DREGUBLOG CATEGORY ARCHIVE: Blog
Friday, June 26, 2009
QUINCY DISPENSING UNIVERSAL TRUTH, LIKE MOSES
"When God walks out of the room - you can't control that. People think they deserve the success -- that's a mistake.... There's two basic laws: treat your creativity with humility and treat your success with grace... or you will be in trouble."
-- Quincy Jones, today on MSNBC, re: Michael Jackson
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I am reprinting, here, a chapter from my first book: "A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-examined as a Grotesque, Crippling Disease," which came out in 2000.
I apologize in advance for material that may seem wildly off-color in this airless climate of political correctness. I've mellowed out some since this book was published, but there are still, I think, some salient points.
Goodnight, Sweet Prince. Mama-say-Mama-sah-Mamama-qua-sah.
"I know a place where dreams are born/ and time is never planned/
It's not on any chart/you must find it with your heart/ Never never land."
- "Neverland" lyrics from the Broadway musical "Peter Pan."
JACKO, THE NO-NOSED MAN FROM MOTOWN
(A MORALITY FABLE)
"Michael as well as myself have been severely underestimated and misunderstood as human beings. I can't wait for the day when the snakes that tried to take him out get to eat their own lunch and crawl back into the holes from which they came. We know who they are and their bluff is about to be called."
-- Lisa Marie Presley (shortly before divorcing Jackson in 1995)
There are people who, over their time of celebrity, have been seemingly autonomous broadcasters of a kind of Holy Joy.
Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Michael Jackson , who was a child of incredible, other-worldly talent. Hammered into superstar condition by a merciless warlock of a father who belt-whipped his musical ambitions into the hides of his countless offspring, Michael was only six years old when his family's singing group, The Jackson Five, was signed to the Motown label. He developed an ecstatic feral bird quality in his pre-pubescent voice that transcended anything human; he possessed the kind of arm hair-raising sublimity found only in little Anglican choir boys and castrati. His big brown child animal eyes and perfectly round Byzantine afro-halo and his pre-sexual, pre-self-conscious free dancing suggested a huge pipeline into something other and better and more refined than the filthiness of real human life, with all its ill humor and defecation and smarm. Michael became very famous by the time he was only twelve, and got truckloads of mail from wildly obsessed fan-boys and fan-girls all over the world who wanted to touch him, kidnap him, steal handfuls of his hair, and tear off his clothing and rub their bodies against him.
In 1983, when Michael was in his early twenties, he electrified the entertainment world by appearing on Motown's 25th Anniversary Special with black flood pants, cryptic diamond glove and neon socks with loafers, and effortlessly "Moonwalking" across the stage like hot oil down a shingled roof. He was a revelation, like Nadia Comaneci's perfect ten, that raised everyone's pop-consciousness. Fred Astaire called young Michael on the phone the next day. Fred, all hopped up on tranques and gin martinis, crumpled and gravity-bound like a pile of wet newspaper in his hospital-style flex-o bed in some wealthy suburb like Burlingame, was watching the blizzard of inspiration that was Michael J. when he crowed to his group of wealthy golf-bastard hanger-ons, "Get me the Red Phone, the one that goes directly to the head of William Morris! I want to send that Nigro boy a shiny new dollar!"
In the next few years, Jackson became one of the few and proud to achieve a substantial stretch of documented extra-terrestrial excellence, like Barishnikov in his prime, or Michael Jordan. Much of his older dance music holds up as well as anything in the timeless lexicon of royal R&B greats, particularly those songs from the "Off the Wall" album and the subsequent "Thriller" LP. Shortly after those records broke all previous records, mega-mega-mega fame trained the deadly blue heat of its X-ray eye on young Jackson and stared him crispy.
With his new multi-millions, Michael built himself a fantasy home : Neverland Ranch, named after the land of Peter Pan, the fairy-boy who never grew up. Neverland Ranch contains a full-scale amusement park with carousels and ferris wheels, two real choo-choo trains, and an entire petting zoo. Michael invited little children from all over the world to come and play with him. Michael lo-o-oved children, because his Dad was a mean Jehovah's Witness and he never got to play or have Christmas or birthdays growing up; he only got ruthless beatings, and was forced to learn mature love ballads and complicated dance routines. Michael felt that the innocent hearts of children were keys to the magical secrets of life. "When I'm upset about a recording session, " gushed Michael in an interview, "I'll dash off on my bike and ride to the schoolyard, just to be around them."
Michael loved women, too, but in a strange, slavering, idolatrous way that made it impossible for them to love him back : Liz Taylor, Diana Ross, and later Lisa Marie Presley and Debbie Rowe, the Mother of His Children, all seemed to care very deeply for Jackson while staying at least a six-hour plane trip away from him at all times. He looked wrong with anyone too near his body. When he and Madonna were each other's dates to an awards ceremony, they looked as uncomfortable sitting next to each other as two morbidly obese people on the bus. There are some auras whose size and radiance requires miles of solitude, like a nuclear accident, and Michael's seemed to be one of them.
Michael began to get a whole shitload of plastic surgery, breaking his nose and re-shaping it so many times it ceased to look like a nose at all. There were pictures of him in particle masks, and talk of elaborate enemas. People started to wonder : was the star was a strange, fearful virgin, or merely swishy ? Why did his voice never change? Why were his closest friends chimpanzees or growth-stunted child stars such as Emmanuel Lewis? Well, thought the adoring fans, he's a lovable eccentric.
Michael kept making music, but his own image on the album covers started to become unrealistic and preposterous. First the "BAD" album came out, then the "Dangerous" album. Apparently, Michael wanted to be regarded as Bad and Dangerous, but nobody told him that he'd never look intimidating with plucked-eyebrows and rouge, and the over-accessorized buckle-and-zipper ensembles which made him look like a
rodeo dominatrix. His appearance was especially puzzling and ineffectual when compared to actual bad and dangerous musical celebrities like NWA or Public Enemy. Still, despite the slack in record sales and street credibility, things were going pretty well for young Michael.
Then, in 1993, a little kid started telling policemen intimate details about Jackson's wee-wee, and the tapestry of Michael's talented mind started to unravel before the entire world. Suddenly Jackson's eccentricities started to make sense. Ooooh! Said the world. We get it now - the merry go-round, the crying at E.T. : he's a pedophile! The tabloids went apeshit. It was too good to be true. The most famous man in the world! Even talentless joke sister La Toya turned her back on Michael, telling the press that she could "no longer be silent" about her brother's crimes. Young boys came forward to defend their pal Michael, but when they spoke of having slept in the same bed with him in a friendly "slumber-party" type of way, they ended up doing more harm than good.
Michael began wearing more and more eyeliner; his nose got even smaller. His skin, once a pleasant mocha hue, became the powdery color of meringue. He had a deep cleft hewn into his chin. He began collapsing a lot, and being rushed off to various hospitals to be treated for exhaustion, dehydration and pain-killer addiction. Michael issued many, many requests for the press to leave him alone, especially the tabloids, who seemed to regard Michael as their personal whipping-pederast.
Suddenly there were numerous, last-ditch, triple-image-spin-bypass operation attempts by his PR squad to rescue Jackson from being exclusively thought of as a noseless hermit child molester, capable of inspiring even more fear in the young than his old pet corpse pal, the Elephant Man. He married second-generation Ultra-Fame scorch-victim Lisa Marie Presley (which was at least cosmologically interesting : Elvis was also one of the most Zeus-like 22 year old songsters that ever lived; he also, for a time, possessed the lightening-bolt of superhuman Joy. The Fame smothered both men, overstimulating them into frightful husks of self-abuse: they both had to vandalize themselves, since the world could do naught but love them. Despite the difference in testosterone levels, Michael, for Lisa Marie, must have been reminiscent of Daddy), but the two of them weren't able to convince America that they were in True Love, and they divorced two years later. He publicly had 2 "babies," albeit suspiciously pale ones, with his second wife, a friendly nurse in his plastic surgeon's office, and insisted that they were achieved through some form of actual sexual intimacy, as opposed to being begot with a turkey baster for a brood-mare fee of $528,000.00, as some tabloids suggested.
On the cover photo of one of his CD singles, he wore a carpal-tunnel syndrome wrist brace as a gesture of solidarity towards "suffering children". Inside, Michael had drawn a sketch of himself at the age of 6 or 7, huddled in a corner with huge, overbright, trapped eyes, clutching a microphone for comfort, in the saccharin-precious art-style one sees of crying children in patchwork overalls painted on plates in TV Guide, with the caption : "Ask yourself: where has my childhood gone?" This was clearly a bid for more compassionate understanding by the press, but it read more like a crazily un-self-reflexive, backhanded plea for his alleged kiddie games of Doctor to continue with the blessing of the American public. It was sadly obvious that he had no idea how spooky and fucked-up the drawing looked; how utterly removed from the "normal" thinking processes of his fellow man Jackson was. It made the laughably severe image he fostered for his "BAD" album seem almost sane and workable by comparison. It was doubtful that even the uncorrupted children of Thailand (one of the last places his tours could guarantee ticket sales) could buy his all-too-sudden heterosexual progenitor act. His master plans for renewed lovability were even kookier and less understandable than what he did to his own face. What was this poor, outrageously sheltered and wealthy man thinking, in his fortress of stuffed baby toys, monkeys and pain?
None of the images Michael put forth in his previous albums were as weird or disturbing as the towering, Stalin-esque statue of Jackson draped with bullet belts featured in the promotional video for his HIStory album. Epic records pulled out all of the promotional stops and portrayed Jackson as some kind of divine totalitarian emperor-general, unveiling statues of Michael in several European cities based on the 300 foot tall Monument to Victory in Volgograd, Russia. The video featured people fainting and being dragged away, the power of the image overwhelming them. The public was confused : it seemed that after all he'd been through, Bad and Dangerous Michael still wanted to invoke our awe and fear, not our smelly, whimpering love. However, on his now-rare TV appearances, Michael, laying aside his new chrome armor, started pretending he was Jesus. He would sing with his arms out, crucifix-style, suspended above the stage in a white shirt and oversized angel wings. As he descended with his freshly ironed hair blowing back, children in white choir robes of all colors and nationalities would run to him. Actors of all ages and races would reverently touch his shoulder, and Michael, arms still spread, would regard them with tender messianic understanding. At the 1996 Brits, the British version of the Grammy Awards, Jarvis Cocker, lead singer of "Pulp," protest-crashed the stage where Michael was being lowered singing and deus ex machina-like from the rafters. Two security guards tackled Cocker, wounding three pious, singing children in the process. Cocker later issued a disgusted statement about how the music industry indulges Michael Jackson's delusion that he has the ability to heal because of his enormous wealth.
Jackson epitomizes the fullest scope of uber-fame in the United States. He's lived through the whole gauntlet : the best parts of it in his earlier years, the worst humiliating and scandalous parts in the more recent. Anything Michael does now just reads like Outsider Art - he has become as strange and isolated and deranged as anyone who ever walked or crawled through shock treatment. He's the strangest uninstitutionalized crazy person in the public eye since Howard Hughes. My fear is that now, instead of fading away like his natural skin tone, Michael will remain in the public eye, and his bids for world acceptance will just get weirder.
Back in the seventies, when a TV show started losing ratings, they would make some horrible medical thing happen to one of the cast members in order to curry audience sympathy : Laura Ingalls Wilder's sister went blind late in the Neilson death rattle of "Little House in the Prairie." Fonzie had some Evel Kneivel-style death bid a-la motorcycle, to-be-continued. The idea was to leave the audience hanging in a morbid, prurient limbo and grab that same rubbernecking interest that people have for major car accidents. This is now happening in real life, in a small way, with Michael's young, seizure-prone son, but for Michael himself, I predict that his spin-surgeons will insist he be stricken by a freak-accident related coma, in order to cause a burst of previously latent, Princess Diana-esque support for the ailing star. Thousands of fans all over the world would then feel guilty for turning their backs on him, and send him Mylar balloons and teddy bears, carnations and crayon drawings, and the entire Jackson clan; most visibly psychic media- whore LaToya (who would also be spotlight-resuscitated through the tragedy), will embark on a constant bedside vigil. LaToya would go on TV to earnestly beg the world to pray for her ailing brother. Michael would miraculously wake up after 10 days or so, and he'd really want to talk to the TV cameras about his "glimpse of the other side." In a fury of "Moonwalking Towards the Light" enthusiasm, he will be asked onto daytime talkshows, but his aggressively Old Testament, Book-of-Jeremiah-style rantings would not be copacetic with the popular desires of the New Age, and his messages would cease to be broadcast. Should all this pass, I fear that shortly afterwards, during a peaceful lull, Michael will suddenly, quietly die under really bizarre, mysterious circumstances; perhaps he'll drown in four inches of bathwater, fully made-up and dressed, or slump over on his private ferris wheel with a telltale can of silly string and a ziplock bag.
I was worried for a long time that Michael was going to die soon; nobody I knew thought that Michael could live very long, particularly in his disgraced Short-Eyes state, like Wat the no-nosed man in the King Arthur legend who lived in the woods and bit children. I had a pseudo-mystical experience where I had a strange vision of Michael's autopsy photo. Bootlegs of this would be a very hot item in many circles, that would get passed around the sicko cognoscenti in LA the same way that color xeroxes of the police shot of Kurt Cobain after his suicide secretly made the rounds. Jesus, I thought. It's the only way we'll ever know what the poor little guy really looked like under all those buckles, powder and paste.
But who has raised more money for bizarre, esoteric children's diseases than Michael? Who can blame a person for having tragic (alleged) sexual leanings, when they were getting morosely dank nookie offers from every gender of fans before they were old enough to read? Do people not see the connection between making young children - who have no idea what's going on with their own genitals - into objects of widespread, grimy adult desire, and the fact that Michael Jackson grew up to be a white faerie princess who only shines with tiny boys and monkeys? Such unwelcome attentions must have grossed-out young Michael profoundly, and rendered impossible any hope for his having "normal" relations, gay or straight, for at least this lifetime. And who, besides Michael, has provided us with more evidence that Big Fame will fuck you, fuck you, fuck you in the head until there's nothing between your ears but a sour, translucent jelly?
Run away, Michael. Go to an island and live out your days in the sunshine. Disappear before we, the world's mean-spirited publications, kill you with our obsessive, smothering need to know you better.
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Tuesday, June 2, 2009
CULTURE CRIT: THE WASHINGTON POST, and SOME SHOPPERS
WELL HELLO THERE, People.
It has been a long, ridiculous road over here, trying to get my frakking website remade, but suffice to say the end is in sight, and pretty soon I will have something other than a chain of excuses for not looking less ridiculous.
In the meantime, we got links galore.
The Washington Post's Amy Argetsinger was kind enough to quote me in her column, the Reliable Source about Susan Boyle's meltdown....and if you want to know what I said, well....you'll have to read the article.
ALSO, there has been a rash of recent Critical Shoppers in the New York Times, most notably the extremely expensive and casual ZADIG & VOLTAIRE, and the expensively snotty DEREK LAM.
Apart from that I have been slugging away with my little meat-axe creating a new book proposal, and plotting other big, outdated ways to avoid figuring out how to maximize my Twitter potential.
And how are you?
Love, Cintra
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Wednesday, April 22, 2009
TODAY'S CRITICAL SHOPPER: ROLLING KATE MOSS GAINS NO STONES
CRITICAL SHOPPER | TOPSHOP
Past the Bouncers: What a Feeling
By CINTRA WILSON
IT has been everywhere: Ads on subway walls, made to look as if spontaneously painted by vandals. Ads on plywood walls, like posters for rock concerts. On the front page of my newspaper. News of the Topshop opening has been as unavoidable as an untimely death in Hollywood: you don't seek this information, it finds you.
I tried to go last weekend, but the disco line outside, maintained by bouncer-esque security heavies and parade fencing, was reportedly 45 minutes long -- and it was raining.
When I went back midweek, the line was barely shorter, and it was still raining. Your Critical Shopper whispered in the bouncer's ear, shamefully pulled rank and swanned in past the paying customers, feeling like a cruel and dirty Bianca Jagger. Alas, despite Topshop's egalitarian -- even Third Way social democracy ethos (high-concept design, made widely affordable!) -- caste inequities are already entrenched; I left many a fuming leg warmer and flat slouch-boot in my wake.
Topshop is new only to the United States. It has been lurking in England since 1964, periodically reinventing itself. It was so unfashionable in the 1990s as to be a punch line on par with the Cosby sweater. Now, of course, it is the biggest revelation to hit the fashion world since the yo-yo.
Behold: the "shopping as disco multiplex" experience. The décor is all high-ceiling flash-trash glitz and Anglocentrism. Fake flowers hang down from the ceiling; a voyeuristic mezzanine area is visible from the first floor; exhibitionists can emerge from their dressing rooms and test-preen new items before all.
I found it ironic that the thumping soundtrack, when I walked in, was "Natural's Not in It," by Gang of Four:
The problem of leisure/What to do for pleasure/Ideal love a new
purchase
A market of the senses/Dream of the perfect life/Economic circum-
stances?
The body is good business/Sell out, maintain the interest
This set the tone: At Topshop, it is 1983 all over again, with all the shiny spandex leggings, big cheap bangles and Day-Glo Wayfarers this implies.
T-shirts are oversize and knotted into "Flashdance" shapes. One offered ersatz experience: NYC BACK STAGE 1992, in faded lettering (made in Turkey, $32). Another claimed, in a scrawled-by-teen-werewolf font, to be OUT OF CONTROL ($28).
Price tags fluctuate from lowish to highish on the three floors devoted to women's wear, but it's basically the '80s on every floor. The looks seem gleaned from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" or "Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo," apart from selections so imprinted by early Madonna videos (white lace leggings, $44) that I diagnosed them with "Borderline" personality disorder. Everything looks so sarcastic and right-this-second trendy as to be planning for a near-immediate obsolescence. Despite my willingness to wait in the endless fitting-room line, I was unable to find one thing I really wanted to try on; I happen to know from experience that 1983 is unlikely to last forever.
But I was an anomaly. A young woman who had just tried six garments said she loved them all: "Everything fits amazingly true to size!" she gushed. Topshop has believers.
There are hideous floral prints that need only to be covered with cat hair to be the bedspread of your maiden aunt on Martha's Vineyard. I'm not talking about the Liberty prints, which have a frowzy potato-sack charm that even the daemon Kate Moss can't corrupt (Liberty smock-top, made in China, $50). We're talking tea-cozy floral: big, dopey, mauve-rose upholstery prints, lousy with the wrong kinds of butterfat and estrogen -- evoking for me, when applied to a grubby little urchin of a blouson dress, a visceral horror that could be equaled only by a Jersey cow print.
But girls who revere Topshop probably have no scarring life experiences that prejudice them against such florals. They must learn for themselves.
The problem with fashion going Back to the Future of 1983 is that for some reason, the recrudescence of trends from any year tends to embrace the unhip and the clownish. It's not what the cool people wore in 1983, but the Urkels, the Screeches, the Tiffanys, the hapless wannabes. These are cuts, prints and colors that I never liked on anyone, ever, for the simple reason that they look goofy, infantile and unflattering.
Acid-washed jeans with pleats? Only the most risible feebs wore those in 1983.
"Did you feel like Kate Moss was having a laugh at your expense?" I later asked Cornell Bar, the receptionist at my hair salon.
"Totally," said he.
Mr. Bar did, however, like Topman, the men's section, which I found to be unisexual almost unto cross-dressing. It was all very Wham! UK: Day-Glo rosaries and wrist cuffs, little Keds-style canvas shoes, à la Doris Day. A double-breasted jacket in fuchsia buffalo-plaid ($160) would not be worn by any of the men in my life, even at gunpoint. Indeed, a Pepto-Bismol pink Jackie O. duster jacket was something I could imagine only Justin Bond or Quentin Crisp wearing with any real success.
Topshop does unequivocally triumph in one area: villainous women's shoe designs. One cannot accuse it of not stealing from the best: strappy, ankle-busting platforms in all manner of beast prints were seized in spirit right from the runways of YSL and Louis Vuitton -- but costing, for waifs of slender means who must have the look, around $1,000 less.
While inarguably fetching, I did not think the shoes trustworthy. The one advantage to overpaying for shoes, I find, is that the good ones don't make your feet look like Mel Gibson crucified them.
Topshop is sure to become a browsing destination for at least one item it has in abundance: adorable, coltish young girls in skinny jeans and ankle boots. Lotharios can already be found loitering on the third floor, asking silly questions. If I were a feckless tween, by golly, I would shop my tiny brains out at Topshop.
But for severe little me, Gang of Four nailed it best:
This heaven gives me migraine/This heaven gives me migraine/This heaven gives me migraine
TOPSHOP
478 Broadway (near Broome Street); (212) 966-9455.
HODGEPODGE The megabrand Topshop aims to pull the rug out from under the luxury market by making Leger-like bandage skirts, bowler hats, pretarnished sequin gowns and other Bananarama-era hits available to a wider margin of wallets.
HOBNOB Retro-clubby, polysexual, barely legal and as spazzy as a three-day Skittles binge, the clientele is a veritable lookbook of such deathless new combos as the "frohawk and Goyard man-purse" look.
POTSHOT Those who lived through the hair-metal years the first time around will despair to see fringed pleather handbags, leggings printed to resemble acid-washed denim, and sarcastic, slut-muppet lingerie. Paris may still be burning, but Los Angeles was never no lady. Sunset Stripper apparel should go back to England where it belongs. Retirement was good enough for Whitesnake.
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Sunday, February 22, 2009
YES, WE HAVE NO OSCAR MELTDOWN
WELL, it's a sorry state of affairs, my Dear Fiends.
Salon.com, never all that financially stable to begin with, has finally slashed its A&E budget straight to the cutting-room floor. They will have an Oscar re-cap, but it will be written by someone on the staff, ending my annual tradition of a post-Oscar all-nighter that has endured, more or less, for over a decade.
Those of you outraged by the indecency of this have my blessing to complain to the editor, Joy Press.
On a brighter note, I was pleased to win Opium Magazine's Literary Death Match earlier this week, during which Opium Magazine's Todd Zuniga Twittered:
There is also a somewhat blurry but evocative picture.
(Actually, Todd, it was a switchblade... and I was only too glad not to have to use it on the beautiful and talented Andrew Sean Greer.)
I also wrote a nice article for the Times about Brooks Brothers Black Fleece, the line designed by the inspirationally uptight Thom Browne.
So all is not a total loss, even if I didn't get to wax rhapsodic about the long-anticipated comeback of the immortal Mickey Rourke I predicted several years ago in this article, below (which once appeared in an online magazine which shall be nameless).
Hollywood may rest easy tonight, knowing I've been unfairly crowbarred in the knees... but I shall return.
Cintra
MICKEY ROURKE - EXISTENTIAL FONZIE PUNCHES THE MIRROR
Phillip Andre Rourke, Jr. was born on September 16 in 1950, but some reports claim it was 1956. He was a tough kid from Schenectady: a boxer who studied acting at the Lee Strasberg school, then went back to boxing, and is presently trying to get back into acting. At his peak, women loved him because he was better than anybody at smirking in a way that looked like his hard-on gave him terrible emotional pain. Rourke's career is notable for the heady price he paid for his eccentricities, the most expensive of which being that his credibility as an actor was labeled with a scarlet question mark. But this, by and large, is a bad rap.
Good dramatic actors, who need to access a vast color-wheel of emotion, are often intolerably volatile, hypersensitive nut-jobs in real life. To inhabit characters of dubious artistic value, it is also helpful if they aren't terribly smart. Rourke appears to have both of these drawbacks going for him; it is an equation that spells temporary magic onscreen and usually results in terrible suffering offscreen . The very same explosive emotionality which attracts Hollywood executives at the beginning of an actor's career are the seeds of the actor's own demise when he is inevitably labeled "difficult" by the unsympathetic corporate drones who run the movie business. Personal histrionics, a "difficult" reputation and a bad habit of ridiculously sleazy script choices have overwhelmed Rourke's public image to the point that nobody thinks of him as a serious actor with a wide dramatic range. Although many of his 43 movies are disposable, a look at the defining films of his career with an objective X-Ray eye reveals that his acting is a lot better than he got credit for.
Rourke broke through in 1981, Brad-Pitt-In-Thelma-And-Louise-esquely, as an arsonist in the sweaty erotic thriller Body Heat. His tough-guy posturing and glowering, pretty-boy menace made the Hollywood Beast think he might come in handy for a while.
Rourke hit his early Rourkish stride in 1982's Diner as "Boogie," the inveterate gambler-cum-playboy hairdresser. He doesn't fit in with the overall flavor of the film; all of the other actors are on a chatty 78 RPM and Rourke is on a self-consciously heavy 33. He seems to need to be too cool for the movie. As a result, he looks isolated, coming off like the one actor that wasn't dining with the other actors and demanded to eat in his own trailer. But he does have a certain gravity.
His pouty lower lip is used to great effect. There is an almost androgynous appeal to him here; he is wearing more eyeliner than Ellen Barkin. Female audiences went ape for him as a slimy, effeminate cockmaster, and so did the National Society of Film Critics, who gave him a trophy for the role.
When my friend and I were teens in 1983, we saw Rumble Fish. We had never seen a male movie star the compellingly enigmatic sexual equivalent of Mickey Rourke as "The Motorcycle Boy." We were angsty and thought we were sophisticated -- the commercial constructs of teen lust didn't work on us; we were immune to Matt Dillon. But Mickey Rourke pressed all the right teen heartache buttons - not the actor so much as the role: a soft spoken, self-loathing peer leader , poetically depressed, colorblind, half-deaf; a torturously sober and intellectual hipster, doomed to an ignominious small-town fate. Francis Ford Coppola was in his S.E. Hinton phase and nicely inspired; Rumble Fish is an art film for teenagers, and it works. Time-lapse photography skitters black and white clouds fast across the sky to vamping snare-drums, to suggest the overabundance of time in youth quickly becoming the lack of time in old age. The sad smile on Rourke's elvish, acne-scarred face reveals that the Motorcycle Boy, with his greasy hair and unfiltered cigarette, intimately knew the secrets of Man's Frailty, and it confined him to the hell of infinite pity. "That's a deep motherfucker, man," says the old black guy in the pool hall, of The Motorcycle Boy, (as we angry beatnik girls liquefied in the audience). "He's like... royalty in exile."
The role, now, is exemplary of the best use of the damaged charm of Mickey Rourke: Existential Fonzie. Sensitive, empathetic and sorrowful, with a junkie's whisper-soft voice during even the worst emotional violence.
Rourke's next big role, in The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), is more of his tough cookie, sexy criminal schtick. The oily pompadour that is his hair in virtually every movie reaches its most outrageous elevation here.
Daryl Hannah is his dimwit aerobic instructor girlfriend whose role primarily consists of pulling her pants on and off. This film marks the beginning of a standard Rourke movie theme: a basic dislike for women, or at least the stupid female roles that always seem to disgrace his scripts. He has all the power: Daryl slaps him, he smiles that Fuck You smile, flips up the collar of his leather blazer, and walks away. She bleats "Charlie!" in her midriff leotard, he keeps walking. It seems that this role inspired Hollywood to cast Rourke whenever they needed a guy to casually and cruelly dominate whimpering, undressed females.
If any one sin could be said to be responsible for the downfall of Mickey Rourke, that sin would probably be Vanity. While managing, to his credit, not to fall into the single-character, one-dimensional tough-guy glue-trap that macho actors like DeNiro or Nicholson sunk into, Rourke suffered from a different kind of hubris: though essentially an emotionally fearless actor with commendable flair for vulnerability, naked despair and believable accents, he continually chose characters who were either fucking or fighting.
Rourke's credibility was most harmed, it seems, by his slide into mainstream softcore.
9 1/2 Weeks (1986), Rourke's recognized star-turn, features him as "John," a smirking Wall Street sadist.
He feeds Kim Basinger like a baby, he buys her toys and balloons and does cruel and nasty sex to her. The movie is grotesque; Basinger's character is shriekingly infantile, down to pigeon toes and white ankle socks, and absurdly obedient; Rourke is just creepy, and the role seems to tap into a dangerous reservoir of abject misanthropy and scumminess in the actor. It's not all his fault; Basinger comes off as so shrill, moronic and embarrassing, at a certain point you are rooting for Mickey to hit her with a belt (Basinger is said to have referred to her co-star, for unspecified reasons, as "the human ashtray.").
Rourke comes off as ugly and jaded in 91/2 Weeks in a way that suggests a deeper level of psychic disease than his character alone is responsible for. Perhaps he resented being the vehicle which brought S&M home to the office girls of America. Who could blame him.
1987 was, for kabalistic Hollywood reasons, the Year of the Rourke, with 3 of his better movies coming out one atop the other.
Angel Heart (1987) offered Rourke a meaty role and a healthy return to being 'actorly' - but his respectable performance was buried beneath the public's tittering shock at his willingness to enact "controversial," "X-rated" pumping-buttock sex shots with a thrashing Lisa Bonet.
Rourke pulls off an entirely believable Brooklyn accent, and has a very legitimate moment of bottomless despair as the Faustian plot is revealed. Angel Heart is a good example, among many, of Rourke's ability to pull off emotionally gymnastic roles; he never shrank from painful and weepy territory that fellow Tough but Pretty actors like Steve McQueen deliberately avoided. Sensationalism and soft porn robbed him, here, of what might have been real kudos for his skill.
Rourke is most universally beloved for his portrayal of Charles Bukowski's alter ego Henry Chinaski in Barfly. While a bit over-the-top, the role is funky, ugly and lovable in a way his other characters were not. Audiences must have breathed a collective sigh of relief to finally see Rourke in a role that wasn't consumed by self-loathing.
Barfly contains the closest Rourke comes, in his entire career, to is a moment of unqualified happiness, during the oft-quoted victory toast: "To my friends!"
Bukowski wrote about Rourke, giving him the name Jack Bledsoe in his roman-a-clef "Hollywood," a book about the making of Barfly. Bukowski liked Rourke, and was fairly dazzled by him. There is a good scene wherein Bledsoe (Rourke) has brought his obnoxiously fabulous Hollywood Harley Davidson crew to the set, and is introducing them to Bukowski:
"His buddies leaned against the bar, backs to the bar, facing the crowd. They each held a beer bottle, except for Jack who had a 7-Up. They were dressed in leather jackets, scarves, leather pants, boots....
Jack introduced us to each of his buddies.
'This is Blackjack Harry...'
'Hi, man...'
'This is The Scourge...'
'Hello there...'
'This is the Nightworm...'
'Hey, hey!'
'This is Dogcatcher...'
'Too much!'
'This is 3-Ball Eddie...'
'God damn...'
'This is FastFart...'
'Pleased to meet ya...'
'And Pussykiller...'
'Yeah...'
And that was it. They all seemed to be fine fellows but they looked a little on-stage..."
Starring in Prayer for the Dying (1987) gave Rourke a lifelong affection for the IRA - he bears a tattoo of their emblem.
Homeboy, 1988, which Rourke helped write, lands the actor close to himself; he plays dumb-ass, luckless boxer "Johnny Walker," a punchy, feral, kicked junkyard dog. One gets the feeling that this is a character Rourke really identifies with; turbulent, violent and rebellious in an ill-advisedly Quixotic way. He utilizes a Bill Murray, dislocated Caddyshack jaw, and a totally acceptable Southern accent. The scene with the most unctuous music involves Johnny Walker having an argument, and jumping out of a car on a bridge. He tries to beat up the car; he rails, he threatens traffic, and ends up walking drunk in driving rain in the middle of a busy road. One feels these raging moments of worthless self-sabotage are familiar Rourke territory. His co-star, flat-faced Deborah Feuer, became his wife for a little while - their chemistry seems lopsided and doomed, even onscreen.
Johnny Handsome, 1989 while a dumb movie, probably features Rourke's most moving performance. During a scene when the doctors take his bandages off, the man who was formerly a hydrocephalic monster with massive cranio-facial deformities is suddenly revealed in a post-surgery miracle as having Mickey Rourke's face. He cries with joy and gratitude. It is particularly moving when you consider that in Rourke's real life, shortly thereafter, he started out as a man with a beautiful face and ended up undergoing numerous surgeries and voluntary beatings to become unusually scary-looking. One imagines what he felt when his real bandages came off, after having lived this moment on film.
Francesco, 1989, wherein Rourke is cast in the unlikely role of St. Francis of Assisi, is notable only for a scene where the saint is rolling around naked in snow and his tattoo is visible.
Wild Orchid (1990 ) is a miserably stupid and sleazy wank film with the dubious distinction of being the place where the lives of Rourke and model Carré Otis collided head-on, like a big motorcycle accident.
Here, Rourke's outsides began to match his tumultuous insides.
His face-lift looks too fresh - he's having trouble moving his mouth, and his forehead, so expressive in Diner and Rumblefish, is way too smooth, motionless and shiny, like a balloon dipped in Clinique bronzer. He can't smirk anymore. His eyes seem pinched; his crow's feet are disturbingly gone. His eyebrows are too light, and they don't move. Eye jobs, for the first year at least, make the recipient's eyes appear smaller; they lose any roundness below during the surgical elimination of under-eye-bags. Rourke's black eyes lost their ability to transmit emotion.
The movie is wretched in that it isn't even viable as smut; there's way too much abysmally stupid "dialogue" and "plot." It boasts perhaps the worst script ever, not helped by the fact that Otis delivers lines like a one-armed UPS guy delivers aquarium tanks. The entire movie is one long wait for the smutty finish.
There is a whole lot of panting-foley, particularly during the "controversial" final scene wherein Rourke's box-browned abdominal muscles gnash and dilate while grinding into Otis' pornographically rectangular strip of pubic hair.
The legend that was "leaked" from the "set" was that the two "actors" couldn't "control themselves" during this big sex scene, and despite presence of the entire camera crew had "actual penetration." Yeh right.
What did happen was that Rourke and Otis ended up together, sharing, by all reports, a bloody kind of soul connection. "We were both really wounded kids," a now sober and "deliberately celibate" Otis recently explained to Christopher Goodwin of the London Times.
This is the period of time where Rourke stopped having anything effeminate about him at all. One wonders if the inevitable rumors that he was gay triggered some kind of barbaric, street-kid homophobia that made him kill off the sexily feminine, feline aspects of his persona.
Otis, around this time, was a Calvin Klein model, when the designer was going through his 'biker' phase; arguably inspired by the heavy Harley Davidson fetishizing-scene that was happening in Hollywood at the time, spearheaded by Rourke and Otis. I was unable to find any information on Rourke's artistic photography hobby, which flourished during this time, which primarily featured nude, black-and-white shots of Otis covered in motor oil.
In 1991, in addition to making the appalling (and double-appallingly popular) Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, the film where Rourke's abysmal tough-guy hubris came to roost and killed all of his artistic credibility, Rourke quit acting, which he derided for being "a womanly profession," and started boxing professionally again. Whatever his loutish comments, a closer investigation suggests that he was deeply hurt by the fact that Hollywood was not a meritocracy, and that the system, media and machine alike, never recognized that he really was a good actor.
Though he won several fights, he suffered a broken cheekbone, two broken ribs, a broken toe, four broken knuckles, and a split tongue and a mashed nose. By the time he stopped boxing in 1995, he was broke, and his Beverley Hills home was repossessed for failure to make payments. He had to go back to the movies.
Rourke and Otis were deeply in love, but really, really bad for each other. They married in 1992 and divorced in 1994, but reconciled shortly thereafter. He stalked her. There was a well-publicized incident of Otis being beaten black and blue that resulted in Rourke's arrest in 1994; previous to that there was an "accidental shooting" wherein Otis took a bullet while hanging around a film set with Rourke in Arizona. Otis now claims she was strung out on heroin a good deal of that time in response to Mickey's numerous infidelities. She is now a sober, rehabilitated Buddhist and in-demand plus-size model.
Rourke has spent a good deal of time over the years groveling to get her back.
I used to see them at Gold's Gym in Hollywood a few times a week, in '95; it was the general consensus that they looked like they'd been living on nothing but Ho Ho's and bourbon for the last 18 months, and in Mickey's case, steroids. Rourke became enraged at "China Beach" star Jeff Kober for speaking to Otis during this time, and gave him a black eye in front of the gym.
In 1997, Rourke was reduced to making Another 9 1/2 Weeks, wherein 'John', the same sadist, is looking for kicks, but rubbing blondes' nipples with a straightrazor just doesn't do it for him anymore.
His face is ruined. His upper lip is freakishly swollen, his nose puffy and flat, and one cheekbone protrudes like a purple walnut from a combination of boxing and ill-advised surgeries. Like a bad portrait tattoo of himself, Rourke, at this point, is only recognizable when you squint. His voice has a strangely alcoholic, gasping lilt to it, like Jan Michael Vincent's or Harry Dean Stanton's. The producers would have been wise to replace Rourke: he has no chi left. Angie Everhardt drags him around the screen like an arthritic dog. The worthless, if artsily-shot film is a horrifying document of how Rourke's inner demons defaced him. The French, apparently, had no problem with this devolved version of Rourke, and loved him more than ever at this point.
I saw him once in the Harry Cipriani restaurant at the Sherry Netherland in NYC in 1997. He looked like his head had been sculpted out of wet cat food. He was huge and red, his face looked minced and swollen; his hair had been aggressively re-blonded, and he resembled no one so much as the apocalyptic cartoon character RanXerox; almost wholly unrecognizable.
One wonders if Rourke might have been happier if he could have stomached more bad, cartoonish, Hollywood Stallone roles like Rambo, or Russell Crowe-type roles that called for more acting, fewer fisticuffs and less sexual boasting. His magazine portraits now, puckering in thuggy gymwear and stocking cap, suggest that he has become, in real life, a character much less complex and interesting than most of those he played onscreen. He consciously and aggressively gives off the impression that he is a dumbass tough-guy; this seems to underline that he is insecure and haplessly needy. The tougher a guy looks and act, as a general rule, the more frightened he is by life's searing personal confrontations.
The gym muscles, cosmetic surgeries and box-tanning that have become Rourke's armor only suggest how thin his skin really is. This is a man crucified by an emotional volume knob that is always on 11, who, I reckon, has done more than his share of crying. Ultimately, all the available information on Rourke paints a sad picture of an incurable pussy hound who stuck his pretty face in front of fists and butchers until it wasn't pretty anymore, who fucked up the biggest love of his life by having no self control, and screwed up his career by being unable to exact a mature compromise with the contemptible Hollywood status quo.
But for an actor superficially labeled with an idiotic "Bad Boy" image, he didn't spare himself by coasting by on a ridiculous image. His heart was full of bloody holes that he generously shared with audiences, much like a cat brings headless chipmunks to the door as an act of love. He worked hard, and turned out some pearls that the swine never picked up on.
I read one report of Rourke staggering down the street in LA with several Chihuahuas, talking to himself. He got kicked out of a coffee shop for bringing his little dogs in, and without argument, went staggering off, mumbling , unable to ungrip his little dog friends long enough to buy himself coffee. Men with torrential feelings invariably become lonely monsters. One can only hope that now that nobody wants to see Mickey Rourke's vigorously clenching white ass in flagrante anymore, Hollywood can begin to appreciate and nurture his genuinely interesting and flexible talent for a certain flavor of desperate truth.
(For more information on Mickey Rourke, I recommend an excellent article: "Call of the Mild" by Jessica Berens, available on the "Simply Mickey Rourke" website)
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Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The Child Within - Yikes
In the coming era of renewed hope, a green future, a return to simpler pleasures, and the New Age, one may be recommended to reconnect with "the child within." The child within does not need money, status symbols, or getting loaded. Social interactions are plain and straightforward. The child within likes things natural. The child within is rainbows and waterfalls, cabbages and kings.
Except that sometimes, the terrain of the child within is a freakin' scary place. I'm not even talking about diabolical spring of parent-induced trauma.
For example, remember the routines you had to put yourself through to mentally maintain some kind of control of your surroundings, which you were usually helpless to understand? Habits that would cause a diagnosis of serious obsessive-compulsive disorder in an adult? Not only were there times when you could absolutely not step on any cracks in the sidewalk, but you would have to repeat certain movements or thoughts a prescribed number of times in order to save your mother from dying, or to prevent something equally terrifying from happening. How about the lunacy of verbally repeating or reading words over and over until they appear to be utter nonsense? That one could be kind of fun, until the terrifying realization that nothing is as it appears to be settles in. How about the one where you lie in bed at night imagining infinity? You lay there in the dark, thinking about the universe, and try to get your head around the meaning of never-ending. The existential angst that this produces may not be a desirable re-visitation.
The primal rage of the child within is especially frightening in its lack of control or understanding of its origins. I remember having tantrums in which the blood-boiling anger verged on the homicidal. During one tantrum, I threw the contents of my room into a great pile in the middle of the floor, with visions of torching it all. How does a small child even have these impulses? Does anyone really want to re-visit this violence and fear that is an innate aspect of the child within?
Certain children's entertainment programming induced a kind of primal fear, a cloying existential creepiness that was downright terrifying, and lingers to corrupt the existing child within. Bruno Bettelheim as well as other child psychologists have made careers out of delving into the notion of how children's entertainment, in his case fairy tales, purposely tap into the creeping fear of children so that they can be trained and controlled.
Certainly this was true of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. An adult for more decades than I can believe, I still have nightmares about the repellent Child Catcher. I experienced this same kind of terror once watching one of my favorite after-school programs, Speed Racer. A usually benign show, during this particular episode I succumbed to unstrung shrieking, and ran to my dad in the living room, who was perplexed that a tough kid could be so scared watching something so banal. But he didn't see it. The sequence had to do with someone you love turning on you and becoming evil. It is a frightening archetype of what one actually has to deal with if one has intimate relationships with drunks, drug addicts, or the mentally unstable. Thanks to the wonder of YouTube, I have found this clip of Speed Racer, and I have to say, the creeping horror still spooks me and my child within:
My husband, a childhood Dr. Who fanatic, describes feeling the creeping existential horror he felt fairly frequently upon viewing his favorite program. This was a show that, though frequently frightening to even adults, was broadcast at 5:30pm on Saturdays, a children's timeslot.
He was also freaked by a certain episode of Space: 1999. Upon viewing it, the child within me indeed recoils:
Me and my child within have regressed into a quivering fetal position under the bed, hiding from the bogeyman in the closet.
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Friday, January 9, 2009
A CONCERNED MESSAGE TO JOHN ZIEGLER
Dear Mr. Ziegler:
Congratulations on your new film, which posits Sarah Palin as the victim of an organized smear campaign by the liberal media (when in fact she was attacked on the basis of being an unqualified and inarticulate pinup-girl representing a hyper-conservative Christian fringe-contingent bent on antidisestablishmentarian social-engineering, and because, for progressive, sophisticated women, she represents a hypocritical and repressive cultural atavism nearly as frightening as the idea of life under the Taliban).
HIS MOTHER FAILED TO TEACH PROPER ETIQUETTE
But you're an attractive and principled man, so I feel compelled to give you a media tip.
Shouting over your TV interviewer, sneering insults and being generally sarcastic, uncivil, venomous, bellicose, hyper-defensive, obnoxiously loud and personally dismissive toward the host interviewing you -- in lieu of having actual, intelligent answers or properly thought-out argument points -- is not an ideal strategy for promoting your ideas.
Barking, tooth-baring snarls and chest-beating may make you look like a virile "Alpha" to the straggling dregs of your depleted and elderly neocon tribe -- but, in the context of a civilized TV news show, it makes the elite demographic group who are not in jail and who have completed schooling up to or beyond the third grade regard you with the same visceral horror and dismay you might arouse if you drew a swastika on your forehead in your own fecal matter.
Not a great look, John.
Sorry.
Hugs,
Cintra
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Monday, January 5, 2009
HAPPY NEW YEAR AND PRESIDENT AND STUFF
HULLO PEOPLE.
So, here's the deal - I realize that the Dregulator and Dregublog have seemed somewhat unloved lately. Nothing could be further from the truth, I am just experiencing the usual delays in the construction of a BRAND SPANKING NEW cintrawilson.com. It's in the works.
Other than that, there's been plenty of stuff happening and I am going to link the living bejeezus out of everything.
Firstly, there have been truckloads of New York Times Critical Shopper Pieces, for beloved stores like MAC in San Francisco , the charmingly and paradigm-shiftingly funky No. 6, the East Village's own witchcraft superstore Enchantments, the sublime Oscar de La Renta, and there's probably others but I can't remember.
I also had an article in the December issue of Oprah Magazine in which the exquisite designer Gary Graham, the artist Charles Beyer and myself all went to Flatbush to go discount Christmas shopping for Mme. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Brad Pitt and Beyoncé. That was pretty cool, actually. I am stoked that Oprah Magazine printed it.
In any case, I'm not ignoring this website, I'm IMPROVING IT. I realize that sounds about as convincing as Joan Crawford saying, "I'm not mad at YOU, I'm mad at the DIRT," but....damn, it's TRUE, yo.
Love,
Cintra
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Sunday, January 4, 2009
American Artist and Arts Organizations Circa 2009: Get Over It and Adopt a New Paradigm
If you're anything like myself and millions of other Americans, 2009 heralds a new era of hope. With the inauguration of Barack Obama on January 20, great change for this country and the rest of the world seems possible, even imminent. This feeling has a special quality for American artists, who have become less visible and more downtrodden since the Bush administrations decided that art and culture were dangerous critical forces that should disappear.
Despite the pabulum being fed to us by museums, music, motion pictures, and the publishing industry, American art and culture has not completely disappeared, it has only been mortally wounded. And though the new political administration may offer hope on many fronts, culture will continue to take a back seat to the major issues of war and economic depression.
Artists, please do not sit around bemoaning that the National Endowment of the Arts, state councils on the arts, and other civic funding streams have all but disappeared. Reliance on public or corporate funding is going to be a lost cause for a long time to come, and there is no forgoing a day job. Trickle down capitalism, an interesting theory, never worked very well in a society steeped in greed. It is up to the artists and arts organizations themselves to adopt new paradigms if culture is going to continue to exist.
Making art your business is the only way to survive in this cultural climate. Yet many artists still feel that it is unfair to have to look outside of their artistic processes in order to produce work; art is inherently valuable on its own, and should not have to function on some kind of business model. A valid idea, but unfortunately outmoded in our present day reality. Do not be fooled into believing the notion that artists cannot be business-minded. Entrepreneurship is an endeavor that relies on creativity. Look around you and see if there are any partnerships to be formed that would promote your art. If you are a musician, choreographer, performance, or visual artist, how could you partner with your place of employment or local businesses? Bars, restaurants, community centers, and the like will sometimes sponsor art projects, even if only for commission and exposure. Are there for-profit venues, like clubs or cabarets, where you could perform? If you are a theatre artist or a writer, how could you teach a class or sponsor a workshop? What are the possibilities through your local public libraries, block associations, business improvement districts? Find other artists to collaborate with, either inside or outside of your discipline. Of course, a presence on the internet is essential. There are so many new ideas to try.
An entrepreneurial approach applies as much, if not more, to nonprofit arts organizations. These organizations have tended to operate in a meandering, catch-as-catch-can fashion. Waiting for the next big grant check to arrive is no longer a valid way to run a business. Organization, goal orientation, and outcomes must be the new way to function. Again, this approach is not something outside of an artist-run purview. If you regard it as "corporate" and below your creative energy, you will fail, if you haven't already. Like the individual artist, what are some of the ways that your organization can tap into new funding streams? One obvious way is to fashion your organization to fill gaps where education has failed. Better education is as sorely needed in this country as an infusion of culture. What are some of the educational institutions in your community where the arts have been eliminated from the curriculums? This won't be hard to identify, as this problem is endemic. Are there other ways that you could teach your particular area of artistic discipline? And though you may loathe corporate or business culture, find a way to partner with these enterprises, even if it is through in-kind services rather than through grants. You will be the first on the grant roster when philanthropy resumes. Create a staff and board that are lean and mean. Pay good employees a living wage for their work; they won't be difficult to find in this era of rampant unemployment, and the investment in your organization will be much greater than hiring underqualified staff for a pittance. Use your creativity to consistently find new ways that your organization can survive.
Clearly, one of the most essential things the arts community must do right now is to form networks and alliances. In numbers there is safety, validation, support. Organize meetings and salons where the cultural populace can socialize, brainstorm, and share work and strategies. This is one way in which people like Cintra and I have been fomenting an American cultural revolution. The old attitude of covetousness and exclusivity amongst artists no longer works.
Being an artist is a great gift, as it is a powerful means of communication. Art is also innately rooted in critique and confrontation. In a civilized society, culture informs government; government does not inform and control culture. We cannot give up.
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Sunday, December 21, 2008
The Failure of "Kids Lib"
Around the age of eight, I got sick of being an indentured servant and decided to go political. With the rights movements of other disenfranchised groups surrounding me, I reckoned that kids needed one too. I called my movement Kids Lib.
Myself and the other children in my family were raised in a work camp environment. The adults dictated a seemingly constant labor by the progeny. There were never ending dishes to wash, bathrooms to clean, weeds to pull, dirt to shovel, dog poop to pick up. I spent Saturdays cleaning house with my mother, a cleanliness nazi. My friends stopped asking if I could play. So the undemocratic situation of never having a vote in family affairs bothered me. When I asked for one, I was told that children existed to help their families, to mind adults, and to work hard in school; and when I was an adult, the reward for my kindertoil would be to impose the same noblesse oblige over my own offspring. But with my grandmother being a women's libber and my mother a lesbian feminist, I already possessed an awareness that my lesser statuses of age and sex were based on uncontrollable factors of biology, and were inherently unfair.
Hence, Kids Lib. It started with a series of scrapbooks where I created an alternative reality for women and children using reconfigured cutouts from magazines. A running satiric commentary on chauvinism would appear below each collage, narrated by a buffoonish character I called Guy Machopig. I shared these with my friends, hoping to elicit a response to the inequity that shackled us. I was mainly met with blank stares, and "Do you want to play Barbies now?" Where was their consciousness? I decided I needed stronger tactics: takin' it to the streets. I devised a homemade pamphlet with crayons and construction paper attempting a call to action. Kids Lib appeared boldly on the front page, and inside the poorly stapled pages were slogans like "Act now against adult chauvinist pigs," and "Oppose ageism." I canvassed the homes of the neighborhood children, making what I thought was a persuasive arrival on the "Chariot of the Dogs," a vehicle which involved standing on my skateboard and lashing my jump rope to my dog, who would pull me around, and named after my favorite movie, Chariots of the Gods. I advertised upcoming Kids Lib meetings to take place in my clubhouse, a sort of bivouac made of rotting boards propped up in some weeds in the vacant lot across the street from my apartment building. Again, blank stares. These people were obviously not ready for the radical action I was suggesting, one that would free us from these lives of age-imposed slavery. I waited in my clubhouse for the Kids Lib meetings to commence, alone.
Why wasn't everyone outraged, as I was, by the lack of a voice? With my childish reasoning abilities, I was forced to examine the failure of Kids Lib. Maybe they just weren't governed by a life of drudgery; most seemed to have chores that fit their juvenile status, or had a full-time mom who would do the housework. Or was it because I was a weirdo with a dyke mom whose clothes came from Salvation Army? Or are people with the privileges of ruling race and economic status desensitized from the struggles of others, a docile complacency that sets in early on?
Would Kids Lib work in America today?
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Saturday, December 6, 2008
The Pilgrims Progress - The Movie
As an expression of the co-opting of religion by rampant consumerism, the onslaught of holiday movies is one of the most annoying. As you prepare yourself for the possibility of sitting through a screening of Four Christmases or Nothing Like the Holidays as a desperate attempt to avoid communication with estranged family members, you might wonder what whimsical adventure blockbusters are being pandered that would offer a higher quality of distraction. The Day the Earth Stood Still? Yet another effort at creating an "us" and "them" mentality that American movies are so dead set at pushing on us in the Bush era: be afraid, be very afraid, of Others. So pre-November 4! Delgo? The synopsis of this film describes it as "a fantasy adventure set in a magical world divided by fear." Again? For the next Christmas season, I suggest that an adaptation be released that is full of Hollywood blockbuster favorites: - monsters, physical travails, pathos, and redemption, as well as unconcealed Christian doctrine - The Pilgrims Progress: The Movie.
The Pilgrims Progress was written by John Bunyan in the seventeenth century during the reign of Charles II while Bunyan was in prison for preaching Christian doctrine outside of the state-supported Church of England. The reputation that precedes The Pilgrims Progress may be one of boring catechism. In actuality, it is a floridly imagined adventure on par with The Lord of the Rings, and as rife for cinema. Many of the pilgrims of Bunyan's ilk fled to the New World to escape persecution. And religious freedom is an ideal greatly beloved by Hollywood and America. That is, unless you're Muslim.
The Pilgrims Progress is a hero's journey, an archetype employed in nearly every American action film. Good news, as if there's anything that Hollywood loves, it's repetition. The story follows Christian, an Everyman, as he travels from his humble home in order to find the Celestial City, i.e. heaven. Along the way, he encounters numerous stock characters, such as Faithful and Timorous, whose mere names and respective actions bludgeon one with their obviousness.
As Christian journeys, an insane amount of tests and travails occur. Like The Lord of the Rings, there is endless hiking through inclement terrains inhabited by threatening personalities, where epic battles and spiritual tests must be performed. One of the most significant sequences plays out as Christian and his fellow pilgrim Faithful arrive at the moral decrepitude that is the city of Vanity Fair, where their objections to the avarice of commerce manifested therein leads to the grisly execution of Faithful (a perfect foil for Hollywood to exemplify its self-perceived altruism). Christian escapes, only to later enter the Valley of Humiliation, where he spends hours fighting Apollyon, a scaly, winged dragon who, like most of the foes, is a stand-in for Satan. Having survived all this, does Christian get a break? No; with the relentlessness of current action cinema, he continues to endure an all more torturous journey. Christian and his latest traveling companion, Hopeful, become imprisoned in Doubting Castle by the Giant Despair; threatened by their faith, this sad and violent creature beats them and leaves them in an airless cell to starve to death; but through providence, they escape. One can almost feel the itch of the animation supervisors' fingers as they prepare to twiddle the keys of the latest CG technology to illustrate the spectacle.
The second part of The Pilgrim's Progress follows the journey of Christian's wife, "Christiana," and their children, who eventually decide to follow Christian's righteous example to find the Celestial City. Insanely lurid trials and tribulations follow, such as an encounter with a "Romish" monster with seven heads and ten horns, who "would also carry away their children, and teach them to suck its whelps"; and peering into a hole in the hill, "or that commonly called the By-way to Hell." Christiana and her children are weighed down for quite some time by their barely functioning companion, aptly named Mr. Feeblemind. As they at last set out from the Land of Beulah (vaguely akin to Rivendell), Christiana reaches redemption through her long and virtuous suffering. Dad was right all along.
Hollywood loves to show a left-wing face animated by a right-wing brain. And it presently holds a consuming passion for unflagging action sequences, demons, torture, and explosions. What could be a better holiday cash cow than The Pilgrims Progress: The Movie? Once that succeeds, we may finally be ready for The Qu'ran: The Musical.
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Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Sport, That Immutable Tool
I was confused as to why I didn't enjoy school sports more. Didn't the coaches tell us that we were there to learn physical skills while we built teamwork? I guess I just didn't feel comfortable with them bellowing at me and calling me names while I tried to be a team player. And why did physical education inevitably involve extensive personal insults? I wasn't sure. Despite my athletic abilities, I avoided sports as much as possible throughout my schooling to avoid yet more humiliation, like most of my peers.
Sporting events and televised sports are fun, right? There's a lot of beer drinking and yelling, and people gathering at each other's homes to bust their guts with junk food and lie around on LA-Z-BOYS and couches. Some people get really drunk and do a lot of howling before they become violent or pass out. They show their neighbors that a winning team is a lot more important than a tacit agreement to respect one another's privacy. Many sports enthusiasts feel a sense of personal accomplishment when a team hired to represent their city is winning. I am told that this is called "civic pride."
Growing up in the Bay Area offered numerous opportunities to love sporting events, as there were several consistently winning teams. Primary among them was the football team known as "the 49ers." These hunks of two-million-dollar-a-year-earning man-beef seemed to win the Super Bowl practically every year. Apparently lacking a sense of civic pride, this was to my chagrin. Riots would invariably break out, making it difficult to get home, or impossible to leave. One riot in my neighborhood involved drunken men roaming the streets and molesting a number of random women, including myself. Police were on hand, not to arrest the naughty men and dissipate the crowd, but confusingly, to beat homeless people on the heads with billy clubs. Another winning night, joyful celebrants surrounded my car at a stoplight. They climbed on the fenders and hood, hitting my vehicle with sticks. Some reached in my open window, grabbing at me and screaming, while I tried desperately to roll the window up. The damage to the car was minimal, the police said, so try not to be a killjoy. The violation of my person I would just have to swallow for the sake of my city's glory.
One thing many sports enthusiasts do not often realize is that our industrial-sports complex was created to control our citizens, just as it did in ancient Rome. By providing a social distraction, while convincing everyone of its primary significance, true political and global concerns can be masked by sports. The inflated salaries of the players, our gladiators, are there to construe the bloated importance of commercial sporting enterprises. That American physical education feeds into this mentality is no surprise. Is there ever a time when a major sporting event does not receive front-page news reporting, despite whatever else may be going on in the world? War, disaster, political upheaval? An American audience is trained to believe that national and global events are just not as important as the current Yankees triumph.
This is not to say that I don't enjoy playing sports and feel that it is important to many of our social and recreational lives. I love the release of physical activity and game playing. I just feel a tad strange about watching a game that I can't physically participate in, played by grossly overpaid people that I don't know, and knowing that this was created in order to incite or control certain human behavior. It perverts what should be wholesome and healthy, the human desire to develop and maintain a good physical condition.
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Monday, October 20, 2008
CALIGULA FOR PRESIDENT: TIME FOR A TYRANT
The relentless stress of the democratic election process getting you down? Let Caligula put the bold strategic power of the covert Holy World Order right in your lower-middle-class hands. Obama vs. McCain? -- Yawn.
Either way, Caligula will still be President of the United States...and your personal savior. Let this campaign ad convince you. You'll never look at nunchakus the same way again.
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Saturday, September 27, 2008
Vote, Or Else
The United States has one of the most pathetic voter turnouts of any country in the world. This seems astonishing if one considers that this country is supposed to represent the model of freedom and modern democracy, and if one considers how easy it is to vote: you can register online, or fill out a form at the post office. Our process may not be ideal, but frequently it's all we've got in order that some kind of change in political policies may be made.
Voting is a privilege that people in many other countries do not have, and sometimes suffer and die for. Americans have dozens of reasons for why they choose not to vote. Upon examination, do some of the most common reasons hold up?
One vote isn't going to change anything.
You are one of 305 million people in the United States, a great percentage of which has the right to vote. These numbers add up quickly when people go to the polls. There have been many instances in history when one person's actions and decisions have made a significant difference. Remember that it was a difference of a mere, greatly contested 500 votes over Al Gore that made George W. Bush president.
The politicians don't represent my interests.
The candidates are all jerks, you say, who don't represent myself or my concerns. But the job of elected officials is to represent their constituents, not just their personal interests. If you voted and vocally supported your interests, by calling and emailing your elected officials, for example, wouldn't there be a better chance that they would represent you than if you sat around complaining? Great strides in policy have been made in the past fifty years in terms of traditionally marginalized people, including minorities, women, and gays. It's still far from ideal, but how is it going to get better if we don't raise our voices politically? Sometimes you have to work with the system at hand in order to change it.
I've voted before, and it never works.
One reason that voting often doesn't seem like it's working in your favor is because many governmental seats, such as those of Supreme Court judges, are appointed, not obtained by public vote. The people who appointed them, in our current history, were primarily Reagan or the Bushes. But if we start voting against the right wing cowboys and their ultraconservative spawn, we may still see a change in the future. Are we going to let the next generation pick up the pieces of apathy, like we've had to do? Is that how we want to go down in history?
I live in one of the western states, and the votes are decided by the time I can go to the polls.
Besides the Northeast, the West is the most populated region of the United States. All the states of the west coast, except Alaska, are heavily blue, and some of the red western states ride the line between red and blue. You have an additional three to six hours for your vote to change what you think has already been decided.
I don't want to do jury duty.
It's true, if you are registered to vote, you could be called to do jury duty. You think, what could be more boring and a waste of my time? Until you go to jury duty, and see what a shambles our judicial system is in, often because our citizens are not participating in civic life. You see how cops have the most influence on what is occurring judicially, because the citizens aren't there to represent the people. You see how socially skewed juries have become, and do not represent a cross section of the citizenry. If your job does not continue to pay you while you serve on a jury, you have a legitimate excuse to postpone. Otherwise, is your job so great that you'd rather be hunched over your desk than involved in a process in which it is your right and social expectation to exert some influence over the judicial system?
I don't believe in capitalism.
You may think that because you don't believe in the system of capitalism, that you will have no choice among the candidates, who all represent this ideology. It's true, the United States is a bi-partisan political system where both the Democratic and Republican parties represent different approaches to this one doctrine. It irks me to no end that we live in a supposed democracy, yet only one choice of ideology. But there are other parties represented on nearly every ballot, from Working Families, to Green, to, gasp, Communist. Be an individualist and vote for a candidate in which you truly embrace their political views. You do not have to adhere to "the lesser of two evils" voting every time. In other countries it is typical to have cabinets of mixed ideologies.
Voting is boring and I have other stuff to do.
Great. You've taken the proverbial land of the free and home of the brave and helped make it into the land of the lazy and home of the entitled.
Cut the crap, Americans, and roll out of your complacent sloth. This country desperately needs some change. You may not like the voting system, but even that in itself will never change if we don't utilize the tools offered to us. If you've never voted before, this upcoming presidential election is the time to start.
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Thursday, September 18, 2008
THE VOLUPTUOUS HORROR OF GOTH, AND SARAH PALIN
Well, it has been a hell of a week over here, 'round the old Dregublog gin tub.
There has been much progress in the way of infuriating right-wing Christians, (which is Googleable in all its breadth and scope if you type in "Cintra Wilson" and "Palin" ) including smackdowns from Sean Hannity, and that roly-poly man who single-handedly sucked so much Vicodin out of the prescription drug market that I can't find any at all, Mr. Rush Limbaugh.
But here's a NEW article on Sarah Palin, fresh in the Huffington Post.
Thankfully, Ms. Palin's running mate and his sophisticated ideas about how to ignore the tanking economy seem to be hobbling Palin far more effectively than I could ever dream of doing...
While that dirty little culture war is percolating.... we got fashion!
The NY Times is running my feature on Goth fashion today.
And BOING-BOING is running THE ENTIRE FIRST CHAPTER OF "CALIGULA FOR PRESIDENT" -- which is really swell of them.
It's a howling maelstrom of words out there, my fiends....please, read good ones.
Love, Cintra
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Wednesday, September 10, 2008
SARAH PALIN: WHITE HOUSE BUNNY
PRO-LIFERS, this one is for you. *SMACK*.
Here's the big difference between pro-life and pro-choice:
As someone who is pro-choice, I don't want to prevent anyone who is pro-life from making decisions about their own bodies. I want to protect their right to act in a manner befitting their convictions. This is the ideological freedom upon which America was founded.
Pro-lifers seek to prevent me from making my own decisions about my body. This makes pro-lifers, by their own tacit admission, incapable of making seasoned, moral adult decisions for themselves, and incapable of tolerating the decisions and convictions of other people that are different than theirs.
Critics (pro-lifers and feminists alike!) have been deriding me for using profanity, but personally, I think their trying to force a crucifix up the collective female fanny is rude, insulting, and an intense violation of our humanity.
Pro-life women, if you were on the verge of being raped (not to mention impregnated by rape or incest, and then criminalized for getting an abortion) -- the ones among you not brain-damaged from huffing feminine deodorant spray might use a few choice four-letter words yourselves.
Squeal all you like, just stay out my underpants. You're not my type.
Here's the text of my Sarah Palin article on Salon.com, which seems to be arousing the ire of backwater, atavistic, evangelical Christian Taliban zealots everywhere.
Pro-Lifers, if I've made any of you finally see the light, your next abortion is on me.
Love, Cintra
| Sarah Palin may be a lady, but she ain't no woman.
I confess, it was pretty riveting when John McCain trotted out Sarah Palin for the first time. Like many people, I thought, "Damn, a hyperconservative, fuckable, Type A, antiabortion, Christian Stepford wife in a 'sexy librarian' costume -- as a vice president? That's a brilliant stroke of horrifyingly cynical pandering to the Christian right. Karl Rove must be behind it."
Palin may have been a boost of political Viagra for the limp, bloodless GOP (and according to an ABC/Washington Post poll she has created a boost in McCain's standing among white women to a 53 over Obama's 41). But ideologically, she is their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread, revealing the ugliest underside of Republican ambitions -- their insanely zealous and cynical drive to win power by any means necessary, even at the cost of actual leadership.
Sarah Palin is a bit comical, like one of those cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms. What her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter unequivocally prove, however, is that her most beloved child is the antiabortion platform that ensures her own political ambitions with the conservative right. The throat she's so hot to cut is that of all American women.
I don't want Sarah Palin being the representative leader and custodian of my rights, my Constitution and my country any more than I want polygamist compound leader Warren Jeffs baby-sitting for my preteen goddaughters.
As a woman who does not believe what Palin believes, the thought of such an opportunistic anti-female in the White House -- in the Cheney chair, no less -- is akin to ideological brain rape. What this Republican blowup doll does with her own insides in accord with her own faith is her business. But, like the worst and most terrifying of religious extremists, she seems very comfortable with the idea of imposing her own views on everyone else.
I did not think that women being downgraded to second-class, three-holed chattel would be a pressing concern in my lifetime. I thought it was like polio, or witch burning -- an inhumane error that had already been corrected. But after eight years of Republican hegemony, and now the potential ascendance of this sheep in ewe's clothing, I am so mortally offended I feel like it is really time for women to be angry, hardcore and disgusted again. Not just with old white Christian patriarchs and their hopelessly calcified, religiously condoned misogyny, but also with the self-abnegating, submissive female Uncle Tommies whose ambitions and eagerness to please the powerful males of their tribe are so desperate that they would sell out their sovereignty over their own bodies. And yours too.
Republicans have -- in a P.T. Barnum, sucker-born-every-minute kind of way -- successfully framed themselves as the custodians of Christian ethics and conservative family values. This stance successfully masks their wholesale class war against the majority of their supporters, who continue to vote blatantly against their own economic interests in thrall to this deliberate emotional manipulation. It was the media critic Douglas Rushkoff who pointed out, several years ago, that Republican politicians were employing marketing techniques perfected by Clotaire Rapaille. Rapaille, broadly paraphrased, introduced a theory that approximately 80 percent of all decision making is done at the level of the limbic system -- our lowest, most colorless, reptilian emotional level. Republican strategies are consistent with a belief that the voting process, for most people, is full of feelings -- but devoid of reason.
Sarah Palin, in this light, makes so little sense that she makes perfect sense. She speciously represents a new power paradigm of the Nice Mommy: the opposite of Hillary (the Mean Mommy), the opposite of Oprah (black, and therefore foreign), the opposite of Martha Stewart (another Mean Mommy). In her support for women on women's issues, she has done everything but volunteer for her own circumcision. She tacitly promises a roll backward into old-fashioned sexual roles -- like Old Testament-style old. Her morality is fixed, predictable and inflexible. There are those who will find comfort in the fact that they will know exactly what can be expected from Palin: Free will subordinated to obedience of an airtight, evangelical interpretation of the demands of God, country and Republican men.
The choice of Palin represents what the Christian right is really saying to the women of America. The subtext: It's a Faustian bargain, girls. To elevate your sex to power and respectability, you must first give us the keys to your chastity belt.
It is unsurprising that the morally compromised fraternity of corruption-infested Republican robber barons and war profiteers came up with this stunt, but we must regard it in the same light as the rest of their treasonous, criminal behavior. We must regard Sarah Palin as the Carmella Soprano of the GOP -- an enabling wife of organized crime, who sees, hears and speaks no evil of the boys in her old-boy network for whom she does this ideological lap dance.
It is a kind of eerie coincidence that Sarah Palin is being sprung on the public at the same time as the bimbo/frat-boy titty comedy "House Bunny," which features a poster of a beautiful young lady with Playmate-style bunny ears, big, stupid eyes and her mouth hanging open like someone just punched her.
Sarah Palin is the White House bunny -- the most nauseating novelty confection of the evangelical mind-set since Southern "chastity balls," wherein teen girls pledge abstinence from premarital sex by ceremonially faux-marrying their own fathers.
Sarah Palin is the sexual front of the culture war and the embodiment of the bold social engineering stance of the new authoritarianism that Republicans have been employing ever since they stole the election in 2000. As a result of conservative Republican policies, America has proved itself to be too rife with fraud, bureaucratic constipation, self-inflicted economic calamity, cronyism and incompetence to effect any positive movement anywhere at all, even at home.
But, the Republicans seem to be saying, at least we can offer you the hope of putting women back in their place.
Bristol Palin will no doubt be a fine example as a first teen, particularly now that her mother is inflicting an old-fashioned shotgun wedding on the hapless, horny, condomless youth who impregnated her.
The Republicans are, in effect, saying: We're not going to win this race on the basis of being the better candidates. Barack Obama is going to make you think. You don't like thinking. Here's an It Girl vice president who is easy on the eyes, you stodgy old white baby boomer. She's like a grown-up version of Mary Ann from "Gilligan's Island." She embodies the raw conviction that everything the Republicans have ever done has been right. She'll make you feel better about yourself for voting for Bush. Twice.
Relax: The war is God's plan. (Or whatever.) Women, even if they are vice president, can always look pretty, worship their husbands in the fear of God and never, ever resist invasions from unwanted sperm.
Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa have me and my friends retching into our handbags. She's such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it's easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism.
She is dangerous. She is not just pro-life, she's anti-life. She is the suppression of human feeling and instinct. She is a slave to the compromises dictated by her own desire for power and control. Sarah Palin is untethered from her own needs and those of her family, which is in crisis, with a pregnant daughter, a son on the way to Iraq and a special-needs infant.
She should, however, be a galvanizing point for women everywhere. Not to support her candidacy but to rebel against the Republican Party and take back the respect and equality so hard-earned by the women's liberation movement in the 1970s.
We've been shanghaied. This is sick. We need to slap the face of our bad frat-boy date and walk home from this drive-in movie. Sarah Palin may put out to be popular, but the rest of America's women don't need to do the same.
If not, what the hell? John McCain should go the whole Hugh Hefner route and have eight V.P.s that all look exactly like Sarah Palin.
It's McCain's world, girls: You'd just live in it.
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Tuesday, September 9, 2008
The Dark Knight: It Hurts So Bad
![DK1[1].png](http://www.cintrawilson.com/dregs/DK1%5B1%5D.png)
Hoping for a diversion from existential angst, a friend and I went to see The Dark Knight. What ensued was not a diversion from the angst, but a pummeling further into its depths.
The following commentary is in no way to be construed as currently topical, The Dark Knight having been out for a couple of months. It's just taken me this long to disentangle myself from the malevolence portrayed therein.
Becoming inured to insupportable violence has become de rigueur for film viewing audiences. The Dark Knight encapsulates this trend in filmmaking that I've been hoping would evolve into something else, a film whose primary objective is to beat the audience into submission through a combination of graphic superviolence, fast cutting, a deafening soundtrack, and a disregard for human suffering. This has gone beyond a niche to permeate nearly every film released, The Dark Knight being the present apotheosis of this style.
I mainly enjoyed the first half of The Dark Knight. The shot compositions and camera work showed the talent and skill of the director, Christopher Nolan. The script, by Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan, was tight and adept. The performance by Heath Ledger was virtuosic in its business of psychopathology, a killer clown run rampant. Christian Bale, an actor I do not always favor due to his often smug and self-conscious portrayals, was subdued and almost touching in the role of a rasping, morally conflicted Batman. Batman has always been an interesting superhero because of his self-enforced duty to fight crime, and the moral conflicts that arise through this imprimatur. But there's the rub: who wants a superhero so morally conflicted that people die and institutions burn because of his mistakes? As the second half of the film sunk into utter darkness without a tad of redemption, I wondered why this is the modus operandi of every superhero now? We have Hancock, why must Batman to be like this too?
The reason seems apparent: that many people feel that we are living in a time in which we can depend on nothing, and the fabric of our governments, economies, and social structures are rending beneath us. The Dark Knight does not just suggest this state of being, but revels in it. Like many great films that concretize the reality in which they exist, it proves that this view is no longer an abstraction. No caped crusader is going to fly in and save us. The wealth, power, and scientific innovation in Batman's capable hands can do little against moral corruption and unmitigated violence. He tries again and again to successfully aid the cynical police department and the vulnerable citizenry, as do his allies on the ground, ably played by Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Gary Oldman. Neither they nor Batman can do anything against the terror and violence wrought by the bloodthirsty Joker.
Didn't the Joker used to be that, a kind of funny, wacky, if dangerous criminal? The Joker in The Dark Knight embodies the kind of violence only seen in the worst possible human situations, like war or prison; or in the insidious everyday desperation of the wicked patriarch who has absolute control of his family through pathological violence and manipulation, like that guy in Austria who kept his family locked away in the basement. This is some evil-ass stuff. This Joker is not motivated by money, like most villains. When he has a huge pile of it, he burns it. He is only interested in the power of unimpeded destruction and control. That it is brought about by a juggernaut of self-loathing seems to be the only conceivable explanation of this extraordinary flaw. That life seemed to imitate art in the death of Heath Ledger upon completion of The Dark Knight makes the bleakness of the film more chilling.
The Great Depression of the 1930s saw a surge in divertingly sugary tales and splashy musicals in the cinema. Will this be how cinema evolves going forward? Or as more people feel alienated from the promise of social humanity, will the filmmaking trend of irredeemable darkness and violence displayed in The Dark Knight continue unabated? Whatever you do, don't go to see The Dark Knight if you're looking for light, comic book diversion. Better to stick with goofy Spider-Man.
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Sunday, August 24, 2008
It'll Get You High
I'm always amazed that no matter what is happening on MSNBC's "Hardball," host Chris Matthews manages to work a Clinton angle into the picture. It's amazing, but not surprising considering this transcript funneled to me from a media back channel.
Setting: MSNBC studios. Chris Matthews is sitting at the "Hardball" set reading through the script while Andrea Mitchell sits across from him also reading her notes. Both look a little out of sorts, especially Andrea who keeps scratching herself and is sweating profusely. They both look jittery and stressed as they prepare for tonight's show.
Chris Matthews: (Reading over his script for "Hardball") Tonight! Surrogates gone wild? Jesse Jackson is caught making an off air mumble that's become a mess for ... I (slamming down the script) ... I can't do this. It's just ... it's just not the same! I need my Clinton Crack! (scratching underarms) I'm jonesing over here! Look, Andrea! My face is all bloated and red!
Andrea Mitchell: (Involuntarily twitching) Your face is always bloated and red, you ignominious bastard! There would still be some Clinton Crack if you hadn't smoked it all!
Chris: (To himself) I can't go back.
Andrea: (Wiping nose, suddenly calm) I sometimes huff paint thinner.
Chris: Really? Does it work?
Andrea: It'll get you high. I mean, if you're desperate.
Chris: I don't know. You said that about Romney refeer and all it did was make me gain 20 pounds and buy a bunch of Marie Osmond records. I guess I could try that Brangelina stuff, but that seems more like a kid's party drug.
Andrea: I lost 10 pounds doing Brangelina, but I also stopped sleeping, had sex with Billy Bob Thorton and adopted six Ugandan orphans.
ENTER KEITH OLBERMANN
Keith Olbermann enters the set, walking by, looking peppy.
Chris: How do you do it Keith? Your eyes are always so glassy and you always look so happy, despite being nebbish and tense and kind of killjoy. What are you on? And don't say Ron Paul freebase because Jack Cafferty sold me a sack of that shit and it does not work!
Keith looks left-to-right then leans in to take a seat next to Chris and Andrea.
Keith Olbermann: (whispers) I have something TEN TIMES more potent than Clinton Crack.
Chris: I'm interested.
Keith: Obama Opium.
Chris: Opium? They still make that?
Keith: No. Not just regular opium. Obama Opium. It's the main ingredient in Black Tar Heroin.
Chris: I think they liked to be called African American now.
Keith: What?
Chris: It would be African American Tar Heroin. You know? I thought you were more racially sensitive than that? Whatever. Forget about it. Tell me about the drugs. Where did you get it?
Keith: Well, you can't tell anyone.
Chris: This is just between you me and Andrea.
Andrea: (twitching) Did you just say you had some Clinton Crack?
Keith: No.
Andrea: Because we'd have some if Chris hadn't smoked it all!
Chris: I get it, Andrea! I'm a fat bastard. All right, Keith. Tell us. Where did you get the stuff?
Keith: (mumbles) Muurrr-murrrr.
Chris: What? Speak up. Why are you mumbling?
Keith: Sean Hannity.
Chris: What?
Keith: I got it through Alan Combs from Sean Hannity. I was desperate. It so hard to act like I give a shit night after night. I just needed a little something to take the edge off. I used to snort that Bush Blow, but it doesn't work like it used to. Plus it made me really, really angry. Or maybe that was just the Rove 'Roids. I was trying to lose weight. I just needed something to even me out and Combs told me Sean was smoking the Big O every night. He hooked me up.
Chris: Does it work?
Keith: Oh (smiling) ... it'll get you high.
Chris: Can you boil it down like real Heroin because I just want to take a shot of Barack and put it in a hypodermic needle and shoot it right into my eye ball?
Keith: I think I have a spoon around here somewhere.
Chris: I'm excited about this. I mean, I've been using Clinton Crack since 1992. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. But I only partied with it. Nothing serious. Then one day, boom, it was gone. I forgot about it. Didn't touch anything. But then they came back. And there was just so much of it. I didn't really pace myself. So ... so I'm in deep shit. I mean. I gotta have it. I need it. I want it. But they cut me off. I asked James Carville two months ago if I could get 5 grams of Bubba for $50 and that son-of-a-bitch said "Drug store's closed." Can you believe that? Drug store's closed! I've had to get my Clinton Crack through Andrea ever since.
Andrea: Alan got me hooked.
Keith: Alan Combs?
Andrea: Alan Greenspan. He and Bill still talk sometimes.
Keith: (to Chris while cooking the drugs) Don't go crazy with this. Alan said Hannity's been hitting it so hard he almost OD'ed while watching some Rev. Wright footage Sunday. He's sobriety partners with Rush Limbaugh now.
Chris: I bet Rush does a lot of this stuff.
Keith: Nah. He's on Nicorette and OxyContin-laced Twinkies dipped in embalming fluid now.
Andrea: They call them "RushBaughs." I tried that once and I woke up fully dressed in a bathtub full of water after a party at Brian Williams' house. Brian doesn't do drugs but Willard Scott was passing them out. I just thought they were hor' devours. One minute I was dancing to Starland Vocal Band and making out with Ann Curry, then the next I was up to my neck in warm, soapy water. It was sooo awkward when Brian asked me to pass him the soap. He has very nice abs for such a boring man.
Keith: Wait ... he was?
Andrea: He said he didn't want to wake me, but regained consciousness when my head slipped underwater and I almost inhaled his loofah. And that's not a euphemism. I was actually gagging on a his sponge.
Keith finishes cooking the Obama Opium and draws it into a hypodermic needle.
Keith: You kissed Ann Curry? What was that like?
Andrea: She tasted like cocaine and strawberries.
Chris: (Annoyed) Enough with the chit chat! Let's do this. (Rolls up sleeve and ties belt around forearm) Get me high, mother fucker!
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Monday, August 11, 2008
DID OUR FOOL PRESIDENT ACTUALLY JUST SAY THAT TO RUSSIA?
HULLO Peoples:
WELL, here on the verge of total human annihilation (""Russia has invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people. Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century,"...um, *gag*), I thought it best to give the site a much-needed update...
HE'S ALREADY WON
Please excuse the long-stretches of violent inattention of late; I thought I was going to AFGHANISTAN and was hustling to assemble hideous Taliban-friendly couture, but the Army had other ideas...
Meanwhile, a fairly ill-tempered review of the store, OAK, appeared in the New York Times, and there's a semi-fresh Dregulator over there.
MORE as it happens...
Love CW
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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....
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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!"
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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.
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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.
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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:
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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
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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.
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Thursday, May 8, 2008
I LIKE HILARY BECAUSE SHE'S A BLOODTHIRSTY MONSTER TOO!
(BTW, that's a new Dreg over there --->>)
I couldn't agree more with Ken Silverstein of HARPER'S Washington Babylon, and his article, "Why I Like Hilary: She's a Bloodthirsty Monster."
Absolutely. Besides, if the Clintons have shown us anything, it is that nothing that they say or do until they get elected actually counts as truth. They know exactly how filthy the game is. Obama is a slick cat but he really hasn't been tarred and feathered and kicked in the teeth and generally hated enough to really know what the deal is. He's still too pretty to be a seasoned heavyweight grappler. He doesn't know how to be heel-kicked and constantly humiliated the way Hilary does.
Inhuman? Perhaps, but Relentless as the GOP
HIlary is a political zombie that can't be killed. She moves kind of slow and she doesn't look quite human, but that pale powdered face, that turquoise pantsuit and those manicured fingernails are going to tirelessly pry their way through the rotten wainscoting and into the political spotlight until someone attaches her to a power pole the way Roy Scheider did in JAWS.
It's admirable in terms of raw survivability. She knows how ugly a presidency can be.
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Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Americans, You Look Like Hell
What is America's fear of dressing well?
I recently attended a formal wedding in Oregon, and was astonished by the inappropriate attire that I viewed there. I saw grown men dressed in pleated khaki shorts, polo shirts, and athletic footwear. All that was missing were the backwards baseball caps. As I glided past in my silk gown and fitted velvet jacket, I felt for the bride and groom. As their friends and family, didn't we have an obligation to try to be elegant for their special day? Couldn't we all, for one day, honor the couple's marriage ritual by dressing appropriately? Is it somehow embarrassing, or too emotionally difficult, for American men to behave as if they care?
Until the last couple of decades of the twentieth century, Americans considered dressing well as displaying a sense of pride and purpose. To present oneself as well groomed showed that you cared, that you were deserving of respect, no matter what your income level. It still does, but America has lost that thread, as it were. Part of this decline has to do with the mass marketing of clothing for large business conglomerates, such as department stores and big box emporiums. But one-stop shopping does not a stylish citizen make. Department stores and big-box emporiums cater to the concept of ready-to-wear and off-the-rack. Ready-to-wear is more business baloney that has colluded to make the American citizen look bad while making a lot of money. The sizes are confusing and shift according to brand, and are cut to conform to an arbitrary fit model. No one possesses the same physical proportions; this is one of the gifts of individuality that has been bestowed on us by nature. If a piece of clothing does not fit you properly, you should have it altered. Alterations to fit individual bodies was part of how all commercial clothing was produced, until profit margins took precedence over dressing well.
Wake up America, and understand that Wal-Mart and their ilk are not out to make you look good. Their purpose is to sell cheaply produced, anonymous clothing that wears out quickly so you will have to buy more. While doing this, your individuality will be stamped out. You will lose the knowledge, if indeed you ever had it, of what looks good on your unique form. You will be forced to continue to patronize generic retail establishments, which make their profits by the exploitative practice of outsourcing their clothing production to developing countries. Realize that this is un-American, for America values individuality, freedom, and quality, doesn't it?
The media emphasis on what celebrities don is another marketing ploy of the bigger conglomerates of the apparel industry. It makes average people understand style as something only the wealthy and perfect-bodied can afford. But celebrities work with stylists to create a certain image. They are creating iconography, which is not style. The average American says "I could never look that good anyway." Neither do the celebrities; look at the alternative industry, maddening in its mixed-messagery, that the gossip media has also created: trafficking images of celebrities in sweat clothes, flashing cellulite, schlubbing around on their days off. American people, beware of this trickery! Do not let media double-speak deprive you of your obligation to present yourselves with dignity!
There is an erroneous idea that only designer clothing looks good, and the average American cannot afford to dress well. But style is an alternative to money. Money does not influence wearing clean, pressed, well-fitting clothing. Nice clothing can be found used at cheaper prices than new Wal-Mart-type crap. The stigma of used clothing being the province of the marginalized needs to change if we are to truly embrace green politics as the only viable alternative this planet now faces.
In Europe, people prefer to buy a few well-made and individually tailored pieces per season. The American practice, in contrast, is to blow wads of cash on poorly produced impulse purchases at the local mall to fill an emotional void that has been planted there by a consuming culture.
Looking good is not only for yourself, but perhaps more importantly, it is for other people. You are hurting someone's eyes if you stomp around in fleece and oversized tee shirts, and not only the eyes of aesthetes such as myself. Clothing that fits your body, that flatters your unique physique, will provide you with comfort and confidence. Certain cuts of clothing force better posture. Television makeover shows have flourished under this premise. If you're not sure what looks good on you, bring someone whose style choices you admire, or ask someone who works at the store. Any self-respecting salesperson will be happy to do so. Clearly, this will not occur at K-Mart or Old Navy.
Even so-called anti-fashion movements such as punk have style in droves. It's just that their fashion is not driven by a profit-making industry, but by political expression. Style is not affectation. It is how you present yourself to the world. Get real, Americans, we've looked bad for too long!
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COMMENTS
Oh no, Isiah Washington alert!
Can great talents really be controlled though? Isn't the beast what a performer wants ? Isn't that the big quixotic existential plight? Why we all like the IT to come out when it's a great performer who goes beyond the beyond. It goes back to the Caves of Altimira and I say embrace it but take vacations.
And when a non performer or media whore like Bethany Frankel or Audrina Partridge does get beastly, it inspires endless superiority. Exploitation with camp and self deprecation is great (Shatner, Russ Meyer) without any camp or god forbid self dep, exploitation is the worst (Madonna, Paris Hilton) and that's almost all there is now.
Paul Robeson, as equally gifted as Jackson musically (unsurpassed as yet, in scholarship by any other athlete or entertainer) an international giant from the 1930's till the early 1950's, ended up a recluse, mostly erased and forgotten in poor health during his final decade. Still very much alive for the remainder of his life, passing away in 1976 at the age of 78. And considering how hard US intelligence tried to keep that from happening it was a triumph, even if told his son in the mid 70's , he'd have ended his own life years ago if it was not for his fans and family.
Robeson retreated, conserving what little health he had left, as Jackson should have, and it saved his life but in many ways not on his own terms. But he had a wonderful father, a pastor, an escaped slave who single handedly raised five children and who made Paul study every single day for about four hours a day. His father had told him never to quit-- ever-and he didn't.
Poignant.
Posted by: Super Amanda Super Amanda at June 26, 2009 4:52 PM
Speaking Truth to Narcissism.
Posted by: steven steven at June 26, 2009 5:17 PM
Oh Amanda, it is so lovely to have you back. You and your wonderful canny comments and your exquisite rack. I kiss you.
Posted by: Cintra "Jermajesty" Wilson Cintra "Jermajesty" Wilson at June 27, 2009 9:36 AM
Jermajesty! I first found you with Anna Nicole's ascent to heaven via twin dirigibles and now I find you again so I can do what you did when you did what you did to me.
I swear I don't just show up when people die! xoxox
Posted by: SuperAmanda SuperAmanda at June 27, 2009 11:36 AM
You close your eeeeyyess and hope it actually could get weirder.
Tourists came to watch the Filipino Thriller prisoners and Bubbles the Chimp has supposedly been preserved in plasticine...
Posted by: SuperAmanda SuperAmanda at June 27, 2009 7:28 PM
"In London I live around the corner from a woman called Evi. Evi is an avid cook of Viennese food, a Stevie Wonder fanatic and a Holocaust survivor. She once made us a batch of these delicious cookies and I went through them in one day."
-Gwyneth Black Amex card in y'alls face!
Posted by: Gwyneth Paltrow washes with GOOP Gwyneth Paltrow washes with GOOP at June 29, 2009 2:36 AM
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