SlapClap

Whenever I tell people that I never want to visit the Hamptons they pause me to ask “Why?” as if I had just told them I’m getting a vasectomy tomorrow. I don’t want to go to the Hamptons precisely because of “art” openings like this, hosted by a photographer whose claim to fame is knowing Madonna and being “kick-ass” at Equestrian. They throw the kind of parties I’d like to see the Joker crash. But it makes an interesting theater for social experiment when you subject them to authority. Remove 3 bottles of wine from a party and suddenly it’s Dog Day Afternoon: People chanting at the police, pools to get-up bail money, whispers of the old colonial “blue laws” enacted by the Dutch a century and a half ago. I can’t think of a group of people I have less in common with, save maybe the Janjaweed.

And in the middle of all of it stands “leggy blonde,” destined to remarry an Elliman real estate executive. She’s one of these women I see on the MET rooftop always on the arm of a man who looks like Joe Biden but 42. I see her and it’s the only time I use the word “o-face” half-seriously, as in “needs one.”

Hollywood scoop: HBO kills Preacher television series.

As it so happens I’m currently in the middle of reading Garth Ennis’s notorious creator-owned comic series Preacher. Or at least I’m at the beginning 1/3 of reading it (just cracked vol. 3). Preacher is about a wayward (yep) preacher in a small Texas town named Jesse Custer who gets possesed by the deity Genisis, spawn of an illicit affair between an angel and demon in heaven. It gives Custer the power of command over any person and compells him, alongside transient Irish vampire Cassidy and ex-girfriend/hitwoman Tulip, to find God and make him answer for abondoning the Kingdom of Heaven once Genisis was born.

The book is a by-the-numbers “slapclap.” It’s one of those books that I tell people I like but not before a thousand caveats. For instance: I don’t like how the thick Texas accents of the characters read on the page, I don’t like the “back when men were men” speechifying by main character Jesse Custer and his vampire buddy Cassidy, and I don’t like the insane grabs for over the top storytelling like having the rogue, one-eyed angel accidently sodomized in an alley in San Francisco.

But I do like the book. Why? It’s big! It’s expansive of imagination and its more juvenile moments are outweighed by its ambition. I’m sold on the trajectory of the story- that ultimately something huge will have to take place, one way or another, for this thing to conclude. And Steve Dillon’s art is very good. It’s too bad it won’t be an HBO show because the series is made for that kind of long serial format. It also distresses me how far HBO has fallen from grace. They can’t get a show going. Where’s F.O.C. by the way? Wait we have to suffer through more Entourage? Slap on you HBO.

Best of Twitter right here. (via fiddlr)

I wish I could take a microphone to the Orange Julius she’ll be at this weekend. “My family is stupid. They should be illegal?” That’s a clap friendo. That’s a clap.

JUNE 20

Barcelona is a marvelous city. Crowds turn out in the streets to watch us work. Mercifully they realize I’ve no time to give autographs, and so they ask only the cast members. Later I handed out some 8-by-10 photos of myself shaking hands with Spiro Agnew and offered to sign them, but by then the crowd had dispersed.

AUG. 10

Directed Javier in emotional scene today. Had to give him line readings. As long as he imitates me he’s fine. The minute he tries his own acting choices he’s lost. Then he weeps and wonders how he’ll survive when I’m no longer his director. I explained politely but firmly that he must do the best he can without me and to try to remember the tips I’ve given him. I know he was cheered because when I left his trailer, he and his friends were howling with laughter.

AUG. 20

Made love with Scarlett and Penélope simultaneously in an effort to keep them happy. Ménage gave me great idea for the climax of the movie.

From: (nytimes)

(Gold medal winner Yelena Isinbayeva)

• The Adorable

(The Sartorialist)

SlapClap Caption

I just saw that? 900 euro for an extra pair of plaid shorts? It’s like I’m fucking your girl Newsted. FUUUK!

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Kanye produced, mother approved. Note the Gallagher reference.

Google me bitch. Now you can do it on your phone … well you can already do it on your phone, but now on a Google phone! … well actually the phone is made by the company HTC: leading makers of mobile phones … in the world!!!

Yay?

And their phones will be powered by Google’s powerful Android software, available in all phones perhaps as early as October … well not all phones. Just those 3 seen above, and only through T-Mobile. Not that exciting really when you think about it. I just did. Think about it. Thought I’d be a little more pumped up about this. That’s the sum of technology though isn’t it? Ultimately deflating. (I should twitter that)

Because who don’t love ‘em? (Michael Vick, the Anti-Christ, Ed McMahon’s assistant, Swiss bankers, Ted Nugent, Robert Smith, hunchback scientists, Perez Musharraf, people who are allergic)

For the weekend.

An algorithm from my email inbox:

ASSURED VENTURE.
You may be skeptical or apprehensive receiving this
email as
we have not met before, I am Mr. Patrick K.W. Chan
(Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer) of the
Hang Seng Bank
Ltd., I have a business proposition involving
huge sum of money in my
bank which I know will be of mutual
benefit of us,and I believe we can
handle it together,
once we have a common understanding and mutual
cooperation in
the execution of this modalities.
I shall furnish you
with more informations about this operation
when l receive your reply.
Should you be interested,
please send me those informations 1.Full
names, 2.Age
3.Occupation, 4.Private phone number,5.Current residential
address.
Via this email address; chan_kwpatck@yahoo.com.hk

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From Onion A/V:

AVC: So it wouldn’t be a pleasure to look at them [past movies], like an old photo album or something, just to see where you were at a particular time?

Woody Allen: That’s a pleasure I deny myself, because then you get into nostalgic self-involvement, and I don’t think that would be good for me. I don’t like to reminisce much, and my walls don’t have photographs of me and the actors I was with, or any of that stuff. If you were in my house in New York, you wouldn’t know I was in the movie business. It just looks like a regular house, like the home of a lawyer or something, and I try and keep that disciplined, and just work. There are so many traps you can get into, and looking back on your own work is certainly one of them.

On the Knicks:

What I’d like the Knicks to develop into is a team that’s fun and that’s colorful and that you really like to watch every night, which is the way they were many years ago. It was fun to watch them, because they didn’t just pile up wins in unappealing ways.

AVC: Like the [San Antonio] Spurs.

WA: Yeah. I’d really rather be entertained and have them come in second than be bored stiff and see them grind to a first-place finish.

What Comic-Con conventions need are less storm troopers and more Woody Allen nerds. Nerds with dark rimmed glasses who take 5 minutes to finish a thought; nerds who would rather be at a book party at Elaine’s than in outer space. Light sabers in the form of self-deprecation, but with a hint of self-assured intellectual superiority. From 1977-1994 Woody Allen made movies that made me happier than any movie by any other filmmaker at any other point in time. Annie Hall, Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Hannah and Her Sisters, Shadows and Fog, Husbands and Wives, Manhattan Murder Mystery, just to name eight. And those aren’t even mentioning his “earlier, funnier ones.”

There’s alot to take away from the Woody-verse of films, especially in your mid-20’s when maturity is suddenly in reach. What’s more sophisticated at age 25 than acquiring a taste for Sidney Bechet records, the Marx Brothers, the word “didactic,” Bergman, existentialism, muted colors, jokes that reference books, Sentimental Education by Flaubert, Tracy’s face …

Of course the other reason to love Woody - that is, if you like New York - is because he loves New York. Instead of grilling the immigrants the city should make every 1st year investment banker in this town watch Manhattan. The Woody-verse bolsters your NY IQ ten-fold. Never mind that when you actually move to New York not even 5% of his movies translate to your day-to-day life. For instance: Winona Ryder won’t be asking you to meet her at El Teddy’s at midnight (closed anyway), and that table at Rao’s is not available even if its restaurant week. But this is not my point. We’re not talking about the show Friends here - disparities don’t make his New York any less real, or the love-contempt relationship to the city his characters embody any less authentic. And there is always the opening sequence of his 1979 masterpiece Manhattan to consider; as rapturous a valentine from an artist to his environment as you’ll find.

Having said all of that let me now say this: 2nd entrant into SlapClap’s Clap Academy Hall of Fame … (drumroll) … I wasn’t planning to do this … (drumroll)

Get up here Wood-man! It’s Woody Allen. Save your messages of praise for after the jump.

Hmmm, the villain from Forgetting Sarah Marshall is co-hosting next month’s VMA’s with Britney. It’s a long drop from Chris Rock isn’t it? But don’t worry because his very specific look and his “comedian as rock star” aesthetic will be just as funny five years from now- we’re sure of it. Yep.

By the way, Britney’s whole career now … off the cuff? Even the promo to the corporate award show she’s co-hosting is her on a blooper reel. It’s like meta-Jessica Simpson, minus Joe + Hot Pockets.