Plano Book Festival

Kort and I spent the morning at the Plano Book Festival which was happening in and around our building. The Fest set up several tents near the DART track and rented one of the meeting rooms at Eastside Village where we attended a panel on an incredibly mediocre topic "unexpected love" but where we heard two incredible women read from their works of fiction, Rosalyn Story and Michelle Stimpson. Story is the author of And So I Sing: African American Divas of Opera and Concert and her latest book, a novel More Than You Know. Stimpson is the author of a new novel Boaz Brown, a humorous tale of an African American woman who discovers love, except it's not what she expects it to look like.

Kort's currently in the living room assembling more book shelves for the apartment. After this group is set up, the apartment should look more or less settled.

I've been checking out the local neighborhood and applied yesterday for my first Texas library card. The nearest library is a 15 minute walk down 18th Street and has a modest DVD collection and a decent poetry section - will have to go back to check out Kevin Young's latest Black Maria. I checked out and watched several films this weekend:

1) A Raisin in the Sun
2) Dr. Strangelove or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb
3) All About My Mother
4) Blue Velvet

I think Kort was a little freaked out by my choices - none really "date" material. But three of these 4 titles are classics that I felt that I needed to see. Of all the films, I think A Raisin in the Sun resonated most for me. The story of a black family in Chicago whose lives are changed when they receive a $10,000 life insurance check. All of the characters are emotionally complex, particularly the elderly matriarch of the family, the long-suffering wife, and Walter Lee, Jr. who has big dreams of providing a real home and opportunities to his son and family, but who drowns his frustrations in alcohol. Walter Jr.'s sister Benny is also an interesting character but for different reasons. On one hand, I could relate to her and recognized her grasping tendencies. Youngest of the siblings, destined for medical school, overprotected and disconnected from her cultural identity and desperately trying to figure that one out. She takes up with a Nigerian classmate (though she resists his initial advances), wears African clothing and plays tribal music to try and reclaim her identity. It's just painful.

Peter Sellars plays three different characters in Dr. Strangelove - a British commander, President of the United States, and Dr. Strangelove. What range! Most unforgettable is Slim Pickens riding the nuclear warhead to oblivion.

All About My Mother - a Pedro Almodovar film dedicated to women, mothers and Bette Davis - with an homage to Streetcar Named Desire thrown in. Shot in Madrid and Barcelona, the plot deals heavily with transexuals.

Blue Velvet - definitely the most disturbing of the bunch and hard to swallow as "erotic" and all the other buzz words emblazoned on the back of the box. Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern look so young in this 1986 movie. Lots of signature David Lynch effects at play - the saturated colors and spotlighting on characters, ambient music and strange people dancing at inappropriate moments. Kyle MacLachlan plays a would-be amateur detective in Blue Velvet which is interesting to think about in contrast to his role in Twin Peaks. Lynch seems to enjoy working with a certain group of actors over and over again - MacLachlan will star in "Inland Empire" (where I hail from), currently in post-production.