from Vice's Fashion Dos & Don'ts
The '60s wasn’t the safest place in the world for black people, but fashion-wise it couldn’t be more risk-free.
The magazine's beloved street fashion critiques have never shied from non-sequitur, but this one jumped out. In fashion and culture, people refer to "place" in a figurative manner: taking an idea to a "different place" can mean developing it uniquely. Here the sixties inexplicably make the jump from a time period to a historical milieu to a set of wardrobe choices.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Last Act of Götterdämmerung
from James Neugass' memoir War is Beautiful, p. 209
We may now call ourself Mars and let some slightly less bloody planet name itself The Earth. A black, dripping sun has arisen. All the stops in the organ of death have been pulled out, the last act of Götterdämmerung is upon us. In a blood-red sunset an earthquake topples and sets afire the pillars of Wotan's castle. The waters of the Rhine engulf the ruins. Lady Macbeth has incarnadined the multitudinous Mediterranean. Spain, the bad conscience and whipping boy of the Democracies, suffers first.
Neugass' long-lost memoir drew praise this year, even if its subject--international volunteers in the Spanish Civil War--seldom did. The author takes a crack at apocalyptic imagery from the front seat of the ambulance he drove. It's powerful, haunting, but the reference to Wagner's Ring Cycle is out of place.
The Nazis appropriated Norse mythology as part of their mystique, and these same Nazis provided crucial air support for Franco in his brutal conquest of Spain. History has verified Neugass's contention that Spain was the first chapter in a sustained threat to civilization--the American sounds the call several times in his memoir. But Götterdämmerung took place only in 1945, when the Thousand Year Reich fell. How was Neugass to know, in 1938, that he was invoking a fascist apocalypse, rather than a humanist one?
Incidentally, "incarnadine" means to turn red, lest readers detect another mixed metaphor. As far as I can tell the Lady Macbeth thing is solid.
We may now call ourself Mars and let some slightly less bloody planet name itself The Earth. A black, dripping sun has arisen. All the stops in the organ of death have been pulled out, the last act of Götterdämmerung is upon us. In a blood-red sunset an earthquake topples and sets afire the pillars of Wotan's castle. The waters of the Rhine engulf the ruins. Lady Macbeth has incarnadined the multitudinous Mediterranean. Spain, the bad conscience and whipping boy of the Democracies, suffers first.
Neugass' long-lost memoir drew praise this year, even if its subject--international volunteers in the Spanish Civil War--seldom did. The author takes a crack at apocalyptic imagery from the front seat of the ambulance he drove. It's powerful, haunting, but the reference to Wagner's Ring Cycle is out of place.
The Nazis appropriated Norse mythology as part of their mystique, and these same Nazis provided crucial air support for Franco in his brutal conquest of Spain. History has verified Neugass's contention that Spain was the first chapter in a sustained threat to civilization--the American sounds the call several times in his memoir. But Götterdämmerung took place only in 1945, when the Thousand Year Reich fell. How was Neugass to know, in 1938, that he was invoking a fascist apocalypse, rather than a humanist one?
Incidentally, "incarnadine" means to turn red, lest readers detect another mixed metaphor. As far as I can tell the Lady Macbeth thing is solid.
Balance on Both Sides
from the New Yorker profile of baseball's Scott Boras
There’s a balance that’s needed in the growing of the game, and I provide the balance on one side, and you provide it on the other.
Superagent Boras addresses a congregation of his enemies: Major League Baseball's management and owners. Boras is widely known for helping to inflate players' salaries to astronomical sums.
But here he doesn't gloat, or even acknowledge any discrepancy between his players' interests and the owners'. Amiably, Boras claims that both parties individually "provide balance."
This bit of slick rhetoric obscures the countervailing forces at work. Who needs give and take when you've got two balances joining to form one supreme harmonious balance? In truth Boras provides a demand, then subtly suggests that he's getting a better offer from another team, at which point the owners shell out millions.
There’s a balance that’s needed in the growing of the game, and I provide the balance on one side, and you provide it on the other.
Superagent Boras addresses a congregation of his enemies: Major League Baseball's management and owners. Boras is widely known for helping to inflate players' salaries to astronomical sums.
But here he doesn't gloat, or even acknowledge any discrepancy between his players' interests and the owners'. Amiably, Boras claims that both parties individually "provide balance."
This bit of slick rhetoric obscures the countervailing forces at work. Who needs give and take when you've got two balances joining to form one supreme harmonious balance? In truth Boras provides a demand, then subtly suggests that he's getting a better offer from another team, at which point the owners shell out millions.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Lightning Couldn't Strike Twice
from a playoff preview on mlb.com
The weather powers-that-be have already swung and missed in a big way this postseason at Yankee Stadium, forecasting unplayable conditions for a game that eventually went 13 innings. If lightning could not strike twice for tonight's Game 6 of the American League Championship Series in the Bronx, both the Yankees and the Angels would be very pleased.
The cliché has it that unfortunate bolts of electricity are more or less random and their victims are evenly scattered. So when your friend's car is stolen, you can tell him that his house certainly won't be burglarized, because "lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice." Of course you would assume then that criminals were not targeting him.
But this report from NASA finds that lightning often does strike the same place twice, sometimes even at the same time. So as a metaphorical bromide to soothe an aggrieved person and as a weather-prediction theory, this stock phrase falls short.
Bryan Hoch twists the idiom into a prognostication. If lightning didn't strike the first time, then for Hoch it could "not strike twice." Of course, lightning doesn't strike in an almost infinite number of places, all the time, so instead of a fortuitous chain of events, this would just be a lack of rain, and some overcautious baseball umpires ("powers that be").
The weather powers-that-be have already swung and missed in a big way this postseason at Yankee Stadium, forecasting unplayable conditions for a game that eventually went 13 innings. If lightning could not strike twice for tonight's Game 6 of the American League Championship Series in the Bronx, both the Yankees and the Angels would be very pleased.
The cliché has it that unfortunate bolts of electricity are more or less random and their victims are evenly scattered. So when your friend's car is stolen, you can tell him that his house certainly won't be burglarized, because "lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice." Of course you would assume then that criminals were not targeting him.
But this report from NASA finds that lightning often does strike the same place twice, sometimes even at the same time. So as a metaphorical bromide to soothe an aggrieved person and as a weather-prediction theory, this stock phrase falls short.
Bryan Hoch twists the idiom into a prognostication. If lightning didn't strike the first time, then for Hoch it could "not strike twice." Of course, lightning doesn't strike in an almost infinite number of places, all the time, so instead of a fortuitous chain of events, this would just be a lack of rain, and some overcautious baseball umpires ("powers that be").
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Other People's Cake
from Vice interview with Kato Kaelin
Bottom line, I think O.J. is the kind of guy that wants his cake and to eat a lot of cake from other people, too. He really does.
Most selfish people want only "to have their cake and eat it too." To his confidante Kaelin, O.J. Simpson is the type who wants to eat other people's cake, presumably after having finished off his own piece. He's doubly, postmodernly cursed with dissatisfaction. At least no one called him a "cake-eater."
Marie Antoinette could never have foreseen the greed and competitiveness that would inspire Simpson to murder his ex-wife, so dissatisfied was he with his own allotment of cake.
Bottom line, I think O.J. is the kind of guy that wants his cake and to eat a lot of cake from other people, too. He really does.
Most selfish people want only "to have their cake and eat it too." To his confidante Kaelin, O.J. Simpson is the type who wants to eat other people's cake, presumably after having finished off his own piece. He's doubly, postmodernly cursed with dissatisfaction. At least no one called him a "cake-eater."
Marie Antoinette could never have foreseen the greed and competitiveness that would inspire Simpson to murder his ex-wife, so dissatisfied was he with his own allotment of cake.
Torn Down from This Pedestal
from the NY Times Sunday Book Review
[The judge] sent her home to change her clothes, instructed her husband to use a tighter rein and told reporters that it upset him to see "women tearing themselves down from this pedestal."
Unnecessarily upgrading a thing's status is "putting it on a pedestal." But to be toppled from a pedestal suggests the overthrow of a dictator, or the descent of a dignified thing into the vulgar fray that takes place on the ground.
It was a clever argument to subvert women's emancipation to suggest that the workaday world was always less rewarding than domestic life. Anyone who felt otherwise, then, was not just reversing the natural order but had a disgusting appetite for business transactions. The artist Renoir claimed that the only job women should perform is "making the world tolerable."
In reality, power is shared between pedestal-occupiers and groundlings. Take it from our good friend Foucault. Every one of us has a pedestal to climb, dismount, demolish, or turn sideways.
[The judge] sent her home to change her clothes, instructed her husband to use a tighter rein and told reporters that it upset him to see "women tearing themselves down from this pedestal."
Unnecessarily upgrading a thing's status is "putting it on a pedestal." But to be toppled from a pedestal suggests the overthrow of a dictator, or the descent of a dignified thing into the vulgar fray that takes place on the ground.
It was a clever argument to subvert women's emancipation to suggest that the workaday world was always less rewarding than domestic life. Anyone who felt otherwise, then, was not just reversing the natural order but had a disgusting appetite for business transactions. The artist Renoir claimed that the only job women should perform is "making the world tolerable."
In reality, power is shared between pedestal-occupiers and groundlings. Take it from our good friend Foucault. Every one of us has a pedestal to climb, dismount, demolish, or turn sideways.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Glass Slipper on the Other Foot
from The New York Times
Troy Duffy’s original Hollywood story was a fractured fairy tale. As recounted in the documentary “Overnight,” Mr. Duffy reacted to the instant success that came with a multimillion-dollar deal with Miramax for the thriller “The Boondock Saints” by abusing his friends, family and new corporate partner, doing it all on camera, and then alienating the filmmakers who had the footage. As Cinderellas go, he was the type who would smash the glass slipper and kick Princess Charming down the stairs. Yet a decade later the glass slipper is on the other foot.
A once-maligned film director--who went from rags to riches--is the object of two converging footwear metaphors. Since he's currently having the last laugh, the "shoe is on the other foot." And due to his "Cinderella" status, that shoe is the elusive "glass slipper."
But the glass slipper is the bit of evidence that leads the Prince back to Cinderella, not the girl's source of greatness or her reward in having been chosen. And working filmmakers surely opt for more comfortable shoes, right?
Troy Duffy’s original Hollywood story was a fractured fairy tale. As recounted in the documentary “Overnight,” Mr. Duffy reacted to the instant success that came with a multimillion-dollar deal with Miramax for the thriller “The Boondock Saints” by abusing his friends, family and new corporate partner, doing it all on camera, and then alienating the filmmakers who had the footage. As Cinderellas go, he was the type who would smash the glass slipper and kick Princess Charming down the stairs. Yet a decade later the glass slipper is on the other foot.
A once-maligned film director--who went from rags to riches--is the object of two converging footwear metaphors. Since he's currently having the last laugh, the "shoe is on the other foot." And due to his "Cinderella" status, that shoe is the elusive "glass slipper."
But the glass slipper is the bit of evidence that leads the Prince back to Cinderella, not the girl's source of greatness or her reward in having been chosen. And working filmmakers surely opt for more comfortable shoes, right?
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Hot Rockin'!
from Judas Priest's 1981 album "Point of Entry"
I wanna go
I wanna go
I wanna go
Hot rockin'!
"Hot rockin'" is more a state of mind than any particular activity. Rob Halford and company are seen hanging out in a sauna after some exercise (with titular hot rocks), and performing rock music while slowly being engulfed in flames. There is certainly also an innuendo involving testicles, which makes three separate meanings for the song's title.
Vague but cool-sounding idioms like "hot rockin'" are what make heavy metal so enduring in northern and eastern Europe--areas that can boast English fluency but not English mastery.
I wanna go
I wanna go
I wanna go
Hot rockin'!
"Hot rockin'" is more a state of mind than any particular activity. Rob Halford and company are seen hanging out in a sauna after some exercise (with titular hot rocks), and performing rock music while slowly being engulfed in flames. There is certainly also an innuendo involving testicles, which makes three separate meanings for the song's title.
Vague but cool-sounding idioms like "hot rockin'" are what make heavy metal so enduring in northern and eastern Europe--areas that can boast English fluency but not English mastery.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Full-Court Spruce-Up
from the Chicago Tribune
If the Olympics had come to Chicago, there would have been a full-court press to spruce up the area.
Blair Kamin is disappointed by his visit to Washington Park, site of a plan for a temporary Olympic stadium. As he sees it, a sports pageant would have been the best solution for cleaning broken glass and cracked sidewalks, so he offers the image of a team of basketball players in aggressive mode, armed with vacuum cleaners and feather dusters.
Ballers don't "spruce up," and neither do the real-estate jackals who salivated over Washington Park.
If the Olympics had come to Chicago, there would have been a full-court press to spruce up the area.
Blair Kamin is disappointed by his visit to Washington Park, site of a plan for a temporary Olympic stadium. As he sees it, a sports pageant would have been the best solution for cleaning broken glass and cracked sidewalks, so he offers the image of a team of basketball players in aggressive mode, armed with vacuum cleaners and feather dusters.
Ballers don't "spruce up," and neither do the real-estate jackals who salivated over Washington Park.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Marketing Ceasefire
from the blog Screen Machine
Almost everything that is beautiful eventually gets eaten up by capitalism, almost every moment of creative individuality becomes transformed into cultural capital, almost every struggle against homogeneity becomes a niche-marketing ceasefire.
In praise of the Chicago cable access program Chic-A-Go-Go, Australian critic Brad Nguyen disparages the cannibalistic arts industry. It's an admirable sentiment, but jumbled by "ceasefire." Nguyen probably means "open-fire" or "blitzkrieg" or something like that.
Unless a "ceasefire" means perfect, undisturbed conditions for selling art. Then it would be a "niche-marketing rookery." Nguyen's metaphor is cogent if warfare is being contrasted with art-dealing, but if he wants to liken warfare to art-dealing, then it isn't.
Almost everything that is beautiful eventually gets eaten up by capitalism, almost every moment of creative individuality becomes transformed into cultural capital, almost every struggle against homogeneity becomes a niche-marketing ceasefire.
In praise of the Chicago cable access program Chic-A-Go-Go, Australian critic Brad Nguyen disparages the cannibalistic arts industry. It's an admirable sentiment, but jumbled by "ceasefire." Nguyen probably means "open-fire" or "blitzkrieg" or something like that.
Unless a "ceasefire" means perfect, undisturbed conditions for selling art. Then it would be a "niche-marketing rookery." Nguyen's metaphor is cogent if warfare is being contrasted with art-dealing, but if he wants to liken warfare to art-dealing, then it isn't.
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