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Archives for 01/21/2006 - 01/21/2006

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Slogdance 6 - Overheard on Main Street

Posted by on January 21 at 10:51 PM

Trying to weave our way down Main Street, snaking through people who are standing outside of parties that they’ll never get into, we overheard a guy say this: “So, at this party. Was Jay-Z actually there?”

Slogdance 5 - Back to Main Street

Posted by on January 21 at 6:55 PM

Hey! They turned on the wi-fi in the condo! Awesome!

So I was planning on sitting around for a while, writing about some of the movies I saw. But the best laid plans of mice and men tend to lead you back to Main Street. I shall be meeting the condo-mates up at the Wassup Brew Pub (or something like that) for a party celebrating the movie Guatamalan Handshake, which is a Slamdance movie that I both saw and enjoyed.

I’m starting to wonder if I’m going to write about any of the damn films. My new promise to myself: Tomorrow morning I’ll skip the 8:30 am screening and the 9 am screening and the 9:30 am screening, and will write about Friends With Money and the rest of the stuff I’ve seen. We shall see.

By the way, Seattle folks are starting to show up, and they’ve put together a big party tomorrow night. Sub Pop is bringing in Iron and Wine and a few more acts. I’ll tell you more about that after it passes.

-Andy Spletzer

Porn Fantasy

Posted by on January 21 at 5:59 PM

There are ’70s Penthouse covers on display in the women’s section of American Apparel on Broadway.

It’s presented as a pop-art exhibit, and so, the series of magazine covers is accompanied by a written statement that waxes nostalgic about the “natural” look of “70s and 80s” porn when “curves” and “body hair” and “blemishes” and “stretch marks” were hallmarks.

What a bunch of revisionist bull shit.

Yes, there was half a second in the early early early 70s when a “natural” look was in (meaning big bush—but certainly not blemishes). But ’70s sex symbols were air-brushed skinny blondes with manicured bushes and big tits, just like today. Yes, there’s something about the depressed ’70s that seems dirty and slutty and dark and “real,” but let’s stop pretending that the sex industry was celebrating normal bods. Idealized disco sexiness in the ’70s was exactly the same as sex industry sexiness today: skinny, blonde, busty, and airbrushed. The hairstyles and lip gloss were a little different, but that’s about it.

Certainly, porn circa 2006 stars shaved women and/or super-trimmed women, but the ’70s models were hardly Woodstock hippies. They were manicured and airbrushed. (70s porn films may have been more “real,” but that’s because the industry was much more underground, and so, there wasn’t as much money, and so, production values were low and fly-by-night.)

If American Apparel is talking about Hustler…Well, Hustler was more graphic (more spread legs), but it did not promote “natural” women. And, if American apparel is talking about Hustler, than they should be displaying Hustler, instead of Penthouse.

Even more absurd: American Apparel’s attempt to include the ’80s in its statement. The ’80s?? The ’80s?? There couldn’t be a more plastic, unnatural time than the stilted ’80s. The ’80s were leather, barbie doll new wave, big tits, and once again: skinny skinny skinny. The ’80s were not a time when “natural” anything was on the menu.

Bareback Mountain

Posted by on January 21 at 5:55 PM

The inevitable porn rip-off/riff-off of Brokeback Mountain—Bareback Mountain—is coming soon. Some shots from the flick can be seen here.

Republicans? Or the Mafia?

Posted by on January 21 at 4:47 PM

This new websiite—RepublicansOrTheMafia.com—helps you keep track of the corrupt white guys running the country.

Casinos! Bribes! Hitmen! Is this Season 5 of The Sopranos? No, it’s just another day in the life of today’s Republican party. Are you confused by the names of all these obscure GOP operatives in the news? DeLay, Scanlon, Safavian, Abramoff… how’s an average joe supposed to keep track? Here at ROTM, we simplify the process by comparing corrupt Republicans and their shady goings-on to well-known characters and scenes from your favorite gangster movies.

Has PostSecret Already Jumped the Shark?

Posted by on January 21 at 3:16 PM

Now, I love me some PostSecret, but when I see entries like this, I worry about the Jerry Springer-ification of it all.

After all, how sexually inhibited can you be if you can take a picture of yourself wearing nothing but a chastity belt and send it in to a website for publication??

Late-Night Entertainment

Posted by on January 21 at 3:01 PM

Here are two late-night events that didn’t make it into this week’s theater calendar but are worth your attention:

1. Playwright Bret Fetzer reading his original fairy tales at the Hugo House. Like the old-timey fabulists—and not the cutesy, “fractured” types—Fetzer writes short, imaginative morality stories with kings, peasants, talking animals, and the other indispensable fairy tale features. One of my favorites is a grisly tale about a bereaved king who banishes Death from the land. Death agrees and the results are… vivid. (Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave, $7, 10:30 pm)

2. The Stay Up Late Show, an anarchic, drinky-drinky, low-fi talk show at the Capitol Hill Arts Center, hosted by the ever-brassy Rebecca Davis. Tonight’s guests include Nancy Guppy (of Almost Live) and a man who calls himself Gary “The Gorilla Man” Davis. (CHAC, 1621 12th Ave, $10, 10 pm.)

And here is a picture of a funny plane crash:

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London Mourns

Posted by on January 21 at 12:08 PM

When a whale is tired of London…

The northern bottle-nosed whale that strayed into the River Thames in central London two days ago has died.

Slogdance 4 — Music

Posted by on January 21 at 11:42 AM

Finding a wi-fi hot spot is not always as easy as you would imagine here. My ISP is through Comcast, and so there’s no dial-up that I can use, and my condo isn’t wired. Anyway, I spent yesterday seeing a bunch of movies (which I’ll blog about in a bit), and ended the afternoon in the Music CafĂ© to catch a show by Rufus Wainwright.

That was more like it. This was my first time seeing him, and I found him to be a very funny performer who has written some sweet and sincere songs. Of course, at an official festival venue like this, the crowd isn’t always there for the show. Take, for example, the drunken, middle-aged former sorority sisters who kept taking pictures of themselves next to the bar. One actually heard a song or two, because she was overheard saying, “The whiny guy is really good, but his songs make me sad.” Of course, his songs made many other people happy, but this is proof positive that he can get through to anyone.

He finished his set with the Leonard Cohen song “Halleluiah.” Beautiful. And it’s a song that’s featured in the Leonard Cohen doc I’m Your Man, which I’ll write about eventually.

In fact, my grand plan is to write about the movies that I’ve seen. I swear I’ll get to that eventually. I swear.

-Andy Spletzer slogging from Sundance in Park City, Utah

Nominate Seattle’s Sexiest by Wednesday!

Posted by on January 21 at 10:47 AM

We’ve gotten tons of great nominations of hot folks for this year’s “Seattle’s Sexiest,” and their pics will run in our Valentine’s Day issue along with thousands of our readers’ valentines. But there’s still time to nominate someone as one of Seattle’s Sexiest—the cut-off is this coming Wednesday at 5.

Know an unsung sexy someone? Sexy yourself? Email a photo or photos of your nominee—photos taken with permission, please—to sexiest@thestranger.com. Include the nominee’s name, some clues about where we can track ‘em down, and a few words about what makes ‘em so freaking sexy.

And, yes, feel free to nominate yourself—why be shy?

And (free!) reader Valentines are due in no later than Friday, Feb 3—click here to send your lover, spouse, or secret admiree a free valentine in the Stranger. One per person, please—unless you’re poly, in which case we’ll make an exception for you and yours.

Black Mass

Posted by on January 21 at 10:18 AM

I don’t know quite how to feel about this story from the UK:

A British vicar has created his own version of the Rocky Horror Picture Show to lure the faithful back into the fold—a new twice-monthly church service for the Goths in his parish, complete with rock music and compulsory black garments. The idea is the brainchild of Martin Ramshaw, associate Anglican vicar and resident Goth at the very traditionally named church of St Edward King and Martyr in the very well-heeled eastern university city of Cambridge.

“The service seeks to find new ways of making the life of the church meaningful to people from alternative, and particularly Goth, communities,” Ramshaw explains on the church’s website, www.st-edwards-cam.org.uk.”

St. Edward King and Martyr isn’t named for Edward II, the English king who was murdered at the orders of his wife, Queen Isabella, and her lover, but it should be. Edward II was a big homo, so they shoved a red-hot poker up his butt—they literally got Medieval on his ass. A very Goth way to go. I just read a new biography of Isabella, Edward’s wife, by Alison Weir. Weir argues that Isabella not only didn’t have Edward killed, but that Edward II escaped from England and lived for decades as a hermit and a penitant Italy until his death decades after his son, Edward III, took the throne.

I only mention this crap because after I posted something about Project Runway earlier this week I was accused in the comments favoring trash TV over reading books. Not true. I make time for both.

Grow

Posted by on January 21 at 9:36 AM

If you’re anything like me (lazy, kind of bored, stressed OUT), this will occupy an unreasonable portion of your day.

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