Tarhearted.

EMBARRASSING CONFESSION.

I cry every time I hear the Darlene Love song "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)." Every single time, including in the opening of my favorite Christmas movie, Gremlins. It's truly one of the greats.

BRENDA'S GOT A BABY.

I've been on an early 90's rap kick lately. Who knows why?

I recorded this video or Tupac's "Brenda's Got a Baby" onto VHS and watched it over and over again. It was a habit I had. I watched this tape in the early morning while I was waiting for my mom to get dressed so she could drive me to school.

If memory serves, this was around the time that I was also obsessed with "Stay" by Shakespeare's Sister and, thanks to Wayne's World, Bohemian Rhapsody was enjoying a crazy popularity amongst children who weren't born when it was originally released. I feel like there was a lot of music about the dangers of bad decision making for teenagers, a la "Janie's Got a Gun." I loved it!

I loved, loved, loved this video and I can see why. It's theater!

Random thoughts:

1. "Based on a true story." Isn't that usually reserved for stories that would otherwise seem incredible, like Fire in the Sky etc. Do we really need this preface to a story about a teenager in the inner city becoming pregnant?

2. I love groups of people walking in slow motion black & white. Also, Tupac is like the angel in It's a Wonderful Life, only way more depressing. Tupac is teaching us something! I wish an angel would show certain republicans how unwanted children "effect the whole community."

3. Brenda's dad is a real asshole. I know he's a junkie, but does he have to shoot up at the table where she's doing homework? (Note to Brenda: give it up, girl. You can hardly spell your name.)

4. Did Tupac just say the baby's father was Brenda's cousin? That came really fast and wasn't mentioned again. Incest? No biggie!

5. Did anybody see the Taylor Mac play "Okay" in the EST Marathon a couple of years ago, about a girl giving birth in the girls room at her prom? It was one of my favorite plays I've ever seen.

6. Every time I see a baby in Tupac's arms I want to grab it and run.

7. As manipulative and melodramatic and dumb as this song/video are, I'm totally pulled in. I'm such a sucker.

Now, to bring the drama from '91 to a complete close (for now) please enjoy "Stay" by Shakespeare's Sister.

WALK ON THE WILD SIDE.

I KNEW I didn't just dream that Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch sampled my favorite New York song, "Walk on the Wild Side" by Lou Reed. Nobody in my life that I surveyed remembered this, but here it is in all its heinous glory:

Way to steal from queer culture without acknowledging it, by the way. I love that.

THE END OF AN ERA.

I'm really sad that this decade is almost over. As much as I like aspects of the 1990's now, I really hated them at the time. I like the 80's much, much more in terms of music, so when my friends were listening to Pearl Jam, I was listening to the Psychadelic Furs or whatever. (They'd all be sorry for making fun of me a decade later when their music went out of style and mine came back in though.)

Anyway, this nameless decade (seriously... is it the aughts?), on the other hand, was a lot more up my alley in terms of music and fashion, Uggs and tights-as-pants notwithstanding.

To wrap up, here are some of my favorite albums of the last decade. Yes, I know some of them are obvious, but don't try to act like you weren't retarded for that first Strokes' album. In no particular order, the albums that mattered to me:

 

FannyPack- So Stylisic

This was one of the first albums I bought when I moved to New York, and one of my first "walk around Brooklyn like you own the damn place" albums. FannyPack is bound to be one of those forgotten novelties that'll come back at gay parties in another ten years. THANK GOD.

 

Yeah Yeah Yeahs- Fever to Tell

What can I say? One of the best bands of the decade, hands down, and it all started here.

 

The Strokes- Is This It?

They started the whole obnoxious hipster thing, but this is a really good album. So shut up.

 

The Pippettes- We Are The...

Cutesy 60's throw backs from England. i really loved this album.

 

Junior Senior- Move Your Feet

Queer rock with eclectic roots that you can dance to. Another favorite from my early New York days.

 

The Gossip- Standing in the Way of Control

Beth Ditto is cooler than you.

 

Interpol- Turn on the Bright Lights

Hello, college! Swoon. The emotions! The drama! Living in Seattle! Living in poverty! My college boyfriend. (Hi, Keehnan!)

The Libertines- Up the Bracket

One of the best rock albums of all times. Too bad Pete Doherty blew it.

Annie- Anniemal

Why are the Swedish so good at pop music? (see Junior Senior, The Sounds) I never liked her other albums as much as this one.

 

White Williams- Smoke

His low-fi New wave sound and cute, cute style give me a boner.

 

The Sounds- Living in America

Another Swedish favorite from early New York days. This was on repeat when I was first dating The Boyfriend, going out every night with hipsters, andl doing a lot of blow with my old roommate in Williamsburg (a story for another time.)

 

The New Pornogrpahers- Electric Version

This was the album, along with The Postal Service, that transitioned me from Seattle to New York in the summer of 2003.

 

Amy Winehouse- Back to Black

Please don't blow it, Amy. (See Pete Doherty.)

Gravy Train!!!!- Hello Doctor

Remember Electroclash? God, what a blast I had. I never thought explicitly queer hip hop would happen until this.

Santogold

A great album by a cute girl. People who compare her to M.I.A. are lazy or deaf.

 

Peaches- The Teaches of Peaches

Again, remember electroclash?

 

The Postal Service- Give Up

I know this has been co opted by car commercials, but it really meant a lot to me when it came out. "such Great Heights" was my walking-around-Seattle-and-feeling-emotional-'cause-I'm-about-to-move-to-New-York song.

M.I.A.- Kala

She's awesome, has great style, and we had the same hair stylist.

So, what we're your favortie albums? Politics and the economy aside, I hope the next ten years are as awesome as these were. I hope, because I'll be in my thrities (Jesus Christ!) that I'm a little happier and a little more grounded, while still being hip and fun.

BOY CRISIS.

I love their name. I love their sound. I love this video that borrows footage from my favorite blog, Everything is Terrible, and I'm pretty sure I saw an image of one of my other favorite bands in it. How can one band win so hard with me?

And just look at how cute they are. I wanna play Mystery Date with them at a girl's house .

THIS CHARMING MAN COLLAPSED.

Dear God,

I don't believe in you, but if I started would you stop taking people that I love? Why do you always call the good ones home? Why not take Katy Perry or that bigot, Buju Banton? You can't have Morrissey. I'm sorry, but you just can't.

I have had a pit in my stomach about this all weekend. I seriously don't know if I can handle it. You hear me, jerk? If you take Morrissey please take me too. A world without Moz is ugly and dull.

(Get well soon, Morrissey. For the love of God, please get well soon.)

So be a pal, God. Take somebody stupid, like Mariah Carey. Or how about all of The Pussycat Dolls?

Kisses,

Tarhearted

UPDATE: Morrissey is in stable condition. that means I have a direct line to God. Any favors you want called in?

MUSIC RECOMMENDATION.

I can't stop listening to "Burning" by The Whitest Boy Alive.

URGH! A MUSIC WAR

After a lifetime of wanting to see Urgh! A Music War I discovered by pure accident while at Videology that it had been released on DVD. First Shock Treatment and then Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. How lucky can I get? What's next, a Little Darlings release?

Anyway, I'd seen some of the performances on YouTube and the amazing Klaus Nomi performance was in the documentary about his life, The Nomi Song (which I highly recommend, by the way.) There were some really obscure bands on there! Surf Punks, anybody? Splodgenessabounds? Invisible Sex?

What surprised me was how some of the bands I love I wasn't so into live. OMD's performance of "Enola Gay" was a total bore, and I really love that song. On the flip side of this were the performances that totally knocked me out. I'm fucking obsessed with this performance by The Cramps singing "Tear It Up." How fucking sexy is Lux Interior here? holy crap! Pay special attention to his guitarists, who are both rare beauties.

I was never really that into The Cramps, but now I think I'd better reconsider my position. That performance was bananas.There was once a time when I wasn't really into The Gossip either, until I got to see them live. It's hard to believe Lux was almost 40 in this video.

Another performance I loved was by a band called Chelsea, whom I'm ashamed to admit I'd never heard of. Some internet research tells me that lead singer Gene October, who deserves his own Boner Jams entry based on this video, lost his original band when the formed (along with Billy Idol) Generation X. Here is Chelsea singing "I'm On Fire" which is a straight up class warfare jam, a sentiment I've been feeling a lot lately myself.

It's funny. I was starting to think I grew out of punk in favor of more modern and sophisticated rock, but lately I've been revisiting it so much. It seems to be all I really want to hear. I wonder what that's about. It's certainly having an effect on my writing.

BEST MOVIE EVER: SHOCK TREATMENT.

I recently attended a party full of movie buffs, when the circle I was sitting in began talking about our list of the most under seen and underrated films we could think of. This was a party thrown by somebody who works in horror film, so mostly people's lists skewed in that direction, but I was thrilled when several people brought up Shock Treatment. It's one of my top ten favorite movies, and being a fan of it can feel pretty lonely.

If you're not familiar with it, Shock Treatment is Richard O' Brien's 1981 follow-up to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Some call it a sequel or a semi-sequel, but that's not really fair. The movie's production seems to have been cursed with bad luck. Originally intended to be a more straight forward sequel entitled The Brad and Janet Show, the creators completely rethought it when industry strikes in the United States forced them to shoot entirely in an English film studio. Their solution was really fucking clever and ahead of its time.

In Shock Treatment, Brad and Janet (now played by Cliff De Young and the AMAZING Jessica Harper) are visiting their hometown, Denton, which you may remember as being held up in RHPS as the ideal American town and the beacon of normalcy. In actuality, Denton is a town that exists completely within a film studio, where half of the townspeople have their own series' and the other half of the townspeople sit in the audience all day watching them. It's very bizarre and unnerving and the lines between what is real and what is fiction get blurry.

Brad and Janet are plucked to appear on "Marriage Maze"- a game show for couples on the rocks- which results in Brad being sent away to "Dentonvale" (a medical drama) and Janet going to live with her parents (who have have their own series, "Happy Homes".) Meanwhile, Janet doesn't know that DTV's new owner, a fast food kingpin, has fallen in love with her and wants to make her "Miss Mental Health", a ploy to sell sanity to the people of Denton in the form of absolute mind control. Confused? Yeah, that's normal. you'd have to watch Shock Treatment about a hundred times to really understand it, if you ever really can. The last minute changes make it kind of convoluted. Still, it's pretty fascinating that this little movie accidentally predicted what reality television would do to the American psyche two decades before it actually happened.

I actually prefer Shock Treatment to Rocky Horror, which is an unpopular opinion to say the least. I think it's fascinating to watch the glitter and overt sexuality and rock and roll of Rocky Horror (and the 70's) give way to the minimalist, cold, self absorbed, new wave aesthetic of Shock Treatment (the 80's). Also, it's no secret that I love new wave music more than just about anything, so there's that.

I really, really wish Richard O' Brien would make another musical. I love, love, love his two movies and the pair of them have been some of my biggest influences on my aesthetic as a playwright. This style and music and aesthetic of this past decade would have been perfect for Richard O' Brien to make another movie and now it's almost over.(Is it weird that I miss this decade before it's finished?)

Richard O' Brien, where have you been?

LOVE IS ALL.

I have a new favorite band. It's been a while since a new band synced with me like this, and - no surprise- they're Swedish. I don't know what it is with me and Swedes, but nearly all of my favorite bands from the last decade have been Scandinavian. What makes them so damn good at pop music?

Anyway, Love is All makes music just like I like it: punchy, loud, beautiful, strange. Plus, a new awesome chick vocalist to swoon over.