The first half of the Rubicon pilot is certainly interesting. A show for smart people or a show for people who think they’re smart (and love 70s paranoia thrillers)?
Right off the bat, let’s lift a shadow off this evening: The only people for us are the mad ones and there’s nothing nearly eloquent enough to explain our excitement about the return of Mad Men tonight (and the return of us gabbing about each new episode afterward) with the fourth season premiere, “Public Relations,” but August is going to start us off with…
August Bravo: One of those guys is going to leave New York with a VD.
Is it me or shouldn’t this episode have been titled “Don Fucking Draper,” right?
Marco Sparks: Seriously. That would have been a great title for the season premiere of the show for rich people and rich minds alike.
August: Seriously. This episodes taps into the psyche of Don and who he is now. Maybe who he always was.
Marco: I feel like every single season we’re told that there’s a larger question hanging over that particular year or story arc, and there is no resolution, not clearly. There’s milestones. There’s totems on that timeline. There’s road blocks and rest stops, but that probing question only gets more complicated, more faceted…
But it’s nice that no matter how despicable some of Don’s actions can be, he’s still one of our better role models for men on television. Right? Well… no, probably not. There’s obviously a very masculine energy to him, a complicated creature of intrigue and overflowing with a talent that can’t be denied and a certain enviable confidence. But it’s a weird time for men now, not unlike the 60s in some regards, and it’s hard to find good male role models in this day and age…
Though it’s interesting to watch the new era of Don Draper. The single Don, a man living a sadder life perhaps? It’s like watching an actor without a real role. Don’s always a little more in his zone when he’s lying to a woman effectively and it’s got to be hard for him when the possible new girl in his life sees through a little of the old tricks of his. But, Don being Don, and knowing the ways of the world like he does, and being in advertising after all, he relies on kindly women from the oldest profession who can give him what he wants, a literal expression of what has happened to him thus far: A good slapping around.
August: No need for the hooker to take off her brassiere, she already knows what Don wants.
Marco: Even if perhaps Don himself doesn’t.
August: I’m not sure a lot of people could have imagined Don throwing himself down to this level. But I don’t think it’s like that.
Marco: I’m sure the events of his life sure haven’t helped. The confusion at work as they build a new company. The constant struggle to move out of the darkened corners of invisible anonymity in the creative department to becoming the poster boy, the handsome cipher, the face of the company.
It’s 1964 at this point, it’s Thanksgiving, and Don isn’t finding himself a whole lot to be thankful for. This new found freedom isn’t necessarily good for him, it sure as hell isn’t glamorous in any way, and divorced guys are seemingly considered basically damaged goods. And I think a lot of people came up with a lot of reasons for why Don like or wants or needs a bit of the rough stuff in his sex life, specifically being slapped, but the very first thing I got out of it was a reminder of Betty slapping him back in the season finale last year.
August: Life is just slapping him around at this point. I think it’s about what he said earlier. Every day he works is an investment for the company. He has no time to pick up women and seduce them into copious amounts of sex, to play that particular game that he plays so well. He has work to do.
Marco: Cause in every single way, Don is the star of this show.
I love the use of “John And Marsha” by Stan Freeberg, one of the kings of early satire, and the song is both a lovely inside joke when it comes to the world of advertising and a nice joke on soap operas. And it only becomes so much more meta when you consider that that’s really what Mad Men is.
August: Johnnnnnn.
Marco: Marshaaaaaaa.
August: In the metamorphosis from Sterling Cooper to Sterling Cooper Draper Price I’m glad they’ve updated from their shanty of an office in a hotel room to an actual floor, which unfortunately enough for Harry Crane doesn’t have more than one story, with their name on the door. Sorry Pete, guess they did end up having a lobby. But still no table…
Marco: I think we’re all holding our breath in anticipation of more Joan. And the possibility of Joan and Don… you know. That’s the difference, in just some regards, between a show like Mad Men and True Blood… True Blood is all soft core fan service (at some point everyone on that show will have fucked everyone else on that show for our amusement) and Mad Men is cerebral teasing all the way. It’s about dangling and snatching away at the last moment.
I especially think that’s true in light of this episode of Mad Men, which is all about not being able to close certain deals and not wanting to close others. You gotta love Don’s orchestrated “fuck off” to the prudes manufacturing sex in swim wear and thinking they’re better than they are.
August: I enjoyed the ruse Peggy and Pete conjured in order to garner press for the ham company. Didn’t go as planned, but that’s life I guess.
Marco: “It was going great… until it wasn’t.” Is this the beginning of real publicity stunts as prominent and regular tools for advertising?
August: It’s hard out there for the boys and girls in America. Especially in the 60′s. 1964, if I’m not mistaken?
Marco: It certainly is.
August: Sad to see no one from the old Sterling Cooper in the episode, but I’m sure we will in due time.
Marco: Like your beloved Ken Cosgrove.
August: Ken had cool hair. Terrific few parts of the episode? Don and Roger bickering back and forth about the one-legged reporter and his inability to write a real story. Maybe they should talk to a whole reporter next time? Ha-ha. Roger sure as shit was the comedy relief in this episode as a lot of things/people were so morose.
Now back to Don, who has always been the main character of the show, I guess the protagonist, if you will, who really made this episode what it was. I think he feels this is temporary, this won’t last with Betty…
Marco: Henry Francis just feels like he’s about to get hit by a car or walk off the top of a skyscraper any moment now, doesn’t he? His patheticness almost makes Betty look even more cruel and horrid. It leaves where she ends up because of her frustrations from the past few years even more unchecked. Just as the kids are scared of their mother, I can’t imagine Francis not growing bored of her and then where will Matthew Weiner deliver her( and us)?
August: Will Don get back with her? Will he want to? The man with no key to his own house. I love his ability to take the jabs by his attorney and Roger in this episode. Usually so defensive, I think he’s just too shot down. Or just doesn’t give a shit anymore.
Marco: I’d be hurt if Benjie Light doesn’t have a few words to share with us about Betty, but I like where they’re taking the kids here, story-wise and post-divorce, the way they’re building on what we’ve seen so far concerning Sally and Bobby Draper. Sally, of course, is going to rebel and be repulsed by the way her little life is going so far and Bobby is going to grow up to be fucking creepy. If they ever do an episode flashing forward to where all the characters ended up, I want to see Bobby Draper, with his new striving to be liked by everyone now, as a politician.
And since they cast Matt Long as Peggy’s little partner, I’m wondering just out of curiosity since I never actually watched Jack And Bobby (and I don’t believe that anyone else did either)(though I think John Slattery was on there too), but didn’t Bobby end up being the one who grew up to become President?
August: No need for Don to try to defend his failing marriage, he’s got other things to worry about. Like mentioning jai alai…
Especially since Henry’s idea of recapturing the magic between involves them fucking in the car, seemingly echoing back to when they had to sneak around? Only one episode in and I already feel like these characters feel like they can’t handle the a-changin’ times around them and they’re flirting with the soft seduction of the past and all of it’s elements, the moments when they felt happier or more dangerous.
August: I couldn’t tell you where this episode may take us, as far as the new season is concerned. I’m just hoping I get to see more of Pryce.
Marco: And Joan. And maybe more Trudy/Alison Brie? And maybe we can slowly grasp our way towards something resembling that eternally elusive question that this show constantly is hanging over us…
It’s Friday. I’m tired. I can’t brain today cause I have the dumb, sorry. So, I’m just going to share some gems from the internet with you and then we’ll call it that, okay?
It was all just shit and giggles. A little information, a little fun, some leaked albums, rumors, stock quotes, and a whole lot of pornography. Oh, and this also:
But that was then. And this is now! “The internet is over!” Prince has decreed, and maybe he’s right and maybe he’s wrong.
Actually that quote comes from an interesting interview with The Purple One and he’s really referring to the internet re: music distribution, but still, it makes for a good sound byte, yes?
And then he says:
The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.
So true. You know what I hate having in my head? I mean, like more than I hate the memory of “two girls, one cup?” Numbers. They’re the worst.
Ha ha. Still love you though, Prince. I swear someone should just put together a collection of reminisces of “normal people” and journalist’s first time meeting Prince, being inducted to his world, etc. I would love to read that.
So that’s that and the internet’s possibly over and now I just don’t know what to do with myself. Especially since Benjamin Light mentioned Know Your Meme to me last night and then I got stuck looking at it for like three hours when maybe I should’ve been attempting sleep, y’know?
Courage Wolf knows what I’m talking about.
Hell, at this point, I really want to see Courage Wolf and all his friends get a Saturday morning kid’s show. I think that would be brilliant. Anyway, before I go for the day, something completely different…
The pictures in today’s post by Weegee, otherwise known as Arthur Fellig, an Austrian-born photographer/photojournalist from the mid-1900s, best known for documenting the grim beauty that was the seedy life on the streets of New York City. His nickname came from a phonetic tendering of the word “ouija,” which he got because of his eerily prescient ability to appear at the scene of a crime or a fire or emergency of another kind moments after it happened or was reported to the authorities.
To me, his pictures walk a very fine, very fascinating line between going too far and perfectly capturing the beauty of the worse sides of life, the raw and wounded aspects. Looking back at his pictures now, there’s just something unmistakably real and authentic about them, something that maybe you wouldn’t see as much now?
Fellig was married to Margaret Atwood from 1947 to 1950 before he went to Hollywood and began working in film. He became friends with Stanley Kubrick (the two of them are pictured together above) and did the still photography for Dr. Strangelove, and it was his accent that Peter Sellers copied for the title character of the film.
Right, so now each month on Counterforce, at the end of the month as that chapter closes, I find myself looking back on my posts and just wondering about all the puzzle pieces left strewn about. Some things planned, some things decidedly not planned, some accidents, some just flat out mistakes…
Sometimes your blog is both a testament to you and a museum devoted to your mistakes and victories. It can be a lovely display of all those things you loved, or hated, or sometimes a combination of the two, and usually more about yourself than anything else.
I’ll never forget that an ex once told me that “nostalgia is for people who have no future.” I found that to be a rather curious statement and when I pressed her for clarification, she told me that, to her, too many people use the mirror as a reflection on the past and only rarely on the present. I asked her what was wrong with that, in certain doses, and she responded with, “You shouldn’t have time for that. You should be moving so fast that when you pass by the mirror all you see is a blur.”
She said that and then she was gone. I felt like all I got out of that was the blur.
This relationship was a long time ago. It was short, but it felt longer, and it feels like it was longer ago than it was, but it was probably circa the first Arcade Fire album (not the EP). And now they have another album coming out.
If one of the leaked songs had been called “Month Of June” instead “Month Of May” that would’ve been a lot more convenient for my blogging concerns, thank you very much.
The first thing you should know about me: The other day, on twitter of all places, I was self analyzing out loud and wondered if I hold better conversations via the phone or if my stronger quality is my voicemails (which are, quite frankly, amazing)(to the point that, ladies, you would have to hold the phone away from your ear for fear that said voicemails could put you instantly in heat), you know, from the perspective of whoever the fuck it is I’m calling. Honestly… I don’t care.
But that lead me to realize: When I talk on the phone, you can tell if I’m actually active in a conversation not so much by what we’re discussing or who I’m talking to anymore, but what I’m doing physically. I mean, obviously if I’m sitting there watching TV, then I’m not listening to you, but it’s more of a kinetic thing. If I’m up, walking around, pacing, then there I’m there, I’m really a part of the thing, the process, the bullshitting, whatever. My other mode, oddly enough? Staring at myself in the mirror.
It’s weird. You could call me up, we could be having a fascinating conversation and I’ve noticed that, without thinking about it, I might just walk into the bathroom and start looking into the mirror. At myself? No. It’s hardly ever a really conscious thing. Maybe it’s self reflexive, like staring out at the horizon, only in this case, the horizon is my face and it’s a portal to a larger gateway of either the honesty or just flat out sexy bullshit that I’m going to peddle your way.
Or, maybe, by looking at myself, with a certain visually conscious part of myself shut off, I’m actually subconscious recording myself looking at myself looking at myself looking at myself looking at myself as I talk about myself looking at myself looking at myself looking at myself… in some kind infinite loop of recursive blogitude?
The second thing that you should know about me right now, right this very second is that I have every intention of making this song the jam of the summa summa summertime:
I mean, that’s my intention, but as for you? You’re so vain, you probably think that summertime jam is about you, don’t you?
More and more this blog feels like a book to me, in a way. Like you could collect it into a hot mess of an interactive coffee table curio. A book in 12 parts, chronicling the year in which we make contact. But contact with… what? Ourselves? Each other? Slow dancing in the burning hotel room that is the past? Or staring at ourselves in the mirror, reflecting on the future? Or is “the future” just another aspect of right here and now because all times are one (especially on the internet)?
All of those and more, maybe. Maybe not. But, so far, in the section of this starship/book/beast/blog entitled “June” we have so far been subjected to:
And all accumulating to but quite possibly falling way short of a certain sense of… thisness.
But, as we already covered, tomorrow is another day. With a different mirror to look into. And a different version of ourselves reflected back in. Perhaps we’ll start to look more like ourselves as we strangely believe that ourselves should look or perhaps we’ll look like another stranger in a strange land.
Just a quick word on three books that I’m currently reading…
The first:
Krakatoa: The Day The World Exploded by Simon Winchester, which is about, as you probably guessed from the title, the explosion of Krakatoa on August 27, 1883. Winchester is one of my favorite authors of general non-fiction, and I’d highly recommend his The Professor And The Madman, one of his accounts of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Anyway, I could say quite a bit about both of these books, but the book on Krakatoa just felt timely, what with the eruption in Iceland a few months ago. And Krakatoa was an explosion that significantly changed the world in quite a few ways, both lower the temperature of the planet much like Mt. Tambora and “the year without a summer,” but Krakatoa also affected the way we look at our world and us. For the first time, the “global village,” as Marshall McLuhan would say, was assembled through technology such as the telegraph and news traveled faster to and from more remote places, and in this particular case, that news was that the world wasn’t all that it seemed, and that our relationship with nature could be quite fragile in places.
The second book:
Love And Sex With Robots: The Evolution Of Human-Robot Relationships by David Levy. At first I thought this was going to just a silly little read, but it’s actually quite fun and interesting, dealing not just with human/robot couplings, but with mankind’s long history of emotional attachments to our technological creations, and our seemingly continuing return to synthetic love and how it can be as important to us as “the real thing.”
But it brought up things that I didn’t know before, which is embarrassing in a regard, but talking about the creation of the vibrator, the book brings up the word hysteria pretty much translates from the Greek as “womb sickness.” For a long time prior to the early 1900s, many woman would suffer from a “madness” due to “sexual dysfunction” and it would be the job of a doctor or a midwife to essentially bring them to paroxysm or orgasm to cure them.
And, of course, coincidentally, one of our favorite writers, Tracy Clark-Flory, would link to a similarly related article, “Turn Right, My Love” from The New York Times on her tumblr the other day:
Unlike my wife, my GPS voice is completely subservient. She gives me something I want and doesn’t ask anything in return. All I have to do is plug her in every now and then and she’s happy.
Our relationship is all about me.
And therein lies the boon to my marriage. Having someone around whose sole role is to serve me gives me what I want as a man (efficiency and attention) while not threatening what my wife wants as a woman (kindness and equality).
People are just so weird. It’s wonderful. Anyway, the book opens with a quote from this 2006 article from The Economist, talking about South Korea is pushing to have domestic helper robots in every home in it’s country by 2020 and then quoting Henrik Christensen, the chairman of the European Robotics Network…
Probably the area of robotics that is likely to prove most controversial is the development of robotic sex toys, says Dr Christensen. “People are going to be having sex with robots in the next five years,” he says. Initially these robots will be pretty basic, but that is unlikely to put people off, he says. “People are willing to have sex with inflatable dolls, so initially anything that moves will be an improvement.” To some this may all seem like harmless fun, but without any kind of regulation it seems only a matter of time before someone starts selling robotic sex dolls resembling children, says Dr Christensen. This is dangerous ground. Convicted paedophiles might argue that such robots could be used as a form of therapy, while others would object on the grounds that they would only serve to feed an extremely dangerous fantasy.
So, the question is: When do we start falling in love with our tools and how does that reflect our own personal reality and view of the world around us?
I know Benjamin Light said he saw the Swedish film version of the first book in the trilogy – The Millennium trilogy, which is a name I like – and that he wasn’t crazy about it. I think they’ve already finished the third film over in Sweden, and any second now we should hear about casting for the American version of the films (which will still be set in Sweden), which will be interesting in a way similar to creation of an American version of Let The Right One In. I can’t wait to see K-Stew sneer her way through this one.
Trailers for The Social Network (remember the poster?), the new Todd Solondz, and Red, based on the Warren Ellis/Cully Hammer miniseries/graphic novel (and retaining the general plot, but seemingly having dropped everything else).
Pictures from this post on redesigning Nabokov covers, and how certain limitations could be an artist’s saving grace. In this case, the recurring theme tied back to the author’s love of lepidoptery.
The covers are: Despair by Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin. The Enchanter by Megan Wilson and Duncan Hannah. Speak, Memory by Michael Bierut. King, Queen, Knave by Peter Mendelsund. And The Defense by Paul Sahre.
Last night, about an hour or so before I fell asleep, I got a phone call. An old friend that I had talked to… well, it hasn’t been a long time since I talked to her, it had probably only been a week, and that was nice. So we talked for about an hour and eventually, the effects of the long day and long night started to take their toll on me and I was already laying down and I could feel the fatigue really setting in. My eyelids were getting heavy. I could feel myself slipping a little. This was at like 1 or 2 in the morning and though it was nice talking to her, having to work early today, I didn’t really want to fight this, you know?
The sad thing is that she and I were in the middle of a very, very, very important conversation, which was: The five “safe” celebrities that you, if you were in a relationship, could sleep with and it wouldn’t be counted as cheating and your girlfriend/boyfriend/significant other would have to be okay with. You know, like in that episode of Friends. And man oh man, maybe it’s cause I was tired, but I was having a really hard time coming up with five. I was struggling. It was pathetic. I would say things like “Natalie Portman,” which felt timely, but also a bit generic.
Also weird and coincidental was that earlier in the week Benjie Light and I had a conversation about various celebrities and their “eras and fuckability.” This is only the kind of conversation that two men can have, but I’ll let Commander Light finish that tale.
Anyways, so the conversation kept going, talking about other things here and there, filling in the holes of my trying to think up potential celebrities to hypothetically sleep with, and I started drifting off, a few seconds here, a few more there. Apparently I was mumbling things at one point. I didn’t realize what it was until my friend texted me this morning, telling me that she googled some of the things I was saying and they were apparently from this Dido song. How fucking weird is that?
But that got me thinking about female-centric pop music from the past ten to fifteen years and I started hitting up the easy peezy nostalgia machine: Youtube. Some videos listened to: “The One” by Tracy Bonham, “Wrong Impression” by Natalie Imbruglia, “No Man’s Woman” by Sinead O’Connor, “Simple Kind Of Life” by No Doubt, and “Open Your Eyes” by Tonic.
So that was that and now I’m going to take it here for just the briefest of moments…
2. The Concretes “Say Something New”
The other night, approximately three nights ago, I ran into an ex. We had a lovely, not terribly long encounter. Did a little talking, maybe shared a few drinks, caught up just about as much as we needed to.
The next day, I ran into her again. “This is weird,” I said to her as I stood there in the harsh light of day after the previous night. “Isn’t it though?” she said with his bemused smile. I was in a rush, “no time to talk,” I said, “but it was nice running into you again so out of the blue,” and then I was gone.
The following day, ran into her again. “Isn’t this weird and exciting?” she asked with this pre-crazy look in her eyes.
“Uh, sure…” I said. Then I thought about it for a moment and amended that: “Actually, no, sorry. That’s weird. Haven’t seen you for a very, very, great long time and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I keep running into you. It’s weird and it’s bizarre. Plus, you know my well trodden paths and I don’t know yours at all. I couldn’t fake running into you even if I wanted to, but you… you could.”
She just smiled. It was a nice smile, a bit mysterious and intriguing. “Yes, I suppose you could say that,” was what she said.
Then I added: “You know, the mafia have a saying. They have a lot, I’m sure, but they’re all quotes from The Godfather, most likely. But they have another too. It’s this: Once is happenstance. Twice? That’s just coincidence. But three times? That’s enemy action.”
“That’s a mafia quote?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” I said. “It was in Goldfinger and it sounds like the kind of thing I’d like the mafia to say.”
“Ah,” she said.
Then she told me of certain ulterior motives, which are nice in theory but not so hot in fact following upon certain words and deeds from long, long ago. She asked certain questions, proclaimed certain things, and made vague suggestions about the future… A shared future that she was suggesting. Such professions can be flattering at times and, sometimes, such professions can be… repetitive.
And to her, and to all the internet and the ex’s out there who are far better off that way, I propose and dedicate the above song by the Concretes. To everyone else I dedicate the song below:
Counterforce is dedicated to excellence and enjoyment in the audio and visual. Music is posted for a short sampling period and then removed. If you are the copyright owner of something on this page, send an email to counterforce01 at gmail dot com and tell us what you want to hear. Or not hear (i.e. have removed). The same address works perfectly for inflating our egos, hate mailing us, or inquiring about where to send donations.
Mad linkage:
“My soul knows my meat is doing bad things, and is embarrassed. But my meat keeps on doing bad, dumb things.”
from here.
“History is merely a list of surprises… It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again. Please write that down.
“Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.”
The male gaze
10 movies
