I had a brief phase where I mixed Jack Daniel's and domestic sparkling white wine. It lasted about 3 hours, which I think says something impressive about my tolerance back in the day and something less than impressive about my taste buds.
Not exactly a phase sort of thing, but I had an awkward conversation the other day in which a friend was enthusing about the Marx Brothers, alluding to various motifs that were reminiscent of the present day, and I just had to keep shrugging helplessly. I don't know. Never really got into them. I'm afraid I don't know what you mean. Who's Margaret Dumont?
1: I'm embarrassed to admit it, but if we're going to be honest: yes. To up my cool points maybe, another one that happened in 7th grade (and kind of keeps going, actually) was a Bad Religion phase.
5: You guys had no phases back in the day? Oh wait, it's Bad Religion thing, isn't it?
What 5 says. I went through a very brief UB40 phase.
6: Have they actually released an album since you started listening to them?
I went through a Green Party phase. Since it was 2000 and I was registered in Florida, I got over it, but not before the damage was done.
I was super, super into Rush for a while there. In High School. Oh wait, the whole internet knows that. Haha, booze.
I also went through a phase where I wore rave pants to work. I aged out of it pretty much at the appropriate time, though, so no harm done.
I was a fairly big heavy metal fan from about age 13 to age 16, or so. So there was a 'metal/rock' phase. Then my taste rapidly got more catholic from about 17 onwards.
Doesn't everyone still go through phases, to a lesser extent? I fairly regularly get particularly into some musician, or other, or some genre or other. Not to the exclusion of all else, but certainly to the extent that it might predominate in my listening for a while. Most of my other hobbies/interests go through similar 'mini-phases'.
8: Yeah. Stranger than Fiction (1994) was just out around the time I got into them, but I was avoiding that album, geeking out as I was, at the time, to Generator. During maximum phase-ivity, my favorite album was Recipe for Hate
Blog phases are weird, and disappointing. I'll get super, super into a blog, and then I'll read the archives, and then it's over. Like it was planned that way. If somebody could tie this into a whole thing about the modern condition and the internet I'd be grateful.
You know what I just realized, though? I don't feel bad, or even unusual, about any of this. What's your point, Stanley?
I was super, super into Rush for a while there. In High School.
Did you go through a concurrent Ayn Rand phase?
What's your point, Stanley?
I was told there would be no point.
I was super, super into Rush for a while there.
I read this three times before realizing that Sifu meant the band and not Limbaugh. I went through a Rush Limbaugh phase in high school for the express person of hearing someone I wanted to argue against. In hindsight, what was I thinking?
I was told there would be no point.
This would be a good autobiography title.
A Sinatra phase, which hasn't quite left, 10 years later.
16: you know, I should have, but I was lucky enough to have a frenemy in high school who (while also in to Rush -- it was pretty much de rigeur in the Strategic Games Club) discovered Ayn Rand (and Depeche Mode) first. So I took to hating on Ayn Rand (and Depeche Mode) without having to become enamored of her (them) first.
Then I discovered Nine Inch Nails before anybody else, and I was king of the schoolyard.
The end!
I sort of missed most of the classic rock stuff in high school so I went through a phase in college. Other than that, high school me started out ordering Baileys, tequila sunrises and sex on the beach. The latter sort of appropriate since it started at a greek island summer camp with a 2-1 ratio of girls to boys [actually given that it was run by Catholic seminarians maybe it should be in the other thread...].
Doesn't everyone still go through phases, to a lesser extent?
I hope so! And not even to a lesser extent. You have your phase when you were hanging out with artists in cavernous warehouses, or your phase when you were doing the academic thing, or your phase when you were, well, you know how this goes.
I've been more prone to literary and art flings than musical phases. I can think of my early Luca della Robbia obsession, a later Magritte one, Nabokov, Zbigniew Herbert, Proust (the only writer that made me feel like I was stoned just walking around), Brancusi, Malevich, postwar Czech writers, etc.
I've never even heard of the Deftones, but I'm pop culturally ignorant.
I could go through a micro-phase of watching this video over and over again for a week or so.
I had a phase of collecting books about pirates in my early 20s. Then I gave them all away to a punk friend before a big move. I wish I still had the Peter Lamborn Wilson one and the theory-heavy women pirates one. Oh well.
I still like all the music I've ever really liked (as opposed to just listening too without horror when it comes on the radio.) But for a few experimental purchases, which were made based on what proved to be unfounded recommendations by friends or reviewers, I've still got every album I've ever bought. (Although my little sister did wind up with all my Beatles CDs. More where those came from though, I daresay.)
one high-school summer i was really into Thomas Hardy. there was a used bookstore in town, and i read everything of his i could find.
i have no idea why... i hate Victorian literature.
26: We're doing the UK one better -- ranked choice voting that eliminates the need for primaries (just for municipal races so far here in Ice City.)
eliminates the need for primaries
Is "primaries" a synonym for "violent bloodbath"?
I've somehow managed to go through life without reading any Hardy. Somewhat bizarre since even though I'm not a fan of the Victorians (Dickens, most overrated writer evah, Gaitskell, torture material, Trollope, ok time wasting fluff), I've read most of the big names. French nineteenth century lit on the other hand is great, except for Zola - Dickens plus lots of sex, sexism (even by nineteenth century standards) and eugenicism.
I like Zola for the historical aspect. At least the one novel I've read so far. The sexism and inherited characteristics stuff is definitely a downside.
I'd say I've gone through literary phases except I generally fall into the pattern of really getting into an author without reading more than one of the author's books. Conrad might be the only exception, but even there I read only a couple of his novels.
I've been in an old movie - pre-1960s, mainly 40s and earlier - phase for a couple of years. Started with crime/noir/politics films and sort of branched out. Mostly American because that's what's on tv, but not intentionally focused that way.
Then I discovered Nine Inch Nails before anybody else, and I was king of the schoolyard.
Pretty Hate Machine was 20 years old this week.
If somebody could tie this into a whole thing about the modern condition and the internet I'd be grateful.
Upon discovering a new paramour author, one immediately wants to immerse one's self in the world of the beloved, greedily drinking up his wry or trenchant observations, hungrily inhaling her intellectual observations and witty bons mots. Flipping madly throught the archives, rushing to discern her stance on the important issues of the past; aping his elegant or vicious style.
Searching urgently for the names of friends and fellow-travelers, exulting in the byzantine connections of the gentleman from here who also appears there, who lived at the house and attended the wedding and the shot the photo and cropped the angle at which it is portrayed in the so-clever blogbanner.
And then inevitably one emerges out of the whirlwind of infatuation, to coast gently into the calmer waters of quiet, sustained friendship, or bump abruptly into the chill shock of disilusionment.
This, then, is the modern condition: Nothing new under the sun, just a faster cycle, so that it is possible in a single evening to churn through the miasma of joy and excitement and discovery to the worldly, experienced wisdom of a longtime devotee. Thus does one grasp and digest the oeuvre of a blogger as one might take in the collected works of Dorothy Sayers or Louis L'Amour, Steinbeck or Austen: Hey! Catch THIS.
I get obsessions quite frequently. For example, last summer it was Australia. I read books about Australia (travel stuff, Bill Bryson), literature by Australian writers (Gould's Book of Fish, for example), listened to Australian music (Nick Cave, The Waifs, others), and watched Australian movies (The Proposition, Muriel's Wedding - actually, a bunch of Toni Collette stuff, now that I think about it, and so on). And then the obsession just sort of fizzled, after having wandered into my life.
My whole life is one long chain of obsessions. Some are short-lived and die forever, others recur at intervals of months or years, barely diminished in intensity. And I get stuck re-following the same chains of thought. It's fine when it's a burst of listening to the New Pornographers repeatedly again, leading inexorably into a period of obsessively listening to Destroyer and A.C. Newman solo albums. It's less comfortable when it means I decide to once again dredge up the problem I spent most of 2007 working on with no publishable results, only to realize I'm repeating exactly the same set of inspirations and failures I went through at the time, the details of which I had forgotten.
I thought it sounded plausible, myself. Bit hard to tell with that thesaurus in the way.
I went through a phase where I'd read comment sections and various blogs' archives. Now I just read posts only at all but a few places, and the archives only if they're linked from a current post.
I guess I sort of go through phases, but given my minimal interaction with the world of aesthetic production it's hard to positively identify any particular ones. What I do tend to go through are huge shifts in every aspect of my life. On a fairly regular basis so far, but that'll likely start to change as I get older and settle into more of a pattern.
Ooh. I definitely went through a Sunny Day Real Estate phase. Meet you there? In the blue? Of course I will.
['what did that even mean? you dreamed to heal my wounds?']
Pretty Hate Machine was 20 years old this week.
So there's less distance between Led Zeppelin IV and Pretty Hate Machine than there is between Pretty Hate Machine and today?
Where's my Geritol?
I still like all the music I've ever really liked (as opposed to just listening too without horror when it comes on the radio.) But for a few experimental purchases, which were made based on what proved to be unfounded recommendations by friends or reviewers, I've still got every album I've ever bought.
Wow, your taste hasn't changed sufficiently that you no longer see what you saw in something? I actively dislike a fair number of things I liked when I was 15 (although by no means everything) and there are quite a few things I still like (from more recent phases) but where I no longer see why I was so into it at the time. I've not had a proper CD-cull in a while, but I used to have them fairly regularly.
I'm going to get out in front of the curve and recommend a Jake Fleisher phase.
Archives here. My favorite here, this a close second.
I feel like They Might Be Giants was a pretty significant and discrete phase for me. Lincoln opened up music for me, and I went back and listened to their old stuff; I devoured their next two albums hungrily; I stopped there, but they probably had a strong effect on my songwriting and recording for five or six years more.
I'm going through a phase of reading Unfogged.
Yeah, I went through many mini-musical-phases as a teenager. I remember one phase when I would come home from school, put on the Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five LP and play Roland Goes Digging. (In a darkened room, natch.)
Now wondering what my kids would say if I suggested they play Roland Goes Digging. I bought some old Nintendo Game & Watches from eBay a few years ago and we (my brother and I) couldn't believe how easy they were. I got 999 on Donkey Kong within a couple of goes, which had taken us months and months the first time.
That key transitional phase, from metalhead to eclectic taste happened really fast, when it happened. I saw a couple of bands that were slightly outside the rock mainstream -- Living Colour, Jane's Addiction, Fishbone, etc* -- all in quick succession (late '88, I think), and then just went crazy. Within 6 months, it was 'Bitches Brew', Stravinsky, and Public Enemy. Within a year and a half I'd bought a tenor sax, and was learning to play bebop.
* none of which I really listen to now, but who were eye-opening to a 16 year old.
45 is true, minus the "songwriting and recording" and plus "being a giant nerd in high school".
I also had a phase where all I listened to was Thomas Dolby. I count it as brief, but you may want to check with my roommates at the time.
Wow, your taste hasn't changed sufficiently that you no longer see what you saw in something?
I don't think I have, really for anything. I'm more of a flood of fascination, ebb tide of ongoing enjoyment kind of guy. It probably helps that I've just about never obsessed so completely on something that I've grown completely sick of it.
Actually, RATM may be the closest to this that I come - when it pops up on Shuffle, I often cringe a bit. But ican still enjoy it in context (like in a minimix of angry political music I made ca. 2003).
actually, i can't listen to gang of four or magazine much anymore after train trips across italy and switzerland listening to Entertainment and Rays And Hail over and over again.
but apart from that i can't think of much.
actually!
also, that's not really phase is it?
I had a roommate who went through a Doors phase when the movie came out. For a couple of months, he'd come home and play the whole album. I have nothing but deep loathing for the Doors now.
My phase of masturbating to Soupy Sales is over.
I had a magic phase (the tricks, not the game) as a kid. Then a phase where I wore a baseball cap all the damn time. Roughly concurrent with my Asia/Def Leppard phase. Then there was the hallucinogen phase, which had a couple afterripples. On to literature, where the phases went Hardy, Russians, Tibetan Buddhism. Then the Jazz phase launched by the move to the west coast and a real jazz station entering my life. Then the bluegrass phase. Then the shit, people in my life are dying phase.
Who knows what phase I'm in now. Perhaps the use of all my limbs phase.
Heh. Even before seeing this post, I was loosely reminiscing about my Arrested Development phase. (The band, not the show, which is still current.) In particular, how profound I found Mr. Wendell.
Mr. Wendell has a freedom, a freedom that you and I think is dumb. The freedom to live outside of a quick-to-judge society - see, Mr. Wendell's a bum. His only worries are hunger and the occasional police, who give him chase. Uncivilized we call him, but I just saw him eat from the food we waste.
"Oh yeah," thought tween Heebie, "That is really deep."
34: Witt has nailed it. I leave enthusiasms to the Boing Boingers, knowing they'll eventually get old too.
re: 56
Heh, someone I know was _in_ Asia. So I suppose he had that phase, too.
Perhaps other people didn't listen to as much shit as I once did, but I just couldn't imagine listening to much of what I listened to circa 1986 any more, except for an occasional moment of nostalgia.
59: I still listen to 80s music in the car. The trick is to turn the dial back to WYEP (basically NPR, but 1/4 less boring) before your wife takes the car.
Witt's 34 is indeed great, Phases and infatuations are an important part of being alive, an impulse to cherish when it arises, in oneself and in others. Hopefully not leading to rave pants for the middle aged....
I have now idea what rave pants are. I thought they were the lack of pants. Are they worse than those fake-cammo-Bills-colors bloomers circa 1990?
62: oh you know, this kind of thing.
I kind of want some, about the way I want a motorcycle again
I couldn't bring myself to get rid of all of mine, I don't think. You never know.
I do like all the music I've ever liked, at least somewhat. I go through phases for non-musical things all the time, but usually I then look back on them not in embarrassment for being interested in such a thing, but in embarrassment for having relinquished such an admirable activity (learning French, reading the poems of W.H. Auden, playing the guitar) to return to my puerile daily routine of passive consumption.
Although there was the long period of forcing myself to like ska-punk, out of my desire to be one of the cool ska-punk people. Then after I actually enjoyed it I had to stop listening out of my resentment for the ska-punk people, as cool as whom I proved to never be.
Interesting, I can now distinguish between Hammer Pants and Ali G Pants, though can't explain how without having worn both.
I had a phase where I went to this goth club, but it definitely wasn't my fault.
The trick is to turn the dial back to WYEP (basically NPR, but 1/4 less boring) before your wife takes the car.
Yep.
Arguably I had a Transcendentalist phase, but I still reread Thoreau occasionally, and I'd say some of the principles stayed with me, so I'm not sure it was just a "phase."
Probably had a Hudson River Valley School phase, but, again, I still like the paintings, and I love to visit Olana.
Oh! I got it - my Charlie Manson phase. Obsessed with the Family and Helter Skelter and all, for about 2-3 years. Definitely not still a big Charlie Manson fan.
On the issue specifically of the Deftones, I read this incredibly positive review of their album "White Pony". Apparently every song was totally different from every other song, every song was brimming with creativity, and the lyrics combined insight with wordplay and poignancy. All this stuff must have been only evident to listeners who were also rock musicians, because I couldn't tell any of it apart from Taproot or Spineshank, it did not appear to be an advance on their earlier albums in any way except that there were more varied sound dynamics, and obviously I couldn't tell what the guy was singing.
Had a similar experiment with one of the albums by Stanford Prison Experiment.
||
BOGF has attempted to friend me on Facebook. WTF?
I mean, seriously, WTF. I'm a little freaked out by it.
|>
That's hilarious, JRoth, but it also sucks.
Get AB to friendrequest her while you are still in ignore mode.
So, I thought that I posted this in another thread, but I can't find it, and CN is here now.
Why don't we use adjuvant in the H1N1 vaccine in the U.S.? They're using it in Canada. We'd have so much more here straight away and might be able to give some to developing countries too.
I have no idea. Maybe I'll find out later today!
72: You didn't read that review in Alive & Kicking, perchance? They have never written a bad review of a Sacramento band (or any other band) ever.
73: Switch your thumbnail photo to a picture of your kids holding-up a sign that says "You suck, therefore we exist."
78: It was definitely the kind of publication that finds the good in everything, but then has a couple pet artists that it likes to be contrarian about. Page after page of raves, and then "Well, it looks like Queens of the Stone Age are back to their old chestnuts."
But this review just described so many very specific qualities, giving the impression that the writer just could not stop listening to it, and absolutely none of that was evident to me. Most of their positive reviews are a lot vaguer.
Why would you suddenl find out today?
Ned is prone to visions, and can feel the spirit rising within him.
I remember reading a review somewhere of a Tori Amos album that was just about the funniest thing I'd ever read. Just absurd, sickening levels of sycophancy and pretentiousness, and it was like that. Endless purple prose about the genius of this track, versus that track, lots of discussion of wonders of detail and nuance; leaving the impression that either this music was like Miles Davis, Stravinsky, and Bach all working in perfect harmony, or the reviewer was borderline mentally ill. A friend linked to it, because he liked the review [he wasn't being ironic, either].
I remember reading a review somewhere of a Tori Amos album that was just about the funniest thing I'd ever read. Just absurd, sickening levels of sycophancy and pretentiousness
I have a Hebrew textbook which, on the back cover, has the quote from one of the authors: "We sensed we were revolutionizing the way that Hebrew is taught in America." I love that line so much.
"We sensed we were revolutionizing the way that Hebrew is taught in America."
But it turns out that nobody wanted Hebrew taught incorrectly. So we wrote this book.
I love those kind of reviews on Amazon that just turn into huge joke threads. Couldn't stop laughing when C and I watched The Office wedding episode and Dwight was wearing the wolf T-shirt.
For some reason I found it briefly shocking that people in the UK watch the US version of The Office.
34 is excellent.
I am in an I and Love and You phase.
Kick Drum Heart, especially. It helped redirect my daughter from angry to happy this morning.
Her hand was bouncing all the way to school. Then, she got teary-eyed when she had to get out of the car.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNvgNX3ZIV4&feature=fvw
Downloaded; I don't think it's ever been on actual tv. We got 12 episodes and 2 Christmas specials. There's only so many times we could keep rewatching them.
re: 89
I think it was shown somewhere on terrestrial TV; I have vague memories of catching one episode [the only one I've seen].
My whole life is one long chain of obsessions. Some are short-lived and die forever, others recur at intervals of months or years, barely diminished in intensity.
If I gave it some thought, I could chart my life as a succession of greater and lesser obsessions, probably. I've had bibliographical phases, musical phases, philosophical phases, sartorial phases, and gastronomical phases. This year and last, for example, I went through a mini-obsession with Frank O'Hara and the New York School poets which has kind of petered out at the moment. In the past, I've had a medieval phase and a late antiquity phase and an American exploration phase and a Catholic phase and a Zen phase. I had a phase where I was obsessed with collecting 19th century boy's books and a phase where I was obsessed with collecting those little Everyman's books. I've never had an economics phase or a military phase, but I suppose there's still time.
43: Wow, your taste hasn't changed sufficiently that you no longer see what you saw in something?
Not really. My taste tends to broaden rather than narrow. I suppose I should have put a "virtually" in there somewhere -- there are a very few songs or albums that I've gotten sick of over the years, maybe a dozen? -- but really, I never know when I'm going to be in the mood to revisit something I haven't heard in a decade. I do go on long hiatuses from all music though. I'll spend several months with the same dub cd in the player, just pushing play occasionally. Then I'll get nostalgic for something and listen to a bunch of music and maybe buy some new stuff. Now that I work at a venue again though, I hear so much music as background noise (both the CDs the bartenders put in during happy hour, and the actual bands that play) that my need to seek out fresh sounds is usually slaked from work.
I guess the one "phase" I could admit to is tiki. Not the music so much, just the scene in general. I got interested right before everyone jumped on the bandwagon, and then it got boring, and now I don't really pursue any tiki interests. But I conceive of that more as waiting until it is totally loathsome and uncool for anyone hip to be involved with tiki, and then I'll go back to it.
Too, I don't really dig stuff that hasn't stood the test of time. The bulk of my music collection is stuff that was recorded before I was born. (And I'm talking about popular music here.)
now I don't really pursue any tiki interests
Tiki-curious SWPL SWGM ISO ex-Tiki obsessive. Deftones a must.
Man, I'm not even sure what 'tiki' is. 60's kitschy Polynesian lounge decor, music and drinks, like Don Ho singing "Tiny Bubbles," pupu platters and Maitais? Or does it have some less silly connotation?
The most recent association I have with tiki involves an episode where Greg Brady suffered a head injury while surfing.
I thought the tiki craze stopped being overblown and became indie again around 1962. Is there some sort of localized Silopaennim tiki revivalist movement?
#98. There was a big tiki craze in the mid-to-late '90s, too. I assumed that was one Natilo was referring to.
Ned, the tiki crazy was revived in 1993. Nobody told you because we wanted all the poi to ourselves. Sorry.
From Wikipedia:
The mid 1990's saw the beginning of a revival of the tiki culture.
Several books on the subject of Tiki kitsch have been published including The Book of Tiki by Sven Kirsten, published by Taschen. This book is credited with bringing mid-century Tiki culture back into the American mainstream.
Unwashed=sin(pop cultural trope)
"Out of phase" = cos(pop cultural trope)
Just to be clear, 100 was a completely lie fabricated to provide a brief distraction from formating an overly detailed table. I have no idea what 99 is talking about.
Really? Did this have something to do with the success of Smash Mouth?
When trolling, bait looks more attractive.
96: No, the silliness is the point. There's varying degrees of tolerance for deviations from "authentic" tiki. Kersten, whom I've spoken with, is about as much of a "purist" as anyone, and even he is pretty catholic in his tastes. The revival tiki ideal is an actual hapa-cloth shirt, a few dozen vintage mugs, a handmade bamboo bar, real Japanese glass fishing floats, Les Baxter on vinyl and drinks made from scratch with fresh ingredients and top-shelf liquors. I know a few people who aspire to that level of recreation, but they'd be the first to admit that what they're promoting is substantially different from the way the original marketing phenomenon unfolded in the 1950s and 1960s.
Anyhow, like I said, the silliness is 90% of the fun. The "Catalog of Cool"-era folx who were doing it back in the early 1980s (when the original wave was barely cold) did it because you could get everything you needed for $.50 at the thrift store and it didn't make any sense when juxtaposed with Reaganism and New Wave.
I really liked the "Catalog of Cool". I got a used copy of it recently and a lot of it doesn't hold up, but it was really hard to get good book and music recommendations back then.
I used to frequent a tiki bar in the outer sunset that was mostly populated by off-duty cops. I met the scariest fucking guy there ever. SF cop willing to straight-up admit he was racist and corruptly fucking with people, and he more or less threatened to rape me, saying that he was holding back because my boyfriend was there (actually just a male friend, but whatever.) his beat was in the mission and I used to be terrified he'd be the one to bust me sometime. I don't know that I've ever met anyone I was more scared by. the thing that really cemented his love for me was when I said I liked that college football was more freewheeling, with laterals and such, but that nonetheless I couldn't muster up any caring about it and was an NFL fan only. he was like, I've only ever dreamed of a beautiful woman with that opinion. me and my friend had to leave, and the cop was drunk enough that when he tailed us we could lose him pretty fast. this marginally decreased my love of things tiki.
I'm not really sure if there's an UK equivalent of the tiki scene. Never really been part of a scene, but I did used to go to a lot of retro funk clubs in the very early 90s.
There used to be one in Edinburgh ran by Jamie Byng [Obama's publisher, among other things] that was so great. Definitely the closest I've ever been to a place that was like a scene from a movie. You'd walk in and there'd be a dance-floor rammed with people, all really dressed up* and dancing like they were auditioning for Soul Train. Sometimes, as if by magic, people would end up dancing in sync (like the scene from Boogie Nights).
There were also some really good northern soul/mod/motown revival nights in Glasgow.
http://bp3.blogger.com/_KY1Ez0TsjN8/Rt2PxKNwHhI/AAAAAAAABnE/8ldUiOx1vac/s400/orangedancegeneric4cv7.jpg
That one looks to have still been running, fairly recently.
* very much at odds with the club aesthetic of the time
The whole tiki/lounge thing was big in both Boston and LA; not sure how y'all missed it.
110: I don't know how LB missed it at Chicago, since the local bar with the 4am license was (the now lamented) Ciral's House of Tiki. It's tiki-osity dated back to the early 60s.
I remember the (very odd) moment when all the noisy, punk-ish rock bands in Boston decided lounge was now the thing, and started throwing parties with fake beaches, drinks in coconuts, and upright basses. It lasted about a month and a half, but what a smooth month and a half it was.
Yeah, there was a brief 'lounge' monent in the UK, too. I have a some of the compilations and reissues that came out on Ultra-lounge, not because they are kitsch but because the music on them is really good.
I remember a Riki-tiki-tane moment; it was very Rudyard Kipling but of course I was rocking out to One Love etc.
Mainly I think Jo Diamond was awesome but if anyone wants to represent, Jah Rastafari. (I am serious about the One Love moment, but again jah rastafari!)
I do apologise to anyone who is Rasta; that was fucking awesome.
(Again, my idea of rasta is, shall we, say odd and of course post-colonial in an inter-storming way, I do ignore Simon Grigg who is a fucking mensch as non-white chaps go.)
is a fucking mensch as far as non-white chaps go, I should say,
and of course the very idea of tiki is pretty fucking racist to be honest, and again I do apologise to anybody who is PI, but really, ``tiki'', honestly?
They really are just using the idea of exoticism. Unless you are a Poly guy in which case I am sorry but I have an exam to sit and I really can't help exact a wee bit.
This thread is the first I've heard of the whole tiki thing. Weird.
111: Googling 'wicker monkey' should reveal that I used to go to the House of Tiki. I just wasn't sure that that kind of thing was what Nat was talking about.
From the original derivative tiki thing (rather than the derivative derivative), Trader Vic's also won a lawsuit against Don the Beachcomber over who invented the mai tai. (Don the Beachcomber was reputedly the first "tiki" restaurant in the US; it was opened in LA in 1934.) To Keir's point, I do like this line from the part of the wiki article that describes post-WWII developments (including Michener, South Pacific and interest in the Kon-Tiki expedition) : Americans fell in love with their romanticized version of an exotic culture.
And what's this "wiki" stuff? Some kind of revival?
118: I was teasing you, since it is not possible to live in HP for 4 years and not go there.
I once went to the Trader Vic's in Chicago (also now gone) and ordered some ridiculous drink solely because Bertie Wooster drank them (a Gin Swizzle?). The bartender wouldn't give it to me because I was "too little." "What do you mean too little? I'm 22." "No no. You're just too small for that drink. This drink would be much nicer for you."
120: Apparently there is still a Trader Vic's in Chicago on North State. However, he biggest concentration of Trader Vic's today is in the Middle East (especially UAE) with 10 of their 25 locations.
116: This sort of thing always confuses me. Yes, it's appealing to cheap exoticism, but on the other hand it just doesn't seem likely to offend or injure actual Pacific Islanders in any way. Stupidly kitschy, like "Irish" bars with no actual connection to Ireland, but does it get all the way to "pretty fucking racist"?
I may be missing something -- there isn't a significant PI population in my part of the US, so my sense of PI people is Samoans living in Samoa, not people living overseas in countries in which they're a minority. Maybe it's more offensive and injurious than I can see.
Budding tiki enthusiasts may appreciate the work of Josh Agle aka Shag.
Americans fell in love with their romanticized version of an exotic culture.
There's an interesting chapter in David Toop's Exotica on the tiki phenomenon and world music, particularly musicians like Colin McPhee, Henry Cowell, and Lou Harrison.
110: I don't know how LB missed it at Chicago, since the local bar with the 4am license was (the now lamented) Ciral's House of Tiki. It's tiki-osity dated back to the early 60s.
The House of Tiki closed at more or less exactly the time I moved to Hyde Park. I remember encountering people who were very upset about this, and thinking "a tiki bar? that sounds kind of dumb". But freshman me was clueless about just how limited the bar options in Hyde Park were.
125: Jimmy's, the Pub, and . . .? (And the Pub is silly.)
126: The Cove and Bar Louie, though I never went to either (and heard mostly negative things from people who did).
woah that really didn't make too much sense did it? However, I dare say i can construct an actual argument out of the above if anyone cares.
Well, `pretty fucking racist'; I suppose it doesn't actually hurt anyone really, but it seems to me that the explanations for tiki bars are pretty well racist: exoticised fantasies of the sexually available Other, etc.
I think it is rather racist, even if it isn't importantly racist, if that makes sense?
(My head hurts a bit, to be honest.)
The pub may be silly but they have a lot of beer.
