Me when my Spanish teacher in junior year of high school humiliated me in front of the entire class but then got fired a week later for giving students handjobs on a Spanish exchange trip 3 decades ago
KAT: "I don't know what it was but I just felt a calm and a peace that I don't know, had to be coming from the woman above
"I felt really confident…I felt like a kid. It was just fun out here. This is something as a kid you always dream about…to be in the NBA Finals
"All day…weird feeling. I felt like a kid getting ready to play in my Saturday and Sunday AAU games
"In a way I felt like I was seeing her in the stands
"It was really fun. It was really comforting
"Game 1 of the NBA Finals you're told how the pressure's gonna be…
"I don't know, it felt like a certain presence was here that was very comforting and very loving and I felt like I could have fun out here––in Game 1 of the NBA Finals…"
Shaq: Yes. Rest in peace to your beautiful mother"
Watching Malcom and the Middle last night w/ my lil dude
Him “what’s a nympho”
Me “ummm. It’s a girl who likes a bunch of boys”
Him “what kind of like?”
Me “it’s like a girl is super boy-crazy. Has lots of boyfriends” 😔
Him “oh. Gotcha”
(2 minutes go by)
Me “bro. That was a lie. It’s a woman who is obsessed with having sex. Lots of sex. I can’t have you calling your sister’s friends or friend’s sisters a nympho cause you think it’s something else. It’s about sex man. You don’t know any nymphos right now”
Him “okay… (understandingly shakes head)”
Wim Wenders explains why "The American Friend" (1977) is political, even though it is an entertainment movie:
"Every film is political. Most political of all are those that pretend not to be: 'entertainment' movies. They are the most political films there are because they dismiss the possibility of change. In every frame they tell you everything's fine the way it is. They are a continual advertisement for things as they are.
I think 'The American Friend' (1977) is different. Yes, it's 'entertainment' and it's exciting. But it doesn't affirm the status quo. On the contrary: everything is fluid, open, under threat. The film has no explicit political content. But it doesn't talk down to you. It doesn't treat its characters like marionettes - nor its audience either. A lot of 'political' films, unfortunately, do."
("The Logic of Images", Wim Wenders, Translated by Michael Hofmann, 1991)
P.S: On this day, 49 years ago, "The American Friend" (1977) premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.
kendrick lamar is corny short guy woke music for white IT professionals who need to look morally just in front of their girlfriends and black coworkers DRAKE is for cool people who do molly and experience life as a curatorial art experience CHOOSE WISELY YOUNG MAN!!!!!
I don’t think Kanye was going exceptionally crazy. He lives the life of a schizophrenic person but if all their paranoid delusions were real - constantly being tracked, pursued, extorted, used, shamed, watched, smeared. Extortion or fear of extortion can only have power over you if you have something to hide, and you get your life back by basically “destroying yourself” before anyone else can. Luckily for Kanye this just meant saying words you’re not supposed to say and being transparent about his porn addictions and other unflattering issues in the public square. All of this while also going through the biggest celebrity divorce of our generation.
Kanye has always stood up to power in many forms - one could say his entire body of work is about defeating false idols of power in the name of surrendering himself back to the ultimate power of God - and in the last few years, the power that had to be defeated was a culture and media landscape that was addicted to extortion, bullying, and destruction, on both local and distant scales , even of those who did nothing but reveal basic human traits , who have done nothing but their jobs as entertainers, who have given so much to culture and art and communities. Everywhere you turn in recent years has been miserable discourse from unknown agents, a cacophony of people selling eachother shadows and demands with no backing, constantly pocket-checking, surveilling, obsessing, stalking, and feeling so righteous in it. We all got to see that ugly first hand.
I don’t think Kanye is or was exceptionally crazy. I think he had to stare in the face of a very real entity trying to kill him every day and tell it to leave him alone. A bully.