#they play country music a lot so i hear the original version p often

[dashiellqvverty]

hearing girl crush for the first time

and alternatively, hearing the harry styles version for the first time

[kivablog3]

Sylvia’s Cooking

I just got my first Stonewall 50 email. At the bottom of the email in the small print it says Heritage of Pride™, which means it’s still run by the same guys as always, except under more scrutiny now, after getting the march on Channel 7 and with the whole world coming next year to physically or spiritually fit into that little pie-wedge space on Christopher Street where the Stonewall Inn bar is located. This World Pride thing isn’t just an advertising slogan they came up with at HoP, it’s a Thing, like Stonewall 50’s a Thing. My therapist, who’s very active in the community and probably gets lots of interesting emails from various Things, told me it happens at a different city’s Pride each year.

And next year, of course, they’re coming to New York, because it’ll be the 50th Anniversary of the night Sylvia Rivera and her friend Marsha P. Johnson (who I never met, and who may have thrown the first punch, there are scholarly debates on this point, but I am told that Sylvia firmly insisted that she was the first one who punched a cop, it’s like the debate over Lexington and Concord, they’re not sure exactly where the Revolution started but we know that they started it) threw out the first punches to start the legendary three-day riot, rather than just get in the police van like always, right in front of the Stonewall Inn. The night the drag queens finally began to fight back. It made a sound heard ‘round the world, and it’s still reverberating, and if anything really changed the course of history in that wretched year of 1969, that surely did.

It reached me in the front seat of our car when I was with my mom one Saturday, when for once my sister wasn’t with us. I used to like tagging along on her Saturday visits to her office, wherever that was. As we were about to drive away from the small airfield where she worked as a secretary to go to some thing where co-workers were already playing bad country music, I asked her what a homosexual was. It was a sunny day and there was no one else around for a mile in any direction. It was the Summer of 1969, of course, and I was eleven years old.

I can only suppose this is just after I’d heard of Stonewall in the news. It was the first time I’d ever brought up sex as a topic of discussion with my mother, and I did this with some trepidation. I sort of knew this wasn’t her favorite topic of conversation generally, sex, much less transgressive sex. The kind hippies had. Maybe some of them were homosexual, who knew? So I persisted in my line of inquiry. What I didn’t know was that she’d been waiting for some version of that question ever since she’d stopped dressing me in dresses, when I was two.

She put the transmission back in park, turned the engine off, sighed, and for once didn’t light a cigarette before we started what turned out to be a lengthy, meandering conversation, which wandered after a while into related and then tangential topics, and which ended with me correcting her on some minor misunderstandings as to how gonorrhea was transmitted, at which point things kind of ground to a halt and she started the car up.

The whole thing probably took an hour. She used to joke that she’d had the Talk with me, the generalized birds and bees talk, because we did touch on conventional sex and How Babies Are Made, but that I had ended up explaining some things to her, instead, which shouldn’t have surprised her. I did read a lot, after all. I probably already knew a couple of things about homosexuals, but I wanted an explanation of how they actually Did It, and as squirmy as that made me, I wheedled it out of her. I could’ve asked her more about how a male-female couple had sex, but that wasn’t what was on my mind. She wasn’t happy about it, and did her best to make it clear that it was all gross and disgusting. I think she made a face when she was explaining lesbians to me. I liked the sound of the word the first time I heard it, tbh: Lesbian. It sounded soft and fuzzy.

I remember wondering about the feasibility of anal sex, as she sketchily and hastily outlined it, which apparently was what men did together; but what women did together sounded really kind of fun and not nearly as difficult. She didn’t want to talk about that, though, and I do remember that it was around there that the discussion went off into the weeds, to things related and not. Eventually we ended up at syphilis and gonorrhea (aka “VD,” or venereal disease, where venereal=“vaginally transmitted,” rather than “of or having to do with the goddess or planet Venus” — clearly a term invented by men) and I explained some of the then-current science on transmission to her, i.e., you don’t catch it from dirty toilet seats in public restrooms. Not girls, not boys, it’s a myth, mom. They told us in science.

All that was fifty years ago, as of next June. The following June, in 1970, they had the first Christopher Street Liberation Day March, so 2020 is the fiftieth anniversary of the March. But next year is the Big One. It looks like this anniversary will be just as controlled and careful as the 25th anniversary in 1994 was huge and utterly chaotic and wonderfully random, with 200,000 marchers from around the world. We took over Central Park. We took over freakin’ Midtown. It rocked.

Well, not next time. No more of that anarcho-festive celebration stuff. Now you have to be part of a signed-up contingent to be part of the march, and those slots are limited. And no more hopping in-and-out from the sidewalk, apparently. They want everyone in a marching contingent to wear the same t-shirts, ffs. It has to be controlled, as well as going backwards (starting a few blocks north of Christopher, past the Stonewall the wrong way, and up Fifth Avenue, what the fuck?) I’m told some of the people in the Village are tired of the crowds and the noise. They can do what people do in Austin when SXSW comes along: leave town. Tiniest quantum violin playing.

Now that it’s a TV show, I guess it has to run on time and look good on camera. They’ll have a beautifully made-up drag queen doing commentary like last year, along with the usual probably-white cis-guy-&-cis-gal parade anchors. I don’t know where they find those. It’ll become another tradition soon, that trio as parade anchors, now that scientists have established that str8 people in statistically significant numbers will watch drag queens on television and thus advertising time can be sold for this event. It’ll be just like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, or the Fourth of July, only with One of Us in the booth along with two of them.

“And you know, Mike, the rainbow flag has been a unifying symbol in the LGBT community since it was first designed in 1978, and did you know that originally it had eight stripes….” There will be carefully-timed performances in front of the Stonewall, and commercial breaks. Some of the stories people tell will break your heart, some will make it sing. Plus commercials, did I mention the commercials? You can record it and FF through them. I did. I stopped this year to watch Chelsea and Rusty talking about Sylvia, which is what makes me think of them all, along with the fact that Sylvia and Marsha deserve statues, and you get reminded of that every June. I’d love to have a statue of the two of them at the Stonewall National Monument, which technically is the little triangular pie-slice shaped park, the benches and the wrought-iron fencing, where you can sit next to the statues representing gay men and women from the 1980s. They should add Sylvia and Marsha.

The whole parade on TV represents some kind of weird queer communications breakthrough, I guess. And now that it’s on every year, I suppose it has to be faaaaaaabulouss! I guess we can record it and go, too. And watch. There were some forums recently at the Center, maybe just one, where people could come and complain about the corporatization of Pride, and the most-of-us not marching thing, and the reverse-route thing where it just kind of ends around 28th Street for no apparent reason, and ask for things they won’t get, but that part’s over and it’s time for Early Bird sign-up.

Whatever. Sylvia and Marsha are the mothers of us all, both trannies and everyone else that fits under this patched, unwieldy tent called “LGBTQ.” We argue, some of us incessantly, about which part of the tent is what, and whether this part is even really part of the same tent as that other part of the tent, but no one argues with the fact that Sylvia and Marsha put up the first tent poles. That may not be the most elegant metaphor, but I’m going with it. Never apologize for your art.

And it’s kind of okay, I think now, or at least I’m trying to convince myself it is, that I never realized “who” Sylvia was, even though at least two people said I should talk to her because I was “interested in politics.” Hm? Oh, ok. No one ever said why. Ffs.

But it felt sort of like I knew Sylvia, the way it feels like I know these professors and other people who my wife works with, after I hear her describe them a few times. She’s a union delegate as well as a math professor, so she knows a lot of people. By now I also know a lot about professors in general. And in the same way I realized after a while from talking to people around T-House, conversations in which she came up, often at vital junctures, that Sylvia was the Mom around the place: she made dinner, I knew that much, and she did a lot of other things to keep Transy* House, Chelsea and Rusty’s house, from burning down, falling over, and sinking during those raucous years around the end of the 20th century. She seemed quite nice when I was introduced across a crowded room downstairs, which actually happened twice I think. She smiled and said hi, I do remember that. She seemed nice.

That, in and of itself, was quite difficult for some people I was around back then — this was and still is New York, the Attitude Capital of the Western Hemisphere and, during Fashion Weeks, the Tribeca Film Festival, and the General Assembly, perhaps the world — but from my brief impression she seemed genuine, and older in a reassuring way when I was twenty years younger. She gave off these hippie-mama vibes, just by making dinner. In a house where a whole lot of chaos happened, and necessarily so given how many trans kids with no other home came through there — because Chelsea and Rusty never turned anyone away, not as far as I know — not to mention how much fun was had there on a regular basis, at least some of it destructive of property, she just looked to me, in a vortex of drama, like a pole of stability.

Maybe that’s shaped by how people talked about her. Everyone said how nice she was; but I wasn’t over there often enough to run into her when she was (a) there and (b) had a free moment, and didn’t know I should prioritize it anyway. And there were other people using up the oxygen in the room at any given time, including me. But it would have been awesome to truly know her.

I knew other people there, had my own reasons for being there. I lived with Kathleen and our two-year-old son in an apartment which was also on 16th Street, in Brooklyn, two blocks away. It was the Nineties, so it didn’t seem unusual to me that there was a house full of transfolx a short walk away, nor that my friend Jamie knew everyone there. Like, she knew everyone. She was the other pole of stability then, around the turn of the century. She doubtless knew Sylvia pretty well, and she probably told me enough to form an impression.

Now Chelsea and Rusty own a bookstore upstate, and T-House is long gone, replaced by the ineluctable tidal forces of gentrification, although there’s a queer history tour that stops at the site and tells a short version of The Story. I wish sometimes they could have a sort of T-House reunion, somewhere, somehow. I would very much like to find Jamie again, even if only online. And I do still wish I’d gotten to talk with Sylvia.

#HistoricalNearMisses

__________

Footnote: Everyone back then except Chelsea, more or less, called it that, but without the “s,” if you get what I mean. We don’t say it anymore, at least not when younger transfolx are around. People get really upset, and if it’s only been used to hurt you it’s a painful word, I get that. Yet it was our word then, and it didn’t hurt at all. It was a warm, friendly word. It was what we called each other, lovingly, and no one else had any reason to use it, and I miss it.

this article also appears at https://medium.com/@kivazo/sylvias-cooking-1b1b4f24e780

[bynkii]

It’s all right there

(originally published on 18 Nov. 2015)

If only you’d look to the side once in a while

Somewhat odd fact: I’ve never been really anywhere outside of the U.S. Not that I’m anti-travel, it just seemed to never work out. I mean, I’ve been to Toronto, spent a summer in Mississauga with my cousin Diane and her family, and technically went near Nassau on a night-time cruise, but I was so obliterated that I don’t know if I left the boat.

I was in the Air Force, but at a B-1B base in the mid-80s to early-90s, and so we didn’t really even start going overseas for air shows and exercises until I was fixing to separate. Then came a marriage and a kid and it kind of just never happened. Which I do think is a shame, but I can’t say I’ve not done anything cool, I just did it all…here.

This came up because I was talking to a good friend of mine, N., who is much smarter and well-traveled than I, (and for a Cali transplant, still understands why Waffle House is amazing.) I was commenting how a mutal acquaintance, who is my age, seems to have just woken up to the reality that non-honkies in the U.S. have very different lives than honkies do. I said I didn’t get how someone could be as well-traveled as he is, (he has literally traveled the globe) and still be so…blind…to the world outside of his somewhat narrow set of interests. This legitimately puzzled me until N. explained it.

She said, (paraphrased) that if you’re traveling on business, to a conference or on a book tour or what have you, that it’s easy. You get off the plane and go to the hotel. Which is probably a Marriot or other chain, and where the club sandwich in Tokyo is exactly like the club sandwich in Des Moines. You are driven to where you need to be when you need to be there, you go out after to a restaurant, maybe a bar that is tourist-friendly, and then back to the hotel. After a few days, home you go. Maybe you take a day for being a tourist, but you’re going to do fairly standard stuff.

You do that enough, and there’s no difference between anywhere.

I can’t argue her point, I literally don’t know, but it struck me as sad. To be somewhere totally different, but wrap yourself in a cocoon of home, like some kind of odd warp bubble.

Because while I’ve never really left the U.S., there’s always been this “walkabout” impulse. I probably got it from my mom, who as a single woman, lived in Tokyo immediately following WWII for some years, (and evidently spent enough time near Hiroshima to come home rather sick for more than a few months), and then in the 50s and 60s, literally traveled everywhere in this country where a train would go. I’ve pictures of her in D.C., at Gettysburg, Monticello, San Francisco, you name it.

In an era where being an independent woman was somewhat frowned upon, she was independent. Mind you, she never learned to drive. This was all public transit and trains.

My dad helped too, he’d been in Japan & Korea in the early 50s, trying not to die during a war, and getting into marvelous trouble in Japan on leaves and furloughs.

One of his better stories, one that fascinated me was about how he and his friends would go to a restaurant in either country, and just blindly order. Whoever got the ugliest dish paid. He thought he was safe when a friend got the squid. Until a WHOLE OCTOPUS, eyes and all, broiled in its own ink was placed in front of him.

That always seemed like the coolest thing: go to a restaurant you’ve never been and just order something. How cool a way to learn new food? Sometimes, you get the octopus, sometimes you get amazing malaysian food. Amazing wins over OMG WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT more than you might think. Food is a great introduction to different cultures.

As I’ve mentioned, I grew up in Miami. My family moved down in 1970, and I didn’t really leave until 1986, when I joined the Air Force. I was there for some shit. Mariel, Liberty City, Murder Capital of the world, Cocaine Cowboys, (I still can’t really watch “Scarface”. Because too much of that movie isn’t some gorefest story, it’s what was happening in my world. There’s not a lot of exaggeration there), all of it.

It’s easy to fall into the tropes. Miami’s a pit, it’s a crimefest, it’s nothing but Cubans. But that’s the saddest way to look at it. Because Miami showed me so many things. ¿Qué Pasa USA? Pastelitos. Pecadillo. A properly made Cuban sangwich. The smell of the wall of ovens baking Cuban bread in an Imperial Supermarket just off 8th Street and Salzedo. The bizarre joy that was the Bed Race. Goombay, where I discovered a host of carribean food and music. Tito Puente. Gloria Estefan before she was Gloria Estefan. Guava. Flan. Materva. The Red Room. The Kitchen. Coconut Grove when there were still more hippies than hipsters. The Friday night Hare Krishna Drum Party in Coconut Grove, where you’d have a hundred people dancing along with the Krishnas and they would just play their asses off. The guy who sold small crabs and palmetto bugs dipped in gold.

It’s actually hard for me to talk about Cuban Culture like it’s some separate thing, because I grew up in it. I’m not Cuban, not even close, but that culture was a part of my youth and my adolescence. It’s not “other people’s” culture. It’s a part of me as much as it can be. You grow up in Miami, your first concert is P-Funk, it’s hard to live in The Honkie Zone™.

Here’s an example of how it affected me. One day, after I’d gotten out of the Air Force, my boss takes me to a Cuban place in Pinellas Park, La Terecita. (AmazingCuban food, BTW.) The waitress seats us, sees we’re a table of superhonkies, and gives us menus. With the food in english. I literally had no idea what any of it was, because you order Cuban food in spanish. What the fuck other language even makes sense? So I ask the waitress, when she returns, “Is there a spanish menu? I don’t know what any of this is in English.”

She looks at me and asks “Where you from?” I tell her Miami, she laughs and says “Okay baby, let me get you the menu.” (If you know what a Cuban accent sounds like, then you get more of the picture.) She comes back with a Spanish one, aka a real one, and at last, I can order my Picadillo y maduros y Materva. Fuck me, english, what use is that?

You also never understand why people are puzzled at children drinking coffee, because you start kids on cafe con leche as soon as they’re off the tit. I mean it. Non-Miamians don’t really get how central Cuban coffee is to life down there. Water is minor, cafecitos are critical.

As a kid in Miami, this was my “community pool”, Venetian Pool. It’s an old limestone quarry converted to a pool. To be able to use the diving boards, you had to swim across the pool without stopping, watched by the lifeguards. That was what turned you from a little kid to a big kid. Swimming is a necessity, because half your elementary school field trips are to the beach. Yeah, yeah, education, starfish, the stingray shuffle. I’m still convinced it was how the teachers wangled free midday beach time. As they should.

Some places brag about how you can watch the sun rise and set over the ocean by just walking a few miles. In Miami, on the highway out to Key Biscayne, you could do that just by turning around. Then there’s Stiltsville, and a not-long drive away, things like Pennekamp and Key West. Along with treasures now gone, like Ocean World, and Miami Marine Stadium, where you could see unlimited hydroplanes, and watch concerts with the stoners on rafts in the middle.

I was also there for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Andrew. My biggest memory of that is just after the hurricane, when shit is still fucked up and Gloria Estefan, who unlike most celebrities, grew up in Miami, and is a hometown girl, holding a benefit in the Orange Bowl, to raise money to help folks out. It’s kind of fucked up, power is still wonky, she is a bit of a sweaty mess, (we all were), and yet there she is, singing “Coming Out of the Dark”, and somehow, everything was going to be okay. Gloria Estefan will always be okay in my book for that.

I don’t think you can grow up with my parents in that town and not look to the side every so often. Or all the time. And it helped me see, not just the bloody obvious truth, like the lives lived different of non-honkies in this country, but all the things.

Like driving between base and town in Grand Forks on highway 2, happy to be off early, (at 2am) and it’s one of those snowstorms where it’s not a blizzard, but the flakes are coming down big, wet and noisy. You can actually hear them hit, and as I come around a curve, there’s this explosion of light, and two two trucks pulling a semi out of the ditch. As Toccata & Fuge in D Minor is blasting in my Civic. Pipe organ version, of course. There is something perfect about that, along with Bach at 2am during another snowfall in the middle of nowhere.

Or another night, same highway, same time of day, only it’s summer, and there’s this flash of light and a roar I only hear because my windows are down, and as I look up, I see a metor blasting through the sky overhead, on fire, big trail of smoke. I pull right the fuck over because if it hits, fuck yeah, i’m gonna get a piece. (No, the obvious downsides didn’t occur to me, because ROCK FROM SPACE.) It burned up completely before it hit, but I got to see it.

You look to the side, and you find things. Like malaysian restuarants in Kansas City. Or how, in Biloxi, just outside of Keesler AFB, if you and your friends go to the same Chinese place enough, and keep ordering “something with beef, something with pork, something with chicken, and surprise us” enough, eventually the family that runs it starts making you the non-gweilo versions of things. Or that there’s a fantastic Dim Sum place not a half-block from the Moscone in S.F., an amazing cajun place in Knob Knoster, MO, and one of the best southern restaurants ever is near Binghampton, NY, (THEO’S4LYFE!)

You see things that other folks miss. Like a tango club performance in Union square, where the guy in his 70s is shaming all the younger men. Because he may be old and slow everywhere else, but he is the Tango grandmaster and the youngin’s best just step back, this is his show.

Walden Pond. It’s not just where Thoreau lived, (with lots of help from his friends. He may have wrote about self-reliance, but he was not so good at practicing it) it’s a place. It’s a swimmin’ hole. Kind of cold, but very beautiful, and a great place to take slow walks with friends. The whaling museum in Peabody. Realizing that on multiple occasions, a pre-fame/pre-Gaiman Amanda Palmer made you milkshakes and sundaes (and she was very good at it.)

You become best friends with everyone in a ten-meter radius at a crawfish festival, because you just can’t suck head, and so you give away heaping plates full of the nasty things to anyone within reach. For this, you get a lot of free beer. Some years later, at Bad Medicine Lake in MN, you gorge on the biggest crawfish you’ve ever seen, (LOBSTER-SIZED) because people up there think they’re gross, and the bottom of the lake is covered with them. It is totally worth the hypothermia you risk, and pissing off a plethora of plastered, pulchritudinous sorority sisters because if they reject crawdads, they can’t be worth your time.

You meet people who aren’t like you, and learn at a young age, just how full of shit you are, and maybe you should fix that. You pick up foul words in multiple languages, (profanity starts both fights and friendships. Often simultaneously.) You learn that the “stripper paying her way through college” isn’t just a trope, and she amazes you both with her pole work and her analysis of pre-Revolutionary War America.

You discover, if you’re open to it, that there are amazing people everywhere in all walks of life, doing all kinds of jobs you aren’t, and they are just fascinating. That there are former adult stars on Twitter who build amazing models of Star Wars ships from metal because that’s what they do, when they aren’t losing their minds over the San Jose Sharks or making beautiful art. They talk about their work too, and that’s even neat because you learn about the behind the scenes stuff. “Inside baseball” is fucking fascinating when it’s about porn. (Ed. note: this person checked out a few years ago. I genuinely miss her, and presence on Twitter.)

You learn that two authors you admire who have become friends have forgotten more about food and culture than you’ll ever know. You learn the history of Switzerland that’s about just how terrifying the Swiss are, “…I’m from Northern Ireland, I don’t do well with unannounced gunfire.”, and that a description of dinner eating between two members of old Russian Royalty can be far, far more…intense than any non-porn writing has a right to. (Seriously, hie thee to wherever you can find them, and read all of “Tales of Old Russia” by Peter Morwood. DESCRIPTIONS OF DINNER SHOULD NOT HAVE THAT EFFECT ON PEOPLE.)

Actually, if you see anything with either Peter or Diane Duane as authors or co-authors, just read it. Trust me on this.

It’s not hard to see the world as it is, good and bad, awesome and terrifying. You don’t even have to leave the country. You just have to look around every so often.

[weekendwarriorblog]

WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND February 8, 2018  - THE LEGO MOVIE 2, WHAT MEN WANT, COLD PURSUIT, THE PRODIGY

Well, folks, this week I’m travelling down to Oxford, Mississippi for the 16th Annual Oxford Film Festival (and my third time there as a juror), so that’s really what I’m most excited about this week, although there are a whopping four movies released Friday then another three wide releases next week, so I’ll be looking forward to when things slow down again.

You’ll also notice a pretty major change in this week’s column, and that’s because I’m happy to report that I’ll now be previewing and reporting box office for my good friend Heidi McDonald over at The Beat (Comicsbeat.com), so you’ll be able to read my box office stuff there but still get some insight into the new movies coming out here, especially if you’re interested in the lower-profile limited releases, streaming and repertory stuff.  But I’ll still write about the wide releases, and this is most likely where I’ll be reviewing many of them still, since I haven’t been asked to write reviews for The Beat just yet.

Either way, as long as I still have time to write a modified version of this column focusing on the limited releases, I will do so, including a link to my column over at the Beat every week, so you won’t miss out on what I know some people read the column for, which is my box office analysis. If for some reason, you don’t care about anything besides the studio releases, please let me know, since it’s a lot of writing if nobody is writing. THIS WEEK’S BOX OFFICE ANALYSIS AT THE BEAT

THE LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PART (Warner Bros.)

Directed by Mike Mitchell (Trolls) Written by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (with story by Matt Fogel) Voice Cast: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish, Alison Brie, Nick Offerman, Charlie Day, Maya Rudolph, Will Ferrell MPAA Rating: PG

This is one of the easier movies this weekend to talk about, since it’s the year’s second sequel after M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass, and it’s not exactly reinventing the LEGO wheel, as it follows shortly after the events of 2014’s The LEGO Movie, which became another hit for Phil Lord and Chris Miller after having hits at Sony with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (plus its sequel) and 21 Jump Street.

In the five years since that hit, the Warner Animation Group released The LEGO Batman Movie, which also did fairly well, but Lord and Miller are coming off their recent animated hit Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which seems to be heading towards an Oscar in the Animated Feature category at the end of the month.

Reviews for the movie have been great, just like the original movie, but as seems to be the case with me a lot lately, I’m the outlier as I really didn’t care for the sequel at all for reasons you can read in my review linked below.

MY LEGO MOVIE 2 REVIEW

WHAT MEN WANT (Paramount)

Directed by Adam Shankman (Hairspray, Bringing Down the House, Rock of Ages, The Pacifier) Written by Tina Gordon, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory Cast: Taraji P. Henson, Wendy McLendon-Covey, Erykah Badu, Max Greenfield, Peter Davidson, Kellan Lutz, Shaquille O’Neal MPAA Rating: R

Offering the first bit of counter-programming is the latest movie from mega-producer Will Packer, who has had hits with Girls Trip, Think Like a Man, Ride Along and many more (including sequels to two of those). This one is a reenvisioning of the 2000 Nancy Meyers comedy What Women Want, starring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt, which scored an astounding $182.8 million over the holidays that year.

This remake switches genders as well as races as Taraji P. Henson plays a woman who can suddenly hear what men think… and I feel very badly for her to be subjected to that, although it’s bound to lead to a lot of funny moments, some of which you can see in the trailer.  Helming the movie is Adam Shankman, who has had great success in the comedy realm with movies like Bringing Down the House, which paired Steve Martin with Queen Latifah, and mixed results with musicals. (I actually didn’t like Hairspray very much, compared to the John Waters film, and was also kind of disappointed with Rock of Ages, having seen the musical on Broadway.)

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to see What Men Want in time to review – and most reviews probably won’t show up until Thursday either -- but I do hope to see it down the road sometime, as I’m definitely a fan of most of the cast and the cast.

COLD PURSUIT (Lionsgate/Summit)

Directed by Hans Peter Molland (In Order of Disappearance) Written by Frank Baldwin, Kim Fupz Aakeson Cast: Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Emmy Rossum MPAA Rating: R

Also hoping to appeal to older guys who might not be interested in the above two movies, this is the second remake of the weekend and fourth for the year as Norwegian filmmaker Hans Peter Molland transports his 2016 film In Order of Disappearance to Colorado with Liam Neeson as a father getting revenge for the murder of his son. The original movie was quite innovative but didn’t get much attention when it was released by Magnolia a few years back, but one presumes Neeson’s fanbase, who have supported him in similar high concept action-thrillers, will give this one a look as well. I’m not even sure I want or need to mention the trouble Neeson faced recently with a few controversial statements, but I have a feeling those who might be interested in a straight-up revenge movie like this won’t be upset by Neeson’s confession.

Shockingly, reviews for this have also been great, right up there with The LEGO Movie 2, and of course, I hated it! Incidentally, I interviewed Molland for In Order of Disappearance along with original star Stellan Skarsgard, which you can read here.

Mini-Review: Normally, I am not one to trash a remake merely for being a remake, although so far this year, none of the English remakes I’ve seen have stood up to the original foreign language films on which they were based.

I was kind of wondering why Norwegian filmmaker Hans Peter Molland would make the same movie over again with different actors, but maybe he had some ideas of how to reimagine it to rural snow-covered Colorado with Liam Neeson as snowplow driver Nels Coxman. Nels has just learned that his son has died of an overdose, so he goes after the men he thinks is responsible.

There’s quite a few changes from the original movie but few of them are any good, especially the number of unnecessary characters added like a couple local police officers, one played by Emmy Rossum, who just make this seem more like a straight-up Fargo rip-off than the original movie did.

There are plent of other problems with Molland’s attempt to reenvision the original story, including how erratic it is in its storytelling. For one thing, Nels immediately goes after his son’s killers, brutally killing three men after getting information from them, then dumping their bodies in a roaring river. Obviously, Liam Neeson seems more than capable of handling his revenge, so one wonders why he would bother to waste money hiring a hitman to go after Tom Bateman’s Viking, the head druglord in the region who may have ordered his son murdered.

It’s sad that Americans might watch this movie and think anything positive about Tom Bateman’s awful performance, but it’s even sadder when you realize how extraordinary Pal Hagen was in the original role of “The Count” – Bateman just doesn’t have a handle on the character at all.

Worst of all is how the film is fairly misogynistic with Laura Dern (barely in the movie as Nels’ wife) and Rossum being two of the only women in the film not depicted as hateful shrews but really not given very interesting roles to play.

Cold Pursuit never seems as clever or innovative as the original movie, and many of the jokes just fall flat compared to the original where the Scandinavian quirkiness added so much to the film’s dark humor. Cold Pursuit just doesn’t offer anything particularly interesting beyond the typical Hollywood revenge flick with the film’s better action setpieces being taken almost verbatim from the original movie. Rating: 4.5/10

THE PRODIGY (Orion)

Directed by Nicholas McCarthy (The Pact) Written by Jeff Buhler Cast: Taylor Schilling, Jackson Robert Scott, Colm Feore, Brittany Allen MPAA Rating: R

But wait, there’s more! And it’s this high concept horror film that exists within my favorite sub-genre of horror: evil kids! This one stars Orange is the New Black star Taylor Schilling, whose son (played by Jackson Robert Scott) is the prodigy of the title, but he also might be an evil killer.  I also won’t have a chance to see this movie before heading down to Mississippi on Wednesday, so not sure I have much more to add, although I did like the trailer when I finally had a chance to see it.

Furthermore, STX and Alibaba released the Chinese animated PEPPA CELEBRATES CHINESE NEW YEAR, based on the British sensation seen on Nick Jr., into 65 theaters across the country Tuesday afternoon to celebrate the Lunar New Year, and I hear that many showings sold out!

FESTIVALS

Sadly, not many of my readers will be able to join me down in Oxford, Mississippi where I will be one of the jurors for the 16thOxford Film Festival, but I might try to write something about my experiences, as I have in previous years, because it’s often one of my favorite annual experiences involving movies.

Besides the Oxford Film Festival, the annual Berlinale runs from Feb. 7 through Feb. 17 AND Lincoln Center’s Film Comment Selects runs from Feb. 6 through 10… but like I said, I’ll be at Oxford, so that’s what I’ll be covering. Got it?

LIMITED RELEASES

This weekend begins the annual OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS (separated into four programs with the short docs split into Part A and B), playing at the IFC Center in New York and at the Landmark Nuart in L.A. If you want to do well in your office Oscar pool at the end of this month, you’ll make an effort to see all fifteen of the nominated short films, as that often is the make or break for most predictions. I know that I will try to watch and write something about them (although most of my shorts-focus right now is on the ones I’m judging for Oxford, to be honest).

Two-time Oscar-winning Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi returns with the Spanish language film EVERYBODY KNOWS (Focus Features), starring Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Argentine actor Ricardo Darin (from The Secret in Their Eyes), which involves Cruz playing a woman named Laura, who returns to her childhood home for her sister’s wedding only for her teen daughter to get kidnapped by people who think her husband (Darin) has lots of money.  To find her daughter, Laura calls on her former lover (played by Bardem) and secrets start being exposed about their relationship. I liked this film quite a bit, as it employs much of what has made Farhadi’s Iranian films so special – he’s a fantastic writer who really pulls many emotions out of his actors while slowly building a story into a third act full of interesting developments. Everybody Knows opens in select cities Friday, and likely will expand over the next couple weeks.

The Audience Award winner from last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Shawn Snyder’s TO DUST (Good Deeds Entertainment), stars Geza Röhrig (Son of Saul) as Hasidic cantor Shmuel, who recently lost his wife and tries to find solace by looking into how her body would decay. In order to learn this, he partners with Albert, a community college bio professor played by Matthew Broderick, to perform experiments about body decomposition.

Just a couple weeks after Netflix streamed his movie Polar, Jonas Akerlund’s previous film LORDS OF CHAOS (Gunpowder and Sky/Vice Films), which premiered at Sundance last year, will open in select cities and On Demand. It follows Norwegian black metal band Mayhem whose new singer (played by Jack Kilmer) goes by the name “Dead” … and then he actually kills himself. Fun! The very dark comedy stars Rory Culkin, Emory Cohen (Brooklyn), Sky Ferreira, and it’s pretty entertaining in the vein of the doc Anvil: The Story of Anvil. I’ve seen a lot of hilarious movies about the music biz with This is Spinal Tap and Tapeheads being two of my favorites, and I have a feeling this has the potential to become another cult classic that will be found on almost every band’s tour bus for years to come. In other words, significantly better than Polar.

The next film in the series of anthology films based on major cities around the world is BERLIN, I LOVE YOU (Saban Films), a series of ten fairly humorous and romantic shorts set in Berlin starring Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren, Luke Wilson, Mickey Rourke, Diego Luna, Jim Sturgess and many more.  The directors involved in this one are a mixed bag including German filmmakers like Til Schweiger and Mexico’s Fernando Eibecke (Duck Season) and even Glee star Dianna Agron making her directorial debut.  It opens in theaters as well as on VOD and digital HD, similar to most Saban Films movies.

From Berlin, we move to Paris as Veep star Matt Walsh stars in Archie Borders’ Under the Eiffel Tower (The Orchard), playing Stuart, a man dealing with a mid-life crisis after losing his job, so he tags along with his friends’ family on a vacation to Paris. After embarrassing himself, he heads off to the French countryside with “ladies’ man” Liam (Reid Scott, also from Veep) and cross paths with a vineyard owner, played by Judith Godrèche from The Overnight.

Following its world premiere at last year’s Fantasia Film Festival, Robert D. Krzykowski’s directorial debut The Man Who Killed Hitler and then the Big Foot (RLJE Films/Epic), starring Sam Elliot, will open in select theaters and on VOD/Digital HD Friday. In the comedy, Elliot plays Calvin Barr, a man who… well, read the title. It’s fairly descriptive. Calvin did indeed kill Adolf Hitler and now the government has called on him to kill Bigfoot before the legendary creature spreads a deadly plague to the populace. In other words, Elliot can expect another Oscar nomination this year. (it also stars Ron Livingston, Aidan Turner and Caitlin Fitzgerald.)

A long-running horror franchise returns with The Amityville Murders (Skyline Entertainment), written and directed by Daniel Farrands, who previous directed a History Channel documentary about the 1974 murders when Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed his entire family as they slept, saying that “voices” commanded him to commit murder. This dramatization stars John Robinson, Chelsea Ricketts, Diane Franklin (who appeared in Amityville II: The Possession!) and Paul Ben-Victor from various Netflix shows.

Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher’s doc The Gospel of Eureka (Kino Lorber), narrated by Mx Justin Vivian Bond, looks at the town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas in the Ozarks where pious Christians mingle with the queer community in a local gay bar, breaking down the divide we’re currently seeing in the country.

“NFL player turned actor” Thomas Q. Jones (Luke Cage) stars in Matthew Berkowitz’s A Violent Man (GVN Releasing), playing an unknown MMA fighter who beats the undefeated champ (played by actual MMA champ Chuck Lidell) at a local gym and gets a shot at a fight for the title until a female reporter covering the story is found dead with him as the main suspect.

Lastly, Emma Forrest wrote and made her directorial debut on Untogether (Freestyle) stars Jamie Dornan as a writer who has an affair with his teen prodigy (Jemima Kirke from Girls), while her real-life sister Lola Kirke (Mistress America) plays her younger sister, who has an affair with an older man (Ben Mendelsohn). 

STREAMING

One week after Dan Gilroy made his Netflix debut, Steven Soderbergh continues his run of low-budget indie films with HIGH FLYING BIRD, starring André Holland from Moonlight as sports agent Roy Burke, who is caught in a dispute between the pro basketball league with the players. It’s also written by Academy Award winner Tarell Alvin McCraney, who wrote Moonlight.

Also, the Netflix series One Day at a Time returns for its third season, while Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj also returns this Sunday.

REPERTORY

Before we get to the repertory regulars, I just want to share that BBQ Films, a fantastic group of film fanatics who create unique cinema events around films like Beetlejuice and Blade are kicking off their new program  GREEN SCREEN this Sunday, Feb. 10, with a screening of  David Chappelle’s 1998 movie Half Baked at the Chelsea Music Hall on West 15th, which will include pre-show entertainment, stand-up comedy and more.  I won’t go into details about the all-encompassing theme of Green Screen, but you can probably figure it out by clicking on the link. Next show is March 3 with Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which actually celebrates its 30thanniversary on February 17.

METROGRAPH (NYC):

I haven’t been to my favorite local theater in a while but hopefully that will change soon.

This weekend’s Late Nites at Metrograph offering is Luis Bunuel’s 1972 film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoise, while Playtime: Family Matinees  screens Tom Moore’s 2014 Oscar-nominated animated film Song of the Sea.

THE NEW BEVERLY  (L.A.):

Tarantino’s theater will show the Spencer Tracy-Katherine Hepburn film Woman of the Year  (1942) on Wednesday, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II  (1974)will screen from Weds. through Sat. with The Black Godfather (also 1974) screening at midnight on the same nights. The weekend matinee is the 1968 Carol Reed musical Oliver!   Sunday and Monday, the theater screens double features of Paul Wendko’s Battle of the Coral Sea (1959) with Angel Baby  (1961), as well as screening Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle Monday afternoon. Tuesday’s “Grindhouse” double feature is Shark!  (1969) and Shamus (1973), both starring the late great Burt Reynolds!Oh, and Tarantino’s own Oscar-nominated film Pulp Fiction (1994) will screen on Friday at midnight.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

Far Out in the 70s: A New Wave of Comedy, 1969 - 1979  celebrates one more full weekend with Albert Brooks’ Real Life (1979) on Thursday, as well as a double feature of Smile (1979) and Stay Hungry (1976), starring Jeff Bridges, Sallly Field and one Arnold Schwarzenegger. Friday is a double feature of The Late Show (1977) and Harry and Tonto  (1974), then Saturday sees a single screening of Peter Yates’ 1972 film The Hot Rock, plus a double feature of Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H with Brewster McCloud, both from 1970. Sunday’s amazing line-up is Burt Reynolds’ Smokey and the Bandit, Bread and Chocolate (1974), Hal Ashby’sThe Landlord (1970) and Shampoo (1975)… sadly the latter two aren’t a double feature. Monday is a double feature of Mike Nichols’ The Fortune (1975) and Jack Nicholson’s Going South (1978), and then the rest of the week is mainly repeats.

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Luchino Visconti: Cinematic Nobility kicks off on Thursday with Burt Lancaster in The Leopard  (1963)  and Ludwig (1973) on Sunday.  (There’s a Happy Death Day double feature with Happy Death Day 2 U on Saturday night but that’s not quite “repertory” even if it sounds cool.)

AERO  (LA):

The one and only Norman Jewison will be appearing in person for A Tribute to Norman Jewison with a number of double features through the weekend. On Friday night, there’s a double feature of Moonstruck  (1987) and …And Justice for All (1979), followed by The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! (1966) with Jewison joined by Carl Reiner and Eva Marie Saint, plus a separate screening of 1971’s Fiddler on the Roof and then on Sunday, there’s a double feature of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and The Cincinatti Kid  (1965).

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Actor Jeff Goldblum is getting the retrospective treatment with The Goldblum Variations featuring a wide variety of the actor’s work running through Feb. 23. Some of the highlights this weekend include The Big Chill  (1983), David Cronenberg’s The Fly  (1986), Invasion of the Body Snatchers  (1978) and Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou  (2004).

BAM CINEMATEK(NYC):

Beginning Wednesday, the Brooklyn Arts Museum (or at least that’s what I think BAM stands for) begins a series called Race, Sex & Cinema: The World of Marlon Riggs looking at the work of the filmmaker who brought a voice to gay black men, which includes a 30thanniversary screening of Tongues United, as well as his documentaries Ethnic Notions  (1986) and Color Adustment (1992) as well as more, including a screening of  Barry Jenkins’ Oscar-winning Moonlight, which was inspired by Riggs’ work.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Weekend Classics: Early Godard  takes the weekend off, but Waverly Midnights: The Feds  shows one of my favorite Ridley Scott films, Hannibal, starring Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore.  Late Night Favorites screens Tom Hanks’ popular favorite Big (1988), directed by the late Penny Marshall.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART  (LA):

This Friday’s midnight movie is David Lynch’s Blue Velvet  (1986).

FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER(NYC):

Most of the Film Society’s repertory screenings this weekend are part of Film Comment Selects, including a rare screening of Jerry Schatzberg’s Honeysuckle Rose (1980) with Schatzberg in person for a QnA.

MOMA (NYC):

Modern Matinees: Sir Sidney Poitier screens 1962’s Pressure Point on Weds, the 1966 Western Duel at Diablo on Thursday and Paris Blues (1961) on Friday. Cinema of Trauma: The Films of Lee Chang-dong also continues through Saturday with 1999’s Peppermint Candy on Friday afternoon and Lee’s latest Burningon Saturday night.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

MOMI begins its latest retrospective series Poets of Pandaemonium: The Cinema of Derek Jarman and Humphrey Jennings  with Jarman’s 1993 film Blue (paired with the short Listen to Britain) on Friday, 1985’s Angelic Conversation andThe Last of England  (1987) on Saturday and In the Shadow of the Sun  (1981) with The Birth of the Robot on Sunday. It runs this weekend and next. Also, See It Big! Costumes by Edith Head (which started last week) continues this weekend with Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) on Saturday and To Each His Own  (1946), The Heiress  (1949) and Roman Holiday  (1953) on Sunday.

That’s it for this week, but time-permitting, I’ll write something about the new movies coming out next week, which includes the sequel Happy Death Day 2 U, the Manga adaptation Alita: Battle Angeland the rom-com Isn’t It Romantic?

[simplesights]

Chamberlin’s Arguments Against Marx: That Hold Up Today

NOTE: After rereading this post I put up, I find that it is very biased and untrue in many aspects... I will have to return to this later and see what I was thinking I agreed with when I originally posted it... but honestly a lot of it is libertarian hogwash. William Henry Chamberlin (1897-1969) was a frequent contributor to The Freeman. Author of the Russian Revolution and numerous other books and articles on world affairs, he was uniquely qualified to discuss Marxian errors by having lived and traveled where such mistakes are obvious.      It is especially timely to review what Chamberlin reported more than twenty-five years ago to be some of the mistakes of Marx. This article is reprinted from the May 1956 Freeman.

“The evil that men do lives after them.” This maxim applies with singular force to the work of Karl Marx. The life of this apostle of socialism, communism, and class war was spent, for the most part, in obscure and sometimes squalid poverty. Marx was unable to make even a humble living as a writer and journalist; he had no other trade or profession. He would probably have had to go on poor relief, in his time less generous in England than it is now, if it had not been for handouts from his disciple and collaborator, Friedrich Engels, who enjoyed the advantage of having a successful capitalist father.

Marx’s record of political achievement at the time of his death seemed quite sterile. Because, in a moment of bravado, he renounced Prussian citizenship, he was unable to go to Germany or take any intimate part in the German socialist movement. He played no role in English politics.

To put it mildly, Marx was not a mellow or lovable character. His habits of excommunicating from the socialist movement everyone who disagreed with him kept his circle of friends very limited.

There is an abundance of historical evidence for Max Eastman’s caustic profile of Marx in Reflections on the Failure of Socialism:

“If he ever performed a generous act, it is not to be found in the record. He was a totally undisciplined, vain, slovenly, and egotistical spoiled child. He was ready at the drop of a hat with spiteful hate. He could be devious, disloyal, snobbish, anti-Semitic, anti-Negro. He was by habit a sponge, an intriguer, a tyrannical bigot who would rather wreck his party than see it succeed under another leader.

But if there were few mourners, literally or figuratively, at the grave of Marx the man, the idea of Marxism, the vision of a world in which the proletariat, oppressed by capitalism, was to become the architect of new millennial order, marched from success to success.

Before World War I Marx was revered as the founding father of the socialist parties which had sprung up in most European countries. Because a Russian genius of revolutionary action, Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin, swallowed Marx’s ideas whole without conscious reservation, Marxism became the creed of the new communist regime in Russia.

This regime, which has never wavered in its belief that someday its power will encompass the entire world, represents a revolt against all the values of Western civilization, against religion and the moral law, against civil and personal liberties, against the right to own property, which is one of the first and most indispensable of human liberties. After World War II communism, the offspring of Marxist teaching, extended its dominion over China, over the countries of Eastern Europe, so that today [1956] it has been imposed as a dogmatic faith on more than one third of the population of the world.

And the influence of Marx is by no means restricted to nations under communist rule. The appeal of Marxian ideas to European socialists, to the half-baked intellectuals of newly emancipated countries in Asia has been considerable. And, although the number of persons who can honestly claim to have read through with comprehension the dry and abstruse Capital must be small, the simplified version of Marxist theory presented in The Communist Manifesto and elsewhere possesses strong psychological appeal.

Marx Sets the Proletariat Against the Bourgeoisie

Marx professed to know all the answers, to offer a complete explanation of human activity on the basis of historic materialism. In the Marxian scheme there is a hero, the proletariat, a villain, the bourgeoisie; and the hero is represented as a certain ultimate winner. There is a vision of revolutionary victory that will transform the conditions of human existence and usher in a millennium, of the nature of which, to be sure, Marx offers few and vague hints. To trusting minds which accept Marx’s premises and assumptions without question there comes an intoxicating sense of being in step with history, of professing a creed that is based on infallible science.

But it is just this myth of infallibility that is the Achilles’ Heel of Marx as a thinker, of Marxism as a system. An examination of the works of Marx and his collaborator Engels reveals ten big mistakes, of which some are so fundamental that they completely discredit, as a preview of the future, the whole superstructure of faith in capitalist misery and doom, and socialist prosperity and triumph, which Marx laboriously reared on a foundation of Hegelian metaphysics and minute research in government reports on the seamy sides of early British capitalism. (#1) The “dictatorship of the proletariat” is a just and feasible form of government. This is based on two false assumptions: that the “proletariat,” or industrial working class, has some kind of divine right to rule and that governing power can be directly exercised by this group of the population. Both are wrong. Marx never clearly explained why the proletariat, for which he foresaw increasing poverty and degradation, would be qualified to rule. And Soviet experience and Red Chinese experience offer the clearest proofs that dictatorships of the proletariat, in theory, become ruthless dictatorship over the proletariat, in practice. Absolute power in communist states is exercised not by workers in factories, but by bureaucrats, of whom some have never done any manual work; others have long ceased to do any. (#2) Under socialism the state will “wither away.” This grows out of Marx’s belief that the state is an instrument for the suppression of one class by another. In the classless society of socialism, therefore, there will be no need for the state. Events have played havoc with this theory. Nowhere is the state more powerful, more arbitrary, more of a universal policeman, snooper, and interventionist than in the Soviet Union. Yet it is here that the new regime has abolished private property in means of production, thereby, according to Marx, inaugurating a classless society. One is left to choose between two alternative conclusions. Either the Marxist theory of the state as an instrument of class rule is a humbug or the kind of class rule that prevails in the Soviet Union must be uncommonly crude and ruthless. (#3) All ideas, all forms of intellectual and artistic expression are a mere reflection of the material interests of the class in power. This conception is expressed repeatedly in Marx’s writings, notably in German Ideology, where he writes: “The class which has the dominant material power in society is at the same time the dominant spiritual power . . . . The dominant ideas are nothing but the ideal expression of material conditions.” One of the few wisecracks associated with the name of Marx is that the Church of England would rather give up all its Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith than one thirty-ninth of its possessions. The historical record shows that this interpretation of human conduct is crudely one-sided and inaccurate. Men die far more often for ideas than for material interests. The communist victory in Russia was not due to the fact that material conditions for the masses became better after the Bolshevik Revolution. This was emphatically not the case. What did happen was that the organized, disciplined, communist minority acquired an iron grip on the masses by its double weapon of propaganda and terror, kept passions of class hatred and class envy at the boiling point, whipped laggards into line by ruthless regimentation, and thereby preserved their regime through years of civil war and famine. Sometimes the materialistic interpretation of history becomes sheer absurdity, as in the case of a Moscow musical announcer, whom I once heard offer the following bit:

We will now hear Glinka’s overture, “Rusian and Ludmila.” This is a cheerful, buoyant piece of work, because when it was written Russian trade capitalism was expanding and conquering markets in the Near East.

It would seem that, in order to carry any semblance of plausibility, this should have been accompanied by proof that Glinka owned stock in the expanding companies—a highly improbable contingency, if one considers the economic status of Russian musicians. (#4) Production depends on class antagonism. To quote Marx, in The Poverty of Philosophy:

From the very moment in which civilization begins, production begins to be based on the antagonism of orders, of states, of classes, and finally on the antagonism between capital and labor. No antagonism, no progress. This is the law which civilization has followed down to our own day. Like many of Marx’s “laws,” this is a mere unsupported assertion of a pedantic dogma. No proof is adduced. The greatest human constructive achievements, the cathedrals of the Middle Ages, the great dams and skyscrapers of modern times, are the fruit of cooperation, not of antagonism. (#5) Nationalism is a negligible force. Marx and Engels lived in an age of rising national consciousness. Conflicting nationalism was the strongest force that let loose World War I. Yet in all their’ writings the attitude toward nationalism is one of contemptuous deprecation. As Isaiah Berlin, a fairly sympathetic biographer, writes (Karl Marx, p. 188): He consistently underestimated the force of rising nationalism; his hatred of all separatism, as of all institutions founded on some purely traditional or emotional basis, blinded him to their actual influence. (#6) The worker is cheated because the employer, instead of paying him the full value of his work, holds out on him profit, interest, and rent. Or, as Marx himself states his theory of “surplus value” (Capital, Modern Library edition, p. 585):

All surplus value, whatever particular form (profit, interest, or rent) it may subsequently crystalize into, is in substance the materialization of unpaid labor. The secret of the self- expansion of capital resolves itself into having the disposal of a definite quantity of other people’s unpaid labor.

It requires little reflection or research to realize that “surplus value,” like many other Marxian catch phrases, is a myth. How, under any economic system—capitalist, fascist, socialist, communist—could industry expand and provide more goods and more jobs for more people if capita] were not withheld from immediate payment to finance future construction? Perhaps the best refutation of Marx’s rabble-rousing myth that surplus value is a peculiar dirty trick of capitalists, practiced against workers, is that the extraction of what might be called surplus value is practiced on a gigantic scale in the Soviet Union through the medium of a sales or turnover tax that often exceeds 100 per cent. A Classic Failure It is amazing that, with such a demonstrable record of failure to understand either the world in which he was living or the direction in which that world was going, Marx should be hailed as an unerring prophet. The truth is that there is nothing remotely scientific about Marx’s socialism. He started with a set of dogmatic a priori assumptions and then scratched around in the British Museum for facts that would seem to bear out these assumptions. Like the Emperor in the fairy tale, Marxism, for all its ponderous appearances, really has no clothes on when examined in light of realities, in Marx’s time and in our own. His supposedly infallible system of interpreting history and life is riddled with mistakes, of which the foregoing ten are only the most obvious and the most glaring.” Points and article from: https://fee.org/articles/some-mistakes-of-marx/

[airadam]

Episode 127 : Stand Strong

"...so instead, you prefer to be lied to."

- Hutch

This feels very much like the stance needed at the end of a rough year on many fronts. Still, we're here on the cusp of a new decade, but we play out this one with a (mostly) wintry selection from both sides of the Atlantic which will take you into 2020 in fine style. Thanks for your continued support - I hope to continue bringing you quality material!

Twitter : @airadam13

Playlist/Notes

Bugzy Malone : December

Thought I'd take the opportunity to play this new track while it's still this month! Manchester's Bugzy Malone is primarily associated with the grime scene, but this single leans into contemporary straightforward Hip-Hop as much as anything else. When you hear his voice there's no mistaking where he's from, and this new release has him reflecting on how things have worked out for him after years of work as an independent artist. The heavy beat by Krunchie and Zdot sounds like the darkest timeline of a Xmas advert - good work!

[El-P] Run The Jewels : Twin Hype Back (Instrumental)

I only picked up the instrumental version of the first Run The Jewels LP this month, but it's worth having for the DJs, and would probably make a solid contribution to a gym playlist as well!

Dr. Yen Lo : Day 70

It's been well over 30 episodes since we last played anything this LP, so I thought it was due a revisit. Ka on the mic and Preservation on the low-key production is perfect for this time of year, cold and wintry. Take time to listen properly to Ka's lyrics - always an absolute treat.

DJ Jazzy Jeff : The Government's Dead

Jazzy Jeff's "M3" LP definitely seems to have passed most people by, but it's definitely worth checking - a very different vibe to his previous albums, but still very well done. The band recruited and produced by Jeff cook up a jazzy groove which starts off sparse and light and then builds into a crashing wave. Lyrics come from "The Trinity" - Rhymefest (an early writer for Kanye), Uhmeer (Jeff's son), and Dayne Jordan - in multiple forms, from spoken word to rhyme to song.

Phonte : Euphorium (Back To The Light)

Little Brother's return this year with "May The Lord Watch" is an essential, but so was the most recent Phonte solo, "No News Is Good News". This was a beautiful closing track to the album, with Phonte starting off displaying a little of his singing skill before switching up to spit some bars - very much a reflection of him feeling free to be his whole self, as he says. Abjo out of San Diego provides the production, which feels faster than the 70-ish BPM it is while also having a lighter feel than much of the 140 BPM stuff that we hear now.

Curren$y & Harry Fraud ft. Styles P : W.O.H.

This sample usage by Harry Fraud is an absolute gem. Kind of in keeping with the original track, it's the soundtrack to a mental image of someone who needs to get out of town in a hurry. Curren$y stunts on everyone in his trademark fashion, but also brings in Styles from The LOX for a little extra flavour on the closing verse. Definitely my favourite track from the "Cigarette Boats" EP, and 100% perfect nighttime driving music.

Jan Hammer : Airport Swap

This track and the previous one almost got saved for a future planned podcast, but hey...there are always more records! Taken from the "Miami Vice" TV series soundtrack (the episode "No Exit"), this is classic 80s Jan Hammer. Production trivia - those electric guitar sounds are all synthesized, no strings in sight.

Gang Starr ft. Q-Tip : Hit Man

I was making some mad faces the first time I heard this track - DJ Premier absolutely put his whole foot into this beat. Straight gangster (appropriate) material from the biggest surprise release of the decade, "One of the Best Yet". Guru's monotone is so clean on here, on something not a million miles away from "Sabotage" on "The Ownerz", and the hook is provided by none other than Q-Tip from Tribe, doing his best gun sounds!

Blak Twang : 19 Long Time

The title track of the first Blak Twang album to get a proper release (the long-lost "Dettwork SouthEast" didn't surface until 2014 for most of us), this 1998 cut is undeniable. Tony Rotton looks back at all the Hip-Hop experiences that brought him to that point, with references that UK heads of a certain age can relate to. The beat is quality, well-mixed with plenty of bump for your speakers. Random trivia : it's odd to think that since this was released, both of the veteran travel agents mentioned in the third verse have gone out of business...

Raekwon ft. Havoc : King of Kings

I guess the title makes it seasonal? Anyway, this is one of the gems on the somewhat patchy third album from Raekwon, "The Lex Diamond Story". I'd assumed that Havoc had done the production here, but on checking the credits I find it's actually Crummie Beats, who's worked with Illa Ghee and Sean P amongst others. Havoc and Rae are experts in delivering that dark NYC street vibe, so there's no surprises when it comes to the bars.

MED, Blu, and Madlib ft. Dâm-Funk and DJ Romes : Peroxide

I only got up on this one recently - a defining aspect of the past decade for me has been such a deluge of music releases that it's common for great records to pass you by for years at a time! 2015's "Bad Neighbor" LP is a collaboration with the widely-popular Madlib on production and MED and Blu on the mic, but this particular track features original Lootpack member DJ Romes on the cuts and the LA retro god Dâm-Funk giving the tune some electronic flavour. 

Ilajide : Breakin (Instrumental)

This one kind of crept up, a quiet banger from the "Five Week Heet IV" release. If you're a regular listener then you're probably well up on the brilliant producer from Clear Soul Forces, but if not - search out his stuff!

The Coup ft. Del Tha Funkee Homosapien : The Repo Man Sings For You

I feel like there's a replayed melody here during the verse and sung on the hook that I should recognise, but just can't put my finger on! It sounds like something that would be on the soundtrack for a Hip-Hop retelling of "A Christmas Carol", with the repo man (played by Del) heartlessly and gleefully confiscating goods from a debtor, and Boots (also the producer) playing the put-upon poor worker who is his victim. This is a highlight on the excellent "Steal This Album" which is also an appropriate track to play at a time when Black people are often omitted in the discussion of who is "working class".

Big Hutch : True Lies

Very apt in our seemingly post-truth world... This is a pick from the first solo album by Hutch (aka Cold 187um of Above The Law), 1999's "Executive Decisions". Self-produced as you'd expect from the man who arguably invented G-Funk, it's an ominous one which in my opinion would just have been elevated by slightly better mastering. 

Tobi Sunmola : Good Guys Don't Survive

Tobi is a Nigerian-born, Manchester-based MC I learned about from Dubbul O (who gives him a shout here). This man is getting a lot of respect from those in the know, so get yourself up to speed with the title track from his 2018 EP. The drum track that underpins the beat is perfection, and Tobi's voice slices through with ease, allowing us to appreciate his writing.

Frameworks ft. Rioghnach Connolly : Calm The Still Night

Rioghnach is an incredibly talented musician, and someone I came across early in my time on the Manchester music circuit, with both of us at the same open mic/jam sessions. She's gone from strength to strength since then, and she combines here with another star of the local scene, producer Frameworks. This is a lovely chilled-out song, deftly constructed, which was released both as a single from the "Tides" LP and also on one of the First Word Records compilations.

Mudstone : The Tourist

Another quality beat from the "Return of the Tec" beat tape, courtesy of The Beat Tape Project. I couldn't dig up much (no pun intended) in the way of background on Mudstone, but s/he does their thing here.

The Honey Drippers : Impeach The President

I couldn't not play this, with only the third ever impeachment of a US president underway! As you'd almost certainly twig from the sound, this funk classic was released during the Watergate scandal - when Nixon, of course, managed to avoid actual impeachment by resigning first. Roy C of "Shotgun Wedding" fame is the man on the lead vocal, with his lyrics being timeless enough to fit the current indictee perfectly. One of the most often sampled records in all of Hip-Hop, this track gives us some of the best drums ever to enter an SP or an MPC! Not bad work for a band of high school students from Queens :)

Please remember to support the artists you like! The purpose of putting the podcast out and providing the full tracklist is to try and give some light, so do use the songs on each episode as a starting point to search out more material. If you have Spotify in your country it's a great way to explore, but otherwise there's always Youtube and the like. Seeing your favourite artists live is the best way to put money in their pockets, and buy the vinyl/CDs/downloads of the stuff you like the most!

Check out this episode!

[biofunmy]

How Do We Sing Our ABC’s? L-M-N-O-Please Not Like That

This week, the people of the internet rallied to the defense of the elemenopee.

That’s the letters L, M, N, O and P of the English alphabet, which, if you sing them in the alphabet song, tumble together in a brisk legato that makes the letters hard to distinguish from one another.

In musical notation, legato calls for a series of notes to be played or sung smoothly together. That is how a lot of people sing their ABC’s from the 12th letter through the 16th — with one note change, and no pause for air.

But in one version of the song, that legato is eliminated so that each letter has space to breathe. When you hear it for the first time, it can be jarring — the bar that typically ends with P seems to stop short at N, and the timing and rhyming are thrown into disarray after that.

So when a comedian shared that version on Twitter on Friday, calling it “life ruining,” many people were similarly aghast.

The comedian, Noah Garfinkel, has written for shows including “New Girl,” “Abby’s” and “Single Parents.” (You might also know him from “The Good Place.” He didn’t write for the show, but it used a portrait of Mr. Garfinkel to portray the young Doug Forcett, a character who guessed the truth about the afterlife while tripping on mushrooms.)

In an email, Mr. Garfinkel called the L-M-N-O-P sequence “the highlight of the original song.” “In the new version,” he said, “you’re led to the same comforting place you’re used to all the way through the letter K, only to be suddenly thrown into the rhythmic equivalent of a roller rink bathroom.”

Jokes about the altered alphabet song came quickly on social media. There were disappointed GIFs everywhere.

“I will not sit idly by, while the media conveniently pivot to more revisionist history!” Nic Nemeth, a comedian and WWE wrestler, said on Twitter. “What’s next, the twinkle from a star?”

But this version of the alphabet song is not new. The clip shared by Mr. Garfinkel came from a YouTube video posted by the account Dream English Kids in 2012. The protagonist of these videos, a man named Matt, has performed the song the other way, too.

In an email on Wednesday, Matt declined to share his last name but said that he had been making educational songs and videos for more than a decade, and that they had been used in classrooms around the world.

He said the idea for the altered alphabet song came from a book about teaching English to children.

“The book said that if you can find an ABC song with a slow L-M-N-O-P, it is very helpful for young learners to recognize each letter,” he said. “As a musician and teacher, I decided to make my own version. That was about 10 years ago.”

The melody of the alphabet song, at least, has been fairly consistent for centuries. It is often attributed to Mozart, but he didn’t compose the original tune — only variations on it. The song has existed since at least 1761, when it was published without lyrics in a French book of music called “Les Amusements d’une Heure et Demy.”

“Mozart also had nothing to do with words,” said Bob Kosovsky, the curator of rare books and manuscripts for the music division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. “His setting is for piano.”

Over the years, the melody has been linked to lyrics about a child who wanted to eat sweets, a woman falling in love, a twinkling star, and a black sheep with three bags’ worth of wool.

Mr. Kosovsky called the Twitter debates over the alphabet song a “tempest in a teapot,” but he also weighed in on the version shared by Mr. Garfinkel.

“It violates the rhyme created by the letter G rhyming with the letter P,” he said. “Without that, it’s much more difficult to remember the words.”

Catherine McBride, a developmental psychologist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and an expert in early literacy, agreed that the classic version of the alphabet song benefited from the “e” sound at the end of each line.

“One of the most important aspects of children’s early learning is that children love rhymes,” she said in an email. She added that the fast L-M-N-O-P was well placed, highlighting a middle section of the alphabet that children might otherwise forget.

“It is true that some children memorize L-M-N-O-P as one lump,” Dr. McBride added. “But I don’t think this is a problem. It is a good way for them to pronounce a lot of information (letters) quickly.”

But Matt said the altered version could be a useful alternative.

“I am not trying to change or make the new ABC song,” he said. “I simply made another version that I hope is helpful for children to learn the letters, and be able to pronounce them well. This is particularly helpful for students in countries where the English alphabet is not regularly used.”

Mr. Garfinkel acknowledged that the altered version of the song could be useful for some educators.

“A lot of people have responded saying that the new version is actually way more effective in teaching the alphabet,” he said. “And that’s probably true, so it’s a good thing. But I’m already pretty decent at the alphabet, so it’s not doing a lot for me.”

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[joshterry]

this afternoon i grabbed coffee w/ a college student that my old boss asked me to meet with. she graduates soon & was in town interviewing for jobs at various music companies. my old boss sees some promise in her, so as a favor to him, i told him i’d be happy to meet with her. the meet up couldn’t have came with worse timing. i’ve been in 3 weeks of utter hell at work, stressing out over everything, overreacting, internalizing, not being the best version of myself and in general just being mentally and physically exhausted. but the coffee meeting was happening whether i wanted it to or not because i’m a grown man who’s not in charge of my own schedule and my assistant had already cancelled a bunch of other things i wanted to avoid this week and i wasn’t going to let my old boss down, so i needed to man up and drink coffee with this freakin' college kid.

as with most coffee meetings with strangers, they start with small talk and pleasantries, the stranger tells you a little about themselves and then they finally get to the actual point of the conversation. now usually i’m quite ninja like in my ability to talk about anything but myself. i’ve learned over time most people if given the opportunity will go on and on about everything in their life, and so when the topic turns to me, i can easily skirt around it and get back to focusing on them. in these types of meetings though, i can’t escape quite so easily, because i’m actually the subject they want to talk about.

she asked about my job, how i got my start & what steps i took along the way. i talk to a lot of college kids and these questions come up quite often. jenn from my office has heard me tell this story probably 9 million times in the 3 years she’s worked for me. she often jokes and says it’s hard for her not to roll her eyes almost every time i tell someone my background story, because i always tell it just a little bit differently. part of the reason for that is i have a terrible memory & the other part is when i’m caught up in telling a story i can tend to embellish a bit for the purpose of really driving a point home. i’m sure i often make out that i was some kinda refugee who walked miles to school in the snow with no shoes on, starved to death because i was so poor and suffered in the same ways the cavemen did before they discovered fire. in fairness, jenn’s right, i have a penchant for storytelling and sometimes remember the exact details a little fuzzier than they really happened. kinda like that guy adnan on the podcast “serial" who’s in jail for killing his ex girlfriend. to hear him tell it he’s so innocent and was framed, he had an idiot lawyer and was just a kid. he couldn’t remember what he was doing the day she died, probably because if you asked me he killed her, but because some white lady who worked for this american life reports on it, now everyone thinks he’s innocent even though it’s obvious to me (and america if you’re truly honest with yourselves) that adnan killed that dang girl. i mean come on, just listen to the podcast, i know you have, it was like the most listened to podcast in the world. and you’re telling me that sucker can’t even remember if he was playing nintendo the day his ex girlfriend was found dead, come on. nope he doesn’t remember crap because probably he killed her and also because it makes for a better prison story if you think he’s innocent. so i guess you can say i’m kinda like that dude from serial who killed that girl but can’t remember quite how he killed that girl so instead he says he can’t remember and you think he’s innocent because sarah koenig from this american life will make you believe anything because SHE knows how to tell a good story. i think i’ve made my point. you’re welcome. 

anyways, keep me on track people. i get lost sometimes.

anyway i answered her questions. my story can be inspiring and she seemed inspired. go me. so she asked the follow up which always comes next. it’s the question every college kid who’s not sure if they’re doing the right thing right before they graduate always asks me in hopes that i will give them some sort of reassurance as someone who “did it” so they feel at peace with their choice.

“if when you were my age you knew what you know now about where your career would take you, would you have still chosen to go down this career path?”

had she asked me this question on any other week, in any other month, in any other year, i would have had a stock answer that reassured her, challenged her or maybe even made her think twice if she was serious enough about this. today i was just honest. 

now i’m paraphrasing here, because lord knows i can’t remember what i said. right jenn? but i think i said this.

“to be honest, when i was your age there wasn’t anything a 36 year old goober like me was going to say that was going to convince me i wasn’t right. so here goes. you want to know if i would recommend what i’m doing now to be something you should dedicate the next 14 years of your life to doing. ha. well let’s see, the past 3 weeks i’ve been an absolute lunatic. i’ve bitten off people’s heads, i’ve been short with people, i’ve felt overextended, not heard, overwhelmed, mean, negative and like a really really bad version of myself. i’ve wanted naps, soooo many naps, i even wanted to be deaf one day so i wouldn’t have to hear anyone complain or hear their stupid ideas that i already thought about 3 days before they asked them because i’m that good at this that i’m like ms. cleo the psychic reader when it comes to people feeling sorry for themselves and needing to be mad at someone for something they did to themselves. literally on tuesday in front of my entire staff i almost had a nervous breakdown and talked some nonsense about how out of control i felt and now i think they all think i’m a crazy person and maybe they’re be right. so yea at 22 i had no clue that my last 3 weeks would have been like this, and if my stupid 22 year old self would have even had that thought i probably would have pursued something that paid me better, gave me more vacation time, or benefits, or maybe  i would have just spent more time trying to talk to pretty rich girls so i could be a stay at home dad with no kids so not really a dad but like a bum who’s wife’s rich and maybe even considered adopting a pet if she wanted that and i dont’ even like pets but if my rich wife liked them i’d like ‘em or heck i’d even get some stupid hobby like flying kites like those dumb people that fly kites seem to enjoy…”

immediately the poor college kid's eyes got huge & i could tell she instantly regretted asking me her unoriginal question. she was probably thinking “what on earth did i just get myself into, this coffee isn’t even that good." so i continued.

“but here’s what i do remember about being 22. everyone that was older than me told me not to get into this. they told me this profession was very trying, that i’d make tons of sacrifices that might not be worth it. they told me that most days i’d feel more defeated than successful. they told me that no job was permanent. they told me that i’d have more self doubt after doing this job than confidence. and they told me that most people that do this for a living are drug addicts or idiots or both. so i can tell you this as a 36 year old that now appreciates what all those older people told me when i was your age. they were right.”

again not the answer the poor kid was looking for. she was no longer smiling like she was when she originally asked this question before i started my ramble. instead i think she was looking for the exit signs in this coffeeshop so she could run the hell out. 

“…but all those people who were in their 30’s & 40’s that were telling me all of that, knew that i was going to do this anyway. they knew this is what i wanted, and they knew they weren’t going to talk me out of anything. and you know what, even though i’ve had 3 of the most trying weeks of my life & have felt like a complete lunatic & useless person to everyone around me, i would not trade any of the ups & downs, the highs or the stresses that i’ve had in 14 years for anything. because it all happened how it should have for me. i couldn’t have imagined the successes i’ve had at such a young age or seeing the things i’ve seen. i never thought i’d live in nashville - the honky tonk country music line dancing capitol of the world. but i love it here. i never would have thought at my age now i’d be an entrepreneur again and not working for someone who gives me benefits and a 401k. but i adore what i do now, even when it drives me crazy. if i’ve learned one thing in my time working with music, it’s that i now know who i am as a person and i’m pretty unapologetic about it most days. this job has tested me and pushed me. it’s taught me patience, empathy and even tolerance, and i’m anything but all three of those things. it’s taught me that no matter how bad it gets, i’ll get through it. and it’s taught me that if i surround myself with good people and we all trust and believe in one another and we stay the course, we can create some really amazing moments and do some special things together. every day i get to go into work, no matter what craziness is going on around me and i get to talk to two of my favorite people, two people i’ve given chances and believed in, they both work for me, they both don’t know who master p is - i bet you don’t know who master p is either do you, but those two non-master p knowing fools do more for me and my business than i can ever thank them enough for. they’re smart, and they’re driven, and self motivated & they’ve taken something i created and are making it their own and because of them what i’m doing now is far better than i could have ever imagined on my own. i get to talk to bands that i love, who’s music inspires me, who i consider friends and who also believe in me and i get to help them achieve their dreams and goals and hopefully build a business that supports the art they want to make for the people they want to make it for. and i get to do all of that without anyone telling me what i can and can’t do. my job and my life are focused around two things - doing things that i think matter and doing them with people that i think matter. that’s it. and at 22 years of age, i didn’t have the foresight to think any of that was even possible, because i didn’t think a dumb kid from south carolina could be that lucky. so if you want me to tell you what you should do with your life, i’d tell you to stop listening to some 36 year old guy who went crazy these past 3 weeks and just wasted an hour of your time and learn to trust your own gut, because i think you know what you wanna do, and whether i tell you to do it or not, you’re going to do what feels right in your heart, and secretly if i’ve made my point that’s what i’m trying to tell you anyway.”

her eyes were still big, but she was now smiling.

i got up, thanked her for her time and said “i gotta go back to work and be crazy again."

as i walked in the door & sat down, i apologized again to my staff for how i’ve been acting the past 3 weeks. they laughed, jenn probably rolled her eyes (again) and we just continued to do our jobs. because at the end of the day, they support me and they motivate me, and i think somehow i might do a small bit of that for them too. if i’m honest, i think most times they don’t think i’m as crazy as i think i am. and that’s why they’re my people and that’s why i’m glad that at 22 i didn’t listen to nobody but myself, because had i listened to anyone else, i wouldn’t have what i have today. and i hope for that girl’s sake, 14 years from now she feels even a fraction of the way i do tonight. i also hope she can admit to herself that adnan killed that girl, because he did, and i’m not going to listen to you either if you don’t believe me.

[iamnotthedog]

WAUSAU AND MORRISON: SPRING 1993

After Jim graduated from high school, he moved to Normal, Illinois, to follow in Jeni’s footsteps and attend Illinois State University. Unlike Jeni, though—Jeni who had a perfect grade point average in high school, Jeni who had starred in plays and musicals, Jeni who never snorted coke or smoked weed or drank or had sex on the railroad tracks—Jim didn’t make it very far at Illinois State. He was a fiercely intelligent young man, for sure, but he wasn’t a “student” in the sense that Jeni was, and he hadn’t been for years. He was, first and foremost, a musician. He played the drums better than just about any kid in the state of Illinois, and he wanted nothing more than to drink booze and smoke weed and cigarettes while listening to some loud guitars and banging on his kit all hours of the day. Jim dropped out of I.S.U. after only a semester, and the next we heard of him he was living at Jack and Mary’s place in Wausau.

I remember driving up to Wausau once with Mom and Don to watch Jim play in a band. Jack and Mary were there, and I think maybe some aunts and uncles—some of Mom’s brothers and sisters, who all lived in Wisconsin, where they had all been born and raised. I remember Jim looking sort of embarrassed most of the night, and acting kind of distant. He looked different, too. Out of character. He still had his long hair and his dorky wire-framed glasses and he was still pale as a nun, but he was a little bigger in the face, and he was wearing a bandana around his head. He looked less like a skinny, rural Illinois punk and more like a northern Wisconsin rocker-type—like a guy who ate mostly cheese and beef and white bread and grew sideburns and rode a Harley Davidson to the corner pub every night. It was around 1993. The guys in Jim’s band wore leather jackets and jeans, and they played some originals, then covered some songs that I had heard on the radio a bunch. I remember Jim singing the Black Crowes’ version of “Hard to Handle.” Everyone was chain smoking inside. I was only twelve, so I got lots of comments like “How many beers have you had tonight, little buddy?” and I had a lot of large men with sweet-smelling breath spitting words in my face—saying things like “I bet you get all the ladies.” I loved the attention, and I loved seeing Mom and Don get all loose and slurry after a few drinks. I had a blast.

Jim, however, didn’t look to be having much of a blast. He played and seemed to have fun on stage, but rolled his eyes every time Jack made a loud, embarrassing comment, or Mom yelled “You’re so good, Jimmy!” or another ridiculous and motherly thing like that. After the show, I told him he was great, and he looked me dead in the eyes and said “Thanks, brother.” Then he went outside to load out his gear and avoid the rest of the family while they all got drunk and hugged and made hushed judgmental comments to one other about one another, as families do.

After that trip, we heard from Jim that he was moving to Arizona to play in another band with some friends. I listened in on Mom and Don’s conversations about it late on one of those nights when I was supposed to be doing homework or reading or going to sleep, and they were sitting at the kitchen table and eating ice cream right out of the half-gallon tub and talking about their kids. They seemed happy for Jim that he was moving west, but Mom also seemed to think that the move just solidified the fact that he was never going to go back to school. Don agreed, and said Jim was “taking the hard route.” I wasn’t really sure what that meant. I didn’t see how any route one chose to take in life could be any harder than any other route. I was only twelve, but I was starting to understand that life was pretty tough no matter what a person decided to do with it.

Right around the same time, we got some big news from Jeni, who was finishing up at I.S.U. and had been applying for internships and jobs all over the world. Her application had been accepted to the Peace Corps, and she had passed all the screening tests and the medical examinations and all of that. Jeni was 22 years old and was on her way to Africa. She was moving to Kenya to teach English to kids who only knew Swahili, so those kids could move to an English-speaking country and “make a difference” or whatever.1

Hearing that Jeni was going to Africa absolutely blew me out of the water. I was young enough at that time that I hadn’t really had a chance to get to know Jeni yet on any sort of a personal level. I was far too young for her to have any desire to really open up to me—not to mention the fact that I was her little brother—so I knew nothing about the young adult version of her. To me she was still just sweet, innocent Jeni who was nice most of the time, but whose buttons I occasionally pushed, and whom I occasionally caught hell from. I had never seen her outside of the nest, and all I knew of her life outside of the nest was that she called home every weekend and talked to Mom for an hour or two. Because of this, I couldn’t picture her doing anything on her own, really. But what did I know? I was twelve.

Jeni and Jim, unlike Jeni and I, were very close. They fought a lot, too, but they also talked a lot more than Jeni and I did. I think that deep down there was a little jealousy in me because of that. Jeni and Jim were only two years apart; I was the young one who was going to be stuck at home when they both moved on with their lives. And now they were both most definitely moving on with their lives. I was excited that they were getting out and experiencing the world—and excited that I was going to get to see first-hand pictures of Africa and hear stories of a place that I really had no concept of. But I also remember feeling like I was getting left behind.

The day Jeni left, we got in a fight. I was annoying her—I annoyed a lot of people when I was that age—and she told me to leave her alone. I called her a bitch—a word I had heard thrown around at school quite a bit—and she broke down crying. I could tell that she was really crying, and not just trying to get Mom to pay attention to her, which I wasn’t used to. It kind of freaked me out, so I ran into the other room, where Mom was sitting on her water bed with the dark brown mirrored headboard and the big navy blue quilt that Grandma Donalds had given us a long time ago. Mom was folding laundry—rolling up pairs of socks, folding Don’s Fruit of the Loom briefs into neat little squares. I asked her what was going on with Jeni, and she told me that my sister was really stressing out, and that she was about to do something that most people said was the hardest thing they had ever done in their lives. So I walked back into the living room, where Jeni was lying on our ugly paisley couch and crying into a pillow, and I sat on her and hugged her and said I was sorry. Then she sat up and hugged me back, and we sat there like that for a while and talked about some meaningless bullshit and cried, and it was the closest we had ever been since I was a baby that I could remember.

Then Jeni went out and sat in the backseat of the car that was stuffed to the roof with her luggage, and Mom threw one last suitcase into the trunk and got in the front passenger seat, and Don put WGN on the radio, then shifted the car into reverse and backed down the driveway, and Jeni was gone from our lives for two whole years.

I looked down at Adam, who was standing next to me and couldn’t have been more than five at the time, and like some sappy scene straight out of a goddamned Hollywood movie I said, “Well, buddy, it’s just us now.”

 This sounds negative, but it isn’t meant to be. Though I often question why it is that the United States sends volunteers around the world to teach English—an extremely arrogant and imperialist concept to me—Peace Corps volunteers are actually invited by their host countries; they aren’t an invasive species like, say, missionaries usually are. And they do so much more than just teach. They encourage critical thinking, and integrate issues like health education and environmental awareness into English, math, science, and other subjects. They offer their minds and bodies to small, isolated communities of peoples in need. And most importantly, simply by being culturally-sensitive, friendly, considerate, and hard-working people, Peace Corps volunteers can give people in third world countries all over the globe a good impression of Americans—something that is usually desperately needed. ↩︎

[m0rgansux]

SONG #1: Supercut - Lorde

1. How old were you when you heard this song for the first time?: It just came out this year so 22 because I probably heard it before my birthday

2. What album is it off of?: Melodrama

3. What genre is it?: Alternative 

4. What’s your favorite lyric from this song?: “Cause in my head, in my head, I do everything right / When you call I'll forgive and not fight / All the moments I play in the dark / Wild and fluorescent, come home to my heart”

5. Does it remind you of any certain person or event?: YEAH HOW RUDE

SONG #2: Modern Love - David Bowie

1. Which of your friends would most likely enjoy this song as much as you do?: Angelica would enjoy it because she could do a ballroom routine to it, and I’m sure any of my friends that like classic rock already like it 

2. Is this band your favorite, or at least one of your favorites?: No but I like him

3. What do you think this song is about?: MODERN LOVE LOL!!!!

4. Have you ever blasted this song in your car?: YEAH BOIIIIIIIIIII

5. Do you own it on CD?: No who owns CDs anymore 

SONG #3: Molly (feat. Brendon Urie) - Lil Dicky 1. What language is this song sung in?: English

2. Have you heard this song on the radio?: No

3. How did you discover this song?: I actually heard it on Songpop and realized it had Brendon so I downloaded it

4. Would you mind if this song was played at your wedding?: It...would not be appropriate...

5. Does this song have any cursing in it?: HELL YEAH

SONG #4: Paris - The Chainsmokers

1. How often do you listen to this song?: Idk whenever it comes on shuffle or the radio, so a couple times a week

2. Do you have it on any of your online playlists?: I’m literally using my favorite song playlist to do this survey

3. Does this song have a music video?: Probably but I never look up music videos

4. Is this a popular song from the band?: Ya it’s a single and it’s on the radio all the time

5. Is the band popular at all?: Right now ya!!!

SONG #5: Out of My League - Fitz and the Tantrums 

1. Have you seen this band live? If so, did they perform this song?: No

2. Is this a very well-known song? Was it played on the radio?: It was their first hit, and I hear it on the alternative radio station all the time

3. Do any of your friends like this song?: Idk man but my mom loves this band

4. If you could pair up one historical event with this song, what would you chose?: I............. the black plague why not 

5. Just going by the title, what do you think this song means?: It’s literally about being in love w someone that you think is too good for u

SONG #6: Clarity (feat. Foxes) - Zedd

1. How long have you been listening to this song?: Since it came out

2. Is this song from the band’s newer or older music?: I have no idea how long Zedd has made music srry  3. Ever heard this song on MTV/Fuse/etc.?: I have never watched any of those 

4. If you went up to a random person in the street and mentioned this song, what are the chances they’d know what song it is?: Like 75% probably???

5. Are the vocals male or female?: Female

SONG #7: Issues - Julia Michaels  1. What’s better in this song; the vocals or the actual music?: I like the vocals more but the music is p cool 

2. Do you have this song on your iPod/Zune/MP3 player/whatever?: I’m... using my phone for this survey 

3. Do you have this song downloaded onto your computer?: No

4. How old is the person who sings this?: She’s 23 wtf she’s a baby  5. What instruments are used in this song?: MAN IDK A LOT

SONG #8: ...We Belong Together - Mariah Carey :----)

1. What memories does this song bring back?: OH GOD 

2. Was this song produced earlier than 2005?: I think it was produced in 2005

3. Is this song leaning more towards rock or rap?:  Neither????

4. What’s a song that sounds similar to this (think of a band that sounds similar)?: Idk maybe a Beyonce song w a similar tempo

5. Do you own a band shirt of this band?: NO 

SONG #9: Stockholm Syndrome - One Direction 1. What mood does this song put you in?: PARTY DANCE MOOD 

2. Did you ever reference this song for a school paper or in your diary or anything?: What the fuck no

3. How can you relate to this song?: I don’t 

4. Do you know all the lyrics to it?: HELLLLLLLLL YEAHHHHHHHH 5. Who got you into the band that sings this song?: ME!!!!1

SONG #10: Into You - Ariana Grande  1. What country does the band who sings this originate from?: US

2. Ever heard this song live? How does it sound compared to the CD version?: I have never heard it live 

3. One instrument that really stands out in this song?: Ummmmmmm the guitar sure 

4. Can you play this song on any instruments? If so, which ones?: No

5. Do any of your family members know this song?: I don’t think so and I really hope not

[affairesasuivre]

Shugo Tokumaru gets his friends involved on new album ‘Toss’

A couple of months ago, Shugo Tokumaru released a video on YouTube that showed him preparing an elaborate meal from an unlikely set of ingredients. In it, he took a selection of toy instruments — a ukulele, a recorder, some castanets, a party horn — and chopped them up, dusted a few pieces with flour, then simmered them together and served them in a miniature drum over a bed of pulped sheet music.

It was the last in a series of videos that he had posted over the previous two years, documenting the recording process that yielded his latest album, “Toss.” As visual metaphors go, it was also pretty accurate.

The record, Tokumaru’s sixth, marks a significant departure for the 36-year-old indie-pop polymath. On his previous two albums, “In Focus?” and “Port Entropy,” he played every instrument himself except the drums. For “Toss,” he still left ample room for his own instrumental talents, but he also recruited a host of collaborators, including members of his regular tour band, a chamber orchestra, and drummer Greg Saunier, of U.S. avant-rock act Deerhoof.

“Rather than making songs purely using my own input, this time I wanted to make them from sounds that had come from other people,” he says. “Maybe listeners won’t notice any difference, but for me, that created a major change.”

Enlisting a varied cast of musicians was only the start of the process. When Tokumaru first entered the studio, he didn’t actually have any songs. Instead, he coaxed his players into supplying him with a variety of raw material, which he later refashioned into the music heard on “Toss.”

“The way I did it this time was almost like a remix,” he says. “I wasn’t sure what kind of songs would come out of the process while I was doing it. It was like I couldn’t see the goal — it felt a bit like a puzzle.”

In one of the earlier YouTube videos, his collaborators seemed mildly amused, if not slightly baffled, by this approach. Guitarist Masamichi Torii compared it to playing in front of a blue-screen background; bassist Kei Tanaka speculated that Tokumaru had “forgotten” how to record in a studio. Saunier, striking a more diplomatic note, said simply that he’d “never recorded with this philosophy” before.

“Greg played drums for me, but he wouldn’t recognize any of the songs on the album as ones he played,” Tokumaru says. “These songs didn’t exist at that time — I just got him to play to a click track.”

He contrasts the process with his experience of recording with Gellers, the indie-rock band he has played in since he was a teenager: “If someone says, ‘Play an A-chord here,’ I’ll play an A. But with this album, even if someone had played an A, I’d change it to a G.”

While Tokumaru’s previous albums have been cohesive statements, “Toss” is a more skittish, wide-ranging affair. The first three tracks sound like spikier variations on the kaleidoscopic baroque-pop that he perfected on “In Focus?” in 2012, but some of the subsequent detours are more surprising.

There’s a lo-fi ballad drenched in tape hiss (“Migiri”), a virtuosic finger-picked guitar instrumental (“Dody”), and a weird, lurching pop song made using a graphic score, in the vein of modernist composers like Cornelius Cardew (“Hollow”). “Vektor” enlists the talents of instrument-making oddballs Maywa Denki, while “Bricolage Music” features a dense patchwork of sounds that were crowd-sourced from the public.

Most unexpected of all is “Cheese Eye,” an exuberant orchestral piece that Tokumaru co-wrote with composer Chikara Uemizutaru, in tribute to classic American cartoons such as “Tom and Jerry.”

“I didn’t originally plan to make an album,” he admits. “I wasn’t making music with that purpose in mind: I just wanted to create a series of stand-alone songs with their own concepts.”

He has coined the term “concept songbook” to describe this format, in contrast to the longform concept albums of old: “It’s like a collection of short stories.”

If the existence of the album itself feels almost like an afterthought, Tokumaru is less flippant about the creative process that it entailed. He explains that his decision to post regular updates during the recording process — not only on YouTube, but also via a dedicated website — was a reaction against how ephemeral music has become in the streaming era.

“It’s so easy to hear a song now, using iTunes or Spotify or whatever,” he says. “But you don’t really understand what that song means: there was probably a really interesting process involved in making it. When it can be listened to so easily, I find something about that rather sad.”

When Tokumaru released one of the first fruits of the recording sessions, “Lita-Ruta,” in December 2014, he chose a willfully impractical format: a 10″ vinyl record, housed in a package that could be folded out to create a primitive record player. There wasn’t any download code. Though the song has become a staple of his live shows, its inclusion on “Toss” will be the first chance that most people have had to hear the recorded version.

With the album finished, Tokumaru is due to embark on a 14-date nationwide tour, starting next month. His live shows used to be charming-but-diffident affairs, like a small-time indie act that had accidentally been booked for the main stage. (A typical bedroom musician, in other words.) Recently though, he’s emerged as a more dynamic front man; where he once played with his eyes screwed shut, he actually seems to be having fun now.

“I didn’t particularly enjoy playing shows in the past, but I’ve started to understand what the attraction is,” he says. He speaks admiringly of bands that have nailed the art of the good gig: “They’re not just playing music, it’s like they’ve reached another level beyond that.”

“Normally, you hear that people played best when they were young,” he continues. “You often get that in rock music — ‘They used to play better before, their shows were better in the past’ — but with jazz, there are a lot of people who you want to watch right now. I really admire that: I feel like that’s the kind of musician I’d like to become.”

Given how established he is on the Japanese music scene at this point, it’s easy to forget that Tokumaru was once better known overseas than at home. His 2004 debut album, “Night Music,” was released by U.S. imprint Music Related, and earned an 8.6 rating on influential music site Pitchfork. It wasn’t until third album “Exit” in 2007 — the first on his current Japan label, P-Vine Records — that he began to gain a wider audience in his native country.

Unlike some of his compatriots, who’ve tried to tailor their music for overseas listeners by performing in English, Tokumaru continues to sing exclusively in Japanese. However, he expresses the hope that his music will be heard “throughout the world,” describing it in terms that sound a bit like a pilgrim on a quest for enlightenment.

“I’m spending all this time shut up at home, working alone, it’s still a mystery whether there are people out there who really want to listen to my music,” he says. “I feel like I want to take my music to wherever those people might be — and if I find someone there who can tell me what it is I really want to be doing, I’ll be happy. I still don’t fully understand it myself.”

“Toss” will be released in Japan on Oct. 19 via P-Vine Records. The album tour starts on Nov. 18 and includes dates in Sendai, Morioka, Kobe, Kyoto, Tokyo, Takamatsu, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Nagoya, Osaka, Kofu, Matsumoto, Niigata and Sapporo. For more information, visit www.shugotokumaru.com.