The Feminist Headbanger

My BF just turned me on to this cool blog called Feminist Headbanger because they had a really great post about why Periods Are Metal.

To quote the posts' author "Morla, the ancient one" :

"I happen to think that bleeding each month and not dying is probably one of the most “metal” things one could do. "

and also

"Periods are fucking metal. Even more metal are periods that are painful beyond the norm. Periods experienced by women with fibroids, endometriosis and other disorders of the reproductive system. With these conditions, the monthly visitor is a terror; a demon to be reckoned with that cannot be conquered except through pharmaceuticals, beer or extreme rage. A combination of all three, plus a hot bath that surrounds you with clots, amounts to an image that’s as unsettling as a Mayhem cover."

Anyhow, Feminist Headbanger is awesome and you should go check it out.

The post also reminded me of this old Margaret Cho bit about if guys got periods. I've posted it before but its so good it deserves re-posting.

Ayshay

Check out the new music video by Ayshay, an accapella project by Fatima Al Qadiri.
For more info go here.















Warn- U
by Ayshay


Also her performance at the Tate Modern on May 15th.

Jodie

This 1998 art piece by artist Dara Friedman is titled "Jodie", featuring model Jodie Kidd. For those of you also from the MTV generation - it takes about 3 minutes in for it to get going.

"Friedman documents a model during a fashion shoot, the exaggerated, staccato rhythms of her camera punctuated by machine-gun like bursts of fireworks and the chiming of bells. The model veers wildly between states of calm and hair-wringing distress in a short, hyper-kinetic sequence bookended by image fields of solid color; a slow approach to an intense, intimate proximity"

Q'orinka Kilcher Arrested For Civil Disobediance At The White House

Q'orianka Kilcher, best known for her role as Pocahontas in Terrence Malick's 2005 movie The New World, has been arrested this morning at the White House. Kilcher tied herself to the White House fence while her mother poured black paint symbolizing oil all over her. The women were protesting, along with a big crowd of people, in light of President Obama's morning meeting with the President of Peru. You can read more about that on my post here - but the simplified version is that the Peruvian government has been approving for years the vast destruction of the Peruvian Amazon at the hands of oil companies who are destroying the land and native people with enormous oil and mining projects. Not only are they hiding the deaths of tons of native Peruvians who have no say in the project, but the government has also killed many of the protesters.
Kilcher, whose father is Peruvian, has stated in the past that she wished President Obama would get involved and take action. After all part of this disastrous situation is due to the U.S.'s free trade agreement with Peru, and as Kilcher stated on Democracy Now...

"I started trying to highlight the over-thirty-five-year-long struggle that the Achuar community was facing with Occidental Petroleum, a Los Angeles-based company, you know, drilling there, using practices outlawed in the United States, pumping an average of 850,000 barrels of toxic waste in one day on one block alone, and dumping it into the rivers, not using reinjection."

Its sadly an old story, wherein the U.S. doesn't follow its own laws when on someone else's soil.

Both women were arrested - Q'orianka for disorderly conduct and her mother for defacing government property. For those of you unfamiliar with civil disobedience this is a good thing. No one would even know there was a protest at the white house today if Q'orianka and her mother had not been there getting arrested. News reporters need star power to bother writing about things.













Its also interesting to think about this story in the context of her role as Pocahontas. My generation grew up generally understanding that Columbus was a bad guy for slaughtering the Native Americans, but as Kilcher puts it - that's just called Globalization these days. The world loves seeing 14 year old Pocahontas getting Stockholm syndrome for her captors and dieing a tragic and beautiful death.

Yet, the now 20 year old Q'orianka is part of my generation and she's not going to go with the flow. She brought intelligence and respectability to her role as the naive Pocahontas and she continues to bring a level of substance to her career as actress and activist.













Here's a video of one of her trips to Peru. It shows some of the damages to the land.

From Your Front Porch To My Front Seat

Ooo-eee, it has been warm out lately. Makes ya just wanna wear your birthday attire as Ms. Nina Simone is doing in the photo at left. So I've got a lazy summer mix for you. I was feeling inspired by this post of Patti Smith where she covers "You Light Up My Life" so I thought I'd do a post of all covered songs.











Here Patti Smith does Gloria. I love both the original by Van Morrison and this cover so much I wanted to name my first born daughter Gloria, but pretty much everyone I know isn't into that name so I don't think its gonna work out. Anyhow, enjoy.


I was also inspired by this version of Bruce Springsteen's Thunder Road that I heard on Studio 360 last week performed by the actress Martha Plimpton. Ya know what, Martha Plimpton is cool. And this song is completely epic. Because this was meant for radio I suggest closing your eyes and listening to the lyrics. It does The Boss some serious justice.


The ultimate summer song aptly titled Summertime. The original is written by George Gershwin, but this version by Janis Joplin is my favorite song of hers.


Here Kate Bush takes Elton John's Rocket Man and makes it her own. Its just pretty cool until the reggae beats kick in and it gets even better and becomes totally moving. "Mars ain't the kind of place to raise a kid.."


Sorry not much of a video for this one, but Mr. Bojangles written by Jerry Jeff Walker who wrote the song not about the famed Bill "Bojangles" Robinson but about a guy he met in jail when he was arrested on the 4th of July. Which officially makes it a great summer song. Here is Nina Simone's version which she infuses with much more meaning.


St. Etienne covers Neil Young's Only Love Can Break Your Heart. They surely arise to the occasion.


And since its Memorial Day and we're doing covers who could miss this.

Addicted To Love

Andrea Merkx's 2004 cover of Robert Palmer's Addicted To Love.

The Shit

Hooper Place
Lying, cheating, stealing, seduction, betrayal, jealousy, greed, murder... it's just another day at Hooper Place.

Good-Bye Bret

Have you read this interview with Bret Easton Ellis. I don't even know where to start. Maybe with this or this or this.? Oh well Bret, I guess this is good-bye. Can womankind make some sort of pact so that he never gets laid again?

Also, I just realized the only one of his books that's ever been made into an actually good movie is American Psycho directed by Mary Harron.
As for his male directed movies : The Rules of Attraction was an okay fun college movie but The Informers and Less Than Zero were sad butcherings of the books. So what is he even talking about?

here is the full article
http://www.movieline.com/2010/05/bret-easton-ellis-on-american-psycho-christian-bale-and-his-problem-with-women-directors.php?page=all

What are your thoughts on women directors? After you saw Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, you tweeted that you might have to reevaluate your preconceived notions about them.
I did. And after I saw [Floria Sigismondi’s] The Runaways, too.

Really?
I loved it.

I wish I’d loved it.
Well, I wasn’t looking forward to it. I avoided it, and then I was with some people and they said, “It starts soon at the Arclight. Let’s go.” So yeah, I do have to reevaluate that, but for the most part I’m not totally convinced, [except for] Andrea Arnold, Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola…

Not Mary Harron?
Mary Harron to a degree. There’s something about the medium of film itself that I think requires the male gaze.

What would that be?
We’re watching, and we’re aroused by looking, whereas I don’t think women respond that way to films, just because of how they’re built.

"Regardless of the business aspect of things, is there a reason that there isn’t a female Hitchcock or a female Scorsese or a female Spielberg?"

You don’t think they have an overt level of arousal?
[They have one] that’s not so stimulated by the visual. I think, to a degree, all the women I named aren’t particularly visual directors. You could argue that Lost in Translation is beautiful, but is that [cinematographer Lance Acord]? I don’t know. Regardless of the business aspect of things, is there a reason that there isn’t a female Hitchcock or a female Scorsese or a female Spielberg? I don’t know. I think it’s a medium that really is built for the male gaze and for a male sensibility. I mean, the best art is made under not an indifference to, but a neutrality [toward] the kind of emotionalism that I think can be a trap for women directors. But I have to get over it, you’re right, because so far this year, two of my favorite movies were made by women, Fish Tank and The Runaways. I’ve got to start rethinking that, although I have to say that a lot of the big studio movies I saw last year that were directed by women were far worse than the sh***y big-budget studio movies that were directed by men.

Which are we talking about?
I mean, do I want to say this on the record? Did you see The Proposal? Anyway, whatever.

The Best of Lindsay Bluth

The best of Lindsay Bluth in Season 1 of Arrested Development as played by Portia De Rossi.

Seafaring Lass

Jessica Watson has just become the youngest person to sail around the world solo and unassisted. The 16 year old started out last October and just finished today, May 15th, in Sydney, Australia.


VIDEO: Jessica's final night