Sunday, January 9, 2011

Things I Love This Week

Lil Wayne's "Six Foot Seven Foot"
So it has been a couple of weeks since I first heard this song, the first single from The Carter IV, and at that time I was blown away, could not get enough, played it really loud over and over again. The track is produced by Bangladesh, the same producer who created the amazing "A Milli," which this track is very similar to in that both utilize heavy bass, crazy samples, and lack a traditional chorus. For whatever reasons, ones I am not going to complain about because it actually is prolonging the enjoyment I am getting from this song, it's not getting too much radio play. I occasionally will hear it on Hot 97, but not as often as they play Drake and Nicki, who are played just about every other song. This is the most amazing pop song out there right now and that it's not played on every station every chance they get is very weird to me, but again it means that a couple weeks later I still have not tired of this song. When it does come on the radio that I listen to in our work office, I go a little bit crazy, blast the song, and tell everyone in the room how amazing it is. The song is an on switch, a cue to dance, to lose your mind. They lyrics are the product of a mind on fire, in love with plays on words, and verbal slights of hands. For instance:

"Life is the bitch, and death is her sister /
sleep is the cousin, what a fuckin’ family picture /
You know father time, we all know mother nature /
It’'s all in the family, but I am of no relation."




Jersey Shore
The show has started back up again, the cast back in Seaside Heights, and I could not be happier. Early on in my relationship with Jacob, we would get drunk and watch the new episode each week when it appeared online together, a thing that we would look forward to. There are certainly reasons why I enjoy this show so much, though they are vague, complicated, and perhaps even conflicting. Watch this episode online and enjoy this beautiful train wreck of a show. Also on this list of favorite things from this week, closely tied to this, would be Brian Moylan's lengthy recap of this week's episode for Gawker. You can tell that he has a lot of fun writing the recap and he produces some beautiful moments of writing that seem a bit out of place on Gawker, given it's extended length (at least for Gawker), but it is a really fun, even beautiful read. One of my favorite bits from it is this paragraph:

"Just like New Egypt, with its developments of cookie-cutter homes and just barely above average public schools tries to outshine the seat of the pharaohs, so does Deena try to outshine all the other members of her house. She is the drunkest, sluttiest, fightingest bitch of the bunch. She is exactly what she thinks she is supposed to be. She is a construct created out of high expectations and watching the previous installments of this show. That said, she sure is a lot of fun. She claims to be a "walking holiday." But which holiday is she? Christmas with its promise of presents and inevitable disappointments? July 4th with its boozy picnics, regrettable hookups, and a whole ton of fireworks? Arbor Day, with all its good intentions and seeds that never take root? Administrative Assistants Day, with its vague entitlements and unruly underlings? We don't quite know yet, but we think she's going to be all of those holidays rolled into one."

Black Spark
I discovered this artist after seeing links to his videos on Fleshbot. It's a bit of a mystery as to who he is, which is certainly part of the appeal. He is utilizing his Facebook account to tease fans as to the identity of Black Spark, at one point claiming that Black Spark is not one person, but that there are many Black Sparks. He has also said that he is working on a blog and more videos. It's a pleasure to not only get to see these pieces of art, but to see him hint at future projects on his Facebook account. Today, he just posted another video to XTube and it is another beautiful video with hot sex, hot men, haunting music, and something more than what you would normally find in online porn, that this is porn that definitely aspires to be more, that it is shooting for art, and does so successfully. The only off mark with the videos is that the pop songs will eventually become tired to hear and the superimposed text that whooshes on and off the screen looks too lo-fi and amateurish considering the otherwise high quality of production values.

But it is filmed beautifully and really well-edited. Clearly whoever is behind the camera knows what they are doing and has a lot of talent. The men on screen, often masked and bathed in odd lighting effects that reveal and call attention to bits of their body, are gorgeous and insanely cut. They have abs that I probably never will have. They are the standard ideal of beauty and perhaps that should be problematic, but Black Spark addresses this in this video through text, admits it, proudly claims it. Over a shot of a male doing ab exercises, text appears that says, "I train my body to fight for what I believe in. Monsters Exist I have seen them. I am Addicted to Sex."

I have been going to the gym fairly regularly lately and working out harder and harder, getting into lifting weights, really trying to shape my body, specifically my stomach, into a certain thing, this same thing, an instrument of sex.

This video has a clear "Billy Jean" reference occurring (saying what though, I have no clue) and it should be absurd, but this video and its haunting music really get at eroticism, that a great deal of sex is the desire to not be alone, to connect with someone else, and this video really hits on that point, how humans don't want to be alone, that we need these physical connections to make us feel that we are not, but that even with them we probably still are. This is a gorgeous, gorgeous video that is inspiring me. And, yes, I jerk off to these videos and they make me hard, but there is also something else going on with them. They are also giving me thoughts and ideas and inspiration.


Party Down
I recently watched the second season of this show and fell in love. Next week, the first season will be back on Netflix Instant Viewing and at that point, I intend to write more about it, having watched all of the episodes of the series. But for now, I will say that at certain moments in your life you will encounter art that specifically seems made for where you are at in your life at that moment, that had I encountered this show at the age of 18 or so, I would have thought it was funny, but I wouldn't have related to it as much I do now at the age of 29. This show really has me thinking about my own life and that of some of my peers, how we work these service industry jobs and think of ourselves as artists, that these jobs are only temporary, but the show brilliantly portrays what is really occurring, that most likely that is not and will not be the case, that you will just get more and more cemented in these career roles we think of as temporary. This show is so insanely good. I am kind of bummed that I am only now discovering this, now that it has been canceled. But it is still there for the viewing and still with a lot to say. Perhaps I was waiting until the appropriate time, this particular moment in my life where I am having thoughts that are barely formed with regard to this subject, that this show spotlights and throws into stark relief, makes painfully clear.

Cheap Beer and Shot Combos

1 comment:

  1. You said what I've been thinking about Black Spark, but have not been able to put into words as well as you did (and regularly do). Those videos capture not just the raw sex but also masterfully express eroticism which is a different aspect and intoxicating.

    ReplyDelete