Grace Reading Series

I have this playlist I listen to over and over and over and it is freaking me out.

Freddie Mercury has me by the throat. Freddie Mercury might as well have been TEACHING my elementary school classrooms when I was little--that Persian, gay, big, complex English eccentric was right there at the pizza parlor and the roller rink in our hearts, at 7, 8, 9, and that is a feat, and that means that you can do ANYTHING.

Itunes has just informed me that I can download the new Tori album now. That's good, because my neighbor has to feel about my playlist by now how I feel about her thing with the 2001 Wilco album five times every Saturday: I like it too but do us a favor--

Time for something new.

(There is another blog post I didn't put up but you don't need it. It's that: The women have had it with this crap we're enduring right now. We're done. Check out the always-on-point--as I have routinely remarked back since my Cupcake days--, the Sasha Frere-Jones on how Tori and Bjork are expressing precisely how it is time to step up to the plate. In the same week-amazing no? We know this. Our beacons are telling it to us. We're just not quite sure--consciously--HOW to do that yet.)

This playlist is key to that for me. It's tons of energy, but fun, and makes the assumptions about humanness that we all made back in the eighties, before that was worn away by so many corporate nasty takeovers of our landscape and hearts. This playlist reminds me I can fight and I can sing at the same time and I am not so scared.

My playlist is full of Queen, and includes "Solsbury Hill," and the three best Go-Gos songs, and the three best John Cougar Mellencamp songs, that one Siouxsie Sioux song Peek-A-Boo, the three best Squeeze songs, "Boys Don't Cry," some other eighties loveliness including the Stevie Nicks duet "Leather and Lace" which shows up so often, randomly, in my life these days it's like a message from beyond and two more songs that I just realized are really important that I am including below that took my breath away when I realized what they were ACTUALLY saying to me.

(This is after months of listening to them. Sometimes my conscious mind=a little slow. The intuition always knows, however).

After about a month of my little habit here I stuck Tori's massive new single "Big Wheel" off of her new album American Doll Posse in there and it felt like "Big Wheel" had sought out and returned to its biological family--almost nothing outside the eighties fit on this playlist, but "Big Wheel was perfect. And it was like gas in the car for me in my work with classes and helping women market themselves and doing intuitive readings and writing books: every vibe has a time, and this is a big time, and a big vibe.

Anyway, no matter how I shuffle it, this playlist always starts with "Children's Story," from Slick Rick.

I didn't get why--it seems sort of random. I figured the bassline must have matched the other songs, or something. But it's much more:

Just tonight, AFTER I started this blog post and was listening to it, I realized, what I'm hearing in this song is now a precise allegory for the Bush Administration:

Look:

Here we go,
Once upon a time not long ago,
when people wore pajamas and lived life slow,
When laws were stern and justice stood,
and people were behavin' like they ought ta good,
There lived a lil' boy who was misled,
by anotha lil' boy and this is what he said:
"Me, Ya, Ty, we gonna make sum cash,
robbin' old folks and makin' tha dash",
They did the job, money came with ease,
but one couldn't stop, it's like he had a disease,
He robbed another and another and a sista and her brotha,
tried to rob a man who was a D.T. undercover,
The cop grabbed his arm, he started acting erratic,
he said "Keep still, boy, no need for static",
Punched him in his belly and he gave him a slap,
but little did he know the lil' boy was strapped,
The kid pulled out a gun, he said "Why did ya hit me ?",
the barrel was set straight for the cop's kidney,
The cop got scared, the kid, he starts to figure,
"I'll do years if I pull this trigga",
So he cold dashed and ran around the block,
cop radioes it to another lady cop,
He ran by a tree, there he saw this sista,
a shot for the head, he shot back but he missed her,
Looked around good and from expectations,
so he decided he'd head for the subway stations,
But she was coming and he made a left,
he was runnin' top speed till he was outta breath,
Knocked an old man down and swore he killed him,
then he made his move to an abandoned building,
Ran up the stairs up to the top floor,
opened up the door there, guess who he saw?,
Dave the dope fiend shootin' dope,
who don't know the meaning of water nor soap,
He said "I need bullets, hurry up, run!"
the dope fiend brought back a spanking shotgun,
He went outside but there was cops all over,
then he dipped into a car, a stolen Nova (?),
Raced up the block doing 83,
crashed into a tree near university,
Escaped alive though the car was battered,
rat-a-tat-tatted and all the cops scattered,
Ran out of bullets and still had static,
grabbed a pregnant lady and out the automatic,
Pointed at her head and he said the gun was full o' lead,
he told the cops "Back off or honey here's dead",
Deep in his heart he knew he was wrong,
so he let the lady go and he starts to run on,
Sirens sounded, he seemed astounded,
before long the lil' boy got surrounded,
He dropped the gun, so went the glory,
and this is the way I must end this story,
He was only seventeen, in a madman's dream,
the cops shot the kid, I still hear him scream,
This ain't funny so don't ya dare laugh,
just another case 'bout the wrong path,
Straight 'n narrow or yo' soul gets cast(?).

(I would change it to "Dick, the dope fiend"--metaphorically speaking of course--but that's just me.)

Anyway: since "Big Wheel" fit in so well, I got to thinking that this playlist encompasses my cover requests for the Tori tour. I want to hear her cover Slick Rick. How amazing, no?

The other song that is oddly required for me on this list, is "Mary, Mary," which I thought I was keeping around for the "why ya buggin'" of yore, but these lyrics do a bit of a trick too:

This girl Mary I knew so well
I met her on the road in a fly hotel
High on the heels and never failed
(Clubs and the pubs is where she dwelled)
Story about Mary was well to tell
She seemed to scheme for a dream to sell
She spent a night locked in a cell
I knew Mary well cause she +Raising Hell+

[D.M.C.]
It's not Mary who was quite - contrary
Talkin bout Mary who was always in a - hurry
The things she needed were necessary
She did not need, a busted cherry
True and blue just like a blueberry
Ask if she's crazy and I'll say very
Livin in a house that's out on the prairie
I worry about Mary cause Mary is scary!

You watch one episode of "Run's House" and you know that man deals with the divine feminine, holding down the fort in New Jersey with his girls and his flock and his spirit, and don't even get me started about Russell. I saw him on Oprah last week and I don't think it's just the vegan thing and great dermatology: he really does glow a little like a bodhisattva. Maybe you saw the "Cribs" where he shows us his Glinda the Good Witch statuette on his daily altar??

In honor of this new gorgeously zeitgeisty Tori album which I haven't heard yet, I will say two things. One, when I first listened to "Big Wheel," the "gimme 8---gimme 7---gimme 6--" freaked me out. And now of course I love it. It freaked me that she was holding that space for herself, made me nervous with the claps and that bold pause! Actually nervous--love that. And this always happens with Tori's new stuff for me--because she pushes. She's mapped out some new turf that cuts to the bone, holds a newly powerful space that is outside the comfort zone of what she got us used to last time. I haven't listened to anything else off the album yet, I am going to be sure to do so before tomorrow night.

And two: my other big requests from my playlist for her cover bits on this coming tour (last tour I wanted to hear "Sugar Daddy" from Hedwig but no luck) would be "Our Lips Are Sealed," the Mellencamp, "Pink Houses," and then also the Dire Straits song "Money for Nothing." Toriphiles: think about what the five alter egos of American Doll Posse could do with those. AND, I know this sounds nuts, but "White Lines" was on this list for awhile (doesn't bear too many listens, nixed it) though I have to say, if I were DJing I would mix it into a jam with "Barons of Suburbia." Then I would mix in "Genius of Love" (see below).

Okay, that is my big Tori moment here. I have got to stop blogging because there are 300 emails in the inbox. Goodnight darlings and keep an eye out for my new marketing for women artists class, which may, if I really step up to the plate, be entitled, "We Are the Motherfucking Champions."

from "Genius of Love":

What you gonna do when you get out of jail?
I'm gonna have some fun
What do you consider fun?
Fun, natural fun

I'm in heaven
With the maven of funk mutation

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 11:33 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The only thing I can remember about the Choate Rosemary Hall laundry is that it was extremely risky to smoke behind it (though possible if desperate) and that someone kept fucking stealing my Minor Threat tshirts.

Apparently, however, the endless CRH t's on the privileged youngins are the root of the supposedly "real model" American Apparel billboard with a 12-year-old-looking model in a leotard in a crotch-flashy pose that I have the misfortune of always having to drive past on my way home to Brooklyn.

According to the Choate Alumni Magazine:

Why T-shirts? Charney says he became enamored of the all-cotton Russell Athletic heather-gray T-shirts and Champion athletic wear issued at Choate’s Johnson Athletic Center. At that time, only poorer quality polyester blends were available in Canada. . . .

During breaks, he would bring his haul of American contraband down to the Amtrak station in Wallingford and board The Montrealer. Twelve hours later, he was reselling the T-shirts to his friends in Montreal for a profit. Charney acknowledges “the idea for a retailing business involving ‘American Apparel’ had its beginning at Choate Rosemary Hall.”

Here's to hoping he comes back for one of the weekly school meetings to discuss the benefits of masturbating in front of women's magazine reporters.

(The other great thing about this issue is that the photo of Charney is paired with a inflatable looking Ivanka Trump '00 (scroll down to p.13), which shocked me because I'd heard she'd been very very thrown out. Guess not, hmmmm--will mysteries never cease?)

In addition to exposing me to the perfect de Beauvoir quotes to stun and irritate my parents, Choate taught me to maneuver around the menaces of hair tests for acid in the infirmary and the viciousness of entire posses of 16-year-old-bulimic narcissists from Greenwich, so it's not surprising that many of its alums have become wiggly entrepreneurs who rewrite certain rules and see new ways through old boy terrain.

However, the "real" of those hideous American Apparel ads is about as fresh as Skull and Bones or a standard lacrosse hazing.

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 10:18 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Sequestered in the house by the weird flood weather we're having in New York. Not blogging so much these days--honestly I think it might be that I got cable. Slightly pathetic, but do you have any idea how amazing Miami Vice reruns are? I am not kidding. The ur-male-melodrama. Twin Peaks would not have been possible without it--I never really understood that lineage before.

There was an episode last week guest-starring, again, I am totally serious, James Brown and Chris Rock and a bunch of alien abductees and the worst visual effects ever, involving James Brown's pompadour floating in the Miami sky, but with the face of Crockett & Tubbs's coworker who is getting abducted sort of pasted into the hair, like when you stick your face into the board with the hole and the charlie brown painting at the state fair. Guys in suits with dark glasses and close haircuts popping up and stealing things=the government coverup angle. It's all there, we didn't even need the early nineties.

I'm brewing up something with the next books, and a couple of new classes with a focus more on getting the art out there and taking up space, power, and income as women artists rather than getting the books picture picture perfect. Also a weekly thang somewhere else on the internet but I will let you know when we launch that this week or next. Very naughty and very fun.

Something is really, really shifting--it's time for the women just to stop tiptoeing around and really step up to the plate. We have all the tools we need to be happy and to not give authority to creepazoid narcissistic freaks: when are we going to do that? Now. But you already know that.

Posted by Elizabeth Merrick at 01:08 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)