May 10, 2007 by info.

the Pope.

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May 10, 2007 by info.

Verizon lost. Read my Herald review here.

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May 9, 2007 by info.

It’s not easy being a feminist pop music fan these days, what with right-wing TV pundits railing against black artists under the guise of paternalistic protection of women. I can’t side with someone against rap misogyny when they’re also anti-choice — which, make no mistake, most of the Fox News crew is. That said, it will be interesting to attend Gwen Stefani’s concert tonight in the wake of the Akon/Verizon controversy. There are a lot of layers to this issue. On the one hand, Akon clearly crossed lines of acceptable behavior in his handling of a female fan in Trinidad. It’s not the raunchiness of his behavior I object to; it’s the roughness, the way he pushed the 15-year-old around. The fact she has complained of the way she was treated is significant; this was not consensual. On the other hand, I don’t want to play into the racism of commentators who call Akon a rapper just because he’s black; Akon’s a singer. I’m tired of the media jumping on hip-hop for reflecting larger social ills. As tired as I am of casual pop misogyny.

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April 16, 2007 by info.

Imus was fired first and foremost because he’s a racist. If he had only called the heroic women of Rutgers ho’s, he might have gotten suspended, but I doubt — unfortunately — there would have been such a brouhaha. By adding the phrase “nappy-headed” to his producer’s “ho” diss, Imus went way way too far, in most people’s minds. He added a general, obvious racist stereotype to the merely racially inflected misogyny. Big mistake.

So it’s been somewhat amazing to see the dialogue continue over the use of the word ho’s, and Imus’s comments boomerang back to the rap community. On the one hand, I think it’s wrong to blame Imus’s racism on rap; in that sense I agree with Russell Simmons. On the other hand, not even Russell can deny that many rappers have long had a problem with sexism. And since racism, sexism, and all other prejudices are inevitably inextricably linked, I’m happy to see the discussion of hate language continue.

Meanwhile, black women are taking on and tackling hip-hop machismo in other ways. The Village Voice has a fascinating cover story this week on AGs, gay women who adopt thug styles. And in her great video for “Like a Boy”, R&B singer Ciara — a woman who’s been previously sadly known to do the usual on-the-floor video grovel — struts it like a G magnificently.

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April 12, 2007 by info.

Alanis Morissette has apparently had it with female artists’ capitulation to male objectification in music videos, judging by her hilarious and poignant spoof of Fergie’s “My Humps,” which is a You Tube must-see. I’ve never been a fan of the jagged little pill before, but this time, she hits the nail head-on. And I don’t think she’s just dissing the younger artist as a usurper to the pop throne she once held; I think she’s being self-deprecating in the scenes where she has a breakdown, making fun of her own generational histrionics.

Between this and the forthcoming Tori Amos album, the women rockers of the early ’90s may be staging a mini-comeback. You go grrrls.

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April 6, 2007 by info.

I took a little vacation and forgot to post my Herald profile of Gilberto Gil here. I interviewed the Brazilian minister of culture in Austin. He spent over an hour with photographer Susie J. Horgan and me; it was a generous and intimate encounter with an amazing man. His concert at the Knight Concert Hall March 30 was incredible. Enrique Fernandez reviewed wonderfully for the Herald. It’s not always that one gets to feel one’s job as a critic has world-historical impact, but every time I’ve interacted with Gil (or his colleague Caetano Veloso) — well, it beats talking about Anna Nicole on Nancy Grace, that’s for sure.

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March 30, 2007 by info.

It’s hard to promote a memoir about parenting in 2007 without someone bringing up Alternadad. That’s not the fault of Neal Pollack, who has written this excellent account of his own child-driven odyssey to grown-uphood. Today I finally finished reading Alternadad, not because it’s long (though that is my main criticism of it: It could use some trims), but because like all multi-tasking parents, I kept getting distracted.

I’ve been a fan of Neal’s writing ever since I was asked to introduce him and Augusten Burroughs to an audience at the Miami Book Fair a few years ago and therefore read Nevermind the Pollacks. Dude’s hilarious. His satire of rock criticism, particularly the Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus schools, was spot-on. I also liked him in person (Burroughs, however, was uptight and aloof). One of my biggest new-parent regrets is that I didn’t accept Neal’s invite to go out carousing in South Beach with him and Dan Savage. That would have been a night to remember …

Neal recently wrote a mostly positive review of Mamarama for The Miami Herald, which you can read elsewhere on my website. All of which is to say I’m not the most unbiased reader of Alternadad.

Which I heartily recommend. I laughed, I cried. Neal has a deft knack for deadpan dialogue and a wonderfully irreverent eye, ear, and nose for the grossness of small children. He’s a twisted comic genius. I kept seeing Jack Black playing him in the film version of Alternadad.

Some idiot at Time magazine called Alternadad the Howl of alt-parenting memoirs. It’s irritating that as soon as a male enters a genre, they’re anointed the leaders of the canon. Hey Time idiot (whose name I won’t grace with brain cells), women have been writing this stuff for years. Operating Instructions by Ann Lamott is the genre’s Howl; Ayun Halliday’s The Big Rumpus is our On the Road; Ariel Gore is our Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Pollack is, I don’t know, Ken Kesey (someone else tell me who I am. Or better yet, don’t).

Again, it’s not Pollack’s fault he gets to benefit from male privilege (though he could have been a little bit nicer to sister me in his review – but I digress). And I’m really glad a male’s throwing his hat into the ring — I guess we can’t call them  momoirs anymore. There can be no new approach to parenting without the sperm-providers involved. When people ask me about Alternadad, I like to call it and Mamarama his and hers companion volumes.

Pollack criticized Mamarama for my tendency to wax epochal about culture. I, conversely, think sometimes he could use a little telescoping of his own life. From a cushy upbringing to the family’s righteous organic-food obsession to his stint as a neighborhood organizer, Pollack is thoroughly caught up in upper-middle-class privileges that he sometimes seems oblivous of, or tries to ironically distance himself from via beer and punk.

But that classism does make his family’s eventual plunge into near-bankruptcy poignant. Pollack also misses the mark early in the book when he chastises himself for spending so much time thinking about something as domestic and therefore banal as parenting, whereas his male literary heroes wrote about big topics like war or their penises, or whatver. Wrong, dude: That willingness to take on a Brave New World is precisely what makes Alternadad not just funny, but important.

Alternadad is mostly about the guffaws. But it also provides profundity. Pollack beautifully summarizes the new consciousness that drives us alt-parents to navel-gaze, on page 282: “I felt a new emotion, at least for me. It wasn’t happiness, or sadness, exactly. Maybe it was a kind of all-knowingness, an understanding that life presents you with limitations and that you have to learn to deal with those limitations and be happy anyway. While I recognized the irony of having this life-changing epiphany while buying my son a plastic toy at a chain store that allowed its pharmacists to deny people birth-control medicine based on religious principles, I cried anyway. I wished I could give Elijah more, could be more for him. I just wanted the best for my family, and I felt ashamed that I couldn’t give it to them.”

The pressure to be a provider should be a great literary theme, if it isn’t already. Pollack tackles it with humility, grace, and judicious use of marijuana. We memoirists get a lot of ribbing for our egotism, Pollack especially. But in fact it’s his self-abasing humor that makes Alternadad such a joy.

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March 29, 2007 by info.

Last week the family was out having a rare meal together at a Greek restaurant. I complimented Karlie on her T-shirt, which read, “I would only end up hurting you.”

“Do you know what a femme fatale is?” I asked her and her sister.

“No,” they said.

 ”It’s a French phrase that means, literally, deadly woman. It’s a phrase for a woman who’s beautiful, but trouble.”

The girls’ eyes lit up. “Cool!” Kenda said. “I’m putting that on my MySpace page.”

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March 29, 2007 by info.

Belated posts on these: Rachel Fudge did an incredible interview with me in the current issue of Bitch. The article’s not online, but the link will tell you how to get this worthy publication. And you can hear Doug Henwood’s WBAI interview with me here. Deborah Harper just did a great, long interview with me that you can listen to as a podcast at a few of her sites and which I will post here as soon as I figure out how.

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March 26, 2007 by info.

Cole and I went to see Laurie Berkner with a group of dear friends yesterday. It was my first kids’ rock outing, the first time I’ve taken Cole to a show that wasn’t a festival. It was a beautiful day. In fact, without a drummer and enough amplification, Berkner couldn’t compete with the weather, the fun of playing with his friend Eli, and the joys of chasing bubbles. Cole sat with me for maybe two songs. Then I don’t know if he heard a word Laurie sang after that.

Berkner is a smart songwriter: not genius, but melodic and, as Cole would say, engaging. She’s definitely the most accessible of a slew of newish acts that are re-creating children’s music. I was on a panel about this at South by Southwest; I also wrote a story on it for the Herald in December. A couple of parents have been asking me if there’s good kids music out there. Here’s a list of CDs I recommended with that story. I would add to it both albums by Uncle Rock and the Sippycups’ CD (Uncle Rock, aka Robert Burke Warren, and Sippycup Paul were both on the panel).

KIDS’ CDS
* New Orleans Playground (Putumayo Kids): Includes such classic bayou tunes as Ya Ya and Choo Choo Ch’Boogie, for the young at heart.

* They Might Be Giants, Here Come the ABCs (Disney Sound): Educational can be weird.

* Wee Hairy Beasties, Animal Crackers (Bloodshot): Clever, fun, folksy, but not cutesy.

* We Are . . . the Laurie Berkner Band (Razor & Tie): Noggin-watchers’ favorite lady of song.

* Elizabeth Mitchell, You Are My Little Bird (Smithsonian Folkway): Folk, rock and reggae songs by Neil Young, Francosie Hardy, etc., gently and smartly reinterpreted.

* Jack Johnson and Friends, Sing-a-Longs and Lullabies for the Film Curious George (brushfire): For the little jamsters.

* Dan Zanes and Friends, All Around the Kitchen (festival five): The former Boston rocker (Del Fuegos) pioneered the current wave of kid rock; his several CDs mix classics and originals.

* All Together Now: Beatles Stuff for Kids of All Ages (Little Monster/V2): Tasteful, modern renditions of Yellow Submarine, Birthday, etc., packaged with a book of poems and trivia.

* The Backyardigans, Groove to the Music (Nick Records): Some of the best musicians in New York play on these songs. Just beware of the munchkin singers.

* Lil Jams, Vol. 1 (GMG): Hip-hop hits sung by kids in not too cloying a fashion.

* Jack’s Big Music Show, Season One (Nick Records): A decent sampling of Nick Jr.’s favorites, including Berkner, Milkshake, and Sweet Honey in the Rock.

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