Hillary Duff's redemptive turn

The water main in my office building broke today and, seeing as they couldn't exactly deny 8 floors of people access to porcelain facilities, they sent us home around 1:30 this afternoon. What's a girl to do with a surprise of a free afternoon? Why, watch War, Inc., of course.

As far as movies that satirize the corporatization of the war in Iraq go, I'm sure this one's quite funny. However, it had too many fancy pyrotechnic effects and too many guns and too much John-Cusack-puking-very-unexpectedly for my taste. I don't know if it's some kinda defense mechanism or if I really do get just that bored, but explosions and other action-movie hallmarks make me sleepy as hell. I dozed off a couple times.

Nonetheless, I'm sure it has plenty of incisive and amusing things to tell you. If you can somehow manage to stay awake with bombs going off in your living room, I mean.

Now, I may have derided the oeuvre of Hillary Duff in the past. Though her hambone teenage goopfests have made my list of of go-to hotel-room-viewing choices more than once, I could never claim that anything she's been in has been enjoyable, exactly. Mindless and non-taxing after a day of business travel, perhaps. But not, like, good.

That said, whoever had the idea to cast her as a Middle Eastern pop star in War, Inc. is probably a genius. Sure, her assumed accent is a little sketchy. Yes, she still looks like a white girl-- just a white girl with a lot of kohl around her eyes. And no, she didn't suddenly develop substantive acting chops.

But two of her scenes pretty much make the movie.

In one scene, I swear to god, she fellates the nozzle of a gas pump. Hillary Duff orally ministering to a gas pump-- classic. And in the second, she's all decked out in a Britney-esque slut-erific bridal minidress... and she lays waste to a battalion of mercenaries with some kinda semi-automatic. Yep. Hillary Duff, armed and matrimonial.

I don't know if this movie's really worth watching. I'm sure it's up to something good, but it's not the kind of movie that speaks to my soul. However, in my book, it wins loads of irony points for badassifying one of the cutest of the Disney proteges.

That's an almost-endorsement, right?

I am still me I am still me I am still me I am still me

Last week, I acquired my very own single office at work. When I first learned about this, I was quite sad as my former officemate is adorable and often offered me a much-desired distraction from work by sharing the ongoing tribulations of planning her wedding with me. And though I miss her (well, really, she's now next door to the communal printer and I can get a Celeste fix whenever I really need one), I've realized I can decorate my office with all manner of weirdness and no one can say a word!

This weekend, I bought some images for my walls with the idea that having weird things around me will contantly remind me that I'm weird myself, and will prevent me from assimilating into the corporate morass, even though I feel it licking hungrily at my heels every day.

Here's a list of my purchases:

Symphony for Felicia, Joan Snyder.
Snyder's a neo-abstract-expressionist lesbian painter... and the painting officially lives at the High Museum in Atlanta, a place that I love. This particular painting has slightly more subtle vaginal imagery than most of Snyder's other work, so I figured it wouldn't offend anyone. And hey, one of my colleagues has her little Georgia O'Keefes all over her office... a few more pictures of vaginae aren't gonna hurt anybody.

Blue Mountain, Vassily Kandinsky
This is a really gorgeous early, more representational Kandinsky than most. As I love to read the first books of poets, I find that I often also love the earlier, more formative work of big deal painters-- the stuff that shows where and how they learned their lessons, the stuff that's a little less iconic. Pasiphae, that transitional Pollock painting, has always been my favorite of his... mostly because it so obviously shows all his growing pains. I think this work shows a similar stage in Kandinsky's development.

I, and the Village, Marc Chagall
I once spent an entire afternoon at MoMA stairing at nothing but this painting. I mean, I made a special trip into NYC just to go spend time with it. I love it for all its otherworldliness, its nostalgia, and also because Chagall uses more green in the composition than one can usually get away with. A predominately green painting will, more often than not, fall flat. Trust me, I've tried -- green paintings are just hard to pull off. But this one totally glitters.

Albino Sword Swallower at a Carnival, Maryland, Diane Arbus
Who doesn't need a picture of a circus freak on her wall at work to remind her of her own freakishness?

publicity poster for Cremaster 5, Matthew Barney
Really, this is just a big, slightly creepy photo of some severed doll heads and Barney himself covered in some white powder. However, it has the word "cremaster" in large typeface across the bottom of it. And though I doubt anyone would actually make a big deal about it, I'm really putting it on my wall because not too many people actually know what the cremaster is... and because I know a few folks from my office read my blog, I'll allow their curiosity to goad them into googling it themselves, instead of spelling it out here. They all pretty much know I have the dirtiest mind in the building anyway. But god knows I love the fact that artists like Barney exist (see my July 25th, 2006 post for more about Barney)-- because someone has to do that purposefully rarified, whacked-out stuff, right?

And so, in this way, I hope to not lose track of myself.