WFMU's Beware of the Blog

SFL Mid-Season Review

The Summer Fun List is one of DJ Kelly’s more genius ideas: Sometime in late spring you make a list of all the fun things you want to do during the upcoming summer, so that the whole season doesn’t fly past without your having done anything fun at all. (This is especially useful for former Midwestern Protestants such as myself, who tend to forget that “fun” is not the same thing as “evil.” Or maybe it is, and that’s why it feels so jolly. But I don’t wanna get all philosophical about it now.) A few weeks ago I was feeling pretty unhappy about something and I drew a big X across the Summer Fun List page and wrote “KILL MYSELF” instead, but I’m sort of over that now, so I figured I’d take another look. Plus, it finally got sunny for three days in a row, and it’s starting to feel a little bit like summer at last. Here’s what’s on my SFL this year:

UConn Puppet Museum
Rosendale (more bees?)
Fireworks
Yankees game
Bruno
Musical Saw Festival
Book Arts Lounge and/or Class
Bacon Retrospective (& other art)

So far, this has not been a particularly successful SFL season. I used to try to go to one Yankees game a year, but now that tickets cost more than I make in a month, I won’t be doing that. And because of Global Economic Change, there weren’t any 4th of July fireworks anywhere near where I live: All the usual displays were canceled. So Sluggo and I went up on a hill near our house and looked down the Hudson toward New York City and saw just the tippy-top of the Macy’s fireworks—we wouldn’t see anything for two or three minutes, and then there’d be a little puff of red light, and then nothing for another couple of minutes, and then some silvery sparkles. Even though I tried as hard as I could, I wasn’t able to convince myself that it was actually “fun.” And I have been SO looking forward to this year’s Musical Saw Festival on Saturday, July 18. I went last year, and it was truly fantastic. I heard Satie’s “Gymnopedie” performed by a musical saw and the Trinity handbell choir, and I am not kidding when I say that it was life-changing. Seriously. It was great, and weird, and great-and-weird, and I have been looking forward to going again for a whole year—and I have an unavoidable conflict that day and can’t go. But you should. It’s in Astoria, it costs only $10, and this year they’re going to try to break the Guinness World Record for “largest musical saw ensemble.” This is a musical event I sincerely recommend for any WFMU Listener, so add it to your Summer Fun List and go.

That’s the disappointments so far, but there’s been some surprise fun, too. Sluggo and I got invited to cocktails at the penthouse residence of an ambassador to the U.N., which was clearly some kind of mistake but we went anyway and had a very nice time. We also went to the “Agitprop!” Book Arts Lounge at the Center for Book Arts, where we talked about Russian constructivist advertising art with polymath poet Mr. Jeremy James Thompson and letterpressed some little flyers that say “Money is No Object.” I got to take the “Brown Bag Bindery” class, too, and built my own piercing cradle, sewing frame, and finishing press. Sylvia Alotta, the teacher, used to be an industrial designer for GM, and has come up with the most beautiful, functional, simple designs for binding equipment. She is my new hero, and almost makes me want to move to Chicago just so I could study with her there. (*Almost.*) Now I’m looking forward to the “Embroidered Bindings” Book Arts Lounge on August 14. Maybe I’ll see you there.

My friend Miss Manytitles has arranged for me to attend a free screening of Bruno with her this week, but the movie I’m really looking forward to seeing is ROBOGEISHA. Here's the trailer, so you will want to see it too. OMG, I have to see it! My Grammy Carlton used to say, “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings,” and when there are movies like Robogeisha in the world, I think she was right.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.

Drag Me to "Drag Me to Hell"

I love reading Wm. Berger’s blogposts about horror movies. They all sound so awesome, although I don’t know if that’s because they really are great films or if it’s just that Wm. B’s fine, fine aesthetic sensibilities make everything he presents sound better than it is. I can’t watch them to decide for myself, since I can’t get foreign films where I live upstate. When I want to see a horror movie, I have to go see whatever’s playing at the Regal E-Walk 13 over by the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

A couple of weeks ago that was Drag Me to Hell, the new Sam Raimi movie starring the guy who plays the Mac in those Mac/PC TV commercials. I dragged Dr. Colby along to see it with me because I thought, “Well, it’s Sam Raimi, how bad can it be?” Pretty bad, as it turns out. Really bad, actually. In fact, the more I think about it, the more bad I think it was. It was like if Disney made horror movies. It was like watching a 99-minute-long commercial for a new coat. After we saw it, Dr. Colby told me that Rom people are unhappy with the portrayal of Gypsy stereotypes in the move, and I’m not surprised. Heck, I was offended by the portrayal of the Plucky Iowa Farm Girl stereotype. Not to mention the Mysterious Hindu stereotype and the Mexicans in the Back of a Pick-Up stereotype and the Rich Wasp Parents stereotype and, I dunno, the Sacrificial White Goat stereotype. On a scale of zero to $12.50 (the cost of a movie ticket here), I’d give it maybe $2.50. Bad.

On the other hand, I went to see The Toxic Avenger Musical, and really liked it. And usually I hate musicals. I never understand those radio commercials for big Broadway shows, where they give you a sample of someone screeching (“Ah could be his lahf's com-pan-yun … anywheh but wheh we a-h-h-h”) and then expect you to pay $110 to go hear more. But we sort of got enmeshed into going to the TAM, which was $50 and fun. The play follows the movie pretty faithfully, and the music was written by a guy who plays keyboards with Bon Jovi (okay, but it’s an improvement over Andrew Fucking Lloyd Webber), and the wee little cast of 5 or 6 people can all sing and dance and act—incredible!—and they work SO hard to entertain the audience that eventually they even won over Sluggo. There were plenty of tasteless blind jokes, and various drag characters, and the sets were great … it was all good. So if you have the dough and you like plays and musicals and what-not, I definitely recommend The Toxic Avenger Musical.

Finally, a friend lent us the DVD of the movie Black Sheep, a rather comical “horror movie” about genetically altered flesh-eating zombie sheep in New Zealand, written and directed by Jonathan King. Who? Yeah, I never heard of him. And they didn’t have the money for all sorts of computer CGI stuff, so they used the most genius puppets and models and all, done by Weta Workshops (who did the Lord of the Rings movies). Lots of sheep farting and blood and explosions. It was quite jolly, and Sluggo and I enjoyed it, and it didn’t cost any bloody $12.50 either. Jonathan King wins, and Sam Raimi loses, and that’s all there is to it.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and don’t forget to make up your Summer Fun List before it’s too late.

A Jolly Quiz

You may have seen the news story a few weeks ago about Chen Fuchao and Lai Jiansheng. It happened in Guangdong Province, on a bridge that's become fairly well known as a place to jump from if you'd like to commit suicide, which Chen Fuchao did because he was really in debt. So Chen climbs way up on the bridge, but he can't bring himself to jump and he can't go back, either, because he owes everybody money and his life totally sucks. Pretty soon he's holding up traffic, sitting up there, and everything's backed up for 5 hours before the emergency service guys finally show up and start inflating the big air cushion for Chen to land on when he jumps.

Meanwhile, here comes retired soldier Lai Jiansheng, who's 66 years old and not putting up with any of this crap. He climbs up the scaffolding of the bridge—pretty spry, for an old guy—and leans over and says something to Chen, and Chen says something back, and Lai puts his hand out and he and Chen shake hands, and Lai claps Chen on the shoulder—and then he pushes him off. Chen falls, and lands on the partially inflated emergency air cushion, and injures his spine and his elbow but doesn't die. So now he's in the hospital, and he's charged with "disturbing public order," and he still owes everybody money.

Lai claims he was just fed up with Chen's "selfish activity," not to mention all those other stupid jerks who've been climbing up on the bridge and backing up traffic. "They do not really dare to kill themselves," Lai says. "Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities' attention to their appeals." So he's charged with "causing intentional injury," but I doubt he really cares.

 When I used to do a show on WFMU, I had a semi-regular feature called "Douche of the Week," and that's why I keep thinking about this story: Which one was the bigger douche? Chen, for being a whiny little attention-seeking fuck-up, or Lai for being a crabby old asshole? And that is my question for you, oh happy Listener.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.

Please Stop

Stop comparing me to Angelina Jolie! It’s a lack of creativity on the media’s part. Just because I have dark hair and tattoos? That’s as far as the similarity extends. I’m sure she has no idea who I am. If I were her, I’d be, like, “Who’s this middle-aged Westchester housewife that’s going to be the next me?” I don’t want to meet her—I’d be embarrassed. I’m not the next anyone.

Next post: Please stop comparing Sluggo to Brad Pitt.

Eating Paste

 I have a dayjob as a magazine editor, which is quaint, I know. It's like being a beekeeper or a radio DJ or something, and I just hope I can get some kind of retraining (underwater welding?) before all the magazines close down.

Traditionally, magazines have made their money in two basic ways--sales (newsstand or subscription) or advertising. But now comes a letter (snail mail!) from Paste, a magazine of fairly mainstream music and pop culture, asking for donations. It's the "Campaign to Save Paste." In the last few months they've discontinued their monthly CD inserts (just as well), and they've dropped to 72 pages (with the dreaded saddle-stitch staples), and they've gone bimonthly (although they deny that they have), and they're still running at a loss. So they would just like someone to send them some money. Hey, it can't hurt to ask.

At a time when those kids in Williamsburg are making news because their parents won't bankroll their co-ops any more, it seems unlikely that anyone is going to be emptying the piggybank to support the vital cause of alt-music reviews. (Although the original W-burg story was in the New York Times, so  possibly does not qualify as "news" per se, or even as "true.") Besides, we need you to start saving now for the next WFMU fund-raising Marathon, just 9 months away. Someone's gotta play those CDs that no one's gonna review.

Thanks for reading my second blogpost this week, and may God bless.

Mourning the Death of President Bongo

Lately I have been pretty upset about my gullibility problem, which is second only to my little hoarding problem in the list of My Upsetting Oddities. (Not being able to touch doorknobs is third and, rather surprisingly, being unable to recognize human faces has recently fallen to fourth.) But then I was looking at the news today, and saw that some camera crew found a middle-aged Korean man wandering around Macao  and decided he was Kim Jong Nam (“the Small General”), eldest son of Kim Jong Il. So maybe I’m not the only one.

The Local (“Sweden’s News in English,” which for some reason I cannot stop calling “The State”) had an entertaining story today, too. Supporters of those Pirate Bay file-sharing guys who were convicted of copyright violations in Sweden last month have won election to a seat in the European Parliament. Candidates of the Pirate Party campaigned on the issue of reforming copyright and patent law, and won 7.1% of the vote in Sweden, putting them into the EU government.
Huzzah! I mean, Arrrrrh!

Another One Bites the Dust

Good-bye, Nickelodeon Magazine! Home in print of many fine Cartoonist-Listeners, and former employer of little freelance writer Bronwyn C.  Goodbye, too, to Radio and Records mag, dead and dead as of yesterday.

Why Do You Think They Call It Twit?

 There's no denying it: I've always been gullible. Really, really gullible. I don't know why. I'm not stupid, technically, but I am a very literal person. I take everything really literally, so maybe that has something to do with it. Anyway, I was totally thrilled when I heard that Kim Jong Il was on Twitter. I mean, of course I figured it could be a prank, but I read that one of his tweets said, "National defense is the sacred duty of the young and all other people," and I thought, you know, it could really be him. So I signed up for Twitter just so I could follow Kim Jong Il. And then some of his other tweets said, like, "I'm restarting my nuclear reactor and there is nothing you can do about it," and--my favorite one--"Bitches need to stop spreading lies. My satellite launch was successful," which reminded me of that guy Herbert Kornfeld who used to write the column in the Onion, and made me laugh, but also made me feel pretty dumb. 'Cause, you know, now I kinda doubt that it's really Kim Jong Il.

Goin' to the Chapel of Crap

I was in Brooklyn Heights yesterday on the way to rehearsal with my new Christian Techno band, when I realized I was just a couple of blocks from the chapel where Sluggo and I got married in 1991. Our wedding was such a nightmare. For years afterward, whenever I saw a just-married couple coming out of a church, I burst into tears. Really. If it hadn’t been for my friends at WFMU, I don’t think I could have gotten through it. The other girl DJs and I had an on-air bachelorette party, and Program Director David made a tape of music to play at the little party after the wedding, and Stn. Mgr. Ken arranged to record the wedding itself (which was especially great since we didn’t get any video or photos of it) and then Ken and his wife Hank gave us what I considered at the time to be an insanely generous amount of money (it was more than anyone in Sluggo’s family gave to help us, that’s for sure), and I would name all the dear DJs who were there but then the ones we couldn’t invite who are still mad at us might get all riled up again, so I’d better not. But the memories of my WFMU friends means a great deal to me, especially because everyone else was so completely shitty about the whole thing and it was horribly traumatic and awful. It was also a long time ago. So as I was walking past Pierrepont Street, I thought, you know, it might be kind of nice to walk down there and just peek into the chapel, it might even be a little romantic or something.

I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to get in, but as I walked up I could see that the outer door was a little ajar. I stepped through it, and the inner door was propped open, and I leaned around the edge to look inside (in case there was some kind of service going on or something), and the entire chapel was totally full of crap. The pews were gone, and there were long card tables with mounds of broken junk on them—old analog TV sets and obsolete computers, and air conditioners sitting on the floor—tons of ugly debris. You know I have that little hoarding problem, right? So this chapel of failed consumerism reminded me of my living room: It horrified me, and I ran away. By the time I got back to Cadman Plaza, I was sniffling and feeling like I was going to cry. I have to remind myself that it’s not the wedding that’s important, it’s the marriage. Our marriage has had its rough patches, but overall it’s been okay.
I don't know what I'm going to do about the hoarding thing, though.
Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.

The Vinyl Solution

My friend Jimmy is the superintendent of a small apartment building where a DJ used to live. (Not a WFMU DJ, but a club DJ). Then the DJ moved out, but he kept paying rent on one room that he used for storage. After a while he quit paying rent on the storage room. The landlord waited for a bit, then told Jimmy to break the lock and throw out whatever was in there. Jimmy finally got the door opened and found hundreds and hundreds of record albums, all stacked up in milk crates. So he set to work hauling the crates full of records down to the street, all by himself--up and down the stairs, crate after crate. It took a long time, but he finally got all the records stacked up out at the curb in a long row a little higher than Jimmy is tall. He went back upstairs to secure the door to the DJ's former storage room, and he swears he couldn't have been up there more than 15 minutes or so. But when he got back down —all the milk crates were gone! The records, however, were still there, tossed all over the street in a huge mess. Somebody had snagged the crates, but not the contents. So Jimmy had to push all the hundreds and hundreds of records up out of the street and off the sidewalk, so they'd be out of the way until the sanitation truck came to take them away with the garbage.

Thanks for reading my blog post this week, and may God bless.

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up with String

Observe and Report. Dr. Colby has a way of rating movies on a scale of 0 to 12.5 dollars (because that's how much a movie ticket costs in Manhattan), and on that scale I give Observe and Report $25 because I liked it so much I saw it twice. The first time I went with DJ Kelly, and the nice ticket lady gave us tickets to Obsessed by mistake because she just could not believe that a couple of dames like us, out by ourselves on a Friday night, were there to see a dark, violent, completely incorrect comedy. (Which might describe Obsessed too, I guess, except that in that case it wouldn't be intentional.) On our way out of the theater, DJ Kelly stopped, considered carefully, and then said, "That was the most fucked-up thing I've ever seen." And she liked O&R.
So then I went to see it again with Sluggo, and he liked it too.

I'm not recommending this movie to anyone, though, because I can see how other people might not like it. Dr. Colby herself went to see it because I said it was good, and at first she gave it $2, but then she started adding a a little more here and there, like an extra $1 for the portrayal of the alcoholic mother, and she ended up giving it about $8 in the end. Still not a ringing endorsement. And if you're the sort of person who bursts into tears when someone says, like, "hospital clown" or something, you should not see it at all. But if you're curious about how a typical summer raunch-fest movie could strip away all the cliches and get down to the brutal rock-bottom awfulness of people's lives--and still be hilarious--this is the film for you. It's definitely the film for me--it might be my new favorite film ever.

The Nytpicker. It's not Lies of Our Times, but it's short and funny and free. And a couple of days ago they figured out that New York Times is an anagram for Write, Monkey. (I put the comma in because it bothers me too much to leave it out.) It's at www.nytpick.com.

The Local—Sweden's News in English. I check out The Local whenever I can remember not to keep calling it The State. (I don't know why I do that.) I finally bookmarked it so it doesn't matter what I think it's called. Swedish news is pretty warped. Last year there was a happy article about all the shop-window Christmas displays that featured penises. And without their sports reporting, I would have been completely unaware of the fact that Sweden had a fantastic come-from-behind, sudden-death OT  6-5 victory over the U.S. in the World Ice Hockey Championships last week. In fact, I wouldn't have even known the World Ice Hockey Championships were happening, unless the U.S. had won, in which case it would have been on the front page of, like, the New York Times. And then Nytpicker would have found something wrong with it.  www.thelocal.se

Numismaticism Update: The Guam quarter is out! Although I haven't seen one yet. But it features both the latte and the flying proa! And the Martin Van Buren gold-colored dollar is out, too, but, um ... you know. No flying proa there.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.

My Ill Na-Na

So last week I went to the gynecologist, and before I could see the doctor I had to sign a form that said I had read the 6-page “Notice of Privacy Practices,” effective date 4/14/03. They seemed pretty surprised that I actually wanted to read the Notice before signing the form that said I had read it. So they gave me a copy, and I did read it, and I was very relieved to see the section on National Security and Intelligence Activities. I have now given permission for my gynecologist to release medical information about me to “authorized federal officials for intelligence, counterintelligence, protection of the President, other authorized persons or foreign heads of state, for purpose of determining [my] own security clearance and other national security activities authorized by law.” I hope it makes the President and all those other foreign heads of state (Stephen Harper! Hugo Chavez! Kim Jong-il!) sleep better, to know that my ladyparts are thriving.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless.

I'm Not That Blogger

 So J.G. Ballard has died, and he was pretty old--78, I believe.
There are times when I prefer blogging to doing a radio show, but this isn't one of them. If I were broadcasting to you now, I would probably read some excerpts from some Ballard short stories, and then I would play music by some of the bands who were influenced by his work, or who quoted his work in their music, and you might be surprised: Joy Division's "Atrocity Exhibition," sure, but what about "Video Killed the Radio Star?" And there are others. (I would not play Hawkwind, but that's just personal taste.) I would probably talk about the movie "Crash" and make fun of Holly Hunter fishing out her tit at the slightest provocation.  It would probably be a nice little half hour or so, you and I together, considering the life, and the work, and all. Maybe if I were more clever, I could do all that here for you, give you the quotations to read for yourself, and set up some links to all those songs, or maybe even a video clip. But ... I dunno. It's not how I want to do it. Sorry. I'm not that blogger.

But let me at least share my favorite Ballard factoid: He started writing when he was in the R.A.F. and they stationed him in Moose Jaw, Canada, for 6 months. Jeez, you can't blame him.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this week, etc.

You’ll Never Walk Alone

Twenty years ago today Liverpool was playing Nottingham Forest in an FA Cup semi-final soccer match at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium. There was construction work on the main highway from Liverpool to Sheffield and a lot of fans arrived late, just minutes before the game was scheduled to start. There was a big crowd at the turnstiles, and a lot of shoving as people made their way through a narrow tunnel that led to the standing-room pens behind one of the goalposts.

In retrospect, there were a lot of things that could have been done: The game could have been delayed; the fans could have been directed into less-crowded pens; the police could have pulled their heads out of their asses. Instead, there was a perfect storm of crowd hysteria, police stupidity, and bad stadium design. 96 men, women, and children died, some by being stomped on and crushed and some by compressive asphyxiation (they remained standing, but couldn’t breathe). Meanwhile, the soccer game started promptly at 3:00 and went on as the fans were slaughtered; the referees didn’t order the players off the field until 3:06.

In the aftermath, there was the obligatory government inquiry, an inquest that failed to take into account anything that happened after 3:15 that day, and the early retirement (with full pensions) of some of the police. One of Rupert Murdoch's so-called newspapers blamed the victims.

BBC News’ UK Web site has video of some survivors today; I thought Damian Kavanagh's segment was particularly moving. And most of the memorials feature an old Rodgers and Hammerstein song from the Broadway musical “Carousel,” which for some reason has been associated with Liverpool F.C. since the early 1960s.

Thanks for reading today’s News of the Dead blog post, and may God bless.

Only the Dead Know Flooring

I had kind of a shock when I opened my suburban housewife reading material on the train last night and saw Gilda Radner advertising fake-wood laminate flooring. Not that I object in principle to dead people having jobs, and I'm always pleased when dead people are elected to political office, or win posthumous awards, or something. But, you know, it's Gilda Radner, who was funny and nice, and who died an awful, painful death and is probably best known now for the cancer support groups established in her name. And of course it's not really Gilda Radner, it's a Gilda look-alike (as in, the floor is not really wood, either). But still. And I wasn't in the market for a fake-wood floor, anyway. But it still creeps me out.

Thanks for reading my additional blogpost this week, and may God bless.

Hope and Change in the Exhume-Me State

Harry Stonebraker was well-liked in Winfield, Missouri (population 723). Last week he was about to finish his third 2-year term as mayor of the town, was running for a fourth term, and was pretty much expected to win. And he did win, by a landslide—90%. He didn’t let the fact that he was dead keep him down, nosirree. Elaine Luck, Lincoln County clerk, said, “I figured he’d win because he seemed to get even more popular after he died, just like Carnahan.” County Clerk Ms. Luck was referring, of course, to Democrat Mel Carnahan, who was elected U.S. Senator from Missouri in 2000 after dying in a plane crash. (Carnahan defeated Republican incumbent John Ashcroft, of “Let the Eagle Soar” fame.)

I never cared much for Missouri when I was growing up in a much-better neighboring state, and I really grew to dislike it during the year or so that I actually had to live there. I felt weird and out-of-place, although they did have the cheapest beer I’ve ever seen anywhere (Buckhorn, $3.00 a 6-pack), a lot of pinball machines, and the Kansas City Art Institute. But that was long before Missouri opened up the electoral process to dead candidates. Maybe now I’d get along there; after all, some of my best friends are dead people.

Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God bless.

Gettin’ a Buzz On

A couple weeks ago I drove up to Rosendale, New York, near New Paltz, to take a beekeeping class given by Chris Harp of Honeybee Lives. It’s a beautiful area of New York, full of pretty little towns where things are actually happening. There are many admirable hippies living up there—not the stupid, pothead hippies who lie around in their own excrement because it’s “natural,” but hard-working hippies who know how to modify their diesel automobiles to run on vegetable oil and then start a bio-diesel co-op to provide their own fuel.

The class was held in the Sustainable Resource Living Center, a hexagonal (!) building with many sustainable features that I can’t remember now, but we had to take off our shoes before we could go in and walk on the floor and the coffee was really good. Chris Harp has been a beekeeper for almost 20 years, and has developed a natural, organic approach based on respect for the social structure and behavior of bees.

Differently Cognitive

I don’t read a lot of fiction, because usually I find it upsetting. An author sets up some characters and gets you all interested in them, and then makes terrible things happen to them. I told that to a guy I worked with, and he pointed out that bad things happen to people in non-fiction books, too. “But those are real people, they’re not invented specifically to make you care about them,” I said. I don’t think he understood the distinction, but it makes a difference to me.

Anyway, in the last few years I have found a little sub-genre of fiction that I enjoy: novels written as if by people with neurological disorders. First was Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday, 1999). This is the story of Lionel Essrog, an orphan with Tourette’s syndrome who tries to solve the murder of Frank Minna, his employer, mentor, and friend. I liked the experience of seeing the Brooklyn I knew though Lionel’s eyes. The depiction of Tourette’s felt accurate, and didn’t seem as if it were just a gimmick or even just a metaphor. The writing was excellent, and the story was satisfying. (I still smile at the memory of the two old dons, Brickface and Stucco.) I discussed Motherless Brooklyn on my WFMU book club show on August 14 and 21, 2002—which seems incredible, since it was so long ago. One caller explained the name Essrog to me, and I’ve always wondered if that was Jonathan Lethem himself, but I’ve never found out. (Update 4/3: It wasn't Lethem, it was Listener Bruce! That's good to know, after all this time.)

A Most Rare Vision

Way back in 2005, DJ Kelly and I were filmed for a movie called “Guest of Cindy Sherman.” I blogged about it here. Last year it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and now it’s having a theatrical run, starting this Friday at Cinema Village in Manhattan. It’s an interesting film, the story of Paul H-O, a guy who’d made a little niche for himself with a cable access TV show called “Gallery Beat,” and what happened to his life when he started dating an attractive young woman who’s widely considered to be one of the greatest artists of the late 20th Century.

What do you think happened? Try to guess.

In an interview in the 2008 Art Issue of The Believer, Robyn O’Neil describes the moment when she was 16 and growing up in Omaha and suddenly realized that friends were taking up too much of her time. “I made this really distinct choice, where I had to be a little selfish, that was the only way I could see this—being an artist—working out for me.” She stopped seeing her friends, and she started drawing more.

I think it’s a choice all women have to make: The friends, or the work? The baby, or the art? The husband, or the novel? It’s not the same for men: A male artist who chooses to get married is usually choosing to have someone look after his basic needs so he can work more. I remember reading a Reader’s Digest profile of some big-deal musician, back when I was growing up in Omaha, and this guy said about his much-younger wife, “My need of her gives meaning to her life.” Even as an 8-year-old girl, I knew that guy was an asshole. I can’t even remember who it was, but it was so offensive to me that I never forgot it. And I don’t think a famous, accomplished woman would ever say that about a guy.

So “Guest of Cindy Sherman” brings up a lot of issues about the construction of identity, and the art world and women’s place in it, and how men artists are treated differently, and the male ego, and how women are expected to be just a little less successful than men. But what makes it complicated, and more interesting, is that it’s clear these two people really cared about each other, were happy together. You can tell that Paul H-O adored Cindy Sherman. And then it’s not enough for him, and she has to make that choice.

In the end, I think “Guest of Cindy Sherman” is a very sad film. Paul H-O reminds me of Bottom, the ass-headed mechanic in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” who is beloved by Titania, queen of the fairies, when she’s placed under an enchantment. Once the spell is broken, Titania flees in disgust and Bottom is left to mull over what happened. “I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was: Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was--and methought I had--but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.”

Of course, Bottom didn't make a movie about their relationship and enter it in the Tribeca Film Festival.

Thanks for reading my blog post this time, and may God bless.

Go POORS!

One late autumn afternoon in 1987 I walked into the basement of Upsala College’s Froeberg Hall, where TKF was doing his radio show on WFMU. He was positively giddy with schadenfraude: the stock market was down, was crashing, was destroyed! It struck me as curious, like, why should we care? Nobody we knew had enough money to invest in stock. In fact, a lot of FMU’s DJs in those days had to carefully consider whether or not they could afford the $10 or so that it cost each week to go round-trip to the station in East Orange. Like, could they really afford to do a show? Plus, this was in the days before the Internet, so I’m not sure how TKF was even following the story. Was someone phoning him with updates? Did he have a little radio in the studio so he could listen to the news? Was he just making it up, and somehow projecting his thoughts into reality via mystical DJ powers?

Today the entire economy is collapsing again, but this time we have the Internet so there’s the happy prospect of watching rich people blog about how dreadful it is to be forced to give up their vacation homes and chauffeured Rolls Royce autos. And I am not making that up. Good old Gawker has been documenting the trend under the general heading THE POORS. My favorite so far has been formerly rich magazine editor Alexandra Penney, who is now writing on Daily Beast about the terrible, terrible trials of adjusting to her new economic status. And she has a book deal to tell you all about it, too!

Now, as in 1987, as in forever, the underemployed show-offs who present their shows on WFMU do not get paid by the station. The station itself doesn’t get paid by anyone—it’s completely Listener-supported. And now, as always, WFMU runs one annual on-air fund-raising marathon to raise the money it needs to stagger through another year. But this year there are some extra problems—we need to move our transmitter, the tenant in our building has quit paying rent, and so on. (Station Manager Ken explained it all on a show last Saturday that you can hear archived here.) And of course this year’s economy isn’t making it any easier for us. But I like to look on the bright side: Our beloved Listeners, our Poors, mostly still have their crappy, underpaid jobs. They didn’t have that much to lose, so that means they can give just as much as they always managed to scrape together to keep FMU around. Some formerly rich guy may have to sacrifice membership in his private club, but YOU don’t have to give up a thing: You can have just as much WFMU as ever. All you gotta do is pledge.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this time, and may God bless WFMU.