Pre-Women Rock

In the New York Times today: Rocking Out, No Boys Allowed.

This was not a standard garage band. For one, the members had picked out instruments two days earlier. For another, the jam session ended when a supervisor called, “Ladies, it’s snack time.”

The band formed at Girls Rock Camp in Atlanta, which teaches 10- to 16-year-old musical beginners to bang drums and windmill guitars like their rock heroes. The five-day camp has a simple message: Girls rock too. In a genre long dominated by men, the founders want campers to feel as comfortable being loud and expressing themselves on stage as many boys do. 

Oh, to be a preteen in July. These kids are precious, no sarcasm intended. Here's 10-year-old Katherine Butler, whose band Think Fast has already been riven by artistic disputes:

“We’ve had some hard times,” she said. “It feels like we’ve been a band way more than two days.”

And another anonymous rockette:

“I don’t respect Justin Bieber, but I really, really like him.” 

Bless. Absolutely darling. But wait.

A similar rock camp for girls opened in Portland, Ore., in 2001, and the idea has quickly gained steam. It was founded by a women’s studies student who had worked in the music industry and wanted to encourage more women to start bands. 

Encouraging more women to start bands. Oh yes let's. As the article reminds us, this is all so empowering. By all means let us gather up our tender young offspring and deliver them into the loving, empowerfulizing embrace of the music industry.

Summary: be solo, or a duo, because a full band is financially untenable; work much, much harder, under much more stressful conditions, than bands of earlier generations had to. Be very young, or have the ability to take the broke-ness, the physical and emotional knock-around, that very young people can.

Whoops, Mike Doughty, you're such a downer. Let's try that again. Being in a band is so empowerfulmentatious! You go, girl!

On a personal level, I have witnessed the impoverishment of many critically acclaimed but marginally commercial artists. In particular, two dear friends: Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse) and Vic Chesnutt. Both of these artists, despite growing global popularity, saw their total  incomes fall in the last decade. There is no other explanation except for the fact that “fans” made the unethical choice to take their music without compensating these artists.

Shortly before Christmas 2009, Vic took his life. He was my neighbor, and I was there as they put him in the ambulance. On March 6th, 2010, Mark Linkous shot himself in the heart. Anybody who knew either of these musicians will tell you that the pair suffered depression. They will also tell you their situation was worsened by their financial situation. Vic was deeply in debt to hospitals and, at the time, was publicly complaining about losing his home. Mark was living in abject squalor in his remote studio in the Smokey Mountains without adequate access to the mental health care he so desperately needed.

Artists, comma, good news about. Anyone?

Google: Red In Tooth And Claw

Finding Women Do stories is sort of an art form. There are a few ways to go about it.

1. Google News, may it live and prosper. Googling news results for "women" (or, better yet, "women increasingly") usually yields a pretty good harvest. Then it's a matter of sifting the wheat from the chaff.

The top news results are often real, newsworthy, depressing stories about the various means by which women are, either physically or through extortion, prevented from acting like people. Have a glance at them, pour out a snifter for your embattled peeps, and move on. These are not the droids you're looking for.

The best Women Do story is usually a one-off near the bottom. It is not really news, so it has probably not spawned a legion of AP headlines or gotten too many commentators in a lather. Moms Rock. Paeans to in-home shopping. Women Sometimes Do Boxing.

Sometimes there's a big evo-psych study hot off the press, in which case, jackpot.

2. Read widely. Where I come from, the land is hard, and we have a saying about our mountains: Two rocks to every dirt. Newspapers are much the same. Two rocks to every news -- in some places three or four -- and a fair number of them are bound to be Women Do.

It is too bad that I don't live in Boston anymore. The Globe sat right on top of a very rich vein of this stuff. Is it still as Women Do-y as it ever was? I will have to start reading it on the regular again.

3. Write a blog making fun of newspapers writing about women. Lure in a bunch of smart readers. Get them to send you things.

Hint hint.

At any rate. This morning, I went and climbed to the top of the mountain, took a deep breath, fired up the Goog, and typed in "women," just to kind of get the lay of the land.

Conclusion: I hope to God Wikipedia can hang onto its Google-juice. Because if AskMen's Top 99 Women of 2012 makes it to #1, the zombies are well and truly coming, my friends.

Women Exacerbate Dairy Crisis

As you all know, unless you have been living under the proverbial rock these last twelve months, we are in the End Times--or, if not the End Times, perhaps their darling Victorian antechamber, where we will have a glass of sherry and have a look at some etchings before the butler arrives to usher us into the Apocalypse Proper. Odds are you've got it pretty bad. But unless you're a dairy farmer, it could be worse.

(I'm guessing you're not a dairy farmer, because if you are, you're probably not reading blogs about newspapers writing about women doing things. You're probably at your bank begging for a loan so you can buy hay to feed your cows so they'll make milk which you can sell to a giant monopoly that is currently under investigation by the Justice Department so you can maybe make back half of the money you spent on hay. Or you're at your 40-hour-a-week day job that you have so you can get health insurance, popping Ritalin so you can make it through the day and still get up at 4am to milk 100 goddamn cows. Or maybe you're out shooting your cows in the head.)

Being a dairy farmer? Not so hot right now. And it's about to get a lot worse, thanks to women. Women cows, that is.

The New York Times tells the tale for us citified types that haven't heard it yet. Since approximately the dawn of time, cows, like most animals, have been giving birth to male and female calves in roughly equal numbers. But a male calf on a dairy farm is, as Rip Torn might say, about as useful as a poopy-flavored lollipop. So a few years ago, Science gave the beleaguered dairy farmer marvelous new sperm sorting technology, ensuring that most calves born would be female.

Now farmers have a different problem: too much milk. And the first generation of bionic bovine fembots are about to hit the milk parlor, with a vengeance.

“Just as the industry starts to recover from these difficult times, we’re going to see these heifers enter the marketplace,” said Ray Souza, president of Western United Dairymen, which represents farmers who produce about 60 percent of the milk in California. “At the very worst it could certainly stop the recovery altogether and send us into another price recession.”

It's like the Chinese one-child policy, only with cows. Thanks a lot, Science.

When Life Gives You Lemons, Enjoy Your Banker PMS

There are a lot of things to love about being in the middle of a ruinous economic meltdown. Hobo chic, which is hilarious. Backwoods Home magazine getting fatter and fatter. Laughing at soulless twits who bought condos at the Natick Collection. And my favorite: the Banker PMS Story.

It used to be that 99%* of stories about people rendered insane by the cocktail of hormones coursing through their veins were about women. No more. Now, when you crack your morning paper and read about somebody losing their God-given marbles to an endocrine secretion, it's just as likely to be a banker-man.

It's a little bit of schadenfreude, to be sure. But having long been vexed by newspapers yammering about how irrational we women are when on the rag/pre-rag/pregnant/postpartum/lactating/adolescent/menopausal/postmenopausal/etc., I am enjoying watching the deposed Masters of the Universe marinate in their own humiliating stew of pop evolutionary theory and specious psychobabble.

*Not a number validated by any kind of science whatsoever.

Piling On

It's a painful exercise, making fun of the Globe in its hour of doom. Some days, I wonder if there is any point in doing so. For the record, in case anybody is confused: I'd like the paper to live, breathe, thrive, kick ass and take names all over Boston.

But they're not helping themselves with running stuff like "Where the boys (over 35) are."

Trees died to bring you this vital news. Pulitzer-finalist photographers were laid off so it could continue to run. City Weekly was killed so that...I'll stop now, I can feel the earnestness coming on. Nobody wants to see that.

Women Panic, Take Off All Their Clothes

In what appears to be a real, actual, numbers-backed trend, women are competing with increasing ferocity for stripper jobs as the economy continues its headlong plunge into the abyss. This seems on its face to make a small bit of economic sense. On the one hand, stripping is as tough as it ever was, and as the article points out, the clubs aren't drawing so many big spenders these days. On the other, at least you can't get outsourced to China.

(I haven't been in Lower Manhattan since the housing bubble burst--do you suppose the few female refugees from Lehman Bros. are wandering through the deserted streets in tattered skirt suits, wearing sandwich boards that say "Will Whore For Stale Bread"?)

But to all you gomers out there hoping that the adult entertainment industry will save your bacon, be ye warned. Nothing is recession-proof. Exhibit A: this recent auction announcement in the Wall Street Journal. (Good eye, Em!)

Everything South Of Canal Street Must Be A Howling Wasteland If This Tripe Is On The Front Page Of The Wall Street Journal

That is all.

Apparently you thought so too, because several of you sent me this story, which informs us that women are on Craig's List selling their old pants.

What Do Women Need?

Unpaid writing jobs!

Hear ye, hear ye:

"A brand new online magazine "What Women Need"( http://whatwomenneed.com/)
needs writers.

Our website will focus on women aged 35-55. We're searching for several feature writers who have some meaninful or entertaining insights that they would like to share with others. This is an excellent opportunity to have your writing published online. At this point in our development, we're a start-up magazine and the position is unpaid. However, we believe that this will change and payments will be negotiated as we grow. We are hoping to have writers on a permanent basis. However, one-time submissions are welcomed.

The articles should be relevant to issues that women in their 30s and 50s can identify with. Some of the headline articles
will fall under these categories:

RELATIONSHIPS, BEAUTY & STYLE, CAREER & MONEY, SPIRITUALITY, MIND & BODY
HEALTH/ FITNESS & DIET, FUN, ART & MUSIC, HOME & FOOD, OUTDOORS & TRAVEL
PARENTING, POLITICS

Please forward a short bio, samples of your writing or articles that you would like us to consider to editor1@wwnmail.com.

Thank you!"

Not to be confused with www.whatwomenwant.com, which is sex, www.whatwomenmustknow.com, which is where you should go if you are "a person who is trying to make sense out of why you are not feeling healthy and vibrant," or www.womanwithin.com, which is the Lane Bryant Catalog.

Thanks to Adam for finding this.

I Want To See Sarah Schweitzer's

Gawker is right: this is not only the worst newspaper office memo ever, it's the worst office memo ever, period. Not even Steve Carrell could be so dastardly.

Nevertheless, I would dearly love to see how the Globe's Fluff Squad would respond.

Also. Dear BU Comm majors: Heed the fucking writing on the wall and stay the hell away from journalism. Seriously.