#100: Beastie Boys Video Anthology

(originally published June 20, 2012)

Pollywog Stew (1982)

I never knew the Beastie Boys did straight-up punk.

Licensed to Ill (1986)

“(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)” was impossible to avoid. The video was on heavy MTV rotation, and I disliked the Beastie Boys for many reasons: shouty lyrics, frat-boy antics, low-level homophobia. Of all the things to fight for, I thought, why is partying first? But the biggest reason was that hip-hop wasn’t on my radar; I was twelve, and only making the transition from Top 40 to Euro synth-pop.

Paul’s Boutique (1989)

At Barnes & Noble, I spread all the alternative music magazines I could find in front of me on the table so that everyone could see how alternative I was. Even though Paul’s Boutique got plenty of positive press, my antipathy towards the Beastie Boys had evolved into indifference. They were mainstream, I thought, and to hell with the mainstream! I was too busy with the review of the latest Peter Murphy album and the up-and-coming Nine Inch Nails, who I suspected might get big.

Check Your Head (1992)

R___ had a poetry class with me. He wore baseball caps backwards and was in a fraternity: in other words, the type I associated with the Beastie Boys. And, sure enough, when I delivered a copy of my workshop poem to his dorm, there, on the floor, was Check Your Head. Mark Strand took a liking to R___’s work, much to my dismay. Strand held up phrases of his for us to examine: a crumb of soap. Grandmother slurping soup. I wondered, How was this possible? Strand gave me a C, and I retreated to the Baltimore raves, which frat boys hadn’t yet infiltrated.

Ill Communication (1994)

In X-Force #43, Rictor (a mutant with the ability to create seismic waves) takes his teammate Shatterstar (a warrior from another dimension) to the Limelight to teach him about human feelings. When Shatterstar hears “Sabotage,” he notes the atavism of the song, how the bass rattles his bones. When a young girl tries to dance with him, he runs away, wondering what it would take to make him feel human. Years later, he and Rictor become lovers.

Hello Nasty (1998)

Ad-Rock apologized for his past homophobia in a letter to Time Out New York. “There are no excuses, but time has healed our stupidity,” he wrote. “We have learned and sincerely changed since the 80s.” He takes it a step further in “Alive” when he raps “Homophobics ain’t OK,” while wearing a fuzzy powder-blue jumpsuit.

Hot Sauce Committee Part 2 (2011)

Adam Yauch passed away from cancer about a month ago. A friend in Brooklyn told me about passing a beauty salon that had a hand-written sign reading ‘R.I.P. MCA.’ I didn’t know what it meant, my friend said. Neither did I. Adam Yauch, to me, was not MCA but the founder of Oscilloscope Laboratories and vegan Buddhist. But, rewatching the videos, I realized how Adam Yauch is inseparable from MCA, the way I’m inseparable from my 80s self for which I have yet to apologize. There he is dressed like a scruffy 80s motorcycle rocker; then again with short-cropped gray hair. There he is his delivering a gruff rap about beer; then again criticizing disrespect towards women. There he is, still fighting.

#79: W. C. Fields—Six Short Films

(originally published Apr. 9, 2011)

Pool Sharks

The University of Houston’s reading series invited heavy-hitters from around the world. In my three years alone: Seamus Heaney, Mario Vargas Llosa, Salman Rushdie, Edna O’Brien, amongst others. After the readings, wealthy donors living in the River Oaks neighborhood would host receptions for the biggest names at their houses. A satellite image of River Oaks Boulevard shows one palatial mansion after another, each with a chlorine-blue outcropping, a de rigueur private pool.

The Golf Specialist

River Oaks Boulevard ends in a loop in front of the River Oaks Country Club. It boasts 18 holes of golf across 6,868 yards of Bermuda grass. Players are expected to repair divots and marks on the greens. Soft spikes only. A marshal enforces tee times. A guardhouse along River Oaks Boulevard keeps wayward graduate students from getting too close. From our old, rickety cars, we saw the white colonnades and trimmed hedges and knew that we’d gone too far.

The Dentist

Marion Barthelme, Donald Barthelme’s widow, also hosted parties at her house, in the West University area. Her house, in comparison, seemed more modest than the ones in River Oaks, even though she had remarried to the former CEO of Tyco International. Marion, not surprisingly, was much more involved with the University of Houston’s creative writing program. After her receptions, for instance, she pulled out a stack of newly-bought Tupperware containers. For leftovers, she told us. I know how you writers get hungry. None of us were shy about claiming one. For days afterwards: cold lamb brochettes, chunks of unidentified French cheese, beggar’s purses. Our teeth remembered how it felt to eat.

The Fatal Glass of Beer

At these receptions, booze flowed freely. We sat on her sofa and looked around her house, scrutinizing the signatures on the artwork lining her walls. She had Picasso pencil sketches along the stairwell. One late night, red-rimmed wine glasses and empty beer bottles occupying every flat surface, one student pointed out the de Kooning in the living room, and another student, clearly blitzed, said, “Yeah, that. That’s just a decorative de Kooning.”

The Pharmacist

In the display case separating the dining room from the living room, Marion had a small, wooden box with antique pharmacist’s bottles—clear, small ones used to hold powders and tinctures and ointments. These, however, were filled with marbles and sand and sea glass and pinfeathers. I wanted to shake them, just to hear the sound the objects inside made. “Bad idea,” someone said. “I’m pretty sure that’s a Cornell box.”

The Barber Shop

I learned recently that Marion Barthelme died from cancer. She lived not far from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, and I wonder what treatments she had sought. I wonder if her hair had fallen out. That’s a stereotype, of course—Susan Sontag would have my hide for that—but there’s no other way to think of Marion than with her brown hair, packing away hors d’oeuvres, and we graduate students lining up, grateful, as always, for her generosity.