Get Get Get Your Party Party On On

In the latest UR Chicago, I reviewed Junior Senior's new(-ish) album, Hey Hey My My Yo Yo. It's so hard to compress all your thoughts about one album into 150 words, and I'm not going to quote the whohttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifle review here, but phrases like "non-stop party marathon," "the 80's are back in full force" and "generic, anonymous lyrics" give you an idea. (You can find the review at their website in the Reverb section until the next issue's reviews replace it.)

HHMMYY really threw me for a loop. They managed to evolve by regressing. It's like they combined the R&B/disco/pop of the 70's and 80's with their Casio-keyboard productions in a dehydrator: all the unwanted fat dripped off and you're left with tight, crisp sonic nuggets. The Danish duo adds piano and hand claps to what sounds like a Jackson 5 cover on "Ur a Girl." The single "Can I Get Get Get" (they obviously really like stuttering words and repetitive titles) is squeaky, squirmy cartoon funk. Like the Junkyard Gang got horny. And one of the highlights is when Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson of the B-52's belt like gangbusters through "Take Your Time." Through not one but two key changes, they buttress the giddy melody to its euphoric highs.

They're seriously focused on having fun: nothing lasts even four minutes and there's not a mid-tempo song or ballad in the bunch. Unfortunately, that's where I got a smidge disappointed. Sure, they're having a lot of fun and throwing one hell of a party, but the hosts remain anonymous. On the sunny surfer pop of their first album, D-D-Don't Stop the Beat, straight "Junior" and gay "Senior" had a funny back-and-forth repartee that was quirky and unique. "B-b-b-b-boys are handsome and tall," sang Senior. "G-g-g-g-girls are nasty and small," chimed in Junior. They sang of "Chicks and Dicks" and every little hipster in nail polish and hipsterette with buzzed hair felt equally sexy.

It seems that, in an effort to really focus on their aesthetic, they felt they had to check their personalities at the door. Obviously they can't ride their "one of us is gay and one is straight!" act for too long. It's a gimmick that wears out its welcome as fast as being a gay white rapper. But did they have to resort to such banal, "break it up, break it down" lyrics in order to serve their musical vision? "Senior" barely even shows up to sing or rap at all. They do, however, present themselves as the coolest of the uncool nerds, so Junior probably doesn't mind dancing all by himself.

Also check out: Okay, Go: Dance Duo Edition (Justice and Junior Senior)
And: Rock the Cazwell

Top Chef Check-In

OK, so we're day 4,189 into Top Chef's six-year-long Season Three. How's everyone holding up? Stocked with plenty of water and truffle butter? Do we need to pass around the mushroom risotto for sustenance?

Seriously, this season started, what, a couple months ago? And there's still Eight. Chefs. Left. For real? Bravo is milking this show for all they can. Not only was there a useless mini-reunion halfway through the season (hosted by that insufferable Bravo producer Andy Cohen), but this past week the judges (spoiler alert!) didn't even eliminate anyone! The two teams of four chefs had 24 hours to open a mock restaurant. They had to create a full menu, shop for all the interior decorations, train an apparently incompetent waitstaff in thirty minutes and then serve thirty people. When both teams - unsurprisingly - failed, no one was sent home! Since they all sucked, all the losers cancelled each other out and everyone ended up being, in a way, winners, since they could stay another week. Got that? Hugs all around!

It's not that I'm not enjoying the show. I am. I've been a little hesitant about Top Chef in the past, but Salon's Heather Havrilesky changed my mind:

I love the guessing game...Top Chef is sort of one part cooking competition, one part unfolding mystery: You develop your theories about which dish tastes the best, but you don't really know that it's lacking oil or acid or is unevenly salted until the judges have their say.

Okay, I can go along with that. Now I'm fully, unconditionally addicted and it's mostly due to the show itself. The challenges are interesting, most of the chefs seem genuinely talented and it's hard to guess who's getting kicked out of the kitchen each week as past successes don't necessarily guarantee anything.

But TC's charms are starting to wear thin. Instead of decreasing in number, these chefs seem to be multiplying every week. The judges should be eliminating two, three, four chefs at a time by this point. "Hung - you're a big spaz! You're gone! CJ - you're too tall! You're gone! Sara, no, you, the other Sara - you haven't won one challenge yet! You're gone!" See how easy that was, Padma?

Here's how Bravo could punch this show up:

1) Show Tre in sleeveless shirts more. When Tre stripped down to a tank top for the challenge in which they had to feed a late-night club crowd, even he knew that the drunks were lining up to check out his guns, not the raw oysters. With the cute-girl quotient rapidly reducing (only the beautiful Casey remains as a specimen of poreless womanhood), Bravo should take advantage of the cute boys left: the built, soft-spoken Tre, 6'8" former-volleyball-player CJ and mohawked, former-gymnast Dale. Forget the chef jackets as kitchen uniform - bring on the requisite tank tops.

2) Let us actually get to know the contestants. At the beginning of one episode, we see Casey and Lea talking over breakfast. Then, when Lea is eliminated later, Casey has a mini-breakdown because they're apparently best friends. Same thing with Dale and Sara - as soon as we found out they were BFFs, Sara is sent packing. I'm all for a Bravo show focusing more on the creative challenges and less on personal drama ({cough}Project Runway{cough}) but we still need to get to know the chefs if we're going to care about them.

3) The judges should...I don't know...make sense, maybe? The biggest problem with this show - what the hell are they talking about half the time? First Tom Colicchio complains that the chefs aren't being creative enough when they have to update a classic American comfort food. Then they criticize Sara's updated Chicken a la King for not resembling Chicken a la King closely enough. Say wha? Could they complain even more, please? When served pineapple sorbet, two of them literally cried "It's so cooooold!" In fact, these judges complain more than any other judging team from any other reality show. I'm waiting for critiques like "your broth was too brothy." Or "your saffron sauce didn't match my shoes." Or "your left earlobe looked slightly asymmetrical when you brought out your dish."

And please...no more never-ending plugs for overrated, largely disregarded food bloggers, please.

Minor details, overall, however. Bravo has a good thing going and they know it. Which is why I'll still be sitting on my couch at the season finale, eight years older, with a beard as big as Hung's ego, surrounded by discarded fennel bulbs and empty mascarpone tubs, crossing my fingers as the next Top Chef is announced.

Also check out: Top Project Runway Rip-Off.
And: Please Pack Your Breasts and Leave.

Babies are the New God

If you name your first book God is Dead, you might be a young, brash writer brimming with big ideas, or a one-note gimmick suffering from a desperate need for attention any way you can find it or you might just suffer from elephantine cojones. Luckily, in the case of Ron Currie, Jr., it's the first and last options. (Okay, with maybe just a healthy dollop of attention-baiting thrown in for good measure.)

In his compact novel-in-stories, Currie's vision is big and darkly funny. In interviews he has said that the spirit of his book closely follows a line from The Brothers Karamazov: "If God is dead, then everything is permitted.”

Fittingly, Currie has taken his idea and run with it. In the introduction, God takes the form of a Dinka woman who pleads with Colin Powell - yes, that Colin Powell - to help her. Currie imagines Powell in spiritual crisis who studies Samuel L. Jackson movies to be more intimidating. When an assistant apologizes after questioning whether Powell is black enough (hmmm, where have we heard that one lately?), Powell responds with "apology accepted. Bitch-ass." Then, after a stunning monologue, Powell calls the unnamed U.S. president a "silver-spoon master-of-the-universe motherfucker" to his face. If only, you know? If only.

With the title as its own spoiler, God is killed in the Sudan. Word of his death spreads around the world thanks to the pack of feral dogs who eat God's decaying body and are then blessed with the ability to communicate to humans. The rest of the stories deal, however directly or indirectly, with the ramifications. While the whole book is one giant "what if" for the future, Currie lets us know that maybe it's not that far in the future. To fill the void, adults start worshipping their children. Teenaged boys with no parental supervision turn cynical and violent. Warring populations kill innocent civilians in their quest for idealogical dominance. Where, oh where, does Currie get his crazy ideas?

Well, according to his acknowledgments, Currie started working on these ideas when he was in the Zoetrope Workshop. Honestly, it felt like it, too, which is neither a critique or a compliment. A lot of the stories, especially the first one, sound as if they originated around a bong or in a bar after a writing workshop. (Or, maybe in Currie's case, both?) "Dude, what if God was on Earth, like, right now?" "Yeah. And what if he was actually a woman?" "Yeah, like a snobby blonde lady who shops too much." "No! No! Like, some other woman. Like a Dinka woman." "Dude, you just said Dinka."

But that youthful courage to just go for it is exactly what's so refreshing about the book. Titles like "Interview with the Last Remaining Member of the Feral Dog Pack Which Fed on God's Corpse" are what made me unable to put down the book after catching it in Borders' Original Voices section. And luckily, Currie's prose stands up to his ideas. His descriptions land perfectly between the feminine (i.e. flowery, unending) and masculine ("muscular," clipped). He develops characters while keeping the action moving forward. And if some of the ideas don't work, as is the case with most story collections, then the ones that don't are still fascinating.

Hopefully, Currie didn't blow his creative wad on his first collection. I eagerly await his next book, whatever it may be about, eagerly anticipating how his work grows more sophisticated yet still blustery and in-your-face. We could use more fiction like that.

Also check out: Just Wondering.
And: My Love is More Like Vodka.

Spread the Word

...and the love. The first annual QueerFest Midwest is coming to Chicago on August 25th.

From UR Chicago (more of which I'll get to in a later post)...

On August 25, Pulaski Park Fieldhouse in Wicker Park will hold Chicago's first music and art festival for the Gay-Lesbian-Bi-Transgendered (GLBT) community. Queer Fest Midwest will gather and showcase the artistic talents of the GLBT community through their wide range of musical acts, as well as visual and interactive artists, while raising money for About Face Theater, a theater company that creates city and nation wide dialogue about gender and sexuality through their plays. The visual arts portion of the festival - "The Cowboy and The Pegasus" - focuses on the wide range of work by local and national recognized queercore media artists. The exhibition features video artists Sadie Benning, Dylan Mira, Latham Zearfoss and Bruce La Bruce, paintings by Zack Stiglicz, Grant Schexnider and Terrance Koh, photography by Sean Fader, the creative concepts of Will Harrison and Kean O'Brien, and a confessional documentary about HIV by Charles Lum.

Musical performances by...
Katastrophe
The Ex-Members
Johnny Dangerous
Chris Garneau
Katz
Gina Young and Team Gina
and many more


For more info check out the festival's MySpace page.

Giada 3.0

First came her signature cooking show, Everyday Italian. Then came the best-selling cookbooks and another TV show. At this point, Food Network star Giada De Laurentiis is hosting 3 shows - Everyday Italian, Giada's Weekend Getaways and Giada in Paradise - and is also a regular correspondent on NBC's Today. But now, according to Broadcasting & Cable magazine, her name-branding machine is kicking into high gear.

Already appearing in ads for Barilla pasta, Mrs. De Laurentiis will also be launching a line of oils, vinegars and spices with Barilla due in December. She's designing a line of bakeware for Pyrex Glassware to launch in early 2008. AND, come September, she will co-host the new fourth hour of Today for one week each month for at least a year, as well as becoming "one of a rotating roster of co-hosts for all of the hour's segments."

Holy over-enunciated Italian words, Batman! Emeril may be the face of the Food Network and have his own line of cookware, and Rachel Ray may be the media-saturated star with her own talk show, magazine and kitchen products, but Giada is really stepping out on her own here. She has really surprised me with her ambition. Her story always made it sound like she was just along for the ride, kind of like, 'I wrote a magazine article about cooking for my large, Hollywood family and voila! Food Network asked me to host a show!' But now it seems like our dainty pasta princess is really aiming for household-name status. (I was going to call say pasta queen, but that would be insulting Lidia Bastianich.)

And what a name it is. How refreshing to know that a household name could be one as long, complicated, vowel-choked and flat-out Italian as hers. Yes, Ray is technically Sicilian, but I don't think anyone associates "Ray" with Italian ancestry. I know it seems trivial, but I've seen and heard as many possible variations of my last name as possible. ("No, ma'am, you can't insert a consonant between the three vowels just to make it easier for yourself.") Even if it's in some small way, someone like Mrs. De Laurentiis gives hope to all of us. We're here, we have long names, get used to it!

Now, being a long-time Giada fan, will I mindlessly run out and buy her stuff? No. It's really not as if the world needs one more bottle of olive oil lining the shelves. I'm sure Giada's name alone insures some credibility, and therefore sales, but you just never know, especially when it comes to celebrity products. The article doesn't mention price points, either, so I'll simply have to wait, taste and see.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Sometimes Giada cooks on Today, sometimes she doesn't. So will there be any cross-promotion of her products on the show? Will she use her own products on her own Food Network shows? Because one of the more interesting points of the article is that Giada's products, including her books, are separate from the Food Network.

Food Network has approached De Laurentiis to jointly launch products, but she has chosen to go it alone (she already has three cookbooks in addition to the ongoing Barilla relationship) because star and network haven't been able to align on terms of a deal, she says.

“I came in at a time where Food Network didn't have those ties with a publisher and others,” De Laurentiis says. “They were doing food programming, and that was it.”

Luckily, both parties acknowledge their mutual benefits relationship - the more popular one gets, the more it helps the other - and so it sounds like their relationship isn't affected negatively. Which is good, because I like Giada in the grocery store, even moreso on my bookshelf, but most of all I like her where I got to know her first: on my TV.

(Thanks to Esquire for the pic.)

Also check out: You Had Me At "Prosciutto."
And: Ode to Polenta.

Of Booze and Political Statements

Since I live in a city with a large gay population, a gay-friendly mayor and two neighborhoods heavily populated by my fellow 'mos, it's sometimes easy to forget that not every gay person has it so easy. Granted, my boyfriend and I know not to hold hands in certain neighborhoods, and there's always going to be some bigoted asshole who has a problem just to have a problem, but Chicago has its advantages. There are plenty of stylish gay bars, gay publications and even Hamburger Mary's, a national gay burger chain (the waiters are actually ponies and the burgers are made out of glitter and Cher's old noses).

It's not like I live in, oh, say, Mississippi. When you open a gay bar there, it's right down the block from a Confederate-flag-decorated straight bar where the patrons say things like, "If [the queers] fuck with me, I'm-a bust their heads wide open." Obviously, he's never tasted a queer burger. Chicago 1, drunk redneck 0.

Luckily, that guy doesn't get too much air time in Small Town Gay Bar, a new documentary out on DVD today. A grand jury prize nominee at the 2005 Sundance film festival, the film documents the struggles to open and maintain a gay bar in rural areas of the "Bible Belt." Faced with prejudice that sometimes leads to violence, the owners and patrons of these establishments risk social alienation and physical harm just to toss back a few Bud Lights.

The film starts by interviewing many of the customers, who endlessly reiterate how much they need Rumors, the local gay bar - how it creates a sense of community, how it's the only place they feel safe and comfortable (once actually inside), how they'd have to travel up to 2 hours away to the second-closest gay bar without it. It then jumps, somewhat jarringly, to the tale of Scotty Weaver, a local boy who dressed in drag. He was tied up, strangled, mutilated, partially decapitated, then dragged to the woods and set on fire. The filmmakers tie this to the danger rural gay men and women face by being themselves. Anyone who follows the news knows that many gays are the victims of hate crimes all over the country, even in such gay-friendly cities as Chicago. But the film reminds us that the large scale of cities offers an element of anonymity, whereas everyone knows who are in a small town. Sure, the local gay men and women could flock to a larger, more accepting city, but whether for personal or financial reasons, they choose to stay and live in the place they call home.

In the film, we meet Rick, the owner of Rumors who isn't even out to his parents ("I know they love me and accept me, but if I told them that I don't think they could accept that"). There's Rumors' "show director" (pictured singing here), the fantastically glamorous, sharp-tongued drag queen Jim Bishop, aka Alicia Stone ("Let us be the grown adult taxpayers that we are and make our own decisions"). There's also Lori and Ruby, the lesbian couple that buys the abandoned, dilapidated gay bar Crossroads and put all their time and money into opening it up as a new gay bar, Different Seasons.

We also get a long, in-depth interview with the Fred Phelps, leader of the Westboro Baptist Church that picketed Weaver's funeral (I'd compare his balding, pockmarked, squinty looks to Mr. Burns, but I would never, ever insult Mr. Burns like that). Phelps blames homosexuality on parents who don't teach their children about God 'n stuff and actually says, "I'm the only one telling [homosexuals] the truth, for God's sake. I'm the only one that loves them." Of course, that would be a lot more believable if he could actually supress his smirk when he says that all gays are going to hell.

We also get to meet Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association, located in nearby Tupelo, MS. Wildmon describes his association's acceptance that other people are allowed to "exist" (gee, how big of them) while others explain how AFA members would read on the radio the license plate numbers of cars parked at gar bars the previous night. So, you can exist, just don't be different and drink beer at the same time.

The film gets a little repetitive. Not to take away from anyone's problems, but there's only so many times in a 76-minute documentary you need to be told that being gay in a small town is really, really hard. Maybe it's because I'm part of the choir, but there's only so much preaching necessary to make your point - and isn't this documentary probably going to be viewed only by the choir anyway? Also, after a moving, silent montage of proud gay men and women who promise to keep attending their local gay bar despite local prejudices, director Malcom Ingram strangely decides to end his film with one more offensive spit of verbal bile from Fred Phelps. Not exactly the note on which you'd expect him to end his tribute to tough, perseverant gay men and women. (To make up for that, if you get the DVD, definitely watch the hilarious extras with executive producer Kevin Smith, director of Clerks and friend of the gays.)

Still, with the national debate still focused on gay marriage, it's easy to overlook the small, daily battles that gay men and women go through just to peacefully live their lives. These aren't activists marching in parades or providing commentary on national news shows. They're the local veterinarians and DJs and post office workers trying to escape from the daily grind like we all do. When you see all the effort they have to go through just to drink beer, laugh with some friends and maybe dance to something other than Hank Williams, Jr., you have to stop and think. The AFA and others accuse them of trying to push a homosexual agenda or revolutionize mainstream culture. In some parts of our smorgasbord country, grabbing a beer bottle - next to a rainbow American flag - truly becomes something radical.

Also check out:http: You Win.
And: Kinsey Sicks Wanna Be Republicans.

Okay, Go: Dance Duo Edition (Justice and Junior Senior)

*Updated below!

You know, MTV has gotten a lot of (deserved) shit for not playing any actual music, but now it and its sister station VH1 have really abandoned music videos altogether. It's shameful, really, as some videos can approach works of art, like this one or this one.

For this edition of Okay, Go, my occasional post dedicated to the dying art of music videos and/or new artists you should hear, we will be distracting you with not one but two new videos. First up, French duo Justice are back on the scene and ready to dance. You might remember them as the winners at the 2006 MTV Europe Music Awards that provoked Kanye West to jump on stage, protest and generally lose his mind. "D.A.N.C.E." features hipsters walking around with constantly changing animated t-shirts. Simple concept, awesome execution. Oh yeah, and the song itself is pretty sweet, being sung entirely by a children's chorus and sounding as if could be pumped through your local roller disco.



I especially like when one t-shirt quickly flashes "Internet killed the video star." It's so true and yet...it's so not. The internet delivers music videos whenever we want them, on demand and ready at a moment's notice. But because they're so accessible online, MTV and its brethren seem to have completely abandoned them for the same reason. Thank you, Youtube! You give record companies and artists reason for pumping thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars into a single that has no chance of ever being seen on TV!

*(After winning the 2006 MTV Europe Music Award for Best Video of the Year, Justice is now nominated for the US equivalent! It really comes out of nowhere - no other major nominations, they're not a mainstream band. And yet, with that kind of recognition for an actually good video, it's almost like MTV...has...taste...)

Next up is Junior Senior. This Denmark duo burst onto the scene in 2003 with the scarily peppy "Move Your Feet," accompanied by a hilarious early-Atari-graphics video. They're finally back with Hey Hey My My Yo Yo and its first single, "Take My Time." It's a Red Bull, tequila and crack cocktail of a song (wait, the song actually sounds kind of 80's, so what kind of cocktail would that be? Percocet, tequila and crack? Valium, tequila and Freezy Freakies juice?). There's not one but two key changes, culminating in a euphoric, almost hysterical climax (your speakers at work probably won't do it justice). Even better, the lyrics are belted out by none other than Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson of the B-52's. (The band is working on a new album, btw.)



In fact, I couldn't help but notice that the hand-drawn graphics in "Take My Time" more than slightly resemble the graphics for the B-52's own "Roam." Coincidence? Homage? You decide, then tell me. Okay, go!

Also check out: Okay, Go: Scissor Sisters.
And: Okay, Go: Mika.