DREGUBLOG CATEGORY ARCHIVE: Blog
Monday, July 28, 2008
Au Revoir, Le Juillet
Goodbye, July! What aspects of this red, white, and blue month have you enjoyed? Barbecues? Crazy thunderstorms? Young Americans dying for nothing under the scorching Middle Eastern sun? Or perhaps, if you are continentally inclined, "le tricoleur" and Bastille Day? With semi-naked French dwarves gyrating to sappy, insipid music? Oh wait, that was just me and Carla Bruni.
One feckless July I arrived in Paris in time for "Le Quatorze juillet", where I planned to meet up with my friend Charlie Hunter and pass the hat for the buskers, while I worked on a novel which never transpired. The details of my plans were hazy, and I was broke. But apart from my go-go dancing job, nothing of interest was holding me in San Francisco. I got off the plane, and since I had not bothered to book a hostel, I decided, with the logic of a recently homeless youth, that I would head up to Sacré Coeur cathedral and hang out with the street musicians all night until an opportunity for accommodations arose. Sure enough, after a few minutes, I was engaged in a conversation with a small man who offered to help me find a cheap room. His name was Danny. I was a tiny bit apprehensive, but I reasoned that Danny couldn't harm me. I figured that since he was a dwarf, I could take him on if he tried anything; and since he was black, he probably wouldn't try, as any black man with an ounce of sense would be aware of the severe repercussions should he try to harm the lily white. Danny explained that there were several cheap hotels in nearby Place Clichy, and we set off.
But first Danny had to get a coffee. This turned into several coffees at several different cafes. Our conversation was stilted, as my French was basic, and I was very tired after my long flight. Finally, I entreated Danny to take me to the cheap hotels. Danny explained, since it was now so late and the hotels would be closed, that my only alternative was to stay at his apartment. Although I realized this wasn't particularly prudent, I relented, reminding myself that I could take Danny on if anything bad happened.
Arriving at his tiny home, former maid's quarters at the top of an apartment building, Danny offered that I could sleep in the bed with him. I declined, saying that I was perfectly comfortable on the floor, and began to put my pajamas on. Danny disappeared into a small room on the other side of a beaded curtain, much to my relief. As I drifted off to sleep, colored disco lights and the strains of Billy Ocean awakened me; I looked up as the beaded curtains parted. Danny came forth, wearing only a pair of leopard skin bikini underwear and a gold chain bearing a medallion. He swiveled his hips and rolled his disco fists to the music. I could only gape as he danced toward me in a bizarre simulacrum of eighties eroticism. What should I do now? I certainly was not going to accept the amorous advances of this lilliputian Lothario, but it was the middle of the night. As he started to grope me, my survival instincts kicked in and I flipped out. I leapt up and threw my clothes on, screaming every French and English insult I could think of. Danny, now quailing, begged me in a pathetic whine not to wake the landlady. I grabbed my luggage and ran out the door like an ingénue on a gothic novel cover, half-dressed, with the shadow of a man looming in the darkened doorway behind; or rather, darkening the doorstep, pint-sized.
So much for Franco-American relations, continually on the downswing since then. I realize that not all French people are miniature creeps, though people such as Danny and Nicolas Sarkozy cause me to make that association. Perhaps the xenophobia of fist-pumping July has rubbed off on me. As Sarkozy slashes France's welfare and social programs, does he wear a leopard print bikini under his suit, just for joie de vivre?
Did you enjoy this post? Use the wonders of social bookmarking to share it with friends and the Internet hive-mind!
del.icio.us
Digg it
reddit
Google
StumbleUpon- Show Comments for Au Revoir, Le Juillet (2)
Monday, July 21, 2008
N-Word: Use At Your Own Risk
Hi. My name is Danielle Belton and I am an official, 100 %, born n' raised American black woman. I popped out of my Mama's womb black. I'm gonna die black. I'm the descendant of slaves and their masters. I say this to let you know that this is the authentic view of one solitary natural born Negro. (Not all, so don't get it twisted.) And this is my message to non-Negroes about a troublesome word so powerful that it makes pretty white girls cry.
So listen close to what I'm about to say.
You can use the "N-word."
Seriously. Use it.
I only say this because Thursday's edition of ABC's The View drove me to a Bloody Mary and a marathon of B-boys breaking it down on MTV because that's my idea of soft-core porn. Very relaxing.
But for those who don't know, last Thursday, conservative, normally perky yakker Elisabeth Hasselbeck was reduced to tears of the N-word.
She hates the N-word, ya'll. She would never use it or any racial epitaph. So she wanted to know why black folks, could fling it around. Co-hosts/comedians Sherri Shepherd and Whoopi Goldberg tried to shut Hasselbeck's shit down with the usual, "I'm black. It doesn't mean the same when I say it to my kinfolk and you can't tell me what I can't say to my own peoples. But you, white girl, can't say it because of the history of white folks just being dicks about it, coming up with this singular word that reduces us to chattle. So we took the word back and now you just can't say it, white folks! We live in different worlds! Nigga, what! What!"
While I agree that the word comes from painful origins, I really think black folks should stop with the you can't say it dogma and white folks should stop acting like there is some rule, some ghetto pass that can be distributed that would absolve them of all historical white privilege and guilt and let them rip into that word like an Arkansan on chicken neckbone.
Fact is, the situation is a lot more complicated than, "I can say it and you can't," because in all reality -- We Negroes can't say it either.
The N-word, nigger, is a racially charged curse word. Like the vagina-laced C-bomb but with an ethnic lineage, the N-word is not cool in all black circles. A lot, and I mean A LOT, of black people hate the N-word and would not use it under any circumstances. They get offended when it is used around them by other black people. They, like me, stopped listening to certain types of hip hop years ago because the "nigga, nigga, nigger" shit got old fast.
It reeked of self-hatred and acting out the pain of our history through the adoption of the words of our captors. Trying to make love out of a mass of fecal matter. In my house the word was banned. My mother didn't use it. She didn't even curse and as far as she was concerned the N-word was a curse word. My dad used it, but only while joking with his younger brother. He knew how my mother felt and even though he came from a place where the N-word was fine among family and friends he didn't use it anywhere else.
The word, even when used as benign slang by other black people has historically been seen as tacky and low class. It was too rude to use out in public, in front of old folks or at work. Like the sexist dig "cunt" there was no appropriate place to fling the term around other than amongst your friends and family.
I don't use the word personally. I have in the past, but in the end I came to the same conclusion as my mom. There wasn't enough soap in the world to make that word clean. I've been called a nigger by a black person and by a white person in my 30 years and it hurt both times. It was shocking both times. It was hateful both times. And it was meant to "put me in my place" both times.
Don't go thinking you're smart or talented because you're still a "nigger."
But that's not why I'm saying white folks should just let the word fly. My beef is that it is ignorant to ban words. Rev. Jesse Jackson proved this after making a big show of leading the NAACP to have a ceremonial burial of the N-word and lambasting rappers for their N-word addiction. Then, in a casual conversation with another Negro, he drops it while talking about black Jesus ... I mean, Barack Obama (sometimes I get them confused). And suddenly he's a hypocrite when in reality he's just another victim of his own faulty logic. You can't ban words. The more forbidden the more people want to say it and that is the only reason why this debate exists.
The truth is the N-word was invented by white people. It was once their proxy, pal and verbal weapon. Maybe deep inside some folks just want it back, want to return to the good ol' days when you could just drop an N-bomb in a black person's face and they couldn't say jiggaboo back.
But I say, don't explain. Don't equivocate. Don't make up bullshit reasons about trying to reclaim the word, black people. Don't say you can say it and they can't. Tell they can say it. Encourage them to. Tell them they can say it as much as they want, but they have to take whatever drama comes with it.
There is no ghetto pass coming. There is no black Pope coming down to let you kiss the ring and receive the blessing to be profane. There is nothing to absolve you if you drop the word in the wrong setting. This is a "use at your own risk" situation. You can say the N-word, but you have to accept the burden of the N-word. You have to be prepared for the criticism, the stares, the denouncing and the controversy. You can't have it all. You can't use it freely because you can't change the past. You can't use it liberally because black people can't even use it freely amongst each other. Hearing a black person say "nigger" may feel slightly different, but it is disrespectful all the same. But I have no right telling you what to say any more than Elisabeth "Pollyanna" Hasselbeck has the right to say that no one should use the N-word.
Yeah, it's hateful. Yeah, it's wrong. But go ahead and say it if you want. It's a free country. Just beware of the free beatdown you may receive for expressing that right.
Did you enjoy this post? Use the wonders of social bookmarking to share it with friends and the Internet hive-mind!
- Show Comments for N-Word: Use At Your Own Risk (19)
Thursday, July 3, 2008
The Hot Comb Bible
Madam Walker was an entrepreneur who built her empire developing hair products for black women ... When confronted with the idea that she was trying to conform black women's hair to that of whites, she stressed that her products were simply an attempt to help black women take proper care of their hair and promote its growth. -- Women In History, Madame CJ Walker
Assimilation is a bitch.
Twice a month I got "assimilated" as a kid sitting between my mother's knees either getting my long curly hair braided, or worse, holding the cap from a jar of Afro Sheen over my ear, protecting it from the hot comb as she pressed my hair straight.
This is the penitence countless black women and girls pay to pretend our hair just grew out that way.
Simply because of racism and the works of first black millionaire Madame CJ Walker, the First Lady of the United States cannot rock an afro.
Michelle Obama, definitely black enough ball up her hand in a fist, shout "down with The Man" and rock an afro, cannot do so because the rules of engagement require her to fashion her hard to straighten hair into a killer bob more brutal and precise than the laser-like precision of Condoleezza Rice's killer bob.
I hate the bob. It is, by far, the least attractive 'do. It's corporate black hair designed by committee. It's been marketed and tested as patented follicles that don't scare white folk. Although I don't know how much good it does her with people opening up emails about "Michelle Obama Whitey" tapes only to find Rick "Singin' Like A Negro" Ashley telling them how he's never going to give them up.
But while Rick can ululate like Frankie Beverly and Haddaway, Michelle can't embrace her nappy roots.
It was Sarah Breedlove, aka Madame CJ Walker, who made this dream of straight hair assimilation a reality by inventing the pressing comb.
An ingenious device made of iron, it was comb you heated up on stove whereupon you would apply oil to your hair and sizzle the curls away. Finally, the Western standard of beauty was half-ass obtainable for black women. The hot comb created the black hair care industry and launched the careers of millions of black women who became economically self-sufficient as beauticians. The press n' curl was a lucrative 'do that kept the sisters coming back. After all, a drop of water, a touch of humidity or a slight sweat on the scalp returned the hair to its naturally nappilicious state.
Today, taking natural hair and turning it into something unnatural and making that look halfway coherent still takes work. They can event an iPhone, but they still can create a way to conform black hair to white standards in less than two hours.
The best technique is using hair that's not your hair. Back when white girls were still working a crimping iron and dressing like Mayim Bialik, black girls were mastering the glue, the sew and the braiding of synthetic/"treated" hair grown from the heads of broke chicks in Asia, then textured to better match our wave patterns.
So the secret's out. That is not all of Michelle's hair.
I've seen the older pictures of her. She's done what it took Condi four years into the Bush Administration to figure out. Get some damn weave to fill out that killer bob. Create the illusion of health and thickness to give your natural hair a break, lest it break off.
Most black women with straight hair go for the chemicals, but that can lead to the ever-expanding of your forehead space with the sides and the top breaking off over time. There's nothing worse than a perm that's put in for too long, the acid burning into your scalp leaving it scarred, sore and scabby like you just rolled around the the toxic dust of Chernobyl.
That's why the best method, but the least permanent technique to straighten hair is the pressing comb. You might get burned but your hair isn't going to fall out (unless the presser doesn't know what they're doing).
But black beauticians nowadays look at you like you're crazy if you want your hair pressed over a perm. Perms make more money. Historically a press n' curl was cheaper because you already bought the comb. All you're paying for is time. But rather than charging $25 or $35 for good hair sizzle they want to charge as much as they charge for the perm -- $50 and up.
While money is an issue for me, it's not for Michelle Obama. She probably has her own weavologist, press n' curl genius maintaining that killer bob.
I'm sure that if I asked sweetly my mom would let me sit between her knees again from another round with a jar of pressing oil and tensing up as she gets closer and closer to the back of my ears, but I choose just to wear my hair natural.
After all, I'm not trying to assimilate my way to Pennsylvania Avenue. I'm free, by golly. Free to wear my hair in curly twists and have well meaning, but boundary crossing white folks touch my hair like it's mink coat, petting it and admiring that it's so soft.
It's a pain in the ass, but ... eh ... it's better than bob. Rock on Mrs. O. Rock on.
Did you enjoy this post? Use the wonders of social bookmarking to share it with friends and the Internet hive-mind!
- Show Comments for The Hot Comb Bible (4)
Saturday, June 28, 2008
The "Kitchen Nightmares" Business Model
Like a ten car pile-up with bodies strewing the highway, I can't tear my eyes away from the reality program Kitchen Nightmares. The pain and squeamishness I feel watching people getting their asses kicked by Chef Gordon Ramsay is tempered by the outrage I also feel at watching people letting their restaurants die through inefficiency, intransigence, and sheer stupidity. As disingenuous as the reality show can be, Chef Ramsay and his team have actual knowledge, informed by experience, as to why these businesses are failing, and make an attempt to turn them around. And as dippy as it may seem, I have come to believe that Ramsay's techniques could be used successfully for all kinds of businesses. If he could tone down the restaurant-bred rage and profanity, I believe that Gordon Ramsay could be the progenitor of an improved business reality.
Like most reality shows, the action in Kitchen Nightmares follows a prescribed format. Chef Gordon Ramsay surprises the restaurant employees as they're preparing for dinner service. He talks to the owner about the restaurant's problems. At dinner, Chef Ramsay orders from the menus and judges the meal, unanimously negatively. He rips into the management. Then, during dinner, he stands over the chef and the staff, screaming at them in derision. A major conflict between Chef Ramsay, the owner, the manager, and the chef ensues. Things get uglier as Chef Ramsay issues pointed insults and character assassinations, usually resulting in someone storming out. He returns the next day with a plan that he believes will save the restaurant. The staff tries it, and lo and behold, it starts to work. There are hugs and tears, as Chef Ramsay then gently explains to them, with convincing sensitivity and concern, that they are all wonderful people, and that all he really wanted was for their restaurant to work. Ramsay returns two months later, and if they have adopted his methods, the business is no longer in peril.
Most of Chef Ramsay's business advice is common sense, something which most of the restaurant owners that are selected for the show do not possess. This is revealed by restaurants that are filthy, disorganized, and rely on menus based on frozen and pre-packaged ingredients. Kitchen Nightmares forces them to try something new, or risk televised humiliation. The other strategy that Chef Ramsay relies upon is also straightforward, if brutal, in its simplicity: breaking someone down to build them back up, shaking off their old, bad habits that are the products of the restaurant owners' bizarrely huge egos. Gordon Ramsay is skilled at psychological confrontation. His bullying is perversely effective, and always squirmingly fascinating to watch.
True, the restaurants that are featured on Kitchen Nightmares are going to be the worst examples of business ineptitude in order to provide television drama. I sometimes feel sorry for the poor idiot who is getting torn a new one by Chef Ramsay, but one has to remember that these people signed up for this. Their dual desperation of wanting to be on TV and trying to dodge bankruptcy has caused the reaming, and so it seems warranted.
Wouldn't it be great if Gordon Ramsay expanded his bellowing métier to other enterprises? Wouldn't there be immense satisfaction if he showed up to turn around the swindling realty in your neighborhood? Gordon, scream at the dishonest louts and force them to return rapacious broker fees! Offer discount incentives in order to sell new property! The too cool for school hair salon? Chasten the staff, who desperately cling to their snotty prejudices! They'll make more money if they're nonjudgmental, not just tragically hip. The rude delicatessen? Why should customers endure abuse to order food from them? Constrain them to volunteer in a soup kitchen and see what it's like to have no job at all! And when these deeds are done, how about a big group hug so that they all feel appreciated and validated? Chef Ramsay, please turn your techniques into a compulsory study for all business owners, and save us from occupational ineptitude.
Did you enjoy this post? Use the wonders of social bookmarking to share it with friends and the Internet hive-mind!
- Show Comments for The "Kitchen Nightmares" Business Model (1)
Thursday, June 26, 2008
SHOPPING FOR THE RIGHT WEAPON
This week's NY Times Critical Shopper takes us to Beretta, where they sell beautiful guns that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's right next door to a cafe where even a bottle of sparkling water costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you're like me, you realize this could spell trouble.
BERETTA: NOT JUST FOR ROBERT BLAKE ANYMORE
Also, next door on your right over there, there's new Dregulator flogging an old DARPA robot-horse in a Brave New Way....
Did you enjoy this post? Use the wonders of social bookmarking to share it with friends and the Internet hive-mind!
- Show Comments for SHOPPING FOR THE RIGHT WEAPON (1)
Thursday, June 19, 2008
THE PENTAGON DIVA STRIKES, AND IT FEELS LIKE A KISS
OUR beloved girl in Washington, the Pentagon Diva of I LUV A MAN IN A UNIFORM-blog-fame, wrote such a "cave-smokingly hot" blog about fellow counterinsurgency expert and all-around PowerDandy Dave Kilcullen that even the WIRED national security blog, DANGER ROOM picked it up.
Who Wouldn't Pick Up Such A Juicy News Item
Yet more proof that life within the Pentagon is infinitely more varied than scientists ever previously imagined possible. As the Diva herself would say, "MEEOOW!"
Did you enjoy this post? Use the wonders of social bookmarking to share it with friends and the Internet hive-mind!
- Show Comments for THE PENTAGON DIVA STRIKES, AND IT FEELS LIKE A KISS (0)
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
INTRODUCING: THE BLACK SNOB
It is with outstanding and chest-beating pleasure and pride that we who are Cintra Wilson introduce yet another whomping talent from the creedly corners of outer Blogovia, THE BLACK SNOB. I hope you enjoy her incredible talent for nailing everything you ever wanted to know about black chicks but thought you'd get your ass kicked for asking as much as I do. Ms. Snob, as you can see below, truly roasts the written word, and we are honored to have her.
Did you enjoy this post? Use the wonders of social bookmarking to share it with friends and the Internet hive-mind!
- Show Comments for INTRODUCING: THE BLACK SNOB (0)
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The Unfuckables: Asian Men, Black Women Surprisingly Pissed Over Interracial Dating
In America and if you're a man who enjoys getting head it really helps, statistically, if you're a white guy. You have way more options because something must be magical about white dick considering when it comes to interracial dating for Asian and Latina women, white penis is where it is at.
If you're not white and you want to get ass, being a black guy is the next best thing. Fucking a black guy is still the number one way to piss your parents off if you're a white girl. But statistically the one man in America no one wants a triple X throwdown with is sideshow William Hung, actor John Cho and a multitude of their Asian American male counterparts.
I didn't know anyone could be more pissed about interracial dating than black women, but Asian American men give us sisters a run for our Haterade. While it doesn't bother me much, a lot of black girls treat every stringy haired, flat-assed, orange fake tan Aryan Goddess like Buffy the Negro Slayer.
But color me surprised, the Asian man wants to put a foot in the ass of every white boy coveting their shojo princesses.
A few years back I started reading blogs and internet forums by Asian American men and I learned that they were crying out in silent pain over what is the mantra of both our kind:
No one wants to fuck us.
Now technically, some people want to fuck black women, but usually that becomes "fuck over." But East Asian women date outside their race at a much higher rate than black men or women. As for black women we hardly date outside of their race no matter how high up we go careerwise. To this day black magazines write articles suggesting successful black women to consider "marrying down" by fucking a plumber or a guy who sells mixtapes at the swamp meet. So what if you have an MBA from Harvard? That cat on fries looks like he could get us pregnant before we hit forty.
For the sisters if it ain't black they don't want it. It's Negro or nothing.
Asian men just want the benefit black and white men get. They want to be fucked. They want to be desired. No white or black girls are dreaming about swallowing an Asian man whole. Everyone is a fetish but them. (Well, the gays have an Asian man fetish, but that really doesn't help the rice grinder riders who like pussy.) They want girls to want to give them head too. They want a fucking date. And this shit isn't a joke, this time, it's personal.
You can sell post-feminist Americans on men who can keep their jobs, treat women well just because they're supposed to, and won't run off with some other girl after 2 years leaving you holding the house and kids. (Of course that's a lie too...) And then there's the final option ... Just grab your trusty AK-47 and simply fill every goddamn racist white male SOB full of lead and tell them to keep their !@#$ hands off of Asian women. It's your move.
It's hard to live down the stereotype that Asian guys are controlling, mama boy nerds with limited penis power and suffer from a bad case of "Otaku wuss."
A few Asians commenting on the message boards noticed that black women can't get a date either and suggested the obvious: a black woman/Asian man case of Yellow Dengue Fever. And while this sounds delicious to me, black women are notoriously intimidating. (Re: Negro or nothing!) I know I scare the shit about of men all the time. But I say try anyway. I mean, I've checked out some Korean boys and thought "I'd hit that," so live dangerously, Asian man.
But I realize most won't take the black bait because of the myth of the Negresses being undesirable (we're apparently butch harridans) and how we all must be used to being fucked by monster cocks.
Try as one might, you can't explain to the men of America that the dick thing is overrated and that it's "open season" on at least trying to love up the black girl. But apparently the black man put a "hands off" sign on all of us and for some reason everyone respects it. Which is odd given that the minute they stopped getting hung for it black men started ignoring the hands-off signs on white women.
But my Asian brothers, try not to dwell too much on it. After all you don't want to be forever bitter like black women who are still all sour patches over Tiger Woods, who technically is insulting three ethnicities with his wife, Elin, the ultimate fembot. Tiger dissed black women, Asian women and White American women. Us all filled with impurities, he had to find the WHITEST WHITE WOMAN IN THE WORLD OF WHITE WOMEN, venturing the valley of the Nordic blond in Europe to find his prize. She's so pure if you cut her she'd bleed unicorns and Summer's Eve.
Which would explain why she always looks like a douche to me.
But, oops. I let the bitterness slip. Yeah for black men fucking white women. Whoo-hoo.
Did you enjoy this post? Use the wonders of social bookmarking to share it with friends and the Internet hive-mind!
- Show Comments for The Unfuckables: Asian Men, Black Women Surprisingly Pissed Over Interracial Dating (11)
We know global warming is bad, and we know that human beings' misuse of natural resources has caused it to occur. The explanation of accelerated global warming being due to the Earth's natural climate swings has been discredited. Has tangible global warming not yet taught us that a reactive response to scientific research is quickly ruining our planet? Yet it is our duty to try to figure out how to decrease the intensity of global warming, and fast. I grope for new models that will provide effective information.
Though we are now blazing under unrelenting heat, up until a week and a half ago, it has been chilly while I work in my studio in upstate New York. Global warming involves massive swings in the highs and lows of the Earth's temperatures, and it is still spring in these northern climes until late May. In New York, spring and fall are represented by two-week periods between winter and summer. The rest of the year is dominated by severe weather; I now call our two seasons "Freeze" and "Inferno."
There are many arguments against alternative fuel sources used by the U.S. government and other capitalist-based fossil fuel addicts. Wind energy uses spinning turbines that cause noise pollution. Solar energy isn't powerful enough for a typical household's increasing fuel needs. Combustibles, like wood and coal, pollute the air. Hydroelectric power, because of the use of dams, has ruined ecosystems. Geothermal energy is only available to a small part of the world. But if more funding was given to develop these alternative energy technologies, answers to these arguments will be discovered.
It is interesting to look at recently planned eco-towns and see if these will offer any viable alternatives. Prince Charles has completed the development process for Sherford, a new community in England that has been planned to be mostly sustainable. Solar and wind power will be used in the homes and businesses, which are quaintly designed to evoke the kinder, gentler (for some) Georgian era. I also discovered that Prince Charles already designed one of these communities, Poundbury, in Dorset. Why hasn't this been all over the news? The architect Lord Norman Foster has designed a city in the desert of Abu Dhabi, called Masdar, which will also be almost fully sustainable and self-contained, despite its harsh surrounding terrain.
Average citizens, it is argued, must struggle every day to survive in an unrelenting economic downturn, and do not have time to worry if their coffee is heated with purloined fossil fuel, or a pinwheel. Sherford and Masdar have been criticized as the pet projects of imperialist aristocrats with too much time and money on their hands. If that is the case, then shouldn't we encourage the heirs of wealth and power to shoulder this burden? If they have the time, money, and energy to apply to a global problem, shouldn't we let them? Tracking the success of these communities, and applying the lessons learned as an essential part of urban planning, could alter our global future. We should not reject anything that offers a possibility to clean up this apocalyptic-level mess.
Check out information on these projects:
Did you enjoy this post? Use the wonders of social bookmarking to share it with friends and the Internet hive-mind!
- Show Comments for High Stakes for Our Little Eco-Towns (1)
Monday, June 2, 2008
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO BE KEITH RICHARDS AND ANITA PALLENBERG
Greetings, Dregublog Fiends.
Firstly, I'd like to say that if Anita Pallenberg is your style, then you probably don't shop at Tory Burch, Critically or otherwise.
May I nextly say thank you to the diehards like Phil for hanging around and being generally swell and loquacious as always despite my prolonged absence on the comment-pile. The dirty deed has been done dirt cheap, and I have it on good authority that my new book (drumroll please):
CALIGULA FOR PRESIDENT: BETTER AMERICAN LIVING THROUGH TYRANNY
BOW DOWN AND TREMBLE
...will be OUT and in stores hopefully by September, definitely by October, and definitely before the next presidential election.
In the meantime, there is a new-esque Dregulator over yar ---->>>
....another Critical Shopper in the NY Times extolling quality Eurotrashinita par excellence, CATHERINE MALANDRINO....
....and a lovely shout out from the Great Lady of Salon and MSNBC punditry fame, the lovely and scary-smart Ms. Joan Walsh, who re-discovered my Scott McClellan piece from 2005 and linked to it on her Salon blog.
Anyone who hangs around most evenings arguing publicly with Pat Buchanan is more than OK by me.
In short, there's a whole lot of shakin' going on, and hopefully all the pretty little rocks don't fall out of my head.
Love,
Cintra
Did you enjoy this post? Use the wonders of social bookmarking to share it with friends and the Internet hive-mind!
- Show Comments for EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO BE KEITH RICHARDS AND ANITA PALLENBERG (3)
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Film School and the Perpetuation of the Myth of the Independent Filmmaker
I committed myself to learn the craft of filmmaking so that I could create an escape from a drab and mundane existence. The power of creating motion picture images was intoxicating to a novice filmmaker. If given the chance, could I ever make something as transporting as The Wizard of Oz or La Dolce Vita? Would attending an elite film school make this possible?
Be forewarned: attending an expensive university film program may teach you how films are made, but they will not help you become an independent filmmaker. There are reasons why it is called the film "business." Heed my tale.
I attended the New York University graduate film school. Learning from the same instructors who taught Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee seemed like a dream come true. I would learn motion picture production skills by which I could earn a living. And the greatest hope of all would be that, like Jarmusch and Lee before me, I would have the opportunity to become an "independent filmmaker."
At NYU, we learned of the rigid hierarchy that Hollywood dictates to American filmmaking, and how it was crucial to honor and respect it. It soon became clear that filmmaking was the dominion of the wealthy, steeped in nepotism, and that the school was, in actuality, a male-dominated Hollywood prep school.
Still, this went against the messages we were hearing about the burgeoning profession of "independent filmmaker." Look at Susan Seidelman! Look at Tom DiCillo! These people were making the films they wanted to make on their own terms, and no movie studio could tell them that quirky characters and black and white images were a no-go. Why, Robert Rodriguez made El Mariachi on just $5,000 that he charged on his credit card. And it's the hit of the year, and heavy-hitting producers are lining up to work on his next picture!
Those of us who were not making slick, predictable film "products" with the assumption of working for a studio were advised to write a screenplay and shop it around to production companies. You had to work hard and pay your dues, but if you were willing to do so, you could be rewarded by having your film independently produced, your vision as an artist left relatively intact.
I was willing to work hard. I shopped my screenplays around for years, slogging away at the drudgery of freelance motion picture productions in order to earn a living. Working fourteen hours a day on MTV reality shows and A&E intro sequences would all be in the past once I hit my stride as an independent filmmaker. But somehow my screenplays weren't attractive to the production companies. They were too "arty," too "literary." American audiences don't understand subtlety, I was told. Try writing a chick flick.
Why weren't any of my colleagues becoming successful filmmakers by making their own feature films, and "creating a buzz" that would allow them to continue to do so? After ten years, I realized that no one I knew from NYU had become an independent filmmaker. Nor had any of the people I knew from the other major league graduate film schools. Most had given up and started new careers, and the only ones who had hung on were being financed to retain this extravagant dream by affluent and indulgent parents. The luckier Hollywood scions had administrative jobs at studios. What had happened to the El Mariachis of the world?
The answer is that independent filmmaking does not exist. El Mariachi was not made for $5,000. Neither was Tarnation, a 2003 film supposedly put together on the filmmaker's home computer. These films may have been shot for nominal amounts, but the filmmaking process doesn't end there. Films must be edited, a long-term and time-consuming process. Once that occurs, if a production company shows interest in the film, they must put it through innumerable stages of better edits, credit sequences, prints, marketing, and the like, to prepare it for the possibility of commercial distribution. Without distribution, the film will never be seen. Who controls virtually all film distribution in this country? Large Hollywood monopolies consisting of movie studios, cable television giants, and multiplex theatres. These monopolies depend upon polished and formulaic film products that will make them as much money as possible. Remakes are popular, as they are known entities that have already earned large profits in previous iterations. Films holding new ideas and styles outside of familiar genres are not going to be distributed, because their profit margins are unascertained.
Why perpetuate the myth that independent filmmaking exists? Because exclusive institutions such as NYU, staffed and attended by Hollywood progeny, need breeding grounds where the misinformation that filmmaking is a democratic pursuit is maintained. And more importantly, because Hollywood is an industry that relies on myth making and mystique, and on the collective fantasy that anyone can do anything in America. Hollywood executives love the delusion that they will be the ones to discover the next, hugely profitable talent. That almost all of this talent has no possibility of reaching them is of negligible concern to the myth itself.
I have since learned that all the big names in "independent filmmaking," including some of the aforementioned, have rejected the notion as well. They have either been absorbed by the Hollywood system, or burned by it to the point that they work only on its periphery. Some operate in other countries, or, if they have been commercially successful at some point, by financing their own production houses. They do not believe in the existence of the independent filmmaker, and neither should we.
Because the commercial formula that we see in every Hollywood film was cemented early on, the artistic and experimental possibilities of the medium were eschewed to the netherworld, where they remain. Motion picture is too expensive a medium to play around with, and due to this country's distribution system, we will never see the few experiments.
Did you enjoy this post? Use the wonders of social bookmarking to share it with friends and the Internet hive-mind!
COMMENTS
If it were nothing, then the Jihadis wouldn't be choosing to fight too.
Maybe the GIs, or the Jihadis, are just targets. Those young Germans on the beaches of Normandy didn't die for nothing, they died so the forces of liberty could win. As did their little sisters roasted in Hamburg.
But it's not nothing.
And I liked the dwarf story.
Posted by: staghounds staghounds at July 29, 2008 1:26 PM
any black man with an ounce of sense would be aware of the severe repercussions should he try to harm the lily white.
Paris doesn't have a history of lynching, darlin'. The Africans I have met there have all considered themselves free and equal citizens, if they have ever considered the matter at all. It's most refreshing.
Great story!
Posted by: Pretty Lady Pretty Lady at August 6, 2008 4:35 PM
CONTRIBUTE TO THE CULTURAL DOGFIGHT