defiant petunia

Music: Lehrer News Hour

I captured this image today (click for a bigger version) as I returned home from work---or rather, I came home, was shocked by seeing a flower, got my camera and returned to immortalize it in pixels---because of what Jung termed "synchronicity." I am not much of a Jungian, so I do not believe in the validity of synchronicity, but I do believe that psychically we make the connections all the time, and that these connections are meaningful in ways that have material effects. This bloom (actually, there are two) emerged from the petunia after a week-long deep freeze. I haven't read up on petunias, but it seems to me this plant should have died with the 20-degree temps and ice-storm drama of last week. Regardless, I'm inspired by the petunia!

The homology: this morning my father called to report that my grandfather has left us. He is still physically alive, but because his heart has given out, all his organs have failed and there is significant brain-damage---so much so that the doctors are 90% sure he is not coming back. The Gunns met to decide what to do yesterday, and they decided to take him off of life support. My father said that they expected him to go quickly, but apparently he is hanging on. He will not come to consciousness ever again. We wait. What troubles me the most is that the family has decided not to have a memorial or service. My father called to insist that I not come home. It was a hard conversation.

It bothers me that there is no symbolic gathering to mourn him. The rationale is that "Papa" was strident about not wanting one, but dammit, it's not for him; it's about him, for us. It's for my father. But it's not my decision and I need to respect that.

You know, I don't want to be cliché and am not really looking for shout-outs by posting this, I just feel it would be ok (it's my blog, and I'll cry if I want to!), and I'm not sure there's a point to it all except that the point is superficial but nevertheless deeply felt. It's just an everyday thing, seeing this flower and relating it to the situation (Papa hanging on---as stubbornly as he was in life, but always with laughter). Those kinds of connections, however maudlin one might label it, are important to me.

Bleh: it's been one of those days.

sea men

Music: Labradford: Mi Media Naranja (1997)

Not too long after I recommended that junior scholars should not, in general, review books, I agreed to review one. I was asked to review Davin Allen Grindstaff's Rhetorical Secrets: Mapping Gay Identity and Queer Resistance in Contemporary America for Rhetoric & Public Affairs, the most culturally conservative journal in my field. I originally declined, citing a litany of previous promised deadlines. I was told, however, that they believed I was really the right guy to review this book and, having read it twice now, I think I know why (aside from the conceptual focus on "secrets"): this is a performative text that many of the more traditionally inclined rhetoricians may not know what to do with. At least that's what I'm telling myself, as I like to think of myself as open to unusual texts!

The challenge of reviewing this tome is that I do get it, but I'm just not sure how to impart that the book is both an argument and a peformance itself, that the author is trying to perform his argument, and often in strong, homoerotic, highly sexual narratives. [LATER EDIT: E! cautioned that people have a strong distaste for reviews in which the reviewer attempts to prove "she gets it"--they come off as condescending. So, I am taking much care NOT to do this]. Some of the conservative (er, homophobic) readers would hate it. So how do I (a) give a positive review that mirrors, in some way, its clever approach to advocating for public desiring; but (b) do my job of identifying who would and would not appreciate the book. I mean, book reviews are supposed to generate the right audience for a book. And then I have another mission of (c) convincing those who would originally dismiss the book because of its subject not to do so, but to look deeper.

My solution was to begin with the cum-shot. My read of Grindstaff's book is that it performs jouissance, and I think the "shock" of the exemplar gets at the public/private issues that ground the book. It is also pleasurable for me to, you know, be the first explicitly figural money shot in a conservative journal. I do not want to exempt my desire from the review either---I want to play with the author too. One wonders, however, about the politics of journals versus books: Grindstaff writes of explicitly sexual stuff in his book, but there is something about a book that makes it "more ok" than in journal articles, or at least this is my perception. So here is a teaser preview of the review; stay tuned for the full version late this semester or this summer (and probably edited, if not outright censored):

One of the many pleasures of reading Davin Allen Grindstaff's study---or I should say, one of the ways in which the reader is suspended between an erotics of pleasure and pain---is the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which the author displaces the cum-shot to the off-screen of the book’s preconscious. At the literal and figurative center of Rhetorical Secrets: Mapping Gay Identity and Queer Resistance in Contemporary America, Grindstaff argues for an "ethic of fluidity" premised on "semen's ability to function as synecdoche for male subjectivity," but in a way that embraces its connotations of danger and contagion as an emblem of possibility (85; also see 131-132). Inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, Grindstaff writes that since antiquity semen has been yoked to male subjectivity in ways that implicate a troubling tendency toward (ideational) solidity and containment as a way to stabilize---or better, dam-up---male identity, a tendency that is no more obvious than in filmic pornography: either solo or with a partner, the male "pulls out" to spurt or squirt his "junk" or "load" deliriously into the air or---as is more frequently common---onto the face of a motionless yet ravenously passive lover. Although it is unclear if the cum-shot has since become a common, private practice in the everyday bedroom, most critics agree that "visible ejaculation" was originally a pornographic, filmic innovation "to 'prove' that the sex is 'real'" and provide a sense of closure to a given scene. Insofar as the meaning of the cum-shot for spectators remains contested, however, Grindstaff's argument about the synecdochic virility of the figure of semen would resist the cum-shot as a "closure" or the solipsistic scene of male self-identification (e.g., "I am cuming!") in favor of exposing the paradoxical, open, and relational work of subjectivication betokened by ejaculate as a synecdochic figure of both cathexis and elusive mutability (e.g., "every-body, my body, your body, our body, cums!"). In other words, in Rhetorical Secrets Grindstaff is careful to describe the ways in which the figure of semen both rhetorically establishes and upends masculine subjectivity at the bodily and embodied scenes of enjoyment: "The body is more than merely the residence of one's sexual identity," Grindstaff concludes his study, it "is also a collective entity, responsive and responsible to others." Signaling a Deleuzian allegiance, Grindstaff advocates a public "desiring" of multiplicity and both/and, which is the queer community's "most powerful form of resistance" and the better route for cuming together as a queer body politic (156).

I've opened this review deliberately with the cum-shot because the shock it will invite in some readers helps to underscore the publicity of pleasure Rhetorical Secrets advocates as well as the liminal, performative place Grindstaff would seduce readers to go. Although male ejaculate is the topic chapter four alone, those who are easily offended by the "public" discussion of presumably "private" events may not take pleasure in Grindstaff's study, and in particular, the deliciously erotic, first person narratives of the author's intercourse with Melville's Billy Budd (42-55); such readers may be repulsed by the arousing ways in which Grandstaff describes how a muscle-bound stud in a phone sex advertisement "fucks me with his eyes" (119-123), or turned-off by the (very) close reading of Allan Gurganus's yearning yarn of a bloody and polymorphous "hooking" ho-down (139-148). Yet to ignore the monograph because of these hard-core hermeneutic hook(ing)-ups would be a mistake, for the significance of Rhetorical Secrets is precisely its willingness to publicize the heterosexist assumptions of propriety that render gay male subjectivity a "performative contradiction" in a way that is enjoyable for the queer and "straight" alike. In other words, Grindstaff's book is not only for those interested in learning about the rhetorical construction of gay male identity. Rhetorical Secrets also endeavors to explain how that identity is discursively produced by and among those who both deny and promote homophilia. Everyone's desiring is implicated the project of gay male identity, and Grindstaff achieves this insight not only argumentatively, but in the way the text is "performed" itself: after a many paged, highly theoretical discussions, sometimes the reader suddenly finds him- or herself in bed with Grindstaff as he slides to first person descriptions of his thoughts and feelings about bodies in homoerotic encounter. This said, in addition to detailing the basic argument of the book, it is important to foreground the author's explicit commitment to the performative dimension of identity and politics and the way in which the book issues both desirous invitation and erotic repulse as techniques of self-evidence.

Notes

[i] Joseph W. Slade, "Flesh Need Not Be Mute: The Pornographic Videos of John Leslie." Wide Angle 19 (1997): 129.

[ii] See Richard Dyer, "Gay Male Porn," Jump Cut 30 (1985): 227-229; and Cindy Patton, "Hegemony and Orgasm-Or, the Instability of Heterosexual Pornography," Screen 30 (1989): 100-112.

blogcast the first

Music: American Idol and the 2007 State of the Union Address

As American Idol wraps up I'm preparing to watch Bushie II's annual address. It occurred to me I might do a kind of stream-of-consciousness blogging as I watched and listened to Bushie II, let's call it a blogcast. I'm sure the term means something else to someone else online, but that's what I’m going to call this: a blogcast. Here are the rules: 1. I will type exactly what comes into my head as I listen (as quickly as I can—I'll probably not be able to write it all down); I am only allowed to edit with a spellcheck; 3. I must post my blogcast within fifteen minutes of the end of the speech (so as to give myself time to reflect, but to avoid being "spinned" by the after-speech chatter). This should be fun!

T-minus 6 minutes: I'm thinking I should have listed beforehand the generic norms of State of the Union addresses (which are well known among my ilk, the Rhetoricanians). Oh, here we go.

There's Laura, nice dress. At Randall's I was in the forever long line—you know, I get in the freakin' slow one---and the cover story for a tabloid was that Bush walked out on Laura in the "worst fight of their marriage." She looks pretty happy though.

Cider is too hot. It doesn't need to be boiling to dissolve the packet. Why are the justices always at this thing? Cider still too hot; I can't tell it's sugar free, though, so that's good.

Rick sent that photo of Bill Clinton's head on Hilary's body today. Man, that was creepy. Lots of red dresses tonight. What's with the red dresses? Red ties too. Condi is a twit (ok, that's not what I’m really thinking, but some censoring is necessary). Campbell Brown is a commentator now? Jeeze: I thought she only did soft pieces on the weekend. I like her voice—it's very confident and smart. Why do they put Katie Couric on the nightly news? She does not appear as smart to me. But better than Rather---I know he was a Texas boy and all, but what an ass.

Room full of presidential wanna-bes. Brown says they will be cautious with their eyebrows because any furtive shows will be "on Youtube forever." Hugh. That's interesting to think about: easy access gaff capturing. Oh my god: that barbaric yawp of what's-his-face, chairman of the DNC, Dean. Right. Someone was telling me McCain will not be the next president because he will land a gaff as he has consistently done in previous runs that gets him beat up. But Bush is a veritable gaff-a-ram and looks like Alfred E. Newman, so . . . . Maybe McCain is just not impotent enough?

Bill Livingwood announces Bush—it would be so kick ass to have that guy do my answering machine message. Bush is wearing a light blue tie. Ah-ha: contrite, indeed. It's not red, which is telling. This is going to be a very interesting rhetorical gesture. I expect he will do something unexpected. Oh my god: my grandfather kind of looks like Bush after he dropped all that weight. Eek. NBC is good, but I should try Fox's coverage just to look at the framing. I bet they are getting relentless shots of Laura and her red dress.

Oooh, there's Palosi---not wearing red, but a sedate "sea foam" (I learned that color name from a commercial). Clothing signifiers are important. "Ready to go?" he asked. "Let's do it!" She calls to order, five knocks.

His mouth looks like a tiny cave. Oooh, shout-out to "Madam Speaker!" Uproarious. A gracious gesture, and comes off as sincere. Good move.

Man his speechwriters and coaches have really worked Bush over since the first presidency. Gerson was on television this morning talking about the challenges of this speech. Why did they cut Gerson (or why did he leave)? The speeches are not as good, but I suppose more godless, which is good. What is his lapel pin? Is that . . . American flag. I'm a bad listener? I am more interest in the bling than what's coming out of his mouth (cause it's empty!). "Work to be done," "responsibility," "crossing the aisle." So he opens with a "w00t, you go girl" and then "we gots ta werk tagetha!"

Ok, now were into "it's the economy stupid" stuff: balancing the budget is out of his mouth first. Yay! Everyone's happy. And we can do so without taxes? Boo. And monkeys will fly out of my butt. His little mouth kind of reminds me of a butt—except when he licks his lips. Then it reminds me of a mouth. Good hand gestures. His ears are kind of Vulcanesque. Do my students critique my looks like this? Hopefully my lectures are more interesting. It's hard to make them love Isocrates, but I think my comparison of Helen of Troy and Paris to Jessica Beal and Clooney got them thinking. Can Ted Kennedy's face get any redder? It looks like a festering pimple.

Fixing Medicare and Medicaid. Do I pay that? I couldn't find it on my pay stub. Social security was there but I didn't see Medicare.

Oh shit, here's a hot button: "No child left behind." He's calling it a success? WTF? We're staring to get the product of no child left behind in college now. They can take tests! But write? Think critically? Appreciate the arts? Math and science skills--please, Congress, don't reauthorize this measure!

Cheney has a little lapel pin too---what is it? A flag. Reform for health insurance, baloney. Oooh, bright green tie: who is that guy? Cheney does sort of resemble Jabba the Hut. Maybe he thinks Pelosi is chained to him. Watching the back of Bush's head must be akin to eating those little squid things Jabba eats. Grants grants grants. Blah blah blah. Expand health savings accounts. Hey! I have one of those. I don't see any discernable benefit, however. It's supposed to be a tax shelter, but I think I have to spend more to see a difference. Therapist charges $300 a session. Shit. I couldn't believe that when I saw it (I get whacked with $40). You know, I should think about getting into that gig. Though I think if I ever said "Lacan" aloud I'd be banished from the APA or something. Didn't his patients have a high incident of suicide?

Securing the boarders, hoo-hah. Temporary worker program. Hmm. Will help us "track" them in our relentless search for terrorists. Keeps 'em legal, helps us weed out the evildoers. Melting pot, assimilation. Ooooohhh: miscegenation trope alert! Quick, get your Charles Sumner Playbook! Well, immigration reform is good---maybe all those rallies last year made a difference? At least on the "public screen" as DeLuca and Peeples put it.

Ooh, the secretary of energy looks like a Boston Baked Bean. Red red red! What's up with the red dresses and red faces (is my TV not adjusted?). Red noses. He wants new energy strategies. His eyebrows got excited with the mention of "wood chips."

Isn't it great Rick Santorum is not to be seen!

More on cars and gas and stuff, reducing dependence . . . oh, more calls for more drilling. My friend Meredith is a lawyer for a drill company. She says it's all my fault for encouraging her to go to law school. I said ACLU, not oil drilling companies. Her father is the CEO, though, so I have to give her some slack. And this IS Texas, after all. Water sip. Cheney sips too. Like the repetition panel: we all drink at once. Supreme Court justices have their hands folded in their lap. Do they ever get up to applaud? I cannot see. They probably do not. Ah, I see now. They sit there, seemingly dispassionately.

Uh-oh, switch to terrorists. Guarding the homeland (must we use that term? it's so . . . Nazi!). "To win the war on terror, we must take the fight to the enemy." Uh-oh. Is he going to drop the "Iran" bomb? "The enemy knows the days of comfortable sanctuary . . . are long over." Now he's listing accomplishments of anti-terrorist activity, uncovering plots . . . we owe thanks for those who dedicate their lives to finding the terrorists and stopping them. "Shoreless ambitions of the enemy," we're constantly at war, he says. Well, it's a reassertion of the state of exception. The room is quite as Bushie is giving a lengthy description of "the terrorists." They want to spread their "totalitarian ideology." He's moved on to discuss Shia and Sunni extremists . . . "wicked purposes," they want to kill Americans.

". . . it remains the policy of this government . . . to find these enemies and protect the American people," via any means necessary. Aye, my hand is getting tired. Condoleezza looks like an alien. She needs some sleep or something. Well, I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, it sounds like a build up: all this chat about evil and wicked "enemies" coming to kill us. So, is there a specific policy proposal coming? Now it's the greatness of Afghanistan and Iraq and their democratic reforms. Hoo-hah. Oh, I see: the enemies are adjusting their strategies as a result of these successes. Ok, so what you gonna do? Is this the rationale for "the surge?"

Pelosi is blinking way too much. She must be upset.

Cheney doesn't blink at all. Perhaps is black and soulless, unfeeling heart.

Yeah, he was building up for the Surge. Here comes the case: clearing and securing neighborhoods, the city, and taking out the "roaming death squads." The language sounds like a Hollywood script: roaming death squad. Why don't they pull in Willie to write them an "Old Shoe" song?

An odd thing: if you focus on Bush, Pelosi begins to resemble (out of focus) Laura, it's like Laura up there supporting him. This is odd---some preconscious appeal . . . she should be making bad faces, you know, for subliminal effect. What if Laura and Georgie are fighting? The political unconscious is at work there: of course they are, Laura is that American Public that supported this Bozo. The figure of Laura is very important to the imaginary of this presidency (duh, of course), but especially to this speech. I wonder if this is in HD? Everyone's noses look runny and red . . . pissy democratic faces around with the comment we need to succeed in Iraq.

Ok, I'm getting worn out. It's like a broken record . . over and over the same yah yah. I'm getting a headache, literally. Cider is empty. Boo. How did people do it in Lincoln's time? Didn't their butts get sore sitting on tree stumps or whatever?

Something about nuclear weapons—I missed it. I was becoming embodied to myself. Oh, it's Korea. Team America was not as funny as I thought it would be, but I liked the "America! Fuck yeah!" song, that was pretty good.

Commitment to HIV/AIDS eradication; Bush has a good record on that I recall. 1.2 Billion for malaria. Good call. Yeah, the justices are sitting all stoic like. Makes you to go tease them, like one of those stuffy British soldiers with the funny hats.

Heroic kindness . . . oh, here comes the show and tell. This is a new innovation in State of the Unions. We started seeing it in Reagan's speeches, but Clinton really amped it up in his "town meeting" shout-outs to folks. Now it's standard in all State of the Unions. Someone up in the gallery---sitting next to Laura. At some point there's going to be a solider with his arm blown off or something.

"Baby Einstein" company . . . a shout out to an entrepreneur. Yehaw, "you too can do it!" Up with Oprah y'all! There are no structural impediments to your success! Who next? Oh, to Harlem. Nice, follow the lily-white lady with a black hero. Guy saved someone's life---he's clearly moved for the recognition. Blowing kisses and glad-handing like crazy. Oh! Here's the blown up soldier! I knew there would be one—although it's his legs. Doh---but he just stood up. Clap clap. Sorry dude, it does suck but, don't you feel a bit, er, odd at this particular State of the Union?

He's wrapping up . . here's the pitch: "state of the union is strong."

Ok, television off, pee break, a summation, then I'll post.

Hmm. So with a tinkle-time to reflect, my summation of the speech is this: (a) it wasn't terribly good, seemed even to veer into apologia territory---in tone, especially; (b) the women were really doing a lot of red, while the men's ties were much more muted, suggesting---interestingly and I think I could argue convincingly---a admission of symbolic castration; (c) Bush is thinking about his legacy, and he/his handlers were playing the race card by trotting out all those people of color (and especially in terms of the immigration reform stuff); (d) there was a palpable sense of "it's over."

As the words of our political speeches get less and less important, it would seem (initially) that image politics are more important: the dress, the lapel pins, Bush's little mouth, the Laura presence, the color red, and so on. Yet tone was important tonight, and more communicative. The tone was subdued and somewhat deferent. The imagery communicated a tone---one that elevated the feminine in respect to "power" and one that muted the masculine. Oh, it's 9:17—must post.

note to self

Music: Japan: The Other Side of Japan (1991)

Just because I have my earpods in my ears and cannot hear myself fart does not mean that others are wearing headphones or do not hear my farts at the coffee shop. One should not fart in the coffee shop.

itmfa

Music: Sigur Ros: Takk (2005)

A little more than a year ago Jenny sent me a sticker to affix to my vehicle, a fetching ITMFA logo. The logo is part of a larger, humor-driven campaign calling for an impeachment of Bushie the Second, which was (I think) initiated by Dan Savage of Savage Love fame. We have Savage to thank for one of the best contemporary neologisms of all time: "the santorum." My question today---which is always appropriate because Sundays are the days when I think about politics because of all the talk shows that are on in the morning---my question today is: do we have Savage to thank for a coming impeachment?

My bud Christopher and his girlfriend Tracy are visiting from College Station this weekend. When Christopher came down I was watching Ted Kennedy grouse about "the Surge" to what's-his-face (Russert?). Christopher said the resolution is more important than I realized. He said the talk in College Station is that the seemingly toothless Democratic resolution to oppose the surge is a set-up for a coming impeachment. "The talk" is that the Democrats want to draw on Bushie II's phallic resolve to make the case that he doesn't "listen," and then to use the prolonged failure in Iraq (including the coming atrocities) to garner "public" support for an impeachment bill. Once impeached, the president will be effectively saltpetered.

I am naturally skeptical about this talk, however, after Christopher said this everything that subsequently came out of Kennedy's mouth made much more sense. Oh, goodness: Are we headed for an impeachment? That will be so much more interesting this season than American Idol or Trading Spouses (although Marguerite is back!). I would really love me some impeachment drama for evening television. Fun! fun! fun!

another heady post

Music: Pinback: blue screen life (2001)Per the request of Debbalicious, this post is mostly to get rid of the old man's rotting face photo two posts ago. While I'm at it, though, I want to share that this morning I awoke to a mucus fiesta in my head! I was a bone-i-fied blockhead, like, I had this vision of thought that the other side of my face was one big, undifferentiated slab of booger yuckiness.

I was a blockhead yesterday too, and last night I had a toddy before I went to bed (that is, a shot of whiskey, a shot of lemon juice, and a tablespoon--ok, two tablespoons--of honey, topped off with piping hot water). This depressed me because this "remedy" is high in carbs and I started a low carb diet to lose last semester's six pounds on Monday (and I was doing so good!). Stupid cold. Anyway, I mention the toddy because it works! Alas, I could not have a toddy this morning as that would not be good for the 9:00 a.m. meeting (two more meetings to go, too).

So, as the office execs were listening to me hack and snort and blow this morning, they recommended Mucinex. Said it worked wonders. Said the stuff was magical. On the way home for lunch (and a load of laundry--guests arrive tonight) I picked up some Mucinex. It was twelve freakin' dollars! I kept looking for that New Jersey working class booger cartoon on the carton, but the Mucinex box doesn’t have that guy. Once I stopped looking for the working class booger (WCB) I found the box.

I'm now back in the office in preparation for meeting number two. Oh my god: the Mucinex works great! I'm clear, not runny! No cough. It's expensive, but that stuff is AMAZING! Joshie Juice endorses the Mucinex. It de-solidfies his juices. Yup.

american grotesque

Music: American Idol

The university has decided to hold class tomorrow---to my surprise. I predicted they would at least open at noon because all the elevated fly-overs are now closed (I'll have to take an alternate route to school tomorrow). But they were reporting that the city was out of de-icer? They're opening at 10:00 a.m., which means my 11:00 a.m. class will meet. I'm now scrambling to put together my outline for the class (I'm trying powerpoint for the first time . . . deity help me).

As I work on this task I'm listening to the Fox hit American Idol, which, at this point, is a media phenomenon that cannot be ignored. As I learned reading Variety, all the other networks literally throw up their hands when scheduling against the show, which is currently running four hours a week on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. The competing networks consider the Fox hit somewhat of a fluke, while Fox uses the show to launch others (the drama House was catapulted after it was scheduled following Idol). This is the 6th season.

Why the heck has this show lasted so long? First, I think it is because you can do all manner of things while you watch it. It moves very slow, and everything that happens is mostly predictable. You can go pee and nothing significant has transpired. Second, there is the ruthless, sardonic framing of freaks, geeks, misfits, and idiots that pretty much is the formula for the first part of the season. A young man with a touch of that Trekkie quality (he holds his waist nervously), with red hear, bulging blue eyes, and bad teeth confidently but cluelessly massacred some boy band song. They let him sing for a full three minutes because it was so terrible, and also because the young man was visibly unaware of how bad his singing was: "What the bloody hell was that?" says Simon. Simon is visibly angry. There is an awkward pause. A confident voice returns: "That was me." Another long pause. The young man then gives in. "Was that not good enough?" The judges proceed to tell the man he is terrible.

Now, the show tends to revolve around the fact that Simon is a "mean judge" and says harsh, terrible things. He does, actually (he said to one guy tonight he looked like a creature from the jungle with "big eyes"—he implied bug-eyed natives, but fortunately the young man went for the more innocent, "he said I looked like a monkey"). But what is really sardonic are the shots and the jump-cuts that elevate Simon's direct cruelty to a kind if indirect severity. After the young man above leaves the room, Ryan Seacrest approaches him and asks how it went. The young man replied not very well, and this was all he had to say. Seacrest stares at him, he stares back, and they just keep shooting in a prolonged scene of clueless humiliation. The sheer length of the shot is uncomfortable, then a jump cut to a head shot of the young man speaking definitely, then back to the stare contest.

For the most part tonight's program was cruel, although not in ways that I had expected. Instead of poking fun at their singing, all sorts of things are insinuated about intelligence, looks, class, fashion sensibility, gait---and anyone that is in some way physically awkward (there was, for example, a woman who had the appearance of Down Syndrome) will be featured. American Idol seems, in other words, to function by identifying its own "terrorists" against which to define the normalcy of the televisual audience.

As a fan of Jerry Springer and court television shows, I very much understand the enjoyable logic behind of negative definition. I watched in horror as an obviously mentally handicapped individual was ballyhooed as a freak (Paula seems to swoop in at the end to recover and provide some modicum of recognition/love). What seems missing in Idol is something like informed consent: a lot of the folks who are made fun of do not seem aware that they will soon become objects of derision. One might argue that because the show is in its fifth season, "they know what they are getting into." But it's clear some of these folks are incapable of discerning the social cues—incapable of understanding how they are being humiliated. Does humiliation require self-awareness?

Regardless, because the producers prey on ignorance, American Idol is a mean show.

hegel undead, or, critical rot

Music: The For Carnation: Fight Songs (1995)

Last Friday a very engaging graduate student from the Radio, Television, and Film program dropped by to talk about zombies. He is writing a thesis on Night of the Living Dead that employs Fredric Jameson's protocol in The Political Unconscious: in the horizon of chapter one he will conduct a close, narrative analysis of the film itself; in chapter two, his horizon will be historical context, and in particular, reading the figure of the zombie up against a cultural imaginary of concentration camp imagery; and he'll nest the third horizon in chapter three—but hasn't determined what that will be (cart before the horse issue, you know). He doesn’t need me on a committee or anything, he simply wanted to discuss zombies with someone who gave a shit. It was a fun discussion.

One of the things I mentioned was that in writing about zombies, we need to justify the figure as a privileged "monster" of our time: why is the zombie more important than the vampire? Is there a resurgence in zombies? My friend Laura might argue, for example, that the cyborg and/or virus are the monstrous figures of our time, not the zombie. So I recommended Jodi Dean's most excellent Aliens in America as a good example of how one might justify a cultural figure for organizing a study. I also thought of Jean Comaroff's stuff on the coincidence between industrialization and the rise of the zombie figure in South Africa.

I also shared with him my argument for the importance of zombies, and it goes a little something like this: like many monsters in the popular imaginary, zombies are figures of social critique. Their purchase, however, is the consistently conscious way in which zombie fantasy marks itself as a critique. In the early days of zombie film (say, 1920s-1940s) zombies critiqued capitalism by amplifying it's threat to the nuclear family and implicating fascism as the terminus of instrumentality (a point that coincides with the work of the Frankfurt School during the same period). In the so-called "Golden Age" of zombie film, and largely as a result of George Romero's innovations in the genre, zombies critiqued gender, race, and class issues. Today, zombie films continue to critique all these things (most pointedly race and class in Romero's Land of the Dead, the latest undead flick to make a splash).

Of course, any critique of zombie films will have to contend with the doubling of ideological labor: with regards to the notion of "cynical reason," arguably zombie films, by critiquing the postmodern scene, are actually doing the work of interpellation. This will be my and Shaun's point with the film 28 Days Later, which is careful to show the close relation between paternal sex right (Pateman's notion) and the institution of marriage, which would seem to be an extension of the military order. This "critique" works to obscure the neo-primitivism of the film (that is, the British fascination with black women as fetishized sex objects, and by extension, imperialism) that surfaces in the way the female lead is cast. And worse, after the critique is actually made, the film ends by unraveling it: the nuclear family is reunited at the end, man's centrality in that order established (the telling dialogue is a crack made about a "cock," which we learn as the camera widens refers to a chicken . . . yeah, right).

Talking with the student, however, it occurred to me that perhaps the purchase of the zombie is that the figure represents the key move of any critical gesture, and one premised on a fundamentally Hegelian understanding of self-consciousness: does not critical theory presume a retrojected pre-given subject? That is to say, to theorize subjectivity and its relation to ideology, the symbolic, and so on, it seems that---for reasons demanded by informal logic at the very least---one must posit a priority in the way that Lacan suggests one must posit a mythic plenitude in his notorious graph of desire. Before interpellation or subjectification, there is a "mass of the pre-text, namely, the reality that is imagined in the ethological schema of the return to need." Zombies represent the underside (that is, the horror, as opposed the presumed joy we tend to retroject) of this fluxus, the counterpart to the human infant. To say that rhetorical studies has some "zombie trouble" is not, then, only the one-dimensional Burke-ificaiton of ideology critique sans the unconscious, nor is it reducible to the fear of determinism. Rather, the zombie trouble of rhetorical studies in some sense is the unwillingness to admit of the necessity of a mythical gestures in the act of critique, that I must at some level posit the unreal in order to make claims about "the real" (in the everyday sense). Zombies are horrifying because they are both gross and, at some level, testify to the nothing that is pre-interpellated existence. We tend to assume---even in Lacanian scholarship---that the mythic plenitude of the prior, the place of the pregiven, is harmonious, blissful, and so on, when it is in point of fact just as horrible: it never existed.

Perhaps in this respect Camber Van Beethoven better diagnoses zombie trouble as both a predicament and a command: "Never Go Back."

But it's just as you feared
Never go back
If you see me sitting around
Thinking the same old thoughts over and over again
Or going back to old ways I've long ago abandoned,
Please, tell me
Never go back

austin on ice

Music: Judge Judy

Shrink: "Hello?"

Me: "Hi Dr. Strangelove, this is Josh Gunn. Did I call the right number?"

"Hi Josh, yes you did. I'm here!"

"Oh, goodness, I hear the roads are a mess."

"I can see I-35 and traffic is moving along; so I’m here if you want to come in."

"Well, I think I should probably cancel for today, you know, I live at the bottom of a series of steep hills. I lived in Minnesota for six years, so it's not that I don't know how to drive on this stuff---but I'm worried about getting hit by a local yokel, you know?"

"I understand. You're not the only one to cancel today. But if you want to come in, I'm here!"

"How were the roads? I can't believe you forged it today. Don't you live in Travis Heights?"

"Oh, I just walked to the office. It's probably not safe to drive."

"Yeah, they said there were already 200 accidents and two deaths, at its barely ten a.m. It's coming down pretty hard here in northeast. It's probably best to stay home today."

"I understand. I remember the last ice storm I had a patient, and he called. I told him I was here. And he said, 'if you're there, I'm coming,' and he came in. He got hit on the way home. I felt so bad. But if you want to come in, I'm here!"

"Ok. I'll play it by ear but, if not, in two weeks?"

"Two weeks."

"Ok then. Thanks Dr. Strangelove."

"Goodbye."

Various frozen things around the house here.

one more saturday night

Music: Jerry Garcia Band: Live (1991)

Klimt has got nutin' on us. Nutin!

for the love of invention

Music: Judge Judy

Writing this week has been difficult, and I reckon this is because I'm sort of pooped: holiday family goodness (er, drama) followed by two preps, letters of recommendation, and a revise and resubmit has simply tuckered me out! I have four or so days before the new semester and its requisite pile of shit descend, and so I thought I would hammer out a manuscript I have been envisioning for over a year now. I have been so excited to write this! I assembled all my sources, reviewed my notes, made outlines and . . . I have sat for almost three days in front of this screen and only as many paragraphs to show for it. [sigh]

Well, at least it's something. Because it creates the illusion of productivity for myself, I’m posting in what I've managed:

For the Love of Rhetoric

Plato's Phaedrus advances one of the few rhetorical theories that are explicitly premised on the promise of love. Relaxing in their loosely fitting togas under a plane-tree by the Ilissus, in the language of lovers Socrates and Phaedrus flirtatiously discuss the merits of the "true art" of discourse, eventually concluding that the more instrumental and manipulative approaches to communication taught by Sophists like Lysias are an affront to the gods. For Plato's Socrates, good persuasion speaks to the soul of the hearer by appealing to some underlying, spiritual commonality. Good rhetoric is that which attends the spiritual needs of an individual, sometimes even against what he would prefer, by appealing to memories of the divine (anamnesis).[1] As John Durham Peters observes, for "Socrates the issue is not just the matching of minds, but the coupling of desires. Eros, not transmission, would be the chief principle of communication."[2] As the critique of writing at the end of the dialogue makes plain, Plato feared that new technologies of communication would weaken the import of desiring, further alienating individuals from each other. True persuasion, understood as an act of both erotic (eros) and transcendent love (agape), promised to bridge individuals faced with the increasing "potential for distance and gaps."[3] Understood as a form of love, for Plato true or good persuasion traverses or bridges division.

Although rhetoric has been described as a form of seduction---erotic and otherwise---in the centuries since Plato advanced the relation, today there are few rhetorical theories that attempt to detail a relationship between rhetoric and love.[4] In contemporary rhetorical scholarship, the most widely read and well-known theories that might be said to link them are two fold. The first is Wayne Brockreide's suggestion that rhetors adopt the ideal of "arguers as lovers," which entails a mutual respect for one's interlocutors and a valuation of the relationship over the outcome of rhetorical encounters.[5] The second is Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin's "invitational rhetoric" paradigm, which opposes a presumed, agonistic link between patriarchy and persuasion with a feminist posture of hospitality.[6] Although both approaches share Plato's concern with sensual encounter and bridging gaps, they seem to abandon the metaphysical promise of spiritual transcendence that underlies Plato's theory.

In the decade since Foss and Griffin introduced the invitational paradigm, theories of love have become increasingly common in the theoretical humanities: beginning with 2000's All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks has written numerous books and had become one of the most visible contemporary theorists of love.[7] In her influential Witnesing: Beyond Recognition, Kelly Oliver has called for imagining "love beyond domination" and a new ethic of "response-ability."[8] Even Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, "the world-renowned authors of Empire"--who are more renowned for their celebration of the "new barbarians" and the agonistic uprising of "the multitude" than their feminist sympathies--have argued "a concept of love is just what we need to grasp the constituent power of the multitude."[9] Yet despite what appears to be a larger theoretical trend in humanities scholarship, few rhetoricians have endeavored to develop Brockereide's proposition further,[10] nor has the invitational view been elaborated beyond what many scholars see as a relatively facile and misguided posture toward agonism.[11] Are rhetoricians reluctant to take the "turn to love" that has been made in the theoretical humanities? I think so, and this essay endeavors to explain why.

More specifically, in this essay I argue that rhetoricians have not theorized love for two, interrelated reasons. First, love has been avoided in theoretical discussions because it is already the assumed dynamic of persuasion. I suggest that this is demonstrable in the widely taught concepts of identification and "consubstantiality" found the work of Kenneth Burke. The dominant idea of persuasion as the creation of "identification" over some common, shared substance is the tacit love theory of rhetorical studies. To better theorize an explicit theory of love, I argue that we must overcome the indwelling, Platonic idealism of Burkean identification in favor of a more psychoanalytic understanding of persuasion.

Second, I argue that rhetoricians have avoided theorizing love because of its close proximity to naive idealism or "kitsch" in Western culture-that to speak of love in theoretical scholarship (or at least in work that does not concern literary art or film in some way) risks being thought of as trite or "cheesy." Originally understood as artwork that is worthless, pretentious, and overly sentimental, kitsch is a German concept has gradually come to denote something that covers-over or hides an unpleasant truth.12 Insofar as the dominant fantasy of love in the West is, in fact, the impossible Platonic ideal of transcendent unification (e.g., "you complete me"), or as Jacques Lacan has put it, insofar as love is the fantasy of a nonviable sexual relationship, to invoke love in theory necessarily tempts kitsch. In this respect I suggest we have been afraid to approach love as a theoretical endeavor. It is also in this respect that criticisms of Foss and Griffin's invitational paradigm as "utopian" are akin to the cynical dismissals of gaudy Valentine's Day decorations: both are criticized for attempting to cover-over, deny, or disguise the ugly truth of human aggression and alienation. Any theorization of the relationship between love and rhetoric must consequently address love's utopian connotation or risk its immediate repudiation.

In order to explain how (a) rhetoric assumes love; and (b) how this assumption tempts kitsch, this essay proceeds in three parts. In the first part Lacan's understanding of love as a fantasy of unification is explained and then compared to Kenneth Burke's theory of persuasion as identification. Understood in relation to what Lacan terms the objet a, identification concerns a gesture toward an elusive but tantalizing "something more" in others that is reducible to the promise of transcendent love. Once the tacit connection between persuasion and love is made explicit, I then turn to an explanation of kitsch in part two. A comparison of the well-known duet by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, "Islands in the Stream," to the paradigm of invitational rhetoric shows how both are homological representatives of a Platonic idealism better described as kitsch. Finally, the third part concludes the essay by arguing a rhetoric of true love entails a rejection of kitsch and reckoning with the ontological dualism that grounds rhetorical studies.

I. On the One

II. Them Two, or, Love is Shit

III. On Them Two, Working Out, and the Love of Rhetoric

Notes

[1] Plato, Phaedrus, trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1995.
[2] John Durham Peters, Speaking Into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999), 37.
[3] Peters, Speaking, 37.
[4] See, for example, .
[5] Wayne Brockriede. "Arguers as Lovers." Philosophy and Rhetoric 5 (1972): 1-11
[6]Sonja K. Foss and Cindy L. Griffin, "Beyond Persuasion: A Proposal for an Invitational Rhetoric." Communication Monographs 62 (1995): 2-___.
[7] bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions (New York: William and Morrow, 2000); bell hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love (Harper Paperbacks, 2002); bell hooks, Salvation: Black People and Love (Harper Perennial, 2001); [8] Kelly Oliver, Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), esp. 217-224
[9] Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 351. Also see Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000); and Nicholas Brown, Imre Szeman, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, "'Subterranean Passages of Thought': Empire's Inserts." Cultural Studies 18 (2002): 193-212.
[10] See Jay VerLinden. 2000. "Arguers as Harassers." Paper read at the 86th Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association, 9-11 November, Seattle, Washington; available http://sorrel.humboldt.edu/~jgv1/ME/harassers.html accessed 9 January 2007. For recent work that touches, however indirectly, on the relation between love and rhetoric, see Jeremy Engels," Disciplining Jefferson: The Man Within the Breast and the Rhetorical Norms of Producing Order." Rhetoric and Public Affairs 9 (2006): 411-435; Eugene Garver, "The Rhetoric of Friendship in Plato's Lysis." Rhetorica 24 (2006): 127-146; and Dave Tell, "Beyond Mnemotechnics: Confession and Memory in Augustine." Philosophy and Rhetoric 39 (2006): 233-253.
[11] Dana Cloud. 2004. "Not Invited: Struggle and Social Change." Paper read at the 90th Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association, 11-14 November, Chicago, Illinois; Nina M. Reich. 2004. "Invite This! Power, Material Oppresssion, and Social Change." Paper read at the 90th Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association, 11-14 November, Chicago, Illinois; Nina M. Reich. 2004; and Julia T. Wood. 2004. "The Personal is Still Political: Feminism's Commitment to Structural Change." Paper read at the 90th Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association, 11-14 November, Chicago, Illinois; Nina M. Reich. 2004.
[12] Or as Milan Kundera eloquently puts it, "kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence." The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel (New York: HarperCollins/Perennial Classics, 1999), p. 248. Also see Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. "kitsch."
[13] Jacques Lacan, Encore: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972-1973, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998), 32; hereafter cited XX.

the splat pack

Music: B-Tribe: Sensual Sensual (1998)

Afeared that Delta Airlines is going under, I cashed in some frequent flyer miles this summer for a subscription to Variety. Both judgments were mistakes: Delta looks like they will survive, and Variety is not as interesting as I thought it might be. I reasoned that because I study popular culture and reference film and television all the time in my teaching, Variety may be a good read and useful. The problem with Variety is that it is too promotional and careful to really dish any shit about Hollywood, and it has all this bizarre insider jargon (for example, Rupert Murdoch is routinely referred to as "Rupe," all network television stations are called "Nets," and everything is abbreviated: "H'w'd conducts dud diagnosis"; "B'way makes music" . . . . ). Every issue is a giant promotional splash with very little "insider" scoopage. Bleh.

This said, the the most interesting story that Variety ran was this weeks lead, "Blood Brothers: The Splat Pack Support Group Bonds Horror Helmers." The story is about young filmmakers and screenwriters in their late 20s and early 30s who are turning out low-budget splatter blockbusters: Eli Roth (Hostel), Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes), Barren Lyn Bousman (Saw II), James Wan (Saw), Leigh Whannel (Saw III), and Neil Marshall (The Descent) are featured. Most of the story focuses on Roth, and a sidebar titled "For the Jung at Heart," features Roth's father, a Harvard psychoanalyst. Says daddy:

The Splat Pack films, and Eli's in particular, . . . give people a chance to process unbearable and unacceptable feelings, but feelings that they nonetheless have. When this gets projected onto the screen, it gives people a way to see their dreams actualized. It provides a safe way of handling these feelings.

I wonder what King Oedipus would say if lil' Eli made bondage porno?

I've always been a fan of horror films---I was (and am) that kid who was into masks and renting bad b-films and I even had a subscription to Fangoria until I was 31 years old (I’m 33, by the way). I stopped subscribing to Fangoria because the horror film was slowly being overtaken by gore: the monsters and creatures and ghosts are now replaced almost entirely by the sociopath with knives. The zombie has (thankfully) held on---perhaps the monster of our times---but it seems like the supernatural has been eclipsed by the ecstasy of sadism. Where is the imagination in seeing someone's fingers being chopped off? The first (and one of the best) "splatter" film, Black Christmas, was still somewhat of a monster movie when it debuted in 1974: the "moaner" or "super-tongue" was not quite human, or at least the viewer is led to believe so, and while the murders were gross, they didn't turn on Bloodfeast style gore. They turned on suspense. Jason of Friday the 13th is a supernatural mutant, as wasthe monster of my youth, Freddie Kruger. Even films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre buffered the gore with kitsch or bizarre b-movie oddity (e.g., the bizarre-family dinner scenes).

With films like Saw and Hostel, horror is just horrible. It's all about nail-biting (and chopping) gore with little to no inventive story in the service of captial, NOT fantasy (notably, the little cartoon used to illustrate the story features a Suit weilding a chansaw). What happened to films like Phantasm with flying silver balls-o-death and dwarfs from Mars? Although Roth's pop is right about film as a projective enjoyment, from the standpoint of the collective unconscious, do we not see a transformation in horror over the past thirty years that says something a little disturbing? Have we become too comfortable with filmic violence?

I think and feel that we have, and although I will never jump on the PMRC political wagon, it just bothers me that Variety is celebrating the Splat Pack because they are profitable. I know, I know: "Like Duh, Josh, you subscribed on this premise." And the subtext of the story is money: Wan's Saw was shot with a budget of 1.2 million, but made over 100 at the box office, and so on. The story is pretty much this kind of song and dance for 3,000 words. Although it's true that older I get the more squeamish I have become, my objection isn't so much about gore as such, its that the gore is so mindless (oh, the jouissssssssssssance!), that the gore is a commodity, that the fetish is not so much the possibility of the supernatural but rather of simply losing one's mind. Mindlessness is as much the logic of mass violence as it is capitalism---or rather, mindfulness in its most instrumental is commercially addictive.

"When you watch people scream and almost vomit, it makes it all worth it" says Roth. Roth is making himself and The Man money off of your impulse to throw up. Unless you are a forensic nurse or coroner, I think it is important to preserve our impulses to throw up.

children of men

Music: Fields of the Nephilim: Mourning Sun (2005)

Yesterday Brooke and I saw Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, a film about worldwide infertility in the not too distant future. I don't want to spoil the story for you that have not seen it, so I will lay off on many of the details. I will say that the film is the best I have seen this year and last because of the careful way in which the characters are developed: by the end of the film you really care for the protagonists—so much so you may have no fingernails left. It's a very tense movie, a tear-jerker and a edge-of-the-seat ride: teeth grinders and nail-biters beware!

The film is not simply a "sci-fi" action thing (comparisons to Blade Runner are misplaced), but a compelling drama about sovereignty and the assertion of a "state of exception"---and what happens when hundreds of thousands of "fugies" are reduced to the state of nature. A young, African American woman becomes a madonna-like figure at the end, stopping state soldiers in reverent awe (like homo sacer). I suppose my positive response to this film has a lot to do with my lust for science fiction, but there's something very compelling about it beyond that; it's just well done.

It took some hours to sort of "get over" the unexpected emotional upheaval the film achieves (at least for me and Brooke). The movie is just plain disturbing, and precisely for the reason that Zizek has already suggested:

I would say that it’s a realist film, but in what sense? Hegel in his esthetics says that a good portrayal looks more like the person who is portrayed than the person itself. A good portrayal is more you than you are yourself. And I think this is what the film does with our reality. The changes that the film introduces do not point toward alternate reality, they simply make reality more what it already is. I think this is the true vocation of science fiction. Science fiction realism introduces a change that makes us see better. The nightmare that we are expecting is here.

Not all science fiction does this amplification very well at all (oh, say, The Fountain). Unlike the maudlin fakery of Spielberg's doom and gloom epics (with perhaps the sole exception of Minority Report), Children of Men is disturbing because everything in the diagetic frame has a real referent in today's world; it sort of collects all the coordinates of violence in our contemporary "real world" situation and puts them all in one place. Cuaron is careful to show the ecstasy of human sadism in the name of order (the banality of evil) and cause (misguided revolutionary politics). The sovereign (for example, the racist soldier on the bus in the fugie camp) and the revolutionary (for example, the dread-locked "terrorist" who murders in the name of uprising) are both portrayed in ways that effectively demonstrate what Agamben has argued: when the state of exception becomes the rule we witness the arrival of death machines.

Things I liked about the film: the acting, character development, the pacing, the realistic violence (but never gratuitous), Michael Cane's character (especially when he plays that crazy music and gets stoned). Things I did not like about the film: the fake infant, the portrayal of people with dread-locks, perhaps even the realism itself.

On the way home, Brooke asked: "Why is she black?" We discussed the reasons why the Madonna was conspicuously marked (she had a Caribbean accent, for example, and in one scene disrobes to reinforce her markedness, and we learn she was turning tricks and don't know the father's name, and so on). Of course, her race was overdetermined for reasons that one would expect (evolutionary theory, Henry Louis Gate's Africana-mania, British primitivism/fetishism, and so on). I am l unsure what I think about the "white man saving the black woman" stuff. On the one hand, during the last half of the film everyone is literally colorblind---no one (of the protagonists) really gives a shit about their cultural identifications. The film does a good job of showing how, in the midst of violence, discrimination makes no sense for survival (at one point Owen's character and the Madonna hook up with a Romanian woman with bad teeth and they take care of each other). On the other hand, the viewer is asked to rely on racial stereotype ("Oh, but of course it’s a black woman who is pregnant, since they are naturally more promiscuous," and so on).

Well, I dunno. Just thinking aloud. But the film makes me think, and this is good. Damn good. After seeing the Brothers Quay Piano Tuner of Earthquakes with Brooke last week (and suprisingly being bored out of my gord), I was starting to worry about film these days. My faith in filmmaking is restored.

child abuse

Music: Harold Budd: Luxa (1996)

Shortly before Brooke and I left town for our respective families we had a two-day "Holi-date." On the first night after a lovely dinner we boarded some shuttle buses downtown and headed to Zilker Park, where we joined hundreds of child-bursting families for the annual "Trail of Lights." It's like the Trail of Tears, only instead of dying Indians there are plywood cut-outs of cartoon characters and 200,000 Christmas lights (and these are Christmas lights, as there is absolutely no attempt to shout-out to our Jewish friends). It was obscene and an ob-scene, a scene "of" or "off," an "obscene offscene," if you will.

After touring the trail a small boy—I figure around the age of five—approached us as we exited a glowing tunnel with a disco ball at the end. He handed me what looked like monopoly money. "How cool," I thought, as I looked and saw a coy Santa on the front of my $50,000 bill! (you can click the image for a bigger version). Brooke cynically said it was probably a Chick Comic deal, but I was hoping it was something cheerful.

Alas, later I learned that the play money was not designed to cheer me up. Instead, it told me Santa's "naughty" list was about all the boys and girls that were going to hell because they did not read the bible literally:

He's making a list, he's checking it twice . . . he's gonna find out who's naughty and nice! If Santa used the Ten Commandments for his standard, how would you do? Let's find out . . . [.] Have you ever lied? Have you ever stolen anything? (No matter the value.) Ever used God's name in vain? Ever looked with lust? Jesus said, "Whosoever looks upon a woman to lust after her had committed adultery with her already in his heart."

Holy Jimmy Carter, Batman! This play money says that when I imagine licking the erect nipple of that lady who I saw at grocery store just a half-hour ago I'm getting coal in my stocking . . . or hot coal in my pants . . . for eternity! The money continues:

If you are guilty of these things that makes you a lying, thieving, blasphemous, adulterer-at-heart. Many people don't know that God will use the Ten Commandments to judge the world. Forget about Santa . . . how will you do on Judgment Day? If you are found guilty, that means an eternity in Hell . . . 2,000 years ago, God sent Jesus to the earth to pay for your sins. When Jesus died on the cross, He took the punishment that you deserve for breaking His Law (the Ten Commandments). God's wrath came down on Jesus instead of you. . . . Remember, if you try to get to Heaven on your own, you must keep every Commandment in thought, word, and deed. . . . Place your faith in Jesus Christ alone and God will grand you eternal life. Read your bible daily and obey what you read.

Well, golly, you know what sort of "naughty" things I could do if I read my bible daily and obeyed what I read? "Thus sayeth the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, . . . and slay every man his brother, . . . companion, . . . neighbor" (Exodus 32:27). I won't go there today (here's someone who did, though). What I will say is that this kind of thing represents one side or the constitutive limit of the "obscene supplement," to carp a Zizek phrase, of the holiday season.

In The Plague of Fantasies Zizek references the band Laibach (a personal favorite) and the novel and filmic version of Dune to question how a staging the phantasmic support of harmful stuff, like Proto-Fascism, can be subversive. In their ironic displays of Fascistic power, for example, Laibach stage the "obscene supplement" of Fascism.

Zizek argues that those who criticized Laibach for their form of "resistance" did so because it was obvious the band members enjoyed the staging. Zizek responds that the critics missed the point, for enjoyment is what enables Laibach to stage and make visible the inconsistencies and contradictions of Fascism in the first place. Or to put this in more contemporary terms: when legions of Marilyn Manson fans were giving the "German Greeting" during the deeply parodic Anti-Christ Superstar tour they were definitely motivated by enjoyment. What is characteristic of supplement is that it is presumably secondary to something "natural" (e.g., writing, birth-control, and so on)—that it either enhances or perverts--but, it turns out, supplementarity is absolutely necessary to complete or experience "the natural" or "the norm" (whether it is to realize fascism or its defeat, or fully experience sexual fulfillmet with another person because you masturbate without them). To offer up critique Laibach must similarly enjoy the phantasmic support of Fascism to stage it in the first place. In both matters of critique and ideological blindness, enjoyment always has an "obscene" underbelly.

It is in this respect that we can read the Santa dollar bill as both the staging of resistance as well as a form of child abuse—an obscene supplementarity. On the one hand, the child who is distributing the "money" enjoys the fact that the beneficiaries (at least initially) seem to enjoy getting it; the child participates in and enjoys commercial ideology of Christmas. What makes feelings of love, cheer, and wonder possible are all the sponsors who pay for the lights as a means of indirect promotion. At least from the fundamentalist perspective, the fake money is an enjoyable way to stage a critique of Christmas as a commercial holiday that drowns out the true "reason of the season," laying bare the contradictions at its core. Of course, the child probably is not enjoying it in the way I'm suggesting (his parents, however, are).

On the other hand, however, the bill represents a form fundamentalist violence that underwrites Christmas kitsch: holiday ideology is designed to down out and temporarily cover-over political and ideological differences in the joyful harmony of childhood wonder (er . . . and lust for presents); betwinkled kitsch gives all the ugliness of human evil a green-hue (transforming it into the Grench). These many lights, for example, are supposed to blind us to religious righteouenss, however temporarily (even when they are erected by the righteous, for isn't the plastic manger scene in the suburban front lawn precisely that, a non-righteous kitschy righteousness?). Now, holiday critics like the fundamentalists are right to point out that this green hue is really from money, but they fail to note it is the red hue of violence too ("Feeeeed tha wooooorld . . . let them know it's Christmas time . . . ."). And as the phantasmic support of fundamentalist critique: what does obscene enjoyment do to a five year old when you tell her that she is going to Hell unless she lets Jesus 'into her heart'?" One only wonders about the joyful scene prior to distribution, when the devout explain to their children what the Santa money says: "we're saving souls, son." One only wonders about the confusion of children exiting the exhibit and experiencing this rhetoric for the first time: "What does this say, mommy?"

"Don't worry about it Suzy. It says you've been a good girl this year. Just wait to see what Santa will bring you tomorrow!"

I was raised an evengelical Baptist with Pentecostal leanings, so I get this obscene pleasure. I remember when was six years old a "Youth Minister" tried to explain to us what Hell was like: "Have you ever burned your finger on a stove," he asked us. Universally all of us had. "Well, imagine that pain all over your body, but not just for a few minutes, but forever and ever and ever. That's what it feels like when you die and have not been saved."

Some days ago my mother called me a Scrooge for expressing disappointment that a holiday display didn't have a shout-out to Jews. It reminded me of what an editor said about Nikki's article on Christmas kitsch when he regretfully took it to press: pointing out the obscene underside of the holiday contradicted his "vision of humanity." I didn't bother telling mumsie about what the editor said, or the Santa money I was gifted, or the hellish memory that resurfaced thinking about the age of the boy who gave it to me.

Ah, the nostalgia: Merry Christmas/Go to Hell!

2006, year of the hand-claps, or, the annual obligatory music review best of post, part two

Music: Skinny Puppy: The Greater Wrong of the Right (2004)

A'ight, I shall continue and conclude my twenty best albums of 2006 list (you can find the first ten here). I can guarantee every album I've recommended will not disappoint if you like music like I do. You probably don’t, but, you know, if you were me you'd like this stuff.

The Knife: Silent Shout: Well, I had this album in 2005 since it was leaked way, way early but I'll give it a nod 'cause it's my kind o' thing. Swedes with synthesizers and interesting femme vocals (reminds me of Bjork without the scratchy throat on the top end), sometimes sounds like Asian pop, dancey but also moody with subtle glitchiness for percussion. "Marble House" is great torcher with female/male duo (is that Jay Jay Johanson?). Filter sweeps and synth washes and slow builds, dance beats and groove, reminds me of FPU, but with vocals. Best of all, no voice goes without a treatment!

Ladytron: Witching Hour: Ladytron's third effort strikes out beyond the cold, two-tone background amble of electroclash into less synth-heavy, warmer songcraft (although the drum machine is never abandoned). Like a number of electronic acts this year, Ladytron's latest features a number of less dance-floor friendly songs in favor of more focused story-telling. As in the previous albums, the machinic female vocal predominates, however, there is more of an attempt here to stray into polytonal delivery. Some songs amount to little more than extended grooves with the occasional break-beat and change up ("Beauty 2"), but a sense of melancholy weaves throughout the entire album. Guitar is featured conspicuously on a number of tracks, signaling the move toward a warmer, less paranoid-android sound (e.g., "Whitelightgenerator" sounds like some analog Swedish pop bad). The stand-out track here is "Destroy Everything You Touch," an upbeat, rollicking dance track with a hard slap-clash beat and biting lyrics about a very bad King Midas character (no doubt a great anti-love song, which is why it found its way to my Philophobia 2006 mix this year).

The Legendary Pink Dots: Your Children Placate You From Premature Graves: It's hard to believe this is the 20th anniversary album for LPD, a psychedelic-goth-ambient-folk-drone-pop outfit from London (now the Netherlands), because it sounds so much like stuff they were putting out a decade ago (about the time I interviewed Ka-spel for college radio). Ka-spel's voice and lyrics are consistently Syd Barrett-esque, his voice at once a sweet comfort and then, well, creepy as all get out (the opening track begins with a snide "Jesus loves the children" and builds, repetitively, as Ka-Spel's voice is progressively manipulated/mutilated to an electronic murmur). Your Children features mostly organic, percussion-and-base driven songs that are mostly low-key ruminations on spiritual themes, many starting out as discernable and coherent songs and gradually turning into a kind of jam-band psychedelic porridge. Niels Van Hoornblower's sax gets a lot of time on this particular album (recalling the earlier 1992/3 pairing Shadow Weaver and Malachi), as does the acoustic guitar. This is an intoxicating, late-night record for contemplative moods. Gentle and "middle-of-the-road" for LPD, sans the usual songs about tragic beauty and the evils of abortion—except for the title, of course. My favorite track is "Bad Hair," which features a slow-building, repetitive guitar strum and electronic bloop for seven minutes as Ka-Spel whisper-sings "will you stand next to me, will you cast nets for me . . . will you accept me?"

Marconi Union:Distance: This is by far my most played album of the year. Given my taste for Harold Budd and all things minimal and ambient, when I heard this I almost melted (indeed, it is the ambient sound of melting Josh, or at least Josh writing or studying or reading in the bath tub). Soft guitar strums cascade over gentle, unobtrusive percussive loops as whirrs of glitch and static and synth sweeps build and relax, all in a minor key or melancholic dronish sort of way. Next to the Delays, this is my second favorite album of the year. Contemplative and moody and electronic but somehow also authentic. On the All Saints label, of course.

The Rapture: Pieces of the People We Love: Disco-punk with more handclaps and cowbell than the last album, which is definitely a great thing! Pieces is the roller-skating album of 2006! Lead singer sounds like a young Robert Smith beat upside the head by James Brown. I've been a fan of the Rapture since they started out as a fuzzy punk outfit and listened to them morph into the money-making party-music machine. Old time fans have deserted them, but I, for one, find the disco-bug they got in their butt quite fun! Almost every track is dance-floor groove-juice, and the lyrics are pretty standard ("C'mon give it to me," and so on), but the bass is sooooooo dirty. We likes the dirty bass! Stand out track: "Get Myself Into It," a disco drum beat with sax fills and bass very high up in the mix. Just a fun, disco, punk groove thing. Pieces is this year's Hot Fuss (but better, cause this gang don't do the self-important thing).

Ratatat: Classics: Hand claps! I say: 2006 was the year of hand claps in pop music! Righteous! Ratatat has some hand-clapping in some of their songs. But what they ain't got is vocals. Instead, they play guitars. They play guitars like percussion instruments. They play guitars like voices. And they play guitars in harmony—they do lil' guitar duets. It's like dualing banjos, only they ain't dueling and they ain't banjos. Ratatat mix guitars and lo-fi electronic to produce melodic groves of non-dueling guitar solos, and sometimes with fake cat roars. This album is righteous, somewhere between 70s cheese and pomo-electro-beats. I don't know how else to describe it.

She Wants Revenge: [Self-titled]: Well, I always feel dirty when I recommend an album that you can buy at Target (that is, that I bought at Target for $6.99), but She Wants Revenge has all right ingredients to make it a VH-1 People's Choice award winner. This band's fantastic retro-80s sound is perfectly timed for my demographic: thirty-somethings are now the target of Targets and prime-time programming. Every track features the leads tortured, 80s moan to bass-heavy mixes of songs that sound like they were written in 1988. "Sister" is a great example of the album as a whole: the song opens with a repetitive guitar strum reminiscent of Joy Division, and the tortured voice of the vocalist begins telling a story of a devout woman who took him home to make love as "the angels are watching." "You can hurt me/do whatever you like" the chorus repeats, a consistent lyrical theme throughout the album: sadism is fun!. Well, this album is naughty. And it's a ton of fun!

Spank Rock: Yoyoyoyoyo: She Want's Revenge may be naughty, but they're nothing compared to the "ass tapping" ambition of Spank Rock! Well, the lyrical themes are par for the hip-hop course, as this band first got noticed for their single "Backyard Betty" which repeats "Ass and boobs, ass and boobs, I'd tap the ho, tap the ho!" This album, however, is not quite hip-hop and not quite electro, but a combination of the two. Originally from Philly, Spank Rock have a distinctive electronic sound that relies on old school rap beats that are re-processed and transformed into deep electronic baselines; it's definitely party music and dance-floor friendly, but different in that many of the vocals are self-samples layered on top of one another and re-re-repeated and re-wound. I swear the same cat roar sampled by Ratatat is sampled here in "Touch Me"—maybe they should do an album together (and yes! "Touch Me" has processed hand-claps too!).

Stuart Staples: Leaving Songs: Stuart Staples has such a unique voice, deep but not yet Cohen, a little Willard Grant Conspiracy but not as misanthropic in sentiment or mood . I'm sure the comparisons to Cohen are out there because his back-ups sometimes sound like "the Angels," but the flavor is altogether different---perhaps a bit more optimistic. Hammond organ beds foreground a slow, acoustic guitar build to brass horn fills, chimes, and xylophone on the lead track, "Goodbye to Old Friends," which echoes in a strange way, the academic life: "it's not that I don't love you/or am tired of your ways/if I could only take you with me/if I could only ease this pain." Those of you in long distance relationships know what I mean. This is a great road trip album or late night drinking album. You'll either love his voice or hate it, but, fans of Cohen will probably dig it. It's a marvelously crafted album (and it comes paired with a repress of his first album---not as good, but still good).

White Rose Movement: Kick: Heavy, dirty baselines and repetitive guitar strumming, and the occasional hand-clap percussive, mark the White Rose Movement as party to that 80s retro-thing. What can I say? I'm a child of the 80s and this album hits all the right buttons. But whereas we might describe She Wants Revenge as the U.S. hetero 80s retro, this is the British faggy retro: Skinny sexy lead singer with a snotty British accent singing "I wanna get straight/I wanna put you through/cos in a darkened room/you orchestrate your moves/Whipcrack/Girls in the back." Do you know what it means? I don't either, but it sounds naughty! I'll forego describing how good this album is and just provide you a link to the video for this stand-out track; please do take note of the hand claps (and here's a game: what side does the yellow-pants hottie dress on?).

Thom Yorke: The Eraser: Given the last few Radiohead albums, the direction Yorke takes on his solo effort is not surprising: looped samples and synthetic beats provide the backdrop for slurrily pronounced lyrical moaning. The title-track is redolent of the whole: two sampled piano chords repeat until an electronic beat sets in, and then York begins his sloppy singing. By the time he's at the chorus, there are ghostly moans that echo in waves. As the song continues, new elements pile into the song, such as random electronic bloops and bleeps, and the faint sound of strings. The entire album is mostly structured similar, low-key and mostly percusso-glitchy. It's a beautiful album that represents how influential Yorke (and his friends, not to mention Bjork) have been in stretching the boundary of what counts as "pop." Had this album appeared five years ago, many folks would have been baffled. We know how to listen to it now . . . thanks Thom.

And finally, an innovation for the best-of post! Here are TWO OF THE MOST HYPED AND OVERRATED ALBUMS OF THE YEAR:

The Hold-Steady: Boys and Girls in America: I listened to it twice, and this must be a good live act, because the album, to quote Lita Ford, "ain't no big thang." Every lyric is about tortured manhood, doing drugs and getting wasted, which is good for, well, exorcizing your metrosexual, doing drugs, and getting wasted, but what about the rest of the week? Sing-talk style lyrics that veer into cheesy territory, power chords aplenty, but . . . bleh. I don't get it.

The Killers: Sam's Town: Overdone Meatloaf from a Flower that would be Bruce Springsteen or Bono. Such shite, really. "When You Were Young?" Yeah, he looked like Jesus: what the fuck does that mean?. If you're going to be a songwriter, your songs either have to make delicious nonsense (e.g. early R.E.M.) or poetic sense, or something. This album is just so arrogant, but not in a good way (e.g., first Strokes album). Hot Fuss was such a fun party album, snotty, you know, a groove thing, but on heavy rotation during my road trips. Now we have pretensions to grandeur . . . but Joshua Tree this album ain't. It's ultimately forgettable gestures to stadium rock and ballads and, barring a few tracks, will not leave any tracks in your conscience in a year's time. Enjoyable but still mediocre.

2006, year of the hand-claps, or, the annual obligatory music review best of post, part one

Music: Meat Beat Manifesto: Satyricon (1992)

Since the RoseChron debuted over four years ago, I've been sharing my spinning habits for the year, although I suppose I should be sharing my "digi-habits" or something, as I only listen to disks in the car these days. As an aside: I don't know if my range of my enjoyment has expanded, or if there's simply a lot more good stuff out there (I have a top 20 this year instead of top 10). Because it's the holiday season I won't think too hard on it, but there is an argument to be made here about the Digital Revolution and musical distribution: in a time when Myspace publicity can introduce your sound to hundreds of thousands, it seems cheaper to circulate and manufacture musical output these days. Now that the major labels have bought out many of the indies---or at least bankroll half of them (SubPop, for example, is 49% Warner Brothers)---there's a lot of invisible muscle-push-power for the alternative and unusual stuff---so much so that folks like Chan Marshall are ending up on end-caps at Target and into grandmum's stocking. Worse (oh horror of horrors), since I've started downloading tracks to sample stuff, I find myself giving more mainstream acts a chance . . . I must admit I really do like the latest My Chemical Romance like 15 year olds everywhere. Since I've been reading Virilio again, let's call my recently recognized mainstream tastes the consequence of "The Distribution Bomb." Is the music industry's answer to pirating and ease of distribution the expansion of distribution? It seems like it (or if not that, at least Ben Folds behaves like it is).

Well, before I start waxing media eco-nomy/ology I better get on with it. So, with just a little further ado, I give you DJ Joshie Juice's top twenty albums of the year. The criteria for top-ness were (a) "hmm. What do I find myself listening to . . . a lot?" and (b) "what's a very good album despite the fact I may not have listened to it a ton?" Heck, this is just a reflection of habit, so probably there was only one criterion: frequency of indulgence. Here goes, in no particular order---except that my favorite album of 2006 is The Delay's You See Colours, and my runner-up is the Marconi Union's [Distance]:

AFI: Decemberunderground: The follow up to Sing the Sorrow is no where near as goth-friendly (nor as good), but this dark-clad punk pop still knows where to go in the chorus (and besides, my copy had the Davey portrait on the inside—hawt!). The experiments with electronica work pretty well, and the riffs are tasty. The worst aspect of the album is the grumbly-Norweigan-black-metalhead-voice Davey goes into in fits of faux-demonic possession (GWWAARRRRR!)---it just sounds silly. Even so, this is a fun and angsty album with lots of sing-a-long, comic-book goth-love lyrics.

The Black Keys: Chulahoma: Smokehouse Brown (a.k.a. Rogie Rog) gifted me a copy of this six song homage to my favorite blues artist, Junior Kimbrough, and I've been listening to it non-stop. One week is usually not long enough for me to make a judgment, but, I predict this is one the the year's top-twenty for me: wow, it's like Junior "all cleaned up." The technical proficiency is really noticeable, and although the music haunts (like Junior is with them), it's still very different. For one, all the songs average around four minutes, when Kimbrough's "real" tunes (that is, the one's he did for Fat Possum) often veered into seven minute, "Stairway to Heaven" territory. For another, you can understand the lyrics; what I always liked about Kimbrough's voice is that you had no clue what he was griping about (well, unless the title was "Keep Your Hands Off Her"). This is the Blue Mississippi Hypnotic, no shit. Amazing. I don't think I would have put that self-congratulatory answering machine message from "Junior's Widow" on there as the concluding track, though; guys, it's good--you don't need the dead man's woman to tell us.

Lindsey Buckingham: Under the Skin: That I like this album is an admission that I adore Fleetwood Mack (Tusk is just one of the most brilliant pop albums ever). Depending on how you like him, this is either Buckingham's best solo album or his worst (they're all good, though). Most songs on Under are understated for Buckingham, who can rock out if he wants to, and he usually does. But these songs are mostly lulabyes, ballads, and choral pieces. All feature his melodic, rapid-fire multi-string playing (some 12 string stuff at times), but the guitars are acoustic, and there is a lot of multi-track vocal play. This is a sweet and dream-like album (except the first track, "Not Too Late," which is kind of a bummer), and the singing reminds me of the way Alan Parsons treats up his vocals for his radio friendly tunes. Nothing on this album is really radio friendly, mind you, since Buckingham's lyrics are just too melancholy or mystical. The song "Castaway Dreams" is awful, but the rest of the album is nice for late nights, studying, or dinner with a friend.

Cat Power: The Greatest: Definitely (in my opinion) Marshall's greatest, and damn, this album is so goodly soulful. Apparently she traveled to Memphis and hooked up with a bunch of Al Green's session mates (and maybe the soul of Steve Cropper), and every song, consequently, has this gliding rumble at the bottom, the analog phatness buoying her piteous voice and plaintive piano. The lyrics are always choice--sad, angry, hopeful---but this album, more than others, is upbeat. Sentiments from songs like "Hate" aside---"do you believe she said that?"---Marshall's in a happy place (and she's not hiding). The only thing this album needs, perhaps, is percussive handclaps on a few tracks.

The Delays: You See Colours This second dose of choir-boy cock-less pop begins with Greg Gilbert's high pitched, plaintive "to the bitter end, I have fought-ten love/now this cavalry is coming hoooooooommmmeeeeeee," which is followed by a repetitive sweep of synth until the drums hammer in and, BANG: it's full-blow pop-till-you-puke for over an hour. This is my favorite album of 2006, a pomo Frankie Valley and his Four Seasons (one of whom is Gilbert's brother) that is also one part The La's and one part Cocteau Twins. "This Town's Religion," for example, is a brilliant track with rumbling goth baselines, postpunk guitar work, a synth fill every now and again, a dance beat, and lyrics that reflect my current attitude about Snellville, Georgia having just returned ("I don't get it, I just don't get it"). There are also some delicious pop love songs without a hint of cynicism ("Hideaway"), but the darker side of love does close the whole set: "I warn you honey, I love you." This album is soooooo good. The best of the bunch.

The Dresden Dolls: Yes, Virginia: Brilliantly written, pro-queer, pro-feminist, anti-Bush "songs that tell a story" about botched sex change operations and forlorn amputees from these Bostonian Cabaret Queens. It's Tim Burton's best idea in sound, but with a hot chick who has tattooed eyebrows. Each song features Amanda's plodding piano-playing (dramatic, oh, oh, so hammered) and the jazzy drums of her mate . Most songs are upbeat and feature Palmer's expressive singing with Brian Viglione's aggressive drumming and occasional harmonies. The stand-out track here is "Backstabber," apparently about a not-so- nice person, because the chorus is so soaring and arrives after a frustrating build: "backstabber! hope grabber! greedy little fit haver!/god, I feel for you, fool…/shit lover! off brusher!/jaded bitter joy crusher!/ failure has made you so cruel!" Fun! I've met some folks like that.

Brian Eno: Another Day on Earth: Eno is a genius, and consequently, a lot of folks love to love and love to hate his music, but I'm a born again Enoian, so I guess I love him. I came to him via Roxy Music and Bowie's Low, then on various ambient compilations, but only within the last four years have I been educating myself on his past studio-album catalog. This recent offering is so creative, alternately strange and familiar, with those melodic flights that give you goose bumps and a punctuation with the glitch-percussive that has become so standard in pop electronica these days. The vocoder treatment on "And Then So Clear" is fucking brilliant (my favorite track), and the album is a nice balance of the more slow and relaxing ambient we love this guy for and more upbeat, good-with-the-world William Orbit movie soundtrack-style tracks.

Gnarls Barkley: St. Elsewhere: There is no need to tell you what this album is like (or to post its image), because it's already a mass media darling and has been promoted to death. It's massively good, despite the hype, especially if you like your soul un-crunked. "Crazy" has been played too much, but I must admit it is for good reason: Cee-Lo has found his steady platform. One only wishes this was a double album.

Gregor Samsa: 55:12: The Kafka-inspired, low-build dirgeness of this gently floating, hour-long album brings to mind the work of Sigur Ros and Spiritualized in a "chopped and screwed" mood. Male and female vocals accompany guitar/piano/fiddle washes of intensifying drone, but thankfully, without coming to the now clichéd, slab-o-sound Mogwai moneyshots that your garden variety instrumentalists are so fond of (with apologies to Austin's Explosions in the Sky). Hushed and reserved, Gregor Samsa's latest ambles along without ever jarring the listener into some sort recognition of their grandness or talent---and that's a good thing! There is a kind of humble modesty to this low key music, even when they must make a break (as the un-jarring but noticeable change-up in the second track, "Even Numbers"). Fans of Mogwai, Godspeed, et al. will prolly enjoy this, as would folks who are fond of the more contemplative music of 4AD. Like the later work of Talk Talk and Mark Hollis' solo album, silence is an instrument here, so earphones/pods are better for catching all the subtleties.

Hot Chip: The Warning: The title track of this album is reason enough for owning it: "This is a warning, I'll spell it out for you . . . Hot Chip will break your legs/snap off your head . . . ." The lyrics are sung low-key, in a hushed chorus of whiney male voices, seriously and without a whiff of cynicism, to a series of bleeps and a glitch-percussive rhythm. This is delightful, low-key, smart electronica album without dance-floor aspirations--or at least most of the tracks don't seem hellbent to get there. Every song features unexpected turns, breaks, and neatly mashed-up samples at first listen. The first time I heard the album I was like, oh, that's cool. But after the second listen it digs into your brain and, before you know it, you're cutting vegetables and singing to yourself, "excuse me sir . . . Hot Chip will break your legs . . . ."

A'ight, that's all for now. You can find reviews of the remaining ten here!

love's official sanction

Music: The Birthday Massacre: Violet

[hangs up phone]: "Oh, she just had the baby yesterday and there's drama already."

The holiday is definitely underway with unhappiness, thankfully most directly among the extendeds, although it does impact the unholy trinity via the maternal news vehicle at its center.

Really, the holiday is pleasantly relaxing but for babies and tongues.

Fragment of the morning walk with maternal news vehicle: beautiful, glorious day with the smell of burning backyard leaves and the sight of deflated Blow-Up Santas and Snowpeople in every other yard. Some gleeful preteen got his Christmas pocket-knife early.

That gleeful pubescent hellbent on merry mischief represents the inevitable threat of Disneyfication: if you enforce happiness and corral it to one place and one day, you're tempting an eruption of bummedness, you're risking bursting that boil of red and green excess. I think Paul Virilio is pretty darn right when he argues "if you build it, not only will people come, but they will help you to create the accidental catastrophe of It too." The invention of the blow up Snowpeople staked to the obnoxiously green Southern front lawn was simultaneously the birth of pocket knife vandalism against inflatable Christmas lawn ornaments.

I mean really, Snowpeople in 70 degree weather?

What should we expect with all these tidings of comfort and joy? Your Uncle Earle is something like the opening sequence of Lynch's Blue Velvet: lurking just beneath the surface is a gas cloud just waiting to erupt at the dinner table, and precisely at the moment grandmother is thanking God for the bounty and asking him to bless the boys overseas.

After I post this, I am going to go watch My Girl, starring Macaulay Culkin and Anna Chlumsky, with my parents. We're going to have blackberry cobbler, and probably suffer a few cheerful hums of "White Christmas" by my father. This is possible for me because I really do love my parents and can sometimes endure what Kundera called "the second tear" for them. Oh, and also because Anna Chulmsky starred in Blood Car this year: "In the near future, gas prices are at an astronomical high. One man is determined to find an alternate fuel source. That alternate fuel source turns out to be blood...HUMAN BLOOD."

Blood: love's official sanction . . . and fuel.

Oh, and Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it. That's what we celebrate here, the real reason for the season . . . and if you don't agree I'll go out back and get a stick and beat your goddamn ass. To wax Shaunessy: You can take Josh out of a Christmas, but you cain't . . . .

grandfather greets, holiday style

Music: Boingo: Boingo (1994)

"Wooooweee! Looka-choo. You're gonna be big like your papa."

"May-be, may-be."

"How much you weigh Josh?"

"I hover around 190, I guess. I'd like to drop down to what I weighed before I quit smoking, but, it's hard."

"You need to lose about twen-five pounds or so. You know I used ta weigh about 250 pounds. 'Called me the 'Round Man."

"You look too thin, papa."

"'bout 140. Last summer I was down to 175. Can't keep my pants up. Where's your girlfriend---no, where's your wife? What's wrong with you? You should have been long married by now."

"I've decided I prefer boys."

"No shit you ain't. [stands up] There ain't n'er been a Gunn like that, and there ain't gonna be. I'll go out back a get a stick and beat your goddamn ass!"

two wongs, or, hyperstunting the obvious

Music: Editors: The Back Room (2005) I have safely arrived at my holiday destination somewhere in Hotlanta from what proved to be quite a pleasant plane ride: after discovering I was seated next to a demanding two year old and his "spare the rod"-style mother, a gentleman standing in the aisle kept banging my head with his fancy, overstuffed leather purse. It turns out that he was trying give up his first class seat so that he might sit with his beloved in the stale yet freshly vacuumed "coach." I overlooked his abuse of my forehead and possible brain injury and reluctantly volunteered, moved to the very first seat just beyond the foreboding "go no further, RUBE"-style curtains, where upon was treated to always piping, fresh coffee, fresh fruit, moist towelettes and the foot room of five Hobbits!

Even better, just before boarding I caught an extended interview clip of Donald Trump. Apparently just the day prior Rosie O'Donnell---perhaps in an effort to cover-up or over her racist flap---ranted about The Donald's newfound moral authority. Whence such self-proclaimed authority? Because, I learned, Miss USA was busted for underage drinking and "partying" with Miss Teen USA. I also learned that Miss Nevada had drunken pictures circulating the Internet featuring hot, hetro-faux-lesbo tongue-kissing action (which just goes to show you these pageants are uber-repressive apparatuses, right!?!? Here's the whole gallery in case you need to see "acting-out" documented).

What has this to do with the Donald? Well, he owns the Miss USA franchise and his Miss USA people wanted to de-crown Miss USA for partying, snorting blow, and humping outside of wedlock. Instead, The Donald held a press conference to announce that Tara Conner deserved a second chance, that she was going to drug and alcohol abuse counseling, and that we can all learn from her mistake(s). This apparently incensed O'Donnell, who fired off on The View that the woman was just partying, it's not a big deal (I agree with Rosie). She then flipped her hair to resemble The Donald's bad toupee, and questioned: who was he to hold a conference premised on his moral authority? (We can embellish to help Rosie out a bit: moral authority is a metonymic slide from economic autonomy, Rupert Murdoch's Fox-logic and an important clue to this intriguing media ruckus!) Rosie said that the Donald was an adulterer and a scammer, and that he filed for bankruptcy three times. Today, as my jaw dropped, they aired this clip in the George Bush Houston International airport.

Like most things excessive, initially I thought the Donald's remarks were legit and I was entertained. I also thought calling Rosie "ugly" and "fat" was a little over the top, and reasoned that the working class (signaled by "truck driver") would probably be pissed at The Donald. Then I got to thinking as I was on the plane that the remarks were in fact misogynistic. Then I got to wondering why he didn't say something homophobic (since he went ahead and insulted women, obesity, and the working class). Both of them, however, went after each other in terms of economic success: Rosie accused The Donald of being anything but a self-made "Man"; the Donald expressed joy at Rosie's magazine and television show failures. The bottom line of the melee is, in fact, the bottom line as a source of moral authority.

What is curious to me is that Rosie left her critique implicit. If you go back to the clip, one of the co-hosts (to Rosie's left) remarks "I think it's brilliant," trying to get Rosie to say what is implied: The Donald's press conference was a publicity stunt. O'Donnell is trying to call him out on the tactic, but why does she go for the joke at the risk of blunting the critique? Of course, The Donald answers in his counter-blast: The View hired O'Donnell to boost sagging ratings, and she has been deliberately "running at the mouth" (and it's working). Is it no surprise that the viewership of Miss Teen USA, Miss USA, and Miss Universe was down last year, that Trump needed to do something to garner some mo' eyeballs? The Donald taking on an smart, emasculating woman is precisely what he needed. The man is Greed Incarnate, Greed on a Stick; you can see every moral and aesthetic judgement he makes about Rosie as dollar signs flicker in his beady lil' orbs.

This is Baudrillard's hyperreal on a stick, folks. Although I'm not so sure O'Donnell really knew how well this was going to work out (for her), The Donald seized the moment premised on that superficial homology between finance capital and representation, and I mean "superficial" only in the sense that it's turtles all the way down.