November 2004 Archives
Months ago Antony, at the Antony & the Johnsons EP release, wore a furry Peter Pan hat which made him look like Errol Flynn; he plopped it on his round, luxurious hair-head right after Boy George left the stage for a smoke. That is something I forgot to mention. Boy George was compelled to smoke a cigarette after dueting. Smoking, that stuff'll kill you, but it was Boy George and he will smoke forever and live forever, like Joni Mitchell and Marlene Dietrich. Their voices cascaded together like cornsilk, both.
I am in love with this sweet video for "The Lake." Animated by Theworldofadam who, incidentally, is a Portlander now residing in Brooklyn.
So necessary: Lynne D Johnson on the long-running tradition of feminist hip-hop criticism. She also posts an amazing bell hooks article I'd never seen before (THANK YOU Lynne).
Drug post: Took 2 Nautamine (french equivalent of Dramamine) to curb the rickety-barfing side effects of the Thksgiving train from New Haven, and I am feeling fiiiiiine. This woozy anti-anxiety, plus thxgiving with the loveliest family ever, plus emails from two seperate exes asking if I'm "OK", makes me wonder if I should travel more often. Regardless, I'm exercising my constitutional right to remain unfocused. The three-day-old-mascara, over-the-counter-drugs, "Did I sleep in these pantyhose?" kind of unfocused. Am I going out into the night like this? Oh, yes. Courtney Love, watch yr back; I got motion sickness.
I think constant focus leads to believing yr own mythology. And that kinda defense mechanism will bite you back. Especially in mid-life, when your mythology starts showing its cracks and, in an effort to re-obscure your untended baby self, you must purchase an expensive convertible sports car and/or start fucking yr secretary.
Midlife crisis: not a good look. Protect yr future self: fall apart now. Woo!
I will now make a case for the unfairly vilified full Tofurkey feast: product of Oregon (of course), offered in the freezer section of your local vegetarian foodstore around this time of year. I love it for its visual element: tasty globe of stuffed fake meat that comes wrapped in a plastic bag. It is like eating pretend food; like we are playing grown-ups, and it is our holiday-meal fantasy. The mock wishbone looks like two snausages pressed together with an iron. But it tastes like jerky.
If you're a coffee snob like me: might I recommend the Hairbender? After friends, Stumptown is the main thing I miss about Portland. (I also mourn my cheapass rent.)
Except for good old T.I., who is charismatic and the ladies LARVE, and the fact of Juvenile et crew bringing up an eight-year-old in full army fatigues to join in on the chorus of "Slow Motion" ("Oh! I like it like that/she workin that back/I dont know how to act/move it slow motion for me"), the show last night was boring. My seatmate groused that Atlantic (Recs.) proffers C-list rappers and that's gaudi's truth, but what's worse is that the C list is cookie-cuttered from the megalo-capitalist playbook of exploitation, trickery and mascotting; parading women, kids, and ODB up there like fox suits at a Nets game. I felt sad for that little kid, who's got a terrible load of messages to overcome if he wants to develop outside this labyrinthine masculinity = war = sex jail. I felt sad for Juvenile, who's given himself over to it. I thought about humanism, and my friends, and the fight, and I just wanted to leave.
So I did. I left to see Dipset at SOB's. It was the usual crowd of Hot 97 ticket winners, label employees and various members of Wu-Tang (what, no Catchdubs?), except it was only 1/3 packed. Two major visual points: 1. They were giving away free Sizzurp, which smells of tart Hawaiian Punch and comes served on the rocks. 2. There was a tiny and briefly visible contingent of homo courting--dudes sharing furtive sensual touches and tense sideways glances, but shelving both ideas after a hot minute. The down-low is not how you break bread at a Dipset show. Diplomats themselves were there, but filed back onto their Journey-sized tour bus and bounced without performing.
Parts of this world feel so ugly to me right now. It feels personal. It is antithetical to my best hopes for humanity. It is a reflection and a catalyst. And Cam "no homo" 'ron is the defining energy at this particular blip on the NY timeline; he seems to own both New York and New York media (which, I surmise, are two seperate entities). Purple Haze reviews coming soon to a grocery-line mag stand near you. He is so the rap vanguard: sardonic, drops eight bars in onomatopaeiac monosyllables and they make sense, uncharted metaphor, cadence like pop rocks. And yet he's so conservative: chauvenist, homophobic. Me, I am going to figure out a way to use Cam'ron's lyric "I'm a sexist" as an entry point for actual dialogue.
Tell me if this is all in binary. I am deathly afraid of proffering binary arguments. Or C-lists.
Presenting the same gift to two different people is a weak move; at the very least, it reveals a lack of imagination. So I did not make Chris a diorama, though he deserves a Dipset installation piece or a dunk competition in Prospect Park. Instead I made him a disaster survival kit, which included a small wrench (for protection) and a little toy whose head bobbles as the earth begins to quake. I hope it can somehow make up for the setback, and Ben Wallace's excessive punishment.
HAPPY B-DAY, NOT-CHAUNCEY-BILLUPS.
I've discussed Rhythm & Gangsta with around 4-5 people. WHY HAS NO ONE MENTIONED SNOOP ENCOURAGING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ON "Can U Control Yo Hoe"?!?!?!
ADDENDUM.
Some of the language in "Can You Control Yo Hoe" mirrors exactly the language abusers use to justify their violence. You made me do it. That part, Snoop repeats thrice. It is so extreme, heart-sickening to the point that, were I a Los Angeles social worker, I'd show up at the Broadus residence to check in.
He threads the sentiment through the album, piling sex on the death on the violence. Insidiously framed by songs about God, killing, and fucking, it's Snoop's neverending Iceberg Slim syndrome: pimp mythology in rhyme scheme, like Iceberg Slim is someone you really wanna be. A friend shared a sad quote with me recently, about violence in hip-hop: "We treat our women like America treats us."
I am desensitized. I am a feminist who picks nits and splits hairs. But I also give passes. I throw my hands in air in the club to the crunk. I shake my ass like tomorrow's not gonna come, to songs written by men who wouldn't respect me. I rap along to murder-threat verse. I say to myself: sexual expression is complex and that's how I like it. I am an adult. I justify: I live in America, contradiction is my burden to bear. But how much am I really deaf to, that it takes something so extreme to provoke my rage, that it's not just business as usual. How much does it break down my subconscious? How did Calvin Broadus, not super-persona Snoop Dogg but the human Calvin Broadus, get this track past his wife, his crew (Nate Dogg notwithstanding), management, producers, label people onto an album? OH, because we'll buy it. $14.99 at Virgin times platinum numbers. I'll multiply it next time I 'm out, dancing "yes" and thinking "no." The language of the abused.
[Grazie to Joan Morgan.]
PS. cut the shit with the patronizing comments section, people. i spend every moment i live obsessing about "real things," adjusting my life accordingly.
Like it's not all part of the same deathpower trap, anyway.
Streaming Gwen Stefani solo album, Love, Angel, Music, Baby. Fireworky, but too many cooks in the kitchen. "Bubble Pop Electric" is theeeeeee weirdo-'50s jam. Gwen drops R. Kelly-worthy sexaphor at the crux of the bridge, when she sings "take me to a... drive in movie/drive into me." Not sure how the chorus, "bubble pop electric," correlates to giving it all up in the backseat, but maybe she's just trumping R's shit? Andre "A-yo" Benjamin sounds hot like the Fonz riding a mini-Casio, which is who he will be in about six weeks anyway. OCD logistical question: if he's riding a motorcycle, how can they get it on in the cah?
Question 2: Why is the Bernard Sumner/Peter Hook-track, "Real Thing" --despite unmistakably sounding like Bernard Sumner/Peter Hook--despite cribbing the structure (and some of the notes) from Lauper's "Time AFter Time" and "Temptation," the greatest song New Order ever wrote--still kinda unremarkable? Answer: Gwennie is singing the melodic equivalent of a Kleenex in my pocket.
More on this after further investigation.
If any NYers know where a lady can get her eyebrows reliably waxed in the BK, do not be afraid to share.
Current exact location of Mike Jones and Paul Wall RIGHT NOW: Crunky's cubical. I imagine they are drinking champagne/sizzurp cocktails and talking politics on rolly chairs, glamournt style.
C'nP's Dolce & Gabbana hook-up, alerts us of the sample sale this weekend at the D&G store in Soho. This would mean absolutely nothing to me, except he advises it's like Carnivale for trannies clocking sugar-daddies' credit-cards, and everyone should go for the experience.
I am boycotting because they sell $10,000 denim jackets lined with THE FUR OF HAMSTERS, which I think is extravagantly cruel. Our hook-up tried one on and says, "It's the softest touch you'll ever feel." You think, papi.
I love Dave Tompkins. For one, cause he dropped a Folkways "NYC Jumprope Songs of the '70s" record midway thru a bass set, with no warning. He did this whilst DJing a party in Ft Greene, for someone who shared a birthday with Dave Chappelle, and where folx were so drunx, nobody thought to cut into the cake. It just sat there on the counter, melting red velvet, and getting drunx cigarettes mushed out in its icing rosebuds. The drunk people were dancing 45-degree-angle booty dances, but were thrown off when the deep-Florida synth bombs gave way to rhyming kids' voices and the rhythm of rope thwapping pavement. They stopped moving for a moment, and aimed puzzled gazes on the turntables, which were set-up precariously on the kitchen counter. But Dave kept it going, grinning and oblivious; clearly in love with every note of every record... (Ever? Possibly ever. Every record at that party? Definitely.) The dancers looked over, puzzled... then they just started dancing again.
Dave DJs like Jonas Mekas films, I think. He documents, and lets your synapses fire away; it's interactive and you fill in the blanks. (There are actual blanks, cause Dave doesn't mix, either. Spots of silence between songs; good for reflection.) I want to write my EMP paper about Dave Tompkins.
I also love Dave Tompkins cause he's like, the only non-Christgau I've seen who can drop Voice-standard dense pomo stylee and still be this funny and alive!
It's C'n'P's one-year anniversary. Gracias to Mike and Curt for hooking me up, statcounter, Tiny and Sasha for the encouragement, my cousin Brian Diaz for never telling the rest of our family about this blog (if you are in Queens and need a headshot he will hook you up), Steve Gevurtz for the confessional license, bell hooks and Kathleen Hanna (from fanzine to Julie Ruin eras) for saving my life, Joe H. for putting ODB "got yr money," Nina Simone "Sinnerman", the Federation "hyphy" and some Django Reinhardt ish consecutively on a mixtape, and all my people everywhere across the globe.
p.s. go see Ms. Shayla Hason's Polaroid installation at agnes b., 103 greene st, soho. It is fabulous and as an added bonus, I am in it, wearing an orange tube top and looking dazed, as I recall.
Never mind that Destiny Fulfilled is their worst album, mostly stuffed ballads and only one real headspinner. Never mind that Be and Kelly are velvet voiced, and Michelle Williams sounds like a godly L'Trimm. Its chronological relationship narrative is a kind-of amazing cautionary tale of action and consequence. Kicks off with "Lose my Breath" and "Soldier" (for the love of thug intellect; Lil Wayne the street hottie w/a "purple heart" = Rumsfeld-era creepy), woman overextends ("T-shirt"), woman realizes man is a fake faker dogging her out ("Is She the Reason"), her girls got her back as she cries ("Girl"), she dumps him ("Bad Habit"). Then DC screws "Karma" by Lloyd Banks, this year's consummate playa track, for "If," the acerbic "sayonara, doggie, I ain't got time for this" revelation/empowerment vocal pilates number. The Freedom Dance ("free"), the bitter "I gave it all up for you" ("Through with Love," essentially "Bad Habit" redux but w/Mike Oldfield meets Diwali production). "Love" is rejuvenation. Seven stages of grief, with denouement and rebirth. Moral: Even Kelly Rowland dates down?
* ("Lose My Breath." With that marching-band dancehall beat, sounds like two hotties making out underneath the bleachers at a pep rally. Video is weird, though... The Warriors plus Le Double Vie de Veronique? Beyonce: "Who am I?")
Overlooking the garish spider-eyelashes, in her younger years, Fran Allison somewhat resembled Janet Leigh. She was girl-next-door-pretty, a radio comedienne and singer from Waterloo who discovered God when she was small, after her mother, stricken with TB and locked in a sanitorium, "prayed herself well." Even despite that and her father's chronic illness, Fran stuck with god and stayed tender, which made her an ideal matriarch to a cast of furry puppets. In 1947, she was cast as the only human character in Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, a children's show that aired in Chicago for ten years. She was warm-voiced, sweet and interacted with Kukla and Ollie as though they were human; kids and parents loved her because she was never patronizing. The show was incredibly successful; influencing many subsequent childrens shows, including Sesame Street and Chic-a-go-go, and hailed as adding another dimension to television, opening the door for other smart and life-enriching programming.
Or so they say. I have never seen the show; this is merely what I have learnt from cursory research. I have heard some of the songs Fran sang, however, and one of them is straight out of a children's gender conditioning study ca. 1975. The song is "Girls Were Made to Take Care of Boys," written in 1948 by Ralph Blane, sung also by Billie Holliday. The KF&O version begins with Ollie telling Fran she's a great problem-solver, to which Fran responds, "Well, that's kind of my job." A piano scale blooms, and she begins:
Girls were made to take care of boys
Made to share their sorrows
Made to share their joys
Made to help and guide them
With ever a patient hand
Made to spread affection in the right directions
Always Understand.
Boys may think they take care of girls
Just because they pass on their fashions and their pearls
But Ive always found its just the other way around
If you love the girl
And declare you do
Shell be there to take care of you.
(The original version of the song includes the lyric that we are, "Always kind and dutiful.") When Billie sings it's got sardonic bite; but Fran, ever the sweet one, imbues her vocals with warmth and polite vibrato. Like Julie Andrews, she was singing nice. And here, niceties seem maniacal; listening to it from the vantage of hindsight, I can't forget that many women of that era—kind and dutiful, always—were knocking back pills and whiskeys eight hours a day, just to endure the monotony of domestic life; the obligation of taking care of their husbands. Or Billie, knocking back whiskeys to endure the entourage of abusive men. To expunge the memory of rape. Fran's singing from the '50s; absent The Pill, Roe v. Wade, Title IX, even the sanctioned O (absent the discourse, even), listening to this song, I imagine her as woman whose rage is so far compressed, she's become an emotional tundra. It makes me want to pour hot wax down my ear canal.
During the '90s, which are easy to romanticize now, feminism became post—and now, many of our feminist cornerstones are about to be fed to the incinerator by the Bush death star. Concurrently, Destiny's Child, who termed and personified the idea of upward mobility as lady power, who've been a fairly accurate thermometer of where middle-ground/sex-power feminism roosts—releases a song entitled "Cater 2 U," a pictorial of the woman-as-rock/-servant mentality. So Fran Allison!
Let me help you
Take off your shoes
Untie your shoe strings
Take off your cufflinks
What you wanna eat boo?
Let me feed you
Let me run your bath water
Whatever you desire
Sing you a song
Turn the game on
I'll brush your hair
Help you put your do-rag on
Want a footrub
Want a manicure
Baby I'm yours
I wanna cater to you boy
Smoove B.? Mom? When do we eliminate this idea as a road map... 2008? 2076? Should I start drinking now?
[dramatic exuent, part I]
No stolen elections: info on voter fraud and disenfranchisement pours in.
Courtesy the honorable Ms. E. Mendez Berry: a The Dept. of Homeland Security meddles in OH vote counts. (MSNBC transcript.)
Hope and love to Jeff, whose family has been called up by the backdoor draft.
Special to the googler of "fingers julianne shepherd":
I assume you are wondering about my knuckles. Since birth, I have been missing the knuckles on my left ring and right pinky fingers; they are not actually missing-missing, but the ligament never grew, so they're buried deep in my hand, with nubby valleys in their absence. Consequently, those two fingers are graceful but stunted little baby piggies, short and inadequate for excellence on most musical instruments requiring agile hands. (I am double-jointed, however, a boon on piano: I have the reach for Scriabin, though not the speed.)
You are probably wondering about the photos/x-rays in the December 1991 issue of Southern Medical Journal, a publication based in Birmingham, Alabama, committed to interdisciplinary disease management. The spread was pitched and captioned by my doctor, who noticed this medical anomaly during a routine physical (the one required for admittance to my jr high school basketball team, a whole other story). After my friends found out, they crowned me with the nickname "Knuckles" — gateway semantics, perhaps, because less than a year later I developed a shortlived reputation as a no-mercy homeroom fistfighter.
I am a pacifist now, so get in touch.
PS. Not-Chauncey-Billups is America's greatest unrealized frontman. If you are forming a band, particularly a true-blue, not-crusty screamo ensemble or need someone to mug smooth and expressive like a young white Al Green, I suggest you call him up.
Maybe later today or tomorrow I will tell you about my night with Mums, Jamie Hector from The Wire, UTFO and Kurtis Blow's mom. I will tell you about my first visit to the Bronx ever, about the best potato in America and how Kid Lucky hitchhiked up and down the west coast, but he isn't trying to stop in Idaho.
And how La Bruja and Roxanne Shante made me feel better than I have since the election, about the power of unity, the power of voice, the power of struggle. Ante up. I'm calling for deep personal overhaul, to reexamine our standards, to reexamine what we deem acceptable in our lives, to ask ourselves how we're complicit in our personal, professional, and artistic relationships. Cause you know what? Fuck this shit. Fuck this immobilizing depression. I'm not handing over my future to a rich good ole boy motherfucker and his blind congregation.
Fuck that shit. I'm making moves.
1 pm today, Bronx Museum of the Arts:Connie and Ebenezer's thing.
Oh don't get snotty about it. Eb and I discussed at length the corniness of the title; inspiration at 4 am w/your guard down, sometimes puns are birthed.
H2O film fest awards ceremony, Peter Jay Sharpe Theater, 95th & Broadway. All I know is: the RZA. Roxanne Shante.
Kerry won, maybe.
Disaster Mix V. 1: SECESSION.
"A Distorted Reality is Now a Necessity to be Free," Elliott Smith.
("You disappoint me, you people raking in on the world." There's always more to deflate.)
"Never Been To Spain," Ike & Tina Turner.
(Sexy number on the benefits of other countries. I will marry Barcelonans with references.)
"Strugglin' Woman's Blues" Clara Smith.
(Appropriately ca. 1927.)
"the Point of No Return" Immortal Technique.
(You think you know Warrior? You don't know Warrior. Lloyd Banks – whom I once adored, but must now divorce based on his far-right, self-interested relationship with capital -- doesn't know Warrior. Technique? He'll teach you the meaning of a flak jacket and a revolution.
[At Your Next Reading Group: Discuss the Possible Roots and Implications of Camouflage as Wartime Fashion Statement.])
Let this be my last gesture of irony during the Bush II era: "Get Your House in Order" by Dottie Peoples and the Peoples Choice Chorale. Get your house in order, "for Jesus is coming." A cappella chorus so crystalline, but for the militaristic stomping beneath. As she sings about the homeless people, so many homeless people, all the homeless people that Jesus gonna take care of, the fogginess over religious-right is cleared away, their motivation set forth: Jesus will take care of us, so the gov't doesn't have to. The pro-armageddon regime is cognizant of its strength.
[Not making judgements on the lovely Dottie or her Peoples... this song's just clarifyin' things.]
Cordero, "Cuando la Vida."
"Sweetness" by Yes. Epic solace.
Yeah, the Zino-soldier premise is ridiculous and the lyrics are weak, but don't hate on Martika. Her trajectory from the Disney Channel to greater fame presaged Xtina, Justin, Britney AND Felicity.
Marxist linkage on the nightmare chasm, courtesy Sasha's sidebar.
To everyone in the youth bracket who didn't vote: I'm assuming you have an alternate plan, right?
Well, it's time to STAND THE FUCK UP.
Meanwhile, I will marry any non-North American for citizenship in your country. Barcelonans given special consideration. Repayment in fascinating conversation and dance lessons.
Then again: it seems irresponsible not to stay and fight for justice alongside the people who don't have the privileged option of leaving.
Please vote for John Kerry today.
And when he wins, let's not rest until dude is camped out shoeless in the Betsy Ross room with a chilled mojito in one hand and a list of cabinet appointments in the other.
Not sure if this is reality or Philip K. Dick, but there it stands.
Great piece in the Independent today: A day that will decide the fate of the world.
Nov 3 is National Day of Action, so let's take to the streets. Info here and here.
11/3 anti-war actions in NYC: March from Ground Zero to Wall Street.
Let's go.
