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.
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.
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.
So, got home and felt tired of the quick-hit jitteryishness of social media, resolved to take it easy and simply watch t.v. Quick-edit, junk t.v. That counts as serenity nowadays. Kinda messed up.
Two looks at chaos theory. A theme today. First, a decent, whimsical look by the venerable ‘Rocketboom’ from 2008:
Next, an explanation from ‘Jurassic Park’, one of the best movies ever, hammy, cheesy, chunky, a Denver omelette of entertainment. The pinnacle of the dozen of Jeff Goldblum scientist roles. Oh, how I love this performance…
Once the kids are out of high school, Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm will be my role model. That I will be 52 by then will make it even more unctuous and over the top. Letting you all know.
Despite driving while intoxicated/stoned in recent years, George Michael, according to YouTube, has given a concert within the last month. Among the songs he sung were covers by two of my favorite artists. “Let Her Down Easy” from Symphony or Damn by Terence Trent D’Arby (who now goes by Sananda Maitreya and still makes great music):
He also covers “Going to a Town” by Rufus Wainwright from the album Release the Stars. Here he admits to being stoned talking to Wainwright on the phone and not remembering the conversation afterward:
Mostly, I’m pleased to see George Michael being charming, lucid, and doing a good job selecting songs to cover. Hope he keeps it together…
In 1990, I fixated on how much I hated “Silent Lucidity”, the hit single by sensitive prog rock band Queensrÿche. When I really hated something in pop culture, I would delve deep to get agonizingly precise about WHY and HOW. This pathology led to a two-year obsession with Danzig. I can’t hear more than a few bars of Danzig without laughing. My buddy V, who got similarly obsessed, can get us going with quoting a Danzig grunt or mumble.
“Silent Lucidity” sounds like a Pink Floyd parody. I never liked Pink Floyd. Oh, those guys are fine as people, grateful to Dave Gilmour for bringing Kate Bush into the light, Roger Waters seems a decent bloke, and so sad about Syd Barrett, but in college people got so preciousssss about Pink Floyd, often while mocking my preference for Prince. Thus, Pink Floyd, the collective entity, has earned a karmic “kiss my grits”. Yes, I am all about pop culture vendettas.
BEHOLD this video. Be AWED how the lead singer dude looks into the camera, peering into YOU achingly, seeking solace, wanting to guide you in turn! LISTEN how “lucidity” is turned into five syllables, possibly seven, eight, infinite syllables extending to a fourth dimension! “As I lay next to you, in silent loo-sid-uh-tee-hee.”
So, my masochistic button in ’90 was pushed and I HAD to buy the cassette single (what’s that? Kids, they sucked, but that’s all we had after the Walkman revolution. Don’t worry about it.) of “Silent Lucidity”. This jihad followed my having just sold my car, my dear ’65 Buick Skylark Gran Sport, red, vanity plate “DANTE” (because it took me to hell and back, har-har). I persuaded my friend V to drive to the shopping mall. He agreed, but only if we went to Dairy Queen with out friend visiting from out of town, G, to eat Blizzards afterward. This was a fateful decision.
Bought the cassette single, we ingested Blizzards (gross! why were we girlfriendless?) and I got home. With ceremony, as my friend & roommate B was out, I put the cassette into my Walkman, and sat on the toilet.
I had felt a little flushed in the head eating the Blizzard. As the music played, it was clear digestion was not going well. Song went on, discomfort churned to disgust and I was at the mercy of some satanic gumbo gurgling in my intestines that couldn’t decide whether to evacuate & slither down through me to sewer pipes in a path back to hell, or wreak more horror by roiling within my mortal innards.
Composed myself enough to collapse into bed. The next morning I was running a 102 degree temperature and still had the runs. After sharing how ill I was, my roommate B did not register my ailment, and instead shared how he took exception to an obnoxious message I left for him on our answering machine (what’s an answering machine? Again, kids: don’t worry. You have inherited a better world). At that moment, I was not capable of interpersonal subtleties/apologies/analysis. I was fending for the integrity of soul and body, because of Queensrÿche, which had infiltrated and violated me from my very center.
So now I LOATHE the song. In fact, I didn’t even listen to the song or watch the video when posting it above. PTSD has etched the whole thing, and etched it deep.
And what is up with the ümlaüt in their name? If anÿone can provide an answer I’d be grateful.
“It has so many AWESOME parts. You simply won’t believe how much this book can change your life.”
“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.”
— Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
“Hello. My name is Elder Price, and I would like to share with you the most amazing book.”
— Elder Price, The Book of Mormon
When listening to the Broadway soundtrack (and eventually watching the show: YAY!) to the Tony-sweeping The Book of Mormon, I keep thinking of Marx’s compassionate point preceding the “opiate of the people” line.
The musical gets a LOT of deep digs in at Mormonism, but makes a profound point in its savage satire with complex, catchy, funny, moving songs. People need stories, and will adapt stories to resonate with them, no matter how ridiculous their sources. The more oppressed the people, the deeper the wish-thinking in their collective sigh for a tale to tie it all together.
“I’m going to take you back to Blblical times: 1823.”
— Elder Price, The Book of Mormon
Referral form used by Mormon missionaries circa 1993. Yes, my copy.
Joseph Smith, the founding “Prophet” of Mormonism, was a multiple-count convicted con-man “money-digger” who charged money to tell people where treasure was buried by using a sham device. The victims would dig where he told him. When they found nothing, the move was to say “Ah! The treasure must have moved, then. But it USED to be here.”
Smith claimed to be directed by an angel named Moroni (!) to dig in a yard in upstate New York, where a series of drilled-hole bound golden plates was buried telling the story of the Mormon people. A tribe of Jews sailed from the Middle East to the Americas and had a bunch of dull-ass adventures and talkity talk. Also, Jesus visited the Americas between the Crucifixion & Ascension. And Eden is in Missouri.
“I believe in 1978 God changed His mind about black people!”
— Elder Price, Book of Mormon
Mormonism was a hobby in my teens & 20s along with my buddy Paul and later on with buddy Fanny. More lore? Dark skinned people were marked because they were cursed, and ineligible to be full Mormons. Jesus and Satan are brothers. Only men are eligible for priesthood (crazy!) but since all men of age are eligible to be priests there is no vow of celibacy (whew!). In the afterlife, the blessed get their own planets (Coo-ol!). In 1978, the Mormon President announced a divine revelation that dark-skinned people could be full Mormons. New demographic for international markets!
Joseph Smith did not allow anyone to see the golden plates he got. He persuaded a neighbor, Martin Harris. to dictate him “translating” the golden plates from behind a suspended blanket. Smith was not even looking directly into the plates, but into magical seer stones set inside of a hat to block out all light. Harris was never allowed to see the plates. It became an obsession for Harris at the expense of maintaining his livelihood. His spouse, the brave Emma Harris, hero for the ages, had enough of this bullshit and swiped away the 116 pages of manuscript and demanded Smith try to reproduce them. No big deal, given he was reading from magical golden tablets still in tact. Right? RIGHT? In pure Imam/Vatican fashion, Smith declared the first manuscript infected by Satan (like the “Satanic Verses” of the Koran) and a new version from OTHER plates, even more pure, was incipient and would be dictated to other writers.
Back to the book. It sucks. It’s boring. It lifts entire sections of The Bible, and clumsily apes the poetry of the King James Bible. But the preface is AMAZING and crazy and ballsy and defensive. Joseph Smith persuading people to sign testimony they saw magical figures beaming in to interact with Joseph Smith. Check it out if you get a chance.
“Did you know that Jesus lived here in the U.S.A.? You can read all about it now. In this nifty book, it’s free, no you don’t have to pay!”
— Elder Young, Book of Mormon
In the 19th century Mormons DESPERATELY wanted to be a separate nation named Deseret that extended from what is now Utah to southern California, Nevada, chunks of Oregon, Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico. Congress threw them land-locked Utah territory instead. Also, polygamy was an important part of doctrine and critical in swelling LDS numbers. Polygamy isn’t as big a deal to my sensibilities now, so long as it’s between adults – when it leads to childbrides, though, send in the rescue teams! But polygamy got shed from Mormon doctrine more than a century ago.
“Eternal life is super fun! And if you let us in we’ll show you how it can be done!”
So, the Book of Mormon compounds a bunch of American crap with shoddy, all-too-human rubbish imagination and bigotry as a Third Testament to the New Testament, itself a collection of contradictions and tamperings by womb-fearing men written generations after the death of Jesus that ends with a petulant smashing of everyone’s toys and eternal torture of those not in the club. And the New Testament compounds the idiocy and superstitions of the Old Testament, a series of Iron Age myths written and edited and re-edited when Man did not know anything about anything. But the Book of Mormon, unlike the Old and New Testament, at LEAST acknowledges geography beyond the Middle East. So, point awarded to Joseph Smith. Still, a mish-mash glopped onto hash that was already on a pile of hash.
“I’m wet with salvation!”
The musical The Book of Mormon mocks a LOT of that, even starting up a FOURTH Testament to compound on Smith’s book with more absurdities. Magical frogs that cure AIDS. Boba Fett as divine instrument of justice. On and on. Each element hilarious and/or heart-wringing. Each of them adapted by a native people in despair and distress. Joseph Smith’s book evangelized by the Mormon missionairies bores them, but frogs that cure AIDS and holy admonitions to not circumcize people (in this case, women)? That resonates with them NOW!
The musical knows Mormons tend to be “really fucking polite to everyone” and plays it for laughs, then finds its heart there. Video below of a HUGE, grim laugh in the first half of the show. “Turn it Off”, a number about ignoring horrors and troubles, including being a closeted gay, by clicking them off, like a light switch. At this point, the two main missionaries, Elder Price (the tallest, handsomest, charismatic and most destined for greatness) and Elder Cunningham (shlubby, prone to making things up), are experiencing culture shock after arriving in a war-torn Uganda village where their fellow Mormons have failed to convert a single person. This number earned the main singer in the number (supporting player Rory O’Malley) a Tony nomination. Official video is not available, but here’s an amateur production that’s charming:
Nikki M James
Nikki M James has a Tony. She is talented and beautiful. World domination inevitable.After witnessing a violent act by a warlord general, Elder Price begins to doubt his destiny as the next Joseph Smith. His crisis of faith splits him from Elder Cunningham, who must take the lead after being disregarded his whole life. He falls in with a local girl Nabulungi (Nikki M. James, who won a Tony for the role) who is charmed by his imagination and sees him as a way out of the horrors of Uganda to a paradisal land called Sal Tlay Ka Siti. James’s performance of “Sal Tlay Ka Siti” (say it aloud to get the joke) is a turning point that the show will not be completely “Har har!” mockery of its characters. It’s moving, and she does a great job of selling the yearning in a song that ends: “I’m on my way/ Soon life won’t be so shitty./ Now salvation has a name. / Sal Tlay Ka Siti.”
Side note: the actors playing Ugandans have wandering accents, shifting from genero-African-ish to Carribean inflections and, heck, I’m not a dialectitionator. Not gonna go to Uganda to research this point. I’ll drop the pretense.
From the rousing final number: “Who cares what happens when we’re dead? We shouldn’t think that far ahead. The only latter day that matters is tomorrow.”Elder Cunningham flourishes and uses his lying/creativity to adapt and exaggerate and customize stories that resonate with the tribe, as Joseph Smith did. And the people exaggerate the stories even further to suit themselves.
The writers of The Book of Mormon (the dudes who make South Park and the composer behind Avenue Q) have mentioned originally they were going to have Elder Price killed by gunfire, leaving Cunningham completely alone to lead the tribe, as Joseph Smith was fatally shot and left Brigham Young to lead. A severe, intriguing idea. Price does not die (spoiler!) but does go on a divergent path that makes for a richer exploration of ideas about religion, faith, and not needing belief in heavenly reward to work to help people in this realm.
“We are all still Latter-Day-Saints. All of us. Even if we changed some things, or we break the rules, or we have complete doubt that God exists. We can still all work together and make this our paradise planet.”
This guy on staff was really cool about handling people eager to figure out how to get tickets.
The Book of Mormon is the hottest ticket on Broadway, even before reaping Tonys. I love theater, but had never been to a Broadway show, or New York City, before watching it August 13. I’m not much of a musical afficionado. The few musicals I do know, through film, I know deeply: Singin’ in the Rain, An American in Paris, West Side Story, Grease, and … that may be it. Oh, Purple Rain, but that doesn’t really count. The Les Miserables mania in the late 80s? Pass. Phantom of the Opera? Get the fuck outta here. Wicked? May see it before I die, but wouldn’t recognize a single song.
I dig theater. I’ve seen nearly 100+ productions at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival over the last 25 years, modern and classical productions. And I’m competitive about being the first audience member to clap. An embarrassing trait during classical recitals in the break between one musical movement to another.
But The Book of Mormon? I’d listened to the soundtrack maybe 20 times before seeing the show, and it’s the first time in my life I’ve owned a soundtrack for a currently running Broadway show.
It does skim ONE problem with regarding religion as stories – it’s okay to let other people follow whatever myths they want. But the evangelism, telling other people what to do, is where the true harm comes in. Why can’t people imbued with the Great Cosmic Answer seem content and happy? Why the need to bully others? Not so much a Mormon trait, but a general lamentation about the self-Elected.
Seeing the production, the script and plot points not conveyed by the songs themselves (though the songs do a great job of moving the story) was a great experience. Inspired acting and direction, catchy tunes, fun choreography. Toward the end of the show, I got teary-eyed from being so happy to be there and see the show with great wit and heart. It was fun watching the show with a friend who didn’t know what to expect. And even knowing what to expect, the show exceeded my hopes.
What I’m saying is: the story of The Book of Mormon really resonated with me. And I want to share its story with you.
Jay-Z seems a nice enough fellow, very much of his time. Kanye West is more forward-thinking and entertaining. I sympathize with his egomania, but it so echoes my own solipsism that his songs as they bounce within my ear canals give temporary relief at forming my own self-aggrandizing thoughts. Doesn’t count as entertainment, more a palliative.
And his pronouncements/stunts usually make 100% sense to me. Still have a hair-trigger wildly intense response to defending his bumrush of Taylor Swift in the name of Beyoncé and the integrity of art itself. Drumming fingers over lips contemplating a post about this. Three years late, sure, but the power of Internet Posterity compels it!
Any-hoo, gonna let the world chew on their joint album Watch the Throne, and see what singles come out of it. If I hear three singles I like, or two that I REALLY like, I’ll buy it.
In the meantime, here’s a cute photo of Jay-Z sitting next to Kanye who may be having a stroke. Anyone who reads this is HEARTILY welcome to come up with a caption.
Not that strokes are funny. If you are having one and reading this, for gosh sakes leave your mobile device/laptop/tablet/desk/WebTV and seek medical attention immediately. Unless you’re a faith healer, in which case goodbye and you may wanna close those browser windows of fetish porn in your last few flails and gasps.
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.
