Quick Shout Out For Giant

Quick Giant Shout Out

Here's a quick plug for anyone reading this (yes, all three of you) and in the Seattle Metro area: My friend's band (Allen and Lyle) are going to premiere on Wednesday April 13th at 9:00pm, at the Rebar.



Check them out via their oh-so-slick website...



And yes, it's also the same day that we're finally getting folks together for the book club (so I can cross that off one of my 43 things... So far, my choices that I'm going to bring: this Safran Foer, this Albo, and maybe, just maybe, this classic since he just died...

My Appropriation

My Appropriation

Today Salon ran an interesting tirade on Gwen Stefani's use of Harajuku Girls as props in videos and overall entourage. Of course, the reviewer felt the fetishation a cold and commodofied parasitic relationship between the innocent Harajuku street freaks and the evil Stefani empire that's built on pushing designer denim and a clothing line (appropriately named l.a.m.b, as in easily led as a...). Yeah - it's probably not the bigger of all evils (pole-dancing as liberation and other vapid arguments at whatever-wave feminism Camille Paglia is surfing), but Gwen is doing the gosh-these-Japanese-girls-are-just-like-manga-robots kind of wink to audience. She knows they are a prop and nothing more... So they do ridiculous pantomime bows and make with the stereotypes so whitey in Omaha will relate somehow. Oddly enough however, the Harajuku teens - ones that I've also photographed when I went to Japan - play and perform for the camera. These are girls who want to perform as larger than life comic book stereotypes (bloody nurse, evil victorian dollie, sexy blade-runner teen). And contrary to the parallels the writer makes to the other NYT photo essay that was highlighting Japanese teenage girls, these are not the demure teens the Danish photographer Hellen van Meene was focusing on. Those were schoolgirls being stopped in the street and thrown into whatever western-fixated gaze the viewer wants to initiate. These particular girls however (the Harajuku gang) are ones that are staging their own music videos. They design their own costumes and make their own stories. Which is probably why Gwen really has it all wrong (she'd be singing back up if they would allow her).

cosplayzuku5
Originally uploaded by Wickidboy.

Speaking of feminist backlashes - Andrea Dworkin died?! First the pope (on one extreme puritanical end) and now Dworkin. I had been just reading about her biography, how it was frenzied and paranoid (alas - I did not know she had been raped in a Parisian Hotel a few years ago) but recalling the essays in college that we read and watched Not a Love Story in the interests of staring a dialogue (but more to shock anyone who didn't have any position on pornography before). She was someone that caused lefties, gays and artists to just shudder - killjoy, irritant and brimestone preacher of extremes. She and Catherine McKinnon had single handedly dismanteled the constitution in the interests of what would later become known as the "greater good"... She'd give the right wing a good stereotype of the left wing gone heretic, and she'd be the stereotype of an unfunny feminist. In alot of ways though - her extreme views, born out of alot of terrible shit in her own life, gave way to modern sexuality because everyone I knew in the 90's were quickly running from the repression and shame that both the left and right could instill. I remember her affect on liberties gave way to how people personally felt about pornography (moving beyond good vs evil paradigms and soviet-like extremism that she had fostered a decade before). Art would become more provacative and transgressive in an effort to push boundaries (Madonna, Bruce La Bruce, and Pedro Almodovar notwithstanding). People started to open up to sexuality as discourse because it was almost as if the crazy person in the room had made some extreme claim that got everything thinking. I guess you don't really know your monsters until you see them and their body of work... Like Susie Bright acknowledges, she's someone who clearly defined the opposition, someone who didn't join, felt probably shunned, had anger in her life as the core of her being. At least we can say she had an impact...

On the Papal Visit

On the Papal Visit

I suppose the pope's passing should get some merit - as I think this is one of those insane spectacles I'd never really thought I'd live to see. 4 million people descended on Rome, which never had any preparation for such an onslaught. The fervor that pulled people in is the same fervor that I find charming in a mosiac-your-house-in-a-religious-theme-but-entirely-with-dried-macaroni-kind-of-way, interesting, but something I'd never really do. I'm not religious and I tend to be more agnostic in my thoughts about spirituality (you can't define it in testements, torahs or stone tablets), but I can see and understand why people either love or hate him. He preached peace and then in the same breath condemned gays and unmarried women seeking abortions. He's part of a corporate lineage of religious business, inlfuencing millions and policies that still impact a woman's right to choose, safe-sex education and gay marriage, yet have not been elected by the same body of people (it just happens after much politcking). Don't even get me started in the creepy way it dealt with it's peodophilia problem (sweep it under the rug and transfer the offending priests to some other parish where they're free to do it all again. Rinse, repeat, repent).
I guess though as raised a Lutheran, I'm ambivelent. I have no grudge because the way history went down in the 13th century, Martin Luther saw the same ridiculous structure and posted his famous resignation letter to the catholic church. That's why I can't understand why people drag their dogme around with them like rabid knights on crusades still. Although - someone the other day at work said that anger brings you closer to godliness (because it's what makes you true to your emotion and sense of morality). Given that most moral compasses these days point to alot of self-justification, I don't agree. I 'd like to think that compassion, either within or outside of religion is what trancends us.

addictions

Addictions and Subtractions

So - I've now more power at my finger tips, finally having upgraded to DSL. I'm realizing what/why most of my time was wasted in an afternoon, and in just one word: iTunes. If there has ever been an argument for the concept of "trainspotting" as a concept that should be in the AMA, iTunes brings out the fanaticism in anyone. I have chased down more musical curiousities in 5 hours than I thought was possible (and purchased about 15$ worth of singles. It will make a good mix tape (if anyone out there is interested), but here's my current playlist:

2nd Floor
The Creatures

Galang
M.I.A.

Cish Cash
Basement Jaxx & Siouxsie Sioux

Tribulations
LCD Soundsystem

Reason Is Treason
Kasabian

Let's Go to Bed
Ivy

Filthy/Gorgeous
Scissor Sisters

Gossip Folks (Fatboy Slim Remix)
Missy Elliott

My Girl Josephine
Super Cat

Genius of Love
Tom Tom Club

Mega Medley
Zapp

Yes - it's very post-Williamsburg,tonights-music-on-the-OC-was-brought-to-by, kinda teeny pop, but hey... it's stuff I'm jonesing to hear. You can also purchase the entire lot here if you have iTunes...

Pizza Out.

April Fools

A Fuhhh-neeeee

While the FCC decides to go after cable programming for pushing the boundaries of art and comedy (which always goes against popular taste), we can remember that sometimes the best comic spectacles are the most obvious:

and

Nothing says "April Fools" like a Situationalist Stunt like a good ol' fashioned pie in the face (or salad dressing dousing) of Conservative pundits.

Signified Vegatables

Signified Vegatables

Terry Shiavo, who now get's more google action than anyone alive or dead, will be forgotten in one week. Meanwhile - the right-wing circus roars it's hilarious spectacle like a Fellini like circus (recalling the virgin sighting in La Dolce Vita). The meaning that the churchies brainstormed in under a month's time has no historical relevance - according to a Jesuit scholar, "Sanctity of Life" is a recent term, and one that's being used for this particular agenda (and not one for say - repealing the death penalty in Texas or ending the war in Iraq?)... Yes, I fall victim to the same partialism if I say I support human rights and Amnesty international, but have my logic is reduced to the obvious: These are living people. I also concede that you can draw lines and conclusions as you want, this isn't our business. The "Sanctity of Life" as applied to the personal choices of a family are as rhetorically hollow as the Jesse Jackson media op (and what happened here?). But, the rabid angry fan-base for "SOL" arguments, like Rosanne Barr once said of her middle-american detractors, "Well, at least that's one less person forming the human-fence around the abortion clinic." Unfortunately, they won't go elsewhere.

History Teaches Us Nothing

History Teaches Us Nothing

This week's Stranger Cover story features a report on the Micah Painter gay bashing incident last summer (since the trial is occuring at this very moment). The outrage felt last July over this easily resurfaces when you read Eli Sander's peice. It's a very telling analysis - much like the way "Sorrow and Pity" outed the secret hatred Parisians still had for Jews generations later. In this case - it's emigres from small towns and immigrants from other lands, and ironically, both victim and criminals are of the near-same faith. It makes you sick with fear that if three incredibly stupid, hateful people can be consumed by bigotry and intolerance, what's the slippery slope for more than just those three?
Ironically - I always felt safe walking home from the Rebar, 24hourFitness and Timberline (the area in the denny regrade where the incident occured). Capitol Hill seemed to take care of it's own the minute I arrived (gangs of Q-patrol people like a 2nd-rate Guardian Angels troupe walked the streets, but it seemed unneccessary - everyone had your back). Yet you read the way it went down and you realize it could be you. Bigots stupid with self-hate and alcohol infused anger arrive to sack civilization at every turn. While the war on terror rages - these are the real barbarians at our gates - and no, being from out of the country has nil to do w/this. These barbarians are cut in every corner of the world. We don't need to give them years of historical oppression, or tribal anguish fueled by machete-wielding violence of teenage juantus - you just need hate and a passage from the bible to reason your hate.
The peice was published before the verdict -which was returned with a Guilty Verdict that it was a hate crime. There is no justice in this however as they got off with lesser degrees of assault. The fact that the bottle was used as a weapon should have made this attempted murder at the very least. And what about the victim? Life pretty much ruined, and wanting to possibly leave this tolerant city. Nothing has been gained from this - we can have all the awareness we want, but no-one's reinforcing the gates (or so it seems). Maybe the Q-patrol should be brought back in force. And it becomes a community effort (everyone - gay, straight, black, white, old, young) are required to walk around and make sure everyone's safe at every possible hour. And perhaps we'll have big gates and a fortress wall?