tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80149178073298899392024-03-07T20:21:49.456-06:00FlowbearGetting engaged since 1983.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.comBlogger312125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-42141977460203659902020-06-23T03:58:00.003-06:002020-06-23T04:16:42.546-06:00Song That Caught Me By Surprise on Shuffle Because of How Great It Is, #1: Pinback—“AFK”<div class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-top: 16px;">
<i>(I have a lot of songs I like a lot in a playlist, and I like to play the playlist on shuffle. In this space, I will write about one of those songs, on shuffle, at random.)</i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ho8GvNuG7rM/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ho8GvNuG7rM?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<div class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
They were such pretty, prissy, prancy fancy boys. But this song is so EMO. Not in the way you’d expect from an actual emo band, any more than you would look to side project Goblin Cock (say it out loud, lol) for actual heavy metal. But it’s so much more front loaded with its angsty white dude bitchiness, and, in a rare coup, that’s exactly what makes this song a fucking <i>jam</i>.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
I had this conversation once with this guy who was way too fucking cool for everything. His name was Mike. He made music that was, like, IDM-inflected post-rock covers of the lightest, grooviest soul ballads of the 1980s, which sounds like it could be great, but in practice, at least in this particular case, was garbage.</div>
<div class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
We, me and Mike, started talking about Pinback, and for a while, a long while, he wouldn’t budge. They were, he said, “just a new variation on the rote two-guitars-a-bass-and-drums formula” that had handcuffed rock and roll, and also (just for the record) explicitly and straightforwardly described the music he himself made.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
After a while, though, he started to buckle under the weight of the world he himself had introduced: “new.”</div>
<div class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
And the whole cackling hyena’s intransigence of this whole affair is that the following things are true: Pinback is just some guitars, a bass, and some drums (sometimes mechanical), about which there is nothing new; AND, there is something totally new about the way in which Pinback plays some guitars, a bass, and some drums (sometimes mechanical).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br />
What I mean to say is, at some point in the conversation, Mike swung around to the other pole of his own opinion. Instead of being like "guitars, bass, and drums, but with a unique twist? that's bad!" he was like, "holy fucking shit, how would one ever even hope to come up with even the slightest variation of the guitar, bass, and drums formula, let alone REINVENT IT WITHOUT SO MUCH AS CHANGING THE INGREDIENTS."<br />
<br />
And I was like, "Right on, Mike. I'm glad you've chosen to see it from my perspective."<br />
<br />
Also, full disclosure: Mike was way, way cooler and a lot more handsome and charming—and probably smart, but I'm not willing to make that concession yet as it's only been 15 years since the last time I talked to him—than I was, and no doubt remains so to this day. Small victories on both sides?<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
Actually, one of the most bracing things I ever noticed while listening to sad white indie guy music was that a lot of the drum tracks on Pinback’s first album are obnoxiously low-effort drum machine beats. The thing is, that didn’t bother me in the least bit, before I noticed, because I couldn’t haver been less focused on the instruments as acts of individual contribution to the songscape. I just heard the song, and the beat was a part of that. I have been scratching and clawing to get back to that sense of holism, no matter how aloof it might seem, and no matter how impossible it might be, ever since.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
I think it’s maybe clearer to kids who will go on to know a lot about music than it is to adults who have gone on to learn about music: the best songs are the best because they sound like one, undifferentiated thing. A cloak of many colors, to be sure. But the moment when you learned to differentiate MC Hammer from Rick James, or Vanilla Ice from Queen, was in some way the beginning of a precipitous fall from grace.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
A fall from grace, to be sure, that has its own consolations, like reveling in the moment that the guitar splits off from the bass in “Bulls on Parade” to do a bunch of wah-wah gobbledygook before joining back into the rhythm section to form a uniform back-beat to a dope rapper, rapping about imperialist exploitation and dehumanization.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
It’s those moments where music coalesces into something indissociable itself, and then breaks apart into a series of discrete elements, that is the most interesting thing about music to me, now.</div>
<div class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
And this is where Pinback, to put it gingerly, fucking slays.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
If you need another example, take “Concrete Seconds,” off the Pinback album apparently nobody likes, but holy shit this song is great.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jEwWZwuDqLQ/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jEwWZwuDqLQ?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
<br />
Two guitars are duetting, in a way, to make a broad-strokes harmonic backdrop, but then they’re also letting the bassline play its way in to furnish the harmony. But <i>then</i>, the singer starts singing, and he’s singing a melody that is wrapping itself around the bassline and the guitar harmonies.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
And then the keyboards start doing their own melodic caterwauling, in a way that has been endlessly influential in my own hamfisted attempts to make up pop songs, because, like, they’re there, just doing a whole different pop song, right in the teeth of this other great pop song?</div>
<div class="p3" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
I guess that’s what’s called counterpoint, but I don’t really know, because I never really studied music. I just think it’s neat.<br />
<br />
And I didn't even say anything about "Not in a Slint way"!!!! Which, if you don't know what I'm talking about, I don't know—chat me up about it. I have more to say.</div>
Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-45601724859690924342016-05-20T17:26:00.004-06:002016-05-20T17:40:29.055-06:00Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal (Ch. 1-3, Abridged): A Sonnet Sequence<div class="p1">
<b>Chapter 1. "Dealing: A Week in the Life"</b></div>
<div class="p2">
<br />
I don’t do it for the money. I do</div>
It do it to do it. Deals are my art<br />
Form. I call Don Imus to thank him. I <br />
Tell Imus he’s the greatest. But what the <br />
<br />
Hell? I’ll wing it and things will work out. I’m<br />
Not too big on parties, because I can’t <br />
Stand small talk. I like the casino business.<br />
My wife, Ivana, stops in to say good-bye.<br />
<br />
I still give Ivana a hard time.<br />
Ivana may be the most organized<br />
Person I know. In reality, I’m not too likely<br />
To get involved. This story just won’t quit.<br />
<br />
I almost never stay up late enough<br />
To watch Letterman, but I know he’s hot.<br />
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>Chapter 2. "Trump Cards: The Elements of the Deal"</b></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
My style of deal-making is quite simple<br />
And straightforward. It’s in the genes. I think <br />
Of it almost as a controlled neurosis. <br />
In fact, I believe in the power of<br />
<br />
Negative thinking. Some people criticize<br />
Stallone, but you’ve got to give him credit. <br />
The other people I don’t take too seriously<br />
Are the critics. If these critics<br />
<br />
Ever tried to become developers,<br />
They’d be terrible failures. It’s also <br />
Nice to get good reviews. The dollar<br />
Always talks in the end. I don’t kid myself. <br />
<br />
By contrast, Bob Guccione of <i>Penthouse</i><br />
Has been trying for the past seven years.<br />
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<b>Chapter 3. "Growing Up"</b></div>
<br />
His story is classic Horatio<br />
Alger. Instinctively, my father began<br />
To think bigger. My parents had no<br />
Pretensions. My father had never sheltered me.<br />
<br />
I punched my music teacher because I<br />
Didn’t think he knew anything about<br />
Music and I almost got expelled. I’m<br />
Not proud of that. I like to stir things up. <br />
<br />
I flirted briefly with the idea of <br />
Attending film school. But in the end I<br />
Decided real estate was a much <br />
Better business. We got rid of the bad tenants.<br />
<br />
Looking back, I realize now that I got<br />
Some of my sense of showmanship from my mother.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-60350969294565206112016-03-05T12:13:00.003-06:002016-03-05T12:13:54.166-06:00What I Imagine My Grandmother Imagines When She Thinks of Bernie Sanders SupportersI can't wait 'til Bernie wins. Can't wait to live in a nation on the brink. I will don the uniform of khaki jodhpurs, heft the sickle, and join my non-Christian, sex-positive, trans-friendly, bi-flexible, ethnically indeterminate brothers and sisters in the ranks of the new national guard -- a million fingers on the iron hand, each guided by one will, all ready to fly with perfect, savage violence at the merest whim of Generalissimus Sanders.<br />
<br />
In time, we fly. We serve our function, as a tool must. We fulfill the Will of the People: ecstatic, tireless, tantric stomping, a communal orgy of boots on necks: rich kid necks; executive necks; chiropractor necks; celebrity chef necks. Guy Fieri. Emeril Lagasse.<br />
<br />
See the of methedrine-sharp special forces of our Red American Army, the Spetsnaz. Each man and woman -- don't ask, don't tell -- is an aristocrat hunter, the elite of elite. Each wears a humble yarn loop as a lanyard. Many lanyards dangle grotesque badges, worn proudly -- mostly ears, a few noses, stumpy and bloodstained. Some of us are more decorated than others. But we are one force, as a force of nature. We obey one law, as a natural law: Confiscate and Redistribute. Action and reaction. Storm clouds gather; rain falls.<br />
<br />
Confiscate: So-called legal tender. Paper money. Commodities. Luxury goods. Needless things. The fetishes of Mammon. A dead mink coat from a professional decadent. An antique wristwatch from an angel investor. Italian frames from a psychiatrist's spectacles. Now public property. Clouds, waiting to break.<br />
<br />
Onto my lanyard, I thread three fresh medals.<br />
<br />
We take mansions. The man who owns, who dreams he owns, a palatial estate must be shocked back to consciousness. Cuff his hands and feet in the bathtub, turn the tap on as hot as you like, and add, like vegetables to soup stock, a dozen roof rats -- declawed or not, defanged or not, you choose. This is a deep bath -- sauna jets, space for two, decadent, ostentatious. I wish I could equip each rat's forelegs with water wings, tiny and rat-sized.<br />
<br />
Rats are gifted swimmers. But I like the thought.<br />
<br />
Power to the People. Down with Oligarchs. Kill Whitey.<br />
<br />
Sanders / Farrakhan 2016.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-63239386112950149112016-02-28T06:16:00.003-06:002016-02-28T06:16:41.660-06:00#Idiocracy: still not a documentary, broSo the screenwriter of Idiocracy, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1000113/">Etan Cohen</a> (who is not <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001053/">Ethan Coen</a>, though it's an easy mistake to make, and one that led me to believe for many years that one of the Coen brothers wrote episodes of King of the Hill), goes on twitter and he says,<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
I never expected <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/idiocracy?src=hash">#idiocracy</a> to become a documentary.</div>
— Etan Cohen (@etanjc) <a href="https://twitter.com/etanjc/status/702545314733895680">February 24, 2016</a></blockquote>
<br />
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
He says this because Idiocracy is a sci-fi satire about a dystopian future where the President is stupid and everyone else is stupid, too, and he takes this counterfactual situation to parallel our current, actual situation because Donald Trump... and so forth. The tweet then gets picked up by lots of news outlets, who deem it newsworthy, <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/02/24/idiocracy-writer-film-became-reality.html">and</a> <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/feb/25/etan-cohen-idiocracy-writer-i-never-expected-movie/">so</a> <a href="https://www.rawstory.com/2016/02/its-official-idiocracy-writer-says-his-satire-about-a-dumber-america-has-become-a-reality/">it</a> <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/270642-idiocracy-writer-i-never-expected-my-movie-to-become-a">bombards</a> my -- and perhaps your -- various social media feeds.<br />
<br />
I would like to float the idea that this thing Etan Cohen said is significantly less clever than it seems to think it is, for at least a couple of reasons.<br />
<br />
Let's start pedantic: Idiocracy is still not a documentary. And in fairness, Etan Cohen never actually says it <i>is</i> one, when he reports he never thought it would <i>become</i> one. But plausible deniability aside, I hope we can agree that documentaries are, by definition, about things that already happened. If you make a documentary about the future, you are a goddamn necromancer, or else an innocent Trojan woman gifted with the power of prophecy, but also cursed never to be believed, by the god Apollo, as punishment for refusing to sleep with the god Apollo, which is the actual-mythical story of Cassandra of Troy, whose generally situation is pretty amazingly captured by the FML expression on Frederick Sandys's "Cassandra":<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbGwq2_aVc1mc7KBF5R_ceTUvHQTZ6KzggIVWfuVL-d-Lumx__Dks0bdepS7uWC-Q5-TZ-WlZ0eNV95mSG4cXUEmRjeQYM9EwTg_u1pEJuJGvVtyy_NC30ImaDrj_aey-UIMcHEF8d-3a0/s1600/5535611413_ef18542717_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbGwq2_aVc1mc7KBF5R_ceTUvHQTZ6KzggIVWfuVL-d-Lumx__Dks0bdepS7uWC-Q5-TZ-WlZ0eNV95mSG4cXUEmRjeQYM9EwTg_u1pEJuJGvVtyy_NC30ImaDrj_aey-UIMcHEF8d-3a0/s320/5535611413_ef18542717_o.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
And to characterize a prophetic foretelling of imminent catastrophe as "a documentary" is to bury the lede, i.e., that you are a wizard or a witch or at any rate have special and probably sacred powers with which we all must reckon.<br />
<br />
If this quibbling over definitions seems humorlessly literal, recall the words of our late philosopher-laureate, Mitch Hedberg:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBj5RL8gTBnXvzOplwGU8WI3djYFyeqffyaOpXcDQ9lhyphenhyphengFfWSNJVLDrZ75P38AqM_QDKRDuE6wNvRKfpqAAlhfbvAiaHHwcV9Jdk6gxdNmaFLeJ8OcGppJ8aZERj-d6j8hROc60BTkgOZ/s1600/tumblr_ln71hyS7Jt1qzp976o1_500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBj5RL8gTBnXvzOplwGU8WI3djYFyeqffyaOpXcDQ9lhyphenhyphengFfWSNJVLDrZ75P38AqM_QDKRDuE6wNvRKfpqAAlhfbvAiaHHwcV9Jdk6gxdNmaFLeJ8OcGppJ8aZERj-d6j8hROc60BTkgOZ/s320/tumblr_ln71hyS7Jt1qzp976o1_500.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Idiocracy was made in the mid-2000s, at which point, of course, the President of These United States was a Rhodes fucking Scholar named George W. Bush, who nicknamed his Chief of Staff "Turd Blossom," and whose education platform included <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ej7ZEnjSeA">the lapidary insight</a>, "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" and who once rehearsed in public the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKgPY1adc0A">timeless folk axiom</a>, "Fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me... You can't get fooled again." (Disclosure: George W. Bush was not a Rhodes Scholar.) This was nearly as stupid as that time, a rough decade before, our whole national consciousness was embroiled in a controversy that centered on a President's penis,<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqK0KwLOG-n6Wpmd9ZRBnn5yGAaIX0iHELadE3O-9TXRFiXulzvi6YFU9Kw6aLR3b9cL-ZTjAE0KdnQwqh0hDAPFZH3-ybNto87bYtHRqAkvfeuPja1JatZRnTHIMzGSCTXFUWa1MtAN0T/s1600/aa5896f10cf1da75aebbe9f507c1d876.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqK0KwLOG-n6Wpmd9ZRBnn5yGAaIX0iHELadE3O-9TXRFiXulzvi6YFU9Kw6aLR3b9cL-ZTjAE0KdnQwqh0hDAPFZH3-ybNto87bYtHRqAkvfeuPja1JatZRnTHIMzGSCTXFUWa1MtAN0T/s320/aa5896f10cf1da75aebbe9f507c1d876.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
which in turn was about as stupid as the time, another rough decade before, a President went on television and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pa4_NBlYK8">said</a>, "A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not." Ronald Reagan was King Truthiness.<br />
<br />
This nation's political thunderdome has survived idiots of every conceivable stripe doing stupid shit in every imaginable flavor and variety. It is either hubris or laziness to imagine that we have reached Peak Idiot. I feel confident in saying this because, for instance, in 1790, a bipartisan committee resolved that any attempt by Congress <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=lsPztgGkYYgC&pg=PA118&dq=%22to+attempt+to+manumit%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiT9ICzr5rLAhXLeD4KHY99D1EQ6AEIQDAG#v=onepage&q=117&f=false">"to attempt to manumit"</a> slaves, or anyone who might become a slave by importation or birth, was unconstitutional until 1808. They decided that, in other words, not only was slavery legal and constitutional, but that trying to make slavery illegal was unconstitutional. Isn't that just too stupid? In 1910, to take another example, when a black boxer named Jack Johnson beat a white boxer named Jim Jeffries, white people were so angry that they rioted in more than 50 U.S. cities, and killed dozens of black people for some reason that at the time must have seemed to them very compelling.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizUcwNToKkEG0NkZ8GW0zzhyphenhyphenKqtw697C3AnO4GN09YSCZAHBS3n-7VKEeL63Gl2rAhGrNTCReAEtMN9ntv0pAm5xni2QXaToHA6ypWVe09etVJZSGbTHEVbYod9QHcguTCULQPMNw25QC6/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-02-28+at+6.40.58+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizUcwNToKkEG0NkZ8GW0zzhyphenhyphenKqtw697C3AnO4GN09YSCZAHBS3n-7VKEeL63Gl2rAhGrNTCReAEtMN9ntv0pAm5xni2QXaToHA6ypWVe09etVJZSGbTHEVbYod9QHcguTCULQPMNw25QC6/s320/Screen+Shot+2016-02-28+at+6.40.58+AM.png" width="156" /></a></div>
These were monumentally stupid times to be alive. There have perhaps been stupider. There will surely be stupider still.<br />
<br />
But maybe the knee-jerk anti-populism that says "we're dumber now than we've ever been before!" is the smart set's apocalypse, the cynical flipside of the grimly optimistic (and, to me, entirely unintelligible) compulsion to<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj__flhzpp7RyvE4mX-aYcrJk-oABc5T_iCHGaEH01rkkpI5YPqZFiT07lbsKF7XaM4Q-moOlcxY3kdPCkcf4wwPiUdTBOnjG7IuehmPJ5UeFbikRb7hMHo8WAShvkEjxXlc-qsQOlytfRe/s1600/trump-hat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj__flhzpp7RyvE4mX-aYcrJk-oABc5T_iCHGaEH01rkkpI5YPqZFiT07lbsKF7XaM4Q-moOlcxY3kdPCkcf4wwPiUdTBOnjG7IuehmPJ5UeFbikRb7hMHo8WAShvkEjxXlc-qsQOlytfRe/s320/trump-hat.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Make America Great Like It Used to Be: slavery Civil War Jim Crowe, you know the routine of national triumphs, uninterrupted until 1999 <i>at least</i>. Great like when our first generation of truly gifted robber barons bought, bribed, and grifted themselves into heritable monopolies on steel and oil and infrastructure and then named universities (Vanderbilt!) and concert halls (Carnegie!) and urban palaces (the proto-Trump, Rockefeller!) after themselves so we would remember them fondly for fucking us forever.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhESTk1kHRAIu8onNBJiYYBBC0qQiF_bRpnFApU8fyJquzU9DU1ZPu_-YDbWX3m_rMc-JLOMUhm9pyieklSgMvKUS_O6N6eRTQ8TK7tXlMUo_c6TfYZsANdTX1FSgdKyuBxqnCszPaM3NpH/s1600/image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhESTk1kHRAIu8onNBJiYYBBC0qQiF_bRpnFApU8fyJquzU9DU1ZPu_-YDbWX3m_rMc-JLOMUhm9pyieklSgMvKUS_O6N6eRTQ8TK7tXlMUo_c6TfYZsANdTX1FSgdKyuBxqnCszPaM3NpH/s320/image.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Merry Christmas! We own everything!" -the Rockefellers</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Or the First Great War, or Prohibition, or else the Great Depression. Or when we took vengeance on the Japanese military by atomically bombing the Japanese citizenry. Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia. MLK, JFK, RFK. Watergate! Watts and Harlem. Stagflation. Gordon Gecko. The Iran Contra, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again. Just the very highest highs, the stuff of which a million chants of "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" have been built, like great choral pyramids, ascending to the heavens.<br />
<br />
For decency's sake, let's not let the stupidity of our current situation, which is ample but not unprecedented, blind us to the truly revolutionary thing about democracy: it makes stupidity -- yours, mine, anybody's -- politically viable, even vital. Here's something Gordon Wood -- to historian Will Hunting <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azM6xSTT2I0">mocks</a> that ponytail goober for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnESedN4vSI">regurgitating</a> in the Harvard bar -- said, a thing I really quite like, about what Americans realized when they thought about what they had wrought: “If men were all alike, equal in their rights and in their interestedness, then there were no specially qualified gentlemen who stood apart from the whole society with a superior and disinterested perspective. All people were the same: all were ordinary and all were best represented by ordinary people. That was democracy." As if to say, What a wonderful mistake we have made!<br />
<br />
Then again, we don't live in a democracy. We live in a republic, where representative leaders are supposed to be chosen from the "natural aristocracy of talent," the common pool of our best and brightest. So maybe we're totally fucked. I dunno. I drank too much coffee for dinner.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-86599946360934003372014-06-26T19:30:00.003-06:002014-06-26T23:57:26.173-06:00Ann Coulter is not so much wrong as stupid about soccerResponding to Ann Coulter is like what shooting fish in a barrel would be like if fish were immortal and guns had no effect on them: easy but pointless; fun for a second, but ultimately futile. Every inch of her is covered with the criticism-resistant armor of narcissism, Teflon-grade shamelessness, Kevlar-quality self-confidence so unearned as to be unfathomable. She just wrote a terrible <a href="http://www.clarionledger.com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/06/25/coulter-growing-interest-soccer-sign-nations-moral-decay/11372137/">article</a>, bizarrely divided into a series of bullet points, about soccer. Now look -- I don't care if people don't like soccer. I don't care if people don't like anything. Unless people don't like the things they don't like in the style of assholes. I don't like Ann Coulter. I don't like her so much it makes me an asshole. She sucks me into this wormhole of loathing where I loathe her so much that it makes me loathe myself. It's like all your bullets ricochet off the impervious fish and caromb around the room before lodging in your own ass.<br />
<br />
So, in a sisyphean exercise in trying to get to the bottom of what I don't like about myself for not liking Ann Coulter, here is what I can't stand about this fucking silly Ann Coulter article.<br />
<br />
According to Ann Coulter,<br />
<ul>
<li>In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised.</li>
</ul>
Ann Coulter is crazy, here, in two distinct ways. First, the point of "team sports" is not, primarily, "individual glory" and the ruthless gutting of losers and the goats who it fuck up for everybody else. Sure, this is a part of sports, but if what you're looking for is one man left holding the bag, then individual sports are the sports for you -- and I'm not sure Ann Coulter is ready to get on board with tennis, boxing, amateur wrestling, or golf, where the athlete is actually alone in responsibility and glory. And yet, she keeps making recourse to <i>football</i>, of all things -- just about the most tightly orchestrated, highly organized team sport there is, and the only sport where every player has to line up in a line and stand totally still in exactly the position mandated by the rules until the leader-player says a word, at which point every player takes precisely as many steps as were diagrammed for them by the middle-management, a bourgeois class of coaches whose iron-fisted control over the player's movements is positively Stalinist.<br />
<br />
More importantly, there is -- in point of fact -- an almost lunatic level of individual accountability in soccer, and especially soccer at the international level. Most famously, in 1994, Columbia defender Andrés Escobar was murdered after he scored an own-goal in the World Cup. He accidentally kicked the ball into his team's net, <i>and he was murdered for it</i>. Not only is soccer absolutely chock-full of personal responsibility, it is so chock-full of personal responsibility as to be, all too often, morally indefensible and repugnant.<br />
<br />
But Coulter wants more! Way more.<br />
<ul>
<li>The prospect of either personal humiliation or major injury is required to count as a sport. Most sports are sublimated warfare. As Lady Thatcher reportedly said after Germany had beaten England in some major soccer game: Don't worry. After all, twice in this century we beat them at their national game.</li>
</ul>
<div>
This is incoherent. The implication seems to be that personal humiliation and major injury are not part of soccer, which is on both counts demonstrably false. But then Coulter argues that most sports are sublimated warfare, and to prove it, she offers the example that soccer is, in fact, a form of sublimated warfare. </div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Baseball and basketball present a constant threat of personal disgrace. In hockey, there are three or four fights a game — and it's not a stroll on beach to be on ice with a puck flying around at 100 miles per hour. After a football game, ambulances carry off the wounded. After a soccer game, every player gets a ribbon and a juice box.</li>
</ul>
<div>
This is, quite possibly, the least sufficient metric imaginable for evaluating the merit of an athletic contest. You know what else offers the constant threat of personal disgrace and violence? ABC's <a href="http://www.thewrap.com/tv/article/wipeout-another-reality-show-death-9994/">WipeOut</a>. NBC's <a href="http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/01/30/fear-factor-donkey-semen-2/">Fear Factor</a>. Coulter's weird, atavistic bloodlust is precisely what's supposed to be <i>sublimated out</i> of warfare. Otherwise we've got the Roman Coliseum with its lion-eating Christians and Russell Crowes screaming "Are you not entertained?!" </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In 1962, welterweight champion Benny Paret called Emile Griffith a "marricone" (faggot) before their third fight. Griffith -- who was gay, but not exactly out, being as he was a professional athlete in the 1960s -- was humiliated. In the twelfth round, Griffith hammered Paret with dozens of unanswered headshots, including 18 punches in 6 seconds while Paret was slumped against the turnbuckle, unmoving and unresponsive. After ten days in a coma, Paret died. The fight was broadcast on ABC. Millions of people watched Benny Paret get pummeled to death by a man he had humiliated.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
These are not the things we want in sports.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Any increasing interest in sports that lead to this kind of pain, shame, and death can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Junior Seau was one of the "wounded" casualties after hundreds of the professional football games he played in. <a href="http://www.gq.com/entertainment/sports/201309/junior-seau-nfl-death-concussions-brain-injury">According to</a> Seau's teammate and friend, Aaron Turner, "Any time you play a sport that requires an ambulance to be on-site, it's inherently a fucking dangerous game, right? 'Getting your bell rung' was the euphemism, and I think we all took pride in it. If you didn't light somebody up or get lit up in a collision, there was a sense that we weren't doing our jobs." After years of depression and insomnia, Junior Seau shot himself to death. Researchers who studied his brain <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/junior-seau-diagnosed-brain-disease-caused-hits-head/story?id=18171785&singlePage=true">discovered</a> definitive signs of CTE, a degenerative neurological condition caused by repetitive head trauma. The fucking terrifying symptoms CTE <a href="http://www.bu.edu/cte/about/frequently-asked-questions/">include</a> "memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, suicidality, parkinsonism, and eventually progressive dementia." </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Why does this woman want more things like this to happen? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Why is she so callous?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This isn't exactly a rhetorical question. My (admittedly speculative) guess is that she's kind of a fucking sociopath who gets off on the bad feelings, pain, and shame of other people -- especially strangers. I'm not being intolerant, here -- it's not that I don't <i>tolerate</i> people like Coulter so much as I'm grimly fascinated and baffled and a little repulsed by them. They have the right to exist. They're just so... <i>gross</i>. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
When Ann Coulter doesn't like something, that thing is immoral and un-American. That means Ann Coulter's caprices, tastes, and predilections are, for Ann Coulter, the guiding lights of Americanness. The biggest supposed problem with soccer -- the refrain that has droned on and on, to incredibly boring effect -- is that soccer is boring. </div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Do they even have MVPs in soccer? Everyone just runs up and down the field and, every once in a while, a ball accidentally goes in. That's when we're supposed to go wild. I'm already asleep.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
They do have MVPs in soccer. In fact, there is a fairly clear consensus on the greatest players of all time. <a href="http://www.caughtoffside.com/2014/01/09/top-10-players-best-footballers-in-the-world-ever/">It</a> <a href="http://www.givemesport.com/356166-top-10-best-footballers-of-all-time">goes</a>:</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>Pelé</li>
<li>Diego Marradona</li>
</ol>
</div>
<div>
The ball only seems to go in accidentally because Coulter doesn't know what she's watching; her criticism is basically similar in spirit to those people who think baseball is boring because they don't know what's going on when they watch it, or those people who think calculus is boring because they don't know how to do it. There's nothing wrong with thinking either of these two things, in my view, until you try to foist them on other people like you're Jesus sermonizing on the fucking Mount.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Actually, maybe the best analogy for Coulter's view of soccer is a non-gambler's view of poker: "What's the point, it's all random luck, nobody has any idea what's going on and it's just a chaos of numbers." Except Stu Ungar <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Best-Poker-Players-of-All-Time">won</a> the World Series of Poker 3 times and made probably $30 million dollars playing cards in his career. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There's actually a name for this kind of uninitiated disdain -- the <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/">Dunning Kruger Effect</a>. In the most basic terms, what happens is: a person who is shit, and has no idea what it takes to be good, at something assumes it can't be that hard. My mom, for instance, whom I love very much, insists that no NBA basketball player should <i>ever</i> miss a free-throw, because they're "free points." She has, god love her, absolutely no flying fucking idea what on earth she's talking about, and absolutely no conception of what a mind-bendingly difficult thing she is witnessing every time she sees anyone make any shot in front of 20,000 screaming assholes. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But having no idea what the fuck she's talking about is, for Coulter, a <i>badge</i>. It's a <i>credential</i> of her Americanness. Ann Coulter, to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3PJF0YE-x4">quote</a> Chris Rock, loves to <i>not know</i>. Not knowing anything about soccer lets Ann Coulter feel superior to it, even though Ann Coulter, of all people, shouldn't feel superior to <i>anything in the world for any reason.</i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here's a <i>complete sentence</i> from Coulter's article, one of the coffin nails she uses to shore up her case against the beautiful game:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>It's foreign.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
Point of fact, soccer from <i>England</i>. But the point isn't the origin, for Coulter. Foreignness is a class- and race-based criteria for discrimination: you know who to hate by knowing what they like! After all: </div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>If more "Americans" are watching soccer today, it's only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law. I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Liking soccer is a cultural aberration that will be boiled off in the melting pot. A fondness for soccer is, in fact, incompatible with being a Real American. The same way you know a computer isn't a person because it fails the Turing Test, you know a person isn't a Real American because they like the most popular game in the world. To be a Real American, you have to love watching <i>Real Men </i>(never <i>women</i>) play HARD-HITTING, PHYSICAL games... or baseball. </div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One of the awesomest parts of Coulter's unwound rant is her oblique takedown of the metric system. </div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Soccer is like the metric system, which liberals also adore because it's European. Naturally, the metric system emerged from the French Revolution, during the brief intervals when they weren't committing mass murder by guillotine. <br /><br />Despite being subjected to Chinese-style brainwashing in the public schools to use centimeters and Celsius, ask any American for the temperature, and he'll say something like "70 degrees." Ask how far Boston is from New York City, he'll say it's about 200 miles.<br /><br />Liberals get angry and tell us that the metric system is more "rational" than the measurements everyone understands. This is ridiculous. An inch is the width of a man's thumb, a foot the length of his foot, a yard the length of his belt. That's easy to visualize. How do you visualize 147.2 centimeters?</li>
</ul>
<div>
The switcheroo is precious. "Liberals get angry" and say the metric system is "more 'rational,'" but that's "ridiculous," because the real reason they like it is because "it's European." Liberals are under the weirdly hybrid thrall of "Chinese-style" social engineering and "European," I don't know, anarchism? Constitutional Democracy? The failed project of Revolutionary violence and terror? Whatever it is, it can't be good! But don't sweat it, because "any American" uses the U.S. system of measures, despite the fact that it is actually a holdover from provincial, pre-Enlightenment Europe. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Seriously, check out the wikipedia article for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_(unit)">the foot</a>. The foot, which is as long as a man's foot, is clearly more rational than a universal standard of measure: "Historically the foot, which was used in Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, England, Scotland and many Continental European countries and which varied from country to country and in some cases from city to city, was part local systems of units. Its length was usually between 250 mm and 335 mm and was generally, but not always, subdivided into 12 inches or 16 digits." Which is why architects, carpenters, and civil engineers never go anywhere without "a man's thumb," "his foot," and a "belt." Because they really want to get things exactly right.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Seriously, though, what do people see in Ann Coulter? She's like your college friend's girlfriend whose appeal you just can't fathom, but your friend is like "dude, she's a completely different person when we're alone together," except there <i>is no</i> "alone together" version of Ann Coulter -- she is just, purely and simply, this awful ipecac dram of a public persona. Go away, Ann Coulter. In the immortal words of Edward Albee, you make me puke.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/nInE5TITzE8?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-49534585428162099752014-04-11T12:55:00.002-06:002014-04-11T16:56:53.489-06:00L'esprit de l'escalierIn some ways the most interesting people to deal with, for me, are the ones whose two most pronounced feelings towards me are, so far as I can tell, disdain and fear.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
They are interesting, partly, because whenever I see them, it's a surprise to both of us -- we rarely plan to meet up, these people I scare and disgust -- and the way they choose to cope with the situation is by very, <i>very </i>studiously ignoring me. You know, the kind of ignoring that takes way more concentration than actually paying attention to someone -- making sure you're always keeping them in your peripherals so you can make sure you never actually have to <i>focus</i> on them.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There's a girl I had a crush on for like ten minutes a year ago. I don't know her very well. She seems very nice. Point of fact, I really don't know her at all. She's charming, and that's usually good enough for me. The barebones backstory here is that, the day after I met her, I asked her out via facebook message; she responded guardedly but not forbiddingly; and then I didn't respond for like a year, during which year we basically didn't interact with one another because MEN ARE FROM MARS AMIRIGHT, though when we ran into each other was generally polite and decorous, if sort of tense, because MEN ARE FROM MARS AMIRIGHT. Then, one day, I had a very bad day indeed, and a very unpleasant conversation, during which conversation I had a couple of beers. When I got home, I saw that she had liked something I had written on the facebook machine, which she had never done before. And I thought to myself -- though I reserve the right to disown this whole line of thought with the benefit of hindsight -- well, that was nice of her and makes me feel good; I will write her a message to make her feel good about herself! </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The effect of the message I wrote seems to have been precisely the opposite of that intended. Though I will not analyze <i>why</i> this is the case, I will include, in its entirety, the message itself, to enable the armchair diagnosis (and assuage the curiosity) of the reader:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Hey [redacted]. I'm writing to say that, when the above exchange happened, almost a year ago, I was asking you out because I totally thought you were rad, and also completely adorable. I didn't respond because it made me anxious, because I thought that it was totally sweet and also completely unexpected that you did respond, and frankly I just kind of savored it and didn't want to screw it up. I am writing now to say that -- while I don't think you should ever go out with me, because you are way too pretty for me, and I'm not stupid -- it remains the case that you are totally rad, and every time I see you I'm like, wow, she's awesome and adorable, and also says really interesting things. All I'm trying to do, here, is acknowledge your objective level of radness. Well played, and be well, and good day!</blockquote>
<div>
I imagine you can see how the good-hearted but somewhat vertiginous and swirling motives in back of this missive could, depending on the recipient, make it fly astray and hit the "I am confused and he is a stalker what the fuck" part of the brain instead of the "Aw what a nice little unremembered act of kindness and of love" part of the heart. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Anyway, the upshot of this message is that I cannot have an interaction with [redacted], now, that does not result in:</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>Her just stone-cold, straight-up ignoring me</li>
<li>My feelings being hurt</li>
<li>Me giggling uncontrollably right after it's over</li>
</ol>
</div>
<div>
Once, for example, while she was studying in the lounge, I walked in through the door directly behind her and said "Hey!" She reflexively said "Hey!" back. But then, when turned around and saw it was me who had said "Hey!" the automatic affectation of good humor and camaraderie just instantly crumbled out of her face and her posture, and she swiveled back to scowl at her laptop with an unbreakable focus until I left the room. I had had every intention of sitting in the lounge and reading (in the chairs, incidentally, directly in the path of what would have been her sightline if she had looked up from the screenglow) but it seemed too much like social terrorism, so I just pretended to look in my mailbox -- which has not actually contained mail for something like two years -- and bolted. And then, I collapsed into a chortling heap in the hallway. And, at the same time, felt like a real piece of shit.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Today, on the other hand, I was sitting in the lounge reading, headphones over one ear the way I do sometimes when I would rather interact with people than a musty old book, when she walked in. I gave her the ol' reflexive "Hey!" greeting and it was met with -- or rather, I guess, decidedly <i>not</i> met with -- the contemptuous silence one associates with the caste system in India, or the treasurer of the A/V Club trying to get a ride home from the homecoming queen. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So why is this funny, to me?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Because this reaction -- this posture of obviously counterfeit zenlike disinterest -- presents to the ignored party an absolute ocean of possibilities, simply because, when it's <i>so</i> obvious that someone is paying <i>painfully</i> close attention to you, but <i>so</i> obviously <i>does not want</i> to be paying <i>any</i> attention to you, and <i>is not willing</i> to <i>seem</i> to be paying any attention to you, you can do ALMOST WHATEVER YOU WANT with absolutely no consequences, and with absolutely no reaction from the ignoring party. It's a social carte blanche, and they're just giving it to you, begging you to take it, with no conception of its pricelessness. As long as you don't ask that person a direct question -- "What time is the talk later?" -- or indicate that person's concrete state of being -- "Your fly is unzipped, you dumb bastard" -- you can get away with everything. If they refuse to look at the register, it's the perfect crime every time.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In the maybe three seconds it took her to run the gauntlet from door to mailbox to door, I thought of the following things that I really wanted to blurt out, apropos of nothing:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>"I like hamburgers better than I like hotdogs, but today I want a hotdog!"</li>
<li>"I smell amazing because of clean laundry!"</li>
<li>"It's such a nice day, it makes me want to fucking blow my brains out!"</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
I didn't say any of these things, because I am not the worst person -- I am merely a terrible person. I let her off the hook kind of easy -- just said "Bye!" in the dopey, mocking voice of the untipped bartender -- because I don't want her to dislike me more, or to think I'm scarier, than she already does. But I resent her resentment and I'm afraid of her fear, so obviously I dwelled on the situation for some minutes after she left, chuckling to myself merrily and sadly, self-loathingly and misanthropically. And, while I was sitting there, unable to read for the mild adrenaline rush that comes with a good, solid spurning, I came up with the following other things I could have, and in some ways would have really relished, said to her, all of which, I imagine, she would have just pretended not to hear, because people are crazy and interacting with them is a nightmare clusterfuck of anxiety, unspoken rules, and implied boundaries that are deep and black as the Styx:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>"The Ultimate Warrior died, but he'll live on, in the hearts and minds of millions."</li>
<li>"Haven't wet the bed in a while, but I can't imagine the last time was the <i>last</i> time."</li>
<li>"If I had a million dollars in ones, I would make it rain on the Quad."</li>
<li>"It's hard not to admire Oprah, but what has she <i>really</i> done for people of color?"</li>
<li>"Artie Lange, R.D. Laing, K.D. Lang -- wow, that's weird."</li>
<li>"I can eat a whole box of popsicles, but maybe not all in one day."</li>
</ul>
<div>
I will be coming up with more of them throughout the afternoon, because people are crazy and interacting with them is a nightmare clusterfuck.</div>
</div>
Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-12590292051048647622013-08-18T19:37:00.002-06:002013-08-18T19:57:51.568-06:00Singer; Actor; Weaselly Soul-Patch Grower: The Authoritative Marc Anthony Timeline<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial; font-size: small;">
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKCHCg1u1-ghCZsP3RUABY6MoIL1KauYPpy1QluDebF_3ObMAl6U8YYh8O8V8rPKIjd8-ShRH9iOaWOg0LU0Th52CZaQMe27C0XSlnlzzLDO-W7wx0rj7lExuKnUHGN6w-CKNJqRzf_pQK/s1600/prolapsed_umbilical_cord.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKCHCg1u1-ghCZsP3RUABY6MoIL1KauYPpy1QluDebF_3ObMAl6U8YYh8O8V8rPKIjd8-ShRH9iOaWOg0LU0Th52CZaQMe27C0XSlnlzzLDO-W7wx0rj7lExuKnUHGN6w-CKNJqRzf_pQK/s320/prolapsed_umbilical_cord.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
1968 (age 0) </div>
<div>
Anthony enters the world slimy, naked, and possibly undercover, as Marco Antonio Muñiz<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG70G9OBiMgMX2hA0bVG7oRbO4nbydhx1WbCADGLZPGdbvQRJoTVwGBwVeKE6Ska_WBMpKcJgDYn93_nuailQGXoOOcwonMgujny7qcHNO8k3CtKhqfKyR9AHvXBmlvq_kA20TQpjzOYrN/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-08-18+at+8.39.28+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG70G9OBiMgMX2hA0bVG7oRbO4nbydhx1WbCADGLZPGdbvQRJoTVwGBwVeKE6Ska_WBMpKcJgDYn93_nuailQGXoOOcwonMgujny7qcHNO8k3CtKhqfKyR9AHvXBmlvq_kA20TQpjzOYrN/s320/Screen+Shot+2013-08-18+at+8.39.28+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div>
1995 (age 27) </div>
<div>
After growing to his full height of 5'7", Anthony is mercilessly out-acted by Bunk from The Wire as U.S. Secret Service Cyber-Terrorism Division Special Agent Ray Kee in the futuristic cyber-thriller Hackers, which goes on to be voted Sight and Sound's perennial #1 greatest movie of all time, and also 2-5 probably<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix5I30NWqkHfGThd96narVDpR-71JiTcYiuWh7y-EB_IF09ozitr68cym6rzOj-MZVCGIUKywM6jtKx-ZZWoBk3JlhL35Sg11tZunsYx5YwHJAJgbqrsHWCBX-igXntzNQuerNtK_DEzfm/s1600/600px-Sub_109.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix5I30NWqkHfGThd96narVDpR-71JiTcYiuWh7y-EB_IF09ozitr68cym6rzOj-MZVCGIUKywM6jtKx-ZZWoBk3JlhL35Sg11tZunsYx5YwHJAJgbqrsHWCBX-igXntzNQuerNtK_DEzfm/s320/600px-Sub_109.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div>
1996 (age 28)<br />
Anthony looks eerily older and more haggard than his classmates as high-schooler Juan Lacas, a murderous and sort of rape-y drug gang kingpin, in the accidentally-franchise-launching film The Substitute (which, unlike The Substitute 2: School's Out, The Substitute 3: Winner Takes All, and The Substitute 4: Failure Is Not An Option, does not star Treat Williams)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxRS2UCgzaeZmFkKyI6rhd3u_zXK7G_sCK8berqVwixh0UKvNWKvQtEuaJwPFbL-MaP23Ovg7w2RuiN5E222lMdjjRB2XPIyLd6kHePkYrNpf7uoldpLXrk0hnVs0ub0sYvL7ViPvXF8mS/s1600/now+that.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxRS2UCgzaeZmFkKyI6rhd3u_zXK7G_sCK8berqVwixh0UKvNWKvQtEuaJwPFbL-MaP23Ovg7w2RuiN5E222lMdjjRB2XPIyLd6kHePkYrNpf7uoldpLXrk0hnVs0ub0sYvL7ViPvXF8mS/s320/now+that.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN_VTKtZHi9lmwLaqRCNk9_2sr7DpE9oFNueg_-q-gce35AOZTLUPhEeXbi46sAmMlZRPJCAqO813TStwezlCvn7ml2tYuASmgBbUWcixfWHnS8lOl3RwI_wGUb28zndhIICn96SjLGPvr/s1600/article-2266156-17153922000005DC-559_964x612.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN_VTKtZHi9lmwLaqRCNk9_2sr7DpE9oFNueg_-q-gce35AOZTLUPhEeXbi46sAmMlZRPJCAqO813TStwezlCvn7ml2tYuASmgBbUWcixfWHnS8lOl3RwI_wGUb28zndhIICn96SjLGPvr/s320/article-2266156-17153922000005DC-559_964x612.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div>
2000 (age 32) </div>
<div>
Anthony is awarded music's highest honor when his single, "I Need to Know," is chosen for inclusion on NOW: That's What I Call Music, Vol. 4<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKT7lDC-0_ybtAJu2J4Uc2HwTOBmPlARd7pufdQGam1tiCwUuDZEM6Kh6fjGMi3Dc4E7-c0ilyvMlhk4v6xqxiwHDeHnWlm5s7WzDUjHEdV5oCRVaJISl8DxUYJephhDWV7XfYUJoybmtP/s1600/alg-jlo-marc-anthony-jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKT7lDC-0_ybtAJu2J4Uc2HwTOBmPlARd7pufdQGam1tiCwUuDZEM6Kh6fjGMi3Dc4E7-c0ilyvMlhk4v6xqxiwHDeHnWlm5s7WzDUjHEdV5oCRVaJISl8DxUYJephhDWV7XfYUJoybmtP/s320/alg-jlo-marc-anthony-jpg.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div>
2006 (age 38) </div>
<div>
Anthony marries the surprisingly height- and age-appropriate, 5'5", 37-year-old Jennifer Muñiz, née Lopez, who strikes most observers as much too tall and young and also pretty and famous for him<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbnzuZXKktfs3P7LWOCKSzje3qT-w4fVK-CrRQvFLg8CTqRSCsdUqyeIBPca_ZIxh4m8h1J0ROZayMFXYYHFYwUmGsmG__vgxB4ZSvbNh5mJEcRL7dbezR7p2y5NLxGxjCz5G2Mavcc_IR/s1600/marc-anthony-j-lo-miami-dolphins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbnzuZXKktfs3P7LWOCKSzje3qT-w4fVK-CrRQvFLg8CTqRSCsdUqyeIBPca_ZIxh4m8h1J0ROZayMFXYYHFYwUmGsmG__vgxB4ZSvbNh5mJEcRL7dbezR7p2y5NLxGxjCz5G2Mavcc_IR/s320/marc-anthony-j-lo-miami-dolphins.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div>
2009 (age 41) </div>
<div>
Anthony first displays an interest in the National Football League when he purchases a small stake in the Miami Dolphins franchise with wife Jennifer Muñiz, née Lopez, who seriously looks taller than he does in those heels; also I feel like they had some babies or something<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihKAq4U5Y2SuIOlJxK41I8BLIlLA9q4NPTg5S5ugljO4HJ0Pxtu_VeAOMi701Mmna_UuUM5J5yEz55jKXK5o42NPWmgwtR_-F9QtaU7LsCrBypHPDka6u9ZTQwJxWvRP2tMR-RAyLJ0oFa/s1600/jennifer_lopez_marc_anthony_babies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihKAq4U5Y2SuIOlJxK41I8BLIlLA9q4NPTg5S5ugljO4HJ0Pxtu_VeAOMi701Mmna_UuUM5J5yEz55jKXK5o42NPWmgwtR_-F9QtaU7LsCrBypHPDka6u9ZTQwJxWvRP2tMR-RAyLJ0oFa/s320/jennifer_lopez_marc_anthony_babies.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
</div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6O1gvJCljlV5IyiLX1lEPSccip9Rp9rOXixnkckGr14K7GoSC5jOeIwUWdY63d5uUXHJ0grtmMkfQpStMON2U8wxi1qrLStFxP-ocXxeb80gTuY68kx9FCm5IuDbRAZRu1OMtkb1Mj4L3/s1600/marc-anthony-nightline.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6O1gvJCljlV5IyiLX1lEPSccip9Rp9rOXixnkckGr14K7GoSC5jOeIwUWdY63d5uUXHJ0grtmMkfQpStMON2U8wxi1qrLStFxP-ocXxeb80gTuY68kx9FCm5IuDbRAZRu1OMtkb1Mj4L3/s320/marc-anthony-nightline.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div>
2012 (age 44) </div>
<div>
Anthony divorces Jennifer Lopez, née Muñiz; their twins go missing and are widely presumed dead<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH9izsaKLO4zhyINLqfsiv3K-rv1CVH9noipGsewezeuyt3D-dTlQlZ84_370Wk1mBtMyd_dDu5rSKjO3PwhA1-16N80kRMv3f_KBGj03grC2PYr4jEwexVac0FNm6NhGylf7JG8kJ6d9I/s1600/urbanlegends_poprocks_coke.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH9izsaKLO4zhyINLqfsiv3K-rv1CVH9noipGsewezeuyt3D-dTlQlZ84_370Wk1mBtMyd_dDu5rSKjO3PwhA1-16N80kRMv3f_KBGj03grC2PYr4jEwexVac0FNm6NhGylf7JG8kJ6d9I/s320/urbanlegends_poprocks_coke.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div>
2012 (age 44) </div>
<div>
Anthony accepts a dare from his cool new roommates, Noah and Landon, to fill his mouth simultaneously with Pop Rocks and warm Coke; after a brief rampage, he goes missing and is widely presumed dead<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_LuB5K7I-q3JsfFblXzQLWMb9_6PW935RHhP1bBiJHh1hqsBQyM5RAPEr6w6wEwWfIdId5IrfdXessOxvy9K1Exvv5p9W6yJywkquqjwozMXM774b8-8kq8iwLs_aoAaqzsishZ5vDmjv/s1600/Screen+Shot+2013-08-18+at+9.00.08+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_LuB5K7I-q3JsfFblXzQLWMb9_6PW935RHhP1bBiJHh1hqsBQyM5RAPEr6w6wEwWfIdId5IrfdXessOxvy9K1Exvv5p9W6yJywkquqjwozMXM774b8-8kq8iwLs_aoAaqzsishZ5vDmjv/s320/Screen+Shot+2013-08-18+at+9.00.08+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div>
2013 (age 45)</div>
<div>
After assuming a new identity and undergoing a controversial anti-aging gene-therapy procedure, Anthony is selected by the Baltimore Ravens as 23-year-old, six-foot tall defensive prospect Marc Anthony in the 7th round of the NFL draft (247th overall)</div>
</div>
Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-69929718936956683622012-01-07T17:41:00.004-06:002012-01-07T18:42:58.520-06:00The Worst Commercial Ever Made: Chevy Silverado<div><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WXJ6nL3gomM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div><div>In this commercial, a man is asked which house is his. He says, "The one with the Silverado out front." So far, there's no real problem here. A Silverado is a pretty singular marker -- I don't see a lot of people driving them, and can't imagine why anyone would -- and a good way to identify something as distinct from other things, like "the woman with the hairy goiter" or "the dog with the huge balls, you know the one I mean." </div><div><br /></div><div>Then, friendlily enough, the interrogator asks, "What do you do?" The man -- our hero -- says, "Well," and seems on the verge of answering the question like not-an-asshole. At which point, the commercial smash-cuts to a montage of the man doing the following things: Swimming; pulling dirt bikes with his truck; driving his family and singing; playing paintball; wearing a hardhat and throwing lumber in the back of the truck; fishing; chopping a log; washing his hands with a hose; loading the back of his truck with hay; playing chess with an old guy; pulling a boat; lighting a barbecue; and having dinner with his wife, who is giving him the googly-eyes. Then, he says, "Ayyyyye," trails off, furrows his brows, and looks down, discouraged, overwhelmed by the glut of possibilities. Then, Tim Allen tells us something about how manly and efficient the Chevy Silverado is, and then the anti-actor who plays the jock on Numb3rs gives you some specifics about a sale because his rate per hour in the recording booth is way more reasonable than Tim Allen's, and finally Tim Allen comes back and there's something about "From work site to home front, Chevy runs deep," which if you think about it doesn't make any sense at all. Does Chevy burrow under the ground to get from one of those things to the other? Is Chevy an underground river, and is the entire neighborhood going to collapse into it when it erodes the cave ceiling?</div><div><br /></div><div>Ok, so ultimately the message the commercial is trying to convey is the ol' 'Merkin corporate standby, "If you buy our product you're a rugged individual who, like Thoreau, cannot be bound up by definitions or constrained by the strictures of society. And like Whitman, you contain multitudes. You're not like everybody else, everybody else being sheep and ciphers." In this, the commercial is only as egregiously awful as just about every other commercial ever made. It becomes uniquely terrible in trying to be specific about the unique multiplicity of the asshole -- our hero -- in question.</div><div><br /></div><div>A couple of points. First, the two men are at a children's party. The interrogator is drinking out of a clear kitchen cup; the Silverado doucher is drinking out of a blue flippie-cup. So he's probably wasted in the middle of the afternoon at a kid's birthday party, so fuck that guy. </div><div><br /></div><div>Second, no American of average-or-better intelligence doesn't know that when someone asks "What do you do?" the question is actually shorthand for "how do you make money, what do you do for a living, please don't walk me through a list of all the things you actually do with your life like walk, eat, breathe, drink water, and smirk at your own cleverness." This last, you will have noticed, is exactly the function of the montage. </div><div><br /></div><div>It seems to me there are three options here: First, the man is unemployed, and so he's trying to come up with a way to answer the question that doesn't cause him public humiliation, exacerbated by the fact that he's just moved into a bougey new suburb and owns a brand new truck; second, he doesn't understand the utilitarian function of the question "what do you do" and thinks it is an open, metaphysical question -- "what do you <i>really</i> do, y'know?" -- and is therefore the kind of person I can't imagine anyone enjoying to be around; and third, that he understands perfectly well what the question implies, but smugly thinks that his job, his career, the source of his income, doesn't encompass his identity, so the question insults his personal special-snowflakeness, and he is therefore the kind of person I can't imagine anyone enjoying to be around. </div><div><br /></div><div>For the sake of argument, we'll assume he has a job, and are left with options 2 and 3. Based on the list of options presented by the montage, there are two new options: 1) he is a construction worker (loading lumber), or 2) he works in some agro-business or livestock capacity (loading hay). He is not, that is to say, in all likelihood a professional swimmer, a professional dirt bike rider, professional chauffer for his own family, a professional paintball player, a professional fisherman, a professional lumberjack who specializes in splitting a single log at a time by hand, a professional hand-washer, a chess grandmaster, a barbecue chef, or a kept man. Why, then, he doesn't simply answer that he is either a) a construction worker or b) in agro-business in some capacity isn't easy to say without making him look like a terrible, terrible person. </div><div><br /></div><div>Let's also remember that the man is new to the neighborhood -- his house still has the "sold" sign out front. He's making a first impression at somebody else's party in this back-and-forth. And it actually flashes through his mind to say, "Well, sometimes I eat dinner with my wife and then I probably fuck her based on the look she's giving me," and, "I play chess with an old guy," and, "Me and my asshole friends won a paintball tournament and then we got all rowdy about it, it was sweet." He thinks about saying "I own a boat and some dirt bikes and I pull them with my truck." This is an infant who, when you ask him his name, tells you that he's Adam and he's five-and-a-half and he has 112 Pokemon cards exactly wrapped up in a rubber band want to see them? This is the waitress-who-says-she-is-an-actress elevated to the nth degree, and made even worse by the fact that this guy doesn't define himself by an aspiration, a goal to someday reach, but by perfectly trivial day-to-day activities that nobody outside of his little clan of mouth-breathers could possibly give a shit about. </div><div><br /></div><div>But the worst part about this commercial, to me, is the implication that this guy, who does all this trivial shit, is inherently deeper than the other guy, who is a fucking schlub, too, obviously. The other guy probably drives, like, a Honda Camry or a Ford Accord or something, and is just as entrenched in the breeding, nose-wiping middle-class as Silverado Man. He has enough disposable income to have a cute little montage of his own where he, I dunno, sits in an expensive La-Z-Boy and drinks brandy out of a crystal snifter and hits an expensive golf ball with an expensive golf club and goes to a jazz concert and slaps his daughter for back-talking and blindfolds his wife after they come up with a safe-word. All of this is possible. But it's not necessary. You know why? Because as awful as this man no doubt is -- the commercial invites us to disdain him, so we might as well play by its rules -- <i>he doesn't need this montage. Because when somebody asks him what he does, he says "I'm an accountant" or "I'm a pharmacist" or "I run numbers for the mafia." </i>And he does this because he is, against all odds, the less awful man in this awful, awful commercial: The Worst Commercial Ever Made.</div>Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-66298898322983501472011-02-28T02:05:00.004-06:002011-02-28T04:28:03.210-06:00M'lady is possessed of haunchesA Lover's Plaint,<br /><br />By<br /><br />The Good Sir Mix-A-Lot<br /><br />I am given to rotund backsides. I, duty-bound against prevarication by the strictures of honor, trust none amongst my peers-at-court can repudiate the honorarium of tumescent attention he pays when a lady, svelte of belly and plentiful of thigh, strikes his fancy. These gentlemen halt, no matter their endeavors, upon observing this lady's derriere, squeezed pleasingly and with no room to spare, into her pantaloons. For myself -- when in the presence of such damsels, my fixation is almost monomaniacal. I would not only like to engage these peerwomen in sexual congress, but also to capture the image of their orbitual posteriors for obituary posterity.<br /><br />When my chums, confederates, and confidants note me in this comportment of desire, they attempt to give me pause by prophesying hexes and mongering doom. I, however, am unable to attend to their advertisements as the sapid hindquarters inspire me with a lasciviousness rather difficult to brook.<br /><br />Oh woman, since it is the case that the flesh of your rump has the look and feel of something soft as felt or suede, I invite you to exploit my attentions and affections for the use of my equipage, for you are not a common whore of the street. You are something more.<br /><br />I have seen these vaunted women performing saltations; such sights render me inimical to the conventional proprieties of courtship, as when a lady is glistening with perspiration, moist as the morning dew, and in such spirits as a well-bred mustang, high of blood in the mating season.<br /><br />I find myself fatigued by certain recent popular periodicals, endorsing the position that buttocks of attenuated convexity are attractive. On the contrary, put the question to the representative man of equatorial complexion and, I pledge, his response will be, "The marked convexity of her buttocks is paramount!" So brethren, fellows, is your paramour possessed of adequate hips for birthing? If indeed she is pleasingly shapely, enjoin her to waggle her goodly rump.<br /><br />M'lady is possessed of haunches!<br /><br />Her countenance is of a sweet, angelic city; her privity of a land of hardwood trees.<br /><br />It is to my preference that the anatomical oddities in question be both spherical and bountiful, and whilst engaged in bardic oratory I become enraptured, ravished, ecstatic -- all but deprived of my humanity. But soft, friend, it might be controversial, nay outrageous to opine that it would be desirous to me to retreat with this paragon of femininity to mine own abode and, so to say, make the beast with two backs, if you will.<br /><br />This truth is not to be had by the blue-books of our time, and not to be found in them. The embellishments undergone by these publications in the pursuit of voluptuary delight instead give the impression of playthings.<br /><br />What is wanted, on the contrary, is authenticity, density, and a preponderance of moisture. And yet not without danger, for I, the good Sir Mix-A-Lot, am often afflicted with doubt and botheration by these aphrodisiacal lures.<br /><br />Even as we speak, I turn my attention to musical tableaus preferred by the occidental rabble, and in them see coquettes with thighs so emaciated that their knees percuss in the manner of bone rattles. These coquettes are less to my taste than, for example, the esteemed track-and-field athlete Jackie Joyner--Kersee.<br /><br />An aside, to the women of corporeal solidity and ethereal mystery: My desire is to fornicate with you. I will neither upbraid you verbally nor abuse you physically, but it is my duty to be forthright, and therefore to tell you my desire is to fornicate with you for many hours, perhaps until the sun rises. You are sexually desirable, and I desire you sexually.<br /><br />Many philistines will disapprove of my lover's plaint because they fornicate with these women in question but once; I on the other hand, due to my abundance and mesomorphism, am more inclined to create heat through repetitious rubbing of tumid flesh and the slapping of bone on bone for sustained, hedonic duration. If you, fair lady, are possessed of these qualities, demonstrate them outwardly and you will be rewarded with the ululations of even the fairest of youths.<br /><br />Some men's concubines, in the pursuit of shapeliness, employ the routines of Jane Fonda, and, for the purposes of rhyme, drive popular and economical Japanese automobiles. Yet backside of the former, Ms. Fonda, is bereft of the power afforded by the locomotive engine of the latter, a Honda, and as such, the longing of my serpentine phallus is unprovoked by this undesirable want of curvature. I grant the importance of exercise, and cast no prohibitions upon it as long as it comes in the form of side-bends or sit-ups. However, I enjoin and remonstrate, to perform exercises such as those demonstrated by Ms. Fonda might have the loathsome result of slimming the callipygous fundament in question.<br /><br />There may even be those diabolical tricksters and madmen who argue that sizable haunches are less valuable than lead run through the alchemist's alembic and, in their phrenzy, part with you as lovers. In a way, I even thank these men -- their castoffs are my treasure, my dread pirate's booty!<br /><br />Though the aforementioned popular periodicals confuse your copious voluptuousness with corpulence, I cannot agree with this assessment. Your stomach does not protrude, but your hips and breasts protrude mightily, and I want to have sex with you. The overly-linear ladies proffered by these periodicals are not to the taste of the times; rather, a woman who has not been denied a diet high in starches and complex carbohydrates is to the liking of the modern man.<br /><br />Even some men who prefer these zatfig ladies, as is proper, are nothing but fools and charlatans. Though practiced and successful in the ways of wooing, these mongrels smite their <span style="font-style: italic;">embonpoint</span> maidens with fists. But again, the rakes' refuse is my reward, and even as the unfortunate women nurse their wounds and anoint their bruises, I anxiously approach with the intention of engaging them in prurient caresses.<br /><br />In conclusion, damsels and peeresses: If your hindquarters are orotund, and you are desirous of engaging with me in lubricious and shocking <span style="font-style: italic;">contretemps</span>, dial 1-900-Mix-A-Lot and divulge to me the perverse and demoniac motive and content of your phantasies.<br /><br />M'lady is possessed of haunches.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-54337411696762824242011-02-18T17:19:00.007-06:002011-02-18T19:49:17.953-06:00Your Life Stitched ShutIn a hysterical Wired UK article about social networking called <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/03/features/sharing-is-a-trap?page=all">Your Life Torn Open: Sharing is a trap</a>, Andrew Keen decries the "increasingly ubiquitous social network -- fuelled by our billions of confessional tweets and narcissistic updates -- that is invading the 'sacred precincts' of private and domestic life." He wants us to know that he thinks narcissism is bad, and that exposing strangers and would-be voyeurs to the machinations of our private lives is <span style="font-style: italic;">sacrilege</span>, defilement of the holy ground that makes and keeps us human.<br /><br />But he also wants us to know what a fucking cultured world-traveler he is, so he begins the article with this: "Every so often, when I'm in Amsterdam, I visit the Rijksmuseum to remind myself about the history of privacy. I go there to gaze at a picture called <em>The Woman in Blue Reading a Letter</em>, which was painted by Jan Vermeer in 1663." See, he's in Amsterdam a lot, but <span style="font-style: italic;">sometimes</span> when he's in Amsterdam -- he'd like us to know -- he goes to "the Rijksmuseum," which, he would further like us to know, he refers to as if he only speaks with people who know what that is. It wouldn't be enough to tell us that this painting exists; he has to set the scene, placing himself front and center, standing with his fist pressed thoughtfully to his chin, contemplating reverently this monument of Great Art. Because Andrew Keen, you understand, is very sophisticated.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCrDfjS-Xr0bIozX_XoAuI4F-Lxg-HRu0yuNzTjKKB4QM9dFdZpcbekNn0-aIANiJnZhnteHy6F_jBhOPyxtfEoSkdxpUn54jYDU4fNn_-wfGgRglkbt66QIF1gUqBbiAwx6JGRzXSindf/s1600/vermeer-woman-in-blue.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 260px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCrDfjS-Xr0bIozX_XoAuI4F-Lxg-HRu0yuNzTjKKB4QM9dFdZpcbekNn0-aIANiJnZhnteHy6F_jBhOPyxtfEoSkdxpUn54jYDU4fNn_-wfGgRglkbt66QIF1gUqBbiAwx6JGRzXSindf/s320/vermeer-woman-in-blue.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575174779701120418" border="0" /></a><br />The painting, Keen tells us, "is of an unidentified Dutch woman avidly (?) reading a letter. Vermeer's picture, to borrow a phrase from privacy advocates Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren, is a celebration of the 'sacred precincts of private and domestic life'. It's as if the artist had kept his distance in order to capture the young woman, cocooned in her private world, at her least socially visible." This painting, in which a girl who doesn't know she's being watched is captured in a moment of privacy, is a "celebration" of <span style="font-style: italic;">not invading private spaces</span>. I guess you've got to show a kid what his bathing area is before you can tell him that it's wrong for strangers to touch him there. Painting is one way to do it, but I tend to celebrate this blessed sacredness by watching women towel off while sitting on a tree-limb just outside their bathroom windows.<br /><br />So Vermeer's painting keeps its distance "in order to <span style="font-style: italic;">capture</span>" this poor woman "cocooned in her private world," which is basically the equivalent of preserving the magic of its transformation into a butterfly by tearing open a chrysalis and freezing a caterpillar with liquid nitrogen. Nothing celebrates what you love quite like killing what you love, embalming its corpse, pinning it to a wall, and inviting any dilettante with enough money to fly into Schiphol International Airport to take a look.<br /><br />But Andrew Keen isn't just an appreciator of the arts and a champion of privacy -- he's a student of philosophy (and an ogler of corpses) as well. Oh, and he's still a fucking sophisticated, jetsetting, globetrotting playboy, he'd like us very much to know, and he's still <span style="font-style: italic;">strongly opposed</span> to narcissism. "Every so often, when I'm in London, I visit University College to remind myself about the future of privacy. I go there to visit the tomb of the utilitarian social reformer Jeremy Bentham." See, sometimes he's in London -- but he's in London a lot, and only sometimes when he's in London does he vouchsafe his bougie taste and sophistication, and also his intense concern over the issues of the day that will be up to him to diagnose and, if this article is successful, <span style="font-style: italic;">maybe even cure</span>, by communing with the dead body of a man he regards as his ideological enemy. Because, you see, Jeremy Bentham didn't believe in privacy, so it's not at all creepy for Andrew Keen, who says that looking into the private lives of other people is a kind of secular sin, to stand, fist pressed thoughtfully to chin, to gander at the "glass-and-wood mausoleum... from which the philosopher's waxy corpse has been watching over us for the last 150 years." Dead people don't have private lives. You can't rape a corpse.<br /><br />Keen also demonstrates that I'm not the only writer in the world who can come up with misleading analogies: The compromised "real life" we're left with after the encroachment of omnipresent digital networking "could have been choreographed by Bentham." Moreover, Mark Zuckerberg's idea of "sharing," Keen writes, "could have been invented by Kafka." I like this misleading analogy very much: "Just as Josef K unwittingly shared all his known and unknown information with the authorities, so we are now all sharing our most intimate spiritual, economic and medical information with all the myriad 'free' social-media services, products and platforms." Except for the superficial differences -- like Joseph K being denied jurisprudential due process, being forced to undergo all kinds of meaningless and bizarre rituals that make it all but impossible for him to carry on with the job he hates at a shitty bank, and, in the end, being convicted for an unspecified crime <span style="font-style: italic;">and then stabbed to death by anonymous officials</span> as punishment for this obscure guilt -- I am persuaded. Perhaps Kafka was secretly working on a manuscript he destroyed before his death called The Social Network, in which a number of shallow-yet-clever people search for meaning in their lives, against all odds and in the face of the strangling authority of the Law of the Father.<br /><br />Keen further doomsays, "Today's digital social network is a trap. Today's cult of the social, peddled by an unholy alliance of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and communitarian idealists, is rooted in a misunderstanding of the human condition. The truth is that we aren't naturally social beings. Instead, as Vermeer reminds us in The Woman in Blue, human happiness is really about being left alone." This, of course, is preposterously stupid, and is based the idea that lasseiz-faire liberty -- "being left alone" -- is the opposite of being "social." If Keen is setting himself in diametrical opposition to the sociality offered by networking, then his ideal of human happiness -- and his idea of the truth of the human condition (!) -- is that we don't want to be watched or touched by anyone. The ideal manifestation of our humanity is solitary confinement, in which prisoners suffer "memory loss to severe anxiety to hallucinations to delusions and, under the severest cases of sensory deprivation, people go crazy" (<a href="http://www.cnn.com/US/9801/09/solitary.confinement/">CNN</a>). This craziness, according to <a href="http://www.prisoncommission.org/statements/grassian_stuart_long.pdf">a different psychiatrist</a>, is a "a specific syndrome" due to "inadequate, noxious and/or restricted environmental and social stimulation. In more severe cases, this syndrome is associated with agitation, self-destructive behavior, and overt psychotic disorganization."<br /><br />The Woman in Blue, we should remember, isn't <span style="font-style: italic;">left alone</span> -- she just doesn't know she's being watched (by Vermeer and by us, voyeurs all). She is reading a letter, and enjoying the social contact that can be created -- miraculously -- in the void left by the <span style="font-style: italic;">absence</span> of loved ones. Social networks, sinister as they can be, also let us feel watched by people we care about; and the feeling of their eyes on us is, not to put too fine a point on it, a reason to go on living. Keen asks, "What if the digital revolution, because of its disregard for the right of individual privacy, becomes a new dark ages? And what if all that is left of individual privacy by the end of the 21st century exists in museums alongside Vermeer's <em>Woman in Blue</em>? Then what?" Then we'll go on living our lives, just like they did in the "dark ages." And when the next renaissance comes, they'll have persecution and crusades, just like they did the last time. And if this is the beginning of the apocalypse, Keen will just be lucky to have blindfoldedly pinned the tale on the ass of the donkey every other fearmonger in history has missed.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-24141285007019866192010-10-17T06:21:00.010-06:002010-10-17T10:16:57.440-06:00High Theory: Accessible at Last!The prose style of what is known as literary theory -- a hodgepodge of German metaphysics and French gibberish spun out by a loose coterie of gay continental philosophers, post-gendered beard-strokers, half-mad babblers, and the odd full-on hypocrite -- is about as preposterous as a three-legged triceratops gouging with its horns at a whirlwind of duck feathers. (Witness, for instance, Judith Butler's infamous Bad Writing Contest-winning <a href="http://www.denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm">sentence</a> for 1998.)<br /><br />This style is adopted, argues evolutionist-cum-jester and disliker of theory Richard Dawkins, by "intellectual impostor[s] with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life." In a legendary depantsing of theory, reformed hoaxers Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont declare that a work of uncut Theory-with-a-capital-T is lucky to squeak out "a handful of intelligible sentences -- sometimes banal, sometimes erroneous" -- like so many pearls cast before, gobbled up, and shit out by swine. Semifamous (<span style="font-style: italic;">serious</span>) philosopher Thomas Nagel isn't sure which piston drives theory's engine more forcefully: "invincible stupidity," or "the desire to cow the audience with fraudulent displays of theoretical sophistication." In fact, no one seems to be sure whether theory is the work of a dangerous cabal hellbent on undermining the very fabric of intellectual discourse, or a b-squad of Mr. Beans whose ineptitude would almost be charming only they could stop drooling all over their MedicAlert bracelets that warn of allergies to peanuts and lawn-grass.<br /><br />Indeed, the rage for order shared by these unmaskers -- this desire for words to make sense -- wouldn't be nearly as interesting if the venom wasn't in part meant to conceal the deep anxiety that perhaps there exists an almost-unimaginable third way, somewhere between diabolical evil and developmental disability -- <span style="font-style: italic;">what if this theory stuff isn't total horseshit? What if it's brilliant and I just don't get it?! </span>When it's invoked, this anxiety is brushed aside with a mirthful chortle, as if these hatchetmen were conceding, as an afterthought, "Of course, <span style="font-style: italic;">everybody</span> knows it's true that OJ Simpson is <span style="font-style: italic;">technically </span>innocent, according to the <span style="font-style: italic;">Constitution</span> -- but <span style="font-style: italic;">come on</span>."<br /><br />Noam Chomsky, who has had Serious Documentaries made about him and is referenced in Good Will Hunting, and whose intellectual credentials are therefore unimpeachable, has offered the most concise example of the confused combination of rage and insecurity, condescension and defensiveness that characterizes any really rollicking anti-theory screed: "No one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of 'theory' that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b) ... I won't spell it out." It's a dazzling rhetorical strategy -- Chomsky plays the wide-eyed naif who is loathe to think an entire international industry of professional writers, thinkers, teachers, and students is... well... it's too horrible even to say!<br /><br />But if he is capable of scoring from the goalie box, he is also adept at playing offense-as-defense, crossing and striking so as not to be struck. Of seminal theory bigwig Jacques Derrida, Chomsky says, "I found the scholarship appalling, based on pathetic misreading; and the argument, such as it was, failed to come close to the kinds of standards I’ve been familiar with since virtually childhood. Well, maybe I missed something: could be, but suspicions remain." You see? <span style="font-style: italic;">Even as a baby</span> -- or close enough -- Chomsky would have been hip to the con. Derrida's work is appalling. Pathetic. A failure. <span style="font-style: italic;">Unless it's actually really good</span>. Doubt it though.<br /><br />This dexterous double-doubt -- "is it good or does it suck, and either way, why am I so mad about it?" -- wobbles on the crux of that age-old problem, the problem which is very nearly theory's only subject of concern: Is the meaning of a given statement comprehensible in all its facets and tints, or does some of its significance evade ready comprehension? Put another way, "Does this here word-caterpillar mean something smarter than what it looks like?"<br /><br />Well, in a half-assed attempt to clear up this confusion, to tear down the language barrier between self-evident Dawkinsian or readily-intelligible Chomskese and the Nonglish of English departments worldwide, I have gone beyond the pale and violated the unspoken pact that binds all of us who make our living, no matter how obliquely, through the incantations and ululations of the unkempt and savage hobo-philosophy known as high theory. I have taken it upon myself to Benedict Arnold the whole theory enterprise by translating select paragraphs by certain theoretical luminaries -- without losing an iota of intended meaning (jk lol) -- into voices that might be less alien to those casual readers repelled by theory's uncircumcised pomp and smooth-shaven circumstance. In so doing I hope to allow self-loathing positivists, pragmatists in the throes of a dark night of the soul, and scientists on their brain-period to accept the brilliance, profundity, and salubrious revolutionary power of theory, as God intended, or to reject it wholesale once and for all, without the self-conscious pussyfooting of men wearing skirts for the first time publicly.<br /><br />On with the show. First, the abstruse theoreticians in their own words. Next, their words banged and yanked into the everyday speech of unicorns and pegasusi.<br /><br /><ul><li>Theodor Adorno, sourpuss: "Cultivated philistines are in the habit of requiring that a work of art 'give' them something. They no longer take umbrage that works are radical, but fall back on the shamelessly modest assertion that they do not understand. This eliminates even opposition, their last negative relationship to truth, and the offending object is smilingly catalogued among its kind, consumer commodities that can be chosen or refused without even having to take responsibility for doing so."</li><li>Theodor Adorno, as translated into an embittered-but-lazy art school traditionalist: "Posers who say they care about art but really <span style="font-style: italic;">don't</span> care about art, man, all they want to do is take, they don't want to give anything back. But they're too stupid, or too scared to be wrong, even to be mad that this gallery is showing poop sculptures and blood paintings. They just stand there looking at some installation, like some mobile made out of used tampons glued to turtle bones, and they're all, 'I don't get it.' They don't even call bullshit. They're just like 'well, that's not really my thing.' That's bullshit, man. They don't even take a stand for anything. That's why the art is dying."</li></ul><br /><ul><li>Giorgio Agamben, crypto-fascist: "<span style="font-style: italic;">Being in force without significance</span>:...What, after all, is the structure of the sovereign ban if not that of a law that <span style="font-style: italic;">is in force</span> but does not <span style="font-style: italic;">signify</span>? Everywhere on earth men live today in the ban of a law and a tradition that are maintained solely as the 'zero point' of their own content, and that include men within them in the form of a pure relation of abandonment. All societies and all cultures today (it does not matter whether they are democratic or totalitarian, conservative or progressive) have entered into a legitmation crisis in which law (we mean by this the entire text of tradition in its regulative form, whether the Jewish Torah or the Islamic Shariah, Christiam dogma or the profane <span style="font-style: italic;">nomos</span>) is in force as the pure 'Nothing of Revelation.' But this is precisely the structure of the sovereign relation, and the nihilism in which we are living is, from this perspective, nothing but the coming to light of this relation as such" (Homo Sacer, 51).</li><li>Giorgio Agamben, as translated into a caricature of an Appalachian wingnut: "The gubmint just do what it want for no good reason. The gubmint always hangin' 'round behind you, but you can't see it, you don't know when it be making you do something and you don't even know it's making you do it. Everybody in the world being run by gubmints, and gubmints don't care none 'bout people -- just suck us dry. Everywhere in the world, Muslims and liberals and fascists and pinkos, all the same. They take away your freedoms. Gubmint's the enemy of the common man. It don't care none. Never did."</li></ul><br /><ul><li>Walter Benjamin, tragic tramp: "What does language communicate? It communicates the mental being corresponding to it. It is fundamental that this mental being communicates itself in language and not <span style="font-style: italic;">through </span>language. Languages, therefore, have no speaker, if this means someone who communicates through these languages. Mental being communicates itself in, not through a language, which means that it is not outwardly identical with linguistic being. Mental being is identical with linguistic being only insofar as it is capable of communication. What is communicable in a mental entity is its linguistic entity. Language therefore communicates the particular linguistic being of things, but their mental being only insofar as this is directly included in their linguistic being, insofar as it is capable of being communicated."</li><li>Walter Benjamin, as translated into a stoned dude who just put down an acoustic guitar at 3 in the morning: "It's like, we <span style="font-style: italic;">think</span> we say stuff with language. But what does <span style="font-style: italic;">language </span>say? What if what language says is <span style="font-style: italic;">itself</span>. Like, do you ever feel like when you say something, it's not like you're talking with language, it's like <span style="font-style: italic;">language is talking with you</span>? Like, what if language is like, this body, and we're all just like little cells in it. No, think about it -- like, sperm is part of us, but at the same time sperm are these little animals in our bodies. What if we're just language's sperm? So like, what we <span style="font-style: italic;">think </span>we mean isn't <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> what we mean, because like we're just on a mission for language, and we can't see the bigger picture. So like, when we say stuff, we mean what we think we mean, but we also mean, like, <span style="font-style: italic;">way more</span>. Because, like, <span style="font-style: italic;">language </span>means all this <span style="font-style: italic;">other stuff</span>, too."</li></ul><br /><ul><li>Paul de Man, Nazi-sympathizer who Jews sympathized with, fan of irony: "In the study of literature, the question of the self appears in a bewildering network of often contradictory relationships among a plurality of subjects. It appears first of all, as in the Third Critique of Kant, in the act of judgment that takes place in the mind of the reader; it appears next in the apparently intersubjective relationships that are established between the author and the reader; it governs the intentional relationship that exists, within the work, between the constitutive subject and the constituted language; it can be sought, finally, in the relationship that the subject establishes, through the mediation of the work, with itself. From the start, we have at least four possible and distinct types of self: the self that judges, the self that reads, the self that writes, and the self that reads itself. The question of finding the common level on which all these selves meet and thus of establishing the unity of a literary consciousness stands at the beginning of the main methodological difficulties that plague literary studies."</li><li>Paul de Man, as translated into a middle school English teacher so careful to be precise that she almost becomes confusing: "In this class we're all going to put on different hats and go to a lot of faraway lands without leaving our seats! You're all going to have opinions about what you read. But what's funny about reading is, someone else's words are in your head! Think about that -- you're thinking in your head, but you're thinking somebody else's thoughts! That'll tickle your noodle! So we're all going to have to try to figure out what the author was trying to say in his book, and what it means to us. But also, it's important to think of what it the <span style="font-style: italic;">writer</span> thought his book meant. So we're going to have to put on four hats in all. We're going to be reading, and thinking about what we read, and writing about what we think, and even thinking about what we think! Did that blow your mind? Believe you me, it's not easy to wear those hats all at the same time! Have you ever put on four hats and looked at yourself in the mirror? It might be a fashion no-no, but it's an English yes-yes!"</li></ul><br /><ul><li>Jacques Derrida, grand wizard of nonsensical sense: "The two concepts (friend/enemy) consequently intersect and ceaselessly change places. They intertwine, as though they loved each other, all along a spiralled hyperbole: the <span style="font-style: italic;">declared</span> enemy (Blake declares the enemy by ordering him to declare himself: be my enemy), the true enemy, is a better friend than the friend. For the enemy can hate or wage war on me in the name of friendship, <span style="font-style: italic;">for Friendship</span>s <span style="font-style: italic;">sake, </span>out of friendship for friendship; if in sum he respects the true name of friendship, he will respect my own name. He will hear what my name should, even if it does not, properly name: the irreplaceable singularity which bears it, and to which the enemy then bears himself and refers. If he hears my order, if he addresses me, me myself, he respects me, at hate's distance, me beyond me, beyond my own consciousness. And if he desires my death, at least he desires it, perhaps, him mine, singularly. The declared friend would not accomplish as much in simply declaring himself a friend while missing out on the name: that which imparts the name both to friendship and to singularity. That which deserves the name."</li><li>Jacques Derrida, as translated into a teenage girl who wants you to think she's more distraught, and more thoughtful, than she really is: "Omigod, sometimes I hate my friends so much. I know it sounds totally stupid but I feel like my enemies are the only people I can trust. It's like, I trust my friends one minute but then they stab me in the back. Ashley is totally acting like we're total BFFs, but ten seconds later she went through my bag while I wasn't looking and she's using my lipgloss again without asking, which is just super disrespectful. It's my property and she doesn't even have the common courtesy to ask if it's ok, and I've already told her not to do it a bajillion times. She totally would ask if we weren't such good friends, so it's like, what good are friends anyway? But like, when Blake told me I was his worst enemy when we were playing badminton in gym, I totally trusted him. I know it sounds retarded or whatever, but it's true. It's like, at least I know where I stand with Blake. I feel like Ashley just hangs out with me because people think she's cool, she does it just to be seen with me, so she doesn't look like such a spazz like she did when she was all fat and had acne last year before I showed her how to put on foundation and not eat three Fruit by the Foots every day at lunch. But Blake like totally hates me and he doesn't even care how it makes him look. It's so <span style="font-style: italic;">honest </span>that sometimes I almost feel like he's, like, in love with me. He doesn't go rooting through my bag and taking my stuff and pretending he didn't think I would be mad. Even if he did, at least he'd just be doing it to piss me off. He'd be thinking of <span style="font-style: italic;">me</span> and not just how everybody thinks he's totally popular because I let him smoke with me in my car during open period. God, Ashley is such a bitch!"</li></ul>Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-89483399702045465782010-09-15T23:24:00.004-06:002010-09-16T00:21:55.545-06:00You know what's fucked up? I'm not even high.It's interesting that people who are intellectually invested in defending evolution and denigrating intelligent design are also, in a strange way, backed into the corner of viewing intelligence as a uniquely human thing, qualitatively different (and more valuable) than whatever animates the other bits of space-junk randomly bumping uglies out there.<br /><br />The design argument runs that the world has clearly been planned and built with such care that some intelligence must be in control, must have lain the ground rules and must in turn be enforcing them. Nonsense! cry evolutionists. It's perfectly plausible that it was merely a random string of events, and as we all know, on an endless timeline the infinitesimally unlikely becomes all but predestined. It's science, not intelligence! There's no wizard in the sky! The heavens are filled with trudging mechanisms, spasms of inky plasma, stars swallowing other stars and spitting out comets that crash operatically into balls of unimaginable flame in a fit of cannibalistic rapacity even more harrowing for the fact that <span style="font-style: italic;">the universe has no desires</span>. It doesn't want to destroy. It doesn't care either way. It just destroys, because insensate things are fucking cruel. Except not really, because again, they don't give a shit.<br /><br />It's odd, right? We say that there's no intelligent force governing everything, which in a sneaky way ratifies the idea that there's something fundamentally unique, special, and singular about human intelligence. Our atheism becomes a kind of self-congratulation -- we're special! -- that we're trying to critique in believers. Instead of arguing that there's <span style="font-style: italic;">no such thing</span> as intelligence, or at least that human thought -- and life in general -- isn't qualitatively different than all the other crap that's going on, we implicitly argue that we're the only tiny pocket of intelligence for as far as the eye can see. Creationists argue that there is a god and we are created in his image; we argue that there is no god, because he would have to be created in our image it would just make <span style="font-style: italic;">too much sense</span> and shit would be cool and nice and pleasant to live in when <span style="font-style: italic;">clearly that's not true</span>. I mean, <span style="font-style: italic;">look around, man</span>. Everything is a swirling mass, a primordial blob of who knows what, and we're a privileged enclave whose spasms of thought make us special, if for no other reason than the exquisite awareness of our impeding, collective doom, the fact that someday we will be washed away by the cosmic equivalent of Scrubbing Bubbles, and our recorded history will become a cold, dead monument to nothing. The power of observation will be gone, and with it will go any shred of significance, in any sense of the word.<br /><br />On the other hand, we take heart by reading BBC Science articles and saying things like, "it's a statistical near-certainty that there are other intelligent life-forms somewhere in the deep reaches of space!" But we belittle people who believe -- based on what they swear is experience but what we insist is misguided faith -- that they've seen, say, a UFO. We have to say we believe wholeheartedly in the fantastically improbable, but we don't believe it <span style="font-style: italic;">cares about us</span>, and to suggest otherwise would be lunacy. Because, again, we're the only thing in our neighborhood with the special skill to care about stuff; and even if we weren't, we're not that interesting anyway. (Narcissistic self-loathing.) If there's anything intelligent out there, it hasn't found us yet, because we haven't found it. And we're kind of the gold standard around here, I don't know if you noticed. We're kind of the only game in town.<br /><br />Quantum and string theory -- not that I understand the first thing about them or can talk about them without mumbling like a nincompoop -- are fascinating in this respect: By suggesting that, say, the universe is just a tiny bubble in an endless sheet of bubble-wrap with and endless number of other sheets of bubble-wrap above and below it that an insane toddler is taking its sweet time popping, one bubble at a time, we get to imagine all kinds of insane Rube Goldbergish scenarios for the creation of the world.<br /><br />If our argument, as Free Thinkers and all that shit, is that the universe makes an elegant kind of sense insofar as nearly impossible things become necessary in the long run, does it become logically necessary to suppose that at some point, a three-eyed troll in negligee named Carter Burwell once vomited up a celestial pool of filth, one lonely rising bubble of which was the Big Bang, or a Bigger Big Bang before the Big Bang that contains our Big Bang and a billion like it? And Carter Burwell is, in turn, a quivering quark in a monumental atom of gold so vast it's dense enough to make you cry and valuable enough to cause a war between a Greek in a loincloth and an Egyptian with a weird animal head, which the Egyptian wins because the Greek is crushed from out of nowhere between the thumb and finger of the lunatic toddler?<br /><br />The forms bigness this big take on are predictably anthropomorphic & anthropocentric. I can't imagine the kind of new, mind-incinerating entities I hope straddle universes, and what kinds of personalities they have, and what kind of complicated things they might do that, if we had a vantage on them, would look strikingly like intelligence, except of a sort so vast that it merks humanity's like '86 Tyson did Marvis Frazier.<br /><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/AwTE0mVGCMI?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/AwTE0mVGCMI?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br />So I imagine awesome, slobbering babies and giant titans fighting over shiny stuff I wish I had. But this is optimism. More likely, the universe and the universes around it are cold, dark places lit up periodically with terrifying flashes of rending light none of it matters, in the scheme of things, any more than we do. Which is to say, not at all. Fortunately for us, the antidote to despair is ignoring its causes and acting like we're fucking awesome. We're so fucking smart, it's incredible.<br /><br />Here's what bothers me about, but also saves me from going insane under the weight of, eternity and infinity -- it's impossible not to think of them as, respectively, A WHOLE BUNCH of time and A WHOLE LOT of space or stuff or whatever. But that's never seemed quite right to me. Eternity and infinity are the same as <span style="font-style: italic;">no</span> time and <span style="font-style: italic;">no</span> space; not just the biggest number you can imagine +1, but the smallest number you can imagine <span style="font-style: italic;">and then it vanishes</span>. Absolute zero. This, to me, is a great consolation. If it turns out we're wrong -- if it turns out there's a smartypants god and he invented everything and the last will be first and the first will be last and the last and the first will be judged by their acts, it's comforting to know that an ever-lasting suffering in a never-ending lake of fire is also a <span style="font-style: italic;">never-starting</span> suffering in a <span style="font-style: italic;">non-existent</span> lake of fire. Hell takes so long that it's over in literally less time than an instant, the smallest division of time imaginable<span style="font-style: italic;"> but even shorter</span>; and heaven is so big it can fit in the shoe of one of the army of angels dancing on the head of a pin.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-50779997011862570322010-08-20T22:05:00.006-06:002010-08-21T09:40:12.846-06:00On attention sp... hey, look, a beaver!Speed is important to me in a really troubling way. Basically I mean efficiency, as in "requiring little time to work," but I would be wrong not to mention the dextroamphetamine salts in the generic Adderall I get from my psychiatrist who looks like a skeleton. Mentally, I am a rat-race addled working man. I just happen to have the schedule of a bum. I want to do things as efficiently as possible, with as little effort as possible, and glean maximum results with minimum expenditure. I don’t like spending a lot of time on anything except trying to <i style="">absorb</i> things – recently, it’s been podcasts about things I half-care about.<p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I listen to hours of podcasts every day or two. Semi-professional production values meshed with semi-articulate talkers all served over a bed of self-serving unselfconscious hypocrisy and convenient position-taking. It doesn't really matter what they take themselves to be about; that's what they all consist of. Every podcast I listen to is basically terrible, but they’re all comforting. I don’t learn very much, except by a sort of osmosis – I’m only half paying attention, and I’m not paying attention to learn so much as I’m paying attention so I don’t feel so alone. This is one of the amazing things about all new media, to me – especially new media that captures the voice or movement of another human being. I’m pretty sure we haven’t entirely learned to parse the fact that they’re not really there – it’s a presence that feels good, that takes a certain burden of solitude away. Radio, at its best, is like being told a bedtime story all day.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><br /></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">There is this sense of absorption – of learning without trying, of doing or being able to do without trying. <o:p></o:p>This was what I was trying to do by getting lots of audiobooks and mp3 lectures about my field. I wanted to replace reading and learning via elbow grease with the facility of absorption. But it hasn’t worked for me, and it won’t. And that’s partly because I’ve come to identify literature – particularly American literature from the 19<sup>th</sup> century, the subject of the aforesaid audiobooks – with <span style="font-style: italic;">work</span>. And work is something that I believe you should only do on the clock.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">I have a more or less evil, capitalistic sense of time. I’m entering my fourth year of grad school – my writing year, in which I’m supposed to produce on my own time and with my own schedule – so I don’t have a clock. Nobody watches me, or makes me do anything, so I always have the sense that I’m shirking responsibility to do something fun at the expense of some Scrooge-ish overseer who, for once, isn’t paying attention. It's like, the only way I can make my dalliance with irrelevancy significant is by making it a romanticized "fuck you" to the powers that be -- which, make no mistake, actually <span style="font-style: italic;">exist</span>, but also don't give a fuck what I do with my day to day. I think deep down I feel I’m cheating my employers out of something by getting paid not to do any work, and there’s something incredibly satisfying about that – I am exploiting them right back for exploiting me, the bastards.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">But there’s also something absurd and pathetic about it all. It’s just such a waste, such an orgy of resentful feelings and bad faith. I don’t do anything because doing stuff is hard, and doing stuff is hard because it’s work, and it’s work because it’s what I do. It’s who I am. It structures my identity and my reality. But I hate my reality and I hate my identity and I want to escape it. How can I use literature or theory as an escape from my identity or my reality – which is WHAT LITERATURE AND THEORY TELL ME I’M SUPPOSED TO USE THEM FOR – if they’re the very things that structure my identity and my reality? I want to escape <span style="font-style: italic;">from</span> these things, not use them to escape something else.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">So I do.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I play Red Dead Redemption, which I bought for my new Playstation 3.<span style=""> </span>It’s an incredibly immersive experience. It will never yield anything. But it's awful fun, though.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yesterday I took a legally-procured Adderall. I have a medical condition, you see, called attention deficit disorder, the symptoms of which only rear their heads when there's something I am supposed to be doing but cannot do because I lack the willpower and ability to care and gumption and tenacity and sticktoitiveness. It's in the DSM-IV, look it up. I fully intended to do some work after taking said psychostimulant, but my new HDMI cables came and I just had to see how Red Dead Redemption would look on my new LCD TV without decades-antiquated component cables.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">I ended up playing for 9 and a half hours or so. Finally forced myself to stop out of disgust when I couldn’t find any cougars – I’m supposed to kill two cougars with my hunting knife to become a “master hunter” – and I kept getting mauled by grizzly bears, which are entirely too stealthy and entirely too aggressive to be plausible in this fucking game.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I stopped to go to Target to buy a wrench so I could finally put together the Ikea kitchen shelf unit that’s been obstructing some pathway or other since I moved into this new apartment some weeks ago. The cheapest adjustable wrench at Target was $20, so I bought a $5 pair of non-needle nose pliers and stripped the shit out of the bolts tightening them up. So I hope I don’t ever have to take it apart, but at least I put it together, and now it stands there, monolithic, holding up my microwave, my Foreman grill, my coffee maker, and my toaster oven. A true monument to convenience. Except I accidentally installed one of the shelves in such a way as to block the outlet, and I haven’t the gumption to take it out and put it back in. I blame my ADD.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But the point of this story is that, when I drove to Target, I felt simultaneously like I was sleepwalking and like I was still playing a video game – everything felt consequenceless, and everything seemed at a remove, as if through a screen, projected onto my windshield instead of existing on the other side of it. I knew I was driving recklessly and dangerously, but I couldn’t make myself care enough to correct it. I fiddled with the radio, flipping until I found a song, not that I wanted to listen to, but that I wanted to soundtrack my experience. When I got to Target, I stared at the wall of tools long after I’d discovered that the kind of wrench I wanted wasn’t to be had, as if it was a problem I could solve if only I scoured the terrain long and concentratedly enough.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">An interesting question, to me, is whether or not video games and the like are actually going to destroy the attention spans of generations to come. I guess I’m in one of the first generation of kids who never knew what it was like to write without having a word processing equivalent on a personal computer at home, and I never knew what it was like not to have recourse to, say, Microsoft Solitaire when I got bored. I have played Microsoft Solitaire for entire days, before, honing technique, subconsciously learning probability, adjusting the way I move the mouse for speed and precision. I have dreamt in solitaire. I have lived life seeing things and people as if they were solitaire cards, and as if what I was supposed to do with them was turn them over in the proper order.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">The first time I took Adderall, I looked at porn for eight hours.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Adderall is a wicked drug. Some new users, yours truly tragically included, enter a state called "hyperfocus." Hyperfocus is about what it sounds like -- at the expense of everything else, you sink into the Fire Swamp quicksand of whatever subject happens to be at hand, and you don't leave until the subject or the drug is exhausted. It's a race for last place.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Adderall also makes you incredibly, preposterously, Pepe Le Peu-ishly horny.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">But mainly what Adderall does is suck all the non-essential blood out of your body and send it to your brain. The effect of this is more or less what you'd expect: In the end it's something like being a late-career Philip Roth character -- desperately wanting, prurient, desiring, wanting, <span style="font-style: italic;">needing,</span> lusting, craving. But there's just not a lot going on down there.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">On the other hand, you can concentrate <span style="font-style: italic;">forever</span>. On <span style="font-style: italic;">anything</span>. But you don't want to concentrate on anything, because this hotshot of speed to your brain has made you into a quasi-impotent sexual dynamo -- you're like one of those Greek statues of a fertility god with the dick broke off. Pornwatching, in this state, makes you a kind of ultramodern Tantalus, reaching for grapes but not having long enough arms. There's a terrible pun to be had in there in there somewhere.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">So anyway, the first time I took Adderall, I sat there looking at gallery after gallery of still shots. I decided to play a game. With most Thumbnail Gallery Post sites, certain thumbnails will redirect you to an entirely new TGP site with entirely new thumbnails of entirely new and promising galleries, which in turn direct you to new TGP yadda yadda yadda. The game I made up was to click on every thumbnail that -- at the time -- struck me as "undeniable," and only stop when I had managed to close every single gallery and every single TGP array.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">I completed this mission. It is possible. It is horrible, horrible, and it takes eight hours, but it's possible. When I stopped, I started seeing porn in my life the same way I had seen solitaire years before. Everything took on a certain positional or appendagial significance that was wholly unwanted and thoroughly unsettling. When I finally went to bed, 36 hours after my first dose of the drug, I dreamt about porn. But not porn as in <span style="font-style: italic;">porn </span>-- porn as in <span style="font-style: italic;">everything in life is porn</span>. I was able to focus for eight hours on this thing that I really did not want to be focusing on, and for hours and hours after that it wouldn't leave my subconscious -- it provided a kind of organizing principle for my entire life.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><br /></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Yet, I have trouble sitting down to read a single page, or to think about – much less write down – what’s been on my mind. The idea of paying attention to something at the expense of everything else is an almost crippling affliction to me.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">When I was a kid, I had a paper route. Every morning, I would deliver 40 or 60 newspaper, and at the end of the month, I would get 40 or 60 dollars. It was a pretty shitty gig, but it gave me exactly enough money to spend exactly one entire day at the arcade. My mom would drop me off in the morning and pick me up a workday or so later. I would be drenched in sweat, almost post-coitally spent. And in those eight, ten, twelve hours, I would have participated with full focus in a fantasy world built out of pixels by other people. I would have a near-obsessive drive to correct mistakes I’d made, to approximate the goal of perfection that videogames, so much more than life, render approachable and plausible – even if, like life, they leave it lingering past the horizon of your limited capabilities. It was a state of deep concentration, totally oblivious to time or space, only interested in Street Fighter 2 or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or The Simpsons or even – and most agonizingly – that fucking machine with the tub full of cheap toys and The Claw. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I spent hundreds of dollars on that Claw, always winning an armful of stuffed creatures and cheap watches before my money was up, never feeling like I got my money’s worth, and always returning to it with a sense of indignation, as if THIS TIME would be the time I wouldn’t let the machine beat me – I’d come away on the upper hand. This is, I imagine, what it feels like to gamble – to develop an animistic relationship to “the house” that makes you resent your own (probabilistically pre-ordained) failings as the sinister machinations of some imposing but faraway intelligence. Winning becomes personal, but it’s personal against no one – it’s nothing but a measly point of pride, and your triumph wins you no plaudits and tarnishes no rival's honor.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Later, as a young teen, I punched holes in my bedroom's plaster walls – perhaps a dozen holes. Some of them were because I was growing up in small-town Iowa and the small-town Iowa girls I thought at the time were hot but have gone on to learn were on the threshold between gross and average didn't like me like I liked them; but most of the holes were punched over Mortal Kombat II for the Sega Genesis. I would come home from school, where I had been bullied and shamed in a million disparate, and always somehow novel, ways, where I'd been marginalized and made to feel insignificant – and, what’s more, like I was playing a game for which everybody else knew the rules, but they were so baroquely complex that I’d never be able to make sense of them without a crib sheet I’d never be given. And I’d come home to this box, which I’d play for hours every day, until my parents told me to stop – that is, until I realized I could just keep playing after they told me to stop and they’d eventually stop trying to get me to stop. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This made sense to me. I knew that if I honed my reflexes, learned very specific and recognizable patterns, adapted my idiosyncratic way of understanding the problem to the fully intelligible problem itself, I would end up solving it. I could win, which was a sensation I was promised nowhere else in life. Not in art or literature, not in social interaction, not in organized athletics – and I was a good athlete, goddamnit, but I was mercilessly bullied off the soccer team by a kid who was bullied so much he finally had to transfer. The big wheel keeps on turning.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">I certainly couldn't hope for this kind of promised success academically. I couldn’t win at school. I couldn’t escape the sense that no matter what I did I was a disappointment to someone, that I couldn’t delegate my time in a way that would make my efforts satisfactory to everyone looming over me in judgment – a half-dozen teachers in wildly disparate subjects and two parents who only showed genuine interest when something was wildly wrong, and who brought me up to think I was at my best when I didn’t cause trouble but didn’t do anything that warranted special attention, so exhausted were they from dealing with my terrorist of a criminal of a sister.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s not that I particularly wanted to underachieve in school. I didn’t much care either way. But my teachers so thoroughly drilled it into my head that I was underachieving so prodigiously that my young, stupid mind only took away that I was young and stupid, and that I couldn’t really do any of the things they wanted me to do, so I should only do what I want to do. I can only assume that their attempts to shame me for putting zero scholarly effort in were intended as motivational, intended to stoke the fire of passion for knowledge they suspected burned just under the surface ashes of my cartoonishly morose persona. You should have seen my shock when I saw that my history teacher, who I’d only given the form to that morning in spite of the fact that we were supposed to give at least 2 weeks notice, gave me all 1s on a scholarship recommendation. But I didn’t catch any of these subtle signals. I thought he was just fucking with me. It was all part of the game I so stupendously misunderstood at the time, which I now take such delight in trying to decipher. I’m not sure if it’s across-the-board difficult to hint kids in the right direction, but I do know that it was impossible to hint me into doing what they wanted me to do. I wanted to be told, and no one ever told me shit -- the nudged and finessed and cajoled, and if there's one thing I've learned from my romantic life it's that I'm entirely too thick to take hints. So I did what I wanted to do. </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">And I wanted to play Mortal Kombat.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="">And when that didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, I wanted to punch holes in my wall.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="">This seems off the beaten track of concentration and attention span. But consider what people bemoan when they talk about the intellectual decline they see in the youth today. Great Books. Epic Poems. Ethics. Fucking Opera. Intellectual issues considered broadly, apart from soundbites or blurbs.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="">Youth’s inabilities are painted as a decline in the faculty to pay attention to shit we don’t care about, and have no reason to care about (or at least, are given no incentive to care about). And, what’s more to the point – these things are unpleasant. And nobody makes bones about this. Reading a Henry James novel, for the mass of men, is awful. Sure, there’s the odd odd duck who does enjoy it – and these are generally the people who try to make everybody else feel guilty for not enjoying it – but enjoyment isn’t really the game, here. Rather, it’s about tradition or heritage or genius or greatness or fucking human dignity (which I’ve always found to be a remarkably curious concept for a species whose coping strategy for dying appears to consist of forcing the aged to become senile and shit themselves and move very slowly and take very seriously things nobody else takes seriously at all.) It's about doing what people have always done, because that's just the way people do it, and it would just be a shame to lose that.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="">With videogames, the rewards are immediate and visceral.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="">They’re not, on the other hand, metaphysically satisfying.<span style=""> </span>At least not when they’re your primary means of subsistence, the thing upon which your life is predicated.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="">But here’s the thing. NOTHING that you predicate your life upon is satisfying to the least degree. Literature is not satisfying unless it’s an escape from the horrors of your own life. Work is not a solace unless it blocks out the horrors of home. Alcohol isn’t any fun if you drink it all day, every day -- then it's just another fucking job. Vocations are miserable. But most of the people who tell us we should be doing more things that are intellectually rigorous – that require more attention, that force us to concentrate – seem to have no idea that we can immerse ourselves, life and mind and body and all, into Madden ’06 for 18 hours straight without eating or drinking anything. They have no idea that when they tell us we’re failing when we don’t learn this shit they think we should learn for the betterment of our souls even though none of us believe in souls anymore, we want to fail because what did THEY ever succeed at? I would love to be shown the generation who excelled at mathematics and concentrated on things that aren’t fun and really hunkered down to read long works of literature who didn’t, at the end of the day, feel as empty as we do, and who didn’t, at the end of the day, engage in wars and crimes and rape fantasies and wicked thoughts and petty thefts just as callow and horrifying as our own. It would give me something to shoot for.<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="">The only problem now is, I hate all of my peers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="">The end.</p> <!--EndFragment-->Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-75879703957806690712010-07-25T14:54:00.010-06:002010-07-25T18:05:43.223-06:00I, Power-Bottom<div><div>I have a theory that the closest a heterosexual male can come to learning what another heterosexual male is like in bed is by grappling with him. But this doesn't go for just any two guys who have never grappled before. As with sex, the first few times basically consist of flailing, barely-concealed terror, unrealistic expectations, and crushing ineptitude. But once you know where to put your hands, and once you know how to shift your hips, and once you know the appropriate responses acts of aggression, you establish a baseline comfort level and start to develop a legitimate personality -- a set of skills and tactics that actually constitutes a kind of identity. It's hard to imagine, for instance, what it would be like to have sex entirely differently from how you have sex now, but once you have sex with your second partner it's surprising how different -- for all the consistencies -- each person is.</div><div><br /></div><div>Grappling is the same way. Everyone has a certain style. Everyone learns the basic moves, but they work differently for everybody's body. And entirely different idioms, virtually different languages, develop out of roughly the same syntax. This is, in a sense, true of all sports, but grappling is more intimate than just about any other athletic endeavor. It's competition based on the unmediated communication of two bodies in contact. For instance: I know, by feeling where your limbs and your core are, and where your body is going, where I need to go to beat you to the spot. I know, by listening to your breathing, whether you're tired, and how hard you can push. I know when you moan you're about to give up, and I know when you grunt you're about to fight back. I know, by feeling your sweat all over me, that you are fucking disgusting and I'm going to get a staph infection.</div><div><br /></div><div>As you can see, it's very much like sex. And everyone has a different specialty. There are guys who are wizards from side-control. </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLs0mHA-apVGM99omyi7mN3PcISNPsu0RU4uFVU6Ianwv4SgjC7RaOVnwj-LaOFb3eaG5Hom0BtJuSaMr7sL7t3VeKhEhb48dgcjnmGY-j5dUEPeGZLJad49a6IvLwbmKAuCkWB_UHQ9g5/s1600/kimura(1).jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLs0mHA-apVGM99omyi7mN3PcISNPsu0RU4uFVU6Ianwv4SgjC7RaOVnwj-LaOFb3eaG5Hom0BtJuSaMr7sL7t3VeKhEhb48dgcjnmGY-j5dUEPeGZLJad49a6IvLwbmKAuCkWB_UHQ9g5/s320/kimura(1).jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5497968641428565090" style="cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 300px; " /></a></div><div>There are guys with suffocating back-mounts.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxPiEQ3XfcYTZt-f7F4RehxgfXdPUMFxD2Xu5p7VgR5X-3qrc0Yk69WLtYsFgGsMHV_rb_-sTVXPUXahYr2I81OXWzkFl2j7rqpD1AeTAL2KtBzYjn2OMElg6nMmTjYZT1po-t-5GJfcWH/s1600/rear-naked-choke.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxPiEQ3XfcYTZt-f7F4RehxgfXdPUMFxD2Xu5p7VgR5X-3qrc0Yk69WLtYsFgGsMHV_rb_-sTVXPUXahYr2I81OXWzkFl2j7rqpD1AeTAL2KtBzYjn2OMElg6nMmTjYZT1po-t-5GJfcWH/s320/rear-naked-choke.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5497968429330961810" style="cursor: pointer; width: 213px; height: 320px; " /></a></div><div>There are well-rounded guys with skills in all areas, but who don't dazzle you anywhere. There are guys with gaping holes in their games, weak spots, so you know if you wiggle a specific block they'll topple, Jenga-style. Then there are virtuosos, the kind of people who make every person you've ever met who says they're "good in bed" because they've gotten over their fear of leaving the light on look like a fraud. Watching my instructor grapple is like that scene in <i>Watchmen</i> where four Dr. Manhattans are having sex with Laurie while simultaneously making scientific breakthroughs in the other room. Basically the difference between him and me as grapplers is the same as the difference between me and Gandalf as wizards.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are also pressure top-control guys, and I hate grappling with them. </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsXXuTM2gXPJqmU7OS6-HopfsDpXDFRI3C7cT5Md_6jqsgJvtdj_aXY3ENA23JvsmSl00SUKlIlsTebuDCLwxUI_AEy6bxmFVWlPvSF4AP-lrsQnt6aEWa9cxid91rdFS9I0Q7LxDgzXPg/s1600/top+control.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsXXuTM2gXPJqmU7OS6-HopfsDpXDFRI3C7cT5Md_6jqsgJvtdj_aXY3ENA23JvsmSl00SUKlIlsTebuDCLwxUI_AEy6bxmFVWlPvSF4AP-lrsQnt6aEWa9cxid91rdFS9I0Q7LxDgzXPg/s320/top+control.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5497969489074301218" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 213px; " /></a></div><div>They get on top of you and just wrench and twist you, manhandle you, out-strength and out-muscle you until they get you where they want you. They make mince-meat of you.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course, pressure top-control is the classic way to grapple. It's the way it's supposed to work, and the way it works at its highest level. It's why amateur wrestling is the best foundation for combat sports. The philosophy is simple: You power a guy onto the ground -- you get into a dominant position -- you neutralize his defense -- you attack until he submits. In amateur wrestling, the fight is over when you pin a guy's shoulders to the mat. The objective is simply to be on top, and for your opponent to have no way out. It's just all kinda... rapey-y... isn't it?</div><div><br /></div><div>Amateur wrestling is generally done by the kind of people who wrestled at your high school, and those people are generally bad people. </div><div><br /></div><div>I, on the other hand, am a guard player -- or what some affectionately (?) refer to as a "<a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?defid=1131015&term=power+bottom">power-bottom</a>." I like to fight off my back. This also means I start every fight in the least threatening position imaginable: the butt-scoot. </div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(221, 221, 221); line-height: 20px; font-family:Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;font-size:11px;"><a href="http://www.mma-core.com/gifs/GifDetails.aspx?gid=10000638"><img src="http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j253/Okkun/mma/alvarez_aoki_1.gif" border="0" alt="Shinya Aoki butt scoot chase" /></a></span></div><div>(We could go into all the ways this parallels my courtship strategy, but I believe it's important to leave certain things unsaid, for mystery's sake.)</div></div><div><br /></div><div>There are a couple reasons for this. First, it's the best way to exploit my Gumby-ish flexibility by gift-wrapping people with my armlike legs into awkward positions with stupid names like "crackhead control."</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOOxuXJWweXX3hn7DepUhA3YlMePkqj46jhkVw0UibwSFTXLLjiyVStOMgqOEm_xNYEAE0wUX8k8xaPoewN2JPK09sxzFWU64FwEJRqoCPhUBOpo3NeSSTkkDiLthQ4QatKEEj3gZJgEX6/s1600/crackhead+control.gif"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOOxuXJWweXX3hn7DepUhA3YlMePkqj46jhkVw0UibwSFTXLLjiyVStOMgqOEm_xNYEAE0wUX8k8xaPoewN2JPK09sxzFWU64FwEJRqoCPhUBOpo3NeSSTkkDiLthQ4QatKEEj3gZJgEX6/s320/crackhead+control.gif" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5497972595275142002" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 241px; " /></a></div><div>More importantly, it allows me to attack and control from a situation that is typically submissive. It's a subversive way to fight -- by doing it, I re-appropriate a subaltern position and extract a new kind of power that counters the hegemony of the bourgeois status-quo of what fighting is "supposed" to be. It enacts a leveling deterritorialization that explodes constrictive stratifications, provides a line of flight to escape from the fascist regime of vertical, top-down power into the horizontal bleed of The Real.</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm totally kidding. But hey, look, you can do Deleuzian literary criticism on <i>literally anything</i>, and that's something, right?</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>I herniated the left side of the C6/C7 disc in my neck -- <i>again --</i> about a month and a half ago during BJJ class. This is apparently one of the worst discs to injure, because the nerve it protects is responsible for the left side of your body. Such as your heart. And your arm.</div><div><br /></div><div>The first thing that happens when there's direct pressure on this cervical nerve is that your tricep shuts off. Poof. Gone. Nothing. It can't flex, and it almost instantly starts to atrophy. It turns out that this is the worst possible coping strategy your body could adopt, because when your tricep shuts off, all the other muscles in your arm and shoulder clench up into a vicelike Rube Goldberg contraption of overcompensation. The main problem here is that these other muscles are the muscles that pulled the disc out of alignment in the first place, and the only way to get it back where it needs to be is by engaging the tricep. But your central nervous system is telling your body that flexing this particular muscle is impossible, and your central nervous system is one hell of a bureaucrat. What it says, goes.</div><div><br /></div><div>I hurt myself doing duck-unders, a wrestling move that somebody with a bad neck has no business practicing with a fiery ex-wrestler who really, passionately wants me to do it right for some reason. My head hit his arm, my neck folded back, and I felt a tingle in my shoulder that trickled, Reaganomically, down my arm. </div><div><br /></div><div>At first, I thought I'd just pulled a muscle, and in retrospect I regret the fact that I shook it off and kept wrestling with people much bigger and stronger than I am for the next hour and a half; though, when I got to my car and the adrenaline wore off and I felt the characteristic numb tingling in my fingertips, I felt like a fucking savage for having toughed it out for so long. I felt considerably less tough after the half-hour drive home. I pulled up to my apartment building feeling like an army of radioactive wasps had gone to war with my shoulder, and I'm not sure I would have been able to finish out the drive if I hadn't kept myself occupied by screaming non-sequiturs at the top of my lungs at people on the sidewalk. Which is hilarious, by the way.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the most unsettling, and most characteristic, side effects of this particular herniated disc is "referred pain." All the signals from the nerves in your arm are routed through the central master-nerves in your spinal column on their way to your brain, but when your spinal column is compromised it interprets the pain as coming from everywhere <i>other than</i> where it's actually coming from. You're not supposed to feel anything in your spine -- that's why it's wrapped in armor. Essentially this is the same thing that happens to amputees when they get phantom limb -- acute sensations that actually exist nowhere below your neck, and yet are absolutely real -- except, mercifully, the limb is still there.</div><div><br /></div><div>So that's the upside -- your arm isn't gone. The downside is that herniating this disc is, so they tell me, one of the most painful mundane injuries that can happen to a body, up there with kidney stones and childbirth. It has unfortunate social consequences, too, because it's difficult to explain -- to your friends why you're in such a terrible mood, to your doctor what hurts when what hurts is just past your fingers and somewhere to the left of your elbow, to your bosses why you can't get out of bed for a week straight.</div><div><br /></div><div>I hurt my neck on a Saturday and didn't get out of bed until Monday. I didn't go to the doctor, because my health insurance makes it much cheaper to go to student health before I go to any independent providers. So I sucked on Aleve like Now 'N' Laters for forty-eight hours, moved as little as possible, tried to sleep, and tried not to breath. </div><div><br /></div><div>I called Student Health services and made an appointment for 1:30 that afternoon, but the receptionist transferred me to the head nurse told me to go directly to the ER because "there's not a lot we can do for you here." I told her I would, hung up the phone, and started sobbing uncontrollably. I'm not a crier -- I once went plus-or-minus ten years without crying, and mostly all I can muster is a couple of dry-eyed convulsions and a choke or two. But not on this day. I'd all but forgotten what it feels like for tears to trail down your face and leave that wet feeling, and then dry into the same trail but sticky this time. </div><div><br /></div><div>So I called my friend Nick, trying to pretend for some reason that everything was cool, asking him how he was, crying hard but fighting through it, and asked him to drive me to the emergency room. He finished his bowl of cereal and pulled up outside fifteen minutes later, and dropped me off in front of the emergency room entrance. I thanked him and hobbled away, clutching my elbow in a makeshift sling.</div><div><br /></div><div>That was the last social contact I had for fifteen days.</div><div><br /></div><div>I got to the ER at around noon. I paced. I avoided eye-contact. I resented the people in line ahead of me, and I resented the nurses who didn't seem to feel sorry for me. Forty-five minutes later, a doctor who spoke at least passable English called me into an examination room and asked me some questions -- I take Adderall, Sertraline, and Xanax sometimes; I'm not allergic to any medications; I have health insurance; my pain is a nine out of a possible ten. He looked at me skeptically and shuffled me off into another waiting room, where I got to hang out with three cool, friendly guys passed out in their chairs and two loving mothers ignoring their children. The moms turned on the TV in the corner that said "DO NOT CHANGE CHANNEL" and changed the channel to a soap opera. They talked to each other with incredible fluency about the characters on the show. One of the little girls cried. The other one played at the little toy-station in the corner. When her mother saw what she was doing -- <i>a half hour later</i> -- she called her away, forbade her to play on something so dirty, and scraped her hands, hard, with a baby wipe. This little girl started crying, too. The women talked louder about the soap opera.</div><div><br /></div><div>I was called back into the examination room by the pretty nurse, by this point almost delirious with pain from sitting and standing -- two things, if you don't mind me saying, we as humans generally take for granted. In my brain, I told myself I would say, "You're one of them pretty nurses, like I done seen on the TV!" My brain told me this was a really very good idea, but when I opened my mouth my shoulder flared and all that came out was a sad little squeak that sounded like "gak!"</div><div><br /></div><div>A teenage boy with his dad were led into the next room. I listened to the same pretty nurse interview him. "I had surgery for some abscesses and the stitches are torn and the cotton packing is coming out."</div><div><br /></div><div>"And where are the abscesses?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Uhm, well, one's on my inner thigh, one's on my lower buttock, and one's on my... I guess... my taint area?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Your what?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"My taint area?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Oh... OH."</div><div><br /></div><div>"And every time I take the antibiotics I throw up."</div><div><br /></div><div>I wondered what was wrong with this poor kid, and what it was like for his dad to be there. I wondered if they were scared. I was scared.</div><div><br /></div><div>After an hour or so, a dignified greybeard of a doctor, earth-tone business-casual head to toe, swept into the room and asked what he could do for me. By this point it was about 3 pm. I'd had an appointment, you'll remember, with student health at 1:30, but they were not qualified to serve my needs. Well, it took all of three minutes for this doctor to confirm my self-diagnosis and write me scrips for Percocet and Prednisone. And then they turned me out the door. Three hours and three minutes for synthetic opioids and oral steroids seems like a small price to pay. </div><div><br /></div><div>But I still haven't got the ER bill.</div>Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-19368269692065805022010-07-21T22:27:00.012-06:002010-07-21T23:45:16.709-06:00The Super Awesome Mega ChampionshipI'm back from Chicago after a long weekend (or a lean week) of sunbaking while watching bands that aren't quite ready for the big time play in front of many thousands of sunscreened assholes at the Pitchfork music festival, and I am just as happy as a clam. My friend J housed me as he always does: with some implausibly shaped pillows and a sleeping surface (after a manner). My favorite parts of these vacations to Chicago are always the weekdays, when he and his girlfriend are at work and I get to pad around the house siphoning oodles off his stash of PERFECTLY LEGAL DRUGS and watching grotesque effluvia on the NFL Network before popping in a Bond VHS tape on his St. Bernard-sized monstrosity of a television.<div><div><br /></div><div>Usually, anyway. </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv-ivSf14dyGv3dh_KwRAgb_UI17actdupSwxNtXVA0Z7_Qi51Rc3qZJlRhE0G7cwCvxA6v9wuMZ0kkLaVjjOSwJW-jDEW-ptfaolOH0LD2uVUJtqg-4h055OD-ZrXzP-ekgu0ptUbZwVW/s1600/chris.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv-ivSf14dyGv3dh_KwRAgb_UI17actdupSwxNtXVA0Z7_Qi51Rc3qZJlRhE0G7cwCvxA6v9wuMZ0kkLaVjjOSwJW-jDEW-ptfaolOH0LD2uVUJtqg-4h055OD-ZrXzP-ekgu0ptUbZwVW/s320/chris.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496587659108495218" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " /></a></div><div>This trip, my favorite part was going to Chris's Billiards, the poolhall where they filmed that scene in The Color of Money where Tom Cruise has a temper tantrum and tears the balustrade out of the wall on the stairs.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXGAto8Eg49vVvbSawAKsi6c0Ic1brJPvd2hkrKveN43p_YxTBXvW7aXXb8ASz1XNwZh8BbXCfweF8Im6d0doN54uhSQTYxbp8OfThVBhY7wsvQBBeoK3uoNKCamsLzgd_gBOkkiZ_-LW0/s1600/color.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXGAto8Eg49vVvbSawAKsi6c0Ic1brJPvd2hkrKveN43p_YxTBXvW7aXXb8ASz1XNwZh8BbXCfweF8Im6d0doN54uhSQTYxbp8OfThVBhY7wsvQBBeoK3uoNKCamsLzgd_gBOkkiZ_-LW0/s320/color.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496588768820925842" style="cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px; " /></a></div><div>J is better than I am at pool. Substantially better. This is infuriating to me, because I'm better than you are at pool. I'm better than you and your three best friends who are good at pool. I'll take your money, and I'll make sure you leave with a shaved ass when your wallet is empty, just because that shit is funny to me, and also, fuck you. I'll beat you in front of your girl with a fifteen ounce cue and a bee-sting on my aiming eye. I don't give a fuck.</div><div><br /></div><div>But J? He'll buy and sell you for a dollar.</div><div><br /></div><div>I managed to tie it up at 2-2 after going down 2-0.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7PNsfnm4XnihBfhDq0ckMCRhXGmhIP-6jUnyEj0th7LTuAmpDUK95hj_CzSEpuSC7-bv3DC_YKoPS5eObpWl4Xk4umCS-ioKpWPPzjAwyfBQYOEyByPcocJTdm5e2LdrCp5_GtZ3nQ1SS/s1600/tie.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7PNsfnm4XnihBfhDq0ckMCRhXGmhIP-6jUnyEj0th7LTuAmpDUK95hj_CzSEpuSC7-bv3DC_YKoPS5eObpWl4Xk4umCS-ioKpWPPzjAwyfBQYOEyByPcocJTdm5e2LdrCp5_GtZ3nQ1SS/s320/tie.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496587989869567234" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " /></a></div><div>The reason I was able to do this is because, as previously indicated, I am really good at pool. If being good at pool were the precondition for attaining a title in medieval England, I would be at least a Baronet.</div><div><br /></div><div>But J? He would be something even better and more prestigious than a Baronet. He would be a Marquess or a Viscount or something else even more badass than a Baronet, like a Duke or a King even. And it seems to have nothing to do with skill level, at least not in the rustic American pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps sense. I can and have practiced baroque bank shots for sixteen hours a day, and he can practice being handsome and having nicely windswept hair whenever he remembers, and he'll still beat me seven games to five at pool -- and two of the games I win, it'll be because I left him an insanely easy shot on the eight ball and he scratched it because he either (a) pities me, or (b) folds like a sucker when the shit goes down. Seriously, if I could compete with this guy based on intestinal fortitude instead of talent, I would maul him like some kind of fantastical bear that has claws on its teeth, because pressure crushes him into a little origami hula girl, and I eat origami hula girls for breakfast.</div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, J eats me for breakfast, so there's a weird Mobius strip effect going on here.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg19i8YZDfz2p_SyvLGnZYmKH-Q2mEpd7XvJOfY7ImcFLTZ-P-HW19aw61hS-8N_zE81AHqBL-ID8A-T-Ly_btxn-S4hLnCAwxq0ePrz-mFCaahGiFPj6OfQN8mb4RppJcmwKJbbkGTya79/s1600/rack1.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg19i8YZDfz2p_SyvLGnZYmKH-Q2mEpd7XvJOfY7ImcFLTZ-P-HW19aw61hS-8N_zE81AHqBL-ID8A-T-Ly_btxn-S4hLnCAwxq0ePrz-mFCaahGiFPj6OfQN8mb4RppJcmwKJbbkGTya79/s320/rack1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496587682991197714" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " /></a></div><div>I had to sacrifice some handsomeness for anonymity in this shot. So I do him all kinds of favors in photography, but in pool I'm like his medieval puppy-dog bitch court jester. </div><div><br /></div><div>Seriously, this is the kind of shot-to-win I leave him.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaeVG1UCyPVcX0UmPWZI9_rvl0kT3OYpzWOLZAOQ0_RwpWpEUhUvt_mzcz5awr3wTUhk7dTRd1ZcD0eeoLLreQtTTvNslMHu8smVMHvmgCkUG6ucDJDfESveBkdr_sa8m4EiikfVZ8m5FO/s1600/easy.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaeVG1UCyPVcX0UmPWZI9_rvl0kT3OYpzWOLZAOQ0_RwpWpEUhUvt_mzcz5awr3wTUhk7dTRd1ZcD0eeoLLreQtTTvNslMHu8smVMHvmgCkUG6ucDJDfESveBkdr_sa8m4EiikfVZ8m5FO/s320/easy.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496591505609396162" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " /></a></div><div>It turns out that I'm the worst pool player in the world, even though I'll still destroy you financially, ruin your marriage, and make your kids hate you on a single behind-the-back, double-bank 'n' kiss-off-the-nine combo. </div><div><br /></div><div>Don't fuck with me. I'll end you.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgReZHzeQQK0Hsn8hGxni2wJZ68HRbIrbXb7lqJcshS-_zBOYGqdo0_DxgbWd4aoREstZd23SN_jZbGXwNFSakZvCCYe9i6a5ZegnEpU6RzyynNZXJkS84XPQ9eM4Y8a33JxVNa01U0q-6g/s1600/rack2.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgReZHzeQQK0Hsn8hGxni2wJZ68HRbIrbXb7lqJcshS-_zBOYGqdo0_DxgbWd4aoREstZd23SN_jZbGXwNFSakZvCCYe9i6a5ZegnEpU6RzyynNZXJkS84XPQ9eM4Y8a33JxVNa01U0q-6g/s320/rack2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496587980556232946" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " /></a></div><div>(J racking because he lost like a hack coward loser. PATHETIC.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Many years ago, J and I devised a strategy to cope with the most troubling problem in amateurish competitive pool: How do you know when to stop? As is our wont, it was decided that all decisions should be made in the most childish manner possible. We reckoned that, with children, the championship is never the championship.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is how kids work -- the alpha-boy declares that the next game is to be the last game. Then, because even alpha boys are shoddily designed and often dressed constrictively, even he sometimes loses. But rather than suffer his ignominy with dignity, he deicides -- through the god-given fiat of being the handsomest, the angriest, and the first one to crack four foot tall -- that the game is not over. The championship isn't the Championship -- because we haven't played the <i>Super Awesome Mega</i> Championship yet.</div><div><br /></div><div>And the Super Awesome Mega Championship is what separates the winners from the losers, and the prematurely pubed from the late-bloomingly shorn.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbut6jJfQ49owulS8Ih_WnpdVK3QSrHVrXyFdsfLdKDHLN422-jLYHng_Ioqxpm1JUuKGJVbobI6o9qq9muHS1jcVZ9uaUze5HZ9TLytLIoGcYQNkD-9gnRWxlHrnrz3uv2LFxg9f0R44T/s1600/tables.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbut6jJfQ49owulS8Ih_WnpdVK3QSrHVrXyFdsfLdKDHLN422-jLYHng_Ioqxpm1JUuKGJVbobI6o9qq9muHS1jcVZ9uaUze5HZ9TLytLIoGcYQNkD-9gnRWxlHrnrz3uv2LFxg9f0R44T/s320/tables.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496587976537717538" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " /></a><br /></div><div>Naturally, I almost always win the championship -- the meaningless exercise that does nothing but give my oppressor an opportunity to try. </div><div><br /></div><div>Then J comes back and bulldozes me with a six-ball run in the SAMC, and pretends like it's not a big deal.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCYEVvcdGSVczBPipTu82KkuxAxaasZs0kLOl585QM13vsptfmEYlsyqLM679hyphenhyphenrBlpFzgEYOwgH7Ua8HOmrUtmm976bog16m68Ay0vRuJjmK-BhDEBE7zNSfBKNcx9wsvlPTcT3MHW3Wj/s1600/balls.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCYEVvcdGSVczBPipTu82KkuxAxaasZs0kLOl585QM13vsptfmEYlsyqLM679hyphenhyphenrBlpFzgEYOwgH7Ua8HOmrUtmm976bog16m68Ay0vRuJjmK-BhDEBE7zNSfBKNcx9wsvlPTcT3MHW3Wj/s320/balls.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5496587648458624978" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " /></a></div><div>But right here and right now, I've got a message for J. It's a simple message -- the only kind he can understand, BECAUSE HE'S TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND COMPLEX SENTENCES BECAUSE FUCK THAT GUY WHAT AN ASSHOLE AM I RIGHT?</div><div><br /></div><div>That message is this: Next year, I'm going to crush you, you homunculus.</div></div>Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-46583249569377482962010-06-29T18:41:00.043-06:002010-06-30T03:07:21.582-06:00Spielberg's Hook, psychosexual smorgasbord<div><b>I Baited that Hook</b></div><div><br /></div>In 1991 I attended a Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch concert in southern Massachusetts. Mr. Wahlberg rapped, stiffly but not without enthusiasm, while a pan-ethnic cadre of backup dancers broke their parents' hearts behind him. He took off his pants -- remember how that used to be one of our now most recognizable living actor's gimmicks, taking off his pants and rapping about being "drug free, so put the crack up"? -- and stalked the stage, flexing his jagged abs provocatively. After a wardrobe intermission, Wahlberg retook the stage wearing a bathrobe. He took it off and revealed himself to be wearing only... his boxers. Underage girls screamed. I left feeling perplexed -- why, if he'd already taken off his pants, did he have to put on new clothes only to take them off again? -- but having had a mighty fine time. I felt the vibrations. Come on, come on.<div><br /></div><div>Outside the civic center was a booth organized by a local radio station. They were giving away promotional items to shill for the launch of one of the year's most anticipated blockbusters: Spielberg's Hook. The bulbous, haggard DJ threw a t-shirt to me, rolled and taped. I opened it immediately, and was crestfallen to find it was an adult medium. Puny as I was -- the shortest kid in my class, girls included, until grade 8 -- when I put it on, I looked like a refugee in a muumuu. I sighed and resigned myself to the fact that I would never be able to walk around, impressing my friends by billboarding for the all-the-rage motion picture event of the season.</div><div><br /></div><div>That shirt is now my oldest possession. As far as I can tell, I've had it for several years longer than anything else I own.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-3WeluKcf_cmeWC2vF4O-Mg20p_IqomqJfYP5U9fJsxmYqsmFfmSHMp3ghB9BZhNgTthw7f7KSesrrd0pdwe9Cui-IO_H2UugnEkGSb101gnLGTr2yWZVob5etpEG1IAUPRkeLWaQzkG6/s1600/hook1.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-3WeluKcf_cmeWC2vF4O-Mg20p_IqomqJfYP5U9fJsxmYqsmFfmSHMp3ghB9BZhNgTthw7f7KSesrrd0pdwe9Cui-IO_H2UugnEkGSb101gnLGTr2yWZVob5etpEG1IAUPRkeLWaQzkG6/s320/hook1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488368953343519858" style="cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px; " /></a></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-3WeluKcf_cmeWC2vF4O-Mg20p_IqomqJfYP5U9fJsxmYqsmFfmSHMp3ghB9BZhNgTthw7f7KSesrrd0pdwe9Cui-IO_H2UugnEkGSb101gnLGTr2yWZVob5etpEG1IAUPRkeLWaQzkG6/s1600/hook1.jpg"></a><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghD2R2amhHt7pO0IOCX2XCgT-mX5Ycyw96MpGvr5CNfX2xZ-J6rKoAINsFMtODZZpL9ciTgFlvGMu9gHBo0lP0DpFw6c87ZVB5iMH2aUTbYzpoJ3zlmSa36wXYbBeGaOzqxaSsT1R59H5V/s320/hook2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488368959215894786" style="cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px; " /></div><div>It's survived 4 states, 13 moves, an accidental bleaching (thanks a lot, mom), and being used as a painting smock. It was with me that next year, 1992, when I went on my first date -- to Aladdin and then Big Boy, who I thought had the best hot dogs on the market -- with a girl named Sam (and my parents). It was with me on my last date, to a cupcake store for my ex-girlfriend's birthday, where I told her "I can't take you anywhere" after she was rude to the clerk, thereby precipitating the weeks-long fight that would end with a perfunctory breakup. It now fits me almost preternaturally well -- every gaunt angle, every malnourished crevice, every worrying mole, stretch mark, and superfluous third nipple on my torso is swaddled tight in its cotton embrace, as if I've grown to fit its shape as it has shrunk to fit mine. Like a Venom symbiot.</div><div><br /></div><div>Perhaps it's just a cheap coincidence. Perhaps its a cosmic confluence of taste and happenstance. Perhaps this shirt is responsible for the man I've become -- but sometimes it seems like I'm<i> the only person in the world </i>who likes Hook.</div><div><br /></div><div>It has a 22% "fresh" rating on rottentomatoes, and the positives range from condescending ("muddled but fascinating," or "It's worth a look. But overall, Hook feels like an exercise in cynicism") to milquetoast inanity ("The movie is a strong reminder of the freedom of youth and the quest for pure adventure, one that looks to the stars and sees the possibilities are as bright as a child's own imagination"). Gag.</div><div><br /></div><div>I've seen it perhaps 15 times -- just enough to be able to annoyingly recite pretty much every significant line of dialog a second before it's uttered onscreen. I love Hook. I really do. But I never realized what a fucked up movie it is until last night.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Peter Pan and the Women Who Love Him</b></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJi0EbDOe50jucFSKynxbx7TrDZw_NSETGX-1BkpR2Ol5_RqeHw-TqpXiIqEjPgGuWsC3QkozPsNrbNqi6ZZEk6Z5rvzWQxoHvWZt8Kvl3YGq2SE08wxkwLaWz3ZtuDSkfJ4KNRPxkyxaW/s1600/become+a+man.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJi0EbDOe50jucFSKynxbx7TrDZw_NSETGX-1BkpR2Ol5_RqeHw-TqpXiIqEjPgGuWsC3QkozPsNrbNqi6ZZEk6Z5rvzWQxoHvWZt8Kvl3YGq2SE08wxkwLaWz3ZtuDSkfJ4KNRPxkyxaW/s320/become+a+man.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488382133921257618" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 186px; " /></a></div><div>"I don't ever want to become a man. Yuck!"</div><div><br /></div><div>Three characters are in love with Peter: his wife Moira, Moira's grandmother Wendy, and Tinkerbell. </div><div><br /></div><div>When she first appears in the movie, Tinkerbell pummels Peter with a rolled up magazine until he falls onto a baby's bed and then stands, triumphant, <i>on his crotch</i>. It's all fairly infantilizing and emasculating, innit?</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizDToQzusKHDejoz4WjtBl0NjdREW35QTOFPx-4u-8yUDQpt1VzBsqd1iS5Cj8IK5VwJXwCHUAkGkQ_Wv_9Oo00GPCusG-iVVV5BFHdXcUocuZ6R00T1gbSSbsUueNrTo-Oez4_9mKYD9k/s1600/crotch+4.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizDToQzusKHDejoz4WjtBl0NjdREW35QTOFPx-4u-8yUDQpt1VzBsqd1iS5Cj8IK5VwJXwCHUAkGkQ_Wv_9Oo00GPCusG-iVVV5BFHdXcUocuZ6R00T1gbSSbsUueNrTo-Oez4_9mKYD9k/s320/crotch+4.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488400755142912290" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>"If less is more, there's no end to me, Peter Pan."</div><div><br /></div><div>Peter explains her appearance this way: "You're a complex Freudian hallucination having something to do with my mother, and I don't know why you have wings. But you have very lovely legs, and you're a very nice tiny person, and what am I saying, I don't know who my mother was and I'm an orphan, and I've never taken drugs because I missed the sixties. I was an accountant." It takes a while for the irony of the invocation of Oedipus -- and the creepily incestuous vibe in Tinkerbell's brand of pedophilia -- to come into focus. </div><div><br /></div><div>About halfway through the movie, Peter has a torrent of remembrances that begins with an image of his birth-mother discussing her plans to send Peter to attend Whitehall and Oxford before ascending to "the highest court" as an attorney, all the while saving time for "a marriage, and family, and all of that." Meanwhile, she forgets to watch her pram, freighted though it is with precious future-barrister cargo, and it rolls away.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJRiaiqH6_sxB7OTjNAMefiANvW0uGYtQGl_L2R5-H_hEBzIyMYbZEETRmFUadKXIG1BY5zDLrtadEIjg9x8nhHeCNNyEERVtR6Ol_i0BhznVpyPBGM7m0lLroMStRComzDtcDZiKW_bZ8/s1600/pram.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJRiaiqH6_sxB7OTjNAMefiANvW0uGYtQGl_L2R5-H_hEBzIyMYbZEETRmFUadKXIG1BY5zDLrtadEIjg9x8nhHeCNNyEERVtR6Ol_i0BhznVpyPBGM7m0lLroMStRComzDtcDZiKW_bZ8/s320/pram.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488425303616978482" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>So her priorities kind of suck. </div><div><br /></div><div>Peter explains, in a kind of voiceover that supposed to be directed to Tinkerbell, but is really just hammy exposition for our benefit, that at that moment he realized that he didn't want to grow up -- this must have been a fucking smart baby -- because "everyone who grows up has to die some day." So instead he "ran away." Ran away in his baby carriage. By making it roll down a hill. Until apparently it tipped over in the rain? And he fell out into the middle of a spiral on the pavement in a suspiciously well-framed shot?</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc_U6LUyWdI-Rt93DoASbuSF0Vz-ftrGj0sqcapgeyyeu1uF2OdGRSCNGRXCtfAQ65txUhYSZZ9Hmb8SoERGCyikYzWjBtQC3et3dftg7Aaat0AD9VMxrv1I5upi0MTgCs32yYwjXNg4-S/s1600/baby.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc_U6LUyWdI-Rt93DoASbuSF0Vz-ftrGj0sqcapgeyyeu1uF2OdGRSCNGRXCtfAQ65txUhYSZZ9Hmb8SoERGCyikYzWjBtQC3et3dftg7Aaat0AD9VMxrv1I5upi0MTgCs32yYwjXNg4-S/s320/baby.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488425293974997202" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>Like, how did the baby get from the pram to the middle of the spiral <i>on its back</i>? </div><div><br /></div><div>So Tinkerbell finds and rescues baby Peter -- and he's thrilled about it, clearly.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSarY1ZbIyNJwvq-kgO2gz8qtOe29Xr74FtRC75thsFjUium-lPKMFquZZ2l4UD3zPZVo64fDvPQfONyaE3J4jZP2lz1sdfdcyC_qY09zTp2xf7kv1myN4zSXBFcCjWjPZ1f0nkaeI2Zxd/s1600/baby+2.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSarY1ZbIyNJwvq-kgO2gz8qtOe29Xr74FtRC75thsFjUium-lPKMFquZZ2l4UD3zPZVo64fDvPQfONyaE3J4jZP2lz1sdfdcyC_qY09zTp2xf7kv1myN4zSXBFcCjWjPZ1f0nkaeI2Zxd/s320/baby+2.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488425295669751170" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>Tinkerbell absconds with the little dude, in what would look suspiciously like kidnapping if baby Peter hadn't had a preternaturally sharp baby intellect capable of high-level practical reasoning, awareness of his own inexorable mortality, and the amazing ability to navigate a baby carriage of which he is inside. </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlh1v4pswS3tMqQGRUYxeJM8QWj-XsDSKTPHwx9Qy0M43THgadSzmX8penHtC8mPb4nuFkxfFR-dC2EfO3ZsyxA9ElbuKKw2wT5SqqecnRCXiEIq90_bpV_uhmwohkffyvS7ib-KSPmPXO/s1600/baby+3.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlh1v4pswS3tMqQGRUYxeJM8QWj-XsDSKTPHwx9Qy0M43THgadSzmX8penHtC8mPb4nuFkxfFR-dC2EfO3ZsyxA9ElbuKKw2wT5SqqecnRCXiEIq90_bpV_uhmwohkffyvS7ib-KSPmPXO/s320/baby+3.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488425789805054962" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>He explains: "You came and you saved me. You brought me to Neverland. You taught me to fly." So Tinkerbell is, at the very least, on the cusp of felonious babynapping. But she also raises Peter, provides him succor and care and nourishment, for the first twelve years of his life in Neverland.</div><div><br /></div><div>At which point we run upon the rock of an insuperable problem. Isn't the whole point of Neverland that you stop aging when you're in Neverland? If I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to call it shoddy filmmaking.</div><div><br /></div><div>Fortunately, it's a problem with a payoff: without this loophole, Tinkerbell couldn't be simultaneously Peter's mother-figure, nursing him to manhood from his first days on earth, <i>and</i> want to jump his bones. </div><div><br /></div><div>If Peter doesn't want Tinkerbell -- his surrogate mother -- he doesn't want Wendy -- his foster-grandmother -- either. But, of course, this movie has a moral responsibility to us to creep us out with quasi-incest as much as it possibly can. So, the now ninety-something year old Wendy Darling, who still calls the now middle-aged Peter "boy," is also still in love with him, eighty years after the fun summers in Neverland. Only one problem: Peter married her granddaughter, Moira. Imagine getting left for your <i>thirteen year old grandchild</i>. That would sting a little bit.</div><div><br /></div><div>In his initial visits to her open window, Peter resists the advances of the young Wendy -- who looks strikingly like a young Gwyneth Paltrow -- because he's a fucking idiot, apparently. </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhtL9ykaxCDD9U0SF41fQBe3N0km-A_0RaRp3bCyit4sYEqw4b0ADaYzgu11Y8vBSr1X_PytL-hDEyytRyyKzojsyTbar8v38IHacejvc-82ABxyyOrOF-tFzU3lLsFTAIfgcuwOVMJoxf/s1600/young+wendy.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhtL9ykaxCDD9U0SF41fQBe3N0km-A_0RaRp3bCyit4sYEqw4b0ADaYzgu11Y8vBSr1X_PytL-hDEyytRyyKzojsyTbar8v38IHacejvc-82ABxyyOrOF-tFzU3lLsFTAIfgcuwOVMJoxf/s320/young+wendy.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488430212511823170" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>And, in the immortal words of Michael Bluth, "you gotta lock that down," because this asshole has the gall to be surprised when young, hot Gwyneth Paltrow turns into old-ass Dame Maggie Smith.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdy0z5K7xlwaGheyTn_zCyAP3o-8oygnT8I1rb5gLjh-lfMwzWpxWIfswL2DKAYjdXBUO2aBRysVxzMGYZQUZS16SlA9ipIfTZSz2SkB4sUTvKMPZbmjhYoSmqtMRXJy-wNbMiPsXqAHdZ/s1600/old+wendy.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdy0z5K7xlwaGheyTn_zCyAP3o-8oygnT8I1rb5gLjh-lfMwzWpxWIfswL2DKAYjdXBUO2aBRysVxzMGYZQUZS16SlA9ipIfTZSz2SkB4sUTvKMPZbmjhYoSmqtMRXJy-wNbMiPsXqAHdZ/s320/old+wendy.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488430998635055058" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>I mean, she's hot for an old lady, but... come on.</div><div><br /></div><div>In a genuinely affecting scene early in the movie, Wendy explains to Peter that she has always been in love with him: "When I was young, no other girl held your favor the way I did. I half-expected you to alight on the church and forbid my vows on my wedding day. I wore a pink satin sash... but you didn't come." </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLRImbs9KmtGmhXI6w6l47yaqZanjS0uaFU2e5mlQ4XVRPnDIQV4-1RSheog3tsLxKfCNpjjOqnzB62gD5sQA9n67tF9VxRag0A37ZyQewmHTxPOxk7KI_W_ekpussYmYHnFMx3_1P_KGj/s1600/no+other+girl.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLRImbs9KmtGmhXI6w6l47yaqZanjS0uaFU2e5mlQ4XVRPnDIQV4-1RSheog3tsLxKfCNpjjOqnzB62gD5sQA9n67tF9VxRag0A37ZyQewmHTxPOxk7KI_W_ekpussYmYHnFMx3_1P_KGj/s320/no+other+girl.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488431340597806578" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>Peter, taken aback by her bedroom eyes and her clumsy groping, responds, "Grandmom?"</div><div><br /></div><div>And this is where we find out what kind of chap the young Peter Pan really was. Wendy says, "Yes, I was an old lady when I wrapped you in blankets. A grandmother, my thirteen year old granddaughter asleep in the bed. Moira. And when you saw her, that was when you decided not to go back to Neverland." It will take an hour and a half of screen-time to learn the rest of this story.</div><div><br /></div><div>Not only does Peter decide to stay; he decides to give the sleeping girl a kiss. Wendy begs him not to -- "I couldn't bear for Moira's heart to be broken when she finds out she can't keep you!" -- but Peter is adamant. He hawks in and plants one right on her pie-hole. In one fell swoop, Peter devastates the woman who has served the role of mother for, and who is in love with, him;</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2KIja-h587HG6If91BPtQxOqBvG40tx4ChxmDcgpJKrfTjNAYX1RuSfXgM4zU6ZhgpTPC2xAtrq5vYRxNdxNaNFLErj-wqvXqDVfxsLyVOdWDbG72eqhQi-kujjZsCqEW2pVMKuRv4_rs/s1600/devastated+tink.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2KIja-h587HG6If91BPtQxOqBvG40tx4ChxmDcgpJKrfTjNAYX1RuSfXgM4zU6ZhgpTPC2xAtrq5vYRxNdxNaNFLErj-wqvXqDVfxsLyVOdWDbG72eqhQi-kujjZsCqEW2pVMKuRv4_rs/s320/devastated+tink.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488435337109926018" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>he terrorizes the woman who will become his grandmother, and who is in love with him, thereby consigning her to decades of torture in providing for him financially and emotionally while watching him seduce her descendant <i>right in front of her;</i></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_Yqvq6bqxaOMkY5VNGJvSCMDbB521Gh7J1nvPLhS3k7SFbm570WK2WS7u_PSzYg9RZhoSKtuxTojj-EsXyvpDk6jQYyzrGsYwhOhpau_3N32WzMbUrFx9B3O3hR2wARNQG_mCLLVHeP40/s1600/devastated+wendy.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_Yqvq6bqxaOMkY5VNGJvSCMDbB521Gh7J1nvPLhS3k7SFbm570WK2WS7u_PSzYg9RZhoSKtuxTojj-EsXyvpDk6jQYyzrGsYwhOhpau_3N32WzMbUrFx9B3O3hR2wARNQG_mCLLVHeP40/s320/devastated+wendy.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488435345327699394" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>and he commits something that looks eerily like sexual assault on a minor incapable of consent. </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif6_nj4ko_0DLXlEE51mNcX80ndId_FliwF_9oUqgcoOEibSA8WN5c2HXnZWYMvloC_75Q-lw9aLkkbTYESCcytXb1L032ZUL5Pu7T6Gil5fWBIzCBo6Xx6NrSAZsj9RESCyrHvVKb6t-t/s1600/kiss.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif6_nj4ko_0DLXlEE51mNcX80ndId_FliwF_9oUqgcoOEibSA8WN5c2HXnZWYMvloC_75Q-lw9aLkkbTYESCcytXb1L032ZUL5Pu7T6Gil5fWBIzCBo6Xx6NrSAZsj9RESCyrHvVKb6t-t/s320/kiss.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488435347869134178" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>We should remember that this is Britain, and the laws might be different there -- after all, if they locked up every pervert and pedo on the street there wouldn't be a whole lot left over. But no matter where you are on the globe, this is big-league dickweed stuff. The kid's a world-class asshat.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><b>Happy Thoughts</b></span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>This whole cavalcade of reminiscence is triggered by Peter finding an old teddy bear his bio-mom put in his perambulator to keep him company while she talked about his future with her shrew-friends. </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwnr3qpSaBavpL1mqwnByoVIeGhM7RKxpHlg-og6CfYx6HVCGApFgMn-jdUOv67jYZHPGvuLfLblyNJWULaAasuSn-3URTKiCHf_aVbepic_0hdl_NKJd1T2mK1BWmDOCwANdOd8qUI88O/s1600/teddy+2.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwnr3qpSaBavpL1mqwnByoVIeGhM7RKxpHlg-og6CfYx6HVCGApFgMn-jdUOv67jYZHPGvuLfLblyNJWULaAasuSn-3URTKiCHf_aVbepic_0hdl_NKJd1T2mK1BWmDOCwANdOd8qUI88O/s320/teddy+2.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488437028104808050" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a><br /></div><div>After he describes the aforementioned gray-rape incident to Tinkerbell, she responds, "I can see why you have trouble finding a happy thought. So many sad memories, Peter." Because you totally dicked me over, you son of a bitch, she continues silently.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZr2KBM-kFKLks-RzHh3HcSGiNfV84t2L5vRiyN0e7DNAnMG7YwdUh37SsNPtA9xLbUxjBCVDdj2yy0d2sKppo0vTcNYjsqWf3fFq2m9SL_ArgtpPijqiJNCsNTc-ougApfsaHOX2vupyX/s1600/teddy.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZr2KBM-kFKLks-RzHh3HcSGiNfV84t2L5vRiyN0e7DNAnMG7YwdUh37SsNPtA9xLbUxjBCVDdj2yy0d2sKppo0vTcNYjsqWf3fFq2m9SL_ArgtpPijqiJNCsNTc-ougApfsaHOX2vupyX/s320/teddy.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488437020180812610" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>Fortunately for Peter -- and <i>pace</i> Freud's <i>The Psychopathology of Everyday Life</i> -- "teddy" sounds kinda like "daddy."</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc-98P-_q2ZEU67-mOrk9jWZsfmLaqiwckcI-5gT2ZragUe7SbhmD2262t8J6ONC6zpQfSyOH3YU2NsUFH5IGdpFHSUdgjpWgd9YNz-SF9mZfQ9J-HHpVReLGaMYldxbQ84WqMcc_QhV9e/s1600/daddy.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc-98P-_q2ZEU67-mOrk9jWZsfmLaqiwckcI-5gT2ZragUe7SbhmD2262t8J6ONC6zpQfSyOH3YU2NsUFH5IGdpFHSUdgjpWgd9YNz-SF9mZfQ9J-HHpVReLGaMYldxbQ84WqMcc_QhV9e/s320/daddy.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488437012084861506" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>And lo, Peter has his happy thought, and he can fly -- which is one of the three important things, along with fighting and (for some reason) crowing, and blah blah blah. </div><div><br /></div><div>The "happy thought" is, of course, an important, if borderline-nonsensical, theme in the movie. Peter's happy thought is Jack, his son; later, Jack's happy thought will be Peter; Peter's daughter Maggie's happy thought will be her mother Moira. Only two Lost Boys are allowed to have happy thoughts: Tootles and Thud Butt (more on him in a minute). Tootles's happy thought is somehow literally manifested in his marbles, because, as Foucault has convincingly argued, crazy people cannot be happy. When Tootles gets his marbles back at the end of the movie, he flies to Neverland, the doddering old bastard.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxEVGTuRZzFg7iYBNMgyiAWmw8tjfmbNHbmzkIPWUD9_qekd4PxYlMQsEwZJJWgsw0todeuLFu1F7L1UaLWtpJ3U6NHAE_yZoFiBf30Mh4btPdaxeqTXOIXFMn5BZz8qPU8hV4RRM9Ug9n/s1600/tootles.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxEVGTuRZzFg7iYBNMgyiAWmw8tjfmbNHbmzkIPWUD9_qekd4PxYlMQsEwZJJWgsw0todeuLFu1F7L1UaLWtpJ3U6NHAE_yZoFiBf30Mh4btPdaxeqTXOIXFMn5BZz8qPU8hV4RRM9Ug9n/s320/tootles.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488470676763753010" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>He's in for a rough go of it when he gets there and remembers the Lost Boys think "all grown-ups are pirates," let alone that "we kill pirates."</div><div><br /></div><div>Also, Moira seems surprisingly placid when <i>a senile old man starts flying.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Wishes</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Happy thoughts aren't for everybody. Only for the fulfilled. The Lost Boys can't fly, and no wonder -- just look at the ridiculous shit they suggest to Peter when they're trying to coax him skyward.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisOFCsmlrG1eDO5F2IzB6kKFNM5kgsi4L1tpv53etuXwnqqc1BQYu_eMH0f48b5UufYgm8TolGnrBkKnT4AIK7sd2ZVsJ_MGHN1chayTBpSR8UUt9NibjexLEKTOPoOzNxsyFK52mP78iL/s1600/happy+thoughts.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisOFCsmlrG1eDO5F2IzB6kKFNM5kgsi4L1tpv53etuXwnqqc1BQYu_eMH0f48b5UufYgm8TolGnrBkKnT4AIK7sd2ZVsJ_MGHN1chayTBpSR8UUt9NibjexLEKTOPoOzNxsyFK52mP78iL/s320/happy+thoughts.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488472632526966034" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>Man cannot fly on gum alone.</div><div><br /></div><div>Two disappointed characters, Tinkerbell and Rufio, have the bummer obverse of a happy thought -- both have, instead, a "wish." </div><div><br /></div><div>Tink's wish is expressed in one of the movie's most perplexing scenes. Peter has found his mojo again -- he can fly, fight, and crow, and is a full-on, raging, rock-hard Pan. But he's also regressed emotionally: He thinks he's in Neverland "to always be a little boy and to have fun," and he doesn't remember that he has kids. Tinkerbell has to make a melancholy choice between brainwashing the man she loves into being a little boy again so he might love her back, or reminding him of what he truly wants. </div><div><br /></div><div>And so she does the clearly wrong thing and chooses to try to seduce Peter and make him forget about his life.</div><div><br /></div><div>The people in this movie are pretty shady. </div><div><br /></div><div>Some monumentally cheesy special effects erupt and Tinkerbell becomes as tall as Julia Roberts for some reason. "I did it," she says. "You're humongous," says Peter.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPhL4_VJdw5rkRU6wnJC6DP8B0SPVMlfRLvrtJ5ByMm1oEFIe_8sbIYQpEFQ81ZSULL8y5b7YGUleK8NkH8UFWjb3i5n1TUyBhnAVW1H4Om3hq5g-Z5VW6LUp67ab0tEQO_SS8jSyAIw0q/s1600/I+did+it.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPhL4_VJdw5rkRU6wnJC6DP8B0SPVMlfRLvrtJ5ByMm1oEFIe_8sbIYQpEFQ81ZSULL8y5b7YGUleK8NkH8UFWjb3i5n1TUyBhnAVW1H4Om3hq5g-Z5VW6LUp67ab0tEQO_SS8jSyAIw0q/s320/I+did+it.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488450567787405410" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>"This is the only wish I ever wished for myself. Oh Peter, this is the biggest feeling I've ever, ever felt, this is the biggest feeling I've ever had and this is the first time I've been big enough to have it." </div><div><br /></div><div>Did I mention Carrie Fisher was brought in to rewrite Tinkerbell's dialog?</div><div><br /></div><div>"Peter, I want to give you a kiss." He reaches out his hand for a thimble. "No, I mean a real kiss." </div><div><br /></div><div>Did I mention that Julia Roberts was nominated for a worst supporting actress Razzie for this performance? (She lost to Sean Young in A Kiss Before Dying. I haven't seen it, but that performance must have been something special, because Ms. Young won both the worst actress AND worst supporting actress Razzies for it.)</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje6BLecf0mBmS8ZxJCV9H3MkG6D3nAHlppB-QkP9Lnvs-OyZYedVaSoJgyO6Z0SyUfkw0mZwoVcZIEMgCcTMvsz4-2twPbd7QA7qDRYSu5C3mYLv4jyfHg7__mzBInxmwLyZmh3y5EG8QR/s1600/kiss+2.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje6BLecf0mBmS8ZxJCV9H3MkG6D3nAHlppB-QkP9Lnvs-OyZYedVaSoJgyO6Z0SyUfkw0mZwoVcZIEMgCcTMvsz4-2twPbd7QA7qDRYSu5C3mYLv4jyfHg7__mzBInxmwLyZmh3y5EG8QR/s320/kiss+2.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488450623074559810" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>They kiss. Tinkerbell says, "I love you, Peter Pan." </div><div><br /></div><div>At this point I wonder, do you think Tinkerbell breast-fed the infant Peter? Or did she feed him neverberries and roots from the neverforest?</div><div><br /></div><div>Fortunately, at this moment of ethical crisis -- and, let's call it like we see it, fairly brazen sexual manipulation -- the ol' word-association trick kicks in again, and when Peter asks Tink to kiss him "more," it makes him think of "Moira," which is the name of his wife. It's a good thing she wasn't named like Agatha or Isabel or something -- the movie's second moment of soft adultery could have turned pretty explicit. This is, after all, one of Julia Roberts's best-looking movies.</div><div><br /></div><div>The second disappointed character, Rufio -- the interim leader of the Lost Boys in Peter's absence -- <i>conspicuously</i> doesn't have a happy thought. He's got authority -- "Ru-fi-oooooo!" -- but he seems insecure. He growls, "I've got Pan's sword. I'm the Pan now!" But, in the justly famous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dozens">dozens</a>/food fight scene ("Bangarang!"), Peter reminds Rufio that he's "a one-celled critter with no brain <i>that can't fly</i>," and that he's "suffering from Peter Pan envy."</div><div><br /></div><div><div>The two trade insults (including two of my favorite from Robin Williams: "prison barber" and "nearsighted gynecologist"), and then move on to imagining delicious frostings into existence and hurling them at each other.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigj0TKlUwHSf9ReM5jKWovmDD3tlj6CmGxvJeSvkm-3CKadxgsfByEirhNmeujexikmWwlvip-D8oeE7jNekm74QsBLSMNQKgjR4oSYDpWqfaUgrHrMhEg1XlziPGXDn24a_OIIR89PIrj/s1600/frosting+1.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigj0TKlUwHSf9ReM5jKWovmDD3tlj6CmGxvJeSvkm-3CKadxgsfByEirhNmeujexikmWwlvip-D8oeE7jNekm74QsBLSMNQKgjR4oSYDpWqfaUgrHrMhEg1XlziPGXDn24a_OIIR89PIrj/s320/frosting+1.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488421108367850802" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>No homo.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZF_n_hDOta7MpUtqK5gOpDONpX2xa0zqxMirXbOf5ztcS0SynAicDDf4QxyTkv02rehDec_oy4DKcmLmdMxQqAj2JkSM0FbwhKnKIA6_PrxkvJCHEMkKb_WyNSZoyShefgy7NWFXUGqYj/s1600/frosting+2.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZF_n_hDOta7MpUtqK5gOpDONpX2xa0zqxMirXbOf5ztcS0SynAicDDf4QxyTkv02rehDec_oy4DKcmLmdMxQqAj2JkSM0FbwhKnKIA6_PrxkvJCHEMkKb_WyNSZoyShefgy7NWFXUGqYj/s320/frosting+2.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488421115685518530" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>No homo.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoMCnwxnPZ_27s4gmNZsElkEjtNhHwTPsFyrZbH2LPfL-xuwrszz4j_0L5N1HyWU9eslXe_CfPvBM_JcdDkWJ0FMo8zMmZsE36yTpn9qqbhVInW4XAPlGibAIgU_-6WN2jYfQrRw76rBNt/s1600/frosting+3.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoMCnwxnPZ_27s4gmNZsElkEjtNhHwTPsFyrZbH2LPfL-xuwrszz4j_0L5N1HyWU9eslXe_CfPvBM_JcdDkWJ0FMo8zMmZsE36yTpn9qqbhVInW4XAPlGibAIgU_-6WN2jYfQrRw76rBNt/s320/frosting+3.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488421124939629874" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>No homo.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY02CGIvtf1Lu6XQ-jijTXRpVe6m_UpyJpqAShTB26bEeZsbBhnRzP9F6GDlAejyMdq74cdECxxNWf0a6MPV8g6C5tChFXql-Zyh_TRL2Cdij8CNMWk_1_tPzTHHSke7NG8AT7IL6OXV8S/s1600/frosting+4.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY02CGIvtf1Lu6XQ-jijTXRpVe6m_UpyJpqAShTB26bEeZsbBhnRzP9F6GDlAejyMdq74cdECxxNWf0a6MPV8g6C5tChFXql-Zyh_TRL2Cdij8CNMWk_1_tPzTHHSke7NG8AT7IL6OXV8S/s320/frosting+4.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488421132694744114" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>No homo.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMiVRjRjAPpznlJ6XDDVMJiDH8E4hmnVkPP5yBb5CQXLvIdHdy451zbgtHlekN6q3vtjiW1q3PQSfwPM-ATTiV2vRzuWcD-SBq48_SEHcIUGZ33j3SE-9X2WTljoeZwOafloRl_kLRjIgY/s1600/frosting+5.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMiVRjRjAPpznlJ6XDDVMJiDH8E4hmnVkPP5yBb5CQXLvIdHdy451zbgtHlekN6q3vtjiW1q3PQSfwPM-ATTiV2vRzuWcD-SBq48_SEHcIUGZ33j3SE-9X2WTljoeZwOafloRl_kLRjIgY/s320/frosting+5.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488421136401914194" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMiVRjRjAPpznlJ6XDDVMJiDH8E4hmnVkPP5yBb5CQXLvIdHdy451zbgtHlekN6q3vtjiW1q3PQSfwPM-ATTiV2vRzuWcD-SBq48_SEHcIUGZ33j3SE-9X2WTljoeZwOafloRl_kLRjIgY/s1600/frosting+5.JPG"></a>No homo.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3VgtaVmkjNW_K7vIY4nqfAGN0qRsnCB8Xb8VBwwgpkTBxvng3bHrjJ7jqXESyULkMKsiEkRosStpoxfBn6O13VtWM-bMExZiJkNSE_W-in2EIyatzWJy410405gscMwiKbTEmb-sbgNoJ/s1600/frosting+6.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3VgtaVmkjNW_K7vIY4nqfAGN0qRsnCB8Xb8VBwwgpkTBxvng3bHrjJ7jqXESyULkMKsiEkRosStpoxfBn6O13VtWM-bMExZiJkNSE_W-in2EIyatzWJy410405gscMwiKbTEmb-sbgNoJ/s320/frosting+6.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488421396028871394" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3VgtaVmkjNW_K7vIY4nqfAGN0qRsnCB8Xb8VBwwgpkTBxvng3bHrjJ7jqXESyULkMKsiEkRosStpoxfBn6O13VtWM-bMExZiJkNSE_W-in2EIyatzWJy410405gscMwiKbTEmb-sbgNoJ/s1600/frosting+6.JPG"></a>Even Tink gets hit with some splashback.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJa-Fbs2N6VXE3MAn2R5eX5c2FIJ436x6KSmHEeRtmQj6quWiSq-1ShAjnHQDV6MqoPPtdnl2Z0FsvhNZCktqrKr5TditDIrVaIULrLF8IrUlojd1bgr3Q1JoYEBDfgDaHMZI80qkPMPAL/s1600/frosting+7.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJa-Fbs2N6VXE3MAn2R5eX5c2FIJ436x6KSmHEeRtmQj6quWiSq-1ShAjnHQDV6MqoPPtdnl2Z0FsvhNZCktqrKr5TditDIrVaIULrLF8IrUlojd1bgr3Q1JoYEBDfgDaHMZI80qkPMPAL/s320/frosting+7.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488421393841307170" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>By the end, it looks like Chan-Wook Park tried to direct a grindhouse bukkake flick and it went horribly, horribly wrong.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Peter wins, of course, and in vanquishing his rival he also becomes a fairly clear father-figure to Rufio as the film progresses -- both in the sense that Peter gives him someone to look up to, and in the sense that Rufio is continually placed in conspicuous proximity to Peter's crotch. </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj2diurIdhKgpBcA45vtc8vOtzBac3VgysIbAy3ibZu25OWkIZvoN2GoHKrvQ7q-1fg9100f66KuNJgbzxSsSSQoS4zoGmVZFnHVn-InRayCxR890uVOt1PwUQYDvxpJ52LTwr5lgh6w6j/s1600/abdication.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj2diurIdhKgpBcA45vtc8vOtzBac3VgysIbAy3ibZu25OWkIZvoN2GoHKrvQ7q-1fg9100f66KuNJgbzxSsSSQoS4zoGmVZFnHVn-InRayCxR890uVOt1PwUQYDvxpJ52LTwr5lgh6w6j/s320/abdication.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488444496970012658" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>I mean, if the story doesn't make it fairly explicit, the camera angles do a pretty good job. </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmXxABt3PMuqOPx04yOgGAxIVRWhNc9JAAb3zKa5Hngdcr6XKTvRuTXSu5A5TUc22u1S0Rg_gtHbzxmAC6ef9tjpKnE1y4tbkg7U8Roaiwk62ipvk21rfDCX2OI4mobbs3OCdJt3duI3x9/s1600/abdication+2.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmXxABt3PMuqOPx04yOgGAxIVRWhNc9JAAb3zKa5Hngdcr6XKTvRuTXSu5A5TUc22u1S0Rg_gtHbzxmAC6ef9tjpKnE1y4tbkg7U8Roaiwk62ipvk21rfDCX2OI4mobbs3OCdJt3duI3x9/s320/abdication+2.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488444499662211874" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>"You are the Pan," Rufio says. </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-j_lWgWCl7tEIBYgjhT7J1b2h5GKF8de3r1HmIUbdp3aEpytVoesDY4zGj_nCnNjn4m2WrSmW-9s66MDYm6OcRqTNo6F87OLLZJy1GiifYujIF1FL9onK5vNuQaRfgABe95wCAkP8bA0K/s1600/abdication+3.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-j_lWgWCl7tEIBYgjhT7J1b2h5GKF8de3r1HmIUbdp3aEpytVoesDY4zGj_nCnNjn4m2WrSmW-9s66MDYm6OcRqTNo6F87OLLZJy1GiifYujIF1FL9onK5vNuQaRfgABe95wCAkP8bA0K/s320/abdication+3.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488444507401690642" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>But Peter isn't satisfied until he has totally humiliated the pretender. Even though Rufio has just abdicated his station of his own volition, Peter still feels the need to draw a literal line in the sand, forcing the Lost Boys to desert Rufio and join Pan's side, even though it's strictly pro-forma. </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgliXu24ULacpYyZrS0yYVqaANUPkPREIDbqIRGHJzj7aQn9lNKgx-75vqksqkKC8ujcKz78W4JbSdfABG_Nm4j22LkAnt5nj2YWn8GE5bsNWJb3Sxz0IXr0PMD3cp2MhAHAXHBNf-c8yxQ/s1600/abdication+4.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgliXu24ULacpYyZrS0yYVqaANUPkPREIDbqIRGHJzj7aQn9lNKgx-75vqksqkKC8ujcKz78W4JbSdfABG_Nm4j22LkAnt5nj2YWn8GE5bsNWJb3Sxz0IXr0PMD3cp2MhAHAXHBNf-c8yxQ/s320/abdication+4.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488444523084140498" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>Also, I don't know if you picked up on this, but the sword is, like, some kind of symbol for a dick or something.</div><div><br /></div><div>So anyway, Rufio's wish is expressed in the wake of the scene that broke ten-thousand hearts -- "looky, looky, I got Hooky." </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzVq72XIZGz48KgF0LffaqY6-gDkirfkQqtwXvpXwmCvq5S5Xv2fvGPuOVyAY3eioZy-U33qcs0772JdCfcRB2lLFkG_Hu4Bh2LrQgXY2ojGAHgLqOSFaMD3wmGOmnW37hMXSW1Mhlnyzi/s1600/rufio+stab.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzVq72XIZGz48KgF0LffaqY6-gDkirfkQqtwXvpXwmCvq5S5Xv2fvGPuOVyAY3eioZy-U33qcs0772JdCfcRB2lLFkG_Hu4Bh2LrQgXY2ojGAHgLqOSFaMD3wmGOmnW37hMXSW1Mhlnyzi/s320/rufio+stab.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488457326243580530" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>Dying in the arms of the man who usurped him, disrespected him, forced all his friends and allies to betray him, and didn't save him because he was busy saving someone else, Rufio says, "Do you know what I wish?"</div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6v4OOjNVGr0riSdMA8twJbCK3PQnLkbjTApnwyA414MXKfNj2Ke8zYvkKsagHs_QXMNKNmftrFhwUxB2cO_UBx09osAfgvy5kUicjX-f9_7OEbpymtdxpaEIbLofv2_2-pxlpPMOhN4KS/s1600/rufio+wish.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6v4OOjNVGr0riSdMA8twJbCK3PQnLkbjTApnwyA414MXKfNj2Ke8zYvkKsagHs_QXMNKNmftrFhwUxB2cO_UBx09osAfgvy5kUicjX-f9_7OEbpymtdxpaEIbLofv2_2-pxlpPMOhN4KS/s320/rufio+wish.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488457334266815266" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></span></i></div><div>"I wish I had a dad..."</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinNmrgIHPu5fW17hZ1Cy6lK3hDW1hHdSoCGKxsFF9zcNLB_2fk7XchHA7U62EMCrEG83cFFZ8KvE0qcppIeXXtEpPRYrUhLWYrRuejpn_fjjJvLmMpntikIi_kbLfx7ICJ4lHP1tX-AF9u/s1600/rufio+wish+2.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinNmrgIHPu5fW17hZ1Cy6lK3hDW1hHdSoCGKxsFF9zcNLB_2fk7XchHA7U62EMCrEG83cFFZ8KvE0qcppIeXXtEpPRYrUhLWYrRuejpn_fjjJvLmMpntikIi_kbLfx7ICJ4lHP1tX-AF9u/s320/rufio+wish+2.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488457327233644994" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div><i>"...like you</i>."</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Captain Jack</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Rufio, we must remember, is an orphan with no history, and therefore a sacrificial lamb whose only role is to make young Jack, Peter's son, realize what an ungrateful little prat he has been to his father. </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1p1abJ-1pBq4deH-6rfsKyJt73d-dkantKz9bwkyfOH5Us4Zy4ZP67kuLxCvK7CC5vB1UzdQCucT6cViseT79bGz5VrF7QPxJ9HSOz9s6GV338iIShQL6xP-w9jcENWe9sATy51IkTKeH/s1600/sad+jack.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1p1abJ-1pBq4deH-6rfsKyJt73d-dkantKz9bwkyfOH5Us4Zy4ZP67kuLxCvK7CC5vB1UzdQCucT6cViseT79bGz5VrF7QPxJ9HSOz9s6GV338iIShQL6xP-w9jcENWe9sATy51IkTKeH/s320/sad+jack.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488458198933822818" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>Even though, let's not forget, his dad's kind of a cocksucker. </div><div><br /></div><div>Though God knows I haven't got the energy to tease out the Oedipal threads of this thing, at the beginning of the movie, Peter misses Jack's baseball game. So the son wishes the father dead.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzYLU-Sgb3LVH40DpNUJ-k1ZOwszkuzbpt250YcCMJ2PonXH2vgwvl0RvU66LGSkSG90P33v45RnihZtcb15QQspp84zuoBRxYYEfOBQOLxgB2G8G8LVFrXTL_qb1I86MHiuq7e8MyZTeM/s1600/wheres+my+parachute.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzYLU-Sgb3LVH40DpNUJ-k1ZOwszkuzbpt250YcCMJ2PonXH2vgwvl0RvU66LGSkSG90P33v45RnihZtcb15QQspp84zuoBRxYYEfOBQOLxgB2G8G8LVFrXTL_qb1I86MHiuq7e8MyZTeM/s320/wheres+my+parachute.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488383340158483026" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>"Where's my parachute?" </div><div><br /></div><div>Then, when Peter remembers his happy thought he says, "I know why I grew up. I wanted to be a father." So it's an old, evo-bio inflected story, really. Boy wants to be boy in perpetuity; boy meets girl; boy realizes girl is exemplary candidate to bear seed forth into the world; boy feels irresistible caveman urge to possess girl as sexual object by any means necessary; boy renounces bid for immortality to spawn son who resents him; boy-as-father shames son for resenting him, even though the resentment is well-founded and justified.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Thud Butt</b></div><div><br /></div><div><div>The only other Lost Boy with a happy thought is the aforementioned Thud Butt.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiofsy28EdXXpR_UbAuMvCmqOt9rye_mnjDNaXtfEYk_Ik2IkcbhNsjaIWlyBklDvYN0V2HHRrFwL87IRL41l7Dq3X0K5czElnwYptPJbGL-I0nZAWUQiHlXrLMcxQR3oOLRK0mFExwA_Mh/s1600/thud+butt.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiofsy28EdXXpR_UbAuMvCmqOt9rye_mnjDNaXtfEYk_Ik2IkcbhNsjaIWlyBklDvYN0V2HHRrFwL87IRL41l7Dq3X0K5czElnwYptPJbGL-I0nZAWUQiHlXrLMcxQR3oOLRK0mFExwA_Mh/s320/thud+butt.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488454023899614306" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>I'm serious. That's his name. You can tell because it's inexplicably embossed on a wheel of cheese.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9xoEMr7RNkvt0zfCnb-eLIRpjpzbxKIVty-ieQuu-fyA3dx2lgoEkDwdjGtwtZ_3gKoL2WfYvymIhUVj00WVdFWNHVe8AqeC3GvITaM-_ph_KzPV2ZnEcNBAp1evH8Dve1tA62v8F3Rwk/s1600/cheese.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9xoEMr7RNkvt0zfCnb-eLIRpjpzbxKIVty-ieQuu-fyA3dx2lgoEkDwdjGtwtZ_3gKoL2WfYvymIhUVj00WVdFWNHVe8AqeC3GvITaM-_ph_KzPV2ZnEcNBAp1evH8Dve1tA62v8F3Rwk/s320/cheese.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488454031194162066" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>Thud Butt is the kid Peter implausibly leaves in charge when he leaves Neverland at the end of the movie. Thud Butt's happy thought is his mother.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>It's a mean-spirited touch -- only characters with "happy thoughts" can fly, and in nearly every case, "happy thoughts" are mothers, fathers, or children. Tootles can fly, in spite of the fact that he's a Lost Boy -- but his happy thoughts are marbles, god knows why. Thud Butt can't fly (yet), but he's got the Pan's sword and a nuclear family-based happy thought, and that seems to be all you need. The movie actually has this weirdly sinister anti-orphan undercurrent -- it seems to say that unless you're connected to the world by lineage and legacy, you're adrift, cut off from happy thoughts that empower you not only to make magic, but to lead men. Rufio was a tragic accident, and order was restored when he was relegated. </div><div><br /></div><div>However, Thud Butt seems by all accounts ill-equipped to fill the role that Pan and Rufio held in Neverland. He's fat and unathletic. In battle, the Lost Boys display their characteristic whimsy by shooting pirates with guns full of eggs and paint and marbles that trip them. They also <i>stab the pirates to death with swords</i>. It's a pretty heavy-duty contrast. Thud Butt, on the other hand, is effete and weirdly feminine -- he rolls down gangplanks and bowls people out of the way, and stomps on boards so they hit guys in the nuts. He's not a stabber. No one seems to respect him or take him particularly seriously. When Peter leaves him in charge, he even hits him with a fat joke: "I want you to take care of everyone smaller than you." </div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisEeLS6d723taOBuUwf510qE-QZg-WimMeo8Xrn57X8THreVRpOg1TZytB49qg02m0jVgUT7AeJi0Zq4MPQ72eOMeWestNvfgWbe-8NYSsXz8xcNuUnoEAfR4chAlXIaGxFMwNKu2HVTMf/s1600/thud+in+charge.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisEeLS6d723taOBuUwf510qE-QZg-WimMeo8Xrn57X8THreVRpOg1TZytB49qg02m0jVgUT7AeJi0Zq4MPQ72eOMeWestNvfgWbe-8NYSsXz8xcNuUnoEAfR4chAlXIaGxFMwNKu2HVTMf/s320/thud+in+charge.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488466165374199234" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>Yet, on the merit of this one happy thought of a time long past, he's given responsibility and sovereignty over the whole tribe of boys. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>The Hook Appendix</b></div><div><br /></div><div>Plenty could be said about Captain James Hook, but I'll limit myself to my two favorite bits.</div><div><br /></div><div>First, his attempt at suicide. "I hate living in this flawed body... I've just had a sublime vision. All the jagged parts of my life have come together to form a complete and mystical whole. An epiphany... My life is over."</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBVK70M-mgdgVvTAsuUrOteW4MCaI0QVXi6WpesFF2ibW3tda-Z6dAT2_sM1FZ-mBpUWTKlfWe3ngB5t3GGhjq0pOtlhsT_03VWGUdiBA6tFWyEAp6WzTIgntovCr_Q_U6k1esgE-Xy3Cr/s1600/suicide.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBVK70M-mgdgVvTAsuUrOteW4MCaI0QVXi6WpesFF2ibW3tda-Z6dAT2_sM1FZ-mBpUWTKlfWe3ngB5t3GGhjq0pOtlhsT_03VWGUdiBA6tFWyEAp6WzTIgntovCr_Q_U6k1esgE-Xy3Cr/s320/suicide.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488410954705907890" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>"I want to die."</div><div><br /></div><div>The second bit includes my favorite line and my favorite sight-gag in the movie. The Lost Boys are having a game to "steal Hook's hook as fast as you can. It'll make you proud. Then you'll crow like Pan." Hook is sitting in the bleachers, waiting for his pirates to indulge master Jack in a game of baseball.</div><div><br /></div><div>He says, "Confound it, Druscilla, glove me! The game's about to start."</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga3XI6w6SE6krawcp_Y8i6X_2ND5lmMR96tMv59hbAzHtVMDJbUya3lEDLGIYzlIJ10rJAgclWdpIOIkzOdGMMNdZnbqsn0LzqGpT6yLEBMGhwBWiLF0ZI9iPrDc309N4UBK3KGGxJ6vhW/s1600/glove+1.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga3XI6w6SE6krawcp_Y8i6X_2ND5lmMR96tMv59hbAzHtVMDJbUya3lEDLGIYzlIJ10rJAgclWdpIOIkzOdGMMNdZnbqsn0LzqGpT6yLEBMGhwBWiLF0ZI9iPrDc309N4UBK3KGGxJ6vhW/s320/glove+1.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488469273796002450" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYTtktiYeIiMMiiVieF_CMfg8sJ43elN4m6ojWzUN8B26RGEflsUJ7nIQLUadji16FDf-3v5RwOUgGiTdlgSokrw2SuDZGBQHTdmEioNvAdqhkmSfcoNdUDNU1-M3tf_fv7FmeNdhyNAbV/s1600/glove+2.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYTtktiYeIiMMiiVieF_CMfg8sJ43elN4m6ojWzUN8B26RGEflsUJ7nIQLUadji16FDf-3v5RwOUgGiTdlgSokrw2SuDZGBQHTdmEioNvAdqhkmSfcoNdUDNU1-M3tf_fv7FmeNdhyNAbV/s320/glove+2.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488469281961829522" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_-NAURleTJ5INuOJlKGjLO_NIyR7vLvdwLUA9JzWG_7Rr3Pqa76tolt2GuyDDW59waQKVZ6zrPhjQmpRDSbp874s2Dz8yOpPIwlKyygPTK4zoKX3Mr2zKrIiiInvkW8DTHyJANvLkut0R/s1600/glove+3.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_-NAURleTJ5INuOJlKGjLO_NIyR7vLvdwLUA9JzWG_7Rr3Pqa76tolt2GuyDDW59waQKVZ6zrPhjQmpRDSbp874s2Dz8yOpPIwlKyygPTK4zoKX3Mr2zKrIiiInvkW8DTHyJANvLkut0R/s320/glove+3.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488469288847750962" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a><br />Gets me every time.<br /><br /></div><div><b>The Shadow Addendum</b></div><div><br /></div><div><div>Early in the film, Peter is haunted by the literal shadows of two things Captain Hook reminds him of in the final fight scene. He says, "You know you're not really Peter Pan, don't you? This is only a dream. When you wake up, you'll just be Peter Banning -- a cold, selfish man who drinks too much, is obsessed with success, and runs and hides from his wife and children."</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6RaUQ03JOyYGhFcznyTGHxxowfeUaMoGlgwV4DuMulA55In8erR8VBnUg_RTgVrOOpNX2rpTFhXw1AC_J_JHBBUfEa2kiBaRCM-IE8hNEAsKuyWfuOb62Pp4YMR3BpR0XhxvUos-_PI7T/s1600/sons+shadow.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6RaUQ03JOyYGhFcznyTGHxxowfeUaMoGlgwV4DuMulA55In8erR8VBnUg_RTgVrOOpNX2rpTFhXw1AC_J_JHBBUfEa2kiBaRCM-IE8hNEAsKuyWfuOb62Pp4YMR3BpR0XhxvUos-_PI7T/s320/sons+shadow.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488385905198443938" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>His son.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUIDB0mk6i9Jdd1TNQd5NAPXGnbZ4GZOxt_QoqrHWv9xGFwwMj8SZUebKPZeJS2xclqPSrXyox0cDavpy8hbVBQoqj9HoFw9NTQ6bPIb5-IQjWcvdi-lhCjsmANyd3K8_Hs3wZtxPCUt2x/s1600/shadow+booze.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUIDB0mk6i9Jdd1TNQd5NAPXGnbZ4GZOxt_QoqrHWv9xGFwwMj8SZUebKPZeJS2xclqPSrXyox0cDavpy8hbVBQoqj9HoFw9NTQ6bPIb5-IQjWcvdi-lhCjsmANyd3K8_Hs3wZtxPCUt2x/s320/shadow+booze.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488458620039675938" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>Booze.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>The Weaver Affidavit</b></div><div><br /></div><div><div>Is it just me, or does this kid look like Sigourney Weaver if she was really, really sick?</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTMJdz-QxQKDwDvf456jCkFcochwISGIFatO7GLcu17QkxaKq1li0T7XIlrlmVpM-bi-jji7vUJPrInLh5T7K1T2dxRniOGp3sHoS-1PDWYgv0vrWguEtAirIv87MbSoYv6Wm6-ZbbhEhg/s1600/sigourney+weaver.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTMJdz-QxQKDwDvf456jCkFcochwISGIFatO7GLcu17QkxaKq1li0T7XIlrlmVpM-bi-jji7vUJPrInLh5T7K1T2dxRniOGp3sHoS-1PDWYgv0vrWguEtAirIv87MbSoYv6Wm6-ZbbhEhg/s320/sigourney+weaver.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488467322623553458" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Love Disinterest</b></div><div><br /></div><div><div>Soon after he gets to Neverland, Peter falls into the water with his hands bound. Tinkerbell screams after him, terrified that he's going to drown. He's saved by some mermaids, who make out with him, presumably thereby blowing air into his lungs. The first of the movie's soft marital infidelities.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTfKNnZouiYVPEytz_gse2wbFppRarVcjEO_kElXch7H9jgTj7eHoO3VMKybw8cCB5IuygX0gbGtZ9SizleWnVx6d3S9QrimMoscYVH9Ie3B5Rg6fl-2KQVy1BIC11GjysshWqtl-jNGPX/s1600/mermaids.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTfKNnZouiYVPEytz_gse2wbFppRarVcjEO_kElXch7H9jgTj7eHoO3VMKybw8cCB5IuygX0gbGtZ9SizleWnVx6d3S9QrimMoscYVH9Ie3B5Rg6fl-2KQVy1BIC11GjysshWqtl-jNGPX/s320/mermaids.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488405700554911586" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div><div>Peter is taken back to shore, and he bumbles his way through Neverland for a few seconds until he steps on a trap and is hoisted up to Tinkerbell's house. Now, in the time it takes all this to happen -- about a minute, which the movie portrays as if it were real-time -- Tinkerbell has already flown from the pirate ship back to her little clock-house...</div><div><br /></div><div>...and<i> fallen asleep</i>.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj23d8xyQ13TIVZGrGIFp-XSUnSsB_cnxMQ7I6vJN6osIINzNe8QyGS4h3F6JOhoSUGNTkRMiubrdXj399euIJJDs_mGU5vvu-WGe-XfA3t3nuuUDo31Y0FWeLUk3zMubtARUxoTOjgVTMp/s1600/tink+asleep.JPG"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj23d8xyQ13TIVZGrGIFp-XSUnSsB_cnxMQ7I6vJN6osIINzNe8QyGS4h3F6JOhoSUGNTkRMiubrdXj399euIJJDs_mGU5vvu-WGe-XfA3t3nuuUDo31Y0FWeLUk3zMubtARUxoTOjgVTMp/s320/tink+asleep.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5488406296061880274" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 187px; " /></a></div></div><div>Sure, she wakes up and she whoops and hollers and seems pleased that Peter's alive. But I mean... come on, girl, damn. <i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">You're his mom <i>and</i> his mistress</span>.</i> The least you could do is <i>grieve</i> for a little while.</div>Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-5990475269502623402010-06-09T12:08:00.023-06:002010-06-09T14:37:43.543-06:00Purple Impact, or, I am ready to lead with my face into the foot that fate has in store for me.There are two things I have known since childhood.<br /><br />First, I can be arrogant. It's only too easy.<br /><br />Next, I can take a beating. A sound, knuckle-scraping, face-stomping beating. I can walk into a buzz-saw of limbs and digits, joints and extremities, and welcome the pulverizing, tenderizing impact. In the end, I will be doubled over in agony, writhing and mewling like a cur, but I'll still be there. And tomorrow, I'll come back for more.<br /><br />Yes, these two things always came easy to me. But something was always missing. Some essential tertiary term haunted me, kept me from feeling complete, made sure I was always one-third phantom, only ever <span style="font-style: italic;">almost</span> whole.<br /><br />Today, I am whole.<br /><br />One of my favorite movies -- both for sentimental reasons and because it is, without hyperbole, easily the greatest film ever made -- is the 1991 Jean Claude Van Damme vehicle <span style="font-style: italic;">Double Impact</span> (imdb.com rating: 4.7/10). In it, Van Damme plays dual roles: twins named Alex, a streetwise tuff from Hong Kong who smuggles and steals and beats ass, and Chad, an effete Los Angeles karateka and dance instructor who wears salmon short-shorts and black silk underwear (the last of which details is an important plot point). Implausibly enough, they have the same accent, and Alex Van Damme calls Chad Van Damme a "faggot" more than once. It's as good as it sounds.<br /><br />In an early scene, Chad Van Damme is teaching what appears to be a class on sexual innuendo to some ladies who probably seemed pretty in the late 80s but are now terrifying.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtKqtBClQ3pP0wSUuRtJvy_t-Oq-Zwd2ydX-Q2b184Pp49txZHja2hsH6mHpwHi0WNYr8th4_7QJwtevC2iVLmurfoieFVjZcXK4Am7Q4fXmbF6CefUJL2LYUmBF3-NxnQ8_XsTewRXW5_/s1600/big+legs.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 202px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtKqtBClQ3pP0wSUuRtJvy_t-Oq-Zwd2ydX-Q2b184Pp49txZHja2hsH6mHpwHi0WNYr8th4_7QJwtevC2iVLmurfoieFVjZcXK4Am7Q4fXmbF6CefUJL2LYUmBF3-NxnQ8_XsTewRXW5_/s320/big+legs.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480863002850929586" border="0" /></a><br />"Because of my big legs and karate, I can do the splits no problem."<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWol7k_BARRi3oduWm0CNpAyUWuyGGOlUXmkPVlfkHl8kUnDNpspQNL9M-T5CYzo7ICCAHNrQveILXszxPjvRo6J9N4LGzObj-ZAfDJjYdK_6IXqjB_X2w2VzZgSmeAmw_pPQ6e0RtcTPe/s1600/splits.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 224px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWol7k_BARRi3oduWm0CNpAyUWuyGGOlUXmkPVlfkHl8kUnDNpspQNL9M-T5CYzo7ICCAHNrQveILXszxPjvRo6J9N4LGzObj-ZAfDJjYdK_6IXqjB_X2w2VzZgSmeAmw_pPQ6e0RtcTPe/s320/splits.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480863014504035058" border="0" /></a><br />Uncle Frank -- who, spoiler alert, isn't really his uncle -- calls him away to take over the karate class downstairs. "Dressed like this?" Van Damme asks.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPgRDFbrO9TIrNaGShNiRz0f5noDc9wg8FeSp6d053vEOF4PpWFY4xrsnV5jJFEHar4C2GeBuDZ2YXeOy_XtHyHZq3ubJrAi6aZ3gmbP_YfbQQfqZY_Bw8sZbs09PVrlYaKUfk_Y1spnyv/s1600/like+this.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPgRDFbrO9TIrNaGShNiRz0f5noDc9wg8FeSp6d053vEOF4PpWFY4xrsnV5jJFEHar4C2GeBuDZ2YXeOy_XtHyHZq3ubJrAi6aZ3gmbP_YfbQQfqZY_Bw8sZbs09PVrlYaKUfk_Y1spnyv/s320/like+this.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480844937479197026" border="0" /></a><br />I think he looks good. Uncle Frank checks out his package.<br /><br />Keeping with the theme of peculiar couture, for some reason, the karate class is dressed like this.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuFwdH9voCKmqRVnboIwJAKckteYVUplrJVZfvtwOSuyiLb6czCRQEdcB8-MaJOyVYR3kfhW7H5B1Azy8l7_ddLy5NWy6DPauHCODuTBxqvLK3Icb3UN7vzto_Q3ATQtDf385OC8Nsba1b/s1600/gi.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 223px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuFwdH9voCKmqRVnboIwJAKckteYVUplrJVZfvtwOSuyiLb6czCRQEdcB8-MaJOyVYR3kfhW7H5B1Azy8l7_ddLy5NWy6DPauHCODuTBxqvLK3Icb3UN7vzto_Q3ATQtDf385OC8Nsba1b/s320/gi.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480845283075272098" border="0" /></a><br />An unruly Australian, identified as "the new guy," is picking on some poor kid, and Van Damme, following the Bushido code of honor, has to step in and defend the weak in his samurai spandex.<br /><br />"Are you the ballet teacher or what?" the Aussie asks. "Dancing, yeah, dancing... also some, ah, karate," Van Damme responds nonchalantly. And so the web is laid -- the trap is set. It's all over but the pain and humiliation.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyUN9V1g6lZI2KvFhODUkfx6tXm7zTuRhweayypEGSUaYlrdgEhBvAwhfi3XKwo9JHuezGn5QD6Xo9gT26PY1_KwoGH1fwQRFbRo2GLOVcDMPia5U3FTALmTKoZ3YxrVuJsNwm6n1kReis/s1600/dancing.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 224px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyUN9V1g6lZI2KvFhODUkfx6tXm7zTuRhweayypEGSUaYlrdgEhBvAwhfi3XKwo9JHuezGn5QD6Xo9gT26PY1_KwoGH1fwQRFbRo2GLOVcDMPia5U3FTALmTKoZ3YxrVuJsNwm6n1kReis/s320/dancing.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480849491789328530" border="0" /></a><br />(You could do worse, at this point, than to notice that the Aussie is wearing barrettes in his hair.)<br /><br />"Show me one of your special kicks," Van Damme enjoins, pointing somewhere off-screen. This moment has always puzzled me. JCVD seems to be suggesting that the bully is well-known for his kicks, indeed that his kicks are perhaps even advertised at JCVD's own karate studio. Yet the bully is referred to only as the "new guy," and his belt matches his gi, which would normally mean he's a white belt -- and being a white belt in karate usually just means you haven't paid the first month's gym fees. On the other hand, perhaps the movie is trying to suggest that he's a light-pink belt, a rank so formidable <span style="font-style: italic;">it doesn't even exist</span>.<br /><br />At any rate, the Aussie obliges.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh73pUCkeddtPfHhFnAVESVnoQC5ihqglmhpRN9FxP2jIuNZ7UBZ4WPYH8BvApuVbcuibOWSUZ4fVWCjJD8KrXcR9UF6WUnoq1gGPpZm7YVyc6pMjST3ctdsi-EFmp_MeLOn6TU9JEIJLtq/s1600/special+kick.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 224px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh73pUCkeddtPfHhFnAVESVnoQC5ihqglmhpRN9FxP2jIuNZ7UBZ4WPYH8BvApuVbcuibOWSUZ4fVWCjJD8KrXcR9UF6WUnoq1gGPpZm7YVyc6pMjST3ctdsi-EFmp_MeLOn6TU9JEIJLtq/s320/special+kick.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480850328268852178" border="0" /></a><br />And bitch, that's a mistake<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFCrz1c_Ertn8um9XVM8pw0_hyTK-NwjS8EYz2J2BlRtvsmiH1GuWU5GNNnKRc2a4_fwLLeJhH4DS2d-ordPPLM7GzrJz7nd4YAl5GN7duBok-g60zFHB5QeLRTEow9BuMQSp4SqCVuGB4/s1600/counter1.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 224px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFCrz1c_Ertn8um9XVM8pw0_hyTK-NwjS8EYz2J2BlRtvsmiH1GuWU5GNNnKRc2a4_fwLLeJhH4DS2d-ordPPLM7GzrJz7nd4YAl5GN7duBok-g60zFHB5QeLRTEow9BuMQSp4SqCVuGB4/s320/counter1.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480852423138409602" border="0" /></a><br />because<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSI5PIgf-rBnN90t2nSPjviiZ3omBxPzJNB8ZzAUaha0H914MXOoWcBIr66LLNmmLXWWyoanntOxq8R5aBYHD1JCTHpEyiSAVWRcLlHABblTICdK1nUivrZLvpqR5kXUaYE3gFCi9wx70M/s1600/counter2.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 224px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSI5PIgf-rBnN90t2nSPjviiZ3omBxPzJNB8ZzAUaha0H914MXOoWcBIr66LLNmmLXWWyoanntOxq8R5aBYHD1JCTHpEyiSAVWRcLlHABblTICdK1nUivrZLvpqR5kXUaYE3gFCi9wx70M/s320/counter2.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480852434629555458" border="0" /></a><br />you're<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Iod0P2DQ7eUk3_eRAyqjuDlQrihMqaEx_-MCks0ZltXvG_a5L9iqFVjQ5uIZqhh3bn1kPRuykwfUQ2g5pS1dg4O_o_aLDWV-aiG6hYb0EKr4vRjwnr2tC2Ly1E0OtqFtaWbXKKxoV_dZ/s1600/counter3.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Iod0P2DQ7eUk3_eRAyqjuDlQrihMqaEx_-MCks0ZltXvG_a5L9iqFVjQ5uIZqhh3bn1kPRuykwfUQ2g5pS1dg4O_o_aLDWV-aiG6hYb0EKr4vRjwnr2tC2Ly1E0OtqFtaWbXKKxoV_dZ/s320/counter3.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480852443753196354" border="0" /></a><br />gonna<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPDIUnGqh9UnrLDbLfq_-9SLCt_1J0mvgNNuaxvwTToIrzXE9bJNFrI8OrQPcXgnqA-g76cJ0Erhy8RUL4dviVwBgSIdn3HZz4gijfJ1M-U9DJqmowFyl6NsaLaM4skwk3zEKV2-k6GyH3/s1600/counter4.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPDIUnGqh9UnrLDbLfq_-9SLCt_1J0mvgNNuaxvwTToIrzXE9bJNFrI8OrQPcXgnqA-g76cJ0Erhy8RUL4dviVwBgSIdn3HZz4gijfJ1M-U9DJqmowFyl6NsaLaM4skwk3zEKV2-k6GyH3/s320/counter4.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480852468289564546" border="0" /></a><br />get<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM2WNpHSdp3noRQx6XtmMRN6AsNdTflQTHKy3DwrWkkAPVI06MN1AJ1T3HyxgW0QBeX1OjR0ok72tcL9DNdDZ85UckwRI0qQJn5h6bY5HzH-4iZe2VQpLacWz0ol_XMAmtaQfQLGQdMR-Z/s1600/counter5.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 224px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM2WNpHSdp3noRQx6XtmMRN6AsNdTflQTHKy3DwrWkkAPVI06MN1AJ1T3HyxgW0QBeX1OjR0ok72tcL9DNdDZ85UckwRI0qQJn5h6bY5HzH-4iZe2VQpLacWz0ol_XMAmtaQfQLGQdMR-Z/s320/counter5.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480852478522653394" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">KNOCKEDTHEFUCKOUT.</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpRqicXphGTRA79vetserIk838feIyrYr8cpMvo1AK6PV2gtr7n9Z6Kbw4uzvgAhRJ8taln9LMMvfM0Twfp_hxndMbYhq2NoZvVQNgkN9YgO9rYcvslublEMKmx-EZTQryGQ1vUX_9-JEa/s1600/counter6.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 223px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpRqicXphGTRA79vetserIk838feIyrYr8cpMvo1AK6PV2gtr7n9Z6Kbw4uzvgAhRJ8taln9LMMvfM0Twfp_hxndMbYhq2NoZvVQNgkN9YgO9rYcvslublEMKmx-EZTQryGQ1vUX_9-JEa/s320/counter6.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480852795655821618" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNUGP69mh2_gXwvZQ9V9TtAow6EsRZZ3Z056fcZy9JSCdlhBPY_bFNE4yEsrDQNB2O5Ejit_dwCE-ReRBujIqhqWJaGcHtkP-NBYnLG6-hFD3-SEJ_mLHmk7_ON5JhFK6BZD5Ohqzf8Wf8/s1600/counter7.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 212px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNUGP69mh2_gXwvZQ9V9TtAow6EsRZZ3Z056fcZy9JSCdlhBPY_bFNE4yEsrDQNB2O5Ejit_dwCE-ReRBujIqhqWJaGcHtkP-NBYnLG6-hFD3-SEJ_mLHmk7_ON5JhFK6BZD5Ohqzf8Wf8/s320/counter7.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480852804451299346" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMyXNvqRIXjo_duk1rb1mxZiOkujpYPBe3gBFwh5qzcyg1z4fhdgwty0Zy_JAsoaItrOoTBD_s9Rjb-UsV2g5nzRXlDnGt-SKAPtt6LeENixoZ1tCjgaMQ__ISi9jNmGQ6algsB-56eOYz/s1600/counter8.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMyXNvqRIXjo_duk1rb1mxZiOkujpYPBe3gBFwh5qzcyg1z4fhdgwty0Zy_JAsoaItrOoTBD_s9Rjb-UsV2g5nzRXlDnGt-SKAPtt6LeENixoZ1tCjgaMQ__ISi9jNmGQ6algsB-56eOYz/s320/counter8.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480852813133755298" border="0" /></a><br />Ahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahaha!<br /><br />For some obscure reason, this Aussie became something of a hero to me. Something about his verve, his pomposity, the way he plowed headlong into the intractable foot of justice, appealed to me. He <span style="font-style: italic;">owned</span> what an asshole he was -- he didn't pussyfoot or tiptoe. He laid it all out there, and he took what was coming to him. He showed his true face to the world -- and then Van Damme kicked him in it.<br /><br />Perhaps it's as simple as this: I admired his style.<br /><br />As the years wore on, it became clear what I couldn't do. The dullness of karate's katas doomed me to wash out early, far before I would ever develop any "special kicks" of my own. My hair thinned, and was summarily shaved clean, ensuring that barrettes would never be my calling card. No matter how hard I tried to sound suave and sunkissed, my accent remained a resolutely Midwestern twang, only undertoned by the last remaining evidence of my first decade in California and Massachusetts.<br /><br />But there were three things -- the three most important things -- left over. We already know I can be arrogant. We know I can take a beating. <span style="font-style: italic;">But what about sartorial flamboyance</span>?<br /><br />Well, this morning, I dumped a package of Rit dye and 3 gallons of water into an empty garbage can, dropped in my spare jiu jitsu gi, and kneaded it until my fingers were blistered, cracked, and stained a regal hue.<br /><br />Behold, mortals, the wages of my labor!<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7SVLhdCgmqbYL6TFDaayXSo6ydb2A13yybW7v14qUfJQJQINQcP4l0y1z2t0KZfh5sUo73dzkCNYltxCd0RkckukJRVFB-8WabrjMvgEIWT7uBSo_P-7wr0Dl5uj_ae3jsnAbDyK4M4OE/s1600/purple.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7SVLhdCgmqbYL6TFDaayXSo6ydb2A13yybW7v14qUfJQJQINQcP4l0y1z2t0KZfh5sUo73dzkCNYltxCd0RkckukJRVFB-8WabrjMvgEIWT7uBSo_P-7wr0Dl5uj_ae3jsnAbDyK4M4OE/s320/purple.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5480859332047455794" border="0" /></a><br />I see this as having two related practical benefits. First, if you kick my ass in jiu jitsu class, of course you kicked my ass, I'm wearing purple -- you're <span style="font-style: italic;">supposed</span> to kick my ass. Second, if I kick your ass -- dude, you just got your ass kicked by a guy wearing purple.<br /><br />But far more important than this is that I am finally ready to become my destiny. I am ready to lead with my face into the foot that fate has in store for me. I am a new man.<br /><br />I am the new guy!Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-78522213691901687932010-03-07T01:05:00.003-06:002010-03-07T03:12:26.809-06:00The American Heroic MythI'm going to spend the next several years writing a dissertation somehow related to the concept of heroism in American literature. The first step in writing a dissertation is research, and the first step in researching is Google. This much is uncontroversial.<br /><br />When you google "American hero myths," the second result is <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/liebermann2.html">this amazing wingnut article</a> about why America needs a hero myth to protect us from Marxism. I wouldn't have made much of this -- it's your standard-issue conservative True Believer stuff -- if it hadn't been for the about-the-author tagline at the bottom of the page.<br /><br /><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:100%;" ><i>Ron Liebermann is a contractor and manufacturer of mylar balloons in Louisville, Ky. </i></span><br /><br />This article -- which begins by defining "hero" as "a legendary figure, often of divine descent, endowed with great strength or ability," and ends with the a "heroic call to greatness" which is "the path to freedom" --is by guy who makes balloons.<br /><br />Now, far be it from me to castigate the mighty manufacturer. The balloon, after all, is a powerful metaphor for the ascent of the soul and for the enlargement of the mind. Thoreau's family made lead pencils, and he toiled many a weary day in the pencil factory... making pencils. Which are a great metaphor for writing... and also penises. Thoreau was able, in true Democratic fashion, to extricate himself from such a life of toil by elbow-grease, gumption, and a little cabin on a pond; and he landed himself in literary and political anthologies with his incisive insight about the state of men's souls and his vicious diagnosis of the modern world.<br /><br />So let's see -- on a properly capitalist metric literary merit, in this case defined by how susceptible the source material is to satire -- how this guy stacks up. (Spoiler: Really super well.)<br /><br />Somehow this article was written in 2002, 2 years into Dubya's phallic and virile reign. I didn't think the 2002 edition of the official Government Dictionary had already taken this stride, but Ron makes it clear that "the State defines heroism as triumph over adversity, or danger." We know on the other hand, comrades, that heroism is really about <span style="font-style: italic;">evil</span>. But the state can't have that: "To call heroism a triumph over evil makes the state uncomfortable. It knows that an increasing number of Americans are engaged in a heroic battle against domestic tyranny, which is clearly evil. The State thus denies it's evil nature, all the while increasing it's tyranny." It's kinda hard to follow the logic here, so let me streamline it: the government is clearly evil, so it's uncomfortable being called evil. Cartoonish, mustache-twiddling villains are sensitive with the word "villain" the same way fat people are sensitive to the word "fat." It just hits a little too close to home, you know? I do dearly love the first of the typos that rounds out the quote -- The State denies <span style="font-style: italic;">it is evil nature</span>. It's like that part in Army of Darkness where Ash gives shoulder-birth to his doppelganger, Bad Ash, who pokes him in the eyes and kicks him in the balls.<br /><br />(Oh hai, what's domestic tyranny? Is someone tryin' to stop you from makin' balloons?)<br /><br />So we've already seen good nature and evil nature, but hold on to your butts, because we're about to see <span style="font-style: italic;">super</span>nature! "Government animosity towards heroism has it's roots in the conflict between Jeffersonian Democracy, and the Marxism we have today." It's very similar to the conflict 1985 Marty McFly had with 2015 Griff Tannen; all Marty (<span style="font-style: italic;">hero</span>) wanted was to bring Jennifer safely back to 1985 and keep his future son from going to jail, but Griff (<span style="font-style: italic;">evil</span>) wanted to hit him with his pneumatic bat and run over him with his gnarly Hoverboard. Similarly, all Jefferson wanted was to protect agrarian farmers from corrupt aristocrats and industrialists, and to provide a codified series of rights for all people regardless of wealth or social standing, but instead he had to travel to 2002 to rescue Jennifer from the evil Marxist government (Griff) and keep his principles (son) from falling into the hands of wicked bureaucrats (jail). The two line up so well it's barely even a metaphor.<br /><br />Indeed, what really boggles the mind about evil Marxism is how it ever managed to dupe anybody in the first place, since it doesn't even <span style="font-style: italic;">try</span> to hide its evilness (much like fat people before the invention of pinstripes). It might have something to do with the fact that Marxism is <span style="font-style: italic;">whatever the fuck</span> this guy wants it to be. "Everyone knows, of course, that lack of effort does not create equality, it creates poverty." (C.f. the little-cited footnote on page 12 of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Communist Manifesto</span>, "Nobody has to do anything under communism; no, I'm serious, you don't have to work, ever.")<br /><br />Ron continues, "When a Marxist such as Al Sharpton promises to elevate the poor, he is really promising to deliver equality as an illusion." (Spoiler: in a second Ron will use Horatio Alger's protagonist Ragged Dick, the quintessential arbiter of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, as a central tenet of the American hero myth -- and while I knew Ragged Dick had a special place in American culture, I thought it was more because of our predilection for dry-humping in wool pants. Spoiler 2: Horatio Alger was white. Al Sharpton, not so much.)<br /><br />But again, Ron: "Children are taught to expect reward without effort, and status without achievement. Military rank is a prime example: Promotion occurs as a result of political correctness. The ability to win battles is no longer a factor." I love this idea -- there's a whole new breed of kids <span style="font-style: italic;">rushing</span> into the military because <span style="font-style: italic;">it's so easy</span>. Seriously, boot camp? A breeze. Long tours overseas without contact with loved ones? A snap. Fear of death? A non-issue. All you have to do is <span style="font-style: italic;">not diddly-shit</span> and you'll be promoted to Rear Admiral just because you're developmentally disabled, or Korean, or four inches shorter than average, or something. Affirmative action, baby! It's a disease! "The Marxist disconnection between effort and reward has resulted in a new pathology: The cult of non-effort." See, entitlement is emphatically not a problem among people whose parents are rich enough to provide for them, and to keep them from having to work for themselves. No, entitlement only rears its ugly head... well... in the military, I guess?<br /><br />But the military isn't, after all, the <span style="font-style: italic;">best</span> example of this new freeloader ethic now holding truck with the goddamn lazy kids. "To witness non-effort in action, tune to MTV. There, one can view young Anglo's Hanging Out and young blacks Chilling." Truer words, my friend -- <span style="font-style: italic;">truer words!</span> It's some kind of wonderful zoo where you can go to see these fanciful creatures, "Anglo's" and "blacks," in their native habitat of narcotic indolence, a beautiful dance of idleness, "a celebration of sloth within a materialistic utopia." It's actually really beautiful. They don't do <span style="font-style: italic;">anything!</span> MTV is straight out of a Keats poem, a pastoral choked with melody too soothingly beautiful to die yet too achingly beautiful to live.<br /><br />But Ron, let's get specific, who are these anti-capitalists who want to cripple the free-market with their lazy-bonesed selves? "Kid Rock, Snoop Doggy Dog, and Puff Daddy are the primary arbiters of this worldview." Since it should be obvious that none of these men are proponents of the free market, and none of them have any interest doing stuff -- ie, Marxists -- we can forgive Ron for his indulgence in that time-honored defensive tactic, If I'm Such a Racist How Come I Included a White Guy? Marxists have no colors. Their color is evil.<br /><br />But let's just take a look at a sample Snoop Doggy Dog [sic] lyric, in which he proclaims himself to be, "Rollin' down the street, smokin' indo, sippin' on gin and juice / Laid back, with my mind on my money and my money on my mind." Sure, it implies a certain degree of relaxation, but it sounds to me like the relaxation that comes with a hard day's work. Surely Snoop is driving home from another day at the mylar balloon factory, indulging himself in a pair of relaxing adult beverages in his automobile -- and after all, who is the government to step on his right to drink Seagram's and smoke a fat sack on the interstate? The time to toil is over, and what is this but ciphering up the day's credits and debits, the gains and losses in his head? Not only is Snoop a model for the free market and for non-interference, he's also a model for fiscal responsibility. This guy's management material!<br /><br />So it's a good thing for Ron that this "cult takes other forms, as well. Consider the lottery. Everyone is equal in the eyes of Lady Luck, so effort is pointless. The lottery is self-funding Marxist propaganda."<br /><br />I don't even know what to do with this one, so let's move on. Question: You know what my favorite extreme sport is? Answer: EXTREME SUPERFLUOUS DISPLAYS OF SUPERFICIAL LEARNEDNESS!!!! "St. Augustine wrote extensively on the subject, saying that the conflict between good and evil rages not only in mankind as a whole, but in every individual." When I read this, I nodded sagely. It's true, you know.<br /><br />But let's not forget those ladies, y'all. In an all-new episode of <span style="font-style: italic;">Unlikely Allies</span>, Freud is enlisted in the defense of that lovable underdog paradox, libertarian paternalism: "Fathers are the primary mythical heroes. Young men internalize the heroic myth, and use it to form an identity. This identity serves as a rudder, which helps each man to steer a course through a dangerous and complex world." Women, it should be noted, do not matter. But don't take my word for it: "The heroic myth is masculine, and chivalrous. It exists exclusively in the minds of men. It is Camelot, King Arthur, and the Damsel in distress. This fact is intolerable to female Marxists who demand, but can never achieve, heroic equality." So... sorry babe. No balloon factories for you. Plus, "Feminism encourages divorce, which separates fathers from sons, breaking the heroic myth continuum." Nothing says "freedom" like an unhappy marriage, eh comrades?!<br /><br />Meh, I'm done with this.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-12402711765428647232010-02-21T01:18:00.000-06:002010-02-21T01:19:09.724-06:00Make it funWhy wall between worlds of experience? Plunge into something, something that might be cold or warm, you're not sure, soft or grainy, wholly liquid or just mostly wet, you don't care. Fun does not have to be kept on a leash in a small house behind the large house where you live, miles away from the sad, drop-ceilinged office where you work to rhythm of the clock ticking whip cracking. That boundary is the business of the reifier, who puts tagged collars on dogs made of mist, who dresses spirits up in suits so form-fitting they chafe; the business of the boss and the business of the dog-catcher. To experience every experience as the dog you'll come home to, to prepare to plunge into grainy wet warmth or cold soft wet without anxiety -- the cold wet warm nose of the dog leads the way -- shouldn't this be enough?<br /><br />Woof woof woof!Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-72338772554810801192010-01-24T12:16:00.004-06:002010-01-24T12:30:42.972-06:00a bluesman in the life of my balls, a jazzman in the world of the second and third Matrix moviesJust real quick.<br /><br />This is the second time I've seen Cornell West describe himself as <span class="italic">“a bluesman in the life of the mind, a jazzman in the world of ideas, forever on the move.”<br /><br />There's so much wrong with it I don't know where to start.<br /><br />I mean, just obviously, it's arbitrary. </span><span class="italic">It would be, presumably, just as easy to be a bluesman in the world of ideas or a jazzman in the life of the mind. </span><span class="italic">But not <span style="font-style: italic;">just</span> arbitrary; it's got the unsettling confluence of self-congratulation and arbitrariness. </span><span class="italic">Name one person you care about who's a bluesman AND a jazzman. You can't do it. Pick one, motherfucker! You don't get to have it all the ways. I don't go around naming every career I respect or envy and then ascribing it to myself and my own day-to-day: "I'm a classical guitarist of the life of sitting on the couch watching TV, a neuropathologist of ordering pizza, a priest of not giving a shit about literary criticism, a really good chef of not exercising enough, forever on the move. I am a porn star of checking my email on my phone, forever fucking bitches (on my phone)."</span><br /><span class="italic"><br />Besides, what's the relationship between being a bluesman or a jazzman and being forever on the move? Like, is there a predicative relationship? Or mightn't it be more accurate to describe oneself as a railroad hobo of the life of the mind, or a traveling salesman of in the world of ideas, forever on the move? Or is Cornell West ok with dismissing every stationary, non-itinerant blues and jazzman in the world? Dick move, Cornell. <br /><br />Dick move.<br /></span>Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-1477371670841914272010-01-05T11:10:00.001-06:002010-01-05T11:11:49.234-06:00Emily Dickinson & Erectile Dysfunction: A Secret HistoryEmily Dickinson wrote a poem called “I started Early – Took my Dog” which comes in, prestige-wise, right after the ones about “Funeral brains –” and “Slants of death –” that you had to read in high school. The early Dickinson impresario – and amusingly named – Yvor Winters declares “I started Early” to be one of Emily's “most nearly perfect poems.” The poem is so fucking good, as a matter of fact, that its “defects do not intrude momentarily in a crudely obvious form.” What an asshole.<br /><br />The poem is also, in my opinion, entirely about sex. It is on this proposition that I propose to meditate.<br /><br />Confession: I see sex everywhere. In every situation that admits doubt or calls for interpretation, my interpretation is invariably, “They're doing it.” If there's only one person, my interpretation is usually that he or she wishes he or she was somewhere else, doing it. If there are three or more people, I posit that all the people just did it together and are dealing with the attendant shame each in his or her own way, or – when one of them is fat or a eunuch or on the rag or something – that at least two of them wish they were somewhere else doing it together, and whoever's left over is feeling pretty jealous about it and would like to be somewhere else doing it, too.<br /><br />Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe this is the stone-soberest, clean-livingest, no-private-parts-havingest poem there is. But...<br /><br />Before the poem: a summary of what I imagine to be the poem's essential plot points, rendered in Edgy and Hip contemporary youth-speak:<br /><br />“So I'm this girl, and I live in Solid Town with my folks. One day I told them that I was going to start walking the dog. They were cool with it. They figured the dog would protect me in case the shit goes down, like, “woof woof woof!” haha. I'm pretty stoked to get out of the house and be on my own, so I leave pretty early and start walking around with the dog, just checking people out. All these women look at me, but who cares about them, right? Meanwhile though, there are all these old guys and stuff who are like, flirting with me, like “Hey baby,” thinking I'm easy, like I'm naïve or innocent or something and they're all touching me and I'm like “gross!” None of the guys ever did it for me or kick-started my four-stroke or made my flame burn blue or whatever. Until... well, there was this One guy. He took me under the boardwalk, and he lifted up my dress, and then he put his mouth on me like he was going to eat me all up. [extrapolation] Then we had sex, [end extrapolation] and I came, and then he came right after me. I could tell because I felt it, and then it started dripping out of me. After, he walked me back to Solid Town. He was worried about running into somebody he knew, like he was embarrassed to be with me or something. We didn't run into anybody he knew for a while, but then we DID run into somebody he knew, and he acted all like we had this really innocent friendship and like he was my stupid uncle or something and then he took off.”<br /><br />The poem:<br /><br />I started Early – Took my Dog –<br />And visited the Sea –<br />The Mermaids in the Basement<br />Came out to look at me –<br /><br />And Frigates – in the Upper Floors –<br />Extended Hempen Hands –<br />Presuming Me to be a Mouse –<br />Aground – opon the Sands –<br /><br />But no Man moved Me – till the Tide<br />Went past my simple Shoe –<br />And past my Apron – and my Belt –<br />And past my Boddice – too –<br /><br />And made as He would eat me up –<br />As wholly as a Dew<br />Opon a Dandelion's Sleeve –<br />And then – I started – too –<br /><br />And He – He followed – close behind –<br />I felt His Silver Heel<br />Opon my Ancle – then My Shoes<br />Would overflow with Pearl –<br /><br />Until We met the Solid Town –<br />No One He seemed to know –<br />And bowing – with a Mighty look –<br />At me – the Sea withdrew –<br /><br />We, fellow argonauts, we are not the first to ponder upon the poem's meaning. It was Mr. Winters himself who made all of our all of our head-scratching worthwhile by misunderstanding the poem so badly out of the gate (1947) that one shudders to think he judged its quality in clear conscience: “The sea is here the traditional symbol of death.” (At this, in the margins, I noted: “I thought it was about fucking!”) Winters writes that the poems is about navigating “forces which tend towards the dissolution of human character and consciousness.” (I wrote, “Orgasm!”). Mr Winters does not mention orgasm.<br /><br />A short while later, in 1951 – not coincidentally, the same year King Leopold III abdicated the Belgian throne in favor of his son Baudouin – a woman named Kate Flores took off the kid gloves and slapped Baby Yvor around something awful. Miss Dickinson, she writes, has been “rather misinterpreted... the sea can hardly be so understood” as a symbol of death. The poem is, on the contrary, “a study in fear, fear of love.” (Marginal comment: “?!?!”) The poet's “fear of the sea is based upon the very power to undo her.” Her “whole being is endangered” by the sea's awesome power to ablate her identity. In the final stroke, Flores deals Winters the blow that kills: the sea, she writes, threatens “the dissolution of human character and consciousness.” <br /><br />No, I'm just kidding, she didn't write that. Remember? Winters wrote that! Then Flores said he was totally full of shit and rubbed it in by stealing his point.<br /><br />But Ahh, but the bittersweetness of the poem! In the poetess's “blind terror of the sea [she] can know no man.” But though she's doomed to spinster virginism, untouched by man-hands and man-stuff and so forth, the poetess will not be swallowed by the sea; she succeeds, “by the strength of her intellect, her will, in turning to go.” This is a supreme celebration of the lady-poet's valor and ingenuity. It is a triumphant expression of her feministic overmanning. I have no idea what the fuck she's is talking about. <br /><br />But still, Flores has saved her most persuasively unintelligible assertion for last. It “seems clear that [the poetess] will never venture forth again.” Ruh-roh. Good thing she lives under the floorboards of a sybian factory.<br /><br />As you might imagine, it took the Dickinson industry no great time nor energy to totally disregard this bewildered Flores woman and her impossible ideas. In 1952, Laurence Perrine – a young paladin in the holy order of Not Reading All That Much Into Things – drove his rapier as deep into the debate as practically no effort at all could drive it: “Both Yvor Winters and Kate Flores... load Emily Dickinson's 'I Started Early, Took My Dog' with a weight of meaning, symbolism, and emotion which this wholly delightful bit of poetic fancy simply will not bear.” <br /><br />Legend has it that, after writing this sentence, Perrine was so exhausted that he had no choice but to loosen his belt to play with his balls for a while in a kind of self-satisfied stupor. And yet, with a last gasp of effort – an impossible phrenzy of will – Perrine's vim rushed back and, summoning all his Inner Resources, he set the record straighter than a bunch of bankers in Hawaiian shirts and shit playing in a Jimmy Buffet cover band on Thursday nights in a guy named Maury's semi-finished basement: “The poet is describing a morning walk to the sea – real or imaginary.” After writing this, perhaps inevitably, all the capillaries and shit in Perrine's brain fucking exploded from just thinking too hard and his roommate Cooter had to spend days scraping brains and shit off the walls with a plastic fucking dustpan, and he didn't have any paper towels either. Nothing would ever be the same after this, Perrine's great doomed sally, which all but matches Jimmy Buffett in its undeniable elan vital. <br /><br />The bitterness of critics, who actually had to work for a living, was palpable. In 1962, when the aftershock of Perrine's back-to-basics approach was showing first signs of settling, Eric W. Carlson desecrated the memory of our fallen Ur-Lebowski by claiming Perrine's interpretation “left unresolved the question of the basic meaning of this poem.” One cringes to think how much more the allegation would sting were there so much as a grain of truth in it.<br /><br />But Carlson wasn't done. All simultaneously, he danced and pissed and puked and cried on Perrine's grave by claiming the poem is about the “frightening realization that toying with love may arouse a tide of emotion too powerful to control.” Make no mistake: “toying with love” is a singularly mean-spirited reference to Perrine's heroic, recuperative balls-fingering a decade earlier, and the “tide of emotions” is the typhoon of blood and gray matter bursting through skull, all of it looking like a stepped-on frog. And poor Cooter, who had to clean it up, synapses and dendrites and all, still alive to read such villainous calumny!<br /><br />Yet Carlson's analysis is too dangerous to be ignored, too alluring to be cast aside – like the bag of weed you found outside Burger King, next to where the immigrants break down boxes. <br /><br />Carlson's analysis is compelling because – Jesus Christ, took long enough – it introduces the notion of the narrator's “pleasure and desire.” No longer is she a wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie, but a woman with wants – a woman on fire!<br /><br />And yet, Carlson claims, the poem is haunted by a “power greater than romantic love.” Only in “mystic surrender to Nature” – as opposed to just the regular kind of surrender to Nature – “lies the most insidious threat – the loss of self-identity.” Cowardly editors expurgated the most significant conclusion Carlson draws from this point, still one of the most insightful observations in the history of the debate over the meaning of Dickinson's poem: “Didn't that Yvor Winters thing about this poem say something really similar? I think he said exactly what I'm saying about identity! And then that Flores lady introduced the idea of romantic love, but then she said exactly what Winters said about identity! And now I'm saying exactly what he said about identity to argue against this romantic love business that she said! Jesus Christ, I can't believe this is an actual job that people actually get paid to do. In fifteen years of tenured scholarship all we've agreed upon is that the ocean can threaten your identity. What a joke.”<br /><br />After this, perhaps from shame or perhaps from confusion, critics forbore analyzing the poem for over two decades. They split into small groups, huddling together for warmth and debating in decreasingly affluent dialects about their next move.<br /><br />Finally, in the wake of this Great Tribunal, there was an anointed one: Cristanne Miller – all the way in nineteen hundred and eighty seven – the first to mention the term “sexual” – god bless her, amen. The poem is, she claims, “deceptively innocent.” (But I think she means deceptively lascivious. I mean, right?) It begins as what seems like a single event – starting early, taking dog – but it quickly seems to be something “repeated” or “customary.” Our dear little poetess has been cruising the beach! On the regular! She “teases” the reader and she “teases” herself. She even teases – and I swear to God, there seems to be absolutely no registration that this is an all-time egg-on-the-face unintentional pun – the “Sea/man.” <br /><br />She teases the “Sea/man.”<br /><br />She “pretends to be entirely innocent in her motives” while she teases the “Sea/man.”<br /><br />Then, having teased the “Sea/man” enough, the poetess gets “to the point of mutual arousal” with the “Sea/man” before she “runs away.” So, in this reading, the “Sea/man” becomes aroused, which is a lot like the Poop Monster in Dogma pooping. One can't help but feel that Ms. Miller could have pushed into herself just a knuckle or two deeper, analytically speaking.<br /><br />In '88, Kenneth Stocks – I call him Ken, because he hates it and he's a douche – claimed that, in “the bad fright and the race for home,” our poor pretty poetess is “pursued by the rising tide of consciousness.” This avails nothing. We forge ahead.<br /><br />Ahead! To a woman named Shakinovsky. In '99, we get from Shakinovsky – who is a Russian stripper/dancer or I will eat my hat – one of the more delightfully symptomatic readings of the poem. We should not, however, conclude from this that she's a “no means yes” kind of girl. <br /><br />In Shakinovsky's adorably doe-ish eyes and easily terrified brain, the “welcoming, 'extend[ing] hands of the Frigate are not entirely friendly and contain a slight sense of threat, as 'Hempen' implies the possibility of trapping, tying, and strangling.” I know I, personally, cannot escape the throes of panic, when I'M STANDING ON A BEACH, that I am going to get TRAPPED, TIED, AND STRANGLED by the motherfucking SAILS OF BOATS WAY OUT IN THE OCEAN. It's a close cousin of that terror we none of us can escape: The fear of falling out of a tree you're not in. Which in turn has rent near as many hearts as the fear of slipping on ice you're not on. Pooping your pants when you're wearing a skirt.<br /><br />[Here it is worth noting that Shakinovsky is the author of the classic studies, “I'm Afraid of My New Neighbors: They Might Be Foreign, or They're At Least Jewish or Something”; “Falling Coconuts: A Blight on The Nuclear Family”; “The Effects of Nuclear Fallout on the Coconuts of Enewetok Atoll”; and “Shark Attacks: Just Because They're Rare Doesn't Mean They're Not Still Scary.”]<br /><br />Later, Shakinovksy writes, “This threat is made explicit as the Sea turns into a Man who follows the narrator, which serves to sexualize the image.” <br /><br />[Be on the lookout for Shakinovsky's new book, “When My Cat Oliver Follows Me Up the Stairs I Feel Like He's Going to Rape Me and Sometimes I Get So Scared I Run and That Makes Him Run and Then I Scream and My Neighbors Call the Police,” forthcoming from Palgrave.]<br /><br />This “increasing encroachment... and... personal threat... REACH THEIR CLIMAX [all-caps added] in 'And made as He would eat me up.' The threat here is that the narrator will be incorporated into the Sea and swallowed up... The relative size and impact of a drop of dew in relation to the ocean also serves to indicate the narrator's sense of her own powerlessness and fear of ravishment.”<br /><br />[Shanikovsky doesn't date much. It's not that she doesn't want to meet somebody. It's just... it's complicated.]<br /><br />So what about it? Who's going to lance these jokers off their steeds and be presented with my laurel-bush to wear around his head?<br /><br />Russell Reising takes the prize (my bush). First, because he's the only critic who even comes close to acknowledging the weird, but also eyebrow-raisingly straightforward, female sexuality of the poem as something other than timidity and oppression and and running away from a cat named Oliver. <br /><br />Second, because it does it in a fucking hilarious way. <br /><br />So here it is: the only academic article I've seen which talks about the sexuality of “I started early,” and gets bonus points for doing it in terms that somehow manage to be over-the-top in their explicitness, and euphemistic, at the same time. <br /><br />Reising doesn't wast time. He goes straight for the poem's “nearly pornographically fetishistic specificity.” Without, that is, specifying it. What's wonderful about this formulation is that not one of the critics perused above noticed the “nearly pornographically fetishistic specificity.”<br /><br />Thought experiment: can you imagine any other form, any other medium, in which something could attain “nearly pornographically fetishistic specificity” and it would take experts in that field over fifty years just to notice it?<br /><br />So wait, what's fetishistic? Well... each item of clothing – shoes, apron, boddice, and belt – takes up a “demarcating and fetishizing position on the speaker's body.” You see... shoes go on your feet. And feet are a fetishizing position. And then an apron goes over, like, your whole front area. And your front area, that's for fetishizers. And then your boddice, don't get me started on your boddice that covers pretty much the same stuff as your apron. And your belt, oh my stars, that's on roughly the same area as your belt and your apron. So, as we can see, this is a pervert's dream vacation. How many women have the common courtesy these days to highlight and demarcate their fetishizing positions by wearing clothes on them? They might as well just go naked and paint big florescent arrows on themselves towards their naughty bits. But not their normal naughty bits, just their weird naughty bits. Such as a belt would cover. Also, did you know the ocean is a pervert? We can tell this because Reising tells us that “fairly explicit sexual maneuvering [is] attributed to the sea.” He gets goo all in her shoes! <br /><br />But is the ocean just a pervert, or is the poetess a pervertess, too? Reising notes that “I started” might be construed as a “sexual awakening.” IT ONLY TOOK US FIFTY YEARS to get from “The sea is here the traditional symbol of death” to “maybe 'I started' is kinda sorta a euphemism for orgasm.” <br /><br />Ah, but the disgusting euphemisms will come hot and heavy now, because – in 1999 – women get to want to have sex in our interpretations of literature. This is the best thing that's ever happened to hermeneutics, if this is the kind of stuff it cranks out.<br /><br />You see, “whereas the speaker 'started,' the sea could only 'follow' her lead.” So our new, dominant, desirous poetess “domesticates and limits the previously irresistible and overwhelming force of the sea within the phrases 'His Silver Heel' and 'Pearl,' both of which transfer the fetishistic specificity previously reserved for the representation of her own body to the body of the sea.” <br /><br />CATECHISM<br /><br />Q: What are we fetishizing? <br /><br />A: The “ejaculatory culmination of the sexual act.”<br /><br />Q: Why are we fetishizing the ejaculatory culmination of the sexual act?<br /><br />A: Because of “the appropriation of the male emission as an object of female ownership (pearls and jewelry).”<br /><br />Q: What weird, hard left turn are you about to take?<br /><br />A: “Even if we read the image of her shoes overflowing with pearl as one of male sexual climax, the speaker nonetheless represents that climax as equally female – it is her shoes that overflow, suggesting the possibility that her desire, however generated, culminates in its own dripping fulfillment.”<br /><br />Ladies: did you know this is what happens to your shoes?!<br /><br />* * *<br /><br />One Parting Reason to Fire All English Professors Post-Haste: “The 1862 composition date for this poem also enables us to read 'started' within a context capable of highlighting its responsiveness to the confinements and oppression peculiar to a slave culture, in this case reimagined by Dickinson to include the oppression of American women, even in the North. Frederick Douglass, to cite just one example, refers to his and his companions' planned escape from slavery as their 'intended start.'” The only way I could brook this is if Douglass wrote of his and his companions' planned escape from slavery as their “intended orgasm.”Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-32974380642032742862009-01-17T00:02:00.006-06:002013-08-20T13:36:01.614-06:00How Friday Night Lights wrung me out like a ragMy dream girl, the girl of my dreams, is a plot device on the NBC series Friday Night Lights.<br />
<br />
Let me explain.<br />
<br />
My dream girl is not Adrianne Palicki, which would have surprised me two days ago. Adrianne Palicki plays Tyra, a character who is apparently supposed to be the mutant offspring of some Apollonian Greek God who never appears onscreen because he's pure concentrated attractiveness so undeniable that if he's captured on film it mysteriously melts (I assume this is the implication), and a trailer trash train-wreck whose other daughter is a stripper, played by Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, seen below in a towel.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJSmyg4gs9I6RcfdW3pnth7fA_lLreze-q8teHcEVu6lb84FUa-8gbG1oIvQf_H-IQZK6mtK_ANREQ3A54F6C-7uIsLsaPCmaH7JErw1cnLh-cPy-b-aE4Xz9wEYdVL-F0mOhOY-oPC1hy/s1600-h/dana+wheeler-nicholson.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292164056115253106" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJSmyg4gs9I6RcfdW3pnth7fA_lLreze-q8teHcEVu6lb84FUa-8gbG1oIvQf_H-IQZK6mtK_ANREQ3A54F6C-7uIsLsaPCmaH7JErw1cnLh-cPy-b-aE4Xz9wEYdVL-F0mOhOY-oPC1hy/s320/dana+wheeler-nicholson.JPG" style="cursor: pointer; height: 239px; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
Now, when I used to watch Fletch a lot, I had a serious crush on Dana Wheeler-Nicholson -- there's something about her utter lack of personality in that movie, her abject tabula rasa-ness, that almost lets you think she's just really cool under pressure, and not just overmatched by the prospect of being the female lead in a major motion picture opposite Chevy Chase at his most bombastic. I really love her in that movie. Then, she was the tumultuous, bitchy, and laudinum-addicted love interest of, like, Kirk Russell or somebody in Tombstone. Then she disappeared, and popped up again, playing these horrific and de-glammed people. I saw her in an episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, and her role was to play somebody who used to be beautiful, but then got all this plastic surgery and it all came out wrong and she was ugly and tragic. But the thing was, it just looked like Dana Wheeler-Nicholson, who I had a huge crush on as a teenager, so I'm like WTF! Come on, tv, there ain't nothing wrong with an aging Dana Wheeler-Nicholson. Then she popped up again on Friday Night Lights, as the absolutely hopeless Tyra's mom, the girl who gets dumped by the men who beat her and pops pills to stay homeostatic, until she falls through a plate-glass table and has to be rushed to the hospital by a bunch of drunk 15-year olds.<br />
<br />
If you google image search "Dana Wheeler-Nicholson" with safesearch turned off, the first result is a vidcap of her doing what the website describes as a "drunken strip tease!" from, apparently, the first season of Sex & the City. It's pretty worth it.<br />
<br />
Adrianne Palicki is one of those people who I find so attractive that it actually makes me recoil -- every time I see her -- with some emotionally confusing mixture of terror, rage, and, well, confusion.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3r5-XivUNw-bMk77h9CLdcbTh36KbK1u1PdjfvBtPguQaRKVzvN5N6XRHf2KTZEUzu_3IuPPeBOx90_cMsQiFVxfsAB1bMeaHLRz8brwtXtkNVwcB6b5D9Srxxp9YLw2m9YfK7i3fUHkx/s1600-h/adrianne+palicki.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292164054582840866" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3r5-XivUNw-bMk77h9CLdcbTh36KbK1u1PdjfvBtPguQaRKVzvN5N6XRHf2KTZEUzu_3IuPPeBOx90_cMsQiFVxfsAB1bMeaHLRz8brwtXtkNVwcB6b5D9Srxxp9YLw2m9YfK7i3fUHkx/s320/adrianne+palicki.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; height: 320px; width: 256px;" /></a><br />
I feel this heightened sense of danger, but I am totally stupefied. I know something very wrong is happening, but there's nothing I can do. Like a cow getting cattle-prodded down the conveyor belt to where the illegal immigrant is standing, knee-deep in the blood of my brethren and fallen comrades, with a rusty old knife to cut my throat. My friends, Adrianne Palicki is that illegal immigrant, and I am that cow. Her boobs might be the knife, or maybe it's the little mole between her eyes, I dunno... this trope needs some work.<br />
<br />
So, Landry Clarke, played by Jesse Plemons -- who looks like Matt Damon if Matt Damon looked like a pancake with Matt Damon's facial features carved into it like a two-dimension Mount Rushmore --<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg39aa4EJkM4U9kEXvuLcrRG2WJFD3v8bwzGg32RFFq4omFXk-jE0LcH6FrGgLQtQfpC3yqtBrClEBQ0x0X9SSlLzNsq3bQlWovmcXmSRy7dHzaJ4OlyBj1yTpKevNpmi2-qhlUHsxtMECi/s1600-h/jessePlemons.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292166979521308274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg39aa4EJkM4U9kEXvuLcrRG2WJFD3v8bwzGg32RFFq4omFXk-jE0LcH6FrGgLQtQfpC3yqtBrClEBQ0x0X9SSlLzNsq3bQlWovmcXmSRy7dHzaJ4OlyBj1yTpKevNpmi2-qhlUHsxtMECi/s320/jessePlemons.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; height: 316px; width: 235px;" /></a><br />
is this geek. Actually, to call him a geek is to miss the point, because he's not a geek -- he's the culmination and fulfillment of the secret desires and fantasies of every geek, and he's <span style="font-style: italic;">masquerading</span> as a real geek. He is the secret geek in every geek, the psychotic geek who follows his instincts even though that's exactly what geeks never do. He does all the things geeks don't do, while maintaining the appearance of something uncannily like geekery, like those aliens in Invasion of the Body Snatchers that look like people but are something <span style="font-style: italic;">else</span>. Here's an abridged rundown: Landry beats a man to death to protect Tyra's honor. Then, he punches a starting quarterback in the face, inciting a lunchroom brawl that turns into a happy-go-lucky food fight, and then back into a brawl, in defense of Tyra's honor and also just because he's pissed. He joins the football team in order to win Tyra over, and then turns out to be unaccountably good at football -- so good it doesn't really make any sense at all, in terms of the fictional logic the show has been working with for, oh, I dunno, <span style="font-style: italic;">twenty episodes</span>. Like, the coach repeatedly calls him "Lance" because he's so ignorable and forgettable and bad at football, and then suddenly he's going into games and making saving plays and scoring touchdowns and doing these implausibly athletic things in practice that have the coach saying "who's that guy?" and giving speeches about how he's "not the most talented athlete on the team" even though he just joined the team after what seems like a lifetime of absolutely sedimentary inactivity only to miraculously see playing time as the tight end (the tight end! the dude's like 130 pounds!) in a must-win game for a Division 1A state champion Texas high school football team. It gets to the point that, in the penultimate episode of the second season, the coach is running through the list of the devastating losses to the team's personnel, the players who aren't practicing that day, and he says, anxiously, "Landry, Saracen, and Smash." So the list goes: the geek who got, like, a two-minute montage of getting run over by people during his first practice because he was supposed to be so inept and is injured because he tripped over a curb... followed by the team's two stars and offensive juggernauts. It makes very little sense, except as ubergeek wish fulfillment. As ubergeek wish fulfillment, though, it makes every sense ever.<br />
<br />
So anyway, the matter at hand is, my dream girl -- the girl of my dreams -- she's a plot device on this show. She appears, arbitrarily and out of nowhere, as Landry's "physics partner." She exists because Tyra is, in the logic of the show, the kind of person who Only Wants What She Can't Have, or, to be more precise, the kind of person who Has Something She Doesn't Want, Then Realizes She Might Lose It, And, In A State Of Panic, Goes Through Every Means Available To Possess It Even More Stringently And Exclusively And It Works Because She Can Have Whatever She Wants Which Is Why She Only Wants What She Might Lose, Until Eventually She Loses Interest And Doesn't Want It Anymore.<br />
<br />
So the writers, they're thinking, "there is, at this point, nobody who believes that Tyra would be with Landry, and it's such an elephant in the room that we've actually written it into the show. Shit, we had Landry's Father accost Tyra and say 'you could have any man you wanted, so what do you want with my son.'"<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBQOVxi5kUWYZHmuiVpPswZMstf1hUOmw1TIkQrOMPfJfHEHiSMLWCJksoCJtOkuH4v66889RbypvLQnVJBzfv7mooM9na_yX2Qi6fN3eVDgJDSiQIFA9-X2ypRB8E28WQRimQbmQbUpkM/s1600-h/wish+ful.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292166982933384610" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBQOVxi5kUWYZHmuiVpPswZMstf1hUOmw1TIkQrOMPfJfHEHiSMLWCJksoCJtOkuH4v66889RbypvLQnVJBzfv7mooM9na_yX2Qi6fN3eVDgJDSiQIFA9-X2ypRB8E28WQRimQbmQbUpkM/s320/wish+ful.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; height: 240px; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
(The sine qua non of ubergeek wish fulfillment.)<br />
<br />
"So," the writers say, "we better do something -- anything! -- to make this make sense. <span style="font-style: italic;">T</span><span style="font-style: italic;">ime for a plot device!"</span> And thus is introduced my dream girl, the girl of my dreams.<br />
<br />
When we first see her, she's just sitting there, across from Landry at the lunch table, being interesting. Knowing stuff. Being smart. Having a ton of pluck and just a zest of sass. Talking about cult movies and independent music. She is, in other words, carefully, meticulously calculated to be the girl of my dreams. She is manipulating me, owning me, conning me, and the bitch of it is, it's not even her that's doing it. It's the writers, the producers, the motherfucking Wizard of Oz. I'm being conned by the whore and her pimp. They cast her, knowing they could cast somebody as beautiful as they wanted, then give her glasses and a silly haircut and, instantly, she would suffer from the "I'm Rachel Leigh Cook and I'm in high school and I have glasses and a haircut carefully calculated to make me look slightly frumpy but also totally quirky and the kind of outfits middle aged women who don't yet know they're middle aged call 'funky'" effect. And they also knew that, in the last analysis, it wouldn't matter if the girl they cast was the prettiest girl in her high school, which she probably was, because she's very short, and Adrianne Palicki is very tall, and Adrianne Palicki is a <span style="font-style: italic;">motherfucking goddess</span>. So, when the girl of my dreams, Jean, my dream girl, is placed side by side in the same frame with the impossibly awesomely named Adrianne Palicki, this six-foot firebrand with the upturned nose and the surprisingly black roots, who doubtless gave any number of junior high teachers incredibly guilty consciences about the content of their fantasy lives, the producers know Jean, the girl of my dreams, will fade into the margins. She'll bleed off the screen. She'll walk in like Buster Douglas, owning the joint, and then be carried out after 60 seconds in the ring with Tyson. The writers know this. They know that the difference between a 9.4 and a 9.8 is the difference between a yellow banana and a banana with a tiny bit of green just right at the top that can't possibly hurt, but when both of those bananas are crowding up your visual field, you can only really see one of them. Adrianne Palicki is that yellow banana. The writers know this. In the immortal words of Mitch Hedberg, "Yellow means go. Green means stop. And red means, where the fuck did you get that banana at."<br />
<br />
The writers also know that, when Jean, the girl of my dreams, is allowed on-screen by herself to shine, she will be incomparable (as long as you're not being forced to compare her). Even if she's marginalized by the indominable presence of Adrianne Palicki, her presence is enough to dominate the memory Adrianne Palicki's presence. The writers, the casting directors know this. They know that in a show that has Adrianne Palicki in it, this one -- <span style="font-style: italic;">this person here</span> -- is allowed to be "the ugly one."<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBlA_vc7y1FgU3MJwl9KQ6_zrW3-vxufOE1npSxF301O6j2GIonScfOhznaYhb8JARA13njXpMQzq8fMMamHcswF9wMakt0zA2u5cQDZOpmk3KDPFNQS3KxyteWKDL68fJrNuR23ZGA4xK/s1600-h/brea_grant.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292164051786108658" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBlA_vc7y1FgU3MJwl9KQ6_zrW3-vxufOE1npSxF301O6j2GIonScfOhznaYhb8JARA13njXpMQzq8fMMamHcswF9wMakt0zA2u5cQDZOpmk3KDPFNQS3KxyteWKDL68fJrNuR23ZGA4xK/s320/brea_grant.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; height: 320px; width: 214px;" /></a><br />
"Hi, I'm the ugly one. I'm so ugly and gross and geeky! Want me to make you a mixtape?!" It's sort of like how, in an Ethiopian prison camp, Kate Moss is the fat one. Or like how, in the commercials for The Lost Boys 2: The Tribe, Corey Feldman was the one who wasn't that annoying. It's all relative.<br />
<br />
People like me, watching this show because we absolutely love football but also have (unrelated) tiny brain-orgasms every time we meet a pretty girl who has opinions about sub-genres of heavy metal, will keel over and have a wistful aneurism when this startlingly gorgeous, four-foot-nothing creature with the blonde semi-dredlocks says, "My vinyl basically has two sections. Metal and non-metal," even though, in the last episode, she was talking about, like, Elvis Costello or something, because she has to be all things to all geeks, and goddamnit, she is everything to me. She mentions, probably for the first time in the history of network telvision, Carcass, Napalm Death, and, like, Agoraphobic Nosebleed or somebdoy, in a single sentence, while interrogating Landry about the influences of his grindcore / extreme-thrash band Crucifictorius. It's one of those moments that is calculated to be cherished by nerdlingers like me, and simultaneously digestable as a code for everyone else, signifying clearly enough that she is "in the know" about something Landry is "in the know" about, and that nobody else could possibly care about, and that they are probably the only two people who are attractive enough to put on television, and "and in the know" about this particular subject, in a 500 mile radius. It's sorta like that scene in the David Cronenberg <span style="font-style: italic;">Crash</span> where James Spader and Holly Hunter both come to understand that they'll both really get their rocks off if they do it during a car wreck.<br />
<br />
(Incidentally, FNL is the only long-form fictional motion picture I've ever seen that does a credible job of representing what it's like to be at a shitty rock and roll show. This, to me, is an accomplishment on par with setting water on fire.)<br />
<br />
You know what she, Jean, the girl of my dreams does to flirt with Landry? Ok, he's like, ragging on power metal, so she <span style="font-style: italic;">makes him a power metal mix cd</span>. Imagine you're this loser, right? And you're hanging out with this girl who is way out of your league. With me? Then, she prostrates herself and gives you a mix cd that has this on it.<br />
<object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FjV8SHjHvHk&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FjV8SHjHvHk&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />
You know what happens? You instantly melt into a puddle of goo that spreads out on the pavement and spells out "I love you." I'm so in love with this girl, it's embarrassing. I mean, every guy who watches this show probably finds himself seeing her and uttering, in the cramped quarters of his inner monologue, my single favorite sentence in the history of the world -- "I could love her." But more than that, it's because, from the moment she appeared, I knew I was destined to lose her.<br />
<br />
She -- Jean -- the girl of my dreams -- my dream girl -- shows up spontaneously enough, and with so little exposition, that it is at no point in question that she is <span style="font-style: italic;">only</span> present so that she can be accepted by Landry to spurn Tyra into a mortifying seizure of jealousy, and then renounced by Landry, in some kind of pathetically ersatz-Christ cartwheel of martyrdom, in order to win Tyra back. There is no question. And it happens, all in all, in a 3-episode arc that takes a total of maybe 12 minutes of screen time. And in this screen-time, she, Jean, the girl who is inevitably to be spurned and thrown into the metaphorical toilet like so much metaphorically used metaphorical tampon, becomes my dream girl. The girl of my dreams. She appears in the season finale of season 2, only to look crushed, disheartened, ashamed and alone when she sees Landry and Tyra walking along, holding hands blissfully and aloofly. Then, she disappears.<br />
<br />
According to imdb, the character, Jean, the girl of my dreams, appears in 3 episodes of the series Friday Night Lights. So she's never coming back. This one selfish gesture of Landry Clark's managed not only to crush her and discourage her, to wound her and traumatize her; it also stole her away from me.<br />
<br />
This means she's gone forever. In the immortal words of Jacques Lacan -- who I'm pretty sure was talking about something much different -- "the Woman does not exist."<br />
<br />
This is only the most extreme example, though. Friday Night Lights has this remarkable way of casting remarkable people who, for one reason or another, haven't been snatched up to let their unfathomable gifts shine on another stage already, and then presenting them, in a way that is only <span style="font-style: italic;">barely</span> believable, as, like, people with normal problems. Like, "Oh, no, the guy who looks like he could be cast in a TV show as the star quarterback, who is, on this TV show, the star quarterback, gets paralyzed... <span style="font-style: italic;">in a game of football!</span>" Or, "the girl who looks like she could make Hugh Hefner's leg crank like Thumper Rabbit's is, get this, <span style="font-style: italic;">deeply religious and sleeping with her paralyzed boyfriend's best friend!</span>" It is a show that is almost entirely made up of conventional commonplace tropes that somehow just manage to avoid being cliches and become, by some ineffable act of movie magic grace, absolutely fucking breathtaking. I don't get it.<br />
<br />
I love this show, even as every fiber of my being is screaming at me, "this show is trying to make you love it!" It doesn't matter. I love it through my shame of loving it, the shame of my own tedious predictability, and I even love my tedious predictability.<br />
<br />
Watching Friday Night Lights has done things to me like make me lie in bed and think about how much I think I secretly would have been good at football if I'd gone out for football in high school. I rationalize: in 5th grade, I came in 2nd in the 40 yard dash. In 6th grade, the soccer coach told me I was the quickest player on the team. Surely, then, I could have played high school football, been unspectacular but solid enough. I could have walked on at a Division 1 FBS college, proven my mettle and given a scholarship in my senior season. I could have made a play in a third-tier bowl game, been drafted in the 4th round by a hungry but rebuilding perennially second-class NFC team, impressed with my tenacity and work-ethic on the practice squad, moved to reserves, been put in the game because of an unfortunate injury to a defensive stalwart and team captain, and then impressed so much with my tenacity, good instincts, sticktoitiveness, and raw athleticism that I quickly erased so much as the last vestiges of his memory, then made the Pro Bowl as a third alternate. I'm pretty sure, at some point while I'm telling myself this story, in my head, which is on a pillow because I'm too lazy to get up, I actually believe it.<br />
<br />
In my fantasy, I'm a cornerback.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Also, Kyle Chandler, holy shit. Why have I not seen this man in anything between Early Edition -- the show that guest starred Fisher Stevens (the guy who played The Plague in <span style="font-style: italic;">Hackers</span>) and prominently featured a pet cat and was based on the idea that a guy got a newspaper from some mystical ghost-deliveryman and was able to solve the crimes that happened tomoorow today -- and Friday Night Lights? The motherfucker just oozes charisma. But more importantly -- <span style="font-style: italic;">when</span> they cast him, why didn't they change the concept of the show?<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpTn6h-hLjEKXzz6JWIujY58JtWJdLnEzV6_wfbKCi6caAsqC0AGk7Lpd4431uASGnWdELoCcc2aTJ0yb__MajtcMevX4dEnLb6LPeP0D9HY89iwfYvgPn2JmW6O6diUAb486sjyh1O_so/s1600-h/EarlyEdition.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292164058080845506" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpTn6h-hLjEKXzz6JWIujY58JtWJdLnEzV6_wfbKCi6caAsqC0AGk7Lpd4431uASGnWdELoCcc2aTJ0yb__MajtcMevX4dEnLb6LPeP0D9HY89iwfYvgPn2JmW6O6diUAb486sjyh1O_so/s320/EarlyEdition.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; height: 320px; width: 226px;" /></a><br />
Hear me out -- <span style="font-style: italic;">Early Edition 2: Saturday Morning</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Post</span>. A high-school football coach gets the paper a day early, Friday morning, and discovers the outcome of the game he coaches that night! He has a mere 12 hours to game-plan a victory, or his team might miss the state tournament! Fisher Stevens guest-stars!Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-27395968408710437412008-12-08T14:10:00.005-06:002008-12-08T14:21:08.744-06:00Gag giftI don't have to be back in class for like 40 days and 40 nights and, as in the film of that name, I will count the break a success only if (if <span style="font-style: italic;">only</span>) I can avoid having sex with Shannyn Sossamon.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA150FPXigD3iyAevc1Vl_dSjOA2zTAe285NdLf-S1XUO_Su71Y5mpu_7D_azb9guJEKLyq7J2tV34tcoilZrbEqmFzPrcpVr_5djGuVxnUWjV22h-68G_-hhk1NWLaipxTaSQAoDeWwXS/s1600-h/shannyn+sos.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 264px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA150FPXigD3iyAevc1Vl_dSjOA2zTAe285NdLf-S1XUO_Su71Y5mpu_7D_azb9guJEKLyq7J2tV34tcoilZrbEqmFzPrcpVr_5djGuVxnUWjV22h-68G_-hhk1NWLaipxTaSQAoDeWwXS/s320/shannyn+sos.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5277515248468997106" border="0" /></a><br />(Here she is praying I don't go through with it.)Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-38282519774668270792008-11-20T21:40:00.006-06:002008-11-20T22:13:26.847-06:00The fleshy part<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJULNGRYurJzJDbCf328H01FJvcs4lQIm9A-4Wstp7PFRdpbnkWaQ4PDkxyuY-XzRTZx8ON8RBLIVk0mivrtWxeUzetjOgxjE9pyUkfritITKqTp99jv7qQwfeuZnUhuLtXB_xk_b72eVU/s1600-h/fleshy+part.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 157px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJULNGRYurJzJDbCf328H01FJvcs4lQIm9A-4Wstp7PFRdpbnkWaQ4PDkxyuY-XzRTZx8ON8RBLIVk0mivrtWxeUzetjOgxjE9pyUkfritITKqTp99jv7qQwfeuZnUhuLtXB_xk_b72eVU/s320/fleshy+part.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5270952833295976226" border="0" /></a><br />(The 10th, and possibly the most harrowing google image result for "fleshy part.")<br /><br />I am currently regretting the fact that I went with the 14" cheese-steak for the price of a 7" cheese-steak at a sports-bar called Bert's at lunch. It raises at least one interesting question -- what, legally, is the definition of "steak"? If you wanted to, say, level a lawsuit at a restaurant -- how far would their "steak" have to be from that normative legal standard "steak"? Because the first thing that pops up in my dictionary is, "A slice of meat cut from the fleshy part of an animal or large fish." Which doesn't carry with it any of the quality control that is, to my mind, implicit in and conveyed by the word. Can you imagine if they'd just decided not to invent the word steak and just gone with <a href="http://www.definition-of.com/fleshy+part">fleshy part</a>? Going to a the local fleshy part house for a sirloin fleshy part? Firing up the grill and throwing down some t-bone fleshy parts? Groaning about having to watch those awful, awful hot men hock for Taco Bell's Triple Fleshy Part Burrito during every commercial break? Having the classic Simpsons' line instead be "Money's too tight for fleshy parts"? I can tell you one thing, and I will tell you that one thing -- if the special had been a 14" fleshy part sandwich for the price of just 7" of fleshy part, I'm pretty sure that's a sandwich I wouldn't be regretting.<br /><br />Also -- Last week, I sat in on a lecture, and the lecturer said that "mutton" was a kind of cow meat. I wasn't so sure, so I went to the lecturer afterward and I said, "are you sure mutton is a kind of cow meat?" She was absolutely sure. Now, having thoroughly searched the surprisingly extensive wikipedia page for "mutton" for such phrases as "cow," "beef," "steak," "fleshy part," and "any other animal that's not a sheep or goat or lamb or something like that," it is becoming more and more clear that mutton can, under no circumstances, be a cow. Not even in Britain, where, it was intimated by the lecturer, it was more likely to be a cow. I know that because there's a "Britain" section to the wikipedia entry for mutton, no shit.<br /><br />So now, I'm trying to find a way to reveal that I'm right about mutton, without it coming off as gloating. I'm thinking about wearing a t-shirt that says, "Mutton Can Under No Circumstances Be Cow," and explaining to everyone that it's the hot new fashion the kids are wearing, like No Fear and Shemalé in their day. I'm thinking I could organize a campus even called Mutton Week under the auspices of some shadow corporation called NoCow or Cows AREN'T Us (a limited liability corporation), with a mission of getting out the facts about mutton and ending all the pernicious misconceptions. I could get a bunch of freshman to stand on the quad and hand out literature and do something theme-appropriate like, I dunno, wail on some cowbells or something. I could dress up like the gypsy from Jane Eyre and go into her office hours eating some mutton, and then deliver a seemingly mad, yet curiously precise disquisition on the nature and history of mutton, and then jump out the window to evade campus security. I could revive the old theanonymouspervert@gmail.com gmail account and send her an anonmyous tip from the anonymous pervert, on the preconception that, as long as my name isn't attached, she won't know it's from me -- the only problem would be finding a way to say something perverted about mutton that's still actually about mutton, sort of like how I imagine it was sometimes difficult for Bill Nye the Science Guy or Beakman (either of the Beakmans) from Beakman's world to simultaneously follow every standard of scientific rigor and falsifiability and remain accessible, you know, for the kids. But I'll probably have to just go on letting her believe that mutton is cow, and infecting whole new generations of readers with this damned lie. The needle and the damage done. I just hope she doesn't get to you, or anyone you know.Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014917807329889939.post-1230175374832751322008-11-20T00:10:00.003-06:002008-11-20T00:16:55.903-06:00Etopian upiphanyThere's nothing like standing over the dirty counter eating expired olives off a dirty spoon during a bout of stress-induced insomnia to make you think, "really? this is what my life is like? <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span>?"<br /><br />It's like that scene in Mrs. Doubtfire where... ah hell, what's the point...Dhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18261973621703572980noreply@blogger.com0