The Justin Theroux tribute entry
Date: 12.19.03
Climate: Chilled
Eating: Skittles
Drinking: Gatorade
Feeling: fine
Listening to: NPR
Watching: nothing
Reading: The Wall Street Journal
Justin Theroux...(girlysigh)
First of all, he's incredibly attractive, born in DC, educated at Bennington, complete theatrical resume, was in I Shot Andy Warhol, and has been in American Psycho and Mulholland Drive...two of my favorite movies.
But its more like, I wonder what it is about these dark haired, sometimes glasses wearing guys that draws me in.
I wonder. If ever I were to have a type, I suppose this is it. But its really only when he's got glasses on that this odd fascination begins. I just, I have no idea what my problem is here. First Ira, now a movie star. I sound like an aged thirteen year old girl with a diary and stickers all over her room or something. But he is the nephew of writer Paul Theroux so thats a plus. And he has been written up in the New York Times magazine about his dumpster-diving finds which now adorn his incredibly urban decay chic apartment. Also, his kitchen sounds alot like what mine would be if I didn't have a roomate, or I guess, what it was when I lived in Lincoln Park: only suited for take out and making espresso. Funny. And he is also friends with Amy Sedaris, who gave him two found paintings, — one of a little girl disfigured by syphilis, the other of two toddlers playing with a syringe. "Some people get it, some don't," he said of the paintings.
Here's some more random notes and quotes about him. --
I think I am just desperate for companionship...and finding it in actors? How unsettling.
-->Mr. Theroux's perspective is similarly middle-retro. Before offering a tour of the apartment, he said, "You really should have seen my old place; that was a great apartment," and proceeded to call up photographs on his laptop. Voilà — two home tours for the price of one. "That place really had a lot of garbage," he said. "It was just perfect. It skeezed a lot of people out."
The old apartment was a tiny tenement on the Bowery at Bleecker Street, furnished with a bathtub in the front room, a picket fence in the kitchen and a salvaged toilet that he used as a giant candelabrum in the living room. It bears description here because it seems inseparable from the apartment that followed it, or at least from his perception of the new joint. He rented it after moving from Washington in the mid-1990's, drawn to the area by the ghosts of CBGB past. At the time, Mr. Theroux was a struggling denizen of the occupational slash — an actor/painter/muralist/bartender, proving that four professions do not always add up to one. He furnished the place with garbage out of necessity, he said, but also out of disposition. "I collected garbage since I was little," he said. "The couch that's still in my mom's living room was one I picked out of the garbage." He especially liked the Bowery street scene, where one of the locals could reliably be found reclining on a chaise longue with a bottle of malt liquor, looking to Mr. Theroux as if he was having a better time than his onlookers, and the corner deli gave change on any size purchase in dimes, because that's what so many customers brought in.
"You see the same people repeatedly," he said. "There's a whole army that just trash-pick computer stuff. Or another bunch of guys that look for copper." Besides the Dumpsters in the West Village, he said, public schools are the best, because they are always replacing old wooden desks, chairs and other furnishings.
"It's not like going to a flea market, where you can go in with a set goal," he said. "You find stuff and then say, `What can I do with it?' Like you'll find a picket fence and say, `Why not put it up in the kitchen?' " (NYTM)
D.C. at the time was a great place for music, and one got the idea that something was really happening. It was. I don't want to over romanticize the time, but enough to say, and to quote D. Boone, "Punk Rock changed my life." Even if it didn't change much else. I can't help but think it didn't hurt.
I'm gonna start sounding like one of those guys that was at Woodstock, but as for punk now, it's pretty crap. It's not really even punk now, it's just kinda Bubble Gum Orange County shit. The minute Skateboard Culture and Frat Culture (inexplicably linked in my mind) and Punk culture collided, it got pretty nonsensical. I have to laugh when I see "punks" nowadays with store bought patches of their favorite bands and brand new 80 dollar Vans, or DC skateboarding shoes. In my day anyone with something other than a homemade band t-shirt, arm band, patch, what have you, woulda been laughed out of town. I know I am starting to sound bitter, but change, and especially change for the worse, always makes one at least a bit sad.
As for my family, they just sat back and marveled at the variety of hairstyles and piercings. At the time, everyone that didn't look like me was just a "tool of the government, parroting the words that the Lying New York Times told them to say." Now, and ironically, I do movies like Charlie's Angels... So who knows where I stand on that stuff now... God knows how many B.K. Broilers and McRibs I sold with that one. I'm still pretty conflicted about it, I guess. Not terribly punk rock I know.
I don't like Good Charlotte or Sum 41. I mean, how punk can you be sandwiched all over MTV by Vanilla Pepsi commercials? I think it speaks more to the desire to be cool, than the desire to be original or thought provoking. Make no mistake, I still think half of punk is being cool, but it truly is tougher and tougher to be cool in a commercial context. Selling "goods" is the goal. Not selling ideas. That's why we see infomercials selling lawn blowers and not the texts of Carl Jung or DVDs of Martha Graham. There's no real place for it. As for punk today, I kinda have a "poor Good Charlotte" attitude. I don't know, they mean well I guess, I suppose if I was thirteen today I don't know if I would be able to stand up to the barrage of commercial advertising.
Just as a side note, and on the subject of music and advertising, I recently saw a Dr. Pepper commercial with LL Cool J and Run DMC that "honored" Jam Master J. After about thirty seconds of Hip Hop and soda drinking, came the tagline, "R.I.P. Jam Master J." Jesus... If anyone ever "remembered" me like that, I would ask them to go dig me up, and shoot a couple of rounds into my coffin. How insulting. To be drinking fucking soda over a dead guy. I don't really know what they were thinking. As for Hip Hop in general, thank God you can still buy P.E. [Public Enemy] and KRS-One records.
Which artists do you find to be the most influential?
Influential to me? I like and am inspired by a lot of things, sometimes people that I don't even know. Like I would love to know who designed the logo for Magnolia Condensed Milk, or Champion Spark plugs. As for established artists, I really like James Rosenquist, Sue Coe, Tamborini Liberatore and a bunch of graffiti artists like Espo, Phil Frost, Twist, etc.. too many to name really. I'm pretty easy to please artistically. I can be inspired by a rusty length of chain, or a car battery if it's the right color.
When did you get the tattoo on your back and what is it of? Do you have any others, or want more?
I don't want anymore. I have several tattoos: a black target on the inside of my wrist, a dragon on my back (something I thought was pretty meaningful at the time, but now serves only as a reminder of the fact that I was seventeen), and I have an "X" on my ankle, that I gave myself when I was 14. A remnant of my futile attempts to be Straight Edge. I should have stopped there. I still love that one, though.
Here we can have a little fun exposing a big Hollywood P.R. lie. Probably about .004 percent of actors choose their roles. I am not one of them. I always laugh when I see actors on Entertainment Tonight or whatever saying they "Chose the role because, blah blah blah." Sometimes I know the role was offered to about eight other people before said actor chose it. It's like they woke up that morning and called their agent and said, "Hey, I've decided to play Napoleon" or whatever. This lie can be proven simply by observing the large number of actors saying they are so happy to have chosen whatever crap sitcom they are doing at the time. The only control I or most other actors have is saying "No" to roles. After saying yes to a role, you can then only create a character, but even then it is only as good as your preparation, and the director who shoots and edits it. So in answer, I choose my roles, basically by saying no to bad ones, and sometimes by settling for ones I even think could be even better. I have also been very lucky sometimes. It really is a matter of taste or style. I think any role that is complicated is more interesting than one that is not. Simple formula I guess, but there have been roles that are not necessarily couched inside good projects that I have been drawn to that have been difficult to refuse. Like anything, a lot has to be weighed before saying yes or no to anything.
You appear to have some strong political values, what do you think of the current state of the US?
That's a big one. It would be very easy to sit and rail on all the absurd contortions of US policy, and the policies of many other countries as well for that matter. But it seems to ignore the even larger issue, the worldwide spread of "anger" in a more general sense. The world now more than ever seems caught in this strange cycle of planting fear and sowing anger. The two are inexplicably linked. It's a bit hard to write policy on general subjects like fear and anger, I know; and forgive me for sounding a little naive, but I think a lot if the ills of the world could be solved by taking a more loving approach to difference. There is plenty I am angry about. I am shocked almost every day when I pick up the paper. I count it one of the greatest ironies that the people in our administration and others around the world who appear on the surface to be the most brave, the most hawkish, are in the end the ones who simultaneously appear the most scared. Terrified in fact. One could even argue real pussies. I know there are dangers in the world, I'm not stupid either, but there are more constructive ways to deal with the fear than building huge walls and lobbing bombs over the side of them.
History tells us that some of the bravest men of all pay with their lives. Martin Luther King, Sadat, John and Bobby Kennedy, Yitzhak Rabin, Ghandi, even the man George W. claimed was the greatest philosopher to ever live, Jesus Christ. Himself a victim one could argue of not only assasination but also capital punishment. If one was being cynical, one could also of course argue that they are all dead, but more accurately one would have to further observe that in death they created much more change than they ever could have had they not been cut down. It also doesn't hurt to remind oneself they they are all largely remembered for their work in regards to peace, compassion, and non-violent agression. In short, love. Pretty simple. Some of the greatest murderers and dictators in history died old, wealthy, and of natural causes. Being shot in a bunker a la Hitler is rarer than one might think. Sometimes bravery is actually cowardice in disguise. It's just pretty damn sad when the Dixie Chicks have the appearance of being the greatest and most radical voice of dissent.
--->
Oh wait, I get it. I see remnants of each and every guy I have ever had as a friend or boyfriend or potential love interest in his answers or something. Now I see, like the reincarnation of my past in Justin Theroux. I wonder what he'd think of that.
:::
Today i woke up at eleven o clock. I am beyond lazy. I showered, painted my nails (my boyfriend painted my toenails last week, it was beyond cute) to match my toes, read the newspaper, watched the news...listened to NPR online...taped some maps around my room, made CD art for my friend Lena's birthday gift...yeah.
I'm pretty idle.
Tonight, Julie's party with my friend ROB (note the use of his first name).
Should be a holiday-riffic good time.
Date: 12.19.03
Climate: Chilled
Eating: Skittles
Drinking: Gatorade
Feeling: fine
Listening to: NPR
Watching: nothing
Reading: The Wall Street Journal
Justin Theroux...(girlysigh)
First of all, he's incredibly attractive, born in DC, educated at Bennington, complete theatrical resume, was in I Shot Andy Warhol, and has been in American Psycho and Mulholland Drive...two of my favorite movies.
But its more like, I wonder what it is about these dark haired, sometimes glasses wearing guys that draws me in.
I wonder. If ever I were to have a type, I suppose this is it. But its really only when he's got glasses on that this odd fascination begins. I just, I have no idea what my problem is here. First Ira, now a movie star. I sound like an aged thirteen year old girl with a diary and stickers all over her room or something. But he is the nephew of writer Paul Theroux so thats a plus. And he has been written up in the New York Times magazine about his dumpster-diving finds which now adorn his incredibly urban decay chic apartment. Also, his kitchen sounds alot like what mine would be if I didn't have a roomate, or I guess, what it was when I lived in Lincoln Park: only suited for take out and making espresso. Funny. And he is also friends with Amy Sedaris, who gave him two found paintings, — one of a little girl disfigured by syphilis, the other of two toddlers playing with a syringe. "Some people get it, some don't," he said of the paintings.
Here's some more random notes and quotes about him. --
I think I am just desperate for companionship...and finding it in actors? How unsettling.
-->Mr. Theroux's perspective is similarly middle-retro. Before offering a tour of the apartment, he said, "You really should have seen my old place; that was a great apartment," and proceeded to call up photographs on his laptop. Voilà — two home tours for the price of one. "That place really had a lot of garbage," he said. "It was just perfect. It skeezed a lot of people out."
The old apartment was a tiny tenement on the Bowery at Bleecker Street, furnished with a bathtub in the front room, a picket fence in the kitchen and a salvaged toilet that he used as a giant candelabrum in the living room. It bears description here because it seems inseparable from the apartment that followed it, or at least from his perception of the new joint. He rented it after moving from Washington in the mid-1990's, drawn to the area by the ghosts of CBGB past. At the time, Mr. Theroux was a struggling denizen of the occupational slash — an actor/painter/muralist/bartender, proving that four professions do not always add up to one. He furnished the place with garbage out of necessity, he said, but also out of disposition. "I collected garbage since I was little," he said. "The couch that's still in my mom's living room was one I picked out of the garbage." He especially liked the Bowery street scene, where one of the locals could reliably be found reclining on a chaise longue with a bottle of malt liquor, looking to Mr. Theroux as if he was having a better time than his onlookers, and the corner deli gave change on any size purchase in dimes, because that's what so many customers brought in.
"You see the same people repeatedly," he said. "There's a whole army that just trash-pick computer stuff. Or another bunch of guys that look for copper." Besides the Dumpsters in the West Village, he said, public schools are the best, because they are always replacing old wooden desks, chairs and other furnishings.
"It's not like going to a flea market, where you can go in with a set goal," he said. "You find stuff and then say, `What can I do with it?' Like you'll find a picket fence and say, `Why not put it up in the kitchen?' " (NYTM)
D.C. at the time was a great place for music, and one got the idea that something was really happening. It was. I don't want to over romanticize the time, but enough to say, and to quote D. Boone, "Punk Rock changed my life." Even if it didn't change much else. I can't help but think it didn't hurt.
I'm gonna start sounding like one of those guys that was at Woodstock, but as for punk now, it's pretty crap. It's not really even punk now, it's just kinda Bubble Gum Orange County shit. The minute Skateboard Culture and Frat Culture (inexplicably linked in my mind) and Punk culture collided, it got pretty nonsensical. I have to laugh when I see "punks" nowadays with store bought patches of their favorite bands and brand new 80 dollar Vans, or DC skateboarding shoes. In my day anyone with something other than a homemade band t-shirt, arm band, patch, what have you, woulda been laughed out of town. I know I am starting to sound bitter, but change, and especially change for the worse, always makes one at least a bit sad.
As for my family, they just sat back and marveled at the variety of hairstyles and piercings. At the time, everyone that didn't look like me was just a "tool of the government, parroting the words that the Lying New York Times told them to say." Now, and ironically, I do movies like Charlie's Angels... So who knows where I stand on that stuff now... God knows how many B.K. Broilers and McRibs I sold with that one. I'm still pretty conflicted about it, I guess. Not terribly punk rock I know.
I don't like Good Charlotte or Sum 41. I mean, how punk can you be sandwiched all over MTV by Vanilla Pepsi commercials? I think it speaks more to the desire to be cool, than the desire to be original or thought provoking. Make no mistake, I still think half of punk is being cool, but it truly is tougher and tougher to be cool in a commercial context. Selling "goods" is the goal. Not selling ideas. That's why we see infomercials selling lawn blowers and not the texts of Carl Jung or DVDs of Martha Graham. There's no real place for it. As for punk today, I kinda have a "poor Good Charlotte" attitude. I don't know, they mean well I guess, I suppose if I was thirteen today I don't know if I would be able to stand up to the barrage of commercial advertising.
Just as a side note, and on the subject of music and advertising, I recently saw a Dr. Pepper commercial with LL Cool J and Run DMC that "honored" Jam Master J. After about thirty seconds of Hip Hop and soda drinking, came the tagline, "R.I.P. Jam Master J." Jesus... If anyone ever "remembered" me like that, I would ask them to go dig me up, and shoot a couple of rounds into my coffin. How insulting. To be drinking fucking soda over a dead guy. I don't really know what they were thinking. As for Hip Hop in general, thank God you can still buy P.E. [Public Enemy] and KRS-One records.
Which artists do you find to be the most influential?
Influential to me? I like and am inspired by a lot of things, sometimes people that I don't even know. Like I would love to know who designed the logo for Magnolia Condensed Milk, or Champion Spark plugs. As for established artists, I really like James Rosenquist, Sue Coe, Tamborini Liberatore and a bunch of graffiti artists like Espo, Phil Frost, Twist, etc.. too many to name really. I'm pretty easy to please artistically. I can be inspired by a rusty length of chain, or a car battery if it's the right color.
When did you get the tattoo on your back and what is it of? Do you have any others, or want more?
I don't want anymore. I have several tattoos: a black target on the inside of my wrist, a dragon on my back (something I thought was pretty meaningful at the time, but now serves only as a reminder of the fact that I was seventeen), and I have an "X" on my ankle, that I gave myself when I was 14. A remnant of my futile attempts to be Straight Edge. I should have stopped there. I still love that one, though.
Here we can have a little fun exposing a big Hollywood P.R. lie. Probably about .004 percent of actors choose their roles. I am not one of them. I always laugh when I see actors on Entertainment Tonight or whatever saying they "Chose the role because, blah blah blah." Sometimes I know the role was offered to about eight other people before said actor chose it. It's like they woke up that morning and called their agent and said, "Hey, I've decided to play Napoleon" or whatever. This lie can be proven simply by observing the large number of actors saying they are so happy to have chosen whatever crap sitcom they are doing at the time. The only control I or most other actors have is saying "No" to roles. After saying yes to a role, you can then only create a character, but even then it is only as good as your preparation, and the director who shoots and edits it. So in answer, I choose my roles, basically by saying no to bad ones, and sometimes by settling for ones I even think could be even better. I have also been very lucky sometimes. It really is a matter of taste or style. I think any role that is complicated is more interesting than one that is not. Simple formula I guess, but there have been roles that are not necessarily couched inside good projects that I have been drawn to that have been difficult to refuse. Like anything, a lot has to be weighed before saying yes or no to anything.
You appear to have some strong political values, what do you think of the current state of the US?
That's a big one. It would be very easy to sit and rail on all the absurd contortions of US policy, and the policies of many other countries as well for that matter. But it seems to ignore the even larger issue, the worldwide spread of "anger" in a more general sense. The world now more than ever seems caught in this strange cycle of planting fear and sowing anger. The two are inexplicably linked. It's a bit hard to write policy on general subjects like fear and anger, I know; and forgive me for sounding a little naive, but I think a lot if the ills of the world could be solved by taking a more loving approach to difference. There is plenty I am angry about. I am shocked almost every day when I pick up the paper. I count it one of the greatest ironies that the people in our administration and others around the world who appear on the surface to be the most brave, the most hawkish, are in the end the ones who simultaneously appear the most scared. Terrified in fact. One could even argue real pussies. I know there are dangers in the world, I'm not stupid either, but there are more constructive ways to deal with the fear than building huge walls and lobbing bombs over the side of them.
History tells us that some of the bravest men of all pay with their lives. Martin Luther King, Sadat, John and Bobby Kennedy, Yitzhak Rabin, Ghandi, even the man George W. claimed was the greatest philosopher to ever live, Jesus Christ. Himself a victim one could argue of not only assasination but also capital punishment. If one was being cynical, one could also of course argue that they are all dead, but more accurately one would have to further observe that in death they created much more change than they ever could have had they not been cut down. It also doesn't hurt to remind oneself they they are all largely remembered for their work in regards to peace, compassion, and non-violent agression. In short, love. Pretty simple. Some of the greatest murderers and dictators in history died old, wealthy, and of natural causes. Being shot in a bunker a la Hitler is rarer than one might think. Sometimes bravery is actually cowardice in disguise. It's just pretty damn sad when the Dixie Chicks have the appearance of being the greatest and most radical voice of dissent.
--->
Oh wait, I get it. I see remnants of each and every guy I have ever had as a friend or boyfriend or potential love interest in his answers or something. Now I see, like the reincarnation of my past in Justin Theroux. I wonder what he'd think of that.
:::
Today i woke up at eleven o clock. I am beyond lazy. I showered, painted my nails (my boyfriend painted my toenails last week, it was beyond cute) to match my toes, read the newspaper, watched the news...listened to NPR online...taped some maps around my room, made CD art for my friend Lena's birthday gift...yeah.
I'm pretty idle.
Tonight, Julie's party with my friend ROB (note the use of his first name).
Should be a holiday-riffic good time.