Anti-Post Post

Following a funnyordie.com lead last night, I came across a mildly entertaining sketch where Will Ferrell plays a scarily believable condo-dwelling slacker, dodging rent in an intense confrontation with his landlord. The catch? [record scrrrratch!] The landlord's a toddler! Will Ferrell stars in, Baby and the Lease... rated PG-13.

While the actual content of this surprisingly popular clip makes you wonder why Ferrell is wasting his comedic genius on shit that looks like it could've been written by an 8th-grader, what was more bothersome about my visit to this page were the viewers' comments below the video. I cannot claim to be contributing anything of real significance to the internet community besides the hits I give websites which keep advertising dollars flowing, but I also haven't surrendered my voice to the endless, mindless fodder of pages like this one. I can't really imagine what is going through these peoples' alleged 'minds' when they scrawl this poignant commentary. A viewer labeled mellmo explains: "MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE!!! SO FUNNY!!!" This clip is the single best thing she has experienced; the rest of her life is painful and gray. Fair enough, mellmo. Posts of this nature are common and to be expected, but the vein in my forehead really starts pounding when posters try to recapture the clip's mediocre comedy as though they were accomplished critics with a knack for pinpointing just what makes comedy successful. Blackpenguin enlightens us: "i love pearl she is so cute….........IM JUST BUZZED…....I NEED TO GET MY DRINK ON…..she is a cute little alcoholic…....at the end she says come mommy so funny." Wait, is that what the last subtitle said? LOL! That is classic. Thanks, Ebert! These people make me want to vomit and unlearn English, not because what they are writing is particularly stupid but because they seem to think they are writing something entertaining or even important. Blackpenguin made sure to post this gem twice.

As I said, I don't profess to offering anything significant to the world of user-based content and maybe this rant is just another offensive example of wasted human effort and focus, but I still wish there were better standards for the comments people splooge onto message boards so regularly. Any online media enthusiast has surely read a post or two that could make even mellmo here sound like Melville. The web is ours now, some weird brand of democracy so I guess we have to wade through an ocean of asinine commentary; we could respond to their posts with posts of our own but no one should ever lower themselves to that sort of pedantic bitching. Really though, if the mentally challenged couldn't exploit the web's user-based content arena, where would they go? Outside in the sunlight? Now I'm just talking crazy. Maybe these people just need the net as an outlet to prevent themselves from slowing down our non-virtual society like they did in the old days. I guess I still just wish there was some physical mechanism to punish these people, like a spring-loaded mallet. The baby from Ferrell's act was just laid off so at least these particular ignoramuses will be out of business for a while. Just remember, we get to make the internet now so let's combat incompetence and banality with slightly less useless fodder of our own.

Peter Sarsgaard

There is a new trailer up at apple's website about a movie called "Rendition". I have no idea what it is about other than it has Peter Sarsgaard in it. Apparently it has something to do with torture or political shit. Honestly who cares? Frankly, I don't care as along as it has Sarsgaard. Jesus, this guy is hot. A two minute trailer and he makes Jake Gyllenhaal look like that kid Eric Stoltz played in Mask.

HERE IS THE LINK

Model Spotlight / Photo Series: "Sloane"

"SLOANE"

As a photographer I am always looking for new subjects. In my twenty-one years as a professional I have photographed many different subjects and have focused on more than a few distinct fazes from nudes, walnuts, speakers, jell-o, undersea turtles, to my series detailing the migration of native snail species.

This being the case I was shocked when Sloane walked through the door of my studio. I was immediately so caught up by Sloane's energy and sadness as a subject that I felt as if I had never really taken a picture in my life. Look for a full length book of nudes coming out in coming months, also featuring Sloane.


This photo captures everything about this series that I had hoped for. The vacant eyes filled with suffering, the hair--so fine and curly seemingly at war with the supple mouth and lips. Sloane is a man whose features lend themselves so easily to film that I found I needed to do very little to create the most compelling photography of my life.







Here the shadows over Sloane's eyes recall the sadness and abuse that he had suffered through as child. The curly hair and cherubic features belie the suffering of the subject.







The confident, almost military body language and arm position is not only hostile, but inherently masculine and strongly erotic.








Sloane: a man adrift.








I am particularly proud of this picture because I was able to coax a real smile from Sloane. Also, the body language is particularly upbeat. I remember Sloane saying, "I am really a happy guy!" I only believed him after seeing this print.

The darkness of this shot really brings out Sloane's inner turmoil. The way that Sloane is positioned in frame shows how robust but nihilistic a presence I was working with.

Here the focus is on Sloane's eyes and eyebrows. The shadows covering the eyes recall a young Brando or perhaps and old Nicholson.








Here is a nice shot of Sloane with his mouth in a sort of half-frown, half-smile. Notice the lighting on his chin and neck accentuating his muscular bone structure.

Band of Horses Sophomore LP Slated to Kick Ass

After releasing their gently enrapturing breakout full length, Everything All the Time, just last year, Seattle indie rock outfit Band of Horses is already hitting the road (cue coconut sound effects) after recently finishing up a new LP down in South Carolina. If their sold out performance at DC's 9:30 club was any indicator, this forthcoming record, Cease to Begin, seems to be a win or at least a place. Damn, 2007 has been a good year in music.

The three or four new songs played on Tuesday showed a use of the layered guitar-driven arrangements for which the Band is known but also demonstrated a new approach to those arrangements, one that emphasizes the group's pop inclinations in the best way possible. Rather than becoming derivative or pandering, as second efforts all to often do, Cease's jams are more easy to listen to/pop thanks to more robust, even more confident compositions which build on the ideas from the Everything LP. Ben Bridwell's unmistakable crooning seems even more effective in these songs as his vulnerability becomes contrasted by more powerful grooves and choral hooks. Some fans may miss the quiet simplicity through intricacy formula used throughout their debut but, in my opinion, new tracks like "No One's Gonna Love You" and "Islands on the Coast" let the Horses stretch their legs and show how strong their message and music can really be. And the formula is still there, just integrated and multiplied and such. Any popiness that comes as a result seems incidental (although it most likely is not) and the songs retain their intelligence and earnestness.

At the same time, it may be difficult to judge the new LP from their live act which brought their single "Funeral" out from its dusty sad-pop cabinet where Everything lovingly placed it and onto a power-pop chopping block to be slashed up in a very concert-friendly way. With three guitars at work, songs both new and old felt more full of sound but never washed out or just noisy. They even closed with a seamless Otis Redding cover driving home the cool melancholy that permeates the Band's tone. Although I don't expect to see this promising band in stadiums any time soon, they certainly rocked harder than their recordings might have suggested. I can only hope this aggressive yet ever-pleasant sound has made its way to their second production and if it has, I think we can all look forward to an impressive fall album. Look for it early October.

High Society DC: A Night With a Fake ID

After a few days of solo 'success' with my ID at various happy hours near my job, which consisted mostly of hearing one depressing Barry Breadwinner life story after another, Friday arrived and it seemed like the right time to get out there with my contemporaries. In the summer, every Friday in DC comes with a free jazz show at the sculpture garden near Capital Hill, where a thousand or so yuppies gather to erase their memories of the week with sangria and chardonnay. I hadn't checked it out yet during my time in DC so The old, Middle Eastern liquor clerk grinned as he looked at my ID but gave it back and asked if I got carded a lot. Because I look young. "Yeah, I'm used to it." I left with a few tall-boys and a half liter of Jack and skated down past the White House to commiserate with my fellow American worker.

Sitting under a tree on my skateboard amongst the plaid blankets and my khaki brethren, reading my book in the thick sunset and letting that wonderful first buzz of the weekend wash over me, I must have looked like a loser in need of some company because the group sitting in front of me gave me the old come 'ere little fella' and welcomed me to their crew. Abbey, a chirpy Italian mid-20s paralegal, didn't spare any time to ask all about me and by the end of my Jack and their spritzers I had a few new friends. Although they blended in well with their picnic baskets and business casual uniforms, they were a pretty cool group of people who actually thought they didn't mix well with the stiff jazz show attendees and were causing a scene (see apologetic drunk). They believed this so much in fact that they thought it wise to bail out to a bar where Abbey worked in Adams Morgan, the clubbing district. I'd never ventured to Adams Morgan as it is notorious for intense ID enforcement but Abbey assured me if I knew her, I wouldn't have a problem.

So my friend Melissa and I, who had met up with us by that point, emerged from the garden, where the jazz had seemed more like an afterthought, and set out for the mecca of DC nightlife. As we walked up 18th St. into the heart of AM, that familiar grip of uncertainty took hold of me, my ID feeling more like a ski mask and crobar in my back pocket. Abbey was already inside so we were on our own. After passing endless clubs overflowing with greased-up 30somethings, when we arrived at our stop, Peyote, I was relieved to see a small underground entrance, no line and a bouncer who looked like he'd been hired for the night. I might has well have shown him my library card. He barely caught the open bottle of wine leaning out of Melissa's purse (which he saved for us). While I never would've tried to go there without a decent fake in the first place, it was somewhat frustrating to know that I could've spent a few of those lonely July nights at a karaoke dive bar in the most central part of AM without a problem.

The scene inside was awesome, a karaoke camaraderie I hadn't even seen during my glory days as a karaoke roadie. Singing a song to a crowded bar can make the foxiest of women attainable and the most haggard of men rock stars. It's a disturbing and beautiful phenomenon that was in full effect this night as the crowd, from high school hipsters to balding business men, gave their choral renditions of everything from George Michael to Sublime. Abbey hooked some free drinks and when we were over karaoke we explored the two other bars up the stairwell from Peyote where we subsequently got our dance on. It was dank.

When it seemed time to leave the bar the alcohol punched a little hole in my memory and dropped me skating to a park for blunts with my new ghetto fabulous comrade, Ebrahim Mila Ali Brown. He talked about (and skillfully acted out) his frustration with segregation in DC and the fact that there's no right way to approach a girl anymore without doing something wrong. We happened to run into some old friends from his neighborhood... the girls ranted about characters from Laguna Beach with Melissa while the guys burned and pissed on Ebrahim's red neck scarf for being red, which Ebrahim seemed to graciously understand: "If you have a thing for burning that particular color, man, shit, by all means." Finding ourselves hungry after a lengthy flat ground skate we walked back down to Jumbo Slice. You'd think people working at a pizza place would at least know the English word for 'cheese' but it took about fifteen minutes to get the three orders in front of me. I managed to get some reluctant service when a fight broke out and I was able to corner a 'cashier' before he could join everyone else in the street. Although the night ended with the worst (and largest) slice of pizza I've ever been offered, Adams Morgan delivered and I guess I have my shitty ID (and Abbey) to thank.

Unless you want to spend your night not dancing with girls or convincing a Retardlican that the crux of your argument is not that Halliburton is run by Satan and Saddam/at a Georgetown party, Adams Morgan seems to be a good option. Damn, even jazz on the mall's a good thing to do in DC. But if you want to get domed and skate with a guy like Ebrahim (you do), DC is definitely not the best place to do it.

Skarsgard or Sarsgaard

OR

Does anyone else confuse these people?

Peter Sarsgaard is the young(ish) supporting actor in Garden State, Jarhead, Kinsey and Boys Don't Cry. Stellan Skarsgard (his name has some weird Swedish shit over the second "a" in Skarsgard) is the fifty-something foreign guy in Good Will Hunting, Pirates, Amistad, and Deep Blue Sea. Pretty much the only thing they share is a mild similarity between their last names. But one of the ga(a)rdses stands far apart from the other. Here lies the definitive difference:

The fucking ultimate coolness that radiates from Peter Sarsgaard.

While both men are fantastic actors with numerous award nominations and wins (seen here and here) such as Skarsgard's Teen Choice award nomination for Exorcist: The Beginning and Saarsgard's win of a Chlotrudis award for Kinsey (hey, dude, I thought it was an STD too), why is it that I find myself being pulled inexorably toward Peter?

Is it Sarsgaard's good looks? is my latent gayness emerging in the form of a savage man-crush for Zack Braff's co-star? is it that I live vicariously through Sarsgaard because he happens to be boning down with ultra cool indie-actress Maggie Gyllenhaal? In the end I think it must be all of these things and more.

The fact is that Sarsgaard's ability to slide so effortlessly into my heart has less to do with movies he is in and more to do with what he does in those movies. Although I think his films are generally pretty good (yes, even Garden State), It may be that I prefer Skarsgard's films: the Pirates movies are great, Amistad is fantastic, and Good Will Hunting is one of my all-time favorites.

Yet, Sarsgaard is just so believable and (how do I put this?) slimy yet likable. Peter Sarsgaard may well be the slimiest most likable person I have ever seen on screen. It isn't that he plays gross people (although he sometimes does), but that every line he delivers is so full of a gross desperation yet earnest goodness. How can you dislike the stoner-loser, yet ultimately loyal best friend he plays in Garden State? Or even the volatile bi-sexual grad student in Kinsey. Fuck, man, I even like Jarhead a little bit because he was in it.

Anyway, the point is, when you have to choose between Skarsgard and Sarsgaard (which will ultimately be, like, never) try and be careful. Sarsgaard may creep into your body and grab onto your balls like just like he has done to me.

ps

in case you haven't seen it rent Secretary with Maggie Gyllenhall. it has nothing to do with Sarsgaard except that you get to see what he gets to go home to every night. lucky bastard.

this post is for, you, chris

Bergman

As you may have heard Swedish director/writer/genius Ingmar Bergman died on Monday. Although many great articles have been written on Bergman's life already (Ebert's being my favorite) I thought I'd share a little bit of how I feel about Bergman.

I am not a film critic and don't know very much about film making, but what I do know is that there is almost nothing better than sitting down and watching a Bergman film. I saw The Seventh Seal for the first time a few years ago and discovered Bergman for the first time. Since then I have seen many more of his movies and every one has been a fantastic experience.

You don't need to understand philosophy or psychology or film on any technical level to enjoy the humanity, sadness, and beauty of Bergman's movies. Yet Bergman's films manage to portray everything about human nature with such acute vision that watching a Bergman film is like taking a class in any of these subjects.

My favorite Bergman movie is wild strawberries, in which an aging man and a young woman go on a road trip together. It is simple and beautiful and (unlike many of Bergman's other films) somewhat hopeful.

Bergman's death is not terribly tragic (he was an old dude) but I still can't help feeling sad that one of my heroes is dead. Anyway, what I am really trying to say is: go rent Bergman's films. I can't recommend them enough and now that he is gone it is even more apparent how important the films he made during his life were.

How You Should Read Gravity's Rainbow (and Why)

I am not an English major, but I am not an idiot either. This being the case, I have tried and failed to read Gravity’s Rainbow twice, each time starting from the very first page and ending somewhere around page 250.

Now, on page 200 my third time through Pynchon’ magnum opus, I think I have come up with a strategy that will ensure that I can finally finish GR, but more importantly, I have come up with a way of reading it where I truly enjoy every page.

First, some background info: In case you do not know, Gravity’s Rainbow is a 775 page WWII epic about a guy who gets a boner before a rocket falls on him. There are secret organizations of all kinds that attempt to capture him and use his “skill” for their own purposes as he wanders aimlessly through war-torn Europe. It is almost universally recognized as one of the greatest books of the 20th century (meaning that it is an extremely long book that few people finish).

This is a strange and twisted novel. The narrative jumps all over the place and hundreds (if not thousands) of characters are introduced to the reader and then dropped, only to return a hundred pages later seemingly out of nowhere. Thousands of references and inside jokes are made concerning everything from Jazz to Astrophysics. There is a trained assassin octopus named Grigori. Only one thing is constant: Tyrone Slothrop and his rocket detecting erection.

Why should you care about this book?

1. It rules. Although it is not always the case that critics are right about books, Gravity’s Rainbow is undeniably amazing. Even when I was struggling with the book, I could not help but be blown away by Pynchon’s writing and the level of detail.
2. Lame pretentious people who aren’t smarter than you have read it. Why not try and one-up some English major who is impressing girls because he has read this book? Chances are that the dude you overhear talking about it never even finished it, so go ahead and make him look like an idiot. It will make you feel smart and you can bring justice to the world.
3. For some reason hipsters have decided that they love Pynchon as much as they like fixed gear bikes. For proof, go find an interview with James Murphy, he will totally be talking about it. If you think you are a cool kid then its required that you read this book (although I am not quite sure why).
4. It allows you to understand other things: numerous references in everything from the Sopranos to that Klaxons song (you know, the one called Gravity's Rainbow) are from GR. You know that scene in Trainspotting where the dude goes down the toilette? Straight out of GR.
5. Fun Factor: Reading a big book that is supposedly difficult makes you feel good. Novels are written to be read, GR is no different. Having a good time reading is awesome.

My new strategy for reading the book has 3 tenets:

1. Do not attempt to understand all of Pynchon’s references. When I first started to read GR, I felt like I was missing too many references. This is not the case: Pynchon places these obscure tidbits in the novel to enrich your read, not to infuriate you. Be happy when you understand, move on when you don’t.
2. Do not attempt to understand the plot: Gravity’s Rainbow is insane. It is a mess so intricate and strange that it is almost unnecessary to try and untangle. Just pay attention to what Slothrop is up to and the activity of the few main characters. Pynchon leaves enough clear so that the reader is not totally lost. Just when you think you have no idea what is going on, trust Pynchon to enlighten you in a few pages. You will begin to get it, I promise.
3. Read at a quick, constant pace. You will enjoy the book more if you do no labor over hard to understand passages. JUST KEEP READING.

Keep in mind that I have not yet finished the book, but my new strategy is working extremely well thus far. I am having a better summer because I am reading this book and I urge you readers out there to give it a try. If the dudes from Klaxons can read it, then so can you.

Welcome to STATION!

A Brief History of STATION...

In the Summer of 2002, back when Iraq was still shying away from weapons inspectors and Lindsay Lohan was still a nice girl, two heterosexual life partners sat across from each other on a cramped porch at dusk in a sleepy beach town oblivious to these happenings and to what their mutual boredom would spawn that evening. These lads, who I will now begin referring to as 'we,' were only really sure about a few things in life, at that point, one of which was stickers. Stickers meant global stardom, creative outlet and mischief, if used smartly. Stickers, we knew, would enable us to flood the world with our inside 'jokes' and personal insights, things the world had certainly long awaited. More than anything though, we wanted to confuse people. To do this, we scoured our immediate environment for source material that only we would ever relate to or at least remember. There goes my cat... done: "DON'T JUMP BETTY!" or "JUMP, BETTY, JUMP!" We could use both and really fuck with people, couldn't we? Brilliant. To unite our dissociated tag lines we would need a symbol and a title. STATION was adopted as our brand name and a piece of abstract art from my mom's house as our symbol to represent whatever we would be pushing (which, of course, turned out to be absolutely nothing. not even stickers...)

I seem to recall only those phrases with the least context of the twenty or so we conjured up in the ten minutes of excitement that birthed STATION before we wandered to get a burrito. It is that minimal context that reminds me why STATION was so attractive to us. It was ours. Only we could manufacture it. The fact that our manufacturing process was usually oriented around personal use and involved lots of notebook paper didn't really matter, although, it was somewhat disappointing. The spirit of STATION was kept alive in some way in every symbol we scribbled or carved, or later, in every unrealized creative inclination we experienced. Let's start a band! No instruments or talent? Oh well. Let's write...about...lots of stuff, interesting and funny stuff...because, we're smart...right? Oh well. Many of our youthfully optimistic plans lost what momentum they had in our heads to excuses, lack of required motivation, complacency, what have you. But maybe some of our plans, those broader ones in the background, were incrementally coddled by every passing interest, every good idea, every week's STATION. For five years (and probably for much longer), we've been passing from STATION to STATION and now, as a conveniently adult replacement for the sticker, the blog has given us a second chance to return to the end of the line and build a new one. We will try to be more relevant than aimless pet commands but we can't promise anything. Just that this is ours. And free beer. Welcome to STATION.