Saturday, July 31, 2004

Funny about Bunuel, I thought of him just yesterday, and Andy mentions his last movie (or at least one of his last movies). I also saw That Obscure Object of Desire. I own a DVD copy, to be honest. After being exposed to running signifiers, and Lacanian theory one can have a particular reading of the film. Machismo, impotence, fear of monogamy and/or commitment, inability to understand "the opposite" sex (although I would expand that to one's partner), complemented with religious hang-ups through the oedipal institutions, all this supported by the displacement of the jump-cut onto explosions (which could be orgasms), a constant differing of happiness, would be some of the readings running amok. The movie may be about love and its definition contingent upon phalocentrism, hence maybe why the two women as one character and the male character is constantly frustrated with his unfulfilled desire for her love... It's one of Bunuel's best movies--after viewing his biography, I can say that he was extremely honest in That Object. A film worth revisiting with feminst theory in mind.

Saturday Night Fever is a great film. I never realized this when I first saw it, because I was overwhelmed by Travolta's dance moves, not to mention the music. DJing and the Disco nightlife would become my way of life years later, and I was heavily influenced by the film--hell! pop culture was redefined after that day: January 2, 1978. A movie sold out on a Monday night, now that is a real blockbuster! But the story is so simple and still accurate to what goes on in NYC or any city for that matter, that I like watching the film for the narrative, entertaining the uncertainty it leaves us with at the end. Today, there's a number of musical spin-offs of the film. Here is this website, and this, this, this, and this one as well. Even Al Bundy managed to get into the action. Siskell, the movie critic, loved the film and even owned John Travolta's suit.

I grew up with the impression that it was Linda Eastman who had been responsible for the "Beatles break-up." Then I learned it was Ono who was blamed. Blame the woman. Blame her. Word-up.

Ono has some amazing music. Talk about loops, she had them down, having closely worked with the NYC avant-garde. A version of her art career gives her credit for having made conceptual art at least five years before the male conceptualists. Interestingly enough, she was not invested in dematerializing the object of art, but in abstract ideas, phenomenology was the philosophy she was influenced by. Fluxus is a movement she is historically often associated with.

Somehow using the phrase, "the biggest diamond in the world" sounds factual. Gossip could not get any better, when Andy follows his comment with "one of them." But I doubt it is the biggest. Here is the biggest-- break your back, baby, because it is out of this world! And talk about the Beatles, the name of the diamond is Lucy after one of their songs. But this is more like it.

Paul Jenkins' comment reminds me of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie by Luis Bunuel. At the beginning of his film, we see two couples dropping by for dinner. The lady of the house, however, was not expecting them, and she explains that they were expected the next day. So they decide to go out for dinner. Eating was a big deal throughout the film, and actually they never get to have a full meal. In fact, they are only able to taste the food once, at best, as their dinner is always interrupted--at one point by the military.

6'5 cops. That's what the TV show should be called--is size not the best way to impose authority? It may actually be a figure of speech. But then you get this, this and this when googling the "6'5 cops" string...


But having cops washing up in one's place must be odd. A bit sexual for Andy, perhaps. Check the strings: "Then afterwards they washed up in the bathroom and one took off his belt and holster, and it was lying on the table, the gun in the holster, while he washed up." And yes, They were 6'5.

Sal Marciano is best known for the phrase "GOODNIGHT SWEET PRINCE," which is the title of a few books by Dickson Davis, Emma Blair and Carroll Berry.

Andy really was looking at the boys throughout the day. At least Hackett decided to focus on his comments of boys on the particular diary entry of November 10, 1977. It is really her choices we are reading on the published Warhol Diary. Then again, my choosing from her choosings creates a metalanguage--pointing to the refiltering inherent in the nature of blogging--nature!! if there is such a thing for emerging technologies... constructs! nothing but constructs! the structuralist to the left says--bring me transcendence! screamed Mondrian as he searched for the truth in the straight line... The grid, as always, the grid. And the postructuralist claims to slip inbetween the interstice, oh wait a minute that is a post-colonialist who slips like a post-structuralist, which makes him one, but not so easily labeled because of his threshold.

Boys will be boys and Andy looked at them with great pleasure. But being quite familiar with his diaries by now, I can say that he is quite biased when it comes to observing. He simply loveeessss to gossip. Did I say gossip? I thought I said gossip... But I said gossip. No. Gossip. [...] (gossip...) goss...

Of course there's Spike's movie, but at times the most revealing commentaries can be found in the simplest things. This website really gives me the chills. Mr. Berkowitz has had a change of heart, yes. But he was still denied parole.

I somewhat remember Tom Snyder in the Late Late Show. When I was first exposed to late-night celebrity talk shows, I didn't quite get them. I mean, Johnny Carson, at the beginning of the Tonight Show, would stand in front of the camera for twenty minutes telling jokes that were not that funny. Well, they were, but I was not as familiar with American culture at the time, plus my English was not that good. Still, he stood there for a long, long time. Then came Jay Leno, and by then I understood the aesthetics of American comedy, but Leno took the monologues to another level. One time he gave his two guests less than fifteen minutes each, because he spent the rest of the time doing his monologue followed by a set of questionares taken up and down Melrose Ave. Come to think of it, Johnny Carson also had long comedy segments, but at least he wore cool costumes This became his thing for a while. I stopped watching him for a time. Here is a classic Johnny Carson Joke, "I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing." Another: "If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead." Here is a Leno quote: "The reason there are two senators for each state is so that one can be the designated driver," and one more for equality, "There's this big pie in show business, and you physically can't eat the whole pie. If you give everybody a slice of pie, you will still have more than enough. The real trick is not to try to get the whole pie, but to keep the biggest slice."

Andy really liked Liza. He defended her, although in his own words he admitted that, in Hollywood standards, she may not be considered an average beauty. She is the opposite example of Liv Tyler. Liv has a very eccentric looking father... with big lips but she turned out to be extremely beautiful by Hollywood standards--the lips came in handy. I remember Liv in her teens when she started as a DKNY model. Now Liza had a not-so-good-looking father as well. But I think the difference for her is that it was his nose that was passed on, his nose. Take the lips over the nose. I think Liza isn't ugly... Oh!!! is that not what Andy said?

Looking for some good Victor Hugo picks, I found a website that proves the Seventies were swinging.

Valerie had a movie made as well as a song by none other than Lou Reed.

The lyrics:

Valerie Solanis took the elevator
got off at the 4th floor
Valerie Solanis took the elevator
got off at the 4th floor
She pointed the gun at Andy saying
you cannot control me anymore

I believe there's got to be some retribution
I believe an eye for an eye is elemental
I believe that something's wrong if she's alive right now

Valerie Solanis took three steps
pointing at the floor
Valerie Solanis waved her gun
pointing at the floor
From inside her idiot madness spoke and bang
Andy fell onto the floor

I believe life's serious enough for retribution
I believe being sick is no excuse and -
I believe I would've pulled the switch on her myself

When they got him to the hospital
his pulse was gone they thought that he was dead
His guts were pouring from his wounds
onto the floor they thought that he was dead
Not until years later would
the hospital do to him what she could not
what she could not

Where were you, you didn't come to see me
Andy said, I think I died, why didn't you come to see me
Andy said, It hurt so much, they took blood from my hand

I believe there's got to be some retribution
I believe there's got to be some retribution
I believe we are all the poorer for it now

Visit me, visit me
Visit me, visit me
Visit me, why didn't you visit me
visit me, why didn't you visit me
Visit me, visit me
visit me, why didn't you visit me

The first time I saw Warhol's Soup Can I did not get it. I liked it, but I just did not get it as "art." Later I read an interview where he claimed that Campbell's is what he ate for lunch everyday. This may not be true at all, as his biography explains that painting pop subjects was something he very carefully orchestrated to be different from Johns and Rauschenberg. But maybe he ate Campbell's. I believe he did, because he wants me to believe this, and the painting says he did. I will honestly say that I never tasted Campbell's before or after the Soup Can painting I saw. But it must taste just like the painting.

Soap operas are very different in the Latin American market, where they are known as telenovelas (TV novels). The U.S. has soap operas running for over twenty years now, with an ongoing change of cast members. In Latin America all soaps come to an end. Most last for about two or three months, although the more popular ones have been extended to last years, when this happens it usually is considered an "epic." But this has not been the case recently. At this point there appears to be a standard of four months, tops. The actors are recasted into other soaps that are usually broadcasted on the same time slots. The stories are very similar, that of a young beautiful woman that falls in love with a bourgeois man. The man's family oppose their love and go to great lengths to seperate them. The woman often turns out to be a bourgeois, herself, who was "lost" when she was a baby, and who was raised by a working class family. At this point she may even be related to the bourgeois family in some way, and the man she is in love with might turn out to be adopted and not a bourgeois, like she is. Usually there will be two or three other men who are deeply in love with her, and she may accept a marriage proposal from one of them to resolve her love quarrels with the man she truly loves. She will not have sex with anyone unless he is the man of her life. She might be raped at one point, and she will feel guilty for such act. The rapist will often be around her, prowling as he is probably a man of great power--sometimes it might be the father of the man she is in love with. The variations are endless, but they always rely on the tension of the working and upper classes, and the idea of virginity and purity around the woman. Here are some telenovelas to look at.

Talking about working class, the film Studio 54 starring Mike Myers focused on a working class kid who works at the mythical venue. I wanted to see the celebrites out of control, instead they only make "cameo" appearances. Maybe not enough time has passed yet, and too many people that partied at the venue would be embarrased to be shown in decadent action. Maybe when they are all dead it will happen. Saving face is the last straw for the class of leisure. If there is a universal rule is that one.