S and K

Time off

2010-09-06T09:08:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-21T09:28:00.001-07:00

"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

2010-07-19T09:46:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-15T10:22:00.001-07:00

"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

2010-07-14T08:44:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-03T07:13:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-07-02T07:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

"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

2010-06-22T07:38:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-21T00:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-11T20:16:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge!

One hundredth post!!!

2010-06-09T08:39:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-08T09:49:00.001-07:00

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

2010-06-08T07:18:00.000-07:00

"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?

2010-06-03T12:02:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-02T18:48:00.000-07:00

Commenting thread that seems important to me

2010-05-25T14:03:00.001-07:00

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

2010-05-13T21:30:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-13T20:45:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-06T18:32:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-05-05T18:59:00.000-07:00

"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

2010-04-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

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).

Life has been getting in the way lately

2010-04-25T19:09:00.000-07:00

Life has been all up in my junk lately and I haven't has as much time to write on the blog. I recommend you check out my tumblr if you're dying to see my internet activity. It mainly consists of fashion images I find interesting and other internet detritus.

In other news, I found this Runaways video the other day and thought I would share it purely on the basis of Cherie Curie's silver jumpsuit. Oh yeah, be still my heart!

Heidi Montag's Plastic Surgery

2010-04-06T15:00:00.000-07:00

Listen, I know, I KNOW. I know I'm coming to the boat late on this one. But yesterday Jezebel posted a gossip item about Ol' Plastic Bag Montag which you can see here {usmagazine}

OH, it horrifies me! It haunts my dreams! The notions that not only did Montag get her back "scooped" (which honestly makes it sound like the plastic surgeon just went in there and made an ice cream cone of her back tissue), she did it WITHOUT REALLY KNOWING WHAT IT WAS. And really, if you look at the picture in the link, you will definitely think "hmm, yes, that girl's back has been scooped" (no sarcasm here) which is ALSO horrifying to me.

What is there to say that hasn't already been said? She can't jog now because her boobs are too big and because her back scooping probably makes it too painful. She says it herself--she's afraid to hug people because her body is fragile. She committed to all of these procedures so she could be a walking wax mannequin and not even be willing to HUG people because her body is so fragile? Can this woman even have the babies she was begging Spencer Pratt for in the last season of the Hills?

Let's wrap this mini rant up by saying, America's tabloid celebrity media machine really fucking sucks if this is the outcome.

On Iceland Banning Strip Clubs

2010-04-06T14:18:00.000-07:00

The News Itself

All Right All Right All Right! Iceland banned strip clubs for FEMINIST reasons, crazy enough, and they have a totally awesome lesbian Prime Minister. A friend of mine posted the following link to the Atlantic, with two dissenting opinions, which both basically say: if a woman wants to voluntarily take her clothes off for money, who are we to say she can't?

the Atlantic's take on it

I mean, who are we to say SHE CAN?! It seems really fucked up to me that we would prioritize the idea of capitalism over leveling the playing field (even if it's just a tad, and even if it's just in Iceland) for women? Because, at the root of it all, we know that the motivation for ANYBODY to become a stripper is MONEY. You don't hear about little girls raising their hands in first grade class and expounding on the reasons they want to become a stripper. When people tell you to "do what you love and figure out a way to get paid for it," 99.999999% of the time they aren't talking about stripping. And maybe stripping is a safer job than prostitution (which, if you read the articles, Iceland has already outlawed), but that doesn't mean that it's not degrading or objectifying.

When I took Gender and Women's studies there was a lot of discussion about how sex workers should be allowed the right to choose their sex work. Obviously this fell under the Choosy Feminists let you Choose your Choice branch of feminism, one that I ultimately agree with. I'm not here to shame prostitutes or strippers--ultimately, if we lived in a completely non-sexist (and non-racist, non-classist, etc) society, than I think the ability to be a stripper or a prostitute should be anyone's god-given right. However, it seems to me that when someone is a stripper, too many societal forces come in to play: the (wealthier) male has the power of the cliched male gaze, possessing the female body, and ultimately determining her (monetary) worth. The idea of strip clubs really icks me out, and maybe if we lived in a society without them that would be an improvement.

Jezebel's take on it

However, if you are the kind of person who worries about the government controlling everything, than for sure, this does not bode well for the people of Iceland, who better like their socialism! (For real though, I can haz your socialism pleaze?)

/In the interest of full disclosure, I feel like I should include the fact that I actually wrote this post about a week to two weeks ago, whenever the news actually broke that Iceland had banned strip clubs. I wanted to write about it immediately because what an incredible idea! What if we could actually *ohmygod don't say it girl* LEGISLATE EQUALITY?

I'm still not sure it's possible. And for those of you who would argue that limited a woman's right to choose a profession in which she shows her body for money is somehow inherently anti-feminist: well, maybe you're right. I wouldn't go so far as to claim that it goes against FEMINISM but I will agree that it certainly ISN'T pro-choice.

The bottom line, though, is that I would much rather live in a society that attempts to remove the institutional barriers that perpetuate inequality (read: classism, racism, sexism, etc) than to live in one that encourages these barriers (read: parental notification laws for abortion, for starters), so I'm going to continue to argue that YES, Iceland really does rock for doing this. And NO there is no way in hell this is going to happen in the United States anytime soon. It would be interesting if the idea of outlawing strip clubs went to vote, however: would we have a group called the "Pole Grabbers" standing around with signs like "KEEP YOUR COMMUNIST HANDS OUT OF MY STRIP CLUB"?

and the sky was made of amethyst

2010-04-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

yet another hole lyric i thought the world should see

urban outfitters reviews of products

2010-04-01T14:06:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite pastimes at work is to go on Urban Outfitters and read the reviews that people post of the products. It's stranger than fiction and when I considered parodying it, I decided "Well, fuck. How am I going to make up anything that is funnier than this and isn't just the same thing exactly?" So I've decided to excerpt some samples of UO crazy ass clothing reviews for your perusal:

"I ordered the white, it is sheer but that just adds to the spring time feel. I am 5'6" tall and 115 pounds. 32A. I ordered a small, and it deff runs true to size. It fits me perfectly. I do wish that i would have ordered a medium however, simply for the extra loose look. But it runs true to size in my opinion. If i order another color I will order a medium for the looser fit."

"this top is so versatile and the perfect light button-up for spring and summer! i got it in blue, and with a nude bra, although the top is super sheer, you couldn't see it. i'm petite with a big bust, 5'4'' 120 lbs 30F, and i got a small. i'm on the fence about returning it to get a medium, because it fits, but if i button the second to last button to the top, it's a little tight around my bust. the sizing problem is just preference but other than that it looks great!"

"I have been looking for the perfect oxford shirt for the longest time. In fact, when I bought this blouse, I already had three light blue oxfords that just didn't fit the bill. I think I can call the search off finally! This top has the perfect mix between feminine details like the rounded collar with the best parts of a men's shirt- like the pocket, rolled sleeves, and looser cut. I found that it was the perfect length for tucking in skirts or wearing with jeans. As someone else mentioned, it does have that "stiff" quality to it, but that was always one of the things I liked about men's dress shirts, so I don't mind it. I am 5'8" 132 lbs and I bought the size medium (my typical size). It has a looser fit, but I wouldn't have sized down because it would be too tight across my shoulders, plus, I think that a more masculine fit was the intent of this shirt. Overall, it is very well made and the quality seems so much better than the price tag. I would definitely recommend this oxford, I'm going to scoop up the white while I still can."

"I really like this shirt, I got it in blue xs and I'm about 5'8" + 120 lbs, but it's definitely not a typical tailored women shirt. It being an oxford shirt it has more of a boy shape to it in the body area, also the sleeves are a little lose around the wrist (hence the reason they only show pictures with the sleeves rolled up) but the length is good and I personally like the style. Very dapper and the material is thicker and well constructed (like it's not going to disintegrate after a few washings)"

"This is an amazing shirt. I'm 5'3, 110 and ordered an XS. It fits perfectly and will be a perfect button up for spring and summer."

"I loved this shirt online, but when it arrived in the mail and I tried it on it didn't fit well. I was surprised because it was too small on my chest- I'm 5'5", 115-120 pounds and a 34 A, and the xs was really tight around the bust and really loose everywhere else. It was also really short. I loved it though, it's really pretty, so maybe if you have an even smaller bust and a fuller waist/hip area I'd recommend it."

"I bought this in red yesterday and I want more colors.
I am 4'11, 105 lbs, 32C. The XS fits me perfectly. It isn't too short for me to wear with jeans, and it is really flattering even with no bra.
I wore it out last night and felt great, but it could also easily be dressed up or down.
I highly recommend it."

"I love this top sooo much. I ordered the red floral and although it looks nothing like the picture it is the cutest shirt! I find reasons to go out so I can wear it. Don't get it if you want one exactly like the picture because you most likely won't get one that looks like that but i recommend get it its comfortable and chic. Im 5'8" 120 lbs and i got small/medium, fits perfectly, tad short but not a big deal. GET IT"

"I got this in the mail in the floral print and although it looks nothing like the one in the picture is super cute! I wore it out to dinner the first night I had it! It turned out to but a pink floral shirt. Its a little bigger than i thought it was going to be, in 120 lbs, 5'8" and got a small and its a little baggy but not a big deal its still soooo adorable."

"I LOVE UO silk shirts. I got this shirt in the washed gray. I am 5'2 and about 112 lbs and I got a Medium. I usually like my shirts long and a bit loose. I alsoI fit the small and it fitted perfectly, the only thing is that it is a bit short so that's why I got the medium instead."

Ok so I included a lot of examples. If you made if through all of them I applaud you--that is some seriously drecky stuff (holler at your girl, Andre Leon Talley!) The more I read on Urban, the more I am beginning to think that either they have paid copywriters who go in and post fake reviews or else all of these chicks have SERIOUSLY drunk the UO Kool-aid. In fact, as I'm writing this, I'm wondering what a review of the Men's clothes looks like. BRB.

I'm back. Here's an example of a men's review:

"The Shirt In Question is great, but the fit may be questionable for some. It jumps from sizes. The small is much snugger, and the medium is a lot bigger. I'm skinny so it fits me, but it' is not good for people with broad shoulders in a small."

So I'm gonna go with...not that different. This is seriously scaring me you guys. Every review has several things in common:

1) the fit wasn't EXACTLY right in some way, but for the most part it was TOTALLY PERFECT

2) Here are my measurements! My shapely bust is like 35 inches and I have a 25 inch waist!
3) I totally ordered an extra-small and it was perfect.

Also, I'm offended that the copy writer feels the need to make it seem like the men just say they are skinny while the women give exact numbers. LADIES--you need to KNOW that if you are 120 pounds and 5'0" that you are FAT.

Urban Outfitters: you've been warned.

The girl with the most cake

2010-03-29T20:43:00.000-07:00

As you know, I've been on a total Hole kick lately, and one lyric always stood out to me as worthy of remembrance (and therefore illustration). Here it is:

Illustrated in photoshop by me, Copyright by me.

Totally kicking ass in every way: Chick music and grunge

2010-03-24T06:47:00.000-07:00

Jezebel recently posted an article about the video vixens of the 90s. I was so inspired by the style and attitude of these songs that I started listening to all of the Hole and Garbage I could get my grubby little hands on. It made me really miss genuine grunge; it made me miss female artists who were 90s-era Courtney Love gritty. Wearing little girl dresses that were stained and ripped. Dolls covered in mud and doc martens and red lipstick. I miss aggressive lyrics about womanhood and raw voices, things I never knew I loved until I realized that I felt like they were lacking in the current music scene.

But, I am not musical maestro. I am unaware of many bands that exist today that might fit the description I gave in the previous paragraph. I apologize for this gaffe, if it is indeed a gaffe. I do have the power, however, to embed music videos and get steeped in a 90s nostalgia that isn't exactly mine. When my ages ranged from 3-13 through the course of the 90s, I can only really lay claim to vintage Britney and N*Sync, sadly. I will just excuse myself by saying that my brother listened to practically all of this during his rebellious 90s youth (I'm going to embarrass him further by pointing out that he TOTALLY used to sport a rat-tail).

Without further ado, my vid pics for 90s vixens and ultimately AWESOME bitches:

Things that totally rock about this song: "They get what they want, and then they never want it again...." Hole. "Violet." 1994

Ah yes, Old Time Liz Phair before she sucked, yada yada yada. Loving the refences to Chicago in this one. Liz Phair. "Stratford on Guy." 1993.

It's funny because Pink has a single called "Stupid Girls" but I think this one accomplishes much more of what Pink was going for with that heinous song and video. Garbage. "Stupid Girl." 1995.

Quite the bitter song about a father not coming home to his child. Loving it. It makes me want to buy a pair of boots (but then again, what DOESN'T make me want to buy a pair of boots?). PJ Harvey. "C'mon Billy." 1995.

To be honest, it was hard to find a song by them I truly loved because Seether was a little too glossy sounding for me. This is pretty kick-ass though. Veruca Salt. "Volcano Girls." 1997.

No official video for this song on youtube, as far as I could tell. Sleater Kinney. "Little Babies." 1997.

Heck yes, Bikini Kill! Fucking STICK IT TO THE MAN. Bikini Kill. "Rebel Girls." 1993.

Doll parts has GOT to be my favorite girl angst 90s anthem. It is so epically bitter. Hole. "Doll Parts." 1994.

I would normally save this for my tumblr...

2010-03-18T20:05:00.001-07:00

...but I figured my readers might be interested in one photograph of me as a child. So many kittehs, so much joy.

Am I a misandrist/On attempting to be "out" as a feminist

2010-03-15T19:10:00.000-07:00

I am a feminist.

No, I'm not a misandrist.

And no, I don't think claiming the term "feminism" means that I am only a second wave white woman who believes in the rights of rich white woman but can't see past her own white nose.

I try to be all encompassing. I argue with people that I am a humanist.

Feminism has clearly needed a new definition for a while. I have heard and read so many countless weak excuses about claiming the word "feminist." Some people, some WOMEN, seem to think that their journey is over as an advocate for social justice.

For example:

"I'm not a feminist but...[insert remark about how this totally sexist/racist/classist thing REALLY SUCKS.]"

Um, no duh. You are a feminist because you hate the fact that all women are objectified in the media or because you hate the fact that black women are told they are undesirable to marry or because if you are a homeless woman you are more likely to have multiple sexual assaults then a homeless man. You are a feminist, so suck it up and claim the term.

Listen, I get the fact that you probably think that feminism is some historical term that refers to a bunch of bra-burning (that didn't happen btw) hippie women in the 70s who are so out of touch with what women really have going for them today. "That was then, when women were slapped on the ass in the workplace and placed under curfew at college," you think to yourself. "This is now, where I can be whatever I want--a doctor, a scientist, a writer--and no magazine tells me how I perceive my own body and no man tells me what I can or cannot do."

All right then! Go pat yourself on the back! Go have a drink at a bar and flirt with some guy. Have a couple more drinks to celebrate. But if you wake up tomorrow in a strange place and you realize that there is semen on your leg and you don't remember consenting to ANYTHING, you might view the situation differently when the subsequent rape trial blames YOU for being drunk, instead of your rapist for RAPING.

Yes, I brought up the rape card. Because sexual violence and feminism are two discussions that go hand in hand.

As are racism and feminism. As are homophobia and feminism. As are trans-hate and feminism. As are all things that have to deal with gender, i.e. being a human and existing in this society.

Feminism, as a movement, is here to try to end social injustice. That is it. It is not trying to prioritize women over men, or prioritize white women over black women, or poor people over rich people. It recognizes the concept of intersecting identities. If you disavow feminism, you are disavowing the struggle to bring PEACE to human race.

/If any of this sounds familiar to you, maybe it is. I write this tremulously, hoping that I won't piss anyone off, but the fact of the matter is that I worry myself. Sometimes I feel like I need to "come out of the closet" as a feminist because I am quite the chameleon. Sometimes I swallow my tongue and what I'm truly thinking. This blog is here for me to explore these thoughts. And one thought I have is--why do I have to feel like I'm covering up my feminism? You will never hear me say "I'm not a feminist, but" but you will most certainly see me sit silent while some poor girl gets lambasted for having a wrecked body. Maybe it all women's bodies weren't up for consumption at all times, we wouldn't have to be feel so guilty when we are silent in these discussions.

So anyway, reconsider the label for me, please?

Get-rich-quick, aka blogging is the new San Francisco gold rush

2010-03-13T14:06:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I question my motives for wanting to write this blog. It gets hard to sort out what it is I'm actually trying to do or say here. I really enjoy writing my posts on the ways in which society sucks at dealing with HALF of its population (womankind) and I also enjoy writing about social constructions and pop culture and pretty dresses--you name it. I think I may have overdone the whole social networking aspect of the internet in the past few months, namely because I'm beginning to be saturated with the idea of the get-rich-quick scheme that blogging offers. We've all seen Julie and Julia, right? A movie whose central theme is, essentially, that if you are dissatisfied with your life and aren't living up to your own expectations, you can write a blog, get famous, have a movie made of your subsequent book, and then totally find yourself in the middle of all of the success you wanted to begin with.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind it if I landed a book deal (although I hardly expect to land a bookdeal with a blog as hodge-podge as mind) but I can't help but feel those twinges of hope and jealousy whenever I encounter the latest tumblr or blog that has made its way into the upper echelons of blogdom: the Published Book. I can name so many off the top of my head: postcards from yo momma, Dealbreakers (NOT related to the Liz Lemon book), Julie's cooking blog, etc etc.

But I'm carving out my internet niche because this blog was started in the throes of my post-graduation depression. I wanted to write about all the things that cycle in on me when I have depressive trains of thought--how the world can seem so meaningless--and I channeled that energy into expressing my outrage at the various and sundry gender injustices there are the in the world. I will still continue doing that, and I will still continue writing this blog, but I wanted to acknowledge the fact that there is also a part of me that hopes to get to 10,000 views and hopes to be written about somewhere else, some part of me that is disingenuous and ambitious and that part sometimes gets in the way of the actual writing and productivity.

News Hits

2010-03-04T18:59:00.000-08:00

I have been all over the internet lately but not so much on my blog. QUICK HITS:

I got a tumblr. It's in the about section of this blog and I don't know if there's really a point to having both a tumblr and a blog but I think I'm gonna post really quick hits there. I.e. videos I like and pictures that are funny and other inanities. Check it out at essandk.tumblr.com
I got a new computer. My laptop died about 2-3 weeks ago. As a result of getting a new computer+my laptop's death, I have had access to any photo editing software; hence, no photoshop phuns or postcards from yo momma reblogged or new banners. It bothers me a lot not to keep the site looking fresh, but so it goes! Hopefully I'll be hooked up with CS4 soon.
Um, did I mention I got a new computer? Totally awesome.
The last bit of news that is sad is that my childhood cat Fireball passed away today. He was 17 years old and had been with my family a long time. Most of you who read this blog will already know this because I have been posting about it everywhere but I really needed to put it here, on my Blog Of Record, for posterity.

Love.

crap email in the customer service industry

2010-03-03T08:01:00.001-08:00

As is pretty common with my crap emails, this one is in ticketing:

You guys are FUCKED!!!  When people are checking out you only show the prices for the tickets and nothing about any service charges.  You guys know that no one actually reads the long list of bullshit that's listed in the terms and conditions and you count on that.  At least other ticket sites have the common courtesy to show how much service fees are before you actually check out.   You guys SUCK!!!! GO FUCK YOURSELVES!!!  I'LL NEVER BUY FROM YOU GUYS AGAIN!!!   Now I have to pay overdraft fees to my bank so what was supposed to be $60 for four tickets has become $125!!!  FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And then ten minutes later the guy sends another email:

Sorry, Please disregard my last email.  I just looked at your site again and saw the extra charges at check out.  MY BAD!!!! I guess I just wasn't payin' attention. Sorry for the harsh email I sent previously!!!

Meta post on the internet and blogs

2010-02-28T19:47:00.001-08:00

Last year was my senior year of college. I attended Oberlin College and took a class called Principles of New Media (Or Introduction to New Media, I can never remember which) that lasted both semesters. The first semester was more about photoshop and illustrator and some beginner internet; the second semester was purely dreamweaver and flash.

One day in class we had a discussion about the nature of the internet in terms of a social tool. We weren't even necessarily talking about social networking; many of the main points of the discussion dealt with whether or not it was a bad thing for one's entire social life to be on the computer. At the time I felt neutral about the whole discussion because I most definitely had a real life social life and didn't really spend that much time cultivating an online one.

Fast forward a year later, and I wish I knew then what I know now. I have been using the past six months to build my presence in the Jezebel commenter community and I have found it to be an invaluable tool in dealing with my spiral of depression post-graduation. I also have found keeping this blog itself has given me a sense of purpose and a place to organize my thoughts. Maybe I'm unclear as to what my professional aspirations should be; but at least I have this forum to write and develop ideas and stay intellectually on point.

My bottom line? Everybody should be part of an internet community of some sort. Finding the right community is a lot like choosing a college or making a real-life friend. You definitely have to sort through a lot of crap blogs and crap forums until you can find a place that is a good fit for you. But then, it opens up a whole new world! New people to hang out with, new ideas presented to you, a new support system! It's great.

I also think that the way society views the internet is totally wrong. It must be acknowledged that it is a realm unto itself and not an extension of real life. I'm not saying it doesn't cross over into real life or vice versa; it's just that it is entirely possible to live out an entire other life online, and I don't think that this choice should be a punishable offense. You may think many things about people who have their social lives online, but censure and pity should not be among them.

Rape culture

2010-02-18T13:39:00.000-08:00

Recently my brother emailed me a link to this article, which contained news I had already seen on Jezebel. I've been thinking a lot about it in the context of everything else I've ever read or thought about rape. The idea that people blame victims (and that women blame victims more often the men) hardly surprises me. In fact, it didn't even phase me.

A lot of the comments on these blogs that are thoughtful really hit the point about women blaming women: most women want to feel like they can do something to prevent being raped. We are told what steps to take to prevent rape, and then we think that as long as we follow those rules, we won't be raped. I'm not claiming I'm different, I'm just saying that's how it is--so there is probably some part of a woman who thinks "but that would never happen to ME because I would never get drunk/get in a car with a man/go outside/____" and thus, victim-blaming.

How I want to describe the problem with rape culture is this:

Imagine that participating in the gender binary is like driving a car. Therefore, everybody is driving at all times. Most people follow the rules of driving MOST of the time (that is, they drive on the right side of the road, they follow traffic lights, they don't drive drunk, they don't cut people off). On occasion, however, somebody breaks a driving rule, and a crash ensues. These crashes can range from fender-benders (unwanted touching) to death by car accident (rape at gunpoint).

The reason I make this analogy is to ask this question: if you knew a girl who was killed in a car accident because a drunk driver swerved across the middle lane, would you say that it was her fault because she didn't have good enough grades, because she once road in a car with another boy, because sometimes she likes to drive barefoot, or blame her for any number of actions she has taken in the past? Obviously, the answer is no (I hope). You would blame the drunk driver and punish that person and educate them on safe driving.

You can't claim that the accident was the girl's fault because she was driving to begin with--people who decide to operate outside of the driving normative by riding a bike or walking could also be struck down by a reckless driver (i.e. transgendered people, homosexual people, young people, old people). Someday everybody has got to get somewhere, and they could be struck by a careless "driver" at any time.

Additionally, in rape culture, young women are raised with lessons about How Not to be Raped, while men (and people) are not taught How Not to Rape. That's the equivalent of giving half of the populate driver's ed, refusing to educate the other half, letting the uneducated half be indoctrinated through societal messages that they should be aggressive drivers, and then blaming the educated half for getting killed in a car accident when the ignorant driver breaks a law.

In short, stop blaming the victim and start blaming the perpetrator. And then take it one step farther and start blaming rape culture.

Here are some links about Rape Culture and the consequences of rape for further enlightenment:

The Not Rape Epidemic

Short Skirts and the Politics of Sexual Assault

Why women blame rape victims

Study: women, young people blame victims for sexual assault

pipettes/valley of the dolls

2010-02-17T08:06:00.001-08:00

I found myself thinking about this Pipettes video (embedding disabled unfortunately) this morning during my commute.

I wanted to share with you the inspiration for the video, a clip from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls which makes me so happy. It is a great time capsule.

Crap customer service email from a dude

2010-02-15T09:38:00.000-08:00

[redacted]

Lady Gaga: preventing people the world over from suiciding themselves

2010-02-12T07:48:00.000-08:00

So as you may recall from a previous post I will continue posting crazy emails in the customer service entry (and other crazy emails in general). A lot of these emails come to me from a friend who works for a ticketing company and she likes to spread the love.

This one is particularly sad, as it deals with a fan whose love of Lady Gaga knows no bounds. As you may or may not be able to guess because of how extreme this fan is, the person is from Japan. S/he purchased a meet and greet package for a Lady Gaga concert that had to be canceled because of Gaga's overscheduling and health issues. Here is the person's response to an email with the news that the meet and greet is canceled:

Dear [redacted],

I'm one of the biggest Lady Gaga fan in [redacted city].

I'm so disappointed your update. I had been sooooo looking forward to meeting and greeting Lady Gaga. I don't need Hot seat package. Because I have already got a Kobe concert ticket.

If I can't meet Gaga, I don't want to attend (I have Hearbeats headphones as well). I wanted to say "Thank you for saving my life and you are a part of my life..." to Gaga. She saved my life!!! If I hadn't knew about Gaga(her music, fashion, belief etc...), I would have suicided myself. I want to tell her these things from my mouth...

Considering her health condition, not to meet Gaga is the better for her. I will be very sad if she fall into sick again because of hard work for us. I think I will have a chance to meet her in near future. I'd like to get a full refund.

Best regard
[redacted name]

This email breaks my heart. Good luck, Japanese fan who loves Lady Gaga. I hope she continues inspiring you into creating a life that treats you more kindly.

I didn't mean to come back to Brave New World twice

2010-02-08T09:51:00.000-08:00

I'm still in the process of reading Brave New World (It's been going very slowly because I can sense something portentous on the horizon of the book, and that always slows down my reading, especially if I think whatever is about to happen is bad. It's my mind's way of dealing with the possibility of negative things happening to the characters I guess). I just read a passage that absolutely destroyed me.

For this entry to make any sense, we have to first agree on the fact that when a person reads Brave New World, they are essentially entering into a contract with the book. This contract is, namely, that one should think that the "Civilization" portrayed in Brave New World is entirely negative and that the "Savages" (aka people who are not raised in test tubes) are somehow better because they retain their Christianity, religion, literature, individuality, etc. Huxley sets up a then vs now construct, and I suppose the idea is that the reader is supposed to come down on his side (then). (Btw I haven't finished the book so maybe I should save the book reports until then, but I like writing about things as I experience them, so here we go!)

From here on out: SPOILER ALERT

But here's the thesis of my post: I just don't agree with Huxley. I'm not saying everything about Brave New World's "Civilization" is what I want from my ideal society, but there are some aspects of it that are okay, or at least not unacceptable to me. And the dealbreaker for me is the scene where Lenina and the Savage (aka John) confess their love to one another. Lenina, who was socially conditioned to give her body to any man who asked for it, immediately undresses and goes to hug John. Her sudden undressing produces this result:

The Savage caught her by the wrists, tore her hands from his shoulders, thrust her roughly away at arm's length.

"Ow, you're hurting me, you're...oh!" She was suddenly silent. Terror had made her forget the pain. Opening her eyes, she had seen his face--no, not his face, a ferocious stranger's, pale, distorted, twitching with some insane, inexplicable fury. Aghast, "But what is it, John?" she whispered. He did not answer, but only stared into her face with those mad eyes. The hands that held her wrists were trembling. He breathed deeply and irregularly. Faint almost to imperceptibility, but appalling, she suddenly heard the grinding of his teeth. "What is it?" she almost screamed.

And as though awaked by her cry he caught her by the shoulders and shook her. "Whore!" he shouted. "Whore! Impudent strumpet!"

"Oh no, don't, do-on't," she protested in a voice made grotesquely tremulous by his shaking.

"Whore!"
"Ple-ease."
"Damned whore!"

So, to use the words immortalized by Kenan Thompson in his nefarious SNL skit, WHATUP WITH THAT?

Ok, so the Savage believes in choosing one woman and living with her forever. His character's motivations are complicated because he loves his mother, a woman who slept around because she believed that "everyone belongs to everyone," so he has some sort of deep oedipal resentment for the idea of sleeping with a woman and being promiscuous. But this reaction just smacks way too intensely of the madonna/whore dichotomy. Lenina was perfect to the Savage before this incident: divinely beautiful, he could barely look at her, he trembled in her presence, blah blah blah. And then she shows one sign of sexuality and she's a DAMNED JEZEBEL! Besides the fact that the poor girl has nearly no agency in deciding how to deal with her sexuality because she was being hypnotized in her sleep practically her entire life.

Madonna vs Whore is a binary used to oppress women that is practically as old as time itself, and I just don't buy the fact that having lots of sex is so bad, as Huxley makes it seem. But then again, I couldn't give a damn about most of the Bible's commandments of morality, so maybe I'm just largely missing the point.

I guess what I'm asking is--does this instance of extremely screwy sexism illuminate the fact that Brave New World is, frankly, no longer relevant?

formspring!

2010-02-02T10:56:00.001-08:00

I found a nifty website via the groupthink on Jezebel today that allows people to ask questions--any question--of the participants anonymously. I've decided to add it to the blog primarily so you, as the reader, can ask me questions about content you want to see on the blog. Is there something that you think EssandK should cover? Has Kanye been in Taylor Swift's jam lately? Ask me about it or tell me about it using Formspring! It's now a widget on the righthand side--I'm using it as a kind of de facto "tips" section.

Love to all!

postcards from yo momma REBLOGGED

2010-02-01T15:31:00.001-08:00

I finally discovered a postcard from yo momma that truly reflects my future self as a mother. I present for your entertainment, the Gaga postcard:

I wish I could take credit for this image, however, I cannot. Via.

Also the text, as always, comes from postcards from yo momma.

Brave New World & Social Conditioning

2010-01-27T11:53:00.000-08:00

EVERYBODY!! Let's explicitly return to social constructions for a post, shall we?

I've been reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley for the past few days. It's not the pinnacle in difficult literature (mainly I feel like it's something I should have read in high school) but the ideas in it are good. I agree with its place in the high school literary canon and I also think it's a good piece of literature to use to view capitalist society.

Regardless, the novel has some interesting ideas about social conditioning; namely, hypnopaedia, in which the children are taught ideas about their caste and societal functions through whispered repetitions in their sleep.

Which all brings me back to a recent post on Jezebel. The post deals with Natasha Walter's notion that sexism has gotten "worse" over the last few years (since the 1980's and the rash of the power mom). The editor who wrote the post doesn't seem to take that bait, but the commenters certainly did--by agreeing with Walter. Many of them were horrified by the notion of raising a daughter in the current cultural climate. This hypothetical daughter, they argued, would have to live in a culture that sexualizes her by age 5, that demands that she is skinny, that wants her to be hairless, tan, blonde, big-boobed, etc etc etc.

My initial reaction to the Jezebel commenter reactions was: WHAT??! Do we, as women and as mothers (or future mothers), live with absolutely NO agency when it comes to raising our daughers? It seemed preposterous to me that we couldn't prevent the perpetuation of women like Heidi Montag who, if given the resources, will plastic her body to oblivion in order to fit some vague beauty ideal. So I posted as much on Jezebel. And, to some extent, I stand by that comment because YES, I do happen to think that my mother did a good job of raising me outside of some standard idea of beauty and that my college did a good job of waking me up to all the gender problems there are in this world. However, this post posits that sexism has gotten worse in the 2000s and as I grew up in the 90s, I suppose my experience as a feminist is somewhat invalid in the argument about our daughters' futures.

The bottom line is that yes: social conditioning exists, as it does in Brave New World. We might not be whispering our children to sleep with lies about how good it feels to be an Alpha-Plus, but we're entertaining them with commercials that claim they need that new backpack or that all girls love pink. And even if I, as a mother, refuse to let my daughter watch television or look at fashion magazines, one commenter pointed out that the girls at my daughter's school won't necessarily live by such strict rules, and she will be exposed to these ideas in some way.

Backing away from the idea of future children for a minute: the bottom line is the my own experience has told me that I'm socially conditioned by my gender, for better or for worse. This fact was triggered for me while reading Brave New World: in one part, the Director talks about the fact that the lower-caste peoples were conditioned to love sports in the country. This conditioning had a two-fold effect: first, the people would consume transportation to get to the country; second, they would also need to purchase sports equipment in order to participate in these activities. This way, the demand for products is higher and society benefits from everybody's consumerism.

And yes, it seems that women are specifically targeted in this way. Growing up we are inundated with information about our beauty. We need this kind of makeup in order to cover up the circles under our eyes, or we need this kind of pore cleanser to prevent blackheads. Yes, it's true that men aren't entirely unaffected by this kind of gender-based advertising, but the advertising geared towards women typically has the kinds of products that, frankly, most men don't feel compelled to buy. I try to spend wisely because I don't make all the money in the world; however, I have noticed it is a lot easier for my brother to live a spartan lifestyle than me. Aside from our basic differences in personalities (I have an obsession with owning design and art objects that he does not necessarily share), I also find myself needing to buy makeup, clothing, hair products, and any number of basic hygenic products more often than he does. Because of my gender-based consumer conditioning, I incur more expenses than him in the month simply because I am a girl.

I will, of course, exempt all people who live outside of the traditional gender binary in this critique of society: of course men who perform as women have to buy makeup. I'm not saying we're so heavily conditioned that it's physically impossible for us to buy products that are typically intended for one gender or the other. But the point is: if a man decides he wants to buy makeup, he gets a label. And these labels are often pejorative, ranging from the mildest (metrosexual) to the most severe (she-male). One is even at peril when crossing the invisible consumer gender divide. And we have social conditioning to thank for that.

this song: sexy bitch

2010-01-26T10:31:00.000-08:00

If you've been reading this blog at all, you have probably figured out by now that I am a humorless femi-Nazi who spends a good deal of time on the internet with other femi-Nazi commenters on Jezebel (hi Jezebel!) Obviously all of this should be foot-noted with "/sarc," but I really feel like I need to start this post off with an appropriate amount of self-awareness and self-deprecation because I'm about to dismantle a song called "Sexy Bitch" by David Guetta featuring Akon. Click on the play button below and give the song a whirl.

A lot of the song is so auto-tuned that I am afraid you will miss the key details of the lyrics, so I have pasted them below:

Damn, you's a sexy bitch

Yes, I can see her
'Cause every girl in here wanna be her
Oh, she's a diva
I feel the same and I wanna meet her

They say she low down
It's just a rumor and I don't believe 'em
They say she needs to slow down
The baddest thing around town

She's nothing like a girl you've ever seen before
Nothing you can compare to your neighborhood ho
I'm tryna find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful
The way that booty movin', I can't take no more
Have to stop what I'm doin' so I can pull up close
I'm tryna find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful

(Damn, girl)
Damn, you's a sexy bitch, a sexy bitch
Damn, you's a sexy bitch (x2)
Damn, girl

This chorus is so priceless. The first time I heard the line "I'm tryna find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful" I did a spit-take that looked something like this:

Like whoa. I mean, really dude? You can't find a single word to describe a girl you really like that isn't disrespectful? Here, let me help you out with a list:

Good, respectful words to use to describe a girl you really like

Beautiful

Pretty

Intelligent

Smart

Sensual

Funny

Amazing

Light of my Life

Genuine

Gorgeous

Dreamy

Alluring

Attractive

Magnificent

Marvelous

Sublime

Fit

Wonderful

Nice

Awesome

Good

Great

Lovely

Fabulous

Fantastic

Brilliant

Astute

Sharp

Bright

Sexy (arguable)

Hot (arguable)

...etc. Just type "Beautiful" or "Intelligent" or any one of those words into a thesaurus and you'll find yourself with so many respectful ways to describe a girl you'll probably need a snack before you go through them all.

However, I think I should point out that there are, indeed, words you can use that are disrespectful. And, in fact, you use them in your song.

Bad, disrespectful words you probably shouldn't use when describing a girl you really like:

Bitch

Diva

Booty Movin'

Nothing you can compare to your neighborhood ho

Some words I would also recommend not using (and am afraid you are about to because of this song you just wrote) in any description in any way of any woman in your life, ever, if you want to be respectful:

Cunt

Slut

Prostitute

Whore (in fact, any slang or proper word for a woman who sleeps around or gets paid to go to bed with someone)

Twat

...etc

All right, I think this speaks for itself. I'll leave out explicitly analyzing the line "nothing you can compare to your neighborhood ho" and leave you now. I hope you, dear reader, see that there are many many ways in which to describe a woman respectfully.

crap email in the customer service industry

2010-01-25T09:23:00.000-08:00

Recently a friend of mine who works in a customer service segment of a ticketing company forwarded me a crazed email that some disgruntled customer sent in to one of her colleagues. The email is shocking in its vulgarity, creativity, racism, and vitriol. As someone who has been on both ends of the customer service spectrum (I've worked in retail and I've also yelled at a debt collector on the phone), I'm filled with a bewildered appreciation for how truly awesome this email is. So I present it to you, dear reader, with identifying information redacted to protect all of those involved:

Dear [redacted],

I want to thank you for your quick email and now I want you to do me a favor.

Please print out the email that you sent me roll it up in a ball and shove it in your ass.

And the rest of the clowns that work with you can all go fuck yourselves.

Why the fuck would you tell me that the tickets would be available at 3pm [redacted city] time when you no well that there was going to be nothing there.They dont even know who you people are.

Between yesterday and today I spent 4 hours of my life trying to pick up my tickets that have been paid for for a long time and now your fucking with me well I tell you what, either you can get on a plane and come to [redacted city] or you can wait until I get back to the states and you can make it up to me and blow me for four hours.

My question to you sweetie is where the fuck are the tickets? Why would I buy the tickets from you with the knowlegde that I can have the tickets 72 hours before so that I dont have to fuck with all these monkies down here on the day of the show? I know why because I am an asshole and purchased them from you clowns and became a member of a piece of shit fan club. I could have purchased the tickets with someone local and I would have had the tickets weeks ago.

I hope that tomorrow someone shows up with the tickets you fucks!

That´s all for now, Take care, have a nice day and thank you for everything!

P.S. fuck you all!

This email is so inspiring it's got me thinking: perhaps there should be a blog for all of those offensive customer service emails that people have to deal with at work? Would you be interested in reading that?

forever 21: outright proscribing gender roles and pissin' me off

2010-01-16T14:59:00.001-08:00

So I recently got a gift card to Forever 21 for Christmas and I decided to spend it last weekend. The Forever 21 was on Michigan Ave (the Magnificent Mile portion, that is) so of course it's on one of those streets in the country that's a bastion of capitalism and consumerism. In other words, it's so mainstream it's kind of painful so I should have expected something to tick off my feminist sensibilities. However, I went in there salivating over the fact that big ballerina tulle skirts are somehow in vogue. Every glittery, cheap looking shirt was a revelation. I was in shopping heaven. At one point, I literally looked at the vast store and all of its many offerings and thought "Oh, the Joys of Capitalism!!!" It's rare that I have a shopping ecstatic state, but I definitely had it that day. Until I got in line to purchase my fare.

That is when I saw the sign on the wall that I've posted above. I should probably explain that I was in the store without having bathed in like, three days, and my hair dye is all washed out right now and I was wearing one of those big North Face winter coats that makes me want to die because it's so unfashionable but it's January here in Chicago and that sucks. The point I'm trying to get across: I did not have my hair done and I wasn't about to go back to the train and sit around with my knees crossed. When I saw a sign on the wall telling me that this franchise not only encouraged me to always look immaculate, it in fact COMMANDED me to do so, I was outraged. I wish I could say I turned around and left the store without buying anything and I never plan to go back--but I really wanted that 11.50 floral shirt. I'm human.

What I did instead was whip out my camera and take an illicit photo before the women of the store could stop me. Then I decided to come home and write a blog post about it. Because damn, is this shit fucked up. Forever 21's demographic ranges from the early teens to the mid twenties, and I think it's pathetic that the decorator of the store would participate in reinforcing such stereotypical gender hierarchy. I know I'm getting what I paid for when it comes to this store. People who shop at Forever 21 typically want clothes that fit neatly into the gender binary, but I just don't think that this society understands the fact that there is little that is "innate" about the genders. Women don't wear their hair perfect and cross their legs at the knee because it's natural to do so--they do it because they grew up in a time and place that told them they were expected to do so. A society that, in fact, might punish them severely if they did not perform these "feminine" duties. So we all thoughtlessly whip around, espousing ideas about how guys are this way and girls are that way, and then paste a sign on a wall in clothing store that dictates that women have perfect hair without thinking about why there is so much violence against transgendered people. FUCK THAT!

I would like to end this post by stating that I will not abide this shit any longer: if I see anything that commands me to live a certain way just because I was born with a vagina, I'm taking a picture of it and ripping the institution a new one!!!!

Boy cut, hipster, thong or bikini?

2010-01-12T18:03:00.000-08:00

POSTCARDS FROM YO MOMMA REBLOGGED

on history, being middle class, writing a blog, everything in the history of mankind!

2010-01-05T11:25:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a book of essays by Sarah Vowell that my roommate lent me called Take the Cannoli. It's an interesting enough book, one I like but don't love, and only occasionally does her writing hit a nerve. I will say that we don't have too much in common in the way that we live our lives but it's cool to read about someone from Oklahoma who lives in (or has lived in) Chicago and wrote a lot in the 90s.

Regardless, this quote in particular piqued my interest and I thought: this is it. This passage is the impetus for me to write the definitive Blog Entry about Identity and History in the United States as a White Middle Class girl aka The Search for Authenticity.

In one particular essay Vowell writes about a road trip that she and her sister took following the route of the Trail of Tears. They went on the trip because they are part Cherokee. At the end, they meet up with their aunts and uncles in their hometown in Oklahoma. Vowell talks to her uncle Hoy about this life, a man who fought in WWII and never received any education past the third grade because he worked on a farm. During this conversation she thinks, "All these historical forces bore down on him, but he did not break. Still, compared to him, compared to the people we descend from, I am free of history. I'm so free of history I have to get in a car and drive seven states to find it" (p. 156).

Ah, the idea that we are free from history. I wrangle with this concept a lot. Sometimes I feel like such an unspecified mass that who's gonna bother with me? I'm a person who is not unlike a million other people, in that I have a college education and pierced ears and I like to shop at Urban Outfitters. As a member of the educated upper middle class with a family that came to America generations over generations ago, I feel no ties to any particular place. When I go home to North Carolina I hate driving and love the heat. When I come back to Chicago I love the public transportation and hate the cold. When I tell people where I'm from they ask why I don't have a Southern accent. Every time I go to my grandfather's home I find myself searching through photo albums, looking for images of people that preceded me, searching for a narrative of life before myself.

All of these examples are supposed to illustrate the fact that I feel like a tweener: can't stay here, can't go there, don't feel connected anywhere. Sometimes it feels like I'm supposed to aspire to the lifestyles of the rich and the famous. As a pop culture fiend I'm constantly inundated with images of consumerism. I want to travel everywhere, I want to buy everything, I want a big ass house with like, a gigantic venetian glass chandelier. I want to see the entire world anonymously, fitting into every culture like drops in the great flowing rivers of cultures in the world.

But I also just wanted to feel rooted to a place. I want people to know where I am from by looking at me, by the way I talk. I want to feel rooted to a time. I want histories that affect me, causes that inspire me. Fuck, I want to be like the hobbits in Lord of the Rings: constantly dreaming of my ideal place, the shire of the human race, if only I could return there after I dump this ring in that big fiery volcano.

This issue is something I've discussed with my brother before, perhaps more eloquently. What it boils down to is that sometimes I feel like I'm on a gigantic quest for Authenticity. When I'm outside of the South I like to talk about North Carolina barbeque because it makes me sound like someone who is rooted to a place, who knows her background. But the truth is that I rarely eat barbeque. And that one of my earliest memories is barfing barbeque all over my grandparents' floor because my stomach couldn't handle all the meat. And I don't know that much about the Civil War, although I do know where Stonewall Jackson's nickname came from (kind of). I'm free to drift the waves of the internet, of culture, of place, and of time, but all I find myself doing is wistfully hoping that someday I'll find a place where I want to be permanently.

I understand that this feeling is a romanticization of time and place. Do I really want to grow up in a culture where all of the men I know are shipped off to an unfeeling trench war? Do I want to have deal with Prohibition? With slavery? With famine? With even more serious misogyny and sexism?

All I can really say is that I'm too poor to spend the rest of my life globe trotting and too rich to stay in one place without suffering from some sort of unhappiness in relation to the fact that I never "escaped" my hometown, so I'm stuck jumping around until something smacks me in the face and tells me to stay put. Oh, the trials of a poor little rich white girl. I know I sound pathetically privileged but it's the truth. Can any of you relate to this feeling?

In the meantime, a links list

2010-01-04T21:36:00.000-08:00

Hello All!

It's January 2010 and I'm not giving much of a crap about the whole new decade distinction just yet. Maybe it's because I recently started another soul sucking corporate job but DAMN SON. I'm probably gonna use company time tomorrow to write something that is really thought provoking and shizNITE but tonight I'm just gonna let everybody in on some links I've been really into:

what claudia wore: a blog that reblogs every description of what the character Claudia Kishi wore in the Babysitter Club books. If you know me, you know that I love this. If you don't me, you should love the fact that this "fierce bitch" (as the blogger puts it) wears shirts with cacti on them.

dealbreaker: a tumblr that lists all the ways in which a relationship "can stop dead in its tracks." fun for snark, not fun if you're feeling insecure about the ways you ruined your relationship.

poladroid: make your digital photos look like polaroids. see banner above for an example. it's also the cutest program you ever ran on your computer if you so choose to download it.

bringing Moby back: my BFFers and I have been on this mission for a long time, but now there's a facebook group to commemorate it. Please, dear god, PLEASE help bring Moby back!

twitter: to which you all say, duh? But can I get a what what for how much I love using that website to find the links on Etsy I really care about? I mean, that is about 90% of what I use twitter for.

Enjoy!

MERRY CHRISTMAS

2009-12-29T15:29:00.000-08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

karl lagerfeld short film "Vol de Jour"

2009-12-21T19:42:00.000-08:00

I got ahold of this youtube short by Karl Lagerfeld today; for those of you who don't know, Lagerfeld is the head designer for Chanel and also his own line. (Wiki entry here). He likes to occasionally spout of inflammatory things about how nobody wants to see fat women in fashion. He must be the stereotypical fashion guru, with his black and white uniform that include black glasses and white hair. I imagine they based the Zoolander character Mugatu after him (Derelicte, anyone?)

Regardless, he was born in 1933 so he's somewhere around 76 years old and he's still going strong. Recently he made this short film starring Lara Stone, one of the "It" models of the moment (she's Dutch) and some hunk of burning love male model named Baptiste Giabiconi. Without searching him on google, I'm gonna say "ITALIANO." This movie is...well, it's not the best. It's about a couple of very attractive shoplifters who go around stealing Chanel clothes. There's an awkward phase towards the end where Stone tries on clothes for Giabiconi and it gets strangely boring. The whole thing reads as a student film to me, except with remarkably attractive people and lush settings. My favorite part of it is the weird harpsichord music.

I wanted to post it to S and K because this movie reads like a lech's exercise in stalking some beautiful young people. It's true that I watched it while thinking about Lagerfeld himself, but this couple comes across as boring in the film. Beautiful, but boring. We're only interested in them because Lagerfeld is interested in them, and Lagerfeld is (let's face is) SEVENTY-SIX. I'm not trying to spout of some ageist bullshit about older people controlling fashion: I'm just saying it's more than a little fucked up that a 76 year old man picks and chooses the hottest new models. Stone is 26, 50 years his junior. Even the way the male model drags Stone around on the screen makes me nervous. We've got some serious female objectification on our hands.

I realize that I'm opening up a whole can of fashion worms here: most of the fashion industry is dictated by older titans who somehow get to say which pretty young thing matters and which pretty young thing doesn't. (And hell, get a load of the language I'm using here--"pretty young things"--female models are always the object for our consumption aren't they?) Stone herself, at 26, is practically ancient. But overall I'm not interested in indicting the entire fashion industry at this point in time. I just want to note that I saw this clip, I thought my readers might enjoy it, and I wanted to say a few words about how Karl Lagerfeld kinda weirds me out.

I've got christmas on the noggin!

2009-12-17T19:35:00.000-08:00

And I can't get it out! I found this old claymation christmas special from the 80s (featuring the california raisins) that my family used to watch when I was growing up. Youtube is a wondrous place that brings back all things good and magical in the world! You, fair reader, could use a dose of christmas cheer. Watch this please!

Life stuff is totally in the way right now

2009-12-16T22:36:00.000-08:00

Hey blog-readers,

I've been falling down on the blog front lately. It's all right, you can say it. I haven't posted much written material in a week or so. There are many contributing factors to this blog-writing malaise. First, I just got a twitter, ostensibly for the purpose of getting people to read the blog, but of course I became semi-obsessed with it and I find that every time I mean to go write on the blog I end up looking at pictures Danny DeVito has put in his feed. Second, I am about to have a holiday party at my apartment on friday. It's our first party and I'm pretty obsessed with making it cute. I spent much of this evening taping more shit to our walls and making snowflake decorations. Third, I haven't had a temp job since the last one ended on Wednesday of last week, so I think I'm going stir crazy. That usually just turns my mind to mush instead of making me into a productive blogger. Luckily I spent most of this evening running around the apartment trying to make it all fancy, so I'm hoping this energy carries me forward into the weekend. And therefore, the holiday party. HOLLER.

Ah, such is life. SO difficult. So....precious (why is gollum always in my head at this time of year! Damn you weird association between Lord of the Rings and Christmastime!).

Oh, and also? It's FUCKING COLD AS BALLS IN CHICAGO!

I'll be back this weekend with more to offer. Love and candy canes.

Water Bottles Must Die!

2009-12-13T01:38:00.000-08:00

Presented by Online Education

THIS SONG IS MY JAM

2009-12-09T23:26:00.000-08:00

best chorus of the year, y/y?

For those of you who don't know, it's Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z featuring Alicia Keys.

popcorn purring

2009-12-09T17:31:00.000-08:00

WHAT MOM WANTS

2009-12-06T19:56:00.000-08:00

postcards from yo momma reblogged.

twitter

2009-12-05T20:19:00.000-08:00

i have succumbed to the evils that be and have created a twitter account in conjunction with this blog. Follow me at http://twitter.com/essandk.

I will be posting tweets relocating to new blog posts and just being effervescent, so enjoy!

death and the internet

2009-12-05T12:32:00.000-08:00

A while ago I was planning on writing a post about this Korean model named Daul Kim who had committed suicide and whose blog used to be available to the general public. (I still have a link to her blog in my links list, and I've decided to keep it there as a testament to her presence in the world, even if the police have made the blog restricted). All of her writing was interesting, poetic, disjointed. Almost all of her posts were titled "Say hi to..." and her last post was "Say Hi to Forever," although it was just a post where she embedded a youtube video. Throughout the entirety of the blog were references to her hopes and the future--indicators that she imagined living past the age of 20, although she did not.

At the time I was reading about her death and avidly reading her blog, I felt like I was in an internet car crash. The traffic has backed up for a second as everyone takes a moment to twist their necks and look at the damage. And now, as more and more people are making the internet part of their daily lives, we have more and more internet crashes available to us. When someone dies, their internet persona lives on, although in stasus. Now we can look at how people respond to the dead person's memory through the equivalent of online tombstones--is it even fair to remove a departed's facebook profile? The profile becomes digital proof that yes, this person existed.

Let's bring it all back to yesterday. As of yesterday at 3 PM, I still hadn't gotten around to writing about Daul Kim's death and her blog--in fact, I probably never was going to write about it. But then I got a call with some very bad news. My friend (and my good girl friend's husband) died unexpectedly. It's been fewer than 24 hours since I've gotten this news and it still wrenches my heart whenever I think about it clearly. To say that I lost someone when I was 22 for the rest of my life: that is a heavy burden to bear. And yet, I keep looking at his facebook profile. I can't stop. I barely looked at it when he was alive because I just don't really look that closely at my friends' facebook profiles. But now every shred of evidence of who he was and what he believed that made its way to the profile is important to me. I've gone back several times. I think about whether I should post something, or whether anyone will post anything. I wonder where he is now. I sent him a message on facebook. It was not that sentimental. I just wish I could hear him tell me to take care of myself one more time.

A memory, although not a digital one: My friends and I were playing "Loaded questions: Adult Version." It's a silly game where the group gets asked a question and everyone writes down their individual answers. Then the judge hears the answers to the question without knowing who wrote them and has to try to guess which answers matches which of the players. One of the questions during the game asked the players to compliment someone else in the room. My departed friend's answer was this "Essnk, you giggle a lot." I loved that compliment. It said so much about the person giving it--that he thought the fact that I giggled stated plainly was a compliment. I laughed for what felt like hours when I heard the response. This memory is something I keep coming back to, in the short amount of time since I heard that he passed away. I just keep thinking about giggling and wishing that I could be there to giggle for him again. That maybe, somehow, giggling could have solved anything.

These are the things I think about when I cling desparately to his internet presence. I just wanted the Essnk community to be aware of something I am going through. As this blog is a part of me now, I needed to write about this death.

Lady Gaga & Pop Music

2009-11-29T14:36:00.000-08:00

Before anything else, if you haven't seen these videos, you've got to watch them

(sorry these have disabled embedding which means I couldn't put them in the post, unfortunately)

1. Lady Gaga's acoustic version of Poker Face
2. Paparazzi
3. Bad Romance

Some of you might remember a post I had a while back about the Taylor Swift video for "You Belong with Me" (as opposed to its creepy stalker cousin, "You Belong to Me") in which I opined that pop music needed a shred of originality. Well, I take that sentiment back. There was a time in my life when I was the ultimate detractor of pop music. This phase was firmly rooted in my last two years of high school, when I wised up and started listening to indie rock like Interpol and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and all of the sudden, anybody who liked pop music explicitly was a philistine. Fuck no I didn't care if pop could include genres like hip hop or country or just plain ol' pop. It was lame. You are lame. Let me go to the Cat's Cradle and feel smug for a couple hours. Kthanxbai.

I guess this stance towards pop changed during college when I started caring about something else: parties. I think that's when I finally understood pop music--it's the shit you listen to when you wanna get crunk and then wiggle your body around, a delicious respite for the kids who went to my liberal arts college and all took everything so ironically and seriously. We liked pop music because it was unexpected for us to like pop music, so it was okay. I would literally salivate if that Kylie Minogue song "can't get you out of my head" ever came on during one of the many dance parties I attended. Pop music from all generations was fair game--I knew more people than I believed possible who were into the Shangri-Las or wanted to hear Motown music at our college's dance club.

So yeah, for a while now I have become a defender of pop music. This statement doesn't necessarily belie the fact that I like all pop, or that I think Nickelback is great (newsflash--they aren't--and I wouldn't call their music "pop" anyway). And I believe, sincerely, that past the superficial reasons that I started to come back around to pop music (the vague 90s nostalgia, the onset of partying and college life, a sincere desire to shake my tail feather), there are some greater forces at play that reveal a lot about our society. I mean, what is allowed in pop videos, what is popular, and what is controversial often says a lot about constructions of gender, conceptions of material wealth, and the collective daydreams of the American people.

All of this information is a set up for me to talk about Lady Gaga. I first began to care about her somewhere around April of this year, when I spent an hour forcing my boyfriend to watch "Pokerface" with me online. I couldn't believe what I had stumbled upon--the new pop wrecking force. I was coming around to Gaga kind of late in the game, but man, did I become one vocal supporter. I found that, even though she wasn't that palatable for a lot of people, I could generally bulldoze anybody who didn't care for her with my loud and avid declarations of her awesomeness without having to back up my claims even a little. Example "SHE'S SO COOL HAVEN'T YOU SEEN ONE OF HER VIDEOS THAN YOU CAN'T TALK IT'S NOT ABOUT THE MUSIC"....etc. Recently, however, I've entered a slow-brewing tete a tete with a friend about Lady Gaga's ultimate worth (and whether pop musicians are really worth a damn, but hey, one battle at a time folks).

If you've reached this point in the post I hope that you've watched those videos I linked above. I want to proclaim, above all else, that what Lady Gaga is doing as a musician is barely even worth mentioning. YES these songs are unoriginal. YES they are overproduced. and YES I agree that they don't exactly merit all of the hype (although Poker face is damn catchy). What makes Gaga great, however, is her role as a pop cultural phenomenon. And her worth, ultimately, lies in our society's conception of a pop star's body.

So to start off, watch this Beyonce video, Crazy in Love. Notice anything? Notice the fact that Jay Z is fully clothed the entire time, often with a cap that covers his entire face? Notice that Beyonce is barely wearing clothes at all for most of the video? Notice that she does all the heavy lifting in terms of dancing, looking hot, and being sexually available for the viewer?

At this point I posit that our pop stars are a) instantly recognizable b) hot as fuck and c) willing to offer their bodies to us for our consumption. Yes, South Park has it right in their episode about Britney Spears--once someone becomes famous, especially through pop music, they have sacrificed themselves for us on the altar of fame. In short, they are our possession. We can do whatever we want to them (and with them). We're upset with Chris Brown because, yes, he beat up Rihanna, but he also damaged something that was OURS when he hit her in the face. Now Rihanna has a new asterisk beside her name--she might still be America's Girl, but she's also Domestically Abused Women's Girl. That sort of asterisk is uncomfortable and we're pissed we have to deal with it. Hence all of the outrage and all of the bullshit that surrounded that one event which, pretty much, should have been kept private. I'm not saying it's not a good thing that Rihanna is willing to speak up for women's rights, but that shouldn't be a defining part of her image. Just as all women who are raped or suffered abuse have to live with that new reality the rest of our lives, Rihanna will be the Tina Turner-esque "abused famous woman."

All of this is to say that yes, we know exactly what bodies our pop stars possess, we have access to them photographically at all times and even the ends of their bodies are ours (michael jackson's death anyone?). What makes Gaga great, however, is that she has both willfully entered the Fame Monster (as she would call it) but also managed to avoid becoming Our Possession through her constant manipulation of her image. Don't believe me? Check out these pictures. (Each word is a different link).

Or better yet, rewatch Bad Romance. Now, can you tell me WHAT THE FUCK she looks like? If she took off all of her pop start trappings, would you recognize her on the street?

The answer is no.

The best anecdotal I have of this phenomenon is when I was watching video phone (embedded below) with my roommate and she said "I have no idea what this girl looks like."

Gaga has somehow managed to create a fame for herself that isn't inextricably combined with her identity outside of the fame monster (I'm sorry, Taylor Swift!) which shows an extremely high level of intelligence and an incredible understanding of the Pop Music Fame Making Machine. It's totally awesome. She's rolled right into the belly of the beast, winked at us, and asked "Do you see what I'm doing here?" She describes herself as a performance artist because yes, that's what she is, she's performing being famous. Her sexual use of her body in her videos is supposed to be aggressive; it's up in your face and it makes you uncomfortable. Her body isn't there for you to consume sexually. It's there so you think about the fact that all pop stars have to have certain bodies and have to look certain ways. She looks different around every corner because she's calling attention to our constant consumption. She offers up a new version of herself every day because we'll eat it up. We should feel gross when we deal with all the versions of herself that she presents to us because we're gluttons for it.

And above all else, her strongest allusion to the idea that we, the viewer, are there to consume the (female) pop musician's body is in her video, Paparazzi. She performs in a neck brace and she performs with crutches--she's still going although we have chewed her up and spit her out and broken her down and possessed every part of her.

I am not speaking about Gaga's future as a famous person. I guess only time will tell if I'm technically right, if this totally awesome meta-fame is actually regular fame and if Gaga is just the proverbial moose we're chasing around the lake until it drowns. But as of right now, she's doing the damned thing so well that people can't tell the difference, and to them I say: I'm sorry you're missing out on enjoying one of the biggest pop music scams of all time.

And if nothing else, at least her presence in the world made Beyonce look all crazy whacked out in this one video:

plant watering day

2009-11-23T16:25:00.000-08:00

So every saturday in our apartment it's plant watering day. My roommate and I made this pact because in our previous apartment in college, we managed to kill all of our plants through the perseverance of sheer neglect. When we got here, we knew things would be different. We decided to take better care of our plants and our pets and so far it's going smashingly.

Somewhere along the way plant watering day became a phrase that we sang to this David Shrigley poem that is performed by John Shankie on David Shrigley's worried noodles album. It's called "A Song" and I've linked it below. (BTW if you don't know who david shrigley is, he is a god. Links to the worried noodles site and his website).

Today at work I decided to write the full parody to this song, about plant watering day. I give you the full parody below (it would help if you sang it with the tune of the song):

Plant watering day
Watering the plants
Break out the water
Do a little dance

Each plant is special
In its unique way
If you forget that
I'll punch you in the face

Plants are so great
Changing the air
We should always water them
It is only fair

When our plants die
Let's not have regrets
About how we care for them
We are in their debt

They give us flowers
and lots of growth
When we bought them from the shop
We took an oath

They reduce noise
and lower our stress
We still want our plants
to look their very best

So don't forget the day
Remember the plan
Plants needs their water
To increase their life span

DON'T FORGET TO WATER YOUR PLANTS

dayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyym

2009-11-20T19:24:00.000-08:00

postcards from yo momma reblogged

Top 20 Worst Photos in the History of America's Next Top Model

2009-11-18T22:00:00.000-08:00

I decided that it was high time for the flip side of the ANTM coin. Instead of the Top 20 Photos in the History of America's Next Top Model, we instead have the worst photos. Again, I judged these photographs on the quality of the modeling to the untrained eye, the styling, and the overall artistic composition. Mainly I will let these photos stand for themselves more than I did with the good photographs because when we're dealing with ANTM, man, do the bad photos speak for themselves or what?

And boy do we have some doozies! I think it's possible that some cycles don't even have representatives in this list--aren't they lucky? I will say that we got 3--count 'em, THREE--winners of cycles in this list.

20. Fo, cycle 12

First off, what the FUUUUUUUUUUCK is going on with the set of this photo shoot? I remember feeling very strange when I watched this particular episode. Since it was in Brazil I guess they figured that a bikini shoot was appropriate and they wanted to show the "characters" of Brazil but the level of camp in this...is.not.good. I don't even have much to say about it because of its utter mediocrity, but my one criticism is that Fo made herself look much shorter by using this angle and what is up with her random dangling left arm? When you look at a photograph of a model you should never feel like she had to make an active decision to pose that way. It should look natural.

19. Laura, cycle 13

As I said, I love Laura like I love me some grits but this photo is odd, even though it isn't entirely her fault. They way they've photoshopped it makes her look like some sort of weird plastic doll. Nothing about the rope is flattering, also.

18. Kara, cycle 13

I didn't like Kara in cycle 13, I'll admit it. And sometimes the personality does get in the way of the photograph. But in this particular photo, nothing about it is cohesive. She's supposed to be emulating a photo from her childhood and instead it just looks like some chick with a bunch of office plants and terrible hair.

17. April, cycle 2

No head, no right leg, and also a crotch shot. In addition, the photoshopping and the outfit are too tacky for words. I don't care if this was the style back in the day when these steve madden ads used to run.

16. McKey, cycle 11

Everything about this photo screams insecurity, which is because McKey spent most of this photo shoot standing around like a wooden block. Jay eventually had to get her outside of her box by convincing her to do boxing moves. Therefore this shit is forced.

15. Whitney, cycle 10

I included this picture because the overall shoot itself was probably one of the worst in top model history purely because of the styling. Not one but FOUR girls had meat panties?!?! I've included the other shots below to show how truly horrific meat panties really are, but whitney's meat panties are by far the most...diaperish. And everything about this photo shoot screams "statement" without saying anything.

14. Anchal, cycle 7

I remember Tyra wondering if this photo shoot was a bad idea because practically every contestant bombed it, and man I gotta say: she was right. Stick some girls in a crazy vent that forces them into the air and expect them to take a good picture? Poor insecure Anchal...her face looks awkward and strained, her boobs are forced flat by the wind, and that photoshopped universe behind her is the cheesiest thing since pepper jack.

13. Nicole, cycle 2

Don't remember Nicole but this is some slutty Maxim bikini shit and I hate it. It's Klassy with a Kapital K.

12. Tessa, cycle 1

Ditto what I said for Nicole in picture 13, but this one has the added bonus of an extremely strange pose. Poor Tessa, we hardly knew ye.

11. Ann, cycle 3

Ann, even if she was gorgeous, was a particularly inept model. When given hideous styling and told to jump around a trampoline, her first response was to go flying through the air like the atom bomb that represents the quality of this photo.

10. Jaslene, cycle 8

I've included this picture (and another one below) to illustrate one of my biggest pet peeves in ANTM modeling: the chick with the perpetually raised eyebrow. Jaslene had four photographs in which to express four different parts of her personality and in every one of them one of her eyebrows is raised and she looks exactly the same. And modelesque doesn't describe someone's personality as much as it describes your outsides, raised eyebrow and all. FAIL.

9. Dominique, cycle 10

Speaking of drag queens (see Jaslene's picture above) Dominique looks like one in this picture. I'm not saying that to hate, but it was one of her biggest failures as a female model.

8. Tahlia, cycle 11

I have a double header of Tahlia pictures here although I would have liked to include every one of her photos. She was, is, and always will be my least favorite ANTM contestant of all time, mainly because of her perpetually raised eyebrow (THE GRAVEST OFFENSE) and her utterly shitty personality. Burns over 2/3 of her body or no, she was just Tyra's pet cause of the season and didn't know modeling from a piece of trash on the ground (and believe me, the way I just phrased that is considerably less vitriolic than what I previously thought to write).

So this picture sucks because she was supposed to represent the color purple and all she did was raise her eyebrow.

7. Tahlia, cycle 11

And this picture sucks because she's inept. The "bad" teenagers are ridiculous. Tyra wanted this photo shoot to be about how little girls grow up too fast, so she had the models acting out innocent girls while bad teenagers stood around in the background, but by god, what the hell does that have to do with fashion?

6. Natasha, cycle 8

So all of the following pictures have something MAJORLY wrong with them if they manage to be worse than Tahlia's BS. In this photo, Natasha's foreignness is somehow visually clear because she really doesn't know what the hell a teacher's pet is supposed to be doing. The lighting is wonky, the styling is trashy, and she's just sitting there lamely.

5. Megan, cycle 7

This girl could have been Helen of Troy and blonde hair Princess Leia buns on top of her head would still have made her look terrible.

4. Xiomara, cycle 2

Underwater shoots are always hard and as a rule I don't like the kinds of photographs they produce. So in Xiomara's defense, it's not her, it's me. That being said, she didn't even get her eyes open and her mouth makes it look like she's about to poop.

3. Megg, cycle 7

Megg had a huge disadvantage because of all the cool circus themes she could have gotten, she had to be the bearded lady and only got to work with a couple bales of hay on set. However, she is literally just standing there playing with her hair. She actually looks like she's listening to critique from Jay instead of doing anything.

That all being said, she had one of my favorite post-elimination departures of all time on ANTM.

"Me and my friend, you know, we're going to make a band. It's gonna be like a rock and roll model band. Rock and roll man, life is awesome, I'm gonna go make some music"....or something along those lines

2. Lluvy, cycle 4

Dubbed the worst picture in the history of ANTM by Tyra during the 4th cycle, this picture hasn't stood the test of time as the worst of all time, although it is still sitting pretty at number 2. This poor girl's face just could not take that many big ass sequins and to top it off she's awkwardly leaning off with her hands in the air.

1. Kathy, cycle 6

Without a doubt, this is the worst photo in the history of the show. I was so certain of this fact that I put this picture and wrote this portion of the post before I was even done sorting the rest of the photos from the rest of the cycles. I was so certain of this fact that I was ready to put the photo in the worst list the minute I conceived of doing ANTM listicles. I was so certain of this fact that when I watched this first episode of cycle 6, I knew Kathy was out the minute I saw this photo and immediately thought "that is the worst picture in the history, present, and future of America's.Next.Top.Model." I mean, really? could her eyes be any more blank (or look bizarrely more mean?) Could the composition of the photograph itself be anymore dissonant? I think I'll stop here and let the truly terrible speak for itself because I don't want to blast any of these models for how they look or who they are. And to be honest--Kathy had potential, as she was from NC, and I always root for my hometown. But this picture, to put it crudely, simply did not cut the cheese.

Moving on and Moving Out: observations

2009-11-18T16:10:00.000-08:00

While I was getting off the train today I walked behind two noteworthy people that I felt I had to share with someone. My roommate is at work (for once! uh guh guh guh, please don't take this personally dear roommate oh god what have I done will the home environment be the same PLEASE SOMEONE THINK OF THE CAT). So I turn to you, my readers. Because that's what everybody wants out of a blog they read. For their blogger to needless tell them details about their day. Hey, if you're single and petting a cat right now: I'm here for you. I try to do what I can for the little people.

To continue on my train of snarkathon 2009, I decided to dub this a moving and moving out post because I recently switched the formatting on the way tags are displayed (didja notice?) and every time I tag something with consistency, it makes the word BIGGER. Oh my god this is meta, what I'm writing about right now, which is me writing about the blog that I am writing, did you see what I did there?

(btw honest to god this is normally what I'm like when I get home from work because I have to be mostly silent all day).

So, some shit that I experienced today (oh hell, shit I experienced recently):

1) Three Douchey McDouchersons in the corporate cafeteria (Yes I work for a big ass building downtown for a big ass corporation, and NO please do NOT post the name of my Corp in the comments if you know what it is...oh yeah I quit that other job I had. Kthxbai.) were talking about some test that they had to take. This may have been the SAT writing portion for all I know. Then this one guy, he gets all excited about what he wrote in his essay. "OH MY GOD," he tells his friends, "I WROTE ABOUT VONNEGUT ON THE ESSAY." OMG sez his friends. "YES I KNOW! I FELT SO AWESOME, DROPPING ALL THAT KNOWLEDGE. SO WHEN I WAS WRITING, IT WAS LIKE ABOUT THAT BOOK THAT HAD THE BOYS ON THE ISLAND AND ONE WAS A BAD BOY AND ONE WAS A GOOD BOY AND EVERYBODY LIKED THE BAD BOY." Beat...one of his friends meekly says "isn't that lord of the flies?" Douche goes on "AND THE BEST PART IS THAT UNDERPAID GRAD STUDENTS ARE GRADING THIS SHIT SO I'M SURE THEY JUST ATE IT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111"

William Golding, dude, and, uh, your friend was RIGHT. Who the hell thinks lord of the flies is vonnegut anyway? Uh guh guh guh, god, corporate financial types, they are the shit that the flies from lord of the flies are buzzing around. Or, as is the case in lord of the flies, dead pig heads on stick. Zing!

2) Today in the corporate cafeteria (never get tired of sayin' that), I heard this table of women talking about how this 60 year old woman had married someone's 95 year old rich relative and OH MY GAWD was she doing it for the money? Who was this woman? What are her motives? Surely she can't be sexually satisfied by this man! (Well perhaps if she's gone through menopause and lost all of her libido then she don't give a shit! Bring on the $$!)

This whole conversation led to a text conversation where I told my roommate that where I work is "so rich" and she said "you oscillate back and forth so much on your feelings for this place" and then I said "yeah i'm either foaming at the mouth about how much I hate it or silently weeping in the corner at the thought of leaving. It's the money." To which you ask: What's the money? The cause of your hate or your weeping? And to that I say: Yes.

3) The two people worth mentioning when I got off my train stop today:
a) A tall, very fine black man with shaved sides of his head and a stylish swept about faux hawk wearing the sweetest jacket and walkin' with a swagger.
b) A tall, not quite as fine, white man with red hair and a red beard (sometimes they are different, ok) who walked like he had knock-knees and pigeon toes. That is to say, his ankles were rolled inwards when he walked. It looked very strange.

4) I caught the 84 bus today to the red line stop which was amazing. I've discovered that if I'm running a couple of minutes late, I can catch the light to cross the street and then catch the bus in 2 minutes, which puts me at the train stop at about the normal time if I had left on time and walked the distance. Let me tell you guys, this is a miracle on ridge street. I have the morning commute down to a semi-exact science and yet the mother-effing evening commute is still a mystery to me. My stop in the morning is washington and wells but if I use that in the evening, then I have to ride around the entire loop and it adds about 15 minutes to my trip. Since I generally can't stand the commute home anyway, this is a lot. I try to assuage myself by playing mario but really I need to figure it out.

Additionally, I love that when you have your morning commute down to a science you can actually start noticing who's doing that shit with you on the regular. The only people I see pretty much every day (so far) are the bald-headed man and his wife walking down the street when I leave the apartment. I miss them on the days I catch the bus.

5) This temp job is about to leave me and I it at the end of this month, but because of Thanksgiving that means I'm probably only working 4 or 5 more days at best. I'm going to miss the stability of having a job but no more brown line for me for a while, yes thanks! Ah, temp jobs. I love thee more than I loved that permanent job I had for two days (NO JUDGING)

One Hail Mary, BITCH

2009-11-15T19:19:00.000-08:00

postcards from yo momma reblogged

Quiver Full

2009-11-14T13:57:00.000-08:00

I may have mentioned in an earlier post that I have lots upon lots of time at work to cruise the internet, and I always want to bring my incredible findings back here to the faithful readers because you can't make this shit up.

The latest installment of my findings deal with the quiver fulls, an evangelical christian movement that takes this one passage from the bible very literally:

"Lo children are an heritage unto the Lord:
and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
As arrows are in the hands of a mighty man,
so are children of the youth.
Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them"
Psalm 127:3-5

Obviously the name of the movement is based on this scripture, but basically the gist of their ideology is that the participants of QF should not practice birth control and the entire family (wife included) should submit to the patriarchy of the husband. Now I normally find this stuff so ragingly offensive that I wouldn't be able to stomach it, but one of the QF movement's most outspoken protestor is a woman named Vyckie Garrison. She had an extremely troubled early life that she writes about in exhausting detail on her blog, No Longer Quivering. Her mother was essentially single her entire childhood and went from deadbeat step-dad to deadbeat step-dad, men who sexually abused Vyckie's older sister and physically abused her mom. Vyckie got married when she was 16 to a man who emotionally and physically abused her for 5 years before they split. Then she moved to Iowa and married a blind man with whom she raised her daughter from another man, and eventually gave birth to six of his children. These pregnancies were extremely physically taxing for her, as she has a rare bone disorder, and to top it off, they had a home business and were home schooling their children. Her husband constantly berated and verbally harassed their oldest daughter to the point that the daughter attempted suicide.

Vyckie has not fully written out when the turning point came for her to divorce her husband and get her kids out of that environment, but the important thing to note is that she did eventually leave. She now runs her blog with writings from other ex-QFs and very eloquently writes about her own negative experiences.

Reading her story is quite the experience for someone with my worldview. She tries to remember her thoughts, feelings, and politics from the times that she describes, so she often says things that come across as unintentionally hilarious. An example (and I'm paraphrasing) is "At the time Bill Clinton had just been elected president so we truly thought it was the end of times." She had friends who ascribed to the belief that they did not have to hold themselves accountable for their actions (i.e. being in debt or sending their kids to public schools, two courses of action--in their minds--that were equally as "risky") because they thought they were gonna be raptured out of here sooner rather than later.

One thing that struck me about her beliefs during that time in her life is how firmly rooted they were in fear. She and everyone around her practically kept their families on house arrest. They believed that public schools were secular and godless, and that if their children were exposed to the government's evil and sin that their kids would be corrupted. They never once questioned why, if they were so certain that their lifestyle was the right one, that their children would immediately fall into the dangers of secularism and liberalism. One would think that this extreme level of belief would equal some sort of confidence. However, according to their system of thought, the devil is everywhere and he will git ya at any time. Therefore they sought to be vigilant warriors for the lord.

I write all of this about Vyckie's life without the intent to criticize her; through her writings it is evident that she is an intelligent woman. The two greatest victories of her life were leaving a man who mentally and physically abused her as well as a movement that created a psychological strangehold on her and her children (no small feats). I firmly suggest looking at her writing, although it requires a great deal of time to sift through. I hadn't given a great deal of thought to the intersection of patriarchy and religion in a long time. It was a definite wake up call to see how at least one segment of the American population thinks--there are apparently thousands of quiver fulls. (This fact scares me of course because that means they're producing obscene numbers of new Americans. All the better to consume the world with, my pretty! EEEE!!)

Since all of my reading on the internet fundamentally relates back to one subject--sexism--the quiver full movement definitely provided a new insight into the ways in which the oppression of women is perpetuated in our society. Sometimes in the academic world people seem to think that feminism is an obsolete discipline but these people couldn't be more wrong. Outside of the major global issues of inequality that I think all social movements need to address, we're still finding examples of extreme sexism in the darker corners of our society. Let's keep beating the bushes, America, and figure this shit out.

The Jezebel entry on the quiver full movement

beware the killer pancakes

2009-11-11T19:19:00.000-08:00

postcards from yo momma reblogged

catch-all entry about art stuff

2009-11-11T18:13:00.000-08:00

My new job consists of sitting behind a desk transferring phone calls all day (yeah, I get paid to do a robot's work) so I spend a lot of time cruising the internet. This cruising results in curious finds that make me want to post to my blog, but alas, the firewall at work is so intense that I can't log on to ESSNK.

I wanted to share with you some of my discoveries from my time in this great wide world of wonderous weberosity, so this is a catch-all entry: links and thoughts about How We Live Today.

1) Fashematics: http://fashematics.com
A fashion blog I discovered through NYT that puts together two or more images that almost always make an incredible reference point to the latest designs to walk the runway. Funny and fun to look at, although hardly substantial.

2) Modern Art Notes: Tyler Green's modern and contemporary art blog, also discovered via the NYT article on the New Museum's trustee collection show that is fast approaching. The first couple of entries on this blog deal with the issues of the New Museum's trustee, Dakis Joannou, displaying his private collection in a show curated for the museum by Jeff Koons. The whole things smacks of nepotism and art world elitism and is, frankly, a shame. When I first read the article I was sliding towards the apathetic opinion of "what's the big deal?" but after I read the materials on Modern Art Notes and read this extensive drawing/chart of the situation by William Powhida, I realized that I am extremely not OK with what's going on here. The New Museum should totally rock, but instead it gives us the same tired art-ejaculation bull-shit of people like Elizabeth Peyton and Jeff Koons who is FUCKING 57 and has a BILLIONAIRE PATRON in Joannou. And if I have to see one more crappy video installation where people throw paint on each other to electronic music and clearly were only friends of the friends of curator, than I will VOMIT ON THE PLACE ITSELF. And listen, I interned with the New Museum. I love the building. I love the promise it holds as an institution. And I love the fact that it was started by Marcia Tucker who wanted to find contemporary art at the source, before it became a commercial success (loosely paraphrased Powhida on that point). However, this museum is suffering from a serious case of malaise and laziness, using the same names over and over and pushing artists who are too overused. The New Museum should make its mission statement:

"Give me your tired sculptors, your poor painters,
Your huddled digital artists yearning to break free,
The wretched artists of your teeming lands,
Send these, the homeless artists, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my rainbow beside the stack of silver blocks"

...Ya know?

3) But all this art blog stuff eventually led me back to this one piece that I had learned about in my abstract studio art class in college: The Walter De Maria lightning field. Dia Beacon maintains it and it is located in New Mexico somewhere in the elevated parts of the state. You can stay the night there (that's pretty much the only way to experience it) for 250 bucks (That includes room and board for a night) . They recommend that you experience the field at dawn and dusk and try it at night because of the lightning, although it isn't a guarantee. Add this experience to my bucket list because DAMN I WANT TO GO TO THERE. Even if it is expensive.

Top 20 photographs in the History of America's Next Top Model

2009-11-05T21:40:00.000-08:00

I discovered this website called all-antm.net that you can register for and gain access to every photo in.the.history.of.america's.next.top.model. I am overjoyed. I am overwhelmed with the endless possibilities (the tyra possibilities?) for various ANTM-related lists. My roommate has the patient of a saint because she endured me showing her photo after photo, cycle after cycle tonight, because, frankly, there are some darned lot of photographs to choose from.

I've decided to make a new feature here at S n K, which is mainly that I'm occasionally going to do an ANTM listicle. These will probably be created at random and at my leisure but I've decided to go for the Big Bang to start off this amazing new chapter in all of our lives: The Top 20 Photos in the History of America's Next Top Model.

I feel the need to set out a few guidelines for my judging before we get to the good stuff. Namely, I am not a photographer, nor do I work in fashion. These are purely the best photographs based on my taste and eye as an artist and avid consumer of fashion magazines. These photos might not be good modeling, and the girl photographed might suck as a person (god that is true of many girls who have been on that show). I chose photographs for their a) subjective beauty, b) interesting composition, c) styling, d) theme of the shoot, and e) memorable nature. I tried to include as many girls from as many cycles as I could, but I still had the final say--which is that if CariDee has two photos that are better than the best photo from Cycle 1, I'm going go with her 2 photos (btw this is true of my list but damn, the shit from cycle 1 looks amateurish to me. Oh, how the times have changed in Top Modeland).

One pattern that amazed me the most was how so many of my photos were not judged the best at panel. The photo that has been deemed the best photo in the history of top model (see cycle 11, lauren brie, balloon shoot) has not made the list. I never liked that photo and I never will. The composition is not dynamic and her shoulder looks F-ed. On the other hand, a couple of photos I have chosen either got a girl eliminated, or were taken of a girl that few people remember. Weee! I love going back into the obscure bowels of Top Model History. I can't wait until Australia's next top model has enough cycles for this sort of list to be fruitful.

So, in descending order, we begin with:

20. Kahlen, cycle 2

Kahlen was one of my favorite top model girls, although her photos weren't particularly inspiring to me, hence this one photograph being at the end of the list. Obviously, that is not exactly her fault as the styling or themes of the shoot often dictate how cool or interesting the photos are. But I love her natural look in this shot and the backlighting makes for a very warm and beautiful glow.

19. Marjorie, cycle 11

Marjorie also comes in as one of my favorite top model girls, though because of her utterly twitchy personality. This photo got her eliminated, but I've always loved it. The campy amsterdam background combined with her fashion-y awkwardness are in great contrast, and I can TOTES imagine this image being in Jane Magazine, if it hadn't gone bankrupt (R.I.P Jane! There went my dream job but for the grace of god).

18. Joanie, cycle 6

Obviously the theme of this shoot is strangely misogynistic (oh...so the girl is the dummy...operated by the man!!!...omg). However, Joanie really captured the dummy's stance and vacant look. This photo has a great level of theatricality.

17. Victoria, cycle 9

Cycle 9 was the pits. The girls in that cycle were absolutely horrendous, ending with the worst fart of a winner ever, Saleisha. The one thing I always loved about this cycle was the Ivy League Victoria, who liked to pick on Twiggy during panel. Oh, Victoria, Twiggy never "got" you, did she? Twiggy did say (and I agree with her) that there was a vulnerability to this photo that makes Victoria look like a brown-eyed deer, and that is why I was able to remember it even after Victoria got cut after three episodes. I wonder if she's like a brain surgeon now or some crazy shit.

16. Bre, cycle 5

I surprised myself with the inclusion of this photo because I barely remembered this photo shoot before I can began rifling through it. But Bre looks awesome here and all the rightward motion in this shot makes it really compelling.

15. CariDee, cycle 7

This shoot is when my love of Caridee was sealed. That elephant trunk looks so fucking hip its painful. It may be cliched, but circus-themed photo shoots are overdone for a reason. They always look FIERCE.

14. Elina, cycle 11

Including this particular photo actually makes me feel like I'm going to come across as a lesbian. This fact wouldn't bother me at all of course, but it does remind me of this one conversation I had with my brother when I was in middle school or early high school. I was downloading pretty photos of Nicole Kidman and Angelina Jolie onto the family computer because I loved them back then, and he remarked that a guy could never download photos of hot actors without his sexuality being seriously questioned. Now, I love appreciating beautiful women, but this remark always stuck with me. But Elina is gorgeous, and even though she had the personality of a wet noodle that turn into barbed wire on the way down your throat, she undeniably deserved the best photo win that she got the week of this photo shoot.

13. Lauren Brie, cycle 11

This photo, although not number 1, inspired me to make this list...I sought out all-antm.net because I saw this photo in passing online. I had forgotten how utterly amazing it was. I love that the focal point is off-center, yet Lauren looks so symmetrical. It is dynamite.

12. Erin, cycle 13

I had to come to terms with my hatred for Erin before putting this photo up, but this has got to be the only ANTM photo that truly proves Tyra's constant point that alien can be a good thing. She also looks like a contemporary take on a victorian portrait, like girl with a pearl earring. It's so fierce it hurts--god i love pretty things lookin' ugly. Also, why does Tyra never say fierce anymore?

11. Allison, cycle 12

I struggled with the idea of including anything from the dreaded cycle 12 (aka Cycle Tahlia) but this photo of Allison is just too much. Awwwww...fluffy little birdie! But...artsy!

10. Samantha, cycle 11

So cycle 11 is in a dead heat with cycle 7 for most represented cycle in this list...I'm not sure why. I will say that these two cycles both created a great desire for me to actually own photographs from ANTM--a very weird thought. That being said, this photo is so mod, and the splash in the foreground gives the picture very nice depth.

9. Laura, cycle 13

I love me some Laura like I love me some grits, and boy let me tell you: that is a lot. You will probably see her on future positive listicles. You should check out her blog if you want some warm fuzzies. The judge said she looked like a Renaissance woman in the picture. She looks so serene and so soft and so pink that she's like a high-quality marshmallow. Delicious.

8. Anya, cycle 10

They claimed this picture was an accident in judging (she's about to fall off the step), but it's still such a pretty moment it gets into the top ten through the sheer beauty of Anya alone.

7. Rae, cycle 13

Cycle 13 started off strong, and this photo is pretty much the reason why. The light is fantastic.

6. Eugena, cycle 7

Again, this was a photo I had forgotten about. It's compelling because it's so raw and Eugena is probably one of the more underrated ANTM girls. She was an absolute stunner, even if she was a little quiet, and the power of emotion behind this photo speaks to the fact that her exterior obviously concealed a great deal that she didn't allow to make its way onto national television. Suck it, Tyra! Even if she did make top 3!!

5. CariDee and Amanda, cycle 7

When my mom and I saw this photo on the TV we gasped. I'm not even sure what else there is to say about it--of course Amanda got kicked off in this episode, although for what I can't remember. I just love flowy shit and contrasting colors (see the next photo, obviously).

4. Yoanna and Shandi, cycle 2

This picture is amazing because of how sexually charged it is. I'll make no bones about it, it is some serious lesbian shit. The sensuous look on yoanna's face, the ecstasy of shandi's--they never let us see the full shot (maybe it was originally cropped like this) so we can all wonder....ooooh voyeurism.

3. Danielle, cycle 6

Danielle actually took this picture after a couple hours in the hospital after fainting during a challenge. She was barfing, dehydrated, and sick as a dog. And then she got on a top of an elephant and looked so serene and amazing, she made it to the top 3. I am impartial to this photo because of the elephant, of course, but this moment is so pure on both parts that I simply love it.

2. Brittany, cycle 8

My last two photos are violent and thematic because of Tyra's half-baked ideas about what it means to be in fashion (i.e. she blatantly rips off ideas from high-fashion as if that makes the show cutting edge in some way). There was recently a Jezebel post about death in fashion and whether it was appropriate (of course linking to this photo shoot, though not this particular picture). I was conflicted when I read about this--I honestly love seeing death used in fashion spreads, namely because I like to use them for my collages. Regardless, Brittany ended up getting cut because she threw a tantrum after missing the time cutoff for her go-sees, but not for this photo and not for this episode.

1. Michelle, cycle 7

The twins were honestly my favorite ANTM contestants of all time, and I still think they should have been the top 2 (sorry Caridee! Loved ya on Gossip Girl, girl!!!!). That being said, Michelle was clearly the more natural model of the two, even if she threw herself under the bus at the end to save her twin from elimination. She claimed she didn't even know if she wanted to model...and that she was a bisexual? Or maybe a lesbian? But definitely not straight. She was a total basketball dyke. It was awesome. But I digress. This shoot was based on stereotypes about models, and Michelle was supposed to represent bulimia. The action of this photo is really compelling and very gritty. It's haunting in a gruesome way. And that's why I think it was the best photo of all time.

Thoughts? Opinions? Would you like to contribute your own lists?

Moving on and Moving out

2009-11-04T19:07:00.000-08:00

Man, this week has been intense on the Moving on and Moving out front. I finally got a job (yay!) but the pay in peanuts and it's in retail--which means no thanksgiving. That's right. I have no time off for Thanksgiving except Thanksgiving day, so I'm not going home to NC. That news hit me harder than I thought it was going to, especially since I spent Halloween throwing up, so I guess it's just a no-holidays fall for me. I'm hoping that I'll get at least 3 days to go home for Christmas because if I don't, well, I might just have to quit. We'll see how it goes though.

I also have worked three temp jobs this week, which was cool and all, but man, commuting to downtown is a BITCH. I always hit rush hour and it's just like....I can feel everyone's collective stress building up in my spine. I love riding trains, and I love living in a city with a river, but damn, commuters! Everyone CALM DOWN. I hate finding that I'm practically running while I'm walking in order to keep pace with everyone, just because people aren't willing to have a moment of their precious time slowed down.

But I digress. I just wanted to check in today and link to this sculptor named Mari Kasurinen who makes My Little Pony sculptures. Apparently I'm just really into people who remake dolls and other toys...probably because I want those skills myself. These sculptures she makes are absolutely amazing, no question, and she sells that shit for 600 bucks a pop! Awesome!

I'm about to undertake a really big ANTM-related listicle for the blog, so be on the look out for that.

Love to all.

more on rape, so NSFW (ish)

2009-10-29T22:19:00.000-07:00

READ THIS PLEASE

I have been spending a lot of time looking at materials on rape because of the recent California gang rape that I posted about a couple of days ago. Today I read this amazing piece (I am honestly not sure who the author is) about the nature of approaching a woman in public that is less heavy handed than the list of "DON'T BE A RAPIST/how to prevent sexual assault" tips I posted previously. I think every person should read this or be required to read this at some point in their lives. The most astounding statistic to take from the piece is that 1 in 6 women will be raped in their lifetimes, which creates some scary statistics about how many men are rapists.

One commentor had an amazingly astute response, which I've linked here, but I'm also copying for the sake of simplicity:

"You know, it never occurred to me before now, but I’ve never seen that “one in six” (or however many) statistic turned around that way, and I think that’s probably the other side of the “how not to get raped” coin. Or… I guess… the same side, but a different part of the etching. I don’t know, metaphor, not my strong suit.

MY POINT IS:

When we talk about rape as something that happens to 1 in 6 women, it is something that happens to women. Oh no, women! You have a problem! A women’s problem! That has to do with women! What are women going to do to solve this problem?

Perhaps if we rephrased that as “one in sixty (or however many) men will commit rape in his lifetime,” the problem might start to look a little different to certain people."

The point I feel like I'm coming back to, again and again, is that all materials on the nature of rape should not be PHRASED AROUND WOMEN or PHRASED AROUND THE SURVIVOR. I believe ardently that saying that 1 in 6 WOMEN will SUFFER from rape in their lifetime still somehow makes them implicit in the act. Rape isn't something that naturally happens without a perpetrator--somebody MAKES it happen, i.e. the RAPIST--and THIS PERSON is the one who should have statistics. Like "1 in 30 men will rape in his lifetime and 50% of these men will rape more than once." Doesn't that sound more truthful?

I acknowledge the fact that not all rapists are men, but still, hear me out: the RAPISTS are responsible for RAPE!!!!!!! MY CAPITAL LETTERS CAN NOT EXPRESS MY EXTREME OUTRAGE ENOUGH!!!

The bottom line is that rape is not the victim's problem to solve, ergo it is not a "woman's problem." Rape and sexual assaults are humanity's problems, period. End of story.

Stella in Leather: a Killers "Somebody Told Me" Cover

2009-10-28T19:34:00.000-07:00

This post is actually dedicated to my friend Franny. To understand it better, you need these two pop culture references. First off, if nobody remembers the ancient Killers' song, "Somebody Told Me," here's a refresher:

Secondly, in season 5 of Project Runway, there was a designer named Stella who worked in "Leathuh." Here is an example of how she talked:

Her awesomeness is still too unique to be forgotten. So, in fit of drinking wine and random inspiration, the Killers song came on and I realized that a Stella parody fit really easily into the current lyrics. So here's my redux.

Stella "Somebody Told Me" Redux

I’m breaking my back just to sew this cow-hide
Seven challenges and I’ve had it with this ride
Breaking my back just to sew this cow-hide
But heaven is close in Parsons School
100,000 dollars for my own line, fool
Heaven is close in Parsons School
Heaven is close in Parsons School
Bring the hammer down, bring the hammer down
Gonna smash some grommets into this gown

My name is Stella
I work in Leatha
I make love to Rat Bones
So don’t you throw stones
Or metal grommets
Cuz I’ll make you vomit
It’s all about Leatha
Leatha…leatha

Ready? Let’s sew into something new
Model’s clothes so tight she’s turning a little blue

Heaven is close in Parsons School
Heaven is close in Parsons School
Bring the hammer down, bring the hammer down
Gonna smash some grommets into this gown

My name is Stella
I work in Leatha
I make love to Rat Bones
So don’t you throw stones
Or metal grommets
Cuz I’ll make you vomit
It’s all about Leatha
Leatha…leatha

Tim Gunn, please let me be
Cuz I’m working for Rat Bones, baby
Mood, give me some more leatha
And tell me it ain’t pleatha

(x3)
My name is Stella
I work in Leatha
I make love to Rat Bones
So don’t you throw stones
Or metal grommets
Cuz I’ll make you vomit
It’s all about Leatha
Leatha…leatha

this post NSFW

2009-10-27T09:44:00.001-07:00

I read today about a brutal gang rape that occurred in California (news article here).

Not only was it a brutal gang rape, but the girl was 15 and as many as 15 people stood around and watched and/or participated.

I hate thinking about this event. I hate thinking about the ways I have to try to be safe as a girl living in a city. I hate thinking about the fact that someone will make excuses for what happened to this girl or any girl. Yes, there are gray areas when it comes to sexual assault, but the bottom line is that it is NOT THE VICTIM'S RESPONSIBILITY TO NOT BE A VICTIM. I mean, think about it--trying to not be a victim isn't a course of action you can decisively "take." You either ARE or you AREN'T based on the DECISIONS AND ACTIONS of OTHER PEOPLE.

I'll stop here with the overemphasis capital letters, but the reason I wanted to write this post was to include this list about preventing sexual assault (you can read the original web comment on Jezebel here).

"How to Prevent Sexual Assault

1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.

2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!

4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.

5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!

6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.

9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!

10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone "on accident" you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are committing a crime- no matter how "into it" others appear to be."

I don't know if everyone has to go to Remedial How to be a Human Being 101, but the fact of the matter is that women's bodies aren't here to torture men because they are so sexual and they can't have us. We shouldn't have to wander around with our defenses up at all times because we are so sexually appealing men can't "control" themselves. I know I'm talking in ideals right now but godDAMN people! Stop it with the rape already! And stop telling women how to avoid it! Not every decision every person makes in regards to their own safety is necessarily the smartest, safest choice: but should the punishment really be brutal rape? Just because this 15 year old girl agreed to drink with a boy she knew from school, does that really mean she has to beaten until she's in critical condition? Why must the stakes be so high? Her night should have ended with a fight with her parents for breaking curfew.

amazing one of a kind barbies

2009-10-26T23:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, normally I would try to avoid reblogging Jezebel, but as it is my main source of pop culture and this is too good to pass up, I have to point everybody's attention to this woman who makes one of a kind Barbies. They look like...actual human beings (to a certain point of course).

If you're interested in filtering through her site on your own, you can find it here.

For easier browsing, here's a link to the custom Barbies and the custom Kellys.

I've chosen a few of my favorite Kelly images (the Barbies are a horse of a different color entirely) to share here so maybe you'll be inspired to check it out. I imagine that she is getting tons of requests for dolls now that Jez has run something about her. I just cannot believe how amazing she can make a Barbie/Barbie product look. It makes me wish I knew how to redux dolls so I could make them into crazy art pieces. But anyway, onto the dolls.

pumpkin party!

2009-10-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

DON'T BE TARDY FOR THE PARTY

So I don't what it is about this year but halloween feels really new and special to me again. Maybe it's because I carved two (count 'em TWO) pumpkins this year and have eaten a much larger quantity of pumpkin seeds than I have in the past, but it felt so special that I made a mask from scratch and everything for the occasion. This year we're rocking shark telegrams, my roomie and I, and I hope to confuse and delight everybody just.enough. through this costume. I'm so hyped...I could...I could...CHOMP.

I mean, let's be real here, this is the first Halloween I've ever had in a major American city, so I'm definitely excited for that. The thought of rolling around on public transportation with my own crazy costume on, while hopefully running into people with even crazier costumes, and hopefully everybody will be boozy enough to take random pictures with strangers--well, it all sounds too good to be true. Call me an optimist.

(A random aside--my people and I spent a good deal of one night talking about how we wanted people to start asking "how's the boozness going?" at parties and for people to say incredibly nerdy things in reply like "there have been high returns this quarter." So, check it. Make boozness happen, my ten readers!)

So in the spirit of this All Hallow's Eve, some links!

Extreme Pumpkins
The Monster Mash
A Strange Website whose url is barackobamamask.com (not my original find but i had to pass it on--and why is the face on the right NOTHING LIKE OBAMA)
This image of Lady Gaga, which would be a good costume in retrospect. CHOMP
The opening scene from Scream
....And an eyeball tattoo.

moon bombing parties in 3...2...1

2009-10-25T21:09:00.001-07:00

Thoughts on moon bombing reblogged

2009-10-20T21:20:00.001-07:00

http://trollcats.com/2009/10/skeptical-as-to-the-truth-of-your-assertion-trollcat/

life would be a lot sadder

2009-10-12T22:04:00.000-07:00

postcards from yo momma reblogged

"it's like a shark telegram" (my roommate)

2009-10-12T21:37:00.000-07:00

CHOMP. postcards from yo momma reblogged. CHOMP.

musical animals hocking candy

2009-10-11T11:44:00.000-07:00

these might be throwbacks for a few of you, but my roommate and I recently rediscovered the awesomeness that is the singing rabbit skittles commercial and I wanted to share these videos with the reading public.

there will be more posts soon enough once I get back into the pop culture grind. But for now, I leave you with these questions:

why do weird singing animal commercials help sell candy?
why is that bunny such a bad singer?
who would really regret trading skittles for a singing bunny given that skittles are only like a dollar a bag?
why is that gorilla so hyped to play phil collins?

Moving on and Moving Out entails Moving IN

2009-10-05T16:34:00.000-07:00

The run down of the entire experience: yet again, I made the trek from North Carolina to Oberlin to Chicago. We left on Wednesday, stayed over in Oberlin for a day, and then came to Chicago and moved all of my stuff into the apartment Friday afternoon. The day I moved in was when I hit my first big roadblock as a novice apartment-finder: it turned out there was no door to the room I had claimed as my bedroom. My mom and I were looking through the apartment and she turns to me and says "There's no door to your room!" I thought my cheeks were going to catch on fire on the spot--I couldn't believe that I had missed such a key detail when I checked out the apartment TWICE before signing the lease. When I talked to the landlord about it he played extremely dumb--"This is a one bedroom apartment. That room is the living room. If you want a door you have to install it yourself and then take it with you when you leave." Ugh, I couldn't believe it. The apartment, first off, is HUGE for a one-bedroom apartment. Secondly, the layout of the apartment says that my room is the second bedroom--duh. It has a bedroom closet and everything. Granted, the room and the closet are a bit BIG (like maybe they were more intended for storage space) but still, I feel like this was all very shady dealings because I had specifically only looked at craigslist ads for 2-bedroom apartments. I also mentioned my roommate maybe like 1 million times to the dude and had probably said, WOW ISN'T THIS A NICE BEDROOM before signing a TWO PERSON lease for the apartment. Oh, god.

But anyway, my mom and I went Xena on that shit and bought a door from Home Depot and installed it in the doorway to the "Living Room." I now have the equivalent of a closet door as the door to my bedroom but it's good enough.

The other funny thing about the apartment (which I think might be the place's saving grace in the winter) is that it is above a pizza delivery place. It's called Pizza Mania (pizza by the slice, pick up or delivery) and apparently you can only get two pizzas for the price of one, unless you're ordering a slice of course. I think that's the funniest part of it--you're like, noooo, i just want one pizza, and they insist on giving you two.

Yesterday my mom and I went to this amazing resale shop called the Brown Elephant, where I found some amazing furniture for cheap. For 80 bucks I got a nightstand, a coffee table, and a rocking chair. I love all three of these things so much I feel like the pictures above are so necessary.

So now it's on to the job hunt, and my desperation in the face of sincerely wanting a temp job, and somehow hating myself for wanting that.

I'm sorry but

2009-10-03T22:16:00.000-07:00

This shit will never get old for me.

Moving on and Moving Out

2009-09-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

Ugh, I've been horribly belated with posting on the blog lately. Maybe it's because of the absolute inundation of pop culture in my life recently (VMAs, Emmys, ANTM, Top Chef, Project Runway AND How i met your mother), but I can't seem to focus long enough to choose anything in particular to write about. Additionally, I have been packing, trying to find jobs, and generally stressin' about the Big Move to Chicago, so I've had less focus about the blog on the whole.

I want to point you all in the direction of the Rich Juzwiak's blog fourfour.typepad.com (also in my links list on the right) if you are interested in America's Next Top Model recaps. He's really a pop culture genius when it comes down to it, and the insights he has to relate about a show that sometimes makes me feel like I'm losing brain cells allows me to feel smug, and overall makes me enjoy my reality television watching experience THAT.MUCH.MORE. So, if you need an example of his awesomeness, I've done a little "reblog" as they say of his post about the first episode of this season, in which the contestants were given makeovers (although Tyra dubbed them "Tyovers").

From Four Four:

Oh, but they weren't makeovers, they were "Tyovers," since if there's one thing this show doesn't have enough of, it's Tyra's ego. I am not surprised that she found a way to make other people's changing appearance about her -- the only thing I'm surprised about is that it took her this long to think of what to call it. I wonder if she was inspired by the name change in the same way she was when the name of this show just came to her as she looked out of her window that gentle New York morning so many years ago. I wonder what else that window holds? America's Next Top Tyra? America's Tyra Top Tyra? America's Tyra Tyra Tyra? The possibilities are endless, but more importantly, the possibilities are Tyra.

I hope this tidbit is enough to hold you over for the next week or so. I will try to post again before the big move, but right now my brain is mainly consumed with worrying about the fact that I have too much crap to move it.

Oh, and also: my picks for the reality shows I'm watching--

America's Next Top Model:
Nicole (aka Bloody Eyeball)
Laura (Kentucky light of my life)

Top Chef:
I couldn't really give a fuck, I just hope Ashley the Oberlin Lesbian doesn't get cut too soon.

Project Runway:
Ra'mon (who just got cut) so now, Chris and Epperson.

Models of the Runway:
That irish model, Koji (sp?)

robot chicken

2009-09-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

I was watching Robot Chicken the other night (oh to return to my adolescent Adult Swim Youth of like...two seconds ago)! Regardless, while I was watching the show I was amazed again at how much I like it--and how little people seem to talk about it. Of course, what is there to say, really? It's an ADD 11 minute show chock full of claymation and pop culture references. The people who make the show clearly are just having fun and producing it as quickly as possible. But what I really think makes the show noteworthy is that it basically is the collective junk pile of nostalgia for our generation. Do you remember transformers? Do you want to see them again in a redone version where they're actually homosexual? Do you like star wars jokes? Have you ever watched nickelodeon? Then Robot Chicken has the satire for you!!

I realize that posting about Robot Chicken is not time sensitive or even particularly relevant. But I believe it is worth taking a moment to think about--if only for the Operatic version of the Star Trek Wrath of Kahn.

natural consequences when you stop sitting on the couch

2009-09-16T17:19:00.000-07:00

wise decisions and colorful apartments

2009-09-14T17:26:00.000-07:00

I don't want to catch any flak for not exactly updating everybody on the whole Move To Chicago portion of S&K so I'm here!

So I drove about 1500 miles total over the last week and a half (10 days to be exact). It was a huge step for me as an American human being. I spent a lot of time thinking Deep Thoughts but also thinking about furniture, so I think it all balanced out to neutral on the Shallow-Not Shallow spectrum.

I don't know if any of you have ever driven a far distance to try to find an apartment in a city you only know moderately well, but it is a bit difficult. I found that the overwhelming number of ads on craigslist that I had to digest was the hardest part; it's like, you have a few criteria, you weed out things based on your maximum rent, and then you find yourself viewing an apartment in real life that is being rehabbed by a shirtless man who is insisting that you call the owner because the realtor you've been dealing with hasn't shown up yet.

So I saw 6 apartments total in the course of 3 days and 3 of them were absolute crap. So I guess I'll just give the run down of the apartment hunting process:

Apartment 1)
In a high-rise building that was nice enough, with the man who lived on site and did all of the management work. He showed me an 1100/month apartment that he had knocked down from 1300/month, and it was the kind of apartment that would have cost about 5000/month in New York. So the apartments in the building were nice but the building itself was essentially a hotel and filled with Loyola students. I picked up some applications but the bottom line, however, is that you really can't go for the first apartment you see...especially when it's more than you were really hoping to pay.

Apartment 2)
Oh god...it was horrible...the kind of thing that would give me nightmares. Its one redeeming quality was that it was on Clark Street in Andersonville, which is a nice street to live on with lots of stuff, including this great bar called the Hopleaf that has tons of fancy pants beers. However, the carpets were blue and horrible (any of you who are reading this from Oberlin, they were exactly like the apartments in East dorm), some aspects of the apartment were being rehabbed, there was little natural light and no windows that looked out on Clark Street. No.

Apartment 3)
This apartment I never went inside. In fact, I never even looked at the right building. I hate to admit this, but I actually had the wrong address. The thing was, when I made the phone call, the woman would not speak clearly to save her life. Part of it was that she had an accent, but for real, I can understand accents--it was just that when I asked her to repeat things she never slowed down the way she was talking, so I ended up writing down the wrong address. Regardless, once I got to the general area in which the apartment building was located, I knew it wasn't right. It was just too far away and everything looked a bit too grim. So, no.

Apartment 4)
Ended up being the first apartment I looked at by myself. The landlord was funny, odd, but nice. Once again I had written down the wrong address (how does that happen so frequently?) so I took the train one stop down and then ended up having to walk to the entire distance back when I realized where the apartment was supposed to be. When I showed up, sweaty and stressed out and severely regretting wearing skinny jeans, the man was like "omg you should have told me I would have picked you up in my car!!" The building had an indoor bike rack and a typical Chicago back courtyard with lots of wooden staircases. Chicago is the city of wood, brick, ivy, and revolving doors, IMO. The apartment itself was wonderful and the right amount of strange: blue, green, and purplish grey walls with the best bathroom I saw in any place. I was sort of in love instantly but only filled out an application and paid for the credit check and agreed to come back the next day.

Apartment 5)
Was across the street from the apartment I had just seen and the entire experience was a debacle. I was dealing with a realtor named Jack who had even called to confirm the time for the viewing an hour beforehand; when I got to the apartment, he was nowhere to be seen and his phone was off (always a bad sign). There was a shirtless man inside the apartment painting the walls and generally looking sweaty. My brother and I debated just leaving; the apartment was on the first floor and had some very robbable windows--besides the fact that the entire place looked like crap because it was being rehabbed. However, when we were in the middle of the decision, the shirtless man came out INSISTING that we call the owners of the building. So, I called them, and the woman who answered was just as confused as I was. She kept insisting her husband, Tony, was supposed to show us the place and that he thought the appointment was tomorrow (NO I'M DEALING WITH A MAN NAMED JACK, i told her over and over) and then proceeded to describe the entire apartment to me in excruciating detail even though I was standing on the front porch and looking at it. Finally, out of the blue, Jack shows up while I'm still on the floor with this woman and I can barely get her off the phone. We look around the place and I find myself saying bull shit things like "wow these are nice windows" because I am painfully aware you couldn't pay me to live in that particular place. What is it about the apartment hunting experience that always reduces me to paying obvious compliments to the owner about the apartment? Like, heaven forbid I don't agree that the windows are nice.

Apartment 6)
The last apartment I was supposed to see was in the morning before returning to the colorful apartment I really liked. Apartment 6 was in Lakeview, a neighborhood that, on the whole, has a bit more going on then Edgewater in terms of the proximity of residences to shops, but the apartment was on the ground floor and yet again I was faced with rob-able windows (robbable? robb-able? likely to be robbed?), so though some tortured decision making in the course of an hour, I went with my gut and got the colorful apartment.

So now it's final--I'm moving to Chicago at the end of the month (leaving NC on the 29/30 most likely) and then my roommate will be coming along in another week. And then the job hunt begins, as does getting to know Chicago as a city-entity.

To top all of this off, I dyed my hair back to my original color (or tried to anyway). It's now brown (was blonde before). For those of you who know me, it is a shocker.

i'm back baby! i'm back!

2009-09-14T11:25:00.000-07:00