[skit-soid]

Here are five of my favorite albums from five of my favorite artists. These aren’t necessarily my absolute favorite bands or albums, just ones that I love and have found myself listening to a lot over the past few months.

In Rainbows by Radiohead. This may be my favorite album of all time, it’s definitely my favorite album by Radiohead. It’s just so beautiful and I love how every song feels like it’s a puzzle piece that fits perfectly into the overall picture that is the album’s theme. What is the album’s theme? Thom Yorke says the album’s lyrics are based on “that anonymous fear thing, sitting in traffic, thinking, ‘I’m sure I’m supposed to be doing something else’ … it’s similar to OK Computer in a way. It’s much more terrifying.” He also describes most of the tracks as his version of “seduction songs.” Too true Thom, I don’t know of too many songs that are sexier to me than House of Cards, which starts with the line: “I don’t wanna be your friend, I just wanna be your lover.” Ahh I love it.

Neon Bible by Arcade Fire. Again, one of my favorite albums of all time. I just love how dark and gothic it feels. I also love its themes of religion and American culture. Plus they recorded the entire album in an old church that they bought; yeah, yeah, I know, that’s super indie/hipster/whatever, but come on, you have to admit that it gives the album some awesome credibility, I mean its name is Neon Bible. One of my favorite tracks on the album is the very last, My Body is a Cage; about two minutes into the song the organ just explodes and it gives me chills every time.

Wincing the Night Away by The Shins. This is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated/underlistened to albums of the past decade. It just feels other-worldly, like you are actually transported to one of those bizarre planets on the album cover. Just listen to the first track on the album, Sleeping Lessons, if you want to know what I mean.

And glow.
Glow.
Melt and flow.
Eviscerate your fragile frame.
And spill it out on the ragged floor.
A thousand different versions of yourself.

My Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West. Okay, I normally am not the biggest fan of rap/hip hop/whatever this is, but I just cant get enough of this album. Kanye isn’t a traditional rapper, he grew up in an upper-class Chicago suburb to well-educated professional parents (his mother was the chair of the state university’s English Department). This being said, Kanye’s raps are (dare I say) intelligent. I’ve talked about him briefly in my Why skit-soid? post. What he does so well is give such a bold and honest critique of society. He doesn’t skirt around any issues, in fact he faces them head on, and by doing so he wins. A few examples. A nude picture of him leaked on the internet, what does he do? Admit that he sent it to a girl and that it was a mistake.

She find pictures in my email
I sent this bitch a picture of my dick
I don’t know what it is with females
But I’m not too good at that shit.

Kanye wins! He owns up to social snafus in his songs and by doing this he gets the last word in. Another example is how South Park dedicated an entire episode to making fun of Kanye’s ego by having him not get a joke about fish sticks, but he doesn’t want to admit that he doesn’t get it because he thinks he’s a genius. The following lyrics bring it up, but they are also really smart and have a lot to say about his “genius” and his role in the “rap game.”

Is hip hop just a euphemism for a new religion
The soul music for the slaves that the youth is missing
But this is more than just my road to redemption
Malcolm West had the whole nation standing at attention

As long as I’m in Polo’s smilin’ they think they got me
But they would try to crack me if they ever see a black me
I thought I chose a field where they couldn’t sack me
If a nigga ain’t running, shootin a jump shot, running a track meet

But this pimp is, at the top of Mount Olympus
Ready for the World’s game, this is my Olympics
We make ‘em say ho cause the game is so pimpish
Choke a South Park writer with a fishstick

I insisted to get up off a this dick
And these drugs, niggas can’t resist it
Remind me of when they tried to have Ali enlisted
If I ever wasn’t the greatest, nigga, I must have missed it!

Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes. I must have listened to this album everyday while I lived in Scotland over the summer. It was a time of “growing up” for me, thinking about life, family, getting older, balding, death, etc. The album is about all of these things (except maybe balding) and so it spoke to me and I clung to its sentimental folksiness. Here are some of the lyrics from the first track, Montezuma, that typify the album’s ability to express real thoughts and feelings in a really real and simple way. Ahh its so good.

So now I am older than my mother and father
when they had their daughter
now what does that say about me

Oh how could I dream of such a selfless and true love
could I wash my hands of
just looking out for me?

Oh man what I used to be
Oh man oh my oh me
Oh man what I used to be
Oh man oh my oh me

In dearth or in excess
both the slave and the empress
will return to the dirt, I guess, naked as when they came

i wonder if I’ll see any faces above me
or just cracks in the ceiling
nobody else to blame?

Oh man what I used to be
Oh man oh my oh me
Oh man that I used to be
Oh man oh my oh me

Tonight in film class we watched Some Came Running (1959) directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin (neither of which sing) (wait they can act?) (yes. well, Frank can; Dean, sort of). I absolutely loved the movie and highly recommend it. It is on the AFI’s top 100 movies of all time list if you need further assurance. Plus it will make you cry.

Note: "NOT SUTABLE FOR CHILDREN" In reality it would probably be rated PG in today's standards.

I wont go into a whole spiel about the movie. I will just say the characters are done so well that it’s like they are your friends (or at least TV show characters that you love) by the end of the film. PLUS it has two of my favorite kinds of characters, a “rake” and an “ingénue.”

rake /rāk/

A rake, short for rakehell, is a historic term applied to a man who is habituated to immoral conduct, frequently a heartless womaniser. Often a rake was a man who wasted his (usually inherited) fortune on gambling, wine, women and song, incurring lavish debts in the process.

The actual etymology of the word is from the Old Norse reikall, meaning “vagrant” or “wanderer.”

(Side note: Lord Byron is my favorite rake; he was so good at it that they even coined the term “Byronic Hero” after him—although a Byronic Hero differs slightly from the traditional definition of a rake; the hero is more about being moody and mysterious; like Darcy or Heathcliff.) Anyhow, Frank Sinatra’s character Dave Hirsh is this moody WWII veteran that also happens to be a writer (writers make the best rakes and Byronic Heroes by the way).

Drink rake drink!

He has been a drifting vagrant since he was just a teenager and is now overwhelmingly jaded. He eventually meets a cute little creative writing teacher named Mrs. French, the ingénue.

in·gé·nue /ˈanjəˌno͞o/

The ingénue is a stock character in literature, film, and a role type in the theatre; generally a girl or a young woman who is endearingly innocent and wholesome.

Mrs. French (First name Gwen) is a modern 1950s ingénue. She is educated and independent, yet innocent when it comes to the ways of love and men.

"I don't know how to love."

Dave comes along, that old rascal rake, and shakes things up. At first Gwen is attracted to him for his deep intellectualism blah blah blah; but eventually she sees him for what he is, a scoundrel. Through these characters we see how the gender roles for both men and women were beginning to change during the 1950s. Women were becoming more independent and men were losing some of the charm of their machismo.

This might seem like a giveaway for the film, but that is only a side plot. The real meat of the story deals with Dave and his off-and-on girl Ginny, played by Shirley MacLaine. She is a floozy type girl that follows Dave to his home-town after he gets drunk in Chicago and invites her. Once they arrive he pays her fifty dollars to leave again, but she ends up sticking around. Her whole character is just so depressing. She is like a child, and ultimately acts as a symbol of what men wanted the women to be in the 1950s: idiots. She has this stuffed animal rabbit purse thing that just kills me. It is all dirty and she drags it around with her everywhere. It’s so depressing—you have to see it. Towards the end of the movie though you love her with all your heart, and then she breaks it. You will have to see it to find out what I mean!

There she is holding that dirty old rabbit purse. This is when he tells her to get back on the bus and leave. Aww.

For my post-modern literature class I am reading The Feminine Mystique, written by Betty Friedan in 1963. She helped to usher in what would be known as the second wave of feminism. The first wave came in the 1920s when women pushed for the right to vote. The 1930s and 40s followed with increasing social rights for women: more attended college, entered the workforce, and pumped that iron of empowerment.

"To be real women we have to act like men!"

So yes women became empowered. They took on the role of MAN for a season. What eventually happened, however, is that the men came back from World War II and wanted their thrones back.

"GIVE ME BACK MY JOB!"

So as time passed on into the 50s the men began to dominate the social sphere once again. The writers and editors of magazines (which were all women read–who has the time or energy to read books when there is a house to clean?) were primarily men who forced their idealized image of a “woman” onto American culture. That perfect woman they had been dreaming about in the trenches: wife, baby-maker, cleaning robot, great cook with a great figure that looked just swell in an apron.

So, the women not only returned to their roles prewar, they retarded even further back into some primitive capacity akin to those in third world countries where men are the providers and women raise and nurture the young. This was not healthy. Technological advances made it so the nurturing of the young and maintenance of the domestic sphere no longer consumed all of a woman’s time or mental faculties. Consequently, they became perturbed.

"I'm not crazy, I'm just frustrated. Okay, maybe I'm a little crazy."

For a long time no one knew what was wrong. The men dismissed their wives as being bored or neurotic and surprisingly–or not so surprisingly–the wives agreed.

If a woman had a problem in the 1950′s and 1960′s, she knew that something must be wrong with her marriage, or with herself. Other women were satisfied with their lives, she thought. What kind of a woman was she if she did not feel this mysterious fulfillment waxing the kitchen floor? She was so ashamed to admit her dissatisfaction that she never knew how many other women shared it. If she tried to tell her husband, he didn’t understand what she was talking about. She did not really understand it herself.

For over fifteen years women in America found it harder to talk about the problem than about sex. Even the psychoanalysts had no name for it. When a woman went to a psychiatrist for help, as many women did, she would say, “I’m so ashamed,” or “I must be hopelessly neurotic.” “I don’t know what’s wrong with women today,” a suburban psychiatrist said uneasily. “I only know something is wrong because most of my patients happen to be women. And their problem isn’t sexual.” Most women with this problem did not go to see a psychoanalyst, however. “There’s nothing wrong really,” they kept telling themselves, “There isn’t any problem.”

What could the problem be? Everything was as it should be. Perfect little house with the dog and two nuclear children revolving lovingly around a strong masculine man-provider and a perfect yet soulless mother-nurturer-cleaner-cooker. Here is the problem with this picture (I put a star next to it in the book):

The material details of life, the daily burden of cooking and cleaning, of taking care of the physical needs of husband and children-these did indeed define a woman’s world a century ago when Americans were pioneers, and the American frontier lay in conquering the land. But the women who went west with the wagon trains also shared the pioneering purpose. Now the American frontiers are of the mind and the spirit. Love and children and home are good, but they are not the whole world, even if most words written for women pretend they are. Why should woman accept this picture of a half-life, instead of a share in the whole of human destiny? Why should woman try to make housework “something more,” instead of moving on the frontiers of their own time, as American woman moved beside their husbands on the old frontiers?

Betty, you are so right. This is only as far as I have gotten in the book (I am through chapter three), but look how much I have already learned! It’s now really late and I don’t have the time or energy to finish this post strong, so I will end with a funny picture. This is a real exceprt from Housekeeping Monthly May 1955.