Brandon's 21st birthday.
We would like to invite our readers to a party tomorrow night. This includes readers in Switzerland who may not have ever met us in person.
Party: Saturday, July 2. 17 Thayer St., first floor. 10pm. Enter around the back. People you know will be there. Please come.
The occasion: the 21st birthday of Brandon Clover English.
Not infrequently, I’m asked, “What’s the deal with that Brandon guy, anyway?”
Perhaps you’re wondering this too, reading your email on a Friday or Saturday afternoon, doubting whether it’s worth leaving the relative safety and comfort of your East Side apartments and venturing out into the pall of listlessness and violence—and more generally, the humidity—that hangs over Providence this summer. All for someone you’ve maybe heard of once or twice, in conjunction with naked donuts or the ass-induced destruction of a Rock photocopier.
It’s worth it, I assure you. Let’s hazard an explanation: Growing up in a middle-class black neighborhood in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Brandon was told by his parents that the fireworks which occurred every July 4 were for his birthday and not, as he might have otherwise thought, for the celebration of America’s independence. How could someone in that situation not develop a tortured relationship with America?
On the one hand, a shameful past of racial oppression and imperialism, and a disturbing present of mediocre white people. On the other...what other nation on earth could have, however fleetingly, willed the XFL into existence? Radicalized by four years at a high school comfortable enough in its privilege to name its mascot “Preston the Prepper,” he is still middle-American enough to persist in calling soda “pop.”
Enthusiast—indeed, theorist—of Reality Television and of the Xtreme, path-breaking Beirut strategist,[1] tireless interlocutor of Asian and Asian American culture, neologist extraordinaire, loyal friend and, on Saturday night at least, both host and occasion for the best party of your July 4 weekend.
One would expect Brandon to reject the notion of having an extravagant 21st birthday party—after all, treating one’s 21st as an epochal moment, as a fleeting opportunity for once-in-a-lifetime debauchery, seems like one of the most obvious ways in which we Americans legitimize state power. We treat “21” as if it were some eternal marker of adulthood, when in fact the drinking age wasn’t nationally standardized in its current form until 1984.[2] But then again, Brandon tells me that he’s more radically (Xtremely?) feminist than I, despite (because of) his oft-repeated claim that “Women are useless.” So who knows.
Anyway, I’ve gone on too long—we’ll see you on Saturday night.
Christopher Hughes
Adam De La Gente
Brandon Engrish
Nathan Ljubljana
[1] As we have been told by incredulous partygoers, this is a game normally associated with a rather different segment of the American college population. But we play Beirut (admittedly, it is a cruel name) much as C.L.R. James played cricket: neither distancing ourselves from its origins (ours is not a vulgar, “ironical” appropriation) nor denying its potential for beauty and for an aesthetized representation of social relations.
[2] This is the line I took with my mother when she asked if I wanted to “do something special” for my 21st birthday. Instead I went to Barnes & Noble. Resistance INNIT?
Party: Saturday, July 2. 17 Thayer St., first floor. 10pm. Enter around the back. People you know will be there. Please come.
The occasion: the 21st birthday of Brandon Clover English.
Not infrequently, I’m asked, “What’s the deal with that Brandon guy, anyway?”
Perhaps you’re wondering this too, reading your email on a Friday or Saturday afternoon, doubting whether it’s worth leaving the relative safety and comfort of your East Side apartments and venturing out into the pall of listlessness and violence—and more generally, the humidity—that hangs over Providence this summer. All for someone you’ve maybe heard of once or twice, in conjunction with naked donuts or the ass-induced destruction of a Rock photocopier.
It’s worth it, I assure you. Let’s hazard an explanation: Growing up in a middle-class black neighborhood in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Brandon was told by his parents that the fireworks which occurred every July 4 were for his birthday and not, as he might have otherwise thought, for the celebration of America’s independence. How could someone in that situation not develop a tortured relationship with America?
On the one hand, a shameful past of racial oppression and imperialism, and a disturbing present of mediocre white people. On the other...what other nation on earth could have, however fleetingly, willed the XFL into existence? Radicalized by four years at a high school comfortable enough in its privilege to name its mascot “Preston the Prepper,” he is still middle-American enough to persist in calling soda “pop.”
Enthusiast—indeed, theorist—of Reality Television and of the Xtreme, path-breaking Beirut strategist,[1] tireless interlocutor of Asian and Asian American culture, neologist extraordinaire, loyal friend and, on Saturday night at least, both host and occasion for the best party of your July 4 weekend.
One would expect Brandon to reject the notion of having an extravagant 21st birthday party—after all, treating one’s 21st as an epochal moment, as a fleeting opportunity for once-in-a-lifetime debauchery, seems like one of the most obvious ways in which we Americans legitimize state power. We treat “21” as if it were some eternal marker of adulthood, when in fact the drinking age wasn’t nationally standardized in its current form until 1984.[2] But then again, Brandon tells me that he’s more radically (Xtremely?) feminist than I, despite (because of) his oft-repeated claim that “Women are useless.” So who knows.
Anyway, I’ve gone on too long—we’ll see you on Saturday night.
Christopher Hughes
Adam De La Gente
Brandon Engrish
Nathan Ljubljana
[1] As we have been told by incredulous partygoers, this is a game normally associated with a rather different segment of the American college population. But we play Beirut (admittedly, it is a cruel name) much as C.L.R. James played cricket: neither distancing ourselves from its origins (ours is not a vulgar, “ironical” appropriation) nor denying its potential for beauty and for an aesthetized representation of social relations.
[2] This is the line I took with my mother when she asked if I wanted to “do something special” for my 21st birthday. Instead I went to Barnes & Noble. Resistance INNIT?
posted by ch at 9:27 AM
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