My middle name is "buzzkill"

Feh: Royal Wedding. Why is America obsessed?* I am repelled by the wedding-industrial complex, grossed out and offended that anyone would spend $30 million on a wedding, generally opposed to marriage in the first place, and really, on top of it, MONARCHY WHAT THE FUCK? Seriously, it's the 21st century, and the US of A gets all squidgy over a "commoner" becoming a "princess"? Didn't we fight a fucking revolution about that monarchy crap? The whole construct of "nobility" is revolting. Yuck.

A lot of people I consider otherwise reasonable got up at the ass-crack (as in, before dawn) to watch a wedding that will TOTALLY get re-run over and over for the next three days. Baroo??



*this is a rhetorical question. The answer, obviously, is "Patriarchy."

career change?

I'm working on an exhibition involved fashion photographs from the 1940s to the 1960s, and I'm finding the research kind of exciting. Suddenly I want to change paths and be a costume/fashion/textile historian. Well, maybe not so much the techniques of textile, because I cannot get excited about warps and wefts and dye techniques, but fabric and clothing and shoes are interesting to me. Also the ways in which fashion photographs changed over just those two decades - very interesting. I think there's room in costume history for gender analysis, especially when you mix it with photography, because not only are you dealing with the clothing designer's ideas about the garment, but then you have to take into account the point of view of the photographer, art director, and client. What is the message Vogue, or McCall's, or Harper's Bazaar is trying to deliver with this photo? Why pick that dress and that belt? Obviously, at the very base of the pyramid is the imperative: SELL MAGAZINES. Running a close second is: SELL GARMENTS. But then - there's this complex mix of messages, brands, desires, art and commerce.

I just watched "The September Issue" documentary about the development of Vogue's September issue in, I think it was about 2008, and although Wintour is clearly the final authority on all things Vogue right now, there are a lot of visions competing in that organization.

Part of me, of course, the elitist, wants to dismiss it all as puffery, vanity, commerce. But there is real gender analysis to be done here - and Marxist analysis - regarding the ways that fashion and fashion photography push the consumer and the consumer sometimes pushes back. Which is the cart? Which is the horse?

Succumbing to the ordinary

I am watching as a friend succumbs to the ordinary, to the script that was laid out for him at birth by this dumbfuck town he was born into, and it is depressing as hell. Soon he will get a factory job, marry his dumbass redneck infant of a girlfriend, go to church twice a week, and raise more dumbass rednecks who think the likes of Glenn Beck aren't lying, poisonous sacks of shit. It's like watching somebody sink beneath the surface.

Jezebella on tour, Spring 2011

I've been out and about lately. Went to Tulsa to visit some friends, where we drank Guinness in the streets at Kilkenny's Pub. Lovely ginger crowd, but the music wasn't Irish...wtf? Seriously, play some Irish music on St. Pat's day, eh?

Visited the Gilcrease Museum and the Philbrook Museum. I may have more to say about them later. I had some...ISSUES... with an American history exhibition at the Gilcrease. The continuing honky-fication of American history mystifies me. It's the 21st century, for fucks' sake, do we still have to act like the only Americans since 1492 were white guys? Criminy. Both museums had some stellar works, some mediocre works, and decent Native American art collections.

Went to Jackson, MS last weekend to see the Orient Expressed show at the MMA. Good idea, lovely installation, some great works by Robert Henri, William Merritt Chase, Hiroshige, and others. Also some kind of not-so-awesome Orientalist works which. I found the exhibition a bit lacking in its narrative.

Went to Hubfest in Hattiesburg a few weeks ago, volunteered with Planned Parenthood's info booth, drank some beer in the street, smelled a lot of meat-on-a-stick (gross) and decided that, really, funnelcake is the trashy poor relation of beignets and I'd rather just wait til I can have a beignet than eat such a poor substitute. I mean, you would think one fried dough products is the same as the next, but no, not really. Funnelcakes are too heavy and greasy, and probably fried in the same oil as corndogs and god-knows-what-all. Beignets are light and fluffy and not at all meat-tainted.

So: now I've talked myself into craving some beignets. Damn. And maybe a nice hunk of fry bread. Man, I love fry bread. I like the crispy southwestern kind with cinnamon on it, and the fluffy Choctaw kind with just a slightly sweet flavor, just out of the fryer...nom. Now my mouth is watering. Dammit.