We did it! We ran a conference that went amazingly well! And, thank you Baby Jesus, the catering mysteriously appeared, out of the ether.
Now – bubblebath. Then bed. For a day or two.
May, 2008
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Yay!
May 31, 2008 by admin
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Arrrg.
May 30, 2008 by admin
1. The catering! The catering! What is the point of sending me an email on Friday that I don’t receive until the catering office closes telling me the payment hasn’t been received for the catering that is supposed to arrive at 8:00 am on Saturday? I submitted all the paperwork weeks ago, the catering has been paid for! How am I going to feed these people? (My mother’s helpful solution: buy a can of beans and give everyone a spoon. Gee, thanks mom.)
2. Drunk text messages from an ex! Why? I had just put you out of my head, and now you have weaseled your way back in!
3. Papers! When will I write all these papers!
The above, combined with the fact that I have killer cramps and need to fall asleep early so I can get up early and deal with the “wtf catering” issue, are exactly the justification I need to dip into my emergency supply of tylenol threes, left over from Deathly Sore Throat of Death back in February.
One hilarious thing, though: some fucking dipshit undergrads who were miffed that they were made to vacate the room that the conference was taking place in (a room that had been booked for purposes of this conference since JANUARY, much to the consternation of various punk-ass music majors who kept trying to steal it) had the following to say:
“It’s some lesbian conference. Run by a bunch of lesbians.”
(Note: Only two lesbians were in attendance today, and one hadn’t arrived yet.)
And then I went to the Grad Students Association office to drop off some paperwork and the fucking Black Panthers were there and tried to get me to buy their Black Panther newspaper for a dollar but I didn’t have any dollars, all I had was one ballpoint pen, so I was like “Sorry! I have no money. All I have in the world is this ballpoint pen.”
In conclusion, tomorrow night I am going to get royally hammered and then flirt with unsuitable men.
ADDENDUM – Reasons Why I Love School
I have just received the following homework assignment over email:
“Familiarize yourself with two key rap albums from Los Angeles, and be prepared to discuss the differences:
N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton (Ruthless Records, 1988) – West Coast ‘hard core’ rap
Dr. Dre, The Chronic (Interscope, 1991) – the ‘G-Funk’ sound, aka ‘gangsta rap’”Category Uncategorized | Tags: | 1 Comment
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Tonight I
May 29, 2008 by admin
1. Exfoliated my entire body and now feel very smooth,
2. Read a chapter from this book I picked up called Undressing Cinema, which is very good and interesting, but I think I totally disagree with the author’s reading of Picnic at Hanging Rock, a film that I love, because she chooses to see it only as a depiction of girls rendered victim of the male gaze, and doesn’t really address how queerly erotic the movie is, and how could also be read as transgressive. But I will need to re-watch the movie so that I can come up with a more astute counter-argument.
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Dear everyone,
May 27, 2008 by admin
I have been organizing a conference with my friend Lindsay for the past few months. It is now, suddenly happening this weekend! I am stressed the fuck out about this. If you lived in Los Angeles, I would say “come to my conference!” But since most of my blog readership resides in Canadialand, all I can say is, “look at the cool conference logo I designed and look at the neat presentations people are giving!”
Ok! I am now off to do more important pre-conference tasks that include:
1. Hoping that the catering order was received and that the food will, in fact, arrive,
2. Wondering why the funding person from the Grad Students Association has stopped answering my emails,
3. Making lists of the things I have to do before Friday, resulting in me not actually doing any of those things because I am too busy making lists of them,
4. and writing several papers at the same time.Go team!
Xandra
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Why I will never finish my doctoral degree
May 25, 2008 by admin
Sam was like “Have you seen beedog.com?” and I was like, “No…” and then I went and saw beedog.com and it was hilarious and then I clicked on the link to Cat Town which is the new Greatest Thing Ever, and then there was this website on which there is a picture of a squirrel dressed up as Benazir Bhutto.
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In which there is much complaining
May 25, 2008 by admin
Dear the Fire Alarm,
Look, I am so glad that you work. Because knowing that you work gives me the reassurance that, should my apartment catch fire in the next month or so before I move, I will at least be awake, making it a lot easier to escape, so hopefully I will not die in a towering faux-adobe inferno.
The thing is, fire alarm, it would have been nice if you had not decided to assert your functionalness last night, between the hours of 2:30 and 4:00 in the morning, four times. That was kind of totally unnecessary. Although it really was super fun to hang out with my neighbours as we all stood around in our pyjamas on the sidewalk in the dark! Oh, wait, I mean it was NOT FUN AT ALL.
Also, do you know how cold it has been? The weather in Los Angeles has been practically autumnal for the past few days. And I mean “autumn in Ontario, Canada,” not “autumn in So-Cal.” And also, I live in a desert, which means that at night it is colder still. The other day I was walking home in the rain, and it was so cold and wet that my bad ankle started aching. Seriously. Like, am I seventy-five years old? If I was a senior citizen, this is the point where I would complain about my rheumatism and give a young man a shiny nickel to run down to the pharmacy and pick me up some aspirin. But, no, I am a twenty-four year old, which means that instead, I hang my head and sigh at the fact that I have the right ankle of a seventy-five year old and then pour myself another gin and tonic (sans tonic).
So, what I am trying to say is, fire alarm, what was the point of all that brou-ha-ha last night? No point. No point at all.
Cheers,
Xandra A.
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Well, that movie was pretty much wonderful and perfect.
May 24, 2008 by admin
Oh, Harrison Ford. My, my, have you aged well – kind of like a really good . . . cheddar. I’d like to bring you home, keep you around for a while, and then have you in a grilled cheese sandwich.
So (and what I am about to say may be considered a “spoiler,” so do not read the remainder of this paragraph if such things offend your sensibilities), I don’t like to say I told you so, but remember that time many months ago when I was like “I predict that the new Indiana Jones movie is totally going to be about ALIENS and it’s going to be fucking AWESOME”? Well, basically someone needs to hire me to write movies. And remember how in the X-Files, there were nine seasons and a movie of completely incomprehensible alien plot going on, to the point where even I, who spent July 2005 re-watching the entire series chronologically, could probably only come up with “well, there were aliens . . . and Mulder’s dad . . . and that gross black, wormy disease that crawled around under your skin . . . and everyone got those three bug bites on their backs in the pilot episode and it seemed really important and then that plot point was never taken up again . . . oh, and some Russians, and, oh, hey remember that time when Scully got hit in the head with a bookshelf and we all laughed?” if you asked me to explain the nature of the government conspiracy in the X-Files? Well . . . I’m pretty sure that that Indiana Jones movie just somehow explained the entire X-Files. And to think we ever, for a second, doubted the genius of George Lucas.
I also recall predicting that Cate Blanchett as Icy-Cool-Sexy-Comrade would be amazing, and again, I spoke the truth. I am like an oracle of the Indiana. Who would have thought that combining Natasha Fatale and Mr. Spock and a rapier would be the best invention ever? She seriously tried to mind meld with Indiana at the beginning of the movie. It was so meta.
Oh, and Shia LeBoeuf wasn’t completely annoying. Only mostly annoying.
ADDENDUM: The internet is a fucking hilarious place. Like, seriously. This movie has only been out for two days. Who made this? Because whoever it was . . . I love them.
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Do not:
May 23, 2008 by admin
1. try to convince me that Elvis “invented rock and roll,” and that I should believe you because you read it in a Rolling Stone history of rock. He didn’t. He popularized it, and embodied it in North American culture, and was able to bring the genre to a wide audience, but to say that he invented it is a rather offensive fallacy that marginalizes the musicians who were part of the subcultures that led to the development of rock. Like, how could one dude single-handedly invent a genre? The closest thing I can think of is maybe Schoenberg who actually sat down and was like, “And for my next trick – I shall invent twelve-tone, and then have a building named after me,” but even so, stupid old twelve-tone was significantly transmuted by other composers who adopted the technique. Also – please consider your sources. Rolling Stone is, after all, the bastion of white dude rock criticism. So . . . there might be a wee bit of ideology (some of us might call it . . . white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy) that, consciously or subconsciously, will inform whom they choose to canonize.
2. assume that because I want to critique the rock music canon, I am condemning it. Please, do listen to Elvis, he was important, I will grant you that. But there were other musicians who were important too, that we don’t get to hear much about (most of them black, many of them women. Interesting). I’m not trying to piss on a sacred cow. Well, maybe I’m trying to piss on it a little bit. But who wouldn’t want to piss on something that basically upholds a discourse of musical snobbery, while discounting the work of significant musicians, and marginalizing the people who listen to that music?
3. make me feel shitty for not knowing intimate details about record sales and for not being able to name drop important musicians from this period, or put pressure on me to know these things because I study musicology. First of all, I am not interested in that kind of positivist approach to music history. Facts have their place, but do not stand up on their own. We need to query the source of those facts. We need to understand those facts in their cultural and political contexts. Do a little research into what’s going on musicology, and you’ll find out that the field has moved pretty far away from constant recitation of fact. Secondly, Rock did not develop linearly. There are a lot of stories and narratives that constructed rock as we know it today. I was thinking hard about this, and I realized that I do know a narrative of rock, and I know the facts of that narrative rather intimately, and it’s not the same as yours, or the same as anyone’s, and that’s fine, because nobody’s stories of rock will be identical. But each one is valid. I simply do not relate to the Elvis-Presley-What-A-Guy story. The rock narrative that resonates for me includes but is not limited to stories of Big Mama Thornton; of rockabilly gals like Rose Maddox, Barbara Pittman and Wanda Jackson; of girl groups like the Ronnettes, and little known all-girl garage acts like the Ace of Cups and Goldie and the Gingerbreads; of soul and jazz and Annisteen and Ella and Aretha; some fucking awesome, ear-splitting punk and post-punk from the Slits and the X-Ray Spex and the Au Pairs and the Delta Five and the Raincoats; sparkly, bright B-52s New Wave; a little gothic dalliance with Siouxie; angsty, grungy, underground explosions from Sonic Youth, Lydia Lunch and every Riot Grrl you could possibly think of; and post-riot, post-modern Sleater-Kinney, Le Tigre, and Madonna. This is the story I relate to. I do not claim that it supercedes anyone else’s. I want it to stand side by side and intertwined with other stories of rock. And as for Elvis Presley? He sounds a lot to me like a male version of Wanda Jackson . . .
4. decide to conclude the argument by saying that our differences stem from the fact that I am interested in the political, while you are interested in the aesthetic. First of all, don’t make assumptions as to my interests. And secondly, to divorce aesthetics from politics is irresponsible and dangerous.
5. interrupt me. I already doubt my own authority enough. I already question my authority to speak about ANYTHING, including the thing that I have been studying for years, the thing that I’m getting a doctoral degree in, and I think it’s really fucked up that after all these years, I still feel like I have no right to speak authoritatively about music. I don’t need to be interrupted when I’m trying to assert myself, especially when I have a history of not being able to assert myself.
6. tell me that I believe “polite lies.”
7. diss the Mariah. She’s a pretty fantastic musician. Case closed.
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Goodnight, sweethearts
May 22, 2008 by admin
1. I had a really vitally important epiphany today, which has resulted in me inventing a new relationship classification for myself, that is based in part on my extensive experience as a practicing quirkyalone; in part on my resentment over the fact that even though I like being single, I feel a strange pressure to date; in part on the fact that the past few months have borne witness to a number of remarkably catastrophic dating disasters (Lying, unavailable “boyfriends!” People who seem cool but are waaaaayy too into reggae! Twenty-seven year old virgins!); and in part on my realization that said disasters could possibly be attributed to my strange predilection for hipster douchebags and Chuck Klostermans. I have decided that my new status is SINGLE BUT UNAVAILABLE. And I like it. I like it sooooo much. I feel newly liberated and like the weight of the world is no longer mine to bear. Thank the fucking lord.
2. I have just written the following phrases while taking notes on an article about music on the Sunset Strip (and I am a musicologist, therefore these are indisputably true musicological facts):
“Lou Adler wore interesting hats. Michelle Phillips says so.”
“protest a-go-go?”
“Brian Wilson, professional sadsack”
“And meanwhile . . . Phil Spector is a sociopath!”3. Aside from that creepy and unnecessary clown, this makes me happy in a largely unironic way.
4. And this makes me happy that someone invented the concept of Cute, Awkward, Canadian Indie Rock and Roll Boys:
And with that, I bid you goodnight.
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On Space and Time: Two Haikus
May 18, 2008 by admin
on libraries
Where is the book that
I recalled three weeks ago?
Where is it? Where? Where?on public transportation
Where is the bus that
Should have come an hour ago?
Where is it? Where? Where?Category Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments