The very last time

I must break my Perez Hilton embargo because this is just too good. It's the whole Perez IM conversation with some dude. Transcript here. Anyway, the only thing I wanted to mention about it was the bit where he says he wasn't posting about Chris Crocker on his site because "He's not giving him any publicity, even bad press is good press" (I'm ignoring the bit where he pretty much claims hollywood is bad because it's so shallow (ie. and he's so fucking deep)). So when he posts about Avril Lavigne and hating her sooooo much he's doing what exactly? Being a prick. That's what.

Embargo back in action.

Love Is...

In the early 90s, when I was living in Havana with my family, my eldest daughter, Bella, who was then about six years old, came home from school one afternoon in a state of excitement. She asked me, in Spanish: "Daddy, do you know what 'amor' means?" I feigned ignorance. Taking a deep breath, Bella recited: "Amor es lo que Fidel siente para el pueblo" - "Love is what Fidel feels for the people."

More Rock Please

Performing at the Brits last night, the Klaxons and Rihanna.

It's OK.

Isn't the problem with The Klaxons "New Rave" the fact that they just don't rock it hard enough. Which is to say that the dance music they copy (with guitars) is already more powerful than their rock version. And that's the problem with this performance as well.

I should add that I liked their album at the time it was released but haven't been back there for a long time, don't think I could face it really. It could have been so much better (both their album and this performance).

Singleness

Having a spare moment and having been inspired by the last post I thought I'd take a moment to post this amazing passage from Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis about married couples:

I locked in on the smug feeling of superiority that married couples gave off and that permeated the air - the shared assumptions, the sweet and contented apathy, it all lingered everywhere - despite the absence in the room of anyone single at which to aim this. I concluded with an aching finality that the could-happen possibilities were gone, that doing whatever you wanted whenever you wanted was over. The future didn't exist anymore. Everything was in the past and would stay there. And I assumed - since I was the most recent addition to this group and had not yet let myself be fully iniated into its rituals and habits - that I was the loner, the outsider, the one whose solitude seemed endless.

I love that passage.

After Glamorama i'd written off BEE but Lunar Park's amazing, probably his best.

Public Service Advertisements

At work they always have on this local radio station playing standard inoffensive fare from the 60's onwards. You know the type of thing. For as long as I can remember pretty much every advertising break has included a safe sex advert, aimed at teenagers (The question of why they have these adverts on this station is one I'm not really interested in here, but is a question worth asking anyway: talk about an advert completely missing its intended audience).

So I'm at work yesterday and I hear not a single advert telling me how horrible STDs can be. What's on instead? Every advertising break I am now deluged by adverts telling me that being single is horrible and, especially at this time of year, I should consider their dating service.

I understand the whole advertising-love-when-all-over-the-place-single-people-are-feeling- especially-single-given-the-sweet-valentine-action-everywhere thing. What I find odd is that this isn't also therefore the best time to get their safe sex message out there. The only answer to this is obviously that the dating companies don't want their ads sandwiched between some depressed teen whose lost everything because of an ill-advised condomless sexual adventure (or am I confusing this with the anti drink-drive ad? maybe she's just lost her boyfriend and her sexual appetite).

This, of course, actually implies that there is no such thing as a Public Service Announcement, these things are just ways to fill in airtime when there's a lack of actual advertisers. When actual advertisers come along the public can go fuck themselves (without a condom).

Sticking To Principles

Was pretty humoured by this story about Chelsea Clinton from The Wall Story Journal (coming via Wonkette):

Despite her more-public face, Ms. Clinton is still deeply wary of the media. She is noticeably uncomfortable in crowds in which reporters may overhear her and shuns most questions. She declined several requests for an interview for this article.

On a campaign stop in Iowa in December, a 9-year-old student reporter for Scholastic News asked Ms. Clinton if she thought her father would make a good "first man."

"I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press, and that applies to you, unfortunately. Even though I think you're cute," she told the little girl.

No exceptions. I like this. Escpecially the "I think you're cute" which presumably translates as "I could get away with answering your question because you are, after all, only nine years old, and yet, to seperate you from the set of all media would actually be pretty patronising so, instead, I shall point out the patronising nature of this relationship without answering your question".

Genius.

Just watched First Blood Part 2 again after a piece on Cinematical made me want to reevaluate it. I'd only seen it once and was pretty unimpressed. 1 and 3 I've always loved but 2? I just couldn't see it. The first and only time I saw it I thought it was awful. I should point out that living in the UK I've not had the chance to see the new one yet: what is with the bizarre decision to have a month between American and British releases of this film? I thought movie companies wanted to get rid of piracy, not give people a reason to do it?


So what of First Blood Part 2? I can safely say that I thought it pretty good. So good in fact that I'm at a loss as to what made me hate it in the first place. I know one of my problems with it was the female character who seemed a rather pointless addition to the plot (Rambo and his guide fall in love, she gets mowed down by bullets). This pointlessness perhaps infected the rest of the film for me. This time round though I think I actually worked out the point of this plot. It's very quickness was what puzzled me at first, it's kind of like they fall in love quickly (I have no problems with that) and, after sharing their first kiss, they go to move on and, while Rambo collects his knives and bow, she walks into the open and gets shot, telling him never to forget her with her dying breath. It seemed so utterly preposterous. However, watching it this time it occurs to me that she has to die, there is no where else to go. It is a very good example of the fantastical support of the relationship, both sides utterly missing the other, seeing only some version of the other that supports their own self. The woman sees in Rambo her opportunity to leave her (miserable) life behind and start anew in America. Rambo sees in her someone who loves him. The point is not just that Rambo misses the fact that she wants to use him to get to America (a point she makes explicit in their original conversation on the boat), but that she misses the fact that Rambo cannot be at home in America, that she has backed the wrong horse. As the end of the film makes clear, this is where Rambo feels at home. The only way to make this relationship work is for her to die.


The fantastical nature of this relationship is also highlighted by the lack of reference to it in the rest of the film. Once Rambo has buried her he washes his hands of her (almost literally, in that he rubs his hands through the dirt covering the grave, the purity of love being taken over by the dirtiness of the job at hand perhaps). He returns to his reality. Where previously I saw this as a failure, now I see it as consistency. Throughout the film I noticed similarities between Rambo and Jason Voorhees from The Friday the 13th films: they are both empty, automatons, their killing is a simple fact, unrelated to pathological motives. Thus Rambo continues as he was before, he does not go on killing to avenge the death of his beloved, he just goes on killing because that is what he does. Had he not forgotten about his love he would have been a less effective killing machine: emotion has no place in his killing. One can see here a certain similarity to Freddy vs Jason, in which Jason is absolutely ineffective in his work, he always allows someone to escape and raise the alarm before he finishes the job (of killing everyone in reach), absolutely at odds with previous versions of Jason. And the reason for this? Jason has been given character, he is no longer empty vessel.

Vietnam is Rambo's Crystal Lake. The place where he died and where he continues undead until America is ready to bury him ("I just want America to love us as much as we love it").