C-SPAM.

When I was a kid, I wanted to know things.

I wanted to know things so badly that I would beg my parents to buy me every available book on whatever topic was my current weekly indulgence. As a result, I was left with enough literature on UFOs, the Titanic and the birth of Hershey's chocolate that my room doubled as a library of culturally significant texts. 'Culturally significant' in this case means 'important to an 11-year-old' and 'texts' means 'whatever was available at our elementary school's book fair'. But their were numerous works that I would force my family to buy, building myself a collection that slowly began to detour from what the goal originally was: to know things.

I became so overly pre-occupied with having every available piece of information that, somewhere along the line, actually learning that information become somewhat secondary. (Note: this is true for all cases except my obsession with UFOs. That I was all about. It got to the point that I would recite the three different types of 'Close Encounters' with UFOs to anyone willing to listen. Sadly, at the age of 11, every adult near you is considered 'willing to listen'. On the bright side, if there is ever an alien attack of any sort, most of Marin County's adult population should know what to do. You're welcome, America)

The other day, I was speaking to my uncle about politics, which, after college and sports (the latter of which is never a topic I care about discussing - I call football soccer, and war crimes football) is the default conversation for any adult and a 20-year-old. He began to tell me of his apprehensiveness in regards to discussing politics in this day and age - that apprehensiveness was nowhere to be found at around minute 45 of our 'discussion' (read: monologue). He began to recount the days in which politics was more than just a topic, it was a national pastime. A president's speech was the highlight of the year's telecasts; a news anchor would speak to the country, becoming a one-man explanation of all things too heavy to comprehend; the passing of a public figure was accompanied by an anticipated remembrance speech.

But these days, a president's speech is all but forgotten about, until the next day's inevitable "Oh yeah, I heard about that"'s. The anchors are divided by ideologies, with one making you feel scared, and the other making you feel guilty. And did anyone notice President Obama's farewell speech to Sen. Ted Kennedy just this past week? Anyone? Bueller?

But what struck me most was my uncle's belief that the people don't care about politics (if that's even true) because they aren't being told anything. It's a lack of access, he claimed, that is responsible for the apathy of two generations: one that use to throw rocks and now sit in the corner offices making the same decisions they lamented, and one that reads about those very hypocrisies, and uses it as leverage in their overwhelming decision to stay stagnant.

At first, I agreed. As I've stated many times, we'll start caring about the world when there is a world being passed down worth caring about. That, or just let us know what the hell is going on.

Then, the other day, a couple friends and I were dissecting the goal and disposition of our 24-hour news networks: FOX News, the loud mouth conservative base; MSNBC, the loud mouth liberal younger brother, just screaming louder so that other people will notice. CNN, the more grounded and middle-minded of the networks. And then we got to a little diddy I always manage to forget about: C-SPAN.

What the hell. Is up. With C-SPAN?

It suddenly came flashing back to me. 2o years of living - 10 of cultural consciousness - later, and I suddenly remembered how often I would be skipping through channels only to hit C-SPAN and always, I repeat, always, wonder what the fuck I was watching. It was either a never ending frame of the White House lawn or a fountain, or a blue screen that scribbled programming that I swear they never played, all acompanied by a far too sultry and slightly too sleepy female voice, reminding me that, if I was ever to forget, I was watching C-SPAN.

Oh, and it would also stream non-stop coverage of government proceedings and public affairs. So the other day, when reminded that C-SPAN existed, I made a point of watching it. And it struck me in a completely different light. Here it was: constant access to the events taking place behind closed political doors. No, not total access to everything, and no, not all interesting (although watch long enough and you're bound to catch some screaming - it's like the Real Housewives of D.C.), but it was there. We were given access to watch the more minutia heavy moments of public politics and cultural discourse take place.

And no one gave a damn. Not my uncle, not my friends, not even me.

In the Bay Area bubble, where to play any game that deals with counting the number of Prius' you see will end in numbers too high for comprehension, it's easy for me and others to forget about the reality of our political landscape. Adults preach, kids bitch and we all just slap some quasi-funny-but-not-really bumper sticker on our hybrids that make some sort of pun out of Dick and Bush (apparently, Marin also doesn't believe in upping its humor quotient - maybe it's due to our President finally being a badass).

But that belief, that to remain apathetic to any sort of political consciousness is logical because we're constantly kept in the dark, is, I'm sorry to say, bullshit. Because we are no longer in the dark ages. But we're also not in the Enlightenment age either. We're in the information age, where everything we need to know is feasibly at our fingertips. The death of the single broadcaster, the printed press, the need to be knowledgeable is not due to apathy, but excess. With so much information, we've devalued what it means to be informed. The same way broadcasters don't deem it necessary to divert from the shock doctorate. The same way that my friends and I find it satisfactory to label the outlets with what they produce as opposed to provide.

The same way I forgot to read about all the books I bought as a kid. It's the same mentality: the desire to have and to consume overtakes the desire to learn and comprehend. Maybe it's a mix of both of distraction and procrastination. Our desire to be up-to-date has more to do with the source of the information than the information itself. The latest blog to be in-the-know about holds more panache by the watercooler than any of the facts the blog posts. But it's also the knowledge that the facts are there, and there's no rush to get to them. They won't disappear if we don't buy them from the newsstands - they'll be archived. They won't go unseen if we don't catch the broadcast - it'll be on youtube. But in the time between 'wanting to know' and 'taking the time to learn', there is indifference, unfulfillment, annoyance.

The uncles of the world complain about no longer being in the know, even though we're now, more than ever, able to access information at dizzying speeds. What it now takes is the willingness to spend time. Because there is a disconnect that has inevitably grown in the Internet age, and it's deteriorated any cultural center of discourse, leaving no singular stream of information. We're on our own, because we wanted it that way. We made our bed, and now we have to let the C-SPAN lady's voice doze us into sleeping in it.

SI,TW.

It's 3 am, and I'm sitting in my kitchen making Annie's and trying to write a film review. Today, I went to lunch with Hadas, helping her find the world's most perfect outfit in the process. Visited Claire Martin after, where we talked and took a nap together. The intimacy of a very long and complex friendship. Where to go from here?

People are slowly begin to go back to their respective schools/new lives/what-have-yous. Home is becoming something much different nowadays. Still, though, I find myself reminiscing, perhaps once too often, about the days when the bubble that extended from Marin to San Francisco was enough to keep me -- scratch that, all of us -- satisfied.

In other news, I'm pretty sure my dentist tried to kill me the other day. What a profession to take on, one in which you know that everyone who walks through the door is there only because they have to be. I was there about 6 months ago, and the same 1996 issue of Highlights magazine was on top of the dated, scarp stack. Seriously, a subscription to even Reader's Digest? Anything? Sorry, y'all, but I'm an anti-dentite and proud of it. Suck it, Tim Watley.

'This is Not a Love Story. This is a Story About Love.'

500 Days of Summer

Directed: Marc Webb

Staring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel

Fox Searchlight, PG-13, 95 minutes

While walking through an Ikea, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel), the not-so-starcrossed lovers of (500) Days of Summer, hold hands for the first time as they pass a sign that the furniture giant has slammed on the wall for all of its customers to read and remember: “We don’t make fancy quality, we make true quality”.

Truer words, my Swedish cohorts. And ones that speaks for more than just easily assembled furniture. Because if there is anything that first-time director Marc Webb manages to do with his amalgamously assembled film about the quest for love to be as we want it, not as it is, it’s ditch the need for anything fancy and just make it about quality.

That’s not to say that (500) Days of Summer isn’t sharp. Far from it: it’s nonlinear concept, tracking the highs and lows in the relationship of a non-believer and a hopeless romantic, manages to transcend the one-note shtick that current romantic comedies need in order to stay original and, as a result, relevant. It works because it elevates the movie, not defining it, an easy feet since it has its two leads, abundant in likeability and oozing in adorable, indie charm, to keep the film tied down.

Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel are just compatible enough as Tom and Summer, meaning that they don’t work just as a easily as they do. For every micro-similarity (He likes the Smiths! She likes the Smiths!), there is a macro-disparity (He, an ardent believer in love. She, unsure of what the word even means). If the econo-babble is too much to bare, fret not; this is recession friendly cinema, where a secretary and staff writer at a greeting card company can afford an adorable apartment and a dream-sized loft, respectively, all in the curiously un-metropolluted dream world of Los Angeles.

But even those moments feel remarkably acceptable as the film bounces from day 1 of Tom and Summer’s relationship to day 486, randomly shuffling every other day in between. The arbitrary timeline manages to only enhance the film’s constant mantra of not being a love story, but merely a story about love. And that it is: love of music (only here can Morrissey and Hall & Oates be given equal treatment), love of film (everything from grandiose music numbers to neo-realist Fellini), love of anything and everything too complex to understand. Tom uses love as a way to give meaning and avoid confrontation with the reality of his situation. Summer rejects the notion of love for this very reason. He watches The Graduate and sees the lengths that love is worth going to and the necessity in capturing it. She weeps through its hauntingly, ambiguous final scene, witnessing the characters' inner-realization of a romance founded on nothing more than romance, leaving her to wonder if she's simply watching herself. And thus, their relationship defined: witnessing the same common interests through remarkably different perspectives

Perspective, in fact, colors the entire film, reminding us that by knowing how it all ends, we can focus on what happened before. A split screen simultaneously shows us Tom’s expectations paired against his reality, eventually fading into the latter, enveloping him into the sum of his assumptions. An elevator ride, jolly on day 32, cuts abruptly to one that stinks of depression on day 293. It’s a shame, then, that the film didn’t feel the need to bewilder viewers a bit more with its shuffled narrative, instead allowing the film to play out more like a series of vignette’s as opposed to a Kauffman-esuqe meditation on the human condition and the disorientation that comes with emotional attachment.

But this isn’t that kind of movie, nor does it try to be. It could have been one that was better, had it made purposeful and more interesting use of its unique narrative style. But it could have easily been one that was worse, had it dosed every available moment of dialogue with whiplash lingo that writers, too young to call themselves old, are convinced is the vernacular of a generation too old to call themselves young. The film manages to shake any overly pretentious underground charm by being comfortable in its own skin, letting its characters breathe and speak as if they’re truly feeling the ins-and-outs of each other’s company.

Yet, there is a suspicious disconnect in Summer’s character, one who never feels alive enough to be treated as a secondary protagonist. Deschanel plays her wonderfully, but Summer still feels one dimension short of a real-life person. But, conversely, the more we get to know Tom, the more excusable that lack of development becomes. That distance that we feel from Summer begins to shape into something that resembles an honest understanding of who she is or, more accurately, who Tom believes her to be. She becomes the sum of his interests, his passion, his obsession, and his desire – not for her, but for love in the most general term. And that vapidity makes Summer less real, but more human, making tangible her indirect promise to love him for now, not forever.

“I’ve loved this place ever since you brought me,” Summer says to Tom as they unintentionally reunite at a park bench rife with memories, accurate or not. Tom can’t say the same thing about the places that Summer has taken him, both real and emotional. Tom has introduced Summer to a location with foundation, a promise to stay as she remembers it. Summer took Tom to the emotional highs of his desires, but never reciprocated that same solidarity: A date with Summer to Ikea on day 31 is as playful as a similar date on day 238 is suffocating. But it’s always honest, and (500) Days of Summer avoids any of that tactless indie charm by instead showing us everything in between the traditional meet-cute, montage, mixup and mending that comprises most current day celluloid romances. Rest assured, all of that is indeed here, but like the products in its Ikea setting, it’s simply assembled differently, making something purely original in the process.

More.

What a night. So much discussed, not enough digested.

After two years of college, and a summer where we've all found ourselves scattered from oceans apart to states away, tonight may have honestly been the culmination of where everyone currently is; take that to mean whatever you want it to. Being in Keith's van, high out of my mind, with people I respect, love, admire, learn from, etc, is honestly the most purifying experience I could ever hope for right now. Nothing is clear with anything I'm doing, and there is a grounding that comes with surrounding myself with people that continue to support and push me. These friends have managed to pass beyond just mundane relationships - there is actual understanding here, and there is promise of more.

I'm currently sitting under my covers, trying my best to take in everything I've experienced/learned tonight. In addition, I'm outlining a film review, mapping out the future of what is becoming a more professional blog and watching old Batman cartoons. I am in ageless limbo.

'Weapons of Mass Discomfort'

Brüno

Directed: Larry Charles

Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen

Universal Pictures, R, 83 minutes

I sat directly in front of two elderly women, right next to two teenage boys and exactly behind two middle aged men during a screening of Brüno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest, but not greatest, docucomedy about a flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista who craves the American spotlight and all the superficiality that comes with it. Within this nexus of demographics, I was able to experience Baron Cohen’s film in an entirely different setting by assessing the hilarity of said experience through the people around me. Here they were, every major audience represented in a film whose goal can only be said to be purposefully dividing.

There were giggles, groans, grunts and guffaws during various slapstick and slap-dick moments, but one scene in particular, in which the titular character screens a potential American television pilot to a focus group, left the most permanent and telling divide: Brüno/Baron Cohen flaunts his/a stunt double’s penis on screen, swirling it around with Truffaut-esque confidence, until it stops in place and speaks to the viewers.

The elderly women behind me howled with laughter, while the teenagers to my right turned away from the screen, pathetically pleading for the scene to have never happened, accompanied by the obligatory chuckle. And the middle-aged men in front of me? They sat in complete silence, not uttering a single world, either out of shock or disapointment. Yet, there was something suspiciously counterfeit in regards to the bellowing elderly women, something that seemed disingenuous and forced; a hope, perhaps, to banish any sort of suspicion of prudery, proving themselves beyond any level of easy disgust. The same could be said for the teenagers sitting next to me, who seemed to have been more disturbed than amused, only letting out a barley sincere chuckle both as a reminder to those around them (and, perhaps, themselves as well) that this is a film they're supposed to enjoy.

Such is Brüno, a film that surveys the current American landscape to the point where not only are the essence of the people on screen called into question, but the sincerity of the audience watching. No one goes unmentioned, unscathed or, sadly, understood. In Baron Cohen’s desperate love for inevitable envelope pushing, he’s foregone anything that made his 2006 pop culture behemoth, Borat, work. As opposed to gut-busting laughs and thought provoking subject matter, he’s settled for cultural objectification and, sadly, audience obligation: to not laugh during Brüno would leave you either too set in your ho-hum seriousness or unable to get the joke. The truth is, the joke’s on you.

The guerilla mockumentary style that Baron Cohen employs is anything but a new subgenre. In fact, it’s been done many times over and often better than any of Baron Cohen’s forays into the model. But Baron Cohen has become the poster boy most often and most easily associated with the genre, in the same fashion filmmakers like Michael Moore represent documentary film for the masses at large. In fact, Brüno is largely a film that prays on the very idea of what’s in fashion, discracing the mere idea of coveting the latest have-to-have. Bruno is introduced as the former host of an Austrian fashion show whom, after fashioning a suit made of Velcro that promptly ruins a runway show, is blacklisted and finds his fame revoked. “For the second time in a century,” he somberly narrates, “the world has turned on Austria’s greatest man, just because he tried something new.”

It’s a brutal line, and Baron Cohen’s acid tongue is all the more appreciated as a sporadic reminder of why we loved him in the first place. Because if Brüno does anything, it’s make us question the man behind the character, if there is one. After all, the only thing that separates Baron Cohen from his more un-PC counterpart is Brüno’sunintentional disrespect as opposed to Cohen's staged antics. Aside from that, both men are very much the same.

It’s hard to pinpoint what it is exactly about Brüno that prohibits it from rising toBorat-worthy acclaim. Some have cited the film’s lack of clear, discernable structure, but the issue is really the opposite: the problem lies in that desire for structure at all. While Borat would use its titular character as the center of the narrative, the film’s real goal was to expose the underbelly of current American culture. That rampant desire to unveil America's true sensual self-indulgence worked by using Borat, the character, merely as a provocateur of larger cultural discourse.

That desire to communicate larger truths is mostly, if not entirely, absent this time around. In Brüno, the center of the film is undeniably Brüno himself. And that narrative structure that is birthed as a result causes the derailment of what could have potentially been a more substantial socio-cultural commentary.

But then again, the film has no true comments to make. It attempts to be a sprawling satire of everything from the pretentious fashion world and egotistical celebrity culture to what Baron Cohen believes to be a documentation of social discomfort towards the homosexual community. There are moments of grandiose hilarity, such as when Brüno comments on the growing trend of adoptive babies being mistaken for designer accesories, but those moments are few and far between.

Instead, Brüno merely provokes in the hopes of eliciting a substantial reaction as opposed to actually working for it. The targets that Baron Cohen paints are far too easy for a filmmaker who believes himself to be perusing the depths of darkened Americana. The caricature of a gay man that Baron Cohen creates isn’t the problem here; after all, Robin Williams’ brilliant portrayal in The Birdcage and Christopher Guest’s role in Waiting for Guffman were themselves equal parts star power and stereotype.

No, the issue is what exactly was expected of these unwitting partakers in Baron Cohen’s supposed unearthing of homosexual unease? On a larger scale, the more appropriate, accurate and interesting finding will be within the theatres filled with liberal pundits who praise differences and cultural changes to any public within earshot, but still finds themselves amusingly closeted in regards to the actual practice of understanding. It’s that American hypocrisy, one of fake-tolerance, fake-charity and, most importantly, fake acceptance, that would have served as a far better bull's eye.

But that would be Baron Cohen biting the hand that feeds him, and what need does he have anymore to truly go far enough in poking fun at the very people who now clamor to fund his latest projects? He doesn’t. So he instead settles for the segments of our country where homosexual detestation is somewhere between obvious and oblivious. There is no middle ground in the Brünoverse, and there are no winners. Only a two-sided sword: either ardent discomfort towards the 'culture' that Cohen believes himself to be promoting or complete and utter acceptance of his hyper-sexualized ridiculousness – a stance that will still inevitably paint you in the dimwitted light of accepting anything with reckless disregard for crudeness or class. Brüno lacks any of that smarter edge that we know Baron Cohen can deliver. It instead banks on audiences’ fond memories of Borat’s startling cultural commentary as blind faith that his new endeavor is smarter than it actually is.

I christen this: 'something'

Okay.

Between LiveJournal (which I only frequent to read, and occasionally post for my own keepings) and Tumblr (my favorite blogging platform, although it's more of a scrapbook than anything else), this is my third online blog. I don't know how to separate this from anything else, but I think I'll use both. Maybe copy and paste some of the things from there on to here? Make this more personal, the other more professional? Who knows. The beauty of blogs, as with all free things, are that excess is not just an option, it's nearly a requirement. I have a tendency to overuse and overneed, a minimalist I am not. For this, like all things else, I will attempt concession.