We shot a music video yesterday.
And here’s hoping that I (and you) can see it soon. The Tigers are an awesome band.
- America for Sale - (warning: diatribe)
I like movies, flicks and films. And I read books and take photographs and go to museums and read about things and I love a hot discussion about shit and acting all intellectual, as if my opinion or my “interesting thought” will have any impact on the world that exists beyond this blind-eyed web-o-sphere. All of this revolves around culture. What most of us do in our goldeny spare time. It’s the cake of life, right?
Well, sorry time out (5 people who follow this blog) but some things just get me so riled I have to turn this keyboard into a microphone, broadcast to few but broadcast pedantically/obnoxiously.
I first heard about EB-5i on NPR a couple weeks ago and I got really hyper and pissy about it. But I was in the car and traffic is more important than anything here in LA. Plus I was going to The Grove and I was super annoyed about having to deal with that hellhole of bad foot traffic planning one week before Christmas. So it sort of stirred in the back of my head for a while.
EB-5i is a government immigration plan, started in 1991, that allows foreigners to buy a green card for 500 grand. It’s based on investing in American projects and guaranteeing a certain number of jobs (a minimum of ten, I believe - but this is a diatribe not a fact checking mission). That’s it. One lotto scratcher ticket win, a few friends and you’ve got a green card.
Now, let me be clear about where I stand on a couple things. I do not want a fence around this country. I think we should actually accept the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. They can pay taxes and everything will eventually work out fine. Amnesty. Blah blah blah.
What makes me want to roll up, Biggie style, in front of Congress and blow my horn a few rounds is that those dicks yell back and forth across the aisle about fences and terrorists and the TSA and shampoo bottles… yet, lo and behold, all you really need to do is invest in a ski resort in Vermont, plop down what is mad money to some and - BLAMMO - Inside Job.
Think about it for a second…
Let’s keep the brown people out down south. The day laborers. The non-taxpayers. The only ones with a glint in their eye of the true American Dream. We’re not worried about the Canadians up north because they don’t really care about us since we don’t have a national health care system or a bloodline. Instead, let’s offer a port of entry to the wealthy, business building, job creating Chinese. And any other wealthy person that can pay. A few jobs, a few tax dollars and and a nice chunk-a-change at the drop. But what, exactly, are the interests of the green card seeking business venturers other than, well… business ventures and cheap vacation property?
Is this what it has come to in this dream of a dreamy dream dream country? Is this what John Adams (or John Locke a century prior, for that matter) had in mind when he thought about the years ahead for his newborn little baby Democracy? The Great Experiment! Yup. Hear Ye, Hear Ye … Come on down! Buy a piece of The American Dream. Make some money. Then go on home. At least then you can travel to and fro easily. And if you’re a part of the ever increasing “Axis of Evil” then welcome! We hope you enjoy the inside view… Sorry everyone is so rude, we’re pretty xenophobic here! TTFN!
I’m pretty damn sure that if this is what we’ve come to then the experiment is over (and it failed). Look around. When banks are loaning money to people who can’t afford to pay them back then something is stupid wrong. When great white shark investment companies are in bed with the government then something is scary backwards. When the same people that are pissed about their social security & medicare getting cut are yelling about “Obamacare” being anti-American, well then we gots to rethink the situation. (And don’t even get me started on the existence of lobbyists and what that portends.)
Okay. I’m done. You get it. I’m gonna go see if I can buy my way in to Norway. I like a little socialism. And, after all, this life biz is pretty nasty, brutish and short.
NOT EVERYONE HAS TO CHANGE…
I watched Young Adult this weekend with an eager fever. Which usually means I’ll be super disappointed. Not often am I the direct-hit target audience of a flick. I mean, I am supposed to be. But I am not the average bear. The lush-y luscious Miss Theron plays a mid-30’s, divorcee with a flagging career. She’s bitter, bratty and has a super bad attitude. Sounds familiar to me. Scarily familiar. Also, from the trailers, she didn’t seem too keen on babies, drank heavily and appeared quite fond of a particular high school ex-boyfriend… check, check and check. Was I beginning to be embarrassed that my life was looking like a movie written by someone with a name that sounded like that of a Country Western porn star? Um, yes…
So, I enjoyed the movie. More than I even thought I would. There are some moments, and at least one whole scene even, of real genius. Theron’s character, Mavis, is an actress’ dream, I would imagine. She’s despicable, she’s ruthless, she’s half-cocked crazy. She never cracks an unpremeditated smile. (She’s certainly not sugar-coated me.)
But what I love about this movie is the ending. Unlike every single movie that comes out, Young Adult somehow managed to get away with NOT being forced to have it’s leading character learn from her mistakes, make a huge change, a round of apologies or the like and sweetly end the movie with the current cutesie indie track or a quirky composition swelling as the credits start to roll. No, thank you.
Some characters, like the people they try to represent in life, are irredeemable. Some people don’t change. This thought always brings to mind the character of George Roundy, played by Warren Beatty, in Shampoo. Wow, he would have made a great boyfriend if only he could have been monogamous, right? Oh, please… He was not built that way. It’s the silly women who thought they could change him that are to blame for their own broken hearts. And there a million George Roundys out there in the semi-real world. And there are just as many Mavis’. The point in these two movies isn’t what makes them tick or how they change. The point is to watch them in their natural habitat for a little while, observe how they crash around the world effecting the lives of others without a backward glance.
While I may have clamored to watch this film because of my distinct feeling of familiarity with the character of Mavis, I lost this association fairly quickly. But I stayed pretty glued by performance, by dialogue and, most laudably, by a consistent affection for a potentially contemptuous character.
The Salad Days… I love this photograph. Terry has managed to tip off recollections from at least three decades of my life in this image. But primarily it sends me swinging to those bright moments somewhere in 1995 - 96 when I was so in love and had a wedding band on my finger. I loved my job. My best friend looked like Freja does in this picture. And she smiled just like this, naturally, all the time. Weekends were Woodstock or 4:00AM at the flea market.
Shit was fun.
We were stomping down the platform at the Canal Street station of the ACE, arm in arm in arm… my then husband and my then roommate. I became overwhelmed with the light and lovely sense of hope and beauty. And I knew that this was due so much in part to the passing nature of love and youth. My then husband, sad that I would think such a feeling could be short-lived, pulled me tight into him as we waited for the train.
Sometimes being right really blows.
(via starryeli)
I saw this movie at AFI Fest the other night. Buckled into my seat, I leaned over to my friend and sneered “I wonder if all these industry whimps know what they’re in for” referring to the harrowing, and incredible, experience of Steve McQueen’s previous film, Hunger.
I guess they already knew that this was McQueen’s giant step down from “film” to “movie” (aka “Hollywood film”). Like Fincher or every third Soderbergh movie.
It was beautiful. Sexy sometimes. Reaching very hard for an impact or some meaning but failing to make any connection whatsoever. Like Fassbender’s character. Oh, I guess that was the point. Duh.
We are supposed to believe that Fassbender’s character is a sex addict. Except all that he does is have sex, jack off, watch a lot of internet porn and partake of a prostitute now and then. Sounds like my life, minus the prostitute. And I don’t see the shame in that.
He’s single, charming, attractive and has intimacy issues. Sounds like anyone that would be interesting to me…
He has a messed up sister. Who is single, charming, attractive…
The problem is that I’m just not interested in either of these people. I don’t care. I’m only waiting to find out why the damn thing is called Shame because I ain’t seeing anything to be ashamed of.
(And the McQueen has no sense of screen direction and geography. Even if you’ve never made tracks through Manhattan you’d be confused by this place… which, if done on purpose, does not serve this story at all. It just comes off as amateur.)
I’ll give it this… I was compelled to keep watching. Each frame is visually stunning and there is a lovely sense of doom that pervades even the most benign conversation. But a story about sex and isolation and the inability to connect can not be told without making the effort and portraying the eventual failure to do just that. Hmmmm, kinda like this movie.
… and some are worth a quiet reverie.
Hedi Slimane was quite the storm when he became the head designer for YSL and created Yves Saint Laurent Homme in 1997. All the young hipsters in their tight black pants and skinny ties who haunt the Silver Lake venues and the LES bars owe their sex lives to him.
But then he turned his head on LVMH & Prada Group and picked up a camera. One that had film in it. That needs chemicals. And enlargers. And darkrooms.
Here we can see the often breathtaking result.
As is apparent, he’s always been influenced by rock music. And what whispers through his lens and out on to paper and screen are incredible moments of rock future, rock past and rock hope. I can’t look away.
Go see his show, California Song, if you’re in LA…
