Dark and Light

 

You might not know it, but advertisers fucking hate you. So do their useless product generators, and their insane marketing people. They hate you, too. I mean, really hate you. Your hair is bad, your skin is bad, your weight is bad....everything about you is bad, Bad, BAD!, in ever increasingly hysteric tones. I am (of course) the greatest evil in their Bizarro* world, because I am immune to programming, which sucks for them (or you, if you read this and recognize yourself in it).

Gen X'ers, like hep cats, jazz aficionados, flappers, and every other original generation before them, are particularly offensive to the "sell-at-all" costs crowd, because we are not a marketing trend. How do you reach a demo with no pigeon-holed stereotype? You can't, thus the hatred hardily mixed with fear and loathing (thanks, Hunter S. Thompson). No one can get inside your head if you know who you are, the essence that is YOU, because you can't be commoditized.

The chains that bind us to oppression are often of our own choosing. My father used to tell me that the greatest prisons are the ones people create in their own minds, and that is true. How can you be a wage slave unless you sign on the dotted line to the contract that binds you to someone else, most likely a stranger without your best interest at heart? When you do react against it, there's a steady stream of vindictive slurs tailor-made just for you, like "Darkie" or "Pasty".

Don't believe me? OK, check this piece of weirdness out. "Your skin is too dark! Buy this": (insert brand name here). "Oh, yeah? Well, I think your skin is too light. Buy this": (insert competing brand from same company here). Freaked out, yet? Welcome to my world. 

You can have all the lotions you want, if you'd only buy into it.

http://bit.ly/1jgA2FF

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bizarro_World

Turkey Neck

Love the light on this "selfie"....OMG, I have a turkey neck!!

A few weeks ago I was watching my typical Sunday morning program, when I suddenly found myself adrift in that desert of afternoon programming that is daytime network t.v. Oh. That sucks. No "Kung Fu" theater, no monster movies, not even a funny workout program that I can mock, or maybe roll out my mat and follow along with. Like, nothing but ads. 

Oh, well. It was kinda funny. Rght after this fundamentalist preacher sales guy (supposedly, like, wayyyy holy and stuff), was a paid advertisement for neck cream. Yep, you read that right: in New York, in 2015, some weirdo guy pretending to read the bible goes first onstage, and then it's "Fix your neck with expensive snake oil, you silly old hag" time. Huh. Kinda jarring, you know? Or, was it?

It seemed strangely analogous to my explorations as a female artist who uses themes about the self through a series of ongoing self-portraits. Oh! Uh oh. I think I have it. I think I caught "aging", maybe in some public place like the library, because I'm 45! Maybe I need a surgical face mask to protect me out in public, like an Asian fearing SARS would, or I need to coat myself in way more hand sanitizer. I don't know. Maybe t.v. will help me!

But, no. That cream just for your fucking saggy neck costs an arm and a leg. I mean, that's totally why you work so hard all week, right? To buy some fucking neck cream that'll make an on-air doctor rich! Oh, wait....no, that won't work. I'll be broke and still 45, and he'll be totally rich, with or without the snake oil neck cream that enacts a miracle cure for all life on this planet earth that we live on.

It was eerily similar to the slick carnival barker of a "Suthin" preacher who came before him in the Sunday programming line up. So, put that in your pipe and smoke it, dear reader, but first, send me a check for $45 made out to....at the following address....

It's cool. If "AMTM" has taught me anything, it's that you have to use your muscles when you pose. Done! Buh-bye turkey neck!

I practiced stretching my "Gobbler" from both angles, just in case a photographer catches me out in public unaware! Wait, that seems crazy...who cares?! I can't live my life like some out-of-it celebrity. No one will come up to me on the street from just the side, or underneath my neck. I think I'll go back to my regularly scheduled programming. Whew! The crisis is now officially over.

Come on and excel, human! Get with it!! I don't want to be alone anymore, because no man is an island.

Idol Worship

And the winner is...me! "I'd like to take this time to thank my sponsor..."

Working on my own has obvious high points. I wear what I want (or not) when I want (or not). Then there's the extra free time that comes with my high level of productivity because, honestly, I worked in service to others who are far less gifted than me when I was younger and learning my trade. It was fine and I was glad to do so, but there are now gaps where there once was frenetic activity, just in time for my systemic middle age slowdown, the perfect time when most advanced experts strike out on their own.

So, there's a bit more daytime t.v. watching, though (also, to be honest), not as much as the average viewer, because most content is repetitive and boring. Why watch someone else's show when you can make your own? That's what happens naturally, kids. A lot of nighttime viewing is a bunch of artificial, canned, redundant, and equally awful "entertainment" shows that are anything but. Did you know most "celebrities" who are consistently featured on these types of shows are really fucking boring? I mean, like, a total formula for conformity: an early rise to fame, horribly dysfunctional stage parents, a plunge into drugs, alcohol and crime, followed by widely publicized stints in jail and rehab, then a viciously dull cycle of "lather, rinse, repeat", in a boring commoditization of tritely "rebellious" pseudo-types who appear over and over again on t.v., like the eerily identical Fembots produced by the Playboy franchise.

I understand that's what makes them appealing to viewers: it's comfort brought on by the familiarity and similarity of it all, but you have to draw the line somewhere. How many ass photos of a pinup can one look at onscreen?! Who cares? The opposite then is supposedly the "craft" of Acting, which the media serves up in ball gown after ball gown, again, in a supposed contrast to the barely clothed porn star, but only slightly. There's plenty of crossover. And what do we get for watching le grande "Cinema" (with a capital "C") over more commercial fare?

We get (by this count in 2010) 564 different entertainment industry awards. That's right. You read it correctly, 564 of them: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=101295. Wow! What a triumph of art over commerce right? We must be absolutely glutted with quality fare? Right? No? I hear crickets! My mom, and many other people like her, like to dream and fantasize more than they like living, and being a t.v. addict feeds that jones whenever she (and they) want it, but it is far from healthy. When I gave her my honest good review of the latest pretentious art house piece of crap that I had to suffer 3 hours of, hailed by "critics" as "brand new" and "revolutionary" because some shut-in director filmed a kid over the years (like many a long-running t.v star before him) in some long, boring, emo (https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=emo) teen angst story, she immediately chafed against it, because she's been trained to.

"But...it won the (insert name of dull award show here) prize?" Bad? How?! It won an....wait for it...award. So, a pompous director won some award given out by other pompous film directors. Huh. Well, that is new. Oh, I have versions of it in my industry and so do you, but the particular vanity behind people addicted to the hype beast keeps these functions going, fueled on the idea that more is better PR, which is so not true.

Witness this tidbit. Well-known long-running actress Dianne Wiest can no longer afford her plush NYC apartment (http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/dianne-wiest-pay-rent-article-1.2092324), times being what they are. I know! Oh, boo hoo :( But the conceit of these shows hangs upon one central idea, and that is this: if you win a golden statue, it means you're really good, and that means you win yet more gold! Be careful what you lust for. It is not the guarantee in this lifetime that you seek. Amen to you today, my children.

The Golden Calf.  

1 When the people saw that Moses was delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for that man Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.”^a  

2 Aaron replied, “Take off the golden earrings that your wives, your sons, and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.”  

3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron.

  

4 He received their offering, and fashioning it with a tool, made a molten calf. Then they cried out, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you^* up from the land of Egypt.”^b  

5 On seeing this, Aaron built an altar in front of the calf and proclaimed, “Tomorrow is a feast of the LORD.”  

6 Early the next day the people sacrificed burnt offerings and brought communion sacrifices. Then they sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel.^c

 

7^d Then the LORD said to Moses: Go down at once because your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have acted corruptly.

8 They have quickly turned aside from the way I commanded them, making for themselves a molten calf and bowing down to it, sacrificing to it and crying out, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!”  

9^e I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are, continued the LORD to Moses.  

10 Let me alone, then, that my anger may burn against them to consume them. Then I will make of you a great nation.