Well world, Blogging for these last few months has obviously made an impression on me, because I'm blogging while I'm drunk, now. I've just said goodbye to my physical friends, now I'm saying goodbye to my virtual ones. I'm leaving for Spain in a bit and I thought I'd send out a message of peace and goodwill to the world. I don't know if I'll have the internet where I'm going - if I do, that's cool, if I don't, it'll probably do me good - but merry Christmas, anyways. Keep checking back here during the holiday season, because I'll probably find a way to keep posting. If I don't, I'll start up again on Jan. 4th when I get home to Portland. If I don't until then, keep letting that eagle soar, America.
Hey, let's pretend that the last 8 years were a joke, ok? That'll be my Christmas present. Now I have to pack...
I only got a few hours of sleep last night, so when I got home from lectures today I just took some me-time. Tomorrow night I ship out so all I have left to do is study and pack, really. I also went to Top Man today and got a second pair of jeans, cuz I like the other ones I bought and they're only 20 pounds, which is pretty great. While walking around in the rain and the fog I took some farewell pictures of Belfast that I'll put up on Facebook or something. But let's talk about The Happening. Following the many delights that I found in An American Carol, I thought today I would watch another infamous movie from 2008 that I've been curious about and don't mind seeing on the internet.
Remember when The Sixth Sense came out and suddenly M. Night Shyamalan was the hottest new director with a cult that seemed to form overnight? Then Unbreakable came out and people were like, "That was a bit of a misfire, but he's still young; they can't all be winners." Then Signs came out and it was ok, but seemed a little Christian-y and Mel Gibson-y and the big twist (people were starting to notice a reliance on these twist things) about the aliens' weakness was really stupid? By the time The Village came out all the remaining fans had turned to apologists, though, from what I remember, it was like most of the movies beforehand with a pretty good build-up - it was just the explanation at the end that blew. Then Lady in the Water, which, from what I hear, is really really bad and has water-nymphs in it. Remember all that? What a long, disappointing trip it's been.
Then Shyamalan came out in 2008 with The Happening, which I had heard was his worst yet. But, like, so bad it's good. I asked myself, "Could M. Night have already turned into a parody of himself?" A few days ago the Christian girl who lives next to me and only enjoys movies like Step Up and Nanny McPhee told me that it was the only horror movie she liked, cuz it made her think. Now I was really intrigued.
Today I spent an hour and a half watching a movie that, though it can't beat An American Carol in the race to be the worst big-budget movie of the past decade, it nips at its heels - though I haven't seen the update to The Wicker Man (mostly because I liked the original more than I like Nick Cage), which sounds like it could give The Happening a run for its money.
The Happening is shockingly, hilariously bad. Not misguided- and ugly-bad like American Carol, but what-was-everyone-thinking-bad. As well as being a former-Shyamalan apologist I'm also a Mark Wahlberg apologist, having really liked him in movies like The Departed and Four Brothers. Unfortunately, here he turns in what can only be classified as a tribute to the spirit of awful cinematic performance. Zooey Deschanel is worshipping right there with him, as they play adults who cherish mood rings and get jealous over dessert-invites and cough-syrup purchases like 8-year-olds.
The twist to the movie, alone, is ridiculously dumb. It comes about 30 minutes into the movie, but if you don't know (*SPOILER*) the movie is about plants giving off fumes that make people kill themselves. This means lots of Mark Wahlberg and co. running from the wind, which is just as silly as it sounds. He also meets a weird horticulturist who's obsessed with hotdogs, a crazy old lady who accuses him of being homicidal for no reason (and has the best non-sinister sinister line in a movie ever when she says "Why are you eyeing my lemon drink?"), a military officer who says things like "cheese and crackers!" instead of swearing in times of national crisis and more.
Thankfully, some youtube heros have put together clips of the very best moments. And oh, they are so, so sweet. I like that two clips claiming to have the best moments from the movie are made up mostly of different equally hilarious parts (except the guy laying down in front of a thresher and Marky Mark's placation of the crazy lady, which made both cuts). The second clip is shittier quality, but worth the watch, if only for Wahlberg singing and the kid in his class saying "global warming."
So, while Bennington is letting it's current students out into the freezing Vermont tundra, I'm still here in Belfast. Only two more days after today, then it's on to Francia with mama mia (was that Italian? I don't know what I did there). I've been spending my time here studying, drinking, saying goodbye and writing blog posts nobody reads.
Other activities:
Sketching portraits based on people's Facebook photos, which is really just a big image library (if you're creepy).
Trying to remember how to say "stabbed to death" in Old English for my test on Wednesday (it's "ofstingan")
Listening to "Johnny Hit & Run Pauline" a gazillion times, by X, punk's cutest couple this side of Kim and Thurston:
Discovering that dating is obsolete, courtesy of Mr. Charles Blow (...David Charles Blow??). That means if you haven't been going on dates much recently you're ahead of the curve. Go you! Go me!
Spending all my UK pennies on a blank casette.
Watching Top Gear and kind of understanding why it's the biggest show in the UK and not just a British Discovery Channel series. Kind of.
Thinking about how I'm going to get to the airport but not actually planning anything.
I can't stop blogging! I thought the post I just did about An American Carol would be my only one of the day, but this was too good to pass up. These last three posts have actually been a triptych (in honor of Benjamin Busch) documenting things that are so amazing they need no parody.
When I got home tonight and turned to CNN, I was treated to the information that an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes at George Bush today (apparently "one of the ULTIMATE insults an Arab can make"... besides, you know, blowing you up).
Symbolic actions like this rarely hit the intended mark, in my view. A lot of times somebody making a big scene to call attention to a cause or belief will either interrupt or hinder something that's actually working towards their aim or put off supporters by the sheer callousness. But here, it's really pretty perfect, isn't it? It's not like it interrupted some peace talk that might be actually taking us somewhere - Ol' GW is just over in Iraq to give some face-time while he's counting down his last days. And I don't know how put off any Iraqis could be - even if shoe-throwing is the ULTIMATE insult - considering the even ULTIMATER insult of fucking up a war in their country.
Let's look at what CNN has to say:
The shoe-thrower -- identified as Muntadhar al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist with Egypt-based al-Baghdadia television network -- could be heard yelling in Arabic: "This is a farewell ... you dog!"
While pinned on the ground by security personnel, he screamed: "You killed the Iraqis!"
Al-Zaidi was dragged away. While al-Zaidi was still screaming in another room,Bush said: "That was a size 10 shoe he threw at me, you may want to know."
What a great response! "You killed Iraqis!" "Hey, that guy threw a pretty big shoe at me. That could have really hurt! Must have pretty big feet, heh heh."
"So what if the guy threw his shoe at me?" Bush told a reporter in response to a question about the incident.
Yeah, so what? People throw things at him all the time! Maybe nobody told him it was the ULTIMATE insult...
"Let me talk about the guy throwing his shoe. It's one way to gain attention. It's like going to a political rally and having people yell at you. It's like driving down the street and having people not gesturing with all five fingers. ...
"These journalists here were very apologetic. They ... said this doesn't represent the Iraqi people, but that's what happens in free societies where people try to draw attention to themselves."
I bet if they still had a dictatorship nobody would be embarrassing the country like that. Maybe those Taliban guys have a point...
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Just below on the CNN homepage: McCain Won't Say He'd Back Palin For President.
McCain was pressed on why he can't promise support for the woman who, just months ago, he named as the second best person to lead the nation.
"Have no doubt of my admiration and respect for her and my view of her viability, but at this stage, again ... my corpse is still warm, you know?" he replied.
So I have a bunch of work to do before I'm ready to take a trip to Spain on Thurs, not the least being my big Old English exam, but some things can wait and others can't. I had to put down The Dream of the Rood to study a different artifact sure to have anthropologists of the future dissecting it for centuries to come. I am, of course, talking about David Zucker's An American Carol, a movie I have been perversely excited to see. Luckily, watch-movies.net has it uploaded so I don't actually have to give anyone money for the joy I am anticipating (which would, incidentally, decrease my joy considerably). What happens when the creator of such comedy classics as Airplane! and The Naked Gun puts together a satire or the Amurrica-hatin', Commie-lovin', baby-abortin', dope-smokin' liberal left joined by a cast dripping with desperation (Gary Coleman, Chris Farley's brother) mixed with senility (Leslie Nielson and the boss from Seinfeld who's now on Family Feud), smugness (Bill O'Reilly, playing himself) and the only social conservatives in Hollywood (John Voight, Kelsey Grammer, Trace Adkins)? I can't wait to find out!
(This cartoon is from a blog raving about the film: "At long last, a Hollywood film that isn't flamingly Moonbatty!"
I'm going to blog about the first fifteen minutes or so, just so I can pretend we're enjoying this together. You can follow along here (I'm using the third link) if you feel so inclined. Or perhaps you think you're above spending your evening watching Gary Coleman play a character named Bacon Stains Malone...?
It opens on a 4th of July picnic as grandpa Leslie Nielson, surprisingly still vertical, flips USA-burgers for his clan of lily-white children. Then, true to his roots as an American comedy giant, Leslie pegs an old lady in the face with a frisbee. Leslie's back!
The story of the "Scrooge who hated the 4th of July" begins in Afghanistan, where everyone's named Mohammad Huessein! Hahaha! Their culture's different than ours! For some reason, however, when something goes wrong the leader swears, "Jesus!" Given that it's not played for comedic effect, methinks David Zucker could've done a little bit more research into fundamentalist Muslim culture...
4:56 - "Leader," pleads a terrorist, "ever since the Americans came people have hope now, they are voting, women own buisinesses." Mission Accomplished! Wait, does that mean we can leave now? The Taliban (which is apparently made up of three guys) decides they need to find a director to make recruitment videos for them who hates America (which "won't be hard to find in Hollywood," har har; real patriots make movies about frisbees to the face). Enter Chris Farley's brother playing Michael Moore (here, Michael Malone).
6:33 - How does David Zucker tackle Michael Moore's footage of bringing desperate Americans to Cuba for health care? By showing us what we all really know Cuba is like: dirty, Hispanic commies who execute wheelchair-bound Americans for no reason. When Malone wraps shooting of his movie, Die You American Pigs (seriously) gets back on his raft to leave, all the Cubans rush it to leave their Godforsaken shithole of an island and arrive at America's shining shores.
9:05 - Michael Malone snubs some Boy Scouts taking donations for our troops in Iraq. Why? If you hate the war, you hate our troops, duh. He goes and buys Girl Scout cookies instead. Cuz he's fat!!
10:00 - Malone's 4th of July abolition rally is fronted by a send up on MoveOn.org (here MooveAlong). Zucker unmasks MoveOn for what it really is: an organization run by ignorant teenagers (they don't know who Nixon is - they really must be Commies) and supported by the following embarrassing groups: People Against the American Way, Vegans Against Fur, Manboy Loveboat, Padawami Casino and the Church of Entitlement. I like that Native Americans and vegans rank up there with pedophiles on the conservative hate-scale. (btw, wouldn't Manboy Loveboat make a great band name?)
11:40 - Michael Malone eats rat-infested pizzas and buckets of lard. Subtle, Zucker. Bob Cratchet shows up in the form of Michael Malone's country music-lovin', navy-hero nephew. He invites Malone to a Trace Adkins concert (who is, according to this movie, a big country music star all over America except in New York). Does this mean Trace Adkins is Fezziwig??
13:50 - Malone's agent: "Apparently Michael, the people who like your movies don't actually go to movies." This must really be a subtle dig at the Academy after they gave Moore that Oscar back in 2003, yet have overlooked such David Zucker gems like Superhero Movie and Scary Movie 4. They probably don't like Trace Adkins either.
14:06 - No, it's even better: "I'm an Oscar-winning director," Malone says. "Yeah," counters his agent, "for a documentary," as he makes the jack-off motion with his hand. Does David Zucker go to movies?
15:40 - Hey, Paris Hilton's in this! Does she even know that she's being used as a punchline? Does she even care? She's presenting the MooveAlong.org award for best documentary, the Leni Reifenstahl Award. Get it?? GET IT??! "Through the creative manipulation of truth, she was able to influence history, demonstrating the power of film. Although unfortunately resulting in the death of over 60,000,000 people in World War II, her place in any cinematic hall of fame is secure." GET IT? GET IT?????!! David Zucker really doesn't like documentaries, huh?
Holy fucking shit, it just keeps getting better and better. I'd love to blog about it minute by minute, but the real fun comes from watching it not reading about it. Remember in my last blog post how I said one of my favorite things is when parodies are so ridiculous they become parodies of themselves? That's An American Carol in a big way and, suffice to say, it's even better than I could have even imagined.
UPDATE: I just finished watching it and my mouth was seriously open for the last 30 minutes. There is absolutely no way to anticipate things like Dennis Hopper picking off ACLU members with a shotgun while they try to remove the Ten Commandments from a courtroom or Trace Adkins telling Michael Malone that a stadium full of marines listening to modern country was "the real America" (Sarah Palin all over). Everyone has to see this movie.
So I've got a real post in the works, but I don't feel like writing it right now, so I'm just going to share some things:
I've gone into detail before on my love of shitty political cartoons that I disagree with. In the midst of a bunch of fawning cartoons about Obama at Slate, there was this:
All the reasons that this cartoon is stupid are so numerous and obvious I won't go into them. I'll just let you soak it in. Really, cartoons that unintentionally mimic The Onion's intentionally awful editorials like the one below make me laugh. I love it when reality outdoes parody for ridiculousness. Also, no matter what, editorial cartoons are never really funny, but they can become transcendentally greatly awful when they apparently come from some paranoid, misanthropic crank who's scared of change and knows his way around a pen. I wish I could see what the artist of the above cartoon would have written about Lincoln's victory if he'd been alive then.
Today I went into city center to pick up some Xmas gifts. I got my mom some earrings and myself some CDs - among them Death Cab For Cutie's Narrow Stairs. I've always been put off by Death Cab's extreme blandness coupled with Ben Gibbard's irritatingly writerly lyrics. It's the same mixture that has always kept me away from the Decemberists as well. I took a writing class once where the teacher talked about how distracting it is to the reader when they can "hear the writing," and that's what I feel about the lyrics of both bands. The lyrics that "She can't relax with his hand on the small of her back/ and as the flashbulbs burst, she holds a smile/ like someone would hold a crying child" are beautiful and evocative but they seem too calculated and unnatural to me. There's a coat of self-satisfaction on the whole thing.
Regardless, I was won over by the feeling and hooks of songs like "Cath..." and "I Will Possess Your Heart." At least, won over enough to plop down a few pounds for a used copy. All that's a backhanded way of saying that a band that I've always rolled my eyes at put out some songs that I think are really affecting. The rest of the album still sounds a bit like the soundtrack to an indie waiting room to me, but, you know...
What does it do for my mixed feelings about the album that Ben Gibbard looks kind of like Rainn Wilson mixed with a Hobbit in this video? I haven't decided yet.
The other CDs I picked up were Exile in Guyville and Portishead's Dummy, two albums that get blessed with the "classic" label a lot but I've never really given much time. I also got Under the Big Black Sun by X, The Ink Spots' Greatest Hits and an album called The Magic Wurlitzer that I was really excited about, but I kind of underestimated the annoyingness of the Wurlitzer as an instrument. It's pretty interminable. But it was cheap and I guess if I ever buy a skating rink and can't hire my own organ player I'm set.
There's a new trend in pop windows and banners on websites that can obviously tell where your server is connected. They try and personalize their advertisements in hilariously contrived ways. A favorite of mine are the fake chat windows that pop up with women in bikinis who are so desperate they cut right to the chase: "You're in Belfast, too? Wanna hang out? I'm horny! ;-P"
I just found one that takes a tact I haven't seen before. If I could take screencaps with this PC I would, but I don't know how, so I just have to recreate it here for you:
There's a picture of a heart in an envelope a d a flashing button that says CONTINUE. Above that it reads:
You Have (3) Hate Letters (2) People have a crush on you from Belfast. (3) people hate you.
I thought this was so funny that I had to click on it. Predictably, it just directed me to some page asking for my email address. This was too high a price for further satiation of my curiosity. When I tried to close the tab, though, a warning would pop up saying: IMPORTANT - YOUR CRUSH IS TRYING TO CONTACT YOU AT THIS VERY MOMENT. PRESS OK TO READ YOUR LETTER.
I love the idea of the idly curious loner who holds on to the shred of a possibility that someone is trying to contact him through banner ads. "I have a crush?" this hypothetical person asks himself. "Impossible! ... Or is it?" Maybe it's the sheer force of these pronouncements that leaves these poor pushovers into clicking on these ads; like a misplaced fear of being rude: "My crush must really want me if they're going so far as to advertise to get my attention. Maybe they own a banner ad company. I mean, they probably don't even exist, but if they do... shouldn't I know about it?"
The best part of the above ad is how it hedges its bets. If you're not desperate enough to believe that mysterious crushes are trying to contact you, maybe you're paranoid enough to believe that your enemies are. Maybe both! Show your imaginary enemies what's up by rubbing their noses in the imaginary letters from your imaginary crushes!
I'd love to see a cross-section of the people who actually do click on these ads (the idly curious, like myself, excluded). Even more, I'd like to see a meeting where cyber shysters come up with new ways to hook suckers in 12 words or less. "What if you have to click a button to make Amy Winehouse punch George Bush? And when you knock him out your crush will send you a funny video of a cat falling off a bike? Then we'll sell them car insurance."
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In completely unrelated news, I always appreciate it when someone smarter and more articulate than me can argue my views for me so I don't have to hurt my brain trying to do it for myself. That's why I enjoyed seeing Jon Stewart state the case for gay marriage against lovably affable social conservative and bipedal Basset Hound, Mike Huckabee:
Watch it if you want to feel the same vicarious thrill that I'm feeling. Of course, we all know where arguments pitting logic against faith get us. Still, I like imagining I'm over Jon Stewart's shoulder saying things like "Yeah!" and "So there!"
You know what's more boring than vacation photos? Someone telling you about their dreams. Luckily, my blog has both of these features. I figure it must be like a double-negative making a positive because my blog is the most interesting blog ever. Nothing new from the past couple of days: I've just been hella-stressed trying to tie up all the loose ends before I leave in a couple of weeks and still enjoy myself. Did you know that I have to write 3 essays over Christmas break? Gag me. One of them is going to be about Great Expectations. I'm expecting it to be greatly boring. I also have a test in Old English next Wednesday. I just finished cramming some of the grammar and I'm feeling a little bit more confident. I'm at least confident that I'm not a dumbass, because, in cramming I've realized that one of my main stumbling blocks was the sheer amount of grammatical cases we have to memorize. How am I supposed to remember the 16 different case-types the word "they" can take? It's ridiculous! It's all studying from now on, though. I've just finished translating The Dream of the Rood, an Old English poem about a guy who dreams Jesus' cross comes flying into his room and talks to him. The cross tells him how horrible it was to be the cross that Christ was killed on and how sad it made him. At no point does the dreamer question the authenticity of the flying, talking, sentient, 1000-year-old cross. I guess if you're willing to accept such a thing's existence, it's not a stretch to believe what it has to tell you (especially if what it has to tell you is the same old boring crucifixion story: "They nailed Jesus to me and I was sad! Wah!" - you're a cross!)
My dreams over the last month haven't been about flying religious curios. Than what? Read on...
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I dreamed I was traveling with the cast of Futurama in a black, death-metal mini-bus from Africa to a famine-ravaged Poland. We had been told to leave Africa, where the hyenas were plentiful - a common source of food - by a deceitful, giant snake. At least the leader of our crew somehow obtained one of the snake's serrated fangs. While I was showing it to the crew members at the back of the mini-bus I put it in my mouth and sucked on it, forgetting that it was venomous. Upon remembering this, I spit it onto the row of seats in front of me and determinedly fought off sleep and inevitable death.
The bus wound up at the entrance of my private high school, running over a sign advertising the Eminem concert set to take place that night. Because of this violation, Irish cops in yellow reflective jumpers stopped our bus and we couldn't go any further.
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I dreamed I was a regular at a gambling parlor with Max Bussman. I didn't have the requisite entrance fee so Max spotted me enough pounds to get in, but I had to hold the pile of clothes he was carrying while he did so and I lost one of his socks. I told him he could have one of mine once we made our way up to his bedroom and I'd scattered the pile of clothes on the floor. I convinced him my socks were clean, but it took some time.
Later, I was using the bathroom in his house when his mom came home to give a piano lesson. I held the curtain over the window that was unfortunately set at eye-level to those sitting on the toilet, giving a direct view out into the driveway. While I was attempting some modesty, his dad came through the hallway where the door was open and noticed his Buddy Holly Greatest Hits CD at my feet and he asked me if I owned it. I told him that no, I had a different greatest hits collection.
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Last night in the Dublin hostel I dreamed that the hostel owners took our bags from our room while they were serving us breakfast and there was nothing we could do about it. I also dreamed that I, or a friend, had a flying machine that manuevered the swampy green fields right outside the hostel window.
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I dreamed I woke up in a Washington, DC apartment I was temporarily staying in with Raphaela and a different friend while some sort of festival was in full swing. On adjacent buildings and all through the street people were committing all sorts of naked Mardi Gras-style debauchery. The apartment was even full of people no one knew, most of them drugged up on the floor or patiently sitting on the couch. None of them remembered how they got in.
My friend was gone and all that remained familiar was Raphaela's hungry pet ferret that I finally cornered in a room for it's own safety. I blocked the door with boxes so it couldn't get out. Ferrets can't climb.
I left the people in the apartment and walked down the street wearing a nice sport coat and hoping I'd run into Bill Clinton. After I struck a leisurely pose on a concrete city planter, Bill came by and welcomed me to join him and Hilary in the Capital building. We were on a first name basis.
They had me wait in a little kitchen filled with terrible, rowdy kids and an overwrought babysitter. I tried to give her advice - "Don't back down; stay consistent" - but it didn't help anything. The kids were so out of control I barely constrained myself from slapping on of them or boxing their ears, despite their age. Finally Hilary came to collect me and gave me a VIP All-Access badge to the Capital building: a white heart sticker with cherries inside of it. We then left together to have lunch in George Washington's old office, which had been kept just as he left it. Marveling at the room, Hilary and I ran our hands over all the first president's possessions, especially his lovely mahogany desk.
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I dreamed my mom read my dad an article in the newspaper about Chinese overpopulation and expressed the view that this made her scared I would become the next Charles Manson. I told her that assumption offended me, but I couldn't make her understand why. I said, "As long as I grow up right, I'll be fine." My dad's solution to growing up right: "Wheat. Oats. Cookies."
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Ok Junior Freuds out there: what does it all mean?
Remember in 2004 when British band The Darkness blew the charts open with their disarming mix of winking over-the-top attitude and a sincere love of Queen? Their subsequent backlash (we were just talking about this, right?) must have come too quickly for their hometown friends Goldie Lookin Chain to break in the US. Or maybe it's because they're like a walking in-joke on British chav culture, which holds no cultural relevance in America.
Either way, Goldie Lookin Chain is an exquisitely stupid rap group who had five exquisitely stupid hits: "Guns Don't Kill People, Rappers Do," "Have Man Half Machine," "Your Mother's Got a Penis," "You Knows I Love You," and the extremely British slag off of Victoria Beckham, "Your Missus is a Nutter."
Just like The Darkness, Goldie Lookin Chain really says more about the people snickering at it than the people it's ostensibly making fun of. I always thought The Darkness made their irritating fans who were too self-conscious to indulge in glam rock without a safe layer of irony look worse than people who aren't embarrassed to listen to Journey or Boston. Likewise, listening to GLC was probably more comfortable to a lot of young British folks than listening to NWA was. Either way, check out this awesomely bad video for "Your Mother's Got a Penis" and imagine seeing this on American MTV.
Today I needed to share how angry Katy Perry makes me. I don't know if her 15 minutes is up in the States, but it keeps ticking over here (though it's definitely on a downswing). She reminds me of other artists in the past who I've stood on the sidelines and watched part of the world go ga-ga over (I know anyone reading this isn't included there, but, to prove my point, CNN chose to interview her the other day) just waiting for the inevitable backlash. I was trying to make a mental list of these other artists who were really hot one day only to have all of their fans disowned them the next. Of course, this happens a lot in the "indie" community - usually when a band gets semi-popular - but nobody but the indie community is listening to those bands, so it doesn't count. I was thinking more along the lines of Creed and boy/girl bands (also still strong in the UK), where it felt like the whole world went crazy for a little while before dumping them. What other names am I trying to think of?
Anyway, the point is, Katy Perry is one of those artists - I can tell she's one of them because I can't seem to write about why she's so awful, the reasons seem too glaringly obvious for any right-thinking person. This isn't snobbery, it's common sense. The levels of ignorance and faux-attitude in the first line of "Hot n Cold" speak for themselves, don't they? Don't they, world?? "You change your mind like a girl changes clothes/ Yeah, you PMS like a bitch, I would know."
Nothing could make me angrier than a walking Betty Page-lite miming feminine empowerment, yet undercutting it with retrograding gender stereotypes and calculated sass. How can you hear lyrics like that without seeing the league of middle-aged, male writers who put the song together (Dr. Luke and Max Martin, in this instance)? Isn't it a bit like the white guys at Disney writing James Baskett's Uncle Remus-jive talk in Song of the South? There's condescension just dripping off the thing. The message coming from these lyrics is that women are inherently fickle and bitchy. Because they're not girls, men should be above these traits, but women can't help it.
And it's not that I'm just an overprotective dad, but it disgusts me to see middle schoolers choking down this kind of thing. It's like those shirts little girls buy that say "Spoiled Princess" or whatever, thus reinforcing this Super Sweet 16 attitude; telling little boys and girls that it is appropriate and desirable for girls to be sassy, sexy bitches. I'd rather Jeff Dunham were popular with todays youth.
The bottom line is, that, like Creed before her, I will be happily relieved when Katy Perry falls on her face. I look forward to her lame sophomore release that will cause the Disney Channel Generation to find some new pop tart to worship, while Perry joins Fergie and Avril Lavigne in outdated corporate sex-symbol purgatory (Fergatory?).
Yesterday I ate an ostrich. It gave me mild food poisoning, but was good enough that I'd eat it again. I could have had wild boar or kangaroo, but I had to choose wisely. Maybe some other day...
Tomorrow I'm going to make eggnog for the folks in my flat because they've never had it before. I mentioned it the other day and was met with blank stares. Unfortunately eggnog is not something that sounds good when you describe it (the exact same thing happened around Thanksgiving with pumpkin pie). "So it's raw eggs?" asked one. "No, you add nutmeg... and liquor... it's good." I replied. No one was too enthused. I'll show them! I converted non-believers into eating pumpkin, I can sure make them drink something with liquor. They're Irish and freshmen, after all.
It's been a slowly day. I was interviewed by a girl doing a social-economics class about what it's like being an American in Belfast. It was more of a conversation, though, because whenever I'd say something then she'd tell me about her thoughts on it. And it lasted an hour longer than she said it would. Partly because she talked more than I did. Boring.
I finally saw the Christmas market in city center, which was full of delicious looking food. Santa was supposed to be there, but now I guess he's gone. My plan was/maybe still is to get a picture of him holding up a Christmas greeting to my secret Santa in the house, but now he's skated and I'm not sure where to find him. I guess he's up at the North Pole with the carpenter elves making presents. Like Bratz dolls.
Speaking of Bratz dolls, did you hear that Mattel won a lawsuit and now has the power to make them go away forever? Say what you will about Barbie (and there's plenty to say, the slag) but she's way better than those slutty little preteen freaks with their miniskirts and their excess cranial fluid. Of course, Mattel could just decide to manufacture Bratz on their own. Given how much money they make I wouldn't be surprised. But it would still depress me incredibly. That would mean Mattel would have a monopoly on unrealistic standards for little girls.
Worse than normal Bratz? Bratz Babyz.
Look at this little tramp. A bikini top, a coy little pose and a mouth like a blow-up doll and she can't be three years old. What is the world coming to? What are we teaching our babies?? Is our children learning??
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On a completely different topic, I started watching My So-Called Life this Friday. It's one of many shows that's been on my radar as a show I need to watch, but I know that when I do I'll get totally sucked in, so I've avoided it 'til I have time. Now that my heavy reading's over, I can indulge myself. Other shows like that: The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Wire, The Shield, Deadwood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Freaks and Geeks/Undeclared (which I watched some of when they were originally on, but were a little close for comfort at the time. I still get cred points, though) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (which was on a lot in the Bow household when I was really young, so I have fond memories of it. I'm curious if those hold up or, like all my other Star Trek reactions, I don't cotton to it).
Anyways, My So-Called Life is nothing short of amazing. As I told Maggie Duffy, I am not in high school anymore and I'm not a female (anymore?) but I still feel a high school girl inside of me reacting like this show defines her whole existence. If you were to split up my personality into stock characters (like a certain Robin Williams movie I've heard is on the horizon) one would be a pre-pubescent boy, one would be an old man and one would be a teenage girl - call her Bowtina (or Boesha). I'm not saying that's all I have going on in there (one's bound to be a 21-year-old male from Oregon) but they crop up a lot. Anyway, Bonica - who is probably the impetus for rebelling against Victorian novels and regressing back to middle school with Twilight when I get home - is totally in love with this show and lives in a blissful world where Jared Leto never got fat and made Chapter 27. Also, it really reflects my memories of the '90s. Some shows from this same period - like Friends, which is constantly on here - reflect '90s pop-culture, but not actual life. The Friends characters never lived in a world that wasn't two or three disconnects away from reality (have you seen their apartments? And Joey's an actor!). Watching Friends only reminds me of what it was like to be in the '90s watching Friends. My So-Called Life is reminding me of what it was actually like to live then. Wowee wow wow. And I'm only one episode in (so maybe I'm jumping the gun with my praise a little bit).
In other media news, I watched the awful '80s slasher, Pieces today. It was record-setting bad. I wish someone else had been here to watch it with me, but nobody here likes real horror movies. They'll watch things like Saw, which is like saying you like rock music because you listen to Hinder - it doesn't count. The best scene in Pieces posted below. Please click for an Oscar-worthy performance by a woman playing a tennis-pro/detective(?) She's just discovered the body of another tennis star (topless, naturally) cut up in the locker room (by a chainsaw, naturally).
I also have to watch the BBC version of Tipping the Velvet, which should be interesting. I'm not sure how the censors would even approach a story about cross-dressing homosexual vaudevillian prostitutes. I mean, even the title is a euphemism for cunnilingus! So what I'm really saying is that I was basically assigned to read a book and watch a 3-hour adaptation called Cunnilingus. I've been imagining what euphemisms possible sequels would have for titles and trying to make up my own. All of them are gross and none are funny enough to repeat here. I like to imagine that, had the book been written using slang from American Victorian culture rather than British it would be called something like Pussy Lickin', which would undoubtedly sell books. Or some made up slang, like Jazzin' the Cat or Washing the Dishes. What is wrong with me?
If you were to ask me which song most defined my Belfast experience it would have to be "The Promise" by Girls Aloud. You should really watch the video while trying not to hate it and simultaneously trying not to love it.
I've heard this song at least a hundred times since I landed here, none of them of my own free will. Unlike that shitty Kid Rock song and all of Katy Perry's songs which refuse to stop being popular here, this Girls Aloud song has entered my ear and begun to control me like the yerks from the Animorphs books. I don't like it or respect it, but it has turned my hatred for it into a grudging affection, even though it sounds like a hybrid of No Doubt with the Spice Girls at their euro-trashiest. This video is also a good barometer for what the music scene is like here. In a word: shit. But Stockholm Syndrome has set in and I'm beginning to understand my captors and sympathize with them.
Runner ups: The Saturdays - Up. This song is a boring version of "Disturbia":
Who Da Funk - Shiny Disco Ball: You may think this is the trashiest of euro-trash and you wouldn't be wrong. But don't get too snooty, Jack; the atrociously-named Who Da Funk are from the US. I feel dirty by association.
I haven't had much time or desire to write here lately, but this morning I slept through my class this morning, so I thought I'd catch up on my real work. When I started this blog I was planning on steering away from the self-indulgent whinefest model that most take, but today's entry is an exception. Sorry!
The weather here has turned into pure, icy shit and my classes are superlame. I've realized that learning Old English is really hard and that I've neglected to do it. That and it's getting hard to force myself into actually working; my initiative has just gone out the window. Was it naive of me to think that we'd be reading translations of Old English and analyzing them, rather than translating them? Maybe. Either way, it's a shame because analysis takes a backseat to technicalities like syntax and gender. Being an English student, these things should be easy for me, but I'm really only an English student out of convenience - my plan committee wouldn't let me be a "liberal arts focus" because, though they acknowledged that I wasn't flaky some people chose that focus just because they were flaky and... they wanted to treat flakes and non-flakes equally. Or something? Alls I know is that Griff Maloney got the ok to be a liberal arts student and I didn't, so... All that's fine, though, cuz I sure do like being an English major and readin' and junk. It's just that being out of my comfort zone and learning about verb clauses and the like is a real pain in the ass right now (whhiinne). How can I keep my mind from going somewhere else when this stuff is so boring! Can someone just put it all in a Schoolhouse Rock song or something?
Also frustrating: I finished The Way We Live Now (yay!) only to come to class and find that literally no one else had read it... and it was ok! (boo!) Not like it was ok because I misunderstood the directions, but just that the professor did not care. Are you telling me that I read a 750+ page Victorian novel about speculative capitalism just for shits and giggles? Yup.
Why? Because my Televising the Victorians class is not a class on adaptation (as it was billed) but a fake film studies class for lazy lit students who want to pretend they're film students but they don't want to read or take real film classes. And that includes my professor who throws out terms like mise en scene that he found in his jumbo film terms dictionary. All of the film knowledge this guy has shared with us comes verbatim from this stupid film terms book and not from actual film - which is fine, because my classmates haven't heard of films like Gone With the Wind. Not that they necessarily should, given that this is an English class, but we're not studying books here either, apparently. So what are we studying? Amateur theories about how prop-placement and shot distance reflects character and motivation. Seriously. "In this shot they're seen together, indicating fellowship, only to be shot in seperate close-ups next, representing a fracturization of their relationship." Argh! No!
Mostly I'm just looking forward to going to Spain with my mom. We're both pretty exhausted and a break will be really nice. I'm definitely ready for the next and last phase of my overseas adventure. My plan is to grin and bear it and just gun through the remaining work I have, but it's a bit like pulling teeth. Which I guess means that my grin won't be that attractive when I'm done. (har har hurrrk) Send me a message and cheer me up!
Hey, while I have your attention, how about this funny video?:
I want to go have dinner but the freshmen I'm living with are singing along with and dancing to a boy band cover of Nickelback's "How You Remind Me" and I don't want to get involved.
Yesterday I put up a post about Toni Basil and how awesome she was. It has come to my attention in the past 24 hours that there is even more to Basil's awesomeness than evidenced by her videos alone. To save you the trouble of going to Wikipedia, I've done the hard work for you.
A list of other gifts from Toni's elvish heart:
She choreographed the "Once in a Lifetime" video by the Talking Heads and showed David Byrne footage of epilepsy sufferers for inspiration
She choreographed and directed the (admittedly kind of silly) video for the amazing "Cross-eyed and Painless." In so doing, she also invented the moonwalk before Michael Jackson!
She choreographed David Bowie's Diamond Dogs tour.
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She choreographed the Monkees' insane movie, Head, cowritten by Jack Nicholson, as well as other sweet movies like American Graffiti and Muppets from Space.
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She appeared as one of the prostitutes who flips out in the acid trip scene from Easy Rider (she's the one with black hair), as well as a movie called Mother, Jugs and Speed with Bill Cosby and Raquel Welsh (Mother and Jugs, respectively) and the aforementioned Rockula alongside Thomas Dolby(!), among others. She was also on an episode of Baywatch Nights as a fortune teller.
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Ok, I actually thought that list was going to be longer, but that's still nothing to sneeze at. Plus she's six years older than my mom. Whoah!
On a related side note, did you know that in the '90s the Talking Heads reformed without David Byrne as The Heads and released an album called No Talking, Just Head? And it sucked? My goodness.
I said before that if I was living in any cartoon universe I'd like it to be that of Betty Boop. Well, if I could visit any music video universe I think it would be fun to visit that of Toni Basil. The only thing is that I know I couldn't hack it. They're wildly energetic; everything's moving all the time. Toni lives in a void surrounded by theater props and her multi-racial troupe of dancers. So cool! Until tonight I only knew about "Mickey," her super-hit. I didn't know that, like the Obama family, Toni Basil was a pixie made out of pure joy. My favorite videos:
You Got a Problem: A Devo cover. Holy fucking shit.
Shopping From A-Z: Dig how they call out all the groceries ("F: fish!") and for "X" they just yell "Nothing!"
Be Stiff: Another Devo cover. Imagine if this was your band at prom. You wouldn't know what to do. Plus they'd out-dance you and you'd just stop trying.
The Night: In 1990 Toni Basil was in a movie called Rockula about... well I don't know. The whole movie's on youtube, but I don't think I can bring myself to watch it. This scene not only looks like it was awkwardly shoehorned into the flick, but it features: a guy in chainmail licking his lips and scratching with a victrola; Toni doing a really awkward rap; the actors trying to act with nothing to do; a golden piano. Oh, and the song's awesome.
Extra credit - videos not embedded here to save space: Street Beat: I don't know what to say about this. It's over the top. Street Life: Not to be confused with "Street Beat."
Hey, tomorrow's Thanksgiving! I'll be spending it with some Americans that I met. They like to cook and I like to eat so, basically, I'm set. This will be the second Thanksgiving dinner I've bummed this year as two other Americans cooked me a budget feast on Saturday. We had microwave chicken, potatoes, gravy, canned cranberry sauce, apple crisp and instant stuffing. Yum!
While I was on Slate I had to take a look at the political cartoons featured. Favorites include this one of the religious right, who apparently have changed their name tag post-election from "the voice of real America" to "prophets misunderstood in their homeland."
And this delightfully strange depiction of the Obama family in fish/pixie form:
Now, when I talk about pop culture differences between Ireland and the US I usually find myself neatly picking out the worst, most glaring aspects of Irish pop culture (the ones most visible to me) and juxtaposing them with my favorite aspects of US culture (likewise). But that mindset overlooks perhaps the ugliest sides of both, which, to my mind, are products of seething banality. Both in the US and here I'm shocked by the terrible, terrible mediocrity that is embraced nationwide. I hear myself getting on my high horse again, which is never fun to read. I don't mean to sound like some Chuck Klosterman-like arbiter of holier-than-thou taste. But I do know what I like and what annoys me:
I've bitched before about how passable, Nashville blandoids The Kings of Leon are treated like rock gods here. Am I crazy? I mean I know it's not terrible, but it's not that amazing is it? Doesn't it sound like the Rock 'n' Roll Generator is set on "Default?" That said, "Sex On Fire" is kind of fun.
I've been trying to find an analogous mediocre American band that also made it big here. I knew there must be sweet, sweet examples of middle-of-the-road history repeating itself. Imagine my happiness when someone told me that the Fun Lovin' Criminals were huge in Ireland for years and are even still touring. Don't remember them? Yeah you do:
Of course, when the Northern Irish aren't runnin' around robbin' banks all whacked off of Scooby Snacks they're watching X-Factor, which, like American Idol is complete shit. Unlike American Idol, though, everyone tunes in weekly, from old grandpas to 8-year-old girls. And Northern Ireland even has it's own horse in the race, the living Cupie Doll that is Eoghan Quigg:
Speaking of that awful Snow Patrol song, they played that at halftime during the Northern Ireland football match I went to. There's a lot of support for local artists.
But could anything drop my spirits and lift my ire like the fact that universal boil Jeff Dunham has wormed his way into the hearts of people in both the US and the UK? I turned away from the US, embarrassed that Jeff Dunham's Christmas special was the most-watched program in Comedy Central history, only to find that Northern Ireland has embraced his hacky, broadly-racial ventriloquist act, too. It's this kind of humor that makes me even miss the out-and-out, inarguable atrociousness of someone like Carlos Mencia. It's the type of thing I'm almost sure my dad's side of the family undoubtedly thinks is great (other things they like: the movie August Rush, Josh Grobin, church) Why, world, why? Why do the freshmen I live with quote Achmed the Dead Terrorist to me? I dare you to watch all 11 minutes of this clip - the most popular youtube clip in my hall at the moment - without clawing your eyes out so you can get to your brain to switch it off:
Oh, but it's not all question-setup/answer-punchline with a dead terrorist puppet; there are plenty of other too-bland-to-be-offensive stereotype puppets on display. Like Sweet Daddy D! The lisping, jiving, black pimp!
Look at that lily-white crowd laugh! But Jeff didn't forget about them. What about hillbilly Bubba J? He likes - get this - watching Nascar and drinking beer! Haha! I relate to that!
And who could forget Jose Jalapeno. He's a sleepy Mexican pepper... on a steek! Watch purple abomination Peanut tell him what we're all thinking - your accent is funny! "What the hell is feeling "cchhhappy?" You fucking freak!
US and Ireland: this is your culture. You have the power to kill it; you have the power to make it stronger.
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Speaking of August Rush, I had to go imdb to remember it's name. While there I looked at the movies that Robin Williams currently has in production. Listen to these plot synopses and tell me that you can't already picture the movies in your head/ have maybe already seen them:
The Krazees - "Unable to deal with his daughter reaching puberty, a psychologist (Williams) has to get a handle on his emotions, which have come to life as different characters."
Old Dogs - "Two friends and business partners find their lives turned upside down when strange circumstances lead to them being placed in the care of 7-year-old twins."
World's Greatest Dad - "A comedy about a man who learns that the things you want most may not be the things that make you happy, and that being lonely is not necessarily the same as being alone."
Hey, I have a script: unable to deal with the pressures of making a few good movies in the '90s, Robin Williams handles his emotions by becoming a giant self-parody. That, or Hook 2.
So I'd agreed to go out with my friend and do whatever she wanted to do last night, but upon finding out it meant being 5th-wheel at a gay club I opted out. Her and the three guys she went with came back and told me that it was too "underground" and "grimy" and basically ended up saying that it looked like the product of an actual subculture and not a place that was trying to look like the product of a subculture. I think I'd much rather find myself in a place that caters to an actual subculture than one that caters with the idea of a subculture to bourgeois people intent on "slumming it." But maybe that's an elitist, "slumming it" attitude to take itself. Either way, I would've been pretty out of place, though a girl basically told me the other day that I was gay because I told her I liked Coldplay. That's cool; I'm secure enough in my heterosexuality to rep Rush of Blood to the Head 4 lif - Lord knows I listen to gayer music. But you'll never find me repping X&Y. That record's for pussies.
I was going to watch Play Time and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul this weekend but, even after downloading the supposedly all-region VLC Media Player I still can't watch Region 2 DVDs. It's weird because it let me watch Pasolini's Arabian Nights the other week, which you can't get on DVD in America. Why? Maybe because a guy shoots a girl's vagina with a penis-arrow. Or, more likely, because it's long and draggy, the acting's bad and it looks like it was dubbed into Italian by a 5th-grader.
I don't mind the dragginess and all that because over-all, I really love how Pasolini adapts classic texts in a way that is true to the gritty, unsanitised realism of the time they were written. He finds romanticism in the actual grime and dirt of the era, which is really refreshing to me. It feels truer to the stories. He also purely seems to be interested in the stories from the classics that deal with sex, which can be fun when it's done right (The Decameron), disturbing when it's done right (Salo) or just kind of boring (Arabian Nights). Apparently his Canterbury Tales adaptation is nothing to write home about, either, but, after I finish reading it I'm going to rent it (on VHS in the States, unfortunately). Even if the rest is boring, this scene from Hell is pretty promisingly bonkers:
Thank you, Pierre Paulo Pasolini, Now I've seen it ALL! Wah wah. Ba dum dum.
For similar entertainment of a more painful nature, a bunch of high school English classes put up video adaptations of noted slag "The Wife of Bath's Tale." They're all bizarre, but I'm not going to post them here because I know almost no one else cares. If you're a video masochist like me, though, and you want to see exactly what's wrong with the youth of the nation you might enjoy:
The version shot in night-vision where a guy tells the young filmmakers that women in the ghetto most desire crack (1:50)
The version with a kid beating a girl with a baseball bat for calling him a "silly goose" to "When a Man Loves a Woman."
The version with a "Hey Ya" dance scene. PS - please go to 1:48 to see mom make an appearance; it's the best part. I'm serious, you won't regret it.
The version where a girl on a broomstick rapes another girl and literally tears up her "V-card." Also a girl says she desires a man that will let her fart in bed without judging her. Go to 4:35 to see marital discord at it's most harrowing.
Or might I interest you a boy raping a dog in a wig that talks like Betty Boop.
It really just keeps going and going. It's funny how simultaneously amusing and depressing this kind of thing is. You know what's more depressing? The fact that I have 350 pages of The Way We Live Now to read by Tuesday morning and I spent over half and hour watching films by high school kids. My priorities are all messed up.
So I'm really excited about the re/reading of all these middle school novels on the horizon. Does anyone want to do a middle school book club with me, come January? Sally, you said you'd be down. We can raid the young-adult section of our local libraries without shame.
All this talk about middle school had me thinking of other media memories inflicted on me. I spent a little while trying to find this film that we watched in my seventh grade English class. I know we also watched Schindler's List during the Holocaust unit (if your parents signed the note saying it was ok) and the TV-movie adaptation of the awesome Lathe of Heaven, which was significantly less awesome:
Lathe of Heaven is on youtube (in all 15 parts), too, but I'm not going to try and inflict that on anybody.
Anyways, after a little research I found the short film I was trying to remember, All Summer in a Day. Like Lathe it's grainy late-'70s/early-'80s sci-fi, it's kind of a bummer and it's firmly entrenched in my memory. It's all about these kids who live on a planet where it rains all day every day except very special times when the sun comes out for, like, two minutes. Did anyone else watch this?
Fun fact: this movie accurately portrays what living in Portland is like. Fun fact #2: recently the kid who plays little bitch-ass William in this played "Loudmouth guy" in the movie Just a Little Harmless Sex opposite international film star Rachel Hunter. Here it is in it's entirety:
You know when you're searching for one thing on the internet and it just leads down a rabbit hole of weird and interesting discovery? This happens to me sometimes and I end up with about 20 windows open with pages of things I want to know more about. The other day I saw a painting by Franz von Stuck that reminded me of Edvard Munch's Madonna and I wanted to know more about him.
This led me to looking up pictures of paintings by von Stuck and a bunch of other artists listed on the Wikipedia page for Symbolism, most of whom, I'm guessing, people who actually took art history or painting classes probably know about. To be brief and not list all the ones I thought were super-cool I'll just say that I enjoyed almost all the art that I ended up looking at. Since I know fuckall about visual art I'm not even sure how legitimate Symbolism is as a term to classify a type of painting (I mean, the Wikipedia page is big and all, but symbolism is kind of a broad term, isn't it?) so I've just decided that it means paintings with things I like in them like snakes eating horses, whimsical boats and leapord people.
In looking into the work of Félicien Rops, one of the few painters I'd heard of in the list, on google image search I ran across the work of Stu Mead. I discovered that Mr. Mead is a very controversial artist, mainly because he's an open pedophile and all of his work basically sexualizes little girls (as a quick spin on his Myspace page will demonstrate). The controversy drummed up by his paintings and the long conversation about objectification in art it invites is kind of beside the point, I think. The overall effect of looking at his paintings, to me, was that of looking at somebody's homemade pornography, meaning that my feelings of revulsion were quickly overwhelmed with feelings of boredom. Just because it plays with taboos and you put it on a canvas doesn't mean it's any more interesting than some lonely guy's hand-drawn Futurama porn. (On a side note, there was a kid on my pre-season soccer trip in junior year of high school who got caught looking at Futurama porn on the internet. That's called tragi-comedy).
Anyways, apparently there's a book called Apocalypse Culture II that contains an article about Stu Mead and other artists who are controversial. The article (which, always being curious about controversy in art, I found on the internet) is written with a tone that I've come to be familiar with in reading about things of this nature in books of this nature. It's the reverential, sanctimonious tone of someone who came to a freakshow, decided to stay there and has lost sight of the reasons it was billed as a freakshow in the first place. The taboo becomes normal when you make it your sole focus. The rest of the world just doesn't get Stu Mead and I don't get why - isn't it cool how controversial this is? asks the writer, a self described "musician (Boy from Brazil), transformist, eroticist and a self-taught art aficionado." Ugh, ugh and ugh. Oh man, you're into Nazis too? Wild! Who could've guessed??
Speaking of which, the article lead to a couple of other artists, notably Blalla Hallmann, who apparently hates the US, the Vatican, Nazis and consumer greed, yet he is obsessed with making paintings about them. It all begins to stink of something deranged and hypocritical pretty soon. But I'll let the eroticist and self-taught art aficionado tell it:
"Blalla despised the Art world, whose stars, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Josef Beuys were seen as brown-nosing valets to the rich. Remarking that every paintings these guys were selling was money he wasn’t making, Blalla believed that the aforementioned artists were stealing from him."
I wonder why the American art world isn't lining up to throw money at paintings accusing them of being greedy, Nazi bastards from someone who bills himself as "the ambassador of hate?" And I wonder why this criticism is coming from someone who sounds like a greedy, misanthropic bastard himself? The questions just pile up.
All that said, I actually thought Hallmann's paintings were pretty cool. His schtick worked for me, partly because I think his composition and style are neat. He sounds like a paranoid lunatic and thoroughly unpleasant person who, like Stu Mead, has found that he can pay bills just by selling his obsessions to a small niche of the public that like having their buttons pushed.
All this leads to a collective of artists that call themselves Unpop, whom I spent more time looking into than they deserve. The other artist mentioned in the article above was a woman called Beth Love, whose paintings I think are pretty interesting, if undeniably disturbing.
Unfortunately, she and the rest of Unpop seem like pretty foul people. While I like her work, all the other art on display was terrible in thought and execution. More importantly, the whole thing reeks of that kid from Ghost World - you know, the one who thinks he's hot, dangerous shit because he has a zine that focuses on serial killers and Nazis and torture and freaks and yadda yadda (he also publishes pornographic art by a pedophile who creates computer images of little girls because he can't have the real thing. Hmmm...). Unpop is all about offensive jokes under the guise of art and, like the loner in your art class with a trench coat, they're rebelling against you so they're impervious to criticism. They don't care what you think, neuter! You just can't handle Unpop!
It all pisses me off because I do fall for real artists who take the risks that the Unpop people think they're taking. The problem is that there's a thin tightrope between the Scylla of self-rightous, self-aware envelope-pushing and the Charybdis of pure, stupid exploitation. What most of Unpop doesn't realize (and would have you believe that they don't care) is that shitty paintings of golliwogs and screenprints of Joseph Goebbels are useless to the world at large. Offending the public in and of itself is not art (or at least not good art) because after the initial shock and revulsion there's nothing really to think about. It's more offensive because bandying about racist or misogynistic imagery just to get a reaction gives artists who can incorporate those images into something thoughtful and meaningful a bad name. It makes it harder to defend artists who aren't afraid to push boundaries as not just exploitation. Why even give Kara Walker a second look? And, really, what is uglier than a group of aging white males from privileged backgrounds making rape and race jokes to each other, especially with the sanctimonious idea that they are seeing the world in it's true colors and everyone else is just too diluted or dumb to agree. Man, it makes me angry!
What's the antidote? What happens when we take paintings that deal with hot-button issues off the table? The answer may surprise you:
As you may know my family's going through some tough times right now. To cheer my mom up I sent her a bunch of youtube videos that regularly make me laugh. I sent nice(/creepy?) things like talking dogs and the dancing walrus to keep things clean and mom-like. With a little trepidation I put a link to Strong Kids, Safe Kids at the end. Sometimes I underestimate my mom and I forget that she gave birth to me, mixing her and my dad's senses of humor into my genes. "What does it say about me that I laughed the most at that one?" she asked me. "What does it mean that I laughed the most at that one?" I asked myself. My mom has a sick sense of humor.
Holy moly, I have so much to weblog about, but not the time nor energy. Why? Because I've been hanging out with Margery Kempe all night, learning about how much Jesus loves her over the course of 400 pages (answer: thiiiiiiis much!). Though I know it's not true, I like to imagine that this prematurely balding mongoloid on the cover of my copy of The Book of Margery Kempe is, in fact, the author. I think it's actually the stained glass window from the church where she worshipped by crying all over the place, St. Mongoloid's.
Reading this thick-ass, Jesus-packed non-starter of an autobiography along with Ancient and Victorian English has spurred me onto a new quest for my non-FWT. It all started with all this hullabaloo and bullahooha about the new Twilight movie. Since my job this summer teaching little girls who are reading this presumably bullshit book I've been patting my back because I'm now a certified bonafide grown-up who doesn't go for that kid's stuff anymore. Yet... today there was a New York Times article yesterday about how fucking huge this phenomenon apparently is with the just-menstruating set. The Grey Lady said that girls are getting so excited that, before meeting the film's hunky, pubescent star outside of Hot Topics nationwide they're scratching their necks so they'll bleed for him. What?! In my day you didn't bleed for any books (except Island of Blue Dolphins, which demanded a child sacrifice).
How good must this book be to inspire young girls to cut themselves nationwide? (counterpoint: Linkin Park also has this effect). It must at least be titillating to some, weird girl-hormone. Or maybe... woman hormone? That's right, moms love Twilight too.
So, spurred on, as I said, by thick, boring, Jesus-y, Medieval lit and: a) a deepseated love of young-adult literature (having been a young-adult myself once) and b) a deepseated love for horror trash (see: the fact that I'm watching True Blood religiously every week even though it's kind of bad) - spurred on by these factors I think when the term ends and I go home to write my final papers for the term and relax/putter around the house I'm going to read at least the first book in the Twilight series and see what all the young girls/awful American tourists are cutting themselves about.
This also makes me want to revisit those other young-adult classics from the pit of middle school, as well as catch up on ones that I never got around to reading. It could be really fun! Plus, they take, like, a day to read now that I am taller/have better skin/don't think Garfield is funny. My freshman FWT I reread The Giver for my job at the Oregon Children's Theater and it was bomb! A list of the top of my head:
Lord of the Flies - started rereading it a few years ago, scared the shit out of me
Island of Blue Dolphins - never read it
Flowers of Algernon - never read it
To Kill a Mockingbird - read it twice. It's rad.
Shabanu - I remember my whole class hating this book. I also remember descriptions of growing breasts (likened to apples and camel-droppings - gross), listening to your nomadic parents have sex in the tent next to you (gross) and camels cumming all over the ground (sexy. just kidding, gross). There was a storyline, too, but I can't remember it.
Red Badge of Courage - never read it. The OCT was working on a production of it my freshman year as well as a rap musical. I bet that went well.
Hatchet - fucking baller
A Day No Pigs Would Die - read it. Don't remember anything.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry - ditto
The Cay - maybe read it... I think?
Secret Garden - fucking baller (in a feminine way)
Holes - pretty good. Ruined by Shia Lebouf.
Animal Farm - sweet
Yearling - sweet
What am I missing?? That's a pretty good list, if I do say so myself. What should I read this winter? Hatchet's definitely calling out to me. Wasn't there a sequel, too? Bowie Knife or something? (bad joke, but seriously) What else? And remember... ANYONE CAN COMMENT! Please love me. I'm gonna put that reminder in bold until you do. In bold.
Oh yeah I have this thing
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I kind of forgot about this blog and the Lykke Li song made me wish I never
remembered. I'm broke and jobless and living in new city so I definitely
need t...
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Oh, hello, Verbalblogarrhea, most cherished and neglected pet-project.
Please do not get your hopes up. This is, in all likelihood, little more
than an e-d...
At long last
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Coming Soon:
New Commenting Experience
Valued AOL News readers, we have heard your feedback and are temporarily
shutting off our commenting system as we wor...
7/1: "Not tasty."
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-I went to see Ice Age 3:Dawn of the Dinosaurs with Cordell, Lorelai and
Eric. There was a great, terribly offensive transphobic joke: The British,
one-eye...
Tiny Vortex
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I keep forgetting to post in this thing, but I will post more soon. Future
topics may include: animals riding on animals, child priests, and granny
abuse (...
Big America
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We all hear stories of children going missing. Just walk into any Wal-Mart
and look at the, "Have You Seen This Child" board. There are quite a few of
them...
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