Jan 23, 2010
Verses
'O Fortuna'
John Ashbery
2005
Good luck! Best wishes! The best of luck!
The very best! Godspeed! God bless you!
Peace be with you!
May your shadow never be less!
We can see through to the other side,
you see. It's your problem, we know,
but I can't help feeling a little envious.
What if darkness became unhinged right now?
Bloomingly, swimmingly, one remounts the current.
Here is where the shade was, the suggestion of flowers,
and peace, in another place.
Our competition is like tools of a certain order.
No one would have found them useful at first.
It wasn't until a real emergency arose that someone
had the sense to recognize it for what it was.
All hell didn't break loose, it was like a rising psalm
materializing like snow on an unseen mountain.
All that was underfoot was good, but lost.
Jan 22, 2010
I've been knocking people's hats off, or really, elbowing this one chick who stopped in the middle of the subway stairs to chat someone up at rush-hour and snarling at a couple of hot French dudes who tried to cut in front of me in the deli line. I'm not taking mess.
There's all manner of things to be upset about lately (Obama's approval rating [and overcaution], weather, birthday parties). Like this morning I saw one of several (spaced through the week for repeated pre-office weeping) reports on NY1 about the initiation of closing procedures at 20 New York public schools. Yesterday and today, the discussion turned to Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, now officially scheduled for closing (meaning new enrollment will cease). In this segment from yesterday, you can get a notion of what a beautiful, old municipal building it is, as well as how much the interior, its halls and classrooms, appears to be like any other large, historic city school. It looks remarkably similar to my alma mater, Memphis Central.
I really really don't understand school closing. This defense, penned by a member of New York's BOE, makes the mandates no clearer. If the City intends to open new schools to replace the old ones, why/how will these new schools be better than revamped (new staff, security, etc.) versions of the old schools might be? Is this a matter of different zoning? Do the new schools simply exclude 'problem students,' those who are too far below reading level to graduate, those with difficult home lives--drug-addicted or incarcerated parents, young children of their own to care for--who struggle to graduate within the allotted four-year timeline used to judge schools' value/potency? Does the BOE consider the buildings haunted, cursed? Will they open the new schools in time to accommodate the present-day middle schoolers who were otherwise planning to matriculate at Robeson? If not, will there be a couple of years during which kids are attempting fruitlessly to enroll at already overflowing schools outside of their district?
This News article contains particularly bleak information about Robeson's variously insolvent student body.
The closing of schools, beyond its brutal resurfacing of cities, city blocks, city histories, seems to me to be a brutal attack on American young people, the most disadvantaged American young people. It's presented as a last ditch effort to restore good education to underserved areas, but clearly, through an accompanying clumsy bureaucratic process, a number of students (not to mention displaced teachers and administrators) will be (pun intended) left behind. Of course, these young people were "left behind" years ago, allowed to move unnoticed from grade to grade without promised knowledge imparted, without becoming literate or math-literate, history-literate. One could reach further back, expand the net, and note that students in closed schools live in our poorest neighborhoods, come from families rocked by deregulation (the resulting decline of the American working class), epidemic drug use and spikes in crime, seemingly unbreakable cycles begun decades before their birth, a cousin epidemic of parentlessness. The story of urban American school closings is essentially the story of the failed progressive agenda, the post-Johnson one step forward five steps back, the violence brought home from multiple fronts, the mess of having and not-having that grows wilder and wilder unchecked by any modicum of democratic-socialism (bank bailouts don't count). It's an out-and-out tragedy, a crime more like, an ultimate symptom of many-layered wrong-doing, a shirking of gravest responsibility, a shame shame shame.
There's all manner of things to be upset about lately (Obama's approval rating [and overcaution], weather, birthday parties). Like this morning I saw one of several (spaced through the week for repeated pre-office weeping) reports on NY1 about the initiation of closing procedures at 20 New York public schools. Yesterday and today, the discussion turned to Paul Robeson High School in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, now officially scheduled for closing (meaning new enrollment will cease). In this segment from yesterday, you can get a notion of what a beautiful, old municipal building it is, as well as how much the interior, its halls and classrooms, appears to be like any other large, historic city school. It looks remarkably similar to my alma mater, Memphis Central.
I really really don't understand school closing. This defense, penned by a member of New York's BOE, makes the mandates no clearer. If the City intends to open new schools to replace the old ones, why/how will these new schools be better than revamped (new staff, security, etc.) versions of the old schools might be? Is this a matter of different zoning? Do the new schools simply exclude 'problem students,' those who are too far below reading level to graduate, those with difficult home lives--drug-addicted or incarcerated parents, young children of their own to care for--who struggle to graduate within the allotted four-year timeline used to judge schools' value/potency? Does the BOE consider the buildings haunted, cursed? Will they open the new schools in time to accommodate the present-day middle schoolers who were otherwise planning to matriculate at Robeson? If not, will there be a couple of years during which kids are attempting fruitlessly to enroll at already overflowing schools outside of their district?
This News article contains particularly bleak information about Robeson's variously insolvent student body.
The closing of schools, beyond its brutal resurfacing of cities, city blocks, city histories, seems to me to be a brutal attack on American young people, the most disadvantaged American young people. It's presented as a last ditch effort to restore good education to underserved areas, but clearly, through an accompanying clumsy bureaucratic process, a number of students (not to mention displaced teachers and administrators) will be (pun intended) left behind. Of course, these young people were "left behind" years ago, allowed to move unnoticed from grade to grade without promised knowledge imparted, without becoming literate or math-literate, history-literate. One could reach further back, expand the net, and note that students in closed schools live in our poorest neighborhoods, come from families rocked by deregulation (the resulting decline of the American working class), epidemic drug use and spikes in crime, seemingly unbreakable cycles begun decades before their birth, a cousin epidemic of parentlessness. The story of urban American school closings is essentially the story of the failed progressive agenda, the post-Johnson one step forward five steps back, the violence brought home from multiple fronts, the mess of having and not-having that grows wilder and wilder unchecked by any modicum of democratic-socialism (bank bailouts don't count). It's an out-and-out tragedy, a crime more like, an ultimate symptom of many-layered wrong-doing, a shirking of gravest responsibility, a shame shame shame.
Jan 21, 2010
Sponsors
One day [NOT TODAY], I'm going to stop reading blogs I hate and getting upset about them and then posting sort-of rejoinders here.
And I hardly read New York's 'The Cut,' because this girl I went to high school with writes for them sometimes and I don't trust her. I don't trust most fashion journalists. I love Guy Trebay; he's from my Pop's generation of Village Voice staff, and he isn't narrow or mean. He might be a hippie......I loved Liz Tilberis a lot. I used to like The Sartorialist, but he's gotten boring and narrow, never mean, but certainly packing limitations (and also success). The worst thing I find about most fashion journalism is its smallness, its party line. There seem to me to be infinite solutions for dressing, globally, through eons and eons, etc.---and it's the infinity that's interesting and meet.
So this post on The Cut by Amy Odell (who did not attend any of my three high schools) really bothered me, not only because of its damning industry narrowness, but also because it contains examples of that tackytacky watching-Jersey-Shore-ironically "meme" (kinna hurra). Here is a picture of Amy Odell. I don't want to get too snipey with it, but the glimpse is telling. Isn't she like any other girl who showers regularly and talks about shopping? Yes, seems to be. Boxford, Massachusetts, the finer suburbs of Cincinnati. You know? And Odell is shocked (shocked) to find that folks might actually think Jersey Shore's Snooki is es-stylish...gosh...this is a lot for me because Snooki is a genius (so are J-Woww and Pauly D and Vinny's mother). And doing stuff, watching stuff, buying stuff 'ironically' is essentially the worst thing ever. I've gotten wrapped up in Jersey Shore because it's a good show, because it's about dancers, glamorous dancers, men and women peacocking and dancing, really dancing, fighting the beat, vibing, vibing, creeping, cooking food, working at the t-shirt stand on the boardwalk. Yes it's narrow—gym and tan and laundry all the time—but the cast don't purport to be observer-reporters of fashion in total; they're just doing them, just them.
Narrowness and openness are elements of style in equal parts, to oversimplify it: one can be relatively or extremely (depending on preference of the individual) narrow about one's own appearance (an overabundance of openness toward self-style is like not knowing the self, which is no bueno past a certain age [kids ought to shop around]) and open about everybody else's (because nothing is more stylish than a good, loving attitude). Granted, I don't think everybody everywhere is stylish all the time. Clearly I'm not open to the way Amy Odell looks, because she looks like 'floating, common fashion staff' and that's flimsy to me. The only limit I hold, the only limit to my openness about other people dressing, is nativity, whether it be absolutely geographical or a bit more conceptual, I like people to be themselves from the "places" they are from, unabashedly. I like clothes to discuss identity (more than attendance to industry directives), and I find a kind of Manhattan (or L.A.)-bound uniform, rootless in a bad way, and bland. It's never the individual garments, a pair of skinny jeans or a nice blazer or a particular watch, it's their combination (I have seen Korean girls pull off conservative luxe brilliantly, because there is a pinch of avant-garde in each item and you usually can't tell the brands, and the French too can do this sort of look, but without washing or ironing too much....I suppose it fails in America because when one ought to be wearing wonderful freckled, preppy American sportswear but instead gets derailed attempting to be [sweet Jesus] 'edgy' with dumb brass and gold studs on everything it tanks....it's like actresses....it's down to actresses and how they're always on the covers of things). I'm bad at philosophy.
Back to Odell's actual post--
It's titled "Snooki Plugs Ugg, Bebe, Other Scary Labels."
What is Amy Odell afraid of? What does she want us to fear? Fear is the enemy of art (and bowels). Doesn't she know that?
I don't get so carried away with Ugg ugliness. I never wore them in their hey; I thought they were overpriced. This fall/winter I've bought a whole stable of knock-off Uggs available for purchase down the street from us at Bobby's for $5. So has Pillow. I wear them to take out the garbage and run errands and a couple of times to work (though I felt pretty guilty afterward for being so collegiate). They're slippers, which I love, and soft and warm and nowadays fantastically ubiquitous (I don't think they mean anything). They are simple, like espadrilles or muck-lucks. I just don't think they're ugly, because they are so simple and easy. Real comfort is rarely ugly to me. As I said before, they are pretty collegiate and Snooki is a student. So, by saying that she wears leggings and Uggs "to run errands," Snooki is identifying herself as a regular American co-ed (and, as I said, I wear leggings and Uggs to run errands too. I guess I'm still happy being collegiate on the weekends, though I also throw on an old, giant men's tweed overcoat [art-collegiate]).
Back in the day, in 2003 and 4, when I was a y'ung clurrber, I would buy new 'outfits' at the Bebe in Copley Plaza every weekend (also hitting up Armani Exchange and Polo and the salon-for-waxing and Calypso and BCBG...and maybe Armani Cafe [ha]). Bebe makes a specific sort of garment: short, cut-to-there, black lace, some denim, definitely sequins--clurrbwear. Why hate? It's a look, a readily available look, a sort of mall-store pop star look, Mariah and Jenny Lo for under $150. For me, it was a phase (like wearing torn up undershirts with red lace bras), but I looked good, and I get (and dig) that for some it's a forever-look.
My abundant love of Ed Hardy we can discuss another time....
The thing is
Snooki is mad stylish.
Back to Odell's actual post--
It's titled "Snooki Plugs Ugg, Bebe, Other Scary Labels."
What is Amy Odell afraid of? What does she want us to fear? Fear is the enemy of art (and bowels). Doesn't she know that?
I don't get so carried away with Ugg ugliness. I never wore them in their hey; I thought they were overpriced. This fall/winter I've bought a whole stable of knock-off Uggs available for purchase down the street from us at Bobby's for $5. So has Pillow. I wear them to take out the garbage and run errands and a couple of times to work (though I felt pretty guilty afterward for being so collegiate). They're slippers, which I love, and soft and warm and nowadays fantastically ubiquitous (I don't think they mean anything). They are simple, like espadrilles or muck-lucks. I just don't think they're ugly, because they are so simple and easy. Real comfort is rarely ugly to me. As I said before, they are pretty collegiate and Snooki is a student. So, by saying that she wears leggings and Uggs "to run errands," Snooki is identifying herself as a regular American co-ed (and, as I said, I wear leggings and Uggs to run errands too. I guess I'm still happy being collegiate on the weekends, though I also throw on an old, giant men's tweed overcoat [art-collegiate]).
Back in the day, in 2003 and 4, when I was a y'ung clurrber, I would buy new 'outfits' at the Bebe in Copley Plaza every weekend (also hitting up Armani Exchange and Polo and the salon-for-waxing and Calypso and BCBG...and maybe Armani Cafe [ha]). Bebe makes a specific sort of garment: short, cut-to-there, black lace, some denim, definitely sequins--clurrbwear. Why hate? It's a look, a readily available look, a sort of mall-store pop star look, Mariah and Jenny Lo for under $150. For me, it was a phase (like wearing torn up undershirts with red lace bras), but I looked good, and I get (and dig) that for some it's a forever-look.
My abundant love of Ed Hardy we can discuss another time....
The thing is
Snooki is mad stylish.
The Cut (and anybody else of a mind to condescend to Guidos) blows.
Jan 20, 2010
(Brangelina)
I don't wanna write about Brangelina.
Last weekend, I got a chance to look at this picture again:
handily eased himself into the role/roles of "respectable artist" via, mostly, his ease and handiness.
After a few violent edits, and some not-doing, this is alls I have—
Brad and Jen's winter 2005 divorce vacation to Anguilla. I am incredibly moved by his t-shirt. I'd forgotten all about it.
Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, and Angelina Jolie are Blockbuster Video stars; I see them and I think about that blue and yellow awning and that smell like astronaut ice-cream and cheese and short-pile carpet and that drop box with a padlock that folks always disposed of their weapons in. And Friends and The Object of My Affection. And Legends of the Fall and Meet Joe Black. And Gia and Foxfire.
From 2005 to the present, the years through which the narrative of jilted Jennifer and the Phoenix Brangelina was crafted and retold and retold, Blockbuster Video stores were in decline. And movies and moviestars were something other than they had been...films packed up and shipped off at a startling rate, DVDs released mere weeks after cautious, impotent theatrical runs, actors beholden to their publicists, to a total, stranger-than-ever(-with-strangers) media apparatus.
Three grown-up Gen-Xers, one (Jolie) a bit younger than the others--all rather corny, all suffering their dignity (and raking in millions) due to popular imaginings.
Brad Pitt is not so interesting to me.
He does something mealy-mouthed that I cannot comprehend or enjoy.
Three grown-up Gen-Xers, one (Jolie) a bit younger than the others--all rather corny, all suffering their dignity (and raking in millions) due to popular imaginings.
Brad Pitt is not so interesting to me.
He does something mealy-mouthed that I cannot comprehend or enjoy.
handily eased himself into the role/roles of "respectable artist" via, mostly, his ease and handiness.
Jan 19, 2010
Did you know this terrible Ke$ha wrote a song about throwing up in Paris Hilton's closet?! At first I thought the lyric was, "I grew up in Paris Hilton's closet," which, though sung-spoken in that ugly way she do, would have been pretty brilliant, but no....if you can bear it, the full poem is here.
I've done my share of drinking. Over the past couple of years it's tempered, because booze is a depressant and because occasionally I'd forget things or remember things, not awful things just semi-awful things like conversations. Once on Pillow's birthday I threw up all over a hotel room (or just on the bed and a patch of carpet) and she cleaned it up and bought me saltines and a t-shirt where a parrot emits a speech bubble,"It's 5 O'clock Somewhere." Once I was at a party and a girl sitting next to me just slumped forward and spewed on her knees; I was mortified. Everyone was laughing and she was too wasted to notice or clean herself. Being drunk is great until it isn't. It's just so important to not lose control of one's faculties. Waking up in a puddle of sick is never glamorous, laudable or interesting--no matter the circ's, no exceptions!....making a smelly mess of a girl's (quite nice) closet and then writing a smug, shitty tune about it---BIG OY.
I've done my share of drinking. Over the past couple of years it's tempered, because booze is a depressant and because occasionally I'd forget things or remember things, not awful things just semi-awful things like conversations. Once on Pillow's birthday I threw up all over a hotel room (or just on the bed and a patch of carpet) and she cleaned it up and bought me saltines and a t-shirt where a parrot emits a speech bubble,"It's 5 O'clock Somewhere." Once I was at a party and a girl sitting next to me just slumped forward and spewed on her knees; I was mortified. Everyone was laughing and she was too wasted to notice or clean herself. Being drunk is great until it isn't. It's just so important to not lose control of one's faculties. Waking up in a puddle of sick is never glamorous, laudable or interesting--no matter the circ's, no exceptions!....making a smelly mess of a girl's (quite nice) closet and then writing a smug, shitty tune about it---BIG OY.
Jan 17, 2010
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