I don’t always get M.I.A. to be honest. She rips stuff wholecloth from punk artists and calls it new. But I have to say that this song (dig the nod to punk godfather Suicide) and video are amazing. Rough. Brilliant. Satiric. Timely.
Oh…and NSFW.
All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.
- Aldous Huxley
//rant on
I gave up my directv connection months ago, so pretty much the only TV I get is at bin’s place, and while eating sushi. But even I couldn’t escape the bombardment that was yesterday’s death march madness surrounding first Farrah Fawcett, then Michael Jackson. The media in America likes nothing better than celebrity. Except for celebrity debased, or celebrity destroyed, or celebrity on the funeral pyre.
Farrah had been America’s Sweetheart #30356.5a, the “embodiment” of wholesome ’70s sexuality, as opposed to Bo who I suppose was the embodiment of unwholesome ’70s sexuality. Or something. She did one season of Charlie’s Angels then struggled for the rest of her career with a stop in made for TV movie land or two. Her best role, by far, in my opinion was as Robert Duvall’s wife in The Apostle. An amazing piece of acting. She hadn’t really been on the cultural radar until she started to die. Sadly. Then for 6 or 7 hours she was famous again.
Then Michael.
Michael was the walking, talking, crystallized personification of the post MTV Celebrity as crazed, disabled deity. Michael made some of the great pop music of all time, and then paid for it. He paid for his brutal upbringing. He paid for never topping Thriller. He paid for it all. He lived a life of what seemed to be huge amounts of weirdness, insanity, discomfort, sad highs and lows. Michael’s talent can never, probably, be separated from his desperation to be something else, /anything/ else. He too had lost a great deal of his celebrity, reduced to a punch line, tainted by years of eyebrow raising hijinks with kids and money and sheiks and increasingly odd white women. Then he died. And now, he will be famous all over again.
I think Anderson Cooper is an ok media guy. He usually has something interesting to say about world events and can speak with clarity about whatever event has befallen whatever region. Listening to him try to mythologize Michael made me want to cut my ears off. Listening to the parade of hangers-on, minor celebrities, never wases, and talking heads babble on about his gift while the funereal flames stripped away the taboo of his supposed child molesting made me sad.
So there.
//rant off
I’ve often wondered the same things I guess….what happens to our goth bretheren in hot weather? Well, this site pretty much sums it up. Link
I’d not going to pretend that David Carradine was a “good” actor. But he was an actor for his time though, a working stiff (well over 200 film credits) who did his job and got the paycheck. His death by hanging in a Bangkok hotel Thursday leads me to thoughts of his best roles.
Frankenstein in Death Race 2000 (1975): A perfect product of the mid ’70s, this was a firmly anti-establishment film. It’s violent, hilarious, mean spirited, and has a sharp sense of justice. Carradine’s character is the embodiment of the urge to crush the dominant paradigm. Fantastic.
Cole Younger in The Long Riders (1980): Not sure most folks will grok this one, but that’s ok. The Long Riders is a glorious Walter Hill western with the most amazing stunt casting ever. The Keach brothers play the James brothers, the Carradine brothers play the Youngers, and the Quaid boys play the Millers. David Carradine is the most amazing, greasy Cole Younger ever. Delicious.
Bill in Kill Bill (2004): There is an elegaic quality to Carradine’s work here that is hard to ignore. He underplays (perhaps for the first time in his career) the most amazing man. Pure evil and pure good, lover, killer, protector, hunter.
RIP
