Reading Shortlist

In an attempt to archive some of my favorite internet content, here is a shortlist of great articles, blogs, and post.

- In honor of 9/11 I give you a beautiful NY Times article that captures the attitude of New York.

- People infer a lot based on the emails you send. Check this out to see how.

- A new political party has formed around our perception of ownership and copyright. They're called the Pirate Party of the United States.

- Users click on links from Facebook Fan pages 9% of the time on Mondays, 10% of the time on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and much less frequently on other days of the week. (Business Insider)

- Great Steve Rubel Post: The Power of Pull

- Cool Blog Post: What Baby Names Teach Us About Viral Marketing.

- An interesting article that looks at Twilight from a feminist perspective: Is Twilight Bad For Your Love Life?

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Music Recommendation: Jupiter Wave, stripped down alternative rock with a little bounce.

When Will This Happen In the NCAA?

It's only a matter before something like this happens in college sports. A female to male or male to female student athlete will want to continue to play the sport they love. But how will people react and what will happen?


Adoring Andrew Bird's use of language and absolute brilliance. I've never heard a more beautiful song when it comes to words as craft in pure sound.

Andrew Bird - "Tenuousness"

The Finales

I don't watch much TV but last Thursday the second to last episode of Ugly Betty led me straight into the two hour finale of Grey's Anatomy, and ever since I've felt an increased awareness of the fragility of life along with a dash of loss and sadness (I can't help but feel like the characters are just a little bit real). Both shows, while quite different in many ways, featured screen stealing darlings battling cancer and marriages that can't seem to wait.

The common plot lines have me curious about what the screenwriters think about each other's shows. For example, are they concerned about common stories ("Darn, they used cancer on their show too!")? Even more than that, I wonder if the finales of today are especially focused on the value of the moment and the people that surround us because of the landscape of our lives. Is the recession changing plot lines, leading us away from displays of conspicuous consumption and replacing it with a reflection of our rekindled values? Or maybe I'm crazy.

In other news while we're on the subject of television, James Parker has an excellent article in The Atlantic about the allure of Spongebob Squarepants. Check out Spongebob's Golden Dream here for a nice article about how Spongebob
is an excellent example of the embodiment of the American Dream in Bikini Bottom, a effortless setting for the portrayal of a postmodern society.

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Today's music recommendation is a dose of pop electronica doused in grand sweeping statements and a lyrical fascination with the atmosphere. Check out Owl City for a sound that resembles Hellogoodbye after a discussion of string theory.

Owl City - Maybe I'm Dreaming



Owl City - The Airway

A Shameless Event Plug For An HX Event

As some of you may or may not know, one of my many moonlighting occupations resides with HX Magazine. This weekend the magazine is hosting a Gay Life Expo in the NYC Javitz center (11th Av/36th St), so if you're fresh off the Stop the H8 Prop 8 protest near City Hall this weekend and wondering where to go afterward, walk Northwest young man/woman/anything in between.

The Expo features networking events, a career center, vendors, charities, and much more. Obviously, it's the performers and musicians that have me most excited. Below you'll find a list and short summary of what some of them are all about. Enjoy and I hope to see you in the Javitz center this weekend.
SATURDAY / NOV 15

Show # 1
The Marvelous Wonderettes
Poodle skirts and wholesome 1950’s high school girl stereotypes coupled with sidesplitting antics and a ten year reunion that takes place in the typical miniskirt culture of 1968, The Marvelous Wondrettes are a sensational act that will take the Gay Life Expo by storm with their renditions of “Respect,” Son of a Preacher Man,” and much, much more.

Jonathan Whitton
One look from Jonathan Whitton’s glimmering eyes and you’ll melt into heavenly eternity.

Emily McNamara
Emily McNamara grew up belting “Bettie Davis Eyes” into her hairbrush as she swooped around the living room with creative stuffed-animal-leaping dance moves. If you ask her about it today she’ll still admit to the same living room renditions, only now she is living the life she had dreamed of as a girl.

Show # 3
Naommon
French born fashionista Naommon (pronounced NOW-mon) crossed the pond with a grungy, florescent New York in mind. Now based in Harlem, his latest collection of bouncy bass lines and dark, sequin lined disco tracks spew with sultry refrains and images of the beautifully moody New York that keeps us gliding across the dance floor against hard bodies covered in sweat.

Peppermint
To know Peppermint is to love Peppermint. She’s been deemed HX Magazine’s Drag Queen of the Year, Entertainer of the Year in the Glammy Awards, and a part of Paper Magazine’s 10th Annual Beautiful People issue. Constantly on the nightlife circuit and always a pleasure, Peppermint is sure to deliver

Lori Michaels “Me & the Girls”
Lori Michaels just released her full length album “Living My Life Out Loud” and she’s ready to rock the stage with her Pink meets Timbaland in the back of a hot club style.

Murray Hill
Polyester clad, mustachioed Murray Hill emceed Madonna’s record release party, hosted a Antony and the Johnsons show, and appeared in Gossip’s video for “Listen Up.” If there’s anyone who is connected in the New York performance world it’s Murray Hill. He may not have won mayor of New York in 1997 (he received 341 write-in votes) but he’s guaranteed to step up to the stage and fill the room with laughter.

SUNDAY / NOV 16
Show # 1
Neon Glitter Bliss
If beats could kill I wouldn’t mind going out on the ethereal, hook filled syncopation of Neon Glitter Bliss. Pounding the scene with warm original sounds, the Brooklyn based electro pop trio sounds wonderfully familiar but completely original at the same time. The name says it all; this out of the box trio is pure bliss.

Show # 2
Brian Kent
Recently featured on Project Runway and Sirius Radio’s Out Hot 20, as well as Billboard’s #5 Breakout Dance Club Play, Brian Kent’s light, airy progressive house throbs with sexual energy. Earnest and melodic, but also spinning in whirlwinds of sound, these club thumpers will keep house fiends hot under the collar all night long.

Show # 3
Broadway Boys
Everything seems perfect when the hottest voices currently working on the New York stage agree to dress in dandy suits and let it all belt out. Redefining the classics we can’t live without and making original compositions sound as appealing as the standards, the six hunks that make up the Broadway Boys promise to keep you on the edge of your sequin seats in sheer delight.

Dorothy Bishop
Redefining everything from Puccini and Dusty Springfield to Cher and Donna Summer, this Southern born, Yale trained soprano, serves up tantalizing opera hovering over fast paced dance tracks and undeniable synth hooks. Many have called Dorothy Bishop’s performances “popratic,” and there’s no doubt her sense of humor and three octave vocal range will leave you begging for more.

Brett Gleason
A former New York State Gymnastics Champion, Brett Gleason has always been drawn into obscure musical landscapes. Now a one man band, he plays his own piano and guitar before weaving the live sounds into dark digital soundscapes. Part Fiona Apple, part Aphex Twin, Gleason will serve up a New York based ferocious sonic chaos that actually makes sense.

Margoh! Channing
Claiming William Hung and Britney Spears as inspiration, Margoh! Channing has finally embarked on the singing career she said she lost after a night of undeniable passion with Neil Sedaka. With her fluffy black updo, humongous sense of humor, and long black sequined dress she’s sure to bring you along on a snarky, playful romp through fifteen minutes of fame that will surely last a lifetime.

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Neon Glitter Bliss

In the spirit of this weekend's expo, you can of course see this transcending trio this weekend in the Javitz center. My favorite tracks are "Wilted Flower" and "Drama." In fact, I would very much enjoy a society where dramatic situations were suddenly created with people gallivanting along and singing "I don't want no, (high voice) drama; in my life this, (high voice) moment. I don't want no, (high voice) drama; till the casket, (high voice) closes."

To enjoy the music, click on "Audio" in the widget below and then select the songs you'd like to listen to (or just follow the link above).

Magazine Meltdown

Radar Magazine recently folded (see Print Is Dead party invite to the left). Time Inc. cut 600 employees, Conde Nast endured a round of layoffs yesterday, Portfolio is struggling, and Men's Vogue just died. The economy is bad but this is the worst time ever in what was once the mostly recession proof magazine industry.

I want to know where the glamour of the magazine industry went. It's certainly not online because no one really knows how to monetize Internet based magazine type content effectively, and I'm not seeing it anywhere else. Apparently it discintegrated in the mist.

I've been told that magazines work better than any other media in the three B's (the beach, the bathroom, and the bedroom). We might be moving toward a Kindle like device that stores video, books, the electronic version of the New York Times, and all your necessary feeds, but you probably wouldn't ever take your Kindle to the beach. If only for that reason, and that reason alone, magazines should continue to thrive.

You can give me the recession but please don't take away my magazines. The best will undoubtedly survive, but when they do I hope these media empires leave room for an aspiring hard worker and dedicated fan.

Always a reader,

Lauren Proctor

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A Fitting Music Recommendation

Tobias Froberg (Bjorn Yttling Remix) - "A Brickwall"

The Yo of Gender and Thomas Beatie's Pregnancy

Language has always been harsh on the notion of gender neutrality. The romantic languages are laden with relegated masculine and feminine forms and his/her and (s)he never really worked well when man has made an attempt to address his fellow human counterparts of unknown gender.

But language mirrors who we are and how we feel, and I'm learning more each day that our society wants to imprison and keep separate the notion of maintaining dichotomous gender. There's XY and XX, Adam and Eve, he and she. Anything in between or outside the norm makes most of us uncomfortable, and for that reason a gender neutral pronoun has never caught on.

At least not until recently. In the 1990s Baltimore, Maryland students started popularizing "yo" and linguists have been paying increasing attention to the tiny revolution kids have started on the playground (Click here to see NPR's January 31, 2008 story on "yo"). Instead of saying he or she--or perhaps better yet, his/her--students started casually referring to their counterparts as "yo." "Yo sat down on the chair" they say, and although some are dissatisfied with the gender neutral candidate I think it's a significant step forward.

Significant because it marks a small group of young people who are freeing their notion of gender. As hopeful as yo seems though, we still live in a world that's uncomfortable with anything that deviates from the traditional gender norms. Masculine and feminine descriptors are too often stabs like "he throws like a girl" or "you should act like a lady for a change." But in such a fluid society men should be allowed to love musicals and women should be allowed to follow football.

Even if the English language is ready to lose some of its gendered tendencies society is not. Men and women are expected to perform their genders, and if someone who is genetically of one gender performs the opposite gender people are shocked and personally offended.

I thought at one point that the emergence of yo and the transexiness of David Beckham and other "beautiful" males would help us slowly lose our sense of gender but it has not. The reaction to Thomas Beatie's pregnancy has revealed that we are right where we've been since the advent of language; uncomfortable with liberation from gender.

It's the puzzled stare from newscasters, comparisons to sci-fi, and the appalled reaction from citizens that disappoints me most in reference to Thomas Beatie's pregnancy. Too many people are astonished and unaware when it comes to the situation. It's okay to feel angry and confused about Thomas Beatie. After all some people have gone through life without ever hearing terms like top surgery or ftm. We can forgive these people simply because they do not know.

What's difficult for me is the people who undermine the legitimacy of Thomas Beatie as a human being. Beatie may not have male anatomy but he acts and feels like a man. Some people may argue that he can't be a man because he is performing the very sacred female act of having a baby. I personally believe that Beatie's having a baby doesn't compromise his manhood. He's acted like and been accepted as a man for more than eight years. In my mind this doesn't take away his maleness. In fact I would argue that in many ways it makes him what we would traditionally call "more manly."

Regardless of Beatie's sex or people's religion I will argue a simple point. Thomas Beatie and his wife are people. Like most other people, they want to raise a child together. They believe they can bring another person into the world and teach them right and wrong. Beatie wrote an article about his pregnancy for The Advocate (click here to read it), and there's no question that what he wrote was not only thoughtful, but also elegant. The decision Beatie and his wife made was a significant one. Whether they anticipated such a barrage of publicity or not is unknown to me, but I hope that one day people will look on this as a pivotal point in history, a point when we started unchaining the strict notion of divided genders and started seeing people for who they are. If that doesn't happen then I at least hope that we remember one simple thing.

The girl Beatie and his wife bring into this world is a person. The couple who had her are happy and stable, and they will love their child the way any heterosexual straight couple would love their child. We need to treat the Beatie's with respect. After all, they are opening our minds to a concept that has existed (but been squelched) for decades. We can continue to look on this situation like a freak of nature abnormality or we can turn our heads and respect these people for the human beings that they are. And maybe, just maybe, we can see Thomas Beatie for more than the gender roles he is breaking. I anticipate that day, the moment when CNN's story stops focusing on gender violations and starts seeing Beatie and his family as people who love like anyone else.

Yo can only hope.

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Today's music recommendation: The Rescues. Get lost in their beautiful lyrics and layered sound.

Another Reason to Love LaurenProctor32.blogspot.com

Before I formally begin with today's update I want to thank my readers. I checked my Google Analytics page today to track visitors to this site and I'm delighted. I've always been happy to find that the average person, regardless of how they find this blog, spends more than two minutes on this site every time they pull it up in their browser. That could mean one of two things. Either you're opening up my site and getting distracted by external sources or you're actually reading these posts. I hope for the latter. I've been excited to see slow growth of readership but lately you readers have multiplied rapidly. Thank you. I appreciate your visits. And now would be the time to ask for donations to keep this blog going and me in graduate school (just kidding).

Because of the jump in readership I've been inspired to make this blog even better. I've contemplated a complete layout makeover but for now I think I'm satisfied with the functional simplicity of what we have now. Instead I've got a special treat for music obsessives.

I've decided to add a sidebar on the right side of this page that includes calendar updates for upcoming album releases. Such updates might not be relevant to the normal person, but for years I've searched relentlessly for a comprehensive list of upcoming album releases to no avail. I have yet to find anything respectable so I've decided to track upcoming releases myself. If they don't provided it then make it happen yourself, eh?

I'll admit right off the bat that my list isn't respectable yet. The free calendar system I'm using only allows a certain number of daily updates and I've reached the maximum updates many, many times. In the age of web 2.0 I'm sure there's a fast way to create a calendar like this (so if you're a coder and want to help me create something that would do this I would pay you somehow) but as of now every single update on this release calendar is manual. When I receive information from PR I try to add the album release dates to the calendar, so for now we'll just call it a mini release calendar. But it's a work in progress and I create it anyway for editorial storyboards on my music magazine. For now it's just a sidebar for a music enthusiast who is interested in who is releasing a new album. If one of you likes it that's enough for me.

Below you'll find a sample of the actual calendar I keep. Feel free to add it to your RSS newsfeeds, check the URL yourself, or just follow along on the blog's sidebar. Hopefully someone will enjoy this thoroughly:




In honor of a February 5th release I've just added to the calendar, I'd like to feature Lightspeed Champion This slightly eccentric yet accessible musician (and ex-Test Icicle) plays unique low key tracks with a strange and easy sound. Lightspeed Champion's sound gets sweeter and richer with every listen, so give him a chance. Some of my favorite tracks include, "Dry Lips" and "Devil Tricks."

And as always, you can also give him a listen on Youtube below:

"Doing Alcohol, Drugs, and Racing Vehicles..."

In a recent blog I revealed my addiction to magazines. To share the reading experience I might start posting pieces I find interesting. The New York Times recently had a nice snippet about Cambodia's prime minister. The piece is below:

"CAMBODIA: LEADER SEVERS TIES WITH GAY DAUGHTER
Prime Minister Hun Sen said he planned to legally disown his adopted daughter, who is a lesbian, so she cannot claim any inheritance. Mr. Hun Sen made the disclosure about his closely guarded family life in a speech at a graduation. "My adopted daughter now has a wife,” he said. “I’m quite disappointed." At the same time, he appealed to people not to discriminate against homosexuals, adding, "Most of them are good people and are not doing alcohol, drugs or racing vehicles.""


1) Phew. I'm glad to know that most gays are good people who don't do alcohol, drugs, or race vehicles. I was especially worried about the racing vehicles part. We wouldn't want gay people peeling out of Diva's on Saturday nights, their knuckles white from gripping the steering wheel and putting the petal to the metal.
2) Don't worry, adopted daughter of Prime Minister Hun Sen. You've got real family now. You and your wife are formally invited to holidays at my place.


Since Sasha Frere-Jones' sidebar in one of the most recent New Yorkers I pulled out some of my old grime music. Grime launched in London in the early 2000 and is known for a combination of 2-step beats and double time rapping. Grime has quicker, heavier beats than America's rap, and many claim it parallels the feeling you get when boxing. One of the most recognized grime artists on this side of the pond is Dizzee Rascal, but he comes from an extensive pool of talent in the UK.

Although some consider grime hardcore rap, it's actually embraced by a large number of nerdy music enthusiasts who embrace the genre for the way it plays with language. Some of my friends have literally labored over grime songs to understand every word. Before jumping into grime here's a quick guide to some of the British slang you'll need to master before truly appreciating this rap:

1. Nekkle - Great, uberkewl
2. Bare - Lots
3. Trainers - Sneakers
4. Jumpsuit - Sweatshirt

Below you can watch a little grime if you care to...

Please note, the opinions expressed by the rappers above may not express my own personal views.

Magazine Security

I am obsessed with magazines. My coffee table is lined with the latest issues of The New Yorker, Time Magazine, OUT, Inc., Wired, Rolling Stone, Blender, Atlantic Monthly, and a pile of other publications. All said and done, I'm a subscriber to 16 magazines, and I scour around until the mail comes each day so I can verify the arrival of each new publication.

My magazines arrive at a mean time of 3:53 p.m. on their designated days via USPS, and as soon as I grab them out of the box, my number one priority in life becomes reading the most recent issue cover to cover. I excuse the antisocial behavior that naturally ensues by claiming I'm simply attempting to "stay abreast of all the going ons in the world" or saying that reading will, "improve my writing substantially."

The aforementioned may be true, but I'll be the first to admit I have a problem. Whether I'm going to the club, the softball field, or the classroom, it's nearly impossible for me to leave the house without at least one periodical in hand. To do so gives me anxiety, as if I decided to stroll outside naked. Keeping a magazine or two on hand at all times makes me feel safe though, like a bullet proof vest or security blanket.

When I bring periodicals to social events I don't sit in front of a group of friends and casually delve into my magazines as everyone else chats. And while I used to read in the dugout between innings, I've learned that's a little eccentric in itself as well. Instead, I carry periodicals with me for that coveted moment when no one is around and I can steal in a few informative paragraphs.

Perhaps I need therapy to help me deal with the flood of media constantly invading my space and beckoning for me to read it? Or maybe one day I'll finally achieve full clarity regarding what's really going on in the world. On that day I envision myself writing like one of my idol columnists, Lauren Collins, Patricia Marx, or many other brilliant writers. Even then, you couldn't force me to cancel my subscriptions.

Before I head off to read some more of Wired, one of my musical obsessions is Bonde Do Role. Loosen those hips, strap on your dancing shoes, and give "Solta O Frango" a listen below: