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While I’ve always prided myself on my stellar news coverage (sitting just above FOX News and falling right behind elementary-school PA system announcements in the media spectrum), I only wish I didn’t have to report this.
Deep in the jungles of Borneo, scientists have discovered a highly advanced race of humans. These Homo Superiors, as they have been cautiously dubbed, are capable of communicating through telepathy and cerebral inflection. They have grown adept at levitation and can control virtually any type of matter-based object with just their residual sentiments and thoughts. Now that they have been revealed, the nomadic people known as the Dream Wanderers are threatening to level the capital city of Jakarta and submerge the island of Sumatra if they are not given full control of the Indonesian government.
What does this mean for the rest of us, the now secondary and suddenly stupid creatures that we are? As Zarathustra thus mumbled, “Man is something that is to be surpassed. … Lo, I teach you the Superman!” Could America become a Bornean slave colony? Will loincloths finally come back in style?
The horrifying possibilities are endless.
All right, that’s enough deceit. Put down the flaming torches and scratch those plans for Indonesian genocide. I was just wrapping up my readers in a ruse, attempting to hype up my Bornean spring-break travel packages with, dare I say … a hoax.
Hopefully this will go over a little better than the latest deception to reach national prominence. I wouldn’t want to encounter the wrath of Boston – after grossly misjudging a Cartoon Network-sponsored ad campaign as a major terrorist threat-has unleashed against the scheme’s participants. Rather than viewing the LED-based sculptures of the “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” character Ignignokt, complete with sleazy eyebrows and middle finger extended, with little interest, like the law enforcement agencies in eight other metropolises reacted when they found the horribly suspicious objects affixed to prominent structures, Boston officials instead brought the city to a standstill. Basically, Beantown went bonkers.
Now they’ve begun a face-saving witch hunt against everyone involved, starting with the follicle-obsessed, dastardly dudes who did the legwork and ending all the way at the top-Cartoon Network’s parent company and the co-conspiring advertising agency just agreed to pay an out-of-court settlement of $2 million (which is a steal for the publicity, if you consider that a meager 30-second slot during last Sunday’s football finale would run you $2.6 million). For shame, Boston. Just because the lousy Patriots didn’t con their way into another Super Bowl doesn’t mean you should take out your anger on a fledgling small business like Turner Broadcasting.
There are even greater repercussions here, though. What’s at stake? Only our constitutionally protected right to mess with people for personal gain, that’s all.
The hoax has been a part of our national fabric since the beginning, notably with the Thanksgiving story, and along with its less impressive false advertising it has kept our society well nourished with scrumptious lies and simmering tales of the improbable. It is enough to keep the hunger pains of truth at bay and the gurgling vomit of reality from being just a boring, yellow mess of unused stomach acid.
Are we to forget the bogus snake oil medicines of the Wild West, the sales of which surely made our modern pharmaceutical industry into the Viagra-pitching profiteer it has become? What about P.T. Barnum, the father of American theatrical trickery? Where would television exes and Hollywood learn about false showmanship and meritless hype otherwise? What kind of paranoid, fear-mongering society would we be, if not for the footprints left by Orson Welles and his “War Of The Worlds” broadcast?
Could you imagine our country without any urban myths? That means no Bigfoot, UFOs, alien autopsies or Milli Vanilli. False claims like separation of church and state and global warming? Gone too. We’ll have to watch as enigmatic but concocted personalities who inspire us to greatness, like Bill O’ Reilly (played by an acting school dropout with a small penis) and Oprah (she’s really an animatronic object created to gain female and minority viewership and controlled by orangutans), vanish into thin air like the endless smoke they once blew. Lest we forget, we are the true dream wanderers, the ones who color our desolate social landscape with ideas and beliefs only conceivable in our slumber. Let us never wake up.
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
Time seems so endless yet passes so quickly. Like the poet Ovid wrote, “Tempis Fugit” – time flies.
Before college, time didn’t seem to matter as much. It wasn’t my concern; all I had to do was fill in the hours that weren’t predetermined, fleetingly wasting them away with topical analgesics for my mind. My only exposure to Ovid’s poignant commentary was on walks with Cuba, a friend’s rambunctious golden retriever, who was trained, when prompted with the ubiquitous Latin phrase, to take care of business with urgency and resolution that would impress Caesar himself.
Recently, however, my perception of time, like the cosmos it shaped, has changed beyond recognition. No longer do I live in a soma-like state of bliss. Over half a decade of piddling around with no diploma to crookedly hang in my living room has made me cold and bitter to time’s passing. Every incoming crop of diminutive freshmen adds another ring around my trunk, leaving this staunch environmentalist begging for deforestation and strip malls.
Fortunately, before the foreboding winter sky could swallow me up in a flurry of powder and self-pity, Spring Break arrived. For collegians disdainful of impeding professional lives and fully cemented adulthood, this is the ultimate expression of youth. Hastily packed cars and international bound planes suddenly jam-packed with contemptuous thrill-seekers disperse across the world like liberated research monkeys. They fill up cheap single-bed motel rooms, crash on floors, couches and beaches and disregard any and all responsibility in the hopes of finding an equally careless, temporary mate.
And for one last go round, I was determined to take part. I would shed meaningless encumbrances like scholastic obligations, internship searches and creative pursuits. I would attack the opportunity like I still brandished that fake New Jersey driver’s license, the one with the faded hologram and peeling corners, the one that could elicit laughter from even the most hardhearted door jockey. I would simply let loose and have fun. Perhaps this might help me to stop living by the passing second hand of the clock, always moving in the same played-out direction, always pushing me uneasily forward.
The destination was familiar: Savannah, Ga. The normally quiet town comes alive every St. Patrick’s Day, when it hosts the nation’s second largest celebration of all things Irish. Hundreds of thousands of visitors descend upon the city, trying to enrich themselves with authentic Celtic traditions like drinking Irish car bombs, eating giant turkey legs and viewing fountains dyed green (throw in some Lucky Charms and its like you never left those rolling hills of Killarney).
Before we made it to the drunkenness and treacherous cobblestones of River Street, the water-hugging byway that serves as the epicenter for the celebration, my accomplices and I took a detour to the mountains of northwestern Georgia. Like true outdoor enthusiasts, we arrived late in the afternoon, filled ourselves endlessly with the best $5 all-you-can-eat pizza buffet in existence and stumbled up Blood Mountain at night.
After nearly three miles of self-doubt and steep climbing through the dense, dark forest, we emerged onto the bare rock outcroppings that crown the second highest peak in Georgia.
No longer was there complete darkness and frustration; now there was a brilliant moon glow that would have trumped even the brightest of artificial illumination and a chilly mountain wind that ushered in a sense of calm and contentment.
The rest of the trip went as any spring break romp might. There was drinking before noon (when waking up that early was an option), drunken bar-be-cues, drunken porch sitting, drunken dog walking (to appease our drunken host), drunken football and, of course, drunken hollering.
As someone who long forgot what it was like start the day off with a mildly refrigerated Coors Light, this frenzied (and pointless) alcohol consumption initially was a shock, but old habits die hard, and after a couple rounds I was back on the wagon, riding with the best the Betty Ford Clinic had to offer.
After three nights and two days of mind-numbing achievement, we reluctantly made our way back to D.C. and its accompanying normalcy. Despite fatigue and lactic acid overdose, I felt some sort of invigoration after the whole ordeal; though it wasn’t from the incessantly waving float-mongers or marching bands, the cheap, shiny beads, or the immature girls that were all too eager to let vodka and cranberry ease away their inhibitions.
It was the view on Blood Mountain that did it. That’s what made time stand still. Zooming up I-95 like starship troopers, past towed-up rusty Corvettes and Santee Furniture Worlds, I realized that for me, and for anyone with a creative spirit, the only way to not succumb to the perils of time is to engage on a never-ending quest for inspiration. Ignoring age and circumstance is not enough. It will always catch up to you. Though time frustrates all, finding inspiration to fuel your endeavors will keep anyone with a hunger to conquer space and time young at heart.
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
A lot of things can change in 10 years.
Take the last decade, for instance. We’ve seen technology grow at unprecedented rates, making our lives more productive and our access to pornography that much greater. We’ve experienced the rebirth of religious fundamentalism, in both the East and West, thankfully ditching the political correctness movement of the early ‘90s. We’ve even lost a planet in our solar system, leaving school children frantic as they desperately try to figure out what Nine things their Very Excellent Mother Just Served.
It seems, though, that throughout all this political and social upheaval, one thing, one deciding global factor, has remained fascistly constant: America’s ravenous desire for trendy toys.
This admission comes on the furry red heels of the new Tickle Me Elmo doll, which was unveiled last week. Ten years after the first version soared to sandbox supremacy, pitting neighbor against neighbor in an all-out crusade for Elmo ownership, the infamous toy has returned, albeit with a dashing, modern look. Actually, as far as I can tell, it looks the same as the last one, except with bigger feet. But this incarnation, dubbed the Tickle Me Elmo T.M.X. (the initials stand for “Tickle Me extreme”), is eXtremely updated for the 21st century. After you rub its belly, it goes into an all-out eXtreme hysterical fit, slapping its hands and stomping its feet, even falling to the ground, eXtremely, all with the uproarious sound of Elmo’s distinct, devilish laughter constantly echoing in the background. It’s enough eXtreme action to make you eXtremely nauseous.
None of this information, however, nor even a mere glimpse of the actual doll, was available until the grand unveiling. The despotic toy empire of Fisher Price was able to keep Elmo’s appearance and zany actions more classified than certain, much-disputed covert operations done under the guise of national security (if Cheney is Darth Vader, then the CEO of Fisher Price is definitely that guy who fries everyone with lightning bolts from his hands).
Not surprisingly, all this carefully planned commotion has drummed up more attention than should ever be bestowed on a child’s plaything. When it was finally released last Tuesday, it instantly sold out at countless retailers nationwide, and within minutes was being hocked on eBay for more than double (and in some cases triple) the $34.95 retail price, which is already way too much to dish out for a doll that basically soils itself from laughing too hard (something to consider for later prototypes).
And now that the fuzz is loose, let the human depravity begin. The first shot in the war has been fired, and by none other than a man known in underground toy circles as the “Hot Wheels guy.” The as-of-yet nameless culprit, whose proclivity for the miniature racecar brand earned him his street-hardened alias, was seriously distraught when he was beaten to the last Elmo doll on the rack at his local Target in Tampa, Fla. When another customer grabbed the last two available dolls and handed one to an elderly lady next to him, “Hot Wheels guy,” described by witnesses as wearing all black, sporting dark sunglasses and flaunting a dangerous black mullet, got belligerent and according to the victim, threatened to kill him if the fellow Elmo enthusiast ever showed up at his Target again.
For now, this stands as the benchmark for degeneracy and iniquity in our society. And the holiday season has not even started yet. This will only get worse. As an advanced country and culture, we are truly blessed with so many things that enrich our lives, so many ways to bring ourselves and our families closer than ever; yet all we can seem to focus on is what we don’t own. Consumerism has replaced all the values we once held sacred, and left us struggling to breathe under a smoldering pile of corporate debris and discarded corrugated cardboard.
At least when everything finally collapses, when the commodities we crave have extinguished our natural resources and left us disconnected from each other and ourselves, there will be plenty of boxes to huddle in as we tremble and shiver at the onset of another harsh winter as a collectively disjointed nation. Don’t worry, though, we won’t freeze to death; I hear the fur on the new Tickle Me Elmo is eXtremely good at kindling.
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
Sometimes I have dreams, simple aspirations that appear surprisingly translucent and pristine in a clouded mind perpetually stuck in a sky-darkening and bone-drenching monsoon.
These notions, these hopeful premonitions, they are rapidly identifiable and always intriguing enough to at least peruse. They are vividly decorated, oversized art books jutting out past the confines of their shelf, innocuously placed within one of the endless library stacks that house all my irrelevant and nonsensical thoughts, bunched up and catalogued in the most pointlessly random of orders.
These are dreams of a better future, hopes of a finer existence rising above the perfunctory mandates of civilized reality, caterwauling hallucinations of a world more intellectually challenging than intellectually challenged.
Currently though, all I can think about is goddamn corn syrup, and how it manages to slither its way into everything I do and don’t want to eat.
Having just served my annual eight day-long jail sentence of Passover, holed up in the sustenance slammer and locked away in solitary food and drink confinement for reenacting the biblical shanking of leavened bread in the cafeteria slop line, thoughts of food have become my food for thought.
It’s always a scream to try to honor your tradition faithfully while avoiding the urge to kill yourself or others after being pushed to brink of insanity, and it deeply saddens me that more people don’t get in on all the fun. But then it might be easier to get food that isn’t restricted for this important holiday of rebirth and remembrance, which, in turn, just might take the depraved joy and self-mortifying goodness right out of it, leaving Passover bland and uninspired like any number of Hallmark-approved holidays.
Theoretically, there should be enough edible objects available for my consumption to avoid any extraordinary unpleasantness, but the ubiquitous intrusion of corn syrup and its juiced-up, testicle-shriveled cousin, high fructose corn syrup, into the American gastronomical milieu has left me feeling like I just ran a marathon (backwards and naked) through a… corn field.
You see, maize is off-limits during Passover, and as a result, so is any corn by-product, no matter how molecularly distant or chemically altered it might be (corn syrup is less related to corn than I am to a cigar-chomping chimpanzee).
And the gooey plasma endlessly washes through our lives in violent torrents like the Zambezi (think the river of slime from “Ghostbusters 2”), glazing itself over all varieties of mass-produced, general foodstuff.
That explains why, for the previous eight days, I’ve been considering toting organic ketchup around in a hip-slung holster, been getting into arguments with overworked and uninformed diner staff about the contents of their unlabeled jam and coffee creamer and have been denied some of the most basic culinary pleasures, like crusty condiments, allotted to even Soviet Gulag detainees.
Of course I understand that this is my choice, my own conscious decision to restrict my diet in the name of cultural awareness. But even now that I have resumed gorging on fluffy, flaky loaves of rustic artisan ciabatta and funneling pints of yeast-laden, monk-brewed Belgian Trappist ales, I nonetheless long for the days when laboratory-imagined, cost-efficient sweeteners and other additives were simply being tested on animals and perhaps interrogation subjects, not backhandedly fed to law-abiding humans like low-grade trough contents.
It seems reasonable, at least to my oft-irrational mind, to envision a society where I don’t get fooled into buying products touting healthy makeovers that not only take out existing natural sugar, but deviously add completely artificial sweeteners, like sucralose and aspartame, to their devilish recipe.
Nothing is safe – not orange juice, not even pickles (I recently bought a bottle of sweet gherkins that failed to prominently mention on the label that they were enhanced with Splenda, and a crime against my beloved pickles is a crime against nature and all mankind).
Do Americans just have such an insatiable sweet tooth that instead of simply consuming lesser amounts of expensive and nutritionally deprived refined glucose, we must forever be doping ourselves up with cheaply harnessed corn syrup and fake sugar substitutes like a black-tar junkies anxiously pacing outside of a methadone clinic?
I think we’re just getting sweet-talked and hosed, our eyes coated and obscured by a hard caramel shell.
Just like a little heroin can’t hurt anyone, neither can a little pure, all natural sugar. But the corn cartels, controlled by big cereal, the soda conglomerate and the agricultural axis of evil, have left us all constantly begging for just one more crystalline hit of the sweet stuff, even at the cost of our own health. And why stop? It’s like taking candy from a baby.
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago. 1 comment
Tucked away in the quaint and unobtrusive suburbs of Washington, D.C., a pleasant neighborhood has become embroiled in a fierce conflict. Actually, it’s less of a even-sided battle than an unjustly imposed terror, a rapacious scourge worthy of the Cossacks and the Barbarian hordes and even the uncompromisingly cruel Wayans Brothers (pogroms and pillaging are one thing, but did you see “Little Man?”).
The source of this horrific menace? A vile monster, sadistic and hate-filled, draped with flowing, flea-infested blond locks and constantly covered in mud and grime and filth.
I know what you’re thinking, but this isn’t Anne Coulter. The offender is a heathenous hound, a God-loathing golden lab. And although Coulter and the yellow Labrador retriever in question might differ in sex (this mutt is no bitch) and species (although that’s debatable), the similarities between the pundit and the pooch are strikingly eerie.
Both stand tall, with gothically elongated mugs, pronounced snouts and prominent, fuzz-covered chins. Full of raging contempt, both dispense the kind of sound-polluting noise you might expect only in an ultra-conservative rant or on Animal Planet, with the dog’s voracious growls and barks being only slightly less intelligible than Coulter’s. Both are questionably housebroken and relegated to dilapidated, fenced-in properties for fear of escape into the general population. Both have been known to use bigoted speech in their slanderous and baseless attacks against the left (in all fairness to the animal, while Coulter is on record, I have yet to translate possessed dog talk, so I can only imagine the horrid comments coming out of the beast’s mouth. Also, I fashion it as more a libertarian or anarchist than a part of the moral majority). With such parallels in behavior and appearance, the two might as well be related.
But while Coulter is a comic-like character, a near figment of the imagination almost too exaggerated to exist in anything but dark, storm-bringing cumulonimbus clouds and political gossip pages, this beast of Bethesda is frighteningly tangible, all too real to be ignored.
There has already been bloodshed and casualties because of this sociopathic canine. Back in August, after returning from a summer spent working in New York City, I quickly came to know the seriousness and ferocity of the beast, when after getting out of its confines it viciously attacked Napoleon, my noble and proud German Shepard mix, on two separate occasions. One of these confrontations led to emergency surgery for poor Napoleon, to sew shut a gaping, one-inch hole in his side (the result of the beast’s steely jaws).
After successfully confronting the owner (a hulking patriarch of a family teeming with children all basically the same age that moved into a decrepit house down the street while I was gone and instantly garnered the scorn of the community for their ghastly inadequate attempts at renovation) about the veterinarian bills and the need to control his animal, he audaciously asked if I knew anyone interested in purchasing a good, well-bred dog with all papers intact. Amazingly, I haven’t found any takers, so after six months the monster remains.
Not only does the beast haunt my dreams, the echoes of its toxic rancor reverberate around the block everyday when I take Napoleon on his walks. Sometimes our initial approach will go unnoticed, yet on our return, without fail, the shaggy brute is waiting for us, perched on a log with nose pointing and sniffing through the metal fence added to prevent it from leaping out, ears just barely visible above the adjoining stone wall. His paws are grasping and clanging the metal bars of the fence like an unruly and unfed death-row inmate with nothing to lose.
When not spotted by the beast’s cold, soulless eyes, our location is inevitably given up by its accomplice, a ratty and cavorting black Dachshund that might be less dangerous, but is no less obnoxious and infuriating. Once our presence is acknowledged, the unlikely team of Satan spawn harangue and harass good-hearted Napoleon to no end, riling up the elderly statesman with their vehement lies, character attacks and threats of bodily harm. And the wretched animals are constantly left out in the yard, only finding shelter in a crawl space under the house. They’re omnipresent and unavoidable.
But like John Edwards hopefully will do, I’m fighting back. Both the canine and Coulter might brandish venomous, saliva-frothing fangs, but my chompers ain’t so dull themselves.
A famous publisher once said, “If a dog bites a man, that’s not news, but if a man bites a dog, that is news.” If so, I’m holding my press conference tomorrow.
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.”
The great muckraker, journalist and general provocateur Sinclair Lewis wrote those words in 1935 as the specter of Nazism was taking hold of Germany and getting ready to sink its gnarly fangs into the whole of Europe.
Lewis sure did nail it with that portentius vision. But as astute as he was, he got the clothing wrong. I say fascism is already here and it has wrapped itself in bacon, like the harmless dates and figs I’ve seen popping up at haute dining establishments. Drenched in lard and smothered in sizzling pork belly, our nation has slowly been sinking into a big lake of pig shit-literally.
And although I’ve been aware of the gaining momentum of this descent for a while, recent seemingly unrelated events (the kind that characterize the type of feverishly connected storylines that inevitably play out in every Inárritu epic on love and human dysfunction) have led me to believe that America, as mighty as the Titanic, is finally up to its neck in a mess of feces-laden quicksand.
The first of said instances occurred over tea and dim sum at an all-too-authentic Chinese restaurant, the kind that serves up dishes that make you question your staunch belief that no part of a butchered animal should be wasted. After inquiring whether a suspicious-looking item was vegetarian, I was informed the globular delicacy was a meat-free radish cake. After consulting the manager, though, it turned out what we at the table all heard as radish was instead “reddish.” Over the clang of passing steamed bun carts, the confusion between the two words was understandable. But after asking three servers whether the ominously gelatinous dish had meat in it, and thrice being assured it did not, finding out I had ingested Chinese sausage was at the least a tad discouraging.
The following week, I was reading a New York Magazine piece about Momofuku Noodle Bar, an Âber-trendy East Village NYC ramen shop that caters to carnivorous downtown hipsters and pretentious uptown foodies alike, and its brash young head chef, David Chang. So many times had I passed the perpetual line outside the small establishment, wishing they might actually offer at least one substantial non-meat option (the menu blatantly says, “We do not serve vegetarian-friendly items”). My interest faded, though, as I learned in the article that Chang purposefully removed all vegetarian options as some cracked-out form of retribution against an irrational vegan customer. Instead, he decided to throw every kind of swine orifice and appendage he could salvage into his pan-Asian cuisine, emphatically expressing his divine right to cook what he pleased. Initially, I just chalked it up to him being a hateful scumbag who deserved to be impaled through the rear by an overgrown celery stalk. No further deliberation was necessary.
Then the truth hit me like a stuffed wild boar plummeting down from Mt. Olympus. It came thanks to a scathing indictment of the pork industry and its number one producer, Smithfield Foods, in a recent issue of Rolling Stone. While the practically sadistic (if it wasn’t so cost effective) treatment of the millions of pigs Smithfield raises in boxes and slaughters is egregious, it’s what they do with all the toxic remains of carcasses and pig excrement that is even more haunting. They pile rotting, bloated hogs in exposed dumpsters and fill lagoons surrounding their countless processing plants with an endless supply of fresh pig feces. Then they spray their fields with the liquid, let their lagoons, colored pink because of blood and bacteria reacting with the waste, overflow into neighboring rivers and lakes and turn a blind eye as ecosystem and human settlements alike are submerged and often destroyed.
Over the putrid aroma, I can smell a hint of saffron with a touch of conspiracy. With over a quarter of every bit of swine digested in this country coming from Smithfield, they have fully infiltrated the American culinary experience and are now set on dominating how we live. Perhaps they are developing an anti-pig shit pathogen, a swindling swine cure-all that will be the only savior as our countryside and cities grow completely festooned with feces and are rendered unlivable. And who knows how deep this paranoia-inducing lagoon might be? After all, President Bush’s Crawford ranch used to moonlight as a pig farm. Now that’s some food for thought.
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
Retro doesn’t go as far as it used to in music nowadays. The overabundance of bands who are content with simply repackaging musical archetypes for unsuspecting audiences has taken credibility away from forward-minded musicians looking to the past for inspiration.
Fortunately for District-area concertgoers, no one bothered to tell that to The Go! Team, as they thrilled the capacity crowd at the Black Cat with their unique blend of youthful exuberance and all things old school on Sunday night.
Sporting sweaty headbands, knee-highs and colorful shirts not quite cool enough to make it off the racks at your local vintage store, the critically acclaimed British band dunked a diverse audience into a sea of distortion-drenched nostalgia. With enough energy to keep the kiddies in the front bouncing and enough musical throwbacks to keep the more mature onlookers (chaperones included) equally as rowdy, The Go! Team showed why their darling approach to rock and kitschy surface appeal can’t quite cover up the seriously innovative music that lies beneath.
What started as a solo project by guitarist/drummer/harmonica player Ian Parton has now grown to Fat Albert-sized proportions, with The Go! Team achieving success across the Atlantic without the dubious help of the Brit-pop hype machine known for regurgitating unsubstantiated comparisons to the country’s greatest modern rock acts (and Oasis, too).
The band garnered a Mercury Music Prize (the award for the best British or Irish album of the last year) nomination in 2005 for their critically acclaimed full length debut “Thunder, Lightning, Strike,” and with upcoming appearances at influential U.S. music festivals like Coachella and Lollapalooza this spring and summer, like the title of the track four on “Thunder…” dictates, “The Power is On.”
Before moving on to bigger and better things, though, The Go! Team brought their double drum-kit-driven, Sugarhill funk to Washington for the first time, turning the Black Cat into a thunderous pep rally even Horseshack and the rest of the sweat-hogs from “Welcome Back Kotter” would be proud of. After an opening set by local District mainstay Medications, the members of The Go! Team jogged on stage, immediately bursting into “Panther Dash,” with the whirling sounds of careening airplanes giving way to tremolo guitars and the meanest harmonica riff to come out of England since Eric Clapton ran with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers.
The band continued to keep the boomerang and TV Land flavor rolling, and the whole crowd waved their hands like stick up targets with the horn-soaked new number, “The Wrath of Miky,” with cheerleader/vocalist Ninja spitting flows like, “Bring it back where you at!” with a style and smoothness reminiscent of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
With band members running back and forth across the stage, swapping instruments and uncontrollably jumping up and down for the duration of the show, the energy level never skipped a beat, unlike the worn out LP’s that serve as the inspiration for their music.
Some Spaghetti Western-style songs were added to the fray, with the rapturous, mechanical tandem drumming of Parton and fellow drummer Chi “Ky” Taylor, aided by some monstrous guitar slinging in “Junior Kickstart,” painting pictures of saloon gunfights and cigar chewing cowboys.
Like waking up early to watch Saturday morning cartoons, the band’s Johnny Quest-like adventurousness kept the audience tuned in with wide eyes and even broader smiles. The Go! Team members couldn’t hold back a grin themselves as they cheerfully finished their set with their latest single, “Ladyflash.” With Ninja breaking it down like Crazy Legs to the grimy New York break beat, throwing karate kicks and twirling around in her yellow pom-pom skirt, the audience held up their end of the bargain, never ceasing to hop as high as the sky till the song came to a crashing conclusion with the band members collapsing together in a pile of limbs and vintage Fender gear.
So go ahead and tell The Go! Team that retro is dead; that a genuine love for the best music memory lane has to offer has no part in the current indie scene. They’ll just keep smiling, doing their own thing like a child fixated on a TV set, rife with imagination and joy. Just don’t bother offering spinach.
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
District residents and suburban castaways, rejoice: it appears that Washington has finally arrived. Bust out those debutante gowns; this is the grand coming out party. After years of wallowing in obscurity and square-ness, D.C. has hit the big time. And to who do us simple, bucolic metropolitanites owe thanks for such an honor? American Apparel.
The wildly popular L.A.-based clothing manufacturer, which prides itself on its sweatshop-free policies (good), its comfortable yet decisively bland monochromatic attire (bad), and its spread-eagle allusions to child pornography that pass for an advertising campaign (simply disturbing), has been doing hefty business downtown since opening in December. Some of you might be aware of the existence of this bastion of cotton, but didn’t know it was in your own town. Many of you probably have never heard of it, and to you, I apologize for even discussing it.
However, the rest of you, who know damn well what and where it is and more than likely mentioned the posting on District blog DCist, way back when it opened, to get that 10 percent discount on the five identical (albeit in different colors, I hope) t-shirts you decided you couldn’t live without, must be rolling your eyes at my blatantly late and hardly topical reference (“This guy is an idiot, that was soooo two months ago…”).
Regardless, now that I finally received the memo (if the FBI can be forgiven for neglecting to check those wonderful little tidbits of inter-office wisdom, I should be, too), two seemingly contradictory thoughts have entered my head. First, despite my lack of enthusiasm in regards to the opening, I nevertheless find it insulting that the city closest to my heart, the place where I devoted so much time to observing and troublemaking during my formative years, was so low on the list of potential store locations. Apparently Charlotte, N.C., Providence, R.I., and South Norwalk, Conn., are all way cooler than arguably the most powerful city in the world. Fortunately, we did beat our bastard stepchild to the south, Richmond, Va.
My second thought was decidedly more ominous: How soon will it be before the hordes of self-absorbed, unemployed (I can’t quite categorize mindless blogging as a springboard to a rare yet coveted spot as a talking head on VH1, as a profession, even if you do get paid), trust fund-toting (there’s nothing wrong with having one if you actually do something meaningful with your time), neo-urban implants runneth over the District’s cup? Now that the final piece of the puzzle has been uncovered, is it Washington’s inevitable destiny to become the next New York?
All moaning aside, there have been and will be more positive consequences to emerge as a result of this latest cultural revolution in the nation’s capital. Avid music enthusiasts have already seen an influx of quality concert date notices pepper our e-mail inboxes and lift our spirits. Bands that might normally pass on a District pit stop are now gassing up with multiple-night stands. Sadly though, profiteering and scandal come with the territory, and with shows continuing to sell out in record time it doesn’t seem like the shenanigans are going to slow down.
The same can be said for the urban renewal many Washington neighborhoods are experiencing. Renovating dilapidated housing in downtrodden areas will help beautify a city often in need of a facelift and a tummy tuck, but should not be done at the expense of D.C.‘s substantially less affluent citizens. Historic districts like Shaw and Columbia Heights, long neglected after riots, drugs and poverty took hold, desperately need to be reinvigorated, so the once brightly colored residences can shine again. They certainly don’t need tasteless and insipid luxury condos, callously pieced together with the kind of dull bricks your high school might have used.
Perhaps my trepidation is not completely warranted, though. It’s not like the PBR hasn’t been flowing freely in D.C. for years, or as if packed dance parties full of awkwardly flailing, head-nodding, all-too-stoic scenesters are something new.
D.C. still has soul, like Manhattan once did in the rough ‘80s and ‘90s, before Giuliani applied the whitewash; before expensive, trendy hangouts were crammed into otherwise decrepit tenements along Stanton and Ludlow, before … the Strokes. And the District will continue to have it, as long as it remains the hard-working, underappreciated cultural gem that it is.
At least until the primordial sludge of lopsided mullets, skinny ties and prom outfits gone horribly wrong that so beautifully exemplify hipster trash leave the confines of the New York City subway and head due south.
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago. Add a comment
What happens when art and science collide?
In “The Visual Collider,” a modern interpretation of an age-old question, artists Nina Czegledy and Marcus Neustetter are hoping for a Big Bang.
The Hungro-Canadian and South African artists, respectively, discussed their ongoing collaborative project during a lecture and reception at exhibition space Alma On Dobbin in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, last Thursday, January 7. Based on the Large Hadron Collider (the astronomically complex and expensive scientific mega-experiment that is attempting to recreate the conditions of the first moments of our Universe’s existence by smashing atomic particles together at incredibly fast speeds), “The Visual Collider” is the pair’s attempt to reconcile artistically the moment when the confluence of matter, or in this case photographic light, cease to be disparate identities and instead become one object.
This is achieved through a series of visual mash-ups of plain, unadorned photographic source material. More exactly, it is an ironic, purposely low-tech reconstruction, combining snapshot photography taken during the two artists’ many travels, through both overlay (in the form of bare-boned projections) and juxtaposition (in a foldout book of images, the stronger element of the installation).
While reading a methodically detailed and somewhat quixotic artist statement, Czegledy and Neustetter revealed their mix of enthrallment and distaste for the LHC, an undertaking some critics have called quasi-religious. While it’s not completely evident what ratio those dualistic feelings end up at in the artists’ minds, the simplistic yet appealing end result is more readily accessible. Even if many of the photographic pairs are predictable (think shots of planes and Arabic imagery, bullet hole ridden walls and a South African populace), the pictures are captivating (especially noteworthy coming from a pair with no photographic background), and their combination stirs unavoidable feelings about how we view the world.
As the exhibit travels around the world (this was the second stop after the premier in Croatia last September), mimicking the 17 mile trajectory of the particles in the LHC, Czegledy and Neustetter plan on changing the way their images are combined. In that sense, it provides more questions for both the artist and viewer then it does answers. Which would appear to make it a scientific exploration of note.
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago. 1 comment
“The Sociite Anonyme: Modernism for America”
The Phillips Gallery
1600 21st St. N.W.
Until Jan. 21, 2007
Tickets: $12 for adults
If you haven’t heard the news, modernism is back. This past summer’s raucous retrospective of Dada art at the National Gallery initiated the resurgence. It was followed by “Ambroise Vollard, Patron of The Avant-Garde” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, an exhibit detailing the contributions of the leading French art supporter to the landscape of modern art.
Now it’s the Phillips Collection’s turn, as they present “The Societe Anonyme: Modernism for America.” Not to be outdone by the aforementioned behemoths of paint and sculpture, this small but influential D.C. gallery is hosting one of the largest and most significant collections of contemporary art ever assembled.
Running through Jan. 21, 2007, the exhibition closely documents the history, vision and achievements of the Societe Anonyme, the ambitious artist organization and self-proclaimed “experimental museum of art” founded by Katherine Dreier, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray in January 1920.
During its 30 years in existence, the Societe strived to further the American public’s reluctant understanding and acceptance of the revolutionary work being created by an ever-burgeoning worldwide artistic community.
Equally essential to the Soci?t?‘s mission was portraying these works through an artist’s perspective rather than a curatorial one, thus avoiding historical and critical analysis and focusing on the living and rapidly evolving progression of art.
The curators of “Societe” have, in large part, kept with this tradition. The first room of the show is a nearly complete and accurate reproduction of the Societe‘s inaugural exhibition from April 30, 1920. Several of the original 20 works from the groundbreaking show are represented here, and their varying stylistic range is staggering.
Playful sculptures by Constantin Brancusi and Man Ray sit beside modernist masterpieces like Jacques Villion’s “In Memoriam” and Dada absurdities such as Francis Picabia’s “Universal Prostitution.”
To further add to the authenticity, the floor of the first room is covered with the same type of drab, gray, ribbed rubber matting that appeared in the inaugural exhibition. Each of the hanging canvases is surrounded by a frilly white doily, replicating the outlandish and humorous additions arranged by Duchamp for the Manhattan show.
The sight of Joseph Stella’s towering “Brooklyn Bridge,” a stately transformation of steel and cables into fluid light and color evocative of stained glass is still a powerful and amusing image.
The Phillips exhibition shows the wealth and breadth of artists once represented by the Societe and devotes subsequent rooms to important one-person exhibits, as well as a massive space displaying highlights from the Societe‘s crowning achievement, the 1926 Brooklyn International Exhibition of Modern Art.
This exhibit includes pieces from nearly every important artist of the modern era, showcasing both highly recognized names and lesser-known ones. There are works by acknowledged masters Hans Arp, Georges Braque, Max Ernst, Eli Lissitzky, Joan Miro, Piet Mondrian and Kurt Schwitters, as well as equally enthralling pieces by less revered artists like Alexander Archipenko, David Burliuk and Suzanne Phocas, among many others.
There is an intentional lack of any linear or historical context and few neighboring pieces resemble each other in any aspect of style or composition. That is precisely the goal of the Societe, one that has been thoughtfully recreated by the curators of this current exhibit.
Other rooms are dedicated to Duchamp, his relationship with Dreier, the education efforts of the Societe to promote their cause, Dreier’s efforts to stimulate the growing Russian avante-garde art scene and Dreier’s connection with Phillips Collection patriarch Duncan Phillips.
The exhibit serves as a complete historical record of the Societe and its proponents, and it is remarkable in its diligent documentation of the artistic period that determined artistic trends for the next 80 years.
The spirit of irreverence, exploration and reckless destruction of social and artistic boundaries is certainly thriving in the exhibition, but even more alive is the idea of acceptance and brotherhood.
This is no more apparent than in the first room displaying the solo exhibitions put forth by the Soci?t?. On one wall sits the austere, neo-impressionist landscapes of American painter Louis Michel Eilshemius, featured in the Societe‘s first ever one-person show. Across the room hang the abstract explosions of color that categorize the works of Wassily Kandinsky, who was given his first solo show in America by the Societe. Thus, joined together are the traditional and the revolutionary, and for the Societe Anonyme, modern art encompassed it all.
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago. 1 comment