I just got home from finally seeing a movie called Michael Fassbender’s Penis. Shame at the Landmark Cinema. Here are some of my thoughts on Shame Michael Fassbender’s penis.
1. When you go up to the ticket taker, don’t say “Hi, I’d like one ticket to see Michael Fassbender’s penis,” even though every fiber of your being is screaming at you to do so because well, let’s face it, that’s why you’re there. I made the mistake of saying this. (Actually, that’s just a joke. I said, “I’d like one to Shame.” But then I was taken aback when the ticket lady started wanting to talk to me about Murakami’s 1Q84, which I had in my hand.
2. I was surprised at how many straight couples who looked like they were on dates. Still, hallfway through the trailers, someone in the audience yelled, ”Hurry up and show us the penis!” (This is not a joke.) [click to continue…]
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I’ve been kind of lazy with my money in recent years. Perhaps that’s because I don’t have much of it. But that was never an excuse for my parents, who also never had a lot of it, but who always tried to be conscious of how they used it, where it went, and who used it in between.
One of my earliest political memories is of my dad’s grass roots organizing around migrant farm workers (a cause close to home in Oxnard) and around ending apartheid in South Africa. My dad would never go to Africa, or even leave the United States. But through out my childhood, my dad thought it was important to apply whatever pressure he could, from our home in Ventura County, to help the causes of our neighbor, the migrant far workers, as well as and our distant brothers and sisters suffering under apartheid, half a world away.
And so, the earliest boycotts I can recall were against grapes and lettuce (which put pressure on farm growers) and Bank of America (which was doing business in South Africa).
Having learned what I’ve learned about banks over the past few years (and especially the past couple of months), I’ve know for awhile the best thing I could do with the little money I have is to invest it with a local credit union. Bank Transfer Day vanquished my laziness and got me to open up an account with the credit union that just happened to be down the street from me.
[click to continue…]
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It’s been yet another very full week. I began it by publishing my profile of composer (and East Village Resident) Philip Glass on the cover of The Village Voice (with beautiful artwork by Berlin-based artist Siggi Eggertsson). Then, I followed that up with four articles about Glass on the Voice’s Sound of the City music blog on Glass’s South Park style birthday, the U.S. premiere of his Symphony No. 9, an interview with David Harrington of the Kronos Quartet, and an interview with dj BC on mashing Glass up with the Beastie Boys and the Fugees.
