Posts tagged: emo

There are a few porn movies which most people have heard the names of — Behind the Green Door, The Devil in Miss Jones, and Debbie Does Dallas. Add Cafe Flesh and maybe Caligula to the list if you are a science fiction dork fan like me. You can enjoy smut without ever having seen any of those flicks. You can make smut without ever having seen any of those flicks. But, if you have not heard of them, then you are missing a piece of the cultural zeitgeist that most people are in on.

Adult industry professionals and critics have a number of theories as to why the original Debbie Does Dallas movie was so popular. Some people think it was because a lot of people are hot for cheerleader porn and the Dallas Cowboys (and their cheerleaders) were practically America’s team at the time. I’m not really a football person, so I can’t comment on the veracity of that claim. Some people think Debbie Does Dallas was just a really catchy punchy title that was fun to say. Kind of like Snakes on a Plane, but with, you know, naked people. Some people believe that Debbie Does Dallas rode the initial wave of Betamax production, being one of the very first adult titles available on that videocassette format. Yes, I said Betamax. For those of you who are like “WTF is Betamax?”: It was a videotape format which competed with VHS to be the industry standard when VCR’s or video cassette recorders first came out. Betamax was generally considered to be a higher quality format, but VHS embraced the porno market. Guess which one ended up more popular? A VCR was expensive when Debbie Does Dallas first …

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Fueled by Ramen recording artist Cobra Starship is a very modern band. They are currently on tour, opening for Fall Out Boy, along with fellow openers Paul Wall, +44, and The Academy is . . . Cobra Starship’s name sounds like a cross between TheCobrasnake and late Jefferson Airplane. They’ve got a song on the Snakes on a Plane and the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie soundtracks, ringtones available, a Glamour Kills clothing endorsement, and impressively pimped out profiles on all the good social networking sites. They even (I’m sure ironically) cover Lionel Richie’s “Three Times a Lady” and Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” The CS site itself contains a sort of pseudo-ironic “typical” rockstar history, which is probably actually based on true events but liberally gilded. Band leader Gabe Saporta’s animal familiar-dictated mission is apparently teaching “hipsters to not take themselves so seriously and by telling emo kids to stop being pussies.”

I guess Cobra Starship’s genre is Self-Deprecating Post-Emo? I don’t know. The salient point for Blue Blood readers is that Xanthia Doll appears dancing her yellow-clad booty off in their new video for their long-windedly-named single “Send My Love To The Dancefloor, I’ll See You In Hell (Hey Mister DJ)” from their album, While The City Sleeps, We Rule The Streets. Xanthia says, “I’m so happy I’m in it! It was a lot of fun to be a part of! Just look for red hair and a bright yellow jacket and you’ll see me! Wheeeeeeeeee!!!!!!”

Xanthia’s positive attitude is a lot of fun, but I have to admit that I like my rockstars to truly own what they do. If I were more familiar with modern emo, apparently Cobra Starship’s Gabe tapped a …

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The sex blogger panel at SXSW was entertaining and provided food for thought, but I’ve been having trouble writing about it. I finally realized that the problem with writing about sex bloggers is the same problem bloggers have writing about sex: Specifically, sex and sexuality are very core to self, so even the most gentle critiquing of someone’s sexuality can be terribly hurtful. If any sex bloggers are wounded by what I say here, I apologize, but please keep in mind how you feel when you write about sex with a date who doesn’t like your review.

I attended the Do You Blog on the First Date? panel because Rachel Kramer Bussel was on it. With credits including Penthouse, Bust, and Punk Planet, I think of her more as a writer writer than as exactly a blogger, but she does blog very diligently about both her life and cupcakes, so she absolutely has blogging cred. Yes, I said she writes about “cupcakes” and that is not slang for some depraved sex act you are unfamiliar with. Sometimes a cupcake is just a cupcake and I can’t help loving quality food porn; it is hardwired into my system. And apparently I know now that I am not alone in my longings. Rachel Kramer Bussel’s writing is intelligent and raw. She manages to be very self-aware without injecting pounds of that fakey emo I-don’t-really-mean-it irony. No mean feat and a breath of fresh delight in the current online writing landscape. Especially in the blogosphere.

So I showed up to hear Rachel speak and found out about the other sex bloggers on the panel along the way. The moderator was Mikki Halpin who was a good SXSW selection because of …

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Over the years, I think Rolling Stone magazine has maintained a higher standard of journalism than most music rags. The majority of music publications are written by writers in the employ of publicists and most rarely have an article on topics other than a performer’s favorite color or fictional creative process. Although their musical tastes and mine are not always precisely the same, Rolling Stone is usually an example of what journalism ought to be.

A week or so ago writer Elizabeth Goodman did a brief piece for Rolling Stone’s online incarnation where she really blasted Trent Reznor. Full disclaimer: The Nine Inch Nails album Pretty Hate Machine pretty much changed my life. When the “Get Down, Make Love” single came out, I drove from DC to Chicago, partly so I could get it from Wax Trax before it was widely available. Some of this is a topic for another article, but I wanted to fully disclose where I’m coming from on this.

In the recent Rolling Stone piece, Elizabeth Goodman chortled about Trent Reznor not being allowed to be giddy with happiness, being goth and all. Reznor apparently confided to Rolling Stone that he had perhaps taken so long between albums because he had sort of lost his confidence and was too worried what people thought of him. The goth-industrial icon went on to explain that he felt he was developmentally past that and was likely to only improve as an artist. The writer quoted what he said and summed it up saying, “After tiring of patting his own back, Reznor went on to pontificate on another of his recent epiphanies.” A little harsh. Apparently, Reznor’s second epiphany was realizing that he didn’t care much for the twenty bands …

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Emo has been around long enough that it should have died a natural death by now. But it won’t go away. It hangs around, moping just out of view, like a skinny wuss with a journal in his messenger bag and tears in his eyes. You tell him to fuck off and he skulks away, but you see him following you again the next day. Emo needs that rejection to keep its heart pure, you see. Ugh, so creepy? Can you believe you ever thought there was something special about emo?

It’s over, emo. We’re done with you. It’s been 20 years. Why can’t you just move on?

Most emo kids are dorky enough to know the enshrined canon and history of emo, which starts in DC in ‘85 or so with Embrace and Rites of Spring. This period in history might as well be the Siege of Stalingrad to most of the grumpy larvae who cry along with Dashboard Confessional, and it’s not really accurate anyway. The first band from DC that I ever heard labeled “emo” or “emocore” was Beefeater, whose absence from the canon is mystifying, since their stance was militant vegetarian and their bass player sported the original emo beard. (Note: I grew up in DC and I saw Minor Threat live, okay, so if you’re under 35 and not a Mackaye, do not come at me with a bunch of noise you read on the web somewhere.)

As a further point, just to illustrate the roach-like endurance of emo themes, please note that emo goes back not 20 years but 200. The original emo heart-throb was Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, author of The Sorrows of Young Werther. Werther was the original emo kid, with his journals, passionate friendships, condescension to mere mortals, pathological narcissism, and of …

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