This week’s favorite record is The Brave and the Bold by Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Tortoise.
B”P”B is pretty well known, but in case you don’t know him, he’s most well known from his work in Palace, a lo-fi country project, and his solo work, also sorta country but less lo-fi and generally less rocking, both as Will Oldham and Bonnie “Prince” Billy. Tortoise is a band I should probably not admit to not knowign very well, but that’s that. I don’t know them very well, but I’ve always heard good things. Always been a fan of Will Oldham, in whatever incarnation, but Toirtoise puts his pretty unique voice in some awesome, more rock’n’roll context, albeit noisy and sorta spacey rock. It’s awesome.
The record came out in 2006, and I didn’t pay any attention to it then, for some reason. I came up when I was listening to my Books radio station on Pandora. The first song I heard was “Daniel” by Elton John. I’m not familiar with the original, but it was good enough to get me to check out the rest of it. After hearing a few clips on iTunes, it became the third record I’ve purchased via that ubiquitous service.
The songs they’ve picked for the collection are fairly eclectic, and I really only knew a few of them well. The highlight is their selection of “It’s Expected I’m Gone” by the Minutemen. It’s my favorite Minutemen song, so hearing their version, which is much bigger and more rhythmic than the original, was pretty neat. They make it downright danceable, according to me, which is a tall order for that song. In general the songs all have the sort of vibe you’d like to have while strutting down a street on a sunny day. Other highlights include “Thunder Road” by Springsteen, (right?), and “That’s Pep” by Devo. I don’t have a whole lot to say about any of it right now, but I’m super stoked on it. I’d recommend at least checking out the clips on iTunes, but you’ll probably want to buy it, at least the single tracks if you notice any songs you’re a fan of.
Tracy look a handful of fantastic pictures of Hazel, my adorable niece, and posted them in a little mini-narrative/life-lesson blog post. It should be checked out by all, both for its humor and the adorable little girl. I am going to meet her in about two weeks to celebrate her two-month birthday. I’m sure its going to be awesome. I’ll be the last person in the family to meet her, but you know what they say.
First off, please pardon the terrible title to this post. Those who know me personally (that’s probably 100% of my readers) know I love stupid wordplay like that. Still, I think I scraped the bottom of the barrel a little too hard with that. Seriously, Veg-aganda? Is Vegeganda any better? I don’t think so… Anyhow, on with it.
There’s a blog I pretty frequently read called The Debate Link. It’s a guy from Carleton College who’s always impressed me with how well he thinks out arguments and issues, especially because he’s been a really high-quality political blogger since he was (at least) a freshman in college. I recommend checking him out, it’s always a good read, even when I disagree. I seldom link to him, both because I seldom blog and he seldom writes about indie rock and vegetarian cuisine. That changed last week when he wrote about his culinary experience on recent airline trip.
Here’s the post, and here’s a follow-up that he wrote.. A few pertinent quotes from each post (pardon the length of the quoted passages, but I want to try to distill it without losing his main points…
…I did have a rather peculiar experience flying home. Sun Country offers a hot sandwich as its “snack” on the flight. The way there, it was turkey pastrami. Coming back, it was a cheeseburger. Being a semi-kosher Jew, I can’t eat cheeseburgers. I asked if they had one without cheese, and the flight attendant told me, sorry, they don’t. So I told her they should have a few without cheese, because sometimes Jews fly too. And she looked at me and said, half-indulgently and half-patronizingly, “well, we can’t have everything.”
She didn’t say it mean, exactly, but the tone of voice made me feel as if I was making some wildly unreasonable demand of her company. And I resent being made to feel that way. I don’t like it when Judaism is treated as some strange and mysterious cult, and I don’t think its utter craziness to set aside a few hamburgers without cheese so that people who–because they keep kosher, or are lactose intolerant, or whatever–can’t have cheeseburgers still can eat.
…
This experience really impressed upon me that, even though Jews are treated pretty well in America and are reasonably comfortable here, we’re still “strangers in a strange land.”
…
There were really two themes I wanted to pursue in the prior post. The first is the one most folks latched onto: can I, as a member of a relatively small but prominent minority group, reasonably expect accommodations from organizations such as airlines?
…
The second theme, which got less play, was a general reflection on how its tough being a minority, even in relatively hospitable climes.
So that’s his deal. He flew on a plane, but keeping “semi-kosher” made one of the meals impossible to eat. Should he expect to be accommodated? When I first read the post, I immediately empathized. Pretty much every time I fly, I expect to not eat anything. Back in the day when airlines were stuffing the pillows with cash and flying was a high-class adventure, you could order beforehand a vegetarian (or kosher, or vegan, or halal, probably) meal. Nowadays, you can still “order” a specialty meal, but airlines have pretty much skirted the issue by offering “snacks” in lieu of meals. With the “snacks”, everyone gets the same thing, and it often comes in a box. Even though the current snacks are often as substantial as the meals of yore, they have at least created a system whereby you don’t get any choices and you have no reason to complain.
I imagine that a big NYC-LA trip might still have a meal, but living in Chicago pretty much every flight is too short to deserve a full-fledged meal. I’ve always put up with it without thinking. I’ve surely been annoyed, but I don’t go on the plane to eat and I’m very used to eating (or not eating, more likely) at restaurants that don’t accommodate me. If I go out to dinner with friends, I’m always mentally prepared to not order food if there’s no viable option. Luckily, that rarely happens in Chicago, but it’s relatively common in Houston and whenever else I’m outside LA, Boston, or New York.
The post I’ve referred to got me thinking. Growing up in Houston an deciding to become a vegetarian, I’ve always recognized I was outside the norm and that my decision would require some minor hardships. It was something that was important enough to me that I was willing to put up with it, but it was something that I decided.
When I first read the post, my initial reaction was more or less “Deal with it.” It’s something I’ve dealt with for a long time, and it’s such a non-issue I’d never thought about it much. After my initial response, I wondered whether religiously-based decisions should trump other types of decisions. I came to vegetarianism through a vague morality and ecological consciousness. Is that different, or less worthwhile, than someone whose dietary restrictions are based on a thousand-year-old tradition that one is (most often) born into? Is it different because it’s easy to make something kosher (keep the cheese off of it), whereas having a seitan sandwich requires a lot more thinking and planning? Is it different because Jews are pretty systematically discriminated against throughout history, and pretty much nobody cares about vegetarians?
I haven’t come up with a satisfactory answer for any of those questions. Initially, I thought that there were a lot more Jews in the US than vegetarians, so they should be accommodated first, but that hunch proved to be less than true. I’ve heard that ~3% of the US is Jewish, of whom much less keep kosher. Stats on vegetarians are pretty vague, but I’ve found stats ranging from 2% to 10%. So we either outnumber Jews or we’re close. (I’m not even going to consider the implications of Jewish vegetarians, though I doubt those numbers affect the question at all.) Should we expect similar treatment? NYC public schools get Rosh Hashanah off from school. Should they also make sure to have substantial vegetarian options in school cafeterias? Or maybe just once a year?
The big difference, of course, is that being a vegetarian really only affects what you eat (or maybe what you wear), and then only three times a day or so. So the comparison is… well… not something deserving a dissertation. It did make me wonder though. In the end, I still kinda feel like he should just deal with it and, to be corny, use it as a tiny way to make his faith stronger. Every time I’m confronted with not eating because a lack of vegetarian option, it makes me reconsider the position and, again and again, it reconfirms my commitment.
In case it’s not clear, I want to firmly establish that I’m not comparing the plight of the vegetarian to Jews. Only in this particular instance: eating in planes. (Although, I’d be thrilled to be accused of antisemitism as a result of this post, just because it’d be so silly and so far from the issue I was curious about.)
I feel like I could go on and on, drawing and refuting comparisons, but I’m no longer interested. What I am interested in, however, is writing about something that has nothing to do with what I eat. Hopefully tomorrow. Maybe even later tonight. I do have something to say about Clinton’s health care plan, and I would like to use this bully pulpit to promote a few awesome things.
I’d previously posted little bits and pieces about what I thought regarding being a vegetarian and the political/ecological spin it takes. This week, I noticed a handful of articles about vegetarian proselytizing and how annoying it is. First, via Drudge and the Moderate Voice, we have this article:
Activists take Al Gore to task on his diet:
Citing United Nations research that the meat industry is worse for the environment than driving and flying, animal rights groups are directing a campaign at the former American vice-president’s diet.When he delivers a lecture on global warming in Denver next month, protesters will display billboards bearing a cartoon image of Mr Gore eating a drumstick and the message: “Too chicken to go vegetarian? Meat is the No 1 cause of global warming”.
So what do we make of this? First of all, I think they’re probably right. I don’t know much about global warming, and really it bores me too much to find out more about it, but its pretty obvious that the meat industry is bad for the world, ecologically. It would never be my goal to have an entirely meat free world, but I certainly think there’s room for everyone to eat less of it, especially those for whom environmental issues are important. That said, I think the anti-Gore campaign is one of the most strategically stupid things you could do as a vegan activist. Your goal, I imagine, is to get the entire world to stop eating meat, and I can’t figure out how singling out Gore could help. Though he eats meat, he’s a tremendously powerful advocate for better stewardship of the planet. Those people who view Gore in positive light have probably already thought about the meat/environment thing. Those that don’t like Gore will just view this as proof that the vegans/vegetarians are radical crazies.
I guess, given that reaction, they’re just trying to convert the small number of people on the eco-left who are on the fence about meat. That’s fine, but I imagine the millions of people react to that message by thinking the animal activists are crazy and thus not worth listening to. There’s certainly not nearly enough moderate vegetarians to encourage people to make helpful baby steps. Ha. I love that I wrote “moderate vegetarians” without even realizing how ridiculous a phrase it is. Anyhow, on to the second article.
Via Chicagoist, an article about how an art-teacher/fishing guide saw the light, turned to veganism, and started preaching to his students.
An art teacher removed from the classroom for encouraging pupils not to eat meat vowed Monday not to return to Fox River Grove Middle School until it eliminates milk and all other animal products from the lunch menu.
Dave Warwak, 44, also said he plans to ask the McHenry County state’s attorney to file child-endangerment charges against the school district because the school continues to promote milk and other animal products as part of a healthy diet.
Long story short, he got into a bit of trouble and was asked to apologise. Did he? No, he instead threatened the school for child endangerment. Obviously, this is another example of a crazy person, but at least this is a really stupid vegan PR move from a lone-wolf (lone rabbit?) type, so you can’t fault him for poor strategy.
I think the preaching seldom works, it seems most people that see the light do it on their own terms, but these two examples are demonstrative of a common problem: extreme self-righteousness that gets in the way of good strategy and pragmatism. I guess all radicals are like that, but it seems that radicals seldom have lasting success, if any at all. Of course, I don’t know much about radicals nor about their lasting impacts. Actually, today being Sept. 11th, I guess I have to admit they do have lasting impacts, but they tend to be the exact opposite of what they were going for. I do know that every stupid stunt like that makes it a bit harder to defend my nutritionoecologicopolitical point of view without seeming like a crackpot.
Also, now that I’ve brought up Sept. 11th, is it callous of me to have such a trivial post on veganism when my thoughts should be elsewhere? I’d devote a whole post to it… but I’ve gt a feeling the rest of the ‘sphere is going to do a good enough job memorializing it.
Yesterday, a summary of all the major newspapers was posted on Slate.com, as they frequently do. Why is that remarkable? The author of the summary managed to reference four REM albums in the title/sub-title:
Murmurs of a Reckoning: Is Petraeus out of time for his fables of the reconstruction?
In the comments for the article, several people have issues with the inclusion of the word “fables” and said it was a sign of the crazy lefties at Slate. They may or may not be lefties, but it was funny to read a big debate about it when it was clearly just a sweet pop music allusion.
I’d like everyone who reads this to take a moment and view the dorkiest comment ever to have appeared on my blog.
Smile laugh yawn:
Enough said, right…
Watch out for hoola-hoopers!
Sorry I haven’t updated anything here for awhile. For a long time, I’ve been keeping busy working on the new makeorbreakrecords.com. I’m pretty proud of the new site, it’s a lot easier to use than the old site, everything is kinda right at your fingertips, there’s a “radio station” (read: streaming audio), photos, and easier to update news and tour dates sections. It should generally be a website more worth going to than perhaps it was before. ALSO, if you buy a copy of Fellow Project’s 10″, Where’s the Wire?, it now comes with a coupon to download the mp3s, so you don’t have to feel bad about missing the bonus CDs that came with the first copies of the record.. So that’s good, right? Right. Also, I’d like to thank Colin for all his help in the redesign, including coming up with the basic look for the site, guiding me through all the new technology I had to use, and not letting me take too many short-cuts.
I’d also like to point to another site that I’ve worked on recently, indestructiblefilm.com. This is a documentary directed/”starring” Ben Byer, after he was diagnosed with ALS and his life since then. The movie was recently selected for the Montreal Film Festival, which is really fantastic for him. I strongly encourage anyone interested in film, ALS, or just nice people to check out the site, buy a t-shirt or hat, and look for the DVD when it comes out. Should be soon.
Finally, and this is really overdue, I’d like to wish a Happy Three Weeks Old Day to my niece, Hazel. She was born on August First, which should be easy enough for me to remember. Let’s see. 8-1-7. Eight Minus One Equals Seven. My sister’s been really busy, obviously, but she’s still managed to find some time to blog about her experiences, and I’m looking forward to reading about her insights/experiences raising her daughter. She’ll probably not have as much time to meta-parent via blogging as a result of all her actual parenting, but I’ll take whatever I can get. Speaking of Tracy, she should read this. She might not like it, but I’m sure she can relate.
In a final bit of make or break news, I’d like to include here a link to the George Lewis Jr. EPK. George Lewis Jr is the newest member of Make or Break, who has an EP entitled Hold Me coming out this fall. You can stream the album there, if you’re interested. Usually I would only send links to the EPK to music blogs and other critics/magazines, etc., but I figure only my friends see this site, for the most part, and they’ll surely be buying the record as soon as it comes out. Right? Right. So feel free to get a preview.
So that’s all I have. I’ll try to get back in the habit soon.