It’s too cold out to do much else but bury your head into your hat and hood and walk swiftly to class. But, if you’re like me, you might find yourself waiting for a bus or in the windowless rooms of the CCRB. If so, plug the headphones in and dance your way through the week.
This will be on repeat for weeks. So smooth. So original. So catchy. So much better than anything you’ve been listening to lately. Also, I have no idea who the f these dudes are, but they are doing it right.
numba two. Chances are everyone around you has been talking about the new D’angelo album. Confused on where to jump in? Sidestep the long process and take a look at this standout track.
time for a bit of a throwback. Nothing says long nights on the sidewalk waiting for a bus than this amazing beat and Snoop D O double G.
To add some contemporary female vocals to the mix, check out very much under-appreciated Lorine Chia and her latest work.
lastly, as the snow is falling and your room is finally feeling a bit warm, and your homework is finished enough to justify sleep, and your slippers feel great, let this amazing and one-of-a-kind voice take you off to sleep.
It’s Friday and classes are over for the week. In hopes of unwinding, I turn on Pandora to inhale a little of today’s latest jams. Pandora is put on because I can’t think of what I specifically want to here, there’s no rhyme or reason to my choices, just something to spark my interest and get me dancing and bobbing my head. On comes Usher – I Don’t Mind. Now, if you didn’t know, this song follows the mindset of the R&B singer as he serenades to possible strippers, communicating how he doesn’t mind of their profession. Admirable in a sense, but the delivery with lines that target that the women are bad examples to society, that his only acceptance of them is that they will be his at home, and his only real connection to these women being their physical features, makes the message questionable and alarming. But…for some reason… I couldn’t resist dancing and bobbing my head!
Why is this? I find this happens a lot, whether it be with questionable songs with great beats, or films and television shows littered with misogynistic characters but great story lines. There’s something that makes these works of art that we should hate, in regards to content, popular and likable. The Usher song is a great example of using an awesome beat and sweet, serenading voice, in hopes of disguising such a questionable message. Are all of the popular content that carry these sour lessons on being a human being, disguised really well with other fancy aspects in order to distract viewers and listeners from the reality of what is going on and being said?
I think it is important to note that, with complex creations like films or music, not everything is black and white. There has to be some things we hate, some things we love, and some things we’re kind of unsure of, in the story line so that a complexity is there for audiences to evaluate and critique. It is questionable, however, if these complexities are put into these creations intentionally or naturally? Are these beliefs, words, messages, true to the creator’s reality and the audience they want to capture, or was it intentionally made in hopes of arousing some controversy on possible issues?
Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer to a lot of these questions, and if I could interview Usher right now I would. A lot of toxic messages are out in entertainment media, and it is important to be mindful of whether its consumption is changing our ideals on what is right or wrong. However, I do know the struggle. It’s incredibly confusing when you hear a song and don’t support what’s being said, but continue to dance wildly along because it’s just too damn catchy to avoid enjoying yourself over.
The Golden Globes and the Critics Choice awards have both gone by and now the Oscars loom ahead. To no real surprise, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film “Inherent Vice” barely received any nominations snagging just two in the Oscars: costume design and adapted screenplay.
The reason that the lack of nominations for this film, to put it simply, is because it just isn’t a clinical “Oscar” film. Meaning, that it isn’t packaged nicely for the viewer to digest easily in one viewing so that they come out of the theatre saying, “Ya, I get it.”
I can understand that casual viewers wouldn’t even think about seeing this movie, but the polarized reviews by the critics was a little disappointing. Many of them bashed the film for being too boring or having no recognizable plot. But umm…that isn’t the point of the film? Matt Zoller Sietz, a writer for the late Roger Ebert’s movie review website, got it spot on. He recognized that the point of the movie isn’t about following the plot, because honestly, that is damn near impossible. Instead, you should just let yourself be washed over by the atmospheric paranoia of 70’s California that the film immerses you in. Know that this is a movie that gets better with multiple viewings.
Also, if you are familiar with Thomas Pynchon’s work (author of Gravity’s Rainbow, The Crying of Lot 49, and of course, Inherent Vice) then you will recognize that this movie is an incredibly faithful adaptation, and that the convoluted plot isn’t a sign that PTA is a bad director or writer. It’s just Pynchon man…
My best attempt to explain what I think the point of the film, is for me to point you in the direction of a song that is in it’s soundtrack. Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF6JMotbHYM
Amidst this world of hippy paranoia, the only thing that Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) is sure of, is that he still loves Shasta, and he hopes that she loves him too. But this is not meant to be. Of course I may be completely wrong. To steal Seitz’s final line from his review, “What were we talking about?”
Joaquin Phoenix is also another reason this may not be getting much favour from the Oscars (he publicly said that the Oscars were bullshit, but later apologized, however, lets be honest, old people don’t forget insults, although they may forget a lot more, like what a good movie is for instance).
But the entire cast is amazing, Joaquin Phoenix is basically in every scene, then we have Josh Brolin, Owen Wilson, Benicio Del Toro, Reese Witherspoon, Martin Short, and a newcomer Katherine Waterston. Every single one of these actors give wonderful performances.
If it isn’t obvious by this point, I absolutely loved this film. Arguably you could say I am somewhat biased, by saying that I love Paul Thomas Anderson’s work (The Master and There Will Be Blood are both amazing), but that isn’t true because I don’t love Punch Drunk Love that much, nor Magnolia. I still think The Master is my favourite out of his filmography, followed now by Inherent Vice (or maybe tied).
So watch this trailer, and go see it if you want. Remember, don’t try really hard to follow the plot, just enjoy the moment.
Oh, did I forget to mention? The movie is absolutely hilarious.
I have always been hiding myself. It sort of comes with the territory of being gay. You hide from your family, you hide from your friends, and you hide from society. You learn to store things away because someone else’s reaction may be harsher than the consequences of bottling it up. It becomes easier to lie to yourself than to express yourself. This is part of the danger that society imposes on those that are deemed lesser. This is not an experience shared just within the Queer community and I’m sure many of us have this same experience, but I can’t comment on those perspectives, I can only comment on my own.
People always ask me when I knew I was gay. Maybe, I’m a special case, but I always knew I was gay, the only issue was coming to accept it. Again, I might be a special case with this, but I accepted it when I was in 6th grade. That was the first time I stopped really lying to myself. Before then, I was absolutely terrified of who I was. At that time, the representation in media was either very stereotypical/negative or shielded from me because they hit on some very adult themes that I probably couldn’t handle at that point. I had nobody to look up to, nobody to show me that life in the Queer community can be happy, comforting, and safe. I did not want to accept myself, but I knew that life would be even more difficult to survive if I didn’t. I came out to myself and that was my first step to being tired of hiding.
The next step came during high school, the first time someone learned that I was gay. I wouldn’t call it my first time “coming out†because I didn’t really decide to do it. I was asked if I was gay and I didn’t want to lie to them. That’s how I operated for a long time; if someone wanted to ask me, I would answer as truthfully as possible. This was my way to stop lying, but not be open. I didn’t get a lot of questions during that period of my life, so it wasn’t very satisfactory for me. I had actively come out to a person during this time, but I was not ready to actually come out to others. I was moving forward, but very slowly.
My (hopefully) final, and most important transitional step came with college. When I went to college, I decided to be fully open with myself and others. I was completely out to all my friends on campus and I started living my life in the way that I truly wanted. In addition, I started coming out to my family. That is still an intimidating process, but I will continually work towards it. With this new transition, I can finally do some true introspection and find out who I am.
Now a lot of the people reading this are probably wondering what this has to do with art. This blog is a part of Arts at Michigan, so I should make some reference to art. I will do more than that. Unfortunately, I believe that my artistic development is stunted from my experiences. A lot of art concerns looking into oneself and I wasn’t really able to do that for most of my life. I wasn’t able to express myself like others could and I think has negatively affected me. I don’t believe my creative endeavors are as mature as my peers and I don’t know if they ever will be. At the very least, I can express myself now and that is a miracle.
I’ve recently been seeing a lot of publications about the legging epidemic that seems to be overtaking America. The “are they pants or not” debate has been raging since my junior year of high school, but it seems to be getting fiercer as stores come out with more styles and varieties. Up to this point I’ve just sort of rolled my eyes and stayed out of it but a series of incidents have led me to speak out on the topic. Let me start by saying that as someone who loves fashion, I do believe there are times to wear and not to wear leggings as pants, such as if they are see-through or in a professional setting. However I also firmly believe in a woman’s right to dress as she pleases without being labeled a “distraction.” Last year I remember seeing battles between middle/high schools and wearers of bright patterned leggings. Schools called them distracting and were working toward banning them as a result of this. Public education systems struggle enough with getting kids to focus, so even though I disagreed with this affront to self expression, I let it slide.
It wasn’t until I worked as a camp counselor this past summer that I really began to feel outrage toward this issue. The camp has a long standing history of trying to take the focus off of romantic relationships and put it on a more brotherly/sisterly type of bond. This is a reason that so many people love the camp, so it was easy to be accommodating when they started to establish guidelines for a more appropriate way of dressing. Booty shorts and low cut tank tops were quickly abolished, but soon they adopted the dreaded finger tip rule. The problem (as everyone who has recently been in high school knows) is that everyone has different body types and a perfectly acceptable pair of shorts may not always go down to the finger tips. In addition to this, it was becoming increasingly harder for campers and staff alike to find long enough shorts in stores and no one wanted to buy an entirely new wardrobe that they would never wear outside of camp. So, to avoid the issue, this year most of the staff came prepared with loads of leggings and yoga pants – easy to move around in, relatively thin, and not against the rules. Until… One day during the staff training week, one of my superiors told me that they were thinking of banning leggings. I, like all of my coworkers, was infuriated because that was basically all we had brought. When I asked her why, she replied that many of the male counselors had been commenting and talking about the girls. So, once again, they decided to blame the women for the male gaze and sexualization of women’s bodies.
I told her it wouldn’t matter how many times they change the dress code, boys will ALWAYS find something to talk about. For once it would be nice if they addressed the boys about their tendencies instead of blaming the women. Though I thought I was sounding like a broken record, she told me she had never considered it from this perspective. Never considered it?! Even this woman couldn’t fathom that boys looking at girls could be a boy problem, not a girl problem. I wear leggings because they’re extremely comfortable, agile, and stay in place whereas low rise jeans often require constant readjustment so as not to expose the butt crack. No girl wears yoga pants to be sexy. We wear skirts and dresses and booty shorts if we’re trying to dress to impress, but we wear yoga pants for comfort. So to blame us for men and the media’s long history of taking whatever we wear and sexualizing it, is outrageously unfair.
In an article I came across last night, a woman spoke of her decision to give up wearing leggings in public out of respect for her husband after she found out that men (shocker) check girls out when they wear them. She spoke of not wanting to tempt anyone, identifying herself as the problem. This self-blame for male temptation is the same reason that the first question many women get in cases of rape is “what were you wearing,” reaffirming again and again the idea that we ask for it. What this woman doesn’t realize that not wearing leggings isn’t going to change anything. Jeans these days are just as form fitting as leggings, slacks still reveal that we have butts, and skirts and dresses still show off our legs. I’m tired of society telling me I need to change me to be acceptable. That’s why there are so many cultures around the world that force women to almost entirely cover themselves up, so as not to tempt the men who never seem to be held accountable for their own self-control.
Enough is enough, it’s time to change the conversation and ask ourselves if we really want to sacrifice our right to individuality and self expression to try to adapt ourselves to these bogus social rules rather than trying to challenge and change them. I’m not in anyway trying to blame men, it’s a media that constantly sexualizes the female body that is really at fault for this pervasive vein of thought and needs to be put into check. Of course, it won’t happen over night, but in the mean time banning leggings is just further objectifying and manipulating the female body. It’s time to raise our voices just like 13 year old Illinois middle-schooler Sophie Hasty did in protest of her school’s ban: “not being able to wear leggings because it’s ‘too distracting for boys’ is giving us the impression we should be guilty for what guys do.†I’m not willing to turn a blind eye anymore and I think it’s time we rethink our systematized victim blaming.
My mom has gained a recent obsession with corks as an artistic medium. (Largely due to a Pinterest-inspired addiction to recycled crafts).  Past projects have ranged from water bottle sunflowers to ceramic tile coasters. The cork craze has been one of the more interesting mediums and has produced some of the nicest art. Oddly enough, many of her projects have involved minimum effort over a long period of time. At least so far. It takes more than a few weeks to empty dozens of wine bottles to obtain an ample cork supply. Many of these corks have ended up in glass vases of varying shapes, among which she has sprinkled glass bulbs or tied complementary ribbons. The corks have an unobtrusive color to most any decor, plus a subtle shading of red or purple from the wine, rendering each cork marginally unique. This snowflake affect serves well to projects that capitalize off consistent difference. One such example is pointillism.
As a traditional painting technique, famous in works such as Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Un dimanche après-midi à l’Ile de la Grande Jatte) by Georges Seurat, pointillism embodies the idea of consistent difference. A collection of numerous similar pieces forms an image out of the pieces’ minor differences. As the name suggests, pointillism is the use of points in a work of art. Like pixels on a television set, the points are colored (or not colored) dots of similar size and shape that work together to form something larger. Traditionally, it has been used in painting, but has since been appropriated to ink drawings, soup cans, and even corks.
While my mom’s current project is not a pointillistic mosaic (she’s currently working on a wreath), there are some great works of corky pointillism on the Internet.
Like any art form, the beauty lies in the process of creation. Since it would take years to collect the corks and a good deal of time to assemble them into a whole, the dedication to assembling these works is impressive. But let’s hope Scott Gundersen, the cork artist pictured above, didn’t drink all that wine himself. Perhaps the process of creating this art is something that could celebrate community? A local winery where visitors can have a bottle and contribute their cork to something bigger. It may be a cool project. And if people don’t feel motivated to create art together, maybe they could donate their corks to someone who could?
I don’t know about you, but I’d love some cork pants.
