Bits n things

So I only ever blog when I am bored and stoned, and since those two things don't happen nearly often enough...yeah.

Anyoo just a running list of things I am/want/need lately:

1. Pretty much these pants:

These look like the Jessie Kamm sailor pants. I found these at Madewell but they were sold out so I bought these, these, and these. Haven't arrived yet. Guardedly optimistic that something will work. Considered the Everlane version but ended up passing because of the limited color selection and the fact that they sound stretchy, which is not optimal for containing my hips.

2. Nicole Guerriero's daily Vlogs
She got burned out on doing the makeup tutorials and has been uploading daily vlogs instead that mostly consist of her driving her massive Escalade through St. Petersburg, Florida while lip syncing the words to every song on the radio and eating way too many avocado egg rolls and playing with her cats. It sounds horrible but it's not because she's just real and funny and also seems like she gives really good hugs at her meet and greets.

3. LA 92 Documentary
There were like 6 documentaries that came out recently on the 25th anniversary of the LA Riots. This one is told entirely through news and eyewitness footage. No talking heads or voiceovers. It's really well done. And sadly, still timely.

4. Paris Hilton Nostalgia

Why not? We've already revisited other (W.) Bush-era fashions such as Juicy Couture, Adidas pool slides, and baby bags. Our early 2000s would be remiss if we didn't pay cultural homage to the original pointless celebrity and sex tape star. I hope she enjoys some kind of campy, ironic resurgence. She still fascinates me.

5. Summer Playlist
Drake or Bob Seger. There's no in between.

And that is all the dispatch we have from planet Joanna for today.

Something to Watch

Filmmaker Sean Dunne is directing some pretty killer documentaries that probably best fall in the "hillbilly porn" genre, but two of my favorites are Florida Man, a touching portrait of the oft maligned and frequently ridiculed Floridian underclass in his natural habitat outside of liquor stores, dive bars, and behind random dumpsters, and American Juggalo, a not entirely unsympathetic look at the infamous annual gathering of Insane Clown Posse fans. In both features, Dunne trains his lens on a specific breed of white underclass, but his depictions, while raw and at times unflattering, never devolve into pure spectacle. The stills from these docs are sort of beautiful portraits in and of themselves.

You can watch all of his work on his Vimeo page here.

Werner Herzog Inspirationals

Today I'm savoring the bleak, coldly scientific nihilism of Werner Herzog. It's keeping me warm like a cup of hot tea.

All images, captions, and title via: Werner Herzog Inspirationals

Essential viewing: The Staircase

For those of you who can't satiate your closeted trial laywer/detective/forensic pathologist yearnings with Serial, I highly recommend watching the 8-episode mini series The Staircase, by French documentarian Jean-Xavier Lestrade. The series documents the first degree murder trial of novelist Michael Peterson for the death of his wife, Kathleen in their Durham, NC home in 2001. After Michael made a frantic 911 call, his wife's body was found, blood-soaked and crumpled at the bottom of a flight of stairs. The prosecution's claim was that he beat her to death with a blow-poke, the defense claimed she had fallen down the stairs in a tragic accident.

I don't want to give away too much, but suffice to say this one still has me thinking after I burned through all 8 episodes in a day and a half. It's got more twists and turns than an episode of American Horror Story, and like Serial, the essential question appears to be: is an innocent man on trial for a murder, or was there a secret side to him that no one else knew about?

Watch episode 1 below, all episodes are available for streaming on Youtube.

Teenage

The very concept of a 'Teen' did not exist until the middle 20th century. Prior to that, human development was thought of as a dichotomy between child and adult. A confluence of historical factors, including the outlawing of child labor, 2 world wars, and an increasingly restless and disenchanted youth led to the cultural concept of the modern day teenager--a person caught in the purgatory between childhood and adulthood, not fully comfortable with either categorization.



'Teenage' is a fascinating documentary on the evolution of teen culture. Using stunning archival footage from the turn of the century through the 1970s, viewers are taken on a journey that reminds us why teenagers are such a distinctive human life form. Whether they were flappers, hoodlums, hoboes, greasers, swing dancers, or mall rats, all teenagers have been defined by their apparent unwillingness to allow themselves to be classified as either children or full blown adults, a condition that is shockingly perplexing to generation after generation of grownups who apparently forget that they were ever teens themselves.
 

If you're interested in checking out the film, you can watch the trailer here and the movie is available for streaming on Netflix.

  Photos via Shorpy, Teenage Bedroom, Time

Watchlist: I Am Divine

Stoked this movie finally came out on Netflix streaming, because I've always been a huge John Waters fan, and how could you NOT fall for the aesthetic charms of the exquisite creature above.


Through interviews with friends, family (including Divine's delightful and similarly maquillaged Mother), his makeup artist, hangers-on, wannabes, and most bizarrely, a high school girlfriend, the doc explores not just Divine but Glenn Milstead, the shy, overweight teen who barely left the house before the age of 15 and went on to become the biggest, baddest, cross-dressing gay icon we all know and love.


Divine's signature look was created on a whim when makeup artist Van Smith shaved back her hairline in order to accommodate more eye makeup and cartoonishly arched brows. In the 1960s, most drag shows (and yes, they did exist in small underground circles, even in Baltimore) were dominated by thin, stereotypically "pretty" girls. Divine threw the paradigm on its head when she went onstage at 300 pounds, swathed in sequins and crowned by big hair, spewing obscenities that made audiences wild with laughter. She was a true performance artist, and much more than a creation of John Waters. Divine was, above all a method actor, as capable of shocking audiences with outrageous performances as she was of playing 'straight' roles, both in and out of drag.

Documentary: Hot Coffee

If I told you I watched an interesting documentary about Tort reform, would you believe me? Probably not, but bear with me for just a minute. Remember the lady who sued McDonalds for burning herself with a cup of their coffee in the drive thru? You may remember her being skewered in the media, ridiculed by pundits and talking heads, referenced as a symbol of American litigiousness. You may have thought, like me, that the case was indicative of the absurdity and entitlement of a generation of mouth-breathing Americans expecting a big payout for making mistakes that should land them a Darwin Award, not a 7-figure settlement. It turns out there was a lot more to that case, and many others like it, than I knew.

Hot Coffee centers around the story of Stella Liebeck, the 79-year-old woman was scalded with 3rd degree burns after spilling a cup of McDonald's coffee in her lap in the passenger seat of her grandson's car. The burns required skin grafts and a prolonged hospital stay. She originally sought $20,000 from McDonalds to cover her medical costs. When the case went to trial, the jury awarded Liebeck $2.7 million dollars. The vast majority of this was 'punitive' in nature, meaning it was meant to punish McDonalds for failing to ensure the safety of patrons consuming their coffee (company manuals stipulated that the coffee be brewed at 190 degrees fahrenheit, hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns instantly). Whether McDonald's was negligent in allowing the coffee to be brewed so hot, or whether Ms. Liebeck was simply an idiot for spilling it on herself is essentially the crux of arguments for or against Tort (or civil lawsuit) reform.  How much are we responsible for our own safety? How much liability should be assumed by companies selling products? How about doctors delivering babies? Would you say that a child, permanently disabled due to medical malpractice, is only worth $250,000? Only $1 million?

The documentary was particularly eye opening for me in how it laid out the history of large corporations suppressing individuals' right to sue. It turns out most of the dialogue and so-called public opinion around these types of lawsuits has been dominated and manipulated by big business setting out to protect their profits and limit liability in cases where consumers are injured by their products. While the movie has been criticized for not presenting both sides (some have even gone so far as to classify it as propaganda) it was still an eye opening look at one side of a complicated issue--and quintessentially American phenomenon. The civil lawsuit.

**Interesting post-script: One of the women highlighted in the film as a victim of mandatory arbitration laws, Jamie Leigh Jones, who claimed she was raped while working as a military contractor in Iraq for Halliburton, finally got her day in court and a jury found her accusations to be unfounded. She likely made the whole thing up. Which lends credence to the idea that people lie and sue for attention and money. The plot thickens.

TL;DR: Everything you thought you knew about the McDonald's coffee case, and Tort laws in general, is wrong and/or fabricated by large corporations to sway public sentiment and make it difficult to win settlements.