Category Archives: Video

Crushes

  By Eden M. Kennedy | August 18, 2012 - 11:07 am | ,
21 Comments

Here’s another video, and it’s just 2:22 long so it’s not as much of a commitment as the previous one. It’s just me talking about some of my early movie man crushes. Some of them are a little embarrassing. In fact, I believe I unconsciously suppressed Jeff Goldblum because Jack gives me so much shit about how much I loved him in The Fly, but instead of going back to re-record my little speech to include him I just edited him in after the fact. So this is me speaking into an iPad, and then wondering why iMovie distorted my face so wonderfully that I almost threw everything out and started over, but then I remembered: I’m not a perfectionist. So enjoy my squashed-flat face, and let me know if you share any of my movie loves. I’m not threatened. There’s enough of Burt Reynolds to go around.

Crushes from Eden M. Kennedy on Vimeo.

I demand that you care what I had for lunch!

  By Eden M. Kennedy | August 7, 2012 - 10:41 am | ,
33 Comments

Last week Jack and Jackson went on their annual camping trip to Big Sur, so I took the opportunity to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling and figure out what to do next with my life. Meditating like this doesn’t normally produce results for me beyond maybe an angry nap, but for once I tried to be honest with myself. I was inspired by a meditation teacher I recently read an interview with. The full interview is here, but the money quote is here:

Safransky: What’s the single most important piece of advice you would give to someone who wants to awaken?

Adyashanti: Get in touch with what you really want. What does awakening mean for you? Do you want it because it sounds good? Then you’ve borrowed someone else’s idea of it. What is it that’s intrinsic to you? What’s been important to you your whole life? If you touch upon that, you are in touch with a force that no teacher or teaching could ever give you. You are quite on your own in finding it. No one can tell you what that is. Once you feel it, once you’re clear on it, everything else will unfold from there. If you need a teacher, you’ll find one. If you need a teaching, you’ll bump into it, probably in the most unexpected way.

For me, I realized that I needed to start small and work from a really simple place and then see what happens. I wanted to step outside the boundaries of writing/blogging for awhile, so the next day during my lunch hour I charged up my point-and-shoot and made a little video. It’s sloppy and it’s 4:00 long, which is about twice the average amount of time most people spend on this site, so I’m begging your indulgence.

Lunch with the Letter B from Eden M. Kennedy on Vimeo.

(Here’s the link to the video clip I use when I’m talking about the polygraph test for plants.)

(Also, in the video I say “paganist” but what I really mean is “animist.” And the fact that I talk all that time without tying everything up in a meaningful conclusion is the result of my freewheeling, unscripted narrative me needing to shut up and eat and then get back to work.)

Peace out

  By Eden M. Kennedy | January 27, 2012 - 1:00 pm | ,
3 Comments

Videos of people waiting and trying to be still because they think I’m just trying to take their picture delight me for some reason.

If that didn’t do it for you, maybe my latest thing over at The Stir will suit your mood. My best actor and actress Oscar predictions are informed by nothing but whimsy and hubris, as will surprise no one. Have a wonderful weekend wherever you end up standing, sitting, or lying down, on camera or off.

Growth is painful

  By Eden M. Kennedy | January 24, 2012 - 2:44 pm | ,
32 Comments

Yeah, I cut my hair again. (Did you really think I wouldn’t?) I may have to finally admit that long hair is for those who have long-hair lifestyles and long-hair self images. People who are able to ignore the pain and frustration of hair blowing into their face/eyes; who are not irritated as fuck when their hair gets tangled in their bag strap or zipped into a dress. These are the blessed, for whom being romantic and windswept looks natural, instead of laughable.

Unfortunately, my son is in the thick of his need for me to look “like other moms,” for which this hair cut does not qualify. The only other short-hair mom at his school moved back to the Netherlands (so now I’m the tallest mom, too! The obviousness of my sticking-outedness is mythological in scope. Grrr, Mrs. Kennedy SMASH!). Last night, after I came home from work and he saw what I’d done to myself, he stopped just short of begging me to wear a hat. But this is a child who also thinks I should drive a Mustang, wear knee-high boots, and take him to Disneyland for a week. I don’t really understand how any of that will help me blend in.

(Video made using Everyday.)

Lepidopterology

  By Eden M. Kennedy | January 5, 2012 - 5:06 pm | , ,
3 Comments

Every year the monarch butterflies migrate to this one stand of eucalyptus trees north of Santa Barbara, and then they fuck their brains out.

And then they flap around in ecstasy because OMG BUTTERFLY PROMISCUITY. It’s like when all those people were cast as Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz and they got to mingle with people their size, some for the first time ever. The whole thing turns one big (and it the butterflies’ case, not-terribly-explicit) orgy.

Naturally, we had to take Jackson.

We’re progressive parents, after all, and why just talk about the birds and the bees when you can actually watch butterflies fuck until they die? I think that’s how it works.

We asked Jackson all the important questions (Do butterflies lay eggs? Do they bury each other at sea?) since he had a unit on butterflies three grades ago, but he was all, Really? Do I look like Google to you?

Here, look at this

  By Eden M. Kennedy | December 19, 2011 - 8:12 pm | ,
26 Comments

UPDATE: I put the wrong video up. The right one is now below the wrong one. Watch both of them if you want!

Remember back in October when I told you how I went to New York to buy a cheesecake, and accidentally made a video with Alice and Bethenny Frankel? Well, it may have been the other way around. The point is, that video is now live and I am both contractually and morally obligated to show it to you.

The story I told is actually true. The only reason I thought of dipping the baby in the toilet was the fact that Jack likes to tell us how his dad used to rinse his hair in the toilet. Jack’s dad was an incredibly dapper man who grew up on a farm in Indiana and went on to work for Esquire, be a TV cowboy, and write a Gene Hackman movie, so you’ll have to piece it all together from there.

The other thing I was thinking during the video was, “Do I even have any Clorox products in my house right now?” And I remembered that I did because I specifically bought a big bottle of bleach the last time my survivalist instincts bubbled up and I thought I ought to have a way to make clean drinking water in case of [insert post-apocalyptic scenario here].

Day Twenty-seven

  By Eden M. Kennedy | November 27, 2011 - 9:56 pm | ,
12 Comments

In tortoise news today, we’ve been seeing a lot of Peanut as she migrates around the house looking for the right nook to hibernate in for the winter. She’s refusing all food, no matter how tasty (romaine, bananas) or exotic (Japanese pear, raw hamburger). That worried me for a few days, because I think tortoises should be more like bears and gorge themselves before curling up in someone’s Ugg boot for three or four months.

This year, though, she’s having trouble finding just the right spot for her nap. Like Goldilocks, or the Buddha, it seems she’s trying to find the middle way. In front of the warm refrigerator vent is too public; the patch of sun on Jackson’s carpet too transient; and even though that spot underneath Peewee’s dog bed fulfills her requirements for dark, warm, and private, inevitably one finds a dog’s ass pressing down upon one’s shell, sometimes accompanied by an unnecessary amount of scooting and barking.