Ever green

Viggo Johansen, Radosne boze  narodzenie
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Last night's local news offered some very helpful tips on recycling your Christmas tree--

"All Allegheny County parks will accept Christmas trees for recycling."

"Be sure to remove all lights, ornaments, and decorations before recycling your tree."

"Also remember to remove any children or gifts from under the tree and remove the tree from your house before recycling it."

I made up the last one, but apparently when it comes to tree recycling in our little town, instructions have to be very clear and very specific.

Merry Christmas, bitches!

Sorry, I have just always wanted to say that, at least since everything in North America became a little more hip-hop.

My wish for you all is a wonderful December 25th, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, as a religious holiday or a secular one.

Sometimes just making it to the end of the week in late December is reason enough to celebrate. So pat yourself on the back and toast your good fortune with some sparkling, non-alcoholic cider and half a pan of butterscotch brownies. That's pretty much my plan for the day.

Oh, hell, who am I kidding? I'm just going to go ahead and eat the whole pan.

Elfin art for art's sake

"Elf on the Shelf" by Micala - Courtesy of Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

Every time I see a new "Elf on the Shelf" image, I think to myself . . .

Finally! Jeff Koons has found his true muse!

* * *

Really, I despise this sort of crap art (both of the Elf on the Shelf and Jeff Koons variety). But if this quote by lace-on-his-Victorian-bloomers art critic Robert Hughes is to be believed--

"Koons really does think he's Michelangelo and is not shy to say so. The significant thing is that there are collectors, especially in America, who believe it. He has the slimy assurance, the gross patter about transcendence through art, of a blow-dried Baptist selling swamp acres in Florida. And the result is that you can't imagine America's singularly depraved culture without him."*

Then I despise pretentious, bigoted modern art critics almost as much.

Honestly, observations on the theme of American vulgarity are practically as old as the country itself and are no less derivative than Jeff Koons' art.

And while we're painting entire nations with the same slapdash brushwork, may I just say that it's rather rich, being called out for a tacky, boisterous, self-aggrandizing culture by an art critic from Australia?

(Australia, I love you, but come on . . . .)

* * *

* Hughes, Robert. "Showbiz and the Art World", The Guardian, 30 June 2004. Quoted from the Wikipedia article on Jeff Koons. I'll check the original quote as soon as possible and retract it if it's been taken our of context. I doubt I'll have to, though.

When I was 15, it was a very good year . . . for music

I think we can all agree by now that my taste in music--and most other forms of popular culture--is a mixed bag, ranging from the almost-credible to the incredibly dodgy.

Australian and South African soap operas, Fannie Flagg novels, lustful or wry commentaries about French TV personalities, the Sims, ABBA, shortwave radio, the Minogue sisters, '60s James Bond movies, Eurodisco and other music that is more about the beat than the lyrics--guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, and so very guilty.

And so be it. I am what I am, and to deny these rather camp cultural tastes is to deny myself, my identity, which in large part is that of a gay white American man in his early 50s with a slight Southern accent and somewhat leftist politics who can't drive a stick and avoids pretentiousness and math as if they were plagues from the heavens. I'm weary of apologizing for myself and tired of feeling embarrassed about my likes and dislikes--even though I am doing a bit of both, right here and now.

I do have other interests, ones that are slightly more highbrow, especially when it comes to movies (ahem, film) and fiction (ahem, literary fiction). I should share more about those and maybe I will in the year ahead. Admittedly, it is tougher to write about the "serious" stuff and somewhat less fun. Perhaps this belies some serious intellectual laziness on my part, I would wager. Or, again, am I dissing myself over my true interests so as to seem weightier, to be taken seriously? Yes, that too.

Goodness knows I struggle with this at work too often, pretending to being into what I do when, really, I think my interests within my profession lie elsewhere and are much more basic. They're more about helping people, relating to them, figuring out their needs, than shilling to them about another new, half-tried technology or half-baked theory.

My profession is crazy these days. But it doesn't mean I have to be, too.

And, thus, I present to you "Fly Butterfly" by Ruby Manila.

This is one of those songs that has teased my memory for years. I used to hear this--or something like it--on my shortwave radio in the late 1970s, but I was never able to identify the performer, the song title, the country of origin, the year of release, or even the exact station I was listening to (although I had a pretty good idea it was being broadcast on a German station or one in the Benelux between 1976 and 1978). I heard it more than once during the era but could only remember the refrain, "fly, fly (or high?), butterfly (butterfly)," sung by a smooth, high female voice, counterpointed by a ridiculously deep male voice.

I adore the song--it's quintessential Eurodisco, with the swooning vocals, skanky bass, and seductive beat, perhaps more 1976 than 1978 in sound, but who's counting? It's not quite as I recall it--I don't remember any of the lyrics other than the chorus; I remember the music being slightly more electronic and faster in beat; and I remember the singer's voice as being a little higher--but it is the song. Maybe there was another "special disco version" or someone else covered the tune. Regardless, this is it, and I'm glad to finally discover it after nearly 40 years of off and on searching.

How did I find this? I'm not sure I can even recall the exact steps. For years (at least five, maybe longer), I've searched repeated for the phrase "fly high butterfly song" and "fly fly butterfly song" or simply "butterfly song 1970s" via Google, YouTube, and some online music forums. You'd be surprised not at how many references to butterflies in the 1970s you might find in this way but perhaps at the number of songs you might discover.

Such as this:



Which is close. Right genre, right era, right region.

And this:


Which is not but was popular in the early '70s and was covered in other languages and by other artists.

Apparently, too, these guys had a hit with a song called "Butterfly" in the 1970s, but I kept getting pointed to this instead:



No, I don't understand it either. On many different levels. When it comes to "schlager," I realize that even I have borders of camp that I won't cross.

For some reason, last night, after a day of housework and sleep, I was obsessed with the idea of finding this song (plus one other, which we'll get to in the near future). I tried my usual searches and came up empty. And then I got creative (or overcome by the dust and cleaning chemicals, take your pick) and branched out a bit. I can't remember what exactly I typed in the search box: Some combination of "butterfly, fly, disco, song, 1977, 1970s" or some such. This search somehow miraculously led me to this page, which identified a song title and a singer, although providing more lyrics than I recall. And this information quickly led me to discover the video that started off this post.

There are a few other references to the song: For example, this page and this page. But that's about it, at least for now.

None of my usual searches and sources have turned up a roaming mp3 or even an unwanted vinyl for the tune. But never say never. I found the song, I found the artist, and in good time, I'll add the music to my collection.

Along the way I think I also discovered another lost part of my youth and thus nother part of me. Misspent you say? Wasted you infer? I beg to differ. I wouldn't be me without all the Ruby Manilas and Fly Butterflys in my life. Perhaps that means little to you--but if you've gotten this far in the post, I suspect it means something--but it increasingly means a great deal to me.

Tools of the trade

"First Amendment inscription" by Robin Klein - Own work.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia

This is how this will play out: The Interview is shelved for Christmas release due to "terroristic threats" and "concern over everyone's safety."

Within three months, it will be released to theaters "due to popular demand" and everyone's 1st Amendment "right to free speech"--but, really, because it's likely to have a better opening weekend in the dead of winter and because more buzz has been created around it. ("The movie that Kim Jung-Un didn't want you to see!")

Really, folks, this is how capitalism works. It's the cockroach of economic systems.

So everyone please stop being such tools of the entertainment trade, fools of the Hollywood machine. Seth Grogen does not care about Americans' right to free speech. Ferchrissakes, he's Canadian for one thing.

For another, I keep remembering how he blasted that probably douchebaggic Macklemore for his alleged anti-Semitic costume at a concert in Seattle a couple of years ago. Someone who supports free speech at any cost would surely support the free speech of a LGBT-loving, 9/11-truthing, possible-Jewish-stereotype-baiting rapper, wouldn't he? After all, free speech . . . .

And for yet another, he's one of the Nerdpack, another hack-tor in the current series of nebbishy guys starring in dumb-guy comedies. His motivation may in part be free speech, but I'm willing to wager that it is also more money and more fame.

Does anyone care about the quality of free speech? I mean, are we really willing to go to bat or to war for "poor" Sony Pictures and a ridiculous movie with a tacky premise--the murder of a sitting head of state?

How would we react if someone made a movie about killing our head of state? The Queen of England? The prime minister of Australia or Canada? The president of Brazil or Nigeria? Or 130 schoolchildren in Pakistan?

Oh, don't worry, I'm not feeling sorry for that Thug-in-Chief of North Korea. Not in the least. But as much as I want to preserve free speech, I have to question the idea of free speech at any cost, of free speech without responsibility. Surely I want new ideas and provocative ideas to be expressed and shared. However, sometimes common sense and better taste might cause one to think before one speaks--or makes a movie or dons a costume or shows one's butt to the universe with a wack opinion about 9/11 or Jews or Muslims or anyone else for that matter.

We obviously need free speech to make us aware of the torture our government agency's practice. But do we need free speech to make a company a lot of money and to raise Seth Rogen's and James Franco's profile? I'm sure I'm seeming and possibly being short-sighted--I can't stand either of them, along with George Clooney as well--and I'm sure I'm just being curmudgeonly. It's what I do.

But, feh, call me when everyone starts to talk seriously about torture, 130 schoolchildren being murdered in Pakistan, hostage-takings in Australia, repression in North Korea, our support of allegedly Communist China but our 50-year non-support of Communist Cuba, and man's ongoing abuse of man, animal, and the planet.

That's free speech I can get fired up about.

ShhhhTFU* please

Image courtesy of Words, Words, Words

 It does indeed.

* Shhhush those folks up, please.

Back to our regularly scheduled shallowness already in progress

Despite a week of protests against racism conducted by local government agents and congressional revelations about torture conducted by federal government agents (what, no state government agents? slackers . . .), my early '90s nostalgia continues. This time in the mix, Tejano music star Selena and my favorite Spanish-language song by her, "Amor prohibido" ("Forbidden Love").

When I moved to San Antonio in August 1995, Selena had already been dead a few months, murdered by the former president of her fan club, a woman whose name I will not mention here. (She is simply not worthy of the publicity that she seems to crave, even 20 years later.) Yet in spite of having been murdered five months earlier, feelings still ran high and strong in South Texas.

While Selena was born in Lake Jackson, Texas (in Brazoria County over toward Houston), and grew up in Corpus Christi, San Antonians knew her and loved her well. San Antonio was, after all, sometimes referred to Mexico's northernmost city, at least in Texas, where more than 60 percent of the population is of Latino origin, chiefly Mexican American. It is a Mexican American population with a long history in the region, back to the early 1700s at least, when Spain began to colonize South Texas. Even after being declared independent from Mexico in 1836 and later becoming part of the U.S., Mexican influence remained strong and constant with successive waves of immigration throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, which resulted in the development of a homegrown, native-born Tex-Mex (or better, Tejano) culture. Tejano music is a fine example of that.

When I lived there from 1995 to 2004, I loved this aspect of San Antonio, more than all the Alamo and Republic of Texas meshugas--so white, so American in perspective. Fiesta San Antonio, cascarones, that Mexico seafood place on the Southside where I had to order in Spanish, aguas frescas, corn in a cup (hard to find in SA but usually brought out during festivals), code-switching, a passionate local literature scene, las Posadas, tamales at Christmastime, the close proximity of both the Texas Hill Country and Mexico, the slower pace, and a montón of other things--I miss them all. I spent a good nine years of my life there, and as winter in Pittsburgh stalks me once again, I often wonder why I left.

Oh, but I do remember why. I had my reasons, many of which seemed very good then and even now make a lot sense. I hated the Texas heat, all seven months of it, even if it was mostly a dry heat. The slower pace belied a lack of dynamism as well, a go-along-to-get-along attitude that chafed me professionally and intellectually. The strong sense of familia, which could be welcoming and comforting even to an outsider like me, also meant that a lot of gay people lived their lives in the closet.

A snide aside: Nevertheless, by the number of times I've been hit on by married white gay men in other parts of the country, I do wonder if a lot of gay folk have a "familia" issue to deal with. At least Latino gay men in San Antonio seemed happier and better able to live life on the hyphen.

Seriously, though, if I could have found a decent job in a decent library at a decent university in Houston, or maybe even Dallas (but steady on, let's not go to extremes), I think I would have stayed in Texas--or just would have cut to the chase and moved to Mexico, which I love deeply for some of the same reasons, as well as several hundred additional ones. But things turned out differently for me, and the crazy charm of Texas in the '80s and '90s seems to have resulted in just pure "t" crazy in the '00s and '10s. So let's keep the regrets to a minimum and move on.

Back to Selena: She was everywhere in 1995, before and after death. I remember seeing tributes to her in office cubicles in the city's personnel department; constant gossip and worry about her relationships with her father, her club president, and her husband; this huge (and somewhat unflattering) portrait unveiled and displayed at the public library; and her songs in heavy rotation on the airwaves. Yes, we were still listening to the radio back then.

In fact, if I recall correctly, at the time I drove across the Texas border on IH-10 near Beaumont, I picked up a station on the car radio playing either "Amor prohibido" or "Como la flor"--I can't remember which now. It may have been a tribute to Selena's sad, untimely death at 23, but for me, at the ripe old age of 33, it felt like a new beginning.

Sometimes I wish I had just stopped the car in Houston--far more dynamic, far more cultural and cutting-edge. Hot, sweaty, full of "oil field trash" and godawful traffic, and marred by a tragic lack of zoning and urban planning but also blessed with fantastic museums (the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Menil Collection being noteworthy on an international level), opera, ballet, the Galleria, huge Asian supermarkets, and the intersection of Montrose and Westheimer, epicenter for Houston's gay community. I think I would have been happier, more satisfied, and would probably never have left Texas.

And in so doing, I wouldn't have met Cairo; wouldn't have edited a journal; wouldn't have gone to Montreal to study French and learned about an entirely different culture; wouldn't have become president of a regional library organization; wouldn't have made some wonderful friends in Gettysburg; wouldn't have reconnected with friends in Washington; wouldn't have traveled to Scotland, France, Germany, and England (twice); and wouldn't have done a whole host of other stuff either.

I might not have ended up in another Pittsburgh winter either with a hectic job that feigns at being a career "opportunity." I might have more than just a couple of half-hearted friendships. I might not have gained eight pounds in the last year. But it's give and take most days. Win some, lose some, or come to a draw. But most of all, keep moving.

So perhaps this post isn't as shallow, frivolous, and nostalgic as I might pretend. Maybe in the last 20 years, years that have passed by faster than a Rip Van Winkle REM stage dream, I have learned and grown and laughed and loved and striven and succeeded more than I realize. Life feels slow in the here and now, like cold molasses most days, but oh, it does go by and it goes by fast. And whenever I can stop for a moment, catch my breath, and look where I've traveled from and not focus so much on where I'm running to, I realize that I love my life, more and more, truly, madly, and deeply.

I only wish Selena had had the same opportunities. Talented, personable, and by all accounts a lovely, kind person, she deserved better. We all do.

It's torture

I'm not going to do this justice. Not that justice seems to matter much.

"Forgive me if the question seems impudent, but I would like to ask: How do you find it possible to eat afterwards, after you have been . . . working with people?

"That is a question I have always asked myself about executioners and other such people . . . . I would imagine that one would want to wash one's hands. But no ordinary washing would be enough, one would require priestly intervention, a ceremonial cleansing, don't you think? Some kind of purging of one's soul too--that is how I have imagined it.

"Otherwise how would it be possible to return to everyday life--to sit down at table . . . to break bread with one's family or one's comrades?"

 --J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, p. 145

I wasn't kidding

Another early '90s tune, a barely remembered classic (at least to my ear)--Kym Sims, "Too Blind to See It," which tiptoed into the US Top 40 way back in in 1992 but which stomped its foot on position 5 in the UK charts.

Funny that. I was once again more tuned into what was going on in music in Britain way back when (rave, Kylie Minogue, The Shamen, Q magazine), even when it was essentially American music playing on BBC Radio One. Wrong country, wrong time.

I made my first trip to the UK in 1993, when I probably should have gone in 1983 or before, being more new wave than rave. Nevertheless, it was fun being there in the summer of '93, INXS playing a concert in some pub, videos for The Shamen on giant screens on Oxford or some other high street, the secret wish that I'd see Kylie in some random shop. The best I managed was Eric Bogosian, Annie Lenox (sort of--she regularly had lunch in Crouch End, where I was staying), and some unknown Brit actor that I recognized from American TV, forgotten to me now.

I just wish I could have stayed longer. But, really, balding at the ripe old age of 32 and decidedly not stylish like perhaps I was for one brief, well-put-together moment in the '80s, I already felt out of shape and out of place in any sort of under-25, G.A.Y.-oriented environment. Alas and alack. The amount of time I have spent in my life worrying that I was too old, too ugly, or too unhip. What a waste.

Anyway, Kym Sims. This is a great song and an alright video, so evocative of the era, musically, stylistically, and crazy camera-anglely. What is up with those rapid close-ups and reverse-outs? And that dancing--much faster than the song itself, very out of sync. Silly.

And pre-Worldwide Web as well. Imagine having to get all your music news from magazines and BBC broadcasts, letters from friends, and the occasional foray overseas. Yes. Really. That's the way it worked.

To be honest, I miss it. Oh, I love the Web and I make use of it thousands of times per day--and looky, even to write this blog that I'm never sure anyone's actually reading. I met my current boyfriend thanks to the Web, keep up with friends and make new ones through it, do my serious and fun research thanks to it, shop, read, work, stay up-to-date on current events and cultural happenings, goof around, play games, and generally eat, sleep, and breathe it. It makes me more sedentary perhaps, but it also helps me to "travel" through my conversations with others. And it makes me much less lonely than I might have been during my extended sentence in the hell that is Pittsburgh.

But, still, nostalgia. A couple of weeks back I went to a bookstore--yes, a bookstore!--a new one opened by a friend of mine here in town. How fun and exciting it was just to browse in a bookstore again and buy whatever struck my fancy.

Sure, we can do that in a way through hyperlinking and web-surfing, but . . . it just seems different now, more passive, less interactive, than going to a physical store and searching through the shelves, stacks, and bins.

Maybe it's a Pittsburgh thing or a small city thing, living in a place that doesn't have enough people and disposable income to support more retail. We still have a couple of contemporary music stores and some fantastic vinyl shops. We seem to be seeing a resurgence of bookstores, with two now open in Squirrel Hill after a few years of bookstore death. There are some other types of shops as well--cards, gifts, housewares, design, etc. They are few and far between, though, not nearly prevalent or promoted enough.

But do I go to them? No, not really. Rarely, in fact.

Some of it is due to money--trying to be wise with it for a change and not spend it on more stuff that I don't need or will have to pack and move at some point. Some of it is due to focusing on my true interests--music and media, mostly, when it used to be more about music, books, clothes, and food.

But, all in all, I'm just not that interested, and I'd really rather . . . live, work, and shop online.

And watch early '90s videos, remembering when, twenty years ago, and who I was then and reconciling it with who and where I am now.

God help me, I've rediscovered the early '90s

I really don't know what triggered it--maybe a message from a friend reminding that it was 20 years ago when Kylie Minogue released "Put Yourself in My Place" or the Nirvana/Kurt Cobain tributes of late--but I have suddenly remembered the '90s.

Not all of the '90s, mind you, but just certain moments, mostly related through pop music.

It was 23 years ago that I left Washington for greener pastures. It was 21 years ago that went to grad school to be a librarian. It was 19 years ago that I accepted my first library job and moved to Texas.
I was aged 30 to 33 during that era. I went to my first (and only) rave. I hung out with kids younger than me in grad school. I was one of the younger people in management when I made it up the ranks of my career ladder. And yet I felt old then, or at least older than the people I would have considered my contemporaries--new library school grads, new librarians, many of my friends.

Imagine me now: Twenty years later, I feel positively ancient.

It is what it is, and I think I'm coping with getting older these days, much better than I did when I turned 50 a couple of years back.

Nevertheless, I'm feeling a little nostalgic for early '90s music and style (I would have totally worn D:Ream's windowpane check suit, although 10 years earlier), trying to remember myself then before things got busy, I moved around a lot, and 20 years slipped by in a blink.

Perhaps, too, it's a way to come to grips with the middling present. In some ways, relationship-wise, I'm happier and more satisfied than I've ever been. In others--the lack of friends nearby, the sense that the culture has changed too much and has passed me by, and work, above all else, work--I am not so happy.

So a return to 1990-1995 is in order. It's a way to help me remember who I was then, compare it to who I am now, and try to remember what I wanted out of my life.

Before another 20 years passes me by. Before it's too late to do anything about it.

Orange is the new hack

Borrowed from TotallyLooksLike.com

"John Boehner totally looks like an orange M&M."

Credit where credit is due--This image and the idea behind it is from the website TotallyLooksLike.com. I'm not sure when it was first created or by whom, but it seems relevant to this past week in American politics.

When I posted this to Facebook recently, my sister the Journo quickly noted that two may look alike but that they are not the same. The difference between the two? "The orange M&M has more integrity."

I would also like to add that the orange M&M has more self-awareness. At least the orange M&M is honest about being a buffoonish cartoon character.

Now orange you glad you didn't vote in the 2014 midterm elections ?

Day after day

I'm not quite sure why, but this has been my earworm for the last couple of weeks, "Day After Day" by Badfinger, a song I esteem to deserve the label "classic"--unlike so many other offerings from your local "classic rock" radio station.

This was in heavy rotation in Casa Montag circa 1971 or so, mostly because Montag's older, teenaged brothers loved this song, especially Cousin Andy, the middle son. And who can blame them or him? Like I said, classic. Lush and romantic in sound, wistful and plaintive, but with just enough rock-and-roll guitars and drums to provide some power and edge, leading no doubt to bro-bonding among the lovelorn.

I'm describing the song cheekily, I know, but I do think it is praiseworthy. Sure, it's a pop song but it's a poetic, artistic one, a song that makes you feel something, about love, loss, longing, and loneliness. Many pop songs attempt to accomplish this but often fail horribly at it, especially (in my humble opinion) those in the current era.

Usually, most pop tunes get stuck on the theme of love and run the needle into that groove, over and over and over. Longing gets its due as well, as does loss. But loneliness à la carte, let alone the bento box of all four emotions, rarely is listed on the pop menu.

I'm not sure I have any bigger point to this post, other than to say I adore this song, and it's been happily stuck in my brain for some time now. It's a good memory, a recollection of, again, the simplicity of childhood, the warmth of the family hearth, and the comfort of feeling that anything is possible--in 1971 or 2014--even love.

Piggy in the middle

Truly one of my more bizarre childhood recollections: The happy-go-lucky-all-the-way-to-the-slaughterhouse "pre-ham" pigs from the Frosty Morn commercials.

"The height of a piggy's ambition/ from the day he is born [cue stork]/ is to hope he will be good enough [cue halo]/ to be a Frosty Morn!"

I swear I had no idea what these singing pork chops were on about when I used to see this TV commercial circa 1964 or so. Not that it would have mattered so much. They were just so darn cute! Who gave much thought to the their enslaved status, their worshipping of their oppressor, or their imminent execution? Not I. Please pass the bacon.

I kid, I kid. While I think the modern meat business is a dirty one, I do, nevertheless, participate in it--although I do try to buy organic, grass-fed, free-range, small-batch, what-have-you whenever I can, and mostly succeed. But I can afford to do so. Most of the time.

While this commercial is rather macabre (Who was the intended audience? Children who were afraid to eat breakfast meat? Wouldn't the adorable, harmonizing pigs have the opposite effect and swear them off sausage for life?), I can't get as worked up about the pork underbelly of it all as some might. Do a Google search for "frosty morn commercial" and about the third or fourth result is for a blog called "Suicide Food," which, as far as I can tell, is dedicated to decrying the use of cartoon animals to sell food by having them praise themselves on how delicious they will taste.

Yes, that is a strange, strange genre of advertising, one excellently parodied by an old Saturday Night Live cartoon commercial for Cluckin' Chicken--"And then they pluck me and boil me in oil! I'm delicious!" That's how I remember it, at least. Not sure that's ever actually said, but someone obviously picked up on this subtext--animals appraising their tasteworthiness before giving themselves up to the gas oven--and dove undercover into the dark comedy.

But the Frosty Morn pigs are cartoons, not actual pigs hell-bent on self-destruction and self-loathing. Thus it's hard for me to see how they're committing suicide. Technically, others--that is to say, humans--are killing them. Wouldn't then this be more the case of "Martyred Food"? But even still: They are cartoon pigs.

Semantics aside, is there an actual subtext? "Eat meat! The pigs don't mind!" I dunno. Methinks if you're going down that path, you've had one too many literary or social theory classes in grad school--Derrida to the left of me, Gramsci to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with no job prospects and too much time on my mind. Honestly, it's not like kids had to be sold on eating meat in 1964. Pretty much everybody was doing it already, at least in the South, rural or otherwise, where these commercials aired.

Today, sure, I could see the TV ad being all about the subtext--the elfin boy leads the pigs in song signifies (not just "means" but "signifies") that the human dominates the animal and makes the animal perform for his entertainment and yield to his will. It's a form of "porcine othering." Post-colonial agriculture if you will.

But in 1964, the only subtext wasn't even much of a subtext: Buy our brand of meat because our pigs are happy!

That's not oppression. That's capitalism.

Admittedly, the difference is hard to tell somedays.

74 is the new 24

And 53 is the new 13! At least as far as me and my mentality are concerned. Because nothing makes me feel more youthful, carefree, and positive about the future than new music by Giorgio Moroder.

The new single, "74 is the new 24," is out now with a new album--his first in 30 years--due in early 2005.

Thanks to Daft Punk and others, finally Giorgio Moroder's reputation has been rehabilitated, but I knew he was brilliant all along--despite what pseudo-intellectual hacks like Peter Shapiro may have written in Turn the Beat Around. But more about that another day when I have my claws fully sharpened and can rip that book apart in a way that it most truly deserves.

Oh, sure, there were missteps and mistakes, things I didn't particularly care for at the time or even now--for example, the music from his 1976 album, Knights in White Satin, is wonderful but his weird, poorly executed orgasmic "singing" kind of ruins the record for me. Shame that. And I admit to losing interest in some of his later '80s Phil Oakey/"Together in Electric Dreams" stuff, which oddly represents all that I eventually disliked about '80s music--the faux edginess and insincere hipness of it all. More about that another day.

But then he followed it up with the tremendous From Here to Eternity, a record I still play regularly, nearly 40 years later.

Sometimes it's funny what sticks with me all these years later. For example, remembering the first time I heard "Son of My Father" on the radio, listening to the console stereo in my parent's living room, in Eastern North Carolina circa 1972. I recall being fascinated and "funkified," if you will, by that bouncy synth riff--Bomp bomp bomp ba BOW BOW, bomp bomp bomp ba BOW BOW--played by some Euro unknown named simply Giorgio.



Move forward to 1977, and I'm blown away by Donna Summer's "I Feel Love," produced and co-written by Giorgio Moroder. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: There was music before "I Feel Love," and there was music after "I Feel Love," but after "I Feel Love," music was never the same. Hallelujah. Amen.

Who came first, Giorgio or the egg? Kraftwerk or the chicken? I have no idea, but I do know that I think Mr. Moroder was a genius, a popular musical innovator, and one with whom I'm proud to have shared an era, a mood, and some most excellent music.

And now there's even more music to look forward to in 2015.

Talkin' Mac

After a week of politically inspired gnashing of teeth and work-inspired bitterness, perhaps it's time for something musical. My go-to happy place seems to be consistently the sounds of the 1970s. Horrible fashion, dodgy color schemes, no Internet, and stuck in a small town in the back of beyond, yet I feel warm and cozy toward that era.

Pre-adulthood, pre-serious relationships, pre-money woes, pre-responsibilities. About the only things I had to worry over were getting to school on time, finishing my homework, and not looking like a fool every minute of every day in front of my classmates. Part of the foolishness was no doubt conveyed through my taste in then what was considered "not cool" (and probably gay) musical choices, such as ABBA, soul, and disco.

The best years of my life, maybe, at least if nostalgia is our benchmark. I wouldn't want to relive them, though. They were not in any sense my "glory days" in junior high and high school. Years of angst spent not knowing who I was or being able to own up to who I found attractive are not experiences I would want to relive, thanks all the same.

Instead, what I'd like to do is sink back into the "mise en scène" of the '70s, if you will--just luxuriate in the culture, the milieu, the zeitgeist. That's often what I feel nostalgic toward--not the trappings of crap style or tacky furnishings but what we were listening to at the time, what we were talking about, and what I was feeling at the time. So it's more of a me-me-me zeitgeist, but, hey, that's what you pay me for.

So this weekend's "8-track flashback" looks wistfully upon the music of Fleetwood Mac. I am by no means a "classic rock" fan and, similar to how I feel about most country music, would just as soon see it banished from the light, their aficionados forced underground, having to swap shittily recorded mixtapes of every entitled white guy and boringly middle class singer-songwriter-screamer signed to a big deal on Sunset Boulevard.

I'll see you in hell, '70s and '80s hair bands. You're in my sights, pretentious prog rockers. I'll have your heads on a platter with a sprig of parsley on the side, dear d-jays at every Middle America radio station. May the world find you stuck in a Reagan-era shame cycle, forced to just say no to anything new or fun or colorful, while your life spirit trickles down your spine and pools at your feet, in your new home: the sub-basement of a foreclosed Moral Majority McMansion, Any Suburb, USA. With liberty and Tom "Top Gun" Cruise and Melanie "Working Girl" Griffith movies for all.

In other words, welcome to the new 2014, same as the old 2004, 1994, and 1984.

Wooh. So much for steering clear of bitterness and politics. Let's move on, shall we?

* * *

And let's move on to Fleetwood Mac, circa 1975, with "Say You Love Me."



"Say You Love Me" was probably the first Mac song I appreciated at the ripe old age of what? 13? 14? For me, it was probably less about the lyrics (and for me it almost always is less about the lyrics) and more about the sound--the voice, the melody, and, yes, even the banjos. How can you not love the harmonies and happiness of this tune? I liked "Over My Head" and "Rhiannon" as well, but this is such a sprightly, poppy little thing, so evocative of that London-meets-Los Angeles folk/rock/pop/country sound that Mac had in the mid-1970s. I want to go back in time and hear it play on the radio of my parents' AMC Hornet once again. Those were the days, my friend, we thought that American Motors would never get bought out by Renault, of all enterprises, just a few years later.

* * *



When thinking about Stevie Nicks' role in the Mac, it's hard to pick a favorite from among songs. There is "Rhiannon," "Dreams," "Gypsy," and "Sara" to choose from. Along with "Landslide," "Gold Dust Woman," "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around," or "Edge of Seventeen." The wealth is overwhelming, practically poignant.

"Sara" was on the turntable a lot during college, as was the quirky "Tusk." "Rhiannon" came out when I was still trying to figure out Stevie Nicks and whether I liked her voice or not. But "Dreams" edges out the others. It reminds me of a good era in my little hometown. I think my brother Frank owned the album (or maybe it was my brother Charlie or my sister Barbara?). It spun on the turntable a lot at our house in the spring of 1977.

At least I hope we had the album and not the 8-track tape . . . fade, beep, reprise.

* * *

Fast forward to 1979 and "Tusk."


A really bold, odd choice for a single, but a brilliant one at that. More like a soundscape, the soundtrack to some frenetic, tension-filled scene on celluloid--a chase scene or a bank heist gone wrong--than a 3-minute-and-30-second pop song. And god bless 'em for that.

I could take or leave some of the songs on which Lindsey Buckingham was featured prominently. To this day, I can't hear "Don't Stop" without thinking of how it's been abused by certain politicians wanting to appeal to (read: fleece) progressives and baby-boomers (an act that really doesn't require co-opting good music), but Lindsey really added a lot to the group. Who could imagine a group performing something as lush and radio-friendly as "Over My Head" in 1975 creating something as experimental and sonic as "Tusk" in 1979? With a marching band no less.

Plus you gotta love Stevie Nicks' expert twirling of a baton in the official video. I'm sure that's a moment when the British members of the group started to rethink the whole Southern California experiment. "My god. We're in the middle of a baseball field. There's a university marching band playing. And our little 'Welsh witch' is twirling an effin' baton! How did we get so lost?"

Faust was wrong. There are plenty of things to regret.

* * *

Lindsey has always bugged me for some reason. Perhaps in part because he was and remains a very handsome, self-assured (possibly too much so) man. He was gorgeous as a '70s hippie and luscious as an '80s hipster--and, in my warped mind, he always seemed completely aware of this, which is a major turnoff for me. Not that Mr. B. would be perturbed by this confession, of course. Not that this confession is based on anything other than gut and a few TV appearances.

But ol' Bucky was a terrific musician, writer, and singer. Just maybe not a great performer.



This is an incredibly overwrought performance by both Lindsey and Stevie. But "The Chain" is a brilliant song, so all is forgiven, Lindsey. Just don't do it again, please. Again, for Chris, John, and Mick, another bell must have rung, another penny must have dropped.

* * *

I could never stand most of the Mac's '80s videos--I remember describing them in an essay I crafted for my non-fiction writing class in college as "a fine example of the symbolic wallow that is MTV" or some such.



This is the only one that I can just barely tolerate, "Little Lies" from 1987 or so. It gives me just enough mental respite and perverse fascination that I hesitate before I kick in the screen of my 30-year-old cathode ray-tubed console TV set.

And yet, I take issue with the video, nonetheless. To me it looks as if the band just happened upon a Tweeds catalog photo shoot and decided to add the leftover clothes to their own wardrobes. Just prior to the Tweeds shoot, Duran Duran had been on set making their own video--so Stevie, Lindsey, and Christine borrowed some makeup and spackled it on hurriedly before anyone could stop them.

That or the entire video was filmed as a promo for Glamour Shots. Whatever, everyone loses.

Nonetheless, while "Everywhere" from the same album, Tango in the Night, is probably my favorite Mac song ever, "Little Lies" features a wonderful mixture of all three singers--McVie, Nicks, and Buckingham.

* * *

And, finally, this is what I mean about Fleetwood Mac's dreadful, artsy-fartsy videos--



Honestly, dude, Whiskey-Tango in the night-Foxtrot. Who thought this was a good idea? Who allowed this to happen?

Personally, I think it was Stevie and Lindsey. Christine, Mick, and John on their own would never have approved this storyboard. "Let's just do it, please, so that they'll both shut up, alright?" I can hear Christine saying, while Mick and John sob silently into their sleeves.

* * *

With that, we conclude today's psychic flashback. Surprising to some that I could enjoy Fleetwood Mac so much, but it's all true.

Just be grateful I owned up to it--and opted for this nostalgia trip rather than the other one in my head this week--mid-'70s British soul with the likes of Tina Charles, Jesse Green, and Biddu on heavy rotation.

But never say never . . .

Choosy mothers choose riffs

I'm not gonna spread for no roses!

U.S. politics and elections: It's just like being on The Bachelorette! You get to choose from an all-male, mostly all-white cast, hoping against hope that you end up with the least sleazy one in the bunch.

Or at the one who is less likely to be brought up on criminal charges during your brief time together.

Better luck in 2016, y'all.

* * *

* * *

I had another odd dream last night. I dreamt I was overseas trying to call home to the U.S., but the call wouldn't go through. I kept getting the same message over and over again: "The number you have reached has been disconnected or is not in service at this time."

Funny. Just like many of our voters and elected officials.

* * *
 

How you can bring the economy back from the brink and finally get a national healthcare bill passed and yet be pilloried and shunned by your own party is something only the Democrats could manage.

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory once again.

* * *

Everybody, at least in the American media, keeps talking about the takeaway from yesterday's election as being all about big money and its impact on democracy.

I can't really disagree with that, but for me, there's another, equally worrisome takeaway. And it's this: You lose the presidency, don't control the Senate, but own the House of Representatives until our candy-ass Democrats can bother to challenge Republican gerrymandering of congressional districts after the next census. You do not want to compromise with the party in power. You only want what you want.

Later, you lose the presidency, now control the Senate, and continue to own the House of Representatives. You now say you want to compromise, but really? How stupid do you think we are?

Yes, I know a grand portion of our electorate just proved that we're mighty mighty stupid, able to shoot ourselves in the foot and the head at the same time (gotta love our those no gun controlling ways!). But do give us a little credit: We know you are not about to compromise now.

Perhaps in the future you will win the presidency again, control the Senate, and own the House. And you still won't want to compromise.

I really don't know how you do it. It reminds me of that old slogan about the South losing the Civil War but winning the peace, being humiliated on the field of battle yet someone controlling domestic politics and race relations through, first, segregation, then later, institutionalized racism and uber-conservative, anti-social safety net policymaking.

Really, it's childish and transparent, easy to see happening yet horrible to watch. And yet you manage to do it again and again, and no one ever does a damn thing about it.

* * *

It's 9:53 p.m. Eastern the day after the election, and I've already yelled my first "STFU Mitch McConnell!" at my TV.

Courage, comrades. It is going to be a long two years until the next election.
 

Fashion crimes against humanity

All y'all know I love the '70s, for lots of reasons but especially for its politics of dancing, which for me encapsulates the decade's open and relaxed attitude, its positive vibe, and its diversity of ethnicities, sexualities, ages, income levels, social strata, body types, and more. It was OK to be gay, lesbian, straight, and bisexual. It was OK to be African-American, Latino, Anglo, a woman, a man, rich, poor, middle class. It was OK to be. At least that's how it seemed from my vantage as a boy and then a teen. There were lots of possibilities, lots of positivity. The horizon was endless, the future bright and welcoming.

And the music--such a mix! Glam, pop, rock, Southern rock, punk, new wave, soul, funk, jazz, and, yes, disco--and some or all of it coupled together in the same song.

All y'all know as well that disco is one of my favorite genres. I like it in part because of the diversity it embraced and represented but also in part because of the beat. I, for whatever reason, have always been a slave to the rhythm, even though my Anglo-Saxon culture too often seems to fear, reject, and denigrate it. Considering the beat . . . what? Too "ethnic"? Too feminine? Too gay? Too queer? Disco was about the party, sure, about self-focused dancefloor fantasies and glamorous excess. But I think there was some love and kindness there, too. Joy, happiness, and community. And sometimes even more depth than it's give credit for.

I don't think this is just my fantasy either. I'm currently reading excerpts from Vince Aletti's The Disco Files 1973-78: New York's Underground, Week by Week, a compendium of articles and charts from the '70s disco scene, along with some before-after-the-fact interviews with Aletti (a columnist, scene-chronicler, and record distributor during the era), who describes what the disco heyday was like:

There's this scene at the end of [the movie] The Last Days of Disco, one of the characters has this very idealistic speech where he says disco was a whole movement. It was funny, but it was really true and people felt that. They felt disappointed that the idealistic quality of it was being trampled over, in favor of money and celebrity. As much as disco was glitzy and certainly loved celebrity culture, there was never a sense of it being driven by that. It was much more driven by an underground idea of unity (Aletti, 1998, p. 466).

All to the good, and all to the sad and the bad that that feeling was lost due to the "disco sucks" backlash, Anita Bryant, the Reagan and neo-con era, HIV/AIDS, and the fierce, sometimes hate-filled reaction to the culture of the '60s and '70s. Those were "Good Times," and I'm so sorry that they disappeared in a huff of money-grubbing, wowserism, and not-in-my-backyard bitterness.

Nevertheless, despite my love for the era, there's one thing I cannot abide about the '70s: The absolute vileness of the clothes. The colors, the fabrics, the cut, and the style. Profoundly horrid, incredibly tragic, viscerally repulsive.

Oh sure, you could slap a Gucci-Pucci-Fiarucci label on it, but there was nothing flattering about it, except maybe that the clothes did allow for a diversity of body types more so than today's lines. You could be heavier in a caftan or hairier in a leisure suit, but if that's your only saving grace, you probably need to go back to design studio and the catwalk and try, try again.

I hate to go there because it is so so easy, such a cheap laugh, the ugliness of '70s fashion. Mind you, I don't think the '80s, in retrospect, were any prettier. Edgier and sleeker perhaps but still, ultimately, hollow and very dated-looking nowadays--that "triangle" design motif with the broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist pervaded every piece, all of which were shaded in equally decade-giveaway colors.

I favor a lot of '50s and '60s design. It must be the MadMan in me, but that era looks so much classier and classic (albeit preppy-conservative at times), even if the experimentation of the late '60s often looks clownish and tawdry nowadays, an odd mix of Dacron and denim, in organic shapes and lurid colors.

A couple of cases in point--the dancers in the video above by Spanish pop-rock-disco combo Barrabás and this one below by the oddly named Spanish/French band Bimbojet.



Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Fugly foxtrot at that. Nothing you'd ever want to wear yourself, let alone see on anyone you know, except maybe on someone who dumped you for a Solid Gold dancer.

But, again, no cheap shots: Rather than blaming disco, the '70s, hedonism, the Gay Agenda, a mass outbreak of vision and taste impairment, or any other easy-ways-out, let's call out the real culprit: Tacky couture and fascist glamor, courtesy of one Generalísimo Francisco Franco.

I'm (mostly) not making this up and only being slightly ridiculous: Dictatorships do seem to have a certain (horrid) fashion sense. Rarely is it good, with the possible exception of you-know-who. More often it is simply, cruelly vulgar. Really, how often do you need to look at photos of Eva Braun and Marlene Dietrich side-by-side to see that La Dietrich not only left behind a genocidal maniac with a really stupid mustache but also lots of treacly, frilly Berliner Alexander-plotz hausfrau drag? And how many times do you have see a certain V. Putin shirtless on the back of the people's long-suffering horse to long for the days when horse-drawn carriages pulled up to balls and banquets and gentleman sauntered about the manor house in well-cut Eugene Onegin-inspired shirts, trousers, and suits?

It's bad enough that these anal retentive mass murderers abuse their citizens' basic human rights--must they also destroy their nations' innate sense of style? The Italian working class had it going on with its headscarves, neck kerchiefs, and wrap dresses. Bendito Benito "Muscles" Mussolini, with that lampshade pull on the end of his modified fez, so did not.

During a fashion war, intervention and action are vital now, not later. Where is the UN General Council when you need it? No doubt helping victims of famine, conflict, disease, and the like. Yet while the UN dithers, miserable wretches must dance around in jewel-toned Arabian Nights' fantasies and mustard-yellow-and-sage-green baby poop-striped travesties, with no one caring, no one coming to their rescue, not even Couturiers-sans-Frontières.

Clams on the half-shell and roller skates? A rumor has it that it's getting late. Time marches on, just can't wait. There's not a moment to waste when the survival of humankind's fashion sense is at stake!

If your sex toy lasts for more than 4 hours . . .

Before the fall

Let's just call it "failure to raunch."

Apparently, some in Paris have been a-quiver over the last few days due to the fact that a gigantic, kelly green, um, "Christmas tree" has been erected in the the posh Place Vendôme area of the city.

After a couple of days of outrage--including the issuance of some very public slaps to the artist's face--someone has taken the matter into his own hands (ahem) and purposefully deflated the Jolly Green Giant Sex Toy of Paris.

Quelle tragique. Or not.

Personally, I think the Butt Plug Assassins (and wouldn't that make a great name for a punk band?) missed a wonderful opportunity. The artist notes that indeed his alleged work of art was designed to resemble a giant sex toy but also could be interpreted to resemble a Christmas tree. Ho ho ho.

So, conservative Parisians, why not make it a Christmas tree? Form a fashionably ensemble'd guerrilla group and decorate that gros garçon kamikaze style--guns at the ready to blast balls of paint in colors that look like ornaments and lights, maybe get a ladder and string some veiny garland around the circumference, and then climb to the top and plant at the tip a rather splashy-looking star, something with an effervescent spray of glitter, that erupts or perhaps smokes.

Really, art critics, use your imagination. You'll be far ahead of the artist if you do.

I don't know that I think Paris was "humiliated" by this vision/derision in polyurethane, as Printemps Paris claims. At the same time, is the work really worth the outrage? It just seems like another lazy conceptual art piece, something the artist conjured up to provoke easy shame and cheap indignation. Like the Big Rubber Ducky that inhabited the Pittsburgh waterfront a year ago--but with an outsized erection. In other words, not much more than a smutty joke told between work colleagues but accidentally overheard by your clients when you thought you'd disconnected the conference call but, oops, no, you hadn't.

Not that that's ever happened to anyone I know.

So wow, Monsieur Artiste. Vous êtes such a vrai trailblazer. [Insert sarcastic tone.]

Essentially, Madonna trod the same ground with her Sex book way back in the last century--and that was hardly an original idea then. It was all designed to provoke, to challenge, to engorge public opinion, and have it spew forth all over proper society--oh, and sell records and un-stall a career, too.

So let's not pretend we're noble, Painter Man, that we're doing this all as an ironic public service to the perpetually pinched. I've been to the Tate Modern. I know bullshit when I see it in an art gallery and read about in an exhibition catalog.

Thus, one of my reactions to this sort of thing is, meh, how boring, how childish. It's the same reaction I have whenever I watch The Colbert Report or The Daily Show and the Colorado legalization of marijuana gets a mention. A certain element in the crowd always whoops it up, shouts, celebrates, sounding like thirsty frat boys at a Rush Week kegger. Beer! Dope! Sex! Human behavior reduced to the most thuddingly dull and monosyllabic of advertising campaigns!

Despite promises by skin creams and surgeons to the contrary, you simply cannot be 16 forever, dudes. More to the point, why would you want to? What's missing from your life that makes you idealize your youth and infantilize your joy?

My other reaction is--if I must be honest--a small amount of embarrassment. It's not because I'm shocked by the sight of a sex toy--trust me on this. While seeing one out of context, in public, is provocative and makes a vague point (and hence the term conceptual art), it also seems . . . immodest--akin to too much sharing about your bodily functions, too many sloppy tongue kisses on the TV screen, too great a knowledge about what turns you on and turns you off when you're just an acquaintance, and I really don't want or need to know.

Yes, you can share everything with everyone. But do you really need to? Shocking the easily shocked is hardly a bold maneuver. About all it does is draw attention to yourself, which I suspect is mostly the point anyway.

And yet, I'm blogging about this, finding it amusing, the reactions from the quickly enraged as well as the staff writers tripping and dripping all over themselves to find the best penis pun in the mix. As a Facebook friend of mine suggested earlier today, The Guardian did a nice job, but I still don't think there's a clear winner in The Chronicles of Wangia just yet.

* * *

Even though I'm definitely a Westerner and that's unlikely to change anytime soon, the West in general seems incredibly, unnecessarily immodest, prurient, and frivolous to me these days, this being an excellent example of the anything-goes-just-add-nipple-clamps approach to popular culture. I don't know that I think we should live our lives cloistered, concealed, and chastened, too frightened, too ashamed to be our real selves, beat down by the wowsers among us. I benefit in many ways from a more liberal, laissez-faire culture, and I have no desire to step back in time--at least not too far back. Nothing before the Second World War in the U.S., please, or possibly during the interwar years in Europe, thank you.

I also don't want us to live our lives as if the whole world were watching. But the fact remains that the whole world is watching and judging and dismissing or despising us for our "freedom"--or maybe it's just because we're tacky fools who have an it's-all-just-one-big-dirty-joke take on life.

I feel the same sort of embarrassment when I am reminded of some of the street festivals in San Francisco, particularly the Folsom Street Fair, in which bodily functions are eroticized, S&M peccadilloes are put on display--and then immediately photographed and filmed by religious conservatives and shared with their converts to further "prove" that gays are "dirty," "disgusting," and "perverted."

No thank you, not even a cigarette

Of course we're not all like that and some of us are bothered by the behavior of our brethren and the resulting undue pressure that we need to "get with it" in order to be hip, cool, hot, or radically out there. Alternately, that doesn't mean we all want a spouse, 2.5 kids, and a mortgage in the 'burbs either. There's a lot to be said for living between the extremes, one foot on this red dot, a hand on the blue one, an elbow on yellow, a knee on green, Twister-style.

At the same time, I can't spend a lot of time worrying about what other consenting adults get up to in their spare time, in their private or semi-private rooms, with whom, and with which household objects.

However, conversely, I don't like being tarred with the same brush or having my hide tanned by the same bullwhip. Yes, it would be great if the world would just lighten up a tad and let people be. But that's unlikely to happen--and even if it did, would we be prepared for the Libertarian-styled, don't-tread-on-me-but-don't-mind-if-I-do-tread-on-you lengths such a world would be likely to extend to?

Maybe it's because I grew up in the South and in a small town that I'm particularly attuned to this dis-ease over showing too much of your private self to the world. The goal growing up was for everyone to not know your business, any of your business, or even to know what the inside of your house looked like. Because you knew those who found out anything would talk about you in the most unflattering (and inaccurate) terms behind your back while smiling sweetly and insincerely to your face. You might get lucky and catch them in their hypocrisy--overhear them dissing and deriding you or read about them getting caught (literally) with their pants down or dress up with someone else's spouse. But you couldn't bank on that--although their sanctimony had a life-time guarantee.

Thus, sometimes I think it might not be a bad idea to cover up just a little, to tone it down a notch, to share that thought when we're among friends but maybe not shout it so loud while we're seated next to a family of four at Red Lobster. Use our inside kink, as it were.

And keep that sex toy in the drawer of the bedside table--or if we feel impelled to share it in public, try San Francisco or Amsterdam where it's likely to be more appreciated.

Evenings in Moscow

Nostalgia time: This is the version of "Moscow Nights" or "Evenings in Moscow" (in Russian: "Подмосковные Вечера") by Soviet-era jazz great, George (aka Georgiy) Garanian and the Melodiya Ensemble. As noted in the description for the YouTube video, this version of "Moscow Nights" was played as a sort of interval signal or signature tune--a signal or piece of music that identifies a radio station and helps the listener fine tune the radio, especially a shortwave radio, to the broadcast--for the old Radio Moscow. According to the comments section for the video--for once, not as vile, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, and sexist as most of the comments sections on the 'Tube--this was a specially commissioned version of the Russian standard by the broadcaster.

The question for me is whether this version was ever available on vinyl, CD, or as a high-quality mp3. So far, no luck on this one. I can find other versions by Garanian and the Melodiya Ensemble, but I would love to find a copy of this one--the sleek, jazzy, summer-in-the-city version.

This version makes me nostalgic for a number of reasons. In the 1970s and even into the early 1980s, I used to listen to Radio Moscow on shortwave. I don't think it was for the programming, other than Moscow's take on the news, somewhat skewed reports on life in America, and the occasional cultural moment, like Soviet jazz recordings. But listen I did, just as I did to Radio RSA: The Voice of (Apartheid-Era) South Africa, the BBC, the Voice of America, Paris Calling Africa, Radio Australia, Deutsche Welle, Radio Prague, Berlin Radio International, and hundreds of other stations--sometimes for the news, the music, and the cultural programming, sometimes just for the exoticism of the broadcast location. Iceland! Cameroon! Radio Sutatenza in Colombia! ORTF in Papeete, Tahiti! And, yes, even the exoticism of Soviet-style communism intoned--politely, firmly, humorlessly--by quasi-American-sounding voices.

There is nostalgia, too, for my trip to the Soviet Union, one of the highlights of my life (so far). Washington, Helsinki, Leningrad, Tallinn, Moscow, Helsinki, Stockholm, New York, Washington, May into June 1985--a journey that still makes my heart hum, moan, and ache, with the sights, sounds, voices, aromas, and thoughts almost tangible 30 years later.

It was my first time overseas and led to some other overseas trips, such as Australia in 1987, because of friends I made in my travels. I got to use my very limited Russian (often badly). I made a fool out of myself on more than one occasion (I was all of 23 at the time; in theory, I'm allowed to be immature, even though I won't allow myself that excuse in my memories). I was tired by the end of it, sick of dealing with American jerks (and the occasional Russian one), a little homesick, a little hungover, and needing some downtime and solitude, being the introvert that I am. As a result, Helsinki and Stockholm are somewhat of a blur.

Yet I was homesick for Russia, for Europe, after I got home to Washington. I felt I should be elsewhere, anywhere but here, a feeling I still experience regularly, though less painfully nowadays. I don't think it's so much that I thought I should be European; it's more the case that I just was ready to travel, learn, experience the universe, and meet people who had a larger worldview and more knowledge about life, culture, history, and the now than I--a little hayseed/hipster wannabe from rural North Carolina--had at the time (or even today). But I only had so much money to do so, and no real guidance from family and friends on how to go about it.

Afternoons in Leningrad, circa May 1985

So in some ways that first trip abroad was wonderful, revelatory, sublime. But in other ways, it was painful, harsh, and frustrating--it just made me want more.

I still feel that way today, often frustrated by my limited vantage from Pittsburgh and the insularity around me. I'm impatient for change and hopeful that the next change, the next move, the next job, the next trip, will salve my restlessness just a bit.

But maybe that wouldn't be such a good thing. Perhaps it's better for me to stay restless and hungry for something more, something better. Frustrating, yes, but it is ultimately oddly enjoyable.

Well, maybe not enjoyable, nor satisfying. It's just who I am. And it's past time to accept that, be a little proud of it, and celebrate it now and into an uncertain, opportunity-filled future.

This weekend's read--And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records

I'm going to try something new with this blog--start writing more about what I'm reading.

It's not that you've been missing much. Simply stated, I've lost that reading feeling over the last couple of years. My normal explanation is that it's an occupational hazard--for me, as a librarian, information, words, text, are just so much "product" and so much noise at the end of a long day. Books are a commodity. Information = work. I get tired of seeing text all day

No, I don't read books at work, despite the idealized stereotype of the librarian at work. (I have shushed a couple of people in my time--and been shushed myself by library patrons for being a little too loud and boisterous.) However, I do read screens, memos, articles, websites, reports, e-mails, what have you. The thought of doing this even more when I get home, especially on a device like a Kindle or a Nook, is rather horrifying--or maybe just depressing. Or possibly both.

Couple this with the vague concept of ownership surrounding e-books (do you really own that book or are you just renting and borrowing it for a period of time?), preservation issues (will you be able to read that book in the same e-format 20 years from now? 10 years from now? Probably not), and not having a lot of room for books/wanting to travel light on any future moves, and I just find myself feeling indifferent to the printed word. Shocking, I know.

Nevertheless, I'm trying to get the feeling again. Last month I devoured Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, with 600 pages flying by during a week away from work. I will try to write up my thoughts on that book soon; while it probably is not perfect, I really enjoyed it, more than anything I've read in a long while--which may not be saying much as I really haven't read anything substantial in a long while. The novel Triomf by Marlene Van Niekerk was the last hefty tome I took on--a book I bought at The Strand in New York in 2005 and finally finished in . . . 2011? And I still haven't written up my thoughts about that one, which has left a heavy impression on me.

I may even do something radical and finally move past page 25 in Le Libraire by Gérard Bessette, my first (short) novel in French or at least try to finish A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin, another short novel and one that is testing my new-found interest in and patience for reading.

In the meantime, I'm turning my eye to my first love and the original intent of this blog, pop culture, by reading And Party Every Day: The Inside Story of Casablanca Records by Larry Harris, an executive at Casablanca during the mid- to late 1970s (co-written with Curt Gooch and Jeff Suhs). So far, so good--it's been an enjoyable read, although not one that I've read sequentially. Instead, I've skipped around to find and savor the parts of most interest--how Casablanca founder Neil Bogart started the label, the arrival of Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer on the scene, and bits and pieces about Alec R. Constandinos, Jacques Morali, and Henri Belolo, the latter two of Village People fame.

Along the way, I've been reminded that Casablanca Records was also the home of KISS and Parliament/Funkadelic, something I've mostly forgotten, and two groups that have had amazing staying power over the decades, KISS for its image and Parliament/Funkadelic for its wild, innovative, influential, and highly sampled sound.

Casablanca, too, had a "filmworks," having produced not just the lamentable (or maybe just lame) Thank God Its Friday, but also the summer of '77 blockbuster, The Deep, among others.

What I've enjoyed most, of course, is gaining some insights into the personality and work ethic of Donna Summer. Harris writes that, based on her early recordings with Giorgio Moroder, Neil and he weren't that impressed with Summer on initial listen. Later, once that realized how talented (and invaluable) both were, Harris describes Summer as having a certain amount of drama surrounding her. Later, he notes that her marriage to Bruce Sudano settled things down and made her very happy. The author also seems to bear no ill will toward her for jumping to Geffen Records, which, along with the (alleged) death of disco, was the beginning of the end for the label. Rather, he seems to have facilitated her leaving for (according to him) altruistic reasons.

I also like his positive takes on Paul Jabara and Jacques Morali and his not-unexpected takedown of Village bully Victor Willis, the one straight member of the group (other than producer Belolo) who by numerous accounts, here and elsewhere, seems like an asshole of the first order.

There are some surprises along the way--Harris noting that despite seeming and mostly being a gay-friendly record label (pretty much unknown heretofore), there were those in Casablanca management and staff that were indeed homophobic (not Neil Bogart, however). And there were those who didn't initially get that the Village People were a very gay act.

Interesting, too, is to read how often the music was viewed as "product" by executives, promoters, staff, and others (although seemingly not the artists themselves). Disco wasn't taken seriously at first (if ever), but it became a huge money-maker for the label, at least for a time. However, even KISS, a "serious" rock-and-roll act (OK, not really) was viewed in terms of money, product, risk, liability, promotion--the mechanics of the record industry.

Of course this shouldn't be such a surprise; it's just me being quite naive about how business works. It also shows my naivete about pop culture--it is often commerce that we attach deeper meaning to. Is that justified? Or does the meaning exist upon inception and creation of the work and the response to the creation is commercial? I can't really say; it's probably something of both. I'm unlikely to know unless I finally get that master's degree in popular culture from Bowling Green State University I've promised I would for years now.

Then again, in my profession, am I any different than a record company exec or flunky? I surround myself with literature, scholarship, and information, but they are really just product, commodities, costing money, requiring promotion, incurring liabilities and risks? Etc., etc., etc.

I don't mean this to sound negative about my profession or even the record industry. It just is what it is. Nevertheless, in my case, it's not too late to remember to appreciate books and information for the treasures that they truly are.

Which probably means a career change at some point, or retirement, or that master's degree from Bowling Green. I think it's plenty obvious that I'm not close to either of those events at this phase of my life. Alas and alack.

So in the meantime, I'll keep reading And Party Every Day and then hopefully quickly move on to Turn the Beat Around and The Disco Files (for which I am not paying the going rate), finally making it onto my suddenly rejuvenated reading list.

Get up and boogie, y'all.

No photographs, please

La gata negra del barrio

Meet Miss Kitty, my new, fast-moving neighbor, who, while extraordinarily affectionate for a cat, apparently has a "no photographs" clause in her contract. She just moves too darned quickly for me to get a good snap of her.

Normally, I am indifferent to the charms of cats. However, I am willing to make an exception for this one. She has begun greeting me every evening when I get home from work, almost every morning as well, and even during the day on weekends. Whenever she hears my garage door open, whether for my bike or my car, she flies out from a nearby alley, squalling hello, rubbing up against my legs, wanting me to stroke her back, her face, and even, tentatively, her belly. She has climbed into my lap once and even let me pick her up with no fuss just the other day.

Oh Miss Kitty, you had me at "meow."

I'd like to think that this cat-man love is limited just to me--and I may be right in that assumption. When Cairo last visited, she seemed surprised, even indifferent to him (and he's much more of a cat man than me) and even somewhat to me. She let me pet her . . . sort of. She let Cairo pick her up, which I didn't have the nerve to do prior to that, fearing the usual reaction I get from cats. (Pet me pet me pet me! How dare you pet me! Scratch!) But her reaction to both of us was all very perfunctory, very polite, very this-is-what-I'm-required-to-do. And then she coughed up a hairball in our presence.

It was like she suddenly went from being her normal Brazilian self to being British in spirit in the blink of an eye.

The next day, when Cairo left, she was back in black, with la Gata Negra hanging out with me while I tried to repair my bike brakes. This took hours (and I still didn't get them right), but le Chat Noir explored the garage, lolled about on the driveway, rubbed up against my hands and legs, and invited her (I'm assuming) kitten over for a visit. Even while I bitched, cursed, and dropped tools all over the concrete, she didn't sprint away in fear.

If all cats were this sweet, this charming, this happy, I'd consider getting one of my very own. Nonetheless, I don't think I'm likely to become a cat person anytime soon--and if I do, feel free to report me to the authorities as I will have officially lost my freakin' mind.

But I could get used to having Miss Kitty around the house. At least if she could stop coughing up hairballs.

The royal family

And they'll never be royals - "ClintonSenate"
by Unknown. Licensed under Public domain via
Wikimedia Commons.

Over the weekend, Chelsea Clinton, daughter of Bill and Hilary Rodham Clinton, gave birth to her first child. Despite the fact that this is something women do every day in every country on the planet, in far less plush surroundings with far less access to healthcare, it has taken the American news media by semi-storm.

Well, why not? There's nothing else much going on the world these days. *Cough* Ebola *cough* the Middle East *cough* oligarchy.

As part of the media cavalcade, CBS News referred to the Clintons as "American political royalty." Which is all true, of course.

It's just that they're more akin to the Grimaldis of Monaco rather than the Windsors of the United Kingdom. Although similarities to the Windsors in the '80s and '90s--Fergie having her toes sucked, Diana's affairs, Prince Charles covered in a blanket hiding in the back of a station wagon--wouldn't be amiss either.

Oh, but why cast aspersions on such a happy occasion. I'm sure no one will use this life event to their advantage . . . .

So congratulations, Grandpa Bill and Grandma Hilary! Can't wait for the photo ops on the non-campaign trail, Hil. And Bill, I'm sure you ordered your "World's Sexiest Grandpa" t-shirt during Chelsea's first trimester, so you're doing fine.

Business as usual for the both of you.

The veld-vet underground

I'm always the last to know. In this case that Die Antwoord released a new album earlier this summer, along with two singles over the last year.

Not that I can begin to explain "Cookie Thumper" without flushing red in embarrassment (nor without vomiting a little in my mouth for that matter). And yet it is yet another intriguing, dystopian video and hypnotic, addictive tune by a South African rap-(early '90s) techno hybrid that apparently is fronted by Hellraiser in a Speedo and that little girl from Poltergeist, all grown up, overly sexed up, with a hairstyle that only Pikachu could love.

Alternate group name suggestion: FouUnlimited.

I understand that there's been a lot of discussion surrounding Die Antwoord as an art project. Ninja (Hellraiser himself) has said that

People are unconscious, and you have to use your art as a shock machine to wake them up. Some people are too far gone. They'll just keep asking, "Is it real? Is it real?" That's dwanky. That's a word we have in South Africa, "dwanky." It's like lame. "Is it real?" You have to be futuristic and carry on. You gotta be a good guide to help people get away from dull experience. (David Marchese, "Die Antwoord's Totally Insane Words of Wisdom." Spin, February 7, 2012.)

I admit I'm semi-unconscious most days and have come to accept the fact that I have to be that way in order to survive the day-to-day of the real world. And yet I do admire Die Antwoord's brilliance. But it is a brilliance I'm fine with listening to from a distance and watching from even farther away.

Plus I'm old and wish they'd stop saying "fokken" every three seconds. That's what I do, not my art.

Almost simultaneous to discovering new music from Die Antwoord, I just checked out a copy of Agaat from my local library, Agaat being the latest work (I've discovered) by South African writer Marlene Van Niekerk, she of Triomf fame. Here's a description of the plot of Agaat from the back cover of the book:

In the waning days of South African apartheid, Milla, a sixty-seven-year-old white woman, is condemned to silence by a creeping paralysis. As she struggles to communicate with her maidservant turned caretaker, Agaat, the complicated history of their relationship is revealed . . . . With sadistic precision and yet infinite tenderness, Agaat performs her duties, balancing anger with loyalty.

So it's a light read.

If this is what I'm listening to, reading, and watching in September, I should be a right jolly ol' zef by the time Christmas rolls around.