The Old Switcheroo

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Friends Don't Let Friends Wear Crop Tops (FDLFWCT)

While shopping on Melrose and contemplating the dreaded return of the crop top, The Decemberists' “The Wanting Comes in Waves/ Repaid” came on overhead. To the chagrin of my dear sister, I instantly began stomping around the store singing “and this is how I am repaaaaaaaiiiiid,” complete with light head banging and the occasional air harpsichord solo. My muffintop of steel played a starring role in this performance, as it joined evil forces with a floral, Lilly Pulitzer-bright belly-baring shirt, prompting the revival of my personal chapter of Friends Don't Let Friends Wear Crop Tops (FDLFWCT).

As per usual, I hated The Decemberists when I first heard them. I suffered through Colin Meloy's vocals, knowing that I should like it, but I just didn't. Hearing “The Wanting Comes in Waves” at Sasquatch 2009 sent my dislike radar into a tailspin. That last sentence may be a little misleading, as, having been forcibly removed from the Sasquatch perimeter before The Decemberists hit the stage, I did not actually see them play. Apparently Sasquatch securrrity doesn't particularly like it when you scale the back fence and scramble over the port-a-pottys, a la parkour.  They're all concerned with tickets and nonsense.  

Instead of twiddling our thumbs waiting for our be-ticketed friends to return, my partner in sexytime crime Liana and I proceeded to hand out grain-liquor shots from our trunk to the dudes wearing "free hugs" shirts.  Our mescaline-infused neighbors even emerged from their homemade, found-objects teepee to join in our festivities.  The only interruption to this joyous debauchery came when The Decemberists hit the stage and the female vocalist's voice came cascading and echoing over the the rolling hills of the Columbia Gorge.  We paused our bacchanalia to marvel and sway to the rock opera, feeling the wanting coming in musical waves over the campground.  

"The Wanting Comes in Waves/ Repaid" makes me feel like I am at the center of a Michael Bay 360 pan, with all the epic feel and none of the gut-wrenching physical and mental nausea his films induce (the considerable queasiness I feel when even thinking about Transformers 3 is in part due to the horrific date that accompanied me to the "film," but that is a story for tomorrow).  Perhaps a better analogy would be to the final scene of Fight Club, when Edward Norton sits at the center of capitalism's apocalypse - the world around him shudders and falls decapitated to the ground as he looks on, at once innocent bystander and omnipotent leader. 

This year's Sasquatch will be significantly more accessible as I am one of the be-ticketed attendees now. In addition to my usual excitement over Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Deadmau5, Ween, Portugal.The Man, and The xx, I'll be lucky enough to see old favorites like Dr. Dog and new ones like Freelance Whales.  

The Decemberists - The Wanting Comes in Waves/ Repaid

Freelance Whales - Hannah

Dr. Dog - I Only Wear Blue

Photo credit goes out to the wonderful Liana Pregnant Cavness. 

Sound Off

My first reaction to things is generally to not like them.  People, places, things, no proper noun is safe from my negative first impressions.  LCD Soundsystem fell victim to my perpetual inner sneer, but unlike the case of TV on the Radio and every other thing I enjoy in this world, I never looked back to correct my mistake.  Until now.  I'm slowly warming to their frenetic beats and monotone, though I must admit it's an uphill battle as my thesis headache constantly coaxes my fingers towards the pause button. "Pow Pow" hasn't received the same media love and kisses as "I Can Change," but it's still a contender for my favorite track on their newest album - perhaps because it reminds me of a soundtrack to a bad workout video in a confusing yet good way.  

How to Write a Thesis and Still Give a Damn

This morning I wrote an op-ed for the Scripps College Voice newspaper about thesis and, being that my articles usually get edited into curse word-free submission (I maintain that "clusterfuck" is totally an accurate description of the Scripps Mail Digest.  I even used asterisks for the print version) and the online version of the newspaper seems to be perpetually "under construction," I'm posting the pure version on The Lockative Case. 

Like the good procrastinator I am, I have finally started writing my thesis now that there is less than a month until it must be printed, bound, and ready for intellectual action. In all honesty, I began the torturous thesis process with absolutely no direction. I ricocheted from topic to topic, starting with advertising in 1960s issues of Vogue (try fitting that into a politics major) and ending first semester with a vague thesis statement postulating that the increasing accessibility of photographic technology allows for a more populist means of influencing the burgeoning democratic processes in Iraq.

Then I stopped working on thesis completely. Detached from both my ideas and my research, I visited my first reader and advisor extraordinaire Professor Thomas Kim in January to grumble about the whole stupid concept of writing a year-long thesis when one has little, if any, clue what she wants to with her life post-Scripps. I threw down the academic gauntlet: “I don't want to do thesis and I most certainly do not want it to take over my life, especially not my senior year,” I declared, “which means I want my thesis to be short and sweet – not bad, just not a 75-pound tome of intellectual masturbation that will slowly accumulate dust and irrelevancy in the basement of Denison Library.”

At this point, Professor Kim didn't try to convince me I was mistaken about the value, or lack thereof, of writing upwards of 100 pages about a subject I may not give a flying rats arse about in five years. He didn't even scold me for my complete lack of progress. Instead, Professor Kim took his characteristically laissez-faire approach (at least in my case) to advising and gave me a gem of advice, “From this point on,” he said, “spend all your time doing original, primary research that will give your thesis weight and relevancy.”

I stopped scouring LexisNexis and Academic Search Premier for information/inspiration and began collecting primary data by interviewing photojournalists around the world who have documented the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. My apathy vanished like brain cells at TNC (the comments about entitlement on this are highly...illuminating).

Like so many other Americans, I maintained only a peripheral interest in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I cried and proclaimed myself a pacifist in 2003 when the news media broadcast the first night-vision footage of air strikes in Baghdad, then glanced over major news reports for nearly the next seven years.

Primary research not only cured my indifference towards my thesis, but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and perhaps even violent military conflict worldwide. Even meeting former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Conner does not compare to the inspiration I've gained talking one-on-one with professional photojournalists who risk their lives in zones of violent conflict to shed light on everything from human rights abuses to the daily lives and bravery of soldiers. My interviewees were kidnapped and held hostage, they witnessed suicide bombings and friendly fire, they visually recorded soldiers both saving and ending the lives of civilians.

As I conducted the interviews via Skype from the comfort of my pillow-top mattress in my palatial Scripps dorm room, I finally understood that I, like my interviewees, will never be satisfied by the life of an academic or a job that requires me to stare at my desktop for hours on end. The constant reminder of their mortality reminded me of my own, and, forgive the triteness, the unfettered need for a carpe diem approach to life.

At last I have a thesis: I am analyzing the Department of Defense's program through which they “embed” photographers and journalists in military units in Iraq and Afghanistan through the lens of photojournalists personal experiences working within and outside the limits of the program. Despite this lackluster blurb description, my thesis will not be a dry, legalistic dissection of military poli formation and implementation, but entertaining prose infiltrated with narratives – my interviewees and my own – that I will proudly look to as the culmination of my Scripps education. Now I just have to write the dang thing.  

The end.

For the last 2 weeks the soundtrack to my thesis-writing/2nd floor bridge of the library-living has been Pretty Lights.  I fell hard for their most recent album Making Up a Changing Mind when I heard "I Can See It In Your Face" for the first time; the track fills a little hole in  my heart where RJD2 used to reside.  Like RJD2 and the Rocky theme song, Pretty Lights is the kind of music I will play when (if) I climb to the top of a mountain. 

Lucky for ya'll, I'm going to post the entire 6-track album for the next 24 hours.  After that, I'll leave "I Can See It In Your Face" up for approximately a week.  

Pretty Lights - I Can See It In Your Face

My dear friend Maddi has recently informed me that Pretty Lights puts their sweetass music up on their website for free.  I am officially the coolest.  My bad. 

Leakage

MGMT entered my life in late 2007 when the very prescient Nurse Amy at St. Jude put "Electric Feel" on a mix cd chock full of future indie hits.  I played the song daily, hourly, letting its saucy electro vibes transport me away from the shitmarsh of a city called Memphis, Tennessee. Like the first time I gazed into Josh Hartnett's squinty brown eyes, or my very first buttery bite into a madeleine's spongey goodness, the attraction was instant – love at first listen.

MGMT's recently-leaked album Congratulations does not illicit the same response. It is blah; it lacks the melodic pizazz that made Oracular Spectacular so outstanding. I forgot I was listening to a new and superduper anticipated album and had to force myself to concentrate after it quickly faded into background noise.

The tepid reactions to the lackluster single “Flash Delirium” foreshadowed this failure, yet MGMT didn't exactly take the criticism to heart. It appears they would rather be known as underappreciated artists proudly standing by their shoddy work than hipster heartthrobs inundated with American Apparel-clad fans.  Here are two tracks that I mildly enjoy.

MGMT - I Found a Whistle

MGMT - Someone's Missing

Witching Hour Music

Patience is not a virtue I possess. So when I wake up at 3am afraid of my dorm room, which is tinged with an eerie fluorescent glow from the parking lot scenery outside, I need a quick fix for my interrupted slumber.  Mayer Hawthorne 's A Strange Arrangement has been the soundtrack to my witching hour since I found it in my mailbox last September.  Usually I don't go for this kind of sap - I suppose it's fairly telling that my favorite song on the album is not "Green Eyed Love" or "I Wish It Would Rain," but instead "Just Ain't Gonna Work Out."  Hawthorne's falsetto really toots my horn, especially when coupled with the multi-harmony technological magic that was unavailable to his Motown predecessors.

The Case of the Decimated Hard Drive

Yesterday morning around 11:45am I woke up and went through my usual morning routine.  I pushed aside the various homework assignments that occupy the other half of my queen-sized bed and surveyed the evidence of the night before: 1 crunched up ticket to see Lupe Fiasco, 1 half-eaten piece of Trader Joe's salame, and finally, 1 text message reading "damnit my hand got stuck in the pickle jar and now my bed smells like pickle juice fml."  I clicked the space bar on my MacBook to check and see if Mail Goggles had actually worked for once and possibly finish my episode of Parks and Recreation, when my laptop started clicking.  And blinking an angry-looking grey screen of death, which in MacBook language means, "your hard drive is officially, royally f***ed." And away into the ether went everything I've done in the last two weeks, including my thesis interview with Zoriah, humanitarian photojournalist extraordinaire and the new album "American Ghetto" by Portugal.The Man.  Thanks to MediaFire, I still have it here for you.