HOW IS THIS APPROPRIATE? Frank Zappa: You are what you is (video)


Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention tested the limits of free expression and racial taboos in this 1984 music video for You Are What You Is. The hippie-light-show-solarized extravaganza features a harmonica-playing Ronald Reagan, dancing African “natives,” scantily-clad ladies (sexy nurse? sexy stewardess?) and the N-word. It’s all inappropriate and it’s offensive and rude. It’s nothing but things nice people don’t say. And it’s all true. We’ve got lyrics:

Do you know what you are?
You are what you is
You is what you am
(A cow don’t make ham…)
You ain’t what you’re not
So see what you got
You are what you is
An’ that’s all it ’tis

Mas…HOW IS THIS APPROPRIATE? Frank Zappa: You are what you is (video)

Newtown, Quentin Tarantino and the culture of death

Like many people, I’ve spent these past few days reflecting on what’s wrong. What the hell is going on? People are expressing so-called shock and awe at the recent violence in Connecticut but no one has any answers. Some would call it soul-searching, others grasping for straws. Others still are trying to squeeze as much blood from this stone as they can before it passes into obscurity, which it eventually will…

One thing that I know for sure is that the violence epidemic in the United States of America is not attributed to any one thing. We have been on this road for a long time now and anyone shocked by the fruit that the blood-soaked soil has produced has not been paying attention. Welcome to the culture of death.

Mas…Newtown, Quentin Tarantino and the culture of death