celebrity – dowackado

Back on the chain gang….

By timmukyPosted on September 3, 2015Posted in celebrity, environment, fashionTagged cheating at golf, climate, climate change, Donald Trump, H&M, hottest summer on record, recyclingNo Comments

We here in central Kentucky somehow avoided being roasted during what was globally the hottest month ever recorded, in what may still turn out to be the hottest YEAR ever. Most of the summer here was wet and temperate, but we have reverted to the scorching mean the past few weeks.

I hadn’t planned to do so, but it turns out I took the summer off from blogging. My last offering was right around Memorial Day (and it was a recycled post at that….)

But you know, recycling is good.

As per I-d:

Did you know that 95% of binned clothes could have been re-worn or recycled, and recycling one T-shirt saves 2100 litres of water? Basically, you can help save the planet by not clogging up landfills and not squandering the natural resources used in fabric production.

Since then over 14,000 tonnes of old clothes have been collected globally, and now the Swedish brand has launched Close the Loop, a collection of 10 denim pieces made from the textiles recycled from the Garment Collecting initiative.

Look, I’m fully aware that big corporations are constantly trying to piggyback onto noble causes while continuing their unsustainable, avaricious, capitalistic ways, but … I can’t find anything to criticize in this campaign.

Plus, this video promoting the campaign is terrific:

That’s all I got this morning. It’s upbeat and positive, and goes against the summer’s trend of dispiriting news: climate change, mass shootings, and a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem, cheating at golf.

Todd, Rahm and hydrogen bombs made out of dumb

By timmukyPosted on March 8, 2012Posted in celebrity, music, overlooked musical geniiTagged todd sniderNo Comments

A new record from Todd Snider is always a cause for celebration, and Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables is currently streaming here. (Or was.) [Update 3/19–now on Spotify!]

But. BUT. Todd is friends with Rahm Emanuel? WTF?!! This little snippet pretty much blew my mind:

Yeah. He’s my friend. I love that guy. He first came to see me in Washington, D.C., and he was about to go to some big meeting. The next time I met him was in Chicago. I was telling him about this song I was making up about the military-industrial complex. I was telling him it’s a stoner fable. All the stoners in the world are convinced that the world is run by these people that Eisenhower warned us about. He said, “You’d be surprised how much power the banks have now by comparison.” He pointed out that there’s a song about “the military and the monetary” by Gil Scott Heron called “Work for Peace.” So it’s been tackled. He said, “What would Woody Guthrie do? He’d figure out a way to point out what the bankers are doing right now.”

Now if I were a marginally famous folksinger and the White House Chief of Staff came up to me after a show to tell me how awesome I was, I’d probably have a hard time bad-mouthing the dude, but … Rahm Emanuel. You know, the guy who made 18 million dollars in two and a half years as an “investment banker.” As per the Times, his rainmaking for Wasserstein Perella & Company involved “turning many of his contacts in his substantial political Rolodex into paying clients and directing his negotiating prowess and trademark intensity to mergers and acquisitions.”

For this guy to talk about exposing “what the bankers are doing right now” and to imply he’s down with Woody Guthrie and Gil Scott Heron–that takes some pretty spectacular compartmentalization. Or balls. Or both. I want to say it started with Clinton and his sax, the first hipster president, but I think the real precursor is this guy.

It continues to this day of course….. Yeah, Obama’s day job involves making up lists of people to assassinate without charge or warning … but did you hear that Al Green thing he did????

***

And slightly off the topic, here is a quotable quote from the Salon piece. Here’s hoping “Hydrogen bomb made out of dumb” becomes part of everyone’s vocabulary:

I grew up conservative Christian and all that, and now when someone tells me they’re conservative politically and also a Christian, I think, Why didn’t you just tell me that you’re a hydrogen bomb made out of dumb. Because those two ideas don’t gel. There’s one group that’s saying, Take everything you have and give it to the poor. And there’s another group that’s saying, Don’t tell me what to give to the poor. How can you join both groups? That’s like you’re joining Puppy Kickers Animal Rights of America. It just doesn’t gel, and that’s what I ran away from.

Model lawsuit against Next agency: WikiLeaks for really good-looking people

By timmukyPosted on December 1, 2010Posted in celebrity, childhood, fashionTagged Anna Cywinska, Anna Jagodzinska, karmen pedaru, model lawsuit, next agencyNo Comments

carmen_pedaru_contract_2 — Karmen, her contract, and Terry

It doesn’t compare with the uncovering of 15,000 Iraqi corpses no one had previously acknowledged (but that is not exactly a trending Twitter topic today, is it?) Still, there are some eye-opening revelations contained in “What Vogue really pays its models”.

I harbor no illusions about the fashion industry (two words: Terry Richardson!), but I was actually kind of shocked by Jenna Sauers’ examination of the numbers and arrangements brought to light by the $3.75 million lawsuit filed by three eastern European models against the Next Agency.

Really, the day rate for “new faces” at Vogue is $125. And for “established models” $250!

Although that is pretty hard to square with the only model quote most people remember (“We don’t wake up for less than ten thousand dollars a day”), apparently the editorial pay rate is hardly a secret.

BUT, in at least one model’s case, those modest fees still hadn’t been paid nearly a year after being incurred. And after looking over the contracts, you could make the case that the agency in question, which is supposed to work on behalf of the models, offers something like indentured servitude for all but a few of them.

The piece is funny/shocking, a perfect balance of outrage/bemusement (the author, Jenna Sauers, is a former model). The myriad ways agencies take advantage of their clients (typically teenagers, frequently girls with little or no English) is dizzying, to say the least.

A brief excerpt, and Sauers’ conclusion:

Next also includes in its standard contract a provision that it be permitted to keep up to $5,000 of a model’s earnings in what it calls a “Reserve Account,” just in case Next incurs any expenses on the model’s behalf at some time in the future. Pedaru isn’t subject to this clause — it’s crossed out. But in its standard form, this contract binds a model to a management agency that will first take 20% of everything that she earns, then take a bite out of the rest for miscellaneous expenses that it need not inform the model of beforehand or seek her permission for, a management company that may book her on jobs for clients that have a record of non-payment at her sole risk, and then, if she’s still in the black after all that — and a lot of newer models, especially those on the hook for the travel costs booked by the agency, and the rent at the models’ apartment the agency owns, and the grocery and phone bill money they have to borrow against their future earnings (at a 5% penalty) which agencies call “pocket money,” are most assuredly not in the black after the above calculations — if that model is in the black after all that, the first $5,000 left over is the agency’s to hold on to. Just in case. Pedaru was three months shy of her 16th birthday when she signed her contract with Next.

The lessons here? Vogue Paris pays crap, Vogue pays not much better, neither of them pays particularly quickly, and campaigns are worth a mint to everyone lucky enough to work on them. And if you are a 5’10” 15-year-old with 34″ hips who would like a job where you’ll bear all the market risks associated with your labor, be solely responsible for expenses outlayed by others on your behalf without your consent, and maybe meet nice, successful men like Terry Richardson, modeling might just be the ticket.

Zadie un-friends Mark Zuckerberg

By timmukyPosted on November 7, 2010Posted in celebrity, film, teh internetsTagged facebook, mad farmer liberation front, mark zuckerberg, new york review of books, virtual worlds, wendell berry, zadie smithNo Comments

photo_zadie-smith — "Let's take another. Not haughty enough."

Zadie Smith has major problems with Mark Zuckerberg’s world. Fair enough. Hear her out. Her ruminations on The Social Network in the New York Review of Books are quite good, and provocative (and I might add I’m looking forward to her new books column for Harper’s).

This is her best point.

Step back from your Facebook Wall for a moment: Doesn’t it, suddenly, look a little ridiculous? Your life in this format?

Also,

With Facebook, Zuckerberg seems to be trying to create something like a Noosphere, an Internet with one mind, a uniform environment in which it genuinely doesn’t matter who you are, as long as you make “choices” (which means, finally, purchases). If the aim is to be liked by more and more people, whatever is unusual about a person gets flattened out.

… Finally, it’s the idea of Facebook that disappoints. If it were a genuinely interesting interface, built for these genuinely different 2.0 kids to live in, well, that would be something. It’s not that. It’s the wild west of the Internet tamed to fit the suburban fantasies of a suburban soul….

Shouldn’t we struggle against Facebook? Everything in it is reduced to the size of its founder. Blue, because it turns out Zuckerberg is red-green color-blind. “Blue is the richest color for me—I can see all of blue.” Poking, because that’s what shy boys do to girls they are scared to talk to. Preoccupied with personal trivia, because Mark Zuckerberg thinks the exchange of personal trivia is what “friendship” is. A Mark Zuckerberg Production indeed! We were going to live online. It was going to be extraordinary. Yet what kind of living is this?

Nearly forty years ago, Wendell Berry, who to this date has not heard of Mark Zuckerberg, (and quite possibly never will), anticipated the flattening out of personality problem presented by being reduced to your “Wall”:

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

The Mad Farmer’s advice:

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

I love that bit about the fox!

Ironically, there is a Facebook page for Wendell Berry (4,487 likes!). Pretty good for someone who does not own a computer, and never will.

My heroes, at age 13

By timmukyPosted on January 28, 2010Posted in celebrity, childhood, literature, music, rocknrollTagged catcher in the rye, j.d. salinger, pete townshend, sex offender advisory, super bowl, the whoNo Comments

It hasn’t been a good week for my adolescent self. Here’s the story, btw, about why homes and schools in the vicinity of Dolphins Stadium are receiving “sex offender advisory” postcards warning them to be on the lookout for Who guitarist Pete Townshend.

Couture clash: Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo?

By timmukyPosted on January 25, 2010Posted in celebrity, fashion, film, french cinemaTagged a hard day's night, celebrity, celebrity culture, cinema verite, couture, diana vreeland, dorothy mcgowan, fashion, film, french, masculin/feminin, Qui êtes-vous Polly Magoo?, satire, william kleinNo Comments

Edward Klein’s Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? is a film I knew by reputation, but only just this weekend got around to watching. I loved it.

It’s had some high profile screenings this past summer, at Walker Art Center in my hometown of Minneapolis and at the Metropolitan Museum in my other hometown, in conjunction with the Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion exhibition.

This film has shoehorned its way into my all-time favorites list. From the opening scene, a fashion show where the models wear sheet-metal outfits, and the imperious editor (who bears more than a passing resemblance to Diana Vreeland) pronounces that the designer has “created the Eve for the nuclear age,” it’s a satirical tour de force, a commentary on fashion, celebrity and media that hasn’t lost any of its bite.

It’s funny, sexy, stylish as a film is possible to be, and shot in that gorgeous high-contrast black and white almost-verité style you see in Godard’s Masculin/Feminin and Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night, another film from an American expat. Oh, to have been one in those days!

The star, Brooklyn-born American fashion model Dorothy McGowan is pretty much just being herself and not really caring what anyone thinks of her. She’s perfectly suited for her role, as were the Beatles, who had the same attitude. (See, especially, the classic “Dead Grotty/early clue to the new direction” scene where George stumbles into a youth marketing man’s office). Jean Rochefort plays the television producer who sets out to make fun of the superficial girl, but she is tougher and smarter than he thinks, and he ends up falling in love with her and pondering his own nothingness (I know! but it’s a sixties French movie, after all). A good chunk of the film is occupied with a subplot involving a handsome prince who is smitten with Polly’s image, and the hapless spies he sends to track her down.

With her moon face, rabbit’s teeth (her own description), and huge eyes (usually featuring some extreme deployment of mascara, liner and false eyelashes), McGowan’s gorgeous, and impossible not to look at, even when she is out of makeup, in her tiny little apartment, more appropriate for a student than a cover girl.

Klein’s photography is spectacular: in the fashion scenes as you would expect, but also in many shots of the quotidian life of Parisians (he loves tight shots of crowds from belly-button level): queued up for a cafeteria, getting into heated political arguments, stewing in traffic jams. And there is this strange and wonderful animated sequence that brings to mind Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python animations.

Alas, McGowan apparently stopped modeling and acting after this film. “Every time they take my picture, there’s a little less of me left. So what will be left of me in the end? I’d like to know.”

Lady GaGa: “Disco Sucks” redux?

By timmukyPosted on January 11, 2010Posted in celebrity, music, pop, rocknroll, videoTagged Alexander McQueen, annie, Bad Romance, barbara walters, bill o'reilly, Disco demolition, disco riot 1979, fan site, goldffapp, lady gaga, Madonna, parody, song reminds me of you, westboro baptist churchNo Comments

The official video for Lady GaGa’s “Bad Romance” (Alexander McQueen! Haus of GaGa!) is best viewed side-by-side with this inspired fan parody (Snuggies! WalMart bags!). Click here to do just that.

I find the strong reactions Lady GaGa inspires more interesting than her actual music and videos. (I do like some of her songs, but if I’m in the mood for dance pop, I’ll listen to Goldfrapp or the Norwegian singer/DJ Annie.)

Not many are neutral about Lady GaGa. Her fans adore her, and there are a whole bunch of them, but she also really really really gets up the nose of others, including, predictably, Bill O’Reilly and the always entertaining Westboro Baptist Church, who has singled her out as having a “whore’s forehead” (it’s some nonsense from the Bible, apparently).

westboro-baptist-church-pickets-gaga — "whore's forehead"

There are precursors to this. You could go all the way back to Elvis, I suppose, but I prefer to arbitrarily start with the loathing Madonna inspired from mainstream media when she first appeared on the scene, and especially (this really dates me) the Disco Sucks promotion night at Chicago’s Comiskey Park in 1979.

Don’t remember that one? Here’s an account via the Independent

The precise time and place was 12 July 1979 at Comiskey Park, Chicago, at an event overseen by W-LUP DJ Steve Dahl, under the banner “Disco demolition”. In the intermission of a baseball game between the Detroit Tigers and the White Sox, a huge pile of disco records was covered in lighter fluid and then set ablaze. Anyone who brought disco records to the game for burning was allowed in for a mere 98 cents. Dahl was an overweight, bespectacled shock-jock in military headwear who had himself actually hosted disco parties. But he saw an opportunity and sensed the backlash that was swarming around him. Live on television, the flames sparked a crowd-invasion, the field ended up trashed, and the White Sox were forced to forfeit their second game. The event made the international news.

It was the end of an 18-month campaign that had been brewing across Middle America in order to contain the music that had so caught the popular consciousness. That it was picked up by the media with such enthusiasm demonstrates the latent hatred that had been festering. Disco was diametrically opposite to the macho posturing of white rock – and since there were no bands in disco, no tours, or souvenir T-shirts, it was difficult to quantify. A few journalists wrote passionately about it, but in the main it was ignored or treated with disdain. As Craig Werner writes in A Change Is Gonna Come, “The Anti-disco movement represented an unholy alliance of funkateers and feminists, progressives and puritans, rockers and reactionaries. None the less, the attacks on disco gave respectable voice to the ugliest kinds of unacknowledged racism, sexism and homophobia.”

Is this all a bit strong? Maybe. And I really can’t stand seeing those final three words strung together like that. It sounds like a paper written by a sophomore at a very expensive, mediocre private college. But I do agree that virulent anti-disco, anti-Madonna, anti-GaGa reactions (typically from “overweight, bespectacled” types) usually stand in for something deeper and nastier.

more about “YouTube Doubler Beta | Mashup Helper“, posted with vodpod

Early Shakira, when she was even more awesome

By timmukyPosted on October 23, 2009Posted in celebrity, music, rocknroll, videoTagged rocknroll, videoNo Comments

Just watched the Shewolf video from the new, bodacious, blond Shakira. Two comments: 1. I could use a shower, and 2. it’s fascinating how much she’s changed. For the better or not, who knows? But I prefer this video and this song, from her days as a strange little would-be hippie girl with too much dark eyeliner. So much going on here, so many musical styles. And I love when she becomes a robotic wig mannequin.