New Videocast: A Review of Green Day, The Killers, and the Text of Punk

In this new episode I review Green Day's new album, 21-st Century Breakdown, The Killers' recent concert, and the recent collection of photographs entitled Punk is Dead, Punk is Everything.

I talk about the connection between image and popularity as well as the hierarchical nature of success in punk rock culture.

You can view this new episode here.

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New Videocast: Individual Skill and Destiny in the Middle Ages

In this new episode of De Amore: On Love with Brikena Ribaj I talk about the character of Gregorious in Hartmann von Aue's Gregorius der gute Sünder. The question I raise is how a medieval character's skill set manages to inform the overall individual destiny of said character.

You can view this short episode here.

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Genius? No, I Do Not Agree with David Brooks

If you think the word 'genius' gets thrown around a lot in the vernacular, raise your hand. Well, metaphorically. Unless someone reads this to you out loud and you end up raising your [well, my, in this case] hand accompanied by a pronounced rolling of the eyes. Then you've entered another realm of bizarreness. But that's another story.

Let me explain why I am of the opinion that the word 'genius' is disrespectfully and superfluously exposed to the vernacular without much thought. The reason why I'm giving this some thought at this point is because of the recent NY Times piece on the topic by David Brooks.

Consider the following from said article. Brooks notes:

" What Mozart had, we now believe, was the same thing Tiger Woods had — the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent on improving his skills. Mozart played a lot of piano at a very young age, so he got his 10,000 hours of practice in early and then he built from there.

The latest research suggests a more prosaic, democratic, even puritanical view of the world. The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft."

You can read the rest of his piece here.

Brooks' article was the focus of much of our Sunday conversation and I thought I would share some of the thoughts shared.
First, Brooks seems to reduce genius to much fundamentally concentrated practice. Granted, practice is indispensable to success but there is something unique that natural ability alone coupled with utter dedication can contribute. Brooks mentions Tiger Woods. The reason why Tiger Woods is the best golf player to ever practice the game is not because of his long practice sessions. There comes a point where sheer talent catapults one to a point beyond compare. What marks him so very uniquely is also what he does off-court and how game-centered he is. Extremely high results are not derived only from focused practice, a strong desire, and ultimate focus but rather a combination of all of these things plus a good measure of raw talent/natural skill.

Genius is about achieving machine-like results through analogue processes. It's a holistic process that approximates the slow, methodical tedium that David Brooks calls genius. By way of his own admission, Brooks is coming from a modern point of view which is why his discussion of genius is incomplete. What constitutes 'genius' is a modern view, which is exactly why modernity is so bereft of real genius. Now granted, we have many, many examples of competency in our day and age. There is certainly no shortage of pluggers away which, naturally, is a positive.

Brooks mentions Mozart and how uncomplicated his earlier works were. Well, what about his later work?

Only people with a superficial knowledge of a field recognize its greatest figures because of the things they did well through practice. Granted, Mozart practiced a lot and his early compositions are ordinary and imitated but the prodigy aspect of Mozart isn't what people in the know respect most about him. What inspires awe are works like Mass in C Minor, the Requiem, the mature operas and symphonies. The greatest works weren't arrived at by driveling away in the menial fashion the way David Brooks suggests in his awfully superficial treatment of this very important concept.

Now let me submit another example. Dante. Dante wrote his Divina Commedia in the 'terza rima.' A total of 100 cantos all written with unbelievable precision in the third rhyme. The Divine Comedy comes to us circa 1300. Dante was in exile, he had no access to Ivy League libraries, super computers and resources, or even an iPhone with incredible applications. Jest aside, what Dante had, other than much dedication and work ethic, was incredible literary talent. He had that which many other writers didn't. Naturally, a whole lot of menial years are required before great works are accomplished. But hard work alone is not sufficient. A lot of people work hard and a lot of them are great at certain tasks. However, they're not producing Comedies or Requiems a dime a dozen.

Tip of the hat to my dear LS for the food for thought and always delightful conversation.

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Chairlift's Music is *Adorable*

I saw a new band live. They're called Chairlift.

I find them, well, for lack of a better term, adorable. I don't think I can find the word 'adorable' in my vernacular or professional inventory but this adjective sums this Brooklyn-based band up.
Songs like "Bruises" have already entered the mainstream since Apple picked it up to promote their fourth generation iPod nano.

However, their entire album entitled Does You Inspire You is a bundle of cuteness. I suppose I can't really help but use words like adorable and cuteness when it comes to their music.

Chairlift is characterized by a whole lot of levity and their music evokes the pleasures of daily life for in its simplicity lies its real value.

I approve of them and they were, yes, adorable in concert. And who doesn't have room for some cuteness in their iPods? I sure do. At least a gig worth.

Here is an interesting bit about them I was made aware of via Liam.

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Green Day's New Album: 21-st Century Breakdown

It takes courage to be an authentic artist in modernity. In an age when a lot of the celebrated images belong to not-even-mediocre acts who have just exited prepubescence whose art is merely a product of sound engineering and pseudo-rebellious textile/aesthetic choices, truly good musicians have to work twice as hard to gain the kind of visibility they deserve to have.

Enter Green Day.
They have the courage to be excellent. And that they are.
Remember their 2004 album American Idiot?
Brilliant album. The gods of creativity were good to them then.
They must have worshipped them right because they are great to them now.

Their new album 21-st Century Breakdown elevates Green Day to a new level of brilliant achievement. When listening to tracks like "Before the Lobotomy," "Christian Inferno," "21 Guns," and "Restless Heart Syndrome," I remember thinking to myself how much anxiety they have had to sort through while engaged in the creative process.

A track like "Last of the American Girls" is what sold the album to me. The bass provides the kind of support that you don't hear all that often. It reminded me of the kind of support you feel when your tall, loved one keeps you safe from the jumping members of a mosh pit.
And the lyrics. Well, the lyrics ooze a kind of anxiety- and uncertainty-informed meaning you sort of get by virtue of being a modern being but which you sort of wish you didn't.

It's this dual experience one gets when listening to this album that adds to the overall relevance of the band. I would submit that 21-st Century Breakdown is one of the top albums of 2009. You should definitely listen to it. Furthermore, it was produced by produced by Butch Vig of the band Garbage whose credits include Nirvana's Nevermind.

Green Day is good because it knows how to translate the cultural realities of the times we live in into their music. And lyrics.
This album is full of energy. And intellect. And hope. But the kind that is anxiety-laced.

21-st Century Breakdown captures our modern anxieties and uncertainties dexterously and the only prerequisite course one needs to appreciate it is some experiential knowledge of modern life.

Ergo, I give this album my tip of the hat. And the album is so gripping that I will be reviewing it further on the next videocast for Gendering the Media with Brikena Ribaj.

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Travel, the iPhone, Time/Space

“Wasn’t is a great morning today?” said the Trader Joe’s cashier to me as I was picking up my combination of sparkling water and sunflower butter.

I had to think a bit before saying: ‘Yes, good, good.’ First, I had to think about where my morning had been and then I had to match my first morning experience with one of my high-frequency applications on the iPhone: the checking of the weather. As a biker, I have to be aware of the weather, after all. The weather had apparently been good in the town where said employee had woken up and the last time I was in said town, it had been raining pretty steadily. It felt like much time had transpired albeit it was but one day. The time/space duo acquires particularly peculiar meaning at times.

In a twenty-four hour period I had driven over 650 miles and passed through parts of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. When much space is covered in a short amount of time, time itself is processed a little differently.

One of the good things about this kind of travel is the help that technology affords. The iPhone is especially handy and the GPS service is most reliable. The little blue dot proves reassuring, more often than not, and whether you are in what looks like Nowhereville, USA or a major downtown area, the iPhone says, 'don’t worry, I got this.'

Of course, I’m a fan of the iPhone. I tend to use only Apple gadgets because, like my trusted people, they deliver. If something works, I believe in showering it with linguistic attention.

So, just what was accomplished in one day, which is not necessarily a prototype of quotidianity?

Well, other than covering different time zones by car and visually experiencing some of the vast landscape that is the Midwest, I met up with fellow medievalists, presented on my research at the International Congress on Medieval Studies which takes place annually in Kalamazoo, MI, spent an evening with a fellow medievalist with a knack for Apple gadgets to whom I showed which iPhone apps he'd been missing out on while simultaneously thinking of how little we were talking about the importance of medieval scholarship is higher academia, heard a few talks in my field, rediscovered the music of The Strokes on the drive back (as it played from the iPhone, of course), and much more.

Who, but medievalists can pull off such multidisciplinarity, I ask (in jest for those who might take this rhetorical question as a sign of narcissism.)

On the way back I was entertained by the day I had just experienced. Medieval scholarship and modern technology do make quite a gripping marriage indeed. I really should have read my presentation off of the iPhone but introducing too much modernity to an auditorium full of medievalists might prove to be a tad too daring. So, I used paper. This time.







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New Videocast: The Clothing of Courtly Love

In this seventh episode of De Amore: On Love with Brikena Ribaj, I discuss the idea that many medieval characters, male and female, are not inflected for gender. I refer to such works as Parzival and Erec. Our understanding of how gender worked in the Middle Ages might just shed some light on the different forms of gender expressions we encounter in modernity.

You can view the episode here.

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Father Cutie

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New Videocast: Of Entertainment, Michael Chabon, and Michel Foucault

In this new episode of Gendering the Media with Brikena Ribaj, I discuss the concept of entertainment as Michael Chabon treats it in his recent book Maps and Legends as well as Michel Foucault's treatment of heterotopias.
I mention reality TV, modernity, Wagner, Verdi, and, of course, Franz Ferdinand.

The main question I raise is: What is a heterotopia?

You can view this videocast here.

Incidentally, one of the sentences I quote from Chabon's latest book says the following about entertainment:

"Entertainment is junk and too much junk is bad for you. Bad for your heart, your arteries, your soul."

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Manny Takes Fertility Drugs?

Could somebody explain to me why Manny Ramirez is taking fertility drugs? Is this something that's in the vernacular that I, for some reason, missed? Men take fertility drugs? Hm.
Paint me confused!

How bizzaro is this?

A bit from today's Times says:

"“Unfortunately, the medication was banned under our drug policy,” Ramirez said in the statement, which was released by the players union. “Under the policy that mistake is now my responsibility. I have been advised not to say anything more for now. I do want to say one other thing: I’ve taken and passed about 15 drug tests over the past 5 seasons.”"

Read more here.

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