True Blood: RIP Lorena Krasiki

"I do miss the 1930s. Such style, elegance. People knew how to behave, knew what was expected of them. Knew how to avoid creating tragedies for the people they loved." -Lorena

All the True Blood fans out there know that Season 3 is pulling out the big guns. Secrets and sexy characters keep coming and dying. Vampires commit spinal carnage out on the national news. Sookie Stackhouse is a FIARY [jealous]. I think I speak for us all when I say, True Blood, thank you for not losing your moxie.

But I'd like to take a Little Kia, Big Planet moment of silence for one particular act in the True Blood Season 3 parade of plot  upheavals---the death of Lorena Krasiki, the fiercest, most stylish bitch on television.


I should've known that Lorena was next up for the slaughter the moment I started to like her. It's been the pattern of all female, villain characters on True Blood. Take the beautiful, stylish, and pure evil Maryann Forrester for example. As the main antagonist in Season 2, I don't think any of us had seen such an evil bitch on TV at the time. She manipulated pure hearts with drugs and pleasures of the flesh. She used her bewitching powers to make innocents rage, kill, and turn against each other--all in the name of getting exactly what she wanted. 


I was right there with everyone not waiting until the moment when she would inevitably be killed dead in the worst way. But when that episode came, and she ran around Sookie's mangled house in a wedding dress crying over the arrival of her bull-god, I saw a little bit of myself in Maryann's crazy-ass. I admired her cosmic delusions and eerie willingness to give herself up to her believed deity. But alas, it all ended with a hoax as Sam, in shape-shifting form, skewered her with his bull horn and ripped out her black heart. A pretty epic death for such an epic female.


Lorena was portrayed in a similar way to Maryann. You could do nothing but hate her. She was shown as a heartless, vindictive force driven mad by her selfish, undying love for Bill Compton. Maybe she was all that, but I always saw her as much more.


Lorena is one of the greatest examples of the tragic femme fatale, lost in her doomed love for Bill. She lost all her shame and all her pride all in the pursuit of his love, and received nothing but humiliation and heartbreak in return. But despite it all, she kept her head held high in the finest fashions, never giving up on winning her love's hand.


All the True Blood audience really saw of Bill and Lorena's relationship was his disgust and hate for her and her foolish, wicked attempts to ensnare him once again. But in the episode "I've Got a Right to Sing the Blues", Bill sheds light onto Lorena by revealing feelings he still has for her.


Lorena plays music from the 30s as she prepares to slice Bill up, the decade where they once experienced joy as a couple together in vampirial, carnal bliss. She reels on about her suffering as she places her blood into his open wound so that she  may be inside him in true death, not Sookie. Bill admits that enjoyed the times they had together of world travel, decadent parties, and luring humans into their bed to feed upon and make love in their remains. He looks up to her with sincerity as he tells her

"I wish I had known you before you were made. Before you turned hard. I would like to have seen you smile with light in your eyes, instead of darkness. That would've been something." -Bill

Maryann and Lorena may never be known for anything more than their seductive, evil ways, but it was just that that made them such stand-out characters alongside the good-girls and righteous men. I know I'm not alone when I say I miss their impeccable style, their murderess class, and their alluring composure despite being disturbed, crazy bitches.

Besides, who remembers the well-behaved girls anyway? ;)

Gaga for GLEE!

It happened to me. I was overtaken by Gleek fever. And according to this year's Emmy nominations, apparently the rest of us were too.

Congratulations to Glee! for 19 Emmy nominations! It's so wild. I've never heard of a TV show getting that many nods in my life.

But instead of harping on about how amazing, clever, fresh, and well-cast the show is, I'd instead like to focus on the episode that I believe was the most special of the whole series. And that of course is Theatricality--the Lady Gaga tribute episode!

Both the tribute episodes, "The Power of Madonna" and "Theatricality", were defiantly two of the best episodes in the first season, but Theatricality goes above and beyond in musical numbers, emotional depth, and intensity.

In this episode, Glee club learns the joys of living life theatrically, with unabashed self expression and your freak flag flying high. Among many issues, this episode deals with gay rights and the scrutiny people face for being different, leading viewers to some of the most colorful and emotional scenes in the whole season.

If you're a fellow Gleek, then you know all about the witty one-liners the writers sprinkle into the show. This flashy episode is full of quotes to LOL and ponder at.

• "My mom won't even let me watch Twilight. She said Kristen Stewart seems like a bitch." -Tina
• "I'm going to put together a palette that expresses who you are and who I want you to be...Who you want to be." -Kurt
• "What's up with this Gaga dude? Doesn't he just dress weird, right? Like Bowie." -Puck 
• "Even though I'm painfully shy and obsessed with death, I'm a really effervescent person." -Tina
• "You look terrible. I look awesome." -Brittany
• "The reason I'm here right now, in a shower curtain, is because of you." -Finn
• "I swear to you I will never change. I'm proud to be different. It's the best thing about me." -Kurt
• "We're all freaks together, and we shouldn't have to hide it." -Finn

Many would probably say that the best thing about Theatricality was the quality of the music numbers. If you've been following the season, then you know that some of the music numbers don't quite add up to the others. Some are just OK. But Theatricality delivers four numbers that are each very impactful in their own way.

Rachel and Ms. Corcoran's "Poker Face" could melt your heart, and the intent in Puck's eyes as he sings Kiss's "Beth" to Quinn is 100% believable.  But in my opinion, their version of "Bad Romance" really stole the show.



Apart from extremely jealous, this performance made me feel happy above all else. I loved watching them all swinging their claws and gritting their teeth while they rocked it out in those crazy outfits. I believe behavior like this is healthy. Theatricality is healthy. We can do nothing but gain from acting this way--abandoning inhibitions and surrendering to true self expression and exultation.

I appreciated Glee so much for making this episode, and ultimately, it made me appreciate Lady Gaga in a whole new way that I hadn't before.

It used to be cults like Rocky Horror Picture Show that preached the joys of living larger than life and without inhibitions. Now, Lady Gaga is bringing that message into the mainstream so that everyone has a chance to discover it. Now that we can celebrate the theatricality and raw, passionate energy of an artist like Lady Gaga, those who were previously unwilling are now able to see that it's OK to let go. It's OK to be a freak if that's how you feel.

Thank you Lady Gaga and Glee for giving hope to all the little monsters out there, and keeping the Rocky Horror Picture Show message alive--Don't dream it, be it!

Toy Story 3: The End

::Sigh:: Toy Story 3--the ending of probably the most treasured animated story of our generation. And with this last installment, I think it's safe to say that Pixar blew our minds in ways we weren't expecting. Whether it's the phenomenal short, Day and Night (see it in 3D!), the character depth, or the darker tone, Toy Story ended the trilogy in the most impactful way. But of course, what everyone is really talking about is the last 30 minutes of the movie--the ending of it all. 

If you didn't cry during the last half hour of this movie, you must be a robot, because everyone I've talked to says they did. I won't go into what exactly happened in case some of you haven't seen it, but as you probably know, Andy does end up giving his toys away. Let's just say that the whole a affair is a LOT more emotional than you could ever imagine.
 

With my personal experience in seeing the ending, I cried among many other things because I felt an overwhelming sadness that this wonderful story, these beloved characters were all coming to an end. I thought about how when Toy Story started, I was Andy's age, and that I had grown up with this story too. I felt this strange loss within myself. Just like Andy, I was losing these toys too. 

Given the experience I had in the movie theater with Toy Story 3, here is my interpretation of the epic ending to this tale: 

 Andy represents the audience--the entire generation that grew up with this story. As I said before, our generation was about Andy's age when this story started, so his growing up experience mirrors ours. I believe the message that Toy Story 3 leaves with us is all about growing up--how it makes us change, the things we have to lose, but also the childhood innocence that will always be in our hearts.

Like Andy, we too had to let go of our childhood relics. The playground days had to end. But what we took from that precious time is still part of who we are. The toys we loved, the games we played helped us grow. And even if those toys and those games are long gone, we are still children at heart because the memories and connections we had to that time are still alive. 

No matter how old we grow, we will always have times when we feel like our childhood selves who cried over broken toys and scraped knees. And whose imaginations were so wild and carefree, and hearts so full of love, that all we wanted to do was just cuddle up with our toys and play.

Flash Delirium

When MGMT's Oracular Spectacular came out about a year ago, I decided that I didn't want to buy into that whole scene. I enjoyed the album at first, but was majorly turned off by the crowd they attracted--you know, the Urban Outfitters/Clothing Warehouse hipster type. I therefore took their experimental style as the band trying to cater to that particular (trendy) crowd.

I am happy to say now that I think I was wrong.

Dubbed as "anti-christ" by a population of YouTube viewers, MGMT's new song and video, Flash Delirium, is weird. Like, John Waters/Rocky Horror Picture Show weird. And I am so, so happy that any kind of artist today is capable of envisioning and achieving that kind of absurdity.

The song itself is written in an uncanny way, even more so than songs from their first album. The lyrics are written in Dada fashion with lines of ridiculous, disconnected prose like "The hot dog's getting cold/And you'll never be as good as the Rolling Stones".

And then there's the video, which acts as a both a harmonious and an unexpected representation of the song's quirkiness and absurdity.

The video starts out with the band's front members, Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, arriving at a Welcome Home party in a lavish mansion. A group of mostly elderly people wearing high society, 60/70s fashion people greets them. It's very Royal Tenenbaums. 

The video's progression leads us through an odd series of images/events including robotic, strained dance numbers, ventriloquist doll chants, and mouths singing from throats--all paired with ostentatious references to phallism, anal sex play, fallacio, and apocalyptic destruction.

After seeing and hearing Flash Delirium, I don't doubt MGMT anymore. I really think that they are genuinely weird, not faking it like all the cultural hacs out there. It turns out we might just be kindred spirits with each other ^_^ 

I am so happy to see something weirdly erotic, disturbed, and Dada by a current artist. I almost thought musicians just weren't strange anymore.

Love and Lolita

I always knew I'd fall in love with Vladimir Nabokov's controversial masterpiece Lolita. As a long time lover of fucked up literature [check out White Oleander, Fight Club, Disco Bloodbath] , I always thought of Lolita as the queen bee.

Last summer, I finally got around to ordering a copy of my long-awaited scandal novel, but didn't start reading it until around fall. It took me far too long to finish Lolita, much longer than the pace I had read books throughout the summer. A lot of that has to do with Nabokov's masterful writing style. He writes so richly, and ornately that I often went back and read passages several times over.
But this language also kept me caught in a trance. I would hang on to every word as I flipped through pages of devious, fantastical, and wildly passionate scenes.

The thing about Lolita is that while the relationship between main character Humbert Humbert and fantasy girl-child Dolores Haze (Lolita) is universally wrong and disturbing, make no doubt about it that this is a love story. Vanity Fair calls it "The only convincing love story of our century". And the deeper you fall into the story, the more you realize just how true it is.

Many passages struck my heart to the core.

• "Sometimes, while Lolita would be haphazardly preparing her homework, sucking a pencil, lolling sideways in an easy chair with both legs over its arm, I would shed all my pedagogic restraint, dismiss all our quarrels, forget all my masculine pride--and literally crawl on my knees to your chair my Lolita! You would give me one look--a gray furry question mark of a look: "Oh no, not again"; for you never deigned to believe that I could ever crave to bury my face in your plaid skirt, my darling!"

• "...there she was with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-veined narrow hands and her goose-flesh white arms, and her shallow ears, and her unkempt armpits, there she was, hopelessly worn at seventeen, with that baby, dreaming already in her of becoming a big shot and retiring around 2020 A.D.--and I looked and looked at her, and knew as clearly as I know I am going to die, that I loved her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else."

Reading passages like these affected me even physically. Towards the end of Lolita, whenever I read in public I could feel the emotional toll the words were taking on my facial expressions and body language. I would feel like crying. Often, people in the streets would stop and ask me what was wrong or what I was reading.

I believe Nabokov really achieved something extraordinary. It's hard enough to write about love, but to make it so convincing that the words take a real, emotional toll on the reader takes magic. And he created this magic between a pedophile and a young girl.

Through all his passion, obsession, hopelessness, and insanity, the reader knows clearly of the love that Humbert Humbert has for little Lolita. The reader knows it, and they feel it. And most importantly, they believe it. How strange that one could read a novel with such a torrid, disturbed relationship and leave wishing that someone might one day feel the same way about them?

Suffer for Fashion

I don't feel I belong to any particular subculture, so it's very easy for

me to observe/make fun of everyone else.

I can name qualities from any subculture here in Savannah.

Hipsters

• Can be seen wearing any combination of flannel, raggedy-ass pants, fashion sunglasses, a beard/stache, slutty shorts/skirts, and looking painfully self-important

• Drink PBR and ride fixed gears
• Hang out in packs with other hipsters while denying they're hipsters
• Sentient Bean is their mecca

Crust Punks

• Go out of their way to dress dirty/unkempt/unfashionable but ended up creating a whole new fashion of their own (note the link).
  

• Hop trains, dumpster dive for food/goods, then talk about how they hop trains/dumpster dive with all their crust friends

• Drink cheap liquor and Four Loko, the shittiest alcoholic energy drink ever. Just drink Sparks people!
  
• Hang out at the Pony Pen and listen to terrible music

New Age SCAD Hippies ::shudder::

• Claim to be these worldly, humanitarian, live-by-the-earth people but then post pictures on Facebook of themselves at their parents' million dollar vacation house in the Virgin Islands.

• Wear stereotypical hippie clothing/accessories ironically considering their parents gave them the money for it.

• Don't kill cockroaches, but still eat meat.
• Loaf around in Forsyth Park playing shitty, cliche hippie guitar and hula hooping while consuming goods from Brighter Day.
  

• Once again, claim to be these down-to-earth, natural people, but are really just ASS HOLES!

Gag, gag, gag. Well, the point of all of that was that all these different subcultures have their own codes and inner-workings, but they all have one thing in common--they claim no reason for acting/dressing the way they do. They buy the clothes and adopt the lingo, but refuse to admit that they're doing it because they want to emulate what they see. They choose to go down that path because that's the person they want to be.

Basically, they just like the fashion of it. They like the dress. They like the talk. They want to project themselves in that way. They want to put on the fashion of it and make it their own.

But fashion is a sinful word to most of these people. They'll refuse to admit they're following any kind of trend. Like they've always been the way the are. Whatever.

All I'm suggesting to everyone is how about we just admit we're doing what we do for the fashion. Why don't we just drop the front that we all have of being impervious to trends and style? We all do it. It doesn't matter who you are. We all want to embody a certain ideal. We're all just picking our costumes and striking a pose.

Maybe we'd all get along better, we'd all stop being so snooty, so exclusive, and high and mighty and intolerant of others if we admit that 15% of everything we do is for the fashion of it. Maybe we'd all finally see eye to eye when we admit we have the same, human common ground. You materialist piece of shit. ;-)

Madeline moments

I would like, if I may, to take time to remember Marcel Proust, French scholar and father to the "madeline moment". In the early 1900s during the winter of his career, Proust took a bite of a madeline cookie and became consumed by memories of his childhood racing back to him. This wave of memory inspired him to write In Search of Lost Time, one of the greatest novels of the century.

While we non-French scholar folk may not be able to write a whole novel about them, we can all relate to the madeline moment--that one awesome moment in time where some random occurrence spurs a chain of memory and we relive those sweet, forgotten childhood moments.

Today when I was in the shower I felt especially tired decided to lie down flat on my back
and let the water wash down on my body--a once routine move that I had not done in ages. Almost the second my back touched the shower floor, my forgotten memories came alive in my mind. I remembered how I used to lie on the shower floor as a young girl and pretend that I was a castaway orphan in an Italian village lying poor and naked in the rain. I imagined all the other warm, finely clothed villagers looking at me and thinking "Oh how sad, the poor girl" and then they'd walk along their way. I'd close my eyes and let the heavy rain wash down on me as I laid in exhibition for the entire quaint, Italian village.

I don't know what me pretending to be a poor, naked, starving Italian girl in the rain meant or what it's supposed to say about my character or upbringing. All I know is that it felt really good to rediscover that lost pastime I used to enjoy so much. It was relaxing, familiar. It felt almost comforting to pretend I was out on display.

I love you madeline moments. <3