Get Frisky

With this song which might as well have been a poem:

Rent a flat above a shop, cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool, pretend you never went to school.
But still you’ll never get it right ‘cos when you’re laid in bed at night
watching roaches climb the wall, if you called your dad he could stop it all.
You’ll never live like common people, you’ll never do whatever common people do,
you’ll never fail like common people, you’ll never watch your life slide out of view,
and dance and drink and screw, because there’s nothing else to do.
Sing along with the common people, sing along and it might just get you through.
Laugh along with the common people, laugh along even though they’re laughing at you
and the stupid things that you do, because you think that poor is cool.

– Pulp

I remember listening to this when I lost my insurance sophomore year of college.

Though it makes me wonder – whether or not class divisions are as obvious in the U.S. as they are in Britain. And something tells me no…

White House Sex Tapes

This is not a ploy to drum up traffic via pervy search hits

I hardly ever read “Vanity Fair” anymore – but contributing editor Wolcott inevitably seduces me into picking up the latest issue.

His latest offering, “Why Are British Sex Scandals So Much Better than Ours”?, contains (as usual) a spot-on observation regarding public life in America:

“… a dreadful piety has taken hold in American life, predicated on the notion that no one misbehaves out of choice or inclination or a simple warm itch, but because they were driven to it by drink, drugs, or childhood dysfunction (next stop: rehab), or because they lapsed from grace into the gutter lane (next stop: joining their paws in prayer with Chuck Colson).

I would substitute the word “piety” for “immaturity” – particularly in the way we view public figures, particularly if those public figures are in the seat of power. When I was much younger than I am now, I wrote in reaction to a conversation with a good friend who told me that she could never buy a vibrator on a credit card, because she wants to go into politics. I wondered then – why would a gifted young woman with political ambitions think this way? And what does this say about the nation we live in? Well, that it’s terribly boring, for one thing, and there is also the fact that

…in the age of mass information, we’ve emerged as a society of tiresome hypocrites.

Why do our politicians lie to us? Because we can’t handle the truth about anything, from vibrators to wars.

We are infantilized to the point of (unintentional) hilarity. We have never left those playground conversations about pee-pees and wee-wees behind. And if one of our public figures is caught playing with the wrong person’s wee-wee – they are next seen putting on a pop psychology peepshow with a bland TV personality/fatherly religious leader – and ratings go through the bloody roof.

Blah.

Gratuitous Harem-and-Kultur-Blogging: The Spartan Edition

In case anyone thought I was done… Or in case anyone was wondering if I was interested in saving the last shreds of my credibility…

gerry baby

Gerard Butler – The barrister who became an actor. The actor who became Natalia’s Blog’s Harem Hero. The Harem Hero who… I have no idea how to finish this. Help?

Seriously now.

What makes the actual trailers for “300” special has less to do with actual hotness, and a whole lot more to do with storytelling through image and sound. As an aspiring storyteller, I have to say – the previews themselves create a brilliant drama within the space of a couple of minutes. Friends who work in graphic design/advertising pretty much say the same thing – “If I was part of that, I could die happy.”

This is an advertisement at its best – in its magic, it reminds me of Luc Besson’s Chanel commercial (which is basically a classic). There is delicious, jarring dissonance between its three major components – ancient history, CGI, and Nine Inch Nails. The sexual component is a kind of garnish. The thing is an achievement – a whole lot more Oscar-worthy than, say, the entire “Titanic.”

And this may very well turn out to be one of those films that, no matter how its actual scenes are strung together, will be looked upon as a kind of breakthrough in genre – because it strove so valiantly to combine comic book art and commercial action film flair. Whether or not the storyline holds up to scrutiny… Well, by the time March 9th rolls around – I suspect it won’t matter much. People like me – we will always have the trailers.

Creepy Search Items

Almost every blog owner has a menagerie of search items that are funny, surprising, or disturbing (disturbingly dumb, disturbingly weird, and so on). These are a few recent ones, in no particular order:

Fr(e)e s(nu)ff

Fr(e)e s(nu)ff fi(lm)s – in case any of us were in doubt

Russian w(ho)re

Veil prevents ra(pe)

f(uc)k natalia – no thanks

d(ir)ty + c(ek)c + pic – More, ah, compliments to us Slavs

I’m going to have a shower now. For obvious reasons.