For most it’s an exertion of social bonding.
A selfish cascade of endorphins firing.
For me, it’s a source of furtive promises and loss.
A transaction of fulness, absence the cost.
Social bonding to be broken
Quick thoughts on Robin Williams and thanks for ‘Garp’
I got tired of Robin Williams’ schtick decades ago, but only because I was immersed in it for so many years. People would remark: “Wow, how can anyone could think so fast?” I would recite how his “quick” off-the-cuff jokes were actually rehearsed and already used in that interview or that concert or these other two talk shows. I caught everything I could. It was terrific. Then I hit saturation point, and pretty much stopped watching his rat-a-tat-tat comedy bits with rhythms I had already absorbed and moved on.
I fucking owned the Mork from Ork suspenders. I wore them until 12 years old. We friends greeted each other in grade school with “nanu, nanu”. We repeated bits from Mork & Mindy the next day at school, and into the week, and the next week. Okay. Got that out.
As a subdued actor, he was much better to me. Like his comedies, some huge, awful misses, but also performances that were impressive. I know the cool thing nowadays is to think of Good Will Hunting as mawkish. But he was good in that movie. And in Dead Poets Society (something I avoid as more mawkish than Hunting). And, a movie I’ve watched 5-6 times to try to get precise about why/how it went wrong … Hook. Spielberg whiffed that movie. Williams is good in a role he worried he’d be called “Porky Pan”. There was no way to play that role and be great, but he showed courage taking it on. He’s particularly good as Peter Banning, before discovering he was Peter Pan.
But the movie that I appreciate him the most for is The World According to Garp. My parents took me to see it in a movie theater. I was only 13. A lot of jokes were over my head, but the sense of the world wasn’t. The irony wasn’t. The hurt wasn’t. And it got me into reading modern literature. I went straight from reading the Dune books (I don’t like sci-fi, but it was a perfect series for a horny early teen cynic) to reading John Irving. I rarely read fiction written by living authors, even then. But I read Garp twice. I’ve seen the movie 4-5 times, and am moved each time. Enraged at the Ellen Jameseans, amused and taken by John Lithgow’s performance as a former NFL player turned to a woman, Glenn Close’s oddly clinical yet warm performance.
And, except for a few scenes where he got to be rat-a-tat-tat in Garp, Robin Williams’ performance is subdued and sly and engaging. As a writer, married to a literature professor. In Williams’ often frantic display of frenetically vibrating strings and wavelengths, he often pointed us to nodes of calm. It is those points where I’ll think about him the most, and where he showed us the most.
Keep it tight
Fresh warm words to refresh and replace echoes nursed for so long.
Keep the bedding closed tight. Don’t let the cold air in.
Let the words, soft words, stay and settle for a little while. A little while.
I’ve everything to show. I’ve everything to hide. REM’s Out of Time
Spent the weekend with longtime friends, which always gets the mind hopping from “thens” and “nows”. Before arriving, and since, I’ve had “Radio Song” by REM with KRS-One in my head. There’s something about it sonically that is gooey in my skull now. Could it be that it’s bouncy with bass? That it’s from when it was unique to have a guest artist on a song, before it became almost mandatory?
The lyrics are okay, but I don’t even know if it’s among my favorite 15 REM songs — and I don’t know REM particularly well — but there it is mentally rolling around. Does this stick in your head, too?
Four years ago, almost to the DAY, I posted about “Shiny Happy People”. How square am (was) I? I got into REM’s Out of Time a full year after it was released. When I enthused about it the summer of 1992, a good friend said “Where were you in 1991?” A good question, SJ!
When revisiting Out of Time, I rarely listen to the whole thing, but at a minimum I listen to the bookend songs. “Radio Song” and “Me In Honey”. In the epic 5-hour karaoke concert that plays constantly in my head full of guest starts from past and present, I duet with one person on “Me In Honey” and we rock the shit out of that song, then never talk with each other again, having reached the peak of visceral human communication and humor.
But that fantasy may be largely based in wanting to stand next to Kate Pierson (gush) from the B-52’s, the original guest vocalist on the song.
In defense of Iggy Azalea’s flow
Pop music is a mongrel, forever gaining vitality borrowing and mingling from other pedigrees. It’s slutty mongrel. No. Wait. It’s a sex-positive mongrel. Iggy Azalea has two massive hits and has taken knocks for being an Australian female rapper with “southern rap” affectations.
Any artist should be free to steal from other sources and try any persona. If it works, it works. We don’t look to artists for morals or history lessons. I didn’t know who Ariana Grande was by name. I knew her as the girl with the one-note voice on the t.v. show “Sam & Cat” that was forever the background television noise while I was in the kitchen cleaning or making meals, or in the dining room writing, gaming, or doing dark and dank deeds. She’s the actress with the dyed red hair in this clip:
That one-note voice affection is, as actors say, “a choice”, right? I heard Grande was a recording artist, but ALL OF THOSE Nickelodeon and Disney starlets are recording artists. No big deal. All those songs are boring aspirational or first-love stuff. All the more boring when they go into the inevitable “I’m not a kid anymore!” phase as if they are the first ones to discover the fumblings and grindings that generate us all and so shake the world.
I don’t even know if I like Grande’s well-produced hit “Problem”. She has great range, but I keep hearing her one-note tone sitcom actress “choice” throughout. Iggy Azalea raps during the bridge.
Many articles have criticized Azalea for trying to sound “black” or “urban”. A point for debate among music nerds, but not something to be ashamed of. Try everything. Go with what works. Plenty of suburban kids of all races have tried “urban” affectations (Alicia Keys comes to mind). So what? If the music is resonant & fun, let it roll. Any line of music that doesn’t draw from other genres and cultural signifiers is doomed to staleness and extinction.
I don’t even know if I like Iggy Azalea. There is something sonically interesting going on, but I’m undecided about whether it is good music or not. I confess to a problem with female musicians in their 20s and early 30s. It’s my advanced age, but even if I would have found them attractive 20 years ago, to see them carousing about advertising their availability now (fine and their right), my gorge rises at it. They just seem like uninteresting people and I have trouble watching them. It’s not them, it’s me. Keep on keepin’ on, kids.
Ariana Grande mentions meeting Azalea at a party thrown by shouty, shouty Katy Perry where they vowed to work together sometime. They have, and it’s a success.
Now, if you want to get upset about Azalea outright stealing a rich vein of music, take her to task for robbing the sing-cheerleader-chant genre from Gwen Stefani. That shit is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
“House of Cards”: a few grapes among prunes
House of Cards bores me when Spacey’s character Frank Underwood talks to the camera. It’s a dull device and a huge reason why I also can’t fully enjoy The Office or Parks and Recreation. I don’t need a character’s permission to identify when something remarkable happens. It conveys: “Here’s what I’m doing, in case you are too stupid to figure out what I just said to other characters or to understand what you just saw.” I get it. It’s supposed to bring us in. We are buddies with the character, on the inside track. It’s like we’re there in the office with them as their confidante! “Wouldn’t it be great to get up to the break room and dish on that crazy thing, or that character yet again doing what he/she does, with Adam Scott or Jenna Fischer? Amirite?”
Feh!
#RestoreTheFourthWall, shows, and stop having characters talk to me directly unless a soliloquy is really important and clever. And the way House of Cards does it is rarely essential or clever. It’s a way for the slow people (all of us?) to feel smart. One commenter put it:
I’ve only seen a couple episodes of this show. Are they still doing that thing where Kevin Spacey puts someone in a booby trap and they sputter “B-b-but I thought we were friends!” and then Kevin Spacey turns to the camera and says “Politics is full of sneaky traps”?
And Spacey’s alleged South Carolina accent sounds lazy, putting about 30% of the effort he put into Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Finished season 2 of House of Cards tonight, several months behind the rest of the world. Spoiler: a very bland President gets an injection of about 30 IQ points for half an episode, sees all the schemes, then goes Flowers for Algernon and loses his intelligence and resigns for dumb, vague reasons. Sending a boat to China, calling it back, and going to marriage counseling? Or something? U.S. citizens would care about any of this, to the point of giving him only an 8% approval rating?
The participation of noted media pundits is amusing, considering the show shits on the journalistic profession and the media over and over.
Robin Wright as Claire Underwood felt like the center of the show in the second season, and the dynamic between the two of them as a married power couple is the most interesting part. The show has other ripe moments here and there, but I can’t recall any moments of genuine insight about politics or the human condition.
A season 3 is coming in 2015. I’ll have to think whether to bother watching any more episodes.
On this July 4th…
I’m as skeptical about the U.S. as the next person. Maybe more. I don’t think the U.S. is preeminent on all matters, but it has the capacity to get better. “American Exceptionalism” is not only annoying, it’s dangerous. It’s a worldwide embarrassment we don’t have public healthcare, and people die because of it. I roll my eyes at much of the ticky-tackiness of July 4th celebrations, and feel empathy for people with pets and for folks with PTSD who get stressed out by fireworks and coping with days of sudden explosions.
But, I made this anyway. It’s among the reasons why I sneer at people who regard royal families as something to revere and swoon over. Fuck that noise.
Made with Meme Generator. It’s fun!
Knew it
I knew when I felt it, that want and satisfaction had rushed
To each other, swirled and filled each other
And made life, for a time, calm.
E-cigs: “Buddy, mind if I vape?”
E-cigs, those vapor-based nicotine delivery systems with little LEDs on the end of them, look silly-ass. Marketing talks about “vape” and “vaping”. To my ears it sounds like an ill-researched attempt by marketers to develop a new slang term. Like when a square in a suit sits down “to have a rap” with teenagers.
How do we compare smoke to the e-cig water vapor emitted by these dorky blue-lit sticks? Howsabout “vape” instead of “smoke”? SOUNDS COOL! Let’s give this a go…
Hey, brother. Can I bum a vape?
I got to take my vape break. I’m allowed one every two hours due to labor laws.
Is this flight non-vaping?
Where is the vaping section?
Hold up. Can we stop here at the store? I gotta get a pack of vapes.
Holy shit! She looks GREAT! She’s vaping hot!
I wish I could quit vaping. But, fuck it.
If you HAVE to vape, please roll down the window. My mom’ll get pissed if the car smells like we’ve been vaping. She has no idea I vape.
Smoking DOES have allow for great visuals. It’s instant atmosphere, particles catching the light around an individual. An act of defiance: I know this will kill me. And I don’t care. I’m choosing this moment of dosage and pleasure receptors tickling away and demonstrating that I flirt with mortality on my terms, and my terms, my defiance against amoral and random Nature, is to will my end to arrive a little closer, to be less exposed to random chance than you non-smoking saps.
Using e-cigarettes conveys: Good thing this thing is not truly lit by fire, else I’d be ignited by my own fumes of Axe Body Spray and desperation.
Who are you, New York?
Who/what is New York? The answer is that New York is its people, history, and structures. On to the anecdotes!
Before this past week, the only time I spent in New York City was a crazy 14 hour dash through Manhattan with a friend. Amtrak from Albany to NYC in the morning. Penn Station, waited for The Book of Mormon (lovingly analyzed by me here) ticket lottery (lost), bought tickets regularly, saw the show, ate pizza, walked through Columbus Circle to Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum, bus to Empire State Building, then back to Penn Station for an early-a.m. return to Albany.
I like walking. I like the bustle of people in fair forward motion. I like seeing a variety of people in a variety of social stations engaged in a variety of things.
I like catching up with a super-smart, engaging, clever, kind, and funny friend whom I haven’t had an in-person chat with for over a decade. I like walking with this friend for hours and hours. She made the time on brief notice, and gave good pointers on walking highlights when she had to return home on those work nights.
I like art museums. I like going to art museums to finally see in-person pieces I’ve admired as reproduced images (such as Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon which I wrote a speculative piece about). The flaws and character and choices of the bronze or marble, the brushstrokes. I like entering the museum for free with the help of a connection and pretending to be someone I am not. A museum experience is much enhanced by a caper.
I like seeing locations only seen before in print or on screens. The world gets more cozy. The human experience and history more tangible.
I like making mediocre waffles at a complimentary hotel breakfast buffet. I rarely eat more than half of the waffle. I do wince at the waste when throwing it away along with an empty yogurt container, a bowl of Raisin Bran detritus with milk sloshing around, the remainders of eggs never as good as one hopes, and the always disappointing sausage. I still will essay buffet sausage in whatever variation it is proffered in. That’s just the optimist in me.
Family and friends need to know that I always eat all the decent portion fruit I dish up.
I like seeing new things. I like returning to known things. I like being slightly disoriented then figuring my way. I like the cordiality of strangers. I like picking up the indigenous customs and traveling with the herd. I like being asked for directions when I hardly know the area myself.
I like buildings and architecture. I like getting accustomed to places much larger than my usual environment. I don’t like people in shoddy knock-off pop culture themed costumes panhandling money by posing for novelty photos like in Times Square or the Las Vegas Strip. Three Elmos in Times Square within four blocks. Yeesh.
I like looking around and wondering if the more attractive a person is, the more likely it is the person will move to a larger city.
I like seeing a vast scope of human achievement, how things have gotten run down, and how things have gotten better. I like seeing a mass of people getting along, living their lives and not losing their minds.
I like knowing good people I am fond of, for year over year, even if the contact is intermittent. I like being worthy of staying in contact with. Across state lines, time zone lines, and nations there are people that I admire and know walking the earth encountering alternating happiness and frustrations, just like me. It gets me out of my smallness to hear the thrums of other heartstrings and sense in the ground the pulsing hums of lives worth knowing. As we climb into middle age, more people we have known will be dead than alive. Having those thrums and hums will become more dear.
No, I did not have the standard New York songs in my mind while in the city. Thankfully. I did have this one by Rufus Wainwright. Semi-consciously, I have hit most of the locations it mentions.
Yes, I did see people, always men, peeing in the open. Mostly transients, but also one guy who was moving merchandise from a van into a shop.
No, I did not buy any “I Love New York” souvenir, though I do agree with the statement.