Saturday 5 January 2019

How a badass, ex-drug addict groupie became a millennial hero at 75

How a badass, ex-drug addict groupie became a millennial hero at 75


How a badass, ex-drug addict groupie became a millennial hero at 75, Eve Babitz


Even before gaining literary fame, the LA wild child Eve Babitz had torrid affairs with rockers and movie stars including Jim Morrison and Harrison Ford, according to a new book.


Even at 20, in 1963, Eve Babitz knew how to make a statement. Back then, her curator boyfriend gave the artist Marcel Duchamp a retrospective in Pasadena, Calif., and made the mistake of not inviting her to the opening party.
So she attended another party at the museum days later. There, a photographer for Time magazine needed a shot of Duchamp playing chess with a young woman. Naked.
Babitz took her revenge.
The resulting image shows Babitz’s face hidden by her hair, her voluptuous body on full display. The photo firmly placed her in the pop-culture firmament — a shadowy figure, true, but an indelible one. That picture is one of the most iconic to emerge from the LA art scene at that time.
It was also classic Eve, writes journalist Lili Anolik in her new book “Hollywood’s Eve” (Scribner), out Tuesday. “[She] was a sex object who was, too, a sex subject, meaning she exploited herself every bit as ruthlessly as … the men exploited her. She wasn’t just model and muse, passive and pliable, but artist and instigator, wicked and subversive.”
Babitz was the daughter of Los Angeles bohemians. Her father, Sol, a Jew from Brooklyn, was first violinist for the 20th Century Fox Orchestra. Her mother, Mae, was beautiful and charming, hosting parties for the various musicians and intellectuals that wandered through the Babitz home. Igor Stravinsky was her godfather; Fats Waller, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Bertrand Russell and Aldous Huxley all had cameos in her childhood.
With the Time photo serving as her de facto coming-out party, Babitz let loose on LA, becoming a groupie to various artists and musicians. She propositioned Jim Morrison within minutes of meeting him in 1966 and liked the man, whom she found to be tender (“He knew in his worst blackouts to put my diaphragm in and take my contact lenses out . . .”) but not his music, which she found to be drivel (“The Doors were embarrassing, like their name . . . Even [Jim’s] voice . . . sounding so sudden and personal and uttering such hogwash.”)
Of this time, she wrote, “I was 23 and a daughter of Hollywood, alive with groupie fervor, wanting to f–k my way through rock ’n’ roll and drink tequila and take uppers and downers, keeping joints rolled and lit, a regular customer at the clap clinic, a groupie prowling the Sunset Strip, prowling the nights of summer.”
She was also working as a photographer and artist, creating collage album covers for Buffalo Springfield, Linda Ronstadt and the Byrds. But what she really became was a sculptor of life, weaving together flamboyant and fantastic experiences, like beads on a rosary.
A new look at Eve Babitz : Artist, provocateur and unlikely feminist icon

A new look at Eve Babitz : Artist, provocateur and unlikely feminist icon


In 1961, a precocious young artist named Eve Babitz wrote a letter to “Catch-22” novelist Joseph Heller, seeking help getting her book published. “Dear Joseph Heller,” it began, “I am a stacked eighteen-year-old blonde on Sunset Boulevard. I am also a writer.”
Heller wanted to see more (of the book) and, when he got it, sent the manuscript to his publisher, who also wanted to see more (of the book). That book never materialized, but no matter. Babitz went on to become a successful writer and artist and a notorious Los Angeles “it” girl.
In the new biography “Hollywood’s Eve,” Lili Anolik tells the wild story of Babitz’s life. It is a swooning, sometimes madcap look at Babitz, “the louche, wayward, headlong, hidden genius of Los Angeles” who has in recent years become something of a feminist icon.
Babitz was born in 1943 to haute bohemian parents. Her father was a violinist for the Twentieth Century Fox Orchestra; her mother was an artist. Igor Stravinsky was her godfather. Babitz grew up in a house where stars such as Fats Waller, Greta Garbo and Charlie Chaplin made regular appearances. Her myriad lovers included Jim Morrison, Paul Butterfield and Harrison Ford; later, there would be relationships with Annie Leibovitz, Warren Zevon, Steve Martin and Ahmet Ertegun. During a brief spell on the East Coast, she found time to introduce Frank Zappa to Salvador Dali, testify about the benefits of LSD before a Senate committee and work briefly as a secretary.
Needless to say, Babitz is a consummate provocateur. “All I cared about anyway was fun and men and trouble,” Babitz wrote in her 1982 roman a clef “L.A. Woman.” She got her share of all three, and then some.
At 20, she began a relationship with Walter Hopps, the older, married curator of the Pasadena Art Museum. Hopps had organized a groundbreaking 1962 pop-art survey and persuaded Marcel Duchamp to let the museum host his first retrospective. Devastated when Hopps put the kibosh on her attending that show’s opening — he took his wife instead — Babitz vowed that “if I could ever wreak any havoc in his life, I would.”
She succeeded brilliantly a few days later, when she agreed to be photographed nude, playing chess with Duchamp (fully dressed) in the museum. The result was what Smithsonian archivist Paul Karlstrom called “one of the most famous photographs certainly in California art history.”
Soon enough there were more rock stars, more booze and drugs, a stint designing classic album covers for Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds. In the early 1970s, burned out and aged out of the groupie lifestyle, Babitz turned her focus back to writing. A Rolling Stone article helped secure a book deal for “Eve’s Hollywood,” a collection of odes and aubades to Tinseltown that if published today might be categorized as autobiographical fiction.
Reading “Eve’s Hollywood” is like going on a bender with your smartest, sexiest friend and listening to her dish nonstop until you both collapse into glittering, gleeful exhaustion. Yet sales and reviews were modest. Babitz wasn’t taken seriously as a writer.
“She was seen as this sexy girl who somehow got Seymour Lawrence to publish her book,” her agent recalled. (The fact she was sleeping with Lawrence didn’t help her credibility.)
More books followed: the superb essays collected in “Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.,” considered her masterwork. The novels “L.A. Woman” and “Sex and Rage,” both of which fictionalized much of the same material as “Eve’s Hollywood.” “Black Swans,” a collection of autobiographical stories written after Babitz got sober. A book on tango and another on the Fiorucci fashion house. Then, in 1997, a horrific freak accident derailed her life — her clothing caught on fire and left Babitz with third-degree burns on much of her body, skin grafts and months of recovery. The spotlight-seeker became a recluse.
The appearance of Anolik’s new book is part of a mini Babitz renaissance. Last year a new edition of “Black Swans” was published, Emma Roberts chose “Sex and Rage” as her book-club choice this summer, and Hulu is developing a series based on “L.A. Woman.” Babitz is a popular subject of millennial Instagramming. But readers looking for new revelations about Babitz’s famously fractious life will have to wait.
Anolik warns us on the first page that “Hollywood’s Eve” is “a biography in the nontraditional sense, a case history as well as a cultural; a critical appreciation; a sociological study; a psychological commentary; a noir-style mystery; a memoir in disguise; and a philosophical investigation as contrary, speculative, and unresolved as its subject,” and “above all else: a love story.” It’s also somewhat of a hot mess, but then so was its subject in her heyday.
The book riffs on Anolik’s original piece about Babitz in Vanity Fair, and too much of the rest is padding, some of it written in a style that embarrassingly apes Babitz’s. Anolik skims over Babitz’s post-9/11 turn to conservatism and seems oddly uncritical of the ’70s groupie culture that normalized relationships between older men and teenage girls. Babitz’s rape as an 18-year-old gets only a fleeting mention.
Yet the sections on Babitz’s younger sister, Mirandi, are surprisingly compelling, with Mirandi — prettier and sweeter-natured than Eve but also prone to her addictive demons — providing a different, often darker, perspective on her older sister. But ultimately, the only writer who could do justice to this brilliant, unruly life story is Babitz herself.

Pete Prisco's NFL Wild Card Weekend odds, picks: Colts pull off road upset, Cowboys edge Seahawks

Pete Prisco's NFL Wild Card Weekend odds, picks: Colts pull off road upset, Cowboys edge Seahawks


Pete Prisco's NFL Wild Card Weekend odds, picks: Colts pull off road upset, Cowboys edge Seahawks



The NFL ( National Football League )  playoffs are here, which means the intensity rises on the field and also when it comes to picking the games.
There are only four games this week and four next week, then two and then one.
That means the margin for error is slim.
I expect a few upsets this week, and maybe a wild ride in the playoffs with a long shot even making the Super Bowl.It also means focusing in on the games is a little easier. I usually do well in the postseason when it comes to making picks, so let's hope that trend stays true.
Wild Card Weekend will be fun. Let's hope the picks are good to go with it.

NFL Playoffs tv schedule : National Football League

Pete Prisco's NFL Wild Card Weekend odds, picks: Colts pull off road upset, Cowboys edge Seahawks

Los Angeles Chargers at Baltimore (-2.5)

Sunday, 1:05 p.m. ET (CBS, stream the game here) 
The Ravens beat the Chargers in Week 16 in Los Angeles thanks to an impressive defensive performance and a nice game by quarterback Lamar Jackson.
The Ravens ran for 159 yards in that game, averaging 4.5 per rush. I don't think that will happen again. That was the first time the Chargers saw the Ravens and their scheme with Jackson, which can be tough the first time you see it. I think with a grasp of it, the Chargers will handle it better.
The Baltimore defence had an impressive game in the first meeting, limiting Philip Rivers to 181 yards passing and picking him off twice. Rivers will be better here and offensive line, which was dominated in the first meeting, will be stouter. 
I think the Chargers will win a low-scoring game, with a late sack-fumble play by Joey Bosa to ice it.
Pick: Chargers 19, Ravens 16

Philadelphia at Chicago (-6) : National Football League

Sunday, 4:40 p.m. ET (NBC)
The Eagles are a hot team right now behind Nick Foles, but this is a big challenge heading to Chicago to face the Bears' No. 1-ranked scoring defence.
Foles and the passing game will be challenged here by a Chicago defence that was first in the league in passing yards per play. It helps that pass rusher Khalil Mack makes things tough for any quarterback. But the Eagles offensive line has played better down the stretch, which will be key here.
The Chicago offence has had moments where it's been impressive, but it's limited in terms of being able to line up and run the football. That could be a trouble spot for Mitchell Trubisky against an Eagles defence that is playing better lately.
Despite that, I think the Bears will find a way to generate enough offence to win a close game and advance to the Divisional Round. The Eagles will make it interesting, though.

Pete Prisco's NFL ( National Football League )  Wild Card Weekend odds, picks: Colts pull off road upset, Cowboys edge Seahawks

Friday 4 January 2019

Why are Bird Box memes so popular? It’s complicated.

Why are Bird Box memes so popular? It’s complicated.

Netflix's hit horror flick about family bonding has inspired lots of real-life family bonding via memes.


Why are Bird Box memes so popular? It’s complicated.


On the surface, the weird and viral love for Netflix’s recent movie Bird Box doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Sure, the memes it has inspired have spread all throughout the internet, and the #BirdBoxChallenge has come close to putting people in the hospital. But these trends aren’t really all that connected to the post-apocalyptic horror movie itself — at least until you look closer.
Why are Bird Box memes so popular? It’s complicated. bird box memes.


On top of that, for many people, the interest doesn’t feel honest. There’s been substantial conspiracy theorizing that Netflix somehow gamed people into watching a just-okay movie(albeit one starring Oscar-winner Sandra Bullock) by flooding social media with Netflix-orchestrated Bird Box memes. The theory holds that Netflix created bots or paid people on Twitter to spread memes about the movie — in essence, to create FOMO that would nudge more people to watch it. (Netflix had no official comment on the meme or the film’s success, but a company representative told Mashable that “the meme content happened on its own and spread organically.”)
Though that conspiracy has been debunked, the virality of it indisputably worked in Netflix’s favor: The network said that 45 million people streamed Bird Box during the holiday week following its December 21 debut, making it the most successful Netflix film launch to date. Bird Box also became something of a social media phenomenon, because as the memes made the rounds, they seemed to simultaneously generate more interest in the memes and authentic interest in the movie from people who wanted to watch it solely to enjoy the memes.

Why are Bird Box memes so popular? It’s complicated. bird box memes.

The buzz around Bird Box has now stayed so viral for almost two weeks — an extremely long time in internet terms. That makes the film arguably Netflix’s buzziest production since its hit TV series Stranger Things — so much so that when Kim Kardashian finally got around to watching it on New Year’s Day, she met with an inevitable ‘get with the times’ reaction from fellow supercelebrity (and Twitter powerhouse) Chrissy Teigen:
All of this is fun, but it might be baffling considering that the memes have been going strong for well over a week and show no sign of slowing down. In fact, many people feel that the memes have outstripped the popularity of the movie itself — quite an accomplishment considering that it stars Sandra Bullock. (However, the memes have also thrown assumptions about Sandra Bullock’s recognizability into question!)
Are Bird Box memes just a quirky but ultimately meaningless internet distraction? Where did they come from and why are they still here?
The answers to these queries, and more, lie within.

Why are Bird Box memes so popular? It’s complicated. bird box memes.

Bird Box is about our impending planetary doom. Bird Boxmemes are mostly about blindfolds.

Bird Box is about a mom, played by Sandra Bullock, who’s desperately fighting to protect herself and her two kids in an apocalyptic near-future where monsters make people kill themselves by sending them suicidal visions. (Yes, really.) To survive, characters must stay blindfolded at nearly all times. It’s a popcorn flick with strong performances from Bullock, John Malkovich, and Moonlight’s Trevante Rhodes.
Although the premise is more than a little silly, it works in tandem with A Quiet Place to nicely bookend 2018: two post-apocalyptic horror films, one opening and one closing out the year, that involve monsters effectively disabling one of humans’ five senses.

Why are Bird Box memes so popular? It’s complicated. bird box memes.

By forcing their characters to adapt and survive, respectively, without speech and without sight, both films tackle a growing cultural awareness that humanity is stumbling, deaf and blind, toward a global climate collapse that many of us feel completely out of our depth to handle. (Others have theorised that the monsters in Bird Box are metaphors for everything from Satanto Twitter and social media and parenting.)
Bird Box memes, however, are mainly just blindfold jokes. No, really.
The majority of Bird Box memes that aren’t blindfold jokes are responses to the story itself. But on some level, all of the memes are responses to the story. A good way to think about Bird Boxmemes is that they are kind of like the “This is fine” dog in action. (Did I just memeify a meme? Yes. Take deep breaths.) But in all seriousness, these memes react to Bird Box in ways that are explicitly about sidestepping the movie’s terror and apocalyptic drama to humorously perform denial about all the terror and drama.
To understand what else the memes are doing, though, we have to take a look at the memes themselves.

Bird Box Memes: A Compendium

There are four main classes of Bird Box meme. Get ready, ’cause we’re breaking ’em down.

1) Bird Box memes that react to the storyline itself.

This class of Bird Box memes is pretty basic: they serve to comment on the premise and story of the film. Most, predictably, are about reacting to events in the plot. (Vague spoilers below!)

2) Bird Box memes that use the blindfold imagery to joke about selective sight

This is an irresistible and widespread version of the meme, so much so that Michael Herriot wrote an entire tongue-in-cheek post at The Root about how the movie is a metaphor for white people’s selective refusal to see racism. The applications of the blindfolded metaphor are endless.
One of the most popular variants of this meme takes the form of joking about the kinds of things that would propel the meme-maker to take off their blindfold and look, when tempted by the vague nightmare monsters.
The more typical form of miming — which would involve using ideas and images from the movie to engage with other aspects of society — hasn’t gotten nearly as much play from the Bird Box fandom thus far outside of these very popular iterations. But there’s a smattering of other forms of this meme out there as well:

3) Bird Box memes that make the inevitable comparison to Hush and A Quiet Place

Hush (2016), A Quiet Place (2018), and Bird Box all deprive characters of one of their five senses. In Hush, the main character can’t hear. In A Quiet Place, one main character can’t hear and the rest can’t speak. In Bird Box, each of the characters has to selectively blind themselves. So it only makes sense to meme them all together.
The most popular iteration of this meme combines all three movie premises with a fourth image serving as the punchline — like these, in which the punch line comes, respectively, from a viral Vine kid, and a viral Wife Swap kid:
A few popular versions utilise jokes from the Fueled By Ramen bands My Chemical Romance and Panic! At the Disco, respectively:
Many Bird Box memes also rope in Netflix’s other holiday release, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, and it choose-your-own-adventure conceit.
Then there’s the most notorious meme branch-off of all:

4) The “Bird Box Challenge”

This is the meme that is literally just putting on a blindfold yourself and groping around in front of a camera.
That’s right — if it sounds like something that might put you in the hospital, it probably is:
You might think Netflix’s warning was for Netflix’s benefit — a stealth way of getting more hype and attention for the memes. But, uh, have you seen any of these memes?
Granted, this is far from the first time people have done unwise things on video in the name of a good meme and a chance at 15 minutes of internet vitality. But what is it about Bird Box that’s inspiring so much enthusiasm — and why hasn’t the meme cycle died of yet?
I have a few theories.

Why are Bird Box memes so popular?

1) Timing

Bird Box’s December 21 premiere date — the Friday before Christmas — gave it the perfect opportunity to reach people looking for something to watch while enjoying some time off work for the holiday.
Many of those same people were probably spending time with their families, and the combination of Sandra Bullock — a megastar who typically headlines very mainstream films, including traditional family fare — with an ensemble of cult actors (Malkovich, Rhodes, Get Out’s Lil’ Rel) and an intriguing horror premise may have ensured that Bird Box appealed across household demographics at a moment when families were seeking ways to bond with each other.
Plus, in early test screenings, the film scored high with women viewers, perhaps because of its focus on family bonding. That a message could have proved to be a holiday bonus, in that it offered an unexpectedly wholesome addition to the normal end-of-year table talk.
So I’m envisioning a scenario where people bonded with their families over the movie and the memes — in either order — and then put on their blindfolds and started making the memes themselves. Crucially, the phenomenon surged between Christmas and New Years, when lots of people were on vacation or bored at work and had downtime to devote to making and circulating the memes online. And though Netflix did heavily market the film, it couldn’t work magic. Luckily for Netflix, the combination of timing + time off + dedicated meme-makers + the internet may have worked better than magic ever could.

2) Black Twitter loves it

Bird Box memes — including many of the ones featured in this article — first took off among the nebulous community known as Black Twitter, where the meme picked up its tongue-in-cheek flavour and reactions to it found their best forms.
Netflix even acknowledged the community’s support indirectly, after announcing Bird Box’s viewing numbers.

3) K-pop fandom also loves it

Across social media, K-pop fans have worked K-pop subjects into Bird Box memes with an impressive rate of consistency, using the conceit to comment on recent K-pop news and to meme their favourite bands.
If you know anything about K-pop, you know that K-pop fandom is mighty, and when fans commit to a meme, they go all in. There is zero logical connection between Bird Box and K-pop memes. But clearly, the movie has struck a chord with fans; and when has logic ever gotten in the way of love?

4) Bird Box is also a huge Tik Tok meme

On Tik Tok, the social video app whose runaway success has made it the natural heir to VineBird Box memes have been very popular; posts using the #birdbox hashtag have racked up nearly 54 million views in recent weeks. Especially popular are blindfolded family videos overdubbed with Bullock’s “if you take off your blindfold, you will die” speech from a seminal scene in the movie, and the #BirdBoxDance, which is exactly what you think it is.



5) The memes have given people a way to recreate the experience of collectively shouting at the screen while watching a horror movie together in a theatre

Think about it. Half the fun of popcorn-ready horror movies like Bird Box is attached to the performative community around the film — i.e. yelling at the screen, or otherwise reacting en masse, when something especially scary, funny, or poignant happens. But the memes give us a chance to perform our communal, collective response to the film the way we can’t really do for a small-screen phenomenon unless we’re all in one space.
Well, the internet has clearly become that space. And because it came out at a time of year when a lot of people were already primed to think about community and togetherness, memes about the movie may have been a perfect extension of that sentiment. And at the same time, they also offered a chance to collectively decompress at the end of the year — whether from the stress of a scary movie, from the holidays, or from a scary 2018.
Bird box memes. 

IBPS Clerk Preliminary Result 2018 declared; check results on ibps.in

IBPS Clerk Preliminary Result 2018 declared; check results on ibps.in


The Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) intends to fill over 1,599 posts of specialist officers in nationalised banks.


IBPS Clerk Preliminary Result 2018 declared; check results on ibps.in


The Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) has announced the results of Clerk Preliminary (prelims) exam on the official website today. The candidates can check the results through IBPS official website, ibps.in.
IBPS had invited applications for as many as 7,275 posts of clerks in 19 nationalised banks across India in September. The prelims exam was held on December 8, December 9 and December 15 and December 16.
The IBPS intends to fill over 1,599 posts of specialist officers in nationalised banks.
How to check IBPS Clerk Prelims result 2018:
  • Log onto the official website, www.ibps.in
  • Click on the "Result" tab present on the top of the page
  • Enter all the requested details
  • Check your result and download it
  • Take a printout of the results for future reference

Next step for the applicants who pass the preliminary examination will be to appear for the IBPS clerk main examination, which is to be conducted on January 20, 2019.
The admit card for the main examination will be released either on January 5 or January 6, 2019, while final result will be announced in the month of April.
In the main examination, selected candidates will be asked 190 questions which need to be answered in the total duration of 160 minutes.
For the IBPS main examination, candidates will get 160 minutes for solving 190 questions of 200 marks. There is the provision of the negative marking also. If a candidate gives wrong answer then 0.25 marks will be deducted as penalty from his total marks. If no answer is given, or candidate does not attempt any question, then no mark will be deducted from his/her scores.


The Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) holds exams to recruit probationary officers and clerks for its associated Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) banks, SBI, Associate Banks of SBI, RBI, NABARD, SIDBI, few Co.op Banks, LIC and Insurance companies.

How a badass, ex-drug addict groupie became a millennial hero at 75

How a badass, ex-drug addict groupie became a millennial hero at 75 Even before gaining literary fame, the LA wild child Eve Bab...