Going up

The past summer has been full of books for me, and few have sated my thirst after reading the Pevear translation of Anna Karenina. I've searched all of my standbys and classic writers, Fitzgerald, Forster (and others not beginning with "F"), but none have kept my attention after Tolstoy. That is, until I opened up Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist.

It's about elevator inspectors, and it's exhilarating.

Two warring factions in the Department of Elevator Inspectors vie for dominance: The Empiricists, who go by the book and rigorously check every structural and mechanical detail, and the Intuitionist, whose observational methods involve meditation and instinct. Set in a dirty, working class, mob-run American metropolis sometime after the civil rights movement, the book focuses on Lila Mae Watson, the first black female inspector in the country.

The book quickly unwinds form this initial novelty (elevator inspectors? really? how quaint) into a dark and hyper-realistic city with heavy suggestions of Film Noir, while going off on philosophical excursions into Lila Mae's educational life, and delving into her struggle with racism and politics. Blade Runner comes to mind, and much of the descriptors of the book I can think of come from film, rather than literature. But the writing is incredibly artful, not only the prose but the structure as well.

And while the book is going in what seems like one hundred directions at once, it's all headed upwards. The elevator provides not only the organizing content, but melds all of these ideas and themes into one focus. Never before have I considered the theoretical, psychological and even social implications of these metal boxes, but this work of art has given me new eyes onto the dark chutes we so depend on.

The book is a thriller, a philosophical investigation of culture and fear, an excursion of dark humor and is an entirely rich, full invented world in it's own right. From a vivid flashback to Lila Mae's final inspector's examination to the random mentions of Lift magazine, the world unfurls without pretense, each one accomplished with a whip-crack.

From the book:

"'If we have decided that elevator studies - nuts and bolts Empiricism - imagined elevators from a human, and therefore inherently alien point of view, wouldn't the next logical step, after we've adopted the Intuitionist perspective, be the build an elevator the right way? With what we've learned?'

'Construct and elevator from the elevator's point of view?'

'Wouldn't that be the perfect elevator?'"

The Intuitionist is just such a thing: a piece of steel constructed from air, a book separate from book-ness. Frankly, it's an ascension.

STIMULUS PACKAGE

I admit it, I slept on Sha Stimuli pretty hard. Every now and then, dude's name would show up on some obscure mixtape crowded with Wu affiliates and Cormega knockoffs, but I never paid any attention. I should've. In fact, I'm beginning to imagine how satisfying the last couple years of my life would've been if I wasn't totally blacked out on Wu-Tang fringe material. Why? Because from January 08 to January 09, Sha Stimuli dropped 12 mixtapes. That's right-- 12 months, 12 full-length tapes. Don't believe me? And these aren't your typical filler-riddled joints either-- many of them are concept albums, including the stand-out Hotter Than July, a Stevie Wonder-inspired tape that exclusively samples the R+B legend.

Ok ok. Who the fuck has time to listen to 12 mixtapes by a relatively unknown Brooklyn MC? And what would that even prove? That your boy is prolific? That don't mean shit. Agreed. But scope any of Sha's freestyles or verses, and you'll hear creative rhyme schemes, a personalized flow, a knack for punch-lines, and an honest passion for hip hop that DOES mean shit.

Sha has all the makings of a technially great rapper, but what really makes him stand out from other MCs is his intellect, sincerity, and self-awareness. It's this self-awareness which makes him so unique among peers. Very rarely do underground rappers acknowledge a desire for commercial success, and it is equally rare for mainstream artists to speak of themselves as anything but the GOAT. Yet Stimuli positions himself in that grey area between the two, boasting a huge ego while simultaneously acknowledging his struggle to be successful within a context of "underground authenticity." In other words, peep the first verse on "Win the Fight," off Hotter Than July:

Oh you thought that I was playin?/ I do albums in my sleep so while you dream of gettin paper I cause nightmares like you seein' Satan

I showed up at Summer Jam feelin like Son of Sam/ Lookin at the stage in a rage/This is stupid yo/ I'm standin here mad at myself so I hit the studio/ And wrote this/

No hit record, no underground...

I'm up to somethin/ To intertwine fluff and substance/ The hip-hoppers gone feel it and the thugs will love it

Stimuli's penchant for reflexivity is further on display at his blog:

As much as this hurts me inside I have come to grips with the fact that I do not look scary at all to strangers. I can have my earphones in bopping to my music with the meanest of faces on a dark New York street and some elderly Caucasian lady will tap me on the shoulder and ask me for directions without hesitation. I want to say “Don’t I look frightening? Why aren’t you concerned that I’ll rob you Miss?”

The MC's reflections always seem to invert traditional ways of thinking about what is good (from a liberal perspective) for hip hop music and artists. Yet all this looking in the mirror seems to be good for Sha. As long as he knows where he is within the game, then he can keep banging out fresh material that challenges an audience stuck crabbily arguing about Underground vs. Mainstream. Which is why I'm so excited by this:

Further reading:

Sha Stimuli- Look At You

Humpday

Google the term "bromantic comedy." You'll find scores of writers using this phrase. So we're going to go ahead and assume that you agree that the comedic subgenre that Judd Apatow made incredibly popular is in fact a real trend. If you're still skeptical, go see Superbad, Pineapple Express, or, what some folks are calling bromantic comedy's "greatest height": I Love You, Man. Fools must not have seen Humpday.



Humpday is still playing in Seattle, where your boy here is from and where the film was shot (for dirt cheap) by local director Lynn Shelton. And yes, she is a woman. Is it playing in your town? Fuck if I know. But you ought to check, because the film was picked up (read: bought) by distributor Magnolia Pictures and is/was playing at major cities round the US. And if it isn't playing where you're at, stay vigilant for the DVD release.

For me, the main appeal of Humpday is that it achieves, and bests, what these in vogue bromantic comedies do - show, in a funny yet earnest way, the love that exists between bros. Whether or not the Judd Apatow comedies have helped bring about or are merely a reflection of this shift in mainstream masculine culture in the US, I would certainly argue that heterosexual man-love is increasingly acceptable to show and discuss publicly. Humpday takes this a step further, however, by directly addressing the homoerotic aspects of male relationships from the get-go.

The premise is that two old (straight) friends dare each other into making a gay porn together. Such a film would be, in their estimation, a work of art, but more important to the characters is asserting their masculinity by not pussing out of this big gay dare. Each guy tries to talk the other out of the dare, one has to tell his wife, a game of basketball descends into a wrestling match - it's all hilarious and believable. The film form aids this believability - the dialogue is almost entirely improvised, and the film is shot in a very raw cinema verite/documentary style. The characters, the situation, and the locations (houses of Shelton's friends) feel real. Real real.

The film is remarkable for the fact that it takes its premise and never lets it descend into a farce. It remains a believable and hilarious character study the whole way through, as our two protagonists attempt to pull off this porn in a desperate attempt to stave off growing old and stale. It's much more mature and just as funny as any of the Hollywood bromances. It makes you wonder: could you bone a straight friend? Is your aversion innate or culturally constructed? And if you did, would that even be art, or just a ludicrous dare?

The Jetsons, er, the Schweebs

People, it seems, lack a sense of what the future should be. We have no idea what it's supposed to look like. So our minds fall to thinking about the imagery from the cartoons we've seen in our childhood. I wold purport (with much purpose) that in many respects, the future is being created as an imitation of our wildest celluloid imaginations. And the craziest thing is, it's real - it really is what it's pretending to be. Maybe I'm crazy, and perhaps I don't know much about the future (except, of course, everything about it. But we all know exactly what's happening on November 23rd, 2011), but bear with me for a moment.

Let's take this premise: it's the future. And now that we've stopped living our dreams in the long-forgotten television, what are we to do on a lazy weekend? Basketball? No, the robots down at the court are too good, it's not fun any more. One could go to the local Ye Olde Mini Golfe place, or drive some Go Karts. But if those diversions are too old-fashioned, you can get your futuristic kicks and head to the racing-pod-monorail place. The Shweeb. For real.
photo: "The Scwheeb" monorail system. www.shweeb.com

But wait. This is not the future, this is happening right now!
Hanging in plexiglass enclosed pods, you zip around a race track trying to beat your opponent and, I assume, not look like a complete idiot. And while this looks like a lot of benign fun, it's only the preliminary stages of development. See, the people at Shweeb are merely testing the cow-eyed public's acceptance of this form of transportation; their real goal is to make vast inter-borough transportation networks of these commuter pods. It smacks of something from the sixties, and after all, it is a bunch of Australians who created it. From their website:

" The Shweeb is a direct response to the transportation needs of today and the future....Any attempt to resuscitate the automobile by devising a new fuel or engine is doomed. Our cities simply can’t cope with rising numbers of cars or parking spaces. In our opinion a fresh approach is required...Our proposal to get you safely and quickly from one point in the city to another would be to elevate you onto a network of interconnected monorails where you never have to stop at traffic lights. The ideal vehicle for such a system already exists.

Fully faired recumbent cycles, because of their low aerodynamic resistance, are breaking all bicycle speed records and currently reaching speeds of 90 kph (56 mph) in sprints. Suspending these comfortable and highly efficient machines from monorail tracks has the added advantage of taking away the rolling resistance of pneumatic tyres. Trains of Shweebs can further reduce the aero drag – ten people travelling at 40 kph will each have a lot less work to do than a single rider at the same speed." (Schweeb.com)

From their polemic it's not hard to imagine entire cities covered in a web of transparent pods, zipping people to work with zero emissions, and seemingly fewer worries. It is a heady idea, one made more realistsic by their computer generated simulation of such a transportation system (right). Wait, maybe this is a time warp, I certainly can't handle the graphics. Maybe they're too ahead of their time, and maybe I have a softer spot for the Flintstones, but at least this isn't some subconscious re-creation of 1984.

So while we're trying to find our futures, we've found ourselves in the time-space of the future-past, stuck right back in the present.

Holy Smokes

Andre 3000 and Cee-Lo Green were injected to the womb by ATL-bound extraterrestrials. ODB evolved from amoeba to man in the NY primordial soup that was the crack era. But where the fuck did Dudley Perkins come from? Somewhere in Cali I guess. He surfaced in '95 to drop a feature on Tha Alkaholiks' Coast II Coast under the name Declaime, but for all we know the dude's been at it since Jurassic times. His most recent release, Holy Smokes puts him squarely on the funk-rap radar. Just peep the cover:

The opener, "To Declaime," pits Perkins over an acid-dripping beat from producer and friend Muldrow, and the MC goes in hard with a draggy, inverted flow that tests limits in rhyme-length and rhythm. It's a good intro to the album, but really one song can't do the whole justice. Perkins covers every topic from roach-smokin to politics, spitting with equal care over all. Throw in a cohesive, personalized body of production, and the result is a doorway into that other dimension, where booty-shaking is the preeminent form of prayer, and mythic battles between MCs and right-wing giants overrun the earth. Quite a magnificent place to be.

Dudley Perkins- To Declaime

Dudley Perkins- Sally