I Got a Crush On...

Okay, I admit it. Reluctantly.

It's irrational, and probably unjustified. Which, I suppose, is what makes it a crush.

He voted for the border fence. He pussed out on that Iran vote. His health care plan was described by one expert (=activist I know) as "terrible." My expert did note, however, that his plan was "no worse than the other two."

So, okay. No worse than the other two is a start. If he's no worse than the other two on Issues, and has that early war opposition going for him, perhaps I can rationalize this by explaining why he wins the other event, Character.

First, this out of the way: Hillary Clinton is a politicobot and we all know it. What's more, I don't appreciate being a pawn in whatever sick hold-my-hand-through-Lewinsky-and-I'll-make-you-president pact this pair has going. Don't drag us into your twisted marriage.

The Clintons act like they get to appoint presidents. And I love how Bill Clinton, having apparently promised this appointment, can't quite seem to follow through. He keeps accidentally (subconsciously?) sabotaging her campaign with his little unscripted Bubba moments.

Oh, but she's a woman? You have to be kidding me. This is some great feminist victory, for the first female president to be a former first lady installed by her husband's political machine? I wash my hands of it.

This too: John Edwards is a weasel. His "populist message" is so much focus-grouped branding bullshit, and he has conveniently shifted that brand from "defender of the poor" to "defender of the middle class"--which, really, could mean anything. Freaking Lou Dobbs thinks he's "defending the middle class."

And however much I might agree that evil corporations are pulling the marionette strings of America, etc, this message is hardly fresh and exciting. Or even utmostly important, considering the many crucial questions we face about war, immigration, global warming, gay rights. He could have done this pseudo-populist shtick in any decade of the 20th century. Come on: this guy's clearly full of shit.

Great, that's out of the way.

Now: Character. This is quite a squirmy topic. I was raised in the kind of old-school lefty household in which Issues mattered and "character" was pretty much considered a made-up concept. (Needless to say, this posed problems beyond politics, but we shan't dally down that road.) My belief was, you vote for the guy whose positions are most correct. Period.

If I start talking about character, it seems inevitable that I'll spew crap like, Character is something you can't really explain, you just have to see it, hear it, feel it. Crap that calls into question one's seriousness and understanding of politics. That makes one sound like the kind of dumbshit who subconsciously chooses a candidate based on the symmetry of his teeth.

But...I must. Because he's got it. It's there in his biography, his experience (if Hillary Clinton hasn't trademarked that word yet.) It's there in his voice, which I could SO listen to for four to eight years.

Barack Obama is the realness.

I trust that he is not running for the presidency just to satisfy narcissistic urges, and that's a rare treat in and of itself. I trust him to show insight, integrity, and good judgment. I trust him to deliberate presidential decisions with probity. Scandalous and shameful though it may be, I think these things matter.



Philosopher-king.


And I relate to him. The other candidates seem to be from another planet (in Kucinich's case, Mars) never mind another generation.

I've only read one of the eight thousand biographies of Abraham Lincoln, and I've gleaned what I know about Obama from sources other than his memoirs (dreading that their politiciany tone would crush my crush), but I do see similarities between the two. They faced outward challenges and internal struggles as young men and they grappled, learning complex lessons that go beyond mere policy. Obama strikes me as capable of becoming a Lincolnesque philospher-king.

Notice I said "capable." He also seems capable of avoiding decisions so as not to disappoint any constituency. Those people-pleasing tendencies I talked about in an old post are a serious hazard. Then again, he also also seems capable of admitting mistakes (preferably using the phrase "bone-headed"), which is everyone's new favorite thing after seven years of Bush.

I never thought I would agree with Andrew Sullivan on anything--well, other than, "I like men"--but his article in the December Atlantic made an excellent point: Obama could help us "get beyond the symbolic battles of the Boomer generation and face today’s actual problems." Amen.

Would Joe Biden care to be his running mate?

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Always Got the Hind Tit

BOOK REVIEW
Little Heathens




Just when this blog was aching for some white and WASPy subject matter, here comes Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression, a memoir penned by my new imaginary grandma, Mildred Armstrong Kalish.

Little Heathens is deeply cute. And when I say something is cute, by no means am I calling it trivial or cloying. I take my cuteness quite seriously. This book is cute as in wholesome, heart-warming and earnest. It made me feel like I was curled up beside a fire eating fresh-baked cookies in a fuzzy bathrobe with a kitten in my lap.

Speaking of kittens, here's how Kalish and her younger sister bundled up on cold winter nights:

After placing a thick featherbed on the mattress, we covered it with a heavy flannel double-length blanket, which we tucked in at the foot of the bed, creating a snug sack...After donning our heavy wool nighties, we hopped into bed and pulled the blankets and quilts completely over our heads, then snuggled together like two spoons. We were permitted one or two kittens, which would find us on their own and snuggle at our feet near the warm stones.

Permitted one or two kittens. To think, I permit myself one or two kittens regularly.

Harsh Iowa winters are only the beginning. Kalish and her siblings and cousins--the "little heathens" of the title--survive endless chores, lash-enforced rules, a scarcity of modern medicine and mind-boggling levels of thrift. (Scrape insides of eggshells with your finger so as not to miss any precious egg whites.) Kalish's family leaps high hurdles to fulfill basic needs. Just to get dinner on the table, the pig has to be slaughtered, the water pumped, the wood gathered, the fire started, the eggs collected, the vegetables picked, the bread baked.

Oh yeah, and it's the Great Depression.

But the book is written from a child's perspective, and it's really about the best kind of kid stuff: running ecstatically through a rainstorm, picking sun-warmed strawberries, inhaling the sweet smell of a lamb's fur, and tagging along after the Big Kids. The Little Kids, among whom eighty-four year-old Kalish counts herself, are always "getting the hind tit." (Among barnyard litters, the runts settle for the less milky, rearward mammary glands.)

The country pleasures in this book are made all the sweeter by the fact that you get to read with curiosity about the frigid outhouses and entire tedious days spent on laundry without having to experience either.

After one Iowa winter too many, Kalish eventually moved to California. "I prefer to sit by an open fire and listen to Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra sing songs about the ice and the cold and the snow," she writes, "rather than experiencing them firsthand."

Likewise, Little Heathens is the best way to experience, secondhand, childhood on an Iowa farm during the Great Depression.

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Superhead, Meet Supercleb

BOOK REVIEW
Confessions of a Video Vixen



Got a chick named Super-head
She give super-head
Just moved in the buildin, even gave the super head
Jadakiss, "Blood Pressure"

So begins the story of the most hated woman in hip hop. Well, not with the super getting head, but with Ja Rule and his Murder Inc. compatriots re-gifting the nickname Jadakiss had originally bestowed on the generous lady friend in the song.

Karrine Steffans, hip hop groupie, "video vixen" was the recipient.

I was finally able to get my grubby little hands on her 2005 memoir sans the shame of having to admit I was buying it (great Hannukkah present, Bri, thanks!) and devoured it within seventeen hours of arrival. That the book discussed the respective endowments of Shaq and Vin Diesel had nothing to do with my reading pace.

Want the rest of the list? Kool G Rap, Ice T, Ja Rule, Irv Gotti, "Papa" (=Method Man, according to Crim & Assoc.), Puffy, Ray J, Fred Durst (random!), Xzibit, DMX, Bobby Brown, Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Usher, probably hundreds of unnamed athletes and music industry execs.

Sup, you could do with some editing. Of those, only Method Man, Vin Diesel and maybe Xzibit actually seem sexy when you think about it. And when you read about it.

Don't read this book unless you're prepared to have a big shit taken on your sexual fantasies about rappers. Kool G Rap beats her, Irv Gotti pimps her. Most of the rest take their fellatio apportionment with bizarre matter-of-factness, buy her some shit and move on.

And she doles out the apportionments in kind, with skillful efficiency. There are actual torrid affairs with a few of the aforementioned, but what takes place with most is a weird, sterile transaction in which both parties seem to know they have to do this, so they get on with it, already. The more famous the man, the less pleasant the sex: witness her mediocre fifteen minutes with Puffy (p. 149), gross baths in Shaq's copious sweat (p. 144) and grimy, late-night hotel encounter with Dr. Dre before he started working out (p. 115).

But the book never really tries to explain why. Readers get to see her being cruelly abused as a child and raped at age thirteen; we generally gather that she has a great gaping void which must be filled with famous cock. She does explain that, through all of it, she is miserable, addicted to fame, money and drugs.

But with her standing right there at the crossroads of so many fascinating social forces--race, fame, sex, gender, hip hop--I couldn't help wanting her to apply more of that fellatistic ambition to her writing, to give me not just the wheres and the hows and what they ordered from room service, but the WHY DID YOU DO THIS?

Maybe it's unfair of me to expect so much in the way of analytical skills from Sup. Although she does reclaim her by-then-shameful nickname at the end of the book's journey, explaining that in England "superhead" means something like "brainiac."

Gripes aside, I like Sup. She certainly does keep it real. It's no fun having the great army of hip hop ready to kill you with its bare hands. She broke the unspoken code and infuriated rappers and their followings, which says a lot about who the code hurt and helped in the first place.

They didn't see it coming, which is kind of delicious. You just get the feeling that all those guys thought they were in the warm mouth of a pleasure robot, not a living woman who just might fuck and tell.

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Best of Clebilicious

November 2006-November 2007

Clebketeers, it's been one whole glorious year in the 'Sphere. Blogosphere. Thanks to all of you who have been kind enough to stop by during your Internet rounds. As a little thank-you present--at least, I hope it seems like a present--I give you ten posts culled from sixty-four. Think of it as little gems mined from a braindroppings pit.


First post: Fabulous Life Of . (Well, technically, second, but the very first said only, "H...hi.")


Stammering early efforts...
Sexiest Voices
Are You Ready to Make a Difference? (appearances to the contrary, this hilarious one was actually written by Brian)


Light summer fare...
Walnuts v. Walnuts
Time To Break Out the Shorts


Hardball with Clebbie Polwick:
Bush II: More Fun Than Expected


Navel-gazery:
Thirtynothing
You Can Do Sidebends or Situps
If Black People Eat Bagels...


And maybe my best nugget:
Jews Come Out of the Cultural Closet (plus the delectable follow-up)


Drop a comment if you have a favorite! And thanks for reading.

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My Fascination With Hip Hop -OR- If Black People Eat Bagels, Does That Make It Okay?

Last night, at the Bay Area Record Rockers party The Influence, my friend Matt asked me if I'm into hip hop, or if that's just Crim. I muttered something half-assed about how if he hangs around the American Coot long enough, he'll probably start bird-watching.

But it occurs to me that I've been asking myself the same question.

To wit: if I blast KMEL every time I get in the car, if I catch myself in otherwise casual conversation unleashing diatribes about the phony high-mindedness of Kanye West, if I can recite every word of not just "Bust a Move" and "Baby Got Back," but the double-time Biggie verse on "Notorious Thugs"...

Am I a big hip hop fan?

I try to be a good white girl and listen to rock, but it's really fucking hard. At the peak of my efforts, in high school, I officially listened to just rock, with, like, the requisite Beastie Boys and Bob Marley extras. Only alone in the car did I sneak down the dial to Power 106, where hip hop lives. I didn't even want to program it! Fortunately, at 105.9, it was just four button pushes down--beep-beep-beep-beep--from 106.7 KROQ.

I wasn't always such a little conformist. Earlier I had treasured my cassingles of "Keep Ya Head Up" and "I Get Around," beginning my lifelong study of the ambiguities of Tupac. (He loves women! He hates women! Loves! Hates! Loves! Hates!)

I also tired out my tape of The Chronic, and could spit every nasty, skeezy verse of "Nuthin But A G Thang" by age thirteen. (All you parents, take note: I turned out fine.)

Hell, I was a SoCal kid in the Golden Age of LA rap.

Then came Nirvana and Pearl Jam and four years wandering the desert. By college, I had amassed a collection of what I now know to be exactly the kind of hip hop white college kids listen to: Beastie Boys, Beastie Boys, Tribe Called Quest, more Beastie Boys, Fugees. Nowadays, I suppose that list would be supplanted by Kanye and more Kanye.

Of course it was Crimmie who sealed my fate. Nine years of living with him and his thousands of hip hop records. I usually credit him with getting me to like all this stuff, thus abdicating responsibility. But I wonder if he gave me my affinity for hip hop or if my affinity for hip hop helped feed my affinity for him. He did, after all, woo me by meowing "Push It" by Salt-n-Pepa. (Granted, he has other charms too.)

And cohabiting with those records sure has worn me down. It's not just Snoop, Dre and Pac anymore. I probably couldn't stay in this relationship if I didn't revere Nas. And then there are my secret affairs with Shock G and The Game. Plus I love any beats by Dr. Dre or Timbaland, and probably the Neptunes, too, and anything with either Akon or Nate Dogg singing the hook, and any early 90s LA song with high-pitch synth. Anything by Outkast, whatever the hell Andre 3000 is wearing. All the Bay rappers, especially Keak da Sneak. I've even had to disavow my stated dislike for Wu Tang. So come on in Ghostface and Method Man, RZA, GZA, ODB and all those other ones I can't distinguish. Group hug.

Ever since those days in the closet, the problem has been the same. I don't feel like I should love hip hop. Because it doesn't feel like it should be mine. At my high school, there were plenty of non-white people ready, willing and able to listen to Power 106. I think I felt it was my duty as a white person not to crowd the ranks.

And there are serious questions of cultural appropriation here. Just think the word "wigger." Shudder.

On the other hand...

Black people eat bagels.

Check out the Lakeshore Noah's if you doubt me. So, if black people eat bagels, does that make it okay?

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Jews Come Out, Part Tsvey

In Jews Come Out of the Cultural Closet, Part I, I asserted that Jews are coming out (in the cultcha) and that Jewishness is, of all things, becoming cool.

"And it's not just the comedy world," I wrote, among other things. "Did the Beastie Boys ever rap about the girlies with the big ole tukheses? Hell no. But hip hop producer Scott Storch--who I'm so not endorsing, btw--calls his production company Tuff Jew. And 50 Cent's team of lawyers? They're called Jew Unit."

Well, as usual, I underestimated just how right I was.

After putting up with much chatter this summer about his post-beef disappearance, Rapper Cam'ron (Killa Cam) recently sent the following cryptic message to MTV:

Killa Season again, you little yentas. November 7th. Cam'ron is anonymous. Dipset!

When Miss Info from Hot 97 asked Cam if he knew what a yenta was, he said:

Hahaha, of course! You know my lawyers are Jewish, they be saying that all the time. So then I was watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Larry David—I fucks with Larry—he called Ted Danson a ‘yenta.’ Yo, I fell out laughing. That shit was crazy. I said, that’s exactly what all these folks are doin’, gossiping about me. Yentas.

And then this from Jay-Z's new American Gangster album:

Black Bar Mitzvahs
Mazel Tov
It's a celebration bitches
L'Chaim
I wish for you a hundred years of success
But it's my time

Am I right or fuckin what. Mazel Tov. It's a celebration, bitches.


Research courtesy Crimson & Associates. (Motto: "Get rich and don't spend it.")

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Fast Times at John W. North High

Of all the people from the John W. North High School Class of '97 stupid enough to plunk down $75 for a reunion, apparently I'm the one who HAS CHANGED THE LEAST. By crowd reaction vote, no less.

Oh sure, I might have pleaded, But, but...what of my crippling back problem and battle back to health? My gain and subsequent loss of some forty pounds? My dripping-with-drama severance from my dictatorial dad? It would have been no use.

I figure if anyone wants to tell me I still seem eighteen, hell, I'll take it. And despite my grumbling about how I had! changed, in point of fact I enjoyed feeling popular and pretending I was following the classic high school reunion narrative of triumphant return.




[In despair with my "I Changed The Least" button.]

But that narrative really requires one to have been a big nerd in high school and I was not. I fought my way hard out of nerddom, disappointing the old dadctator, who desperately wanted me on Academic Decathlon.

There was a huge contingency of unreconstructed nerds at the reunion. And I'll kill a sacred cow here and say that they annoyed me. These may have been the pitiable and picked-on in high school, but they're now full adults with intellectual superiority complexes and no social skills.

Oh, how they disdained the superficialities of the once-popular with their hair and their make-up and their ability to dance. As if the nerd patrol alums don't cling to their own petty shit: techie job titles and enforced-frump outfits and gadgets bought with their new money. Awkward and antisocial just doesn't age well. That classic high school reunion narrative is really about growing out of it.

My friend Shaun was pretty much a nerd when I met him in fifth grade, but that didn't stop me having a fat crush on him. (He responded by throwing rubber balls at me and my sister and shouting, "Big butts! Big butts!") We stayed friends through high school, commiserating over our five hours of nightly homework. And he was the person I most wanted to see at our reunion, because, unlike those unreconstructed nerds, Shaun is a good swan story.

Right around the time I had my back problem, Shaun suffered a medical crisis that left him essentially blind in one eye. I didn't know it then, but he was also struggling with his identity.

The once skinny, slumping salutatorian showed up to the reunion a proud gay man in Diesel jeans, standing his full six feet five inches. He lives in West Hollywood (even!) and has been with his boyfriend for five years now. (Which he says = 30 monogamous gay man years.) And best of all, both our boyfriends are maniacal reef aquarists, which means we'll all have to get together so they can do tank talk.

It's been a tough decade for the Clebster, and it meant a lot to reconnect with an old friend after we've both come such a long way. It also meant a lot when we hit the dance floor and he said I seemed the happiest he's ever seen me. He's known me for eighteen years.




[Sorry ladies, he's gay.]

Lest I get too weepy, though, one more bit of commentary. After my reunion, Bri said my relatively healthy understanding of race made sense. Riverside is a real middle class haven. People who don't have a lot of money move there from LA and Orange County to buy a tract house and nab a slice of American dream pie. The second generation Riversidians are mostly black and Latino (okay, Mexican) and many are upwardly mobile.

Virtually all of the black North alums at the reunion were doctors, lawyers or on their way there. Of course reunions skew to holders of i-Phones, but still. At my high school there was no racial majority and it just wasn't such a thing that white people were richer and black and Mexican people were poorer. Not utopia by a long shot, but not as segregated as New York or, sad to say because I love it so, Oakland.



[Riverside. Not giving a fuck about race since 1992. Or thereabouts.]

When it was time to drive back up to the Bay, Brian unwittingly gave me a poem:

Take the 60
To the 15
To the 10
To the 210
To the 5

We're both native SoCalians, and when we talk freeways down south, the definite articles kick back in. (Nobody in the Bay says the 580.) I made him repeat it a few times, and not just because it's been a while since I've driven out of the Inland Empire.

It sounded like home.

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