Ton Rouge

Ode to X-Ray Spex

2011-04-26T20:29:00.005-05:00

I was surprised to hear that Poly Styrene died last night. I had decided that she committed suicide years ago, I suppose in order to kept her punk-rock mythic self preserved in my mind.

I thought about my mistaken information today and I did the dishes listening to X-Ray Spex on Grooveshark. I still have my bright orange cassette tape of their only album. But since my car died last summer, I have no way to play it. So I was most un-punk rock and I did the dishes and cleaned the kitchen. Grooveshark only had four songs. I remembered the words to all of them.

When I was seventeen, Christine slipped the tape into the cassette player in her kitchen. She handed me the tape case so I could read the lyrics as we listened to Oh Bondage, Up Yours.

I'd never heard anything like that tape. It was better than Madonna, better than the Sex Pistols, better than The Cure. It took my years to really hear the lyrics -- I think I appreciate them now far more than I ever did then -- but I couldn't get enough of Poly's voice trilling the 'r' in rrrrrrrat.

We lived in the suburbs and we listened to that tape everywhere. In the summer, my friend Christine drove a carload of us to work every morning. I could time the drive by what song we were on when we got to the boathouse in Hull.

I kicked and bounced around the kitchen this afternoon as I did the dishes. I thought Christine driving us around Cohasset and the South Shore. Of driving in Florida with Rachel and Molly, of hanging out in Katie's basement, of blasting X-Ray Spex in my parents' station wagon with Ann.

Ann, Christine, Christina, Dee, Errin, Eliza, Katie, Susan, Renee, Rachel, and Molly: you are all my punk rock sisters from the nineties. I've been thinking of you all while I hummed X-Ray Spex today. I've been remembering the bright orange tape blasting saxaphone in the background as we careened from adolescence into adulthood. I couldn't have asked for better friends.

Why I'm Ok with Driving to the Oil Disaster Protest

2010-06-17T21:24:00.005-05:00

I’m teaching composition this summer and I’ve told my students that I would be attending some protests about the oil blowout this week. They wanted to hear about the protest (or just avoid more talk about active and passive voice). “Do you have signs and stuff?” “Are you all angry and screaming?” “Do you, like, carry a pitchfork?”

A pitchfork? I tried to explain to them that while I was angry about what was going on, I didn’t stand around screaming. From the back row came the comment, “It’s too hot to be mad.”

And it is.

I’ve been to two events this week on at the Baton Rouge capitol – one organized specifically for the workers and about the use of Corexit on Tuesday and a loveyourcoast event put together by a couple student organizations and some others (Sierra club was one). C and I only lasted a little more than an hour.

It was so hot and so bright on the white capitol steps that it felt surreal. There were a couple singers with guitars. I recognized some faces from Tuesday. A line of about eight people held signs. I admit I was expecting a massive crowd of hundreds. I think there were between twenty and thirty people there. I’m wondering how much that would change if the protest were scheduled for 4pm?

I’m amazed at the people who were out there before we got there and who stayed out there after we left. I’m still dragging from standing on those steps. Some of the legislators saw us. While I was there we got some curious glances, but mostly the capitol workers walked around us. At one point the cops told people to take down a shade tent.

While it is legal to protest in Louisiana, apparently all protesters should suffer in the sun.

Enough with my negativity. Seeing Dr. Riki Ott speak was amazing. She’s worked with Valdez survivors for thirty years and is one of those rare people who can witness suffering and injustice, be angry enough to try to change it, and remain enthusiastic. She warned us that BP was using the same tactics as Exxon had with the Valdez. She told us we were doing the right thing being there. She knew about those awful feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness. Organizing and coming together, she told us, would lift us up.

And she’s right. But that’s something I’ve struggled with in regards to activism: does it make a difference to show up? My urge is often to do something really big. And often I think that if I can’t develop superpowers and fix it, why bother? Dr. Ott reminded me of the importance of bearing witness. Sometimes the most we can do is stand with an umbrella behind some people holding posters in the 100 degree heat.

This disaster has a whole other layer added to the problem of showing up: I’ve thought more deeply than I ever have about how I get to the protests. I’ve wondered if it is counterproductive to drive to an oil disaster protest. Or if the fact that I’m driving there means I shouldn’t be complaining about oil companies.

Nope. As a person living in an oil dependent society I better be complaining. If it means I have to drive to do it, so be it.

My options were for today: drive or don’t go. It’s too far to walk. I don’t have a bike I can ride that far right now.

I’m glad I went. They needed people there today and I’m proud that I was one of them. Don’t get me wrong: I hate being so dependent on fossil fuels. I wish gas cost a lot more because I think that’s the only way public transportation in Baton Rouge and the rest of Louisiana will be a viable way to get around. I’d like my next car to have the engine modifications done so it can run on vegetable oil. But this disaster doesn’t mean I’m going to stop going to work (driving or buses are my only way to get there). Why would it mean I wouldn’t go to a protest?

Dr. Ott suggested we meet every week on the capitol steps. I hope people do and I’d like to be a part of it. I hope some days I’ll be able to ride a bike or take the bus. But if I can’t, I’m still going.

Sex and The City 2: We know it was bad. Here’s why it is my top film of 2010. And oh yes, Spoilers Galore!

2010-06-11T14:57:00.003-05:00

I might not enjoyed the movie as much as I did if I hadn’t read this io9 review of it, so I knew what to watch for. . Time was indeed tricky throughout the film and The City does control all. For example after Carrie and Aidan have kissed and Carrie frets over whether or not to tell Big, she says, “We’re eight hours ahead of New York, so it hasn’t happened there yet.” Carrie then decides if she tells Big it won’t be a secret she kept from him because it hasn’t really happened yet. Bad writing or a commentary on the fluid possibilities of time and fate? Can I really decide that after just one viewing?

Perhaps I enjoyed it so much because Sex and the City 2 was a testament to the power of objects to control our identities. And instead of the second rate objects which control my life, the women of SATC-2 are controlled by designer and vintage objects. Like the butlers who can’t leave the $22,000 a night hotel suite until they are dismissed by their mistresses, the women of SATC-2 do the bidding of objects.

Carrie’s kiss with Aidan was clearly caused by an eyeliner she bought at the Souk (along with some genie shoes). Carrie’s voice over notes as she puts on the eyeliner that she “wasn’t herself.” The dark eyeliner liberates Carrie’s past self which Carrie later notes is a insecure, affection starved self. Luckily for Carrie, she has a gold purse, after which she grips frees her from her past self and brings her back to her present self who is married to Big and doesn’t want to be kissing Aidan. Whew!

Objects are in charge of the sex act as well. Samantha’s two sex scenes are tame compared to the television series; we see Samantha’s legs and her face and hear her shouts, but Samantha’s most graphic sex in the film takes place her and a hookah. Samantha goes on a date with a Dutch man, says something tasteless about how good she is at sucking, then briefly performs fellatio on the hookah. It’s the most graphic moment of the whole film. The sex-scene finale takes place on the hood of a jeep, on the beach on the forth of July. Samantha appears more intimate with the jeep than with the man, as she grabs onto the windshield wipers while she moans.

And in the end it is objects rather than Samantha’s flashing of flesh that gets her into trouble. Samantha’s condoms turn up at all sorts of inopportune times, culminating in a dramatic scene at the souk. During the call to prayer, Samantha’s purse is torn and condoms spill all over the ground. Dressed in a tank top and shorts (she’s having hot flashes) Samantha begins waving the condoms at a mob of Arab men in white robes. The men surround her – she screams she’s American and she has sex, then thrust her hips while she shakes condoms at the men.

The foursome is rescued by a couple of burka clad women who unveil themselves behind a shop. The women are wearing the Spring Prada beneath their burkas, and are reading the same book about menopause that Samantha plugged earlier in the movie! Is the pairing of these holy capitalist vestments with the call to prayer a coincidence? I think not – it’s a glimpse towards the post-colonial church of the future!

I’m worried that it sounds like I’m only dissing SATC-2. I loved it because it showed just how cultural colonialism works so transparently. And entertained me with wonderfully hideous outfits in the meantime. Even when the plot was predictable, there were so many exciting clothes to look at that I didn’t care. And Liza Minnelli! During the dynamic foursome rendition of “I am Woman” in a nightclub -- and there’s so much more to say about that – the club belly dancers even get in on the liberating action --Samantha wears a red jacket with spiked silver epaulets. She looks kind of like Shredder from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Or like Bowser from Super Mario. Is this a commentary on a spiky exterior that protects a vulnerable core? Or is Samantha truly a sexual warrior?

There’s so, so much more to say about this movie. I’ll think this email I wrote to a friend sums it up why I loved it: It’s a snapshot of gender, race, class and colonial racism balanced on designer stilettos, delivered with bad sexual jokes. It's the best type of satire there is: one where the creators didn't know they were mocking themselves. I think the whole movie was taken hostage by the American collective unconscious. It was written by the spirit of colonial capitalism itself. It was like reading good theory, but watching it. With glitter.

Week 1: Goodbye desk!

2009-10-18T21:49:00.002-05:00

Just a quick update: one of this week's tasks was to get rid of something. The Apartment Cure book said the bigger, the better. So with Cara's help, I got rid of my desk! My bed now has space on both sides. I didn't realize how cramped I've felt.

Week Zero of the Apartment Cure: Are slobs born or made?

2009-10-11T17:08:00.004-05:00

My bedroom and living room today.

For most of my life, except for a six month period in sixth grade when I decided that I could become neat by covering my room in tatami mats and sleeping on a futon and covering the overhead light with a red plastic lantern, I have been a slob. Eventually, my mother gave up on getting me to put my clothes in drawers. She got me two boxes: one for my clean clothes and one for my dirty. I sat in a pile of clean clothes every morning to pick out my outfits until I left for college. Was I born this way? Or did something make me a slob?

My family was messy growing: my parents opted for a creative household instead of a neat one. We got to leave the living room in fort configurement for days on end. And my sisters and I are all quite crafty. But they are both neat. Even my parents are neat now. I am the last vestige of laundry piles and overturned furniture. Perhaps I am the slob scapegoat: the rest of my family can be neat because I express the mess for all of them. Well, should they start to leave their clothes on the floor and papers all over the living room floor in the next few weeks, we’ll know my theory was right.

I like to think in the past two years I’ve progressed from the day my friend Megan found a tiny frog living in a curtain in my living room. Currently there is only one fork in the kitchen sink and only a couple things on my bedroom floor. But I am for the most part still living in chaos. I have to look for my course syllabi every time something is due. I file my mail using the pile system. The thing is: I hate messes. But that hasn’t stopped them yet.

Enter the ear infection. Two weeks ago, I got a double ear infection that is finally on its way out. In my moments of worst pain, I decided that I needed to get my room in order or else my life was going to end up as clogged as my ears. Then my friend Jamey posted a link to the Fall Apartment Cure on my Facebook page.

And so I begin. Eight weeks to transform my living space from a place that makes me feel guilty and like I never really left my early twenties into a Tigerland oasis of adulthood.

What I've learned the past three weeks.

2009-09-15T21:24:00.002-05:00

I started a PhD program at LSU a few weeks ago and I forgot how much reading there is in grad school. And how grad classes thrust me into the fun fireworks of my brain and make me feel demoralized, unaccomplished and idiotic. All in the same few moments.

But mostly I have learned in the past three weeks that I am not reading books. Nor am I reading articles. I am not reading words or sentences or paragraphs.

I am reading texts. I am scouring texts! I am contextualizing texts! I am amazing others with my superhuman ability to find the flaws in texts! Texts! Texts! Texts!

Punctuation.

How Was my Trip North?

2008-08-06T22:32:00.003-05:00

Well,

I went to Buttercup in Manhattan, the famous cupcake store opened by the ex-lover of the Magnolia owner (of Sex and City fame, when Magnolia owner and Buttercup lady broke up they had a public fight over who first made a hummingbird cupcake.) So I had to try it. Dude, you can buy cupcakes and cheesecake that crappy at Stop and Shop or Target. The frosting is flourescent (never a good sign). The peanut butter cheesecake tasted like it was made from an instant cheesecake mix. I had two bites of my spice cupcake, then fed the rest to the pigeons that live on my sister's roof. At least they enjoyed it.

And Kudos to Boston. Closing the one exit to the airport from the Expressway provided stimulation my 4 am drive to the airport might have otherwise lacked. Joke's on you Boston. I made the flight.

P.S. If you're wondering why the font and title look so awesome, thank Sean. Thanks Sean.

Why Does Moving Suck so Royally?

2008-07-15T23:21:00.002-05:00

Is it the PMS or the fact that I hate packing a suitcase let alone a whole apartment up? I just constantly feel like I can't get it organized the way I want it to, so then why bother? I have these fantasies of labeled boxes, stacked, tetris like with my things. My FAVORITE things. Unfortunately that's most of my things.

If my friends hadn't come over for packing party two weeks ago I'd be screwed. But there's still SO MUCH STUFF. If Bobbi hadn't come over tonight, I would have spent it watching To Love, Honor and Betray on Lifetime. The bad acting, the dramatic music, and oh the dialogue. But instead Bobbi helped me empty the dresser I have to get rid of since it won't fit in my new smaller (but more expensive, but has a pool and a porch and central air) apartment. We discovered I have a billion pairs of fishnets most of which I never wear. And the identical brown shirts. Lots and lots of brown. Throwing away is supposed to free you and be symbolic and the first ten or so bags were, but now it's an admission of defeat. Everything I buy comes with this bizarre childish fantasy that somehow if I can just find the right clothes or tights or shoes everything in my life will click. The three bags of stuff for the goodwill from one dresser and some shelves: testament to how wrong I am about that. Is it so emotional because stuff I don't use makes me feel greedy and foolish, each a soft piece of defeat? Or because I can't give it up, this belief in a platonic ideal of a wardrobe that will fix me? In the bottoms of the my drawers I find clothes that I forgot existed, but when I see them I can remember where and when and why I got them (and if they were on sale or not).

Fanatasy lives. In mine I'm neat. Organized. And I don't space out during conversations. I don't spend hours watching Tv. I do the dishes right away. I write every day. And exercise. Ok, so that sounds like the type of person I wouldn't get along with. In fact it might be the type of person I'd find myself irritated for hours afterwards just because they were so damn chipper when they said hello. But maybe that's why moving sucks: digging around in my fantasy lives and realizing that I can't measure up. And I'm the one making myself miserable. But will realizing any of this making packing tomorrow suck any less? I doubt it.

Alternative Grains for Swingers

2008-06-24T21:17:00.004-05:00

I made some biscuits today with buckwheat, millet and whole grain flour that had been soaked in kefir to neutralize the wicked enzyme inhibitors in whole grains. Yes grains may seem healthy but according to Sally Fallon , nutritionist extraordinaire, whole grains unsoaked will attack your systems like Red Sox fans after they've won the world series (why do they get so violent? What is it about New England that makes people break stuff when they're HAPPY?). I digress. I soaked those mofo's and then baked them and ended up with biscuits the color of paper bags, only softer and perhaps a bit more bitter. Nothing lots of butter and honey wouldn't fix. So now I have a freezer full of paper bag biscuits instead of a revised thesis.

Last week I took it (yes, it, my thesis with it's contrived ending) out to work on and the mother board on my computer died and I couldn't work for a week. Today, I had my computer back so I made biscuits. And coconut kefir. Oh and last night I bought so many shoes on zappos that my credit card company called me at 7:30 in the morning to see if my card had been stolen. No, I told Bank of America, after answering a multiple choice quiz about streets I've lived on and zip codes I've inhabited, no one stole my credit card. It was I in a black-out shoe buying frenzy. They will be returned. Every last gorgeous pair.

Brooklyn, measure of all things worth attending.

2008-06-24T01:02:00.004-05:00

Why oh why do I keep reading the Kane? I'm already pissed off enough in my life, but sometimes my regular angst isn't enough and I read things like the blog-which-shall-not-be-named. The Kane happens to be using Brooklyn as a yardstick of all things fun to do in Baton Rouge. As in commenting that an event was good because it was Brooklyn-esque. Oh, does that mean everyone there was oozing attitude instead of sweat? And yes, Cokane, I know it's so wacked that Baton Rougites actually do cool things besides wearing purple and gold and drive around looking at abandoned buildings and eating crawfish and funneling beer, but SURPRISE they do.

1) I love Brooklyn but if things in Baton Rouge were Brooklyn-esque, no one would be dancing or smiling or having duels with roman candles. Nor would a Brooklyn New Year's Eve party include the tying together of four (yes FOUR, geaux Scott) artillery shells. We crossed the streams and we paid the price with our clothing and some of us might have ended up with bruised legs and burns but wasn't that better than standing around in itchy sweaters with weird ass bandanas around our necks being cool?

2) Where else can you not be packed and then have stuff in your apartment moved out by random strangers who come by and haul away 300 pound elleptical machines, then later invite one over for beans and corn?

and

3) Ok Advocate, since when is hating on Baton Rouge NEWS? Am I a jealous writer who blogs out of spite? Perhaps. But seriously. I'm from Massachusetts. I bitch about everything and yet I have found a way to love this place where at 1 am I am sweating like...like someone who lives in Louisiana. Before I moved here, I had no idea the places sweat could trickle. Like from my stomach. Who ever thought stomachs could sweat?

Full Steam Ahead: Penelope gets all Sentimental about Louisiana

2007-11-09T00:07:00.000-06:00

Quote of the Week: “Penelope, you’re a Yankee and no matter how long you live in the South, you’ll never be able to overcome that.”

(Buster the incredible fighting kitty among the coconuts.)

Ok no one said that this week. But Dub did say it last week at Anna’s surprise birthday party and I liked it.

I’ll admit that this week, I got a wee bit depressed about the fact that I don’t know what I’m going to do next year except be squashed by the ridiculous amount of student loan debt I’ve racked up. On Wednesday decided I would move to New York once I graduated and try to get a job in publishing. There I could copy edit other people’s books by day and try to make contacts at night so I could get my novel published, but instead I’d have to go home after work because my back would hurt and all the other entry level writer hopefuls who are ten years younger than me will go out to trendy bars in the East Village, and get drunk and sleep their way to book contracts, while I lay in bed with an ice pack on L4 and L5 and talk to my friends on the phone about all the books I copy edit which are so awful and how my book is way better and why wasn’t it published yet and then I’d hang up worried that I’d become a whining bore and all my friends hated me. Then I’d fall asleep in front of the TV, and try to get up early to write but keep hitting snooze until I absolutely had to get out of bed, and ride to work on the subway having panic attacks about getting trapped in a subway tunnel.

But Wednesday night I went to go see “Low and Behold” at the Shaw Center. It’s a phenomenal movie. It combines a fictional story of an insurance adjuster in New Orleans after Katrina with real stories of people after the storm. It made me change my mind about that day’s plan to move to NYC. I got all fired up and decided to move to lower Plauquemines parish instead and hang out with the Croatian fisherman.

“Low and Behold” gave me one of those Louisiana moments where my eyes tear up and I think, “Damn, I didn’t know what love was until I opened my eyes and saw all those live oaks and smelled the sweet wood burning during fake winter and stopped being so g-d judgmental of all the people here.” That movie made me want to hug Louisiana until someone can smack some sense into all the politicians and dickhead corporations who screw this state over again and again. Mostly, I can’t believe I didn’t step foot here until I was twenty-nine. I’ve lived in West Virginia and Florida and Colorado, but I always felt like the East Coast was the center of the universe (any East Coaster who says otherwise is lying). I didn’t even know Louisiana existed, really. And the first year and half I lived here I HATED it. (Just ask my friends who had to listen to me complain about it all that time.) I couldn’t stand the blatant racism, the conservativism, the strip malls and chain stores everywhere.

I grew up on a salt marsh in a small coastal town in Massachusetts. I was and continue to be deeply tied to that land, to the way one particular tiny stretch of the rocky northern Atlantic smells and looks. But I’m not sure I knew what it was to love a place until I let Louisiana in. It makes me think of the first four lines of a Sylvia Plath poem (please keep reading, I swear I’m not gothing out on y’all), Love Letter.
(from Love Letter)
Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.

If you haven’t experienced that rush of expansion, the way Louisiana can touch your tender secret places, then scare the crap out of you and make you tear your hair out in frustration, and then show the best time you’ve ever had, this is not the blog for you.

I decided to start blogging in protest of another blog by a certain recent Yankee transplant to Baton Rouge who doesn’t know a thing about Louisiana and happens to be dissing on this town in a BIG way. A major, wicked, uniformed, holier-than-thou dis that is just plain mean-spirited at times. I mean, come on, if you’re going to hate on Baton Rouge, hate on the haters and the socio-political structures that f--- this town and the entire state of Louisiana over. We can start with the people who make mulch out of cypress trees and work our way up to Bobby Jindal. But griping about trick or treaters not wearing costumes and the name of the Advocate’s website? F U BaRou? Baton Rouge: Retarded or Just Slow? You better check yourself Miss BaRou. Or fais do do your hipster ass on outta here.

***Filled with innovative plans, ideas and good intentions, Penelope admits she’s been known to run out of steam on more than one occasion. She has thought about writing for publications such as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Elle, The Atlantic Monthly, The Baton Rouge Advocate, 225 Magazine, The Reveille and most recently the Baton Rouge Business Report. Other projects she’s planned but not completed include: Mary Queen of Spite, A Spite Documentary; making an Elvis Presley Mosaic out of Mardi Gras beads; stopping sweatshop production of Mardi Gras beads and creating a self-sustaining all Louisiana produced Mardi Gras bead economy; Sin and Salvation a weekend of strip clubs and mega churches; Pantoum, the Movie; reorganizing the stuff under the kitchen sink. ***