Category: ultracultural

Alpha Male

If you know me, than you probably know that I’m a big fan of science fiction. Why hide my spots, right? I make an effort, though, not to impose my enthusiasm on those who don’t share it. It just invites snickering and rolling of the eyes.

Jonathan knows what I mean. He knows to avoid the indifference of some friends, and share the enthusiasm for others.

When we first met at this past Summer’s Blogmeet it came up in conversation that I’d been totally taken with my rediscovery of Space: 1999, a show whose charms he also understood. He told me about his best friend Kit, a sci-fi enthusiast who’d built made replicas of the show’s sets and costumes, which were — and you should see them for yourself — outstanding, at least before the show’s American backers called for some unfortunate budget cuts. Since I was clearly a fan and not just a curiosity-seeker, he promised me that I’d get to see Kit’s handiwork if I ever came to London.

Sunday, when I met Kit (who’s just a sweet, handsome gem of a fellow), I was blown away. I was also encouraged to indulge my fandom. May I now present then, my adventures in the Alpha Room:

Hot Sauna Action

Once I get back, remind me to tell you more about the Victorian-era Turkish bath Paul took me to today. It was in Carlisle, a little village just south of Scotland. Presumably some Americans have been to the area to see Hadrian’s Wall and such, but we’re pretty sure I’m the first one to make it into the bathhouse. Nothing unseemly, just a little bit of relaxing luxury that the local farmers (and the occasional working-class hottie of dubious sexual orientation) enjoy for a mere trifle. A fascinating new experience in social dynamics.

Later, we returned to Lancaster and enjoyed a lovely Christmas dinner. Tony prepared the roast potatoes and vegetarian turkey, Paul brought out his homemade Christmas crackers, and we wrapped it all up with some Christmas pudding and some more TV masterpieces of schadenfreude.

Quick Notes

A few quick items before I forget:

  • I’ve had my fill of squeezing into single beds for the time being. For the rest of the trip, I’m going to remind myself that I’m on vacation and my comfort and convenience are important, too.
  • This is the fightin’est town I’ve seen in a while. I’ve never seen so many black eyes on random people in my life. I suspect it may have a lot to do with the power-drinking that goes on before the pubs close so barbarically early.
  • Blackpool is pretty magnificent, even when mostly closed for the season. It has all the creepy, trashy, sweet charms of Coney Island or the run-down parts of the Jersey Shore. I say this without irony: I’m a total fan of midways and carnivals and skee-ball and low-brow amusement fun.
  • The American Midwest may be pretty flat, vast, and featureless, but for sheer lack of visual stimulus, it ain’t got nothing on England’s Midlands.
  • Are we at war or something? There was some big protest going on in London, and all these earnest-looking trendy kids were wearing “Stop the War’ stickers in the Tube. Shouldn’t they have been out doing their patriotic duty and shopping?
  • There are more cute boys here than you can shake a stick at, but there’s a sad lack of the hispter-nerd aesthetic I enjoy so much at home.
  • It’s the little difference that matter, like going to buy a sandwich at the train station and having to choose between ham/pickle/onion and bacon/mayo/prawn.
  • There will be lots of photographic evidence when I get back.

Potty Mouth

I wanna give a big ol’ shout out to my pal and fellow NYC blog guy Andy for his KICK-ASS one man show, Potty Mouth, which I caught last night. It’s way funny, and saucy, and even very moving, just when you least expect it to be. There’s another performance next Friday 11/16, that you can catch, it’ll be your own fault if you miss it. If you’re not convinced by my enthusiastic recommendation, watch the trailer.

Later, Michael and I went out to FC29/Daddy’s/The Hole/whatever-it-is-now to hang out, catch up, and whine about boy troubles. Of course, and this explains why he’s such a gem, we wound up doing all that but mostly grooving to Prince-affiliated 80s pop, wondering about Rebbie, the forgotten Jackson sister, and talking about our secret love of heavy metal. (Michael was telling me about a turntable-scratch version of Def Leppard’s “Foolin’” that he did many years ago, which is only another reason he’s cool as shit.) It seemed like bloggers were everywhere, convincing me that we’ll own this town before long, but no one will know because we’ll all still be writing about Buffy, boy trouble, therapy, and the little details of downtown-homohipster lifestyles.

Oh, in other theatre news, it looks like Kiki & Herb have finally made it to the big time. This year’s Christmas show, Kiki & Herb: There’s a Stranger in the Manger, is trading in its cramped-yet-intimate cabaret setting for a full-on production at the Westbeth, the theater that spawned Hedwig and the Angry Inch. I’m quivering in anticipation to see what they do with the extra budget and space, even if the ticket price has more than doubled. Luckily, though, those of us on the mailing list have been sent a convenient discount code to get cheaper tix until Dec. 15th, which I will gladly share with you because I love you all and want you to experience the brilliance of Kiki & Herb. Just go to Ticketmaster and give them the code “KHSPIN” when you get your tickets. I’m going on Saturday, 12/1, if anyone wants to make an outing of it. Rock on!

Una Noche Divertida

Sexy Mexicans are good for morale. At least that’s what I felt last night. My friend Josh and I decided that we’ve been feeling so fucked up about this whole past week that we could use a little cheery distraction. After some hemming and hawing, we went ahead with out plan to go see El Vez, the Mexican Elvis, play with his band, the Memphis Mariachis, and singers, the Elvettes (Priscillita, Lisa Maria, y Qué Linda Thompson), in an intimate little show down at the Mercury Lounge. It was a good call, and did wonders for our addled minds. The basic idea is that he’s this guy from East L.A. who adds a whole South-of-the-border schtick to an amazing Elvis-themed cabaret act. This particular show is part of his “Boxing with God” tour, which actually gave him a good opportunity to plainly acknowledge how rough things have been this past week: he was able to express his sadness and sympathy and then seque right into the Gospel Elvis theme.

Not that it’s just Elvis songs with the lyrics changed for comic effect — oh no! El Rey and his entourage do a whole show pulling from all over the spectrum of rock and pop history: Elvis, George Michael, Iggy Pop, The Doors, the Edwin Hawkins Singers, Naughty by Nature, and Simon and Garfunkel all appear in the reportoire. It was not unlike a Latino Kiki and Herb show without the pathos.

Lord knows there’s been enough pathos this week. I’ve had to stop watching the news altogether as the media coverage turns completely to publicizing everyone’s grief. It’s upsetting enough to walk around New York right now, passing makeshift vigils and memorials at every turn, without having to watch people on TV being badgered by reporters to talk about their shock and sorrow. I just want news about what’s going on now, whether or not we’re going to give in to the public bloodlust and embark on a massive campaign of revenge. I’m trying to sort through my own reactions to this — reactions that have been much, much more powerful than I would have expected — and make sense of the changes in the people and the cityscape around me. Watching the TV coverage constantly churn up newer, sadder aspects of the whole thing is just not helping.

I think it’ll be good to go to San Francisco next week and get a little distance from New York. Seeing all these candles and flyers and tributes, talking to people about what they’ve been through, and endless political discussions are really wearing me down. I don’t expect the issue to go away, but I need to get further from the epicenter of so much sorrow and rage.

Consumers Should Be Seen and Not heard

I’ve been completely absorbed in Naomi Klein’s No Logo : Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies lately, which is a fascinating read. Granted, it’s preaching to the choir in my case, but she really does a wonderful job of articulating a lot of things that stick in my craw about the state of marketing and branding these days, among them:

We have almost two centuries’ worth of brand-name history under our collective belt, coalescing to create a sort of global pop-cultural Morse code. But there is just one catch: while we may all have the code implanted in our brains, we’re not really allowed to use it. In the name of protecting the brand from dilution, artists and activists who try to engage with the brand as equal partners in their “relationships” are routinely dragged into court for violating trademark, copyright, libel or “brand disparagement” laws — easily abused statutes that form an airtight protective seal around the brand, allowing it to brand us, but prohibiting us from so much as scuffing it.

Art Chantry Saved My Life

As I mentioned, I got a piece of unsolicited e-mail yesterday from my idol, a Seattle-based designer named Art Chantry. He was doing a Google seach and ran across this old journal entry of mine where I mention that he saved my life. Curious, he dropped me a quick note to ask what in hell I was talking about.

Well, back when I was a senior studying design in college, I found myself swiftly losing my winsome zeal for my chosen profession. My work was adequate, in that I was doing what was required of me with a certain amount of technical proficiency, but I was disillusioned and my enthusiasm was pretty much gone. I was spending all my time at a computer, pushing stuff around on a tiny black-and-white screen, trying to finish assignments but not having much fun with them. I couldn’t remember what had once seemed so enticing about design, because it just felt like I was at the start of a lifelong career path of churning out monotony. After three-and-a-bit years of art school, for which I’d waited most of my life, I was getting the sinking feeling that I’d made a bit of poor choice in focusing on graphic design.

I was plucky, though, so I still kept reading about design and keeping myself involved in the field, hoping I was just in a rut. I tried to get the most out of my student membership in the AIGA by going to see a lot of talks by famous-ish designers. One time, I went to go see this guy Art Chantry speak. I hadn’t heard of him, nor had anyone else at school, but we saw a couple of examples of his stuff and it looked fun, so off we went. WOW! His stuff just blew my ass away. And not only was his work good, but I also loved his attitude and his approach to design. He did stuff that was raw, and funny, and sensitive to details, and — this was the kicker — expressive. Yes, he was doing work for clients, but he found ways of putting his own energy into the stuff he produced. He often did a lot of work for chicken scratch, because he believed in what the clients were doing and because they gave him the freedom to take some chances and be playful. (I use the past tense, but I assume this is still the case.) Suddenly, I saw a version of graphic design that wasn’t just slick and clever commercial art. This stuff was everything that I ever loved about comics and punk and zines and B movies that ever made me want to make stuff of my own.

It wasn’t just the final products that struck a chord, but also the way Art spoke about how he came up with stuff. He hadn’t become enslaved to a Mac, and has never really made use of a computer part of his work at all. He made stuff with his hands, pushed around typeset galleys, and experimented with what could be done on or off press. He played with the materials at hand, and tried some things just to see if it could be done. A cruddy budget could be an opportunity to see how interesting a picture could be made with photocopies and white-out. If a retro-style wood-type poster was needed, why not just have an authentic old poster shop set the type? If a burnt edge was needed for the design, why worry about creating an illusion when it’s simpler to singe the stack of press sheets? This is what real “thinking outside the box” was about before that became such a terrible cliché. And behind all this was a sharp wit, a really solid sense of typographic texture and form, and an understanding of craftsmanship needed by the designer, the printer, the typesetter, and anyone involved. It was so damn refreshing. It was exhilirating to see that there really could be a place in design for all the other things I loved and was learning: drawing, printmaking, photography, painting, whatever. It made me realize that design could be what I made of it. It could be personal and expressive and still work for someone else. It could be tactile and physical and textural, not just a flat abstraction or a printout.

I raced home that night with my head overflowing with ideas and inspiration. Nothing specific, but just these flashes of other ways to try things I’d been doing all along. I took out a couple of huge pieces of paper and feverishly scrawled all the ways I could think of to make images or to set type or make marks on paper or deal with paper’s third dimension. It sounds corny, yeah, but that single brainstorming session opened the floodgates for me. I wound up redoing all the projects I’d worked on that semester, starting most of them over from scratch and doing about a million times better. I got the same grades I would have otherwise, probably, but that wasn’t the point. I realized how to do work that I was excited about, that I was proud of.

With a few lapses in conviction over the years, those lessons have stayed with me, really playing a huge part in making me the designer — the artist, if you can generalize like that — that I am today. This is not to say that I do work that looks like Art Chantry’s. Far from it. I’ve worked out a lot of my own visual and conceptual and philosophical ideas over the years, and seem to have arrived at an approach that is certainly my own, little seen as it may be these days. (I might also point out that this is the same approach that led me to give up on working as a designer for the time being, freeing me to think of design as my medium of choice for personal work, not just a job I happen to like.) No, I learned how to incorporate play and handicraft and integrity into my work. I learned that slick or flashy is not always good, and that new solutions can come from old tricks, as long as you maintain a fresh perspective. I know, that’s a lot of ethereal-sounding hoo-hah, but it’s true. Damnit!

Thanks, Art. You rock.

So Many Choices

Ah, New York in the summer — so much to do, and so little time to do it. For instance, I’d really been looking foward to catching a free show by Bebel Gilberto at Summerstage, but then my friend Josh calls to remind me that Brave Combo is playing at the Bottom Line that same night. So as much as I love Brazilian grooviness and free shows (and I’m already mad that I missed the Basement Jaxx show and the Propellerheads/Asian Dub Foundation show at Summerstage), I certainly can’t pass up one of the rare opportunities to see my favorite polka/latin band on one of their rare visits from Denton, Texas. Especially not when there’s actually someone else around now who can appreciate them with me.

More Summertime Thrills

This weekend was a roller-coaster ride. Basically lots of fun and good music and beautiful downtown hipsters and entertaining guests and thought-provoking art and stuff. More of a good thing at P.S. 1, an unbelievable final show of Kiki & Herb, glam-rock brilliance at the Hedwig movie, bumping into friends everywhere I went, and more cute guys than you could shake your stick at. Great, right? A hot time in the old town, right? So what’s had me in such a funk during all the down time, what’s had me furrowing my brow the moment I’m left on my own to catch my breath? Well, it’s been the nature of a lot of the good stuff, frankly. Namely, being reminded of what I lack — someone local to make me feel and warm and fuzzy inside, someone to play my better half when I go out and do all this kinda stuff, someone to bust a groove with in a richer way than “just friends” can offer.

At P.S. 1, for instance, there were dozens and dozens of what I would consider my target demographic: the exact type of tiny, scruffy, clever-looking hipster types that I prefer. Thing is, I didn’t seem to turn any heads, especially not in the midst of such a comely crowd. There was also a wonderful visit from someone pretty swell who reminded me of something I took for granted back when I had my golden opportunity.

So I want a boyfriend. Big deal. Could I have anything more cliché to whine about? I tell ya, though, I’m actually pretty grateful I can narrow down my demons to just this for the time being. It’s refreshing to feel like the issues troubling me most these days are the ones that they write pop songs about, because it’s more fun to wallow that way.

Bleah. Anyway, here are some scenes from the good moments…

Warming Up for Summer

My official recommendation for the weekend is to get your ass over to P.S. 1 this saturday afternoon for the kickoff to their 2001 summer Warm Up series. Those funk-loving Venezuelan cuties Los Amigos Invisibles are gonna be playing, and there’s always a bevy of good DJs and cute arty types. In case you miss this week, there’ll also be some prime booty-shaking opportunities that saturday after when Basement Jaxx and the Viva Brazil Dancers do their bit at Central Park summerstage. For all my griping about the heat and the humidity, I admit in my better moments that NY-Fuckin’-C can be a great place to spend the summer.