Sorry About That, Thursday

I missed a day of blogging.

There was a bit of a car trip and then a movie and then some eating and then some sleeping.

The car trip was from Lafleche. Our bellies still full from a fantastic brunch and my muscles still sore from a fair amount of digging and large appliance moving.

Just in case my satedness subsided, I packed myself a delicious roast beef and bacon sandwich on homemade bread. Just before Moose Jaw (and just after I had passed an ancient woman slowing traffic to a crawl on the non divided highway) I decided I would like a bite of my sandwich.

Carla is scent sensitive and asked if I could wait till we got home before I masticated. Her query came too late as the zip-locked was now neither. The delicious scent of my delicious sandwich filled the car. Being a thoughtful husband I rolled down the window to let in some fresh air. There weren't no fresh air anywhere. The succulent sandwich smell was sucked out and replaced with the overpowering stench of cow shit.

Cow shit lingers.

It lingers.

Like a ling.

Exit Through The Gift Shop is not the easiest film to describe. But I will give it a try. There is this frenchman with an English sounding name that is spelled all weird because he is French who lives in L.A. He sells old clothes for way too much money to people with way too much money. He also videotapes everything. Everything. Not that he is all that great a videographer but he can't be beat, prolifically speaking.

By chance this strange man has a cousin who is an up and comer on the street art scene, and by virtue of the fact that he tapes everything the strange frenchman documents his cousin's exploits. Which leads to him documenting the exploits of many other prominent street artists.

Meanwhile, there is this street artist by the name of Banksy who is making a name for himself. He is talented, daring and anonymous. His path gets tangled with the strange frenchman's. They hang out. They help each other out.

The frenchman, at some point during all of this said that he was going to make a film about all of this. Everyone thought this was a great idea. Until the strange frenchman actually made the film.

I've been to a lot of student video festivals, the frenchman's film wouldn't have made the cut at most of 'em.

Banksy sees this film and decides this new street art movement deserves a better filmic representation and decides to make a film using all the frenchman's footage (he couldn't do any worse). To keep the strange frenchman distracted, Banksy encourages him to make his own art, put on an art show.

So the strange frenchman does, adopting the nom de plum Mr. Brain Wash.

Mr. Brain Wash rents out a space, buys screen priniting equipment, hires artists to make his art. He leverages himself out the brown hole to do all this. And a lot of his art looks like it came out of said hole. Soul-less Warholian aping drivel. Of course the public eats it up.

The film that Banksy made is this story. It's a film by man A about man B who tried to make a film about man A and failed and then fluked into artistic success.

Exit Through The Gift Shop is an interesting film. It shows a lot of the work that goes into making street art. It's funny. It's painful. It raises a lot of interesting questions about the nature of art and artists. I highly recommend it.

I do not recommend Orange, the first izakaya style establishment in Regina. If you want authentic izakaya food in Regina, let me know and I'll cook you up something good. The takoyaki was all wrong, the okonomiyaki was worse, the gyoza was a fucking insult.

Of course we all said it was fine when asked by the server if everything was good. Our server had no idea how to pronounce any of our dishes. Bad dining experience.

Orange is short for Orange You Glad You're Not Eating at Orange.

Holy crap! It's not even Friday any more. I wanted to write about Inception, but I think I'll sleep on it first.