Out with the New, In with the New Old
The New York Observer has a fun little article on the ‘New Old Gay’, a breed of New York homosexual who is abandoning his jort-wearing hipster peers in Brooklyn, and returning to the piano-bar meccas of downtown Manhattan. According to the article:
Project Runway Season 1 contestant Austin Scarlett is New Old Gay, Project Runway Season 4 winner Christian Siriano is New Gay. The Scissor Sisters are New Gay. Rufus Wainwright flirts with being New Old Gay, but he’s really New Gay in a Judy Garland costume. New Old Gay is The Golden Girls; New Gay is America’s Next Top Model. New Old Gay is putting together a reading of a Wendy Wasserstein play and singing show tunes around the piano at Marie’s Crisis, the West Village bar with colored Christmas lights arranged in a rainbow pattern on the ceiling; New Gay is karaoke at Sing Sing after a birthday party at Primorski’s in Brighton Beach.
Where do you fit on this spectrum?
(Thanks to Adam for the link!)
Couldn’t Escape If I Wanted To
“And how could I ever refuse
I feel like I win when I lose.”
It was with these very words that ABBA swept the 1974 Eurovision contest and began their quest for world pop domination. But when Benny and Bjorn penned these lyrics for ‘Waterloo’, could they possibly have imagined the cinematic nightmare their canon of work would inspire? Tonight I finally saw Mamma Mia and, let me tell you, never in my life has winning felt so like losing.
Over the past few years I have made it my mission to steer clear of the stage production Mamma Mia on sheer principle: modern jukebox musicals (Footloose onwards) are predictably rotten nostalgia-fests that happen to occur on a stage; ‘theatre’, ‘art’, and ‘good’ are terms that one generally should and would not use to describe these shows.
However, Mamma Mia the movie promised Meryl Streep and a pocketful of DILFS (Pierce Brosnan - check! Colin Firth - check! Stellan Skarsgard - …err, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad, although the man does get honorable mention for having the largest balls ever committed to celluloid (as if you didn’t notice during his sex scene with Nicole Kidman in Dogville!)) - so how could I resist?
Mamma Mia, as it turns out, is the story of a wicked girl named Sophie who forces all of her international friends and family to fly to Greece for a wedding that she ultimately calls off for reasons which are neither clear nor important. (And Mamma Mia virgins, I assure you all that I have not spoiled any of the film’s plot for you, for narrative is definitely not the name of this game.) So not only does said mean girl force many people to fly many miles to a very remote island before selfishly canceling her wedding, but she also invites three strange men - all of whom have had a poke at her mom back in the days of yore - hoping to learn which potential sperm donor is her biological father. Unbeknownst to her mother, all three rent-a-dads turn up and (theoretical) hilarity ensues.
As I may have mentioned earlier, incoming Freshman at UCLA’s film department are unlikely to find the words ‘narrative’ and ‘Mamma Mia’ used in conjunction on any course syllabus this Fall. Narrative in Mamma Mia is merely the uncomfortable sequences that fill the gaps between ABBA numbers. Thankfully, these gaps are few and far between. What little story the audience is given actually poses more questions than it answers: if she was raised on this remote island in Greece, why does Sophie have an American accent? Where did she meet her two best friends, who are Scottish and English, and who don’t live anywhere near the island? Why does Pierce Brosnan sound like he was raised in some imaginative English enclave of Queens? And why does this movie even take place in Greece, when it could just have easily been set in scenic downtown Hoboken for all difference it makes. At least a New Jersey locale would have made the girls’ friendships more plausible, and would have made inconsiderate Sophie seem like less of an environmental monster (having pointlessly increased her wedding guests’ carbon footprints by forcing them to attend a sham wedding).
Man, I think that thoughtless Sophie is an even bigger villain than Heath Ledger’s Joker. I truly despised her mayhem and foolishness.
Visually, the movie is an even bigger disaster. Several shots are out of focus, several look as though they were filmed for a Melissa Gilbert Lifetime movie of the week, and others make dance routines my cousin Adrienne and I made up to ‘Janie’s Got a Gun’ when were were 8 look like the newest offering from the Joffrey Ballet, compared to what passes here for choreography.
As I mentioned at the top of this post, though, the film does make losing feel like a winning game (and make no mistake about it: anybody who sees this film will walk away having lost two hours of their life, and a small part of their soul). Upon leaving the movie theatre, I commented to my escorts, Ben and Corey, that watching the movie had the same gratification as watching a Saved By the Bell marathon while hungover: it’s wrong, a complete waste of your time, but thoroughly and inexplicably entertaining from start to finish. In short, the movie is a glorious train wreck - made only more enjoyable this evening by the fact that 1.) the projector temporarily broke half-way through the movie, causing girl-n-gay pandemonium, and 2.) every time Pierce Brosnan spoke/sang, the audience erupted in laughter.
Seriously guilty pleasure? Yes. Seriously good musical (or film)? Hell no. For a more successful imagining of ABBA on film, please let me direct your attention to the brilliance of Muriel’s Wedding:
So Long, Sophia
As I’m sure you’re well aware if you’re reading this blog, Estelle Getty left us all for that great Shady Pines in the sky. Now Sophia was always my least favorite Golden Girl, but I think it’s only appropriate to honor her the best way I know how. Through YouTube.
When Bears Attack
Apparently mankind’s continued gangbang on Mother Earth has had yet another detrimental effect: bears gone wild! No, no, no, not those kinds of bears (the two picture being a rare breed known to select circles as design bears). I’m talking about real bears, the kind that live in the forest and steal picnic baskets. According to The Guardian, Russian salmon poachers have stolen all of their local bears’ nature-candy, and now the grizzlies are demanding a blood sacrafice:
A sloth of up to 30 hungry and desperate bears have attacked and eaten two men in Russia’s wild eastern region of Kamchatka and trapped a group of geologists at their remote site…Bears have been known to attack humans in the scarcely populated region. Most people live in the grey and foggy regional capital, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatky, on the peninsula’s east coast. But the bears are now encroaching on towns, rummaging in bins and scoffing the remains discarded by food factories.
I don’t know what’s worse - being eaten by a bear or having to spell ‘Petropavlovsk-Kamchatky’ as your return address every time you send a parcel of mail.
I Believe In Harvey Dent
It’s 3:00 in the morning, I’ve just walked in the door after an exhaustingly long day, and sleep is the last thing on my mind. I have just returned home from seeing The Dark Knight, and it’s given me more than enough to think about. I’m not going to bother to write some approximation of a review, when others will undoubtedly do the film far more justice. Nor will I attempt to add more to the mounds of soundbytes that have been floating around the web for the past several weeks: yes, the film is dark - relentlessly so; yes, Heath Ledger is unforgettably terrifying (without overshadowing his castmates, who are equally on the mark); yes, it is not a film for children; and yes, it’s going to be hard to leave the last 2.5 hours behind me. In fact, I just might have to see Mama Mia to get Batman out of my head.
Christopher and Jonathan Nolan have written a story so menacing, and so obsessed with morality, that the film is nothing short of a modern Greek tragedy. What interests me most about The Dark Knight, though, is its representation of a great white hope - an insurmountable moral pillar in a sea of trouble and uncertainty. As the movie quickly establishes, Batman can and never will be the poster boy for hope and change. Batman is a rogue, a wild card no more predictable or human than the Joker; how is a city in peril to trust a man whose face they’ll never see? A city rife with home-grown terrorism and political corruption needs a Harvey Dent, a golden boy with the power to inspire not only hope, but the power to inspire change. People need something to believe in.
Ultimately, though, the film reveals the face of hope and change as a facade, yet another mask. Not free from his own complications and compromises, Harvey Dent is no stronger a moral compass than the dark knight himself. Reconciling the shortcomings of fallen icons can be a bitter pill to swallow, and one that haunts all of the principal characters by the film’s conclusion. Yet as bleak as that final realization is, I would argue that The Dark Knight ends on a redemptive note. The path towards a more just society isn’t necessarily the most ethical; and sometimes the most important aspects of a hero aren’t the flaws from his past, but the progress he inspires.
I can’t help but think of our own troubled times, the uncertainty that lies ahead, and the promise of a better tomorrow that Barack Obama has pledged to a great deal of my peers and, indeed, the country. And I think about the badge that I always wear on my bag that reads ‘Beards for Obama’, a sign of solidarity as serious as it is sassy. I think about the times I’m afraid of being questioned about Obama’s proposed economic plan versus that of McCain, or am asked to defend his credentials - afraid because sometimes I’m not certain if my allegiance is based on fact or faith. I think about Obama’s relationship with Reverend Wright, and the months of allegations, rumors, and scandals that we’re inevitably in for. I think about that hilariously unfunny New Yorker cover. I think about the pressure of being a black man in a white man’s world, and all of the compromises and contradictions that Obama has had to make peace with in order to achieve his level of success.
But mostly, I’m glad. Glad that, not matter how he’s justly mythologized or demonized, people in America finally have somebody to inspire greatness. So if there’s one impression that The Dark Knight has made on me, it’s that I do indeed believe in Harvey Dent.
He’d Get One: Aaron Eckhart
It’s been ever so long since I’ve cyber-shagged anyone. I hope there were no concerns that I’d gone celibate, or that my mickey had fallen off in a freak horse-riding accident. Set your fears aside though, folks, and behold Aaron Eckhart! Ben reminded me of his attractiveness via IM earlier today, but with slight trepidation. And I’ll admit, Aaron Eckhart does fall into some sort of gray area on the Kinsey Hotness Scale (which exists, FACT!). There’s something a bit…unconventional about his handsomeness. But with a jaw that square, and a chin that cleft, how could any self-respecting girl or gay say no? Actually, there’s no cleft in the picture that I found. Maybe he had some sort of cleft-reduction surgery recently…And look at his hair! It’s weird around the ears, like when I’m drunk and use my beard trimmer to cut my own hair. God, Ben was right: Aaron Eckhart is sort of a mess.
He’d still get one, though. And I’ll be seeing a whole lot more of Aaron on Thursday in The Dark Knight, where his Harvey Dent will undoubtedly encounter some freak acid accident. I, for one, would take his Two Face over Tommy Lee Jones’s any day. In fact, I’m still not ever convinced that Tommy Lee Jones is wearing makeup in that picture.
Thursday Knight
See what I did there? Made a pun. God I’m amazing.
So I was a bit disappointed when I first saw then ending of Batman Begins, when it became clear that the sequel would revolve around the Joker. I had such fond childhood memories of Jack Nicholson’s Joker and, indeed, for both Tim Burton Batman films (Batman Returns being a mise-en-scene masterpiece); I wasn’t sure I wanted to see yet another incarnation of such a well-tread character. Early reviews for The Dark Knight, however, can’t praise Heath Ledger’s Joker enough, and I just can’t wait to see this film.
It’s a tribute to Ledger’s indelible work that he makes the viewer entirely forget the actor behind the cracked white makeup and blood-red rictus grin, so complete and frightening is his immersion in the role. With all due respect to the enjoyable camp buffoonery of past Jokers like Cesar Romero and Jack Nicholson, Ledger makes them look like — well, clowns. Variety
It’s a stupendously creepy performance, wild but never over the top. He cuts a figure so dangerous that you wonder if Batman is up to the task—or if our hero himself will have to become as ruthless as his foe. When you’re fighting an enemy who plays by no rules, do you have to abandon your own moral code to vanquish him? Newsweek
And then there’s the film’s tone. Time writes that director Christopher Nolan “wants viewers to stick their hands down the rat hole of evil and see if they get bitten. With little humor to break the tension, The Dark Knight is beyond dark. It’s as black — and teeming and toxic — as the mind of the Joker.” Or, as Mick put it over IM earlier, “Every Batman that comes out is supposed to be darker than anything before it. Soon, they’ll just be showing a black screen for two hours.” Zing!
My ticket is booked for the midnight showing on Thursday. Is yours?
Project Runway 5
I was supposed to go to the beach today, but a combination of Ben’s Eptsein-Barr-like laziness, and my beer-induced sinus headache, resulted in a day on the couch watching the tail-end of Bravo’s Project Runway’s Season 2 marathon. And any skilled TV watcher knows that where there’s a marathon, there’s bound to be a season premier.
Yes, Season 5 is upon us. It seems like only yesterday that Christian Siriano made ‘fierce’ a household word, but I suppose Bravo wants to milk the franchise for all it’s worth before Heidi and co. jump ship for another network.
Apart from working it on Project Runway, Hedi’s also been swimming around with one of my other true loves: shark documentaries. I’m not really sure what Heidi and sharks have in common, or why the Discovery Channel thought she’d be an appropriate person to swim with the big beasts, but I’m biting.
Separation Anxiety
In regards to pop culture, I can be a very obsessive person. Friends have often remarked on this admittedly mediocre phenomenon, stating that they’ve rarely seen a person pour over something they love as thoroughly as I do. Movies, music, sometimes theatre, and especially TV; these have all been targets for my fancy.
In the days of yore, televisual obsessions were fairly easy to cope with. Apart from re-runs and off-time, shows aired regularly. One had a decent amount of time to reflect upon each passing episode, mentally preparing for upcoming shows while maintaining some sort of grounded relationship with the outside world. The advent of the DVD has, however, brought about a sort of pop-culture plague that exaggerates and intensifies any TV obsession to the point of absurdity. I am speaking of that horrible, depressed malaise that occurs after watching episodes (or seasons) of a given TV show in rapid succession. If boredom was the disease without a name for 1950s housewives, this, my friends, is ours.
Symptoms of this disease may vary, but the underlying pathology is the same. Once a marathon viewing has been completed, the afflicted often feels dissociated from the outside world. Normal social functions seems like paltry substitutions for the fantastic fictional world that you have just inhabited. Your friends, colleagues, and the people that you love - people whose company you have cherished for years - often seem a bitter replacement for the characters you have watched for hours upon end. And you can’t help but wanting more: more episodes, more plot twists, more entertainment.
I am not the only person who has suffered from the cruel hands of TV-to-DVD bulimia. Sit any rational person in front of all four seasons of LOST and I guarantee you they’ll be desperate to hop on an ill-fated plane in search of smoke monsters and lusty, half-naked beach people. Fact.
I mention this disease without a name because Mick recently gave me the complete series of Twin Peaks for my birthday. Obviously, I ODed.
I had watched the first storyline (as in “Who Killed Laura Palmer?”) in bits and pieces about a year ago, but had never seen the much-lauded latter-half of season two, or the prequel movie, Fire Walk With Me. Eager to round out my stint in Twin Peaks, I greedily consumed approximately 12 episodes of Lynch goodness over the course of a few days last week. While the rest of the country ate hamburgers and watched fireworks last Friday, Mick and I celebrated America’s independence by watching the coronation of Miss Twin Peaks and the possible (but doubtful) demise of beautiful Audrey Horne. The following day, Mick returned home to Ireland; to console my heavy heart, I bought and watched Fire Walk With Me which was promptly followed by two nights of unpleasant Twin Peaks-themed dreams, complete with visits from Bob and the Log Lady. And on top of my normal post-show come-down, I’ve been emotionally jostled by the show’s lack of resolution. Damn those motherfuckers at ABC!
Subsequently, I’ve discovered that the only thing worse than the separation from a beloved TV show is the separation from a beloved TV show in conjunction with the separation from a beloved boyfriend. I can’t help but feeling, though, that there must be some sort of life lesson here; some pearl of wisdom that will make me stronger as a person.
Perhaps instead of doggedly mourning the end of my latest obsession, as well as the departure of Mick, I’ll take some inspiration from Twin Peaks’s own Agent Dale Cooper: “Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it. Don’t wait for it. Just let it happen.”
Come to think of it, that Sex and the City box set would make a lovely gift for myself right about now.
He’d Get One: Rocco Mediate
Yesterday I spent some quality Father’s Day time with my dad, doing his second favorite activity in life: watching golf. Just to clarify, his most favorite activity in life is playing golf. First comes golf, then comes watching golf. Do you see the distinction? As I child my parents encouraged me (their words) to take up golf; I hated being forced (my words) to learn such a dull sport, and quickly quit my lessons for much more interesting pursuits - namely watching re-runs of Saved By the Bell and putting on dance recitals with my girl cousins.
Long story short, I have very apathetic feelings for anything golf related. I generally equate watching golf with getting circumcised with a rusty butter knife; however, it was Father’s Day and so I indulged in my dad’s love of the sport. Although the tournament at hand nearly sent me into a coma, I was spared from TV-induced torpidity when Rocco Mediate came on the screen. Apparently he’s the underdog against Tiger Woods in today’s final match (game? round? what the hell does one even call it?), and I’m eagerly rooting for the 46-year-old DILF from Greensburg, PA.
Who knew that my interests and my father’s interests would finally cross paths? If those PGA people would just throw in a few creative elimination challenges, get Lark Voorhies to host some sort of judging panel, and air games on Bravo, I would totally start watching golf with my dad.