Welcome to Eatster! (A Meta-Holiday, Proposed by Chika Michelle)
Let’s eat! And let us celebrate that! No birth, no death, no battles fought or wars won–I propose a new holiday! One for which no one had to suffer or struggle or push another human being out of their body and then get no credit for doing so, one we’ve all earned just by virtue of being alive and managing to get out of bed most mornings (go you!).
Eatster!: a celebration of celebration, a holiday just for the hell of it, there when you need it–a reason to party when you have no reason to party. The only rule is you make up the rules! My first rule of Eatster!: EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT EATSTER! My second rule: hotpants appreciated.
(Eatster! A Meta-Holiday.)
Alejo Sauras on Being Himself
Do directors sometimes tell you just to be yourself? I asked Alejo Sauras, Spanish film and TV actor. I was writing about actors portraying themselves onscreen and off and thinking about the burdens of stardom when it occurred to me that I could interview my friend Alejo. Without hesitation, he answered, “No, never! Be yourself, no! Don’t be yourself.” He pointed to the table. “Be this one on the paper!”
Oh! I thought. There goes my central idea. All my interview questions had been built around the ironic notion of actors playing themselves, the meta idea of self-reflective acting. Well, I told myself, carry on with the interview, and later I will find a way to fit the pieces together. Watch me now as I try.
(Alejo at Wiggy-Okie at the House of Fish.)
Alejo Sauras On Being Famous in Spain
You want to be famous, don’t you? I can read it in your eyes, the hunger for attention.
Well, we all want people to adore and admire us, to fuss and fawn over us, to call us good-looking and talented. But if the genie of celluloid granted your wish, would you enjoy the fame? Or would shout “Leave me alone!” and punch the paparazzi?
I have a friend who is famous in Spain: Alejo Sauras. He has been in fourteen movies, ten shorts, six TV series, a guest role in nine other TV series, and five plays. You may not know who he is, but people recognize him wherever he goes in España. He is fairly well-known in Latin America and even Central Europe (where they have started showing his TV series Los Serrano). Even here in San Francisco, fans come up to him on the street. Nevertheless, he told me, “I can walk a little more freely in every country but mine.”
(Alejo kicking back in Dolores Park on Easter Sunday.)
I know from talking to him that being a celebrity is not not all glamour and glitter–sometimes it is a kick in the groin–but would he trade celebrity for an ordinary life? I was working on a post about actors playing themselves, mulling over the benefits and drawbacks of stardom, so I decided to ask him.
Actors Playing Themselves
What does it mean when stars portray themselves? Are we getting a glimpse of ”the real person”? Far from it! We learn instead that the actor and the image are not the same person. Few performances are as artificial as those in which actors play themselves.
In an interview with the acclaimed actor Michael Cain, Michael Parkinson said, ”Yours is the most impersonated voice in the business.” Cain responds, “Oh yeah, everyone– I– I can do it.”
“Can you do it?”
“Yeah, yeah . . . ‘Ello, My name is Michael Cain.” (When he says his name, it sounds like “my cocaine.”) The interviewer and the studio audience laugh. Michael Cain does not. He says, rather seriously, “I sound like a bloody moron.” What does it mean when an actor criticizes his own image?
Doesn’t it drive a wedge between the man and the star? If he can step outside of his own persona in order to criticize that persona, then he is not that person. As audience members, we often forget that distinction. We forget because we want to believe in stardom and we want to believe in stardom, so that we put ourselves in that star’s head for a while and imagine what it would be like to be famous.
Metamucil: Making Meta-Shit Happen
If metafiction is fiction about fiction and metapainting is painting about painting, “Metamucil” must be mucil about mucil, right? But what is mucil?
(Photo borrowed from the hysterical website de-motivational.com.)
Like This!: The Liking of the Liking of Liking
I just liked a new Facebook page called, “Liking.” I liked it before I liked it and I still like it. Turns out my friend and colleague Ned Buskirk set up the page. You should like it too. Why not?
The “Like” button on Facebook has changed the verb. Before Facebook, “like” was a positive emotion one felt towards a person or object, but now “liking” means pressing a button. Doing so means you like something in the traditional sense, so the like button refers back to the furry and friendly emotion. The button hasn’t replaced the feeling, so there is no reason not to like it.
Don’t Invalidate My Existence: A Meta-Dream
Sometimes I realize I am dreaming. Once, my college friend Robert Lochner and I were in line at the check-out counter of a grocery store. I told Robert I was dreaming as the cashier began to ring me up and that everyone in my dream was a figment of my imagination and that they would cease to exist as soon as I woke up. Robert, who was familiar with my philosophical posturing, rolled his eyes, but kept quiet, waiting for his turn at the register. The cashier, however, got very upset.
“I don’t care what you believe,” she said, pointing at me, “but don’t you invalidate my existence! You hear me? You can think whatever you want–I don’t care–but it is extremely, extremely rude to tell someone they don’t exist. How would you feel if I told you were just a character in my dream? A figment of my imagination? How would you like that?”
That is all I remember. I woke up. My friend Robert survived the dream although I haven’t heard from him in years. I was about to say that the cashier did not survive, but I have told this story several times and now I have written it down and sent it out into the cloud. The cashier doggedly continues her existence in spite of my insensitive comments. She exists. She is real.
Watching the Watcher: McMenamy x M.A.C., a Meta-Movie
In this short metafilm by Miles Aldridge, the viewer watches supermodel Kristen McMenamy, “the cosmetics muse,” watching a movie. We never see what she is seeing. We only see her face (and bold makeup, hair and clothing). We are the watchers that watch the watcher. We enjoy her enjoyment and get off on her catharsis.
Repainting the Tenderloin: Mona Caron’s Meta-Mural
[See the artist's own comments about her mural below.]
Where did the name “The Tenderloin,” come from? Stories abound, but the one I first heard was that the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco was so full of homeless people, drug addicts and prostitutes that the police get “hazard pay” to work there, which makes it possible for them to afford the better cuts of meat. Another story is that the police can afford fancier meat because they accept bribes from the entrepreneurs in the hood. Perhaps the name is a reference to the soft, vicious underbelly of San Francisco. Or to the tender loins of the prostitutes who work there. Or did we borrow the name from New York City’s Tenderloin, which has a similar reputation? Whatever the origin, the Tenderloin is not considered the choicest cut of San Francisco’s neighborhoods.
Nevertheless, some organizations and individuals are working to better this shady district. Mona Caron, one of my favorite muralists in San Francisco, painted a mural (“Windows into the Tenderloin”) on the corner of Golden Gate and Jones Streets not only to brighten the neighborhood, but also to offer a vision of transformation to the troubled are. In her mural, she shows how murals can improve a neighborhood, so her Tenderloin mural is a meta-mural, a mural about murals.
(Photo from Mona Caron’s website.)
Debunking Infinity
I used to believe infinity extended in all directions: outward into space and inward into the tiniest particles, from the past into the future, backward and forward in the reflections of a mirror reflecting a mirror, and around and around a circle. However, now I suspect that “infinity” means little more than “goes a very long ways.”
If you keep following a circle or a figure eight (the symbol of infinity) around and around, the shapes seems to go on forever, but who could follow them forever? Someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder on the very best crack could only follow the symbol around and around for a couple days at most. Once the crackhead stopped tracing the shape, the eternal symbol would cease to be eternal. A circle and a figure eight do not go around and around forever. They just sit there. Only our eyes go round and round.
