Environmentally Unconscious

Growing up in Santa Cruz, I was always aware of an odd sort of disconnect between what people preached and how they acted.  I’ve tried my hardest to not fall in to that category of Cruzans who waxes poetic about how we need to do our part for the environment before getting into a gas guzzling SUV and driving two blocks to 7-11.  Even when I announced that I was moving to Los Angeles, many very helpful souls berated me for moving to this unsustainable urban wasteland, before slipping into the comfort of their Hummers (seriously, this actually happened more than once).  

Now, I would never claim Los Angeles to be some bastion of ethically, morally, non self-centered people.  Because it certainly lacks any sort of ethics or morals, and I’ve met few Angelenos who aren’t ridiculously self-absorbed (myself included), but I noticed something very interesting yesterday.  I was selling books at an Doctors Without Borders event.  One of the doctors wrote a book about his experiences working in Africa.  Of course, rich people can’t help themselves when the chance to throw money at the ‘Africa problem’ presents itself.  Angelina Jolie and Oprah Winfrey have made all the rich Angelenos absolutely horny over all things Africa, and they all want to come together in some sort of Bacchanalian orgy of talking about what they’ve done, how many times they’ve been there, how many African children they have, etc.  It’s slightly nauseating though their hearts are in the right place.  

I, as a representative of an independent book store, sit in the mirrored lobby of a refurbished Art Deco movie theater that no longer shows movies and sell the $27 book to people donating more money than I’ll make in a lifetime.  And the question I get asked the most at these events, “Can I get it on Amazon?”  I also get a lot of “Oh, that’s expensive.”  It’s the price of a new hardcover book.  I’m sorry, it’s not 1970, hardcover books are, on average about $25.  It’s called inflation.  

So these people will pour money into a third world country, that desperately needs it, I’m not arguing that point, but they won’t pay full price for a book that they might be able to get for a discount on amazon.  I guess what I don’t get, and maybe it’s just me, is how people can pour money into something and not care what happens in their own neighborhood.   Can’t both be accomplished?  Can’t we give foreign aid and still work to keep our neighborhoods unique and distinct?  

Maybe that’s my Santa Cruz coming out.  The fierce localism that permeates every one of us that grew up listening to the constant arguments about Borders and Home Depot coming in and forcing our beloved local businesses out.  

But really, perhaps we should be thinking in a broader kind of vision.  If African aid is your thing, fantastic, but does that mean that you should drive a Hummer through the rough terrain of L.A. and buy everything from Barnes and Noble, Sam Goody and Costco?  Can we do it all?

Peace, Love, and Shop Local,

Julia

The Fabulous Britney Spears

I am a huge Britney Spears fan.  Let me say that again, I am a huge Britney Spears fan.  I have been since the beginning, though I was a closeted fan at first.  Yes, the girl with turquoise hair and 10 pounds of chains was secretly listening to Hit Me Baby One More Time in the her room before her parents came home from work.  I own every Britney album, I’ve seen the HBO concert, I’ve even learned one or two of the dances (thanks to Darren’s Dance Grooves, cheap vodka and dorm rooms).  I love Britney.  I love her music, I love dancing to it, I know all the words.  

Ever since she started down the crazy train (and let me tell you something, I’m sure she’s always been bat shit crazy, she just fired her publicist and it actually came out), I’ve been waiting for the big comeback.  Last year at the VMA’s she trashed it up a bit, drugged up and stumbling through her performance, but with the release of her new video Womanizer the awesome, dirty, Slave for You Britney is back.  The video is racy, and full of a barely clothed, if not totally naked Brit, complete with her recently reclaimed awesome body.  The tune is catchy, and one I’m sure to be drunkenly dancing to in Vegas in approximately six weeks.  And best of all, it is the one video on youtube that is not currently featuring Sarah Palin.  

What I love about Britney is the same thing I love about Madonna, she’s constantly reinventing herself and constantly subverting the hot messes she gets herself into.  When she first started Britney was the dirtiest little virgin from the south.  She came out in that naughty school girl outfit and domestically abused her way into our hearts, followed up with bubblegum pop hit after bubblegum pop hit that made her a multi-millionaire.  When she performed Oops I did it Again at the VMA’s there was a kind of interim period when she was dating Justin Timberlake and stopped claiming to be a virgin.  Then all of a sudden we were thrust into dirty Britney, not to be confused with Drrrrty Christina Aguilera.  This is what I like to call the period that magic happened, this would be the Slave for You era.  An era that gave us the amazing movie know as Crossroads, and the last of our false sense of security before K. Fed stepped in and ruined everything.

I’ve been hoping since the Britney and Kevin: Chaotic t.v. show that was either the worst show ever, or so far ahead of it’s time we’re just not yet aware of how awesome it truly is, that Brit would make her big comeback, and now that it’s here.  I can only hold out some ridiculous hope that she won’t come out with a weird Bollywood inspired album like Madonna did.  Welcome back Brit.  We missed you.

Peace, Love, and Womanizer,

Julia

The Lebowski Decade

It’s been 10 years since The Big Lebowski first graced us with its presence.  I was one of the few people who saw it in the theater, knowing the Coen Brothers from the success of Fargo, and was one of the many people who walked out going what the hell did I just watch.  It was a movie I thought little of in the three years from its release to my first year in college.  But then something happened.  As if out of nowhere, everyone at my university was quoting The Big Lebowski to each other.  All of a sudden The Dude was showing up on Halloween in the chaos of Pacific Avenue.  Like a beacon of coolness in a world of over the top. 

The mounting popularity meant that I was often subjected to watching the movie in a variety of different settings.  And something clicked one day, this was maybe the single most profound piece of genius to come out of Hollywood in a long long time.  This movie was freaking hilarious.  Of course, it helps when the man who gave you life is, if nothing else, an almost exact incarnation of The Dude.  Even still, the archetype of a Philip Marlowe-esque romp through the streets of Los Angeles, looking for a rug that tied the room together, paired with the stoned, white russian drinking laid-backness of an old hippy makes for some of the most entertaining and strangely poignant moments in cinematic history. 

Last month, Rolling Stone wrote an article on the 10 years of The Big Lebowski.  The interesting part, for me, was how the writer tied in our current youth climate to the unprecedented success of the movie as an at home cult-classic.  How gatherings like Lebowski-fest inspire a kind of hope in my generation, a generation that is paying the price, in every sense of the word, for the excesses of the seemingly aware generation that preceded us.  I have grown up in a generation that will not see nearly the success that our parents saw, where the very planet we live on is turning against us, and it’s our fault.  But that’s the thing, it’s not really my generations fault.  Sure we’ve contributed, but not as heavily as the generation before us, the one that endured oil shortages and global warming when it first came to be.  The generation that protested and politically activated only to give it all up for a Lexus and a nice pair of Manolo Blahniks.  

My generation is paying the price for it, and doesn’t come with a $700 Billion price tag.  It’s so much more.  So we turn to the beacons of hope we can.  Sure, for the most part we’ve turned to Barack Obama as a pillar of light that might help us (though I’m not naive enough to think that he’s going to solve all the problems we have).  Instead, my generation has almost completely turned to The Dude.  We garnered college degrees that mean next to nothing in earning power (and let’s be honest about why most people go to college…to earn money).  We were promised better opportunities if we just spent the $50,000 for four years of education, and we’ve received nothing in return.  Sure, we can reference the works of Karl Marx and Judith Butler, but not one person I know can survive without monetary help from their parents…or the parental figure of Visa.  

So for us there is something refreshing about a man who shirks all societal responsibility.  Who sits in his bathtub and smokes weed as he listens to the dulcet sounds of bowling pins being knocked over.  A man who’s biggest concern is getting back a rug that sat in his single apartment.  A man who prays to the god of the seventies colored bowling alley and who’s biggest nemesis is a mexican pedophile in a polyester unitard who may or may not be able to out-bowl him.  

In a world where the potential leader of the free world likes to shoot animals from a helicopter and has foreign policy experience because she is close to Russia (not Canada mind you), we need The Dude.  We need him to teach us how to stop and sip the caucasian.  How to let the things go we cannot control.  Sometimes there’s a man, he’s the man for his time and place, and that’s The Dude…..  Sometimes there’s a man…….

Peace, Love, and Preferred Nomenclature,

Julia