do you like to watch?

leave it to Parry Gripp to memorialize youtube banality in a pop video remix. adolescence + webcam = ????
i'm too exhausted to include an analysis, just wanted to re-post and add a few links on surveillance/policing/voyeurism that caught my eye (pun intended, oh yes).

here in Boston, a piece on clashes between graf artists and police: http://thephoenix.com/Boston/News/73132-Graffiti-wars/

and in my hometown San Francisco, an even more riveting story: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/13/BA7Q14N5S6.DTL

what i learned in high school

in high school a bunch of us decided to start a DIY opinion journal for our senior year, a kind of free-form rambling venue to bitch about, assess and poke fun at the world in simultaneously self-assured and searching voices only seventeen-year-olds can truly capture.  Now that we are having our 10-year reunion, the journal's editor proposed that we write a reunion issue and shared some gems from the pages ten years ago...

imagine my surprise when I read my own piece on none other than midnight in different cities, in which i wrote: 

"It is exactly midnight. I often wonder about this hour, a time with which I have become well-acquainted during the past four years at Lick. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, this hour is a nuisance, at least in San Francisco. The energy ebbs into an eerie calm throughout the city, its flourescent signs fading in the Tenderloin, the stoplights changing to blinkers at Fell and Oak streets, the wind whipping cleanly down the corridors of the avenues. Midnight in San Francisco is about deceiving the eye into believing it is time to rest, time to seek solace amongst the buildings that were never too imposing in the first place.

In other cities, midnight grows and shrinks in epic proportions. In new york, where the bars don't close till 4am, it seems a deep breath before the night bursts and expunges its insides to the streets. Drunks yell a bit louder, tourists teeter near the abyss of whether to journey back to their respective hotels, the lights pick up a notch before they flicker and shut off for the night."

on that tip, ten years later, i've been jamming to this while i write my PhD qualifying paper on nightlife:

looks like i'm 78% man

continuing on the gender tip...

i plugged my website into Gender Analyzer and it was 78% sure this blog was written by a man.

there's no explanation as to what indicators they look for or how they come their gender conclusions, but it's fun to play around with for about 15 seconds.  and yet another manifestation of our obsession with gender coding and classifications.  

lazy so lazy!

in all the election hype, I fell off on my pledge to myself to keep this blog as up-to-date as possible. i'm also admittedly in the throes of an overdose of academic writing and moment of finance-searching so I can be flexible about returning to California. all this combines to push regular updates to the very back of my brain.

speaking of election hype, wtf?? Obama Commemorative Plates??? Is this necessary? Capitalism ain't really wounded til these things go.

but here's a mixed bag of what's been on my mind lately, in no particular order...

1. The Election
Gobama! I spent part of the day phone-banking to remind voters in swing states of their polling places. However, most people sounded really pissed off that I was calling, hung up on me, or almost blithely - and definitely nonchalantly - confessing their disinterest in the election. I found it appalling, but quickly checked myself to leave the righteous bit behind. Why don't you want to vote?, I inevitably asked. Because they found the election boring, they weren't interested in the issues this time around, or they were simply too busy. Incredulous. Let the righteous bit roar - how could you not find any part of this election at all provocative, the least bit intriguing? How could you disengage so thoroughly? What is this apathy? What does it take to get people to care?

But aside from that bit of negativity, most of the night was spent nervously and later blissfully fixated to the TV. Ben watched me cry with amusement when they announced Obama won, and we both marveled at how utterly dead our corner of Cambridge was as compared to reports from New York, Berkeley and other areas around the country. Then I spoke with my mom, whose voice trembled with excitement. She sounded so happy, and she voiced to me her hope about having Obama as a leader.

This struck me more than my own reaction. Sure, it's a new feeling to actually support a politician, but I've only been voting for ten years. My parents, however, are children of the sixties, lived through MLK and JFK and Bobby Kennedy and the Black Panthers, and participated in moments of unparalleled political involvement and hope. They then, of course, suffered the disappointment and disillusionment of a country that squandered the potential of so many of its young leaders, that neglected to preserve the advances of the civil rights movement, and that ultimately assured its citizens through all means of policy and rhetoric that the best way to get ahead is through self-interest and conspicuous consumption.

Do I think everything's suddenly changed now? Of course not. I am pleased about Obama, but my joy is somewhat more measured now that he's elected and faces grave challenges on multiple fronts. However, it was worth it all to hear my parents' renewed engagement with politics and excitement about potential change that I have never seen, and have only heard about in their stories from the past, in photos trapped in albums stored on dusty shelves. I only hope my generation can help us all to move beyond what theirs lost.

2. Still Black


My friend Aruna invited me to see a documentary on transgendered black men called Still Black. The MIT classroom was actually pretty full, and the documentary was a fairly straightforward collection of about six or seven profiles of, you guessed it, transgendered black men. Really interesting stuff came out in the process of their testimonials, and rather than feign my familiarity I'll admit some of its was incredibly provocative and downright surprising. One identifies as a gay man after transitioning. One dates straight women, gay women, bisexual men, straight men. One married to a lesbian woman who continues to identify as lesbian while being with a transgender man. The story of the trans pastor with a young daughter, preaching equality to the church.

And throughout all these stories challenging our the traditional sex and gender binaries, the issue of race. How different it felt to be a black man, how people look at them differently now. How they don't feel like a rapper or like Obama, and aren't sure how to be themselves, how to be black without falling into a stereotype.

While it would have been interesting to see interviews with their loved ones or to learn more about how the community around them and society in general responds to these complicated gender issues, in the end I appreciated the bare bones, purist approach, highlighting these men in their own words. It was emotive and intimate and felt very real. Albeit a little long and slow in parts.

Most of all, it reminded me how much we do need documentaries like this, and continued conversations about what being trans means, about all the nuances and varying expressions of and identifications with gender and sexuality. I think we all have so many questions, so much information to share to clear the air about what can be fairly taboo subjects, and I find it better to be open than to pretend you know it all.

Aruna also brought up the hijra, the "third-sex" in India that is quite a familiar concept there but so foreign to us in the US that most can hardly wrap their minds around it.

Good to keep asking questions, to keep listening to stories, to keep on challenging what's normal.

Fading frontera friendship

Border Field State Park is an expansive estuary in California's southwestern-most corner, butting up against friend 'n' foe Mexico in an unlikely juxtaposition. The American side is barren, all empty beach and nubby ice plants, with a single vigilant Border Patrol jeep keeping close watch on the contested land from a meager perch near the park's main car lot. The Mexican side, or Playas de Tijuana, is all action, clumps of families clustered on blankets basking in the temperate sun, boisterous vendors offering up mango-sticks, carved coconuts, chicharrones, and their female accomplices hawking silver bangles and woven anklets. Mariachi and nortena music blares in the background from a line of beach-side establishments, hugging the perimeter of Tijuana's bull-fighting ring.

The reason why I know what the Mexican side looks and sounds like, is because in these remaining few meters before land meets sea on the U.S.-Mexico border, the dense double-paned and barbed-wired wall tapers into a series of wooden poles (see the image above). Notice they look like unkempt telephone poles, spaced to leave a foot or two of inviting room to accommodate sneaky border-crossing or mango sales (to help give the dry U.S. side some sustenance!).

When I was there just a few months back, a few men crossed from Tijuana to the U.S. side for a 'friendly' football game as soon as the border patrol momentarily drove off. They were engaging and sweet, but knew to dart back to Mexico when the American jeep returned. A couple lay blankets on opposite sides of the border to spend precious time together, peering between and even touching across the poles. In contrast, the rest of the border resembles a minefield of stoic aluminum barriers, over ten-feet tall, topped with vicious barbs.

The beachy Border Field State Park is known as "Friendship Park," but it's a far cry from anything its name would denote. Recent efforts to defend the few meters of open(ish) space have failed, and the last remaining openness of California's western border will soon transform into the impenetrable barricades and walls known elsewhere in the state. Proponents of the expanded border wall cite ecological preservation and increase safety, while opponents decry the development as punitive political tool, and one that will deter communication and ultimately hurt friendly relations between the U.S. and Mexico.

See the recent NY Times article for a quick national update, and the San Diego Union-Tribune for more info on pro/con arguments.

Suffice to say, I love being able to buy a mango on a stick in this land of friendship.

The Right to the City

"Everywhere, the state is at war with those who it rules"

Boston's like a frickin horn of plenty when it comes to intellectual life. Last week I decided to start taking advantage of the endless talks, lectures, colloquia, free/cheap films, lessons and tours offered in this city of schools. So I found myself watching a talk on The Right to the City, sponsored by MIT's Visual Arts Program , and running wild with Henri LeFebvre, generously framed by scholars/practitioners Philippe Rekacewicz and Shuddhabrata Sengupta.

I couldn't stay for the full Q&A, but needless to say the presentations were top notch - Rekacewicz's radical cartography particularly shined in his poignant reminder of map-making as an imaginative rendering of perspective and power struggles rather than unbiased, immutable truth-telling, as well as his wry discussion of the privatization of airports (autonomous authoritarian zones, no less, whose public spaces have been manipulated into oblivion by the encroaching free trade of Duty Free). Interesting to note that these same "free" commercial zones tend to obscure the pervasive surveillance and policing that constitutes our airports, making for a telling paradox of our obligation to consume versus our lack of right to do much else.

Sangupta, a founder of SARAI , made the night entirely worth it, however, with his intervention on "Bodies, Biographies and Bombs." I'd love a copy of the talk, although the VAP (see link above) should have the talk recorded for those interested. He's a poetic writer and confident speaker, all of which made for a captivating talk that began with Galton's visual archive of the "homo criminalis", moved into the Delhi police force's "identikit" recognition system (which helps image criminal faces using an archive of physical features taken from police officers), and then concluded with the consequences of images of violence in the media, and the resulting anxiety "fatigue".

The entire talk was riveting, but one of the ideas I keep turning over in my mind is what Sangupta referred to as a "pornography of quantity" in the news, or the obsession with (and fetish for?) numbers associated with violent crimes and acts of terrorism. It is the numbers that pull in our fascination, and his assessment of the September 13, 2008, bombs in Delhi drew sharp parallels with (obviously) the U.S. 9/11, and, for me, the rising murders on the U.S./Mexico border. Juarez isn't the only city with killings spiralling upwards like a lotto of souls, Tijuana's got its own share and the media's fascinated .

Sangupta derided this news porno as more degrading and objectifying than any of the usual erotic acrobatics we'd usually associate with the term, an abuse of bodies and flesh for ratings. What happens to life when we render it news clip and pull quote? What happens to life when we mediate it, photograph it, copy it and re-tell it in the name of nationalism and security?

Both talks gestured towards the schema we use in our rhetoric to achieve certainty, and the ruptures that occur when the facts don't always fit the frame. In pursuing more of Sangupta's work, I found a wonderful piece on borders - as applicable to the U.S./Mexico division I know so well as to the India/Pakistan border he refers to. It's yet another critique of the violence that these schema produce, of how so many of what we think of as rights and liberties are so dependent on just a line in the sand.

"The border is the mark on the ground which tells you that wherever you are on earth, hell begins close to home. And you are never far from a border. It doesn't matter in which city, continent or country you are in, the border seeks you out in the end."

Loving to make music

I'm not a huge fan of mash-ups...it was a fad generated to make a fuss over what DJing has always been about - taking incongruent sounds and making them work, extending a beat and mixing old and new, new and new, fast and slow, you get my point. That's not to say I don't appreciate a good extended mix when I hear one, and in the post z-trip era it's nice to hear some quality collaged soundwork coming out. Check Daedalus if you can, who's been a prolific producer for years and has recently come out with a really solid, all-around album, Love to Make Music To. The link will take you to a particularly bizarre story - gotta love world's fair injuries and Frankensteinian transformations in the liner notes.

My fave track is "My Beau", probably because it makes me feel better to know that one of the defining tracks of my high school 'big booty ho' days is not only appreciated by a musician i greatly respect, but that he has even remixed it with a tweaked out bassline, making it sound more aaliyah than 2 live crew. Not that there's anything wrong with some Luke, but check it:

about MIT...

Okay, the Soulja Boy dance craze is so 2007, but I was entertained to see the MIT version on youtube today while searching for a mysterious and still to-be-found MIT dance club (yes, I went there...):

Who knew lab coats could move so well?

Panic!

As in active but senseless behavior, irrationality, not thinkin' straight.
And that's just what we're in right now, a verified panic that has financial markets crashing with the force of a category 5 hurricane. Is it because it rained all weekend on the east coast, that congress just couldn't get it together to make a plan (studies show sunshine is beneficial for finance...hmmm)? And who knew that the supposedly rock-solid foundation of our liberal economy would be so sensitive to the pyschological weaknesses that plague most of us - insecurity, hubris, greed, paranoia, confusion?

Common sense and a good dose of Marx, not to mention the words of caution from authors presaging the current predicament (see The Clusterfuck Nation ) help to soften the surprise of a free market gone a-muck. Strange that the Patriot Act could regulate 99% of human action with such ease without recognizing that economic action just might be connected to the same 'disorder' that keeps therapists employed across the nation. I'm not condoning the dastardly Patriot Act in any way here, just riffing on panic and confidence, two words commonly associated with new mothers and Ivy League grads respectively, and now mostly applicable to a big LED screen tracking numbers.

Fear comes so easy to us in a culture of sensationalized information, stretched to its extremities just to grab our attention. As my very wise and very economically savvy brother advised to me, "Whatever happens, I urge everyone to do the opposite of what our political and business leaders are doing: do not panic."

Easy for me, I have no liquidity to speak of anyway! So I'm gonna take all that money I don't have and not invest it, and try not to worry. If you are still thinking about reasonable investments, I suggest alternative energy sources and technologies...but if solar panels aren't your thing, Campbell's Soup anyone?

This is strange

Stranger even than, let's say, reluctantly joining Facebook this past year, and much more awkward than a mass e-mail every now and then.  I've had some irrational resentment for blogging in general, but if you asked me to logically explain it I wouldn't have much to justify my disdain.  I guess it's something akin to how I feel about people who talk about themselves too much, people who are annoyingly righteous, people who know so much about every hip website, cool blog and quirky youtube video that you suspect they take their laptop with them to the bathroom and probably don't sleep.  

And so here I stand, newly in the ranks of the blogiverse, forced to confront my own resentment.  

Let me justify my own participation, and learn to forgive the bloggers, self-centered talkers, internet info wizards (but not so much the righteous).  

First reason: my parents live in San Francisco, my brother in New York City, grandparents in Florida and Tennessee, and aunts, uncles and cousins in scattered cities and states around the U.S.  I spent nearly eight years in New York and still keep strong ties there.  But my friends have splintered off to all kinds of far-flung places, I now live in San Diego, am moving to Boston to lead a bi-coastal life this fall, and simply can't fathom how to keep in touch without some kind of miracle megaphone (aka a blog).  On top of all this, I can be terrible at responding to e-mails.  But the great thing is, unlike an e-mail, you get to pick when and if you want to know what's going on in my life and mind.  

Second reason: a year ago, after returning from a conference and research in Mexico City, my friend Courtney recommended I start sharing some of my research and travels online, since we were nasty phone tag and it was taking a lot of time to describe my experiences.  I also hate repeating myself to multiple people.  And furthermore, I have a lot to say about my research, teaching and travels that I get too lazy to write down.  So this serves as a platform and a kick in the ass, a way to share information and a reminder that I have to push myself to communicate more publicly (and explain what the hell i'm doing) if I'm really getting this degree in Communication.  

Without further, welcome to my blog and thanks for reading.  I promise to try to not ramble, to keep updates interesting, to avoid righteousness.  I hope I'll stop feeling like an idiot while writing these posts soon enough.