the 2008 virginia state fair

2008 will be the last year that The Virginia State Fair will be held in the capital city of Richmond, and seeing how I have never been to a state fair before in my life ( yes, I know it’s hard to believe, my faithful reading several, because I am such a well adjusted fellow, but I did lead a somewhat deprived childhood) I decided that I better go now or else I will never the get the opportunity to go the the Virginia State Fair which will be held somewhere in northern Virginai from 2009 onwards again. (And the idea that I could always use some more diverse content on this website, had also helped to influence my decision to go.)

Minor gripe number one: While driving to the fair, I kept thinking I was getting lost because I figured that along the the highway and byways leading up to the fair that there would be some temporary road signs stating “state fair this way”  or something pointing you along the right direction. There weren’t. And with gas prices being what they are, one can’t afford to be driving aimlessly, you know.

Parking wasn’t too bad at the Richmond International Raceway complex, where the fair was being held, though I have to admit that the parking was great only because I decided to go to the fair at 6pm on a Sunday night, when most people were eating supper and then getting their children ready for school the next day. After paying for walk around tickets for my girlfriend and I ($26) we were instantly confronted by our first and only display of Virginia “heritage.” Two Native American dancers wearing traditional outfits, dancing traditional dances to the tune of new age music cover versions of Elvis songs. (I shit you not.)

Minor gripe number two: The illusion of traditionalism was ruined even further when I noticed that one of the dancers, who looked like he was one the verge of passing out from dehydration, was wearing his traditional “black nike air jordans” and he had those ear plugs in his ear lobes that stretched this ear lobes open wide enough that a small child’s fist could pass through. The Native American fellow running the booth was also playing around boringly with his “traditional” iphone.

One of the reasons to go to a state fair, one assumes, is to look at the animals, which we declined to do because, frankly, livestock smell and today had been a hot humid day, if you catch my drift. There was a chimpanzee show going on shortly after we arrived, but the throng of people around the exhibit was so thick that you couldn’t see a thing. Unless, of course, this exhibit was some sort of metaphysical statement about the primitive herd state of most people in attendance at the fair, as evidenced by the ubiquitous blue round McCain/Palin stickers that everyone seemed to be wearing on their t-shirts. (However, to balance things out, I did see one bootleg looking air brushed Obama t-shirt out in the crowd.)

However, when you go to the state fair, make sure you take a small bank loan along with you. Your basic walk around ticket doesn’t include rides, as I quickly found out. There was a bracelet that one could buy that allows you to go on an unlimited amount of rides, but seeing how I have an irrational fear of losing my glasses while spinning on a ride and the fact that my girlfriend has a heart murmur, we decided to go the next best option, which was a sheet of 25 ride tickets ($20.) But seeing how each ride takes a different amount of tickets to enter, it turns out that a couple can go on two rides before they are left with a conundrum: not enough left over tickets to go on more rides together with. So if you were “on fire” to go on more rides, you had to buy another sheet of tickets.

But, unfortunately for the greedy captialist nature of the state fair, we had set out to go on two rides only: the Ferris Wheel (which I had planned on yelling”hail satan!” at the top of my lungs when I was at it’s apex, but forgot to do so because I was just having too much fun by yelling “whee!” ironically) and the Tilt A Whirl, which is my girlfriends favorite ride. I ended up giving my remaining five tickets to a young mexican girl that happened to pass us by on the fairgrounds.

There were numerous carny games that looked like money grabbing scams that my girlfriend and I were just too jaded to play even just for a laugh.

The food was great, but expensive: two polish sausage and pepper sandwiches ($14) one funnel cake ($6) and one candy apple ($2.50.) However, eating these items were enough to stuff the two of us to the point that simple tasks like walking had become Herculean in nature. When that feeling hit, we knew it was time to leave.

jareddriskill

why is it…

…when you are male above the age of say, 25 or so, single, and who likes to keep his home clean, people always assume that you are mentally ill, or worse, gay? ( I’m not saying that I personally think that being gay is worse than being mentally ill or anything, its just seems that in the eyes of the modern American public, the people who judge me for my perceived quirk of having a clean home when I am single, that being mentally ill is more acceptable than being gay. Of course back in the 1950’s or whatever when being gay was considered a mental illness things sort of evened out, public perception wise. Although the mentally ill back in the day were also subjected to forced electro shock therapy sessions, so I guess there are no winners in this argument.)

Whenever I go out to buy cleaning supplies the following transaction with the cashier occurs.

cashier: “I see the Mrs is making clean house.”

me: “I’m not married.”

cashier: “Okay, your girlfriend then.”

me:”No, believe it or not, I like to keep a clean home without being forced to have one by the constant nagging of a woman.”

cashier: stunned silence with a twisted look on their face that eitehr says “He keeps a clean house?!?! This honkey bastard be trippin!” or “What are you, fucking gay?”

me: Standing there with tears in my eyes shouting out in my best ABC After School Special dramatic whail “Nobody understands me!!” And then I run off crying after I paid for my purchase with my bags in my hands bouncing around and hitting my legs as I run.

What I am saying is the reason why that I keep my home fairly clean, ( although my home would certainly never pass any intense 16 point white glove inspection, it is neat) is because filth and squalor sickens me because it is a personal belief of mine that states ”people who voluntarily live in filth and squalor are inherently lazy, and lazy people just fucking piss me off.” If this belief is a sign of a oncoming mental illness, then I say so be it. I know it is not a sign of being gay because being gay is about who you love. ( But I do love having a clean home. Gasp!)

But otherwise, I think that my quirks are perfectly normal.

jareddriskill

film history #f

I don’t know if it’s the suddenly changing weather or the fact that I intern at a health care facility full of sick elderly people or I have unconsciously uncovered some sort of deep seated latent racism (I kid you assuredly) but I developed one hell of a sinus headache this evening which made it hard for the author, that’s me, to concentrate on tonight’s film history topic, Black Cinema, or as the genre was called back in the day, “Race Films” or “Midnight Rambles.” (Hey, I didn’t make those terms up! Save those rotten tomatoes for my racist ancestors back in the day.)

The Black Cinema movement began around 1916 as a backlash against the popularity of the D.W. Griffith pro KKK historical drama, “Birth of A Nation” as a means to promote black lifestyle and to give African Americans positive, prominent roles in films. The Black Cinema movement also help birth, in an indirect way, the modern independent film industry because films from this genre had to develop their own means of production, promotion and distribution, so just like rock n roll, the next time that you enjoy an independent film take some uncomfortable knowledge in the fact that the modern independent film system was basically ripped off from hard working African Americans by some rich, snot nosed white devil.

Tonight we had two documentaries about the Black Cinema movement, the first ( the title of which escapes me at the moment) was a short film featuring a young Danny Glover re-enacting clips from the films of the African American auteur, Oscar Micheaux. ( Which by the way, brings me to my weekly Mighty Boosh reference in this series. The pronunciation of the name Micheaux had reminded of a lyric from a Mighty Boosh crimp\, which goes a follows: ”miso miso, fighting in the dojo, miso miso, oriental prince in the land of soup!”)

Of course, Danny Glover is Danny Glover, but why couldn’t they use actual Oscar Micheaux film clips instead? But the cool thing about this documentary is that the reenacted clips are interspersedwith interview segments from other major film stars from the black cinema era, such as my favorite: Lorenzo Tucker, ” the Black Valentino.” With a name like that, how can you not be cool?

The second documentary was “Small Steps, Big Strides” which I failed to watch because my sinus headache had just made it too painful to watch any flickering images on the big screen. I originally was going to compare this film to my other favorite documentary about early 20th century African American civil rights struggle, “Eyes On The Prize.” But I suppose that it was just not meant to be.

Next week on the syllabus: The first exam and afterwards, Dada and Surrealism in cinema!

jareddriskill

random item tuesdays

I apologize once again for lack of posts recently but senior year in school is keeping me very busy. But I am going to make up to you, my faithful reading several, with an extra long random item Tuesday post this week. How’s them apples?

1. A friend of mine recently suggested that I try the Aquafresh Plus Whitening Extreme Clean toothpaste in the “Original Experience” flavor. And I have to say that Original Experience is an apt name for this brand of toothpaste because my mouth have never experienced such cleanness before in my life and I now find myself brushing my teeth the recommended old school three times a day instead new school recommended two times a day to get that oh so fresh feeling. (Remember when dentists used to say you have to brush your teeth 3 times a day? Now I am reading that its twice a day. What’s the deal with that?)

2. Speaking of brushing your teeth, dentists also recommend that you brush your teeth after meals and snacks. As a kid, I imagined that severely obese people who followed this rule would have some serious ass bright white teeth. But as I have grown older, I slowly found out that obese people usually don’t give a fuck about proper oral hygiene. Finding out this fact has also disappointed me more than finding out that santa claus wasn’t real when I was 3 years old.

3. Hell, here’s another hygiene question for you: How often are you supposed to use a disposable razor before you throw it away? It never says how many uses you are supposed to get of each razor on the box. I mean I know it’s for damn sure it’s not just one use because if you rinse the razor out pretty good after each use, you can use it again 3 or 4 (or in my case, 40) more times. I always find out the hard way that its time to use a new razor when the blades on the old one are so cragged, that it scrapes my face wide open.

4. Over the past several weeks on campus, I noticed that Obama supporters are trying to get students to register to vote. How come the McCain camp doesn’t do that? I mean the Obama supporters are generally ignored by the majority of students on campus just as well as a McCain supporter would.

5. I bought an ice cream cone from a street vendor on campus this morning. After I paid him, he asked me if I could do him a favor and tell all my friends to buy ice cream from him. I told him that he needs to put himself out there and promote himself. I mean yeah, he’s has an ice cream cart on campus, but he just stands there with his hands in his pockets waiting for people to show up like some fucking loser. That ice cream isn’t going to sell itself, especially when it’s 4 dollars for a small cone! Take a business administration course and try again, corky!

6. Here’s something I find odd now that I work retail: when something is out of stock, people come up to me, the store employee, and demand ( they never kindly ask) that I look in the back room and see if there is a case of that item sitting back there. In all of my 31 years on this earth as a consumer Inever beent o a store and see a customer demand that an employee go look around in the back room and look for an item. Hell, whenever I go to a store and see if something is out of stock on the floor, I say fuck it and go to another store that has the item in stock, or heaven forbid, find a suitable alternative item that actually is in stock. Wow, what an concept.

Oh, by the way, whenever a customer demands that I look around for an item, I tell them that it isn’t in the back room because, if there was more of that particular item in the back, that it would’ve been put out on the shelf by now.

jareddriskill

film history #e

We had another jam packed, content filled night in “the History Of the Motion Picture.” This week’s theme/subject was “silent comedy.” We opened up with the last celluoid refugee from our technical glitch filled evening several weeks back, Georges Melies’ unofficial follow up to the first sci-fi film ever made (“A Trip To The Moon, for the benefit of those among my faithful reading several who came in late) “The Impossible Voyage” or as some like call it, “The Journey To The Sun.”  

Whereas I had compared “A Trip To The Moon” to an episode of The Mighty Boosh a few weeks back, I would make a similar comparison to “The Impossible Voyage” by saying it is like one of the lesser episodes of The Mighty Boosh. ( “Impossible Voyage” is the “eels” episode compared the the “nightmare of milky joe” episode of “A Trip To The Moon.”) While this film is still imaginative and unlike anything you have ever seen before in your life, but in side to side comparison to “A Trip To The Moon” it just doesn’t seem as dazzling any more.

As a special treat the professor showed the music video for “Tonight Tonight” by the Smashing Pumpkins, which is a homage to the works of Georges Melies. Also the lyrical stylings of Billy Corgan fits into tonight’s topic of “silent comedy” because he sings SO badly which makes you think it is an elaborate joke on his part, but instead of finding out for sure or not, you just rather jab knitting needles into your ears.

We were also treated tonight to the last 15-20 minutes or so of the classic Buster Keaton comedy, “Seven Chances.” Showing only the climatic chase sequence was a wise move on my professors part because I remember seeing this film on AMC about 12 years ago as part of silent movie marathon and believe me, the first 45 minutes of this film is rather dull. Watching only the climatic comedic stunt sequence in ”Seven Chances” makes me wish that there was a Buster Keaton comedic stunt highlight reel I could watch and enjoy instead of having to watch alot of weak story building sequences in his films that do nothing but distract you from the fact that there isn’t a great comedic stunt going on at that very moment.

Tonight’s feature film was Charlie Chaplin’s “The Kid” which also starred a very young Jackie Coogan. (It’s hard to imagine that a cute-ish kid like him grew up to become the broken down, hard on his luck actor who ended up playing Uncle Fester on “The Addams Family” tv show.) Unlike Buster Keaton, who only provides the audience with a visceral thrill of his comedic stunts, Chaplin does his audiences one better and manages to bring a sense of pathos to his comedy, though he laid it on a bit heavy handed with it at times. ( i.e the title card at the beginning of the film that read; “a woman who only sin was motherhood.” Ugh.)

Not a bad night of film history all in all, but my only complaint is: “What, no mention of Harold Lloyd?!?! What a fucking outrage!”

Next week on the syllabus: colored cinema! (film to be announced)

jareddriskill

random item tuesdays

1. For those of you who haven’t already heard, it is with a heavy heart to announce that novelist, David Foster Wallace had left this mortal vale of tears this past weekend. While his material was difficult to read at times because of the sheer amount of genius he had put into his work, I always appreciated the fact that there was some one like him in the literary world to push boundaries and to challenge age-old conventions. If he didn’t exist, the literary world would had to make him up. Of course, now that he’s gone, we might have to do just that.

2. Now that I am knee deep in the trenches of the retail world, I now know what a pain in the ass setting up all the holiday/ christmas merchandise in September is. I mean what the fuck man, we just sat out all the Halloween related junk in late August. (Which by the way, is just sitting there on the shelves unsold and tying up all that business capital that could be better spent on inventory that actually DOES sell.) While I take great pride in having great knowledge of market economics, but this whole retail economics business is a different story…

3.I became that much more bourgeois and therefore officially that much more useless in the coming class struggle this past weekend. Yes, that’s right, I ate at an Olive Garden for the first time ever. I have to admit, the food wasn’t too bad and well worth the exorbitantprices that they charge. I had the chicken scampi with stuffed mushrooms as an appetizer and it was marvelous. I forwent the dessert menu because I was so stuffed that I almost suffered a food induced coma while at the restaurant. (Yes, being hypnotised to sleep by a great meal is a wonderful feeling, but for health reasons it isn’t something you want to experience on a regular basis. Unless you want to die of an heart attack when you are 40.)

jareddriskill

be positiive! say yes! part 6

“Yes! Despite all your efforts to the contrary, I will grow up to be a disappointment!”

“Yes! I DO hate you daddy!”

-jareddriskill

Brett Anderson “wilderness”

Brett Anderson/Wilderness/itunes/2008

Lordy be! How could I have been so busy for the past few months to have not have noticed that the ex-Suede vocalist had released a brand new solo album?!?! Well, whatever the case may be, I have rectified this problem, hence this review. (On a side note, I noticed that Mr Anderson has somehow gotten this album unto the US itunes store, which usually tends to ignore most UK indy releases. Not only that, he also managed to get itunes to carry an extra bonus track and a digital booklet complete with a lyric sheet! Well played, my good man, well played.)

Unlike his first self titled solo album, Brett Anderson has decided to forgo having a backing band and recorded this album using only a piano, strings and vocals. The music is dark and intense, sorta like a musical version of 1960’s Swedish existential cinema, if you will. You can almost see death himself set up the chess board in your minds eye during the track “Funeral Mantra.” (If you didn’t get that “Seventh Seal” reference, then there is just no hope for you.)

I would hate to say that this piano driven song crafting is a new direction for Brett Anderson because he had already recorded several sonic prototypes in the past, (i.e. “The Next Life,” “A Love As Strong As Death” et al.) But… he has never performed anything that carried this much emotional punch either. With the possible slight exception of the non-album A side “Back To You.” (Which, incidentally, was re-recorded for this album.)

And Brett’s vocals? As I had said in my review of his first solo album, he is no longer doing his trademark mewling yelps, but now his voice has matured further and he has the experience to use his voice to devastate his listeners emotionally. In fact, I believe that this is why there is several seconds of silence after each track, to allow the listener to reflect and think about the moving experience that he or she just went through. (Either that or my itunes account is really, really messed up and this is some sort of happy accident.)

jareddriskill

dreamlog #54

I dreamt that Glenn Danzig wrote a book of short stories called “Frenzy.” (In the dream I cursed myself for the fact that the book wasnot named after the Ingmar Bergman film. Of course, in real life I’m not aware of a film with such a title from the great director. Hmmm.)

So being the die hard Danzig fan that I am, I was waiting outside the bookstore before they opened on the book’s release date. Outside the book store, there were crowds of college aged teenagers standing out side waiting to buy their copy of the book. They weren’t Danzig fans at all, they had heard a rumor that if you read certain pages of “Frenzy” in a certain order, it would cause you to have visual hallucinations of violent graphic imagery.

So I fought my way through the crowds and bought my copy of “Frenzy” and when I walked outside the book store I immediately read the certain pages of the text in the exact order prescribed and sure enough, I had an halucination of a giant zombie spitting out a spinning knife from it’s mouth. The spinning knife transformed into a spinning skull which moprhed rotting flesh over itself, which slowly turned into living flesh of an old man which regressed in age on down to an infant.

Pretty damn cool, if I must say.

jareddriskill

film history #d

We got a extra special treat tonight in class tonight, which was that we finally got to see the short film, ”Musketeers of Pig Alley” by D.W Griffith, which was unfortunately left out of our technical malfunction ridden D.W. Griffith retrospective session a few weeks back.

Martin Scorsese himself stated that “Musketeers of Pig Alley” *(which, by the way, is considered the first gangster film committed to celluloid) was an direct influence on his film, “Goodfellas.” I couldn’t for the life of me see the connection, unless of course, he means that both films are rather fucking boring. In that case, I agree with him wholeheartedly! The only interesting thing about ”Musketeers of Pig Alley” was that D.W. Griffith had embedded the American Biograph logo in the background scenery in several shots, in an effort to deter piracy. (Some things never change, do they?)

Tonight’s lecture was focused on “post revolution Soviet montage” which leads us to this week’s film, “Battleship Potemkin” by Sergei Eisenstein. Which frankly, is only famous for the “Odessa steps” sequence. While I admit it is an well edited piece of footage, but what shocks me is that the rest of the shots in the film are also well composed, thought out and executed piece of propaganda for one certain V.I. Lenin. Hell, for a minute there Eisenstein almost had me believing that “the people’s revolution” was THE political philosophy to follow. Which leads me to what I think is the failing of the “Odessa steps” sequence in the context of the entire film.

The failing is this, like most revolutions and uprisings in real life, the elite leaders of the revolution are welcomed and rewarded by the people. But when “The Man” comes to smack the revolution down, its the people who always end up suffering or getting killed. Meanwhile the elite leadership runs off and forgets about the idioic bourgeoisie scum who foolishly bled and died for their false beliefs. I found it hard to believe that the crew of the Battleship Potemkin would rejoice at the films climax when they find out that the entire Russian navy was on their side, all the while they conveinently “forget” about the citizens of Odessa, who pretty much got wiped out in a beautifully edited genocide sequence because of their support of the revolution.

The lesson learned from “Battleship Potemkin?” The only way to get ahead in any post revoultion society is to be in the inner circle from the very beginning, otherwise you get fucked.

next week in the syllabus: silent comedy and “The Kid!”

jareddriskill