What does MJ tells us about us?

He was a cultural fucking icon. Few like him, no doubt.

What I’m trying to think about is what defined him as such. His death is a huge deal. Would it have been such a big deal in 1992? Would he have been remembered as much or as relevantly [sic, sic, sic] had he died then? I mean, in 1992 he had already released all his albums “that mattered”, i.e. up to Dangerous. But in 1992, there were still no lawsuits, scandals, babies, marriages, etc… His contributions to music, dance, etc, pretty-much all happened pre-92 (maybe with the exception of some of his via-Britney and via-Justin and via-Madonna and etc coreos). But would have he been as remembered, as relevant without the scandal? Probably not. And what that tells us about us is kinda scary…

I am NOT reading that book (but boy! is it fun not to)

I use the insulting “that” as opposed to just a regular “that” (and a more normal “this”). “That” book is Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew B Crawford. I am a bit put off, already, by the choice of title (and cover photo) and slight insinuation that this has anything to do with the brilliant text of Pirsig. Now what drove me off completely was also hugely entertaining:

1. I was stood up for lunch today, and as I grubbed away I read this week’s New Yorker. In “Out of the Office” (here), Kelefah Sanneh reviewed the book in what can only be termed and absolute critical bloodbath, despite its beauty and elegance.
2. Now the coincidence was that last night my brother came over and we watched the more slapstick-ally-minded obliteration of Mr Crawford by Stephen Colbert (here). We laughed and laughed and thought he was an idiot.

From what I can tell, I would not have given this author such amazing shelf-space (I mean, THE New Yorker AND Mr Colbert) or much thought. But it really has been fun to see him (deservedly) treated like a gazelle on Animal Planet…

Style Wars redux – I

I was recently in the Boston area (yes, it’s sort-of-Mecca-like for DFW fans). While there, MarGin convinced me to wake up early and visit Shepard Fairey’s (SF, incidentally the same initials Paul Erdös used for God, whom he called the “Supreme Fascist”) exhibit at the ICA before meeting up for lunch. MarGin said it was a can’t-miss-life-changing-spiritually-healing-aesthetically-climatic experience. Well, they really just said it was great, but this is what I wanted to glean from their body language (so that I could later be all the more supportive or argumentative). I showed up at lunch to say “I didn’t like it.” That was the opener (and used for shock value as I did “like it”, but…). After a short discussion, I promised to go through Supply & Demand: The Art of Shepard Fairey and come back with more thoughtful words. I have now done so.

SF’s Manifesto (here) is excellent. It manages to update and give form to the idea of writing on the NYC MTA from the 1970s. So that’s the first compliment-critique. He did come up with something new and cool and smart, but he was in a way appropriating a cultural expression that truly emanated from the street (as opposed to the classroom). That was truly a movement in the basest social sense of the term, as it had no heads, no leaders (I am stealing from my brother’s article from this morning, here). In a way, I prefer the honest subversion of Skeme’s “I want to bomb, to destory all lines.” (from Style Wars). In the end, the objectives of the OBEY campaign, as noted in the manifesto, ring familiar as regards those of the MTA writers. OK, this is probably being a bit obsequious to my own critical agenda, as SF has always been graffiti-like-ish… (One could also call him unapologetically tame for his “Giant is designed to provoke thought about the mechanics of the system we live in…not to destroy it,” but I will restrain myself.)

Back to the main point. I really like the OBEY campaign. I really like the basics of SF’s aestethic. I really like many of his sources (communist propaganda design, The Sex Pistols, Vivienne Westwood-ish stuff, etc). I guess I have to say I really like (a lot) of his art. BUT, and this is indeed the BIG BUT… it’s all the same. If Supply & Demand was one exhibit by SF, if OBEY was one project by SF, there would be little to say except “kudos!”. However, the exhibit is pretty much the sum-total of his career; he has tons of pieces and they are all the same (more so than with Jan Hendrix, as per the post here). The funny thing is that the best argument, or best summary of my argument, comes via SF himself in his interview of Banksy in Swindle (here). Banksy says “I’m always trying to move on. You’re not supposed to get dumber as you get older. You’re not supposed to just do the same old thing. You’re supposed to find a new way through and carry on.” I’m tempted to suggest that it was either a Banksy prank to say this to SF’s face or a sincere Banksy giving advice…

There’s been little evolution in SF, and his art is such a constant recombination of his own art that over the past 20 years, the first real, material, significant deviation (OK, there was the jump from Giant to the communistic) was the Obama poster. (I love the poster for what it was and for what it represents and for its aesthetic.) Obama brings change, and we can only hope that the Obama poster also brings change (to SF’s oeuvre).

Teen sports movies, chick-flicks, etc… and the capillarity of Water

Some consider my penchant for teen sports movies (see previous post: Sunday Confessional, here) and chick-flicks and the like, a prolapse in judgement—and criticize it. But if we go to 6.43 (of THE Tractatus) and note that…

If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can only alter the limits of the world, not the facts—not what can be expressed by means of language.

In short, the effect must be that it becomes and altogether different world. It must, so to speak, wax and wane as a whole.

The world of the happy man is a different world from that of the unhappy man.

…then therein lies my consolation. If Raise Your Voice or Twilight (which am about to watch, again) can serve to alter the limits of my world… If it enhances my construct of Water… Then it is good judgement call. Because if we paraphrasingly posit that ‘Water is all that is the case,’ then I want to make sure that my construct is allowed to “wax and wane” again and again to make sure my world “is a different world from that of the unhappy man.” my Water “is a different [Water] from that of the unhappy man.”

Sunday confessional

(This is the prelude to a wider Water-topic that is upcoming.)

I am watching Stick It!, again. I am falling in love with Missy Peregrym (Hailey), again. And just the fact that the soundtrack includes a chunk of “One Big Holiday” by My Morning Jacket makes me like the movie more. I like the subversive undertone, and the rebel-rebel attitude. Much more interesting than play-it-safe, lay-up, be-nice, geek-goes-jock, Ice Princess (albeit I liked it too). Part of why that one works is because Michelle Trachtenberg has to be a good-girl. Her trying to play the bad-girl is probably what annoys me so much of her in Gossip Girl)… The her-his conflict in The Cutting Edge: Going for the Gold, adds a bit of romantic tension, but that one remains relatively bland (if enjoyable). In any case, the point is that when Hailey shed a tear on the balance beam, so did I.

The Mexico that isn’t

(This was written in early March 2009. Follow the ‘more’ ink to read the full note, which is on the long side…)

Not long ago, I came across a review of Mexican High: A Novel by Liza Monroy, soon to be published in paperback by Doubleday. I started getting more and more interested as I figured out it was based on the High School I attended. As people asked me about whether I knew her (to which “no” was my initial answer), I eventually figured out who the author was.

I went to High School at the American School Foundation (ASF) in Mexico City from 1993 to 1997 (characterized as ISM, the International School of Mexico, in the book). Both new students, I first met Liza Gennatiempo (that was her name then, so I guess she might have changed it or gotten married—beyond her marriage-for-green-card-and-LGBT-rights-statement) at new student orientation in what was probably late August 1993. I last saw her—to the best of my recollection—at graduation or prom, whichever was after, around June of 1997. Thus, we shared a pretty similar High School experience, from which she came up with the book. So much so that in the story, one character is “Jaime, whose father ran GasMex [in reference to PEMEX], the country’s petroleum giant;” and later in an interview in WNYC, Mrs Monroy again highlights that she went to school with the “sons and daughters of [...] the person that ran PEMEX [...] these fresas”. My father was CEO of PEMEX from December 1994 to December 1999. This “me” both times serves to help define the fresas, in the book and in the interview. The author characterizes these, for example, as “Eurotrash with Mexican passports”—when pulling her punches. Reading the rest of the novel and hearing the WNYC interview, I take offense. I do.

But, back to the book…

Ambition is kicking in (reading list)…

Am getting waaaaaaay ambitious…

My reading list is like ten miles long, and if I manage to get through it before year-end it will be quite a success. What makes it even harder is my addiction to American TV, to which I now have access (Frasier re-runs, old Law & Order, Mythbusters, VH1 [specially the 'history of drugs' and stuff], and my obsession will chick-flicks [as I write, I am watching the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, again]…. I am doomed).

Anyway, the idea is to keep the mix of the lowbrow (countless hours of TV, on which more later) and the highbrow. My brother teased—after I went to watch Night at the Museum 2—that I have incomprehensible movie tastes; that I can own and watch and re-watch Hillary Duff or Kate Hudson or old Anne Hatheway movies, interrupted by reading THE Tractatus, again, or Pynchon, or the physics of David Deutsch…

I will stick to fiction, mostly, except when about water. In piles around my apartment (IJ is a pile of its own) one can find:

Gaddis’s A Frolic of his Own, an annotated Hamlet (am also watching the Branagh film, preparing for IS), Palahniuk’s Pygmy and Snuff, all of de Botton, the (rest of the) Twilight saga, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the other essays in Franzen’s How to be Alone, Naomi Klein’s No Logo, Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, the graphic Watchmen and V for Vendetta, and all my water books (Learn to Sail, The Complete Sailor, Sailing for Dummies, J/Boats: Sailing to Success, The Annapolis Book of Sailmanship, US Sailing’s Basic Keelboat and Sailboat Racing, and the rules of sailboat racing)…

I am thinking of adding Gravity’s Rainbow but with the Gravity’s Rainbow Companion. All I need is to go through P90X simultaneously… Shoot for the moon, I guess they say.