WesCeleb...

This is my mood right now: that feeling when you look at an old picture and remember the time fondly, but also notice you're wearing a painfully awkward outfit, or were really secretly unhappy at that moment, or kind of fat-looking. I believe wistful/regretful/nostalgic sums up my brooding. A second metaphor, which makes more sense as I get into my wesceleb section of the post: here.

What led to this evening in by myself brooding all started with staying up until 6am yesterday. I went out to a familiar bar (Fat Black..) and had some oddly normal conversations with people with whom awkwardness is more the norm. I had some Mamoun's falafel, a bad idea, with too much hot sauce, and ended up kind of awake and hyper and watching random Food Network shows and eating Ben and Jerry's way past when the content had transitioned into paid programming. I woke up at 2pm, had some caffeine and chocolate soy milk, and went for a swim at the NYSC in Times Square.

Turns out it's in a decently nice hotel, and you have to walk through the lobby and up an escalator, past a restaurant, bar, and conference room before you can even get to the right elevator bank. Or at least that's what I did since I was kind of lost.

Since I was hungover and unshowered, I had worked it by throwing on some hipster casj (head scarf, dollar sunglasses, buffalo plaid) and felt a bit out of place. I told my Mom this and she said people would think I was a star. This made me think of my Steve-O sighting at the Dream Hotel. He walked into the elevator, shirtless save the flannel shirt tied around his neck like a prep, flanked by his linebacker of a bodyguard. I need me one of those.

After a swim, steam room detox, and a trip to TJ's, Anna texted me back to say she was feeling depressed and not leaving her apartment. I kind of took on that mood myself, and spent some internet time trolling personals websites. Actually I am thinking of joining-joining Match.com. This cute boy who is a medical resident (anesthesiology !) emailed me after I winked at him, but I can't read the email unless I pay. BOO!

Then I decided to catch up on Wesleying, which had a post about a MGMT article in Nylon. I remembed listening to their song "Kids" a lot a couple years ago, but I've stumbled across quite a few times in the past few months. First their song "Time to Pretend" was the free download of the week on iTunes, then I noticed that song was in the Top 100 Songs of 2007 on Pitchfork, then this. I checked out their site, whoismgmt.com, their myspace (added them as one of my friends), and then finally got around to watching the insanely-long-to-download music video. Directed by Ray Tintori. It's absolutely fabulous: the visual effects, the costuming, and, importantly for a music video, the relation between the diegeis of the lyrics and its visual and narative mimesis in the video. While the lyrics ironically call to the singers' desire to live rock star lives (even weirder since now they kind of are rock stars), the music video follows another fantasy, with people wearing hipster-shaman going on a cross of a 60's psychedelic/Native American mescaline spirit quest. I liked that it culminated in a hunt; the archery shots were well-composed, and reminded me of Ray's Sight and Sound film, which had quite possibly the best low-angle shot of cardboard sword fighting I have ever seen. I think this might be a directorial motif :). Also, a lot of the extras are people I recognize - I'm like, isn't that one guy the quiet person from my epidemiology class?

Seeing this tremendous talent, much of it still raw, only exacerbated this wistful feeling I've been having. Then, of course, the following lyrics made it worse:

"Yeah it's overwhelming, but what else can we do?
Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?"

I have a job in an office. I wake up for the morning commute.

This makes me feel sad.

I also stumbled across this article, In AdAge (back into my current profession!). Turns out this music video was so good, now Ray's being repped by the same people who represent Michel Gondry. Ridiculous. Also, two other Wesleyan senior thesis films were on NYMag, including Egg, which I saw my Freshman year and have been dying to see again ever since. (note: youtube-sized screen does not do the 16mm justice)

So all this, and other random stuff, like seeing the Stone twins in a Dell computer commercial during the Oscars (kind of a big deal, people know us..) and finding out some other Wes guy won Beauty and the Geek, and seeing ANTM alum Kim Stolz doing random stuff for the election on MTV - hey, I want to be famous too! Seriously, though, I will never be as cool as those peeps. I'll have to think about this one...maybe it's Time to Pretend?

FULL LYRICS

I'm feeling rough, I'm feeling raw, I'm in the prime of my life...