On NPR this morning the anchor happily reported that Minnesota Police have started their own YouTube channel to show how well they do their job. In response to a video that showed peaceful protesters "getting roughed up" before being charged with "impeding the flow of traffic," Minnesota's finest posted a video that shows them first yelling at the peaceful protesters over a bullhorn. The story was presented as great news. They made it sound like accurate information shows that the police in question are not bad people, and according to our cultural norms this may almost be true, but according to the ideals of our constitution and our legal system it's a long way off.
Aside from the obvious and irrefutable argument about the rights to peaceably assemble, speak freely and petition the government that are guaranteed to all Americans in the Constitution, which make any law against impeding the flow of traffic inherently illegal and un-American, we have another constitutional doctrine against cruel and unusual punishment.
This doctrine is often summed up by a belief that "the punishment has to fit the crime." I would like to argue as a substitute teacher that if someone stands in someone else's way, there is no reason for anyone in that situation to yell over a bullhorn, let alone "rough them up." These are two of the biggest misconceptions I face when I teach in kindergarten and first grade classes, so I know they exist, and I also know how to clear them up. I could counter it with an enlightened Gandhi quote like, "your right to move your arm ends where my nose begins," but this is really too dignified a refutation for such a patently silly and immature justification for bullying.
A school bully is not justified in "roughing up" any of his classmates for being in his way or for saying how they feel. My young students learn that instead of solving problems with violence they need to talk things through and, if that fails, go find a teacher to help calmly talk things through to a mutually agreeable solution that respects the rights of both parties. When they do go get a teacher, the teacher's job is just that: to talk things through. That's also the Minnesota policemen's job if they are brought in to a trafficky, frustrated situation by a democratic government which disagrees with its people.
If a teacher came in to a disordered, frustrated, trafficky classroom and started "roughing up" defenseless children, that teacher would go to jail. More than that, they'd be completely ridiculous, as a different YouTube phenomenon has pointed out. They'd be ridiculous because we know teachers, as authority figures, are supposed to serve as behavioral models to show children how not to act as bullies. They'd be ridiculous because once they start acting like bullies, teachers lose their moral authority. A teacher who hits students is not only a physical danger to those she teaches, but a moral danger to those her students may encounter later in life, who have been taught that grown ups respond to bullying by simply becoming bigger bullies.
This Minnesota nonsense pits the Constitution of the United States of America against the Bully Doctrine of Move Because I Said So Very Loudly. It is ridiculous that our public radio system, with a moral obligation to defend and explain the former, should glibly endorse the latter. It's bad enough that many parts of America are policed by grown-up, heavily-armed people who believe more powerfully in Because I Said So than in the god-given right of all people to peaceably assemble. It's bad enough that this can be presented as "News." However, when bully policing is presented as good news, on the grounds that at least the bully said so very loudly before "roughing up" his fellow citizens, we have before our nation a teachable moment.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Check Your Fart Rate!
After my work is done I'm going to start a nonprofit that helps people understand their carbon footprint in terms of a more comprehensible greenhouse emission. I mean, when everyone you know is releasing tons of carbon emissions through their driving, shopping and eating choices, it must be hard to see that as the mistake that it is. But if you could hear the sounds of those emissions, you'd understand what's really going on. So, without farther adoo, let's calculate our carbon fartprints!
Sheet1
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| First, calculate your carbon footprint in tons/year at: | Let's convert that into tiny 35mL farts. | That's still such a big number that it's kind of abstract. | Still having a hard time understanding your greenhouse emisisons rate? No problem! Let's convert it to Seconds Per Fart. | ||
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| http://www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator/index.htm | We'll just multiply by the 48138639 mililiters in a ton, and then divide by 35. | Let's divide it by the 525 948.766 minutes in a year. | We'll just divide the sixty seconds in a minute by your FPM rate, to get your SPF. | ||
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| ||||||
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| Let's say your score is: | Now your farts/year equivalency is*: | Here's your external farts/minute rate. | Note that even though we're calling this rate, SPF, greenhouse gases are not a sunscreen. They're actually the exact opposite! | ||
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| 1 | 1375389.68571429 | 2.61506400361872 | 22.9439891019769 | ||
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| 2 | 2750779.37142857 | 5.23012800723744 | 11.4719945509884 | ||
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| 3 | 4126169.05714286 | 7.84519201085616 | 7.64799636732563 | ||
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| 4 | 5501558.74285714 | 10.4602560144749 | 5.73599727549422 | ||
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| 5 | 6876948.42857143 | 13.0753200180936 | 4.58879782039538 | The average person on earth should say "excuse me" once every four and a half seconds. | |
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| 6 | 8252338.11428571 | 15.6903840217123 | 3.82399818366282 | ||
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| 7 | 9627727.8 | 18.305448025331 | 3.27771272885384 | ||
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| 8 | 11003117.4857143 | 20.9205120289498 | 2.86799863774711 | ||
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| 9 | 12378507.1714286 | 23.5355760325685 | 2.54933212244188 | ||
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| 10 | 13753896.8571429 | 26.1506400361872 | 2.29439891019769 | ||
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| 11 | 15129286.5428571 | 28.7657040398059 | 2.08581719108881 | ||
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| 12 | 16504676.2285714 | 31.3807680434246 | 1.91199909183141 | ||
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| 13 | 17880065.9142857 | 33.9958320470434 | 1.76492223861361 | ||
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| 14 | 19255455.6 | 36.6108960506621 | 1.63885636442692 | ||
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| 15 | 20630845.2857143 | 39.2259600542808 | 1.52959927346513 | ||
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| 16 | 22006234.9714286 | 41.8410240578995 | 1.43399931887356 | ||
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| 17 | 23381624.6571429 | 44.4560880615183 | 1.34964641776335 | ||
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| 18 | 24757014.3428571 | 47.071152065137 | 1.27466606122094 | ||
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| 19 | 26132404.0285714 | 49.6862160687557 | 1.20757837378826 | ||
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| 20 | 27507793.7142857 | 52.3012800723744 | 1.14719945509884 | ||
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| 21 | 28883183.4 | 54.9163440759931 | 1.09257090961795 | ||
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| 22 | 30258573.0857143 | 57.5314080796119 | 1.0429085955444 | ||
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| 23 | 31633962.7714286 | 60.1464720832306 | 0.997564743564213 | ||
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| 24 | 33009352.4571429 | 62.7615360868493 | 0.955999545915704 | ||
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| 25 | 34384742.1428571 | 65.376600090468 | 0.917759564079076 | ||
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| 26 | 35760131.8285714 | 67.9916640940868 | 0.882461119306804 | ||
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| 27 | 37135521.5142857 | 70.6067280977055 | 0.849777374147292 | The average American should say "excuse me" five times in every four seconds. | |
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| 28 | 38510911.2 | 73.2217921013242 | 0.81942818221346 | ||
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| 29 | 39886300.8857143 | 75.8368561049429 | 0.791172037999203 | ||
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| 30 | 41261690.5714286 | 78.4519201085616 | 0.764799636732563 | ||
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| 31 | 42637080.2571429 | 81.0669841121804 | 0.740128680708932 | ||
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| 32 | 44012469.9428571 | 83.6820481157991 | 0.716999659436778 | ||
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| 33 | 45387859.6285714 | 86.2971121194178 | 0.695272397029603 | ||
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| 34 | 46763249.3142857 | 88.9121761230365 | 0.674823208881673 | ||
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| 35 | 48138639 | 91.5272401266552 | 0.655542545770768 | ||
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| 36 | 49514028.6857143 | 94.142304130274 | 0.637333030610469 | If you're up here, you must be very wealthy, and unlike most Americans, you have the ability to change where many people score. Not just yourself. | |
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| 37 | 50889418.3714286 | 96.7573681338927 | 0.620107813566943 | Let your employees work from home a few days. Improve the vegetarian options in their cafeteria. Subsidize public transportation. Reduce mandatory travel. Etc. | |
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| *note that this doesn't count your actual farts. But you're welcome to add those in. The average is 500mL/day, or 182,500 ml/year. |
| Actually, the most interesting comparison might be hidden in that asterisk. If an ordinary person passes 182,500mL of greenhouse gas per year, then each ton of emissions represents the FartStrength of seven men. If you emit around 7 tons of greenhouse gas per year, you can congratulate yourself that your emissions are way lower than those of most Americans. You can also congratulate yourself that you fart with the strength of fifty men (or two over-crowded classrooms). If your emissions total 14 tons per year, you fart with the strength of a hundred men (you don't go to the assembly. You are the assembly). At that point, you might want to stop congratulating yourself and take a look at how to change your behavior. | That's all. | Happy Belated Earth Day! |
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Hardcore Fail
After my work is done I'm going to start an awards show that gives awards to other awards shows for the things they do well. It'll be great to recognize the way that positive reinforcement and publicity can help spur creativity, innovation and growth in almost any field.
One awards show I'll have a hard time recognizing might be the Washington Area Music Awards. What could I recognize about their 2012 ballot? Maybe I could give them an award for Most Bourgeois? Most Noise-Free? Most Generic?
How else do you honor an awards show dedicated to music in Washington D.C. that doesn't mention punk? In last fifty years, DC has been on the national music map for two things: hardcore punk rock, which developed its straight edge movement in DC and gogo, which was invented entirely in DC.
Yes, it's great that the ballot has two categories devoted to a capella music, and that these categories gave Sweet Honey in the Rock their due. Yes, it's marvellous that there are still three categories devoted to big band jazz, in case Duke Ellington should rise from the grave, but for some reason I can't help wondering if nominee "Natty Beaux" isn't even from D.C. at all...
It's good that there are four different awards given to bluegrass musicians in the area because, as much as no one here listens to or plays bluegrass music, people really don't listen to or play bluegrass anywhere else. This is cultural preservation at work. And that's great, even if the culture comes from Appalachia.
But while we're at it, let's preserve the culture for which DC is internationally known and respected. Let's recognize that there's more to the local rock scene is not actually divided into "modern rock," "pop rock," and "roots rock." The last time I saw any of those LA-generic terms in a local concert review was... well... never.
The reason we need a local awards show isn't to show how everything in DC is just like everything in LA, only not half as plentiful, popular, organized or publicized. The reason for a local awards show should be to show what's unique about a location.
Thankfully, although I had to scroll down almost the entire ballot to find it, there is a GOGO section, with awards for the best talker, group and instrumentalist in the genre. The fact that the ballot goes to the trouble of saying "talker" instead of "vocalist" is an example of exactly how an awards show should go about understanding the mess it seeks to categorize.
I'm happy to see some old friends and acquaintances nominated for awards--and am certainly excited to vote for Lucky Dub, Justin Trawick, Flo Anito, Niki Barr, Bio Ritmo, Edie Sedgwick, and Gabin Assouramou--but I'm also perplexed because, while these are all terrific musicians who contribute to the multicultural patchwork of the D.C. scene, none of them really sums up what D.C. music means to people in and outside of D.C.
For that you need to recognize not just Go Go, but also Hardcore. Bad Brains put this town on the map. Fugazi put this town on the map. There's still a scene today, all over town, and that's recognized with Dischord Records' nomination as Washington Area Record Company of the year.
But who am I telling? You know all of this stuff, Wammies. It's all in your history of the DC Music scene. In fact, in the late nineties, you even gave out awards in a lumped together category called "hardcore/punk/underground." Yes, that's fifteen years after the rest of the world started to associate DC with, as you correctly put it, harDCore, but still, better late then never.
But since then, Wammies, what's happened to you? Your rock awards are so vague and arbitrary that they don't seem to mean anything. They certainly don't rock.
Once you put together a few hardcore categories (Best Band; Best Singer, Intelligible; Best Singer, Unintelligible), it might be time to add a few nods to the avant garde scene and then, if you're feeling really brave, you might even update some of the other rock categories. Interview some rock bands. Talk to some club owners. I would bet that there are more "post-punk" bands and "indie" bands in DC right now than self-described "pop rock" bands in the entire country. I know the word "pop" is short for popular, but among rock musicians it's rather short on popularity.
Still, everybody wants an award. Nobody's going to say no to a Wammie just because it says "pop rock." If I were to one day win a wammie in "pop rock," I would do my best to feel proud and be happy I had it, and not spend the rest of my life envying Ian Svenonious for winning a real one. But seriously, by that same inconsiderate logic, Wammies, you should be proud of all the awards I've offered you above. Please comment to let me know where I can send the certificates.
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Valuing Education
This month one of America's largest school districts emailed all of its thousands of substitute teachers a link to a great opportunity. They could get raises of $2.07 per hour, regular hours and great new benefits including health insurance, sick leave a retirement account if chosen for this promotion. The title of this exciting new position: bus driver.Upon reading this I called up my favorite scholar of health-care inequalities in a controlled outrage. "Does this really mean," I simmered, "that for all those times I got pulled over for speeding on the way to college classes, I was hurting my career both ways?"
"Well that's just it," I said. "There are studies of data about bus drivers, because they have insurance. The insurance company has hard-drives full of data about how unhealthy bus drivers are, and how stressed they tell their doctors they are every time they drop by just to take off their shirt for another check-up. Nobody studies substitute teachers because we don't have health insurance and we don't visit doctors. No data exist."
And upon that analysis, I decided not to grade chemistry quizzes over the weekend this weekend, saving them instead for my paid planning time on Monday. Last weekend I was so excited by the opportunity to teach something interesting that I was grading in my downtime at my other job. After reading what the Human Resources department thinks of me, though, I think I need a couple days off. My favorite scholar was right about one thing, though: no matter how hard my job is, I really am glad I don't have to do it in traffic.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
They Can But They Don't*
After my work is done I'm going to write a book about why Capitalism doesn't feed everybody. There seems to be a consensus among my Republican friends that if we just eliminate all social welfare programs designed to keep human beings from starving to death in the streets, everybody will suddenly find great jobs and thank us for taking away all of the handouts that had been keeping them from achieving their full earning potential.
Obviously it's easy to criticize the people at the bottom, themselves, and to point out that many of our homeless, unemployed and elderly are not in great shape to work. Many of our poorest are pretty out of touch with reality and do indeed have a hard time with many simple, basic tasks. I don't think this explains everything, though, because whenever I see interviews with CEOs, they have their fair share of weaknesses as well.
I could try from the outset to explain the math of how capitalism works in individual cases to help individuals collect money from others. I could try to compare capitalism as it's currently played in the US to a game of checkers, where once you get a king the rest is just cleanup. I could try to find statistics on the number of successful capitalists who start nonprofits that feed people vs. the number of successful capitalists who start nonprofits to increase the profitability of their for-profit corporations. But ultimately, these approaches would only show why I think capitalism isn't intended to feed everybody.
There are plenty of people who still believe Ronald Reagan's trite rallying cry that a fully de-regulated capitalism should provide everything for everybody at the best possible price. So I'd like to interview them and find out what they're doing, through capitalism, to create opportunities. I'd like to find out what CEOs believe they are doing to help create jobs each day and meet needs for those who have the least. I'd like to find out how small business owners are leveraging their savings to uplift their communities and promote equal opportunities.
Now, to be fair, I am not a communist. Communists come from poor countries and don't respect democracy or competition. I love competition, because it lets me show how smart America has made me. I just think that the American way, as it has succeeded since the Great Depression, is still the best way to keep this country the greatest in the world. I believe that we should keep providing opportunity for all our children if we want them to grow up to provide prosperity for us.
But that's all been said. What I'd like to write are just the stories of CEOs about how pure capitalism is supposed to provide an alternative means to the unprecedented success of the mixture of capitalist competition and socialist safeguards that has made us the greatest superpower in the history of mankind.
*"They Can But They Don't" is also the title of a book about teaching students with learning disabilities. I would like to reuse that title, because I think the comparison is appropriate. Given extra time, a dyselxic child is entirely capable of reading Moby Dick. But they need special attention, incentives, encouragement and supervision. Similarly, given extra money, Warren Buffett is capable of feeding us all. His heart is in the right place. He'd like to help. That's just not what he does on his own, so he'd rather work together with everybody else, through the government to get it done.
Obviously it's easy to criticize the people at the bottom, themselves, and to point out that many of our homeless, unemployed and elderly are not in great shape to work. Many of our poorest are pretty out of touch with reality and do indeed have a hard time with many simple, basic tasks. I don't think this explains everything, though, because whenever I see interviews with CEOs, they have their fair share of weaknesses as well.
I could try from the outset to explain the math of how capitalism works in individual cases to help individuals collect money from others. I could try to compare capitalism as it's currently played in the US to a game of checkers, where once you get a king the rest is just cleanup. I could try to find statistics on the number of successful capitalists who start nonprofits that feed people vs. the number of successful capitalists who start nonprofits to increase the profitability of their for-profit corporations. But ultimately, these approaches would only show why I think capitalism isn't intended to feed everybody.
There are plenty of people who still believe Ronald Reagan's trite rallying cry that a fully de-regulated capitalism should provide everything for everybody at the best possible price. So I'd like to interview them and find out what they're doing, through capitalism, to create opportunities. I'd like to find out what CEOs believe they are doing to help create jobs each day and meet needs for those who have the least. I'd like to find out how small business owners are leveraging their savings to uplift their communities and promote equal opportunities.
Now, to be fair, I am not a communist. Communists come from poor countries and don't respect democracy or competition. I love competition, because it lets me show how smart America has made me. I just think that the American way, as it has succeeded since the Great Depression, is still the best way to keep this country the greatest in the world. I believe that we should keep providing opportunity for all our children if we want them to grow up to provide prosperity for us.
But that's all been said. What I'd like to write are just the stories of CEOs about how pure capitalism is supposed to provide an alternative means to the unprecedented success of the mixture of capitalist competition and socialist safeguards that has made us the greatest superpower in the history of mankind.
*"They Can But They Don't" is also the title of a book about teaching students with learning disabilities. I would like to reuse that title, because I think the comparison is appropriate. Given extra time, a dyselxic child is entirely capable of reading Moby Dick. But they need special attention, incentives, encouragement and supervision. Similarly, given extra money, Warren Buffett is capable of feeding us all. His heart is in the right place. He'd like to help. That's just not what he does on his own, so he'd rather work together with everybody else, through the government to get it done.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Faster, Higher, Stronger
After my work is done I'm going to start a blog about success. Not how to get it, but about what it is. I think the American dreamer is too focused on how to find success to know it when he's got it. Take my Grandfather--God did.
Grandpa Resnick was a Jewish cavalry doctor in the US Army. He rode horses with a small bag of surgical supplies to fight Nazis. That's pretty much success, right there. Am I right? What could be more awesome for a Jewish kid from a poor immigrant family than not only becoming a doctor but becoming a cavalry doctor fighting Nazis with the best fighting force in the history of the world?
I'll tell you what: becoming a doctor who fought Nazis on skis in the greatest fighting force in the world. So, the American Dream being the uncatchable, impish sprite that it is, Grandpa Resnick did that too. And was he happy?
Of course not! Americans are never satisfied with who we are. If we are computer scientists at Harvard or MIT, we want to drop out and start Microsoft. If we are astrophysicists who discover new stars, we want to get arrested in solidarity with teacher's unions. If we are the first Black President, we want to provide health care for all Americans, solve the immigration dilemma, end two unnecessary wars, start and finish two more and keep our approval ratings up. Of course Grandpa Resnick wasn't satisfied with being a skiing, horseback-riding, gun-toting, Nazi-fighting, Jewish doctor in the U.S. Army.
And what's cooler than all that? Obviously, a ski-jumping, spying one.
Grandpa didn't like to talk about the war. But when I was three and I asked him about it, he didn't tell me that. He didn't say, "I don't like to talk about that." He didn't say, "who wants to bring up a fight I'm lucky to have survived two generations ago." He didn't even say, "war is complicated. I've been more of a hero by saving lives at home than taking them abroad."
Instead, probably because he knew that I was three, and that I wouldn't stop asking until I got an answer, or maybe just as much because I was three and I would believe anything, but probably never remember it, Grandpa told me, "the war was exciting. We used to ski through the alps, spying on the Germans to find out where they were. One day we saw a whole company of them up ahead, in a valley, and we were going so fast that we couldn't stop. The only thing we could do was jump over them. But the Sergeant was worried that if we jumped over forwards, they might shoot us in the back, so he made us ski-jump the valley going backwards. When I was in the air, I heard the German commander say, 'don't shoot. Save your bullets. They'll kill themselves just trying to land.'"
From the age of three until about twelve, that was what war meant to me. A quick, death-defying, impossible acrobatic feat, coupled with mutual understanding and mutual respect between nations. Yes, I knew that at other times in a war, soldiers on different sides shot at each other. But they didn't shoot each other in the middle of a backwards ski-jump. Even in a war, some things were still sacred.
When I was twelve I told the story to my father, who looked at me for a long time, and probably thought about why my grandfather had told it to me that way. He thought about a father who never talked about the war, and had a hard time talking about anything else emotional. He thought about a father whose accomplishments he had struggled to live up to. He realized for maybe the first time that his own father must have felt some of the same inadequacies, in spite of being, by all appearances, incredibly great at everything. He didn't want to fight the perfected image of a man he knew was closer to perfection than anybody had any business being anyway.
I think as soon as he heard that story, he loved it even more than he loved his own memories of his father, because it was a rare chance to see his father as Grandpa wished he could be. So my father didn't point out that Grandpa only skied in basic training, and probably not enough to jump at all, or that Grandpa didn't speak German and couldn't possibly have understood a German commander, even if he could have heard him with the wind rushing through his ears in the middle of what would have had to have been a sixty mile per hour ski jump to clear an entire German force. My dad just said, "Wow. He never told me that story."
A lot of people tell me I'm lucky to have the family I have, and know that I can grow up to be anything. But I know the truth. I know that I'm American, and that I am blessed and cursed to spend my life pulling upwards, white-knuckled on my own bootstraps. I know that whatever I accomplish in this world, I will always wish I could have achieved it faster, backwards and on skis.
Grandpa Resnick was a Jewish cavalry doctor in the US Army. He rode horses with a small bag of surgical supplies to fight Nazis. That's pretty much success, right there. Am I right? What could be more awesome for a Jewish kid from a poor immigrant family than not only becoming a doctor but becoming a cavalry doctor fighting Nazis with the best fighting force in the history of the world?
I'll tell you what: becoming a doctor who fought Nazis on skis in the greatest fighting force in the world. So, the American Dream being the uncatchable, impish sprite that it is, Grandpa Resnick did that too. And was he happy?
Of course not! Americans are never satisfied with who we are. If we are computer scientists at Harvard or MIT, we want to drop out and start Microsoft. If we are astrophysicists who discover new stars, we want to get arrested in solidarity with teacher's unions. If we are the first Black President, we want to provide health care for all Americans, solve the immigration dilemma, end two unnecessary wars, start and finish two more and keep our approval ratings up. Of course Grandpa Resnick wasn't satisfied with being a skiing, horseback-riding, gun-toting, Nazi-fighting, Jewish doctor in the U.S. Army.
And what's cooler than all that? Obviously, a ski-jumping, spying one.
Grandpa didn't like to talk about the war. But when I was three and I asked him about it, he didn't tell me that. He didn't say, "I don't like to talk about that." He didn't say, "who wants to bring up a fight I'm lucky to have survived two generations ago." He didn't even say, "war is complicated. I've been more of a hero by saving lives at home than taking them abroad."
Instead, probably because he knew that I was three, and that I wouldn't stop asking until I got an answer, or maybe just as much because I was three and I would believe anything, but probably never remember it, Grandpa told me, "the war was exciting. We used to ski through the alps, spying on the Germans to find out where they were. One day we saw a whole company of them up ahead, in a valley, and we were going so fast that we couldn't stop. The only thing we could do was jump over them. But the Sergeant was worried that if we jumped over forwards, they might shoot us in the back, so he made us ski-jump the valley going backwards. When I was in the air, I heard the German commander say, 'don't shoot. Save your bullets. They'll kill themselves just trying to land.'"
From the age of three until about twelve, that was what war meant to me. A quick, death-defying, impossible acrobatic feat, coupled with mutual understanding and mutual respect between nations. Yes, I knew that at other times in a war, soldiers on different sides shot at each other. But they didn't shoot each other in the middle of a backwards ski-jump. Even in a war, some things were still sacred.
When I was twelve I told the story to my father, who looked at me for a long time, and probably thought about why my grandfather had told it to me that way. He thought about a father who never talked about the war, and had a hard time talking about anything else emotional. He thought about a father whose accomplishments he had struggled to live up to. He realized for maybe the first time that his own father must have felt some of the same inadequacies, in spite of being, by all appearances, incredibly great at everything. He didn't want to fight the perfected image of a man he knew was closer to perfection than anybody had any business being anyway.
I think as soon as he heard that story, he loved it even more than he loved his own memories of his father, because it was a rare chance to see his father as Grandpa wished he could be. So my father didn't point out that Grandpa only skied in basic training, and probably not enough to jump at all, or that Grandpa didn't speak German and couldn't possibly have understood a German commander, even if he could have heard him with the wind rushing through his ears in the middle of what would have had to have been a sixty mile per hour ski jump to clear an entire German force. My dad just said, "Wow. He never told me that story."
A lot of people tell me I'm lucky to have the family I have, and know that I can grow up to be anything. But I know the truth. I know that I'm American, and that I am blessed and cursed to spend my life pulling upwards, white-knuckled on my own bootstraps. I know that whatever I accomplish in this world, I will always wish I could have achieved it faster, backwards and on skis.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Educational Reform
After my work is done I'm going to start a blog about educational reform. Politicians on both sides of the aisle talk about the need for an educational system that truly prepares kids for the workplace.
Delusionally and embarrassingly, they all tend to agree that this means giving kids more tests of their ability to analyze logical statements, solve math problems and bubble in circles with a number two pencil.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Intertubules, I have been to the work-place, and they did not ask me to solve any calculus problems. What they did ask me were a lot of banal questions about the weather, about my weekend, about how long I had been working there, not counting today....
Having a job doesn't start with a timed test in a crowded room and no talking. Having a job starts with a hand-shake and a conversation. You sit down with someone who already has a job and you make friends with them. If they like you, then you get to have a job, too.
Then you spend some time making friends with the other people who have that job, and vaguely, while you're at it, doing something you all agree is "work." If you don't do the work very well, the other people tell you how you're supposed to do it. This is okay. If you stop being friendly, though, and start being mean to everybody there, you won't have a job.
So when I reform our education system, I'm going to help our kids spend more time hanging out. They're going to practice smiling through boring, meaningless meetings. They'll practice answering questions in ways that couldn't possibly offend anybody. They may even go out for pageants.
The students of my reformed educational system won't cure cancer. They won't go to space. Heck, they won't even know how to unclog a drain. But they will know how to succeed in the American workplace. And isn't that our goal?
Delusionally and embarrassingly, they all tend to agree that this means giving kids more tests of their ability to analyze logical statements, solve math problems and bubble in circles with a number two pencil.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Intertubules, I have been to the work-place, and they did not ask me to solve any calculus problems. What they did ask me were a lot of banal questions about the weather, about my weekend, about how long I had been working there, not counting today....
Having a job doesn't start with a timed test in a crowded room and no talking. Having a job starts with a hand-shake and a conversation. You sit down with someone who already has a job and you make friends with them. If they like you, then you get to have a job, too.
Then you spend some time making friends with the other people who have that job, and vaguely, while you're at it, doing something you all agree is "work." If you don't do the work very well, the other people tell you how you're supposed to do it. This is okay. If you stop being friendly, though, and start being mean to everybody there, you won't have a job.
So when I reform our education system, I'm going to help our kids spend more time hanging out. They're going to practice smiling through boring, meaningless meetings. They'll practice answering questions in ways that couldn't possibly offend anybody. They may even go out for pageants.
The students of my reformed educational system won't cure cancer. They won't go to space. Heck, they won't even know how to unclog a drain. But they will know how to succeed in the American workplace. And isn't that our goal?
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Clothes make the man.
After my work is done I'm going to start a blog about the role that context plays in human relationships. Today I attended my big sister's dissertation defense at a major research university. She did really well and I was really proud of her. Naturally, as a proud little brother, I wore a fancy jacket and tie to go see her.
I've been really down on myself lately, feeling old and unattractive, so it kind of cheered me up when some young lady smiled at me in the hall. And then another one did, peering out of a classroom. And another. And then it stopped cheering me up, and just depressed me.
Because these were the looks I'd be getting if I were the sort of person who had to wear a tie every day as part of his role at a major research university. Which is always the sort of life I expected for myself.
But instead I substitute teach, and coworkers don't look at me twice, not flirtily, not friendlily, not acquantancially (is that a word? has anyone ever needed it before?) and not even to invite me to that happy hour I know they all go to every week just to be polite. Because I couldn't possibly know anything worth talking about. Because the sticker that says "substitute teacher" on my shirt also says "idiot," much more clearly.
But at a major research university, where no one is a substitute teacher, I could not possibly be an idiot, so if my shoes are tied correctly and my tie is on relatively straight, I must be among the World's Greatest Men.
We had a brief luncheon with cake and one of my sister's friends gave me the same flirty look I had been getting all through the building. I should clarify at this point in the story that I am not available, so my reader will understand why I didn't just stop and talk to any of the other five million women trolling the halls of this building. I was somewhat worried that I wouldn't be able to successfully give the eye contact or body language or magic look that says, "thanks, but I'm in a good relationship. Can we be friends," and it seemed like I might not have a lot of time to, because she seemed totally excited to meet me.
But then a professor stepped in and asked me about what I do.
And the room got silent.
And they all moved away from me.
When that girl left, early, I said, "nice to meet you."
It seemed like the thing to say.
She didn't answer.
I love my sister and I'm really proud of her.
She's earned her way into a very exclusive world.
Very, very exclusive.
I've been really down on myself lately, feeling old and unattractive, so it kind of cheered me up when some young lady smiled at me in the hall. And then another one did, peering out of a classroom. And another. And then it stopped cheering me up, and just depressed me.
Because these were the looks I'd be getting if I were the sort of person who had to wear a tie every day as part of his role at a major research university. Which is always the sort of life I expected for myself.
But instead I substitute teach, and coworkers don't look at me twice, not flirtily, not friendlily, not acquantancially (is that a word? has anyone ever needed it before?) and not even to invite me to that happy hour I know they all go to every week just to be polite. Because I couldn't possibly know anything worth talking about. Because the sticker that says "substitute teacher" on my shirt also says "idiot," much more clearly.
But at a major research university, where no one is a substitute teacher, I could not possibly be an idiot, so if my shoes are tied correctly and my tie is on relatively straight, I must be among the World's Greatest Men.
We had a brief luncheon with cake and one of my sister's friends gave me the same flirty look I had been getting all through the building. I should clarify at this point in the story that I am not available, so my reader will understand why I didn't just stop and talk to any of the other five million women trolling the halls of this building. I was somewhat worried that I wouldn't be able to successfully give the eye contact or body language or magic look that says, "thanks, but I'm in a good relationship. Can we be friends," and it seemed like I might not have a lot of time to, because she seemed totally excited to meet me.
But then a professor stepped in and asked me about what I do.
And the room got silent.
And they all moved away from me.
When that girl left, early, I said, "nice to meet you."
It seemed like the thing to say.
She didn't answer.
I love my sister and I'm really proud of her.
She's earned her way into a very exclusive world.
Very, very exclusive.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Young, Rich, Single Women
After my work is done, I'm going to start a blog about young, single, rich women. I'll probably have to set up a lot of interviews to keep providing appropriate content. And what's the etiquette when interviewing someone? You can't invite yourself over, but you certainly can't invite them over to your place. They'd get the wrong idea. Obviously you have to meet in a cafe or restaurant. Is it appropriate to buy their drinks?
It's not like anything would happen, studies now show:
Young, Single Women Earn More Than Male Peers - WSJ.com: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Last night some hopeless academic named Dougherty trumpeted America's feminist gains among single people, celebrating the fact that single American women now earn more money than our single men. While this certainly represents a step toward overall wage equality, I'm not sure whether it's more disturbing that married women still earn less than married men or that lower-income, less-college-educated men are apparently not marriage-eligible. Or maybe it means that higher-income women can't overlook their patriarchal assumptions and find happiness in the economic dependence of someone kind of hopeless but kind of hopelessly good looking, like higher income men used to (and apparently still) do.
Dougherty suggests that one reason for the income discrepancy is that more women than men now attend college. It doesn't look at why that is. In my experience as a student, dropout, grad-student and teacher, students stay with school as long as they receive consistent positive reinforcement from at least one of their teachers. Is there any reason why teachers should positively reinforce young women over young men?
Well, one possibility is that there are many more female teachers than male teachers, especially in the younger grades, where students form lasting impressions of the educational apparatus and of themselves as students or, if their teachers describe them otherwise, non-students.
An elementary educator recently told me that overwhelmingly more boys are dyslexic than girls. A more experienced colleague corrected her. She said there simply aren't numbers on who has more trouble decoding visual stimuli, but that boys are overwhelmingly more often diagnosed because they aren't taught the same academic coping skills that might help dyslexic young women slide by.
I think another obvious piece is that teachers, for all of their educational theories and training, are still human. Human beings empathize most strongly with the children who remind them most strongly of themselves as children. This is why we all like babies even more than kittens. The same principle can extend to gender differences as long as we as a society view those differences as constructive elements of identity.
If our young children have mostly female teachers, and all of our teachers are still growing up in an overtly gendered society, then young women are more likely than young men to receive approval from their teachers. These young women are then more likely to stay in school, more likely to finish college and more likely to let fond memories of school guide them into careers as educators, themselves.
Should men go out and blame feminists for this discrepancy? No. Men should get over their ingrained patriarchal assumptions that teaching is women's work. Men, go back to college. Men, go get a degree in education. It can be physical education or math education if you need to still keep the world divided. Or if you want to really do something novel, go get a degree in how to teach kindergarten. Learn how to teach Spanish. Teach Home Economics. You'll be a precious resource for schools that recognize their need for diversity. You might save the next Emeril Legace from dropping out.
When a few million single American men go back to school and get teaching degrees, they won't just even out the statistics on college degrees among American singles. They won't even just even out the statistics on income among American singles. If my knee-jerk interpretation of the above data is correct, they'll actually stop being a part of that statistical category of "singles," entirely.
And maybe they'll help us reach toward a state of equality. That's not a numerical achievement like equity. Equality is a state of fairness. Equality means that instead of saying "boys need more money so they can feed girls," or "girls need more money so they don't have to depend on boys," we recognize that everybody needs money (or, really, farmland) to feed themselves. Equality means that instead of assuming that young men, whatever struggles they may face, will eventually put on a shiny suit and become successful businesspeople with horses and castles, we all will have to do our best at whatever we're best at to earn our wages.
Equality means that instead of asking teachers to tell us which of our kids are "good" and which ones are "bad," and then taking them at their word regardless of how many female educators keep telling us that our "boys are gross and they can't sit still," we'll have to start asking all teachers what our kids are good at, and developing those talents. Let the grossest among us become comedians and artists. Let the rest find love for themselves, that they may someday find it for others. We don't need everybody to learn to be good officepeople. I'm not even sure we all need offices.
If more of our young women work in offices, this should not be a surprise. Offices are designed for women. An office, in the traditional, patriarchal construction, is a place where you show up at a certain time to sit still and read and write all day long. Whether by nature or nurture, more American young women learn how to sit still than American young men. American young women get more practice reading than our young men. They also get more books written and published specifically for them, even when literary values would dictate otherwise (*twilight*). American young women get more practice being on time than young men. It is tremendously ironic that our economic patriarchy has so scrupilously maintained an arbitrary system of merits by which to ensure its own dissolution.
Of course I say maintained and not established because it was established by a woman. The Virgin Queen of England, finding herself in charge of a number of men distinguished for their feats in equitation and brutality, held contests among them in poetry. All it took was one woman in authority to change gender roles as we still think we know them in spite of four hundred years of evidence to the contrary. One woman in charge, and there was never again hope for patriarchy.
But I have trouble with the concept of a modern patriarchy. I don't think it's dissolving. I think it's so long gone it's as if it never existed. The idea belongs to a world of talking heads on the TV and other relics of an incomprehensible past. I can't even conceptualize anyone I have ever met seriously claiming to belong to such a group as a patriarchy--the men who own the world. None of us can own the world. Not singly or in any number. We can only borrow this world from our great grandchildren and try to get it ready for them, whatever gender or non-gendered futuristic identity-construct they may be.
It's not like anything would happen, studies now show:
Young, Single Women Earn More Than Male Peers - WSJ.com: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Last night some hopeless academic named Dougherty trumpeted America's feminist gains among single people, celebrating the fact that single American women now earn more money than our single men. While this certainly represents a step toward overall wage equality, I'm not sure whether it's more disturbing that married women still earn less than married men or that lower-income, less-college-educated men are apparently not marriage-eligible. Or maybe it means that higher-income women can't overlook their patriarchal assumptions and find happiness in the economic dependence of someone kind of hopeless but kind of hopelessly good looking, like higher income men used to (and apparently still) do.
Dougherty suggests that one reason for the income discrepancy is that more women than men now attend college. It doesn't look at why that is. In my experience as a student, dropout, grad-student and teacher, students stay with school as long as they receive consistent positive reinforcement from at least one of their teachers. Is there any reason why teachers should positively reinforce young women over young men?
Well, one possibility is that there are many more female teachers than male teachers, especially in the younger grades, where students form lasting impressions of the educational apparatus and of themselves as students or, if their teachers describe them otherwise, non-students.
An elementary educator recently told me that overwhelmingly more boys are dyslexic than girls. A more experienced colleague corrected her. She said there simply aren't numbers on who has more trouble decoding visual stimuli, but that boys are overwhelmingly more often diagnosed because they aren't taught the same academic coping skills that might help dyslexic young women slide by.
I think another obvious piece is that teachers, for all of their educational theories and training, are still human. Human beings empathize most strongly with the children who remind them most strongly of themselves as children. This is why we all like babies even more than kittens. The same principle can extend to gender differences as long as we as a society view those differences as constructive elements of identity.
If our young children have mostly female teachers, and all of our teachers are still growing up in an overtly gendered society, then young women are more likely than young men to receive approval from their teachers. These young women are then more likely to stay in school, more likely to finish college and more likely to let fond memories of school guide them into careers as educators, themselves.
Should men go out and blame feminists for this discrepancy? No. Men should get over their ingrained patriarchal assumptions that teaching is women's work. Men, go back to college. Men, go get a degree in education. It can be physical education or math education if you need to still keep the world divided. Or if you want to really do something novel, go get a degree in how to teach kindergarten. Learn how to teach Spanish. Teach Home Economics. You'll be a precious resource for schools that recognize their need for diversity. You might save the next Emeril Legace from dropping out.
When a few million single American men go back to school and get teaching degrees, they won't just even out the statistics on college degrees among American singles. They won't even just even out the statistics on income among American singles. If my knee-jerk interpretation of the above data is correct, they'll actually stop being a part of that statistical category of "singles," entirely.
And maybe they'll help us reach toward a state of equality. That's not a numerical achievement like equity. Equality is a state of fairness. Equality means that instead of saying "boys need more money so they can feed girls," or "girls need more money so they don't have to depend on boys," we recognize that everybody needs money (or, really, farmland) to feed themselves. Equality means that instead of assuming that young men, whatever struggles they may face, will eventually put on a shiny suit and become successful businesspeople with horses and castles, we all will have to do our best at whatever we're best at to earn our wages.
Equality means that instead of asking teachers to tell us which of our kids are "good" and which ones are "bad," and then taking them at their word regardless of how many female educators keep telling us that our "boys are gross and they can't sit still," we'll have to start asking all teachers what our kids are good at, and developing those talents. Let the grossest among us become comedians and artists. Let the rest find love for themselves, that they may someday find it for others. We don't need everybody to learn to be good officepeople. I'm not even sure we all need offices.
If more of our young women work in offices, this should not be a surprise. Offices are designed for women. An office, in the traditional, patriarchal construction, is a place where you show up at a certain time to sit still and read and write all day long. Whether by nature or nurture, more American young women learn how to sit still than American young men. American young women get more practice reading than our young men. They also get more books written and published specifically for them, even when literary values would dictate otherwise (*twilight*). American young women get more practice being on time than young men. It is tremendously ironic that our economic patriarchy has so scrupilously maintained an arbitrary system of merits by which to ensure its own dissolution.
Of course I say maintained and not established because it was established by a woman. The Virgin Queen of England, finding herself in charge of a number of men distinguished for their feats in equitation and brutality, held contests among them in poetry. All it took was one woman in authority to change gender roles as we still think we know them in spite of four hundred years of evidence to the contrary. One woman in charge, and there was never again hope for patriarchy.
But I have trouble with the concept of a modern patriarchy. I don't think it's dissolving. I think it's so long gone it's as if it never existed. The idea belongs to a world of talking heads on the TV and other relics of an incomprehensible past. I can't even conceptualize anyone I have ever met seriously claiming to belong to such a group as a patriarchy--the men who own the world. None of us can own the world. Not singly or in any number. We can only borrow this world from our great grandchildren and try to get it ready for them, whatever gender or non-gendered futuristic identity-construct they may be.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
64x30: First Quarter--Wherein he Toiled in Obscurity
Rolling Stone hasn't written back. In fact, my subsequent emails updating them on the progress of this project have come back undeliverable. Are the editors of Rolling Stone so divorced from the production of independent music that if you send them a letter telling them about the album you just started making, they block your email address, or is the "Reply" button on G-mail busted? You decide.
The folks at Brooklyn Vegan came over and listened, and one commented over on their side that they wanted royalties, but as the comment was again anonymous, I'm going to have a hard time paying up.
The editor of Pitchfork hasn't written back. Did I tell you I wrote to the editor of Pitchfork? I did. But it's only been a couple days. I'm not giving up hope yet.
Also, this morning, I commented on Lucinda Williams' facebook wall to ask if she minds my quoting her songs in my song about her, "Lucinda." It's been like, eight hours, and so far there's no reply at all. There's no reply at all. Is anybody listening?
Oh, also, yesterday I posted "You're Really Hot," which brings 64x30 up to sixteen songs. That's six more than the Eagles' greatest hits and seven more than Michael Jackson's Thriller. But I'm not stopping. Before this is through, I'm going to record sixty-four more original songs. I even mostly wrote one this morning. Hopefully tonight I'll figure out how to play it and produce a high fidelity multiple track recording for your listening enjoyment.
But while we're on the subject of contacting people who aren't likely to be very interested in hearing back, does anybody have an email address for Stephen Merritt? Tell him I'm coming.
The folks at Brooklyn Vegan came over and listened, and one commented over on their side that they wanted royalties, but as the comment was again anonymous, I'm going to have a hard time paying up.
The editor of Pitchfork hasn't written back. Did I tell you I wrote to the editor of Pitchfork? I did. But it's only been a couple days. I'm not giving up hope yet.
Also, this morning, I commented on Lucinda Williams' facebook wall to ask if she minds my quoting her songs in my song about her, "Lucinda." It's been like, eight hours, and so far there's no reply at all. There's no reply at all. Is anybody listening?
Oh, also, yesterday I posted "You're Really Hot," which brings 64x30 up to sixteen songs. That's six more than the Eagles' greatest hits and seven more than Michael Jackson's Thriller. But I'm not stopping. Before this is through, I'm going to record sixty-four more original songs. I even mostly wrote one this morning. Hopefully tonight I'll figure out how to play it and produce a high fidelity multiple track recording for your listening enjoyment.
But while we're on the subject of contacting people who aren't likely to be very interested in hearing back, does anybody have an email address for Stephen Merritt? Tell him I'm coming.
Monday, August 2, 2010
64x30: Brooklyn Vegan Comment War?
There's a good review of Arcade Fire's new album up on Brooklyn Vegan. However, some of the comments were less than charitable. It got me thinking about how hard it must be to make music for millions of people you haven't even met. I mean, I have a hard enough time writing a song that means something to both myself and the woman I wrote it about. So it must be really difficult to write songs for, say, everyone who lives in any suburb, everywhere, as Arcade Fire have to do now.
On my current superalbum, 64x30, I'm trying to write sixty-four songs in sixty-four days. I don't expect that anybody but me is going to love all of them. Actually, I myself hate certain aspects of each of them, even though on the whole I love them each as if they were my own children. If I were spending sixty-four days recording one perfect song, I wouldn't put out a song with a little piece I didn't like. But I feel like that's what I do in most bands I play with, and now I'd like to try the opposite. My goal now is that, by the end of the album, anyone who listens to the whole thing will be able to find one or two songs that they completely relate to. Maybe they won't understand half of the other ones at all, but they'll be able to point to one or two and say, "that's my song. That's what I feel like."
So this is a song that's not for the commenters at Brooklyn Vegan, although along with Walt Whitman I love them as though they were myself, this is a song that's for Arcade Fire to relate to, and say, "yeah. if you took all the negative stuff people in just one community can say about an album we just spent years working on, well, you could write a pretty good song."
On my current superalbum, 64x30, I'm trying to write sixty-four songs in sixty-four days. I don't expect that anybody but me is going to love all of them. Actually, I myself hate certain aspects of each of them, even though on the whole I love them each as if they were my own children. If I were spending sixty-four days recording one perfect song, I wouldn't put out a song with a little piece I didn't like. But I feel like that's what I do in most bands I play with, and now I'd like to try the opposite. My goal now is that, by the end of the album, anyone who listens to the whole thing will be able to find one or two songs that they completely relate to. Maybe they won't understand half of the other ones at all, but they'll be able to point to one or two and say, "that's my song. That's what I feel like."
So this is a song that's not for the commenters at Brooklyn Vegan, although along with Walt Whitman I love them as though they were myself, this is a song that's for Arcade Fire to relate to, and say, "yeah. if you took all the negative stuff people in just one community can say about an album we just spent years working on, well, you could write a pretty good song."
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Fall Catalogue
Aside from my solo work, I've got this band I play with, called Fall Catalogue. They're basically the awesomest band ever. Tonight we played a really beautiful show with The Slowest Runner In All The World and Ascent of Everest. They're both awesome, incredible groups with cellists who will one day play in Rasputina.
It was a great show tonight. It surprised me that the highlight of the evening was hearing the other bands. During the first song of Fall Catalogue's set, I managed to play the riffs from both Iron Man and Smoke on the Water. I didn't think it could get much better than that. But it did.
Those other two bands are playing in Baltimore tomorrow night. You should probably go see them. Otherwise you'll be sad and lonely for the rest of your life. Okay, not really that long. But for tomorrow night, I'm not making any promises of happiness or great rock and roll unless you listen up and check it out.
It was a great show tonight. It surprised me that the highlight of the evening was hearing the other bands. During the first song of Fall Catalogue's set, I managed to play the riffs from both Iron Man and Smoke on the Water. I didn't think it could get much better than that. But it did.
Those other two bands are playing in Baltimore tomorrow night. You should probably go see them. Otherwise you'll be sad and lonely for the rest of your life. Okay, not really that long. But for tomorrow night, I'm not making any promises of happiness or great rock and roll unless you listen up and check it out.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
64x30: Cover of the rolling stone?
So, I may not quite be ready to live out Shel Silverstein's dream, but I have set my sites on a different, and deeper desire.
Yes. It's been two days since I emailed the editors of Rolling Stone magazine about my intentions to become internationally famous by recording and releasing sixty-four new songs in the last sixty-four days of my twenties. I still have yet to hear a follow-up requesting more details. Two whole days, people. In a twenty-four hour news cycle, that's the equivalent of....
...long enough to realize it was a pipe dream, writing to them in the first place, especially since I forgot to include a link.
But I haven't given up with trying to get my face on the front of something. I present my latest original composition, Cereal Monogamy, about my longstanding desire to get my face on the cover of Quaker Oat Squares.
Yes. It's been two days since I emailed the editors of Rolling Stone magazine about my intentions to become internationally famous by recording and releasing sixty-four new songs in the last sixty-four days of my twenties. I still have yet to hear a follow-up requesting more details. Two whole days, people. In a twenty-four hour news cycle, that's the equivalent of....
...long enough to realize it was a pipe dream, writing to them in the first place, especially since I forgot to include a link.
But I haven't given up with trying to get my face on the front of something. I present my latest original composition, Cereal Monogamy, about my longstanding desire to get my face on the cover of Quaker Oat Squares.
Friday, July 23, 2010
64x30: New website
I've started migrating my files from Garageband over to Bandcamp. The new site is at http://eliresnick.bandcamp.com/album/64x30 and will eventually be able to hold all sixty-four songs. Garage band also offers artists the choice to give songs away for free, charge a set amount or let purchasers name their price. I'm going to keep everything free for at least a few more weeks, so download and enjoy.
Take a minute especially to check out last night's creation, Eminently Lovable. My lead guitar came out just beautiful and hauntingly electronic. Through a combination of a dead nine-volt battery in the guitar's balancing circuit, a little bit of radio interference that wouldn't go away until I turned the treble almost off on the amp and my own preference for fingerpicking even on lead parts, the notes are just barely there, but over the fingerpicked classical rhythm guitar they offer a really interesting blend of textures.
I think it's quite possibly the most beautiful recording I've been a part of since I played bass and engineer on a home recording The Casual Occupation's Friday Night. Lobby Gabe for a copy. Hear what I'm remembering, and why I'm so thrilled with my lead tone on Eminently Lovable.
Take a minute especially to check out last night's creation, Eminently Lovable. My lead guitar came out just beautiful and hauntingly electronic. Through a combination of a dead nine-volt battery in the guitar's balancing circuit, a little bit of radio interference that wouldn't go away until I turned the treble almost off on the amp and my own preference for fingerpicking even on lead parts, the notes are just barely there, but over the fingerpicked classical rhythm guitar they offer a really interesting blend of textures.
I think it's quite possibly the most beautiful recording I've been a part of since I played bass and engineer on a home recording The Casual Occupation's Friday Night. Lobby Gabe for a copy. Hear what I'm remembering, and why I'm so thrilled with my lead tone on Eminently Lovable.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
64x30: Dick Cheney and English Class
Yesterday I recorded two songs. The first was a triumph of quick and dirty, single-take, acoustic guitar improvisation. Dick Cheney is just a straightforward blues in E, the lowest, best (and the easiest because rock players practice it the most) guitar-blues key. I'm switching up between chords and lead to compliment my voice and that's about all it needs. Of course, the cuban drum-loop doesn't hurt, either. Let's hear it for royalty-free things that serve as metronomes while simultaneously adding actual content.
English Class is a little bit more refined now. The only piece of cliched writing advice that didn't make it into the lyrics proved to be the guiding force for the recording process here: you don't write; you edit. And if there's anything I've learned about the editing process, it's that it usually involves more writing than the writing process.
After staying up a few hours past my bedtime working on the guitar and vocals and overlaying a rough bass take, I put it aside for this morning. In the morning I decided to start from scratch. There is no force stronger than sleep for getting things done. First thing in the morning, the song was easy to play and easier to sing.
I think overnight I actually learned a lot of the nuances of it that eluded me last night. Also, having tried to play an appropriate bass part over my first, really free guitar part, I understood that I wanted to start out with a rhythm-only guitar line, lay down a simple, basic bass part over that and then see what I could do about lead and fancy things, once the foundation was there.
After playing the guitar and bass for the song and singing one take, I couldn't decide whether it needed harmonica or backing vocals more, so I tried a take where I switched between the two. After that, it didn't sound like it needed anything else.
In fifty-nine more songs, I'm going to get plenty of opportunities to play guitar solos. I'm a lot more excited about getting each song to sound good for what it is. If they need guitar, I'll play it. If they don't, well, I hope I got it out of my system at the end of Electron Directions.
The other really exciting development from last night is that I switched up how I was routing the signal from the mixer to the line-in on my computer, and suddenly the left-right balance is fine. That old, beat up, Californian mixer has some rock-solid, center-detented pan controls after all.
The problem now is that I'm routing my mix into the computer through a headphone amp. Still, I think you'll agree the sound quality has improved 200%. I really hope there's time to go back and re-record the first few tracks at some point, but until I find a lower-distortion solution than the headphone amp, I'm going to rule that dilatory.
English Class is a little bit more refined now. The only piece of cliched writing advice that didn't make it into the lyrics proved to be the guiding force for the recording process here: you don't write; you edit. And if there's anything I've learned about the editing process, it's that it usually involves more writing than the writing process.
After staying up a few hours past my bedtime working on the guitar and vocals and overlaying a rough bass take, I put it aside for this morning. In the morning I decided to start from scratch. There is no force stronger than sleep for getting things done. First thing in the morning, the song was easy to play and easier to sing.
I think overnight I actually learned a lot of the nuances of it that eluded me last night. Also, having tried to play an appropriate bass part over my first, really free guitar part, I understood that I wanted to start out with a rhythm-only guitar line, lay down a simple, basic bass part over that and then see what I could do about lead and fancy things, once the foundation was there.
After playing the guitar and bass for the song and singing one take, I couldn't decide whether it needed harmonica or backing vocals more, so I tried a take where I switched between the two. After that, it didn't sound like it needed anything else.
In fifty-nine more songs, I'm going to get plenty of opportunities to play guitar solos. I'm a lot more excited about getting each song to sound good for what it is. If they need guitar, I'll play it. If they don't, well, I hope I got it out of my system at the end of Electron Directions.
The other really exciting development from last night is that I switched up how I was routing the signal from the mixer to the line-in on my computer, and suddenly the left-right balance is fine. That old, beat up, Californian mixer has some rock-solid, center-detented pan controls after all.
The problem now is that I'm routing my mix into the computer through a headphone amp. Still, I think you'll agree the sound quality has improved 200%. I really hope there's time to go back and re-record the first few tracks at some point, but until I find a lower-distortion solution than the headphone amp, I'm going to rule that dilatory.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
64x30: Two more for y'all
So, after that guitar-drenched angst, I've recorded really open, bare arrangements of my next two songs. They sound more like, I don't know, Lucinda Williams and They Might Be Giants. Okay, that's a big range. One of them sounds like Lucinda Williams and the other sounds like They Might Be Giants. This could either be a huge coincidence, or else just a result of the fact that I really like both musicians. But maybe I'm wrong. Check out Electron Directions and Lucinda. What do you think?
On a technical side, I found out the mixer I picked up on tour in LA is not perfect. Whatever is panned to the center is coming out a little to the left. Maybe it's just the outputs or a connection issue, but I'm panning everything a little to the right to try to get it to even out.
Speaking of evening out, I have sixty-one songs left to record in the next sixty-one days. If only I had sixty-one songs already written. I'll be hitting my old notebooks hard, certainly, but if you've got an idea for something I ought to be writing a song about, please let me know.
On a technical side, I found out the mixer I picked up on tour in LA is not perfect. Whatever is panned to the center is coming out a little to the left. Maybe it's just the outputs or a connection issue, but I'm panning everything a little to the right to try to get it to even out.
Speaking of evening out, I have sixty-one songs left to record in the next sixty-one days. If only I had sixty-one songs already written. I'll be hitting my old notebooks hard, certainly, but if you've got an idea for something I ought to be writing a song about, please let me know.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
64x30: First challenges
Well, it's day three of my self-imposed challenge to record sixty-four original songs before I turn thirty.
Already I've wondered if I should have called it "sixty-four going on thirty," and Chris suggested 64-4-30.
But this hasn't been my biggest challenge.
Actually, after I set up two very different mics for mid-side encoded vocals, two very accurate mics halfway between my head and hands to capture all the non-musical authenticity of a take and a clean/dirty pair of condensers in front of a guitar amp that's up on a table, pointed at the backs of all the other ones anyway, I found an actual challenge.
My rackmounted eight-input firewire recording device won't turn on.
So instead I've got everything plugged into a tiny Mackie mixer and running in stereo into my computer's line-in, for some lower quality, noisier analog to digital conversion.
It is not an ideal situation. I like to record, as above, several different angles and tones of a sound source, and then mix them all together, spending all day adding different effects to each angle, and moving them back and forth from left to right. My computer has one stereo input, so I get to make a stereo mix in my headphones and then that's what I get. There's no adding an effect to the guitar if the guitar take is on the same track as the vocal take. I've got to commit early and redo whatever doesn't work from scratch.
But the real challenge in recording any song is still, as it has always been for me, letting go of it.
So even though I'd like to spend a year recording this first song, I'm going to let you hear what I did with it in just a couple hours of takes, with no real mixing beyond some eq on the voice and a few volume adjustments to get the guitars audible without drowning the vocal. The drums are programmed and I haven't even added bass, but I'm not sure it needs it. I think with just one voice, three guitars and, basically, three digital drumsets, this is getting where it needs to be.
I don't know, though. It's an undending search. So it's fitting that the title of this first song is, "When I Find God."
Already I've wondered if I should have called it "sixty-four going on thirty," and Chris suggested 64-4-30.
But this hasn't been my biggest challenge.
Actually, after I set up two very different mics for mid-side encoded vocals, two very accurate mics halfway between my head and hands to capture all the non-musical authenticity of a take and a clean/dirty pair of condensers in front of a guitar amp that's up on a table, pointed at the backs of all the other ones anyway, I found an actual challenge.
My rackmounted eight-input firewire recording device won't turn on.
So instead I've got everything plugged into a tiny Mackie mixer and running in stereo into my computer's line-in, for some lower quality, noisier analog to digital conversion.
It is not an ideal situation. I like to record, as above, several different angles and tones of a sound source, and then mix them all together, spending all day adding different effects to each angle, and moving them back and forth from left to right. My computer has one stereo input, so I get to make a stereo mix in my headphones and then that's what I get. There's no adding an effect to the guitar if the guitar take is on the same track as the vocal take. I've got to commit early and redo whatever doesn't work from scratch.
But the real challenge in recording any song is still, as it has always been for me, letting go of it.
So even though I'd like to spend a year recording this first song, I'm going to let you hear what I did with it in just a couple hours of takes, with no real mixing beyond some eq on the voice and a few volume adjustments to get the guitars audible without drowning the vocal. The drums are programmed and I haven't even added bass, but I'm not sure it needs it. I think with just one voice, three guitars and, basically, three digital drumsets, this is getting where it needs to be.
I don't know, though. It's an undending search. So it's fitting that the title of this first song is, "When I Find God."
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Sixty-Four by Thirty
My work is not done, but I'm on summer vacation.
A few trips to the pool, a few good home-cooked meals. Some good times with friends.
A last gasping grasp at youth before the big tres cero.
Through my childhood I've wanted to be a singer, a songwriter, someone who records music.
I've played shows in different cities, even out of the country. I've written songs people have listened to without meeting me.
But in the prime of a life spent studying music, poetry, songwriting, the history of American music, the culture of rock and roll, I know I can do more.
In the sixty-four days of now through my birthday, I am going to record sixty-four original songs.
They won't paint a picture of me. They might not explain your life to you. They may not be the greatest work of a great composer, toiling in obscurity beneath the digital noise of a million equal minds pushing that same rock up the same road.
They probably won't even all be great songs.
But the unrecorded life is lived only on faith, and I am not always a person of such strong faith.
So today, after months of choosing a project, rejecting everything I know I cannot sustain, I am sitting down as one of the oldest young men on the planet to do my work.
And after my work is done, I hope you will enjoy it.
A few trips to the pool, a few good home-cooked meals. Some good times with friends.
A last gasping grasp at youth before the big tres cero.
Through my childhood I've wanted to be a singer, a songwriter, someone who records music.
I've played shows in different cities, even out of the country. I've written songs people have listened to without meeting me.
But in the prime of a life spent studying music, poetry, songwriting, the history of American music, the culture of rock and roll, I know I can do more.
In the sixty-four days of now through my birthday, I am going to record sixty-four original songs.
They won't paint a picture of me. They might not explain your life to you. They may not be the greatest work of a great composer, toiling in obscurity beneath the digital noise of a million equal minds pushing that same rock up the same road.
They probably won't even all be great songs.
But the unrecorded life is lived only on faith, and I am not always a person of such strong faith.
So today, after months of choosing a project, rejecting everything I know I cannot sustain, I am sitting down as one of the oldest young men on the planet to do my work.
And after my work is done, I hope you will enjoy it.
Friday, June 4, 2010
The Chive
After my work is done I'm going to start a satirical newspaper in an effort to get discovered by the onion. Of course I'll be hoping that they'll discover me as a missing piece to their ideal lineup of writers, and not just as someone to compete with and drive into the ground.
Because my blog won't be better than the Onion. It'll just be a whole lot like it.
I'll satirize current events, claiming that, unaware of recent changes in local customs and excited about America's first African American president, British Petroleum celebrates African American literature with a free Joel Chandler Harris tarbaby for every child in New Orleans.
I'll satirize religious people who cling to cultural prejudices in spite of their various religions' messages of tolerance and love with an editorial called "Jesus is my Token." The editorial will celebrate recent biblical scholarship which now entitles all Christians to refer not only to "my Jewish friend" but now also to "my Black friend."
To satirize The Onion's effective monetization I'll sell "Jesus is My Token" bumper stickers, "Jesus is my token" hoodies, "Jesus is my token" stocking caps and "Jesus is My Token" New York City subway tokens. It'll be hard to get the weight and shape just right, but, man, won't Bloomberg need to change his pants when he gets a bagful of those out of the turnstyle.
Okay, that last part of my plan isn't just for shits and grins. It's also to get rich by selling tons of underpriced subway fare through worker exploitation in some third world country I'll never visit, with a reasonable chance of legally defending myself in the name of comedy, religion or some other sort of important right I am not, in fact, exercising.
I like those last few words: I am not, in fact, exercising. Maybe I'll sell them on some sort of running shorts or sporting accessory. Water bottle, anyone?
My blog will be funny, but it will also be a full time job. Which is good, because after I publish cutting edge satires of our religious and cultural mores, I may have a hard time getting another full time job. There are a lot of good reasons the Onion publishes its articles anonymously. Unless they don't and I've just been too busy laughing to read all the credits.
My blog will also parody The Onion directly, with an article called "area man read's funny article in humorous newspaper, and laughs." It will identify the person by name and then say, in five different ways that, after reading a satirical article in a satirical publication, he showed his amusement by giggling. It might even say that he chortled briefly, smiled to himself, and was reported to have bent slightly forward at the waist during the emotional display.
That article will also contain an interview with someone who sat next to the area man on the subway and firmly believes that he didn't laugh enough. "It would have been much better if he had doubled all the way over and guffawed into his knees," the fictional companion will drolly observe. "I don't know what the big deal is," he'll continue, "It's not like in an extreme moment of uncontrollable and cathartic response to the comedic text, he simultaneously started crying and shot milk out of his nose. To say nothing of sprite."
"It's not really such a big story. I mean, he laughed. Maybe the article was funny. Or maybe he just wanted to think it was funny, because at the end of a long day, he had no other thoughts to really comfort him, and it was good to just lose himself in the way the article repeated the same droll non-news-items as though they were newsworthy. It may have served as some sort of reminder of how awful life is, and what a shitty job we give to the people we expect to report on it every fucking day, no matter how little anything ever changes."
My article will finally contain a brief interview with the area man, himself. He will sheepishly acknowledge that, indeed, upon visually perusing the parodic periodical, he experienced brief diaphragmatic spasms accompanied by involuntary sonic creation in the glottal regions of his throat. When further questioned, he will expleain that he may even have undergone some slight, brief, accidental stimulation of his voicebox.
He will reflect, upon examination, that the action, which was not entirely dissimilar to an episode of seizure or glossolalia, provoked a certain amount of attention from his fellow subway passengers, but not nearly as much attention as he'd get if the subway cops found out he'd paid his fair entirely in Jesus tokens.
When asked to speculate on his future endeavors, the area man will say that he hasn't given it much thought, but that he imagines he'll keep waiting for his stop, "and then maybe read another article," while he waits for his crosstown bus, "that is, if all the reporters and cameramen won't be too offended."
Because my blog won't be better than the Onion. It'll just be a whole lot like it.
I'll satirize current events, claiming that, unaware of recent changes in local customs and excited about America's first African American president, British Petroleum celebrates African American literature with a free Joel Chandler Harris tarbaby for every child in New Orleans.
I'll satirize religious people who cling to cultural prejudices in spite of their various religions' messages of tolerance and love with an editorial called "Jesus is my Token." The editorial will celebrate recent biblical scholarship which now entitles all Christians to refer not only to "my Jewish friend" but now also to "my Black friend."
To satirize The Onion's effective monetization I'll sell "Jesus is My Token" bumper stickers, "Jesus is my token" hoodies, "Jesus is my token" stocking caps and "Jesus is My Token" New York City subway tokens. It'll be hard to get the weight and shape just right, but, man, won't Bloomberg need to change his pants when he gets a bagful of those out of the turnstyle.
Okay, that last part of my plan isn't just for shits and grins. It's also to get rich by selling tons of underpriced subway fare through worker exploitation in some third world country I'll never visit, with a reasonable chance of legally defending myself in the name of comedy, religion or some other sort of important right I am not, in fact, exercising.
I like those last few words: I am not, in fact, exercising. Maybe I'll sell them on some sort of running shorts or sporting accessory. Water bottle, anyone?
My blog will be funny, but it will also be a full time job. Which is good, because after I publish cutting edge satires of our religious and cultural mores, I may have a hard time getting another full time job. There are a lot of good reasons the Onion publishes its articles anonymously. Unless they don't and I've just been too busy laughing to read all the credits.
My blog will also parody The Onion directly, with an article called "area man read's funny article in humorous newspaper, and laughs." It will identify the person by name and then say, in five different ways that, after reading a satirical article in a satirical publication, he showed his amusement by giggling. It might even say that he chortled briefly, smiled to himself, and was reported to have bent slightly forward at the waist during the emotional display.
That article will also contain an interview with someone who sat next to the area man on the subway and firmly believes that he didn't laugh enough. "It would have been much better if he had doubled all the way over and guffawed into his knees," the fictional companion will drolly observe. "I don't know what the big deal is," he'll continue, "It's not like in an extreme moment of uncontrollable and cathartic response to the comedic text, he simultaneously started crying and shot milk out of his nose. To say nothing of sprite."
"It's not really such a big story. I mean, he laughed. Maybe the article was funny. Or maybe he just wanted to think it was funny, because at the end of a long day, he had no other thoughts to really comfort him, and it was good to just lose himself in the way the article repeated the same droll non-news-items as though they were newsworthy. It may have served as some sort of reminder of how awful life is, and what a shitty job we give to the people we expect to report on it every fucking day, no matter how little anything ever changes."
My article will finally contain a brief interview with the area man, himself. He will sheepishly acknowledge that, indeed, upon visually perusing the parodic periodical, he experienced brief diaphragmatic spasms accompanied by involuntary sonic creation in the glottal regions of his throat. When further questioned, he will expleain that he may even have undergone some slight, brief, accidental stimulation of his voicebox.
He will reflect, upon examination, that the action, which was not entirely dissimilar to an episode of seizure or glossolalia, provoked a certain amount of attention from his fellow subway passengers, but not nearly as much attention as he'd get if the subway cops found out he'd paid his fair entirely in Jesus tokens.
When asked to speculate on his future endeavors, the area man will say that he hasn't given it much thought, but that he imagines he'll keep waiting for his stop, "and then maybe read another article," while he waits for his crosstown bus, "that is, if all the reporters and cameramen won't be too offended."
Friday, May 28, 2010
I'd just never noticed that John Wayne walked like that before...
After my work is done I'm going to start a blog about the power of trend analysis to take things about the world that hurt people and make them alright again. It'll follow the ebb and flow of the slow mechanations of the stodgy old journalists who eke out livings giving silly names to otherwise nonexistent teen sensations.
A couple years ago someone coined the term "metrosexual" as a playful term to describe an allegedly recent shift by men to adopt feminine dress codes. Of course, this shift is traced back in literature to the Elizabethan era, when moralists got their shifts in knots decrying that styles had grown so similar that tailors had to put buttons on different sides of men's and women's clothing just so that there was some clear mark of who an article was allegedly designed for.
But trendspotting is not a historical science. It's actually a trend in itself, a way to nationalize the behavior we find in every third grade classroom, where in order to show membership in a group people delineate clearly what behaviors do not fit within the confines of their group. This behavior, among children, has a much simpler name: namecalling.
A namecaller shows boundaries of normal and expected behavior in order to allay personal fears of abnormalcy, strangeness and social undesirability. We can only presume based on the similarity of action and effect that a trendspotter performs the same activity for the same causes. One could argue for the addition of economic rewards, but in my blog we'll take for granted that those are already included sufficiently in the above list.
So all across the country, at every major media outlet of our world-famous free press, professional name-callers picked on guys who dressed too much like the women whose attention they were trying to attract. The national name-calling campaign didn't entirely liminalize the behavior, though. Because the sartorial minority had (as it did in the days of Shakespeare's original drag queens) critical mass, the external identification fostered greater self-identification.
Whereas before a young man might wear his hair long and condition it every day because he wanted to be a rockstar, and then be totally surprised if a couple awkward kids asked whether it meant he was gay, in the era of metrosexuality he became a part of a movement. Or maybe movement is the wrong word. It wasn't specifically going anywhere, but everybody knew about it, so the sense of identity became a preoccupation. People embraced their label. The fashion industry caught on quickly and started making tight jeans for both genders to try to help us squeeze out our differences.
But in middle schools across America, kids understood the namecalling for what it was and imitated it perfectly. A national script of neo-para-homophobia was successfully established as the dominant discourse of our younger generation, even in an era when America is at war over a different set of fears and misunderstandings. Kids in most American schools (and yes, I do believe I have taught at a representative random sample, including integrated, segregated, rich and poor schools) still don't know what halal means, but they can pick on a metro or a homo, or simply apply the labels to pick on anyone or anything that catches their ire. To wear trendy clothes is to be labeled metro, and the label will be read aloud in every class.
This year (or maybe last--I'm not all that trendy) some geezer coined the term "retro-sexual" to symbolize a movement back to the same set of highly differentiated gender roles that, to counteract the information that they are not any older or more natural, are insecurely referred to as "traditional." Traditional gender roles can be any number of things. They can include male-to-female physical, sexual and emotional abuse. They can include codependent relationships like those portrayed in Romeo and Juliet. They can include solicitation.
They can also be positve forces, when applied gently. Someone can be told to man up and treat a woman right. Someone can decide to be a man face his fears. But women are better at facing fears than men. Women walk in a world every day where they are terrified of "traditional" male behavior. Women are afraid to take stairs or elevators alone. Women face fears men do not even dream of and have a scientifically tested higher tolerance for pain. An all powerful, all knowing God couldn't have meant women to be weak and made them tougher than men just by accident, could She?
So, as you can see, my blog won't be in favor of all trends, but it will assess the power of trend identification. For instance, throughout the aughts, to be trendy in any way became synonymous with being metrosexual which, as noted above was, on a scale of liminality, synonymous with homosexuality.
Now the namecallers have started trying to popularize a trend of retrosexuality in order to sell retro fashion--i.e., royalty-free designs that don't require creativity can be reproduced to help a new generation of trendy young things dress up and make believe that they invented the world and all its pleasures, and that they are its rightful kings because they alone, unlike their older sisters and brothers, are properly acting out the essence of their own being, by dressing according to how they pee.
It won't be long, though, before some middle school name-callers start noticing how trendy these retrosexuals are; how much their fashion-enslaved behavior mimics the behavior of magazine obsessed little popularity queens. It won't be long before retro joins metro and homo as a new insult among the brightest minds of tomorrow. At the same time, it won't be long before yesterday's trendy metrosexuals become tomorrow's trendy retrosexuals. In short, it won't be long before every guy that goes out of his way to display his heterosexuality inadvertently ends up with the opposite label.
And when all our kids tease each other relentlessly for being gay, the word should hopefully lose any remaining negative connotation. When that day comes, my trendy blog about trendspotting will cover it. And I'll be so cool. So, so cool. And not at all metro.
A couple years ago someone coined the term "metrosexual" as a playful term to describe an allegedly recent shift by men to adopt feminine dress codes. Of course, this shift is traced back in literature to the Elizabethan era, when moralists got their shifts in knots decrying that styles had grown so similar that tailors had to put buttons on different sides of men's and women's clothing just so that there was some clear mark of who an article was allegedly designed for.
But trendspotting is not a historical science. It's actually a trend in itself, a way to nationalize the behavior we find in every third grade classroom, where in order to show membership in a group people delineate clearly what behaviors do not fit within the confines of their group. This behavior, among children, has a much simpler name: namecalling.
A namecaller shows boundaries of normal and expected behavior in order to allay personal fears of abnormalcy, strangeness and social undesirability. We can only presume based on the similarity of action and effect that a trendspotter performs the same activity for the same causes. One could argue for the addition of economic rewards, but in my blog we'll take for granted that those are already included sufficiently in the above list.
So all across the country, at every major media outlet of our world-famous free press, professional name-callers picked on guys who dressed too much like the women whose attention they were trying to attract. The national name-calling campaign didn't entirely liminalize the behavior, though. Because the sartorial minority had (as it did in the days of Shakespeare's original drag queens) critical mass, the external identification fostered greater self-identification.
Whereas before a young man might wear his hair long and condition it every day because he wanted to be a rockstar, and then be totally surprised if a couple awkward kids asked whether it meant he was gay, in the era of metrosexuality he became a part of a movement. Or maybe movement is the wrong word. It wasn't specifically going anywhere, but everybody knew about it, so the sense of identity became a preoccupation. People embraced their label. The fashion industry caught on quickly and started making tight jeans for both genders to try to help us squeeze out our differences.
But in middle schools across America, kids understood the namecalling for what it was and imitated it perfectly. A national script of neo-para-homophobia was successfully established as the dominant discourse of our younger generation, even in an era when America is at war over a different set of fears and misunderstandings. Kids in most American schools (and yes, I do believe I have taught at a representative random sample, including integrated, segregated, rich and poor schools) still don't know what halal means, but they can pick on a metro or a homo, or simply apply the labels to pick on anyone or anything that catches their ire. To wear trendy clothes is to be labeled metro, and the label will be read aloud in every class.
This year (or maybe last--I'm not all that trendy) some geezer coined the term "retro-sexual" to symbolize a movement back to the same set of highly differentiated gender roles that, to counteract the information that they are not any older or more natural, are insecurely referred to as "traditional." Traditional gender roles can be any number of things. They can include male-to-female physical, sexual and emotional abuse. They can include codependent relationships like those portrayed in Romeo and Juliet. They can include solicitation.
They can also be positve forces, when applied gently. Someone can be told to man up and treat a woman right. Someone can decide to be a man face his fears. But women are better at facing fears than men. Women walk in a world every day where they are terrified of "traditional" male behavior. Women are afraid to take stairs or elevators alone. Women face fears men do not even dream of and have a scientifically tested higher tolerance for pain. An all powerful, all knowing God couldn't have meant women to be weak and made them tougher than men just by accident, could She?
So, as you can see, my blog won't be in favor of all trends, but it will assess the power of trend identification. For instance, throughout the aughts, to be trendy in any way became synonymous with being metrosexual which, as noted above was, on a scale of liminality, synonymous with homosexuality.
Now the namecallers have started trying to popularize a trend of retrosexuality in order to sell retro fashion--i.e., royalty-free designs that don't require creativity can be reproduced to help a new generation of trendy young things dress up and make believe that they invented the world and all its pleasures, and that they are its rightful kings because they alone, unlike their older sisters and brothers, are properly acting out the essence of their own being, by dressing according to how they pee.
It won't be long, though, before some middle school name-callers start noticing how trendy these retrosexuals are; how much their fashion-enslaved behavior mimics the behavior of magazine obsessed little popularity queens. It won't be long before retro joins metro and homo as a new insult among the brightest minds of tomorrow. At the same time, it won't be long before yesterday's trendy metrosexuals become tomorrow's trendy retrosexuals. In short, it won't be long before every guy that goes out of his way to display his heterosexuality inadvertently ends up with the opposite label.
And when all our kids tease each other relentlessly for being gay, the word should hopefully lose any remaining negative connotation. When that day comes, my trendy blog about trendspotting will cover it. And I'll be so cool. So, so cool. And not at all metro.
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