Pomona College is a strange place. It is an English garden oasis nestled in a desert landscape, amidst endless In-N-Out’s and Ford dealerships, filled with an assemblage of students from every corner of the country who have come to Southern California to do yoga and read Descartes, to learn Spanish or Mandarin. Every day, students wake up and walk by each other on the way to class, preoccupied with thoughts oscillating between today’s English reading and yesterday’s paper. We too easily lose ourselves in our own academic projections, but strangely decide that, between the classrooms and the dorm rooms where we endlessly read and write and calculate and think, conversation stops and the life of the mind pauses. That five-minute walk between the dorm and class is not a bridge between two isolated locations of intellectual activity. An insightful teacher once told me that our best thoughts come in our sleep or in the bathroom. Leaving the validity of that statement aside, the point is that thought is not circumscribed to a given locale or time of day, and often it is during the most routine activity at the most awkward time that we produce our greatest insights.
In some ways, Pomona is a haven for a variety of discourses. There is the routine: the digester, the small talk over lunch, or the late-night meandering conversation. There is the “academic” activity that goes on in classrooms between Bonita and 7th St., and the silent work that constantly goes on in libraries, dorm rooms, and laboratories. There are even the anonymous and fleeting rants plastered to Walker wall. There is the absurd experience, the extraordinary event, and the bizarre conversation. Yet when it comes to a written record of our discursive activity, there seems to be a common assumption that a newspaper is somehow a panacea, as though there is nothing more to be said beyond current events, opinions, sports, and arts. I have a problem with this seemingly foregone conclusion, because it is between the newspaper sections and after class that we have our most fascinating thoughts. It’s not these forums that are misguided, but the belief that discourse stops with the established venues of academic writing and news. Pomona’s Pruning Knife hopes to provide an alternative forum.
Pomona is the Roman goddess of fruit and gardening, and her implement is the pruning knife. Too often, the fruits of our mental labor are left to fall to the ground and rot. We started Pomona’s Pruning Knife to trim and gather the thoughts and ideas that lie somewhere between the newspaper and term paper. This is a forum for the ideas that involve life and school, class and party. It is non-exclusionary and yet non-inclusive. We have no agenda and no subject matter. We’re not sure if we’re a journal or a magazine. What we do know is that Pomona students are thinkers, and that a forum for highlighting their ideas that occur between the lines is long overdue.
Jacob Levi, co-editor
This project started as a column in TSL called “The Liberal Arts Life.” Each week I wrote about an idea that was somehow present on campus, as explained to me by someone who had some expertise and enthusiasm for the subject. I wrote about the big bang theory, a Brahms symphony, corporeal mime, and the possibility for political implications in art.
At the root of every subject is an idea that represents a perspective on the world. Those ideas are what I was after in my original column, and what I want to capture in this publication.
I was inspired by a series of four Thomas Cole paintings called “The Voyage of Life.” They depict Childhood, Youth, Manhood and Old Age.
The castle in the background of “Youth” spoke to me as a representation of that perfect idea or view of the world--the one we as young people seek. Then there’s the way that the painting as a whole visualizes the search itself.
I’m trying to recreate a certain moment from a Physics course I took last year. We were learning about Quantum Mechanics, and our professor did this cool thought experiment on the board. Suddenly I saw the bizarre implications of the endless problem sets and proofs contributing to a really interesting view of the world.
I’m interested in reading articles about any idea that can inspire such moments. And I think everybody at this school knows enough about some particular subject to explain why it is exciting.
I hope you’ll contribute an idea you love.
Rose Haag, co-editor
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Shifting Gears By Clay Taylor
It was late at night and there was only the road. We were somewhere just north of Dallas on some two-lane truck route gunning towards Amarillo and then onwards to I-40 West. My two companions had been asleep for hours, and I was the only one awake. Tweaked on Adderall, coffee, and cigarettes, I needed something to keep me grounded. But there was nothing. My mind was racing out of control, and I was alone with my truck.
It was a terrible solitude. Flat, desolate blackness extended in every direction as far as the eye could not see. Without even the faintest light from the moon, there was no way to know what I was missing. In my head, I pictured an alien dreamscape more bizarre than Dalí had ever dared to paint. I knew reality was probably far less glamorous, but I needed a fantasy to keep me entertained and focused. The road was starting to get to me. As time dragged on, the dotted yellow lines began to look like bullets. I felt a strong urge to dodge them. But there was no way of escaping this terrible onslaught. My palms started to sweat. I longed more than anything for a turn. A dip. Hell I’d even settle for a bump. But nothing changed. Endless monotony. I started to wonder if we would ever reach civilization at all. Never before in my life had I been so far out in the middle of nowhere. And never in my life had I been so far from the cops.
I was totally free. There were no speed limits. There were no traffic lights. There weren’t any signs at all. Just an endless stream of passing telephone poles, giving the road the appearance of a runway. I decided to take off. I nudged the accelerator just a little at first and then rammed it to the floor. I was all in. I held the wheel tightly and leaned forward to watch the road more carefully. The speedometer began to climb. Eighty-five. Ninety. Ninety-five. Ninety-seven. Ninety-nine. And then a roar. The transmission downshifted and the engine revved high. Just shy of a hundred miles per hour, and I could go no faster. But it wasn’t because my engine lacked the power. There were plenty of horses to do the job. Something was holding me back. And I was furious. It was the goddamned computer. My transmission was being controlled by a machine. Just like the bell that sounds when your seatbelt isn’t buckled, this onboard policeman was installed by the good people at Chevy to keep me safely under control. I could do nothing about it, so I let off the accelerator, eased down to eighty, and lit another cigarette. I would have to learn to limit my romantic expectations. Jack Kerouac is dead. A tank of gas costs over fifty bucks. And the days of joyriding are over.
I was disappointed. But my disappointment in circumstances such as these is constant and to some degree expected. In this age of modern material comfort, society has lost its appetite for raw physical danger. Everything has been wrapped in bubble wrap to protect us from ourselves. Even our cars. What’s worse, we’ve substituted the actual thrill of exhilarating experiences for the vicarious experiences of others. We stare at the screens of our computers, of our televisions, and of our cell phones and suck down Huxley’s soma and forget what it feels like to take risks. And the youth are the ones who suffer most. No longer can we push the limits of our world to find our place and discover our character.
Freedom in modern America, it seems, is shrinking faster than Bush’s approval rating. Take two steps out of line and there are satellites relaying your exact location to the nearest authorities, who are perched, waiting to run you down like dogs. Even out in the middle of fucking nowhere, you aren’t free. If it’s not the cops, it’s something else. But I won’t stand for it. I refuse to give in so easily. Right then and there, I vowed that my next car would be a stick shift.
It was a terrible solitude. Flat, desolate blackness extended in every direction as far as the eye could not see. Without even the faintest light from the moon, there was no way to know what I was missing. In my head, I pictured an alien dreamscape more bizarre than Dalí had ever dared to paint. I knew reality was probably far less glamorous, but I needed a fantasy to keep me entertained and focused. The road was starting to get to me. As time dragged on, the dotted yellow lines began to look like bullets. I felt a strong urge to dodge them. But there was no way of escaping this terrible onslaught. My palms started to sweat. I longed more than anything for a turn. A dip. Hell I’d even settle for a bump. But nothing changed. Endless monotony. I started to wonder if we would ever reach civilization at all. Never before in my life had I been so far out in the middle of nowhere. And never in my life had I been so far from the cops.
I was totally free. There were no speed limits. There were no traffic lights. There weren’t any signs at all. Just an endless stream of passing telephone poles, giving the road the appearance of a runway. I decided to take off. I nudged the accelerator just a little at first and then rammed it to the floor. I was all in. I held the wheel tightly and leaned forward to watch the road more carefully. The speedometer began to climb. Eighty-five. Ninety. Ninety-five. Ninety-seven. Ninety-nine. And then a roar. The transmission downshifted and the engine revved high. Just shy of a hundred miles per hour, and I could go no faster. But it wasn’t because my engine lacked the power. There were plenty of horses to do the job. Something was holding me back. And I was furious. It was the goddamned computer. My transmission was being controlled by a machine. Just like the bell that sounds when your seatbelt isn’t buckled, this onboard policeman was installed by the good people at Chevy to keep me safely under control. I could do nothing about it, so I let off the accelerator, eased down to eighty, and lit another cigarette. I would have to learn to limit my romantic expectations. Jack Kerouac is dead. A tank of gas costs over fifty bucks. And the days of joyriding are over.
I was disappointed. But my disappointment in circumstances such as these is constant and to some degree expected. In this age of modern material comfort, society has lost its appetite for raw physical danger. Everything has been wrapped in bubble wrap to protect us from ourselves. Even our cars. What’s worse, we’ve substituted the actual thrill of exhilarating experiences for the vicarious experiences of others. We stare at the screens of our computers, of our televisions, and of our cell phones and suck down Huxley’s soma and forget what it feels like to take risks. And the youth are the ones who suffer most. No longer can we push the limits of our world to find our place and discover our character.
Freedom in modern America, it seems, is shrinking faster than Bush’s approval rating. Take two steps out of line and there are satellites relaying your exact location to the nearest authorities, who are perched, waiting to run you down like dogs. Even out in the middle of fucking nowhere, you aren’t free. If it’s not the cops, it’s something else. But I won’t stand for it. I refuse to give in so easily. Right then and there, I vowed that my next car would be a stick shift.
A Little Jaunt by Rose Haag
If cross-country road-trips are about meandering across the countryside and “finding yourself,” then my drive home last May was an anti-road-trip. It was just Zoë and me. We drove around the clock, saw practically no scenery, and made it from Claremont to Philadelphia in under two days. Besides the gas and coffee stops, we only pulled off the road twice: in Flagstaff, AZ we submitted our final exams, and in Mulberry Grove, IL we went for a run.
We left on Thursday.
Zoë had been up all night working on a paper, so I drove first.
We only made it four hours out before the sun started going down and we settled in at a Motel 6 somewhere in Arizona.
By ten o’clock the next morning, our papers were finished and suddenly we looked around to find we were in Flagstaff, and finished with sophomore year of college.
We bought Dramamine for the backseat, coffee for the front, and by noon, we were off!
I took over the wheel as it was getting dark and drove through Texas. I couldn’t see much. I do remember a huge cement cross by the side of the road, and a gas station where the coffee was 10 cents cheaper if you brought your own cup.
Zoë took over as the sun came up. I slept through the Missouri rest-stop, where the coffee was free and the cashier pointed out that Missouri offers far better hospitality than “those Arkansas rest-stops.” I was looking forward to seeing the Mississippi River, but all I remember is waking up, looking around, seeing the bridge, and going back to sleep.
We tried to only spend money on gas and coffee. I had somehow acquired sardines and canned spinach, and we took some staples from the dining hall before we left: bread, hard-boiled eggs, and apples. I also recall some Hershey’s and a huge jug of V-8.
By the time we hit Illinois on Friday afternoon, we were starting to feel strange from too much sitting, too much coffee, strange interactions between caffeine and Dramamine, and all those sardines. We pulled off because the name “Mulberry Grove” sounded cool.
We parked in the church parking lot, put on our running clothes and ran down the dirt road past fields and farmhouses. The first half hour was refreshing; after that, we were nauseated and dehydrated, and unfortunately still had to run back.
It was miserable, but we made it back to the church. The priest was waiting for us; he let us rinse off in the bathroom. Before we left, he gave us a copy of the New Testament, written in “plain English, without the thees and thous.” Signed, Randy of Mulberry Grove.
Ohio’s gas stations were the sketchiest. I was driving and it was past midnight on Saturday. The doors to the convenience store were locked, and we went to three different stations before we found a usable bathroom.
I was wired so I kept driving into the morning, way past the end of my six-hour shift. I have this incredible hazy memory of that dawn, of the pink sky and the gray clouds and the mountainous, windy roads of Western Pennsylvania. I’d been sitting in stale air for hours, but I felt like I was riding down a hill on a bicycle with crisp air blowing through my hair.
By the time we were trying to navigate city streets in Philadelphia, I was a zombie. Somehow, I stayed awake for the final three hours down I-95. I walked in my front door on Sunday afternoon, a full day before my sister’s birthday.
Zoë posted on my Facebook wall a few days later:
“Phone conversation between me and a Concerned Older Brother:
Me: Hello?
A: Mom?
Me: No, it’s Zoë.
A: Oh hey, wait, why are you home already?
Me: I decided to drive.
A: Yeah we discussed this on Thursday and you hadn’t even left. How did you do that so fast?
Me: just well planned use of zoom control.
A: Zoom control? hmmm, I think someone needs to lay off the Jack Kerouac.”
Impressions from A Road to Nowhere by Jacob Levi
It is eight in the morning, it’s forty-five degrees, and I am sitting on the passenger side as we zoom down the highway through the Mojave. Endless orange-brown sand is highlighted only by the occasional shrub, damned by the lottery of birth to grow in this inhospitable, arid climate. We pull over to pee. I watch my feet for rattlesnakes, thorns, spiders, or any other unfriendly creature that might ruin this otherwise picturesque morning. Don’t forget to face downwind.
I’m not sure why or how I got here, only that I haven’t slept in what feels like days, and my skin is beginning to meld to the leather seat. I hope I remember how to walk because I’m not sure I can feel my legs. The sun is glaring overhead, but nothing can hurt me through my sunglasses. Sonic Youth blasts over the stereo. Thurston Moore screams, “Incinerate!” over and over, an anthem of urban decay and rebellion. A propos. I sit idly by as the desert passes by me.
This is nowhere. There are no gas stations, no 7-11’s, no restrooms. Only sand and dirt for miles and miles. Every car that crosses our path is an event on this two-lane road to nowhere. Or should I say, road from nowhere. The end of this road leads to the center of it all, the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, the beaches, the bars. But here! Here we are free. The traffic, the drama, and the light—it’s all strikingly unreal in the midst of sand dunes that extend as far as the eye can see.
But somehow it has crept. Yes, the dirt and the dust and the tumbleweeds creep steadily towards Los Angeles, the tropical city built upon a desert. The desert has crept into my car—sand in my nostrils, in my mouth, between my toes, in the car. However, what I mean is that Los Angeles has crept toward the desert. From behind a rolling hill of red sand emerges a conglomerate of hundreds of prefabricated houses, meticulously ordered such that the cloister could almost pass for a community. There is not a single car in a single model home. Someone must’ve thought this was a good place to build homes. In the middle of the Mojave Desert. Surely there are people who, seeking solitude or natural beauty, want to live in the desert. Apparently none of them were interested in a prefab’ home surrounded by a hundred other identical prefab’ homes. It appears that little boxes on the hillside are more marketable amidst the lush palm trees of San Diego and Thousand Oaks.
We pass a small ranch with a sign on the highway. It reads, “GET THE US OUT OF THE UN,” in ever-patriotic red, white and blue-stenciled lettering. Really? I didn’t know there were people who felt that way. Was I lost? Had I made a wrong turn and crossed into unfriendly lands? I don’t even think Sarah Palin wants to leave the UN—and she can see Russia from her house!
My mind once again returns to Sonic Youth. Maybe there is something to be said about the parallels between urban decay and the state of affairs in the Mojave this morning. Yes, indeed we should pull out of the UN. Look at all these Mexicans stealing our jobs. Look at all these tumbleweeds in need of mending. To think that nobody has bothered to water those scraggily bushes on the side of the highway! Travesty. Bring American jobs back home to the Mojave, where they belong. I hear that the housing crisis hit the central Mojave the worst. Lost jobs everywhere. Wall Street has no idea. Whoever put that sign up was certainly on to something; Sonic Youth was clearly talking about the same thing. There is something very, very wrong with this country, and it is clearly France. Politics tire me out and I return to watching the car’s shadow cross the melting asphalt.
Sometimes this city doesn’t know where to stop. I thought I had freed myself from it, at least for this Saturday morning, but the sprawl already caught up. It is difficult to imagine that the Valley looked much like this desert less than a century ago, but it is easy to envision that this area will probably look like the Valley does now in due time, scattered with affordable housing, fast food and expensive gasoline. If you can’t bring the people to LA, bring LA to the people. So far I don’t see too many of either, but that is certain to change. I find myself constantly repeating the last line in Roman Polanski’s neo-film noir classic, “Chinatown” in my head: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” This city does not seem to know its own limits.
I’m not sure why or how I got here, only that I haven’t slept in what feels like days, and my skin is beginning to meld to the leather seat. I hope I remember how to walk because I’m not sure I can feel my legs. The sun is glaring overhead, but nothing can hurt me through my sunglasses. Sonic Youth blasts over the stereo. Thurston Moore screams, “Incinerate!” over and over, an anthem of urban decay and rebellion. A propos. I sit idly by as the desert passes by me.
This is nowhere. There are no gas stations, no 7-11’s, no restrooms. Only sand and dirt for miles and miles. Every car that crosses our path is an event on this two-lane road to nowhere. Or should I say, road from nowhere. The end of this road leads to the center of it all, the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, the beaches, the bars. But here! Here we are free. The traffic, the drama, and the light—it’s all strikingly unreal in the midst of sand dunes that extend as far as the eye can see.
But somehow it has crept. Yes, the dirt and the dust and the tumbleweeds creep steadily towards Los Angeles, the tropical city built upon a desert. The desert has crept into my car—sand in my nostrils, in my mouth, between my toes, in the car. However, what I mean is that Los Angeles has crept toward the desert. From behind a rolling hill of red sand emerges a conglomerate of hundreds of prefabricated houses, meticulously ordered such that the cloister could almost pass for a community. There is not a single car in a single model home. Someone must’ve thought this was a good place to build homes. In the middle of the Mojave Desert. Surely there are people who, seeking solitude or natural beauty, want to live in the desert. Apparently none of them were interested in a prefab’ home surrounded by a hundred other identical prefab’ homes. It appears that little boxes on the hillside are more marketable amidst the lush palm trees of San Diego and Thousand Oaks.
We pass a small ranch with a sign on the highway. It reads, “GET THE US OUT OF THE UN,” in ever-patriotic red, white and blue-stenciled lettering. Really? I didn’t know there were people who felt that way. Was I lost? Had I made a wrong turn and crossed into unfriendly lands? I don’t even think Sarah Palin wants to leave the UN—and she can see Russia from her house!
My mind once again returns to Sonic Youth. Maybe there is something to be said about the parallels between urban decay and the state of affairs in the Mojave this morning. Yes, indeed we should pull out of the UN. Look at all these Mexicans stealing our jobs. Look at all these tumbleweeds in need of mending. To think that nobody has bothered to water those scraggily bushes on the side of the highway! Travesty. Bring American jobs back home to the Mojave, where they belong. I hear that the housing crisis hit the central Mojave the worst. Lost jobs everywhere. Wall Street has no idea. Whoever put that sign up was certainly on to something; Sonic Youth was clearly talking about the same thing. There is something very, very wrong with this country, and it is clearly France. Politics tire me out and I return to watching the car’s shadow cross the melting asphalt.
Sometimes this city doesn’t know where to stop. I thought I had freed myself from it, at least for this Saturday morning, but the sprawl already caught up. It is difficult to imagine that the Valley looked much like this desert less than a century ago, but it is easy to envision that this area will probably look like the Valley does now in due time, scattered with affordable housing, fast food and expensive gasoline. If you can’t bring the people to LA, bring LA to the people. So far I don’t see too many of either, but that is certain to change. I find myself constantly repeating the last line in Roman Polanski’s neo-film noir classic, “Chinatown” in my head: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.” This city does not seem to know its own limits.
Cracks in the Wall By Georgia Zacks
We navigated the rectilinear streets of the planned city of St. Petersburg, walking along the Moika River just off Nevsky Prospect, seeking a boat at the number 43, but it was nowhere to be found. Lost souls wandered past us, dragging hard on Russian cigarettes and muttering americanka. We are tourists in a Russian city and there is no denying it (or hiding it -- despite my new chopped and banged Lila Brik haircut). We are doing the quintessential tourist activity: the boat trip through the canals. Number 43 was down some steps and under a bridge. As we all filed into the boat, the tour guide counting heads as we passed, a memory passed through me...I was 7 years old and boarding another wooden boat on the Wild River ride at Disneyland; it slowly jerked down-river, yielding mechanical Wild West scenes at every bend. Even as a kid, the ride bored me—the Wild West figures were lame! Of course, I am infinitely more mature now and St. Petersburg provided an infinitely richer view than Disneyland, but, nonetheless, I was about to tour Peter the Great’s fantasy land: the canals he dreamed up and the baroque architecture he commissioned from brilliant Italians.
As we rode down the canals, the view was spectacular; the sun sank a little lower in the sky but the streets were still alive with people. We passed gorgeous building after gorgeous building, many in the process of being restored. The weather in Petersburg is so harsh that apparently the buildings have to constantly be touched up to keep their outward appearance looking like the regal, European capital that Peter had so desired. I thought about the rot that must exist underneath the surface of the those appearances, the inner rot that comes along with satisfying the wishes of a long-gone ruler in the face of the forces of mother nature. We passed the backside of the Mariinsky Theater and the weather had thoroughly eroded its minty green facade, exposing a rotting underbelly. It was merely the backside, so why bother with restorations? It was much like in the land of Disney where “no one has ever died,” a façade maintained by banning medics from pronouncing visitors dead until they have left the walls of Disneyland.
Instead, I thought of Baudelaire and Rilke, the beauty of natural decay, and how it looks when the elegance of a thing naturally fades, like a former model who has decided against injecting mountains of collagen into her face. Or when life fights through artificiality, like on a vine-covered English Tudor or like blades of grass sprouting through a crack in the pavement.
People kept waving at us from the bridges. I thought about the Wild River ride again, only to realize that these were real people to whom I was waving, not Mickeys and Minnies, and Peter the Great had not forced them to wave at me, or at least not directly. These real people are living in a city that was the fantasy-land of one man – a westernized Russian city.
A while back, Joan Didion wrote an article about a planned community in Southern California. The article started at a human level. There had been a gang rape in this community. I can’t remember the name of the place but it was something like Smithstown let’s say, but anyways, the members of the community were outraged.
“How could this happen? And here! Smithstown is the ideal American community and to think that my son plays baseball with those boys!” said one mother, a character left unnamed by Didion as well.
Smithstown was founded by a steel mill corporation and built in concentric circles. The town was arranged so that the inhabitants could work in the factories on the outside ring, live in the pre-packaged cookie-cutter houses in the inner ring and consume in the center of town, where the company generously included a large shopping center. But the factory went under. Smithstown shows what can happen when a deep crack arises in a perfectly calculated dream. Once the steel industry faltered, the corporation that founded Smithstown had no investment in keeping up the American dream and the city crumbled, taking its inhabitants down with it. Peter the Great’s ghost has done the opposite: commanded armies of painters to keep up the Western façade. Over 300 years after his death, the city is still without a crack.
How does a city progress when its roots are all in one headstrong man? How can it evolve? Petersburg seems like such a strange hybrid of a city now. Before coming here, the only image I had was of Dostoevskian archetypes wandering in tattered frock coats, but obviously that’s not the case. It’s a modern city left in the shell of its past, a city of museums with fetuses floating in jars of brine and baroque buildings cryogenically frozen like ice queens. Through ordinances and rulings, it has succeeded in preserving the exteriors of its dream, a dream that was realized on some level by producing world-renowned literature and housing European designers on Nevsky Prospect. But the city will never be one with the rest of Russia for the people did not will it: it is the city now that does the willing. A dazzling maze of circus mirrors and mist rising from Neva River seduce all who enter.
Peter’s goal of westernizing Russia failed because St. Petersburg is a Western city in a Slavic land. A city where dreamy peasants transform into dandies and their former selves are taken out of city limits to be buried. Rather than modernizing Russia, St. Petersburg created a physical manifestation of the nation’s schism, where ghosts of the Slavic crawl out from under the rug and wander the streets of the city’s white nights.
As we rode down the canals, the view was spectacular; the sun sank a little lower in the sky but the streets were still alive with people. We passed gorgeous building after gorgeous building, many in the process of being restored. The weather in Petersburg is so harsh that apparently the buildings have to constantly be touched up to keep their outward appearance looking like the regal, European capital that Peter had so desired. I thought about the rot that must exist underneath the surface of the those appearances, the inner rot that comes along with satisfying the wishes of a long-gone ruler in the face of the forces of mother nature. We passed the backside of the Mariinsky Theater and the weather had thoroughly eroded its minty green facade, exposing a rotting underbelly. It was merely the backside, so why bother with restorations? It was much like in the land of Disney where “no one has ever died,” a façade maintained by banning medics from pronouncing visitors dead until they have left the walls of Disneyland.
Instead, I thought of Baudelaire and Rilke, the beauty of natural decay, and how it looks when the elegance of a thing naturally fades, like a former model who has decided against injecting mountains of collagen into her face. Or when life fights through artificiality, like on a vine-covered English Tudor or like blades of grass sprouting through a crack in the pavement.
People kept waving at us from the bridges. I thought about the Wild River ride again, only to realize that these were real people to whom I was waving, not Mickeys and Minnies, and Peter the Great had not forced them to wave at me, or at least not directly. These real people are living in a city that was the fantasy-land of one man – a westernized Russian city.
A while back, Joan Didion wrote an article about a planned community in Southern California. The article started at a human level. There had been a gang rape in this community. I can’t remember the name of the place but it was something like Smithstown let’s say, but anyways, the members of the community were outraged.
“How could this happen? And here! Smithstown is the ideal American community and to think that my son plays baseball with those boys!” said one mother, a character left unnamed by Didion as well.
Smithstown was founded by a steel mill corporation and built in concentric circles. The town was arranged so that the inhabitants could work in the factories on the outside ring, live in the pre-packaged cookie-cutter houses in the inner ring and consume in the center of town, where the company generously included a large shopping center. But the factory went under. Smithstown shows what can happen when a deep crack arises in a perfectly calculated dream. Once the steel industry faltered, the corporation that founded Smithstown had no investment in keeping up the American dream and the city crumbled, taking its inhabitants down with it. Peter the Great’s ghost has done the opposite: commanded armies of painters to keep up the Western façade. Over 300 years after his death, the city is still without a crack.
How does a city progress when its roots are all in one headstrong man? How can it evolve? Petersburg seems like such a strange hybrid of a city now. Before coming here, the only image I had was of Dostoevskian archetypes wandering in tattered frock coats, but obviously that’s not the case. It’s a modern city left in the shell of its past, a city of museums with fetuses floating in jars of brine and baroque buildings cryogenically frozen like ice queens. Through ordinances and rulings, it has succeeded in preserving the exteriors of its dream, a dream that was realized on some level by producing world-renowned literature and housing European designers on Nevsky Prospect. But the city will never be one with the rest of Russia for the people did not will it: it is the city now that does the willing. A dazzling maze of circus mirrors and mist rising from Neva River seduce all who enter.
Peter’s goal of westernizing Russia failed because St. Petersburg is a Western city in a Slavic land. A city where dreamy peasants transform into dandies and their former selves are taken out of city limits to be buried. Rather than modernizing Russia, St. Petersburg created a physical manifestation of the nation’s schism, where ghosts of the Slavic crawl out from under the rug and wander the streets of the city’s white nights.
Knife Peddlers By Rose Haag
I emailed Minsoo Kim (PO ’10) to see when we could meet up to talk about our summers selling Cutco. I asked if he could meet me at 11:00 on Thursday, or maybe at 12:30 for lunch? It’s a classic Vector Marketing trick: give two options so the client thinks he is making the choice.
Minsoo sold Cutco knives for the entire summer of ’07 in Atlanta, GA; I only lasted three days during June ’08 in Rockville, MD.
The classified ad in The Washington Post said, “Work for Students, base pay $17/hr.” When I called for an interview, the receptionist told me, “Ms. Colaro can see you today. She has asked that you dress professionally and be there on time.” All I knew was that the company was called Vector and it was a marketing job. The receptionist assured me that there would be no cold calls.
Unlike me, Minsoo knew what he was getting into. Vector sent out letters to all the students at his high school, advertising a flexible job with good pay. His friend went first and told him all about it, so when he showed up for the first interview, he wasn’t nervous.
I was, though. I walked into a bare, un-air conditioned room full of people around my age. The first interview was five of us in a small room with “Ms. Colaro,” who was actually only 19, but managed to pull off a stern mean boss face pretty well.
Almost all of us were called back for the second round, which was a 90-minute lecture on Cutco knives. Ms. Colaro lined us up in two neat rows, shoulder-to-shoulder, and tried to make us as uncomfortable as possible.
I was still scared of Ms. Colaro at the end of the lecture, when we were each called back individually to her office.
“I can’t offer you this job, I’m sorry to say, but you seem like a really positive person. You’re really attentive, I could tell you took a lot of notes, and you seem like a really nice person,” she told me mechanically. “So we’d like to offer you this job.”
Huh?
I thought I’d imagined it. Minsoo told me it’s another Vector ploy. I was such a sucker. I was legitimately disappointed when she told me I didn’t get the job, despite the fact that I still didn’t really know what the job was.
From the perspective of the IRS, I was an entrepreneur, running my own private Cutco business. Sales representatives had to build their own contact lists. We started with a list of adults we knew, and called each one using a prompt that said something along the lines of, “I need help with my new job, I need to do practice appointments, I get paid per appointment, you don’t even have to buy anything but it would really help me out if I could stop by. Would Monday at 1 work, or maybe at 4:30?” We were told not to mention Cutco unless they asked.
It’s part of what Minsoo calls the “web of unsaid truths.”
In reality, appointments don’t pay well. To make any substantial income, you need to sell knives. But the knives are high-quality, the demonstrations are impressive, and the presentation is usually convincing. After the presentation, the client is offered free merchandise if he or she writes the name and number of a few friends “who might be nice enough to listen to the presentation.” Each appointment leads to more appointments, and it doesn’t take long to build up a nice little business.
In training, they told us that even if we were the worst salespeople in the world, we would still make sales because “Cutco sells Cutco.” I don’t buy that.
Minsoo recalls, “It wasn’t me selling knives--it was me selling myself.” One family even told him they were buying the knives because they liked him.
That was just what my parents were afraid of–they didn’t want our family friends to feel obligated to buy the knives. The most basic set sells for over $500, which is a long way from a box of girl-scout cookies.
After training, each sales representative is given a binder and a booklet with the sales presentation, which is written out word-for-word. We were given specific instructions on body language for certain parts of the presentation, particularly for the closing: “Now Mr. and Mrs. _______, I wouldn’t be doing my job today if I didn’t ask you this question: would you like to go ahead and purchase your Homemaker Set, with a free pair of Shears? (look customer in the eye, smile and nod).”
Every client got the same spiel – even the family friends whom we were supposedly using for “practice.”
“Yeah, it’s a little heartless, very manipulative, and a little questionable,” Minsoo said. “But it’s just a mental hurdle you have to overcome. I never felt I was extending someone’s budget.”
I did. But on the other hand, I told myself, I wasn’t forcing anybody to buy knives. They could always back out, and as adults living in a consumer society, shouldn’t they know how to say no?
Minsoo and I both encountered a few people who were good at that. Minsoo’s had an uncomfortable moment when he was showing a set of gardening tools to an older woman. The tools were supposed to cut through a cutting board, but when the woman tried to do it herself, she couldn’t. Unaware at first that Minsoo’s visit was a sales pitch, the woman laid it out: “I think you should leave now.”
My worst moment was during training, when I called the home number of a high school classmate. His dad picked up the phone, I said my piece, and asked if I could come by the house. Mr. Bannon said, “No, you may not,” and hung up on me.
The job had me deconstructing all my ideas about money and consumerism. Minsoo, however, was more laid back about it because he thought of it as a game, and as he said, “Winning the game is never an evil. People put down money they would’ve spent somehow, and the products are good.”
It’s possible to make a pretty substantial income over the course of a summer. The more you sell, the higher your commission. There were prizes for reaching certain milestones-usually Cutco merchandise to add to the demonstration kits. The big prize was an iPhone and a night out in a limo if we sold $10,000 worth of Cutco within the first 10 days. To me, the prizes felt like bribes--an admission on the part of Vector that we were being asked to do something morally dubious.
Minsoo approached it as just another part of our consumer culture: “I can’t hate it because I am it,” he said. “Money as the root of evil is a myth. It’s not good or bad in itself. But it can cause a lot of happiness. It’s an agent to getting what you want; it’s too important to just discount.”
I sold $1070 worth of knives during my first three days, and made about $150. Then I stopped calling my manager for the daily check-in, and I didn’t show up for the meetings. I figured since they didn’t bother telling me what they were hiring me to do, I didn’t have to tell them that I quit.
Minsoo sold $18,000 worth of knives over the course of two months. He made about $6000, and became an Assistant Manager. “It made me more persuasive, made me take real risks, not care about getting shut down, and it made me work my ass off. I had six appointments in a day sometimes. It improved me. I would do it again,” he said.
When you break it down, I got paid $150 for three days of training and three days of selling – I barely broke even on gas.
I might do it again.
Minsoo sold Cutco knives for the entire summer of ’07 in Atlanta, GA; I only lasted three days during June ’08 in Rockville, MD.
The classified ad in The Washington Post said, “Work for Students, base pay $17/hr.” When I called for an interview, the receptionist told me, “Ms. Colaro can see you today. She has asked that you dress professionally and be there on time.” All I knew was that the company was called Vector and it was a marketing job. The receptionist assured me that there would be no cold calls.
Unlike me, Minsoo knew what he was getting into. Vector sent out letters to all the students at his high school, advertising a flexible job with good pay. His friend went first and told him all about it, so when he showed up for the first interview, he wasn’t nervous.
I was, though. I walked into a bare, un-air conditioned room full of people around my age. The first interview was five of us in a small room with “Ms. Colaro,” who was actually only 19, but managed to pull off a stern mean boss face pretty well.
Almost all of us were called back for the second round, which was a 90-minute lecture on Cutco knives. Ms. Colaro lined us up in two neat rows, shoulder-to-shoulder, and tried to make us as uncomfortable as possible.
I was still scared of Ms. Colaro at the end of the lecture, when we were each called back individually to her office.
“I can’t offer you this job, I’m sorry to say, but you seem like a really positive person. You’re really attentive, I could tell you took a lot of notes, and you seem like a really nice person,” she told me mechanically. “So we’d like to offer you this job.”
Huh?
I thought I’d imagined it. Minsoo told me it’s another Vector ploy. I was such a sucker. I was legitimately disappointed when she told me I didn’t get the job, despite the fact that I still didn’t really know what the job was.
From the perspective of the IRS, I was an entrepreneur, running my own private Cutco business. Sales representatives had to build their own contact lists. We started with a list of adults we knew, and called each one using a prompt that said something along the lines of, “I need help with my new job, I need to do practice appointments, I get paid per appointment, you don’t even have to buy anything but it would really help me out if I could stop by. Would Monday at 1 work, or maybe at 4:30?” We were told not to mention Cutco unless they asked.
It’s part of what Minsoo calls the “web of unsaid truths.”
In reality, appointments don’t pay well. To make any substantial income, you need to sell knives. But the knives are high-quality, the demonstrations are impressive, and the presentation is usually convincing. After the presentation, the client is offered free merchandise if he or she writes the name and number of a few friends “who might be nice enough to listen to the presentation.” Each appointment leads to more appointments, and it doesn’t take long to build up a nice little business.
In training, they told us that even if we were the worst salespeople in the world, we would still make sales because “Cutco sells Cutco.” I don’t buy that.
Minsoo recalls, “It wasn’t me selling knives--it was me selling myself.” One family even told him they were buying the knives because they liked him.
That was just what my parents were afraid of–they didn’t want our family friends to feel obligated to buy the knives. The most basic set sells for over $500, which is a long way from a box of girl-scout cookies.
After training, each sales representative is given a binder and a booklet with the sales presentation, which is written out word-for-word. We were given specific instructions on body language for certain parts of the presentation, particularly for the closing: “Now Mr. and Mrs. _______, I wouldn’t be doing my job today if I didn’t ask you this question: would you like to go ahead and purchase your Homemaker Set, with a free pair of Shears? (look customer in the eye, smile and nod).”
Every client got the same spiel – even the family friends whom we were supposedly using for “practice.”
“Yeah, it’s a little heartless, very manipulative, and a little questionable,” Minsoo said. “But it’s just a mental hurdle you have to overcome. I never felt I was extending someone’s budget.”
I did. But on the other hand, I told myself, I wasn’t forcing anybody to buy knives. They could always back out, and as adults living in a consumer society, shouldn’t they know how to say no?
Minsoo and I both encountered a few people who were good at that. Minsoo’s had an uncomfortable moment when he was showing a set of gardening tools to an older woman. The tools were supposed to cut through a cutting board, but when the woman tried to do it herself, she couldn’t. Unaware at first that Minsoo’s visit was a sales pitch, the woman laid it out: “I think you should leave now.”
My worst moment was during training, when I called the home number of a high school classmate. His dad picked up the phone, I said my piece, and asked if I could come by the house. Mr. Bannon said, “No, you may not,” and hung up on me.
The job had me deconstructing all my ideas about money and consumerism. Minsoo, however, was more laid back about it because he thought of it as a game, and as he said, “Winning the game is never an evil. People put down money they would’ve spent somehow, and the products are good.”
It’s possible to make a pretty substantial income over the course of a summer. The more you sell, the higher your commission. There were prizes for reaching certain milestones-usually Cutco merchandise to add to the demonstration kits. The big prize was an iPhone and a night out in a limo if we sold $10,000 worth of Cutco within the first 10 days. To me, the prizes felt like bribes--an admission on the part of Vector that we were being asked to do something morally dubious.
Minsoo approached it as just another part of our consumer culture: “I can’t hate it because I am it,” he said. “Money as the root of evil is a myth. It’s not good or bad in itself. But it can cause a lot of happiness. It’s an agent to getting what you want; it’s too important to just discount.”
I sold $1070 worth of knives during my first three days, and made about $150. Then I stopped calling my manager for the daily check-in, and I didn’t show up for the meetings. I figured since they didn’t bother telling me what they were hiring me to do, I didn’t have to tell them that I quit.
Minsoo sold $18,000 worth of knives over the course of two months. He made about $6000, and became an Assistant Manager. “It made me more persuasive, made me take real risks, not care about getting shut down, and it made me work my ass off. I had six appointments in a day sometimes. It improved me. I would do it again,” he said.
When you break it down, I got paid $150 for three days of training and three days of selling – I barely broke even on gas.
I might do it again.
AAPI Activism in the Nation’s Capital: More Progressive than Pomona College? By Ellen Lê
Is it possible that America’s epicenter of contentious debate and bureaucracy is further along in its social activism than our esteemed progressive California institution of liberal arts? Spending a summer in Washington, D.C. showed me that in terms of Asian American activism, the answer is yes. Our notoriously slow-to-respond government is actually taking faster action on salient issues in the Asian American community than Pomona College.
I went to Washington to work at the Environmental Protection Agency. My placement was through an Asian and Pacific Islander (AAPI) advocacy group called OCA, which runs an internship program. Each year OCA places 20 college AAPI interns from all over the country into various federal and non-governmental agencies, with the goal of increasing AAPI participation in Washington.
My boss turned out to be the most well-connected woman in the Washington AAPI community. Her name was Piyachat Terrell, and she was fabulous as the one-woman head of the EPA White House Initiative for Asian-Americans, which does everything imaginable that involves the Asian American community, human health, and the environment. Piyachat never slacked; she took on anything and everything that came her way, even if it was outside the realm of “protecting human health and the environment” (the EPA’s mission statement), all the while looking very stylish (she had been a fashion design major in college). Her eagerness to tackle last-minute projects got me on a plane to New York during the third week of my internship, where I gave a presentation on the new federal designation of AAPI-Serving Institutions at the largest annual conference for AAPI Americans working in the federal sector.
Since 2001, there had been a push for long overdue legislation that would designate AAIP-Serving Institutions, institutions of higher learning that have a high enrollment of needy Asian American students. Other communities have benefited from a similar designation, like the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions and Tribal Serving Institutions. Legislation for the AAPISIs was introduced five times in the House and Senate, until it finally passed in September of 2007 as a very small section of the comprehensive College Cost Reduction and Access Act. The designation would appropriate government grants directly to institutions and federal agencies that work with these institutions, offering everything from internships to large grants for environmental education programs.
As much as AAPI organizations are excited by this historic landmark designation, there are several problems with it. The first is the most obvious: had you heard about it until now? Probably not. Most likely, the appropriate administrative officials at your college have not either. The designation of AAPISI is incredibly small in terms of attention and monetary contribution—a drop in the bucket compared to the money allotted to other minority-serving institutions.
The full designation in the Act is “Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions” (AANAPISIs). What? The AAPI community is already incredibly diverse and has to reconcile extreme differences within its own community. Pan-Asian organizations hardly have the infrastructure to assist the various communities within their served population – how is adding the Native American community to this designation going to help the program be successful?
But back to the conference in Brooklyn. One of Piyachat’s colleagues was supposed to give a presentation on the new federal designation, but she pulled out at the last minute. Piyachat put me, the frightened intern, on the job. I set out with only the congressional bill in hand to make a presentation on something I knew nothing about.
My first step was to go to Wikipedia. I found that the article on “Model Minority Myth” was incredibly inaccurate. Generally speaking, the myth is that certain ethnic minorities are better disposed to succeed at the “American Dream,” than others; Asian-Americans are frequently cited as one of these “model minorities.” This myth is at the heart of nearly every issue facing the AAPI community. I found that the Wikipedia page was not only misrepresentation, but it even played into the model minority myth. I spent two workdays editing the entry, since I am apparently more knowledgeable than the punks who wrote it.
Most of my research came from a new report on the harmful misunderstandings about AAPIs in higher education. The report showed that the communities within the umbrella term “Asian American and Pacific Islander” are unbelievably different in their needs, but because their statistics are aggregated into the one AAPI category, the needy communities are ignored—especially Southeast Asian, Pacific Islanders, and refugees. Aggregated statistics show that Asian Americans have an average graduation rate from high school of 19.6%. However, this statistic is drastically lower for the Hmong, Cambodian, and Laotian American communities. The story is similar for all other commonly accepted indicators of success: college attainment, income, SAT scores, etc. Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders appear to be doing really well within the category “Asian American and Pacific Islander,” but the story is much more complicated than the aggregate statistics imply. The new AAPI-Serving Institution designation can help fix this long-ignored problem by building up special emphasis programs, or even by collecting disaggregated information by ethnicity.
At the Marriot Brooklyn, when I asked a room full of over one hundred twenty federal employees from various agencies who had heard of the long-awaited AAPI-Serving designation, only three hands apprehensively rose in the air. The ones who did know about it–people from the Department of Education-didn’t even bother to come to our presentation. Later, though, they came looking for me and Piyachat, thoroughly embarrassed, saying how they wanted to work with us. I am hopeful that we inspired some other agencies to reach out to the AAPI community.
So, yes, Washington can be tedious, frustrating and bureaucratic, but clearly we can make small victories in AAPI advocacy. I am hopeful because we have Piyachat. We have Rep. George Wu, who persisted in introducing the legislation for AAPI-Serving Institutions. We have Rep. Mike Honda, who helped host a Congressional hearing on AAPIs in Education this summer. Attending this hearing was probably the most memorable part of my summer internship, besides getting bitched out by Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao’s assistant, but that’s another story. All in all, I am hopeful for the future of the government’s investment in the AAPI community.
On the other hand, back at Pomona, I am uninspired by a lack of AAPI leaders and activists. We now have only two professors in the Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies, both of whom are joint appointments. There was one other professor who resigned from the department the day he got his tenure. The head of the AARC recently left to become the dean of students at another school. Among the AAPI student groups, the emphasis is heavily East Asian. This is not the students’ fault, because the admissions department does not care about recruiting Southeast Asian students, who heavily populate the Inland Empire and Orange County.
My sophomore year, I made an attempt to participate in the very successful Minority Student Action Program (MSAP), a special emphasis program to get more students of color to apply to Pomona. Disadvantaged AAPI students can supposedly participate, but they are not allowed to stay for the popular MSAP weekend. I noticed that hardly any of the staff, student volunteers, or high school students touring the school with the MSAP kids were AAPI.
Did you know that Pomona College does not make visits to every school in the surrounding community? They visited my predominantly white upper-middle-class high school in suburban Massachusetts, attracting more of the same. I very recently got two mass emails from the admissions department looking for volunteers to represent Pomona at local college fairs and “help recruit students of color.” Not only does admissions not want to send its staff to these fairs, they can’t even pay students to help increase their minority enrollment?
It didn’t make sense to me, until I realized it’s a numbers game: why spend money to attract students who will only cost the school money, rather than students who will generate a substantial income flow? So as we keep populating this school with students from predominantly white and privileged communities to form another predominantly white and privileged community, we keep getting kids who feel entitled to an explanation of why there is AAPI activism. It should be the other way around: they should be explaining why they are in such a privileged position.
And we go in circles. And the school administrations get nervous, but then these radical student leaders eventually graduate. And the administration breathes a sigh of relief, at least until the next student activists take three years to come to the same realization.
Did you see “ASIAN AMERICANS DIE NOW” painted on Walker Wall in 1992? Did you know that student activists took over Alexander Hall that same year and chained the entrances shut -- and that was how we got an Asian American studies department?
So go ahead and talk about making white mentor groups. For the remainder of the time that I am at this institution, I give up on Claremont AAPI activism. I am more optimistic about the economy, because I trust the leaders in Washington more.
The National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education (CARE) report entitled “Facts, Not Fiction: Setting the Record Straight,” is a collaboration between the Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, and the College Board, You can get a PDF copy of the report at http://www.nyu.edu/projects/care/.
I went to Washington to work at the Environmental Protection Agency. My placement was through an Asian and Pacific Islander (AAPI) advocacy group called OCA, which runs an internship program. Each year OCA places 20 college AAPI interns from all over the country into various federal and non-governmental agencies, with the goal of increasing AAPI participation in Washington.
My boss turned out to be the most well-connected woman in the Washington AAPI community. Her name was Piyachat Terrell, and she was fabulous as the one-woman head of the EPA White House Initiative for Asian-Americans, which does everything imaginable that involves the Asian American community, human health, and the environment. Piyachat never slacked; she took on anything and everything that came her way, even if it was outside the realm of “protecting human health and the environment” (the EPA’s mission statement), all the while looking very stylish (she had been a fashion design major in college). Her eagerness to tackle last-minute projects got me on a plane to New York during the third week of my internship, where I gave a presentation on the new federal designation of AAPI-Serving Institutions at the largest annual conference for AAPI Americans working in the federal sector.
Since 2001, there had been a push for long overdue legislation that would designate AAIP-Serving Institutions, institutions of higher learning that have a high enrollment of needy Asian American students. Other communities have benefited from a similar designation, like the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions and Tribal Serving Institutions. Legislation for the AAPISIs was introduced five times in the House and Senate, until it finally passed in September of 2007 as a very small section of the comprehensive College Cost Reduction and Access Act. The designation would appropriate government grants directly to institutions and federal agencies that work with these institutions, offering everything from internships to large grants for environmental education programs.
As much as AAPI organizations are excited by this historic landmark designation, there are several problems with it. The first is the most obvious: had you heard about it until now? Probably not. Most likely, the appropriate administrative officials at your college have not either. The designation of AAPISI is incredibly small in terms of attention and monetary contribution—a drop in the bucket compared to the money allotted to other minority-serving institutions.
The full designation in the Act is “Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions” (AANAPISIs). What? The AAPI community is already incredibly diverse and has to reconcile extreme differences within its own community. Pan-Asian organizations hardly have the infrastructure to assist the various communities within their served population – how is adding the Native American community to this designation going to help the program be successful?
But back to the conference in Brooklyn. One of Piyachat’s colleagues was supposed to give a presentation on the new federal designation, but she pulled out at the last minute. Piyachat put me, the frightened intern, on the job. I set out with only the congressional bill in hand to make a presentation on something I knew nothing about.
My first step was to go to Wikipedia. I found that the article on “Model Minority Myth” was incredibly inaccurate. Generally speaking, the myth is that certain ethnic minorities are better disposed to succeed at the “American Dream,” than others; Asian-Americans are frequently cited as one of these “model minorities.” This myth is at the heart of nearly every issue facing the AAPI community. I found that the Wikipedia page was not only misrepresentation, but it even played into the model minority myth. I spent two workdays editing the entry, since I am apparently more knowledgeable than the punks who wrote it.
Most of my research came from a new report on the harmful misunderstandings about AAPIs in higher education. The report showed that the communities within the umbrella term “Asian American and Pacific Islander” are unbelievably different in their needs, but because their statistics are aggregated into the one AAPI category, the needy communities are ignored—especially Southeast Asian, Pacific Islanders, and refugees. Aggregated statistics show that Asian Americans have an average graduation rate from high school of 19.6%. However, this statistic is drastically lower for the Hmong, Cambodian, and Laotian American communities. The story is similar for all other commonly accepted indicators of success: college attainment, income, SAT scores, etc. Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders appear to be doing really well within the category “Asian American and Pacific Islander,” but the story is much more complicated than the aggregate statistics imply. The new AAPI-Serving Institution designation can help fix this long-ignored problem by building up special emphasis programs, or even by collecting disaggregated information by ethnicity.
At the Marriot Brooklyn, when I asked a room full of over one hundred twenty federal employees from various agencies who had heard of the long-awaited AAPI-Serving designation, only three hands apprehensively rose in the air. The ones who did know about it–people from the Department of Education-didn’t even bother to come to our presentation. Later, though, they came looking for me and Piyachat, thoroughly embarrassed, saying how they wanted to work with us. I am hopeful that we inspired some other agencies to reach out to the AAPI community.
So, yes, Washington can be tedious, frustrating and bureaucratic, but clearly we can make small victories in AAPI advocacy. I am hopeful because we have Piyachat. We have Rep. George Wu, who persisted in introducing the legislation for AAPI-Serving Institutions. We have Rep. Mike Honda, who helped host a Congressional hearing on AAPIs in Education this summer. Attending this hearing was probably the most memorable part of my summer internship, besides getting bitched out by Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao’s assistant, but that’s another story. All in all, I am hopeful for the future of the government’s investment in the AAPI community.
On the other hand, back at Pomona, I am uninspired by a lack of AAPI leaders and activists. We now have only two professors in the Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies, both of whom are joint appointments. There was one other professor who resigned from the department the day he got his tenure. The head of the AARC recently left to become the dean of students at another school. Among the AAPI student groups, the emphasis is heavily East Asian. This is not the students’ fault, because the admissions department does not care about recruiting Southeast Asian students, who heavily populate the Inland Empire and Orange County.
My sophomore year, I made an attempt to participate in the very successful Minority Student Action Program (MSAP), a special emphasis program to get more students of color to apply to Pomona. Disadvantaged AAPI students can supposedly participate, but they are not allowed to stay for the popular MSAP weekend. I noticed that hardly any of the staff, student volunteers, or high school students touring the school with the MSAP kids were AAPI.
Did you know that Pomona College does not make visits to every school in the surrounding community? They visited my predominantly white upper-middle-class high school in suburban Massachusetts, attracting more of the same. I very recently got two mass emails from the admissions department looking for volunteers to represent Pomona at local college fairs and “help recruit students of color.” Not only does admissions not want to send its staff to these fairs, they can’t even pay students to help increase their minority enrollment?
It didn’t make sense to me, until I realized it’s a numbers game: why spend money to attract students who will only cost the school money, rather than students who will generate a substantial income flow? So as we keep populating this school with students from predominantly white and privileged communities to form another predominantly white and privileged community, we keep getting kids who feel entitled to an explanation of why there is AAPI activism. It should be the other way around: they should be explaining why they are in such a privileged position.
And we go in circles. And the school administrations get nervous, but then these radical student leaders eventually graduate. And the administration breathes a sigh of relief, at least until the next student activists take three years to come to the same realization.
Did you see “ASIAN AMERICANS DIE NOW” painted on Walker Wall in 1992? Did you know that student activists took over Alexander Hall that same year and chained the entrances shut -- and that was how we got an Asian American studies department?
So go ahead and talk about making white mentor groups. For the remainder of the time that I am at this institution, I give up on Claremont AAPI activism. I am more optimistic about the economy, because I trust the leaders in Washington more.
The National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education (CARE) report entitled “Facts, Not Fiction: Setting the Record Straight,” is a collaboration between the Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, and the College Board, You can get a PDF copy of the report at http://www.nyu.edu/projects/care/.
On Grief and Loss By Torrey Olson
I have seen a friend, broken, weep for a loss the same as my own. And I wept too. And it seemed to me intensely clear why we both wept: to suppress language from our bodies.
The first reaction to the comprehension of loss is the desire to change the situation, or, in other words, rejection (the subconscious thought, “No, he must be retrievable…no”). The weeping that emerges from such overwhelming sorrow-sorrow only possible as the result of a loss-is a mechanism that forces the body to face what has happened in its unchangeable truth: he is gone, he will not come back, and I am irrelevant to this equation. And it is never more viscerally clear that the matter is entirely out of my hands than when the weight of the realization breaks me, engulfs me, and comes upon me as something external and entirely out of my control—I will weep, whether I want to or not. And in this state, words are impossible. The audible emergences from the body are stifled: solely whimpers, gasps, and the sounds of choking remain. It seems clear to me that there is a necessary function to this choking of language. Language can only navigate around the feeling, because the feeling is one of loss, a lack of substance, a void in which the entire sadness resides, except for the knowledge that there will be nothing ever to replace it. We can talk about shared feelings, memories, future plans of memorialization, the facts, the tragic, or, like this essay, the experience of loss itself, but there is nothing really at the center to be described. What remains is nothing. It is a loss, and there is a corresponding loss for words. One can hate one’s sister’s new husband (he is selfish, he is ugly, he is a womanizer), but one cannot even describe the absence of a person, except maybe temporally (its beginning was untimely, its persistence is tragic, it is still a loss). Don’t get me wrong--the things that remain to be talked about are likely useful in some way or other. But when we weep, though we might wish it would stop, the sorrow of loss forces us to confront, in an experience in which our entire body participates, the experience of loss, and our inability to do anything but understand, and allow the truth to sink in that we are left with an un-fillable void.
This realization seems particularly tragic to us because we are used to wanting to make something whole, not leave gaps in our arguments, holes in our clothing, or breaks in our relations. But in the language of loss, memorialization seems to me the fortification and maintenance of the void with which we are left. Our task as memorializers is not to erase this space where the object of our love used to reside, not to let it disappear, not to fill it with something else, nor to forget about it. Rather, to memorialize is, as weeping recommends, to accept, to persist with it, and further, as the name suggests, to leave it as a space for memory, the memory of what existed before the absence, and through which, if there is hope left (and I believe there is), one may hope to reanimate, at times, something that was formerly there. None of this is intended as consolation, but rather as one of ways language can talk around loss that will (hopefully) begin to encase the absence that we will try to retain.
The first reaction to the comprehension of loss is the desire to change the situation, or, in other words, rejection (the subconscious thought, “No, he must be retrievable…no”). The weeping that emerges from such overwhelming sorrow-sorrow only possible as the result of a loss-is a mechanism that forces the body to face what has happened in its unchangeable truth: he is gone, he will not come back, and I am irrelevant to this equation. And it is never more viscerally clear that the matter is entirely out of my hands than when the weight of the realization breaks me, engulfs me, and comes upon me as something external and entirely out of my control—I will weep, whether I want to or not. And in this state, words are impossible. The audible emergences from the body are stifled: solely whimpers, gasps, and the sounds of choking remain. It seems clear to me that there is a necessary function to this choking of language. Language can only navigate around the feeling, because the feeling is one of loss, a lack of substance, a void in which the entire sadness resides, except for the knowledge that there will be nothing ever to replace it. We can talk about shared feelings, memories, future plans of memorialization, the facts, the tragic, or, like this essay, the experience of loss itself, but there is nothing really at the center to be described. What remains is nothing. It is a loss, and there is a corresponding loss for words. One can hate one’s sister’s new husband (he is selfish, he is ugly, he is a womanizer), but one cannot even describe the absence of a person, except maybe temporally (its beginning was untimely, its persistence is tragic, it is still a loss). Don’t get me wrong--the things that remain to be talked about are likely useful in some way or other. But when we weep, though we might wish it would stop, the sorrow of loss forces us to confront, in an experience in which our entire body participates, the experience of loss, and our inability to do anything but understand, and allow the truth to sink in that we are left with an un-fillable void.
This realization seems particularly tragic to us because we are used to wanting to make something whole, not leave gaps in our arguments, holes in our clothing, or breaks in our relations. But in the language of loss, memorialization seems to me the fortification and maintenance of the void with which we are left. Our task as memorializers is not to erase this space where the object of our love used to reside, not to let it disappear, not to fill it with something else, nor to forget about it. Rather, to memorialize is, as weeping recommends, to accept, to persist with it, and further, as the name suggests, to leave it as a space for memory, the memory of what existed before the absence, and through which, if there is hope left (and I believe there is), one may hope to reanimate, at times, something that was formerly there. None of this is intended as consolation, but rather as one of ways language can talk around loss that will (hopefully) begin to encase the absence that we will try to retain.
¿Revolución? By Ben Cheney
I discovered a method of time travel last month. Combine history’s cyclical nature with a society whose nostalgic obsession is an attempt to escape the crumbling present, and one can reach a separate temporal plane without running into any of those pesky time travel paradoxes. Or was it just nostalgia? A slogging war backdrop, protests and counterprotests, and a denouement coated in tear gas? I have never heard any allegations against the elder Mayor Daley as severe as the ones I heard against certain Claremont administrators. Perhaps nothing has changed since 1968, except that yesterday’s hippies are now professors, or parents sending their children to school in liberal havens like Claremont. Nonetheless, political criticism is muted and apathy is high.
I wanted to see Karl Rove’s speech at Claremont-McKenna to see the kind of reception he’d get. I also wanted to see how many people would notice the event, at a time when there are ever more forms of bread and circuses for the public, and when college students are busy updating fantasy teams and building “Genius” iTunes playlists, not to mention plotting theses. I have been guilty of apathy myself at times, letting my mind turn numb from news of the chaos in the world, and focusing instead on academic trifles.
Last night there was a voter registration drive outside Doms Lounge at Pomona. It was a strange scene: beverage service at the counter, sweaty people crushed together in a pheromone-charged Kowloon Walled City, and booming rap, tonight from college freestyle performers, not Weezy. Apparently, the registration was successful because of the bait it chose.
Indymedia.org evidently did an effective job of spreading the word about the Rove talk, because the hundred or so student protestors were joined by a few dozen outsiders, whose weather-beaten skin and budget clothing contrasted with that of the gleaming Claremont students and so-called “trustafarians”. The protesters’ megaphone-fueled rhetoric always kept one foot in Southeast Asia as they spoke about the fateful time in their lives when restless youth saw villages destroyed in order to be saved. In the locked-down fortress of the Athenaeum-the Bastille wishes it were ever as secure-Rove did as expected. He calmly defended his legacy, cracked jokes to defuse the tension, and answered semi-softball questions. Aware of the differing opinions in Claremont concerning his visit, he joked about Pitzer’s relatively small endowment—indeed, smaller than a presidential campaign war chest. But I was hardly in attendance to listen to and consider Rove’s point of view. It was the spectacle of the event that captured my attention.
While the “Ath” was full of an elite cadre of CMC faculty and students as well as media and Republican consigliere, the rubberneckers and unwashed herds were consigned to stand across the mall. Every burst of applause from the Ath was countered by the boos of the six hundred-plus observers crushed inside the McKenna Auditorium watching a live feed of the speech. The protestors on the green did not seem to adhere to any time signature, repeatedly breaking into chants of “ARREST KARL ROVE!” They were backed by a steady tribal drum rhythm, as percussion has launched many a revolution before. I recall watching stock footage of Mayor Daley’s stormtroopers running in fear from the primal noise and the unusual smelling smoke emanating from the protestors at the Chicago Democratic Convention as the Age of Aquarius began.
After the speech, the consensus among the spectators in the Ath was that Rove was impressive in his defense of his legacy, but while the viewers left convivially, joking or discussing the elections, the crowd in McKenna Auditorium stomped out after an hour of listening to Rove push their buttons and denigrate their beliefs. The protestors formed a ring around the Ath and sat down in front of the entrances, while a group of about fifteen CMC students, dressed and sounding like Nixon’s Orthogonians, serenaded them with “FOUR MORE YEARS!” and made unsubtle demands that the protesters get off their campus. The rest of the night I didn’t see-security escorting Rove out, perhaps tear gas-but in any event the world was not watching Claremont this evening.
More than the speech, the entirety of the event was an interesting glimpse into a political consciousness that won’t go away as the culture wars deepen. My parents have told me: “If you remember the sixties, you weren’t there.” That statement has a sociological meaning now.
I wanted to see Karl Rove’s speech at Claremont-McKenna to see the kind of reception he’d get. I also wanted to see how many people would notice the event, at a time when there are ever more forms of bread and circuses for the public, and when college students are busy updating fantasy teams and building “Genius” iTunes playlists, not to mention plotting theses. I have been guilty of apathy myself at times, letting my mind turn numb from news of the chaos in the world, and focusing instead on academic trifles.
Last night there was a voter registration drive outside Doms Lounge at Pomona. It was a strange scene: beverage service at the counter, sweaty people crushed together in a pheromone-charged Kowloon Walled City, and booming rap, tonight from college freestyle performers, not Weezy. Apparently, the registration was successful because of the bait it chose.
Indymedia.org evidently did an effective job of spreading the word about the Rove talk, because the hundred or so student protestors were joined by a few dozen outsiders, whose weather-beaten skin and budget clothing contrasted with that of the gleaming Claremont students and so-called “trustafarians”. The protesters’ megaphone-fueled rhetoric always kept one foot in Southeast Asia as they spoke about the fateful time in their lives when restless youth saw villages destroyed in order to be saved. In the locked-down fortress of the Athenaeum-the Bastille wishes it were ever as secure-Rove did as expected. He calmly defended his legacy, cracked jokes to defuse the tension, and answered semi-softball questions. Aware of the differing opinions in Claremont concerning his visit, he joked about Pitzer’s relatively small endowment—indeed, smaller than a presidential campaign war chest. But I was hardly in attendance to listen to and consider Rove’s point of view. It was the spectacle of the event that captured my attention.
While the “Ath” was full of an elite cadre of CMC faculty and students as well as media and Republican consigliere, the rubberneckers and unwashed herds were consigned to stand across the mall. Every burst of applause from the Ath was countered by the boos of the six hundred-plus observers crushed inside the McKenna Auditorium watching a live feed of the speech. The protestors on the green did not seem to adhere to any time signature, repeatedly breaking into chants of “ARREST KARL ROVE!” They were backed by a steady tribal drum rhythm, as percussion has launched many a revolution before. I recall watching stock footage of Mayor Daley’s stormtroopers running in fear from the primal noise and the unusual smelling smoke emanating from the protestors at the Chicago Democratic Convention as the Age of Aquarius began.
After the speech, the consensus among the spectators in the Ath was that Rove was impressive in his defense of his legacy, but while the viewers left convivially, joking or discussing the elections, the crowd in McKenna Auditorium stomped out after an hour of listening to Rove push their buttons and denigrate their beliefs. The protestors formed a ring around the Ath and sat down in front of the entrances, while a group of about fifteen CMC students, dressed and sounding like Nixon’s Orthogonians, serenaded them with “FOUR MORE YEARS!” and made unsubtle demands that the protesters get off their campus. The rest of the night I didn’t see-security escorting Rove out, perhaps tear gas-but in any event the world was not watching Claremont this evening.
More than the speech, the entirety of the event was an interesting glimpse into a political consciousness that won’t go away as the culture wars deepen. My parents have told me: “If you remember the sixties, you weren’t there.” That statement has a sociological meaning now.
Submitted For the Approval of the Midnight Society By A. Warren Marcus
Welcome to our Pedal Pumping and car stuck site! Here you’ll find Pedal Pumping videos and pictures of sexy young girls who got stuck hopeless with their car, jeep, suv or van in mud, snow, sand, clay or wet gras[s]. See Pedal Pumping with sweet muddy feet, barefoot or with boots, pantyhose, pumps, high-heels, riding boots, sneakers or buffalos. Our cute girls try to rock, push and tow the car out of the mud. So when you like spinning tires and love to see a girl who [sic] stuck in the mud or maybe a muddy catfight - Then you are right here, because we are the experts for carstuck and Pedal Pumping video!
- www.carstuckgirls.com
Consider this futility which I have noted under the sun:
A slightly-overweight young “urban” male heeds the guiding watchwords of our times with vigilance: “Get a vasectomy and keep it a secret.” He lives in a world of fragments and ruins, and he worships the monuments and values of a gloriously whitewashed past. He is told that he fears castration, but he doesn’t agree. His greatest moments of insight are littered with advertisements for the $5 footlong from Subway. He criticizes those who lack his education and background as crude and insensitive. He is contemplating getting a Prince Albert. He’s heard good things. Like so many of his era, pornography is a passionate hobby. He considers unadulterated access to a variety of pornographic media to be a fundamental right (and who are we to legislate away another man’s ideals?). He has strong opinions about the quality and arousal-factor of various erotic sub-genres.
He is particularly fond of doctor-patient scenarios. He dreams of directing his own film:
-What is it, doctor? Is it bad?
-Well, it’s… ummm…
-Give it…. Give it to me straight, doctor.
-It’s your pussy, ma’am. It’s so… well… it’s just so… tight.
-Oh my…
-I haven’t seen a pussy this tight since back in… Vietnam.
[cut to a hotel suite in Japan in the early 1990s, where our doctor-protagonist is blowing a twelve year old Korean boy.]
Ladies and Gentile men, we avert our gaze and move onward to the office of a middle-aged Jewish businessman. He sits busily at large oak desk, engrossed in spreadsheets. His desk faces a wall-sized map of Ljubljana, Slovenia. On either side of the desk is a standard issue OB/GYN table, upon which sits a butt-naked busty blonde, secured by straps and stirrups. The blondes look bored and tired, but their eyes are fixed on the flat-screen television mounted on the opposite wall. MSNBC. Chris Matthews. Volume down. Through the subtitles we are asked to participate in the latest, highly scientific political poll: Which candidate’s wife would you most like to take home after a key-swapping party? Special guest commentator Pat Buchanan ruminates about the possible bearing of the Bradley Effect upon the current poll. Send in your text message now to 1-212-MSN-BC08! Chris Matthews does a line off the news desk. A small white spot remains on his nose throughout the rest of the broadcast.
The Jewish businessman ignores his surroundings. He’s above that petty bullshit. He came of age in the era of Richard Milhous Nixon and Linda Lovelace; what has he to do with the titillation that passes for hardcore these days? At this very moment his wife is at Whole Foods, picking out some ripe zucchini, cucumber, and yellow squash. Organic.
We live in a digital age, sisters and brothers, and we must not blink for one moment. Eight years into the future and we’ve only just begun to understand the new values that define our times. Gone are the days of moon-landings, deep-sea diving, and Double Vaginal Double Anal. Frontiers open up a mile a minute. We cannot afford to think in only two dimensions! Nation-states and borders are incidental. They represent the archaic and the obscene. A younger generation is slowly finding its voice and it is demanding an end to the missionary position as a hallowed institution! We know that we have asked our gods to give us kings and that we have paid the price. We no longer fear the dark spaces, for we know that it is only sterility that can destroy us. We are prepared to profane the sacred and to destroy the very notion of profanity! We’ll keep searching in vain for the wombs and primeval seas of our dreams. We will side with Leviathan.
We’re well aware of the vapors which have coalesced against us as a solid mass of steel and syringes. This time around we know that we cannot succeed and we accept that fact. We also know that our own demise is contained within ourselves. Collectively, we are a 20-something female grad student with heightened nipple sensitivity and a biological clock in panic mode. Her boyfriend lets her know that several years ago he got a vasectomy, but never told anyone before. Unbeknownst to her he secretly reverses his vasectomy and slips fertility drugs into her drinks for several months. She gets pregnant, drops out of school, and soon finds out that she’s having triplets. Her boyfriend, meanwhile, gets another vasectomy and maintains that he was always sterile. He produces documents. He calls her a whore and never sees her again. She is left to raise three children on her own.
Friends and colleagues, remind yourselves that time is always the one thing we don’t have. We cannot afford not to publish our precise measurements of the Almighty! Events are unfolding with unprecedented speed, and the choices before us were never more urgent. Let us not delude ourselves with pleasantries and letters of hope and promise and advertisements for double-knit suits. We lace our cigarettes with Vicodin and we booty-bump to stay thin. In homage to the third world, we choose jenkem as our psychedelic of the month. We represent the rigidity of relativistic ideologies and we willfully ignore the flaccidity of Law. We ascribe value to opinion and consensus. We are raising children without a pleasure-function.
Nancy Reagan is a harbinger of death! The safety net is gone. The cards are laid out before us. The future is clear as crystal.
And yet, we remain.
The businessman reaches into his desk drawer and removes a box of “It’s a Girl” cigars and a straight razor. He picks up a cigar and places it on the desktop, slicing the butt end with the razor. The nude blonde to his right watches out of the corner of her eye. A few tobacco flakes stick to the blade, and the man brings it up to his mouth and licks them off with the tip of his tongue. The razor’s edge pierces the supple flesh ever so slightly, producing a trickle of blood that runs down to his lower lip. (Chris Matthews is speaking silently to the busty young lady to his left about a child slavery ring operating in Hoboken, New Jersey). A chilling calm descends upon our principle players, the businessman and his two naked companions, and a light snow begins to fall outside. The man picks up a matchbox and presses the cigar to his lips. The dried tobacco leaves that make up the casing absorb the pooled droplets of blood as he lights the cigar and takes four assertive puffs. The blonde to the right looks on with a mix of rage and intense fascination. She wishes she could think of anything beyond the current moment, but she cannot. She sits transfixed, strapped to an uncomfortably mechanical relic of the modern age.
She attempts to remember where she came from, how she got here, or who this man is that arouses both hatred and allure inside her. She fails. She can’t even remember her own name. After what seems like eternity a single memory from her life floats forward to the level of conscious thought. It is a memory from childhood, obscure and seemingly long-forgotten. She is alone in a forest. It is night but the moon provides just enough light for her to see her immediate surroundings. A small furry creature bounds forth excitedly towards her, ears flopping, tongue panting, wet nose probing. She is overwhelmed with delight and she lovingly caresses its neck and scratches its floppy ears. She knows this creature well. It is hers, domesticated and familiar. She searches her thoughts in order to remember what to call such a thing, but she comes up empty-handed. The closest word she can muster to designate such an animal is “bunny.” She knows it’s incorrect, but that it will have to suffice. It’s all she has. She leans forward sweetly and tenderly. “That’s a good bunny,” she intones softly. “Good, good, bunny,” as she rubs its belly.
Horsecockedly.
- www.carstuckgirls.com
Consider this futility which I have noted under the sun:
A slightly-overweight young “urban” male heeds the guiding watchwords of our times with vigilance: “Get a vasectomy and keep it a secret.” He lives in a world of fragments and ruins, and he worships the monuments and values of a gloriously whitewashed past. He is told that he fears castration, but he doesn’t agree. His greatest moments of insight are littered with advertisements for the $5 footlong from Subway. He criticizes those who lack his education and background as crude and insensitive. He is contemplating getting a Prince Albert. He’s heard good things. Like so many of his era, pornography is a passionate hobby. He considers unadulterated access to a variety of pornographic media to be a fundamental right (and who are we to legislate away another man’s ideals?). He has strong opinions about the quality and arousal-factor of various erotic sub-genres.
He is particularly fond of doctor-patient scenarios. He dreams of directing his own film:
-What is it, doctor? Is it bad?
-Well, it’s… ummm…
-Give it…. Give it to me straight, doctor.
-It’s your pussy, ma’am. It’s so… well… it’s just so… tight.
-Oh my…
-I haven’t seen a pussy this tight since back in… Vietnam.
[cut to a hotel suite in Japan in the early 1990s, where our doctor-protagonist is blowing a twelve year old Korean boy.]
Ladies and Gentile men, we avert our gaze and move onward to the office of a middle-aged Jewish businessman. He sits busily at large oak desk, engrossed in spreadsheets. His desk faces a wall-sized map of Ljubljana, Slovenia. On either side of the desk is a standard issue OB/GYN table, upon which sits a butt-naked busty blonde, secured by straps and stirrups. The blondes look bored and tired, but their eyes are fixed on the flat-screen television mounted on the opposite wall. MSNBC. Chris Matthews. Volume down. Through the subtitles we are asked to participate in the latest, highly scientific political poll: Which candidate’s wife would you most like to take home after a key-swapping party? Special guest commentator Pat Buchanan ruminates about the possible bearing of the Bradley Effect upon the current poll. Send in your text message now to 1-212-MSN-BC08! Chris Matthews does a line off the news desk. A small white spot remains on his nose throughout the rest of the broadcast.
The Jewish businessman ignores his surroundings. He’s above that petty bullshit. He came of age in the era of Richard Milhous Nixon and Linda Lovelace; what has he to do with the titillation that passes for hardcore these days? At this very moment his wife is at Whole Foods, picking out some ripe zucchini, cucumber, and yellow squash. Organic.
We live in a digital age, sisters and brothers, and we must not blink for one moment. Eight years into the future and we’ve only just begun to understand the new values that define our times. Gone are the days of moon-landings, deep-sea diving, and Double Vaginal Double Anal. Frontiers open up a mile a minute. We cannot afford to think in only two dimensions! Nation-states and borders are incidental. They represent the archaic and the obscene. A younger generation is slowly finding its voice and it is demanding an end to the missionary position as a hallowed institution! We know that we have asked our gods to give us kings and that we have paid the price. We no longer fear the dark spaces, for we know that it is only sterility that can destroy us. We are prepared to profane the sacred and to destroy the very notion of profanity! We’ll keep searching in vain for the wombs and primeval seas of our dreams. We will side with Leviathan.
We’re well aware of the vapors which have coalesced against us as a solid mass of steel and syringes. This time around we know that we cannot succeed and we accept that fact. We also know that our own demise is contained within ourselves. Collectively, we are a 20-something female grad student with heightened nipple sensitivity and a biological clock in panic mode. Her boyfriend lets her know that several years ago he got a vasectomy, but never told anyone before. Unbeknownst to her he secretly reverses his vasectomy and slips fertility drugs into her drinks for several months. She gets pregnant, drops out of school, and soon finds out that she’s having triplets. Her boyfriend, meanwhile, gets another vasectomy and maintains that he was always sterile. He produces documents. He calls her a whore and never sees her again. She is left to raise three children on her own.
Friends and colleagues, remind yourselves that time is always the one thing we don’t have. We cannot afford not to publish our precise measurements of the Almighty! Events are unfolding with unprecedented speed, and the choices before us were never more urgent. Let us not delude ourselves with pleasantries and letters of hope and promise and advertisements for double-knit suits. We lace our cigarettes with Vicodin and we booty-bump to stay thin. In homage to the third world, we choose jenkem as our psychedelic of the month. We represent the rigidity of relativistic ideologies and we willfully ignore the flaccidity of Law. We ascribe value to opinion and consensus. We are raising children without a pleasure-function.
Nancy Reagan is a harbinger of death! The safety net is gone. The cards are laid out before us. The future is clear as crystal.
And yet, we remain.
The businessman reaches into his desk drawer and removes a box of “It’s a Girl” cigars and a straight razor. He picks up a cigar and places it on the desktop, slicing the butt end with the razor. The nude blonde to his right watches out of the corner of her eye. A few tobacco flakes stick to the blade, and the man brings it up to his mouth and licks them off with the tip of his tongue. The razor’s edge pierces the supple flesh ever so slightly, producing a trickle of blood that runs down to his lower lip. (Chris Matthews is speaking silently to the busty young lady to his left about a child slavery ring operating in Hoboken, New Jersey). A chilling calm descends upon our principle players, the businessman and his two naked companions, and a light snow begins to fall outside. The man picks up a matchbox and presses the cigar to his lips. The dried tobacco leaves that make up the casing absorb the pooled droplets of blood as he lights the cigar and takes four assertive puffs. The blonde to the right looks on with a mix of rage and intense fascination. She wishes she could think of anything beyond the current moment, but she cannot. She sits transfixed, strapped to an uncomfortably mechanical relic of the modern age.
She attempts to remember where she came from, how she got here, or who this man is that arouses both hatred and allure inside her. She fails. She can’t even remember her own name. After what seems like eternity a single memory from her life floats forward to the level of conscious thought. It is a memory from childhood, obscure and seemingly long-forgotten. She is alone in a forest. It is night but the moon provides just enough light for her to see her immediate surroundings. A small furry creature bounds forth excitedly towards her, ears flopping, tongue panting, wet nose probing. She is overwhelmed with delight and she lovingly caresses its neck and scratches its floppy ears. She knows this creature well. It is hers, domesticated and familiar. She searches her thoughts in order to remember what to call such a thing, but she comes up empty-handed. The closest word she can muster to designate such an animal is “bunny.” She knows it’s incorrect, but that it will have to suffice. It’s all she has. She leans forward sweetly and tenderly. “That’s a good bunny,” she intones softly. “Good, good, bunny,” as she rubs its belly.
Horsecockedly.
Talking to the Sea: Thoughts on Jeremy Jackson’s “Brave New Ocean” By Cortlyn Authement
There is very little about Harvey Mudd College that stirs up thoughts of the sea. The dry, hilly surroundings suggest we are much more than an hour from the ocean. But descending the staircase to Galileo Hall at nightfall, the first thing that catches your eye is a Romanesque fountain that calls to mind the presence of waves--it is the visual equivalent of putting your ear to a conch shell. The romantic feeling this evokes is all the more ironic because most oother places at the college have an ostensibly utilitarian atmosphere. It suggests that in spite of the complex science we have built around its study, the ocean still holds mystery.
Most of us have a very finite perspective on the sea. We think of it from above the surface. Our point of view sits on the beach or rolls tumultuously in a ship. Rarely do we experience the ocean from below, so it’s hardly surprising that the average person doesn’t worry about its health. It looks just fine from up here. But there are people who are looking harder, whose gaze is fixed far below the surface. These scientists, including Dr. Jeremy Jackson, know an entirely different story.
“This is a very scary time. A terrifyingly scary time,” Dr. Jackson said towards the beginning of his talk at Mudd.
The title of the talk, “Brave New Ocean,” makes it sound like the ocean has reached some new and fascinating evolutionary phase, but in fact, the title alludes to Huxley’s classic dystopian novel. Dr. Jackson is saying something that we don’t expect to hear from a scientist. It’s something we’d expect to hear from the likes of Al Gore: the ocean is dying, we’re killing it, and it would take a global overhaul of awareness and policy change to even just maintain it at its current damaged state.
Now sixty-five, Dr. Jackson began studying the ocean in his twenties. He’s one of the few people who has seen the large-scale changes in the global ecosystem with the expertise to explain them. He talks about estuaries in the Jakarta, San Francisco, and Chesapeake Bays, the green turtles of Central America, and the coastal fish population of Key West, Florida.
He tells us that the swaths of bleached coral are the only remains of once-vibrant and living parts of the sea. The ocean’s flora and fauna seem to have disappeared while we weren’t watching.
Meanwhile, the ocean depths are becoming a toxic wasteland. Eskimo women’s breast milk is considered toxic by the EPA and wild salmon have become a major source of land animal poisoning, but these are just small pieces of evidence. The point is not even about what we’ve already lost; it’s about everything we have left to lose. Overfishing, destruction of habitats, introduction of non-native species, warming and acidification by carbon dioxide, eutrophication, and slime buildup are all contributing, and most of us don’t even know what we are doing.
However, in an age where our egregious sins against the planet are becoming abundantly clear, this comes as little surprise.
One species that is doing well in spite of all of this is the jellyfish. In fact, Dr. Jackson predicts that this opportunistic species will be among the few that survive the final destruction of the ocean ecosystems. They are the “rats and cockroaches of the ocean.” This “brave new ocean” will be stratified like the Black Sea, and a dead zone will surround the coast. Jellyfish will be virtually all that is left.
Dr. Jackson tells us all this in the short span of an hour, and concludes with a tone of distinct remorse: “we tend to think that scientists are enough; that we will ride out on white horses and discover the truth and everyone will listen to us.” It seems as though he already knows that the cause is lost.
There is an inevitable sense of irony as one of the obscure scientific community’s most distinct ocean researchers reads what could amount to a eulogy of the sea, at a relatively unknown college. Afterwards dessert is served in the lobby, and only one or two Kuwaiti students stay behind to speak to Dr. Jackson. Even among a specialized and interested community, his message seems to fall on deaf ears.
Most of us have a very finite perspective on the sea. We think of it from above the surface. Our point of view sits on the beach or rolls tumultuously in a ship. Rarely do we experience the ocean from below, so it’s hardly surprising that the average person doesn’t worry about its health. It looks just fine from up here. But there are people who are looking harder, whose gaze is fixed far below the surface. These scientists, including Dr. Jeremy Jackson, know an entirely different story.
“This is a very scary time. A terrifyingly scary time,” Dr. Jackson said towards the beginning of his talk at Mudd.
The title of the talk, “Brave New Ocean,” makes it sound like the ocean has reached some new and fascinating evolutionary phase, but in fact, the title alludes to Huxley’s classic dystopian novel. Dr. Jackson is saying something that we don’t expect to hear from a scientist. It’s something we’d expect to hear from the likes of Al Gore: the ocean is dying, we’re killing it, and it would take a global overhaul of awareness and policy change to even just maintain it at its current damaged state.
Now sixty-five, Dr. Jackson began studying the ocean in his twenties. He’s one of the few people who has seen the large-scale changes in the global ecosystem with the expertise to explain them. He talks about estuaries in the Jakarta, San Francisco, and Chesapeake Bays, the green turtles of Central America, and the coastal fish population of Key West, Florida.
He tells us that the swaths of bleached coral are the only remains of once-vibrant and living parts of the sea. The ocean’s flora and fauna seem to have disappeared while we weren’t watching.
Meanwhile, the ocean depths are becoming a toxic wasteland. Eskimo women’s breast milk is considered toxic by the EPA and wild salmon have become a major source of land animal poisoning, but these are just small pieces of evidence. The point is not even about what we’ve already lost; it’s about everything we have left to lose. Overfishing, destruction of habitats, introduction of non-native species, warming and acidification by carbon dioxide, eutrophication, and slime buildup are all contributing, and most of us don’t even know what we are doing.
However, in an age where our egregious sins against the planet are becoming abundantly clear, this comes as little surprise.
One species that is doing well in spite of all of this is the jellyfish. In fact, Dr. Jackson predicts that this opportunistic species will be among the few that survive the final destruction of the ocean ecosystems. They are the “rats and cockroaches of the ocean.” This “brave new ocean” will be stratified like the Black Sea, and a dead zone will surround the coast. Jellyfish will be virtually all that is left.
Dr. Jackson tells us all this in the short span of an hour, and concludes with a tone of distinct remorse: “we tend to think that scientists are enough; that we will ride out on white horses and discover the truth and everyone will listen to us.” It seems as though he already knows that the cause is lost.
There is an inevitable sense of irony as one of the obscure scientific community’s most distinct ocean researchers reads what could amount to a eulogy of the sea, at a relatively unknown college. Afterwards dessert is served in the lobby, and only one or two Kuwaiti students stay behind to speak to Dr. Jackson. Even among a specialized and interested community, his message seems to fall on deaf ears.
Space, Tension, Relaxation by Emily Taylor
The Pomona College Museum of Art’s current exhibit is a group show, featuring the work of the Pomona College Studio Art faculty members. Mark Allen, Sandeep Mukherjee, Sheila Pinkel, and Mercedes Teixido are each represented.
When you walk into the gallery, you are confronted by two very different bodies of work that are similar only in scale. However, an intricate relationship between the works is formed when the organic, cosmological paintings by Sandeep Mukherjee face the activist photo compositions by Sheila Pinkel.
In this first room, you are confronted by opposing modes of experiencing the world. Mukherjee’s work uses natural colors-greens, blues, blacks, and reds-to reference cosmology and landscapes. The viewer becomes more aware of the physical world—that is, the unchanging part, untouched by man. On the opposite wall are pieces that show the human influence on the world. This can be seen in the subject-matter as well as the style and production of the work. The piece uses text, photos, and an actual prison bed.
One of Pinkel’s pieces is a large graph that shows the fluctuations in prison populations in the United States over the last seventy years. Pinkel also displays a triptych comprised of large photographs of dollar bills in a 9x9 lattice. The middle bill in the lattice shows a prisoner in a cell; the outside bills quote statistics on prison labor and the costs of our prison system. Pinkel’s work demands the viewer to think critically about prison and incarceration in this country. This potent political message is heightened by its juxtaposition with Mukherjee’s paintings.
As stated, Mukherjee’s paintings reference cosmological bodies, landscape, and space. While Pinkel’s paintings encourage a straight-foward consideration of the world in which we live, Mukherjee’s paintings take a different approach. His luminescent orbs and repetitive arcs are meditative in a manner that compels you to stop, pause, and take in the painting. Later, you begin to wonder about the geometries and symmetries and that exist in the world. You are lost in the painting, observing the meticulous application of color that did not originate with a brush stroke, nor was it machine-made.
The spirals are hand-painted, and the use of the body to create something so complex and intricate helps you visualize how the microcosmic can become the macrocosmic, how one man can become a people, and how one mark, if repeated, can create a universe. The use of scale, and the relationship of the miniscule to the immeasurable is essential to this work.
The second room of the show contains work by Mark Allen and Mercedes Teixido. If the first room is a commentary about the world in which we live on a grand scale, the second room is about the private parts of the world, and the nurturing aspect of nature. Whereas Pinkel created a jail cell in the first room by taping off a square on the floor, Mark Allen created the Phone Booth, another cell-like area, as a place to be secluded and isolated, but still connected to the rest of the world and to nature.
The phone booth is a small greenhouse set up on one side of the room. You enter through a sliding door, and receive instructions to spray the plants with water, sit down in the conveniently placed chair, and use the telephone to call a certain number. Depending on the day, a different person answers and either sings a song, tells a trivia fact, recites a poem, plays a musical instrument, or something of that nature. When you sit down to use the phone, it is not only an obligation to listen to the person on the opposite end, but you are then stuck for a moment, attached to this phone, hanging from a cord, on a desk, in the greenhouse. There is something strangely intimate about having someone perform a song or poem across a telephone. The first time I went in, a girl sang a song she had written about plants. I didn’t know what to do when it was over. Should I clap? Hang up? Start a conversation? It was actually very unclear.
The phone booth is a disorienting experience because the greenhouse is very humid and crowded with plants. Fitting two people is somewhat uncomfortable, and it seems obvious that it is meant for solitary experience. It is a transition into a jungle environment, with the exception of the parlor room feel generated by the chair and phone.
You can’t help being soothed and calmed by the plants, the humidity, and the voice on the other end of the phone, but the relaxed and informal experience feels out of place in an art museum. Allen’s piece creates a tension between a personal and a public place.
Mercedes Teixido’s two bodies of work also exhibit a unique personal touch. Her set of paintings reference nature and creation, but in a very different manner than Mukherjee or Allen’s work. The paintings are very process-oriented. Teixido came up with rules to govern their creation. They are made with opaque watercolors, and each piece starts with a larger organic body, which was allowed to flow and get somewhat “out of control.” She overlaid and extended this with tiny controlled circles or dots, also of condensed opaque watercolor.
The theme of nature and growth complements Mark Allen’s Phone Booth (which contains real growing plants). A tension between control and freedom is also present in Teixido’s work, because the pieces were created by allowing the paint to flow and be free, and also by using the paint in a very restricted way.
Teixido’s second body of work is a series of drawings. These bring personal spaces into a public space, as well. Teixido refers to this set of drawings as her memory drawings. She tried to think of all the places that she has ever slept, and then she drew them on somewhat small pieces of paper with hard pencils. The accumulation of drawings is like the accumulation of memories. Some are more intricate than others, but all are finished with a very delicate and intimate feel.
This series is probably the last set of drawings one sees in the exhibit because it is on the far wall in the second room. This is fitting, because where else do you end up at the end of the day but in bed?
On the way out of the museum, you again pass by the prison bed that is a part of Pinkel’s work. After seeing the intimately conveyed beds in Teixido’s work, the stark unfriendly small prison bed is even more effective as a statement about the living conditions in US prisons.
Each faculty-member of the Pomona College Studio Art Department has a very distinctive style and medium. In this case, their work fits together in a cohesive show that deals with the natural versus the man-made world and the tension between public and private spaces. This allows the viewer to confront each body of work in relation to the others, heightening the effect of each. Juxtaposing relaxing personal spaces and disquieting public spaces, the faculty art show illustrates each artist’s unique mode of representing reality.
The show opened on September 2nd, and will be up until October 19th, 2008.
When you walk into the gallery, you are confronted by two very different bodies of work that are similar only in scale. However, an intricate relationship between the works is formed when the organic, cosmological paintings by Sandeep Mukherjee face the activist photo compositions by Sheila Pinkel.
In this first room, you are confronted by opposing modes of experiencing the world. Mukherjee’s work uses natural colors-greens, blues, blacks, and reds-to reference cosmology and landscapes. The viewer becomes more aware of the physical world—that is, the unchanging part, untouched by man. On the opposite wall are pieces that show the human influence on the world. This can be seen in the subject-matter as well as the style and production of the work. The piece uses text, photos, and an actual prison bed.
One of Pinkel’s pieces is a large graph that shows the fluctuations in prison populations in the United States over the last seventy years. Pinkel also displays a triptych comprised of large photographs of dollar bills in a 9x9 lattice. The middle bill in the lattice shows a prisoner in a cell; the outside bills quote statistics on prison labor and the costs of our prison system. Pinkel’s work demands the viewer to think critically about prison and incarceration in this country. This potent political message is heightened by its juxtaposition with Mukherjee’s paintings.
As stated, Mukherjee’s paintings reference cosmological bodies, landscape, and space. While Pinkel’s paintings encourage a straight-foward consideration of the world in which we live, Mukherjee’s paintings take a different approach. His luminescent orbs and repetitive arcs are meditative in a manner that compels you to stop, pause, and take in the painting. Later, you begin to wonder about the geometries and symmetries and that exist in the world. You are lost in the painting, observing the meticulous application of color that did not originate with a brush stroke, nor was it machine-made.
The spirals are hand-painted, and the use of the body to create something so complex and intricate helps you visualize how the microcosmic can become the macrocosmic, how one man can become a people, and how one mark, if repeated, can create a universe. The use of scale, and the relationship of the miniscule to the immeasurable is essential to this work.
The second room of the show contains work by Mark Allen and Mercedes Teixido. If the first room is a commentary about the world in which we live on a grand scale, the second room is about the private parts of the world, and the nurturing aspect of nature. Whereas Pinkel created a jail cell in the first room by taping off a square on the floor, Mark Allen created the Phone Booth, another cell-like area, as a place to be secluded and isolated, but still connected to the rest of the world and to nature.
The phone booth is a small greenhouse set up on one side of the room. You enter through a sliding door, and receive instructions to spray the plants with water, sit down in the conveniently placed chair, and use the telephone to call a certain number. Depending on the day, a different person answers and either sings a song, tells a trivia fact, recites a poem, plays a musical instrument, or something of that nature. When you sit down to use the phone, it is not only an obligation to listen to the person on the opposite end, but you are then stuck for a moment, attached to this phone, hanging from a cord, on a desk, in the greenhouse. There is something strangely intimate about having someone perform a song or poem across a telephone. The first time I went in, a girl sang a song she had written about plants. I didn’t know what to do when it was over. Should I clap? Hang up? Start a conversation? It was actually very unclear.
The phone booth is a disorienting experience because the greenhouse is very humid and crowded with plants. Fitting two people is somewhat uncomfortable, and it seems obvious that it is meant for solitary experience. It is a transition into a jungle environment, with the exception of the parlor room feel generated by the chair and phone.
You can’t help being soothed and calmed by the plants, the humidity, and the voice on the other end of the phone, but the relaxed and informal experience feels out of place in an art museum. Allen’s piece creates a tension between a personal and a public place.
Mercedes Teixido’s two bodies of work also exhibit a unique personal touch. Her set of paintings reference nature and creation, but in a very different manner than Mukherjee or Allen’s work. The paintings are very process-oriented. Teixido came up with rules to govern their creation. They are made with opaque watercolors, and each piece starts with a larger organic body, which was allowed to flow and get somewhat “out of control.” She overlaid and extended this with tiny controlled circles or dots, also of condensed opaque watercolor.
The theme of nature and growth complements Mark Allen’s Phone Booth (which contains real growing plants). A tension between control and freedom is also present in Teixido’s work, because the pieces were created by allowing the paint to flow and be free, and also by using the paint in a very restricted way.
Teixido’s second body of work is a series of drawings. These bring personal spaces into a public space, as well. Teixido refers to this set of drawings as her memory drawings. She tried to think of all the places that she has ever slept, and then she drew them on somewhat small pieces of paper with hard pencils. The accumulation of drawings is like the accumulation of memories. Some are more intricate than others, but all are finished with a very delicate and intimate feel.
This series is probably the last set of drawings one sees in the exhibit because it is on the far wall in the second room. This is fitting, because where else do you end up at the end of the day but in bed?
On the way out of the museum, you again pass by the prison bed that is a part of Pinkel’s work. After seeing the intimately conveyed beds in Teixido’s work, the stark unfriendly small prison bed is even more effective as a statement about the living conditions in US prisons.
Each faculty-member of the Pomona College Studio Art Department has a very distinctive style and medium. In this case, their work fits together in a cohesive show that deals with the natural versus the man-made world and the tension between public and private spaces. This allows the viewer to confront each body of work in relation to the others, heightening the effect of each. Juxtaposing relaxing personal spaces and disquieting public spaces, the faculty art show illustrates each artist’s unique mode of representing reality.
The show opened on September 2nd, and will be up until October 19th, 2008.
Megapuss: “Surfing” by Jacob Levi
I can imagine record stores accidentally shelving Megapuss’ debut album “Surfing” in the death metal section on the basis of the unsavory name, but this collaborative effort from Devendra Banhart and Priestbird’s Greg Rogove is anything but cacophonous. I also imagine that the duo would giggle at the sight of such a misrepresentation. Devendra Banhart is well known for his bizarre antics and psychedelic/surreal folk music, combining a traditional a folk- guitar sound with off-kilter lyrics and variations. While this album is more electrified than Banhart’s acoustic guitar melodies, the rich eclecticism and irony in the lyrical and instrumental compositions is as strong as ever. “Surfing” garners influence from surf-rock and blues-rock, at times sounding something like Chuck Berry, and other times it takes a page from The Beatles, circa Magical Mystery Tour. Swinging guitar melodies accompanied by the squeak of fingers over frets combines with sturdy, if conventional drums and powerful bass lines to show reverence for “classic” rock, while the lyrics appeal to a more ridiculous- perhaps even Dionysian- listener.
Fans of Devendra need not worry that their favorite crazy-folk-renaissance man has gone electric like Dylan; this is clearly a side-project that apparently began as a joke. The story goes that the duo challenged each other to write songs with ridiculous lyrics in ten minutes--it turns out what they wrote was actually pretty good. André Breton would certainly have something to say concerning the patently surreal lyrics and the apparently “automatic” writing style. The lack of reflection seems to have allowed for a new level of lyrical absurdity.
Certainly there is a great deal of intended shock value in Megapuss’ music. The first song on the album is a love song with a serenading trumpet introduction that repeats, “All my loving / All my loving / ‘Cause it’s all for you” to a swinging melody with heavy use of the hi-hat; the song is called “Crop Circle Jerk ’94.” Your guess is as good as mine. The artists obviously revel in their own misdirection. Megapuss is almost always on the limit between childish crudity and a thoroughly ironic disposition, and surely many listeners will be scared away by their bizarre sense of humor. But it appears that, according to the 2008 Zeitgeist, the injunction against the profane and inflammatory is passé and you can write a slow song named “Chicken Titz” or a robotic jingle called “Mister Meat (Hot Rejection)” without causing a fuss. Hey, if Sarah Palin can run for vice-president, everything is permissible, right?
At other points, crudity gives way to the downright absurd. The second song on the album-my personal favorite-is “Duck People Duck Man.” It opens to a muted acoustic guitar melody with the title sung repeatedly. This hypnotic line becomes the backdrop for a strange raspy voice, speaking on behalf of the duck people: “Don’t tell me we look like ducks; that’s a stereotype / We cross bridges; that’s a stereotype that’s true / We buy hummus from Trader Joes; windsurfing / Have you ever had hummus with white beans and basil? It’s delicious / We don’t even need pita bread; we just eat the hummus by itself.” There’s no use hyper-intellectualizing songs like this; they’re completely inane, but thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining. Megapuss invents a world of creatures and concepts that fills the album with a language that is thoroughly their own. It is the same kind of ridiculous ethnopomorphism that the Beatles experiment with in “I Am the Walrus,” “Piggies,” and “Rocky Racoon, ” although, I would not dare draw a categorical association between the two groups.
It would, however, be unfair to characterize “Surfing” as a totally detached collection of work because, at times, the social consciousness of Megapuss is apparent. “A Gun on his Hip and a Rose on his Chest” is an anti-establishment anthem with a simple swinging guitar line, maracas and bassdrum. Musically, the song is a throwback to the early days of rock and swing, reminiscent of Chuck Berry. This is a song that appeals to the “maverick” in each of us, and its message is pretty clear: “Fuck the president in the asshole / Fuck the government in the asshole / Fuck the taxes in their IRS’s / Got a gun on my hip and a rose on my tit—yeah!” Yet there is a always an air of levity to Megapuss’ music that is obvious from their own self-referential jokes. Later in the song, they sing, “Fuck Abe Lincoln—Ahhh! I’m just Kiddin’”. Yeah, they certainly are. It is not hard to write a funny song with a couple of witty digs and bizarre jokes; it is a rare treat to find an album that is as musically engaging and mercilessly absurd as Megapuss’ “Surfing.” In whatever section the attendees at the record store decide to shelve it, “Surfing” is worth your time.
Fans of Devendra need not worry that their favorite crazy-folk-renaissance man has gone electric like Dylan; this is clearly a side-project that apparently began as a joke. The story goes that the duo challenged each other to write songs with ridiculous lyrics in ten minutes--it turns out what they wrote was actually pretty good. André Breton would certainly have something to say concerning the patently surreal lyrics and the apparently “automatic” writing style. The lack of reflection seems to have allowed for a new level of lyrical absurdity.
Certainly there is a great deal of intended shock value in Megapuss’ music. The first song on the album is a love song with a serenading trumpet introduction that repeats, “All my loving / All my loving / ‘Cause it’s all for you” to a swinging melody with heavy use of the hi-hat; the song is called “Crop Circle Jerk ’94.” Your guess is as good as mine. The artists obviously revel in their own misdirection. Megapuss is almost always on the limit between childish crudity and a thoroughly ironic disposition, and surely many listeners will be scared away by their bizarre sense of humor. But it appears that, according to the 2008 Zeitgeist, the injunction against the profane and inflammatory is passé and you can write a slow song named “Chicken Titz” or a robotic jingle called “Mister Meat (Hot Rejection)” without causing a fuss. Hey, if Sarah Palin can run for vice-president, everything is permissible, right?
At other points, crudity gives way to the downright absurd. The second song on the album-my personal favorite-is “Duck People Duck Man.” It opens to a muted acoustic guitar melody with the title sung repeatedly. This hypnotic line becomes the backdrop for a strange raspy voice, speaking on behalf of the duck people: “Don’t tell me we look like ducks; that’s a stereotype / We cross bridges; that’s a stereotype that’s true / We buy hummus from Trader Joes; windsurfing / Have you ever had hummus with white beans and basil? It’s delicious / We don’t even need pita bread; we just eat the hummus by itself.” There’s no use hyper-intellectualizing songs like this; they’re completely inane, but thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining. Megapuss invents a world of creatures and concepts that fills the album with a language that is thoroughly their own. It is the same kind of ridiculous ethnopomorphism that the Beatles experiment with in “I Am the Walrus,” “Piggies,” and “Rocky Racoon, ” although, I would not dare draw a categorical association between the two groups.
It would, however, be unfair to characterize “Surfing” as a totally detached collection of work because, at times, the social consciousness of Megapuss is apparent. “A Gun on his Hip and a Rose on his Chest” is an anti-establishment anthem with a simple swinging guitar line, maracas and bassdrum. Musically, the song is a throwback to the early days of rock and swing, reminiscent of Chuck Berry. This is a song that appeals to the “maverick” in each of us, and its message is pretty clear: “Fuck the president in the asshole / Fuck the government in the asshole / Fuck the taxes in their IRS’s / Got a gun on my hip and a rose on my tit—yeah!” Yet there is a always an air of levity to Megapuss’ music that is obvious from their own self-referential jokes. Later in the song, they sing, “Fuck Abe Lincoln—Ahhh! I’m just Kiddin’”. Yeah, they certainly are. It is not hard to write a funny song with a couple of witty digs and bizarre jokes; it is a rare treat to find an album that is as musically engaging and mercilessly absurd as Megapuss’ “Surfing.” In whatever section the attendees at the record store decide to shelve it, “Surfing” is worth your time.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Todd Osborn (no e), the man behind 2008’s Osborne, defines nerd super-producer. An ex-record store owner who flies and repairs planes, owns an electron microscope, and wrote the software he used to make his album, Todd is one of the small group of people who excel at both designing circuits and making music. February’s self titled release on Spectral Sound offers proof of this in the form of an album full of songs unlike most other contemporary house music. It sounds like a throwback to the electronic dance music as it was first put together by the master architects of the 80’s: producers like Larry Heard (Mr. Fingers) and Juan Atkins (Model 500, Rhythm is Rhythm) worked out of Detroit and Chicago as house music (and in Detroit, “techno”) started to push itself away from the Italo-Disco that, in the clubs where it was pioneered, had dominated the turntables for years before it. Moving away from Italo’s lush disco sound, the work of these producers asserted the sensibility of harder beats and mechanically precise repetition that would come to define house music. The instruments Todd draws from to build the album (whether actual models from this era or imitations) are certainly a nod to the past, but in a way that makes it feel less slick and more real. Their sounds are uncomplicated and have the characteristic warmth of analog synthesizers.
The album’s sound is often comparable to music released through the label DFA, whose releases tend to display a similar preoccupation with proto-edm kitsch but with more disco flair. Another close comparison is the work of Morgan Geist, whose music displays a similar tendency towards simple arrangements and vintage sounds. In comparison to a lot of this work, however, Osborne uses its retro drum-machine flavor to package something a little less esoteric and a little more straightforward. The focus on melody and harmony is not as unusual in electronic music as some DJ sets might make it seem, but here, as in Geist’s “Metro Area 4,” the simplicity of the pieces often foreground their arrangements in a way that renders the album more interesting in your living room than on a dance floor. It pushes into the emotional territory you explore more by staring out of train windows on the way home from work than being up all night in a warehouse, something a little melancholy in ways that pumping acid house bass-lines never are. While a few of the tracks would make vague sense playing at a party, it’s the ways that they wouldn’t that makes the album really interesting. It’s a kind of music for all the moments you spend between things and lost in thought–-it is a cool, somber, and thoughtful album in a really human and honest way. The album’s only low point is the track “Our Definition of a Breakdown;” sadly the kitch factor doesn’t save a track built around someone announcing “the scratch beat” and “the clap beat.” But other than that, Osborne really shines, and it’s worth your time to give it a listen.
High Places: “High Places” by Jacob Levi
Perhaps the emergence of an electronic-percussion-based genre-bending duo from Brooklyn doesn’t raise eyebrows the way it used to back in, say, 2002. With groups like Animal Collective, Joanna Newsom and Of Montreal breaking through to the forefront of the independent music scene (and beyond), the floodgates are open for experimental indie-pop. Throw together a synth, some drums and a guitar with an off-axis, yet catchy melody, and it seems that you’ve got the recipe for a hit single. And for the majority of these acts, probably nothing more. High Places may be part of the onslaught of electronic-infused acts, but their debut album reveals a unique creative spark that certainly elevates them above the clouds of passing musical fads. Mary Pearson and Rob Barber’s group has produced a vibrant and colorful sound (and it is very much a sound) that outclasses most of its emerging sub-genre.
On the heels of their debut EP, “03.07-09.07,” High Places’ self-titled LP delivers more of the same, but in the best possible sense. High Places combines an intricate and downright fascinating electro-percussive core that beautifully merges with Mary Pearson’s dreamy vocals. Most percussion-heavy acts either abstain from vocals or struggle to adequately balance the rhythmic and vocal aspects of their music. Many critics throw around the term “noise music” as a diminutive moniker for de-structured sound that they can’t quite get their head around. While this is not the place to discuss the merits of noise music, High Places does not fit that category. The opening song on the album, “The Storm,” builds into a layered beat involving shakers, a twangy guitar line, claves, and a plethora of other exotic samples layered with Barber’s drum machine. This combination establishes the backbone of an enticing beat with tropical flair, in many ways reminiscent of Animal Collective or Caribou. Castanets and other jingles and jangles accent the dominant rhythmic line, looping flawlessly in and out around Pearson’s vocals. It leaves me wondering whether or not I want to get up and dance, or sit on the beach with a Piña Colada in hand. Probably both.
High Places’ rhythms are experimental and include a multitude of different cultural and instrumental influences, but it maintain its coherency beautifully. Instrumentally as well as rhythmically, High Places certainly has garnered a lot of influence from other bands like Animal Collective, but whereas the Baltimore group generally uses prolonged buildups to establish their melodic and rhythmic composition in songs that are often over eight minutes long, High Places’ music is court and sharp, never allowing a melody or drum loop to outstay its welcome. Each song feels like a little jingle that you’ll hum to yourself when you’re walking to the store or driving to work because it’s so catchy, despite the patently unconventional arrangements. What I find particularly appealing about High Places is that they successfully navigate the thin line between deconstructing traditional pop sounds, and falling into the abyss of free-form noise music that lacks the coherency (or perhaps the pace) to string itself along. Every song on the album is between one and a half to four minutes long, and while it can leaves the listener wishing that the beats went on, it also keeps their music from dragging. Everything about this album is uplifting.
It’s no wonder that High Places’ music is frequently described as “playful,” or “dreamy.” “Namer,” a track in the middle of the album, expresses a nostalgic longing to be home, and an intimate attachment to the smallest of things: “Yes I know every crevice // I’ve named them all // There were none too big // There were none too small.” It’s the little things that get them going, and they revel in it. Because they are forced to leave home, in the second verse of “Namer,” she plots rebuilding with her companion dog: “I’ll buy a plot of land // One full of trees // Where I can practice taxonomy”. Pearson revisits the glee implicit in naming, and like a child at play, she is content so long as she can sit around with her dog renaming the things around her. High Places revisits previously ordinary topics with renewed inspiration, unleashing the sublime from the ingrained with an almost Proustian ability to revisit things long forgotten. High Places makes itself at home by getting to know their environment’s quirks and renaming it as their own—much like their music takes traditional noise-music and pop-ifies it. Said another way, their music takes pop and adds an experimental touch. In High Places’ dream-reality, there is wonder and amazement contained in the seemingly simple things: our homes, small animals, the sky. The banal is the sublime, and the sublime is the banal. It’s not naiveté, but a genuinely innocent look at the world that is both endearing and gorgeous. High Places does not break down any monumental musical barriers—they just work with what they have, to dizzying effect. While Pearson’s echoing vocals lulls listeners into their dreamy world, Barber’s electronic percussion keeps them simultaneously bobbing their heads to the rhythm. High Places does not claim to be anything more than it is: there is no grand vision of musical revolution, there is no shocking crescendo or daring lyric; there are just two artists, playing on synthesizers and jangling bells, creating catchy yet substantive music.
On the heels of their debut EP, “03.07-09.07,” High Places’ self-titled LP delivers more of the same, but in the best possible sense. High Places combines an intricate and downright fascinating electro-percussive core that beautifully merges with Mary Pearson’s dreamy vocals. Most percussion-heavy acts either abstain from vocals or struggle to adequately balance the rhythmic and vocal aspects of their music. Many critics throw around the term “noise music” as a diminutive moniker for de-structured sound that they can’t quite get their head around. While this is not the place to discuss the merits of noise music, High Places does not fit that category. The opening song on the album, “The Storm,” builds into a layered beat involving shakers, a twangy guitar line, claves, and a plethora of other exotic samples layered with Barber’s drum machine. This combination establishes the backbone of an enticing beat with tropical flair, in many ways reminiscent of Animal Collective or Caribou. Castanets and other jingles and jangles accent the dominant rhythmic line, looping flawlessly in and out around Pearson’s vocals. It leaves me wondering whether or not I want to get up and dance, or sit on the beach with a Piña Colada in hand. Probably both.
High Places’ rhythms are experimental and include a multitude of different cultural and instrumental influences, but it maintain its coherency beautifully. Instrumentally as well as rhythmically, High Places certainly has garnered a lot of influence from other bands like Animal Collective, but whereas the Baltimore group generally uses prolonged buildups to establish their melodic and rhythmic composition in songs that are often over eight minutes long, High Places’ music is court and sharp, never allowing a melody or drum loop to outstay its welcome. Each song feels like a little jingle that you’ll hum to yourself when you’re walking to the store or driving to work because it’s so catchy, despite the patently unconventional arrangements. What I find particularly appealing about High Places is that they successfully navigate the thin line between deconstructing traditional pop sounds, and falling into the abyss of free-form noise music that lacks the coherency (or perhaps the pace) to string itself along. Every song on the album is between one and a half to four minutes long, and while it can leaves the listener wishing that the beats went on, it also keeps their music from dragging. Everything about this album is uplifting.
It’s no wonder that High Places’ music is frequently described as “playful,” or “dreamy.” “Namer,” a track in the middle of the album, expresses a nostalgic longing to be home, and an intimate attachment to the smallest of things: “Yes I know every crevice // I’ve named them all // There were none too big // There were none too small.” It’s the little things that get them going, and they revel in it. Because they are forced to leave home, in the second verse of “Namer,” she plots rebuilding with her companion dog: “I’ll buy a plot of land // One full of trees // Where I can practice taxonomy”. Pearson revisits the glee implicit in naming, and like a child at play, she is content so long as she can sit around with her dog renaming the things around her. High Places revisits previously ordinary topics with renewed inspiration, unleashing the sublime from the ingrained with an almost Proustian ability to revisit things long forgotten. High Places makes itself at home by getting to know their environment’s quirks and renaming it as their own—much like their music takes traditional noise-music and pop-ifies it. Said another way, their music takes pop and adds an experimental touch. In High Places’ dream-reality, there is wonder and amazement contained in the seemingly simple things: our homes, small animals, the sky. The banal is the sublime, and the sublime is the banal. It’s not naiveté, but a genuinely innocent look at the world that is both endearing and gorgeous. High Places does not break down any monumental musical barriers—they just work with what they have, to dizzying effect. While Pearson’s echoing vocals lulls listeners into their dreamy world, Barber’s electronic percussion keeps them simultaneously bobbing their heads to the rhythm. High Places does not claim to be anything more than it is: there is no grand vision of musical revolution, there is no shocking crescendo or daring lyric; there are just two artists, playing on synthesizers and jangling bells, creating catchy yet substantive music.
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