The Lo Down

2008-06-03T18:09:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama is the leader we can believe in. I cannot think of a political candidate I've ever wanted in office more; a person whose integrity stands heads and shoulders above the rest; and a man whose choice of words reflects not only a thoughtful individual but one who understands the ripple effects of his choices, both large and small.

I have always been proud of my country. But I am prouder tonight than I've been in a long while.

Undiscovered Country

2007-01-04T11:02:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite end-of-year/beginning-of-year features anywhere is Slate's Annual Movie Club. Although writing under the auspices of a well-trafficked web magazine can always be hedged by the knowledge of (critical) readers, SAMC seems to have a freshness, a gentle banter that always helps put movie-going in perspective. (This being said, though I heartily empathize with Dana Stevens's kick-off "war movies conundrum," I found it less enticing than subsequent discussions the group has had over the past few days. Also, even though he shuffled over to New York Magazine last year, where is my beloved Edelstein?!) With Slate's round-up of critics, there's always a sense, too, that optimism is at stake. The hope of seeing a great movie is precisely that which makes us go back to the blackbox theater, or even slush through piles of VHS tapes in the one dollar bin. To find a great movie, we must bear through the rest, or at least have critics tell us which things films worth shelling out greenbacks for. Let it also be noted that there's always the occasional critic whose ideas about movie-making are the complete and total opposite of one's own that we know to love a movie when he/she has slaughtered it.

My point is that there are few great movies of yore (and present) that we encounter nowadays that we haven't had some previous exposure to, or at least some semi-consciousness about. There are so many movies on my list of must-sees -- derived from the lists of hard-core cinephiles -- that I hardly know where to begin. But my parents aren't as bedraggled by the lists of others, and are much more the cinematic risk-takers than I am: so much so that they will walk to our local public library every week to borrow three DVDs, all dependent on what's on the shelves and, they admit, the cover sleeve. Now that I'm on vacation and much of my entertainment is theirs, I was delighted when they came back recently with "Two For the Road". Though a self-proclaimed Audrey Hepburn fan, I had no idea what the movie was or what I was in for. (Then again, how could I pride myself on my personal movie watching cred? I only just saw -- and certainly enjoyed -- the first Indiana Jones this past year!)

But "Two for the Road" is the one movie I watched in 2006 with which I thoroughly fell in love. And not the kind of whimpering, self-effacing love of adolescence, but, rather, the adult version. This year was not so amorous in terms of movie-going for me: I was riveted by "The Queen" and I have yet to see "Children of Men." But traipsing -- and sometimes plundering -- down memory lane with the Wallaces was the best time I'd had since "Eternal Sunshine," not least because of its similar jogs of memory and candor about love. The framework for the film is the French country roads that Joanna (Hepburn) and Mark Wallace (Albert Finney) have traveled together--and the movie is lively and full enough that we can suspend our disbelief about their having taken the same route every time--but their scattered memories of being on the road are interwoven, quite seamlessly. First we see the couple on contemporary, embattled terms, in a plane, about to touch down on France. Then we have the pleasure of seeing them attempt to start their sad sloppy junk of a roadster; and later we see the two, fresh and naive, as they first meet, de-boarding a boat. All the while, we see moments of what was, what is, and an object lesson in how the past can never predict the future, even when the future is already here. (Indeed, such is the case for William Daniels, the man who plays efficiency consultant Howard Manchester, and then later turned out performances every week as Principle Feeny on "Boy Meets World.")

The running gag between them is also the cause of their first meeting -- when Mark loses his passport, Joanna finds it. But what makes this lost-and-found scenario symbolize bumpily married life all too well -- even better than the distraught, mute couples found so often in restaurants (and also refered toby Joel Barish in "Eternal Sunshine" as "the dining dead") -- is the trickery Joanna deploys and Mark's willing forgetfulness. On the plane or in the car Joanna will ask Mark if he has her passport, he'll search frantically when he can't find it, and, a few beats later, Joanna will fish it out of her bag or the glove compartment and hand it to him. Perhaps she does know him better than he knows himself -- such is the moral conveyed -- but it all feels like a set-up in which they both knowingly participate with each other, for each other. She waits just long enough and he is just forgetful enough to make this central metaphor for their relationship so central: she's seriously playful and he absent-mindedly bullish, but they somehow, together, form a unit. They can't live without each other. Perhaps this would be the case of Henry Mancini developed the soundtrack for all of our lives...

The tagline for "Two for the Road," as I discovered from watching the special feature trailers and IMDB, is "They make something wonderful out of being alive!" (as opposed to the imperative of the movie poster above.) It's sad to see the genuine joys of the film be so woefully, so exuberantly mischaracterized. It's not that the Wallaces don't have high highs and adorable affection for one another; it's that all these come in realistic doses wrought by their situations and not, apparently, by the script. Their wonderfulness is not a pre-determined deal, and that's what makes the film so electric -- we do wonder honestly about the couple for there are moments when it seems it just won't work out. Frederic Raphael, who also adapted "Eyes Wide Shut," seems to know something about relationships. He won't let their most precious, most silly moments be drenched in sap. And he seems to understand something that many others do not: there is a difference between living and making, and, in convincing us of love, the former outdoes the latter every time.

Kelis, "Bossy" - Correction

2006-08-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

A close and trusty informant just told me that the line in Bossy isn't "I told John Sterling he should switch debate." In fact, the lyrics are: "I told young stunna he should switch to Bape," Bape being the Japanese fashion label "A Bathing Ape." I like the idea that Kelis bosses people around, telling them what clothes to wear. I wish I could collapse my former interpretation with this corrected one so that the line would be "I told John Sterling he should switch to Bape", which would mean that he would be a blinged out 58 year old sports guy, all the while enjoying numerous Broadway shows!

2006-08-23T19:55:00.000-07:00

Here is another LA Weekly piece I wrote. It's about this homeless man named Robert who sells water on the corner of Fairfax and 3rd. He was fantastic to speak with, and he had lots and lots to say in our seven minutes together!

Elliott Hundley @ The Hammer

2006-08-21T23:19:00.000-07:00

He had been a press darling, and such an astounding up-and-comer that galleries were warring over the right to claim him as their own. But earlier this year, I saw a group show at Peres Projects in which Elliott Hundley failed to live up to the hype. (Truth be told, I felt as though he contributed somethign that looked like a high school stoner's arts and crafts project.) But I'm happy to report that my feelings have changed. Gallery or no gallery, Elliott Hundley's sculptures/installations at the Hammer Museum look mighty incredible. From afar, they swirl with psychadelic yet learned formal gumption, popping the gallery space in and out of itself with an elegance that is relentless, organic, and delicate. In detail, they prick with the tiny pins that keep choice magazine cut-outs in their rightful, fully edited place, and illuminate miniature, mythological maps full of people, places, things culled from the real world. The Rauschenbergian lineage is clear, but there's something of Sarah Sze, Matthew Ritchie, and maybe even some Frank Stella crazy cut-out paintings/Elizabeth Murray 3D paintings; and, better than all of that, Hundley has a massive store of material and whimsy all his own. Sometimes, it's just fantastic to be proved wrong.

Hammer Projects: Elliott Hundley; through September 3rd at the UCLA Hammer Museum.

She's the Boss

2006-08-21T00:40:00.000-07:00

Music Video Review
Artist: Kelis
Song: "Bossy"
Album: Kelis Was Here
Director: Chris Robinson

Kelis came into my life one lazy night during my senior year of college. One of my roommates was hanging around our living room, scanning the annals of pop culture, and, shocked, exclaimed, "This is what America is listening to!" He turned up the volume on Windows Media Player, and out poured "Milkshake." Kelis's voice had a tone that embodied shrill adolescence, and the song's content reinforced as much. At the time, I couldn't much stand "Milkshake." Slashed jeans, suggestive lollipops, and rhythmic breast-shaking make not for a lady prim and proper.

But thanks to the real world, my prudish days are over, and Kelis, now a married woman, a bit better coiffed and more stylishly refined, will be releasing her new album, "Kelis Was Here," tomorrow. "Bossy" is the first single, and it's nothing short of fantastic. The synthetic keyboard -- over which Kelis initially reasons for her dear listeners, "You don't even have to like me, but you will respect me" -- taps a morse code of sinister cool, and the promise of more narcissistic pronouncements to come.

And the video makes the case that Kelis isn't just out to conquer those who fell under the spell of "Milkshake", but that she's fit to be a queen of pop cool. The first scene features Kelis cutting her kinky curls, and we find out very quickly that she's traded them in for a sleek bob, several pairs of wrap-around shades, diamond-studded grills, an electric blue-dyed poodle, and a hot red Ferrari. It's not as though she does all of this in a vacuum either. Blinged out during the whole of the video, we track Kelis from her outdoor boudoir to a pool party ripped with (male) hotties; from which we get the opportunity to oogle as she splays out on a diamond-and-ruby-encrusted floor. Soon, she's less scantily clothed and sporting sunglasses while driving through late-night Downtown Los Angeles. And it's not long before she's alternately partying and rolling around the floor of a lush carpeted bar, replete with Veuve Cliquot, oysters and a unicorn ice sculpture, and, later, spotlit in front of a concrete wall. Ridiculous, excessive, and unruly as this all may sound, every single cut contributes to Kelis's uncanny now-ness.

To help, Chris Robinson takes care to put Kelis in tantalizing situations, ones in which it is not necessarily Kelis's sexuality that does the enticing, but those which underline the sway she holds over her domain. While there's something down to earth about Kelis -- we see her hanging out with friends, drinking, getting into a one-person food fight, doing a modified bridge pose in fancy silk clothes -- she's clearly the center of attention, and she holds court wherever she goes, her limp, apathetic hands ready to snap into a middle finger at any moment. At one point, Kelis even has the gall to push her boobs up at the bar, as though to assert her ubiquitous title from just a few years ago. And the gesture couldn't be hotter.

But the genius mark of the video is its knowingly hipsterly look. There's bling aplenty in Kelis's world, but she also wears clothes and inhabits spaces that are best described as indie and vintage; certainly not your typical rap/R&B ghetto fabulous feel. It's refreshing, as though Kelis isn't just looking to conquer her Jive demographic, but Pitchforkers and their curmudgeon critics too. Nothing's too exclusive for Kelis; she'll undoubtedly win her way in because she's knowingly, intelligently pan-cool (she even centers her chorus on how she made John Sterling -- presumably the Yankees sportscaster -- "switch debate"). And it's this dead-on confluence of hip that makes "Bossy" one of the best videos in months.

Dramatic Taste

2006-07-21T18:32:00.000-07:00

When Malan Breton was kicked off of "Project Runway" this past week, it was a blow to bear. His creepy, burbly laugh had grown on me. His optimism was refreshingly innocent. He also had a mission -- to right a wrong. As you might recall from the "Casting" pre-premiere special, Malan was the one who had actually rejected PR before its second season, and who had come back, tail between his legs, to the Season 3 auditions. Thus, the expectations were quite high for our strange friend.

Alas, the trusty PR editors/producers could have thought of no better way at tugging our heartstrings than by featuring Malan recalling the paler moments of his youth. He recounted that he was still in single digits when he showed his mother his first fashion drawings. She promptly threw them on the floor and reprimanded, "You should never do this again!" Of course, my Project Runway compatriots proceeded to ask the obvious question: Was it the drawings Malan's mom hated, or the fact that he was doing them?... But, no matter. How the history resonated this week!

And such storytelling coupled with the kick-off reinforced for us what Project Runway is: awesomely high tension television. Let's recount some facts: Angela didn't even make a proposal sketch for Miss USA's dress. Instead, she used drawing time to convince her way into Kayne's puissantly pageant-y hands. Angela and Vincent didn't work well together at all--though, granted, Vincent has a bit of the flighty megalomaniac about him. But, was there any way Angela could have actually helped? Could her heated criticisms -- par example, "this looks like something I made in college" -- have been more constructive? I think it's entirely possible. (And, for the record, I agreed with Nina Garcia -- the back of Vincent's dress was beautiful; however, Miss USA, you hit the nail when you described the weird shoulder-ribbons as a bit "space cadet.")

Unfortunately, while Angela fell so far short of all initial challenge requirements and so far from grace in her dealings with Vincent, Malan sketched out the dress, crafted it poorly, and did the gentlemanly thing of taking responsibility for its poor craftesmanship and strange execution. Is Project Runway telling us that they -- or fashion? or TV?! -- are more willing to keep contestants who wittle the nerves, whose strategy is to connive their way onto the better projects, and who refuse to do any work over contestants who do their work, mess up once, and take responsibility for it? I hope Tim Gunn is as disappointed as I am!

For some reason, my friends paused their DVR after the show on the PR disclaimer. In real time, the fine print speeds by, and we never really give the show's regulations a second thought. But in frozen form, there was a sentence that caught my eye: The producers and Bravo are before contestants are Klum-ed "Out!" I've always been tickled by what good television PR is, but this was the first time that I'd noticed that it was a television show that depends on ratings. Drama, in other words, consists of more than designers executing elegant creations within 24 or 48 hours; the insane personalities have forged their way into America's hearts. I guess, that's just reality.

====
By the way: Malan fans, take heart! As you can read on his Project Runway bio, Malan's world is certainly not over. He was named by Women's Wear Daily as one of 12 new designers to watch on the New York runway (in Feb. `06), and we can expect to welcome him into our living rooms again, as he does voiceover work for ABC and ESPN. Additionally, here's a follow-up interview with Malan in all his dignity, care of the fabulously addictive Blogging Project Runway.

2006-07-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

My pick!

B&S and The Bowl

2006-07-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

Here's my latest LA Weekly piece!

Yay!

2006-07-07T12:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a piece I recently wrote for the LA Weekly!

How and Why Television’s Best Drama Got Gypped

2006-07-07T12:41:00.000-07:00

Scanning over the 58th Primetime Emmy nominations list last Thursday morning (and delighting in the nod to Steve Carrel), it seemed curious to me that the most engaging drama on television was not recognized in the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences’ “Best Drama Series” category or in any other major category. The show in question was named “Best Show of 2005” by Time Magazine and recently won a Peabody, the highbrow statuette previously bestowed to celebrated series like “The Wire”, “Deadwood”, and “The Sopranos.” And for weeks, this best-of-the-best show’s logo was plastered all over heavily industry-trafficked defamer.com, accompanied by those familiar words “For Your Consideration.” What seemingly scoffed, highly suspenseful, utterly fascinating, purely addicting series could I possibly be speaking of? Why, only Sci-Fi’s “Battlestar Galactica.”

Based on the late `70s series of the same name, “Battlestar” has updated the terms of what sci-fi can be—indeed it’s upped the ante on just what can constitute televised drama. It is every Trekkie’s answer to the socially acceptable sci-fi opera, and every uninitiated, only-saw-“The Matrix” layman’s and laywoman’s introduction to the joys of the geekier genre. The appeal comes from “Battlestar”’s courage to answer every televisual desire and go far beyond it, to confront sex and violence, spirituality and abortion, terrorism and robotics without so much as a single flinch. Whereas “Lost” has failed--especially during their tiresome sophomore season--by over-attenuating the island’s many mysteries (i.e. the hatch and the button, the they-were-there-before-we-were Others, and special effect smoke bats), and whereas “Invasion”, “Surface” and “Threshold” were as second-helping “Lost”s as their one-name titles might imply, “Battlestar Galactica” has pumped up the action-adventure heat and suspended fans’ disbelief from day one. And surprisingly, it continues to do so with some of the most rip-roaring, unthinkable and imaginative storytelling that has graced the small screen. This show’s got it all: a sizzling former Victoria’s Secret model, special effect violence that rages on the apocalyptic, super-high production value, a fun and friendly substitute for the f-word (i.e. “frack”), rich, engaging characters who make confused decisions, and, what so many shows aspire to have but never achieve: a certain sense of urgency. It’s the kind of urgency we might feel, say, if, as in the series, the human race was on its last 97,750 legs (that is 47,875 men, women and children).

Admittedly, palpable endangerment of the species takes a little bit of time to digest. “Battlestar” and its bounty of rewards can only be reaped – and fully understood – if the patient couch potato starts from the beginning. One must devote two hours to the kick-starting mini-series, and, seeing as it’s sci-fi on Sci-Fi, delve right into a universe where you believe that robots are extinguishing the human race. See, Cylons, robots that were long ago engineered by humans, have now molded their robotic bodies into human form and declared full-out war on their Frankensteins’ offspring. Programmed with blood, sweat and emotion, they’ve taken to infesting human-inhabited spaceships, finding ways of planting themselves indispensably in everyday, seriously-space-age human life. And then the episodes spin out from a universe-changing event: Cylons have blasted the human planet of Caprica and its neighbors, and only about 50,000 survivors remain – and they’re all on spaceships, which now form a kind of colony led by the Battlestar Galactica.

While the stakes seem high and inconceivable, they climb even higher as we get to know superb veteran actor Edward James Olmos’s Captain Adama, helmer of the Galactica, and the Secretary of Education-turned-President Laura Rosalyn, played by the seriously endearing Mary McDonnell. (For the record, I’ve never seen two lead characters who parlayed so well, and never, for a second, do Olmos or McDonnell betray the integrity of their characters.) The government and the military have their work cut out for them in their attempt to save the human race. In this endeavor, they are assisted by firecracker Captain Kara Thrace (Katie Sackhoff) and dutiful-but-reserved Commander Adama, Captain Adama’s son, but there are other obstacles to bear: power hungry scientist-politician Gaius Baltar and his Cylon lover, Number Six (controlled and scintillating supermodel Tricia Helfer). The Cylons continuously strike blows in order to crush the remaining, not-so-lucky refugees. The only human option -- now that their home planet’s been blown up – is to look for a much-mythologized orb called Earth.

This is already probably confusing you and we’re not even up to Boomer’s actual identity, ever-loveable Chief, Kobol and The Scriptures, Colonel Tigh and his annoying wife, and the retrieval of Apollo’s arrow! Each episode is thick with “Holy Shit!”-inducing plot, and none in the series’ two-season run disappoints. The writers recognize that smart, labyrinthine storylines can pay off only when unwieldy troubles arise and are dealt with, instead of being cloaked in stale mystery. All the while, of course, BG’s characters and their universe are constantly gilt by a lingering, overarching sense of desperation. For our heroes, this consists of no permanent home, and the series shows us how they dignify their lives with a sense of a normalcy and, most poignantly, how they’re learning to cope.

Now, by awaiting Season Three, we fans are learning how to cope too. BG Followers are so rabid that Ron Moore, formerly of “Star Trek” and “Carnivale,” mans a Sci-Fi.com blog and podcasts about the show and the writers’ room. Sometimes, for personal inflection, he’ll even include his wife, who herself has been known to answer questions on the official website bulletin board. And those boards will attest with their hundreds upon thousands of postings, the community of “Battlestar” watchers is sprawling, inquisitive, and hungering for more.

I imagine that the sole reason why “Battlestar” got shut out in the Emmys is an initial sense of science fiction skepticism. The show was campaigning like crazy – by sending the entire Season Two DVD set in sleek, black packaging to all Academy members – but to no avail. Though every episode begins with a quick run-down of what’s going on in and outside of the Galactica, it’s all a bit overwhelming and clubby for the BG neophyte—and, dare I say it, a bit nerdy. Without knowing what happened in Season One, Season Two can seem like a bunch of nonsense – and more like fare solely for the science fiction fanatic. This is a most unfortunate reversion to type, symptomatic of the running complaint that good television doesn’t exist. When so many bemoan reality-television’s infestation of our boob tubes, and when many good dramas have deflated and lost their steam, the show with the most explosive imagination doesn’t even get a fair high-profile nomination-shake. Are we really supposed to be happy with just a Special Effects nod? Take it from me, one of those laywomen who had never seen a single “X-Files” in her life: this is the show that you didn’t know you’d hoped for when you bought your television set, and it’s the one show you’ll want to keep paying your cable bills for this fall.

a note on moving

2006-06-26T22:39:00.000-07:00

There is never a time when moving is not a huge ordeal. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about it is packing up your stuff, putting years of accumulated junk into boxes (or, the flimsier alternative: brown paper bags from the grocery store -- and then feeling like a dopey old bag lady!), and, upon assessing all that you've done, believing you still haven't accomplished very much. That's how I feel today, even though my dresser drawers and cabinets are empty, even though my kitchen has been cleaned out, even though my clothes for the rest of the week are in yet another flimsy paper bag on my floor. Only my computer, the wireless internet, and my cell phone charger are plugged in, and everything is much quieter than usual in my neighborhood. It must mean my departure is near.

My walls aren't bare yet, though. I couldn't stand the thought of completely giving up my apartment before the official end-date, so these gray and white cartoons from some televised animated detective story are still hanging in their frames. They make the place look less frightening, less not-mine.

It's strange that this place has been the site of so many of my own memories, and that I will think of my early twenties as being anchored to this place. But, of course, I'm not the only one who has lived here and called this place home; many others had before me. And, soon, it will be someone else's, and the walls will be bare again for whoever that person is and his/her new beginning. My cartoons and I will be somewhere else. And hopefully by then I will have recycled these wretched paper bags.

Declassified: The Menace and Madness of "Art School Confidential"

2006-06-19T19:40:00.000-07:00

Film: "Art School Confidential"
Written By: Daniel Clowes
Directed By: Terry Zwigoff

From its first frame, Terry Zwigoff's latest offering, "Art School Confidential," is a portrait of the artist as a pre-adolescent loser, then as a relative adolescent loser, and, in the Strathmore Art Institute, as an officially sanctioned an art school loser. Max Minghella's loveable Jerome Platz has an early passion for Picasso's art -- not just his fine art, but the art of his loins, or, rather, the artful territories Picasso's loins famously traversed. We can believe from the very first scenes at Jerome's expense -- those of traumatic elementary school bully beat-ups to moderately pretty girls passing him up for jockier beefcakes -- that this young man has some amount of depth to him. And it's true. To a point. That point of no return is, of course, where the film faulters into disappointment.

Jerome goes to art school and he's radiant with hope, as do we with him. He wants to be the world's greatest artist (!) and he wants to get girls, finally! His virginity is to do with taste, he tells his new roommates, an egomaniacal, index-toting director (played gruffly by Ethan Suplee "My Name is Earl" fame), and a fashion design student who will soon discover his homosexuality even though the audience already has. All the while, a scary strangler has been on the loose on the Strathmore campus; pretty gory stuff, from the likes of headlines. But Jerome, encumbered with a skilled hand, a longing heart, keeps his eye on the prize: a model from the Strathmore brochure. But before he gets to set his eyes on her porcelain skin, Jerome must be schooled in all that is not-so-confidential about art school. And that's where, I suspect, Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff had some fun. They leave the task to Bardo (brought to life by Joel Moore), a guy who's dropped out several times and come back to Strathmore, is our art archetype tourguide. He points out the holier-than-though vegan, the conceptualist, the butch lesbians, the suck-ups who've endlessly Googled their professors, the overly emotional Beatnik girls, the stuffed animal swaddling girls, the baby mamas who are still out looking for a good time, and the empty-nest moms who discover that their true calling is art. There's the failed professor, played excellently by John Malkovich, who's been perfecting triangles all of his life, and the Japanese ceramics teacher who just doesn't care. We get the art history professor -- in the form of the sizzling Angelica Houston -- who asks, pointedly, what is art during her first lecture; we discover a bastian of mediocre and sub-mediocre creativity. All these characters and characteristics populate Jerome's first days -- and Jerome, even with all the pre-fabricated possibilities, is difficult for Bardo to pin down. That is, we suspect, precisely why Bardo befriends him, and why we have too.

Jerome is initially difficult to pin down because there's an earnestness and interest about him that is soon to be corrupted. After meeting the down-and-out artist Jimmy (played rather miraculously by Jim Broadbent), he starts his descent into art world avarice. He meets the brochure model, Audrey (the beautiful Sophia Myles), befriends her, and almost gets with her until a frat-dude guy gets in the way -- with a really hip, pop, minimalist painting of an outline of a car on white, emanating from a flat yellow color field. The fascination with the painting is its now-ness and the fact that it conveys the artistic sensibility of a "guy who's never seen a painting in his life"! This gets Jerome's goat because he thinks that his figurative painting is eons better and that frat-boy's pulling the wool over everyone's eyes.

And here's the problem with the film: of course it's all parody and farce (beyond farce, even), but the art is all so bad! It seems almost inane to make this criticism in a film that's for a relatively popular audience, but it is because the art is bad that the culture can't be taken seriously enough. What adds fuel to this slow-burning, needlessly vindictive film is that it gives so little dignity to the art-making process that it willfully erases any kind of cultural import art has in our world. "Art School Confidential" gives us the most cynical maxim of them all: that art corrupts and that famous art corrupts famously.

To be sure, many have been turned off and torn down by the conceptually-addled art school curricula of our day, but taken to this extreme the notoriety of art school goes from being funny and well-observed to bitter. It's an object lesson in light-hearted revenge gone sour, and extremism in its most annoying, sardonic, and perfectly self-righteous form. Even a couple of appearances by the incomparable Steve Buscemi can't make this thing levitate. Unfortunately, by the time he shows up, everything's been disclosed, and all the things that could have gone wrong have been declassified.

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Others on "Art School Confidential": Roger Ebert, Scott Foundas, Carina Chocano, A.O. Scott, and the always-venerated David Edelstein.

Lately

2006-06-07T09:28:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the books I've been reading:
- Liars and Saints by Maile Meloy
- A Family Daughter by Maile Meloy
- Here at the New Yorker by Brendan Gill
- And Now You Can Go by Vendela Vida

Here are some of the things I've been watching
- Magnolia
- Battlestar Galactica: Season 2 (SO GOOD!)

I've also been eating a lot of Indian food and ice cream. And once I get over my cold, I hope to have something intelligent to say!

2006-05-01T16:29:00.000-07:00

A very wonderful place.

The Medicine of Matthew Barney

2006-04-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

Drawing Restraint 9
IFC Films
Written and Directed by Matthew Barney
Music by Bjork
Producers: Barbara Gladstone and Matthew Barney

Attention: Spoiler alert!

Last night, Linda and I saw Drawing Restraint 9, the first feature film release arrival of Matthew Barney, art world auteur, Cremaster craftsman, and boyfriend-collaborator of Bjork. Barney's Cremaster series is a strange world, and a willful call to sexual convulsion, the palpability of the aesthetic, prosthetics on the loose, and utter spectacle. We -- the lucky "we" who aspire to an engaged and elegant cultured-ness, who purport to look for instances of beauty whether at Amoeba Music or Rivington Arms or in the everyday shuffle of our cities' sidewalks-- came of age during the Cremaster cycle, patiently awaited and anticipated Cremaster 3, refrained from giggles when the ancient Richard Serra harvested petroleum jelly along the sprial of the Guggenheim. We privileged artful excess; we delighted in Barney's pig eared, tartan-tailored satyrs (and self). There was a jovial sensibility in the air. And even after 9/11, the idea that Cremaster 3 could come out just meant we were moving on, that we had things to do, places, things, and people to see; there was a degree of relief that Cremaster could still be Cremaster and that we could indulge in it because there was actually something to indulge in.

But these days are different. We live in a world whose realities of war and national division are difficult to confront, but they always linger, enough so that they impress their urgency on us daily. And especially we, as cultured individuals, feel a certain sense of responsibility for these trying times, and a certain necessity to finding productive solutions for them. And into this torrential political climate and these sky-high gas prices comes Barney's film, a love story deep in the sea-hardy seas of Japan that puts Barney and Bjork in fine kimonos and shark-jaw shoes, that sees them precise and perfunctory in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony (I think this is where the purported Shinto wedding comes in), and, after they seem to start licking and gnawing at each other's faces, unites them in self-destructive, knife-happy, gory glory. And then they really eat each other. And then they turn into whales. This is the sped-up version that you could only get for two pennies. The storyboards, I imagine, must have aspired to a novel-worthy page count because the movie is almost three hours of aesthetic control, preciousness, waiting, wanting, near-satisfaction, and the kind of agony that we love to hate but still kind of love anyway. My patience notwithstanding, I will try to do the film more descriptive justice in the next couple of paragraphs.

The first scene sets the elegant pace of the film: a woman wraps two gifts -- rocks that ooze clear, viscous liquid -- with the kind of precision that could probably garner her human national treasure status in Japan. She folds, cuts and bisects with near-mechanical care, showing us that wrapping paper need not just wrap, but, rather, has its own angular, unaligned and off-center/minimalistly elegant purposes. The presents done, and sitting quietly but pondorously next to each other, a quick cut delivers us to a happy band of Japanese festival dancers and workers parades through the turbines of some dock, reveling and fanning themselves, and after much delay finally starting the process of Baney's signature petroleum and what Carina Chocano acutely called the "bisected Vaseline suppository." And thus begins the strange symbol that will lurk throughout the whole movie. We also get glimpses of Barney and Bjork -- who never become more than Barney and Bjork -- as they leave their own territories to converge on the Nisshin Maru, a fatefully commissioned whaling ship, with many workers and ship-ish things to do, and lots of attention to, yes, the bisected suppository.

As I've hinted at earlier, when they get to the ship, Bjork and Barney are initially groomed and clothed separately, and, heavily and ridiculously garbed, they plop down on a small little bench at the edge of the hull of the narrow ship. They wait, and wait, and a sliding door opens, revealing a ceremonial tea room, covered in tatami mats, and spidery tendrils of oceanic life--oh, and a column of barnacles. The master of the ship, an old man with a kind, intent face, serves them tea and every move is excruciatingly detailed. They are left to their own devices, and they start in on each other, the physical union only complete with the ship's petroleum stores start overflowing, and the couple can then go ahead and cut viciously into each other and eat each other to reveal - -TA DA! -- that they're both human-torsoed whales!

This is the main narrative thread of the film. It's fine, I suppose, but nothing revelatory, nothing meaningful. New York Times's Stephen Holden insisted that this was Barney's "Moby Dick." Bullshit--and this is also the painfully obvious analogy. Just because it involves whales and sea-things does not make it as extensive or as legitimately epic as Melville's masterpiece. Sure, I'll give it an A for obsession and micromanagement in the same way as the tale of the great whale, but to liken the two seems an ignorant jab at Melville.

Holden also insists that there are those who have been "initiated" into the Barney-fest simply by having seen his other films and maybe rambled around the Guggenheim a couple of years ago. But the fact of Matthew Barney is that you're never part of the club. And the finest difference between Melville and Barney is that Melville has a sense of emotional texture and empathy, both of which are just not Barney's expertise or aims. Barney never illustrates character; in fact, he denies it because of his highly aestheticized aesthetics. He places himself in the films because he is who he is, but developing three-dimensional voices, feelings, and life seems never to be an afterhtought. That is what makes the film so aggravating to watch because it becomes simply spectacle, relying on aesthetic tension to be its emotional crutch. But it's something that we have to admit makes Barney who he is; it's the subtle reason for buying the ticket. It's this suspended depth that makes Barney compelling as an artist, academically and theoretically speaking, but perhaps not one's favorite artist, not one for whom you can feel passionate emotion for, as it's all surface, it's all sheen.

Character having never been found in Drawing Restraint 9, there is other footage to delight us in the meanwhile: cute Japanese female pearl divers; vertebrae-like Vaseline sculptures; a startling clown that really makes no sense to the plot; cute kids who throw up goo and others who mesh that goo with shrimp shells to start making some kind of sculpture; the gigantic, bright aqua cleaning pipe sculpture during the first ceremonial march; and a big long rock formation that clearly looks like the world's biggest gray turd. But these make for signature instances of randomness and Barney's insistence on connectedness, even something of a narrative. He hides so many easter eggs that it's impossible to keep track that even though we wanted to at first, there comes a point when the Easter Bunny no longer exists and we no longer care. And the only part of the film that is self-consciously light is the part when denim-on-denim outfitted Barney's thick hair and eyebrows are shaved while he's sleeping. But that's where the problem lies: the only kind of hilarity--the only release that we get from the purported seriousness of the film--that can take place is when Barney is still in control, when he is aware of and lets the joke operate and perform. That's when one's breathing room is frustrated, that's when we want very badly to take our eyes off the screen and go home already.

But we don't. We sit still, for some reason, because somehow we feel compelled to see these incredibly long films that make no sense!

That sense of knowing you'll just be exasperated or frustrated or unhealed, but doing it anyway is what I think makes Barney's work like expired Tylenol Rapid Release Gels. [Indeed, Chicano's suppository must be taken further!] The expired Tylenol gel cap can still maintain its sturdy, molded form; it still gleams with its shiny colors, still glistens with its gelled surface. Inside are tiny fragments, these little balls of chemicals that are all similar in composition and encapsulated in the same space, all overseen by the same machines (the machines, in the case of Barney being his assistants and underlings). The expired Tylenol Rapid Release Gel is very attractive. And when you have a headache, you might not really be pay attention to the expiration date because you just want to get rid of the headache, or even if you are looking at the fact that the bottle says 09/2004, you don't really mind because how harmful can it be? So you just swallow the damn thing. It goes down pretty easily, being so pretty and all, but after fifteen minutes, then half an hour, then an hour, you realize it's not working. And you feel disappointed. But it was harmless. It was a little bit of your time. It was a little bit of money. And for a small instance, it gave you hope that you'd feel better. But you know better than that.

In fact, you did even before you went and saw the movie.

miscellany + "Ghost World"

2006-04-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

David Remnick is such a lucid writer, and what an interesting -- and humbling -- figure Al Gore has come to be:

"There is no substitute for Presidential power, but Gore is now playing a unique role in public life. He is a symbol of what might have been, who insists that we focus on what likely will be an uninhabitable planet if we fail to pay attention to the folly we are committing, and take the steps necessary to end it."

==
I haven't been much in the way of writing these days. It's been difficult to find a topic that really grabs me, or something that makes me want to write as passionately as I would like to. I wish I had something intelligent to say about young, bright art stars and the so-called backlash at galleries such as Gavin Brown's Enterprise, but I really... I don't know. There's something boring about the debate to me. In the end, it will all come down to whether or not the work is good. No matter if the artist is mid-career or emerging, if the work produced is compelling, we will celebrate it now and later. If it isn't, perhaps it will denigrated or tossed aside, or held up as an example of what not to do with art, how not to make it. What is of interest to me is the contingent of artists who get some attention but aren't Koons-ified, but who are then reassessed and brought heavily to bear. The Gutai artists come to mind, or even comic book artists as a whole. There's something refreshing about the world changing, and shifting just enough to reevaluate, and to find something new in that which was old.

Speaking of comic book artists (and I suppose art in general), I watched "Ghost World" last night for the first time. I had a great time watching it, and particularly liked that, stylistically, it was so clearly derived from a comic book. Well done, Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff! It also pulled off strange -- yet seemingly true and genuine -- moments (unlike Garden State), and helped suspend my disbelief about things that were completely surreal. It was like there was enough weirdness as a whole to make the weirder things (i.e. the old man waiting for the bus, in particular) seem plausible in these character's world.

I've always professed to being a Steve Buscemi fan, but his attention to detail as Seymour -- and being Seymour -- is just superb. It even made him objectively attractive, well, at least for the sympathetic. As a collector, Seymour hordes so many objects, so many pieces of the past, and those unseen acts of reverence and obsession make him as delicate a character as he was. One is utterly rapt with agreement when Enid, played by the mesmerizing Thora Birch, says, "I just can't stand a world where you [Seymour] can't find someone to be with." I fear I'm getting the exact quote wrong, but I hope that what I've cobbled together taps into the same vein of kindness, gentleness --and the discovery by high school outsiders that dorks are kind of awesome.

The movie is certainly not Buscemi's alone; it's even more Thora Birch's. She is simply mesmerizing, and completely reminds me of a more extreme version of what I could have been in high school and straight after -- although, I never really dabbled in the world of punk, nor did I ever really draw the conclusion that strange looking people in diners were devil-worshippers. In fact, I never really went to art classes outside of school; but hers is one that genuinely takes the cake. I guess it's more of her character Enid's harsh, sophomoric judgmental nature that I can relate to all too well, and those days, long past, when I hadn't joined something resembling a yuppie-like generation.

And, how do these last few paragraphs tie together? Well, all of it has led me to believe that "Art School Confidential" will be insanely delicious to watch...

huff and puff

2006-04-14T14:44:00.000-07:00

Things have finally returned to something akin to a steady state after lots of huffing and puffing around the country last week. Chicago was super-fun; got to hang out with old friends, one of whom took me to the Art Institute for the first time. I was especially taken with the miniature room which was soon and coincidentally supplemented by Stephen Millhauser's latest offering, "In the Reign of Harad the IV". Boston turned out to be sunny and warm and quite favorable, and San Francisco was gloomy and drizzly, fraught with too many slippery hills. Coming back to Los Angeles was made more pleasant because I had finally caught up on all the magazines that I'd let sit and pile up in my apartment, and felt allowed to (finally!) start reading Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler.

I started the book last night, and I'm already 10 pages away from the end (it's a short 109 pager!). It's a delightful treat to hear about something so wonderful and so strange written about with such care and excitement. It also doesn't hurt that the book is actually about one of my favorite haunts in Los Angeles, and makes reference to delicious India Sweets and Spices. (Here are some more kind words about Weschler.)

But here is part of a paragraph that particularly struck me, though they were not Weschler's words:

[A]ccording to James Gleick in his introduction to Richard Feynman's recently reissued Character of Physical Law, "Physicists had hands-on experience with uncertainty and they learned how to manage it. And to treasure it--for the alternative to doubt is authority, against which science fought for centuries. 'Great value of a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance,' Feynman jotted on a piece of notepaper on day, 'teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed.' This became his credo: he believed in the primacy of doubt, not as a blemish upon our ability to know but as the essence of our knowing."

the difficulties of invention

2006-04-05T00:37:00.000-07:00

On the drive up to Monterey, we listened to a Malcolm Gladwell lecture (a New Yorker Festival talk available via ITunes) about the American obsession with precocity. In the talk, Gladwell dabbles in different cultural arenas: prize-winning runners (and how they burn out, or shine late, with Gladwell's personal anecdotes included!); the mechanics of musicianship and how young star musicians can be made through intense practice, but musical innovators -- people who change the very nature of music and how we listen to it (whether composers or musicians) -- tend to have passions and investment that drive them in distinctly non-mechanical, non-technical ways; the obsession with IQ tests that evidence youthful genius; and experimentally 'innovative' schools that challenge the best and the brightest which, in fact, produce happy and contented upper-middle-class citizens (doctors, lawyers, bankers and the like), but not necessarily Field Medal winners. Gladwell argues that, in fact, many of those who are known as geniuses flourished later in life. Not necessarily in the sunset years, but well beyond their early twenties, after finding their passions, and investing time, energy, willpower, and then sacrificing creature comforts -- personal and otherwise -- for their art.

But the Mozart part of his talk -- the part about Mozart being this violinist-product of his father's slavedriving and how wee Wolfgang Amadeus had practiced so much by the time he was 6 that he was as good as a professional orchestral violinist today -- tapped into two interests of mine (which I got to discuss with my friend Liz tonight): invention, and the fatigue of invention. I'm interested in the idea that it takes X amount of hours to become a concert violinist (on average), and that the amount of hours or skill to becoming a virtuoso is absolutely different. Perhaps not necessarily a matter of skill, changing a medium or inventing something entirely new is not a matter of technical mastery, but a different kind of understanding of the medium entirely; a reworking of vision. And even then, there is a point -- a "just so" point -- when it can be deemed 'inventive' but not necessarily insane or useless or far-gone. I'm fascinated by what invention is because it implies that someone has created something very original and very different. Yet this difference -- the object or idea of such striking qualities -- still fits perfectly in the world. Sure, it sometimes requires the approval of more progressive thinkers and doeres, but usually, like the IPod, an inventive thing will start popping up all over the place. The IPod is perhaps a typical example: it's something that at one time never seemed needed--i.e. when CDs and their randomizers first arrived on the market and, by golly, there were walkmen into which we could put hand-picked mix tapes. But the cogs of those inventive individuals turned, and then, suddenly, digital whizzes enlightened us about the IPod's small screen, its portability, its ingeniousness. Its usefulness and innovations were hailed; it picked up momentum among the techies; and then became a widespread, unmistakable phenomenon. This, of course, is a Gladwellian trend (oh, how you haunt me, you fan-addled `fro!), the kind he illustrated in The Tipping Point. But perhaps it is also worth considering that now, sometimes, we have to remember to not take the idea of "shuffle" for granted, and how there are so many previous inventions that are just taken for granted. Indeed, on a larger scale, phones, planes, autmobiles, subways, radios--all these, we already deem ubiquitous, useful, normal. Thus, due to new inventions themselves, and the way we adapt to them as a society, old inventions become wrapped in and up with the everyday. It is not a matter of nostalgia, but a matter of course, a matter of how society continues to evolve.

In painting, Julie and I used to call the best paintings inevitable. The oft-cited painter example was Laura Owens. She came out of RISD, then Skowhegan, and then CalArts just doing her paintings and whammo!, consistently crafted inventive, inevitable paintings that are initially playful, and then lodge themselves in one's mind fully, completely, purposefully. They have all the manners of the typical painting -- canvas, stretcher, paint -- but they take hold in a different way. They're gentle and unpretentious in their pastels, yet bold and patterned in their weaving of gobs of paint and confident brushstrokes. And when one has toddled out of the gallery, and thinks back to and about a Laura Owens painting, the world doesn't seem right without her eyeglass-wearing monkeys and her fanciful, painterly unicorns, because they've already become part of the world. Their invention captivates, and then becomes part of a catalogue of invented things (i.e. the inevitable), and it is not that they're forgotten, but they are ultimately part of a past and mark a specific moment in history. They lose that initial burst of freshness. I suppose this has more to do with the fad-ism of the art world, but also a great deal to do with cultural moments, and their palpability. Some things stick, while others don't; some things are meant to continue to mesmerize, others are better left in the collection warehouse, waiting to be reappropriated--or rediscovered--later on.

And there are some things that can no longer be reappropriated. I was thinking of that strange 'joke' that used to be in movies (probably most notably "L.A. Story") about an agent or executive who was talking on his gigantic cell phone. He would be speeding through Los Angeles, and then suddenly start hugging a canyon (Laurel, Beachwood, or what have you), at which point his cell phone would start breaking up. The call would crackle, and the line of communication would be chopped and dropped. The joke was that one could use this excuse to stop talking to some exasperating twit. But with fake pine-tree mobile towers going up all over the place, and Motorola coming out with flat, sleek vessels of connectivity, can a person still use the excuse? Indeed, isn't the joke tired because cell phones are no longer subjects of exclusivity, but, rather near omni-presence? What would my friends and I have done if we hadn't had our cell phones handy to tell each other where to meet? What would contractors do if they couldn't ring up their favorite painters or worksmen at a moment's notice? How would one deal with a car broken down on a misty, uninhabited highway? What, I wonder, is the new, technologically exclusive joke now?

(more to come...)

an assortment of tastes

2006-03-31T11:28:00.000-08:00

Or, things I've been looking at recently (and previously):

1. I'm trying to make my mind a bit more supple again. So, lots of reading at the moment. Right now, one of the books I'm reading is Things That Talk, edited by the incomparable Lorraine Datson. It's a volume dedicated to the way "things" and "objects" become charged with meaning, how they are inculcated with and announce their meanings, and several historians' endeavors to unpacking objects layered with dense cultural/historical significance. One of the essays in the book, which I haven't gotten to quite yet, is all about the glass flowers at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, officially called the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, and how they were received (and I believe frowned upon) by the scientific community. The first academic ideas that might come to mind when I think about them are mimicry and 'faking it'-- or maybe even idolatry -- and the the object(ionable) attempt to stop time.

But before I take a turn for the wholly incoherent, I might as well admit that what makes the glass flowers resonate for me is that they made me understand, for the first time, that it wasn't just girls who appreciated delicate beauty. I was 9 years old and at the height of my hatred for pizza when we went to visit the HNHM, at the insistence of my uncle, whom I'd always thought of as a dutiful, quiet man who enjoyed fishing and the occasional beer. My mom and I seemed to be simply tagging along. As we walked among the Echeveria, I would go quickly from object to object, but my uncle would summon me over to peer down into the vitrines. At each display case, his eyes were intent and his face wrinkled with appreciation. It was rare that I saw someone so engaged, and that was, in and of itself, something to behold. The flowers instantly become auratic, lustrous with the ability to transfix. I wondered who else they had changed, or who else they had helped see differently, if only for a few moments.

2. This, of course, made me start thinking of the greatness that is the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which has a similar feel as the glass flowers exhibit, plus an added creepiness due to low-lighting and "Tell the Bees." Thus, the next book on the list is Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder.

3. And the title of the book made me start wondering if there are any blogs that are veritable "cabinets of curiosities"...?

4. Lastly, for more profane amusement: I found, by looking at Google News ealier this morning, Kurt Loder's entirely ineffectual review of "Basic Instict 2: Risk Addiction." If only Loder had found a way to make a slick, literary transition between Sharon Stone's hoo-hoo and what he describes as Daniel Johnston's "adenoidal voice", I would nominate him for a Pulitzer. Also, to quench any curiosity (and blind you from thinking about my question of blogs that are cabinets of curiosities), here is the super-smutty trailer for BI2 that was (oops!) released a couple of months back. It showcases Stone's boobies in all their raisin-smuggling glory. I still can't believe this exists!

2006-03-24T17:01:00.000-08:00

I suppose this blog is becoming but a chronicle of how and when something moved me to tears, but this small paragraph is undeniably worth posting for its tenderness.

"But I never stopped trying to match that evening--not just trying to entertain her but trying to impress her. Decades later--after we had been married for more than thirty-five years, after our girls were grown--I still wanted to impress her. I still knew that if I ever disappointed her in some fundamental way--if I ever caused her to conclude that, after all was said and done, she should have said no when, at the end of that desperate comedy routine, I ased her if we could have dinner sometime--I would have been devastated."

Calvin Trillin, "Alice, Off the Page," The New Yorker, March 27, 2006, 47.

Music Video Review: This Boy Be Bad

2006-03-23T22:21:00.000-08:00

L.L. Cool J featuring Jennifer Lopez
"Control Myself"
Todd Smith
Director: Hype Williams

When he was born in 1968, he was given the name James Todd Smith. Then, at the brink of bursting onto the hip-hop scene in 1984, he became LL Cool J. And now, for the title of an album and the name of a clothing line, he has taken up the monniker Todd Smith. We might think of this new, more mature LL as someone a little less warmhearted than the character who delightfully stuffed his face in "Last Holiday." And the difference between LL and Todd Smith is that Todd dons sunglasses or slings his baseball caps low, never revealing his eyes. He has something to hide, or, maybe he doesn't want you to catch him looking at you. And ladies, he's out to convince you that he's a fiend with a fire in his pants.

I have nothing but respect for the man who brought us "I Can't Live Without My Radio" and "I Need Love." He's ripped as fuck, a co-founder of that `90s label FUBU, and a moderately successful actor. Truth be told, LL's got a lot to recommend himself. But with "Control Myself," newly minted Todd Smith's first offering is best described as an amateur mash-up of "Baby Got Back" and samples of Fergie titillating her humps. In a failed attempt to stoke the fire of the song, he's brought in reinforcements in the form of Jennifer Lopez. One would think that this would be a smart move for the video too, but not even the JLo who once dazzled in "Out of Sight," and who continues to make pretty cute high heel wedges with her clothing-cum-accessories line and slightly danceable songs, can save the musical and visual disaster that is "Control Myself."

Lyrics like "It's hard to control myself / you've got, you've got, you've got / what it takes to make this boy be bad" are far from hot. They're tepid, at best. They would have been best served in a straight-forward, "unimaginative" music video. But because the lyrics are so bad, we wish for something of sustinence to cling to, and that is surely not found in this overly, idiotically complicated video. Using a device that's begun to be employed for short musical adverts, there's a widescreen in the middle, flanked, top and bottom, by two halves of another scene. NE-YO's video for "So Sick" uses the device well, but "Control Myself" highlights to evils of going crazy for filmic novelties. For example, in the middle widescreen panel, we see LL's rapping about how hard it is to control himself, but framing this panel is a group of showgirls strutting their stuff. Their scene with the showgirls, however, is split into two, such that the girls' heads are on a top panel, and their legs and butts on the bottom. The effect is disorienting and requires more concentration than this horrendously overproduced video deserves. The split-screen device defines overzealousness when the top and bottom panels are populated by one single person: LL's head and arms flail on the top in crucified style, but because the rest of his body is on the bottom panel, it gives the illusion that he's been Gumb-ified. In the middle, cutting into LL's elongated torso, is a close-up of J.Lo's face.

As this snippet might lead you to believe, there's too much going on this video, and to make matters worse, none of it is interesting. It's the same typical hip-hop fare: hot dancers, hot bods, lots of alcohol, all rife with vanity. At one point, it almost seems that LL's imploring us to take his sexiness seriously when he flexes his muscles as though he were competing for Mr. Universe. Possibly impressive, but not impressive enough. JLo, almost as though she senses how much this video lags, gets in on the act, wanting to convince us that she's hot when she lilts, "The afterparty is at my body / come meet me you're invited." Sorry, I'll be at R. Kelly's hotel lobby.

Towards the end of the video, Todd Smith (whom I can no longer bear to call LL because of this travesty of a video) and JLo convene, trying to woo us with the phrase "Zuh-zuh." The meaningless noise is repeated again and again, at first with erogenous intentions and then more playfully, but every time to ill effect. In the end, the boring "Zuh-zuh"-ing coagulates into a parody of the entire three minute video that they've just made us sit through. And all I could wonder was how such an utterly ridiculous video could have been made.

===
More coverage: Gary Sussman is all too kind to the undynamic duo.

On a tangential note: what is with the Pussycat Dolls's song "Beep," the even more whorish girl's version of "Humps" -- and why on earth would Will.I.Am agree to be featured in it?!

2006-03-20T11:31:00.000-08:00

The art of fake UFO photographs: a practice shaped by a history of devices and deceit. I smell an interesting exhibition...

Kelly Clarkson's Karaoke Revolution

2006-03-15T18:21:00.000-08:00

Music Video Review
Kelly Clarkson
"Walk Away"
Director: Joseph Kahn

In David Raposa's Pitchfork review of "Since U Been Gone," he described the hit track -- and its writer, Max Martin -- as having given Kelly Clarkson an image makoever. The song recasts her as a woman who's "diffident, defiant, and mad as hell." And it was an utterly catchy, innovative pop confection. But the video for "Since U Been Gone" was not nearly as inspired. In those one-note three minutes, Clarkson is supposed to be in her ex-boyfriend's apartment tearing up his and his new girlfriend's shit while they're away, acting as the agent dispensing bad karma to the boy who did her wrong. Not only was it difficult to figure out how she got into the apartment (if you had even figured out that that's where she was), but, more importantly, it didn't have the subtlety of the song itself. It was too bad-ass for its own good. Thus, as Clarkson tore open down pillows and snipped clothes into rags with a pair of scissors I'd ignore the video, but kept MTV Hits on just so I could hear that lyric of falling "for that stupid love song." My preferred method for listening -- and, let's face it, rocking -- to "Since U Been Gone" was and is to turn my iPod up and sing the fuck along.

And singing the fuck along is the very premise of "Walk Away." When we enter "Walk"'s video-time, it's 8:30 in the morning. A radio DJ announces that Kelly Clarkson is going to perform her hit single "Walk Away" for listeners all across "Radioland" (the announcer's description of his radiowaves). As one experiences every weekday, 8:30 is populated by those who are just getting ready for the day, and those who are already in the thick of morning. Throughout the course of the video, we catch glimpses of a girl who's getting up, a guy who's stuck in traffic, a mousy woman at work slipping her earbuds into her ears, a guy vacuuming his living room, a cop giving a fancy woman a ticket, a guy showering, shaggy-haired twins cleaning their kitchen, a busboy, a hairdresser, a waitress, a guy singing into the mirror of a public bathroom, and football jocks all hanging out in their locker room. The thing these individuals have in common is that they are all infected with the song, so much that they themselves break into song. And the pleasure in the video is seeing their diverse versions of getting down.

It's almost as though one day, Clarkson and/or Joseph Kahn were looking at the 10 East on a Wednesday morning and saw a number of commuters (myself included!) get down when I heard "Since U Been Gone" on the radio. Maybe Clarkson was thinking of her pre-American Idol days with aching nostalgia; like, say, if, like all girls who grew up in the `80s, she would sing to, say, "Like a Prayer" with abandon. And, speaking of Madonna, the video for "Walk Away" is, in a major way, the karaoke/lip-synching version of the video for Madonna's "Hung Up." Both videos have the elements of people rocking out to a diva, and cuts to the diva herself singing and shaking it. But what differentiates "Walk Away" is the line that Clarkson draws between her viewers and herself. While Madonna converges with her grooving audience, a kind of joint club circuit/Dance Dance Revolution/do-the-Hustle convention, Clarkson is officially a pop diva who brushes the sleepdust out of her fans' eyes, but stands apart from them. I suppose it's because there would be something admittedly weird if all the people featured in Clarkson's latest video met up with Clarkson and started singing along with her and a Karaoke Revolution revolution of her song.

Given its variation-on-a-theme quality, "Walk Away" is simply a super-fun video to watch. And it was well worth the risk of possibly being called a copy-cat. Perhaps one of the weirder emulations featured in the video is Kelly Clarkson-as-sex symbol. With midriff bare, sexy, lace-up boots hugging her calves, Clarkson swivels her hips, stands contrapasto, plays sassy, and even, towards the end of the video, gets upset at the director because he's being too difficult to work with. But it still feels weird to see America's most popular American Idol -- no, American Idol's sweetheart -- with the aim to scald. We've seen this side of Clarkson before, in leotard form, singing "Behind These Hazel Eyes." This side's got the same tight, ripped, shocking fashion statements (of which I am no fan), but it doesn't seem to have been emphasized in choreography before. And while it might fit the lyrics that Clarkson is singing, she doesn't yet feel comfortable in the role. But the delightful thing about the video, though, is that everyone else in it -- everyone who's singing along -- totally does. And the truth of it is, wouldn't we all agree that Madonna looks pretty ridiculous in "Lucky Star"?

2006-03-15T10:36:00.000-08:00

The best picture I've seen all week!