Bamboo Nation
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- Naked 2: Electric Boogaloo
More photos of Vanessa Hudgens in various states of undress keep popping up on the Internet, and one wonders how Zac Efron feels about Disney's salacious scandal. Will Zanessa crack from the weight of runaway naked publicity? If Hollywood's It Couple falls apart, all Zefron merely needs to do is think back to a couple months ago when he enthusiastically planted full-on, real-life kisses onto his Hairspray co-star, Nikki Blonsky. A kiss is not just a kiss, baby. Look at that—it's hot lust:
Nikki sure could pick up where Vanessa left off.
Thu, 13 Sep 2007 19:26:00 +0000 - The Wisdom of the Wipe Board
I have a dry-erase board covered in quotes that I used to have displayed wherever I happened to live. I just pulled the board out from storage, so I could remind myself of what is written on it:
It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.—John Steinbeck
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in—Leonard Cohen
"Anthem"
Those sleeping hearts will never understand
You can't hear the song until you dance
We run with scissors in our hands—Ben Lee
"Running With Scissors"
It's just theater, and we're all gonna die.—Brighde Mullins
If you have time to chatter, read books.
If you have time to read, walk into the mountain, desert and ocean.
If you have time to walk, sing songs and dance.
If you have time to dance, sit quietly, you happy lucky idiot.—Nanao Sakaki
You need not leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, simply wait.
You need not even wait, just learn to become quiet and still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.
It has no choice—it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.—Franz Kafka
Maybe, baby, if we both relax
The ax that grinds behind our backs
Will wear itself to nothing over time—John Wesley Harding
"Same Piece of Air"
GEMMA: If you, I'll tell you something, if you went down in history as unquestionably the greatest poet who ever lived, better than Shakespeare and Dante and all those other yahoos, I would still say, "Was he nice? Was he kind?" And if the answer is no, I'd say, "So? So what?" "Let me compare thee to a summer's day." Fuck that, be nice to people, we're all gonna be dead soon enough, God!—Craig Lucas
Missing Persons
TALENT
PERSISTENCE
INTENTION—Prince Gomolvilas
Thu, 13 Sep 2007 18:38:00 +0000 - Watch Out Zefron: Your Days Are Numbered!
I'm certainly not cruel enough to say that Zac Efron is so last month because my obsessions usually span at least 90 days. But Jonny, who seems to revel in shamelessly fueling my sick infatuations, just pointed me in the direction of Drake Bell, co-star of the Nickelodeon sitcom, Drake & Josh.
Drake, who will now be dubbed "Drell," doesn't dance like a homo, but he plays guitar, writes his own songs, and seems to channel 60s rock. (To those of you visiting this blog for the first time, "dance like a homo" is not an insult; it is a badge of honor. So step off, bitches!)
Anyway, I am happy that I can continue to keep my finger on the pulse of tween America and that I have a brand-new obsession to wallpaper my computer with.
So Drell sings a irresistibly infectious song called "Makes Me Happy," and I swear I think it's a love song to his cock. Listen to it!
When I asked Jonny if indeed the song was about Drell's cock, he responded, "All of Drake Bell's songs are either about his cock or Vanessa Hudgen's boobs."
So, here Drell is, giving Zefron a run for his money (the performance starts about 20 seconds in):
By the way, Jonny is as funny and fabulous as Diablo is, and he just re-launched his online persona with a new blog, Hatesexy, which you must add to your blogroll right now.
Thu, 13 Sep 2007 01:39:00 +0000 - Citing Shakespeare Makes You Seem Smart
Last night was the second week of the Writing Is Rewriting workshop, and I found myself once again referencing Hamlet, which makes me seem smarter than I actually am. That's the power of Shakespeare. Cite him every once in a while, and whatever you say has the air of authority and the ring of gospel truth.
We've been talking a lot about the idea of a play's thematic journey and how most plays express certain thematic ideas at the beginning and usually express nearly opposite thematic ideas at the end. And that thematic journey from beginning to end often dictates the development of the narrative, the characters, and the emotional core.
For example, one of the major themes that Hamlet tackles in its opening scenes is the necessity for revenge. By the end, of course, that idea is turned upside down, and we see that the play is about the futility of revenge. That's one of the thematic journeys of the play, of which there are many and include ideas of familial obligation, betrayal, action vs. inaction, and the very meaning of life itself.
All this reminds me that Kenneth Branagh's four-hour, word-for-word 1996 film version of Hamlet was finally released on DVD recently. It doesn't consistently keep me riveted, but a lot of it is fantastic and visually stunning, and it is undeniably gratifying in its ambition (excess?):
As bizarre (and gimmicky) it is to cast Jack Lemmon, Billy Crystal, and Robin Williams, what the hell is Gerard Depardieu doing in that movie?
Holy crap! Have you heard John Wesley Harding's absolutely brilliant five-minute song, "Hamlet," which summarizes all of the play with intelligence, irony, and wit? Hear it now!
Please note that this blog entry is not as smart as you think it is.
Wed, 12 Sep 2007 18:15:00 +0000 - I've Finally Found My Understudy
There's a fast-spreading rumor going around that my storytelling, song-singing, bingo-playing theatrical extravaganza, JUKEBOX STORIES, which also stars Brandon Patton, may be returning for a new six-week run in the San Francisco Bay Area in the spring of 2008. JUKEBOX STORIES' 2006 incarnation at Impact Theatre was a critically acclaimed postmodern cabaret show that audience members came to see again and again and again. (You know who you are, and I love you!)
I can neither confirm nor deny these rumors at this time, but I would like to inform you that, if I ever needed an understudy, I finally have one. Some Hawaiian guy who dubs himself "minouye" on YouTube also tells ridiculous stories with impeccable comic timing, cites Woody Allen as a personal hero, and is a nerdy Asian brutha! Give that guy a pair of glasses, and he's a veritable me—younger, sure, but I will always have better hair:
Someone get me a worm-in-the-apple, "What's Up, Bitches" T-shirt! Stat!Tipped by:
Plastic Bubble World
Wed, 12 Sep 2007 01:02:00 +0000 - The Sweet Sounds of Sheep
I doubt that this is actually a real commercial for the network it claims to be advertising, but it's damn funny either way. Fair warning for those of you in an office environment—no nasty pictures or anything, but the sound may get you busted. Get out your headphones:
Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:51:00 +0000 - Swimming Kitties!
I don't know what I find more amusing: the swimming cats; how serious that lady is ("It was so beautiful. It was like watching a ballerina."); the screenshot of her website ("Swimming Cats! And Manifesting Dreams"); the out-of-breath, giggly anchorwoman; or that rugged, fine-ass, Oregonian anchorman:
Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:45:00 +0000 - What's Your Favorite First Line From a Song?
Speaking of great first lines, I'm wondering what your favorite first line from a song is. Post your answers below so we can get a comprehensive overview of fantastic lyrics that kick off good (or bad) tunes.
What's mine? Well, I'm going to have to go with the first line from Robbie William's "Ghosts": "Here I stand victorious/The only man who made you come." Now that's how you start a song!
Tue, 11 Sep 2007 17:26:00 +0000 - "It's Britney, Bitch"
"It's Britney, bitch" may be the three greatest opening words in any song ever, but I've pretty much avoided Britney Spears's new single, "Gimme More," because, as you know, I am very concerned about my street cred. And after the High School Musical brouhaha, I can't afford to lose anymore. But, man, that song (produced by Timbaland mentee Nate ''Danjahandz'' Hills) is infectious, with its hypnotizing club drone, meant to soothe you into sweet submission.
Britney performed a version of the song (which includes a "you lookin' for trouble?" preamble) at Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards. She may do the worst lip-syncing job in lip-syncing history, she may lumber around stage like a winded pre-schooler, and she may look like she's drowning in the musical number's pole-dancing excess, but I can't stop answering my phone, "It's Britney, bitch."
I'm rooting for a comeback.
Tue, 11 Sep 2007 17:01:00 +0000 - James Bond Can Suck It!
Clive Owen, who at one time was the heir apparent of the James Bond franchise, stars in Shoot 'Em Up, which is not so much a movie as it is a series of preposterous action sequences hanging on a thread of a plot—something about baby harvesting, bone marrow transplants, gun control, and a presidential campaign. But who gives a shit about the plot, really, when you have a film so intentionally over-the-top, so ridiculously absurd, and so damn giddy? Shoot 'Em Up, the brainchild of filmmaker Michael Davis, pushes the action genre to implausible extremes, but also carries the spirit of outrageous comedy. Pick a scene, any scene:
Clive Owen participates in an overwhelming opening gunfight while delivering a baby and shoots off the umbilical cord with his gun. Later, there's a gunfight while he's having sex with a hooker. (No, seriously, folks, he's shooting people to death while having intercourse.) Even later, he takes the gunfighting to the skies, shooting 'em up midair after diving out of a plane. He's also prone to chomping on carrot sticks before using them to stab people in the eye. And there's more. So much more.
I even find this two-minute red-band trailer exhausting. But that's the point. When you're basically telling James Bond to suck it, you want to make sure you're driving the point home:
Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:46:00 +0000 - I'm Gonna Fuck You Up With This Bag of Cheetos!
You've got to hand it to those Iowans. They don't need fancy weapons to hurt you. Give 'em a bag of Cheetos, and they will fuck your shit up.
A Des Moines man was arrested and charged with domestic assault after he threw a bag of Cheetos at his dad. The bag hit his father square in the face, causing his glasses to cut the bridge of his nose. According to Associated Press, the police report claimed the assailant's "T-shirt was also covered in Cheeto dust."
I find that additional commentary on this incident is unnecessary. My work is done here.
Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:33:00 +0000 - How Cultural Elitists Are Destroying Art and Creativity; Or: Why Guilty Pleasures Aren't Guilty of Anything
The words "a Rob Zombie film" and the fact that I'm not particularly fond of John Carpenter's original Halloween did not deter me from going to see Zombie's remake of the 1978 slasher film. It's two hours of innocent people getting gruesomely hacked to death (as well as slaughtered in other horrifying ways) by a masked psychopath with no emotion or an ounce of human decency—what's not to like about a movie like this, really? Besides, Malcolm McDowell shows up, supposedly lending the project some artistic cred. (But is that cancelled out by the fact that he starred in Firestarter 2: Rainbird?)
This Halloween pretty much replicates the plot and carnage from the first movie, but with Zombie's deft and convincing directorial vision. And an hour-long first act is tagged on in order to humanize the crazed killer, Michael Meyers, delving into his grotesque white-trash childhood and documenting his murderous antics at the age of 10—four people beaten or stabbed to death by his young hand.
It's all relentless and pretty overwhelming, so I checked out mentally early on.
Cultural critics lambast films like Halloween for having no redeeming social value and contributing to the delinquency of minors. And I'm not talking about social conservatives or pioneers in the family values movement. I'm referring to the denizens of pop culture, the scholars of art in all its forms, people like you and me.
Indeed, the term "torture-porn horror" was created by a film critic to deride films like Saw and Hostel and Captivity. There's a pretty thought-provoking defense of modern-day horror movies and an attack against its finger-wagging naysayers in this week's LA Weekly. In "Why 'Torture Porn' Isn't," Luke Y. Thompson charges that critics "seem unable to make the distinction between fantasy and reality when it comes to some of the best contemporary horror films." The inability to distinguish fantasy and reality is, interestingly enough, what some critics worry most about when it comes to extreme horror. (This is not limited to cinema. Just observe parents snatching away gangsta rap from their kids because children supposedly can't separate the "characters" in gangsta rap from the artists who create them.)
This entry is not meant to be a defense of the Saw and Hostel movies and that whole genre because I don't like them enough to want to stand by them. But the ensuing "controversy" that these types of films leave in their wake point to a larger problem, not only in modern-day cinema but in modern-day creativity in all its forms. It's simple, really: cultural elitists are destroying art.
Okay, when I use the word "destroying," I am grossly exaggerating because I wanted a titillating title, but I think it's fair to say that the elite are at the very least stifling the expansive, evolving, and multidimensional creative spirit.
The spate of articles that bristle at contemporary horror are compounded by other articles that attempt to devalue other forms of art as well, just because it doesn't conform to some undefinable ideal of what art should be. What prompted this entry was not horror's bad press (because, again, I really don't care all that much), but all those other critics who have been attacking other aspects of pop culture in subtle but nonetheless pretentious ways.
When the film critic I most admire, Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman (yes, I like some critics!), reviewed Captivity, he made me roll my eyes. No, he didn't say anything particularly derisive about the film itself, but he referred to the film's director, Roland Joffe, as a "middlebrow humanist." (Joffe won Oscars for helming the historical dramas, The Mission and The Killing Fields.)
And I've seen this all my life—in film, in the theater, in the literary world—the word "middlebrow" used as an artistic insult, as a weapon to cut down anyone who dares to make a piece of art meant to reach more than a chosen few.
I'm not sure that Gleiberman meant the phrase to be an attack, but it reeks of a kind of elitism that is wholly unaware of the damage it is doing. I know that Gleiberman, of all people, is able to enjoy all kinds of movies and see their value no matter what genre they fall in, so perhaps I am misinterpreting his intentions. But anyone who's been an artist a day in his life knows that, when someone calls your work "middlebrow," that is not high praise. In fact, that's not any kind of praise. That's a slap in the face.
In the same week, I read a jaw-droppingly pretentious article from The Washington Post called "Harry Potter and the Death of Reading," in which book critic Ron Charles seems to issue contempt at "perfectly intelligent, mature people, poring over 'Harry Potter' with nary a child in sight"—as if the intelligent and mature should not waste their time with anything as purportedly pedestrian and trivial as the Harry Potter books. Indeed, any adult with an interest in Hogwarts is suffering from "a bad case of cultural infantilism," according to Charles. Furthermore, he seems to want to blame the Harry Potter phenomenon for the decline of literacy.
Again, I didn't particularly like Halloween, Saw, or Hostel; I never saw and never will see Captivity; and I have no interest in reading any Harry Potter book ever in this or any other lifetime. But the seemingly widespread attempt to devalue particular types of creative expression, different types of art, is a cultural sickness. And it must be stopped in the interest of preserving a vast and varied cultural landscape. There is a place for Shakespeare, for horror, for Pulitzer Prize-winning novels, for Harry Potter, for Rob Zombie, for Roland Joffee, for Ingmar Bergman, for Bjork, for Justin Timberlake, for Bach—and that place is on the same shelf.
Certainly, you'll have your preferences when it comes to art, but let's not devalue the types of art that don't appeal to us and let's not undercut the people who like them. We can indeed dislike and even hate stuff, but it doesn't make that stuff less valid as an artistic expression. Indeed, on this very blog you'll see me rail against movies that suck, but it's because I think they suck on their own terms. I do see them a valid cinematic expressions.
And since when did "socially redeeming value" become a requirement for good art, for worthy art? Guess what? All art is worthy. Now, don't misinterpret my words—I'm not talking about snuff films or "art" that physically harms people. You know what I'm talking about; you really do.
There's real artistry that went into Citizen Kane and Lawrence of Arabia, sure, but do you know how equally difficult it is to pull off something like Superbad or The 40-Year-Old Virgin? And there's real poetry and genius in Hamlet, but can you deny the mastery of language and human understanding necessary to create something like Where the Sidewalk Ends? You know what I'm talking about.
When it comes to art in all its forms, I propose that we remove certain phrases from the lexicon (or at least from our own everyday speech) because they, in subtle ways, damage this nation's relationship to art and its creators and serve to stifle the variety of creative expression:- middlebrow
- lowbrow
- guilty pleasure
- escapist
- veg out
The tagline to this blog has always said, "where writer/performer PRINCE GOMOLVILAS navigates through high and low culture." I italicize the word "and" to emphasize that I make no judgmental distinction between "high culture" and "low culture" because, when you really think about being an artist and the nature of creativity, there's really no difference.
Agree? Disagree? Still think Eli Roth needs to be banned from the planet Earth? Discuss.Further Reading:
Why 'Torture Porn' Isn't by Luke Y. Thompson in LA Weekly
Movie Review: Captivity by Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly
Harry Potter and the Death of Reading by Ron Charles in The Washington Post
Sun, 09 Sep 2007 16:55:00 +0000 - New "Office" Clips Delight Me
My other favorite TV show, the American version of The Office, returns on September 27, 2007, launching four continuous weeks of one-hour episodes. NBC has been running a promo spot, where all our favorite office drones talk about what they did during the summer:
Aside from being so consistently funny, The Office has an unusual love for all its characters, which allows the show to be deeply and surprisingly moving when you least expect it.
Sat, 08 Sep 2007 17:11:00 +0000 - B-A-B-Y M-A-M-A
I resisted listening to Prince, the musician, for a long time because of the negative associations I placed on him due to the fact that people have always insisted on using him as a reference point when they mock my name. I don't mind the mocking, really, except that everybody thinks they're doing it for the first time and that I don't hear that every time I meet someone new.
But my resolve has slowly dissolved over the years, and I find myself currently spinning Prince's new album, Planet Earth, which bounces from genre to genre and features a few great tunes. (Download "Resolution" and "All the Midnights in the World.")
Anyway, there's a song on there called "Future Baby Mama," which I'm not particularly fond of but it does remind me of a song that Fantasia sang a few years ago that was one of the most simultaneously catchy and unintentionally funny songs I had heard in a long, long time. It's called "Baby Mama," a song of maternal empowerment so earnest that it took me a good while to figure out that it isn't a joke. It's sort of a "Weird Al" Yankovic song that "Weird Al" Yankovic never wrote.
Here, then, is Fantasia, singing "Baby Mama." By the time the second chorus rolls around, I want you to join in: "B-A-B-Y M-A-M-A." And as much as you'll want to believe this is some elaborate hoax, it is not:
Despite myself, I just love Fantasia. I really do.
Sat, 08 Sep 2007 16:50:00 +0000 - BAMBOO NATION: Live in San Francisco! (Leg-Humping Optional)
Saturday, September 29, 2007, marks the final opportunity of the year that you will easily be able to corner me in a public place and try to hump my leg. That date is the Closing Night Gala of Kearny Street Workshop's 9th Annual APAture, a multidisciplinary arts festival with an appropriately obsessive interest in Asian Americans. (The festival runs September 18-29, 2007, in San Francisco.)
The sure-to-be-wild Closing Night Gala will feature an array of entertainers, culminating in a performance by the evening's featured artist—ME. I'm currently in the process of morphing everything you know and love about my BAMBOO NATION blog into a live event that will blow you...away. Just imagine what I can do with a stage, a captive audience, and tons of hate mail from High School Musical fans. The possibilities are not only titillating but limitless!
Mark your calendars, invite your friends, and buy your tickets now! The price is sliding scale, which means you can pay anything you want in between $10 and $25. It will be night you will never—I tell you, NEVER!—forget!
APAture 2007 Closing Night Gala
Featuring Prince Gomolvilas
Saturday, September 29, 2007, @ 8:00PM
Space180 and BottleCapp
180 Capp Street, 3rd floor
San Francisco, California 94110
Tickets: $10-$20 sliding scale
CLICK HERE to Buy Tickets Now
CLICK HERE for the APAture 2007 Website
Fri, 07 Sep 2007 18:21:00 +0000
