intellectual properties

Queen of the Sun Screenings in Berkeley

i have followed the news reports on the recent widespread disappearance of feral honey bees as much as i have followed any of the other strange/foreboding yet somehow under-discussed environmental indicators of the past decade. that is to say: i am not one of the people who has been FREAKING OUT about the bees, but i have been concerned.

i am recruiting people to see a screening of this new documentary film The Queen of the Sun, partly because i do have interest in the subject of the bees, but mostly because i so enjoyed the director’s previous film, “The Real Dirt on Farmer John” (netflix/youtube trailer), which i will once again maintain is one of the best documentaries i’ve ever seen whether you care about organic farming or not, and so i believe that this film will be interesting and engaging whether or not you have an interest about the bee situation.

the movie is playing (screening list) at the Roxie in SF March 30 and March 31 (tonight/tomorrow), and will be at the Elmwood Theatre in Berkeley April 8-14. I will be going to one of the Berkeley screenings, probably the weekend of the 8-10th. hit me up if you want to join.

body as universe

“Dr. Kathy…believed in the interpenetrating dance of spine, nervous system, spirit, and cosmos as totality—in the universe as an infinite system of neural connections that had evolved, at its highest point, an organism that could sustain consciousness of both itself and the universe at the same time, such that the human nervous system became the universe’s way of being aware of and thus “accessible [to]” itself…”

-from the brilliant short fiction piece “Backbone” by David Foster Wallace in the 12/7/2011 New Yorker.

an open letter to Lady Gaga

to date, i have not been a Lady Gaga fan. i mean, obviously her visual aesthetics are awesome, but i find her music unbearable. as big of a Madonna fan as i used to be, i find the modern sound of techno-pop unlistenable. i don’t like house music or trance music, and someone singing over it just makes it worse.

but it’s kind of made me a little sad that i don’t like Gaga’s sound, because i want to like the rest of her. i saw her play piano with Elton John at the 2010 Grammys and was like….she CAN play and she CAN sing….so why does her music sound so standard and pop?

Gaga visited Google last week and gave a 1-hour interview. i watched the entire Google goes Gaga video, and have some thoughts and a question for the Lady.

i was impressed by the person i saw in the interview. i would like to be friends with Gaga. obvi we have a mutual love of couture fashion and really BEING a character and costuming. her positive attitude is special and her candid demeanor was attractive. but i am still confused about what feels to me like a disconnect between the artist i see visually and the person i heard speak and the music that comes out in the end.

during the google interview they show this amazing clip of a little girl playing piano and singing Born this Way. she’s right. it’s a beautiful song. i like the messages in her music. the lyrics, albeit cheesy sometimes, are literal and honest. i like that. but again, it’s the SOUND. for example, the Scissor Sisters, who i LOVE LOVE LOVE and have tix to see in SF on 4/15, have been opening for Gaga on this tour, and i think it’s the same kind of thing – campy, cheeky, and dancey but full of message. but their sound to me is much, much more organic and soulful.

Gaga talks about how when she parties with her friends she likes to listen to AC/DC and the like, and there’s a lot of punk rock vibe happening with Gaga. so when i imagine the sound, i imagine something that sounds a lot different than other pop-techno/house-dance music on the air, either more in the direction of Scissor Sisters or in swinging the harder-edge way toward Marilyn Manson or NIN. i imagine something with a more ROCK AND ROLL edge to it. but to me, her sound doesn’t have that edge. Gaga says she co-produces every single track and spends hours and hours in the studio with the sound engineers coming up with exactly what she wants to hear, so i have to believe this is the sound Gaga wants, not something imposed on her by a label/producers because that’s what they think will sell. she says she’s a musician at heart, not a performance artist.

i was thinking about this through the whole 1-hour+ interview, and then she gets to a point where she talks about how women are underestimated and we live with low expectations. and that’s when i was really feeling this disconnect. because to me, she’s playing right into that place. perhaps that’s presumptive of me, and maybe i really just don’t get it.

so my question(s) for Lady Gaga is: do you also feel this dissonance? do you spend a lot of time listening to a lot of other techno-pop/is that the genre you really dance to? if yes, then i guess i understand and it’s just a question of taste/preference. but that’s not the sense i get, that you really connect with other music in this genre. so if not, why isn’t your sound more organic? why aren’t you more rock and roll?

we can be heroes

watch this:

link: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/living/2010/04/01/cnnheroes.krishnan.profile.cnn

and then, for anyone interested and feeling generous (or, like me, maybe wishing i could be so selfless as to give up my job and everything i have to help others), the website for his foundation is http://www.akshayatrust.org/index.php and you can donate here via PayPal: http://www.akshayatrust.org/donation_foreign_currencies.php

i’m certain every little bit counts.

i agree with Glenn Beck

“I’m not saying God is, you know, causing earthquakes — well, I’m not not saying that either. But I’ll tell you this … There’s a message being sent. And that is, ‘Hey you know that stuff we’re doing? Not really working out real well. Maybe we should stop doing some of it.’ I’m just saying.” — Glenn Beck

~via  Glenn Beck is a Message from God

i agree with Glenn Beck. “Hey you know that stuff we’re doing? Not really working out real well. Maybe we should stop doing some of it.”

like cutting social welfare programs and laying off teachers while launching missiles at Libya. not gonna work out real well.

or evangalizing misinformed political theories your television show.  maybe we should stop doing that too.

whether “God was punishing Japan” is ….well….my belief system doesn’t allow for those theories.

anyway, the irony is, that the thing that makes me agree with Glenn Beck – agree that America is no longer what it once was, that American culture is (hopefully reversibly) fundamentally flawed – is that GLENN BECK IS ON TELEVISION and PEOPLE LISTEN TO HIM. that’s what makes me agree with Glenn Beck about the f*d up state of the world and humanity, albeit from polar opposite worldviews.  that Glenn Beck exists. proof in the pudding, right there.

films: on the subject of alternate and/or parallel lives

“the internet is like this new human experience.  at first, everybody’s gonna like it. but there will be a fundamental change in the human condition. one day we’re all gonna wake up and realize we’re just servants.  it’s captured us.”

We Live in Public (IMDB/netflix) – are you reading this on the internet? have you not seen this movie? do you have a facebook account?  do you use a smartphone to “check in” to places and tell the world where you’re at? do you tweet about what you eat? is your life trackable online?  you should watch this movie. especially if the above applies to you and you have also been to burning man.

a biography/documentary of josh harris.  like “The Social Network“, only the crazy slightly sociopathic internet visionary is played by himself and he goes a bit crazier than Zuckerberg with his ideas about how the internet will change humanity, including creation of an underground pod community in NYC just before Y2K where everyone is on TV/broadcast to each other 24/7.  watch trailer.

.::.

Das Wilde Leben aka 8 miles high (IMDB/netflix/wikipedia) – hot german girl Uschi Obermaier joins counterculture community experiment Kommune 1 in west berlin in the late 60s, meets revolutionaries, becomes “it girl”/supermodel, hooks up with the rolling stones, travels the world all gypsylike.  the movie has great scenes and dialog but also sort of cheesy stereotypical 1960s “free love” moments. the actress who plays Uschi is unbelievably hot. fictional biography. in german with subtitles. also super relevant if you have ever been to burning man.

.::.

Leaves of Grass (IMDB/netflix) – in which Edward Norton plays twin brothers who have diverged somewhat stereotypically into a redneck pot farmer and harvard philosophy professor and are reunited under contentious circumstances. i was skeptical (mostly because of a) fake southern accents are hard to take and b) it had a very Doc Hollywood “big shot gets stuck in small town” direction to the script), but i admit the dialogue and acting was above average, and while some moments were easy to see coming, others were totally not.  edward norton fans will LOVE this. as will intellectual potheads.

.::.

i sense a theme here in the movies i’ve watched lately.

fitbit replacement

my fitbit fell off while i was changing and hit a cement floor yesterday and smashed open. little robot guts everywhere – i gasped! and then figured out how to put it back together. it still works but i don’t think it’s recording steps properly – the gyroscope must be out of whack. i’ve had this thing since august and even through burning man i haven’t gone a day without wearing it. i’m attached to it as much as it is attached to me. i use it to see how active i’ve been (only 2000 steps today?? better take a walk….) but i also track my food to make sure i’m getting a good balance of carbs/fat/protein and not eating too much. i don’t track my food every single day, but i know that when i don’t use the online dashboard to track my food, i DEFINITELY eat more. it’s a super helpful tool. or maybe i’m just obsessed.

anyway, i thought about getting a different pedometer/calorie burn counter (like the one they use on Biggest Loser- bodybugg®), but looking online i don’t really see one i like better (mostly i don’t want to wear an armband – the tiny fitbit clip is soooo much better – everyone thinks it’s a flashdrive ), so i’m definitely ordering another one. the good news is that you can now order fitbit through amazon, and there’s no longer a wait!

$3.99/lb

there was a commercial on the radio this morning for ground chuck or some other beef product from Safeway “for only $3.99/lb!”

and all i could think was:

how would you feel, as a sentient being, if you were valued at only $3.99/lb?

i’d be worth less than $500.

what are you worth, per pound?

recent books and movies: the shallow and the deep, the dark and the light

.::. seen .::.

Invictus (IMDB/netflix) : i have to say: i was sort of disappointed.  i get that the myopic focus of the film is specifically on the 1995 Rugby World Cup and how Mandela used the rugby team to unite the nation after Apartheid, but it seemed to me that the focus was a little *too* narrow.  like: south africa was WAY f*ked up at that time, and you only kind of get to see a little bit of that, glossed over. even the Mandela character as played by Morgan Freeman is a little too smooth for me to believe. but still: great story, and if you like sports films it’s probably worth watching just for the rugby scenes.

we also recently (re)watched A Serious Man (IMDB/netflix), and i can’t recommend this film enough. it’s perhaps now my favorite Coen brothers film (although i *did* really like Romance and Cigarettes…) because i just can’t stop thinking about it. the intersection of religious mysticism with quantum physics and personal karma, in a darkly humorous context?…..oh yes. fave line: “I understand the physics. I understand the dead cat.”

Scott Pilgrim vs The World: i never have been a comic book person, so i found parts of this….yawnworthy. but even so, i liked the overall direction the film took and enjoyed it’s unabashed nerdiness. nerdy comic book action + awkward romance film. michael cera. not a lot more to say there.

The Vicious Kind (netflix/IMDB). dark, dark romantic comedy, especially recommended for the uber-cynical among us.

final movie note: all you potheads/Kevin Smith fans out there need to watch Kevin Smith: Too Fat for 40.

.::.read.::.

the YMCA has a book-trading shelf, and i saw this book “Confessions of a Shopaholic“. now, i usually don’t read anything that might be categorized as “chick lit”, but given my currently limited cash flow i’ve been thinking a lot about my own shopaholic tendencies lately, and plus i needed something light to read on the plane (i cannot read heavy material while traveling), so i picked it up. (oh, apparently this was also made into a film in 2009.  like “Eat Pray Love” (read last year), i am sure the film is TERRIBLE.  i am talking about the book.) i am sort of embarrassed to admit how much i enjoyed this book. first: i related to the shopaholic tendencies (and yes i am aware that i often post avidly NON-CONSUMERIST items here, but indeed that is highly driven by my own consumer pitfalls and struggles and those posts are as much a reminder to myself as anyone else), and second, the career aspect.  the 2nd level story here is that this woman is doing a job she’s decent at but totally unmotivated to cultivate into a career, caring only that it provides her with a paycheck to go shopping with, until …. well i’ll leave the spoiler out.  but let’s just say i could relate. a little too much. not sure if i have any interest in reading more novels by this author or not.

i finished that while in Michigan, so to make up for reading such fluff, for the trip back i raided my mother’s collection of Kurt Vonnegut novels and chose “A Man Without a Country“.  now i am also embarrassed to admit (particularly since he is my mother’s favorite author) that i’ve never read any of Vonnegut’s novels, but after reading this quasi-memoir you can bet i will.  i was laughing before i even finished the first page, and the unapologetic treatment of such controversial and sensitive topics as the bombing of Dresden (for which he was present as a WWII soldier and based Slaughterhouse-Five on) and 9/11 is priceless. most of the book was originally published as long screeds in the alt publication In These Times, and you can read most of this novel in a less curated form on their website. warning: the satire is left-leaning to the point of falling over, but in this case i do not see that as a fault.

non sequitur: fasting

for reasons i won’t go into right now, on certain days i have an inordinate amount of time on my hands, and i often just start reading wikipedia entries on things that i’ve recently heard talk of or seen referenced that i realize i don’t actually know much about.  like Lent.

reading about Lent led me to reading about fasting, which i was also thinking about because some friends of ours are restricting their diets of starches, not because they have any malady, but as yet another nutritional experiment (possibly related to the recent phenomenon of the 4-Hour Body.)  it’s one of the quirky things that always amuses me about the bay area: all the fasting and dietary experimentation that goes on amongst the hippies and hipsters. it’s like a hobby around here, depriving oneself of things and proclaiming certain foods “bad”.  since when are carrots bad for you?  i always think of that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer becomes a minimalist and declares “You know what I discovered? I really like depriving myself of things. It’s fun.”

disclosure: for a couple of years i did attempt to fast on Thanksgiving day as a way to express my gratitude for food, but it turns out i am prone to hypoglycemia and so any attempt at fasting – even juice fasting – has always failed for me. also: this is not cynical. i find the practice of self-imposed restrictions interesting and a worthwhile endeavor in this land of excess and plenty; i am not begrudging it. i am amused.

anyway, the wikipedia article on fasting omits mentions of it being a pastime for the hippie-bourgeois-foodie contingent on the West Coast of the United States. it focuses on the intersection of religion and fasting, which i found quite enthralling, particularly when i got to the orthodox Christan section:

For Eastern Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Christians, fasting is an important spiritual discipline, found in both the Old Testament and the New, and is tied to the principle in Orthodox theology of the synergybody (Greek: between the soma) and the soul (pnevma). That is to say, Orthodox Christians do not see a dichotomy between the body and the soul but rather consider them as a united whole, and they believe that what happens to one affects the other (this is known as the psychosomatic union between the body and the soul).

well that definitely jibes with all the yogi-fasting-tribal-ritualistic-hippie talk i hear around here, but although i grew up in a very Christian town -protestants and catholics alike – no one i knew ever fasted a full day in their lives that i was aware of, and this reverence for body-mind connection was never discussed in my church that i recall (outside of some being teetotalers). yet it seems if you read the bible closely enough and take its instructions literally, as many followers do, you should be fasting (or preparing to fast) MOST OF THE TIME.

i guess the nugget that stuck with me is that for a supposedly “christian nation”, most have managed to ignore the biblical bits about mindful and grateful eating and the body as a temple for the soul, and instead we have a land of processed fast food and an obesity epidemic.

oh, and this: “Moses fasted for forty days and forty nights, twice back-to-back, without food or water; the first, immediately before he received the tablets on the mountain with God. And the second, after coming down, seeing the Israelites practicing idolatry, and breaking the tablets in anger.”

well, isn’t that some interesting context.  i might see/talk to God after climbing to a mountaintop if i hadn’t eaten for 40 days too.