...

teh jams

2011-12-02T12:15:00.002-05:00

WHEN I GET BACK

2011-09-09T12:01:00.004-04:00

some autumnal revelations:

Just want to dance to something beautiful, yalls. Danish. All you need to know.

Swedish, brilliant. What is it with northern Europe getting it so hard?

...As well as Malian nomads. Tinariwen might as well have invented rock and roll.

Weirdly, these guys are American. Get me to a party// FOUR MORE YEARS

Immaculate dark electro pop from Canadian duo... perfect if you like a little punishment.

Nashville bros tear it up, new album We Are The Champions is like being thirteen again with ten extra years of experience.

Com Truise-- possible favorite discovery of the season. On Ghostly International records out of Ann Arbor. His album Galactic Melt is transportive from beginning to end, and this video is probably the best I've seen since the mid-nineties.

... Or 1982, from Rodway.

Bell crawled out from under some northern European iceberg and her album Diamonite is sparse and sprawling all at once, familiar and measured but full of surprises.

this existential breakdown will be danceable. <3

All these and more Thursdays 12-3pm EST on widr.org. I came to dance. No whiny dudes with guitars allowed.

David Foster Wallace Is My Boyfriend

2011-08-30T09:58:00.007-04:00

Summer: Books and iced americanos amiright. Here's how I wiled away my splendid underemployment and hedonistic afternoons sweating in public.

Persepolis II, (2001) Embroideries (2006) and Chicken With Plums (2006), Marjane Satrapi

I know, global politics are not that sexy. Until you've met Satrapi. Her graphic novel Persepolis breathes humor and humanity into the Iranian revolution with the intimacy of a friendly conversation. Embroideries is an afternoon spent with her aunts and mother's friends as they chat about sex and love, and Chicken is an elegy to her late uncle that manages to be touching and funny. Satrapi is a rare storyteller of heart and wit.

I Thought My Father Was God: And Other True Tales From NPR's National Story Project, edited by Paul Auster (2000)

A lengthy collection of non-fiction short stories from Americans of every demographic. Some pieces are powerful, some aren't, but together they form a wide view of American life in the past half century. Not a particularly hard-hitting collection; racism is mentioned approximately once in this version of American history and sexism, classism, etc, not at all. But perhaps the collection is most successful when the reader eschews all notions of what "America" means and instead listens to the voices of these ordinary people.

Agee: Film Writing and Selected Journalism, James Agee (2005)

Agee: not an ordinary American. The author of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and the Pulitzer-prize winning A Death In The Family was also an extremely prolific critic and essayist. His essays on film here from the 1940s and 50s are insightful, honest and art in themselves. In the era of blockbusters, or when all you need to sell a movie is tits and terrorists, it's hard to believe that American cinema was once an art form. Does anyone take movies seriously anymore? Peter Travers doesn't count.

Everyone Loves You When You're Dead, Neil Strauss (2011)

A collection of interviews by a marathon journalist. He deals mostly in the music business, and covers every pop and rock star you've ever heard of, plus a few stray CIA agents and lawyers. Because his subjects include the Britneys and Robert Plants of the world, there isn't too much in this volume in the way of existential truths. But it is compulsively readable and Strauss is sneakily ruthless in exposing his subjects as vapid, drug-addled, self-obsessed children, which of course most of them are. Except for Springsteen, but that goes without saying.

How They See Us: Meditations On America, edited by James Atlas (2010)

A collection of essays about America by international writers. There are a variety of sentiments on display here: America has stolen an Iraqi author's homeland and history, America has given a Chinese writer the freedom to realize his artistic ambition. America has failed the world, America has redeemed itself with Obama, America is a "tyrannical prom queen" (as one Nigerian writer's contribution states). One overarching theme materializes: America is everywhere. It does not know cartographical boundaries but instead has permeated the entire globe with its influence and hamburgers. If reality is informed by perception, all Americans need to read this book to discover exactly what "we" are in the 21st century.

And The Pursuit Of Happiness, Maira Kalman (2010)

Instead of the question of whether America is "good" or "bad," Kalman explores what America is. The daughter of Israeli immigrants, New Yorker Kalman spends a year exploring American history and notions of democracy in an attempt to discover if the founding fathers would be satisfied with what their vision has become. She travels around New York, to Washington, to California exploring the government, schools, farms. Most importantly, though, this book is completely illustrated in beautiful full color by Kalman. She paints Jefferson, she paints her lunch. The type is her handwriting, and she incorporates her own musings into the facts she picks up. The book is charming and whimsical but it's not simple.

Pushcart Prize XXXV: Best Of The Small Presses, edited by Bill Henderson with the Pushcart Prize Editors (2011)

I want to marry this book. It's smart, sensitive, brutal, sharp, sweet, bearded... um what? The title sums it up: a collection of the best non-fiction, fiction and poems from small, independent publishers. Over a hundred pieces form the collection and while the subjects and voices are all unique, they are all united in their sheer truth and power. This volume has done nothing less than actually inspire excitement in me to live in a world where art of this caliber is being created by so many people. This book is a gift.

Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace, David Lipsky (2010)

Oh, David.

In 1996, David Foster Wallace was 35 and had just published Infinite Jest to international acclaim. After seeing a photo of Wallace in his trademark scruff and bandana, Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone decided he was "one of them" and sent David Lipsky to follow Wallace on his book tour. Lipsky spent three days with Wallace, smoking, eating, driving and talking. After Wallace's 2008 suicide, Lipsky published the complete transcript of the interview. For the small but fervent world of Wallace-philes, this is a rare conversational glimpse into Wallace's world, but part of Wallace's unique genius (and hence his devout followers) was that his prose was a direct route to every corner of his unique, crazy, gifted, super-human beautiful mind. Nothing he says here comes as a complete surprise; it serves as more of an addendum to his essays and fiction. Lipsky himself takes some liberties with the format and inserts some commentary which comes off as extremely clunky (to say nothing of the strange feeling one gets that this is Lipsky's attempt to cash in on Wallace's suicide, finding that these three days has suddenly appreciated a shit-ton of value). But those who love Wallace's writing, and his humanity, really, will take any scrap they throw at us, and end feeling a little emptier knowing that the supply is always diminishing.

Next Season: Foucault and more Wallace, the Vietnam War, probably some Sweet Valley High.

SLACK'D

2011-07-27T10:50:00.002-04:00

Back in 2003, I was living at home, wearing purple eyeliner to my boring service industry job and spending most of my time collaging. I had a fresh driver's license and the thrill of rolling around in my mom's car at night listening to the Raveonettes and using her Hollywood Video rental card to check out Marlon Brando movies was unparalleled. The guy at the counter was a plump ginger with a long ponytail under his Hollywood Video-issued baseball hat who I suspected had a crush on me since I was the only teen coming in without my kid and buying the king size pack of jujufruits. I ignored his halting glances since I didn't really start talking to boys until I was about 20, even ones I had no interest in.
One day, I checked out Slacker, because the case looked weird and I had just recently discovered that I was cooler than anyone I knew, having been educated at a prep school in which my peers' interests ranged from the fall j. crew catalog to the spring j. crew catalog. I got home, popped in the VHS (earnestly) and got to work stenciling "London Calling" lyrics onto t-shirts I'd just picked up at the Gap on sale for $9.99.
Slacker was weird, I couldn't really make sense of the characters and the lack of plot line got lost in my intense stenciling session-- I later moved onto Bowie lyrics.
Eight (!!!!11) years later, my life is eerily (depressingly?) similar to that of my eighteen year old self. The only element that's different today from the scene described above is that I use my mom's Netflix account. And I know how to talk to boys now, but that's a different story entirely. Tonight as I was sitting around making record cover journals, feeling inexplicably attracted to Ted Nugent, I decided to scroll through the Netflix collection, and Slacker caught my eye once again.
The film that I watched tonight, of course, is the same as the VHS I rented a thousand beers ago, but oh how my perception of it has changed. What once seemed like dreamy esoterica has since become the soundtrack to my own life; the characters, once just that, are now people I have met over and over, comprising my own anchor to post-collegiate reality. While I was completely engrossed in the film and finding myself in conversation with these people, a thought entered into my head: Is this movie making fun of us? Is Richard Linklater looking at 20-somethings who sit around drinking beer, talking about their lives and the world, politics and their relationships, with their friends and roommates and strangers, and deeming it all a waste of time? The film is called Slacker. Is the film's thesis that we're aimless, rootless, wasting our time and our potential to fulfill that great American myth of "making something of ourselves"?

As anyone with a hundred thousand dollar degree in Why The World Sucks and a barista job to prove it knows, "Our Generation" is the topic of a thousand porch/bar/breakfast PBR 30-packs. The Oxford English Dictionary defines "slacker" as "a person regarded as one of a large group or generation of young people (especially in the early to mid 1990s) characterized by apathy, aimlessness, and lack of ambition". They may have to alter the era included in their definition. Is it not "Our Generation," the children of those hardworking model Americans, the baby boomers, that has been called out on a hilariously frequent number of occasions by the New York Times for being lazy, ego-driven, sext-crazed narcissists? Slackers, in the truest sense of the word? Intra-generational hand wringing abounds at the NYT as their op-ed columnists tell us to stay out of restaurants and save our money. In preparation for footing the bill for "Their Generation's" gross mistakes, of course.

Every conversation over porch beers at noon on a Tuesday illicits the same conclusion: we're not unmotivated, the ones pushing papers and paying their bills are. We're the ones who are looking for something more, the ones who refuse to settle for what we've been given. We're taking the path of least resistance, fighting with ourselves and everyone else for answers instead of with the TV over Dancing With the Stars.

And it turns out Linklater agrees: “Slackers might look like the left-behinds of society, but they are actually one step ahead, rejecting most of society and the social hierarchy before it rejects them. The dictionary defines slackers as people who evade duties and responsibilities. A more modern notion would be people who are ultimately being responsible to themselves and not wasting their time in a realm of activity that has nothing to do with who they are or what they might be ultimately striving for.”

Slack on, "our generation."

also posted at l337blog.

july

2011-07-09T11:43:00.000-04:00

modern love

2011-06-07T17:19:00.001-04:00

Dear Leaders of Tomorrow,

2011-04-21T10:37:00.002-04:00

I just received an email from students from my high school, a venue in which the students are encouraged to believe they are the most important people in the world who will be running shit in a few years. Most of them will be, after they get into Georgetown despite failing Math for Fucktards Who Can't Do Long Division because their father sits on the board. While being encouraged to walk around with their heads up their asses and learn to hold everyone who didn't attend a prep school in contempt, the students use their parents credit card numbers to order from the J. Crew catalog on a regular enough basis to not miss out on the newest collection and thus be the laughingstock of the dorm hall and blackballed from the varsity lacrosse team.
The email in question from these wide-eyed, precocious and doomed youths was sent in the spirit of soliciting alumni opinions on the dress code and if it "is important in our preparation for our future careers." I almost ignored the entire thing but the line "The link below will take you to a brief survey regarding your current profession and the expectations for professional dress" was too delicious to pass up. I rarely miss a chance to throw the median of a statistical study.

Unfortunately the survey didn't give adequate space in which to detail one's current employment (or lack thereof) and how the school and its dress code did nothing to prepare this alumna for much of anything besides my forthcoming memoir. However, I did draft an addendum to my survey results:

"Dear Bobby [Redacted] '11,
Thank you for the opportunity to participate in your survey regarding the dress code. I took part with gusto as the dress code was a constant source of woe for me during my secondary school years, as I had an aversion to nylons and a penchant for wanting to piss of Mrs. [redacted]. The reason I really wanted to respond, however, was the hilariously misguided concept of said dress code preparing high school students for "future professional careers." After you leave high school, you will go to college, forget everything you learned in Mr. [redacted]'s history class, as he was stoned the whole time and wrong about almost everything. In college, you will wear sweats to the classes you actually attend and put on an ever-more-snug polo shirt to parties where you will attempt to get laid. It might even work! You don't think I know you, Bobby, but I do.
When you leave college, you may spend the summer drunk in Europe and then you will most likely walk onto an entry-level position in "finance," where you will spend your day playing Farmville and no one will care. No one will be checking to see if you're wearing socks or if the top button of your oxford is buttoned. I may be a wrench in the median of your survey results, but in almost everything I have done to earn money since leaving college (surely the premise under which one attends the school that we did: to embark on a long, fulfilling life of grabbing the largest piece of the pie and fucking as many people over as possible on the way to Goldman Sachs VP), including selling art on the street and making lattes, my profits have increased directly in correlation to the zaniness of my earrings and ridiculousness of my t-shirt.
So, no, the dress code did not prepare me for a professional career.

Good luck, I hear Wall Street is rough these days.

Sincerely,
Emily [redacted], '03

causalties of the mechanized modern world, yallz

2011-04-19T17:04:00.005-04:00

me: in lieu of of having self-respect and a positive impact on the world, I guess I'll just show off my tits and be rewarded for them. THANKS WORLD.

kelly: THANKS COLLEGE. Actually, if there's one thing I learned in college, it's that I should be rewarded for my tits. everyone in the world is a retard and making more money than me at being a retard.

me either, bro.

2011-04-05T17:48:00.003-04:00

and as always, more here.

love! love! love!

2011-02-13T14:12:00.002-05:00

for those of you following along from home, new things concerning matters of the heart have been posted here.

THE RUMORS ARE TRUE:

2011-01-29T12:38:00.005-05:00

Meredith and I are lending our profound insight into the "world in gen" to the subject of literature. BUT WAIT: It's on teh internet SO YOU CAN READ IT!

Don't add this to your "internet to do list" unless you're in the market for a MMB (major mind blow).

Life Advice

2011-01-27T01:21:00.001-05:00

protest signs [via kevin smith]

2011-01-25T19:41:00.001-05:00

I Hate Crowds
Hell Is Fabulous
Dick Tastes Yummy
I Am A Happy Jew (with illustration of a happy Jew)
Being Bisexual Doubles My Chances for a Date on Saturday
God and Gays Agree That Polyester Is a Sin
God Hates That I Couldn't Get Tickets to Red State
God Hates That There Were Only 2 Seasons of Pushing Daisies
I Went to Westboro Baptist Church and All I Got Was This Lousy Sign
And on the 8th Day, God Created BEER
God Hates Signs

&then

2011-01-21T00:07:00.001-05:00

where 'artists' = 'humans' and 'necessity' = 'freedom of will'

2010-11-28T12:32:00.003-05:00

Artists may here have a more subtle scent: they know only too well that it is precisely when they cease to act ‘voluntarily’ and do everything of necessity that their feeling of freedom, subtlety, fullness of power, creative placing, disposing, shaping reaches its height – in short, that necessity and ‘freedom of will’ are then one in them.
-Nietzsche

habits of highly effective people.

2010-11-15T16:52:00.004-05:00

10:20 am: Wake up. So. Tired.

11:40: Wake up again. Stumble downstairs with Franzen in hand. Put yesterday's coffee in microwave.

12:20 pm: Check email.

12:30: Scan idealist.org for jobs.

12:32: Think about updating resume.

12:33: Google image search "bruce springsteen jean vest." Brief scan reveals nothing other than the sad fact that Target sells denim vests. Then a photo of 80s era B. in a jean vest over a leather jacket. Not quite was I was hoping for.

12:36: Watch Nelly videos on youtube.

1:00: Catch up on google reader. Over a thousand unread items! I AM SO BUSY.

1:47: Read item about how some douche from Yale '09 just got a book deal, focusing on the immorality of his generation. Wish for the 83rd time since graduation that I never went to college.

2:17: Watch Daniel Radcliffe slide show. I would like to be the kind of friends with him that make out when drunk.

2:30: Wonder if I can sell the rights to my twitter account to NBC.

2:31: Realize I only retweet Michael Ian Black and Andrew WK's gems.

2:32: Gchat to multiple friends about Rihanna's haircut. Send all friends links to Nelly videos.

3:45: Go for a run. Plot strategy to become youtube sensation via ukulele covers of Nelly and Flo Rida whilst wearing low cut shirt. Pass boys college cross country team. CHRIST they just keep getting younger. Wonder if I could pass for 21, and if I should go for the reach around next time.

4:45: Get back, check email. Weekly shower.

5:00: Breakfast.

6:00: Stare at record collection. Momentary indecisiveness over whether to choose Bruce, Hall and Oates or ELO turns to excitement as a I realize I CAN LISTEN TO ALL OF THEM. Briefly wonder when someone will love me for my record collection rather than for my boobs and ill-tempered personality. Also realize that someone has my Joan Armatrading. And, that the riff in Bruce's "Badlands" off of Darkness on the Edge of Town is the closest to perfection we may ever confront in this world.

6:17: Stare at collage material. Succeed in making two cards and organizing old magazines chronologically. Thumb through photos from college, vaguely remember having a reason to live.

9:00: Dinner: popcorn and beer.

9:26: Second beer while double checking correct alphabetical order of records. Put on Jackson Browne's "Lawyers in Love," decide again that while embarrassingly 80s, it's underrated. Draw my own hand.

10:30: "Arrested Development" on Hulu, with almond milk hot chocolate and kahlua.

11:47: Wake up; Tobias is blue. Lol.

11:48: Check email to make sure no unflattering photos have been tagged on facebook.

11:53: Return to The Twenty-Seventh City; another day, another few chapters of Franzen.

the awlsomest

2010-11-13T14:06:00.002-05:00

"It is hard to believe of someone who is so chronically depressed, bent on self-destruction, and quick to dismiss the work of others while nursing staggering insecurities of his own, but it's true: I think I am super-fucking awesome."

<3 u alex balk.

[the awl]

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME BIG BAND?

2010-11-11T23:49:00.005-05:00

I had a philosophy professor who once told our class that when he was young (in the twenties or something) his parents hated that he listened to jazz because it was too "radical." Can you ever imagine such a time? I cannot.
Tonight, my dad and I went to see a jazz concert. He'd gotten tickets from a friend and asked if I wanted to go; I was like "yeah, whatevs." I wasn't doing much else (i.e. anything) and this seemed like something I could wear heels and lipstick to, which I like to do once a year and seemed appropriate since I haven't been showering regularly for the past five weeks or so. Plus, jazz is one of those things, like gardening, pilates and waking up before noon that I've been meaning to "get into" to prove to myself and the world that I am a legitimate human being worthy of consuming the planet's finite natural resources. (I did attempt, and fail at, an appreciation of jazz in college at a local cafe's jazz night every week, but that was purely for the purposes of touching enlightened butts. I weep for the Wednesday nights I will never get back).
We had just settled into our seats as the lights dimmed and the conductor, sporting the most hilarious haircut I've seen in person since 1984 (a very full straightened mullet), shouted "ARE YOU READY FOR SOME BIG BAND?" I, for one, was not then, or ever "ready for some big band." The rest of the crowd, however, was nothing if not ready for some big band. I should note that the average age of the crowd was about one hundred and twenty. I had been planning on a night of reefer and beat poetry and here are 20 college kids in tuxes rocking the hell out to "I Got Rhythm" or whatever it is that has meant TOTALLY LAME since it came out at the beginning of time.
The jazz singing group came on stage and if there is one thing that makes me more uncomfortable than a bunch of adults singing the theme to "Barefoot in the Park" while strictly adhering to their direction of "SMILE-- WITH TEETH" and literally doing "jazz hands," I would have grounds to sue someone. Along with experiencing extreme discomfort, I am frankly embarrassed for them and wish for nothing more than the immediate end to their insane joviality that has no place this side of 1963.
Headlining the show was Kurt Something who is basically the Mick Jagger of jazz vocals. And he taught me the most important lesson of the night: along with farting, scat singing will always be funny. It's initially horrifying, as it seems like speaking in tongues but only more nefarious since it was actually once considered by some to be cool rather than just fucking crazy like its jesus-y cousin. However, watching a grown man in a satin suit and hair plugs sing "boodoobeebopbop" etc, ad nauseum, into a microphone in front of hundreds of adoring fans was worth the thirty-three dollar ticket that I didn't pay for, as I lolled my head off through the entire thing.
I also realized why I've never gotten into this whole jazz/big band/Sinatra thing. The lyrics. I know the primary focus is on the instruments, but good god. Most of the songs sound like they were written by a second grader just learning English. The lyrics rarely stray from wanting to maybe kiss this pretty lady and how it would be just divine, and how "you've gotten under my skin". This makes me not sad that no one will be playing this music in forty years.
One highlight: the jazz drumming professor just playing the shit out of that kit. Wow. All of his students on stage were just rocking out (politely) and when it was over I wanted to stand up and be all like "AWWWW YIHHH!"
But the real intrigue of the evening lay withing the jazz band themselves. This group of barely post-pubescent trumpeters and tromboners is actually the highest ranked college jazz band in the country. They've played in London, in New York, and all other things that are supposed to sound wildly impressive. But. They play instruments, they've risen to the top of their field, they've got bright futures in a non-boring field, and yet these guys (all the players were men aside from one trombone player) almost definitely get SO much less action than guys in the worst rock bands or even the third string forwards on the club hockey team. Why is this? Is the issue the inherent nerdiness of the clarinet or are girls unable to appreciate the nuanced world of big band jazz? I'm voting for a bit of both. But just seeing the singing ladies and their jazz hands made me feel a little better about the tromboners' prospects.

Me Myself I

2010-11-11T12:32:00.001-05:00

just another tuesday evening.

2010-11-09T12:57:00.001-05:00

Girls started tackling boys. People kibbitzed about the future of news, and the role of race in the arts. Someone cried, then proceeded to breakdance. Halloween candy was thrown into the air. Everyone was singing. It probably looked like some Ken Kesey-ian Acid Test.

[the awl]

Franzen.

2010-10-18T10:55:00.000-04:00

The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.

Let's get topical.

2010-09-26T02:54:00.002-04:00

Here's what I don't get about this whole "Don't Ask Don't Tell" debacle: should gays, or anyone else for that matter, really be fighting so hard to go die for no real reason? Why do "liberals" who ostensibly don't support the war(s) care so much about giving gays the right to go fight in them?

OH NO!

2010-09-21T02:25:00.002-04:00

You know what makes America great? Our cars. The prosperity of our nation is founded on our love of dependency on foreign petroleum and our unrivaled adeptness at causing massive oil spills. Sadly, the sun is setting on the Greatest Nation In The World:

YOUNG AMERICANS DON'T SEE CARS AS A STATUS OR SEX SYMBOL! THIS WILL SURELY MEAN THE END OF AMERICA.

The Crazy Never Die

2010-09-19T23:13:00.001-04:00

LOL @ everything ever.

2010-09-19T22:11:00.003-04:00

You know the Situationists, the radical French movement of the 20th century? (Read that link plus anything else you can about them, it will blow your mind. Lipstick Traces by Griel Marcus is an excellent source.)

They sought to deconstruct what they viewed as the oppressive confines of modern capitalism, and came up with a ton of slogans they plastered around Paris, eventually leading to the revolt in France and all over the world in May, 1968.

One such situationist slogan was "Under the Paving Stones, the Beach!" I also have an art site under that name.

This month, within the span of a few days, I recieved the following correspondence:

Good Day,
Am [redated] and i will like to know if you do sell Paving Stones ? If you do then, I will like to know some of the types, sizes and price range of those that you have at the moment. I As soon as you reply me with those information? I will get back you to with the quantity that will like to order so that we can proceed from there.
For the payment, i will like to know if you do take major credit card as method of payment?
Thank you and do not forget to include your Name and Phone number when getting back to me.

Dear Customer
I am Pastor [redatced] and i am sending this Email in regards to Order some (Paving Stones) and i would like to know if you do sell some but if not you need to email me back with the Type,Size and with their Prices you have in stock and also advice me of the major forms of payment that you do accept and can you email me with your contact full name and phone number that i can call to place the Order...Awaiting to hear from you soon
May God Bless you ...Pastor.

Viva la revolucion, indeed.

2 pm in BKK/// 3 am EST

2010-08-17T00:26:00.002-04:00

me: whatchu doin
Meredith: just got home from 90s night
wtf
smooched on a cheek or something
me: with who?
Meredith: this bro. think i coulda gone to the bz
but "didn't want to' because i thought he was gay/i can do better
me: ooooh jaja
im in bangkok last night
i mean now
Meredith: LOLLLL
me: i cant speak ebnglish anymore
Meredith: fjjhahahah
did you see meteors?
me: no!
Meredith: !!!!
perseid meteor showah
me: ahhh so i heard
Meredith: saw 13 shooting stars last night
i wished on them
but they were
oh wait
they were shooting stars
meredith feat. billy bragg
YAYYY
what's that book called based on blade runner?
sorry so drunk/excited right now
do androids dream of electric sheep?
me: do androids dream of electric sheep
YOU OWE ME A COKE!
Meredith: you read it?
kinda want to get into sci fi
me: yeah-- also, children of men SO GOOD
Meredith: wtf are there actually no original ideas left from which to make a 'film'?
me: well, niception
Meredith: niception was kinda lame
me: i sort of h8 leo
Meredith: he's a good actor but i dunno
me: hes fat
Meredith: miss u boner days
me: totally miss boner
Meredith: did you know that bloopers used to be called boners????
me: is that in an encyclopedia or something?
Meredith: nah i saw a record today about some 'great boners' or like 'funniest boners'
me: great boners
Meredith: teh fast and teh furious boners
me: fast and furious boners
Meredith: american beauty boner reelz
me: i kind of hate movies, i think
Meredith: h8 action movies
me: omg the action in children of men is S0 SICK
like, the angles are insane.
super long takes
long takes or shorts?
Meredith: you mean shots?
no long shorts alowed
me: ack have you ever seen kermit as a director?
or maybe it's a producer
Meredith: kermit thee frog?
me: gah sad, no pics of kermit's afro on the internets
prollz gonna go drink a beer

HOLY SHIT!

2010-07-31T04:07:00.004-04:00

I'm in Thailand!

You know what's pretty zany? The other side of the world.

While Twilight is big here and everyone seems to know Obama, this place is, in a word, different.

For example: most of the food is eaten without the use of forks or spoons, but peanuts are eaten with a spoon!

Also, bananas are peeled from the other end!

It's pretty commonplace to drink whiskey at 10:30 in the morning!

Also, it's really goddamn hot.

I'm one of a few white people in my city, aside from a couple crusty old British dudes. I've seen no other foreign women here outside of Bangkok.

I'm writing about things here. Even if I was getting made out with, hanging in opium dens, etc, I wouldn't be writing about that because other than the fact that that's tacky, I'm writing as a requirement for the org that sent me here (with baht from the Thai gov't). But I'm trying to keep it as lively as possible.

chat/write me @: emilyshortshorts@gmail.com.

from "Free Association"

2010-07-22T04:49:00.002-04:00

"Nietzsche said a person must discover twenty-four truths every day before he can sleep well. First of all, if a person found that many truths, the supply of truth in the world would exceed demand. Secondly, a person who discovers that many truths isn't going to want to go to sleep."

--Xi Chuan

The best 8:40 you'll spend today

2010-07-07T07:47:00.001-04:00

way up on way up on way up on

Dear America,

2010-07-03T22:59:00.003-04:00

We haven't chatted in a while and I just wanted to say hi. I've been thinking about you because it's your birthday. I know we've had our differences in the past, because sometimes you're incredibly stupid (Blackwater, WMDs, 2000-2008, THE CURRENT OIL SPILL AND THE INABILITY TO DEAL WITH IT, Us Weekly culture, Leonard Peltier, SARAH PALIN, good christ I could go on forever).

But. Since we've separated, I've learned that you do have a few things going for you. Clean water from the faucet is nice. And, um, the idea of "democracy" is also pretty cool, if it's used correctly and effectively, ie to actually give power to the people.

I've always thought, though, that the greatest thing America has ever produced is its dissidents. The true mark of an evolved society is letting its citizens, or those a nation ostensibly exists for, change it and improve it. Anyone who takes the time to tell America how bad it's fucking up does so only because they believe it could do so much better. Abbie Hoffman, Hunter S. Thompson, et al believed that America could be the world's freest democracy, providing its citizens with the most liberties, and were only disappointed that their country was falling so short of its defined goals. Since being away, I guess I've realized the fact that I'm allowed to say "America, you're really fucking up" is pretty awesome, although I obviously wish I didn't have to say that at all. How great would it be to say "I love America! We have clean energy, awesome health care and a great education system! There's no discrimination or gun violence, and we're not sending (poor) 19 year olds to the other side of the world to die. We don't only elect fat, rich, old, racist white men to office, and instead we have elected officials of every race, gender and economic background to serve the interests of the people. Americans enjoy life and there's a high value placed on the arts. WE DON'T IMPOSE SEXIST BELIEFS ON WOMEN AND ASSUME OWNERSHIP OVER THEIR BODIES. America doesn't really subscribe to a religious doctrine and people are pretty much allowed to do what they want as far as that's concerned. America doesn't sell a lot of useless shit because we know that doesn't provide happiness. There is no show called 'Two And A Half Men' and people don't watch that much TV anyway, they spend a lot of time with their friends instead."

Today, we should all remember that America was founded by dissidents who didn't feel like taking shit from anyone because they wanted to have power over their own individual lives (people who quote the constitution these days seem to be only balding white dudes trying their hardest to make sure poor/brown people don't have health care/citizenship so I'll stop short of that).

Shouldn't the goal of any nation in the modern world be to provide it's citizens with the highest quality of life possible? And I'm not talking about cheap shit from Wal-Mart that will make your life easier. Quality of life can be truly determined by health, personal freedoms and yes, the ability toward the pursuit of happiness.

On my birthday, I like to think about what I could do better in the coming year; how I could be a better friend, sister, daughter, person. So America, on your birthday, put down the credit card, have a beer, appreciate what you have and think about how you could become the country you should be.

Love,
your friend.

PS: I just read that Obama is putting $2 Billion dollars into solar energy! Which will create jobs and help to liberate us from oil dependency. I can't think of a better birthday present.

the internet was probably just invented so people would have something to do at "work."

2010-06-30T21:33:00.005-04:00

When I die, please DO NOT, like even THINK about EVER setting up one of those "pages" on facebook where people can comment and be like "I miss you girl... you always kept it real" and other such debasing inanities. If you let this happen, I will come back to haunt the shit out of you.

When the rights to my life story are optioned, the contract will stipulate that Will Arnett will star. Opposite Daniel Radcliffe as the (non-existent in reality) love interest. HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER SUMMER 2K47!!1111

Since I snored my way through years of church and sort of debunked the whole Adam and Eve ruse as complete bullshit by age seven because where did the dinosaurs fit in there?, I've always thought religion was for people who weren't smart enough (yeah, I'm a douche, whatevs) to stare the cold truth of human existence in the face-- that we don't matter, that we'll die soon and there is no eternal pool party waiting for us at the end, no matter what Carrie Underwood or whatever says. However, that being said, if I had to choose a religion it would definitely be Buddhism, as it takes all the good parts of religion, e.g. spritual and moral guidance, a reason for living, without all of the YOU CAN'Ts that make modern American Christianity seem like a boring, excruciating anger/hate-fest and about as much fun as a rectal exam. Most importantly, no wars were ever waged in Buddha's name.

Good thing America produces a lot of glossy high-fructose treats (Pixar, Gaga etc) to export to the rest of the world so they don't really notice that we're robbing them of autonomy and blowing up shit all the time.
AMERICA: Hey, don't pay attention to the IMF! Watch this music video featuring writhing naked women!
"DEVELOPING" NATION: America is so cool! Hey, why has all the independent industry in my country been replaced by multi-nationals? Why do we owe the World Bank millions of dollars in interest that we'll never be able to pay back, on a loan we were forced to take out?
AMERICA: Hey, did you know that sexy people like us buy stuff all the time? Have some!
"DEVELOPING" NATION: Wait, um, it would be cool to have some accessible clean drinking water....
AMERICA: Buy some Coke! Or do you want Sprite?

*all this having been said, I do enjoy clean drinking water. Thank you America.

What We Can Learn From Baboons

2010-06-26T15:35:00.006-04:00

So the other day I stayed up past 9 o clock and found an English-speaking channel on TV. It was playing some National Geographic docu called “Stress: Portrait of a Killer” which despite it’s Reader’s Digest headline of a name, I decided to watch (the only alternative being Thai soaps. There’s a lot of angry faces and crying and like no making out). I thought the film was going to talk about how you should eat more fish, stop drinking and exercise and other things that NO ONE EVER WANTS TO HEAR. But, it turns out that the film was riveting. And LIFE SAVING!
So, the film followed various neurologists who study stress levels in primates, both human and those on the more simian end of the DNA scale. SPOILER ALERT: we’re the same. Specifically, we both have wacky hierarchical systems that are run by alpha males who intimidate and terrorize their subordinates, and therefore vicious, emotionally (and physiologically!!!) taxing competition ensues. The neurologists found that the alpha males experienced much less stress than the subordinates (no shit), therefore living not only longer lives but healthier ones as well (seriously, primates can gain weight from stress too. And they look really funny when they're fat. THEY REALLY ARE JUST LIKE US!).

Two very important findings:
1. Stress itself causes plaque to build in your arteries, eventually leading to heart attacks (not a myth! a FACT!) Also, our chromosomes are capped with something called tinimeres (or something, I don’t feel like googling it) that effectively perform the functions that keep us young, or our actual age. Stress preoccupies your nervous system, robbing the tinimeres from the chromosomes to perform other duties, literally aging us. (hence the harried mom’s cry that her rambunctious kid is giving her gray hair-- he really is!). So stress will not only kill you but also make you look old on your way to a premature dirt nap.
2. The baboon tribe that a total badass of a neurologist named Robert Sapolsky (seriously, you should see this guy's hair, he looks like he drove a bus around the southwest and did a ton of acid from 1967-1982-- you can just see him telling the higher-ups at Stanford [where he's a professor] "f off bros, I have a MacArthur Genius Grant, I do what I want") had been studying the stress levels of for 10 years lost all of its alpha males after they ate tainted meat and perished from TB. Since then, the tribe consists of only “nice guys” (that’s a scientific term) and females, and the STRESS LEVELS OF THE ENTIRE TRIBE DROPPED! THEY’RE ALL HEALTHY (ie no plaque in arteries) NOW! Also, teenage male baboons leave their own tribes to look for new ones, and when they stumble upon this alpha male-less tribe, they’re shown the way of the stress-less lives and actually learn to assimilate after starting out like jerks and picking fights.

So clearly all the alpha males in our own society should just die of TB and we’d all be happy and healthy, enjoying life and picking the proverbial nits out of each others fur.
Oh, and back to the tinimeres: it’s been found that they can actually be REPLACED by an enzyme created from a reaction in the brain when we practice (get ready for it) COMPASSION AND GENEROSITY TO OTHERS.

So: cooperation + empathy = longer, healthier lives, happier individuals and a better society. I teared up as these neurologists waxed philosophical about the end of stress in our own hamster wheel of a society, leading us toward a more compassionate future. Oh, Robert. I believe you!

(unrelated except for embarrassing times at which to cry: I also almost cried (ie like, did) when I heard the Shakira world cup commercial, which pisses me off because it’s barely tries to be a song at all and instead just settles for being basically a pepsi ad with a caricature of “Africa!!!” as it’s color scheme, [plus Shakira, for all the hips not lying and what not, is the most wooden, least charismatic world-wide sensation imaginable] but maybe it’s because the line “this one’s for Africa” sort of makes it seem like We [humans in the world, collectively, as one] actually give a shit about the most criminally fucked example of the genocide we conveniently tie up as “wealth disparity” in the “civilized” modern world.)

Also discovered the Pin Ling reality channel on Thai TV: 24 hour coverage of a panda’s life in a zoo as it goes about its daily business of eating, sleeping, and doing nothing exciting like maul people or even tricks like painting or playing catch. Sort of like the fauna version of The Truman Show: I watched Pin Ling sleep for a few minutes. Turns out watching a motionless, heavily breathing panda sleep in the comfort of your own living room is a pretty effective stress reducer.

Prized Possession

2010-06-17T05:48:00.005-04:00

It's really not even mine. It's Meredith's; she lent it to me two years ago when we shared a wall and the yard that I first read it on. She had read it for a class, said I might like it. I'd never heard of it, didn't consider the great depression among my realm of obsessions. But immediately after opening it, the book became a road map, a compass, a sacred ancient tome by a prophet not of this world, a paper limb.

I could have bought my own copy in the past two years-- whenever I'm in a bookstore I head straight for the A's, hoping there's more by him there, or that James himself will be perusing the beginning of the alphabet too, ready to share more secrets. But usually there's only another copy or two of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. A muscular volume, the the humble pale green of the spine greeting me like a friend I skinned knees with. And I always think of buying it, nine or so bucks to own it myself. So I flip it open, scan the pages. And they're bare. No underlines, starred passages or creased corners Meredith made during class (the eyes of a trapped wild animal, or of a furious angel nailed to the ground by its wings, or however else one may faintly designate the human 'soul,' that which is angry, that which is wild, that which is untamable, that which is healthful and holy, that which is competent and most marvelous and most precious...), lines that I've marked, and copied and recopied and since adopting (seizing, really) the loaner.

And the one at the bookstore was never on that yard, when we were still students, children on a blanket in the sun on a weekday afternoon. And it didn't come with me west, to California, then Portland, on to Michigan, then to Thailand, sitting in my carry-on like my only friend in the world.
(what's the use of trying to say what I felt.)

And somehow, between the months and the pages my own story has been seared into this volume. Vital scraps stuck absent-mindedly between pages: the ultimate safe-keeping place, an impeccable record is kept.

I open the front cover-- that face lined with exhaustion and dignity that has become Agee's own in my mind-- to find first a postcard from a friend visiting San Fransisco, addressed to my first house in Portland-- the address now a synonym for both infinite freedom and deadening defeat in equal measure, and nothing in between.

Next, a postcard bearing Frida's photographed portrait, purchased at the SF MOMA on my 23rd birthday, spent with Kelly-- art museum and burritos in the mission-- we owned the world.

A photograph taken my last spring in Burlington, later tried to draw its young leaves and new sun but couldn't come close to their brilliance.

A flier from a local winery in Portland.

And over the face of the first portrait in Walker Evans' series, on a sticky note: a website and number of a student loan agency, to whom I owe money, the rest of my life. I've never called the number.

Halfway through the book-- a flier for a booking/design collective in Burlington. The fall show schedule. Our social calendar in a town with just enough going on. Franzia, board games, b-movies when there wasn't.

Reciepts from a sushi dinner in Seattle-- my first week out West. $11.04-- avacado role and a Sapporo. Another receipt-- $3.50-- another Sapporo. Playing dress-up with other adults. I felt childish and mature at the same time, fearless and terrified. On the brink-- of the world, of what I would be in it. The sun set orange over the water and the warm June breeze sighed through it and I took a breath, found a home, in that.

"Small wonder how pitiably we love our home, cling in her skirts at night, rejoice in her wide star-seducing smile, when every star strikes us sick with fright: do we really exist at all?"

Tree bark I intended to press and write a letter on: the bronze paper skin of the Madrona. Its home Northern California, where Kelly and I spent a summer in the river re-organizing what we'd collected over the years in our minds re: our lives in the world. the futures that laid sprawling before us, boys. Suddenly the bark is a postcard from that time and place, far and away and long ago, now.

And finally, toward the end, between 292 and 293, a January letter from my sister, one of the hundred since we've been apart, since I left where we were for some idea of "more." Two young girls on the front of the card she made: "They remind me of us... although I'm quite thrilled that neither one of us have the boney arm belonging to the girl on the left," she says. "This weather reminds me of last winter, when we were together.... I only hope it can be that way again."
(what's the use of trying to say what I felt.)

And now, it sits on my desk in Thailand, in a school where I am somehow a teacher, not a student. Nine thousand miles from where I first picked up the book, but somehow closer than I've been in a while.

(but I am young: and I am young, and strong, and in good health; and I am young, and pretty to look at; and I am too young to worry; and so am I, for my mother is kind to me; and we run in the bright air like animals, and our bare feet like plants in the wholesome earth: the natural world is around us like a lake and a wide smile and we are growing: one by one we are becoming stronger... and one by one we shall loosen ourselves from this place, and shall be married, and it will be different from what we see, for we will be happy and love each other... it will be very different.)

SOMETIMES

2010-06-11T02:41:00.002-04:00

you have to throw yourself in front of a bus just to see what it feels like.

I'm in Thailand.

It's probably ignorant to compare nations because they don't share the same sewage system as one's own, but Thailand reminds me a bit of Belize... outside the marble-floored palace where the white Americans stay, workers walk home from the job through traffic and garbage. it's 98 and humid. the streets are chaotic and and smell like burnt air and piss.... stray dogs roaming and a languge I can't recognize being thrown around over my head. The drive to school starts in the city and cuts through farm land and fields-- green extending as far as your eye.

But specific to Thailand. Motorbikes almost outnumber the cars-- fifteen year old girls cruising down the road, moms with babies up front. Everyone laughs all the time. The students are shy with their falang teacher but playful with each other. There's a sort of quiet undercurrent to the culture here, which I can only interpret as a kind of deep pride, a contentedness with their culture and their home.

hellhole ratrace [girls]

2010-05-18T13:29:00.001-04:00

tits! tits! tits!

2010-05-13T12:14:00.002-04:00

Mas here.

Independent Woman gets dumped, wonders why

2010-05-04T19:21:00.002-04:00

Why is Beyonce, who has probably never gotten dumped, pandering to normal women, i.e. those who aren't married to the "Black Bill Gates"? More importantly, why did her handlers chose a Bettie Page style reference when that hasn't been interesting or "edgy" since 1994?

More on the evolution of Beyonce and the American pop cultural landscape here.

Xtina: Dangerously Boring Sexual Politics

2010-05-01T21:54:00.008-04:00

Christina Aguilera just released a new album or something and here's the first video that attempts to polish its turd of a song with shiny bondage wear:

Observations:
1)This seems like a parody of something "totally outrageous." She's Marilyn! She's a dominatrix! She's fucking a chick!
2) Wish all the of last decade would have died...
3) but maybe Gaga will have her henchmen stuff this pale imitation into a sack and throw it back into 2002 from whence it came.

Like the less popular girl in 10th grade, Christina has always relied on giving blowjobs in the locker room to best her prettier rivals.
First, Britney won the last decade with her more accessible features and less desperate (hard to believe, but in comparison) attempts at maintaining a fan base of sixth grade girls and old pedophiles. Lady Gaga opened the second decade of the 21st century miles ahead of any other popular performer: she's accepted by the mainstream and embraced by critics. In 2010, Christina once again finds herself a bridesmaid, and resorts to the same tactics employed in 2002's "Dirrty": shouting for her father's (um, fans?) attention while writhing in a leather thong.

Which is all fine. Christina could have sex with a walrus in a mosque in her next video and I really wouldn't care.

The truly disappointing element of this entire venture is its thesis: a return to the shrouded sexual politics of the last decade, which was borrowing them from the 50s and MTV pretended to make them "new."

Christina is pushing thirty but remains a faithful TRL mascot, which she (or her middle-aged male svengalis pulling the strings of her midriff) helped define with "Genie In a Bottle": the virginal whore. "I might have sex with you, but I also might not. You can look, but don't touch. Maybe. Unless I say so. Also, 'no' might mean yes."

The name of the song is "Not Myself Tonight"; the theme of it's video is what in America is called "sexual deviance." Since Christina's "not herself tonight", she will take you home and tie you up. She will do anything you ask her to, because she's not herself tonight. And you can't blame her in the morning. She's a woman who is unable to take accountability for her actions, which may not fit within the expectations of the men she's looking to please. But it's ok because she's "not herself tonight."

After ten years of this though, Christina may want to take a moment to ask what "herself" actually is.

Rainy Saturdays

2010-05-01T19:16:00.002-04:00

= Zizek on youtube.

Today in Suicide-Inducing Headlines

2010-04-30T16:06:00.004-04:00

or at least lunch-losing:

Bush's Reputation Rebound Likely

(and the above article cites the Democrats as helping to re-write an unelected idiotic warmonger as a "success.")

In other news, Humans Are Not Capable of Complex Thought and Instead Rely On Revisionist History out of Self-Interest.

&&&

2010-04-29T15:54:00.003-04:00

I'm looking for a quiet revolution.

can't keep track of the days of the week

2010-04-28T15:25:00.007-04:00

Just finished Please Kill Me again. Patti Smith-- greatest rock start of the 20th century? Maybe. Also, apparently heroin is bad for you.

this reminds me of really cool kids books that I used to love.

Just re-found Richard Lloyd's post-Television Alchemy from 1979, post-Television. So. Good.

this sounds way better than a ton of other things.

tits + brains = world domination.

Never trust anyone who describes him- or herself in 3 words.

Start a spectacle, make some noise, take off your pants and flail around-- you can't lose.

Military Madness

2010-04-25T21:12:00.004-04:00

"Over the past nine years, more US military personnel have taken their own lives than have died in action in either the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan."

Military Suicides: A Sign of Empire Pathology

Perhaps the story of Ron Kovic in Vietnam epitomizes the soldier aboandoned and left for dead by the machine he was donating his life for. Time has told that it's embarrassingly naive to assume that the United States and its raison d'etre, the military, would have turned a 180 in the span of the past four decades, but that the lessons of Vietnam still haven't been absorbed by the powers that be is a sign of criminal myopia.

Joni Sez:

2010-04-23T15:59:00.001-04:00

"My first four albums covered the usual youth problems — looking for love in all the wrong places — while the next five are basically about being in your 30s. Things start losing their profundity; in middle-late age, you enter a tragedian period, realizing that the human animal isn't changing for the better. In a way, I think I entered straight into my tragedian period, as my work is set against the stupid, destructive way we live on this planet. Americans have decided to be stupid and shallow since 1980. Madonna is like Nero; she marks the turning point."

rest of the LA Times article is here.

LOL@

2010-04-20T21:28:00.003-04:00

sports
anorexics
dudes who can be manipulated by advertisements questioning their masculinity
the government
tween bible study groups
Catholics
all religions, actually
bloggers
the mall and the people who go to it
being 22 and like 60k in debt for following the rules and going to college
the fact that LA is a desert and no one is supposed to live there
people who take politics seriously
people who drink skim mochas with whipped cream
people who go to the gym esp. girls who go to the gym so they will get skinny so bros will like them
"red states" vs. "blue states"
people who have their own initials tattooed on themselves
people who go to ivy league colleges
people who sit around typing up lists of things they think are "funny"/dumb
the ipad
organic vodka
dog vacations/weddings/bat mitzvahs
the fact that there are still kids being born
teabaggers in general. it's like they were put here solely for the purpose of sentient beings.
sarah palin's existence and her heaven-bound followers
twitter. seriously, what the fuck.

JULEZART

2010-04-10T21:48:00.005-04:00

My talented and connected sister in wanting to have a good time all the time Molly does lots of zanily awesome art things for Cochella and asked me to design a piece for Julian Casablancas, one of my faves. I admit I almost died when presented with the chance to make something that will end up in the hands of JC, who has topped my list of currently breathing ballers since I was about sixteen. So hopefully he'll think it's kind of really fucking awesome.

"Yalls faith has got to be greater than your fear. " -- JC

Here it is:

Also, I'm currently available for hire, world.

one of the most intelligent entertainers maybe ever

2010-04-07T15:24:00.006-04:00

...is the original antichrist/anarchist.

Interview with John Lydon at the Onion Av Club.

I'll spare you bombastic historical context of Lydon, Malcolm McLaren and whether the Sex Pistols were actually even punks at all since McLaren was a charlatan who just co-opted the whole idea from American proto-punks like the Velvet Underground, et al, and then commodified the entire thing (see Please Kill Me for full background story*) and instead just leave you with some bons mots from Lydon:

"It depends on what you mean by the word “art.” Art as in craftily manufactured? Art as a commodity to be purchased? No."

"Pop music is just as valid as any other intellectual process. It all requires effort."

"I love pop music. It’s not easy to write a good pop song. It may be easier to put out a fake jazz album, as Sting does from time to time."

Pretty impressive that he's still alive in 2010, let alone still making music with PiL and thoughtfully discussing the creative process.

*this weblog fully endorses checking out the book from your local library or at least buying it used if you have to.

!

2010-04-05T22:47:00.002-04:00

Derrick Jensen:

2010-04-04T22:28:00.004-04:00

On the nuances of experiencing life in the modern age: "We're so fucked.... but I feel so good. We're so fucked... but life is so amazing."

Even if you're not into believing/caring that the natural world is being destroyed and corporations have humanity in a chokehold, just check him out. Admittedly, most people associated with Utne Reader seem kind of lame, but I assure you DJ is a badass who thinks you are a warrior and that you should be acting like it. And he says fuck a lot.

I realize that "caring about things" is s0000 passe by now, since we no longer have a visibly dangerous criminal in the white house and eight years was a long time to be carrying around that amount of loathing. It's too hard to care, because actually, everything really is falling apart. Jensen defines a just world, or the one that we should all be living in, as one in which the rich no longer have the ability to steal from the poor and the powerful no longer have the ability to destroy the environment. Obviously, we're no closer to achieving that ideal now than we were a year ago. It's easy to fall into a habit of apathy and nihilism. But we're humans with a lot more than that running through our muscles and veins. Humans are stronger, more real than a mechanistic system. We just have to show it.

Check out his site (which looks like it was built in 1994) here, although you'll probably end up on a list that will get you frisked before your next flight.

Set yourself on fire: SxSW

2010-03-28T17:42:00.021-04:00

Hey friends. I was in Austin Texas last week for the week of insanity and Lonestar that is possibly the biggest music festival in the US, SXSW. 6th Street, the Bourbon Street of Austin, was flooded twenty four hours a day for a week with musicians, tattoos, free beer, cops and drunks and I barely went to bed before 6 am all week. Molly and I biked our way through the masses and along with a bunch of other radasses from OKC and Philly definitely achieved our dual goals of experiencing something real and having a good time all the time.

I know this event is criminally underreported so I thought I'd write about it on my weblog. So to recap, here were some highlights of the madness:

Checked out Sleepy Sun's Thursday afternoon show and suddenly wasn't bummed anymore about not being in San Francisco in 1969 cause it was right in front of me. They do NOT half-ass their commitment to sixties psychedilia and anybody who is that into their trip gets snaps from me. They brought out the Austin Children's Choir who rocked the tent AND they did a cover of the Guess Who's "No Sugar Tonight/ New Mother Nature," an epochal song of its era. The singer sounded EXACTLY like Burton Cummings too, for an added bonus. I was in heaven. Here's kind of what the show was like:

This is exactly what America should be in 2010. Love it. We also started a butt-touching contest in the middle of 6th street. The Sleepy Sun tent was full of olds who we later realized were parents of the children's choir. Some of the dads left pretty excited, as did a cop and multiple other passersby (I totally lost but did get some Abercrombie-with-girlfriend-next-to-him butt, which has gotta count for something.)

Whqles played at a friend's houseparty and although their name looks like a t9 typo, they were great. (hey Whqles, if you're reading this, Molly and I were the ones sitting in front of your set-up and snapping our necks). I haven't stopped listening to their EP even though it's only about 10 minutes long. Check out their space for more. Recommedations: "Sum of All Evils pt 2" and "JG," a cover of John Lennon's "Jealous Guy." And this video is kind of what their live show was like-- full of glow in the dark paint, fast, loud and impossible not to like. I have no idea what's going on in LA and never cared but now I'm curious.

Another great was seeing Mariachi El Bronx at Mess With Texas. (LA hardcore band's The Bronx mariachi side project). They put on a tight set and showed some love to the crowd.

We (thirteen people piled into a five seater with a trunk) also tried to go to a party at the UT co-ops that Andrew WK was headlining and was sure to guarantee trancendence over space and time. But instead of understanding how "to create a dynamic so that we can appreciate beauty and joy and pleasure" (seriously, read that interview linked above. it will change your life), our only lesson learned was not to show up to a party that Andrew WK is playing at 2 am (40s and facepaint got in the way, as usual). The only time I've seen more humans in one place crawling up and down stairs and around railings is between at-bats at Fenway Park when the Yankees are in town (try using a sports metaphor today!). All I could think of was a bunch of people had sex in the 80s and this is what happened. Apparently AWK did show up to play a set at 5 am. Next time, bro.

DID get to see Woods at the Magic Hat party (woooot VT) on the Lawn of the French Legation. One of my faves since their 2006 album How to Survive in the Woods, they did not dissapoint. I only wish that their set was longer and that they played "Military Madness", but then I would have been crying all over myself and the lawn.

Lone Star was the unofficial sponsor of the experience and I'm pretty sure it's since replaced most of my blood. We spent a lot of time at Shangri La, the bar that Bill Murray ended up bartending at, but missed it. I think I can still die without regret.

We ALSO ended up at some party in "the hills" (I think every city not on the east coast has a super exclusive neighborhood full of Range Rovers called "the hills") completely full of tweens on spring break and two untapped kegs. Needless to say the kegs were emptied before we left and a few packages of fruit snacks were missing. Also, lower back tats [I hate the term "tramp stamp"] are still popular?

Speaking of tweens and unintentional hilarity, Molly and I also worked the Keep A Breast table at the Alternative Press show. It's an awesome organization that educates teens about prevention and early detection of breast cancer, and middle- and high-school kids across America are now wearing "I <3> boobies" bracelets and t-shirts. The org is endorsed and promoted by Circa Survive (I am happily older than 12 and have no idea who this band is), Angels and Airwaves and a bunch of other huge acts of a genre (post-dashboard screamo tweencore?) that no one born after 1992 could understand. We met about 600 people that looked like variations of this:

Like all things that make life worth showing up for, it was horrific and hilarious at the same time. And quite possibly the best form of birth control I've encountered yet.

We also checked out some metal at Primo's, a bar in a formerly Mexican neighborhood (weird, an American city is having problems with gentrification?), which I don't really "get." Don't know if it's because I'm a girl or because I wasn't super alienated in high school. Either way, it's kind of a bummer. I wish I could get into metal. It's one of my resolutions for 2010.

Also, does your city have a magazine that is primarily concerned with squids, jorts, beards and beers? I didn't think so, which is why you need to check out Misprint Magazine. On its agenda is ending live music in Austin. Zany fun for the whole family. If they're all jaded drunks. (And whose family isn't?)

The moral of SXSW story is: forget standing in line for 4 hours to see She and Him. Get on a bike, grab some free beers and jump into a bar, venue or house party just to see what's going on. They might not suck.

ALSO every town in America should have taco trucks.

humans have different opinions about things in the world

2010-03-27T14:20:00.006-04:00

Here we are in 2010, all supposedly evolved and whatnot, and good christ we sure are having a hard time. As readers of this little virtual wasteland know, gender roles are one of my favorite topics EV. Not just because I happen to be a broad and therefore unjustfiably care about this, but because, for those of you who are just joining the living, gender (along with race, class, citzenship, etc.) is a major determining factor in an individual's ability toward self-determination in our world. Moreover, the political course of the world happens to be overwhelmingly determined by a specific gender, which is not in itself an accident.

This article on the Onion AV Club caught my eye, and the comments are predictably insane and represent just about every view of feminism that exists. I edited this dialouge from the comments; both sides seem to make a solid case and for that I found it pretty compelling.

Notes: I bolded the passages that seem to define each view. B is being sarcastic, which I thought was interesting in itself-- it seems that today, when we are behind a cause or an ideology that is deemed unupopular by the masses, sarcasm is often an easy shield from which to shoot behind. And for the record, I obviously agree with B.

a:
At the risk of sounding sexist, I think that 95% of what I hear that passes for "feminism" on a broader (hah!) societal level is bullshit. I just really don't think the average woman has it that bad (again, outside certain workplaces) and I certainly don't think institutional sexism is a big problem in this country.

b:
You're so totally right, institutional sexism is totally not a problem anymore!!! Women are free to earn 20% less annually then men, which is close enough that it really doesn't suggest the existence of sexism within capitalist institutions today. I mean jesus, we let them vote, we let them get jobs, we even let them hold public office, and all they can do is bitch and moan about how our entire society and capitalism itself is founded on patriarchal relations, even though they don't understand that if we say they are equal through legislation than that automatically means they are totally equal. The average woman has it so GOOD, and we all know the average woman is a totally quantifiable entity (white, middle/upper middle class?)...there is no such thing as emotional violence or subverted oppression enacted by spouses or by the culture industry. They are totally not indoctrinated into specific roles that deny them an actual identity, and they are totally not presented as sexual objects by mass culture. "Feminism" today is such bullshit, I mean god knows that they face unfair hurdles for power and pay, but these feminists suggest those two things have implications beyond individual employers which is totally silly. Women have it easy unless they want to have power over their own lives or they want to be able to sustain themselves independently, if they want those things they have to face some unfair hurdles, but really they don't have it that bad...

a:
Count me in as female anti-feminist. I cringe at the word "feminist" because it just has associations of combativeness by now. I'm satisfied with what is available to me in professionally (because I happen to be upper middle class well-educated) and I think that about 90% of the energy thrown at feminist issues in the United States or other first world countries would be infinitely better spent trying to rectify socioeconomic inequality or quality-of-life problems in third world countries. Feminist concerns are a privilege of the upper middle class. Note that I'm talking about first world countries, here.
Also, it drives me crazy how everyone always wants to deny that there ARE inherent, biological, evolutionarily based gender differences. MEN AND WOMEN ARE NOT THE SAME. Most people actually like that fact. Deal with it.

b:
Socioeconomic inequality and patriarchal dominance the same.
Feminism is only a concern of the upper middle class because it is only something that the luxury class has time to fret over, god knows that a lower class single mother who has to work full time to feed her children (which we all know is the only way to prove she loves them) has no reason to be concerned the bourgeois concern of feminism. And we should just accept that there are biological differences between men and women and stop trying to search for social and economic equality, just like we need to accept the biological differences between Africans and Europeans and stop trying to create a dialogue that is based on equality and understanding of difference without letting it dictate the proceedings. Feminist is a combative term, and why should women be combative?! It's not like the state enacts violence on women by dictating what they can and cannot do with their bodies (I mean the fetus inside of them is not theirs, it is the states and so they have no say in what happens to it). Fuck it! Women need to stop bitching, accept their role given to them by our totally just society and their own biological nature, and let the fuck go of the fact that they are turned into commodities by the media and advertising industries. Just get the fuck over it and start worrying about South America and Africa, we can fix by using our beautiful western way of thinking to solve their problems, which has nothing to do with what caused their problems in the first place. And our way of thinking has totally led us to an (almost) just society in which we listen to music that actively preaches objectification and abuse of women!

a:
I get that not everything that falls under the umbrella of "women's rights" or "women's issues" in a global sense pertains to upper middle class white females in America. When people say "feminism" I promise you the first association is with the kind of stuff mentioned in the article, glass ceiling, wage imbalance, and people who care more about that than about more serious problems.

And finally, something I have always taken huge issue with: You mention women being "presented as sexual objects by mass culture." People often fall into the trap of imagining that "mass culture" is something sort of mystically imposed on people from a random third party source. No, culture doesn't impose itself on people, people CREATE the culture based on their own interests -- based on the demands of the market, which is a mixed gender audience. Nobody is a "victim of society," everyone is a part of the society.

b:

Good point! The culture that exists in the US is the spontaneous will of the masses, and not another facet of industrial capitalism...the fact the GE owns NBC/Universal means nothing. Why would NBC/Universal have a vested interest in confirming and enforcing the role of the housewife? It's not like her existence is key to GEs sales figures in the home appliances, and it's not as if those who produce our culture have a vested interest in selling identity to women so that women in turn feel like they identify with the characters on the shows the produce.

a:

Saying that "patriarchal dominance" implies "socioeconomic inequality" is ridiculous. Socioeconomic inequality is based on socioeconomic causes. Class distinctions have ALWAYS existed, everywhere and in every time throughout history, and not all societies have had "patriarchal dominance." You're telling me that patriarchal dominance is responsible for, say, serfdom? For immigrants having a difficult time breaking out of the bottom of the socioeconomic strata? For caste systems? I don't think so.

Anyway, see my comment above about how there is no such thing as an amorphous "society" that we can blame for people's behavior. It's idiotic to say that music can "make" people into misogynists. That's as stupid as saying "Advertising makes girls anorexic!" Then again, I love the Rolling Stones and I seem to be something of a misogynist so I guess I am proving you right on this count!

Grow up and drop your college freshman style obsession with the evils of capitalism. Gender roles are not new and it is just as misogynistic as anything else to believe that women lack the capacity to form their own identity and instead are reduced to brainlessly absorbing the identity the malevolent capitalists are preaching to them on television.

b:

Sexuality is always economized. Labor-based communism will imply the superiority of men based on their physical gifts and ability to Work, and capitalism will appeal to the many uses of Products that women require in the successful rearing of a family.

There's no way to get around it. It may be its own unique issue, or a symptom of the larger misogyny of society, but it certainly exists.

Ok, discussion time.
B's argument that the political order of the modern world is the result of a long history of capitalist and gender norms, which until very recently have gone uncontested. The view that political (sexual, socieconomical, etc) reality exists as only as a result or construct of the very society it now defines is called materialism (specifically historical materialism). It's linked to the philosophy of the Enlightenment, in which humans recognized themselves as existing independent from an omnipotent god. and was/is denounced as barren of spirituality. (Think of materialsm like a pyramid, with all the political, societal etc norms that exist today at the top, with all the blocks supporting it representing previous eras in human history.)
A, however takes the opposite approach in believing that things exist as they are because of essential truths of nature or what she may define as "human nature." In denying that capitalism and subordination of females are a patriarchal construct, she falls back on the "this practice has existed since the beginning of time" justification.

Both sides are well argued and articulated-- they are each delivered by highly educated
individuals, which forced me to evaluate why I side with B. The answer, as stated above, is because of B's acknowledgement of Culture (in which exists politics, the economy, gender roles and norms, etc) not as an organic entity but one which has been shaped by humans themselves, or rather a very select group of self-appointed leaders of the ruling classes (in the case of the world that we live in, largely a group of white males). This insistence to evaluate humanity's role in shaping our political reality rather than it being merely handed to us is the ideology that allows for first critcism (as seen in the civil rights movement, etc) and then progress.

And, a final word about feminsm from another commenter:

I am a man and I am a Feminist and I am a Liberal and a Democratic Socialist and I refuse to allow the press, pundits or the right wing to steal away or dilute the meaning of those terms, or to make me feel like I should hide or apologize for what I believe. The question is not whether Men and Women are different in measurable ways, they are (by which I mean that yes, for instance, the average man is taller than the average woman, but that doesn't mean that all men or taller than all women--it's distributive), but that alone should not dictate the way one or the other is treated, or otherwise limit the opportunities one or the other should have access to. Sexism and Heterosexism and Racism etc. are all part of a continuum, products of the same basic and flawed essentialism that declares that some configuration of our chromosomes, no matter how they achieve expression, can somehow fix our identities and encapsulate all that we are or can be. Feminism seeks to dispute and rectify that, and while it does begin with a criticism of gender roles, it should absolutely embrace Class and Culture critiques as well. It's never enough to compare the place of women in the US to that of women in Saudi Arabia, for example, because it's a false dichotomy. There are problems with both systems and its disingenuous to suggest that because it's worse for some in some ways there, it is not worth taking a look at here. Feminism is not some kind of answer or fix to a world of Sexism, but a complicated ongoing process of examination--a necessary part of the work that a progressive society does.

.

2010-03-09T08:59:00.002-05:00

more here

This week in Duuuhhh

2010-03-08T20:27:00.001-05:00

People who aren't idiots are smarter than those who are.

MEET SEXY SINGLES IN YOUR AREA

2010-03-05T18:32:00.002-05:00

HOT SINGLES WANT TO TALK TO YOU NOW! CLICK HERE FOR SEXY SINGLES IN YOUTR TOWN

This week in tasteless humor

2010-03-04T00:12:00.004-05:00

Man, that tween bible study group tonight at the coffee shop had more virgins than...

a) the 1988 International Star Trek convention
b) the Vatican [uuhhh, oh wait.]
c) Muslim extremists' afterlives AMIRIGHT

On the Olympics

2010-03-01T15:12:00.004-05:00

In 2010, it's hard to think of two more useless things than sports and nationalism, and the Olympics are a barely disguised corporate-sponsored excersise in pitting arbitrarily defined entities against one another when we should be coming together as a globe (if this sounds ridiculous, read some comments on articles about the Olympics).

That having been said, Lindsey Vonn's gold after working her entire life for it and sustaining an injury right before the Olympics was pretty amazing. Watching the gold medal hockey game, I was forced to forget about the ads plastering the rink and realize that those players are the best in the world at their very specialized set of skills, and that's kind of cool.

But I'm not to be trusted as I nearly cried during a Morgan Freeman-voiced Visa commercial about Korean ice skaters.

Also, this is brilliant (although a bit old):

Saw this on a SUV today

2010-02-23T15:08:00.002-05:00

"To err is human, to forgive is divine. Neither is the policy of the U.S. Marine Corps."

Our Age: A History in Postcards

2010-02-14T23:15:00.012-05:00

Things sure have happened in the world lately! Here, a recap through the lens of everyone's favorite mailable that doesn't require an envelope.

2006/7: Man, this blows.

Like a newly minted college graduate, Postmodernity is experiencing an existential crisis. The Modern dream of "progress" has ended in a horrifying global scenario that is confronted only by ignorance or guilt.
The "free world" is run by someone you wouldn't cheat off of in Intro to Government, and the idea of a "future" seems like wishful thinking.

It can't get any worse, so you attempt to cure the world of its ills-- the imperialism, consumerism, commodification that's killing everything it touches (and it's touching everything)-- and truly believe that you can.

A little heavy handed? Definitely. But this is no time for subtlety. The world is ending!

2008/9: A new day!

Our long global nightmare is over. Let's revel in the truths of existence (and Fleetwood Mac)*.

*which, incidentally, are one in the same.

2010:You know what? This whole thing is dumb.

The impossibility of human reason to surpass the interest of the self seems more evident every day in the actions of the people we elect to lead our society and make decisions that will impact our lives and the lives of future generations. Blind ignorance seethes from all ends of the political spectrum. No one has answers/911 is a joke/"society" is a cultural construct, man.

Things are realized and expectations are lowered. It is a possibility in our world that the person that is Sarah Palin might one day have power to influence the way other people's lives as humans. Absurdity is truth.

Think I'm gonna be thankful that at least emo is over (sort of?)...

... empty 18 packs while seeking refuge in a nostalgia for things that are "young" and "cool,"

and harass everyone whose address I have with stuff like this.

The USPS: still one institution for the people.

Actually, globalization is kind of cool looking

2010-02-13T12:48:00.003-05:00

Japanese snowboarder Kazuhiro Kokubo, who has dreads and pissed of his government by looking "sloppy" at the Olympics.

There, I said it

2010-02-12T20:52:00.003-05:00

Pretty sure Haitian orphans don't really feel that Miley Cyrus and other detritus of American culture are really "the children" and/or "the world."

Also pretty sure that experiencing that song and video are just about as traumatizing as nearly dying and losing your entire family in an earthquake in Haiti.

But, this is America, the land of self-aggrandizement masquerading as selfless acts of charity.

What I Learned from Superbowl

2010-02-08T10:41:00.003-05:00

White Males are an oppressed minority.

Keith Moon's decision to choke on his own vomit 30 years ago in order to not shit on songs that used to have meaning alongside his fossilized bandmates now seems quite courageous.

Holy Shit! Suddenly I need a Volkswagon! Thanks Grizzly Bear (tm)!

Dante's Inferno is a motherfucking video game.

Feel like crying?

2010-01-31T19:27:00.002-05:00

I do!

This song was written in 1964. In the past past 46 years, we've learned approximately nothing.

ZINN

2010-01-29T13:21:00.002-05:00

So Howard Zinn has died at 87, and "the (far) left"/anti-capitalists, -imperialists and and anarchists have lost a huge voice for their cause.

You can watch an awesome video about his work here .

Usually commenters reveal the human race's darkest cognitive abilities, but this comment on the above linked post is particularly poignant and speaks to Zinn's work in a consise, articulate manner:

"Make that money. Just know there’s almost always a social, environmental, and/or economic cost associated with the cold pursuit of that dollar. And I’m pretty sure Zinn has donated most of the money he’s made to causes fighting against current injustices."

Sure, his name is "Poop," but sounds about right.

Person Pitch

2010-01-26T21:20:00.003-05:00

Dug up some Panda Bear videos. Here, a visual representation of some of 2007's Person Pitch. The coolest 20 minutes of anything I've seen in a while. Beats The Office. (American version).

not having a job =

2010-01-25T17:55:00.003-05:00

dear american broadz:

2010-01-23T12:39:00.005-05:00

last night i was in the women's room at a restaurant and a couple of bank-teller types were re-applying their eyeliner while turning sideways in the full-length mirror. They were both about 5'9'' or so and in their late 20s. One of them turns to the other and says: "just once I'd like to be the short sexy girl."

Now, who knows what sort of self-conscious self-loathing is swirling around in every other human's cranial cavity, but seriously? It's called mind control. Let's move on. Here are some easy steps toward self-acceptance:

1) whatever bad thoughts exist in your mind are the product of corporate media-propagated mind control that exists for no other purpose than to a) make you feel bad about yourself so you'll consequently b) buy shit in an attempt to purchase your own sense of self-respect, which you conversely absolutely never will. These are the people that have made being "too tall" and "too short" concepts in the first place, relegating millions of lives to the backseat because they feel like freaks. Who wants to join me in a class-action lawsuit against the puppetmasters of Seventeen, Allure and all the rest?

2) guys (ie those who you are trying to be "short and sexy" for) don't care how tall you are, what kind of pants/eyeshadow/shoes you're wearing, etc etc and if they do, they're obviously "not worth your time." And of course there are plenty of people who aren't worth your time, and they are the ones whose consciousness have been successfully colonized by corporate media brainwashing (see above). Don't waste your life trying to appease these human vaccuums-- you never will.

3) If you want to be "sexy" (duuuhh, who doesn't) decide what's totally bangin about you and play it up. If you believe "women's mags"/the "entertainment industry" etc, there is about one way to be hot and it involves lots of collagen and ex-lax. Which is fine, but doesn't sound like much fun. Plus, who wants to look like one of Tiger Woods' sext-mates when you can be a TON hotter by just being you?

So if you ever feel bad about your"self" (ie the self that is presented to the rest of the world, more often the physical self, which we are taught to value above all else) just remember that's the aim toward homogenization of the corporate entities that want nothing more than your money in exchange for only your soul.

So! Bros and broads, love yallself. I realize this lecture seems adolescent in target audience, but evidently, humans are somehow allowed to enter adulthood never having checked their irrational hang-ups at the high school out door. I would venture this this is actually why Glen Beck has a career-- he's a flabby loser looking for validation, and felt so unloved he'd do anything to anything gain the admiration of his fellow idiots. Case in point: insecurity is dangerous. Stop buying jeans and sneakers and starting talk shows to validate your existence to yourself and whoever you have a crush on. It's never gonna work.

love,
your high school guidance counselor, who is right and thinks you are lovely just the way you are so stop throwing up your lunch or I'm going to send a note to your parents.

Hype in the time of Internets

2010-01-18T23:25:00.006-05:00

(actually don't miss them at all)

Hey guys,

Welcome to Buzzband Awareness Week.

I was at a Passion Pit show not long ago with a bunch of other 17-year-olds out on a school night and the COMPLETELY sold out crowd was dancing their (its?) head(s) off the entire time, and it seemed like a very communal experience, with everyone "grooving to the same vibe" and having a generally positive experience. I thought, "this is what it must have been like to see the Rolling Stones in 1968-- a large group coming together to enjoy a shared entity in earnest." So then I thought, will the Passion Pits still be touring in 2047? Will these tweens grinding next to me remember what the Passion Pits sounded like when they're forty, and will they still enjoy this music?

I thought back to the beginning of buzz bands in the modern era, and I traced this ancient tradition back to the dawning of Rock and Roll: 2001. This is the year that The Strokes invented guitars. And then I thought, Where Are They Now? They're still playing music occasionally while not being dads or in rehab, but they probably wouldn't sell out clubs anymore, and many of their fans probably wouldn't admit to liking them anymore. (for the record, I will cop to liking the Strokes until the day I hear "is this it" at the gates of heaven, and even after that.)

So then I was thinking, did the "machine" of the modern music industry eat up the Strokes? Does the hype just inflate every band until their bubble of desireability just pops and the bros in the band are left standing in a gooey wet mess of embarrassment? When the Strokes were born in the early twentieth century, the internet didn't even exist. These days, bands have a shelf life of about 3 months in realtime before they are retired.

During the Passion Pit show, I thought of all the Buzzbands of yesteryear:

2001: The Strokes

2002: The Vines

2003: Jet/The Rapture/Kings of Leon/Hot Hot Heat (lol remember them?!)

--this era marks an important shift in buzzband culture as Pitchfork gained prominence amongst young music consumers and alternative music producers and fans were sick of feeling sad about their own generation being a reheated version of history. Buzzbands evolved from "dumb and bro-y" (Jet) to "thoughtful and evocative" (BSS, Arcade Fire) and "frantic and meloncholy" (Wolf Parade, Clap Hands)

2004/5/6: Bloc Party/Broken Social Scene/Arcade Fire/ Wolf Parade/Arctic Monkeys/Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

2007: MGMT

2008: Animal Collective/Fleet Foxes

2009: Grizzly Bear

2009 1/2: Passion Pit/ Phoenix??

2010: ??? xx or something? girls? animal collective again?

(the dates might be a bit off since I don't care about buzzbands-- and generally don't consume their music until they survive the first run of hype.)

In the span of those eight years, the bands got smaller and smaller, and their reign lasted less and less time. The Strokes were the Everyband, inventing the modern "indie" genre, and were made famous by Rolling Stone magazine, while Passion Pit was very popular for a week with college students who own neon clothing, and were made famous by the internet.

Looking at that list, we can see that Australian bands are not good but can maintain popularity for a while via ipod commercials (the Vines, Jet), British bands are not that good either but last for only about a week (Libertines, Arctic Monkeys), Canadian bands are "very good" and oftentimes "serious musicians" (BSS, Arcade Fire) and I suppose I can't sum up American buzzbands because these colors don't run.

Also, it's important to note that the above list doesn't include other buzz entities like solo acts (Sufjan Stevens, Devendra, Bon Iver), female artists (Joanna Newsom, Cat Power), or "genre- defying electro-terrorists from the third world" (M.I.A.). It's important to remember that a buzz band is made up mostly of white males from the English speaking world (although Phoenix is the exception to that rule, but doesn't really count since the lead singer is boyfriends with Sofia Coppola). (I also wouldn't count bands like Bright Eyes, the Decemberists or TV on the Radio as "buzzbands" although they experienced large volumes of internet exposure, because they're institutions that seem to get by more on their "hard work" and devoted fan bases rather than blog mentions/pitchfork reviews. Animal Collective sort of fits in here but they have come to define success for the buzzband, so they're on the list.)

I just thought I'd bring up this topic because it's important to remember that buzzbands are people too, and we need to look out for them so they don't end up back in Minneapolis or Melbourne on their mom's couches, or on some alt version of "dancing with the stars." If you enter into a relationship with a buzzband, remember not to hurt their feelings, and see them the next time they're in town. It's not their fault that the internet hype just chews them up and then makes them seem "uncool" when it finds someone else, or that pitchfork gives their second album a 5.4 (except for the Vines, because they were actually awful).

gifts 4 evry1

2010-01-16T16:12:00.004-05:00

New stuff here!!!

grl got beatz

2010-01-14T00:03:00.001-05:00

iwant2prtywitchu

2010-01-12T22:32:00.002-05:00

they did attempt to make a video for this song, but it couldn't be more boring and dumb, so just turn this up instead.

forgive me

2010-01-12T22:29:00.001-05:00

For a more peaceful 2010

2010-01-11T23:04:00.003-05:00

Hi Everyone,

The new year is the ideal juncture at which to attempt a better go at humanity. Instead of the usual hamster-wheel of trying and then failing to avoid drowning out loved ones and elected officials with your opposing opinions, I've invented something to help us all get along a little bit better:

You can print out this out either sign-size, to be held up to police officers and at politcal rallies/sporting events, or cut it out card-size to present to family members, co-workers, and other people you're forced to converse with.

Here's to a peaceful year to come.

dispatches from the america

2010-01-04T21:40:00.003-05:00

Some like to call the global south the "third world" but my current latitude is pretty damn close to Canada and I could've sworn the other day that I was in a place less that "developed." The place in question was the customer service desk at a local "supergrocerystore" in which you can buy both novelty t-shirts that merrily announce the onset of hunting season and Dorito knock-offs in bulk. I was getting a key to my parents' Infiniti copied so I can occasionally tool around town/drive into oncoming traffic on my way to Michael's, my favorite Chinese-produced inhalant supplier (they offer 50% off coupons ALL THE TIME), without having to wait till my mom's makes me lunch to grab her keys.

So I'm at the counter, being helped by a rosy-faced young man with a bit of a paunch and a kind manner named John. I simultaneously wondered sincerely why he hasn't killed himself yet and how I can make him my friend (we would eat tacos and watch movies together), and then briefly pondered whether the American education system intentionally breeds what its overlords ensure will become a nation of fine customer service employees, like John. Better that than a nation of perma-breeding substance abusers, I suppose-- at the next counter over was a woman, probably not much older than myself, outfitted from head to toe in grey "sweat" material (the uniform of suburban high school dropouts, along with silver eyeliner and cakey mascara), her hoodie allowing plenty of room for the approximately seven-month old fetus lounging about two feet below the "bullshits" and "fucks" emanating from her mouth in a voice that only be described as 2-packs-away-from-corpse.

She was attempting to return a box of contact lenses that she claimed were for some 84 year-old man in her life, but Scott L., the cross-eyed manager of the department, refused. Scott L. kept his cool as the mother-to-be insisted that she receive a gift card or cash in return for the contacts, accusing the institution of "not hav[ing] [their] shit straight" and that they should in fact get it straight. Scott L. told the woman that they could not grant her a refund of any sort without a receipt. She continued to express her dissatisfaction with the policy of the store as Scott L. pointed to a sign that stated said policy in large bold type. He suggested that she retrieve the receipt and bring it back to the store, to which she responded with more displeasure, stating that she lived in a town about twenty minutes away. Scott L. pointed out that they do have another branch in that town. She was not pleased with this response. This inane back-and-forth continued for several moments before Scott L. left the window, reiterating that this elderly man's health was the most important matter. Scott L.'s absence didn't deter the woman from firing expletives mostly to herself.

There's a phenomenon that has sprung from the unwavering, God-given rights in America of "freedom" and "we're the rightest" and "I deserve." An unintended consequence of this very modern American viewpoint is the formation of a new type of American: a person who is so incredibly wrong but so certain she is right, who will go to great/insane lengths to convince other people that she is right, including willingly embarrassing herself in public to starting completely unwarranted/pre-emptive physical violence. She believes that by executing these actions, the world outside her own mind will then be convinced she is in fact correct. This is evident on the Jerry Springer Show, in our former president's bombing of Iraq under the pretense of "weapons of mass destruction," and in the existence of Sarah Palin admirers.

The future mother stood at the desk with her fetus for a good minute or two while she muttered to herself incoherently and folded up a bag at the glacial and uneasy pace of a beer sipped while you were drunkenly sure you'd puke in a few minutes. I remained vaguely afraid to look over, as she was volatile and I lamely feared she would view my non-junky face as both a threat and an easy target. A quick glance revealed heavy eye-lids and a lips that were close to harboring drool. She finally slouched off.

"Tweaking?" Nancy S. was about to go on break and had swung to the front of the desk with a hardcover from the library.

"Just a little" said William N., not without irony, who had been quietly watching the scene unfold from the next desk over.

"Sad," said Nancy S. She sounded like she meant it, sounded like a mother herself, maybe of someone around the woman's age.

John apologized for the key taking so long to make. I told him not to worry and thanked him sincerely, and cut in front of everyone on my way out of the store.

Another Best Video of the Year

2010-01-02T12:33:00.002-05:00

Tron, Fellini and Steven Segal shake the hand of post-irony.

I just ordered a leather vest. Hello 2010.

two best videos of 2k9

2010-01-01T14:00:00.004-05:00

Lindsey Buckingham - The Trouble

i saw my generation starving hysterical naked

2009-12-31T17:25:00.005-05:00

This past decade has been defined by war, environmental destruction and politicians' general inability to exhibit the critical thinking skills of a fourth grade debate team champion. The 00's have also seen the emergence of the children born during the eighties-- an era now remembered for its excesses, entitlement and Reaganomics, and for laying the groundwork for the shitstorm we're all wading through right now-- as voters, consumers and producers of the American culture.

A couple decades later, we helped get Obama elected. We started some blogs and some bands. We're underemployed and largely disconnected from the constant war that's being waged in our name on the other side of the globe.

Some thoughts on Reagan's kids from Slate.com's Stephan Metcalfe: "These are a generation of American children (so sayeth the unkillable puritan in me) who have never been made to feel small, are insecure to the point of physical violence, the aura of which attends nearly everything they do."

This quote appears in an article on A Separate Peace and aimed toward the cast of MTV's reality show "Jersey Shore." It's striking as a critique of the darkest corner of our generation's psyche; we have confidence-- what have we achieved? We are entitled-- to what, now?

Metcalf's sentiment pinpoints an unpalatable characteristic unique to our generation, and it's difficult not to view this intense self-obsession/-awareness and ensuing emptiness within the context of the indugence of the era in which we entered the world.

Perhaps in the next decade, we'll learn to exist in a world that demands more from us than ourselves.

Happy New Year!

I suppose not.

2009-12-21T10:24:00.001-05:00

R. Sikoryak

Music Journalism That Sucks and People Get Paid to Execute

2009-12-12T19:02:00.003-05:00

Slate.com's team of "music reviewers" dig as deep and as recent as Kurt Cobain for a musical hero.

This is what a middle aged, well-fed gross miscalculation of trying to remain current sounds like:

"...To say that Scott Stapp, a bellowing repackager of grunge as a bludgeoning, Christian-motivational medium, wasn't a miserable blight on the culture, is to suggest that Kurt Cobain didn't matter as much as we wanted him to[.]"

You can almost see the Columbia School Of Journalism diploma hanging in his wood-paneled office as he types away on his new Macbook Pro, the nanny chasing the two young kids around their Connecticut home as he sneaks another Amstel light before the wife gets home.

Music

2009-12-12T19:02:00.000-05:00

Dear Mark Zuckerberg,

2009-12-09T16:05:00.003-05:00

Thefacebook.com is in very acute and desperate need of a "this hurls [me] into a homicidal rage" button on users' "status updates". Existing in constant and dangerous proximity to such a large volume of idiocy (mostly subjected upon the innocent by vacant and now obese sads they attended high school with) without a convenient and succinct means to express it is a truly harrowing concern, the likes of which our generation is uniquely poised to endure. I implore you to correct this.

Thank you.

heh.

2009-12-07T20:56:00.003-05:00

One Nation Under Beyonce

2009-11-30T15:19:00.008-05:00

In 2001, Destiny's Child released "Independent Women (Part 1)" as a tie-in with that year's "Charlie's Angels" movie. The track was Beyonce and Co.'s manifesto as independent women who bought the shoes on their feet, the car they're driving, and the house they live in. The song begins with the lyric "Tell me what you think about me/ I buy my own diamonds and I buy my own rings." The video is now clearly of a very specific time in American culture-- its huge, oh-so-early 00's, tailored to fit TRL, and riding the tail end of the "girl-power" that the Spice Girls had popularized half a decade earlier.

Destiny's Child - Independent Women

Seven years later, Beyonce released "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" which caused an international sensation-- even Obama was doing the dance. Beyonce is an impeccably groomed superstar, and that rarest of breeds who has never had a public meldown or even a career misstep, and this is arguably her biggest hit to date.

Beyonce - Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) [Official Video]

In the span of seven years, Beyonce has changed her tune from having power in the relationship ("I only ring your celly when I'm feeling lonely", "Try to control me boy you get dismissed/ Pay my own fun, oh and I pay my own bills/Always 50/50 in relationships) to a sort of passive helplessness ("pull me into your arms, say I'm the one you own" and of course the refrain, "If you like it then you should have put a ring on it"). Beyonce goes from buying her own rings to asking for one from a man who failed to fully appreciate her.

A huge fan of top 40 radio at age fifteen, I was undenaibly influenced by Beyonce's brand of female empowerment; "Independent Women" absolutely helped to prop up my own sense of self as a person, a woman, and what I should or could be in relation to men. She completely refused to spout the "no but yes" drivel of her poppier contemporaries Britney and Christina, who made careers out of perfecting and exploiting the most marketable of all female archetypes: the virgin/whore two-for-one variety pack. Those fake blondes existed only as responses to the men they formed their identities around; for a brief moment, Beyonce existed completely independent of everything but her own power as an individual. Beyonce is obviously still miles ahead of the rest of the class of 2001, but I only regret that young girls listening to Beyonce's latest radio hits --or anyone else's-- will be left wanting for a truly empowering anthem of their own.

I can't help but wonder if the "Independent Woman" of 2001 has gone out of fashion as our national culture has become increasingly macho and militarized over the better part of the last decade. In post-Bush America, we like our men in charge and our women asking for things rather than demanding them as we attempt to restore "American values" and prosperity to our country, whatever those mean today. The left looks to Obama as a talisman of progress in order to quell fears that we're collapsing into a nation of dogmatic Palin-enthusiasts, but the very current war on abortion rights is a war on women, and specficially the powerful, independent woman that Beyonce lauded and proudly self-identified as earlier this decade. In addition, women are often the first to suffer in recessions, and are more likely to turn to work in the sex industry as a last resort to pay the bills. Is the power of being an "independent woman" in America a luxury that we've sacrificed as our country is waging futile wars across the globe and against the rights of its own citizens to return America to what we falsely believe it once was?

In 2009, we now know that Beyonce was a little bit clairvoyant in "Independent Women": "Ladies, it ain't easy bein' independent."

Nation ink

2009-11-28T18:41:00.002-05:00

"Generation Recession" responses in The Nation, from yours truly and some other 20somethings with too much education and not enough work to justify or pay for it.

mtremix is s000 thankfl 4!

2009-11-25T20:36:00.012-05:00

18 pax on tuesday mornings, all my hot chill bros and broads, and that even though they are not insured they probably do not have terminal diseases, not having to wear a burka/veil and instead being at liberty to use the phrase "not a dry crotch in the house" in polite conversation while having an abortion, having a chill mom and dadbro who occasionally read this and still haven't disowned me, crls, Fleetwood Mac and the Lindsey Buckingham solo project [yes plz! amiright], the cultural prevalence of irony as a literary device to render what is said completely devoid of meaning, Sarah Palin and all of her god-fearin' followers, being a citizen of the Best Country on Earth (tm), Andrew W.K., hedonism, that the world we all live in facilitated the existence of Jeff Lynne, that every time a republican dies a gay muslim socialist gets their wings, David Rees, like sunsets and stuff, having feet to dance like no one's watching, hands for blogging like no one's reading, 3M glu stix to collage like no one's stupid, sensitive bearded men and the liberty to make out with them [yes plz! amiright], that the internet has "revolutionized the music industry", T9, that AnCo can't really sell out...

what r u guiz thankful 4?

Freddie Mercury is Psyched About This

2009-11-24T21:44:00.000-05:00

How To Be Alive

2009-11-24T16:42:00.001-05:00

"...There is no need to be cynical. Nor is there time to be cynical. You and I both know how much stupid crap there is in the world. Do not allow it to make you cynical about your own miraculous being. The crap in the world is about power and control and wealth and status; as such, it is an outgrowth of fear, the ego's silly fear of dissolution and nonexistence; the crap in the world is not the world's essence; it is our fear-filled distortion. Surely moguls and hustlers fill the streets and boardrooms; surely the bullshit machine of need hammers at us day and night to buy more, to keep these fearful moguls in trade; surely there is plenty of crap in the world. But the world is not crap. The world is glorious. The world is an out-and-out miracle. The world is yours. The world is calling to you...."

from Cary Tennis at Salon.com.
Rest of the article is here.

but i am young.

2009-11-12T16:49:00.003-05:00

Airport Conversation

2009-11-10T16:39:00.002-05:00

my dad: Have you heard of this Glenn Beck guy?

me: mmhm. I read blogs and things.

dad: Apparently his book is 4th on the bestseller list! I'd like to get him and Rush Limbaugh in a room and just ask them "do you know what you're doing to America?"

me: mmmhmm. Yeah. I know.

dadbro: Or I'd just piss all over them.

me: [lollzz]

dadbro: And then throw them in a big garbage can.

Zeke, is that you?

2009-11-10T16:06:00.002-05:00

A hundred and fifty years ago, it took a couple years, a lot of squirrel dinners and some log rafts to complete the transcontinental journey westward. Today, over the course of a six-hour journey between the Atlantic and Pacific, one is served a microwaved cheeseburger and has the pleasure of watching a special on "Hollywood Pets", or dogs who get tummy tucks.

Weekend Tapas

2009-10-24T14:04:00.002-04:00

Breaking: women still aren't equal, some good tunes by a sad guy, and a long-lost concert review.
Happy Saturday!

"Certainly, when you look at the numbers, women have made tremendous strides over the past 25 years. But in the process, we lost sight of something important. After focusing for so long on better jobs and higher pay, maybe the best thing — the enduring thing — we can do is make sure respect is part of the equation too." [NYT]

Casiotone For The Painfully Alone from Daytrotter.

Finally, the following is a review of a Kings of Leon Concert I wrote about four years ago. It ended up not getting published because my co-staffer at the paper, a talented writer and a more resourceful one at that, drank with the band after the show, which my boobs, general cluelessness, and lack of years on my ID would have made difficult. Plus, his review was actually a lot better. The Kings are now apparently "huge in Europe" but floundering on the modern rock radio format at home, beloved by neo-corporate, new parent types. But for a minute, they seemed poised to take on the world, like the Strokes three years before them. Anyway, here it is, a sign of the times. Oh, to be underage, drunk in public, and completely convinced by a rock and roll band.

Where There's Kings of Leon, There are Fire Trucks

By Emily May

October 5, 2005

Kings of Leon have spent their short life on the scene being likened to anyone from the Strokes to the Allman Brothers by admirers and skeptical critics alike so I'll spare them the disservice of comparison, however flattering. Their sound, style and coifs may not have originated within the foursome's career span, but the Kings have made each one all their own. The Tennessee-based band of three brothers and their cousin showed that they're more than just a little bit rock and roll on Tuesday night at Higher Ground, satisfying the crowd who name-checked everyone from Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin to Widespread Panic as other favorites.

The Kings played a calculatedly raucous set to appreciative, carefully accessorized 20-nothings, with boys decked in Burger King crowns (an homage?) and women's jeans, trying to ignore their growing, undeniable attraction to front man Caleb Followill, as the girls tossed their side-bangs to Jared Followill's base lines, wishing they could be as pretty as he is. Whether totally organic, as the band claims, or completely manufactured, as their critics contend, their unique take on 21^st century classic rock, exemplified on “Taper Jean Girl” and “Rememo”, off their latest album, Aha Shake Heartbreak, proved undeniably danceable in a manner that shows these boys have never heard the term “post-rock.” The party reached its height during a surging rendition of “Trani,” as Caleb played down on his knees, proving that while the young group is constantly measured against other bands who were around when rock wasn't “classic” yet, their sound is nothing if not technically perfected. I'd heard reports of the boys rocking like young Keith Richardses, and this cynic is happy to attest that she felt that she was watching rock roll at it's twenty-first century best, at a time when Keith's face is hanging almost as low as Bush's poll ratings.

As any rock and roller knows, no show is complete without some unplanned mayhem, or at least badged officials. As the anticipation for the encore hung in the air like the thick smoke from the prevalent illegal substance of the evening, the lights switched on and the fire alarm sounded as the disappointed crowd filed out as if a high school party had just been busted. And just like a high school party, everyone had an unrequited crush. Love or loathe the Kings of Leon, there wasn't a dry crotch in the house.

... recommends

2009-10-23T14:24:00.004-04:00

Forough Farrokhzad
Iranian female poet, condemned during her short life by her country's conservative regime. Her work is "scandalous" but more importantly, true.

Emoh, Lou Barlow (2005)
First solo album from Dinosaur Jr.'s Lou. Sparse, acoustic, perfect for autumn.

Read David Rees if you value your life.

Jeff and Jules: sometimes music is very good.

Luc Sante: Aging punk writes about New York and how hypercapitalism is ruining all things that were once good. Brilliant. Start with Kill All Your Darlings.

The Kind Life: Plants are good. Just sayin'. Saw Alicia speak about her new book and she was engaging, passionate and as lovably ditzy as Cher Horowitz. Her best case for the macrobiotic vegan lifestyle: Lic' doesn't look a day over 1996.
(Luc Sante -- Punk-- XVX-- Alicia Silverstone. There.)

Desmond Dekker: "You Can Get if if you Really Want It" in the morning, "Sing a Little Song" if you're heartbroken. "Isrealites" all the time.

Waking up at 6 am for no real reason other than to see what the sky looks like.

America, from elsewhere

2009-10-23T13:32:00.003-04:00

Britain's humourous take on "Life in America After the Crash!!!!!!111" from the BBC's Newsnight:

"Buddy can you spare a dime", "Dancing in the dark", "Life is just a bowl of cherries", all phrases that were coined during the Great Depression and have remained in the American lexicon [thought the first was a Marvin Gaye song, the second was Bruce, and the third-- uuuhh Doris Day or something?].

As fixed as the haunting images of migrant families captured by Dorothea Lange's unparalleled photographs.

The Great Depression shaped modern America, literally in the great skyscrapers, and metaphorically as the Depression gave way to World War II, the Cold War, and ultimately the greed of the Gordon Gecko years. [From your ninth grade history paper.]

But has it taken this new crash to bring America to its senses?

....

We have a stellar guest list. In the studio historian Simon Schama [brilliant author of Landscape and Memory, as opposed to this guy:], writer and satirist Joe Queenan, [who is a supremely untalented hack] queen of the internet and Republican-turned-Democrat Arianna Huffington, banker Liaquat Ahamed (whose book Lords of Finance points to the actions of four bankers in the 20s as central to the crash), and the novelist Hari Kunzru.

Already in the can, Jay McInerney, [the NY "writer" who best personifies the term "yuppie" in the most derogatory sense possible] who has some extraordinary observations of his own, which he is working into a new book. Get this - he says people on the Upper East Side are pretending to have lost money through the Madoff scandal.

Meanwhile, Philip Roth speaks of this as just another dark time in a series of dark times in America.

Paul Mason has made two archive-rich films to kick off discussions. First, he asks if the 1929 crash taught Ben Bernanke and others a lesson that helped avoid a depression this time. [Ha! What an important lesson to have learned!]

And second a film on the cultural response to 1929 - the literature of Steinbeck and Henry Roth, the "talkies" which portrayed the underbelly of American life, and the state-induced saccharine of screwball comedies like Bringing up Baby.

Then we'll look at the cultural response this time around.

TV sitcoms now focus on family life again. In Hank, Kelsey Grammer is an entrepreneur who loses his job and moves to small town America [Kelsey Grammer: who says "small town America" more? And what can help understand and cope with "our" "economic strife" more effectively than a sitcom? No one and nothing, that's who.] . In the explicit Hung a teacher who is struggling to make ends meet becomes a male prostitute [male prositutes on Showtime: truly indicative of a cultural trend.]. Oliver Stone (who only last year said he couldn't imagine revisiting Wall Street) is currently making Wall Street II, with Michael Douglas reprising the role of Gordon Gecko.

And, of course, like Banquo's ghost [hey, British news and your hyper-literacy], Michael Moore has turned up with his own trumpet blast at the bankers with Capitalism, A Love Story.

The sparks will fly, so do join us live from New York at 10.30pm on BBC Two.

Do the British have a better grasp on America than Americans do?
Are they smarter than "us"?
Or are they just "jealous" that we "broke away" from them over 200 years ago and turned out to be even better at "ruining the world" than they were?
Is the BBC just a "business" trying to "increase ratings" by having "idiots" like Joe Queenan and Jay McInerney argue with each other and smart people like Arianna Huffington and Simon Schama?

high capitalism at the idealist grad fair

2009-10-23T01:08:00.004-04:00

Between talk of tuition costs
and securing jobs,
we were told to market
ourselves "like a brand." Fuck.
Commodified again.

roman.

2009-10-22T13:44:00.001-04:00

defense: cultural
relativism. plus, the
guy made Chinatown.

rihanna.

2009-10-21T12:52:00.002-04:00

if only your voice
and songs were just like your hair
-- worth talking about.

tom.

2009-10-20T18:45:00.003-04:00

oh, those magic riffs
more sweet than tough; road and sky.
we all fall free, now.

fragility

2009-10-20T13:34:00.004-04:00

"After the Islamic Revolution I came to realize the fragility of our mundane existence, the ease with which all that you call home, all that gives you an identity, a sense of self and belonging, can be taken away from you."

--Azar Nafisi, Things I've Been Silent About

this might be the end

2009-10-19T22:19:00.002-04:00

...of the end of the world. go to p4k and listen to "11th dimension" by julian casablancas and "lust for life" by girls.

sounds like getting over getting over it. sounds like something new, again.

yum

2009-10-17T14:44:00.004-04:00

l337 choco-v3gansauce

A lot of powdered dutch cocoa
1/4 that amount of sugar
Enough soy milk to fill a mug

Mix cocoa and sugar in a mug. Heat soymilk in saucepan. Once heated, mix a little soymilk into cocoa/sugar until blended. Pour in remainder of soymilk. goes will with non-fiction literature. Add Kahlua or Bailey's if you're headed to work.

DFW on Life

2009-10-14T15:55:00.003-04:00

But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.

from DFW's 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, which has since been published as "This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life".

Makes the world seems that much emptier without DFW, who killed himself a year ago. A highly recommended, incredibly enlightening read.