"I wish all the banks would fail and we could finally start those garden communities we’ve been fantasizing about."
My master plan, if, indeed, all of the banks go under and our economy entirely implodes:
Stock up, Y2K-style. Retreat to the mountains, lay claim to an abandoned shack in the hills. Bring seeds and starts and tools, establish a largely self-sufficient garden and lifestyle, weather Great Depression 2: Electric Boogaloo.
(Confession: this is essentially my long-term life plan anyway- you know, moving out to Index, WA, starting up a commune with my chosen family- and I don’t really mind moving the schedule up twenty or thirty years.)
Anyone into this kind of stuff is welcome to join in my Laura Ingalls Wilder-style romanticized future.
After a few days in Portland, I am full of ideas and inspiration. Songs to write, bands to practice, zines to make, food to cook, books to read, friends to call, thank-you notes to compose.
I think the best way to visit friends in other cities is not whirlwind city tours, seeing the sights, and big nights out; rather, "let’s make dinner together and watch a movie and fall asleep talking as though we still lived in the same town and not six hours apart."
It was summer when I got off the train in Portland on Tuesday, and now that I have returned, it is thoroughly fall. I was unprepared for this when autumn was first threatening a few weeks ago, but now I am utterly ready for apple butter and pumpkin soup and cider, warm blankets and rainy evenings.
Jessica took me to In Other Words, and waited patiently while I examined every single shelf. Now I am proud owner of LESBIAN NUNS: BREAKING SILENCE, which would sound totally salacious if it was not under the earnest copyright of Naiad Press 1985.
I was never scared of hantavirus until Jamie told me about her friend’s house being sealed off, ET-style, due to a rodent problem.
There are mice in our house- I hear them! I find their poop sometimes. The WA state hantavirus site says that I should wet it down with a bleach mixture before cleaning it up, but shoot, do we even have bleach in our house?
That was last night (the clean up). This morning, I wake up with a horrible cough, like I had a month ago, pre-antibiotics.
CLEARLY THIS IS A SIGN THAT HANTAVIRUS WILL SLAY ME BY THE END OF THE WEEK.
If this happens:
Cory = eulogy
Katie = executor of my will and inheritor of all of my kitchen stuff.
Wynne Greenwood just won a Genius Award from the Stranger. Apparently she’s hot shit in the art world, but I just remember seeing her at the Old Firehouse when I was in high school, knowing she was somebody I was supposed to see, dancing a little bit, and really not understanding what was going on at all.
Um … I still don’t always get it. (The parts I do get, I think they are fucking brilliant heartbreaking hilarious true). When I read the liner notes for Tracy + the Plastics releases, absorb all the lesbian-feminist-art-theory that is behind her work, oh, I am so behind it. But maybe it was wasted on roomfuls of sixteen-year-olds.
Or maybe the sixteen-year-olds need to have their minds blown by weird art that they don’t understand, and it’s worth much less to seasoned art consumers who see & comprehend all of the points of reference in her work and therefore are distanced from the shock of it.
Two questions (related).
A] Is discomfort necessary to growth?
B] Can art be effective if it makes you uncomfortable, but you don’t get it?
Because shoot, if I still don’t get it until I read the theory behind it, what about all the kids who’ve never heard of Carolee Schneemann and just feel profoundly confused + weirded out by watching Tracy/Nikki/Cola talk about audience-performer-relationship and-the-fucked-up-history-of-the-rock-show? And hey, maybe it was the first time I made the connection between a microphone and a phallus.
Preaching to the choir? Or is it the discomfort that is important, the hope that it will maybe start that thing so beloved by social justice workers and activists- "dialogue."
Regardless, I still think that Wynne Greenwood is a badass woman par excellance; maybe I appreciate more precisely because I don’t always understand; it’s more challenging + intriguing than Le Tigre songs where there is no subtlety and I get it, I get it, I get it.
"This summer, she took a job helping young convicts paint murals. For that job, she waxed her mustache. She has a soft, black, natural mustache, and being without it made her feel less like herself- but she needed to blend in, to pass. Now it’s growing back."
Part 3. Upon Leaving Sacred Heart, the Parish of My Mother’s Youth
I waited at a stoplight today. A cop was monitoring the intersection, wearing a neon vest that identified his profession. He was supervising the crossing of many women, wearing pink, doing the Susan G. Komen Walk for the Cure. I wanted to honk or wave or something, as though they were protesters and I was showing motorist solidarity, but everyone else was driving along without doing anything.
All these women, lots of ages but mostly middle-aged and older; wearing pink, some with tutus, Mardi Gras beads, sequined visors. One trio of white-haired women wore homemade shirts, all I could see was part of their message, "BOOBS" across their chests in big black letters as I drove by.
Maybe it was because I was driving away from a funeral, maybe it’s because my summer cuddling is over, maybe it’s because I’m not used to seeing large groups of non-politicized (that’s an assumption, but this was Bellevue- maybe I should say "women who don’t identify as feminists and who look totally normal") women do something together, publicly, for a common cause … Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have to make excuses for it. But my eyes welled up behind my sunglasses, at these old ladies and their sassy homemade BOOB shirts; I turned Rumours down, and watched them walk by.
Then I drove north on 405, hit I-5, and went home to Bellingham.
After 4.5 years of lady-centric programming, GIRLS GET BUSY is coming to an end. I can’t even begin to put into words how much this show has meant to me; and it would mean a whole lot if you’re able to tune in for some of my last few shows.
SEPT. 8TH: AN ABBREVIATED HISTORY OF GIRL PUNK
From the Slits to Sleater-Kinney to Erase Errata. The movers & shakers, + the overlooked but influential.
SEPT. 15TH: ALL VINYL ALL THE TIME
KUGS has a ridiculously amazing vinyl collection, full of LPs and 7-inches that are out-of-print/never released on CD/super rare. From the Avengers’ elusive red album to Autoclave, I’ll be doing an all-vinyl show, as well as throwing in a few sweet things that I’ve collected.
SEPT. 22ND: BALLAD OF A LADYMAN
Okay, it’s my last show, I’m gonna play my favorite songs & bands, the ones that made me do this show in the first place and the ones that continue to blow my mind and inspire me on a regular basis.
GIRLS GET BUSY: girl heroes + guitar squall
Monday nights 10pm-midnight PST
89.3 KUGS-FM Bellingham
streaming online at www.kugs.org
Always, always, Missy’s like, "See how the booty shake like an earthquake. There is no escape when I shake it in your face," talking about herself like she’s one of the legions of video girls.
[youtube 2Fe4GBTVvsg]
Except that this is Missy. When she’s talking about how she’s really, really hot, her actions are speaking louder than her words:
She’s still fully dressed, brushing the camera paparrazi off her shoulders and into the frames of all the other videos. She’s separating out the female artist from the sexual image, letting Ciara do all the shaking like jello while Missy absents herself from that line of work. She’s already proved herself x15 with her psychedelic afro futurism, she doesn’t even need to bother with all those other distractions to get taken seriously.
I know this is all over the place right now, but Amy Goodman’s been arrested at the RNC. Say what you will about her cult of personality, but when it comes down to things, she’s the real deal.
[youtube oYjyvkR0bGQ]
Shit’s fucked … and, speaking from personal experience, you do not want to mess with angry Democracy Now! fans.
