I'm back after a weekend of entertaining family flown in from Raleigh and Pittsburgh.We day-tripped to the Mall of America yesterday so that our Eastern relatives (Felicia's mom and sister) could soak up Midwestern commerce in all its glory. Normally taking three incredibly fun but usually flighty women to a crowded shopping disaster zone such as the Mall of America would be excruciating, but I scored big with a sleek button down shirt from H&M, a nice summer polo from Fossil, and a comfortable cotton zip hoodie from Express - AND I snagged all three for less than $50 total. I also really enjoyed the coconut shrimp and blackened grouper from Kokomos Island Cafe.
In case you were wondering, yeah, I like to shop. Probably not a lot of straight men that are willing to admit that, but I'm definitely one of them. I think I spent a good 10 minutes drooling over the John Varvatos vachetta leather shoes at Nordstrom's, but I didn't have a spare $350 sitting around that I wanted to part with.
All in all it was a good trip and a good weekend despite the fact that there's not a whole lot to entertain people with in central Wisconsin other than beer, bowling, and Friday night fish frys.
FEATURED STORIES
Book Review: Faking It: the quest for authenticity in popular music
by Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor Faber & Faber, 288pp, £14.99
ISBN 0571226590
We consider the "primitive" music of blues singers such as Leadbelly to be more authentic than that of the Monkees. But all pop musicians are fakes
LeadbellyHugh Barker and Yuval Taylor, two publishing professionals who have turned out their personal record collections to produce a persuasive defence of inauthenticity as the defining characteristic of great popular music, borrow the title of their book, Faking It, from a suicide note - the most authentic, and also the stupidest, genre of all. "The fact is," wrote Nirvana's singer Kurt Cobain shortly before eating the muzzle of a shotgun in 1994, "I can't fool you, any one of you . . . The worst crime I can think of would be to rip people off by faking it and pretending as if I'm having 100% fun." (The italics are Cobain's.)
Like many people of a certain age, I remember where I was and what I was doing the day Cobain died. I was in my third year of college, I was in a dorm; friends and I were drinking 40-ounce bottles of Colt 45 malt liquor, and when we heard the news, we laughed. Cobain, the gold standard of rock-star sincerity since his suicide, had long seemed to us like a joke, a poseur, a pretty-boy pop singer for the high-school teens who gathered in herds of earnest weeping within hours of the news. We slightly older boys and girls were past that kids' stuff; we listened to 1980s art-punk and traditional blues - two of the fakest musical genres ever presented to the public as revelations of the real - and it was to the forgotten pain of dead black men, Skip James and Son House and Mississippi John Hurt, that we raised our 40-ouncers.
Little did we know that these musicians had been served up to us on platters, literally, resurrected 30 years before by another generation of white college boys who had looked up and recorded the old men as stand-ins for their fantasies of the romantic savage. They had at least bothered to produce some records; all my friends and I did was listen to them and drink malt liquor, a beverage manufactured to exploit poor black people and winos of all races. For us, it was liquid authenticity.
Our choice of malt liquor and callow disregard for suicide constituted what Barker and Taylor call an authenticity "trap" - the harder you try to "keep it real", the more artificial you become. Barker and Taylor explore the trap in ten chapters ranging from 1920s blues to Nirvana's last concert, most of which pair an artist generally considered authentic with one generally considered not, often to surprising effect...[READ MORE]
Hoyas, Hos, & Gangstas
From The Situationist:
Last month, on the eve of Georgetown University’s match-up with Ohio State University in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four, we observed that many fans have questioned the ability of Georgetown players–who, since the 1980s, have almost all been African-American, and whose reputation has frequently centered on their “athleticism”–to “grasp” the “complex, precise” offense used by Princeton University’s men’s basketball team for so many years. That offense was brought to Hoyas by John Thompson III (”JT3″), son of the famed Georgetown coach John Thompson, whom Georgetown hired away from the Tigers.We argued that the origin of these doubts can be found in the largely subconscious knowledge structures and implicit associations in our minds and reproduced andPatrick Ewing Alonzo Mourning Allen Iverson reinforced in our culture and its institutions. In other words, doubting the capacity of African-Americans to master a relatively complex and intellectually demanding playbook is not a sports phenomenon; it’s an American phenomenon expressing itself in the context of college basketball.
Yesterday, we came across a column by Dan Daly in The Washington Times that provides some support for our analysis. Daly praises John Thompson III in his column, and is particularly effusive of Thompson’s capacity to get regular, mainstream American folks to like Georgetown basketball players again...[READ MORE]
Groping for God and Country -- and School
by Tracy Mehan, III
As a former wrestler, I found this next article interesting, especially since there seems to be quite a bit of conversation recently about the segregation of sexes in schools, the military, and sporting events. Just this morning I noticed in our local paper that the area high school is going to start separating boys and girls into two different classes in Algebra 2 in an effort to "equalize the classroom." The following article speaks to a slightly different subject, but the area of conversation regarding the separation of sexes is equally compelling.
My son attends an all-boy high school, as did I. One of the joys of that experience is the camaraderie shared by a rambunctious band of brothers before the inevitable attractions of the opposite sex dissolve the bonds that bind them together.
That said, it is imperative for young men to learn to respect women in the person of their mothers, sisters, and the women or girls they encounter in their day-to-day lives. This requires that a respectful, chivalrous attitude be inculcated in young boys or men during their formative years. In this way they come to appreciate the complementary natures and roles that men and women bring to their interactions in life up to and including marriage for those who choose that vocation
My idealistic view of these matters ran upon the hard rock of reality when my son joined the wrestling team. We were soon confronted with the possibility that he might have to wrestle girls from other schools who participate in the same program with their male counterparts. Evidently, this is not uncommon in many of the programs in the area. My son's school may not be able to participate in some wrestling tournaments in the future.
As a recovering lawyer, I have some knowledge of the claims for sexual discrimination that could be brought because of hostile work environments created by male superiors, or their employees, predicated upon offensive words or actions -- groping, for instance. One basic rule is: "Hands off." Various Hollywood fantasies notwithstanding, these cases overwhelmingly involve men preying on women.
As for high school grappling, an athletic program that allows, nay, encourages, the manhandling of young women by young men, and vice versa, is one indicator of a culture in a very bad way. I am under no illusion that the young ladies cannot handle themselves, at least to the extent of avoiding injury or even embarrassment on the mats. On any given day a particular girl can beat a particular boy depending on relative skill, strength, speed, and the like.
What is troubling is the enforced physical contact between an adolescent boy and girl. It presumes a familiarity between the sexes far in advance of their years, not too mention their single state in life. Throwing a half nelson on someone, or pinning to the mat, a person of the opposite sex is not the way to encourage respect for that opponent's unique and complementary sexuality -- a respect that is essential to a harmonious marriage and family.
To put it another way, wrestling is not ballroom dancing which would be the ideal way to introduce young people to the opposite sex in an active, physical, yet relaxed manner, allowing for conversation and social interaction.
SADLY, THE MILITARY IS ANOTHER place where the concept of social space or respectful distance between the sexes is being obliterated in the tilt toward gender equality at the expense of a complementary, even chivalrous attitude towards women. Hand-to-hand combat training between men and women is now fairly routine in the Army whether it is between men and women, married or unmarried. Again, behavior very akin to groping is routine. In this case, it is government sanctioned and mandated...[READ MORE]
Sex & Scandal at Duke
Lacrosse players, sorority girls and the booze-fueled culture of the never-ending hookup on the nation's most embattled college campus
By Janet Reitman for Rolling Stone
On a night in late April, barely a month after the rape allegations that have rocked the campus of Duke University, the brothers of Delta Tau Delta, one of the school's top fraternities, are having a party at Shooters, a Durham, North Carolina, dive just south of the Duke campus. It's a Saturday evening, and the men are celebrating spring: a new class of freshly initiated brothers, the imminent end of the school year, warm weather, girls in halter tops. It's 1 a.m., and everyone's covered in bubbles.
This is not just any fraternity party -- it's a ''foam party,'' a sweaty, alcohol-soaked bacchanalia that's a little like taking an enormous bubble bath with hundreds of strangers. At Duke, where crackdowns on the previously party-hearty on-campus social environment have forced much of the scene off-campus, foam parties are promoted by frats as large, open-to-everyone events, and can either be totally fun or totally gross, depending on how drunk you are.
Tonight, just about everyone is drunk. Tiny soap bubbles that have been shot through a thick rubber hose into a mesh tent outside the bar cling to dozens of dancing kids. For Duke students, Shooters is usually the last stop on the bar-hopping circuit -- the place you go when you're almost too wasted to walk. It's a grimy spot with an L-shaped bar, some dance platforms, video screens, a few picnic tables and a white alabaster horse that rears on its hind legs under a sign that reads WILD, WILD WEST.
Foam parties are events that beg for people to show up in clothes they don't care about, and at Shooters everyone has come prepared: The girls, dressed in miniskirts, whip off their shirts to reveal bikini tops; the boys, who've come in ratty shorts, remove their shirts and leave them off. Thus attired, they fall into one another, spilling drinks. They make out. A few of them dry-hump while doing the grind. There is a metal go-go cage in which a group of Duke girls clad in tiny denim skirts and halters perform a modified pole dance, but no one seems to be watching. Bad techno-rap music pulses, the dance floor throbs. Tom Wolfe, whose novel I Am Charlotte Simmons is set in an orgiastic, booze-drenched version of Duke (given the fictional name Dupont University), couldn't have thought up a better scene.
Away from this hedonistic stew, tucked in a corner of the bar, some of the men of the Duke University lacrosse team -- the ones legally able to drink, anyway -- are doing shots. There are maybe a dozen of them: big-shouldered, handsome guys in clean polo shirts, khaki shorts and baseball caps. Depending on which side of the story you believe, three members of this team -- none of whom are at Shooters tonight -- may or may not have raped a black twenty-seven-year-old single mother hired to strip for a frat party in March, at the start of spring break. DNA tests have been run on the team. The tests came out negative. Nevertheless, two young men have been indicted; a third would be indicted a month later...[READ MORE]
MUSIC
Spin interview with The Cribs
Featured Artist: Bondage Fairies
If you like helmets, beer, and bondage-loving punk/electro/indie bands from Sweden have I got a treat for you this Sunday.
I have to admit that I sort of stumbled across The Bondage Fairies by accident while perusing some of the latest and greatest music blogs...not while googling bondage or fairies, although that might yield the same result.
According to their myspace site,
Bondage fairies have a 3 point agenda: 1) decriminalize sodomy, 2) add fags to the protected classes as victims like blacks, and 3) criminalize Gospel preaching against fags. Bondage Fairies doom is now irreversible!
-- Jesus of Nazareth
Spawn from the carcass of a chewing gum!
Conceived in pleasure the Bondage Fairies is probably the only nintendo-death-punk band that the cold country of Sweden has squeezed out from its fleshy womb. Bondage Fairies love for synthesizer-sex, beer and helmets is far known in the subculture of Stockholm and they are praised for their bizarre punk rock live acting on stage.
-- Finkus Lahoya
Bondage Fairies - "Indie Girl"
Bondage Fairies - "Faze"
Bondage Fairies at Myspace
Featured Artist: The Sky Drops
The Sky Drops are Rob Montejo and Monika Bullette - a superforce of guitars, drums, and vocals.
Based in Wilmington, Delaware, the band members each have their own fine pedigree and began The Sky Drops in the Autumn of 2005.
Since becoming a duo, Rob and Monika have taken their moody sonic maelstrom through the Northeast Corridor to rapt audiences.
Rob and Monika's beautiful harmonies are intensified by swimming blissed-out guitars and no-nonsense drumming. The Sky Drops have been likened to a "shoegazing Everly Brothers". [link]
The Sky Drops - "Sentimental"
The Sky Drops - "Million"
Purchase music from The Sky Drops
Bonus music: Feist
Feist - "The Simple Story" (w/Jane Birkin)
Feist - "Mushaboom" (Postal Service Mix)