I guess I am like Toulouse Latrec, in the sense that I hear he was interested in the collision between high and low art, which is why he hung around cat houses. Maybe that was because he was crippled and a drunk. That's what the Frenchies call haut en bas.

I was walking to work this morning, and there was a row of motorcycles all in a line, and I was looking at them, just kind of noticing their complexity and design and all the angles and all, and I was thinking how innured we are to what is produced around commerically that we so rarely take the time to appreciate. Also, last night, I watched The Ladies Man, which was pretty funny, considering. But I watched it right after having watched a movie called Stripped, which is a kind of meditation on feminist empowerment and stripping. Setting aside the accidental curated theme, that both movies are about ladies, there wasn't much in common between them. Stripped had terrible audio and was shot on what seemed like a home video camera, concerned itself with the internal lives of some burlesque dancers and, not to ruin it for you, but two of them died during the making of the documentary.

There isn't much in the way of titilallation in the movie, as it mostly focuses on how miserable, poor and desperate people are who get in the industry and how it dehumanizes you and wrecks your life. Not that it is a good movie or that I would recommend anyone watch it. But to see it next to Leon Phelps, the lisping character from SNL, do a film that is all farce, it got me thinking about how we sort of live in two different countries. I know people say that about republicans and democrats, or stupid people and smart or whatever, but when you spin the radio dial between NPR and some morning zoo, you can't help but marvel at the width of the gulf out there. You don't see it on TV as much, because even some nature show on PBS is pretty dumbed down and mainstream, though Everybody Loves Raymond does set the bar pretty low. But that's like a choice between kind of formulaic and dumb to dumbest. At least on the radio you might actually hear some smart people, where elsewhere you hear people who wouldn't pass for class clown in the 6th grade. But I think you follow me, that the span between the hi and lo of our culture is quite wide, which may not be particular to our civilization, but I think in time past it wasn't as accessible as changing channels.

Anyway, enough of that. Last night, we went out for Ethiopian food. You'd think it would be the same Ethiopia in New York and Berkeley, but it wasn't. For one thing, it was bad here, with a very attitudey waitress who wouldn't let us change tables and never brought me my hot sauce. Plus there was what appeared to be a large spoonful of mayonaise on the injira, and though I'm no Ethiopian, I've never seen mayo in any african food before. Blech. Also at dinner, I learned that Alisa's dad, who is the renegade multinational who is involved with the World Bank, has kept extensive diaries of his adventures, only he has kept them in his own made up language, and all the volumes of his diaries are kept locked up. Which I find intriguing and if it were my dad, I would ask for a dictionary to his made up language, so that some day I could translate them. After dinner I bought a pair of sunglasses. A girly pair, according to some.