How wonderful was Laugh-In? Very, very wonderful. And this is maybe the loveliest thing ever to happen on that venerable show. Makes SNL look very flat and pale, doesn't it?
|
Monday, March 19, 2007
Here is a publicity still from the 1994 movie Muriel's Wedding, featuring Rachel Griffiths and Toni Collette doing a smashing ABBA-themed karaoke number.
It's especially delightful because Griffiths went on to become the biggest self-infatuated dolt on Six Feet Under, a television show that my husband loves but it sends me shrieking from the room.
I was so glad to learn that the real Rachel Griffiths would willingly lip-synch to ABBA. The sight of her prancing around in a shiny white centurion skirt lifted my spirits to the skies. I hope in real life she is having as much fun as Rhonda, her character in this movie.
It is kind of a weird movie. I liked it, but then I would watch Toni Collette read the phone book.
|
Monday, March 12, 2007
George Lois designed the famous Esquire cover of Muhammad Ali as St. Sebastian, a wonderfully vivid visual comment on Ali's refusal to fight in the Vietnam war. Now that Ali's (and Lois's) defiance is seen for the prescience it was, Lois returns to his the subject of his greatest success in Ali Rap, a cheeky compilation of Ali's witticisms and braggadoccio. I can't wait to read this.
|
Friday, March 9, 2007
Many people have a wrong idea about what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.--Helen Keller
The following is from Wrong About Japan by Peter Carey*:
"In the middle eighties, there was a Japanese science-fiction author called Moto Arai. One of her stylistic tics was to address the reader very formally with the second person pronoun, otaku, a much more distant form than the French vous, for instance. Her fans liked this book so much that they adopted this peculiar usage, referring to each other as 'otaku.'"
I had read enough to imagine that I understood. "Isn't it an extremely respectful form of address?" I asked.
"No!" Yuka cried in English.
Charley's eyes flicked my way.
"The way otaku is used now," Paul translated, "it's the reverse. It is no longer about fans imitating Moto Arai's prose. It's not about fun anymore. It's not respectful, it's discriminatory. It's like calling you 'sir' when I don't really mean it. It's ironic, sarcastic."
Okay, so the word's dripping with discrimination. "But doesn't it have a number of meanings?"
"Of course," Paul said. "It can be used for people who are enthusiastic about almost anything. In English you might say aficionado, although it is also rather like nerd."
In the midst of this explanation, the staff of Kodansha, so earnestly at work only minutes previously, erupted into wild cheering. Yuka did not blink an eye. And although sararimen in offices all over Tokyo had abandoned their posts to watch Japan battle Tunisia, she was far more interested in drawing a fat teenager with a schlumpy T-shirt and a bad complexion.
"Otaku," she said, pushing it across the table.
"As you can see," Paul said, "in this sense an otaku is someone who has no dress or social sense or any interest in anything other than the object of their obsession. This may or may not be manga. It could easily be the bra sizes of actresses."
Yuka interrupted and Paul translated: "Also, among the otaku community there are many of us who will laugh and make fun of this sort of person. We used to have a badge, like the Ghostbusters badge, with a red line drawn across this type of figure."
"Then otakus are outsiders," I asied, "different, but united by their outsider status?"
I don't know how good Yuka's English was, but she was correcting me before I finished my sentence.
"More like a hobbyist," Paul translated. "If it were England, you might think of trainspotters in anoraks. But then again, that's a stereotypical otaku. It's like expecting everyone in Texas to be a cowboy. There are some people like that, but most otakus are not."
*whose excellent novels, in particular The True History of the Kelly Gang and Oscar and Lucinda, I recommend to you
|
I never get a chance to hear This American Life on the radio, but now we can record it on TV!! Thrillingly, Ira Glass is (a) way cuter than I thought he would be and (b) wearing a three-button suit.
In other news, Peter Carey's book Wrong about Japan is a dork masterpiece about Carey's totally withdrawn, manga-obsessed son and their voyage to Japan. I intend to learn everything there is to know about otaku, a word sometimes rendered as "passionate obsessive." Which is right up the street of our dorkismo.
Who cannot love a wee lampoon of Matthew Barney. Here is a wonderful parody of the trailer for Drawing Restraint 9, in the manner of What's Up, Tiger Lily? or Fractured Flickers, anyhoo it is sublime ...
I was lucky enough to interview America's second-best air guitarist, Björn Türoque, for my upcoming book Dorkismo. Yes, we knew him when. I will add that Björn really let his hair down for us in this interview! Before the book becomes available, though, you'll be able to enjoy the inimitable artistry of Björn Türoque in Air Guitar Nation, a documentary film coming to a screen near you.
