JB's Back

It's officially Fall! Justin Bobby's back on TV, and his half-sensical one-liners, unruly scruff, and genius wardrobe have captured my heart again. I don't blame Kristin Cavallari for blatantly inviting herself onto the back of JB's motorcycle and into her "spick and span" bed on just the 1st new Hills episode of the season. I'd die to grip his love handles thru his dirty leather jacket on a Hollywood highway at dusk, and I'd die twice to not sleep beside him. Keep it crazy, Justin.

THANK YOU NEW YORK MAGAZINE

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2009/09/it_is_now_fashionable_to_walk.html
I totally agree. I hate when I see people doing this on my way to the L train, especially when they feel the need to walk as slow as sin.

Nobody's sexier than Alex Turner.

I'd be content to spend the rest of my life listening to him croon "Secret Door." If they could take songs and make them into lovers, I'd go to bed for all eternity with this one.

my i-want-to-be-her girl spotted with my dream goon???

http://perezhilton.com/2009-09-21-new-couple-alert-chloe-and-jason

AWESOME

life metaphor

I think I should get out more.

a crack pot idea

It's no secret that I'm probably one of the biggest Dennis Hopper enthusiasts on the planet. On Wednesday I finally went to Tony Shafrazi Gallery to see the Hopper exhibit Signs of the Times. I felt like I was there for 10 minutes, but I stayed for over an hour and a half. Shafrazi's a huge gallery, and most of the wall space is devoted to photos that Hopper took from 1961-67. When you get all the images from the scenes of his amazing experiences (just in the 60's!) into one room-- civil rights marches, Warhol's factory, the beginnings of Pop Art, Taos NM, Hollywood, etc.-- the quintessentially American status of Dennis Hopper's icon-ship becomes manifestly apparent.

And then when you go into the long 3-room chamber of film clips, forget about it. They've got clips from virtually every reel of film his face has been exposed on, even the super rare documentary The American Dreamer, in which drugged-out Hopper struggles to edit his best and most honestly experimental work The Last Movie.

So yeah, it was basically just a cavern of awesomeness that I could house up in until the show's end. My Hopper worship just multiplied about 500 times, and I'm happy because this guy doesn't get enough credit for his incredible career and production of art work in multiple genres. His eye's phenomenal, from collecting art to creating it to making the films that take my soul (and many others) and put them into visuals and words that are so heartbreakingly beautiful you just wanna blow yourself up with dynamite! (Yeah, he did that and SURVIVED!)

And survival's what it comes down to for me when I think about Dennis Hopper. He started out as a golden boy actor straight from the farms of Kansas. Hello, American Dream! He made it in Hollywood until he got too creative and sure of his own ideas and was blacklisted from film for rebelling against his director. Then he got creative, played around with Art's elite, roamed the country, made Easy Rider, and fell off the deep end from alcohol and drug abuse. He made a masterpiece that won the Venice Film Festival (THE LAST MOVIE) and went bat-shit crazy in Taos, NM. But he kept film in his life, and film kept him alive. He pushed life to the absolute limits, suffered and destroyed because of that craving for the edge of the abyss, but the most American thing about Hopper is that he came BACK from that. He realized the American Dream is the most major mythic lie (and stubbornly sought goal) in our culture, said fuck it and did his own thing, but then reintegrated himself back in the artistic society on his own terms.

The Summer That Wasn't

Yesterday I worked a double, and I asked my mom to keep me updated on the US Open final that I automatically assumed Roger Federer would win in 3 or (maybe) 4 sets. Automatic assumption only explains a part of my surety-- for the past 5 years I've had more faith in Roger Federer as invincible than probably anything else in my life, and faith for me is hard to come by.

As most sports pages proclaimed today, Federer lost what would have been his 6th straight US Open championship to 20 yr. old Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina, I thought again of the lesson I've repeatedly learned this May thru early September, or what I call "The Summer That Wasn't." Nothing is permanent, nothing lasts.

Often, people find comfort in the simile that "life is like a roller coaster." If you're down now, things are bound to go up. But what about those who are currently at the top of the drop? They don't want to believe that they will fall from the precipice of awesomeness that is their life, but... gravity always wins.

After a summer in which literally everything that happened at the beginning closed in on itself in the end, and nothing that Rebecca and John and I believed would happen actually did happen, including Federer winning the 2009 US Open, I reclaim what I wrote in my diary on 11.29.05: "Don't let me forget to question everything; to keep myself grounded by being grounded in nothing."

So Federer is not a loser, nor is he no longer the best player in the history of tennis. He's just somebody who got kicked from the top of the mountain because that's the way life happens. And even still, after all that's happened, I believe that Fed can come back from this loss. The summer's over, and life goes on. The coaster keeps moving.

Fed's Killin It

Check out your HD ESPN 2 right now, because Federer is killing it, old-style as we speak.

Inglourious Basterds

I went to see Inglourious Basterds today, and I can safely say that it's probably my favorite Quentin Tarantino film. I loved Kill Bill (esp. Part II) but Basterds takes the blood red cake. Tarantino's auteur status sucks you in from the moment the yellow typeface of the credits kick this epic film into action along with the Spaghetti Western soundtrack. You know you're in for a GLOURIOUS crazytrain ride.

The movie clocks in at 2 hours and 33 minutes, but I did not look at my cell phone to check the time once... I wanted more when it ended and yet felt so alive from the awesome re-writing of history that Tarantino uses the film to achieve. Each chapter boasts such phenomenal performances, encyclopedic references to film, and deliciously intricate self-reference that I could have watched it for 12 hours straight. Melanie Laurent (above) who plays Shoshanna was spectacular, and in the Beatrix Kiddo tradition of the blonde-with-a-vengeance plot, I totally cheered her on in her quest. I don't want to say too much in case you haven't seen the film, but really... from Mike Myers' quick cameo to Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz (sexy and awesome) to Eli Roth as a DiMaggio-like Basterd with a baseball bat penchant, this movie just hit it out of the park.

I'm glad I said goodbye to this worst summer ever with a movie worthy of my top ten of the 2000's label, and then ADIOS VERANO for real tonight with Jazzy at Mercadito. We had such high hopes for this summer and spent our kick-off outdoor drinking fest at Mercadito just 4 short months ago proclaiming the mantra, "Clean slate, white pants!" After all our hopes and dreams of greatness in bikinis and speedos (imagine!) were shattered by fate's cruel fist of doom, we are ready to embrace whatever this Fall In New York City wants to throw at us. Our new mantra: BLACK AND GRAY LAYERS, BITCH. Because that's how we roll. Bring it on, Chuck Bass, Fashion Week, Justin Bobby's crazy outfits on The Hills, concerts where you must pay, and jackets. Jackets galore. We are ready.

been around the block once too many times tonight

I saw the Alexis Dos Santos film Unmade Beds today @ IFC. This movie has been marked on my MacBook calendar for about 3 months now, and I was psyched to see it the day it opened in NYC. I think the "coming of age" narrative and rock and roll aesthetic drew me in, and I found myself enjoying the film even in the midst of personal chaos. C'est la vie, verdad? (If I could have one wish, I think I'd want to be reduced to the distortion in a No Age or Japandroids song, but that is another story in entirety.)

The film centers on Axl and Vera, Spanish and French respectively, in their early 20's and at loose in London. They cross paths but their inebriated states make their meeting mean less than it might have, so one must ask, do we all miss these potentially important human collisions because of the substances we (ironically) ingest in the mere hope of meeting someone new who could blow our worlds to pieces? This movie makes you think!

Also, film-wise, the movie is great. We get a The Shining garden maze and an Honore-like romanticism of modern urbanity. There's also the Godard spirit of rebellious youth, but it's like all rebellious youth you see today: there is no purpose or goal, just the chic edge of doing it all now and for what? the simple fact that this planet we revolve upon could be blasted into nothingness tomorrow.

Of course you fall in love with Axl for his boyish, sheepish, hair-in-the-brown-eyes quest to find his father, and you fall in love with Vera for her willingness to chase another guy, even if she thinks she's being cautious by refusing to learn his name. The Dos Santos shots of her naked body colliding with his tell you, the viewer, otherwise. Names do not make a difference. (Just ask Juliet. What's in a name?)

So love, and love without abandon. Be safe!