rachelhills: I’m sure there is an image floating around somewhere of me, age 7, dressed as Alice, and my second grade bestie dressed at Dorothy. Image by dollychops. So, this is what I wrote on Facebook when I saw this:  Isn’t Dorothy in her teens and Alice about seven? (She thinks her sister’s book without illustrations or quotations is really dull.) I’d say Dorothy would be babysitting. Also, I wonder how the upper-class and English Alice would respond to the Midwestern farm girl Dorothy? Would she only be able to think of her as the help? And 35 years separates publication of the two stories, meaning that Alice would actually be in her forties when Dorothy went to Oz. So maybe Alice is really Auntie Em’s age?

rachelhills:

I’m sure there is an image floating around somewhere of me, age 7, dressed as Alice, and my second grade bestie dressed at Dorothy.

Image by dollychops.

So, this is what I wrote on Facebook when I saw this:

  •  Isn’t Dorothy in her teens and Alice about seven? (She thinks her sister’s book without illustrations or quotations is really dull.) I’d say Dorothy would be babysitting.
  • Also, I wonder how the upper-class and English Alice would respond to the Midwestern farm girl Dorothy? Would she only be able to think of her as the help?
  • And 35 years separates publication of the two stories, meaning that Alice would actually be in her forties when Dorothy went to Oz. So maybe Alice is really Auntie Em’s age?
112740
books america england
Apr 15

thesinglesjukebox:

BRAD PAISLEY FT. LL COOL J - ACCIDENTAL RACIST
[1.00]

Ebony and ivory…

Jonathan Bradley: Paisley is a canny performer who might be too canny here for his own good. The set-up works: a well-meaning audience surrogate starts to realize the ideas and icons he thinks innocuous actually aren’t, and all in the setting of the quintessentially country/not-country confines of a chain store coffee shop. The problem is that Paisley thinks he wants to talk about racism when what he actually wants to talk about is the South, which he frames as implicitly and exclusively white. He should know better; has he forgotten his “friend from school, a running back on the football team,” the one whose neighbors burned a cross on his front yard, from his Obama tribute “Welcome to the Future”? Paisley’s biggest mistake here is inviting LL aboard; the self-described “black Yankee” transforms the conflict underpinning “Accidental Racist” into one between African Americans and Southerners. “R.I.P., Robert E. Lee” he says, on a song penned by the son of a state that came into existence when it would not follow that Virginian general into treason. But as Georgian Shawn Jay had it: “When you see them Confederate flags, you know what it is/Your folks picked cotton here, that’s why we call it the fields.” Or T-Mo, of Atlanta, the fall of which enabled William Tecumseh Sherman to march to the sea and seal Lee up in Virginia in a siege of inevitable attrition: “In third grade this is what you told: you was bought, you was sold.” Paisley, who here calls himself “a son of the New South,” is, after all, a singer who extols the virtues of a pluralistic, inclusive America in the language of a part of the country more suspicious of such a thing than most, and in language that doesn’t suggest propaganda to his fans. Perhaps after his previous successes in expressing the duality of the Southern thing, he settled too easily into his Southern comfort zone. 

[4]

Aight, I seen this from Ta-Nehisi Coates a whole bunch around the Internets:

I can understand why an artist like Paisley would be attracted to an artist like LL Cool J. I can’t for the life of me understand why he’d choose LL Cool J to begin “a conversation” to reconcile. Rap is overrun with artists who’ve spent some portion of their career attempting to have “a conversation.” There’s Chuck D. There’s Big Daddy Kane. There’s KRS-ONE. There’s Talib. There’s Mos Def. There’s Kendrick Lamar. There’s Black Thought. There’s Dead Prez. And so on.

And you notice how Baltimore/New Yorker TNC doesn’t mention a single Southern rapper? (Dead Prez’s Florida connect excepted.) Brad Paisley wants to have a Southern conversation? He should have one. But he, like TNC, doesn’t recognize there are rappers living next door to him who can do that. Quit hating the South — but It ain’t every Southerner who thinks that red flag is innocuous..

17
music america hip-hop race the south country
Apr 13

It’s difficult to believe that a hundred years from now historians are going to say, ‘America had a terrible curse of gun violence. It also had entertainments of all kinds, which depended on the use and glorification and a fetishization of guns, but these two things had no connection. They ran on completely different cultural circuits.’ They will say, surely, something closer to the truth: Americans were obsessed with violence; they fetishized it and glorified it, loved to watch it; and that American culture of spectacular violence took many turns. Often, it was a symbolic turn, occasionally a sublime turn—expressed in many extraordinary works of art—and inevitably that conception of violence as high style, serious style, of nihilism as a test of meaning, infected the rest of their lives.

Adam Gopnik, at the New Yorker (via thesmithian)

This is staggeringly idiotic. Shouldn’t something like this follow?

“…and then they exported it to countries all over the world, many of which did not have anywhere near the number of gun deaths or murders the US did.”

We have Bruce Willis movies in Australia, too. We don’t kill each other like Americans do. If you look at the US, with its lax gun legislation, its history of oppression that squeezes opportunity and hope from communities and squeezes them into underserviced pockets of poverty, and conclude that the problem is even remotely connected to Halo, you’re suffering from a shocking failure of imagination.

And, see, Gopnik even affirms the weakness of his argument:

The correlation between observed violence and actual violence is very poorly established—and, here again, common sense confirms social science: the Japanese play seemingly insane amounts of violent video games, but have very little gun violence in their culture and country.

He offers no rebuttal to this point, except to call people who make it “pious.” Gopnik just feels violent entertainment must be harmful.

I’m not saying that American culture and history doesn’t contribute to the nation’s gun violence; it does. But culture is not the same as cultural output, and pretending like you’re undoing centuries of shared understanding of large and complicated concepts like justice and liberty by tut-tutting about Call of Duty is not addressing culture in the slightest. (And it ignores that US gun culture is changing: gun ownership over the past few decades has been shrinking, and gun owners are increasingly older and whiter members of the population.)

This plaint that violent entertainment must be magically, uniquely hurting Americans is American narcissism at its most banal. It proceeds as if human experience outside American borders is something that not only doesn’t matter, it’s something that doesn’t even exist.

94
america politics
Apr 11

So here’s the summary: Miley was about four dressing rooms away from Thom Yorke, so she asked her manager to reach out to his people so the two could meet, because who knew, Miley loves Radiohead. “They’re like, my rock god. I am obsessed with them. This is the only person I would probably cry over. I would cry,” Cyrus said on air.

So what was Radiohead’s response when offered the chance to meet Miley Cyrus? “We don’t really do that,” the band’s reps told Miley’s manager. That was enough to make Cyrus refer to the band as “Stinkin’ Radiohead!” From what we know, Yorke is a notoriously shy guy who probably wasn’t in the mood to hang out with a chirpy star-struck teenager who has probably never heard Hail to the Thief, discussing unicorns and Nick Jonas in the hours before his band was set to perform at their very first American awards show.

Daniel Kreps, “Miley Cyrus Snubbed By Radiohead, Vows To ‘Ruin Them’,” Rolling Stone, March 5, 2009

Or remember this? Maybe Avril’s just trolling?

(n.b. Pls note Rolling Stone journalist being a massive douchebag.)

5
music
Apr 11

Here’s to never growing up.

Here’s to never growing up.

5
music
Apr 11

singing radiohead at the top of our lungs

katherinestasaph:

isabelthespy:

singing radiohead at the top of our lungs

My question about this is the same question I had with “The One That Got Away”: WHAT RADIOHEAD SONG ARE THE KIDS SINGING/MAKING OUT TO THESE DAYS? Why do I feel old when I’m not?

I mean, I figure the song is about folks mine/Avril’s age: a 28 year old’s answer to “22.” It’s not about being young now, it’s about being old (“old”) now and getting drunk and obnoxious, which, lol Avril, pls never change.

Not that this makes it any easier to answer the What Radiohead Song question. I reckon Radiohead is just great, but I’m not singing along to them when I’m out being irresponsible. But I never went and crashed the mall either, so what do I know about having a good time?

Anyways:

  • Just?
  • My Iron lung??
  • Paranoid Android??? (“KICKING SQUEALING GUCCI LITTLE PIGGY!) 
  • Idioteque????
  • Knives Out?????

EDIT: Come on, no one suggest “Creep”; Avril’s obv into #deepcuts.

28
music
Apr 11

Don Draper and death in Hawaii The American idea of Manifest Destiny: that the US was preordained to spread itself all the way from its colonial-settler origins to the Pacific Ocean, to fill the empty expanse (n.b. It wasn’t empty) with democracy comma life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness. The westward expansion is the pursuit of happiness, a journey into a place unbound by the traditions of the old east (of the US but also the old world) into a realm where the individual could live for himself and by his own rules without regard to the opinions or restrictions or regulations of his fellows. Which is why California is America in extremis: more hedonistic, less restrained, less tied to the past, more absurd, younger, freer, wilder. California is always the America of the future because America is like a wave ever rolling in from the east and crashing on the Pacific coast, the very edge of the known world. (R.E.M., intentionally ambiguous: “It’s the end of the continent.”) But out there beyond the edge, beyond the apocalypse, is an island chain where everything exists in an oneiric haze and life stops for the duration of your stay. And yet it’s still American. It’s America beyond the bounds of America. America after the end. It’s where a man can slip off his clothes, walk into nothingness, and not even pursue happiness, but become it entirely, with not even life or liberty necessary to accompany it.

Don Draper and death in Hawaii

The American idea of Manifest Destiny: that the US was preordained to spread itself all the way from its colonial-settler origins to the Pacific Ocean, to fill the empty expanse (n.b. It wasn’t empty) with democracy comma life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness. The westward expansion is the pursuit of happiness, a journey into a place unbound by the traditions of the old east (of the US but also the old world) into a realm where the individual could live for himself and by his own rules without regard to the opinions or restrictions or regulations of his fellows.

Which is why California is America in extremis: more hedonistic, less restrained, less tied to the past, more absurd, younger, freer, wilder. California is always the America of the future because America is like a wave ever rolling in from the east and crashing on the Pacific coast, the very edge of the known world. (R.E.M., intentionally ambiguous: “It’s the end of the continent.”)

But out there beyond the edge, beyond the apocalypse, is an island chain where everything exists in an oneiric haze and life stops for the duration of your stay. And yet it’s still American. It’s America beyond the bounds of America. America after the end. It’s where a man can slip off his clothes, walk into nothingness, and not even pursue happiness, but become it entirely, with not even life or liberty necessary to accompany it.

15
mad men television america
Apr 10

On Thatcher

If you hated her yesterday, nothing will have changed today; for those people, surely her death is no relief. Margaret Thatcher hadn’t existed as a political figure in years (not since she palled around with Augusto Pinochet in the late ’90s perhaps?) and if dementia was not vengeance enough for her detractors, what could death really offer? Thatcher’s opponents never had the satisfaction of seeing her deposed electorally, as we in Australia did with John Howard — surely the happiest revenge anyone could hope to take against a politician in a democratic country.

So Thatcher is worth considering (and dismissing) today because her ideas and influence are being newly discussed. On that count, I like Jessica Irvine:

Thatcher inherited an inflation-riddled, union dominated, heavily nationalised economy. Her early policy reforms were aimed solely at bringing inflation down from eye wateringly high levels above 25 per cent a year in the 1970s to around 4 to 5 per cent. By the mid 1980s, she had succeeded. Inspired by the ideas of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, she began slashing government spending in a way that would make the modern European troika proud.

But her austerity regime came at a price. That price was the jobs of three million Britons who suffered the indignity of unemployment during her rein. The British jobless rate stayed above 10 per cent for most of the 1980s, even as prices growth sank to a moderate 4-5 per cent. A world recession in the early 1980s didn’t help the jobless situation. But neither did pro-cyclical big cuts to government spending.

[…]

She deregulated financial markets – an event remembered today as “the Big Bang” – leading to an explosion of private equity firms and hedge funds in The City. Indeed, the seeds of the 2008 financial crisis were sown in her decision to abolish regulations on borrowing.

And Krugman:

Well, there’s a bit of a problem: Thatcher came to power in 1979, and imposed a radical change in policy almost immediately. But the big improvement in British performance doesn’t really show in the data until the mid-1990s. Does she get credit for a reward so long delayed?

This is, by the way, somewhat like a similar issue in America: right-wingers were eager to give Ronald Reagan credit for the productivity boom of the Clinton years, which also didn’t start until around 1995; if Reagan could get credit for events that were 14 years or more after his 1981 tax cut, shouldn’t Richard Nixon be given credit for anything good that happened in the Reagan years?

Anyway, I guess there is a case that the Thatcher changes in taxes, labor regulation, etc. created a more flexible economy, which made the good years under Blair possible. But it’s an awfully long lag. And there’s another possibility. For what happened in the 90s that arguably redounded very much to Britain’s benefit? Why, the rise of fancy finance — which was a huge boon to the country that contains the City.

And, why not, Germaine Greer (h/t Soto):

Thatcher’s strength derived directly from her limitations. If she had been better read, if she had been afflicted with imagination, if she had had a sense of humour, if she had had anywhere near as much insight into the lives of ordinary people as she claimed to have, she would have been unable to pursue her headlong career, riding roughshod over the consensus towards the property-owning debtor economy in which we now struggle. If socialism had been in better shape, she would not have been able to turn it into a dirty word or confuse it with totalitarianism and state monopoly capitalism. If the trade unions had not betrayed their own class, if they had understood the importance of organising all workers, including women, including those in the service sector, if they had not institutionalised inequality, the people might have defended the cause of labour.

Thatcher had her successes — and not just the symbolic, feminist success that was her election. There were markets that needed to be deregulated and industries that should not have been owned by the public. But even these commend her poorly. She deregulated and privatized with the zeal of an ideologue driven not by desire for good governance but by the venom her enemies, in turn, returned to her. “Economics are the method: the object is to change the soul,” she wrote once, the sloganeering of a right-wing social engineer. Tasked with the duty of economic modernization, but unburdened by her fanaticism, Australia’s Paul Keating and Bob Hawke delivered the same successes as Thatcher — greater ones, in fact — without the misery, the nostalgia for empire, the disgusting tolerance of apartheid, or the class warfare. Don’t credit Thatcher’s toryhood for her successes; blame it for her failures.

24
politics england
Apr 09

It’s the “nobody promised you anything” philosophy that is all too absent in contemporary, consumer-driven culture.

Jennifer Rubin, “Margaret Thatcher’s political lessons for Republicans,” The Washington Post, April 8, 2013

This is confusing; the WaPo’s conservative blogger is complaining about “consumer-driven culture”? I understand market-suspicious lefties complaining about consumer culture, even though I think such complaints are vapid, but how can you exalt the market’s influence economically yet bemoan its influence culturally?

Or, if that is what you want to do, how can you not acknowledge the contradiction?

(There are market-suspicious conservatives, but unlike their lefty counterparts, they’d never admit to their skepticism.)

2
politics
Apr 08

microphoneheartbeats:

ohrohin:

“Here’s To Never Growing Up”

Avril Lavigne

2013


***

“SINGING RADIOHEAD AT THE TOP OF OUR LUNGS / BOOMBOX BLARING AS WE’RE FALLING IN LOVE” has to be one of the most incredible couplets in pop so far in 2013.

Rohin is bringing it tonight. Everyone else beware. And also, why what why what? I don’t understand. And I have a soft spot for Avril.*

*As a Canadian, I am constitutionally obligated to have a soft spot for Avril, per the contentious Supreme Court decision, Lavigne v. Sweetnam, Dobson, et al.

Awww, Avwiw! This is fantastic!

24
music
Apr 08


2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11