Ah, Avon. Nothing says “new customer base” like having your new skin creme resemble the zombie-in-a-bottle serum from the Resident Evil movies. Not convinced? Go to io9.com and watch the side-by-side commercials for Avon and the Umbrella Corporation. It’s eerie, people.

You must watch this commercial for Australia (the country, not the Nicole Kidman/Hugh Jackman box-office flop). Mr. Luhrman is famous for directing Moulin Rouge, though you should skip that frantic mashup in favor of the infinitely more awesome Strictly Ballroom. Trust me on this one.

To really see what’s wrong with this commercial, we’ll have to break it down.

It’s a dark and stormy night in Gotham City (or a reasonable fascimile). A man tells an overworked blonde he wants to take a break for a while– over the phone. Classy, Nameless Male Person. The blonde responds by running into the middle of the street sans umbrella, hollering into her cell phone about rearranging the front page (because women can only have high-powered jobs in the magazine industry– am I right, Harlequin Books-of-the-Week?). Here’s where things get weird: the camera zooms in on a muddy footprint– presumably of a creature following the blonde home. I think about five X-Files episodes started like this. Now I’m concerned about the blonde. Run, lady!

The blonde runs into her large, dreary apartment lovingly furnished by the All Beige Decorators of America. (Want a colored throw pillow? Too bad! They won’t allow it. Those Union regulations are no joke.) She calls Nameless Male Person and apologizes for not calling in a while. The conversation is worth repeating in full:

Man: Long day?
Woman: [nervous laughter] It’s not over yet.
Man: It’s never going to change, is it?
Woman: Can we please not have this argument now?
Man: It’s always work.
Woman: What are you saying?
Man: You’re not the same person I fell in love with.

Because  the woman he fell in love with was unemployed? “Remember playing footsie at the Welfare Office? We never do that anymore!” And way to be a jerk over the phone, Nameless Male Person. Maybe if you showed up in person your relationship would go further. Just sayin’. The blonde presses her skinny, pale hand to her forehead in the Universal Gesture of Womanly Despair.

Now it gets creepy again. A child’s voice whispers: “Sometimes, we have to lose ourselves to find ourselves.” Low-level shot of someone’s bare feet walking in the blonde’s apartment oh my god the creature is inside the house RUN BLONDE LADY RUN. It’s too late. She’s lying in bed, eyes closed, deathly pale. The creature reveals itself to be . . . an androgynous child. Androgynous Child leans over the blonde’s pillow and whispers: “Sometimes, you need to go Walkabout.” The blonde opens her eyes.  Now, I’m a New Yorker. If a small, androgynous child broke into my apartment and whispered in my ear, I would a) jump about thirty feet in the air yelling bloody murder and using every karate move known to man, and b) call the police and/or child protective services. This lady, however, just holds out her hand. The Androgynous Child takes it. Ut-oh. Now I’m concerned about the child.

Androgynous Child drops a handful of dirt into the blonde’s hand. Now I’m calling the carpet cleaners in addition to protective services, but the blonde doesn’t seem to mind. Suddenly, there’s water, water everywhere. There’s an underwater shot of the blonde lady swimming that looks a lot like the underwater shots in Jaws. Is the Androgynous Child going to swim up and bite her? But wait! The blonde is not swimming alone! Nameless Male Person is there, too– although his face is incredibly blurry. Very suspicious. The happy couple surface, surrounded by red rocks. Nameless Male Person says: “I’m glad you’re back.”

Shots of red rocks, waterfalls, red rocks, a river, and red rocks. What is this, a Martian spa? Small white text reads: “She arrived as Ms K Matthieson, Executive VP of Sales.” Shot of smiling blonde lady. “She departed as Kate.” Title: AUSTRALIA.

That’s right, ladies! Come to Australia because let’s face it, you’re not getting any younger, and if you don’t get that rock NOW you’re doomed to be MS. Executive VP of Sales forever. You’ll never get an Androgynous Child of your own that way. Don’t you want a Nameless Male Person to belittle you long-distance forever? Of course you do. True, he won’t come over unless you buy him expensive plane tickets halfway around the world, but that’s a small price to pay. Mary says he only wants you for your money, but what does she know? She’s divorced. Take my word for it– you won’t land a man with a fancy career, missy. In fact, if you don’t go to Australia right this minute you might as well kill yourself.

Egads, Baz Luhrman. This kind of thing was unacceptable in the early 80’s, nevermind post-2000. Think before you direct, man!

Unless you’ve been abducted by aliens for the past year, you’ve been bombarded with news of the recent financial unpleasantness. For my own peace of mind as well as your general edification, here is a list of things I’m going to do (and not do) to deal with economic shenanigans.

What I’m Doing:

• Drinking coffee at work instead of a $7 mocha-latte-grande-imbibo-caveo. The coffee pot is also a hot spot for rumors unofficial information.
• Making soup at home instead of eating out as much. Chuck a lot of veggies and some chuck stew in a pot and simmer for a few hours, and the results are delicious. Properly doled out, a big pot of soup can last the week (especially if you freeze some of it). And this is coming from someone whose previous idea of a home-cooked meal was Hunan Wok on speed-dial– so when I tell you it’s an easy recipe, you better believe it.
• Buying used movies and music. Folks in the tri-state area should cotton on to the wonder and glory that is The Princeton Record Exchange. Thrill! to the wonders of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s (JCVD, to his friends) entire collection for the princely sum of $10.99! Gasp! as you behold an entire shelf devoted to $4.00 copies of Alien Vs. Predator! Moan! at the knowledge that fickle America just does not appreciate Enrique Iglesias like it used to. The Grey Lady (that’s the New York Times to non-natives) had an article on the good Exchange a few months ago, which ran more toward the snarky than the informative; criticizing the store for its “dorm-room decor” is totally, like, missing the point.
• Working through my teetering pile of unread books instead of keeping B&N solvent. (Sorry, B&N. No hard feelings, okay?) Lately I’ve been putting down the economics books and reaching for P.G. Wodehouse, who never fails to amuse.
• Saving money when possible. I found $90 worth of change the other day in my piggy bank. Who knew?

What I’m NOT going to do:

• Give up meat. Yeah yeah, you can stick your carbon footprint up your carbon . . . well, you get the idea. Sometimes a girl needs a nice, juicy steak. It’s why we have incisors, you know. This is not to disparage my friends who are turning to vegetarianism like organic parsley turns towards the sun. Live and let live, is what I say– as long as I can get some bacon on Sunday. (What stand-up comic said he was becoming vegetarian not because he loves animals, but because he really hates plants?)
• Give up alcohol. A good martini on special occassions can be a thing of beauty. “Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts” (Proverbs 31:6, for those playing at home.) Amen to that.
• Buy a gun. No, seriously. The boys and girls on the MarketWatch messageboards are big cheerleaders for the ‘guns and gold’ brigade. A friend of mine who used to be a sharpshooter in high school told me all the ammunition stores he knows of are perpetually sold out. Apparently a large number of people believe total economic collapse is imminent, and we should all be oiling our glocks or priming our Winchesters or spring-loading our AK-47s or whatever-it-is you do to weapons that can blow your head clean off. I’m not going to get involved, because, petite specs-wearing swooning female that I am, I realize that if I need to do my Annie Oakley impersonation to borrow a cup of flour, I’m probably not going to make it. I belong in the Gilmore Girls universe, not Mad Max, and at least I’m honest enough to admit it. Also, Americans tend to overreact. Every boom cycle is going to last forever (DOW 36,000, anyone?) and every bust cycle is an excuse to stockpile vats of SPAM (Hello, Millennials!). Besides, we’re free and clear until 2012, when the Mayan Alien Zombies are going to bring the apocalypse. Everone knows that.
• Put my money in my mattress. Mattresses can burn, people. Safes can walk away. And as much as the idea of stuffing my savings into a hollowed-out a copy of The Wealth of Nations appeals to me, I’m going to stay calm. The FDIC program still insures every account for up to $250k, so relax. Even if you’ve sacked away your savings at Madoff Savings and Loan, the government will step in and guarantee your ill-gotten gains.
• Buy everything from thrift stores. Nothing wrong with thrift stores, mind you. But I’d rather buy something new for a decent price and wear it into the ground than use someone else’s worn-out flannel pajamas.
• Mock Wall Street. Maybe it’s because I have friends in the industry, but seriously, folks– large banks are run like a small city– there’s thousands of people in Admin and PR and HR and IT and the Middle Office who are clean-cut, high-minded, sharp-eyed, hard-working folks who happen to work for Upper Management that made terrible decisions at the wrong time. Ease up on the hate.

And there we have it. Any suggestions from the peanut gallery?

Why hello there, stranger! Put the sharpened pate’ knife down and come warm yourself by my trashcan fire here in our little corner of WallStreetVille. What’s that? Of course you can have some fried squirrel leg! Share and share alike, I always say. There’s a Depression on, you know.

Or so the media would have us believe. Honestly, if I have to read one more article on how we need to get  house cleaning tips from The Grapes of Wrath and dress in plastic grocery bags to atone for our collective sins, I’m going to scream. And considering I might lose my job any minute, my day is already full of eye rolling, breast beating, garment rending, and teeth gnashing. I just don’t think I can fit screaming into the itinerary.

Fortunately, the internet is there to distract us from our ensuing economic twilight. Here for your pleasure and amusement are some Things I Like:

• Baby’s Named a Bad, Bad Thing– Hilariously snarky commentary on the inadvertently awful names some parents choose for their offspring. Free sample: “This is for my niece, Dawn. She is expecting a baby girl in September. I suggested that they name her Dusk. What does everyone think? I think her grand-daughter Nighttime would not approve. Or her grand-neices Afterhours and Graveyardshift.”
• This is Why You’re Fat– Pictures of the gastronomically vile. Or totally awesome, depending on how you look at it. Sample heading: Chicken-fried Bacon with Gravy. Mmmm.
• Gallery of Regrettable Food-- Speaking of unfortunate foods, be lucky we’re not in the 50’s. You haven’t lived till you’ve seen the horror that is meat-filled jello molds. You heard me. Sample snark: “One of the more popular cuts: pressed shank braised with smoker’s phlegm. It may take a few tries to get Uncle Hank to hack up enough Lucky sauce, so be patient.”
• Cockney rhyming slang– Did you know ‘Emma Freud’ was slang for ‘hemorrhoids’? You do now! Adam and Eve it.
• 15 Unfortunately Placed Ads– The title says it all, I think.
• Worst Romance Covers-- I’ve linked to 2003, but if you do a little searching you can find the rest. Here’s 2004, and it’s a doozy. I know, I know, authors and agents don’t really get a say over the covers, it all depends on the whims of an overworked, understaffed team of artists, etc. etc. That still doesn’t excuse some of the monstrosities here. But all is forgiven, because these covers are hilarious.

Here’s hoping everyone has a nice, peaceful week.

No, I’m not talking about the markets, though the way things are going not even the House wins nowadays. I’m talking about the art of the con . . . artist shows. For your persusal, I have two examples of the genre: Hustle, a 2004 entry from across the pond, and Leverage, its 2008 Yankee cousin. Both shows feature teams of grifters taking down the high and mighty. (Note: If you haven’t watched The Sting, you should really do that before viewing either of these.)

In my mind, it’s no contest: Hustle has a joy and panache that the dourly shot and over-explained Leverage lacks. To judge for yourself, click each link below and watch for at least 15 minutes. You’ll see what I mean right away. Please note the links below are meant purely as visual aides for comparative purposes. If you like the episodes in question, I strongly suggest ordering them from iTunes. (Note: TNT has some Leverage episodes on its main site, but it only works on Windows. Way to limit your online viewership, TNT.)

Leverage, season 1, episode 3

Hustle, season 5, episode 1

Those interested in learning more about America’s long, uneasy love-affair with scammers should read David W. Maurer’s classic book The Big Con, which was the basis for the cons shown in The Sting.

Learn about the financial meltdown courtesy of a brilliant Brit rocking a green sweater and wielding the power of a big marker at Marketplace.com. These 10-minute videos are the best explanations of the financial armageddon I’ve seen. Enjoy, and Happy New Year.

Quantitative easing from Marketplace on Vimeo.

Untangling credit default swaps

Crisis explainer: Uncorking CDOs

Untangling credit default swaps

Getting naked in short selling

The complete list of videos is available here: http://vimeo.com/marketplace/videos/sort:date

It’s Halloween! The wonderful time of year where it’s okay for small children to a) dress like axe-wielding serial killers, and b) eat candy all day. In short, it’s a weird time. (Except for candy corn. That’s a tradition I can get behind.) And what could be more Halloween-y than reading books that give you the screaming mimis?

As luck would have it, I’ve read two books whose jacket copies promised me nightmares: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, and House of Leaves by Mark Danielwski. Only one book fulfilled its promise. (Dun dun dunnnn.) The winner in the literary spook-off is Ms. Jackson, whose 1950’s tale of a lonely, repressed 30-ish woman getting ghostly attention from a house of pure horror kept me up at night. Shirley Jackson’s prose is tight and evocative, and I found myself lying in bed remembering the scary parts. Not that the book is a gore-fest; in fact, there’s very little blood at all. Ms. Jackson uses her incredibly sympathetic but slightly unbalanced protagonist to get you sucked into the atmosphere of the Eeeeeeevil House. Plus, the book is short (a couple hundred pages) and eminently re-readable. After I’d finished, I wanted to go back and re-read it. And the parts I flipped through again were still creepy. Plus, the ending was appropriate, satisfying, and inevitable. I would give this book as a gift to my friends, and I can think of no higher praise.

Mr. Danielewski’s House of Leaves didn’t live up to the hype–maybe because he was fool enough to quote someone saying Pynchon, Wallace, and other postmodern geniuses would be “kneeling at the feet” of the author in awe. (Don’t worry, folks. Pynchon’s reputation is safe.) Mr. Danielwski gets props for his conception–that of a crazy tattoo artist/lothlorio junkie discovering the papers of a dead blind guy; the papers describe a critical examination of a movie that doesn’t exist. Yeah, it’s one of those. The non-existent movie is about a family whose new house is larger on the outside than the inside, revealing a cold, deadly labyrinth. The text is half academic blather and half descriptions via footnotes, appendices, latin fragments in translation, an index (!), etc. I give Mr. Danielwski full points for cleverness– to get some important clues to the story, you need to know morse code, acrostics, aviation flags, and a working knowledge of Derrida. He also makes the text resemble parts of the story (it winds around pages like the actual labyrinth, gets smaller, gets bigger, changes colors, etc.). (I also have to mention the academic critique of the non-existent movie doubles as an excellent satire of Ivory Tower publications. Some of the footnotes are laugh-out-loud funny.)

Where the book falls down is in its ambition. The book also tries to be all things to all people: the house is meant to be a real construct AND a Big Metaphor, the multiple unreliable narrators are meant to be real characters AND a statement on the difficulty of proving authorial intent, and on and on and on. I spent some time spinning my wheels, trying to determine WHICH craaaaaaazy character wrote the book, and whether they imagined all the other characters, or if the other characters really existed and just loved huge coincidences. Then I realized the book had enough ‘evidence’ to be interpreted a bunch of ways, and was banking on that as an excuse to, you know, not have a real ending. I fell asleep pretty quickly after that. No nightmares, either. But even though I had trouble getting frightened by lengthy academic discussions of the Myth of Echo, I had to give the author credit for the sheer effort the whole thing took– in typography, big ideas, and themes. It’s nice to see a book stretch the boundaries, even if it ultimately detracted a bit from the story.

P.S. Hey, authors of books over 700 pages: please end your stories properly. If you can’t think of something original, please remember that burning down the house/laboratory is a well-loved literary trope for a reason. You can even tack on the epilogue where you’re not sure if the evil has returned in a far-off location. It’s okay, really. We won’t mind. Because the alternative is to stop writing and call it an ending, and that’s just lame.

I’ve been griping lately about movies, so I thought I’d mention one I heartily recommend: Zhang Yimou’s technicolor soap opera ‘Curse of the Golden Flower.’ It features poisoned tea, Gong Li’s heaving bosoms, incest, a sumptuous color palette, a villainous Chow Yun-Fat, an excess of bling, and ninjas. If these things do not make your eyes sparkle and your heart beat quicker, then, well, this movie is clearly not for you. Otherwise, watch and enjoy.

All of Zhang Yimou’s movies use color marvelously (‘Hero‘ was practically built around color palettes), and this movie does not disappoint. If you want to calibrate your TV’s yellow gradient, ‘Golden Flower’ is the movie for you. The sets are a riot of gold: gold hairclips, armor, crowns, pajamas, walls, doors, tables– you name it, it’ll set off a metal detector. And what’s not gold is silk or multi-color jade. Here’s a picture, courtesy of the http://outnow.ch site:

Gong Li Sets Off Metal Detectors All Over China

The plot revolves around an Imperial family reunion in the Forbidden Palace. Empress Gong Li feels rather ill every time she takes Emperor Chow Yun-Fat’s special tea, and starts putting two and two together. Meanwhile, their three sons start to re-evaluate the line of succession. And that’s not even going into the incest and ninjas. But the dishy, soap opera-y plot takes a backseat to the overwhelming awesomeness of the set design. Here’s another picture, and keep in mind the tiny size can’t do it justice.

They Just Don't Make Homes Like They Used To

Here’s the trailer, which shows the kung fu bits more than the juicy overacting, but is okay overall:

In short, this movie is a very diverting two hours, and well worth giving a spin.

I will soon be on vacation for two weeks, which is a cheering thought. So is this, which is one of my favorite Godzilla moments of all time, second only to the Mothra song:

!SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR THE DARK KNIGHT MOVIE!

A nutty question, perhaps, but bear with me. Those unwilling to hear philosophical blather about ficitonal characters who wear their underwear on the outside might want to skip this post. Like a good chunk of American youth, I saw The Dark Knight movie this weekend. And “Dark Knight” is right. It could have been called “The Really Dark, Pitch Black, Look On My Movie and Despair Knight.” Near the end of the movie, a bad guy puts a gun to a kid’s head–and I really thought the kid was going to die. I thought the PG-13 (side note: what is the MPAA smoking?) summer blockbuster by Warner freaking Brothers was going to show a kid getting snuffed.  That’s how dark the rest of the movie was. The previous two and a half hours had innocent people killed by the truck-load in a parade of gruesome murders via grenades, bombs sewn in the gut, rabid dogs, knives, bazookas, poison, car bombs, falling from a great height, and being just plain old exploded by gallons of gas. It’s not just the sheer amount of casualties, though, it’s the WAY people die: begging for their life, screaming in pain, knowing they’re going to die but unable to do anything about it. That scene with the kid was prefaced by a good five minutes of the parents begging the bad guy not to kill their son. That’s not entertainment, in my book. That’s just sadism. There’s a scene 3/4 of the way through where the Joker blows up a hospital with people in it, and I thought: “Why am I watching this movie?”

And there’s nothing to alleviate the darkness. Batman, the supposed hero, arrives five minutes too late to do any good in all but one or two cases. What good is a hero if he’s incompetent? Harvey Dent seems like the real hero until he, uh, flip-flops. The Girl character isn’t on screen long enough to root for. Which leaves only the Joker–and he’s brilliantly played by the late Heath Ledger as a total pyschopath. Ledger makes Jack Nicholson’s interpretation look like Bozo the Clown. Brrrr. But he’s so evil even the most hardened of hearts wouldn’t root for him. So who is the audience supposed to root for, I ask you? A lot of reviewers are interpreting this kind of confusion as moral ambiguity, a sure sign the movie is “deep” and “mature.” I say darkness is different from profundity. Nobody laughs in this movie, except maniacally. Nobody smiles, except through permanent scars. There’s no real love, and friendship is a brief thing best used for leverage in the War on Terror. If this is Gotham, sign me up for a one-way ticket to Metropolis.

Clearly, director Chris Nolan slept with a copy of Frank Miller’s seminal 1986 comic The Dark Knight Returns by his bed. Both Nolan’s movie and Miller’s comic focus on Batman’s violence as a response to the chaotic, corrupt culture around him. According to this logic, only Man’s Will, as expressed by his Fists, can restore Order to a world gone Mad. The will of the people can be easily ignored, as people are stupid, weak, jealous, cowardly sheep. Society and its agents, including cops, the military, and government of all stripes, can be safely ignored: they are either corrupt or useless. Only the individual has any moral standing, and only a group of individuals willing to use whatever means necessary has the right to action. Any sign of hesitation or mercy is perceived as weakness–except for the one bright line Batman refuses to cross. He won’t kill you. He will, however, beat you to a bloody pulp with his bare hands, cut you with knives, and drop you off a (small) building. Dark, sure. Violent, yes. But fascist? Maybe.

According to the Wikipedia article on fascism, a good definition comes courtesy of Robert O. Paxton:

A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. — The Anatomy of Fascism

Frank Miller’s Batman comes the closest to this definition. In Miller’s version, Batman comes out of retirement to fight a pyschopathic gang of violent punks, and ends up the leader of group of fellow vigilantes who restore order to the city after a nuclear event. Clearly, Miller thinks Batman is justified in his use of violence against his enemies, though Batman doesn’t kill anyone. Miller’s also coy enough to have Batman question his own mental health (something I’ve done for years). But “redemptive violence,” “community decline,” and victimhood? Describes Bats to a T.

And Nolan’s Batman isn’t much better. He angst a bit about what he’s going to “have to become” to defeat the Joker and his terrorist ilk, but when it comes down to it Batman drops a mobster off a small building, breaking his legs. Batman uses a city-wide surveillance program that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. He beats up cops if they get in the way. The only way he’s NOT fascist is that he’s not setting himself up as the leader of a Brave New World– he values the individual above the state in all things. Which makes him more like Ayn Rand’s philosophical brother than Mussolini’s long-lost cousin.

But is being Ayn Randian any better? That’s another discussion, but the short answer is: NO, it really doesn’t. Batman’s a pseudo-fascist, then. Like The Watchmen, another seminal 80’s graphic novel that discusses the rights of the people versus the ubermensch. But that’s for another post. Man, I feel depressed. Time to watch some Spider-Man 2 or Hellboy 2 or Iron Man or something to see heroes who actually enjoy life. Egads.