I want to live in a film noir....

via Shorpy

A couple weeks ago I was watching the old movie The Third Man. It's a tale of murder, deceit, and gorgeous dark, brooding cinematography. That's when I realized that many of the things I'm drawn to fit rather comfortably under the category of noir--and noir films and certainly one of my favorites.

Film noir is about crime, desperation, cynicism, and cigarettes. Throw in some moody lighting and nocturnal city scapes and you've got some highly evocative cinema.

via Technicolor Dreams

Although let's be honest, it's really about the high-contrast black and white film.

Out of the Past, via Film Noir

Riddled with corrupt heroes and hard-bitten dialogue, film noirs appeal to the darker side, the gritty urban environment, and the pervasive sense of gloom that sometimes seems to creep into real life a little too much.

It's grungy vintage with plenty of fedoras and trench coats, pistols and betrayal. Good fun for a dark night's viewing.

The Big Combo

The characters are morally ambiguous and mostly miserable, the settings are enough to send anyone into depression. It's the land of black coffee, lamp posts, and disturbing shadows.

The Third Man is probably one of my favorites that I've seen in a long time. I particularly liked the ending--the hero, after he's just killed his best friend, stands at the end of the long entrace into the cemetery. He lights up a cigarette as his romantic interest slowly walks up. It's quiet, it's stark, he's just standing there waiting to say all the things he's felt during the movie, everything he wants to say to this girl who's been through hell with him. She walks up. She doesn't look at him. She keeps walking. He keeps smoking his cigarette. I'm a sucker for downer endings.

The Third Man

There's also quite a cool photoshoot by Vogue in a film noir style.

via Vogue

Very sleek. All of this was, in fact, brought about because of my frenzied but ultimate fruitless search for an independent movie that just came out, called The Perfect Sleep. Still can't get my hands on it, but it looks great and I'll be keeping my eyes open for a chance to watch it. Any movie that includes the line, "And now the blood spilled on this concrete must be getting lonely" is okay in my book.

Cloudy Day at the Beach

Here are the pictures I took the other day at the beach. It was a lovely cloudy day in the Monterey Bay and everything looked windswept and very East Coast-y.

These were the loveliest wildflowers.

At the end of the dock was this broken-down old boat, overrun with pelicans and seagulls and at high tide partially submerged.

Here on the West Coast

Greetings from the West Coast! I haven’t been able to post in the past couple days because a) my home internet service was shut off earlier than expected, and b) the traveling and move have been so hectic the past couple days that I couldn’t find time to get on the internet. But finally, here is the long-awaited update of the now mostly completed move. I got quite a few pictures of my house in Texas, which I will post in full later, and snapped a few shots of the new place in California. It’s quite different!

We've traded in Texas flatlands and scrubby forests for redwoods and the Pacific. Wow. We are currently about a mile from the ocean--we can even see it from the house!

This is the trail just behind our old house. Very typical of the climate and flora in central Texas. We lived in the middle of a huge pine forest, slightly arid but beautiful. It was already getting into the triple digits when we left, so we just missed the scorchng summer heat.

This is the view from the place where we are currently staying. You can just see the ocean on the horizon. I can't believe how big it is because I'm so used to being land-locked.

It's also unbelivably cold here--about 65 degrees. It feels like winter! I've gotten quite wimpy about the cold after eleven years in Texas. Breaking out the winter clothes already. I got some pictures of the California terrain on the ride from the airport. The differences are interesting. In our area in Texas, the only topographical variances were low, rolling hills. Here, we are just on the edge of the redwoods forests, a fairly mountainous area, and I loved seeing the mountains on the horizon and the enormous trees, mostly redwoods, pines, and eucalyptus (and the occasional car that snuck into the pictures!).

I really do love the mountains. We also visited a tiny little town nearby called Felton, way up in the mountains. It's a beautiful, beautiful place, and we may end up living there. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera on that excursion. We also went to the beach very quickly and I snapped a few photos, which I think require a post of their own. Living so close to the water, though, we can go pretty much all the time. More pictures later....

Outbacky

Today I wore:

Plaid shirt - thrift store

Skirt - Forever 21

Tank top - Wal-Mart

Boots - hand-me-downs

Belt - used to be my brother's Cub Scouts belt

Satchel - thrift store. This purse goes with me everywhere, carries an arsenal of daily survival tools, and smells about a thousand years old. It's pretty much the best purse in the world.

Fields and Cemeteries

.............

I got some pictures yesterday of a field of wildflowers next to my church. It's a very pretty piece of country land, very typical of the area I live in. Texas is wonderful for the wildflowers. This is the last time I'm going to be there, so I had to get a couple of shots!

I only got one (very bad) picture of what I was wearing.

Sweater - I made it.

Button-down shirt - used to be my mom's

Jeans - high-waisted jeans from Wal-Mart that I tailored

Sandals - brown, hiding behind the grass, got them from Wal-Mart

Belt - I've had it since grade school

Sunglasses - no idea! I lost my favorite old ones, which were vintage-looking horn rimmed glasses, dubbed the FBI glasses because they look like what an FBI agent would wear in the Fifties. Maybe I'll still find them when cleaning out the last of my stuff.

I also got some pictures of the church cemetery next to the field. It's quite small and old, but the history there is amazing. It's in a tiny town of about 250 people, and pretty much everyone who's died in the couple hundred years since its founding has been buried there. The oldest tombstones go back to the very early 1800s. Many of them are written in German, since it's a town of German immigrants, and most of the names are from a half-dozen families whose descendants still live in the area.

I found them very pretty. Familes still leave flowers on graves of people who died more than a hundred years ago.

Cardigans in the summer

What I wore today:

Cardigan - grabbed it from my little sister. It makes a nice cropped cardigan!

T-shirt - Wal-Mart

Skirt - made it from a pair of plaid shorts

Belt - made from an old green and yellow striped tie

Shoes - gray suede t-straps from Old Navy

Locket - eBay (I do have more necklaces, but they're packed away at the moment.)

Fun with quilts

My room looks so bare and empty. I've taken down and packed away everything I'm taking with me, except my radio, which I use so much I'm not packing it until the last minute. It's kind of depressing right now, but without the usual clutter, I also find it strangely calming. Could I be succumbing to minimalism?

Most everything left is going to be sold at the estate sale, so I am going to be starting in the new house almost from scratch. As usual, I'll be making do with what I have, which will be a lot of cardboard boxes. Expect creative use of cardboard furniture in the near future.


My faded, old, much loved comforter is packed up and this quilt is serving in its place until moving day. This has gotten me thinking that I would really like an antique patchwork quilt for the future house. I like the look.


I love the faded colors and the traditional, rural quality. Definitely somthing that was tucked away in the attic.

Roses

These roses are growing in my front yard and are one of the things I'm going to miss here. When the flowers dry up and die they look like delicate aged parchment. Even dead they're beautiful.

First day of June

What I wore today:

T-shirt - Wal-Mart, very boring

Skirt - plaid wrap skirt bought at a thrift shop

Shoes - Old Navy, they are wonderful gray suede flats

Socks - No idea! They are plain black.

Locket - eBay

Carpet bag - been in the family so long I don't remember

Headband - can't really see it, but I made it out of a piece of ribbon