Showing posts with label Culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Culture. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

New Year and The Queen of Sheba



Ethiopians celebrate their New Year on September 16. I don't think that it is a coincidence it falls around the same date as the Jewish New Year, or Rosh Hashanah.

According to Ethiopian cultural accounts, the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba went to Israel to visit King Solomon to seek wisdom from the famous king.

Although this story is presented as a myth, I believe that the Queen of Sheba did exist. There is historical evidence, through written text, statues, carvings and burial sites, to indicate that such a queen did exist in the southern regions of what is now Yemen and northern Ethiopia, which would form the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia. At the time, Ethiopia was struggling with monotheism, and stories of a monotheistic country and king quite possibly reached the country and its queen, who then traveled to meet this legendary king.

Pre-Christian Ethiopians looked to Jerusalem when trying to understand their spiritual world, and as a way to get closer to this God. They were surrounded by pagan cultures, and isolated themselves, aided by the difficult mountainous terrain, to build their civilization based on this monotheistic premise. I believe the Queen of Sheba returned from Israel with many Jewish religious and spiritual insights, including the idea of this single God. She also brought with her the traditions of New Year as both a social and religious celebration.

In Christian Ethiopia, there is a special church service on New Year's day. The importance of the ram's horn in Rosh Hashanah, reflecting Abraham's sacrifice of the lamb, is observed in the social gathering of families. A ram is taken as a gift to the elder (often the grandfather) of the family, and slaughtered/sacrificed for the meal of the day.

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Monday, September 17, 2012

Ethnic Kate and Her Role Models

The least innocuous of the "going ethnic" style,
the Canadian maple leaf on a hat


It looks like Kate gets "ethnic" on her various trips around the world. She even managed to find something "Canadian" on her trip to Canada last summer. The floral prints which she wore in the Solomon Islands this September were in solidarity with the Governor General's wife, who wore her own island floral print dress.

Kate with Lady Grace Kabui,
in Honiara, Solomon Islands


But it is the truly exotic which seems to earn Kate's special respect. Going barefoot and hijabed is one of the ways she shows that respect. She's not alone, and has illustrious role models to follow.

Queen Elizabeth also went barefoot, and diligently covered her head when she went to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi in 2010, and at the Green Mosque in Turkey in 2008.

Queen Elizabeth barefoot at
the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque
in Abu DhabiAbu Dhabi


Queen Elizabeth at the Green Mosque in 2008 in Turkey,
with slippers and a head scarf


Princess Diana wore Islamic dress on many of her trips. And the Crown Prince himself, Kate's father-in-law said this about Islam:
The Islamic world is the custodian of one of the greatest treasuries of accumulated wisdom and spiritual knowledge available to humanity. It is both Islam’s noble heritage and a priceless gift to the rest of the world.
It is no wonder, then, that this deep respect transfers to Kate Middleton, wife of the future King of England, and head of the Church of England, who enters a mosque with her shoes off.

Kate at the Assyakirin Mosque
in Malaysia, Respectfully shoeless
with a dress and scarf reminiscent
of her mother-in-law's below


And who else is the role model for Kate but her mother-in-law Princess Diana. Below, she gracefully puts on a pretty floral scarf that matches her green dress, as she enters the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo in 1992.


At one time, the monarchs of England fought wars to ward off Islamic invaders. Now, they subserviently enter their places of worship.

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Sunday, September 16, 2012

The Post-Modern Woman

Kate Middleton, barefoot and bare-breasted

The post-modern woman follows the latest sluttish trends, exposing as much skin as possible without being arrested for indecent exposure, yet will parrot the latest multi-culti truism, and have no qualms about Muslim women in full Islamic gear walking around her neighborhood.

Well, Kate Middleton, aka the Duchess of Cambridge, bride to the future king of England and ruler of the Commonwealth, parades around topless on an island resort while on vacation, and sees nothing contradictory about attending a princely (and princessly) visit to the Muslim country of Malaysia in a "respectful" hijab.

Hasn't she learned from the folly of her predecessors that anything the royals do is fodder for the public? Topless in a remote island while on vacation? What a silly woman. And why is she topless in the presence of her husband? Cannot she muster a little modesty in front of him?

I suppose this is what bored monarchs do, and why they got relegated to mere cosmetics. But, they can't even look good, so what good are they?

I like Queen Elizabeth (I've written about her here and here), but her odd forays into territory she doesn't understand, following what useless advisers tell her are good things, shows that even she has become the last bastion of this formidable, and fading lineage.

Perhaps Americans were right. It has taken us several hundred years to realize that the British monarchy has served its purpose, and nothing can ignite it anymore. I had hopes on William, but with a Crown Princess like that, who wants him around?

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Update: Enhancing the Asian Woman


I've edited my most recent blog post, Enhancing the Asian Woman, to add more content (to explain my ideas better), and to add more photos. It is a little different from the original.

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Enhancing the Asian Woman

Laetitia, Lady Lade, 1793
George Stubbs
The Royal Collection


I suppose persistence in pursuing an observations is useful.

I've been doing a large number of posts on East Asians in North America (Canada and the US), and how they have an aggressive, but alien, presence here.

A lot of my posts have been on how this group of people is picking what they think is the cream of the crop, including beta white males, who abandon their own culture and women in order to set house with them. I also have noted their more materialistic approach to life.

Below is an image posted at Laura Wood's The Thinking Housewife, with an Asian woman on horseback with a black man in a bare torso standing next to her and the horse. According to the correspondent, the image is from an ad from Photoshop, an image editing software, which shows actions used to enhance photos."


Now the irony is not lost on me that this correspondent couldn't see that the woman is Asian, and writes to Laura after reading Laura's post "Advertisers Love the Thrill of Black Man/White Woman." Photoshop must have done a pretty good job of "enhancing" the Asian woman to look more white than Chinese. Her hair is dyed a dark blond, and her eyes are heavily mascaraed to make them look bigger.


The other irony is that Chinese women do want (or desire) enhancing in order to look more white. I see it all the time, with exaggerated eyeliners and hair dyed a lightish brown, so from a distance, or from the back, these Asian women look white. The purpose, I'm convinced, is to catch the white male, trying to look close enough to what he's used to, while adding that fetishistic "otherness" to get him attracted.


The photo collage above is from a TLC (The Learning Channel) show called "I Found the Gown" about brides looking for the "perfect" wedding dress. I find it fascinating because of the inordinate amount of time these young women spend on their wedding, not to mention the costs they incur. And also to see the kinds of marriages taking place in contemporary times. Most are racially compatible (blacks with blacks, whites with whites, etc.) but of the few that aren't, it is often a Chinese woman and a white male.

Often, although the Chinese bride will perform some part of the ceremony in the white and western tradition, she will bring in many elements of her background including even having a second ceremony. And she always has a large entourage of sisters, aunts and of course a rather dictatorial mother, who is really the one running the show.


The Chinese bride from the collage above had with her a troupe of family members "helping" her decide on the dress. The tiny, dictatorial mother is in purple, and on the far left is an equally domineering grandmother. Sisters come along to give moral support, although they do not contradict the mother.

The strange thing about this episode was that the girl really didn't like the dress at the beginning, but through the relentless persistence of the two older women to pick it, and who bluntly told her they didn't like any of her other dresses, she caved in and seemed to have had a change of perception - she just liked what she didn't like. Perhaps this amnesia is the only way she can survive in her family.

Apart from having a white groom (as shown through various scenes in the episode), one thing that fascinated me about this Chinese woman was the subtle ways in which she changed her natural appearance. Her hair is clearly dyed a lighter brown, and her eyes are heavily mascaraed to appear larger and less oval shaped. Even her skin has a more reddish glow, but I think it is the effect of the light in the photograph.

Asian Female
Before: With a reddish tint in her hair
After: Photoshopped to have darker hair and paler skin


But back to the original photo of the white-looking Asian female on horseback, with the black male standing by.

My first thought was Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind at her Tara plantation, with her billowing 19th century American Southern dress, and a black, protective slave by her side.

Scarlett O'Hara running up the stairs
in her mansion at Tara, dress billowing


Scarlett, devastated by war and returning to her home Tara, vows:
As God is my witness, as God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.
And she does recover Tara. But she is faced with another devastation when her only daughter with her persistent suitor-turned-husband Rhett Butler, dies. Bonnie Blue, like her mother Scarlett, was a bit of an equestrian, but her stubborn insistence that she could do it all on her horse cost her her life after an accident during a trial jump at the young age of four. Rhett Butler, her devastated father, couldn't face Scarlett after this death, and left her to nurse his grief.

Bonnie, Scarlett and Rhett's daughter, on her pony

Unlike the aggressive but unimaginative white women of our era, who buckle under at the slightest (real) challenge, Scarlett stood up to her mistakes, and losses, and her last words in the film were:
Scarlett: Tara! Home. I'll go home. And I'll think of some way to get him back. After all... tomorrow is another day.
If white women were able to demonstrate half of Scarlett's courage, they might be able to salvage some of what they've lost.


The image above is from my blog post The Wrath of the White Woman, where I write:
And no-one will be on the side of the white woman: Not the white boyfriend who betrays her; the Asian female who has had her eye on him from early childhood; the Asian immigrant parents who are more than happy to have a white son-on-law and future half-Asian grand kids, who will be more Asian than white; and not the multi-culti climate that dominates Western countries these days.
And, meanwhile, the fickle East Asian woman will go for the black man with his romantic image of the muscled protector. In her eyes, he will out-bid the modern white man as the more desirable, the more manly, male to catch.

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Saturday, September 15, 2012

Sub-Par Designs of Asians and Their Influence in Society

Left: Marchesa Resort, 2013
Right: Sui, Fall 2012


I've written about the Marchesa sisters, and their superior design ability, especially in their area of expertise which is evening gowns.

The 2012 gown designs are now on display in various fashion websites, and I happened to find Ana Sui's latest. I've also blogged about Sui here and here. I've described her design ability thus:
Anna Sui is an Asian fashion designer who has been somewhat under the radar, but has entered the limelight due to some fascination for all things Asian. At the February 2012 New York Fashion Week, her collection of prints don't quite get the grade, as I explain with samples of designs below.
I continue about Sui, and Asian (East Asian) designers:
Asian designers have "almost" moments, as I wrote about Vera Wang's dresses (view my recent entries under "Fashion" for more on this). They are clever at marketing themselves, and also clever at picking up (copying) certain current trends. But their works lack something. It is partly creativity, partly craftsmanship, and the overall effect is oddly inferior work which almost passes as something of quality.
Anna Sui

In the same blog post, I deconstruct one of her dresses to show its inferior aesthetics and craftsmanship.

Sui, Fall 2012

Like many East Asians in Canada and the US, Sui has family which is clearly an admixture of whites and Asians. According to this site, Sui never married, but her "family photo" groups together whites, East Asians adults, with clearly white/Asian offspring.

Below is a photo of Sui and her family. I write here about the family's racial dynamics:
- Various biographical sources write that Sui has two brothers, so it is likely that the two older Chinese men are her brothers.

- One is sitting close to a white woman holding a young child, in the top photograph. She looks like she's the same woman with the child in the bottom photograph, standing next to a man holding another child. These children could be their children, they do have the half Caucasian, half Chinese features, so they must be part of the family at some generational level.

- The other Chinese man, with the his hand on the young girl's shoulder in the bottom photograph, at the far right, could be the girl's father.
The racial Smorgasbord of Sui's Family

I've written here that this offspring is creating a new type of people, here in North America.

As I wrote here:
A "new" kind of people [is]emerging from [Chinese/white coupling]: the Eurasians (white/Asian admixture), who look different, although more Asian than white, and who behave differently (I find them slightly more aggressive and insensitive - to noise, to color, to food tastes, and of course my topic of concern, to beauty). They also tend to group together, so in effect forming a new society. Their strength is also that they draw in Asians from the Asian continent, thus increasing the overall "Asianness" of Canada. There is likely to be a large demographic change in Canada within the next twenty years, with an Asian (including the admixtures) majority or close to majority, rather than a white one.

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Saturday, September 08, 2012

The Asian Woman's Jackpot of Marrying a White Man

Kelly Ripa with her new talk show host

There are interesting discussions going on at The Thinking Housewife about interracial marriage, or more precisely, interracial coupling.

Kelly Ripa, who is has been hosting the morning talk show Live with Regis and Kelly by herself after that old-time TV personality Regis Philbin retired as her co-host, is bringing on some forgotten football player as her new host. This might help the downward spiral of her show Live with Kelly sans Regis, although I don't think adding "Michael" to the title and bringing on this non-photogenic and clumsy co-host will help her much.

But I don't think that it is that surprising that Ripa goes for racial "diversity." She is married to a dark-skinned Hispanic third-rate actor (all his TV series and his films have been relegated to the deep recesses of production shelves), and occasionally brings him on to co-host with her to give him a break from the unemployment line.

Kelly Ripa with her husband

At another post on interracial coupling at Laura's site she notes that "40 percent of Asian women in America now marry outside their race" which means that they marry white men.

I see the same thing in Toronto where every third couple I see is that combination.

In fact, just a few days ago, I sat outside in a relatively busy part of town to have coffee, and practically all the couples that passed by me were the white male/Asian female variety. I even thought I should start some kind of tally.

Laura Wood comments that it is:
...the relative femininity of Asian women [that] is attractive to white men.
And here is where I disagree.

Since I'm bombarded with this vision on a daily basis, I decided to investigate what could be considered so attractive about Asian women that white men are leaving their own women in droves to couple with them.

Firstly, I don't think that Asian women are as "beautiful" as white or black women. I've written about this here and here.

Second, I don't even think Asian women are necessarily more docile (more feminine) than white or black women. The harshest argument (actually, twice) I've come across in a public setting are between a white male and an Asian female.

Third, I think the white male pairing off with an Asian female is some kind of fetishistic behavior that white men are exhibiting. Not to be too crude, but it is like some kind of odd Freudian background which makes some people desire feet, for example. So, it is more of a desire brought on by some psychological blockage rather than a true desire.

Fourth, following from the third point, white men are pairing off with Asian women because they are rejecting their own kind, which means that they are rejecting themselves, which means that they are rejecting their background which failed them at some point in their (early) life).

What could have set off this fetishistic behavior?

I can try to understand it.

- It could be that white women, after the rise and triumph of feminism, have neglected their men, and most importantly, their vulnerable young sons, to such an extent that all the family memories young men (and of course young girls, but they can buttressed with feminism and "girl power") have of their mothers are negative ones.

- I would think being neglected in day care centers practically from birth so their mothers can "go off to work," figures largely in this.

- Another most likely cause is the high divorce rates amongst white couples, leaving young children, and especially their sons, susceptible to all kinds of negative environmental impacts, including loneliness, feelings of neglect, awful daycare centers, resentment and even hatred of the parent they think caused this miserable life etc.

So, I agree that black women are generally more difficult to get along with, and partly that is because I don't think black women want to pair off with whites, but with other blacks.

That leaves with the conveniently placed Asian women, who, from my observations, seem to find it a kind of jackpot if they catch and marry (or pair off with) a white man. This is true both of recent Asian immigrants, and third or fourth generation Asian-Canadians. A white male is a better catch, materialistically, socially, culturally, and even aesthetically.

They cleverly behave well and docile during courtship, but start tightening the reins once they have successfully sealed the relationship. I've seen this happen in a couple of public situations. Here are high profile Asian/white relationship blowouts I've written about [1, 2].

And, often, these white men end up being a mediocre type, possibly a life-long disappointment (as Vera Wang's failed-business-man husband and Amy Chua's scholar-turned-erotic novelist husband show).

By then, the male has been coerced into including "Asianess" into the family life, and has children who look more like their Asian mother than his own mother (mixed Asian children always look Asian to me), so he is deeply into the relationship (which he agreed to and accepted when he first entered it). And any kind of "rebellion" will just make his life more difficult, so he sticks by this as long as he can.

On a related tangent, some high profile white male/Asian female divorces are happening, which I've written about here, which is a kind of litmus test for what's also happening in the rest of society.

From my experience, children of these mixed Asian/white couples are much more Asian, have no interest in white culture, will promote their "Asianess," and in a surprisingly twist of events, will couple with other Asians, and often with half-Asians like themselves, which gives them the best of all worlds: Canadian and western materialistic gains and a comfortable, familiar cultural lifestyle.

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Sunday, August 26, 2012

Bluegrass

Kentucky Bluegrass

A while ago, I bought Doll Parton's The Grass is Blue, which is a collection of her original bluegrass songs. I'm not a country music fan, I find the current country music to be bland, boring and musically simplistic. The songs I've heard of a few decades ago are much more interesting, but I've never really got into them.

Dolly Parton's cheerful disposition is always attractive. I heard a song from her The Grass is Blue album in some public place, and asked about it. I then went and bought it.

I take back "I find the current country music to be bland, boring and musically simplistic." Jeff Bridges acted in the great film Crazy Heart, where he does much of the singing. Yes, the songs are a little repetitive, but the melodies are very good, and Bridges gives the songs energy and rhythm.

I heard Gillian Welch for the first time on some talk show, and was taken aback again at the strength of her melodies, which are clearly country influenced. As she says about her experience hearing a bluegrass band as a college student:
The first song [by the bluegrass band The Stanley Brothers] came on and I just stood up and I kind of walked into the other room as if I was in a tractor beam and stood there in front of the stereo. It was just as powerful as the electric stuff, and it was songs I'd grown up singing. All of a sudden I'd found my music.
Although she's produced CDs since 1996, it is her recent albums that have made her more known.

Starbucks (yes, the coffee house) plays and promotes CDs of "non-mainstream" artists. After listening to a song, I asked the girl who were the vocalists. They are the Secret Sisters. Again, it's "contemporary" country, but with very distinct "old" country roots.

It's as though these singers do a lot of research on the old country songs, their styles and melodies, and reproduce them in their own idiosyncratic ways.

So I am a country music fan, after all!

Dolly Parton singing Train, Train, from her album The Grass is Blue

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Thursday, August 09, 2012

Conservatory Garden in Central Park

Photo from the Central Park Conservatory website

[Larger photo here]


This is a hidden gem (as are many things in New York) in Central Park. It is located between 104th and 105th street, on Fifth Avenue.

Here is what the Central Park website says about the garden:
The Conservatory Garden is divided into three smaller gardens, each with a distinct style: Italian, French and English. The Garden's main entrance is through the Vanderbilt Gate, on Fifth Avenue between 104th and 105th Streets. This magnificent iron gate, made in Paris in 1894, originally stood before the Vanderbilt mansion at Fifth Avenue and 58th Street.
Wikipedia has a little more information:
The Conservatory Garden is the only formal garden in Central Park, New York City. Comprising 6 acres (24,000 m2), it takes its name from a conservatory that stood on the site from 1898 to 1934. The park's head gardener used the glasshouses to harden hardwood cuttings for the park's plantings. After the conservatory was torn down, the garden was designed by Gilmore D. Clarke, landscape architect for Robert Moses, with planting plans by M. Betty Sprout; constructed and planted by WPA workers, it was opened to the public in 1937.
I couldn't find any information on M. Betty Sprout, except that here in Google books (from the the book Garden Guide: New York City) she is mentioned as "[Gilmore D. Clarke's] future wife at the time project was in the planning stages. The Google book reference also mentions Thomas Drees Price as part of the design team.

This site has more information on Price, calling him a landscape architect. He also worked as part of the team which excavated "Horace's Villa" in Rome in 1930.

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Tuesday, July 31, 2012

All Hijabed and Ready to Judo


This could be straight out of a Saturday Night Live skit.

From Drudge:
Saudi Arabian judo athlete will compete in hijab...
The Telegraph title is a little more complete:
London 2012 Olympics: Saudi Arabian judo athlete will compete in hijab.
Here are excerpts:
A female Saudi Arabian athlete will compete in a headscarf during her judo event, the International Olympic Committee confirmed today...

Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani, 16, will compete in the +78kg judo category...

Mark Adams, communications director of the International Olympic Committee, said..."[T]he judo federation in Asia does allow for some headscarves. It is a version that is safety compliant but also allows for cultural sensitivity...and the judo federation has reached a compromise ..."

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A Hierarchy of Bouquets

Left: Marc Chagall, Bouquet sur Fond Orange, ca. 1975
Middle: Raoul Dufy, Le Bouquet d'Arums, 193)
Right: Jean-Pierre Cassigneul, Bouquet de Fleurs, 1968

Larger images:
- Marc Chagall's Bouquet sur Fond Orange
- Raoul Dufy's Le Bouquet d'Arums
- Jean-Pierre Cassigneul's Bouquet de Fleurs

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I've found similarities between Chagall, Dufy and Cassigneul (see my posts on their paintings here, here and here). But, like everything in art, there is a hierarchy. It goes:

First: Chagall
Second: Dufy
Last: Cassigneul

1. Chagall's Bouquet sur Fond Orange is an explosion of colors. But his painting is much more organized and structured than it seems. For example, he has divided his color blocks into three: floral sections of violet/blue and red/pink, and green/yellow leaves. The orange, which is reflected in the brownish pot, is the glow of light which illuminates the forms. Being Chagall, he cannot help but add in his village/town life, a glance at civilization. This painting is about an arranged, designed vase of flowers, not flower growing in the wild. Homes line the painting's background, and a fruit tree, another form of civilization, stands next to the table with the flowers. His bouquet dwarfs other items on the table, and rightly so since it is the most important item in the painting. It dwarfs a bowl of fruit and what look like a bottle of wine and a glass filled with wine, and a salt or pepper shaker. A miniature women dressed in red stands by the table. Clearly, the subject of the painting is the bouquet, and not her.

2. Next in hierarchy are Dufy's whimsical flowers in Le Bouquet d'Arums. Dark red and black ink trace the forms of calla lilies, leaves and small floral shapes, which are covered with strokes of colors. These colors are suggested rather than filling the forms with exactitude. The red flower could be a carnation: the lilac and purple of small flowers, the yellow and white of the lilies, and dark green for leaves. Rather than result with an unfinished effect, this evokes whimsy and delicacy, where shapes float in colors, and colors never completely define, or constrain shapes.

3. Finally Cassigneul's Bouquet de Fleurs. I tried looking for flowers without the perennial silent woman that fills his works, but could find only a few. I couldn't find any of the joyful, colorful renditions of bouquets that Chagall and Dufy paint. Instead, this was the best I could find. As always with Cassigneul, there is a lack of form. The tulips and roses are a blurred and shapeless, and the leaves blend into the background wall. Dufy's quasi-unfinished forms give us whimsy; Cassigneul's just look unfinished. This is because Cassigneul doesn't draw, but rather paints spots of color to form his shapes. His pot is the most elaborate of the three paintings, but it distracts from the flowers. Chagall left his pot without patterns. Dufy's callas could be in a garden, or in a vase that is below the paintings frame. Cassingeul pot is covered with an unidentifiable pattern his pot, which add a further layer of confusion. As always with Cassigneul, I feel that he is a clever painter, but not a very talented one.

And when we put him alongside the other two, we can see his limitations even more.

Art these days lacks a critical approach, partly because of the attitude that "everyone is an artist, don't you know," and a disrespect for art history and all our predecessors. We seem intent on working with a clean memory slate.

And modern art is all about deconstructing, then reconstructing. This is great if you were born about seventy-five years ago, where there were great works to deconstruct (and reconstruct, in your fashion). What we have now is an already diluted, deconstructed art, several generations down the masterpiece line. What can we deconstruct? The deconstructed pieces? This, of course, resulted with the famous empty canvasses that hang on museum walls, to the amusement of the unsuspecting public. Now, we just works that are dredged from an empty imagination, since there is nothing left that is worthy enough to guide us.

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Sunday, July 29, 2012

O Brave New World

Pablo Picasso
Women Running on the Beach, 1922


I've read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World many times. Only recently, I found out that he derived his title from Shakespeare's The Tempest.

From Wikipedia:
Brave New World's ironic title derives from Miranda's speech in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I:
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't.
—William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I

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Thursday, July 26, 2012

"My eyes were made to erase what is ugly"

Left: Dufy, Jetee d'Honfleur, 1930
Right: Cassigneul, La Plage Aux Hortensias, 1985


[More images after the end of the post]

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Raoul Dufy:
"Mes yeux sont faits pour effacer ce qui est laid"
("My eyes were made to erase what is ugly")

A couple of days ago, I posted some images by Jean Pierre Cassigneul, a painter whose print I have carried around for many years. Yet, I don't know (or didn't bother to know) much about it, or him.

It is Dufy who has always attracted me. From a long time back, I started to study his vivid colors and exotic (French) locales. He painted a variety of subjects, but almost always the same ones. He painted mostly the French coastline, often in southern France in Nice, but sometimes in the north in Deauville and Honfleur. He scatters his scenes with people. His themes include: at the racehorses; sailboats; views of the sea through open widows; bouquets of flowers; musical instruments; and some famous European (mostly French) towns and buildings. He was also a diverse artist and designer, making textile prints, tapestries, murals, furniture, woodcuts, lithography, ceramics and theater sets.

Dufy is certainly the more important painter. Cassigneul never got the similar popularity. I think Cassigneul paints well. His subjects are pleasing and his paintings pretty. But there is a lack of completeness in his paintings, like a slightly blurred photograph, or a painting without the moldings of light and dark (shadow and light) to give them a three dimensional quality.

For all of Dufy's Fauvist "seemingly wild brush work and strident colors...with [his] subject matter [having] a high degree of simplification and abstraction [source]" his paintings are defined and sure, even if they often look like watercolor sketches. Sail boats have clear lines; horses are molded and given rounded bodies through dark and light paint; the sea is differentiated with white paint for crests and dark blue for troughs; the outer and inner colors of petals are given different shades; and he painted portraits of actual, recognizable people, rather than anonymous subjects like Cassigneul.

Cassigneul paintings are pleasantand flattering to the women, who are his central (overwhelming) theme. But they are always anonymous women, and he tells us nothing about their personal backgrounds: no names, titles, positions, or even relations. Many have dark, vacant eyes.

Dufy's subjects look anonymous, but they are seldom alone, and are almost always within a social context of the horse races, at the regattas, or on piers and promenades. We recognize the individuals and groups of individuals through their social and cultural milieu. Where his subjects are alone, they have distinct features. They are almost exclusively women, either painted as portraits or nudes. And in many of his portraits, he gives us the names of these female subjects.

Left: Dufy, Portrait of Regina Homburger, 1952
Right: Cassigneul, Profile, 1982


Left: Dufy, Reggatta, date not available
Right: Cassigneul, Dans le Train Bleu, Côte d'Azur, 1970


Left: Dufy, Fenêtre ouverte sur la mer, ca. 1923
Right: Cassigneul, Femme au Balcon, Vue de l'Avenue Foch, 1990


Left: Dufy, The Racetrack, 1928
Right: Cassigneul, Longchamp, ca. 1967


Left: Dufy, Le champ de courses de Deauville, ca. 1941
Right: Cassigneul, Dimanche au bois, 2008


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Thursday, July 12, 2012

A Petty Vandal's Petty Conquista of "Art"

Left: Woman in a Red Chair. Picasso, 1929
Menil Collection. Houston Texas
Right: Defaced painting


Here is the story of an "artist" defacing the work of another "artist."
Houston cops are hunting for a dapper art vandal who was caught on video spray-painting a priceless Pablo Picasso painting at a museum last week.

Cell phone video shot by a visitor at the Menil Collection Wednesday showed a suave hoodlum in a dark suit jacket and sunglasses spray-painting a stencil over the Spanish master's Woman in a Red Armchair...The brazen graffiti writer sprayed a picture of a bullfighter slaying a bull and the word "Conquista" on the painting.

The witness who shot the video told KPRC television that he confronted the well-dressed vandal afterward.

The vandal said he was an up-and-coming artist and desecrated the artwork in order to honor Picasso, the witness, who didn't want to be identified, told the station.
In this era when "art" is the most scared thing around, it is truly a sacrilege to deface a "work of art," even an ugly and mediocre painting!

But Picasso had it coming. I visited a recent exhibition of his work at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and concluded that he was one of the biggest artist frauds around, and not only that, he was also one of the biggest defacers of art.

It is ironic that another useless, talentless artist should mimic him, to the extent of defacing his (Picasso's) images. Picasso's students cannot be accused of hypocrisy.

But, of course, this vandal only did superficial harm, since all he did to the painting was spray gold (!) paint on it, scribble the word "conquista" and a stick-bull. And isn't spray paint, the modus operandi of graffiti "artists," itself considered art by our connoisseurs these days? Picasso's heirs are pretty lame.

And to make it even worse, this petty vandal was caught on a cell phone! Some museum patron video taped the whole incident on his cell phone and "confronted the...vandal afterward." So much for a Kodak Moment gone awry. I actually don't know who is worse, the vandal, or the cell phone hero, who just wanted another sensation to post on his Youtube/twitter/blog.

Gretchen Sammons, a museum spokesman, assures us that:
'The artwork is currently with the museum's onsite conservation lab. The prognosis is good. But we have no idea when it will be back on display. It's an active investigation with the Houston police.'
The prognosis is good!

I'm working on a blog post on ancient Greek and Roman culture, which I viewed at the Royal Ontario Museum recently (actually, I've been there several times this past month). As I went through the sculptures, I was astounded at the beauty of the work, and specifically the carvings of delicate, gauze-like drapes on these sculptures.

As I looked at these works, I remembered seeing similar translucent drapes on one of Picasso's paintings at the AGO. It is on Les Demoiselles Avignon, a painting that distorted nude female figures and covered them with a gauze-like material. Someone as clever as Picasso (and as talent-bereft) could have only got the idea from these classic Greek and Roman sculptures. And of course, rather than marvel at the beauty of these sculptures and elevate them, the petty, envious Picasso can only desecrate and destroy them. And his are not goddesses, as the Greeks and Romans portray, but prostitutes from a whorehouse in Spain.

At one time, destroying or effacing the works of art of a civilization would be enough to start wars. And no, Woman in a Red Chair is not art, which the reason why the only irate person was a cell phone "artist" who just wanted the images for his personal gallery on twitter.

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Will Vera Wang Wear Black for Her Divorce?

Wang and Becker, on May 15 2011
at the Museum of Modern Art's 39th
Annual Party, with Wang in her hippy
costume while her husband is in
full black tie attire


Here's is a high profile divorce of an Asian woman and a white man. My intuition has been that Asian women/white men marriages are more fragile than they seem. Since this type of union is relatively new (as far as the human species is concerned), I think we're beginning to see the beginnings of the fall outs.

I was never impressed with the Wang/Becker marriage. I wrote about the fashion designer and her husband last January intuiting some kind of marital discord:
[Wang] doesn't talk about her husband in the article [January 10, 2012 Harper's Bazaar]. Does he travel from one side of the country to the other on Wang's schedule?
Wang had recently bought a home in California, and relocated her business from New York, where her husband still lived at the time, to Los Angeles.

And about Becker, I wrote:
He looks like another one of those insipid, disconcerted spouses.
Later on, I found that he actually quit his job in 2010 to work with Wang's fashion conglomerate. I wrote:
A 2010 headline at the NaviSite website informs us that "Arthur P. Becker Steps Down [as CEO] and is Succeeded by R. Brooks Borcherding," which implies that Becker has retired. This leaves him ample time to follow his wife around to satisfy her yins and yangs.
People Magazine confirms Becker's beck and call to his wife with:
Though Becker reportedly had his own business ventures, he was also involved in Wang’s company, which has expanded into makeup, fragrances, mass market, juniors, home goods and a lower-cost bridal line in recent years. However, a friend of the designer tells WWD that the couple “will not let this impact the running of the company. They have worked too hard to build it up.”
A cheeky blogger writes:
Some suggest the divorce from Arthur Becker had some clues in her Fall 2012 Bridal Collection (view gowns 7-13 here), known for Wang's penchant for all things dark.
This may be a joke, but I have written about Wang's funereal wedding gowns, where I comment:
Wang's flashing bride in black is a negative statement on weddings, and life, in general. In our culture, white is for purity, whereas black is often for death, the mysterious (and evil?) underworld, darkness and obfuscation. And if the bride wears black, it is as though the she went to her own funeral. Or is a widow executing a vengeful act...And what real-life bride wants to be dressed in black, even with the modern woman's dearth of cultural knowledge and sensitivity?
And the bride wore black:
Wang's Wang's black wedding dress
from her Fall 2010 collection


Appearances matter. A black wedding dress, however much a fashion statement, is a black wedding dress. Of course, besides the macabre color Wang chose for the most important day in the union of a man and a woman, she also produced mediocre gowns which I call mounds of chiffon, which were exaggerated piles of gauze to detract from the mediocrity of her designs.

Becker plans to continue working with the Wang enterprise (at the other end of the country from Wang's California base). There is no doubt that Wang is a savvy and aggressive entrepreneur. But eventually, young women will catch on, and demand more from the dress they will wear at an important milestone in their life. What will Wang concoct next? And what will Becker do?


Above is a 1995 photograph of Wang and Becker. I describe the photo thus:
Fashion designer Vera Wang coiled, Eve-like, around her husband.
Even insipid white men eventually untangle themselves from life-threatening situation.

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Thursday, July 05, 2012

Fireworks Spectacular and Dismantling of a Society

Photo by: Katharine Egli/The Jersey Journal
[More photos of the fireworks here]


Whatever may be going on in America, it is still the greatest country in the world. The Fourth of July fireworks by Macy's, over the Hudson River, were the most spectacular I've ever seen. Of course I wasn't there, but NBC programmed the full hour live last night.

But one thought that came to mind as I watched the event was that in order to appease the masses, totalitarian regimes produce spectacle: through huge processions, displays of might with military marches, and various mind-numbing techniques like action packed films and streams of empty television shows. It is a strategy to wipe out people's thinking processes by a constant barrage of noise.

Perhaps Macy's planned this spectacle to quieten (however temporarily) the agitated mood in American politics, to distract the people, and to let Obama proceed with his dismantling of the fundamentals of the society.

Guy Debord, a philosopher whose book The Society of the Spectacle we studied during my film/photography studies, although a Marxist, understood this society of the spectacle, although he attributes it to capitalist societies. But socialists are even better at programming spectacles, often ignoring their bankrupt coffers to temporarily appease the masses.

George Orwell, another socialist writer, described the omnipresent telescreens in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four which were used both for surveillance and as propaganda monitors on the citizens of Oceania.

These days, spectacle is presented through brilliantly orchestrated images right into our living rooms, via our television screens, now wider, bigger and better through High Definition technology, with cheap, made in China screens made available even for the poor proletariat.

Here is what Wikipedia writes about Orwell's telescreens:
Telescreens, in addition to being surveillance devices, are also the equivalent of televisions (hence the name), regularly broadcasting false news reports about Oceania's military victories, economic production figures, spirited renditions of the national anthem to heighten patriotism, and Two Minutes Hate, which is a two-minute film of Emmanuel Goldstein's wishes for freedom of speech and press, which the citizens have been trained to disagree with.
Home monitors as surveillance isn't so farfetched anymore. Already, it is easy to monitor the internet "history" of a computer, and to collect data on the internet user.

From World Net Daily:
The Barack Obama administration has announced plans to lift a government ban on tracking visitors to government websites, and potentially, collect their personal data through the use of "cookies" – an effort some suspect may already be in place on White House sites.
From Politico:
[A]ccording to a campaign official and former Obama staffer, the campaign’s Chicago-based headquarters has built a centralized digital database of information about millions of potential Obama voters.
More at Politico on the Obama Newspeak/Doublespeak:
"The Obama campaign has to confront the contradiction that the president talks about ‘timeless privacy values,’ and then, his campaign using contemporary digital tools to operate a stunning commercial surveillance system,” says Jeff Chester, executive director for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Digital Democracy. “The idea that the Obama campaign can create a political dossier on you that they can act upon without asking permission first is outrageous."

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Sunday, July 01, 2012

"Qualitatively Different"

Madonna before the alter of the cross

The above image is from Madonna's 2012 MDNA tour. Notice how Madonna uses MDNA to reference INRI. She is gyrating on the embers of Hell, reaching out to the blood-red cross. One thing one can say about MDNA is her creative energy, and image-producing capacity.

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Laura Wood at The Thinking Housewife writes about Madonna's latest "artistic" foray:
Madonna has always produced trash but this is qualitatively different. It is much worse.
I fully agree with her. A couple of months ago I wrote two posts on Madonna. In one, which I titled Madonna and Her Mirror, I review her new perfume Truth or Dare, and I write:
The official ad for the perfume (see image above) has Madonna, Narcissus-like, contemplating her reflection. Except, unlike Narcissus, it is not her beauty that she is entranced with, but has made her reflection into a Freudian, self-sexual-gratification...

Her creative ability has spiraled in recent years. All that anti-Catholicism, homosexual advocacy, sexual perversion, etc. has spiraled into nihilism, resulting with her ugly and perverted new video. (Full review at the blog post here.)
In another, which I titled Madonna: Modern Day Cybele, I describe the transgendered, homosexual dancers that perform in her latest horror show for her video Girl Gone Wild. This video, and its song, are a far cry from her relatively innocent boppy tune Like a Virgin, which propelled her to her strange fame. But don't get me wrong, Like a Virgin was simply the beginning of the spiral. I wrote about her earlier tunes in a post titled Madonna and Her Mirror:
I used to like the early Madonna. Even her very first Like a Virgin was cute and innocent [I have to qualify that now, since as I write above, it is simply the beginning of the spiral downward]. She does have talent, which she showed in her Latin-beat inspired Papa Don't Preach and with (the well-photographed black-and-white video) Vogue.
Madonna takes her two children with her in her decent to perversion. Lourdes, her illegitimate daughter, recently started a clothing brand called Material Girl, after Madonna's early tune of the same name. This is a clever take on material, as in textile, as well as a reference to Madonna to capitalize on her name. The clothes, as the name (and dynasty) suggest, are the cut-out, skin-revealing items that Madonna made famous in her heyday.

Lourdes' Material Girl fashion line

Madonna with Lourdes. Ripped stockings complete the look.

Madonna has a weird, sexualized interaction, with her children. In the photo above with Lourdes, Madonna looks like the girlfriend being led by her, well, younger girlfriend. But Lourdes also has the hard glint of a narcissist, and plays willingly into the "leader" role that Madonna has given her (or is forced to give her).

Madonna also has strange, competitive relations with much younger female pop stars. Remember the Britney Kiss (and later on the one with Christina Aguilera)? Lourdes is now her young competition, and there is no reason why she should treat her different.

Rocco, Madonna's legitimate son with British film director Guy Ritchie, whom Madonna married him briefly, is now going on stage with her quite possibly to work his way into pop stardom. He prefers the art-bereft rap.

Madonna is "dating" a much younger boyfriend (he is twenty-four to her fifty-three), and adds "much younger man" to her list of exoticisms which so far include Muslim and Arab (or simply non-white). He looks like a slightly older, and darker, version of her own son Rocco.

Madonna's dancing boyfriend from her troop

In the photo below, Madonna brings on Rocco during her MDNA tour in costumes representing her various sexualized songs and videos. She has him dressed as a monk for her gospel choir version of her infamous Like a Prayer video in which she frolicked around trying to seduce a black Jesus (burning crosses are also - not so gratuitously - thrown into the melee). And she reverts to some adolescent stage to partner with her rapping son.

Rocco on stage with Madonna during her recent MDNA tour

Her MDNA tour is garnering the usual controversy (actually, juxtaposing Madonna with Controversy is boring, and twenty years too late). In Israel, she showed up in jackboots and a machine gun, of course "protesting" the "Occupation."

Jackboots and machine guns in Israel to kick-off her MDNA tour

In Abu Dhabi, she gyrates on a pedestal of fire, in front of a red-hot cross (see top image). Burning in Hell? Expiating her sins? I've written before that the current popularity of the cross has nothing to do with Christianity, but fulfills people's innate need for spirituality. Of course, spirituality without God simply ends up being idol worship, and the cross without God is not exempt from that. Here's what I wrote about Madonna and the cross:
Madonna cannot separate herself from the cross. This is of course, her own version of the cross (and religion - I cannot call it Christianity). As I've written before, people cannot do without religion, and have to create their own, joining together what they already know, with what they desire. Why throw out such a powerful symbol as the cross?
Madonna just took this one step further, and made the cross an emblem for Hell, with her burning at its pyre like some she-devil. I expect she expects to be resurrected once she's fulfilled her rites.

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Wednesday, June 20, 2012

The Wrath of the White Woman

Jeanne Darst

Elisha Lim, clearly an Asian writer at a website called Racialicious, writes:
The Valentine’s Day show [of NPR's This American Life], however, pushed me to new levels of downright rage. It's a series of stories all about the mishaps of love, and in the last, 12-minute segment, writer Jeanne Darst describes her outrage when she discovers that her boyfriend is cheating on her.
Lim quotes Darst's angst with a derisive "How does a white woman claim to be the victim of yellow fever?"

Here is what Darst writes about the man she started dating (taken from the transcript of her NPR show This American Life which aired on February 10, 2012), and whose journal she found and started to read:
A[n]d his journal was right there. Right there...

I'd like to tell you that I had some hesitation about whether to open this thing up and read it. That I thought for even one single second about right and wrong. But I didn't...

And then I read that he did not have an attraction to-- page turn-- white women. White women like me.

I knew he had dated some Asian women and his ex-wife was Asian. He had Asian assistants, but I didn't think too much about it. I guess that's why I got Sunday.

Maybe it was my fault. I probably should have said right at the start of the relationship, I'm not Asian-- before anyone got hurt. Me. Before I got hurt...

I then read in the journal, "There are some real red flags with Jeanne."...

I got hurt. Redd Flaggs got hurt.

I don't think I'll ever read anyone's journal again. I never want to know what someone thinks of me in that kind of way ever again. It's too intense. I know I'm not Asian. I know I had reservations about Jake, instincts, which is why I read the journal.
Lam, an ethnocentric and antiwhite Asian woman, continues with her derision:
What about all the Asian women that date Darst’s boyfriend, without knowing that he’s more into their race than their selves? What about Asian women as a whole, who have to deal with yellow fever–with age-old stereotypes about their sexuality that reduce them to objects of someone else’s (white) desire? She somehow manages to depict herself as the main victim of Asian fetishization, and stews in self pity.

How does a white woman claim to be the victim of yellow fever? I know, it’s so absurd it’s funny. But she manages it, by denying the impact of racism, and replacing it with a spiteful sense of competition.
Lam describes herself as "blatantly promot[ing] the dignity and sex appeal of queer and trans people of colour " which means that she is one of those herself.

Still, "queer and trans" are minutely "sensitive" to "discrimination" so she is trying to help out her straight Asian sisters here.

But "a spiteful sense of competition" has the perfect ring of the convoluted excesses that minorities will go to express their entitlements. Rather than competition, they are getting a free ride.

And no-one will be on the side of the white woman: Not the white boyfriend who betrays them; the Asian female who has had her eye on him from early childhood; the Asian immigrant parents who are more than happy to have a white son-on-law and future half-Asian grand kids, who will be more Asian than white; and not the multi-culti climate that dominates Western countries these days.

She's on her own with this one. As I wrote in my recent blog Racial Multi-Culti Chic:
I am waiting for the wrath of white women who will some day have their multi-culti glaze removed from their eyes, as they realize that their men have been stolen away from them, and by the Asian "friend" who was around all the time.
She can feel rage at the Asian interlopers. But what about at her white men?

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Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Radical Multi-Culti Chic

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I found Tom Wolfe's The Painted Wall at a second hand bookstore for $4.95 (compared to the $12 advertized in the websites of most retail book stores). None of the books salesmen, whether at Chapters, Coles or the second hand store, knew about the book. And I couldn't find (or the salesmen couldn't find) the lone copy that was listed in the big store databases.

"No-one reads Tom Wolfe anymore," I said disdainfully.

"He wrote a couple of fiction books," said one book expert, not to be outwitted.

"He's best known as a scathing critic of culture. Forget his fiction," I said.

I usually take my books to a favorite reading spot, somewhere where I can have a cup of coffee. This time, I went to a restaurant, which although it has loud music, is muffled by the very high ceilings. The nice waitress gave me a large seat, and took my order.

Well, I was right across from a couple which looked like it was in its early twenties. I should have read the signs. The girl was an attractive, well-groomed Chinese/Korean/Asian, and the guy was an unattractive white guy, who was overweight, badly groomed, and dressed sloppily in dirty sweats and baggy jeans. Yet another from my survey: "White unattractive guys with cute Asian girls." The girl was facing me while the guy had his back to me (and he never turned around once in my direction, even through the "interaction" that followed).

I should add that the Asian cuteness is over-rated, and I think white girls are by far the more beautiful, if we are to make a hierarchy of looks, with blacks coming second.


I have this theory that it is the Asian girls who run after the white guys, using their wiles in many ways, from their long permed hair (no Asian girl has naturally curly or wavy hair, and every Asian girl has long hair), their short-shorts that is the style-du-jour for the summer months (as I count short-short wearers, Asian girls far outnumber anyone else, at least here in Toronto), their ready smiles, and all-round more feminine ways. But, as I have noted, this "femininity" takes a back seat to a more belligerent temperament as the white male/Asian female relationship solidifies, i.e. the man is trapped.

Since Asians females aggressively shove in my face their alien, inter-racial couplings, i.e., muscling aside the traditional same-race relationships (Asian females are now more commonly with black males as well), I have no qualms about staring at such couples from where I am in the subway, at a cafe, or just standing at the sidewalk.

And I did so at this couple, although I was staring at the girl directly, and glancing at the back of the guy. The effect was interesting. The girl put on a terrified, trapped look on her face, and kept aggressively and cloyingly demanding the man's attention, from linking her arms with his, to rubbing his hands, to shaking her permed wavy hair back and forth. I didn't stop staring. I decided that they have a few choices in order to "deal" with my behavior. The guy can come and confront me, like a true "man," then we can have a real mano a mano; he can call the wait staff, then I can call the manager and tell them I've done absolutely nothing wrong; they can continue as they are; they can stop; or they can leave.

They chose mid-way between stopping and continuing, egged on by the Asian girl. She smiled, she scowled, she frowned, and finally, when the the dry seriousness of it hit her, she put on a terrified look.

Then, I just smiled, picked up my book and read my few chapters. All the waiters/waitresses were nice to me. One took so long to take my order (it was a busy afternoon) that I caught him rushing by and he served me with his profuse apologies. Another forgot my bill, so I asked him to bring it, for which he profusely apologized. Another sent me to the wrong exit, for which he profusely apologized, and set me to the right directions. I wasn't some loony, and the wait staff was on my side (I made sure of that). I left with a chorus of their goodbyes, and my demure smile from behind my shoulder.

The hand-clinging couple, with the petrified Asian girl, continued with its pathetic public display of I-don't-know-what, knowing (at least the girl) that someone doesn't find it cute.

I should add that I don't really find anything wrong with public displays of affection between couples. I think, though, they should be discreet and as private as possible. Or, lovers should be on the romantic bridges of Paris, with a beautiful sunset as the backdrop to a silhouette of the many lovely buildings around the Seine, which would make them romantic and demonstrative and not not lewd and clingy.

But there is something creepy about seeing public demonstrations of terrified affection between a white guy and an Asian female.

Still, a bar/restaurant in a mall doesn't capture any romance for anyone, and in fact it is simply a place to have a decent meal, to have some conversation (if the music allows), and to leave.

I read some funny sections from my small book, had my quick snack, paid my bill and tip, and left. The "couple" stayed with its footsies and carb-filled dinner.

I am waiting for the wrath of white women who will some day have their multi-culti glaze removed from their eyes, as they realize that their men have been stolen away from them, and by the Asian "friend" who was around all the time.

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Friday, June 15, 2012

The Pomposity of the Centre Pompidou


Here's more from the charming "picture" book Paris Versus New York by cartoonist/designer Vahram Muratyan (I posted one of his juxtaposed images here). He is comparing the Centre Pompidou with the Guggenheim. I would beg to differ here again. The sprawling Centre Pompidou is an unattractive mesh of tubes. It sits in its own huge "place," separated it from the rest of the Parisian architecture, both in style and in its self-containment. The Guggenheim is nestled between New York City's buildings, not claiming some pompous space but fitting in (albeit in its own unique way) with the city's architecture.

This is what I meant by the decadent beauty of Paris (what a sacrilegious thing to say!). The city's beauty, rather than inspire more grand architecture, seems to have produced such monstrosities as the Centre Pompidou (named after one of France's president, no less).

The "experience" of walking in the Guggenheim is charming, spiraling up the "shell" to reach the various galleries. All one does as one maneuvers the various floors of the Centre Pompidou is stare out onto an ugly concrete "Place" with hippy "artists" using it as their playground. The beautiful Paris buildings are in the distant background.

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