Happy Me Day!
R.I.P. Rodney King.
(Why is that if you're a cast member of any season of Celebrity Rehab there's a good chance you'll die relatively soon?)
I got Miami beating OKC tonight in a crucial game 3 - well, they're all crucial games at this point. Every game becomes the most important one in the series. Miami by six in a tight one.
Rock of Ages bombed. Oh, well. Better off not going to the well once too often.
The play at Georgia Southern Julia and I saw, Neil Simon's Fools, a funny 1981 play about a rural Ukranian village whose inhabitants are all cursed with stupidity. Reading up on the play, I discovered that Simon wrote the play right after he divorced his wife (I assume Marsha Mason). It was determined that his wife would get the proceeds of his next play, so Simon tried to write a bad one, a real clunker! (It worked: The play closed after only forty performances!) We enjoyed it, though; no one can write one-liners like Simon. It was giddily silly.
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An obvious Soul Track for today?
Yep, the Temptations singing about a wayward, sneaky father:
Everyone knows the Temptations. "My Girl," "Ain't Too Proud to Beg," "The Way You Do The Things You Do." Motown's finest, there were various incarnations and groups that changed and melded into what would be the "Classic 5" era of the Temptations - Melvin Franklin, David Ruffin, Otis Williams, Eddie Kendricks, and Paul Williams. While at Motown, the group was mostly produced by songwriter Norman Whitfield, who wrote some of the group's hits with Smokey Robinson.
Every honor and laurel has been bestowed on the group - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, Grammy awards, etc. Their glorious harmonizing soul was responsible for over a dozen hits in the glory years of Motown, and in the late 60s the band produced some really wonderful psychedelic soul - "Ball of Confusion," "I Can't Get Next to You." The Grammy-winning "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" was written by Whitfield for the band The Undisputed Truth ("Smiling Faces"); this version is largely forgotten. In late 1972, The Temptations (Otis Williams and Melvin Franklin being the only Classic 5 members left) recorded it and it was a smash hit and a Grammy winner, a #1 pop hot bloated out from its original three-minute Undisputed Truth original. Released as a single, the song is ranked #168 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQGdp99_VYs
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2011's Red Riding Hood, from hitherto interesting director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Twilight) is one nutty movie. I grooved along with the silliness, the CGI's alpine village sets (where these medieval French folks speak English and have perfect skin) for a good half hour before I did what any reasonably sane person would do if confronted with the movie on TNT or USA a few years from now: engage fully in something else while watching it (push-ups, blogging, online shopping, napping). I could say that it got too Twilight-y, that it wasn't scary, that the dialogue was so ripe it wouldn't be palatable to starved bears, that it was abysmally acted (Gary Oldman shows up, as hammy as you think he's going to be), but I don't want to imply that it isn't a little bit fun. It's bad but never boring; how could one get bored with Amanda Seyfried (as Red or Riding or Hood or whoever, I didn't catch her name), appropriately big-eyed and sensually intrigued as the ingenue who lives in a snowy village that is perennially cursed by a hungry wolf ? Oldman's priest/hunter shows up, insisting that the wolf has taken human form, leading all to suspect that the lupine terror is a neighbor or family member. But who? I can't say I wasn't unintersted - Mandy Walker's swirling camerawork doesn't permit boredom- but I did casually glance over at the screen and gasp a good 'WTF'?
(*)
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Making our way through the 100 Most Influential Photographers, we come across...
Mert & Marcus (#49)
A magnificent duo, Mert and Marcus met in 1996. The Turkish Mert grew up in Ankara, absorbing 60's culture that came Turkey's way from the States and the UK. Mert (pronounced like 'Maht) moved to London and became a fashion photo modeler; the British Marcus moved to London in the early 90s, knowing he wanted to be a fashion photographer. They met, became a couple, and moved in together in 1996. A few professional breaks came, and by 2001, they had shot ad campaigns for Louis Vuitton and Hugo Boss. The two use digital technology a lot - for re-touching - and often rely on Photoshop. They like to shoot (and then digitally augment) sexual, confident, powerful, famous women. They are known as digital perfectionists, seeking the perfect, smooth, flawless visual effect.
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| Madonna, 2010 |
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| Penelope Cruz, 2009 |
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| Diane Kruger, 2004 |
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(Brief) Book Reviews
- The Man From St. Petersburg, a soapy (in the best sense of the phrase) 1982 thriller is Ken Follett at his best, with layered characters, tensely converging storylines, sex, a relentless villain, and a fast pace. A Russian anarchist, Felicks, arrives in London, out to kill a Russian prince who is in the city to come to some sort of agreement with Churchill and other government bigwigs so that Russia and England will enter World War I; Felicks wants to keep Russia and its millions of young peasants who will be served up as meat out of war. The authorities try to capture the elusive Felicks before he completes his task. There are surprises, romantic backstories, and an easy, effortless style that engages and keeps the reader turning the pages. Follett is the ultimate popular writer with a distinct style who gives us what we want without writing down to us in order to do so.
(****)
- John Grisham's Theodore Boone: The Accused (2012) is the third entry in the author's ongoing young adult series about the title character, a wise, ambitious eighth-grade kid who has his own office in his parent's law practice. In this outing, Theo is framed with the theft of thousands of dollars of electronics from a downtown store. He, along with his ill-reputed but savvy uncle, has to try to clear his name and find out who committed the crime. Grisham has always been a fair, solid writer (not bad, far from great) and his straight-ahead plotting and meat-and-potatoes storytelling actually works okay for young adult writing: he isn't subtle, but doesn't seem to be phoning it in either. The characters and settings are well-drawn and it's a given that Grisham is going to guide us through legal maneuvers and technicalities with ease. I wasn't impressed but I'd read another one of the Boone books sometime.
(**1/2)
Images:
http://www.sensualitynews.com/storage/madonna-mert-atlas-marcus-piggott-interview-may-201013.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1280241515508
http://www.thephotographylink.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/01jpg.jpeg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL0P60AiSF1e2UTyMtWyb0TzMzkbylUasmSjIulrVYTKs_jn4ijECPlLz6XErRqWlFHynDneVVk8UOfO1-2_j-TpzNFz_FTKPCZqVtDKaQHY4DFY_lHoBe-arJ1RdQ3rVQsAEkGrUZeql9/s1600/LV_fw2004_004_diane_kruger.jpg
http://www.english-book-service.com/gfx/items/9/7/8/0/4/5/1/9780451163516.jpg
http://images.indiebound.com/762/425/9780525425762.jpg
http://www.threeimaginarygirls.com/files/uploaded-images/RedRidingHood.jpg
Information:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/09/27/040927fa_fact1?currentPage=1
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