Beastly is only sin deep

THIS KIND OF CRAP is why I'm so serious all the time.

...'And for the talent competition, Sister Rufina will be making rosaries in a dazzling habit of black and white sequins to the music of Neil Young's "Natural Beauty"'.

I used to think Fellini's 'ecclesiastical fashion show' in his movie "Roma" was satire, but I guess it was actually prophecy.

Here's the clip in case you haven't wasted 2 hours of your life to see the rest of the movie:

I Love Pixar

PIXAR makes me happy.

As a traditional architect, as an artist that is disgusted at the thought of future generations comparing my century's art with those of other eras, I often become very depressed at the thought that I was born when I was. (Theological problems with that aside...) I would be happy if I was born anytime during the height of Athens. I truly share in the mindframe of the Renaissance. I would have excelled in the Baroque age. But today, I struggle just to find art that doesn't make me want to puke, and my own progress is held up merely because there's very little to learn from, and it's so disdained by the rest of society.

But Pixar makes me happy to be alive when I am.

If I had the chance, I'd drop everything in my career, move the family up to the bay, and start over with Pixar. I love what they do that much. It's not just that they make entertaining movies for kids. It's not just that their kid movies are just as enjoyable for adults. It's because they make great art, and they are upholding and re-presenting the Truth when they do it.

There are many things about Wall-E that I could go on about. Unfortunately, I've only seen it once, and budgets dictate that I'm going to have to wait for the DVD to see it again. and Again. and Again.

But one of the greatest gems about Wall-E was missed by most audience members eager to beat the parking lot jam-the outro during the end credits.

During a sequence of developing images of art, the short story takes us through the history of art itself, beginning with the two-dimensional bas relief of the Egyptians, to Roman mosaics, to representative frescoes, ultimately ending not with the modernist movements of cubism, surrealism or dadaism, but with impressionism. The 20^th century's contribution to the history of art is entirely missing.

Well, not really.

What follows is a series of Atari-level pixelated graphics of the film's characters weaving in and out of the end credits, curiously reminiscent of the artistic quality of hieroglyphics-which is where the sequence began. Why is this important? Because pixelated, non-figural representative art is the culmination of Modernist abstraction art. But the beauty of this little outro is not just that it cutely gives an art history course, but that the message is mimicking the developing human history as the feature film Wall-E presents it.

As art developed from 2D to 3D (as mankind moved from wall hieroglyphs and mosaics to realistic figural work and then landscapes), a heightened sense of realism was attained, but the subject of the pieces were gradually reduced in 'obviousness'. The subject of Egyptian art is obvious. The subject of Impressionist work is by definition, not obvious. There is a removal from reality here, just like the removal from reality that the extraterrestrial earthlings suffer from in the feature. Overall, the outro challenges us to wonder if we, the human race, are in fact progressing. Our art is representative of our ideas, so what does the lack of clarity, the lack of subject in our art say about where we are and where we are headed?

There is more meaning, story, representation and truth in that little outro than in any regular 'ideology flick' from mainline Hollywood.

And it was done without words.

So to those complainers out there who thought the first 45 minutes of Wall-E was too boring or could have been edited: Open your eyes. There is a lot there. You just have to be willing to accept silence for a minute to learn to use your eyes again.

Big Mac Attack

I was watching TV last night and noticed that EVERY single laptop that I saw in either shows or commercials was a MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, yet they all had the apple light taped over or had a modified case. Now, that's called free product placement, and it happens because advertisers of lesser products want to attach their product to an image of a successful product, a cool product. Now, Apple goes to great extents to advertise new products in an exciting way, but to get boatloads of free adverts is ridiculously awesome.

Remember, apple products are unmistakably 'mac'. When was the last time you saw a black rectangle from distance and said 'now that's an HP, and I love the new design!'. I'd bet never.

Add to all this Pixar's very 'subtle' product placement of apple imagery or actual products, and you have magic potential given that kids love Pixar movies and characters.

Take for example Pixar's most recent gem of a film: Wall-E. Who among us can deny that Eve, that adorably cute and yet extremely powerful robot that Wall-E falls in love with, is actually a futuristic iMac? Word on the street is that Johnny Ive, the Apple VP of design responsible for the iMac and iPod, was a consultant to Disney/Pixar for the film, specifically on Eve's design. I wonder if he added that halo glow always surrounding Eve.

But there are many more references there...Wall-E watches 'Hello Dolly' on a magnified iPod. He chases around a group of one-button mice. When he starts up, he sounds off the start-up sound all Mac users hear daily. My 7 year old turned to me in the middle of the movie and said 'Hey Dad, Wall-E sounds like your computer'.

With that kind of product placement in front of current and future consumers, we have an explosive potential for breaking down the near monopoly of Microsuck and maintaining it for a generation at least.

This reminded me that I have a $100 bet with a friend that Apple will have achieved a 30% market share of personal computers by September 2012. Given RECENT DATA, I'll be collecting that Franklin far in advance of 2012. In fact, he has already bought an iMac himself.

My advice to you investors: ignore recent trends. Buy APPL now. Apple shares will hit $300 by the end of 2009.

Juno, I Think They're Missing Something

After Time Magazine BROKE THE STORY last week of the 'pregnancy pact' in Gloucester, Mass, there's been a lot of talk about the 'Juno Effect'--referring to the spike in teenage pregnancy because recent movies such as 'Juno' and 'Knocked Up' glorified it. Planned Parenthood is on the warpath, and doing anything they can to undermine whatever pro-life message that might have been in these films. Mass media has picked up the torch, attacking any pro-life groups who defend the films as well as the high-school students at the center of current attention in Gloucester.

There's even a NEW REALITY SHOW ON NBC that is puts 16-19 year olds in charge of babies in order to teach them "that parenthood is a very grown-up grind."

But is that the only interpretation of the 'Juno Effect'? I think not.

To me, it's not surprising that there are 17 pregnant girls in a high school of 1200, but it is surprising that there aren't 100s more. Teenage boys and girls are humping like rabbits. And then coerced into aborting by parents and teachers when they magically conceive. And it's obvious that contraceptives aren't working, either. ACCORDING TO The Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, 54% of women who had abortions used contraceptives. 54% failure rate, and they want you to think that contraceptives are more effective than abstinence. (Actually, I think abstinence is the wrong choice of words. We should be promoting chastity of mind and body, not merely abstinence.)

At one college campus in one year, according to figures provided by Feminists for Life of America, “of 3,000 college women, 600 had pregnancy tests; 300 of these tests were positive; and 6 women had babies.” Yes. That means that half of the women tested were pregnant. 98% of them ended in either miscarriage or abortion. I'd bet maybe 1 or 2 was a miscarriage.

So back to Gloucester. We know that kids have been and are promiscuous. We know that there's been an increase in pregnancies, as the pregnancy rate for teens is up 3% nationwide in 2006, but abortions are on the decline overall. So, instead of saying that 'Juno' has put it into these teenagers' minds that they have to have to get pregnant to be cool, we should think that it has put it in their mind that it's really not cool to kill the baby should they get pregnant. I wouldn't doubt that some of the girls got pregnant to be in THE INNER RING. (If there's only one linked article you read from this blog, make it 'The Inner Ring'.) But I do doubt free contraceptives from the school would have prevented this.

Juno is not convincing kids to have more sex just to have babies. Juno is helping them see that abortion is not the only choice once they are pregnant. Now, we need to help them see that chastity is an earlier choice.