SLACK'D

Back in 2003, I was living at home, wearing purple eyeliner to my boring service industry job and spending most of my time collaging. I had a fresh driver's license and the thrill of rolling around in my mom's car at night listening to the Raveonettes and using her Hollywood Video rental card to check out Marlon Brando movies was unparalleled. The guy at the counter was a plump ginger with a long ponytail under his Hollywood Video-issued baseball hat who I suspected had a crush on me since I was the only teen coming in without my kid and buying the king size pack of jujufruits. I ignored his halting glances since I didn't really start talking to boys until I was about 20, even ones I had no interest in.
One day, I checked out Slacker, because the case looked weird and I had just recently discovered that I was cooler than anyone I knew, having been educated at a prep school in which my peers' interests ranged from the fall j. crew catalog to the spring j. crew catalog. I got home, popped in the VHS (earnestly) and got to work stenciling "London Calling" lyrics onto t-shirts I'd just picked up at the Gap on sale for $9.99.
Slacker was weird, I couldn't really make sense of the characters and the lack of plot line got lost in my intense stenciling session-- I later moved onto Bowie lyrics.
Eight (!!!!11) years later, my life is eerily (depressingly?) similar to that of my eighteen year old self. The only element that's different today from the scene described above is that I use my mom's Netflix account. And I know how to talk to boys now, but that's a different story entirely. Tonight as I was sitting around making record cover journals, feeling inexplicably attracted to Ted Nugent, I decided to scroll through the Netflix collection, and Slacker caught my eye once again.
The film that I watched tonight, of course, is the same as the VHS I rented a thousand beers ago, but oh how my perception of it has changed. What once seemed like dreamy esoterica has since become the soundtrack to my own life; the characters, once just that, are now people I have met over and over, comprising my own anchor to post-collegiate reality. While I was completely engrossed in the film and finding myself in conversation with these people, a thought entered into my head: Is this movie making fun of us? Is Richard Linklater looking at 20-somethings who sit around drinking beer, talking about their lives and the world, politics and their relationships, with their friends and roommates and strangers, and deeming it all a waste of time? The film is called Slacker. Is the film's thesis that we're aimless, rootless, wasting our time and our potential to fulfill that great American myth of "making something of ourselves"?

As anyone with a hundred thousand dollar degree in Why The World Sucks and a barista job to prove it knows, "Our Generation" is the topic of a thousand porch/bar/breakfast PBR 30-packs. The Oxford English Dictionary defines "slacker" as "a person regarded as one of a large group or generation of young people (especially in the early to mid 1990s) characterized by apathy, aimlessness, and lack of ambition". They may have to alter the era included in their definition. Is it not "Our Generation," the children of those hardworking model Americans, the baby boomers, that has been called out on a hilariously frequent number of occasions by the New York Times for being lazy, ego-driven, sext-crazed narcissists? Slackers, in the truest sense of the word? Intra-generational hand wringing abounds at the NYT as their op-ed columnists tell us to stay out of restaurants and save our money. In preparation for footing the bill for "Their Generation's" gross mistakes, of course.

Every conversation over porch beers at noon on a Tuesday illicits the same conclusion: we're not unmotivated, the ones pushing papers and paying their bills are. We're the ones who are looking for something more, the ones who refuse to settle for what we've been given. We're taking the path of least resistance, fighting with ourselves and everyone else for answers instead of with the TV over Dancing With the Stars.


And it turns out Linklater agrees: “Slackers might look like the left-behinds of society, but they are actually one step ahead, rejecting most of society and the social hierarchy before it rejects them. The dictionary defines slackers as people who evade duties and responsibilities. A more modern notion would be people who are ultimately being responsible to themselves and not wasting their time in a realm of activity that has nothing to do with who they are or what they might be ultimately striving for.”





Slack on, "our generation."

This guy "GETS ME!"

Srsly, this guy gets it - has women figured out. Or at least me!

Offend This....

I'm sure you read this article on The Awl "IN DEFENSE OF OFFENSIVE ART" pretty interesting....

Highlights include:

When we encounter art that actually challenges our liberal values, we find a way to enjoy it without actually engaging with those contradictions. We don’t really like challenging art. We like art that reinforces what we already believe in a way that makes us feel like believing these things is a heroic, rebellious act.

and

In fact the idea of the strong individual vision, the Guy Who Doesn’t Flinch From The Truth, exposing softness, crushing weakness etc. has plenty of resonance in right-wing politics and in big business.

So the model is Unflinchingness vs… what? Well, hypocrisy, weakness, complacency but also often more general ideas of softness, dialogue, compromise… a whole bunch of qualities which our social (patriarchal) set-up codes as “female”, so it doesn’t remotely surprise me that there’s a lot of misogyny underpinning some of this art.

This is a good thesis paragraph:

If we want to judge this stuff on an artistic basis rather than a moral basis, then we can’t try and prove that there is a socially redeeming value to offensive art. We should see "offensive art" as a genre, same as country, rap or anything else, one with its own conventions and reasons for being. With "offensive art," the genre conventions are about being dark and talking about unpleasant things and being performatively confrontational. This doesn’t place such art outside the realm of critique—we can still have lots of problems with the ideological constructions underpinning one genre or another. Likewise, no piece of offensive art should get off the hook just because it’s using genre conventions. However, such a categorization would force us to consider each piece on its merits and, maybe most importantly, within an artistic tradition, instead of simply dismissing it because it contains offensive content.

This one is to the point AND HI-larious:

It’s worth noting that we’re not talking about realistic violence here. We’re talking about cartoonish violence. Despite the rhetoric of this is art that throws reality in our faces, it’s not, really. A historical recreation of the Battle of the Somme would be throwing (violent, ugly) reality in our faces, while GG Allin tossing feces into the audience is just a man throwin’ dooky. It’s ridiculous, absurd, over-the-top. It may be a metaphorical representation of the darkness of the modern world, but it's also just, well, a man throwin' dooky.

I do love musicals!

So maybe it’s unfair of me to assume fandom of offensive art reflects an unearned sense of oppression, an embrace of the fantasy that saying bad things is brave and honest.... As a genre requirement it doesn't seem all that different from the same suspension of disbelief that allows fans of musicals to enjoy when people burst into song for no reason.

I'm still having 5 kids to name them after these bros

(i don't care if they're girls or boys, they'll all be chill and have cool hair).

new single here!

I'm liking it... i think it's a return to their roots as well as shows maturity. Jules' voice and Albert's guitar are in top form.

So glad we blew Dodge....

....I mean, Portland. Wait. We didn't blow Portland collectively..maybe just a few... well... since you're involved in the "us"... probably more than a few! But I digress...

Check out this NYT post... That city is deteriorating before our very eyes.. On the OTHER HAND! I'm currently making a mailout for the 'ol real estate company right now that features this little tid bit "Top 10 Best Big Cities for Jobs" Forbes, April 2010...Austin #1!... "Top 10 Least Stress Cities in US." #5 AUSTIN! followed by a Number 6 OKC!... "Top 10 Cities for the Next Decade" #1 AUSTIN! "Top 10 Cities for Young Entrepreneurs" #3 AUSTIN! ... Need I go on?

Normally (and by Normally I mean ALWAYS) I hate this shit... And I ESPECIALLY hate that I help people (PEOPLE I DONT LIKE read: rich people) move to my fair city. But I'll make an exception this time just to drop a hint to you...

KALAMAZOO IS NOT ON ANY OF THESE LISTS!!

move!

j.lynne

jeans creamin time

That perfect spot in the middle of the Jules/Bruce Venn diagram:




this could barely be better even if it was ELO.

Bowing at the altar of Laurie Anderson

FW: You’ve produced an amazing amount of work. What keeps you going?

Anderson: I don’t mean to sound shallow, but it’s the best way to have fun, you know? For me it’s just sort of goofing around. It really is – it’s like “Oh I think I’ll make a cartoon today. No, I think I’ll make a song.”

You know, so when you call yourself this amorphous mutlimedia artist thing, you just do whatever you feel like and people go “oh that’s your work, ok fine,” and that’s how it is.

FW: One last question. As someone who’s been incredibly successful with their work, do you have any advice for those of us living here, holding down three jobs just to pay the rent and trying to find the time to make art?

Anderson: You know when I started being an artist I had this friend who said really irritating things to me. I would say “Look Richie, you don’t understand. I really wanna do my work, but, I’ve gotta pay my rent.

And he would just kept saying “Just do your work.”

And I’d say “No no, Richie, come on, it’s just not practical, I mean I have my rent is due in like a week, I have to be practical.”

And he would just keep saying “Do your work.”

And it made me so mad, but I finally realized what he was saying. He was talking about priorities. What do you really want? What do you put first? If you do your work, and you put all of your best energy into that, everything else will fall into place. And, you know, if you make paying your rent your very first priority, well then it will be harder to do your work. If you want this amazing apartment that looks like an artists loft or whatever, you’ll get that, but you might not be able to do any work because you’ll be putting all your energy into getting that place.

I found that at times very hard to take, but it’s really true. Because you know, it’s trusting yourself. That you have something good to say, and that it’s worth saying. That’s what you have to do as an artist. Nobody else’s really going to do it, everything comes from you.

[free williamsburg]

l337 animal bros!

beware the banana foot lotion

"I wanted to go to a time when cities were cheap and full of junk, and on every street there was a shop with dusty windows that sold radiograms and soul albums with the corners cut off, or secondhand books that nobody had taken the trouble to value.... Now it's just lattes and bottles of banana foot lotion and it's difficult to see how banana foot lotion will end up producing the Patti Smiths of the twenty-first century; she needed the possibilities of the city, its apparently inexhaustible pleasures and surprises."
-- Nick Hornby on Patti Smith's new book, Just Kids, in the The Believer, June 2010.

Ever wonder...

why "we're" all functional alcholics who don't give a shit?

IT'S IN THE NEW YORK TIMES!

Read this and stop feeling guilty about devoting your life to hedonistic nihilism: it's the only thing left to do!

Although I can't help but laugh at the thought of this mainstreamer bro being sad about not getting a "corprate job on the bottom rung of the ladder."

GIMME SOME LONE STAR.

Also, loved the last two posts. Mothersbro inspired in me some optimism. He "gets" it.

How To Cure Moustache Envy

And it was only fifty cents! But I'm pretty sure a real one wouldn't come off when you puke in your sleep after 11 Milwaukee's Best(s?). So color me still envious.

Copy this and send it to all parents and relatives

cause the NYT sez it's ok to fuck around for YEARS after schoolin:


After graduation, I spent five years wandering around doing nothing — or getting as close to it as I could manage. I was a cab driver, an obsessed moviegoer, a wanderer in the mountains of Colorado, a teacher at a crazy grand hippie school in Vermont, the manager of a movie house (who didn’t do much managing), a crewman on a ship and a doorman at a disco.


Thanks, NYT!

PUNK!

&

i'm obviously going to send this to you anyway. But it does prove that Gauguin= 150 yrs ahead of the curve.

have I shown you this experimental side project post-blogspot core blog yet?

RE: lost generationz

defeated? resigned? no fuckin way, broad.

"Mothers, don’t let your children grow up to be hipsters. We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new."


I used to believe this, that our world was over and we were nothing but vultures picking at its rotting corpse... but I really don't anymore. The things that have formed our culture might be dead and dying-- sincerity, huge record labels, hypercapitalism, etc, but there are new, better things popping up in their stead. Self-awareness, self-distribution and small, community oriented projects are growing out of the ashes of those bloated tenets of our modern era.

I don't really know what hipster means in 2010, but in 1959 it meant someone who listened to jazz, liked drugs and wrote/read things that used the word "fuck." I have a feeling that when we say hipster we mean people who listen to noise/folk/punk/jazz, like drugs and read/write things that use the word "fuck." In much of the discourse that labels itself "concerned with American ideals", you'll come across phrases like "standing for something", "hard work" and talk of "freedom" "bravery" and "prosperity." Simultaneously, you'll notice that our armed forces kill civilians around the world with a frequency that suggests they enjoy it, while our elected officials have left a fifth of the children in their own country to live in poverty. And this is largely thanks to that "peace and love" generation who later built corporate America over former farms and forests and parked their SUVs in the driveway.

So if we are defeated, it's because we recognize the gross mismanagement of funds and passion by the people who call themselves leaders of the free world, and if we are destroyed it's because we don't know how to change that. Instead, we throw pebbles into the void, listen to noise/folk/punk/jazz, like drugs and read/write things that use the word "fuck." The more people who opt out of our modern corporate nightmare, the fewer bombs dropped in its name. "Hipsters" might not "stand for anything," but they've got my vote.

s00000 ghey for these bros

[when i was younger, i wanted to have 5 kids and name them for each member of the strokes. nick and nicolai could get confusing.]

Mr. Manny Coon

Re: Crash and Burn

So what's a TOTALLY creative, complete renaissance girl Reagan's kid to do?

Well, you already answered your own question with that one. Go out and get laid anyway!

As your sister in living rent free/jobless/just tryna experience something real, grrrrl have I been there.

When criticism from the world at large (parents, other family members, clueless friends, etc) arises, I like to do two things: 1) look at their lives, and ask myself if that's something I aspire to, and 2) reach into my arsenal of humans who I do think lived badassedly ie the way I wish to live in general, and ask myself what they would think. More often than not, I think that they would be like, "fuck yeah. I never had a real job or a mortgage either!" If Allen Ginsberg ever walked up to me and was like, "what the hell are you doing? stop it!" I sure as shit would. Until then, I'm gonna keep believing that what I'm doing (or not doing) is ok because I'm ok with it.

Kinda just think that the world is full of people who just don't "get it" (as illustrated by the fact that the world is falling the fuck apart), so I'm not too quick to get down on one who decides to say "f that shit" and avoid the trappings of modern life at all costs.

Personally, I think your response of the creative realm being different is completely valid. The problem is that our dumb world places value on monies more that anything else so it's hard for people normalized by this culture to see the other things you've "earned" this year: an awesome portfolio, great experience and lots of contacts.

Maybe just in the interest of preserving your rent-free way of life for the time being, it would be worth having a sit down with the roommates and telling them your plans and your reasons for your life choices, internship, etc. All parents really want is their kids to have some idea of what they want to do, and surprisingly think that their kids are totally clueless. I've had SO many convos with my madre re: this topic, while I am FREAKING out because I can't do what I want to do and stress about "the future" ALL the time, while she's asking me if I ever think about "the future."

So yeah. You just gotta like do what you wanna do, while attempting to keep the roommates happy. Sucks that they don't understand the world, so you gotta do your best as a liason. Also, if you are interested in earning dollars, is there any after-school art program or something you could work at? Maybe not with li'ls, but high school kids could be fun.

(just read Dan Savage and am feeling all advice columny, apparently.)

Welp, I'm about to go to an interview for a barrista job! Hopefully my future co-workers will be 19 and hot.

some advice from Das Racist (the hip hop duo)

So what’s the message you guys are trying to send out to the youth of today?

H: “Calm down. Calm the fuck down.”

V: “Shut up, dude.”

H: “Shut up and calm down.”

V: “Chill the fuck out, bro.”

H: “Sit still for a minute and just shut up and calm down. A lot of people got it worse than you, bitch.”