fourfour

Scanning my life

I spent last week between jobs and attempting to organize my life. I wasn't entirely successful. I learned what I already knew: I have so much crap that I never, ever want to throw away. Below is some of it, scanned. Aren't you lucky, getting to look at my hoarding?

Now that I've made this post sound as unappetizing as possible (no cats were flattened in the making of it, I assure you!), the answer to a recurring question I've been asked more than once -- "What do you look like with hair?" -- is below, among many things that I think are actually interesting...

Miss Jackson, if you're still interested

While watching Janet Jackson perform this weekend in Atlantic City's Borgata Event Center -- a venue less than 60 miles away from but over six times smaller than that in which I first saw her in Philadelphia 17 years ago -- it struck me how much this woman has in common with Pee-wee Herman. Both were famously exposed and immediately shunned, their public careers yanked out from under them (though Paul Reubens faded into obscurity seemingly without struggle; Jan wouldn't go down without three failed albums worth of fight). Janet's most recent attempt at recorded relevance, 2008's Discipline, staggered down a hall of sounds already perfected by her contemporaries to the extent that it was the musical equivalent of, "I know you are, but what am I?" (The question in this case was earnest, not a taunt.) And, in the past year, both Janet and Pee-wee returned to the stage, in venues smaller than those that held these performers' previous glory but that radiate enough audience appreciation to make the size difference feel negligible.

Both The Pee-wee Herman Show revival and Janet's Number Ones: Up Close and Personal are angled on nostalgia, and that is enough to carry them. In my informal survey of the presentation of The Pee-wee Herman Show that aired two weekends ago on HBO, a third of the audience's audible responses came as a result of a simple reference that either that materialized in physical form (Miss Yvonne, Pterry, Penny, the foil ball) or expression ("I'm a rebel!"). Though there were plenty situational attempts at humor (some hit, many miss), I got the feeling that the show would be plenty satisfying to a large part of the population even if there were no real jokes to be had (and still many of the jokes were based on references themselves, like "If you love her so much, why don't you marry her?").

The rapturous response Janet received in Atlantic City almost always resulted from a reference -- the show is just a string of them, really. Janet's trek is no mere hits tour, but a No. 1's tour -- it is a testament to the former enormity of her success that she's able to construct an entire setlist out of songs that hit No. 1 on at least one Billboard chart (the one exception is "Nothing," which sounds like its title -- it's a bit of pseudo-emotional musical stasis that fittingly scored Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married, Too?). The show is a concentrated presentation of Janet's former glory, with hit interrupting hit in breathless medleys that pack about 30 songs into under 90 minutes. Janet trots out the iconic dance moves that accompanied many of them in their videos, and even adheres to her Rhythm Nation 1814-era sense of monochrome. In the first half of the show, she dons a camel-toe defying liquid-shiny one-piece that's part Flash Gordon, part Catwoman. She is dressed to look like she's presenting the past from the future. I can't imagine more appropriate attire.

During her show, Janet leaves the stage several times, and the self-tribute kicks into overdrive. We see a montage of her acting through the years (including a scene from Good Times depicting Penny's abuse, which is really not the best look for a celebratory gathering) and one of pictures spanning Janet's eras. A third time she leaves behind no visual, but a particularly heavy full-band rendition of The Velvet Rope's abuse anthem "What About?" Given the show's brevity, the amount of time Janet spends off stage is strange as it conflicts with her work-horse aesthetic. Hardly blessed with a virtuoso voice but famously thrust into the spotlight regardless, Janet's always made up for her shortcomings with palpable, thrilling effort. Her meek pipes have held their own amongst the clatter of Jam & Lewis' drum machines and samples and steam-letting and giant ideas (about love, society and the self), a sonic flower pushing through a dissonant asphalt. The amount of breaks and the length of them betray everything we've understood about Janet's devotion up to this point. Perhaps she is slowing down -- age seems not to have taken any toll on her physical appearance and it must manifest itself somewhere. Perhaps they are a new way of her asserting herself ("You'll wait for me, when I say so"). After all, it would fall in line with Janet's polite persona that her diva moments occurred out of the public eye.

This is all a minor point ultimately because when Janet is onstage, she owns it as she has for the past 25 years. She not only pulls off self-tribute, she does it with such grace it feels only appropriate. What makes Janet Jackson's current career downturn so frustrating is its redundancy -- her paradoxical shyness, her muttering singing style, her publicly admitted abuse and depression make her an underdog before the public even gets a chance to cast its vote. And because of all these fragile traits she brings to the fold, she is the perfect superstar: asserting her ego (i.e. what superstars do and what we end up hating them for) feels like a triumph for Janet. Nobody truly deserves to be a superstar, but when a prematurely discarded celebrity like Janet or Pee-wee can come back doing exactly what made us love them in the first place, it feels like good karma. It also suggests that whoever said you can't live in the past was a quitter.

Mise en scream: The fourfour guide to single-setting horror

There is great power in constraint, or so I've gathered from a recent rash of horror (and horror-like) movies that confine their characters to a single, often claustrophobic location. The groundwork for this stuff was laid in Hitchcock's Rope and Lifeboat, much like Cannibal Holocaust inspired what would become the subgenre POV horror, and much like An American Family predicted reality TV years and years in advance. (Weirdly enough, the pattern in all three of these pop culture subgenres is that there's an extremely early foundational example, followed by a high-profile update on the form that becomes the most obvious point of reference  -- The Blair Witch Project in the case of POV, The Real World for reality TV and Cast Away for single-setting stuff -- for a movement that emerges still several more years later.)

With Cast Away being an obvious influence and things like Phone Booth and 127 Hours being essential entries in the single-setting subgenre, it's a more fluid form than POV horror. But even if they all don't strictly rely on the conventions of horror, these movies deserve to be grouped together. They inevitably depict nightmare scenarios, for one thing (the difference between a thriller and horror is often just a bit of added politeness on the part of the director). Also, tropes begin to emerge within this subset: the movies typically have short running times (many below clock in under 90 minutes) and almost all feature exceptionally good-looking people, even by Hollywood standards. After all, there's not much else to look at within the confines of single-setting horror. They're just trying to give you your money's worth.

(Note that I'm not including movies like The Amityville Horror, whose single setting of a house affords multiple locations: rooms, the yard, etc. Extreme confinement is key here.)

I thought it'd be fun to examine what I consider to be the main entries in this subgenre,  side-by-side. They present a range of seemingly insurmountable challenges for their characters, but are united by a single cinematic challenge: how to make something that is static in nature still move viewers.

Liza on Liz

 

Chalk it up to ignorance and things slipping through the cracks, but I was never a true fan of Elizabeth Taylor's work, except for when it involved howling on a red carpet. That was, after all, the best thing that ever happened in the history of things happening. Regardless, I was watching the news yesterday and reading various celebrities' statements on her death (Elton's was particularly poignant), and Liza's reminded me of when she was on Larry King in 2006, talking about how Liz's sage advice helped her through a rough time. I used this clip in the first video re-edit I ever did, but in that, it's all cut up for maximum incoherence (not that Liza needs help in that department!). Above, it's in one piece and really just the best advice ever for dealing with haters. Seriously, always, the No. 1 rule is: DON'T READ IT. This is especially true about the Internet. Liz was way ahead of her time.

Charlie/Brown

Any negative treatment of a person of color is worth examining for racism. Ignore history if you like, but without perpetuating itself, the status quo would not exist. Regarding it warily, and giving minorities the benefit of the doubt represents the bare minimum of human decency.

And so, it's reasonable to momentarily wonder if Chris Brown's lingering reputation as a not-so-nice guy has anything to do with the fact that he's also a black guy. If his Rihanna-bashing were an isolated incident in an otherwise spotless track record then, it might be easier to make that case. But what I said about Brown a year and a half ago holds true: he's a hard person to like. This is based entirely on his behavior -- at this point, the only color the guy could be to improve his public profile is invisible. His charmlessness spans his earliest public address of the assault, in which he seemed more focused on how it might impact his career than in expressing accountability, to a recent one when he referred to it as a "mishap" (like the kind explained away with a chain that says, "Oops!"?). In between, there's been whining about a judge's orders to stay away from Rihanna and the possibility of him becoming, gulp, a "mixtape artist." There was an incident in which he mocked Raz B's alleged sexual abuse on Twitter by calling him a "dick in da booty ass lil boy," and then, when his fans took exception, he offered, "I'm not homophobic! He's just disrespectful!!!" Bigotry, after all, is about entitlement.

People have pointed out that the public seems to be picking favorites in our pool of celebrity women-beaters -- Charlie Sheen is the go-to guy for illustrating the perceived racial underpinnings in anti-Brown sentiment. In Anna Holmes' great New York Times op-ed, "The Disposable Woman" (which I otherwise agree with), she wrote, "The privilege afforded wealthy white men like Charlie Sheen may not be a particularly new point, but it’s an important one nonetheless. Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears are endlessly derided for their extracurricular meltdowns and lack of professionalism on set; the R&B star Chris Brown was made a veritable pariah after beating up his equally, if not more, famous girlfriend, the singer Rihanna. Their careers have all suffered, and understandably so." Perhaps a Times reader himself, Brown echoed the sentiment today, when after his window-smashing tantrum at Good Morning America, he tweeted: "I'm so over people bringing this past shit up!!! Yet we praise Charlie sheen and other celebs for there bullshit." If you read this as a plea for fairness, Brown's words sound like those of a child who can't wrap his head around the fact that not everyone wants to celebrate his feces like his mommy does.

The thing is that very few are praising Charlie Sheen for his "bullshit" (which I assume refers to his extensive history of abuse). As Holmes point out, what people have actually done is overlook it. A big reason for that is that Sheen has made it easy to overlook. His performance art is fascinating in itself. Sheen's media-mastery is savant-like and his way with words is diabolical. Chris Brown, a professional writer if you believe his albums' credits, would be lucky in his entire career to stumble once on something as absurdly clever as the shit that just rolls off Sheen's tongue (unlike Sheen, I get the feeling that Brown's boogers and brain are the same age). And that is to say nothing of the fact that the women who Sheen has been accused of brutalizing are not nearly as publicly beloved as Rihanna. Everyone deserves to live a life free of abuse equally, but the fact of the matter is that if you hurt a superstar, you can expect super-sized backlash.

Not that super-sized backlash is what Brown has received. Yes, his sales took a slight, momentary hit. Yes, he has his detractors, but he also has a legion of loyal fans who unleash questionable grammar and vague Biblical references the minute anyone intimates Brown's feces are less than praiseworthy. In the past year, he's had three Top 20 hits on the Billboard 100, and three Top 5 hits on Billboard's R&B chart (including the No. 1 "Deuces"). It would not be surprising if he sold out a tour the size of Sheen's upcoming one (after all, Sheen isn't filling stadiums but theaters). Given the consistent mediocrity of Brown's output and thinness of his voice, the guy is doing fine. His job provides him with an obscene amount of money and the ability to do what he says he loves on a national stage. His work in his other medium of choice, the outburst, regularly gets national coverage, too. If attention is the bottom line or at least close to it, being praised for his bullshit is exactly what Brown is experiencing. If that isn't winning, I don't know what is.

A story about my old job

I already posted this on Twitter, but it deserves a heads-up here since this is my life we're talking about: Friday was my last day working for VH1. It's very surreal of me to  leave a place that for a while, I never thought I would (I was coming up on my fifth year). While my goodbye post conveyed the bittersweetness of my departure, as I get further away (even as far as a weekend), there is more and more relief. When I start my new job at TVGuide.com next week, I will no longer be locked into one network's programming lining and creating (what amounts to) advertorial content (as much as I put into making it not read as such) for it. I have some pop-cultural blind spots that have come as a result of focusing on one network (so often, the last thing I wanted to do upon after spending my day watching TV was to watch more TV) and I look forward to fixing my vision.

Every job has its frustrations and while I'm happy to leave a lot of them behind and never so much as consider them again, there's a story I've been sitting on for a while that I'd like to share. It is a tale involving someone who had no idea how to do my job telling me how to do my job, of the rare clash I had with on-air talent (one of maybe two in the hundreds of delightful weirdos I encountered and wrote about), of an insanely late-night email exchange gone extreme, all drizzled in the essence of homophobia. I hadn't thought about it for a while, but when I was going through my inbox before leaving VH1, I reread this epic thread and was mostly pleased with my writing. For that reason chiefly, but also based on the belief that if you see something even remotely anti-gay, say something, I am sharing this exchange.

I'm not here to make friends, but I'm also not trying to throw anyone under the bus (see what I did there?), and for that reason I have redacted the particulars that would make this person immediately identifiable. This is not meant to humiliate anyone, but to give a little slice of my former professional life and the complications that can arise when your job is to write about the output of the company you're working for.

My new favorite song

Everybody knows the music of Mr. T, but probably few have known of the music about Mr. T. Until now, that is! This comes from a softer-than-softcore VHS called Ultraflash and features someone who looks very much like a stripper (and a little like RuPaul's Drag Race's Carmen Carrera) taking interpretive dancing into the realm of seizing as a song about needing the help of Mr. T blares in the background (best line: "I'm on a pay phone and I can't talk long / Mr. T (Mr. T)"). I don't know that this woman expected Mr. T to do for her situation. Hold down her tongue? Hold down her person?

Anyway, I think both the dancing, message and Mr. T samples in this track are what's missing from contemporary music. In my day, we flailed and grunted to show affection (and we certainly never got on no airplanes!)! We weren't afraid to look like sub-Flashdance floozies to prove our love. Ah, the halcyon, whoreful (new favorite word alert!) days.

Make like a cat, and go back to bed!

 

It is, after all, Monday.

BTW, sorry to double up on Winston subject matter, but the snoring above annihilates this snoring. True fact!

Zoonoying

As a child, I often heard that I was annoying. This criticism was not confined to relatives or friends or friends of relatives (although members of each of these groups were certainly among the most persistent and elaborate as to just how annoying I was) -- I heard it everywhere I went. All I had to do was open my mouth and BAM, "Annoying!" I can't even be specific about it because I thought I was just existing, and soon that existence came to include being called annoying at every turn. It has affected me in adulthood in that I feel like being annoying is a natural tendency of mine that I must always fight against. Sometimes this means being unnaturally terse, at others I do this by avoiding communication entirely. I don't make small talk, for one thing. (Still, often I fear that my resistance just doesn't work.)

After revisiting the programming that I watched as a child, chiefly Small Wonder and Zoobilee Zoo (via a VHS I found this weekend at the Salvation Army on Bedford Ave., of course), I realize that I was doomed from the start. These shows (and, obviously so many others) glorified annoying as the way to get what you want (including your point across). Of course, the fact that I was watching Zoobilee Zoo when I was way too old for it (it premiered in '86, when I was 7 or 8) may have been my first problem.

But wow, this VHS exceeded my memory of how annoying the show was. It is frankly unbelievable, and for that reason, not unbearable. I know it's terrible marketing to be like, "This is annoying, watch it!" but the cut I did above of the most skin-crawling moments, I think, is astounding. I understand that children's programming has a tendency to be brash and obnoxious and that you could make an effective cut like this out of virtually anything (I'd have a field day with Barney), but that should not discount the enormity of annoying on display above.

And by the way, I don't think this way of communicating via TV is going anywhere. If anything, we're getting more annoying as a culture (everybody loves Kanye!). I haven't watched Disney Channel original programming since Good Morning Miss Bliss, but the amazing SNL skit this weekend for the Disney Channel Acting School ("On the Disney Channel, every person has to be the loudest person in the room!") makes me believe that this tradition is alive and well.

What I've been listening to

God, what a shitty year it's been for pop music so far! Even stuff that's caught my attention long enough to make my brain move has felt underwhelming -- divorced from the context of their superstar singers, I doubt "Hold It Against Me" or even "Born This Way" would have inspired me to write about them. The only pop album I've reviewed all year has been Adele's 21, which: BORING. Nice, pleasant, mom-pandering, sung exquisitely, very promising -- all yeses. It itself? Mild enough to lull me into a coma. (I, however, challenge 2011 to deliver me a more satisfyingly miserable dose of pop wallowing than "Someone Like You." The BBC's Ian Wade calls it a "future standard," which sounds about right. I also challenge Adele to deliver a live performance as moving as the album version -- the chafed strain on her voice in the chorus is what that song is all about. I understand going there live is risky, but the payoff would be immense.)

But things are looking up. Chris Brown's F.A.M.E. just leaked, for one thing (haha, just kidding - the only thing worse than Chris Brown the person is Chris Brown the "artist"). Updated: Come to think of it, it's a draw as to whether I hate his music or his persona more. I'll give him that he's consistent, though.). Sky Ferreira's As If EP does a lot to justify the heretofore puzzling hype surrounding this girl (my tweets about "99 Tears" don't even do my obsession justice). On the dancier side of things, the just-leaked Holy Ghost and Wolfram albums have me hooked in a way that nothing has so far: I actually look forward to listening to them repeatedly. That's pathetic, but at least I have love in my life again.

There have been a few bright spots in the form of individual tracks. Some stuff that didn't make me question my life path is embedded below...