CORRECTION: I accidentally mixed up No Mas Bodas and The Low Lows. I didn’t actually get to see The Low Lows play, but I doubt they disappointed.  Apologies to the bands in questions and anyone misdirected.  I’ve edited the article accordingly, hopefully without overlooking much.

This past Friday—September 18th—UT’s student-run radio station (KVRX) held a benefit show at Mohawk, a downtown music venue. On the whole I was quite impressed by the lineup. Aside from great music, it was also one of the more enjoyable shows I’ve gone to in recent memory. Given that KVRX is a student thing, the crowd largely consisted of people who are either going to UT, formerly went, or are relatively close to the university’s artsier wing. The concertgoers naturally reflected that, but most people in those circles are friendly. The overall vibe of the event was very positive, even for those who aren’t RTF major indie kids.
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// posted by brien on 20 Sep 2009 at 5:57pm. leave or view comments.

The English Premier League season started this past weekend. The only way for me to follow these games in the US is by streaming them online; buying digital cable or a satellite hookup is completely unfeasible. Because this practice is in a legal gray area, a lot of the streams originate in less industrialized countries. It’s not unusual to watch a game in Arabic, Russian, or Turkish—indeed that’s to be expected. The feed I used to watch most of Liverpool’s facepalm-inducing performance on Sunday happened to be from India. It also happened to be a channel that runs commercials, which meant that in watching the match I also got to see what commercials are like there.

Perhaps the most interesting cultural artifact is that all of the ads save one were in English, many (possibly most) featuring Western actors. This is no coincidence in either respect. There’s a huge body of research on issues like the statuses/connotations of particular ethnicities/races/linguistic groups in this postcolonial world. It’s well documented, for example, that white actors are often used to associate things with higher status (eventually sources will appear here).

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// posted by brien on 17 Aug 2009 at 4:04pm. leave or view comments.

A friend of mine recently referred me to a documentary produced in 2005 by the Film Board of Canada, titled They Chose China (click to view for free). It deals with a group of American soldiers who, after being captured in the Korean War, defected to China.

Unlike possibly every other prisoners of war situation in history, the prisoners were treated so well that they even had an elaborate olympic games within their camps. Once POWs, the soldiers found that their captors were courteous and even friendly, among other things giving them cigarettes and letting them cook American food.

As a result of the astonishing generosity of the Chinese, about 23 or so American soldiers decided to stay in China when their release had been negotiated. Most of them eventually returned to the US, but they did only with positive stories. Many came back opposing the war, even adopting communist doctrine entirely. They reported that they were never abused by their captors; the black soldiers reported that, for the first time, they experienced equality—all of that while prisoners of war.

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// posted by brien on 16 Aug 2009 at 2:53pm. leave or view comments.

If you habitually use Facebook, dear reader, you’re no doubt familiar with the general landscape of the main page.  Towards the upper right in particular are the most heavily sponsored ads; some of these take the forms of polls.  Of course, like everything on Facebook, this is rich fodder for analyzing pop culture: because these ads in particular are designed by professionals to appeal to specific groups, it’s relatively straightforward to deconstruct the ads down to the consumer psychology and subculture/demographic pandering that could motivate such a thing.

One of the most interesting ones I’ve found was promoting the at time of writing not yet released movie District 9.  The advertising for this movie gives every impression that it’s just a lowbrow summer scifi action movie, but their choice of poll questions stopped me in my tracks: “Do non-humans deserve equal rights?”

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// posted by brien on 12 Aug 2009 at 2:23pm. leave or view comments.

I think I more or less understand why people oppose socialized medicine: a faith in capitalism, general American distrust of the government, the notion that it’s lesser quality, etc. There’s a lot of dissonance between the strong current of neoliberalism in the American collective (un)conscious and socialism, so it’s easy to see how some people would be reactionary when confronted with the notion of American public healthcare.

Nonetheless it seems odd to me that people, even strongly individualistic ones, would think preventing death isn’t the most important function of a government. I know they frame it differently, and perhaps I’m too constrained by my own worldview; for one they might see the military as serving the same function, despite evidence to the contrary.

Odd how Americans in particular are so willing to collectively support the people-killing institutions of the government, yet for some reason it’s a bad thing for everyone to share the burden of reducing the suffering and unnecessary death of their fellow countrymen.

// posted by brien on 11 Aug 2009 at 6:32pm. leave or view comments.

“Life sucks,” a good friend said. “Can I call life tech support?”

1-800-WHY-LIFE, I suggested.

Of course, if such a line existed, the staff would likely be inept, the entire experience amounting to unobtrusive elevator music punctuated by a series of different confused voices. Who would’ve thought music so thin and pallid could become so grating? Often it seems like the quality of experience of a support call is inversely proportional to its importance. With few exceptions, in my experience at least, calling a utilities or telephone company will be agonizing.

But how can we be sure 1-800-WHY-LIFE doesn’t exist? The fact that constructing faux custom numbers is even a meme indicates that people would be quick to snap them up, like license plates or domain names. Someone might’ve found on this one and, if the world is truly a good place, may have done something with it. If not an actual helpline, even just an ironic gesture of some sort would be enough to brighten the spirits.

Regardless of content, odds are someone probably has this number. In middle school I discovered that (at least at the time) 1-800-666-1313 points to the internal voicemail system of the company Johnson Controls. Of course for a 12-year-old boy this was impossibly funny. I’ll fess up to spending a bit of time exploring their system, leaving messages in strangers’ inboxes.

The other day I saw the Texas plate OBAMA—even in a state (though not city) this Republican, you’d expect that one to go quickly. JohnSmith.com, disappointingly, points to a bogus, late-90s-looking classifieds website. All it lacked was animated construction signs. Have you ever known a John Smith? They tend to use their middle initials. One was once my manager, and my sister knows one as well. In both cases they reported recurring trouble convincing authority figures of their name’s authenticity. Visualize a rotund, mustachioed police officer with an inferiority complex asking you for your name.

I’m both fortunate and unfortunate that I’m probably the only person in the world with my name (counting spelling), but many are not so (un)fortunate. If the unavailability of your name dot com has driven you to existential despair, life tech support might be the answer.

By the way, that comes out to 1-800-949-5433. I gave it a shot (even though I already have the inadequately developed briensouthward.com). My attempt at fulfillment was met with a prerecorded advertisement. “Looking to [… blip]lk to people JUST like YOU?” the fragmented recording asks me. “Then call 1-800-922-TALK, that’s 1-800-922-8255.”

How American is it that the tech support line for life—the very last resort, after Google and blowing into the cartridge fail—is an automated advertisement offering to help you talk to anonymous others, just like you?

// posted by brien on 9 Aug 2009 at 2:39pm. leave or view comments.

The New York Times recently ran an article on ongoing attempts to authenticate works of art in Vietnam. Apparently, around the time of its civil war, Vietnam was just starting to get attention on the international art market. Because the war created obvious risks for delicate works of art, the Vietnamese art establishment went to great lengths to protect the works.
The simplest way would just be to take the art into hiding, but this also removes it from the public eye and takes it off the market. Since the market there was burgeoning, they needed to find other solutions. One method was to have either the artist, a student, or an expert paint a duplicate to put in place of the original; sometimes multiple copies were made. Many of these were very good, only varying (if at all) in minor details that even the artist could’ve forgotten: the number of birds in a tree, etc.
The chaos brought by the war led to documentation of the works and their authenticity being lost. Now, decades after the war, efforts are still underway to sort out originals from copies. Without the documentation, it’s nearly impossible to determine which painting is the original, if the original even still exists.
The situation in Vietnam begs comparison and analogy; questions it raises touch on a lot of recurringly problematic issues of authenticity, authorship, duplication, and the relationship between art, law, and business.
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// posted by brien on 6 Aug 2009 at 1:51pm. leave or view comments.

Today is the 3rd day in August, or as it’s generally rendered in the US, 8-3-2009.  In American usage, the month precedes the day.  The motivation for that is obvious to any American: the standard phrasing of a date is month-day-year, so for example “August 3rd, 2009″ (although others occur from time to time).  In most of the rest of the world (although not all!), most notably in Europe, the ordering day-month-year prevails.  Again, in many cases, that corresponds to the phrasing of dates.

Of course there are other reasons why a particular standard should be favored other than correspondence to speech; for example, keeping standards consistent across borders.  But barring circumstances such as that, it seems natural that the numerical and verbal representations of a date would align structurally.  I’ve been asked before by an English person why we write the date ‘backwards’–and the reason I gave is that we order it that way in speech, something he didn’t fully expect to vary by side of the Atlantic.

Even in the US this order is deviated from on occasion, however.  There’s one glaring exception in particular: The 4th of July.  Of course in that case that ordering is a formal name, and to my ears borders on poetic by American usage standards.  What’s intriguing about this particular example is that the standard ordering is also used to refer to it: July 4th.  To me that seems more journalistic, or at least likelier to occur in the media than in popular usage.  That may or may not be true, but one thing I can say confidently is that the day before it is not the 3rd of July, at least not here.

That the name The 4th of July can be rebuilt as July 4th is intriguing, and is largely a result of the remaining internal syntactic structure in the phrase.  Over time, if the name The 4th of July undergoes substantial phonetic erosion into–as one wild guess–forjuly, the structure has been completely deleted, collapsing the entire phrase into a single word.  This might seem odd, but happens all the time in language.  The word goodbye is an eroded form of the phrase God be with ye, and since then has eroded further into just bye.

Sorta cool I think!

// posted by brien on 3 Aug 2009 at 11:51am. leave or view comments.

THIS ENTRY CONTAINS SPOILERS (below the cut)

Like most Americans I spent a big part of my childhood in front of a TV. As common an experience as this is, it’s no surprise that people worry about the content children’s brains are absorbing. I’m worried about this for other reasons: the majority of what’s on TV is basal and trite. I don’t think this is the fault of the public so much as the people producing this content. Art and industry rarely mix well: if you’re trying to increase ratings or turn a profit, artistic freedom is eroded, which ultimately cripples the work.

The average person is smarter than TV execs give them credit for; properly educated and raised on quality media, our society might learn to engage with art more directly, rather than being opiated by cliche pandering. It’s reassuring, then, to discover that at least some of the TV I enjoyed as a child is both creative and well-executed. Being born in the late 80s, the majority of these shows are from the early 90s. The two that I’ve found most striking so far are Batman: The Animated Series and the Jim Henson-created show Dinosaurs.

In both cases, I was surprised by the sophistication and artistry of them.  Given that they were aimed at children, it’s surprising they were aired at all.  Batman is at times very dark, making frequent use of heady and conceptual plots, referencing inter alia Hitchcock films and, significantly, early 20th century TV serials; Dinosaurs explores themes more mature than most children’s TV, and develops deep, engaging, and often bittersweet characters.

Both of them are also of very high production value: Batman is some of the last American animation done entirely by hand, and quite possibly some of the best ever made. Dinosaurs was a live-action show, filmed using a cast of animatronic suits, each controlled by several different actors/puppeteers. The puppeteering is fluid and lifelike; the parts of their bodies move in unison like a real creature, and their body language is realistic and communicative.

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// posted by brien on 23 Jul 2009 at 3:56pm. leave or view comments.

It’s sorta lame when blogs open with an About This Blog-type post, but I figure it’s useful to give some info not worth a sidebar, to link back to.

For starters, I’m Brien Southward, a student at the University of Texas. You can get in contact with me at [my first name] DOT [my last name] AT gmail DOT com. I welcome any feedback, criticism, suggestions, interesting links, mutual linking offers, etc you might have.

In brief, most of the content of this blog will deal with pop culture, art, social/cultural issues, and language.

Lastly, if you’re curious: the title of this blog is a pun on the unrest at the debut of Stravinsky’s (awesome) ballet The Rite of Spring. The audience was so offended by the music that they actually rioted, requiring police intervention.

// posted by brien on 23 Jul 2009 at 2:58pm. leave or view comments.