100 HUNDRED THOUSAND MILLION: Boy The Earth Used To Talk To →

the20000:

natepatrin:

iamdavidbrothers:

100hundredthousandmillion:

Hold on a minute— a white guy in his 30s is going to talk at length about how he prefers rap music from the ’90s to the rap music of today? GIVE ME A MINUTE TO CLEAR MY SCHEDULE IN PREPARATION FOR THIS MOST COMETLIKE OF RARE OCCURRENCES.

I say this as someone who cried during…

Pappademas spitting ether.

Speaking as another white Jewish thirty-something dude named Nathan, I am grateful that I grew less prone to Golden Age stick-up-ass isolationism the more I aged. Not that I don’t still get reactionary about some things sometimes, but I figure the “discovery” portion of my brain hasn’t entirely shut off yet.

“accidentally inventing horrorcore…” Ouch.

Also, wow @ ATCQ & Jungle Brothers’ legacies boiling down to “seduced a nation of college students and white kids”.

“trendy Afrocentric garb…” Yikes.

Not to keep piling on here, but when I read the intro column yesterday, the thing that occurred to me is that this is what happens to most people, eventually, no matter what kind of music they like. At some point — maybe from the time they graduated from college, or when they got a real job that kept them busy, or got married and stopped relating to every song about a shitty break-up, or just stopped having time to seek out new music — almost everybody you talk to can go on about how they just haven’t been able to keep up with what’s going on in music these days.

It’s the least novel thing that there is, and it has nothing to do with hip hop. Being in your 30’s and not relating viscerally to pop music the way that you did when you were younger is just a part of life. Your experiences are more varied, your understanding of your emotions is more nuanced, your struggles are more specific to you, and it’s really unlikely that you’re going to hear “Okay Cupid” or even “Runaway” and feel the way that you felt when you first heard “Fuck Tha Police” at fourteen. Or that you’ll hear 2:54 and feel like you did the first time you heard Disintegration, or whatever.

Now, there are ways to mitigate this. (Writing a 52-part series about how great the music you listened to when you gave more of a shit about music is not part of it.) Here’s what you do: listen to new records a lot. Like four or five times a day, play the same new record that you are interested in, and learn it the way that you learned about music the way that you did when you were 15.

Because that’s the other thing, especially if you’re 30-something now and got all of your music for free (from publicists, totally, definitely not from What.CD): it’s really easy to just take everything in once while you’re checking Facebook, ignore it mostly, and then be like, “New music just doesn’t do it for me!” Well, you’re not giving it the respect that you gave it when it actually did do something for you.

And maybe, you know, you’ll find something as you get older that does speak to you at whatever point you’re at in your life. I found “Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror” by Jeffrey Lewis when I was 28 and at the very first listen, it did for me what Heartbreaker did for me at 21. But there aren’t going to be a lot of songs that you can take for granted are made for you to relate to. It’s really the height of self-involvement to think that this is because music stopped innovating or evolving. What would you expect Tyler, The Creator or Waka Flocka Flame would have to say to a 36 year old?

Feel free to skip the reluctantly Nazi-free Chaos In Tejas festival in Austin this weekend.

I know Chaos In Tejas brings a lot of cool bands to town and all of that, but every time I see anyone — especially in Austin media — talking about the festival, all I can think about is that it’srun by a dude who is stillacting like he’s a victim because people called attention to the fact that he booked Nazi bands.

And yeah, those bands are not playing anymore (“because of the drama,” Disma opted to pull out, said Timmy Hefner, the dude who booked them), but the fact that Hefner is still acting like he got done wrong because he couldn’t just book his Nazi bands in peace does little to make me feel enthusiastic about this.

Now, look — it’s clear that Chaos In Tejas is big and getting bigger, and that public opinion has come down on the side of “hey, check out these cool bands at this festival,” and not “…who were booked by a guy who is still whining that he couldn’t bring Nazis to town for it,” and that a post like this might look like sour grapes. But honestly, I don’t really care.

I wouldn’t give Chaos In Tejas a dime of my money, and I wouldn’t write a single word about the festival that doesn’t also point out that it would feature friggin’ Nazis on the bill if the Hefner had his way. The fact that he’s still acting like the fact that people called attention to that is something unfair that happened to him, rather than something he was responsible for, is just galling.

It’s going to make a bunch of money this weekend, and be a big success, I’m sure. But seriously, fuck that guy and fuck that festival.

And on a totally different note... →

Jimmy Buffett sings a lot of songs about wasted youth, feeling like you belong to another time, finding peace mostly in a bottle, being lost in a world that doesn’t understand you, and a contemporary world that makes you feel like you’ve drowned.

But his perspective on those things isn’t tragic, and he doesn’t romanticize them in the way that, say, Townes Van Zandt — who became a legend for writing about those same themes in a way that treats despair as glory — used to. Buffett’s songs about those things tend to lead to someplace that says, “But then I got drunk with some friends” or “at least I got a really good cheeseburger,” and celebrates those distractions from sadness, rather than plumbing the depths of despair.

Most Americans tend to do the same thing — but not the ones who pen paeans to the genius of tortured artists. Which helps explain both why Buffett’s flown under the critical radar for most of his career, and why there were so many people in Hawaiian shirts who just wanted to make fins with their hands and shout, “Salt! Salt! Salt!” during “Margaritaville.”

I took my mom to see Jimmy Buffett last night, and gave some thought to why I have always heard his hits as sad songs for CultureMap.

Let’s make this simple.

Regarding “war on women” rhetoric and the exclusion of transgender people that comes with terms like that: I get it, yes, the people who want to strip reproductive rights probably do not even acknowledge the existence of transgender people, for the most part. As far as they are concerned, uterus = woman = woman = woman, forever and ever.

But A-1, why are you using their definitions of identity in crafting your arguments? And B-2, is it worth denying the existence of an entire group of people just to score a few rhetorical points?

If you win — let’s say you win! — and people say, “Yes, there is a war on women in this country,” but that comes at the cost of denying that transgender people even exist, which is exactly what you accomplish by agreeing with the Rick Santorums of the world that the word “women” is good enough to encompass everybody who has a uterus, what have you won? It is not a more just, more ethical, more reasonable world in which people are no longer oppressed. It is just a world in which you may have been able to partner with hateful people in order to shift the burden of oppression onto a smaller group.

I understand very well that “war on women” is a powerful rhetorical weapon. But what the people who wield that weapon need to consider is that it strikes at more than just the misogyny of people who want to limit reproductive rights — it also strikes directly at people who suffer harsh attacks on a daily basis, and if that’s acceptable collateral damage for you, then I’d strongly urge you to consider what the world you’re trying to build will look like, and if you can describe it as “justice.” 

Election post-script.

Two of my three candidates won — including Sheriff Hamilton, which was the race I was most concerned about, because it seemed to have the most at stake. David Wahlberg will be a judge in Travis County, which is excellent news. Charlie Baird, meanwhile, got hammered by over 50 points. Can’t win ‘em all.

But let’s talk about Charlie Baird real quick, because I got into a discussion about him on Twitter with someone who insisted that he “would not be good for Travis County,” and linked to this post, about his use of PR bonds as a judge, when asked why.

A PR bond is a personal bond offered to a person who has been arrested and is awaiting trial. It’s offered in lieu of bail. When a person has been arrested, after his or her arraignment, the judge can choose to set a bail amount or offer a personal bond (or some other things, but we’ll leave them out at the moment since they’re not relevant to this discussion). Bail is a monetary amount that a person is required to put up to the court as a promise that they’ll show up for trial. A PR bond is a promise to return taken at the word of the accused.

Since the post on Burnt Orange Report genuinely doesn’t seem to get this, I’ll spell this out: People are not meant to be held without bond because they’ve been accused of doing something really bad. Bail and bond are not meant to be used punitively. Under certain very specificconditions, a person who presents a clear and present danger to the community may be held without bond to keep them from causing the harm that is imminent, but that is for unique circumstances. But a person who is released on bond — whether it’s a PR bond or bail — has not been convicted of anything. The only reason to hold them is to ensure that they will appear in court. If they are convicted, then we incarcerate them as punishment.

It’s not soft-on-crime whatever to release people who haven’t been convicted, who don’t pose a flight risk, and who aren’t shouting threats in the courtroom, on a personal bond. It’s the just thing to do.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about this for nearly 48 hours now.

thisfan:

• I’m still not there.
• But I’ll tell you this— I was incarcerated for 21 hours.
• For something I didn’t do.
• The charges were dismissed, because there was no evidence that I did what I was arrested for doing. Because I didn’t do what I was arrested for doing.
• Dismissed with no conditions at all— just fucking dismissed. Because I didn’t do what I was arrested for doing.
• Which means there wasn’t enough evidence to get an indictment. Because I didn’t do what I was arrested for doing.
• And it’s FUCKING EASY to get an indictment.
• I should know; just search my blog for the grand jury duty tag.
• So it was particularly hilarious when I was taken to the same building in which I served that duty in handcuffs;
• Except it wasn’t hilarious at all.
• It was fucking terrifying.
• As our criminal “justice” system is designed to be.
• But what I’m taking from the whole experience is this: women will find a way to protect and care for each other. 
• Across racial, socio-economic, even lingual boundaries, women will find a way to protect and care for each other.
• I would not have gotten through those hours in that pen without those women.
• They say they wouldn’t have gotten through it without me.
• In the end, I’m glad I was in the last group to be brought to court, because I didn’t have to go home worrying that any of those women were still in that cell while I was at home. 
• As hard as that last hour and a half was, when it was just G and me left, when we were doing everything we could to keep each other sane, I’m still glad that I didn’t have to be at home worrying about any of those women stuck in that cell. 
• Because I would have worried. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep, even after nearly 24 hours of not sleeping.
• I would have cried my eyes out if I’d had to leave J in that cell, if I was called to court before she was. She was so scared of being left alone, I was actually grateful that she was called before I was. 
• I would have worried my head off if I’d had to leave D in that cell. D speaks just a tiny little bit of English, but she and I were able to communicate through rudimentary Hebrew when she figured out from the tattoo on my foot that we’re both Jewish. 
• I honestly thanked God, while still in that cell, that D wasn’t going to be left there alone.
• I’m still really anxious.
• I’m still pretty scared.
• I’ll write about this when I can.
• But I need to remember this: we found a way to protect and care for each other.
• I need to remember this: we refused to let anyone else in that cell feel alone.
• I need to remember this: we held each other, we rubbed each other’s backs, we got each other water, we encouraged each other, we reminded each other that it would all be over soon, we made it possible for each and every woman in that cell to make it through.
• I need to remember this: I’m proud of that.
• I hope I won’t forget that part.
• I hope I forget everything else.

This is horrible, of course, but also lovely, so I’m reposting. Thanks for sharing it.

(And, while I’m sure you’ve got plenty of people offering you advice, I would nonetheless urge you — if the charges were anything more than a very simple misdemeanor — to speak with an attorney, even with the dismissal, at the very least to have one tell you that you don’t require their services.)

Who I voted for in the Travis County Democratic Primary

I posted this a few days ago, after I did early voting, but since today is officially election day, I thought it’d be worth bringing back up. Apologies to people who live outside of Travis County and don’t give a damn who our D.A., Sheriff, or district judges are — though if you’ve never considered whether the people who hold criminal justice offices in your area come from a prosecution, defense, or other background, I’d urge you to read this, because it matters there, too.

The turnout for this election is probably going to be around 30-40,000 people, which means that actually voting gives you disproportionate voice, and since these are important offices, I’d urge you to use it. All of these are offices that, when held by the right people, can make Austin a significantly more just place.

District Attorney:
Charlie Baird over Rosemary Lehmberg. Lehmberg has been an acceptable district attorney, but it is genuinely exciting to cast a vote for Charlie Baird, who was our best judge when he was on the bench, and he’ll be a very progressive DA. Also, while I’m not opposed to incumbency, I do question whether it’s healthy for an office that needs to be flexible to have at its head someone who’s been there for three decades. Austin does not have a terrific record when it comes to criminal justice issues — from a lack of charges in police shootings to the handling of the yogurt shop murders — and much of that is on Lehmberg’s watch. We were fortunate to have Baird on the bench, and it would be a terrific thing for criminal justice in Austin if he were to serve as DA.

Sheriff:
Greg Hamilton over John Sisson. John Sisson’s platform is built on “mandatory memos” regarding deportation, and the argument that, when ICE requests that a person be detained for possible deportation, it’s just that — a request, which the Sheriff can decline. It’s hardly clear if that’s true, though, and even if it is, it’s definitely the case that it will not be true by 2013 (that link comes from Sisson’s own website). That doesn’t leave a real reason to vote for John Sisson. Meanwhile, I like, and trust, Greg Hamilton. Some of y’all may be aware that my wife runs a small non-profit that she started as a volunteer at the Travis County Correctional Complex (where she still goes in every week). Not only has Sheriff Hamilton personally supported her work with the women in the jail — which he doesn’t have to do — but she’s told me about the support that the Sheriff has from those women, which is overwhelming. A Sheriff who operates with the support of the people he’s in charged of incarcerating is one whom I am happy to support.

District Judge, 167th District:
David Wahlberg over Efrain de la Fuente. To put it simply, if there’s a candidate for judge who comes from a criminal defense background running against a candidate for judge who comes from a prosecution background, I will vote for the defense attorney 9,999 times out of 10,000. (Might not cast a ballot for Levy from The Wire.) The fact is, there is already enough cooperation between the DA’s office and the bench just by virtue of both having the same employer; the perspective of a prosecutor while wearing the robe isn’t anywhere near as valuable as the perspective of a defender. David Wahlberg is a good defense attorney, by all accounts, and that makes him an important voice to have on the bench. There are countless former prosecutors who are now judges, and it does not often work out that well for the accused. I’ll always support a candidate who works to break that monopoly.

Find your precinct number here.