October 2009 Archives

Reasons why Halloween is the finest holiday of the year:

1. costumes
2. no relatives
3. drunk time
4. COSTUMES

Unlike every Halloween preceding it, last Halloween sucked.  I had a bad costume (nothing could beat my Joan of Arc from the year before).  The party that everybody was supposed to go to got overrun by shitfaced 18-yr-old assholes- Marissa punched some dude in the face for calling her "bitch" and then trying to start a fight with her- and the cops broke the party up by 11.  Downtown was full of drunken jerks dropping casual slurs and trying to fuck girls who were too fucked-up to say yes.  Sam got belligerent, I got depressed, and we ended up in a corner of the Ranch Room, nursing drinks and being ornery.  Sam tried to fight a guy in a Winnie the Pooh costume on High Street when we walked home.

THIS YEAR WILL BE DIFFERENT.  I'll be as far from downtown as I can, holed up in my house for a quiet stay-indoors party with my roommates. 

Is this what adulthood looks like?

If so: sounds good.

Also, this is who I'm dressing up as.  FAKE BEARD = YES.  (I was hoping to find a nice grizzled one like the Prophet, but today's the 30th and I'll take what I can get.)  Halloween's no fun if it doesn't involve facial hair.

fuckyeahdykes

I played a show in Seattle last night. Some old dudes were talking to us as we were setting up our stuff. "Who's the drummer?" I point at Claire. "No way!" (I don't know what he means by that.) Pronouncement: "We have to stay and watch these ladies play!" (maybe I am the only one who cringes at the word "ladies"). We go on stage, and on the song where I play drums, Claire sometimes bangs on Davy's chest with a tambourine while they sing the duet and Davy plays guitar. After the song, I went to pick up my bass again, and heard different old dudes in the front row telling each other, "Man, that was really sexy!"

So before we started our next song, I grabbed the mike and addressed the very sparsely-filled room (we were the opening band). "You know what the best part of being in an all-queer girl band is?" I asked. "When dudes try to hit on you and don't realize that they're dealing with A WHOLE TROOP OF LESBIANS. It's awesome. Totally the best part." A couple people cheered and clapped, and I could see Chris from Police Teeth laughing, because I had been complaining to him before the show about the old dudes situation.

But UGH. I have been at so many shows where stuff like this happened and I was just in the audience and couldn't do anything about it, or where the band on stage completely ignores any weird shit that is obviously happening in the audience- and this time, finally, I have a mike, and there's no way I'm not going to use it, even if it means burning bridges.

And then all the other three bands after us were old dude rock, and I just couldn't deal with it. I left.  This happened at our show last week, too- I just couldn't take it anymore, all the dudes on stage and no ladies, or ladies only in the crowd. (Taking pictures of the guys while they soloed.)  Hella visceral reaction. I had to go sit outside in the rain and fume.  Felt like crazy feminist, couldn't even enjoy my friend's band because of the overwhelming dude energy that was suffocating.

At the show last night, there were a bunch of women loading in equipment, and we got excited- like, maybe we were wrong about the other bands, maybe there are some ladies in them! But after they got done carrying in amps and guitars, they went up to the door guy and put all of their names on the guest list- just the girlfriends.

And at the show a week ago, while I was selling merch, the girls next to me- also selling merch- were talking to their friends, proudly pointing out their boyfriends-in-the-band and hocking t-shirts.

And I want to be like, "Hey, merch girlfriends of the world! Start your own fucking bands- you're already doing all of the hard work- 'cause shit, those amps are heavy." It makes me want to quit my jobs and just spend all my time being a cheerleader for ladies making music.

maybe this is what I should do.  maybe I should make a new piece of art every day.  maybe I should take quotes from theory and then illustrate them with examples from my own life to make them real.

god, maybe then I would be more productive than just sitting around on facebook all afternoon/messing around with the same guitar riff that has been in my brain for a month and a half.  at least when Elisha Lim does the same thing, it makes something.

point being, this is more of her art, as she is breaking my heart and making me laugh at the same time.  like if Alison Bechdel started writing Dykes to Watch Out For as a twenty-something punk queer who has lived all over the world and sometimes experiments with claymation.

maybe even more devastating than the song that made the Slits famous.

The new Gossip record remakes Beth as kind of a neo-Donna over cubic zirconium beats; an approximation of deep faggy house that tries to catch up with where Hercules + Love Affair were a year and a half ago.

I fall in love a little bit more each time I stumble over Elisha Lim's work, especially the 100 BUTCHES series.

MIKA MIKO NO MORE.

L.A. Times story

what happens when you work at a record store on Sundays.

Formed by the Rev. Ray, a Pentecostal Evangelist and known homosexual who himself was once beaten severely outside his gay mission center, the Panthers patrol the streets nightly with chains, billy clubs, whistles and cans of red spray paint (a substitute for forbidden Mace). Their purpose, as the Rev. Ray candidly puts it, is to strike terror in the hearts of "all those young punks who have been beating up my faggots."

c. 1973, Lavender Panthers in TIME.

Olympia is having a Ladyfest! Except even better than that, they want it to be more genderqueer and trans-inclusive, so they are calling it GENDER JAM: LaDIY and Trans Fest. SO EXCITING!!!

It is happening Nov. 20-22. Nicki (who did the "DIY or Don't?" zine that Ladyfest B'ham contributed to) is one of the planners. They are looking for performers (yeah yeah yeah)!

They have a myspace.

They have a facebook group.

They have a facebook event page.

They have an email address.

And holy fuck, even a blog!

SISTERHOOD LIKE WHOA! Who wants to carpool to Oly in November?

Nora is on the cover of the Stranger this week!

whoa, speaking of musical fanzines, I just found a treasure trove.  all 7 issues of HOMOCORE are archived here.  I haven't had a chance to look through them yet, but holy shit.  gold mine.

I fell asleep last night on the couch, with my new white fringed cowgirl boots on the floor next to my head.  I am like a 5-year-old: I just wanna wear my fancy new shoes everywhere, all the time, forever.  I showed them to Sam at the Horseshoe last night and he affirmed my suspicion, that they might be Jessica's old pair that she gave to Value Village and I, in turn, bought.  If so, this is not the first time we have traded clothes with a thrift store as the intermediary.

My boots, however- show-stopping as they are- have a lingering, unpleasant, and unmissable eau de mildew.  Fifteen years in some stranger's garage will do that. 

It seems that sleeping next to my mildew boots, in conjunction with rainy bike rides home and hanging out all day with dusty old records, has gifted me with my first cold of the season.  It leaves me sniffling into my hanky and too foggy to do much more than listen to those dusty old records.

I found this from 2004.  Sometimes I want to email her and tell her that she is a constant reminder of why we need to keep doing what we're doing, all of us; punk/feminist voice in the wilderness.  Greta, who plays the git-fiddle, in the Cursive, said to me "Playing that show in Chicago and then meeting up with you at this truck stop is the closest I have ever been to being on tour with another band with a girl in it." It was kind of like "oh ha ha, the bitter reality" chuckles for about the first 12 seconds before I think the stain of depressed reckoning branded us and we walked silently to the parking lot. This is the part where you shake your first at the sky and wonder what you are doing, wonder what everyone is doing, why are there not girls in bands? is it because this is totally pointless, uninteresting? stupid? not cool? too hard? too easy? too many rules? What?! Is it a matter of the right inspiration being ciphened in? Do we need a bussing program and like 9,000 copies of the first Team Dresch album to reach out properly? Am I totally idiotic for trying? Does it bother you as much as it does me that this is like.... the only fucking topic I write about?

I saw Team Dresch two weekends ago.  If they were this good on their (two-show) reunion tour, they must have been a force of nature back in '94.

It made me feel like 17 again, seeing Sleater-Kinney: surrounded by similarly-infatuated co-fans, no douchebags wandering in out of curiosity to check out the show.  Just a bunch of girls and dykes and delightfully faggy punks, there to see the most important queer punk band ever.  The triple-axe onslaught of Kaia, Donna, and Jody- I know they broke up more than ten years ago, periodic reunion shows aside- but fuck, we still need them as much as ever.  Where else are we gonna see four dykes make riffs look so effortless, as though every girl was born with a guitar or sticks in her hands?