A regular dispatch of essays, criticism, and (pop) cultural ephemera, compiled and mixed by Norman Brannon.

posts tagged “shortcuts”:

∞

3.5.2012

My boyfriend John told me he loved Ernie as a kid, but I loved Bert. He couldn’t understand why anyone would love Bert — he is the boring one, after all — but in my mind, it made total sense that I’d want to be best friends with someone who collects paperclips. For one, my family couldn’t afford your fancy stamp and baseball collections, but my mother was delighted to buy office supplies for her five-year-old son. (I am not even making this up.) More importantly, you need to have a brilliant imagination to sit around and actually appreciate the nuances of a paperclip. That’s not always the person I am, but that’s still the type of person I want to be.

My boyfriend John told me he loved Ernie as a kid, but I loved Bert. He couldn’t understand why anyone would love Bert — he is the boring one, after all — but in my mind, it made total sense that I’d want to be best friends with someone who collects paperclips. For one, my family couldn’t afford your fancy stamp and baseball collections, but my mother was delighted to buy office supplies for her five-year-old son. (I am not even making this up.) More importantly, you need to have a brilliant imagination to sit around and actually appreciate the nuances of a paperclip. That’s not always the person I am, but that’s still the type of person I want to be.

∞

2.25.2012

“The Promise Ring’s zippiest, poppiest numbers predictably went over the best with this crowd. While the ballad “Become One Anything One Time” from the polarizing 2002 swan song Wood/Water remains a very pretty would-be prom-night classic, it was received as a cue to hit the bar until something more upbeat came along. Clearly, even something of early ’00s vintage was too far out of the Nineties emo comfort zone on this night. (The audience even reacted enthusiastically to a Texas Is The Reason reference.)”

— Bizarrely, Rolling Stone seems surprised that the Promise Ring’s Milwaukee audience “even” reacted enthusiastically to a Texas is the Reason reference, perhaps forgetting that our bands were as attached to the hip as two bands could be — touring together, releasing a split 7-inch together, combining our line-ups for an impromptu Rolling Stones cover band called the Crossfire Hurricanes that mysteriously showed up after our shows — and that Milwaukee, being the smart and loyal town that it is, probably knows that. (Maybe the writer missed this week’s AV Club oral history?) Just saying.

∞

2.11.2012

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Owen Duff

"I Wanna Dance With Somebody"

Unreleased

315 plays

It is an unspoken truth that many of us work hard to manipulate memory and rewrite ourselves with the hope that, someday, we’ll be remembered for that one “good” thing and not that one “bad” thing, because as much as we’re told that identity is layered and complex and certainly never all one thing or the other, we still bury our dead with the distinction of being Those Who Did No Wrong or Those Who Did No Right. But try as we might, the outcome is consistently leveled by chance: when the music stops, you just hope there’s a chair underneath you.

I’ll remember Whitney Houston for everything that she was, the good things and the bad things, and I won’t love her any less for falling than I did for her soaring. I’ll also remember her for writing songs that sounded jovial when the music played, but elicited pain a cappella. Like the way she exposed her midriff and simpered for the picture sleeve in spite of the fact that “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” seethes with the desperation of feeling unlovable, I too know how it feels when your packaging betrays the product. I’ll remember Whitney Houston most for showing me how to smile when you’ve never felt more alone.

∞

2.8.2012

This is, perhaps more than any other, an extra-gratuitous GPOY that Mike Dubin took last month. It is Wednesday after all.

This is, perhaps more than any other, an extra-gratuitous GPOY that Mike Dubin took last month. It is Wednesday after all.

∞

1.29.2012

“No matter how long you work, it’s always going to end sometime. And there’s always going to be things left undone. And it wouldn’t matter if you lived until you were 75. There would still be new ideas. There would still be things that you wished you would have accomplished … Part of the reason that I’m not having trouble facing the reality of death is that it’s not a limitation, in a way. It could have happened any time, and it is going to happen sometime. If you live your life according to that, death is irrelevant. Everything I’m doing right now is exactly what I want to do.”

— Keith Haring, Rolling Stone (August 10, 1989). The clarity with which Haring closes this interview is both inspiring and tragic. I do think we’re a death-fixated culture — ours is an obsession that fuels rigid religiosities, notions of “legacy” and monolithic identities, and the rush to supplement and enhance our physical natures in an attempt to convince us that we’re that much closer to living forever, among other things — so Haring’s introspection seems pointed. What he’s trying to say, I think, is this: An active resistance to death, which is inevitable, can actually become an active resistance to living if we let it. Haring died eight months after giving this interview, at the age of 31.

∞

1.16.2012

“I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” I’ve been reading Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” today, and this excerpt stood out as still particularly relevant — especially in a country where political expediency is often more valued (or at least more practiced) than the unmediated justice our so-called principles demand. These are the ideas we should consider when conservative Republicans and Libertarians try to shore up MLK as a member of their side, even when they belittle the civil disobedience of Occupy Wall Street as “socialism” or “class warfare,” and not the inevitable pushback of economic oppression. This is the argument we should present when Democrats try to shore up MLK as a member of their side, even as they regularly inform millions of gay Americans that the heterosexists are not yet ready to cede power, and that 2012 is still too inconvenient a time for full equality under the law. What King says here is clear: Dismantling the ideology of the oppressor is an active pursuit, not a passive one, and the right time will always be now. There are no exceptions. Let’s not get it twisted.

“I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

I’ve been reading Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” today, and this excerpt stood out as still particularly relevant — especially in a country where political expediency is often more valued (or at least more practiced) than the unmediated justice our so-called principles demand.

These are the ideas we should consider when conservative Republicans and Libertarians try to shore up MLK as a member of their side, even when they belittle the civil disobedience of Occupy Wall Street as “socialism” or “class warfare,” and not the inevitable pushback of economic oppression. This is the argument we should present when Democrats try to shore up MLK as a member of their side, even as they regularly inform millions of gay Americans that the heterosexists are not yet ready to cede power, and that 2012 is still too inconvenient a time for full equality under the law.

What King says here is clear: Dismantling the ideology of the oppressor is an active pursuit, not a passive one, and the right time will always be now. There are no exceptions. Let’s not get it twisted.