Zoë Stagg

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Book #35, currently clicking. When you’ve read everything BY someone, you have to branch out to read things inspired by them. Chuck Klosterman and Philosophy. If this was a class, I’d be the first one in line. He’s listed in the book description as an “astute analyst of popular culture,” a subject of conversation around here lately. As a currency of knowledge, how much is pop culture worth? It’s not a skill, it’s not vocation (unless you’re St. Chuck) — it’s seemingly nothing more than an ability to participate in Jeopardy-on-mute from the elliptical. I don’t even mean the consumption of popular culture, I mean the odd trapping of it as a triviality. A token of a civilization. What good is it to be able to recite LeVar Burton’s resume, chapter and verse, name the author of Roots, and describe the outfit he wore on TNG if you’ve never SEEN nor READ any of the above? Or being able to name the movie Hitch from a vague plot point offered, without so much as ever catching part of it on cable? You’re not a pop-culture analyst, you’re just a lazy voyeur. Do you then possess any fluency? Or are you just a big Cocoa Puff Faker? (Book #34 was Geek Girls Unite, a not unpleasant read however impossible to tell who it was written for. If you’re a geek girl already, it’s a primer you don’t need — and if you’re not a geek girl, why would you be interested? I was hoping for a discussion of a growing display of female intelligence and willingness to adopt and share interest for those pursuits most commonly and historically masculine — and how that was a new sense of feminism through truth-to-self, but… nope. Just a primer.)

Book #35, currently clicking. When you’ve read everything BY someone, you have to branch out to read things inspired by them. Chuck Klosterman and Philosophy. If this was a class, I’d be the first one in line.

He’s listed in the book description as an “astute analyst of popular culture,” a subject of conversation around here lately. As a currency of knowledge, how much is pop culture worth? It’s not a skill, it’s not vocation (unless you’re St. Chuck) — it’s seemingly nothing more than an ability to participate in Jeopardy-on-mute from the elliptical.

I don’t even mean the consumption of popular culture, I mean the odd trapping of it as a triviality. A token of a civilization. What good is it to be able to recite LeVar Burton’s resume, chapter and verse, name the author of Roots, and describe the outfit he wore on TNG if you’ve never SEEN nor READ any of the above? Or being able to name the movie Hitch from a vague plot point offered, without so much as ever catching part of it on cable?

You’re not a pop-culture analyst, you’re just a lazy voyeur. Do you then possess any fluency? Or are you just a big Cocoa Puff Faker?

(Book #34 was Geek Girls Unite, a not unpleasant read however impossible to tell who it was written for. If you’re a geek girl already, it’s a primer you don’t need — and if you’re not a geek girl, why would you be interested? I was hoping for a discussion of a growing display of female intelligence and willingness to adopt and share interest for those pursuits most commonly and historically masculine — and how that was a new sense of feminism through truth-to-self, but… nope. Just a primer.)

I’m Not Here…

Book #16 was a one-sitting affair. I read Chuck Klosterman’s new novel, start to finish, sitting on my rock, halfway through a 20-mile bike ride. An entire day, solo.

Fitting, as The Visible Man, wrestles with who we are when we’re alone, and what constitutes “being there.” It’s particularly hooking because of his entire body of work, this is the least I’ve ever felt his presence. He gets criticized for his voice being too recognizable, too present when it’s thought it shouldn’t be — but in this book, Klosterman vanishes.

There’s one part, one sentence where you see him. A brief glimmer from behind his cloak — the bottom of page 179. His voice, is there.

It’s a meditation on solitude, how when we’re alone we’re in a holding pattern for the next moment when we’re not — all while it’s the only time we’re our authentic selves. Very few people, he conjectures, are content when they’re alone. TV. The internet. Shameful secret pursuits, all fill that void.

“In other words, the internet was doing two things for Bruce — it allowed him to separate from the exterior life he hated, but also allowed him to stay engaged with an interior life he wanted.”

There may be more content loners than he posits, though. I have a black belt in alone. That and vanishing, the book’s second concept. Leaving your body present, and your will elsewhere. Spend any amount of time where you’re forced to perform, and it will happen. Your body shows up onstage, or for the promotion board. And the real Visible You watches it, bemused from the corner. It’s useful and odd.

But if the only time you can be seen, be present, is when you’re alone, it stands to reason. People can’t see what they don’t know is there.

(I don’t know if I liked it. It made me think. It made me turn the pages. It left me unsettled. Of all of my recent attempts at reading fiction, this was the best. It may be too prickly to revisit, though. But I like that I’ve seen this part of his mind; that he put on his invisibility suit and told this bizarre story. I feel like I’ve seen him, just a little bit more.)

Chuck Klosterman, of the Index Klostermans, said the one thing everyone born between 1968 and 1980 has in common is, “profound nostalgia for the extremely recent past.” He said this while discussing the concept of guilty pleasures. I suppose it could be argued that all of this seemingly navel-obsessed, culture-is-as-it-refers-to-my-experience view of what’s valuable should make us guilty. It should, at the very least, strike us as shallow and narcissistic, all this immediate wist. Minute Nostalgia: When Easy Mac takes too long already. One of the prime examples of this is the popularity of the series I Love the 80s. People lost their minds for it — so much that there was a second round of deeper cuts, and then — I Love the 90s. Which included, of course, I Love 1999. Even the commentators noted that “remembering” things that happened less than five years ago was weird. Chuck says we shouldn’t feel guilty about pleasures, and I say we shouldn’t feel guilty about nostalgia. Those of us born in the time frame in question are allowed this velocity of remembery precisely because our lives and everything we surround ourselves with, has changed at the same speed. Think about it: The time between a TV and a PC — if 1955, when 60 million people tuned into a broadcast of Peter Pan, is the “we have TVs” moment, then say 1985, the year by which Apple had sold 2.1 million home computers is the next landmark of innovation — that’s 30 years. From 1985 to the next big technological jump, commonplace cell phones, is only ten years. Add another 5-7 and suddenly we all have TVslashComputers that we can hold in our hands. Of course we consider the recent past at a seemingly greater distance. Objects in Mirror, and all that. So velocity is one factor, security is another. This Generation Nostalgia, was at the youngest, 21 when 9/11 happened. Our entire adulthoods has been shaped by this event. And yes, other generations had galvanizing tragedies too — our revolution just happened to be televised to the tiniest degree of detail, crafted by the eyeball seeking News Corporations, and fed to us 24 hours a day. And that’s but one unsettling reality of the only world we’ve known. The planet is crumbling, everyone wants to nuke us, gunmen are wild and lone, and in seven seconds, our money will be worthless. This photo above is the board game Mall Madness. I saw this picture this morning while collecting fodder for the radio and yes, had a little nostalgia swoon. For precisely the reasons above. It’s 20 years old, but looks like it could be 200. And what could be safer than the cocoon of a mall, the insulated hum of prosperity and homogeny. We hold on to anything familiar and safe in this world where very little is. You want in deeper? Watch the commercial for it. Bonus points for spotting the crux of our current economic sinkhole and/or more than six dozen scrunchies. You want more hollerbacks like this? I’m Remembering. Go. Look. Remember. Nostalgia isn’t indulgent any more than food is. Yes, they both give you pleasure, but they’re both actually necessary for survival. And that, ain’t nothing to feel guilty about.

Chuck Klosterman, of the Index Klostermans, said the one thing everyone born between 1968 and 1980 has in common is, “profound nostalgia for the extremely recent past.”

He said this while discussing the concept of guilty pleasures.

I suppose it could be argued that all of this seemingly navel-obsessed, culture-is-as-it-refers-to-my-experience view of what’s valuable should make us guilty. It should, at the very least, strike us as shallow and narcissistic, all this immediate wist.

Minute Nostalgia: When Easy Mac takes too long already.

One of the prime examples of this is the popularity of the series I Love the 80s. People lost their minds for it — so much that there was a second round of deeper cuts, and then — I Love the 90s. Which included, of course, I Love 1999. Even the commentators noted that “remembering” things that happened less than five years ago was weird.

Chuck says we shouldn’t feel guilty about pleasures, and I say we shouldn’t feel guilty about nostalgia.

Those of us born in the time frame in question are allowed this velocity of remembery precisely because our lives and everything we surround ourselves with, has changed at the same speed.

Think about it: The time between a TV and a PC — if 1955, when 60 million people tuned into a broadcast of Peter Pan, is the “we have TVs” moment, then say 1985, the year by which Apple had sold 2.1 million home computers is the next landmark of innovation — that’s 30 years. From 1985 to the next big technological jump, commonplace cell phones, is only ten years. Add another 5-7 and suddenly we all have TVslashComputers that we can hold in our hands.

Of course we consider the recent past at a seemingly greater distance. Objects in Mirror, and all that.

So velocity is one factor, security is another. This Generation Nostalgia, was at the youngest, 21 when 9/11 happened. Our entire adulthoods has been shaped by this event. And yes, other generations had galvanizing tragedies too — our revolution just happened to be televised to the tiniest degree of detail, crafted by the eyeball seeking News Corporations, and fed to us 24 hours a day. And that’s but one unsettling reality of the only world we’ve known. The planet is crumbling, everyone wants to nuke us, gunmen are wild and lone, and in seven seconds, our money will be worthless.

This photo above is the board game Mall Madness.

I saw this picture this morning while collecting fodder for the radio and yes, had a little nostalgia swoon. For precisely the reasons above. It’s 20 years old, but looks like it could be 200. And what could be safer than the cocoon of a mall, the insulated hum of prosperity and homogeny.

We hold on to anything familiar and safe in this world where very little is.

You want in deeper? Watch the commercial for it. Bonus points for spotting the crux of our current economic sinkhole and/or more than six dozen scrunchies.

You want more hollerbacks like this? I’m Remembering. Go. Look. Remember.

Nostalgia isn’t indulgent any more than food is. Yes, they both give you pleasure, but they’re both actually necessary for survival.

And that, ain’t nothing to feel guilty about.

“No one will ever be as close to her as I was that night, because no one else can ever be with her when she’s alone.”

Chuck Klosterman. The Visible Man.

The writer for whom I have named an Index and a Litmus Test and who made me cry so hard with his last (first) novel that I have only been able to read it once — has a new one coming out! But not ‘til October. Oh yeah, I totally pre-ordered and will be checking my mail obsessively until then.

In the meantime, he’s been writing over on Grantland and deconstructed Zeppelin’s last stand, second by second.

We always like to think about rock music as a socially liberating concept, but it’s just about impossible to have a free, public experience with popular sound. It homogenizes expression.

This is a notion I would like to debate for the sake of unpacking it. Like much of what he says, it’s simple, declarative, and infinitely controversial. The Gemini way. Say something to see how it feels to say it. To see if you can get away with it. And to see what happens when you do.

He is my any-culture manifesto. 

My Chuck tag is deep. Accurately Rated and Advanced, both. I don’t remember the first thing of his I read, nor how I came to. But I know that I hear entire phrases of his, complete with declarative conversational cadence and soft Ss in my brain constantly, “It smells like chlorine and Hot Topic.” I know who among you is my nemesis and who is my archenemy. And I know that he and I share our views on Coldplay, 100%. And even though I’ve consumed every word, I dig these eCollections, all sorted by proclivity. (Though! In book format you are forceably exposed to the sports stuff, and you are none the worse for it.) And he was on NPR the other day, talking about music PR and creating a fake band press release. “I’ve probably helped the person to learn that you should not make consumer decisions based on some random media message that someone just fabricated.” You can listen/read the whole shebang here from NPR. And it occurs to me finally that…I could never go to a signing/reading/Q&A of his. Because if I haven’t underrated him completely even with my absolute adoration, I would be crushed. Though, as his birthday is the day before mine, it is hereby declared a joint holiday where I will play a rousing game of Journey/Styx/Rush/REO Speedwagon in his honor.

My Chuck tag is deep. Accurately Rated and Advanced, both.

I don’t remember the first thing of his I read, nor how I came to. But I know that I hear entire phrases of his, complete with declarative conversational cadence and soft Ss in my brain constantly, “It smells like chlorine and Hot Topic.” I know who among you is my nemesis and who is my archenemy. And I know that he and I share our views on Coldplay, 100%.

And even though I’ve consumed every word, I dig these eCollections, all sorted by proclivity. (Though! In book format you are forceably exposed to the sports stuff, and you are none the worse for it.)

And he was on NPR the other day, talking about music PR and creating a fake band press release.

“I’ve probably helped the person to learn that you should not make consumer decisions based on some random media message that someone just fabricated.”

You can listen/read the whole shebang here from NPR.

And it occurs to me finally that…I could never go to a signing/reading/Q&A of his. Because if I haven’t underrated him completely even with my absolute adoration, I would be crushed.

Though, as his birthday is the day before mine, it is hereby declared a joint holiday where I will play a rousing game of Journey/Styx/Rush/REO Speedwagon in his honor.

And suddenly, it’s a velvet Elvis painting of the contemporary. A screencap of celebrity, the rise and fall, the creation and maintenance, and the cost of having played the game. Britney Spears is an autobiographical Frankenstein of self-spawned fame. It was fed to, and ultimately perpetuated by the feverish masses; shooting star turned Super Nova; consumed and digested from first video to spin-off fragrance, with a few snakes in between. In the scope of celebrity, there is no more fascinating case study than this. And this Velvet Elvis is the very image of that complexity. Wresting herself from obscurity based purely on the power of her ambition and moxie and embraced — probably more for her dynamic and dichotomous persona than her actual talent. She made us feel good and naughty. Sweets that we’ll pay for later. She knew it as fiercely as she denied its looming. As Chuck Klosterman says, “either Britney Spears is the least self-aware person I’ve ever met, or she’s way savvier than I’ll ever be.” Yes. Both. And the War of the Roses is still a war. When you give the public that much power over you, they can take it back. Equally. Forcefully. And the treadmill of giving us what once turned our heads will forever smack of a sad and scorned lover. But love her, we did. Did. Though lucky among us are those able to say, “That was more than a little exciting—and I’ve seen Britney Spears LIVE.”

And suddenly, it’s a velvet Elvis painting of the contemporary. A screencap of celebrity, the rise and fall, the creation and maintenance, and the cost of having played the game.

Britney Spears is an autobiographical Frankenstein of self-spawned fame. It was fed to, and ultimately perpetuated by the feverish masses; shooting star turned Super Nova; consumed and digested from first video to spin-off fragrance, with a few snakes in between.

In the scope of celebrity, there is no more fascinating case study than this. And this Velvet Elvis is the very image of that complexity. Wresting herself from obscurity based purely on the power of her ambition and moxie and embraced — probably more for her dynamic and dichotomous persona than her actual talent.

She made us feel good and naughty. Sweets that we’ll pay for later. She knew it as fiercely as she denied its looming. As Chuck Klosterman says, “either Britney Spears is the least self-aware person I’ve ever met, or she’s way savvier than I’ll ever be.”

Yes. Both. And the War of the Roses is still a war.

When you give the public that much power over you, they can take it back. Equally. Forcefully. And the treadmill of giving us what once turned our heads will forever smack of a sad and scorned lover. But love her, we did.

Did.

Though lucky among us are those able to say, “That was more than a little exciting—and I’ve seen Britney Spears LIVE.”

(via chelsamander)

B&W / Read All Over…

Squirreled away at training for most of 2010, I have a hole in my experience of popular culture—kind of like the year we lived in England left a 1987-sized gap that seems mostly My-Two-Dads in nature.

I missed out on a lot. I did not see the A-Team reboot in theaters. I didn’t see the LOST finale with the rest of the world. And I didn’t know that one of my favorite writers had a new book out.



Despite my wild digging of him, David Rakoff has never made my Klosterman Index—and I just figured out why. There are writers I love, who I don’t read. Not with my eyes, anyway. He is one of the writers who I will only consume if they’re reading their words to me themselves.

It’s not read-cheating by audiobook. (Nicholas Sparks, however, would be.) No, in this group, it’s as if their creations demand their own cadence in order to be consumed, the stress intended added quite deliberately and accurately by their own performance. 

Chuck Klosterman is usually one of these, though not entirely as strictly. Sarah Vowell is another. David Sedaris for sure. And David Rakoff is the King of the List. I own everything he’s written. And not a single page of it. So without visual reference,  he slipped my mind during the last ranking of the Index.

I will withhold my own review until I’m done listening, but I’m four months behind. When it dropped, the New York Times reviewer tucked this notion in the middle of his piece on it, “You wonder how many of these selections would be better said than read.”

Well, duh. Of course you do. “Reading Rakoff”: UR DOIN IT WRONG.