Lightning struck itself

On the plane, waiting out an endless pre-flight delay, I pick out the following phrase from the conversation going on behind me:

In the trunk of your Mercedes

I want to turn around and say,

Hey, um, did you know that what you just said was in perfect trochaic tetrameter? You know, like Poe--Once upon a midnight dreary? While I pondered weak and weary? In the trunk of yr Mercedes? Yeah. So um, do you like trochees too? Because they are so totally the most punk rock of all metrical feet. BUM-bum BUM-bum. It's almost the "Marquee Moon" riff, don't you think? Okay, not exactly, that's more evenly stressed, but "Psycho Killer," maybe? "Beat on the Brat?" 'Cause like, the trochee is also the underdog foot. Everybody loves iambs. Iambs steal the attention since they're Shakespeare and all, and I realize it's hard to ignore that 'The quality of mercy is not strained' stuff, but really, what is iambic pentameter? A feather floating to the ground--a horse galloping at best. Which is fine and all, you know, that's great, but trochees are like hammers striking anvils. You want urgency? You want speed and heat and insistence and propulsion? The trochee's yr foot. Do you know what I mean?

I don't.

And now a word from our sponsor

Out of town for the weekend. Keep pogoing by yrselves in the interval.

Some people are hard to impress

L: Oh my God. The Smiths turned down five million dollars to reunite at Coachella.

(a pause)

J: Don't they do that every year?

Show me the lipstick

All big musical trend pieces are doomed out of the box. Still, last Thursday's New York Times Critic's Notebook peddles egregious journalistic what-the-fuckery of a kind normally reserved for the pages of the Weekly World News. Casting about for a way to explain what those crazy kids are listening to nowadays, the NYT sells its sanity for a point of reference its target age demographic can appreciate and finds itself reporting, "EMO IS THE NEW GLAM ROCK." Which is a compelling and plausible claim, if you happen to be a 70-year-old reclusive Valium addict who spent 1970-1974 listening to the A side of "A Gene Autry Christmas" and thinks that Mott the Hoople was a character on Sesame Street.

It starts out innocently (if lamely) enough: "[emo] has become the soundtrack of white adolescence." That's about six years late, and marginalizes all of the precocious smartie lit kids who are listening to, like, the Decemberists, but okay. Then--

"A genre that was once mocked for its supposed earnestness is now home to some of the most flamboyant boys in rock 'n' roll."

Flamboyant? Flamboyant how, exactly? In their egotistical tunnel-vision and unshakeable belief that their straight white boy problems trump those of the rest of the world? In their confidence that said problems deserve to be soundtracked by bargain basement power chords dueling laryngitic hamster vocals and listened to adoringly by the sympathetic youth of America? This sidesteps the real meaning of flamboyance, which refers to the ostentacious public display of one's self, often through elaborate and fancy clothing. If we adhere to the first half of that definition alone, all pop singers are flamboyant; to get into true fiery glam territory, emo bands would need to wear a lot more than black hoodies and thrift store Vans. Glam was necessarily queer--by which I mean abnormal/subversive/ literate/hedonistic/revolutionary in addition to homotastic--and there is nothing queer about emo, either sexually or politically. For all its anti-establishment trappings, emo clings desperately to the status quo and to the stability of a system in which boy-subjects must eternally suffer at the hands of cruel yet objectified girl-vixens. When you queer emo, make a girl a subject or a boy a vixen, it ceases to be emo at all.

"BUT OH!" the Times interjects here. "Didn't you notice THE MAKEUP??"

"emo bands are doing something unlikely: they're reviving the fierce, fey spirit of glam rock, complete (sometimes) with eyeliner and lipstick."

At this point the article gestures proudly at a a picture of Pete Wentz wearing (GASP!) eyeliner. Oh, the abjection! Oh, the upended social paradigms! Pete is Ziggy reborn! Or so the Times would have us believe, since they make supreme ass-hats of themselves by running a picture of the Homo Superior himself c. 1973 on the next page and proving by visual comparison that Wentz is about as fierce and fey as a Little Debbie snack cake. Wearing a Bowie t-shirt and rebirthing an entire socio-musical movement are not the same thing. As for the lipstick tease, where are all of these mythical Maybelline'd baby queens? So Gerard Way likes his eyeliner--fine. But find me a picture of an emo dude wearing lipstick and I'll show you an Alkaline Trio lyric that quotes Andrea Dworkin.

The devil will find work for idle hands to do

When I work upstairs at the bookstore people mostly leave me alone. There is the occasional "Where's yr Vonnegut/Frank O'Hara/Scientology/ public bathroom" query, but the truly bizonkers customer encounters are few and far between. Yesterday, though, kittens, yesterday--a man approaches me blazing a bright white clerical collar and asks for Dante. He is holding a torn paperback of Paradiso but wants more. "Oh," I say, trying desperately not to stare at his collar, and then remember something. "Oh! We actually have a beautiful illustrated copy of the Inferno. Would you like me to get it for you?"

"No," he says firmly. "I am only interested in Paradise."

So I scamper away into the lit section feeling totes the foul temptress, tapping what are surely cloven hooves inside my knockoff New Balances. I find another copy of Paradiso and call after the priest, "Sir!" even though it would really curl my pointy tail to be able to yell out, "Father!"

He takes the second Paradiso and goes downstairs, but my mind is already racing around and away and ahead, thinking back through the history of the priest as fetish and wondering what this is really about, whether it could all be as simple as overripe paternalism and the specter of the flesh renounced. Why do priests get eroticized in ways that rabbis, for example, never do? Is it just the celibacy or is there something uniquely Catholic at work here?

It is a good thing the store will be keeping that illustrated Inferno, though, because one wants to know where one is going to spend eternity. As far as I can tell it's the seventh circle for me, the flaming desert where it rains fire, and it's really not so bad compared with what goes down in circles eight and nine. Chances are I'll see you there, because technically, any non-procreative sex acts comitted outside of Christian marriage are sodomitical. When I get there I'm going to start a four-way checkers tournament with Michelangelo, Colette and Freddie Mercury. I am sure there will be checkers in hell.

"Is there some place I can plug this amp in?"

Also on the Tracy tip, or at least the filmmaking peers of Miranda July underappreciation roll call: Dream Machine, by Brett Vapnek. The most inspired cinematic use of doughnuts, lipstick and karaoke ever? The best short film you've never seen? A WORLD OF YES. Like July and Greenwood, Vapnek has an eye for the mundane, for the awkward silences and small social traumas that fill our lives but rarely get seriously represented in works of art. Dream Machine isn't afraid to point out the beauty of the everyday caught up in a thousand moments of waiting, boredom, miscommunication and aloneness--or to posit a world in which people ignore Mary Timony and make it somehow believable. Vapnek has fallen off the Pogo radar somewhat since Fan Mail but I am hoping she has a new project lurking wing-side, waiting for its glorious Me & You & Everyone-style accolade explosion. The world needs her films too much for this not to happen.

The city--apocalypse!

HOMOCORE MINNEAPOLIS
The 7th Street Entry, 3/9/06
Tracy + the Plastics w/ Ear Candy, Gay Beast

Despite top City Pages billing and the fact that this was the third-to-last time Tracy, Nikki and Cola will ever appear on stage together (possibly the last time they will ever exist live, period??) the crowd was light and in a distinctly un-mourning mood. Gay Beast heroically dodged Erase Errata tags while still kicking out the kind of no-wave spazz-core that is perfect for seizuring yrself into an early danceteria grave. Ear Candy rocked white vinyl minidresses, shades and wigs with Chicks on Speed ferocity, sang in French, blew minds and stole hearts. When Tracy came on the mood didn't so much come down as rearrange itself to accomodate the eulogy. This show, after all, was Wynne saying goodbye to characters she has been shaping and living inside for six years. Not that she's sad about it. Pointing out that there are just two Tracy shows left, she declared, "That's a good thing." "No! Nooo!" the front row fan kids gasped in horror. "Yes," she insisted. "It is. A very good thing."

And maybe, somehow, it is. Being in a three-person band where all three people are you is not exactly twinkies and skittles, and the fatigue showed just the smidgiest bit, with Wynne performing the painfully brief set/demo sitting down. It was fab to see that even after so long, Nikki can still make Tracy laugh--she sat slumped in her chair, fiercely nonplussed, staring into Nikki's face projected onto the backdrop, shaking her head and snickering as if to say, "God, Nikki. What are you doing?" But the empty spaces of Tracy shows have always been there for a reason, to give breathing room to spontaneity, audience interaction and politics, so we talked about Cheney, South Dakota ("I thought about doing an impromptu performance piece where I give myself an abortion, but that would have just been gross,") Wynne's last Mpls Homocore ("I was a roadie for the Need!") and the imperative to decenter and deconstruct the White House ("That's how it is when you're a radical lesbian feminist.") Six years went by so fast. Tracy, Nikki and Cola, you will be missed.

Expressway to yr sub-corporate distributor

Am I supposed to be squiffed that Ecstatic Peace is teaming with Universal? Because the sadness is there, and a twinge in my heart—the “this is so not what Ian MacKaye would do” indie bereavement-cum-indignation. But in the end, I am calling this an un-betraying non-issue, because the Thurston says he’s being cautious, and I trust that. SY did this little thing in 1990 called sign to a major label, and they somehow weathered the morph without turning into the J. Geils band. It was a harrowing time, for totes, but we all survived in one piece, and later there was Murray Street, and Sonic Nurse...right? Right? Ignore the twinge. It'll be fine.

She's come undone

The Oscars have always demanded a certain number of jokes about gay and Jewish people per hour. The number gets smaller every year, but we are counting backwards from a million, so it is going to take us a long time to get to zero. I ask Jon and Anjanette why this is. They jibe, sarcaustic: “Because gays and Jews are funny.” I dance to the commercial and when they laugh at me I snark, “See, I just proved it’s true.”

At the bookstore we looked at Why We Never Danced the Charleston, its back cover advertising “the handsome, brooding Jew.” “Can that be my new nickname?” I plead, even though I am not sure I quite deserve to be called any of these things. “Yes,” she says. It should be a Wikipedia tag, we determine tonight. We also look at Cinderella’s Big Score, and when I point at Cynthia Connolly's S-K portrait under Mia Zapata in the photos section and say, “Look, she is schizophrenic,” that is exactly what I mean. Split-brained. Skhidzein, to split; phren, phrenos, mind. Split at the root. If the English language offers any precision whatsoever it is thanks to Greek. Pinnioned in the fold like that Carrie has three eyes, one of them downcast and half-closed, the others curious and peering. It is not a comment on the inward eye, voyeuristic complicity or even pop performance as schizophrenia, but I want it to be, because isn’t that what you have to do? Keep one face smiling at the photographer and another focused on yrself? This is not really me at all/ stunt girl daring twirls watch me fall.

This makes me nervous. I do not like the coincidence. All too often when we talk about women, artistry and genius keep solid company with schizophrenia and hysteria. The classical legacy plays nice when confined to words, but sabotages our assumptions about art and who makes it and why. When men make music that is wild and new and difficult it is because they are brilliant; male artistic experimentation has precedent and canonicity. When women make music that is wild and new and difficult it is harder to explain without talking about hysteria, trauma, instability, sexual history—-witches boiling newts’ eyes in cauldrons. Nick Cave is innovative. Bjork is unhinged.

Hysteria is a loaded and highly problematic concept to introduce into a discussion of female creativity, even as a metaphor. The term comes from the Greek word for uterus, husterikos. For centuries, psychosomatic and mental disorders in women were attributed to a ‘wandering womb.’ In other instances, such delirium was perceived as the mark of possession by demons...*

But then, doesn’t this make women the ultimate pop stars?

In a sense, hysteria is the very stuff of pop, both on the part of performers and fans...Pop has always been about the too much, the melodramatic amplification of passion or pain.**

When I made the mix tape, I wrote down the band names on a scrap piece of paper. Slant 6, Julie Ruin, Rasputina, Mecca Normal, Tuscadero. Excuse 17, Tracy, Patti. Later I noticed that across the top I had written HEROINES AND HYSTERICS as a reminder to check out the book of the same name. Another coincidence, or 23 years of conditioning? I say, let's reclaim this shit.

Hysterical Blackness
Hysterical Librarian
Hysteria festival

* & **: Simon Reynolds and Joy Press, writing in The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock 'n' Roll (276-7).

Fingertips to fingertips

Sometimes you read or hear something to which no amount of grandstanding or slang-slinging can do justice, something that absolutely and with no mercy kicks yr emotional equilibrium to the curb, bereft of breath and words. You are following along, doing yr laundry, perhaps, until suddenly the narrative twists, the story being told is yr own and you are left standing still in the middle of yr bedroom, holding a matchless sock and sobbing.

Catalina Puente's WNYC Radio Rookies segment is that kind of thing. Please, whoever you are--listen to it. It might not be about what you think it's going to be about. It will be worth the 12 minutes and 43 seconds, I promise.

Simons say

By the time of rave I had read Deleuze and Guattari, and it all just seemed to genuinely be there in the music, at the heart of how it operated. The idea of rhizomatic networks applied to the world of white labels and pirate radio and record shops serving as hubs. And also the dementia involved. Deleuze and Guattari came out of the idea that normal life screws you up and that madness is a sane response to our civilization.

If there was ever any doubt that Simon Reynolds knows his shit, it's been Cheney'd out of the quail covey by his Seattle Weekly Jukebox Jury with Andy Battaglia. The name-that-tune format really lets Reynolds shine, especically when they're listening to Phuture's "Spank Spank" and he pounces, "Is this an acid-house track? Phuture? Something about the hi-hats..." Or when they put on Gang of Four and he deadpans, "This is very much about Antonio Gramsci." Which it totes is, it's just, y'know, weird to hear somebody say it so declaratively. He diagnoses Arctic Monkeysitis as a kind of perennial Beatles nostalgia, observing, "the core music-press readership is always looking for a four-man guitar band from Britain that reflects back their lives to them in a slightly heroic way." Notice the "man" part of the equation; do (boy) critics get jazzed about Electrelane and the Gossip and even the Sleater in quite the same way they do about the Monkeys and Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand? Maybe sometimes. But the downward pull of the girl ghetto always lurks, fierce and relentless--like Scylla, or Ann Coulter. The default setting for "new genius band" is still "men."

While we're on the subject of glasses-wearing British whiz-crits named Simon, I'ma get something off my chest. Remember when Perfect Sound Forever interviewed Simon Frith? That was the one that went like this:

PSF: You've talked about generalizations of record collecting habits where girls are 'dupes' and boys are 'cognoscenti.' How do you find this so?

SF: ...One of the few generalizations you can make is that if a boy likes a record, they'll [sic] go out and buy all of them (by an artist). You find that when boys buy a Bon Jovi record for instance, they have to go out and buy all the Bon Jovi records, whereas girls may have two...And that just kind of struck me through a lot of anecdotal experience- just to hear how girls listen to music, that they're not collectors like boys are. And that's something with a very long history and that goes across any number of cultures too. Being collectors and cognoscenti seems to be a very masculine attribute. How you actually explain that, I absolutely have no idea--what sort of cultural or psychology things are at play and such.

Apart from the fact that I do not appreciate being called a dupe because of what is (not) between my legs, I am not stepping to Simon F. I know it's just a generalization, and I understand the point he was trying to make. However, I feel obligated to stress that I do not fit this pattern. I can kick the collector/cognoscenti steez any day of the week, and I am a girl. My sister is this way, too. And I can think of at least one "cultural or psychology thing" at play--try gender socialization. Kids are brilliant at conforming to what is expected of them. If girls grow up being assured that they're weak, or nurturers, or dupes, that's what they're liable to become. As for Frith's later point that "girls are more likely to have female acts in their collection than boys are," yeah, I suppose--except for the most collectorly dude I know, who shops for 7 inches the way most people buy bread and whose house is practically constructed out of rare vinyl. Said dude's mantra is six close variants of "BOY BANDS ARE BORING" and he quizzes me on Raincoats trivia when we are supposed to be working. Whose anecdotal experience is Frith privileging here? How many girls have to be collectors before the generalization begins to break down?

P.S. So's not to be exclusive: Simon Price is also lovely.

Interrobangin'

Julianne Shepherd nails it in Interrobang:

"YouTube is also this insane cultural tool. It not only illuminates certain truths about moments in music history, but also offers this intimate window into how other people in the world are relating to the current moment-- people who you'd never otherwise know but for the webbertron's perpetually amazing global connectivity. For instance, who is this guy, and how does one end up live-popping in a clothing store? Or these dudes, chillaxing in a V formation? I don't know, but I think I would like to be all of their friends."

Take the money/ leave the box/ everybody's on Top of the Pops

YouTube's reign of terror is merciless. I can't go anywhere without brainstorming bands to search for when I get home. Two nights ago I actually sat up in bed and gasped, "SUZI QUATRO!" The live performance trough appears to be bottomless, even after you've sifted out the 75,000 clips that are Mariah Carey and porn. A good bet is to search for Old Grey Whistle Test and Top of the Pops, but be warned--you may be forcibly dragged from yr compy months later, deranged & dehydrated, screaming, "NOOO! I HAVEN'T CHECKED TO SEE IF THEY'VE GOT X-RAY SPEX YET!"

Some of my favorites:

The Adverts -- Gary Gilmore's Eyes
Gaye Advert's black nail polished bass wizardry blinds the eyes and burns the heart.

Human League -- Sound of the Crowd
The fog! The hair! The single stabbing finger keyboard-playing! A tranny disco fever dream for the ages. Words cannot express how beautiful this is. Get in line now/ get in line now!

The Kinks -- Autumn Almanac
Toasted, buttered currant buns; my poor rheumatic back; yes, yes, yes, it's my autumn almanac! Ray Davies lifts suit jacket, wiggles bum; Dave grins like he's just drunk a quart of Skittles. You'll get six cavities while watching.

Queen -- Killer Queen
Whatevs, whatevs, Freddie's the shit, even lipsynching. Fastidious and precise...if you're that way inclined.

The Rezillos -- Flying Saucer Attack
Four-way tie between this, "Destination Venus," the deathly meta "Top of the Pops" (performed on show of same name, natch) and the coked-out art school wankery of "(My Baby Does) Good Sculptures." Boy-girl vocal caramel a la John & Exene, plus guitarist nailing the perfect pogo. Karen O has obvs. seen the tapes.

Altered Images -- A Day's Wait, Insects
In heaven, all kindergarten classes are taught by Claire Grogan. And everyone dances just like her, too.

Turn on the Brit bands

So the Arctic Monkeys aren't as bad as all that. Maybe it's only because I've just now eaten an enormous bowl of Count Chocula, the crack cocaine of breakfast cereals, but honestly, they could be worse. I enjoy the way Alex Turner straps his guitar way up under his armpit, as if he could care less about assuming the requisite "my axe is my phallus and I wear it down by my knees" pose of rock boy machoism. His playing doesn't resemble wanking off so much as frantically grating a wedge of cheese. I also like the fact that he rhymes "Capulets" with "DJ sets," and that the Monkeys will be hitting up the Hull Ice Arena for their spring 2006 tour. Perhaps they will perform on the rink itself, in reference to their name? Or at least hijack a zamboni for the encore?

Like it or not, we had all better get used to the Arctic Monkeys, because they are the new Oasis. That's what everyone has been saying, so it must be true. The Subways are the new Arctic Monkeys, as well as the old Art Brut, who were the new Futureheads, who may or may not have once been Oasis. Everyone is Bloc Party.

Personally, I miss the days when you could just call somebody Joy Division and be done with it. Those were simpler, saner times. Dammit, Interpol, where are you? I think some more Count Chocula is in order.

Quiet mob/ noisy recluse

THE PINES
with special guests SPAGHETTI WESTERN STRING CO.
Cedar Cultural Center
Friday, February 17, 8 pm
$10 advance/$12 day of show/$8 student rush

Like October's Quiet Mob release party in reverse. This time the Pines headline, towing a brand new EP of their own. They are deep and dark and shiverful, like early Dylan but emphatically un-Oberst. Plus, SWSC have new songs that are not to be missed--I have heard living room previews.

And if you like you can buy the ring

"It got very treacherous in the end, the flowers thing, because the stage was so goddamn slippy...you know, I'd be wearing moccasins and you'd be getting down with your bad self, and the next thing, whoa! Bang! A tulip!"

-Johnny Marr on the unique challenges of Smiths shows

Youtube has a Smiths clip up with more dreamy concert montages than you can shake a daffodil at. It's from some British VH1 rip-off called "I Love 1984," but unlike their American counterparts, the Brit writers and music people herded in to do the commentary are not bumbling, unfunny ass-clowns. This is great, because it means that instead of Michael Ian Black drooling we get Tony Wilson & Friends being classy and making comprehensible points. We also get Shaun Duggan, the Smiths teenage superfan whose play based on "William, It Was Really Nothing" was produced and performed in London in 1984. The BBC smelled drama and somehow induced Moz to actually show up and interview the poor kid, and said interview is the grand finale of the Youtube clip.

I dunno what the whole thing is like in context, but as is it's gothic and weirdly sexual, with Duggan looking like he desperately wants to climb into Morrissey's lap. I'm not complaining, it's fucking fantastic, but where are they? Why is the set so dark? And was that really a close-up of Morrissey licking his lips? Moz asks if fame is important to Duggan, and he quips, ""Yeah, I mean, I don't want to die and be no one, do you know what I mean?" There is the briefest of pauses before Moz breathes, "I do." But in that pause there is Morrissey, a teenage superfan in his own right, barricaded in his bedroom in his mum's house, sanctifying every inch of wall space with James Dean and the New York Dolls and trying to figure out how to turn himself into a pop star. Yes, darling, he knows.

Mozzer also shows up to head-scratching effect in New York Doll, the bizonkers documentary on Dolls bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane. He's totes eloquent and earnest, almost painfully so, but for some reason the director insists on shooting him exclusively in an eyebrows-to-chin close-up. Which is odd, because all of the other Dolls genius testifyers (Chrissie Hynde, Clem Burke, Mick Jones, Bob Geldof) are shown sitting several feet away from the camera. Maybe he's body-conscious and agreed to appear in the film only on the condition that he be shot in close-up, or else the director thought it would make him seem more mysterious and savior-like (he masterminds the Dolls reunion). Either way, the result is some seriously intense heaping screenfuls of Moz face.

You'll be able to see all of him, presumably, at SXSW next month when he does a special combo interview and music showcase. If you're a starving wallflower like me and will be sitting that one out, read this charming essay instead. And let's all of us read Saint Morrissey again--it's still the stunningest Mozological survey yet produced.

P.S. Dear God, this is the cutest thing ever.

Pogo Princess Girl Band Quiz 'N Contest

Test yr music smarts. If you get 7 of 7 correct answers w/o cheating, e-mail Pogo headquarters (dancingvioletsnail@yahoo.com) with yr address and you will receive a prize.

1. Which of the following is not an actual girl band?
A) Bella and the Bottomfeeders
B) Goldie and the Gingerbreads
C) Doris and the Dee-Lighters
D) Martha and the Muffins

2. "It's garage pop in clean overalls...And like Debbie Harry, Nikki is no slouch in the looks department -- ooooh, that pout! "

The previous quotation, from a review of Nikki & the Corvettes' self-titled album, was written
A) in 1979
B) in 2000
C) by Greil Marcus
D) by an alcoholic donkey

3. Tracy + the Plastics is
A) The world's leading manufacturer of disposable silverware
B) Three women
C) One woman
D) Two women, a man and three robots

4. In a 1999 interview with Rolling Stone, David Bowie described 70s super girl-group Fanny as
A) "about as talented as my cat's bum"
B) "one of the finest fucking rock bands of their time"
C) "tremendously indebted to Space Oddity"
D) "a bit better than the Spice Girls"

5. Laura Molina was the lead singer for
A) Tiger Lily
B) Tiger Trap
C) Tigerella
D) "Tiger" brand stain remover commercials

6. Influential punk phenoms Kleenex (later LiliPUT) were also
A) Swiss
B) amateur mimes
C) actually men
D) the Mo-dettes' secret side project

7. What was Cibo Matto's first full-length record called, and what were all of its songs about?
A) Ladies, Women & Girls; skateboarding
B) Odyshape; origami
C) Stereotype A; pets
D) Viva! La Woman; food

SCORING
1-3 correct answers
You looked in She's A Rebel.

4-6 correct answers
You are Gillian Gaar.

7 correct answers
You are Gillian Gaar's mom.

ANSWERS: 1) C; 2) B; 3) C; 4) B; 5) A; 6) A; 7) D

SCUM/Solanas FAQ

Writing about the Friedan legacy for Salon, Joan Walsh offers,

"I'm not old enough to judge the battles of the day with firsthand knowledge or memory, but certainly [Friedan] was wrong about some things (she called lesbianism "a lavender menace" and thought if feminism embraced gay rights all feminists would be labeled lesbians), right about others (she threatened to sue when New York NOW president Ti-Grace Atkinson took up the cause of Valerie Solanis [sic], deranged founder of SCUM, the "Society to Cut Up Men," [sic] who shot Andy Warhol after accusing him of exploiting her in 1968)."

A few observations.

1. Valerie Solanas' last name is S-O-L-A-N-A-S. Kind of like the breakdown in Hollaback Girl. It is considered good journalistic practice to spell people's names correctly when you call them "deranged" in a national publication. Even if they did suffer from childhood abuse and paranoid schizophrenia, and are dead. Especially then.

2. The acronym SCUM stands for Society for Cutting Up Men.

3. SCUM was not, as the sentence implies, a functioning organization. Rather, it was an extended literary device intended to provoke attention and debate (think A Modest Proposal). Solanas never seriously planned to destroy the male sex. As she told the Village Voice in 1977, "It's hypothetical. No, hypothetical is the wrong word. It's just a literary device. There's no organization called SCUM."

4. Solanas did not say anything about men in the SCUM Manifesto that men haven't been saying about women for thousands of years. Substitute the word "female" for "male" at any point and it reads like mainstream ancient Greek, Medieval, Renaissance and even Enlightenment philosophy. Is SCUM more "deranged" than John Knox's 1558 "The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women," which states, "[Women's] sight...is but blindness; their strength, weakness; their counsel, foolishness; and judgment, frenzy"? It's anyone's call. At least Solanas, as Lili Taylor stressed on Saturday night at the Walker, had a sense of humor, which is more than can be said for either Knox or Filippo Marinetti, whose 1909 Futurist Manifesto called for the glorification of war ("the world's only hygiene"), the defeat of feminism and a general "scorn for woman."

Solanas didn't start this game. She just played it from the opposite side:

"Direct thought is not an attribute of femininity. In this, women are now centuries behind man." -Thomas Edison
"Completely egocentric, unable to relate, empathize or identify, and filled with a vast, pervasive, diffuse sexuality, the male is psychically passive." -Solanas

"Nature intended women to be our slaves. They are our property." -Napoleon Bonaparte
"The male is docile and easily led, easily subjected to the domination of any female who cares to dominate him. The male, in fact, wants desperately to be led by females, wants Mama in charge, wants to abandon himself to her care." -Solanas

"When a woman becomes a scholar there is usually something wrong with her sexual organs." -Friedrich Nietzsche
"[The male's] responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations." -Solanas

"Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another." -H.L. Mencken
"Love can exist only between two secure, free-wheeling, independent groovy females, since friendship is based upon respect, not contempt." -Solanas

Occult empathy

Always suspected, finally confirmed: Lili Taylor is the Mirah of film. Feminist, independent, uncompromising, inspiring as hell, realer than reals. Her talk show guest crossed-legs pose quickly melted into a hands-in-lap, legs-folded-at-ankles posture of polite attention, which also alternated with the kind of leaning-forward, both-feet-on-the-ground, "fuck ladylike" stance that betokens serious thinkery. She giggled a lot and was nervous and excited and awkward in the most endearing of ways and used the word 'autonomy.' TWICE. She posited a seachange in the marketability of indie movies around '96 and '97, just post-I Shot Andy Warhol/ Girls Town, but decried the reduction of an entire artistic philosophy of independence to a financial formula wherein you go low-budget only to maximize profit. She also made it pretty clear that from now on she is exclusively interested in taking on small projects that will probably never make money, because she is in this for the art and the honesty, not so much the commerce.

And of course, the heart-stealer moment: she said, "I am a feminist." When she did, my breath caught in my throat, because I swear, it is like J.M. Barrie's fairy-killing in reverse; every time somebody says "I believe in feminism," there's a feminist somewhere out there who comes to life.

Speaking of feminist heroes: my lady Becky Smith sends the arrow into the bullseye, through the target, around the world like Superman and into the bullseye again.

Give me 15 cents, and I'll give you a dirty word

Lili Taylor talks with B. Ruby Rich tonight at the Walker. It is going to be like Inside the Actors' Studio, only feminist, and not stupid. Hopefully somebody will bring up Jungian archetypes during the Q&A and we will debate their potential for lady-positive reclamation for six hours.

Please don't kill the freshman

I have been OKed to present at EMP Pop Con this year. This is rather like the Yankees letting a 5-year-old tee-ball novice pinch-hit for a couple of innings. I am very, very scared--the kind of scared that keeps company with rashes and cold sweats--but hope that it will all turn out like it did when I was 11 and did ballet. I was a mouse in The Tales of Beatrix Potter, and every night before I had to go onstage for the big mouse dance I would cower in the wings and wish that I was somewhere, anywhere else where I wouldn't have to run around in front of hundreds of people in a mouse head that made it impossible to see where I was going. But then, when my part was over and I could just hang out at stage left and clean my whiskers while the adults danced, the blood would rush to my head and I would get the most intense natural high imaginable and scream internally, "THIS IS FUCKING GREAT," only without the "fucking," because I was 11.

So maybe EMP will be like that. Me, dancing blindly in a mouse head. And then euphoria. Here is what I will be cleaning my whiskers about:

Truly Outrageous: Towards A Defense of Jem & the Holograms

Part response to the MTV explosion, part transparent marketing gimmick for a line of Barbie-like dolls by Hasbro, the animated television series Jem & the Holograms debuted in 1985 and aired in syndication until 1987. The show followed the adventures of Jerrica Benton, a plucky Nancy Drew-Kylie Minogue hybrid, as she and her all-girl band the Holograms recorded music, toured, and sparred with rival girl band the Misfits.

Jem & the Holograms provided a generation of kids growing up in the 80s with a template for understanding female musicianship. Not surprisingly, this template had more to do with fashion and magical earrings than it did with the labor of songwriting and performance. But where it failed to delineate a practical guide for musical production, Jem succeeded in conjuring up a unique world in which women were the primary producers of music, and men their villainized or inept supporting players. In my paper and through analysis of video clips, I examine the politics of this world and its influence on the ways we think about “girl bands” today. I also assess the show’s equation of musical (and female) success with materialism in order to test the limits of a feminist reading. Finally, by situating Jem as a response to the popularity of real groups like the Go-Gos, the Bangles, and Bananarama, I argue that the series deserves recognition not only as a guilty pleasure, but as an historical site of engagement with the changing musical landscape of the 1980s.

Just another clip about women in rock (huh!)

Mairead scooped me on this one, but in addition to the "Typical Girls" video, You Tube also has an amazing excerpt from a German documentary about women in rock, featuring lots of Slits performance footage and Viv Albertine being incisive and awesome. Visibly exasperated by the never-ending "How does being women affect yr music?" and "What is it like to be a woman musician?" line of questioning, Viv finally gongs the nail on the head: "We are fucking women making music, that's all there is to say about it."

The filmmakers are obviously big supporters of female musicians, but the sum total of the interview clips is sad and a half--sad because the Slits shouldn't have had to talk about this in 1979, and I definitely shouldn't have to write about it now, 27 years later. While the inherent ability of men to make music has never been considered worthy of scrutiny, the imperative to explain female musicianship is deathless. It is explored and questioned, defended and denied as if it were Einstein's theory of special relativity or Heisenberg's uncertainty principle rather than the simple physical act of a woman playing an instrument. Why is this something that necessitates study? We're people, not particles traveling at the speed of light in a vacuum.

I don't live here, I'm from Fanville

It is an odd thing to suddenly find yrself on the performing side of the audience-musician divide when it is not yr native province. It's weird over there. There's too much empty space, and that mike stand in front of my nose just cries out to be jostled, and why are all of these people staring at me so terribly, terribly squarely? If their bangs weren't covering half their faces then maybe I could tell whether everyone was having an okay time or not, but as it is I am too mired in show-fright, so I keep my eyes on the ground and study shoes--boots and Converse, mostly, with rusty buckle and duct tape accents. High-Top Purple Cons seems to be enjoying herself, stomping a bit, but Knee-High Mukluks looks bored, and Ratty Sneakers clearly wishes he had stayed at home. After bumping the mike stand for the seventh time I hang my head and intensify an already strong-ass respect for the people who do this every night, who endure the sound checks and staring to make the art they believe in.

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"Some people are born with the certainty that they own sound or volume; that the lexicon of rock music is theirs to borrow from, to employ, to interpret. For them, it might be nothing to move around a stage, to swagger, to sing in front of people, to pick up a guitar, to make records. I set out from a place where I never assumed that those were acceptable choices or that I could ever be anything but an accessory to rock'n'roll. Coming out of a tradition that historically didn't allow women much of a voice, then finding myself helping to create a sound that filled an entire room, that reached into every person in that room, that is a power I had to learn. I needed to try it on before I could call it mine. I had to find a means to make it my own."

-Carrie Brownstein, "More Rock, Less Talk," from This Is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project.

I can even sort of play guitar

Jessica Delfino's White Box Session over at The Brink is six flavors of genius, including the kind with the caramel center. Yes, it's a throwaway joke song, but it taps into a very real, very powerful and very American anxiety about anonymity. What proof of worth and success does a post-Warhol, reality show-saturated culture demand other than celebrity? If you are a halfway intelligent person with any kind of talent whatsoever, this culture assures us, you are a failure if you are not famous.

P.S. Dancing With Myself does not advocate the pre-meditated killing of people, animals or kiwi fruits--famous or otherwise.