musical confessions

dear friends,

i am just going to say it. i like this song. i must, because i have been listening to it almost non-stop since i returned from canada. well played muchmoremusic. well played.

in my defense i have been averaging four or five hours of sleep a night. perhaps i am just nostolgic for my (much) younger life?

l8r,
cam

samamidon=well worth a trip on nj transit

dear friends,

last night brought a return to nyc-show going after a long and inadvertent hiatus. it was lovely to see ms. hannah and to return to tonic. (as an aside, while waiting for hannah, i decided that i am pretty sure the lower east side toy company across the street is not a toy company at all.)

samadion is a little folkier than i have been used to of late, but i really enjoyed the show. i recommend it for the following groups:

- those raised on an early diet of johnny cash, patsy cline and willie nelson
- those whose dads aren't as rad as mine who want to pretend they were raised on above diet
- supporters of music collectives/communes and rotating rosters (see also: work on doveman)
- appreciators of tears for fears covers
- fans of "liturgical dance" (requires going to the show)
- wannabe neo-appalachians (reasonable facsimilie: mildly crunchy)

i have posted two tracks here. how can you say no to a tears for fears cover?

shout, shout let it all out.
cam

shows shows shows

dear friends,

it started off innocently enough, but i have somehow managed to line up 5 (and hopefully 6) shows in the pre-generals era.

tonight- sam amidon cd release at tonic
friday- luke brindley at the living room
april 24th- pela cd release at mercury lounge (have extra tickets!)
may o5th- arcade fire in philly (well, upper darby)
may 06th or may07th- if i am lucky, arcade fire in nyc
may 08th- final fantasy and beirut

show reports to come.

nj transit might be my new study-spot,
cam

Lessons of a CCD Teacher

dear friends,

my young charges were insistent that i watch this.

apparently this is hilarious if you are a 13 year old girl.

i am thisclose to unironically saying kidsthesedays (perhaps with crazy broom waving)

is candy mountain code for something that i am too old and innocent to understand?

cam

when generals are over, i will watch this...

dear friends,

since i have moved to america, i have been asked many times about whether michael moore's portrayal of canada in bowling for columbine was accurate. from now on, i think i might just skip the speech on how sault st. marie is not exactly representative and how many canadians do lock their doors and refer them to this film. it was behind the free-subscriber wall, so i have pasted it below.

and this is not about me being a recovering conservative. i actually do like the moore message too.
cam

ps- tomorrow you might even get an environmentalist-esque rant from me about fiji water (even though it is delicious).

Can't talk to him? Talk about him

A documentary by two Canadian filmmakers questions whether Michael Moore's methods cast a shadow on his message

JENNIE PUNTER

From Monday's Globe and Mail

AUSTIN, TEXAS —

Manufacturing Dissent, a revealing new documentary about popular filmmaker, left-wing social critic and celebrity Michael Moore, set tongues wagging this weekend in Austin, Tex., after its world premiere at the annual South By Southwest (SXSW) film festival. The film, which generated substantial pre-festival buzz, follows Moore on his promotional tour for the Palme d'Or winning film Fahrenheit 9/11 and his "Slacker Uprising" speaking tour before the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Along the way it chronicles his films, television work and controversial episodes in his career through archival footage and interviews with friends and former colleagues. But the film's major thrust is to raise questions about responsibility in documentary filmmaking by examining Moore's methods: Do his movies -- which have inspired legions of young documentarians and helped build a mainstream audience for non-fiction cinema -- reflect the reality of the people and events he films, or are scenes staged or heavily manipulated to serve his agenda? Does his message trump his methods?

Toronto-based co-directors Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk were on hand Saturday night for the film's first public screening, which packed the vintage Paramount theatre, SXSW's flagship venue, and got a warm reception. After the lively post-film Q&A, the discussion spilled onto the street where everyone was still talking about the film and sharing their opinions of Michael Moore. "I used to have a Roger & Me poster in my bedroom," one viewer said, "I'll still see his films -- they're entertaining -- but I'll definitely question what I'm being shown."

It's no secret Moore is a polarizing force on the American political scene, but criticism of his work and views -- from TV pundits to bloggers, in books and documentaries with titles such as Michael Moore Hates America -- has largely come from the right end of the spectrum. Caine and Melnyk -- whose previous films include Junket Whores (1998), about the Hollywood marketing machine, and The Frank Truth (2001), about the satirical scandal magazine -- like Moore's films and support his ideological views.

They set out to make an admiring, straight-up observational biography about Moore as a switch in tone from their last film, Citizen Black (2004), about Conrad Black.

But during the filmmaking process, they hit a fork in the road. "We felt the direction of the documentary was changing because of what we were learning about his methods," said Caine, an Ohio-born journalist and cameraman. "We didn't want the film to be an attack, and there was a lot of hand-wringing about whether we should stop."

The turning point for the filmmakers came after an interview with social activist Jim Musselman, who worked with consumer advocate Ralph Nader for eight years and started a campaign to bring attention to GM president Roger Smith's indifference to plant closings in Flint, Mich., in the mid-1980s. He and Moore, who worked for Nader for a short time, were friends with a shared goal. Moore's debut feature Roger & Me (1989) looks at the effect of the closures on the community and follows his unsuccessful quest for an interview with Smith.

After watching An Unreasonable Man (2006), a documentary about Nader, Melnyk felt Musselman had more to say about Moore. "[Musselman] was very careful," she said about his agreeing to an interview. "He told us Michael interviewed Roger Smith before a shareholders meeting and again at the Waldorf Astoria [in New York] in January 1988 at a show of GM's latest products to its corporate shareholders. The part where they drag him out is in Roger and Me, but Moore also got a 15 minute interview with Smith -- which ended up on the cutting room floor."

"If he was willing to fudge the premise of that film, we wondered if there were similar examples," said Caine, adding, "We understand that documentary-making is like trying to shove 10 pounds into a five-pound can -- you're continually making value judgments. But I feel the less you mediate the material the more truthful it is, at least in the doc realm."

In Manufacturing Dissent, Caine and Melnyk admit to using one of Moore's tricks. They made fake press cards to gain access to Moore's appearance at Kent State University. "We hadn't needed cards to show [up to] that point," Melnyk said. "We felt pretty icky about doing that." The scene ends with the co-directors getting kicked out of the event, as Moore's sister shoves aside Caine's camera.

Throughout production, Caine and Melnyk continually tried to secure a sit-down interview with Moore with no success. They sent a letter to his lawyer, followed by a series of unreturned phone calls and e-mails. Occasionally, at various public appearances, they were able to get close to him with the camera and microphone (although not quite in the "ambush" style Moore popularized) but he would jovially find a way to skirt the request.

"I don't like documentaries," Moore says at one point in a clip from the press conference for Roger & Me at the Toronto International Film Festival. One wonders what he would think of Manufacturing Dissent.

Special to The Globe and Mail

Manufacturing Dissent has its Canadian premiere at the Toronto Hot Docs International Film Festival in April and will be broadcast on Bravo! at a later date.

sociologists (of religion) have not done it better

dear friends,

usually i use this little interweb soapbox to tell you why sociologists are better than journalists and/or generally wonderful. however, today i alert you to two areas that have not adequately been addressed by sociologists of religion (so far as i can tell):

1) the relationship between african american muslims and immigrant muslims. very interesting article in the nytimes.

2) the discernment process in the catholic church (god or the girl via netflix)

ironically, i have been searching for a soc of religion dissertation topic and feeling like the area is sort of saturated at this point. the irony is that i am not the sociologist to tackle either of those topics. i lack the cultural capital to enter the field in the first and well the second is a whole other story.

don't judge me for watching god or the girl!
cam

pela appreciation day

dear friends,

listening to a new pela remix (via brooklyn vegan) has me remembering how much i loved this band when they opened for rainer maria. they are proving to be the perfect accompaniment to gender and american religious history. that is to say, these songs are the only thing that are keeping me from falling asleep.

and also, "don't just stand there, tell me i'm something" is one of the greatest lyrics in the history of ever.

pela-lost to the lonesome
pela-the trouble with river cities

to the working,
cam

true (short) story

dear friends,

someone recently commented to me that when they first met the sfips (that's seminal figure in political science in case you have forgotten) that i work for they were struck by his piercing blue eyes. it put me in mind of this.

this blog is like a russian nesting doll. one story nested inside of another.

cam

an open letter to the prof who has a tramp stamp as his desktop image

dear friends,

like a good little grad student i spent my friday in an all-day workshop on issues of social capital, trust and the welfare state in canada and the us. i was mostly there as a canadian and as political sociologist, but also because the sifps was presenting and the domestic insurgent on my generals committee set it up. on the panel was a prof who i knew of from my former institution. he's in that other department i took classes in. although short, he is quite beloved by the undergrad ladies there and when you catch him and his little ipod and his genius dork glasses rockin' his way back home to the vendome metro, you can't help but acknowledge he's a little spicy.

all of this is just preamble to introducing what i hope is not a full fledged social phenomenon. projected via lcd from his mac (of course) for all the sfips and grad-students to see was his desktop background. random asian characters. like the ones that people think mean 'earth' or 'love' or 'feng shui'. that's right friends... it was like watching a presentation with brief glimpses of some girl's lower back. i am not sure what is the greater offense-- having a ridiculous desktop image projected during a professional presentation (he was a small fish in a big pond and did not bring his game) or lower back tattoos. when discussed with another student who knows the players, it was suggested that one might only be able to take so many undergrads trying to get in your pants before it starts to affect you. this makes me wonder what my undergrad thesis advisor uses as his desktop. i think it might be the above.

i wasted some time google image searching and could find neither his desktop nor a good asian character example for a side by side. but i did find that, which i also hope someday to make the cover of one of my books on women and religion.

if you would like to check out more on tramp stamps, visit the urban dictionary-- this week alone the ol'ud has helped me learn what "afo" and "what it do ma" mean.

unstamped with love,
cam