holy fuck!

thinking, lamenting, etc,
you should do so here:
http://pedagogyofthehopeless.blogspot.com

Do stop by.

I will be home (as in true home, rather than grad school home -- as in SoFl) August 7-15, on account of a ticket bestowed by a special somebody like manna (or marzipan).

There are two specific and certain priorities:
Two wedding gifts, belated, to give in person (and the guilty parties should know who, exactly, they are).
A birthday barbecue.

Let me know if you'd like to hang.

O, the best kind of music writing: politically situated, poetically focused, and totally right-on:

Jane Dark's Sugarhigh takes on that turn between the 80s and 90s, that turn within hip-hop from resistance to commodity (not that it was all that neat), speaking straight to that part of my nine-year old brain that always confuses Digital Underground with Digable Planets.

tell me everything you know about malt liquor energy bevs.

Continuing in this new tradition of posts on film:

Okay, Rock School. I've been very sincerely thinking about formulating a class on gender and post-60's (roughly) pop/rock, its relation to consumption, notions of virtuosity, the interchange of the 'underground' with the 'mainstream' re: next-big-thing-ism, etc. etc. etc. (I promise, in time, all of this will cohere). And this film, I was so excited about it, thinking about the ways in which it could potentially trouble all that notes-scales-theory-shit through combining performance and the nitty-gritty of pro-musicianship (in the sense of "hey, I sometimes get paid to play," but certainly not in the sense of "I play for a living" -- and that gap between the two is a whole other topic) with typical music-pedagogy (the privelege of one-on-one lessons, institutionalized school-band-military-drill-style-learning). But the absolute unwillingness of the gentleman who runs the school ("NO MORE PURPLE RAIN") to allow the students to, well, fuck around, experiment with sounds rather than drilling Black Sabbath tunes, and the concomitant denigration of contemporary music (assigned, intrafilm, as something to do with flannel shirts and three chords) in the service of a missed-the-bus wank fest on Frank Zappa -- it all left a real bad taste in my mouth.

But, but -- I'd be interested in teaching it alongside some readings/film (if any at all exist) covering the Rock and Roll Camp for Girls, exploring differences in pedagogical approach and the ways in which goals for the students and the program are set.

Fuck. I've got to shower and go get my teach on.

But, addendum: On the new Propaghandi album, there is a song called "Fedellah's Hearse." Some of you may know Fedellah as Melville's Orientalist prophet figure, the guy who guides Ahab thru Moby Dick. I cringed at first (a Moby Dick intertext?), but the song, and the lyrics, are basically so fucking smart and sharp you'll slice yr pants open on them.

to one T.A. for the best gaddamn new-teste-revisionist-kinked-out-acoustic-jam EVA.

Webster's is soon to be amended:

bowagic (BO-waj-ick): An amalgam of bogus, wack, and magic. purposefully ambivalent, meaning-wise. meant to amend the already-existing pantheon of ambiguous adjectives, i.e. good, bad, wicked, badass, nasty, gnarly, silly, crazy, etc. etc. ad nauseaum.

That phone call last night was totes bowagic.
You bombed that econ quiz? BOWAGIC.
Ugh, that hoppy microbrew? Bowagic.
Stay away from those underwear. They're bowagic.



etymologically derived from last nite's scrabble board.

In a back issue of Hit It or Quit It, in an article authored by Julianne Sheperd, there is an interview question asked one Carrie B., who you might know from this band that basically saved my life in high school.

The question goes as such:

"Nelly sings, "It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes." How do you respond?"

CB Responds:

"When I hear these words, I like to imagine that Nelly is actually Nellie (as in Oleson) from Little House on the Prairie. This relaxes me a bit and allows me to go ahead and remove whatever I’m wearing. It’s no big deal to go naked on the frontier; after all, there isn’t any air conditioning. I imagine myself wandering naked around Walnut Grove, stopping in at the Ingalls’ or maybe having Dr. Hiram Baker mix up a tincture for me. Nellie doesn’t mean to sound dirty; she is merely up to her usual pranks. Soon, Nellie’s mother, the formidable Harriet Oleson, will call her in for supper and I’ll put my clothes back on and go home. When it’s not hot in Walnut Grove, and therefore I’m fully clothed, I like to visit the Greenbush and Turnbaugh Twins, who played ‘Carrie’ and ‘Grace Ingalls’, respectively. I like to give them their proper dues since most people are ignorant to the fact that they were the precursors to the ubiquitous Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen phenomenon. I feel bad that neither of these earlier sets of twins ever got to have their own media empire at the age of 15. In conclusion, and as a general rule, placing anything within a Little House context makes it seem more wholesome."

And effectively saves my life all over again.

I get so, so sad when, on top of yelping out to the whole world about her drug 'situation,' the AP has got to go and pair the report with the least flattering photo ever.

Courtney, I love you.

1. Reply with your name and I will write something random about you.
2. I will then tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I will pick a flavor of jello to wrestle with you in.
4. I will say something that only makes sense to you and me.
5. I will tell you my first memory of you.
6. I will tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I'll then ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on your LJ.

Yet another Bush Quote:

“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." - Barbara Bush after touring the refugee camp at the Houston Astrodome.

It just won't stop!!!!!!

Love you,
Mom

Love you back, Mom.

By the way, Fugazi's The Argument is the best album of the century, and although we are only five years in, I care not. Nothing, and I repeat, nothing, could ever top this.

Also, I'm enrolled in my first anthropology course since that one I started two months late, sophomore, undergrad, and this time around it is all ethnographies on transexual prostitution in Brazil; journal articles on the birth of queer anthropology; uber-critiques on lesbianism as a transhistorical, transcultural mode of resistance, etc. etc.

I am so privileged to be here. Here as in this school this day this month this year.

And 'Bias, there are two conferences I was thinking you might want to come and present at, maybe in conjunction with a visit to the tendy. One is this and the other is this.

I think it might be fun to run a joint workshop or something. We'll talk later.

And also, the busses here are incredible. And totally fuckin' free. Take that, 3-dollar-per-gallon tank.

Doods --

Tommorow Teht and I embark on the odd-i-see that is our graduate career. It begins at 11 am with a "networking luncheon" and will end, hopefully, years from now with a big bundle of paper full of lots of words about liminal identities, queerness, love and pretty and engaging things.

I think I'm a little excited. Perhaps.

TOBIAS, YOU ARE A GIFT GIVING GOD AND A LETTER WRITING GENIUS.

I. LOVE. YOU. MORE. THAN. AN. APPLE.

NASHVILLE:

One H., in the sprawling suburban land of the GAYLORD ENTERTAINMENT CENTER WHERE ELTON JOHN IS PLAYING VERY SOON (AKA One NASHVILLE TN):

-- got sick with a viral infection that has left both T. and I snot-nosed chest-compressed sad kids.

-- saw Richard Buckner because Mary Lou Lord namechecks him in a song and because it is Nashville where depressive Americana reigns among the tight-jeaned twentysomething set and drank whiskey and coke. Richard Buckner pulled a cheap trick wherein he overdubs the last few seconds of each song and leaves them playing while he fiddles with tunings and changes guitars, which angered my father immensely, prompting him to call RB, among other musician-musician mano-a-mano epithets, 'unprofessional' and 'lame.'

-- saw some serious gay-as-fuck banjo picking by a little-known band called Good Lord to The Devil. They are cute, and amazing, and sang songs about motorcycles and the wrong boys taking their shirts off. After the show, One T. and One H. found one father of H. sitting in the parking lot on the bed of an old Ford pickup with a newfound dreadlocked whiteboy friend, sharing a bowl of kryptonic and talking about acupuncture for carpal tunnel.

-- drank too much coffee.

-- slept late and worked out on a very fancy and expensive spin bike in a very dirty and piss-smelling basement.

-- read back issues of House Beautiful on a toilet, which contributed to some very bizarre nesting urges in One H. involving minimalist swedish design and whitewash and seatones (don't ask and I won't tell)

-- realized, quite sadly, that suburbia anywhere USA feels a little bit like home.

-- cursed God on a Sunday in the Bible Belt.

-- drove a truck.

-- listened to an AC/DC country-rock cover band called,
wait for it,
wait for it,
FUCKIN'
AC/Dixie
!!!

Bob and Mary came and went, and in between there was a visit to Ithaca, where even the goths wear tye-dye, and also chinese food, a big bottle of cabernet sauvignon and also a big bottle of Jim Beam.

Bob, Teht and I are both amazed at how lucid you are trashed at 3 a.m.

Mary, Teht and I are both amazed with your creative work.

Also, we are leaving tommorow for Nashville, where members of my extended family await us with open arms, season passes to Six Flags, confusion about gender identity, etc. etc.

It is also my birthday in two and a half days, and for the first time in years and years I will not be getting throughly wasted with a small crowd of people I love. This year, it looks like it'll be a mid-sized group, instead.

Does this make me sad?

I'm not quite sure yet.

If you do not hear from us for the next twelve days, it is because we are on rollercoasters in the deep and dirty south.

Holla!

In the backseat of a late 80's Honda coasting through the downtown of Middleton, CT, we pass a McDonalds. 99 billion served. I lean my head into the space between the two front bucket seats and ask my road trip companions if they remember when Mickey D's had only served 49 billion. One does. The other doesn't remember 49 billion, specifically, but does have a vivid memory of the tally being at 37 billion.

This makes me feel very, very old.

In other news, I'm reading Georges Bataille because I've got to teach him in a month or two. Apparently, his "best writings are intellectual tours de force that are to philosophy what fisting is to a virgin anus."

Should I be excited? So far I just think he's totally fucking heterosexist.

An old writing prof of mine wrote a short story called "Things To Do" that was all about what a mom post-divorce and post-sending-kids-off-to-college does with her time. These things, from what I remember, involved crafts, dancing, air-drying laundry, and dating handsome divorcees. And, while that is all well and good, I have little to no experience with empty-nest syndrome (although it does, whenever the topic comes up, make me think of my mother, who is a bit empty-nesty right now and doing things like reorganizing gardens and quitting smoking...and if you're reading this, mother, know that you better still be quitting smoking, or I will be very, very, very upset). Anyway, none of these "Things To Do" have anything, in particular, to do with anything that I have been doing. In fact, my mention of them is only as a basically meaningless introduction to a brief collection of mini-vignettes (which you may call mini-vinnies, if you are so inclined, although this makes me think of my sicilian grandfather and not a short textual image-impression-etc.) from the aforementioned road trip. I thought it was a bit more engaging than writing "Things I've Done, Recently" at the top of a post. I may have been wrong, however.

-- Three very queer looking kids, two female-identified and one mostly-male-identified, sit at a diner in Monticello, NY. It may very well be the diner in Monticello, NY, as it is called the Miss Monticello Diner, which implies a coronation of sorts at the hands of a town, a kind of diner-beauty-pageant winner of a restaurant. The mostly male-identified kid, who has recently decided to go back to being vegan, orders a dry bagel and a side salad, with oil and vinegar. The other two order cheesesteaks.
Seated in a table just next to the booth these three inhabit is a group of elderly and near-elderly men with a variety of NYC-borough accents, wearing all manner of athletic wear, discussing the mass appeal of women's basketball -- specifically, which players are 'cute-as-a-button' and which are 'built like men' and the mostly male-identified kid thinks that, perhaps, if he were built more like a man, he could approach the table and let these men know, explicitly, how vapid their debate is. Instead, he chuckles to his two meal-mates, who are both women who look very much like boys, and tells them that he loves women that are built like men.

Roughly halfway through the meal, he notices the placemat he is eating on. It, like his coffee cup, is spotted with advertisements for local and area business. One of this businesses is located at 4 Bon Jovi Lane. He pauses, tomato balanced on a fork, dripping vinegar, midway to his pink mouth. "Wasn't Bon Jovi from New Jersey?"

After the meal, he pees behind a tree outside because he was a bit frightened by the way the waitresses crowd around the bathroom doors.

-- In Providence, Rhode Island, he sleeps in a room that, during the winter, is inhabited by a circus performer-cum-father who breather fire and juggles and travels Europe. In the room, there are enormous posters in french and german advertising a cirque-de-something-or-other. Each of these posters (and there are many) feature the edifice of an enormous, absolutely enormous, traditional clown face. He has been terrified of clowns since his older brother forced him to watch Killer Clowns From Outer Space at the impressionable age of four. However, these clowns, his nighttime guardians who watch him sweat out mezcal cocktails in the hot hot town by the bay, do not frighten him. There is also a half-finished oil-pastel-dragon looming on an easel in the corner, jaws rent wide, in process courtesy of a very nice lady who, among other things, has gone to many different art schools and taken lots of photographs and dated a boy that he, too, used to date. This dragon does not scare him, either.

-- On a lawn chair 2,000 feet in the air, he gets drunk on pink lemonade and citrus vodka and watches the sun set over Lake Champlain. Later that night, he sleeps in a tent on a mountain near the lake and wakes up to a group of thirty-something French-Canadian bachelors blasting Celine Dion from a Hummer as they pack up their campsite. He thinks about how that, basically, sums it all up.

The very next day he does yoga on a fire tower on a big rock on top of a big mountain which he has climbed, looking down at a group of adolescent girls from sleep-away camp sun-lounging below. They are snacking on granola. He remembers he has granola in his backpack. So, on a mountaintop in the Northern Adirondacks on a firetower in intermittent sunshine, he eats a granola bar. The granola bar is good. It has almonds in it, and, although he has never been particularly fond of almonds, he realizes he may have underrated them.

I will be spending tommorow in Ithaca, this weekend in Brattleboro, VT with jugglers and exes, and the first portion of next week at Ausable Point, ADK National Park with a brown Honda from 1986 and two buddies and a trunk full of illegal.

If I get to shower during any of this time, it will be a very lucky break.

I have a new sleeping bag which resembles a bad circa-70s lumberjack with a penchant for periwinkle.

I've got to finish a Eugenides novel while lying on rocks wearing rock star sunglasses.

I've got to not contract an oddly communicable disease from an oddly small variety of bug.

I've got to hike for miles and miles.

I've got to learn to build a better campfire.

Mmhmm.

Thoughts:

Teht shakes his boy-hips like it ain't nobody's business.

And he's fun fun fun to dance with.

And also, we discovered a bar, thanks to Amie, that has Elvis Costello, James Brown, The Pogues, The Smiths, The Pixies, James Brown, Pat Benatar, Blondie, and also amazing others on the jukebox, and also Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on tap for three bucks a pint (top that, DaDa's).

There is a queer bar in town, and Deb works there on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. We are buddies now.