Japanese Cat (cuter then a Japanese cartoon)
Ok, so the Japanese are known for their big eyed, pigtail wearing CUTE anime and manga characters. They also decorate their signs, food packaging, and windows with CUTE cartoons demonstrating what you should be doing with whatever it is you are looking at. Well, it appears it’s not just their merchandise thats adorable. Check out mugumogu kitty.
Jeffery Lewis at Mercury Lounge
Last night I went with Maya to see Jeffery Lewis and man, it was lovely. Lewis’ clever and heart felt lyrics were enhanced by the straight forward rock the band played. A straight faced young man, Lewis’ played the crowed well, treating us to some of his large from comics about Barack Obama, a comic noir, and an unfinished piece on Korea.
Lewis played some of his covers from the band Crass, much, much slower versions. The band also played a couple songs by Jack, the bands bassist. I thought Lewis had a Kimya Dawson sound to him, kind of that anti-folk thing.
The whole show was really enjoyable one the drunk fat guy left us alone. Blue Moons and moody musicians. How do you spend your Friday night?
Hathaway Getting Serious: Review of “Rachel Getting Married”
Director Jonathan Demme’s new movie, Rachel Getting Married is a story about the perils of drug addiction and how it can affect a family. The film stars an intense Anne Hathaway as Kym, who is coming out of rehab to attend her sister’s wedding.Through good acting, genuine emotion and unique camera shots, Demme’s film convinces the viewer that the experiences Kym and her kin have could be anyone’s family in the right, or wrong, circumstance.While the film is titled Rachel Getting Married, it focuses on Kym and the tension she places on her relatives. This stress becomes evident almost immediately when she says goodbye to the nurse at rehab and gets into her father’s car. Sitting in the back seat, Kym sardonically comments on the people attending Rachel’s wedding. She appears to hate everyone off and on, yet the sarcastic bitterness she exudes proves a tool to cover the misery and insecurity she feels about herself.
The climax of the film comes when Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt), tired of Kym grabbing all the attention, yells at her, “Your suffering is not the most important thing in the room.” This proves the turning point in the film as it shows the highest amount of strife between the sisters’ relationships. Before the fight can continue, Rachel starts listing off the things she has, and Kym doesn’t. While Rachel has everything, Kym feels she has nothing.When Rachel ends up telling the family she is pregnant, their fight stops and all attention goes to her. Kym is not able to deal with not being in the spotlight. She feels if people don’t pay attention to her, whether it’s for good or bad reasons, she will disappear.
Hathaway establishes herself solidly in the role of Kym. She is pale, with almost translucent skin, dark, heavy made-up eyes, and choppy brown hair. In this role, Hathaway proves she has moved far from her early days playing the sweet, pretty princess of her Disney years, or the put together office girl she acted as in Devil Wears Prada. As Kym, Hathaway has crosses into adulthood. By taking this role she helped to show herself as a mature woman, both by playing a drug addict and having on screen sex with Mather Zickel, who plays her future brother-in-law’s best man, Kieran.
The way the film is shot also added to the acting because Demme uses the camera to dramatize Kym’s feelings. The roughness of the handheld camera causes the film to have jarring shots, which mirror Kym’s emotional state. When she is worked up, the camera becomes shakier and less focused. The camera choice also gave Rachel Getting Married a home movie feel, which is appropriate about half the time, but during the other half, it feels crazy and slightly physically nauseating. But, kudos to Demme for juxtaposing some of the shots to appear as if they actually were a home movie of the wedding being filmed by a family member.
While Demme mastered the cinematography style, he failed in various aspects of the plot. The major problem is the lack of a time frame for Kym, her drug habit, her relationship with her family, or the other characters relationship with each other. First, the sisters’ ages are never revealed to us, though Kym is younger. Kym has been sober for about nine months, but the viewer doesn’t know why she went into rehab or when. Also, the mystery surrounding the death of the sisters’ brother Ethan isn’t revealed until two-thirds of the way in, though ample foreshadowing softens the impact; Kym accidentally killed him while she was driving under the influence.
Other temporal details needed to be fleshed out as well. We never find out how long Kym has been away, how long her parents have been divorced, or how many years Rachel and Sidney (Tunde Adebimpe), have been together. The latter two are important to the plot to illustrate how much of an impact Kym coming back should make.
Yet, anxiously anticipating the homecoming of, and for a difficult sibling must have some toll on the characters, which they show well. Rachel obviously loves her sister, but wishes Kym were different. Kym also loves Rachel, but feels an immense amount of guilt and jealousy, one of the main reasons she acts out the most towards her sister. The love/hate, family obligation ratios are played out well, as they convince the viewer that this is a real family, with real emotions.
Some scenes could have been cut short, like when Kym wrecks the car in an self-destructive rage after her fight with her mother, after she had fled the key argument with her sister. Another dawdling scene occurred at the never ending wedding reception where everyone gives and impromptu speech about the couple. Generally though, Rachel Getting Married runs smoothly and the characters proved genuine. One of the poignant scenes of the film occurred near the end, on Rachel’s wedding day, where she selflessly gives the emotionally and physically broken Kym a bath. Without words, Rachel cleans Kym’s wounds and helps renew their bond. Together, this sentiment, among a few others in the film, could easily be understood by anyone who has a sibling that they care for, with, or without, the drama and the hate, but with the unconditional love for family.
Front Page Memorabilia
At about 4 p.m. today I walked by the New York Times building on 41st and 8th Avenue. What a surprise! A line of people stretched around the building from the 41st Street side to the 40th Street side. I hadn’t seen a line like that since, well, yesterday, when people lined up for the polls.
Turns out I wasn’t to far off. One man said they were all waiting to get a copy of New York Times’ November 5 edition. He wanted it for the cover, which to him was memorabilia. I didn’t manage to get a copy the paper, but last night I took a screen shot of the website, which is basically what today’s New York Times’ cover looked like.
This wasn’t the only nice Obama cover. The Daily News, Newsday, and New York Post all had full page pictures featuring our new president.
Central Park Skaters: Halloween Party
Celebrating the last day of the season, the Central Park Dance Skate Association hosted their annual Halloween Party. This fine group of people have been in my life a lot lately as I am writing about the CPDSA’s president, Lezly Ziering. Here is a preview of some of my photos for the project!
Lezly in his red costume. Usually, he wears purple, but for Halloween he even covered up his skates!
It was a great day, the weather remained perfect, and the energy high and good.
Banksy Caged:The London artist’s latest show in NYC
From the outside, The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill in the West Village looks like it has always been there, but it hasn’t. The “shop” is the shell holding the latest work by the British graffiti artist Banksy.
A sandwich board standing on the straw covered sidewalk out front reads, “Open for rare breeds, pet supplies, mechanically retrieved meat.” The last phrase most accurately describes the main theme of the controversial exhibition inside the pet shop: processed meat pets.
This isn’t the first time Banksy has created a politically charged piece of art, but, the execution of his art, which normally revolves around graffiti – spray paint, stencils and cut outs, is new. By having an actual show, with a press release, web site, and location, Banksy deviates from his classic presentations. Also, by displaying his art legally, in a building, Banksy has put his creativity in a box, which juxtaposes his exhibit of fake animals in their pens and cages.
Using animatronics, Banksy has created a world of mechanical animals and moving food inside the pet shop. Placed in a large fishbowl, two giant fish sticks swim around a plastic plant like a pair of goldfish. Six glass tanks line the wall next to the fishbowl; their inhabitants, consisting of a series of sausages, move as if they are alive. A mustard adorned hotdog “drinks” from a stainless steel dish in one tank, while below him, a tube of baloney squirms in its plastic casing. To the left of the baloney, a group of cocktail weenies wiggle on a rock, a container of toothpicks resting near by.
The most striking of the six are the salami, which resemble a snake emerging from its skin in slices, and the tank included a feed dish filled with olives. While it’s unusual to see processed meat displayed in this way, this is exactly how you would expect to see turtles, fish and lizards for sale in a pet shop. Though in a pet shop, the lighting wouldn’t have had the fluorescent glow of a grocery store. Because Banksy showed these pieces this way, he made the impression what if we bought our processed meat the same way we bought a gerbil.
The wall-mounted shelves behind the tanks are filled with Swanson’s TV dinners, cans of Dinty Moore beef stew, and other meaty human food, none of which you would feed a pet. In this way, Banksy relates humans to pets, and pets to the animals we unconsciously eat. The feeling of watching a hot dog come to life was more comical then disgusting, lending humor to the way we view our food.
The most disturbing part of the show is a pen of chicken nugget chicks feeding from a classic McDonald’s style sauce container, while a more naturalistic sculpture of a mama hen dozes in her roost. Even more unsettling than the nuggets dipping themselves are the series of eggs on the other side of the coop. One of the eggs has “hatched,” an un-battered nugget with its resin afterbirth puddled around the shell. These images invoke the idea of what if our meat was born the way we eat it. If an egg looked like a chicken nugget, would we have a different attitude about consuming the chicken?
Banksy also looks at animal exploitation beyond factory farming, which is in stark contrast to his last New York show where some viewers chastised him for animal abuse after he painted and displayed a live elephant. In this section of the exibit, Banksy focuses on the idea of manipulation of animals for human benefit.
In a pen viewable from inside and outside the shop, a white rabbit sits on her hind legs filing her nails with an emery board, the scritch-scratch of her grooming barely audible, but distracting, above the Johnny Cash and classic country music playing in the shop. She wears a pearl necklace, blush, and eyeliner, and her automated head tilts seductively. Her vanity mirror is laden with makeup by Cover Girl, which is made by Proctor & Gamble, a company that commonly uses animal testing for their products. By displaying the rabbit with animal tested makeup on, Banksy draws the viewer to question if beauty is important enough to destroy another being and what if we tested on humans, would we still wear the eyeliner?
A chimpanzee sits in a cage on the other end of the shop. He wears large DT770 Pro headphones and watches chimps having sex on the Discovery Channel while breathing heavily and rubbing his crotch. In his foot he clutches an empty Budweiser can, and on his right, sits a local pizza box scattered with crusts and a pack of Marlboros. On the left side of him rests a National Geographic magazine with the cover article, “Who Killed the Mountain Gorillas?” But, he remains fixed and glassy eyed as the chimps copulate on the screen. By this image, Banksy makes a statement about how Americans ignore what’s going on in the animal kingdom by drowning it out with booze, porn and food.
The last in this trio is the leopard. From the outside, it appears to be a asleep on the style of branch you would usually see in the zoo. Its tail swings in rhythm, and you can almost fancy it breathes. But enter the shop and cross to its other side and the leopard turns out to be a coat, positioned to look like a gutted animal with the brass buckle doubling as the wild cat’s balls. How could anyone want to skin a leopard from the zoo? It makes wearing fur look truly cruel, without the in-your face tactics of PETA activists who throw paint on rich women in Manhattan.
Banksy’s show poignantly comments on our view of animals as products, without chastising viewers for their choices. Rather, he simply illustrates some of the current issues relating to animals. The show directs the viewer to ask the question, “Hey, did you ever look at it this way?” And, based on the disgusted and intrigued reactions of the people in the Village Pet Shop, they haven’t, which makes his show a success.
Down and Out: Review of Chuck Klosterman’s novel
Down and Out
Review of Downtown Owl by Chuck Klosterman
By Linnea Covington
Set in the fictional town of Owl, North Dakota in late 1983, Chuck Klosterman’s debut novel Downtown Owl attempts to find deeper meaning in the daily grind of a quiet Midwestern cow town and its inhabitants. Chiefly, the book centers on three main characters: a young female newcomer, a 73-year-old man, and a high school football player.
Fresh out of college, Julia, came from Madison, Wisconsin to teach seventh and eighth grade history, including the course “Our State,” which is all about North Dakota, a place she never thought she would live. Julia’s arrival marks her as one of the only available woman in Owl, giving her the role of fresh meat and a natural receptacle for the men’s affection – shown in the form of potent gin and tonics at the local bars.
Horace, a long time Owl resident, never achieved his dreams and spends his days in the town’s coffee shop, talking with other old men about a legendary football game and who did what to whom in the town. While his life has remained relatively quiet, Horace has a couple of secrets that set him apart for the average Joe.
The third character, teenage Mitch, appears to be an average, naïve high school student. He plays football, hates his teacher, and relates the town to his class reading, Orson Wells’ 1984, which leads him to conclude that they already live in a Big Brother run society.
While Klosterman attempts to organize his characters by titling the chapters with the date and individual character’s name, he muddles the stories with too much sudden and pointless information about other townspeople and events that don’t help in showing the town. The result made the three characters he tried to highlight fall flat, as they don’t distinguish themselves in the readers mind. This causes the reader to maintain apathy towards them and conclusively, the book.
Klosterman also has the tendency to interrupt the action in order to tell a story about random people, and often, as soon as he introduces them, they disappear. This is especially true in the case of Julia. Her chapters were riddled with descriptions of the drunks at the bar and internal dialogue with Vance, the sad football hero she fancies herself in love with. Klosterman offers an unconvincing female character that not only remains one-dimensional, but whom the reader never really knows, or cares about in the end.
Klosterman does a little better with Horace, who turned out to be the most compelling character, as his plot moves with purpose. He is old, but still changing and challenging himself. Hence, his character grew throughout the book and he is the only one to survive it.
Aside from Horace, the other characters sound the same. Perhaps this monotonous portrayal of people is what Klosterman wanted to illustrate. Even their thoughts display the idea of normalcy. He wrote, “What Mitch wanted most was what he already had: a room…He wanted to sleep in a room that expressed nothing, because rooms were supposed to be meaningless.” [pg 108] As Klosterman wrote it, meaningless describes the lives of the people in the Owl, and it’s true. Instead of experiencing emotional or physical change like many characters in other novels, the characters in Downtown Owl end up drowning in mediocrity.
Klosterman understands this kind of place because he grew up in a small town in North Dakota and he left for bigger and better things. Still, if his goal was to illustrate that typical equals tedious, he succeeded, but without convincing us that these people are normal. The result is a rather boring book, whose sudden climatic ending does not compensate for hundreds of pages of nothing.
Despite his weak story line, Klosterman does a fine job with the details of the town and demonstrating his obvious talent with words. Like when he describes Owl through Julia’s eyes, “The land here was relentlessly flat; it was the fattest place she’d ever seen…When she looked out her bedroom window, she could see for ten miles to the north. Maybe for twenty miles. Maybe she was seeing Manitoba. It was like the earth had been pounded with a rolling pin.” [pg 9]
Another facet Klosterman expertly utilized was his application of 80s detail, like references to Trapper Keepers and acid washed jeans, which lent authenticity to the setting. He did however fail to create personality through description like when he said, “Julia washed her paws while Naomi dried her talons.” [pg 32] This statement gave the false impression that Julia is a sweet innocent girl and Naomi, another teacher at the school, a harpy.
His most detailed and dramatic scene involves a ghastly description of a tortured cat, an image that didn’t do anything to change or add to the perception of the town, but instead, appeared there purely for shock value.
Known for his non-fiction books like Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto and Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story, Klosterman’s wordy fiction reads like his non-fiction, which doesn’t work in this novel. The writing is compelling enough that the reader constantly wants to continue with the story in an attempt to figure out a plot, but it never takes shape. The underlying feelings of non-commitment projects from every character save for the aforementioned Horace.
Klosterman himself appears bored of Downtown Owl, as his quick, dramatic ending takes the place of a slow resolution or development of an actual purpose to these people’s lives. In the end, Klosterman fans would have spent their time better rereading one of his clever essay collections.
Crazy Central Park Guy?
I was working on a story in Central Park today and this awesome looking guy came by. Seriously, is he not a dream? One of the fellows said he was gay and from Puerto Rico, which, to him, meant he couldn’t understand anything.
A slice of the DUMBO Arts Fesitval
Here are five pieces from five different shows in DUMBO. This weekend is the DUMBO Arts Festival so this represents just a sliver of the opening night.
Pizza
By Flora Rocco
Pochron Studios
20 Jay Street (DUMBO)
Pizza features a series of photographs of the artist consuming an entire pizza, box, roasted chilies and all. The highly saturated images capture the action of eating this cheesy treat and manage to make the viewer hungry at the same time. Flora Rocco said the inspiration behind her photo project was to show a woman eating alone, something she views as different then when a woman eats in front of other people. Not only does this series capture the spirit of stuffing your face, but Rocco’s use of bright reds separated this piece from other works in the gallery.
Illusions of Shadows
By Chang-Young Kim
Chang Young Kim Open Studio
55 Washington St. (DUMBO)
Comprised of a series of shadow paintings, Chang-Young Kim’s bright red, blue and purple images have a ghostly charm to them. At first glance, you might mistake them for basic blocks of color, but a deeper look reveals Kim’s hand, shown in various layers of silhouette. While one of these paintings proves intriguing, a whole display of them leaves the viewer underwhelmed. If he had undertaken the task of painting different parts of the body, the exhibition would have been more successful.
Ice Works
By Gav Barbey
Gallery Space 220
111 Front St. (DUMBO)
The process Gav Barbey goes through turned out a lot more interesting then his actual product. In Ice Works, Barbey uses blocks of melting ice and paint to create circular images of colors with a residue around the lump of pigments on a series of rectangular pieces of paper. Some of them come out neat, like the tiger’s eye looking circle, and others just look like blobs of color. Even though the images are repetitive, Barbey included a video at the gallery that shows him at work, which really added to the show.
Alina Tenser
111 Front St. (DUMBO)
Among the galleries at 111 Front St., this one was dark, unmarked, and completely bizarre. The reason for its strangeness had less to do with the odd sculptures inside, but instead, the hand written name by the open door lead to questions about the authenticity of the exhibit. Even so, this Kleenex sculpture, which looked like a crumpled piece of wrapping paper shaped like a wall sconce containing a tissue dispenser embedded in it, intrigued the passerby. Not sure if it was a real show or a guerrilla attack, the mystery around this functional sculpture turned out to be rather well made, even though we expected someone to jump out of the room at any moment.
The Artist Project
By Peter Sumner Walton Bellamy
Henry Gregg Gallery
111 Front St. (DUMBO)
Often times a photo remains just a photo. But Peter Sumner Walton Bellamy’s photos captured a special time in the art world and the people who were just making headway. His portraits included Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, as well as others. In particular, the photo of Haring captured an angle of this muralist that is not often seen. He looks so young and fresh. While the photo doesn’t maintain the sharp contrast of blacks and whites that are so popular in contemporary (and even new prints of classics) photos, the sepia tones worked well to communicate an era.
Dennis McNett Art Show
Visual artist Dennis McNett unveiled his newest creations at The Stanton Chapter (176 Stanton St. btwn. Clinton and Attorney Streets) this past Friday. Titled The Old Horned Deity, McNett utilized artists to pen in his dark ideas.
I asked McNett where he got his inspiration from and he said it was during a road trip. The endless sky stimulated him and he wanted to convey how overwhelming it was. This was why he decided to cover the gallery walls in almost pastel psychedelic patterns.
The art on display is fantastic and extremely detailed. From the giant paper mache tiger, which is decorated in black and white tiger faces, to the large eagle, also paper mache, the tiny gallery felt overwhelmed with images.
McNett’s dark and sinister drawings will have you staring at the walls and sculptures for hours, rocked in the spell of immense nature.
