as for VU + Nico: what is some good writing about it you might recommend??

Heck man, two HOT (who would have Thunk Hannigan would bea jewass) jewish girls for the price of one show. Could life get any better? Those lad magazine pictures of Hannigan in the school uniform i just found in Google have made my day.

http://www.geocities.com/morgan_lander_fix/AlysonHannigan03.jpg

Here is the outline for the talk i went to:

“onday 21 November, 8:30pm in the Nihon Room

Metamorphosis, Buffy, and the Classical Body

By Jonathan Wallis

To what extent are we defined by our bodies? How do we understand our bodies, and those of others? Why is the body so common as a social and political metaphor? These questions, and the literary possibilities of the body, have fascinated writers since antiquity. In his epic poem Metamorphoses, the Roman poet Ovid manipulated the bodies of his characters to examine the question of what it means to be human. Using similar ideals of bodily integrity, the writers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer used the changing body to explore concerns about personality and gender, desire and alienation, at the end of the 20th century. Do our bodies define us? Come along to the Ivory Tower Society for a discussion of two texts in which bodies are disturbingly unstable.

Last Updated ( Saturday, 22 October 2005 )”

Buffy: “What are you doing for Christmas?”

Willow: “Being Jewish. Remember, people? Not everybody worships Santa.”

Tho of course, like many a Jewish computer-geek girl, Willow converts to wicca and lesbianism in college, making her hilariously uberprogressive (but emotionally distant) parents proud.

(Alyson Hannigan, by the way, is def. Jewish on her mom’s side, while her dad’s Irish-American.)

Don’tcha try and outgeek me on BtVS, Guy!

http://copland.udel.edu/stu-org/chabad/asktherabbi/011gellar.html

(www.jewhoo.com is essential reading)

In the show she also acts like perfect Calofrnia JAP. Ive met a few, i know.

Secondly. Ill pick up the brett easton ellis conversation with you another time. I think that probably without intending it BEE reveals something profound about how even with the most banal stimuli the human brain is capable of great things. (this is true of the book too, which beyond being the funniest book ive ever read about the 80’s is also one of the most profound Nihilistic satements in literature this side of Atomised. It was inspired by “notes from the underground” and for my money transcends it).

But I agree, the U2 concert scene is very very funny.

G.

Guy, sorry, but two things: First, Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Not remotely Jewish. California valley-girl WASP through and through.

Second, I don’t think you could say Ellis was elevating Whitney and Huey Lewis. Those “Pitchfork”-style reviews were, after all, beign enunciated by a psychotic serial killer. To me the joke was pretty obviously that Patrick Bateman is so soulless that not only does he kill and dismember people, he seriously thinks Huey Lewis is great music! That’s in keeping with his other obsessively slavish attention to 1980s status details, like brands of suits and ties. (On that level I actually think the book is a bit unfairly mean to the musicians.) In addition, remember, in that decade people such as Whitney Houston and Huey Lewis and Phil Collins all DID get that kind of attention from reviewers in Rolling Stone, for example, which was probably then at its absolute nadir. Bateman is really just parroting (and amplifying) what he would have read. You’re right that it’s as much satire of music writing as it is of the music, but Ellis wasn’t looking at fanzines and such; he was looking at the mainstream press. The best music scene in the book, though, is the part set at a U2 concert, where Bateman believes he’s receiving a communication from the Devil through Bono, while (if I’m remembering right) persisting through several pages in calling the guitarist “the Ledge.”