Went with the family to watch Hugo, a movie we all enjoyed. Nice to watch a kids film that didn’t feel obliged to make rapid fire jokes with pop cultural references to get an easy laugh of recognition without requiring any wit (HATE that!). Hugo is about art, cinema (ekphrasis alert!), orphans, inspiration. As portrayed in the film, all Parisians have British accents. Good to know! Will British ribbing of the French ever cease? Sascha Baron Cohen does a good job as a demi-villain, too. Oscar nomination for Best Picture seems likely.
Although, for less than a second, during a tumult in a Paris train station, JAMES JOYCE makes an appearance in a café! For this dormant Joycean, a pleasing touch.
On the way back home in the car, the kids insisted on listening to The Book of Mormon soundtrack. I am very proud when they start singing along. I skipped playing the song “Hasa Diga Ebowai” which has lyrics like “Fuck you god, in the ass, mouth, and cunt. Fuck you in the eye.” (with a bouncy melody!). They asked why I skipped it (which they’ve heard before).
My 11 y/o son: “Is it because of the bad words?” I said: “Yes, and it’s because your Mom is in the car and I don’t want to shock her.” That turned into a sarcastic flurry with me asking the kids in the back seat things like: “So, you’re telling me you kids continue to make good decisions about what words to use, and when, and don’t feel the need to say dirty words at every single opportunity?” When the joshing subsided, I STILL did not play the song. In role modeling that authority often involves erratic rules, my children are learning important life lessons.
We DID listen to the song “Man Up”, which has the line “Christ, he manned up.” Son asked what that was about. After a few seconds to compose my thoughts, I summarized the story of Jesus Christ’s passion, the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension in neutral language in about a minute and a half! Yes, I am bragging about that, have EARNED it, and…
Male baton twirler with the Oregon State University marching band in their halftime show against Oregon November 26. They lost 49-21. It’s a fair guess this baton twirlrer didn’t really give a shit about that.
My baton casts a glamor spell on the throngs stacked all around and above me in the stands. Eyes on me, drawn to my poise and flash as schoolmates waddle with bulk strapped to their trunks. I am unencumbered. I interpret the music. Many watch to thwart me, to hope I drop the baton. I will not let them win. I am here to instill triumph for those who trust in me. I am not asked to show my legs like my more common baton twirling sisters. Just as well as my legshow would incur mass envy. I am slim. I am quick. I can toss and catch on the beat. I am strong. I am fierce. I twirl the baton as a goddamned man. I am a warrior.
On a two hour road trip this weekend, we played through three Wiggles albums for the first time in years. Fun was had by all, nostalgia was had by three (two parents and son – our daughter born three years later grew up with non-Wiggles music).
The Wiggles are a four-person music-for-kiddies group formed in Australia. Three of the four were early childhood educators, and it shows in their songs. Not brilliant music, but they make an effort to sing about healthful eating, safety lessons, other cultures, and silly things.
Around 2001, we bought a Wiggles videotape and watched it over and over. As our son danced with happiness, and I often danced with him, we adults made short back stories as grown-up minds are wont to do during kid shows. The leader, Greg (yellow shirt), was an affable dork on the surface who subtly but effectively rebuffed any attempt by other Wiggles to take the lead. Anthony (originally green shirt, then blue, and the first Captain Feathersword ’til they found another actor) was a lothario, a permanent beta who WANTED to take charge but couldn’t stop carousing enough at night to pull a coup together during the day. Murray (red shirt) was even dorkier than Greg, and just wanted everyone to get along. Jeff (purple shirt) was a political prisoner held against his will. These backstories/coping mechanisms kept us amused for years.
We took our son to see The Wiggles when he was about two. Great energy in the theater full of toddlers and happy parents. Murray even made it up to the balcony to say hi and delight the kids.
Greg had to leave after several rampantly successful years with shows in many countries, including choice placement on the Disney Channel and huge tours. He had a cardiac problem. He was replaced, but we didn’t track The Wiggles past that point.
But enough of my yakkin’, let’s boogie.
“Hot Potato” is The Wiggles version of “Satisfaction”. If they didn’t perform this song dutifully for their fans, riots may erupt. Video features the friendly pirate Captain Feathersword (he’s the pirate with the feather sword) and “Paul” a chef-looking dude who must be a mate of theirs in real life:
Less fun (because they’re all sitting) but a better tune is “Fruit Salad”. To continue the Stones analogy, it’s their “Honky Tonk Women”.
Close to my favorite song is “Shaky Shaky”. Video quality here is shoddy (alas, friendly pirated media!) but it’s an Elvis nod. When watching the Disney Channel was a daily occurrence in our home, I noted Disney aired this bit on Elvis’ birthday and the anniversary of his death. Clip is enhanced by the sounds of a toddler in the room:
Yes, I did want to be a Wiggle, and eight or nine years ago would have been ready to don a colored shirt and hit the ground running. Though I’ve fallen out of practice, if called I will serve. Hope you are taking it easy, Greg. And good work. Beauty, mate!
This is the head of character Jasper Cullen. It is ridiculous and makes me laugh.Dragged my spouse to the latest Twilight movie: Breaking Dawn, Part One. She’s read all the books. I only read the birth scene in the final book. It was weirder than de Sade.
The Twilight phenomenon seems to have petered out. Or the Twi-Hard Moms have moved along. Early on, seeing middle-aged women swoon and slobber over this teen-oriented series was annoying. By annoying, I mean made me jealous. Hopefully these same women were granting a pass to their partners/dudes swooning/slobbering over attractive female celebrities. Doubtful? Sure.
Also had trouble getting through my own teen (okay, also twentyish) romantic melodrama PTSDs. Due to about $150,000 spent on Scientology training (I now am Tom Cruise’s official toothbrusher) and extensive re-re-reading of The Secret (vision board iPad app allows me to manifest things while on the road, BAM!) I am now well past projecting onto the Twilight saga and can regard it dispassionately.
This movie was boring.
The director must have been chanting: “One more time, with less effort.” Poor actors.
Per usual with the series, any scene of characters enjoying themselves must be followed by a tenfold of regret. Not life as a series of ups and downs, but one iota of pleasure carries heavy shame and angst every time.
One night of sex? Aftermath: 100% pregnancy rate, bruises, brooding, apologies, locals yelling curses at you, lethal vampiric fetus a tumor consuming and breaking you from within.
Every night is a full moon. Either the whole story takes place during one evening OR the characters are catatonic for 27 consecutive days and emerge only on the 28th. Like Brigadoon, but slightly faster.
The birth scene is obscurely done. Dull disappointment.
Jacob, the teen werewolf, imprinting on an infant as a future mate? Oh, they kinda tried, but the audience laughed. There’s no way to win that. Dorky, disturbing, trying to make us swoon over something heinous. I laughed, too.
Looking for scenes of dog-punching? This movie’s got it, though confusingly edited.
Despite what the poster hints below, the vampires from Europe have essentially no presence in the film. Just as well, given Europeans are E-VIL in these movies. They have their cra-zazy adequate healthcare systems, respect for other nations, sense of place in human history. E-VIL. If you’re worried about American minds being exposed to European ideas in this movie, fret not.
The Alarm, (left to right) Other guys, Not-BonoAchtung Baby came out 20 years ago. An occasion for curmudgeonly reflection and latent proclamation of mental ossification. First, I welcome being a curmudgeon. Second, I think the junk music today is loads better than the junk music of the 80s and 90s. Third, this may be the best era ever for quality television. There is no way to watch all of it. We live in days of wonder.
I caught onto U2 late. I am not, and have never been, cool. There was a span of time in the early 80s I confused them with The Alarm, a Welsh band deliberately trying to muddle kids on just that point.
Got into them during The Unforgettable Fire, (yeah, yeah. Boy and October and all that. If Casey Kasem or Dick Clark wasn’t talking about ’em they didn’t exist – remember, me = not cool). Loved the doo-wop part in the background of “Pride (in the Name of Love)” – really, it’s there. Got The Joshua Tree and decreed it with millions of others as a Very Big Album imbued with shamanistic powers. It took many months before the sanctimony blockade was broken and some of us peeped to each other that “Bullet the Blue Sky” was really annoying and doofy.
Rattle and Hum came out, people cried hubris. The cowboy ensembles were redonkulous, but the songs and the Think Big, Sing Big, Feel Big, and Rehash Our Hit Song as a Gospel Piece to Show We’re Down had highs and lows, but by golly, they were trying. And Bono critiquing lyrics with B.B. King? On film? And Larry Mullen Jr. crying after sitting on Elvis’ motorcycle? That shit is just funny. Remember, United Kingdomers grow up with Monty Python running 24-7 (or do they go by metric time there?) so they communicate only through irony. Get it now? Yes, see? Ha ha. U2 was having a laugh.
Word got out U2 was recording with Brian Eno (Bowie fan: So, what’s new?) in Berlin (Bowie fan: Whaaaa? Are they doing the “oblique strategies” thing? I don’t know what’s real anymore.). They ended up doing most of the work in Dublin, but, oh, for a while there…
When the first track off Achtung Baby came out, “The Fly”, it sounded really dense. Then the video came out with Bono putting on large sunglasses and a new personna, The Fly – studied poseur and oily, louche behavior – that caused a one-two reaction: 1.) Bono is taking control of the mockery by surpassing it? 2.) is he making fun of Michael Hutchence from INXS?
This was a big deal, the album was even better, and their Zoo TV shows took their cues from the video above. A great artistic maneuver, taking control of public perception and bending it.
Bono and supermodel Christy Turlington, Dec. 1992 Vogue (logo in black leather).But 20 years later, Bono has still not ditched the shades and the distance.
Side note: Henry Rollins Jr. has called Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. the worst rhythm section of any major band. Discuss.
I saw the Zoo TV tour in the Tacomadome in Spring 1992. I think the Pixies opened (?) but didn’t know the Pixies very well. They weren’t mainstream enough (me = not cool, though I respect the disdainful and wistful look you got on your face just now). The show itself was great. Huge flourishes, sensational, touching songs, big confidence and humor.
Drive back with my buddy was long. 6+ hours. We were exhausted. Risky driving on the road kind of groggy. A stop at AM/PM for provisions was a life-saver. Stayed up all night and went to class the next day punchy. A great 24 hours.
U2 was on the t.v. all the time about how t.v. is so pervasive in our culture. Bono smoking slender dark brown cigarettes, engaged in, using, bemoaning “Las Vegas trash” sensibilities. The phrase is short hand with my concert buddy for evoking the whole period.
Why was I in a years-long dating drought? All so clear now. Too late to rescue him, the dope.
Zooropa was a really good album, continued weirdness. Didn’t feel as big a statement, but it was fun to see the band stretching itself. Easy to suspect taking mushrooms or cocaine with Brian Eno in the studio, Daniel Lanois playing with Radio Shack kits to insert bleeps and blurps and to make Eno laugh. Who wouldn’t take up THAT opportunity?
Looking for pharmaceutical ads, found this awesomer image. Listen to any Coldplay or U2 song of the last 15 years while staring at this. It WORKS, right?POP Mart came out and U2 bored me for good. Save for the occasional uptempo single, their songs now sound like backing tracks for bucolic pharmaceutical commercials with kids frolicking in a pasture, or ads of people finding liberty granted them by a cell phone company boasting about its signal strength. Like Coldplay (sorry Linnae). Bought their album with the single “Vertigo” (the one in the iPod ads) in it as a final act of obedience/loyalty, then have stopped. One or two albums have come out since then. Mehhhh…
Listened to the whole album again the last few days. Doesn’t tug at me as it used to. Still like the Achtung Baby song “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)”, despite or because of lyrics: “When I was all messed up, and I had opera in my head/Your love was a lightbulb, hanging over my bed”. One of those naff things where he’s singing about a chick or Jesus or both (a bearded lady with messianic powers?). Video below is from a 2009-10 ish tour trying to sell a DVD. Still, a good performance:
By the way, I have a really funny joke about U2. Ask me to tell it to you sometime.
Sitting in deep thoughts, realizing I have thought these thoughts before and I rarely realize new deep things I deliberate and determine to go to bed rather than chance the arrival for a rare new thought.
In sustaining joys, jarring absences by death, by geography, by time, by recycling things in mind churn and churn and I resolve to rest to be more adept and acute for the next day of new circumstances and the assurances of familiar uncanny echoes and reliable routines.
Wisdom and time give ballast. In practiced, palliative breaths shivers of memory are expelled through my arms and fingers and absorbed into bone and blood and meat to be borne quietly for guidance and haunting.
Dilemmas become routine, as for everyone. I exhale and go to solid sleep.
Web browsing led to a train of thought from U2 to The Alarm to Michael Hutchence to Kylie Minogue and ultimately to watching the video to her “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” from 10 (!) years ago:
A glamorous sheen, wit, fun choreography, confidence in presentation. Gay as hell.
She’s a knockout, of course, but something is off-putting. Her face at times looks masculine. Her lips in the second segment (white cowl – does it count as décolletage if it doesn’t really connect up until the floor?) are done up raw in a way that’s perhaps MEANT to be uncanny. Easy to imagine The Joker going “Hey, dial it down!”
[No, comic book villains do not regularly appear in my erotic imagination. Thanks for the concern.]
An example of pop culture with attractive women ostensibly paraded for straight-male admiration, but REALLY directed to tastemakers. Watching this video is like witnessing a meteor carefully composed and launched from a magical land called Art, then we in the hoi polloi cluster of breeders gape while it streaks above. We coarsely admire and think whatever base things we are meant to. The luminous missive is finally received in the distant land of Aesthetes where the denizens eagerly decode and coo over the embedded messages the mass of us in the valley could not detect.
I dutifully bought the single in 2001. No worries about helping subsidize secret semaphore between Art and Aesthetes, even though I don’t know what the hell these brilliant bursts of white light mean half the time. Purty lights!
Elbows behind back, flashing jazz hands is my favorite part.
Keep discovering more people I know who wear these nightguards in their mouths to fend off nocturnal teeth grinding (allegedly). They cost about $800-900 and aren’t covered by insurance. Hmm…
Three close friends have them, as revealed the only three times the conversation has come up (100% hit rate!). A colleague who works in the office next to mine ALSO has one. Her dentist told her: “I’d be concerned about your teeth if you were 60 years old, even 70.” Which is the same line MY dentist (different from hers) used to scare me into getting one (attained June 2010).
The dentist couldn’t tell if the wear & tear happened years ago OR UP TO AND INCLUDING LAST NIGHT! Another dentist in the 90s suggested I get one, so I relented this decade.
Are we really that stressed out? Are we playing into a dental windfall, our mouths a glittering cavern of glistening coins to be mined by the DDS?
Am also left to wonder at the common element: me. Is there something I’m doing that’s causing us to collectively clatter and clack into the night with these damnèd things? If so, sorry.
I never had dental-related anxiety dreams before, now every few months I dream of mortifyingly pulling out a ever-replenishing supply of top-row teeth, the row my nightguard is fitted for. Is the subconscious message: “Hey, you’re too stressed, maaan.” or is it “Get rid of your teeth, they’re playing right into THEIR hands!”?
Questions, QUESTIONS! Conspiracies! It’s enough to make a person REALLY stressed out!
[Jaw clenches, teeth grind so hard that fragments of enamel ignite into sparks, scalding inner cheeks]
The past weekend’s episode of Saturday Night Live had a funny skit about the Greek economy that took place on Olympus. Ya, ya. Seeing it four days later (sometimes being a parent with a full-time job hinders timely consumption of pop culture doses). While not truly fair to the Greek gods, the skit was pretty funny. Felt like someone making fun of your parents: a blend of “Ha ha” and more than a few “Hey, watch it, now!” complete with the wag of an admonishing finger.
Imagine a world (dream or nightmare) where I am an omnipotent force over the entire United States. After some thought, I have decided against omniscience. Enough waking hours are spent sprawled with my own thoughts on a chaise lounge, back of my hand pressed against forehead, lamenting “Lo, the burden of consciousness!” to find any appeal in compounding that by a factor of 300 million more thoughts.
Keeping the basic structures of the government intact, some things I would change:
FAITH Anyone who cites The Bible as a source of logic and/or a magical Christian force as directing his/her political campaign must be immediately quizzed. If he/she can correctly name 2/3 of the books of The Bible, that person will be deemed a true believer and can retain office. If the person can name only half of the books of The Bible, a discretionary oral quiz may be administered asking for a convincing interpretation of the “Book of Solomon” within the context of the Old Testament. If done with decent feeling, the person will pass. An interpretation citing “Solomon” as a prophecy of the arrival of Christ will result in an automatic fail (remember, OT context).
Failing the quiz means loss of office, being publicly branded a “poseur”, and his/her constituents must elect someone else.
GAY MARRIAGE Anyone who has voted or spoken within the last ten years against the right of homosexuals to marry within shall immediately be gay married for a period no shorter than two years. This shall serve two purposes: 1.) It will prove to the person that homosexuals can be conventional and not 100% as exotic and “on” as the media portrays. 2.) Most importantly, gay-bashing zealots are likely closet cases and the steady understanding of a same-sex partner will chill them the fuck out.
BIRTHERS Any elected official who maintains or alleges Barack Obama was not born in the United States of America, and thus should not be President, must be removed from office and his/her constituents must elect someone else. Birthers are latent (or overt) racists and have not shown this vigilance monitoring the pedigree of any white President. They are also patsies to the neo-con playbook defining Obama as an “Other”. GTFO. Birthers may be admitted back into office after having given a verbal mea culpa named A Very Special Testimonial. Any Testimonial citing having several friends/acquaintances from various ethnicities shall result in immediate disqualification and the ban from office maintained.
TEA PARTY Any elected official proclaiming themselves a Tea Party member must be removed from office save for meeting condition (a) below and their constituents must elect someone else. They are corporate neo-con patsies, and have shifted from railing against bank bailouts (understandable), to now thinking Obamacare is the greatest problem our nation faces. Sadly, they found their sense of purpose when a black man took office and were not visible when white President Bush started two wars conducted off the books, a record-setting corporate welfare giveaway, massive deficits, warrantless wiretapping of citizens, and torture.
(a) If a Tea Party member can show evidence he/she protested Bush-era issues at the time they occurred he/she will get a totally pimp-ass card made from platinum and jewels, and free gas for a year. One has been made up for Ron Paul, otherwise the expense of this offer is expected to be limited.
REMEMBERING ME There shall be no establishment of religion for the purpose of worshipping the God Emperor of the United States. First, it’s a recipe for trouble and institutional corruption. Second, I don’t respect kiss-asses.
Rather than typical prayer — usually involves taking the position of a slave to the master, pretentious whispering/chanting — contacting the God Emperor of the United States shall happen strictly through Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ where I shall be sure to see it.
On the way back home in the car, the kids insisted on listening to The Book of Mormon soundtrack. I am very proud when they start singing along. I skipped playing the song “Hasa Diga Ebowai” which has lyrics like “Fuck you god, in the ass, mouth, and cunt. Fuck you in the eye.” (with a bouncy melody!). They asked why I skipped it (which they’ve heard before).
