Ah. Sarcasm.
It was refreshing to see your photo illustrations
for "Bikini Blues...or how to stop worrying, and love the body you've got" using "normal" sized and shaped women instead of a bunch of cute 20-somethings with gorgeous bods. Or at least it would have been refreshing if you actually had.
Howard Stovall
Pseudo-Feminists!!
I agree with Christina Water's ("Bikini Blues") basic argument that women should not destroy our bodies and our self-esteem by agonizing over the ways in which our bodies do not conform to unrealistic beauty standards. However, I find it hard to believe the sincerity of her argument when the article is accompanied by photos of women (not to mention the cover photo) who fit those exact beauty standards she purports to challenge.
I also take issue with her pat summation that "the whole propaganda machine...is really run for women, by women."
Please! The fashion and diet industries are run by men for their profit at the expense of women whose insecurities they create and then capitalize on. Bombarded with these beauty ideals constantly over the course of our lives, we have internalized them and use them to police ourselves and make ourselves miserable, but we didn't come up with them. Pseudo-feminist articles like "Bikini Blues" that talk about how we shouldn't worry about conforming to those standards, but then blame us for it while visually reinforcing said standards just serve to reinforce the status quo
Amy Johnson
Immodest Proposal
Tax food and drug commercials to fund a
"truth commission?" That's not A Modest Proposal [Ace Jun 27, Guest Opinion]. It's fantastic nonsense. Writer Norman Solomon sez "Many Americans feel under siege from advertising that insults their intelligence..." Every day, right? And it's a siege because new TVs have plugs that weld themselves to the socket, and don't have an OFF button?
This isn't a siege; it's a tantrum. It's like bringing garbage into the house, and demanding that the government stop the flies. Writer Solomon apparently knows more about drugs than about advertising. Patent medicines were among the very first clients of the first advertising agencies, and that has been one of the most enduring marriages in US history. They sold a lot of alcohol, snake oil and poison, which is why the Feds have inspected pharmaceuticals for 140 years.
Also about 100 years ago, the advertising industry learned to appeal to people's desires, not their intellect. The classic book here is Walter Dill Scott's Psychology of Advertising published in 1908. If there is no need for your product, you must concoct one, and a rational approach won't work. If what you're selling is crap and another landfill problem, you can't come right out and say that, so truth-in-advertising would not be a factor. It certainly didn't bother the tobacco industry, until lately. Nor their pimps in the ad industry. Tobacco is still sold in drug stores. So is alcohol.
So what's the problem here, disingenuous advertising, or disingenuous healthcare, or both? The advertising I can block, and maybe afford health insurance one of these days
Bruce Williams
Lexington
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Mo' Money
Lexington Arts & Cultural Council's 2002 Campaign for the Arts exceeded this year's goal of $900,000. The campaign raised $916,940.95. Funds from the campaign will provide
general operating support to 11 Beneficiary Organizations as well as for the Community Arts Development and Special Project grants.
And Mo' Money
A few week's back, local police and firefighters addressed the Lexington Urban City Council in regards to their pay, or lack thereof. Last week, the Council has agreed upon a plan that would include a 2.5 percent raise for a city employees and a flat "rebate" of $310 for Lexington city workers.
It's all fun and games
We all love fireworks. Light 'em, stand back, and watch 'em blow up. But remember, Safety First!
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that approximately 11,000 people are hurt during the course of a year due to consumer fireworks. Consumer fireworks include cone fountains, cylindrical fountains, roman candles, sky rockets, firecrackers, mines and shells, helicopter-type rockets, certain sparklers, and revolving wheels. Please be careful so you're not the person who shows up at the office next week with your hand heavily bandaged or sporting an eye patch.
To submit an advocacy/activism activity or event for Quickies, email rkirkland@aceweekly.com, or editor@aceweekly.com.
Follow the $$
If you called 255-6614 Monday morning (hardwired into all our brains as Lynagh's Music Club), you finally got the long-predicted: "this number has been disconnected" recording.
As late as last week, the recording only advised listeners of the schedule through Saturday, and informed bands that no bookings were being made as "management negotiations" continued.
"Negotiations"-as everyone knows by now-were protracted.
It's difficult for a newspaper to hop on the rumor mill, when press (pro and con) can so easily be used to manipulate any financial deal (everything from lease agreements on down).
Besides, "news" that a club is closing really isn't news until the last nail has been hammered in the coffin.
We all remember that that the Wrocklage was closING "any minute" for at least a year before the doors actually shut.
The rumors of Lynagh's impending doom surfaced last winter, when Bobby Ray announced that he would be leaving his job booking the talent there, for a gig as road manager for the Yonder Mountain String Band. (Actually, Alejandro Escovedo made the official announcement, from the stage.)
In December, Ray was profiled by Ace as "This Year's Model,"-in recognition of his longterm efforts at putting Lexington on Americana's touring map. (See aceweekly.com for archived stories.)
Given the 18-hour drive between the two cities, Lexington seemed an unlikely "suburb" of Austin-but Ray helped make it happen.
Though admittedly, Lynagh's was no Threadgill's.
Over the years, the acts and their management developed an abiding trust (rare in the music business) with Ray-confident that a stop in Lexington would go off without a hitch; their riders would be respected; their guarantee would be honored; and the groundwork would be laid for an enthusiastic crowd. Escovedo even played Ray's wedding.
(OK, Junior Brown's microphone did get stolen that one timeOr was it Big Sandy?But mostly, it all went well.)
As Ray-and the musicians and the crowds-have acknowledged, the place itself was never the allure.
Last week was business as usual: sticky floors, asphyxiating poor ventilation, and detritus (social, human, and physical) were in abundant supply.
How many of you reading this would arrive home from after an evening at the Club, only to shock the neighborhood and frighten the horses as you shed your clothes at your front door, leaving them outside till laundry day-refusing to pollute your home environs with the stench of smoke and alcohol and who knows what else?
OK, maybe that's just me.
I can also remember-as a young lass-throwing up in their Ladies Room at a Texas Rubies show. (I was sick, not drunk, for the record.) And it was surely a misadventure in public hygiene horror that will profoundly haunt me till my dying day.
Accoutrements aside, we withstood it all, for the music.
It's why Bobby Ray (and by way of groundwork, Mike Tevis before him) worked night and day, to the bone, at nominal wages, for years...for the music.
But music is not a money-making proposition; liquor sales are.
And for that, the Lynaugh family already has the pub.
So will somebody step in to fill this void?
Not likely.
How many collective tears have been shed for the Wrocklage? And yet if everyone who cried the blues about its demise had showed up and spent money there, it'd still be in business.
Nashville (admittedly a music town) is home to clubs like 12th and Porter (where you can catch Steve Earle or Robert Earl Keen and many other guys named Earl), and a half dozen more of similar caliber.
But even far smaller markets like Bloomington, IN have managed to support thriving venues like the Bluebird (where you could've caught the Wooten Brothers last month, for example).
In this college town, college kids still love cover bands. They don't know any better, unless they're educated otherwise. Now they're left with one less opportunity to learn.
There's no denying it's a brutal business; the weak are winnowed out; and even survival isn't pretty.
Anybody who knows what it takes to successfully make the sausage in any largely-cash-based venture is prone to develop a sudden interest in vegetarianism.
And bands-as much as music lovers might wish otherwise-primarily exist to attract thirsty customers with discretionary incomeand the crowds are just seen as machines who efficiently convert beer into urine (or varying other substances into dead brain cells), as Bill Maher would opine.
Yeah, it's a sad day for music fans.
But anybody who ever thought that's what this was about is an idealist with a hard row to hoe.n