Friday, December 31, 2010

Extra Extra This Just In: More Cat Names and Other Cat-Related News

That's right, the post-it on the fridge is full. What post-it you ask? Why, it's the "Names For Cats," an on-going list I keep of the names I call my cats, names that are not their birth names. They probably don't even know their names (Tomago and Oshinko). Looking at this current batch, you'll see that some of the names are addressed to both of them at once and then also you'll see that some of them are for them individually. Tomago is fat and cute. Oshinko, his sister, is skinny and cute. So here we go:

Snack & Snack Incorporated
Monsieur Mushy Belly
Mushy Pickle
Picklepuss
Puddin' Pop
Pontius Pudding
Puddin' Puss

Now I'll start a new post-it to put on the fridge. Just in time for 2011. Happy new year, my liddle kitties! Yeah, that's right, Mr. Spellcheck On My Computer! "Liddle!" Because that's how I pronounce it. Phonetic this, Blog Speller!

With snappy weird non-sensical one-liners like that I should write for Hollywood blockbuster films.

Also: the word phonetic is NOT spelled phonetically. Oh, the irony.

Also! This year I listened to a bit more Cheap Trick (how did I not get in to them earlier? They've got some really great stuff -- it takes someone else to have it in their collection to expose me to it), and because I never look at song titles, every time I hear the song "''Elo Kiddies" I think they're saying "Hello Kitty." Ha ha ha ha.

I have to imagine I am NOT the first person to think this, based on a few things I've found on the web, including this one:


Someone who works in CEOtrends was writing about this? How funny.

Hapy new year! Resolutions?

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Britney Wanted to Know If I Got a Lump of Coal

Well, OK, maybe not me specifically:



Britney decorated her house and it looks sort of nice:


I celebrated Xmas Brit-style with a gift from Joe:


Slim-fit tee? Who are they kidding?! 

Monday, December 13, 2010

The Science-fiction Reality Inquiry of Perfume Commercials


So! I got the Curious Britney Spears fragrance set.  I dared. Well, actually, my brother and sister-in-law dared to give me the set. It was a holiday gift.

It is an exhilarating white floral wrapped in the sensuality of vanilla-infused musk. Well, that's what britneyspearsbeauty.com, the official fragrance site for BRITNEY SPEARS™ products has to say about it. I think the smell of it is fruity and kind of more adult-y smelling than the other Britney Spears perfumes. By adult-y I mean that it smells like something that when I was a kid I imagined adult perfume would smell like. I do actually have another Curious perfume of Brit's but it was a precursor to this version of Curious. That one was all about pink packaging. This one is all mostly a blue theme, with occasional pink, and lots of black.

So this is the Curious one I got, pictured here.

This is the one I already had, pictured here. A tiny tiny tiny picture!


My fave of Brit's scents is Believe. FYI.

But! I have not tried the newer ones, like the Circus line or Radiance Line.

I mean, I like this one too, but really, the best one is Believe. That one was more musky. The smell and the color of the packaging makes me think of her Slave 4 U era, like kinda spicy and pheromone-y. Also the color of the Believe stuff was the same green she wore for her famous MTV awards where she danced holding a boa, and they recreated part of that when Glee did the Brittany/Britney episode. Lots of green.

I like this incarnation of Curious stuff too, but I doubt anybody around me would be titillated if they smelled it on me. Still, it is pleasant. Some of the words and phrases britneyspearsbeauty.com used to describe this line of fragrance include:

Louisiana magnolia
Anjou pear
lotus
tuberose
star jasmine
sandalwood

I guess I can detect the magnolia. At least, what I imagine magnolia smells like. Pear? Don't know about that one. Not sure I can detect any hints of that. I thought maybe I'd notice it more when I used the "Curious Lather Me Up! Shower Gel." But no, I didn't sense any Anjou pear. Mostly I have just been poofing out sprays from the atomizer and sniffing the air. Or lightly misting it and then moving my head around where I just sprayed. Why am I not spraying it on myself? Because I don't want to smell like a hooker. But oh! I love atomizers! I can't stop playing with it. It's a poofy thing that I can poof! Poof! It has the dangling little tsi-tsis hanging on the end like on the pink Curious bottle too! How luxurious. Anyway, lotus, well, I like the way lotuses look and I know I've definitely had them in food before (and Asian pastries) but I'm not sure I would recognize it in a fragrance. Star jasmine! I didn't know there were different types of jasmine. How exotic! And sandalwood. Makes me remember my days working at The Body Shop. I got really into dewberry when I was there and when I went to college my friends told me that they could smell when I was somewhere before they were there because I wore that much of it, like they'd say "Were you in the student union quad earlier? Because i think I smelled you." Many people have told me that I put on too much scent when I wear perfume. I guess it's because I can't smell myself after a while. (Or you get used to the scent, which makes sense considering when I would go into to work at The Body Shop, it always smelled awesome when I came in to work but then since I was immersed in it all day I couldn't smell it after a while.) I know this sounds crazy but I love it when people wear too much perfume or cologne. That smells good to me. Maybe that's another reason why I overdo it.

Anyway, even though I personally like the Curious stuff, reactions from critics are mixed.

If by "reactions from critics are mixed" you mean reactions from a test audience composed of one of my cats who smelled it and left the room and a roommate who pronounced "That smells like a French whore. A cheap French whore," then yes, reactions from critics are mixed.

My response to being told that I smelled like a French whore was: "I like it. What do you not like about it? Lots of people liked it in 2004. It was actually the top selling perfume of that year." Also I read somewhere on the internet that as of this very moment, her beauty products are the top selling perfume products in the world.

My roommate responded, "Because of the marketing. That's why you like it. Lots of people eat at McDonald's. You think it's because they have good food? Go wear your synthetic ambergris outside! Quit trying to make excuses for this cheap whore you're so obsessed with!" Then he went to bed.

I thought "Mom, what WAS the marketing for Curious like when it came out?" I went and rewatched the commercial for it on You Tube (I say rewatched because once I watched it I realized I'd seen it before.) You can watch it here if you need to consult it (I know you're really dying to go watch a Britney Spears perfume commercial):


If you watch it you may recognize that plot acceleration device used in commercials and movies, where they show two people meeting and a potential "what if we followed this thread?" montage sequence in fast-forward for about 10 seconds, and then they go back to the present. I saw it once on a commercial (for what I don't remember), where a girl and a guy who have never met see each other in the elevator and you see them both, eyes locked, in the span of a few seconds, go through in their heads a rapid-fire succession of images that imply they date, get married, have kids, etc. And then it shoots back to them in the elevator in the present. Also, I've seen this device used in an episode of Doctor Who where they do this sort of flash-montage sequence of showing the tenth doctor as a human (not a Timelord -- long story), and he's married to this human woman, and in the span of a few seconds you see them raising kids, growing old together and then him on his death bed, satisfied, thanking his wife for his life with her -- but then it flashes back to him in real time, and in this instance, based on what you know about the situation at hand, the viewer is made to think of this particular instance with this plot device, "Ah, the life that will never be." Spoiler? Sorry.

Ah, the potentially thwarted future history plot device. I am a TOTAL sucker for that. That shit just pulls me right in.

I am also reminded of the scene at the beginning of Slacker2 with the guy in the backseat of the cab doing this monologue (I think it was the director, Richard Linklater himself) about his thoughts on the what-if-each-thought-had-its-own-reality? type of premise.

It seems that if we expanded the concept of "Here's-what-this-reality-would-have-been" to include things other than the accelerated "potential time line" montage, we also have entire movies based around exploring that alternate reality. I can already imagine a lot of things that belong to that category, like immediately I think of those "good will to all" novels and movies where the main character is in some way shown what the world would be like without them, like It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol1, and an episode of Buffy where they show a Sunnydale without Buffy's ever having been there; her two best friends had been turned into vampires, and that was interesting. [Sidenote: What I like about vampires on Buffy is that most of the vampires were gross and not particularly sexy when they were doing their vampire-y activities. Is it like that in other vampire-y things in vogue right now? I don't know, I never really got into vampire movies and have only read the sort of canonical vampire-y stuff that good high school goths in training do, like Anne Rice etc.] In last month's Bust there was an article about the difference between vampires and werewolves, and that it was essentially a class difference; vampires are often portrayed as upper class and werewolves sort of represented the lower class, and they had all these examples to back up the assertion, but of course I can't remember much of it, although they did talk about vampires drinking out of goblets in castles and werewolves would be more likely to wear a shirt that says "Mustache rides" on it.)

I watched the commercial twice. Then I couldn't help but click on some of the other links: other Britney commercials for other fragrances, fan-posted cell phone movies from Britney's Circus tour, and make-up tutorials from a lot of women, my fave being a charming Welsh woman with the best accent ever demonstrating how to emulate Britney's eye makeup from the Hidden Fantasy Perfume commercial (I have seen a number of YouTube videos of different woman doing Britney Spears makeup demonstrations. I love that it's always in a messy room.)

Anyway, Britney’s newest fragrance commercial is for Radiance, which has some of the following characteristics: white flowers, amber, musk, tuberose, jasmine, orange flower and iris. The key for me on this one is that even though I haven’t actually smelled it I bet I would like it because it has orange flower scent in it and I looooooove orange flower water. In fact, just earlier today I had some orange flower water on some strawberries. How Moroccan of me. Orange flower water is like Dr. Brommer’s, you can use it for anything and put it on anything, and all it does for you is good.

Interesting that the commercial for Radiance shows Brit escaping from a pap crowd and going in to a fortuneteller who asks her if she wants to know her future and she declines, adding “I choose my own destiny.” I find this interesting in light of the discussion about alternate realities. The slogan for the product is “Choose your own destiny”,” which reminds me of that scene in The Matrix where Neo goes to see the oracle and she tells him “You’ll remember that you don’t believe in fate” or whatever. She also tells him to have a cookie.


1 I saw Slacker when I was in high school. Watching it more recently I was much more intrigued by it, mostly because of that monologue in the beginning, having realized that what that monologue really was, which was that was a set-up for the premise of the film. During that opening monologue, he talks about a dream he had on the bus, that it wasn't really about anything in particular, but just people talking and reading. He said something to the effect that each reality is competing, thinking it's THE REAL reality, and when we dream, really what we're dreaming is bleed through from the other reality. The implication is that throughout the movie, one scene/conversation ends at the same destination where another one is picked up, and in this the way, the movie becomes more than a stream-of-consciousness but a series of decisions to follow a certain reality at any given moment, depending on who walks by, and in that way, the audience infers "this is the reality we pick at this moment, but certainly those other realities are happening elsewhere." When seen through the lens of that consideration, the movie is much more interesting to me. Also, Slacker is funnier than I remember it being. I don't think I understood at the time why the movie was called Slacker but I get it now. I've always been too much of a type A personality to get into the psychology of the notion of the "slacker" as realized in that sort of Gen X-Coupland-intelligent-but-lazy archetype definition, but there are times where I admit that I am Type A about certain things and not Type A about others.

2 What's with all the Xmas alternate-reality things?

Monday, November 29, 2010

I Am a Sucker For the Pop Star Bildungsroman


This is how I spent my afternoon. It was dark when I came out of the theater. Winter sucks.

It's opening week for Burlesque, the Christina Aguilera/Cher vehicle. I saw it today with my movie club, a group of friends that get together to watch movies that pop stars make (which got started with watching Cool As Ice, the Vanilla Ice movie). The trick is that the movie only qualifies if it was made after the pop star got famous. I was interested to see how Burlesque fit into the recent model of the genre, if you want to call it a genre.

It seems to me that it used to be that pop star movies were all about the protagonist already being famous but having to deal with that fame, such as Rick Springfield's 1984 movie Hard to Hold, the madcap musical adventures of the Spice Girls in Spice World (which was pretty much the Spice Girls in A Hard Day's Night), or maybe you might make a case for Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan. Or sometimes pop stars were in biopics of someone else (Madonna in Evita or maybe you might make a case for J-Lo in Selena -- although that was more of a breakout role for her, so I don't know if that movie qualifies). Sometimes pop stars make a ridiculous movie of the genre I enjoy with my friends like Mariah Carey in Glitter but then almost disappointingly they go on to make a film where they actually are pretty good, like Mariah Carey was in Precious (or so I am told; I haven't actually seen Precious).


Most of the above mentioned movies with pop stars are not quite the same as the movies with pop stars with the Hollywood bildungsroman story arc, which are the ones I like the best. They usually document a naive yet spunky and talented youth, who ends up leaving the small town to "make it" in the big city. We watch them clumb up from rags to riches on a journey into success and fame, sometimes paying some sort of price for their sacrifices. The specific ways in which these plot developments unfold may differ, but those certain conventions are usually present. Usually the protagonist has had a sad upbringing, and is usually impoverished and troubled (Glitter or Burlesque). You usually see early on that they have some kind of raw and untrained talent: Britney Spears sang to Madonna albums in her bedroom in Crossroads so that viewers understand she knows how to sing, Christina Aguilera sang along with some sassy tune cleaning up after hours at work so the audience understands that she has higher aspirations than waiting on tables, and so on. There's always some defining moment where the protagonist uses their pluckiness to show their talent to the right person who makes the big decisions, proving they've "got what it takes," and they're given a chance to prove themselves; maybe the usual performer at the bar is sick and the protagonist jumps at the chance to strut their stuff (Burlesque).

The end of the movie will have some payoff, whether it's reconciling with foes (Purple Rain), saving-the-bar against uncertain demolition (Burlesque), bravely standing up to one's elders (Crossroads), etc. Although I have never actually seen Eminem's 8 Mile, there is no doubt in my mind that there's some you've-got-one-chance to-prove-yourself-by-rapping-in-front-of-a-massive-audience finale scene.

Also, I am always interested in seeing how the careers of Britney and Xtina parallel, since they are pretty much each other's peers going back to MMC. (And then also with Justin Timberlake -- does Britney ever feel he's the one that got away?) Anyway, I could't help when I saw this picture of Xtina in Burlesque, think of Britney in the video for "Circus." If you look at the pictures, I think you'll see what I mean.

Christina in Burlesque.
Britney in Circus.

So people are all into the old-timey stuff these days, which I quite like. I heard that Xtina's most recent album Bionic didn't do so well (they tried to Lady Gaga her up with being kind of like a crazy fashionista weirdo thing which is not her style, and then they also tried to do all that mechanical steampunky android science-fiction stuff with her, and of course that didn't work either because that's also not her style too) -- and I'm told that it was all kind of disasterous for her. Or at least that's what I inferred from the the way they talked about it on Sound Opinions. The truth is that I haven't even heard anything on the Bionic album, at least not knowingly. Maybe I'll go scope it out just out of curiosity.


I did hear someone speculate that Burlesque was supposed to be an attempt to revive Xtina's career, which is interesting, because it actually seems a bit late for a pop star like her to making this type of movie in her career, it being such that when pop stars make those movies with the rags to riches get famous movies, it's usually after just a couple albums. Or maybe I'm only thinking of the fact that Britney Spears made her version of the pop-star-story movie Crossroads eight years ago, and both Xtina and Brit are pretty much peers. On the other hand, Crossroads was hardly a movie with the same type of dancing and singing that was featured so heartily in Burlesque.

All this is to say that I was almost disappointed that I kind of liked the movie even though it was strangely saccharine for a movie that was so sexy. Also, there was of course some cringeworthy stuff as you would expect -- one scene I am thinking of specifically is one in which Cher performs a ballad lamenting the potential loss of her dear burlesque club, that was pretty er, well let's just say it was The Greatest Love of All fed through a St. Elmo's Fire (Man In Motion) processor. And the scene was almost gratuitously emotional the way the camera falls on the DJ's resigned sigh as he turns off the stereo at the end of the song with a pensive nod of sympathy. I did actually burst out laughing. So there was that. But the singing and dancing scenes were actually pretty amazing.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Boy Am I Glad I Wasn't Raised In An Orphanage Training Me For A Life In the Chinese Opera

...Unlike Jackie Chan, whose autobiography I read, which is I Am Jackie Chan: My Life In Action by Jackie Chan with Jeff Yang (Ballentine Books), 1998.
Action hero Jackie Chan is known for being a guy who does his own stunts in his movies. I like that he has a hilarious kinesthetic sense of humor, and I can see how he claims that he was influenced by Buster Keaton, who also did a lot of his own stunts. (Full disclosure: I have only seen a few snippets of Buster Keaton, so it's not like I can make some sort of cultured observation. But -- from the very little that I know of Buster Keaton I would venture to say that Jackie Chan has been influenced by him.)
Jackie Chan had it hard growing up. His parents were so poor that they basically sold him into indentured servitude to this school that taught students how to perform in the Chinese opera. That’s a type of traditional theater that incorporates among other things, acrobatics and martial arts. At this school he was tortured with corporeal punishment, starvation and various other unbelievable things, all this the whole time he was growing up. It was hard to read because it was an abusive orphanage. I should have read this when I was growing up and I would have been at least happier knowing that no matter how long I was grounded for, at least I wasn't undergoing what Jackie Chan went through. 
This book is more heartbreaking than egotistical but I would have liked it much more if he was preposterous. I find that MORE compelling. Maybe the fact that I tend to enjoy salaciously egotistic celebrity autobiographies the most is that I am a disgraceful person.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Because If It's Not In an Outline Format I Can't Understand It

If making plans are intricate for something than I need to have it laid out in a preposterous outline format, or I just know I'll leave out the details. Lately I have come to hear myself frequently say, "I can't talk about this without my notes," or "I am useless without my calendar." I swear to you, this is an e-mail I actually sent to family members (with names changed, like anybody cares really, but I feel like I should change them, which is silly, but you know, whatever), with the subject heading "Holiday Plans Ridiculously Outlined In an Almost MLA-like Format."


Holiday Plans
I. Nov 27th: We are all getting together on Sat, Nov 27th. Is that when we're celebrating Hanukah (since Hanukah starts Dec 2nd) or my dad's b-day? In my planner I wrote "Hanukah." But then my dad's b-day being the 29th, my brother speculated that perhaps Nov 27th might be when we're celebrating my dad's b-day? So now I need some clarification because I am easily confused. It's amazing I get anything done really.
II. Dec 5th: We are all getting together Sunday, Dec 5th. Is that for Hanukah or my dad's b-day?
III. Meal Clarification: Which meals are both of these events for? I asked to work the early shift on Sat, Nov 27th so I could leave early and meet up for dinner. Sunday Dec 5th is more flexible for me.
  A. Reservations: Have any reservations already been made at any restaurants? If not, my brother volunteered to make them.
     1. If they have been made, where should we meet and when?
  B. Reservation-related details: If they have not been made, here are questions my brother requested to have answered to make said reservations:
      1. Does dad have a prefereance where he wants to go?
      2. How many people should he make the reservation for?
  
If you need me I'll be in the office supply section of Office Depot.

I feel like maybe I should expand this into some ridiculous flash fiction thing. Using gimmicky devices for short fiction pieces seems like it's all the rage right now. Book blurbs that tell a story! Stereo instructions that tell a story! FAQ's that tell a story! My butt! It tells a story!

Oh! Someone better go tell McSweeney's!

Monday, November 15, 2010

I Will Celebrate By Accepting Your Sacrifice of Small Gifts and Candy

I have a meting tomorrow for this alternative comics fest here in Chicago that I'm helping plan because we meet on Tuesday nights and tomorrow we're settling on the place we're going to have the tabling at. One of my cohorts circulated a reminder e-mail to remind everybody about the importance of tomorrow's meeting. When I confirmed it was in my datebook, I couldn't help noticing in my datebook that tomorrow is also the Muslim holiday Eid-al-Adha that commemorates the willingness of Abraham sacrificing his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God before God provided a ram to sacrifice instead. I recognized this story, because that's the story I read out of the Torah at my bat mitzvah as a Jewish pre-teen. And I got to thinking about the insanity of that story. What kind of story is that to read at a coming of age ceremony?! How is that helpful?! That if you lay down your life for God he'll give you a ram and then ask you to kill it? WTF, God?

What I would really like is if at someone's bar or bat mitzvah they were all, "You know what? Now that I'm considered an adult I would just ike to say, I think Judiasm is bullshit. But I will take any gifts or money that you can give me for turning 13. Also, please sign the enlarged picture of me in my soccer uniform. Diyanu!"

However, in honor of the holiday, I said that I would only come to the meeting if someone sacrificed something to me. I sent around an e-mail to the Google Group for the committee reminding everybody that I would accept candy, dollar bills, and other small gifts. I also said that people could come clean my house, which is also perfectly acceptable.

Mazol tov to me I am now a woman. Checks can be made out to "Liz Mason."


Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Poor Baby Playlist

Songs about being a celebrity are hilarious to me. In case you want a playlist, I have included a screenshot of one I compiled in my I-Tunes called “Poor Baby: The Trials of Being a Celebrity.” The tracks include pop songs that vary in degrees and opinions about being famous. A number of them pretty much say “poor me, the life of being a celebrity is so hard” and then other songs communicate the braggadocio of rap artists: “Announcement of my arrival! Make way for me!” This is by no means a comprehensive list. What else should I add? Why am I so interested in this?



Monday, November 8, 2010

OK GO Clean It Up and Avril Lavigne's Clothes

So after last night's post about the mash-up potential of Willow Smith's video for "Whip My Hair" vs J. Geils Band's "Freeze Frame" video, someone told me about the OK Go video for "This Too Shall Pass" and I watched it in it's Rube Goldberg-ian glory, and it is pretty awesome. And as usual, the comments for it from viewers are AWESOME. So it's the whole video of contraptions knocking things over etc., which I'm sure made a huge glorious mess. And then here's the best comment:


OK Go clean it up




Anyway, I was amused by both video and the comments as usual. I did take a picture of the paint-related part too, since I'm beginning to see a "paint-splattervision" theme in music videos. Interesting.




Also! I noticed at the end of the video it said Brought to you by (or was it "sponsored by" or maybe just "State Farm Insurance" with a logo?). Poetic/humerous/ironic but probably on purpose in some clever marketing angel kind of a way. But! I don't care, it's an awesome video.

I'm almost done with my next issue of my zine Caboose, and I am proud to leak some of the few rejected images I'm not using in this next issue. And it will give a good overview of some of the things in this issue.


Why are they tags from Avril Lavigne's Abbey Dawn clothing line at Kohl's, you ask? Because I did a clothing product line review/creative non-fiction piece about the Candie's Britney Spears clothing line at Kohl's. Avril Lavigne's clothes at Kohl's are 13 racks down. And because I am pretty much maxed out at the maturity of a teenager in terms of my clothing tastes, I am interested in both lines. How arty of me to scan in these tags in black and white. And why did I spend $40 on this skirt? And then there's a ridiculous shirt to go with it. I know, I know, I can barely pay my bills. Hey, it's for the sake of art. I was writing about it! I couldn't just NOT buy them. Um yeah. I'll just keep telling myself that.

So here's me dressed up in Avril Lavigne clothes. But first a picture of her so you have an appropriate reference photo. I think I tried more to communicate essence more than actual pose. Enjoy! You're welcome! Sleep tight! Zzzzz...Are you sleeping? Wake up! Wake up! Look at me in Avril LAvigne clothes! Really! Really! Look at me! I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you, la la la la!








Go back to bed now!



Sunday, November 7, 2010

Willow Smith Is Pretty Much the J. Geils Band

So after I saw that Britney Spears had tweeted how she thought that Willow Smith was so cute, I -- oh wait a minute, back up. OK, so Willow Smith is the daughter of Will and Jada-Pinkett Smith (who is spelling what right here? I don't know. Or care.) Right OK, so Willow has that song "Whip My Hair." In case you're wondering what the lyrics are, I took a picture of the lyrics of a random spot in the song, you know, just to fill you in. You know, to get you up to speed.



You get the idea.

So OK,  Britney Spears had tweeted:



OK, so I went and watched the video, because I was interested because of Britney, but then also I had read some kind of other headline somewhere that was all like, "Britney Whips Her Hair" which is weird, I was like "Are they trying to say Britney Spears made an exasperated gesture?"...So that explained her Tweet. OK, so anyway, I'm watching the video and is this girl singing about whipping her hair and being pretty much just, bein' sassy, and I think I might even have heard her say "swagger" in it somewhere. Does she have a swagger coach? I need a swagger coach. I think Justin Bieber has a swagger coach. Or how about a swagger couch? I can sit on this couch and just sort of swagger while I sit... OK! But! So! Anyway!

The first thing I thought about was that the video for "Whip My Hair" was interesting because it had this classical dystopian feel of there being no color used, just black and white clothing and furniture, etc. Here's a picture of part of it:



You know, like all like Brave New Classroom or something. But then the minute the singing starts, there's rebellious dancing and singing with kids' hair splaying paint around and like, you know, the singer of this song is our savior etc. etc. etc. And then it's like how in Pleasantville there was the whole thing about a society/world all black and white, and then color starts to creep in, and that affects the world, symbolism symbolism and so on. And that feels weird to me too because of how loaded the word "color" or "colored" is in terms of skin tone, race, etc. ANYWAY, so the real point I'm getting to here is a point that is unrelated to any of this discussion about any of these bigger issues. My point is that the video for "Whip My Hair" is pretty much the  same as the video for "Freeze Frame" by J. Geils Band.

OK, so here's "Whip My Hair" by Willow Smith:




"Freeze Frame" by J. Geils Band










A regular Jackson Pollack fest around these parts.

Might I also add that the comments people put after things on You Tube are hilarious, sometimes better than the videos themselves? When is someone going to do a book of just those? In two minutes, and it will be me. My favorite quote for the "Freeze Frame" video someone left was this:


I remember,back in 1993 I used to work in Fitchburg,Ma pumping gas after school. The bass player would come by all the time.I used to get all funny feeling, I asked him "you played bass for the J Geils band huh?" He said yeah. I don't think he knew how much I thought of him and the band.


Awesome.