Rock'n roll and pink feathers

There was a time when you could be a great rock guitarrist and be covered with pink feathers. You still were divinely awesome.

Questions

Questionaire for a Political Science class project:

Are you sexually active?
YES (ok)
NO (ok)
MAYBE (okish)
DON'T KNOW (not ok: having sex while you are sleepwalking can be mildly dangerous!)
N/A

I am as old as Lucy Harmon

I have been 19 for almost a week.
I got my pride back, had champagne and baked a cake. Went to see art galleries with friends through the rainy Vancouverite afternoon/night (hard to say when one ends and the other starts). I am drowning in essays. I will barely make, but I will.... Oh, sweet 19.



I rewatched "Stealing Beauty" by Bertolucci. Was it because I was upset about the never ending rain? Or was it Lucy Harmon. I am as old as Lucy Harmon.... what does that say about life? Irony? Pherhaps...

Lucy Harmon is my favourite 19 year old character. She comes to Italy, to spend some time on her dead mother's friends' place. The rest... just watch the movie... I find it a great performance by Liv Tyler.

And she is so complex, so bright and young and yet so dark in many ways. She is not innocent, but she is confused. Yet she knows clearly what she wants. And, the best part, she is searching exactly for what no one suspects she wants. That is pherhaps her most curious aspect. Everyone has their expectations of what her 19 year old American self should be like, and secretely she pursues such a different line of thought. It is that wonderful miracle that is called the private life of the mind... so, mysterious and fascinating.

Oh, being 19. The last teen. Not that that ever really mattered. But now I am as old as Lucy Harmon.

"More More More!" that 70's Post

It's the 7'0's,

They get me... somehow. I don't know what is happening! I watch "That 70's show", watch the dance scenes of "Saturday Night Fever" and suddenly I find myself making a 70's pop playlist! I swear, it's the aliens, they took over! I just saw one blinding light...

Less drama, now. I just wanted to make a small note about Andrea True and her "More More More!" hit.




It's sooooo 70's. Why?

- the simplistic lyrics : get the message ? Try harder, you might just make one up!
- the beat: finding it hard to keep control of your body and avoiding embarassing "I'm so cool" disco moves?
- the repetition: and they say today music is boring?
- the "mooooooore", epic-type of voice strech: so disco romantic...
- the fact that she does the same thing for 3 min: they didn't have that many ideas for videoclips back then...
- the image quality
- the setting: shinning with the lights of a thousand Christmas trees
- Andrea True: the name - uhm... 70's
- Andrea True: the fact that she was actually a famous porn star - very 70's, porn movies boom era (it disturbs me that the lyrics say "get the cameras rolling, get the action going"... )
- Andrea True: the blown-up hairdo and the sexy boots + hotpants WITH the leather top thingy.... 70's, all said.

Take that!

"The anatomic bomb" of Italian cinema... did not shave her armpits! Ahah! Take that, social norm!

I accidentally noticed this while watching "Too bad she's bad", great film with Sophia and Marcello Mastroianni, and Vittorio de Sica!


This is the ultimate proof that you can get all the sensual charm of a true mediterranean diva without beocoming a child-like porcelain doll.






Because that is what women look like these days: children. Tiny, fragile, hairless. Puberty is a tragedy for us all. Even the ample breasts and hips factor that made Brigite Bardot or Marilyn Monroe icons is restricted in appeal to the porn circuit (and even about that... I'm not so sure). The leaner, the smoother, the smaller the better.

The effect? We all become little young girls in the arms of everyone and anyone. We are so not powerful, so not sexy, so not women. We are just vulnerable, naughty, like 14 year olds wondering what being alone with that guy would be like.

Is this why out Western society is so fascinated and paranoid about pedophilia? Because, in a way, we all deep inside know this does not come out of the blue? Like 19th century Victorian painters, we share a mesmerised gaze at young children, at young girls. Women are no longer queens of the screen, no longer standards of beauty, no longer a focus of admiration, fear and attraction.

And what did Sophia say when they asked her what was her beauty secret?

"Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti."

On communal showering

(I realised I have completely neglected blogging, and that I had a few posts lying on my desktop, so here it goes)

When did we stop having three-way showers...?




Michael Pitt, Eva Green and Louis Garrel in Bertolucci's "The Dreamers"



Mick Jagger, Michele Breton and Anitta Pallenberg in Donald Cammell's "Performance"

I just realised some of the best scenes of the best movies I have seen are baths, communal style... Bathing in itself is something so significant, so magic, about cleansing your body and soul. Something mystical and religious. A shared bath has exactly that dimension, of common functioning, of sharing one's vulnerability and also one's uplifting moments . So, no wonder they make such awesome scenes. They are charged with symbolism and meaning, beauty. Great discussions too: who tells the truth, Clapton or Hendrix? Or just stick some wet paper money on Jagger! These two scenes are just so liberating, so apeasing, they make you want to lie on a carpet for hours staring at the celling...