True Urban Legends

she is no longer. first of all, there is no reason that monica needs to have released so many albums since the first and best one ten years ago, there's another one that suffers from the john singleton complex (can't live up to the first project) but the most recent album has to be the most offensive..."the makings of me" indeed. you know from the first moment with the extended intro by the franchise boys, why is someone else introing your album? and then she sings a song about hos....bitch you're on the cover of your album wearing a rope, who are you calling a ho? and her blonde weave wearing self is dedicating the album to her son, welcome to motherhood, monica...guess it worked for nelly.....and don't even get me started on ciara calling her new album "the evolution" and including a definition of "evolution" in the cover. they're all singing like beyonce anyway...but i'll see dreamgirls before "step up", which was just a glorified movie about how white people are not only better dancers than black people (outdancing them at dances that they invented after all) but they are also better at being wayward foster kids from the wrong side of the tracks caught up in violence and earning scholarships to white schools...."dick in a box" that shit is not.

wow. i just googled myself, and found things i didn't even know about! like that letter to the editor of Audrey magazine, folks been publishing things i say left right and centre...but it's up to a good four pages now, and i know y'all read me because this comes up top of the list. spanx a million...

ok. so i went to see Eragon last night (free pass courtesy of The Mirror and the scowly one-"you can at least pretend to make happy in photo with me!" as i protested this morning) and was strangely titillated enough to stay awake through the whole thing. they made the dragon kind of cat like in my opinion, and my favorite line was, "you have to become well-versed in the secret language of elves". werd. let me become a dragon rider so i may be privy to that langue.

film is a reflection of society and also a projection on what society "should" be by the creators of our cultural contexts. in the nineties, we were all concerned about the future, "aliens" penetrating borders because immigration was the biggest deal, at least in American cinema. so, i found myself wondering what the frick the fascination with superheroes and "lord of the rings"-esque movies is about. the former, i think is the marker of the fact that we've really run out of ideas and are recycling the same stuff over and over (the latest Mr. Potato Heads are Darth Vaders, though i think for the holidays the In Living Color version of Michael Jackson Potato Head would be a better look, but i digress), that and we really need a secular saviour to lean on to get us up out of this mess that we've created of our world.

the latter, i worked out during the course of the movie, is that we're returning to a "past" (where they wear jeans, as pointed out by my movie mate, yep, dragons and m%thafunkin' jeans) ruled by a patriarchal monarch, where some could argue we are toeing a dangerously thin line of possible history repeating with our lovely inbred cousin to the south leading the way to bringin' manifest destiny back (yeah). the fact that the king has stamped out any opposition ("you're either with us or against us") and the rebel forces are greatly outnumbered and under surveillance (hello, zapatistas much? subcommandante marcos, stand up) the aim remains the same, they're waiting for a saviour.

so, what's wrong with that, right? except the chosen one has to be a young white boy, going to rescue his lovely white maiden (am i the only one that thought it was slightly wrong that she constantly be dressed in "indian", and by that i mean indigenous peoples' garb, well, a poor facsimile because it's really just a collection of strategically placed feathers and fabric, but it's a nod nonetheless to the collateral damage of the beginnings of empire building, yes, the societies of the first peoples were matrilineal, but lilywhitebread siouxie two-shoes was NOT who was leading them.

and the rebel forces led by Djimon Hounsou (who's making a pretty penny this year, "you are NOT my partner!" but Blood Diamond is a whole other blog) and his daughter, what about his wife? in their "egyptian" like garb that i think they borrowed from the "Remember the Time" video shoot, is just foreshadowing of another empire that's fit for the plucking. sure, let's form allies with people but only until they get in the way, they can help us defeat our enemies, but there is no loyalty amongst thieves, anyone could fall victim at any point in time if they have something you want..

and the bloodthirst for land and resources is as rampant as it ever was. too bad the earth is not exactly equipped to sustain the parasites for much longer....let katrina, the tsunami, and the fact that it's freaking 12 degrees above zero in Montreal two weeks before Christmas be a warning that we better check ourselves before we reck ourselves... 

she speaks english.

and not even broken english either. she's trying to get away from her husband and her father....the plot thickens. 

fuck the race wars survivor, here's this for racial disharmony.

so, they set it up so there's a conflict between the asian man and the black man, but there's a kerfuffle because the asians only speak asian with subtitles when they're talking to eachother. any other time, they just speak korean and no one else understands them.

black man sees asian woman topless, there's an innuendo, she watches his kid as he goes off to the jungle to kill a boar and comes back hurt.

suddenly, asian man rushes black man, they tussle in the waves, black man is losing, the "terrorist" and the badass who hates the terrorist come to break them up, nobody trusting anyone, cuffs go on the asian.

black man asks middle eastern where he's from, he says "iraq". he then purports to say, "where i'm from, in the United States of America, Korean people don't like Black people". ok, so that doesn't fan the divide and conquer flames, no...

black man has to go on to explain to his son why he's a deadbeat dad and we get the backstory of the korean man turned mean because he was poor and had to work for his wife's father and turned into a madman.

yes, i'm hiding from the world watching LOST and yes, i'm wondering how the hell the old guy can walk again.

it's official, i'm hooked, it's like the OC all over again.

damn the DVD technology, dammit.

Joan of Arcadia is a good look too, though I only got disc 3 of season 1 at the library.