Saturday, May 07, 2005

Brigid was certainly overweight. She ate a lot the day she almost got run over by a car, as Andy commented: "she had ice cream cones ($.75 X 4 and $.90 cookies from Greenberg's and then cake $12, Big Macs $8.52)."

A lot of food. For sure. $.90 cents worth of cookies is a lot for the early eighties. I mean, I remember going to the corner store and buying a quart of chocolate milk, a Sneakers bar and a bag of chips for only .90 cents. I was stuffed after that. But given that Brigid had just had a near death experience, it is understandable that she overate on that day. Although, following other accounts by Andy, Brigid constantly struggled with her weight.

This is actually a big problem with Americans. It is so bad that now it has turned into a stereotype. The other day I ran into this image depicting a slim European woman and an over-weight American woman. Both giving their backs to the camera, of course--to keep their objectification at play. Also notice that the camera hovers over the thin European, while it looks up to the overweight American. The European is more approachable since the position of the camera implies a gaze with power, while the upshot of the American implies a sense of overwhelment. Problematics run amok here.

"So how about that revolution, Mick?" What kind of question is that? "How is the Drug culture?" What kind of questions is that? Small talk was created to keep awkward moments at bay, and then it also became appropriated by inpropriety. So be it.

Brockis was the man. He wrote Warhol's biography. I used it a lot to learn about Andy. Some juicy stuff in that book. Like Andy Running out of an art store in New York yelling "I'm starting Pop Art" [...] "because I hate abstract expressionism!" Well, he did not start pop art all alone, but that he was one of the gurus nobody can deny.

The soupcan, the soupcans, the soupcans, the cow, the cows, the cows, the gun, the guns, the guns (with Elvis) the money, the money, the money, the women, the women, the women, the men, the men, the men, the torso, the torsos, the torsos.

Rocky and the man living under his shadow. A character so big Stallone had to milk it for four more movies: RII, RIII, RIV and RV. I liked Mr. T in Rocky III. I was a kid then--I still am, like Mouchette ;) I remember his Mohawk. He looked tough. And then Mr. T showed up in the A Team and it ruined it for me. He just became an empty vessel saying empty lines--"a fool"--no, that was his line, can't use it against him--he be and be cool today. But the Mohawk kicked butt. Then there was the Russian fighter--the Siberian express. Drago! and his wife who ended up being Stallone's wife in real life shortly after the movie: Brigitte Neilsen. Brigitte and Stallone are game in the reality TV frenzy. Now, after 9/11 I can see all the politics in that movie, it was all about being American and better than the "enemy." There is always an enemy in every decade--for anyone, it appears. Today it is terrorism... not an actual enemy but an ideology that is too elusive to fight with arms. it must be fought with education.

Rocky. How could it have gone so bad after the first movie? I have a theory about sequels. They are bad simply because they are sequels--they are followers, and it is hard to follow up something good, or decent--I like Rocky. How Stallone pulled off the first film is a mystery to me. He must have had a lot of help with that script; it appears that the more power he got to direct and write the worst he got. Once I read a magazine featuring his home, and it had wall-sized painting of himself as Rocky. "I'm Rocky!" He was. But no more.

Andy's tour through the sausage factory in Dusseldorf sounds like an excerpt from a porn film. Let us check the goods with sex in our intellectual minds--links are a must, of course:

First like all porn films, everything is well lit: "you could see all the employees," he says. (oohh, that led us to a link with the same exact post on which I am commenting, small world.)

Lights are ready for action, and then Andy adds:
"He had my Pig on the wall" (lovely). [...] "a lot of toys." [...] "pigs, pigs, pigs, all over the place" [...] "There were funny things hanging on the ceiling" [...] " We went through and watched the ladies make the sausages. It was really fun." [...] ...

Andy was obsessed with sex. I mean, speculating and imagining if Bianca was giving the limo driver a blowjob, come on! She's his friend, his buddy! Admitting not to know what the hell was going on inside the limo, yet still salivating about the possibilities. Bianca giving a blowjob. This is the same woman that now is known for being a globe trotting peace hustler... and the limo driver was not even good looking according to Andy... she was dazed, he says. Maybe he was good at it (whatever that may mean) Or if you are a guy (and a chauvinistic pig at heart) reading this, maybe the limo driver had a big you know what. Phalocentrism. Let the feminist speak and appropriate the language. Let men be castrated. Word. Maybe then men would get more creative(?)... Word. Psychoanalyze the subject of power--phalloesss [out] the house! Please please please. I am asking for it. get on widdit. yeah.

No, but in all seriousness, there is a history of the bourgeois doing it with the help. That's what I'm tawking'bout... Hybrids were born out of such moments--moments of rape. Which reminds me of the most exotic movie, Sargasso sea. Why? Because a woman slave is abused. Whiteness is all over that film. So classy according to the critics, les connoiseurs.

I was just watching Pretty Woman with Richard Gere and Julia Roberts (of course). It was playing in Spanish. Somehow every line sounded really fake in Spanish. But I admit that Roberts and Gere look good together--even with a bad translation--looking good, and that's about it. Apparently, that's why they made a second movie together. Amazing how other people can start to look like the people in the movie. Once Gere played a prostitute, and then he played the man who hires a prostitute. How times change, yet the template stays the same. Sell sex, with the Cinderella story (now even that is a movie). Julia Roberts got started in the big time with her pretty role. They sold her legs with those boots.

I still remember a rumour I heard about Gere and a gerbil... Heck, it's become an urban legend. Urban legends. Even they have a movie, not to mention a magazine.

Searching for "Rupert" after Andy's entry of Tuesday, January 1, 1980, I ran into a post dealing with his exhibitions, which then led me to a post with a quote by Gary Indiana. I always thought he had a cool name. Indiana... Does not quite mean what it would mean once it is appropriated by American culture. It sounds, cool, cultured, yet ethnic. Does not mean what it would mean, even when one may know what "indian" stands for. It may read as "Indian[a]" or "indian...a" or "Indian/a", yet never straight up "Indian." I would simply say "Indio con una a."

He be Koo. Be cooo da'man. Here is Gary Indiana, the place--can one ask for anything more?