oh, after a day of lounging around and reading 'the best unrequired reading of 2003,' which had a great story about a the first ten years of the life of child born during the LA riots by Daniel Voll, i sauntered through some unrequired listening of '03 while figuring my pazz & jop best ofs, listened to the rosebuds who have the twee jangle pop thing going on but the worse iron-on'ed smiths quotes and hey baby vagueness that just spins them out of being really, really decent.

and was reading sf jones blog, a post about how lovely cat power is + the link to her video. thinking about how chris newmyer (self starter foundation mailing list) wrote something similar abt karen o, how the indie-ified video sequencing catches the mystique, etc etc. adding that 'the music keeps getting better and better' as, apparently, they keep getting better looking. this comes just at a time when girl group is talking about how only 'attractive' female artists or girls in bands get into mainstream mags, and 'the ugly girls' are pushed to the ghetto of minor mags. it's frustrating to think that this could be true, and that artists like edith frost, who made sensitive, intelligent and welcoming alt.country/indie crossover a few years ago really didn't get the due she would have if she were of the chantuese complexion. is it exclusively males who get sucked into this? did i get sucked into the joan jett/pj worship like everyone else? if we've constructed beauty differently, is it okay to look at hanna with lusty thoughts? more than sure, as public figures, but what of the critical when it has a face you want to please?