| And I'm getting madder.

Chanel: 0 / Kate Moss: $15,000,000

Posted on August 14, 2006 by Sister Wolf

I hate Vanity Fair, but I bought the new issue simply because of Kate Moss. There she is on the cover, looking as adorable as ever, if not more so. I fucking love her, and I don’t care who knows it. Kate, do as many drugs as you see fit! Unless you kill a baby or a puppy, I love you unconditionally. Kill the puppy even, if you have to. I just need to know what lipstick you’re wearing on that Vanity Fair cover, and I will charge it on my Neiman Marcus card.

Wasn’t it stupid of those companies to fire Kate Moss from their ad campaigns a few months ago? We all knew they’d be sorry. I hope Kate has doubled her fees for the companies that dropped her. Now in Vanity Fair, she is featured in ads for Versace, Calvin Klein, Longchamps, David Yurman, Burberry, Louis Vuitton and Dior. You go, Kate! Show those idiots that women want to see you, and only you, flogging these luxury items. We don’t care about the brands; we just want to imagine ourselves as Kate Moss, eternally youthful, waiflike, pouty, slutty, and good enough for Johnny Depp. When I see Kate’s lips alone, I feel my endorphins flowing. When I see her whole face, I want to disappear into it. When I see her laying on a couch naked, wearing David Yurman jewelry, which I’ve never liked, I want to press my body to hers. I would remain fully clothed, though, because I am no lesbian.

Perhaps Chanel and Burberry and the rest of them can now recognize the power and glory of Kate Moss. Let her snort her blow or shoot up or get rehab or date that stupid junkie musician. Let her be shorter than other models. No one gives a shit! She fills me with yearning for lipstick, handbags, boots, jeans, necklaces, trenchcoats and so much more. If scientists could create the perfect face, they would come up with Kate Moss. Next to Kate, Giselle is a big giraffe. No wonder Kate will make $15 million next year! I love you Kate, you deserve every penny.

Posted in Celebrities, Fashion, News | Leave a comment

The Greed of the Hollywood

Posted on August 10, 2006 by Sister Wolf

I think there are movies you don’t have to see in order to hate them. “The Passion of the Christ” is certainly one of them, and from my perspective, “World Trade Center” is another. I only heard about it recently, and at first it seemed like an interesting idea. Then I saw that Oliver Stone was the director, and Michael Shamberg the producer. Uh-oh, and uh-oh. Then I read an article about the project’s history: At some point, two hugely successful female studio executives met on a street in New York, and discussed the script. One says, Oh, we must make this movie! Then, one reports that she cried when she read the script. If you don’t live in Hollywood, you may not know that “I cried!” is the stock response to any script that isn’t a comedy. You HAVE to cry; it shows how sensitive you are. You can then go ahead and pass on the project, after making sure it’s understood that you Cried.

Hollywood shit aside, I don’t want a film about September 11. It strikes me as stupid and ghoulish, and incapable of providing any insight into anything. The use of this event as entertainment of any kind is just preposterous, verging on pornography, in my opinion. But of course, I don’t approve of Holocaust movies either. The notion of actors shaving their heads and running around pretending to be in gas chambers, while people watching them do this eat popcorn, is just outrageous to me. If you need to be “educated” watch a newsreel or “Shoah”. Likewise, the cataclysmic deaths of so many people, on September 11, should not be fodder for entertainment, and certainly not in the form of a schlocky studio film by Oliver Stone.

On September 11, I was awakened by my best friend, who was watching TV. She knew my son worked at the World Trade Center, for a snooty investment company. For the next three hours, I sobbed and tried to call New York. I watched the news on the internet and all I could think about was finding my child. Life could not go on without him, I kept thinking in my panic. Finally, his friend’s mom called to report that my kid was okay. He called later, and told me how he had run for his life, and how his office in the building next to the Twin Towers had been sheared off by fire.

My great sense of relief was soon followed by tremendous guilt. This was pretty common, I hear. It’s terrible to realize how many other moms didn’t get good news that day. I still don’t know to what extent my son has been affected by his experience. I can’t think of anything more traumatizing, outside of war.

I don’t see how anyone would want to make a film that focuses on the “bright side” of September 11. Courage and compassion are beautiful traits, but should not be celebrated in the context of a feel-good movie that exists to enrich the director and producers, all of whom could already afford to feed the greater part of Africa. I hate these guys for personal reasons and political ones (aesthetic ones, too.) But I’d hate this movie no matter who made it. It underscores everything that Muslim Fundamentalists think about us Infidels: Nothing is sacred, nothing. At least, not if there’s some money to be made.

Posted in Horrible Stuff, News, Rants | 2 Comments

I Own, Therefore I Am.

Posted on August 6, 2006 by Sister Wolf

Five years ago, a British artist named Michael Landy performed the public destruction of all 7,226 of his belongings in a vacant building in central London. He stood on a platform over a production line of ten “blue-collared operatives”, directing the cataloguing and destruction of all his possessions, down to the last sock. It took nearly two weeks, and attracted 45,000 visitors. Landy called it an examination of consumerism.

When he finished, he told an interviewer, he felt a tremendous sense of freedom and possibility. But that freedom was eroded “by the everyday concerns of life.” His performance piece, called Break Down, was the subject of much controversy. He was criticized by art dealers for destroying the work of other artists, and was decisively removed from the running in the competition for the prestigious Tuner Prize.

Landy mentions in interview that he was a little annoyed by the fact that some of his possessions might have eluded destruction: Love letters, for example, that he had returned to an ex-girlfriend at her request. He also admits that it was very hard for him to see the last item go…his father’s sheepskin coat, which he hoped someone would steal in order to save it.

These last two conflicts seem like the ones that would drive me nuts. If you’re set on destroying all your belongings to make a statement, I can see how you might feel a certain psychotic level of scrupulosity: Everything means every goddamned thing! Forgetting a toothbrush would just fuck the whole thing up! All that for nothing! you might feel. Likewise, wanting to spare a certain special item sort of negates your whole aim. If you are too attached to even one thing, you might as well keep it, as well as all the rest of your shit. It’s your shit, after all! It’s all you can acquire in life, besides debt and if you’re lucky, some amount of knowledge.

Poor Landy. He didn’t feel the desire to work for a long time after Break Down. I can see his dilemma: Why bother? Once you have made such a huge gesture implying the nobility of destruction, why create? But later, he went on to become the subject of a BBC Documentary, and published a book of the computerized catalogue of the stuff he destroyed.

I sometimes like to imagine the purity and weightlessness I would feel if I lost everything in a fire or tidal wave. To be free from the ballast of all my shit…free to start all over, not just collecting shit, but to be someone else. Someone defined by the new shit I would acquire! Did George Carlin discuss this angle in his rumination on “Stuff”?

Unlike Michael Landy, I am neither ready to give up my belongings, nor impressed with them enough to think they deserve cataloguing. Except for my lipstick collection, of course, which will be curated at a later date. But I have to admit that his endeavor provokes a complex array of feelings, from “What an Idiot!” all the way to “How Liberating!” I will probably settle down, though, at my standard default position, “How soon can I go shopping?”

Posted in Art, News | 3 Comments

The Misery Cup Theory of Life

Posted on July 31, 2006 by Sister Wolf

Many years ago, I formulated the Misery Cup Theory of Life, and while it is only one Nobel Prize worthy idea among many I have conceived, I think it is safe to share it while those Swedish guys are reviewing my work.

The Misery Cup Theory is related to the principle that “water seeks its own level”; only swap the word Misery for water. Every person is born with his/her own Misery Level, which will actually remain static, even though it may give the illusion of volatility. Think of your life as a measuring cup. Your Misery Level has a set-point, much like your body’s metabolism. Your own level may be lower than average (i.e. sunny outlook), or right at the top (i.e. excruciating anguish). But it is unlikely to change, at least without the big guns of psychopharmacology or a severe blow to the head.

Here is some empirical proof: Let’s say you get a flat tire. Shit! You’re really pissed off, your day is ruined, godammit. You feel your Misery Level rise. But later on, your level will have returned to exactly where it was. Now, let’s say you find the boots you always wanted, at a huge discount! You Rule! Your Misery Level plummets, as you rejoice that your life is now perfect! By the next day, though, where is your Misery Level? Right back to where it was.

This theory is not necessarily a negative view of personality or psychology. It should be comforting to know that no matter how many awful ordeals you must suffer through, in the end you will not be more miserable than you were already. Your Misery Level will shoot up temporarily, but it will find its own level.

My own Misery Level is set quite high, obviously, but I think this allows me to tolerate misfortune without falling apart. I’d probably be more fun to be around with a lower Misery Level, but those are the breaks. I once read about some scientist who had worked out a Misery Index of some kind, which I find completely delightful! Since I can’t remember how he did it, I may have to devise one myself. Then, you could simply combine the Miserable Event with your Misery Level to predict how miserable you will feel, until things settle down to normal.

If a bad haircut equals a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10, and your ML is set at 8, you won’t even register any pain. If your ML is a 5 however, you will experience a surge of level 7 Misery, but only until the event is absorbed. Then: Right back to 5, until you catch your spouse cheating on you (8) or you get fired (8) or you lose a toe in a hunting accident (9) or you see your butt in a three-way mirror at Bloomingdales (10).

Posted in Religion, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Philanthropy, dude.

Posted on July 26, 2006 by Sister Wolf

Ben Goldhirsh, 26, is the son of self-made millionaire philanthropist Bernard Goldhirsh, who tried to raise Ben with as little sense of entitlement as possible. But when Bernie was diagnosed with brain cancer, he began to consider Ben’s aptitude for running a philanthropic organization. He endowed the new Goldhirsh Foundation and set up a trust fund for Ben, who could only access his money to make investments or start companies. Ben recalls the party he had on the eve of his father’s funeral. His old friends came to cheer him up. In fact, notes Ben, “I got laid in the yard that night under the stars.”

Good to know, and yet…not. One has to wonder at Ben’s argument with his sister Elizabeth, who wants to fund brain cancer research. The siblings argued about this issue for a year, with Ben complaining that brain cancer isn’t very common, so “why throw money at it”? Well, Ben is not a sentimentalist, except when talking about himself. He recounts a story about a realtor showing him slick Beverly Hills mansions with marble fountains. “I was like, dude, you are gonna get fired. Think dirty fingernails and calluses.” Instead, Ben found a rambling property on five acres of Beverly Hills, where he can hike with his cool friends.

Impatient at film school, Ben told his professor “I don’t know if you know this, but I’ve got loot”. He engaged the professor to help get a film company off the ground, dedicated to making “relevent films”. At the last minute, Ben balked about investing 30 million in an “old guy”. Instead he rounded up his pals to start Reason Pictures, where he will make a few films a year. Then he thought of starting a magazine called Good. “I was like, that’s dope.” It will offer a hipster take on the world of energy, politics, indie culture and green living.

Meanwhile, Ben wants to do good in other areas. He gave several thousand dollars to a refugee camp in Ghana. “I just gave that gift, and booked. I didn’t really stay in touch,” Ben confesses. Now Ben has been approached to sponsor a refugee teenager to study in the US. “The girl is so cool” Ben says. “But does it make sense to spend $20,000 on one kid,” or should he invest it in the Ghana school system?

What a mess! Ben even had to miss Coldplay at Coachella. Dude! As Ben explains though, “Sometimes you have a limited bandwidth for helping out.”

Is it me? Somehow I feel this guy has a limited bandwidth, period. Hugely wealthy, hugely ambitious, too lazy to finish film school, but hey, now he’s really putting his nose to the grindstone. “I’m working on having a comfort with money that my father or grandfather never did.” Maybe that starts with getting your fingernails dirty or tampering with other people’s scripts down at Reason Pictures.

I’m wondering: How is Angelina looking to you now? Personally, I like her bandwidth.

Posted in Horrible Stuff, News | 3 Comments

Maggots

Posted on July 24, 2006 by Sister Wolf

When I was 11 years old, my dad used to take me out on a fishing boat that left early in the morning and returned in the afternoon. The fishermen all put money into a pool, as a prize for catching the biggest fish of the day. The day I won the pool, the fishing must’ve been pretty crappy. I won with a 15 pound Bonita.

I was so proud! It was a real moment of glory in a childhood that I only remember in snapshots, most of them unpleasant. I loved the fish, so I put it in the garage on some newspaper. One day, my mom told me to go and throw the fish away. When I went to get it, it was swarming with maggots. And I mean MAGGOTS. I ran back inside shrieking. I remember my mom telling me that it was my fault for leaving the fish there, so too bad, I had to throw it out. To this day, I can’t remember what happened next.

But a few days ago, I opened the trashcan in my kitchen, and guess what? Fucking maggots! I screamed and ran in a little circle. My kid asked what was wrong and I told him: MAGGOTS! He disappeared into his room. My neighbor Alec is my go-to person for Man Stuff when my husband isn’t there. Alec has thrown out dead possums, has drilled holes and once even cut down a tree for me. Alec is out of town, so I called Bruce, and left a message. Then I called my adopted son Chris (the Ex-Anton) who told me to get rubber gloves and some pesticide. Bruce called back and told me to take the trashcan outside for the extermination project.

I bought some elbow-length bright yellow gloves that made me feel ready to kill anything. I sprayed some bug spray into the can with my eyes closed. After a while, I carried the can outside and blasted it with spray from every angle. Finally, I felt that the maggots were dead. “Not only really dead, but really most sincerely dead!”

I really fucking hate maggots. The moral of this story is: Make sure you have plenty of friends for Man Stuff, and don’t leave your fish in the garage.

Posted in Horrible Stuff | 2 Comments

Gilles Trehin: Another Beautiful Mind

Posted on July 21, 2006 by Sister Wolf

Gilles Trehin is a 34 year old Frenchman who has created a city in his mind called Urville. In more that 200 drawings, he has crafted a city with an elaborate history reaching back to before the Middle Ages, complete with an entire culture that includes religious, political, and economic records. The city’s life is mapped out with information about its universities, industries, and cultural events. Gilles, who has been diagnosed as autistic but probably has an autistic spectrum condition called Asperger’s Syndrome, is an angelic looking man who hopes to make a living as an artist. He also has perfect pitch and an interest in prime numbers. His first word, at three years old, was “airplane.”

Earlier stories about Gilles have focused on his autism, making him sound like an inordinately gifted chimp. After watching this video of him, I see that he is an intelligent but somewhat otherworldly young man with a truly beautiful spirit. His drawings are awe-inspiring, and his prodigious intelligence is very moving to behold — for me, anyway. Rather than being a poster-boy for the disabled, Gilles Trehin is a multi-gifted genius who should be celebrated as such. You can see some of drawings here at the Kircher Society, (whose dedication to “the wondrous” makes it a delightful website to visit.)

Gilles Trehin’s book, Urville, published by Jessica Kingsley, is available from Amazon.com and directly from the publisher.

Posted in Disorders, News | 1 Comment

My Girlie Brain

Posted on July 15, 2006 by Sister Wolf

In their efforts to understand autism, researchers have found that not only is autism a predominantly male condition, but a type of autism called Aspergers Syndrome seems to reflect a sort of extreme male brain. Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen’s theory is that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems. He calls it the empathizing-systemizing (E-S) theory.

Empathizing is the drive to identify another person’s emotions and thoughts, and to respond to these with an appropriate emotion. The empathizer intuitively figures out how people are feeling, and how to treat people with care and sensitivity.

Systemizing is the drive to analyze and explore a system, to extract underlying rules that govern the behavior of a system; and the drive to construct systems.

A key feature of this theory is that your sex cannot tell you which type of brain you have. Not all men have the male brain, and not all women have the female brain. The central claim of this new theory is only that on average, more males than females have a brain of type S, and more females than males have a brain of type E.

This has been great news for me personally! I used to joke that I had only one brain lobe, and now my test scores reveal the truth: I have Extreme Girlie Brain! My female brain quotient is nearly off the chart. My male brain quotient is a dismal 4 on a scale of 1 to 80. (The average female score here is between 20 and 30.) No wonder I can’t read maps or work the remote! Baron-Cohen believes that his theory predicts the existence of an extreme female brain, but he notes that such a condition would not be easily recognized as a disability. Women who are impaired at systemizing but gifted at empathizing could attract males to set up a home theater system, for example…

Such has been my life. I am smart in one way but retarded in another. I’ve been able to get by via my superior Girlie Brain. I don’t know how to open the hood of my car, but I can tell if you need cheering up. I can save your marriage by directing you to drop the fight and give your spouse oral sex, ASAP. I can also tell Lancome Roulette Red from Holiday Red, which I believe has served to put a roof over my head and a computer in front of me.

Morbid Interest

Posted on July 10, 2006 by Sister Wolf

I have come to think of Joel-Peter Witkin as the embodiment of a certain brand of Hipsterism that really bothers me. I guess it’s a sort of celebration of morbidness that strikes me as pretentious, not to mention annoyingly predictable. What Hipster worth his or her Nick Cave CD’s doesn’t love Joel-Peter Witkin? Once you tell me you love Joel-Peter Witkin, you’ve told me everything I need to know about you. (e.g., you love Nosferatu, Freaks, Quay Brothers, Bunuel, zombie movies, etc.) I have tried to discuss this idea with my husband, who is usually adept at nipping such conversations in the bud by exclaiming “Why do you ask me these things!â€? This time, I persisted. I knew he knew what I was talking about, even though he pretended not to.

I posed the question as something like: “Why do Hipsters have to like Joel-Peter Witkin?â€? But he forced me to rephrase it several times, until it became: “Why do Hipsters love things that are either morbid or shocking?â€? Finally, after relentlessly badgering him, he explained it. “Hipsters are supposed to be sort of an outlaw element, so they like anything that smacks of outlaw culture.â€? Well, bingo. I didn’t marry him just for the one thing, you know.

So today, while continuing to ponder the Joel-Peter Witkin thing, I looked at some of his photos online, and sure enough I was annoyed, repelled, somewhat intrigued, but mostly disgusted. I read an interview with Witkin, where he describes his search for a nice male corpse, somewhere in Mexico. He spoke of love and redemption and mortality. Good themes, all of them. Then he spoke of humor: He thought it was funny how in complaining about his photograph of someone putting a penis into an empty eye socket, some outraged letter-writer had mistaken the penis for a potato. Ha ha! Good one, Joel-Peter! Still further down the page, you could click on a nice ad from Witkin, who is seeking a young blind woman with cloudy eyes, as well as a young armless woman to model for him. He offers in return a free print from the photo session.

You know what’s next. My personal message to Mr. Witkin: “Joel-Peter, go fuck yourself!â€? I know he would, if only he were deformed in some way and could photograph it.

Beyond this attack on one perpetrator is a larger issue I found articulated by an editor of Photovision magazine. In the last quarter century, he notes, the world has moved from the “absurd ageâ€? to the “horror age.â€? For all I know, this has been stated already in the New Yorker and everywhere else; but for me it’s kind of a fresh idea. It feels true. After September 11, the tsunami, Katrina, and the freely available videos of people getting their heads chopped off, we are all traumatized, whether we think so or not. We have been exposed to horror non-stop now, and it’s harder every day to shock us. Darfur, child soldiers, child amputees, sobbing earthquake victims, teen sex-slaves, prison torture, reality TV, it never ends.

I’m still capable of being shocked. And I don’t want to be exposed to any more horror than is necessary. I don’t know where the age of horror will lead. I can’t blame it on Joel-Peter Witkin, but I can cite him as a poster boy for the era. And I can turn in my Hipster card if that’s what it takes to renounce him.

Posted in Horrible Stuff, Rants | 6 Comments

The Artist as Fucker

Posted on July 5, 2006 by Sister Wolf

I always have a problem separating the art from the artist (i.e. the artist from his life.) This has come up for years now when the subject is Woody Allen. I was so pissed off with him after the Soon-Yi Incident that for Christmas that year, my husband sent me a card “from” Woody Allen, with a personal apology. No dice. I haven’t forgiven Woody, because that would be shallow, but I find I am still able to enjoy Annie Hall without feeling too much moral indignation.

One school of thought is to accept and appreciate the art (or of course disappreciate it) independently from any judgment on the artist himself. In other words, Joni Mitchell has written some beautiful songs, even though she is a complete asshole. It makes perfect sense! But I can’t seem to do it. Ever since I read an interview with her in Rolling Stone, at least 100 years ago, in which she heaps praise upon herself as a brilliant visual artist, she has made me sick. Just a few months ago, in Starbucks, I picked up the Joni Mitchell edition of their CD series dedicated to an artist’s selection of musical influences. Joni Mitchell is the only artist who has had the temerity to include one of her own songs! What an asshole!!! She is ruined for me forever. Sorry!

What about Roald Dahl? As a child, I loved his short stories. They were so creepy! Who doesn’t love Roald Dahl for god sake? But years ago, when a biography revealed him to have been a horrible father, among other failings, I could never extinguish this reprehensible image of him. Same story with R. Crumb. Seeing the movie “Crumb” the first time, I cried at the tragedy of his crazy brothers. The second time, I couldn’t avoid cringing at R’s coldness toward his son: He says openly that the only person he’s every truly loved is his little daughter, Sophie. Where does that leave your son, you fucking bastard, is my feeling toward Crumb. Yeah, yeah, great cartoons, but what a waste as a human being. He won’t even let his son touch his stupid records.

Today, I read a horrifying account of the life of Bertrand Russell. The least of his crimes against his family members is that he decided to make his 4 year old son John learn to swim by repeatedly throwing him into the ice cold sea. He did this until the child learned that his sobbing was pointless. John later developed schizophrenia. It only gets worse. If you really like Bertrand Russell, don’t even consider reading any recent biographies.

I am so grateful that Patti Smith continues to hold her own as a person. Thank you Patti for living a life that measures up to your art….maybe even surpasses it! Neil Young has done pretty well too, until this afternoon. “He” posted a bulletin on mySpace that on its surface is a noble anti-war entreaty, but turns out to be an effort to sell tickets for his tour with Crosby Stills and Nash. It’s not the worst thing, but it’s not something I wanted to see, either. If you’re reading this Neil, please watch yourself! Don’t screw things up for me like your friend Joni did.

Posted in Celebrities, Rants | Tagged artists, fuckers, music, Woody Allen, writers | 6 Comments