Cutie Crack

Okay, if the student housing comes through it means that we can't have a dog, which is boo hoo for me. But if that happens, I can spend all the money we're saving on housing and make one of these. It's a palace for cute little hamsters! Go here to see more pics, including some with the little guys.

I'm Over Oprah

I haven't seen the show in awhile, and although I love hearing Kathy Griffin narrate the Oprah Barbara Streisand interview, I have to say I had a hunch the show had gotten sort of bonkers. Tom Cruise and all. But it's really a strange show. The lighting, the make-up, the fawning fans. I like Oprah, I do. But I think the whole format should just be Oprah going around helping people. Today she interviewed SJP, and it was so vapid, so underwhelming...such an obvious time suck, that it was startling.

And are SJP and Jennifer Anniston the same person or what?

It occurs to me that the current celebrity bubble really has burst. There's no grit, no texture. It's too virtual. But what's next, trendwatchers? What?

Randa is Rad!!!!

She sold her book, y'all! Go give rockslinga (aka Randa Jarrar) a high five. Booyakasha!!!!

Punk Rock Poetry Friday

WIPE THAT SIMILE OFF YOUR APHASIA
by Harryette Mullen


as horses as for
as purple as we go
as heartbeat as if
as silverware as it were
as onion as I can
as cherries as feared
as combustion as want
as dog collar as expected
as oboes as anyone
as umbrella as catch can
as penmanship as it gets
as narcosis as could be
as hit parade as all that
as ice box as far as I know
as fax machine as one can imagine
as cyclones as hoped
as dictionary as you like
as shadow as promised
as drinking fountain as well
as grassfire as myself
as mirror as is
as never as this

*************

Read more about Harryette Mullen here

*************

Also, I'm starting an online magazine for women's poetry. You can check it out here.

Jonathan Antin Will Eat Your Children

The SB said it best: Brain Poison. There is no other phrase that could adequately describe the Bravo series Blow Out. For those of you unfamiliar with said series, the basic premise is this: a narcissistic, sociopathic, abusive, mercurial, and volatile hair stylist (Antin) runs around doing hair. This would be boring except that Antin basically terrorizes someone new just about every place he goes. Whether it be an employee, a client, or a business partner, Antin is not in this world to make friends. Doing so would suggest that he is human. He is so utterly un-self conscious that it's pathological. I know I don't sound very nice right now, but check out this clip of Jonathan Antin with Bruno (aka Ali G aka Sascha Baron Cohen):

Am I right or am I right? This guy is nuts.

Here are some quotes from the premier episode of Blow Out season 3.

On his involvement with the marketing of Jonathan Product:

"I do what I do best: make beauty"

On sexually harassing models on a photo shoot:

"People don't want to look at clothes on girls; People want to look at clothes coming off girls."

On working with clients who have to 'get into wardrobe' thus making Antin relocate for the rest of the styling:

"You're going to move ME, when I'm here for YOU?" (said with utter incredulity, because, y'know, when YOU're hired to do a job people are supposed to cater to YOU. That's way more important than being in the right clothes when the curtain goes up. Um, logic?)

On his appearance on the Early Show:

"When Diane Sawyer calls you a hairstylist, that's like the higher being looking down on you and saying 'you did good kid.'"

What a piece of work!!!

Anyway, J.A. was probably too busy looking in the mirror to worry that being on TV might lead journalists to uncover this bit of dirt from his past. What a prick!!!

File Under Offendoplex

This story about a pro-life statue of Britney Spears (yes, you read that right) is unfuckingbelievable. It just gets weirder and weirder.

To see what we mean by Offendoplex, go here.

The Real Housewives of Orange County. WTF?

In a scene from the new Bravo series, The Real Housewives of Orange County, a teenage daughter gets her hair done for the prom while her mom hovers nearby, asking an endless stream of questions about the plans for the night. It all seems like typical overprotective mom stuff until the daughter, who is clearly and understandably annoyed by her mother's queries about everything from the color of her date's shoes to the manner in which the stylist is curling her hair, tells her mom to back off, to which her mom replies "it's not just you here." The daughter, like me, is totally confused by this. I mean, wasn't this lady just reminiscing about her own prom? It then becomes apparent that this mom actually thinks she's going to her daughter's prom. Creepy. Unhealthy. Whatever.

There's actually much to say about this show, but I don't really know where to begin. It's really a piece of work. It basically takes equal parts Laguna Beach, Desperate Housewives, and Aryan Nation and whizzes it into a poisonous anti-freeze witches brew. TV is so misogynistic right now it is f*ing frightening. So how do we untangle the misogyny from the overwhelming ick factor of wealthy white people bragging about their genetics, breast implants, and the square footage of their homes? How, when there are also creepy enmeshed mother-daughter relationships that seems to manifest precisely because of the this toxic cocktail, do we reconcile our sympathy with our vitriolic hatred?

This show basically lets men off the hook, even though their lives are soaked in the blood of the working poor. Isn't that the real story here? Isn't that the real story gurgling underneath almost every vapid reality show on TV? What do we call this method of story making of evasion and sidelong glances and avoidance? Propaganda? Poison?

Yes, this show allows us to hate on the wealthy. Yes, there is real human drama here; it tends to go wherever humans go. Point a camera at anyone long enough and you have everything you need to confect a story in the style of today's reality shows. So why these people? Why "housewives" (so retro!).

I'd love to know y'alls' thoughts on this?

Mary, Missy, Busta

obviously, I am obsessed with youtube. OBSESSED!!! Anyway, I think it's appropriate that, after posting about cheerleaders, I should find this video. These cheerleaders are totally rad. Busta's pretty cool, too.

This is sooo Cool!

The Book of Numbers


*um, can anyone teach me how to do this kind of thing?

Who is Kevin Finnerty?

I can't wait until next Sunday!

Superchunk Still the Best

better than anything else I saw at SXSW.












Jenny has some amusing posts about our SXSW experience over at bloglisted. Here's the video Jenny took of Superchunk. She's the raddest!

Book Meme

from Emily @ Poesy Galore

a book that made you cry: Flowers for Algernon; I cried so hard and for so long that my mother thought that she was going to have to take me to the doctor. I'm serious. I finished the book on the eve of my menarche. Sorry if that's more information that you wanted. This is a blog, after all. Also, Cat's Eye and The Red Pony. boo hoo.

a book that scared you: The Handmaid's Tale

a book that made you laugh: Bling, Pride and Prejudice, Dear Mrs. LaRue

a book that disgusted you: Prep

a book you loved in elementary school: The Secret Garden, Little House on the Prarie

a book you loved in middle school: Emily of New Moon

a book you loved in high school: The Bell Jar, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

a book you hated in high school: Anything that was assigned! Not because of its content, but because it was assigned! The first that leaps to mind is Tale of Two Cities. Sorry Charlie.

a book you loved in college: Sons and Lovers, Rebecca

a book that challenged your identity: The Laugh of the Medusa

a series that you love: Anne of Green Gables

your favorite horror book: Frankenstein, Goblin Market

your favorite science fiction book: hmmm...haven't read much science fiction. Can I just say Buffy?

your favorite fantasy book: Weetzie Bat

your favorite mystery book: Possession

your favorite biography: Savage Beauty: the Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay

your favorite "coming-of-age" book: Jane Eyre

your favorite book not on this list: To the Lighthouse, Sister Outsider

Public! Warning! Who's in Town?!

Lady Sov rocks the mic @ waterloo records in austin.

7 year old poet stirs the pot

7 year old poet Autum Ashante wrote a poem called "White Nationalism Put U in Bondage." Apparently, it pissed some people off. Read about it here.

Tasty Videos For Your Yum

Neneh Cherry



M.I.A.



Lady Sovereign (reminxed with the Ordinary Boys)

Cheerleader Nation

I've said it before and I'll say it again: high school sucks. It really really really sucks. And although Laguna Beach somehow found a way to depict high school without the pain, it's pretty clear that show isn't really about, uh, reality. Mainly because it's about high school kids who appear as though they never have to go to school. Or deal with their parents. Or worry about money. In fact, the worst thing the Laguna Beach kids deal with is each other -- the so called "drama."

But it's a different story on Cheerleader Nation. On the show it isn't the girls who seem like trouble, it isn't the crazy risky flying through the air stunts, and isn't drugs and it isn't boys. It's the moms. Leave it to Lifetime. These moms are some of the most annoying people I've ever seen on television. I'm serious.

It makes an interesting pairing with rollergirls in that it's a version of female strength and power that's almost archetypal. And yet the women in both shows stiil appear to be in the margins. While this predicament isn't really part of the narrative in either show, it's an underlying tension or energy. I haven't quite put my finger on it yet, but I think it has something to do with the fact that women's sports still haven't managed to find an audience equal to that of men's sports. That said, the level of athleticism in both these activities is like, crazy. But even within the context of women's athletics, cheerleading and rollerderby-ing are somewhat outside the mainstream, albeit at opposite ends of the "outside" spectrum in the way they relate to constructions of femininity.

Awhile ago I caught an interesting show about a non-white cheerleading squad that was more interesting than Cheerleader Nation (I think the show was trying to depict them as the real life version of the uber-cool hip-hop cheerleaders in Bring it On!). I wish I could remember what it was called. Both cheerleading and rollerderby-ing seem predominantly white. It's interesting because the rollerderby seems to work with working class signifiers, and cheerleading seems consumately middle class.

Missy Digitized

I know this is like forever after the fact, but I am still really loving the yahoo music commercial spots that look like old-school video games. I especially love the missy one. And I also like it when Green Day loses their heads.

You can watch the clips here .














* That said, let the record show that I am officially fed up with retail. I never want to buy anything again.

* In other music news, we didn't get a f*ing wristband, but that's okay b/c we'll be trolling all the free sxsw stuff. We'll let you know how it goes.

My New TV Boyfriend

Cesar Milan, Dog Whisperer









watch Cesar with pug AND pig (!) here.

Galactic Cartography!!!

This is really cool. Get up close with the red planet.

Punk Rock Poetry Saturday

If yr in Austin for AWP or SXSW
or even if you just live here, come to this:

.:. .:. the creative music
workshop presents .:. .:.

- sound and word -

First set:

DAPHNOMANCY (Kyle + Austin, Texas)
Michelle Detorie (text, projections)
Kurt Newman (guitar, voice recognition software)

Second set:
DUO
Joshua Beckman (NYC/Seattle - books, pen, voice)
Chris Cogburn (Austin - percussion)

The sounds, the words, improvised.
Special guests tba.

Saturday, March 11th
9pm
$0-$8
1311-D East 6th Street
(entrance is on Navasota, between E. 5th and E. 6th)
(roughly 1/2 mile east of I-35 after Waller and Attayac!)
(B.Y.O.B)

Cutie Crack

a meeting of the marmots

MAMAs in Hip Hop

I heard 2pac's "Dear Mama" on the radio today, and it made me want to take a closer look at the depiction of mothers in hip-hop. From Jay-Z's "December 4th" to Eminem's "Cleanin Out My Closet" to Krazy's revolting "I Hate My Baby Mama" ...mamas are all over hip-hop.

This a still a raw idea, but look for a post about this soon.


also: Suge Knight honors single mothers on Mother's Day.

Some Things I've Noticed About AWP

1. It's big.

2. Its world is small.

3. The bookfair is cool, tho it ought to be open to the public. I feel sorry for the convention workers who have to turn people away.

4. It's super-duper white.

I Can't Wait

Visit the Soprano's website here.

Did You Know Antartica Has a Literary Journal?

Check it out here.

I Love Santino!

Are you addicted to Project Runway yet? How do you feel about Santino Rice?

What's weird is he was my least favorite designer by episode four. I thought he was an arrogant prick. Not annoying-boy-of-the-week-awful, but bad. And then, somehow, he became my favorite.

Have you heard him sing? Not a day goes by when I don't visit his repetoire: "Daniel Franco where did you go?," "Tim Gunn, Tim Gunn, if he says your name you're done," "Andre, What's the Matter with Andre?" and (my favorite) "Lighten Up This is Fashion."

And of course his impressions of Tim Gunn are hilarious, especially his bit about Tim and Andre at Red Lobster. These are, in my opinion, the best moments of reality TV since Jessica Simpson asked, "Is this chicken I'm eating or fish?"

You can check out Santino's blog here.

The PR season two finale in TOMORROW!!!!

Poetry in Kyle, TX

If your Austinish: come hear Gerald Stern and Anne Marie Macari read their poetry at the Katherine Anne Porter House in Kyle. This Wed., March 8th, at 7:30.

more details here.

File Under Annoying

1.) People who, in a long line full of people (i.e. the security line at LAX), assume their flight is more important than everyone else's and harass TSA employees, huffing that "everyone is so unhelpful." These people are even more annoying if they look really rich.

2.) People who, in a packed plane, are too bored or lazy to tell their child to stop screaming and hitting the call button. Having children doesn't mean everyone will automatically assume little Damian is cute and therefore forgive you for your entitled laziness. Also, people who assume everybody wants to help them or stop for them just because they have a kid. These people are even more annoying if they look really rich.

+++++++++++++

We're back from California where a Ph.d program beckons. We feel energized and excited, so you can expect posting to get back to normal. Coming up -- posts on the new "dating chumps" reality shows, how Jennifer Anniston and Sarah Jessica Parker are becoming the same person, a new "annoying boy of the week," and all the cutie crack and punk rock poetry you can handle. Plus lots more!