Appropriate THIS....

Oh - dang. I can't use this picture. That would be "Cultural Appropriation."

"Listen very carefully. I will say this only once."

CULTURE

is, by its very nature,

a vast stewing pot meant to feed the world.

EVERYONE

brings something to the pot and puts it in;

everyone

takes something out.

THAT'S HOW IT WORKS.

"Cultural Appropriation"

is nothing more than the latest rallying cry of the braindead 

-- the latest line of

intellectual masturbation

intended to draw boundaries around the way people express themselves, to make rules and to create limitations about the things that are "acceptable" to those braindead few.
At its worst, "Cultural Appropriation" is a kind of Hitlerian call to "Racial Purity" where no one can adopt any style or thought that in any way derives from another's perspective.

Yeah, we all know how well THAT line of thinking works.

"Cultural Appropriation" is the biggest line of Divisionist, Touchy-Feely Bullshit that's been foisted on us in a long time.

Without "Cultural Appropriation" not a single one of us would be listening to Rock music today.

Without "Cultural Appropriation," the USA would have NO CULTURE AT ALL. America is a BASTARD NATION. Its culture is made up of one hundred percent stolen elements -- stolen from African Americans, stolen from Native Americans, stolen from the Jews, stolen from the Italians, stolen from the Spaniards, and even stolen from Great Britain. Take away "Cultural Appropriation" and America's got squat.

But you know what? It's all right. Because that's what Culture is.

Without "Cultural Appropriation" 

THERE WOULD BE NO ART.

Everyone learns and draws on what has been put out there before us. This is the nature of art and of life itself. So please, Just Stop It. Take your White Guilt and your guilt-driven False Outrage and your guilt-driven attempts to squelch free expression and deal with it in on your own, in private, where it ought to be dealt with. 

Don't drag your personal prejudices out into the world and use them to try to restrict and encage artists -- all of whom are better people than YOU are, because even the WORST artist is trying to bring something POSITIVE into the world. 

PARK IT WHERE THE SUN DON'T SHINE.

-- Oops, waitaminnit, I can't say that, it's "Cultural Appropriation."

You can criticize Bad Art for lots of reasons, including Soft Thinking, but "Cultural Appropriation" is not a valid criticism of ANY god damn thing.

-- Frede

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Send In The Clowns

As a former Republican I can not understand how any reasonable, intelligent member of the party can look upon the field of candidates that they have been given to choose from in this election year without feeling, at best, appalled and humiliated. From Trump all the way down to Bush, the party can’t in any way be said to be putting forth its Best and Brightest… indeed, it’s more like “Send in the Clowns.”

Where are the reasonable Republicans? Where are the Barry Goldwaters and Eisenhowers of this generation? None of them seem interested in leading; rather, the tone of the Republican debates has been to inflame, provoke and divide. 

I fail to see how anyone with half a brain (which doesn’t say much about the level of American intelligence) can take any of these ranting Republican cartoon characters seriously as a candidate for the highest office in the country. Even down to Carly Fiorina, who is considerably smarter than some of the others she is running against, although more purely, coldly, calculatingly Evil, we’re looking at a field of characters who belong in an old Warner Brothers cartoon — where Bugs Bunny would promptly make mincemeat out of them. 

As I looked around for a Republican candidate who could be considered without, you know, pointing and laughing, I realized that there is one serious, reasonable Republican candidate out there: 

It’s Hillary Clinton. 

The one percent have got this figured out: turn the Republicans into a party of crackers, weirdos, lunatics and cartoon characters, then turn the Democrats into Moderate Republicans and completely disenfranchise true liberals by marking us as dangerous socialists, by essentially stealing the Democratic Party out from underneath us. 

I must say it’s a brilliant plan, and all the signs are pointing to its success. 

— Frede.

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Death Cuts Both Ways -- FINALLY!!

I make no apologies whatever for my belief that the best thing Justice Scalia ever did for this country is to die. Furthermore, I have seen death come to so many good people in the last few years, people that I loved, some of them struck down considerably before their time, that I frankly rejoice: because it's about damn time that it happened to someone who BLOODY WELL DESERVES IT. It is a bitter, cutting thing to see the ones you loved, cared about and admired struck down while the EVIL BASTARDS just go on and on and on, in contrary to what would be the rules of a Just World. Let us hope that "Justice" Scalia is but the first in a long line of villains whose influence is eradicated in this manner.

--Frede.

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Why Must They All Move On?

When William Hartnell landed the role of Doctor Who Number One in 1962, he was experienced enough to have learned that when you get a good, steady well-paying gig in an otherwise shaky industry, an industry where more people fail than succeed, you don’t trade that Good Thing in on the vague promise of doing “something different.” It was for this reason that he was so disappointed in his co-star, Carole Anne Ford, when she decided to leave the show at the beginning of its second season. Why throw away a good thing? And he was right. To this day, Carole Anne Ford is remembered for being Susan on Doctor Who, not for anything she did later. Fifty Years down the road, the youngest Doctor ever — Matt Smith — pitched his high-profile, steady, well-paying gig so that he could go off and play bit parts in bad movies that nobody will remember. Young people never seem to learn.

The same thing is true, and perhaps even more true, in the music business: and so I was dismayed, upset, and even hurt earlier this year when musician Marianne Sveen announced that she would be leaving my favorite band, the Nordic all-gal group Katzenjammer, in order to pursue her solo career.

Previous to this, she had already taken time off to work as a producer and as the solo act Dandylion; I bought a few of her solo EPs myself. But did she ever reflect that maybe people were only interested in her solo career because of her association with Katzenjammer? 

I ask the question because it's evident now now that her selfish decision has killed the group. In the wake of Sveen's announcement, fellow band-member Anne Marit Bergheim yesterday posted on Facebook that she is moving on as well: leaving no doubt that my favorite band was an “all for one and one for all” outfit: rather than replace Sveen on tours with a new musician, Katzenjammer has decided to fold the tents for good.

Does Sveen know that her decision to kill Katzenjammer could make her the most reviled woman in rock history outside of Yoko Ono? Does she know that the polite interest in her solo career will probably evaporate now that she’s burned down the only reason that anyone outside of Norway ever even heard of her?

And so the history of Katzenjammer seems now to be written: just another really talented almost was. They never became a household name in the USA, but they could have done. They could have done so much more, together. Ten years, three genius albums that grew in accomplishment from release to release (last year’s Rockland seemed to make the specific statement that the women of Katzenjammer had the substance, the experience, the raw power and the songwriting skills to go toe-to-toe with the best in the business) … all now dissolved, gone the way of that other Fab Four, The Beatles. 

All because Marianne Sveen doesn’t know a god-damn good thing when she sees it, and wants to chuck it all so that she can do “other things.” Specifically, “other things” that will never amount to half of what she has already accomplished working with Anne Marit Bergheim, Turid Jorgensen and Solveig Heilo as part of Katzenjammer.

We didn’t know when David Bowie released his last album that it would be his last album, and the same is true about Katzenjammer and Rockland. It turns out that the lovely title ballad, penned by Anne Marit, didn’t just close out the album: it was the swan song for the band’s entire history. You can listen to it in the video above this post. I don’t suppose that any other group ever said goodbye more beautifully.

— Frede.

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One Way Out

I truly Madly Deeply don't

often get political on this blog.

I believe that a person has to pick and choose their fights.

That's why I'm right now getting All Political on you.

As long as we keep electing moderate liberals,

we will keep on moving inevitably to destruction.

Ever since Ronald Reagan sold the Republican party downriver to the bible-thumping, chest-beating right wing, the Republican party has been headed farther and farther into the lunatic fringe, closer and closer to the brink of destruction. Moderate "liberals" have only had the effect of holding the ground we are standing on, or of getting us to the edge of disaster a little bit slower.

Republican candidates get louder and crazier and more insane by the moment -- and somehow we are supposed to fight this by being moderate? Republicans are dragging the whole country in the wrong direction, and Hillary is PART OF THE PROBLEM.

How can we counter Republican extremism by being moderate?

WE CAN'T.

Given the options that we have (and yes of course I wish that there were more real, substantive options... but in the America of today, almost completely 100 percent controlled by the Ruling Class), there is only ONE option. This guy:

This is why I will be caucusing for Bernie Sanders, and this is why I will not vote in the general election if he loses the nomination. If the American people are DETERMINED to throw themselves off a cliff, there's not one goddamned thing I can do about it. Electing Hillary will only delay the inevitable. A vote for her is a vote in favor of the one percent continuing to rape and fuck our country right over.

YOUR CHOICE.

Here and Now

This morning with itchy bleach on my head (because I hate my hair's natural mousy brown color , and so dye it as close to white as I can get it ... fer crine out loud, here I am in my late fifties, when is it just going to turn already?) I went back to the earliest days of this blog and read a few of the posts surrounding the experience of moving into my current house, all on my own.

I'm so glad that I wrote it all down five years ago, as it happened. Memory is beyond imperfect, and time does dull the pain. But here I am, five years and twelve days exactly after the move was finally completed.

So much has happened and changed in that time.  The architecture of my family has mostly evaporated: Pooky, Pandy Bear and Patches have all died, my friend Howard is gone, my Dad has moved away (yet we have somehow grown closer), my evil sister saw the deaths of her son and husband in rapid succession, only to replace them almost immediately with a New Family that she is welcome to (my sister's soul is nothing more than a black hole that sucks up anything that gets too close, in order to give itself the illusion of substance).

 The Saga and Process of Moving On has more or less completed, insofar as it's ever complete; after all, we are always moving on from something.  But five years after the fact, there's no denying that I'm in a better place now than I was then, having divested myself of a job and a boss that were helping to drive me to drink, among other things. The past couple of years have been loaded with blessings, not the least of which are the numbers of people who have let me know that they like the work I am doing: something that hadn't happened in such a long time that I'd forgotten what it felt like.

Of course change is the order of life and it can all go belly-up from where it is if one is not careful. And I'm not, nor will I ever be, without sadness: it's a part of my biological make-up. But I look at those entries from five years ago and remember what a bad place it mostly all was, and see how far I've come from those times; and I'm so grateful to have, with your help, and for now, reached a place where there is a lot less pain to write about, but still much to remember, and much to do on the road ahead.

-- Frede.
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Lady Grinning Soul

David Bowie released an album and then he died. 

In an act of transformation that is nothing if not pure alchemy, an interesting album coalesced into a profoundly moving work of art. In the video of “Lazarus,” Bowie is seen writhing and levitating in the most austere of hospital beds, while his Inner Self struggles to get all the words down on paper before his time expires. This is powerful, emotionally shaking stuff, but also cold: in the same way that Bowie made all of his best work, he has objectified himself and become the part that he was playing and writing about. 

In another decade, the work would be hailed as the artistic achievement of an admittedly young year. Instead, I fear it is doomed to become a reflection that fades rapidly in the collective rear-view mirror of our non-culture. Now, in the middle of the twenty-teens, Bowie is becoming the victim of what he himself warned us about: the transitory nature of an aging culture, the strange changes that cannot even be faced because the world has already moved on. 

With Bowie gone, it’s left to folk singer Slaid Cleaves to warn of what’s happening and what will happen: throughout his album Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away, he laments:

All you see

every love and every dream

temporary

as morning dew will turn to steam

Bowie is dead, long live Bowie, blink and you missed him, he was barely here. So much has changed since David Bowie warned us about change. The Pop Culture that nourished his growth no longer even exists: because culture implies something shared, and the element of sharing is now simply another casualty in the endless quest for Novelty that has become the driving force behind everything we see, hear and do. We live in a rarified “Do-It-Yourself” culture that’s different for every individual, because it exists only in the experience and choices of that individual. 

It’s all in your personal Pop-Culture Mixmaster, streaming in the wifi-ed air around us, down into your iPod and out through the earbuds. There is no job in this world more obsolete than “disk jockey” or “programming director.” 

From here on in, we’re all going it alone. 

*

Alan Rickman quickly followed Bowie down the rabbit-hole, same age, same cause of death. Although it boggles my mind to learn that there are actually people out there who liked Robin Hood (a movie that plays rape for laughs, and which boils down to — as I wrote at the time — “the Sheriff of Over The Top fighting Robin Bland to see who has the most annoying acting style”), that was just one execrable movie in an otherwise exemplary career. You’d listen to Rickman read the telephone book, wouldn’t you? I would.

The thing that’s concerning about this is that Mister Death seems to be focusing overmuch on The Good Folks. Why is Pat Robertson still alive? Why is Dick Cheney still alive? Why haven’t Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Donald Trump had their fatal coronaries yet? Why are evil-minded men gleefully lopping off the heads of people who never them did any harm, and still managing to keep their own heads attached to their shoulders?

It seems to me that Mister Death has a legitimate Job of Work to do, and that he’s been shirking. In the novels of Terry Pratchett, Death is always anxious to present himself as just another working stiff, really your pal, “it’s a bad job but someone has to do it.” And yet he takes Terry Pratchett and leaves us with the likes of Tom Clancy and James Patterson (neither of whom even write their own books anymore). 

There must be MILLIONS of people out there who deserve to be dead, and yet Mister Death passes them by, waving a bony hand in passing, “That’s okay, buddy, you’re good for now, I’m on my way to take out that person who made millions of people happy.”

It’s not the same, it doesn’t hurt as much, it isn’t as personal as losing your grandparents, your mom, the beloved members of your family. I miss my poor pussyquat Patches more than I will ever miss David Bowie or Alan Rickman. But deaths out of the world we live in re-open those wounds, because they cast a stark light on the timeframe of your life. Everything, even the sadness of knowing that your world is passing on, is “Temporary as the morning dew turning to steam.”

— Frede.

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Alien Regurgitation

"For the whitest whites, the brightest brights, use only CRELM toothpaste!"

This evening I subjected myself to Alien Resurrection (1997) … not because I had any crashing desire to see another Alien movie, but because it was directed ny Jean-Pierre Jeunet, one of the few remaining active directors whose work I admire enough to actively seek out. It was his only Hollywood movie, and I believe the experience was bad enough to sour him on ever doing it again. Can’t blame him for taking the offer; gotta admire him for cutting the cord and going back to doing what he does best: his own thing.

Jeunet struggles manfully to make something out of the material; but it’s an effort that’s doomed from the start, hobbled as it is by a script excreted from The High No-Talent Supreme, Joss Whedon. Whedon, James Cameron, J.J. Abrams — these three clowns taken together are among the worst things ever to happen to Hollywood, discounting only the corporate numbskulls who keep on hiring them. If I’m ever unlucky enough to meet Whedon, I want to ask him what it feels like to fuck The Avengers.

When he’s not busily engaged in finding ever more extreme ways to gross out an audience (the one thing that the Alien movies seem to thrive on), he’s dutifully hitting the mark of every standard Hollywood Plot Point, every cliched theme or line of dialogue that he can possibly lay his typing fingers on. Alien Resurrection is one of those movies that the audience could have written just as well, by rote: all 114 minutes are telegraphed and predicated (and predictable) from the movie’s opening seconds. This is probably its great failing as a horror movie: it’s hard to be scared by a movie when we already know what’s coming, down to the split second.

Still, Jeunet’s visual trademarks somehow manage to shine through: and the opening sequence is pure Jeunet, leading one to expect a far more inventive picture than what follows. And it does have Sigourney Weaver and Winona Ryder, thank goodness for that. I’d watch those two in practically anything, and Jeunet knows how to photograph them: you can’t turn your eyes away when they are onscreen, much as the content of the picture makes looking away almost mandatory. 

It’s worth watching — once — because of Weaver and Ryder and Jeunet; but you can almost feel the man’s frustration running through the movie’s frames like the slimy alien goop that saturates it throughout. No man who is capable of works like Delicatessen, City of Lost Children, Amelie, A Very Long Engagement, or his other films, is going to be happy applying his talents to lifeless crap like this. The business of making sequels to other people's work in Hollywood must be akin to working inside a gigantic Kill Jar. Perhaps this is why he opens the movie with an insect about to be smushed.

Really, I wanted to watch this tonight because I’ve finally managed to snag a copy of Juenet’s most recent picture, The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivot. This has barely been seen in America thanks to its distributor, Harvey Weinstein: basically, an ego on legs. In Jeunet’s own words: “Gaumont sold the film to Harvey Weinstein, and he fucked me... because I refused to re-edit the film. He kept the film for two years and he released the film without advertising, nothing, it was a disaster.”

So at last, sometime this weekend, I’ll get a crack the man’s latest work. It’s had mixed reviews, but this is not surprising: if you don’t “get” Jeunet, then you may feel lost wandering the landscape of his cluttered mind and razor-sharp eye. For me, the only thing that doesn’t bode well for the viewing is that I’m looking forward to it so much.

We’ll see. I’ll let you know.

—Frede.

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