Band: Worker Bee
Album: Divorce Your Legs
Best song: “Recital” is the album’s gem.
Worst song: “Imploder” is the least strong track on a very strong album.
I’m not as up on philosophy as I should be — a quick reminder to those who don’t know: I have undergrad and graduate degrees in journalism. Not a real subject. — so my self-identification as somewhere between Nietzsche, Levi and Camus is probably poorly-constructed. With that said, my nihilistic leanings bring me to this: One of the few things in which I believe is the progressive, changing nature of society.
I’ve tried to think of a million metaphors to describe it and all seem to come across like someone on bad peyote. Society, like time, rolls on like a steamroller or Gustavo Fring or the “unstoppable evil” of a Cohen Bros. movie or the boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark or a snowball or whatever you want to
I, generally, tend to think this is good. The nature of time/society/etc. being progressive means that more people eventually get rights, access, etc. to the fruits of society. Sixty years ago, women were not as active in the workforce. Today, they are. Sixty years ago, we had three national TV channels. Now, we have hundreds.
This is why, often, a lot of small-c conservatism is difficult to put forth. American political Conservatism relies on the notion that the old way was the better way (more on that in a moment), environmental conservatism relies on a similar notion within the context of nature (simplified: humans ruin everything and the society boulder destroys all in its path).
Friend of the site Alyssa Rosenberg wrote a bit about this recently, in criticism of the wonderful television show Mad Men. The show relies so much on the internal strife of the old guard, with the new guard — those representing the society boulder — as orbiting around them. Alyssa explains it as such:
In a way, this clarifies for me why I’ve never felt as attached to Mad Men as some of the folks who love it do — I’m somewhat interested in the reactions of folks on the wrong side of history, but I’m more excited to spend time with folks who will be liberated by the crudening of that culture. Because while politeness can be a spur to style, and wit, and class, it can also be a powerful means of enforcing privilege and preserving the comfort of people who benefit from it.
She makes a perfect point, certainly, though I’d say that the show is also wildly successful at using plenty of other themes as fodder for criticism. The old guard isn’t the only thing seen as a problem, but rather the notions of American mid-20th-century free market capitalism (it’s set in an ad agency that ruins everyone’s lives), sexual politics, city v. suburban life, etc. It truly is a layered show.
(I feel I always have to say this whenever I bring up Mad Men: It’s a great show, but it’s not Breaking Bad. Mad Men often tries to do more than it should and fails. Breaking Bad does not. It is always pitch-perfect and addresses personal strife in an interesting, personal way. Unlike Mad Men — which, again, I adore — Breaking Bad deals in the personal, the suspenseful and the cinematic, whereas Mad Men often hits you over the head with a sledgehammer.)w
I don’t disagree with Alyssa’s point, though, and that’s why Peggy Olson is the best character on that show. While the protagonist’s inner strife is compelling, we see his world through the eyes of someone who doesn’t always understand and, more importantly, isn’t interested in understanding. Peggy’s boyfriend is a quasi-revolutionary Jewish kid. She, more than patrician-in-training Pete Campbell, is the person who has a place in two worlds, from the birth control storyline of the first season to the warehouse parties with her art house friends to the most recent episode of moving in with said boyfriend. Peggy’s at the crossroads of a lot of things, while still having a foot in the old way.
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Twelve years ago, the Onion ran one of my favorite pieces: In My Day, Ballplayers Were For Shit. It’s a wonderful twist on the old person’s refrain of how life was better “in my day.”The piece is sort of an easy joke, but it fits well because I find it applies more with each passing year. I’m 31 and it’s hard for me to not look at my younger days as the halcyon days. But, they weren’t and the world isn’t necessarily better or worse. It’s different.
Similarly, because of my age, I’m constantly fighting against baby boomer nostalgia. The constant refrain of the 50s-70s being the great time of life is overdone and frustrating, but it is a refrain we hear a lot.
With all of that said, there is a part of that with which I agree: Fashion.
Let me be clear. I don’t fancy myself a fashionista and I’m much more poorly-dressed than I should be. A lot of this comes from the time and place from which I come. My parents are not good dressers and subscribe to the newly-assimilated/midwestern ethnic notions of business casual/comfort. I hate this, though it is society’s de facto.
It bothers me to no end that business casual has become the driving force in workplace fashion in the past 20 years. For the most part, it makes everyone look dumpy (fitting, consdering how fat Americans are) and unkempt. Poor-fitting pants, so many t-shirts and the ever-present golf shirt bug me to no end. The nadir of our society came a few years ago with the idea that Crocs were shoes people could actually wear outside of a garden, a costume party or as house slippers. When one succumbs to wearing Crocs in public, sweatpants and stained t-shirts are not far off.
(With that said, I also hate high heels. I think they look pretty dumb, give no benefit to the woman and are generally bad for your body. In the same way I don’t care what music anyone enjoys, I don’t really care that women wear so many high heels. But, I certainly do not understand why women wear them.)
The example I always use is when I had to go in for jury duty four years ago. I saw so many people wearing Redskins sweatshirts and jeans. Forget the golf shirt/khaki look that so many people wore; a third of the people there were dressed like they were going to work on their cars. I wore a suit.
I do this to travel, as well. If I’m getting on a plane, I tend to dress up. Again, I understand why people don’t do this. Flying is uncomfortable, it’s often warm and it’s simply easier to throw on a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt. But, it speaks to a different notion of private/public notions of one’s best self. Traveling should be novel, it should be special. A plane ride shouldn’t be, as Patton Oswalt calls it, a “flying party bus.”
I bring this up because of a series of somewhat recent Southwest Airlines problems with people’s attire (latest here at Jezebel). I don’t have a particular problem with what this young woman is wearing; it’s way more stylish/nice than 90% of people getting onto airlines in 2012 (again, she’s not wearing Crocs, sweats or the like). It’s not an “I’m with stupid” t-shirt (WOOHOO DATED REFERENCE). It’s no, as the Jezebel story indicates, a condom t-shirt. It’s a busty woman in a dress. Big whoop.
I’d actually prefer to fly an airline with really restrictive attire rules. No t-shirts, no shorts, etc. That is my ideal airline. Nothing about cleavage, nothing about religion, nothing about sexual preference. Simply dress like you’ve drank something other than Mountain Dew in the last 48 hours.
Part of this, of course, is a complete (over)reaction to my own lack of style. I can barely dress myself and, all too often, fall back onto the notion of wearing a dress shirt and black chinos. I do the business casual thing every day. I am a hypocrite, though one that did wear a suit every day at my last job.
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And again, this goes back to Mad Men. In a particularly heated scene from this season, Lane Price tells Don Draper, essentially, that Don has the luxury of doing the right thing because of his success, his privilege and his life. I write all of this because I also have the privilege to do (what I consider) the right thing.
I wear a suit when I travel because I was raised in an educated part of America that valued — well, not always — social mores. I have the luxury of being in the ruling part of society (I’m an educated white male) that makes these rules. I’m playing the game people like me invented. So, the rules are tailored to me.
Part of the success of Mad Men more than a similarly-praised show (Breaking Bad or The Wire, for example) is its art direction and the look of the show.
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It’s hard to reconcile one’s love for art in a way to the personal feelings. I’m not as experimental in my art preferences as a lot of people — I don’t listen to droning music and find, as mentioned, Earth to be a mostly boring band — but I do try to expand my mind in terms of art. I like some pretty dissonant metal, I listen to hip hop, I like music that’s not necessarily very accessible. I also, like any reasonable person, find some genres to be largely without value. Because I’m over 15 years old, most punk rock is useless to me; watching Tim Armstrong try to sing like a teenager is ridiculous.
(Some of that is simple the dial moving, culturally. In the 1960s, the Beatles were pretty subversive to the Mad Men old guard, but, man. Captain Beefheart was really the weird shit.)
But, the inherent nature of music and technology — it’s awfully easy to record an entire album on one’s computer in the 21st century — makes it so that so much good music is available. There are artists on labels, artists that get on the radio, artists that are featured in magazines, but there is an even larger group of artists who are nowhere near the public’s consciousness.
I came to Worker Bee via a blog. Not Tiny Mix Tapes or some other music blog, but rather the USS Mariner, a blog about a baseball team I do not follow. But, at the time, I was a baseball fan before I was anything else and would watch hours of baseball every week, trying to grasp nuance in the game. Called by Derek Zumsteg “is ridiculously obscure,” the album is akin to an Explosions in the Sky record, all anticipation and climax. It’s befuddling to me that more people don’t know about this record, but I wouldn’t have heard anything about if, were I not reading USSM that day.
