Pretty Good: The Bronwyn C. Top Ten of 2008

1. The Giants win the Superbowl.

2. The NYC Musical Saw Festival. I’ll say it again: Hearing Satie’s “Gymnopedie” played by a musical saw and a handbell choir was one of the highpoints of my life. Seriously. The piece for musical saw and Japanese music box by Scott R. Munson was outstanding, too. This year’s Saw Festival is scheduled for July 18.

3. Reading my story “Loved Ones” at the Cup and Pen Small Press Reading Series in March. Emcee Rebecca Alvarez (pictured) is the Pink Pony Princess of the World.

4. The Center for Book Arts, and Barbara Henry, and letterpress printing in general.

5. A weird photo that I took was made into a giant street banner and hung from a lamppost in a little village in upstate New York. Somewhere I have a picture of the banner hanging up, but not where I can get at it right now. It was pretty great, though.

6. The excellent books from Eye Rocket Books ), especially the brilliant and extremely disturbing “Diamonds” and the incredible “Works Cited.” Matt Kessler and Zach Huelsing should totally be getting grants from the Center for Book Arts.

7. DJ Kelly and I spent three days getting gussied up to attend the premiere of a movie we were in, and then didn’t even think to get a picture of us standing in front of that official “Tribeca Film Festival” backdrop. In fact, we didn’t get any photos of ourselves at all. That’s probably partly because I’m faceblind and it never occurs to me to get a picture of myself, but what’s her excuse?

8. The exhibit of Francis Alys’ collection of copies of one 1885 painting of St. Fabiola at the Hispanic Society. Bizarre, unique, and oddly moving. Sluggo and I spent hours on it.

9. “That One.” After John McCain referred to Barak Obama as “that one” during a debate, Mr. Obama called Mrs. Obama “this one over here” during an interview on CBS. That One, This One—what do they call the girls, Thing One and Thing Two? But everything has felt better and more hopeful since he got elected.

10. Judge Roy Pearson was named “Douche of the Year” on a special bracketology edition of my show “Killing Time with Bronwyn C.” on June 6. (For highly technical reasons, all the archives of that show are filed under the name of another show, “Bronwyn Knows Best with Bronwyn and Kelly” on the WFMU playlists and archives page. But it’s there.) Judge Roy Pearson is the douche who sued his dry cleaners for $64 million dollars because they temporarily misplaced his trousers. The great thing is that he was subsequently removed from his job as an administrative law judge in Washington DC and now he's suing for reinstatement and “damages in excess of $75,000.” Plus he’s appealing the ruling in the original case. Once a douche, always a douche—something to keep in mind as we go boldly forward into 2009.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.

Comments

[Rufus J Squirrel]

Zach Huelsing was an intern of mine a few years ago! He is an insanely talented gent. Did you know he went to school to be an architect and then quit when he realized architects were douchebags? This was once he was done with school and interning or in residence or whatever it is you call it.

Maybe he wouldn't want me telling people that. But I thought it was a very ballsy thing to do - total course correction like that.

[Dale]

Re #7: Do you not recognize a picture of yourself?

I wonder if anyone's done Flight of the Bumblebee on a saw.

[Bronwyn C.]

Hi, Listener Dale--No, I cannot recognize myself in photos or in the mirror or anything, and EVERYONE has done Flight of the Bumblebee on a saw. It's like the main thing they do.
I always wonder whether the Eye Rocket guys ever saw "Walken Around," John Kelly's brilliant fanzine about Christopher Walken. No one ever could figure out if he was serious or not, which only added to the disturbing quality of it.