Teen Sensation

Twilight backlash is such a drag! I spotted these knickers on Jezebel, where they were the featured item in a post about fandom going "too far." How fascist! And when I clicked on the text link "Robert Pattinson panties" (that word makes me boof), I found a whole line of tsk, tsk, tsk blog entries decrying the little garments. But why? As a serious appropriator of images, I am charmed by them, might (if I still wore underwear) consider owning a pair (and this too!--what a trip!). There is a line in the Jezebel post: I'll admit that firstly, it's been a long time since I've been a big "fan" of anyone or anything. Really?! Oh no! She doesn't like anything??? I've had it up to here with the narrowness and humorlessness (or no-humor-but-our-own-ness) of the Brooklyn-based blogosphere.

Twilight is fabulous. The first film (and, I imagine, the soon-to-arrive second) was a style avalanche, a celebration of the extraordinary, near-terrifying lushness of the Pacific Northwest, of small towns, of high school and Lord Byron and glitter and Native peoples and cops and isolation. Oh my goodness. And R. Pattz really is divine. Divine. And people love it. People love him and his girl and the books and the films. And aren't we just sick and tired of mocking the multitudes? A&P is. Lookit:

Newsies

A few things potentially more important than nail polish--

--The Post has provided us with another phrase for everyday use: "sex foul."

--A&P has Mrs. Clinton on the collective mind.

--The Palestinian death toll in Gaza now tops 300 (well over half are civilians). Israeli losses are 13 (ALL soldiers). I have been bereft about the ugly crimes committed by our government in the name of "our safety," driven mad by our lack of agency, by how capable of variously trouncing human rights and other nations' sovereignty without the input of American citizens or allies the Bush administration (over the past eight years) or the C.I.A. (always) have been. I feel similarly about Israel. I am thoroughly disgusted by their military brutishness and religious self-importance. I am ashamed by any association. For me, this single-minded, warring state is more "German" than Jewish.

Let's Talk about Yesterday (and Tomorrow)

In reviewing my posts from yesterday, I found a blaring contradiction. First, invoking my Walter once more, I say--

"I contradict myself. So, I contradict myself."

Second, I address this contradiction, because it is paramount to one's understanding of the "high and low" thesis of our tag-line. I began the day by professing my love for the Gotti family, their hair and accents and home. I finished the day with a critical post about Ms. Lindsay Lohan and her "raspy, cocktail waitressing, sanitation-worker-assaulting heritage (and how desperately [she] try[s] to conceal it)." I have no doubt that one or more of the Gottiae have assaulted a sanitation worker (and, for that matter, used the word "colored").

Why am I critical of this B&T business in one place, and not in the t'other? I think it's an issue of "realness." In the magisterial film ATL, the affair of high school, star-crossed lovers, New New and Rashad, mostly consists of the two of them saying to one another, "Just be real with me." Word, New New and Rashad . . . word. The Gottis simply scream "free to be you and me." Lindsay, on the other hand, seems at odds with her past, at every turn playing the preening, pretentious actress who is too dumb to carry off preening and pretention. I seem to remember a phase in which she was crowing about moving to London and having a Fitzgerald-themed birthday party, as if the two were related? And, of course, the Gottis did NOT call Barack Obama "colored" on national television; they know better than to talk about politics--they talk about hair and "Daddy" and vacations.

I just wanted to clear things up, because, here at A&P, we don't just "snark" (a million apologies for using that hateful word) at high and low culture, we LOVE it. I genuinely love Victoria Gotti and Dog the Bounty Hunter and R. Kelly and Britney Spears. I genuinely love Caspar David Friedrich and Anthony Trollope and Art Deco textiles and Antonioni. A&P has little interest in irony. We are earnest folks, trying to build a bridge (no, not to nowhere) between low and middling and high. We address all culture, not just a portion of it, and we celebrate liberation, honesty, and self-awareness.
Speak on it!