Teenage Fashion Show

2006-07-14T08:50:00.000-07:00

At the risk of sounding naive

Let me see if I have this straight.

You have a guy who has consistently mismanaged your money. He has lied to you on multiple occassions as to what the true cost of items are, where he is getting the funding for them, and how your pocketbook has been affected. You have him dead to rights on exactly how he's been screwing you and you've begun to have had enough. Then, one day, he tells you the good news: "Remember a couple of months ago when I said you were colossally fucked?" he says, "Well, it turns out I didn't even get that right. But, silver lining, you're only going to been habitually ass-gored."

Why 1) would this be good news or 2) would anyone believe that the colossal fucked numbers weren't fabricated (just like all the previous figures) in order to make the habitually ass-gored numbers seem better?

White House Lowers '06 Deficit Estimate

Seriously, someone explain this to me. (And, while your at it, explain how a reduced deficit brought on by increased tax revenues coming in from a business boom being steadily pushed, if not propelled, by our tax subsidies [military contracts in Iraq] or family grocery budgets [higher gas prices] can possibly be taken as 'good news,' or even mildly sensical when the job rate isn't exactly kicking ass?)

2006-05-15T21:24:00.000-07:00

One Day I Woke Up and All of My Friends Were Unemployed

One day I woke up and all of my friends were unemployed.
And I thought, “That’s funny”—
Or decidedly unfunny, since these were the funniest, most talented people I’ve known.
And since to the list you could quickly add thoughtful and humane,
I knew it stung.
Not poverty, mind you—any pussy could persevere that—
But indignity
And again, not the kind you think.
For there was no lack of dignity with these fine people
They carried themselves far better than anyone else could.
But rather the indignity that comes
From not being able to laugh quite as loud
Roughly, from the throat belly and balls
Because the world wasn’t a jack-booted thug
Who you could fight with honor and spirit
But a fucking maitre d',
Lispy and effeminate
Demanding placation
From the clamoring acquiescence
Lining the street to the door.

And we are fools
onto something
and in for
a long hard night.

2006-05-11T22:05:00.000-07:00

This dude has a newspaper gig and draws none to shabby, though he'd never tell you as much.

2006-05-03T07:04:00.000-07:00

Lifestyles of the Rich, Strung Out, and Petty

Scott Weiland is not many thing, but apparently he is a smack talking genius. Here's his recent 'press release' about Axl Rose:

"get a new wig motherfucker. Oh shit, here it comes, you fat, botox faced, wig wearin' fuck!"

Notice the deft use of the monological call and response. Anwering your own question is a totally underrated mode of insult. I'm fond of this as well:

"What we're talking about here is a frightened little man who once thought he was king, but unfortunately this king without his court is nothing but a memory of the asshole he once was."

Mind you, he is WRITING this, not speaking it. It reminds me of when I was 6. That's pretty great. (Also, when did Axl Rose become every white dude painting houses for a living? With cornrows.)

2006-04-26T19:20:00.000-07:00

I was just struck (again) by how beautifully this album cover encapusulates the music inside it: throbbing, muddy, heart-wrenching sincerity headed knowingly toward the edge of the cliff and trying to turn certain (induced? entropic?) demise into a dignified walk into the sunset.

Or some shit. Not many album covers do this without being too literal. It's a fine line, but this really looks like what it sounds like and colors the music in a pretty great way.

2006-04-18T22:15:00.000-07:00

For Jay

The cow eased up to the bar
Took off his sunglasses
Laid down a fifty
And told them to keep pouring.

He kept glancing at the game
Shadowboxing his watch
Bullshitting with the other cows
And told them to keep pouring.

When his udders ached
He pissed
When his feet grew bored
He moved.

A day passed, maybe two
years maybe ten
miles maybe fifty
states maybe one hundred
countries maybe one thousand
people maybe the whole goddam
thing.

And in another
day
year
mile
state
country
and life:

When his udders ached
He pissed
When his feet grew bored
He moved
And when he couldn’t take it anymore
He did.

3.20.03

2006-03-09T12:45:00.000-08:00

Dispenser of Wisdom

My dissertation is currently languishing in Academic purgatory, but no fear: Teenage Fashion Show has knowledge and insights falling out of its pixelated ass. Here's a freebie dissertation for all you suckers: lawn mowing. What is the rhetoric of lawn mowing? When did it originate? What specific class-consciousness did it birth? What sorts of public domains were opened up by this unique production of space? How did it factor into the creation of a suburban, bourgeoisie identity? As a site of adolescent enculturation into patriarchal masculinity? As a multi-valiant site of emasculation in the post-modern novel: physical (the academic with knee high black socks, unable to win this puny fight with nature), post-capitalist (the idiocy of working 60 hours a week to pay for something that you have to devote another 2 hours a week to maintain; working for the privilege of working), and sexual, as manifested in both in popular (Franzen's The Corrections) and more popular (King's The Stand) novels. And just think of your sexy interdisciplinary conferencing with landscape architecture and critical geography! You're guaranteed a cross-over spot in Cultural Studies and Women's Studies (who got to write the history of lawn mowing? who wasn't being allowed to mow the lawn, which may as well be spelled p-u-b-i-c h-a-i-r? can we interrogate the psychological connection between young men whose fathers demanded meticulous diagonal lines and a penchant for the landing strip?) Congratulations! You have tenure.

You know what you can't get tenure for? Writing and teaching about the fucking First Amendment and hoping that your students turn out a little smarter and a little less douchebaggy for it. Apparently, that's ridiculous.

P.S. Be the first person to actually show me the cite to a scholarly work on suburban lawn mowing practices and you’ll win me shooting myself in the head.

2006-03-05T08:47:00.000-08:00

Really for no other reason than I need to keep track of how I'm spending time, I'm going to start documenting the books I read in a given week. Here's a partial list of the last 6 weeks, also including substantial articles (i.e., stuff that's over 50 or so pages and/or wasn't stupid) and not including what I read in the New Yorker, etc., that week:

-Levitt (?): Freakanomics
-Zizek: Sublime object of ideology
-Zizek: Looking Awry
-Derrida: "Mystical Authority of the Law"
-Herman: Story Logic
-Mitchell: Right to the City
-Phelan: Narrative As Rhetoric
-Phelan: Living to Tell About It
-Shiffrin: The First Amendment, Democracy, and Romance
-Eiser: The Plot: The Secret Story Protocols of the Elders of Zion
-Chomsky: Imperial Ambition
-Lapham: Gag Rule
-Fraser: 150 pages of miscellany on publics and counterpublics
-Garsten: Saving Persuasion (Introduction/First Chapter)
-most Supreme Court cases on First Amendment protest protection
-Edward Gorey: Amphigorey Also
- Burke, A Grammar of Motives
-Beckett: First Love
-Benjamin: Author as Producer (?)

Started and determined was crap
-The Death of Discourse

Started and determined was probably good but I don't have time to read it:
-Smith: White Teeth

Poetry:
-Berryman
-Merrill
-Flatowitz

2006-02-08T13:11:00.000-08:00

This always happens to me.

I was asked to submit a column to this political website that was going to launch. So I spent a couple hours doing this (I'm paranoid about publishing stuff with my name on it), they accept it, they like it, and then I never hear from them again. I have a pile of "solicited" stuff like this. I am never again responding to these requests: they fall through, nobody reads them, and they don't "advance" my "career" in any way. (Should way have been in quotes too?)

Anyway, this one is now three weeks past expiration date.

Pseudo.

Years ago, that was historian Daniel Boorstin’s designation for the meaningless “news” events that are legitimated as authentic, as meaningful, only by virtue of us treating them as such. Think of awards shows that have only been around for three years. Or Bradjolina.

Or try not to think of Samuel Alito’s confirmation proceedings.

Clinging, at times almost painfully, to his handler’s suggested strategy of saying absolutely nothing, Alito has achieved Miss America caliber platitudinousness. Did the man who will decide whether abortion is legal really just answer a question about his judicial philosophy with “I would be myself. Everyone should be themselves”? When asked about the ‘imperial presidency’ and whether the executive branch can invalidate or ignore laws passed by Congress, did the person who will determine whether individuals are wiretapped, tortured, and indefinitely jailed manage to shut down Senatorial inquiry with the incontrovertible logic of “Everyone deserves to be treated equal under the law, that’s one of the great things about our legal system.” Would he juggle and put on a bikini if emcee/coach Lindsay Graham asked him to?

Would he tell me why the hell I’m watching these proceedings?

And the icing is that this nothingness, this absence of content, is ostensibly the tabula rasa mind we the people want in a judge. The less Alito says, so the rhetorical logic goes, the more objective and fair and impartial he sounds to the call-in nation. No “grand theories” in Sam’s head, pal. This is a straight shooter. Nerdy, even. A regular guy who prefers the “good sense and decency of [his] friends and neighbors” to the “very smart people and very privileged people behaving irresponsibly” at Princeton. He’s just gonna read that Constitution and call ‘em like he sees ‘em. “I would never suggest that judges have superior reasoning power than Congress” on constitutional matters, says our future Supreme Court Justice.

Are you kidding me?

Why wouldn’t a judge know more about the law than an exterminator (Tom DeLay’s former occupation) or any of the other criminals and lunatics who periodically saunter in to the House of Representatives? Just because you and I don’t understand the intricacies of the Commerce Clause, does that mean we don’t want a Supreme Court Justice who does? This false humility, this ridiculous posturing of everyman-ness, allows Alito to dodge monumental questions about the limits of executive power with tautological coup de graces like “the president must follow the constitution”—which is like saying illegal acts are un-legal insofar as they are against the law. And while it’s a shame that this charade can proceed because most Americans lack an education in legal interpretation, the bigger shame is that this “regular guy” shtick gains political legitimacy by pretending that such an education is unneeded, by pretending that Constitutional interpretation isn’t a messy, complicated, and vigorously debated business, and that Alito, by virtue of having been an exceptional law student and jurist, doesn’t already have an interpretive framework in his brain that has conditioned him to see the Constitutional issues of our day in a very particular manner.

“I don’t want to say anything that will be characterized as an argument that I am making.”

Well, you are making an argument, Soon-To-Be Justice Alito, and that rather calculated argument is about some sort of inhuman impartiality when it comes to thinking about the Constitution. And despite your Senators’ best efforts to have you hermetically sealed and sterilized—articulating your positions on past cases for you, espousing your judicial philosophy for you— by leaving you to sit there goofy and aphasic, you’re forced to maintain a posture that makes you seem distinctly unqualified for the job. Saying that you haven’t really thought about Bush v. Gore, the case where the Supreme Court effectively decided the 2000 presidential election, makes you sound either disingenuous (pronounced: lying) or supernaturally incurious (pronounced: an idiot). Ditto presidential signing statements, which you don’t have an opinion about even though you advocated their use for the Reagan administration. Ditto every other time you refuse to answer for fear of prejudicing “any constitutional question” that may be presented to you as a Supreme Court justice, even though we all know that in order to have Constitutional expertise, you necessarily must have pre-judged or considered these questions (or at the very least thought about how you think about them).

Which means even as job interviews—and maybe even pageants—go, this one’s a fake.

I only hope the threat of the imperial presidency is similarly pseudo.

2006-02-05T11:27:00.000-08:00

A New Low

After reading this article on Penn Jillette, I felt compelled to email the writer. I am now firmly on the road to being one of those assholes who corrects the grammar of supermarket ads

Dear Mr. Curtis,

Though I am aware of the alleged cache surrounding the word "deconstruction" (i.e., it makes folks seem smart), I'm not sure of the value of using the phrase 8 times in a six paragraph article. I also think it goes against your purpose (i.e., sounding smart, making the talented Penn Jillette sound more so) when you never once use the term correctly.

Through your usage, "deconstruction" becomes merely synonymous with criticism, unveiling, 'showing how something is done,' what we once called critical analysis, and/or, to use Jillette's phrase, exposing bullshit. Unfortunately, deconstruction isn't necessarily any of these things, but rather a set of procedures and assumptions for looking at the ways language and communication work. And while the jury is still out on whether deconstruction is a useful theoretical enterprise, it is at least entitled to having a word that refers specifically to that particular enterprise and its attendant methodologies. Otherwise, I'm not sure why you couldn't similarly substitute "narratological," "anarchocaptialism," "magic," "kitten," "potato," "dictionary" on any other of the many, many words in the English language that similarly have nothing to do with the phenomena you are trying to express. (Actually, that project does sort of sound like deconstruction.)

Thank you,

T.W. Stilinski

2005-12-19T07:04:00.000-08:00

This is why the newspaper is great.

Locally, it turns out that Ohio's much touted deregulation of electricity is actually going to result in an increase in rates for customers. The problem: once the subsidies run out, market "competition" doesn't really happen (no incentive money for tech development) and thus, no savings. So, basically, deregulation only benefits consumers insofar as it is regulated. No shit? And what do you mean I can't start up an electric company in my storm-cellar?

Nationally, we are all supposed to be celebrating with Howard Stern as the FCC manages to make the public forum so inhospitable that we now have to pay for the privilege of "free" speech. Of course, while the private sector does allow fart jokes and fake orgasm noises, it doesn't really allow for anything as biting as a ad denouncing Wal-Mart (I'd insert the link about a broadcast network denying such an ad, but, really, who cares.) So, really, how did any of the players (Stern or the FCC) lose in this situation: he makes a ton of cash on Sirrius and the FCC gets to help along its forward march towards privatizing, or rendering obsolete, the public airwaves.

There is no connection between these two stories. And they are in no way interesting. Nor is my commentary on them. Merry Xmas.

2005-12-18T10:46:00.000-08:00

Geeks vs. Nerds

Know what's great? The local scenesters in my town had a "potluck" last night, which consisted of getting 28 of them in a room, randomly (or somewhat randomly) dividing them into bands, and then giving them 8 hours to come up with 2 original songs and a cover. And why is this a great idea? Because it separates the wheat from the motherfucking chaff, that's why. Guess who's been coasting on their haircut? Guess who is just a giant untalented nerd masquerading as an edgy asshole? Guess what fuckin' ponce is all gear, no moves? Yeah, douchebag, why don't you throw a distortion tantrum and explain how cool you are again--cause the collection of unassuming music geeks that played before you smoked your obligatory-furry-winter-parka- wearing ass in 420 mintues flat. And you didn't even have the balls to try to do anything; you just stand there like a giant sucking void, making rockstar/professor's kid faces. Delicious.

Merry Xmas.

2005-09-03T17:54:00.000-07:00

An honest inquiry I now submit to the salon. Dedicated to the hurricane:

Why are conservatives so invested in the concept of free-market capitalism?

o Capitalism is inherently a function of innovation. Conservatism is definitionally and in practice in opposition to this. Without a belief in the status quo, or a return to golden past, conservatism doesn’t really exist as a concept.

o Why would conservatives (nostaligics that they are) years for a “free market system” that hasn’t even existed, really, in the United States. (Or, came the closest to existing in the late 19th century and then was judged so corrupt, malicious, un-Christian, and downright assholish by a majority of the people, including the conservative's beloved President T. Rex, that it was dismantled by the very governmental forces that the modern conservative movement opposes.)

o At the point where conservatives now vote for social conservatives, don’t they then lose all the libertarians benefits/impacts that would be allegedly derived from innovation? Which is to say, if the point privitazing is ostensibly to reduce government influence on private lives, why vote for people--or empower people based on your allegiance to a concept that they are inescapably piggy-backing on--whose only goal is to increase government regulation not only on private life, but the most intimate aspects of private life: sex, education, marriage, political expression, religion, and how you can and cannot spend your "free" time.

o for the moment, I want to disregard the moral, ideological, and ethic complications that inevitably arise when financial gain is the chief motivation for a publicly-necessitated service or activity (e.g., Guantanamo, the LSAT and GRE, would a school owned by G.E. really inform students about the Military Industrial Complex?). At the point where it’s either the government or private sector providing the same services—and there shouldn’t be a radical increase or decrease in employment either way—is the free-market conservative's position just about efficiency? If so, is there really any evidence that the private sector is more cost efficient in any generalizable sense—let alone when one looks at particular projects that historically have never been undertaken by private individuals (i.e., roads, large-scale police forces, the establishment of a system of laws, the protection of a country)? And if free-market conservatives will grant that some of these (i.e., protection of a country) are more logically, and more efficaciously, undertaken by a nation (after all, why else was the country founded other than on the idea of protecting property), and thus by government, then why universalize that we should do away with government, with regulation, that we should "starve the beast." Is it really anythign but nonsensical in rhetoric and untested (or tested and judged a failure) in practice? So, since no one, at least no one framing the rhetoric of conservatism on a national scale, can possibly be this stupid, is it really just about which political interests are getting the contracts and the loot? Is it just about base cronyism?

Is it this simple? Please intelligent conservatives, let me know how I am wrong and where I can obtain the empirical data that shows privitazation will produce a more efficient system. At least then we will have a reason to bother trying to figure out if the efficiency wrought from that system is in any way just or desirable.

Or, if not, at least laugh with me when you legislator talks about freeing gas prices from the shackles of governmental taxation--and in the next breath gasps about the need for legislation to prevent price-gouging. Because if you vote for someone this ideologically confused, on the basis of the "philosopic and economic principles" they claim to espouse and that you find to be a facile and comforting way to sift through the confusing nuances of the world, you, sir, are a grade-A moron.

2005-08-31T10:21:00.000-07:00

Hey Six Day Kid,

Realize that you have a place to stay in Ohio. Just show up if the phones don't work. Start walking.

614-784-9718/614-578-7757

2005-07-14T08:30:00.000-07:00

A response to the Scream post by the ever enlightening and flirtatious Film Watching Robot: http://www.moviebot.blogspot.com/

I really don't think anything of Scream, but I'm certainly not mortified by it either. Stepping back a level, it just seems like a fairly sophomoric presentation of the basic themes of some sort of postmodernist blop blop, but one at that at least tickles around the genitals of the central claim of this system of beliefs (i.e., that you are product and combination of the influences, "discourses," sources that irradiate your life; “your reason is just the discontinuous and disparate discourses inhabiting you,” etc.), as well as some kind of not-terribly thought out existentialist critique of self-narrativity (i.e., what are the consequences of thinking of your life in narrative terms; in "movie" terms). Not very sophisticated, but what the hell is that puts millions of fat American asses in seats? (And, maybe, just maybe, makes them think about their fat asses in those seats. [All the while, of course, it makes those asses fatter--as well as the wallets of the filmmakers, I'm not saying that this ‘self-referentiality as critique’ isn't infuriating (like parentheses inside parentheses inside parentheses [which, of course, implies another set of parentheses (as does this, etc.)])].)

But, I tend to also look more on the Wes Craven side of things, which is to say, to extend some sympathy to a guy who made a couple of great, frightening, fucked-up and relatively "genre-less" movies (Last House on the Left, Hills Have Eyes)

before being forever sucked into the (genre fortified) shit-hole which is the modern horror movie. Now, my sympathy isn't for his deplorable artistic choices (he's still a whore, even if he is a whore who says so with, I think, believable remorse) but with his attempt at redemption in the mass-public eye—using the generic conventions that are necessary for mass-pubic communication (or, at least, necessary to get your picture made by a studio) and that damned him as an artist. So, small picture, Scream is his way of telling his widespread, intellectual diverse (read: mediocre and democratic) audience the painfully obvious in terms they will find refreshing: for God's sake, don't you see how familiar and uninspired all this is. And if that move is now about 20 years past dead (i.e., familiar and uninspired), well, fine, I probably agree, but the Simpson's and all that other pomo shit needs to go too (or at least the next person to reference the crop-dusting scene of North By Northwest needs a hearty knuckle thrown to their nuts--Seth MacFarland I'm looking your way), and some superman better figure out how to write in a, hitherto, genre-less fashion.

But that point is really the point (or at least the point when this pomo crap is thought through a little better), which is that I don't think this originality is possible. Or, at least, your ability to navigate a realm of the "new" is compromised and narrowed by how much you "consume." (And this is my version, not the post-modern dogma, which then allows me to carve out some amount of creative agency as opposed to succumbing to total, invisible, odorless, and sinister determinism; or at least act as if I don’t.) But the problem is that artistic move toward “originality” requires either a ball-load of hubris, or a pathetic amount of naiveté, or a genuine disinterest in influences; each of these moves has its own set of difficulties and life-consuming neuroses, and I can’t blame artists for commenting on them any more than fault basketball players for writing memoirs about shooting hoops and laying groupies.

And so the nexus of our disagreement is, again, "Your life is defined by what you consume, not by what you experience"---which is to say, our disagreement is about whether consuming is experience in a way where experience isn't just consuming, the latter of which puts us back in the cross-hairs of Craven's critique: the problems with thinking of life as "just a movie" (or a conflux of all the movies, books, art, everything that you’ve consumed). And while he is taking this to a retarded, and right-wing, extreme (i.e., sociopaths who commit acts under the influence of mimetic fiction and the self-righteous politicians who win elections celebrating this “inescapable” psychological power of art: how clever, how unique, how fucking Plato), as a critique it has been a pretty useful one for a couple minutes past forever (i.e., what are the consequences of looking at your life as if it is a narrative; as if it progresses; as if you are a character trying on different parts, reacting to situations; as if those situations having any bearing on your situations; as if those situations are your situations; as if you are capable of distinguishing your “authentic” situations from the situations that you have already been a, vicarious, participant in; as if any situation exists apart from your prior situations, etc,. etc., eureka, etc., yawn, etc. ).

So I think, for the moment, the distinction, that we'll maybe agree on has something to do with experience being "production"--in some fashion or another. Which means the real problem with Scream, and the Family Guy and all this shit, is that it you passively ingest it; it’s just surface. And while this isn’t an inherent problem with the tropes of post-modernism per se, the increasing banality of these tropes certainly contributes to this passivity. And while I am still convinced that that experience of art is, at times, a system of diminishing returns (because of banality therefore passivity; and, hey, maybe this banality is the consequence of an embarrassment of riches—or at least an economic system that allows so many “artists” [and critics] to exist), if there is production involved on the part of the audience, it at least opens up the possibility of me acknowledging it as art---and therefore possibly respecting it---because it has done something. The question then is whether it is Birth of a Nation, Martin, or Straw Dogs, but I think Scream should at least be looked at as an instance of a (entertaining and ultimately toothless piece of popcorn shit) efficaciously arming a nation of idiots with the equivalent of 16 minutes of college (and showing the consequences of being so cavalier about “life as a movie”), and not as a malicious, cancerous turd that willful celebrates what it claims to be against.

Because, after all, this latter characterization should be left for human race-traitors like Karl Rove.

2005-07-07T09:30:00.000-07:00

In case anyone was wondering, the Google results are as follows:

"Robert Novak" and traitor: 12, 900
"Robert Novak" and cocksucker: 194
"Robert Novak" and pigfucker: a respectable 122
"Robert Novak" and reputable thinker, man, and journalist: 74
"Robert Novak" and "would like to murder him with my bare hands": 0
"Robert Novak" and "please dear god give this bastard an aching case of ball-cancer": (after this post) 1

2005-07-03T17:01:00.000-07:00

This is the inevitable consequence of the man behind the curtain standing in front of the curtain

I wish it wasn't so banal to point out the irony of Bush denying the credibility of the recent Iranian elections on the basis of 1) voter disenfranchisement 2) that the candidates have to be vetted by a religious authority because, otherwise, it is absolutely fucking hilarious.

2005-07-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

You've head this before? Guess what asshole, we've heard everything before.

Stealing is fun, and getting away with shit is great too. In old movies, or even movies that depict the older generations, the way to win a girl’s heart is to break some rules. Whenever Jimmy Stewart or Woody Allen are courting someone, they always are transgressing some boundary; it shows the lady-friend that your not so dickless that you fearfully tiptoe over every arbitrary rule that society has macraméd around you: you steal an apple, you sneak into a movie, you steal her towel when she’s walking home after the gym floor retracted throwing everyone into the pool. My grandfather is one of the coolest guys ever, and it’s because he thrives on getting away with shit. He openly lies to waitresses and cashiers. He walks into conventions and pretends to be a dentist. He takes handfuls of free-samples. For a while, he was waiting for my 5 year old brother to get hungry and cranky, putingt him in his truck, and convincing the Burger King employee that the kid was starving and they didn’t have any money. No one does stuff like this anymore, or, rather, when people do there are swift and disproportionate consequences. Maybe the problem is that the unspoken boundary, the “real” non-legal boundary of what is the accepted level of jackassery, particularly if you were trying to win a heart, was trampled on and necessitated the formal one. In any event, next time you are at the movies, or in public, just look around at all the fascist pussies you’re surrounded by. Or, worse yet, the women they are sitting by. Or, worse yet, their all-sass, no balls children. It's sickening.

2005-07-02T09:53:00.003-07:00

If "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" fell in the forest...

I’m rarely intrigued by actors in terms of pathos, because it is all about the situation, not the performance. The situation dictates the performance and the performance can only attempt to rise to meet it. (Of course, since in any mimetic medium the “situations” are so artificial, our only standard to judge how well the performances have risen is prior performance, which takes us further outside the scope of the “real” that allegedly gives the mimesis its value anyway: to be real is to be less “real.” So what we’re left with is that the art defamiliarizes what “real” life is, thus allowing us to see the “real” in a new—and the artist would argue legitimate or valuable—way. I’ve approached this dilemma with varying degrees of hostility towards “representation as catharsis” art throughout the years, but now I just see it as a case of diminishing returns; which explains why I’m interested in situations [‘theory,’ genre, political science, rhetoric] as opposed to particulars [individual performances within ‘fiction’] in terms of efficacious empathizing. Except for music, which rules. And 60 Minutes, which makes me cry. (And aside from the fact that an individual performance can act as a "situator" bringing about a context.)

2005-07-02T09:53:00.002-07:00

Of Course He's a Tool, That's The Point

People keep complaining about how Tom Cruise was miscast in War of the Worlds, but that casting decision was the best, only?, thing in that movie. (Aside from the implicit messages to go buy a gun and support the army, despite the, also implicit, message that all directed, conscious, ‘human’ action is futile against a imperial force, though the imperial force will still fail through a combination of its own inertia and hubris.) But the reason the Cruise casting bothers people, I think, is because they don’t want to deal with the fact that pretty-boy jockos who have amounted to nothing will be the inevitable survivors and thrivers of any post-apocalyptic scenario. And that Tom Cruise the person, which since he can't act is effectively Tom Cruise the actor, is the living breathing archetype I'm talking about, only with a bit more nails-on-the-chalkboard tenacity and a cubic buttload of luck. I’m talking about guys who did well in high school (i.e., played football, beat kids up) thus ensuring that they did well in high school (i.e., procreated a lot), knocked someone up with their fertile seed, had a lousy marriage, proceeded by a lousy job and a couple of kids who resent them. Here’s why they will succeed: Darwinistic advantages— looks, strength, natural agility (which is more important than strength; attention nerds who work out: you're still dead)—; smart enough to have an intuitive sense of how things work but not smart enough to have had nuance or insight atrophy intuition; an banal “everyman” appeal that will allow them to quickly establish rapport, recognition, and respect from others fleeing destruction; and, more importantly, independent to the point of being incapable of having meaningful inter-human relations. The benefit of this last point cannot be overemphasized: dead beat dads will ensure the survival of the species. They are shitty, un-nurturing parents, which means that their kids have to learn to take care of themselves, autonomously generate self-respect, fight, fix cars, etc. These offspring have already determined that they have the will to exist, otherwise they wouldn’t have made it out of their teens. And, in turn, they will become selfish, emotionally unavailable fathers who will, in turn, produce self-sufficient survivor-types. The rest of us, who can read enough to have a rudimentary hold on the human condition (now and as it has been through the ages); hold a conversation; demonstrate love; transmit our emotions into some other medium; and have sophisticated enough interests that they are in some way predicated on the future arriving, are, to be succinct, completely and utterly fucked.

2005-07-02T09:53:00.001-07:00

From the look of your haircut, I'd say you actually have a Ph.D. in Matchbox Twenty CD Ownership

The most ridiculous—and human, thus credible—thing about psychiatry as a practice is that it is a science whose methodologies are dependant on the same variables that would allow you to pick up some mattress meat at the bar: connecting to another entity through taste, empathy, and base communication.

2005-07-02T09:53:00.000-07:00

Scientology is a scam, but...

by the same token, I realize that Alzheimer’s is a disease, but have you ever heard of a disease that can be prevented by doing crossword puzzles?

2005-07-02T09:47:00.000-07:00

Magnum P.I. Need Not Apply

Private Investigators really got the shaft in the Internet information age. It’s bad enough for record geeks (now that the community of the record store, of hearsay accounts of early releases and shops in dilapidated downtowns where bootlegs fall like manna, has been replaced by a billion fan sites and Boolean searches), but dirt that used to be earned by flat-footing around a rendezvous hotel, bribing barkeeps, or bum-rushing garbage pails is now just a Google search away. There is nothing noir—nor truly communal—about the bandwidth superhighway, and the cost may be our hard-won olfactory abilities to root out bullshit.

2005-06-26T18:47:00.000-07:00

Feeding a kangaroo to a dog is like killing Picasso so that the woman who draws Cathy may live.

And how the hell do I put titles on these blog entries?

2005-06-26T17:31:00.000-07:00

There are two kids of “almost”: almost as in it makes a better story to say that it was in the realm of possibility for you to do something that you didn’t and almost as in you surveyed that realm of possibility thoroughly and it narrowly lost out to the path you chose. Using the second example, I almost threw a CD at some pooka-shell wearing motherfucker at the Best Buy yesterday.

When my in-laws were in town last week, we all ended up shopping. My birthday was coming up and they offered to buy me a CD at the nearby Best Buy. This is an extremely nice gesture. One problem: I know that Best Buy doesn’t carry much that I want to listen to that I don’t already own. So in we all walk to the Best Buy—mother-in-law, father-in-law, sister-in-law, wife, and me—and I know that it is going to be a bit of a hunt to find something, but there is no way I could have anticipated that it would be THIS much of a hunt to find something. Minutes are passing. Aisles are being walked. Acne ridden employees are being employed in the search. Computer are consulted. In-laws are circling. Nothing. Zero. Awkward. Fuck. Then, almost by accident, I find a misplaced CD that I actually want (Mission to Burma); gift is herby given, gratitude expressed, hallelujah.

Except when I get home I realize that it’s the wrong CD. So I have to go back to the Best Buy. But this is no problem, right, b/c without everyone staring at me, I can surely hunt down something or exchange it for blank CDs or some other mundane shit, right? Isn't this the promise of convenience proffered by our beloved megastores?

So wife and I go back to Best Buy. We hunt around for something. Right when we almost can’t take it anymore, I actually find another, again misplaced, CD that I want (Patton/Kadaa). We go to the register to exchange it. This ensues.

Me: Hi. I’d like to exchange this CD [in wrapper, with Best Buy tag and price] for this one.

Customer Service Specialist: Do you have a receipt?

Me: No, it was a gift.

Cashier: Do you have a gift receipt?

Me: No

Mongoloid: Then there’s nothing we can do.

Me: (incredulous) Why, exactly? It’s obviously from here.

Scrot-throat: That’s always been the policy.

Me: That’s certainly untrue.

[Note: My friend Summer believes that “That’s certainly untrue” may not have been the most rhetorically efficacious phrase for me to deploy. We have to agree to disagree on this point.]

Magna Cum Laude from the Manchester School of Applied Cocksuckery: We’ll it’s been that way for the three years I’ve been here

Me: [Anger so blinding that it is actually audible; so much rage-plaque coating my eyes I'm fucking Daredevil. Split second decision is made to not throw CD at his skull. Instead….] Shelve this [throw CD on counter; leave; realize that even if I wanted to get this CD again I can’t because it will be re-shelved someplace equally incorrect]

So what, right? Why have I made you endure this tediously told tale of the tedious? BECAUSE THIS ASSHOLE LIED TO A STRANGER ON BEHALF OF A COMPANY!! This minimum-wage ball-licker went to bat———went to goddam bat———for BEST FUCKING BUY. For his piece of shit dead end job. And not only went to bat, he stood up for them; he instinctively drew conclusions based on Best Buy’s character . Because, certainly, I am lying. Because that’s what I do: I steal CDs one at a time from Best Buy and then I return them. Because I don’t understand how money works. And that’s how I pulled off the wife standing next to me.

It would have been worth the $11.99 to bash his eyes out of their fucking sockets. That’s retail value. Fuck Mission to Burma’s quasi-Marxist, oh music is so powerful, our lyrics are praxis, D.I.Y. nursery rhyme bullshit: put the Best Buy employee in the fucking hospital. If he’s so in love with this company that he feels a duty to defend it, we should duel over her honor, over the crack in the asphalt near the handicap parking sign that he so meekly dry humps every night when the street lights come on. Because only then, with tar and pebbles caked around the scalded head of his penis, could I believe THAT THIS COCKSUCKER CALLED ME A LIAR ON BEHALF OF AN AMORPHHOUS, FICTIOUS ENTITY. You couldn’t ascertain whether Best Buy “always” did something even if you wanted to: it’s a legal fiction; it is a conglomerate whose millions of moving components, comprising its character and actions, change radically from day to day. YOU CAN’T FUCKING ASK IT WHAT IT DID; THE SINGULARITY OF ITS “IT” IS A FAÇADE TO THROW YOU OFF THE TRAIL. But for the sake of argument, I WANT EVIDENCE. I want this pimply asshole go bring me documents: business protocols, minutes from board meetings, receipts dating back to three minutes before fucking always, Mr. Buy’s diary pages, everything. I SHOPPED IN THIS STORE IN 1998 AND HE DIDN’T WORK THERE UNTIL 2001 AND HE CAN LOOK ME IN THE EYE AND SAY WITHOUT HESITATION THAT HIS COMPANY IS ABSOLUTELY, 100%, INFALLIABLY IN THE RIGHT, THAT THEY COULD NOT HAVE POSSIBLY CHANGED A POLICY IN 80 YEARS, BECAUSE THAT WOULD INSIINUATE MESSING WITH PERFECTION??

What does he possibly get out of this? Is he going to be CEO someday? Is his salary going to shoot up 1004% in his lifetime? Are they looking for someone who at age 32 has only managed to pull down the customer service job at fucking Best Buy? Short term, what is he looking at? Is the Iowa-cute, sixteen year old girl who gets to decide that he’ll work Christmas this year going to say “Congratulations, Bob, you just got the employee of the month parking spot…oh, wait, yup, you just got it again. Huh, what, again? Good job Bob, good job.”

And the part that totally sickens me is that when I was leaving the goddam store I realized that hippies were right, and that always burns my ass. Because when I worked for an independent music store that was being slowly squeezed out by the Best Buy, the gospel they kept ramming down our throats was that Best Buy—and every other retail entertainment conglomerate—would use a huge music selection and an open-ended return policy to run the local business out of town and once they did, we’d be fucked.

Well, welcome to fucked, population us.

2005-06-21T06:53:00.000-07:00

Denver is the sound of a fat man masturbating while eating barbecued ribs.

2005-06-21T06:49:00.000-07:00

I insist that we begin referring to Phil Collins as "PC." As in, "We put some PC on the motherfucker."

2005-06-21T06:44:00.000-07:00

If I was on Saddle Creek, my band name would be Aphids in the Honeysuckle, the first album would certainly be called "Love is a (held) Nectarine," and my girlish nub-cock would be tenderly nestled for all time.

2005-06-21T06:37:00.000-07:00

In young/old relationships, taste does not run downhill. Except when it is gross: the young lapping up fecal water.