The Melvins

The Melvins, outside of Seattle, are remembered as the band that "created" Nirvana. Kurt Cobain famously tried out for the band, but was so nervous he forgot everything. Cobain was a friend and groupie of the band for most of his life.
Listening to them now, it is easy to hear the similiarities between them and Nirvana. On "Honey Bucket," the song has the fast metal that grunge famously co-opted.


The video for "Talking Horse," in addition to having a great song, also has a wonderful combination of live action and cartoon elements. The image of a woman who has a mouth for an eye is particularly striking.


The Melvins are one of those lucky bands that inspires cult-like fidelity among their fans. This song, "Boris," became the name of a band that does covers of the Melvins.
It is too bad in some ways that the Melvins are remembered so frequently in connection to Nirvana, because they are their own great band.

Rihanna's "Man Down"

It's been well over a week since Rihanna's controversial "Man Down" video premiered on tv.
What gets me is that there is controversy at all over this video. There are lots of violent music videos out there, but almost none of them seem to have received the attention that this particular music video has.
I'd like to take us back a couple of weeks (ages, in the 24 hour news cycle) to the Common Controversy. Basically, the rapper Common was invited to the White House for a poetry reading by the First Lady. Fox News began accusing the White House of all sorts of bizarre things, mostly that Common's lyrics were unfit for the President to support. It was mostly a non-controversy, which is to say, anyone with even a basic understanding of art was able to see through this as an obvious non-issue. Common is one of the least violent rappers around, often calling for an end to violence in his lyrics.
But the idea, that black men are violent, is a pervasive aspect of American racist rhetoric, one that has its roots in the antebellum period, where those who supported slavery would assert that African Americans had to be enslaved, otherwise their "savage blood" would cause them to commit acts of violence. A bunch of white, wealthy men picking on Common as violent without any proof or justification (not even in his art) is just another round of American racism at its finest: obscuring the actual issues through disinformation and fear.
And then there's Rihanna's video, which is perhaps one of the least violent videos I've seen. In it, Rihanna shoots an unarmed man in a train station, and later the video goes back in time to reveal he raped her. This is apparently a problem because, well...wait, why?
Because we can't handle a black woman using an act of violence as revenge against her attacker, nevermind the circumstances over which she was attacked first. (I notice no one else was offering to do anything about her rapist in this video; like most rapes, it went unnoticed by anyone else other than the rapist and the victim.)
It's not as if these revenge fantasies, in which a woman destroys her attacker, are new. Take Lady Gaga, for instance, who kills her attackers in several videos. In "Paparazzi," Lady Gaga's boyfriend uses her body and sex as a way to increase his own fame, and then throws her from a balcony. She poisons him. Lady Gaga herself explained that her video for "Bad Romance" is about her being kidnapped and forced to work for as a prostitute for a bizarre fashion house-brothel. At the end of the video, she sets a man (the one who is coded to look like the head of this house) on fire right before she enters his bed and presumably is about to have sex with him. Nowhere have I heard any discussion about the violence in those vidoes, where a white woman could apparently take revenge against her rapist without certain people calling for it to be a problem. When it's a black woman, racist rhetoric about violence which ignores context comes out.
(Ms. Magazine also makes some good points about rape culture, but mostly ignores that racism that is implicit in this so-called critique of a black violence.)

Book Haul

So, apparently, haul videos are really big. I'm not much for clothes, but instead, I decided to write about the book haul I got at the book sale today. So here goes, in no particular order:
1. Chinese Handcuffs by Chris Crutcher
I'm a huge fan of Young Adult Literature, even though I'm no longer a young adult. I've actually read Crutcher's Ironman, and this looks like a similar story: a young athlete with family troubles, who struggles to watch other people in his life suffer through abuse and who falls in love with a broken, but still fighting, young woman.
2. Londonstani by Gautam Malkani
I once read an essay by Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers discussing how you should buy albums every once and a while based on their covers. I've decided to adopt that same approach to books, since it has lead me to some great music. The cover looks like the kind of scribbles you'd expect to see in a teenager's notebook. It's apparently about a group of southeast Asian teenagers living in London. I'm also interested in postcolonialism, and this book looks like a teen version of that. Like other teen classics The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, it looks like different sections are narrated by different characters. Flipping through the book, I see there are mentions of Rude Boys, which bodes well. The book has a slight crease in the backcover, but basically, it looks like I bought it in a bookstore.
3. I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolf
I saw a Jon Stewart once interview Tom Wolf about this book, which is why I picked it up. It's apparently about college girls. Back when I saw the interview, I was still in high school and it sounded fascinating, especially since I was heading to college myself. The diaries and hearing Wolf saying "Wu Tang clan" were enough to make me remember the interview. The book is flawless, like I did actually buy it out of a bookstore.
4. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
I saw the Gillian Anderson movie some years ago, and I always feel bad about seeing movies based on books I haven't read. (I recently fixed this with the book Jane Eyre.) I loved the movie, especially since it seemed so quotable and witty and the ending was ironic, tragic and thought-provoking. I'm hoping this will be the same.
5. Dead Ex by Harley Jane Kozak
I love mystery novels, and since this book's cover had one of those dead body outlines, I knew I had to try to. When reading the back, I discovered it's also about soap operas and the drama behind them. This has to be one of the most delightful combination I've seen: murder and cheese. It appears that I picked up an early copy of the novel, so this is a total score from a collecting point of view.
6. A Concise History of South Africa by Robert Ross
Don't worry: this is the only textbook I picked up. My second major is in history. I'm taking an African history class, and we spent a month on South Africa, which was fascinating. I'm hoping to learn a little more about the place through this book.
7. Three by Flannery O'Connor
My friend Christine suggested O'Connor to me last year, and since this particular book was only 50 cents, I've decided to give it a whirl. This is definitely an older book, since the pages are yellow.
8. A Heinlein Trio by Robert A. Heinlein
I've always wanted to read Heinlein, since he's a science fiction master. The cover of this book is really cool is a psychedelic way. I'd actually like a poster of this original design.
So, that's it everyone. I managed to get eight books for 7.50. (For those of you not inclined mathematically, that's about 94 cents per book.) I'm excited to read these new books (if I ever find the free time to do so), and I feel good about spending my money at the book sale, since it supports the Red Cedar Review, which has been a wonderful organization. I'm so proud to be part of them.