Yum 8 - On Salons and Sugar aka This Dork's Life

What a funny week.  Funny ha-ha and funny weird.  I know it's not a full week since I posted the last one, but the last one was super-late and I'm trying to slide back on sched.  Like you care.

SALONS

Back in the day, Katy and I tried to have a weekly salon in our apartment.  It was a pot luck Sunday thing, with the idea that we’d get all the arty creative types together and something would bloom.  It did -  eating and cooking and conversation – but we could  never get the art part to really happen.  Maybe that’s cause most of the artists we know were actually putting it out there 6 days a week as it was, so they might’ve needed a break to be foodies and friends.  We kept it up a while, then scaled back to monthly, and it was always good times.  We know a lot of great chefs and it was always cool in Santa Monica and walks to the beach were good, too.  Then Katy moved to NY, I got lazy, then I left…life moves on.  And there’s always Primitivo.

This week, I’ve effectively been to two salons.  In LA, in 2010.  For real.  Jealous?

The first was an open mic in the Brewery complex.  Now, they call it an open mic, except it’s in an artist’s loft, and there’s food and drinks and no sign-up sheet and it’s mostly about the spirit moving you.  Hosted by Stosh Machek, co-hosted by Brenda Petrakos, the night made its way through three power outages – one lasting over an hour where flashlights were called for – and several 12-packs of beer.  It encouraged a lot of new and lapsed writers to get up and speak and left room for socializing.

The second was actually called a salon, and featured performance and baked goods.  Yum yum yum.  In a beautiful old Hollywood style apartment, we gathered and drank prosecco and elderflower, or red wine or port, ate cheeses and fig tart and clafoutis and chocolate cake and brownies and more and more and more, and were treated to performances by musicians and singers and writers.  It was a new group of people and artists for me, which is always scary and fun, but since they don’t know they’re being blogged, I won’t name-check ‘em.

I am suffering a massive sugar hangover today - okay, there was some alcohol, too - due to the above-mentioned salon and the Tisch West Cinema Screening Series where I had wine and a goopy mocha cupcake after a screening of

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD

OMG – SCOTT PILGRIM IS SO META!  IT’S EXTRA META…IT’S META META!  Scott Pilgrim is High Fidelity on acid; it's Spaced with a real budget and real effects.

Yes, next level genre transcendence has been reached.  Geek chic has tilted the machine, the promise of Revenge of the Nerds has been fully realized and it’s a new age for movies altogether.

Edgar Wright proves his skillful direction – fulfilling not only every joke in the script, but also its emotional impact – and, sadly,  that he doesn’t need Simon Pegg to make a movie.  (But oh how I missed him!)  

Michael Bacall has a script credit and has gone far beyond his previous writing with this. 

Michael Cera proves once again that he is the best Michael Cera out there, nobody can whoop his Michael Cera's a** and that we like us some Michael Cera.

Who is Ellen Wong and why is she so damn cute?  Who are all these adorable-hot geek-cool girls and why do they hang out with such TOTAL DWEEBS?  When is Jason Schwartzmann going to stop being so frakkin awesome he steals movies in the last reel?  When will Kieran Culkin be in all movies and become the next oh we slept on him but now we get it Robert Downey, Jr.?  (See Igby Goes Down if you still don’t get it.)

Will costume designer Laura Jean Shannon come fill my closet with clothes and sneeks?  Pretty plessy?

And how do I get a first name like Knives?

This movie knows it’s a movie – like Stranger than Fiction or Adaptation – but it knows more than that – it knows it’s a network intersect of pop culture, fiction, movies, video games, the hero’s journey, this dork’s life, slacker-arty culture, our collective fears as a race and as a generation, and our need for Hot Topic to exist despite the fact that we wouldn’t consider shopping there anymore (except just enough to save them from filing for Chapter 11).

Is this movie so referential (like Community - a show I'm absolutely falling in love with) it's moved us to post-referentialism?  (What will the spoken word artists and MC's do?)  Is all that reverential referentialism detrimental to the storytelling or is it our new form of connectivism?

I haven’t read the graphic novels – I’m not that kinda geek – but it has to have transcended them exactly as it should for this screen adaptation.  It’s maybe 7 minutes too long, but only because they’ve got heaps of narrative to get through.

And despite that, I'm heading to a theatre to see it again.  <3's and Ramona Flowers to you.

Ramona Flowers - the love interest -- and her cool hair.  The only other chick I know who changes her hair that often is Judy Holiday.  Oh, wait, I don't know Ramona Flowers.  And she's not real.