The Masquearade Parade, where locals let their collective
freak flag fly. I saw most everyone I knew in town along the way. I shot all of
these with the Nokia N93 which they’ve given me to try out. My first pass assessment:
the trigger's a little sluggish, but as
you can see the images are amazingly crisp and rich for something shot with a
phone. All images are un-retouched.
Follow this tangent: I took some pictures of a demonstration for the celebration of the Sisters of
Perpetual Indulgence at Republique in Paris when I was there a couple of weeks ago. A
French Trans gathering and I wandered right into it. Sometimes I wonder at my
luck.
I’m in Key West right now where Fantasy Fest is fully On. Later tonight
I’ll be posting some pictures of the Masquerade Parade, which these Paris pictures made me think of (Tangent Accomplished). It’s a mostly-locals
late-afternoon foot parade through Old Town’s back streets, with costumed revelers
wandering from guest house to guest house throwing back free shots and is quite
definitely Good Times.
Important article in
the International Herlad Tribune by Thomas Cranston called Confessions
of Criminals of the digital age. Some rad French citizens who belong to the group StopDRM staged civil
disobedience of a kind to demonstrate their anti-DRM (Digital Rights
Management) grievances. The punitive copywrite protection techniques employed
by record companies make making mixtapes for your friends terrifically
tedious, so all artists-getting-their-due concerns aside I am so with them.
On the other side of
the globe the pro-DRM Forces begin indoctrination early as Boy Scout age, the
AP and endgadget
report. Troop Leaders in Los Angeleare handing out merit badges for not sharing
music illegally, which is so fucking fascist it’s shocking. And I say ‘shocking’ with the same arch, indignant and English-accented way Madonna did in her Oprah interview. Shoh-cking.
Claude Lelouch’s 1976
C’etait un rendezvous. Warning: Loud
and long (8:14) and lovely.
Read all about the history of the film at
rendezvousdvd.com and check out some
impassioned, obsessively detailed analyses of the car in question at Subdriven.
Marie Antionette
won’t be Sofia Coppola’s first visit to cinematic princessdom. The wretched
Francis Ford Coppola section of the New
York Stories omnibus(well worth re-viewing, as Scorses’s meditation on artistic
ferment and self-indulgence is sheer perfection) was a
collaboration with the young Sofia. The story of the daughter of fabulous
parents and her baroque, sickeningly ostentatious misadventures were the clear
product an imagination nurtured by a family that considers themselves royalty in a way that’s both
Italian and Cinematic. The scene of her avatar throwing chocolates covered in gold
foil to a homeless man living in a box in Columbus Circle was simply shocking. Don't tell ME to eat cake, little girl.
But all Sofiaphobia
aside, the 2-disc soundtrack to Marie Antoinette is outrageously good. Disc One
is possibly the choicest Deep New Wave mix ever assembled, and Disc Two is more ambient, piano driven stuff both period and contemporary. Along with music supervisor Brian Reitzell (whose
Thumbsucker OST included the lacerating Elliot Smith cover of Cat Steven’s
‘Trouble’)she’s crafted a narcotic sonic tapestry that's both fashionable and personal. The kind of anachronistic
juxtapositions of period that are used to odd effect in the film (high tops
with ball gowns) are put to sublime use in a mixtape that conjures a
fabulous film thay may have nothing to do with the one Coppola made. The
sequencing is inspired, drawing goosebump-raisingly apt connections between the
ebullience of Adam and The Ants’ Kings Of The Wild Frontier and Vivaldi’s
Concerto in G.
I was in Miami last night at
the launch party for the
phone tattoo artist Ami James designed for Motorola. I must admit I was
dubious when I heard about the phone-it sounded gimmicky. But looking at them
in person the graphic quality of the designs made sense on the flat surface of
the RAZR; a different kind of skin. I didn’t get it together to actually shoot
any of the phones as I was too busy surreptitiously shooting him from behind as
he hung with his crew. The shaved head, the arms bursting with veins, completely sleaved, the white t-shirt, the pin-strip suit: very nice.
Why I didn’t go up,
talk to him and take his picture like a normal, psychologically healthy member
of the press I don’t know. I guess I like it a little freaky.
I actually caught
Bush’s press conference on October 12th and it was one long, strange
trip of defensiveness, floundering and random stabs at humor. By the end of it
you almost felt bad for the guy, even a little protective. Of course, as my
friend Greg pointed out, the Daily Show writers must have thrown their pens on
the table at the end of it and said, ‘Well, our work’s done for today, let’s
take the afternoon off.’
The feverish
reception Stewart gets at the beginning of the show certainly puts this tee
shirt in context. For this and more of Lorenzo di Flaneur’s cultural reportage
and hunk tracking check out hisFlickr page.