Our friend Lapata is having an exhibition at Counter Pulse and I failed, miserably, to notify you. More importantly, I wasn’t able to attend in person.

She has put the works featured in the show on her flickr page: Dhoom Dhamaka! Show. 

I think some of her strongest work, to date, is being featured in this show – specifically, the Rasa series. Since she has portrayed generals and kings, she immediately got how a true theocratic-juristical Leader, such as me, should be captured. After a lengthy, exhaustive, and exhausting series of photo-shoots – scattered around the globe – she finally was able to capture the sprite that lurks behind my twinkling eyes. That iridescent smile.

Karuna
Bhayanak
Bibhatsa
Shanta
Adbhut
Raudra
Veer
Hasya
Shringar

In all seriousness, go see her show:

1. Dhoom Dhamaka!

Sept. 4 – Oct. 1

Opening reception: Sept. 4 at 6-8 PM.

CounterPulse
1310 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

The show will be held in conjunction with a performance by Joti Singh’s Duniya Dance Company. Performances will take place Sept. 11-13 at 8 PM.

The theme? The War on Terror! Paintings are shown in the lobby and can be seen from 12-6 Tues-Fri, at the opening, and during the performance (where they will be projected onto the stage). For more information about purchasing tickets ($12-$20) for the performance and directions to the venue, visit CounterPulse .

(Suggested listening while reading this review: click here; don’t bother to watch the clip, since it’s just a fan slideshow) The film version of Etgar Keret’s novella “Kneller’s Happy Campers” (which is also recreated in the graphic novel Pizzeria Kamikaze) has finally been released in the US (see the earlier review of Keret’s work here). Despite some major and possibly regrettable alterations to the setting and plot, it is still an excellent movie. The biggest disappointment is the location. The story takes place in an afterlife universe where people go after they have committed suicide. In the novella and graphic novel, this place is a city and surrounding countryside that bears a remarkable resemblance to Tel Aviv. The movie was shot in the United States in run-down parts of LA and somewhere near the Nevada-California border, which makes sense, since most cinematic universes are relocated to California. The characters are now mostly American, or recent immigrants to America. Choosing to make the whole movie American and losing the Israeli element of course robs the story of some of its original flavor, although in the novella the place is never named, and is only meant to resemble the lousy places where the suicides lived before they killed themselves. Suicide is not a culturally flat construct and in the context of an ironic Israeli tale it takes on an especially dark and provoking resonance. On the other hand, the Croatian director, Goran Dukic, has done a superb job choosing the grimmest and most derelict locations imaginable, and this does make up for the initial disappointment that our hero is now from New Jersey and his life has probably improved quite a bit now that he is dead and living in California.

Many alterations have been made to the story, but most of them work well and some brilliantly in helping the writing transition to a visual medium. Dukic shows enormous attention to detail in his choices of location and set decoration. In an interview he explains that he directed his crew to find the most run-down and undesirable objects imaginable for every scene. This was a clever and thrifty way of dealing with the task of creating an alternate universe on a shoestring budget. Added to the general dilapidation of everything is an element of whimsy which helps to underscore the absurdity of the dismal universe of suicides. For example, in a couple of scenes that call for some kind of transportation, ridiculously small vehicles appear, such as a tiny train car that seats only two people. As Dukic explains in the same interview, the color was desaturated after shooting, giving the whole movie an aged, slightly dirty look, like a yellowing, battered old photograph.

Many reviews of the movie accuse it of being yet another entry in the roadtrip/romance genre, with the added gimmick of the suicide universe. Some reviewers have even accused Dukic of glamorizing suicide or taking hipster irony to an unpalatable limit. The roadtrip/romance aspects of the film are far stronger than in the original story, no doubt mostly to give it more coherence and direction. The unexpectedly happy romantic ending was also added for the film, making the whole thing a lot more Hollywoody, despite its clear indie roots. Nonetheless, to take Wristcutters as a roadtrip romance is to misunderstand the underlying mood and message of the story. Far from glamorizing suicide, Keret’s story imagines the outcome of suicide as the opposite of desensitized escape or martyrdom, a continuation of the depressing state before the act, only just a bit more depressing and lonely. An exception to the more depressing rule might be the case of the side-kick character, Eugene, an aggressive, punky Russian immigrant rocker, whose entire family has committed suicide and is now happily reunited in suicide land. Though this character exists in the novella, he is not depicted (at least not in English translation) as a Russian immigrant. In the film, the family’s happiness at being reunited, their close bond and deep affection for one another, and their relative lack of interest in the fact that everything is slightly worse, seems a commentary on the trials of migration.

Eugene’s career as a musician when he was alive provides an excuse for an excellent soundtrack full of songs by the “Transglobal Gypsy Punk Rock” band, Gogol Bordello. The character of Eugene is in fact modeled on the lead singer and founder of Gogol Bordello, Eugene Hütz, a friend of the director, Goran Dukic. The opening scene includes a song by Tom Waits, who also plays the role of Kneller, an idiosyncratic charismatic group leader of sorts, in the film. The Tom Waits part of the movie, toward the end, is worth the price of admission alone, and his acting and character go a long way toward heightening the bizarreness of the story, which reaches a climax in a spectacular show put on by ‘the Messiah’, played by Will Arnett (AKA G.O.B. Bluth). The fact that Tom Waits and Will Arnett play roles very similar to other personas they have inhabited outside the film adds to the heightened surreality of these later scenes. Importing the baggage of very particular (indie-ish) pop culture icons makes the characters they play jump out like scenes in a pop-up book. The effect is clearly intended, and serves as a short hand for the elaborate characterizations in the novella that might otherwise require loads more explication in the film version.

And finally, it is worth taking a look at this interview with Goran Dukic and the female lead, Shannyn Sossamon, if only to see how mind-numbingly dull some interviewers are, how exhausting Sundance must be, and how startlingly undereducated Sossamon apparently is.

As you can see, I am a magnificent horse. Proof of my magnificence lies in the fact that I was presented as a special gift to First Lady of the United States Jacqueline Kennedy by Field Marshal Ayub Khan in 1962. During the First Lady’s resplendent tour of South Asia, she was presented with many fine gifts, including me (Sardar), an elephant named Urvashi (presented by the Nehrus), and two baby Bengal tigers (presented by Air India) whom the First Lady had planned to name Kitty and Ken after Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith and his wife. I say she had planned to name them Kitty and Ken because they perished before they could be shipped to the United States from India. Clearly I was the most suitable gift of these as the First Lady was an equestrienne nonpareil and I was successfully brought to the state of Virginia in the United States so that Mrs. Kennedy might enjoy my company as much as possible.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “You say you are magnificent, but you are only half a horse! Where is the other half of your body?” This is an excellent question. As it happens, I am actually a painting of a horse, representing a particular horse, named Sardar, that existed in history. My photograph was taken in Virginia in the company of the First Lady and Field Marshal Khan, and an artist has rendered that scene in a triptych. During the course of this rendering, the artist has made certain stylistic decisions, causing me to be only half a horse in her painting, though I remain a full horse in the original photograph. This decision was no doubt made because, in the style of miniaturists of old, she did not wish to make the animal larger than the two great human leaders also present in her painting, yet, bound by the duties of a perspectival painter in the Frankish mold, she was not able to bring herself to make me a very small horse in proportion to the First Lady and the Field Marshal. Thus, I have become half a large horse.

As befits any momentous event in human history, as well as those timeless tales of old that perhaps once took place in the ordinary lives of every day men and women, such as the story of Leila and Majnun or that of the travails of Princess Diana, the wondrous tour of South Asia undertaken by Mrs. Kennedy, or Jackie O, as she is also known, has been documented on many pages and even upon the medium of celluloid. As it happens, another artist, one from the country of France, accompanied Mrs. Kennedy on this tour, and created many intricate paintings depicting many thrilling events during that time, but neglected to capture the apotheosis of the journey, the gifting of a horse (me) to Jackie O. Those paintings by the French lady are collected in a small volume called Mrs. Kennedy Goes Abroad that includes an introduction by former Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith, for whom a Bengal Tiger cub was nearly named until it met with an untimely demise, being a less suitable ornament to the First Lady’s person. As Mr. Galbraith recounts:

My wife Kitty and I planned Jacqueline Kennedy’s trip to India. We resisted a proposal that she visit the ancient temple of Konarak, where her viewing of the explicitly erotic statuary would have greatly attracted the media instinct which later was so rejoiced by Bill Clinton. We were her hostess and host until Jawaharlal Nehru, one of the most distinguished statesmen of his age, snatched her away. The American embassy residence in new Delhi was then under construction; our dwelling was too small so we had requisitioned nearby accommodations. Nehru held them to be inadequate and moved Jackie and her sister, Princess Lee Radziwill, to rooms in his own house. This was not a simple act of grace: Meeting her at the plane and seeing her later, he was enormously attracted and wanted to see more of her, which as the visit passed he did.

For many chroniclers, it was Mrs. Kennedy’s wardrobe that caused the most excitement. The ne plus ultra of the trip was for many that little pink dress she wore in Udaipur. In an article on her fashions during the trip, a reporter from Life magazine recounts many interesting tidbits:

At the start of her journey to India, Jacqueline Kennedy expressed the hope that her trip would not turn into a fashion show. But despite her best efforts, her every seam has been the subject of hypnotized attention from the streets of Delhi to Khyber Pass. By the time she reached Pakistan, an official release was describing her as “the best-dressed woman in the world.” whether or not she was wearing a hat or a hair bow or a belt took on international importance. An Indian lady correspondent timidly asked, “Would it be impolite to mention in my story that she is not wearing stockings?”

The most dogged of the clothes-watchers in her press entourage have now counted 22 different costumes as of the end of her stay in Lahore. She has worn only two things a second time. The rare “repeats” are greeted with the joy of a bird watcher spotting a prothonotary warbler.

….

Among the statisticians of the trip there are even counters of shoes, one school holding that she wears the same pale cream ones and has them cleaned, and the other holding she throws them away like Kleenex.

Surprisingly, although one may well imagine bearers staggering under a load of 16 trunks, Mrs. Kennedy actually travels with two large footlockers plus six assorted smaller suitcases. Her principal secret weapon is her maid, Mrs. Providencia Paredes, who is always so discreet that she is nearly invisible– so much so, in fact, that the Kennedys almost left Vienna last spring without her. Mrs. Paredes carries a steam iron wherever she goes and wields it with extraordinary skill.

….

The utmost discretion has been observed about the Kennedy coiffure.
Throughout the safari, as the rest of the females in her party grew gradually rumpled, then wilted and finally vanished in a pool of butter like the tigers in Little Black Sambo, Mrs. Kennedy’s flowing tresses survived an overnight train ride, two boat rides and two weeks of one-night stands. Through all this her hair looked precisely as it had the day she left. This is obviously impossible without aid; the finger of suspicion in this delicate subject points to Mrs. William Laton of New York City, listed in the party as Princess Radziwill’s maid and secretary. There is speculation that Mrs. Laton keeps a hair dryer in her typewriter case.

The most impressive part of Mrs. Kennedy’s dress, however, was the visual impact of the colors she chose for each occasion. A French artist who is a member of our troupe remarked, “She must have studied terribly carefully. Every dress she wears becomes a marvelous spot of color, like the bright spot that holds your eye in Persian miniatures. The pale apricot silk she wore for the boat ride on Pichola Lake was wonderful against these pink-tinged castles in the water.”

….

One of the most noticeable side effects of Mrs. Kennedy’s wardrobe has been its influence on the traditionally dowdy female press corps. Two lady reporters are now carrying, in addition to typewriters, hatboxes, containing wigs, and three take notes while wearing little white gloves.

Personally, as a familiar of Mrs. Kennedy, I must say that it is not the penchant for haute couture which makes the lady, but her exquisite manners and charming personality. As you can see from the paintings recently completed by the artist who has rendered my half-portrait, the First Lady was a sparkling conversationalist and was able to put her interlocutors at ease, whether they be a military dictator, a prime minister, her sister, or a horse, such as myself.

Many of us were surprised to learn that the actor who performed the role of Kumar in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle with such panache will now be starring in the film version of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel the Namesake. There will be lots of publicity on this in the coming weeks; but for now, sepoy has forwarded me this intriguing interview with Kal Penn about his new movie.

While CM was being hacked, some of your correspondents ended up getting hijacked by the trendiest new web presence in town, my.barackobama.com. Within moments of the site’s inception, we began to feverishly collect friends, join groups and start movements. But now that the site is already five days old, the bloom has faded from the rose and we are ready to come home. We are not sure if, after all, we wish to be part of a nationwide email conversation about how much, how very very much, we want our guy to kick the cig habit, or how it might be fun to have a ginormous sixty minute conference call with fellow supporters across the nation.

We still love the man, and it being Valentine’s Day, we’re here to express that, despite concerns about his handling of the whole madrassa issue, and other worries yet to be discovered. So in honor of his dignity, which is being vigorously shredded from all sides, we’ve gone photoshopping for a pretty new t-shirt to help him cover his nakedness, since he is still apparently somewhat miffed about the People mag papparazzo shot. As in the sad tale of the toothsome Gavin Newsom, who learned too late, after being caught with his pants figuratively down, that all those hair gel articles recalled a simpler, happier time, the Obamalator needs to understand that he should count himself lucky when he has only been exposed literally.

First in a series of posts on the junior senator from Illinois.

Gary Cooper: Perfect. It’s a matter of fact. Everything about you is perfect.

Audrey Hepburn: I’m too thin and my ears stick out, my teeth are crooked and my neck’s much too long.

Gary Cooper: Maybe so, but I love the way it all hangs together.

–Love in the Afternoon

Like Cooper’s character in Love in the Afternoon, we’re terribly jaded: we’ve lived the capitalist high life and rolled with all sorts of exotic dames, Swedish twins, Spanish princesses, you name it. Frightened Republicans, cranky pessimistic Democrats and The Main-Stream Media alike may ridicule us for our sudden infatuation with the new pair of ankles in town, but what they don’t understand is that like Ms. Hepburn, Senator Obama is the real deal. You can get to Hepburn’s waif-weight on a steady diet of club-hopping, methamphetamine and cocaine cut with strawberry Quik, or you can get there by gnawing on tulip bulbs in the basement during the Dutch Famine. You could achieve the grace and poise of Hepburn by hiring a personal trainer and doing pilates every day or you could get there by cutting short your training as a professional ballet dancer due to poverty-induced malnutrition. Similarly, you could give speeches as well as Obama by hiring a stable-full of professional speech writers, or you could get there by spending a lifetime reading literature and honing the craft of writing. You could adopt a message of hope, non-partisanship and reconciliation after consulting with a team of highly paid pollsters, or you could hold such a message as a conviction, a lesson learned through personal experience and public service.

The mood around the Obamanan has a lunatic edge, primarily because it is far too difficult for anyone to believe in the notion of the genuine article. Pundits are disturbed by his unrelentingly rock star appeal because it hasn’t been hand-crafted by them. Even ‘experts’ and journalists who are ostensibly on his side are poised and ready to spring into a much anticipated maelstrom of negativity when the time comes. No one wants to be the naive one who canonized the rising star too soon. In anticipation of the fall of Obama ( cause for speculation as early as March 2006 by the NYT), everyone is jumping on the superficiality bandwagon as fast as they can. We are deluged daily by a perplexing array of critiques of Obama’s physical appearance (eye candy!), clothing (business casual!) and name (Iraq! Saddam Hussein! Osama bin Laden!). The name bit, an embarrassing act of desperation, results of course from the rightist spin machine: maybe we can get people to think he has something to do with those things! True, many people still do not know who Barack Obama is and give rise to news reports like this and this that make us fear still further for the intelligence of our populace, but lack of name recognition isn’t the sort of thing that lasts long around a public figure who appears on Oprah,the Daily Show and Larry King, and introduces Monday Night Football.

And then there’s Obama and fashion. Maureen Dowd, doing her best come-hither-Barack wink, while simultaneously not wanting to look dumb if he turns out not to be all that, seems to have gotten the ball rolling. With her piece ‘Project Obama,’ she warns the object of her affections not to get carried away with all the adulation lest he come to appear too light in the loafers for the job of Commander-in-Chief. This time her TV Guide metaphor-du-jour is Project Runway, and she wrings her hands at the prospect of Obama, with his Annie Leibovitz photo shoot for Men’s Vogue, appearances on Oprah and a little too much time spent at the gym, ending up as everyone’s favorite celebrity guest star. She closes with the dramatic and thought-provoking punchline, “Does Barack Obama want to be a celebrity or a man of history, or is there no longer any difference?”

The fashionisto in Obama is all the rage now, most strangely in this

exchange between Wolf Blitzer and Jeff Greenfield, which Greenfield now

claims was a joke:

GREENFIELD: The senator was in New Hampshire over the weekend, sporting what’s getting to be the classic Obama look. Call it business casual, a jacket, a collared shirt, but no tie….But, in the case of Obama, he may be walking around with a sartorial time bomb. Ask yourself, is there any other major public figure who dresses the way he does? Why, yes. It is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, unlike most of his predecessors, seems to have skipped through enough copies of “GQ” to find the jacket-and-no-tie look agreeable.

Whether or not this was, in fact, a joke, clearly the most insulting part of it all is being compared to the distinctly unfelicitous sartorial style of Ahmadinejad, who, politics aside, is a man who wears white socks with leather shoes and whose suits and dress shirts clearly contain no small number of synthetic fibers.

In fact, it is the article in Men’s Vogue which takes no interest in Obama’s sartorial choices, and the Annie Leibovitz photo spread unveils the Junior Senator from Illinois wearing his own clothing, with no apparent attempts at pre-shoot styling. The combined article and photographs contain so little reference to appearances or the fashion world that one is led to wonder just what the gang over at Vogue is up to. As one skeptical participant in the Men’s Vogue discussion boards, sir_elton, reflects plaintively, “Obama didn’t look right. He wasn’t pressed. Not presidential in my book. Who chose those clothes, anyway? Was that A.L.?”

Well that’s just it, kids. Barack Obama doesn’t need a stylist because the man’s got original style. Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue, High Priestess of Style, knows this. The article in MV is remarkable because it lets Obama speak for himself, through his writings, speeches and conversation. The Leibovitz photos shoot him doing the things he does in the clothes he wears (which, granted, are quite tasteful). And, most arrestingly, we learn that his most stylish asset is his command of language. One hears and reads very often that Obama has ‘boatloads of charisma’; that he speaks eloquently; that he writes well. But in the context of the language skills and rhetoric of, let’s say, all politicians today, that means nothing. The fact is that Obama writes and speaks beautifully.

Can there be any other politician who has as strong a policy regarding semi-colons and lists? From his elegant and looong post to Daily Kos, in which he makes the fascinating argument that liberals should be nicer to the Democrats who voted for Judge Roberts, even though he himself voted against him (and the way the list is embedded in a set of double dashes– it just gives you the shivers):

I shared enough of these concerns that I voted against Roberts on the floor this morning. But short of mounting an all-out filibuster — a quixotic fight I would not have supported; a fight I believe Democrats would have lost both in the Senate and in the court of public opinion; a fight that would have been difficult for Democratic senators defending seats in states like North Dakota and Nebraska that are essential for Democrats to hold if we hope to recapture the majority; and a fight that would have effectively signaled an unwillingness on the part of Democrats to confirm any Bush nominee, an unwillingness which I believe would have set a dangerous precedent for future administrations– blocking Roberts was not a realistic option.

And how many people quote the poetry of Borges to discuss their turn toward religion (‘a choice, not an epiphany‘)? How many people quote the poetry of Borges at all? And this quote is from a love poem:

“I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow—the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.

“I think Borges is talking to a mistress or lover” Obama said. “But that kernel that is untouched;that doesn’t traffic in the trivial or the mean or the petty;that sounds like God to me.”

(In the previous line of the poem, rather confusingly in this context, the narrator states,

I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.

This last being, no doubt, a priceless thing to offer, but probably the sort of association one should avoid as a politician. But he didn’t quote that part, and he acknowledges it is not a poem about religion, but a love poem, and it probably doesn’t matter that it was allegedly written for his comely young apprentice, Adolfito Bioy-Casares, by an elderly Borges, in English, in honor of their ‘English Friendship’.)

And when have we heard a public figure intelligently discuss the role of religious imagery in the rhetoric of politics, instead of just pumping more and more hackneyed phrases and tired cliches into the atmosphere?

“If we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice,” he argued. “Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King;the majority of great reformers in American history;were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public-policy debates is a practical absurdity.”

Obama is indeed a man of style, but that style stretches far beyond a make of clothing, an aspect of his physical appearance, or an over-abundance of charm. It’s not Project Runway style, it’s Chicago Manual of style. And we just love the way it all hangs together.

[rejected by US Weekly]

They’re CRAZY about celebrities!

Dictators can meet any celebrity they want. They can even kidnap them and force them to make movies for them while they eat live lobsters with silver chopsticks. But that doesn’t mean a dictator can’t be starstruck. Chairman of the National Defense Commission of North Korea, Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army, and General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, the notorious Kim Jong-il can’t believe his good luck: he’s standing right next to the beautiful and talented singer Kim Ryon Ja!

They LOVE their pressure cookers!

President of Cuba and Comandante of the Cuban military Fidel Castro loves to cook with Chinese pressure cookers! Not only are they energy-saving for his entire nation, but they really lock in the flavors of meats and vegetables…without boiling out all the nutritional content, like with regular pots and pans! Usually people share cookery tips with their friends and family without expecting everyone to set up their kitchens the way they do, but when you’re a dictator, you can command everyone else in your country use your favorite cooking utensils too. It’s just like being Martha Stewart or Emeril Lagasse, only with a whole country, and not just a franchise and a series of trend-setting media appearances.

They can’t ignore a GREAT pair of legs!

President of Pakistan, Chief of Army Staff of the Pakistani military and celebrated memoirist General Pervez Musharraf: a guy thinks he’s got everything he could possibly want and then some cute little thing in a short skirt waltzes by and he realizes he may be a military dictator, but he’s only human!

They can’t keep their minds off HAUTE COUTEUR!

President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the US Military George W. Bush is no stranger to the catwalks of Fashion Week. Our Dubya just can’t disguise his admiration for right-hand gal Condi’s stylish evening duds on the occasion of a state dinner at India’s Rashtrapati Bhavan. When you’re the Emperor of the Free World, you can feel free to feast your eyes on all the high fashion you want! No wonder George B. chose the finest dressed dominatrix in the land to send forth his message of dominion to the Four Seas!

They let their wives dress them up in MIX ‘N’ MATCH outfits!

Executive President of Zimbabwe and Chancellor of all Zimbabwean universities, Robert Mugabe may intend to rule his nation with an iron fist until he turns 100 years old, but when it comes to picking out the Dictator’s outfits, his lovely and talented wife Grace is the Commander-in-Chief!

Was I the last person to find out that the Iranian pop diva Googoosh is making a comeback and living in the United States and Canada now? I have painted her portrait in honor of this exciting news. There are all sorts of delectable websites devoted to Googoosh, including her own, official site, and Googoosh TV which includes loads of MP3s.

I first learned about Googoosh about six years ago, when I saw a terrible documentary about her. The film was focused on post-Revolution suppression of her voice and, more importantly, the filmmaker’s obsession with Googoosh as an absent presence and a pop icon. He was unable to or not allowed to interview Googoosh for the film, so the whole thing ends up being about her absence and her silence, only not in a way that could be described as interesting or artistic. The overall effort reminded me of a translation of a Marathi short story I read years ago by Vilas Sarang, in which a historian takes a tape recorder around to all the Indian monuments and ‘records the silences’ of the historical sites.

The Googoosh documentary seems to now be available on DVD. I think this is the same one I saw, though from the Amazon reviews it is, as always, hard to tell whether something is bad or good. Highlights include:

-This film is an insult to Googoosh and to filmmaking.

-If we give the content to a professional editor and producer they probably can make a good 45min documentary out of the whole 150min repeated content so if you are familiar with home video editing it worth buying the DVD and editing it yourself!

The film was in fact ‘hamstrung’ by the complete absence of Googoosh. I came away wondering what she looked like and what her music sounded like. That’s how I became a fan, so maybe it was worth something. But apparently, right around the time that the documentary was released 2000, Googoosh was finally granted a passport by the Iranian government, allowing her to travel outside the country and perform. Since then she has recorded a couple of new albums and has even settled down in Tehrangeles. Perhaps Mr. Zamani should now re-edit his film to make her absent presence present.

One day we will look back at YouTube, like we look back at Napster. Until that sordid day arrives, my blogging duties are so much simpler [yes, yes, i have some actual posts coming. I swear.] Enjoy the Lil’ Superstar.

The track is Holiday Rap by DJ Sven and Miker G [also a must-see!]. All hail the great blake for the 411.

The alternative society created in part by Hollywood myopia, and the cynicism-or, depending on your point of view, foresight of The Passion‘s marketers, has come to fruition. Senate majority leader Bill Frist has decided to exercise what the press and Congressional Republicans call the ‘nuclear option’ to make it easier for Senate Republicans to bring cloture to filibusters, the Democratic party’s last vestige of power. The Senate’s own website tells us:

Instead of justifying his reasons for altering Senate procedures to reduce the power of the minority and eliminate a frustrating, if useful, tradition to the editorial board of the New York Times, or on Meet the Press, or some other secular outlet, Frist plans to build a groundswell of support using the channels of Evangelical America’s parallel, influential, and increasingly mainstream, culture.

The lemmings at America’s 4th place television network won’t be outdone. Attempting to meet this demon where it lives, they’ve offered up Revelations (sic). Here, instead of an exploitation of the new Christian reality, we’re given–at least in the first episode–a great example of how Hollywood doesn’t understand American Christian spirituality, and why American Christians hate Hollywood.

Farangi’s notes on the script:

The super-sexy co-protagonist is a Catholic nun. I don’t get why producers and writers insist on using Catholicism as the de facto representation of American Christianity in entertainment. Only in the last century did Roman Catholics even comprise a plurality of American Christians. Even today, where most Americans are Christians, most are Protestant, and most American Protestants are – gasp – Southern Baptist. I suspect this disconnect survives because Catholicism holds a measure of old-world spookiness for non-believers that makes for good visuals; also, because Catholicism is innately hierarchical, its systems are easier to grasp, especially in the morning, at your word processor, with a huge hangover, with Cliff’s Notes on the Bible and Dummie’s Guide to the Apocalypse beneath your roach-littered ashtray.

It should be noted that the modern Catholic church doesn’t publicly stress or fret or obsess about the “end of days,” in the ways we’re used to from Protestants. Chances are good the guy you dodge in the sandwich board every morning is a Protestant. Also, Sexxy Sista comes from a group called the ‘Eckland Foundation’ which a group of evil doctors refer to as a “fundamentalist group seeking to prove the end of the world is real.” This might refer to a Catholic group, but that’s unlikely, especially since our nun has a degree of autonomy not often seen in Catholic women in vocations. This sounds a lot like the Chick Group or some other overfunded nuthouse. Such groups believe the Catholic Church is the “Great Whore Babylon” and the Pope is at least an anti-Christ, if not the anti-Christ. That a nun would affiliate with such a group stresses credulity. In addition, the nun’s positive offering of Tibetan necromancy as exemplary support for the notion that the dead might speak through the living gives too much ecumenical credit to the Church. We’re still arguing over Transubstantiation, folks. It’ll be a while before we look kindly upon marching the dead up to the podium for the keynote. Please.

The super-stoic co-protagonist is a Harvard semi-scientist who lost his daughter to a Satanic ritual killer, whom he visits in prison like Starling calling on Lecter. The Satanist character, frankly, has the depth of my empties’ backwash. The Satanism thing is as weak as it is tired, and what’s worse is that our writer (who allegedly wrote the scary-as-shit Omen and should know better) seems to have merged the Occult and Satanism, as shown by a lazy mix of anecdote, motif and dialogue. The character spouts longwinded speeches, quotes the bible, fixates on the “game of hearts,” and is the subject of awed respect by those who deal with him.

Satanists are by definition within the Judeo-Christian tradition, because they agree to its premises but protest them through sacrilege. In fact, Satanism as we know it is the product of 1950′s San Fransisco, and a former carnie named Anton LaVey. The thoughts buttressing Satanism existed for centuries, but it took LaVey to bundle them to a cache of Nietzche and anonymous esoteric texts–some of them quite interesting from historical, literary and philosophical perspectives and, prior to Lavey smudging them, worthy of further critical examination–declare them a ‘Satanic Bible’ found a ‘church’ and commence to hosting highly theatrical orgies with starlets like Jayne Mansfield and bon vivants like Sammy Davis, Jr.

LaVey’s inverted pentagram glyph, made a fetish by 80′s metal bands, is an explicit rejection of the ‘Occult’ which we shall call, for the sake of space, a mutant amalgamation of some of Europe and Asia’s pre-Christian philosophical and religious traditions–necessarily outside the Christian tradition. Most occult traditions respect the pentagram as a symbol of the completeness of man’s relationship to natural cycles, hence LaVey’s inversion-i.e., man transcendent over all moral strictures.

Further, I was struck by the weirdly awed comment of a prison guard, describing the Satanist character: “He says he only needs to breathe once a minute, and then goes into a trance.” Now, basic knowledge of the Occult will tell you that the 1:4:2 ratio one-minute breath cycle comes into ‘Western” consciousness from Arthur Avalon, Aliester Crowley, and H.P. Blavatsky, and was cribbed from Central Asian Sufis and Indian Yogis.

The most cursory application of the scientific method will demonstrate that this is actually called ‘meditation’ or, even ‘prayer’ and is unworthy of mention, or awe from a prison guard. This confusion shows contempt for the intelligence of its audience. Its facile employment of the ‘other” is more evidence of Hollywood stupidity and reliance on irresponsible portrayls of ideals and traditions for the quick jolt. Its lack of nuance exempifies further to the dumbing of America from on high.

In addition, as though to deflect criticism aimed toward the pilfered Lecter character, the writer actually draws more on a character whose copyright has long expired. The Satanist character is an inferior facsmilie of Stoker’s Reinfeld, who in Dracula howls the way as the vampire’s John the Baptist. Instead of an asylum, we have a prison, instead of the vampire, we have the Anti-Christ. I’m all about a cover tune, yo, but damn. Try to make it yours, or do it better.

I have nothing further to write of Pullman or his character-self proclaimed, alas, ‘scientist, realist, Devil’s advocate’ except that Pullman the man seems mortified to be playing this role, and what passes for his bewilderment and grief at the loss of his daughter actually seems, on further examination, to be hate for his fellow cast members. Cut-to’s of old interviews with Carl Sagan and the staff of the scientific fundamentalists at CSICOP would be more enlightening and entertaining. At least we wouldn’t be waiting for their inevitable conversion, a la X-files Scully.

The exploitation of the Schaivo tragedy is so horrible here that the NBC execs who greenlighted this turkey-or changes to this turkey-should be tarred and feathered. A prophesying dead girl, struck by lightning and in, I shit you not, ‘a persistent vegetative state’ is in constant danger of having her organs harvested by greedy athiest doctors and skeptical hospital staff, who, because the girl is a ward of the state, aren’t making any money by keeping her alive. They actually stalk her via security camera like vultures, awaiting a legal excuse to flip the switch. Conflicting decisions come from various courts-each side picking its legal champions, and the only real thing keeping the girl alive is that she occasionally shouts in Latin, and draws pictures identical to the ones Pullman’s character’s daughter drew before the Satanist cut her heart out. Enter the plaigarisation of Blatty’s Exorcist, Stigmata, and the talking Sturgeon that a few years back terrorized some Orthodox Jews in New York. It’s refreshing for me to see smug doctors and the medical-pharmaceutical establishment in for a drubbing as the story’s initial antagonists, but would it have been so hard not to completely ape the real-life, and far more complicated, tragedy in Florida? Shame. Shame on them.

Tomorrow, another exegesis. And we’ll talk about Jenkins and LaHaye, and why the best selling books in the history of publishing are a dramatization of the modern premillenial dispensationalist understanding of the ‘end times’ and how that understanding has less to do with scripture and tradition and more, so much more, to do with geopolitics and the rise of the American right.

I don’t get to watch much t.v., except for Comedy Central and Cartoon Network. Couple of years ago, we got hooked on 24 in its second season. I thought it was wonderful Camp (dead serious, extravagent, predictable for its infantile fixation on “twists”). I didn’t see the last season but we taped and watched the four episodes of the new season which started Sunday. Frank Rich, in the NYT, already wrote up this new season’s dramatic return to Middle Eastern terrorists. And a return it is. The terrorists are all off the set of 1994 True Lies – swarthy, sweaty men in fatigues with klashnikovs. The masterminds, so far, are a Persian(?) family cell who have been plotting their mayhem for 4 or 5 years. Even the rebellious 16 year old son is down with the program, complete with a unibrow. Muslim-Americans are center square as sleeper cells and terrorists amongst us. I would feel bad for a 16 yr. Muslim kid in Peoria going to school after watching these episodes but I am too busy being entertained. Also, ripped right from the headlines is the delicious irony of seeing the sec. of defense in Gitmo/AbuGharib orange jumpsuit taking down the terrorists with an AK-47. Rummy who?

Anyways, what has caught my eye so far is that “torture” issue is magnificently highlighted. What with A. Gonzales hearing and the Abu Gharib trial in the news, one wouldn’t have clear thinking on such a crucial issue – human rights and all. 24 tells you straight away: You gotta bring them in the House of Pain. Traditional methods are not getting our heroes anywhere so Jack has to shoot a terrorist (who despite being a top planning guy never learned to wear a disguise, or at least, a toupe√à) in the knee to make him spill. Awesome. Torture works. Next up, is the son of the sec. of defense. He is hiding something. Immediately, torture is authorized but the interrogator recoils from using some chemical and sissies out by doing sensory deprivation tricks from the 70s. Hopefully, Jack will get back to CTU soon and shoot this kid in the knee as well. And this is only in the first few episodes.

I look forward to next week’s show.

We discovered Buffy: The Vampire Slayer late – in the seventh season. And thanks only to sven. Now, I admit, I am hooked. I love the humor, mainly. But, there are others to whom Buffyverse is a vast, uncharted space for interstatial observations.
There is Ken Kuykendall, a Mormon youth leader, who uses Buffy to teach Christ.
There is a literary theory thriller where Buffy stands in for pomo-bashing.
There is philosophy.
And, after all that is said and done: there is The Slayage Conference on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. An academic affair that attracted philosophers, theologians, physicists(?) and literary critics. Some papers that caught my attention:

• Structural Identity, or Saussure Visits Buffy/Angel’s World: What’s the Difference? – AmiJo Comeford (University of Nevada at Las Vegas)
• Renegotiating Identity: Viewing the Post 9/11 Buffyverse in a Post 9/11 World. – Jill Gorman (Rollins College)
• Im/Material Girl: Abjection, Penetration, and the Postmodern Body on BtVS. – Jasmine Hall (Elms College)
• “Oh Stay! You Are So Beautiful”: Angel the Vampire Faust. – Angela Lin† (Vanderbilt University)
• Buffy Slays Walt Disney. – Katia McClain (University of California, Santa Barbara)
• Russian Existentialism and Vampire Slayage: A Shestovian Key to the Power and Popularity of BtVS. – J. M. Richardson and J. D. Rabb (Lakehead University)
• Warrior Heroes: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Beowulf. – David Fritts (Henderson Community College)
• “Il y a” the Vampire Slayer: Encountering Levinas Through “Hush”. – Christopher Berry (Purdue University)
• “Don’t Speak Latin in Front of the Books”: Knowledge, Power, and History in BtVS. – Jennifer Welsh (Duke University)
• “Actually, No Wheeling Is More My Specialty”: Why Buffy Doesn’t Drive. – Brett Rogers and Walter Scheidel (Stanford University), Distinguished Speaker
• “Why don’t you just go back where you came from?” Aspects of Post-Colonial Theory in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. – Russ Jackson
• Magic, Classical Physics, and the Conservation of Energy and Matter. – Scott Speakman (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)
• Self Becoming or Becoming Self? A Comparative Study of Buffy and the Hindu Saint Antal on Identity and Self-Realization. – Tracy Tiemeier (Boston College)
• “This Is How Many Apocalypses for Us Now?”: The Buffyverse Apocalyptic and Premillenialist Christianity. – Lisa Roy Vox (Emory University)
• A Vampire Is Being Beaten: De Sade Through the Looking Glass in Buffy and Angel. – Jenny Alexander (University of Sussex, Falmer)
• The Male Hero in Feminist Society: Comparisons of Buffy’s Spike and the Iroquois’ Hiawatha. – Linda Jencson (Appalachian State University)

So, today, we are gonna go and pick up a copy of the 6th season DVD and I am going to start studying over the long weekend. yeah.

I am stunned by this makeover madness on the telly. In my nightly crawl of cable, I see people get makeovers for their cars, their houses, their partners, their careers, their pets, their face, their bodies.
On and on and on.

Americans have given up. Thrown their hands up in the air, and yelled to the Gods: We Sucketh. Expect Us Not to Organize, to Learn, to Manage, to Cope. And the Gods have answered with a crop of gay lifestyle experts, hunky carpenters, teams of surgeons, acerbic wits and Visa/MasterCard. Their dreams come true, they get a new wardrobe, a plasma tv, a new attitude, a new fame and we, the viewers, are satiated. Another one of us is rescued by the Gods. We cheer the triumph of a team of specialists with unlimited budgets over our lives’ most intractable problems. We hope we are next. A nation of 250 million awaits their makeover – one by one.

In this weird moment in American cultural history, the viewers of the 90s reality tv fad (Real World, Springer Show etc.) have become the participants of the new decade. No longer are we content with voyeurism of the freaks and geeks but we have to manifest our own identity as their opposites. We all deserve better. We should dress better, make more money, look prettier, have nicer friends, have passionate sex, and millions should KNOW us. Oprah can sell us a contract and allow us to overcome ourselves. The makeover shows give us all the help we need to finally free the “real” me trapped under bad fashion and bad fat.

What I would like to know is, where does it go? Will the audience grow impatient with the rate of makeovers? Will we have mobs of people hunting experts down? Where is the makeover madness taking us? I can tell that for one, it is taking us to EXTREME editions. Sure, but is that all? Aren’t there bigger issues than teen body image problems arising out of Swan? The very ethos of can-do, do-all Americana is at risk, I venture.