#stuart vandal

[agentxthirteen]

Sharon-A-Day, Day 595 (8/18/23)

Avengers Roll Call. On sale 4/25/12.

Writers: Jeff Christiansen, Mike O'Sullivan, Stuart Vandal, Sean McQuaid, Rob London, Markus Raymond, Patrick Duke, Roger Ott, Patrick D. Ryall, Madison Carter, Ronald Byrd, Anthony Cotilletta, Kevin Garcia

Pencillers: Dalibor Talajic, Gus Vazquez

Sharon appears in the write-up about Jimmy Jupiter.

[onlylonelylatino]

The Maestro by George Pérez

[eretzyisrael]

by Dion J. Pierre

Penn’s handing down disciplinary sanctions came nearly two months after it finally cleared protesters from school property with the help of the Philadelphia Police Department. The university had attempted to negotiate with the protesters, but its patience wore thin amid their escalating conduct. After hours of discussions failed to yield a settlement acceptable to both sides, interim president Larry Jameson publicly called the protesters a safety hazard while noting that they had committed acts of vandalism, including defacing a statute of Benjamin Franklin, one of the United States’ Founding Fathers, and “The Button,” a sculpture built in the early 1980s.

In addition to divestment from Israel, the demonstration’s leaders demanded that the university vacate a suspension of Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine, which the school shut down after multiple rules violations. Frustrated with the university’s refusing to grant them any concessions, masses of new people joined the encampment, expanding it over a larger area of school property and forcing the university to request additional security on campus.

“The protesters refused repeatedly to disband the encampment, to produce identification, to stop threatening, loud, and discriminatory speech and behavior, and to comply with instructions from Penn administrators and Public Safety,” Jameson said after the tents were dismantled. “Instead, they called for others to join them in escalating their disruptions and expanding their encampment, necessitating that we take action to protect the safety and rights of everyone in our community.”

Antisemitism fueled by anti-Zionism exploded at the university long before the “encampment” was set up, an action which was precipitated by Israel’s military response to Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7. In September, it hosted “The Palestine Writes Literature Festival,” which included speakers such as Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta, who once promoted antisemitic tropes, saying in an interview, “Jews were hated in Europe because they played a role in the destruction of the economy in some of the countries, so they would hate them.” Another controversial figure invited to the event was former Pink Floyd vocalist Roger Waters, whose long record of anti-Jewish snipes was the subject of a documentary released last year.

One day before the event took place, an unidentified male walked into the university’s Hillel building behind a staffer and shouted “F—k the Jews” and “Jesus Christ is king!” before overturning tables, podium stands, and chairs, according to students and school officials who spoke with The Algemeiner. Days earlier, just before the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah, a swastika was graffitied in the basement of the university’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design.

[daresplaining]

Hiya~! You're always in the back of my mind as a kind and knowledgeable source for Daredevil. ♥

Do you know if it has ever been revealed exactly what chemical blinded Matt? Or even where it was coming from/going in the middle of the city? My knowledge of comic books exploiting all potential plots makes me feel like this is a thread that would have been pulled at some point over the last 60 years, but I don't see anything.

Aah, thank you! That's a great question, and the answer is that a lot of these details have actually been kept vague. There have been a lot of retellings of Matt's origin, but they haven't explored the actual context/nuances of the accident that much and the details they have included have tended to be inconsistent. The thing that blinded Matt was a radioactive substance of some kind, but visual depictions have varied wildly, from a glowing "radioactive cylinder" to leaky barrels of toxic sludge.

Matt's accident depicted by Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, and Glynis Wein (left); and by Chris Samnee and Javier Rodriguez (right).

As I mentioned, the details of the accident itself also vary. In Daredevil #1, we learn that the substance that blinded Matt was being transported by Ajax Atomic Labs, and that the accident was caused by the truck's brakes malfunctioning:

Daredevil vol. 1 #1 by Stan Lee, Bill Everett, and Sam Rosen

In Daredevil #164's origin rehashing, Roger McKenzie tells us that it was the army transporting bomb materials through the city, and that the accident was caused by the driver suffering a sudden heart attack:

Daredevil vol. 1 #164 by Roger McKenzie, Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, Glynis Wein, and John Costanza

Perhaps most compellingly (at least to me), Tony Stark's notes on Daredevil in the Civil War Files identify a Stark Industries project (under the leadership of Tony's father) as the source of the substance, which is referred to as radioactive waste:

Civil War Files #1 by Anthony Flamini, Stuart Vandal, Ronald Byrd, Madison Carter, et al.

Mark Waid added one more detail, which gave voice to something that had previously just been implied: that this dangerous substance—whatever it was—was not supposed to be going through a populated area at all:

Caption: "That's when the driver opted to finally look up. His tires screaming, his cargo tumbled loose. It had been secured with the same kind of care one would expect—from a fly-by-night company that thought it'd be okay to illegally transport toxic waste through New York traffic." Daredevil vol. 3 #23 by Mark Waid, Chris Samnee, Javier Rodriguez, and Joe Caramagna

To this, I might add the inference that it was likely being driven through Hell's Kitchen in particular because it was (at that time) a low income neighborhood where the authorities would be less likely to notice or care.

Waid's description of the accident, and the visual of barrels of toxic waste rather than a radioactive cylinder, are reminiscent of the alternate universe version of Matt's origin that Frank Miller and John Romita, Jr. presented in Man Without Fear—which also included the juicy detail of lawyers for the corporation showing up at Matt and his father's apartment afterward and strong-arming Jack into not pressing charges.

But yes, though I understand keeping the science involved in superhero origin stories non-specific, this is definitely an area of the Daredevil lore that could use further clarification. For real-world inspiration, here's an interesting New York Times article from 1985 about the transportation of nuclear waste through New York City. This part in particular seems relevant, and fits the timing of the publication of Daredevil #1 in 1964:

"Brookhaven has had a nuclear reactor operating since 1954. From 1954 to 1976, the spent fuel - radioactive uranium - was carried by truck into New York City, across the 59th Street Bridge, north on Third Avenue and across town to the George Washington Bridge. It then went south to a site in South Carolina for reprocessing. But in 1976 the city passed a local law banning the shipments, and triggering a battle over who has authority to control the shipments."

Maybe Matt was blinded by radioactive uranium? That transport route doesn't hit Hell's Kitchen at all, but I will also point out that Matt's childhood neighborhood wasn't specified as being Hell's Kitchen until Daredevil #164. At the very least, we know that toxic stuff was going through Manhattan in 1964, so if you were interested in a potential real-world source for more details to add to Matt's accident, that seems like a good place to look.

[gorillaz-swapped]

CHARACTER PROFILE: STUART “2D” HAROLD POT

Stuart (also known as 2D) is a 23 year-old male born on May 23rd, 1978. Stuart grew up in a middle class household, spending most of his time at the funfair, where both he and his parents worked. When he was well into his teenage years, he got involved with the wrong crowd. Stuart was quick to change his entire personality just to fit in, and found that acting tough and hard as nails gets you respect. Stuart would find himself in less than savory situations, wether it be vandalism, petty theft, hookers and what-have-you. But Stuart wanted to break out into showbiz and start a band. One day, while going way over the speed limit, he accidentally crashed through the window of a record shop, injuring Russel. ..And then injured him again while he was supposed to take care of him. Stuart knew this was going to be his first member. Luckily, Russel was willing fo comply, and it turned out Russel could play the drums like a professional. Stuart found Noodle playing her electric guitar on the side of the street for a few pounds and was quick to scoop her up. They had a bass player named Paula, who was Russel’s girlfriend. That was quick to fall apart, however, since Noodle caught 2D hooking up with her. They’d go on to recruit Murdoc after placing an ad in the newspaper for a bass guitarist.

“2D?. Ehh.. not a fan. He’s bloody rude to me and Russ for no reason. I fink he’s scared of Noods, though, coz’ he won’ boffer her. I don’ blame ‘em though. Noodle knows how to fight!— I’ve seen ‘er!-“ Said Murdoc, when asked for his opinions on 2D.

• —– ٠ ✤ ٠ —– •

Likes - Zombie movies, singing, spray painting, causing problems, organization, freaking out Russel, the band (secretly), carnivals and stealing Russel’s pain killers.

Dislikes - Russel, cold weather, being belittled, people who patronize him, the amount of attention Murdoc gets, children, not getting his way and not having control.

[joeseventies]

RTC characters as quotes my friends and i have said

Mischa: "Go get your ears hear-ed."

Constance: "Today I got out of my mom's car and I fell and I said 'weeee' before I fell."  

Penny: "And they sit in the windowsill and just stay completely still and they stare."

Ricky: "How giant… is the Uno."

Noel: "Meh." Ocean: "Meh? What does that mean?" Noel: "Its like shrugging, but with my voice."

Penny: "If I had a nickel for everytime I swallowed a nickel, I'd have exactly one nickel."

Ricky: "Everytime a phone rings, nitrogen gets its wings."

Mischa: "Too fast for the eye movement."

Constance: "I think that's legit the flavor." Ocean: "Flavor? Do you EAT your handsanitizer?" Penny: "I do."

Constance: "Dont threaten me about my socks! You almost gave me a heart attack!"

Ricky: "Careful there J.D." Mischa: "Who's that?" Ricky: "You dont know who J.D. is?" Mischa: "Isn't he from Warrior Cats?"

Noel: "You have the IQ of soft toast."

Penny: "I'm not a criminal, I'm just a drug dealer."

Mischa: "If I'm an idiot, then you're a ghost."

Constance: "You're not stinky."

Noel: "He’s like a very Italian pepperoni pizza. But british."

Ricky: "I'm shoving my gay up my pants."

Mischa: "Everybody gangsta till they tongue starts feeling weird."

Ricky: "Imma great mafia talk. Meow shmeow."

Penny: "3 people voted. God is dead."

Ricky: "Homosexual bad grr"

Noel: "I am not fucking watching Glee."

Ricky: "Remember: When fire strikes… Gay out and slay out!"

Noel: "They're still gnomes, I don't care if they're gay."

Ricky: "Happy Birthday, here's my AIDS."

Constance: "Chocolate MILF? I like women."

Ocean: "What's under my eyes? That's right. Abstinence."

Mischa: "I will only shake my ass for the POPE!!"

Ricky: "Run me over with your car, oh baby."

Ocean: "Give me your paper, you infertile gold digger."

Noel: "You're the one staring at my donut like a pedophile staring at a playground."

Penny: "Its not vandalism if it's fun."

Mischa: "Do you wanna check out my ass? For one second?"

Constance: "Straight people can be kinky too."

Ocean: "I'm literally a lobster. Lobsters don't have airpods."

Ricky: "Another day, another slay."

Mischa: "Don’t pull up on me. I'll pull up on your mouth."

Penny: "I know where your heart is."

Ocean: "You want my life to be miserable because you won't give me a penny?"

Penny: "I can feel every fiber in your body."

Noel: "Do as I say, not as I say."

Penny: "Does your fish want to paint? Woop woop woop."

Ricky: "Do you guys like my ring? Just kidding it's a pink monkey."

Mischa: getting choked "That was good form."

Ocean: "Let me put my hand in your pocket and show you I'm not gay."

Penny: "I always make people look away. Whether it be with my face or my actions."

Constance: "Little donuts on my math paper make me anxious."

Penny: "I've been craving water since 2nd grade."

Ocean: "Turn on your brains. Turn on your ears. Cause it sounds like they're not on."

Penny: "So health or religion?" Ricky: "Communism."

Mischa: "They word in such a way that words should not or should word."

Mischa: “Wait Stuart Little is Shakespeare?”

Noel: "You know how much I'd kill myself??!??!"

Penny: "Yep that's some high quality cocaine."

Noel: "Youre pissing me off." Ocean: "You're pissing me on."

Ocean: "You're gonna end up on an episode of forensic files."

[moonbiscuitsims]

2-D appreciation on Sims 4 Gorillaz Project

Noodle's room pics Russel's room pics Murdoc's room pics ("mature") More Gorillaz posts

From the wiki: Stuart Pot, better known by his nickname 2-D, is the lead vocalist, keyboardist and frontman of Gorillaz.

A.k.a. 2-D, Stu-pot, Face Ache, Pretty Boy, The Chosen One.

Born: Hertfordshire, England 23rd of May 1978

Occupation: Singer-songwriter

Instruments: Keyboard, Synthesizer, Melodica, Omnichord, Guitar, Drums, Vocals.

Nationality: British

Religion: Vajrayana Buddhism

Created by Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn

2D's room was so much fun to make, he is probably my favourite member of Gorillaz. The Gorillaz art is just no-CC art from the Gallery. It adds a super cool touch to the whole Kong Studios build. I also love the weird doors I've been using for all the rooms by @the-crypt-o-club I think this set. I think the arty painted table is also by them in the DIY or Die set their stuff is awesome!!! also feels very maxis match and official.

Also these deco keyboards by @pixlmonster were EVERYTHING for this room in particular, you'll see in the reference pics 2D's room had TONS of them.

The "amazing 2D" graffiti was pure coincidence I found it in my game it was meant to be.

Again, there is a lot of cyberpunk 2077 CC in this build, so those TV screens on the wall I think by @hamsterbellbelle download here. Though I can't tell if they are that object or another so if it's wrong sorry 😅

I can't find the cool synthesizer stereo object that 2D is repairing sorry :(

I used the messy clothes on floor rug from the 2t4 teen style conversions by @simsi45

Xelenn made the buddha wall deco but I couldn't find the little gold one yet

Cyberpunk apartment clutter set for the aesthetic cyberpunk light

I didn't mention in other posts but also shoutout to @aroundthesims content which is super useful for making this build (and many others) look super grungy and messy: Uglify Your Town and Slob's Life Anyways a LOT of cc was used in this build, the lot is HUGE so if I make a cc list it will take me a long time, but possibly as I have mentioned I'll do it in the future.

If you're a Gorillaz fan please show these posts some love <3 I really enjoyed making them and any support is appreciated.

Reference pics:

I didn't include the "Ha** Sat**" because it was a vandalism done by Murdoc on poor 2D's room, I included it in Murdoc's room which I'll be uploading x)

I'm just now realising I should have added those cool rainbow neon strips but I might update that :)

[art-damaged]

In September 2023, a painting by Stuart Semple was damaged while on view at London’s All Is Joy Studios. As captured on CCTV, two individuals enter the gallery, at which point one produces a bottle of pink paint and douses the artwork, while the other removes a jacket to reveal a t-shirt bearing the slogan “SAVE ALL ART.” They each proceeded to superglue one hand to the gallery wall while using the other to raise their middle fingers to the surveillance camera.

Semple’s exhibition, titled “D.A.B.A. (Destroy All Bad Art),” had apparently sparked controversy, as it included Semple’s assistants systematically destroying numerous works by the artist using sledgehammers, flame throwers, and angle grinders; Semple had also invited the public to bring in anything they deemed “Bad Art” to be destroyed in a similar fashion. This resulted in protestors picketing outside the gallery with signs bearing slogans like “All Art is Sacred,” “My Art My Choice,” and so on. (That these seem like poor attempts at parodying pro-life and pro-choice maxims is one of several red flags suggesting this whole series of events was a calculated performance, but I can't say for sure.)

The vandals’ choice of pink paint was on the nose, as Semple’s main claim to fame is having invented the world’s “Pinkest Pink” pigment as part of a feud with Anish Kapoor over Kapoor's “Blackest Black” paint.

Semple has since issued a response, in which he says he first suspected the “Stop Oil lot” whose recent wave of artwork-targeted protests have gained widespread attention in recent years; he also wonders if the vandals are “Anish Kapoor sympathizers.” Finally, he clarified that his call to destroy artworks “is not mindless vandalism – it’s about a much bigger conceptual idea, which is de-objectifying objects.”

It’s unclear whether Semple or the gallery plan on pressing charges, but something tells me they won’t, as this whole incident feels a bit corny and staged – but who knows?

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

Five Nights at Freddy's

As film adaptations of video games go, Emma Tammi’s FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S (2023, Peacock) may seem like small change. There are no armies of kung fu fighters or naked Milla Jovoviches, no hyper-athletic Angelina Jolie. But I was surprised, given its tepid reviews, how far from monkey dump it is. Maybe it helps that I never played the game, so I wasn’t disappointed at how little the animatronic villain figures were used. Instead, I enjoyed the way the script — by the game’s creator, Scott Cawthon, Seth Cuddeback and Tammi — sets up elements in the first act that will pay off in the last. I also appreciated that they took the time to establish the main characters and their situation. Josh Hutcherson is trying to raise his emotionally withdrawn sister (Piper Rubio, who’s really quite good) and hold a job while coping with a lifetime of trauma initiated when his brother was kidnapped during a family outing. His career counselor (Matthew Lillard) sets him up as the single night watchman at an abandoned family pizza parlor with animatronic animals that turn out to be possessed. We see how deadly they can be early on when they take out the previous watchman and a group of vandals, but when Hucherson has to take his sister there one night, they become her playmates. There’s a brief utopian moment as the siblings and a friendly police officer (Elizabeth Lail) set up a play space for the group. It can’t stay that way, of course, but the unravelling is more satisfying than I had expected. Hutcherson has a hard job. He has to let us in while playing a character whose trauma makes it difficult for him to open up, yet his ability to connect with his sister and Lail provides just the window needed. Lillard is also quite good in his first scene, and there’s a funny performance by Michael P. Sullivan as the evil aunt’s (Mary Stuart Masterson, wasted) reluctant lawyer. The plot hinges on a rather large coincidence, but if you can swallow that, you should have a lot of fun.

[accelerated-tech]

Enhancing Business Security with Advanced Security cameras in Stuart and Port St. Lucie, FL

In the bustling business environment of Port St. Lucie, security is paramount. Protecting assets, employees, and customers is essential for a thriving business. With the advancements in surveillance technology, local businesses can significantly improve their security systems, ensuring a safer and more secure environment.  They can leverage the latest in security cameras in Stuart and Port St. Lucie, FL, to enhance their security measures.   The Importance of Advanced Security Cameras   Advanced security cameras are no longer passive recording devices; they have evolved into sophisticated systems offering real-time monitoring, high-definition video quality, and intelligent analytics. These features provide businesses with a comprehensive security solution that can deter criminal activity, provide evidence in the event of an incident, and even help in operational efficiency.   Key Features of Modern Surveillance or Security Cameras   High-Definition Video Quality:   Modern surveillance cameras offer high-definition (HD) and even ultra-high-definition (UHD) video quality. This level of clarity is crucial for identifying individuals, vehicles, and other details that can be vital in investigations.   Night Vision and Low Light Performance:   Many advanced cameras are equipped with infrared (IR) capabilities and low-light sensors, allowing them to capture clear images even in complete darkness. This ensures 24/7 surveillance and security. Remote Monitoring:   With internet connectivity, businesses can monitor their premises in real time from anywhere using smartphones, tablets, or computers. This feature is handy for business owners who are frequently on the move.   Intelligent Video Analytics:   Modern surveillance systems have intelligent video analytics that detect motion, recognize faces, count people, and identify unusual activities. These capabilities enable proactive security measures, such as alerting security personnel of potential threats.   Cloud Storage and Management:   Cloud-based storage solutions ensure that video footage is securely stored and easily accessible. This eliminates the risk of losing critical evidence due to hardware failure or tampering.   Benefits for Port St. Lucie Businesses   Crime Deterrence:   Visible security cameras in Stuart and Port St. Lucie, FL, act as a strong deterrent against criminal activities such as theft, vandalism, and trespassing. Potential criminals are less likely to target businesses with robust security systems.   Enhanced Employee Safety:   Security cameras help maintain a safe working environment by monitoring employee interactions and ensuring adherence to safety protocols. This can reduce workplace accidents and conflicts. Customer Protection:   Protecting customers is as vital as protecting employees. Surveillance cameras help monitor customer areas, ensure their safety, and provide evidence in case of any disputes or incidents.   Operational Efficiency:   Surveillance technology can also improve operational efficiency. By monitoring employee performance and customer behavior, businesses can identify areas for improvement and optimize their operations.   Implementing Advanced Surveillance Systems   For businesses in Port St. Lucie looking to upgrade their security systems, partnering with a well-known security solutions provider is essential. These professionals can assess the business's specific needs, recommend appropriate equipment, and ensure proper installation and maintenance. Customizing the surveillance system to fit the business's layout and operational requirements will maximize its effectiveness.   Investing in advanced security cameras is crucial for businesses in Port St. Lucie to enhance their security. The benefits of high-definition video quality, night vision, remote monitoring, intelligent analytics, and cloud storage significantly outweigh the costs. By adopting the latest surveillance technology, local businesses can protect their assets, ensure the safety of their employees and customers, and improve overall operational efficiency. 

[shrinnirs]

December 17, 2010 interview for the Shrinnirs "Early Singles" collection Josh Burkett put together and released on his Mystra record label in collaboration with the Father Yod record label.

Byron = Byron Coley   

Josh = Joshua Burkett  

Joe = Joe Malinowski

Byron: What’s on this LP?

Josh: The first three singles, plus some unreleased stuff from around then.

Joe: Some of it’s from a 10” that never came out.

Byron: Who was doing the 10”?

Joe: Charlie Krich. He had a label in the early ‘90s, Vandal Children Records. Our !Me da Una Rabia! 7" from 1992 was released jointly by Tulpa and Vandal Children.

Byron: The Bimbo Shrineheads more or less mutated out of Eclectic Bitch?

Joe: Yeah. Well at that time Eclectic Bitch was a name that dawn liked for herself. I just wanted to call the band the dawn cook band or dawn cook, but she said if we were going to do that, her pseudonym would have to be Eclectic Bitch.

Byron: The earliest stuff was done as a duo?

Joe: It started out as a duo, then we went through a bunch of bass players in a real short time. None of them recorded with us. We had one guitar player -- William Stuart – for a while, then after he left, Josh joined on bass and sax for a couple of years.

Byron: Did you already know Wayne & Kate by that point?

Joe: We met them at WHUS radio, sometime around then. When Josh was with us we opened for the Laughing Hyenas and Crystalized Movements at the Populous Pudding. That was a great show.

Byron: What was Josh’s hair like when he was in the band? Did he have that big Euro he had in Vernonster?

Josh: That was the biggest hair I ever had.

Byron: It was like John Sinclair’s. How much sax did you play with the band?

Josh: It was just occasionally.

Joe: He preferred bass, but dawn and I were always trying to get him to play more sax.

Byron: Did you jam much at live shows?

Joe: We mostly played songs. There was a lot of visual stuff. dawn had put together a slide show. dawn and I jammed when on our own recording the type of stuff that appeared on the Liminal Switch LPs, but usually stuck to the songs when working with Josh or other people.

Byron: What was dawn's stage presence like then, and what was her most outrageous costuming?

Joe: dawn brought some of her artwork with her like a car windshield she had smashed up and painted. She was in to rummaging through junked out autos for raw art material. In retrospect, I guess we were an on stage car wreck of a band. dawn would wear a lot of make-up applied asymmetrically, the left side of her skull was shaved and painted in a checkerboard pattern, and she had skirts made of duct tape and used to add tin foil here and there. A lot of her clothes were held together with staples or duct tape or occasionally nuts & bolts for heavier fabrics. She wore men's boxers for shorts during the summer. The first show I have a photo of has dawn playing guitar in front of a Knights of Columbus bingo display board, wearing a mesh Boston Bruins jersey and ripped up long-johns for pants which she had decorated with several crayon drawings. None of it seemed all that outrageous to me, since she wore the same type of stuff off stage. She had a TV set with the picture tube removed. She sometime wore that on her head on stage. I remember her wearing it at the El'n'Gee Club in New London, near the submarine base, while she played Tuli Kupferberg's "Go Fuck Yourself With Your Atom Bomb" on accordion. She also used to play "I'm Going to Kill Myself Over Your Dead Body If You Fuck Anyone But Me". She loved Tuli. During our first few years of playing out, dawn would usually start the set solo on acoustic guitar, or just acapella, and occasionally on accordion. She only played accordion in public a few times because she didn't feel very confident on it. She used it more like a harmonium. dawn also used to bring onstage artwork Colette Butterick had left behind in the Populous Pudding, lifesized standup figures of Caspar Weinberger, Oliver North and other Iran-Contra characters prettied up in frilly pink ballet tutus. Colette was an intriguing presence in Willimantic. During the early 1980s her son played drums in the White Pigs and the Separates. Colette put out the Separates 7" single and turned her basement in to a punk rock show space with a tiny stage. I didn't know Colette well, but appreciated her rare appearances at the Pop Pudding, particularly the night she strung herself like a tree in Christmas lights and plugged herself in to an electrical wall socket for a poetry reading.

Byron: Seems like you guys got a lot of good opening slots.

Joe: Well I was working at Platter Connection Record Store. It’s where I first met you and Jimmy Johnson. You stopped in while on a visit to Ziesing Bros book shop. It wasn't all that great of a record store, but I met a lot of bands there, and as music director at a college radio station, and by booking shows in Willimantic. It was just fellow bands helping each other out.

Byron: When Willimantic was a hotspot still. Before Ziesing moved.

Joe: Yeah, I spent one depressing birthday helping Mark Ziesing move his bookstore, hauling boxes of books down flights of stairs to the 18-wheeler. A sad day for Willimantic.

Byron: Lili still has her shirt from there – Radical Lesbian Feminists from Outer Space.

Joe: Our friend Joey Zone did the art for that.

Byron: It was a weirdly happening nexus. I was never there when the anarchist Ziesing brother was still around...

Joe: Yeah, he moved to Thailand. That store was where I found my first record by the Ex in 1982. Mike Ziesing used to have punk bands there on occasion during the early to mid 1980s. The store was divided in to separate sections. Mark Ziesing used most of his for sci-fi stuff and other lit, Allison Meyers owned the feminist and poetry section, and Mike Ziesing sold records along with 'zines and anarchist books. Plus, Wayne Woodward’s comics section. After the Ziesing Bros. closed up, Allison opened Everyday Books, first in her house and later as a cafe in downtown Willimantic. Allison published Mary Ellen Meikle's poetry. dawn used Mary Ellen's words on a couple of songs. One of them is on this record.

Byron: Did you guys have a lot more songs than you recorded?

Joe: We just have live tapes of them. That’s why we reissued the Live at Charlie’s cassette from 1992 on CD-R a few years ago. There are lots of songs dawn wrote that we never properly recorded.

Byron: It’s interesting. It seems like the band’s basic sound has stayed relatively stable throughout decades of activity and inactivity.

Joe: Well, ever since we first started playing together we were just making it up as we went along.

Byron: dawn’s basic sound had been folk before that?

Joe: Yeah. She was very briefly in a group called Bruce Bayne and the Dawn of the Living Dead Band. Otherwise, her background was in performing folk music at coffee houses, street protests, and fund raising potluck dinners.

Byron: How did she decide she wanted to go freak?

Joe: We were listening to early Sonic Youth and the Ex. We both dug the heck out of the Minutemen. Eventually Dawn really got in to the few ESP albums I had. I remember Patty Waters made a big impact on her. She also liked Frank Lowe's Black Beings album. Most frequently I'd find her listening to my old Nonesuch Explorer and Folkways ethnomusicology LPs when she was home alone with my records. But what stands out in my memory is how she enjoyed God & The State, that Ruins album with the Urinals drummer. She was crazy about that record. She still sings those songs in the car.

Byron: So you were the bad svengali record scum guy. Well every band story needs one.

Joe: We met at a college radio station in 1985 about a year before we first started playing music together. Dawn hosted a show that concentrated on articles she would share from underground newspapers and 'zines, along with interviews with fellow activists. She would mix in anti- authoritarian songs here and there. Whatever she could find, from Victor Jara to Gil Scott- Heron. The packaging on a Maximum Rock'n'Roll comp caught her eye and she grew a little curious about punk rock as a vehicle for expressing her political views. I just offered suggestions like, "if you're in to Gil Scott-Heron, maybe you would like the Last Poets," or "if you're into political punk, you might appreciate Crass and KUKL." Then from there, "since you like that stuff, you should definitely check out The Ex."

Byron: You later got to play some shows with the Ex. How were they to deal with in those days?

Joe: They were great. They stayed with us for a few days on their first U.S. tour in 1989. We opened for them in Storrs along with 76% Uncertain and Azaila Snail. The Ex didn’t have many shows outside of New York. They made a trip to Montreal and came back to Willimantic. They’d bought a beat up old station wagon for their tour. It kept breaking down. So they were stuck with us.

Byron: And you got to feed them for a week.

Joe: Actually, they fed us. Their sound guys even fixed dawn’s car for her. They were amazing. Just really nice people. We didn't even blame them when our beloved indoor cat was run over after the band talked us out of imprisoning him inside.

Byron: Did you play out of town much?

Josh: They did a U.S. tour.

Joe: We played New York and DC for Riot Grrrl shows even though we were much older than most of the people there. We played Providence a lot, Albany once, North Hampton, and another show in NYC at ABC No Rio. And we did tour across the States a couple of times, but that was mostly camping out with shows that were a thousand miles apart. We had a few on the West Coast between Los Angeles and Portland. We played Minneapolis and Buffalo. And we opened for the Orthotonics in Richmond, VA after a show in Chicago. There was a huge crowd that kind of hated us, particularly a really angry German dude who after the gig let Dawn know how exactly brutally offended he was by "Rape Poem." At least we got to play Richmond, stay with Michael Hurley for a couple of days, and have a great time in an amazing swimming hole with Rebby Sharp.

Byron: Where did the Bimbo Shrineheads name come from?

Joe: It was something our late friend Rob McDonald blurted out while we were watching the tv news. Around that time George HW Bush picked Dan Quayle as his running mate, and Rob said, “He’s a Bimbo Shrinehead, just like Vanna White.”

Byron: So you’re named after Dan Quayle?

Joe: Yeah, or Vanna White. But I have no problem with Vanna White. I just really didn’t like the name Eclectic Bitch, so we compromised and settled on the Bimbo Shrineheads. Eclectic Bitch grew out of a regrettable joke I made when dawn and I were first hanging out and she was hoping to find people to start a band. dawn was describing how her dream band combined feminism and political revolution with poetry, theater and a wide variety of music; everything from jazz to folk to rap to reggae to heavy punk rock mixed with Segovia. I teased her that she should call her band Eclectic Bitch, sarcastically suggesting she reclaim the word "bitch" as an act of empowerment. She should have punched me in the face, but instead took a liking to it. I would have preferred getting punched.

Byron: Why did the name keep mutating?

Joe: We never really liked any of our names, including Bimbo Shrineheads and Shrinnirs. We figured we didn’t have any kind of following so it wouldn't matter. We've been kicking around the idea of changing it again, but with all the time and money Josh has put into this singles collection, we should probably stick with Shrinnirs for now.

Byron: Did the band start up before the Tulpa label?

Joe: The band came first.

Byron: How many releases did you end doing on Tulpa?

Joe: Not many,

Byron: Must have been about 15.

Joe: Yeah. The Flaherty/Colbourne stuff was about the end of it. There was a Footprints 4 comp that never came out. That had Sun City Girls, Galloping Coroners, Snake River and Brian Johnson. Snake River were from Michigan. They had submitted music to Tulpa. Brian Johnson ran an art gallery in Hartford. He played percussion for Vernon Fraser. dawn modeled for the cover of Vernon’s album Sex Queen of the Berlin Turnpike. I think the Sun City Girls and Coroners stuff eventually came out on other labels. I’m going to put out a Colbourne/Flaherty recording with Mike Roberson on guitar soon on my Withdrawn Records label. We released a live Shrin 7” in 1997 with artwork stolen from an Alan Lomax Columbia World Music LP. The covers were hand stamped "Withdrawn" to look like the deacquisitioned records we bought from library sales. Since I still had the stamp, I used it a few years later when I gave out cd-r mixes of some of my 78s to a few friends, and when I put out Randy Colbourne's Clarinet Works recording.

Byron: What was Tulpa named after?

Joe: The name grew out of a discussion with Joey Zone, a graphic artist from Willimantic. It wasn’t named after the Magazine song.

Josh: What does it mean?

Joe: Joey Zone described it as being like a doppelganger, an evil spirit twin who does your dirty work for you. A year or so after the first Tulpa record release Joey gave me a tulpa themed Detective Comic and a Tulpa logo he put together. I've since learned a tulpa is quite a bit different than my understanding of a doppelganger, but at the time my knowledge of Tibetan mysticism was largely limited to what I picked up from UNESCO LPs and Batman comic books.

Josh: How did you get together with Flaherty?

Joe: It was through Rob McDonald. I'm not sure how Rob came in to contact with Flaherty. Paul may have mailed a Flaherty/Colbourne record to the Populous Pudding. It was right around the time of their first Cadence LP. Rob thought I would be into what Paul and Randy were doing, and he was right. They had no gigs. They either played under bridges in Hartford or they would sneak in to the UCONN Art building. When security would come in, Paul would claim he was an art instructor. He completely played the part. I remember an art student pretentiously critiquing the music and offering the advice, “Sometimes less is more.” And Paul said, “No. More is more.” Bimbo Shrineheads had a song with lyrics from a book of words and drawings Paul Flaherty self-published about 20 years ago. dawn pulled the lyrics to the song "Corporate Prostitute" out of there. I think the title of the book was The Corporate Bored. I loaned out my copy and never saw it again. Flaherty claims to be out of stock, but maybe he could dig one up for you. He wrote it while working at one of the Hartford insurance companies before he started painting houses.

Byron: The records you did with those guys put them on the map in a whole new way. For a lot of people that was some of the first free jazz they’d ever heard.

Joe: Aside from the Tulpa comp, Kevin Kraynick helped spread the word, when he featured Flaherty/Colbourne in Damp Magazine. Rob McDonald and I booked Paul and Randy at the Populous Pudding whenever we could. It didn't matter what the other bands on the bill were like. The Pudding was an arts and music collective located in an old fur locker, basically a loud cement box with a single entrance/exit, large bank vault type door. It was a dangerous violation of fire codes, and the perfect setting for Flaherty/Colbourne. They were stunning. Every gig transcendent. Unbelievable.

Byron: What was dawn’s stuff like when she was a folkie?

Joe: She had just started writing originals shortly before we began playing together. It seemed like she was listening to that Silly Sisters album whenever I went over her house, just a huge Maddy Prior fan, but she mostly performed Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Ralph McTell and Buffy Sainte Marie covers. She had the Wobbly songbook. She also had learned a lot of Irish traditionals from singing with her friend Gordon MacDonald. She also covered a lot of Joan Baez. Once we started playing the Populous Pudding, Charlie Krich saw her and Charlie would give her sheet music and order her to learn other Buffy Saint Marie songs: "Here, play Cod'ine next show."

Josh: She could read music?

Joe: Yeah, a little bit, just enough to struggle through working out the chords.

Josh: I remember she was into that first Ricky Lee Jones album.

Joe: The first time I played with her, she used to play coffeehouses all the time, and this was a coffeehouse type setting. She came in with her untuneable electric guitar and I had an industrial oil barrel like Neubauten or something. And we played "I Will Die in Willimantic", "Slabs of Stone", and Dylan's "Masters of War". It was funny to witness the reaction. It was not what people wanted to hear. Actually I'd rather hear dawn solo on acoustic guitar, too. Whether playing folk standards or her own songs, everything sounds better when she slows things down and plays and sings solo. She knocks me out at times. I've always felt lucky that she puts up with me.

Byron: How did your Swedish release come about?

Joe: A Swedish band mailed a tape and wanted Tulpa to put out a record. I think they’d read about us in Maximum Rock & Roll. We decided to do a split. I’ve never met them, I don’t think they’ve ever been to the States. It was a co-release with Fetvadd in Sweden. But 16 B.U.H. sent the material hoping one of the bands on the first Footprints comp would want to do a split.

Josh: Did they have other releases?

Joe: Yeah, they have a few albums out.

Byron: What happened to the proposed Twisted Village LP?

Joe: It was mostly live to cassette recordings from various basements. On some of the songs dawn had home made contact microphones taped onto her bouzouki and balalaika and it sounds like it’s really noise genre stuff, but it’s just her pulling the mic off and retaping it. I was never sure if Wayne & Kate, from Twisted Village, were just being nice because we were friends or what, so I never pushed them on getting the record out. I put together the tape and I couldn’t tell if they were genuinely enthusiastic or not. After a while it just fell by the wayside.

Byron: Some of that’s what got recycled on Limnal Switch?

Joe: Yeah.

Josh: What about that Twisted Village compilation on Shock?

Joe: Wayne put that together when we were talking about releasing an album on Twisted Village. He used a song from one of our old 7" eps. His mix is better than the original. Stefan, from Shock, hates that track. He was pissed our song ending up on his label. He just doesn’t like that kind of music.

Josh: But for a lot of people, that’s how they first heard about the band.

Byron: You were in Wormdoom also.

Joe: Yeah, that was around ’95.

Byron: How many gigs did Wormdoom play?

Joe: Two. Twisted Village had just opened as a store and we did one there to celebrate and one out here at the Amherst Unitarian Church with Flaherty/Colbourne.

Byron: Were there plans for more shows?

Joe: I would have liked to play more, but Wayne & Kate were busy with Magic Hour and the new store.

Josh: I played on the Wormdoom album, too. It was just basement jam stuff.

Byron: Did they credit you?

Josh: There were no credits. It’s the same with that B.O.R.B In Orbit CD. There were no credits on that either.

Byron: Are you on any of this stuff, Joe?

Joe: I’m on some of the Vermonster stuff.

Josh: You might be on that B.O.R.B. CD, too. That was just basement jams too.

Joe: I don't think I'm any of the B.O.R.B. stuff, but the band did make nice use of my Radio Shack Moog. Josh and I played on some of the last Crystalized Movements gigs. We played CBGB.

Josh: That was the only time I ever played there.

Joe: And Providence and...I think there were three shows.

Byron: That must have been when they were more together. Their early shows featured a lot of tuning.

Joe: Bimbo Shrineheads did a lot of that too. We got tired of it and started doing entire sets with no breaks at all. Saving up to buy Dawn guitars that would hold a tuning was the key.

Byron: Were you still doing songs?

Joe: We’d have five short songs in a row, but we would leave spots open to improvise if we felt inclined, then we’d play some more songs. We were back to the duo line-up by then. Sometimes Josh would join us at the end when we played in Cambridge. He would play sax and dawn would sing in to an mbira plugged in to the distortion pedals on her guitar amp. She often used an old throat mic built for airplane pilots and ran that through her amp, too. It looked like a beat up leather choker around her neck. That was probably '93 to '95.

Byron: What was the worst band you ever played with?

Josh: Maybe the Reverb Motherfuckers. That show was not a very good. They played for like two hours.

Byron: What was your best gig?

Josh: I remember a really good one at the Middle East.

Joe: I think Fire in the Kitchen headlined the show you are thinking of. Steve Erickson, from Cut 'Zine, put that bill together with Billy Ruane.

Josh: That was great that night. Fire in the Kitchen were a much better live band than their records ever let on.

Byron: What was the horrible show in Worcester I’ve heard you refer to?

Joe: That was with Eugene Chadbourne at the Worcester Artists Group in ‘91, but we had plenty of other horrible shows. Chadbourne was great. We were terrible. We spent too much time creating our most elaborate props ever for performance pieces. dawn worked very hard on set design and stagecraft for that gig. We suffered technical problems throughout. It stifled the music. After that show we cut way back on props and slide shows. That freed us to just go up and play with room for improvisation when we felt like it. dawn still did things like occasionally shave off chunks of her hair on stage, but we left the slide shows and most of the props at home. It was also disappointing because we had just started playing with Jeff LeDoux on guitar and vocals. He fit in perfectly from the very first practice. That one bad show with Chadbourne was Jeff's only show with us. A few days after, he broke the news that he was following his girlfriend to Minneapolis.

Byron: What happened to the scene in Willimantic? Everyone just move away?

Joe: Pretty much, but not entirely. There was punk rock music in Willimantic long before the Populous Pudding, and today there are still dedicated people putting on art and music shows in empty Main Street store fronts. After the Populous Pudding closed, Charlie Krich started doing shows in his basement. Charlie had initially gotten involved in the Pudding as an outlet for his poetry. He didn't seem to have had much contact with punk rock prior to the Pudding, but maybe I'm wrong in assuming that. The enthusiasm and DIY spirit of the touring bands impressed him. He’s a human rights lawyer with a beautiful old Victorian home which he opened up to a young crowd of hardcore bands and underground music fans. After a while there were too many noise complaints, so he worked with Jay Forklift and a few of the other kids to open the Willimantic Arts Collective. That space didn't last long. They had better luck with the landlord and police in Studio 158, which they founded soon after. It a was great place for shows. Charlie is an extremely generous and humble guy who truly deserved the Saint Chuck and SuperChuck nicknames the kids gave him. A lot of younger folks were shaped by Charlie’s shows – throughout the early ‘90s he was booking hardcore punk and all that. He had Green Day at the Norwich VFW. We played there with Spitboy. We opened an Econochrist show Charlie helped a kid put together in a condominium complex in Manchester. At Studio 158 we played with Bikini Kill, Universal Order of Armageddon, Avail, Devoid of Faith and a bunch of other touring bands, as well as local friends like Mi6.

Byron: How did it go over when you played with punk bands.

Joe: Usually confusion.

Josh: But I’ve also heard over the years that there were people who really got changed by seeing you. It was beyond their comprehension at the time, but it made them realize there was something else possible.

Joe: But a lot of the young guys were really intimidated by dawn too. They didn’t know what to make of her face paint or whatever. She could sometimes lose herself and unknowingly glare intensely at people while she played. She scared some of the boys. Overall, it seemed like we were tolerated. There was a difference between our earliest shows in the 1980s and the shows say '92 to '95. In the 80s a faceless male voice from deep in the crowd would often heckle. After about 1992, we didn't get much of a reaction. For the most part, people sat on the floor, politely clapped, and waited for our set to end. I know dawn is always surprised when women tell her things like how they were effected by seeing her chop up her hair or when people speak about certain songs and shows from years ago.

Josh: On one of the songs she’d just scream for like ten minutes. It was her anti-child abuse song, “Mother Goose and Mr. Hyde". Even severe hardcore bands were not that severe.

Joe: We did it one time on WRIU radio and it was just psychodrama. I don’t know what the kids at the radio station thought. Listening to the tape, I can hear why Josh left the live version off this collection. The words and visceral screaming can be a stomach sickening bum out to hear, and musically it is a mess since my drum kit actually fell apart, but I thought the live radio recording was one of the most accurate documents of what we were doing.

Byron: Where was the gig you were supposed to open for Suckdog & Costes?

Joe: That was at UCONN. Lisa called the promoter to say they were delayed. Costes had jumped out of their car and runaway. The promoter kept coming up on stage and whispering, “Play more.” I think that was my least favorite show along with the time in Chicago when I cracked my head on a low hanging monitor and later puked between songs. My favorite show was the one in New Haven where we got kicked off before we even finished the first tune.

Josh: We played at this diner, opening for St. Johnny.

Joe: Who didn’t even play. The owner said, “If you’re like them, here’s $25, just go away.”

Josh: We played one song and they turned the mics off and turned the jukebox on really loud. There was no one there anyway.

Byron: And then you left Willimantic, rendering your best known song more or less untrue.

Joe: We’ll see.

Byron: You went to Boston.

Joe: Yeah, for 14 years and then New Haven. Boston got too expensive so I moved. And dawn went to Worcester to go to school. Now she’s in Manchester, CT.

Byron: Do you guys have any plans to play more?

Joe: Well, if people ask us we’ll play. dawn loves playing out. I prefer jamming in her art studio. We haven't played music together much over the last few years. I'll play out if that is what it takes to get her motivated.

Byron: Can they pick the line-up that plays?

Joe: Maybe.

Byron: Has dawn done any musical stuff subsequently?

Joe: Not much.

Josh: She paints.

Byron: But she didn’t go back to her folk roots?

Joe: No.

Byron: You kind of ruined that forever.

Joe: I hope so.

[agentxthirteen]

Sharon-A-Day, Day 505 (5/20/23)

Avengers Roll Call. On sale 4/25/12.

Writers: Jeff Christiansen, Mike O'Sullivan, Stuart Vandal, Sean McQuaid, Rob London, Markus Raymond, Patrick Duke, Roger Ott, Patrick D. Ryall, Madison Carter, Ronald Byrd, Anthony Cotilletta, Kevin Garcia  

Pencillers: Dalibor Talajic, Gus Vazquez

Sharon, Maria, and Victoria: Avengers liaisons.

[onlylonelylatino]

Ultimate universe Defenders by Bryan Hitch

[eretzyisrael]

by Dion J. Pierre

Penn has been embroiled in controversy this academic year stemming from concerns over antisemitism. Last month, a pro-Palestinian protest on campus devolved into intimidation of Jewish students, as speakers berated pro-Israel counter-protesters in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist onslaught against Israel.

“The Israeli Jew has bastardized Judaism! Bastardized it! Trampled on it! How could you let this genocidal regime crap all over your God and your religion like this?” one speaker said at the protest, according to footage seen by The Algemeiner. “How can you, as a people who have seen the same amount of oppression in the past, stand by the same genocidal tactics, and lies, and methods that they use on our people? How could you stand for that? Look at you — you’re not even looking at this direction. You’re scared. You’re scared of being wrong.”

Addressing Jewish students who were standing nearby holding a counter-protest, the speaker continued. “Israelis! Hello, Israelis! Look at me! If I asked you to give me one justification, it would be a lie, misinformed, or consumed in post 9/11 dogma. Ask yourself, Israelis: Do you want to continue living in this false narrative, this fairy tale, or do you want to actually talk to the people? That [Israeli] flag has murdered.”

He concluded: “I hope you sh—t when you go on your bed tonight. I hope your dreams are filled with the horrors of dead Palestinian babies, burned Palestinian children, dead Palestinian women, a hundred square miles, leveled. I hope this scorches your brain. I hope you are terrified of this, because you should be.”

Professor Eve Troutt Powell, who teaches history of the modern Middle East at the university, accused Israel of not learning “the lessons of the Holocaust” shouting at the demonstration, “That was the lesson! Never again! This now is never again!”

Professor Huda Fakhreddine, who teaches Arabic literature, added, “Israel is the epitome of antisemitism … it desecrates the memory of the Holocaust victims. It humiliates every Jewish person.”

Days later, members of Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi), a traditionally Jewish fraternity, discovered graffiti saying “The Jews R Nazis” on the door of a property next to their house. The campus’ Division of Public Safety was investigating the vandalism as a potential hate crime.

Before the war in Gaza, the university came under fire in September for refusing to cancel or move a “Palestine Writes Literature Festival” held on campus. The event, which caused outrage and heightened tensions across campus, featured several activists who promoted conspiracies about Jewish power and called for violence against Israel.

One day before “Palestine Writes” took place, an unidentified male walked into the university’s Hillel building behind a staffer and shouted “F—k the Jews” and “Jesus Christ is king!” before overturning tables, podium stands, and chairs, according to students and school officials who spoke with The Algemeiner.

[princetonuniversitypress]

This month’s Office Hours is worth the read. Forrest Stuart, MacArthur Grant recipient and author of Ballad of the Bullet: Gangs, Drill Music, and the Power of Online Infamy, shares some significant moments thus far in his career, offers valuable insight on some of his favorite books—and may surprise you with his bedtime reading habits.

ML: What are you reading now?

FS: For the last decade or so, I’ve developed the habit of keeping two books on my bedside table at any given time, reading a bit of both each night as I wind down. The first is typically a newly published ethnography, which helps me stay current in my field. Right now, it’s Policing the Racial Divide: Urban Growth Politics and the Remaking of Segregation, by Daanika Gordon. The book takes us throughout daily life in Rust Belt city via police ride-alongs, community meetings, and other public events. Gordon weaves a fresh analysis of how police departments do more than merely respond to the racialized issues emanating from histories of segregation; rather, they are key, active authors in creating and reproducing the urban color line. As urban sociologists, geographers, and political economists continue to take policing more seriously, this book feels like the first of a new era of much-needed scholarship.

The second book in my bedside rotation is always a fantasy novel. My obsession with the genre is something I’ve kept very quiet around colleagues, until now, I suppose. I’m currently wrapping up the fifth and final book of Brent Weeks’s Lightbringer series. It follows a young orphan challenging an empire ruled by religious authoritarianism, palace intrigue, and, yes, a healthy dose of magic. Weeks’ series is deeply ethnographic, with complex worldbuilding that stretches between the multiple thousand-page books. I’m especially fond of the detailed maps on the first few pages, which let me follow the protagonist’s journey across mountain ranges and oceans. In my first book, Down, Out, and Under Arrest, which documents policing’s ripple effects across everyday life in LA’s Skid Row, I designed and included a map of the neighborhood as a kind of homage to my favorite fantasy writers. I also find myself dog-earing pages of fantasy novels when I spot literary tricks and grammatical moves I hope to try out in my own prose.            

ML: What book has had the most impact on your career?

FS: Without a doubt, the book that has had the biggest impact on my career is Mitchell Duneier’s masterful 1999 book, Sidewalk. It’s an ethnography of Black, precariously housed magazine vendors who set up shop on Sixth Avenue in New York’s Greenwich Village. Through Duneier’s fieldwork, we see how the vendors become “eyes on the street” to enhance safety for vulnerable populations, provide mentorship to young Black men in the local service economy, and act as key “nodes” that link residents across racial, class, and generational lines. Throughout his analysis, Duneier “zooms out,” tracing how structural forces, like deindustrialization and zero-tolerance policing, have aligned to bring the vendors to this location and hound their continued existence. He also “zooms in” to the interactional level using conversation analysis (CA), measuring split second pauses and turn-taking to show how vendors’ seemingly innocuous chatter with passersby constitutes a form of “interactional vandalism” that intimidates women and reinforcing stereotypes about Black men. Stylistically, Sidewalk often reads more like a novel, with flowing dialogue punctuated with beautiful black and white photos from the Chicago Tribune’s Ovie Carter.  

A few years after its release, Sidewalk was also the subject of arguably the most famous book review symposium in sociology, generating a heated back-and-forth between Duneier and Berkeley’s Loïc Wacquant on the issues of transparency, representation, and the role of urban ethnography in the fetishization of poverty. I return to the debate every time I start a new project.  

ML: What is your favorite book to teach?

FS: In just about every class I teach, I look for new ways to put Mary Pattillo’s now-classic Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class on the syllabus. I start by showing students how Pattillo uses the opening “setting” section—often a perfunctory, forgettable part of a book—to set up a wonderful empirical puzzle. Walking the reader through a tour of the “Groveland” neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, Pattillo paints a scene where, because of intergenerational segregation, middle class Black residents, banks, and churches share walls and sidewalks with low-income Black residents, subsidized housing, and check cashing outlets. How, Pattillo leads us to ask, does this unique cross-class proximity structure everyday life and social organization for the Black middle class? In answering, Pattillo deploys several analytical strategies that I pass on to my students. She shows the underestimated power of creating typologies, finding variation among Groveland residents (for example, whether they internalize or merely perform “street culture”), and then showing how variation along these lines leads to differing outcomes. She also leverages the power of “deviant” cases to show how certain people blur the boundaries of ideal types, forcing us to rethink and refine many of our taken-for-granted theoretical categories. The book is simultaneously a lesson on how to write about participants and their communities, especially those who occupy marginalized social positions. Pattillo’s empathy and respect shine through on every page, from the pseudonyms she chooses to the biographical details she shares (and doesn’t share) with the reader.

ML: Do you have a favorite moment as a researcher, maybe an encounter that unexpectedly changed your way of thinking or the direction of a project?

FS: I’m proud of the fact that I’ve had quite a few occasions where an experience radically reshaped my prior assumptions and the direction of the entire project, usually for the better. One that I won’t ever forget came in the early stages of my research for my second book, Ballad of the Bullet. The book follows a group of young Black men on Chicago’s South Side as they strive for popularity—and an income—in the digital economy. They spent their days recording and uploading a homemade genre of gangsta rap, sometimes referred to as “drill music” to YouTube. Then, they turn to their multiple social media platforms to try to authenticate the hardened criminal personas they crafted in their songs. A music video about committing a drive-by shooting might be accompanied on Twitter with talk of potential victims and Instagram photos holding a gun out of a car window. When done well, it’s easy to start believing that young men in the drill scene might actually do the deeds they rap about. That’s their intention, after all—to lure in voyeuristic, middle-class audiences looking for a glimpse into ghetto life.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I had bought into quite a few of their performances of “badness.” Of course, I knew that they weren’t nearly as violent as they wanted their typical audiences to believe. But when I really got to know them, I learned that the vast majority of their posts weren’t just exaggerations, they were utter fabrications. Some of the men known as the most violent had never actually fired a gun, and even avoided conflict. Focusing instead on these young men’s inauthenticity, and their strategies of performance, let me highlight their savvy creativity amid some incredible structural obstacles.

ML: What is the best career advice you ever received?

FS: When I was in grad school at UCLA, Elijah Anderson gave a talk in our department. At one point in the question-and-answer portion he made an off-the-cuff comment that the best sociology is sometimes just documenting how “regular” people—as in, non-sociologists—do sociology in their day to day lives. Whether at work, at home, at church, or on a date, people run into recurring dilemmas and vexing situations. Just like us “licensed” sociologists, they try to figure these things out, collecting data, forming hypotheses, testing hunches, assessing their findings, and implementing the lessons learned. It’s our job, then, to figure out how different people walk though these common phases. This idea really stuck with me and colors how I approach research, writing, and teaching. Maybe the thing I love most is that it encourages us to move from deficit-based approaches to asset-based ones that rethink even the most marginalized groups as creative problem solvers.

https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/office-hours-with-forrest-stuart

[mariacallous]

oh, hello professor stuart...

What are you reading now?

FS: For the last decade or so, I’ve developed the habit of keeping two books on my bedside table at any given time, reading a bit of both each night as I wind down. The first is typically a newly published ethnography, which helps me stay current in my field. Right now, it’s Policing the Racial Divide: Urban Growth Politics and the Remaking of Segregation, by Daanika Gordon. The book takes us throughout daily life in Rust Belt city via police ride-alongs, community meetings, and other public events. Gordon weaves a fresh analysis of how police departments do more than merely respond to the racialized issues emanating from histories of segregation; rather, they are key, active authors in creating and reproducing the urban color line. As urban sociologists, geographers, and political economists continue to take policing more seriously, this book feels like the first of a new era of much-needed scholarship.

The second book in my bedside rotation is always a fantasy novel. My obsession with the genre is something I’ve kept very quiet around colleagues, until now, I suppose. I’m currently wrapping up the fifth and final book of Brent Weeks’s Lightbringer series. It follows a young orphan challenging an empire ruled by religious authoritarianism, palace intrigue, and, yes, a healthy dose of magic. Weeks’ series is deeply ethnographic, with complex worldbuilding that stretches between the multiple thousand-page books. I’m especially fond of the detailed maps on the first few pages, which let me follow the protagonist’s journey across mountain ranges and oceans. In my first book, Down, Out, and Under Arrest, which documents policing’s ripple effects across everyday life in LA’s Skid Row, I designed and included a map of the neighborhood as a kind of homage to my favorite fantasy writers. I also find myself dog-earing pages of fantasy novels when I spot literary tricks and grammatical moves I hope to try out in my own prose.          

What book has had the most impact on your career?

FS: Without a doubt, the book that has had the biggest impact on my career is Mitchell Duneier’s masterful 1999 book, Sidewalk. It’s an ethnography of Black, precariously housed magazine vendors who set up shop on Sixth Avenue in New York’s Greenwich Village. Through Duneier’s fieldwork, we see how the vendors become “eyes on the street” to enhance safety for vulnerable populations, provide mentorship to young Black men in the local service economy, and act as key “nodes” that link residents across racial, class, and generational lines. Throughout his analysis, Duneier “zooms out,” tracing how structural forces, like deindustrialization and zero-tolerance policing, have aligned to bring the vendors to this location and hound their continued existence. He also “zooms in” to the interactional level using conversation analysis (CA), measuring split second pauses and turn-taking to show how vendors’ seemingly innocuous chatter with passersby constitutes a form of “interactional vandalism” that intimidates women and reinforcing stereotypes about Black men. Stylistically, Sidewalk often reads more like a novel, with flowing dialogue punctuated with beautiful black and white photos from the Chicago Tribune’s Ovie Carter.

A few years after its release, Sidewalk was also the subject of arguably the most famous book review symposium in sociology, generating a heated back-and-forth between Duneier and Berkeley’s Loïc Wacquant on the issues of transparency, representation, and the role of urban ethnography in the fetishization of poverty. I return to the debate every time I start a new project.  

What is your favorite book to teach?

FS: In just about every class I teach, I look for new ways to put Mary Pattillo’s now-classic Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class on the syllabus. I start by showing students how Pattillo uses the opening “setting” section—often a perfunctory, forgettable part of a book—to set up a wonderful empirical puzzle. Walking the reader through a tour of the “Groveland” neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, Pattillo paints a scene where, because of intergenerational segregation, middle class Black residents, banks, and churches share walls and sidewalks with low-income Black residents, subsidized housing, and check cashing outlets. How, Pattillo leads us to ask, does this unique cross-class proximity structure everyday life and social organization for the Black middle class? In answering, Pattillo deploys several analytical strategies that I pass on to my students. She shows the underestimated power of creating typologies, finding variation among Groveland residents (for example, whether they internalize or merely perform “street culture”), and then showing how variation along these lines leads to differing outcomes. She also leverages the power of “deviant” cases to show how certain people blur the boundaries of ideal types, forcing us to rethink and refine many of our taken-for-granted theoretical categories. The book is simultaneously a lesson on how to write about participants and their communities, especially those who occupy marginalized social positions. Pattillo’s empathy and respect shine through on every page, from the pseudonyms she chooses to the biographical details she shares (and doesn’t share) with the reader.

Do you have a favorite moment as a researcher, maybe an encounter that unexpectedly changed your way of thinking or the direction of a project?

FS: I’m proud of the fact that I’ve had quite a few occasions where an experience radically reshaped my prior assumptions and the direction of the entire project, usually for the better. One that I won’t ever forget came in the early stages of my research for my second book, Ballad of the Bullet. The book follows a group of young Black men on Chicago’s South Side as they strive for popularity—and an income—in the digital economy. They spent their days recording and uploading a homemade genre of gangsta rap, sometimes referred to as “drill music” to YouTube. Then, they turn to their multiple social media platforms to try to authenticate the hardened criminal personas they crafted in their songs. A music video about committing a drive-by shooting might be accompanied on Twitter with talk of potential victims and Instagram photos holding a gun out of a car window. When done well, it’s easy to start believing that young men in the drill scene might actually do the deeds they rap about. That’s their intention, after all—to lure in voyeuristic, middle-class audiences looking for a glimpse into ghetto life.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I had bought into quite a few of their performances of “badness.” Of course, I knew that they weren’t nearly as violent as they wanted their typical audiences to believe. But when I really got to know them, I learned that the vast majority of their posts weren’t just exaggerations, they were utter fabrications. Some of the men known as the most violent had never actually fired a gun, and even avoided conflict. Focusing instead on these young men’s inauthenticity, and their strategies of performance, let me highlight their savvy creativity amid some incredible structural obstacles.

What is the best career advice you ever received?

FS: When I was in grad school at UCLA, Elijah Anderson gave a talk in our department. At one point in the question-and-answer portion he made an off-the-cuff comment that the best sociology is sometimes just documenting how “regular” people—as in, non-sociologists—do sociology in their day to day lives. Whether at work, at home, at church, or on a date, people run into recurring dilemmas and vexing situations. Just like us “licensed” sociologists, they try to figure these things out, collecting data, forming hypotheses, testing hunches, assessing their findings, and implementing the lessons learned. It’s our job, then, to figure out how different people walk though these common phases. This idea really stuck with me and colors how I approach research, writing, and teaching. Maybe the thing I love most is that it encourages us to move from deficit-based approaches to asset-based ones that rethink even the most marginalized groups as creative problem solvers.

If you could have dinner with two sociologists, living or passed, who would they be and why?

FS: Karl Marx and Erving Goffman. These are the two sociologists that have influenced me the most intellectually and personally. These are, in my opinion, the two most brilliant thinkers in history. But I’ve always felt a tension between the core premises of their work, especially around what explains social life and outcomes. For Marx, the key explanations rest at the macro level of political economy, in the structural relationships between classes. Marx seems hardly concerned with what goes on during micro-level interactions between people. For Goffman, it’s mostly the opposite, privileging interactions and bounded situations while paying much less attention to macro level forces. And yet, when we look out at the world, there’s plenty of evidence that both are “right.” I’d love to pour the two of them a few stiff cocktails and see if we can find the common threads running through their thinking.