r.mutt's blog

4/27/08 SOULJA BOY TELLEM for those of you who don't follow the sideshow minutia of the nba playoffs, there is a feud between cleveland superduperstar lebron james and washington's starting shooting guard deshawn stevenson. deshawn called lebron "overrated" before their respective teams' first round matchup, which cleveland is currently leading 2-1. lebron, who is close personal friends with jay-z, responded: "With DeShawn Stevenson it is kind of funny. It's almost like Jay-Z saying something bad about Soulja Boy. There's no comparison. Enough said," which many sportswriters have shortened to lebron = jay z, deshawn = soulja boy. next thing you know, soulja boy is offended by the slight, and deshawn is giving him courtside seats and a washington wizards jersey to wear to washington's home playoff games against cleveland. and, lest you think jay-z has better things to do than join in on the smack talk, jay-z recorded a deshawn diss track at a washington nightclub friday night. which is all to say i can't wait for the requisite soulja boy v. lebron diss track, to be posted, hopefully, on souljaboytellemdotcom.com. "lebron... anhhh... deshawn... anhhh... rabble rabble... anhhh... danaenaenae..." i heart soulja boy for reals, yo. 4/22/08 I'M SHIFTLESS WHEN I'M IDLE AND I GOT TIME TO WASTE this mp3 blog has the (recently remastered and reissued with lots of bonus tracks, including the band's breathtaking first demo tape) first replacements record sorry ma, forgot to take out the trash up for the downloading. mark richardson extolled the virtues of this album yesterday. it's a fantastic album; it anticipates the band's later stone-cold rock and roll classics let it be and tim, while wearing this completely unabashed, youthful exuberance on its sleeve — a sleeve the mats clearly used to wipe their snotty noses. there's also something wonderfully guileless about this record. for the replacements' place in the 1980s punk rock canon, they didn't seem to know much of anything about punk rock. the mats, unlike hüsker dü, black flag, the necros, or any of their '80s punk peers, were all unself-consciousness and sincerity, all disaffected teenage angst without a cause. and their influence, as mark richardson has written, is limited to sappy tools like the goo goo dolls and ryan adams (not to mention semisonic, third eye blind, and about five hundred midwestern emo bands that sound like the get up kids). but there was something real about the replacements. it was unmistakable on let it be, which is a unanimous classic (bruce pavitt's seattle rocket review in '84: "westerberg sings from the heart and knows how to break it"). you can also hear it all over tim, behind tommy ramone's mostly inadequate production. and the realness of the replacements is basically incarnate on sorry ma, forgot to take out the trash. i'll take it over anything on nuggets and anything the stones laid to tape. (note: the exuberance of the mats is nothing like the knowing punk rock exuberance that i love so much in bands like superchunk.) "real" is what paul westerberg began to lose after 86ing guitarist bob stinson and longtime superegoic manager peter jesperson back in '86. you can hear the last gasps of "real" on the 1987 album pleased to meet me, even as legendary big star producer jim dickinson did everything in his power to hide this growing lack behind layers of studio schlock. and "real" is what westerberg's brief brush with the mainstream lacked completely, even if it produced a few kind of nice, jangly adult-contempo tracks. here's a famously maligned one. and "real" is what westy was trying to find in this recent, and surprisingly convincing, flesh for lulu (what?) cover, more than twenty years after sorry ma, forgot to take out the trash. 4/18/08 LIGHTNING CRASHES the dia art foundation is attempting to raise $1.1 million to save walter de maria's monsterific art project lightning field. along with robert smithson's spiral jetty, the donald judd museum in marfa, texas, and the mark rothko chapel, lightning field is one of the destinations of the southwestern art tour i plan to go on when i someday qualify for super-gold-star-tenure and can buy my own helicopter. i just hope to god that lightning field doesn't go the way of most of the other large-scale artist's projects funded by dia, great places i never got to go to like fred sandback's single artist museum. spiral jetty also needs saving, you know. you can't fight big business. but hopefully dia can stave off big business until the year 2050, when tenure will be so rare that tenured faculty be paid at the level of CEOs, and when the qualifications won't be based on academic excellence and teaching ability, but rather on arcane knowledge of early 90s punk rock trivia. in the meantime, please enjoy this seasonal mixtape i made, in which the still, sad music of humanity reflects on the still, sad music of humanity. if you know anything about the time-based land art of de maria and smithson, i think you'll agree that this emo mixtape is a more poignant rumination on entropy and temporality than any fucking max neuhaus sound installation. 4/16/08 SOMETHING LEARNED UPON GOOGLING MY OWN NAME i shouldn't have signed away my intellectual property and royalty rights... 4/15/08 WHERE DO THE ROCKETS FIND PLANETS? as my esteemed interlocutor related recently: among the venerated heroes of the jewish resistance are the rebels who temporarily kept the germans from liquidating the warsaw ghetto, using only improvised explosive devices, shitty rockets, and a handful of guns. as we speak, hundreds of thousands of people are packed into the gaza strip, their access to food, fuel and medical supplies subject to the whims of the israeli government, and if they so much as fire a shitty homemade rocket out, the israelis think nothing of sending in ground troops, attack helicopters and jets to shoot fish in that overflowing barrel. a timely meditation. today, they're commemorating the 65th anniversary of the warsaw ghetto uprising. quoth shimon peres, the israeli president, this morning: They lost the battle, but from history's point of view there never was a greater victory, a victory of humanity over human bestiality. where was ehud olmert? on his way to meet with president bush and the war machine. also: the stirring recollections of marek edlman, leader of the warsaw ghetto uprising. it's not the same thing as what's going on in gaza right now, but still... 4/13/08 VAMPIRE WEEKEND people keep emailing me about this. doods, i know. thomas' book was pimped on boing boing. more importantly, the book is finally available for sale. here. 4/08/08 ADDENDUM a propos of my entry this morning, see BBC article. actually, it's so good that i am going to reproduce it in full below. UN expert stands by Nazi comments By Tim Franks BBC Middle East correspondent The next UN investigator into Israeli conduct in the occupied territories has stood by comments comparing Israeli actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis. Speaking to the BBC, Professor Richard Falk said he believed that up to now Israel had been successful in avoiding the criticism that it was due. Professor Falk is scheduled to take up his post for the UN Human Rights Council later in the year. But Israel wants his mandate changed to probe Palestinian actions as well. Professor Falk said he drew the comparison between the treatment of Palestinians with the Nazi record of collective atrocity, because of what he described as the massive Israeli punishment directed at the entire population of Gaza. He said he understood that it was a provocative thing to say, but at the time, last summer, he had wanted to shake the American public from its torpor. "If this kind of situation had existed for instance in the manner in which China was dealing with Tibet or the Sudanese government was dealing with Darfur, I think there would be no reluctance to make that comparison," he said. That reluctance was, he argued, based on the particular historical sensitivity of the Jewish people, and Israel's ability to avoid having their policies held up to international law and morality. These and other comments from Professor Falk comments are, if anything, even harsher than the current UN investigator, John Dugard, who himself has been withering about Israel's actions. A spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry said that Israel wanted the UN investigator's mandate changed, so that he could look into human rights violations by the Palestinians as well as Israel. If that were not to happen, the Israeli government may consider barring entry to the new UN investigator. damn, historical singularity be damned. in many cases, i think we have to be judicious about pushing the "genocide" button, because calling a situation a genocide comes with the quick deployment of troops and military intervention that comes often without enough forethought or reflection. but, in this case, the holocaust comparison (as opposed to, significantly, the "genocide" button) is rhetorically forceful, the moralism of saul friedländer, et al. be damned. 4/08/08 HISTORIEWISSENSHAFTLERSTREIT about three weeks ago, german chancellor angela merkel became the first head of state to address the israel parliament, a privilege normally reserved for monarchs. the fact that she did so in german, combined with the german flag flying over the israeli parliament, provoked some outrage — though not much of the kind that is heard internationally. i wrote: read this and this they flew the german flag over the israeli parliament. however secular you are, and however anti-zionist you may be, that's got to offend you as a jew, right? man, balls to ehud olmert. how quickly all of the friendlaenderian outrage goes out the window when the warlord needs a military ally in his fight against the other warlord in iran. beh. otto schnellbacher he replied: I'm gonna be honest with you: i'm having a lot of trouble getting excited about this incident. intellectually, i recognize the perversity of the thing, but the stream of offenses emanating from the state of israel over the last six decades has been so incessant and overwhelming that i find myself inured to the shock that would naturally be associated with any particular one. for example, after that incomprehensible foray into lebanon it's difficult to imagine what they could really do to stir me from my numbness. as i said, perverse: on the one hand, israel's backers continually trot out the holocaust as an argument (intended primarily for the jewish community) for the necessity of the state of israel, as beacon and benevolent protector for all the jews of the world. on the other hand, they've long been fooling around with the nation that was responsible for the holocaust (and have now finally gone all the way), if only because germany is the only european nation that'll put out. there's a lesson for the kids: guilt and pity really work. but here's another perversity: among the venerated heroes of the jewish resistance are the rebels who temporarily kept the germans from liquidating the warsaw ghetto, using only improvised explosive devices, shitty rockets, and a handful of guns. as we speak, hundreds of thousands of people are packed into the gaza strip, their access to food, fuel and medical supplies subject to the whims of the israeli government, and if they so much as fire a shitty homemade rocket out, the israelis think nothing of sending in ground troops, attack helicopters and jets to shoot fish in that overflowing barrel. i know: incommensurate examples, singularity of the holocaust, and so on. but still. and i could go on this way. to some extent, such examples merely illustrate the quintessentially human tendency to perceive evil in others, but to miss like properties in our own conduct and character, but there's also something singular and, i think, more grating going on here. as sad as it is, there is a broad class of people for whom the holocaust is a rhetorical device, in much the same way that certain people in this hemisphere have come to rely on the invocation of 9/11 to justify their personal idées fixes. as the ranks of those with direct (or indirect but proximal) experience of the holocaust disappear, it is more and more the case that it is not a trauma that permeates the speaker's very experience of life, nor even a trauma that is keenly felt in the presence of a particular trigger (hearing the german language, say), but rather a trauma whose experience is performed. one wishes to feel, and to cause others to feel as well, typically in a way that suits one's own ends, and for such purposes, the holocaust is the alpha and the omega. it has been, is, and always will be a staple of those who would have israel be loved and respected by all — 'cept the dirty arabs, naturally — but it's a tool, a weapon, which can be set aside as the situation dictates. and to expect better from the government of the state of israel, who will almost literally step over the bodies of dead children if they think the slightest advantage will accrue to them by so doing, would be, i'm afraid, to indulge in a certain measure of wishful thinking. that those who are most insistent that the holocaust never be trivialized or robbed of its singularity should be, in the above sense, among the worst offenders is upsetting. perhaps this is a point on which i can become exercised, but it is not really tied to the specificity of the incident in question, except insofar as a general principle is wedded to a given illustration. rather, it is merely a fact of the world in which we now live, albeit manifested here in an especially obvious way. still, i seem to recall that the military killed several dozen gazans in a single fucking day in the last few weeks, and this kind of symbolic, highly-orchestrated reconciliation (or rejection) seems a bit less interesting in comparison. then again, i find myself drifting away from the realms of symbolism and ideology lately, so maybe i'm missing something. using a ladder, fer chrissake, meadowlark lemon and i was all like: i've been meaning to set aside time to offer a thoughtful response to your email. i began to write it not long after you sent it, but then had to go to new york. i've been in and out of town, with another trip to the city tomorrow, so... it won't be all that thoughtful. but here's some amalgam of my half-completed hasty and immediate response and my thoughts with a bit of distance, but under the pressure to finish my work before leaving town again. without further ado: very quickly, for me, there's must be a separation between the israeli government and the citizens of the israeli state, lest we put so much faith in representative democracy that we put citizens to blame for — perhaps even say that they "deserve" — the horrible things the state does to them and to others. and the psychic violence registered in this painfully symbolic act (and however much the figure of holocaust has been twisted and turned, it still registers an undeniably affective presence) seems here to be levelled by the israeli government at the expense of its constituents. the boycott speaks to that, even if a number of them were "performing," as you say. on the one hand, i agree with you on both perversities, and that the irony having been lost on many seems inconceivable for a nation so well-versed in the historical legacy of the holocaust. on the other, i don't necessarily believe in the moral responsibility of all local actors to behave themselves internationally, at least not morally responsible to the extent that they forgo basic human rights when they subscribe to irresponsible political views. which is to say that the same citizens of israel may not have batted an eyelash during any of the times they read about gazans being blown up in the news; however, are these people not nonetheless entitled to not have to endure the psychological battery of the german flag flying above parliament? in an ideal world, these people would be able to see past the self-interest of the israeli state — a self-interest that may or may not actually reflect their own, but which they believe to do so. but this is not an ideal world. and those among the israeli population who are hatemongerers still, i think, can be victims in this sense. it seems you have identified the question as one of priorities, and i agree. perhaps i place more emphasis on psychological trauma (of the collective national kind) than you do. but know that i am in full agreement that there are far more dire things going on in that part of the world that require our attention. i thought the generals were due, hugo claus and he threw down: well, i'm glad your response wasn't too thoughtful or immaculately written, as it would have been out of all proportion to my barmy wee message. in response, i, for my part, composed a staggering, viscera-shredding landmark of the email age while i was on the train to chicago last weekend, but lost it to a computer crash. it was quite a message and would have brought the zionists, opportunists, and ne'er do wells of all descriptions to their knees, begging for forgiveness. starving, hysterical, naked, and so on. you'll have to take my word for it, though. then take the second rate substitute below, which i composed on the return trip from that shining city on the lake, whose name is whispered on the prairie winds, and whose presence presages every utterance of those who speak nobly of freedom, of enterprise, of urban privation, and of the slaughter of livestock. as for what you wrote: i feel you. i am more sympathetic than my response probably suggested, and i didn't really mean to accuse all of those who protested the merkel event of hypocrisy or opportunism, including the one unwilling to listen to spoken german. if anything, i'm pleased that they were able to distance themselves from an official gesture that, while clearly in israel's national interest, was in poor taste. long may such protests continue, and soon may they be centered around issues of concrete importance. as you suggest, no one, no matter how noxious his or her politics, and how blindly hypocritical his or her world view, deserves needless psychological trauma of this sort. nor should they be judged any less entitled to take offense or to receive sympathy because the individuals who run their country routinely behave in an unfortunate, irresponsible fashion. that said, my sympathy for israelis is nonetheless tempered by my (admittedly unreasonable) conviction that, by living in israel and incorporating oneself into the israeli political, economic, military, and mythological apparatus, you've made a serious ethical decision, and should be subject to whatever sanctions might be imposed on douchebags in a more just world. i suspect that i came by this conviction as a result of my rather limited experience with people living in israel: all american jews, most (all but one) with horrendously bad politics and unhelpful intentions which they acquired either before or very shortly after setting foot on israeli soil. as far as i'm concerned, most of them deserve a good kicking, and any slights of which the human mind can conceive. obviously, though, there are second, third, and possibly fourth generation israelis running around, who had no greater say in their country of birth than i, and no greater chance of altering the country of their citizenship. indeed, it would be braver and more useful for those with healthy ideas to stay and try to bring about the necessary reforms than flee just to suit my irrational prejudices. hmm. perhaps i've just turned a mental corner in this very paragraph. thanks, geritol. it occurs to me, though, that you asked whether the event offends me personally. i'm not sure i adequately addressed that question, shifting immediately (and more or less unconsciously) to a consideration of the israeli public and the geopolitics of the middle east. the honest answer is that i am supremely indifferent, except, perhaps, insofar as i am offended on behalf of those who think differently than i. in particular, i appreciate that those who have invested the knesset with a particular kind of great symbolic (and, critically, jewish) authority, say as solid center of the widening gyre that is modern judaism, would certainly be offended to have a representative of the nation responsible for the holocaust speaking therein. here's the thing, though: the politics i internalized in my jewish education were of the social justice — free the slave, lift up the fallen — variety. unsurprisingly, i very definitely never came to identify the knesset as an essentially jewish body, or its building as an important jewish shrine. or, to clarify, the institution and the edifice have no connection to judaism as i have always understood it, no matter how many more decades those sorry motherfuckers spend yammering on about jewish state this, and right of return that. so the wrongness of the address by merkel, in german, doesn't really register: qua jew, i am unmoved. i am bothered only in the secondhand way mentioned earlier in this paragraph, and in the sense of the "these shits presume to speak for me, then they go and do this" outrage on display in my earlier message. i could probably go on and on (or carefully edit and clarify what i've already written), but the effort of attempting to replicate the previous message has made me lightheaded. which is to say, i need to sleep and, having [now] slept, to work out some of the ideas that cropped up during the course of this weekend's meetings. wish you were her, wilt chamberlain p.s. wuss rock makes me break out in hives. as much as it may hurt you to hear it, i never much cared for matthew sweet back when we were kids and, despite the alarming enlamening of my tastes in recent years, i still don't really see the appeal. but then again, who knows what the future may hold? five years from now, i may suddenly find myself walking down the street listening to wuss rock on a fuckin' iphone, or some such thing. i think i'll manage to shoot myself before things go that far, but it's sort of a "frog in a pot of boiling water" type situation. 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Any who make unauthorized use of said content will be prosecuted to within an inch of their lives.] 4/07/08 "LEGITIMACY HERE WE COME" photographed using the camera embedded in the top of my laptop's screen: from an essay in a catalogue for an art exhibition called trading spaces, sponsored by the department of art history at the university of binghamton. the citation, of course, is to this. 4/04/08 ALL THE TEENAGE FANS ARE HERE steve schroeder has already declared teenage fanclub the greatest band of all time. in recent weeks, they seem to be threatening to enter my own shortlist of favourite bands of all time. they include, and are limited to, heavenly, galaxie 500, d.b.s., and big star. more on these later, but i have recently posted this wuss-rock playlist for sparky and these other wuss-rock songs from the 90s. teenage fanclub, of course, are far more than just wuss-rock, and certainly have far greater historical significance than as the finest — and most commercially successful and most critically acclaimed — of all of the bands of the early 90s power-pop fad. more, probably, on all of this later. for now, just listen to the great pop songs. r.mutt's diaryland profile tradition and the individual talents' friendster profile monopöle!'s myspace profile your emily dickinson's facebook profile —————blog archives