November 2006-November 2007
Clebketeers, it's been one whole glorious year in the 'Sphere. Blogosphere. Thanks to all of you who have been kind enough to stop by during your Internet rounds. As a little thank-you present--at least, I hope it seems like a present--I give you ten posts culled from sixty-four. Think of it as little gems mined from a braindroppings pit.
First post: Fabulous Life Of . (Well, technically, second, but the very first said only, "H...hi.")
Stammering early efforts...
Sexiest Voices
Are You Ready to Make a Difference? (appearances to the contrary, this hilarious one was actually written by Brian)
Light summer fare...
Walnuts v. Walnuts
Time To Break Out the Shorts
Hardball with Clebbie Polwick:
Bush II: More Fun Than Expected
Navel-gazery:
Thirtynothing
You Can Do Sidebends or Situps
If Black People Eat Bagels...
And maybe my best nugget:
Jews Come Out of the Cultural Closet (plus the delectable follow-up)
Drop a comment if you have a favorite! And thanks for reading.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Saturday, November 24, 2007
My Fascination With Hip Hop -OR- If Black People Eat Bagels, Does That Make It Okay?
Last night, at the Bay Area Record Rockers party The Influence, my friend Matt asked me if I'm into hip hop, or if that's just Crim. I muttered something half-assed about how if he hangs around the American Coot long enough, he'll probably start bird-watching.
But it occurs to me that I've been asking myself the same question.
To wit: if I blast KMEL every time I get in the car, if I catch myself in otherwise casual conversation unleashing diatribes about the phony high-mindedness of Kanye West, if I can recite every word of not just "Bust a Move" and "Baby Got Back," but the double-time Biggie verse on "Notorious Thugs"...
Am I a big hip hop fan?
I try to be a good white girl and listen to rock, but it's really fucking hard. At the peak of my efforts, in high school, I officially listened to just rock, with, like, the requisite Beastie Boys and Bob Marley extras. Only alone in the car did I sneak down the dial to Power 106, where hip hop lives. I didn't even want to program it! Fortunately, at 105.9, it was just four button pushes down--beep-beep-beep-beep--from 106.7 KROQ.
I wasn't always such a little conformist. Earlier I had treasured my cassingles of "Keep Ya Head Up" and "I Get Around," beginning my lifelong study of the ambiguities of Tupac. (He loves women! He hates women! Loves! Hates! Loves! Hates!)
I also tired out my tape of The Chronic, and could spit every nasty, skeezy verse of "Nuthin But A G Thang" by age thirteen. (All you parents, take note: I turned out fine.)
Hell, I was a SoCal kid in the Golden Age of LA rap.
Then came Nirvana and Pearl Jam and four years wandering the desert. By college, I had amassed a collection of what I now know to be exactly the kind of hip hop white college kids listen to: Beastie Boys, Beastie Boys, Tribe Called Quest, more Beastie Boys, Fugees. Nowadays, I suppose that list would be supplanted by Kanye and more Kanye.
Of course it was Crimmie who sealed my fate. Nine years of living with him and his thousands of hip hop records. I usually credit him with getting me to like all this stuff, thus abdicating responsibility. But I wonder if he gave me my affinity for hip hop or if my affinity for hip hop helped feed my affinity for him. He did, after all, woo me by meowing "Push It" by Salt-n-Pepa. (Granted, he has other charms too.)
And cohabiting with those records sure has worn me down. It's not just Snoop, Dre and Pac anymore. I probably couldn't stay in this relationship if I didn't revere Nas. And then there are my secret affairs with Shock G and The Game. Plus I love any beats by Dr. Dre or Timbaland, and probably the Neptunes, too, and anything with either Akon or Nate Dogg singing the hook, and any early 90s LA song with high-pitch synth. Anything by Outkast, whatever the hell Andre 3000 is wearing. All the Bay rappers, especially Keak da Sneak. I've even had to disavow my stated dislike for Wu Tang. So come on in Ghostface and Method Man, RZA, GZA, ODB and all those other ones I can't distinguish. Group hug.
Ever since those days in the closet, the problem has been the same. I don't feel like I should love hip hop. Because it doesn't feel like it should be mine. At my high school, there were plenty of non-white people ready, willing and able to listen to Power 106. I think I felt it was my duty as a white person not to crowd the ranks.
And there are serious questions of cultural appropriation here. Just think the word "wigger." Shudder.
On the other hand...
Black people eat bagels.
Check out the Lakeshore Noah's if you doubt me. So, if black people eat bagels, does that make it okay?
But it occurs to me that I've been asking myself the same question.
To wit: if I blast KMEL every time I get in the car, if I catch myself in otherwise casual conversation unleashing diatribes about the phony high-mindedness of Kanye West, if I can recite every word of not just "Bust a Move" and "Baby Got Back," but the double-time Biggie verse on "Notorious Thugs"...
Am I a big hip hop fan?
I try to be a good white girl and listen to rock, but it's really fucking hard. At the peak of my efforts, in high school, I officially listened to just rock, with, like, the requisite Beastie Boys and Bob Marley extras. Only alone in the car did I sneak down the dial to Power 106, where hip hop lives. I didn't even want to program it! Fortunately, at 105.9, it was just four button pushes down--beep-beep-beep-beep--from 106.7 KROQ.
I wasn't always such a little conformist. Earlier I had treasured my cassingles of "Keep Ya Head Up" and "I Get Around," beginning my lifelong study of the ambiguities of Tupac. (He loves women! He hates women! Loves! Hates! Loves! Hates!)
I also tired out my tape of The Chronic, and could spit every nasty, skeezy verse of "Nuthin But A G Thang" by age thirteen. (All you parents, take note: I turned out fine.)
Hell, I was a SoCal kid in the Golden Age of LA rap.
Then came Nirvana and Pearl Jam and four years wandering the desert. By college, I had amassed a collection of what I now know to be exactly the kind of hip hop white college kids listen to: Beastie Boys, Beastie Boys, Tribe Called Quest, more Beastie Boys, Fugees. Nowadays, I suppose that list would be supplanted by Kanye and more Kanye.
Of course it was Crimmie who sealed my fate. Nine years of living with him and his thousands of hip hop records. I usually credit him with getting me to like all this stuff, thus abdicating responsibility. But I wonder if he gave me my affinity for hip hop or if my affinity for hip hop helped feed my affinity for him. He did, after all, woo me by meowing "Push It" by Salt-n-Pepa. (Granted, he has other charms too.)
And cohabiting with those records sure has worn me down. It's not just Snoop, Dre and Pac anymore. I probably couldn't stay in this relationship if I didn't revere Nas. And then there are my secret affairs with Shock G and The Game. Plus I love any beats by Dr. Dre or Timbaland, and probably the Neptunes, too, and anything with either Akon or Nate Dogg singing the hook, and any early 90s LA song with high-pitch synth. Anything by Outkast, whatever the hell Andre 3000 is wearing. All the Bay rappers, especially Keak da Sneak. I've even had to disavow my stated dislike for Wu Tang. So come on in Ghostface and Method Man, RZA, GZA, ODB and all those other ones I can't distinguish. Group hug.
Ever since those days in the closet, the problem has been the same. I don't feel like I should love hip hop. Because it doesn't feel like it should be mine. At my high school, there were plenty of non-white people ready, willing and able to listen to Power 106. I think I felt it was my duty as a white person not to crowd the ranks.
And there are serious questions of cultural appropriation here. Just think the word "wigger." Shudder.
On the other hand...
Black people eat bagels.
Check out the Lakeshore Noah's if you doubt me. So, if black people eat bagels, does that make it okay?
Monday, November 12, 2007
Jews Come Out, Part Tsvey
In Jews Come Out of the Cultural Closet, Part I, I asserted that Jews are coming out (in the cultcha) and that Jewishness is, of all things, becoming cool.
"And it's not just the comedy world," I wrote, among other things. "Did the Beastie Boys ever rap about the girlies with the big ole tukheses? Hell no. But hip hop producer Scott Storch--who I'm so not endorsing, btw--calls his production company Tuff Jew. And 50 Cent's team of lawyers? They're called Jew Unit."
Well, as usual, I underestimated just how right I was.
After putting up with much chatter this summer about his post-beef disappearance, Rapper Cam'ron (Killa Cam) recently sent the following cryptic message to MTV:
Killa Season again, you little yentas. November 7th. Cam'ron is anonymous. Dipset!
When Miss Info from Hot 97 asked Cam if he knew what a yenta was, he said:
Hahaha, of course! You know my lawyers are Jewish, they be saying that all the time. So then I was watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Larry David—I fucks with Larry—he called Ted Danson a ‘yenta.’ Yo, I fell out laughing. That shit was crazy. I said, that’s exactly what all these folks are doin’, gossiping about me. Yentas.
And then this from Jay-Z's new American Gangster album:
Black Bar Mitzvahs
Mazel Tov
It's a celebration bitches
L'Chaim
I wish for you a hundred years of success
But it's my time
Am I right or fuckin what. Mazel Tov. It's a celebration, bitches.
Research courtesy Crimson & Associates. (Motto: "Get rich and don't spend it.")
"And it's not just the comedy world," I wrote, among other things. "Did the Beastie Boys ever rap about the girlies with the big ole tukheses? Hell no. But hip hop producer Scott Storch--who I'm so not endorsing, btw--calls his production company Tuff Jew. And 50 Cent's team of lawyers? They're called Jew Unit."
Well, as usual, I underestimated just how right I was.
After putting up with much chatter this summer about his post-beef disappearance, Rapper Cam'ron (Killa Cam) recently sent the following cryptic message to MTV:
Killa Season again, you little yentas. November 7th. Cam'ron is anonymous. Dipset!
When Miss Info from Hot 97 asked Cam if he knew what a yenta was, he said:
Hahaha, of course! You know my lawyers are Jewish, they be saying that all the time. So then I was watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Larry David—I fucks with Larry—he called Ted Danson a ‘yenta.’ Yo, I fell out laughing. That shit was crazy. I said, that’s exactly what all these folks are doin’, gossiping about me. Yentas.
And then this from Jay-Z's new American Gangster album:
Black Bar Mitzvahs
Mazel Tov
It's a celebration bitches
L'Chaim
I wish for you a hundred years of success
But it's my time
Am I right or fuckin what. Mazel Tov. It's a celebration, bitches.
Research courtesy Crimson & Associates. (Motto: "Get rich and don't spend it.")
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Fast Times at John W. North High
Of all the people from the John W. North High School Class of '97 stupid enough to plunk down $75 for a reunion, apparently I'm the one who HAS CHANGED THE LEAST. By crowd reaction vote, no less.
Oh sure, I might have pleaded, But, but...what of my crippling back problem and battle back to health? My gain and subsequent loss of some forty pounds? My dripping-with-drama severance from my dictatorial dad? It would have been no use.
I figure if anyone wants to tell me I still seem eighteen, hell, I'll take it. And despite my grumbling about how I had! changed, in point of fact I enjoyed feeling popular and pretending I was following the classic high school reunion narrative of triumphant return.
[In despair with my "I Changed The Least" button.]
But that narrative really requires one to have been a big nerd in high school and I was not. I fought my way hard out of nerddom, disappointing the old dadctator, who desperately wanted me on Academic Decathlon.
There was a huge contingency of unreconstructed nerds at the reunion. And I'll kill a sacred cow here and say that they annoyed me. These may have been the pitiable and picked-on in high school, but they're now full adults with intellectual superiority complexes and no social skills.
Oh, how they disdained the superficialities of the once-popular with their hair and their make-up and their ability to dance. As if the nerd patrol alums don't cling to their own petty shit: techie job titles and enforced-frump outfits and gadgets bought with their new money. Awkward and antisocial just doesn't age well. That classic high school reunion narrative is really about growing out of it.
My friend Shaun was pretty much a nerd when I met him in fifth grade, but that didn't stop me having a fat crush on him. (He responded by throwing rubber balls at me and my sister and shouting, "Big butts! Big butts!") We stayed friends through high school, commiserating over our five hours of nightly homework. And he was the person I most wanted to see at our reunion, because, unlike those unreconstructed nerds, Shaun is a good swan story.
Right around the time I had my back problem, Shaun suffered a medical crisis that left him essentially blind in one eye. I didn't know it then, but he was also struggling with his identity.
The once skinny, slumping salutatorian showed up to the reunion a proud gay man in Diesel jeans, standing his full six feet five inches. He lives in West Hollywood (even!) and has been with his boyfriend for five years now. (Which he says = 30 monogamous gay man years.) And best of all, both our boyfriends are maniacal reef aquarists, which means we'll all have to get together so they can do tank talk.
It's been a tough decade for the Clebster, and it meant a lot to reconnect with an old friend after we've both come such a long way. It also meant a lot when we hit the dance floor and he said I seemed the happiest he's ever seen me. He's known me for eighteen years.
[Sorry ladies, he's gay.]
Lest I get too weepy, though, one more bit of commentary. After my reunion, Bri said my relatively healthy understanding of race made sense. Riverside is a real middle class haven. People who don't have a lot of money move there from LA and Orange County to buy a tract house and nab a slice of American dream pie. The second generation Riversidians are mostly black and Latino (okay, Mexican) and many are upwardly mobile.
Virtually all of the black North alums at the reunion were doctors, lawyers or on their way there. Of course reunions skew to holders of i-Phones, but still. At my high school there was no racial majority and it just wasn't such a thing that white people were richer and black and Mexican people were poorer. Not utopia by a long shot, but not as segregated as New York or, sad to say because I love it so, Oakland.
[Riverside. Not giving a fuck about race since 1992. Or thereabouts.]
When it was time to drive back up to the Bay, Brian unwittingly gave me a poem:
Take the 60
To the 15
To the 10
To the 210
To the 5
We're both native SoCalians, and when we talk freeways down south, the definite articles kick back in. (Nobody in the Bay says the 580.) I made him repeat it a few times, and not just because it's been a while since I've driven out of the Inland Empire.
It sounded like home.
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)