The Skunkeye Consumer Guide

Here are some more Simon Henwood portraits of Roisin Murphy that accompany the packaging of her fantastic solo venture Ruby Blue.  In my easy access to distraction, I’ve been thinking how interesting  it is (to me) that these two artists are converging right now because I discovered both of them around the same time and up until now they were completely unrelated.  (I strongly suspect they are dating now.)

Murphy’s band, Moloko, now on hiatus, emerged in the mid/late nineties, and really excited me even though I wasn’t especially into house/dance music.  There was something about their unabashedly eccentric and sexy vibe that appealed to me and I fell for Roisin Murphy. I even attended their Tight Sweater launch party in New York at a nightclub next door to where I was crashing on Bleecher, the name I can’t for the Life of me remember but it was very hot at the time. I was a hopped up hipster and if I hung out with the band i don't rmember, but  I do remember meeting a youngisher Amanda Lepore, who was dancing at the event, and later in the week partied with her and Kurt Loder (among other disparate and odd company) well into the morning daylight in a trancy pit at the VH1 Fashion Awards (I was a PR flack for one of the sponsors) post party at Twilo.  Seems like a lifetime ago. 

So back to Simon Henwood.  Around the same time, kids, there was this magazine called Purr just starting to hit select stands.  Purr was like everything that interested me and more pulled together beautiful and tailor-made for my scant – I still hang on to the scant five or six issues or so that were published in the United States.  Harry Crews, Barry Adamson, Edward Gorey, pre Walkmen jonathan fire*eater, Raymond Pettibon, edgy comics, art, film ,and music – it was a smorgasbord of all my sensibilities at the time.  Through Purr I developed an early friendship/correspondence with Dame Darcy – in fact I became one of her doll-hair suppliers – clipped from select regions from my family’s Standard Poodle.

So anyways, a lot of young Simon Henwood’s work was appearing in Purr at the time and I was an early convert.  It was an exciting scene. 

Yikes!  Okay, this is why I’m going to bomb on the GMAT this week!  I can’t make the logical progression from A to B, much less the if you had “two thousand boxes of watermelons and if x(a2 – bz) ≠ 8997∞ <666~¾ than what would 8 million sixteen-packs of Double A batteries cost if….)”

And don’t get me started on statistics which is a prerequisite for the program I’m applying to…. My recently-passed grandmother was a natural-born statistician but clearly the apple fell not only far from the tree but on another planet……

I’m in so over my head!!!!

Simon Henwood’s artwork on Ruby Blue alone is worth the price of admission – in fact all of his recent current projects really excite me (and I wish my folks were still in Korea to pick up the fashion line he just did for a department store there for me– although the product is unlikely to fit on my non-Asian, increasingly bloated frame!) – his paintings for this project kinda rekindle my love of design and especially portraiture and that certain delicious painterly tradition of British pop art which I've always been drawn to-

and is making me figure I should be pursuing a MFA rather than a MBA!!!!

Ay, I’m just looking for an escape….

I’m too braindeadfrazzled choking on advanced trigonomicalgebrafstatsormulas (I charmed my way into passing Algebra 1 in HS – years ago- and this was after taking the same course twice!) to compose a solid spin on Ruby Blue but read these reviews/artciles and you’ll get the jizz:  Guardian, Pitchfork, and various  – ay just Google “Roisin Murphy” if you are seriously interested… in applying to the program, hah.a.. forgive me I am muy entrance exam-minded right now). 

I just absolutely adore the album, especially the Spanish fly “Night of the Dancing Flame” and the Dusty Springfield moments and "If Were Love" is the most catchy dance single I've heard since well.. Moloko's "Sing it Back" and "Fun for Me."

Check out producer Matthew Hebert’s site, Magic & Accident, for his dogged manifesto and also this recent Guardian article in conjunction with the release of his more experimental pet project, Plat du Jour.

And I’m certain that Matthew Hebert and company would relish the current exhibit at the Hirshhorn, Visual Music: Synaesthesia in Art and Music Since 1900. 

While logic, math, and theory retarded, and the show is steeped in that particular train of thinking, I had a wonderful – almost meditative – time a few weeks ago.  Actually, the show is all rather refreshingly old school, launching with the usual Klee and Kandinsky, and then segueing into the Futurists, through these awesome pre-Star Trek almost sentient colour/space whatever warps made by organs such as the Synchrome Kineidoscope, the Clavilux, the Lumigraph or the Optophonic Piano, fantastic early animation synchronized to jazz and classical music, and trippy sixties and seventies prog collaboratives – I have new fascination with the Soft Machine. Another cultural reference are those classic photos of the Velvet Underground with all those psychedelic, Petri-dish microbes projected all over their performances – very trippy – and I imagine even more so if one were in “heightened awareness.” The show hits a flat note when it reaches the eighties, the Atari generation, which is cool by me  - the show hits a “Pong” note and also because we can all do all sorts of amazing stuff with our laptops and mobiles and ipods and maybe it is all that “artistic” no more.   Who cares what color your sound is these days….

I wanna go back to the show – I swear I was close nirvana state in many of the rooms were it not for the tourisitas invading my space. But this ain’t a good week to re-visit since its too hot to leave the house and plus the Boy Scout Jamboree has invaded! (I’m hating DC right now)

Ay, it is so disgustingly hot out! Garbage collector came LATE yesterday and turned down most of the bags and bins left out in the street and alley. I’m sure there’s a question on the GMAT about the temperature plus humidity and some formula for that and also for the alarming amount of rats that have been carousing my garden and alley – seeing A LOT of younger, smaller ones.  What does this mean: x(friskiness) + y (no city rat catcher) + (rampant smelly overflowing rubbish) x 8 z(1000)(a zillion)= ihatedc?!!!!

This has been a very odd summer and I’ve been making my best effort to be proactive rather than drown in limbo.  I’ve really been neglecting this site, partly because my old buggy laptop finally done crashed about a month ago. (I actually managed to revive it recently Frankenstein-style briefly with equipment I found on the street – it was like Awakenings!) Also, I’ve been trying to focus on my next phase in life - and have been on a serious spartan budget - and thus haven’t indulged much in the usual pleasures that I like to post about.

Good news is that, as of last Saturday, I’m the proud owner of brand spanking new laptop – I’ve entered the Moyen Age!   It’s kind of embarrassing what a luxury this is – the equipment I’ve used up in until now has been borrowed or barely functioning cast-offs!  So I’m getting to know my new machine – this baby is so sleek and so fast and efficient and love that I can tap into free wi-fi in my hood (from certain locations in the house, that is – nothing in Skunkeye’s world ever works out perfectly…)

I’m still between gigs but should have a better idea of where I’m going next in the coming days.  I’m also – believe it or not – studying for the GMAT – which is something I never imagined doing.

The accompanying illustration is by one of my favourite designers, Simon Henwood – it’s a portrait of Roisin Murphy, late of Moloko, whose Matthew Herbert produced solo debut, Ruby Blue, has been my soul mate and soundtrack this summer.  Excellent album!

I’ll write more about Ruby Blue and other things soon – right now I’m navigating my new toy!

In addition to failing to update my site, I’m also way behind on the movies this summer. I haven’t seen any of the big blockbusters and don’t think I will, but I did do some catching up at the art houses recently.
As light and sensual mid-summer fare, I highly recommend Pawel Pawlikowski’s My Summer of Love. I guarantee we will be seeing more of the film’s incredible leads; Nathalie Press recalls a combination of Sissy Spacek and Toni Collete in their youth and Emily Blunt is an arresting, devastatingly beautiful presence. The wonderful score was put together by Alison Goldfrapp. (new album - Supernature - out in Europe late August!) The audience knows pretty much where the plot is going to go from the start – we’ve all seen this story told before – but it is presented in such a captivating way that the ride is well worth it.

I sorta felt the same way about the latest offering from François Ozon to reach the US, 5 X 2. In fact, the film shares many similarities with Gaspard Noé's recent Irreversible, in its reverse structure, poignant portrait of a relationship, as well as a certain unspeakable act of violation. As with My Summer of Love, the romantic leads are magnetic, in particular the wonderful Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi (sister of Carla Bruni!), who brings to mind both Virginia Madsen and Patricia Arquette. I’ve seen all of Ozon’s films, including his early shorts, and given the speed in which he puts his films out, and range of his subject matter, and certain slightness of story that marks his productions, I get the feeling he just makes whatever he feels like without really thinking about it too much. That said, 5 X 2, is perhaps his most mature work.

The same could be said for Gregg Araki’s Mysterious Skin. The director has grown up quite a bit since his annoying enfant-terrible days and the film is quite affecting. Third Rock’s Joseph Gordon-Levitt is excellent and quite a revelation in this piece! I can’t really say I enjoyed the film though because I think a child molester was sitting right in front of me – he seemed to be really getting off during certain scenes and was quite obstrusive throughout his various ticks– and I was disturbed and had finally find another seat! Creepy.

Good news! The Best of Youth is coming back to DC for a limited two week engagement at Landmark E Street downtown. Check the site for the rather tricky showtimes – for some odd reason they are running more screenings of part one than part two – one mustn’t miss any of this production! I have been telling almost everyone I meet to see La Meglio Gioventu – in fact, I think I convinced my old school Italian barber to take his wife and family to it today while getting a trim!