Category: ultracultural

While I’m at it, here’s a listicle that ran this past Friday:

Hay Festival 2011: John Waters on 10 things every role model needs
Words of wisdom from film director John Waters at the Hay Festival

1. History. You can’t have a one-night-stand role model. No one can become a role model in 24 hours. It helps a lot if you knew them when you were young, so they sort of grow or fester with you, like Johnny Mathis was for me.

2. Be extreme: all my role models have to be. They have to be braver than I’ve ever been. Even to survive success is hard, no matter if it’s widespread success like Johnny Mathis had, or Bobby Boris Pickett, who his whole life just had to sing one song [The Monster Mash]. Today too many people are trying hard to be extreme. For the people I admire it was natural, and they turned it into art.

3. Style You can have bad style, but you have to have some style. That’s why I wrote about Rei Kawakubo, who reinvented fashion to be damaged and to be everything you hoped it was not when you bought an outfit. And she quadrupled the price. That’s a magic trick.

4. Be alarming – I think that’s important. And it’s different from being
shocking. Alarming threatens the very core of your existence, it doesn’t
just shock you – but you don’t know why it makes you nervous at first. You know, St Catherine of Siena drank pus for God. That was important to me because I thought: I want to be her, I don’t want to be half-assed! If I was going to be a Catholic, it would have been before the Reformation.

5. Humour It’s very important to be well-read, but I never understand why people are so sure their partners have to be smart. What kind of smart do they mean? I’m not interested in talking about literature in bed! I like people who can make me laugh. Humour gets you laid, humour gets you hired, humour gets you through life. You don’t get beat up if you can make the person that’s going to beat you up laugh first.

6. Be a troublemaker All art is troublemaking, because why go through all the trouble of making it if you don’t cause a little stir?

7. Bohemianism Bohemia saved my life. And by bohemia I mean all sexualities mixed together, and people who do what they do not to get rich — freedom from suburbia. People who want to fit in but don’t are losers. Bohemians are people who don’t fit in because they don’t want to.

8. Originality Someone unique like Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West, is an easy role model to have. She could fit into any of these categories – her outfit looked like Comme des Garçons, and anybody who could scare children like that… The problem was, I wanted to be her. And as I turn 65, that has sort of come true.

9. Neuroses I think it helps to be neurotic. Neurotic people always end up being in the arts. If your kid fits in while in high school they’re going to be a dull adult. I still see a few people I went to high school with, but the other ones, when they come up to me I say: “I’m sorry, I took LSD, I don’t remember you.” It works, because then they aren’t offended personally. It’s really just manners.

10. Be a little bit insane That’s different from neurotic. You can stay home and be neurotic. You have to go out to be insane. You can be a little bit of both, but both need to be joyous. As long as you can find a moment of joy in even your worst behaviour, it’s something to be thankful for.

[Taken from The Telegraph, 27 May 2011]

jonnodotcom:

Troublemaker Invades Walker Art Center: “Can artwork sexually attract each other? Does minimalism make pop horny?  Does pornography elevated to high art lose its erotic power? Does size matter or can a tiny joke compete with a maximalist icon?  Can art ever be ‘funny’ without losing academic enthusiasm? … Maybe the entire museum-going experience is in need of intervention. Why is there no art in the parking lot? Wouldn’t a symphony of car crash sound effects remind visitors not to drink too much and drive home after an opening? And shouldn’t the public know how much this show cost? Why not display all the expense receipts (shipping, insurance, construction) in a vitrine like artistic ephemera and let the museum-goers snoop at the endless price of exhibition? Who says simple sculptural vandalism somewhere in the building make the whole experience of visiting an art museum sexier? And what if the blue-plate special being served in the restaurant is a photograph rather than an actual meal—isn’t that nutrition of a different kind?”

– John Waters @ the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; see also, and previously

It’s a totally minor thing, but in the middle of a dull week it made me smile. After watching a really, really terrible made-for-TV version of A Room with a View (my exile from England has driven me to gorge on British period films) I decided to wipe the disappointment from my mind by watching the original again.

There is still plenty to love about the first version, even after all these years, but watching it again I caught something small but charming that I wouldn’t have noticed the first time around. In the book, the pivotal scene on the Fiesole hillside is quite brief, but it gets a little more time and attention in the film. There’s a film-only moment where cousin Charlotte and Miss Lavish are gossiping about an English woman who runs off to Italy and marries a much-younger Italian in a town called Monteriano. That, of course, is actually the scandal at the heart of an earlier novel of Forster’s (also turned into a film later on), Where Angels Fear to Tread. It’s a quick aside, but a cute detail to throw in, and it actually does a neat job of establishing that Charlotte and Miss Lavish develop the kind of friendship where they’d swap indiscreet stories.

Continue reading “A Room with Angels”

I first watched all of John Waters’ films on video or in the theater, so I totally missed the inclusion of deleted scenes in the more recent DVD releases. Bliss! It pains me that I’ve gotten this far without seeing these.

Hmmm, perhaps I should use this stay back in the States to grab the earlier movies. The UK still only sells a more heavily edited version of Pink Flamingos.

I’m amazed that I never stumbled across this interview with John Waters before, since it was in BUTT years ago. However, I’ve worked about 14 hours today and I’m too tired to concentrate even on a pleasant surprise like this, so I’m just pass out and leave it linked here for you to enjoy until I get a chance to come back to it.

Update: Best quote from the interview: “You can’t get AIDS from sitting on a pie.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. I try to quietly accept that my aversion to most British food is just a matter of a cultural adjustment that I can’t make. Regularly, though, I’m pushed to the brink and I have to lash out at the culinary monstrosities I encounter, especially at lunchtime, which has become the most stressful time of the day for me since moving to England. As if things weren’t bad enough already at the Tesco near where I work, there’s a new contender for most soul-destroying approximation of food — the lasagna sandwich.

Now, I’m not automatically opposed to the idea of a lasagna sandwich. In fact, I’m intrigued. Until I remember this isn’t something from a great NY deli, something that involves a crusty roll and hot, fresh-made Italian food. No, this is the British take on it:

Between two thick slices of white bread, you’ll find a generous filling of diced beef in a tangy tomato and herb sauce, layered with cooked pasta sheets and finished with a creamy cheddar, ricotta and mayonnaise dressing.

I think I’m sick already. It’s bad enough that cheddar cheese is a common ingredient of Italian food here, but I’ve been trying to adapt to that. And their idea of “thick” white bread is nothing of the sort. It’s just clammy and tissue-like. The fucking mayonnaise, though! Ugh. I can’t even bear to think about it. Tesco regularly offends me (and leaves me with little to eat at lunch besides hummus and bread) with their generous use of mayonnaise on unlikely foods — cheese salads, Southern fried chicken, sushi — and it seems that this madness has no end in sight. The writer of that article about the lasagna sandwich gives a pretty good indication of what horrors lie in wait, but as he points out, there’s a market out there for even the unlikeliest concoction.

I just want a decent grilled cheese and bacon. Is that so much to ask?