Metaphysical kitty. Made this as an experiment.
Sting, biochemical love, loss of mind.
Sting is an example of an artist with a strong personality needing other strong personalities for balance/combat to create better art. The Police was a better act than Sting as a solo artist because the band had two people who could tell Sting to shut up.
Yet I poured over his first two solo albums, so great was the devotion to The Police. Grant me wisdom! Musical genre dabbling! Dribblings of wisdom! Then realized he was a dork. A slow period of acceptance.
I laughed when he appeared in diapers extolling the virtues of yoga in the early 90s (I later took on yoga). His tantric sex boast about maintaining a state of orgasmic arousal for four hours caused tittering across our Puritan nation (including me). Now? Dude, if you can manage it, bully for you. When I made that boast in Oregon shopping malls instead of MTV, it failed to pay dividends.
Sting claps during the Nothing Like the Sun tourWhen the song “Straight to My Heart” off his second late-1987 solo album Nothing Like the Sun came up as a topic, my girlfriend at the time and I mocked Sting (not around to defend himself) about being so showy over writing a pop song with a 7/8 time signature. In the Nothing Like the Sun tour, he had a little drill for the audience to teach us all to clap in 7/8 time. Nailed it! I can also clap on the 2/4 and 4/4 (noted on my résumé) but for genetic reasons cannot clap on country music’s 1/4 and 3/4 (not noted on résumé).
Video below is from a “Symphonicity” tour he did a few years ago. Sting/Police songs played backed by a symphony. I refused to attend, for religious/aesthetic reasons over the title. Haven’t gone to a Sting show for over 20 years. Yet on top of that “Synchronicity” = “Symphony” = “Symphonicity”? Yeesh.
YET, years later, I find myself charmed by the song. (1988 Me and Then-Girlfriend laugh at Present Me. I nod obeisantly, then turn with a grin and think: “Oh, brother, what you’ve got coming…”) The song is a defiance of the knowledge that romance is a state caused by biochemistry, not metaphysics.
A sub atomic chain
Will maybe galvanize the brain
A biochemic trance
Will eliminate romance
But why ever should we care
When there are arrows in the air
Formed by lovers’ ancient art
That go straight to my heart
Here are lyrics that would make a great Valentine’s Day card:
But what will make me yours
Are a millions deadly spores
Formed by lovers’ ancient art
That go straight to my heart
In an interview Henry Rollins did with Howard Stern years ago, he shared many insights. Two that have stuck: 1.) U2 may have the worst rhythm section of any major rock act 2.) Sting is a wickedly talented person, but if you buy a Sting CD then you have pretty much given up on music.
As “Straight to My Heart” has earwormed me the last couple of days, I have to allow for my own aesthetic/mental entropy. It’s possible to draw a straight line to a day when I will be in an old folks home (as an old folk) standing on a chair and singing Sting’s song “Russians” at the top of my lungs until the orderlies are summoned. Present Me mourns Future Me’s diminished mental state, but nods at what a kind of small bad ass moment that would be.
Ah, I get it now! “Popsicle” = tumescent male appendage!
“California Gurls” [excerpt] by Katy Perry
Daisy dukes, bikinis on top.
Sun-kissed skin, so hot
We’ll melt your popsicle.
Uh-whoah-oah. Uh-whoah-oah.
For AGES I took these lyrics to be a flat, scientific statement. Of COURSE human skin, exposed, presumably at normothermia let alone warmed by the sun, would carry sufficient heat to melt a popsicle that will turn liquid well before reaching 98.6 degrees Farenheit (37 degrees Celsius for the rest of the world).
Nearly two years after this poem was released in 2010, it finally occurred to me this was a metaphor. See, a man’s popsicle (i.e. penis), normally rigid in a state of arousal, would find itself liquified due to the allure and heat generated by the narrator’s Daisy Duked clan. Fine enough considered blithely. To give longer thought to an organ melting, though, seems horrible. Like what happens to that Nazi’s face when the Ark of the Covenant is opened in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Thanks but no thanks, Ms. Perry. Has anyone checked that Snoop Dogg is okay?
Growing up (in 2002) and Peter’s bouncy giant zygote
Summer 2002 at a mutual friend’s wedding, saw an ex-girlfriend I hadn’t spoken with in ten years. My main response? Shame. See, I had come to realize I had been a major drip, clingy, and utterly failed to see that a cross-continental relationship between two young people who could not afford to travel cross-continent (and my drippy behavior had already begun in-person) was a not-so-good idea. She saw that early on, I didn’t and kept on dripping long afterward.
BUT a Peter Gabriel concert tour was taking place that winter. After 17 years of Gabriel fandom, I had never seen him in concert. It had been 10 years since his last album. And it was coming to Seattle where my friend lived. I took two buddies along. She hosted and toured the three of us through fun corners of the city. It was fun. She was stalwart about being a tour guide to three goons. My mind kept going whoosh between past and present and I somehow managed to insert sentences in between urges to apologize for drippiness.
All that made me VERY ready for the Peter Gabriel concert. He’s one of the few artists I tuck in deep. My favorite song on his album up was Growing Up (which had the deepest groove) and I was delighted how over the course of the show the staging by Robert Lepage (who also works with Cirque du Soleil) had a huge overhanging egg. Then the egg covering fell away to reveal a round moon image projected from within. Then the moon’s covering fell away to reveal a giant transparent egg cell that lowered slowly onto Peter Gabriel as he inserted himself within it as the opening bars of “Growing Up” began. And then he moved around the stage in the zygote, and bopped up and down to the song.
The birth of my second child was pending in about four months. The song is about birth and engaging the world (like how we first learn to identify one point in space, then two, then three… I kept thinking about how my daughter would be coming into the world, ready to bop about (which came true). The female vocalist on the stage is Melanie Gabriel, Peter’s daughter, and her making way for her daddy’s strolling zygote was even more amusing.
It was a hazardous drive back, heavy rain and wind, VERY tired, the laughs back in the car exhausted after the first hour or so. But we made it alive, and after our early morning return a few hours later I joined one of my friends to watch The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers on opening day. A memorable, intense 24 hours.
Not quite ten years after THAT day, was listening to this album and this memory/anecdote came back. Most everything everyone says about Time is true, escpecially the word “funny”.
Below is a screen grab of a Google ad that came up while viewing the video above. Funny indeed, though I’d flip the genders in this case. Glad Google is pandering to the me from 20 years ago.
Behind the times, catching up on celeb self-porn
I’m about 3 weeks behind the rest of the world in discovering that nude/private cell phone pics of Christina Hendricks and Olivia Munn were “leaked” on the internet. Of course, my first impulse with a nearby internet device was to engage with you in deep reflection.
2-3 years ago I used to read PerezHilton.com daily and kept current on all the good and bad choices celebrities were making. Perez was funnier then, with his coarse white pen making dribbles of this or that fluid on celebrities. He then shifted to being buddies with celebs, and took a nicer tone which helped with getting in-depth exclusives but got rid of his scrappy humor. And the ads, ugh.
So I don’t check it now and rely more on cultural osmosis than a single source.
Are these photos taken by the starlets and leaked on purpose? It’s human nature to want to show what we got. And to have someone broadly desired and glamorous send something solely to YOU must be a thrill to receive (and to send) but…
Isn’t it not so much IF a starlet’s personal nude photos get leaked but WHEN? They are alluring/comical, but many times the photos also convey a personality with more range than what the starlet is known for. Like an audition.
Dude actors don’t seem to have this PR problem (opportunity?), dude athletes do, tho’. Okay, male politicians do, too.
Punch your heart, then ask for money?
Kony 2012 joins an interesting year of social network activism. Awareness that the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure was driven by right-wing anti-women women leading to plummeting donations to Komen, and a rise in donations to Planned Parenthood. Making Rush Limbaugh apologize and costing him sponsors. Fascinating examples of how social networks can create a tide of public opinion to great effect.
In the last day or so, the world is suddenly concerned with a this terrible Kony warlord. And the entity that spread the word wants you — if you care for children and object to rape and murder and terror — to donate money to them and share with your friends the news and calls for donations. 43 million views on YouTube. 14.2 million on Vimeo. Astonishing.
Being engaged is important. Making a difference and helping those who struggle is important. But the effect of the video and the excitement of being part of a quick-response online movement has seemingly made many people’s critical thinking skills temporarily disengage. What is this group Invisible Children behind the video? Are they good or bad? Do they spend money wisely? I don’t have all those answers, but there’s a lot of cause for skepticism before forking over money. And they do ask for money, over and over again.
A critical mind about the Kony 2012 online fad in no way constitutes an endorsement of raising children to kill and rape their own family members, run drugs, and making life as shitty as possible for others.
P.S. – This article on Jezebel about this topic is really good.
Santorum, fecal demi-Catholic, lubey, wants to spray you
Rick Santorum cites the Catholic Church as his source of moral guidance. Like most Catholics, he cherry picks which direct-from-god dictates to follow, no matter how much of a furrowed brow and pointed finger the Pope-of-the-day makes on the topic. He hates women having control over their bodies, contraception EVEN IN MARRIAGE, and homosexuals.
Does he follow the Catholic Church’s stance against capital punishment, the Iraq War, and unversal health care? Doubtful. I’d check that, but it would require a mouse drag all the way to the top of this browser window to use the search engine and I’m not putting that much effort into it.
Back when Santorum still held elective office, he was an asshole then, too, and columnist Dan Savage ran a contest to create a definition of “santorum” to mess with search engine results. Known as Santorum’s “Google problem”, here’s the winning reader submission:
Pronunciation: san-TOR-um, Function: noun, Etymology: Savage Love – 05/29/03
1. The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.
2. Former Senator Rick Santorum
Here’s a political ad by Rick Santorum in which his right-now pollitical rival, Mitt Romney, gets sprayed by a frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter:
Villain! This ad uses the overture to Carmen. Fool! Fiend! Carmen belongs to meeee!
The final image is a dead ringer for the image long at Santorum.com to keep stank all over his name.
Santorum is a weirdo!
Star Wars 3-D?
As I didn’t like The Phantom Menace in 2-D, and don’t care for 3-D movies, the answer is no, George Lucas. No.
Ryan Gosling, Zooey Deschanel, and gender equity
Top image is from a gallery of more-than-lurid image macros with Gosling from Digital Moms Blog (another caption from the collection: “Hey Mom…I think Moms are hot” and they range from laughable to mundane to troubling). Lower image is one I made this morning.
Not a fan of spouses/partners calling each other “Mom” or “Dad” or “Mother or “Father”. If people want to do that during role play, go ahead (post photos/video!). I can understand that partners using “Mom” or “Dad” comes from referring a kid to the other adult (e.g. “Go ask your Dad”), then it becomes an arch label, then sticks. Still, eww.
Both Gosling and Deschanel are born in 1980. Both seem intelligent. Gosling has a “I’m almost an adult” persona. Deschanel’s persona is “I may be a grown-up, at some date of my choosing. Or I may remain pixie-ish and the kind of spinster who names all the spiders in my home.”
And Gosling, veteran of the New Mickey Mouse Club with Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera (and some other N’Sync dude, right? dignity keeps me from researching that) has likely witnessed things while peristalted through the intestines of the Orlando entertainment system, dark things, of a nature hopefully few of us can imagine.
Saw this on the internet, and it seemed kind of wrong-ish, and wanted to ponder its wrong-ness by turning the genders around. Thoughts?
Dissecting ‘Doctor Zhivago’
Doctor Zhivago is not a great film. Though I’ve seen it a dozen times, it may not even make my list of top 20 favorites.
Cupcake, cheesecake.Director David Lean’s film before Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, is my favorite movie (don’t tell Singin’ in the Rain, m’kay?) and watching Zhivago (same composer, a lead, director, screenwriter) always gets me contrasting art that works (Lawrence) to art that falls flat (Zhivago). I’ll probably never write my thoughts out about Lawrence, there’s not enough internet space for all the slop that would pour out, but it’s interesting that Lawrence has no speaking roles for women, and the only time women are heard are ululations of women sending their men off to battle. It IS an army movie in the Middle East and I don’t recall T.E. Lawrence mentioning women in The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Oh, shit. Right. Zhivago. See? It’s easy to get rolling about Lawrence. Staunching that gusher and getting back on topic…
Producer Carlo Ponti wanted Sophia Loren to play Lara. Lean thought her too tall. Julie Christie was hired instead. And I can’t make up my mind about Geraldine Chaplin as Zhivago’s wife and cousin. In many shots she seems alert and intelligent, others like a ninny. And her appearance changes from gaspingly cute to weird-looking.
Christie was already a notable actor and beauty, Chaplin would become a prominent actor and had already been a teen model. Like any good devotee, I demand consistency from objects of worship. Fluctuating levels of beauty and presence are confusing.
Lean decided to make the character of Yuri Zhivago an observer, to Sharif’s initial frustration. He was to take it all in, hardly emoting, but he and the audience would know Zhivago would express himself through poetry. Don’t worry, Lean assured Sharif, despite the beautiful spectacles and actors emoting all around him, at the end of the movie they will think most about Sharif as Zhivago.
“[The novel] Doctor Zhivago is a sorry thing, clumsy, trite and melodramatic, with stock situations, voluptuous lawyers, unbelieveable girls, romantic robbers and trite coincidences.” – Vladmimir Nabokov
Would it shock you to know that Doctor Zhivago is not a documentary? Turns out the scenes in the ice palace home were not done in a ice palace that just happened to be there. The ice effects were done with beeswax coating the set, the drippings flash-hardened by being sprayed with ice water.
Speaking (okay typing, you stickler!) of fake cold, and fake heat. Something about the movie remains unconvincing. The actors don’t quite click. I may have started to put my finger on it.
It has to do with too much emphasis on the look of things. How the shot is lit, in focus, holding a pose as if for a movie still. In the throes of passion, or deep feeling, the leads don’t comport themselves the way people do. Too many shots of the gorgeous Julie Christie as Lara being lit achingly right:
And, with Sharif’s Yuri Zhivago relegated to being an observer, the movie is a parade of sustained white glints of light in his moist eyes. It’s not subtle. It’s distracting. A simulcra of a highly attuned human and artist shown so deliberately he seems a falsely-moved mannequin. Take this still which is the shot right after the one of Christie above:
Feeling the passion? Neither are they, but they are optimally lit, and Sharif’s sleeve is smoothed out just so.Omar Sharif is a great actor. Julie Christie is a great actor. It’s a fault of the direction and cinematography. Has David Lean done a convincing love scene? It’s a mood killer, and irreparably harms a grand melodrama like Zhivago. Any-hoo, having pinned that down I’m going to sleep knowing the world is a better place having helped us all get more precise about a supreme piece of middling entertainment.