Film Review--Paris Is Burning

Jennie Livingstone’s Paris Is Burning is a documentary made in 1990 that explores the little known and unexplored culture of black drag queens and transvestites in New York City at the end of the 1980s. At the time it was created, this type of behavior was seen as subversive by the mainstream and not much was done to fully understand it.

The narrative is centered around the Ball, a celebrated event in the underground world of drag. The Ball is essentially a runway for the different participants to walk down, showing off their talent and “realness” when it comes to being femme. The one with the best outfit, look, walk, and personality that fits the category the best wins a trophy and gains a certain high status within the community. Interviews with the house mothers (a house is essentially a nonviolent streetgang where they compete in the Ball) provide an insight into the personal lives of these men as they dress as or are on their way to fully transitioning into women. The director also highlights the differences between those in the older generation and the young “children.”

Livingston received funding for her project from the National Endowment for the Arts and kept the details to a select few to avoid controversy. After it was released, it was hailed by some as groundbreaking and by others, particularly black scholars, who referred to it as a source of entertainment for white people. Regardless of the cultural criticism, it still remains relevant to this day and is one of the few films to infiltrate this subject matter.

Album Review--Dowsing's All I Could Find Was You

Chicago has seen many great bands come and go, and hopefully the newly formed foursome Dowsing is here to stay (at least for a while). When a group of college friends come together to play music and have fun, their passion and excitement for their project definitely shows.

Dowsing formed in late 2010 and by mid-2011, they had already signed onto Count Your Lucky Stars Records and released their debut EP, All I Could Find Was You. This six song release will take you back to your old days of innocence, being young and stupid, falling in and out of love, and learning valuable lessons. When you listen to this record, all you will want to do it just turn it up, forget everything, and sing as loud as you can. In fact, their songs welcome this result—more than half of them have significant parts dedicated to chorus chants and repetitive, nostalgic phrases with words and subject matter that everybody can relate to.

Dowsing’s music can mostly be compared to that of The Promise Ring, but they still create a new sound of their own. It can best be described as subdued melodic pop punk paired with rough vocals. If you’re in a mood to just have fun, be yourself, and jam out, Dowsing is a must-listen.

Album Review--Bloc Party's Silent Alarm

Silent Alarm, Bloc Party’s debut album, was released in 2005 by Witchita Recordings and was well-received internationally by critics and new fans alike. The British foursome proved early on in their career that they could blend genres, create a new type of experimental sound, and still somehow manage to appeal a variety of people.

The album teems with rhythm and steady upbeat tempos that are hard to stop listening to. The songs manage to sound thoughtful and pensive but can be danced to without having an overly electronic sound. The consistency of the music throughout the release can either make people love it or hate it. With most CDs, there is usually “that one fast song” and “that one slow song,” but Bloc Party doesn’t try to please varying preferences for one or the other. The fluidity of each song going into the next is enough for someone to be able to either enjoy the album as a cohesive whole, or to perhaps "just listen to that one song."

The lyrics are personal yet ambiguous. Lead vocalist Kele Okereke states that this allows for the listeners to interpret them for themselves and take what they can get out of the songs on their own. They do, however, have underlying political messages that make it very clear as to where they stand on the political spectrum. “Helicopter,” for instance, is widely believed to refer to America’s ex-president George W. Bush when they sing “He doesn’t like chocolate…he’s born a liar, he’ll die a liar...some things will never be different…just like his dad, just like his dad.”

Regardless of where the listeners’ beliefs lie in terms of politics, this album is one that most people can agree upon. Its subtle experimentalism is accessible and will either soothe or energize you.

Web Content Review--Whopple.com

Whoople.com is a blog-style website that features interviews with artists. Run by Anne Marie, a retired media publicist, the goal of Whopple is to shed light on currently practicing artists and to spread awareness of their work publicly. Once an artist is accepted for an interview, Marie claims that she sends out a full press release to all of her art-related connections, made during her years as a publicist. This seems like a win-win situation for both the featured artists and the website, but does the site actually accomplish what it states?

Upon first visiting the site, the lack of professional and aesthetic design skills is apparent. It uses a Wordpress blog interface, which makes the navigation and content accessible and easy to find. However, the choice of color, fonts and background image are reminiscent of build-your-own-websites of the early 2000s such as Yahoo!’s Geocities that spawned a number of hideous user-made web pages. Such small tweaks like those has a huge impact on the viewer. By merely looking at a site, a viewer can tell right away whether or not the website is trustworthy or a sham just by how cohesive the design is. Marie strives for some professionalism, but Whopple’s credibility can easily be upgraded by hiring a design pro or by using a pre-made layout offered by Wordpress.

The content is only slightly above calibur in relation to the aesthetics. The categories for types of artists are both generally and extremely specific. General categories include labels such as “Digital,” “Mixed Media,” and “Photography.” The other categories wrongfully use art historical terms such as “Impressionistic” and “Surreal.” Both of those terms refer to art movements specific to a certain time and place. Although a piece of art can appear to have the visual traits of an Impressionist work, by no means is the artist an Impressionist. The worst category of all is “Contemporary.” Since all of the featured artists work in this day and age, they are all technically “contemporary.” The array and types of categories show Marie’s thoroughly lacking education in art and art history.

Whopple’s whole shtick is artist interviews that provide a deeper insight into how the artist works and creates. However, this too falls short of any depth as you slowly realize that the same generic questions are asked of every single artist who applies to be on the site. “How long have you been an artist, do you make a living off your art, what is your inspiration, what was your first job” and so forth do not highlight the artists as Whopple states. It makes you wonder if these questions were on the application to even be considered for the website. Readers get a peek at the artist without the presence of the interviewer to further engage the interviewee’s answers.

All in all, Whopple is good if all you want is general background information for a lesser-known artist or an introduction to the art world. The immature design and content most likely do not attract dealers and galleries as the website would have one think. One of the few good things about Whopple is that it does not cater to one particular kind of art or viewer and is unbiased in the information provided. This appears to be more so of a personal project for Anna Marie than an actual place for artists to show off themselves to the world.

TV Pilot Review--Breaking Bad

Have you ever found yourself wondering how far you would go in order to make ends meet under certain circumstances? What would those circumstances have to be, exactly, and just how willing are you to put your limits, both mental and physical, to the test? Don’t ponder over your own predicament for too long--if you tune into AMC Sunday evenings at 11 PM, you can forget all about your own problems and instead follow those of Walter White in the debut of the 2008 series Breaking Bad.

The producers waste no time in getting the audience’s attention. Within seconds, you get bombarded with a pair of pants and a shirt flying through the desert air, only to get run over by a speeding RV moments later. This puzzling scene is accompanied by sirens, and is interrupted with shots of a puny older white man wearing only tighty-whities and a gas mask as he tries to gain control of the hurtling vehicle, which by now is tumbling directionless all over New Mexico’s rocky topography. As the car comes to a halt, the man rolls out with a video camera, and, still semi-nude and covered in dust, he proudly stands up and states the following into the camera: “My name is Walter Hartwell White. I live at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87104. To all law enforcement entities, this is not an admission of guilt.”

Now what the f*%^ was that?!

Bryan Cranston stars as Walter White, your below-than-average Joe, living with his family in New Mexico. Cranston is no stranger to playing common suburban dads and is best known for his role as Hal, the father in the Malcolm in the Middle series. When it becomes known that White is a high school chemistry teacher who also works a second shift at a car wash to make a few extra bucks, you definitely begin to wonder how the hell he ends up racing in the desert in underwear and gas masks. While pilot episodes usually present a sort of conflict that sets the foundation for the rest of the series, it is rare for the main character to undergo such a drastic personality change to this degree in under 45 minutes.

After the stunning opening sequence, the show takes a break from all the action and brings you back three weeks earlier to the scene of White’s 50^th birthday party, where all the underlying issues slowly begin to unfold. Right away, it is apparent that White has a strained but loving relationship with his pregnant wife, Skylar (Anna Gun), and tries his best to be a good father to his son, Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte), who has cerebral palsy. He is unhappy with his life, and yet he can’t seem to really do anything about it until he is randomly reacquainted with an old deadbeat student of his, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). They strike up an odd friendship to say the least, and things only get stranger from there.

Breaking Bad chronicles an over-the-top middle life crisis of a man desperate to grasp hold of something new in his mundane life. The show explores White’s breaking point and how he handles his financial troubles in a manner that relates with many viewers. The program presents many serious issues and falls under the category of  “drama,” but with the ridiculousness of some of its contents, it’s difficult to say whether or not producer Vince Gilligan (of X-Files fame) intended for it to be more of a comedy.

Walter White’s life became so unbearable that even he had to step back and revisit who he is as a person as well as his moral standing. How far will he go in order to feel alive again? This series appears to be one with a long over-arching narrative so unless you have plenty of time to dive into a new TV show, avoid at all costs because you will get sucked in and you won’t be able to break away.

Revisiting The Skyscraper: Jeanne Gang's Aqua Tower

It’s difficult to differentiate between the hundreds of almost identical-looking skyscrapers dotting along Chicago’s beautiful skyline. While varying in height, the majority of the skyscrapers are black, gray, white, rectangular, and often quite indistinguishable from their neighboring structures. Now, enter Jeanne Gang: a successful yet accessible award-winning architect who set her sights on reinventing what architecture can do for the tiring urban landscape. Her first-ever skyscraper is Aqua, a mixed-use residential high-rise on 200 north Columbus Drive, which was completed in 2009. Aqua manages to discreetly breathe in new life to Chicago’s growingly stale condominium scene, standing silently like a nerdy quiet high school girl among a hoard of loud and athletic jocks.

Gang, an Illinois native, received her bachelors in architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and continued her education at Harvard University, where she graduated with distinction. She went on to work with famed architect Rem Koolhass in the Netherlands before founding her own Chicago-based firm, Studio Gang, in 1997. Within its fourteen-year life span, the firm has won countless awards and captured global audiences and continues to do so. Their work is even on display in several museums, national as well as international. In the world of contemporary architecture, where standard and uniform designs are abundant, Studio Gang pushes their designs to the limit without dramatically going over the edge.

Jeanne Gang already had several Chicago ventures under her belt before she began to conceptualize Aqua like the Brickweave House, a media production center for Columbia College, a boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo and many others. She is no stranger to the history and familiar forms that have dominated Chicago since the turn of the twentieth century. It should not be a surprise, then, that developer Jim Lowenberg selected her when he had something new in mind for the area in between Millennium Park and Lake Shore Drive. Having received that opportunity, Gang certainly took this project to new heights—Aqua is now the tallest building in the world designed by a woman at 859 feet.

When viewed at eye level, Aqua is not as impressive as one is led to believe from all the publicity and praise. It blends in with its surroundings and seems quite like any other ordinary high-rise. Its only distinctive feature is a break from the linear forms that typically allow audiences to distinguish between the different floors of the building. The balconies seem broken up by ambiguous organic shapes that look as if they are slowly trickling down the sides of the structure.

Aqua’s eloquence can only be experienced when looking directly up at it. Viewers are instantly drawn toward the building’s façade, filled with a beautiful arrangement of undulating balconies that rhythmically surround the rectangular glass building, a reflection of nearby Lake Michigan. Studio Gang’s website refers to it as “a vertical topography shaped by the forces of the city.” The now famous balconies have been altered and stretched by Gang so that people can get the most of their view of the city around them as well as underneath them.

She stays true to her design philosophy—function should not be sacrificed for a new innovative architecture. In fact, as interesting as the wavy features are, they merely mask typical construction of a skyscraper. Yet the subtlety of the design and how Gang slightly tweaked an unexciting feature of a high-rise and completely reimagined in is astounding.

The building has been designed for residential use, but now a Radisson Blu hotel is slated to open in 2012. With an endless number of amenities including a rooftop garden, exercise areas, and views to die for, Aqua makes the most of its location and sustainable design. Although long famous before Aqua’s construction, this is certainly Gang’s breakthrough moment. After recently being awarded a MacArther Genius Grant, Gang is a rising star who is not afraid of using architecture’s limits to create unlimited possibilities. 

Revisiting the Mona Lisa

What's so damn great about the Mona Lisa?

Painted between 1503 and 1506 in Florence, Italy, the Mona Lisa is arguably the most famous painting in the world, as well as an instantly recognizable icon of present-day visual culture. But of all of Leonardo da Vinci's great works (and there are many), why is it the Mona Lisa? Afterall, it's just another portrait commissioned by a wealthy patron in the early 16th century. Lisa Gherardini Giacondo is seated in the center, hands delicately folded, with an ambiguous expression that slightly borders on a sly smile. She is situated in some kind of natural, outdoor environment as vague as her emotion.

How boring.

Yet for some reason, six million people insist on flocking to the Louvre Museum in Paris each year just to see her, where it is a part of its permanent collection. Even when they finally get to the room where the piece is hung, they can forget about getting close. Hoards of people in small bunches stand around it, fighting anybody who interferes with their ability to take their soon-to-be Facebook picture next to it. Most give up easily and accept the fact that they got a fifteen second glimpse and move on. But what it really comes down to is the experience--not the fact that you saw the Mona Lisa, but the fact that the Mona Lisa saw you.

Why not visit the other portrait galleries where other bored rich wives are on display? John Singleton Copley's 1771 painting of Mrs. Thomas Gage is also a crowd pleaser; why not stand in line for that? Sure, da Vinci used a new technique of blending light and shadow in the Mona Lisa but other artists and other works of art exhibit new approaches all the time. The Mona Lisa's popularity just got the best of her.

Bragging to friends about seeing the Mona Lisa can only get you so many cool points. Until the vast majority of the world's population beings to appreciate the painting for what it actually is instead of treating it otherwise, be prepared for disappointment.

Black Dogs by Jason Buhrmester

Money, sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. These four things are, of course, the best things in life. And this book has got them all.

Set in suburban Maryland in the 1970s, Jason Buhrmester’s Black Dogs: The Possibly True Story of Classic Rock’s Greatest Robbery follows a group of young men as they plan their get rich quick schemes with oftentimes failing results. Told with wit, this short novel outlines Buhrmester’s idea of the events that may have led up to the true yet still unsolved mystery of who and how someone stole $200,000 from Led Zeppelin.

The plot unfolds through the eyes of the main character, Patrick. Patrick seems to be the only upstanding citizen with a conscience in his deadbeat town who actually had the means to get out of it and start a new life in New York City. However, he quickly goes back to his old ways moments upon his arrival thanks to his neighborhood high school friends who still rely on breaking the law to make a living. Alex, the other main character, was just released from prison after getting caught during a heist in which Patrick was able to get away. The two reunite at Alex’s welcome home party, along with their other friends Keith, Frenchy, and Danny, who, according to Buhrmester, are “guys who got the ‘burn out’ part down but forgot the ‘fade away.’”

Headed by Patrick, they concoct an ingenious plan to rob Led Zeppelin of the thousands of dollars that they reportedly get in cash after playing each show. Little do they know, it is going to require much more work than one night of mischief to actually succeed in robbing a legendary rock band. The group encounters a series of obstacles along the way, realizing that they need to rip off more people and businesses than ever in order to get remotely close to the big money. Just throw in some Black Sabbath, drinks, a holier-than-thou religious killer biker gang led by the gruesome Backwoods Billy, and the boys are officially in for the misadventure of their lives.

In real life, nobody sympathizes with criminals. Criminals are considered to be a bunch of bad apples who should be kept away. Now, either readers are just too used to the fact that their protagonists are always the good guys, or Buhrmester can fool anybody into feeling sorry for anyone. Although the characters’ incriminating pasts are established at the very beginning, audiences will grow to love--and even empathize with them--regardless of how many times they have gone to jail or how many people they’ve scammed. The bond between the group grows stronger as they continue caring for each other and learn how to place absolute trust in another as each distraction complicates achieving their main goal. One is instantly drawn into the distinct and vivid personalities of the individual and can find a part of themselves in that person, whether it’s a desirable quality or not.

Buhrmester also has a talent for crafting every scenario down to the very last detail so well that readers will find themselves racing next to the crew down the hallways of the Drake Hotel, hearts pounding and scrambling to find the money, all while trying not to get caught. His choice of language is so accurate and precise that if this book were to be adapted into a movie, a screenplay would be completely unnecessary. Buhrmester takes his time carefully laying out the groundwork so that every character, place, and object is well defined and has a purpose in the overarching story. The real action doesn’t even pick up until more than halfway through the narrative (but it’s worth the wait).

This work of fiction is a fun and quick read for anyone in the mood for some lighthearted entertainment. Although the book’s storytelling and plot devices are juvenile in nature, it surpasses the predictable category of young adult fiction. Adults will recall their smoke hazed teenage years, when the only thing that really mattered was the music and where the next party was going to be. Black Dogs captures the essence of adolescent culture in the 70s so that this generation’s youth is able to read it and appreciate it. Let's just hope they realize it's a fiction novel and they don't get any ideas.

Snowing--I Could Do Whatever I Wanted If I Wanted

Stream the album here

Add Snowing to the list of hundreds of contemporary bands that directly and poorly emulate their sound from mid-90s Midwest emo bands. It is painstakingly obvious that the Pennsylvanian foursome listened to too much Cap’n Jazz in high school and decided to hop on the current emo revival bandwagon, minus the stereotypical notion that one has to be perpetually sad. Music style aside, Snowing’s first full-length album I Could Do Whatever I Wanted If I Wanted is a 29.1 minute long collection of poorly curated and constructed songs.

Released this past year as a follow-up to their widely circulated five-track demo/EP, Fuck Your Emotional Bullshit, this latest release has proved to be classic Snowing—boring and repetitive. Every single song sounds exactly the same with no particular unique parts that help listeners make distinctions between them other than a line or two of occasional vocal chants. It is impossible to tell whether or not a song has completely ended because the next track is its exact equivalent; this poor excuse for a band may as well have released an album with eleven duplicate tracks of one song. Because of this, the album lacks the feel of being a whole entity and lyrically ends up sounding like an assorted mix tape compilation consisting of someone crying about his most recent break-up, being caught up in an unfortunate situation and, strangely enough, decided that the act of reading House of Leaves was important enough to warrant its own song.

Besides lacking any emotional depth, Snowing is also musically forgettable. The vocalist’s jagged high-decibel wailing may be piercing and striking at first, but it gradually blends in with messy versions of the characteristic and overused mathy guitar work reminiscent of a string of 8-bit video game music (in the same key, nonetheless). Imagine hearing your fifteen-year-old son’s first ever punk band playing a show in your suburban garage—ten times faster while drunk—and you have the entirety of I Could Do Whatever I Wanted If I Wanted. By the end of each song, the constant whining becomes inaudible as the violent crash of so-calling “singing,” screaming, and instrumentation collide together like a predicted earthquake. It may sound the exact opposite of dull, but after hearing identical noises for precisely 29.1 minutes, it can get old.

Fans of Cap’n Jazz, Algernon Cadwallader, Grown Ups and the like should give this album a quick listen if only just to become familiar with this band who has made a small but well-known name for themselves in today’s emo scene. What they will discover is a group of guys whose only goal seems to be playing in a band “just because” and an eleven-song album dedicated entirely to unskilled guitar playing and complaining. Snowing plays songs for the sake of playing songs, and to them, there really is nothing more. 

Evenings--North Dorm EP

Stream the EP Here

Charlottesville, Virginia native Nathan Broaddus, performing under the moniker “Evenings,” is one of the many trying to pursue projects which dabble with the possibilities of electronic music. Where he succeeds is where others try and fall short. His “North Dorm” EP, although not a full-length album, exhibits Broaddus’ full musical prowess and his strong desire to creatively advance ambient and electronic music.

Unexpected heavier beats (which have an almost hip-hop quality to them) accompanied with supple tones and whispered vocal samples mixed in with samples of sounds found in nature distinguish his music from other run-of-the-mill ambient acts whose sound gets soft, repetitive, and boring—fast. Most ambient music serves as a mood piece; mere sounds to fill up the space between walls or the air next to your ears. Rather than utilizing sounds that will eventually tire and stagnate, Broaddus brings simple beats to life by carefully paying attention to each quality and arranging them in such a perfect manner that one cannot get tired of hearing them. He also avoids falling into the trap of producing overly digitized sounds and maintains an earthy ambience throughout the whole EP.

The first track, “Still Young” lets listeners know immediately that they are listening to something new and unconventional, as their ears are met with strong yet not overpowering drum beats paired together with electronic beats and the eventual “chorus” of repetitive guitar strumming. “Babe” and “Favorite Maze” are the more mellow tracks which echo the style of the first, followed by my personal favorite “Friend [Lover].” “Goodbye Forever” is an appropriate way to the end the album, which eventually fades away and ends with a chorus of crickets.

Relaxing yet stimulating, the best time to listen to Evenings is, in fact, evenings. Take a listen after a long day of work or school; you will be lulled either into a deep meditation or be provided with a soundtrack for productivity.