I See You Gettin' On The Air With Song I Love...

…and I’m like fuck you.

Or is that “forget you?” I can’t seem to completely recall what Cee-Lo’s original artistic intent was. What statement it was he was trying to make. If, like Gwyneth Paltrow (whose taste in men is eternally a question in my mind (Chris Martin? Really?)) she was mildly upset because the guy he was with left her for a richer girl or if he was livid that the girl he loved was a gold digger.

Break me off a piece of that!

That’s what our PG culture is forcing on us: Aristotle’s philosophy of no extremes. Something isn’t god damn terrible, it’s just damn terrible. Someone makes someone angry, we can’t shout “fuck you” so we croon “forget you.” I understand that parents don’t want their children exposed to foul language, but is it really that bad?

Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s character in Pirate Radio (a fine film, I recommend it if you get a chance), moments before saying “fuck” on the radio for the first time in the history of the medium, says:

“If you shoot a bullet, someone dies.
When you drop a bomb, many die.
If you hit a woman, love dies.
But if you say the "F" word, nothing really happens."

Isn’t that the truth? If, as a society, we ran around screaming “fuck” at each other instead of a polite version thereof, would the meaning change? If we’re upset at something dumb we did, like stubbing our toe, does it matter if we lament our “foul-up” versus our “fuck-up?”

What an ugly mufflefluffle!

In my opinion, actually, no, in proven scientific fact and pure common sense, language is the way by which we humans convey an intended message. If the intended message is foul, then the language doesn’t matter. If you tell someone to “eat shit and die” versus “go jump off a bridge,” isn’t the intention and outcome the same (though one certainly less palatable than the other)? Either way, the person, should they heed your advice, will leave your presence and expire shortly thereafter.

By just the addition of that solitary word, we seem to have somehow rendered unto them a terrible insult of exponentially greater harm than “jumping off a bridge.” Why, because shit tastes bad?

And while you play through that little thought experiment on language, intention and societal morality, let me digress to the original topic: why Glee makes me nauseous (or fucking sick (your choice)).

Glee has become popular. Not just popular, but a zeitgeist. At the MegaLoVideoMart I work at, we sell Glee pins and keychains next to a full line of Bandz, SillyBandz and DandyBandz. When something becomes as popular as Bandz, we know it’s really something. For the life of me, I can’t understand why.

Part of me, I suppose, understands that a lot of the characters (and actors?) are homosexual and this provides a sort of hope for homosexual high school students that are seeing their darkest days. Beyond that, however, I can’t see that Glee is making a whole hell of a lot of difference to anyone.

They render unimpressive covers of fantastic songs in the context of a high school glee club. Cee-Lo’s “Fuck You” stands as one of the best songs of the summer. Now, it’s Gwyneth Paltrow’s “Forget You” about the entirely improbable situation where a woman gets left for a richer woman.

Instead of creating anything meaningful, something of artistic integrity with message and purpose, they bastardize other people’s thoughts and emotions and neatly package it as something a bunch of mouth breathers can easily digest between King of Queens reruns and microwaving popcorn.

What an obese buffoon! His father-in-law is an angry old man! His wife, improbably hot!

And they’re loved for it.

And I don’t understand why. In this musical climate, where I think some of the finest music in the past 20 years is being produced and distributed at a breakneck pace, Broken Social Scene is getting no press time and yet Matt Morrison is on the cover of every magazine in print.

What does Matt Morrison do? He’s a marginal actor that can sing other people’s songs and read other people’s words with incredible clarity. That is all. Well, he’s handsome and wealthy, too, which instantly puts him a few pegs above us regular people.

Wait a second: Matt Morrison is better than Broken Social Scene because he’s richer and better looking? Now ain't that some shit?

Fuck you and uh, fuck Glee, too.

Craven Community College (Part I)

Craven is a pretty weird community college.

Let me tell you why:

Part I: In Which Our Hero Takes A Bathroom Break

The bathrooms are the strangest place I have ever been. It’s like a Twilight Zone episode (props to Rod Serling, Binghamton, NY, native) where a guy has to pee, flings open the bathroom door and it’s all swirling specks of light and somebody is playing a theremin. One week, I had two weird things happen to me in bathrooms at Craven (no foot tapping or wide stances or anything) that’ve molded me into a bit of a community-college bathroom skeptic.

I drink a billion cups of coffee every morning. Literally. That being said, at 1130ish, nature demands I find a restroom. Scenario one took place in the upstairs bathroom of the Brock building. For those of you unfamiliar with the layout, upon entry you are staring at a line of three stalls and two urinals down one wall and a row of three sinks on the opposite wall (they usually don’t have soap - - don’t bother).

I walked in and a gentlemen (I assume) was using the middle stall. I was startled by how quickly he turned his head. He locked eyes with me. With passion. With an uncomfortable, fiery passion. As if I was some sort of moth that landed in his metaphorical spider web. I gave the “yeah, we’re both using the bathroom” nod and started to walk, slowly and determinedly towards the urinals on the other side of the room.

Halfway through my walk, nearly perpendicular with the offender and his stall, I look back up. He’s still staring. I continue to walk, looking up at him every so often to see that his gaze is transfixed on me. I stand in front of the urinal, uneasy. I shoot another quick glance and see his eyes dart about quick and refocus, with more intensity, on me. I think briefly for a moment, disengage from the urinal and walk quietly away, his eyes glued to me the entire time.

I have no idea what his problem was or what he was hoping to gain, but let me tell you, thank god the bathroom at the other end of the building was empty. It was later on that week I attempted to use the bathroom in the rear of the student center.

The Student Center Bathroom was, at one point, the most elegantly appointed on campus.

As per usual, I was walking along, humming “Baby Elephant Walk” (my de facto theme music for my time on campus). I swing wide the door and am face to face with a nude African-American male. Nudity usual does not shock me. I was taken aback. He leapt backward into the stall and slammed the door, his clothes strewn about the floor and the room smelling vaguely of shame and desperation (Axe Phoenix).

I have since learned to hold it.

A friend of mine has had similar experiences with the halls and stalls of Craven’s bathrooms. Including one ill-fated trip, to which bathroom, I forget. One of the nicer ones, if I recall correctly. He opened the door and the theremin started, he fell through space and time and landed, feet first in a world where it’s acceptable to defecate with the stall door open. The rustling newspaper, the khaki slacks bunched around a pair of loafers, the humid aroma (the class of person who poops with the stall door open cannot be expected to care much for his diet and as such would not have the freshest smelling stools (I wasn’t there, this is conjecture, but I make a decent case)), all burned into the poor soul’s mind .

He has since learned to hold it.

That’s all well and good, but you ask “What’s the point, man?” Well, man, let me tell you: there are things you expect in a bathroom (drug deals, unclean sink areas, the door handle you feel you need to grip with paper towels, strange odors) and there are things you don’t expect (open-door shitting, nude men, staring contests).

The trick is, at Craven, it’s everything you don’t expect AND everything you do expect. The bathrooms make Craven a tricky school to attend, you not only have to struggle to find the clean ones, after finding the clean ones you have to narrow down which ones are filled with the miscreants and bastard sociopaths and which ones are usually empty.

Kyle Bement is the editor of this blog and frequent contributor to Twitter and Facebook.

He is not a contributor to Spectrum Culture because they take themselves too seriously.

Brasstronaut - Mount Chimaera

Brasstronaut - Mount Chimaera

Brasstronaut, a Vancouver, BC, based sextet released their debut LP, Mount Chimaera on March 2nd. It's only natural that I catch up to it fashionably late, a few months later. However, let me say, that it is worth catching up to. This is, for all intents and purposes, one of the best albums I've heard this year. I put it up with Forgiveness Rock Record, Heaven is Whenever, et. al. And here's why:

Instrumental (ahaha, get it?) to the line up are Bryan Davies on trumpet and Sam Davidson that handles wind instrument duties (including sick ass synth-wind). However, the band avoids the usual pitfall that I've seen several times: "We have trumpets and wind instruments, our novelty alone propels us."

That's not to say that the band exists only as a vehicle for these classical instruments, either. This is truly inventive rock music, moved at times by lilting jazz grooves [e.g. "Hearts Trompet"] and others by thunderous punk beats and breakneck fills [e.g. "Lo Hi Hopes"]. This happens, mind you, while maintaining a firm grasp on their rock, jazz and pop roots and a spotless indie rock aesthetic.

That being said, personal favorite song on the album is a toss up between "Hearts Trompet" and "Hand Behind." The latter definitely has the jazz cool, but enough ennui and emotional discontent to keep it from being washy and plain. The lyrics, simply, directly crafted and delivered through a speaking voice are immediately enthralling:

"If this is what you wanted take it back/if this is what you wanted cut me slack/I count the things you did but I lost track/I count the things you took that I want back"

"Hearts Trompet," as mentioned before, has that deep jazz groove that's immediately recognizable as something familiar and accessible. Then strings attend to the sparse vocals, punctuated by explosions of trumpet riffing (Does one riff a trumpet?). Suddenly, the piano joins and the trumpet's off on a lilting solo. The music is spot on, with everything you expect arranged in a way you didn't see coming.

To conclude, I just have to say that Brasstronaut is 100% worth the listen. I don't even feel all that bad about catching on as late as I did (they had an EP come out in '08), I feel more lucky to have caught on at all. Without a doubt, their album is on heavy rotation on my iTunes/iPhone/CD and with a vinyl available on their website, as soon as my stereo is in working order, vinyl, too.

---

Follow them: @Brasstronaut
Friend them: Brasstronaut

Craven's Smoking Ban

So, Craven Community College took down some art. It wasn't Jesus floating in piss or anything that anyone complained about. It was a race car's hood emblazoned with an airbrushed caricature of the Auto teacher (and vehicle owner) Bob Hall smoking a cigar (as he is wont to do). The offense here was purely at the bureaucratic level, as it was seen to be out of step with the far-reaching, barely legal campus-wide smoking ban. This outraged several people, namely myself and William Toler, who already wrote an article on IndieRegister that says everything I have to say about it.

Later in the article, he mentions information I was previously not privy to ( having blissfully been unaware of this backwards, Southern hellhole for the first 19 years of my life). Apparently, Mr. Toler & company had run the student newspaper and were directly involved when bureaucratic intervention forced the removal of a sex advice column "Between The Sheets." Bureaucratic oversight on student run publications is a major fucking no-no of epic fucking proportions. Here's the full story from March 24, 2005 in the ScumJournal, where you can read from first hand sources that Scott Ralls (president of the college at the time) was a misguided, powerhungry bullshitter of epic proportions that wanted nothing more than to stifle free speech.

So, they keep fucking with us. They forget who pays their god damn salaries with our tuition. Sure, they get grants and federal funding, but if they alienate all their god damn students, that'll all dry up, too. So, fuck 'em. Anyways, where was I going with this? Oh, how bad they've indirectly fucked me over on two non-consecutive occasions with this god damn smoking ban.

Occasion #1 - 1/26/10
After they banned smoking campus wide (including EVERYWHERE outside and even in one's own vehicle), people started smoking in the woods and in front of nearby businesses and doing all kinds of ill-advised things in order to get a cigarette in. Well, with the litigious society we live in and pressure from local businesses, Craven put in a smoking gazebo. Fine and dandy, we have a place to smoke. Problems exist, however with this plan. Here is the problem:

The Blue dot is the smoking gazebo, the red line is a series of interconnected drainage ditches. I have class nearly exclusively in the building labeled H, the "Business and Technology" or some stupid shit name building. You can obviously see how this is problematic for me. Seeing, however, that I grew up in the mighty hills of New York, I decide I can just jump this creek (as most of my childhood was spent with a friend who lived exactly a creek jump and 100 yards away.) The next map highlights (in neon green) this path.

I fall in. Only one foot, though. Still, it's up to my shin, smells terrible and looks even worse. I have two more classes to sit through with this stinking, nasty looking, wet-as-fuck foot-to-shin area. Meanwhile, I'm worried about trenchfoot because god only knows what kind of disgusting pigshit is pumped into those drainage ditches. My day was ruined. Moving ever onward.

Occasion #2 - 1/28/10
Deciding today that "jumping the creek" is a terrible idea, I walk all the way around those god damn ditches. The map of my route looks something akin to this:
Convoluted but doable. I grab my cigarette at the gazebo, then cross to building C to get a cup of coffee and continue on my merry way back to building H. However, an unexpected stick is thrown into my spokes:

At that obnoxious pink dot, I see a classmate. She's unattractive and in class has a habit of oversharing. I try to ignore her, as she is also heading along the green line to class. She notices me and stands still until I catch up to her. "Fuck," I think, "How am I going to get out of this?" As I complete this internal monologue, she launches into a story about how Jimmy is trying beat up Mikey for trying to have sex with her (this all happened down in Pamlico County ("the county," colloquially) which is only a few notches below Bumblescum and a few notches above Ozark Swamp.) This unfortunate fucking conversation which I have no interest in and no desire to participate further in continues for the remainder of the walk to class. So, while I'm debating on whether or not to fake a heart attack (because I'd rather go to a hospital than listen to anymore of this petty hillbilly drama), I realize something:

IF THEY JUST LET US SMOKE WHEREVER
THIS WOULD NOT BE HAPPENING TO ME

Why so, you ask? How is this related to your unencumbered smoking? Well, here's how:

This would be my path. I would walk from building H to building C, smoking a cig and probably checking my email or some shit. I may linger in front of building C while I finish my smoke, then proceed to go in, get my coffee and head back to building H. She'd be nowhere around. But, the delay caused my be having to walk around all kinds of moats and shit and then proceeding to the coffee dispensary gave her just enough time, through whatever unfortunate series of cosmic events, to cross my path and blather about whatever that trite nonsense was.

Fuck the smoking ban. Fuck their gazebo. Fuck fuck fuck.

Smoking Ban in Effect

So, with the ushering in of the New Year 2010, radical change came to North Carolina: a smoking ban in all restaurants and bars. For myself, a displaced New Yorker, this is no big deal. Even in this smoker's paradise, I found myself still going outside to smoke and actively avoiding the bars where smoking was permitted indoors.

There was an underwhelming amount of backlash. I figured for sure these rednecks would be picketing, waving their confederate flags all the way to Raleigh with teabags taped to their trucker hats. "Gubbament can't tell me where and when I can smoke, gawdamit!" I can hear them, now. But, the fact of the matter is, there was very little public upheaval.

What confuses and bewilders me, however, is a smoking ban that went into effect down here a few months back. The Craven Community College campus became smoke free. That's right, no smoking anywhere on campus. Let me see if I can find a campus map to throw up, here. There we go.

Study this map for a moment. Bear in mind, also, that the map is not to accurate scale. We're talking acres, here. Not many, mind you, but still acres. So... the white areas of the map are (by and large) grassy plains devoid of people. You can't smoke there. The parking lots, too, you can't smoke there. This is where the outrage, or at least my outrage comes in. We can't smoke OUTDOORS?! That's one step away from outright prohibition. When you can't smoke outside, where the air is clogged with various pollutants including the occasional waft of hot diaper that comes from the Weyerhauser factory that has our river choked with chemicals and unusable, something is amiss. Yes, the outdoors, where the parking lots on the top of the map (below the Davis maintenance building, which I never knew had a name besides "Maintenance") took a full semester to complete, with bull dozers, backhoes and all variety of polluting machinery ran for all hours for 4+ months to make a GOD DAMN PARKING LOT (flatten land, coat in pavement). That same outdoors was declared smoke free.

But, guess what? They're giving us smokers a gazebo. That's right, we all have to congregate like some sort of bible club for the damned in the 10-15mins between classes suck down a cigarette quick and continue on our ways. It won't be centrally located, mind you. I don't know, exactly, where they're planning to put it, but the way things are run down here, it will be the other side of the aforementioned parking lots, that's where I'm putting my money.