The eighties was a great time for dumb summer movies — the kind of flicks you want to watch on VHS after a long day of indulging at whatever luxurious summer beach cottage you’ve managed to crash. There are tons of obvious hits in this category, but skip the old shtick and delve deeper into your pal’s childhood tape collection for some truly amazing gems. My recent personal favorites for 2010 include some slightly more obscure but celebrity-laden romps.

Like Dirty Dancing? Check out Matt Dillon’s breakout film, The Flamingo Kid, about a Brooklyn kid on a fancy 60’s Long Island resort.

Love John Cusack in Say Anything? Have you seen the absurd 1986 flick One Crazy Summer, where he stars opposite Demi Moore? This movie is ridiculous and amazing.

Love all those dance numbers in Grease? Um, that’s a little embarrassing. You should indulge in Shag: The Movie instead. Bridget Fonda and Phoebe Cates make this film a million times cooler.

However, nobody has made quite the worldwide impact that pioneer extraordinaire John Fluevog has on the shoe landscape.

Celebrating 40 years of mind-blowing footwear this year, you know a Fluevog when you see it. There’s no specific design that you can latch onto — some Fluevog’s are gratuitous, see Madonna’s pink platform Fluevog’s in Truth or Dare. Some are casually subversive, like the simple black and red trimmed dress shoes I have, that also pack enough steel toe to be used as a weapon.

Fluevogs have made such an impact that even the usually a little stodgy Museum of Vancouver is celebrating with a Fox, Fluevog and Friends fashion retrospective. John Fluevog, Peter Fox and Ken Rice all started footwear companies in Vancouver’s swinging seventies and all of them made Vancouver fashion a powerhouse. For as much as we praise Vancouver’s art and culture, the fashion has always been where it’s at, even if nobody remembers it, so to see Fluevog at 40 is an exceptional site and with this exposition, you get to follow the path.

That the Internet proliferates opportunities to have real “fake” experiences in lieu of real “real” experiences is entirely logical; the Internet itself — and computers in general — is a replacement for a wide variety of activities that would otherwise take place within the “real world”. That sex and pornography should be one of the most expansive terrains into which this would extend is even more understandable, since so many people feel guilty about that aspect of their personality, it is an easy way to exercise (or exorcise) their sexuality, mediating their fantasies through technology. Two of the more peculiar, fascinating and totally revolting forms this has evolved into are Vulva Original and Real Touch.

Created by a “pan-European team of scientists”, market researchers and product designers, Vulva Original is a vaginal-scented liquid. The website stressed it is not a perfume, but an olfactory-enhancing aid, meant to be dabbled into your hand while, one presumes, you are pleasuring yourself. The ads seem to imply that the essence of a beautiful woman’s sweaty crotch has been distilled into the phial of slightly yellowish liquid that you receive, and that when smelled a Pinocchio-like transformation will occur to your… erm… nose.

One might be inclined to try this in conjunction with the Real Touch, which is a horrible little mechanical tunnel that men can connect to their computer via USB, and download special porn that is synched up to the device. While watching other people simulating sex acts, this little plastic tunnel in which you place your manhood uses a variety of constricting rings, conveyor belts, lubricant dispersants, and heating pads to make it seem as if you are involved in the fake “real” thing you are watching. The vaginal-scented liquid might add just that additional touch that could turn a plastic box into a beautiful woman, complete with thighs freshly sweated from a workout on an elliptical machine.

When I was shown the video for Robyn’s “Hang With Me”, I had to watch it twice in a row. It might be the first full-on dance-pop track that I have heard in years that I can get behind. It’s an instant unreleased classic. Once again, the Swedes produce the best pop music outside of America. I haven’t felt this way since Madonna’s “Hung Up,” which due to its ABBA sample makes it kinda Swedish. Her other single “Dancing On My Own” is pretty great too. I really hope this album leaks soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3a2qoyONVA&feature=av2e

I enjoy watching Rome more for it’s opulence and style than anything. Yes, it’s a good refresher course on the days of Julius Caesar and Pompey, of Antony and Cleopatra, and interesting power plays, bloody fights and sexual games, but more than anything I like to see the make-up rituals, wigs, lewd drawings, strange pagan-seeming sacrifices within the church, etc.

Julius Caesar!

Above, the beautiful and appealing Cleopatra.

Photo by Ms. Atomic

We recently found ourselves around a fireplace, slouched in leather bucket seats, sipping insanely cheap martinis at Joe’s of Westlake in Daly City. We were the youngest people in the room by, say, 30 years. It’s clear we were a little late on the discovery.

It is–for reals–a place of the past. (In fact, we worried what would come of it when all the regulars died). The bar was packed with older gentlemen drinking bright green concoctions and old fashions. A silver fox was expertly steering the jukebox. Did I mention there’s a piano bar? Yes, there’s a piano with an extended body and a padded lip where you can sit and drink while the band plays. Unfortunately, we came in a little too late for the band that first night. (We saw them a week later).

Our top shelf martinis came with an extra shaker of the good stuff, as if we had ordered a diner milkshake. Close to midnight, the silver fox got the ladies on their feet for some dancing. We stayed seated for the most part, taking in the red hazy glow of a room we thought we could only read about.

Photo by Thomas Hawk

When I first moved to the East Village and the winter was making me want to cry, everyone was like “you gotta go to the Russian Baths.”  I have never been and have no idea why because lately everyone keeps talking about other spas, mostly Korean, and it seems that the bath-house thing is a full on with almost competitive obsession. Spa Castle, the most popular of the non-Manhattan baths, is part rave chill out tent, part discovery zone, part new age retreat center and it’s in a shopping mall in Queens with free shuttles from the train. Supposedly a New Jersey bath-house has it beat with a full golden pyramid that you can bathe in. This winter I will make this happen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBP2rqWlFX0&feature=player_embedded

The website strindberg and helium is amazing. The site features five amazing animated shorts about August Strindberg, a writer and reputed to be a morose sort. The idea behind the site was to create a friend for Strindberg who could cheer him up despite whatever was happening. So the geniuses behind these shorts gave him a friend named “Helium” who is always very pleased, even when repeating very dark words exiting from Strindberg’s mouth. Little can be done for August’s distempered ways, but Helium adds this charming, sweet, and precious presence. We could all use a Helium in our lives.

The exterior of O Cinema, via facebook.com/pages/O-Cinema/143935142284243

The film scene in Miami is a bit of a drag lately, but that, like so many other things here, seems to be changing — if slowly. Last month, I posted about the totally homegrown Borscht Film Festival, which has proven a booster for locally authored film and music. Now, there might be a place to actually watch it.

There have been few places to see independent movies; in fact, there has been no full-time independent movie theater for several years. The Bill Cosford Cinema at the University of Miami has always continued a program of showing independent and foreign movies, but it only has a couple of screenings a night, and not every day of the week. The Miami Beach Cinematheque, meanwhile, puts on great one-off programs and does some in-house screenings. But it’s moved from an independent location to one inside the Miami Beach City Hall building, and, as such, its showings have been curtailed.

Now, though, I’m eager for the forthcoming arrival of O Cinema, a new venue set to open in the Wynwood arts/warehouse district on the mainland. It’s funded in part by a Knight Arts Grant, and it’s meant to have 130 seats and show first-run independent movies Thursday through Sunday. What’s more, it will become the first movie theater in the sprawling Biscayne Corridor area; gentrifiers have had to go back to Miami Beach or to suburbs north and south for a flick fix. Theater founders also say the place will host a video art lounge, keeping with the spirit of the neighborhood. Fingers crossed that Miami will finally be able to sustain such a place. Updates are on the O Cinema Facebook page.

Full disclosure: At my full-time gig, part of my responsibility is to edit a daily music blog, Crossfade, which is meant to cover all things in the Miami music and nightlife scene. I would welcome some more independent competition, and I enjoy exchanging with other people who run similar local blogs — but there aren’t a lot of them.