January 31, 2004 (1) Comments

Here's the deal: "You Got Served" is, in fact, both the best and worst of the new school of urban dance films. It is a film divided in two, a dichotomous adventure into breathtaking dance scenes choreographed (and music-directed) by a conceptual genius. And yet, it was cobbled together by a writer and editor who are clearly hoarding the last stash of legal ephedra in the country.

DJ Juggernaut was wrong; there is a plot, and you definitely notice it. There is so much plot that it's not inconceivable all members of B2K wrote it in a long round of exquisite corpse. Essentially, this crew of dancers (mainly B2K's Omarion + Marques Houston) battle other dance crews in this Dance Battle Warehouse (presumably), where Steve Harvey plays the judge/referree/father figure/friendly neighborhood caretaker guy, whose name is “MR. RAD.” Right away it's unbelievable because 1. who battles using hiphop-video dance steps? and 2. One of the B2K guys is wearing a Blazers jersey, yet the film takes place in Los Angeles. (While that isn't inconceivable in and of itself, the jersey is a RASHEED WALLACE jersey. Sheed is reportedly pals with Shaq and Kobe, but the half-life of Sheed fans in LA seems short at best. I know Kobe fans barely last half a second in PDX.)

As you know from the trailer, the B2K dance crew is challenged by this totally wack rich white kid (his wackness is embarrassing, but even more terrible is his hairdo, which is pretty much the "punk for total chotches" style of gelled spike). As you also know from the trailer, our heroes "get served" by the wack rich white kid (from the OC!! of COURSE he has terrible hair), because, in a "Bring It On"-like development, his crew STEALS THEIR MOVES. But then Omarion starts dating Marques' sister and they run drugs for this doooorky don called Emerald (although they never actually say it's drugs, so they could be smuggling duffel bags of bootleg Capezio Dancesneakers, for all we know), and Marques gets jumped by some dudes and his LEG is broken (HIS LEG??!?!), and there's an inexplicable 15-minute basketball scene and this little 8-year-old kid joins their crew if he promises to stop "hustling" (HUSTLING!?!?!?), and Marques borrows money from his grandma and there's a dance contest for $50,000, to be in Lil' Kim's new video.

You're going WHAT THE FUH, and I'm going SERIOUSLY.

Example scene:

GRANDMA: “Something seems wrong... are you having sex?”
MARQUES WYATT’s CHARACTER [embarrassed]: “Aw, grandma!”
GRANDMA: “What? I DIAPERED IT, I CAN ASK ABOUT IT!!”

This is as funny in its disgusting absurdity as the dis on the new Z-Man album ("Dope or Dog Food," Hieroglyphics), “I ATE YOUR GIRL WHILE SHE WAS PREGNANT,” and actually provoked audible “EWWWW”s in the theater. The other chorus of “EWW”s came when Omarion from B2K kissed his girl in the film, and pterodactylly swooped down upon her esophagus--eyes half-open, tongue extended--for a french like a vacuum cleaner.)

But the music is AWESOME! Yes, the 10-year-old sitting next to me rhymed along to the entirety of Ludacris' “Stand Up," but dudes flipped aerials and headspins to music by Blackalicious, Aceyalone, Joe Budden, MOP, even TROUBLE FUNK! There is something exhilarating about watching battle-influenced choreography, girl crews dusting boy crews by bouncing booty in their faces, to the sound of "Ante Up." (Youngs Ho and Chris once rightly equated the feeling of “Ante Up” with that of wanting to fuck bricks.) The dancing, again, is very MTV style (some of it was done by the *NSync/Britney choreographer Wade Robson, who makes a cameo in the film and whose hair is frosted). BUT, in the triumphant finale, ACTUAL Los Angeles b-boys get the stage, INCLUDING DAVE ELSEWHERE!! Watch the linked video--his popping is like watching toothpaste oozing out of a tube. His name is Elsewhere cause he’s on some other shit.

Here's the "You Got Served" forum on bboy.org, which identifies some of the YGS steps and more of the bboys, too.

Lil' Kim is practically edited out of the movie, thanks to the aforementioned cocaine editing. Her big line is "I like it straight hood," and sounds forced. The best rapper cameo in an urban dance movie ever award still goes to Missy Elliott in "Honey," whose charismatic 3-minute performance negates every second of bad acting in the entire movie.

But she better keep her head up: Mya could really sweep it with her cameo in "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights."

January 30, 2004 (1) Comments

Due to the fascinating enthusiasm/PASSION? over "You Got Served," and because I have cherished, purchased, bootlegged, home-recorded and daydreamed about more urban dance films than anyone I know and probably more than this dude (pointed out by Jay Smooth), I vow to review it this weekend, after I check it out at the matinee, FOR THE GOOD OF THE WHOLE.

That NYT review, actually, is distressing. Is it humanly possibly he could have missed the sordid beauty of Honey, its plasticene altruism, the olde english "Boricua" emblazoned precariously across the ass of Jessica Alba's yoga pants? Could he have ignored the surface-skimming but ultimately triumphant tension of interracial teen love, played out in dewy sequences of club freaking, between Mekhi Phifer and Julia Stiles in Saved the Last Dance (not the first of which films paired classical choreography with from-the-street b-boying)? (Or from-the-video b-boying, anyway.) Was he unaware that when he said "Chinese martial arts" he really meant "capoeira," and when he said "Gene Kelly and Jerome Robbins," he really meant "Don Campbell"?
I only ask because I care. A LOT.

January 29, 2004 (1) Comments

if you are in the vicinity of Rutgers University this June, perhaps you might want to check out the first annual National Hip-Hop Political Convention. From the Cowboyz 'n' Poodles inbox officiale:

"Ballin’ Entertainment is proud to be working with the first annual National Hip-Hop Political Convention. The founder’s aim is to bring together hip-hop activists, artists, educators, workers, and professionals from across the country to build a political agenda reflective if the needs interests of the hip-hop generation. Artists such as Chuck D, and m1 of Dead Prez, Boots Riley from the Coup, journalist Davey D, and author Bakari Kitwana are just a few who are part of this event.
June 10-12, 2004 at Rutgers University in New Jersey"

This is not to be confused with the Russell Simmons sign-up-to-vote blitz.

AND!:

MOS DEF LANDS MALE LEAD ROLE AS FORD PREFECT
IN SPYGLASS ENTERTAINMENT'S
THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO GALAXY

New York, NY - January 29, 2004 - Mos Def (The Italian Job, Monster's Ball)
has been tapped to star as "Ford Prefect" in Spyglass Entertainment's The
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. The film will be directed by Garth
Jennings and Nick Goldsmith, and will start filming in April.

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is based upon the acclaimed novel by
Douglas Adams, which tells the story of a British man who is confounded when
he's saved from the destruction of Earth by his best friend, who turns out
to be an alien.

Mos Def recently completed work on the HBO Film Something The Lord Made, in
which he stars alongside Alan Rickman. The film chronicles the real life
relationship between heart surgery pioneers Vivien Thomas and Alfred
Blalock, and will air on HBO later this year. Def can also be seen in The
Woodsmen, opposite Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick and Benjamin Bratt, which just
premiered at Sundance. Mos Def is also set to release a new album on Geffen
Records in 2004.

Additional film credits include Spike Lee's Bamboozled, MTV's Carmen: A Hip
Hopera, 2002's critically acclaimed Monster's Ball, Showtime, and the 2002
romantic comedy Brown Sugar, for which he received an NAACP Image Award
nomination.

Def also serves as the host, music supervisor and co-executive producer for
the HBO series Def Poetry and served as a writer, producer and actor on the
MTV sketch comedy series Lyricist Lounge. Mos completed his Broadway debut
in 2002 in the Tony nominated, Pulitzer Prize winning, Topdog/Underdog. In
2003, he re-teamed with Topdog playwright Suzan Lori Parks and director
George Wolfe for the off-Broadway play, Fucking A, for which he was awarded
an Obie Award.

Mos Def is managed by Emily Gerson Saines of Brookside Artist Management and
Umi Smith, President of Good Tree Media Inc, Mos Def's management company.
His lawyer is Jason Sloane of Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, Newman,
Warren, Sloane and Richman.

January 29, 2004 (0) Comments

The NYT magazine's cover story this week, on the sex-slave trade in the United States, is provoking a lot of blogiverse discussion, starting with brilliant-all-the-time-and-also-when-infuriated Sasha's. To which I sent him an email, which he posted, and Jessica, Douglas, and Hua wrote about the article, too. Jessica and Sasha put it exactly, and I would also like to reiterate that Radosh can eat a giant helping of his own dicks if he weighs Landesmann's "KNOWLEDGE OF THE INTERNET" over Landesmann's "WILLINGNESS TO DRIVE IN A FUCKING BULLETPROOF SUBURBAN INTO A MEXICAN TOWN WHERE THE SEX SLAVE MAFIA MAY TRY TO KILL HIM FOR WRITING THIS STORY." (And the constant disempowerment of the lower tiers of Mexican government/law enforcement, for hundreds of years, which forced my family to move to WYOMING so they did not get RAPED OR KILLED by the Federales OR Pancho fucking Villa, btw--the disempowerment that makes people SO DESPERATE TO LEAVE AND COME TO GLITTERY GORGEOUS AMERICA FOR A BETTER LIFE) And that, still, to make Landesmann's (NON-FABRICATED) journalism the issue, where he notes in the story it's hard to be exacting when sex slave rings are underground, is to divert from the issue. I still think Radosh's initial reaction was a denial of his own place in society, as a man privileged enough to have a computer which affords him the luxury of blasting his every uncensored thought into the ether, and the idea that he was possibly reading that article and going "OH, Yeah RIGHT" or whatever makes me puke up my brunch.

January 28, 2004 (0) Comments

Tonight, the choice between an advance screening of You Got Served (wherein B2K dance head-to-head with the drummer from Blink 182) and Stephen Petronio Dance Company broke me out in pins and needles. On 95.5*, DJ Juggernaut reported that You Got Served "has a plot, but you don't even notice it, because there's so much dancing." AKA MY IDEA OF A PERFECT MOVIE. But Stephen Petronio won out in the end, mostly because the You Got Served trailer was excruciating, even considering my admittedly sub-low standards for urban dance films.

Stephen Petronio himself is a 1972 graduate of Hampshire College, and while tending goats and reading Foucault, or whatever it is they do at HC, he familiarized himself with Laurie Anderson, Wire, Beastie Boys, Diamanda Galas, and James Lavelle, and uses their music in his productions. While this is not as exciting as the Janet Pants Dans Theeeatre choreographing a piece to Numbers, it's still better than expected, and Petronio has been hailed for 20 years for his innovative choreography. Tonight's performance was the American premiere of Island of the Misfit Toys: Cindy Sherman designed the set, Lou Reed wrote the music, Tara Subkoff/Imitation of Christ created the costuming: kinda future-funk, but then not that future at all. In City of Twist, Petronio's 2002 paean to a post-9/11 NYC, his choreography is full-on classicist, severely rooted in the ceremony of ballet. His motion's got flow, and makes use of every last stretch of sinew in his dancers' bodies, melting them gummily into the floor, tendon by tendon. But after the air was halved by the thousandth arabesque and pas de bourre and grand jete, I got the point: Petronio is in love with form (bodies, motion); his style of choreography is aesthetic, first; and during what should have been a heavily emotional piece—or at least a representational one—his modus operandi was quite simply only-beautiful. I love beauty, but a half-hour of amorphously subtexted beauty doesn't provoke or edify. It just looks beautiful.

On the other hand, his method of combating balletic formalism is by putting his seven dancers in clusters of two or three, shaping their steps with a vague, almost messy confluence, and leaving it all for the audience to untangle. (Imagine Swan Lake at a house party.) While City of Twist was neither interpretive nor explicit, Petronio redeemed it a bit in the last movement, with a solo dancer, alternately clenching and pirouetting against a twinkly white-light scene of NYC skyline, costumed in a jersey t-shirt shredded to look like a flapper dress, so that everytime she moved, loose swathes of fringe followed.

This is all beside the fact that he based City on post-9/11 NYC—an impossible topic for the most obvious reasons—and its subsequent squeeze on the milk-teet by every jingoistic hitchhiker in the hemisphere. The only 9/11 tribute I've seen that worked, ever, was by the Japanese performance-art duo Eiko and Koma, who painted their bodies white and spent an hour barely moving and occasionally twitching in the frigid waters of the Jamison Park fountain.

The newer piece, Island of Misfit Toys was better (in other words, more challenging), but Petronio, deriving some of that herky-jerky twitch stuff from either himself, or the new trends in avant-choreography (see: Janet Pants), even still directed his dancers in strokes of graceful ballonne: Julliard to the max. Cindy Sherman's set included an eight-foot-tall, porcelain-esque doll with the face carved out, and a giant totem pole of emotionless kewpie faces, each representing varying degrees of open mouth, all blank. It began with Lou Reed's reading of The Raven, and the ensemble dressed in pajamas, cutie-pie flounces and nightmarish toy make-up (not unlike Darryl Hannah's character in Blade Runner: swipes of raccoon black, with neon spheres of blush). It was a procession of Evil Dolls and Misfit Toys, dancing like rag dolls with dance degrees.
At one point, while the Reed monologue became the Velvet Underground's "Waiting for the Man," a pigtailed misfit toy broke out of her lyrical ballet, look-at-my-awesomely-long-limbs mode and actually performed the Roger Rabbit. It was my favorite part of the night... which I think means I should have gone to You Got Served.

* 95.5 is Portland's only mainstream hiphop station, where, despite being owned by Paul Allen and not Clear Channel, they have only recently begun airing Twista's "Slow Jamz" and R. Kelly's "Step in the Name of Love." Just now, after playing "Change Clothes," the DJ (not Juggernaut) attempted to explain the greatness of The Grey Album; she said she loves it, but she thought it was by someone like, "um.. DJ Danger, or something like that?" THIS IS NOT OKAY. Then again, it's my personal theory Paul Allen bought 95.5 in order to promote the Blazers (which he also owns, and to whose games you may now purchase tickets for like, a dollar thirty.)

** (DJ Juggernaut also informed us that Ray J, Brandy's brother, is now the ringleader of B2K.)

January 26, 2004 (1) Comments

Rejoice! Joseph Patel's debutante entry into the blogiverse prompted still more obsessive listening to Kelis & Dre's "Millionaire", which is partially about communism, and totally about reparations. P.S. What is up with the Abstract Dynamics monopoly on some of my favorite website writers? This Blaze dude must be hot shit. (Actually, he is--check his beautifully designed site for updates on politics, art, economics, ephemera. Right now I'm bazonkers for his newly launched imaginary campaign ads.)

I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY! I don't even know where to start, except with the last 48 hours, during which I got 4 hours of sleep, staying up with Tiny Lucky and her Viggo Mortenson doppleganger companion in Chicago, passing out from exhaustion on a little floor cot in front of the fire, or rather the stove that heats the house, with Rjyan sprawled on the couch, slumber party style. We were missing S'Mores, only.

Earlier that day, we attended a taping of Chic-a-go-go, a long-running kids dance show on Chicago cable access, where babies dressed as ballerinas and Boba Fett dance awkward dances and spin until they barf, to Aretha Franklin or OutKast. Adults are invited, too, and some of them dress up. Guest musical acts are also invited to dress up, but may lip sync only, resulting in a sort of surreal all-ages soul train. Lip syncing is harder than it looks. Our special guest stars included Ernie Hines, who put out a couple singles on Stax after he realized that going secular was a good way to expand his audience and, even lip syncing, emitted that easy, classy smile that was the language of the first on-TV performers--the serene, soft-lipped confidence that betrayed even their own lyrics.

Bobby Conn's full ensemble fake-played, wearing matching skintight denim suits with fringy fur coming out the ass crack, which Jessica swore they got at Rainbow Clothes for Hoes in the big girls' section. (What Jessica is doing at Rainbow Clothes for Hoes in the big girls' section, I will never know, but that's what she said.) This Bobby Conn family band, acting out big, blue-glitter glam to the sound of their own CD, while a 2 1/2 foot tall, towheaded charmer dressed in a Storm Trooper costume and tap shoes spun curlicues around their violinist. Chic-a-go-go's resultant fizzy chaos could only come from a situation where kids are let loose in front of TV cameras, flapping and swaggering like peacocks and who can blame them, anyway, because imagine being so young and unimprisoned by convention, that you not only ACT UPON EVERY KINETIC IMPULSE, but also know that PERFECTLY SANE ADULTS WILL FILM YOU AND PUT IT ON THE TELEVISION. Honestly, it's not unlike having this MTPPS weblog, or more accurately, recording an album with people you love in your best friend's kitchen in Chicago, where you have to use strapping tape to attach the mic to the top of the fridge and stand on a chair, cause you don't have a mic stand. That's some home recording resourcefulness shinola.

In addition to famous guests (which also included Califone and the drummer's AFREAKINGDORABLE daughters hurling maracas to the floor), the show featured two recurring stars, Finesha and Porsha Jones, 14 and 16 respectively, who have been appearing on Chic-a-go-go for 7 years. They were wearing matching, Baby Phat-style denim tracksuits; Jessica did not venture to predict where they purchased them, but she had better soon, because wearing the same outfit as your friends/siblings, sparkle motion roller posse style, is totally hot (see previous post re: The Warriors). (Although, wearing the same outfit as your spouse/lover is not advisable, unless you are Scream Club.). So anyway, Porsha and Finesha lip synced "Best Friend" by Brandy, and it was really convincing and expressive, up to loosely synchronized choreography. Later in the taping, the older of the two, Porsha, came back to lip sync another song--and this is where it gets weird (as if Bobby Conn in a room full of children isn't already--for the love of god, I was wearing a Fisher Price stethoscope and a shirt with a unicorn on it).

So Porsha comes back wearing a thin style of glittery prom dress and rhinestone jewelry, with a besuited male companion around her age. He is holding a cell phone. They proceed to interpret "Busted," a song written by R. Kelly for the Isley Bros. and JS, in front of 50 kids, some old enough to just barely understand. The moments were heavy as I watched the blush drain from a 9 year old's face.

For the record, in "Busted," a man confronts his woman when she comes home at 2 am, "busting" her for infidelities, while she makes flimsy apologies/excuses/denials, explaining she was performing friendship counseling with her friend Shaquan, whose man has in actuality cheated on HER. In the end, he sings for her to "get the fuck out of here," because it is painfully obvious his woman is humping the entire Southside of Chicago. It's a dramatic song, in the way cheating songs are normally, but because it's written by R Kelly, there's a palpable, kind-of seamy, sexual-tension subscript that makes it sound like a scene from the Bold & the Beautiful. (It is not the sole song of cheating on the album, by the way.)

So Porsha and her unidentified young male counterpart acted out this scenario with theatrical blocking that could have scored them a couple Daytime Emmys--like they, in their mid-teen experience, not only comprehended its message, but had lived through it a time or two. Like identifying the parlance of infidelity was as old hat to them as aptitude tests and on-campus lunch policies.

The room was stale and silent. No one turned off the song. The ponytailed 9-year-old stayed mortified. I was reminded of being suspended for 2 days from sixth grade for bringing Prince's "LoveSexy" album to school and flossing his naked body to my friends. Immediately afterward, the Seven Harkey band came on, wearing black turtlenecks, and lip-synced a Starbucks-ready song about the trials of being in love with someone whose true love is Christ. So much for appropriate children's programming.

Chicago vacation was indeed spent four days straight in the kozy kitchen of the Tiny Lucky Genius, with the Slightly Bigga Geniuses R. Kidwell, Roby Newton, T. Kinsella, Cale Percussion Master, Andrea Also Tiny and Lucky, Miles Not Standish, and The Kid. Together, we are MUY ROMANTICO. We recorded 5 1/2 songs in four days; some of them are sincere and sweet, and some of them are straight loco. Roby challenges melismatic concepts on "Never Been" and emo egoism on "Lover I Don't Have to Love," Tim and Jessica and The Kid and Cale and I made a version of "Oh Yoko" to hang up in your kids' bedroom like Garanimal wallpaper, no one will ever be able to yell "Play some Skynyrd" again if Rjyan's version of "Tuesday's Gone" is heard by the world. (HE freestyled the lyrics and INTERPRETED IT LITERALLY: "Monday and Wednesday weren't meant to lie side by side... cheek to cheek... butt to butt...") The whole situation is overwhelming and life-changing, and encapsulated thoroughlyhere and here, but what I want to add is that fearlessness is so valuable, both in life and in music. To get all Dead Poets Society in this houseboat, it's really important to go beyond knowing thyself and traverse over into holistic self-actualization. You know, dial 1-800-Free-Your-Mind for a good time. I learned this while watching Rjyan and Roby and Miles and Andrea stand on a chair, stretch their lungs out and sing into a refrigerator, just as much as I learned it watching a kids on Chic-a-go-go bust out the Kid 'n' Play to a Califone dance jam. And so, even after suffering through the dismal State of the Union address, even after getting upset when two newspapers cover the same topic in very different ways, I cross my heart and hope to stay idealistic for as long as I live.

Finally, for now: the Portland Mercury User's Group Yahoo Group actually STALKED us on the previously mentioned Portland Mercury date with the girls of the Mercury, and made a report, CIA style, here. My housemate is described as "high collared and slightly mulleted." I am logged as smoking cigarettes and text messaging for ONE STRAIGHT HOUR. Photos included; our date looked like LANCE BASS, not Nick Carter. It's sheer genius, and we had NO INKLING WHATSOEVER we were being followed.

Speaking of genius, Jay Smooth wrote a Ha-LAIR dis rap of Tiny Lucky, available on mp3. It is indeed the first blog rhyme ever; it's also pretty good. Any man willing to get so dorky in a public forum deserves your support.

I'd also like to support spanky new Blazer Darius Miles, except NOW WE ARE SANS FREAKING MCINNIS AND BOUMTJE BOUMTJE!!!!! And even though we beat the Wizards tonight (FACE!!!!) (read the linked article: "Rasheed Wallace made an animated gesture, with perhaps a word or two added in, after a big basket." Amazing), Rose Garden stoolies are still calling my cell phone begging me to come to games for like, $3.49, because folks are so unenthused by their performance this season. We could use a little Brooklyn-style stoke of passion, either way. Still, I will gladly take them up on the offer, if only because my beloved Sheed has probably about 6 more minutes left on our team.

Writing feels like peanut butter and I'm a starved tapeworm, but I'm making myself stop here so I can like, go out into the night light.

January 20, 2004 (0) Comments

I'm out for a spell, recording the grammy award winning cover album, "MUY ROMANTICO: FREAK STORM," dancing on Chic-a-go-go, and swimming laps at the Chicago metro YMCA with my bootylicious homies, who are some of the most brilliant people I know, including my bestest lady Jessica Hopper, who is linked at left and required reading. AMAZING updates upon return. Remember the world is gigante, and every mangy stank ass back alley is ripe for a dance party.

January 18, 2004 (0) Comments

The Date:

Last December, my place of employment, the Portland Mercury, purveyor of entertainment, gambling, and back-alley moonshinery, held an auction for charity (the Portland Relief Nursery, a safehouse for neglected/abused children). One of the auctioned-off items was a date with the lady employees of the Mercury, all seven of us--where the promised activities included dining, dancing, and laughing at all the auction winner's jokes. The winner paid something like $300, no crap, to go on a date with us--a ridiculous amount, but also not too ridiculous as we are extraordinarily beautiful, intelligent, funny, and/or kind (some of us are also fabulous dancers). The winner was a man named BRETT, who looked exactly like Nick Carter from Backstreet Boys, down to hair gel and alluring watery smile. Not my normal swarthy/rabbinical type, but certainly someone I wouldn't shake a stick at. (And couldn't, since he'd already PayPaled the 300 bones.) We met at the Shanghai Tunnel, at 8 pm, where we bought him drinks, laughed at all of his jokes, discussed music (he is currently a mortgage officer but used to run a radio show), and basically got him completely ass drunk, on White Russians, by 9 pm. Then we headed to Lola's Room where DJ Yes No was playing all the hits from 1988 and a large crowd of post-goths or matured Cure fans were dancing in a studied yet uptightedly casual, weekend style. Brett was, in fact, annhiliated, but still able to dance; I found this impressive. Beyond this, I cannot elaborate; I didn't get much face time. I did freak him on the dancefloor a couple of times. I left before night's end, so this one goes out to K. Mikey M. who is dying to know: I cannot confirm or deny whether anyone "consummated the auction." He lives in Beaverton, so for all I know he's still at Lola's, waiting for a cab.

The Dog Show:
My friend Rob Kelley, slave to the Oregonian and soon-to-be-linked-here-blogger, and I met at a predesignated time to attend the American Kennel Club dog show championships at the Portland Oregon Expo Center, to be filmed by Animal Planet and attended by at least 1-2000 best-in-show hopefuls. We did this in an attempt to break out of our daily routine of work, show, dancing, sleep, work, show, dancing sleep, and also because dogs are great. But wait! In reality, DOG SHOWS ARE STULTIFYINGLY BORING, and dogs are only great when they're genetically impure, like the hybrid chihuahua/pug I saw once that looked like a Vienna sausage walking on four toothpicks. The highlights were: 1. DOGSTACLE COURSE, where a dog, led by its owner, must leap hurdles, navigate through a long pink tube, shimmy through a circular conical obstacle a la car-brake testing commercials, and race across a teeter-totter without having a puppy breakdown, and is evaluated for its athletic ability. 2. The TAILS OF WHOA doggie crew, a quadruple pun: three middle aged women walking shelties around the ring, gang name emblazoned on their sweatshirts in iron-on cursive like they were Savage Skulls or something (but really more like the face-painted baseball rollerskating gang in The Warriors). 3. Pomeranians: why are they groomed like fans? and 4. The man who was simultaneously grooming his fluffy white Maltese with a blowdryer and smoking a cigarette. Rob said, "It feels like we are at Costco."

THE WIKKID:

Four women from NYC playing like an orchestra/snake pit warming up for the no wave inquisition, and you are GUILTY and they are smacking your shit down, on three guitars and drums. Scale runs all mashed together and onomatopaeic vocals that sound like siren spells over cauldrons--yes, they are the closest I will ever get to seeing my idols, still-amazing DC highschool band Meltdown, and that's okay.

THE YING YANG TWINS:
Here is one reason why crunk is popular: while dancing during the Ying Yang Twins' approximately third rendition of their hit "Salt Shaker," I looked down and I was RUBBING MY OWN ASS. Absent-minded quasi-auto-erotic dancing wrought by bass. They played a rotation of "Naggin," "Salt Shaker," and "Get Low" like 9 times over, in between constant shout-outs to Bojangles and general cut-throat grunting/ hog-calling; screw Britney, they should be doing collabs w/Dillinger Escape Plan.
I have serious problem with their lyrics, in the tradition of lots of Miami bass I like/love/hate too, namely the line "I hate it when a woman acts like a man" 1/387th reconciled by the lady answer track on the record but come on, dudes. Trad John Gray-style gender roles are so boring. (It should be noted, however, that this show was far less of a sausage party than any underground hiphop or emo shows I've been to lately, barring performances by NW queerpunk elite i.e. King Cobra.)
But the club was bumpin, bumpin: there were about 95 people on stage in a 350 capacity venue, and miraculously, ONLY TWO OF THEM WERE RAPPING. The rest were freaky on the platform, like a jeep or a houseparty, breaking the fourth wall in more ways than you'll want to imagine in the context of this MTPPS weblog. Then DJ Juggernaut spun Twista/Kanye West/Jamie Foxx, at which point I left cause was feeling like it couldn't get much better. (Love the bongo counter-rhythm, the sample, the total dorky humor of the lyrics. To connect the dots between something smarty smarty K. Sanneh wrote in the Times today about the popular bad-singer trend, and the Barry Walters Voice review of Kelis (no golden throated vocalist herself): singing badly, outside of traditionally accepted paradigm, and not giving a fu, is really punk rock.

The Ying Yang Twins are good dancers.

January 18, 2004 (0) Comments

I doubt there has ever been a more intimate, astonishing documentary about a coup d'etat than The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The Irish film crew who made it was there during the April 12, 2002 takeover of the Venezuelan Presidency by an opposition largely led by private oil company interests, corporate media. They were also there when the citizens took it back. Really compelling, with some vague damning against Colin Powell and the US gov't. (quelle surprise, i know).

Do you have the sheet music to the piano part in "Oh Yoko"? Do you want a copy of the Muy Romantico muy romantico long playing album? LET'S TRADE.

January 17, 2004 (0) Comments

Later I will write about my weekend thus far:
* the Dog Show, and the Tails of Whoa sheltie crew
* the date my 7 lady co-workers and I went on, with a dead ringer for Nick Carter from backstreet boyx
* Wikkid, a Meltdown-like ensemble of post-punk witchery
* Ying Yang Twins, a cheer squad for crunky pole dancers

but first, Today's Dichotemy Hour: The All Girl Summer Fun Band, aka the band most likely to make me put more clothes on, is totallly opening the Blazers vs. Mavs game tonight. THE ALL GIRL MTHRFKIG SUMER FUN BND, people!

January 16, 2004 (0) Comments

Despite his fairly indiscriminate love for all things emo, the most beloved of all my ex-husbands left me high and dry for the Coheed & Cambria show last night, grousing, "they're like retarded emo kids who just started smoking pot and listening to Rush," and that it's pretty easy to get famous when your crowd's never heard the music you're ripping off, and that the "incoherent big words mashed together" style of emo prog songwriting is unstomachable. This is a little unfair as I spent a lot of time in the trenches at, like, Rilo Kiley shows when we were dating (I actually like Rilo Kiley but you see my point). But whatever. The show was sold out to behoodied all-agers mugging kohl and knit caps---emo fashion is hardcore fashion and, as my pal Joe and I discussed on the phone yesterday, there is a whole faction of people whose fashion/lifestyle have not evolved one iota since medeival hardcore times ca. mid-'80s, playing out the Beckettian melodrama of vegan punk house serfdom in black stretchy pants and pleather dog collars--the uniform of those with an intimate knowledge of The Matrix--I am pretty sure most Coheed & Cambria fans aren't those people, but that is the style they are rocking. I spent the duration in the over-21 basement, listening through the speakers like I had 2112 on the Victrola, and making new friends with MC Dron, who was there not to watch the bands--he only listens to dub reggae and '90s hiphop, as I found---but to "step into the cypher" with the drummer from Vaux, and talk shop AKA skating at burnside. What does this mean to you? It means some kids never heard a Rush album, and that my ex's theory on the At The Drive-In emo prog band fashion template (unwily Afros) is proving uncanny.

*and the term "step into the cypher" as a euphemism for "blazers vs. nuggets" is fairly amazing

January 15, 2004 (0) Comments

This came in the mailbox, today. I was rooting for Carol, even willing to campaign for her, though wavering.
Go... Kucinich? (Is he the first vegan presidential candidate, at least?)

CAROL MOSELEY BRAUN WITHDRAWS FROM PRESIDENTIAL RACE AND ENDORSES HOWARD DEAN

Statement of Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun

I want to thank everybody for your kindness to me, and for allowing me to participate as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. This campaign has been a wonderful learning experience for me, one that restored my faith in the political process and renewed my belief in the goodness of the American people.

I am here today to thank those Iowans who were prepared to stand for me in Mondays’ caucuses, and to ask that you stand instead for Howard Dean.

Your support is precious to me, and so I make this recommendation with the most sincerity and thought I have ever brought to any decision.

Gov. Dean has the energy to inspire the American people, to break the cocoon of fear that envelopes us and empowers president Bush and his entourage from the extreme right wing, and he has a program to put our country back on track to tax fairness, job creation, balanced budgets and an economy that works for everyone regardless of sex or race. He has the experience to know that state and local and national government have to cooperate and collaborate, and end the destructive game of monetary musical chairs that creates unfunded mandates and failing schools. He understands that a real war on terrorism starts with putting the domestic security of the American people first. He can “work well with others” around the world and craft a foreign policy that is neither arrogant nor preemptive, but that begins with respect and builds on alliances. He takes seriously our stewardship of the planet and our environmental responsibilities.

Howard Dean is a Democrat we can all be proud to support.

I am so very grateful to you who have made my candidacy possible, and who believed, as I did, that my campaign offered Americans a unique opportunity for progress. When barriers of gender and race fall in America, our nation is richer for it, and all Americans will benefit from the opening up of a reservoir of talent and capacity and contributions and ideas that have been locked up for too long.

But the funding and organizational disadvantages of a nontraditional campaign could not be overcome, and so this campaign was unable to compete effectively or support your hard work as it should. Continuing would not have been fair to hundreds of delegates, (especially Congressmen Bobby Rush and Danny Davis), and thousands of volunteers and millions of supporters who wanted to give the American people a message of hope and progress. We were and are determined to give the next generation of Americans no less than what we inherited for the last one, and we are committed to opening up our democracy.

We will get there one day. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Progress for our republic will come when we live up to the ideal of equality and inclusion that is at the heart of the American dream. The political process is an avenue for building a more perfect union, if for no other reason that it is, in the end, a purely mathematical process: with one vote more than the next guy, you win (most of the time!)

When women run, when people of color run, we open up the possibility that women and people of color can win. I have a record of building bridges, bringing people together, and breaking barriers, and I am proud of my role in breaking new ground with this campaign. I was able to walk in the footsteps of my hero, Shirley Chisholm, and we qualified for ballot position in more states than any woman has ever done in the history of this country.

So to those of you who believed in this effort, I say, take heart, you can claim the nobility of moving our country forward, and of opening up possibilities for all our daughters. I thank you for your vision and your patriotism.

But today, especially, I ask that you share my view that Gov. Dean is the candidate best equipped to continue the progress we need to have, to bring Americans together to renew our country and restore our privacy, our liberty and our economic security. His leadership will help us live up to our generational responsibility.

I am happy to support him, and hope you will stand for him with the conviction and courage with which you would have stood for me.

I appreciate your continued support and look forward to dancing with you at the Inaugural Ball for Howard Dean this time next year.

January 14, 2004 (0) Comments

Comments as debate rules. Here are some articles supporting the Invasion of Privacy theory RE: CAPPS II, the passenger risk-assessment givin' it all up at the airport thing. I think the main issue is that, unlike a driver's license, the NSA is keeping tabs on WHERE you are flying (collected from airlines upon ticket purchase) and then RATING your terrorist threat factor: Red, Yellow, or Green (Is he or isn't he?)

Here, two MIT students (god love the MIT students) apply an algorithm to calculate CAPPS I and disprove its safety, not to mention legality under the 4th Amendment. Did I mention I love the MIT students? I love the MIT students. Here's an interpretation of the MIT paper by a non-MIT student.

There are lots more links here, where I got the first two.

January 14, 2004 (0) Comments

Last month's People magazine has, of course, the Reagans on its cover, discussing the HBO protective gov't brouhaha and delicately mourning the Alzheimer's that has crippled Ron and martyred Nancy for changing her life to care for him. ANYWAY, while this is sad and all, I've been reflecting on the "LEGACY" the Reagan presidency left us, which if you want to talk about crippling, let me count the ways.

This goes without saying. But for what it's worth, here's one side of the story: what's happened to the kids who grew up in the '80s who WERENT affected by Reagan's education/mental health/welfare policies, at least directly. Their psychic fallout. Meet my friend "Todd," who plays in an "extreme" post-punk band, wastes his sharp brain cells on cheap beer, and writes jibberish nihilistic philosophy while working at his office job (which he hates, of course). AKA post-Vice Magazine nihilism, which is laid out like so: "our problems are naught because nothing matters because DOOM IS NIGH, so NOW I WILL MAKE FUN OF YOU." This is what happens when you spend your entire life believing the world (or your world) will soon be nuked---aggrandizing fears/problems that are nebulous, if somewhat legitimate. (FUCK THE '80S.) Some kids I know, upper-middle-class ones, on the ass-end of Douglas "I'm sorry for referencing him" Coupland's generational agoraphobia/nuclear anxiety (aka 26/27 year olds) are slouching towards gomorrah or like, building it up, reluctantly being shoved into adulthood, cringing, and trying to drink themselves back into the womb. (FYI, so I feel a little less like the high school confessional livejournal bloggers in the NYTimes magazine this week, I did confer with "Todd" and asked him if this was all okay. That said, I am always happy to be associated with high schoolers.) This is the outcry of a desperate man, who has no real hope because he's never had to fight for anything because (as you will soon discover), he has a pot of gold waiting for him at the end of his alcoholic rainbow: TRUST FUND. The magic words. The logic is thus: smash all the guitars, destroy all the drums, blow out the speakers (because the catharsis of playing abrasive, extreme noise punk is the only Art thing that has the power to really move you---Jessica Hopper would probably call this "extrEMO"), drink the Club 21 down to its last Pabst keg and go to the Sandy Hut down the street and tap theirs, too, and take some photos with your videophone and make some prank calls and GET IT TOGETHER WHEN YOU TURN 35 and CAN COLLECT ON THAT SHIT.

Here is "Todd" capturing the slippery zeitgeist of his life. And it is bleak.

From: "Todd"
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 16:39:33 -0500
To: 'Julianne Shepherd'
Subject: Re: READ THIS NOW

js.
Portland is a concentration camp for drunk losers. Just trying to make it out partially alive.
L8r,
"Todd"

From: Julianne Shepherd [mailto:julianne@portlandmercury.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 1:51 PM
To: "Todd"
Subject: Re: READ THIS NOW

Dude. What are you doing?!?!! It's time to outline/power-point some possible solutions, real, tangible ones. Stop living the lie. Self-empowerment!
seriously,
js.

From: "Todd"
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 17:24:37 -0500
To: 'Julianne Shepherd'
Subject: RE: READ THIS NOW

Naw, check this out: Attempting to address a serious and possibly unsolvable problem will only serve to give it strength. Illuminating it will also cast light on other, more delicate issues, and will thus draw attention away from the "real" problem, which is both imagined and real at the same time. (!!!) The only reasonable method of dealing with anything like this (and feasible when you are aware of how dishonest with yourself you are. (like me)) is to carefully avoid self-confrontation and the possibility of self-realization at all costs. Instead, look deep into the carefully chosen world of hyper non-reality; the pointless trifles and meaningless pursuits that can fill up an entire day. (day, week, year, lifetime, etc..)I'm referring to the accepted activities of us and our peers. People that possess somewhat active brains, but whose minds are totally listless, whose spirits have been mysteriously crushed, and whose souls were cancelled a long time ago. This means alcohol, cocaine, shows, obsessing over the inner workings of a protracted and pointless social circle (a "scene" if you will), and even the enlightening yet ultimately useless art, literature, and music. Be sure to try and maintain this miserable trajectory as long you can, oblivious to the strength your own pain. It will all come crashing down on you eventually, but if you're
like me and have a really rich family, the horror of your ultimate fate will be softened slightly by the prospect of inheritance.
Naw I'm just joking again. Really my life is great. I just bought the
Bush Tetras vinyl re-issue at Jackpot and I can't wait for the Get Hustle show this weekend. We should party sometime.
l8r,
"Todd"

------

AS AN ASIDE, the intro on the new SECRET MOMMY is called "AOL KEYWORD: PARTY," and sounds like farting.

January 13, 2004 (0) Comments

This is funny.

January 12, 2004 (0) Comments

Today's "WHAT THE FUCKIN SHIT" award winners: the government is compiling a database of all travelers; extra-compliant subjects will be presented with the ultimate American reward: convenience. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is happy to press forth in blissful ignorance about the treatment of foreign detainees since 9/11.

January 11, 2004 (0) Comments

My mom, apart from being my mom, is also kind of my ongoing sociology experiment--a window into the mind of a 68-year-old, high-school-educated politically conservative woman, who doesn't use the internet. Her primary news sources are Fox News Network, and the Wyoming Eagle-Tribune. It is through her that I am able to understand a certain Middle American mentality which I'm mostly shielded from in the quasi-leftist quasi-utopia that is the Portland metro area.

Today we discussed music for the first time in probably ten years, when she overheard Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" and was offended by its sacreligious nature. She has recently started purchasing CDs:

Toby Keith
Clay Aiken
Michael Buble
2 albums by Rod Stewart
Huey Lewis
George Strait
Alan Jackson

Her favorite Toby Keith song is "I Love This Bar," because of the lyrics, which she thinks are funny, and include the lines: "I like my truck/I like my girlfriend... but I love this bar" and "If you get too drunk just sleep out in your car." Which pretty much sums up the majority-rule Wyoming experience. Especially the thing about the truck.

When pressed further about her love of Keith's everyman-for-his-own, rigid/rowdy neo-con chutzpah (I believe politically that would be termed "rugged individualism"), our test subject effused,

“He went over and entertained the troops. I thought that was pretty nice of him. Of course, everyone’s doing that now. Tom Cruise is going over there. But what’s he gonna do--swordfight?”

[Wartime blase: Toby Keith was being cutting edge by entertaining the troops, but now that Tom Cruise--who is clearly unentertaining unless confined to the screen and bound by a character--is doing it, entertaining the troops has suddenly become passe.]

And then, the inevitable:

“What kind of music do you like? Is it rap?”

Me: “I like a lot of rap music, yeah.”

Mom: “Rap’s not music. It’s rhythm and poetry. What’s hiphop? Is that rap?”

My mom is so Captain Beefheart, it's sick.

In the old switcheroo, I scored on the vinyl this weekend--three public demand promos on the cheap--decent Agent X, a fab Bitin Back 12, PD Syndicate w/Elephant Man which is just okay, and this amazing track "Big Bad and Heavy" by Heartbeat Family featuring Jigsy King, which is apparently an old jungle classic reupdated w/2step beat in 2001--- really sparse with a subtle subbassy thing that is, I swear, Marva Whitney's "Unwind Yourself," sped up and compressed, and Jigsy King's killer crushed glass-on-flint vocals. Meanwhile, someone somewhere mentioned that grime is very much a regional assertion/answer/backlash to US hiphop--here's my girl Shystie backing up that theory, explicitly.

January 6, 2004 (0) Comments

There are three inches of snow on the ground in Portland, and the teevee news is acting as though it is a national disaster. An anchor, on location at a truck stop in Troutdale, where thousands of truck drivers are banding together as one against this hellacious tragedy, has just informed us in a breathless, windblown tone, "My photographer's EYES are literally FREEZING SHUT!"

Having done time in the flat dead cold of Laramie, Wyoming, wind chill factor at 60 below, nine feet of snow, eight people in a house, sole nourishment a single frozen burrito, sole entertainment a VHS cassette of Simpsons reruns, I wasn't feeling too serious about a city that shuts down schools at 30° F. But we had a day off from work, too, and it was magical. This is probably nothing special to NYers or really, anyone who lives in a moderately populated city, but on this day, my block CAME ALIVE. Kids were sledding down their front steps (icy snow makes it easy). I discovered new, friendly neighbors. Some of them were attractive. All cars were dead in ice coffins, entombed like wooly mammoths.

I thought of this interview with the professor/writer Tricia Rose. In the article, Rose talks about relocating from the Bronx to Santa Cruz, leaving NYU to teach at UCSC; she points out the West Coast car culture allows for a comfortable segregation she calls "unfettered whiteness." On this day, in my neighborhood, parked cars meant a stronger community; I'm no "This Bike is a Pipe Bomb" or "One Less Car" bike punk, but no drivers and no work and I could feel the difference.

Back to the interview--it's a good one--Rose, who wrote books--Black Noise: Rap Music and Culture in Contemporary America and Longing to Tell: Black Women's Stories of Sexuality and Intimacy--has some solid ideas about feminism, hiphop, $$$, and offers her suggestions for a mixtape (includes Angie Stone's Mahogany Soul, my number one workout album from 2001, if we're still up for getting listy and shit.) As a little background, I found it whilst googling feminism and rap music and coming up with not much, and most interestingly, not much lately--based on my loose and unscientific findings, online musings on rap music and the feminist issue seems to have stagnated around 2000-2001. You can bet I'm delving deeper, and will report back with findings.

I have submitted the above interview to the Da Capo Radness of Raditude 2003. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go read JEFF "I AM BADASS" CHANG's meditation of sorts on the DC Best Music Writing series. And write the editors requesting they include the piece in their forthcoming installment.

As for the photo--it's the view from my porch. Jay Winebrenner's $300 baby blue Mercedes is in the background. Posting a bad photo of the bad weather is a very "My Dad" thing to do, but it is really spectacular for Portland. And it is really as solid-ice pristine as it looks. Tomas (who is stranded here until planes can go back to SF) and I, lacking a shovel, used a hammer to chop it apart.

Every now and again, you can hear the cavernous thud of ice avalanching from powerlines.

January 4, 2004 (0) Comments

And oh yeah:

Here are my Pazz & Jop votes. They are both personal and political. I do not give a fuck, and I think the point system is capitalistic though I gave Ellen 11 points and Nice Nice 9 points based on--nothing really, other than Oscar Wilde throwing me auctioneer shade. My canon is a lowrider bike gang armed with sawed off potato guns, a walkman that only plays cassingles, a subwoofer and travel mugs of Emergen-C. And strawberry lipgloss and a 24-pack of cotton tampons cause the rayon ones give you cancer. And a lasso. Those who would like to join are formally invited.

albums
1. Ellen Allien - Berlinette - BPitch Control
2. OutKast - Speakerboxx/The Love Below - Arista
3. Lifesavas - Spirit in Stone - Quannum
4. Dizzee Rascal - Boy in Da Corner - XL
5. Mya - Moodring - Interscope
6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Fever to Tell - Interscope
7. Deerhoof - Apple'O - Kill Rock Stars
8. Cursive - The Ugly Organ - Saddle Creek
9. Basement Jaxx - Kish Kash - Astralwerks
10. Nice Nice - Chrome - Temporary Residence

singles
1. Jean Grae - "My Crew" - Babygrande
2. Sutekh - "Mouth Party" - Soul Jazz
3. Solenoid - "Lotus Flower" - ORAC Records
4. Christina Aguilera f. Tanya Stephens - "Can't Hold Us Down (Da Yard Riddim Mix)" - BMG/RCA UK
5. Aesop Rock - "No Jumper Cables" - Def Jux
6. Shystie - "Step Bac" - Network Music
7. Ted Leo/Pharmacists - "Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?" - Lookout
8. The Gossip - "Yesterday's News" - Kill Rock Stars
9. Basement Jaxx f. Lisa Kekaula - "Good Luck" - Astralwerks
10. Scream Club - "And You Belong" - no label

January 4, 2004 (0) Comments

Some best concerts of 2003:
* BPitch Control Party at Love Parade: Ellen Allien /MIA/ Sascha Funke / DJ Feadz at WMF in Berlin

One reason being: minimal techno sounds like being born after five hours of trance--like being born from the deepest womb of hell. Paul Van Dyk had a float on the Alexanderplatz filled with half-naked ravers wearing furry neon chaps and blowing whistles. Ellen Allien had a lone DJ groupie who would take a drink everytime she took a drink, and give her high-fives whenever she picked a hot track, which was about every song. Understated fans: the way to go. MIA played an air-raid siren, an amplified French horn, and were backed up by the Berlin Brass Marching Band on one song. Sascha Funke and Feadz DJ sets blew our hearts clean open like a failed angioplasty. We were the most enthusiastic dancers all night, very obviously American, until 6 or 7 or 8 am, and the party was barely slowing down, and collapsed in Hanna's flat in East Berlin like two ragged dogs, hair manged up from cigarette smoke and sweat. I can only imagine what would have happened to us if we'd made it to Ibiza.

* Deerhoof w/The Planet The at Blackbird in Portland

This was the last show at the Blackbird. Deerhoof is purity. We let off sparklers.

DJ/Rupture w/Nice Nice at Holocene in Portland

Even after their van was hit-and-run-rearended on the road and Jace lost many rare dubplates I feel sick just thinking of it, he made people I've never seen before (rare in PDX show circuit) shimmy as though possessed. Nice Nice are consistently great, although they'll probably tell you differently.--I think of them akin to improvisational producers or live remix artists, and I wish I could internet-stream every one of their shows in case their record maybe doesn't go bang until you realize they're doing it all with drums a guitar and 288477 pedals, three percussive instruments. They are like that MIT radio device, that filters common denominators from the radio and makes one keening yawl, except Nice Nice are filtering the music from the radio and making it their own.

The Hold Steady at Knitting Factory in NYC

* I used to hate Lifter Puller then saw Craig Finn live now I love them. "Everyone's a critic but most people are DJs," etc. I used to hate rock music until the Hold Steady. This is both the truth and a lie. They make me want to work construction and write poetry on my lunch break.

* Aesop Rock CD Release at Slim's in San Francisco

Ta-Nehisi Coates nailed it in his Village Voice review of the NYC show--El-P was fully ball-hogging the Bazooka Tooth tour. Aesop Rock, though. Lots of my friends hate his record and here's why I love it: the quadruple entendres of his lyrics, the crackled nasal knifey cadences. Density. He's fragile and frazzled, the selvage end of fine cloth. I can take or leave the beats. I just like how he twists words inside themselves and back out again. And his voice-- I think if he hadn't quit smoking (detailed in a funny if slightly bizarre "just say no"-esque skit between himself and Mr. Lif on his most recent tour), his next album for me would be solely about the tone of his voice, the way I can listen to Magoo for hours and not like it per se, but rubberneck-- like a train wreck or curio--slightly horrified, yet unable to turn away.

* Lifesavas at Berbati's in Portland

JUMBO TOUCHED MY HAND!!

Really, though, as much as America has poured love on the Lifesavas (especially Ta-Nehisi Coates, again), I have to assert how very Portland they are--how, at this show, they had an entire crowd fist-pumping to their activist song "Resist" and reciting the chorus:

"Resist/ are you an actor or an activist... realize you're the catalyst... refuse."

And the ever-classic "Fuck 95.5" (portland's mainstream rap station which plays fabolous and chingy in alternate rotation) chant which DJ Wicked popularized at PDX hiphop shows so many years ago (I remember one LIving Legends/Busdriver show where he actually called 95.5 and had the entire crowd scream "Fuck 95.5," into the receiver).

In Portland there are still the underground vs. mainstream Pick Your Allegiances arguments and unfortunately not a lot of dialogue about whys or wherefores, so you get mainstream nights and underground nights and entirely different crowds for both, divided very much along racial lines. Like a lot of smaller American cities, I suppose. But Lifesavas have bridged the racial gap, something I haven't really seen since I've lived here.

Anyway, Lifesavas. Portland. They are leftist and spiritual, boys next door and powerful talents. Free Cascadia.

* Sleetmute/Nightmute at Dunes in Portland

They were a noise band, and this night they were on the verge of murdering each other. Sonic Youth's first tape is eating its heart out. RIP Sleetmute/Nightmute. (P.S. Ladies, don't ever join a band with your boyfriend. It is a bad idea.)

* Silentist, anywhere

He's a one-man, avant-garde/death-metal pianist/drummer/guitarist. He's moving to DC soon but touring on the way and I will post the dates here because everyone should see his genius.

Best Visual Arts Experiences of 2003:

* Jan Fabre's Je Suis Sang in Barcelona

It was all in Spanish (not Catalan), which I don't speak (long story re: ethnocentricism, wyoming, familial apathy). But dialogue might have been distracting from the overt and dramatic imagery: blood, Christ, sex, masturbation, insanity, gluttony, marriage, resurrection, religion, etc, all culminating in one scene where the entire cast was ass naked, tarred and feathered, simulating sex in a flood of fake blood and red wine. This was also the most profound/absurd moment of 2003.

* Donna Uchizono Company's "Butterflies from My Hand" at the Time Based Arts festival in Portland

Where modern choreography has gotten jerky and repetitive, imitating the monotonous motion of our lives, the twitch of our viewing eyes and the tap of our typing fingers, Donna Uchizono streamlined unnatural contemporary movement into an organic, fluid scheme, where everyone slithered like caterpillars and relied on each other's movement to cue their next step. Right: like life. She handed them scissors and they cut apart the floor, pulled up crimson silk from underneath, the blood of the earth, the spark of ideas. She dressed her dancers like blooming flowers. It was a serious piece, as it had to be, but it was humorous as well, certain subtle motions hitting that mysterious place where we understand something as funny, but it's not spelled in letters. A beautiful two hours, definitely the most next-level, visceral performance I saw this year.

* Joan Miro Museum in Barcelona
I used to dislike Joan Miro, and then I saw his entire collection and read about his life. Now I don't love Joan Miro, but I like him, and understand him. This is the truth. A lesson: Art reproduced in books will never compare to the impact of the actual works.

* Roman art/architecture museum in Berlin
1. Paintings from driftwood on the tops of Sarcophagi: how ancient Egyptians looked, wide-eyed, when they died. 2. People were shorter in 59 BC. 3. Looking at a stone sculpture and knowing it's old as philosophy is really humbling.

* Philip Guston retrospective at SF MOMA
I am glad comics are regaining mass respect, like they used to. Philip Guston used pop art/comics in a way I don't find co-optive/shallow (i.e. Warhol, certain Johns works et al)--he used his paintings to protest the Vietnam war, while still working within the age-old "Artist Self" idiom. The self as recurring subject is not boring, when the self is painted as a giant one-dimensional eyeball, sometimes w/boot.

Most Dissapointing Visual Arts Experiences of 2003:

* Going to SF MOMA to see Diane Arbus retrospective, only to find a Marc Chagall exhibit in its stead (because the NY Times Magazine ran its Arbus article one month early). Marc Chagall paintings being THE PAINTINGS OF MY NIGHTMARES.

* Going to NY MOMA, only to find they had changed their hours/days open, and going to the NY Museum of Natural History instead, only to find the OCean Life exhibit (aka the only thing I truly wanted to see) was closed for a business convention

2003 et cetera:
Most disappointing moment, in a sort of half-assed manner of disappointment: When The Shins' Dave Hernandez told me I am his "mortal enemy," yet was too drunk to explain why

Smallest small world moment: Riding the Eurail from Berlin to Paris w/Jessica, and landing in the same compartment with Patrick Daughters, from NY, who not only knows everyone we know, but recognized my face from editing hours of footage of me in the front row dancing at Yeah Yeah Yeahs shows. We friendstered him, and his fakester Rango-Tang, immediately afterwards.

Amount of time it took to become bored of Friendster: 4 months
Most exciting non-Iraq war specific activist/lobbyist groups: Pink Bloque, Future of Music Coalition

Best scene in Wild Style: Basketball Throwdown
Best Fantastic Fiver: Whipper Whip
Best Blazer: Z-Bo Randolph
Most Nefarious LeBron James Endorsement:
Nikes inspired by Hummers
Least Effective Rookie Recommendation for my Pathetically Losing Fantasy NBA team: Jarvis Hayes (Thanks a bunch, Travis!)
Cutest Beatle: Yoko

January 2, 2004 (0) Comments

REALLY coming around on Tasty; at first I thought the single suffered for the album, but now I've realized it's the other way around: "Milkshake" is not that strong a track, a good little mantra with a beat made better on garage mixes (check for DJ Zinc's), but essentially meatless. Raphael Saadiq slays on Glow, Damon Blackmon "Grease" slays on "Stick Up" (takes an idea from R. Kelly/Choco Factory and makes it far less precious) and everybody slays on the satisfying dreamy funk of "Millionare" (see this entry's title). And on the choruses of "Rolling" and "Protect My Heart," Kelis is totally Donald Fagen-ing out. Pharrell and Chad, YOU LOVE STEELY DAN!

January 2, 2004 (0) Comments

Kollaboration is a Pasadena-based Talent Show geared specifically towards promoting new Korean American talent. Dave Elsewhere is the crazy-legged winner from two years ago. His style is a strange parfait of formal bboy robot breaks, nods to Charlie Chaplin/Buster Keaton, and Bob Fosse-esque pirouettes.