DREGUBLOG CATEGORY ARCHIVE: A/V
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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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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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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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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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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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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Friday, March 14, 2008
NEW DREGULATOR, REPLETE WITH POST-MARXIST OVERTONES ---->
...the West will be forced to produce its own catastrophe for itself, in order to meet its need for spectacle and that voracious appetite for symbols which characterizes it even more than its voracious appetite for food. It will reach the point where it devours itself....The Great Crash, the symbolic crash, will come in the end from us Westerners, but only when we are no longer able to feed on the hallucinogenic misery which comes to us from the other half of the world.
-- Jean Baudrillard, The Catastrophe Fix, 1994
Can't you hear that "symbolic crash" resounding all over America?
I AM THE PARACLETE
So many public figures, lately, are ethically choking themselves out and prove the world wrong for loving them. Some gnawing suspicion that they do not deserve what they have; some desire to build a Jenga-style champagne glass fountain in their private lives that grows large enough to shred their careers when it all comes tumbling down.
America sees its shadow; feels fear. The dollar is worth less that 100 yen. Repent.
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Monday, February 25, 2008
THE 80th ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARDS: OSCAR, TOO SENILE TO DRIVE
As per usual, Radioactive Jack was there in the aisle in a pair of sunglasses, and I was on my bed with a in a pair of sweatpants, with my laptop staring at him, with intent to mine him for larger cultural insight.
Entropy Itself
It's his job to represent his brand of cultural malignancy, and my job to simply, factually report on it, for Salon.com
Once a year, fiends. Like The Easter Bunny, hollow chocolate eggs and all.
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Friday, January 4, 2008
APRES IOWA, LE DREGULATOR
I figured everyone else in the world was going to be naked in the shower rubbing the sumptuous pink lather of Obama/Kennedy comparisons all over each other, so I'm going for a cold-brewed, woolen feminist sulk on this one. I'll join the orgy if it lasts through New Hampshire. I'm no spoil-sport. I'll even shave my legs.
Skol.
X.
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Wednesday, December 26, 2007
THE BACK COVER SLAMS SHUT ON VOLUME SIX
That there on your right is the last Dregulator of the year.
I hope we can all laugh about the Great American Sliming of '07 someday, and not just because we all bought the new Wii version of GOP Ultimate Smackdown.
In any case, it finally feels like Good is trying to snap out of its Zoloft stupor and figure out how to triumph over Evil again. Mary Baker Eddy was probably right: Evil has to go down. In the end, it always reveals itself as so fearfully square that nobody with any style wants to be seen with it.
Happy New Year, Fiends, and Alafia and ASH-X for All.
X.
MAD LOVE TO THE COMRADES
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Wednesday, December 12, 2007
LAS APASSIONADAS MIRACULOUSLY APPEARS ON INTERNETS
Las Apassionadas, the follow-up project to Winter Steele, was not beloved of the brass at MTV. Despite glorious bluescreen effects, an absolutely stunning soundtrack by the Broun Fellinis, and the acting genius of Susan Dalian, Steven Price and a cast of thousands (please, people, send me your names that you might receive proper credit someday) this thing, made in 1993, has never seen the light of day, except to win short film awards at various minor film festivals. We were told at the time it was because there were "too many automatic weapons."
It was also, although we had no way of knowing it then, weirdly prophetic of future events that seemed unimaginable at the time.
Written by and starring La Cobra Blanca. Directed by Tim Boxell. Thank you internet Gods.
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Friday, December 7, 2007
HO HO HO AND BIG SACHS OF GOLDMAN
That new Dregulator over there was especially designed to cast shaming aspersions on all the nasty investment bankers involved in lousing up what shredded remnants of "public trust" we have left. I mean, come on. Don't Harvard MBA's have ANY kind of civic responsibility to use their knowledge and position for Good instead of Evil? Do the smartest guys in the room ALWAYS have to use their intelligence to embugger the less fortunate?
Goldman Sachs has some very heavy alumni creedling around the halls of power, performing the dark arts of macroeconomic sorcery. Bob Zoellick, John Corzine.....why, it's practically a bacterial petri-dish for breeding the most virulent, humanism-resistant strains of PNAC.
Mac n' Sleaze
Brrrr. Kind of makes you want to run away to a yurt and eat bark, if there was a way to do it that didn't involve hippies. Lord knows that macroeconomics are easier to eat than macrobiotics. But only just.
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Tuesday, November 6, 2007
STILL WILD ABOUT KEITH
Der Olbermensch, my hero, delivered such a juicy smackdown in his SPECIAL COMMENT last night that I had to give an actual juicy smack to the TV screen (and then Windex the lipstick off afterward. True.)
Select quotes from the text:
"Charged... with assessing the relative legality of the various nightmares in the Pandora's box that is the Orwell-worthy euphemism 'Enhanced Interrogation,' (Daniel) Levin decided that the simplest, and the most honest, way to evaluate them ... was to have them enacted upon himself.
Daniel Levin took himself to a military base and let himself be waterboarded....
.... And he wrote that even though he knew those doing it meant him no harm, and he knew they would rescue him at the instant of the slightest distress, and he knew he would not die -- still, with all that reassurance, he could not stop the terror screaming from inside of him,could not quell the horror, could not convince that which is at the core of each of us, the entity who exists behind all the embellishments we strap to ourselves, like purpose and name and family and love, he could not convince his being that he wasn't drowning.
Waterboarding, he said, is torture. Legally, it is torture! Practically, it is torture! Ethically, it is torture! And he wrote it down.
Wrote it down somewhere, where it could be contrasted with the words of this country's 43rd president: 'The United States of America ... does not torture.'
Made you into a liar, Mr. Bush.....
....Study after study for generation after generation has confirmed that torture gets people to talk, torture gets people to plead, torture gets people to break, but torture does not get them to tell the truth.
Of course, Mr. Bush, this isn't a problem if you don't care if the terrorist plots they tell you about are the truth or just something to stop the tormentors from drowning them.
If, say, a president simply needed a constant supply of terrorist threats to keep a country scared.
If, say, he needed phony plots to play hero during, and to boast about interrupting, and to use to distract people from the threat he didn't interrupt.
If, say, he realized that even terrorized people still need good ghost stories before they will let a president pillage the Constitution,
Well, Mr. Bush, who better to dream them up for you than an actual terrorist?
He'll tell you everything he ever fantasized doing in his most horrific of daydreams, his equivalent of the day you "flew" onto the deck of the Lincoln to explain you'd won in Iraq.
Now if that's what this is all about, you tortured not because you're so stupid you think torture produces confession but you tortured because you're smart enough to know it produces really authentic-sounding fiction -- well, then, you're going to need all the lawyers you can find ... because that crime wouldn't just mean impeachment, would it?
That crime would mean George W. Bush is going to prison."
****
Keeeeeeeith. Keeeeeith. I toss rose petals at your gleaming chariot.
Thanks again, Mr. Olbermann.
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Friday, October 26, 2007
IF YOU WERE A NEW DREGULATOR YOU'D BE THERE ON YOUR RIGHT
And guess what? You ARE.
And if you don't like it, talk to the kids I adopted from the Sudan Liberation Army.
Mama Say Knock You Out
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Friday, October 12, 2007
NEW HOT MEATY POCKET OF MICROWAVE PORK DREGULATOR --->
Find out the kind of wacky things our leading food giants are feeding us in the name of Food!
Ha ha! Made you eat it!
Who knew that those mean boys in the alley who made "stew" in old milk cartons and force-fed it to the smaller boys would someday end up controlling the everyday grocery supplies of our great nation....with hilarious results!
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Friday, September 28, 2007
OK LIKE ALL BLOODY KINDS OF NEW SHITE
Alright.
First off, thanks to the inestimably red-corkscrew-hairy brains of the fine Jan von Sontag, we have an entire Winter Steele gallery.
And we also have a brand spanking new Critical Shopper in the Times -- Chloe, if you're nasty.
AND LASTLY but certainly not leastly, a brand newDREGULATOR over there.
See, good things come to those who put everything off until the very last minute.
Love,
CW
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Wednesday, September 19, 2007
PUNDITRY ALERT: MY HEAD, YOUR TV
Apparently I am going to be speaking extensively on the subject of Mickey Rourke tonight at 9PM on the Biography Channel.
I personally can't even FIND the Biography Channel on my several thousand TV stations. It doesn't seem to be on the TV menu for my neighborhood. But maybe you'll be flipping around, and you'll see me jabbering about Mickey Rourke's unexplored potential, and you'll say, "HEY, she's on TV again. I thought she hated celebrity."
Which would be true. But I LIKE Mickey Rourke.
And if you'd like to see my old article on Mickey Rourke from Salon (which is why they asked me to do that gig in the first place), why, you can do it by clicking right here.
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Friday, September 14, 2007
DREGS O' DREGS O' PLENNY
If you only read one skeevy piece of yellow media filth this year, let it be this one.
Really, I have a whole new take on the Britney VMA meltdown.
Seriously. No, really.
And boobs, too. Lots of "boobs." Hot celebrity boobs, and also two Japanese girls making out.
Right over there, in that article. -------> You have to read it all the way to the end, but then at the end?
Boobs. Japanese ones. Making out. Hot .
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Thursday, August 30, 2007
THE DREGULATOR. A NEW ONE. OVER THERE.
Ask von Sontag why he thinks Movable Type is a worthwhile way to blog. I swear, it's like trying to do word-processing on a Gutenberg press. Anyway, ENJOY.
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Saturday, August 25, 2007
MANY OF YOU MAY HAVE BEEN WONDERING
...why Cintrawilson.com has been sucking so hard of late.
Well, it was an effing nightmare: Dreamhost started crashing due to some glitch with Movable Type, so we moved over to Lunarpages, which was supposed to be cool with Movable Type but actually wasn't, so we had to move the whole bloody kit and kaboodle over to a THIRD server and re-do everything and yes this is incredibly boring but finally after beating the ingenious Jan von Sontag about the face and neck for two weeks (not because it was his fault, just because I am a harridan) everything is up and running again and you shouldn't have those problems you used to have, posting and what.
Jesus himself would have cracked his laptop open against the nearest fire-hydrant and torn out the motherboard with his teeth, I tell you.
But we're better now. Really. How've you been?
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Friday, August 17, 2007
OUR STRUGGLES FINALLY RESOLVED, with FRESH DREG BONUS
The inestimable JAN VON SONTAG has finally moved this enormous wall of krep over from the Old Version to the New Version, and now, we hope, there will be fewer problems and restored commenting capacities. In the meantwixt, please enjoy this brand spanking new Dregulator, over there ----->
With love, squalor, and eternal vigilance,
Cintra
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Tuesday, July 31, 2007
THE MINISTRY FOR ESTONIAN WOMAN PREVENTION
Well, Jan von Sontag and I was robbed the other night at ROFL. I told the whole heartwarming story about how I had adopted Janush from the Estonian adoption agency (after they lied to me and told me he was 21 MONTHS old) -- and how we had translated some of his favorite public service announcements from the original Estonian and put subtitles on them as a mother/son bonding type project.
You'd think they would have been moved. MOVED, I say. Alas, no dice: We lost to a Boston terrier humping a large, stuffed Pokemon. Repent!
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Thursday, July 26, 2007
IWSMFSDIA:ROFLAJP!
IWSMFTSDIA:ROFLAJP!
(It was so much fun, she's doing it again: ROFL at Joe's Pub)
Come down to Joe's Pub this Friday to see Cintra perform alongside Dave Hill and Curtis Eller at ROFL - "The Gong Show for the Internet Age!"
In its second iteration, ROFL features eight local bloggers presenting their "finest internet finds and online creations." I can personally assure you that we on team Cintra have upped the ante since last time, and you'll not only ROFL, but probably LOL and LMAO - but you'll laugh your own ass off, not mine!
ROFL! v1.1
with host Dave Hill and musical guest Curtis Eller
Presented with The Onion and Paper Thin Walls
Friday July 27 at 11:30 PM
$15.00
Joe's Pub
425 Lafayette St.
New York, NY 10003
(212) 967-7555
Tickets are moving like hotcakes, so purhcase in advance by phone or web cannot be more highly recommended.
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Thursday, July 19, 2007
BASK IN THE WHITE HOT POWER OF NEW DREG ULTRA -->>
And do it quick before he turns all the lights off.
PORK TASTES JUST LIKE A HUMAN BABY
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Wednesday, July 11, 2007
A WHOLE STINKING WAD OF TV
Greetings Dregubloggers:
Well, I guess you wonder why Mommy hasn't been around the old campfire the last few days, and that's because I have been doing TRUCKLOADS O' TELEVISION.
First, there was a thing on the TODAY show (it aired yesterday) that I was in for about 2 seconds about Trophy Wife Jeri Thompson. The best lines I had got cut. I really wanted them to let me say, "The term 'Trophy Wife' is demeaning to both the wife and the trophy."
But alas, no.
Then I was on "It's Your Call With Lynn Doyle" again, last night talking about the blackmailed NJ beauty queen, which you can watch if you have Comcast Digital On Demand, for another 2 days. There was a lawyer named Tim Coleman who was decrying the use of "strange animals" on internet sites.
Then I had to do a Biography thing about Mickey Rourke this morning, because I wrote that Salon article about him a few years ago.
And the Mickey Rourke article, sadly, is the only thing I have a link to, at the moment...but the show should be out in a month or so.
I did, however, have the extreme pleasure of meeting Air America star and MSNBC pundit Rachel Maddow in the makeup room at the studio, and I slobbered great heaps of heartfelt praise all over her white Hanes T-shirt. She was taking makeup off as quickly as she could and I was caking it on with everything I had.
I said, "True to the description on your website, you do indeed dress like a 12-year-old boy! Whereas I dress like a Russian prostitute."
She quipped back, "We should get together! Then we could both dress like 12-year old Russian boy prostitutes."
Rachel Maddow RULES.
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Thursday, July 5, 2007
MIKE ALBO VS. THE H-PHONE
Thank God Mike Albo is here to provide us with perspective on the latest gadget craze.
There but for the grace of Mike Albo. Man, I almost sold all my crack to buy one of those things.
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Happy flag-waving pyrotechnics, my Fellow Americans.
Now, pull that 9/11 sticker off the back window of your SUV, and start learning French.
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Tuesday, June 26, 2007
ANOTHER TV THINGY
Tonight I will be punditing on the nature of celebrity, in honor of that Hilton woman's release from incarceration. If you're on the East Coast, you can catch me talking to an Emmy Award-winning news maven on "It's Your Call with Lynn Doyle" at 9PM EST.
Lynn and I ought to be able to put all of your nagging confusions to rest on this topic; then, hopefully, nobody will ever have to talk about it, ever again.
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Friday, June 22, 2007
DREGULAIS NOUVEAU --------->>>
A full-bodied, dry, screw-top varietal. Bloody, with notes of copper, toothpaste, Sanka, and Polonium 210. Perfect picnic refreshment for a summer riot. Quaffable!
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Friday, June 8, 2007
THAT THAR BE DREGS, YE SQUABS
Ahrrr. 'Tis that time to walk that plank again, ye monsters of the deep. Mind ye peg limbs and eye sockets. ---------->>>
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Friday, May 25, 2007
NEW DREGULATOR: FIST PACKED WITH TOUGH LOVE
Yes, Fiends, its that time again.
Feel shock, pain, outrage, and vent your spleen. It's cathartic.
Then, we'll do Metal Karaoke with "Bronda," here.
WHAT UNLOVED VINYL BABIES GROW UP TO BE
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Tuesday, May 1, 2007
DREGULATOR VOL. VI, NO. 9 PODCAST
In which Cintra channels a boozed-up Congress giving away squillions in the name of the GWAT.
Like what you're hearing? Download it. Or subscribe to the podcast feed!
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Friday, April 27, 2007
NEWBORN DREGULATOR, YOURS TO HOLD AND LOVE
Shhh! Hear that soft whimpering? It's little DREGULATOR VOL. VI #9.
So lifelike, wriggling and whimpering for your attention! How could you possibly resist cuddling this wriggling baby DREGULATOR close in your arms, with her vinyl skin, hand-applied hair, tiny eyelashes, fingernails and toenails!
100% VINYL
This adorable DREGULATOR is bound to cause quite a sensation! Move quickly and eat yours now!
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Thursday, April 19, 2007
DREGULATOR VOL. VI, NO. 8 PODCAST
Cintra tells us where to look and where not to look, and it causes throes of ecstasy that could be brought on only by sexy sexy sexy Paul Wolfowitz!
Like what you're hearing? Download it. Or subscribe to the podcast feed!
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Wednesday, April 18, 2007
GUILTY PLEASURES...FOR YOUR PLEASURE
Julian Fleisher is a musician and Dude About Town Extraordinaire, who was kind enough to guest me on his superlative "Guilty Pleasures" podcast.... where, as Grand Inquisitor, he exacts sinful confessions both Musical and Other.
DO confess your guiltiest musical pleasures, below....and be sure to write Julian about them, because it's his THING.
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Friday, April 13, 2007
HOT SPANKING NEW DREGGOS, GIT UM --->
For you Mein Fiendies, to pollute your beautiful minds.
Love, X
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COMMENTS
*shudders*
I too remember Dragon's Domain. I also remember it giving me nightmares for weeks, as well as some other 'dreams' where I went to bed at night and monsters took painless bites out of my flesh, pasting the skin back so that no one could tell what happened, and that they'd keep on doing that till there was no more 'me' left.
Anyone who wants to go back to a state of "child-like" anything clearly doesn't remember what it really was like, or took a good look at any children.
Posted by: Michael C Michael C at January 29, 2009 1:25 AM
I've often wondered at grownups' collective amnesia about childhood too.
Posted by: staghounds staghounds at February 13, 2009 10:11 PM
Ah yes. As a childhood Whovian who had the Tom Baker-era episodes on PBS as a kid, aw Hell, the opening and closing credits with the theramin sounds personally performed by Satan creeped me out even more than the actual show.
My folks, though, "made" me watch Cronkite (which wasn't that hard becuase stuff like the imagery of Vietnam and Belfast was kinda mindblowing). Maybe that saved me from the effects of the kid shows, maybe it messed me up even worse.
It's also funny how you're timing is on this, seeing as I've been recently been reading in my psych text book about cognitive development in children. In reading about developmental stages in kids, I was provoked to wonder about how many of these New Age and self-help groups nowadays are just taking advantage of folks who are convined in a roundabout way that they couldn't get it right in certain ways during the "normal" stages of development.
I would tend to conclude that I am quite satisfied to have already lived my childhood and the child within can not only stay dormant, it can hit the snooze button as many times as it pleases, thank you very much.
Posted by: MP MP at February 15, 2009 4:10 PM
Heartsy-flowery recreations of childhood are intrinsically a fraud.
Posted by: DC DC at February 19, 2009 5:02 PM
Heartsy-flowery recreations of childhood are intrinsically a fraud.
Posted by: DC DC at February 19, 2009 5:02 PM
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