Tin Pan Alley

The battle with my air conditioning wages on. The arctic chill cuts through all the muggy bullshit in my room so suddenly I'm never quite sure if I'm ready to part with that protective slick of sweat. So it's the on/off game in here again. Shiver/sweat. I haven't updated in about two weeks, well not in the journal section anyway. The section that deals with straightening my mind, the confessional, the owning up of misbehaviour, a winding-up of the coils, if you will. My life has likewise been in shambolic loose curls, more or less together, bundled in the right direction, but just barely.

Those of you who have been following my blog, god help you, probably knows that natural sleeping patterns and I don't always see eye to eye. Lately though it has gone straight out the window. No matter how actively I pursue normality, it escapes me. This isn't because I'm in mourning, I'm ashamed to say. Thoughts about my friend would occasionally interrupt my day but I'm always quick to push it out again. There are a whole myriad of guilt and loss matters that I'm not quite ready to freud my way out of yet. Nothing would change the fact that it's too late to start missing him now, but it's important that I do. And I do.

Preoccupations have included copious media saturation, cooking, and minor arts and craft exercises. Cutting up tshirts, origami, that sort of thing. Self-improvement activities that don't actually improve anything, except for the passage of time. The ball of momentum I had building inside of me a mere month ago is now ebbing. I can't wait for structure to form around me, forcing me to confine to something rigid. Some might say continuous episodes of Man vs Wild might not be the best backdrop to clear my head to, but watching Bear suffer through constructed emergency survival situations one after another is somewhat comforting. It certainly brings a whole new perspective to my life when you watch a man urinate into his water bottle and then drink it. It also shamefully allows me to watch my dirty laundry pile up without too much guilt. (Sidenote: I really do have too many pairs of underpants, to not have to do laundry for so long)

Speaking of tv box habits, normally I'll leave the commentary to the good people over at the AV Club, especially for the insight they shed on the likes of Mad Men. However after the latest abysmal episode of Entourage, and their generally excellent but ultimately not scathing enough report on it, I feel compelled to contribute a few words. This was a truly horrific train wreck of an episode, reader. We're talking, trying to take Final Destination seriously kind of bad. What angered me most of all however would be the cameo addition of Sasha Grey. A lot of people know that I have nothing but repect for good porn stars. I'm talking about girls who really perform, absolute troopers who deliver time and again no matter how many times they get cock slapped in the face. However a huge part of that respect is also the fact that they are completely self aware of their social role. Last week I read some article on the Sasha closing in on a legitimate acting career by following her flatter than tap water performance in The Girlfriend Experience with an upcomming new Mark Pellington movie, that doesn't involve a cum shot. Along the way of course, she needs to establish herself as an intellectual, through a cameo on Entourage. Now here is where I take my issue. See, if she was actually any good in Soderbergh's film, then well played sister, the path is clear. But because she sucked so magnificently hard, and not in the way she's normally good at, I'm going to have to call her bluff.

While I have no trouble accepting that perhaps Dorian Grey is a novel she enjoyed and thus retitled herself for the adult entertainment world, I can even begin to imagine some sort of clever commentary she may have constructed in her head about retaining a beautiful physical exterior and the socially "ugly" images of her in tape (I do have some news for you though darling, you are going to age, those tapes won't) but her wanting to drag Vincent to some obscure art film, that frankly was so mumbled I couldn't catch it even after playing it back 10 times, double feature? TOO FAR! Entourage writers, too far. I get that they need her to be the perfect male fantasy girl for the show, kinky, artsy, tequila shot in the morning, funny shaped pancake making, one of the boys, takes it in the ass kinda girl. But for that fantasy to work, it needs to be at least believable. I've seen her in interviews, I see the way she tries to impress high brow audiences, she's got a ways to go to achieve that dream.

It's almost 4am, I need to try to get some sleep so that I can be productive tomorrow. But oh look, it's Friday. Here marks the very first Friday Fives of my spankin new home.

5 things to get done on this Friday.

1. read Picasso At The Lupin Agile

2. aquire the materials for, and finish making prototype #2 of my latest craft project

3. big laundry - sheets, towels. Time permitting, other laundry too.

4. scrub up enough to go celebrate the birthday of one of the Evening Conservatory ladies.

5. Be awake for more daylight hours than night.

Comments

[DASH]

Porn stars are all the rage now, what with Faye Reagan being an American Apparel model and all.

I saw a brief clip of Grey's performance and yeah, she's a pretty boring actress thus far [and her interviews are generally incredibly annoying as a faux intellectual] but given Entourage's tendency to hire gorgeous people generally I'm not surprised, and it sure is a great marketing campaign since I imagine the large portion of Entourage's audience are already familiar with Grey's other 'pursuits' so that would work I suppose.

Sometimes being an IT girl is all you need to get roles I suppose...

[Qinny]

You're absolutely right, Dash. I really shouldn't let this bother me, I mean, shame on me for religiously turning my brain off for Entourage in the first place, what did I expect? It just annoyed me because as trashy as Entourage is, it always kind of played itself up as the trashy step sister who knows she out to get the boys, which made it unfathomably cool. Now it's just lost all entertainment value with trite plot points, barely redeemed through handfuls of cameos.