The Ramona and Beezus trailer has arrived. While I am thrilled that at 94 years old, Beverly Cleary is still kickin’ it with us from Yamhill to the after party, I do wish that there was some mock grave that she could use to roll in at her leisure.
Thanks, VGum, for my new hero.
Well, this is worth it.
Aryan rock bands. Brown-eyed serpents. Jane Lynch returneth with incense and “Duffles.” Megan Mullally ponders where her flanks are. The best of what has been a season of bests. Airs tomorrow night but here it is now. COME BACK for another season!
UPDATE: No more seasons. Ergh.
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But beyond simple availability, actual quality is, I believe, on the increase. Democratization of every major medium has resulted in creative people from all walks of life, and from all means, being able to get their art to bigger audiences than ever before. Mainstream movies may be in dire straits, but the chances of a small, independent project getting released is greater than ever before. Television networks are beginning to populate their schedules with writers and producers who come from more diverse backgrounds than at any time in the medium’s history. Artists no longer need the sanction of a handful of publishers, networks, studios, or labels to get the public’s attention. Even if the talent pool remains static, we can now see the work of a far larger percentage of that talent pool if we so desire. The general public may still have a taste for chaff, but more wheat is being grown than ever. These are the things that are of paramount importance to point out to combat the cultural cynicism brought about by that same cultural overload.
Why bother? Well, other than the obvious fact that I make my living as a sort of cultural advocate, the fact is, as my colleague Donna Bowman put it, people living through a golden age often don’t know. And it’s important that they do, because this golden age, as with all the ones that lie behind us, depends on patronage. If enough people lament the death of culture, culture will die, no matter how sophisticated our means of disseminating it. And what will crush the horn of plenty won’t be the things it isn’t producing, but indifference to what it is.
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"So I just think it takes a couple decades to kind of clear your brain now. So it makes more sense to me that I could find my footing when I was 30 instead of when I was 19. It seems a little more clear. You know, novelists are older now. Things are happening later in people’s lives. They’re kind of living lives and then creating things about the lives they’ve lived. Rather than being an artiste at an early age and coming out with a ball of fire. That energy has been co-opted because you haven’t immunized yourself yet against media. It’s easier to get swept up things then take a couple of years to get over your, like, indie rock hangover. I’m scraping the fucking Quarterstick Records crust out of my eyes when I’m like, 27. You know, “Why am I playing in 5/7? How is that fun?"
These new Lisa Perry dresses with Andy Warhol photographs on them cost $1,300. I just have no idea if that is done in the most distilled spirit of the thing or is a complete horse-blinder fail. Someone explain to me the hows and whys?
So I have returned to Miranda July’s 2007 collection of short stories, in anticipation of her new film, The Future, coming out, and because she’s all over Union Square right now in an interactive, imposing-art-on-the-landscape way that is Deitch Projects’ last swan song before L.A. and museums happen and an era ends. It’s doing me quite right.
Anyways, here is an excerpt (the old fash typing way), because WHY NOT. This bit is from “Something that Needs Nothing,” which was published in the NY’er but is criminally unavails as of yet online.
I went to the bathroom and threw handfuls of water on my face, and it was easy. In fact, I could do anything. I took off the jeans and T-shirt I had been sleeping in. Naked, I crouched on the floor and sliced the legs off my pants with a box cutter. I put them on and they were itty-bitty. Itty-bitty teeny-tiny. I sawed through the T-shirt, leaving IF YOU LOVE JAZZ on the floor. HONK barely covered my small breasts, but hey. Hey, I was leaving the apartment. I was walking down the hall, and there was a small basket of old apples in front of a neighbor’s door with a sign that said, FOR MY NEIGHBORS PLEASE TAKE ONE. And hey, I was starving. I took an apple and the door swung open. I had never really seen this neighbor, but now I could see that she was a junkie. An old junkie. And she was wearing a sweater that I knew she had found in the hallway. It was Kate’s cardigan. She told me to take another one, and then she asked for a hug. I hugged her hard with an apple in each hand. Last week, I would have been afraid to touch her, but now I knew that I could do anything.
I had no money for the bus, so I walked. It was an incredible distance. A horse would get tired galloping there. When birds flew there, it was called migration. But it wasn’t difficult, it just took time. It was a new experience to walk across the city in tiny shorts and a half-shirt that said HONK. People honked without even seeing the shirt. I often felt that I would be shot in the back with an arrow or a gun, but this didn’t happen. The world wasn’t safer than I had thought; on the contrary, it was so dangerous that my practically naked self fit right in, like a car crash, it happened every day.
I’m sure I’m the last person to know this, but Mary J. Blige has signed on to play Nina in the first major biopic of her life, which will be shot this autumn in and around Paris. Mary J. is learning French. She has also said this of getting the part in the film, which will follow Nina’s bipolar disorder troubles and the later-life relationship with her manager Clifton Henderson: “From the beginning…I didn’t trust men, period. But I trusted something in me that needed his help and I’ve never seen that in anyone else before. This story was written similar. Our lives are pretty similar.”
Anyways, please remake this scene, Mary J. Thanks.
