Category: ultracultural

The Minefield of Aggressive Language (Part 1)

Subject: Re: AN OPEN LETTER
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 09:44:32 -0400
From: Daniel Rhatigan <Sparky@inch.com>
Newsgroups: alt.zines

Shantia wrote:

> and faggy is not an insult.

Uh-oh, we’re digging deeper into that thorny “use of language” issue
again.

I find it pretty hard not to find “faggy” an insult here. (“…quoting faggy bands like the Flaming Lips.”) The defamatory sense of the word is pretty clear. And the defamatory point of the word is to malign someone or something by implying it has the quality of what is perceived as standard gay characteristics.

That’s not an insult? If the point is to say that the Flaming Lips are admitted homosexuals and no one cares about it anyway, it’s still a callous way to put it, considering that all the taunting that’s made use “fag” and its derivatives over the years. If the point really is to say that the Flaming Lips aren’t that good, then the insult to us fags seems pretty clear. The intent behind the word always means something. And that’s why people need to be responsible for their use of language.

And I don’t mean “responsible” to be steering clear of offensive or impolite words. “Responsible” means use your language carefully, and say what you really mean. Or people might think you mean what you are only saying. Swear like a sailor! Push people’s buttons! But make sure you know what you’re doing, and do it for a reason.

There are a couple of zines out there like “Teen Fag” and “Single Faggot” that are using the words with great care. They’re trying to push some buttons, and throw the word back at the public that might otherwise use it as an insult. that’s pushing some artistic boundaries. Just tossing the word “fag” around liberally by somebody who’s not thinking about the implications isn’t breaking any new ground, it’s just crossing over the same tired ground.

Same deal with this ongoing debate about rascism. Careless use of the word “nigger” isn’t automatically pushing artistic boundaries just because someone has the right to use it. Sure someone has the right use it, but also the responsibility to face criticism for it. I don’t think the post that started all this hoopla used it any way that was going to make people question their own position on rascism. Not do I think it was meant to spark a healthy debate on the subject. It was just thoughtless. And hence insulting to anyone who ever got called a nigger and had a reason to get pissed off about it.

Just like “faggy” is an insult to anyone who ever got called a fag and knew that it wasn’t meant as a compliment.

So even if I am a man-lovin’, limp-wristed, lisping, cocksucking, buttfucking, gerbil-chasing, popper-snorting, disco-dancing, pink-wearing nancyboy, but — and I quote Joe Jackson — “don’t call me a faggot, not unless you are a friend.”

Dan

Checklist

Media junkie that I am, I naturally checked out a lot of stuff while I was in L.A. In the interest of passing on useful information, here are brief reviews of movies, music, and zines that came my way during my vacation. If you’re one of those people who reads reviews to be up-to-the-minute, move along. These will all be hopelessly out of date by the time you read them.

Continue reading “Checklist”

An Entertainment Bonanza

Me and Mary and ElayneI don’t know if it’s possible to really explain Marty and Elayne. At least, I don’t think anyone could express exactly what it’s like to see them, to hear them.

Marty and Elayne are a husband-and-wife lounge act who perform nightly at a Los Angeles restaurant/lounge called the Dresden. This place is the toniest. It’s all brown velour walls and furniture and gold light fixtures. Circular booths and small tables surround a baby grand piano ringed with a counter and chairs.

Elayne sits at the piano with a pile of sheet music and a couple of extra Casiotone keyboards. Next to her is Marty and his stand-up bass, with a drum kit on the side just in case. Marty is the stone-faced protector of Elayne, the ethereal artist who lives through the music she plays. It sweeps her away, and Marty makes sure everyone respects that. Together, as they’ve done for the last twenty years, they wail out popular favorites and old standards. They don’t just perform simple smarmy covers, though. Every song is transformed into something unique, something unbelievable, something bordering on the incomprehensible.

Without fail, they start every song in a simple way, with either Marty singing in his pitch-for-pitch Sinatra voice, or Elayne in her own jazzy, high-frequency way. After a verse and a chorus, though, the fun begins. Elayne scats. She scats like a cat in heat. She scats in song and plays improvised, otherwordly riffs on the piano. Marty keeps the beat and keeps it strong, plucking or pounding away a steady rhythm that moves Elayne along like a runaway roller coaster. The overall effect seems pretty cheesy, but there’s something about it — something way beyond the humor and the impossible.

You see, these guys have passion for what they’re doing. They’re serious and it shows. If they were just going along in a happy state of shtick, I don’t think it would work. It would be too over the top. This is the real thing, and it makes all the difference. Their enthusiasm is infectious. Of course, I saw people in the room who were watching them with a superior, Lettermanesque shit-eating grin, but most everyone, the people who looked like they kept coming back, was having fun: they all really appreciated Marty and Elayne in a goofy way. Dresden is by no means a cheap gin joint. There’s no cover, but people wouldn’t pay those drink prices if the show wasn’t worth it.

Marty and Elayne perform a huge selection of tunes, mostly on request, like
“Girl from Ipanema,” “Staying Alive,” “Fever,” “Mack the Knife,” “Muskrat Love” and other crowd-pleasers. The most amazing number I heard of them all, by far, was “Light My Fire.” This transcended mere performance. I think it transcended mere music. With Elayne taking the vocal reins and the keyboards, and Marty on the drums, these two wailed away in a frenzy I couldn’t have ever expected. I haven’t seen musicians swept away like that in a looooong time. All hail Marty and Elayne, keeping the sanctity of the lounge alive!

alt.youth.media

Ooze title

monitorOoze bites the hand that feeds it! Ooze came one step closer to its formidable goal of total media domination this past fall when it was included in an exhibit called alt.youth.media at New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art. Could this really be a sign of recognition by the digerati and the art-world elite or just another hoodwink?

Trusty pal Mark and I were deputized as East Coast Correspondents and dispatched by Ooze International Headquarters to attend their prestigious art opening in New York’s infamous Soho. Getting our lazy asses there involved a flurry of e-mail and much FedExing of tickets, info, and promotional Ooze T-shirts (buy yours today, or suffer the humiliation of going without).

The entire block of Broadway in front of the museum (a misnomer at best: the space isn’t much bigger than the sweatshop loft Mark and I call home) was bustling with “alt.youths” as far as the eye could see. Yessirree bub, it looked like someone was lumping the malcontents at Ooze in with lots and lots of teenagers who took punk rock and hipster threads VERY seriously. It felt a lot like going to a high school art club meeting.

Showing skinFeeling sufficiently smug, Mark and I donned our Ooze shirts, got the disposable camera ready, and elbowed through the pubescent crowd at the door. It took a little bit of doe-eyed doubletalk to get our friend, world-famous wine critic Tom Maresca, inside with us since the invite was not so much an announcement as much as a means of Gestapo-like crowd control. Eventually, we were allowed to enter, squeeze past the gift counter, and plunge into the midst of this hullabaloo of teen self-expression. (“I wasn’t expecting this to be such a scene!” said the ever succinct editor of exhibit-sponsor Metrobeat.)

Mark and Dan
My first observation: damn loud and damn crowded. I tried to start slow, so I stopped to look at the blown-up photos of kids in their rooms and read the pithy, Wired-esque blurbs about the exhibit’s aim to showcase the work of a generation thoroughly schooled in media blah blah blah blah blah. I slapped some of my own stickers up over the tags and other stickers covering the whole wall and got on with it.

The inside of the exhibit was a lot like craft day show-and-tell at the average summer camp. Half the room was devoted to zines pinned up on the wall and strewn across a bunch of counters. A nicely equipped “Do It Yourself” area sat in another corner where they encouraged people to play with copiers, rubber stamps, markers, glue sticks, and old magazines and make their very own zines right there on the spot! You only needed to read through the stuff other people had done for about ten minutes to be reminded that some people don’t really lighten up until they grow up a little. I haven’t seen so much gratuitous, angst-ridden manifestos since . . . well . . . since I was about sixteen. Naturally, the gents and I felt compelled to dive into the fray and produce our own punky, subversive, politically-charged zine right their on the spot so we wouldn’t be denied our own shot at uninhibited self-expression! Let’s just say that the long-awaited third issue of Rumpus Room is a little skimpy, but it’s a blistering satire of other zines, and it’s now in the collection of a museum in a major East Coast city. Or at least in its prestigious dumpster.

I had to search pretty hard through the amateur video area and the music sampling studio before I finally found the terminals for the big multimedia section in the back. Well, the verdict was in: The Web may be Big Business in the press, but the alt.youth.artworld thought it only rated two tiny monitors in a far, shadowy corner. Each terminal “featured” about 20 websites, so I felt Ooze needed a break. We hoarded the computer from time to time and forced innocent strangers to watch Ooze on screen while Mark and I took pictures of each other as a cheap publicity stunt.

Free drinksAs soon as we finished the free fancy sodas (no wine at an art opening?!) and tired of hob-nobbing with the teen zine scenesters, we beat a hasty retreat. Those t-shirts definitely work, though: we got funny looks all night long from people who couldn’t quite decide if the baby with the fork in its head was valid self-expression of a just a joke in poor taste. Score one for our side.

[Originally published in September 1996 for Ooze.]