Two nights ago I made a post about Marky Mark dancing in his underwear 20 years in the past. About an hour later, I sat down and processed out my feelings about the news of someone’s death that day. Life hops around.
Fanny pandering w/ Marky Mark
Fanny Chicken: tv spot #1 because it mentions stealing Calvins. Dig the Rick Astley dance moves!
And tv spot #2, which is even funnier and QUITE the period piece. “Cuz they don’t make the hype shawrts.” “They fit good and they hold, hold me snug [cut to crotch grab].” “Oh, she got fweckles.” Also: more Rick Astley dance moves!
Back in the day (rapping with the kids on these here internets) who would have guessed this meathead would end up a decent actor and highly accomplished producer?
In retrospect, he does show good wit and self-awareness. But that’s only in hindsight. Back then? MEATHEAD!
Would pay $1 for a recording of all that was going on in Kate Moss’ head. Okay, $5.
Weiner “sex addict”? Feh!
On the radio, a liberal talkshow host starting talking prudishly/compassionately/condescendingly about Mark Weiner having a “sex addiction” for having tweeted some photos showing off his plumage/prowess/power in a cyber mating display.
His main mistake with PR is ignoring the fundamental rule of them with scandal management: full disclosure, right away. Otherwise the news cycle gets extended as details leak out, and the coverage becomes about the coverup, not the initial transgression(s).
Ya know, we’re all primates. We all do undignfied things every day. Like, say, poop. We’re not a classy species. No big deal.
As long as Weiner didn’t harm anybody, he’ll get through. People love pecadilloes. Heck, they’ve shown time and again they find such behavior adorable. Shows that leaders are just like them. Weiner will get re-elected, no problem.
What is irritating is the media wringing its hands like the moral arbiters of the country. Not necessary.
TED Talks: a little precious
TED Talks are downloaded to my TiVo. I’m getting increasingly likely to delete with a scoff an episode based on the title, and even resistant to watching a whole episode I do choose to start. Viewing what I do has made me stronger, as I HATE flesh-ish colored foam covers on microphone headsets. Is that a floating tumor? A morsel of food? Hey, don’t think you can FOOL me, I KNOW you’re wearing a microphone!
Sidetracked.
Giving a TED Talk must feel like a big deal. No idea what the criteria are, why they are filmed in different towns. Does every city have a giant “TED” prop to drop on a stage any time someone feels profundity coming on? TED Talks feel rehearsed and precious.
Though this has to do with ladies’ fashion (not a topic I ever seek out), I watched this one all the way through. It was short:
The “Golly, I’m thrifty, but also paid money for wear-once clothing and then donated it back to make a point to you all” is charming on the surface, but the overall concept absurd. And the vibe of “dig my life” was a bit much. I was also distracted by “What kind of home life does she have?”
Not giving up on George Michael
George Michael is a genuinely talented, witty artist and I hope he gets (has?) his shit together so he can record more music – specifically upbeat music.
In the mid-80s, my high school girlfriend had much better, broader, deeper musical taste than me and her copies of Wham!’s ‘Fantastic’ and ‘Make it Big’ album sleeves were propped against her shelves and the platters on her turntable all of the time. Their songs were catchy, but I sniffed at the covers and the videos and saw it was all fun, but I wasn’t tuned into how deliberately arch the whole Wham! enterprise was.
It wasn’t until George Michael’s ‘Faith’ album that I grokked his ambition and inspiration and keen ear and artistry. Still immaculately groomed, but crikey, what a great, hungry, assured pop album the fellow made.
More fun and great singles kept coming over the years. Could care less about his sexual pecadilloes (did he have more than just the one?) but the public intoxication and driving under the influence incidents are troubling.
Still, that he had a sustained career for many years in pop music point to a reserve of talent. He’s one of the few music artists from the 80s & 90s I’d like to hear new music from. Not re-hashes of hits, but expressions of where he’s at. Oh, and upbeat songs. His ballads and slow-tempo big-picture songs tend to be snoozers.
Here’s an acoustic performance of “Freedom 90” pulled from about 100 hours of old videotapes. This website may be a repository of these morsels. Still deliberating on what to do with this space.
Oh, and this performance is 20 years old! Eeeek! Crossing fingers for ya, ya mad Cypriot!
I quit ‘American Idol’. Brain: “Thank you!”
I started watching ‘American Idol’ mid-way through the first season. Thought “Wow, that is a LOT of Coca-Cola logos all over the place all the time.” and “This is dorky.” and “That Brian Dunkelman guy and his ‘I’m so much BETTER than this dorkiness’ dorkiness is annoying. At least that Ryan Seacrest acts like he’s psyched to have a job.” Meh about the singers and their drama. Liked the damaged goods stripper mom about to get damaged-er Nikki McKibbin. Thought the boo-ing of Simon Cowell stupid – golly, he was the only one with constructive advice! Blah blah.
Even during the first season, I pegged that the whole process GUARANTEED I would never, ever end up buying a recording by a finalist, or even a contestant. All of the headcases, the interesting people, the oddballs, were weeded out. They are the only ones who make decent music.
Though, yes, clearly Clay Aiken looks like he’s into some dark, dark shit.
Yet, I kept watching.
It had watercooler value, providing good baseline conversations with people while out ‘n’ about. Weekly fascination with guessing at Paula Abdul’s biochemical state. Would she be slurry? Would she make shamanistic proclamations only fully apprehended weeks, months, generations hence?
And Simon Cowell. Sage observations on ‘Idol’. In his professional life: purveyor of crap. He masterminded the “No, really, is this shit serious?” opera boy band Il Divo. It is impossible to look at a photo of Il Divo and not laugh. I double-dog dare you.
If given some quiet, I can name all of the ‘American Idol’ champs. But I still have never, ever purchased a related recording. Not even William Hung’s “She Bangs”. If I hold to that for another 60 years, please note that in my obituary.
Paula “left”, replaced by a semi-dessicated groovy (but totally type-A) music industry chick who kept leaning over to the camera when she SHOULD NEVER LEAN FORWARD TO THE CAMERA unless she’s wearing something up to her neck. She had a funny moment with Bikini Chick, but otherwise, I’m glad to not have to look at her or listen to her again. Ah, I’m pretending to not know the woman’s name. I totally know her name. It’s Kara DioGuardi.
This year, I watched all the auditions and the whittling down. Then the last five weeks I’ve deleted unwatched ‘American Idol’ episodes off the DVR. And that’s, okay. Is it because any enterprise where Randy Jackson is considered the aesthetic anchor is doomed? Mebbe.
In farewell, I post two emblematic moments that stick in my head years after they happened on ‘American idol’. Katherine McPhee’s yellow dress. Kevin Couvais (aka “Chicken Little”) and his goofy shuffle across the stage to “Part Time Lover”.
Goodbye, ‘American Idol’. I wish you and your cross-promotions and product placements well. Seacrest, out.
Facebook a mural of holiday letters
My Facebook biota is full of people browsing, reluctant to contribute, unwilling to extend and be vulnerable.
That makes it less compelling to me. Still valuable as a news feed. Still good for bursts of life’s most presentable aspects scrubbed and groomed like sentences from family holiday newsletters. Feels like a shift more to posturing, less personal bravery. Even under pedestrian expressions (“Hey, gotta make another trip to the grocery store! LOLZ!”), chthonic frustrations can be readily detected (“If SOME people had planned a little better I wouldn’t be going to this goddamned grocery store again and having a SUPER-TEDIOUS conversation with the same clerk who will remark on how I’m back again 20 minutes later implying that I don’t have my shit together!”) – but I don’t want to have to work THAT hard.
I still like it for the quick-hit sense of interpersonal geography. A map of where people I know are, what they’re doing. Expands my sense of the breadth of the world – traveling to and from work can be a existential tunnel.
Many brave friends who have been willing to be vulnerable and articulate have burned out on Facebook and dropped off that mental map. Frequent thought of late: “Why is the News Feed less aesthetic, more anesthetic?” Several still hold on, the depth is appreciated (especially you who got notice from me about this blog – thank you).
Whittling down the list of Facebook friends might help. My list is too long, and I hear from people over and over they appreciate my posts, but they never interact with me. “Thank you!” I say to the compliment. “Grrr…” I say inwardly about these lurkers.
That dynamic has an advantage from a public relations standpoint, but what I’m perhaps yearning for is contact. Or solidarity with other people with peculiar brains. “Peculiar” = perceptive and honest. Life is damned peculiar, being peculiar shows attunement.
Emotional fitness test
Took a fitness test on an elliptical machine the last two trips to the gym, noticed my pulse RISES when listening to melancholy music, drops when listening to funk/soul.
Realistic diagnosis: memory of past dramas gets the adrenaline going.
Preferred diagnosis: I was born funky, bass is my baseline.
‘Twilight: New Moon’, My Deeper-Than-Necessary Thoughts
Okay, this movie is not intended for me, at the ripe age of 40.
When I heard about this series of books, I sniffed at it as abstinence-porn. Given the media onslaught and rabid mania, I slung more than my bodyweight of vitriol at the whole enterprise over the last year. But experience has shown that if I tear into something with zest, there’s something deeper fueling me, and diving in to explore may be rewarding.
Sitting in a theater with my spouse, sister-in-law Erin, and her husband Patrick, there was a lot of time to reflect. Frequent outbursts behind us during the previews from someone (who apparently doesn’t go to moving pictures very often) happily subsided by feature time. For the best, as it hurts the anecdote if I got into a fight at this movie, but was the one who slapped first.
I’d watched about the last 2/3 of ‘Twilight’ on DVD, enough to think that vampire baseball was a really neat idea. Then snorted and laughed at the rest. Sparkly! Aaaaa, so dreamy…
Still, I’d be lying to pretend to have been always above this.
In high school, chances are high that me and my above-it-all friends would have passed these books around and snarked heartily, after reading all of them cover-to-cover.
For two years in high school, I was involved in a relationship that fostered all the hormone & adrenaline charged drama and emotion two intelligent teens could muster. Proclamations promising the metaphysically impossible, wrung-out poems, 6-8 hour phone conversations (sometimes with half-hour long measured silences), nocturnal sneaking, exhilarating reconciliations, crying jags, pleading, yelling, counsel & support, quiet confidences. And at the time, we meant every syllable and exertion (paths diverged, all lives turning out happily and full).
I can’t cast stones in the region of heightened adolescent melodrama. Billions of teens before went through it, billions will go through it now and in the future. The pituitary gland is an agonizing mistress/master.
So, now that I’ve checked myself out of being snarky about 85% of the content of these ‘Twilight’ movies, what’s left to say?
For starters, Jeepers Christmas I cannot abide the pent-up dry-humping blue-balling abstinence fixation that throbs and rubs through these stories. Vampires who are exquisitely pained to give just one kiss, for fear of being stirred to more! Same for dog-people, apparently. Get too hot, and a were-boy has to leave the room lest his clothes fly off. And the dudes still end up with their shirts off, a lot. Pants are ALWAYS on, though. Quelle frottage!
I’ve been told, and have read plot summaries (Wikipedia FTW!) that Edward & Bella eventually do what their bodies are screaming at them to do, after marriage, but the longed-for deed gets conspicuously skimmed over, only to jump into a horrifying, bloody birth that leaves poor Jacob with one of the worst dating/dance cards ever.
Not a fan of abstinence-only education or perspective. Unwanted pregnancy rates rise where those programs flourish, and only drives kids to thinking they keep their virginity if they limit themselves to oral sex and doing it in the pooper (too ashamed to get prophylactics, natch). Teens will do what their bodies want them to do, and it’s dumb to not teach them broadly about all their options. Back to the fangs…
I laughed at a scene where two werewolves are scrapping in a forest, and there’s a shot setup as if the CGI tussle had knocked the camera down.
I respect that Taylor Lautner fought like hell and beefed up to keep his elevated role in this movie. He’s not charismatic onscreen, but serviceable, and naturally sympathetic when you know about the shit hand his character will be dealt at the end of the fourth book.
Robert Pattinson is okay. How a dude can be put in his spot and strike those poses and keep his wits together is a miracle. Given that brooding and tragic airs are required, the guy gets a pass there, too. And it lets me feel that Cedric Diggory is actually okay, if a bit glower-y.
But wowie, why does every other female student in that high school seems LOADS more tolerable and interesting than the lead character, Bella? I begrudge her the pain and the howling and other manifestations of high emotion, but she’s still a pill to hang around. Even as a tormented teen, I could usually pull my shit together for consecutive hours of unalloyed hilarity.
She’s largely passive, too: why does everyone ELSE seem to drive Bella’s pickup truck more than Bella? Appropriate, given all the other characters drag her along, or that things happen to her, but she rarely causes anything to happen. Maybe the DVD will have several deleted scenes of her driving her own damned truck.
How many movies have been made where the sole purpose a US citizen goes to Europe is to confer or be judged by some gilded/marbled room full of weary Europeans isolated from anything vital? Of course, when the US citizen doesn’t like the decree, shit gets busted up.
And the dad is there as the sanity-saver for those of us who are not Twi-hards (ironic phrase!), Twi-Moms, or there to admire beefcake. Clearly, Bella’s dad gets better and more solid sleep when she disappears for days on end. Maybe that’s why he approves of these supernatural hyper-drama boyfriends.
So, lousy movies, but I have a better understanding what the stories are about, my visceral revulsion toward them, and how they got hooks into several of my friends.