Just Like Me

Huh. In one of those strange confluences of coincidence, Anthony Lane's review of Exit Through the Gift Shop references both Welles' F for Fake and Surrealism.(*) Although he ends up in a different place - he hates the flick, and I understand his feelings, but being from LA I found it pretty entertaining - what are the odds of both of us making the same arguments and supporting them with the same fairly obscure references?

In fact, I sympathize with his misgivings, but the part that I liked was its commentary on "the scene and scenesters." THAT is the true value of this flick, and having come up in LA and watching it evokes a feeling not unlike watching Spinal Tap. It's a joke - not necessarily satire - about a joke. The transparent commenting on co-modification is okay, though a well-worn re-tread, and yet, that's not his fault. It is, after all, the way the system works, trite as it is to point it out.

One other thing; I saw ETtGS with Renee and two of her friends. Afterwards I asked her friends if they thought it had significance that it took part mainly in LA. They didn't think so.

Back to Anthony Lane.

The Welles reference I get, as his thing, like mine, is movies. Still, even among movie heads, F for Fake is obscure.

The Surrealist reference is more improbable; the guy's 48, so Surrealism was for all intents and purposes a dead issue as a movement. Now, England did play a fairly major minor role back in the day, and they had an active coterie of English Surrealists who organized some pretty big shows with the participation of many of the French group, including Breton and Eluard. Fairly recently, I believe the Tate ran a show about a decade or so ago.

Smart dude, that Anthony Lane; haha, a transparent hat tip to myself, there. His excerpted review follows.

===========================

(*) The forever elegant Duchamp, though never formally a member, was a participant supporter and even curated some of their most famous shows, like the one where he glued coal sacks to the ceiling which created a weird and decidedly non-elegant setting to say the least.

Tzara, the Zurich dada boss before Surrealism was codified, was "awaited like the second coming" when the young, soon to be Surrealists courted him to Paris and they threw themselves into dada full force. It didn't last long; as the French group was steeped in the romantic tradition and interested in psychic explorations - this is Freud's time - dada's incessant nihilism wore on them. After the breach and formal organizing with the first Surrealist Manifesto in '24, Tzara - in a bit of weird symmetry - eventually re-joined them as a Surrealist. Thus, the father became the son.

The Current Cinema
Street Justice
“Kick-Ass” and “Exit Through the Gift Shop.”
by Anthony Lane

April 20, 2010

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2010/04/26/100426crci_cinema_lane#ixzz0lq6IZpTw

Who made “Exit Through the Gift Shop”? No writer or director is credited, but it describes itself as “A Banksy Film.” To those of you who keep up with developments in street art less eagerly than you should, it must be explained that Banksy is not a derogatory adjective but the alias of an unspecified British artist who has indeed put art on the streets. His paintings and stencillings have won him a fan base of fashionable ardor, unceasingly piqued by his anonymity.

As if in tribute to that eel-like elusiveness, only a portion of “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is about the man himself. We see a cowled and low-lit figure, who speaks with a West Country burr. (This is the most derided of English accents, associated in the public ear with a rustic slowness, and splendidly out of kilter with the braying of the art world.) Banksy tells us about a guy who was trying to make a documentary about him, whereupon—hey, presto!—the rest of the movie turns around and follows that guy. He is Thierry Guetta, though he pronounces his first name “Terry,” thus becoming one of the few Frenchmen in history to prefer his Anglicized self. Even his mustache betrays a Victorian luxuriance; “He looked like something out of the eighteen-sixties,” as Banksy says.

Guetta explains that, living in Los Angeles, with his wife and children, he became interested in, then addicted to, the hit-and-run world of street art. He made friends with a number of artists, whether they wanted befriending or not, and filmed them with a handheld video camera as they worked. Eventually, the road led to Banksy, for whom Guetta became a partner in crime—accompanying him to Disneyland, where Banksy placed an inflatable doll resembling a hooded inmate at Guantánamo next to a ride, causing Guetta to endure hours of unamused questioning by the authorities. Even this failed to sate him, and the latter half of the movie shows him deciding to cross over and become an artist himself, like a war reporter picking up a gun. The joke is that he has no discernible gift, save a knack for self-advertisement; the more depressing joke is that this crumb of talent turns out to be enough. He calls himself Mr. Brainwash, and fills an abandoned television studio with sub-Warholian dreck of his own devising. Art scavengers, lured by the smell of publicity, line up, open the jaws of their wallets, and feast.

“Exit Through the Gift Shop” could and should have been an excoriating work. It isn’t often that I wish a high-minded Marxist had been in charge of a motion picture, but who else would you trust with the spectacle of subversive activity being commandeered, and fetishized, by the capitalist machinery that it was meant to undermine? This doesn’t apply just to Guetta, who still believes, bless him, that rehashed images of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis retain the power to mock and shock, and who, long before the movie is done, dwindles from a doting eccentric into a tiring bore; it also applies to Banksy himself, or, at any rate, to the moment when his paintings found their way onto the walls of Sotheby’s. To forge a million pounds’ worth of fake British banknotes, with the Queen’s head replaced by that of Diana, Princess of Wales, is a definable feat of guerrilla art. But to have your print of Kate Moss sold by a London auction house for ninety-six thousand pounds of real money, whatever you choose to do with it, means that you have been press-ganged from the street where you roamed free.

As a study in prankhood, this Banksy film can’t touch “F for Fake,” Orson Welles’s 1974 movie about an art forger. Welles both conspired with his untrustworthy subject and held him at arm’s length, like a conjurer with his rabbit, and you came out dazzled by the sleight, whereas “Exit Through the Gift Shop” feels dangerously close to the promotion of a cult—almost, dare one say it, of a brand. Nothing by Banksy or his acolytes would have been remotely alarming to Marcel Duchamp, or to Tristan Tzara; what would have struck them was the means by which a Banksy image can be reproduced—the sudden velocity at which its impact can travel, whether online or through the eyes of a hundred cell phones. That is what binds “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” unexpectedly, to “Kick-Ass”: the sense, both arousing and disconcerting, that, whatever you want to be, whether it’s an artist, a superhero, or a mystery man, all you need is the nerve to exhibit that desire. Then hit Send.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2010/04/26/100426crci_cinema_lane?currentPage=all#ixzz0lqeg3x5w

A Corpse

Renee and I saw Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop yesterday and it was pretty funny. It was so appropriate that the crazy shit he talks about went down in LA, probably the goofiest place on earth.

One clarification; people seem to forget that there's history. In reading some of the reviews on ETtGS, you'd think that Shephard Fairey and Banksy had created street art. But I really don't like it when reviewers say things like this:

This self-conscious Post Modern sort of cinematic device--which, of course, reached new heights in the fiction-non-fiction films of Charlie Kaufman--works really well in this film and within the street art context. Street art itself turns reality into fantasy as its creators transform public places into unlikely and often illegal canvases and impromptu galleries. So, while narrators and voiceover are usually loathed devices in film, they seems to give Gift Shop an appropriately fable-esque magical sensibility.
-Shana Ting Lipton (in the HuffPo!)

First, Charlie Kaufman as "new heights in the fiction-non-fiction films" is as a kid compared to Welles' achievement.

Second, the great thing about Banksy is the taste of subversion that sometimes peeks its head up. When he hung up his own paintings in museums for instance, it was the act itself that eclipsed any artistic merit the painting itself might have had.

Aside from ignoring history in the form of the early hip hop graf crews and before them, LA's own king of the streets Robbie Conal and the barrios of East LA, today's generation takes subversion and makes it an in-joke. I get it, you're hipsters, okay?

As a young person I got lucky and hit the lottery in my discovery of Surrealism. Coming up as I did in the 60's/70's, I was at first attracted to the "far out" quality of their paintings. But I stuck with it, and because of my amateur sleuthing and fate, I discovered that Surrealism was a movement, moral in its philosophy, poetic in expression and subversive in tactics.


This is a picture of one of the titans of Surrealism, Benjamin Peret, insulting a priest. Coming up in a thoroughly Catholic environment I found this picture astounding; the spell was cast. These dudes had balls the size of which wouldn't be seen again until the 60's.

Subversion's cousin, scandal, was also an oft used Surrealist weapon. Their public hanging of Nobel Laureate Anatole France - the man of French letters - is legendary.

The first pamphlet, arranged largely by André Breton and Louis Aragon, appeared in response to the national funeral of Anatole France. France, the 1921 Nobel Laureate and best-selling author, who was then regarded as the quintessential man of French letters, proved to be an easy target for an incendiary tract. The pamphlet featured an essay called Anatole France, or Gilded Mediocrity that scathingly attacked the recently deceased author on a number of fronts. The pamphlet was an act of subversion, bringing into question accepted values and conventions, which Anatole France was seen as personifying.
--Wikipedia

Some of the details of the Wiki on "Un Cadavre" can be misleading, but I'll leave that for now.

Irony and humor were founding principles and strategies as well. When Surrealism's "Pope," Andre' Breton, performed what would become one of his customary excommunications from the ranks, his butt got bit on more than one occasion.


That's Breton in the pic, of course, the target of some of his victims.

All of this is to say that while I enjoy some of Banksy's stuff, I particularly relish when he's subversive. Trouble is, in this post-post-modern world full of hipsters, something's been lost. When Banksy hangs one of his pictures in a museum, it comes off as a self-conscious prank, a joke, as opposed to dadaists and Surrealists who would pass out pamphlets inviting the public to attend a theater performance. Upon showtime, the audience would be greeted by the young subversives reading off tracts, insulting and scandalizing everything from French politics to cookie-cutter morals. Perhaps it's a sign of the times that we live in an era when priests are fucking kids but the world looks away, and back in the day the Surrealists got right in their face and cursed them out.

The young Surrealists in the golden age of the Left Bank and their dada forefathers understood one thing; they'd just come out of devastation in the form of WWI, and being writers they knew what to do; get busy. Their logic was impeccable; if it was rationality that had shit out the war, then in true dialectical manner they deduced ir-rationality must have something worthwhile to combat it. As rationality was a necessary component of life their conclusion was a fusion and transcendence of a world that did its best to exclude "the marvelous" in life and reduce living to the mundane. "Where contradictions cease to exist - sur-reality."

That their golden age was framed by two miserable wars is not lost on students of the movement. Fast forward and Vietnam becomes the catalyst for the counter-culture of the 60's and 70's. Today, with two out of control and un-winnable wars raging away and EM08 relentlessly wood-chipping the world, the feeling is of utter hopelessness. As Bunuel, a Surrealist to the end, famously said; "Where is the kindness and intelligence that will save us?"

Meanwhile, Banksy makes bank and incites no one except to pull out their pocketbook, as he himself documents.

Last, the Surrealists loved Paris, famously documented in Aragon's classic Paris Peasant. They reveled in late night walks around their beloved city, thinking and planning ways to further scandalize what they saw as a lost society. So in parting, here's Richard Hawley's song that opens and closes the film, The Streets are Ours.

Just a Big Kid: Tex Avery

One of the ironies of LA being the film capitol of the world is that we've never had a world class film festival. In all my years of asking people why this was, I've never received a satisfactory answer; the closest I got was that the buyers want to get out of town. Thus, Europe (Cannes, Berlin) and North America (Montreal, Sundance) have come to dominate mass distribution. But I digress.

The closest LA came to a world class fest was Gary Essert's Filmex. Through all of its faults - and there were many - Filmex was a special time in LA, dominating the westside and the now gone Century Plaza Theaters, next to the Shubert. It was through Filmex's animation sections that I first realized that animation was more than cartooning. Among those I remember; Paul Driessen (who worked on The Beatles' "Yellow Submarine"), Ian Emes's "French Windows" (which I saw either at Filmex or "The Fantastic Animation Festival" in Laguna Beach), Marv Newland's "Bambi Meets Godzilla" (which made us laugh every time probably because we were stoned each viewing), Frank Zappa's, "Baby Snakes" which featured the claymation of Bruce Bickford who was superior to Will Vinton, and Mike Jittlov, whose "Wizard of Speed and Time" was always a showstopper but which I found really corny. As usual, they're probably all on you-know-where-tube.

It was this reckoning that made me re-assess classic studio animation, and the capper was when I read about the reverence for which the Surrealists held Tex Avery. As a kid I loved Tex. His cartoons usually had a level of lunacy beyond anything else that more often than not peaked in delirium. One of his classics, "King Size Canary," cracked me up as a kid.

Another of my favorite Avery characters was Droopy, a laconic, slow talking lil hound dawg who pulled some of the most outrageous stunts. Like being able to appear anywhere...



Droopy the foil takes a back seat here to the two main characters, placed in a tough situation...



Another Avery favorite, Chilly Willy the penguin who, like Droopy, is a foil full of trickery.


Tex Avery, much like Hitch's "Vertigo" is proof that even the studio system back in the day couldn't suppress personal visions. He still makes me laugh.

An Unspeakable Betrayal

==================================================
NY Times

Surrealism For Sale, Straight From The Source; André Breton's Collection Is Readied for Auction

By ALAN RIDING
Published: December 17, 2002

In photographs André Breton is rarely seen smiling. As the founder and undisputed leader of the Surrealist movement, he evidently took himself seriously. Between the 1920's and 1950's he alone defined the rules of Surrealism and tolerated no challenge to his authority. He encouraged rebellion against prevailing artistic and social norms, but artists and poets who fell out of his favor were summarily expelled from the movement.

On the other hand, he must have had loads of charisma.

Over the years, in addition to the artworks he bought, notably primitive sculptures from Oceania, hundreds of paintings, drawings, photographs and books were given to him by friends, followers and little-known artists seeking his blessing. When Breton died at 70 on Sept. 28, 1966, his small apartment at 42 Rue Fontaine in the Pigalle district of Paris was a veritable treasure trove. He had lived there since 1922. His heirs -- his widow, Elisa, and his daughter from an earlier relationship, Aube -- decided to touch nothing. ''My stepmother lived there, and it was her family environment,'' Aube Breton Elléouët, 67, explained. ''For 35 years we looked for an answer to what could be done with this collection. My father had never expressed himself on the subject.''

Now, two years after Elisa Breton's death, with the French government unwilling to buy the collection, the largest single record of the Surrealist movement is to be sold next spring at the Hôtel Drouot-Richelieu, where Paris auctions are held. One measure of the size of the sale is that the auction house, CalmelsCohen, plans at least six catalogs to cover the 5,300 lots. The auction, from April 1 to 18, is expected to raise $30 million to $40 million.

Books, which account for 3,500 of the lots, include some dedicated to Breton by Freud, Trotsky and Apollinaire as well as art catalogs and journals. Among the 500 lots of manuscripts are originals of some of Breton's writings as well as records of Surrealist ''games'' and experiments. Modern art is represented by 450 paintings, drawings and sculptures and 500 lots of photographs. And there are 200 examples of popular art and 150 works of primitive art, mainly from Oceania. (A description of the collection is online at breton.calmelscohen.com.)

To compensate for the inevitable dispersal of the collection, the entire contents of 42 Rue Fontaine have been recorded digitally and will be made available through a CD-ROM. ''Everything,'' explains a news release by Jean-Michel Ollé and Jean-Pierre Sakoun, who prepared the database. ''Paintings, objects, photos, manuscripts, books. Everything from the least important to the most, the historic and the everyday, the private and the public.''

The principal item not included in the auction is what is known as Breton's Wall, literally the cluttered wall behind his desk that was featured in many photographs and came to be considered a work of art -- the art of collecting -- in its own right. The wall was given by Mrs. Breton Elléouët to the National Museum of Modern Art at the Georges Pompidou Center in lieu of death duties owed to the government by the Breton estate.

The wall's shelves are crowded with dozens of Oceanic sculptures as well as Inuit objects and pre-Hispanic figures from Mexico. On the wall itself are paintings, engravings and drawings by the likes of Francis Picabia, Alfred Jarry, Roberto Matta, Jean Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Picasso, Joan Miró and Wassily Kandinsky. And tucked among them is the odd personal item, like a photograph of Elisa Breton.

Yet the collection to be sold in the spring reveals more about Breton's approach to art, since it includes not only major works, but also lesser works by long forgotten artists and even objects that Breton bought at auctions and flea markets or simply found while out strolling.

''My father had as much passion for a piece found on the bank of a river as for an important painting in his collection,'' Mrs. Breton Elléouët said.

Still, the auction will not lack important works, notably ''Danseuse Espagnole'' or ''Spanish Dancer,'' by Miró, Matta's ''Poster for Arcane 17,'' Magritte's ''Woman Hidden in a Forest,'' an untitled work by Arshile Gorky and ''Danger, Dancer,'' a painting on a photograph on glass by Man Ray. It also includes scores of less valuable works by equally famous artists, among them Picasso, Picabia, Arp, Duchamp, Max Ernst, Wilfredo Lam, Victor Brauner and André Masson. More than 100 original prints by Man Ray dominate the photography collection.

Notably absent is any work by Giorgio de Chirico, the Italian Metaphysical painter, with whom Breton fell out. And a postcard-size collage and gouache is the only work in the sale by Salvador Dali, easily the most famous Surrealist painter, who was expelled from the movement by Breton. The auction also includes no book by the poet Louis Aragon, another friend turned foe. The evidence is clear: Surrealist rebels were expurgated from Breton's life.

Breton himself, while he dabbled with collages and wrote poetry of considerable merit, was most famous simply for being Breton. He was above all immensely curious, his early poetry and interest in psychoanalysis serving as a springboard for Surrealism's constant exploration of the connections between poetry and life, chance, love and sexuality. To describe Surrealism as a sect is to ignore its enormous influence, but Breton himself was very much its guru.

''I believe it is into my thought that I put all my daring, all the strength and hope of which I am capable,'' he wrote in a letter to the art collector Jacques Doucet in December 1924, shortly after publication of the Surrealist Manifesto. ''It possesses me entirely, jealously and makes a mockery of worldly goods.''

Certainly while Surrealism today is best remembered through the works of Dali, Magritte, Miró and Ernst, visual art was not central to Breton's vision of the movement. Yet he undoubtedly had an eye for innovative art: it was at his insistence that in 1924 Doucet bought one of the landmark works of 20th-century art, Picasso's ''Desmoiselles d'Avignon,'' now a jewel in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

As an inspiration for Surrealism, though, Breton was drawn principally to Oceanic art, which he described as ''one of the great lock-keepers of our heart.'' While African art was the rage in Paris at the time, he felt it was too linked to human rituals and animals. He preferred Oceanic art ''for its immemorial effort to express the interpenetration of the physical and the mental, to triumph over the dualism of perception and representation.'' Put more simply, he considered it more mystical.

''Oceanic objects were Breton's companions all his life,'' said Pierre Amrouche, an expert on primitive art who is an adviser to the Breton auction. ''It was his family, a tribe of which he was the chief. The very first object he acquired was an Easter Island piece bought when he was 15 with money he was given for good school results.'' (The most valuable Oceanic work in the auction is ''Uli,'' a four-foot-high wooden ancestor statue from the South Pacific island New Ireland, with a sale price estimated at $600,000 to $800,000.)

When Breton traveled to Mexico in 1938 to visit the exiled Trotsky, he discovered pre-Hispanic art. And when he was himself exiled in the United States during World War II, he further developed his interest in American Indian and Inuit art, which also joined his collection. From 1941 to 1945, with Ernst, Dali, Matta and other Surrealists also in exile, New York became the temporary capital of Surrealism, although Breton never felt at home there: he never bothered to learn English.

His own political views were always on the left, but he was a true militant only of Surrealism. He joined the French Communist Party in 1927 and, unaccustomed to taking orders, was soon horrified by its dogmatism. He finally resigned from the party in 1935 (this was the main cause of his rift with Aragon, who stayed in the party), but after the war he was a vocal critic of France's involvement in wars in Indochina and Algeria and an outspoken foe of Stalinism.

Although Surrealism survived the war, with Breton himself returning to Paris to preside over it, by the 1950's and 1960's it had been overtaken by new art movements. Yet when Breton died, while Surrealist paintings hung on the walls of museums around the world, it was at 42 Rue Fontaine that the soul of the movement resided. Works were frequently loaned for exhibitions, but repeated efforts by his widow and daughter to win government backing for creation of a Breton or a Surrealist foundation came to nothing.

After Elisa Breton's death in early 2000 and the transfer of Breton's Wall to the Pompidou, Mrs. Breton Elléouët decided to make an inventory of the collection. ''That's when we became involved,'' Laurence Calmels, a partner in CalmelsCohen, recalled. ''We arrived at 42 Rue Fontaine, where nothing had changed except 'the Wall.' Breton's desk was as he left it, his pipe, the bag of tobacco, the books. There were paintings on walls, but we found many covered in dust in a mezzanine. There were cartons of documents. He kept everything. It took three months to do the inventory.''

It was only then, convinced that she had no alternative, that Mrs. Breton Elléouët reluctantly chose to sell the collection. ''A few works have been sold to the Pompidou and the new Primitive Arts Museum,'' she said. ''As for the rest of the collection, during 35 years of representations we received not a single proposal or offer of help.''

The Triumphant Sun

That unmistakable major tone that distinguishes greater from lesser poets. -Andre Breton on Aime Cesaire Those who've helped me find my way out of the various fogs in my life are owed a debt that can never be repaid. All I can do is pay homage and be thankful for having found them. So it is with Aime Cesaire, a titan of a being if ever there was one. His passing not only removes a true voice against oppression, but marks the end of an era for me. The last of the classic Surrealists, it was through Breton that I first discovered Cesaire, first, in his poetry, then in his diatribe Discourse on Colonialism, which pre-dated Fanon's later, more well-known works. But what I appreciated so much about Cesaire was his insightfulness, the way he'd analyze the colonial dynamic down to the interpersonal level, down to the way one spoke. In the French colonized Carribean, that meant an ongoing war between Patois and French, which I talked about in an earlier post that cites Euzhan Palcy's, Sugarcane Alley. By the way, Palcy made a doc on Cesaire which I was lucky to see at the Pan-African Film Fest several years ago. It's good, and quite a thrill to see the man himself.

As the story goes, Breton was on a layover in Martinique and in a haberdashery when he picked up a copy of Tropiques, edited by Cesaire, and began to read one of his poems. Immediately struck by the Surrealist techniques, Breton hunted Cesaire down. Cesaire would confirm his allegiance to Surrealism, not only in technique in art, but the morality of the "movement." It's easy to take pot shots at Breton these days, and in certain snobbified circles, it's of a fashion. I myself have plenty of problems with the man, and the many "ex-communications" throughout Surrealism's stormy existence (Ernst, Desnos, Aragon...) attest to this fact. And as problematic as it is for a privileged, white Frenchman to bestow the seal of approval upon a black colonial, he also staunchly praised him to the skies and brought Cesaire to the attention of those who could take his voice to the ends of the earth. Cesaire's intransigent spirit was like a giant pillar that runs to the core of the earth. When like so many other leftists, he joined the French CP, he soon became disillussioned with their ability to answer the colonial question, but specifically, the black question. Negritude. Like Ellison's nameless Invisible Man, the CP would fall short and prompt a great riposte, his ascerbic, Letter to Maurice Thorez, the then CP head. I try and communicate to Renee that you have to get your head and heart right. That means having an intellect that's armed to the teeth, but the spirit to fire rockets. To not be a pussy doesn't mean acting hard, it means being hard. The kids in the barrio have it all wrong; it's not their fault, because what do you expect from a situation like that? Which is why Dr. Huey P. Newton's observation that the best Panthers were always the brothers off the corner, the hustlers, gangstas, fucking degenerates, because once politicized, they became fierce enemies of oppression. Were there problems in that scenario as well, like sexism and homophobia? Of course. That's a fact. But that doesn't invalidate the revolution that overcomes a person in shedding that "old skin." After all, don't those things also exist in boardrooms and any other echelon of power? Or worse, amongst priests who pray on young people? And so Cesaire spoke to and for "those who don't even speak proper French." This my favorite poem that I cited last year. Aime Cesaire is dead. Long live Aime Cesaire. 

JUDGMENT OF THE LIGHT

Transfixing muscles and blood devouring all eyes this intense bright mass of foliage crowning with truth our usual lights a ray a spray from the triumphant sun by means of which justice will be done and every arrogance washed away Household vessels and human flesh slip away into the thick neck of the waves silences by way of contrast have begun to exert the most substantial pressures

Around the circumference of the circle among public activities along the riverbanks the flame stands solitary and splendid in its upright judgment

My Sista Maloy

With the dearth of good Asian/APA writers, it's about time I wrote about a bad Asian sista; you can click through to her old blog above, but her new blog is subscription only.

Besides being smart, what I appreciate about Maloy is that she brings an Asian national perspective that is rarely within the realm of Asian Pacific American (APA) consciousness. It was evident when I first began reading her posts on colonialism. And as someone who has historically had to fetch deconstruction on colonialism/post-colonialism from outside of the Asian/APA circle, more often than not from black intellectuals (like Cesaire, CLR James and Fanon, and others such as Don Bustany, Said, Zinn, and the Surrealists), she was a breath of fresh air.

And as I've said before that Michael Moore's work, despite it's polemical nature, is insightful. But it's a rare feat when someone can take serious subjects and make them funny and entertaining. Comedians such as Bruce, Carlin and Rock do this, and Moore really hit the bull's eye with Sicko. Maloy's entertainment factor isn't always on because sometimes she's just being straight serious, but generally her blog's smart, and she's really entertaining.

Did I (just) mention entertaining? Mix parts of Amy Winehouse train wreck, good writer, up to snuff colonial deconstruction and fashionista. Oh, and goldsmith.

Now, watching Renee grow up has been fascinating. She's acutely aware of how lame APAs are, how they worship at the feet of all things that only sink one deeper into "the system" and fog the mirror of self-reflection. There's a real price paid in that worship, and one of them is the utter lack of strong role models available to her as an Asian woman. They simply don't exist.

And here's something many of you might not know; for a good part of her life, Renee has spent significant amounts of it in Hawaii, which is dominated by Asian/Pacific Islander culture. Well, "dominated" in spite of being overrun by white culture, if that makes any sense. Also, my father was born there, and I've relatives who call it home.

So I turned her on to Maloy a while back, and she was an instant fan, as I suspected she would be. It's funny, but Renee and I can be out eating and catching up, and we often bring up Maloy's latest take, and we're off to the races, using it as a touchstone for analogical and analytical discussions about everything from music to colonialism to the sorry state of APAs.

It's weird how I live in a city rife with Asian nationals and Americans, but I feel outside of the circle. There's a fundamental rift between us and it's always been there. Perhaps it has something to do with me having been raised in a Chicano culture, I don't know, but I've always been at odds with "them." I mention that rift because while Maloy and I have never met in person, I feel much more at home with her ideas than the sterile nothingness of APA politics and art. (In fairness, there are some very talented APA comedians who I wish would get a shot. Honestly, there are some funny suckas out there)

A while back I wrote to Maloy and we've corresponded a few times, and despite her sometimes curmudgeonly blog demeanor, she comes across as really sweet on an interpersonal level. She even helped Renee once with a life situation, and for that I'm thankful. Hey you remember being 16, right?

But I guess among the things I really appreciate is her honesty and forthrightness. She pulls no punches. And as someone who endures a goodly amount of passive-aggressive behavior in his life, she's a welcome change.

So here's a raised glass to you, Sista Maloy, on the other side of the world.

Stay up!