Miley Cyrus, Genius Marketer

Whatever Miley Cyrus’ outrageous “Bangerz” tour is trying to say, after just four stops, it has earned the twerking pixie something far more than mere controversy: Cred.

From the moment she took the stage at Staples Center on Saturday night, Cyrus was in command like a bona fide star, strutting around in what the Hollywood Reporter termed a “cannabis leaf-o-tard” with matching gold medallion, rubbing her crotch atop the hood of a mini gold cutlass with the sort of abandon that would make the girls at Crazy Horse in Vegas blush.

Not for the Hannah Montana crowd, but then, when the competition is Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, one has to up the ante. Which would explain the spectacle that opens with a pair of knockout drag queens and then quickly morphed into a David Lynch scene complete with dancers dressed as stuffed animals, a pint-sized seductress wearing a giant Britney Spears mask and, a woman dubbed “Amazon Ashley” in red Spandex who Cyrus gleefully spanked.

Before long, the aforementioned Ms. Perry appeared in the front row just in time to offer Cyrus a big wet one. By the end of the night, Cyrus sat astride a giant inflatable hot dog, mimed fellatio on Abraham Lincoln and shared a mic with the beloved Flaming Lips front man Wayne Coyne.

So far, the tour has made for some good headlines, but even better reviews. Which speaks to Cyrus’ business acumen. She may come off as a living internet meme, a Disney star gone horribly awry, but as her father Billy Ray Cyrus’ wave from the engineer’s pit reminded us all – Miley’s got showbiz in her blood. And it takes a lot of to get attention from teenagers these days and even more to convince their parents to pay upwards of $1,100 a piece on StubHub for Bangerz tickets.

For all the bum-shaking silliness of her performance, she’s got the pipes to fill arenas and the good sense to lampoon herself while she’s covering the likes of Outkast and Dolly Parton.

The guilty pleasure of “House of Cards”

It probably wasn’t a good idea to watch all of “House of Cards’” season two in three days. Yes, the last few episodes devolved into high camp (menage a trois with the chauffeur!) but the real turn-on of House of Cards is its unapologetic villany.

Unlike so many other antiheroes of his caliber – Tony Soprano and Walter White included – Frank Underwood not only telegraphs the infantile greed and duplicity of American politics, he forces us to confront our absolute powerlessness against it.

Of course he gives us an entertaining way to loathe our do-nothing Congress and every president who has disappointed us. (read: all of them?) Some speculate Frank was modeled after John F. Kennedy’s successor Lyndon Johnson. And though, the show is, as New York Times critic Alessandra Stanley wrote, probably “the most joyless” on TV, it’s also validating in surprising ways.

For Americans stymied by one piece of failed legislation or another, by one corporation or another, watching “House of Cards” offers the illusion of control. We can revel in the Underwoods’ malevolence, while at the same time, point at the screen and shout “See? Here’s the real reason we’ll never be able to retire/fund our kids’ college/take a vacation/drink our tap water.” It’s a masochistic pleasure. And it’s all your fault Francis.

The Hipster Mid-Life Crisis

Thank you Noah Baumbach, though I’m not exactly sure for what. I’ve seen the trailer for your new film “Greenberg.” Ben Stiller is an interesting choice to speak for we sourpuss Gen-Xers. He was, after all, the auteur of “Reality Bites,” the 1994 ode to post-grad melancholy that beset so many of us. We sounded like middle-aged kvetchers even back then. But now we have legitimate reasons for whining. Here we stand, our final decades before us and in our wake, the wistful recollections of our misspent youth (cue anthemic 1980s alt classic, preferably Morrissey or Kate Bush). “It’s weird, aging, right?” Greenberg asks his fellow furrowed-brow friend as LCD Soundsystem soars in the background. It is especially weird aging in Los Angeles, where this film is set. It is hyper-transient, poignant for the same reasons that it is the perfect place to reinvent yourself. And ideal for those who can’t bring themselves to grow up. I, for one, am staying.

Viggo and the potato chips

Viggo Mortensen gave me a bag of potato chips. It was a small thing, really. But as I walked down the hall, away from his hotel suite, reflexively putting chip after chip in my mouth (I wasn’t even hungry, but it seemed like the thing to do.) I was once again struck by the weirdness of Hollywood celebrity. Junkets, in particular, emphasize the perversity of it all. All those attractive people housed in individual rooms in one luxurious hotel for a weekend of relentless scrutiny by decidedly less attractive throngs of other people. Each encounter between the two groups so excruciatingly choreographed that even the most benign instance of authenticity – say, a movie star handing a reporter a bag of potato chips – suddenly feels profoundly intimate. As an individual, Viggo came off as pretty grounded. A serious artist, but without a lot of vanity. I couldn’t help notice that he had little tiny holes in the armpit of his shirt. It was endearing. Make no mistake. Viggo knows how to work those cheekbones, but for those of you who saw “Eastern Promises” you know he’s not afraid to show his less flattering side. And I mean that quite literally.

Tiger Beat Blues

Robert Pattinson, the face that has launched a million Life & Style magazine covers, is pretty scruffy up close. At a crowded Friday press conference on his latest vampire angst-fest “The Twilight Saga: New Moon,” he was a bit unshaven and wore the same flannel shirt I’ve seen in a dozen paparazzi shots. Yet that brunette meringue of a coif– itself a work of genius — remained flawlessly unkempt. And there’s something to be said for his British brand of  self-deprecation. Quite charming. Pattinson, it turns out, is a little irritated that his brooding teen vampire in the “Twilight” series is being perceived as a sort of “animated Tiger Beat.” “I’ve never played it thinking, ‘Oh, I’m in a series of guhls films’ or doing something just for guhls,'” he said to a group of sweaty grown-ups hanging on his every word. Hmm. I wonder what those legions of hyperventilating 12-year-olds have to say about that. (Btw, here’s my story on this in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

The Art of Feigned Sex

It’s something that fascinates even the the most sophisticated cineaste. “Sex” on screen, particularly when the logistics of the thing make you turn your head like the Victrola dog, plugs into something prurient in everyone. This month in a new column in Los Angeles Magazine, I share the back stories from mainstream actors who make a living faking it. It’s interesting to hear the psychological gymnastics that take place between couples when one has to have “sex” with a stranger. Suspension of disbelief, indeed.

Behold, the unrepentant rage of a wildfire

Though I’m not breathing ash this week — mercifully, I’m up in San Francisco — I can still smell the charred air that seems to characterize Los Angeles in the fall. And I can’t read about this latest, and staggeringly vast, inferno without being reminded of my own drive into the black clouds and the burning skies. Back in 2003, I spent a night in a Red Cross shelter chronicling the stories of the San Bernardino County evacuees of that so-called “Old fire,” though most of them could hardly grasp the devastation they’d just survived. I didn’t sleep. My lungs ached from breathing so much soot. And I’ll never forget how wounded the sky looked. It felt as if the world was coming to an end. My heart goes out to all the folks fighting this one. (Photo by Los Angeles Times photographer Robert Gauthier)

Funny. Like ha-ha.

For last two months, I’ve been lucky enough to get paid to laugh. Literally. And here’s the result of all those heart-felt guffaws. A young scruff named Harris Wittels is the star of the article, and deservedly so. But so many others are right up there: Donald Glover reminded me of a young (more sophisticated) Eddie Murphy. Anthony Jeselnik is spectacularly dark and has mastered the power of the pause. And Brody Stevens made me laugh harder than I have in years. I’ll be chronicling the weirdest, most progressive, most interesting bits of it over the next few weeks. Stay tuned. (Photo by Christina House for the LA Times)

My Existential Crisis

Here I am. A whole paradigm away from the excruciatingly hip Echo Park enclave we vacated last winter. I’m starting to feel (even more) ridiculous in my skinny jeans and rock Ts. “The Artist’s Way,” a book I sneered at three years ago, is now resonating with me. Deeply. I’m considering a tattoo. Perhaps the words “MY LIFE IS HAPPY AND FULFILLED” on the palms of my hands. That way, even when I strike a despairing pose (head-in-hands, for instance) I’ll literally be face-to-face with my future, manifesting only good things. Cough. Surely some of you know what I’m talking about here. Why else would The Atlantic tout on its cover, a piece on the world’s most comprehensive happiness study? (Turns out friends and relatives are what’s keeping you alive.) And why else would I receive three emails in a week, by three unrelated individuals pointing me to that over-achiever Gretchen Rubin and her Happiness Project? It all comes back to the economy, I’m afraid. When we can no longer afford to shop our pain away, when an afternoon in Target isn’t the blissed-out experience it used to be, (all that plastic. so wasteful.) we are forced to turn inward. Hey, can someone turn a light on in here?

Damn you, Barbie.

So now that Barbie’s gotten all tatted up and Dora the Explorer has suddenly outgrown animal rescue, opting instead for adventures at the mall, I’m starting to feel nauseatingly out-of-control. As the mother of a wee female, I’m especially aware of her budding self-image. And naturally, toy manufacturers are my new nemeses. These corporations have a special talent for sexualizing inanimate objects. Peruse the aisles of Toys R Us and you will see thousands, nay millions, of pairs of Angelina Jolie eyes beckoning in the guise of newborn babies, candy-colored ponies and those bite-sized “Sex and the City” wanna-bes that call themselves “Polly Pockets.”What was the conversation that spawned the updated “My Pretty Pony?” They wear toe shoes and windblown skirts. There is something prurient about them. These toys are designed for 3 year old girls, remember. Back in the day, the heavy-lidded, bullet-chested Barbie was to blame for warping our ideas of beauty. Hell, Barbie looks positively chaste compared to the miniature floozies — of every species — elbowing each other on the toy store shelves today.

Daily Deadline

Though I have no research to prove this, I’m certain the relentless grind of daily newspaper journalism indelibly warps the cerebellum. “Deadline” — or as former L.A. Times film critic Kevin Thomas (and former Mae West personal assistant) fondly called it, “The Motherfucker” –rigidly structures one’s experience. It keeps you cornered and firing on all cylinders. It gives every day a swift kick in the pants. It dispenses with formalities and hones a razor-like focus. Or (And?) it makes you an adrenaline-junkie rife with crippling neuroses to which you are completely blind. Deadline activates that tiny but powerful portion of the brain known as the amygdala, where our survival instinct lives. Without it, I’ve felt nauseatingly aimless. And so, I’ve redirected all my investigative powers, my need-to-be-a-know-it-all to other areas. Small claims court, for instance. And I’ve become a budding genealogist. Turns out all those cancer deaths on the Italian American side of my family in Appalachia were all due to a toxic landfill – one of the top 25 most toxic places in the U.S. — that sat just two miles from their neighborhood. That sad fact was unknown to me until my buy-out. See? There is an upside to the death of newspaper journalism! More self-knowledge! Yay.

Gen X Comes of Age

It’s been ten days now and I’ve officially got a crush on Obama. Now I’m checking my Blackberry for those earnest emails, slightly wounded that he hasn’t called. (Though, good president-elect boyfriend that he is, Obama promised in his last note to “be in touch soon about what comes next.”) I realize now that all my talk of Obama burnout was just the long-suffering liberal bracing for the inevitable disappointment. But the night he won, I sat in front of my TV, watched the crowds dance in the streets and wept in spite of my cynical self. Every day closer we move toward January 20, I grow more giddy. And that’s really saying something considering Inauguration Day is also my 40th birthday. Even as the jobs evaporate, the nation’s debt balloons, the foreclosures skyrocket and my 3-year-old’s tantrums rage on, I’m feeling effervescent! Obama restored my faith on Nov. 4. And though I know he’ll make mistakes, his election marks my generation’s coming of age. Obama, born in 1961, to a mixed race, mixed nationality, divorced couple, is one of us. (Obama inhaled!) Granted, he’s a more brilliant, better-spoken one of us, but nevertheless a member of that earnest and self-effacing Lost Generation born in the 60s and 70s who grew up with a profound sense of mankind’s darker traits. Our childhoods were marked by melancholy and tumult, both personally and globally. For my part, I was conceived around the time of the My Lai massacre and the signing of the Civil Rights Act. When I was in utero, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated and Chicago police pummeled student activists outside the Democratic National Convention. And I was born the day Richard Nixon was inaugurated. Turning 40 the day Obama becomes President feels about right.

The Cult of Obama

Barack Obama is sending me so many emails that I’m starting to delete his earnest diatribes without even opening them. I know. That’s heresy coming from a journalist. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan. I welled up during his race speech. I gave money to his campaign. I believe he has inspired the world in a powerful way. My 3 year old daughter shouts “There’s Barack Obama!” with glee every time she spots his face. But here we are, on the eve of what everyone expects to be his historic win, and I’m fighting Obama burnout. Here in my dark blue enclave, Obama’s image is a hipster calling card. My massage therapist (okay, she’s a Rolfer) has a photo of Obama in her studio, right next to her picture of Amma, the Hindu Hugging Saint. Perhaps Shepard Fairey is to blame. Way back in January, the L.A. artist’s reverent Obama poster –emblazoned with “HOPE” and “PROGRESS” — seemed to be the tipping point that pushed Obama into Zeitgeist territory. Now websites like obamamessiah.blogspot.com seriously argue that Obama may indeed be the Second Coming. Forget all those predictions of a landslide victory. Is there anything more indicative of cultural influence than a gargantuan gravel and sand sculpture on a Barcelona beach, visible only by air? I think not. (Photo thanks to Reuters)

California: The Greenest State

Pot smoking in California has always been a popular sport. But since 2003, when the state legislature amended 1996’s Prop 215, making it easier to open pot clubs, a genuine marijuana renaissance has taken place. Even in unlikely quarters. In L.A., the “I-800-Got KUSH” billboards beckon from all over town. Middle aged parents smoke up at their kids’ private school camp-outs. Preschool drop-offs are as likely a place for a quiet pot exchange as the high school parking lot. Pot clubs cater Amsterdam-style to the discerning medical marijuana “patients” whose afflictions range from cancer to insomnia. The pot smoking stigma of years past has apparently so diminished that even the Governator himself (shown above in 1977’s doc “Pumping Iron”) admitted on camera last week to TMZ.com that, back in the day, he and Tommy Chong once shared a smoke.

Even routine raids by the DEA (the Feds don’t recognize California’s pot laws) haven’t slowed business. (Probably because every recent attempt to knock down Prop 215 has been swatted away by state and federal judges.) By some estimates, there are 800 cannabis clubs in California and at least 180 registered in Los Angeles County alone. Some say there are 100 more clubs operating under the radar. And there’s a whole sub culture of LA growers, turning downtown LA warehouses into giant greenhouses that secretly supply dispensaries around town. Earlier this year, a group of dispensary owners testified to state officials that their businesses earned as much as $1 billion a year, bringing in some $100 million in state sales tax. Nothing to sneeze at considering California’s staggering $15.2 billion budget deficit.

The Prurient Interests

The sexually adventurous smart girl — from Anna Karenina to Lady Chatterley to Erica Jong to Carrie Bradshaw — is a character that has always titillated. But a new generation of women has risen the stakes on the genre. Rather than toy with sexual promiscuous personae in dating columns or transparently self-referential novels, these young women start off as sex workers. Then work their way back into the Establishment. Diablo Cody is the poster girl of this phenomenon. She blogged about her stints as a stripper and sex phone operator, got the attention of a Hollywood producer, who helped her land a book deal, a movie deal and ultimately a screenwriting Oscar. Then, there’s the London call girl who blogged about her exploits, got a two-book deal that turned into the successful ITV/Showtime TV series “The Secret Life of a Call Girl.” More recently, Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s call girl Ashley Dupre, an aspiring singer, passed on Larry Flynt’s $1 million offer for her own Hustler spread and –after downloads of her songs skyrocketed when the scandal broke last spring – she landed Mariah Carey’s former music manager Jerry Blair. Now she’s in talks with Reveille Productions (which produced “The Office”) to create a dating reality show.

Clearly the motivation differs with each woman. But they share a similar drive and stamina and, most likely, a formidable talent for compartmentalization. They make bloggers like apologetic naughty girl Emily Gould and TimeOutNY sex columnist Julia Allison look even less appealing than the neurotic, long suffering Belle du Jour made famous in 1967 by Catherine Deneuve. Is this new generation of women more complex, less cavalier and more thoughtful than the infamous “Happy Hooker” of the 1970s Xaviera Hollander (who is, incidentally, the subject of a small documentary released this year)? Or have these women just learned how to harness the machine and market themselves?

The Good Life Lives On

Drenched by my apocalyptic fever, I overlooked the fact that luxury is still quite relevant to many people who are completely unmoved by the collapsing infrastructures of our world. Take travel, for example. Courtesy a handful of new clubs like Clear, you can pay your way to the front of security (after a $128, a retinal scan and a background check, of course). And while Delta, American, US Airways and Continental Airlines cut their less fuel-efficient routes and charge extra for checked bags and stale turkey sandwiches, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Virgin Atlantic Airways and Emirates Airlines have snapped up the fancy new double-decker Airbus A-380s (world’s largest passenger airline) and flaunted their bounty at the National Business Travel Assn. expo this week in L.A. For just $10,000 per person, Singapore Airlines offers full-sized beds with down duvets and their now world-famous Givenchy pajamas to take the edge off that 20-hour flight from San Francisco to Seoul. Qantas showed off its remote-controlled “pods” that feature a massage chair, 18-inch flat screen and mood lighting. In the United States of Stagflation, we’re just happy to get an extra package of peanuts and a cup of lukewarm water. Even in first class.

A sentimental ode to the press

The massacre of newspaper journalism unfolding this summer is unrelenting. Yet in all the reports I’ve read, Timothy Egan in the New York Times captures the real essence of this tragedy here. As a postscript, please see this smart little diatribe on Sam Zell, his overheated ego and stale sense of humor.

My Apocalyptic Daydream

While the latest news is increasingly freaky, (what with the food crisis, fuel prices and the world teetering on the brink of economic collapse, etc.), I’ve grown strangely optimistic about a potential breakdown. The idea of starting a survivalist club, as one friend recently suggested, where we’d learn how to can vegetables, gut a wild boar and deliver babies, sounds super cool! I just finished the 1996 novel “Into the Forest” by Jean Hegland about two teenaged sisters surviving the end of civilization alone in rural northern California. It’s beautifully written, but not especially uplifting. Still, it made me want to expand my tiny vegetable garden and study the uses of medicinal plants. Oh, and buy a gun. But let’s not muck up my little fantasy with pragmatism. Maybe it’s just my midlife crisis talking here, but isn’t there something invigorating about the idea of hitting the “reset” button on civilization? Sure, it would be especially treacherous for city dwellers like me and my family. Mob rule and all that. The near future as depicted in the film “Children of Men” felt believable. But in the country, life wouldn’t change too terribly much. Horses and shotguns would probably spike in value. There would be dangerous drifters. But surely somebody would perfect that lovely daydream of a bucolic utopia. You know, where everyone shares and lives off the land? Or maybe we all should just set up tents inside the nearest Whole Foods and hope for the best.

Ageless Beauty in Advertising. Who Knew?

Thank you Monica Corcoran for sharing this bit of encouraging news for women over 35 who are eager to see lovely examples of their peers. As Ms. Corcoran reported in the L.A. Times, the Boomers buying power (and their willful attachment to their own youth), have prompted a sudden rush on models of a certain age. All those self-made super models from the 90s are back — Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell. Even women whose careers started in the 1970s are being recruited by New York agencies. “The aspiration in these ads has shifted to having a full, rich life. Open up any Vogue and you’ll see models over 35,” John Caplan, president of Ford Models told Corcoran. “In the Rolex ad, you have Carmen Dell’Orefice, and she’s in her 70s.” And she has a miracle worker of a surgeon, no doubt. Thanks to technology (plastic surgery and Photoshop) beauty really IS ageless. Yet, it’s tough for me to be wholly cynical about this whole “cougar” phenomenon. When a 70-something can still look this damn good, it’s uplifting for women everywhere. Ahem. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Life tip of the day: Wear a cell phone ear piece

Edward Kennedy’s brain tumor has everyone debating the safety of cell phones again. But this time around there are some disturbing new studies that suggest all that heat and radiation so close to our brains might not be benign after all. The American Cancer Society and the F.D.A. continue to say there’s not a clear enough link. But last year, the American Journal of Epidemiology published a study from Tel Aviv University showing a 58 percent higher risk of parotid gland tumors among heavy cell phone users. A Swedish analysis last year of 16 studies found the risk of acoustic neuroma and glioma doubled after 10 years of heavy cell phone use. And if that doesn’t convince you to trade in that Bluetooth this surely will: Johnnie Cochran’s neurosurgeon believes the attorney’s tumor was caused by his cell phone and told Larry King last week that he himself uses an earpiece.