Sortroom.net

Residents in Deloit, Wisconsin came together to recreate George Seurat’s ‘Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’

Flickr photoset
Deloit Daily News: Art is Alive Along River

Popularity: 1% [?]

I’m sorry to cut and paste a block of someone else’s writing, but in the Seattle Weekly this week, there’s an excellent piece by Roger Downey discussing his separation from the events and celebrations of Seattle’s Gay Pride weekend, which is about to take place in Seattle. Having just seen Brokeback Mountain – yes, rather late – he sees the film from a different perspective from many people who criticised it and who loved it. He thought it was largely about poverty and class, and how being poor in rural America massively reduces your chances at sexual liberation. Long before the time of the events pictured in the film men and women of sexual minority groups were finding companionship with one another in major cities like San Francisco and Miami. By urbanising and grouping together they were strong. But it was and still is those gays and lesbians who are caught in the rural states, in areas detached from support mechanisms, that need help and still need our help. Downey says Pride is now more about celebrating how great we are and what we’ve got rather than what we have achieved. It was those that came before us that made today’s ‘tolerance’ if not acceptance possible. Now we have to do something to be proud of, help those minority groups and racial minorities who aren’t educated in the language of sexual politics to liberate those members of their communities who are still hiding.

I’ve been feeling more and more remote from the events of Gay Pride for years, but seeing Brokeback Mountain, even if I saw it differently than most, got me thinking hard again about what it’s for, about just what it is that’s being celebrated. Pride? Proud of what? Proud of our “difference”? Proud of our struggle to overcome fear, intimidation, and opposition? Twenty years ago, even 10, I could go along with that. But when I look at the Pride marchers today, if I see anything more than a sort of multicolored St. Patrick’s Day celebration, I see people celebrating being, on average, the most privileged people on planet Earth, free to do exactly as they please, absolved even of the implied injunction on heterosexuals to reproduce, to foster their offspring, to devote the best years of their lives and much of their income to providing for the next generation. I’m not saying that’s not cause for celebration. I enjoy the same privileges as they. What I don’t understand is why we call it “Pride,” and why the hets are willing to let us disrupt traffic with our boasting.

Seattle Weekly: The End of Pride

Popularity: 1% [?]

Thanks to the internet, I think for the first time young people are seeing history made before it is censored by their elders. It’s such a powerful thing that we can create our own history, see the news unfold in real-time and contribute our own information and thoughts to unfolding stories before they are stymied by those that would like a more agreeable daily roundup.

Popularity: unranked [?]

You can accuse that movie of almost every sin and it’s going to be true. But what’s sweet about it is that despite, in many ways, being really rubbish, it’s really good! Of course half of that’s probably just because it’s got a stunning soundtrack, but it also has a lot of style, fun, spirit and personality. I know that’s really just four words describing the same concept, but I don’t care. It’s all of them nonetheless.

Anyway, I watched Flashdance last night, for what must have been the second time because, even though I thought I’d not seen it. I love the 80’s style of cinematography with the bad colour rendition, the noise on the picture, the haze of sunlight in the camera. It’s like they’d never thought that blacks should be black, and the whites should be white! This sounds like laundry detergent copywriting, but it’s not meant to be. It’s just a bit fuzzy. Thank god for Panavision!

Anyway, after watching the film I wanted to find out a little bit more about it, and in finding out facts like the fact that the star Jennifer Beals is now cast in the television show ‘The L Word’, I also came across a hilarious fictional analysis of the film from a book, published online at out.com for the 20th anniversary of the film, in 2003.

Out.com: Flashdance Screening Party
Showtime.com: The L Word

Popularity: unranked [?]

While she’s been out of the news for a while, getting married, toning down the raunchy ‘dirrrty’ image that resulted from the marketing of her last album, Christina Aguilera’s back from the recording studios with a soon to be released album. During her off-period she promoted voting in the 2004 US elections, as well as numerous collaborations with other musicians like Herbie Hancock and Andrea Bocelli. The first song from the album, to be titled ‘Back to Basics’, is to have its first single release in the form of the jazz and big-band influenced track ‘Ain’t No Other Man’. The song is great, as you would hope any new Christina Aguilera track would be, though it does take a second listen to really ‘get’ it. It opens with a Miles Davis-esque horn entrance before Christina starts her wail/singing sound and the ‘heavy beats’ come in. It’s a move away from some of the more rap-influenced parts of her previous album, but these are never far from the surface for one of the tracks on the August-released album features the rap star Nas and is due to be titled ‘Still Dirrty’. With fantastic production and her powerful voice, the new album will do doubt be a hit. Nobody’s going to be sending the Aguilera brand to the wall with a shoddy release. Popjustice have this to say before they talk about the single itself:

Is it any good?

We do not know because, as keen supporters of the forward-thinking notion that record sales are the only way to make money from music and that downloading songs illegally is directly taking money from recording artists’ mouths even if the word of mouth generated from such an act would more than compensate for the three pence revenue lost from that initial download, we have not illegally acquired the song.

She performs the song on the 2006 MTV Movie Awards which are broadcast in the US tonight, having been filmed June 3rd. Photos from the evening are below.

Queerty: Xtina’s Ain’t No Other Man
Spine Magazine copy of Ain’t No Other Man no doubt soon to be removed
Popjustice: The leaky return of Christina Aguilera

» Read the rest of this entry «

Popularity: 2% [?]

Screw democracy! The IHT is running a story today that makes me wonder where the French ideas of equality and liberty have gone. In a debates about new copyright laws, in which the Senate wanted to make its classicly-French mark on European copyright law, the legislators ran into unprecendented lobbying, emails and contact from members of the public. Surely that would make you think again about your proposals, but the story goes on to quote Michel Charasse, ‘a senator since 1981′:

“Rarely in parliamentary life have those elected by the nation – deputies and senators – been subjected to so many letters, e-mails, menaces and pressures,” Charasse, said during the debate, to resounding applause from his colleagues. “I would ask the Senate staff to rigorously clean the corridors of the lobbyists from all sides who jump on us as soon as we leave the hall.”

Clear the corridors?! What, so they could get out without having to encounter the rif-raf of the public! I’m embarrassed for the French public that they have such disgraceful politicians as this!
IHT: In Paris, ‘iPod law’ unleashes lobbyists

Popularity: 4% [?]

Comedian Stephen Colbert – well-known for his jibes at the Washington establishment in his show The Colbert Report – was the evening’s featured entertainer.

He paid a mock tribute to the president as a man who, “believes Wednesday what he believed Monday, despite what happened Tuesday”.

“I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least,” he told the audience, “and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq”.

Hilarious!

BBC: ‘Double-You’ Bush delights media
Crooks & Liars has video at Colbert Does the White House Correspondents’ dinner

Popularity: unranked [?]

This story (An Image a Little Too Carefully Coordinated) won its author a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. It’s worthy too. Robin Givhan of the Washington Post, congratulations.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The other event of note that has slipped past me was US President George Bush’s acceptance of a question from longtime White House ‘correspondent’ Helen Thomas. As her style of questioning would imply, she’s not a fan of the Bush regime. She began:

I’d like to ask you, Mr. President — your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, (and the) wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime.

Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is: Why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, your Cabinet officers, former Cabinet officers, intelligence people and so forth — but what’s your real reason? You have said it wasn’t oil, the quest for oil. It hasn’t been Israel or anything else. What was it?

The answer she got, continuing while she attempted to clarify her question, didn’t go any way toward answering the question and instead, inexplicably, focused on Afghanistan. Her question was partisan and her answer was unclear. Though she was asking questions as a member of the press corps, she is in fact more a columnist, one with a great distain for George Bush and his international wars. She didn’t get a good answer.
Despite this her office received over one thousand roses from newfound fans as thankyou for her dogmatic persistence (The Hill.com: After grilling Bush, Helen Thomas gets thousands of flowers). According to The Hill’s article, Thomas shared the flowers with bureau colleagues but sent most of the bounty to wounded personnel at Walter Reed Army Hospital.

It could be seen that Bush was finally letting the least-likely-to-get-picked journalist have a chance at redeeming her credibility by asking a reasonable question. Perhaps he was trying to stop the drops in his polling numbers by reaching out to those who wouldn’t normally favor him. Bush’s approval ratings have been at record lows recently and he needs something to help revive them. He may, on the other hand, have chosen Thomas precisely because he knew her question would become the news of the day. While any other respectable reporter may have elicited a real response from him that may have caused controversy, Thomas was bound to create news herself. As television news anchors attacked her, (O’Reilly, others smear veteran journalist Helen Thomas over exchange with Bush), the news became not Bush’s feeble response but Thomas’s partisan position. The ‘liberal media’ as a whole was under attack and not just one elderly lady. By picking Thomas, Bush was able to discredit all journalists trying to find out really facts from an administration that has has remarkable success in information management, successfully putting a positive spin on events that don’t even make the news. Overall, the story has legs because it’s shows the current White House not as money grabbing and conservative hypocrites, but as manipulative and unclear. The right love it because it shows have repulsive the left really are, and the left love it because it shows that the right understand just how manipulative they can be, and seem to get away with it.

AP: President Bush’s Q & A with Helen Thomas
Helen Thomas: Bush takes potshots at messenger
Harpers.com: Give ‘em Helen [January 2003 exchange between White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and Helen Thomas]
NewsHounds: Special Report Attacks Helen Thomas
MediaMatters: O’Reilly, others smear veteran journalist Helen Thomas over exchange with Bush
SF Chronicle: Bush Tangles with Helen Thomas
National Ledger: President Bush Uses Helen Thomas to Embarrass National Press
Baltimore Sun: News Whiteout

Popularity: 1% [?]