guys calling girls “dude”

This has been happening more and more to me lately.  What’s up with that?

Do women, when excited about something or making an emphatic statement, say to a man “oh my god, gurrrrl!” No, they do not. A man’s head would swivel 360 degrees around on his neck and he would look at you in that penetrating and accusing way some men have when you say something “wrong.” Yet “dude” flows off the tongue of some men with the ease of “hello.”

I am usually not a stickler for words, and I have little dogma where language is concerned. Racial, sexual, and ethnic epithets and mean names are never cool, but anything else  just about goes. We are intelligent beings; we might as well have fun with communication. Word play, double entendres, puns, metaphors, similes: I’m all for ‘em! But when a guy calls me “dude,” I feel a little strange.

I am certain that this is just a generic term, on the level of “yo!” or “hey!” but it still makes me feel a little unwomanly when I am addressed as “dude.” On the one hand, I’m sure it’s due to the person’s comfort level with me, that I appear approachable or relateable. But people fart and pick their nose around those they feel comfortable around too.

Can you imagine a couple in bed, the man relaxed and glib after a great roll in the hay, and he turns to his woman and says “dude, that was great.” Or how about on a date, when relating a particularly exciting story, the man says to the woman, “dude, you won’t believe it!” Or even between friends, when a man is making a point, an emphatic statement of agreement equal to “hell yah!” or “can you believe it!” or “totally!” the phrase is instead “dude!” Maybe this is the ultimate male compliment: what more self-referential way to indicate agreement, buy-in, and support than to refer to someone else with a slang term for your own gender?

Women do it too. When emphatic or excited or to indicate empathy or sympathy, often a “gurrrrrl” will do. The “urrrrrrl” part of the word is always drawn out, the more mellifluous and extended, the deeper the level of agreement or sympathy. But you’ll never hear a woman speak to a man this way.

Next time a guy addresses me as “dude” I am going to call him “girl” within a few sentences just as an experiment. My money’s on the fact that he hasn’t even noticed he has taken to calling me, in effect, “hey guy” and will be shocked and possibly offended that I have addressed him using feminine slang.

Don’t get your panties in a bunch, girl!

Jeff Mills on mistakes

I was reading a Resident Advisor forum posting for one of the latest podcats the site had put up (Tony Lionni, download it here) and truly shaking in my boots at the harshness of the comments: “His mixing sucks,” “dodgy…” and “not beatmatching using Ableton must be a skill in itself.” I thought “jeezus, what happens if one day I’m asked to do a podcast for RA” because I make mistakes in my sets all the time. They usually happen because I’m trying something or I changed my mind about the next track or sometimes, because someone’s talking to me and I’ve gotten distracted. I hate that this happens, but it’s the nature of the game, especially in small rooms where it’s less a booth and more like a shelf with some record players and anyone and everyone can come and try to talk to you while you’re in the middle of a set.

It’s the subject of another blog post, but sometimes it’s just rude to ignore people, and sometimes it’s rude to not pay attention to what you’re doing and fuck up a mix. It’s a balance, like anything else. But the point is, I make mistakes. If you’re a DJ and you’re reading this, you make mistakes too. I almost wrote “probably make mistakes…” but most DJs I know are pretty damn hard on themselves. We hear stuff no one else does, second guess, criticize every little detail of our sets, etc. Sometimes all that inner focus can be a bit heavy, but the point is, I am all too aware of the mistakes I make (in DJing and in life).

So it is with great relief that my idol in the DJing world, Jeff Mills, has a very balanced outlook on the subject of mistakes. From his recent interview in Time Out New York, here is the quote:

“Mistakes happen all the time!” [Mills] says. “I’ll be thinking
about something so hard, or I’ll be searching for some piece of music
and I’ll change my mind like four times, that the record that’s playing
will just end. But mistakes are human, and a human is playing records
for other humans, so it’s part of the process. It’s when you don’t hear
mistakes, when you don’t hear a human—to me, that’s not very
interesting.”

The first time I watched his Exhibitionist DVD, I was amazed to find that not all his mixes were laser-cut perfect. Naturally, being the pro he is, Mills fixes them in no time at all. But they are not all perfect. Hearing him catch a mix adds another layer of interest to the process, especially listening to someone as technically adventurous and brave as Mills. When I hear Mills live, and I’ve had the honor of hearing him live several times now, I’m never aware of the “mistakes” because everything that is happening is so amazing: musically, energetically. To focus on the “mistakes” seems like such a sour way to be.

Mills played last night at Sullivan Room and brought the house down. His energy was unrivaled. He played from 1:30am until nearly 6am and had everyone in the house who was still standing literally shouting their thanks to him from the dancefloor when the lights finally came up. We danced and sweat and swooned to Mills’ beautiful, hypnotic selections and intricate, layered mixes. The vibe he created was complex, varied, and powerful. He has been my #1 DJ for years and he secured this place in my own personal DJ hierarchy once again. I don’t just love Mills’ DJing, his records, and his label, but his intelligence, humility, dedication, passion, and unwavering focus (you can see it behind the decks; his expression is one of pure concentration). His performance last night inspired me. Coming off of DEMF just a few weeks ago and now Mills: if this is any indication of what music in New York will be like this summer, it’s going to be an AMAZING couple of months.

Kudos to all the DJs and producers out there, to all the dancers, fans, music lovers (don’t file share or rip from YouTube! buy and support electronic music!), venue owners, promoters, labels, and everyone else out there supporting this thing. Don’t be afraid of mistakes; we all make them! They are only bad when you can’t forgive yourself or when you let them cripple you to the point of not being able to move forward. That’s no excuse for sloppiness, but like Mills said, without mistakes, you don’t hear the human component, and it’s there that the real intimacy and personality resides.

PRAISE TECHNO! AND THANK YOU JEFF MILLS!!!

Detroit Metro Airport

As is fitting for a city that is known as much for techno as it is for Motown, there is a connecting passageway between airport terminals that is responsive to music and changes colors and patterns according to what it “hears.”

Many years ago I designed a flyer using a still image from this tunnel. It was an event featuring DJs from NY and Detroit.

And I have one little complaint about Flock: when I am using the blogging tool, I am not able to drop media from the media bar into my blog post. Flock, please consider making the blog tool a little more powerful by allowing the drag-and-drop capabilities of the browser! On that note, I can’t even drag/drop Youtube videos into my blog posts once I’m in the editor at wordpress. Photos, yes, but videos, no. Don’t hate, cooperate!

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What a difference a median makes

I once lived on Carlton Ave., in a tiny studio on the ground floor in a building that was literally sinking. I had a sleeping loft built into the apartment to make more room for myself, and the lopsided building, which was most pronounced on the ground floor, wasn’t having it and after a night or two, the loft literally pulled out of the wall and collapsed…while I was in it.

At that time, Carlton Ave. was no picnic. Perhaps for seagulls, as they were often seen walking around picking at chicken bones that were littered all over the sidewalks, which were of course broken and smeared with all manner of dog poo. The street itself was an eyesore. There was a self-storage place on corner of Carlton and Flushing Ave., and on the corner of Carlton and Park, a liquor store that was armored with inches of bullet-proof glass. What can I say, I needed to move, and thought a ground-floor studio with a private garden (more like a door onto an abandoned, weed-strewn lot) near Fort Greene (sort of) was a find! At least I consistently look on the bright side.

If only Carlton Ave. looked like THIS when I had lived there, I might’ve been able to deal with the slanted floor and ridiculously tiny square footage!

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and here…thanks to Google Maps…34 Carlton Ave., appearantly still sinking into the ground

34 Carlton Ave., fighting off gentrification...

First blog from new mac powerbook via Flock

I am rather loving my new Mac Powerbook. My first impression of Mac, other than its dashing good looks, is its simplicity. It’s so simple, it’s counter-intuitive. Just drag and drop the icon of the app you want into “applications.” Really? That simple? When you launch an installer, it just opens up one window, no dialogue, with two icons: the app and a shortcut to your app folder. You’re kidding, right? It really is that easy.

I installed Adium for IM, Flock for browsing, set up my Flock, opened a new account and customized my administrator account in less the time that it would take me to run the install process (and restart, and maybe restart again, and look for the driver, and pray the directory doesn’t get mangled) for ONE app in PC.

I’m not used to all this simplicity, so the idea of simply dragging and dropping things and that they actually do what they’re supposed to do without fuss is new to me. So give me time, dear Mac! I am sure this is something I could get used to :)

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