June 30, 2005 (3) Comments

Connie Wohn, 100% platinum, finally launched her DJ booking co. Stylus 503; she books Shayla, DJ Rev Shines (LIfesavas/Misfit Massive), DJ Anjali and the Incredible Kid (bhangra superstars) and Chris Funk (yes from decemberists--bet you didnt know he could rip it on decks, didja?) AND MORE. You should go to her website because it looks terrific and also, Connie is the number one of your number one. You maybe haven't met her yet but you will.

June 30, 2005 (0) Comments

Soon, Marisa and I shall post our LIVE CHAT about the foibles, the triumphs, the turpitude of last night's totally amazing elleGIRL issue release party. It will look something like this:

Man in white linen pants, gold belt and Top Gun shades offers us Alize from a server while Phantom Planet plays their new songs, which sound drizzled but decadent like new-money Pavement:
Marisa: "He's a Coppolla, you know."
Me: "The guy with the tray?"

etc.

For now, because i will never own a lowrider, thee P. Macia, part-time hotwheels designer, has grafted Jessica's and my back-of-the-cab-photo heads onto a fancy car w/rims. If you want him to to airbrush our faces on your actual vehicle for $182,000 OBO, he is taking orders NOW at rodrigospension.blogspot.com

June 28, 2005 (0) Comments

Jessica and I saw the neckface van on a rare trip to "north brooklyn" last sat, and immediately wrote over the double-headed bat part (our collective graf tag is SPIDER). Hey wmsbg, let's see how you fare against Park Slope massif, whose primary defining characteristic is its disproportionate amt of babies & our tight calves from compulsive jogging. Can yr art school drop-out degrees f w/our childbirthed vaginas? Do you know what it is like to have a child? I DON'T EITHER

I am not really trying to fight, i am trying to show you this cool thing we saw. This is basically why I enjoy sports I think.

June 28, 2005 (0) Comments

From our favorite Elizabeth Mendez Berry:

Dear friends,

Many of you know how profoundly destructive U.S. military aid has been to Colombia. There is an extremely important vote regarding the future of U.S. policy in Colombia and it’s going down today, and you can make a difference (it sounds corny but it’s true—by passing this amendment, we could have a huge, positive impact on the situation there—less military aid from the US would literally save lives). PLEASE Call your representative and urge them to cut military aid to Colombia. They need to know that you care.

Here’s how:

1: Find out who your representative is by going here. (If you happen to be zip code 11215-4259/11th district, it's major r. owens, D, at 718-773-3100.)

2: Follow these instructions, from the Latin American Working Group: If you have yet to call Congress, NOW is the time.. The foreign operations appropriations bill will be on the House floor starting Tuesday morning, and the Colombia amendment is not expected to be voted upon until the afternoon or evening. This means that there are still at least 24 hours left to get those calls in!

Amendment update: Representatives Betty McCollum (D-Minnesota) and Dennis Moore (D-Kansas) decided to cosponsor Rep. Jim McGovern’s amendment. It is now the “McGovern-McCollum-Moore amendment.” Also, the final language for the amendment is available, and we know that it will cut $100 million in military aid to Colombia if it wins. A cut like this will make a difference in Colombia, and helps us send the message that “time is up for Plan Colombia!”

So if you haven’t done so already, please call Congress to urge your representative to vote YES on the McGovern-McCollum-Moore amendment! For a sample script, click here

To learn more about why cutting military aid to Colombia is so important, visit here
Best,
Jennifer and Lisa
jtrowbridge@lawg.org
www.lawg.org

P.S. Very important: please tell us if you know how your member of Congress plans to vote – it helps us strategize!
P.P.S. The alerts will be much less frequent after this week – thanks for bearing with us.

June 27, 2005 (3) Comments

Here is another reason listening sessions are the katie holmes' foot of album appreciation: because if the record you're reviewing isn't actually finished when you hear it, three months in advance to comply with standard-issue mag deadlines, you do not actually write in your review that it includes a track with MIA, because IT HASN'T HAPPENED YET. You are not a time traveler, and the apology fax does not make up for it, even if the artist does have nice handwriting. The bdnkulus cutie-pie running the sound board does not make up for it. It's just like, "oh mike jones is supposed to be on this one. pretend you hear mike jones, okay? here is a sandwich." and on and on and on and on.

June 24, 2005 (9) Comments

what is your address? myself, my friends and last night's entire population of ESPN Zone want to send you something in the mail. it is a plaque called "THE BIASED REFERREE WINNER'S CIRCLE AWARD." The only reason the pistons shut down mentally is because they knew they weren't simply playing against the spurs--they were playing against an entire cast of Texas-biased refs, letting your fouls go and basically holding your hands to the finish line.
As always, the best retribution is knowing that you have to live with yourself.
thank you,
julianne.

p.s. ESPN Zone, you think it is corny because it is in times square, they are selling $9.50 sodas and half the over-50 Polo-and-tan-having white dudes in the audience have forgone their company golf tournament to fly in special from Poughkeepsie just for this one moment, but once you (I) actually get over yr (my) self and go there, it is EVERYTHING YOU HAVE EVER WANTED: hundreds of screaming people ready to fan-beef, gigantor televisions the size of Rasheed's personal theatre (i saw it on Cribs), TELEVISIONS IN THE BATHROOM SO YOU DO NOT HAVE TO MISS ANYTHING WHILST PEEING. Next season i'm posted up in the corner with my miscreant Brooklyn posse, yelling airball.

June 23, 2005 (0) Comments

Thanks to the internet, Peter Macia, he of left coast muscle, right brain flexing and both hands on all wheels, now blogging. OMG, his first long post is about bell hooks, gw bush, mike tyson, & fear. OMG! I'll take it!

June 23, 2005 (0) Comments

Congratulations to Dan and Lupine for being the 14,028 and 14,029 persons I know this year to get engaged, married and / or babied. It is sweet and fresh and I am humbled by, and hopeful for, the suddenly disproportionate amount of humans I know having genuinely healthy relationships.
love,
JS.

June 23, 2005 (1) Comments

Lyric courtesy Remy Martin, soundtrack courtesy Summer Madness (yes, it really is that good--for one, 50 gets mashed sensitive over the PM Dawn song from the Boomerang soundtrack--and that's just the beginning?). Summer Madness courtesy my HBO bootleg BFF and your favorite blogger, Chris. PayPal him some love okthx.

Last night I dreamed I told this lady I know something really personal, the most personal thing, the glowing pebble/time-bomb in my heart that only the people who've lived inside my right ventricle know about me, essentially. I dreamed I let her in on the secret, and a few days later, she casually mentioned it later to a group of like, 9 people, like no biggie, whatever. Like it was gossip. My response, of course, was to leap over the table and pound her face. It was unsettling--meeting trust-betrayal w/violence? way to go, subconscious--and also since I haven't been in a fistfight since 1993, the feeling of physically harming someone, essentially as a marquee ad for my own pain 'n' sadness, was both alarming and alarmingly familiar. I wish I didn't know what it felt like.

So yeah, if anyone has flagrantly told you anything personal about me recently--forwarded emails, gossiped about my secret affection for flax seeds and grapeseed oil, dropped the bomb on my OCD, you know, that kind of thing--please report to the principal's office. I'll be squashed and juiced like a bloodorange out in the school parking lot.

But it made me curious; I want to know peoples' youth fist-fight stories: how old were you, why did you do it and what was the emotion behind it? Was it self defense? What were you hiding/reacting to? Blog it and send me the link or write me a story. I love you.

In pavlovian news, I have finally heard that stupid Bobby Valentino song enough that when it comes on, I get excited.

June 21, 2005 (3) Comments

the hit it or quit it editorial massif continues to hold it down in central HQ, making diagrams, grinding up smarties and snorting them, writing reviews as 1st person Lou Rawls, writing titles in their own handwriting and holding each others' hands in a circle of friendship bonds whispering never broken, never broken. meanwhile, I am getting my solo primal scream on in the east coast office, aka my living room floor. It is not easy running this satellite ship dolo, emailing and phone-calling edits into the flagship office as necessary--but the rest of HIOQI's NY branch is busy holding down jobs to pay their $9000 rent, autographing copies of their novels, representing at the new england book & librarian technical conf. or working at their part-time jobs taming wild seals in the prospect park zoo, or sitting in on a taping of the conan o'brien show.

Yes, I am alone, and my butt is aching bad from laptop-hunching on the hardwood. In this solitary editing blitz, however, I have discovered I work much faster when my wheels are greased by the ambient noise of movies I don't care about on TBS, which I receive free of charge from Brooklyn Cable Access Television (BCAT). HENCELY, the east coast muse/corollary editorial staff member has inadvertantly become A PRE-XTIAN MEL GIBSON, because of TBS' nightly airing of what women want A JILLION CONSECUTIVE TIMES, and since I have been editing for approximately 72 hours straight, barring breaks for jogs and thurrapy, I've seen it every time.

Now, you might find it a little suspect that half the final edits for america's only feminist music magazine (inclusive of hip-hop and men) are filtered through the brain of a woman under the influence of a men are from mars, women are from venus plotted Helen Hunt vehicle, heavy on the gender imperatives--HOWEVER, I have actually found this incredibly helpful, and have been inspired to write a double review of Destiny Fulfilled and DJ Drama presents Lil Wayne Gangster Grillz as gender-war treatise, based around Mel's line to Helen in the movie: "Your ex-husband made you think that just because you are who you are, you didn’t deserve to be loved." I am not finished with the review, because I am still busy editing other peoples' work, possibly even yours!, but it is so far 848 words long and I would say I'm approximately 1/3 of the way done.
the moral of this story is do not ever outright discount what you presume to be bad art, even if it is purveyed by crazy right-wing xtian homophobes. the other moral of the story is that even if it is inspiring, working on something you care about with the television is not even 1/942 thousajillianth as good as working on something you care about in person with people you love, even if the television was free and you aren't even paying for cable.

June 19, 2005 (2) Comments

dear best friends forever,

i forgot to mention all submissions for hit it or quit it's VOCABULON slangtionary section have a format! so if you are submitting--and guess what? you have 22 minutes left!--please email them to julianneshepherd@yahoo.com and model your entries after the following example. sorry for the confusion. KEEP YR VOCABULONS COMING

challahtronix—when mash-up DJs rep hard for Judaism. “Yo, did you hear the DJ drop Hasidic New Wave over that Matisyahu b-side? Shit was straight challahtronix!

yours,
julianne escobedo shepherd aka "harangue-sta grillz"

June 18, 2005 (0) Comments

on break from cutncopy editing, prosp. park 2005, fancy flossing the sweaty jogbra! (QUE!) to de la soul the grind date (it's a good median pace/bpm for jogging FYI): Boyz n da Hood promotional van.

which reminded me, i never told you about the Cam'ron Purple Haze ice cream truck that drives thru my neighborhood, parading a 9 ft mural of Cam right next to an ad for Bomb Pops. state property ad plastered on the back-end. ice cream truck jingle, i think, is "the star-spangled banner."
deep.

also, message to south brooklynites, the farmer's market is in grand army plaza right now and the new jersey fruit farm on the west end is selling KILLER strawberry cider for 4 bucks a quart. a little pricey but so worth it.

June 18, 2005 (0) Comments

Earth,

You have approximately 12 hours to email julianneshepherd@yahoo.com to submit your hypest, FUNNIEST original slang/abbrevs/hybrids/slangjunctions/conslangtions for the long revered slangtionary section VOCABULON, for hit it or quit it #18, which is quickly shaping up to be the best most hilarklious magazine EVER PRINTED IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. Vocabulon: think Teeter Sperber meets ego trip, and you have a pretty reasonable SLANGULACRA of what we're looking for.

SEND IT IN 20 pt FONT MY EYES ARE SQUINTY FROM 36 HOURS OF SHANK-STYLE EDITING
THANK YOU
your bestest friend for fucking ever,
julianne escobedo shepherd aka "baldi"

June 17, 2005 (0) Comments

"what they gown doo" by rod lee, off "Rod Lee's Vol 5" and I literally started crying almost it is SO FUCKING BADRACULA. the uphill climb of the classic break through a forest of lil jons, horn section, whistles, bass, beat shifts, snare swing until it hits about about the last thirty seconds and everything drops into a free-fall. TODAY, THE US POSTAL SERVICE MADE GOOD ON ITS LIFELONG PROMISE. ooooooooh that baltimore clubness "king of baltimore club" rod lee in new york at mission, june 24 hello rod "Hay Whatz Up"
also KW Griff knock my block off

i love you technology and your crazy ways of making bass.
also linked here, scroll down.

back to work

June 17, 2005 (0) Comments

Friends,

It's been totally awesome being here with you all these years. I've made so many friends and had such intimate experiences with so many of you, there is no way l will ever forget these special times. But I'm sorry to say, I won't be blogging here for a little while... because THIS DJ LIL JAY TAPE HAS BROKEN MY FUCKING MIND

The "ping" and muted maraca breakbeats, 2:26 mins in when the handclaps and counterrhythm of LAZERS BRAIN BOMBING on Rod Lee's "Tear it Up" = NEPTUNES WHO?! This shit hath sliced off my limbs i can no longer type. i'm keeping it bouncing til the beat cut off ok! bouncing bouncing! ROD I CANNOT BOUNCE ANY HARDER!

June 16, 2005 (0) Comments

Hello, alternet friends! Here are some more links for hip-hop feminism, in rough chronological order:

Joan Morgan's When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks it Down

Spelman student Moya Bailey blog and Alternet archive, including the story about the Nelly protest

Florida Atlantic University cancels Ying-Yang Twins concert

Essence's Take Back the Music campaign

Ludacris hires strippers for a party, is "targeted by women's groups" (though "activists" and "Women's groups" are never named, nor asked for comment)

Download Elizabeth Mendez Berry's important article Love Hurts, about domestic violence in hip-hop, from the Feb issue of Vibe magazine

Essence's Images of Women in Hip-hop Panel at FIT in New York featuring Remy Martin, Jean Grae, Akiba Solomon, Karen Hunter and Beverly Bond

Feminism & Hip-Hop Conference at the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture

Hip-Hop Feminism Yahoo Group that emerged as a result of Feminism & Hip-Hop Conference

The Color of Violence III conference in New Orleans

Kim Osorio and Michelle Joyce sue The Source for sexual harrassment

B-Girl Be info page

Hip-Hop Journos Speak Out Against Sexism: Jeff Chang and Elizabeth Mendez Berry discuss their petition of The Source sexual harrassment case

LINKS:
Verbalisms Magazine
Lynne D. Johnson
Jalylah Burrell
Tricia Rose
Mark Anthony Neal
Miranda Jane's pyramids 2 the projects
blackfeminism.org
Rachel Raimist
Carla Murphy
More Hip-Hop Feminism links

(if i missed you, email julianneshepherd@yahoo.com and I'll add)

June 15, 2005 (2) Comments

Ms. Laura Sinagra (that is MIZ) on Rize. Good on ya, madame. Still would've liked explanation in film re: African dance footage interspliced w/krumping (the form was beautiful, he would have done better to add commentary tho i understand that's not what we get from La Chappelle) but Laura gets snaps and safety pins for that and for, you know, just being generally amazing.
And from the heart, Jalylah Burrell is also amazing.

The "unforgiving June heat spike" (so said the Times) has wafted away and in the aftermath, New York City alternately smells like a urinal, Manu Ginobili's locker room, or steak. I dumpstered another painting off 72nd and West End, though, this one of paisley peacocks done IN NEON, picked up off a pile of trash, trucked it an hour back to Brooklyn WHILST tapdancing in canary yellow mary janes on the 2 train the whole way. For serious. Sorry, Rob Brezny, you're no longer getting ANY of my money. Fingers crossed.

June 14, 2005 (2) Comments

Rize.

AMAZING. inspired me to stop sending money to Rob Brezny's astrology fund and go legit curandera dance instructor, complete with herbal briefcase and kneepads.

here's what i wrote peter about it, reality tk:

M & i just returned from a free outdoor screening of RIZE in
rockefeller center, intro'd by david la chapelle
himself. he was straight donning the trucker = whatevs, rodin of
cinematography. footage was terrific, technicolor, all
abs on me, kinda gatorade commercial but candy on the
eyes. bet. the loose and unelaborated-upon stabs at
connecting krumping to traditional african
dancing? not so much. (1) you know i came home and krumped
the krap outta my living room. at any rate, free RIZE
screening in rockefeller center to about 3-500 people =
i give it til dec. before krumping bleeds into the increasingly inaccessable (2)
b-boying (AKA gymnastics) on the east side. (if it hasn't already.)
(actually b-boys can get kinda
uppity about krumpy styles--it's too "video". (3)) anyway, we're
paying LA back for pretending we invented the
boogaloo all these yrs (4). tell me what you know about it. *

did i actually write "we" in reference to NYC? interesting.

as an aside, peter is really amazingly funny and sharp and you should go read the only interesting summer festival preview ever written (read it all but scroll down to "T in the Park" and "Fuji Rock" for the funniest entries), and then hire him to write for your magazine. i did ("hiring" being a loose term.)

*ADDENDUM/KEY:

1. the african dance sequences spliced w/krumping were visually stunning, and i caught what he was implying, obviously, but without evidence--footage of the kids talking about how it's an aspect of their dance, for instance, as they do in Laura's article in the Voice (which redeems the choice, actually)--it comes off a bit like La Chappelle dug for footage and created this kind of problematic, romanticized idea of krumping as a part of the innate rhythm begat of africa. this, coupled with the stumbling sentimental R&B song-sequence after a particularly wrenching part in the movie, shows that la chappelle's intentions were good, but his forte is definitely the footage, the style.

2. I love b-boying as much as anything, but I've got it in my mind that, as it evolves and becomes ever more complicated/organized/worldwide and marketable, not to mention AERIAL and increasingly difficult for people to DO unless they devote their entire lives to it (as opposed to the impressive but modest-compared-to-now street form where it began), I got it in my mind that b-boying as it is presented seems inaccessible--if one is introduced to its current incarnation via the market of competitions, battle videos, or the television. granted, i learned breakdancing in 1984 from a 14-year-old boy named Mike at the Cheyenne, Wyoming YMCA, and only otherwise see street b-boys in the Times Square subway station, so I could be wrong. (joe schloss, i am ringing! help)

3. from my casual observer's eye, krumping looks like a combo of what they term in the film as "the stripper dance," contemporary MTV video choreography (not that the latter two are so different), aggressive fight-mimicking (and as la chappelle points out, dance-interpretation of police brutality). many of the b-boys i've known and talked to are open to commercialization of b-boying (esp if it translates to opportunity and a living wage for them, too), but are adamant about delineating between the art of b-boying and hmm the frisson of "video" dancing.

4. b-boying is credited generally to NYC but wouldn't be the same w/out California's boogaloo/popping. let's not hog all the credit ok.

June 14, 2005 (1) Comments

young jeezy, who is just here to motivate the thugs btw, was on the radio this morning all like "I feel as though Gucci Mane has surrounded himself with the wrong sorts of people, perhaps those who encouraged him to start an altercation with me as a viable method of inflating his career. I, simply, wish Mr. Mane would cease the negative talk."

later, Mr. Fat "RECORD IN STORES NOW" Joe was offering unsolicited advice to Michael Jackson: "Move to Europe, homie."

June 13, 2005 (1) Comments

and i swear to god my favorite album review ever, period, is Chris motherfucking Ryan's send-up of Stankonia in Hit it Or Quit It 17, ca. 2000 AD, "it's" instead of "its"es and everything. Makes the hair on the back of my neck play bongos; the potential of the blogiverse (aka fanzine-verse): fiyah and smarts in funny run-ons and parentheticals. I revisit it all the time; it is the essence of why we're here, non?

June 13, 2005 (3) Comments

Billy Corgan and I bond over our late-20s crises.

Sigh.

No, the fragile bald head was not a diss. I was mind-alteringly caffeinated and he looked smaller and paler than I expected him to--vegan?--esp. considering my high school world was partly defined by his music. Siamese Dream was totally the soundtrack of J.B., the pro BMX biker of the summer of '93.
I will think about what this means and get back to you.

June 11, 2005 (2) Comments

According to my text messages, Alex Merrill says hackeysack is coming back. Back from where, I don't know. State college purgatory, I suppose. Ok.

The sole complaint I had about Me and You and Everyone We Know is that I didn't think the character Christine Jesperson really would have been wearing Citizens of Humanity jeans. I know, it's a minor inconsistency in the costuming, but it took me out of the story for that one moment midway through while I asked, "Why is Christine Jesperson wearing Citizens of Humanity jeans?" That shit is like, a one-and-a-half spot, easy. Her character drives an elder-cab and buys her shoes at a lower-tier department store (in my mind, the Sears in Lloyd Center Mall, btw).

But whatever. Because who else makes real, wide-release movies about real artists now? No one, unless they are retrospectives: Jackson Pollock, Frida Kahlo, Basquiat. Contemporary artists seem to work within a secret chasm to those of us outside it, and the film's side-plot is about demystifying that, in its subtle way, whispering "you could be this person, too," in its all-inclusive subtext. It's such a secretly riot grrl movie, so much a follow-up to Big Miss Moviola, "a challenge and a promise," the days when Miranda was making video chainletters and cutting out her own unique space in riot grrrl--she was the only lady in that young RG scene at that time opening for bands with serious feminist performance art, and releasing not-quite-spoken-word, strange and beautiful "time-based art"/skits on punk labels. (Kathleen Hanna doing part of the monologue from Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains on a seven-inch, while amazing, doesn't count. It was a one-off!) The Binet-Simon Test, KRS296, STILL gives me chills, creeps me out and leaves me digging for fire and double entendres. Wynne "Tracy & the Plastics" Greenwood was her successor in that world (someday I will tell you about the time I almost died driving to Olympia to interview her). So are L.A.'s Janet Pants Dans Theeatre. But Miranda's presence in riot grrrl made it possible.

Anyway, in true collective Portland style, voting season is on for the PDX POP NOW! festival. Not that I will be there, but I voted for preteen primitive punkers Black Peppercorns and 9000-person hip-hop collective Oldominion, anyway.

June 10, 2005 (1) Comments

The back and forth: It’s a theme in the heavily Portland-referencing Me and You and Everyone We Know, and it’s also the chorus of a song by Kay Kay, from Portland, with Larry Blackmon from Cameo on cameo, as I recall. My head kept singing it while I watched the movie. Completely unrelated aside.

So I saw it tonight finally, on wide-wale corduroy seats in the screening room in the basement of a fancy hotel. Stuck my soda in the soda cozy in the seat in front of me. Sat my seat back and there it was.

There is nothing but generosity in Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know, (which you must see in NYC on June 16, 17, and 19 and NuARt in LA and Century Theatre in Chicago on June 24, 25, 26). It struck flint and impulse in my heart, like you and me and everyone we know have to get "carpe diem" tattooed on the insides of our eyelids because yesterday and tomorrow don’t exist. WE ARE ALL BRIGHT SPECKS OF LIGHT! You know, that kind of thing… I'm pretty sure I went three octaves higher, and felt a little bit like I had remembered I'd lost something but it was the exact right time to find it. I wanted to expand, because I am living and breathing and flawed and blindingly awesome and stoopid-real, and no film I’ve seen has presented such a vision of hope and aliveness that is as beautiful and unromanticized, but still romantic cause it's so human. Every millisecond of it is magic and OH! And so hopeful and heart-full, so unique in its loving of humanity when the hate/hell/dethfuck is codified and cool-ified and written into constitutions, I just wanted to grab everyone around me and kiss... and I did. Because the film is not about wishing, but doing.

I won't elaborate because I don't want to spoil it for you because I want you to SEE THIS FILM NOW. Take your babies and your boyfriends and your Tia Andrea and Jean Gray, your (my) alcoholic neighbor from upstairs. There is nothing to stop you from being alive, other than self-immolation and/or the fake feeling that you don’t deserve it… the wearing of too-tight shoes, a hand aflame to mark a moment, a bird in a picture frame in a tree. Macaroni.

If you are the anonymous person who texted me at 6 am saying: "HACKEY SACK IS BACK, YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST, BOOYAH," who are you? Please email julianneshepherd@yahoo.com.

June 10, 2005 (0) Comments

Kiss Me Deadly makes me miss Life Without Buildings or, more to the point, The Sugarcubes, or perhaps morer to the point, The Slits. (Like Prosaics is, simply, a reminder that I should revisit Josef K.) Which is to say I kinda like Kiss Me Deadly’s asthmatic strains, at least until that one guy starts wailing on track four, but the effect is a reverse gravitational pull towards something else I used to like better. A bookmark, an echo, a placeholder. But then, someone is probably saying the same thing about me somewhere, like "Julianne Shepherd makes me wanna go home and listen to Stacey Q." Well fuck you, I consider that a compliment.

Which reminds me: read the new issue of Alternative Press, where they jukebox jury all the Gang of Four wannabes with the actual Gang of Four. My favorite answer: "This doesn't sound like us! It sounds like Pere Ubu!"

June 4, 2005 (0) Comments

ATTENTION FEMINIST ZINE MAKERS

"The Barnard College Library in New York City is home to a growing zine collection that focuses on feminist culture and politics. This is an invitation to former and current zine creators and collectors to archive and make accessible through the Barnard Library any zines (defunct or still in publication) that are appropriate for the collection. The collection encompasses a wide variety of zine genres that address a number of feminist and women's issues and experiences, including activism, anarchism, body image, ethnic identity, menstruation, parenting, sexual assault, sexual orientation, urbanism, and war. The collection's website outlines the institution's zine collection mission statement and collection policy. It can be viewed at http://www.barnard.edu/library/zines/. The website also includes a link to access the library catalog (CLIO), where you can view a list of zines the library currently holds.

If you would like for your zine to be included in the Barnard Library Zine Collection, or if you have a collection of zines that you would like to donate to the library, please contact me at zines@barnard.edu. At the moment, we are especially interested in acquiring zines that
document the Riot Grrrl scene, though we are eager to accept zines of any time period or subject as long as they are in accordance with our collection policy guidelines.

Thanks for your time and please let me know if you have anything you would like to share, or if you have any questions or concerns, by responding to to zines@barnard.edu.

Thanks,
Jillian Cuellar"

June 1, 2005 (0) Comments

Elizabeth Mendez-Berry and Jeff Chang: interviewed! "Hip-Hop Journos Speak Out Against Sexism."

From Professor Sarah Dougher on the girlgroup:

"I wanted to let you all know that I have started a label here in Portland called Chercez La Femme. In part it is designed to take up where Mr. Lady left off, since I think that there is still a need, maybe now more than ever, for a label focused on ladies, queers, and moreover feminist projects. The first release will be my own record, Harper's Arrow. It is coming out in three weeks.
The second will be a comp benefit for the queer youth center here starring the Indigo Girls, Sleater-Kinney and the Decemberists, as well as many local bands and solo artists. This comes out in July.
Part of what I want to do is keep a wide curatorial door open, and so as you move through the world, please feel free to forward ideas to me and keep me posted about what is going on where you live."