The Mainly Annual EastWesterly Review / Postmodern Village Conference 2007

The Love Bloat: How America's Obesity Epidemic is Challenging the Size of Sexy
by Dell Tah-Burke

Tah-Burke was not the most convincing half-Asian female impersonator of the conference, but she had the biggest voice. Special guest presenter Gavin McLeod made us all feel better about our extra cellulite, though, despite (because of?) plugging his latest project: The Love Handle, a reality show designed to help the zaftig find TV romance just as genuine as The Bachelor has.

Polesmoker's Eleven: Gay Softcore Meets Light-Hearted Action/Adventure, a Study in Cross-(A)dressing the Marketing Expectations of the American Male
by Abercrombie N. Fitch

Fitch pitches the idea that the "metrosexual" look dovetails nicely with polls suggesting America's youth are more accepting of homosexuality than generations before. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I mean, he's not sayin'; he's just sayin', you know?

Uncle Ben's Cabinet: Contemporary Black Culture Sells Out to the Politico-Corporate Media Slavemaster
by Sisyphus "Retread" Jones and hell books

books's fiery rhetoric acted as a nice counterbalance to Jones's more measured delivery, but the anger was still astute: just what does a poor kid from the 'hood owe Gulfstream, Cristal, Bently, and Benz?

Uncle Chandler's Water Cabinet: how Parboiled Detective Stories Presage Contemporary Performance Escape Artistry
by Christy Blaine-Spade

Blaine-Spade is both tough dame and consummate magician, both femme fatale and private dick. She's her own hot-dressed assistant as well. Delivering the paper from memory as she worked her way out of a suit of locked chains looked easy for her, but the case for her thesis was harder to make. Stan? She's too much man—and woman—for you.

From Orson to Outcaste: Cinematic Depictions of Smoking as Civil Disobedience
by Billy Holliworth

When is a cigarette not just a cigarette? When it's a means of protest, according to Holliworth. As characters in films light up under "No Smoking" signs, they're giving The Man the finger. The smoke in the room was too thick for this reviewer to stay too long.

Uncle Ben's Water Closet: Extreme Home Makeovers for All Today's Oreos, or how the Architecture of the Suburb Kills Contemporary Blackness
By H. Pap Brown

Brown brought on da funk—of drywall mud—and brought on da noise—of power tools—in this attempt to bring back the Black Power decor of a bygone Afrocentric future-past. His paper was a diatribe against the bourgie subdivision mentality of middle-class American blacks and in favor of the boogie get-down interior design of the way things ought to be: beatnik meets batik meets dashiki-chic in colloidal cultural remix. Plus, this reporter finally mastered the miter-box during the audience-participation section.

Rainbow Abolition: Depictions of Racism and Gang Violence in the 'Splatter Paintings' of Jesse Jackson Pollock
by Q. Morten Pappenfussburger

It doesn't take a genius to see that the red represents blood -- and boy, is there a lot of it -- in Jesse Jackson Pollock's paintings. Pappenfussburger further explicated the nuances less obvious though: from the blue of the Crips to the green of the Grove Street crew (a Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas reference lost on all but one highly-enthusiastic gamer who immediately shouted "CJ's my DAWG, yo!"), each color represents the different gang colors and the violence inherent therein, with each drop a deceased member. Pappenfussburger argues that Pollock just pours one out for his fallen homies, but that "one" isn't a forty ounce bottle of malt liquor, but acrylic paint.

Blue Riders in the Sky, or Riding Through the Rhineland on Three Horses With One Name: The Predictions and Postdictions of Nazis in Paintings of Ponies
by Frank Mark Shaw-Gall

While Der Blaue Reiter were only active from 1911-1914, they accurately predicted the rise of Nazism, as symbolized by the horses of the apocalypse, Shaw-Gall argues. Despite the commonly accepted argument that Kandinsky believed that blue was the color of spirituality and that Marc was essentially a pantheist and nature-worshipper, Shaw-Gall argues that the horses in the paintings of Der Blaue Reiter can only be Hitler, Goebbels and Himler (and sometimes Mussolini, but only sometimes -- it depends on which way the horse is facing). In paintings of horses after World War II, such as Robert Casper's "Boy on Horse," the anti-Semitism is still present and has stripped the boy clean, although he still has the force of Nazism under control. An organized sit-in from the EastWesterly University Neue Blaue Reiter Club, all three of them, made this a more interesting presentation -- although the horse whinnies were a bit distracting, as was their intention.