Category: ultracultural

A Little Plug

Eagle-eyed New Yorkers will be able to spot a picture of me on page 52 of the current issue of Time Out New York (the 1/25-2/1 issue, with the ski bunny on the cover). Nothing very glam, just an unflattering shot of me addressing the rapt crowd at the last group meeting of the Brooklyn LiveWork Coalition. It’s a great article, actually, with a broad discussion of the issues at stake with this whole crackdown on loft living here in Crooklyn.

It’s been something of a revelation for me to get so involved with this whole thing. I’ve been spending about 20 hours week (you know, during all that spare time when I’m not scoping or working full-time) donating time to the Coalition, and I even seem to have become part of the leadership. It’s a shock to me because this issue has so easily tapped into some real passions of mine, passions I never really know about. I always saw myself as very apolitical, never getting myself into much of a twist about anything. This time around I haven’t felt any doubt or any apathy. Unlike times when I was faced with gay rights issues or presidential elections or whatnot, I really feel charged about the way my neighbors and I are caught in the middle of this time of adaptation in New York. As the city government reacts to the way life in the city has adapted on its own, I’ve realized that I am actually part of a community here in a way I haven’t experienced before. I started out just making sure I wouldn’t get booted to the street, but as I’ve gotten to know my neighbors and other painters, sculptors, musicians, designers, photographers, entrepreneurs and such I’ve realized that I really give a shit about making sure that we all have a way to continue living in a way that lets us unite our work lives with our domestic lives, uniting what might otherwise be disparate parts of ourselves. Not to mention it would be damn hard to pay for both homes and studios where we could really work.

It’s a delicate balance the Coalition is after. We actually enjoy the mixed character of our neighborhoods, and we want to be able to continue working where we live. As much as we want to bring improvements to these neighborhoods, we don’t actually want to see them overdevelop in ways that make it impossible for us to stay, the way things have gone overboard in Soho and Tribeca. Even though North Williamsburg has exploded in recent years, it’s still a long way off from that kind of exclusivity. I think that’s one way that living in Brooklyn may always make things a little easier for us: No matter how much things transform over here, New York’s geography will still concentrate the money and the attention in Manhattan.

We’ll see, I suppose. In the meantime, I have some more meetings to prepare for…

East Side Ecstasy

If you watch any documentary before you die, you really ought to watch East Side Story, an incredible look at communist musicals in East Germany and the soviet Union. Man, it’ll get your heart pumping to watch those men sing about the glories of their tractors, or watch textile-mill ballet sequence. Of course, now that I think about it, you also should make sure that before you die you see such other incredible documentaries as Grey Gardens, Crumb, and Trekkies. Any of those will be a great reminder that reality can be so much more fascinating than fiction.

On a totally different pop-culture note, I’ve found myself talking with lots of guys recently about how they also always thought that Aquaman was totally hot. So it’s not just me. It’s almost weird how often this has been happening, like some great pent-up surge of homosexual zeitgeist blowing a gasket. A friend spontaneously got me a totally hot Aquaman poster by Alex Ross for my birthday. Another announced he’s planning on fulfilling a lifelong dream and getting an Aquaman tattoo. Various other guys, when I’ve started to mention who the hottest superfriend was, beat me to the punch by screaming out, “Aquaman!” This has been even more startling than the realization a few years back that the homos all seemed to have a thing for Boba Fett.

Star-Fucking

so I said to Madonna...It’s not everyday that you find yourself sitting around with a group of friends gabbing when you come in on a conversation midstream to hear a woman you know say, “So I said to Madonna, ‘You gotta get out!’” True story. Apparently Madonna had sublet a room in Mimi’s apartment back in the early days when they were both struggling dancers, and Madonna had this thing for wandering around the place naked after she showered. Mimi asked her to knock it off while her mother, who was freaked enough about her daughter living on the mean streets of New York, was in town. Well, Madonna still let it hang loose — hairy pits and all — so Mimi decided to give her the old heave-ho (so to speak).

Kiki & HerbIt was a moment of jaded, insane name-dropping that could have come directly from Kiki & Herb, whose brilliant, terrifying, hilarious new Christmas show we had just seen at the Fez. I always enjoy bringing people to see Kiki & Herb for the first time, and I hope that you, friend, are also someday able to experience the jaw-dropping display of blasphemy, psychosis, and musical acuity that makes them so special. Read the clips on the website to get a better idea of what their act is like, but suffice to say I think you’d be hard-pressed to find another cabaret/drag act that mixes Radiohead, Sarah Vaughn, Britney Spears, Belle & Sebastian, Christmas Classics, Kate Bush, and Styx into one show. This time around, they even did a song that Stephen Merritt wrote just for them (so Kiki claims — you can never know for sure). Oh, such treats!

Halloweentown

I may be a Halloween slacker, but apparently my unconscious manipulation of the cosmic luck plane appears to be doing better than the rest of me. Namely, the movies which arrived in my mailbox in the last few days, after lingering on my NetFlix waiting list for months were Gothic, Edward Scissorhands, and Sleepy Hollow. Spoooooky, right? Right?

By the way, Gothic sucked. I wish I could have seen it during high school and college like all the other black-wearing kids. I might have enjoyed it more if I could still be impressed by that level of pretense. It’s nowhere near as much fun as Ken Russell’s much campier Lair of the White Worm.

Pleasures of the Big Screen

Damn, I just noticed how badly I’ve been neglecting this. Oh well, shit happens. Not that my media-/pop-culture consumption has trailed off at all. If anything, a brief burst of solvency found me treating myself to the occasional CD binge and an extra movie night or two.

I love going to the movies, I really do. As much as I hate when guys in personal ads say lame, boring, unoriginal things about what they like to do for fun, I have to admit that my first suggestion for a relaxing social activity with a pal is always to go to the movies. I love the immersive experience. And now that stadium seating is becoming de rigeur, I don’t even have to wince in anticipation of the physical discomfort — even for a li’l peanut like me — of sitting in one of those awful old seats.

Aside from the way heavy-duty sound and a large screen (and don’t give me any of that wussy crap about sitting too far to the front — you’re never too far up front until the the perspective becomes too weird to compensate for, in the first couple rows or so) completely envelop you and bombard you with the sensory input from the flick/movie/film (what I consider to be the three levels of cinematic quality), the most wonderful part about going to the movies is the social aspect. For better or worse, and it usually helps, you feed off the energy of the rest of the crowd when you go see a movie in a theater. It’s a vital part of the experience, and makes up for the added impediments to putting your feet up on the seat in front of you. I can’t tell you how many summer blockbusters have been salvaged for me by going to see them in a crowded theater on a Friday night (in Times Square, if possible, where the audiences are always the rowdiest) where the crowd shouts along with or at the movie, in a giant orgy of audience participation. I still remember when I realized that Godzilla 2000 was gonna be a hoot the moment that we heard a crash of glass in the back of the theater and the smell of malt liquor filled the air. Even if it’s as simple as the audience rooting for a real clunker like the sheep they are, the energy helps make the most of what might otherwise be a bad situation.

When I found out that The Nightmare Before Christmas was being re-released for Halloween this year, you know I was all for it. As much as I already loved the film, the added effect of enjoying it with all the trimmings of the movie-theater and audience experience just made it that much sweeter. I also started playing around with the interesting effects I get with my digital camera in low-light situations:

Not Just a Butt Pirate

God help me, but I’ve finally been sucked into Napster. Well, Macster to be more specific, because the iMac actually has decent speakers. (Mmmmm, right now I’m listeing to Pulp’s This Is Hardcore, which brings back happy, freaky memories of Kiki & Herb’s version.) It’s exactly the addiction I was warned it would be. Thank you, Covad, Verizon, and Internet Channel for finally connecting my DSL line after 8 months of dim-witted attempts. Thank you for making this possible. I started out small, just looking for that rare version of You Can’t Hurry Love by the Stray Cats, and then realized I ought to try and find good versions of the songs from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls to replace my 10th generation bootleg. And then I remembered that this weekend’s houseguests (I’m becoming a regular Bohemian B&B, so make a reservation), Wendy and William from D.C., told me I needed to get the Icelandic version of Birthday by the Sugarcubes, which led me to the songs Björk did with the Brodsky Quartet. While I was at it, I realized I desperately needed to have all the old-school hip-hop and freestyle that my friend Michael and I were listening to at the Boiler Room Saturday night, so it was off to find the Funky Four Plus One and Grand Master Flash, among others. While I was it, I grabbed Rapper’s Delight and part of UTFO’s Roxanne series. One thing led to another, and I was chasing down Christmas songs by Brave Combo and some live songs by David Byrne, including the unbelievable cover of Kraftwerk’s Model that he performed with the Balanescu Quartet on Sessions at West 54th. (By the way, if you ever catch that episode in reruns on your local PBS station, watch for my head bobbing up and down over David Byrne’s rear monitor, bopping to the mucis and grinning like an idiot.) Yes, and I also went looking for stuff by all the other people I’ve seen at sessions, like Cesaria Evora, Lyle Lovett, the Afro-Cuban All-stars, Moby (the theme from Cecil B. Demented), and so on and so on and so on. Ah, if only I had thought to ask about the Indian pop that sounded like C & C Music Factory they were playing at dinner saturday.

So if it seems like I’ve dropped out of site or I’m talking about music more than usual, just look for UltraSparky and see what I’ve been collecting. Hey, does anyone out there have squeeze’s fast live version of Goodby Girl from their six on Ten EP?

Meat Market

Forget all that queer counter-culture posturing you keep encountering on the Internet. Every gay blog I’ve looked at today has confessed to watching The Sexiest Bachelor in America last night, just like I did. We’re all ashamed. We were all horrified (if that eerie picture on Fox’s page for the show isn’t ominous, I don’t know what is). But we all made sure we didn’t have to pee during the swimsuit competition. (Which was lame, by the way. You know guys, there’s a reason the rest of the world makes fun of Americans for swaddling themselves with so much fabric on the beach. We look silly in all that fabric. And not as sexy as people are obviously hoping for.)

Despite the trashiness of this particular televised meat market — and for once it’s good to see men being the meat and not the shoppers, I might add — leave it to American televison to make sure that the winner was the most wholesome of all when it came right down to it. As if the only way to excuse such a tawdry (yet fun, in its way) celebration of beefcake was to show that in the end, it’s just good manners that matter the most.

But maybe that’s being a little too cynical of me. After all, this was on Fox, a fine, upstanding network if there ever was one. I’m not crazy about the lucky Mr. Virginia, but I was surpised and pleased that the judges (by coercion or actual fairness) would grant the prize to a guy who was all hairy and beefy, but not cut like a gym rat, the way the other guys were. Watch the swimsuit competition: he’s puffing up his chest so much to hold in his gut that he might pop a lung. Good for him, even if he was the blandest of them all.

She’s the One That I Want

OK, if you want to laugh your Ass off (and you’re not the squeamish type) you owe to yourself to catch I’m the One That I Want, the film version of Margaret Cho’s one-woman show. Like some of the best humor, it’s a fantastic blend of laughs, fun, and pathos. Just when you’re recovering from some bladder-busting irreverance, Margaret (who is fab-u-luxe) will switch to something incredibly personal and serious, and then wrap it up with a sassy one-liner. she rocks the house!

Work Ethic

Although I’ve heard some bad reviews of it, I finally watched Cradle Will Rock and thought it was fantastic. Like a lot of films that try to bea little epic in scope, it relied on developing some characters in broad strokes and schtick (although Bill Murray did wonders within that), but the overall effect was wonderful. Just watch it some time, OK?

It poses an interesting question: At what point do you become a prostitute for your work? I’ve wrestled with that one a lot over the years — it’s hard to avoid in graphic design. I can’t say that always made the noble choice, but I’ve at least tried to be pretty selective about my bedfellows and choose, whenever possible, to do work that I felt good about in the end. It’s a tough one.

One of the toughest realizations I ever made was about the nature of my work: I’m not interested in pure artistry as much as I am in good craftsmanship and good communication. Even when I’ve worked in more traditionally artsy media, I have always been more interested in exploring the medium or fine-tuning my skills than in making art for art’s sake. There have been times, and there are sure to be more, when I have become my own client and chosen to use my skills to communicate some idea of my own, but that’s not the reason I work. When my own agenda and my work come together, that may be art, but I’m not so interested in pursuing it by that name. Let someone else decide if what I do is art or not: I’m more interested in knowing if I’ve solved the problem at hand. Maybe that makes me a whore once in a while, but at least I’m a whore not trying to convince himself he’s a paragon of virtue.

As for Bill Murray, before I completely forget, I’d like to know when his comic antics crossed that line into sublime performance. Watch Cradle Will Rock or Rushmore and you’ll see that he’s not just a goofball, but that he’s also capable of some really subtle, underplayed brilliance. I would recommend watching the Criterion Edition DVD of Rushmore so you can see Murray’s wry smarts in full effect on an episode of Charlie Rose.

Giving Me Strength

I’m listening to one of my birthday treats, Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach’s Painted from Memory. Although I’m fond of them both, I never had much of an urge to get the album until I rented Grace of My Heart, a sort of dreadful movie filled with wonderful music. God Give Me strength, the big showstopper penned by Elvis and Burt, gives me chills whenever I hear it. I like the Kristen Vigard’s movie version better (get it here), but the album one is also sublime, very well suited to Elvis voice.