American Fun (65 page)

1.
“
Peace!
”: Jeff Chang and DJ Kool Herc,
Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation
(New York: St. Martin’s, 2005), 76. Bronx history and episode derived from ibid., 68–79.

2.
caught this new wave of urban creativity
: Story of Clive and Cindy Campbell derived from ibid., 81–86.

3.
“
Forget melody, chorus, songs
”: Ibid., 94.

4.
“
broke daylight
”: Ibid., 92.

5.
“
comic moves
”: Will Hermes,
Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever
(New York: Faber & Faber, 2011), 257.

6.
“
over a ritual of motion and fun
”: Chang and Herc,
Can’t Stop,
120.

7.
“
Peace, Love, Unity, and Having Fun
”: Ibid., 105.

8.
“
If you break on the cement
”: Joseph Schloss,
Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 95.

9.
“
how innocent and pure
”: Ibid., 96. For an excellent history and analysis of dynamics “in the cypher,” see ibid.,
chapter 5
, as well as Jorge “Popmaster Fabel” Pabon, “Physical Graffiti: The History of Hip-Hop Dance,” in
That’s the Joint! The Hip-Hop Studies Reader,
ed. Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal (New York: Routledge, 2012), 57–61.

10.
“
four elements
”: Chang and Herc,
Can’t Stop,
90, 110.

11.
“
’Cause it was a whole gig, y’know?
”: Ibid., 130.

12.
crafted new tools
: To be sure, it was in 1975 and 1976 that two college dropouts, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, emerged from their respective garages and founded their revolutionary microcomputer companies.

13.
Historically, DIY is the American way
: The American magazine
Do It Yourself
emerged in the 1950s to empower homeowners in the costly world of commercial contractors.
Readymade
magazine appeared half a century later and updated this domestic ethic for millennial hipsters.

14.
“
Death to Invaders
,” “
You could get impaled
”: “Pacific Ocean Park,” “The Cove,”
Dogtown and Z-Boys,
Orsi, A., Peralta, S., Stecyk, C., Penn, S., Kubo, S., Biniak, B., Sony Pictures Classics, Vans “Off the Wall” Productions, ADP Productions, & Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment (2002).

15.
“
clubhouse
,” “
pirates
”: “Capt. Hook & the Pirates,”
Dogtown.

16.
“
Part of the thrill was knowing
”: “Riding Swimming Pools,”
Dogtown.

17.
“Skaters,” Stecyk wrote that year
:
Skateboarder
article quoted in “The Dogtown Articles,”
Dogtown
.

18.
“
Bet you can’t ride it, pig!
”: April 1977
Skateboarder
article reprinted in C. R. Stecyk III and Glen E. Friedman,
DogTown: The Legend of the Z-Boys
(New York: Burning Flags Press, 2000), 56.

19.
In the fall of 1977
: “The Birth of Vertical,”
Dogtown.

20.
“
guys didn’t seem like they were having
”: “Jay Adams,”
Dogtown
.

21.
“
crazed quaking uncertainty,”
“
a strong element of cure
”: Lester Bangs, “Of Pop and Pies and Fun: A Program for Mass Liberation in the Form of a Stooges Review, or, Who’s the Fool?,” reprinted in
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock ’n’ Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock ’n’ Roll,
ed. Greil Marcus (New York: Vintage, 1987), 32.

22.
“
in the faces of performers
”: Ibid., 36.

23.
“
a jock strap with red lipstick swastikas
”: Meltzer article cited in Steve Waksman,
This Ain’t the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and
Punk
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 115.

24.
“
funniest
”: Andy Shernoff, interview by Jason Gross, Perfect Sound Forever, May 1996,
http://www.furious.com/perfect/dictators.html
. Accessed September 1, 2012.

25.
“
We knocked ’em dead in Dallas
”: “The Next Big Thing,” the Dictators,
Go Girl Crazy!
KE 33348, Epic Records, USA, 1975.

26.
“
Hippies
,” “
We tell jokes to make you laugh
”: “Master Race Rock,” the Dictators.

27.
“
Ooooo-wheee-aaah-ooooo
”: “(I Live for) Cars and Girls,” the Dictators.

28.
“
Now I’m a guide for the CIA
”: “Havana Affair,” The Ramones,
The Ramones,
Sire Records, 1976.

29.
“
that there was a line between
”: Tricia Henry,
Break All Rules!: Punk Rock and the Making of a Style
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989), 108.

30.
“
Rock ’n’ roll is supposed to be fun
”: Johnny Rotten quoted in Virginia Boston,
Punk Rock
(New York: Penguin, 1978), 108.

31.
“
one of the first punk bands
”: Nicholas Rombes,
A Cultural Dictionary of Punk:
1974–1982
(New York: Continuum, 2009), 61.

32.
To listen to their scorching diatribes
: Hardcore historian Steven Blush writes: “Punk gave lip service to ‘Do It Yourself’ (D.I.Y.) and democratization of the Rock scene, but Hardcore transcended all commercial and corporate concerns.… If you played Hardcore, you couldn’t possibly have been in it for the money, although you might’ve gone for the glory.… Hardcore established a new definition of musical success: in non-economic terms. Sociologists might see this as an example of ‘tribal syndicalism’: unlike money-oriented economies, Hardcore was an objective-oriented, community-based culture—like a commune or an armed fortress.”
American Hardcore
(New York: Feral House, 2001), 275.

33.
“
I did my usual swan dive
”: Interview with Jello Biafra in Vivian Vale,
Pranks! Devious Deeds and Mischievous Mirth
(San Francisco: RE/Search Publications, 1987), 61.

34.
“
exclamation point
”: Ryan Moore,
Sells Like Teen Spirit: Music, Youth Culture, and Social Crisis
(New York: New York University Press, 2010), 37.

35.
“
shrewd youth
”: This quotation and those in the following two paragraphs are from Nathaniel Hawthorne, “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” in
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Tales,
ed. James McIntosh (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 14–17.

36.
a nation’s “consciousness”
: See Frantz Fanon,
The Wretched of the Earth,
trans. Richard Philcox (1961; New York: Grove, 2004), 170–80.

37.
cleverly precede our 3
-D reality
: Apologies, of course, to Jean Baudrillard,
The Precession of Simulacra
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994).

38.
The video-game proponent Jane McGonigal
: Jane McGonigal,
Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
(New York: Penguin, 2011), 32–33.

39.
“
dance more
”: Ibid., 347.

40.
“
reward circuitry of the brain
”: Ibid., 33.

41.
Tom Bissell tells a harrowing tale
: Bissell writes, “
Video games and
cocaine feed on my impulsiveness, reinforce my love of solitude, and make me feel good and bad in equal measure. The crucial difference is that I believe in what video games want to give me, while the bequest of cocaine is one I loathe and distrust. As for GTA IV, there is surely a reason it is the game I most enjoyed playing on coke, constantly promising myself ‘Just one more mission’ after a few fat lines.” A video-game critic and designer (in addition to being one of his generation’s most deeply thoughtful writers), Bissell is genuine in trusting what certain games “want to give him” (the book performs a trenchant reading of
Grand Theft Auto
’s narratology), but the compulsive, reactive, and chemically charged gaming habit he describes better resembles the mind-blowing
fiero
that the gaming industry and
Jane McGonigal prize. Which is to say, the compulsion itself is nothing to trust.
Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter
(New York: Vintage, 2011), 181.

42.
A recent Google search
: September 10, 2012.

43.
The American Psychiatric Association has the condition slated
: A study of 3,034 Singaporean schoolchildren recently published in the journal
Pediatrics
concluded that socially at-risk children were drawn to gaming, which in turn exacerbated social pathologies: “Greater amounts of gaming, lower social competence, and greater impulsivity seemed to act as risk factors for becoming pathological gamers, whereas depression, anxiety, social phobias, and lower school performance seemed to act as outcomes of pathological gaming.” Douglas A. Gentile, Ph.D., Hyekyung Choo, Ph.D., Albert Liau, Ph.D., Timothy Sim, Ph.D., Dongdong Li, M.A., Daniel Fung, M.D., and Angeline Khoo, Ph.D., “Pathological Video Game Use Among Youths: A Two-Year Longitudinal Study,”
Pediatrics
127, no. 2 (2011), e319–e329; published ahead of print January 17, 2011.

44.
“
go beyond flow and
fiero
”: McGonigal,
Reality Is Broken,
43.

45.
“
very big games represent the future
”: Ibid., 348.

46.
“
We did not owe any
”: David Kocieniewski, “GE’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether,”
New York Times,
March 24, 2011. See also Megan McCardle, “Did GE Really Pay No Taxes in 2010?”
TheAtlantic.com
,
March 29, 2011.

47.
It was the latest coup
: “Yes Men Claim Hoax GE Tax Press Release,” MSNBC, March 13, 2011.

48.
His advice for activating the citizens’ bodies
: Saul Alinsky,
Rules for Radicals
(1971; New York: Vintage, 1989), 138–39; emphasis added.

49.
“the
queen and high priestess
”: Marcyliena Morgan,
The Real Hiphop: Battling for Knowledge, Power, and Respect in the LA Underground
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 134.

50.
“
crowd-pleasing anthem
,” “
us[ing] gangsta, a hiphop term
”: Ibid., 156–57. Project Blowed account drawn from ibid., 130–59. For an incisive history of early hip-hop’s gender politics and feminist wave, see Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar,
Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007), 72–104.

51.
“
beergutboyrock
”: “Riot Girl Manifesto,”
Bikini Kill Zine
2, 1991.

52.
“
rock ’n’ roll fun
”: Sleater-Kinney, “You’re No Rock N’ Roll Fun,”
All Hands on the Bad One,
Kill Rock Stars, 2000.

53.
new wave of fire-breathing zines
: Sarah and Jen Wolfe Collection of Riot Grrrl and Underground Music Zines, MsC 878, Special Collections and Archives, University of Iowa Libraries;
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/msc/ToMsC900/MsC878/wolfesarahandjenzines.html
. Sample zine titles accessed September 1, 2012.

54.
“
When was the last time
”: Katha Pollitt, “Talk the Talk, Walk the SlutWalk,”
The Nation,
July 18/25, 2011, 9.

55.
“Volunteers
”
staged disruptive pranks
: Didi Kirsten Tatlow, “A Merry Band of Rights Pranksters,”
New York Times,
December 4, 2012.

56.
“
really diverse group of agents
”:
Charlie Todd,
Causing a Scene
(New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 695 of 3253 in Google eBook.

57.
“
clueless
,” “
misinformed
”: Ibid., 1198 of 3253.

58.
“
The
golden rule of pranks
”: Interview with Charlie Todd by Shelley DuBois, “How to Get 4,000 People to Take Off Their Pants,”
CNNMoney,
April 20, 2012,
http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/04/20/improv-everywhere-charlie-todd/
. Accessed September 9, 2012. Todd’s golden rule is no joke: pranks pulled with vicious intent or with no forethought to the consequences—like the pot brownies two University of Colorado students served their classmates and professor on “bring food day,” resulting in several trips to the hospital and multiple felony charges to the pranksters—are in fact a threat to civil society: they cause mayhem, anger, and physical harm. They make citizens retreat in fear and resentment. But pranks in the tradition of American fun nimbly follow this golden rule; their collective fun sustains itself on the widespread pleasure of getting the joke. Sometimes a killjoy is the butt of the joke, sometimes society itself is the butt, but the punch line is illuminating, not hurtful. “Police: 2 University of Colorado Students Arrested for Feeding Pot Brownies to Classmates, Professor.” U.S. News on
NBC.News.com
, December 10, 2012,
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/09/15797353-police-2-university-of-colorado-students-arrested-for-feeding-pot-brownies-to-classmates-professor?lite
.