Friday, December 2, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
WHEN I GET BACK
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
David Foster Wallace Is My Boyfriend
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.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
SLACK'D
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.
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.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Dear Leaders of Tomorrow,
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
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
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
causalties of the mechanized modern world, yallz
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
love! love! love!
for those of you following along from home, new things concerning matters of the heart have been posted here.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
THE RUMORS ARE TRUE:
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).
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
protest signs [via kevin smith]
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
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
Friday, January 21, 2011
Sunday, November 28, 2010
where 'artists' = 'humans' and 'necessity' = 'freedom of will'
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
-Nietzsche
Monday, November 15, 2010
habits of highly effective people.
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.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
the awlsomest
"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]
<3 u alex balk.
[the awl]
Thursday, November 11, 2010
ARE YOU READY FOR SOME BIG BAND?
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.
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.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
just another tuesday evening.
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]
[the awl]
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