Dirty Girls

I figured I'd share this on here, and maybe talk about some thoughts I had in regards to it. It's a short film documentary about a group of girls who were outcasts in their school just for not following the trends and actually bothering to be themselves.

From the description, "Shot in 1996 and edited in 2000, this is a short documentary about a group of 13-year-old riot grrrls in Los Angeles who were socially ostracized at their school by their peers and upperclassmen. Everyone in the schoolyard held strong opinions about these so-called "dirty girls," and meanwhile the "dirty girls" themselves aimed to get their message across by distributing their zine across campus. Directed by Michael Lucid. Music: "Batmobile" by Liz Phair."

It starts off with people talking about how horrible and disgusting they think these girls are for not following standard protocol for how one is supposed to dress and act, and then the girls start talking about what they are really doing and what they think about things, and luckily they do have some support from people who get them. Then they go on to talk about their feminist ideals and show their zine, Sour Grrrl, with a lot of people talking about how stupid they think it is.

This clip was relatable to me because, while I don't think I really was an outcast in the physical sense with people treating me that way, I always felt like an outcast based on what other people would say, which basically was everything the people who didn't like these girls were saying, and I basically have always thought like the dirty girls do and agree with what they have to say. When first starting to watch it, I wanted to slap all those jerks who acted like they were so disgusting, as if you have to be totally preppy and popular and dress "nice" and shower all the time, and I was worried the documentary would be in favor of these people and basically about how horrible these girls are, but then I love it when the girls themselves said what they had to say and the girls who weren't part of their group  but liked them and "didn't give a shit" said what they had to say as well. Then I could see it was basically just capturing everyone's reaction to them and actually supporting them, as they were unfairly alienated just for being different.

I also didn't like how everyone acted like all they were doing is rebelling, or wanted attention, because they were doing no such thing, and I myself hate it when people do that. They were honestly just being themselves and sticking to their values and integrity in a world where you are assumed to dress properly and whatnot. I hate it when people confuse being yourself with rebellion, as if there's some set standard and anyone different from that MUST be rebelling as if you can't just honestly be different, because it has that false sense of "Everyone is this way, it's written in stone that everyone always happens to be this way, if you're not then you are purposely defying your true nature just to get attention." The truth is that everyone is different (well obviously you can't be totally and completely different from everybody) but there is no thing where people just are a certain way, and anyone else must be rebelling against that. We come in all sorts of everything. Some people like this, some people like that, some people like the other, some people like none of it, some people like all, some people like a mix etc. etc. and while I do hate it when people do purposefully rebel, try to act "cool" or "different" or "tough", since rebellion is just as conformist as conformity as they are two sides to the same coin, it becomes clear that these girls are not doing that and they honestly just want to be themselves. Heck, I didn't think there was anything wrong with their clothes, and I shared their ideals, and it's not everyone likes to shower all the time anyway (though one thing was that they were falsely being labelled as dirty and smelly when they did shower, just because it became a stereotype, and people kept assuming things and judging them without even knowing them, just based on hearing the rumors of what they were like) so it's not so hard to realize that these girls could actually just be like that. They're pretty much your standard grunge/riot grrrl.

So I would like to ask people to please not confuse being yourself with rebellion. Rebellion is reactionary just like conformity. You are playing by the opposite of someone else's rules,  and not your own. You have to be rebelling AGAINST something, which proves if you just happened to be that way and weren't even paying attention to other people's standards, you aren't rebelling. The only reason individuality gets confused for rebellion is because people who happen to conform easily only can see it from their view, like I've said before, they think everything they subscribe to is just how it's supposed to be and anyone who happens to be different isn't really different but TRYING to be different as if there's a set definition for all humanity, and some of them were probably brainwashed themselves into the "you have to do what's popular" type of culture, which actually makes them hypocritical because they are claiming that it's bad for people to act different when they themselves are acting different from their true selves by conforming to what is currently trendy or what other people say the should be, and it's always going to be better to be yourself anyway. It also reminds me of how realists get pegged as cynics by optimists because they are looking at it from their view and ironically only can see the bad things out of people talking about the good and bad, so since they have to have everything happy and good all the time, anyone saying anything remotely disturbing or sad to them MUST only be thinking of bad things in life (which is actually said by someone in the clip). Just because you are talking about something that may not be considered sunshine and roses doesn't even mean that you consider what you are talking about really bad in the first place, and it doesn't mean that all you think of is bad things, or that you are depressed, or cynical, or trying to be different. It's better to not have the wool over your eyes anyway. I also always noticed this with the characters Darlene from Roseanne, and Daria from Daria. Everyone in the shows acted like they were so depressed and dark, total "misery chicks", yet I never once saw them that way. Though with Daria they did hint at how silly that was (seriously, watch that show if you haven't, and the episode Misery Chick really explains it.)

Another thing I noticed about this video was that it was shot in spring of 1996, and these girls basically are your standard grunge/alternative/riot grrrls, and grunge was huge at the time, yet they were totally ostracized and everyone acted like they were trying to be different. I would expect that everyone at that school would be the same as them, since that was the big thing then, but I have a feeling it was more of a preppy/rich school, especially since everyone else acted like preps. Perhaps if they had gone to another school they would have fitted in better. Oh and I'm a riot grrrl myself, so I also liked their feminist views and thought the zine was cool, and I LOVE the song that is playing during the whole thing. Batmobile by Liz Phair. I'm going to have to check out more of her stuff.

This is Not My Generation Part 3

Well really a big thing is finding out that all your favorite musicians died. It's bad enough that you have to find out that Kurt died, but then you find out that Andrew Wood did too, and so did Layne Staley, and Mia Zapata, and Stefanie Sargent, and Shannon Hoon, and Ben Mcmillan etc. And then Mike Starr just died, which was really sad because it was not too long ago and while I actually knew who he was, and he was in his 40s! Everyone expects the young rockers to die, and die from drugs, because it's the stereotype and everyone knows kids live fast and all that, but no one really expects the middle-aged people to die. It's like wow, even if you get over a thing like drugs in your youth, you're never really over it, and it can hit you at any time. It's like all of your favorite musicians are dropping like flies right before your eyes, though most of them before you even knew who they were, but they KEEP dying! I hate that. Right before Mike Starr died, Rick Kulwicki, the guitarist of The Fluid died, and then back in 2008 Ben McMillan of Skin Yard and Gruntruck died, and then I think Layne was the one before that back in 2002, but it feels like they never stop dying, and I'm too young to have all my idols die so fast, and they're still too young to die. I'm only 21, and they are only in their 40s! They shouldn't even be dying for another 40 years and yet they started 20something years ago at the age of 24(Andy Wood)! 24 is way too young to die! I'll be that age in just a few years. I don't blame the guys themselves for their habits though, if they were one of the ones who died from it (some had weird/random circumstances like Mia being murdered and Rick dying with something wrong with his heart). I don't know why we're supposed to care that they are "rockstar junkies." I mean I think it's sad and all, but it doesn't change the way I think about them. It's just sad that they end up being beaten by it.

Well, one good thing about this generation is getting to relate to all the other outcasts and modern grungers. When I was little and first starting to feel like an outcast of the modern times, I thought that I was different, but a lot of times I actually liked that. I was never the kind of person that felt like we need people and will die without friends or if we aren't part of a group and everyone feels the need to fit in with a group. Then grunge came along and I realized it's cool to be part of a group as well. It was actually awesome being part of something bigger than yourself, and being around people that are a lot like you. Recently I've been thinking about how wild and cool it is to grow up and see all these modern grunge bands that are around my age. It's great to like grunge in general, but now I think I get it a bit more, with the whole being a part of your generation, and being around people that are going through what you are going through. It's cool to realize there are other young grungers today that probably have felt like an outcast as well. The old grungers will always have a special place in my heart, but there's nothing like ragging on your own generation with people your age that are interested in the same things you are and get to sarcastically laugh at the world with. It helps to think of the other modern grungers as your generation, so that you can actually feel like your generation isn't so bad, and, heck, the outcasts always end up rising up and becoming the generation eventually, so we might end up being that anyway. I used to hate it when people always refer to grunge as a generation X thing, and I still do, because I can relate to them a lot, and of course it never went away, but now I get it a little bit more as it is cool being around people that grew up with the same stuff you did and who are your age, and feeling like you're on the same wavelength. It's great that other kids can get what I'm going through, because they're going through it too. Ha, I was watching an interview from maybe a year ago recently for Pissed Jeans, and the frontman was talking about how they started when they were 13 and they're 19, 20 now, and I'm like "WHOAA, they're MY age!!!" I guess I was so used to my favorite bands being my parents age or a little older, that it just caught up on me, but yeah most bands do seem like the members are in their early and mid 20s, so it would be about time. Here's to growing up with this generation of grunge, and feeling connected to these people.

The funny thing is how much of a difference real life is to the internet. You can find buttloads of modern grungers on the internet, like there's a whole world of us out there, so much that it feels like there are millions or billions of us out there, and then in real life, nothing. It's hard to find people who have even heard of grunge in real life (well, at least for people under 30), let alone who follow it. Yet it still is the genre for 20somethings and teens. Most of the people on the grunge forum and other online grunge sites are in their teens or twenties. Heck, the dude who runs grungereport.net is my age. It's as if it stayed the same but the world changed around it. Luckily some middle-aged people are still into it, but I wish there were more, as I've always expected to see long-haired 40somethings wearing Nirvana shirts walking around town, and I've had no such luck.

Grunge Compilations

Yay my Spread the word of good newer grunge bands facebook page came out with a compilation album! http://spreadthewordofgoodnewergrungebands.bandcamp.com/ These are great bands too. Also the Grunge Forum has come out with a few compilations as well, and all of these prove how much grunge isn't dead today.  http://grungeforum.bandcamp.com/

This is Not My Generation Part 2

You know what's really weird? Watching all these grunge documentaries, and they are talking about how all these people could totally relate to grunge/Nirvana/Kurt Cobain/Smells Like Teen Spirit, and how they were lost and alone and it was like a reflection of themselves, and how it felt like they were like them and talking about them and to them and for them and were them, and that finally something that characterized us is in the mainstream and is around and it's something we can relate to, and then realizing that's exactly how you feel about it, down to the tee, all of it, but then they go and put it in the context of "Generation Xers". I know, I know, that is how it happened, and it was those kids that felt lost and alone until grunge showed up and then it felt like something was speaking to them, but for one, kids today can totally feel exactly the same, and for another, it still feels like they are denying that grunge still exists when they put it that way. In fact, the thing to make me think of this right now was this one I was just watching about punk, and then there was a part where they were talking about how Nirvana came in and changed everything, and Henry Rollins comes in right after Thurston Moore and says "Kurt Cobain and the Seattle Scene, tapped into a vast chunk of American white youth who were depressed, bummed out, and here's a guy who looks like them, comes from them, sings for them, about them, and to them, and all of a sudden you got a Nirvana shirt on" and I realized how very much I could relate to that. Heck, I would always think Kurt Cobain was my twin or father or clone or SOMETHING, because of how much he seemed like me. I settled on soul mate/kindred spirit. Trust me, it's like that scene in Hype! where Seaweed is talking about how rock won't go away any time soon because there won't be a shortage of disaffected youth that want to get crazy with punk or whatever. Just because people say rock is dead today, doesn't make it so. Even if there are kids now that were born then, they can still feel exactly the same as these kids of the 90s that were born in the 60s and 70s that you are talking about in these documentaries. Oh and then they also mention that these kids had to go through the Reagan 80s. Oh yeah, well we had to go through the Bush 2000s!

Another weird thing is finding out all your favorite musicians are famous. Now I know us 21st century grungers will all have different stories of how we found out about it, how we got into it, and what it means to us, which is cool and why I would really like our voices to be out there more, because there would be tons of interesting stories to hear, but some of my story, in short, includes discovering it during Christmas of 2004 by checking out my brother's new ipod, and he happened to have that music on there, and it was like an explosion and I never forgot it and yada yada, but I had never heard of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains before. It was those four bands, in the beginning, and I didn't know they were related at all, but I put them as my top 4 favorite bands, and then later on, as I would start to look them up to find out more info about them, I found out they all came from Seattle, which at first I thought was a total coincidence, and that they were all from the 90s, which I had no idea about either (I was like looking around my room in the beginning, for cameras and microphones, because I figured people were spying on me and writing down everything I did and what I liked, and calculating a type of music based on me, because how did they get me so right? and then I found out it was around when I was born.), and then that they were all called grunge and from the same scene, oh and then I started to find out that they were famous. Now, of course when there are bands you had never heard of, and you find out they are famous, it's not like someone says right away that they are the most famous ever so wrap your mind around that right now, so you think that maybe they are slightly famous, then as you learn more and more about them, you realize they are more and more famous than you previously thought, and you sort of grasp the concept of them being really famous at some point, and that they were the biggest thing of the 90s, and then, some time in the mid 2000s, you hear that Kurt Cobain has passed up Elvis and taken the #1 spot for most successful musician, so at first you think "oh wow that's interesting", and then you think "Wait a minute, he must have been REALLY famous then!" and that's when most of it hits you. I had never heard of him before, or them before, (seriously, whoever says Nirvana is still just as famous must be living in a different place than me, because no one around me had ever mentioned grunge, or Nirvana, or Pearl Jam, or whatever, and no one in school knew who they were or were talking about them, and it's not like you'll ever go anywhere and see his face like you do the pop stars, so consider yourselves lucky if you do) so I had no idea anyone else besides me or my brother had heard of any of them, so it was really weird to go from thinking they might be your brother's friends bands from around the neighborhood, to realizing they are like the most famous people ever. It's just so confusing to think of something I actually like being famous when I've hated everything that happens to be in the mainstream since '98. Like I keep thinking, "there's NO way anything I ever like will be famous, that just wouldn't happen, I mean have you SEEN the crap they push in the mainstream? They just really don't get it." I like it though, to know that there actually CAN be something good in the mainstream and on the radio. It's incredibly refreshing and gives me hope for the future of music and culture.

The really confusing thing though is finding out Kurt died. It's like because we didn't see it on the television because we were little then, or born then, or not aware then, or not even born yet, there's no closure. It was so hard to keep reminding myself that he was dead, because the more I found out about him, the more alive and real he seemed. It is incredibly sad that now I know I will never be able to go to a Nirvana concert. That was always going to be my one wish if ever I were to be granted a wish. I guess I'll have to think of something else. I went from discovering this great band, to probably hearing that he died as I looked them up the first time, but I wasn't too familiar with the specific people, to getting more familiar but forgetting that little detail, to finding out again hat he died and thinking "Oh yeah, I think I heard one of them died, wow it was Kurt the front-man. Man, I guess I can't go to a Nirvana concert now." Now I long for the days when he was still alive, because it does seem like there would be a different vibe around life. Every time I start thinking of a band, I think of when they formed and think "Wow, they were playing music when Kurt was still alive. That's wild. I wonder what that was like. I bet it was a much different vibe back then." It seems like one of the defining moments. Life before Kurt and life after Kurt. There's also before and after Soundgarden broke up, and before and after pop stars started taking over in the late 90s. Those 3 seem to be the main things people contribute to the fall of grunge from the mainstream. If you want to travel back in time, it's either to save Kurt, or to be there when he was still alive, because life was cooler before the late 90s, and less depressing from '91-'94.

Oh another thing that made me feel outside of  my generation and kids these days was something, I don't even remember what, where there were people talking in slang of nowadays, and I had no idea what the heck they were saying, and didn't care to use their words or really find out because I'm not going to be talking that way anyway because they sound stupid to me. Ha, I remember always thinking "fo shizzle" sounded incredibly stupid. I swear, sometimes I feel like the stereotypical old person shaking their fist at today's youth and totally not getting it, even though it's my youth. Actually, I've felt that way since I was 6. Kids these days.... I think I'll stick with a mixture of the older ones such as "rad", "phat", "boss", "righteous", "cool", "right on", "groovy", "wicked", "nice!", "sweet!",  and then of course "dude" and "man" and "lame"(all of which I say all the time), and the lexicon of grunge words such as "lamestain" just for kicks. Heck, at least "swinging on the flippity flop" doesn't sound as stupid as "fo shizzle" even though the point was to sound stupid. The shortening of words gets on my nerves too. Both the things like "totes" and abbreviations like "OMG". I guess it comes with the texting/tweeting world, where everyone is in such a rush that both the grammar and the words themselves start slacking, especially if you are going to put limits on the characters one can use, but really that's stupid. Is it worth it to twitter to have that short of a character limit if everyone is typing like a moron?

Singles. The movie that vibes like me. I actually get it, and movies like it, such as the Clerks movies, Reality Bites, Slacker, Hype! (the grunge documentary), and whatever else I'm missing. Those movies where it's people trying to find themselves mixed with dealing with love and relationships, mixed with the total bohemian attitude of not wanting to give up your ideals by following the pack, mixed with actually caring about philosophy, mixed with some really good music, good clothes, and cool people. I'd rather have shows and movies like that than the ever-so-dumbed-down reality shows of today. Hey, I like Beavis and Butthead, I don't mind dumb, but that's because it's total satire, and making fun of people that are that dumb. It's hard to realize that people can actually be that dumb. To think Singles came out the year I was born is astonishing.

A lot of times it feels like I'm the last person on Earth or something. The online world is great for finding tons and tons of like-minded grunge people, but it's hard to find those people in real life. It's like I'm walking around this world by myself. What's funny is that I've always been the type to really not care what people think of me or about having friends and whatnot, because I was always fine by myself and really don't get the whole "we need friends to survive" thing, and I actually did like being different in the beginning, like I loved that I hated Britney Spears because I'd hate to have to like that garbage (and no offense again if you genuinely like it), and if it meant being on the opposite side of everyone else, then I'd be happy to do it, but the more and more time goes by with me not liking all the trendy things of today, the more I wish just SOMETHING I like and can actually relate to could show up there, just so that I don't have to be totally different from the human race, and so that I don't have to hate everything all the time. It's annoying having everything you hate be around you all the time. I'd like to know I can relate to people on some level like that. Actually, finding out about grunge gave me a total sense of actually liking being part of a tribe, and being a part of something bigger than myself, even though I never had thought about it before. It's like the music video for Blind Melon's No Rain: You go around doing your thing, and no one can relate, so you think you are different from everyone, but not being yourself is out of the question, and then one day you stumble upon a group of people who are exactly like you, and your whole perspective is changed.