I am constantly amused by the ways people find this blog through search engines. To wit, a sampling of search terms with commentary:
-"Corran Mirax"-Get thee to the Rogue Squadron, stat. And my, you have good taste in fictional relationships.
-"Rosenbergs scandal"-No relation. My Rosenberg grandma was a fashionista, social
activist, bourbon drinker, and definitely not a spy.
-"Lady Gaga Hellboy Bad Romance"-I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who
noticed the Cathedral Head comparison!
-"Rihanna Government Song"-I only wish I knew! I love writing about government-
centric pop culture for my day job, but this would add to the mix.
-"I was the one worth leaving Owl City"-While the mashup of lyric and band title is
intriguing, Owl City is not the Postal Service. Get thee to allmusic.com!
Friday, November 20, 2009
Personal History: High School Hip-Hop Edition
So, y'all know I like hip-hop a fair bit. But I don't know that I've ever explained to you guys why. So in honor of DJ Stylus's show tonight, I figured I'd make a full confession.
See, back in the day, I was a competetive high school policy debater. Policy debate, for those of you not familiar, involves talking incomprehensibly fast about various facets of a topic assigned to you at the end of the previous school year, usually with the end goal of demonstrating that either your policy proposal would prevent a lot of nuclear wars or that the other person's policy proposal would lead to a lot of nuclear wars. Either that or destroy the philosophical frameworks by which we know ourselves. Or whatever. This video is a pretty good summary. What you really need to know though was that when I was in high school I, and a bunch of guys in my graduating class, did an activity that involved talking extremely quickly and posturing aggressively. Is it any wonder we found our way to hip-hop? Of course, the stuff we found our way to was of sublimely mixed quality.
"Forgot About Dre" was on the high end of the scale:
Em could flow, not almost as fast as we could talk, but in the ballpark. And "Nowadays, everbody wanna talk like they got something to say / But nothing comes out when they move their lips / Just a bunch of gibberish" was the perfect insult for a bunch of hyperverbal teenagers to toss at each other. I don't know if anyone remembers this, but some hackers put together a fake CNN page purporting to report that Eminem had died in a car crash my junior year. I thought my debate partner at the time was going to have a heart attack. Fortunately, Eminem survived, and my partner did too. Our obsession with that song though left me with a life-long weakness for guys who can rhyme really, really fast. I listen to far more Twista than anyone should, as a result.
Then, there was the psych-up stuff, most notably, Nelly's "Number One":
This song isn't really defensible, but I like it anyway. It's super-outdated, with the references to Sprint and Motorola's networks, "some internet chat line," etc. It's totally narratively and argumentatively incoherent. It's weirdly defensive for a song about how awesome Nelly theoretically is. The facial bandaid was the stupidest accessory ever. And yet the chorus "What does it take to be number one? / Two is not a winner / And three nobody remembers" is a bracing rebuke the the "we're all winners" educational psychology a lot of us got fed in school. In debate, when you lost, it was brutal. This was a way to remind yourself of that, and to prepare yourself for it.
And then, for some reason, some of our coaches hooked us up with The Gourds cover of "Gin & Juice," which really, I think you have to concede, is incredibly funny:
I don't know that this song had any major impact on my hip-hop habits, which is probably a good thing, since it's incredibly goofy. I don't really like party rap that much, just because I think it tends to be less lyrically creative and easily slides into misogyny. But this is classic.
Fortunately, I got exposed to better stuff. I remember hearing OutKast's "Ms. Jackson" on the radio for the first time as an almost spiritual experience, one that kicked off a life-long love of Dirty South rap.
And I will forever owe my drama teacher, who made us watch Slam, and introduced me to Saul Stacey Williams (and also stars Sonja Sohn). This blew my head off:
I mean literally. I cannot begin to explain what a huge impact "Amethyst Rock" had I mean. I knew a fair amount about the mechanics of politics, thanks to the debate team, but "the feds is also plotting me /
they're trying to imprison my astrology / put my stars behind bars, my stars and stripes / using blood-splattered banners as nationalist kites" was one of the most passionately political sentences I'd ever heard in my entire life. Ditto for Jessica Care Moore's "Black Statue of Liberty":
Somewhere along the way, I lost my copy of Listen Up!, this fantastic collection of slam poetry, but I still have Williams' She, which is one of the best documents about love and sex I know.
Such a mix of stuff, I know. But listening to and reading all this stuff again this week really swept me back into what it was like to be 15, 16, 17. I don't apologize for liking the worst of this stuff, but it's all tangled up with powerful memories for me now. For better or for worse, this was one of the places where I started, and a powerful force in the directions I began to grow.
See, back in the day, I was a competetive high school policy debater. Policy debate, for those of you not familiar, involves talking incomprehensibly fast about various facets of a topic assigned to you at the end of the previous school year, usually with the end goal of demonstrating that either your policy proposal would prevent a lot of nuclear wars or that the other person's policy proposal would lead to a lot of nuclear wars. Either that or destroy the philosophical frameworks by which we know ourselves. Or whatever. This video is a pretty good summary. What you really need to know though was that when I was in high school I, and a bunch of guys in my graduating class, did an activity that involved talking extremely quickly and posturing aggressively. Is it any wonder we found our way to hip-hop? Of course, the stuff we found our way to was of sublimely mixed quality.
"Forgot About Dre" was on the high end of the scale:
Em could flow, not almost as fast as we could talk, but in the ballpark. And "Nowadays, everbody wanna talk like they got something to say / But nothing comes out when they move their lips / Just a bunch of gibberish" was the perfect insult for a bunch of hyperverbal teenagers to toss at each other. I don't know if anyone remembers this, but some hackers put together a fake CNN page purporting to report that Eminem had died in a car crash my junior year. I thought my debate partner at the time was going to have a heart attack. Fortunately, Eminem survived, and my partner did too. Our obsession with that song though left me with a life-long weakness for guys who can rhyme really, really fast. I listen to far more Twista than anyone should, as a result.
Then, there was the psych-up stuff, most notably, Nelly's "Number One":
This song isn't really defensible, but I like it anyway. It's super-outdated, with the references to Sprint and Motorola's networks, "some internet chat line," etc. It's totally narratively and argumentatively incoherent. It's weirdly defensive for a song about how awesome Nelly theoretically is. The facial bandaid was the stupidest accessory ever. And yet the chorus "What does it take to be number one? / Two is not a winner / And three nobody remembers" is a bracing rebuke the the "we're all winners" educational psychology a lot of us got fed in school. In debate, when you lost, it was brutal. This was a way to remind yourself of that, and to prepare yourself for it.
And then, for some reason, some of our coaches hooked us up with The Gourds cover of "Gin & Juice," which really, I think you have to concede, is incredibly funny:
I don't know that this song had any major impact on my hip-hop habits, which is probably a good thing, since it's incredibly goofy. I don't really like party rap that much, just because I think it tends to be less lyrically creative and easily slides into misogyny. But this is classic.
Fortunately, I got exposed to better stuff. I remember hearing OutKast's "Ms. Jackson" on the radio for the first time as an almost spiritual experience, one that kicked off a life-long love of Dirty South rap.
And I will forever owe my drama teacher, who made us watch Slam, and introduced me to Saul Stacey Williams (and also stars Sonja Sohn). This blew my head off:
I mean literally. I cannot begin to explain what a huge impact "Amethyst Rock" had I mean. I knew a fair amount about the mechanics of politics, thanks to the debate team, but "the feds is also plotting me /
they're trying to imprison my astrology / put my stars behind bars, my stars and stripes / using blood-splattered banners as nationalist kites" was one of the most passionately political sentences I'd ever heard in my entire life. Ditto for Jessica Care Moore's "Black Statue of Liberty":
Somewhere along the way, I lost my copy of Listen Up!, this fantastic collection of slam poetry, but I still have Williams' She, which is one of the best documents about love and sex I know.
Such a mix of stuff, I know. But listening to and reading all this stuff again this week really swept me back into what it was like to be 15, 16, 17. I don't apologize for liking the worst of this stuff, but it's all tangled up with powerful memories for me now. For better or for worse, this was one of the places where I started, and a powerful force in the directions I began to grow.
The Twilight Smackdown
Dear Bella Swann, This guy vampires better than you. Love, Alyssa
So, after burning my brain out on the Twilight books, writing you guys lots of cryptic posts about them, and convincing the good friend who lent me the novels that I am using her beloved Edward Cullen for eeeevil (sorry, Alison), the Atlantic piece I promised y'all about the oddly passive magic of Twilight (and and with lots of references to Cimorene, Wise Child, Juniper, and Morgaine thrown in for contrast) is here! I had an incredible amount of fun writing it (and re-reading all the books that I loved from my childhod and adolsecence that informed it), and I am not-so-secretly hoping this will provoke mountains of ire. After all, I need a better internet controversy out there than the suggestion I want to smut up the Harry Potter books. I have been practicing my Morpheus-style "bring it" gesture all week. So come on, Twi-Hards. Let's dance.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Where I'll Be On Friday
It's not often that I get to endorse awesome pop cultural things that my friends are doing, since, um, I work in Washington, DC, and most of my buddies are policy wonks. But on Friday, at 9pm or thereabouts, I'll be taking my skinny-jeans-and-vintage-bekicked self over to the Backstage at the Black Cat to see DJ Stylus spin old-school hip-hop with DJ Dredd. He's promised to play some OutKast to satisfy my sweet tooth, but the evening as a whole will be more throwbacky than that. Check out these mixes from their last set, if you're curious. Cover's $7. Dress is fly. Maybe I'll see you there.
In Memoriam
It was awful to hear the news this morning that Jeanne-Claude, Christo's wife and collaborator, has died. The Gates, Christo and Jeanne-Claude's exhibition of 7,500 saffron curtained gates in Central Park, ranks among the greatest artistic experiences of my life: I was in college in New Haven then, had very little money, and went to New York two days in a row to see them, because having seen them once, I couldn't not go back. Every bit of this marvelous New York profile of the couple is worth reading, but I particularly love this:
She will be missed.The Christos make no secret that their traveling show—from the political jockeying to the public debates to events like the signing of an original drawing, such as the one they’ve given to New York—is all part of what they consider their grand work of art. Whether this process is a critique of art and bureaucracy or simply great public theater, it’s an undeniably canny way to conduct business. “Keep in mind that the money we spend is our money,” says Jeanne-Claude. “If we made a choice of buying a big estate in Aspen, Colorado, or to cover myself in diamonds, we can also do it. Because it’s our money. But it would be very uncomfortable to be covered in diamonds.”
The Mordant Wisdom of Edward Gorey
Jezebel's review of the reissue of The Recently Deflowered Girl is hilarious, as is the guide to post-loss-of-virginity-etiquette,written by Edward Gorey under one of his pen names, itself. I know Gorey is a Goth icon, and his illustrations and visual style have become enormously popular. But I'll always think of him first and foremost as an incredibly sharp humorist. The man was an alchemist, especially when it came to sex, which is fascinating, considering he presented himself as essentially asexual (The Curious Sofa comes highly recommended). I mean, a story about a girl who ends up having sex with her mischievous pen pal sounds only mildly entertaining when I put it like that, right? But in Gorey's hands, it becomes this:
Deflowered By Proxy
You fall in love with pen pal, Walter, English turf accountant, whom you have never met. By correspondence, wedding date is set. Two days before marriage, he cables that he can't leave London due to pressing business deal. Instead, according to cable, he has made arrangements for proxy marriage and his friend, Howard, on 84th Street, will stand up for him. You invite Howard to your apartment following ceremony. After deflowerment, you say, "Incidentally, Howard..." He ways, "There is no Howard. I'm Walter, your pen pal."
You say: "Of course, silly. I recognized your handwriting on the marriage certificate."
When married to practical joker, it is always delightfully feminine to go along with the gag.The whole scenario is absurd, of course (as all the scenarios in The Recently Deflowered Girl are), but as with most great humor, the genius lies in the details. Walter is a "turf accountant"? And I would love to meet the girl who, after having sex for the first time, begins a sentence "Incidentally, Howard." The anachronistic touches actually make the story a lot funnier, too, since something like this could never happen in a time of social media, but that sort of feels like a loss. Gorey is wildly un-PC, too--something like "Deflowerment By Chinese Detective" would never pass muster today. But it's all an extremely effective part of Gorey's ghoulishness: he's a warped mirror, the silver cracking, on both the past, and our own strange brains.
Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves
After Spencer Ackerman publicly suggested that I need to start playing Hood Internet mixtapes at my entertainments, and the Twitterverse exploded about it, I downloaded the latest tape yesterday, and it really is that good. One track particularly stood out, one with a light female vocal snarling "I might like you better if we slept together." The gal involved is Philly rapper Amanda Blank. The video for "Might Like You Better" is pretty rad:
But I'm particularly digging "A Love Song" (the track has some blank space at the end):
Her flow reminds me a little bit of Estelle, whom I adore. She's got serious hip-hop cred (having worked with Spank Rock, Ghostface, etc.). And this is a really sweet ode to romance. We can always use more ladies in hip-hop. Check her out.
But I'm particularly digging "A Love Song" (the track has some blank space at the end):
Her flow reminds me a little bit of Estelle, whom I adore. She's got serious hip-hop cred (having worked with Spank Rock, Ghostface, etc.). And this is a really sweet ode to romance. We can always use more ladies in hip-hop. Check her out.
Oh, Joan Didion
V.L. Hartmann ran into Joan Didion on the street. I was in a class that got a rambling, multipage email from her that didn't remotely answer the question we'd asked her. But that's not the only reason I feel differently about Didion than Hartmann does, and lots of other young women do. I like Didion. I really do. The end of "Goodbye To All That"is an absolute masterpiece of description. Her political reporting is good, and unique: she's not necessarily amazing on policy, but she's wonderfully tart about the theater of it all. Despite all of this, I don't worship Didion, or even love her.
And I think this may be the reason why. I've always been uncomfortable with the "writers are always selling somebody out" line in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and the credit Didion seems to get for saying it. An announcement like that isn't actually emotionally honest. It's a declaration of your own cleverness. Didion is telling you in advance that she will ruin you, and you will give in to her anyway. To be fair, I think Didion has somewhat more empathy than that: she's not predatory. Even if The Year of Magical Thinking is a somewhat idealized view of her marriage, she clearly loved her husband. She can be good at capturing boredom and venality and futility. But Didion is profoundly not a joyful writer, and I have a hard time with that. I think Anne Lamott is a much less strong prose stylist and reporter than Didion is. But her writing, about terror, and fear, and absolution, and grace is open in a way Didion's isn't. I read Didion to leanr. But I read Lamott to feel.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Carried Away
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