kilometer zero running eye blog

Quinn Comendant, immersing himself in another project.

Keen readers of the Running Eye Blog might have noticed the occasional contribution from Quinn Comendant, the wandering coder from Chico who has taken part in exceptional projects in … well, in just about everywhere. Beijing, Paris, Berlin, Greece, Turkey, London, California, etc. etc. etc..

Recent years have seen him embark on a wide-ranging spiritual quest that involves a strain of Buddhism, a thirst for meditation, and a perplexing guru. Even though Quinn is mostly preoccupied by these ephemeral pursuits, happily he still has time for the occasional cultural lark (see his above-pictured starring role as the mutant mime Loupe) or an applause-worthy political engagement.

Falling into the latter category is his recent involvement in a hack-a-thon in Mexico meant to develop technology that solves issues of migration in Latin America. The life of a migrant is particularly horrible; as Quinn notes, “things are fucked up here: the government has acknowledged more than 27,000 people are disappeared, 60% of women on some routes are raped.”

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On the island of Santorini, Greece, on a cliff at the edge of the Aegean Sea, there is a famous bookstore called Atlantis Books, which opened in 2004 and has brought further literary enhancement to the island, organizing artistic and cultural events and festivals with artists and authors of international stature, making it one of the important places visited by many famous authors who want to read their work to a captivated audience, as David Sedaris and Billy Collins have done.

Going down the stairs to the bookstore that is in a traditional cave, we find a striking mural by the Mexican artist Alma Ayon, which is praised by the hundreds of visitors that it attracts to enter this magical bookstore. This work shows books that fall from the shelves, with texts by well-known authors, inviting us to continue reading and descending down the stairs to discover the mystery behind the wall. These books fly, they want to talk, they fall scattered, eager to be read, shouting their fuss and with their impulse for the reader to travel to new worlds through them. That is why they pile up and open up. They don’t want to stay on the shelves, no. Their destiny is beyond, perhaps in remaining in the minds of the readers, transcending, their reason for being. They invite you to come in, in that unconventional bookstore. The effect that this vision generates on the viewer is provocative, it shakes a lot and is able to propel you to the literary venue with great enthusiasm.

Visit the artist’s website for more of her work.

Killer psychopath bent on revenge or sassy rascal with a heart of gold?

When you have small children, you consume a lot of children’s entertainment. And, sometimes you consume the same bit of entertainment over and over again. Forty-seven viewings of Cars, Good Night Gorilla read so many times the spine is in shreds, the tune to Baby Beluga welded so deeply into the synapses that fantasies of strangling Raffi haunt your waking hours.

After a while, it’s natural that a few narrative inconsistencies or plot peculiarities begin to stand out. Take Tinker Bell. In the original Disney version of Peter Pan (1953), she is a jealous sprite who twice tries to have Wendy killed, once by getting the Lost Boys to shoot her out of the sky, once by helping Captain Hook plant a bomb in her temporary tree home. Yet, in the Disney Fairies incarnation, [Tinker Bell (2008), The Lost Treasure (2009), The Great Fairy Rescue (2010), etc.], which are prequels to Peter Pan and feature the ‘birth’ of Tinker Bell, she is so syrupy that you begin to wonder what event will eventually transform her into the blood-thirsty fairy that wants Wendy dead. Do all her fairy friends get massacred before Tinker Bell’s eyes, only for her to be rescued from the flesh-spattered carnage by Peter Pan, which creates a mix of repressed trauma and unhealthy emotional dependency that manifests itself with murderous inclinations? Continue reading →