Diamante

I really need to learn to start getting to things on time. Was hanging out with Sam Ashby who is stateside long enough to pollinate zine stands with his beautiful new fag film mag, Little Joe. Then I ran into Glitter Nation in an attempt to hear Genesis and the Lady Jaye Breyer P. Orridge spin a yarn at the new museum about cut-ups and Brion Gysin. No dice. Sold out. So sad. So instead I ate crab pizza and drank g&t's into this less-than-sweltering (now - thank GOD!) weather.

Mostly I write about movies but I've got this alternate persona that just wants to listen to pop music 24/7. I try to fight it! I try to listen to what the cool kids listen to. I download Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti. My boyfriend likes ceo/The Tough Alliance (which, alright, the latter is still pop). I bought that Fever Ray record. But back I plunge into the abyss of fabricated jouissance. After the cross-over hit of La Roux's 'Bulletproof' and Kylie's clocking in the top 20 here, Marina and the Diamonds have been giving the US a good deal of attention. She's hit the somewhat coveted position of Morning Becomes Eclectic. She's Welsh and she writes all of her music via piano, see. She can get away with doing stripped down versions of her songs better than Little Boots, who dropped in the UK one year prior to Marina (when I was living there), was tipped to become the next big thing, then... didn't. I guess Marina's been doing pretty well. She's been touring like mad both here and abroad. I saw her at Poisson Rouge earlier this year, but in a moment, she'll be at Webster Hall again. Too bad I'll be in Spain then.

But, you know what, it looks better like this:

That video would be directed by the same team who brought little life to Kelis' poor Flesh Tone which just opened with 7,833 album sales count in the states. Sorry Kels. Oh yeah, and Marina's trying to cash in on the whole Gaga thing in the states with her new single, a once-album-track I had on repeat for a long time. I don't really like session writer Greg Kurstin (Little Boots, Kylie, Dagonette, Sophie Ellis-Bextor), but he seemed to work well for this one:

And then, just because it's popped up again ever since she dropped the ball with a "Director's Cut" that surfaces for, like 13 hours on the production site Why Not? (who did Gregg Araki's second two Teen Apocalypse movies). Well... Grace Jones' new video has emerged again. You get to see her in the nude! As if we haven't seen that enough already. Enjoy. Especially those over in Istanbul and London for her performances - particularly you bastards at Loveboxxx. I am Jealous.

I saw the new Todd Solondz film at a screening on Wednesday. At least his other, recent works Storytelling and Palindromes angered me, but Life During Wartime merely bored me. There's a stellar cast (Allison Janney, Shirley Henderson, Paul Reubens, Charlotte Rampling) doing imitations and floundering (although, Rampling's press-on nails do turn in a truly brilliant performance!). Just not really amounting to anything. And then the film just ends. Mostly I've just been getting to sleep too late from watching Skins on Netflix after I get home. I avoided the show when I lived in London, but man, I'm just blown away, episode after episode...