Witches not bitches, and Hillbilly Roccoco

I love Dame Darcy so much, and have for a long time. It's so exciting to see her in person in this video.
And this book is fucking awesome!

Reading Crazy: the Tween Diaries

I grew up in a reading household. As the youngest of 4 kids I wanted to be reading what the older girls were reading, and in many cases, that was pure smut. The good thing about this is that I read voraciously as a kid, and got shitty books out of my system pretty early. The bad side is that these crazy stupid books introduced me to a world of smut that muddled my tween mind and imprinted some deeply effed up stuff at a young age.  From Judith Krantz I got multiple age inappropriate couplings, molestations and cousin on cousin rape! All written in her lavishly over the top, x rated lavender prose. 

It didn't end there, Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon, Jackie Collins and other one off books littered my nascent prepubescent reading. I have to applaud my mom for being so open minded about our reading material. I'm sure she was thrilled to see us reading. Beyond Judy Blume, Norma Klein, SE Hinton and Lois Duncan, I can't recall reading any YA novels with enthusiasm. My sister recalls my mom telling her she could read whatever she wanted at home, but couldn't bring the books to school. No dummy my mother. 

I still love to read, and while my idea of smut has changed a lot, I still have a huge appreciation for reading depravity. There is nothing I like better than a first person account of a head first dive into the trashcan of life....give me sordid sex, trauma, minds stripmined by drugs and alcohol, families twisted beyond recognition, I'm all in. 

But it really all started with these pulp paperbacks. There is no way I could read this particular type of drivel now, but man it was fun while it lasted. Seeing all these covers again reminds me of a sort of golden age of reading crazy. I have to thank my mom for starting me off by making reading fun. This is some real reading rainbow shit, right here. Not to mention a fond walk down memory lane. 

t

Literary Brat Pack: sex! drugs! books! best hair ever!

I just started reading Lunar Park by Brett Easton Ellis. He talks a bit at the start about the 'literary brat pack'. These authors made a huge impression on me at a point in my cultural development where my neuroplasticity was high. That's to say I devoured their books, and the whole media hype around them just captured my imagination. I guess I was 13 when Less than Zero came out. And 12 when Bright Lights Big City came out. And.....14 when I read Slaves of New York. Actually now when I think about that, these books sort of opened up another world to me, made me obsessed with New York, and kind of showed me a new way to be an adult (which is to say to remain a perpetual adolescent). 

fucking glamour

Brett Easton Ellis always seemed sort of more dangerous to me, I think Less Than Zero had some extreme violence/sex/drug abuse that, combined with nihilism, made a compelling combination. Plus the movie had Robert Downey Jr., not Michael J Fox.....

more glamour! 

this is still the living end of extreme cool

and the film adaptation of Slaves had Bernadette Peters. Who I still love!

Sister of the Road gets run over by Hollywood *SOB*

Just watched Martin Scorsese's Boxcar Bertha. What a let down. It watches like an object lesson in how Hollywood can fuck up a great story, and how the idea of a strong independent woman being the focus of a film is clearly anathema to the sexist movie industry. They completely neutered the Bertha character, simulataneously sexualizing her in a passive, stupid way. They gave her 3 male sidekicks and a love interest whose story eclipses hers.

I was really stoked to see this movie so I'm bummed it was such a let down. Needless to say it completely fails even the Bechdel test (below), give that it has one female character (ok, there were glimpses of a few of her fellow sex workers).

Bechdel test

 

 Edit 

The Bechdel test or Bechdel/Wallace test was developed by Liz Wallace and became widely known after Alison Bechdel featured it in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For.

The Bechdel test is a test of female characterisation in movies. Passing the Bechdel test requires that:

1. the movie [media] has at least two women characters;
2. who talk to each other;
3. about something other than a man.

Passing or failing the test is not an ironclad guarantee of well-rounded, feminist, characterisation but it is indicative of the problems of token women characters. A vast amount of geeky media fails the test.

Master of her own domain. 

The movie was supposedly based on the book, which I read a few years ago. It was amazing. It's a nonfiction memoir of Boxcar Bertha. She comes of age during the depression and is basically a complete radical who rides the rails, stands in solidarity with unions and wobblies, and eventually tells her story to the doctor who writes the story. She's on the move through the whole book, she believes in free love, works in a whorehouse, befriends all kinds of intellectuals and street people. She comes across as a really intelligent, uneducated woman who kind of epitomizes the notion of the free spirit. Her actions are motivated by survival and also by an innate moral compass. It's a great book.


I'd never even heard of the Scorsese movie until a couple of years ago. I really wish someone else would take on an adaptation of it for film, and let the character speak for herself. Fuck, I'm actually depressed by how stupid and passive they made her character. The film industry thinks so little of viewers, or maybe just has so little capacity for creating progressive work due to financial issues that I don't know or care about.

Well I guess the movie got terrible reviews. It's kind of cold comfort but I'll take it.

What Books Are On Our Nightstands? Plus, Show Us Yours! What Books Are On Our Nightstands? Plus, Show Us Yours! – The Frisky

What Books Are On Our Nightstands? Plus, Show Us Yours! What Books Are On Our Nightstands? Plus, Show Us Yours! – The Frisky

library love

“If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!” 

― John Waters

Can you imagine if someone came up with the idea an idea for a public library in this day and age? The concept of a book brain trust, open to all, with materials that can be brought home for weeks at a time? Doesn't it sound positively communist?
My whole family is library crazy. To this day some of my best kid memories are my dad dragging us kids to every library in a 20 mile radius of our suburban home. Libraries weren't a quick in and out, grab a book affair, they could be a whole morning, a whole afternoon. You could, and were expected to, lose hours browsing around. I had a library card from the time I was about 5 years old.
As the years went by, my relationship to the library changed....it waxed in high school when I would hold court in the school library with fellow nerd pals, when I realized they had fashion magazines, then VHS movies (often effed beyond use), and it waned when I started earning money and took great pleasure in curating my own weirdo library at home (in my fledgling attempts to organize the current collection I realized I now have need for sections of books on subjects like celebrity biography, groupie memoir, fat/body positivity books! a whole section of books by John Waters!); it waxed again in the 90s when I suddenly remembered the library. Despite the fact I was doing a master's degree in nursing, I had forgotten that the library was once a trusted friend, a refuge even. Getting a new NYPL card from the huge branch on 5th avenue was incredibly exciting to me. It STILL excites me to go to the library! I still feel so lucky that I get to take out whatever i want! The fact that you can reserve holds, they'll CALL you when the book comes in, still seems incredibly luxurious to me. Someone will notify me when a cool book comes in, I can borrow it for free??
I love that the library is the real melting pot in the urban landscape. You have moms with little kids, people surfing the internet, old people puttering around, homeless bros whiling the day away--all in almost perfect quiet. It's heaven.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/11/unpacking-my-library-jessica-holahan.html

Recently a neighbour saw me with a stack of books, library bound. She commented in horror about the hygiene of shared books (always with the "who knows where it's been?"---who cares??!?) OF course I was compelled to reply that I like to read the gossip magazines int he bathtub. Disgusting!! My sister has a friend who won't allow her kids to go to the library because of fear of germs. Children's Aid might not agree, but to me that borders on abuse--to deprive your kids the fun of the library is crazy to me. Love of reading should be the goal if you want your kids to achieve in school, hell, in life. Books are incredibly important to me. When I go into someone's house and see they only have a few, or the ones they have are arranged by colour or something--I make some unpleasant character judgements.

These are not books for reading, they are books for looking at on the shelf. A crime against books! No, I want the jumble of the library. Arrangement by topic is desirable (sadly a platonic ideal in my home where the books are strictly arranged by 'read' and 'unread'.)

There was a cool series in the New Yorker about people's home book collections:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/the-subconscious-shelf/

So what do our shelves say about us. That we are messy, curious, prefer nonfiction, are aspirational. But mostly messy. 


This shelf is supposed to be the culled collection; it's a mess. Needs another culling badly. I think part of the reason it's stayed as is is due to the fact that last time we got rid of books we delusionally decided to sell them to a local place. The thing is no matter how awesome your collection is (did I mention I love all my books?), it's not worth your time, effort, gas etc to try to get them sold. They're essentially worthless. 


Out of respect for the written word I need to get these organized. 

 This shelving unit was bought so we'd have somewhere to put new books, but it got filled the day it was assembled. Again, needs to be organized badly.

These are all my books TO BE READ. There is everything from Charlaine Harris (I hate myself for reading these shitty, shitty books but am somehow compelled....), and a couple from the Twilight series that I intend to look at. I saw them at the Goodwill and figured I'd see how loathsome they are. Now that I put it that way maybe I'll redonate them. I did get through the first Hunger Games book and it was so goddamn boring I couldn't believe it.
So those are the shame books.



I absolutely love to see people's book collections. When there is none, I get nervous.

What it is + Cruddy

Not sure what took me so long to read Cruddy. 

I guess I'd seen it about a million times and finally bought it after reading Lynda Barry's other book about writing called What it is.
(Apropos of nothing I need to also make mention of Crispin Glover's film project called What is it)

Anyway, Cruddy was fantastic. One of the best books I ever read. It has a roadtrip, surreal passages, magical realism, teenagers acting like teenagers, and really great sensitive, smart writing.

I had picked up her other book What it is shortly before. I liked it but I couldn't really understand it as a book about writing. I realized later that what she's getting at is more a meditation on creativity. It got me thinking about how good it is to have a creative outlet and how that can really sustain a person through all manner of discomforts and hardships. She obviously has a real affinity for children and kids, talks about how her own writing and drawing created an alternate headspace to be in.

She articulates well that sort of absent minded absorption you can achieve through doing something creative, and how losing track of time and doing something (i was going to say "productive", but "creative" really is a more appropriate word) can recharge you. It made me think about how sometimes when I surf the web or online window shop or read celebrity gossip, you're supposed to find it relaxing but it can really drain you psychically. Lynda Barry seems to think you should get rid of your TV, or at least recognize it as a narcotic of sorts. You lose time watching TV and surfing the web too, but it doesn't recharge you, it can do the opposite. Don't get me wrong, I love watching certain shows and I love crappy movies. But I definitely have fallen prey to the glazed eyes, prone on the sofa type of watching too.....

She doesn't even really get into the writing exercises until about 1/2-2/3 of the way in. The book is pretty, it's all collages and drawings by her. 

She talks a lot about memories and images. How you can escape into books and drawing and writing etc. I think anyone who loves reading and loves books can relate to many of the things she said. I do remember lying in my bed in my suburban home as a teenager and specifically reading the Edie Sedgewick oral history biography, and just being so completely absorbed and fascinated that this world even existed somewhere. And losing myself in a book is still such a pleasure, the reason I keep reading all the time is for that feeling. 

There's a fantastic quote in it:

 We don't create a fanasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. 

I wasn't a huge Marlys fan, nor did I really like Ernie's Pook Comeek that much. I just loved Cruddy though. Highly recommend. 

Fatalism and Frivolity: NOLA

I just got back from NOLA a couple of weeks ago. I picked up a true crime book there called Shake the Devil Off. 

Basically it's a sad story about an Iraq war vet who returned to his home in NOLA just in time for Katrina. He wound up in a troubled relationship and eventually murdered his girlfriend, cut up her corpse, and cooked it. He then committed suicide by jumping off the roof of a 5 star hotel, alerting the police to the murder via a detailed note in his pocket.


I love true crime novels, particularly when they are well written. This book was great. The author covers off many issues through this horrible story including the futility of the Iraq war, the abysmal treatment of US vets, on to Katrina and the Bush administration's malignant neglect of the citizens of NOLA. It's not exactly sympathetic to the murderer, as the author explains it, it's his intention to explain the circumstances of the murder/suicide, but not to explain the crimes away. He does a great job.

It got me thinking about Katrina all over again, and the impact it's had on residents of New Orleans.
And about disaster capitalism in Iraq, Afghanistan and even in North Amercia as communities keep getting devastated by natural disasters. Obviously as the climate continues to warm there will be more Katrinas.




I liked the city a great deal. I'm reading another book now called The New Orleans Voodoo Handbook 
It discusses a lot of the history of the city and then goes into the practice and traditions of Voodoo in the city. In one passage a resident says that NOLA residents represent fatalism and frivolity. You totally get that when you visit.

Amazing Biographies

I love biographies. I especially love biographies of women. I particularly and especially love biographies of women reporting back from the dark side of drugs, sex, rock and roll, hideous abuse and underdog struggle! 
Of course I love these books with the full understanding that there is no such thing as an objective memoir. As Lidia Yuknavitch put it so well in her book you can't take memories out and handle them repeatedly without changing them. I don't confuse a good biography or autobiography with hard fact. That isn't really the point as far as I'm concerned. 


Man enough to be a Woman - Jayne County
This is a great book about a NYC punk legend. Part of its interest is that it straddles a couple of interesting worlds including the underground punk scene in NYC in the 70s; the Warhol underground; and the journey of Wayne County transitioning to Jayne in the public eye. 
The great thing about this book is she writes really frankly; she's not delicate in any way. And she's seen every sleazy joint in the world. I saw her DJ in Toronto in the early 2000s; it was great. She has also suffered poverty for most of her life and is incredibly tough. 
She winds up playing 'every toilet' in England and kind of bottoms out in Berlin in the drag scerne. 


It's basically a cross section of completely fascinating subcultures. There is also the requisite Max's Kansas City gossip including details of Jayne's ongoing feud with Handsome Dick Manitoba from the Dictators who gave her a really hard time about her gender transition. And all kinds of run ins with famous underground types. 

Whipping Girl - Julia Serano
I'm always interested in gender issues. This book has aspects of memoir but the author is also a scientist, biology researcher and an academic and basically deconstructs gender. Serano is a transwoman and as such has a lot of insight into the experience of living as a man and also as a woman. She talks a lot about cultural expectations and prejudice she experienced during transition. A couple of things stuck with me about this book; namely she gets into the issue of compounded sexism she experienced as a transwoman. Basically she found that in becoming female and giving up male privilege she was subject to a unique brand of scorn; in the case of transmen they are basically 'trading up' in society's eyes. She makes a convincing arguement that transwomen deal with another level of scorn and are trivialized for their desire to join the 'weaker' sex. There is also a part where she kind of takes heterosexual women to task for rewarding chauvinism; she observes both as a male and a female that men who posture in typical macho ways are rewarded with sex and attention by women. Her point is that if we purport to want men who are more egalitarian and more sensitized to gender issues; we should actually date those men and have sex with those men. I found that interesting. In many ways it's difficult or impossible to rejig what you find attractive in the opposite sex; I just thought she made a good point on this one.
A similiar book came out a few years ago. Written by Norah Vincent, Self Made Man  is sort of the reverse; this female journalist lives as a man for a year and writes about her experiences. It was also really interesting but I liked Serano's better I think because of her analysis. Vincent didn't transition to male either, it was basically an experiment. She does discuss the privileges she experienced as a man but I don't recall her actually dating.

Paradoxia: A Predator's Diary - Lydia Lunch
I love Lydia Lunch. She started out at age 15 in NYCs No Wave moment of the late 70s/early 80s singing in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. She really is a one of a kind. She writes, performs spoken word and does some music too. I had the good fortune to see her a couple of times in the past few years, first at Pop Montreal with Teenage Jesus who had regrouped for the occasion. She's always amazing, totally charismatic, I'll never forget her literally kicking some emo kid off the stage with her boot. If you're not familiar with her work, I envy you actually because you can run out and experience it now! Her writing/spoken word are really aggressive, violent, sexual, visceral--she kind of presents herself as a Kali* type woman--just searing, destructive, relentless, pitiless and fucking angry. Even better she writes really well! 


*Kali: Goddess of destruction and dissolution in Hinduism; known for destroying ignorance

Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha - Dr. Ben Reitman
This is a great account of female 'hobo' during the depression, basically doing what she has to to survive.Evidently it's an actual biography transcribed by a doctor. It's the story of Bertha Thompson who became known as 'Boxcar Bertha' because of riding the rails. She gets involved in the sex trade, free love movement in radicalized NYC in the labour movement. I loved this book because it seems like you don't see many first person accounts of women living in poverty especially from the early part of the 1900s; those stories don't get told much. Bertha is also highly intelligent despite her lack of formal schooling. It's a great read. 

Edie: An American Biography - Jean Stein
This is a total classic in biographies. It's in a league of it's own, it's such an amazing account of Edie Sedgwick; the Warhol 'it' girl from the mid 1960s. It's an oral history meaning it's written from interviews with hundreds of people who knew her. She was a socialite who became an integral part of the Warhol factory in New York. As Warhol's muse she was at his side all the time, modelled and acted in his films and took absurd quantities of uppers. She sort of epitomized the best and worst of that creative scene, blowing the doors of artistic convention and being part of this merger of visual art, film and music (the Velvet Underground got their start here too). But because she's a socialite there is another element of the disapproval and extreme eccentricity of her wealthy family. It's just a great read. I remember reading it as a teenager and just being obsessed with this lens on New York as being so decadent, creative, exciting and dangerous. Edie wound up leaving the factory scene and moving to California and sort of becoming a hippie. Eventually she died of a abarbiturate/alcohol overdose. It's a very sad story. I  have to read this book again, it's that good. She was also incredibly stylish and still inspires the fashion world today. 

Candy Girl: A Year in the LIfe of an Unlikely Stripper - Diablo Cody
I read this book in an evening in the bathtub; it's that type of book. Cody is really relatable, you kind of relate to her and she's identifiable enough that you can see yourself looking at this world with the same perspective as her in a way. She was a bit of a fish out of water in the stripping world, as a midwestern woman with a natural body. She kind of fell into it on a whim. She's a great writer, and I say that with previous reservations because I really didn't like Juno, or Jennifer's Body. (I did love Young Adult however.....) She worked in a few clubs for a year in Minneapolis. She doesn't pretend she was a super successful stripper but she does give a great credible insider view into that world. I like reading memoirs by sex workers, I just find it fascinating. The nice thing about this book as I said is that the writer is relatable. I've read dozens of books by sex workers and sometimes the POV isn't anything you can relate to; sometimes the writer is so busy trying to convince the reader that sex work is real work, or that the workers are all law students or whatever. This one doesn't make those assumptions that the reader is prejudiced against the work. Maybe becaue Diablo herself was such an 'unlikely' stripper, I'm not sure. Anyway warm up the bathtub for this one! 

The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright - Jean Nathan
This is a really sad story of mother-daughter pathos; plus a nice portrait of New York in the 40s-50s and the life of an introverted artist. Dare Wright (this must be the most glamourous name ever?) wrote a classic kids book called "The Lonely Doll"  which is an ok children's book but became notorious because of some vaguely S+M type doll + stuffed bear scenes. There is a scene in the book where a stuffed bear gives a doll a bare bottom spanking. In writing it doesn't sound that scandalous but it does read a bit strange in the book. Needless to say it's a must buy for any friends who have little kids. But her biography is really sad; she couldn't really individuate from her mother and basically just devolved into a life of destitute alcoholism. At the end she's almost homeless and really ill. I find this type of book really fascinating, love reading about creative types going off the deep end. 

The Last LIving Slut - Roxana Shirazi
This one is published by Neil Strauss who I have come to love for his amazing music bios (he wrote "The Dirt" about Motley Crue--one of the best books EVER, plus "The Long Hard Road out of Hell" about Marilyn Manson--another eye popper; AND another good book of essays called "Everyone loves you when You're Dead" which compiles a whole bunch of music interviews and is excellent). But this book by Shirazi is completely insane. In the best way. This woman started out in Iran, raised Muslim and then flees to 
London during the Iranian revolution. She describes herself as being really sexually precocious and flirtatious basically her whole life; as a teenager she gets into exotic dancing and from there immerses herself in the life of a rock groupie. At the same time she earns a Master's degree in English, and has sex with every third string roadie in the Western hemisphere. It's a strange story because although she drops a few names of huge bands like G'n'R, Motley Crue and Velvet Revolver, it becomes clear that she has a LOT of sex with either roadies or other people peripheral to these bands or with other musicians in metal bands I had no knowledge of. I'm not a metal aficianado but clearly this is not the groupie big time. I found it fascinating only in that she seemed really compulsive about her sexual behaviour and I sort of felt like she was using the 'groupie' thing to just act out sexually in response to some psychological problem. It's true that the book makes Pamela DesBarres sound chaste. I'm sure Pamela would be appalled by this. I love seeing the rare interview with DesBarres where she's all 'We were MUSES!'---or trying to distance herself from the newer generations of rock tramps. HA! Anyway, This book is entertaining. 

How to Make Love Like a Porn Star - Jenna Jameson
This is a Neil Strauss joint, and another completely insane book. Aside from the basic interest in how Jameson came to superstardom as a porn actress, producer and mega product; there is something fascinating about how un-self aware she comes across. She describes being happy and well adjusted and then two pages later she's wasted down to like 80lbs due to a crystal meth addiction. Later after her recovery she goes on an exotic dancing club tour and seems to have come completely off the rails again on drugs. It's almost like she can't decide whether to focus on how successful and happy/heatlhy she is or to focus on the more fucked up aspects of her business. The porn world has clearly changed so much since she started her career and she obviously was in the right place at the right time, and is a hard worker/great performer etc. (I say this mostly from reading the book and understanding her place in the cultural zeitgeist, I'm not that familiar with her porn work) This is a huge book and it is well edited. Jameson comes across as a real chameleon. There are lots of photographs in the book and I was struck by how different her face looks in each one, and not from plastic surgery. I think she just has a really mutable face that looks different. Probably an asset in her field. The book is interesting if you are curious about her but also if you're interested in the world of porn/sex work in general. There is lots of gossip and drug use and general insanity.

A Piece of Cake - Cupcake Brown
This is an amazing story about someone who started life with the decks completely stacked against them. Brown basically suffered every nightmare that a childhood could from her mom dying; her dad giving her away; and every kind of abuse in the foster care system. She winds up as a gangbanger in her early teens, then later gets introduced to crack cocaine and completely bottoms out. Eventually she gets some work in a law firm and balances her drug use with a straight life. Finally she gets help from her boss who assists and encourages her to clean up her life; go back to school...and become a lawyer. She writes really well, it's pretty amazing to read about this kind of total transition. The horror story of her early life is fascinating, and it really is inspirational to think she came so far from so little. Girl gangbanger makes good--what else do you want in an autobiography? 

Tiny Furniture, HBOs 'Girls' and SATC plus reading!

Great quote from this film. Incidentally I liked it a lot.
'Relationships aren't rocket science; if you find yourself having to really think about it a lot, analysing it, it's over. It's kaput'
So true.
After I saw the movie I realized this writer/film maker Lena Dunham was featured in the new Bust magazine. She has a new show for HBO called "Girls" which is supposed to be amazing. I read something recently in an interview with one of the actresses (I have no clue who) where she was asked to comment about comparisons to Sex and the City. She responded that comparisons are erroneous because this show is for a new generation and basically totally different---which kind of bummed me out. I feel like SATC doesn't get the credit it deserves for being as fucking amazing as it was. Somehow the last crappy film has just turned the tide against the show; which was truly new, refreshing, amazingly well written, and even new in its use of fashion and integretion of modern sexual politics. I like SATC a lot. Anyway then I read something from Lena Dunham getting asked the same question, and she responded that without SATC, her show couldn't and wouldn't exist. Which is totally cool of her to say.
AND I was SO EXCITED to see this feature in the NYT about what Lena Dunham reads. All I want to know about anyone is what they read; and if they are female, what makeup and skincare they use. I am shallow.

Here is episode one posted on HBO:
http://www.hbocanada.com/girls/episodeone.php

Music Writing + Women

I guess I saw this on tumblr. I love reading non-fiction, I love biographies and reading about music/musicians.

OMG i'm excited about this list: I guess I found the link on twitter or somewhere. Of these I've read two; Rock She Wrote and Please Kill Me. I loved both of them. I'll seek out more, I"d like to read Richard Meltzer. Not sure where Lester Bangs is on this list.

Then another list came out featuring women writers.  I read Rat Girl when it came out. I had never listened to Throwing Muses but Kristen Hersh's story is great anyway. I read and liked Girls to the Front; I liked Just Kids a lot despite not being a Patti Smith fan.

Please add me on Goodreads if you're so inclined.....