No one (that I saw) really picked up and posted what went down when Andrew WK performed at Cinefamily this weekend as party of Everything Is Festival, but it was nuts. His show was directly before the one I took part in (which was great fun!) and so I walked in a bit before the 42:00 mark in the video above to see him sit catatonically for about 15 minutes and then lay on his keyboard like it was a horn in rush-hour traffic for another five before ending his set. It made the Cinefamily theater one of several rooms I walked into last weekend in L.A. where something utterly surreal happened (at one point, when confronted with a group of people in pirate costumes, latex gold leotards and clothing covered in inflated balloons, as well as a cooler full of Tecate, I just surrendered myself to the surreality).
While doing absolutely nothing onstage may strike you as cheap, to me what Andrew WK pulled off was an impressive balance: this was very easy, yet undoubtedly hard. Most impressively, he was able to keep everyone's attention for the entire duration of his nothingness (any longer would have resulted in anger or at least mass walk-outs). But no, people cheered, continued asking questions (you'll see that the entire show was a Q&A with musical interludes) and remained wholly engaged. How much performance art can claim that?
Also, having met the bulk of the Everything Is Terrible crew, I can confirm that they are more awesome in person than on the Internet (how rare of a phenomenon!). It was very nice to be amongst garbage-cutting nerds (Hadrian of Cinefamily was similarly awesome and owns really amazing footage of Heidi Fleiss and Peter Sellers' daughter Victoria freaking out while giving sex advice for Laugh.com).
And just as a random bonus, Everything Is Terrible has unearthed proof that extreme couponing is far from a modern development:
I'm going to be joining Everything Is Terrible and Cinefamily's Mondo Squad for a screening of a bunch of our videos in Los Angeles on Saturday at 8 (Cinefamily is located at 611 N Fairfax Avenue, which means nothing to me because I don't live in Los Angeles, but I will be there!). If you live in L.A., you should come. Even if you don't, you should fly to L.A. for the night because this will be the best thing that ever happened in a live setting (best thing since Andrew WK delivered a keynote speech at the festival just a few hours before us, that is). There's more info at the festival page, and the description of the show I'm taking part in is:
Cinefamily’s grabbing the zeitgeist by the nutsack and squeezing the video juice out of the YouTube for all of our viewing pleasure! Tonight we celebrate two of our favorite memes in the viral video world: “supercuts” and “trash compactors.” You know, like when TV Carnage cut together every “Gimmie your badge…and your gun” moment from every shitty cop movie ever made, or when FourFour did a mashup of every time someone said “I’m not here to make friends” on a reality TV show — that’s a “Supercut.” And when that anonymous editor compressed 120 minutes of Wicker Man Nic Cage insanity into a high-powered two-minute H-bomb of hilarity — that’s a “Trash Compactor.” This show features our favorite pre-existing classics in these two categories, and a group show bursting full of brand-new premieres by Everything Is Terrible, FourFour, Cinefamily’s own Mondo Squad, and more. I tube, you tube, we all tube for YouTube! Tonight’s show features a live appearance by online video mashup maven FourFour!
I'm a maven, guys. It feels spectacular. Buy your tickets and watch me bask.
I don't know what I love more: the word "bimbo" or actual bimbos. Both are wonderful and so very expressive! The highlights reel above comes from the VHS Rock Video Girls, which I guess was also a pay-per-view special? I would pay $49.99 for this, easily. Better than any Tyson fight, for sure. My favorite part out of all my favorite parts is the bit about Bob Dylan and Tom Petty sitting down to pee. Even if the woman between them was mistaken about their positioning, it's a hell of an image.
By the way, if you like this video, I highly recommend Everything is Terrible's WILDLY SPECULATIVE CELEBRITY SEX SECRETS!!! In fact, I recommend that one even if you don't like this one.
Truth be told, I would not have done this video re-edit were it not for the hip-hop part. That is not to insult the magesty of chair-dancing the twist, the Shorty George, the truckin' and doing the hand jive with your feet; rather, it is to express my deep love for vague covers of 2 Unlimited's "Get Ready for This." Don't worry, this will all make (some) sense when you watch the video above.
Also, I think that it's very nice that they've developed a workout for people with disabilities and families with separation anxiety. However, I can't help but fear that in the wrong hands/chair, all this just amounts to exercise for lazy people.
I didn't grow up with DC Talk (Evangelism's answer to, oh, I don't know, TLC and second-hand embarrassment), but after watching their VHS DC Talk: Rap, Rock & Soul, which I then re-edited, I wish I had. I would have known during my insecure teenage years that at least someone was wacker than I was. The contents of this video are so gay (and not "gay" as lame, because I don't say that, but actually homoerotic) and Christian that the only way it could speak to me on a more basic level would be to address me by name.
Note: This video marks the start of a kinda-sorta syndication partnership between fourfour and Everything Is Terrible, which I have long considered my cult away from cult. Practically, it means little (probably just some more links back and forth), but spiritually, it means the world to me.
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.
Full disclosure from a lifelong connoisseur of garbage: I did not enjoy Birdemic: Shock and Terror. What is most irritating about it has little to do with the movie itself, though: in the rush to anoint this legit shitpile the BEST WORST MOVIE EVER, all the press that talked about it being a cult sensation neglected how cult films work (I'll give you a clue: it doesn't happen overnight!). But on top of being annoyed at the way the rush to claim and describe everything perverts long-standing institutions (I'm an old man, so what?), Birdemic: Shock and Terror is just tedious. Part of what makes it hilarious is the stilted editing style, which at times places several beats between each line of dialogue, the sound audibly cutting out between each exchange. This is funny for five minutes and excruciating at 90. Birdemic: Shock and Terror is too long by at least half, which makes repeat viewing virtually impossible (not that various outlets gave anyone the time to watch it again before declaring it a cult classic, and repeat-watching has everything to do with a film's worthiness in assuming that title).
However, its director James Nguyen is at least morbidly fascinating, because there is something decidedly...off about him. I hate saying "off," but "wrong" would be even worse, because I frankly believe he has some kind of mental or emotional impairment. The guy just doesn't get anything. He thinks he actually has made a movie with a "great storyline" that he hopes will leave people "thinking," per his commentary on Severin's newly released Birdemic DVD. Here too is a problem with Birdemic: the ambiguity of intent that is so essential to camp appeal is obliterated by this guy's every clueless interview that asserts how seriously he takes his work (and even a little seriously would be way too seriously in this case). "I think that the majority are laughing with the movie, but some percentage are laughing at the movie, and that’s fine. What do you expect from a movie that was made for less than $10,000? But, I think that the people who are laughing with the movie really like it, they just see through all of its imperfections, and they appreciate the sincerity of the story – a very serious, compelling story," he recently told the Wall Street Journal. For the record, people are only laughing at this thing, if he's lucky, and his assertion regarding the "sincerity of the story – a very serious, compelling story," is exactly the kind of thing they're laughing at.
There's something socially out of touch about Nguyen and if I had to make an armchair-ignorant diagnosis, I'd say he has Asperger's. I mean, who knows, really? It's just a stab at a mind that comes off as alternately complicated and simple. The DVD commentary I mentioned is plagued by the same shitty sound editing as the movie and he repeats himself endlessly. The central point of his rambling goes something like, cars = civilization, and his central question is, "Why did the eagles and vultures attack?” On his so-heavy-handed-it-hurts environmental message conveyed by fake newscasts regarding global warming and polar bears, he assures us, "You really have to watch it closely to catch all that." Is it a lack of intelligence on his part that causes him to question ours? As the commentary goes on, he becomes as insufferable as his film, a pretentious blow-hard that over-explains the overt. He also mispronounces names at random (The Birds is alternately referred to by its actual title and The Bird, and he also says “Angela Jolie” and “Yoko Owner”). I'm not willing to give him the benefit of the language barrier, either: he was born in Vietnam but his family moved to America 36 years ago. It's gotta be something...else.
But look, clearly people are charmed by this guy and his film, and if I can distill what he has to offer, it's in the video above, which cuts together instances of him literally just stating what's on screen during his commentary. His simpleness makes the average director-as-narrator shtick we often hear phoned in on these tracks seem sophisticated and insightful. The video above reminds me of that story John Waters often tells about Edith Massey: they'd go driving and she'd look out the window and just say everything she saw the whole time: mailbox, house, schoolchildren, fence, etc. You know, come to think about it, what the hell was up with Edith Massey?
What I'm mostly saying is: go ahead and laugh at (or if you are one of Nguyen's fantasy viewers, with) Birdemic: Shock and Terror. But at some point, do ask yourself: what the hell am I laughing at?
While the world waits for Britney Spears' "Hold It Against Me" video, being doled out in one 5-second scrap at a time, feast your eyes on this re-edit of her ...Baby One More Time-era VHS, Time Out with Britney Spears. This was back when she was funky, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool and capable of delivering a modern anthem like "Email My Heart" ("Everybody's been doing emails!" is her rationale for the song's relatability). It's so amazing to me in this oppressive cards-to-the-chest climate of celebrity sound bites that they allowed a 17-year-old to just babble and babble at a camera with no concern of how inane she was coming off. Aw! I miss the old days. Also, be sure to stick around for her serenade a decidedly latent pre-teen with "Born To Make You Happy." Even though he's at least 10 years her senior, this kid fully aware of how icky that is. Precocious!
I've been wanting to do a "X for 10 minutes"-style YouTube video for a while now. I really dig this sub-medium, because it is easy and stupid. And so, here it is. I think Cher howling, "Wagon Wheel Watusi!" in Burlesque (I love that movie, didn't you know?) just fits the format perfectly, too. If only she'd been there to guide Xtina through her Super Bowl performance! It woulda been so much Wagon Wheel Watusier.
Lauryn Hill is weird, but she isn't crackhead weird. She's more Beyond the Valley of the Dolls party scene weird. At least, that's how she struck me when she stepped on the stage Tuesday night at New York's Highline Ballroom. It was a make-up show for a date that was canceled at the end of December, thanks to the (first) Snowpocalypse. Doors were at 8; Ms. Lauryn Hill (that's how she's billed everywhere -- tickets, marquees, posted notes around the venue -- as if we needed pre-show warning of her eccentricity!) was set to take the stage at 11. The Highline, or maybe Lauryn's people, or maybe Lauryn herself, or maybe everyone working together to get through this thing called life has realized a thing or two since she embarked on this career-reminding tour (it could be called the Might as Well Do Something With This Talent of Mine Show). Namely, what's clear is that homegirl is preternaturally late. She's spent more time the past two decades not releasing records -- she was active for seven years beginning with the Fugees' Blunted on Reality in 1994 (fine, eight years beginning with the Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit soundtrack in 1993). It's been almost 10 years since Unplugged No. 2.0. For a moment on Tuesday night, it felt like we'd wait another eternity to see her again -- 45 minutes after she was supposed to hit the stage, her DJ announced that she was feeling under the weather and would be later than she already was. What did that mean? 12:30? 1? 2? Never? Would she seriously make us come out with a winter storm brewing for nothing? Assessing the moment and stops and starts and teasing and mess of her career of the past 10 years, all I could think was: this woman is such a pain in the ass.
But that all melted away (like I wish the snow that's vandalizing our city all year would) when she finally joined the stage at the merciful hour of 12:10, rolling and bopping her head, taking weird, tiny steps as if walking through a wading pool of mayonnaise. (Mayonnaise!) Her thrift-store mannequin chic found her in a muumuu, with neck, arms and fingers full of gaudy jewelery. "New York! New York! New York! New York! New York!...New York, New York!...New York City! New York Citay! New York City, I said! I said, New York Cit-tay!" were her first words to us. Immediately, she reminded me of Whitney Houston right before the Just Whitney era (hits included "Crack is wack!" and the Wendy Williams interview). Fantastic, I thought. It's not that I wish devastating, career-sucking addiction on anyone, I just like character. Flamboyance. Unpredictability.Skittishness as performance art.
And that, with some help of what appeared to be a coked-up bravado (she barely took a break from dabbing herself with a towel), is what Ms. Lauryn Hill delivered. Multiple times throughout the two or so hours she was on stage, I thought to myself, "If this weren't what it is, it could be so boring." Imagine Lauryn bringing her drum machine to rehash past hits in a perfect voice. Imagine if she were a Stepford pop star who was simply too busy cleaning and straightening pillows for the past 10 years and simply lost track of time. Imagine Unplugged 3.0. The alternative she offered -- a giant band that included at least two keyboard players, multiple guitarists, three back-up singers, a drummer and a DJ -- was so much more thrilling. She acknowledged her "raspy" voice ("But that’s OK. We’re gonna do it anyway, you understand?") through a 10-or-so song, stretched out journey that found her performing radically altered renditions of her solo and Fugees hits. "I've been doing these same songs forever. We gotta keep it interesting. I don't want to come up here and be phony for you. I wanna come up here and feel it, you understand?" she told the crowd on these new arrangements. She said it defiantly but it wasn't clear if it was in response to audience complaining. I can't imagine anyone in the room having the balls to stand up to this woman, really. She was too unhinged, and so was her show.
This was no well-oiled machine before us -- Lauryn regularly directed her band, the sound guy, the lighting guy and the audience throughout. After all, why sound check before when you can just integrate it into the show? It was hard to tell if the scowl that accompanied her directions was one of anger or concentration -- either way, I cannot imagine that her band is anything but scared shitless of this woman. She was as much a conductor (at times wildly failing her arms and body to bring out sound) as she was a singer and rapper that night, and she displayed a tendency to repeat directions as though they were chants to a power higher than the mere mortals she shared space with ("Builditupbuilditupbuilditup!"). That repetition was something of a musical aesthetic, too, as she'd spiral into tangents for minutes on end. The repeated ad-libs of "When It Hurts So Bad" ("I just stayed a little too long," "I gave too much of me," "If you just let it...") lasted seven or so minutes -- way longer than the structured song that came before them. She ran through a particularly hard, thrashy cover of "Ex-Factor," only to play the song again immediately in its entirety, but in a slightly less thrashy arrangement. The entire suite lasted about 25 minutes. "OK. I like 'Ex-Factor,'" I thought. I certainly wasn't arguing. She did her "How Many Mics" two times in a row -- lest you even thought of going there, she was making you think twice, mon frère.
It's impossible to imagine how crippling megastardom is unless you've experienced it, but very soon after The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill won the hearts of the globe's entire English-speaking population, Lauryn voiced her displeasure with her industry and the very concept of fame. I got the impression that she felt like an outsider who'd magically slipped inside. I interpreted her frequent repetition onstage as her negotiation of herself within pop music's constraints (loops and choruses and the like). After all, unpredictability within repetition is a pretty amazing trick to pull off. And she did and it was singular and captivating.
My only complaint is in response to her music's tendency to rev into high gear to stress fraught emotion. Not only was I less than jazzed about being presented what was essentially a rock show, Lauryn comes from the soul tradition and should show that it was her job to interpret her songs -- it is not her songs' job to interpret her. There's thinking out of the box, and then there's abandoning your essence. Luckily, Lauryn's messy humanity, weathered voice and all-around imperfection was there to remind us not only that she still has plenty of soul, but that for the past 10 years, this woman has been living.
The video above focuses on her often-hilarious between-song banter, so I'm including some music below (namely, "Ready or Not," which has an ad-libbed section about her finding her audience again and us finding her that's moving despite how manipulative it was intended to be, and "Killing Me Softly," to give you a sense of her voice and how different these arrangements are). I haven't been keeping up with YouTubes of her recent performances since I wanted to keep it all a surprise for when I finally attended this show, but my new Zoom cam's mics are made for concert recording, and I doubt you'll find a better-sounding audience video of Ms. Lauryn on all of the Internet.)
Recent Comments