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March 15, 2001, 9:02 a.m. || me & dj spooky

I am on a panel with DJ Spooky at the MIT conference on "Race and Digital Space." DJ SPOOKY! And Beth Coleman, a.k.a. DJ M. Singe! I'm going to be the uncoolest person on that panel. Sigh.

March 11, 2001, 10:35 p.m. || home again home again

I flew in a few hours ago on a lay-over from Denver, and there's too much to say right now about the conference. Way, way too much. I did have to finish my zine reviews for MRR for tomorrow though, and here's one (it doesn't matter what zine this is, because it sucked, but I tried to make another point):

This is a travel journal from a two-week trip to see Screeching Weasel in Las Vegas. It's not all that interesting: long on small detail ("I called So-and-so and slept on her couch, it was okay...") and low on insight. The writing is mediocre and I couldn't get through the rest of the zine; I think you'd probably have to know Phrank to want to read this. I'll take this opportunity to offer a hint to all would-be writers: be self-reflexive. At one point Phrank derides television (and I would guess pop culture writ large, since he's one of those kinds of punks) as so much empty air; but he doesn't recognize that "the masses" are not just duped into "being sedated" but that they often attach meanings to, say, Christina Aguilera tunes, in the same way he ascribes so much emotional power to Screeching Weasel songs. Songs which, I should point out, might as well be Aguilera - pop and pointless - to others (uh, including myself). This isn't to invalidate Weasel as much as it is a suggestion for how to approach writing more thoughtfully. That is, why believe that the ways in which we make meaning from punk rock are significantly different than the rest of the population? "Songs immortalized" in memory because of their personal, circumstantial importance --because a friend killed herself with the tape in the deck, etc.-- can apply to what punk rockers dismiss outright as teen pop crap, but which is rife with that same kind of individual significance for others.