Around this time several years ago my friend Kendra and I made our way across the country to California, in search of good times and respite in San Francisco. We had a lovely time, and because of her awful sense of direction, I learned many of the ins and outs of that city. At times, the map was the better friend. But Kendra is one of my very best friends and she knows how I feel about her poor sense of direction�and she is always good for a laugh: �I got such a kick out of all those kids at that mod night and their 60�s matted hair and the smell of mildew from their vintage clothes�Dry-cleaning, kids! Come on!� It was there in SF, I�m ashamed to say I hadn�t before, that I discovered, and fell in love with, Chet Baker�s vocal work. It�s like marmalade on a warm day but aching, plaintive and sad underneath. That undercurrent of pain is similar to one of the many things that makes The Beach Boys� Pet Sounds so amazing. �Don�t talk, put your head on my shoulder.� And to see Brian Wilson now, just hoping someone will take him back to his sandbox, makes it even that much more poignant. And a true testament to the idea that art and the artist are separate. And that art is transcendent. And that humans die. The story with Chet Baker is similar, only he�s dead. He worshipped Charlie Parker and even so, still got hooked for good on heroin after Charlie warned him, knowing from personal experience, it was no road to take. When my friend Joya was in Amsterdam her friend was giving her directions and a popular line was, �Go by where Chet died,� making reference to the hotel where Chet �fell� or �jumped� from a window, landed on the sidewalk and died. My dad sent me a video about Chet called Let�s Get Lost which is just positively depressing. It�s Flea and some other guys hanging out with Old Chet, drinking and laughing. But mostly Chet just has his eyes closed in the car and can barely talk. But he�s still managing to hide his missing front tooth. Well, at that point he was probably missing a lot more than just the one tooth that he had always been missing. And the missing tooth made his trumpet tone very warm and soft. An old professor of mine and I were having a beer awhile back and he was saying he met up with an old guy friend in San Francisco at a bar and said, �You know, I got to see Chet Baker here before he died.� And the friend said, �Honey, I got to fuck Chet Baker.� Heh. Anyway, Chet cared about melody in a time when scatting was where it was at, cat. And I personally appreciate that, living in a city that houses Berklee School of Music and I can�t go out and see regular live jazz without every player blowing his load on every solo. It�s masturbatory. Sure, it�s fun for a little while (and I really shouldn�t make gross generalizations because some of my favorite musicians are Berklee kids. Lots and lots. I think it�s about having artistic and personal integrity that does the trick). That was another thing about being in San Francisco. I was reading the S.F. Weekly and it had all kinds of suggestions of things to do and I think Kendra and I followed the �Best reason to go out on a Tuesday night� advice and found ourselves drinking cosmopolitans in a totally dead bar in the Mission that had a funny bathroom with only a tapestry separating it from the rest of the place (and you know how I feel about improper bathroom exposure). It was an awesome night. Because this trio was playing and it was nothing like I�d hear in Boston�at the Good Life, or Wonderbar� unless I was catching somebody bigger at the Regattabar or Scullers� anyway. The drummer was laying down these trip-hop beats and the guitarist was accenting it with some electric whammy stuff and then this guy was wailing on the sax. And we talked to them after and it turned out that �The Reverend��the sax player�knew �Little Dayna Stephens,� as he called him, who grew up in SF and was in my swing band in Boston (and happens to be one of those guys who can pick up any freakin� instrument and play it like a pro, and happens to be one of the nicest fellahs you�d ever want to meet). Anyway, I was so happy to hear something fresh and new, and yes, of course built upon the tried-and-true. I guess that�s why I got so mad at that dumb guy at the party the other night who decides what he �likes� depends upon whether he �should� like them. The Musical Anorexic, I like to call this type of person. Obsessed with music and what it says about him to the point that he deprives himself of it. I know a few people like that and it�s really sad. Because they do really love music.

Anyway�watched Mulholland Drive last night with Wil and Susan. Rule #1 for David Lynch�s actors: Don�t get too attached to your character because chances are you�re going to be swapping. Anyway, it was good, entertaining, but in the same unsatisfying/unsettling way all David Lynch is. It�s what made me like him so much for Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and the like, a wee teenager, extra keen on seeing something different. He sucks you in and then never gives you a tangible conclusion. David Lynch is like the blonde Patricia Arquette character at the end of his Lost Highway, who says, in response to Balthazar Getty�s character�s, �I want you� whilst having sex, "You�ll Never Have Me." That is David Lynch. He gets you all riled up, into his movie, caring about what happens, what happened and yet he�ll never give it up. It makes me feel like he must be a man who cannot ejaculate. That would explain the seemingly out of place hot girl on girl action throughout Mulholland Drive� I mean if he can�t get off on his own movie� And Lynch is a slippery fish too. He sets this movie in Hollywood (go there to make it or go there to die), and pours it full of illusion, intrigue and old movie stars (Ann Miller, Tapdancer!) fit for any Nathaniel West novel. It�s like a screwier Day of the Locust, in a way� the �main� character Betty�s eyes full of so stars, fresh off the innocent plane from Ontario, you can barely believe she exists� and she just may not. I mean, this film starts off with a head injury to �Diane,� �Rita� or �Camilla� so you�re already screwed because you can�t be sure what is happening is really happening or if it�s just the head injury. At least that�s what you have to tell yourself when the characters go through some weird warp (the Blue Box) and suddenly become, well, each other, and in the past, it seems. Is this reality? And we were experiencing the head injury with her? I mean, she has amnesia, so she knows just about the same amount we do about her life. It�s like at the beginning of Lost Highway when Bill Pullman�s �character� says, in response to the cops asking why he doesn�t have a video camera, �I like to remember things the way I remember them, not necessarily the way they happened.� So the viewer is pretty much screwed right from the beginning. And Mr. Lynch is free to make crazy shit go down. And that�s why I love him and also why I hate him. But it�s undeniable that he has his own style� the non-comer. I would like to go into this in more detail but I have to finish my thesis proposal. Which doesn�t seem like a big deal but those of you who know me have been watching me drag my feet for far too long� and are probably saying, �yeah right, Jenn. Finish your proposal. Hehe. � But I mean it. I�m handing it in today.

Word of the Day for Monday June 10, 2002:

ennui on-WEE, noun:

A feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction arising from lack of interest; boredom.

He glanced at his heavily laden bookshelves. Nothing there appealed to him. The ennui seemed to have settled into his very bones. --Amanda Quick, [1]With This Ring

He was often off sick or playing hooky and suffered from a kind of ennui, a mixture of listlessness and willful melancholy. --Elisabeth Roudinesco, [2]Jacques Lacan (translated by Barbara Bray)

Yet if she felt anything it was ennui,... the grey sky and the cold wind obliterating every impulse she might have felt to seek comfort in another climate, another landscape. --Anita Brookner, [3]Falling Slowly

He was ashamed and unhappy, adrift with a senseless ennui. --Brian Moynahan, [4]Rasputin: The Saint Who Sinned

Ennui is from the French, from Old French enui, "annoyance," from enuier, "to annoy, to bore," from the Latin phrase in odium, "in hatred or dislike."

Synonyms: tedium, boredom. [5]Find more at Thesaurus.com.