The OH! INDUSTRY 2007 End-of-the-Year Cavalcade of Stars

In the great tradition of TV telethons and radio stations' year-end “Best of” lists, we here at O!I are proud to present a whole “Cavalcade of Stars” as December's special guests. With a year of events ranging from global heat waves to California wildfires, presidential debates to debilitated housing markets, from Rihanna’s Canadian-inspired hooks (‘eh, eh, eh’) to such geriatric heart-wrenchers as Away from Her and The Savages, we decided to call upon ALOTR’s finest to share pieces of their 2007 reflections and 2008 resolutions/revolutions that we have lovingly brought together in a bricolage of cultural insight and creative inspiration. Enjoy!

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SARAH MILLER (writer for Men's Health, Women's Health and TV Guide; author of the novel, Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn):

Brief Reflections on 2 Major Events in 2007
The Dying Bees. I was hoping we'd have to all get rid of our cell phones so that I would have an excuse for being even more lazy and work-avoidant than I already am, but now it turns out they don't even know what the bees are dying from. Great.
It was one of those out of left field things that proves even more that the apocalypse is a very creative entity. [Follow up email from Sarah Miller on 1/3: "The bees are dying from a virus. Heather Lukes just told me. I think the O!I community needs to know. She said they've known for a couple months."]

The Writer's Strike coinciding with reports that Americans don't read anymore. People think language is cheap. It isn't. It is everything. If this culture doesn't figure out a way to make people care about words, we're fucked. There are scientific reasons why reading a lot makes you smart and playing video games a lot make you stupid, besides the fact that books are pretty and video games are ugly. And I don't want to have some post-modern bullshit debate about it either.

"I get it”: MIA (mostly), Snoop (yeah!!!!), Band of Horses (“No One's Going to Love You More Than I Do" – a great crying song, for all you crying fans!), LCD Sound System, Carrie Underwood

"I don't get it”: Kanye, Rilo Kiley (bleck! It's like they're not even TRYING), Lily Allen (ewwww!)

"I really don't get it”: Modest Mouse (what a stupid effin name!)

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J.J. CHINOIS aka Lynne Chan (international playboy, video artist, and Flash/dance designer):

2007 Reflection #1:
Did anyone notice that Melissa Etheridge won an Oscar for her song "I Need To Wake Up" for An Inconvenient Truth? (Here's another truth, that song sucks ass.)

2008 Resolution:
Still, strangely enough, I feel inspired to 'reduce my carbon footprint' in 2008

2007 Video of the Year:
Alexyss Tyler, host of her own cable access show in Atlanta. Vagina Power has to be the 2007 video that has really given me so much renewed self-respect for my vagina, nay, my "intra-vagina". Plus now I'm really hitting those walls and workin the middle, ya heard?



Song for 2008:
Not only am I bringing this song into 2008, I'm bringing it back from 1986, a gem dusted off from Debbie Harry's solo album, French Kissin' in the USA.

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LAUREN BERLANT (professor and purveyor of Feel Tank Chicago and the public feelings project):

Dear Oh! Industry,

My thing is never intention but action, practice, finding myself in the middle of things, looking around, and saying it.

So I wish you'd ask, what's your new year's revolution, and how are you already living it? Or, better, how will you unclench in 2008?

Anyway, taste publicity keeps me queasy. But then, I associate being queasy with ethical risk. And, even if one always wishes to receive the letters one writes, one never rides the waves of the other's fantasy without feeling the whatever.

1. Pipilotti Rist, "I'm not the girl who misses much."

2. Nina Simone, "Mississippi Goddamn."



Uselessly yours, but trying to be ggg,
Lauren

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ELINA SHATKIN (filmmaker and writer for L.A Times' "The Guide"):

New Year's Resolutions for 2008

Gain enough upper body strength to do a pull-up; Finish the short film I'm working on about my mom, Fidel Castro and the music of ABBA; Sell a screenplay for loads of $$$.


Brief reflection on a major event in 2007
Normally, my interest in what other people do with their wombs is less than zero, but the cultural narrative around Jamie Lynne Spears' pregnancy is hilarious and appalling. Apparently, being white, wealthy and famous is all you need to transform your teen pregnancy from a burden on society into a blessed event. It'd be nice if those politicians praising baby Brit for "doing the right thing" showed as much support for all the other little bundles of joy born to unwed teen mothers.


Stuff I love… VHS or Beta -- "Burn It All Down" (anthemic, 80s-esque dance rock that made me want to get off my ass & move)

Rihanna -- "Umbrella" (anthemic, one-note glitch pop that made me want to get off my ass & move)
Spoon -- "The Underdog" (because indie rock needs more trumpets)
Feist -- "1 2 3 4" (too cute for words; no wonder this was picked up for a commercial)
Anything by Don Covay (now I know where Mick Jagger copped his act)

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JORGE IGNACIO CORTINAS (New York-based playwright whose works include one of ALOTR's faves of 2007, Blind Mouth Singing, and fellow resident of the O!I's transnational suburban trifecta of Miami-New York-California):

Art that I will take with me into the future:

COPY, a short film by Michael Griffin and Sean Dowling. The best short film you never heard of.

We lost Dean Johnson this year, and when we remember what was so special about his work, we also remember the New York we let Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump take away from us.



My two major events of 2007 were live performances:

CHURCH, a play by Young Jean Lee which ran at PS 122 this Spring, and is going to be remounted at the Public in Jan. 2008.

An exploration of forgiveness and community and what religion is or might be (or is she talking about theater?), the piece awes because it has the courage to suggest that hipsters might be just as broken as they like to think they are. The play has insights that can't be waved away with a snarky t-shirt.

DYING CITY, a play by Christopher Shinn that was presented at Lincoln Center this winter.

The cynical and catastrophic war continues in Iraq, and on a stage that revolves so slowly, so imperceptibly, you don't realize it until halfway through the show, two New Yorkers try to measure the depths of this monster of a country, and the tangled roots of their own twisted, white liberalism.

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RAQUEL "RAQUEFELLA" GUTIERREZ (ALOTR's fave tricky troll, Angeleno curator/producer/promoter, and core member of BDP, the Butchlalis de Panochtitlan):

2008 Resolutions: Read more “just for fun”; Learn how to silkscreen.

There’s definitely stuff from 2007 that I want to take into 2008 just to keep reminding me that what didn’t kill me only made me a badder-assed bitch. My 2007 was a rough riding year of a pig known as the end of my Saturn’s Return where all my daddy issues, self-hate and denial came bursting through the same glory hole all at once. As I wiped away those tragic little Photoshopped cum bubbles from my eyes (thank Perez Hilton for adding that to our collective visual vocabularies), I realized I needed some soothing; a little redemption for a year spent kicking stones. I needed someone coming out of her Angelina-when-she-was-with-Billy-Bob phase. Pre-Maddox illumination. I needed some Sad Girl religion, bad girls gone good (*Sorry, Rihanna, it never would’ve worked between us, I’m not that son of a bitch anymore), hard knocks make rock-hard spirits, and right before I wrote off 2007 as a complete soul-crusher there came Alicia Keys’ As I Am and Mo’Nique's I Coulda Been Your Cellmate to break it down for me.



What can I say—Alicia makes this emasculated thug feel like a new man. “No One” is a hopeful don’t-let-the-haters get you down joint that I’ll dig up when I need reminding of evil boring demons I’ve slain. I should be pumping this well through to summer. Shit, if Barack Obama had any brains he’d make this his campaign jam and we’d be hearing it through Election Day. Then the Harlem hottie would perform at the inauguration, maybe throw in a medley. She’d unite the fractured party with a foot-stomping version of “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”

Who cares if “No One” has secured its place in the commitment ceremony and the chick-of-color flick soundtracks of tomorrow? Keys has covered George Michael’s “Freedom” at the VMAs, performed a cryptic coming out on Def Jam poetry and has a homely beard. A femme in denial can do no wrong in my book.


Now Mo’Nique rolls a little bit harder. The raunchy big girl responsible for this goosebumpy manty splash takes her show to the Ohio Reformatory for Women (known as “The Farm”) to do a Folsom Prison-style comedy intervention in I Coulda Been Your Cellmate! It kicks off documentary-style with prison and social stats followed by interviews with inmates conducted by Mo’Nique. It’s full of compassion and heart as Mo’Nique’s mission is to bring laughter to the women society’s thrown away plain and simple. There is no judgment here and it feels like a raw and real exchange between damaged females and the choices we make (“you don’t get gay in prison—it’s called survival!”). Mo’Nique sums it up best: “I am one bad decision away from being your muthaphuckin’ cellmate.”

So when I’m feeling like the world’s got a boot to my neck while the haters be holding nooses, I’m just going to stop, step back and breathe. I’m going to check in with my girls, a humble diva and a roughneck dame to help dust me off some with radiant path-shining and potty-mouthed tough love. It’s on in 2008.

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From all of us at O!I, hope you have a safe and prosperous New Year! - (CBB)