Mostly, I was thinking about Marjory from Fraggle Rock today because I'm pretty sure she's what my insides look like. But then I also remembered that Marjory was damn amazing. She was telepathic, telekinetic, could sink into the ground to take a nap, didn't abide by Western rules of cleanliness, and was the oracle of Fraggle Rock. The trash heap has spoken!
Woody Harrelson was recently involved in (another) scuffle with a paparazzo at the aeropuerto in NYC. Yesterday, he issued a statement explaining his behavior:
I wrapped a movie called `Zombieland,' in which I was constantly under assault by zombies, then flew to New York, still very much in character. With my daughter at the airport I was startled by a paparazzo who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie.
Yes. Perfect. No better explanation. Seriously, there is many a day when I go out in public and the only way to explain my crazy aversion to other people is that I mistake them for zombies. Thanks, Woody.
For your Pesach/Easter spiritual efforts, Lil' Kim (on Marc Jacobs, folk art, and her 2006 prison-stint)--
"He's one of my best friends and was actually a huge supporter when I was in prison. He wrote me every week! I decided to buy a coloring book–I'm a huge Bratz fan–and I painted the Bratz and made them all wear Marc Jacobs, and sent it to him. He blew it up and framed it, and now it's hanging in his house. So Marc Jacobs is the best."
Achewood, an online comic detailing the random exploits of a bunch of cats, stuffed animals, and robots, often with no real punch line to speak of. These are a few of my favorite:
Crime scene photo of a bloody phone found in Vince Shlomi's hotel room, following his rumble with a cannibalistic courtesan. The phone appears to be covered in a spattering of my mom's orange lipstick from the 80's rather than blood, but what do I know.
I've been poring over a book about Mughal decoration, which has a sort of vibrancy and sweetness that must be related to flowers and shells (and reads like proper Toile or Shaker staircases --essentially, Spring and Summer). La Alahambra's Court of the Lions afforded my first school lessons in the genteel (and warm!) genius of Islamic design elements. But this view, which is a good deal more like a film set of Shakespeare's Verona or Mantua than a white and laquered Moorish pleasure garden, puts me in mind of Coney Island's seaside apartment courtyards with their funny, abrupt, Mid-Century modern shrubbery. Forgive my dippy relational aesthetics--I'm just glad for the change of season.
Much to A&P's chagrin, the Mid-South Fair, Memphian mecca for pronto pups, fried oreos, airbrushed t-shirts, and lovely, lovely livestock, was shuttered last year. But a friend tipped me off to the site for Dallas's still-kicking version of the same, Big Tex, which (in typical Texan fashion) is clearly much bigger and moneyed-er than our little festering festival of yore. Here is a list of featured foods. It is every kind of good...FRIED DINNER ROLL!
I love a textile, however broad or narrow, and I love a photographed textile however canny or accidental. This guy is clearly of the canny sort, being that the ribbon is the only object imaged at the center of an otherwise empty composition (you know, deliberate). I love its "prize" shape. And I especially love the work's material proximity to dyed cloth, the watery jewel tones sunken into rag. Britain in 1855 was growing fat on colorful Indian silks and cottons, and this little print seems quite the emblem for its moment.
Because starting real soon, the rest of 2009 will be spent listening to them. It will be unavoidable. Perhaps I'm jumping the gun, but I feel in my bones that I'm right. Their songs will soon play on every radio station in the country every hour on the hour. Drunk wenches will soon scream "IT'S MY SAWNG!" in every bar in the country (every hour on the hour). So we should probably get a word in with Chester French while we still can, because I have a feeling they won't be shutting up until their Time Square New Year's Eve performance.
So, here's the deal, Chester French: you're two talented and dreamy intellectual fucks who both know you're extremely smart and dreamy and talented, and can thus be as weird and obnoxious and esoteric as you want. I've seen your interviews. I know your kind. I've fallen for a few of you in my day. You're going to blow up the music scene real soon, craftily weaseling your way into the American lexicon, and I, Alpha, will be bopping along to every bit of it, because you're talented and dreamy and obnoxious and esoteric, and that is an unstoppable mix. So good for you. Enjoy your year. Call me.
Sundown in Flatbush. It is bright and mild and a few trees are in bloom. I'm listening to disco and remembering how much I love Brooklyn (no more of that moving to Berlin/Buenos Aires/Grant, New Mexico business).
Alpha and Pillow love them some Joss Whedon. That's essential to this writing. He's Shakespeare and Jesus and a whole lot of other things people look up to and respect. So it's difficult to speak about him and his work without a certain amount of awkward childlike wonder. That said, we've really been a bunch of ding-a-lings taking this long to spotlight his online masterpiece Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog.
If you don't know, Dr. Horrible is a cute li'l side project-cum-musical extravaganza, starring Neil Patrick Harris (Alpha's hero!), detailing the exploits of a wannabe supervillain whose alter ego unrequitedly loves a sweet, red-headed girl that just wants to help the homeless. As with most things of this nature, I feel the actual thing speaks for itself much better than I, so, a sneak peak...
