Clueless Golden Girls

This is amazing. The Golden Girls do Clueless.

The Good, The Bad, and The Seth Rogen

Okay, where to start. I usually try to concentrate on the positive but today its gonna be a jumble of stuff.

First of all, does anyone have good recommendations for a daily news blog because The Huffington Post is really getting on my nerves. For instance this little tid bit:

What next? Is she sexting with Putin?
In case you haven't noticed Hillary has been laying the smack down lately. She can eat as much chocolate as she wants... she deserves it.


Also word on the street has it that Kate Moss is "fat" now. These type of articles always undo the good they apparently think they're doing. They lump everything from Kate Moss to a "size 28 model" into the same category and then claim it has to do with the recession, since people are buying more economical fatty foods in bulk. I saw the photos of Kate Moss in New York magazine a month or so ago and I was actually really excited about how she looks. I think it was mostly because, since models are unbelievably in control of their bodies this is obviously a deliberate choice of hers. She isn't "cheating on her diet", she's just looking more appropriate for her age. With her lack of botox and softer look she seems to be bucking many of the trends for high profile women. I had the New York Magazine when my parents were visiting a couple weeks ago and I showed them the pictures exclaiming how beautiful she looked. My parents could give half a shit about this kind of pop culture blabbering. My dad just looked at the pictures and said "I don't see what the big deal is,,, your mom looks just like that". Love you dad!


Bea Arthur passed away this week. She will be missed but her influence lives on.

Roast of Pamela Anderson
Bea Arthur Uncensored
comedycentral.com
Joke of the Day Stand-Up Comedy Free Online Games

On the side of good news an anonymous donor has given over seventy million dollars to colleges run by women. They have also sent in special funds for female and minority students. I love hearing news like this especially since the recent articles and news casts about how many graduating high school students won't be able to afford college due to the recession. Yay, anonymous donor!

In other entertaining news... this is a really funny video about a woman named Andrea Wachner who hired a stripper to go in her place to her 10th year high school reunion.

High school stripper en Yahoo! Video

And finally. The troubling issue of Observe and Report. If someone had told me four years ago that Seth Rogen and Anna Farris were making a movie about mall life I would have jumped for joy. Unfortunately, this is not the carefree and fair handed mall life of Kevin Smith movies. Observe and Report has people who haven't even watched it yet freaking out due to the date rape scene that takes place between Rogen and Farris. I wasn't sure I wanted to see it after watching the trailer....

But basically I'll watch all sorts of crap. And Sam and I were doing one of our stints where we end up at the movie theater and try to see all the movies in an effort to get our $12.50 worth. So we saw Crank 2 which is just totally insane -but it is what it is it and doesn't pretend other wise. However Observe and Report draws people who are expecting another bromance from Judd Apatow. Yet, Judd is off making a movie where I'm sure everyone gets married in the end. This movie is a freak show all on its own. So to start off - yes, it is date rape. To all of you who are deliberating if it is or isn't and you haven't seen the movie.... if you have to drag the girl into your house after she pukes up shots and pills, then yea, its rape. However, in all honestly by the time that scene rolled around I wasn't surprised. Rogen's character has taken all the lies of "the great American male", the hero, and gone down a dark path of mental illness and feverish questing for purpose. I don't think anything is really off limits for a good joke, I'm always surprised at what Wanda Sykes can do with off limits material. Yet, when Rogen's character explains that he is bi-polar and was feeling so good he didn't need his medicine anymore, my heart sank. A few minutes later he's raping Anna Farris and then beating the shit out of 15 year old skaters, and eventually shooting people. I immediately starting feeling uncomfortable knowing how this was both a disgusting portrayal of bipolar disorder and also thinking about the actual difficulties that this disease can have for families worldwide. Yet, it was the police (and security guard) violence that really pushed me into a freaked out stage. I thought about the subway shooting in Oakland, the Sean Bell case, and the zillions of other cases each year that are spawned from this same predicament of the male hero fantasy or mental illness or both. The movie is so dark that it could almost be viewed as commentary on the cultural expectations and idealized images that torture modern men. In one of the better moments Rogen's mom tries to tell him he can be whatever he wants because "he still has his dreams". Then they realize how untrue that is. Yet, this Observe and Report decided it needed a movie ending, so our hero shoots the bad guy and shames the slut and gets the virgin and unrealistically gets to keep his job. The final scene was reminiscent of last winter when a New York cop tasered a naked mentally retarded man sending him falling from his window to his death. The cop who gave the order was so distressed he committed suicide a week later. Don't worry I didn't ruin the movie for you, its totally predictable.

Crimson Tide

This show opens at 7pm sharp in my bedroom, yesterday. Stay tuned for Jerry Saltz's review.

Jackie Saccoccio


Ana Cardoso


Eileen Agar


Yayoi Kusama


Lee Krasner


Florine Stettheimer


Hilma Af Klint


Rebecca Morris


Charline von Heyl


Jacqueline Humphries


Carol Rama


Tamuna Sirbiladze


Mary Heilmann


Dorothea Rockburne


Michaela Eichwald

Coco!

So they haven't yet released an English subtitled version of the new Coco Avant Chanel movie trailer.
But OMG it looks like fun.


okay okay, here is a terribly subtitled version of the same trailer



In theaters April 22nd.

Michelle

On the night of the election Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had one of Michelle and Barack's former Harvard professors on their election coverage. When they asked him if he thought Barack would some day be president, he said that he would have pegged Michelle more as the presidential material.
I'm personally really excited to have such an awesome first lady. Michelle Obama is incredibly brilliant, takes no shit, and manages to have killer arms, amazing daughters, and a controversial amount of legislative input. I've always found it interesting that she actually met Barack when she was assigned to mentor him while he was a summer associate at the law firm she worked at.
Michelle grew up in Chicago, spending 3 hours a day on the public bus system to attend high school. She wrote her thesis at Princeton on "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community". After Princeton and Harvard she went on to work at the Sidley Austin Law Firm, as well as being Assistant to the Mayor of Chicago and Assistant Commissioner of Planning and Development. She also worked as Executive Director for the Chicago office of Public Allies, a non-profit encouraging young people to work on social issues in nonprofit groups and government agencies. In 1996, she served as the Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago and then went on to be Vice President for Community and External Affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Somewhere around there Michelle and Barack were finally able to pay off their student loans.
Now in the White House she is fighting for equal opportunities in the work place and advocating on the behalf of military families. She has set up a garden on the White House property and is working to promote organic agriculture. Michelle has appeared before the Department of Education and Department of Housing and Urban Development to promote the Economic Stimulus Bill. I really admire Michelle for being able to accomplish so much while maintaining a stable environment for her daughters. And by stable I mean she held a meeting with the entire wait staff to let them know that Sasha and Malia will be making their own beds and helping the staff with chores in the kitchen and elsewhere. I'm excited to see not just what Michelle accomplishes in her position as first lady but also to watch the Obama girls grow up to be equally as amazing.

Happy Spring Cleaning

Vaginal Davis

Vaginal Davis is a drag queen, performance artist, painter, independent curator, composer, and writer. Yet, she doesn't do any of those things the way you might be thinking. What makes her especially interesting to me is that, in the world of drag the goal is usually to look like the ideal woman, or better than the ideal woman. However, Vaginal Davis took that idea and rolled it around on the floor of a mosh pit. Her infamous performances and well basically her existence is a commentary on the bizarre world of female impersonation, and I mean that in the way that most women are doing some sort of impersonation.... its not just drag queens. Vaginal Davis uses drag and performance to take our understanding of gender to new limits. Amazingly enough her career also knows no limits....she's performed with Margaret Cho and Beck, was in a band with Beck's mom Bibbe Hanson called Black Fag, performed in plays and quite a few movies (from Bruce LaBruce's to big time hollywood) , and has formed many important bands and performance groups- such as "¡Cholita! the Female Menudo" with Alice Bag. She also has an upcoming book entitled Beware the Holy Retarded Whore, a compilation of her interviews with celebrities like Keanu Reeves, Missy Elliott, and Eminem.























If you're interested check out this performance she did as commentary on Vanessa Beecroft's work. The text accompanying the video does a really great job of explaining why Vaginal Davis's work is so important.
http://vimeo.com/2792221

Name Droppin

I usually tend to have an aversion to Le Tigre due to this roomate I had in pre-college who only listened to Le Tigre and Sleater Kinney for the entire 6 weeks. Seriously, it was 24/7 and nothing else. But this song is really cute and i like the lyrics so here ya go.


hot topic is the way that we rhyme
hot topic is the way that we rhyme
one step behind the drum style
one step behind the drum style
carol rama and elanor antin
yoko ono and carolee schneeman
you're getting old, that's what they'll say, but
don't give a damn i'm listening anyway
stop, don't you stop
i can't live if you stop
don't you stop
gretchen phillips and cibo matto
leslie feinburg and faith ringgold
mr. lady, laura cottingham
mab segrest and the butchies, man
don't stop
don't you stop
we won't stop
don't you stop
so many roads and so much opinion
so much shit to give in, give in to
so many rules and so much opinion
so much bullshit but we won't give in
stop, we won't stop
don't you stop
i can't live if you stop
tammy rae carland and sleater-kinney
vivienne dick and lorraine o'grady
gayatri spivak and angela davis
laurie weeks and dorothy allison
stop, don't you stop
please don't stop
we won't stop
gertrude stein, marlon riggs, billie jean king, ut, dj cuttin candy,
david wojnarowicz, melissa york, nina simone, ann peebles, tammy hart,
the slits, hanin elias, hazel dickens, cathy sissler, shirley muldowney,
urvashi vaid, valie export, cathy opie, james baldwin,
diane dimassa, aretha franklin, joan jett, mia x, krystal wakem,
kara walker, justin bond, bridget irish, juliana lueking,
cecelia dougherty, ariel skrag, the need, vaginal creme davis,
alice gerard, billy tipton, julie doucet, yayoi kusama, eileen myles
oh no no no don't stop stop............

"Yea I know I'm too old to live this way"

Here's an old video of Janeane Garofolo in 1992. She's talking about 1992ish issues - 90210 and Gen X non-aspiration. Yet it still seems topical for me since I've been cruising through all ten thousand seasons of 90210 and Kathleen and I have spent quite a lot of time talking about the cast's butts and what they look like in those jeans everyone wore back then. Anyhow, whatever here's the video.
Oh, also Dana Carvey is kinda cute and Janeane is mixing velvet with boxer shorts!

PS- Watch Kathy Griffin's new stand up special She'll Cut A Bitch. It was just on but I'm sure they'll repeat it.

"I want all my daughters / To be like Maxine Waters"

There's a really great review over at dustedmagazine.com about a new compilation out called Fly Girls! B-Boys Beware: Revenge Of The Super Female Rappers! The writer really knows his stuff and I strongly suggest at least reading the review.
http://dustedmagazine.com/reviews/4923
Writer Jake O' Connell brings you through decades - from African princess/ poets such as Camille Yarbrough to the more modern day fly girl rivalry between Roxanne Shante and The Real Roxanne.

Here are some videos of artists he mentions.

Shirley Ellis - The Clapping Song


Blackalicous ft. Nikki Giovanni - Ego Trip
This one is seriously awesome.


The Sequence - Simon Says
This is sort of like the missing link in the story.


Roxanne Shante- Dance to This
So young with such a naughty mouth on her.
(Roxanne Shante is now a PhD in psychology)


MC Lyte - I Go One
Clearly this is for the women. I love how she's looking at slides and that she threatens to steal guys shorts because she might want to wear them.


I also can't resist putting up this video of Sista Souljah. Can she please be our next president?


The compilation and review don't go up this far but I can't help bringing this slightly more up to date with one of my fav's.
Missy Elliot - Work It

Watch more Under Construction videos on AOL Video

I ain't gonna study war no more

Here's some easter weekend for ya...
Mahalia Jackson and Dinah Shore sing Down By the Riverside

Dinah Shore & Mahalia Jackson Sing Down By The Riverside
Uploaded by gp1978

Vermont Makes History With The Help of Evann Orleck-Jetter

This week Vermont became the first state to legalize gay marriage through legislative action instead of court order. Vermont has always been a few steps ahead of the game, they were the first state to legalize civil unions as well. This next step shows that politicians can make the right decisions and states such as New York and California have taken notice. As a New Yorker I'm excited to hear that Gov. Paterson is pushing to bring the decision to Albany where he says “It’s like professional wrestling. You know who’s going to win before the match starts.”
On Democracy Now this week Amy Goodman interviewed Evann Orleck-Jetter a 12 year old with lesbian parents who had testified at the Vermont hearings on gay marriage last month. Many of the legislators, when asked what had changed their views and lead them to vote for gay marriage, cited Evann as their main influence. I thought it was powerful in this interview when Evann notes that many who fight against gay marriage say they're protecting the children. Evann points out that they certainly aren't protecting her, without marriage rights raising, protecting, and caring for your own children can be very difficult. I've often wondered about this issue - can explaining gay marriage to your kids be more difficult than explaining love, death, how babies are made, cancer, how an airplane flies, why clouds exist, or any number of other things kids want to know about. I doubt it would be very high up on things that kids think are confusing.

This video of Evann's interview should start at 27 minutes in,,, if it doesn't just click 27 minutes in.

Just For Fun

Jutta Koether and Kim Gordon performing at Sutton Lane Gallery - Paris, France

The Passionate Mistakes And Intricate Corruption Of One Girl In America

I recently finished reading Michelle Tea's The Passionate Mistakes And Intricate Corruption Of One Girl In America. Part autobiography part fiction the book felt both familiar and at the same time like nothing I'd ever read. I guess it would fall into the genre of 'coming of age novel', kind of On The Road kind of Catcher In The Rye. Yet, when I finished it I realized that in most of those tales the male protagonist, eager to experience life, goes out into the world itching to stir up some trouble. Yet there's something different about coming of age for a girl, in this case a goth Bostonian turned lesbian prostitute. It seems that that boys can go looking for adventures, while when you're a girl just stepping out the front door will land you in a heap of trouble. Not that the protagonist, Michelle herself, wasn't passionate for her mistakes as the title so describes. If Judy Blume was rated X or if S.E. Hinton had written about the girls she knew instead of the boys, America might have had a novel about a true female coming of age. Sylvia Plath and Dorothy Allison, two of Tea's favorites, are the closest I can think of to capturing that unavoidable trouble.
The back cover describes Michelle as an "ex-goth, ex-drummer, ex-straight girl, ex-lesbian separatist, vegan graduate of a vocational high school" which kind of gives you an idea of the range of things she's tried on for size. The book opens up with Michelle outside an INXS show attempting to catch Michael Hutchinson's eye and torn between her desire to be a groupie and her " refusal to become part of the shrieking mob". She treks from Chelsea, Massachusetts into Boston regularly and tears through a couple depressing goth boyfriends. After a couple years of un-fulfillment she eventually ditches her boyfriend and the goth scene for girls and the early 90s. She gets deeply into what she refers to as the " Queer Nation/ Pynk Panthers/ R2N2 feminista baby dyke circle" which leads her to prostitution. So many books and movies have prostitutes, whether the fun loving maternal ones of John Irving's novels, or the flashy drug addled hookers found in any movie about New York in the 1980s. However, I can't ever remember reading about what its really like to be 22 and hoping the obscene amount of condoms don't fall out of your shitty purse while making more money than you could ever imagine from having sex with guys who have Parkinson's Disease or 'whose teddy bears wanna watch'. I especially like hearing about the "Magic Johnson draught" when there was a slump in prostitution because the johns realized anyone can get HIV. Michelle also takes you through a variety of lesbian relationships that really run the gamut and avoid the cliche of Ellen met Portia de Rossi and everyone lived happily ever after thing. The main love interest is Liz, who introduces her to hooking and who seems to alternate with Michelle as the culprit in their angst ridden adventures through Boston, Provincetown, and Arizona.
One aspect of the novel that really stuck out to me is that its not just the tale of an upper class liberal arts educated woman, its the story of a girl who grew up in a working class poor suburb of Boston, attended a vocational high school and worked shitty jobs for a while to afford to go to Salem State College. At one point while on a date that involves sitting on a fire escape drinking wine, Michelle and the girl she's crushing on discuss "how more than being a woman or gay it was all about class". This theme seemed particularly strong at the point when she attempts to find her dead beat dad in a Kathy Ackeresque and eventually unsuccessful scheme to kill him with the assistance of her lover, Liz. The descriptions of her visits to relatives houses in Chelsea, Mass remind me of the most run down places I've been in, the kinds of places where you can smell the staircase decomposing as you climb around stacks of old newspapers. It makes me think her off handed "its all about class" thing is true because we'll definitely see more books by women and lesbians in the future but your chances at a book deal are really slim when you can't afford college, rent, or a bus ticket.
While reading Brandon Stousy's foreword to the book I was reminded of an essay I read recently that Lucy Lippard had written at some point in the 70s. In the essay Lippard claims that she won't really be able to say what is "woman's art" until a generation surfaces that has been " taught by women and turned on by women's art". This novel by Michelle Tea is one of the first I've read to truly draw its primary inspiration from the work of other female writers. When Brandon Stousy asks her in the foreword if she was inspired by Charles Bukowski she replies that she always figured "Eileen Myles read Bukowski so girls like me didn't have to". She cites Myles as a huge inspiration and the one who gave her "permission to use her life as work". I also see some Chris Kraus, Cookie Mueller, and Kathy Acker in the work and I guess it all comes full circle since Kraus's Native Agents imprint of Semiotext published the book and Eileen Myles wrote the afterword. The story's exploration of class issues is pretty interesting when you consider Tea as the other side of the coin to Myles's wealthy blue blooded Massachusetts upbringing.
At some point early on in the novel Michelle describes her twin friends Judith and Janet, who people refereed to as "those crazy The Cure girls". The twins would show up on the library steps where the 'death-rock-slash-skater-crowd" hung out and sit by themselves cutting their arms and writing in their journals. They become Michelle's on again off again best friends until they eventually part ways and end up in different messes somewhere else in some other parts of the country. Michelle says that she knows she wouldn't know them if she saw them. This concept of the lost friends of your youth seems to embody the whole book for me. The fact that Michelle Tea could be any friend you grew up with. It made me think about all the girls I grew up with and the stories that filter back to you - so and so is divorced in Florida, so and so is traveling some other country with her girlfriend, so and so is performing in burlesque shows up North. It makes me remember back when we were bonding over the fact that we were so sure bellbottoms were coming back in style in 5th grade and that was the basis of our friendship. Reading this book was like reading all the steps between that moment and the fact that you wouldn't even recognize that friend now.

Rye Rye

Rye Rye with DJ Blaqstarr - Shake it to the ground

This 17 year old from Baltimore is currently rocking my world

i'm cool and fine i'm a feisty girl
yea, you can't buy me i'm a priceless girl

Bebies!

I love babies as much as the next person, I obsessively stare at them in restaurants and try to touch them in line at the supermarket when their parents aren't looking. However, I'm currently still trying to work up to the point of adulthood when I can manage a dog.
Kristen Wiig and Amy Elliot did a great job in last nights SNL skit making fun of the celebrity baby mania that manages to keep Angelina Jolie and Madonna in the spotlight.