he walks away/the sun goes down/he takes the day
–Amy Winehouse, Tears Dry On Their Own
From the Mouths of Babes
March 4, 2007
Grandma: What do you want for your birthday, honey?
Grandson: (considers a moment)… A friend.
MIA
March 2, 2007Someone recently chided me on my lack of blog posts of late. This is who I hang out with these days. That should explain it.
The Fat Americans
March 2, 2007Some people, particularly dull Canadians, like to revel in reports of America’s fatness. I would just like to point out that the prevalence of obesity in America is primarily among the poor, so nice work making fun of poor people.
Also check out the CDC’s map below, which lays out the fattest states–which also happen to be among the poorest.
The Real Terrorist Threat
February 6, 2007According to Graffiti Research Lab and its sister organization, the Anti-Advertising Agency, those cartoon lite brites are an example of corporate, not political terrorism:
It’s well known that marketing steals ideas from artists. But the connections are rarely so clear as they are in this case, and we don’t often get to see it backfire in such a spectacular way.
Apparently the lite brites were a bastardized version of a graffiti art device created by the Graffiti Research Lab for artists:
Again and again, as advertisers desperately try to break through the clutter they create, they try more desperate methods. The perfect irony to this story is that advertisers can’t get it right. What attracted the attention of the bomb squad was the wiring, circuitry, and large batteries that Interference Inc. added to the G.R.L.s original design in order to be more financially efficient. Once it was discovered as harmless, Interfrence’s next problem was the media’s derision because it was yet another desperate attempt to put advertising in front of people’s eyes.
Each week it becomes more clear in the media that advertising is using illegal methods, yet the fines and arrests remain disproportionately on graffiti writers and activists. We hope more people will see the hypocrisy of arresting, jailing, and fining individual expression of people like BORF, countless street artists, RNC protesters, and cyclists from critical mass, when there has still been zero jail time for CEOs of advertising and marketing firms that knowingly and repeatedly break the law promoting corporate products.
I don’t think it was against the law (but maybe it was, who knows) but I call your attention to a problem I had with Bank of America taking over the Harvard subway station.
On the Menu
February 5, 2007…at Madam’s Organ, located in Adams Morgan, the Williamsburg of D.C.:
Bill Clinton Burger………………………………………………………………………….$6.99
Fat All-American, with a large dill and a slice on the side ($1.00 off for women who have slept with the Pres., Limit: 3 per table).
Dubya Burger…………………………………………………………………………………$6.99
Same as the Clinton but definitely something missing- – - guaranteed to start a war or help you find Jesus. (50 cents Off–you get what you vote for). Add cheese or bacon for .50.
Conversation with a Cabbie in Dubai
January 10, 2007I am pondering a trip to Dubai and came across this amusing post on the Washington Post’s Vagablog, a blog about travel:
Cabbie: Where are you from?
Us: Washington, D.C. in the United States.
C: You know George Bush?
U: (polite laughter) No, we’ve never met him.
C: You know Osama Bin Laden?
U: (slight discomfort) No…. We’ve never met him either.
C: Do you want to meet him?
U: (wondering where he’s going with this) Um… no. (sincerely hoping that we’re not on our way to see him right now)
C: I want to meet him very much.
U: Uhhh… Really? Why?
C: So that I could turn him in to the United States and gets lots and lots of American dollars. (hysterical guffaws)
U: (relieved smiles) Oh, okay.
C: No, I couldn’t do that. They would kill all my family. (another explosion of hilarity)
U: (polite but uncomfortable laughter)
Sometimes The Bible Has Cool Quotes
January 8, 2007“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” –Philippians 2:12
I only heard it in a recent movie, one which, like Pulse/Kairo, freaked me out so much I’m sleeping with the lights on again. It’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose. I wish I hadn’t watched it. Devil/demon movies don’t usually scare me, I’m usually disappointed to find out that Satan is the culprit. “Oh it’s just the devil,” I say to myself, and get bored. But not this one. It’s another mindfuck.
Meanwhile I was not so freaked out by The Descent–it’s what I’d call a “safe” horror film, in that it takes place in a very specific locale that I’m quite sure I’ll never visit (undiscovered caves in the backwaters of North Carolina) and that there’s nothing supernatural going on, just monsters and gore. And an all-female cast of ass-kicking spelunkers who fight to the death with these weird beasts. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Attention Austin, Texas
January 5, 2007Do I have any readers there who might have a couch I can crash on for SXSW in March? Do I have any readers there at all?
The Bell Jar
January 2, 2007For recent travels I acquired some books on tape to pass the time, as reading and/or watching movies on a bus/plane/car makes me nauseous. The library has a very limited selection of audiobooks, rarely anything new or exciting, so I had to choose among the classics. I was a lady traveling with E.M. Forster and Jane Austen for awhile, and quite enjoyed the company of the other lady characters. But on my most recent trip I fell upon Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, which somehow I’ve never read despite its fame. I don’t really even know her poetry much. So I figured now was as good a time as any to get acquainted.
But this lady traveler was unfortunately terribly disappointed. It sucks. It is unbelievably dated–a great book should be timeless, and this one isn’t. It is unbelievably cliched, though it’s possible that many of the cliches I know are derived from this book rather than repeated within it, I’m not sure. It is also unbelievably racist! From the very start, she describes herself, lacking a summer tan, as “yellow as a Chinaman.” And her well-tanned friend, “like a Negress.” And a Peruvian man, “like an Indian.” Cliche, lazy, AND racist, all at once.
And finally, overall, it just isn’t written very well. It’s almost all exposition, there is no work to be done by the reader. And much of it is simply mundane description, mundane metaphor. Something was “soft as pillows.” Wow, now that’s an imagination for ya. This is a poet?
The narrator’s attitudes and the author’s oblivousness remind me a lot of what I dislike about Sofia Coppola.
Good Line In A Fairly Dull Movie
December 27, 2006“You failed the polygraph test.”
“All Russians fail the test. Your polygraph does not understand the Russian soul.”
–Matt Damon interrogating a defecting Soviet spy in The Good Shepherd.
Ayayay
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Quote
December 19, 2006from Room With A View:
“My father has that effect on nearly every one,” he informed her. “He will try to be kind.”
“I hope we all try,” said she, smiling nervously.
“Because we think it improves our characters. But he is kind to people because he loves them; and they find him out, and are offended, or frightened.”
“How silly of them!” said Lucy, though in her heart she sympathized; “I think that a kind action done tactfully–”
“Tact!”
He threw up his head in disdain. Apparently she had given the wrong answer.
Separated At Birth?
December 18, 2006The phenomenally sexy Clive Owen:
and the almost-as-sexy Daniel Craig aka James Bond:
Depression In The Movies
December 12, 2006
Great article in the Guardian about the representation of mental illness (and mostly depression).
“…genuinely accurate depictions of mental illness are still rare in all the art forms. Why? For the very good reason that real mental illness is boring. Depressives are toxic and dull. Manic depressives are irritating. People with schizophrenia or autism are largely indecipherable. Most of them are best treated not by charismatic psychoanalysts who carefully excavate the early, repressed trauma that has “led” to their illness, but by doctors who administer psychotropic drugs of one kind of another. Thus, dramatic narrative and the reality of mental illness rarely go hand in hand.”
I have a personal stake in the issue, as I hope to shoot a film that will be a bit more true to life on these matters. The article mentions a Terence Davies film called Trilogy, which I’ve never even heard of, has anyone seen it? I want to get my hands on a copy.
I must also state that his description of the mentally ill character of Anne in Little Britain is off–yes we are laughing at her but it’s also questionable whether she really is mentally ill. That’s part of the joke, which this person seems to be missing.
