Genre? Social Action? Boy Bands? Yes.

Okay, so my usual taste in music is pretty odd. I like weird, artsy crap or musical contradictions like "dance-punk." It wasn't always like that, however... I used to like...not-so-good music. Admit it. When we were kids we ALL listened to the Spice Girls, we would fight with our friends about which was better: N'Sync or the Backstreet Boys, and you loved Britney Spears... the virginal "I'm oh so innocent" one... before she got "not that innocent." Back when she was indeed a girl and in no way a woman.
Well, while I was looking up crappy boy bands on YouTube to try and get my fix of nostalgia I thought of something: GENRE! The boy band is such a concrete genre... pliable, yet consistent. There was always the pretty blonde boy (the most likely to get a solo career later on), the one that turns out to be gay a few years down the road (not always, but more frequently than you think), the one that seemed just a bit too old and awkward to be there (but secetly this one was the best singer). Regardless, there were dozens of personality classifications, but they were there.
This all started after the death of disco. The genre had been highly producer-driven, but now people were blowing up Gloria Gaynor records and producers needed a new way to satisfy their inner control freak. Then one day an ingenious producer realized that you could sell records with a few pretty faces and dance moves... New Kids on the Block was born. After only a brief hiatus since the death of disco, the producer had one again seized control of the music charts and throughout the nineties, groups reigned supreme. You didn't have to be able to play an instrument, you just had to dance and sing in unison... easy.
Here's what's so interesting about this... even though the members of boy bands were cardboard cutouts, people were tricked into believing they had personalities. "The Bad Boy," "The Innocent One," "The Older Brother-Type." They were so generic but thousands of preeteen girls and... err... sexually-confused boys were smitten.

I should end this. It is getting rather long, but I'm going to open this for debate. Thoughts?

2gether was a pretty good spoof of the boy band and sort of continues what i've discussed here

A little taste of social action..

Seeing as this course is based on the concept of social action, and getting our classwork into the public sphere, I wanted to share a new opportunity with everyone. 

A few friends and I recently started an online news journal, which is basically a fusion of a newspaper and a literary journal. It's called The Common Voice, and it's a wonderful forum for students to submit their work--be it classwork, creative writing pieces, prose, and any type of artwork.

 Maybe you've seen advertising for this new creative outlet around campus, or on Facebook, and I encourage you to take a look at the website, which was launched this morning at midnight. Let me know what you think (we'd love some feedback), or post it here under this discussion topic. Also, if you'd like more info, seriously ask me, I'd be happy to talk to you about it, and let you know how you can get involved. 

Thanks guys! Enjoy!

www.thecommonvoice.net

ps. We have stickers. If you want one, just ask. I have a whole bunch.

Critics of Pope retaliate with genre!

The following genre illustrates a VERY unique and interesting advocacy campaign. How do you feel about it (not, the issue, the campaign)? Do you think it will be effective?



Kat

Buttons

Hey guys!
Just a reminder, I have a button making business.
We have a facebook group that you guys should all join and recommend us to your friends!
Cheap prices, nice looking buttons, it's a win/win for everyone!
Our e-mail address is pinupgirls1404@gmail.com and it's pretty spiffy =)

Coke

Just wondering if we could get a thread on here about the Coke ads. Who liked the pink one? Who liked the car one? Why? Also, another old commonly used ad for Coke is/was the polar bear, as seen above. Who likes that one better?  

FYWP Student Showcase, May 5th

Comments, concerns, and ideas...post under this thread! I'm sooo excited!

Not To Get Too Far Ahead Of Ourselves...

....I found an interesting interview that discusses non-fiction comics (which I thought could relate to our memoirs project coming up). Click here to check it out!

Conferences!

Thursday:
Rachel at Emerson Cafe 12

Friday:
on the 12th floor of Ansin. Turn left and follow my voice to the table overlooking the Common

10:10 Katie
10:20 Jessica
10:30 Brandon
10:40 Gina
10:50 Ben
11: Ben

Kat's Break

11:30 Cara
11:40 Rob
11:50: Omri
12:00 Jake
12:10 Garrett
12:20 Joel
12:30 Micalei
12:40 Jeff
12:50 Matt
1:00 Ethan

1:50 Sarah

A Genre I Found: The Guestbook.

I was at the apartment my girlfriend, er..."lady friend" got and came across a genre I hadn't thought of. The guestbook. Conventions include having to be handwritten (it's a notebook left on a table, nobody is going to type something into it), and apparently all the information in it has to be positive (someone left a note indicating that a page had been ripped out because someone said harsh things about the owners).

Looking through the guestbook, I saw many people had indicated the same restaurants and tourist attractions, often directly responding to previous entries (which is funny, because you really only write in a guest book once and never see it again, so why respond to some things?) Another convention is that it obviously has to be collaborative.

I dug it.

Palindrome poem

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2009/02/demetri-martins-palindrome-poem.html

a new genre?

Random Factoid

Bringing us back to King Corn (even though I didn't see the second half) I just wanted to announce something I discovered this morning: Snapple has officially removed the (disturbingly unhealthy) high fructose corn syrup from their formula and replaced it with sugar. Good times.

DFW again!!

So it's ironic that Rob posted just before me because I just found this article today. Also, random fact, I recently learned that David Foster Wallace, Lobster advocate himself, was an Emerson professor for a short period of time. Shortly before this time he was living in a half-way house in Brighton. An interesting chain of events....

Here's the article about him published in thise week's issue of The New Yorker: 

Life and Letters: The Unfinished Reporting & Essays

More DFW Fun

Since for some reason, David Foster Wallace keeps randomly coming up, I decided to share an announcement I read in the New York Times this morning. According to the Times, DFW's last book, The Pale King, is going to be published by Little, Brown & Co. While, according to the article, the book is only 1/3 finished, it's still "several hundred thousand words long." Insane.

Rules Of Kosher - in case you guys are as interested as I am!

This is cool!
At least, I think it is.
I never even though many of these rules would exist.

Rules of Kosher - Straight from my Hebrew-English Tanakh (The Torah with the Hebrew alongside the English translation)


“These are the creatures that you may eat from among all the land animals: any animal that has true hoofs, with clefts through the hoofs and chews the cud—such you may eat. The following, however, of those that either chew the cud or have true hoofs, you shall not eat—the camel—although it chews the cud, it has no true hoofs: it is unclean for you; the daman—although it chews the cud, it has no true hoofs: it is unclean for you; the hare—although it chews the cud, it has no true hoofs: it is unclean for you; and the swine—although it has true hoofs with the hoofs cleft through, it does not chew the cud: it is unclean for you. You shall not eat of their flesh or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you.
Those you may eat of all that live in water: anything in water, whether in the seas or in the streams, that has fins and scales—those you may eat. But anything in the seas or in the streams that has no fins and scales, among all the swarming things of the water and among all the other living creatures that are in the water—they are an abomination for you and an abomination for you they shall remain: you shall not eat of their flesh and you shall abominate their carcasses. Everything in water that has no fins and scales shall be an abomination for you.
The following you shall abominate among the birds—they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, the vulture, and the black vulture; the kite, falcons of every variety; all varieties of raven; the ostrich, the night-hawk, the sea gull; hawks of every variety; the little owl, the cormorant, and the great owl; the white owl, the pelican, and the bustard; the stork; herons of every variety; the hoopoe, and the bat.
All winged swarming things that walk on fours shall be an abomination for you. But these you may eat among all the winged swarming things that walk on all fours: all that have, above their feet, jointed legs to leap with on the group—of these you may eat the following: locusts of every variety; all varieties of bald locust; crickets of every variety; and all varieties of grasshopper. But all other winged swarming things that have four legs shall be an abomination for you (Leviticus 11.1-11.23)[…]
“The following shall be unclean for you from among the things that swarm on the earth: the mole, the mouse, and great lizards of every variety; the gecko, the land crocodile, the lizard, the sand lizard, and the chameleon” (Leviticus 11.29-11.31).

Vegetables in Outer Space!

So I was surfing and read this thing about potatoes being successfully grown in space so I looked it up and came across this article. It's kind of mind blowing and it deals with food! =D

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/1987-07-01/Outer-Space-Vegetables.aspx

LTM movies

Three things 

1. I found this picture thanks to my new stumbleupon bar and I wanted to share it 
2. I also found a genre that we should explore in our class and that is "the lifetime movie genre." They're so good. My roommates and I always watch them on Sundays as a wind-down weekend tradition. As of now we are watching Odd Girl Out, a tale of a middle school girl who tries time and time again to fit in and each time her bitchy friends sabotage her. The cheesy lines, the extreme situations and D-list actors makes this daytime movie an awesome lifetime movie. After watching this and other lifetime movies I now believe I could write, produce and direct one for a social action project.

If anyone wants to see how predictable and outrageous these movies are go to this site to see all the lifetime movies http://www/lmn.tv/movies/browser.php

3. The Blackstreet-No Diggity video is kinda scary because it has clips of random puppets similar to the ones in Goosebumps.