What not to watch

EVER SEEN THAT TLC show “What Not to Wear”? I have had the misfortune to view it a few times. Yeah, I know, I’m sorry. I’ve been between jobs (again) lately and I’ve had time to kill. Anyway, it’s one of those shows I love to hate. In addition to being fashionazis, style snobs, champions of narcissism and unrelenting cheerleaders for craven conformity and needless consumption, the Jewish-American Princess and
fashion-queen co-hosts of this show are woman-hating, slash-happy hair vampires. All they ever want to do to women with long, beautiful hair is lop it off. What is it with the “Fashion” universe's fear of feminine women? 


Long hair is one of a woman’s most beautiful attributes -- especially for those not especially gifted of face or figure. They are proud of their flowing locks. You'd be hard pressed to find a heterosexual male, at least, who doesn’t like long hair on a woman -- even long and plain.

And then they have to ruin your face. Even for women whose real faces are beautiful, the show’s default position is that every woman must be painted up to look like a generic store
mannequin rather than just be their naturally beautiful selves. The one redeeming fact about Stacey and Clinton is they are not sizeists; even they have the sense to not totally alienate  their audience, which is composed of real women (and men who like real women).

Today’s victim, Lynn, got nicely dressed up (although all the Paris Hilton-worthy gear was totally inappropriate for her job, which is nannying) but the foundation they slapped on washed out her face. Happily, she had the cojones to say no, firmly and repeatedly, to the hairslasher.

“I took a stand,” she told the camera proudly. “I’ve always considered myself to be a unique individual ... at the end of the day, this is who I am.”

Well you go girl. Who knows. One day this being-who-you-are thing might actually become ... fashionable?

And the crunkest!

AROUND MIDNIGHT ON SATURDAY, and I've just left this opening at the Flat Iron Building, where I've been hanging out with the phenomarific painter and musician * Kevin Moeller and co. Before heading home, I stop to roll up a cig with some of the street guys outside the quickie mart. Then I go to my car and just sit there awhile listening to the radio and smoking and people-watching. I'm on North just east of Milwaukee, and of course, the traffic is jacked up like crazy since drunk pedestrians are spilling out of clubs and restaurants and everyone's hailing cabs and whatnot.

And on the other side of the street creepin' my way is this black Toyota something-or-other, and inside is this white chick with ghetto-braided hair and those oversized bug-eye sunglasses -- you know, the ones that make you look like a giant fly.

And she's got her system boomin' away to some Unk or something like that, and she's jukin' like crazy in her seat. And she sees me lookin at her and she hollers at me: "I'm the illest white girl you eva seen!"


I just smile.


"The illest!" she shouts again. "And the crunkest!"


The light turns green and she drives away and I laugh like a maniac.


* See 1:04 on Kevin's video ... hilarious.

Garry's back

GARRY MEIER'S RETURNED to the Chicago airwaves recently, and after listening to him on and off the last couple months, I think he's still got the mojo. With more time to do his own thing in his own style (rather than play second banana to Roe Conn), you can see what this town has been missing for the last three years. His cohost, though -- well, I'm sure he'll grow on me, but right now he just sounds like a slightly smarter version of former Mancow sidekick Turd.

2010 UPDATE: Garry's new home is WGN, weekdays from 3-7 (when not pre-empted by a Cubs game). Still smart as a whip. Check him out.

Sweet Wonderful wha - ?

WHOSE SICK JOKE was it to make panties for barely-teenage girls with a picture of a cute feline on the, er, bottom front panel, with the caption: 

Found: 

Sweet Wonderful Kitty 

This is not being sold to grown women. This is all done in kid style, all cute in bright colors. Apparently some designer thought this would be funny. I'm not laughing, because my 12-year-old niece is wearing these. (Reason I would know: she visited and used my washing machine.)

Bring the noise

ALTHOUGH SIMON REYNOLDS has been doing pop music criticism for almost as long as I've been living, I only discovered his writing late last year via this blog -- (I think while I was Googling Style Council or one of those groups, or perhaps the term "postpunk.") He has not only encyclopedic knowledge, but lots of profound insights about music and pop culture. And he has a new book out too.

For all artsy homo sapiens, it’s a pleasure to introduce you to

MULLIGAN STEW.
I have never laughed so hard at a rap song. (The link is to the mp3.)

This is not new stuff, but SoCal's Soup The Chemist is still an atypical cat, still unknown and still deserving of his due. Probably because for much of his career he was rockin' the mic at churches instead of clubs. But as a true artist and a seminal figure in Christian rap, he raised the bar of a formerly very wack genre to a whole new level.

Born Chris Cooper, his original rap name as the frontman of SFC was "Super C." That mutated into "Sup the Chemist" and then its present form. The last several years of his career (he's "retired" from the rap game now, and I think started a catering business), he moved more toward positive hip-hop on a backpack tip. A lot of underground cats West and East peeped his style and I’m sure it has influenced some of the guys out there whom you’d least expect.

Soup's old website is down, but he just got a Myspace going, with only a couple of tracks so far. Check back for more. Meanwhile, there are some Soup gems hidden all over the Web.

Here. (I like the THC reference in this one)

This is by an artist named Immortal, where Soup guested

Also one here

This is Soup guesting on a Future Shock cut “Waxing Philosophical”

This is a guest appearance on Mark J “Headbobbers”

Wewetalktalkininechoesechoes. Soup guests on a Peace 586 joint from a few years back.

More samples with Soup guesting on this page (if they move for any reason you can go to Soundclick main and search “Soup the Chemist”).

But corny, simpleminded people will never have a clue on how to enjoy this cat's flow.


* 2010 UPDATE: Full Soup album downloads, 100 percent free:

Eargasmic Arrangements

Dust (2000)

Microphone Theology (1994: one Soup track)

Phase III (with SFC, 1992)
and Illumination (1994)

Thanks to Po'Safe!

Sad bastard songs

AS JOHN CUSACK'S character Rob Gordon muses, pop music really has screwed up entire generations with its pictures of "heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss."

As I listened to a local oldies station recently, I realized even the "innocent," saccharine teen love songs of yesteryear were completely disempowering to boys trying to become men. Just when they need to be developing confidence and strength in themselves and toward women, what did popular music give them? Emotionalism, heartbreak, desperation. Begging, pining, weeping, whining. Promises to do anything to win her heart or get her back, up to and including cutting off their genitals and handing them to her on a silver platter. The message to would-be men: you get the girl by acting like a girl.

But of course, as most of us discover sooner or later -- usually way later than we'd have wished -- acting like a girl does not get the girl. (Well, okay, some are into role reversal, but I'm not talking about those.) Nor do pop stars practice what they sing. In real life, they're nothing like the sad-sack, pitiful, whining, pleading protagonists of their songs: they're straight pimps, charismatic and self-assured to the point of absolute arrogance, because they know they may see more drawers come off in one night than many guys will in a lifetime.

Then they get on the mic and whine again. And because these singers are cute (and they're performing for teenage girls -- who, let's face it, are not hard to impress), they can pull it off. And because the teenage girls are going nuts over it, teenage boys listen to it and take it seriously. And that all makes me one sad bastard.

Spoiled brats, all

PARIS AND NICOLE: Non-producing rich brats coasting on family wealth.

Paris-and-Nicole-hyping media: Non-producers coasting on footage of non-producing rich brats coasting on family wealth.

Jen, Jane, whatever

THURSDAY NIGHT/FRIDAY: I have this dream about a beautiful artist/writer named Jenny or Jen, who is a white girl, with red hair. I pick her up on the street and take her for a spin in my car. Sadly, just as I get her back to my dream home, something wakes me up. (Damn!)

Friday morning, I feel moved to scour out the interior of my car, including the edges around the door frame, dirtied up by countless muddy shoes. I have a strong feeling that some new lady will be gracing my passenger seat tonight. (Not old friend Annabelle – as she will tell you, I don’t clean for her.) Who could it be? I had emailed Laura the schoolteacher, inviting her to tonight's Pilsen gallery walk; maybe her? In any case, I'm sick of the filthy car, so I clean it up and take it for an oil change.

So that evening, I leave work in the South Loop. I'm all set to head for Pilsen to the gallery district. But first, I figure, I may as well stop by the Fine Arts Building -- which itself has a formidable list of galleries and studios of all kinds, and is only two blocks away from my office.

At the FAB, I first visit Anita Miller, and then Barton Faist, whom I engage in some convo because I really like his art. He’s really into the Great Masters, which is obvious in his work. He goes on and on and on and on and on about light and color theory and how he obsessively layers colors to create translucent, vivid verisimilitude. Also he lectures me about the color wheel, color opposites, how he sees shades in what the normal person would label a plain white wall, how colors change according to the light level, how even the glow cast from a light bulb lights the air around it; how to make blacks look blacker and whites whiter.

Feeling like I’ve just earned an art degree, I go downstairs and pass by the studio of Barlow, a brotha I visited last time I was here. I remember that his pop-art collage style was not exactly my cup of tea, but still I peep in hesitantly to see what’s new. He sees me and waves me on in. And who’s sitting there but two ladies I know. The first one’s name I can’t even recall – I know her from Columbia College. But the second – who’d’ve thunk! –

Jane!

Jane is a striking, high-cheekboned, chocolate-skinned beauty. She's been a model, dancer, and entertainment editor for a Hollywood publication, but also taught at some of Chicago's toughest schools. She was named one of Ebony’s “25 Most Alluring Bachelorettes” back in the early ‘90s. A Chicago political blogger posting her pic described her as a “stone cold fox” -- one of few such individuals who ran for public office in Illinois last year. Of course, she didn’t stand a chance, being a Republican in Chicago.

I met her nearly ten years ago now, at the youthful age of 23, while working as a public relations assistant. I was helping produce an awards dinner where she was one of the awardees. Afterward, a bunch of us went out to a Hyde Park lounge. A lot of cute flirting ensued: she told me I was "young and adorable" and "cute as a button" but I just needed "a little more experience."

I was intrigued. What ever could she mean?

"I'll train you very well," she promised, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. 

But she waited for me to make the move. When I could afford it, I finally invited her out. Our wide-ranging conversation included her claim to have psychic powers inherited from Hopi shamans on her mother's side. I imagined a pineapple, and I challenged her to guess what I was picturing.

"Well," she said, "it's more like I can read feelings, intentions. Not that you could think about, for example, a banana and I could guess it exactly."

"Close," I said. "It was a tropical fruit."

I drove her home, and she invited me in for a drink. By and by, I announced it was time to go, said good night, exited the house and went to my car. But my keys were missing.

I turned back and went up the steps to find Jane standing in the door, wearing a Cheshire cat grin --with my keys in her palm.

"Hey, how --"

“I told you,” she purred. “I'm a magician.”

You don't need to know what happened next. Let's just say I ended up staying a bit later than I'd planned.


Tonight, however, Jane does not recognize me. I am wearing glasses and I don’t have the goatee I sported ten years ago. Maybe she wouldn’t have remembered me anyway. After at least three drinks for Jane and one for me, the two of us end up walking down Michigan Avenue. Taking advantage of her memory lapse, I manage to fool her into thinking I’m psychic by pulling out little facts about her that she had told me years ago: the fact her father had been a jazz bandleader and producer, or that she had lived in Hollywood and danced on "Soul Train" and "American Bandstand." She seems mystified and even a little spooked.

She is thirteen years my senior, but she’s not boring in the least. Between cracking on me about my supposedly boyish appearance ("How did you get here, on a tricycle?") and me crackin’ back about what a great job they did on her dentures, we crack each other up quite a few times.

Well. Jane ends up in my car – the car I took such great pains to clean just for her. Or for "Jen," if you will.

I take her to Lobster King in Chinatown. She has another drink and by this time, her already goofy, dramatic personality plus the alcohol has her acting silly like a thirteen-year-old girl, cracking more jokes at my expense.

I end up dropping her off at her home. Unlike our first date 10 years ago, she does not invite me in, nor would I have accepted. It’s 1 a.m., and I have to be up at 8:30 for work.


p.s.: One reason why we had only one date way back 10 years ago was that I strongly suspected, based on her family background -- and family research I was doing in advance of a family reunion that year -- that she and I were, apparently, distant cousins. She got a little bit freaked out about that. I thought it was cool, but she thought it was somehow perverted.

Continuing with the breast theme

Don't ask why, but today I Googled the term "breast milk ice cream." This took me to a page of a breastfeeding forum where they were talking about how wholesome mommy milk is the cure for many ailments. And there was a link to an article at boingboing. net about a recent Bay Area Craiglist post that starts this way:

"We are offering a free room for a woman who is willing to provide breast milk for consumption to the household...."

You gotta read it.

Shark attacks and schizo voices

YESTERDAY WAS AN INTERESTING DAY. First, in the morning I had to think about what snacks to buy for the kids. (I work at a youth media nonprofit.) I kept thinking about hummus, but I didn't have enough money to buy some.

Later, after work, I scrape together the dough to go to the Schizowave show. I somehow got onto this chick's email list, and liked her style and have been meaning to go see her for the longest time.

I go to Reckless on Milwaukee and thumb through CDs looking for some bargains. I go to the listening station and check out Shock G, and then grab a disc by my old high-school and college classmate Sharkula -- but then upon popping it in I realize this is the same one I just bought from him at his show two weeks ago.

I'm thinking of asking one of the clerks whether he's been by the store today, since he's a fixture up and down Milwaukee. But I put that thought away and keep listening to Shock -- and then who should stroll up in the place but Shark?

We say what up -- and then, on the down low, he tries to sell me another CD. (Because Shark is just a CD-selling machine -- you know that.) But I don't have cash; I can barely make this Schizowave show, I tell him. He wants to go with me. So we leave the place.

Along the way, Brian (that's his Christian name) tries to holler at a cute girl also leaving the record store, named Carmen. But as he tends to do, he tries way too hard and scares her away -- and ruins what could've been a chance for me.

Since the show's BYOB, we grab a six-pack and then head up to Elastic Arts, where we check out the Schizo show. (This lady is different -- check her out.) Lena's performing in nothing more than a little nightie, which makes things even more fun. Beer is drunk, Mexican food is scarfed, maybe even a blunt smoked. And at one point -- sans any prompting by myself -- Brian goes: "Man, I wouldn't mind having some hummus."

You and me both, brah!

The real simple life

YOU KNOW YOU'RE A REDNECK WHEN ....



... your lawn is your garage and your bathroom.

The owner of the car and tub, Sarah, (aka Stormy), calls herself a redneck -- and in her Jeff Foxworthy-worthy way, she takes pride in it. And ain't nothin' wrong with it. I love rednecks, as long as they don't have a problem with me. I'd much rather hang out with somebody with a bathtub (or other assorted appliances, furniture or vehicles) parked in the yard than with folks so uncreative as to think that a yard is just a place to park a bunch of grass.


Sarah is a fascinating lady. One of nine children, she lives in the Ozark hills of Arkansas. She buys and resells both horses and cars. She's also pretty crafty. A few years ago, when she was 18 or so, she and her brothers and brothers-in-law built a one-room log cabin for her, and she took to living off the grid. Two of her friends are named Amoz and Jed. I know her through an MSN group for Messianic Christians that I joined several years ago but have not really participated in. (Long story.)

twin

sometimes you meet your twin
it’s like looking in a mirror
but just like your reflection and you
maybe twins aren’t meant to come together

drinking Earl Grey warms the body
thinking you, warms the soul
and your body: a thin cup of tea
that, well, grew on me --
but your soul, spirit, mind
had my attention from "go"

you coming through these doors
would be like cold lemonade
or cool sprinkler spray
on a hundred-degree day
i would hug you tight like a sister
--though you belong not to me,
but to my brother

we would sit
and share strong-as-mud coffee
mountain grown
in your island home
connecting
understanding
being understood
knowing, being known
glowing like a light on a darkened path
soulmates in a city of strangers

gestures synchronized
speaking and laughing
in perfect unison
a soul duo following invisible cues
and you'd grin your goofy grin and exclaim:

"twin"

i wish for the crowd as for me
that they could see the synergy
energy
stereophonic symphony

between us
and wonder

That they could feel these ties hidden from human eyes
we could discuss so much more than the weather
yet we find ourselves separated by 500 miles of it
and—oh yeah—

a little thing called

a wedding ring

Sometimes you meet your twin
It’s like looking in a mirror
But just like your reflection and you
Maybe twins aren’t meant to come together

Just like Buddy Holly

YOU HAVE TO LOVE synchronicity.

Friday, 10:33 a.m: I’m watching The Buddy Holly Story on VH-1. Buddy’s mom is telling him over dinner, “we let you sow your wild oats, playin’ your rock ‘n’ roll …”

A moment later I flip to MTV, where on “The Real World” the black brotha’s in the health food store looking at Wild Oats products.

One hour and one minute later, in the movie: Brash, bold Buddy corners the beautiful dark-haired Puerto Rican girl, surnamed Santiago, and says to her: “If you won’t go out with me I wanna know why.”

My mind flashes instantly back to 2000 -- seven years and a few weeks ago --to a phone conversation with a beautiful dark-haired Puerto Rican girl, surnamed Santiago.

Six degrees of synchronicity

WHO IS THIS MAN and what is my connection to him?

Where to start?

1981: Hall and Oates release a song called “Private Eyes.” (Am I working Hall and Oates into every other post lately? I guess so, but only because they are tremendously important.)

This #1 single is the first Hall and Oates song I recall from childhood and would begin a lifetime of H&O addiction for me. One of the few non-original tunes the duo recorded, its writer was Warren Pash.

early '90s at Columbia College Chicago: I study music, one of my instructors being the acclaimed jazz musician and composer Bill Russo.

A couple years later as I became more politically aware, I hear of author, tax protestor, artist and musician Tupper Saussy. Eventually Saussy puts up a web site and I manage to get hold of his last book Rulers of Evil. (I still need to get Miracle on Main Street, although I've read later books along the same theme such as Edward Griffin's The Creature From Jekyll Island.)

I contact him by email, and in our correspondence, not only find I have many similarities with this person twice my age, but that he had studied under the same Bill Russo (years ago, at th School of Jazz in Massachussetts).

Last week: Saussy dies, just before the scheduled party for his new CD The Chocolate Orchid Piano Bar.

The producer?

Warren Pash.


IT'S THOSE KINDS OF  things that give me a kick. You know there are like souls out there, people whose existence seems to parallel your own, and it's always a thrill to run across one of them.

The important thing to say about Saussy, however, is that he was that rarest of individuals in our time: a true Renaissance man, a true talent, a true philosopher (which is different from one who merely academically studies philosophy), a true independent thinker and actor, a true member of "the Remnant" and -- if his own and others' testimony about him are honest -- a true follower of Christ.

I was sad to hear of his passing, because I wanted more Tupper Saussy books -- such as the one he was working on, Gods For the Godless, about the hidden deep-political and spiritual underpinnings of 9/11. At least there's plenty of his music around to enjoy.

Asexuality?

I saw a fascinating Montel show about couples who are romantic, yet asexual. This is cool, since I go through some quite asexual periods myself (and in any case, even when feeling especially sexual, I usually can keep a leash on it). In addition, it's just my luck that I find myself attracted to women with similar, or even lower, drives. That's nice, because without the disorienting fog of sex looming omnipresently over every interaction, it's a lot easier to get to know and enjoy a person in depth. Maybe that's the way real soulmates get to know each other. In a culture that positions sex as the be-all and end-all, how many soulmates have found each other but prematurely ejected (pun intended) because the sex wasn't immediately there? How many couples have met, have clicked perfectly, have conversed for hours on end and had wonderful times together and felt undeniable bonds -- yet have ended up splitting because they weren't constantly wanting to rip each others' clothes off, and so became convinced that "something's wrong"? I've sort of made an informal study of creatives and the creative temperament lately, and I've noticed that while artists have a great reputation for libertinism, in reality I believe it's largely an attempt to live up to a stereotype. In practice, many of the artists and creative types I've known -- particularly the more solitary ones -- learn more toward "asexual" than "voracious satyr." That may be one of the reasons they drink and consume drugs more than the average population: to help unleash their normally dormant libidos. Coincidentally, just before clicking on the TV and coming across that Montell show, I had been thinking; How nice it'd be to not have to eat. There are so many other things to do .....

Artist vs "Bohemian"

MY FIRST POST to The Conversation, the discussion forum at the online home of the Chicago alt-media/art/activism collective, Lumpen, encapsulates my whole philosophy about art -- and the difference between making art and fitting into some kind of real or imagined art-tribe or art-lifestyle.

By way of context, the thread was about the perceived overcommercialization of the Around the Coyote art festival -- a mainstay of Chicago's Wicker Park/Bucktown neighborhood, but also a perceived driving force in the gentrification that had eventually driven all the poor artists out. If you're at all interested in, or involved in, the arts in Chicago,you've probably read all about it, heard all about it, and talked all about it too. Ironically enough, Lumpen itself had been part of the force inexorably driving the very gentrification being deplored. Eventually, it got around to a question of  some imagined clash between the forces of "real art" versus "commercialized art" and I had finally had enough. I wrote:

hey kids
This is my first post in the conversayshun, but I never like to get bogged down with introductions and shit like that.

So anyway, my take on ATC and Chicago art in general, from one who is not a Wick/town scenester. I like what the guy said about "artists" making speeches. I'd just rather that artists would make art and leave the speechifying to others.

I am a born creative, and spent the first half of my life as an obsessive, self-taught visual artist (before veering over into writing and music). Most of the art I drew or painted could not be classed as underground/revolutionary/subversive/anarchist or what have you. However, that doesn't make it "not art" any more than the CSO are "not musicians" simply because they play classical music. To call stuff that people have put their heart and soul and time into "not real art" IMO is, to incredibly elitist and narrow and perhaps shows that one has done too much time in art school and not enough time actually making stuff. People who make art are artists.

There are all kinds of art for all kinds of people. That's one of the nice things about living in a sorta-free country. You have choice. There is lowbrow and highbrow and everything in between. Steven Spielberg is an artist, whatever you might think of his choices and his money. However unfortunate this may be in your opinion, Thomas Kincade is also an artist. Charles M. Schulz (who was my first art teacher, via dozens of Peanuts books) was an artist. Mariah Carey is a musical artist, despite her poor choices of songs to record. Etc.

Artist and bohemian are not one and the same. There are lots of artists who live semi-normal lives and lots of bohemians calling themselves "artists" who have never developed any sort of craft, except maybe going to openings and parties.

That said, I generally can't afford ATC except for the smattering of free shows. (I've seen some interesting performance art there but that's it) Last year during ATC I was actually at an alternative space, the Glamour of War 9/11 show at Ken Hirte's Gallery Chicago, a couple miles down Milwaukee from the Coyote. GC sorta had their own mini-festival, I invited some friends (including Sharkula), and as far as I'm concerned, it kicked all forms of @$$.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like blandness either (though blandness is impossible to define -- one man's blandness is another's bliss). But I like hipper-than-thouness even less. Live and let live.

Revenge of the happy baby pigs

I'm intrigued by the idea of hipster parenting. (Like "alternadad" Neal Pollack, for example.) I wrote the following a couple of years ago, on an old blog that I never publicized. Here it is, only two years late.


MOMS RAWK. If you're not aware of the burgeoning "mommy rock" phenomenon, it encompasses groups such as the Motherlode Trio, the Mydols, Housewives on Prozac (well, it's rock 'n' roll -- you gotta have drugs), and of course, a festival called Momapalooza.

Not long ago Housewives and Momapalooza founder Joy Rose read an essay on NPR wherein she related her overnight transformation from SoHo punk rock queen with a gold record to . . . "happy baby pig" (her words, with emphasis on "baby" -- implying that making babies turns a woman into a pig). As the reality of motherhood set in, she quickly tired of the artist's life. Navigating the walk up four flights of stairs with kids, baby bag and toys in tow proved too challenging. So she and her "partner" (alternaterm for "husband") opted for -- gasp --

THE SUBURBS -- !!!

Denizens of insular urban bohemias think differently, to say the least. In some ways, for the better. But in that hothouse environment, there's also that contempt, even terror, for anything and everything perceived as bourgeois: a notion that the traditional family is for the dull, the bland, the conforming -- the people who go to megachurches and shop at Wal-Mart. Marriage ("partnership," whatever) is a transmitter of the patriarchal oppression virus. Children are not only unhip; they are a burden, a disease to be cured by the abortionist. In some circles these beliefs are held quite literally. Traces of these memes are evident in the self-punishing language Rose employs when relating her journey from moshing to mommying. She sounds sheepish and apologetic, as if to say: I'm really sorry ... I know I'm not supposed to enjoy this exploitative subjugation to an artificial gender role forced upon me by the Oppressive Rapist Patriarchy ... but dammit, I'm lovin' it!

It makes me sad that Rose spent so long steeped in a milieu where doing what nature made you to do makes you a "baby pig," but rejecting motherhood to satisfy ambitions often externally imposed by your subculture, and spending your time and money on yourself, makes you not an "anti-baby pig," but strong and progressive.

Yet even punk rock chicks like Rose continue to apostacize from the cult to obey the call of nature to do what they -- perhaps too obviously to need to point out -- are uniquely equipped to do. Rose had to give up her "me"-centered lifestyle, but didn't give up her love of rock 'n' roll -- at least not forever. She continues to rawk, even in the suburbs. (While moving to the burbs is a tradeoff, not all suburbs fit the stereotypes of blandness, homogeneity and cultural barrenness. And as things are today, a good suburb is a helluva lot better environment in which to raise kids than the big city.)

While I don't know all the details of Rose's rock career, I admire her tremendously for simply desiring to be a real mother. And I'm glad to see the new wave of mommy rock. It refutes the notion of a huge conflict of rock and roll vs. home and hearth, of fun vs. family, of art vs. adulthood. It shows that artistic expression is not exclusively the province of nihilistic, solipsistic singles in their teens or twentysomethings. The movement may inject some much-needed perspective into a scene that needs to be reminded from time to time that it actually is not the center of the universe. Definitely, it will inspire creativity, since rockers who are mommies automatically have a whole new world of material to draw from. And with little ones depending on them, they have even more reasons to change the world.

Knockered out

IN THE FEBRUARY 8 love-'n'-sex-themed issue of NewCity, “Marcy K” bared her soul and shared her small problem -- or rather, her two small problems, which must seem ever smaller compared to the pumped-up monstrosities being paraded around town.

Marcy writes of a recent experience at a club:

I was spending a good portion of the time wedged on a too-tight-to-move lounge space, getting knocked around by big breasts. … It seems to me that they are everywhere these days – and that single (and not-so-single) men in this city have it much too good … How did they spawn? How come all of a sudden it’s
become the industry standard to have glammed-up boobs in this city?

I began to notice the same phenomenon several years ago on the first warm day of spring. I was in the yuppie center of Chicago, Lincoln Park -- my first visit to that area in a couple of years probably -- and I marveled at the new epidemic. It was as if an “Instant Inflate” button had been pressed and everyone in the area had magically gained two sizes. They were bouncing around -- or more accurately, sort of gliding around -- everywhere, especially on a certain species of skinny twentysomething blonde commonly found jogging along the lakeshore or walking around the park toting their hamster-sized dogs. Sure, they catch your eye for a second. But then you realize you're looking at plastic, and you look away, in search of something real.

They're really impostors

I'M PROBABLY THE biggest fan of Hall and Oates on this planet (Oates especially), and I know they’re old-old-school, but -- c’mon. How do professional entertainers, who presumably have managers and PR people, let a couple of clowns such as this one and this one steal what oughta be their MySpace pages?

I gotta admit though, the second one is funny. And the first guy, when I first visited a few weeks ago, has this wacked out hip-hop-swing-marching-band song from these Brooklynite goofsters. But now he's got this redickulous remix of the Muppets' "Movin' Right Along" ... (Haven't heard this song in about 25 years, but I'll be diddly-dong danged if I didn't recognize it after about the first four bars.)

* POSTSCRIPT: Somehow, since I wrote this post, it seems that the real Hall and Oates have managed to claim this myspace page for themselves. Now that's good news.