Round 2

Sorry about the delay.

I don't know if you heard but the AP has already written (or is working on writing) a obituary for Britney Spears. You know, just in case her death comes on a busy day.

But here is my thinking, and perhaps what you can respond to. The news story they wrote for the future has become a news story in itself. Say, tragically, she were to die in the next few weeks. Any piece of writing attempting to eulogize her would be suspect. She won't have a clean death because we will focus less on the loss of life and more on the document telling us about the loss of life.

Now, make it rain.

YouTube Issues

I think we can consider Round 1 over.  I'll begin Round 2 tomorrow at 12:30 EST.

Regarding YouTube, I've found myself using YouTube for a strange purpose lately.  It began this summer really when my brother and I would spend hours on his couch looking up the opening theme music to various game shows.  If you have it in your pop culture lexicon, I highly recommend familiarizing yourself with Bumper Stumpers.

But since then, I've been digging deeper into what I call Nostalgia Mining.  Looking for clips from shows I watched from my childhood.  I found a song from the old PBS math show Square One called "You Can Count On It," which I had forgotten about since seeing it when I was 6 or 7.  But immediately I recalled coming home after school to my family's apartment, the four cookies I was allowed to eat, the blanket my brother covered in vomit, and my first desire to play the saxophone.  

That is all nice, but this starts to get weird when you find clips of shows you never watched but are nostalgic for anyway.  The guy who created L.A. Law made a show called Cop Rock which was equal parts cop drama and shitty rock musical.  While it is classic unintentional hilarity, it also made me extremely homesick for everything from 1991.  I briefly wished I could go back in time, not to watch the show, but know I had the option.

Youtube Is a Racist

When you search for Cam'ron videos on YouTube, the ad that comes up is for a movie called "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins" staring Martin from the television show Martin. If you search for the Arcade Fire, the ad that comes up is for Dominos. I suspect this is racist, but don't think I will ever understand why.

Round 1 - Part 5

The young man receives his sandwich, but is afraid to pay for it. He feels like he has encountered something -- something fragile, something silent yet resonant between him and the sandwich artist. Theirs was the filial affection between strangers, a bond not to be sullied by monetary transactions. He instead says "I'm sorry" to the sandwich artist, and walks away without paying.

He comes back outside, burdened with nourishment stolen from an ersatz mother, and sees Suvari again in the parking lot. Only now, he doesn't recognize her. He only knows it is Suvari because of her proximity to the German car. He recognizes the car, because the car derives its power from the stability of its meaning: it will always be a self-contained mythology of silent efficiency, linked with but never polluted by a fraught history of German utilitarianism.

He looks again at the image he has snapped of her in his Camera phone. Here, he recognizes Suvari, bespattered with Donut-vomit. He loves the woman he sees the in his phone. The real woman, he regards now with a mixture of revulsion and nostalgia.

Part 4

A passing customer in the parking lot notices Mena Suvari and her distress in the car.  He becomes upset and disgusted.  He thinks it is because of what he sees, but it is really because nobody seems to be documenting the downfall of a human being.  So, rather than ignoring it or knocking on her window to see if he can help, he helps in the only way he knows how: taking pictures with his camera phone.

Now that he has pictures of something to prove to himself that it is real, he walks into the store and orders a sandwich at the deli.  When saying thanks, he accidently says "I love you" to the sandwich artist.  The sandwich artist, briefly overcome with motherly affection for having provided sustenance for a young man looks down and says nothing.

Don Delillo Game - Round 1 - Part 3

Mina Suvari walks into the grocery store, realizes that an old cut-out of herself first intended to promote Coors had been re-purposed by the staff to promote Donuts. She realizes that she has lost control over her image. She feels doomed to be distorted, rendered grotesque, nullified by the coming years of mechanical reproduction. She cries, but feels for some reason compelled to purchase every donut her false, glossy, mirror image implores her to buy.

Mina Suvari takes the donuts to her car, a German automobile whose engine produces no sound, and eats as many of them as she can manage before vomiting.

Round 1, Part 2

The thing about these donuts is that they the are (or at least seem) obliquely aware of their own duality. Because they are both beautiful and horrible they are advertised using a cardboard cutout of Mena Suvari in a cheerleading outfit.

Meanwhile, in another room, a baker is arguing with the manager about how to spell donut on the sign. The baker feels strongly that it should be spelled doughnut. In the background, "Private Eyes" by Hall & Oats is playing loud enough so as to not be subtle.

The Don Delillo Game - ROUND ONE!

Okay, so Stephen and I play this game called the Don Delillo Game. It's kind of complicated to explain, so I will start off with an image that we will use as the basis for the subsequent rounds.

Image #1 of the Don Delillo Game:

My girlfriend told me the other day about how she went to Safeway and spent the better part of a half hour staring at the arrangement of donuts on the donut-rack. She said that she felt like there was something both beautiful and hideous about it.

The ball is in your court, sugar-pie.

Curious.

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