#7. Pulp, The Birds In Your Garden
This week, despite the fact that I am completely ass-broke, I bought Further Complications, the new Jarvis Cocker album. I haven’t put it on yet, though; I’m waiting for the right moment.
As a teenager I thought Pulp were The Greatest Band To Have Ever Lived, from the very first time I heard “Common People” on the radio. I was a complete Anglophile at the time, and also very horny and awkward and therefore able to relate to the dozen anthems–and they are anthems, every last one of them–on Different Class. Then This Is Hardcore came out in 1998, and I liked that album just as much, maybe more, even if the songs were a little harder to warm up to. (“A Little Soul” is one of their best, though, as are “Glory Days” and the very underrated album track “Sylvia.”)
In December of 2001, when I made this list, We Love Life wasn’t even out in the US yet. I got it on import from Canada. The record was… okay. The poppier numbers, like “Bob Lind” and “The Night Minnie Temperley Died”, stood out immediately, though there also seemed to be a lot of sluggish wankery in “I Love Life” and “Weeds” and “Sunrise”. (more…)
Filed under: hookers, people from rhode island | Tags: prostitution, rhode island
The history of prostitution in Rhode Island is highlighted in today’s Providence Journal, starting with the 1976 lawsuit by COYOTE against the state. Back then, prostitution was a felony with fines of up to five years in prison.
The whole thing is interesting, because it includes lots of wheeling and dealing, the Catholic Church, and the 1980 decision to reduce a conviction from a felony to a misdemeanor. I also liked how, in 1998, the State Supreme Court ruled that the anti-prostitution law was “primarily to bar prostitutes from hawking their wares in public” and couldn’t be applied to what people did in private.
(I’m actually writing a similar article for a different publication, which I actually have to hand in tomorrow.)
Filed under: gay, heterosexuals, hookers, music, not hot, people from rhode island, personal
Stuff that happened this week that I didn’t get to post about because I spent all day yesterday drinking Miller High Life and watching grown people play kickball.
Dr George Tiller, who performed abortions in Kansas, was murdered this morning on his way in to church, presumably by a pro-life loon. His clinic had been vandalized earlier this month and reportedly the FBI was asked to investigate.
I pulled Reclusive Leftist off my Google Reader; there’s only so much time in the day and I don’t know want to spent any more time than absolutely necessary being completely annoyed. (I know this isn’t news because I’m sure no one cares, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.)
Bat For Lashes has a new video.
So do the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
And somebody thought it would be a good idea to include Brooke Hogan on a remix of Birthday Sex.
Voting’s open in Peta2′s Sexiest Vegetarian Alive contest. I went with the same two as last year, Erykah Badu (because she is eternally awesome) and Sage Francis (because he is from Providence, and also hunky.)
Melissa Gira Grant reported for Slate on why the Craigslist decision hurts more or less everybody.
Rhode Island has its first gay internet radio station. I expected to hate it and, um, I’ll be nice and say that it’s not as bad as it could be. But jeez, the first thing I heard was a house remix of I Hate This Part.
Echidne of the Snakes, one of my favorite feminist blogs, is ceasing to be. So, for that matter, is All Aussie Beef, which mainly had rugby-dude porn.
Finally, today I unsubscribed from the frankly very annoying change.org weekly newsletter. Every Sunday morning I was getting a list of things to be worked up about, and while theoretically I think it’s great that people are getting informed about government abuses and animal rights and civil liberties, the presentation usually comes across more like “Panic about this! Wait, stop, now panic about this! And then this other thing, panic about that, too!”
The final straw was today’s e-mail blast, which listed “falsely excusing prostitution” in the same string of articles that also included battery-caged hens and government lies about Guantanamo. Here’s what they had to say:
Often times the excuse that “Prostitution is the oldest profession in the book” is thrown out there as a means of avoiding the harms caused by the practice. As Human Trafficking blogger Amanda Kloer writes, this excuse is B.S. Prostitution is old. So is hunger. So is poverty and murder and tyranny and cancer and child abuse. Just because something is old, rooted in society, and difficult to fight, doesn’t mean that it should be ignored. Because, as Kloer writes, the pervasiveness of prostitution in history does not make the 14-year-old on the streets of Las Vegas any less exploited.
I have no use for e-mail blasts like that.
[Sage photo by Anthony St James; ganked from the Myspace.]
Filed under: music | Tags: bonnie tyler, literal videos, total eclipse of the heart
Oh, 1984…
According to the description this has already been featured by Entertainment Weekly and the Wall Street Journal, so sorry if I’m coming off as an anti-coolhunter. But this just totally cracked me up, so I don’t care.
[via Twitter]
