January 28th, 2002. Monday
Email from Caryn:
ah, yesteryear. i knew it well. i was a wee lass, wandering the hills of switzerland with only my guitar case and a six-pack of bud light. i was chased by a pack of wildebeasts, but managed to escape into the safety of an elfin village of prostitutes in the foothills. there, i was nutured by many a beautiful young whore until i regained strength enough to once again skip across the mountainside with a gleeful tune on my lips. ah yes, yesteryear.She's bored over there at Spin.
By Monday last week, I already knew exactly how my weekend was going to play out. I thought maybe there'd be some derivation along the way somehow just by chance, but as it happened, the weekend went exactly according to plan. Which was a bit disappointing.
Anyway, on Friday, the event of the evening was a show at Warsaw in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. It's a relatively new venue. I think I saw the first show there, which was the Bonnie Prince Billy show in September. The show on Friday night was one Le Tigre, fronted by Kathleen Hanna, formerly of Bikini Kill. I thought I'd read somewhere that she once punched Courtney Love in the face. So I'd always given her the benefit of the doubt. Hmmm, after a quick further inspection via a quick Google search, it appears that it was actually Courtney who punched Kathleen, after flicking a cigarette at her. Kathleen pressed charges. That's much less cool. And not very rock and roll. She should have waited and struck back when Courtney least expected it. Or at least written a few songs about it. Anyway, the group was me, Caryn, Nate, and Caryn's friends Phoebe and Susan, who knew each other through some sideways manner I'm not entirely clear on. The show was definitely interesting. It was also fun, but mainly a fascinating experience. The target audience, as the band says, is "girls and 'girl boys'." Being neither, it was a little tough for me to really get into the music. I was a little ashamed of my straight male-ness. A lot of what I saw was actually pretty aggravating. The place was just too hip. Nate and I were looking around for the one person who really put the hipness over the top. Remember science class, studying saturation? How you can dissolve sugar or something in water, adding single grains at a time, and at one point you'll put one too many in and all the other grains will just fall out? We were looking for that grain who made the other hipsters fall out. My co-winners were both retro 80's characters- a fellow with zig zags cut into his hair, and perhaps wearing checkered Vans, and a girl in pink spandex leggings, yellow high heels, and turquoise leg warmers, along with the cut up sweatshirt. Also aggravating- the women MCing the show, and her little "Before Le Tigre comes out, I just want to say something about America..." My eye-rolling was pretty much on a loop cycle for the next minute until she shut up. "I just want to say, that most people in this country think it's ok that when we're upset about something, that it's OK to drop a few bombs and kill a few million people." It was pretty much downhill from there. Yes. Kill a couple million people. That is not hyperbole. Happened just last week. And yes, most people think it's ok. But not anyone at the show. No, we were enlightened. Because we like art. Which was what the evening was about. It was a benefit. No one told me this when I paid my twelve dollars. I felt robbed. And here was my first problem with the evening: appalling generalizations. I'm sure if I'd said something that began: "I'd like to say about about people. Most women..." I'd have been scratched and clawed to death. Not to mention that, you know, maybe a lot of people there couldn't give a fuck about art and just wanted to hear some music. If I knew my twelve bucks was supporting chicks like her, I might've just gone to a bar.
The one opening act we saw was too awful to discuss. Except: Kind of like Philip Seymour Hoffman in drag, screaming "There's a corpse! A dead corpse in the room!" in a flaming British accent over loung-act style piano. We'd been waffling whether or not to go to a bar before the main act. This settled all debate.
The musicof le tigre itself was great and a lot of fun. Very catchy. I would've preferred live music though. The only instrument played- and sparsely at that- was one electric guitar. I saw Ray, the bartender from Great Lakes, after the show, and his comment was "I liked it, but I generally prefer karaoke in a smaller setting." This seemed appropriate. I guess by billing themselves as "electro-punk" they can justify using all the synths and sequencers they want. I spent most of the show making snarky comments to Caryn about the the feminist doctrine being flung carelessly about and the mostly female and feebie male audience. Like after many failed crowd-surfing attempts, I told her "No one can crowd surf because no one here is strong enough to hold anyone up." And it was true. No one there, guy or girl, probably weighed over 130 pounds. And Nate and I were the tallest people there. Which was actually kind of nice. Despite all the idiotic people, it was worth it to hear "Deceptacon" live. I probably would've waited another hour to hear that.
Since the show I've been thinking a lot about feminism, in a bit of a more serious way than my usual taunting of Caryn, and to a much larger extent, PFC Katey. I've also been pissing off Caryn a lot by asking questions about the band, which I really liked, by referring to the non-Kathleen Hanna members as "the fat one" and "the mannish looking one." I didn't know their names. Sue me. Anyway, about the feminism thing, what kind of bothers me about it- though only in instances, not in general- is the way it's often carelessly thrown about. I couldn't believe when actually mentioned something about the ERA. It just seemed like it's really easy to throw out slogans to a mob of devotees. In wresting it's called a cheap-pop. Like "And for all the great fans here in the great city of MILWAUKEE..." The night was full of cheap-pops. "Like, so this guy was like harassing me, like, again..." "Boo! harassment! Boo-urns! Boo-urns!" I mean, come on. I know I'll never understand what it's like to have to be a woman, but a lot of the time i really don't understand what the hubbub is all about. Caryn said something in response to my comment of the girls-rock songs, along the lines that every other song was written for men. I'd venture to say that almost 80% of songs written by men are about or for women, or about fucking up other men. So girls win either way. I've never really taken much time to consider the particular problems of being a man or straight or Asian. though in fairness, being male and straight's probably the easiest situation, and also I'm really not all that Asian. Though I did resent Caryn deriding me and calling me a straight white male. But I would like to think that if I were a girl, I'd have basically the same mentality, which would be to be too caught up in my own shit to really not have time to give a damn about the state of the female existence in this brutish, male-dominated society of ours. Anyway, I just think it's sometimes kind of silly. Why do girls think guys have it so easy? From where I sit, girls have it a lot easier than I do. Why can't I complain about how hard it is to be me? Just because I'm not a girl and not gay? And lastly, perhaps I'm being naive, but I think a lot of feminists don't give enough credit to society in general for being a tad more enlightened than say when the ERA didn't pass. Not that I'd want it to pass now. Nor should you. But that's another tirade of its ownI really didn't mean to go off on that little tirade. I just feel a little threatened when I see women organized and with real opinions. But to sum up- I really enjoyed the show, but more in a phenomenological, observational kind of way. Kind of like Tom Cruise in "Eyes Wide Shut," when he gets into the weird party, but didn't really belong there. He was just really curious. And to continue the "Eyes Wide Shut" analogy, this entry also seems meandering and way too long. And we're not even close to finished.
Anyway, that part of the weekend went precisely according to plan. Nate somehow managed to pick up a hanger-on, and he followed Nate and Caryn back into the city with them. I was really hoping Phoebe would want to take a car home, since we live relatively close by and I couldn't afford a car myself, and was shocked and disappointed by her silence when someone said "Let's walk to the subway." Eventually, though we cracked, and hopped in a car. Something disturbing I've noticed in my interactions with Phoebe is that she doesn't find my A-material very funny at all, but finds many of my throwaway jokes utterly hilarious. This usually makes me feel awkward. I like people laughing at my jokes, but I don't like being told later on how funny a particular comment was, or which comments of the evening were funniest. How am I supposed to react to that? It makes me feel terribly awkward and goofy.
Saturday was less eventful by far. The day was marred by the fact that I had to work in the evening. It was a beautiful afternoon, though, so I met Caryn and Nate in the city. After getting some coffee and cake, I met up with them in Tompkins Square Park. Right after I got there, a small child playing in the playground, standing three feet behind us, began urinating in the shrubbery, which was about two feet behind us. I just ignored it and concentrated on my coffee and cake, but Caryn was outraged. She told me and Nate how much she couldn't stand parents that let their kids pee in public like that. While she was "telling" me and Nate, she was really talking to the parent responsible for this abhorrent event. There was no calming her down. Though she did enjoy the chocolate pound cake.
So after that I went back to her apartment and tried to make the cd-burner she'd bought from Garrick work on her computer. I failed, despite several calls to Garrick, who knows about such things. So we sat around and played guitar and watched basketball. It was the first time I've deliberately gone over to Caryn's apartment to just spend a few hours hanging out. It's a comfortable place to hang out, but i hate walking so far east. Somewhere there I picked up an awful mood, and took it to work with me around 7. So a saturday night spent watching tv, but getting paid for it. I had to watch "Dr. No," the first installment of the "Bond Picture Show" on ABC. So it was a fairly easy night. Plus, I'd never seen that movie, so I was mildly interested. It was pretty slow-paced though for an action movie, or what passed for an action movie in 1962. Work is much more relaxed on a Saturday night, so it wasn't as bad as a weekday shift. And, you know, this was the first saturday in a while where i actually came out ahead in the money-flow department.
The projected highlight of my weekend was actually Sunday. And this held true, though mostly by default. In the afternoon I searched high and far for a box of Golden Grahams. I had seen the commercial while watching TV for work, and I wanted Golden Grahams ever since. I checked the local D'agastino, the bane of my shopping existence. first. They had what I needed, but at $5.27 a pop, for a small box, I was outraged. Outraged, I say! Am I really to be expected to pay more than five dollars for fucking cereal? So I says fuck a bunch of this shit, and go looking elsewhere. After finding it a the Met grocery on 2nd, I stopped by the flea market across 7th ave. I never buy anything there, so I don't know why I felt compelled to check it out when I had an armfull of groceries. So naturally, I spent about 10 very inconvenient minutes looking through the records, even though I don't own a record player. I'd been meaning to get one though, and i figured the only way I'd get around to doing that was to start buying records. I passed up a copy of the Rolling Stone's Let it Bleed only because I wasn't sure what a good price was for it. Though for 8 dollars, I don't suppose you could beat that by much. I opted instead for a record featuring Stephane Grappelli and another jazz violinist, also for 8 dollars. I figured I'd have a lot more trouble finding this for cheap than the Stones. It was also a beautiful day out, sunny and in the high 50's. And for some reason that always makes me want to wander around flea markets and stoop sales.
Anyway, the main event was the Eagles-Rams NFC championship game. Jed had to set his alarm to get up early to watch the Steelers/Patriots game. It was a big day for Pennsylvania sports. The 76ers also played the Lakers. But only the Sixers won. So jed and I were in fairly rotten moods. Though Caryn did come over with a nice wedge of brie. And Jen K called earlier before the game started and asked if I wanted her to come over and we could watch the game and eat buffalo wings and drink beer. I've been waiting quite some time to hear those words from a girl. Of course, this never happened, and she ended up staying home to read or some nonsense like that. Still, it's the thought that counts.
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