Um, this book annoyed me:

It pains me to says this, given my admiration for the original, but we need a sequel to The Official Preppy Handbook about as much as we need a sequel to Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche. It’s hard to criticize the design or the thoroughness of True Prep. But the whole misguided project, published during the harshest economic times since the thirties, leaves a foul taste in the mouth of anyone who the recalls the first incarnation with fondness.

When the first Preppy Handbook was released, we’d just struggled our way through two energy crises and were headed towards recession. It was the era of trickle-down economics and “Dynasty,” when people where much less cynical about the wealthy. An era when we’d yet to experience “too-big-to-fail” and the AIG bailouts. The Preppy Handbook introduced regular folk to Prepdom: a privileged, madras-filled world occupied by golden retrievers and children who called their mothers “mummy.” Of course, people always enjoy mocking the rich, but in the 80s people also wanted to emulate what they perceived to be their genteel ways. Needless to say, we live in profoundly different times.

There’s certainly no denying that the preppy aesthetic has made a comeback. Ushered in by cultural forces like “Gossip Girl” and the popularity of Ivy League rockers Vampire Weekend, argyle, rugby shirts, and loafers by G.H. Bass & Co. are now as ubiquitous as they were in their 80s heyday. Not surprisingly, True Prep devotes plenty of ink to fashion (preps now love polar fleece), but like the original Preppy Handbook, the book is much more about class than it is about style. True Prep comes across as callous and out-of-touch with the times.

Read the rest at The Awl.

A little ditty on Yoso and other horrible “supergroups:”

I remember the first time I heard the term “supergroup.” It was 1981 and my older brother Kevin, an avid Styx and Kansas fan, had just brought home a copy of a record with a blue sea monster on the cover. He was sitting on the end of his bed checking out the lyric sheet, the album jacket resting on his stonewashed jeans, and nodding his head along to “Heat of the Moment.” He kept a badminton racket beside the stereo for occasions that demanded heavy riffing. And this was most assuredly one of those occasions.

Me: What are you listening to?
Kevin: It’s this new supergroup, Asia.
Me: What’s a supergroup?
Kevin: It’s, like, a band that consists of members from other groups. That’s Steve Howe on guitar from Yes. I think someone from Emerson, Lake and Palmer is in the band too. [Picks up badminton racket]
Me: Awesome, can I borrow it when—
Kevin: Do you think you can shut up for five minutes, zit-fag? I’m trying to listen. [Shreds a power riff with badminton racket]

In the household of my youth, the name Steve Howe held deep significance. It was almost akin to bringing up the names David Ragsdale (violin, Kansas), Tommy Shaw (guitar, Styx), or Brad Delp (vocals, Boston). Mentioning these names was shorthand for saying “musical genius.”

Of course, I’ve since come to understand that the most unforgivable thing my brother ever did to me was to convince me—at a very impressionable age—that Styx, Kansas and Boston (his trinity of rock) were good bands. They’re not. How could he have done that to me, I have since wondered in dismay? I was just a kid. I looked up to him, for Chrissakes.

Read it all over at The Awl.

I’ve got a new piece over at The Awl about Girls lead singer Christopher Owens and the Children of God cult. It’s pretty disturbing, but hopefully worth a read for fans of the band and/or people obsessed with bizarre cults.

Given the passion expressed for girl music on this site, I suppose it’s not too much an affront to my masculinity to confess my obsession with the admittedly unmanly band Girls. Their debut record “Album” is forty minutes of melancholy bliss, late night break-up songs that will make you feel like a teenager suffering from a his first encounter with heartbreak. My introduction to the band’s back-story came through Pitchfork (shut up!) whose review featured a little biographical information on the band’s leader, Christopher Owens: “Christopher Owens grew up in the Children of God. His older brother died as a baby because the cult didn’t believe in medical attention. His dad left. He and his mother lived around the world, and the cult sometimes forced his mother to prostitute herself.”

Read it all at The Awl. (It’s kinda NSFW.)

I’ve got a new piece on a bizarro fetish over at The Awl:

In case you’re not familiar, pedal pumping is a car/foot fetish for men who enjoy watching women pump the gas, generally in vintage cars, until they strand themselves by flooding the engine or draining the battery. Um, what? Countless variations on this scenario exist — girls getting cars stuck in mud, Asians revving mopeds in the desert, stranded pedal pumpers with “stinky work shoes.” According to The Daily Beast, Michelle McGee even confesses to making a few pedal pump videos. So evidently there’s a market for painted hags who look like Skeletor pumping the gas with swastikas on their toes too. Most of the videos make up for their poor production values with sophisticated dialogue like “start, godammit,” “no, I don’t wanna be stuck here,” and “fuck this Mustang.”
A search for the fetish yields over 200,000 Google returns and thousands of YouTube videos. There are hundreds of websites that cater to the fetish including pedaltube.com, asianpedalpumpers.com, pedalteens.com and carstuckgirls.com. [All sort of/not really/but kind of Not Safe For Work?]

Videos and the rest of the article here.

The Awl just posted a new piece by yours truly about WinterBand–aka the most important band of our time:

Just when I’d “discovered the magic” of Celtic Thunder and become certain that nothing could more effortlessly succeed at making my ears bleed, a friend sent me a link to North Carolina’s WinterBand–the most disturbing Christian rock band since, well, since ever. If you’re a geriatric, hobo-wizard, Jesus freak with a dirty mop-head hanging from your chin, it’s probably not the best idea to be too critical of others. But that doesn’t stop WinterBand’s namesake, Steve Winter, from attacking Catholics, Muslims, democrats, women and countless others for the intolerable sin of being outside his confusing comfort zone.

Check out this important band’s music over at The Awl.