The Riff: February 2007 Archives

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February 28, 2007

Making Sustainable Design Fun

How could humans become their own renewable source of energy? This is only one of the many questions Myriel Milicevic explored while heading-up the Human Powered Workshop during the Interaction Design Workshop Week in Belgium earlier this month.

Projects participants designed at the workshop include the Dirt Annihilator, a street-cleaning trike, Energy on Wheels, a shopping cart that generates power, and an energy generating rocking chair. The objects were inspired by from a Colombian eco-village and electricity-generating turnstiles in Japanese train stations, among other things.

Organizer Milicevic recently spoke to the folks at the interactive design blog, We-Make-Money-Not-Art. She claimed "there is not much difference between politics and play." This realization was the outcome of a workshop she collaborated on with artist and designer Amy Franceschini, called The Politics of Play. (For another example of the intersection between politics and play, you also might want to check out Amy Franceschini's project, Victory Gardens 2007, currently at the SF MOMA.)

The essence of the Human Powered Workshop and the Politics of Play can be summed up in Myriel Milicevic's statement, "I like to remind people that they can make their own observations, share them,…and see grass-roots movements evolve. People can come up with very powerful and creative solutions even with very limited resources."

You can read more about Milicevic's socially and environmentally concerned design projects on here.

--Rose Miller

February 26, 2007

One More Thing about the Oscars...Lesbian Attire

What is a butch (albeit soft butch) dyke to wear to host the Oscars? A dress with lots of makeup, like Jodie Foster (whose walk totally gives it away, anyway)? Or a tux? I'm sure Ellen would rather have worn a full-on tux, but would America really have stood for a dyke in drag, bowtie and all?

I swear, I am no fan of Ellen (on my personal blog I refer to her as Ellen DeRidiculous—let that serve as evidence). But give the dyke a break. I thought her first two outfits were pretty sharp. The last one, not so much. (A butch-on-butch critique: Too clingy in the thighs.) But the MSM has harshed on her again and again. I'm calling homophobia on it—that's right, I'm pulling the gay card.

First of all, this whole armchair fashion critique, not just of the Oscars but also the State of the Union address, is inherently sexist. I mean, guys pull a tux off the rack and voilà. I challenge you to find me a critique of a man in a normal tux.

But here are some jabs at Ellen from places who apparently could have used a memo from the National Center for Lesbian Rights about the butch lesbian's impossible fashion situation (not to pimp my own work, but I think it's fair to say that I hold a significant place in the writing-about-butch-fashion genre, so check here and here).

Salon (teaser line: Ellen was 'Ellish in her tacky leisure suits): Ellen took a contrary approach and went for a casual feel ... too casual. Her red velour leisure suit would have looked right at home playing the Wurlitzer for the State Farm Senior Golf Classic. It appears that hosting daytime TV, in some cases, retards the part of the brain responsible for selecting eveningwear. It was a relief when Ellen changed, midway through, into a slightly more upscale, all white, Usher-esque ensemble, but her third and final outfit of the evening looked like she'd bribed it off of one of the busboys at Musso & Frank's. With bigger mutton chops, she'd have been a dead ringer for Isaac from "The Love Boat."

The mutton chops really exposes the anti-butch agenda here.

Washington Post: New host DeGeneres appeared in a velvet suit with pants and shoes that looked suspiciously like sneakers.

They were white (men's!) dress shoes, I believe.

New York Times: [Ellen] was dressed semiformally in an open collar and red velvet suit on a night that usually commands black tie or white.

Time: Dressed in a too-casual velvet pantsuit, [Ellen] could rouse no more than a few lazy jokes on tired tinseltown subjects…Most pointless politically correct zinger: "If there weren't blacks, Jews and gays, there would be no Oscars." Even Whoopi did better.

I would hardly call her comment pointless, especially in the mouth of the first openly gay host, despite the rather pronounced role of homosexuals in all of the workings of Hollywood.

I'll say it again, I'm no fan of her comedy, but was it really that bad? Especially when she had allegedly been asked to steer clear of politics. And that gay reference was the only gay reference she made all night. (Melissa Etheridge, on the other hand, kissed her wife for which I am so proud that I won't even mention her really, really bad fashion.)

The local rag, the Los Angeles Times, seems to have grasped Ellen's situation:

Chris Rock and Jon Stewart, the last two experimental hosts, came with a little danger, armed with male writers who hate Hollywood; Ellen comes bearing tolerance and yuks, trailing a whiff of patchouli. She's not a mean spirit, she's America's lesbian — a uniter where Rosie O'Donnell (Was she asked to host? Just wondering) is a divider. Give her credit: DeGeneres was hounded off ABC a decade ago amid hard feelings all around that her sexuality had blocked out her comedy, and now here she was back on the network, on its biggest ratings platform of the year.

When is the media going to learn how to handle the L Word? Lesbians are two-plus decades behind gay men...and counting.

Highlights and Lowlights of the Oscars and the Oscars Reviews

Did the reviewer over at Time watch the same Oscars I did? I've never been a huge fan of Ellen DeGeneres, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not so over at Time, where Ellen's performance earned a D. Even the absurdly stupid and time-wasting "Comedian at the Oscars" earned better. The A was reserved for Jerry Seinfeld's totally unoriginal trash-in-the-theaters jokes. Must be a guy thing.

Another clue to their rating system: British accent = "classy." That's what they have to say about Helen Mirren's rather unmemorable presentation with Tom Hanks. Let's not confuse her winning performance with her presentation, mmkay?

The only assessment I agree with is Jennifer Hudson: D. This isn't reality TV where blubbering is warranted. (And what about that costume malfunction during her performance? Close call.) Strangely, the Washington Post review, which is pretty relentless about everything else—notably, and justifiably, the length—singles Hudson out as a highlight. Maybe it was the near breast-sighting.

(Lamest and most transparently sexist remark in the Post review: "DeGeneres didn't seem to have quite the stature of the legendary Oscar hosts of the distant past -- namely Johnny Carson and Bob Hope.")

Can we just get back to the awards please? The people who are genuinely touched to win carry the show, and those expensive montages are the turkey.

Doodie-Head David Brooks vs. Hipster Parents

I know, I should just ignore David Brooks, especially when he does his grumpy old man routine. But his latest "kids these days" schtick is unusually misguided. (Sorry, no link, the column is behind the NYT content wall.) Yesterday, Brooks tackled the scourge of hipster parents, decrying the "Park Slope alternative Stepford Moms" who are "fascistically turning their children into miniature reproductions of their hipper-than-thou selves." Their sins: Giving their kids pretentious names like Anouschka, making them listen to Radiohead, and dressing them in annoyingly precocious t-shirts. All because they "refuse to face that their days of chaotic, unscheduled moshing are over." (Not to be confused with the orderly, scheduled kind.) This is serious stuff: "The hipster parent trend has been going on too long and it's got to stop."

I'm actually sympathetic to some of Brooks' ranting. I'm a new, un-hip parent who wants my kid to be a sheltered, uncoordinated nerd like I was. I think it's dumb to name your baby Kal-El (unless it's a family name), give him a fauxhawk, and stick him in a Che onesie or a "Boob Man" t-shirt. But I'm not too worried that the progeny of young bobos are being turned into what Brooks calls "deceptive edginess badges"—whatever that means. The trappings of hipster parenting are pretty superficial. New parents are naturally self-absorbed, but behind the impulse to be a cool parent with a stylish kid lurk big questions about mortgages and mortality. I'm with Slate's Michael Agger (also an occasional contributor to Mother Jones), who concludes after reading Neil Pollack's parenting memoir Alternadad, "The difference between an alternadad, a banker dad, and a soccer dad is ultimately aesthetic and pointless. Sure, Pollack is psyched when [his son] Eli develops a love of the Ramones and Spider-Man, but most of his book recounts his struggle to find what America used to offer easily: a solid house, a living wage, a decent public school." Child rearing in the U.S. has always been faddish and consumeristic, but the bottom line hasn't changed much: Parents—even the ones with tattoos—want what's best for their kids. Brooks should put on some Dan Zanes and chill for a couple of years. By then, the hipsters will have gotten the hang of this post-adolescent parenting thing and will be buying minivans. Now that's scary.

February 25, 2007

Al Gore Wins! And This Time Gets To Keep the Prize

Okay, so I get that awards shows are going political. First the Dixie Chicks run the table for standing up to Bush, then tonight's Al Gore show at the Oscars.

To sum up:

-Leonardo DiCaprio with Al early on, together they announce that the Oscars has gone totally green, carbon neutral, pats on the back all around.

-Leo then turns to Al in appreciation, asks him if he doesn't have any sort of announcement to share with his international audience. Gore pulls out a paper and starts to lead into an "I've decided to..." when the Oscar score interrupts him, all part of the script.

-Melissa Etheridge wins for best song ("I Need to Wake Up") for Inconvenient Truth, thanks her wife, tells us how it's not about Democrats and Republicans, red and blue, that we are all green and says what a hero Gore is.

-Minutes later Inconvenient Truth wins for best documentary and the director thanks Gore for (and I am paraphrasing here, didn't have the reporters notebook handy) "letting us do this film 30 years in the making." Gore grabs the statue, feels quite at home on the Hollywood stage and uses his time wisely, tells America that its not too late, that we can change the course of our planet's future, but not without action from a passive administration. Something like that.

So, like I said, I get that Hollywood likes to reach out and grab their courageous ones by the tie, or in last year's case by the cowboy hat, but then they have to go all soft and give The Departed the best motion picture nod? (They had already given the oft-snubbed Scorsese the Best Director win, so that's not an excuse.) I may be in the minority here but in my opinion Little Miss Sunshine and Babel (the only other two I saw) both ran circles around the mob film propped up by a ridiculously-flush cast. Maybe it was Alec Baldwin's line about unwarranted wiretapping that grabbed the academy? When his police team is listening in on a deal going down he squeals, "The Patriot Act! I love it, I love the Patriot Act!"

Yeah, probably not.

I know these award shows matter little, and it's Hollywood so what do I expect, but it irks me that they take a serious tone, responsible tone, all political and progressive by theme, and then throw it all down the Charles River before the night is through.

February 23, 2007

Green Cars Electrify the Red Carpet

This year Tim Robbins won’t be the only one stepping onto the red carpet from a hybrid. Global Green USA says it has 30 green cars ready for Oscar night to transport stars like Penelope Cruz and Orlando Bloom to the ceremonies. Celebs who have previously used Global Green’s eco-cars include Charlize Theron, Robin Williams, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Jack Black, and Will Ferrell.

Ferrell, who called eco-cars “just plain sexy," may be proven right this year. A prototype of the lipstick-red, two-seater Tesla Roadster sports car will make its TV debut at the red carpet roll-up. The super-quiet, totally electric vehicle can go from 0 to 60 mph in four seconds, costs $92,000, and has the smooth, curving body of a traditional hot-rod. Commercial production will begin later in 2007.

Consumers interested in more, ahem, affordable eco-friendly cars can see Global Green’s list of the most environmentally-friendly vehicles here .

—Jen Phillips

New Documentary Broaches the Big O

When Chris Anderson, director of The O Tapes, first read the findings of the Laumann study that made public the information that 43% of women experience sexual dysfunction, he was shocked. If this was the case for men, he thought, there would be a pill. Just a few months after reading the findings, one was released—for men, not for women. After doing a bit more research, he discovered that the incidence of sexual dysfunction in men was believed to be about half that recorded for women by the Laumann study.

Anderson, who had been working as a film editor, was in the market for a documentary film project, and after doing a bit of research into the subject himself, the elusive female orgasm became its subject. The only problem, he determined was that he was the wrong gender to carry this project through. But this didn’t deter him. He hired an all-female staff and proceeded to interview hundreds of women and a few noted (or notorious) experts in the field about sexuality. Many of these interviews revealed that women just don’t talk about sexuality.

Last night, I attended a sparsely populated screening of The O Tapes in San Francisco that was followed by a short panel discussion featuring the director and three local experts on human sexuality. Either San Franciscans think they already know everything about sex or the rainy weather served as a deterrent, because the Lumière Theater wasn't even a quarter full. But I guarantee that everyone in the audience learned something new, whether it was a historical fact or a point of view put forth by someone interviewed in the film.

While I would have preferred a more narrative approach, the organization of the film around subjects was effective. As Anderson pointed out during the panel discussion, the interview covered about 60 subjects, most of which could not be included in the final version of the film. Instead, he used his editing skills to define a more narrow set of topics including “orgasm” “foreplay,” and “self image” to provide organization for the project.

The primary strength of The O Tapes isn't the film’s organization, but rather, the diversity of voices that Anderson was able to capture during the interview process. The women in this film range in age from 25 to 84, and are from a range of racial and ethnic backgrounds. While almost all of the women are heterosexual, a few queer women are also given a voice. The project is more than reminiscent of The Vagina Monologues (click here for a Mother Jones interview with Ensler), but the diversity of voices and content goes beyond that normally attained in sex-positive film festivals.

Even though the so-called sexual revolution started something moving in the right direction, we have a long way to go when it comes to understanding female sexuality. For Chris Anderson, part of the solution might be found simply in talking about, rather than around, sex. Getting this dialogue going isn’t an easy undertaking in a culture that has many taboos centered around female sexuality. Fortunately, as revealed in the film, many women do love to talk.

Click here for show times.

--Rose Miller

What's Next, Mosh Pit Cruise Packages?

For the love of punk rock, is nothing sacred? The American Association of Retired Persons is now running a TV commercial that shows healthy, vigorous elders moving about to a backdrop of the song "Everybody's Happy Nowadays," by the English punk band the Buzzcocks. This from a band whose first, unashamed single was the BBC-banned "Orgasm Addict," a band that wrote songs about bisexuality and had lyrics quoting Beat poet William S. Burroughs, and a band who had enough street cred to open up for the Sex Pistols in Manchester in 1976.

And the AARP commercial is not even the Buzzcocks' first ad gig. A Subaru commercial once used "What Do I Get," a song about sleepless nights and the search for lover. Predictably, ageing punks have filled the blogosphere with comments dissing the band for both.

Adfreak riffs on the song title with the headline, "Everybody's Getting Ancient Nowadays" and says the Rolling Stones would have been more appropriate for the AARP. Cult Punk calls the Buzzcocks ad an unfortunate "culture shift." The blogger behind Corporate Satan Speaks Out shouted "What th...!??!?!" when he first heard the commercial, but later admitted that since the band members are pushing 50, it did make sense, sort of.

Come to think of it, since punk has been around since the 70s, it's likely that punk rockers are turning 50 and potentially joining a group like the AARP. The AARP knows this, and they're revamping their image to attract a new generation of folks who used to pogo at punk shows but who now can benefit from health tips and tax-filing advice. Their website even has an online jukebox featuring an array of music Baby Boomers might like, including Ray Charles, Rod Stewart, Tony Bennett, Beazley Phillips Band, Willie Nelson and Madonna. But it is a little strange that punk music ¬ known to be dissident, vile, nonsensical, unrehearsed, angry, aggressive and DIY¬ is being used to push product with the consent of the artists.

Steve Garvey, the Buzzcocks' 49-year-old former bass player, broke it down recently when he told the Chicago Tribune that his royalty checks are helping pay for his kid's college education. Garvey said he loves to play golf, survived cancer of the salivary gland, and has had two rotator cuff surgeries and has bum knees. In a year, he'll be eligible to join AARP.

The Buzzcocks are not the only punk band on heavy rotation in TV commercials. An M&Ms; commercial uses "This is The Day," a song by The The, a 70s English post-punk band founded by Matt Johnson. Mitsubishi scooped up "Blindness," a post punk song by the English band The Fall.

Blogs like "Big Mean Punk" relentlessly track other examples, such as Iggy Pop's Lust for Life, a song about heroin addiction, that now sells Carnival Cruise vacations. Various songs from the The Ramones push beer and cell phones, and Devo tunes have popped up in Target commercials and Swiffer spots, which have also used Blondie songs. (Check out more ironic and shameless advertising and product placement in our current issue.)

It's got to be nice for punk rock musicians to finally earn some cash for songs that originally might have earned them a only beer and a sandwich. The downside is, some of the obscure songs punk kids would crowd into small, unknown, sweaty venues to hear played live by their punk heroes don't alienate the general, mainstream public anymore—they welcome them with open arms.

--Gary Moskowitz

Wilberforce Be With You: The Christian Right Claims Amazing Grace

Yesterday was the 200th anniversary of Britain's abolition of slavery. But since Hollywood doesn't release new titles on Thursday, it's waiting until today to launch Amazing Grace, a new movie about 18th-century British abolitionist William Wilberforce. The flick, directed by Michael Apted (creator of the mesmerizing 7-Up documentary series) and produced by the studio that did The Chronicles of Narnia, is getting enthusiastic advance reviews. But nowhere is the film more highly anticipated than among conservative Christians, who see parallels between Wilberforce's moral battle and their faith-based campaign against sex trafficking. But Wilberforce's unlikely victory is also viewed as a metaphor for the Christian right's struggle to remake the culture. Presidential hopeful Sam Brownback was dubbed a "Wilberforce Republican" by the Economist, and has eagerly accepted the title. And check out this email appeal I recently received from Ted Baehr, who runs MovieGuide, an evangelical movie review site:

One man, William Wilberforce, was used by God to abolish the slave trade in England and bring about a reformation of manners.
Imagine what you and I can do together to redeem the media and save our culture! [...]
Because of Wilberforce's willingness to serve the Lord, a Victorian society where women and children were safe and where the Church was addressing social evils in creative ways saved a nation that was quickly falling into rampant paganism.
[...] you can help us bring about a moral reform in our nation that will set the captives free from the bondage and slavery of corrupt media.
This is the chance for the Church in our era to address social evils in creative ways!

Wilberforce has officially been recruited as a culture warrior. (BTW, MovieGuide gives Amazing Grace four stars, though it warns viewers that it contains "female cleavage.")

Of course, Wilberforce's story doesn't just resonate with religious conservatives. His against-the-odds struggle for social justice plucks liberal heartstrings as well—ours included. For a progressive interpretation of British abolitionism, see Mother Jones co-founder Adam Hochshild's most recent book, Bury the Chains, which argues that the anti-slavery movement was "the first great human-rights campaign." As Hochschild explained when I interviewed him:

In a time that feels politically grim, especially for anyone in the U.S. who cares about social justice, I hope people will take heart from a story of folks who started a campaign at a time when it looked even grimmer. The idea of ending slavery seemed totally utopian, crackpot, wildly too idealistic. But they succeeded. And they succeeded in 50 years, in the lifespan of some people [...] They went through some very grim times, one of them being the long wartime period like the one we’re seeing now. Wartime is bad news for progressives, and it was the same thing [during the Napoleonic wars]. So I guess to the extent that it’s possible for a book like this to have any effect, I would just like to see it have the effect of making people working for justice today feel heartened and to know that any big struggle will always be a long one with many setbacks.

I don't see anyone calling themselves "Wilberforce Democrats" any time soon, but that's no reason to let the right lay exlcusive claim to the legacy of abolitionism, or even Amazing Grace. So take a break from your usual pagan film fare and see if it lives up to the hype. (And for you history buffs/Afropop fans, it's your chance to see Youssou N'Dour's silver screen debut as Olaudah Equiano.)

February 22, 2007

Katha Pollitt Rips Dinesh D'Souza to Shreds

I was going to say something intelligent about Katha Pollitt's review of Dinesh D'Souza's The Enemy at Home, which I also panned. But her review kicks such major ass, that I am just going to excerpt it. Pollitt calls D'Souza's attack on the American left

a secular version of Jerry Falwell's contention that 9/11 was a divine rebuke to "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America." Of course, Falwell got hammered; even George W. Bush had to distance himself. Besides the obvious objections, God's aim seemed wide of the mark: Did He think the ACLU had an office in the Pentagon and that Windows on the World was a gay bar?

And as for Hillary, who D'Souza naturally includes in the Liberals Who Hate America category:

Hillary is a workaholic, so maybe she promotes America-hatred and child pornography in the wee hours, after her day job beefing up the US military.

The coup de grace is that Pollitt shreds D'Souza's logic. He blames the left of allying itself with America's enemies, while he more or less excuses the terrorist attacks by saying liberals' slatternly ways brought them upon ourselves. Here's Pollitt:

The idea that Americans are going to embrace the mullahs and ayatollahs out of a shared dislike of gays and working mothers is fairly fantastic. Besides, the Americans who come closest to sharing "traditional Muslim" family values are fundamentalists like, um, Jerry Falwell, who think Islam is the devil's work. The minute they tried bringing their new best friends to Christ, they'd find out that a mutual obsession with female chastity can take you only so far.

Curtain.

February 21, 2007

Guess Who's Coming to the GOP Fundraiser?

One of the GOP hard-hitting political campaign managers in California is a punk musician and one-time druggie who disappears for days at a time running from the police. Said chairman of the state Republican party: "Some of the more conservative (politicos) are taken aback by the tattoos and leather jacket, but that goes away as soon as they realize how good he is at what he does."

If only social conservatives could grant the rest of us the same largesse.

Read a complete (two-part) profile here and here.

February 20, 2007

Hip-Hop On the Couch, PBS Tonight

Don't miss Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a documentary on violence, sexism and homophobia in hip-hop, airing tonight on PBS. Including interviews with some big timers -- Mos Def, Fat Joe, Jadakiss, Russell Simmons -- as well as a slew of hip-hop insiders and rap fans, the filmmaker goes there, and some balk (like Simmons and the head of BET).

Byron Hurt, a novice documentarian but veteran hip-hop head, calls out his fellow black men asking how the bravado that encourages guns, violence, sexual violence and homophobia is also the pride of the community. Rap artist Jadakiss asks in response, "Do you watch movies? What kind of movies do you watch?" pointing out that what sells in hip hop is no different than what sells in Hollywood: sex and violence. In one scene Hurt asks some unknowns to rhyme for him and all they spit are lines about sex, drugs, killing. He calls them on it and one of them starts rhyming about poverty, and drugs in the community, then stops and says, "no one wants to hear that." And more to the point, no one can get a record deal rapping thusly.

Sexism? Just look at politics -- there's a clip of Schwarzenegger's "girly man" comment illustrating that hip hop is not misogyny's first, or only, rodeo. Homophobia, says Hurt and others, comes in part from the macho over-the-top display of physical dominance in hip-hop that means power, where powerful white men, like say Donald Trump, can hide behind the desk (and hair) and still have power.

Other scenes are set in Daytona Beach at BET's annual Spring Bling and show firsthand the sexism at play, and the disconnect between the music and message. Hurt talks with one white kid from suburbia whose blasting rap from his dad's truck. The guy says he's loved hip hop "since forever, the beginning," identifies with it, then in the next breath refers to Byron and black folks as "colored people." (Hurt calls him on it.)

Hurt is knee deep in this one, expressing his conflicted feelings about making the documentary, feeling such allegiance to the medium, hip-hop being part of him, but also wanting to ask the questions no one seems to be asking.

Indeed, there are lots of questions, for every level of the industry, really provocative stuff. And if you are a teacher, or an educator, or a provider of some kind who has an audience for the film Independent Lens is putting together an educational program to match. Find out more, here.

This Just In: Gay Stereotype Possibly Misleading

While there’s much to love in the Sarah Silverman program (like this and this), I think my favorite characters are Steve and Brian, Sarah’s “gigantic, orange and gay” neighbors. Played by writer Steve Agee and comedian Brian Posehn, the couple are a bit hefty, with scraggly facial hair and rumpled plaid shirts, and seem to love video games and, uh, farting, more than Cher and Madonna. This kind of portrayal of gays on television is indeed unusual, and one could argue the show is aiming for the simplest kind of comedy by using the least “gay” guys to play the gay guys; but oddly enough they end up being a pretty accurate portrayal of most of the queer dudes I know. Maybe this is just my bizarro world, but all my straight guy friends are hair-gelling, disco-dancing superfreaks, and my gay guy friends are shlubby geeks. (And I mean all that in the best possible way, guys). Are all the gay dudes just trying to act straight, and vice versa, until everything’s backwards, or could the stereotypes be (shudder) wrong?

Just this weekend San Francisco welcomed the International Bear Rendezvous, an “annual gathering of bears and bear lovers.” A bear, for the uninitiated, is, according to Wikipedia, a “male individual who possesses physical attributes much like a bear, such as a heavy build, abundant body hair, and commonly facial hair.” My apartment happens to be situated on a street between two of the main host bars, and all weekend, buses pulled up and disgorged crowds (herds?) of large, hirsute men. And I’m not sure if this is related, but the distinct odor of garlic fries seemed to waft over the neighborhood as well. Do bears eat garlic fries? Anyway, as I walked up to the subway station Saturday night, I found myself assuming every bearded, baseball-cap-wearing, chubby guy I saw was heading for the bear festivities, until I realized: no, these are probably just, you know, Americans. Are Sarah Silverman and my neighborhood portents of a near future in which gay stereotypes are so mixed up nobody gives a damn any more, or are we just so deep in the subculture we can’t see straight any more? Either way, I could really go for some garlic fries.

Towns Launch Cold War Over Who's More Inhospitable

This week's crazy intellectual property showdown: International Falls, Minnesota, and Fraser, Colorado, are in a spat over who legally owns the title "Icebox of the Nation." Fraser reportedly gave IF permission to use the title, which it trademarked. But then IF let the trademark lapse, and Fraser has filed to get it back. Part of the reason the towns are claiming to be the most inhospitable place in the continental U.S.? It's a great marketing tool: Fraser renamed its main drag after the antifreeze company that gave residents a free supply one year, and Goodyear once provided snow tires for every car in town. This spat is reminiscent of the 13-year fight over the title "Surf City," one of many examples of IP overkill MJ collected last year. Can't they just settle this with a snowball fight?

February 19, 2007

Breaking News: Britney Shaves Head, Gets Tattoo

Was she just drunk, or, after dispatching Fed-Ex, has she decided to bat for the other team?

More likely the former than the latter, but no one knows for sure. Britney is reported to have grabbed the clippers from the aghast stylist's hands and chopped off her girly locks herself. And a series of sketchy reports places Brit in and out of rehab.

Maybe she's making a statement about how little she has to do to be mobbed by the press. Or how absurd conventional notions of beauty are? (One fan who stood outside the tattoo parlor while Britney got inked told the camera crews also on the spot, "Her head is completely shaved. It looks terrible.") Or maybe Brit's just gone from imitating Madonna to imitating Sinéad O'Connor. Congress, watch out!

February 18, 2007

Dog Parts Deemed Too Hot for School Libraries

Susan Patron's book, The Higher Power of Lucky, won the prestigious Newberry Award—meaning, it's a really good children's book.

No matter, librarians across the country are refusing to put it on the shelves.

That's because one of its thousands of words is "scrotum." Which is weird, but not worthy of a ban. The protagonist of the book overhears a conversation about a dog being bitten on the scrotum by a rattlesnake. She then endeavors to understand the meaning of this strange word. After all, she's 10 and naturally curious about things adults won't explain to her.

But librarians are refusing to stock the book because they don't want to have to explain the word to students.

Let me help: when boy dogs aren't fixed, it's the thingy that hangs down between their back legs.

We're not even talking about human parts, here—we're talking about dog parts that are out in the open for the world to see. Kids might see dog scrotums at such time-honored kid hangouts as the park. Do they not ask there what they are? I mean, isn't talking about body parts in an utterly non-sexual way the best way to introduce soon-to-be sex ed-aged students to the strange ways of nature? Or should we banish all anatomical words from the language since, clearly, it's the words not the parts themselves that inspire young people to have sex?

February 17, 2007

Ghost in the Machine?

Brian Flemming, an ex-evangelical and director of the film "The God Who Wasn't There," mounted the Blasphemy Challenge in late 2006, asking rational people to deny the existence of the Holy Spirit via YouTube.

In a famous video, a young girl proclaims, "I know that the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, God, the flying spaghetti monster, pink unicorns, all of these made-up entities do not exist."

Naturally, the religious right is pretty upset. So now Mike Mickey, the Web master for RaptureAlert.com has cleverly introduced Challenge Blasphemy.

Mickey is concerned that some of the young people enjoying themselves as they rise to the Blasphemy Challenge will later be afraid to turn to God because of their great videotaped sin.

It seems the existence or non-existence of God will also be debated over the mysterious, wireless, omnipotent internet.

February 16, 2007

Al Gore Teams With Snoop Dogg to Fight Global Warming

Al Gore's anti-global warming/entertainment juggernaut continues. Gore, in conjunction with the Microsoft Network, just announced Live Earth, a series of Live 8-style worldwide concerts on July 7. Proceeds will go to found "a new, multi-year global effort to combat the climate crisis." (Yeah, but only after Ticket Master gets its cut.) The lineup includes Pharrell, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Snoop Dogg, Lenny Kravitz, and Bon Jovi, to name a few. (No word on enviropunks Green Day yet, but Snow Patrol will also be rockin' to protect the glaciers.) And before you shell out for tix, get up to speed with our recent coverage of climate change.

February 15, 2007

Tonight: A Documentary on Melvin Van Peebles

How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (And Enjoy It) is premiering on the Independent Film Channel at 9 p.m. tonight. It's a biographical documentary on Melvin Van Peebles, who grandfathered blaxspoitation films with Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song in 1971, and has created 11 other films and seven plays in his career.

This film is a fascinating look at the indomitable creative force who pulled off Sweet Sweetback all on his own, as producer, director, writer, financier, and actor. Even though he could open the show in only two theaters, it grossed more than $10 million, more than any independent film at that time.

"I wanted a movie that black people could walk out of standing tall," Van Peebles explains. "I didn't see the type of movie I wanted to see so I made it myself." How he has done so again and again, despite all odds, is what this documentary shows best.

In the making of Watermelon Man about a white guy who wakes up black one day, Van Peebles recounts that the studio wanted him to turn the man back to white in the end. But such a happy ending would have made the black experience seem like nothing but a bad dream. He half-agreed to shoot both ways, but when the producer called up asking for the white ending, Van Peebles told him, "'Dang I forgot to shoot that.' That's how we ended up with it the way I wanted it."

Van Peebles was not just a filmmaker, but also a groundbreaking artist in many genres. "There were no songs that mirrored the black experience. I felt the black experience had been hijacked musically to simply being rhythm, beat and melody, and the words were getting lost. That's when I invented a style that used words to carry the melody." Those songs had an early influence on rap, says Gil Scot-Heron.

Some lyrics: "Frown, you hostile/ Smile, you a Tom / Look tired, you on junk / Stumble, you drunk."

Turning racist expectations inside out has been the essence of his best work. And maybe his sense of humor. He says he used to keep a spray-bottle of watermelon fragrance on hand for "liberal" friends. "They would walk into the office and say, 'Gee, Mel, what's that smell? It smells like umm…umm…cantaloupe! They were too afraid to say 'watermelon.'" He provokes you to think, hoping you'll eventually think differently.

Brit Awards Conspiracy?

Lily Allen, the up-and-coming reggae-pop singer whose recent show at the Great American in San Francisco I thoroughly enjoyed (and, full disclosure, DJed before), was snubbed at the Brit Awards last night in London. Turns out she had predicted in advance that she wouldn't win a single trophy and blamed record industry politics, telling MTV UK that because the voting juries were made up of "industry insiders... predominantly from Universal," she wouldn't win, since she's on EMI. Music blog Stereogum did some math and added up how many of the Brit awards went to Universal artists: a somewhat eyebrow-raising 61%. Hmmm.

So of course one can't help but wonder: any conspiracies back here in the States at the recent Grammys? Well, I did some math and added up basically all the pop and jazz categories, although I didn't include the random gospel and Norteno stuff because I got tired. Out of the 56 categories I tallied, the results were:

Sony / BMG: 41% (23 awards)

Universal: 27% (15 awards)

Warner: 20% (11 awards)

Apparently unaffilliated independents (mostly random jazz stuff): 9% (5 awards)

EMI: 3% (2 awards)

Of course this kind of non-scientific study doesn't take into account stuff like actual market share or number of nominees, but still... while Universal isn't quite as dominant here in the US, EMI was almost completely shut out. Their two awards were kind of random as well: OK Go for Short Form Video, and Coldplay for Best Remix, which, come to think of it, really goes to Stuart Price whose recent work with Madonna might make that more of a Warner award anyway.

It's hard to imagine record labels actually going to the trouble to rig the Grammys, since most of the music-buying public basically ignores them. Although, shut my mouth, the Dixie Chicks have rocketed to #1 on both the album and singles charts on iTunes this week (with 8-month-old material), so clearly a highly-publicized Grammy rout can still affect sales. Well, who knows, and really, who cares: people will be instantly downloading free music from HyperMySpace on the World WiFi into their BrainPods in a couple years anyway.

Edwards, Obama Keep It Virtual

John Edwards just lost the blogosphere, but he's already staked out his place in the virtual realm of Second Life. Isn't there something ironic about talking about the "two Americas" from inside an alternate world? But then, it's a lot less expensive to build a mansion in SL. Not to be outcourted by a man who already has the hair of an avatar, Barack Obama's just launched his version of MySpace called— yes, really—MyBarackObama. Beacuse Obama belongs to all of us. Even the lurkers.

February 14, 2007

Don't Quit Your Day Job, Fox News!

Looks like Fox News' version of the Daily Show is kicking off. And boy, if this clip is any hint, it really stinks. We're talking worse-than-the-last-half-hour-of-SNL bad. Check it out:

FOX Hates the (Fictional) President

What's up with FOX prime time shows killing off U.S. presidents? While corporate sister FOX News is happy just to assassinate the characters of liberal presidential candidates, FOX prime time shows take it one step further by knocking off presidents the second they hint at a lefty policy position.

Last season, "Prison Break" took out the prez after he said he'd sign a forward-looking energy bill. Now, characters on "24" are plotting to assasinate the president (above right) because he refused to approve a plan to torture bad guys, suspend habeas corpus, etc. Does FOX have any other fictional presidents left to kill? Conspiracy theorists, go nuts.

Related: A special shout-out to friend-of-MoJo James Cromwell. Generally known for playing the kind-hearted farmer in "Babe," he's now joined "24" as Jack Bauer's murderous, terrorist-loving father from hell. He's seen here killing his own son, Graem, with a dose of lethal drugs. Charming!

February 13, 2007

A Pro-War Cartoonist Draws the Line

An unnamed editorial cartoonist serving in Iraq is calling out his colleagues for undermining morale with their pens. How? Drawing flag-draped coffins as symbols of military casualties. He writes: "[I]n many political cartoons, a flag-draped coffin is quickly becoming nothing more than a visual prop, a metaphor." In particular, he takes issue with a recent cartoon by Ann Telnaes which depicts Bush running on a treadmill of flag-draped coffins. Too bad it's a really good cartoon (not to mention that Telnaes totally rocks). But according to the soldier-cartoonist, alluding to the inevitable consequences of war is insensitive to the troops:

U.S. troops are trained to go into harm's way. That is their job. Fatalities are inevitable, though always tragic. The death of a soldier -- or 3,000 troops for that matter -- in and of itself is hardly an effective measure of the success or failure of military strategy, and it is an unfair example to use in painting the president as uncaring.

If anything, it is the cartoonists who are callous to our troops by their continued negative depiction in American op-ed pages.

This sounds like the standard media-undermining-the-troops argument: Our soldiers are fearless ass kickers, yet are vulnerable to a few editorial cartoonists who question the policies that unnecessarily put their lives at risk. So then, how in the world are cartoonists supposed to depict the concept of American fatalities? Admittedly, editorial cartoonists aren't known for having the biggest bags of visual tricks (even the versatile Telnaes has been on a coffin kick; see here, here and here.) Presumably, drawing corpses or skeletons or tombstones or the Grim Reaper would be even more offensive. It doesn't get much more sanitized than a coffin. Which makes me suspect that the soldier-cartoonist's actual beef is that his colleagues don't support the war. But if he really thinks that Americans can't handle a few sketches of pine boxes, perhaps he's in the wrong professions.

Neato Viddys on the Intertubes

With VH1 Classic possibly going away, and Logo's "NewNowNext" seemingly impossible to catch, there's almost no good place for music videos on TV these days. So, like in all things, we must turn to the internet. Below are some new clips that make squinting at a tiny window on your work monitor worth the trouble.

Robyn “Konichiwa Bitches” (via Stereogum)
In which the Swedish pop star gets silly (warning: a couple swear words)

MIA “Bird Flu” (via Cliptip)
In which the UK rapper goes back to Sri Lanka and brings back an evil, infectious beat (sorry)

Arcade Fire “Wake Up” (live) (via NME)
In which the Montreal collective perform in the lobby after a show at Porchester Hall, London, and give me goose bumps

Jay-Z “Minority Report” (via Idolator)
In which the New York rapper pays tribute to victims of Hurricane Katrina

Kaiser Chiefs “Ruby” (scroll down and click "watch" next to "Ruby") (via Yahoo Music UK)
In which the UK combo get a miniature city built around them (plus the ad beforehand is the British version of the Mac/PC ads!)

Lily Allen “Smile” (Gutter remix) (via Pitchfork)
In which random footage of a dance contest gets sync’ed up with a bootleg mix of the UK singer’s reggae-pop hit

Dazed and Confused

Maybe it's because the camp gene is right next to the gay gene, but I heart tribute bands. I'm not sure how I feel about Rolling Stone reviewing them, but it is. Still, I can't help but be titillated by their mention of transgendered bands like Lez Zeppelin and (male) Madonna. I've been giving Klezbians and Isle of Klesbos CDs for gifts for years, for the name alone! But the idea of some dykes rocking out to "I've gotta little woman but she won't be true" is just too fantastic. I love the underground, irreverent humor, especially as it pertains to gender, about which we tend to be sooo reverent. (Little people are down with it, too, at least the ones in the band Mini Kiss.) But if Rolling Stone is covering it, does that mean it's already over?

February 12, 2007

The Chicks Were Brave, Give Them Grammys!

So yeah, the Dixie Chicks wiped up at the Grammy's, but they were careful to let their lyrics do the talking, for the most part. Each of their five wins came with the refrain of "Not Ready to Make Nice," their song about singer Natalie Maines' we're-ashamed-Bush-is-from-Texas comment in 2003. Maines treaded lightly during their acceptance speeches, but did manage this: "In the words of the great Simpsons, 'ha ha.'" That, and her "I think people are using their freedom of speech here tonight and we get the message" comment were all the political juice we got. Oh, and Joan Baez asking everyone to "listen carefully to the lyrics" when she introduced their performance.

It sort of seemed like the Chicks were feted for their prescience. I mean, they said what few were willing to back when this war started, so tonight was kind of like a you-told-us-so-and-got-slammed-for-it nod from the mainstream music world.As for their core country roots, the band had lots of trouble packing stadiums on their latest tour and didn't even score a single nomination at November's Country Music Awards. Their base, perhaps, remains unforgiving.

February 11, 2007

As Go the Dixie Chicks, So Goes the Country

After being shunned by country music stations in retaliation for lead singer Natalie Maines' critical remarks about fellow Texan George Bush before the invasion of Iraq, the Dixie Chicks scored a major victory at the Grammy awards ceremony tonight. The Texas trio walked away with best song and record of the year for the pointedly titled "Not Ready to Make Nice" and best album of the year for "Taking the Long Way."

Just one more way for the country--or at least Hollywood--to tell Bush he's wrong about Iraq. For her part, Maines was gracious and largely apolitical, but did praise the L.A. audience for "using their freedom of speech tonight with these awards."

Party Ben Pre-Live-Blogs the Grammys

This will be so much easier than actually watching the thing.

8:00 PM - Ceremony opens with alleged "mashup" of Gnarls Barkley and the Dixie Chicks. There's some confusion because Gnarls Barkley are in Dixie Chicks costumes. Randy Newman saves the day by descending from ceiling to sing 15-minute extended version of "Crazy"

8:16 PM - First Award, for Best Spoken Word Album. It's a tie: Al Franken and Jimmy Carter! They accept with a witty back-and-forth that puns "tied" with "apartheid." Polite laughter

8:19 PM - Reba McEntire and Diddy emerge as presenters. McEntire: "Hey Diddy, can you believe it, the Police are here!" Diddy: "Hold on, I gotta call my driver!" Slightly less polite laughter

8:23 PM - Carrie Underwood wins Best Country Song for "Jesus, Take the Wheel," forgets to thank him in acceptance speech. Camera shows Jesus in audience smiling uncomfortably. Guy behind him pats him on back. You kind of get the feeling maybe things aren't going so great, like Jesus heard a suspicious message from Buddha on the answering machine and you can see in his eyes this kind of confirms everything. Of course he forgives her but it just seems like she's already moved on

8:27 PM - John Mayer and Tony Bennett perform "Candle in the Wind" accompanied by a montage of moments from the life of Anna Nicole Smith

8:43 PM - Chamillionaire wins Best Rap Song for "Ridin'," sends Weird Al to accept

8:58 PM - Earth Wind & Fire peform theme song from "Snakes on a Plane" with Samuel L. Jackson, and, inexplicably, Melissa Etheridge

9:22 PM - The Flaming Lips win Best Alternative Album. Wayne Coyne attempts to crowd surf in giant bubble, "accidentally" crushes David Spade

9:40 PM - Neil Young wins Best Rock Song; rambling, embarrassing acceptance speech actually converts most liberals in audience into Brownback supporters

10:24 PM - Pussycat Dolls win Best Pop Performance. Camera searches audience in vain, but no-one has any idea what they look like

10:44 PM - Police perform medley of "Roxanne," "Every Breath You Take," and, awkwardly, "Don't Stand So Close to Me," accompanied by same Anna Nicole Smith montage

10:58 PM - Record of the Year goes to James Blunt; thanks fans because "they're the ones who really are beautiful;" 90% of viewers experience fatal brain hemorrhage. Casualties in the high single digits

February 10, 2007

Pazz & Jop Poll Results Announced... Yawn?

The Village Voice's annual poll of music critics, "Pazz & Jop," came out this week, and even though the format has always seemed designed for somewhat conservative outcomes, this year's lists are just... boring. After one and a half months spent adding up the votes (why does it take so long, incidentally? Don't they have Excel?) they come up with the same #1 album as Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan's Modern Times. Wow. At least TV On the Radio's masterpiece came in as a close #2 (apparently beating Dylan in number of mentions, in an event eerily reminiscent of Bush v. Gore). The only thing separating their albums list from every single other critical year-end roundup is... hmmm... the presence of Tom Waits at #10? Well, fine, I guess. The singles list is even more dull, with the typical Gnarls / T.I. / Timberlake / Furtado / Aguilera party posse sitting on top. It's basically right, but jeez, Peter Bjorn & John all the way down at #25? For shame.

I used to check the Village Voice website obsessively, starting in mid-February every year, desperate to see the definitive year-end best-of list. There were always a couple surprises that would turn out to be totally right on, like Magnetic Fields' toweringly great 69 Love Songs jumping in at #2 in 1999 based on far fewer votes than the #1 album, Moby's Play. Perhaps something's changed in the methodology: it looks like there's over 300 fewer critics in the poll this year (2005's 795 versus 2006's 494). Where did everybody go? Perhaps they got their points-allocation jollies out over at music blog Idolator's copycat/takeoff/nose-thumb "Jackin' Pop" poll, whose results came out much earlier, and are somehow more satisfying. Plus Idolator's faux-naive MS Paint drawing of TV On the Radio standing on a mountain of cookies is way better than the Voice's elaborate painting of Dylan running over Kyp Malone. Hate to say it, newspaper: the intertubes are totally beating you.

February 9, 2007

Anna Nicole Smith's Death--Biggest News Event in Recent History!

Anna Nicole Smith's death is apparently the biggest story of the 20th and 21st centuries. If you were watching cable news yesterday, you already know that the largest stories of that time period are of course, (5) the Great Depression, (4) Vietnam and the peace movement, (3) the fall of the Soviet Union, (2) WWII and the dropping of the atom bomb, and (1) the death of a former Playboy Playmate who married for money and in some way embodies the perversion of the American Dream.

The good people at ThinkProgress must have a team of 800 research monkeys, because they've tallied the number of times the three major cable news networks referenced Anna Nicole Smith and the number of times they referenced Iraq, just to illustrate the insanity.

The results:

Network	Anna Nicole Smith	Iraq
CNN	141	27
FOX NEWS	112	33
MSNBC	170	24

You thought ThinkProgress would stop there? These are very hard-working research monkeys, people, and they are inspired by knowing they do God's work. (As an aside, can you imagine being assigned this project by the boss? "Hiiiii, Peter. I'm going to need you to watch hours of cable news that is saturated with worthless drivel, just to catalogue exactly how much drivel it is saturated with. Mmmmm'kay? Don't forget the TPS reports!")

No, sir. They go further -- courageously, valiantly, with no fear for their own health -- detailing the amount of time NBC, ABC, and CBS spent on Anna Nicole Smith vs. Iraq. (It's particularly bad for NBC, which spent 14 seconds on Iraq and three minutes and 13 seconds on ANS.) And to top it all off, they created a video with the lowlights, in which you can actually see Joe Scarborough scowling in disgust with himself and his producers. I can't post all that here, because you really ought to visit ThinkProgress to see everything in it's full majesty. The devolution of television news is upon us, and I know it makes you want to choke on your own vomit. (Sorry, too soon, I know.)

As Dan Rather would say: Courage!

--Jonathan Stein

More on Liberal Anti-Semitism

Last week, Mother Jones linked to news that Alvin Rosenfeld of the American Jewish Committee called for a new policy of "confronting" Jews who challenge Israel. (Rosenfeld's essay specifically calls for confronting only those who "oppose Israel's basic right to exist," but the list of suspects he also includes casts a much wider net.)

Now the Anti-Defamation League is jumping on the bandwagon. The group will host a conference (9 a.m. this Sunday at Jewish Community High, San Francisco) on how Jews can protect themselves from anti-Semitism from the liberal left. They give the example of protesters at a recent anti-war rally in San Francisco chanting in Arabic "Jews are our dogs."

Oy vey and Jesus H. Christ. Whether that happened or not neither I nor anyone else at the rally who doesn't speak Arabic could say—and as such I seriously question if the ADL has good information on it. If it did happen, anyone in their right mind would say it was anti-Semitic plain and simple. There's nothing uniquely "progressive" or "left" about its hatred, and therefore there's little need for a special conference.

Nasty stereotyping and anti-Semitism does occur among those who consider themselves politically pure, just as homophobia does. And for that, shame. But what the ADL really means by targeting anti-war protests is that many of them called for the end of all occupation, whether conducted by Jews or gentiles. (Many disagree with that approach, but rallies unite people with different views.) Strong-arm Zionists have been pulling that same trick for years—conflating anyone who challenges the policies of a nation with those who hate everyone who shares the most common religion of that country. Their tactics make it harder, not easier, to piece out and deal with real anti-Semitic incidents or comments.

February 7, 2007

Snickers Pulls "Kiss" Ad; Nation Confused

By now, most people know about the controversy surrounding Snickers' Super Bowl ad. The spot featured two mechanics whose lips accidentally meet, in a Lady and the Tramp-style kiss, as they both chow down on the same appetizing candy bar. Their horrified reaction, and subsequent bizarre attempt to "do something manly" by pulling out their own chest hair, was apparently supposed to be funny in some way. More disturbing was the "extra content" available on the Masterfoods Snickers website, where you could watch "alternate endings" to the commercial, one of which included the two men beating the crap out of each other, and footage of Bears and Colts players reacting with disgust to the chocolatey lip-lock. Gay rights groups, sports writers and bloggers were not amused, and called for the ad and website to be pulled. On Tuesday, Masterfoods (what kind of a name for a company is that, by the way?) relented and pulled both the ad and the website.

As an admitted gay, I'm definitely sensitive to homophobia in the media. It's pervasive and depressing. However, I've always found criticism of expression, whether it be the "art" of a TV show or even a commercial, to be suspect. To look more closely at these ads, first of all, how disgusting is the idea of accidentally kissing anyone after biting down on the seductively bouncing end of their Snickers bar? Did anyone else find that suggestive of far more filthy sexual practices than just gay makeouts? And what, exactly, is "manly" about ripping off your own chest hair? I got my chest waxed once and it was both excuciatingly painful and the least manly thing I'd done that whole week. What was going on in these ads? Is portraying the apparently excessive homophobia of a couple mechanics, or the actual homophobia of football players, the same as endorsing homophobia? And in a country where you can be fired from your job for being gay in a majority of states, is it worth it to spend any time worrying about a potentially offensive commercial? Anyone who's spent time studying Socialist Realism has to pause at the idea of requiring our artistic expression to represent reality (or an idealized vision thereof). At the same time, free expression of course allows (demands?) speaking out against work you find offensive. Not all writers agreed with the interpretation of the ad, with some saying it was the homophobic reactions that were supposed to be funny. Who knows.

Ultimately, it seems like the ad and website were (at best) misguided, or poorly executed, attempts to illustrate the ridiculousness of homophobia. But they just weren't funny, and it sure didn't seem like watching the players' reactions were supposed to give us pause at the state of gay-straight relations: we were supposed to grimace along with them. King Kaufmann, Salon.com's sports writer, called the whole thing "distasteful" and quoted Molly Willow in the Columbus Dispatch as saying she's "ready for homophobia not to be funny any more." In this instance, it's hard not to agree. But I hope the next time people want to protest a portrayal of homophobia, or gay stereotypes, they remember that a) stereotypes are, often, very funny, and b) discussing and mocking prejudice is one of the best ways (if not the only way) to disarm it.

If Chris Rock Says It, It's Funny; If Sarah Silverman Says It, It's Tasteless

A lot has been written about how women are perceived to be either "not funny" or "not as funny as men." Now that there are a number of respected women comics, that paradigm has changed somewhat in that women can be funny as long as their humor is not aggressive. Ellen DeGeneres, for example, is generally considered funny by anyone who is not a hopeless homophobe, partly because her humor is not at all aggressive (this is not a criticism, by the way--I think DeGeneres is hilarious). Margaret Cho is another story: She says bad words, and she talks about sex in great (and hysterically funny) detail. She not only makes people uncomfortable--she is a woman, she is Asian-American, and she is a member of the LGBT community, to boot.

Perhaps no one, though, has fueled the "women are funny as long as they are 'feminine'" fire as much as Sarah Silverman, whose television series debuted last Thursday night. Both men and women have walked out of her shows, and I have heard many supposedly liberal people call her humor "tasteless" and "disgusting." But the fact of the matter is that Silverman, and other female comics like her, do not push the envelope any farther than a Chris Rock or a Dave Chappelle, whom these same critics admire.

Silverman's humor is not everyone's cup of tea, to be sure. I am not making a case for whether she is a good comic; I am just pointing out that the "shocking" things that come out of her mouth would be considered "badass" if they came out of the mouth of a male comic. Drew Carey says it well: "Comedy is about aggression and confrontation and power. As a culture we just don't allow women to do all that stuff."

Christopher Hitchens, writing for Vanity Fair, recently acknowledged that there are some funny women comics around, but "Most of them, though, when you come to review the situation, are hefty or dykey or Jewish, or some combo of the three." One might just as well say that most of the really funny male comics are black or Jewish (forgive me, those who think Robin Williams is still funny).

Hitchens, to his credit, also says:

Precisely because humor is a sign of intelligence (and many women believe, or were taught by their mothers, that they become threatening to men if they appear too bright), it could be that in some way men do not want women to be funny. They want them as an audience, not as rivals. And there is a huge, brimming reservoir of male unease, which it would be too easy for women to exploit.

--Diane E. Dees

Speaking of Jews in China

China has a hot new class of business self-improvement books. One promises "The Eight Most Valuable Business Secrets of the Jewish" according to the Washington Post. Another tempts buyers with "The Legend of Jewish Wealth."

You'd think that the books would go on to offer Borat-style stereotypes of Jews. But they don't seem to. Yes, the wealthy Jew is itself a destructive stereotype, and the Chinese interest in Jews is a little creepy, to be sure. China, a country of 1.3 billion people, is home to just 10,000 Jews. A recent reality-style show filmed a Jewish couple in their home, interviewing them about what they ate and other fascinating topics.

But the Chinese seem to identify with Jews, or at least Jews as they imagine them, believing that both people share an entrepreneurial sprit, according to Zhou Guojian, deputy dean of the Center for Jewish Studies at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

The books' authors, however, aren't Jewish, nor are they especially knowledgeable about Jews. In fact, when the Post reporters tried to track one down, they hit a wall. If this blogger's second-job as a writer of ESL materials to be sold in Korea is any guide, some poor blogger probably wrote the books only to have someone else's name slapped on them.

Keeping the Candles Lit in Cuba

There's a really nice profile of the tiny Jewish community in Cuba—yes, Cuba—in the New York Times travel section. And, no, it's not tiny because Castro stifles the religion, it's tiny because most of the Jews left with their property at the outset of his regime.

The Times also ran a piece on the closing of the last temple in Tajikistan—and, among the many well-done TimesSelect-restricted articles on historic Jewish communities, a review of a museum exhibit of all that's left of China's Jewish community and a look at a Long Island community's attempt to preserve Yiddish.

February 6, 2007

Dinesh D'Sell Out

It happens to most academic stars. Eventually, they begin self-parodying. So it is no surprise that Dinesh D'Souza, the conservative academic who hit the big time with his 1991 critique of political correctness, Illiberal Education, has swung even farther right with his newest book, The Enemy at Home. To give a quick and dirty measure of how far right, I present its subtitle: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11. What's odd about this is that D'Souza isn't parodying himself, but political sound-byte machines. The right is really on message, is it not? Especially for a message like this one, which contains no truth whatsoever.

I've always wondered, do the Joe Blows of the right-wing believe some of the more absurd bits of spin they repeat? (I have, after much thought, come to conclude that most of the higher-ups, with some grandiosely off-kilter exceptions, do not.) But I've never seen an academic doing the work of political rhetoric quite as explicitly as this.

February 5, 2007

Pole Dancing, Margaret Cho, the Whitney: Julie Atlas Muz's Got It All

In an age when anyone living in a metropolitan area can sign up for pole dancing classes at a local gym or be coached in the art of burlesque, it might seem unlikely that sex work-inspired performance art could gain the artistic prestige of Marcel DuChamp and Man Ray. But a review in today's New York Times compares the work of Julie Atlas Muz to both these heavyweights of modern art. The performance artist and burlesque star who has performed at the Whitney Biennial and the Miss Exotic World Pageant (and is touring with this year’s Sex Workers’ Art Show that Mother Jones reviewed here) celebrated the opening of her first solo show, "Divine Comedy of an Exquisite Corpse" this Saturday. "Exquisite Corpse," as the Times reports, is a commentary on "suicide, terrorism, and fear," laden with undercurrents about feminine power and aging. This sounds like the present wave of feminism at its most diva-like. You have social commentary about sex and politics all wrapped up in glitter with a lot of skin showing. But Muz says it’s just "good old Vaudeville." It sounds like a lot more than old Vaudeville to me. While Vaudeville and Muz’ work may be about stylized performance and glamour, the latter is about reclaiming and elevating both low art and feminine sexuality.

--Rose Miller

Prince Super Bowl Half Time Show: Rebuttal

Oh, previous post, you could not be more wrong! My apologies for creating a new post rather than just commenting on yours, but I wanted to include some links.

Video of the actual performance:
- Part 1;
- Part 2;
- Part 3

Other reviews:
- Kelefa Sanneh in the Times
- Tom Breihan in the Village Voice

I promise I'm not just towing the critical line here when I say that I thought this performance was fantastic. (I was in a car driving up I-5 at the time so I had to watch those YouTube links after the fact, but still). I'll gladly admit that any of Prince's recorded output over the past 10 years (or more) has been forgettable at best, and that's incredibly sad considering the brilliance of his work in the 80s. But in this performance on Sunday, he utterly redeemed himself. Given the miniscule performance time, as well as the short attention span and enormous demographic range of viewers, he did the only logical thing: jam together a string of hits (his own and otherwise) like a prime-time DJ set. I don't think it's "pandering" to play a song people know, especially considering every single moment of even the most familiar numbers was altered in some way. He brought completely new melodies and a call-and-response vocal to "Let's Go Crazy," basically created a live mashup of the intro to "1999" with "Baby I'm a Star" and "Proud Mary," and injected every song with a raw, gritty power via those amazing guitar solos. Plus, considering the recent hullabaloo over black musicians playing rock music, there was something both utterly natural and deeply subversive in seeing Prince take on Foo Fighters' ubuquitous (and mediocre) "Best of You," and turn it into an almost-unrecognizably great song that straddled arena rock and gospel.

Ultimately, though, it was the casual ease with which he handled the almost unimaginable pressure of the event that made this such a riveting performance. He tossed off lyrics like he was just improvising at practice, walked away from the mic to deliver a one-handed guitar solo, and sauntered back halfway through a line like it just didn't matter. As Sanneh put it in the Times, Prince "looked as if he were getting away with something," and whether that was the knowledge that an artist once decried as obscene is giving a safe-but-thrilling performance at a venue now terrified of supposed obscenity, the thought that a quirky, diminutive experimental genius could so easily position himself squarely in the middle of the American mainstream, or just the fact that someone who went so quickly from superstardom to silly-symbol joke could come back so triumphantly, it was amazing to watch. One ticket to the Prince Las Vegas show, please.

Dearly Beloved, We Are Gathered Here Today to Get Through This Thing Called the Super Bowl Half Time Show

Super Bowl halftime shows are, of course, bland blimps of branding; processed cheese whiz for the widest possible audience, which no amount of excess, earnestness, or manufactured controversy can puncture. So I was surprised to feel a touch of sadness as I watched Prince roll out all the empty signifiers one would expect from a Pepsi commercial: the atonal call-and-response with “authentic” fans; the writhing Aussie twinbots, and the accessory du jour, the marching band. Prince was once so transgressive, so outsider, and so defiantly himself, and now here he was warbling feeble medley versions of 20-year-old songs. The only song that stood up to the ant-in-a-swimming-pool staging was “Purple Rain,” and that was only because it always was a lighters-aloft arena power ballad anyway.

The Purple One could not even shock sartorially: In his teal frock coat and orange shirt, he looked like Little Richard dressed as a Miami Dolphins cheerleader, and although I was glad to see him strap on the purple glyph guitar for “Purple Rain,” I half expected him to coax a fountain of Pepsi from it, in a nod to the fret board autoeroticism of his past live shows.

Or maybe it was just a sign of the times. Perhaps what I’m really offended by is the fact that my musical heroes are now officially irrelevant.

February 4, 2007

Electronic Museum

I don't much like to buy shoes online. The color can be different in person, and the shoes may not fit right. But more and more art buyers are buying works valued in seven figures via email, the New York Times reports. Buyers make their decisions based on JPEG images, or compressed digital photographs. Many are motivated by a sense of urgency, partly generated by other buyers' virtual purchasing habits, which eliminates time spent on transcontinental flights.

Many buyers use JPEGs at some point in the buy-sell dance. But some by-pass the dance altogether. As the Times piece delves deeper, it suggests that the latter are brand name-seekers. As a result hot new artists, like Claire Sherman, who graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago 2 years ago, are particularly likely to sell their works sight-unseen.

In another interesting twist, the prestigious Gagosian Gallery recently posted JPEG images of an exhibit on a password-protected section of its website, and emailed the password only to posh buyers. No newcomers allowed.

The funny thing about JPEGs is that they reveal no texture, and the color of the works can be altered significantly depending on the computer monitor. Can you imagine buying, say, a De Kooning—well, at all, but especially without seeing the brushstrokes? Will the advent of the JPEG lead artists to forego texture an a non-value adding proposition? Maybe buyers should purchase the JPEG itself—plus, of course, a JPEG of the artist's signature.

It's Just Starting Now, Baby Blue

Joni Mitchell has always been a bit earnest for my taste, but I can only hope to rock at 63 like the singer-songwriter is now. As an anti-war mixed media show closes in L.A., a ballet partially choreographed by Ms. Mitchell is set to open in Calgary and a new album is nearing release. The New York Times has a long profile of the folk heroine, written after an all-night interview.

February 1, 2007

Only in California

One night between December 28 and January 4, while the owners of a tony home in Atherton, California, were vacationing, burglars struck. These were no ordinary burglars. They managed to get through a code-entry gate. Once inside the house, they passed by numerous electronic gadgets and headed for the cellar. The wine cellar. There, they pooh-poohed lesser vintages and went straight for the good stuff, including a 1959 magnum of Bordeaux worth $11,000. All told, they made off with $100,000 worth of wine, at an average of $3,000 a bottle. Wine theft is on the rise, because prices at auction have been mounting of late. And there's no way to track hot wine—by which I mean metaphorically hot, bien sûr. Sounds like the perfect crime, if the thieves can keep out of the booty.

Mooninites Attack!

This story blows my mind. Apparently, some strange battery-powered devices were found at various points around Boston today, causing officials to shut down freeways, bridges, part of the transit system, and a section of the Charles River. Bomb squads were called in to detonate the devices. Turns out these things are harmless battery-powered blinking LED light boards featuring a Mooninite, a character from "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," which is itself a surreal 15-minute cartoon series airing on Adult Swim, the late-night "alternative" programming brand on Cartoon Network. All this was part of a marketing campaign for the upcoming "Hunger Force" movie: "Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters."

As a fan of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," and especially of the snarky Mooninites (the one on the light boards is named Ignignoc!) I have to say it was extraordinarily surreal to log on to Drudge Report this afternoon and find this unbelievable photograph of a helmeted bomb squad technician holding a Mooninite. Actually, it was a DJ and fellow Aqua Teen fan at my radio station who first pulled up the web page; his slack-jawed request for me to "just... come... look at this right now" was priceless. The show itself has run for a few years on Adult Swim; while it has frankly lost a lot of its surreal humor this season, I'll sit through a rerun any night, and it's the very definition of "underground." To see Ignignoc plastered all over news websites, and TV reporters trying to get their mouths around "Mooninite," was head-spinning.

Like so much in today's (ahem) post-modern culture, this situation elicits equal and opposite reactions. On the one hand, this was a simple commercial art prank, and the paranoid hysteria of post-9/11 America that it illustrates is both shocking and depressing. On the other hand, what the hell were the marketing team at Adult Swim thinking?! There are guerilla marketing controversies that help promote your brand, and then there are controversies that jeopardize the whole enterprise. Planting homemade devices with exposed batteries and dangling wires at public places, no matter how silly the intent, is about as smart as complaining about removing your shoes while in the security line at the airport. Apparently arrests have already been made, and who knows how far the ramifications will travel up the Adult Swim/Cartoon Network/Turner Broadcasting ladder. "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," the movie, is supposed to premier on March 23rd; any bets on that actually happening?