We're Not a Robot

Well, hi there! Sorry I've been MIA for a while, but I've been off on location, and also spending some time keeping an eye on Fatty... he's been partying kind of a lot lately. But things are looking up: He met a new girl at a party in San Francisco last night, and he tells me things seem really promising!

But just when you think you're out, they suck you back in with cliche-laden songs and videos from Greek-via-Welsh musicians who certainly are an expert on the Los Angeles way of life. Like this:



Aw, Marina and the Diamonds, really?? You're so gorgeous and talented and gaining so much indie cred via your KCRW airplay and music placements. But you've succumbed to a nasty case of LA cliche-itis with these lyrics. I mean, yikes:

She is a Polish girl in America
Tall tanned hot blonde called Anya
I asked her "Why would you want to be a Hollywood wife?"
"Because I don't want to end up living in a dive on Vine"
I'll do anything for a dime
Looking for the golden lie

Has she seen what apartments rent for on Vine lately? The above stereotype somehow hasn't made its way onto this blog yet, but it's pretty prevalent -- the naive outsider who arrives here and is immediately corrupted by the cesspool of LA. The best and most direct visual representation of this is here:



Oh Axl, stop stressing, I'm sure you'll be just fine. While those TV images probably gave him some nightmares, at least he wasn't accosted by a plethora of visual LA signifiers like poor Marina: really really piss-poor Marilyn and James Dean imitators, cheap Oscar statuettes, etc. are all over her video. The fake LA accent around the "Shakira/Catherine Zeta-Jones" lines doesn't help much either.

Nor do the non-sequiter glittery cheerleader outfits, which she somehow relates to Hollywood in a way I can't even wrap my head around. Then again, if this Bjork-ish mess is this is her other fashion option:

Then I'll say it: Rah, rah, siss-boom bah! At least we have a sports team in the finals.

My Un-Funny Valentine

A certainly entirely-cliche-free film called Valentine's Day is opening up right before Valentine's Day and starring a ton of huge stars, all of which affects me very little until they started airing this:




Ah, the trials and tribulations of love and being drop-dead gorgeous and living in LA, where nobody RSVP's. Yeah!

I mean, wait, actually that would be "No!" This cliche is a derivative of the "everyone's a flake" stereotype, but the problem is it's completely at odds with another big LA social stereotype: That we're obsessed with lists, red carpets, "it's who you know," etc.

So really we can't win. Except in this trailer, where a shot of an empty dining room reveals that Jessica Biel's evite doesn't have zero responses because Angelenos are flakes, but because her character's annoying and nobody wants to go to her party. See, Angelenos do what they say they're gonna do after all!