Shoegasmic!

I should crack you right in your forehead, MF

Before I begin throwing up at the first notes of It's a Wrap let me tell you why I’ve had it on repeat for a couple of days now. From the first splashes of [unidentified liquid], soft melodic keys and unearthly soaring coos, I thought  I was in a classic Carey vehicle, with her feather-like voice going places high and low, with no lyrical revelations but plenty of pure musical pleasure. This song, however, turned out to be a (complete) surprise.

We are in a lavish kitchen, it smells of coffee, fresh bakery and Mariah. Come in a trio of shoo-tup in her weightless midrange, again reminding us of the old-school R&B that made her who she is. Yet another early morning, she tells us, and there is a grain of salt in her usually perfect voice. So far, so safe. When she comes to Aint no donuts, aint no coffee, I think – oh it’s another one of those, the ones I love. But when the first surprise arrives – I should crack you right in your forhead, I am a bit stunned. This is Mariah like I’ve never thought of her before (But then again, have you seen Precious?).

In a place where the usual suspects are prone to go completely berserk in fury and despair (think 10 Seconds by Jazmine Sullivan or MGB’s I’m Going Down), comes the genius move: Mariah drops from the high notes of her previous threat to a feathery, velvety – Let me take a breath, and remain my composure – almost in a whisper, and then even with more tenderness, Told you one more time if you f’ed up then it’s over. (How this woman peacefully clashes ‘fuck’ against cherubic coos is the encyclopaedic definition of sarcasm).

Then she lets her rage out a little in a short but satisfying chorus, where her voice shows some cracks around the edges, like she is going to choke on her own syllables, or choke somebody with her silk stocking. Then again an array of coos and half-whispers give me a false sense of security. It’s like she is messing with my head, so seraphic with her sensual scoo-do-do-do-dos, so unreliable anywhere near the kitchen knife. When we get to Put all your shit in the elevator (with shit produced in a light high pitched purr) the coos in the background get even more out-of-this-world, more plushy and sensual, making the clash between the lyrics and music (melodically it’s like she should be singing Come on over here and let’s do it again when in fact she sings It’s going down like a denominator) and the climax – You gonna wake my neighbours! Get away from my door! – even more fun and lovely. The song continues with the violent changes in pitch, volume and style, and when she coos and asks for a pause to calm herself I see her closing her almond long-lashed eyes and drawing butterflies in the air with her manicured figures. It’s a wrap for you boy is hysterics with a plush crimson ribbon on it. By then it’s on repeat.

And by listen number twelve (no, I’m not very attentive) I get this line almost in the end: So get out of my face, I’m hung over… The sound of [unidentified liquid] in the beginning doesn’t sound so out of place in the song all of a sudden and I am hit hard with a belated case of a-ha!

Press rewind. Listen again.

We are in a lavish kitchen, indeed, it smells of coffee, fresh bakery and Mariah (here the word ‘breathy’ requires a few other meanings). Even the throwback beat sways and rocks back and forth like the deck of an unsteady ship. Even I start feeling giddy. I close my eyes and I see the somewhat unsteady Mariah self-confessedly pouring herself a full glass of [unidentified brand of posh alcoholic drink] first thing in the morning. Yep, first thing in the morning. She slurs her lines (how didn’t I get this the first time?) and her like it’s nothing, aint no donuts become like isss nothin, ainno donusss. Her midrange that some reviewers have called ragged with flaws is not sign of age (rolling my eyes). Mariah is in character, people. She is at the top of her game, if anything.  Here the jumps of alcoholic logic from life threats to apologies (if I misrepresented… then I’m sorry), screams to whispers seem true to nature, completely spot on. And her scoo-do-do-do-dos are a melodic equivalent of a violent wave of an intoxicated hand (he just hopes it doesn’t land anywhere near his face). Playing that kind of gal, she tries to be cool but loses it in the end – Put all your shit in the elevator, she yells, and the line – You gonna wake my neighbours, sounds increasingly unreliable, since the man in the song isn’t the one screaming. The words ‘shot’ and ‘it’s the martini’ sound menacing, just like the repeating when it’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone… What’s gone? Your drink? Considering the witty lyrics, the swaying rhythm and the real life little incident at an award show It’s A Wrap, penned by Mariah and none other than Barry White, becomes not just a pretty song. It’s a story winking back at itself.

I don’t know if my version of the song is right, but I know this woman has pipes, brains and a sense of humour.  Her high pitch can be breathtaking but her lush whisper can cut like a knife. And for that I can forgive her anything.

cool dresses

 

10 songs I love right now

Stuttering – Jazmine Sullivan

It's a Wrap – Mariah

In Love With Another Man – Jazmine

10 Seconds - Jazmine

Excuse me – Jazmine

The Apple of My Eye -Tanin Jazz 

No Happy Holidays - MJB

I Can Love You – Mary J Blige

Un-thinkable (I'm Ready) – Alicia Keys 

A Dream - Mary J Blige

classic

snobs, go kill yerselves, classic mariah is back lov lov love you girl!

stu-stu-stuterring

I aint usually lost for words, man. But damn, I’m losing it. I keep Jazmine Sullivan’s Stuttering on repeat. That’s how it feels. A few weeks back I was laughing at a boy who lost himself so much he couldn’t talk in my presence. Guess what? Guess who can’t talk now? Feel like a dumb ass. Sto-sto-stomach turns. Didn’t know I could still feel that. So much that I wanna say. Feel like a fucking, fucking fool. I can’t believe that I can’t talk. Feel like cryingsmiling at the same time. Happyhappy.

bliss

What bliss it is to be hopelessly in love...

I woke up screamin, "Fuck the world!"

Men pay less to women so women have to suck up to them.

Men pay less to women so they can take them out to fancy restaurants and look magnanimous.

Men pay less to women so women have to suck their dicks.

Men pay less to women because they are scared of them.

Men pay less to women because then when women go into the sex industry they can say: they knew what they were signing up for.

Men pay less to women to say: all the best directors are men.

Men pay less to women because they are ass holes.

Men pay less to women so that women are stuck with

them forever.

Men pay less to women to say: your job is to raise the kids.

Fuck that. Female chauvinism is the only way to achieve true equality. 

Not Everybody Lies

The word embarrassment is taking a whole new meaning when you have a chatty toddler around to rat on you to perfect strangers.

In the drugstore: Mummy has an Ouchy in her bum.

In the bar: Mummy has a crush on you.

At the mall: Mummy’s gotta pee.

At the groceries: Mummy said she won’t beat me if I eat my broccoli.

At a family event: Mummy asked Santa for a Prince, not a potato peeler. (At this point, Santa will do, kid).

At the doctor’s: Mummy says she has no life.

At a welfare office: Mummy works at her computer all day long so she can buy me a crown.

At the boss’s: How long are you two going to talk?

At the zoo: Mummy says her life is a fucking zoo.

Somehow I am not worried about my daughter’s social life. She is friends with the flower girl. She is friends with the janitor. She is friends with the water guy. She is friends with the susi guy. I am friends with no one.

I also know I am not having unprotected sex with anyone with as much as a drop of Irish blood in them in the next hundred years. Even if it means 98% of the population of the Earth.

BEST/WORST 2010

Since everyone’s doing it here is the best and the worst of what I saw in 2010:

Best of 2010

Toy Story 3/Up (they did it again)

Zombieland (laugh)

Shutter Island (it’s Scorsese, for God’s sake)

Tangled (fun)

Harry Brown (perfect treadmill movie)

The Crazies, The Book Of Eli, Survival Of The Dead, Resident Evil: Afterlife, The Road, Carriers (spot the five differences)

Splice (strangely new)

Babies (it’s a silent film, despite the title)

Shrek Forever After (ahh what will you do?)

Shaun Of The Dead (I said what I saw in 2010)

Worst of 2010

The Social Network (yawn)
The Back Up Plan (run)  

Avatar (fly away)

Legion/The Wolfman (unintentional comedy)

Sex And The City 2 ( when I am old they will just cut off the head and put on another one)

The Bounty Hunter (I love Jennifer)

Robin Hood (it’s the dark ages, stupid, they are not conserving electricity)

The Switch (walked out)

Chloe (it’s the big-eyed woman)

Clash Of The Titans (oh it’s the Avatar guy)

You Can Never Get Too Many Zombies, I Mean, Millas

I am trying to work out to these movies, damn it, zombies make me wanna get on the treadmill or clinch the heaviest of the dumbbells I got. But I end up writing about them. Again.

The beginning of Resident Evil: Afterlife is pretty cool. Glittering red shoes on legginged black sticks that never end are always good. Never thought Alice, the protagonist, was a model, I think. As the camera slides up lovingly, hugging the absence of every curve and the folds of a Gaga-like concoction of a gown, I learn it’s not Alice. It’s a Japanese girl who is probably a model because she is tall, gorgeous and looks like she hadn’t had dinner since she turned 13. It’s a busy street and it’s pouring. Why doesn’t she hold an umbrella, like everyone else? Why doesn’t she mind the rain? Something is not right with her and if we haven’t got it yet tomandandy’s soundtrack will prompt us with notes hinting at 28 Days Later desecrated with a venerable politeness. The girl stares at a man passing her by. She stares hard. Then she jumps for his neck. Now, women, haven’t you all been warned about these diets that just make you gorge on anything that happens to be in your way? Gets me every time.

As the lights of the Earth go out, I start wondering why everyone hates this movie. So far so good.

Allice is such a malleable character. When Warwick-graduate hubby wants to show off how she can kick, bend and duck, she does just that (even though she has superpowers to kick everyone’s ass without lifting a finger, or a long, lean leg). When he wants to show off some impressive  CGI he just makes her blow on her enemies or look at them menacingly (that funny stuff with the pupils is from Men In Black, no?) which makes the walls go all rubble in miniature earthquakes, burying dozens of her enemies underneath. She looks cool, but why is her mouth always open? Wow – there are many of them, many of these perfectly shaped open mouths (let’s keep our fantasies to ourselves, shall we?).

The freeze frames that look like sci fi glamour shots, the close-up of a bullet leaving its cosy abode (now where had I seen that before?) and plenty of carefully choreographed slow-motion sequences all make for stunning visuals especially since Alice, or Milla, to be more precise, is wearing a hell lot of makeup for the last girl on Earth which further proves the point that women just do it for themselves (big hairy things, my apologies). And the girl that she rescues from an empty beach in Alaska is a muddy mess in one shot and spotless perfection in the next – heavy eyeshade, shimmering tone and luscious lips. All that free makeup in the post apocalyptic world will not go to waste (wait for the expiry dates to strike and real horror will begin). And when you are the only two women left in the world, now that’s what I call competition. (Neither of you can stand a chance with Boris Kodjoe flaunting his stuff around. Even the zombies moan and groan).

For a loving hubby, Mr. Paul W. S. Anderson likes to see his beloved wife die a bit too much. She gets gunned down, poisoned and blown to pieces. She crashes in a plane but survives that. By the way, I gotta start learning to fly to survive the zombie event, I wonder if Max Brooks knows (anyone to volunteer – driving only took eight takes?) And don’t you just love when people in movies put on makeup, wave their hands about and look at their interlocutors for ages instead of watching the road while driving? Here Milla (played by Alice, or maybe it’s the other way around) is narrating the end of the world to a winking camera while flying a plane. Who does think she is, some kind of film student from Diary of the Dead?

There are lots of CGI zombies in the movie, or am I going blind? Their presence is not visceral. You can’t smell them, can’t take a good look at them. Nobody gets bitten. They only make unproductive noise. Then there is a huge ‘zombie’ who doesn’t die from a shot in the head (how fresh!), a character from the game, I am told, plus some amphibian zombies with mandibles and tentacles coming out of their mouths – H. R. Giger would be proud, but I am not really impressed. As Alice reverts to her human imperfect form, the undead are evolving into Executioner and "Majini" zombies. The slow motion zombie crowd scene with blood all over your screen is pretty cool. There is also some new eye candy for the genre: Milla swinging down on a long long rope with zombies mid air behind her back, an eloquent explosion to top it all (a splash of some red in this largely grey palette), the score drowning the same seven notes over and over again against a psychedelic beat.

With no layers, no philosophy, no homage to anyone but lots of plain steals, this is a perfect treadmill movie with great visuals and great music. There is no real payoff in the end. When the Executioner gets executed, all you want is for the slayers to lift the hood and stare into his ugly face, but of course they have to blow it off completely and leave you wondering… The third act suddenly features white capsules with heavy made up people in white costumes, hair straight from the nano keratine cloud, and the movie goes all Matrix or Alien and nowhere near Dawn Of The Living Dead (that was a boat they got on to, not a fucking space ship!). I completely forget why I started watching it in the beginning… ah, the zombies! But it’s more about unhappy Dobermans with a bad case of conjunctivitis or caries, or both.

With the 2000 last human survivors, all of whom look like they’ve stepped right down from a Paris catwalk, I say it’s time for a big sex party. Strictly with intentions to procreate, of course.

No Men Below This Point

After another fruitless night of bar-crawling (screaming toddler and pining friend in tow) and a glass or two of bad expensive wine in the 'coolest' bar in Minsk (which costs nine times more than in Italy, just quoting Mr. Renato Cucinotta, the first restaurant critic in town), the question of boyfriends was popped yet again.

Now before I go on I have to tell you that my singer/composer friend has shiny black hair, big boobs, dark eyes, cheeky smiles. Can’t get a man. Can get something that would count as a man in terms of anatomy, but you know what I mean.

She is me five years ago. I didn’t think then the word combination ’good guy’ was an oxymoron. I actually believed that was a rare but nevertheless existing species. Now that I know there is nothing men can do to me that I cannot do to myself, I am perfectly happy to watch desperate girls like my singer/composer friend whine about their menless lives and pop the ultimate question – about playing for the other team.

Besides being straight as a stick (no, not the Gaga one), contrary to common belief (boys, stop quoting Cosmo about the 100% of women, go play in the corner, and why the hell you are reading Cosmo anyway?), I have nothing against the idea of trying things out. Relax, carnal sin is not the subject of this post, the topic exhausted itself three thousand years ago. I was thinking purely ‘afraid to be alone’, ‘trip and fall in the shower’ kind of thing. You know, ‘dogs munching at my gorgeous dead body’ kind of thing.

Living with another woman.

Now we have a lot in common, both creative (please, scream), both Scorpios, both single mums, both disturbing family backgrounds (don’t ask, my shrink had to get therapy), both once in love with the same guy (at different times, don’t get excited – he actually introduced us to each other), so things are looking good for starters. I can cook, she can cook. She is tidy, I am, well, when I want to be. She eats healthy, I eat healthy. She likes good music, I like good music. She likes dancing, I like dancing. We both pee the same way. We are both beautiful, obviously. (Those two sentences together sound kind of strange). We can read books together, we can write songs together. We can share clothes and shoes, lipsticks and creams, perfume and jewellery. We can work out together (put your pants on, that’s not what I meant). She has all the connections and I have, errr, English. She has a car, and can actually drive (well, sort of). We enjoy the same movies, cafes and clubs. Weekends will be fun. We can travel around to visit that old flame of ours or go on a picnic where our children will puke synchronously into some unpretentious bush.

Now since she won’t be gone for eight to ten hours a day like normal people (if you ask me, just go for pilots and sailors, it’s best for everyone), we will be seeing a lot of each other. I ain’t allergic to many things, but humans are sort of tricky. And considering she has a two month old on her fragile hands, struggles to finish uni and have a career, I am thinking I will be the one to help out. A lot. Dirty diapers, anybody? Sleepless nights (for all the wrong reasons)? The babysitting nightmare is out of the way, though. We can have shifts. And my motherly little daughter will enjoy the new toy.

But then again she is a singer and I am a writer. She needs noise and I need silence. She wants to dance when it’s nap time. I need to write when it’s disco time. Her child doesn’t give a shit who needs what. My child gives a hair cut to her child (it was his ONLY hair!). And two women in the kitchen, really? Turns out we enjoy the same movies for exactly the opposite reasons, she doesn’t know her Jazmine from my Janelle and she cannot stand zombies. How can you not like zombies? And all that healthy eatin’ got us starvin’, stomachs turnin’, tempers risin’. Sure as hell, there is the old flame, and it turns out they didn’t tie the knot because of now-guess-who-could-that-be.

And what if our periods don’t coincide? Does it mean I am PMSing half the month and she is PMSing half the month, with all the in between, and no working out for 10 (ten!) days?

It gets worse. Since she is a singer and I am, well, a writer, she will go to all the fancy concerts and I will look after her son, and she’ll get all the attention, and the men, and the flowers, and the smell of fake smoke, and come home all blushing and high and bitch about the dirty dishes (well, you are the one staying in (HER) well, did you have fun in the backroom, whore? (ME) And how come you can afford susi? (HER) Because I have a jjjoooooob (ME) Oh that’s what it’s called, I was wondering (HER) YOU CAN’T SING (ME) – shit, I mean, susi flying all over the place ).

It’s all about perspective, right? Some girls dream of big white dresses, white lilies, white horses, white carriages and other things that are white and fluffy. When I think about r-r-r-r-relationships, I see broken glass, wasabi stains on the walls, one baby on the hip, another clutching my hand, pushing my way to the door. Players, female or otherwise, are not to be blamed.

My life is exactly what it says on the tin.

And the 'Best Mother of the Year' goes to...

If you are a single mother and there is a deadline of some sort looming on the horizon your house looks like this:

The sheets on your bed are stripped and curled into long convoluted ‘snakes’ that hiss and jump at you on every corner. Don’t you dare touch them, their keeper will let you know where to go. The high chair is covered with crumbs of last night’s leftovers, beheaded markers, paper sheets, paper dolls and paper cuts, colouring pages, spare parts of a fallen helicopter. Clothes of all sorts are scattered all over the floor. Your pillow, also on the very unbecoming floor, is converted into a bed hosting two doll babies, snugly tucked in, with your only good dress for blanky. Your child is sporting an asymmetric bob and it’s not because you took her to a fancy hairdresser. Your child has intricate tattoos all over her body, nails and toes painted blue. Your child is wearing: a pair of grey leggings, a pair of orange shorts, your best high heels, a pink summer dress, a Christmas decoration around her neck, beads of watercoloured pasta, Santa’s hat, a summer hat, mittens, a fake sheepskin you got her last year, a velvet pouch, multiple bracelets and beads. The impressive frescos in every room of the flat are getting more ornate and complicated. There are four boots lying on their sides in the hallway, two black, two pink, pools of salty sandy water mushrooming around them. The two coats, one white, one pink, are also on the floor. The doors of every wardrobe and cabinet are flung wide open. The children’s room is one massive pile of stuff: toys and clothes, books and paper cuts. If you have to get to the window, just shove your way through, you should be getting used to that, with the snow we have this year. Whatever happens, you do not go near the bathroom until you’ve had your evening glass of the cheapest semi-sweet in town, and you know that as long as you pee in the dark, you will be fine. You watch where you step – there is always something in your way, a buggy stuffed with dolls and books, cars and play sets, an empty can of milk, a summer bag full of fake food (you hope) and play money your child never stops throwing at you (at least there is something you are doing right). The kitchen is a war zone. All surfaces are covered with still more paper cuts, dolls, tubes of watercolours, sausages of play dough, jars of make-up, old garbage bags, the novel you have been trying to finish for the last six months, face down, in the corner, once frozen cherry corpses, drowned in pools of their own blood, chocolate wraps, paper dolls, more clothes, more paper cuts, cucumber rings, empty Red Bull cans, Japanese takeaway containers that smell funny like everything else (old garlic squeezed dead and turned green in the squeezer, sweet pear, wasabi, fish of unknown origin, honey). There is not a single cup, plate or piece of cutlery in the house you can use. Every time your child screams for ‘woooodaaaaa’ you have to be inventive. There is stuff on every doorknob in the flat – the doll bag, the snowflake from the ever-thinning fake tree, the mobile charger cord, the string of your best beads, the fancy scarf. Everything twinkles, shines and pisses you off. There is a 3D sticker stuck to the sole of your flip-flop so every time you make a step it sounds like you are murdering an oyster. Murderer! There is another sticker stuck to your ass. You don’t care. It pops every time you sit down and it squeaks every time you try to get up. You don’t have time to unglue either. As you are typing away, scrawling through documents, sending out emails and trying to keep it together, your child plays hairdresser, standing behind you on a stool, chattering away in perfect bliss. You learn that meat tenderizers, potato graters, kitchen scissors, bottle openers, peelers, pizza cutters, corkscrews, skimmers, ladles and whisks make great hairdressing paraphernalia after which you need emergency hair treatments you can’t afford. Your toddler helps around the house to her best ability: sweeps the floor, sorts the garbage, washes the dishes after which you need to wash the toddler and the place being attended to. For which, again, no time.

Don’t get excited and fly dialling the social services number with a shaking hand. I will not go down in silence (having good lawyers also helps). This happens once a month. Or so… It’s just that the last incident was so colourful, so picturesque I decided to cherish its glorious image before it evaporated into the mists of memory forever. Because when the day after that comes, the dishes have been stacked away, the different body parts of dolls inserted into corresponding perforations, the floor vacuumed and the air fragranced, I may just as well miss the spontaneity of it all, the chaos, mirroring what’s happening both outside and inside of me with freighting, sobering clarity.

A Dystopian Christmas

I thought Burnt By The Sun 2 was the worst movie I’ve seen in a long while. It’s not, though. It’s the The Nutcracker in 3 D. The two Russian brothers are getting so burnt they crack, and go virtually nuts in the sun, and I don’t see exactly why I have to suffer when I take my child to the only multiplex in Minsk the first day of the new year.

If you don’t remember your Freud from your Einstein, if the formula E = mc² has become somewhat hazy, or you are looking forward to constant mind games with character names (the Nutcracker, Sid, NC, the Prince, circle the right variant), go ahead and waste your ten bucks on this Christmas ‘fairy tale’. I was looking forward to this for a year. Turns out, the trailer is the best thing connected with the whole project. My oh my.

Andrei Konchalovsky has been dreaming about this a little longer. 20 years. That is a bit sad. Because the writing here is so tedious and exhausting, the editing so slack, the choreography and the painful dialogue so, well, full of pain, that it’s difficult to understand what they’ve been doing with this all this time. Aha. The 3 D thing.

This so-called Christmas movie is dark and exhausting. If you think you are in for some magic, forget it. The only thing you’ll be dreaming about is the EXIT and the lights on the arrow luring you – run, run! Just when you get a glimpse of the finish line and you can go home to nurse your damaged brain cells, there goes another outmoded, silly plot twist. There are even two endings, the one in the dream land, the other in the real world. No wonder I had nightmares of explaining the dated Freudian hypotheses to a class of dropped jaws the previous night. I have a good intuition, it’s just that I have to listen to it more often. I am not sure what the director is trying to do with these big names and theories, give the children a passing lecture or entertain the adults, but he fails at both. This is completely unsustainable for grown-ups, certainly nothing like the ambiguous, smart, multi-layered Pixar tales or even the breathlessly effortless Tangled.

The film is ugly, period. I saw it in 2D, thank God, I cannot even begin to imagine the post-production 3D. The rats are ugly, period. They are not ugly cute, not ugly scary, not ugly peculiar or ugly tim-burton ugly. They are ugly disgusting, end of story. I felt like turning away from the screen, and I did. My child was virtually asleep. On our way home she asked me to retell the story for her and I was struggling with the overstuffed plot impossible to be digested for a confused almost-four-year-old.

Vysotskaya, who is usually lovely, especially when she paces around her kitchen blabbering about French herbs, is unflattering both as Mum and the fairy, too made up as the first and sporting a ridiculous curly blonde wig as the second. The girl actress is cute, but nothing can save a movie that is so tedious I wanted to sleep but so loud I was unable to. It was dated 30 years ago. Thankfully rottentomatoes has not given it a single positive movie review. I feel a deep connection with anyone who had to endure it. Hats off, guys.

Those who haven’t seen The Nutcracker in 3 D I would urge to rerun Up or Toy Story 3, or even Shrek The 4rth. For those who had the misfortune, I have a few questions remained largely unanswered to me:

What is up with the size of Mum’s (Vysotskaya) clothes?

What the hell happened to the shark?

How do you like all the post-apocalyptic dystopian Nazi agenda – is this his answer to his little brother’s last year ‘masterpiece’?

How are the drug/rat-poison references for you?

And finally, in all honesty, was that a horror movie?

I am off to see The Crazies, 2010, but I am sure it’s not what my tonight’s nightmare will be.