gordonzola

Went for unexpected beers tonight after my last Board of Directors meeting. I’m really learning to like Wild Oscar’s. It’s a relatively new bar, both Irish and queer. Not necessarily, at the same time, but often it is.

Because of a semi-drunken discussion about how to best enable worker co-ops take over the world, I was late to Modern Times for the reading from Without a Net the new book that Michelle Tea edited about "the female experience of growing up working class". Unfortunately, LJ’s own beelavender and goodbadgirl* (who is rumored to exist in real life) and my co-worker Goldie couldn’t make the reading, but there were still another 10-12 contributors. I managed to catch Diane Di Prima, Ricky Lee, and Colleen Mckee. Sailor Holladay also got up at the last moment and told rotting teeth stories that you know are close to my heart if you go back a ways with my LJ.

All I can say is that from the readings and from what I’ve read so far, people should be checking this book out.

Also, and I don’t know if this will come out right, people need to quit bagging on Michelle Tea. She’s not my friend, (or my enemy either).We know each other to nod at on a good day, and we’ve likely discussed cheese a few times. But the older I get, the less I can stand the way that when someone starts to get a little famous out of the underground scene they came from, (punk, dyke, whatever) everyone starts talking shit about the work that they would have used as a badge of coolness a year or two before. I imagine some people who used to impress out-of-towners with "Oh yeah, I know Michelle, we hang out at the Lex." are the same ones being dismissive of her today because she’s developed some out-of-scene popularity. The crabs in a barrel thing is old.**

I just remember saying such stupid stuff about punk bands like, say, "Wild Gift" by X being not fast enough or that some stupid band getting big enough to play in a bar instead of a punk club was selling out.*** So maybe I’m just blaming others for my stupid mistakes of the past. Still, it seems like often when her name comes up, people can be really dismissive of her and her work. And I’m sure people have seen examples of this phenomenon before and know what I’m talking about.

Maybe I’m going too much out on a tangent because I’m a little drunk. All I’m really trying to say is that she put together an amazing collection of essays here that people should take a look at. Going to bed now.



*Click on that link up there, Good Bad Girl, you’ll be glad you did.
**Ex lovers are, of course, excepted from the above paragraph. Not that they are the ones talking shit in this case necessarily, just cuz that’s the universal rule. They have the right to be as barrel crabby as they want.
***Of course, sometimes I was right. The Ramones "End of the Century" for example.