Watching Enchanted, 10:39pm. It's a real good movie. When a world icon like Disney can make fun of itself, and do it with a great picture, you've got something there, kid. The heroine right now is singing A Happy Working Song. Think Whistle While You Work, but more real.

We’ll keep singing without fail
Otherwise we’d spoil it
Hosing down the garbage pail
And scrubbing up the toilet
Ooh!

Disney should, however, fall back on its original feature animation style. Check out the animation in Snow White vs. Enchanted. Pay attention to the character animation. More on this after the videos.



Pigeons are not ok to kiss. . .



One wonders if rabies exists in these animated worlds. . .

The contemporary style found in Enchanted focuses on sharp and dynamic lines, turning the animation into something that looks sleek. And caricatured. One can definitely see the influence from Japanese animation--note the enlarged eyes and elongated features such as arms and legs, the neck, the sharp angle of the face's T-Line (a new vocabulary word I learned from watching women apply make-up. Long story). Whereas the older style looks like there were real actors filmed, and the animators drew over that film. This is called Rotoscopy party people.

In the past, one saw a very different relationship between cultures and animation. It was American animation, namely Disney animation, that influenced other nations. If one were to look at Disney's biography, a definite power emanated from the Disney studio while Walt was himself closely involved in the animation . As the studio became bigger, more staff, more ideas, more in-house rebellion against Walt Disney's vision of animation as art, animation married with realism, he became distant and lost control and thus the animation changed. Take a look at the vast differences between Snow White and the next few features: Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, a difference of only four years. I'd say, the Disney vision ended early, with Fantasia.

Irony: as Walt Disney became more successful and gained more power, Disney quality as Walt himself strived for, and subsequently Walt's power over animation, became something he could no longer control.

Sorcerer's Apprentice

Party People!!!!!!!

Quick premise of the flash story - it's done on the fly. No editing, no real preparation, just putting the skills on the spot and seeing if they can kick ass. My brain got steel toed boots. They better. . .

The Paper and the Ditch

He clenches his fist and he walks from the table to the kitchen window. Back to the table. Morning is cold and the steam from his tea cup is a long tendril. Looks like if he reaches for it he'll grab silk. Instead, he puts his hands down on the table, looks down at nothing.

The morning paper says they found the body in the ditch several miles from home. If he had a time machine, he would have stopped himself from saying anything at all. If he had a hand ax and a name, or even a picture of how that man looks like, he wouldn't be here in the kitchen walking back to the window, turning on the water without knowing why he was doing it. Maybe it would drown his crying. He falls to one knee.

Party People,

FS3's Read and Watch List continued:

Read

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson
The Elephant Vanishes, Haruki Murakami
Catch 22, Joseph Heller (I haven't read this one yet, it's on my personal list just as it is on yours)
The People of Paper, Salvador Placencias (I've recommended this one before, but it begs repetition)

Watch

Fight Club
Divorzio Al'italiana
Detour
Being John Malkovich
The Good German

Burn After Reading

This past Sunday, my wife and I met my parents at the Empress Theatre in Vallejo, CA. My wife and I drove up, around 5:45 in the evening, when it was already dark, through the old neighborhood of Victorian Houses and alleyways. Who knows what they did there in the old mildewed basements and what smells came from the alleys. We were in the car, windows rolled up. You couldn't be too safe.

"Damnit, I told you we couldn't turn from this street. It's one way. Now we have to drive around."

"Just drive around."

I drove to the next street and circled around.

The Empress stood beautiful. No other place in this diminishing city has kept to its original mission of pushing non-discriminating art and culture to the people. Let them taste and savor every bit of it. Let the politics explode here and all the protests for Gay Marriage and Good Christian Values meet and see what happens. This mission.

Somehow its flashing marquee lights told me this.

They haven't strayed from the original design. Just looking up at the lights after we got out of the car and hearing the electric hum, feeling its rhythm as the red and yellow blinked in some fashion, like electricity trying to be fire, the original designer and architect were laughing at the hold they had on the nostalgic minds who renovated this place. Laughing maniacally - what other way could they laugh, they're old and dead?

The theatre first opened its doors on Valentine's day, 1912.

There was some confusion about whether my parents were already here. We bought our tickets. 2 for 1. This great American theatre automatically kicks any other theatre I've been too's ass because of this. What other theatre around here regularly gives out monthly discounts? Nose upturn to the financial woes of California. What crisis? California is burning, baby, lets have fun. Here's a free ticket.

That's what this theatre says. What else can you do but join the party, or be horribly, horribly shunned and shamed and made impotent from denying it. This party will go on without you.

The Empress Theatre. Run by two die hard people, Randy and Kitty. They've made it their mission to keep this theatre running after all that it has been through - a fire that burned the whole interior in the 1930's, the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, the slow sickness of neglect and a diminishing of Vallejo's Downtown - the Empress, this beautiful bitch, keeps her stiletto heel dug into the ground here and watches the seasons come an go. No man can move her. No bout of nature can topple her, but only blow up her dress and give her a little tickle. She laughs as the original architect and designer do - with insane glory as people fall around her dead.

And she continues to live.

It turned out my parents arrived after us and we went back out to meet them. Then I introduced them all to Randy and Kitty, the General Manager and Assistant Manager respectively. Randy seemed unsure of who I was. It didn't matter. I knew who they were. I damned well knew. Those good bastards who keep this theatre running. They looked tired.

We went into the theatre and my parents awed at the flourish of decor. A wave of gold colored plating curling from the screen to the back, across the ceiling, with a blue glow hinting at the majesty here. We climbed the stairs and we took our seats. In retrospect I wonder at what this place looked like during it's renovation before reopening this March.

No doubt whatever blights that existed here were done away with. The theatre was sexy now.



We watched the movie.

Then we went to eat at a Mexican restaurant called City Lights Cantina. The restaurant being just up the street, we walked. City Lights had the spirit of Old Downtown Vallejo, its square room, its wainscot ceiling, I thought it was made out of an old church. Where the bar stood now, once stood the altar, and the people feasting on their high stools, the chancel at the feet of the breaded Christ. But we soon found out it used to be a banquet hall, and before that the PG&E company.

The restaurant shares the same lovely snobbery as the Empress - that lack of fear and disregard of money. To the man of logic, this is no time to start a restaurant or renovate and re-open a theatre. We watch our cash falling to the floor and leprous hands stamping down on them, snatching them through the folds of a purple curtain. The City Lights Cantina, however, laughs at those sorry sons of bitches. It stands open to feed you while all other restaurants lose their nerve and shrink away. Fuck Starbucks. Let them lose their excess limbs until they have four left and remember what it means to be human.

Delightful Mexican food from City Lights. It tastes better when you know the food is clean.

So, we talked about the movie for a while. My mom thought that there should have been more people at the theatre. The movie was funny. I agreed. Funny. But more, you never saw a real political satire on screen in a long time. We talked more about the movie.

The food took a long while to come out. We speculated about that. Perhaps the bartender, who had by then disappeared, was also the cook. He was the one who took our orders too, served our drinks. I looked around at the people sitting at the high tables and in the booths having their separate, intimate conversations, enjoying their alcohol. They seemed to not notice. Everything was copacetic. I drank my water deliberately. That late at night, drinking soda would have sent my nerves to spark.

There's no excuse for addictive substances like caffeine that late at night when you don't plan on staying awake and listening for intruders in the dark. You think you hear voices and you want to go out and check. But what if they're breaking in and intend on raping you? Just you. Because that's their fetish.

They want to come in when everyone is asleep and abduct you, they're masters at it so they take you slowly from your bed and your wife doesn't wake. They have you and they take you to the front room where they have their way with you. Then they put you back. Quietly.

Checking on that sound will definitely alert you of their presence early if that were to really happen, you can prepare. But something inside you makes you stay awake and super alert in bed, not leaving bed, just thinking about how that could happen. As if that were the best way to be taken if then, all and prone laying down, instead of with a fight.

Well, the movie was indeed a good satire on all the paranoia that hovers around us when you find things that don't belong to you. That paranoia when you think someone is watching you. You see that person look your way and you think he's got it in for you. What agency is he a part of? What do they want from you? It's because you found that file folder on the floor of the gym locker room. There's something secret in there. It's big. It's bigger than you or me.

That Paranoia. It plays well in the movie. And something has to be said about the way all the women make out with the money in the end. About how all the men die in the end, or wind up in Venezuela. Or going on with their job because none of it has anything to do with them and they don't want the trouble because things tied themselves up well, neatly, and without any hitch. That too.

The night went famously.

Lets have some fun today, Party People. When we talk about school, life, and art, we talk about meaning. What do these things mean to you? When you hear a piece of music, what strikes you as interesting?

We ALL do this. We all find interest in something. That's why we like certain TV shows, movies, music, paintings, etc. The only thing that separates people who sound 'non-intellectual' from those who look and sound like they are 'intellectual' is the ability to speak about these things.

Check it:

I liked it. The beat was good. I liked the horn thingy in the middle.

Compare that to this:

The rhythm took on a hypnotic quality. Repetitive drums and piano in synch really draws the listener into an effective lulling. Then, when the horn sections come in on the bridge, it is wholly dissonant and contrasting. The tension in that is very intriguing.

Damnit, THEY SAY THE SAME THING. Just by the size of what the 'regular guy' is saying and what the 'intellectual' is saying, it seems like the later person is very smart. That smart guy has a lot to say. But, nope, that's not the case. It's all in how you say something, all in your ability to talk about the details.

These two people had the same reaction. One just knew how to talk about it better. So, what can you talk about? How much ass can you kick when you talk about this picture. I Googled it up, searching with the word 'art' and picked the first one that I saw. The rest is off the top of my head (remember the definition of freestyle from the Great Build series?). It took me about 30 minutes to type this up:



Let's battle our wits and observations, shall we?

Picture

Taking the picture as a whole, it's simply a man opening himself up, spilling his 'guts' out. We get a sense of confession, or perhaps an extreme case of sharing. Sharing. Even thought that sounds like a funny word to use, think about when you WANT to share something. There is some excitement, some revelation that compels you to share.

You are essentially exposing the excitement in hopes to effect the person or people in the same or in a similar way.

That this shows a man exposing the contents of his upper body, is more related to the 'soul' or 'heart'. A creative expression (sharing), rather than a physical one - physical sharing, or the Eros, would be another choice but that would require another opening, lower, around the actual physical parts related to that type of connection. This is something that can go up for subjective debate, but there can be something said about the choice of creating only the upper torso, rather than the whole body.



Spilling the guts. As I mentioned before, this is reminiscent of a confession. The fact that the contents have been splayed out, still spilling, makes the piece aire more toward this suggestion of confession.

One cannot help the fact that the subject is turning face up toward the heavens. It may be bold to further say that its a confession in the Judeo Christian sense. Man looking up to God, exposing and therefore recognizing his sins, hoping to purge himself of them.

The Christian argument can be taken further when we notice the aspect of anonymity. The man has no discerning features. No eyes, no lips, no recognizable marks that would make him unique. The idea that all are God's children. There is no uniqueness.

Even so, a similar argument can be made that it is a societal message, man, further reduced to an unrecognizable object, a number, as is the case often in a capitalistic society, individualistic society, where the observer does not recognize others as unique as him/herself. We then, are the observer in this case.



Legos

The medium is an interesting choice. It lends easily to erasing the unique features of our subject, almost creating a digitized look, a man almost pixelated. Pixelation, a prevalent aspect of technology, entertainment and the computer age. This would lend to the argument that its more of a modern societal view than a one of religious. How about that?

Taking it further, the subject looks upward to the sky in anguish, the pressures almost breaking the psyche down, and there is no real hope present since the prospect of religion is but a mere part of the rest of society, if we're using the argument that this art is an expression of modern society. Therefore, religion, just another part of the modern dilemma, is yet a participant of the antagonism.

Legos as a medium also suggests the toy/childhood aspect. On one level, it's a contradiction, displaying such an 'adult crisis' or 'real-world dilemma' rather than the toys, monsters and fantasy that is usually attached to Legos.

However, this tension can also be seen from a view that this subject is reacting to the fact that that childhood fantasy cannot be accessed anymore. The innocence can never be visited again and this visage is but a mere pitiful attempt.

The genius comes with hope. Although hope is taken away by the smothering of religion, it remains with the medium. When a confession is told, when you spill your guts out, there is a relief accompanying that purge that can only be compared with childhood innocence. Indeed, that innocence is somewhat revisited, regained, if not wholly then partially. Therefore, using legos as a suggestion of childhood, in this piece a reaching back toward childhood, is a compelling and good choice.



Beat that, party people.

Thanks to Nathan Sawaya for the cool art! Check out his other work.

Watch: Maltese Falcon; Detour; The Set Up; DOA; Touch of Evil; Double Indemnity

Read: A Panorama of American Film Noir by Borde and Chaumeton

Party people and you film buffs,

Why, you ask, will we discuss this. It's so old and hokey. Old is hokey. Talk about politics and ipods and cutting edge technology.

I respond with a quick slap to the face.

This is one of the greatest eras in American Film. It began in 1941 with an epic movie and an epic leading actor: The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart. It came at a time when the United States was starving and weak from the Great Depression. Teeth bared and sharp and gritting hard from pain. The party of the 1920's was over and the hangover was here, hard, those who had become drunk from the excess now hated the world with a headache as big as Europe.



Color film had just been introduced and musicals capitalized on the goodness of it all to try to keep people in love with the saccharine. At the same time, many film directors and cinematographers from Europe were fleeing to the United States, the only nation not involved in World War II at the time. Therein began a harsh reaction that sent movies reeling away from the imagined prosperity and glee. Things weren't about smiles and happy feet anymore. People were poor. Damnit. People were hungry. Imagine you need to feed your family and you see store owners pouring good milk into the sewers, tossing produce into the trash, because they'd rather get rid of their stock and lose the money than give it away.

Films like the Maltese Falcon began to slap these musical films silly, essentially saying, "wake up. Why the hell are you dancing? You look like a fool with those tapping shoes."

Then, the morose of it all shifted films into the extreme and birthed Film Noir. With the Maltese Falcon, one saw a story line where the happy ending dissolved into an ending where no one came out clean. The good guys got beat. The bad guys wound up losing what they were after. Even in terms of character, the 'good guy' didn't even exist. The protagonist you followed on screen was often a crooked and lusty private investigator or a man who's trying to get away from his life and cheat on his girl every chance he got.

Take a look at Bogart's face. This is you're protagonist now.



The effect of these films and this kind of character acting was so profound that people on the street seriously thought that Bogart was a real tough guy like the characters he played on screen. Lucky for him, he was a real tough guy and he kicked serious ass. But I digress.

One can even attribute Film Noir to the advancement of the female character, which would soon be complimented by the 'Rosie the Riveter' campaign that promoted female independence and the image of the working woman, while the men were either enlisted or got drafted to fight in Europe and the Pacific soon after Pearl Harbor.

In Film Noir specifically, the damsel in distress and the innocent, fervently valued woman archetypes were replaced by the sly and foxy and ultimately corrupted. The woman who had her own plans and a gun to get her way. Unlike the singing dancing and melodramatic, this woman lied, had sexual hunger, was selfish and vicious just like the men. To the extreme, she was like this all the damned time.



Needless to say, all the leading ladies today can attribute the depth and complexity of their roles to this movement in film and storytelling. The men too, who the hell would want to keep singing and dancing and forgetting that across the middle part of America dust storms killed vast acres of crops and destroyed the farming economy? People were hungry. Damnit.

Film Noir also incorporated the best in film effects and in the best way--being poor. The bulk of films in this genre were produced by B-rated companies and therefore budgets were low. No color for these films. No expensive backdrops and special effects. They did it the hard way. The hard core way, through the use of dynamic camera angles and use of lighting. The most notable of techniques was Chiaroscuro--the use of shadows to create dynamic effects so to result in visual tension. Thank Film Noir for the image of the menacing shadow crawling up the wall. It began with shadowy figures of men and women running around in their dark dark world with so many secrets and guns that have fired too many bullets.

Well, my party people, since we're on the topic of Culture and Hip Hop, I've decided to share with you a few pieces. These were displayed in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.

At the risk of contradicting myself, I do want to note that our governtment is acknowledging the art that is in the heart of our culture.







To give you a little bit about the artist who did the portraits of Big Daddy Kane and Ice T and Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Kehinde Wiley painted using old heirarchy as a reference. Putting these people in the poses that they are in, giving them the background etc. questions the sense of what we consider royalty. It plays a lot on the notion of association. Since a man holds a royal ceptar and sits on a throne, he is royal himself.

The bigger issue, and what a lot of Hip Hop is trying to give to the youth: you must carry yourself and think of yourself the way you want others to percieve you. Image. But also self esteem. Self respect. Giving respect to others so that you gain respect in return.

My party people, don't be fooled by the radioactivity. Do not succumb to radioactive poison. My party people, we party, but we also party because we understand and respect the fact that everyone has stresses in their life that they want to release. Keep the whole view in perspective.

Hello my party people. The following is a message I posted on Music & Strenght Crew's page in www.iamhiphop.com.



Yo, M&S,Thank you for posting that video bomb on my page. Damn, it's a shame that wall is going to be torn down.

Now, this is for all the people out there. . . What I saw in that video was massive. Government actually allowed graff artists to take over this long track of wall under the trains in Japan. I know a lot of us writers think that outdoing the govt is part of being a writer. Bombing place where we're not allowed. Tearing down the vast array of billboard letters that promote consumerism and negative individualism and replacing them with a sense of creativity and community in our own letters, but, what that City in Japan did was amazing.

It's something that Obey and Ecko' are advocating. Even though the government allowed this wall to be taken over, it was great to hear that the artists were able to come together, commune, share their styles as they came to this spot not only to bomb but also to see the artists at work, to see the work itself. That's one of the best ways an artist can build him or herself.If we had something like that here in the states, we'd have stronger writers out there, less toys, less wack shit, more organization and better representation of what Hip Hop really is.

At the same time, it takes it back to when the good stuff went all-city. Back in San Francisco, we had Psycho City--local SF businesses allowed graff writers to blow up their walls with the freshest pieces. You didn't see advertising posters that implied that you'll be without unless you bought what they were selling. You saw real art. You also saw a community. Artists communicated. They grew better, faster and stronger. My party people, it was dope.

Now, the real problem with government. Sweeping policies that threatened to close down those businesses unless they stopped allowing this community. The mayor at the time enforced this policy with only a single societal view driving her actions. The lack of community consensus (the owners of these buildings had an agreement with these artists!). The lack of acknowledging community.

To say the least, it backfired. Closing down Psycho City opened up the rest of the city to be painted on. This inherent need to create, to accomplish great personal feats overtook the mayor's individualistic agenda to achieve something selfish. The art itself found itself on rooftops, places where it was more in your face instead of when it was in Phsycho City, the small wall area in the heart of San Francisco.

If we say art is life. Then life finds a way to survive and grow. Whether or not the govt allows. Should have kept Psycho City open, now the whole of San Francisco is open.

I hope you check out the video.

Hype.PEACE.