Sound Taste

Visual postscripts to the Inauguration

Can't say I have much to add to the avalanche of commentary on #44's inauguration yesterday (though I may have something to say later this week on the poem), but here are a few random images that amused me to no end:

A shot I snapped on the run of the wares of a perfume salesman on 34th St. and 7th Ave. (didn't have time to purchase a sample -- I wonder what hope smells like?).

There was a gigantic re-creation of the inauguration over at Legoland. Check the slideshow over at the Guardian UK. My favorite tableaus are the line of people waiting for the portapotties and 'Retha and her bosoms. (Photograph: Graham Whitby Boot/Allstar/Allstar)

Also check this and this awesome satellite photo of ants -- er, people -- at the National Mall either at 11 am yesterday or at 9 am (there's a lot of debate on using the Washington Monument as a sundial in the comments; h/t to io9).

And I was totally tickled by the clip below, posted yesterday by Afronerd on the WNYC news blog. God, how I miss Richard Pryor.

Friday Gael

How did I miss this? Two of my favorite tastes that taste great together -- accordions and Gael García Bernal (h/t to NYRemezcla). This is a pitch-perfect norteño video related to the movie Rudo y Cursi, with that lovely Mexiwood power couple, Gael & Diego Luna. The melody shouldn't be too hard to recognize, even for the Spanish-impaired. I'm just disappointed that, while it seems it is indeed Gael singing, he is clearly not playing the accordion.

Another Negro milestone?

Never mind the Black President, Dominicans are all into a Black Santa Claus this year.

According to a press release I received, the Dominican-made movie "Santi Cló: la Vaina de la Navidad" outsold "Quantum of Solace" for the week after its release Nov. 13.

Santa Claus body-slammed the Three Wise Men out of the Christmas gift-giving business a long time ago. But a Black Santa? That is progress.

Several Dominican pop movies that have come out in the past few years have had the potential to  use comedy to look at interesting issues. Sanky Panky, the previous outing by this production team, was about young men who pimp themselves out to lonely tourist women (in other words, this was the funny take on the same themes in the great Heading South).

Alas, movies like Nueba Yol, Perico Ripiao and Sanky Panky always overwhelm interesting issues with overacting, overwrought conflicts and sappy resolutions. Nonetheless, I'll probably go see this when it's released in Washington Heights (or maybe I'll just take a trip uptown to see if the bootlegs are out yet, ho ho ho).

Meantime, here's the (too-long) trailer.

[Santi Cló & Bond face off image by Santiclodominicano via Flckr]

Vin Diesel's Excellent Dominican Adventure

A big convoy truck, supposedly with $1.4M of gasoline, rolls down a highway lined by dry, rocky hills. A lovely (if thoroughly unbelieveable) hijacking sequence follows. But what caught my eye was the tag: "Location: Dominican Republic." Huh?
Fast & Furious

The almost dialogue-free sequence on the trailer in front of the ho-hum Quantum of Solace was for next year's Fast & Furious, the fourth in the boys-and-their-cars series. (The hijacking is shot nicely, which is more than I can say for the action sequences in the Bond flick.)

The IMDB description only mentions Mexico, which makes sense for a movie based on land travel. So did the setting change? Was it that Diesel, a born-again Dominican (though he has not officially ever addressed whether he has any blood ties to the island), is following through on his promise to his favorite president that he would help raise the DR's profile in the film industry?

I can get into action movies (I was, after all at a Bond flick), but I'm not a big fan of this particular type. Nonetheless, I know that the F&F series has very deliberately aimed for the brown-boy demo and I think it's pretty cool to see the DR as a credible setting (as opposed to the background shots in the Miami Vice remake and the various cinematic impersonations of Cuba the DR is usually used for).

And as a bonus, the cast also has Dominican halfie Michelle Rodriguez (who is always better when she speaks little and kicks ass) and Tego Calderón in a supporting role. Hmmm.

Por fin! It's Election Day

Did you vote? Did you make sure someone else voted?

(Ignore the inappropriate accent on Presidente. h/t to Guanabee)

Two shows: (In)formed by Color and NeoHoodoo

Checked two art shows this weekend, one planned, one unplanned.

The one that had the most visceral impact was the unexpected one. Surprises always hit us harder. First Carlos Cruz-Diez's "Cromosaturación" here.

You approach a glowing room in the otherwise bland-ish gallery within the hoity-toity Americas Society on Park Avenue. You put on paper booties (expecting a hairnet and lab coat, too), walk past the sign that warns of disorientation and vertigo and step into a field of green.

Actually, the room is styrofoam-white, and has the same effect as a photographer's white backdrop, which when flooded with flash makes subjects look like they float in space. The green fluorescent light swells within the space, so that your skin is green, the very air is green.

Next to that is a space in red, and when you move into it, the shift is intense. The realities of the red universe are not the same as the green universe. You feel pulled by a different gravity, your blood a different density. Next room is blue, and the jerking sensation is the same.

It was impossible for us to photograph. Our puny cameras adjusted to "normalize" the color field and could not capture the psychedelic effect.

Simple stuff, but really effective in messing with your perception. Maybe there is something to the theory of auras and yoga commands to think in a color.

And at PS1, a show I'll talk about more soon, NeoHoodoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith. Springing from Ishmael Reed's "NeoHoodoo Manifesto" but really more about how the trauma of colonialism and slavery never quite kills subcutaneous knowledge of symbol and totem and ritual and acknowledgement of spirits and nature.

In the biggest hall, the pieces that had the most mojo (to my eyes): José Bedia's incantatory Las Cosas que me Arrastran (The Things that Drag Me Along), with the artist/shaman dragging with him/on him the spiritual charge of the African and the Native American, connected by the chains of the penitent, the pilgrim; Radcliffe Bailey's Storm at Sea, where a small Ogún in the corner haunts an ocean of wooden piano keys and a black black ship that will eventually doom his children; Sanford Biggers' Ghetto Bird Coat, needed camo for protection.

As one of the artists, Amalia Mesa-Bains said to me in an interview at the opening, it's a happy coincidence this show has opened now, when we need the refuge of spirituality most, to recharge for the change coming.

[Cromosaturación pix (not from Americas Society) by Jorge Mor@n 1 via Flickr; Bedia's Arrastran at PS1 by me]

Dominican Body Snatchers

When I saw melanin-gifted actor Tristan Wilds among the cast of the "90210" revival, I was poised to hit the save-get key I have for TV programs and films that address their unbearable whiteness by adding a token.

At least "South Park" not only cut the pretense by naming their Franklin-equivalent character Token, but Chef was always the repository of all common sense and sexy cool.

But looking over info about Wilds, who plays Dixon Wilson, a "troubled youth" adopted into the safe bosom of a white Kansas family that moves to BH (which is supposed to explain his presence in lilly-white land), I ran into an intriguing factoid: turns out Tristan's mom is Dominican, and he grew up in Staten Island (tip of the hat to Remolacha for pointing me to the NYDN story on Wilds).

Which gives me a perfect point of entry for a subject I've been meaning to hit for some time -- the Hollywood invasion by stealth Dominicans. Turns out that over the past couple of decades there's already been a bunch of us in prominent and/or critically-acclaimed roles.

The catch is, most of these performers have not come out of closet as Dominican, either because there is some embarrassing/painful family situation involved (usually absentee fathers) or because most of the people involved are dark-skinned enough to read as Black, and interviewers rarely ask what kind of Black they are. So they pass as Black or "biracial."

I'm not counting here people like Zoe Saldaña, Dania Ramírez, or Michelle Rodríguez, my favorite f'ed up Dominican halfie (who can never shake off rumors of hiding other parts of her identity). It's pretty clear they are Latin, and whenever anyone asks, they acknowledge their Dominican roots.

And though Alfonso Ribeiro, aka Carlton Banks, whose big break came as a 12-year-old in The Tap Dance Kid, has always been open about his Dominicanness, he is so strongly associated with the African-American milieu of "Fresh Prince" that no one ever remembers he's a carajito from Washington Heights (his wikipedia entry identifies him as Trinidadian).

Here I mean more folks like amazing chameleon Sarah Jones, who I hear has been slowly embracing the Dominican heritage she was disconnected from most of her life.

The top stealth Dominican? None other than favorite sci-fi antihero Vin Diesel. He has never acknowledged any Dominican blood, but the first tip-off was the amount of time he has been spending down in Sto. Dgo. in the past couple of years, the film school he has funded and been involved with there, and his god-awful promo spots for Leonel.

My sources claim that his biological father is Dominican, but I have never had enough time (or inclination, or motivation) to confirm. He definitely has a tiguerazo vibe about him, and it would explain my otherwise irrational attraction to his meaty charms.

Know about any other "stealth Dominicans"? Out 'em.

[pix of Tristan Wilds from 90210news.com; pix of Token, Alfonso Ribeiro with Michael Jackson and Vin Diesel liberally clipped from sites with very long urls]

Soca hangover

Slowly ramping up to regular bloggy activity again, having missed all the politrix excitement (Daddy Yankee's McCain endorsement, the tiro-por-la-culata Tina Fey VP pick, Gustav's still-damaging near-miss, etc.).

Went to the West Indian Parade yesterday, and to J'Ouvert in the wee hours for what I confess is the first time ever, with some excellent company: Wayne, Boima and Joe.

Wayne was disappointed in the lacking Jamaican representation, as was I. Jamaicans may win Olympic medals by the barrelful, but Trinis owned Brooklyn's version of carnival (despite t-shirts boasting that Jamaicans, Bajans, Grenadians, and so on, did).

To my mind, the Haitian contingents were the liveliest -- not just because Wyclef seemed to emerge from the crowd to jump atop some studio-apartment-sized speakers. The fast-fast compa, fortified with more blips and loops than a robot conversation, got all my mid-section Hispaniola solidarity going.

The Grenadian contingent was surprisingly large, both at J'Ouvert and the parade. There seemed to be thousands of red-yellow-green flags waving. Amazing, considering that only 7,205 Grenadians immigrated to New York between 1990 and 2000, and they don't even crack the top 40 immigrant groups to the city.

In the merch front, all the Obama stuff was really quite heartening (as Joe commented, "he's clearly got the foreign vote sewn up.")

[pan-Caribbean wristbands pix by moi] (I'm having technical difficulties posting photos)

Batman is Cheney?

Enough money and ink has been spent over that BatFlick, but now I get my say. I dug it. With some caveats.

Aside from the obvious, there is lots of interesting acting, especially when you superimpose previous roles on each actor.

Christian Bale is like Patrick Bateman had a final psychotic break into two people, the caddish yuppy and the self-righteous murdering maniac. Michael Caine is not just the stiff-upper-lip caretaker, but a cold-blooded colonial, like here (note the Burma story).

Morgan Freeman gets to play God again, but this time it's all-seeing God. A sort of "magical (technological) negro." Nestor Carbonell, in a smallish part as mayor Antonio Martinez Robert Garcia, is a combo of Richard Alpert and Antonio Villaraigosa.

Gary Oldman is oddly mild. No Sid, no Drexl Spivey, not even a little Count Dracula. But I guess with all the expressionistic performances, you need a little understatement for contrast. Maggie Gyllenhaal, alas, basically gets to be a moll, a touch of Secretary.

But there are lots of disturbing undercurrents in the movie. The Unapologetic Mexican makes a detailed and convincing case that the movie can be read as a justification of the War on Terror. I won't repeat the argument here, but it did hit a lot of points that nagged at me. Suffice it to say the movie has several actual ticking time bombs, torture (sans waterboarding) and Total Information Awareness.

The dizzying vertical vistas of Gotham and Hong Kong are really breathtaking, but in the latter, you have a clear extraordinary rendition. And what is up with Chinese becoming the villains du jour? Not just Fu Manchu stuff, but a sort of displacement of the 80s image of Japanese as financial yellow peril, a metastasized capitalism.

But I think, unlike TUM, that the movie doesn't entirely side with the righteousness of Batman's cause. The tragedy of the movie is how hard it is to not give in to fear, grief and desperation. I thought it was a meditation on the asymmetry of escalation (thanks, Chauncey) and how the powerful prefer to keep violence offstage, tip over into dehumanizing others at the slightest threat, how corruption is all about economic crisis.

To me, it doesn't just invoke post-9/11 NY and Iraq, but also Cauca, Zimbabwe, ICE raids and detentions, the Occupied Territories.

Illegal Immigration, solved!

What's better than cute kitties, lexically challenged kitties or polydactyl kitties? Marxist kitties, of course!

Enjoy this lovely and cogent framing of the illegal immigration "debate" as really a convenient forgetting of how the U.S. was founded by another sort of immigrant -- settler colonialists -- who legitimized taking over lands from Natives via, paraphrasing Jared Diamond's formulation, guns, germs, and a ratified constitution that served Europeans' interests and ignored those of Natives, slaves and women.

The Pinky Show also has equally fun segments on the Iraq war, genetically modified organisms, and stupid toys.