1 of many jobs

This is my review of THE FOUNTAIN. My real name isn't used because "press" wasn't supposed to be at the screening I attended.

Considering what I'm paid for these reviews, I don't think I should be considered press.

But there it is, in all it's rushed glory.

Agony, thy name is Video Art

First off, it looks like I have a job. I'll be starting part-time this week which is supposed to "develop" into full time over a month.

In light of the recent damage I've sustained, this is small blog potatoes.

I guess I will have to explain that I will be doing the marketing and PR for Machinima.com

There was some Machinima and a panel on said machinima at a film festival right up the street from me this Sunday. My boss was on the panel and asked me to come, and I was thrilled to go in support of my new job.

The Machinima was -for reasons completely unknown to me or anyone- preceeded by some "video art". I didn't say short films because video art is to short film what a bag of broken glass is to a tasty beverage.

Here is, word for word, a description of the "Technologized Bodies/Embodied Technologies" section of the film festival;

"Presenting new work by a group of international artists. The works represented are linked through thier attempts to convey and solicit embodied subjects and/or embodied responses, potentially rupturing the notion that acts of viewing cohere us as the discrete and transcendent origins of vision and knowledge."

It goes on, but you get the idea...or actually, the lack of ideas which are about to be presented.

One of the greatest joys of leaving film school was the knowledge that I was never, ever, under any circumstances, going to be exposed to the painfully incoherent nonsense that is video art.

Here are some of the films that I recall. I tried very much to fall asleep for part of this 55-minute assault on the senses. I have the schedule so the titles and artists are precise.

Jennifer Porter- THE PUDDLE VIDEO (9 min)

The puddle video was all one single shot. The camera was low to the ground and a puddle filled the bulk of the frame. A girl falls into the puddle. She lays there more or less motionless for about 4-5 minutes. She slowly rises up and pulls in dry dirt from out of frame for the next several minutes and changes the puddle into dry ground. End of video.

If you can’t paint, dragging a video camera into your artistic aspirations is not going to help your art. As a matter of fact, you’re hurting art. Art is crying out in agony for having to claim this. For once, “Entertainment” laughs loud and long at “art”, for art is surely the shittier product

Lara Odell and Monica Duncan- VIDEO PAINTINGS: OUTSIDE THE LAUNDRYMAT. (7min)

An external night shot of a laundrymat shows a girl sitting just inside with her back to the window. She doesn’t do anything or move. Occasionally, somebody would walk in or out of the laundrymat. End of video.

Dear Lara and Monica, please see my advice above to Jennifer about really, really wishing you could paint. I wish you could paint too, because then I could walk right past your painting and move onto one I found interesting. Now your statement is as temporal as it is painful.

Mary Ellen Strom, NUDE NO. 3 (6 min)

A nude woman lying on her side in front of a plasma screen TV showing waves on a beach. A large ball sits in the foreground. She moves her arm over a one or two minute period from her hip to her stomach. End of video.

Mary,

Learn to paint and suck curator cock. I’m sure you’ll make a fine living as a terrible painter. Your video art, however is doomed to be forever burned into the six minutes that I, and about 100 other people will never get back for the rest of our lives.

Jose Carlos Teixeira, IT’S OK (UNITED) (4 min)

A face appears on the screen saying over and over “It’s O.K. Everything is going to be alright. It’s OK”. The face takes up about 1/16 of the screen. It’s joined by the same face saying the same thing, slightly out of sync. Soon the screen is filled with 16 identical heads saying the same phrase out of sync for 4 minutes. End of agonizing fucking video.

I knew how this was going to go down the moment the first face looped. I was overcome with a desire to run through the theater, find this guy, and punch his eyeballs out the back of his skull.

Eva Drangsholt ALL SHALL BE WELL (3 min)

A collage of images of war, bombings and shootings. An African mercenary/thug chases an unarmed man into the streets and machine-guns him down. A bomb explodes in a busy intersection. A woman displays her arm, nearly fully severed at the wrist, the wound still bleeding and raw. All the while a pleasant song sings “All shall be well”. End of video.

Holy assburgers in Hades that’s clever. The song is optimistic and serene, yet the images are beyond horrific. I thought this was juvenile, trite, and simplistic when I saw it in college multiple times. Nowadays, I’m dumbfounded that something like this is not only made by an adult, but certain sectors of society will nod their heads in agreement –to what- they have no idea.

I’m sure a deconstruction argument could be made at how horribly racist this piece was since every atrocity showing actual people was in Africa or the Mid-East. Brown and Black people blowing each other to smithereens for three solid minutes. Is everything going to be alright because these people are going to wipe each other out? That’s terrible Eva Drangsholt! You ma’am, are worse than Hitler!

While I can’t place this one with it’s proper title (and thus, wouldn’t want to place undue blame), it must be mentioned. It was a very tight close-up of an anus… for about a minute. End of video.

I don’t know what to say here that hasn’t already been said by the video. It’s an anus.

Video art is very easily one of the most grueling trials a human being could endure. It should be used to determine which humans can withstand the hardships of outer space. Space certainly couldn’t be more vacuous than video art.

Video art is so terrible, the British cook it.

Video art is so bad, the New York Times reported that George Bush had something to do with it.

Video art is so terrible, Ben Affleck asked to star in it.

Video art is so appalling, the French surrendered to it.

I understand wanting to express yourself. I don’t understand the point of creating something so vague and inane that it’s beyond uninteresting, but actually agonizing to watch. It’s like they’re all trying to recreate REQUIEM FOR A DREAM.

If the desired effect is to be so Po-Mo or so ambiguous that people presume it must have some significant, higher meaning and try to assign it one…well why are you trying to say anything at all if you don’t know what you’re saying?

If your art has no statement from inception, it’s certainly not going to find one in the musings of the LA art crowd.

Unintentional Markets

I check about 5 jobsites two times a day. Today I saw a PR job for a toy company, which is something I've done before. I clicked on the link, and it lead to the company responsible for this product.


Now I'm sure they think this will sell to little girls. Who knows, stranger things have happened. But I know a certain subculture that's literally going to cream their collective furry jeans over this one.

I've been remiss in poking fun at a certain hee-larrrrious group for their sexual proclivities. I know, I know, it goes against my "coastal elitist backlash" backlash. It's totally hypocritical. Or is it?

I don't think furries are less as human beings (well, except...that's what they really WANT, but I don't literally think that), or dumber, or anything of the sort. If anything, they should get points for originality and boldness.

It's just that it's so fucking funny. What gets them hard is fall down hilarious.

So at any rate, these dolls are only going to end up as fetish toys or unknowing action-figure pornstars in stop-action amateur furry porno. I think that will be a category in next year's Oscars.

Why was I not the size of the planet Mercury?

So on this diet, they key is very simply counting calories. It's a breeze. On days that I don't work out I eat 1500 calories. On days that I do work out, I eat 1800 calories. One day a week you get to "cheat", but I've kept my cheating pretty modest after the first cheat day.

There are a bunch of food items that quickly become staples because they're easy and the calories are printed right on the box. Lean Cuisine and other low-cal instant meals are such items. Soup is easy. Cup o' instant potatoes; 160 calories. Individual serving of applesauce; 60 calories. And so on.

Since there are these staples...you tend to eat a lot of the same things. This lead me to an online quest for a calorie counter for different places to eat.

In the search, I found Chowbaby.com

It has a calorie counter for quite a few fast-food joints. While I knew perfectly well that these places weren't by any means healthy, I was pretty surprised to see the astounding calorie count on fairly common orders.

I looked up a bunch of things I would eat in college without batting an eye (unfortunately, the female population of the Creative Arts Center wasn't on the list....BOO-YAAAA!)

For example I would split a large Pizza Hut Meat-Lovers Pan Pizza with one of my roommates. 1 slice of PHMLPP? 500 calories. I would have 3, usually 4 slices. Holy assclowns, why wasn't I the size of a fucking Buick?

Even in Florida I would occasionally get 3 double Krystal burgers (they're small!). 310 calories each. A 930 calorie lunch.

While I was quite the porker at my heaviest, I'm actually surprised that I didn't need a giant shoehorn to get my enormous ass into a car. I can't believe I could fit into a regular movie seat.

I've actually found a couple of fast-food things I'll be able to have even on my lowest calories days. However, it's a pretty sure bet that I won't be slammin down a Denny's Appetizer Sampler at 3am after hitting the clubs anytime soon...or ever.

Blog, shmog!

Good God people, I don't have time to blog right now, I'm watching The Sopranos soon!

Go about your daily business and I promise to entertain you with my stories of Celeb Spotting and Korean Danceclub Bouncing tomorrow.

Since Sopranos is on soon, I must prepare my beverge.

Fare ye well Blog readers...this is a non-entry, but you read it you sorry pieces of crap.

Adonis Gym

I've officially lost 20 lbs since getting to LA.

I just started last week at my new gym, Crunch.

My particular Crunch is located on Sunset Blvd in the heart of West Hollywood. As posted by Chuckleboy over on Under my biscuits, it's a motivating place.

While it is arguably the gayest gym in America, nay...the world, let me tell you something; them queers are in some kind of freakin' shape.

You know how superheroes (especially during the 1990's) had extra muscles on their arms and torso that real people don't have? Well they're possible...but they're gay muscles.

Right now I do about 30 minutes of bag work (2 or 3 minutes on then a minute of rest) and then 20 minutes on a treadmill jogging with walking breaks, and then I'm pooped...that's all I've got right now.

Nothing makes you feel like more of a flabby ball of goo than while resting from a whopping 3 minutes on the heavy bag, seeing a guy on his 30th or 40th handstand push-up. He was like a gay, white Jackie Chan...it was impressive.

chiseled queens and all, my gym is awesome.

Ain't no party like an Extras Party, 'cause and Extras party ain't real!

First of all, a shout out to all my pipe-hitting peeps that recognize the title.

Second of all, it wasn't really even a party for extras. But let me start at the beginning.

I did two days as background on a film called MR. WOODCOCK. It stars Billy Bob Thorton, Sean William Scott, and Janet Weiss.

I was part of a parade scene set in a small town in Nevada. We were supposed to wear overalls, earthtones, no designer named clothes, bandanas and the like. Basically, if we could get our hands on some Billy-Bob teeth, we should probably wear those too. This is a symptom of something for another blog entry, but fuck a bunch of Hollywood and their "flyover state" mentality.

At any rate, I managed to get myself invited to a party for the "featured" extras, some doubles, stuntmen and the like. Regular extras were not supposed to be invited, but I happened to befriend Courtney and Casey, a couple of other extras who are friends with the casting (coordinator, assistant, director?) person in charge of arranging the party. They were the only "regular" extras invited, and they invited me. Bitchin'.

The (ghey) casting guy was leery of inviting me, but since his friends were insisting, he gave me an invite.

The party was in a moderately-priced hotel near Magic Mountain, which is about 25 miles north of Hollywood. So I had to fight the traffic home, shower and change, and then drive all the way back there.

When I arrive, Courtney and Casey are mingling with some of the people we saw up on the float, who were sitting next to Susan Sarandon for the parade scene. There was a nice spread of finger sandwiches, queso and chips, spinach dip, and some other relatively good snacks. And, low and behold...AN OPEN BAR! Woo-hooo! Figure out how to get home later, there's free booze kiddies!

I was relatively impressed with the party when I asked where "Burgess" was (the casting guy).

Oh, he set up and got out of here right away.

Really? Crap, I was supposed to give him Joe's card.

Heh, he's probably at the real party.

Huh?

It's explained to me that this is sort of a "diversion" party. Some of the more seasoned extras in the room claim this tradition dates back to the 20's and 30's.

It turns out that it's not so unusual for there to be two parties after such a shoot (our stuff was the tail end of 20 days of reshoots). While there were extras that were around the lead actors for extended periods of time, not to mention their stand-ins and stunt doubles, these people apparently don't warrant an invite to the "real" party, or the one with the famous millionaires.

I was actually stunned. I am not easily shocked, but this was frickin' bizarre. I understand not inviting regular extras to the party. In my brief experiences, regular extras are weirdos, aspiring or failed actors, and generally creepy. I wouldn't invite me either.
But the S.A.G. featured extras are pros aren't they? And certainly the stuntmen know how to act around the dainty and sensitive geniuses, right?

Everyone else laughed it off. Most of them already knew about it, and it didn't phase them. Just the idea of a second party didn't phase me either. What freaked me out is that people pretend that there's just the one party, and everyone is going...and it's been going on for 70 fucking years!

Why still the charade? Why act like everyone's equal when you have shoes worth more than my car? Or to set economics aside, let's not pretend that we don't know where the set medic would head first if I was dying of a sucking chest wound and you had something in your eye.

The party was still a blast. A few old-timers told stories about working with Angie Dickinson, Christopher Lloyd and Dustin Hoffman. We made fun of the Production Assistants that we didn't like on set. Others were doing coke in the bathroom. Even the fake party still has coke in the bathroom. Natch.
But my good friend Whiskey was at the party, and he's always good times.

I guess in a city that's built on maintaining illusions, it's reassuring to know that even the little people get to have smoke blown up their collective asses as well.