Subdermal
May
melpomene whitehead
04.01.02:
Ben Marcus reading from Notable America Women.
I know, sounds kinda dry, right? You’re thinking, yeah,
we know she passed the Jeopardy test, but now she’s getting all edumacational
on our asses? Then you should maybe check out Ben at benmarcus.com
He’s, uh, wickedy wack, as the kids used to say back in the day. He’s sort
of an absurdist, sort of a surrealist, sort of the kind of guy who looks so,
you know, normal, and then you read this and you’re like ‘what the what the
hey?’ And rightfully so. His first book, a collection of definitions fashioned
into a narrative, The Age of Wire
and String,
was so strange
and so dense it took me two weeks to read this 150 page book (that’s a long
time for me). But it wasn’t a chore. It was like cycling up the side of a
mountain—it’s hard but it’s so pretty and the air is nice. Notable American Women is almost more of the same, in a more traditional novel
format. One might say it’s slightly more accessible. At the reading,
Ben had a pantomime demonstrate some thrust positions (you know, what men
do when they have sex. You remember that, right?) which one might try in moments
of stress to create elation. I swear. This was after he ‘read’ from his book
with a cloth in his mouth, The Marcus
Cloth, which absorbs all sounds. I know,
you’re thinking this sounds like the most pretentious bullshit. Maybe it is,
but I like it. Marcus is an excellent writer who easily transcends the most pretentious bullshit. People talk about him like
he might be the most important writer of our time, making comparisons to Lewis
Carroll. Aldus Huxley, Kafka… After only two books I’d say it’s hard to
tell, but he’s a bowl of Ben & Jerry’s Twisted ice cream in a world filled
with vanilla.
Notable
American Women
($12.50, Vintage) is a sort of futuristic mystery about a character named
Ben Marcus. His father might be buried in the backyard. His mother uses him
in a breeding program. A woman named Jane Dark teaches other women behavior
modification to achieve stillness. It’s terribly nightmarish, but it’s one
of those nightmares that when you retell it to someone, it seems stupendously
funny.
03.28.02: Michael Moore reading
from Stupid White Men… We were kept out of the Michael Moore
reading at NYU because we were not rich college students (let me tell
you something about rich college students: they’re stupid. They guy behind
us on line [before we got kicked off the line—by the way, people who are not
from New York don’t wait on line, they wait in line. Why? I
guess New Yorkers maybe really are more aggressive. I’m not passively waiting
in something for things to happen, I’m right on it, dammit!]
was regaling his friends with the details of his day on the set of some cop
show in which he was supposed to play a hopped-up crack addict in a crack
den that was being raided. “What did you have to do?,” queried his cronies.
“The director told me to lie down on a mattress and when the cop tried to
pull me up I should collapse back down like I was so tired.” Excuse me????
A tired crackhead? I used to live in Park Slope, and then later on E. 12th
St., and I can attest to the fact that there are no tired crackheads. Not
ever. That’s why we had so much crime back then in the late 80s and early
90s.
Once Giuliani brought back heroin, crime went down. Heroin addicts really
are too tired.), but that won’t stop me from recommending Stupid White Men ...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State
of the Nation ($24.95 HarperCollins). In case you thought we lived
in a free country, here comes the latest censorship scandal: HarperCollins
tried to censor Moore’s latest book. Like his previous book, Downsize
This!, this one is also a serious look at difficult subjects presented
in a humorous manner (rampant corruption in the US Government, racial profiling,
and Enron are among the topics), but this one was on press on September 10,
2001. Half the run was printed and the rest was ready to be printed the day
that thousands of people died at who knows who’s hands. A few days later HarperCollins
asked Moore to rewrite huge portions of the book AND pay for the reprinting.
Specifically, they wanted the sections concerning the Bush family stealing
the 2000 presidential elections, and the Bush’s connections with Enron. Moore
was writing about Enron’s corruption before the story broke in the major media!
HarperCollins could have changed the course of history, and saved thousands
of innocent Enron employees their pensions had they not been chicken-shit
censors and published the book on time. Moore refused to rewrite the book,
and Stupid White Men sat around for several months before the story
was leaked to the trade magazine Publisher’s Weekly. Once they were
publicly embarrassed, HarperCollins backed down on their anti-free speech
stance and agreed to publish the book. Released in February, it became a best
seller on Amazon before the book came out, from consumer pre-sales.
The book is now in its 15th printing. Moore tempers the horror
of what he writes about with over-the-top, irreverent humor. Everyone
needs to read this book. If you can’t afford it (It’s $15 + shipping at Amazon,
and 30% off at Barnes and Noble bookstores), go to the damn library and reserve
a copy. If they don’t have it yet, demand that they get it. Don’t let
the bad people censor us, or keep knowledge out of our hands. Get two copies
if you can—you’ll want to have one to lend to your friends who think Bush
is doing a good job. Visit michaelmoore.com
for book tour updates and book excerpts.
Hopefully,
this will tide you over until Christopher X. Brodeur’s book on the
Giuliani years, Perverted Little Creep, comes out (see excerpts at
www.pervertedlittlecreep.com)
Oh,
and news flash, there’s another fabulous, great, stupendous readable political
book out, Ted Rall’s To Afghanistan and Back ($15.95, from Comic
Lit). Rall is a cartoonist, and some crazy newspaper (the Village Voice) decided
to send him off to Afghanistan along with 45 other journalists. Three journalists
from this group were killed within two weeks. Thank whomever you want that
we did not lose Rall, one of 
the
great satirists of our times. You may know Rall from his weekly comic carried
in the Village Voice, or from his editorial cartoons that run in many
many newspapers, including the New York Times, or his color strips
in Time and Fortune. The advance reviews for this book are amazingly
positive. Not that he doesn’t deserve the accolades, just that this is not
a rah rah pro-america book. The goddam Nation said, “Rall has filed
some of the best war reporting from Afghanistan by an American journalist.”
CHEESUS. That’s impressive. Like Moore, Rall has no agenda other than an unswerving
desire for truth and disseminating information. Ted Rall—Johnny Appleseed
for the 21st century? I’m so happy there are people like Moore
and Rall around to kick ass and tell things straight.
04.04.02.
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog at Irving Plaza. I was trying to remember what was first show
that I saw at Irving Plaza. It would have been Pig Bag on New Years’
Eve 1981-82, but we were too drunk and/or stoned to make it before the last
two minutes of their last song, “Papa’s Got A Brand New Pig Bag.” So I can’t
count that. It must have been one of the many many times I saw Brian Brain,
Martin Atkin’s first band post-Public Image Limited. We were all
surprised that Martin had a band, ‘cus we were stupid and thought Keith
Levine was the talented one in PiL. Of course, Martin went on to
become a huge force in alternative music, forming Invisible Records,
starting the industrial supergroup Pigface, and producing the dreaded
GooGoo Dolls first album. Keith Levine formed Cowboys International
and faded into complete obscurity.
And
here we are 20 years later. At 15, I was always on the list and treated like
a little punk-rock princess, a hardcore Molly Ringwald if you will,
and now I’m wondering if I can afford the $6 beer because we dropped $25 per
tickets for a fuggin puppet show. I made a decision that night: I am never
going back to Irving unless I am guest-listed. End o’ story. It’s totally
not worth the aggro. We got there at 8 (the tickets said doors at 7:30) and
there was a line around the block. Why? I have no idea. But I do know this:
three separate guys checked my Keroppi lunch box.
I know at Irving they’re really not used to seeing females (the last
few shows I’ve seen there: Television, Mission of Burma, and Mouse
on Mars, had about a 1-to-4 female-male ratio), so maybe they were confused
by the profusion of estrogen. It’s a heady pheromone! Or perhaps 
there
had been death threats against Triumph or his handler Robert Smigel.
If there weren’t, there should have been. The show SUCKED. They have no material
for that puppet, they obviously had not rehearsed, the Irving staff had a
difficult time with all the media (video, lights, etc. Not their fault. I’m
sure that wasn’t rehearsed either). The differences between seeing Triumph
on TV and in person are this—he curses, and he has no one funny to bounce
off. To be fair, there were some OK moments, like the song about how he can
lick his own dick. And Doug from TV Funhouse was there, unmiked
for some reason. All the ‘celebrity’ guests were either currently out of work,
or no one you really needed to see. Paraded out were the guy who plays Big
Pussy on the Sopranos (I know people like this show, but it’s not
like hip, is it? Well, it wasn’t really a hip crowd.), Kurt Loder from
Mtv, two guys who do TV commercials (the Dell guy and Jared the skinny sandwich
man), Weezer Babies—oh, I mean Fountains of Wayne—and Max Weinberg.
BORING! There was very little laughter (does anybody remember laughter?).
I had more fun at the Food Emporium after the show.
Someone made a store just for me! Well, me if I had oodles of cash
and lived in a better neighborhood.
04.12.02:
Braincell Genocide at Surf Reality. Mein Gott, Brer Brian wasn’t kidding when he
named this moving, randomly appearing, loud anti-ffolk night Braincell Genocide.
With free hooch and free snacks, the potential for mass destruction of grey
matter is tremendous. Many art stars and anti-ffolks were in attendance this
night, most of whom were terribly hung over the next day. Besides the free
booze, there’s fabulous music—this night included my pal Hornbuckle, and Brer Brian himself.
There will definitely be more of these events, but who knows how many more,
as they keep having to find new homes for the night. I think there should
be some coming up in June at Collective:Unconscious.
04.19.02:
The Butchies at the Knitting Factory. Now the Knit is also on my shit list because the management
is a bunch of cheap ass bastids who refused to put the a/c on in the main
space during the very crowded Butchies show. Maybe they think girls
don’t need to be comfortable? Was this a subtle form of sexism? It was so
hot, and so smoky (what happened to their no smoking in the main space
policy?), and the air was so stagnant that I VOMITED. This is not
right. I’m no ralpher! But the Butchies are so cute and ebullient that they
made me forget my pain. Their melodic story-driven punk rock, their charming
uniforms, their warm and comfy stage presence, turned the Knit into a happy
happy place. Visit www.thebutchies.com for
more Butchies fun.
But,
here are my gripes: the place was packed with girls, and that’s great. I wish
more women went to see live music. Where were these girls when I went to see
Television? Or Mission of Burma? Or even Lesion fer cris’sake? I get the impression
that certain chicks only like to support certain chick bands. And that’s bad
for everyone. It means bands like the Butchies, a tight, talented band with
great songs, probably get pigeonholed because they’re women, and their shows
are attended by fiercely loyal women who don’t seem to be interested in music
in general, only in music done by other women. I’m baffled by the self-segregation
on the part of this crowd. It seems to be some sort of remnant of the riot
girl days, and that's so ten years ago.
04.20.02:
Le Scandal:
No point in telling you even more about how great Le Scandal is—haven’t
you already heard about this from like, 
everywhere?
The night I attended, birthday girl Datura from Vulgaras
(http://www.vulgaras.net) got a lap dance from entertainers Ammo and
Remy. Remy lamented that the lovely and talented Datura
had just gotten married, to Tibbie of the X-Possibles. A rock-n-roll
girl wedding! Of course, they were married by an Elvis impersonator. Earlier
in the estrogen-packed evening, Vulgaras’s Velocity Chyaldd
did a compelling number involving guns and knives and blood that had the audience
gasping. Le Scandal is not just a strip show, that’s for shit sure. Ladies,
c’mon down! It’s fun for a girl and a boy. You can see Le Scandal every Saturday
night around midnight at The Cutting Room, 19 West 24th street.
And you can see clips from Le Scandal on Rools Like Ozzy, every Thursday night
at 1:30 am ch 56. See more Velocity and the rest of jalapeno-hot rockers Vulgaras
at roolslikeozzy.com