Prince has entered Jesus General territory by declaring as robustly as he could his raging heterosexual love to football. He creatively took one for the team, the Minnesota Vikings, and penned the aural Purple and Gold train wreck you have above this text.
Something's off with 2009, the year in which Twitter became a not only a verb but a manner in which human knowledge is condensed. I was talking yesterday with a a friend and telling her how 2009 felt like "the year in death". It wasnt just big luminaries like Michael Jackson, Teddy Kennedy and Farrah Fawcett who were gone. It was all kinds of random celebrities like Brittany Murphy, DJ AM, Karl Malden and Dom DeLouise. And of course, there's the family members who had passed away in both of our families who were not celebrities but still in our R.I.P. lists.
Then, it was while reading the list of 80 celebrity obituaries at OhNoTheyDidnt's In Remembrance - 2009 that it hit me: Here we have yet again another example of how the media as we know it is really, truly dying. It is not up TV news "producers" and newspapers editors to decided who is notable or celebrity enough to be included in these lists. Heck, it is not anymore in their control to decide who is a celebrity —Andrew WK hoaxes notwithstanding. With the advent of social media and the popularity of social spaces like Facebook and broadcasting platforms like Twitter we now have the possibility of knowing about way many more people who at one point either were celebrities or lower-level celebrities or entertainment industry workers with influence whom we would have never heard about if it were up to newspaper and newsroom chieftains.
It's going to be interesting to see the "moment of silence" moment at the Oscars evolve. Maybe the lists will get so long that they will have to drop the format or be forced to become creative with it.
With that thought, here's my 10 Radom Celebrity Obituaries for 2009:
If you're a Puerto Rican who's been living under a rock like I have, you probably missed the epic "fuck you" Rene Perez blasted at the island's governor during the MTV Latino Awards. He called out the governor of Puerto Rico for pink-slipping 20,000 government workers and punctuated his rant with a "son of the greatest whore".
Here's the transcript:
"América Latina no está completa sin Puerto Rico y Puerto Rico no es libre. Hoy 15 de octubre los puertorriqueños marcharon contra el desempleo, porque el gobernador de Puerto Rico los dejó sin trabajo y el gobernador de Puerto Rico es un hijo de la gran puta. Yo lo puedo decir porque sé y porque tengo influencia. Hoy los puertorriqueños estamos de pie"
"Latin America is not complete without Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico is not free. Today, on the 15th of Octber, Puerto Ricans marched against unemployment because the governor of Puerto Rico left them without jobs and that governor of Puerto Rico is the son of the greatest whore. I can say that because I know and have influence. Today Puerto Ricans, we are all standing on our own feet".
He obviously wasn't well prepared in what he had to say, but it's still and awesomely epic moment.
I rarely talk about fashion in this blog but after a week of Roman Polanski and John Phillips pervscapades, I think we need to turn our heads to Paris France and look at what's ruffling the feathers of the fashion world thanks to Lindsay Lohan.
Yes, I am making a connection between two rapist pedophiles (one of them also being incestual), an up-and-coming fashion designer and Lindsay Lohan. Bear with me.
This was not going to go like Stella McCarthey working for Chloe. Lindsay Lohan's twitter stream is notorious for how it shows her inability to writer properly. This is a girl from the white-collar working class of Long Island with no formal education and a present by a recent regrettable past.
There's the shots of her pantiless crotch while disembarking cars. There's the endless parties drowned in alcohol and cocaine which some say were cover for her mother's addictions. There's the alleged new penchant for meth. There's the bulimia and anorexia. There's the nymphomania. There's the mother trying to shove her down deep into the closet throwing her into the arms of men when she only wanted to be with gals. There's the revolving door rehabbing. There's the promise of a young actor now shattered by her inability to move from child/teen sensation to being an actual adult movie star.
Remember that petition put together by the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques? Well, it's grown to over 700 signatures and it now has the likes of Guillermo del Toro, Adrian Brody and Penelope Cruz.
Here I was going to write a little something about how it made me happy that she's tying the knot with Javier Bardem and she goes out of her way to sign this petition. Geezus Pe, how could you?!?!
I've often said I never really declared myself a feminist until I came to this country. In Latin America izquierdismo has always been defined in terms of your political commitment to either socialism or communism. Even in Puerto Rico we would never describe the pro-commonwealth party (which it's equivalency in the Democratic Party) as being of "the left". The socialist and independence parties were the Left in our country and the closer you were in your political tendencies to communism, the most likely you were in circles that adored Mercedes Sosa.
Mercedes was an unrepentant communist who had to flee Argentina during the years of the dictatorships that brought infamy to the country with its laundry list of Desaparecidos. As a Tucumana, she was a powerful voice for South American First Peoples. And In an odd way La Negra tucumana was cultural, political and social counterpoint to the other Negra I'd listen to for inspiration, Celia Cruz.
Just as Celia, Mercedes Sosa lived life at it's fullest, never backed down from what she believed it. She had an integrity to her ideals and values that was absolutely fierce. When I think of "Wise Latinas", Mercedes Sosa is right up there on my top ten.
La Maza which is the song she is singing here with Shakira, was a fixture of her repertoire and one she made popular with Sylvio Rodriguez (another fixture of my youth). The song is about the meaning of engagement: What good is it to live if you had no reason for it?
What's beautiful about this song is how engagement is define: "If I didn't believe in" all the things she outlines, she wouldn't have just a reason to live but the foundation, La Maza, to lead a life worth living. She would be a blob of meat and tendons; a tool for showing off with nothing worth seeing behind it; a supporter of idols in decline (awesome reference to Nietzsche's "Twilight of the Idols").
I wish I had the time to translate it right now, but I'll leave you with the beat, the heart and the soul of Mercedes Sosa. more this way»
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Superman is a foreigner in a country composed of foreigners; he is, in the phrase of one literary critic, a "Krypto-American immigrant." On Krypton his name was Kal-El, the Hebrew phrase for "god that is light" in weight--that is, a deity who does not oppress and is so light taht he scoffs at the laws of gravity...In America the man of steel is an outsider who succeeds in a new world. He does so by applying his superhuman powers in a way that Jews typically wished others to behave--by helping the weak...Superman is no Nietzschean Ubermench; instead, he is a sort of New Dealer. Conceived during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, to whom Jews showed deeper loyalty than did any other ethnic voting bloc, Superman signified the yearning to protect the vulnerable and to stimulate the confidence-building efforts at nationalist recovery. That is why he reliably fights for "truth, justice, and the American way." In his humanitarian acts, he is more effective than the golem who protects the jews of Prague; the benefactor whom Siegel and Shuster fantasized into being is less parochial and this more democratic as well.
— Stephen J. Whitfield in his chapter in Cultures of the Jews
