George Bush is the greatest president in the history of presidents.
Mission was accomplished.
Toddlers never throw tantrums.
I live in a huge mansion with a cook, a maid, and a butler.
Junk food is good for you and helps you lose weight.
Pamela Anderson is an Oscar-winning actress.
Christian is as straight as a ruler.
The economy is strong.
And Dina Lohan has received a “Top Mom” of the year award.
I am in Bizarro World, aren’t I?
Any picture by Banksy is worth several hundred thousand words:
Back in the sepia-toned, bell-bottomed days of the Seventies when this documentary was shot, Langley was a lovely village surrounded by stables and farms, three-quarters of an hour’s leisurely drive outside of Vancouver. Now it is a strip-mall-encircled bedroom community an hour’s infuriatingly tense drive outside of Vancouver with, improbably, stables and farms still interspersed between SUV dealerships.
And this is the Langley School Music Project, a public school initiative by Hans Fenger, a teacher in the system. Just another public school teacher.
In the early 70s, Vancouver musician Hans Fenger decided to get a real job. His girlfriend was pregnant, and he couldn’t raise a family on earnings from club gigs and guitar lessons. He got a teaching certificate and a job in the Langley school district.
Here is some great analysis from The Delete Bin:
The recordings were literally a school project, headed up by music teacher Hans Fenger based in Langely B.C (just up the road from where I’m writing this), and incorporating 60 students who sang and played percussion instruments on songs which included David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, Paul McCartney & Wings’ “Band on the Run”, the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows”, and the Eagles’ “Desperado”. The record polarized opinion. Some said that the takes on the songs create a sort of ghostly, otherworldly effect, while others denounced it as sounding amateurish and very “school assembly” in delivery. Perhaps it’s their origin which makes these recordings so compelling. Fenger had this to say about the project and the kids who created it:
“I knew virtually nothing about conventional music education, and didn’t know how to teach singing. Above all, I knew nothing of what children’s music was supposed to be. But the kids had a grasp of what they liked: emotion, drama, and making music as a group. Whether the results were good, bad, in tune or out was no big deal — they had élan. This was not the way music was traditionally taught. But then I never liked conventional ‘children’s music,’ which is condescending and ignores the reality of children’s lives, which can be dark and scary. These children hated ‘cute.’ They cherished songs that evoked loneliness and sadness.”
And now, click on to see (and hear) the kids:
(more…)
My dear friends, you’ve no idea how brutal this world can be to an artistic soul. One by one, it eats them alive. Raymond Chandler. Dashiell Hammett. Dorothy Parker. Damon Runyan. Anita Loos. Ernest Hemingway.Mother Goose.
Yes, for is there any soul as fragile and artistic as that of a child’s storyteller? And yet as each tender Easy Reader, picture book, or pop-up manuscript is born, it is ruthlessly wrenched from its creator’s loving embrace and cast upon the heaving black waters of the heartless book market, there to sink or swim as its now-helpless progenitor can only clutch pearls or fedora and gape, wreathed in cigarette smoke and sheer terror (and then write about it on the Oprah forums). Oh! The Humanity!
Here, thanks to Kids in the Hall, perhaps the greatest sketch comedy troupe in history, is archival footage of one such writer’s brutal struggle through the long, dark, teddy bear’s picnic of the soul.
I was going to use their Teddy Bear’s Picnic skit, but that’s too dark even for me.
Sigh. I didn’t really want to go here. I really didn’t. But…
Who exactly are we trying to kid?
All these people who are screeching in outrage at the photo above of a “naked” Miley Cyrus need to step back for a second and take a deep Zen breath. And unfortunately, it seems I must disagree with my esteemed colleague on this issue.
I happen to live in an area that is not only hot, but not too far away from the beach.
Compared to half the girls parading around the area, Miley is looking pretty freaking demure.
A year or two ago it was de rigeur for teen girls to wear tight crop tees with micro minis, which as a combo happen to show quite a bit of flesh. I mean, go take a look at one of the dresses from Juicy Couture’s current line. Go ahead, I’ll wait for you. Now ask yourself, what is the huge difference? And then tell me, because I’d really like to know.
Is it the sheet? Is it the tousled hair? Is there an uncomfortable whiff of something post-coital about the picture?
Because I don’t remember quite this type of outcry when young Jamie Lynn Spears announced her pregnancy, and she obviously didn’t just hint around at the whole sex thing.
Why are we so surprised that young people are embracing the provocative and sexual?
I mean, we are the country of Brazilians for young girls, of plastic surgery for teens, of flaunting everything we’ve got. The media role models of these girls are the likes of Paris “Skank” Hilton and Lindsay “Drunk” Lohan. They see Britney flashing her hoo-ha practically every month, naked photos of Vanessa Hudgens, and I don’t think they give it much thought.
I’m not saying that it’s a good thing, but there it is.
Frankly, I’m shocked that anyone else is shocked.
And if you truly think this picture is trash-tastic, then I advise you to never go onto MySpace.
*Hat tip to superfantastic reader Seana for alerting me to the SFGate article!
Here’s a little something to sustain the grownup in you through the umpteenth viewing of The Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, or Insert-Kid-Fave-Disney-Flick.
Remember that tip to help nervous people relax and enjoy public speaking? The one where you’re supposed to imagine the audience in their underwear? Well, it works pretty well for Disney films, too, as you will see if you click onward. (more…)
You know how it works, so work it in the comments. And yes, technically this deserves the tag “Baby Clothes.”
Carrying on from Glinda’s Teeny Poll: What causes art? In this case, it’s simple: a child’s desire for mutilation.
Do 13-year-olds really need to be saving their babysitting and paper route money for breast implants? Cheryl-Ann Webster wondered that herself, when her daughter told her that a friend was already socking away money for the boobflation job she felt would be an absolute necessity, sooner rather than later.
So Cheryl-Ann made a few synthetic boobs herself; she made The Beautiful Women Project.
To demonstrate that beautiful bodies come in all shapes and sizes, she wanted to surround young girls with sculptures of real women’s bodies…
The Beautiful Women Project is a touring art exhibition of life-sized torsos of real women aged 19-91.
Aims:
* To challenge socially-constructed images of beauty
* To raise awareness and open a dialogue about the link between self-worth and physical appearance
* To be a teaching and healing tool
In the artist’s words: “Our bodies tell our life story. They are portraits of our journeys and experiences. Knowing that our body is beautiful just as it exists, is a message more people need to see and hear.”
