Ganimania

An astonishing film, swift and surprisingly moving. An attentive portrait of a most singular ascetic. An inspiration.

Stupidly wonderful…and shot on a phone. Bravo.

Splitscreen: A Love Story from JW Griffiths on Vimeo.

(Shot entirely on the Nokia N8 mobile phone. Winner of the Nokia Shorts competition 2011.)

In Vegas on business, I’ve had this burger on my wish list for a while.

In Manhattan, we’ve got Shake Shack, with a recent location in my ‘hood, but events have always conspired to keep this burger out of my hands whenever I’ve been on the West coast. Today that all changed.

I ordered a #1: DoubleDouble with fries and a root beer, (although I had them make the fries “Animal” style, with cheese, sauteed onions and Thousand Island dressing). An awesome burger, fresh, juicy, with a crisp, cold crunch to the lettuce, tomato, and onion contrasting the buttery warm patties and cheese and the pillowy bun soaking up all the fatty drippings…
My schedule’s pretty tight, but as I can see the sign from the hotel window, temptation may prove a winning vixen and I may finagle another date before I head back East, this time to do the burger “Animal”, with mustard-grilled patties…SaHtein, ya walad!

The first time I came to Las Vegas, I was enchanted…until I lost $400.00 in less than fifteen minutes. Over the years, as business has brought me back, even as personal events have brought me back, (each trip under varying levels of duress), I have watched as Vegas mirrors, (or leads) the country in monetizing not only the amenities, but also the essentials. Here at the Mandalay Bay, my lodging for this particular jaunt, though there is top shelf liquor adorning the credenza in my room, displayed in a “weight-sensitive” case, (as is the entire mini-bar…don’t pick anything up, one pays even to peruse), there is no coffeemaker in the room. No easy access to my morning elixir, even as these days my intake has been reduced to one satisfying and efficacious cup. The more experienced among my colleagues have carted along various devices, from portable mini-units to immersion gadgets, yet I am reduced to two or three solutions: Room service, the most economical option of which is to order the half-pot, which they indicate to be three cups worth but which I may estimate more closely to be one and a half, and which is priced at $7, before the “operation charge” of $2.50, and void of any gratuity, and that is more than I would pay for a cup of coffee even were I an heir to Midas himself. I could install myself at the 24-hour eatery, but that may drain me of an equal sum, and I prefer my coffee “en suite”, as it stimulates both the mind and the bowels, (and though that may strike some readers as indelicate, it is, nonetheless, entirely candid. I’ll have my coffee in my room, please.) That has left me with the loathsome last resort of Starbucks, which has gratefully opened at 5 a.m., for I am still on East Coast time. I don’t like giving my cash to these corporistas, for even though there is some entrepreneurial admiration to be mined for folks who figured out how to rebrand coffee, for crying out loud, (though much of their success is due to a dull and gullible market), I reject the pretense and fancification, the over-palatization of what has for centuries been a common practice: the roasted bean, freshly ground and warmly brewed. Coffee is simple. Therein lies its glory. And though I make allowance for the cross-cultural addition of milk, (from cappuccini to cafés au lait), I have less enthusiasm for syrups, sandwiches and CDs. I have no need to augment the coffee “experience”. Coffee just works, it always has. Gimme a cuppa joe, black. And get me the hell outta Vegas before they start pricing the toilet paper by the square. Good morning to me.

This, in response to a Facebook posting claiming that the Morgan critics were not advocating censorship:

“Ummm….this whole incident, (no matter the tender content, i.e. the bullying and subsequent desperation of gay youths), is about censorship. There are things one can and cannot say and if one says the ‘inappropriate’ things, one is ostracized, castigated and forced into a very public shaming/apology scenario. It’s all horribly Puritan. The stocks. It’s disgusting and it has nothing to do with personal liberties. I’m not saying he’s not an asshole, but he has a right to be an asshole. People could walk out of his show. They could demand their money back. Audience members could attempt to extract whatever penance they chose to pursue. Because, if one disgruntled guy hadn’t posted a FB page about it and the media subsequently picked it up, the people who would know about this assholery would max out at the capacity of the Ryman. 2000. Now, the whole nation has to hear about it and talk about it and talk about the other celebrities’ reactions to it and we get a spuriously sincere apology from Morgan and even more moralizing about what is right and wrong. I love my gay men and youths but somebody somewhere is always gonna be saying some shit…and I’d rather protect the sanctity of those anomalies and learn to live with them, to handle them, than to live in this persnickety culture of righteous thought and the language police. Plus, I believe that nourishing projects such as the “It Gets Better” campaign are far more productive in the long-term than these digital lynchings. But, that’s just me…”

Here’s a young man exercising his rights as a Jew and as an American in the holy city of Jerusalem…watch how the Israeli police/security forces treat him. Astounding.

(Once again, crucial to distinguish between the glorious faith of Judaism and the rogue, terrorist political entity which is the state of Israel. They have little to do with each other.)

I can’t decide whether to loathe Sarah Palin or to pity her. Or, rather, to admire a very Randian individualist, carving out a reality (and an income) which best suits her and her alone.

Her SarahPAC just released the following video, “American Foundations”, as a recap of last week’s bus tour, Palin tweeting its arrival as “The American Spirit, Unfortunately Missed by the MSM”. Yes, the mainstream, that lamestream media were only interested in soundbites and “scuttlebutt”. So, she’s going to set the record straight, get our focus back to the great American Foundations so we can steer a course for the future. Okay. I’m excited. This isn’t about Sarah Palin, (this isn’t a campaign, it’s just a small family vacation in a bus emblazoned with the first three words of the preamble and her signature), it’s about education! Great! Let me hear about some American Spirit, some history, perhaps a quote or two, (or even three) from those Charters of Liberty! Okay. Let’s watch.

Yowza. That is some seriously effective branding going on right there. In a video entitled “American Foundations”, how many shots of Sarah Palin were there? How many times did people talk about her, and her charisma, and the thrill of being in her presence? Palin says the word ‘foundations’ it seems 4 or 5 times, yet, I don’t think I ever hear her once name what any one of them might be! What the hell is she talking about? There’s a picture of Sarah (and crowds) at the Liberty Bell! There she is on a boat in New York Harbor! Well, there’s the Lincoln Memorial in D.C.! Is that it? Is that all there is?

What are we supposed to think, or feel, or be in relation to these places, these visits, these images? A leader crafts a philosophy, a criteria, and then applies that to the contemporary circumstance. Sarah Palin is simply pointing out the sights and telling us they’re so crucial to our understanding of ourselves and to our salvation as a people, but she say never says WHY! or HOW! She keeps talking about what’s good and strong and free about America and how we’re exceptional, but she doesn’t cite one single example! One illustrative story. One charming anecdote that encapsulates the event and transmits a meaning to her listener. She’s displaying no more competence than a third-string substitute tour guide. She never makes the leap from observation to analysis and then to application. She never says a damn thing. It’s all a repetitious sheen.

And, in that sense, it is wicked dexterity in the free market. She’s branding up a storm. There’s nothing there there, of course, but in this three-minute commercial (not for America, but for Sarah), she’s shiny and sugary and prettily packaged, yet full of empty calories and glucose avalanches, just like a kid’s cereal. Trix. Sarah Palin is Political Trix. Trixie, the Cardboard Candidate.

Finally, if you visit her website, you’ll see that she ends this marketing ploy with another jab at the media (of course, a woman averse to why, how, what, when and where wouldn’t jibe well with journalists, would she? They have the temerity to ask her questions! This, from a potential candidate who wants us to return to our guiding principles. Has she read one of those Constitutions she was handing out?) She assures her followers that she will continue to fight for the real America, to keep moving forward and, “…and we’ll keep reporting on it ourselves.”

Well, it doesn’t take a dramaturgical master to discern from the title (what the mainstream media, unfortunately, missed) and then from the last sentence of the text (pay no mind to those reporters, we’ll be the ones to give you the story about us) that this video isn’t about American Foundations nor the American Spirit at all. It’s a commercial for Sarah Palin, first, of course…but, then it’s also a finger, a ‘fuck you’ to all the media, (almost assuredly derived from a well of anger and detonated by the recent Paul Revere flap) when she effectively determines that the only person to whom Sarah Palin is accountable and the only person who may reliably report on Sarah Palin is Sarah Palin herself. Which, if isn’t simply, foundationally unAmerican, is certainly narcissistic with glimmers of psychosis. Sarah Palin isn’t ‘going rogue’, she’s not a ‘maverick’ doing it ‘her way’. Her isolation from the media is no principled stand, it is her only and final resort, a desperate attempt to control the message because she evidently cannot think on her feet nor does she seem to know much about anything that hasn’t already been fashioned into a folksy ‘talking point’ for her by someone else. (See the video above. That poor editor did the best he could with spare material.) Is she operating at the outer edge of her limited means? Does she really not know that, in that video, she didn’t say a damn thing about what it is that makes America great? Is she woefully dense? Or is she savvy, crafty, banking on the weepy generosity of those who can’t tell the difference (or, if they can and do, they don’t care because she looks like the America they wish would be)? Crazy like a fox, some would say, but morally bereft, if that’s the case.

That’s alright. Lots of crazy people make money in America.
There are all sorts of celebrities who’ve exploited a hot market to fiscal advantage.

I just don’t think that’s all Lincoln hoped for. Or Washington wished.

To invite those comparisons in order to burnish her brand, at the expense of the voter, is more than self-interested. It’s manic, untethered and just a moose short of Barnum.

A.O. Scott references the “Arab Spring” of 2011 in his assessment of David Lean’s “Lawrence of Arabia”.

Today, Jean DuJardin was awarded the prize for Best Actor at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival for his performance in this film by Michel Hazanavicius, “The Artist”. I very much admired DuJardin’s work in the OSS 117 series, so I’m anticipating great charm and physical ingenuity in this film.