Hopeless
Photos: Construction of the Science Classroom Building
Archive for March, 2010
A Plea for Spoken Word’s Return Home
February 22, 2010
Dear Spoken Word,
Where art thou?
We miss ya, mayne!
Come back, come back
home to
your roots
Where the audience
snaps to the avalanche of knowledge
flowing so gently like milk ‘n honey
yet sonic-booms their hearts
I remember the days
When you wasn’t scared of revolution
Ready to mobilize
North Minneapple, or Low End
or Beverly Hills…all ends of Earth
I remember when you
spoke of Last Poets, Ginsberg, Brooks, &
Hughes; then you took it way back to days
of Dunbar, Romantic poets, griots,
& folktales
Back in the day
you used to stroll
into the café singing
your charming music
to minds
in need of
pleasure, like the pied piper;
your words used to
get folks crunk for change
I mean,
I …
Love Machine
You. legato and polyform,
likened to another squall
leathery crepe skin fragile at a glance
unfoldings perfunctory thanks to logic
I am what I am afraid of
I fear my machine parts
blowing off their hinges
Moldings and cross-sections
of an ideal fit
I will be passed over by possibility of
beauty
airplanes vs. helicopters
spread-armed breasts or spiral wall
milk blossom poised to erect
as phallic mother
multiple sap oozings
An indestructible plastic necessitates male
and female parts
Form begs shattering to reach molded core,
as underlying as brick to lime honey
to blood-orange tart gelled
to weakened belly, legs, groin
to kissing the breach between wombs,
body bent between bodies,
candle wax and tactile shapes.
So much promise, we can fold
into angled limb …
Who’s Replacing the Dinosaurs?
The first hints of nicer weather in the current season make us Minnesotans do very strange things. There’s a special brand of optimism that we’re imbued with, a mild delusion that persuades us that temperatures that are barely above freezing qualify as “sweatshirt weather” provided the sun is up. Some brave souls were even spotted jogging in shorts during last week’s “warm snap” (quotes added because most of the country considers temperatures in the mid thirties to be incredibly cold). Perhaps some of this spring …
Is That a Windmill on Your Mountain or Are You Just Mining?
The split between conservationists and environmentalists is upon us. Across the country (and beyond it) our beloved national scenery is being threatened by the greens, of all people. More precisely, greens are attacking mountaintops. With windmills.
Greens, naturally, aren’t the only ones attacking mountaintops. The tentative emergence of wind energy in states such as North Carolina is in some ways a response to mountaintop removal, which essentially destroys hilltops in search of coal. This practice tends to cause pollution, erosion, and all kinds of things that don’t sound that bad unless you live by something that used to be a …
Understanding the Parking Ban
This winter, Minneapolitans were subjected to the usual snowstorms and their requisite snow emergencies. But residents were in for a surprise when it came to snow removal rules: a total even-side parking ban for the second half of the snow season, ostensibly implemented because emergency vehicles were having trouble navigating narrowed streets.
Whenever the city does something annoying, it’s tempting to blame it on some sort of nefarious plot, ulterior motive or government screw-up. When the snow starts piling up on the roads, a whole slew of angry speculations directed at our fair cities public services come to mind. Sometimes …
Smudging The Issues In This Election
Once again, the election cycle is starting to turn on, its rusty gears sputtering and whirring to life even earlier than usual, as more and more candidates for political office are declaring their intention to run, dropping out of the race or simply saying nothing. Since the political machine is already underway, the issues politicians must address have taken shape, the big questions on a state and national level are already being asked and dodged with aplomb by both media and politician. Thankfully, the American public will begin to weed out the fringe politicians who either preach a bizarre, negative …
Human v. Ancestor: Neanderthal Cloning
Cloning has been one of those “hot topics” for years. One of the things you find round-table discussions about late at night when flipping between PBS and the science channel or on the slate for high school debate class. Should we clone sheep? People? Babies? Well here’s a new one: soon we may be able to clone our ancient rival/ancestor, the Neanderthal.
Scientists in Germany have been working for the past five years on accurately sequencing a Neanderthal genome, from which a possible next step would be the re-creation of a living, breathing Neanderthal.
But what exactly is a Neanderthal? The term …
Totally Rad Moments In Songs
“In the Air Tonight” – Phil Collins
This is the obvious choice. It’s been popularized now as Mike Tyson’s “favorite part” of the song in “The Hangover,” but long before anybody had ever even heard of Bradley Cooper, the drum fill in this song around 3:40 had me, and everyone else in the world, waiting on the edge of their driver’s seat in anticipation and beating the shit out of their steering wheels when this totally rad moment finally arrived.
For an added bonus, look up “In the Air Tonight Live” (posted by Sportadic22) on YouTube and watch the ever-creepy Phil Collins …
A Fruitopian Society
I enjoy reminiscing about being a kid. I would assume most people do. My memories about childhood are channeled through particular objects and occurrences, mostly. Impromptu Super Soaker battles were fun, and so was going to my aunt’s house in the Middle of Nowhere, Minnesota. Memories and experiences make us who we are.
Video games hold a lot of memories for me too. Twisted Metal and Command & Conquer were huge and I’m a fan to this day. Likewise, …
Why Filesharing Is Basically The Best Thing
There is this idea that filesharing is bad for bands, which comes from a simple logical fallacy that hinges on the misguided notion that if free downloads were not available, the downloader would instead purchase the album. In reality, in most cases of illegal music downloading, the listener would not buy the album if he couldn’t download it, he would simply not listen to it at all. As a person who spends quite a bit of money supporting struggling underground bands, I can say with absolute certainty that in my case, without illegal downloads not a cent of that money …
Two Great Debut Albums
The Stooges – The Stooges
The first song on The Stooges is called “1969,” and its abrasive, confrontational punk spirit and sound immediately makes it clear that The Stooges are not mourning the end of the 60s. One pictures singer Iggy Pop stumbling through hippie havens, scowling and swearing, subconsciously building the momentum that would explode onto his band’s first record. This was a new kind of rebellion.
Drawing from The Troggs and The Rolling Stones, The Stooges presented a concise, brawny strain of rock that bands have been attempting to imitate ever since. Ron Asheton’s guitar switches from …
Cloudkicker – ]]][[[
The sound is the most immediately striking thing about Cloudkicker’s new EP: they’ve found the perfect production style for this sort of music. The record’s sound is crisp, full, huge, and dynamic. But a great sound is nothing without good riffs, and Cloudkicker’s production is suited equally well to the band’s ethereally epic style and their stern mathematical riffing. It would be hard to find a bad riff on any of these three songs: the licks follow smoothly one after the other with every section pulling its own weight.
Cloudkicker is a four-piece instro/prog/metal-ish band from Britain, and they’ve put out …
Surfer Blood – Astro Coast
Indie Rock’s hype-to-backlash machine has such an impressively quick turnaround that it’s a wonder Palm Beach, Florida’s native sons Surfer Blood even had a chance to release their debut record. The band quickly gained critical acclaim following an impressive showing at this year’s CMJ festival with a raw, muscular and distinctly noir-ish take on ‘90s indie power pop. Comparisons to Weezer trail the band, but Astro Coast contains so much more than a retread of the Blue Album’s tropes. John Paul Pitts, the band’s singer-guitarist-mastermind has crafted an enduring classic with this record, one of those ten-song shitkickers that’s …