that was probably awkward

Guest Aficionado: There’s A Club If You’d Like To Go

We here at PA revel in contradictions: Randian and Benjaminian co-blog!  Randian loves yoga!  Benjaminian hates Goethe! And we'd like to think that our readership is similarly complicated and nuanced in ways that are seemingly inexplicable but nonetheless completely experienced as everyday life.  JB, our featured Friend of PA who will be closing out this calendar year on the blog with the following post, is a study in these seeming contrasts: he's a Joyce scholar (who, unlike your intrepid co-bloggers, has actually published a thing or two), a modernist par excellence who loves Tottenham Hotspur and indiepop in equal measure.  He'll send you recommendations about which Barthes essay to read, and in the next paragraph will wax poetic about how they don't make child actors like they used to (cf ET).  As one half of London-based duos the Pines and Foxgloves, he writes and sings stirringly smart, heartbreaking songs -- but he's also seen A View from the Top ( yes, *that* movie) twice, and professes a longstanding love of a Hollywood starlet we won't name here.   Quite a bit stronger than his love of unnamed starlets (and no, we will not tell you), however, is JB's love of the Smiths (and Lloyd Cole -- but that's a story for another day).  Join him on his fantastic voyage to Manchester, won't you?  And have a wonderful, loopy new year, all of you.

I was standing around like a lump of lifted lead, waiting for my mother (an everyday goddess, really) to get the sausages out of the oven (creamy mushroom; free range pork; cajun – yes, someone should write about these too, but probably not in a post on this subject, as you’ll see), and waiting for Theme Time Radio Hour to growl its first link – and we were both idly listening to Radio 2’s hourly news, and wondering about the Motherwell captain who it seemed had died suddenly on the field of play at Dundee (an everyday tragedy, seriously – though many strong men have seen Dundee and felt the same way). Then the final item: “Morrissey” – not even “pop singer Morrissey” – “has donated £20,000 to- ” and time seems to stop while I wonder who the recipients might have been: Kick Racism out of Football? The Cats’ Protection League? The New Musical Express Defence Fund? The Campaign for Real Ale? The Camp Ayn for Real Males? The Lindsay Lohan Memorial Clinic? The Frankfurt School (Fully Loaded)? The Blue Monday Club (Remixed)? The Gloomy Sunday Gang (Back From The Brink)? – no: to “a Youth Club in his native Salford”. I see. It featured on the sleeve of, yes, OK – it’s Salford Lads’ Club, and when I have rushed to the computer for further verification I find:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7164180.stm

“Morrissey reportedly wanted to make a secret donation, but relented when told the publicity would help the campaign.” “Relented”! I somewhere see him putting a hand to his sweat-beaded, worry-furrowed brow, and … giving in … to the people … yes, those … People who … wish for publicity … in the Newsworld. For they are … not like us, my darling – but it is amid such people … it is in such a world … that we must live.

They want a suspiciously rounded-looking figure of £1 million for repairs to the building; the relief fund is “currently at the £330,000 mark”. Is that after SPM’s twenty grand? Or before? Either way they have a long way to go. You know, at this rate I might start to think of donating a fair percentage of all my annual royalties to this relief fund. It could probably reach about $25 by now.

I suppose one could note that the “original fittings including a boxing ring, snooker rooms, and a gym with a viewing balcony” show how SPM’s fascination with big boys, rope-skipping pugilists, snooker-loopy lads and returned (boxing) rings was not invented in 1992 or 1994 after all, but goes a long way back into the mid-1980s, not to say May 1959. One could reflect on the peculiar consonance of “The money will be used to put insulation into the roof and carry out work on the ceiling” with that vague illegality described at the outset of ‘Vicar in a Tutu’: a song, after all, opposite whose lyrics the Salford Lads’ Club shot appeared. One could wonder how much money Morrissey has actually made by now, and how much of a drop in the ocean, a slap on the patio or a crack on the head £20,000 represents. And whether his funds are really sterling by now – not to mention Linder Sterling, who I think once answered the telephone to me (I will tell this story another time) – or rather lire or your Yanqui dollars. For that matter it has just struck me, all of 17 seconds ago, that my editor probably thinks the whole process of decrepitude and lament is most fruitfully considered in the light of theories of ruins in Weimar Germany.

But for me, the yarn also recalls my own belated quests after this club. The first time I ever made it to Manchester – July 1999 - I started on a 53 bus at the top of the road, opposite the Woodman pub, riding up the hill of first-thing tarmac with the kids from the new orange schools, and by the time I made it to Blackheath, I felt a song in the offing. I started writing it, and it was my biggest hit for years – all of a dozen people must have liked it (I will tell this story another time). What could follow that? I got out my Walkman (yes - Walkman) and listened to Tigermilk, on one of those tapes that used to circulate in those days (believe me), ripped from someone’s stray vinyl copy somewhere perhaps – and this tape that had left me cold through so many lukewarm quarter-hours of washing-up leapt out loud and clear through the headphones at which any kid would now likely scoff or sneer: the words! the tunes! the chords! the spoken section on ‘I Could Be Dreaming’! Well, this was an auspicious start, and we haven’t even reached Trafalgar Square yet – let alone Euston (‘London’ in reverse, indeed), let alone the Virgin train if that’s what it was, let alone the Piccadilly palaver of stumbling from the other end’s station (yes, ‘Heir Apparent’, the 1997 B-side of ‘Alma Matters’: ‘and I couldn’t find my way out of the station’) down some side slope, past the first record shop I ever saw in Manchester, in whose windows old Smiths EPs were for sale for prices neither ludicrous nor especially generous. I couldn’t pretend I needed them, but it seemed the right way to arrive.

Half an hour or so later I was tramping along a wide empty avenue in some post-Majorite industrial estate, passing the billboards, clocking the cars, worrying about making it to the University of Salford on time. Another story, not worth telling another time, save the really nice, medium-sized name in cultural studies who was so impressed by my ignorant invocation of Nicos Poulantzas he wrote it down in his notebook, and the would-be hip academic type, I guess, who at some riverside bar where the local brew was poured admirably cold was blown away by my possession of a tape of – what else? – Tigermilk!

Friday Morning/Afternoon Rhapsodic: Vapour Trail

I'm about to see Charlie Wilson's War with my father.  I'd rather spend the afternoon culling Youtube for more treasures from my shoegaze past, but well, what can you do?  Enjoy this gem from Ride, Oxford's favorite bowlcutters*, in the meanwhile.  (Man, this is a great song!) There's even a tiny snippet of interview beforehand. 

* Yes, yes, Radiohead are Oxford's favorite something else, I'm sure.  They did not, however, single-trackedly redefine the love song for me. 

Smackdown: Sixteen Candles vs. Pretty in Pink

So at my parents' house, where I'm spending the remainder of the calendar year, there are something like 980 channels on their cable plan.  It's great, except that I can't keep up with what's about to play, or what's currently on, or anything like that.   What this means is that I end up watching bits and pieces of myriad films, but never quite a movie in its entirety.   Inbetween various Boxing Day football matches today, for instance, I caught the tail end of both Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles. Great films, both written by teen maestro John Hughes (who directed Sixteen Candles, but not PiP -- Howard Deutsch took the helm on that one).  A veritable Molly Ringwald fest! 

Watching the last hour of both films reminded me of something I had read online not too long ago -- something of a SC vs. PiP faceoff: supposedly men dig SC, while women prefer PiP.  True? Patently false? A misguided faceoff when one considers the glory of The Breakfast Club?  Read Dalton Ross' take on this, and decide for yourself.  And let us know your thoughts in the comments...

[Also, a little known fact: Ross' wife (who is mentioned in his article) is none other than Christina Kelly, one of the inner circle of staffers of famed, and now long-defunct, Sassy magazine.]

[Oh, and if you want my two cents: Some Kind of Wonderful wins, any day of the week.]

Questionable: Love, Actually

Well, yes: love -- the concept, experience, whathaveyou - is a bit questionable to me.  That goes without saying.  But I'm talking here about the 2003 film, the one with all those Brit actors and, oddly enough, Laura Linney.  It takes place around Christmastime, which would explain why it seemed to be playing nonstop on basic cable this week both here in the States and over in the UK.  And it's got all this sort of quasi-screwball comedy-of-errors quality to it, mixed in with good old fashioned unimaginative American-style saccharine family drama, and features Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister, not to mention all of those transatlantic accents, all of which  elevates the entire affair to something seemingly more significant and farcical and witty than it ought to get credit for being.  Because it's not. 

My mother got caught up in it yesterday morning while we were preparing a huge meal for 18 or so guests, for my family's annual Christmas Eve dinner.  She couldn't stop talking about Kiera Knightley's luminous, porcelain skin, and about how love in England seemed so cute and droll.  I didn't have the heart to tell her that I knew no one in the greater London area who lived in such large, well appointed flats, and that the lone couple there whom I know aren't even entirely British.  And that she'd probably disown me if I ended up with any of the older men types in the film (Alan Rickman, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth) who chased after women at least 15, possibly 20 years their junior. 

And then today -- Christmas Day -- JB over in the UK found himself in front of the television with his parents, watching the same film (seriously, it's everywhere).  I probably didn't need confirmation from an actual English family that the whole thing was silly, but I got a mildly irate missive earlier this evening from JB, who produced a much longer laundry list of complaints than I'm going to share here.   Suffice it to say that neither of us found any of the romantic storylines at all plausible, English or not. 

But JB asked a question that I'm still mulling over (which is giving Love, Actually much more head time than I thought I'd ever devote to it): 50-60 years from now, is this the sort of film that's going to pass as a classic?  Is this what passes for screwball comedy nowadays?  To put it differently: do we give the screwball films from an earlier era an automatic pass because they're older, and seemingly groundbreaking for their time?  Or, to put it very differently: Is Love, Actually ... (gulp) ... timeless?   I've got friends  -- including an ex-boyfriend, so it's not simply a chick thing -- who love this film.   I mean, I get its appeal: it depicts the kinds of potentially complicated love stories that we've all experienced in one form or another (triangles, cross-cultural differences, extra marital affairs, first love, et al) and resolves them  in cute, aww-shucks sorts of ways.   And sure, love -- that's timeless, right? 

But the resolutions occur in such a fantasy world -- and I don't mean simply that with the exception of Alan Rickman (and possibly Bill Nighy, but some might dispute that), everyone is attractive and funny and charming and all that.  Rather, it's the fantasy of smoothing over complicatedness by surrounding oneself with the accoutrements of upper middle class existence.  In love with your 12 year old American classmate who's about to board a flight back to the States?  Well then, why not have stepdad Liam Neeson drive you to Heathrow in his Land Rover?  In love with the Portuguese waitress?  Become an instant polyglot and tell her so!  I'm all for love as a universally-experienced phenomenon, but the only thing that's timeless in this kind of unfolding of love is how we continue to let our delusions about love's mysteries become expectations for how things should be.   It's this sort of dreck that undermines our ability to develop full -- and real -- emotional range as interconnected beings.  I mean, I don't want to make the obvious pun here, but this isn't love, actually.  If this ends up being a classic and 50 years from now my (imaginary) grandkids ask me what it was like to live in a time when people took such daring, risky moves vis-a-vis love like they did in that film, I'm going to shoot someone. 

Merry Christmas!

[Update: So KS berated me this morning for not discussing Laura Linney's character's story arc more fully, for it's true -- it's not so cute or happy.  She doesn't end up with her longtime crush object.  She's got a ill brother.  She's sad a lot.  But she's also the lone American in the film (I'm not counting the ladies in the Milwaukee sideplot, which is another post entirely), and as such, was forced to carry a fairly melodramatic story arc compared to the much more droll Brit romances at play.  It was the strangest contrast, really, and didn't really do much to advance the movie as a whole.   A sidelong jab at the US, maybe?]

Wish You Were Here: My Vacation Plans

Yup. 

Holiday Rhapsodic: Fairytale of New York

Best Christmas song ever.   

There was all of this hullabaloo earlier this week when Radio 1 in the UK decided that it was going to play only a censored version of the song that silenced out all of the more questionable lyrics.  After a general uproar ensued -- including the late Kirsty MacColl's mother expressing her dismay -- Radio 1 reversed its decision.   Don't mess with greatness, people.  Also, in related news: Shane MacGowan has made it to 50.  No joke.   

We're Not a Filter Blog, But: Postcards from Poland

I find myself endlessly amused by this.   A fellow named Brian Sack is traveling to Poland for the holidays, and has set up an eBay auction for folks who would like him to send random, slightly incoherent, anonymous postcards to a specified (un)loved one, from the small Polish town where he'll be staying.  Here's his website about the project; here's the ebay listing.  (The Q&A on the eBay page is pretty hilarious.)  The bidding is currently at $255; but if anyone can pay that much to have someone else send them postcards from Szczeczinek, Poland, they can probably afford to fly there and send the postcards themselves. 

Thursday Morning Rhapsodic: Mazarin | Wheats

There's been a lot of posting recently, which can only mean one thing: someone's on holiday.  At her parents' house.   In the middle of nowhere, Los Angeles.  Sans car. 

Being on holiday also means a general loss of language, which means that I'll keep this short and sweet, since I can't seem to string together actual sentences without either misplacing verbs or forgetting the sorts of basic grammar rules that I'd normally scold my first-year students for breaking. 

So: I love this song.  Mazarin, a Philly-based band headed by Quentin Stoltzfus (whose aunt is apparently the Auntie Anne of pretzel fame), is actually no longer Mazarin, having been taken to court by a Long Island band of the same name (but with nowhere near the same level of talent).  They're now known as Black Stoltzfus, but are still making the same sort of shimmery, slightly psychedelic guitar pop that they've always been quite good at.   "Wheats," off the first Mazarin album Watch It Happen, was picked to be NME's Single of the Week back in December 1999; I discovered it shortly afterwards, and have kept it on heavy rotation ever since. It's got lyrics filled with mixed emotions (mostly heartbreak), lovely harmonies, and, well, yeah.   At 3:29, it's quite possibly an exemplary three-and-a-half-minute pop song.  My pal TD giddily describes it as "marching through molasses."  It's wondrous.  I'm going to shut up now.

Mazarin, Wheats.

Reviewing the Previews: Bird's Nest

You know that giant Bird's Nest stadium they're building in Beijing for the Olympics next year?  Well, a couple of guys made a documentary about the process, featuring starchitects Herzog and de Meuron (hip glasses and all).   It doesn't appear to have any major release dates or places, save a screening in Switzerland this spring, but here's the trailer:

I'm not sure why it's not getting more press -- I only found out about it through my brother, who found out through his wife (they're both architects). I mean, maybe the film is crap. But it seems to bring together two incredibly popular topics of conversation these days: China and all of these starchitects leaving their imprint much more boldly, and with much more fanfare, than ever before. 

I live in New York City, so the whole business with the Freedom Tower and the battles between architect Daniel Liebeskind and what stands in for New York design ethos (read: practical, tight-fisted, and ultimately ugly) has been in my public eye for a while now.  But the intersection of civic mindedness, singular vision, and the desire for monumentality is everywhere: witness Benjamin Moser's "Cemetery of Hope: Brasilia at Fifty" piece in this month's issue of Harpers (whoops -- not yet available online -- sorry update: you might need a subscription, but try here), or the 849,000 entries in Google if you type in "starchitects."  Or it's seemingly everywhere, anyway.   

Architecture is first and foremost about an experience with, and in, space, so it's something that everyone can access -- even if one never actually has a direct, tactile relationship with a specific space in particular.   The collision of collective unconscious and individual ego when it comes to the built environment is a source of endless fascination for me -- it's in the news and in commentary everywhere, and yet the collectivity itself doesn't really seem to care all that much -- they want the building, and they want it now.  The squabbling that I find intriguing as a reflection of the disparate understandings of civic good -- the general public couldn't care less.  And yet -- isn't this sort of dialogue necessary in order to at once break down the presumption of uniformity in thinking and come to a new consensus?

There are a bazillion films about love; why not at least 1,001 films about space?  Differently universal, but still universal.  Anyhow, if anyone knows if/when Bird's Nest is going to screen here in the States, or if there's some way I could obtain an advanced copy, please let me know. 

The Strangest Thing ...

The spam filters over here are, for no particular reason, on high alert today.  If you've been trying to add a comment, only to have typepad tell you that it was flagged as potential spam -- we at PA apologize.  We know you're not trying to tell us that we should order your Megadik pill, or that you've got some awesome 'Rolex' watch to sell.  But the spam police seem to be flagging everyone today, and we're still trying to get to the bottom of this.

If this comment filtering is happening to you, please drop us a line -- probablyawkward at gmail dot com.   Your comments are actually just held in a limbo on our end, and we just need to manually clear them.  Sorry about that!