Hustler of Culture
Was Cory Doctorow quoted on Criminal Minds, my favorite show?
Indeed he was. That’s a career goal I’d like to aspire to…
I only knew Leslie Harpold briefly, our paths crossing at parties thrown by mutual friends. She also featured at a reading series I hosted once upon a time.
I can’t say I knew her well or that we were even friends but I do remember being impressed by her intelligence, creativity and vigor for life. She was also from Michigan, which made me like her more.
There are precious few of these sorts of people in the world. Losing one makes our lives glow dimly instead of bright.
Her death at age 40 leaves me shaken. I haven’t been able to find out what happened or how she died. All evidence indicates that she came down with bronchitis and then, I don’t know. Her mom found her when Leslie did not answer repeated phone calls.
I suppose it doesn’t really matter. Death doesn’t ask our permission. It drops in, leaves and lets us clean up.
Leslie’s memory will live in the body of work she created, the people that loved her and those of us who only knew her a little but were glad we did.
Sail on, Leslie. We’ll try to live up to the standard you set.
Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny (2006): “Idiotic conviction is much funnier than wise uncertainty.”
Notes: Seen with my friend Lora at the Parkway Theatre, which is a simply awesome place to see a movie.
If it ever comes to this, I give all of you permission to murder me with sharp, pointy objects.
“I like grit, I like love and death, I’m tired of irony. … A lot of good fiction is sentimental. … The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. … I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass.”
Amen to that.
—Jim Harrison (via the Writer’s Almanac)
Postmodern: “Weird for the sake of weird” —Moe Szyslak
Flashdance (1983): “I can’t wait until get up there so I can disappear.” –Line from the movie.
Notes: “What a Feeling!” is the 6th most popular song on my iTunes and my alltime favorite running song. And yet I’ve never seen this movie. Luckily, my friend Lora loaned me a copy and my friend Joe, whom I had dinner with this evening, is almost as big a cheeseball as I.
This is not a good movie any more than Streets of Fire or Iron Eagle, two of my other favorites from the period are good movies. It’s basically a series of rock videos hanging off the thinist of plots. But it’s so resolutely of its time (early 80s) and place (Pittburgh in the early 80s) that its fun simply by hindsight. You can look at it now and know that when MTV was young, when going to the gym was hip and sleeping with your boss wasn’t considered sexual harassment that Flashdance was slopping around right in the middle of it.
“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves.”