BLOG #13: LUCKY
Last Wednesday, I saw Inherent Vice on 70mm with my boy Jack Hermann at Lincoln Center. It was really funny because he had never seen the movie before. As an emphatic PTA fan (Magnolia has one of my favorite movie endings from the ’90s) I was shocked by this namely because Jack Hermann always knows about more movies than me because he’s a true film professional. And he also works at NEON, which is almost as chic as he is. Rewatching Inherent Vice in this format opened up a lot of the stoner-interpretation the narrative relies on. The best thing about this movie in my personal opinion is that it takes the innocent PTA-irreverence and contextualizes it with such specific and hazy recollection that you approach the plot as disjointed, like you yourself faced at least 3 joints of that chronicccc by yourself. The storylines range from A-Z, and only one of them actually leads anywhere, like when you’re dumb high, hypervigilant, and making connections between things that turn suspicion to magic. This is what makes Inherent Vice such a beautiful trip. IMO this movie is an ethical version of the plot-inside-plot confusion Kaufman deployed in Adaptation (2002). Less self-hatred and more dick-in-hand. Fine line on-screen between tactical irreverence and cripplingly low self image.
Speaking of irreverence, Jack Hermann is now a meme. I’m using his full name in this post so I too can participate in the meme spread without fully understanding what it means. I was a meme once; as in one of my grad school professors called me one.
Tangent (it’s all gonna come back around I promise): basically we were supposed to be reading bell hooks in a film theory seminar and instead of encountering the late theorist’s more incisive interpretation (supported by testimonial) on how the process of race exists in/on film in tandem alongside the concept of affect theory, and my peers chose to veer the conversation to the Unlearning Racism phrases du jour rather than interact with actual words written by a Black woman. My guy D—, whose native language is not English, was one of the only people to actually bring the conversation back to the material, and with regard to the concept of affect transmission and race, he said something along the lines of: “My understanding of the material is like how there are things I can’t understand from what Maya, a Black woman from America, says as someone who grew up in China.” And all of the Unlearning Luddites absolutely lost their shit, and the rest of the class was spent calling in (in a remarkably passive aggressive manner, might I add) rather than discussing the material they clearly were too trepidatious to approach because it violated their internet-sense of anti-racism. D— and I were side-chatting during the whole debacle laughing at the irony of the situation. The next day I coincidentally had office hours with my professor “leading” the seminar about my final paper draft, and he felt the need to apologize for how things went down. I told him, in as many words, that it’s “whatever” and that I was really just upset that we didn’t get to really dig into hooks and affect theory because I was excited by the way he set the readings up for that week on the syllabus, and that it was clear that people were making so many contemporary connections not just because they didn’t read, but because they were afraid to. In my professor’s own uncomfortability, he said that I’d “become somewhat of a meme” for my graduating class. Ah, yes. Your only Black MA student is jesting-by-proxy via her (sorry if any of you are reading this I tried to make it really clear that I only fucked with like three of you during our stint together) dingbat cohort.
Anyways, what made me a meme in this context was existing and being myself, in the same way Hermann became a meme by being himself. Reputation spreads through images, where the image reflects a purely aesthetic mimesis of someone’s most superficial self. You say no, you become Girl Who Says No. You’re particular, you become Particular Guy. But what makes those two archetypes memes is the suggestion of something ineffable that no one can explain; what makes something/someone/some situation distinctly Jack Hermann (adj.) is the face that no one can define what it means, but there’s a feeling of specificity that comes from the aestheticization of him and his name that calls about a sense of specificity so, uh, specific that it catches on. “Oh, there’s hella Jack Hermanns in here.” “That’s so Jack Hermann.” Noun, adjective, probably also verb if you try hard enough. What makes someone a meme? The fact that their name could become a text-image to explain the most unexplainable aspects about them. I find this fascinating.
I saw F1 two Wednesdays ago. It’s kind of a perfect American movie. I had a similar reaction to the first time I saw Top Gun. It’s like Top Gun but with cars. Brad Pitt’s hair plugs have never been fuller and less detectable. Damson Idris is cocky and distinctly English (mutually exclusive observations; don’t come for me). What makes this movie so stunning is, of course, the driving sequences. And as a female pervert, of course the fact that the three principle male characters are a perfect sampler of my type in men (Damson Idris, Javier Bardem, BPitt). Of course, as a film produced by Apple, there’s a lot of subtle product placement and fancy tech-forward plot points that push an idea of contemporary progress as well as “cosmopolitanism,” as H— shared with me over text. But the brilliant thing about making a movie about Formula 1 racing is that the sport is already heavily branded, so the buy-buy-buy doesn’t feel so tacky as much as it is site-specific. Good move, Apple. And Rolex. And all the other ones I’m forgetting. As someone who previously knew nothing about F1 driving, I was truly mesmerized, and left the theater feeling patriotic. Two hours later I got a text from NYS department of health saying that due to the Big Beautiful Bill I could potentially get kicked off Medicaid. Then I remembered the umpteen unnecessary wars and Palantir and Cointel pro and was like yeah…that was short-lived. I’d say something like “Man, imagine if this movie came out in the ’80s” but I mean, Top Gun. Anyways.
I have felt somewhat hopeful about the state of NY government as of late because of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign. As someone who consistently seeks emotional punishment I tried my darndest to not like him as in find ways his campaign strategy feels disingenuous or corny, both of which are true for literally anyone ever running for public office. As Rachel Maddow said on her show during the first Trump presidency, watch what they do not what they say. So, yes I do find the taxi-cab-yellow-self-titled-people’s-princess of it all corny. But wow, it’s almost as if aesthetic sensibility doesn’t matter when Zohran’s comprehensive policy plan and objectively fire debate style actually seeks to benefit all New Yorkers…It’s almost as if they want you to pay attention to Zohran’s NY-first corny marketing so you don’t care about the things that will actually affect you as a tax-paying citizen…now why would anyone want to do that…
There are a lot of people who have voiced my same aesthetic judgements of Zohran’s bid for mayor ahead of the primaries to somehow depict him as disingenuous, and his comms team listened without compromising their integrity. In fact, they found a tongue-in-cheek way of telling everyone how dumb it is to hold this one particular politician to a standard of being uncorny when that is literally a part of the job. I call it cinema verité Zohran. Like if Herzog took inspiration from TikTok for his scores, this Instagram reel shows Zohran trying to film what seems to be his usual campaign fare (explainers with zillions of jump cuts and over-the-top gesticulation to remind you that he’s another tax-paying New Yorker just like you), only you see the behind the scenes. People coming up to him on the street, him fumbling his script a bit. The bits of happenstance that can only occur when caught on camera, not planned, reminiscent of High School or Chronicle of a Summer. Zohran isn’t just telling us he’s peoples, he’s showing us. On-film evidence of the relentless straw grasping naysayers participate in when they say his congeniality is somehow a put on. Reminds me of documentary theory and the idea of indexicality, feeling of what is real and what isn’t and how documentation on film can show people visuals that, in this case, combat confirmation bias. I fucks with this heavy.
I spent a significant amount of time turning myself into an adult Belieber this weekend listening to the new JB album, SWAG. It’s amazing, it’s Tony! Toni! Tone! but also Ginuwine but also MJ with that special mk gee sauce slathered all over it. I was humping the air on the train to Home Depot when I first heard “TOO LONG.” An undeniably sexy Saturday was only compounded with the final bit of Offline Gallery’s Mythologies for a Spiritually Void Time (MSVT) festival, curated by friends Jack Wedge and X.S. Hou. The evening closer was comprised of three dance performances, which I will bullet my reactions to below because I had a lot of complex feelings:
· Iliana Penichet-Ramirez and Madison Wata
o A dance that I hope my red blood cells do as they move through my body (the performers both wore all red). Calisthenic, endurance based, the two become one united stomach-to-back in an illusion-like piggyback, become each other’s chairs, mirrors, and metronomes.
· Sheldon Donenberg and Spencer Klaus choreographed Isa Spector
o What if an acronym didn’t mean nothing, but meant everything? Known as hollow, representative of value, the NFT is somehow distinctly NFT: No, Fine, Totally; a single performer overthinks it, the choreography, everything. Notary Faggot’s Turn, a spritely little thing pops out in a blue spandex dress decorated with $100 bills and turns it. Money isn’t non-real because of some anti-capitalist lamentation, money doesn’t exist because value doesn’t exist, it is as arbitrary and absurd as an NFT. It stands for anything. My jaw was agape the entire performance and my biggest takeaway is that there are few things I wouldn’t do to live inside Isa’s mind for literally one hour.
· Star and Stan
o Dionysian, silver, sweetness. Assless suit for Stan. Dress with a detachable bib on Star that serve as a ramp into Stan’s eager mouth. She was serving skittles. The duo are lovers in this performance: fucking, stabbing, kissing, running each other over in a mini pink plastic Mercedes. The ending of this lovers’ quarrel is a harnessed tug of war between Star and Stan, stripped down to a money-printed string bikini and a jockstrap, respectively. It ends as such beef typically does; someone dies, both are reborn.
I hope something great happens this Wednesday (today). Oh WAIT something great is happening it’s the Hole Play performance at Dear Friend at 7p…buy Theatrics…you should soooo totallyyyy comeeeee.
I don’t have anything else to say about my feelings because I’m doing this new thing where I become less complicated by simply being less complicated. Whining less. Playing neuroplasticity games. Reading my books. Being with people.
It’s working. I am also going to start in-pool conditioning because I actually really miss the water and also synchronized swimming. Been cosplaying my 12-year-old self from when I was a swimmer, aka hopping out the pool in my Speedo, chucking on Soffe shorts and Havianas (except in Cali we used to wear Rainbows…IYKYK), and letting the rest air-dry on the walk home. Rocking the wet-ass-and-crotch stain on the shorts is my favorite part. Last weekend swimming with my girls at Kosciuszko Pool, which is like such a nice facility by the way, the sun etched a light circle tan on my back from the keyhole cutout of my one piece. I was immediately nostalgic of how this tan used to be an integral part of every outfit when I used to swim. As an adult, it was concerning; I like to tan in my tanning bikini, swim in my beater bikini (chlorine degrades fabric over time), go in the ocean in my ocean bikini (sparkly and/or neon). That’s three different tan lines right there. My body would become a lightskin spectrum. Everyone would be able to see it because now that I am not 12 I wear adult-naked clothes in this subtropical climate. H— told me I could use this to my advantage and layer the tanlines like shapes. I am currently strategizing this. We are going to the beach soon.
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