Power Violence & Grindcore

I’ve been meaning to write something for a while — out of character for this particular blog for sure, I know, but not for me myself — on the history of various subgenres of hardcore. I was leafing through the internet today and I found this really funny but really informative history of power violence, which in my day we always just kind of lumped in with grindcore. However, the guy who wrote the article takes great pains to show the extent to which there is, at a certain moment, a break within the genre when it got more popular with a different sub-demographic in the scene, what the dude calls “PC emo/punk kids” or just “suburban kids,” around 1997 thanks to Spazz and Charles Bronson. This is kind of an interesting claim, since on the most general level it totally describes me in highschool, although his causal claim is that it is because Spazz and CB wrote more fun and accessible stuff than the earlier bands, and were must less scumbags. This does make sense, but I always thought of my own interest in this stuff as kind of a predictable aesthetic development–and I should add that with my friends at about this time (96-97), it was Anal Cunt that served as our introduction to the genre. I was always into hardcore, the music and the scene in general (I never liked metal until very recently — I was definitely one of those hardcore kids), but I was also just as into or more into various early forms of what I see as the precursors of harsh noise, or at least bands who made harsh fucking noises, above all that early Butthole Surfers stuff, which still can’t be beat for my money. Anyway, being into hardcore, being into fucked up noises, and generally appreciating anything fast and brutal (and fun, this stuff was the best to dance to), it kind of only made sense we’d come to this material. However, the guy may still be right, since these are the bands I think of first (and I still call them Grind(core) before I called them PV), but then again, it’s this stuff that then lead me (and kind of prepped me aesthetically) for the other earlier bands. And, whatever, the article has a whole section on Spazz anyway.

Anyway, here’s the dumb Wikipedia article on PV. Again, my own instincts on this stuff are slightly different than this article’s too, but close enough for it really not to matter. The best way to actually learn about any of this would be to go through the Slap A Ham discography and listen less than selectively to whatever happens to strike you as potentially interesting.

Petra Zlo, Reviewed

There is a brief review of the first short animation done by Petra Zlonoga, one of my favorite people in the world (no exaggeration) on the Beautiful Decay website for August 6th. My friends and I met P-Zlo and her friends in Sarajevo in 2005, where they were visiting from Zagreb. We all kind of hit it off and have more or less stayed in touch the past few years. Last summer, I had the great pleasure of hanging out with Petra and some of her friends in Berlin, and had a really great time. I think I was a bit cranky from having my money stolen while still in Paris, and having been in Paris all summer, which can in fact make one cranky, but that Berlin trip was definitely one to remember, and I hope I don’t have to wait another 4 years to hear P’s particularly “Balkanic” brand of snark again. Anyway, I’ve always really admired her illustrations, and there is a link to her blog in the BD article too, which you should definitely check out. She is now attending animation school in Zagrab, so hopefully there’ll be some more cartoons forthcoming. I’m still trying to understand what it meant when we saw the fox in the middle of the night in Kreuzberg (beyond simply that foxes live in Kreuzberg). There is a chance I never will, which would, in fact, fit the mood of our quasi-mystical obsession with foxes last year.

Full Text of the Prop. 8 Ruling

The judge in this case is as intelligent, well-spoken, and generally awesome as the one from the Dover School Board Case (on “Intelligent Design” and evolution being taught in school).

Here’s the full document.

Some choice excerpts:

Marriage in the United States has always been a civil matter. Civil authorities may permit religious leaders to solemnize marriages but not to determine who may enter or leave a civil marriage. Religious leaders may determine independently whether to recognize a civil marriage or divorce but that recognition or lack thereof has no effect on the relationship under state law.

And, in full capitalization no less:

A PRIVATE MORAL VIEW THAT SAME-SEX COUPLES ARE INFERIOR TO OPPOSITE-SEX COUPLES IS NOT A PROPER BASIS FOR LEGISLATION…

Finally:

California’s obligation is to treat its citizens equally, not to “mandate [its] own moral code.”

And say what you will about the guy, I have to admit a great deal of respect for Arnold Schwarzenegger given his reaction to the ruling. Here’s his official statement, and a great excerpt:

“For the hundreds of thousands of Californians in gay and lesbian households who are managing their day-to-day lives, this decision affirms the full legal protections and safeguards I believe everyone deserves. At the same time, it provides an opportunity for all Californians to consider our history of leading the way to the future, and our growing reputation of treating all people and their relationships with equal respect and dignity.

“Today’s decision is by no means California’s first milestone, nor our last, on America’s road to equality and freedom for all people.”

We should also take note that the team that beat this stupid law are actually the two lawyers that represented George W. Bush on the one side (Theodore Olson) and Al Gore (David Boies) on the other in the 2000 Supreme Court case that decided the presidency (and, for that matter, the fates and lives of millions of people, both American and living in the Middle East — so let’s not celebrate Olson too much here, just saying.)

The Most Dangerous Game

As is well known about me, I really love bears. I can’t really explain it in precise detail, but I think as far as animals go, they strike me as incredibly funny on the one hand and on the other they’re  just really interesting for aesthetic, ecological and a number of other reasons. The comic below, from the site Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC) by Zach Weiner is over a year old, but after seeing it today I had to repost it, I just found it that amusing. Enjoy.

Islamic Headcoverings, Freedom of Religion & the Law (US and Abroad)

This past Spring I had the honor and pleasure to take a course co-taught by Chicago’s Bernard Harcourt and the incredibly insightful, thoughtful and frankly kind Belgian lawyer and scholar Fabienne Brion, of the l’Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve. The course was on Foucault, but while Fabienne was here in Chicago for the Spring, the Belgian government passed a bill banning the burqa. (Here’s an early Religion Clause article from when the lower house passed the bill; any google search will turn of plenty of information on this). Fabienne has written on this issue, and during her stay presented a paper to the Political Theory Workshop at Chicago, to which my friend Hamza served as respondent. It’d be too much here to rehearse her very interesting arguments, and any of the writing she’s done on it that’s available online is in French, unfortunately. But, I mention it because this issue has been an abiding interest of mine for some time now, and it always strikes me, to be frank, how wide the range of responses and thoughts on it can be: ranging anywhere from a perspective of downright intolerance and Islamophobia, to subtle and I daresay nuanced arguments for varying positions (both for and against). I bring it up now because it’s just come to my attention that the formerly much-maligned (at least at the start there, and perhaps for good reason, although I have no real opinion about it) NY Times Philosophy blog, “The Stone,” has posted an exchange on this issue, beginning with a piece by Chicago’s own Martha Nussbaum (who I greatly admire in general), responding initially not to the more long-publicized question of headcoverings in France or Belgium, but rather in Spain (there are links from her article, so I won’t reproduce them here). The piece is called “Veiled Threats?” and is followed up by a response to readers comments, and a response by Feisel Mohammed. All of the pieces are worth the read, and I particularly like that this is a conversation that is taking place in a philosophy forum, as this is the kind of philosophical work I’m personally interested in (both in terms of reading and doing myself). All of this is to say that it’s worth checking these short pieces out, and keeping up on some of the more abstract theoretical parts of the debate, which I really think crystallizes some of the questions around freedom of religion in particular, and civil rights in general, very nicely.

Finally, since there is so, so much confusion on what “Islamic headscarf” actually means in any of these debates (in the US and in Europe), if you’re interested in this stuff it’s helpful to get a little more familiar with the actual names of the different forms. From what I understand, none of these bans relates at all to the hijab, which is the basic scarf that covers hair (more or less loosely depending), and instead these debates are over the burqa and niqab — which are very clearly much less palpable to Western eyes. This initial difficulty, the intuitive gut-reaction, is part of what makes the issue so fascinating on a more abstract philosophical level, and important on a the concrete level.

Pterodactyl Hunters in the Guilded City

This is a bit of some late news right now, but still worth a post to spread the word. My very good old friend from college, Brenden Leach has, this past Spring just graduated from the MFA program in Illustration as Visual Essay at the School of Visual Arts in New York. His MFA thesis, a comic printed on newsprint and made out to look like a turn-of-the-century issue of the New York Sun, entitled “Pterodactyl Hunters in the Guilded City” is just incredible, and beyond my simple and biased word on this, there have been several excellent reviews and interviews with Brenden in various places (see below) saying exactly the same. In a nutshell, it’s a story about pterodactyl hunters in turn-of-the-century New York, at a point in which the pteros themselves are nearly extinct and the profession is thus dying. The real narrative — and this in brief is why this is a good story and not just high-quality fantasy fluff — has to do with the relationship of two Irish brothers, the last in a long line of famed hunters in the city. The story line is informed and constituted in a really deft way by the visuals, the dialog and more subtle passing references via the other characters, such that the experience is clearly more than the sum of its (still excellent) parts. That all being said, it’s kind of pointless for me to go into a load of detail about the story, since you really need to just read it, but these are the basics.

I must admit, and my former roommates can attest to this, when I got my copy of “Pterodactyl Hunters” a month or 2 ago in the mail, I felt and behaved like an excited kid for several hours, pouring over the narrative and the illustrations, and effusively talking it up to everyone who’ll listen. All I can really say here is that the visuals are great and very characteristic, the storyline is excellent (if a bit too brief, it’s the kind of read that definitely leaves you wishing some of the more peripheral characters and relationships had been fleshed out a little more) as is the character development and the amount of historical research Brenden did for the piece (we met up at the central branch of the NY Public library back in December, and he was telling me about visiting city archives to get a feel for everything from harpoons to military uniforms of the era) is quite clear and really gives the work a kind of depth and atmosphere that you want out of a piece like this. Anyway, try and get a copy of “Pterodactyl Hunters” (I think there is information on where it’s available on Brenden’s website; I heard tell but haven’t confirmed that Quimby’s might have it in Chicago), and check out some of the reviews:

11 O’clock Comics Podcast Review Excerpt

11 O’clock Comics Podcast Full Episode

The Comics Journal – Interview

The Comics Journal – Review

Poopsheet Foundation

Ferocious – Blogrocious

The Daily Crosshatch

Plans

I’m in the middle of a radical re-doing of this site. I am taking the move as an opportunity to clean this place up a little bit, but I don’t exactly have the time to put it all together right now. Basically, I want to get back to the quality of the travel writing, essentially by treating everything like travel writing. The genre, which is pretty much a certain attitude toward a certain content, not much different from any other form of autobiographical writing anyway, seems to lend itself well to the format, and to the way I want to present things. Also, I really don’t like cryptic internet writing that much, even though I engage in it all the time. I’m'a get back to the tried-and-true report and reflect model, just as soon as I finish this week’s reading. Also, also, I’m in the middle of editing all the journal-blog writing I’ve done on computers for the last ten years into a single pdf. I figure if I have grandkids they’ll find it amusing one day.

Otherwise, go look at this other project. The nature of it (quoting things I like or that strike me from things I’m reading), lends itself to more frequent updating, given the way life works right now.

Merle Haggard — Mama Tried

Marty’s gloss: “I turned 21 at college, I went to a bunch of shows…”;  my addition: “…and the rest of the time I spent in the library, except when we went to the Princeton Record Exchange.”

New Things

There are, in fact, none. I haven’t updated in a while, but other than finding myself on the other side of 30 today, school work has kept me too busy to breath, let alone reflect on anything. Something interesting will happen soon, however, to be sure. In the meantime, I recommend “Ghosts of the Great Highway” to you, again and again.

Salon

It was, last night, right in the midst of the man’s talk that I realized, pondering over my own life up until this point and the looming moment ahead of me, what exactly is meant by the concept of the trace.