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Valarie Smith

@valarie.bsky.social

900 followers 150 following 5.6K posts

Welcome, book lovers! 💙📚 Probably rereading Woolf’s The Waves or listening to the Backlisted podcast. Also a fan of Sam Shepard, Kerouac, Dickens, Steinbeck, Willy Vlautin, Donna Tartt, film noir, Twin Peaks, Elliott Smith, Grimm & folklore. Portland, OR

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Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 2h

I listened to some of this and, well, it makes me long for more tales of Pepys’ constipation.

Reposted by Valarie Smith

Coates is Odd This Day @oddthisday.bsky.social · 2h

The idea is that the album has been put out by the lawyer he plays in My Cousin Vinny, which is not the oddest thing about it. That would be the fact that this was Pesci’s second album, and his first had come out 30 years earlier:

Got to Get You Into My Life - Little Joe Sure Can SIng!

YouTube video by Shine Box

youtu.be

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Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 4h

Hahaha, I screenshotted this as well! #yurck

Reposted by Valarie Smith

Alex Spahn 🌋🌪️☄️ @spahn711.bsky.social · 8h

This made me laugh way harder than it should have.

A play on the Obama "HOPE" poster, but with a frog and the word "HOP"

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Reposted by Valarie Smith

the babahuck @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 22h

In 2004, Parisian police were conducting a training exercise in the french catacombs and found, after moving past a desk and a tape playing audio of snarling dogs, a fully functional movie theater and bar. When they returned 3 days later, the equipment was gone, with a note: “Do not try to find us.”

Members of the force's sports squad, responsible
- among other tasks - for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.
After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.
Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.
Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs".

There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.
A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said.
"The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there."
Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."

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Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 7h

Ah, I only saw Saturday and didn't realize it had already happened. Thank god.

Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 7h

This reminds me of graffiti that the PPB posted during the George Floyd protests that showed an anarchist symbol and then said "Biden 2020." That one was hilarious, but this could have godawful consequences. Hopefully everyone else recognized it for what it is.

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Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 8h

Sorry, Chris - I only just saw this now. 🤞 🤞

Reposted by Valarie Smith

OPB @opb.org · 9h

Ongoing protests against President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement policies took a two-wheeled turn in Portland today, when hundreds of people — some fully or partially nude — gathered for what organizers dubbed an Emergency World Naked Bike Ride.

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Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 10h

❤️

Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 10h

Wow. It's so moving, the way people are finding ways to stand against this.

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Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 10h

It's 53F/12C as the (occasionally) naked bike riders roll up. I don't know what the future holds for us, but I'm so proud of Portland & the way people are reclaiming the surrounding territory of this awful facility as our own. S/o to Chicago and DC and everyone else fighting back as best they can.

Alex Baumhardt @alexbaumhardt.bsky.social · 11h

Absolutely pissing rain but the naked bike riders just made it!

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Reposted by Valarie Smith

Alex Baumhardt @alexbaumhardt.bsky.social · 11h

Absolutely pissing rain but the naked bike riders just made it!

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Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 11h

Oh man, how sweet is that?

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Reposted by Valarie Smith

Tim Dickinson @timdickinson.bsky.social · 12h

Fierce, unruly joy in Portland at the emergency naked bike ride

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Reposted by Valarie Smith

Firsk.bsky.social @firsk.bsky.social · 1d

Portland does have a rebellious spirit. This picture, which I took years ago near Reed College, always typified this to me.

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Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 14h

❤️❤️❤️

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Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 15h

Listening to this now and it’s beautiful. Simple, child-like melodies that expand into something haunting and dreamlike.

E.A. @eeeeaaaa.bsky.social · 22h

Now listening to the new album from Lebanese composer Yara Asmar. It’s oblique and highly experimental ambient music. I definitely recommend it, and I recommend reading her account of the making of the album on the Bandcamp page.

everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much, by Yara Asmar

11 track album

yaraasmar.bandcamp.com

Reposted by Valarie Smith

JacquiWine @jacquiwine.bsky.social · 19h

An abundance of diner and delicatessen deliciousness in the WAYNE THIEBAUD: AMERICAN STILL LIFE exhibition at the Courtauld.

Loved this - I’ll definitely be going back for second helpings! #ArtSky #WayneThiebaud

17 CAKES
1963
Oil on canvas
In this celebrated painting, Wayne Thiebaud gives an epic account of one of his favourite motifs, a display of bright and brash cakes familiar from bakeries and diners across America. Working on an unusually large scale for a still-life painting, he accords both the genre itself and his commonplace subject matter monumental status. Thiebaud uses his paint thickly and lushly to accentuate what he considered the distinctly American character of the patterned, vividly coloured and excessively frosted offerings. Cakes was a standout work in exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles in 1963 and helped confirm Thiebaud's emerging reputation as a distinctive painter of modern American life.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Gift in Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the National Gallery of Art from the Collectors Committee, the 50th Anniversary Gift Committee, and The Circle, with additional support from the Abrams Family in memory of Harry N. Abrams

10 THREE CONES
1964
Oil on canvasboard
This small painting offers a fragment of individual pleasure: ice cream cones on a stand, just scooped and ready to enjoy. This frozen moment of anticipation conjures a wider world of modern American leisure and sense of plenty during this period. However, the subject is inherently short-lived; ice creams are quick to melt or be eaten. As Wayne Thiebaud described,
'The ice cream cone, for me, represents a kind of joy, a sort of temporariness... That very bright spirit that it once had, that kind of colour, light, liveliness, soon will be gone.' In this, Thiebaud continued a long tradition of still-life painting as an exploration of the fleeting nature of life.
Acquavella

12 BOSTON CREMES
1962
Oil on canvas
Wayne Thiebaud's interest in objects of everyday consumerism meant that he was often categorised as a Pop artist and was included in several seminal Pop Art exhibitions throughout the 1960s. However, his lushly painted works are at odds with the cool detachment and slick surfaces more typical of that movement. This painting shows Thiebaud working at the extreme of his distinctive approach, with its whipped, buttery brushstrokes conjuring the substance of the creamy cakes themselves. As he put it,
'white, gooey, shiny, sticky oil paint spread out on the top of a painted cake becomes frosting.
It is playing with reality'.
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento

15 CANDY COUNTER
1969
Oil on canvas
When he produced this work at the end of his breakthrough decade, Wayne Thiebaud had established a significant reputation as a painter of modern American still life. Critics had interpreted his work in different ways: as expressing the beauty of the everyday, as an exploration of nostalgic Americana, or even a critique of the excesses of consumerism. This imagined candy counter plays to all these interpretations, with its brighter colours making everything even more vivid than in earlier works. Thiebaud thought of his still lifes as scenes of modern life or staged performances: 'The objects are... like small landscapes, buildings or characters in a play with costumes'. By this time, Thiebaud's work extended beyond still life and, during his long career, he was also famed for his figure paintings and cityscapes.
Private collection

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Reposted by Valarie Smith

Toby Miller @tobytram.bsky.social · 20h

Saw a man towing a pumpkin. Too many shapes and colours to ignore, so I asked if I could take photos.
“Ignore me. Just keep towing; it’s the shape of the pumpkin in the wagon I like” I explained.

He has just won first prize at the village show.
- Congratulations
- Thank you. I am very happy

Seen from behind- an enormous emergency red pumpkin sat in a metal wagon. It has a sticker with Kit Kat written on it. A man is towing the wagon down a narrow village pavement.

He had been using two hands behind him to pull, which is the composition I really wanted. But I didn’t want to get all David Hemmings and start posing him.

A photo from the side of the man - big broad smile, like he’d won the lottery - pulling his pumpkin in a trolley.

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Reposted by Valarie Smith

Christina Daub @christinadaub.bsky.social · 21h

Again I’m Asked if I Glow in the Dark
#smallpoemsunday
#poetry
by Kathleen Flenniken
from her collection Plume
University of Washington Press

@tomsnarsky.bsky.social

Poem by Kathleen Flenniken: Again I’m asked if I glow in the dark.

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Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 16h

I find this episode a tough watch. The killing is quite cruel and Dick Van Dyke’s character is joyless. I feel like Columbo in the last scene just watching it.

Reposted by Valarie Smith

Coates is Odd This Day @oddthisday.bsky.social · 21h

If you’ve enjoyed this – and I grant you, the word ‘if’ may be taking some strain there – you may also want to read the story of W B Yeats kicking Aleister Crowley down some stairs

Odd this day

Ah! 19 April — 123rd anniversary of the day William Butler Yeats kicked Aleister Crowley down some stairs as they fought for control of…

mulberryhall.medium.com

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Valarie Smith @valarie.bsky.social · 16h

Ooh, interesting. I was on the fence about it but now will check it out.