Essays

Letter to my childhood home, for an Art House Co-op project. Transcription follows.

Most of you have probably already heard, but today the White Stripes announced their official break-up as a band. They won't be doing any more live shows from here on out, nor will they be recording any new material. It's not exactly a surprise--the "Great White Northern Lights" tour plays like a farewell, and with the recent vinyl reissues of the first three albums, it's seemed like the end was in sight for a while now.

But it's still sad.

I first heard them in college, through my first boyfriend, who, in retrospect, had excellent taste that I never gave him credit for. He gave me a new vinyl copy of Elephant as a gift. I was baffled by it, but this was a period when I was baffled by the fact that vinyl records were still being manufactured at all, so maybe I can be pardoned for that. It's been a long time since I really thought about it, but I think he was really crazy about that album at the time. That was something he wanted to share with me, something he really wanted me to like. And I was so neutral about it for a long time. I didn't really know what to think of it.

And then, some time later, I heard "Hotel Yorba," and it tapped out the rhythms of my soul. And I heard a couple of their blues and jazz covers, and that's all it took to put me in love.

Really, the White Stripes represent a door of enlightenment opening for me. Before that, I didn't really realize there was good music. Or at least not good modern music. I listened to the radio, or my mom's old records, or whatever I could get from whichever program was the illegal download flavor of the week, and I had to be satisfied with it. And then here, all of a sudden, this music that's almost punk but also blues and rock and everything else, and it's bizarre but sincere, and it's like, "I didn't know people could still do this. Why didn't I know there was anything like this?"

It's a shame I'll never get a chance to see them perform live. I've seen the Dead Weather, and I reckon I'll see Jack White perform again anytime I get the chance, but it's not the same thing. The White Stripes was a weird project--a divorced couple, pretending to be brother and sister, making this excited, honest, nostalgic music but also creating this mythology, this fictional world of iconic symbols that is, in its own way, just as real as the tangible universe. That mythology is part of the appeal, even when--maybe especially when--you know that it's totally put on. You know they're playing make-believe, and yet you're completely willing to buy into it, to segue temporarily into this alternate universe. I'm not sure how they pulled that off, but the White Stripes did, and I don't think there will ever be anything quite like that again.

I think that's part of what makes the end of this project so sad. The music will live forever, but the mythology is only real as long as they feed it, and they're done feeding it, and now it's dried up and all that's left is the reality. Who knows what that reality is--if they've just moved beyond the kind of wild, youthful spirit of the Stripes, or if Jack and Meg have drifted apart to a point where the brother-sister game doesn't feel good to play anymore, or if they're out of ideas for what to do artistically with a two-piece blues garage rock ensemble, or if they just felt in their bones that it was over and they should let it go peacefully. Most likely a combination of factors. But the fiction is dead now, and it's a sad thing any time a fiction dies.

I don't usually pay attention to MPAA movie ratings anymore--they lose all meaning when you become an adult--but recently, the local cineplex has instituted a new policy with regards to admitting people to R-rated movies. Their policy is to card "anyone who looks under thirty." You know, just like liquor stores and bars do.

Except establishments selling alcohol have a strong incentive to make sure buyers are of legal age: alcohol is a controlled substance, potentially fatal when too much is imbibed, and--reasonable or not--there are heavy legal penalties in place to discourage sales to minors. When you could lose your liquor license over a twenty-year-old buying beer from you, demanding verification of age, even from those who look like adults, is completely reasonable. But there is no law out there to penalize movie theaters for letting a fifteen-year-old see an R-rated movie, and for good reason: seeing a movie is unlikely to hurt anyone, even if the (completely arbitrary) MPAA rating says it's not appropriate for them.

The MPAA rating system is screwed up anyway, though. More and more I think we should scrap the one we have and come up with a new one based on a more holistic view of the movies being rated, instead of counting the swear words or pelvic thrusts. I've actually thought about this a lot, to the point where I've investigated the systems used in other countries and come up with one of my own based on what I think makes the most sense in these.

Here's my idea:

• General Audience: All ages. Encompassing what is currently labeled as G and PG, and maybe some of the lower levels of PG-13. The common swears, innuendo, mild nudity depending on context, mild violence, etc. would all be okay. The average parent does not care much about these things. They would not keep their kid from watching Short Circuit, for instance, despite the fact that people say the word "shit" in it.


• 12+: Young teens and up. This would include the bulk of what is now labeled PG-13, also throwing in some things that got rated R solely for nudity, drug use or swearing. Like the 1970s and '80s version of PG (think Jaws or Monty Python movies).


• 15+: Older teens and adults. What is currently called "soft R": movies rated R mostly for reasons like a lot of bad language, nudity, or non-violent sex scenes. Depending on the context, violence that is not extremely graphic but is nasty or frequent could end up as 15+.


• Adults Only: Movies including a lot of graphic violence, blood and gore, or the mixture of sex and violence. Very explicit non-violent sex scenes could push things into this category, too, depending. This would be the only rating that requires ID to enter. Not sure what the cutoff age would be--I'd be tempted to suggest sixteen instead of eighteen.

The vast majority of movies would end up classified as General or 12+. Relatively few movies would be Adults Only--mostly action, horror, and some satires and dramas. Part of the idea here is to make it a little harder for kids to see violence and a little easier for them to see nudity, naughty language or non-violent sexual content, which is demonized in the current rating system despite being pretty inoffensive on the grand scale of things.

Admission to the levels above "General" would be at the theater's discretion. Kid looks like they might be too young to go to a 15+? Don't sell them a ticket (unless their parent is with them or comes by and says it's okay for their kid to see this movie). I like the idea of allowing older teens into an "Adults only" film, maybe only with an adult accompanying them, but forbidding younger children from coming in at all.

Basically, I'm asking for a common-sense rating system based on how parents actually decide whether material is appropriate for a child to watch, and common-sense enforcement of that rating. Movies are relatively low on the "things that might hurt your child" scale, and kids are more resilient than adults give them credit for. The existence of an "adults only" category in my scheme is more for the benefit of adults who want to see a movie in peace than for the benefit of the kids.

Let me begin by pointing out that I am a strong believer in the right of animals to be free of human-inflicted cruelty. Animals deserve to live pleasant lives with appropriate food and shelter, adequate exercise, social interaction and, when the time comes, as painless a death as possible. Most of us can agree that it is wrong to cause pain or discomfort to animals for petty reasons.

It is important for you to know this because I am about to speak out against PETA, and they seem to be convinced that anyone who disagrees with them is an elephant-beater who wears live cats on her feet and loves thinking about cows being abused while eating a huge pile of bloody meat. I may like to eat a huge pile of bloody meat, but only from a cow who has lived a nice life. Just so you know.

When I was a little one, the thing I wanted most was a pet monkey. I grew up in a household moderately interested in exotic pets--at various times we had miniature horses, llamas, African pygmy hedgehogs, parrots, foxes, a skunk, and Bengal cats, and had acquaintances who had emus, deer, zebras and even a serval cat that literally clawed its way through its owner's bathroom door. My family had toyed with the idea of getting a wallaby or a fennec fox. Yet my mother still didn't consider a monkey to be an appropriate pet.

In retrospect I am relieved that she didn't give in on that one (mostly because there is no ending for that kind of story that does not involve stitches), but at the time I found it unreasonable. Of course monkeys were safe, I thought; otherwise they wouldn't sell them! I didn't see what could be wrong with having a little organ grinder monkey to ride around on my shoulders wherever I went. I fantasized about it.

I didn't know if I was going to write about this, but over the last few days it has been progressively weighing harder and harder on my mind. There's been an onslaught of celebrity deaths over the last month or so, and usually even in the best of times this kind of thing serves to remind me of my own mortality. But Michael Jackson. There's a part of my brain that doesn't even believe it's possible.

I was never a huge fan, but I've liked his music since I was a little one. And I liked him as a person, and I think he deserved better than how he wound up. He seemed like a sweet guy--very troubled in a wide variety of ways, but a sweet guy. I wish I could have met him or seen him in concert or something before he died, or even just sent him a nice letter to tell him he's not the only oddball in the world, that I think he's a good person. Would it have made a difference? Probably not. But maybe it would have, in some small way. I agonize about this kind of thing, I'm sorry.

Actually, when I initially heard that he was going to the hospital, I sincerely believed he had been revived and would be fine. And that I would have the opportunity to send him a pleasant little card. That would probably have made me feel better than it would have made him feel, but I don't know. I really don't like that this amazingly skilled performer who's spent twenty years being a media punching bag died before he could have any public redemption. In death I guess he finally has it--it took him being gone forever for people to realize they loved him after all. That may be the saddest thing.

And I don't think he actually molested any kids, for the record.

A lot of people have ridiculed the sort of international grief that's sprung up in light of his death, but I think today's Achewood nails it. Chris Onstad really captured most of my feelings about the whole thing in that strip and in this little article, written in-character as Ray Smuckles:

What I think a lotta folks are feelin' now is a regret. Not regret that a man died; no. They regret that for almost three decades they been mockin' this guy.

And, in a nice counterbalance to the tragedy, here's a nice little humanizing anecdote about the King of Pop from someone who worked at a laserdisc store where he used to shop.

It has come to my attention that VHS tapes are officially no longer being manufactured as of January 2009. We all knew it was coming (does anyplace actually sell new VHS tapes anymore?), but it still feels awfully bittersweet. It's the end of an era.

Very soon there will be a generation of children who do not know what it means to rewind. We (you and I, gentle reader) are among the last to have listened with anticipation to that mechanical whine, waiting for the familiar click and grinding gears to signal that it was all right to press "Play."

We are among the last to open up our VCRs to retrieve "eaten" tapes (and in some cases that act awoke the spirit of the engineer within us).

We are among the last to instinctively turn tapes on their sides to make sure the side of the box says "VHS," not "BETA."

We are among the last to adjust the tracking.

So give your old VCR a hug tonight. Pull out that well-worn copy of Jurassic Park or Mortal Kombat or, God help you, Evil Toons, and give it one more run for old times' sake. Curl up with those memories and take comfort from the familiar sounds and rituals and unabashed flaws that came with the VHS format, for that shared experience belongs to us and our youth.

NOTE: The image is a great VHS memorial t-shirt from Nakatomi.