fourfour

Weekly reader

My still-new day job (at The Daily) is taking up a lot of the brain space I've devoted to this blog, particularly because I can basically write about whatever I want within pop culture (which is what I've always done here). Since it's sometimes hard to track down stuff from The Daily, I'm going to start to post regular link roundups of some of my stuff. I usually tweet that stuff, but that's so ephemeral, too. The idea of self-promotion has always made me feel ill at ease, but the idea of coming off as less active makes me feel worse. The former wins out.

Here are some things I've written since starting a few weeks ago:

On music

Justin Bieber Under the Mistletoe album review
Bai Ling "Rehab" single review
Mary J. Blige featuring Drake "Mr. Wrong" single review
David Lynch Crazy Clown Time album review

On movies

Paranormal Activity 3 review

On TV

Horror TV essay (Walking Dead, American Horror Story, etc.)
Fairy tale TV essay (Once Upon a Time vs. Grimm)

On books

Chuck Palahniuk video Q&A (this is heavily condensed, which is unfortunate since we talked about Judy Blume, among things that were excised, but whatever -- editing me shorter is best left to others)

I'll do these about once a week. Hope they don't make you puke!

Best commercial ever?

 

I am not one of those people who says, "I love that commercial!" On the contrary, I do a great job of tuning them out (to a fault -- references to commercials are the most consistent pop culture references that go flying over my head). Weirdly, I heard this one playing from the other room and couldn't believe what the voice over was saying about Immortals. It's truth in advertising to the extreme and admirably doesn't take seriously what obviously shouldn't be taken seriously in the first place. Won't spoil it here, but full text is below:

Another gay movie

When we talk about gay equality, sometimes we use phrases like, "Well, if it were straight people, then..." (you can replace "straight" with any other group supposedly less marginalized than gays, depending on the speaker's point of view). Well, if Andrew Haigh's Weekend were about straight people, then...it simply couldn't exist. There would be nothing to talk about -- over the course of their 48-hour, club-spun fling in England, Weekend's two principle characters, Russell (Tom Cullen) and Glen (Chris New) barely deviate from the subject of their homosexuality and how it relates to themselves and each other and the larger world. Peppered with male nudity and extended explicit sex scenes, this is as gay as it gets.

The message is simple: we can't yet reverse the gay/straight binary, because there's still so much to work through on our side. We're years away from something as matter-of-fact as a gay version of Before Sunrise, a film to which Weekend has been compared. Maybe it's a bit of self-obsession, but it's hard not to talk about being gay if you are gay, especially upon meeting (and hooking up with) a fellow gay guy. When the majority of the world still feels so behind, still thinks that rudeness (or worse) is a socially acceptable way to deal with a person who is different, you talk about it to cope, to reassure, to strengthen. Language is one of the few things we do have -- the belief that everyone is entitled to have an opinion on your humanity and rights confirms as much.

This film has a good grasp on what it is like to be gay in 2011, this bizarre moment of transition where you won't always get beat up for showing gay affection in public, but you could very well be confronted with disdain. By positioning two characters of the same sexuality that possess different ideas of what equality means and what makes for "radical" behavior, Haigh creates a meditation that asks as much as it proclaims. Glen is comfortable with his sexuality to an almost militant extent; Russell is uncomfortable to the point of being virtually closeted. Glen's is angry, Russell is wary. They don't always agree, but through events that took place in these characters' pasts and from what plays out on screen, they are both justified. This bizarre moment in time makes for really complicated interiors.

Weekend is quiet and intimate, and that makes sense because of how introverted communication has become. Yes, clubs are still frequented, but because of the Internet and Grindr, they are no longer a necessity (and in fact "non-scene" is sometimes worn as a badge of pride). We can get to the point of two people interacting a lot more quickly. For that, Weekend, a film about two people talking, feels perfectly of its time, in the way that Larry Kramer's Faggots and Andrew Holleran's Dancer from the Dance must have felt very much of their time in the late '70s.

T hose books feel largely under-read at this point, and that's for maybe for the same reason that Weekend could only exist at this moment. I don't expect Weekend to have much reach in the future, or even now for that matter -- despite it oozing with humanity, there is not much allegory to be had. It is what it is: two gay dudes talking about being gay and having gay sex. The best case scenario for this document of its time is that we'll return to it in a few years, see the internal conflict, the frustration, the still pervasive homophobia, and realize that it has since become obsolete.

Your new hero

 

Randy Senna is an arcade-game enthusiast and collector that some call "eccentric" (like Philly.com) and some call a hoarder (like the show Hoarders, on which he'll appear next week). A few years ago, he basically commissioned a documentary about himself and his now-closed old-timey game spot on the Wildwood, NJ boardwalk called Flipper's Fascination. The doc lost funding (or something), but its directors, Steve Loff and Prichard Smith, released about 30 minutes of some 107 hours of footage they shot on YouTube in 2008. No one paid much attention, which is perfect in a way (it's like interactive destitution) but also kind of a shame because it's amazing and kind of pre-Jersey craze zeitgeisty and still relevant, I think. If nothing else, there is a really amazing improvised series/movie that is just dying to come out of this or something like it (really, I think Christopher Guest could tear the shit up).

My favorite of all the segments is above, but the one of people just eating boardwalk food is stellar, as is the one about Darlene, who rides a Jazzy, eagerly shows just how false her teeth are, shares a story about her being mistaken for a man and wears vomit on her shirt seemingly just for kicks. The best (and by that I mean most despicable) thing about the one above is that it upholds a great Wildwood tradition. In it, a foreign employee of Randy's is repeatedly referred to as "Pumpkin," which seems kind of...off. Maybe racist and/or homophobic? At one point, after the kid protests being called this, Randy's mother says, "I could call ya worse!" And then, you're almost certain about what she means. Anytime someone says something off color in Wildwood, there's always someone else to prove that your worst suspicions are the correct suspicions.

Have a roaring good 4th

At a Videogum show this year, Gabe read from the novelization of Waterworld and it was hilarious. It made me think that the hilariousness of novels based on film scripts hasn't been exploited to the fullest (or maybe it has -- the Internet is a big place). Anyway, it prompted me to check out the novelization of my favorite terrible movie of all time, Jaws the Revenge (my love of it is summarized in the gif above, which features text from the actual subtitle track -- yes, the shark roars). I didn't read Hank Searls' Jaws the Revenge the novel based on the movie based on the franchise based on Peter Benchley's book in its entirety (there apparently is a drug-smuggling subplot...?), but I skipped around and found a really, really good part that happens when the shark is approaching the Caribbean Island on the hunt for some Brodys while a festival is afoot:

"But it was the drums, pulsing with the rhythm torn from African roots two hundred years before, that pulsed through palm groves, over beaches, and in the gentle turquoise waters on the island's festive day.

They excited the great white shark and made his hunger grow."

So when you are being eaten by a great white shark this weekend, please remember that he loves music just as much as you do.

New favorite thing alert

 

This is from the HBO doc Bobby Fischer: Against the World. The kid's smackdown on the interviewer's creepiness is graceful and effortless. Bravo.

Dunst's finest role?

I doubt I'll see anything I love as much as the video of Lars Von Trier declaring his Nazi sympathy at Cannes for the rest of the month. Make no mistake: I'm not impressed by the director's provocation or lack of political correctness. Even though he apologized, I think joking about understanding any mass murderer, let alone one on Hitler's level, is grossly disrespectful. No, the real star of the clip is Kirsten Dunst whose media-trained world is clearly turned upside down as she sits next to a public figure who says shit you're not supposed to say as a public figure. Watching her negotiate her reality with what's happening next to her is an extremely tense, wholly human experience. I salute her squirming as Von Trier dug his hole deeper and deeper in the way I love best -- a gif wall. This is no mere wall of shame: it's one of mortification.

Cher blinks for 10 minutes

 

Is Cher the most 10-minutes-able star in the world? I think so.

This, by the way, comes from Becoming Chaz, the doc about her transgender son's transition that aired Tuesday on OWN. I fucking loved it (some rambling thoughts here). All the sandwiches alone made it the doc for me (Chaz literally said, "Mmm. Mmm. Mmm. You make such good sandwiches," at one point!). I love sandwiches, too. We aren't as different as we think we are.

The best anti-rock tantrum you'll watch all day

 

I always like to post something religious in advance of Easter (also, I like to post something religious in advance of everything), so I started to cut up this 50-minute Christian propaganda flick Rock: It's Your Decision. It's about a kid named Jeff and his struggle with negotiating the morals of rock and roll with his own Christianity. It has a little bit of a cult following, which is ironic on multiple levels. Perhaps you've already laughed at it. Anyway, Rock's porno-level line delivery and all-around melodrama are pretty amusing (watch some of that in the movie's trailer) until the film's last nine minutes, when it blossoms into an indictment of pop music as a whole in church. What you see above is Jeff's epiphany in its beautiful entirety.

You know, the movie almost convinced me of its moral soundness up to this point. Yes, it's awfully concerned and all up in everybody's business, but at least it verbalized the often-mystifying philosophy (and self-imposed squareness) of those who listen to only religious music (people who kept these guys in business). But by the time Jeff gets around to whining about the dangerous pull of a "really good, get-down beat," and the dangerousness of Captain & Tenille, it was over for me. (I even tolerated the casual gay jab!) (Just kidding. It was always over for me.) Leave Barry Manilow out of it, Jeff! He really is mild! There's a willful ignorance of diversity and how it is, at the very least, interesting from a cultural perspective. I'm coming from the opposite end of the spectrum ("Pass the sex! A second serving of Satan, please!") as Jeff, and I didn't catch the proselytizing bug from this movie. (Then again, this movie was short on beats to drive away my bad mood.) I'm one-man proof that we can all coexist and at least be amused by each other!

And laugh I did. "I think you better look at your albums. If three or four or even if only one song promotes sin, then that's what the author is promoting. And if we buy those albums, every album we buy encourages that artist to keep putting out that kind of music!" That is exactly the kind of logic that Strangers with Candy was made to lampoon. Beautiful. (For more on Jeff's speech, check out Agony Booth's lengthy review, which runs down the factual inaccuracies spewed regarding the secular, really not Satanic music Jeff condemns.)

All that is to say, Happy Easter, you devil-sympathizing heathens!

The picture of self-satisfaction

Scream 4 spoilers after the jump. I'm posting this so late, that shouldn't matter, but whatever. Sorry, I mean wh4tever.