ken park...fuck off and grow up already

I hate moral films. I just rewatched Ken Park, and, while I liked many aspects of the film, I hated the script on many levels, and the bonuses reveal how stupid one of the co-directors was.

I’m not shocked by the nudity. In fact, I rather like it, and I like the fact I can be turned on by graphic sex in the film, which isn’t to say it’s an essay on the pros or cons of pornography (luckily enough). I don’t want to treat the sex like a gimmick for this film… The sexual relations are its core metaphor…I mean, if we can think that there’s something deviant in the mother asking her daughter’s boyfriend regularly for sex…well, it’s bizarre, because the thing I actually find deviant is how she’s not able to say it because people will think it’s deviant. I like their sex scenes, they’re oddly touching. And when the girlfriend ties up her boyfriend…ooooohhh, so outre!!! Whatever…a little pantyhose and spit is something we can’t be shocked at unless we’re virgin porn readers. The sex is the least of the problems, and probably the loveliest aspect of this film.

The story, where every parent is stupid, or drinks, or smokes, or masturbates, or abuses, is retarded. Everybody has a fault, but, showing the pregnant mother smoking and drinking…ooohhh, bad…yeah, but it’s also a little too easy. Like saying all the moral problems in the world are because too many mothers are drinking and smoking while pregnant. GAHHHH!!! Stop the fucking hand-holding already!!!

What an asshole…The co-director, Ed Lachman, said he wants us to be turned off by the sex scenes. What an asshole. What an asshole…this guy should NOT be making films, or talking about anything intelligent with anybody if he’s not honest enough to say what it’s like to be turned on, or to pontificate on what is healthy sex and justify his coolness by saying he “used” to be a skater. Dickhead. Skaters should sue him for misappropriation and slander.

Evidently, he feels he’s avant-garde enough to say that threesomes are ok, avant-garde enough to show a real masturbation scene, but ooohhh, the asshole fathers are all child abusers… the paternalistic tone evident in the overall condemnation of parents is pathetic and so easy, and only reinforces this kind of conservative close-mindedness that makes zombies out of the people. Let’s just all nod our heads sadly all together and mourn our sad and traumatising youths…oh, how I was wounded when I was young! Blah blah blah…everybody has shitty memories from being a teenager, being picked on, having a hard time with parents…the world is full of trauma…but, hello, dealing with it is part of life and part of being human. Honour your ability to be a human being and think for a fucking change!!!

Oddly enough, this film reminds me of a subplot in happiness, where the father (pedophile) is asked a question by his son, on whether he wants to fuck him too…and the father says he just masturbates. This is one of the sweetest and most beautiful declaration of love ever accomplished on the cinema. What we have is a man with a predeliction, whether it be a result of external causes or something he was born with, the focus is not on blaming or explaining, but on just showing that this is how he can love his son…Ken Park fails so miserably in this respect.

What’s wrong with these people?

Maybe Ken Park is ultimately a really american film, in the sense that everything has to have some bullshit moral explanation, and that even people who stand for the left and avant-garde in the states are stilled buried in this incredibly superficial reasoning…like whole country is caught in a passive-aggressive escher puzzle.

I’d much rather hear a republican say he’s disgusted by porn and s & m because at least then the mainstream is clearly stated, and we avoid the double-bullshit syndrome. The new “resistance” to the conservative stance is as mainstream as what it fights against. I hate Ed Lachman, I despise the morality in this film, I’m disappointed that Larry Clark has become such a religious junkie.

Maybe the only film I love, complete unqualified love, by Larry Clark, is Teenage Caveman…which is the only film he should have made. (and also features tiffany limos and stephen jasso…the only reasons to go see this movie, oops, besides maeve quinlan, who’s also fucking good...all puns intended)

under your feet

another lazy day. went to market to get virgin dvds and ended up with pieces of horse steak. having hard time kicking stupid habit of buying too much food at the market...but luckily now have budget and stick to it. went home with darnac and found out house was complete bleeding mess from too many days spent not throwing stuff out. had to jet leftover bottles of coke and oasis (what a great name for a nauseous sugary drink), many other dried:rotting items, and also guests's brown bananas and strawberry yogurt. actually, ate yogurt, which had very ironic label 'bio' on it. ironic? yes...if you look carefully at the incredients, there's one evil E130 preservative, aroma (all aromas are chemical configurations bred to fool our olfactory glands) and artificial colour!!! Bio my fucking ass...that's biohazardous!!!

other pet peeve which is getting sundry nasty items stuck on sole of shoes. france is the worst place in the world for dog shit all over the fucking place...but, if that wasn't enough, there's also chewing gum to avoid.

here's the 411 on me and chewing gum...I think it's incredibly gross, whether it's in a wrapper, getting all mashed up and mixed with saliva in someone's mouth, or stuck onto the bottom of a shoe. In fact, I can't kiss somebody after they've chewed gum, and I feel like throwing up (right now) just thinking about it. it's like snot, vomit or poo...gross. Funnily enough, I don't have the same aversion to semen or piss...weird...anyways, I think my great and all-encompassing neurosis with gum comes from a formative experience in third grade where a lump of sticky pink gum got really messy and weblike on the bum of my white pants. I've never recovered. besides getting it on clothing, the other thing I can't stand is when it sticks to the underside of my shoe. It's as bad as shit, and maybe worse, because I seem to never feel that it comes completely off...GGGGGRRRRROOOOOOSSSSSSS

so, today, got big nasty piece of gum stuck on the sole of my shoe just as I got into the subway. Subway was crowded and was burdened with 5 carrier bags, so really not in a position to clean it off. stayed, balancing on one foot and a toe for close to 30 minutes, with nauseating sweet smell of gum wafting up constantly...darnac had to distract me by asking who would win the Euro this year and questioning brutal nature of hockey. finally got off train and scraped gum off shoe, imitating turette's whole time.

I have one more sour grape to pluck...burned dvds of my new film last week...and, like everything at school, quality control is completely unsatisfactory. why is it that 3 out of the 5 dvds I burned bug and crash??? why why why? what's the point of buying these fucking things and spending time burning them when half of them are buggy??!! am I cursed with new technology, is there some bad magnetic field around me? grrr...luckily I have two that work, but if success ratio is 40% let's just say that the fucking fresnoy (shitty art school/french administrative torture system) just failed another test.

gripe gripe gripe!!!!

oh bugger

I should never write when I'm depressed from spending whole day indoors in the stupid student's lounge. going to the bloody bar to watch the football game. and positively going to get into a positive mood by wearing all white!

football, quick, and the joys of being common, a.k.a, am I a neo-Kieerkergaardian?

I think that, in my life, after years of careful consideration, I might have stumbled across a singular truth, a personal truth, a knight of honour piercing into the darkness. and that is, after years of thinking I might have been special, or talented, perhaps in possession of some over-average intelligence or sensitivity, perhaps, I've been wrong. Maybe, despite all my best intentions and fording up the walls of personality, I am common. you might think this strange, or perhaps you also think that you're a genius secreted away on your own private island, but I've never considered, outside of the few vague early moments of my life when I had difficulty separating myself from the shadow image of me that I get to dissect, that I was anything less than quite over-intelligent, gifted in many senses, and destined for something special (involving lots of backstage blow-drys.) I really don't think I'm alone in this.

If I walk around thinking that my life is like a film, freeze frames, special moments, zooms, closeups, slo-mos, and that the drama and passion enacted within will one day have a slightly satisfying, if anti-climactic ending, I'm sure that most of us have all thought this to a certain extent. The great popularity of realitytv only supports my bastard psychological theory. However, in all of this, with too many stars, and the need, in a narrative, to centre on one personality, am I fooling myself? Is there anything right or wrong about championing this kind of narcissism? Should I be happy in being common?

In this sense, I'd like to distinguish what people mean by common. For me, I cannot stand the new left, I eat tons of red meat, quick, watch and scream about football, like to go shopping when there's a sale, talk about current affairs, and...wait...I'm bored...I'll come back to this in a moment...

but before I leave...I'd like to specify that because I like to do common things, is not the end of my confession...it's just that I'd like to say that I think that maybe my pseudo-witticisms cover up a very broad, general, and not at all perspicacious insight...like most bloggers I guess. I'm common...I have nothing new to contribute...I just say it better than you. My tastes are status quo, my thoughts are status quo...so there's no sympathy for me I guess.

the GB phenomenon

celebration of women in france. started wondering what is the state of the modern woman's (20-early 30 something) mindset. for me, something very curious has come up with startling revelation that life not complete without gay boyfriend...like designated hitter in baseball, the GB stands in when the real thing is off having his loner male crisis. Like, feminism has not brought us any closer to having normal healthy women's psyche unless boyfriend/husband/lover is not retarded over sense of female encroachment on his territory. I not only need to have healthy circle of girlfriends, but also multiple revolving GBs who takes me shopping, watch TV with me, or gossip. In the past, I had two very steady GB relationships, which changed my life and they probably gave me more support than anyone else...especially with boy advice. seriously...the gay boyfriend phenomena will be one of the things we will remember when we think about women at the end of the 20th century. This year, suffered enormously over lack of GB options, but, hats off to the old finnish roommate, who actually, despite no shopping skills and not being gay, managed to be my GB of the year.

on good note, managed to comfort long lost Toronto friend over phone while blurry drunk...after which fuzzily she admitted that everybody in old school still slags me..."oh, it's because you're so strong that people hated you." I don't believe that. I was a bitch, and I pushed those buggers out of the way. It wasn't strength...it was a matter of principle. Sympathy for mediocrity is for assholes.

a good day at the racetracks

So...the day started quite slowly. took young Finnish Scissorhands to see an anaesthesist, highlight being mutual admiration over archery enthusiasm and finding out fact that this guy's family is practically all dead, followed this with an incredibly bizarre irritating stupid prefecture meeting (the prefecture is set up to give foreign people nervous breakdowns since there is no sense of organization nor any hint that france has passed the medieval age), and then short sweet meeting with boss-girl, followed, finally by crazy roommate's slap-you-up-bitch-and-leave-you-in-the-gutter art piece (actually conceptual performance involving apples and trapezist)...very very tiring...but, that's not the end of it all. At around 7pm, four of us, Scooby, Gasp, the B and me packed into a car to cross the border and go betting.

We stopped at the Hippodrome in Oostende, Belgium...a very small quaint track that boosts views of the beach on one end, and a scenic view of sleepy Oostende on the other. Every Friday, in the summer, the track hosts a set of evening races, known as the Nocturne. We got there in time for the third race out of eight...I lost money on the first round on a horse called Mutton...I made the bet on name, because when you name a horse after food, you increase the odds of it winning...anyways, in the warmup, the horse looked distinctly sick...it didn't even canter. It walked...

After mutton, I looked harder at the stats and picked a favourite, Komet Gene, placing a sizable 3Eu bet on that baby...which, luckily enough worked. The horse won. The winnings were 2-1 so I picked up my 6 Euros and skipped forward. The next race was watching only...lots of good looking horses and something won while I was blowing my nose. The wind was picking up. The next race was the loser horse race, where all the horses are big losers that don't go very fast or have developed a habit of disqualification...we played triples/ I picked Purple Rain (8), Princess Raijina (3) and something for 11....and all my losers won!!!! On a 1Eu bet, I made 156Eu...holy crap. We went out to get a photo taken with the horse and then the fever hit so I headed straight for the bar, in search of liquid to cool off...at said bar, boyfriend came a little bit later. He didn't tell us but he'd also played a triple...and, holy smoking tutus!!! He won TOO!! We cleaned the night off a good 350Eu heavier, out of about 12 Eu!!! weird.

However, have to say that now that I've won, I don't think I can play again. I can feel the itch in my fingers and the hunger for the payoff...the pitch gets warmer after the first unexpected success. hard to say but feel family gambling curse must be avoided at all costs...guilt is very strong...even now I hear family curse hovering over my head when excited about new shoes I could buy with money...so really, no more tracks for me..... however, am thinking of making next film in said Hippodrome...wonder if I can get close enough to hot dog lady to get tips.

Money made sure we were slick with alcohol all night long, slipping out into the Oostende nightlife to find a restaurant that served ribeyes...found one right next to the casino...ribeye was so good that it needed absolutely no condiments...only a little bit of stroking and tongue action. Cooked to bloody fascination. Even though the red wine was chilled (obviously our skinhead waittress didn't give a flying buttress for wine protocol) the baked potato and sweet slaw made me slaver all night long. Short stay in Oostend Casino, where was observant of suicidal roulette tendencies of Scooby and Gasp...then G said that two people in his family committed suicide after bad roulette outings...addiction is most underestimated weapon of destruction in western world. Those two burned 100 Euros in under an hour...lucky it wasn't my money.

Don't remember much after, but money is in very safe hands. B only spends dough on Equipe and baguettes, so cashola should hold us out for months. Just remember kids, gambling is potentially fatal...even if a horse called Mutton beckons, remember the old drug ads and just say NO.

oh, and school year finally ended, end of year blues very heavy and sad...everybody running off and not saying goodbye. Small group of friends being sweet and sticking together but majority very nonchalant and running for the hills. Wonder if this is normal procedure, or if natural anticlimactic end to school diaspora effect is compounded by egoistic contemporary artist personality.

listening to easy music

I started downloading tons of music this year, largely due to having unlimited free fast internet access for my laptop. At first I was astonished that people could amass mp3 collections of multiple gigs. bollocks. the first two gigs are like licking a popsicle. My current collection, after massive editing (which takes up nice afternoons where people who call me to go outside are rejected by my protestations of needing to finish work), is around 12 gigs. This doesn't really surprise me though, since I use to be a $1 record hoarder, and internet access like this is like throwing a garbage bag of coke at my head.

Another obvious fact is that one's mp3 collection can produce some interesting results at parties. Why, just the other day, at my french contemporary art school, we were sitting around, listening to a classy CD of bossa nova, when suddenly I hijacked all that easy listening with a little Toxic Britney. I don't know what came over me in that moment, but, as sometimes it just sucks when people are snooting about trying to say important things about art. Funny enough, contemporary artists really love to wiggle to Toxic, and all that cool Beaujolais attitude evaporated into bad Martha Grahams (that's how bad most artists dance). so funny. Felt like I batted for the evil dead but, oh whatever.

blah blah blah...and if you're looking for someone to get self-righteous about buying cds and paying musicians...hell, don't look at me. Just the other fucking day, I bought a CD...Sebastian Tellier...of course he's really obscure and kind of hard to find to download, but, even so, I'd already paid 15 Eu to go see him play, and he only played for 20 minutes. It's just that, he's just too good to pass up. I don't want to have a rationale, nor a philosophy for that of this, or too many other things. I just try to go for the gold with my gut and the Tellier is the last of the french genii.

strange trend these days on obscure indie bands swarming around with post-folk anti-pop hybrids on everything...very exciting times we're living in! new hype on tv on the radio totally deserved, but, i put ambulance on mixed tape where it was followed by syd, and nothing chalks above against the octopus. but..noticed that would not know about said obscure bands without the help of friends and, friends (ie. glossy cool mags telling what new lovelies to goober over). thanks to all my 4 eu inrocks and 6 eu sleaze and 9 eu ids I can tell that the press machine is working overtime on a band called lali puna. mercy buckets y'all. on another note, big hype in france on Leslie Feist, fellow canadienne. Mushaboom is like new version of enya for Y generation, and the fact that she hates singers that might show up in star academy or french idol only highlights how boring new left is. sorry for the slag but that's my smoke.