tickets cost a fucking arm + a leg (“upper level” seating, I haven’t been to an arena show since Weezer when I was 16), but oh, it’s so worth it.
Lindsey Buckingham c. ‘77 is smoking, sparking the eternal question “do I want to be him or do him?” When it’s so hot, does that distinction even matter?
My dreams of a feminist utopia came to pass last night. I found it lodged somewhere between the accidental Salt n Pepa all-lady dance party and the Tacocat lovefest, roomful of womynnn yelling SO LOUD and sweaty, hugging and fists in the air for a Bikini Kill cover.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON SATURDAY?
TacocaT, Connecticut Four, Post Post Fuck Fuck @ VaJay St. Come hang out with us, it will be a good time for sure.
More info here.
We need to expand ourselves. Find nature again. We need to dance in the forest as well as in the streets. We need to remember that there are places to go that aren’t New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berlin, or London. We need to move past the lines that have been drawn for us. Make a party in the woods. I often think about buying land with friends. Building space to go for art. For music. And I think that this could be an option for us. Shared land could be the future. Collaboration to live. Of course we need to make money first. That is the part I think we all get stuck on. What can we do to make enough to have our own space. And create the art we want without becoming a part of the business. A struggle.
IF YOU LIKE LE TIGRE AT ALL YOU SHOULD PROBABLY LISTEN TO THE NEW SONGS FROM "MEN."
Not just them being DJs, which I was not super into. JD & Johanna’s familiar and totally-missed voices + the synths and the knob-twiddles you may remember. They have added folks from JD’s other project, HIRSUTE (Michael O’Neill and Ginger Brooks Takahashi) and doer-of-fascinating things Emily Roysdon.
US tour in spring/summer. YES.
Happy new-day-in-America day!
Listening to him speak, it was almost surreal- like, really? We are using words like "humility"? We are going to work together with other nations and use words other than "evil" to describe folks we don’t like? THIS IS AWESOME. Also, shout-outs to so many different kinds of people in ways that Bush would never do. It kind of makes the last eight years feel like a bizarre alternate universe, and now all of a sudden we have returned to earth and we are going to acknowledge that our energy usage is unsustainable.
SO, SO GREAT.
Season 6 of The L Word starts tonight.
The show has done an exhaustive job of cataloging decades of lesbian culture, and Ilene Chaiken will tell you everything you need to know to be conversant: “9-to-5,” Peaches, Gloria Steinem, Lesbian Nuns, Kathleen Hanna, and remember the episode where every woman in the car knows the words to “Closer to Fine”?
They hit up all the important stuff, and throw in some obscurities for good measure. This is what lesbians listen to, what lesbians read, how lesbians dress, how they fuck, how they are gendered. (And those are the perils of entering a representational vacuum: you get to define EVERYTHING, because no one else has done it before. It can’t be anything but imperfect.)
As nice as it was, as a newly-minted queer, to have someone hold my hand and tell me everything I need to know, it was kind of weird. I’ve got some pretty heavy oppositional culture tendencies, and it unsettles me to be hanging out so much with this awkward half-Hollywood/half-queerion beast of a show.
There’s power in things remaining unnamed, uncharted and without boundaries. The L-Word has named those things, charted those waters, and drawn tidy borders along the edges of its definition of lesbian culture. It’s not a secret club anymore. Now that they’ve turned on the lights, it’ll be harder to find the dark and hidden corners- and those are precisely the places where all of our strange and thrilling queer cultures have flourished.
Moments ago, I sold a kid his very first Zeppelin record. His voice cracked. One of his friends “really likes ’60s stuff,” his mom explained, so he was going to give it a try, too.
Handing him the cd felt like handing him the keys to the castle. Like when I picked up my first copy of “London Calling.” Maybe tonight his mind will be exploded by Plant and the world will never look the same.
LADYFEST BELLINGHAM ‘09: let’s get this shit happening.
Sunday, January 18th, 7-11pm @ Friendship City (email thefriendshipcity [at] gmail [dot] com for address/directions).
Ideas so far:
music (that’s a given); films; workshops; panels; skill shares; zines; words; art; lady-centric everything.
If you have any interest whatsoever in having anything to do with this undertaking, please come and we can all work together to hash out what this will look like. Ladies women + grrls welcome. Bring a snack to share because it is more fun to have meetings when there is food involved. Please spread the word and please come even if you don’t know anybody, we need all the minds, arms, brains, and hearts we can get, and because tearing down the patriarchy is a group effort.
[P.S. None of this Michigan Womyn’s Festival bullshit about gender; this is a space for all lady-identified people, punks, homos, and genderqueer kids.]
Have I talked about this band before? They are young. They sound like Sleater-Kinney. Of course I like them.
Joining a long list of bands (Gamine Thief/Lemmy Caution, Gun Outfit, Diamond Cut Diamond, and, occasionally, Electrelane) that kind of/almost fills the Brownstein-Tucker-Weiss void in my life.
Today in my mailbox, two things:
Dear Nora Rarities 1997-2007 collection. Sweet strange pop songs that make me think that writing a catchy melody really is as easy as picking up my guitar and opening my mouth. This photo screams “late nineties” at me in all sorts of ways, making me like it very much.
listen: Make You Smile
Girls Like Us #3. Ordered this back issue in August, exchanged numerous emails with a representative of the Dutch distributor, and finally it has arrived at my door. Effectively, I paid $10 to read six pages: Judith (Jack) Halberstam, interviewed by Nicole Emmeneger. And oh fuck, it was worth every cent- Halberstam theorizing about Lezzies on X, talking about presenting at the EMP Pop Conference, reflecting on a femme burlesque group that recites Derrida as they strip.
Also, hottest GLU cover ever (totally not safe for work).
There is sometimes not much overlap between gender theory and punk rock, these two things that shape all that I do. When there is, and I find out that Halberstam is stoked on being a member of punk subcultures, it makes my heart beat a little faster.
And really, would I love J. Halberstam so much if she did not make me so mad? Like Helen Boyd, I was puzzled and pissed about Halberstam’s dismissal of masculinity in straight women. I was genderfucking when I was straight, even if I didn’t call it that; but it was such a lonely confusing place to be that it was easier to call myself “queer” than to carve out a place for myself in the hetero sphere. (My coming-out obviously had more to it than that, but this is an important chunk of it.) I want more thinking/writing/talking about the possibilities of gender-queer heterosexuality, and if it involves Halberstam’s keen mind, all the better.
Maybe she will show up at this year’s Pop Conference with a paper that combines lezzie electro and genderqueer hets and all sorts of masculinity, she’ll bring my favorite girl punk radio host with her, and Robert Christgau’s head will explode.
Mark yr calendars! It’s happening end of Feb/beginning parts of March; 3 days of noise friendship and potlucks in sweet little Anacortes.
Lots of Skagit and Island County locals: some folks you know, some you don’t.
This is the new Yogoman video. Just like the band, it’s as good as a love letter to Bellingham. Haters, step aside; even if you have no use for the Wild Buffalo, this band is shorthand for why I love this city to my bones.
Thanks … ?
Christmas money burns holes in my pockets.
"Maybe I will look into little boys’ suits, finally," I think to myself. Google away, navigate sizing charts, dreaming of things like this:
For some time, I’ve been looking for a suit for myself. Not an easy task. I am a small person, so even the smallest of men’s sizes do not fit me, and I don’t have the $$ to get a tailored suit. Look at women’s suits- they aren’t the same thing, I promise. The cut’s all wrong. "Powerpoint Presentation Day at the Office" is emphatically not the look I’m going for.
Kid’s suit, I’ve decided. I can fit into boys’ sizes. I already do that all the time- flatten my boobs, put on an undershirt, good to go, a path paved for me by many XX-chromosomed people before me.
However, this is a far cry from the Tom Ford 2009 spring/summer collection, which Cory sends me links for, reminding me of my sartorial desires: ascots, pocket squares, vests, suspenders.
Just last night, at the symphony with my parents, a natty thin dyke walked past our aisle with a tweed suit and tie, foxiest thing you could wish for. What’s the secret? Thrift stores prowling only rarely yields finds like that. Cory’s entreprenurial dream is to start a line of men’s clothing that is tailored for women- tux shirts that have room for breasts and hips, blazers made for female shoulders, wingtips in lady sizes.
Generations of female masculinity in this fine nation, surely something like this must already exist, right? Kind of. There are lines like Dykes in the City, who mean well; but while their site does provide me with images of hot butches in fedoras, it’s not really what I’m looking for.
Tonight, I will go home, and take my measurements, and maybe I will order a very conservative little boys’ suit from tuxgear.com. No skinny-legged trousers, pointy-toed oxfords, or paintbox-colored jackets here. But it’s a start.
