“Please come. Don’t abandon me. Please.” Ana de Armas as Norma Jeane Baker as becoming-Marilyn Monroe prays to a mirror; her hands clasped together in desperate supplication. She’s begging for, as Joyce Carol Oates describes in her novel Blonde, “her Friend-in-the-Mirror.” Tears stream down her face as she pleads to the bulb-ringed three-way mirror. Her … Continue reading
HBO’s documentary Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage, directed by Garret Price as a part of their Music Box series, seems to pose Woodstock ’99 as a seminal concert shitshow, like 1969’s Altamont, that somehow, in its dissolution into hormone-driven madness, which included chucking $4 water bottles at Wyclef Jean and The Offspring, rolling around … Continue reading
That’s all folks! This is what a disarmingly cheery sign, battered and mangled and a little bit dusty, reads—or approximately reads as it is missing a few pieces that were presumably blasted off—in the exhibition galleries depicting the aftermath of September 11th in the 9/11 Memorial Museum. Placed above a singed file cabinet, melted into … Continue reading
“I was one thing, now I’m being another,” sings Our Lady of the Beaches, Driving Fast and Ruined Peaches Lana Del Rey in the song “Happiness is a butterfly,” off of her new blessed album Norman Fucking Rockwell!. And indeed, Lana is being another. Though certainly not a complete transition away from the rest of … Continue reading
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeehaw!! *spins cowboy hat around* Ahem…*cough* whoa! What’s that? What’s with my fringed and rhinestone-studded jacket, bolo tie and boots? Well, I want to be a cowboy, baby! Here, grab some whiskey, preferably from a dusty and potentially dangerous saloon, while we celebrate the birth of our country by diving headfirst into fanatical cowboy mania. … Continue reading