The only way I can explain/rationalize reality TV is that the aliens, thousands of centuries from now, need to have a great punchline to "What the **** happened"? "Real Housewives" and "A-Gays" will be the only existing historical documents, and intergalactic encyclopedias will be updated to show a race of botoxed, bloated, overexposed mutants who posed, preened and recorded bad dance singles. So - Just as Logo's "A" list exists purely as one of those archeological testaments to how vapid and inane gay culture was in the teens of the 21st century, so I hope that the follow up - Brooklyn's B-List will also survive and show what the rest of us were up to:
Sometimes it's difficult to find the pattern or the distinction. I'm never been into the details, but sometimes the details are better than the source... Take for instance this awesome video by Miniature Tigers...
I thought I would dress in baggy pants, big shoes, a cane and a derby hat. everything a contradiction: the pants baggy, the coat tight, the hat small and the shoes large. Charlie Chaplin
What's not to love about Chaplin? I'm sure he would be honored that millions of twit pics on John Galliano's summer 2011 line featured a Modern Time's take on swimwear. Sinewy twinks in impractical trunks and pants... Puttin on the ritz. I preferably think we're regurgitating the tramp for a good reason - it's jazz-age poverty with a delicate undercoating harmless charm, just in time for the recession. But lest we forget, Chaplin was a complete stud in that he negotiated his own terms prior to any one else in the film industry, was a pro-immigrant humanist who praised diveresity, had scores of women who maligned him as (heaven forbid) loving oral sex, and was an ardent leftist that got him kicked out of the US. It's probably a wonder that he's not erased from the US textbooks.
Terrible! I've not made a post since NY 10... I've truly fallen off the wagon again in terms of tracking my internet ADD (and corresponding arrested development). But I can say in my defense that I've been sorta busy on other endeavors at the moment. So, what do I do now? I had a whole bunch of blog-worthy stuff in the past few weeks (personal/political service announcements, outrage at lesbian prom's cancelled, horror at persecution abroad and glee at watching flashmobs market glee)... But I also know if this stuff was truly important, I would have made a space for it - but I guess sometimes you just gotta make art that sings it's own song.
So with everyone wrapping up with a focus on the decade that's yet-to-be named (no "me"-decade as much as a "Generation OMG" or if you're over 30, the "I'm Still here-read my tweets!!!" decade). It is, as Carrie Fisher described in an interview "googling yourself w/out lubicrant" - we're self-obsessed and self-promoting, so this is the decade where everyone has a medium of some kind where they go and "address their public" or "the haters....
it's been surprising that I've managed to hold onto this blog for nearly 10 yrs (having lapsed only once to the dark recesses of Livejournal between 2005-2006). Like all things, I tend to go emphatically for a few months, lose the momentum due to real-time issues (aka - "real life"), so I won't do what alot of bloggers are doing in a "best of" because technically - this isn't a 10yr anniversary. However, I will highlight my own milestones this year (if it's any interest):
Started this blog and proceeded to join every single social app that was ever marketed to me in an attempt to get me to connect, sell, hookup, or just say a random hello. However, as of this date - I have not tweeted once.
I have had a dichotomy of work technology (all PC) and home/pleasure (all MAC). This year, I buy an iPhone and bridge the two - I get work email on my phone and have become 'one of those people'.
Traveled to 2 major continents - Asia (JP) and Europe (UK, DE), went to NY, Chicago, LA a few times.
Watched the twin towers fall on TV - visited ground zero a year later. Still wondering why we've this paranoid nation of PTSD officials using it to justify everything from wars to wiretapping.
Inspired by Stephen Merritt - start a band w/my friend Lyle. Doesn't quite take off. But it was fun.
I buy a condo during the "bubble" and have knocked on all wooden surfaces for good equity at some point down the line.
I see Seattle boom, bust, boom again. I see Broadway go vacant, Pike/Pine go hetero, 12th street go yuppie. I see the Pine/Belmont block implode but not until a 5 month party of decadence makes it mark (and smart bars like Pony and Bus Stop return). I see Ballard become hip, Georgetown and Columbia City places I want to visit more than Capitol Hill.
I see my own hometown become more cosmopolitan - almost in a strange capraesque nightmare, but also in some progressive areas as well.
After years of being a skinny minnie my metabolism kicks in somewhere in early naughties, I gain 20 lbs of post-relationship/beer weight and in 2006 make an attempt to reclaim my youth. I slim down to 150 with 8% body fat.
I also use bicycling as a means to both relieve stress and acheive said body weight goal.
I returned to my theatrical roots and started doing crazy, exhibitionist things like this.
I still marvel that we don't have flying cars and we're not colonizing mars like they did in the 2010 of Blade Runner. That said I still do suspect we're living with robots who emote better than we do.
My fave femigossip site, Jezebel, linked to this sad, but interesting article in the Guardian about the cyclical return to misogynistic lyrics/narratives in pop music. Deborah Finding has been tracking various memes in pop music over the last 50 years and found a disturbing trend that emerges every so often in the lyrics: some form of acceptable domestic abuse. She site's the early 60's Crystal's "He Hit Me (and it felt like a kiss)" as a jumping off point and then tracks the social awareness and political stance through to the 90's with Suzanne Vega, Tracy Chapman, Tori Amos (etc), and then see's a recent re-emergence of the "Gosh - I was surely asking for it" narrative again from recent UK winners, Florence and the Machine in the Post-feminist era. If anything is a canary in the coal mine how we're doing socially - attitudes toward women are a warning sign that we're not empowering generations to realize this shit is bad: we tolerated Slim Shady in the early 0ughties. Ladies and Gentlemen: civil discourse has left the building. And now we're seeing in addition to this an 11% increase in hate crimes in the US - not to overlap issues, but usually when there's hatin' on the ladies, there's sure to be hatin' on the queers as well. I won't be one of those greying hipsters who condems rap in one breath and then says' they embrace the irony in the second - no, because it's not just hiphop: it's pervasive in quite a few music genres. I won't be banning anyone soon - but I will - as Lady Gaga suggests, shout them down as much as possible. I guess, as Jezebel suggests - one strategy is to take the song and recontextualize it. Kinda like Tori Amos did in "Bonnie and Clyde 97" where she reduces Eminem's misogynistic rap to creepy element: Eminem is f'd up and creepy. In a similar vein, we've got queerish Grizzly Bear covering "He Hit Me". This is questionable if they're recontextualizing the meaning or simply enjoying a song's 4-part harmony (*that was written by Carole King after learning that one of the Crystal's was in fact abused by her boyfriend). I don't know. You be the judge.
File from a "Future that never happened" circa 1999 (as intrepeted from 1982): I love this video mashup of post-punk group Family Fodder's "Film Music" with a 1982 BBC sci-fi drama "Play for Tomorrow". The low-brow neutral patina of what is supposed to be a minimalist future (complete with a pop-history that is hyper-linked by flat screen TV's) is nothing short of a brilliant advertisement for youth rebellion as choreographed by American Apparel. Description of the short as follows:
Shades By Stephen Lowe. 1999 again: A tower block contains youths ‘bought off’ by the government, in a climate of microchip-created endless leisure, who experience (often pornographic) virtual reality-style fantasies by donning the titular ’shades’, until a 1980s theme party (they predicted that right, at least) leads to ideology and political thought seeping in under the dazed lifestyle.
How can you go wrong with wrap-around shades and a belted lame tunic, I ask?
