A look at today’s MSN Homepage reveals a varied representation of either the nadir or the zenith of our socio-political media culture, depending on which way you hold the chart. This sort of thing would normally upset me, but I am too busy looking up the location of the nearest IHOP to care.
The six weeks before Paris Fashion Week are now marked as the time wherein the fashion world is rocked to its core after last year’s January suicide of Alexander McQueen and this year’s career suicide of John Galliano.
After video of him declaring “I Love Hitler” and “People like you would be dead. Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be fucking gassed,” was released by The Sun yesterday, Sidney Toledano has fired John Galliano from his post as head designer at Dior. The irony that, he too, would have been subjected to Hitler’s wrath under Paragraph 175 of Germany’s 1871 penal code (banning sodomy), seems to be lost on Mr. Galliano, who is openly gay.
Dior’s spokeswoman, Natalie Portman, spoke out against the designer stating that “I am deeply shocked and disgusted by the video of John Galliano’s comments that surfaced today…In light of this video, and as an individual who is proud to be Jewish, I will not be associated with Mr. Galliano in any way.” Ms. Portman also protested the designer at the Oscars by wearing a dress by Rodarte, whom was responsible for a number of the costumes in the movie Black Swan for which she won the Oscar for Best Actress. Mr. Toledano, President and CEO of Dior, released a statement saying “I condemn most firmly the statements made by John Galliano which are a total contradiction with the essential values that have always been defended by the House of Christian Dior.”
Rumor has it that Dior has been looking for a reason to fire Galliano after a series of collections that have received middling reviews and comments regarding repetition, but the timing of this incident couldn’t be worse as Paris fashion week ramps up. There’s no word yet on whether the industry will boycott the Dior and Galliano shows, but given that Dior is too important and that they fired Mr. Galliano, it seems safe to believe that the industry will forgive the famed house. They are, however, much less likely to do the same for Galliano’s eponymous label for which there is currently some speculation as to whether or not that particular show will be canceled altogether.
One thing is for certain, fashion has lost its King and there will be a brouhaha in the coming month over who LVMH will decide to replace Galliano. The safe bets are on any acclaimed French or British designer, but wouldn’t it be grand if say, Rei Kawakubo or, more scandalously, an American, was hired?
Update: Title by Momof3WildKids
I love modern society. Charlie Sheen claims that he is a winner at life. The French are shocked – SHOCKED! – that there is anti-semitism within their borders. And the Oscars stunk. Not because Anne Hathaway had a bad case of dramaqueenitis. Not because James Franco spent the evening somewhere in the upper reaches of the ionosphere.
According to Andy Cohen of Bravo!, the Oscars stunk because of children. Public school children. In choruses. Wearing tee-shirts. And behaving like children.
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The pearls of wisdom roll in after the 3-minute mark. “There was a thing called ‘Up With People’ in the ’70s or ’80s. Here’s what: Oscar night is not about Up With People. Like, I don’t need to see that. It was just bad. It was just awful. It was horrible.” Now this is a man I can get behind. Screw you, optimism!
And the solution: kill the children. “A public school chorus singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” I literally — if I wasn’t going to go out to some parties I would have slit ’em right then. It was the worst. I was looking for a knife to stick in my eyes, it was so terrible.”
And the Academy Award for Best Performance By A Douchebag goes to Andy Cohen for his portrayal of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho III: I Want To Slit The Throats Of School Kids.
Personally, I can’t think of anything better than a rich white man telling a group of kids from the crappier sections of Staten Island that “You just ruined everything.” Yeah, and those public school teachers need a paycut. I’m sick and tired of them drinking Cristal at after hours clubs and being chauferred to work in Maybachs.
UPDATE: Because of a lot of “Who the heck are these kids and why did they sing at the Oscars” flying around the Net, I did a little reading (at their website). The Chorus has been written up a lot of times over the last 5 years. They hit it big when one of their YouTube performances of a Tori Amos song was sent to Perez Hilton, who loved it and posted it. It wound up getting well over a million hits.
An excerpt from a NYT article on them:
“And Mr. Breinberg [a/k/a Mr. B, the chorus’ director], in turn, seems to feel a deep affection for his singers. ‘There’s a great feeling in seeing these kids — some of whom have been abused, neglected, who have nothing to look forward to when they get home — and knowing that when they come in to my class to sing, you can just see the depth of their emotional experience come through,’ he said.”
They’re also part of the “Save The Music” type efforts to keep music and arts programs in public schools (often first on the chopping block).
It really gives perspective to whom exactly Andy Cohen was shitting on. I’ve got no problem with him having an opinion. I do tend to draw a line on publicly dumping on children. You don’t have to like the kids or the performance but taking to the national airwaves to tell a group of lower and middle class 10 year-olds “You ruined the Oscars for everyone” borders on sociopathic. Especially given the oeuvre that is The Real Housewives Of…
On the racial front, look at the 2011 Oscar lineup. The winner was The King’s Speech (about as white, rich, and privileged as it gets). Of the nominees, only Javier Bardem was a minority. It was a lily-white ceremony with lily-white presenters honoring lily-white subjects where the only “black” nominated was Black Swan.
Try not to break anything while fist-pumping to this video.
Seriously, is there anything cooler than the 1:12 mark when you see the sub go underwater? Someone should fix up one of those old ships and charge people to go out into the ocean and just blast those machine guns up into the air. I would pay good money to do that.
I’ve had several people email me and say things like “I just heard the word episiotomy for the first time” or “I didn’t know that your face blew up into craters when you were pregnant!”. The emails invariably end with the phrase “Nobody told me that.”
Indeed. That is part of the gestation initiation: There’s a whole bunch of stuff they don’t tell you before you get pregnant. Then, when you’re pregnant, slowly, the mysteries of gestation and birth are revealed to you. It’s highly unsettling and, I think, a little bit unfair. There should be a bit more disclosure for the potential recruits. I doubt knowledge will change much. Most people will still have kids anyway, thinking “I’ll be the exception to the rule”. Knowledge doesn’t stop lots of people from having second or third children. Look at Michelle Duggar. There can’t be much she doesn’t know at this point and it’s no deterrent for her.
In the interests of full disclosure, here are a few things about pregnancy no one ever tells you about. Some might happen to you, others won’t. However, at least two of them will.
Yes, the people around you turn into standup comedians and they all recycle the same jokes. I firmly believe this is at the root of all pregnant women’s grouchiness. The swelling, the exhaustion – these are all things a person can cope with. However 9,878 jokes about the same damn thing will make a woman want to slap everyone she sees. Fortunately, people will write any and all bitchy comments you make off to pregnancy crazies so feel free to tell people to go to hell. For once, you can get away with it.
There are many, many more untold stories of pregnancy, birth, and child rearing. I’ve barely scraped the surface. Unfortunately, I got so annoyed thinking about all the irritating jokes that I’m going to need a glass of wine to calm myself down and think clearly again.
London Fashion Week always gets the shaft. New York is first, Milan and Paris are bigger, and London is wedged among them, shorter than the rest and generally a bit maligned. Over the past few season, though, London fashion has had a few things working in its favor, namely its growing and talented crop of young designers. After a bit of a lackluster showing in New York, the vibrance and enthusiasm of the clothes from across the pond were a needed reminder of just how much fun fashion can be.
There are a few big names on this list, most notably Christopher Bailey for Burberry and Vivienne Westwood, the grande dame of British fashion, but the week’s true standouts were the smaller shows full of colors, prints and new ideas. The old trope of youth being wasted on the young doesn’t seem to be true for London’s next generation of designers; these collections felt urgent and directional instead of neophytic and tentative. American fashion should take notice, because the British are coming.
If we can agree on nothing else, let us at least agree to agree that POLITICO (All caps, please. K THX) is absolutely terrible. Politico is the Qadaffi of websites. No… Politico is the Charlie Sheen of websites. Unhinged, incomprehensible, obsessed with meaningless bullshit and you need a chlamydia test after fucking with it.
So why don’t we throw a little contest for the Crasstalk Army:
Let’s prowl Politico in search of the most execrable, mundane, pointless or otherwise awful article on the site today and post a link in the comments.
Tomorrow we’ll announce the winner. The prize is a very special Crasstalk post, written by me, extolling your virtues and affirming your place in history. Who wouldn’t want that?
So to inspire you, I found this pathetic aborted fetus of an article. Here’s the headline:
Smitten: GOP gushes with more Obama praise
First of all, stop gushing on Obama, GOP. Also, you can’t just put “Smitten:” at the front of a headline and expect it to make any sense. Usually you do something like that if you want to attribute the statement to someone. Like for example, “Scientists: Charlie Sheen Not Actually a Real Drug.” See, that would make sense.
To prove the writer’s point that the GOP is gushing on Obama, it goes on for about two solid paragraphs with a lukewarm Haley Barbour quote and then wraps up with this:
In his typical overly-Texan tone, Perry said the president is “a good talker” rather than communicator.
Perry though made clear that he thinks the Obama may like to hear himself talk, frequently mentioned how “long” the president took to answer some of the governor’s questions.
WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? GAHHHHHHHHHH POLITICO. WHY DO YOU TEASE US WITH SUCH BULLSHIT????
Heh. Denton’s smarmy non-apology to we commenters made me realize how far superior our new confection is. No ads. No Cheetos. No Black Swans. No First!!101!. Gawker is now like Times Square – fit only for tourists who want to… well, Gawk. And enrich others while doing it.
We can do whatever we want and no one can stop us and if I want to run through the grass Dad just cut until the green grass juice is on my feet instead of in my smoothie I can. We can tell secrets and jokes in our treehouse and I’ll pick one of Mom’s Tropicana roses and propose to all of you. (God, we gay kids even have hot pants.)
And then, after the ice cream truck is gone and we’re exhausted, we’ll tell a bunch of stories and make up words.
Tonight’s theme is SUMMER! Because it’s 3 whole months away and I can’t wait. Here’s what to do: make up a word, add a pronunciation code if you like, add a definition and use it in a sentence. Uncle Betts will show you how.
1: Oontzdouche: (OONTZ-doosh): A young person at the wheel of a rickety car, blasting music into the summer air that sounds like OONTZ-OONTZ-OONTZ! It goes on endlessly and carries through the ocean-scented air like a toxic cloud of throbbing, mutant moths and deformed sugar glider squirrels. Often followed by a squee of bad car brakes and the clink of a bottle of Miller, now filled with pee, into Mrs. Vacheron’s zinnia bed.
Our first cocktail party in the yard was marked by the Cheever-like hilarity of hearing an oontzdouche trying to compete with Sade’s “Sweetest Taboo”.
2: Sumstandard: (sum-STAN-dahd) The good feeling that you feel at the end of a summer day when you head into the lav for a badly-needed shower, snap on the light and see what you look like in the mirror. You have scratches all over you from gardening, you missed some sand between your toes, you’re a bit sunburnt, and you smell like someone sprayed a goat with No. 4711 and Bain de Soliel, and then the goat drank a few cold Sam Adams. It’s a VERY good feeling.
As the tub was filling and I saw how disheveled I was, I felt so sumstandard that it was like That Summer That Anthony Walked Me Into The Barnett’s Pool Cabana, Holding My Hand.
3: Gumfields: (GUHM-feeldz): The place in your mouth between your teeth where little bits of fresh, sweet corn kernels spend their nostalgic last moments before you pick or floss them to join their brethren. You have to pick or floss. They’re not coming out any other way.
I had two full gumfields, but my God, that farm stand has the best damn July corn ever.
You try! Make up a summer word!
Remember when you were a kid and in between eating fistfuls of paste you had your box of poster paints? Red and blue make purple, right? So why did it always turn out black/brown-ish purple mess? Because red is not a true primary color. Red has yellow in it. Let’s get past red, yellow and blue with today’s subject, basic color theory. I touched on some of the aspects of this in our previous article but I thought some further information and visuals might be fun.
The two major ways colors are created are applied and light which then play into each other but that’s getting too deep for today.
Put simply, applied is paint, though that is seriously simplified. Pure pigments aside, basically any color can be created using the CMYK breakdown. In printing this is called process color but most art students get to use these colors in gouache for color theory classes . C=Cyan, M=Magenta, Y=Yellow and K=Black. With these four primary colors you are able to create most other colors. C+M=Purple, M+Y=Orange and Y+C=Green for your basic secondary colors. All three together make a warm black. Brights, neons, metallics and white are not possible to create using this method. The large majority of things you see printed in magazines, newspapers, books (not old books), anything that shoots out of your home printer is printed using this way. Art prints often are not and it depends for textiles, but usually not. It is a basic and cost effective way to get the rainbow. An uneven mix of CMY will create a brown. An even mix will create a grey.
Light, on the other hand, is a bit more complex. Light is how most computer art programs function so it’s good to know. RGB are Red, Green and Blue. Secondary are R+G=Yellow, G+B=Cyan, B+R=Purple and all three together equal White light. All brights and neons are possible with this mix. Hence all the bright and shiny colors on your television. Some of the secondary colors seem counter intuitive but if you look at the graphic you’ll see they are basically the inverse of applied color with a couple shifts. Ah, patterns in nature.
As a little interesting end tidbit I left our friend ROYGBIV off of the chart. He is the basic colors visual light wavelengths. He is the rainbow. Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet.
Now get your hand out of the paste and go paint something!
Wake up! It’s time to face the day and deal with whatever nonsense modern existence throws at us today. At least we have each other. We have had a lot of new folks join us over the last couple days, so please make them feel welcome and help them out if they have questions. Here’s some drive time music to get you going today.
Have a great day!
-= Message from Ben =-
Good Morning. I’m sharing a really simple, easy to use Firefox plug-in this morning with you guys. Its called BrowserCheck and checks your web browser to make sure it is secure and all of your software is up-to-date. You can find it here: https://browsercheck.qualys.com/ You install the plug-in, it runs a scan, then if anything is out of date just click the “fix” button and it will automagically download new updates for you. (You’ll still have to run the updates once they’re downloaded.) If you’re using the interwebz to do anything related to commerce, definitely check it out. Its a really good step in the right direction for protecting your computer. (This plugin works for Mac OSX too. You guys also need to be protected!) Have a nice day!
