venerable Brattle Theatre in venerable Cambridge had an anime festival today. ongoing, it's a 24 hour affair, but Erin and I are content with our 9 1/2. the Brattle has for years been home to your basic hip showings of Bogart films and Rocky Horror Show: that sort of theatre. what I'm after saying is that the audience engages to the point of considerable comment during the flick. looked like a hardened crowd, people ready for the derby distance. probably not great attendance, at least so far. I liked the anime. visually, very cinematic and gratifying. I absolutely can't stand the sort of animation used in movies like Shrek, all that techno wizardry strikes me as lifeless. whereas what I saw yesterday had considerable zest and liveliness. and they have surprising depth. one featured a girl who said at the beginning that she woke the night before and realized that she was a god. with ensuing adventures in which indeed she was a god. but she's also smitten by the clueless boy with the cool spiky hair who doesn't quite get that she's there. Half-hearted cosplay (costume contest) occurred during one of the breaks. 3 entrants. one seemed to be a samurai geisha. another wore cargo pants, tube top and kerchief on her head, which is to say, not very identifiable as a character, altho she noted who she was dressed as. showing her stomach may have been the point for her. the winner wore black fatigues or jumpsuit, had blond spiky hair and wielded an outsized sword. One anime concerned two brothers fighting over their father's sword. this one also featured a school girl who goes back to their time, and occasionally returns to the present. she rides her bicycle everywhere, even in the air, and dynamically uses a particularly efficient bow and arrow. there were some wonderful filler shorts seeded thru out the event. one was a student film done by someone who went on to greater things (of which I know nothing). no dialogue, just zooming images. it featured your typical and ubiquitous young school girl in school uniform, but early on she transmogrifies into a Playboy bunny, and proceeds to do hyperkinetic laser battle with Darth Vader, and fly around on what I take to be Silver Surfer's surfboard, all the while with things exploding with nuclear wrath. just so odd. odder still was a live action music video. it featured five guys on stage singing. the group is possibly called Yatta. they wore just their Fruit of the Looms, with fig leaf over the crotch. it's a parody of boy bands and Village People and Menudo and poppy pop music. the five look like software developers but are all exultant smiles and sincere singing and mugging and eye contact with the crowd. the crowd is an odd blend of elders and children. the boys shake their skinny booties in some of the goofiest choreography possible, jumping, marching and kicking. cut into the live performance are the usual vid vignettes. one of which shows one of our heroes, in Yatta mufti, walking down a city sidewalk. he passes a young woman, who smiles at him. he turns with a sad look of yearning. out of the shadows come his four mates, grinning and supportive, and suddenly everything is fine again, lots of hppy reenforcement. there are no subtexts here, it's all uber text. I was quite entertained by everything shown during the event. at one point I left to call Beth and to walk around. which led me to the Grolier Bookstore, now safe to enter. a much calmer place than it used to be. whatever the shoplifting problem under previous ownership, the security archway took way too much acreage in such a small shop. glad to see that gone. I had no particular bees in my bonnet as to what I would look for, tho I don't know why I share personal bonnet information in such a public forum as this. I mainly just wanted to see if the coast were clear at the old poetry shop. what's not surprising but I am hopeful will change is that the selection had glaring holes. er um no Creeley, for one. the shop's latter years were not well funded, so selection kinda sorta didn't keep up with the times. I picked up a copy of Kirby Doyle's collected, priced at the 1986 price of 7 dollars that it entered the shop by. aint never read him. I also discovered Stops by Joel Sloman (Zoland 1999), one of the good people in the local arena. it has an introduction by Denise Levertov. he seems detached from the professorially inspired (or conspired) embargo on originality and verve that obtains in this fusty old town, yet seems like a supportive citizen in the best sense. I was glad to get his book. a guy in the shop needed help from the person working there. I didn't hear his entreaty but apparently he had the woman looking for some Bulgarian poet. eventually he said something that lit the idea of Bukowski in the woman's mind, and that proved to be what the guy wanted. no Bukowskian poetry was in attendance at the shop however so the guy was referred to Harvard Bookstore, right next door. another person wanted a poetry book from, as he said, the man who wrote Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me, Richard Farina (Farina also wrote some lovely songs, too, buddy), but the shop lacked that as well. new ownership should sell off the dustier tomes (i. e. the ones I'm not interested in) and dedicate a handful of smackers to an A-Z overhaul. christ, should I send a letter listing books and authors to carry? I checked for Kasey Mohammad, Stephanie Young, Shanna Compton, as poets who ought and maybe could (they all seem to have some sort of distribution going) be on the shelves. and that I'd be interested in reading. none of them were to be found. see, I'm not crazy about SPD, at least so far as the D of the acronym goes. with our press, they were supposed to send our new publications to libraries as standing orders but oops, never happened. and little presses with micro budgets having to wait 6-9 months for proceeds from sales, yeesh. and hey the exorbitant cost of doing business with...okay, okay, don't get me started. Grolier is supposedly one of 2 poetry shops in the country. I say, send them 3 copies of your book, call it consignment if you like, just to freshen the selection as a material instance of a selection. which brings to mind what I'm told a certain poet does: sneaks copies of his books onto store shelves, with the idea that readers and orders would therefore occur. I didn't feel the kind of excitement I used to feel in the store, but I don't blame current ownership. around 6 Beth arrived and we convened for dinner at an Indian restaurant, then Erin bustled off to see Steam, a parody of anime, gaming, commercials and so on. I saw parts of it at Anime Boston. quite funny, tho many allusions and references exist well outside my ken. Beth and I wandered around Harvard and Brattle Squares. flashback the 60s and hippies and excitement. this wounded-seeming Asian fellow I'd noticed 3 years ago was there in front of the Harvard Coop, playing his 3-stringed instrument and looking very distant. I saw an older man in a couple of different places during the day. he had earphones, and just sat there rocking back and forth to the music. autistic, I would imagine. anyway we scurried home once Steam ended.