-You will not need willpower -You will not gain weight -You will not feel deprived -You will need no gimmicks, shocks, or substitutes -You will not suffer serious withdrawal pangs
Is this the mythical reassurance one wants to hear when trying to write a book? After moving to a new location? When you need to get rid of that Facebook account? At the start of a new job?
Not really, but nor is it unrelated to all of those things. It’s the litany of promises carried on the front flap of Allen Carr’s The Easy Way to Stop Smoking.
Until we can all settle on that official quit date, permit me to send some heartfelt thanks to Carr (ahead of time) for the hope of a cure-all. And to Q-Tip, for the timely entrance of these songs:
We have many reasons to be thrilled lately, not the least of which is our first feature from one of our regular contributors and intellectual soulmates--a writer, scholar, Assistant Professor of Performance Studies at NYU, and (we are certain), one of the reasons Pennsylvania stayed blue in 2008--Tavia Nyong'o. The last time many of us saw him was on Halloween night during our own sordid romp through the sonic wilderness of downtown Manhattan. Apparently, the film Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlistleft Tavia a lot to chew on (so to speak)...
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Queers make excellent ironical readers of the subtexts in teenybop culture. What a surprise then, that the adolescent romp Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist turns the tables on us and begins with a straight protagonist living through the subtexts of queer cultural codes. Nick, the only straight member of a homocore band, complains to his bandmates that they just don’t get the pain and isolation of being heterosexual. The line get a huge laugh, one helped along by the incredible talent of the actor who delivers it: Michael Cera. Cera has cornered the market in alterna-teen masculinity, the very model of the post-geek, post-grunge lovable underdog in the omnipresent, unisex hoodie, this generation’s answer to the flannel shirt. His vulnerable but voluble boyishness fits as seamlessly into this queer scenario as it did in his two prior leads: as the hapless impregnator of Juno, and one half of the hormone-fueled buddies at the center of Superbad. All three films portend a certain collapse of the sex/gender system as heretofore known, at least amongst the rising millennial generation. But are they as queer as they seem? The topsy-turvy premise of Infinite Playlist, like the film’s title, advertises its up-to-date-ness while slyly sidelining queers to the backdrop of a conventional heterosexual romance. No one in the downtown Brooklyn theater I saw the film in booed or wretched at any of the queer content on-screen. But little effort was made to actually represent straight/queer friendships or just plain friendship in general as nearly as important and exciting as the headlong rush towards heteronormative romance. Since the birth of cinema, black filmgoers have had to sit through onscreen representations of ourselves as loving caregivers and wise confidants to white protagonists. If Infinite Playlist is any indication, queers better gear up for the same treatment. It shouldn’t be surprising that the costs of visibility and inclusion might be tokenization. But it’s disappointing that the disruptive sexual and creative energies of adolescence, captured by such visceral and empathetic performers like Cera and his co-lead Kat Dennings, should in the end veer so closely to the conventional. Superbad held a similar promise in its conclusion, when Seth and Evan confess an intense, awkward love for each other, only to go off on separate double-dates, eyes wistfully locked as they part at the mall. While momentarily daring, this conclusion is actually a bit of a throwback to notions of homosexuality as an adolescent phase, an updated expose of the thesis of Leslie Fiedler’s notorious essay “Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey.”
The most radically queer presence in Infinite Playlist turns out not to be the queer sidekick characters so much as a cinematic MacGuffin: a piece of gum that goes from mouth to mouth, into and out of a filthy toilet bowl in Penn Station, for almost the entire running time of the movie. On one hand, this is pretty standard teen gross out fair. But the infinitely elastic gum contained a deeper implication regarding all the anonymous contacts and desires that are inadmissible from the culminating romantic scenario of boy finally getting girl. At the moment Nick and Norah consummate their evening’s lust (on a couch in Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studio – even groups wholly absented from the screen like black people can nonetheless supply a backdrop and support to its central white romance) the gum reappears between their lips. The audience shrieks and squeals in their seats as the filthy piece of delicious gum crosses from tooth to tooth.
Much as the maturational narrative of the film is obliged to move forward: from homosexuality to heterosexuality, from friendship and collectivity to couplehood, from high school to college, the gum bringing its chewers on a backwards trajectory from the oral stage of mastication to the anal stage of the shit-filled toilet. The chewing gum thus seems to operate as what Lacan called “the lamella” the objective materialization of the libido as a wriggly, palpating (un)dead object, that inscribes the erotic as traumatic disturbance within the very social field that presumes to normalize it as a shattering and queasy real. When one queer door closes, it seems, another one opens. - (TN)
In this season of voter registration hoaxes, uncanny SNL performances, last-minute endorsements, and final pushes in battleground states, we here at Oh! Industry recognize the need for and draw towards paranoia and cynicism. In an efforts to transform these 'ugly feelings' into energies of utopic potential, we put out a call for contributors to our "2008 Election Megamix-tape".
Because we all believe in the power of music to change lives, minds, and even the world, here is a short compilation of raucous anthems, power ballads, and bass-dropping manifestos to provide a virtual soundscape for Election Day 2008. They are the songs to carry us through the ballot counting on Tuesday, November 4th. They are the songs we want to wake up hearing the morning of Wednesday, November 5th.
Ned Raggett, journalist for Allmusic.com/OC Weekly/Plan B/Metal Edge etc. (Costa Mesa, CA)
VNV Nation, "The Farthest Star"
This song reinspired me and reinvigorated me when it came to engaging with life, politics and more, a personal recharge that seeks to reach all the universe even though it never could. It's been carrying me through everything ever since I first heard it last year.
In the category of "bass-dropping manifestos" I submit "Shake That Devil" from the latest Antony and the Johnsons EP "Another World." The song begins in the center of a whirlwind. After two and half minutes of soundscapey distortion effects providing only the barest support for Antony's quavering voice as he peals repeatedly "That dog had its way with me, shake that dog out of the tree," drums and horns roll out over the song like thunder, and lament turns into foot-stamping incantation, exhortation, exorcism. "That bird came at me with a knife," Antony sings, "told me she wanted my life. Shake that bird out of the tree, so that everyone can see." This is where I want to be with birds, pigs, and dogs falling out of trees everywhere and the devils in our minds getting shaken out of bushes throughout the land.
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Joel Bernardo, bass player, The Jack Lords (Jersey City, NJ)
Chorus: Vamos a faltarnos el respeto usando el alfabeto completo. (Let's disrespect each other using the entire alphabet). I have not had so much fun trashing politicians since "W" began running for president.
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Ken Wissoker, editorial director, Duke University Press (Durham, NC)
Donald Byrd, "Change (Makes You Want to Hustle)" from his fab Places and Spaces LP.
The title makes it a kind of obvious choice, but I like the way its dance floor energy always makes me feel like I need to do something. (I always heard it as makes me want to hustle.) So, the change goes from Obama's call to our action to make change happen.
I just hope that we all make the "growth" choice on November 4th, the choice that's going to take the country out of 8 years of hell under the Bush regime and take us to a future where we can really see our children's children happier because of it.
There's something celebratory, hopeful, expansive about the swirling synthesizers and vocoder harmonies of this song.
"It's like I waited my whole life for this one night..."
One voice multiplied in echo and variation as it speaks to a future world in which we find salvation, right as we tumble backwards off the ledge: "And I won't let you fall. Let you fall. Let you fall...Oh..."
I believe in this one night and where we go from here.
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Christine Balance, Oh! Industry/scholar/writer/The Jack Lords (Los Angeles, CA)
(the roving reporter, en route from New York to Los Angeles as we speak...)
I don’t remember if it had rained, or if I had only imagined it, as everything from the night before seemed like a dream. If nothing else, though, the morning of November 5th was surprisingly clear. So my belated pick is Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World,” which gently bridges the wide gulf between a world barely imagined and one that’s just arrived. It’s an incredible transition; from Judy Garland’s wistfulness in 1939 to Louis Armstrong’s worn and tender affections in 1968, Iz glides effortlessly between both. And though the song’s been overplayed probably more than most, it manages to sound always fresh, and never more so than on that quiet, still-early morning. “That’s where you’ll find me,” he sings, referring to a made-up place that, from his vantage point, looks real after all. On the cover of Facing Future, he’s standing with his back to us, looking out at the world over there, over the rainbow. The whole world. And though we can’t quite see it, at least not yet, we believe him when he tells us, his husky voice breaking in some places, what a wonderful world it is.
There are few things as awesome in the academy as getting a cool new colleague who knows how to think, drink *and* dance. This year, KT is the benefactress of Shana Redmond's arrival at USC in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity. Shana was kind enough to take time out from her first semester in "Troy" to give us some mythical, magical, draw' droppin' jams. Take it away SRed...
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In the 2002 film Brown Sugar, Sydney (Sanaa Lathan) and Dre (Taye Diggs) are best friends whose lives and loves are bound and entangled by the music that they share. Upon reuniting in New York City after many years on opposite coasts, Dre announces that he is in love and ready to propose marriage to his girlfriend, Reese (Nicole Ari Parker). Sydney is shocked by the announcement and hesitant to believe that the ultimate bachelor is ready for commitment. To prove the honesty of his claim, Dre tells Sydney that he is going to retire his “slow jams deluxe get the draws tape,” the one with “Lutha [Luther Vandross], Sade, and the extended mix of Prince’s ‘Adore’.” As he speaks this line, we somehow believe that his claim is true: by giving up this tape, Dre has released himself from its attachments of philandering and womanizing. His tape is a relic of a bygone era, a time when he needed the music to get him laid. Monogamy now meant that both the tape and his lascivious demons were defunct.
While it would be ridiculous to believe that the tape ‘made him do it,’ its proxy as Dre’s desire is feasible precisely because this scenario is not unfamiliar. Traditionally, these tapes were the ones that your perpetually single, ‘I-love-the-ladies,’ uncle talked about. He kept the cassette in his 1982 El Dorado and allowed its sounds to waft like perfume from the car’s lowered windows while it idled in the church parking lot—a custom that made it impossible for anyone to miss his fashionably late Sunday morning entrance with his new ‘friend’. This association serves the myth of the tape well but is not particularly appealing for those of us post-soul babies who hope to tap into the magic of the tape in our own lives. While the sexually explicit purpose behind the tape has stood the test of time, the contents of the tape deserve and demand reinvention.
The resurrection of the “slow jams deluxe get the draws tape” for a younger generation became my obsession in my junior year of college. That fall I added to my extracurricular resume a radio show, The Drop Your Draws Show, on WMCN 91.7FM in St. Paul, MN. I developed the show out of necessity; there were no Soul/R&B shows on the station at the time and, as my favorite genres of music, I was determined that they should be represented. Beyond this intellectual compulsion however, I had at least one other motivation: sex. I was not striving towards the physical act itself—although, necessarily, that was never far from my mind; I rather was seeking the aural representation of sex, the sound-essence that compelled the act. These sounds, for me, are in some ways more powerful than the act itself because the sensations that they invoke are not dependent on a partner—they simply exist in the most portable of forms. To what ends these sounds are used is up to your discretion. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this updated minimixtape but be forewarned: these sounds may have unexpected consequences. - (SR)
Experiencing homecoming in the abjection machine of an academic conference produces all kinds of interesting side effects. Some are physical: jeans become torture devices as you try and contain the bloating that comes with too many power bars, sandwiches, New-Mex gut bombs. Concealer edges out blush as the most important thing in the makeup bag. Or, contemplating the codes of lesbionic fashion like KT, the penultimate Sophie's choice is between the Mr. Rogers cardigan or "Well of Loneliness" sweater vest. (Mr. Rogers always wins). The liver is cranky for at least a week. Like CBB, we often long for water that doesn't taste like the remnants of coffee at the bottom of its plastic dispenser. The larger tolls, however, weigh heavily on the mind and heart. Common symptoms are loneliness and melancholy after having exposed yourself though your work, physicality, outfit choice. You might regret that you spent the money and time on such an experience especially when, upon return, you face the realization of how behind you are. You return to your home institution and wonder: where have my friends gone? Or, for the more Eeyore inclined among us: I have friends, right?
But we go. We go partly (primarily?) because conferences provide the occasion and the funding for Oh! Reunions. And (not unrelated), they remind us that somewhere, out there, we do have intellectual communities. The after effects of conferences reach you just when you need them, especially in moments of feeling institutionally extraterrestrial. It is in this spirit that we offer our Oh! ASA 2008 highlights.
First and foremost a special thanks to our respective panel organizers, Wendy Cheng and Eric Weisbard for inviting us to present on "Alternative Suburban Geographies" and "Crossroads and Crossover: The American Top-40 as Cultural Exchange," respectively. We had a great time presenting in the hospitable and engaging environments you helped create. Crispy pata all around!
PRESENTATION HIGHLIGHT REEL: What needs to be said: Ann Pellegrini is one of our great orators. Every Pellegrini talk consistently gives us a solid and bad-dass piece of writing. Her meditation on The Kite Runner skillfully modulated description and critique in such a way that schooled us all in that room how to put things together. What's more, her delivery is always engaging, moving, hilarious. I just can't get enough of those Pellegrini-patented puns. And, it's crucial to mention her citational practices, which are some of the most ethical out there. Lisa Duggan and Jose Esteban Muñoz interwove beautifully in their "On Hope and Hopelessness: A performative dialogue." They made us rethink the terms, feelings, and sounds of revolutionary consciousness. And just so you don't think I'm still tugging at the batas-de-casa at NYU, permit me to mention other standouts such as Josh Kun who so gracefully and movingly flipped the North/South script in "We didn't cross the charts, the Charts Crossed Us." Aplauso is also (and always) well-deserved for the archival pleasures made possible by Mimi Nguyen and Gayle Wald on the "Beautiful Kitsch and Random Form" panel. (ATV)
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To invoke the immortal language of short-haired romance shared by Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in Ghost, I can only say "ditto" to ATV's bullseye list of highlights and inspirations at the conference and add super loud "woot! woot!s" for Sandy K. Soto's "de-mastering" of the child through musicality, my co-panelist Glen Mimura's always amazing work about Orange County, and of course, Lisa Duggan's smashing new hair color. I can also only gesture, with regret, to all of the papers and panels I couldn't make despite my best efforts to pinball (cribbing a phrase from an old grad school compatriot, Drew Daniel) between all of the delectable offerings--especially my I.E. sistah, Jennifer Stoever-Ackerman's "When Dusk Meets Dawn: Listening to DuBois at the Crossroads," Tavia Nyong'o's "Lipstick Traces," Karen Shimakawa's "Ugly Feelings at Home and Abroad," the 8am "Queering Children, Queering Family: Race, Labor and Economy" panel, Shane Vogel's paper on "Lena Horne's Jamaica" among many others.
A special shout out has to go to Jayna Brown for grappling elegantly with every presenter's AV nightmare during her paper "Go Wild! Annabella Lwin, Multicultural London, and the Post-Punk Era." I actually treasured her re-enactments of her musical archive, and enjoyed them more than if I would've struggled to hear the music through tiny speakers. Which brings me to a mini rant about ASA AV: so many folks at ASA work on aural and visual forms (music, cinema, television, etc.) that from here on out,"digital packages" in conference rooms should come standard with basic audio. It sucks to have to schlep your own speakers around. Time for an "ambient citizens uprising" (to invoke Lauren Berlant's public feelings paper), so everyone can bring in the noise, bring in the funk. And finally, I'd like to acknowledge all the work that happens beyond the fluorescent conference cubes, aka those iceboxes where our hearts used to be...like learning from my awesome new colleague, Shana Redmond, about what "Quiet Storm" really means. (KT)
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Yes, kudos to the 'quiet storm' of tremendously smart and generous works and writers we heard this past ASA weekend. To Ann Pellegrini, for, once again, expanding the Oh! vocabulary with the notion of "oscillation" (a gentle turn from last year's "blood-covered abortion girl," but still just as evocative). To Gayle Wald, for bringing back the soul generation's televisual contraband and re-invigorating the possibilities of community action and dialogue. Having had the honor of seeing Stevie Wonder perform live this past summer at the Hollywood Bowl, it was glorious to see just how long such an amazing individual has been rocking out. To Jose Munoz & Lisa Duggan, for philosophically toe-ing the line between (and within) hope and hopelessness and for always keeping us on the edge of our seats with the possibility of death by ice cube. My special song shout-out (in the continued afterlife of the Olivia Newton-John lovefest): "Hopelessly Devoted to You."
Last but not least, to Shane Vogel, who also continues to expand my mind with the knowledge and oratorical grace he carries. Despite the limits of ASA's audio-visual set up, he was able to share with and guide us through the impenetrable star power of Lena Horne's vocal performances (while still sweetly inserting under the breath, sarcastic commentary about the lack of audio speakers in the room). Jamaica, Cuba, the Philippines...Shane inspired me in my work to reconsider the poetics of islands and archipelagos in the middle of the open seas.
Biggest regret of the conference was missing the stellar ladies panel, "Subjugated Pasts and Histories of the Present," with the all-star crew of Lucy ("El Bee") Burns, Adria Imada, and Priya Srinivasan. Word on the street is that it was a truly transformative panel, perhaps one of the best in the ASA's recent past. (CBB)
CONFERENCE SOUNDTRACK: In the wake of Josh "Kunmora" Kun's long-limbed dance moves and CBB's flawless sea-horsing around, we hunkered down with the laptop at our hotel room on Friday night inadvertently mashing up the legendary Laura Branigan's "Self Control" with a song that shares a similar "uh oh woah oh oh oh oh"shout chorus, but that we couldn't immediately identify. After googling "uh oh woah 80s song + jungle," we were finally able to touch bass with the long lost "Tarzan Boy" by Baltimora, a dance jam with imperialist overtones that scored a Listerine ad in the late 80s. Re-live the glory here:
The chorus implores "gimme the other, gimme the other" – a sentiment demonstrated to great effect at the ASA on too many occasions. When we looked behind the music we learned that Baltimora was fronted by a Northern Irish dancer/singer, Jimmy McShane, who died of complications from AIDS in 1995. For me this felt like an emblematic Oh! moment. The same kind of sonic moment--a shared recognition across time and empires--that begat "Oh! Industry" a year ago. A half-remembered echo of shallow pop about "Jungle life…far away from nowhere…native beat that carries on…" freighted by the deep history of the 80s—by Northern Ireland and the legacies of British Imperialism (Falkland follies included); by AIDS and the souls who sing and dance no more. (KT)
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I really do desire more dance moves and possibilities to "get down" in the everyday. Not trying to be anthropological, but you can really learn a lot about a person by the way they dance. So yes, extra-special kudos to Josh Kun for going the extra Solid Gold mile and breaking on through to the other side with his limber choreography, delicately crafted for those of us living in the valley of the tall.
In light of my wanting more Dance Party ASA, my soundtrack selection comes by way of Jason King's meditation on falsetto and Sylvester: "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" (check out link for some serious dance moves and short-shorts fashion). Sure, academic conferences cannot be equated with pre-AIDS, coke-charged, libidinally-fueled 1970s dance club magic, but the essence of the song's emotion could definitely be felt when we spotted the Triple Threat alliance that is Karen Shimakawa, Kandice Chuh, and Diana Paulin. Kudos to them for carrying and sharing the special force (perhaps the power of the Ring itself) through their intelligence and presence.
For me, some of the most entertaining and intimate conference moments are the morning preparations. Somewhere in between the workouts at sunrise (or perhaps just continental breakfast, depending on how much you drank the night before) and stepping out into the dry air of the Southwest, there is at least an hour of wardrobe selection, hair blow-outs, mumbling to one's self while peering into one's luggage, and hair or facial product application. Thanks to the wonders of Pandora Radio and its powers as a sonic roulette wheel for bringing Anne Murray back into my life (by way of, once again, Olivia Newton-John radio station and its pre-Lilith Fair ladies of AM Gold line-up). A dedication to my Oh! sisters: Anne Murray's rendition of The Monkees' "Daydream Believer." (CBB)
POST-CONFERENCE SOUNDTRACK My pick is a two-pronged indy sobfest that betray California homesickness. Not since Joni Mitchell's "California" have I felt so regionally adrift. Musically, conferences are educational because of the time spent alongside CBB and KT, rental car dittys, and those jukeboxes in dark bars. These songs offer reprieve from feeling deeply entrenched in the east.
The first, "California Waiting" by the Kings of Leon. I only know this song because it's on a mixtape my little sister gave me. Let's just say, not being in the west will always make many of us long for it. In dreamlife, it becomes a mythical place where folks understand the work, eat good food, and get your jokes. The other is "How Could I Know" by My Morning Jacket, another casualty caught in my Floridian time lag that I've just now been exposed to. Though they hail from Louiville, they offer a nice soundtrack for wanting to float into the somewhere else. Thanks to Josh Chambers-Letson for the education. (ATV)
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A special thank you, once again, to Kunmora for a Swede awakening to the NordicHapa Eurovision pop of Maia Hirasawa on the early morning plane ride back to eLAy. (KT)
LIFE LESSONS LEARNED @ ASA '08:
• Whiskey soda is a long lasting party drink best consumed from a plastic root beer mug. • Always have off-site parties at bars with $3 drinks and pizza delivery. (Megatons of thanks to the fine folks at the Atomic Cantina--especially our bartender, Leonard--for letting our Motley Crue squat on the local roost for happy hour).
• Moisturize, hydrate, then moisturize and hydrate again.
• If you have tendencies, bring Nicorette.
• Tequila will get you going and keep you going, in the words of Lionel Richie, all night long.
• Always trust your friends when they try to talk and walk you down from the waves of (wanting) to mutilate passive aggressive individuals. This too shall pass.
There's nothing better for post-conference exhaustion than getting cuddly with your loved ones and your Tivo for a day of home-o therapy.
As the only person in the universe still watching ER, I knew I'd get a really gratifying TV-weep out of Maura Tierney's last episode, titled "The Book of Abby," which aired this past Thursday night. I've always had a celeb crush on MT, starting with News Radioand her Dee Dee Myers-inspired turn on Primary Colors, only to have my passion inflamed by her victory over Gilmore girl, Lauren Graham on Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown. (Talk about slash fantasies come to life!)
The EW PopWatch Blog offers a hilarious rundown of her sordid hook-ups (Stanley Tucci?!?), ill-fated romances (John Carter?!?), ongoing battles with booze, and bi-polar momma drama (mother Lockhart was played by Sally Field), so I'll spare all of us from any further re-capping. Suffice it to say that Maura made all the show's soapy, medical moments sing with a scratchy, smoker-throated realism. She gave the show gravitas. A certain crankiness and disinterestedness that actually made me care.
In mourning Maura's departure, I also bid adieu to one of my favorite subtexts on the show: the slash-y, sexy, and profound homosocial bond she shared with Bend it Like Beckham's Parminder Nagra (aka Dr. Neela Rasgotra). I'll let this fanvid I found on YouTube tell the long, luscious story through song. Like the vid's closing moments, I too will follow Abby into the dark, somewhere beyond the comforting familiarity of that perpetually rainsoaked ambulance bay. - (KT)
Please forgive us dear readers for the virtual silence the past few weeks (and, for myself, since the summertime). Between starting new jobs, global trotting, and the continued barrage of this jet stream called life, the distance between ourselves and the act of sitting down to write a blog entry seemed insurmountable. We could blame it on the epic nature of this election year. Or we could blame it on the panic at the disco energies surrounding the Wall Street meltdown. But really we can blame it on something a bit more cosmic and, therefore, universal - Mercury retrograde.
Named after the Roman god, Mercury, when our solar system's smallest and innermost planet starts to move backwards, beware the inevitable slowdown in affairs of travel, communication, technology, and finances. Though life may not be going as we planned it in the last few weeks, Mercury retrograde's "lo & slo" approach forces us to reflect, reconsider, and retool ourselves for the future.
In the spirit of the astrological season's call, my SOTW summoned itself through a string of enchanted recent events -- a game of "witchy" Scrabble in San Francisco and a serendipitous session of karaoke in Los Angeles. Off the Xanadu soundtrack, Olivia Newton-John's uplifting love song, "Magic," signals a viable mantra as we see new possibilities on the near-horizon. The song conjures up a nebulous energy that some of us might call magic(k) or chi or The Force but, no matter the assignation, it is a power inside each of us.
From where I stand You are home free The planets align so rare There's promise in the air And I'm guiding you
Through every turn I'll be near you I'll come anytime you call I'll catch you when you fall I'll be guiding you
You have to believe we are magic Nothin' can stand in our way You have to believe we are magic Don't let your aim ever stray And if all your hopes survive Your destiny will arrive I'll bring all your dreams alive For you
They are hopeful words that need to be heard during these trying times, set to the synthesized lilt of John Farrar's melodies coloring our minds with their aural Lisa Frank designs. Dealing everyday with the seriousness of "tenure track," "retirement funds," "power of attorney," and "economic meltdown," Olivia Newton-John's blown-out, interplanetary visage and Andy Gibb-inspired falsetto moves offer a musical respite. Call it 1970s nostalgia wrapped in some sugary abandonment. But, after the second or third listen, I'd like to see you tell me that you yourself don't believe. - (CBB)
Not quite sure what to make of this New York Times MagazineCLASS ACTS spread, only that in inspires us to imagine an alternate crew of academic pin-up models who aren't quite as white, tenured and Ivy-league. Or at least only one of those categories. View this in light of last night's elbow-patched, hard-drinking, Beat [poet]-loving, and irritating English professor on Gossip Girl, who's coaching "lonely boy," Dan Humphreys how to get into Yale English as an undergrad. Dan also makes a joke about affirmative action comparing himself (Brooklyn boy on a prep-school scholarship, with a rock star dad), to "Pacific Islanders," broadly defined. Again, "whuuuuuuut?"
Click on Taussig to peep the rest of the fashion show. (Thanks to Kangagi and Kate Fortmueller for alerting us to this spread):
Even though it's still sunny in L.A, there's something slightly Shining-like about my current state of writerly seclusion, only I'm more like the frustrated "Redrum" kid looking for playfriends while cruising around on a big wheel, than an axe-wielding Jack Nicholson. Lately it seems I only get out into the world in very scheduled ways (mostly for the "Lift" class at 24HR fitness, and my Wednesday night poker game with semi-strangers in Hollywood...oh... and to teach my one frakking class, because I only have a 75% leave year). But we won't waste time complaining.
To invoke the time-honored wisdom of Matthew Wilder, "ain't nothin' gonna break my stride." Even this scheduled song break is brought to you by the curious debris floating around the chapter I'm currently working on called "Behind the Orange Curtain."
[Side note: I love Marilyn McCoo's pageant-plus-Wowowee interlude in this video. For Oh!, Solid Goldhas always been an ur-text. Also, did y'all catch "Pepsi and Shirlie" announced up next on this cable network? For those who don't remember, P and S were George and Andrew's back-up ladies in Wham! during the Fantastic era]
Though Matthew Wilder will probably be relegated to a footnote, the year of his wondrous one hit--1984--is a big deal in my OC chapter. I'll leave you guessing as to why. Some reasons are obvious, others not so. The single came from Wilder's album, I Don't Speak the Language, which was released in 1983. "Break my Stride" peaked at #5 on the Billboard charts in January 1984.
Wilder didn't recede into the ether after his John Oates-ish 'stache ceased to be relevant (that is until the more recent facial hair revivals in various hipster worlds, queer and straight). Matthew Wilder produced No Doubt's Tragic Kingdom, thus defining for the last decade what mainstream imaginaries think of as an "OC sound." And if you listen to "Break My Stride" it all makes sense. Friendly ska-ish upbeats, doubled by "stabbing" New Wave synth (to use one of QBN MAMI's favorite, awesome action words about synths). These two are among a total of probably 4 elements that made Tragic Kingdom such a smash. The notion of a "Tragic Kingdom" to follow-up the Cold War fantasies inspired by the Orange Curtain is where I'm stuck today, so back at it.
That's all the time I have out of the cage for now. Back to life...back to reality... (KT)
************************************ LIVE ALERT: Ain't nothin' gonna break HER stride either...
We'd like to welcome the new online Journal of Transformative Works and Culturesto the "internets" today. TWC is "an international, peer-reviewed journal that publishes articles about transformative works, broadly conceived," bringing together academics, fans and dabblers alike.
For their inaugural issue, the folks at TWC interviewed the three of us, just a small cluster in the large and nebulous collective we imagine as the "Audre Lorde of the Rings" (ALOTR). Here's a brief excerpt (click on the hobbits to link to the full interview):
Introduction: Labors of love
[1.1] TWC editor Alexis Lothian conducted an e-mail interview with Karen Tongson, Christine Balance, and Alexandra Vazquez, who are professors at University of Southern California, University of California–Irvine, and Princeton, respectively. All three are cultural studies scholars who take nonobjective feelings about objects of study seriously. For the past year, they have been blogging together at Oh! Industry (http://www.ohindustry.com/), celebrating the musical, televisual, and filmic soundtracks to intellectual and emotional lives lived inside the "machine" of the academy and among "domestic zones" of "living rooms, backyards, garages, in our cars, or even just between our headphones." With a motley group of allies in and out of academia, many of whom have contributed to Oh! Industry (O!I) and who share a perspective informed by U.S. women-of-color feminism, queer theory and activism, and a determination to "never run away from being serious about 'non-serious' things" and to "never hide [their] irreverence towards objects and industries that others take too seriously," they have formed an unofficial intellectual collective they call the Audre Lorde of the Rings (ALOTR).
[1.2] Together and separately, Tongson, Balance, and Vazquez's work on suburban diasporic communities and pop culture, both mainstream and marginal, shows that the critical and political value of fannishness extends well beyond the self-identified subcultural geek communities on which the body of intellectual work gathered under the heading of "fan studies" has tended to focus. They talked to us about the critical and political value of queered and racialized fannish affects, intellectual labor and performance in and out of the academy, and the articulation between academic institutions and online public spheres.
[1.3]The following TWC editorial team members contributed to this interview: Alexis Lothian and Julie Levin Russo.
Our first suggestion to our compatriots is not just to show off the illustrious Board's name on the masthead page, but instead all of THEIR names on the working Editorial Team, who we know have put a lot of (cylon) blood, sweat and tears into this whole endeavor. Allow us to shout them out here and congratulate them on a great new journal:
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