Kate Dixon

The Very Best of Lisa Loeb

admin — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 20:14:00 +0000

Lisa Loeb is the kind of woman that I think, deep down, all of us sorta want to be. Maybe not entirely (because how many people can really pull off those cat’s eye frame glasses? Not many, my friends!), but in some little way. She’s smart, she’s a great songwriter, she plays guitar, she’s graceful and amusingly self-effacing and almost effortlessly pretty. She’s like the quiet, thinking girl of feminist-minded pop. Her songs exude a sense, somewhat difficult to pin down, but there nonetheless, that, regardless of the heartache and trouble they endure, women are strong, worthwhile people. In this – and in those distinctive frames – she has been consistent.

Her new greatest hits compilation, The Very Best of Lisa Loeb, does a pretty good job of bottling what it is about Loeb, as a musician and songwriter, that listeners have found enduringly attractive. While her mainstream popularity has waned since the mid to late 90s, she has still been creating music and nurturing her loyal fanbase with new material and touring (and yes, that TV show on E!, but more on that in a minute). This album does a good job of balancing the two: gems like “Do You Sleep?” and “Stay (I Missed You)” from her debut album Tails are interspersed among newer songs like “What Am I Supposed to Say?” and “Fools Like Me” from more recent offerings. All have a common thread of Lisa-Loeb-ness about them though, which is at once the compilation’s strength and its weakness. If you’re in the mood for Loeb’s signature introspective, whimsical (oh, I hate that word, but it is too fitting not to use here!) singer-songwriter fare, you can find it all here. If you’re in the mood for some of her less typical sound, you’d be better off picking through the albums individually.

Finally, a note about the newest song on the CD: “Single Me Out,” the theme song from #1 Single, Loeb’s six-episode E! reality show. The song, it pains me to admit, is hideous. The show was an enjoyable little confection of Loeb navigating New York City in search of love (and a dose of sanity on the side), but the song is pure torture. Skip it.

Written by: Kate Dixon, June 27th 2007

Like Son

admin — Tue, 08 May 2007 22:59:00 +0000

By Felicia Luna Lemus

Akashic Books

I was surprised to realize, after I turned the final page and perused the back jacket, that Like Son was not Felicia Luna Lemus’s first novel. It reads like a debut, in good ways and in bad. It’s ultimately an earnest but uneven book, and it seems to spend much of its time casting about for an identity, and a voice, that suits it best.

Lemus’s story centers around Frank, the transgender protagonist thrust back into the throes of familial drama with news of his father’s terminal illness. A gift from his dying father sets Frank on an unsettling cross-country path, as he picks up and moves from his native California to the unfamiliar terrain of New York City. There he meets Nathalie, and their long-standing relationship begins to generate some drama of its own after the catastrophe of September 11th. Frank struggles to make sense of his life, his relationship, and his past while everything around him seems to careen out of control.

Many novels live and die by their narrators. The storyteller within the story is the entrance point – the guide e follow. Frank proves difficult to engage with, if only because his voice is so chameleon-like. One minute, he’s speaking directly to us, in strained slang like “okay, please don’t laugh, but I swear…” and the next minute he’s waxing poetic with sentences such as “I feared that all that gold, all that shimmering glory we’d once been, had transformed into a shattered mess of dead weight.” The resulting narrative suffers from stylistic schizophrenia, and its unevenness becomes distracting.

From a feminist viewpoint, a book with a transgender protagonist that doesn’t make a big deal out of that fact is a great thing. However, this quality is mitigated by the blithe sexism with which Nathalie is portrayed by Frank throughout the story. Nathalie never comes across as more than two-dimensional, despite Frank’s continual odes to her eccentricity, her charisma and, of course, her dainty, fragile, über-feminine beauty. Frank worships her, but ultimately objectifies her. We never get a good sense of why he loves her, other than that she turns him on. So, while the politics of how this transgender man loves a femme woman prove problematic on a feminist level, the up-side is that it opens up space for discussion and debate about the rocky relationship between feminism and transgender issues.

Written by: Kate Dixon, May 8th 2007

Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides

admin — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 16:45:00 +0000

By Ariel Meadow Stallings

Seal Press

There are some women who, upon getting engaged, will spend hours poring over the most recent 700-page issue of Bride magazine. There are other women who would sooner use that behemoth of a magazine as a firestarter than spend a single minute reading about the most recent trends in bustles and floral arrangements. It seems that Ariel Meadow Stallings had the latter category of people in mind when she wrote Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides.

A soup to nuts discussion of how to throw a wedding that doesn’t conjure up the term “cookie-cutter,” Stalling’s book relies heavily on anecdotal discussion about her own (admittedly offbeat!) wedding, along with stories and opinions from other “offbeat brides (and a few grooms).” This narrative set-up is great for getting a broad overview of what a non-traditional wedding might look like, but it also spreads the subject matter a little thin. While Stalling takes pains to point out that the book “isn’t a how-to book or a step-by-step wedding planner,” the sheer width and breadth of the topics that she tackles results in a break-neck pace, and many important aspects of weddings and marriage ultimately feel like they’re given short shrift.

That being said, Offbeat Bride would be a great gift for your sister, friend, cousin or co-worker who recently got engaged, but seems ambivalent to the idea of having a wedding chock full of taffeta, jordan almonds and traditional gender roles. It’s a warm, funny, easy-going affirmation of anyone’s inclination to “get off the beaten aisle.” However, the dedicated patriarchy blamer will probably come away from this book feeling like she’s just read 208 pages of stuff she already knew. Such advanced-level rebels might be better off perusing Stallings' book-related website, www.offbeatbride.com, if they want to skip the Offbeat 101 lesson and get directly to some more particular tips, examples and advice for their own taffeta-free affair.

Written by: Kate Dixon, March 26th 2007