George and the Star

ha. and i found it, just in one hour.

apparently, it's not gerry potterton, but gerald. and he did direct an animated short film about a man named george who decides to get a real star for the top of his christmas tree. and so he goes to look for one and has adventures.

that's all i found. but that's enough.

weirdly, gerald potterton also directed this animated movie called "heavy metal," which i also saw when i was a kid, but probably shouldn't have because it was adult animation with — if i remember correctly — boobs and blood. "heavy metal" is way more famous and its cover has this woman warrior riding a pterodactyl.

but "george and the star" is real, even if imdb doesn't know. i think i need to call my mom and brother tomorrow.

there may not be much about "george and the star" online, but at least now there's one more thing: this.

Alone in an Unlocked House

and while home, sick and studying on a friday night, i somehow remembered this old cartoon that i hadn't thought of in years. i only have the faintest images of it in my head, like parts of a dream or something, but i know it's real — i just can't reach far back enough to fully remember.

i think it was called something like "georgie and the star" or maybe just "george and the star," and it was about this guy named george who had to get a star for some reason. and there was a woman there, too, and maybe a robot or some kind of animal. and he does he the star in the end, and everyone is happy. and there might have been singing. it seems like there would have been, really.

and that's all i have. imdb is no help, for the first time ever. and google seems to think there was a short film called "george and the star" that was animated, but none of the links take me anywhere useful. i've turned up this name gerry potterton, which sounds british but imdb also doesn't recognize it.

this happened once before, in high school, when i suddenly remembered this weird movie called "unico," which actually turned out to be my first experience with japanese animation. that turned out to be real, that weird movie about a floating wizard head in a flashing pyramid who turned people into these weird mummy dolls.

but i swear, i saw this movie, this "george and the star." i swear it's real. i swear i saw it on the disney channel when i was really young. it meant a lot to me. i wish i could find it. i swear, it would make me feel better to know i'm not fooling myself. i just find it hard to believe that not a single place on the whole internet can help.

i just need something. and then maybe i can remember.

Windstorms Over Storke Plaza

Beauty shines more brightly when it is fleeting. What only exists for a few instances — a convergence of coincidences witnessed only by a lucky few — is truly more beautiful.

I realized this when the fruitless walnut trees near Storke Plaza began losing their petals in the wind. Those white flecks bobbing chaotically over our heads better captured what I call "beauty" then blossoms that could have lasted for months had the storm not blown in this afternoon.

Beauty that lasts forever, I suppose, must become ordinary.

Questions in a World of Blue

"If I had a nickel for every cigarette your mother smoked, I'd be dead," said Donna Hayward somewhere in a time loop I can't figure out.

David Lynch nailed it. Life, like his visions, is really just a reel of ambiguous images jumbled together in a meaningless sequence. But stuff keeps coming up, and even though you question the director's plan — or even if he has a plan or even if the director exists — these weird recurrences beg you to interpolate a meaning.

The Show of Life

A short play by the little-known Billy Shakesbad.

Old Nick: Woe be woman, whose fate it is to serve.

Mephista: May thy tongue shrivel, that it spews such falsehoods.

Old Nick: Ah, but does not a man pull thy strings?

Mephista: We are all but puppets of greater powers.

Old Nick: Puppets? As in the show of life? Truly, birth doth draw wide the curtains. And woman, are thy lines scripted? In that I can be no one but myself, I can say only my lines. So sad, to be so constrained.

Mephista: It is I who feel for thee. Thine own role and fate has ever been written, while mine own changes with each breath. Yea, tho puppet I be, it is hope, faith, and love that pulls my strings.

Old Nick: Woman, mine ears do sting from thy tongue. I shall away in search of easier folly!

I have no idea what made me think of these devilish puppets after all these years. I wonder if I will think of them again.

For Esme, With Love and Squalor

Somehow, El Colegio Road reminded me that I miss this last summer. I haven't thought about places like London and Paris in weeks, but I realized on the drive home from work that I wished I could go back — right now — and then I could appreciate it all again, even though I wanted to leave so badly those last few days.

Maybe it's Isla Vista that's gotten old and maybe it's a good idea that I'm heading home this weekend, even it's to an empty house (plus a dog). I think I remembered Europe on the streets of I.V. because they're so empty and ugly and leading to nowhere I want to go. The Pasado House is different; it's my sanctuary against all the stuff I don't want to deal with. The Nexus office, too, I guess, even with it's high stone walls and drainy fluorescent lights — a womb if I was a stucco-and-wax robot. Like a movie set, kind of, but far from the train station in Florence, for sure.

No, I'm trapped on the set of some workplace sitcom...

[ a [[brackets]] break ]

[twyla cut ten inches off her hair and i think it looks awful but she donated the hair she cut to wigs for cancer children, so i think it actually looks very pretty on her.]


[bonnie is moving back to colorado, to solve the jon benet murder, i imagine. i feel bad that she's not happy enough to stay, because beyond a talent for words she has a quality about her that other people sorely lack, even if i can't put my finger on it. i guess she's a real person, after all, and i shouldn't keep her around to make me feel better. besides, kidnapping is illegal.]

I thought about Agnes and Kristen and Charlie today, too, and those three haven't been a unit in my mind since before school started. I wonder how they are now, in Paris, Capetown, and Berkeley, respectively. I finally triumphed over the Mystery Mono. I guess November must seem dull, especially in the wake of Halloween. It's been a while since they changed of scenery and I'm getting terribly bored.

Medication or not, I've been acting out lately. It's not like me to destroy a painting. To black it out then drown it in red and then let Nate take an axe to it.

Maybe I'm changing again.

f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s

The End of the Mushroom Kingdom

(A weekend tally) Axe: One; Art: Zero. Realizing that my painting would never resolve itself and would therefore continue to dominate my mind like some evil taskmaster, I threw it into the rain. As the canvas glided over me, it clipped the back of my head. I now have a big lump at the site of impact.

Wait five minutes.

Damned if I didn't think the rain streaks somehow improved the painting. I tried to rescue it. I had actually brought it back inside when I realized my follow and handed the piece to Nate and told him to go to town with the axe.

It was for the better.

End intermission. Resume regular broadcast.