Time off

Man, I accidentally took a month-long hiatus from this blog. I blame several things: actually having work to do at work, the fact that I joined a new internet forum, and lots of traveling over the month of August. Regardless, I'm trying to get back on the horse and I do have a fair number of things to write about, so hopefully you will see something worth reading here soon. In the meantime, something trendy:

On female friendships

"So divorced are we from the idea that these are the pitfalls of human friendships across every spectrum that even in feminist/womanist spaces, discussions of female friendships will frequently yield comments like, "Well, I have a hard time being friends with women because so many women are gossipy, competitive, jealous bitches."

No. So many people are like that.

That this woman can't successfully be friends with that woman does not mean women can't be friends. It means that those two women can't be friends."

From Shakesville, read the rest here.

Pitchfork Music Festival 2010

This year marked the second time I've attended Pitchfork since the inception of my blog, and also the third (out of five possible years) that I've attended Pitchfork period. I only went on Saturday and Sunday this year (ticket prices have gone up and I prioritized) but I will say that I intended to only attend Saturday and had such a good time that I bought a Sunday ticket and came on Sunday anyway, despite my best-laid plans.

Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera to either day, so I can't do a proper photo+writeup post about it, but I will go through the concerts I attended.

I arrived with my brother and cousin on Saturday with a mild hangover and a belly full of refriend beans and rice. We met up with a friend of ours who was very gung-ho about forcing a bottle of vodka lemonade onto us, and there began my bad idea boozing at Saturday Pitchfork. We were standing by stage A, half-assedly listening to Delorean, a band named after something incredibly trendy in that 2000's nostalgia for the 80'ss kind of way. They sounded good to me; I had never heard them before. I downloaded their album last night and put it on and it didn't sound nearly as good as their live show. It was vaguely like Cut Copy and I still think In Ghost Colours sounds better as a studio album. Since I'm about to see Cut Copy at Lollapalooza, I guess I can judge then whether they sound better live too.

Anyway, after that I walked around the poster fair and saw these amazing Gossip Girl posters that I totally wanted to buy (two images, one of Chuck Bass, one of Leighton Meester) but they were 50 bucks for a set and I chickened out about spending that much money (probably because I was planning on coming back for Sunday). Anyway, I got the business card of the artist and here is his website: Dead Meat Design. And here is one of the posters:

Afterwards I sat around with a couple of my cousin's friends and drank rum and coke with my brother to the point that I felt a little sick because it was like 90 degrees out with full sun and I was drinking booze instead of water. At some point I waited in line for half an hour to fill up my water bottle at the water fountain--they really should have more of those, but they also want us to spend money on bottled water, so I understand why they don't do it. Although it's still hella lame. Around this time Raekwon came on and I idly listened to it and felt like a poser because I have never listened to Wu Tang Clan, not once. I mean, maybe there was a song in the back of my head that just popped up, but I couldn't think of it right now. So anyway, yeah I'm not THAT cool when it comes to my music tastes, as evidenced by my Sunday experience, which I will describe shortly.

Then we stood up to listen to Wolf Parade. They put on an all right show; it really suffered from happening when it was still light out. Wolf Parade in general is kind of a huge disappointment for me because their first album was SO GOOD and everything since has been SO MEH. Also, it was the fourth time I've seen them live which means they're the band I've seen most often in concert, which is just screwy because they are nowhere near my favorite. Sometimes life works out this way.

The highlight of the night and the reason for the season was LCD Soundsystem's headliner set.

And..... It...... Was.Amazing.

They opened their show with Us v. Them. They played three songs off their new album: Pow Pow Pow, Drunk Girls (of course), and I Can Change. I Can Change is one of my favorites off the album so I was excited about that, but if I had my way I would have substituted All I Want and Dance Yourself Clean for the other two. Off of the first LP they played Yeah Yeah Yeah (Crass Version), Tribulations, Daft Punk is Playing at My House, and Losing My Edge. They also played Someone Great and All My Friends off of Sound of Silver, and now that I'm done listing most of the show, I may have actually remembered the entire set (which is a very rare occurrence for me).

They closed the show with New York, I Love You and in the last refrain broke into a split second cover of Empire State of Mind. As a friend of mine said, to insert a song about the glories of New York into their song about how New York is becoming hollow was a genius move, especially combined with the fact that LCD Soundsystem is ending and this is their final tour.

Everything about that show was amazing. I was close enough to the stage for it to be pretty loud and to see James Murphy and every song was a revelation. During Someone Great I even got choked up, mainly because that song's lyrics are so heart-rending.

On Sunday I bit the bullet and bought a scalped ticket for 60 dollars because I had so much fun on Saturday I wanted a repeat (and sitting by myself in my apartment while everyone I knew was at Pitchfork sounded awful). I got there with my roommate around 2:15 and first off we saw Girls, and got pretty close to the stage. I thought that their set was a pleasant surprise because I sincerely thought every song would be a straight up version from their album, but during a couple of their slower songs they took it to the next level and made it loud and droning. I was surprised at how much I liked the difference between their sun-drenched surfer rock sound and then straight guitar noise. It really worked for them. Also the lead singer was wearing silver socks.

Afterwards I hung out at the Beach House stage and enjoyed every second. Their set went by way too fast, probably because I was just lounging in the shade, but also they played a lot of songs off their latest album, which I love. They played my favorite, Zebra. And oh heck, I'll include this detail even though it's embarrassing: I cried during a couple of their songs. It happened for layered reasons, but one of them was definitely that their music just sounded so emotional and raw and beautiful that loud, and it went straight to the heartstrings. God, I'm a wuss.

Afterwards my people wanted to see some bands I wasn't interested in, so I wandered around the record fair and bought a key necklace from Spinal Fusion, whose shop you can find here. Very cool stuff, although she didn't have a button at her table for my neighborhood, Edgewater, among her Chicago-related products.

I then ate a vegan ice cream cone (the only ice cream available was vegan) and I found it very good. I think there is a hope for a vegan-only nation, although converting everybody from dairy is a hard task. I still can't make that leap because of Cheese. It's all about Cheese. Cheese which is so important I MUST CAPITALIZE IT. CHEESE.

After my respite from music, I went back to Stage A for Major Lazer, which had to be the silliest thing in the context of a music festival. Major Lazer is a collaboration between Diplo and Switch. Since it's basically just club music, they had some dancers bouncing about the front of the stage, and this guy with a mike who kept saying "CHICAGO! PUT YOUR HANDS UP!" and acting like he was the creator of the music. "HEY DIPLO, SLOW IT DOWN FOR A SECOND. I WANT TO SWITCH IT UP FOR CHICAGO!!" This repeated every few minutes. The best part of the whole thing were these two Chinese dragons on stage. Once they left, I found my roommate and we went to Neon Indian.

Neon Indian's set was kind of erratic, mainly because the lead singer had a theremin that he enjoyed dicking around with in between songs. So a song would be grooving along and sounding totally rad, and then he would cut it short to put in some noise. I like a bit of noise and some difference in the songs when I see a band, but if you get your apathetic crowd actually moving, I suggest you do NOT cut the song short to dick around with your noise machines. Just thoughts. Their two biggest songs still sounded great (which are "I shoulda taken acid with you" and "Deadbeat Summer").

Afterwards we went back to the main stages for Big Boi, who actually played "I like the way you move" while he had these little kid breakdancers on stage. The only girl in the group, who was about 10 years old I'd say, spun on her head for a good 3 minutes at the end of the song. When you're spinning on your head, I imagine each minute feels like an hour, so I'm still impressed with that. They begged us to like their page on facebook, but I can't remember what they were called now, so I guess we'll just have to live without that particular detail. Also he played a couple of minutes of "Bombs Over Baghdad" which was crazy! Probably because Pitchfork named it the song of the decade.

Then, finally, it was Pavement's big reunion show. Which I did not stay for all of, so you can just go ahead and revoke my indie cred card right now. As much as I would have liked to stay, I never listened to Pavement growing up and so I couldn't fuel the experience with nostalgia. I also didn't want to deal with how crazy the trains are after the headlining act (as it stands they were crazy enough when I left). What I saw of the show was awesome, and their stage was set up with really cool strings of regular light bulbs. They had this shock-jock DJ from the 90s with someone named like Rocking Mike (can't remember now) introduce the band, and it was kind of ridiculous. I think he was pulling a lot of asshole shit for entertainment value, but he claimed that Pitchfork was the minor leagues to Lollapalooza's major leagues, and wouldn't we rather be in Grant Park right now? Okay, yeah, so I am going to Lollapalooza this year, but I can tell you that my musical experience at Pitchfork is as good as Lolla is going to be (if not better). So anyway.

That is my write-up of Pitchfork 2010. HOLLER.

And then Tiger Beatdown went and did a post on fashion the day after my fashion rant

"And so when I hear, tights are not pants, or you should wear pantyhose to court, or I wouldn’t wear X cut of a shirt because it doesn’t look good on me, I think, who made these rules? Why are we following them? Why do we passively subscribe to an aesthetic system that requires us to daily fulfill the twin obligations of being “respectful” by not doing anything out of the ordinary and looking as thin and “feminine” as we can muster? I want fashion to be less about making other people comfortable, and more about personal expression and art. There is too much hierarchy. It is too top-down, from a murky top with too many leaders with too many conflicting messages."

Read the article here

taking fashion photography back

About a month ago now there was a post on one of the fashion blogs in my reader that has been stuck in my craw ever since: Read the post here

Excerpt:

Without getting too much into it at the moment, it's an example of a movement that is taking place, right now behind closed doors, by photographers who believe that fashion photography has lost its origin, and has become too commercialized, and too amateures. And they want to take things back, and at the same time dig deeper into their ability to create non tainted work.

Ehh? I'm pretty cynical about the fashion industry since I consume a lot of its imagery and know a fair amount of its hierarchies and yada yada yada. I have a pretty official stance on fashion photography, and it's basically that I want to make it as democratic as possible. I know that some of my ideas vis a vis fashion photos make no sense in terms of business. Okay, fashion on the grand scale is for all people. Everybody wears clothes. How much you buy into certain aesthetics or the luxury aspect of it depends on how much money you have and whether you really give a shit. I mean yeah, there are people out there who wear their t-shirt from the company picnic and their holy cargo shorts and their crocs and pretty much don't care ever, period. I offer no judgment on that. What I'm saying is: because class exists, because there are wealthy people and poor people, there is going to be wealthy fashion and poor fashion. This will result in the really high end luxury fashions and goods being photographed by people who are paid a lot for images that are put in magazines that hawk expensive goods; magazines that are expensive to make. But even knowing all that, I don't buy it. I don't want fashion to be about the luxury goods--I mean, certain articles of clothing can be well made and cost more--but the whole super star designer ball game we've got going on, where designers sign their name to shoes that cost 50 dollars to make and then price them at 5000--this shit does not sit well with me, whether or not it's a fact of life.

Okay, I'm not really looking to take down the entire fashion industry in this post. Obviously I set the scale really high here.

The idea of a fashion movement that wants to take fashion photography "back" makes me nervous. First of all, how does one even take things back to the time before fashion photog was "too commercialized and "amateures"? When was that glorious time in fashion photography history? The 90s? The 80s? Helmut Lang? If you get rid of amateurs in fashion photography, what are we left with? The elitist hierarchy that shoves Lagerfeld and only Lagerfeld down our throats? The kind of photography that demands that women's bodies only look a certain way?

On the other hand, the commercialization of fashion photography (which I'm assuming just means photoshop): now there's something I would like to revolutionize. I want to see real bodies in real contexts wearing these clothes. I want the fantasy but I also want the fantasy to be democratic; i.e. let's stop pitting rich white women as the ultimate goal and let all kinds of bodies participate in the luxury of interesting clothes. And let's get rid of the computer programs that make their skin look like plastic. Let's get rid of that everlasting temptation to remove just a couple inches off the waist, digitally. Or physically, that too.

So I don't know. I hope that this revolution from this blog post, this group of people behind closed doors: I hope they know what they're doing. I hope they do something fantastic and interesting. I hope they use all kinds of models. I hope that their revolution also actually matters, because it would be nice to see something out of the confines of the Vogue monarchy.

But "taking back fashion photography" is entirely missing the point. By all means, change its course. Just don't romanticize the past and miss the forest for the trees.

On Taylor Swift's "You Belong with Me" Part 2

Some of my more faithful readers may recall this post about how I thought that Taylor Swift's video for "You Belong with Me" should be made with a gay boy as the main character. Well, in this wonderous world of Youtube and Jezebel commenters, my wish is...my command! Check it:

Love this! Love the ending! Gah this makes me happy.

AusNTM cycle 6 coming out this month.

If you read this blog you should know that I'm an avid consumer of the Top Model franchise. ANTM of course if the mother, but Australia's Next Top Model is totally the hip, more attractive younger sister. And as a result of AusNTM, I will forever be in love with Australians. So here is the promo for Cycle 6 (and how amazing is it when Alex Perry says "Expensive"????)

On Racism in the Corporate Lunchroom

I had one of those experiences a couple of days ago. One of those experiences that is the reason I usually hide in my cubicle during lunch: racism in the lunchroom. Oh, it all starts so innocently enough. You work at a majority white corporation that makes school materials that aren't exactly harmless, but on the spectrum from the manufacturing of kitten beds to weaponizing lethal diseases, you would definitely say this company is on the "kitten bed" end of the spectrum. And besides, you think to yourself, you're just a temp anyway. You aren't exactly culpable for any of the crap that goes on here.

So you go down to lunch to eat with all the other white temps in your white washed building except for the Bilingual department where are the Spanish speakers dwell (I kid you the fuck not) and everyone is talking about innocent things. Stuff white people like. The Royal Tenenbaums comes up in conversation. Then the next thing the girl next to you who works in Science is talking about how hilarious it is that when she worked at Chuck E. Cheeze, all of the "gangstas" used to come in wearing hot pink jumpsuits and putting on their chapstick. "You're not scary," she says defiantly, following her speech with, "Don't you guys remember when they were all wearing pink? It was so funny, I wish they still were." Then this other girl, a girl you don't like very much anyway because she made you miss the train once, she decides that she needs to mention that she loves it when "they" "swagger." She then describes a man's swagger that she saw the other day on the street. (And this girl once asked me what it was like to go to a liberal school because her parents are so conservative).

The point of this story is: post-racial society my ass, the only words missing from this conversation are "Black people" and/or "Negroes." This conversation hit me viscerally in many ways because these people do not know who I am. The only thing they know is my name, the fact that I'm also a temp for this corporation, and that I'm white. Without knowing a shred about my personal life or my politics, they assume that they are in safe company .

There is this blogger, Harriet Jacobs. Maybe I've mentioned her before. She runs a pretty kickass blog called Fugitivus (click here to get to it) where she has taken on these issues before. I would feel remiss in addressing any of my experience here without quoting her and her wondrous blog capabilities because often she can say what I cannot. I thought of this excerpt when I was in this situation:

"This is what comes of being the “right” race in a racist society. You are an assumed depository for vile, racist conversations and opinions, and your assumed compatriots operate under the belief that this is not damaging, enraging, difficult, isolating, or painful to hear. I do not feel like an overtly radical person. On the spectrum of anti-racism, I consider myself a tick to the left of moderate. But even that perception is radical, because to get there, I’ve had to move my liberal white friends a whole football field to the right of moderate, into “I’m not racist racist, but I am better, smarter, and more rational than the hypothetical dark masses that exist in my brain” territory." (taken from this post)

What I find so noteworthy about my experience in the lunchroom is that I am complicit in racist statements because I cannot argue with them. It's my job and I make it a point not to talk about my politics, social or otherwise. The best I could do was judge them furiously in my brain; these judgments have been sticking around for several days. Ultimately, what bothers me is that these assumptions are so monolithic: all black people do this and all white people are just waiting to have their moment behind black people's backs. (The "isn't it fun to talk like this" moment). I am not interested in participating in these kinds of discussions with strangers. I don't care what color my skin is: my perceived whiteness should not be an excuse to say racist bullshit around me. Not only do I not want to hear what hateful things are dwelling in other white people's brains, I don't want to be part of that whole post-racial, color-blind system that uses vaguer pronouns to say the same things that white people said 50 years ago.

So yeah, I'm pissed about this still. I know that being a white person who is angry that a bunch of other white people assumed stuff about her because she was white really is a drop in the ocean of systematic racism and that my complaints seem meager. But I can't let this experience slide completely unopposed, even if all I managed was a measly blog post.

Excerpt from Shapely Prose

"And then I started thinking about what it was really like before I’d actually made peace with my body. And what it was really like was this: The Fantasy of Being Thin absolutely dominated my life — even after I’d gotten thin once, found myself just as depressive and scattered and frustrated as always, and then gained all the weight back because, you know, diets don’t work. The reality of being thin didn’t even sink in after all that, because The Fantasy of Being Thin was still far more familiar to me, still what I knew best. I’d spent years and years nurturing that fantasy, and only a couple years as an actual thin person. Reality didn’t have a chance."

Read the rest here

Hey Arnold: nostalgia and nicktoons

Recently my roommate and I discovered that Netflix Instant Watch has a lot of old nicktoons available. I started off obsessively watching Hey Arnold, my favorite of old Nickelodeon cartoons to this day. Then I realized: I know what is wrong with this country. I know what is wrong with the oversexualization of little girls! I know why the celebrity industrial complex is so damn irritating! I even know why Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant! It's because Nickelodeon dropped nicktoons like "Hey Arnold," "Angry Beaver," and "Aaah! Real Monsters." Spongebob remains, but even the Rugrats ended up as tweens.

Hopefully I'll be back to post about other nicktoons that I've watched, but today I'll deal with Hey Arnold exclusively. It's a show that's beautiful in its simplicity: it's about a bunch of kids who attend a public school in New York. They live in Brooklyn and they represent a wide range of socioeconomic statuses, ethnic backgrounds, attitudes, and dress styles. (For the longest time I thought Arnold was wearing a kilt, although now I realize it's a plaid shirt under a sweater). The main character, Arnold, is an orphan living in a boarding house with his grandparents. He is incredibly even-tempered, he understands human motivation, he is kind and big-hearted, and yet he is still a kid who likes popsicles and baseball.

What is so great about the show is its diversity. The characters in the show are not carbon copied young adults who go about their gossipy lives; they include serious character motivations (Mr. Hyunh, one of the boarders, came to New York to look for his daughter, who he gave up for adoption during the Vietnam war). The main female character, Helga, may have a crush on Arnold, but she is no wilting flower. For every moment she spends pining after her Beloved, the next she spends punching that guy who is always wheezing in the nose.

The episode that really convinced me of Hey Arnold's greatness, however, does not heavily feature Arnold. Instead it is an episode about Helga, in which she is not invited to a girls-only sleepover for the girls in her class. Everybody spends most of the episode making fun of Helga for not being girly enough, until she gives in, gets a Fifteen magazine, and gives herself a hilarious makeover.

(Those boobs are totally made of tissue paper, btw). At the end of the episode, she goes to the slumber party, tries to fake her way through girliness, and then loses it when she sees the girls with green mud masks on. Mid-rant, she pulls her hair back into her signature pigtails and wipes off all of her makeup while asking "who wants to do this? Why do we even have to do this?" The girls say "but this is what girls do, Helga" and she says "Bully. Just because this is what girls do doesn't mean they have to do it." At this moment the girls discover that the boys are spying on them and they capture Harold, an oafish dude, and put makeup on him. It's a moment of pure cartoon perfection. The point of the episode is that you can be whoever you want to be, and do whatever you want to do, regardless of gender, but it's not overstated. Helga may give a speech but it's a speech in line with her bitchy, bossy character. This cartoon is remarkably subtle for a kid's show and that is one of the most important parts of its genius.

Two points for the last part of this post: the characters wear really iconic cartoon clothing that I discovered has been transformed into outfits via Polyvore, below:

Harold!! for Polka My Dot ina mid-life crisis

Helga!!!! for Polka My Dot ina mid-life crisis

Dressing like Helga is my new aspiration in life.

Secondly, Hey Arnold uses so many tropes that it can easily be turned into a drinking game (one in which my roommate and I have indulged multiple times). I thought I would provide a list of them here for you intrepid Nicktoon fans.

Hey Arnold Drinking Game

Drink when...

1) The cats/dogs/pigs run in or out of the boarding house.

2) Helga calls Arnold a football head

3) Helga goes on a loveydovey rant about Arnold/Punches Weezy in the face (since these usually are paired, you can decide whether to drink twice)

4) Arnold's grandmother acts crazy

5) Phoebe says something nerdy

6) They make a joke about Harold's eating habits/size

7) Arnold and Gerald do their special thumbshake

8) Grandpa talks about going to the toilet or is seen going to and coming from the toilet.

9) Someone says Hey Arnold!

10) The polish man is fighting with his wife or is inconsiderate (there is a whole episode about this so you have to watch out on this one).

I'm open to any additions to the Hey Arnold drinking game in the comments.

Best of the 2010 World Cup Commercials

My parents were in town last weekend and they gave me World Cup Fever. When we weren't sitting at bars watching the games in High-Def, we were sitting around, watching youtube videos of old miraculous goals and World Cup commercials. Of the commercials they showed me, I decided to compile the ones I thought were best.

World Cup 2010 Bitchin' advertising campaigns:

Best overall advertisement: PUMA: Journey of Football. This commercial has heart; you'll laugh, you'll cry. Also, points for the best song and imagery pairing, like, ever.

Best joking use of historical rivalries: MTN: Two World Wars and One World Cup.

Nothing like reducing all of the world's history to a soccer joke. Did you guys get the memo? England won the world...twice!!! Sarcasm aside, this is pretty clever.

Best obligatory advertisement with famous sponsored players in a match together: Pepsi

Points lost for the fact that Kaka looks like a huge doofus in this commercial with his Dumb and Dumber hair. However, he's a total hottie in real life*

Best comedic advertisement: Nike: Write the Future

Things I have to say about this commercial: Rooney's beard when he's in the trailer park is hysterical; they routinely cut out the Gabriel Garcia Bernal part in the shortened version but it always gets me; Ronal*d'oh* is a pure stroke of genius; who the heck does Nike's ad campaigns? They really must be raking it in.

I also feel I should put an epilepsy warning on this one.

Best tearjerker commercial: Bravia
The first time I watched this commercial I burst into tears the minute the kids walked into the stadium.

* This is what Kaka REALLY looks like:

Jezebel reactions to release of Alejandro

Click to enlarge!

One hundredth post!!!

We are quickly approaching the one year anniversary of S and K (June 18) and what better way to prepare than to celebrate my ONE HUNDREDTH POST!!

Obviously it seems a bit arbitrary to celebrate 100 posts since some of my posts are just links to music videos or what have you, but I am proud to say that I made it through this year intact, and as a slightly more happy person than when I first wrote the introduction to the blog (which you can view here). I'm happy to see that S and K managed to make it through its first year of existence. I also will say that I know I can never compare to FourFour, but one day I hope to be celebrating 5 years of this blog (read Rich's five year celebration post here).

Since this is only the 100th post, which isn't necessarily that many posts in the long run, I will celebrate by posting a top-five of sorts. Basically, the posts I'm listing are ones of which I am particularly proud.

The girl with the most cake: my favorite photoshop phun

Because you can never educate people enough on geography.

My definitive post on Lady Gaga, which still seems to be holding up over time.

Jokey post in which I dismantle "Sexy Bitch."

Public Transportation and Ableism.

A lot has changed in my life since I started the blog. I moved from North Carolina to Chicago. I stopped laying around in a depressed state on my parent's couch and started living my life again. I've worked a bunch of temp jobs and met some new people. I can't wait to be celebrating the 200th post soon.

it's here it's here it's here it's here

It's that time again. Gaga's got a new video out. Some people will say it's repetitive, some will say she's a knock-off of Madonna, but I'm just hyped to read all of the fallout.

Tiger Beatdown on Lynn Hirschberg's piece on MIA

"Because no-one, in the wake of this piece, is talking about the Tamils. No-one’s talking about Sri Lanka. No-one’s talking about M.I.A.’s most provocative belief, the one that’s really threatening: The idea that violent oppression can and should be met with violent resistance, which is a complicated and scary proposition, one that people have been evaluating and fighting over for a long-ass time, one that we’re nowhere near figuring out as yet. No-one is talking about that; no-one, to be blunt, really cares. What we’re talking about, instead, is a plate of fucking fries."

Read the rest of the piece here

What was the best concert you ever went to?

I was messing around in my formspring account and the system asked me this question. At first I was going to answer it in terse earnestness, but then I realized I had a lot to say. So much to say, in fact, that I thought I would jump start my writing for the month of June by answering the question.

Sometimes I think that the halcyon days of my concert attendance are over. Not to say I don't attend concerts or still enjoy them; rather, in high school (when I went to the highest rates of concerts per month) going to a concert was a soul-defining exercise. By going to see the Arcade Fire with my friends, I felt like I was confirming that I was some hip young chick, something so far outside of my conservative Southern high school (I will still swear on a Bible that our de facto class song was "Sweet Home Alabama.") At the time I thought that every band my brother made me listen to, or every time I joined in conversations that involved Pitchfork's rating system, I was being so incredibly unique that I deserved a star.

Ok, seriously, I had problems. Regardless of that, eventually Urban Outfitters invaded our national consciousness and started playing Karen O while a bunch of teeny boppers bought t-shirts that said things like "I don't eat ham because I'm a vegetarian so FUCK OFF MOM AND DAD" and then I discovered that whatever music I liked wasn't really going to define who I was anymore. Everyone loves music and it's fun to be able to share that with people, so hiding in a corner with a list of "indier than thou" bands feeling superior was no longer going to work for me.

But the world doesn't really need another blog post in which someone expostulates "The Shins were sooo cool before Garden State made them all famous and stuff" so I'll move on. All I'm trying to do is make the point that concerts meant a lot more to me back then, when I was even more of a moldable human being searching for some reason to feel like the world was rocking. This fact alone would affect my top five list of concerts.

Then I was talking to a friend today about how I was writing this blog post and she said "so much of my concert experience is my mood, the comfort of the venue, and the number of songs they play that I really know."

And isn't that the truth? You go to a concert and you're stuck in your head the entire time because it's too loud to talk. Hopefully what's going on during the show is entertaining the music is so good you're totally swept up into it. But 90% of the time I spend concerts thinking about how I really fucking wish I was in a band and how much I having a desk job.

So, without further ado, I'm going to put up a list of top five concerts that I've attended. I don't really know if they legitimately are the best concerts, but they are ones I've been feeling in my memory:

5) Miike Snow

Venue: the Metro, Chicago

My roommate and I went to see Miike Snow on a lark a couple of months back, and the show surprised me in many ways. I didn't like the Metro is a venue that much, but these crazy Swedes came out in matching plain white masks and played with an extreme intensity that was infectious. I'd only heard one song by the group but they managed to hook me for the entire concert, which is quite a feat. Their sound was loud and powerful and their look was eerie.

4) Patrick Wolf

Venue: The Cat's Cradle, Carrboro, NC

I went to see Patrick Wolf with Radonwolf last summer. It was part of a Nylon magazine tour which in and of itself is kind of embarrassing. However, I've loved Wolf for a few years now and because it was part of a strange promotional tour there was absolutely no one there. I think there might have been 75 people in a venue that could hold up to 300, and I was right at the stage. Beforehand, Wolf walked by me and said "hey" and I nearly crapped my pants. He makes me wish I was a gay man. During the show, he stopped in the middle of the set to give a eulogy for Michael Jackson who had died days earlier. He then sang an a cappella version of Joni Mitchell's song "Michael." I hate a cappella as a rule, but it was still a nice gesture. He spent most of his banter between songs telling us how amazing the slow life in North Carolina was, and how he could have been at this Glastonbury Festival in England but had chosen to experience the USA instead. To top off the set he put on a grey leather jacket that had bird wing-type epaulets. I should have stayed to get a photo with him. He's also very tall.

I think the weirdest part of the entire show was that there was a very drunk man in attendance with his girlfriend who kept turning to us and saying "THIS IS MY FIRST GAY CONCERT." He also got in a weird back and forth with Wolf at one point about his sexuality that was uncomfortable, but who doesn't like a good asshole story about a concert? As my brother likes to say, the perfect dinner experience should always include one thing to complain about.

3) Gogol Bordello

Venue: McCarren Pool, Brooklyn

Everybody who's seen Gogol Bordello raves about how good their live show is, and I'm no exception. I spent a lot of the show wasting cash on 6 dollar cups of beer. The lead singer has a baller mustache and there are dancers. I think the reason I liked this show so much is that standing around in an empty pool with a bunch of Williamsburg hipsters was fucking surreal and AWESOME. Afterwards we got pizza.

2) The Arcade Fire

Venue: The Cat's Cradle, Carrboro, NC

These top two shows are from high school, and they both hold very dear places in my heart. Particularly because they were at my favorite venue of all time, The Cat's Cradle. I saw the Arcade Fire with a dear high school friend I referenced above, and it was during their funeral tour. I knew every song. Final Fantasy played beforehand and I enjoyed watching him create loops and building his songs--doing a one-man show must be rough. The best part of the show was that they created a funeral procession through the crowd: all of them holding various instruments, sweating their asses off, and beating drums, they walked through all of us and I got to touch the guy who looks like an adult Ron Weasley.

1) Franz Ferdinand

Venue: The Cat's Cradle, Carrboro, NC

This show will always have a one-up on my other concert experiences because it sold out before I had a chance to get tickets. My cousin and I decided to make a last-ditch effort to see them by standing around outside of the venue and hoping that someone would need to sell of their tickets. I finagled a ticket somehow, but then it seemed like Sam would never get one. We waited around through both of the opening bands before a guy who had won the tickets in a radio contest came up and sold his ticket to Sam. We walked in just as Franz Ferdinand came on stage. At that point in time, Franz Ferdinand's sound was so fresh and new and fun that every second of the show was undiluted positive energy. Also, the lead guitarist dances in a very particular and funny way that is best illustrated by the video for "Take Me Out."

eat your heart out

Commenting thread that seems important to me

I'm going to leave this here with very little comment. Normally I would put one-link posts in my tumblr, but I'm trying to keep them separated thematically.

Click ahead.

Daria Werbowy by Mikael Jansson for Interview: Racism

Check out the visuals first

Recently I ran across this fashion editorial in one of the blogs I follow in my reader. The response to it has been mixed, of course, and for my initial reaction you can check my tumblr.

Other blogs have gotten around to saying that they don't like this editorial of course. Refinery29 says they aren't down with it, and fashionlogie presents the info in a more news-like manner. My least favorite reaction was from fashion copious where the poster asked: "Maybe she was taking in a culture? Is the problem

in our own viewing?"

Another poster on Refinery29 said the same thing in a more ham-fisted manner, stating "If Daria wasn't a famous model, no one would be discussing the editorial like this. Other models are the subjects as well, and I think if people interpret these surreal and almost painterly images as "racist," that's their own problem, not the photographs'."

So yes, I think that these images are racist. If not racist, I think, at minimum, that they are the paragons of bad taste. Fashion editorials routinely fall into traps of cultural appropriation and the objectifying of the "other" and I find this shoot to be no different. The problem isn't that the other models are subjects. The problem is that the white woman in the shoot is seen as a focal point. I don't give a damn that Daria Werbowy is famous. What I really care about is the fact that she is white, and her juxtaposition with people of other races in this shoot clearly points to her being more important than the other models. In a society where notions of white beauty are clearly prioritized, putting a white woman in the center of a fashion shoot is nothing surprising. It just reinforces the same old (fundamentally racist) ideas.

Additionally, the claim that the problem is in the way we view the spread: bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. I agree it is not the responsibility of the artist to be held accountable for every single interpretation of a piece. However, when your "art" draws from common racist ideology, you have to be aware of the implications. In these photographs, the lighting and coloring of the shoot makes the models of color blend into the background. They are nothing more than actors in the fantasy that is the white woman's descent into exoticism. The bottom line is that an artist can't put an enormous canvas featuring a penis into a gallery and then claim that it doesn't mean anything, that it's just a portrait of the artist's boyfriend's dick. No, a painting of a penis would carry many cultural implications, and the artist has to be aware of these possible interpretations. Artists' responsibility is to be deliberate with their imagery. If they are going to manipulate racist tropes, there most certainly can be an explanation as to why they have been used. But putting the art out there, saying that it's just for the aesthetic and has no deeper meaning, and then claiming racism is only in the eye of the beholder is, at best, irresponsible. [for the record, Interview/the photographer have not staked this claim, but their defenders have]

So yes, I'm calling "racist" on this shoot. If I wanted to be kind, I would at least call it "careless" and that's equally as bad.

Public Transportation Part 2: The Nature of Ableism

A primary difference between living in isolated car culture and consistently riding public transportation is that I encounter many, many more people (as I stated in my previous post) in my day to day life. The sheer quantity of people with whom I share a space within one day is astounding. And, thanks to that quantity, some of these people I encounter are differently abled, either physically or mentally. I ride a route on the commuter train that I believe leads to some sort of school or workplace for people with physical and mental differences. I have no concrete proof of this (I don't know how to look it up) but sometimes they are together in groups on the afternoon train and the fact that I see them quite regularly led me to this conclusion.

There is a man with a mental handicap who rides practically the entirety of my commute. He is talkative and obsessed with the details of the commute. He has an extensive knowledge of all of the intersecting bus and train routes along our commute. I encounter him in direct and indirect ways 2-3 times a week and to be honest, he makes me extremely uncomfortable. I am not proud of this emotion. This discomfort is the reason I wanted to write the blog post.

I have struggled with an intense fear surrounding people with handicaps my entire life. I am not writing this sentence as a means of excusing myself; it would be easy to write off anything I feel uncomfortable about as a "phobia" and never change. I thought that this problem stemmed from my extreme sensitivity. It pains me to deal with the knowledge that there are people in this world whose lives are so severely constricted by circumstances outside of their control. It pains me to the point that I feel uncontrollably sad and uncomfortable.

When I look at this fear, and even this sense of injustice, I realize that it smacks of ableism. Yes, I am afraid of this man who insists on talking to me about the bus every day because I simultaneously fear and dislike his difference. As a person who can be extremely shy, it is often difficult for me to think of things to say, and I resent him for putting me in that position because that is who he is.

I have had discussions in the past about the nature of feeling physically or emotionally threatened in public places and how that intersects with my conception of myself as racist/anti-racist, classist/not-classist. I should add ableist/not-ableist to this list, although I believe the entire matter is something for another blog post. I would like to note, however, that I am not implying that you, reader, are a bad person because one time you felt afraid when you were threatened while walking on the street. I'm just pointing to my experiences with fear in conjunction with disability on public transportation and asking--how do privileged people confront these feelings that perpetuate a system where people with different bodies are valued differently?

And ultimately, who am I to decide that this man, the one I encounter weekly, will live a life of less value than me? Who am I to think that about anyone? Who is anybody to think that of anybody? Isn't the value of a life mostly determined by the person living it and their actions, not those people who think that the way that person's body looks or brain works makes them inherently less valuable?

The concept of ableism and how I could live my life as somebody who is more at ease with the idea of disability is relatively new for me. I can't say I have all of the answers on this one, but I do think that in many ways riding public transportation is an edifying experience because it makes me come to terms with all kinds of people. And the idea of dealing with certain types of difference, including disability, had once been a theory when I didn't have to confront it as part of my daily existence.

I want to stress that I don't think that riding a bus is a magical world where people from all walks of life can join hands and sing kumbaya. Sometimes the bus runs late, people are cruel to one another, and it is way too crowded. On the other hand, I know from experience it is easier for a single person to recognize the validity of all types of human experience if this person is in contact with many types of people in their day to day life. And I think these experiences are important to my conception of my feminism and myself.

For the end of this post, I'd like to refer my readers to this series of photographs. They were taken by Holly Norris. She writes in her statement about the series, "American Able' intends to, through spoof, reveal the ways in which women with disabilities are invisibilized in advertising and mass media." What if we lived in a world where advertisements like this were actually on billboards? How would we perceive disability, both physical and mental, and where would we be? How do you feel when you look at these images? How is your reaction related to what you have internalized about disability?

To end, one more blog of note.
Earlier

Arizona raises the bar

WHAAAAAAAAAT?? (click on the what for a link to this indescribable bill in Arizona that just got passed)

What? What? What?

Horne said he believes the Mexican-American studies program teaches Latino students that they are oppressed by white people. Public schools should not be encouraging students to resent a particular race, he said.

What? What? What?

This is the greatest form of intellectual censorship of ALL TIME. Anybody who says that it's possible for history to be objective was smoking a crack pipe. I'm honestly so baffled I don't know what to say other than WHAAAAAAAT?

On Public Transportation: A Two Part Post

Recently I've been unpacking my ideas about what it's like to ride public transportation consistently. I would prefer to write two blog entries about it separately, as my first entry is going to to be based more on personal experiences and observations while my second entry will dive more deeply into some societal issues at play about ableism and transportation. If you're more interested in what I have to say about bias and moving around, come back for the next post which should be up sometime by the end of next week.

A brief rundown of my transportation history: while I was growing up I lived in an area where not driving was virtually impossible. I got a car before my junior year of high school and lived in it until going to college. I took it with me to my sophomore year and while I didn't drive it as much while I was there, it was still an integral part of my life.

In college I lived in a small town where you could walk to get everything you needed; however, you definitely needed the car if you wanted to go anywhere outside of the town or if you wanted to buy quality booze. That being said, minus the drives to the nearest "big city," I totally could have bought all of my booze by using a bike to drive to the state-operated liquor store that was two miles (more or less) down the road.

When I graduated I wanted to be able to live somewhere where I wouldn't need a car. One of the biggest considerations was money; I knew I wouldn't be making enough of it to justify having a car. I wouldn't be able to pay for car insurance or upkeep. I also want to put my money where my mouth is. I talk a salty game about caring for the environment, or at least loving big cities, and if I lived in a place where I needed a car on a day to day basis, then I feel I wouldn't be doing my ideals any justice. I'm not saying that having a car or not having a car has any meaning in terms of who you are as a human being. However, we have to acknowledge that we are on the verge of a major planetary shift when it comes to fuel; as such, I wanted to try my hand at having a smaller carbon footprint.

I made the big move to Chicago and started living life as a free-wheeling walker, bus-rider, and train-taker. However, a few months after I moved here, I got a temporary (but still relatively long-term) job in the suburbs that made my public transportation commute quite long. In the morning, it isn't such a big deal (it is about an hour door to door) but in the afternoons the train doesn't come until 30+ minutes after I get out of work, so the commute ends up ranging from an hour and 15 to an hour and 45 minutes long. This amount of time is insufferable for me because I am all about efficiency, and as somebody who lived in car culture for most of her life, I don't understand having to wait thirty minutes for a train. For that reason, I participated in an after-work carpool for three months. Basically this meant that a couple of my coworkers were generous enough to drop me off on their way home since we all lived in relatively the same area. However, somewhere along the line the situation got complicated and I decided to start taking the train home.

That was actually four days ago. I'm in the first week of riding the train home regularly, and I am struggling with it. For one thing, it is common for the train I take to show up 15 minutes later than scheduled because of a "boarding passenger" (I have never been clear on who could delay a train 15 minutes by boarding but I will take the intercom's word for it). Secondly, the train system that I have to take (the Metra, for all of you Chicagoans) does not announce the plans of the train arriving in the station. On my second day of riding the train home, I distractedly boarded a train that was going to run express from my work stop to downtown. I didn't get home until 630 that day, 2 hours and 10 minutes after I left work, because of all the backtracking I had to do. It was a brutal experience. And my third point is that the Metra is LOUD. You think the CTA is loud but then you're standing next to a train that has got to be a couple tons heavier than the longest CTA train and it's blasting past you with the DING DING DING of its bell and all you want to do is curl up in the fetal position in bed and listen to the cars dimly rush past your window. Anything but this loud, awful train!!!!!!!!!

But one of the most interesting (for better or for worse) things about public transportation is the people. I enjoy looking at them and knowing who is on my commute. It's a strange phenomenon when you ride in the same vehicles with the same people every day and you don't know their names. This evening, I took a bus I don't normally ride on weekdays to the bank, and I saw a man who is always on my morning commute. It felt like I was seeing a ghost and I kept stealing glances at him. I have no idea if he recognized me, as he is the stoic type.

Even though I enjoy knowing all of these people by face, fundamentally I am not interested in them talking to me. I am introverted, and when I am freaking out mentally about my commute, I need my space. This anonymous privacy is not always possible and you can bet your bottom dollar that I am PISSED OFF when somebody insists on talking to me past a couple of platitudes about life on the rails. It makes me wonder a lot about my life philosophy: I believe what makes my life rich is the people that populate it; however, I am entirely uninterested in meeting people when I'm transporting myself to a destination. I know I'm not alone in this: it's why we have our ipods and our books and our newspapers and our phones and our etcetera. I just wanted to point out the inherent fallacy in the fact that I complain constantly about it being difficult to meet people after college when I'm surrounded by them every day. I doubt seriously that I'll be meeting my next BFFer on the train to work, but should I be open to the idea?

Sigh. Now that I've worked through that via blog post, tune in next post to read my thoughts on the intersection of the disabled and public transportation.

Beyonce Why Don't You Love Me?

"Why Don't You Love Me" - Beyoncé from Beyoncé on Vimeo.

Beyonce's got a new video out and I think it has to be in my top ten favorite music videos (now there's a list that would be hard to make!) You got to watch it to believe it but she does the 1950s housewife thing in typical Beyonce fashion: totally fucking bitching while kicking ass and taking names. I'm not sure this is necessarily more than '50s eye candy, but you could definitely interpret it as a critique of this way of thinking (i.e. asking "Why don't you love me?" and fawning all over your man is soooo 1950s). WATCH IT!!!

Suffering for Fashion

Every day Jezebel runs a ragtrade post that just has various pieces of information from the fashion industry. Today I noticed a bullet about male model Ambrose Olson, which also included a link to a bullet from another post that detailed the number of model deaths over the past two years. I have included this information for your edification:

From Today:

Male model Ambrose Olson, 24, passed away last week. According to unconfirmed reports, he committed suicide by hanging. Olson, who was well-known for campaigns including Hugo Boss, Yves Saint Laurent, andArmani, is the fifth model to take his own life in less than two years. Additionally, in November, 2008, male model Randy Johnston died of a heroin overdose, apparently accidental

From April 26

Colombian model and celebrity Lina Marulanda has died, apparently by suicide. She jumped from the balcony of her sixth floor apartment. In November of last year, 20-year-old Korean model Daul Kim was found hanged in her boyfriend's apartment in Paris; in May, also in Paris, 28-year-old model andSpider-Man 3 actress Lucy Gordon was found dead, also by hanging. In November, 2008, 26-year-old Canadian model Hayley Kohle died after falling seven stories from the balcony of her agency-run apartment in Milan, and her death was ruled a suicide. So, too, was the June, 2008, death of 20-year-old Kazakh model Ruslana Korshunova, who was killed by the fall from her New York apartment's balcony. In February, 2008, former Yves Saint Laurent muse andFrance's Next Top Model host Katoucha Niane's body was fished out of the Seine. No foul play was suspected in her death. In addition, on the same day that Kohle died, American male model Randy Johnston was found dead of an accidental heroin overdose in London.

I am not familiar with all of these models' work except for Daul Kim (I have a link to her blog in my sidebar, and it is a very interesting read). I wonder whether if this series of model deaths could be labeled a trend, and what exactly is causing them. You could probably add Alexander McQueen to this list, in a way, since he committed suicide and was a well-known fashion designer.

Of course it is ironic that the beautiful, well-traveled, and (some of them) rich people of the fashion industry are taking their own lives. It rings too true of Richard Cory, the one and only poem I have memorized, about a rich man who takes his own life even though everybody in his town envies him. I have silly dreams and aspirations about being a model; after all, I might be America's Next Top Model's biggest fan and follower (that is a big claim to make but let's just run with it for the rest of the post). What other profession so readily funds you traveling the world, wearing fabulous clothing, and getting photographed while doing it? It is like career-porn for the young.

And then there is the other side. The side that results in accidental drug overdoses or purposeful suicides, the side where these faces that we encounter on the day to day are so meaningless to us that we no longer realize how lonely it must be to model. How hard it is to be looked at like cattle and criticized constantly. And underneath that, is there even the satisfaction of knowing that your work serves a greater purpose? I love models and modeling and I can't imagine a life without them, but isn't there the tiniest nugget of truth about the fact that modeling is an inherently selfish profession? Is it possible to save a life by wearing a Valentino dress or are you just perpetuating an industry that promotes rigid beauty standards, gender norms, and industrialized capitalism?

It is a terrible shame that all of these models are taking their lives. And obviously each death is unique: unique because every person is different, unique because the reasons why it happened are individual to each person who died. But these deaths, they should be analyzed, and used as a starting point for serious change in the fashion industry. Not a dedication of an episode of a reality show to Tyra's favorite designer (photo below).