Shaken Faith

The world cracks open and breaks our hearts - Japan's quake keeps the horrors on refresh as things go from bad to worse.  I am not wanting to post much frivolity lately, and while I should be focusing on career aspects, I just can't for some reason.   Visiting there in the early oughties, I was a huge fan of the culture and people, and found them to be very calm in the chaotic world stage of wars and famine.  I see pictures I can't post and videos I just do not want to watch (like 9/11), it's not our porn to obsess over.
I hear - but do not at all want to venture online to corroborate - that a governer of Japan said the quake was a just punishment from God.   I am sickened to think this might be true - and even more sickened that our side will come up with way worse (the Pat Robinsons and Phelps clans should be ignored at this point).
I thus think we need to give back some how that doesn't involve a paypal account and unseen transaction.  There's an uneasy, arrogant feeling in the house that 'we could be next' -  and time is generated/wasted on considering those possibilities and blogging.   Why can't that energy be harvested to help the situation?  
Sorry - guess I'm feeling rather heavy at the moment.

HOLCOMBE WALLER: INTO THE DARK UNKNOWN

EVB has a lovely interview with Portland/via New York transplant Holcombe Waller. I love this man - he's like equal parts Laurie Anderson and Elliot Smith (*yeah, bad analogy - but the visuals and quiet impact of the work is what i'm trying to convey) and he's the only one I've seen nail Brel's "Ces Gens La" with such awesome presence and staging.
In any case - this video for "Bored of Memory" is a beautiful sumptuous visual of a sandbar (maybe in the Columbia?) that shows 2 cute guys falling in love.   Video is here.

Jessie J: Master's Tools, See House, Dismantle? Err?

Interesting single that's apparently a huge hit in the UK, but here - not so much. What's the problem here? Is it the aggro-girl sweat or perhaps the threat of when the goods get together? (Or is it that Jessie J is the co-author of Party in the USA?)

PJ Harvey - The Words That Maketh Murder

Only Polly Jean Harvey can deliver on an autoharp and a prayer. I agree w/Patti Smith - that song does make you happy to be alive. Sigh.

My LA Montage

State of MY union:  I just need three things in life: love, love and love...  that and a killer soundtrack with a John Hugh's like teenage 80's abandon to dance around in a slow Santa Monica surf Bruce Weber inspired montage.  
Oh - if was all this gleeful and inspiring, we'd have healthcare figured out by now.  See the new video by the awesome, sexy Patrick Wolfe after the jump (*and go to his website to download free tracks).   {Post Courtesy of World of Wonder}

Lust and Landfill...

One of my New Year's Resolves have been to chuck a good half of my wardrobe.   You know - the trendy, unwearable reminders of the oughties (and creeping back in vogue 90's)...

Trouble is... Where does it go?

Photo by Christian Boltanski

One-One: Remake, Remodel

Baby Shoes and Briefcase

Ok - So, I'm at the 10-year mark for the blog, which is pretty amazing considering that i've kept anything going that long (job, notwithstanding). Trouble is -uhmm, err.  I can't really prove it.  See - the first few entries have gone awol... I could have sworn I had a list of resolutions from pre-9/11 that were so shiny and reflective of the naughty oughties (you know, the post-election ennui that we had Dubya and crew, but not quite the forthcoming angst of 9/11 and the tech-bubble burst). I seem to recall most were not surprising and very cliched (beginning of my gym-obsession and to fit into overpriced denim. Oh, that and a constant need for recognition/meaning). Secondly, I did have fits and starts - so I can't technically tell you that I'm at 10 years - but I could be, well a few months shy? Oh well.   So, I'll not do any big fan-fair (not that I have any fans. I guess I do what every blogger has done for the last decade - self-sustain.)  So - no starlight parades, innaugural address or blingy banners to tell you that I've been blogging for way too long. 
To that end, what am I going to do for 2011 + this decade? Well - get a new job and career for starters. I've got to get some more professional blogging under my belt before I can start to enhance my - ahem - side projects. That said, you can expect some changes on my old, trusty website. (I've already made it more business like). Will this be business like? No - I'll still keep it to varied and strange interests, uninformed rants and eclectic nostalgia that only I could think was interesting.
In the meantime - to show you I'll remain true to my school - I just discovered this awesomeness of this animator. Check out this Recent profile on WENDY VAINITY in DIS Magazine. She's awesome in her unrelenting use of technology and persona - maybe this is the direction i need to go this next decade.

NYTMagazine: James Franco Narcissus

Oh goodness, I'm a flutter... Is he talking to me? Oh, wait... It's just his reflection. Oh wait - it's HIS reflection... Uhmmm, hmmm - the fact I'm watching this is slightly bothersome... but... uhmmm...

Yuletide Bullying #2: National Portrait Gallery Protest

Man protests Smithsonian's censorship of the David Wojnarowicz video art piece "A Fire in My Belly" on his iPad, is wrestled to the ground, arrested and is banned from the Smithsonian for life, proving that art is dangerous and not to be trusted by it's very keepers. Good luck in trying to keep people out with ipads, different ideas and non-violent strategies.

Yuletide Cultural Bullying

Wow - sometimes backsliding culturally goes so unseen and unnoticed, to where you wake up and think - huh - is it really a 1990-culture war all over again?  Eerily enough - 20 years later - the Smithsonian's move to remove David Wojnarowicz from the Hide/Seek exhibit, namely the "Fire In My Belly" video, is like a sad synchronicity. Something that's not grabbing headlines as it should be, and not angering enough people.  Just in time for Christmas - and even more sadly enough - on World Aid's Day.
It is, however, self-edifying on two fronts - The exhibit is called Hide/Seek: all about that gay and often hidden desire, so subtle and lurking that no one knew (or cared to know). The National Portrait gallery is showing the other "secret history" of America - one that angers conservatives if taught and expressed and causes religious fervor, such that, the artist is hidden under a campaign of intolerance.    The gallery has works that start to evolve and become more prevelant and then show what happened with the epidemic.   Maybe there will be a shift in heart among the intolerant to see an arc of work, then a crisis followed by many deaths.
And secondly, that Wojnarowicz was practically showing the stifling silence and censorship that was killing his friends and loved ones in his work (including this one). It is amazing that this has come up AGAIN. As pointed out in prior posts, the man meant not to go quietly...  He wanted to serve as cultural beacon - and his "One Day" work is very much the anticipated panacea of gay bullying if there ever was one, and this work here is very much a religious work (and derives images from biblical passages and themes) as pointed out by Andrew Sullivan.
So - we must say thank you once again for illustrating our point, Bill Donahue - your timing on World Aid's Day shows you've got real showmanship potential.    Fortunately for us (and unfortunately for you) - the world has a secular device called "the Youtubes", and while we email the Smithsonian to ask that they project this on the biggest wall possible - I'll gladly post this here...

The B in B-list stands for Babulous...

The only way I can explain/rationalize reality TV is that the aliens, thousands of centuries from now, need to have a great punchline to "What the **** happened"? "Real Housewives" and "A-Gays" will be the only existing historical documents, and intergalactic encyclopedias will be updated to show a race of botoxed, bloated, overexposed mutants who posed, preened and recorded bad dance singles. So - Just as Logo's "A" list exists purely as one of those archeological testaments to how vapid and inane gay culture was in the teens of the 21st century, so I hope that the follow up - Brooklyn's B-List will also survive and show what the rest of us were up to:

Miniature Tigers

Sometimes it's difficult to find the pattern or the distinction. I'm never been into the details, but sometimes the details are better than the source... Take for instance this awesome video by Miniature Tigers...

Source Material: The Sexy Chaplin

I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large.
Charlie Chaplin

What's not to love about Chaplin?   I'm sure he would be honored that millions of twit pics on John Galliano's summer 2011 line featured a Modern Time's take on swimwear.   Sinewy twinks in impractical trunks and pants... Puttin on the ritz.
I preferably think we're regurgitating the tramp for a good reason - it's jazz-age poverty with a delicate undercoating harmless charm, just in time for the recession.    
But lest we forget, Chaplin was a complete stud in that he negotiated his own terms prior to any one else in the film industry, was a pro-immigrant humanist who praised diveresity, had scores of women who maligned him as (heaven forbid) loving oral sex, and was an ardent leftist that got him kicked out of the US.   It's probably a wonder that he's not erased from the US textbooks.

100 Games on 1 face

Terrible!  I've not made a post since NY 10... I've truly fallen off the wagon again in terms of tracking my internet ADD (and corresponding arrested development).  But I can say in my defense that I've been sorta busy on other endeavors at the moment.   So, what do I do now?   I had a whole bunch of blog-worthy stuff in the past few weeks (personal/political service announcements, outrage at lesbian prom's cancelled, horror at persecution abroad and glee at watching flashmobs market glee)... But I also know if this stuff was truly important, I would have made a space for it - but I guess sometimes you just gotta make art that sings it's own song.

Noughtie Pine Retrospect

So with everyone wrapping up with a focus on the decade that's yet-to-be named (no "me"-decade as much as a "Generation OMG" or if you're over 30, the "I'm Still here-read my tweets!!!" decade).  It is, as Carrie Fisher described in an interview "googling yourself w/out lubicrant" - we're self-obsessed and self-promoting, so this is the decade where everyone has a medium of some kind where they go and "address their public" or "the haters....
it's been surprising that I've managed to hold onto this blog for nearly 10 yrs (having lapsed only once to the dark recesses of Livejournal between 2005-2006).   Like all things, I tend to go emphatically for a few months, lose the momentum due to real-time issues (aka - "real life"), so I won't do what alot of bloggers are doing in a "best of" because technically - this isn't a 10yr anniversary.   However, I will highlight my own milestones this year (if it's any interest):

• Started this blog and proceeded to join every single social app that was ever marketed to me in an attempt to get me to connect, sell, hookup, or just say a random hello.   However, as of this date - I have not tweeted once.
• I have had a dichotomy of work technology (all PC) and home/pleasure (all MAC).  This year, I  buy an iPhone and bridge the two - I get work email on my phone and have become 'one of those people'.
  
• Traveled to 2 major continents - Asia (JP) and Europe (UK, DE), went to NY, Chicago, LA a few times.
• Watched the twin towers fall on TV - visited ground zero a year later.  Still wondering why we've this paranoid nation of PTSD officials using it to justify everything from wars to wiretapping.
• Inspired by Stephen Merritt - start a band w/my friend Lyle.  Doesn't quite take off.  But it was fun.
• I buy a condo during the "bubble" and have knocked on all wooden surfaces for good equity at some point down the line. 
• I see Seattle boom, bust, boom again.  I see Broadway go vacant, Pike/Pine go hetero, 12th street go yuppie.   I see the Pine/Belmont block implode but not until a 5 month party of decadence makes it mark (and smart bars like Pony and Bus Stop return).  I see Ballard become hip, Georgetown and Columbia City places I want to visit more than Capitol Hill. 
• I see my own hometown become more cosmopolitan - almost in a strange capraesque nightmare, but also in some progressive areas as well.
  
• After years of being a skinny minnie my metabolism kicks in somewhere in early naughties, I gain 20 lbs of post-relationship/beer weight and in 2006 make an attempt to reclaim my youth.  I slim down to 150 with 8% body fat. 
• I also use bicycling as a means to both relieve stress and acheive said body weight goal.
• I returned to my theatrical roots and started doing crazy, exhibitionist things like this.   
• I still marvel that we don't have flying cars and we're not colonizing mars like they did in the 2010 of Blade Runner.   That said I still do suspect we're living with robots who emote better than we do.

Acceptable Abuse Policies

My fave femigossip site, Jezebel, linked to this sad, but interesting article in the Guardian about the cyclical return to misogynistic lyrics/narratives in pop music. Deborah Finding has been tracking various memes in pop music over the last 50 years and found a disturbing trend that emerges every so often in the lyrics: some form of acceptable domestic abuse. She site's the early 60's Crystal's "He Hit Me (and it felt like a kiss)" as a jumping off point and then tracks the social awareness and political stance through to the 90's with Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman, Tori Amos (etc), and then see's a recent re-emergence of the "Gosh - I was surely asking for it" narrative again from recent UK winners, Florence and the Machine in the Post-feminist era. If anything is a canary in the coal mine how we're doing socially - attitudes toward women are a warning sign that we're not empowering generations to realize this shit is bad: we tolerated Slim Shady in the early 0ughties. Ladies and Gentlemen: civil discourse has left the building.
And now we're seeing in addition to this an 11% increase in hate crimes in the US - not to overlap issues, but usually when there's hatin' on the ladies, there's sure to be hatin' on the queers as well. I won't be one of those greying hipsters who condems rap in one breath and then says' they embrace the irony in the second - no, because it's not just hiphop: it's pervasive in quite a few music genres. I won't be banning anyone soon - but I will - as Lady Gaga suggests, shout them down as much as possible.
I guess, as Jezebel suggests - one strategy is to take the song and recontextualize it. Kinda like Tori Amos did in "Bonnie and Clyde 97" where she reduces Eminem's misogynistic rap to creepy element: Eminem is f'd up and creepy. In a similar vein, we've got queerish Grizzly Bear covering "He Hit Me". This is questionable if they're recontextualizing the meaning or simply enjoying a song's 4-part harmony (*that was written by Carole King after learning that one of the Crystal's was in fact abused by her boyfriend). I don't know. You be the judge.

(BTW - Hole covered this a while back and it, uh, kinda... well - you know.)

Popular Resistance

File from a "Future that never happened" circa 1999 (as intrepeted from 1982): I love this video mashup of post-punk group Family Fodder's "Film Music" with a 1982 BBC sci-fi drama "Play for Tomorrow". The low-brow neutral patina of what is supposed to be a minimalist future (complete with a pop-history that is hyper-linked by flat screen TV's) is nothing short of a brilliant advertisement for youth rebellion as choreographed by American Apparel. Description of the short as follows:

Shades By Stephen Lowe. 1999 again: A tower block contains youths ‘bought off’ by the government, in a climate of microchip-created endless leisure, who experience (often pornographic) virtual reality-style fantasies by donning the titular ’shades’, until a 1980s theme party (they predicted that right, at least) leads to ideology and political thought seeping in under the dazed lifestyle.

How can you go wrong with wrap-around shades and a belted lame tunic, I ask?

Norman Rockwell Conquerors

The crispness in the air, the leaves changing and my civil rights are up for a vote in a few weeks. Gosh, I love fall. It really is great to have to remind the confused, out-of-touch voters in remote areas that Ref 71 has nothing to do with taxes or (god forbid) the children... And I can't tell you how much I trust the virtual hoards of these voters like I would if they were carrying torches and pitchforks. I'm picturing a Norman Rockwell mob here - a well-meaning lynch mob decked out in Pendleton wool plaids; civil, optimistic, and helping to start a bonfire where we're all chained... Gruesome, yes - but pastoral and in fall colors.
Sorry for the dark cynicism - but this whole thing is like the annoying children's game "Perfection" -- we run around plugging the oddly shaped pegs into manic small holes with seconds to pass, and then boom - our rights are thrown asunder and taken away and we're three steps back. I try to think bigger picture here - that maybe there is some paradigm shift around the corner where people realize it has nothing to do with them. That there is some point where where you're not the manifestation of years of dogma coming at you, that there might be a few more advances toward enlightenment. But then again, there are still people who believe in witchcraft and cosmic forces, so there you go... we've not advanced...

Flarts

The air is artificially crisp, movies are slower-paced, and the poly-wool blends are hitting the racks at H&M. That can only mean one thing - FALL ARTS (which I'm hoping to condense into a new phrase: FLARTS... workshop it around, etc). Flarts means more art than we can shake a stick at. Instead of foliage, we hibernate into big buildings with theme-shows... Like we have SAM anticipating "Target Practice", and who better to intro this but Paul McCarthy here in all his goeyness at SAM ... I share the same fascination with him as the Stranger, but alas, his talk is happening as I type this and had i known, i would have cut my cardio-20 minutes short and walked down there from the gym. Oh well. I can only hope they can stop things like this from happening:


Also - my perennial fave Ryan Trecartin has posted new videos from his Younger Than Jesus Show on UbuWeb. K-corea is bit too blond and shrill (but the themes are global credit which is both blond and shrill), but i do like the Sibling Topics (which you can tell he filmed at the PDX Eagle of all places).
Sibling Topics (section a) from Ryan Trecartin on Vimeo.

Peel slowly...

Randomness (or this is how I spent my summer vacation while the world spun out of control...):

• 500 Pine Party - You can't return home. Even for a night. We've tried, but good attempt.

• Apparently , late-century art school transgressive passion is back in all it's androgynous Cate Blanchet fabulosity.
  

• But then again, so are hipster beer guts. No, No, no!!!

Idea for a reality TV series: Dinner Party Disorder - 2 people are given a mystery ingredient and a celebrity guest list. They are given one hour to clean their place and create a meal using the ingredient. They then have to entertain celebrities for approximately one hour. Merriment ensues. Guests leave. Last 20 minutes features the cleaning up in silence as waves of melancholy wash over the hosts.

• Ed Varga featured for Homo-a-go-go (*which I quasi-attended this year in SF) on Butt.
• Also featured - Sissy Nobby shows you how to do that thing (that i need to learn how to do by Saturday Night)...
• And while we're on the subject of freak dancing, is there such a thing as too much freak

Ways that my life currently resembles a Wes Anderson film:
Working out to Ziggy Stardust on my MP3 player next to a father and son in matching unitards.
Brightly colored zip covers on book jackets in Viet Wah.
The cab that takes me uptown.
A montage of various activities accomplished over the course of 3 months.
Ways that my life currently resembles a Hal Hartley film:
Repetition.

• You can buy shit from Tao Lin on eBay. Don't though - because he's going to teach us how to Shoplift from American Apparel soon enough.
• Finally - a lunatic fringe of our very own...