High Hat Blog

2008-04-01T13:08:00.001-05:00

It's on your side. You know as much as it to you reveals. It flies, is money, and waits for no man. And it's our Super-Special Topic for The High Hat No. 10: It's Time.

Yes, 10! Can you believe it? Ten issues of America's little webzine that could! And we want YOU to be a part of this Ultra-Special Issue.

Of course, if you're not interested in writing about our Extra-Special Topic (Had we but world enough and it...), we're also interested in your thoughts on movies, music, tv, books and arts, and life itself.

Please send your pitches to highhatsubmissions@gmail.com by April 30th. We're looking for finished articles by May 15 so we can go to press in June. It is of the essence, so be on it!

Ever yours,
The Editors

"a sort of clown"

2006-11-01T16:44:00.000-06:00

Gary Wolf, "The Church of the Non-Believers," in Wired magazine. A profile of today's fiery evangelists of atheism (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris).

Sen. Kerry

2006-11-01T12:54:00.000-06:00

I just want to say for the record that I don't believe for one second that anyone, not Tony Snow, not John McCain, not anyone, believes that Sen. Kerry's remarks yesterday were intended to denigrate the service of American soldiers.

Their cynicism, which is what produced the Iraqi quagmire (hereafter known as "Operation Botched Iraq Joke") in the first place, knows no bounds.

Best Movies of 2005

2006-02-04T18:23:00.000-06:00

I wasn't planning on doing this again this year, but the Academy Awards nominations came out, and they made a few mistakes. Of course, thinking persons of conscience can disagree, and we do not seek quarrels but common ground with our brothers and sisters who would celebrate those works that have brought joy and illumination into their lives, but "Crash" my ass.

1. "Head-On"-- Fatih Akin wrote, directed, and stars in this sexually charged, inexplicably exhilirating movie about two lives that smash into each other at the bottom of the pile.

2. "Mysterious Skin"--Gregg Araki's early movies wanted more than anything to shock the bejesus out of the audience, but given how unlikely it is that you're going to shock anyone who left the house to see an NC-17-rated movie called "The Doom Generation", they just seemed kind of forlorn. Araki did grow more technically accomplished with every movie, though, and here, all that daring and proficiency are joined to a complicated, mature point of view to produce his first real movie--and his first truly shocking one. Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, previously known as the kid from "Third Rock from the Sun", gives a beautiful, adult performance as an alluringly tainted hustler who remembers an incidence of child sexual abuse as his first romance.

3. "Rize"--David La Chappelle's documentary about Clown Dancers and Krumpers, people turning their anger and longing for transcendence in the face of urban cruelty and despair into performance art for the streets and kids' birthday parties. You'll laugh, you'll cry. For real/

4. "Grizzly Man"--Werner Herzog's best movie in at least twenty years, with a star as unlikely as Klaus Kinski or Bruno S.: Timothy Treadwell, self-glorifying failed celebrity as holy fool.

5. "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada"--If Tommy Lee Jones has looked suspiciously as if he had something else on his mind in some of his recent performances, it turns out that this is it: a modern Western, directed by and starring Jones, blessed and cursed with a unusual degree of adult resignation in the face of men's capacity for destructive stupidity, joined to a touching resolve to make the best of things anyway. The cinematographer, Chris Menges, is the best thing that's ever happened to the places where this movie was shot.

6. "Good Morning, Night"--The erratic Italian giant Marco Bellocchio spins a terrible, darkly comic fable out of the ne plus ultra of self-destructive "revolutionary" terrorism from the '70s, the Red Brigades' kidnapping and "execution" of Aldo Moro. Maya Sanso is unforgettable as the most confused and conscience-stricken of Moro's captors.

7. "The Best of Youth"--More recent Italian history, six hours and three decades' worth. Though the chalk dust in the actors' hair and the pillows under their shirts that are supposed to convince us that they've aged a lifetime by the end may raise a chuckle, this is epic-length narrative storytelling at its best, an engrossing and moving attempt to sum up and clarify recent history through the lives of a few people who, by the end, have earned the viewers' love.

8. "Serenity"--The pop geek event of the year, Joss Whedon's triumphant apotheosis of the genre mash-up of his cancelled TV series "Firefly" is sheer fun in a way undreamt of in George Lucas's imagination.

9. "2046"--Wong Kar-Wei's most dizzying celebration of his own romanticism and of the aura he constructs around Tony Leung and a few lucky pet actresses. You could try fighting it, but for your sake, I hope you lose.

10. "Ryan"--Chris Landreth's amazing fourteen-minute animated short about the gifted animator and drug-damaged lost soul Ryan Larkin is stunning and heartbreaking, and, with all due respect to such superior examples of the genre as "Capote" and "Walk the Line", the biopic of the year.

11. "Junebug"--The director Phil Morrison and the writer Angus MacLachlan's comedy-drama about family ties of love-hate and the Red / Blue state divide is rough-hewn and original, with a Star of Tomorrow performance by the ebullient Amy Adams.

12. "Munich"--Steven Spielberg's strongest work in a long time, with an broader emotional palette than the very exciting but more monotonously dread-drenched "War of the Worlds." At a basic level, a superior large-scale thriller, it's a controversial statement only in the eyes of those who are scandalized by any public admission that it's an obvious truism that violence begets violence. It's a sad thing that right now, there seem to be a lot of those folks running around loose.

13. "El Crimen Perfecto"--With its Almodovar-tinged bright pop colors, fun-house gore and slapstick violence, Preston Sturges pace and a performance by Guillermo Toledo that marks him as the amoral lizard of a farce creator's dreams, Alec de la Iglesia's black comedy arrives too late in film history to be the midnight cult movie it deserves to be, but it leaves most classics of the midnight genre in the shade anyway.

14. & 15. "Oldboy" and "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance"--The first two installments of Chan-wook Park's "vengeance trillogy." We've yet to see whether the third installment, "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance", will be up to snuff, but he can already boast that he's come closer to delivering on the trilogy concept that George Lucas or the Wachowski brothers could.

They also served: "Batman Begins", "The Beat That My Heart Skipped", "40 Shades of Blue", "George A. Romero's Land of the Dead", "Corpse Bride", "William Eggleston in the Real World", "Ballets Russes", "The 40-Year-Old Virgin", "Brokeback Mountain", and the last third of "King Kong."

2006-02-01T15:21:00.000-06:00

Here's my Top 10 Albums for 2005:

1. Animal Collective – Feels
2. Deerhoof – The Runners Four
3. Konono No. 1 – Congotronics
4. Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
5. Andrew Bird – The Mysterious Production of Eggs
6. Broken Social Scene – s/t
7. Six Organs of Admittance – School of the Flower
8. Spoon – Gimme Fiction
9. The New Pornographers – Twin Cinema
10. The Decemberists – Picaresque

Also-rans: Devendra Banhart – Cripple Crow, Antony & The Johnsons – I Am a Bird Now, The Fiery Furnaces – EP, The Mountain Goats – The Sunset Tree, The Go-Betweens – Oceans Apart, The Hold Steady – Separation Sunday, Calexico/Iron & Wine – In the Reins, Eric Matthews – Six Kinds of Passion Looking For An Exit, Danger Doom – The Mouse and the Mask, Lyrics Born – Same !@#$ Different Day, Architecture In Helsinki – In Case We Die, Okkervil River – Black Sheep Boy, Clem Snide – The End of Love, Vashti Bunyan – Lookaftering

Four Play

2005-12-21T09:21:00.000-06:00

Cross-posted at listen:

Four jobs you've had in your life: Ladies' wear stock clerk; library technical assistant; grantswriter; teacher

Four movies you could watch over and over: The Searchers, Nashville, Godfather II, Chinatown

Four places you've lived: Poughkeepsie, Ithaca, Durham, Iowa Citry

Four TV shows you love to watch: Scrubs, Law & Order (mothership), Boomtown, 24

Four places you've been on vacation: Atlanta, Tampa, Chicago, New York

Four websites you visit daily: All of the sites on the listen blogroll plus dailykos, bopnews, Salon, Slate

Four of your favorite foods: fresh pasta with marinara sauce and cheese, various Indian dishes, black beans and rice, salad

Four places you'd rather be: Atlanta, New York, Italy, France

2005-08-31T17:37:00.000-05:00

When The Saints Go Marching Out

Godspeed, New Orleans.

2005-08-29T15:52:00.000-05:00

I saw Jandek play live last night. And apparently the world has decided that it might just go ahead and end today. Coincidence? I think not.

The Politics of Star Wars

2005-05-27T12:15:00.000-05:00

Leave it to me to start a thread about the latest low-brow blockbuster movie. But I saw "SW: Revenge of the Sith" last night and the parallels to the Age of Dubya are unmistakable. The Talent Show has a good thorough take on the subject.

2005-05-17T17:18:00.000-05:00

The first half of Jeff Shalit's excellent article on the New Life Church of Colorado Springs in the May 2005 issue of Harper's. Read it.

Reading 'Lolita' in Tallahassee

2005-05-01T19:43:00.000-05:00

Fine local opinion piece from the Tallahassee Democrat, 1 May 2005.

Late? Never?

2005-04-28T13:47:00.000-05:00

So, because the HH had a delayed production schedule for a while there, we never got around to listing our top tens for 2004. Seeing how it's not yet May, anyone care to join me in listing them?

Top Ten of 2004
Hayden Childs

1. The Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat (album). Read about it here.
2. Mission of Burma at La Zona Rosa, March 18 (live show). SXSW showcase. Roger Miller had ear protection headphones on and stood behind his amp, and all three played like they were 20 years old. Excellent.
3. Jandek played live in Scotland (Oct 17, live show)? Really? I wasn't there, but wow. I'm still speechless.
4. The Wire Season Three (tv show). Featuring the most complex characters and almost primordially compelling storylines of any show ever filmed, The Wire is the best thing about television.
5. Kill Bill Vol 2 (movie). Between this & the Fiery Furnaces, I'm apparently a sucker for form. I loved the hell out of both Kill Bills, both of which were more semi-philosophical set pieces and love letters to great filmmakers than stories. And yet, also like the FF, they carry the weight of brilliance operating in confusing times.
6. Brian Wilson with the Wondermints at the Backyard, Oct. 24 (live show). They played SMiLE in its entirety, making sounds more beautiful than most live bands could even conceive. I remember reading a review of the Pet Sounds tour that commented about the loss of wonder in seeing those sounds reproduced on stage. That guy was nuts; I'm still reeling from the sheer talent in evidence.
7. Animal Collective - Sung Tongs (album). Dude. Seriously. Campfire music on acid.
8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (movie). This movie was near perfect. Lots has been written about it, but my only personal 2 cents is that it rips my heart out every time.
9. Deadwood Season One (tv show). It's Locke vs. Hobbes in the State of Nature. This show is about why philosophy is almost as important as soap, whiskey, and a sense of honor.
10. My wife's pregnancy (May 2004 - Feb 2005). Nah, this isn't really the least important of the great things in 2004 (and we're not going to mention the horrible, horrible political realities around us). I'm trying not to be overly sentimental, that's all. This one is just so far above the other stuff that it doesn't make sense in context. Our pregnancy months were amazing, almost as amazing as what came after.

New low for the NY Times

2005-04-13T12:09:00.000-05:00

Despite all the articles that have carried Judith Miller's byline, this article on the "man date" may be the most idiotic thing that's ever appeared in the NY Times. Apparently, some reporter got it in her head that men who are friends may experience homosexual panic when seen together in public, and she decided to exploit this by a) christening it a "man date" and b) writing about straight men who hang out with nary a potential sexual conquest in sight in an absurdly lurid tone.

When women go to dinner together, do they call it a "woman date"? Is the only purpose of leaving the house or talking to another human being merely to get laid? More importantly, why is the most important newpaper in the country printing an article that stigmatizes homosexual men and inflames homosexual panic in straight men? D.U.M.B.

2005-04-06T14:46:00.000-05:00

Slate mag has a new article titled "The Mall Goes Undercover: It now looks like a city street."

Like insecure teenagers, malls keep changing their style. They are ripping away their roofs and drywalled corridors; adding open-air plazas, sidewalks, and street-side parking; and rechristening themselves "lifestyle centers." ... They're also enormously successful—by the most recent count, there are about 130 lifestyle centers scattered around the country.

Including one near my house. I can never get used to the impermanence of cityscapes. When I moved here to Raleigh 16 years ago, North Hills was your standard issue indoor mall, and it seemed to be thriving. But it slid to the status of "the crappy mall" in town, to quote the movie Mallrats (at least I think that's the quote; you get an astonishing number of hits when you Google "Mallrats+crappy") then slid further, to 75%-vacant embarrassment. Then it cycled through a stage as pile of rubble, then mound of dirt, then place to watch giant cranes operating. Just before Christmas '04 it was reborn as North Hills Mall, the lifestyle center, with the external trappings of a comfortably lived-in but still vital urban neighborhood: awnings and wooden benches and cobblestone streets.

As the Slate piece points out, "The irony is almost too perfect: Malls are now being redesigned to resemble the downtown commercial districts they replaced." A true statement, as far as it goes. In the case of North Hills, the mall is the nucleus of a welter of new development, including a hotel and condos and office buildings. The goal is to supplement a residential area with a dense mixed-use area, with people working and living and playing in the same space. Locals have long divided Raleigh into two zones, inside the Beltline (the older neighborhoods and the downtown business district, including state government and NC State University) and outside the Beltline (the outlying residential areas--the 'burbs). Now the developer of North Hills is referring to it as "mid-town:" it is right smack on the Beltline (a.k.a. I-440, the loop expressway) and could develop into a hip happenin' downtown unto itself.

My initial response is to feel good about the change. A somewhat decrepit area has been transformed into a bustling one, with a cinema and restaurants and shopping, all within walking or biking distance from my home. Our property value is going to rise. Then I notice that the grimy auto mechanics' shop that I used regularly is gone--it struck the wrong aesthetic note. And I notice the rent-a-cops. It doesn't take long on the cobblestone streets of North Hills to feel the fakeness.

There's something a bit unhealthy about faux public places designed to attract rich people and make them feel comfortable. (At least the traditional mall didn't try to hide the fact that it was a shopping center.) The lifestyle center is a bizarre outgrowth of the suburban mentality: People want public space, even if making that space private is the only way to get it.

Our tagline says, Art is not a lifestyle. Addendum: A real community is not a lifestyle center.

Bring Out Your Duds

2005-04-04T22:32:00.000-05:00

I don't know about where you live, but in my neighborhood, this past week sure has brought out the hack in the editorial cartoonists. Every day I open the paper that the kind folks at the deli were good enough to wrap my sandwich in, there's the same basic set-up: Gabriel at the gates of Heaven, consulting the book in reference to his newest applicant, to see if he should swing wide the doors or call the bouncer. One day it's John Paul II, another day it's Terri Sciavo ("Here, honey, have some water."), even Johnny Cochran ("We don't usually get lawyers up here..."), until all I could think of was that story that The New Yorker cartoon department once cleaned out its closet by running nothing but desert-island cartoons for one whole issue, and nobody even noticed. The Pope was a gimme, but I'm betting that if Pauly Shore had keeled over last week, he'd have been shuttled into position with the others. Sometimes you hit too comfortable a rhythm and it's just too hard to stop.

Randall Terry

2005-04-02T10:20:00.000-06:00

It's not an original observation to point out that something's seriously wrong with the people who run CNN. The whole Terri Schiavo death-watch and its attending coverage should have opened a lot of people's eyes to what seems to be an increasingly ideological slant to the news coming out of downtown Atlanta. That they would even consider giving air time to that sleaze Randall Terry, who used the occasion of a woman's death to further his own fanatical socio-political aims, is bad enough, but at least (I guess) you could make the case that he did sort of have a dog in that hunt, however tenuous the connection between the anti-abortion POV and the anti-euthanasia POV.

But how, why they can justify giving this nimrod air time to spout his invective as part of their coverage of the Pope's impending passage from this earth is beyond me. He thrives on publicity, and giving it to him is like pouring gasoline on a pile of burning books. The morbid nature of their apparently now 24/7 "Who's dying now?" programming is bad enough without using this need to fill time to justify giving every wacko anti-freedom fanatical nutjob his talking head moment.

2005-04-01T11:27:00.000-06:00

I wrote this yesterday and was going to simply delete it out of existence, but several good friends have encouraged me to keep it around and even post it here. I'm a little embarrassed by it, but that didn't stop me from putting it on my personal blog, too.

---
I was thinking about my problem with religion this morning, mainly because I think I'd like to feel hope for the human race in a spiritual, personal way. I'd like to be able to say that I belong to some group of people who think like I do and have it mean something. But I don't know that it does. I feel that leaving the Southern Baptist Church was one of the most profound things I've done in my life short of being a father. However, I've retained a sharp moral compass that may be at odds with the positions of the church, but that I learned from the church and that guides me to be the man I am. If my son has no similar religious instruction, will he never learn to develop that compass?

But so much of the Christianity I've been exposed to is about negation of life. The Southern Baptists I'm most familiar with say no to science, no to a just welfare state, no to mercy, no to sexual desire, no to valuing healthy lives when those who live those lives are criminals or of different religions, no to allowing people the privacy to make difficult decisions about fetuses and mentally damaged love ones, and no to minds that question any of the above. This, surely, isn't what religion should mean to people. What sort of good God would have people prioritize their lives in such a way?

And these people -- I know I'm talking about strawpeople to some extent, but almost all of my cousins would tell you that they believe all of the above with all of their hearts, as well as the following --these people would tell you in a heartbeat that a) they are happy and b) they are 100% confident that their positions are right.

I should mention that I treasure my doubt. To my thinking, the ability to doubt and critique, by which I mean the ability to reason, is the most profound and important skill that human beings have developed since we became the only monkeys to have pleasurable, non-procreative sex. I think that the greatest, most profound people of faith in recent history, such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Martin Buber, Soren Kierkegaard, are those who have doubted their faith, and I believe that most theologians and even marginally self-aware men of God would concede that point to me. But so many Christian churches, even the ones where I think people agree with me politically, have this prevailing belief that God is the answer. What if God is the question? Is there a church for that? From my understanding of modern Judaism, questioning what Judaism means and what it means to be a Jew is an important aspect of being a rabbi, if not being a Jew. Is there a similar group for goys?

I also suffer from a somewhat paradoxical unwillingness to belong, a lack of fellowship, if you will. For instance, I find the local Unitarian church saccharine to the point of uncomfortability. I've felt the same in liberal Christian churches and in Westernized Buddhist temples. I want to feel kinship with my fellow man, but I'm terrified and a little nauseated by false connections. This may be overly psychological, but my time in the Southern Baptist church has left me convinced that those people are faking their happiness and couldn't give less of a shit if I feel welcome in their congregation. I'm not a person, I'm a warm tithing body.

So, I want religion with doubt, fellowship without fellowship rites, a great big yes to life and my personal ethics without sickening cheerleaderish fake emotion, and to tell you the truth, I like to sleep in on Sundays. Anyone have a clue?
---

My friends have been very encouraging, discussing options such as the Society of Friends or pointing out that they grew finely tuned moral compasses without the unwelcome touch of the church. Some have mentioned how certain churches have touched their lives and how they've found the best way to deal with complicated issues in religion is to be open and honest with their kids. Most, if not all, of those friends are fellow-posters here, so perhaps I should let people talk for themselves instead of paraphrasing.

2005-04-01T10:45:00.000-06:00

I guess now is as good a time as any to spread the news - starting next week, The High Hat will be updated daily, thanks in no small part to a heavy infusion of capital from Farben AG 2000, LLC and an influx of fresh new talent courtesy the National Young Writers' Collective, the American Youthful Copy Editors' Society, the U.S. Underage Web-Coding Community, and the Geographical Area Between Mexico and Canada Underannuated Internet Magazine Reading Group of People. Thanks to all who made this happen and everyone else for their alleged support!

2005-03-31T10:44:00.000-06:00

I'm far too sleepy today to say anything remotely intelligent, but I do want to point out that someone has been taking great pleasure in spilling coffee on the HH and blowing it up over the last couple of days. This is one of the most frequent referrers to the Hat since Tuesday.

Dirty Nazi Drawing

2005-03-30T18:55:00.000-06:00

Sorry to change the subject here so soon, but I just have to get this off my mind. Leonard, your article on attempts to democratize literature is very funny and contains some good insights, but factually I hve to take exception to your characterization of visual arts as the work of a single auteur bringing his or her own physical and mental prowess to bear on the creative process. While a lot of art is made like this, a lot is not. Artists are assisted by staff and students and interns and advised by dealers and agents and critics to an astounding degree. In contemporary art, especially video and installation art, projects are simply too big and require too many skills to be done in any way besides collaboration. Even in disciplines associated more with individual effort like most 2D works are liable to be the product of a 'name' artist directing his or her assistants and applying just finishing touches personally. This isn't new in any way at all, either. The concept of a workshop producing art under a single artists name but the product of many individuals work dates at least to the Italian renaissance.

OK, back to politics - where I'm better off listening that speaking.

Rolling, rolling, rolling

2005-03-30T15:48:00.000-06:00

Am I just missing it, or is the other side just too demoralized or indifferent to mount a cultural assault like they did in the '60s and '80s?

Too harried, probably. Conditions in the late '60s were perfect for a counterculture: the economy had been booming for over a decade, and a lot of people thought that it was going to keep booming indefinitely. This gave people (both young and middle-aged) a lot more leisure time than is realistic now. There's just not enough time in the day to work and have a family life and a social life and do much in the way of protest, unless protesting is your job, or your social life.

Rollin' Balls: A Response

2005-03-30T15:22:00.000-06:00

From where I sit, there were three factors which combined into one big suckerpunch leading out of Election 2004:

1) The results themselves. It was especially hard for my wife, as she had committed uncounted hours of her time to the local Party infrastructure. While it may take a village, as the saying goes, at times there's only one villager with the light burning into the wee hours. It is difficult to come off of that, especially with empty hands. Her activity went from "pedal to the metal" to "wandering on the shoulders of the highway with an empty gas can."

2) Outrage overload. My reading list in 2004 consisted of about every anti-Bush political pamphlet, blog, and tome written. There's only so many times that you can start or end a thought with, "CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT" before tiring of it, and going into a lame duck 2nd Bush term, much of my political fuse was burnt. At least, that's what I had thought -- that Republican politics had pretty much bottomed out, sleaze-fest wise, before Frist & Schindler's Flying Circus hit the airwaves.

3) Business took a steep dive. Work is pretty hard for me to stomach on most given days, but when there's no activity, getting through the week can at times be brutal. (What I have to show for the first business quarter: a Minesweeper record of 148 seconds on expert, and about an 82% win-to-loss ratio on Freecell.)

And while I cannot speak for how others have taken the loss, my coping strategy has amounted to numbing out.

It certainly does not help matters that the Democratic Party has continued their wily strategy to capitulate to the Republicans until "the right moment." After the Gonzales hearings, the disappearance of untold billions of borrowed federal lucre, finding reporter after reporter on the public payroll as policy pimps, Bush claiming credit for the sunrise at every opportunity (e.g. the ripple effect of the death of Arafat in the Middle East), the Gannon non-inquiry, the stalled Plame proceedings, the impending "bi-partisan" doom for consumers that is the bankruptcy boondoggle, the ANWR vote, the continued misinformation campaign on Social Security, and now the quorum-of-three "personal relief bill" for the Schindler family, I am at a loss to point to a single whiff of evidence that there is a functioning opposition nationally.

I did feel empowered as the early weeks of November drew closer. I saw the internal polling numbers from the Kerry camp. I watched election projections on a thrice-daily basis. I took in the news at every opportunity. I talked in increasingly confident terms that yes, we were going to pull this off. It was not to be, however.

When I walked into the office on the Wednesday following the election, people spoke to me as though I had been diagnosed with a dreaded disease. Some even approached me and talked in hushed tones about how they were also [secretly] cheering for Kerry to win. Again, as in 2000, the most often asked question among my comrades in arms was, "How could that dumbass have possibly won?" (The more appropriate question is to figure out how "we" keep losing, but that is another fish fry.)

So, no, I was not ill. Heartsick, maybe. Disappointed, definitely. Bitterness & cynicism certainly are not terminal, but that is really what I was suffering, and now, I am only beginning to mend.

I do not have any answers as to how others are coping, or how my feelings sublimate into a larger collective ennui/disillusionment/recuperation. My feeling is that it is too soon to tell.

For my part, I am busy reconnecting with those things for which I find deep passion. Art, specifically my own photography and writing. Connecting to nature through my craft and through gardening. Rediscovering what it is that I love about music and movies, and finding new things to explore. Reconnecting with friends to talk about something besides politics.

Maybe those things will eventually play a larger part in the world, but for right now, I find myself deeply involved in finding what it is in me that can be an offer to that world, and connecting my personal experience to others who share my interests and passions.

Isn't that, however, how movements begin?

Rollin' balls, tumblin' dice

2005-03-30T09:36:00.000-06:00

So...how about that Presidential election?

We had originally envisioned this issue of the High Hat to come out just before the vote, but that obviously didn't happen. Now, nearly five months on, and with all of us painfully aware of what the election meant, how does this effect what we wrote? How have things changed, culturally?

Nugent hinted a bit at an interesting topic in his "Images of Bush" piece: that, at the very least, one upside of having Bush in office is that it could lead to a rich cultural revival the way Reagan's presidency did. There was lots of good rebel art during that period, from punk to rap to comics to criticism; but unless I'm missing something, we haven't seen the same out of the GWB era. Rap has drifted away from politics and is holed up in its bling-laden mansion on the hill; rock has turned inward, and even the rowdiest stuff is curiously apolitical; and the fierce opposition voice of political columnists is nowhere to be found, replaced by the largely ineffectual samizdat of political blogging.

Is it a cultural sea change? A climate of fear? The backlash? It seems like the loudest rebel voices these days are coming from the right instead of the left, which especially makes no sense, because you can't be the dominant faction and the counterculture at the same time. What's going on? Where's the rebel renaissance of today? Am I just missing it, or is the other side just too demoralized or indifferent to mount a cultural assault like they did in the '60s and '80s?

2005-03-29T11:54:00.000-06:00

Hat Blog post #1. Content-free since 2005!