Ye Olde SB Archives: Nov-Dec 04


12.30 12:13pm: I feel truly sorry for Jerry Orbach and Reggie Smith. They not only died untimely deaths, but they had the misfortune of doing so at the worst possible time of the year: after Christmas, less than a week before New Year's. By this time, all major networks and newspapers have constructed their "Famous People Who Kicked the Bucket" features. And if you think anyone in any media--print, TV, or otherwise--is gonna come into work between Yuletide and the Big Ball Drop for anyone's death, you are sadly mistaken. It would have to be the Pope and the President fighting a Kickboxer-style broken-glass-spiked-glove grapple to the death on a secret island in the Pacific, and then maybe they might send out someone like Ti-Hua Chang or Sam Champion. All year-end retrospectives--death related or not--have an ingrained, calendar-based chauvinism, which states: we shall only consider those events which occurred between January 1 and December 31. Problem is, most of these retrospectives are concluded by December 15, at the latest. The real media hotshots don't set foot in the office in the twelfth month, and if they're really big, they can stay away from Thanksgiving until the end of the year. Also, for whatever reason, these 'look-backs' tend to ignore anything that happened early on in a year. The months of January to March are pretty much dismissed outright, excepting nipple-related incidents at the Super Bowl. So even if the aftermath of Asia's monstrous tsunami drags on for another two months, you probably won't hear about it in December 2005--unless one of the victims was a washed-up singer with wardrobe problems. Case in point: I was completely nutty for Frank Zappa when I was in high school. He died in early December of 1993. Most newspapers had sizeable obituaries (prepared well in advance of his death and filled with glaring errors), but almost none of the networks included him in those "Lives they Lived" lookbacks. Rolling Stone was unwilling to bump their cover story (Nirvana) and merely put a banner marking his death over Kurt Cobain's head. You didn't think Jann Wenner would fly back from Vail to oversee that, did you? Mr. Zappa made the mistake of dying after Thanksgiving, which is as bad a show biz move as following a dog act. Jerry Orbach will get a piece of that Academy Awards Death Montage in February, I'm sure. And Reggie Smith will get a moment of silence at the Super Bowl, or at the very least, one at a Packers playoff game. But I think this is not enough for those who die in December. I would propose a Death's Fiscal Year, running from September to September. Then, there could be a national holiday in October (maybe to replace the moribund Columbus Day?) to honor the dead celebrities of the previous "year". It gives all the media plenty of time to prepare, and it comes well in advance of the deadly Holiday Season. Best of all, it finally creates a catechism for America's true national religion: Fame. 12.27 09:50am: This morning, I decided to brave the elements and take my usual route to work: walking over the Pulaski Bridge into Queens, where I take the 7 train. The last block before I approached the bridge--Green Street between Manhattan and McGuinness--was completely deserted. Most mornings, I see a few old ladies shuffling to or from St. Cyril's, or an elderly resident standing on their stoop, keeping watch for some unnamed danger. Considering the intense cold and the layer of snow on the ground, it wasn't surprising to see no one around. But there was a feeling in the air that not only was no one outside here, but no one was inside either, that the whole block had been abandoned. It was a windy block, and the gusts blew snow out into the street in dusty sheets. No one had swept their sidewalk or stairs. The only thing on the block that moved, other than me, was a crumpled up piece of shiny Christmas wrapping paper, imprinted with little Santas and snowmen. It rolled down the block end over end, like a tumbleweed, making dents in the snowdrifts as it went along. The holiday season was now officially over. 12.22 11:01am: The Daily News is not exactly known for tact or subtlety, but even they dredged a low watermark with last Wednesday's headline, referrinig to the mess tent attack in Mosul: CARNAGE AT LUNCH. The headline is so tasteless and devoid of invention it borders on being an insult to the killed and wounded servicemen. Here is yet another example of reality far outstripping any parody you could think of--you could not come up with a better fake-tabloid lede if you were given a thousand years and a warehouse filled with monkeys chained to typewriters. I can just imagine the ones they must have rejected: BURGER WITH A SIDE OF DEATH TODAY'S SPECIAL WILL BE MURDER EAT DRINK AND BE DEADLY A COMBUTSIBLE FEAST MAN MUST NOT LIVE BY DEAD ALONE Just imagine: In every major tabloid, there is a man whose duties are confined completely to coming up with headlines for the paper each day. This man is ensconced in a bejeweled, velvet-lined duplex overlooking Central Park, attended to by eunuchs and fed peeled grapes by Nubian hand maidens. Every day, the mavens of the journal approach his manse to pay obeisance and humbly ask for his guidance in this, their hour of need. The man licks some icing from his pudgy fingers and intones some mysticism of which they are ignorant. He casts his attendants away so that he may clear his head. He paces the room, padding from the fully stocked mahogany bookcase to the 50 gallon tropical fish tank. After interminable minutes of waiting, he pronounces his brilliance for tomorrow's journal. And it is...JACKO WACKO? The Mosul headline, however execrable it may be, fits well in the tabloid mold, which holds about as many surprises as the average sitcom. A cover story that is happy, funny, heroic, or weird must employ puns and/or alliteration. So last week, when an off duty fireman saved a bunch of people from a burning building, the Daily News proclaimed him a HUMBLE HERO (the accompanying article did not question the humility of a man who poses for the cover of a newspaper). Sports stories employ these methods as well, although after 100 years of serious athletic journalism, the profession is running out of new ways to say one team soundly beat their opponent. Some new phrases coined for defeat in the past few years: lambasted hornswaggled curdled decoupaged crocheted tae-boed panini-ed Kilimanjaroed freecelled The tragic headline is constructed in Mad Lib fashion: (DEADLY NOUN)+(PREPOSITION)+(LOCATION). It is simple, can be confused for respectable, and sounds like the title of a made-for-TV movie, which is roughly the intellectual/emotional maturity level that the average tabloid reader is able to stomach. It also, in itself, reveals so little about the story that arouses a reader's prurient interest, thus making them curious about the nature of carnage, where the lunch was held, etc. Tabloids are a lot like construction sites: the surest way to make someone want to see something is to obscure it. Last week I narrowly escaped my own CARNAGE AT LUNCH. I was on my break, walking down 42nd Street just past a construction site on the corner of Fifth Avenue, when I heard a worker yell OH SHIT! His tone at first sounded like someone joking around with his friends (as in, "Oh shit, son, he wrecked you!"), but the crashing noise that followed told me otherwise. The scaffold structure I was walking under began to collapse, and I ran away Indiana Jones style, disaster trailing behind me. For the rest of the day, I checked all of the local news web sites to see if the accident warranted any ink, but a story never materialized. At first I was disappointed that something that could easily have caused my death didn't even make the papers. But considering tabloid headlines, I was not only spared an untimely end, but also having my passing marked by the elegy LATTICE PREY. 12.13 11:01am: I'm not a capable enough wordsmith to convey the depths of my hatred for "The Little Drummer Boy." In order to do so, I would have to invent a new language in which each syllable sounded unmistakably like a hoisted middle finger. There are plenty of other Christmas songs I dislike strongly--"Jingle Bell Rock" I find particularly retardo--but only "The Little Drummer Boy" (or, as I often refer to it, The Goatish, Evil Laugh of Satan Himself) invokes within me such a profound loathing. For a long time, I thought this hatred was due to my cynical, calloused soul, that perhaps if I had some more Childlike Wonderment (c) within me, I could appreciate the tune. But I distinctly remember despising this song as a kid, too. So finally, I discovered the true reason why "The Little Drummer Boy" is so awful. Most holiday songs are either completely secular or completely religious. The completely secular ones are much more popular, because they're decidedly less controversial. No one has ever gotten into a fistfight over opinions on bells and their ways of jingling. And, the secular ones usually have some sort of obtuse sexual connotations--imploring a loved one to stay at home and snuggle by the fire, waiting for someone to slide down a chimney, candy canes....So you get to act festive and jolly while secretly dreaming of hot Christmas humping. Religious carols have mostly fallen out of favor, at least outside of church choirs. That's because they are usually strictly representational recountings of the Biblical stories of Jesus' birth, or they are calls to the faithful to rejoice, and these make a lot of people nervous. "The Little Drummer Boy" tries to be all things to all people, by taking a religious setting and putting in a precious character that no one could possibly get mad at. But a drummer boy is nowhere in any of the Gospels, so it's nothing more than cutesy bullshit. What was a little drummer boy doing out late at night in Bethlehem? "Come they told me..." Who told you? Did the Magi roll into town and say, 'Hey, we got gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and we need a session man on skins'? "I am a poor boy too..." So where'd you get the drum from? Either you'd have to buy it (too expensive) or make it yourself from an animal's hide and some advanced carpentry (too hard). "And then he smiled at me..." Have you ever seen a newborn baby? They can't even open their eyes. They don't know what the hell they are yet. If a kid playing a drum showed up near a newborn baby and his mother, banging away on his stupid instrument, I guarantee you the baby would scream in infant terror, and Buddy Rich wanna-be would be given a swift, savage beating by the father. So I've deduced that "The Little Drummer Boy" annoys me because it's something pseudo-religious that has no theology whatsoever. It's a lot like the "angel craze" that beset us a few years back. It's something kind of spiritual sounding/looking that has no burden of history, and makes no demands on a person to think, reason, or believe in anything. It contains within it no mysteries of faith, nor does it force a person to question any aspect of themselves or the world around them. I'm not a religious person, but I think I understand the function of religion in the lives of those who are. And if your spirituality serves no higher function than to make you feel warm and fuzzy, why not just believe in Care Bears? 12.07 01:05pm: I'd like to take this opportunity to invite you to listen to OfficeOps Radio tonight from 7-8, where Holy Goddamn! will once again hold forth after a two-week holiday induced hiatus. It also wouldn't hurt to tune in at 6, and catch Chris Gusta, aka the Legendary Curmudgeon, holding forth on the 1s and 2s. Be there and be square. In the interests of truth in media, I should call attention to the fact that I committed a number of glaring errors in my reminiscence of the Pixies' appearance on MTV in 1991. I know this now because I dug up the old tape last night and viewed all of the in-studio band segments, and so now these mistakes of memory blind me like fluorescent light shining off of enormous scabby pustules, ready to burst with lies. (Please excuse me--I'm in training for the Extended Metaphor Olympics.) The bigger un-facts are as follows, in no particular order: * All of the Pixies do not wear enormous sunglasses; only Frank Black follows Corey Hart's directive. He and Joey Santiago, however, do sport obnoxious hats--Mr. Black a floppy, wide brimmed canvas sun hat with chin strap, and Mr. Santiago a huge furry black winter hat of the Russian variety. * Joey Santiago is much more talkative than I made him out to be. In fact, he speaks far more often--and far more enthusiastically--than Kim Deal. He and David Lovering do not try to escape questioning by cowering. At one uncomfortable point, Kim Deal looks perturbed that she is being asked a question, and makes a sort of waving motion in a feeble attempt to avoid speaking, but that is as close as we get to what I purported to describe yesterday. * On a whole, the band is not nearly as uncomfortable with each other as I wrote below. Perhaps that was a projection of what I know now of how much they disliked each other at that point (according to all gossip, anyway, and we all know that gossip is always true). I was correct, however, when I said that they obviously dislike their host. But seeing this now with adult eyes, I can't say that I blame them. Dave Kendall was quite a grating man, with his broad English accent and Marvin the Martian t-shirt poking out from beneath his leather jacket. A friend of mine from high school, who often went into NY for the purposes of weekend hedonism, said that she was once hit on by him at a club, in decidedly unsmooth fashion. She was both flattered and creeped the hell out. * The Pixies did not open up for U2 on the Achtung Baby tour, but the Zooropa tour. Big difference, because Achtung Baby was U2s triumphant return after years of inactivity, and it's actually a good album. Zooropa was basically all the shit they decided to cut off of Achtung Baby, the kind of thing that smells of contractual obligation, or artistic wankitude. * The band only plays two songs. No "Alec Eiffel," but they do play some rocking outro over the closing credits that vaguely sounds like the 'rock out' bridge you hear in "All Over the World." The show is a pretty interesting artifact, a glimpse of what MTV was putting forward as "alternative" just as that phrase/genre was about to be co-opted and ruined forever (the show dates only a few weeks after the release of "Nevermind"). As I noted in yesterday's post, there were an enormous amount of British bands back then before Seattle had been discovered (though the show does have a Mudhoney video). Some of them are mediocre, some downright rotten. And there are some bands that I used to like that I had totally forgotten about, like Lush and Curve and Ride. (Frank Black refers to them as the "one name bands from England." He also says he likes "that one song that Ride does, but I can't remember the name of it."). These bands were characterized by enormous sheets of guitar drone, over which were sung haunting melodies. Curve and Lush were in the sub-genre of Hot Chicks Singing Sweetly Above Raucous Noise, while Lush and Ride intersect in the Raucous Noise Plus Beach Boys Harmonies zone. I ragged on Mr. Kendall yesterday and today, but seriously, 120 Minutes in its pre-Kennedy days really had some cool stuff on it. The bands I mentioned above had mainstream popularity in England, but here you could only catch it on MTV after 11pm. Pre-internet, before you could easily download songs or order albums with the click of a mouse, if you lived nowhere near a cool, independent record store, 120 Minutes was the most likely place you would have heard anything at that time that wasn't pre-fab bullshit. I heard lots of really great stuff on there for the first time--Joy Division, Morrissey, the Pixies, Ministry...the list goes on! If you couldn't stand pop radio, but you also tended to get the shit beaten out of you by meatheads in Metallica denim jackets, 120 Minutes was your only hope. I'm a bit wary of giving any props to MTV at all, but I must give credit where credit is due. Without 120 Minutes, who knows? I may very well have become a Rick Astley fan. I take it all back. Thank you, Dave Kendall, for making us laugh about love--again. 12.06 12:07pm: Prior to this year, my only opportunity to catch the Pixies live was when I first discovered them, circa Trompe Le Monde.* Unfortunately, they were opening up for U2 on their prohibitively expensive, sold-out-before-it-was-announced Achtung Baby tour, and broke up shortly thereafter. The closest I got to seeing them was when they "guest-hosted" an episode of MTV's 120 Minutes in 1991, during the Dave Kendall years. This was a strange moment in indie rock history, if any of y'all remember--there was Fugazi and NOU and a bunch of other cool DC bands, and the Pixies, of course, and the first rumblings from the Pacific Northwest. But if you were into what was still unironically referred to as "alternative" music, chances are your latest hotness was British, either a trippy Madchester group, or one of the droning, sheet of noise, "Shoegazer" bands (Ride, Lush, My Bloody Valentine). Dave Kendall epitomized this in between era--he was an effete British man just punk enough to wear a leather jacket, but not tough enough to pin a Misfits patch on the back of it. All of his sentences had little hooks on the ends of them. I still have this show on tape somewheres in my vast archives. It is quite obvious from the footage that all the members of the band hate each other (except maybe Joey Santiago and Dave Lovering, who seem to be allied in silence). All of them but Kim Deal wear opaque, obnoxious sunglasses, in an indoor studio. But they are all united in one common goal: confuse and annoy the living shit out of Dave Kendall. Frank Black does most of the talking, and though he responds to Dave's questions, you can't quite call them "answers," because he simply uses the queries as a starting point for meaningless ramblings. He doesn't quite talk in the insane tangential manner of Tom Waits, but more in the way of a politician, trying to deflect any chance of actually talking about something of substance. Dave is so ill prepared for this treatment--with nothing to respond to in Frank Black's "answers," he has to move on to his next talking point, haltingly and awkwardly. Joey Santiago and Dave Lovering, when prompted with a question, actually try to hide, waving arms in front of their face. Kim Deal is maybe the most direct and lucid, but she obviously has no more interest in being there, or talking to Dave, than anyone else. She sits slumped and harassed, dragging on a cigarette and exhaling her responses just as slowly. I don't know how purposeful or studied this all was, but I suspect it was planned at least in part--Frank Black, in particular, seems to delight in making Dave Kendall's next 120 minutes a living hell. The band compensates by banging out some smoking versions of songs of their just released album. (Added to the band was Eric Drew Feldman, former keyboardist for Pere Ubu and Captain Beefheart.) If I remember correctly, they played "U Mass" and "Planet of Sound," and "Alec Eiffel". "U Mass" ends so abruptly that Dave appears to have been caught in the middle of a bathroom break. There's an uncomfortable silence of about two seconds, then he suddenly runs on stage to take us out to a commercial. The show also features a number of Pixies videos, the best being "Here Comes Your Man." It's filmed in a weird walleye/keyhole angle, and the band does not lip sync--they simply open their mouths when they're supposed to be singing. Genius. After waiting a mere thirteen years, I finally saw the Pixies live last night, at the Tweeter Center in Camden.** One thing that struck me--other than the fact that they rocked my god damn face off--is how much more friendly they appear now, with each other and the audience. I think it might be because the band is finally getting the recognition and the praise they always deserved. They were one of those bands that, if you loved them, you could not possibly understand why anyone else wouldn't love them, why every track on Doolittle shouldn't hit number one on the charts. Maybe they all thought the same thing, and now that they've reformed and are playing to sold out arenas across the world, they get to know they weren't all crazy back then. It must be a beautiful feeling. * Of course, I was alive when Come On Pilgrim came out, but I was also nine years old, and it was unlikely I would have dug the Pixies back then, or been able to gain entry to any of the clubs where they played. I spent the day in Philly beforehand. More on that loveliness later. 12.03 04:41pm:** There's an interesting article in Slate today about hologram technology, and why we have yet to see "Help me Obi Wan!"-type 3D videos. Apparently, scientists are not yet able to develop holographic video past the comparable state of modems circa War Games. ("Shall..we..play..a..game?) Shortly after reading this, I ran across a link on Bookslut's blog, which cited a company called Customized Classics. For $30, you can get a revised version of Romeo and Juliet which replaces the titular characters with the names of you and your sweetie. They'll even put your picture on the front cover! And if the tragic demise of the young lovers upsets you, no worries--they'll tack on a new happy ending for you! Calloo callay! Reading these back to back is an excellent demonstration of what America has become. We've run scampering from scientific innovation, and save up our ingenuity for fantasy and escapism (see: the Entertainment Industry). As a result, the 21st century is still a long way away of catching up to the future dreams of the 20th. Where are you, flying cars? Back to the Future II promised me hoverboards--where's my hoverboard? And jet packs--CAN SOMEONE AT NASA GET ON THE STICK AND INVENT THIS COUNTRY A MOTHERFUCKIN JET PACK ALREADY?! These have to be boon years for the defense industry, the likes of which I'm sure have not been seen since the scarier days of the Cold War. Can we siphon off some of that dough going to make super smart bombs that only kill brown people, and get cracking on some Jetsons technology already? The lack of such invention and ingenuity in our age is due, in large part, to our complete lack of optimism. Nine peeps out of ten, I betcha, do not think things are gonna get better any time soon (whatever "things" means to you, they's bad these days). People are much too pessimistic to dream up a flying car. Instead, most research cash goes to more cynical things like anti-depressants and boner pills. The American self image has always been one of The Good Guys. Up until the 1960s, though, America was much more optimistic--one might say na…ve--about its place in the world and what it could do with it. One of the great--and last--examples of this was the 1964 World's Fair. The expositions and the architecture were all conceived around the idea that Innovation and Industry (read: Big Business) could make a better world. The theme was Peace Through Understanding, and it was largely the brainchild of Machiavellian uberplanner Robert Moses ("The man who brought you the South Bronx!"). The fair itself was a microcosm of the America of the day: a cheerful, hopeful fa?ade constructed over an underbelly whose seediness was never even remotely acknowledged. Moses--whose personal distinction between the city's funds and his own pocketbook was shaky at best--"borrowed" tens of millions from NY to put on the fair, and never paid it back. Mobbed up unions basically held foreign delegations for ransom, charging exorbitant fees for garbage pickup and other services. It left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths, and although the fair attracted millions of visitors, it also created a whole slew of foreigners who had a new notion of the Ugly American. I often think of the 1960s as the beginnings of America's adolescence, a time when we first realized The Guys in Charge are not gods, that they make mistakes, and that they don't always have our best interests at heart. The historical revisionism we've seen since then is a form of regressive therapy, whereby we dredge up the unresolved issues of our nation's childhood. ("You never should have invaded Mexico, Daddy!") Which isn't to say that I don't think revisionism a good thing--a country has to grow up and not think of itself in heroic terms, and I think most of the gung-ho posturing of the "Vulcan" neo-cons is a desperate attempt to resurrect this dying notion. But an unfortunate byproduct of this is making a people so unable to face their own history that they fell like they have only two choices. They can pretend like stomping on other countries and ignoring the rest of the world is really what America is all about (thanks, Toby Keith). Or they have to completely escape nationhood altogether, and live in a stateless fantasy world of reality TV and action movies. A world where altering Romeo and Juliet to include yourself and give it a pleasant ending is a wonderful thing. Don't hold your breath on getting a hoverboard any time soon. 11.24 11:21am: I'm glad someone finally got the whole Ron Artest mess right. Today in Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley says what no one has yet said publicly: that was a hysterical fight to watch. No one was seriously hurt, you got to see huge NBA players bitch-slap drunken fans, and once again Detroit got revel in its reputation of being a bad ass city. My favorite line, observing how everyone in the Detroit audience seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the chaos: "The very few people in the crowd who weren't interested in the fracas seemed like the kind of people who refuse to be entertained under any circumstance." Exactly--you'd have to be a soulless robot to not enjoy that spectacle on some level. Just remember how exciting it was when you were in school, and all of a sudden two guys would throw down their Trapper Keepers and start wailing on each other. Or, better yet, two girls. And when one someone landed a punch, you'd scream OH SHIT!--and laugh, too, I'm sure. Two people so wrought up about something that they come to blows is funny. I'm not sure why, except that there's something humiliating about a public display of such raw, naked emotion--and as any stand-up will tell you, where there's humiliation, there is comedy. I firmly believe that the entire hand-wringing act put up by the NBA and sports columnists across the nation is one huge purgative, a way for us all to pretend that there is no part of the human soul that enjoys a good fist fight (or just a funny one). Nowadays, we live in a society so obsessed with children's welfare--or what we perceive to be good for children's welfare--that everything we do, say, see, make is filtered through that warped sensibility. Children aren't the only people in this country, and they're not as innocent or fragile as we'd like to think they are. There was not one kid out there who saw that fight and didn't think it was awesome. And I will swear to you on the holy book of your choice that, as a result of seeing it, no more of them will become sociopaths than would have otherwise. No one with half a brain, or any sense of history, can truly believe that sports are more violent today than they've ever been. You wanna hear insane? In the 1910s, Ty Cobb ran into the stands to attack a heckler who had no hands. His response? "If he's gonna ride me like that, I don't care if he's got no legs." There was barely a notice about it in the press, because everyone knew Ty Cobb was a scumbag of the highest order. Of course back then, it was a generally held opinion that all baseball players were scumbags. No one looked to them to be role models, or even decent human beings, so long as they could play the game. What it comes down to is that we're afraid of the thing within us that lusts for fights, the animalistic part of us that we like to think we can control but secretly fear that we can not. So we must make a big public show of deploring this hideous violence, and sentencing all the miscreants to a lifetime of imprisonment in Chateau d'If. Artest, Wallace and the rest of the pugilistic crew must be sacrificed on the altar of our own shame about the darkest recesses of our soul. Like all ritual sacrifices, there must be a higher rationale put forth than simply doing away with what makes us nervous. In this case, that justification is "looking out for the children"--even though we're really just looking out for ourselves. The first person to get on TV and say, "That fight was awesome to watch" gets my vote for whatever he/she is running for, because I will know there stands an honest human being. 11.22 06:45pm: About ten minutes after I posted the pathetic, hand-wringing screed below, I received an email invite for a lit mag's reading for some award they're giving out this year. The email had so many special MS Word characters that could not be translated into HTML that it looked like Klingon. This computerly ineptitude, in its own stupid way, made me feel better about myself. 06:01pm: A word to you young'uns: when you're a writer, trying to get your work published is just one cocktease after another.* Much like the game of L-U-V, literary endeavors are fraught with emotional peril. We all want to think we're attractive--if only to a small subset of the population. So if a fine looking young thing bats his/her eyes your way, nine times outta ten you take this gesture as one of genuine desire. You are further emboldened if you get to buy them a drink or three. And if they leave the club/bar/restaurant supply store with you, surely you start to think I am red hot tonight! But if, after all that, he/she finds someone else to spend their evening with, it's devastating--not really because you lost this particular person, but because you briefly possessed the hope of catching someone, anyone. Writers tend to be fragile people who, because of the nature of their chosen art form, need outside validation--like actors, except they're afraid to be on a stage. They do their work alone, in secret, and the only way to achieve recognition is to get published. A musician can stand on a street corner and plunk out his songs, but a writer can't stand in the same spot and force passers-by to read his novel. When someone expresses even the tiniest bit of possible interest in a writer's work, it's like the heavens have parted, and God himself is reaching down to sweep you up in the palm of his hand. And when, after this initial flashing of the ankle, you hear thanks but no thanks, it is as if that same celestial fist has crushed you to pieces. Did you really give a shit about the Dakron Laundromat Association Literary Review? Of course not. But Did you want them to like you? Oh, yes, desperately. When I get rejection letters in the mail, it's difficult not to feel deeply and personally insulted. I am fully aware that most lit mags have staffs of 2.3 people, either overworked college student interns or dedicated maniacs who do it more for personal satisfaction than any monetary rewards. And I also know that even the tiniest literary magazine gets reams upon reams of submissions every day--98% of which are so startlingly bad and/or inappropriate for the publication that it could drive a good man to the bottle. So I know that being told I do not suit someone's present needs should be taken with a large bucket of salt. But sometimes I'd prefer not to get any sort of hope at all. Occasionally, the rejection notes will have something short and encouraging written in pen, like try us again. Now, to the untrained, non-writerly eye, this may seem no more personal than a message imprinted on the bottom of a supermarket receipt (HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM C-TOWN). To a writer, however, this tiny directive can be pored over with the scrutiny and mysticism of a shaman. Two or three times, I've even gotten a full blow paragraph from a real human being, which to a writer is about as good as getting a coupon for one week of free ice creams and blow jobs. On the flipside, I've gotten more than one snotty rejection letter which turned down my work because it was simultaneous submission. I don't know what kind of lunatics run these magazines, but they're out of their tiny little minds if they expect me or any other writer to submit to them and them only and wait for four months until they dare to respond. Fuck them in the face, hard. Almost as ballsy was the rejection letter I received earlier this week, which included a subscription form within it, so I could receive month after month of magazines that refuse to publish me. I actually like these rejections much better--if you're gonna blow me off, do it mean and give me someone to hate. That can drive me for months. Receiving a polite, anonymous rejection is like getting rained on--how the hell can you fight back? For the last six months or so, I've desperately been trying to find an agent, because getting a novel published without one is next to impossible. I've been told that it's very difficult to get an agent to even look at your book, so each time I've queried an agent and received a manuscript request, I've treated it like the battle was already won. Just like those people who plan out what they're gonna spend their money on when--not if--they win the lottery. There's just something about an agent that to me, unrepresented novice that I am, seems to scream PROBLEM SOLVED. The agent will get your book sold, get the publishing company to promote it, and generally clean up the mess in the diaper of your career. Of the agents that wanted to see my book, more than a few had some Big Name Clients (c), and ones I liked, too. Surely, sez I, the dam has broken--this Philistine world has finally realized the talent it has in me. But I was rejected by each one, about 50/50 down the line for literary and economic reasons. Those who had problems with the writing in the book could not agree on what those problems were, so any hope I had for seeing my way to the end of the tunnel were lost. Economically, however, they all agreed: we can't sell this piece of shit (they said it nicer than that, though; they said "poopie"; one used the precious Britishism "shite"). Most said, "we'd love to read your stuff in the future." In other words, one day far, far off when you might finally develop some chops. And I hate these people suddenly, as much I once wanted them to be my savior. I hate them because I wanted someone--not them, but someone, anyone--to sit at the stool next to me and let me buy them a drink. I can't think of an equivalent phrase for those of you without cocks. Please email any suggestions you might have. 11.10 04:41pm:* I'm in the midst of yet another Lazy Beard (c). When the length of my beard exceeds the length of hair on my shaved head, I can no longer deny that I am headed deep into the heart of Beard Country--and as of today, I am there. A Lazy Beard usually starts with a long weekend, or a sudden lack of shaving supplies, coupled with the fierce desire to avoid Duane Reade. It can also be aided and abetted by not giving two shits about what you look like, because it takes a certain amount of apathy--or short supply of dignity--to walk around with a half-formed beard. I go through bipolar cycles in regards to my personal appearance, caring way too much for a while and then completely giving up. Right now, I would go to work in footy pajamas if I could. As a little kid, I always thought it would be really cool to have facial hair. But like most things that look cool and adult to a child, this one turned out to be a huge pain in the ass. By the time I was old enough to sprout hairs on my chinny-chin-chin, my facial hair of choice--the goatee--had already been coopted. My dream of singlehandedly reviving beatnik style had been destroyed. So, at the age of 16, I decided to do something I'd never seen anyone do: grow out my neck hair. I shaved everything but the hair protruding from my throat and under my jaw. I didn't even let the sideburns grow in, just a furry mess hanging onto the soft underbelly of my head. The first thing I discovered is that my facial hair was red. My arm hair was light blondish, and my chest hair was dark black, so I guess this fit in with the schizophrenic activity of my pores. It looked like I had killed a Muppet and glued its scalp to my throat as a trophy. The second thing I discovered is that beards itch like a bastard when they're growing in. It was impossible to pay attention in school anymore; I was too busy trying to alleviate the continuous discomfort of ten thousand strawberry blond needles brushing into the collar of my shirt. You know like in Spider-Man, when Peter Parker discovers the little hairs in his fingers that help him grip walls? Kinda like that, except I couldn't do anything with my hairs but experience constant pain. I was not the only person I knew who adopted such a rigidly antisocial sartorial style. One friend of mine wore a lab coat to school every day for almost two years. It had a strange stain on the right breast pocket that resembled peanut butter and jelly, and no one dared imagine what else it might be. Another friend alternated between a Minor Threat and Dead Kennedys t-shirt all year, while wearing the same soiled button down shirt on top. He topped it off with wild hair that he towel-dried and lathered with eighteen cubic feet of hairspray. I recall that both of these people drew a lot of negative attention from other students--not just bullies fucking with them, but other kids who seemed deeply and personally offended by what they chose to wear to school. High school is the first and last time you can do things like this, since you're old enough to make your own fashion decisions, and by the time you get to college, no one would give a shit if you walked around campus with your head on fire. I, however, received no such abuse. Only my friends noticed the beard at all. Perhaps this was because it was not the sort of thing that could be spotted across a crowded room. Because of where I was growing the beard, you had to be fairly close to see it; otherwise, you just might think my jaw cast a preternaturally long, furry red shadow. So when spring rolled around, the beard vanished with the snow. I tried the chinstrap a few times in college, but was soon chased back to normalcy by the hope of ever getting laid. And I have yet to see anyone else attempt my own facial hair experiment. Perhaps I took a bullet for all of us.	* > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > * > *	Scratchbomb RSS Feed Holy Goddamn! Podcast RSS Feed 2005 January-February 2004 November-December September-October July-August May-June April-May Back to the Main Drag

12.30

12:13pm: I feel truly sorry for Jerry Orbach and Reggie Smith. They not only died untimely deaths, but they had the misfortune of doing so at the worst possible time of the year: after Christmas, less than a week before New Year's. By this time, all major networks and newspapers have constructed their "Famous People Who Kicked the Bucket" features. And if you think anyone in any media--print, TV, or otherwise--is gonna come into work between Yuletide and the Big Ball Drop for anyone's death, you are sadly mistaken. It would have to be the Pope and the President fighting a Kickboxer-style broken-glass-spiked-glove grapple to the death on a secret island in the Pacific, and then maybe they might send out someone like Ti-Hua Chang or Sam Champion.

All year-end retrospectives--death related or not--have an ingrained, calendar-based chauvinism, which states: we shall only consider those events which occurred between January 1 and December 31. Problem is, most of these retrospectives are concluded by December 15, at the latest. The real media hotshots don't set foot in the office in the twelfth month, and if they're really big, they can stay away from Thanksgiving until the end of the year. Also, for whatever reason, these 'look-backs' tend to ignore anything that happened early on in a year. The months of January to March are pretty much dismissed outright, excepting nipple-related incidents at the Super Bowl. So even if the aftermath of Asia's monstrous tsunami drags on for another two months, you probably won't hear about it in December 2005--unless one of the victims was a washed-up singer with wardrobe problems.

Case in point: I was completely nutty for Frank Zappa when I was in high school. He died in early December of 1993. Most newspapers had sizeable obituaries (prepared well in advance of his death and filled with glaring errors), but almost none of the networks included him in those "Lives they Lived" lookbacks. Rolling Stone was unwilling to bump their cover story (Nirvana) and merely put a banner marking his death over Kurt Cobain's head. You didn't think Jann Wenner would fly back from Vail to oversee that, did you? Mr. Zappa made the mistake of dying after Thanksgiving, which is as bad a show biz move as following a dog act.

Jerry Orbach will get a piece of that Academy Awards Death Montage in February, I'm sure. And Reggie Smith will get a moment of silence at the Super Bowl, or at the very least, one at a Packers playoff game. But I think this is not enough for those who die in December. I would propose a Death's Fiscal Year, running from September to September. Then, there could be a national holiday in October (maybe to replace the moribund Columbus Day?) to honor the dead celebrities of the previous "year". It gives all the media plenty of time to prepare, and it comes well in advance of the deadly Holiday Season. Best of all, it finally creates a catechism for America's true national religion: Fame.

12.27

09:50am: This morning, I decided to brave the elements and take my usual route to work: walking over the Pulaski Bridge into Queens, where I take the 7 train. The last block before I approached the bridge--Green Street between Manhattan and McGuinness--was completely deserted. Most mornings, I see a few old ladies shuffling to or from St. Cyril's, or an elderly resident standing on their stoop, keeping watch for some unnamed danger. Considering the intense cold and the layer of snow on the ground, it wasn't surprising to see no one around. But there was a feeling in the air that not only was no one outside here, but no one was inside either, that the whole block had been abandoned. It was a windy block, and the gusts blew snow out into the street in dusty sheets. No one had swept their sidewalk or stairs. The only thing on the block that moved, other than me, was a crumpled up piece of shiny Christmas wrapping paper, imprinted with little Santas and snowmen. It rolled down the block end over end, like a tumbleweed, making dents in the snowdrifts as it went along. The holiday season was now officially over.

12.22

11:01am: The Daily News is not exactly known for tact or subtlety, but even they dredged a low watermark with last Wednesday's headline, referrinig to the mess tent attack in Mosul: CARNAGE AT LUNCH. The headline is so tasteless and devoid of invention it borders on being an insult to the killed and wounded servicemen. Here is yet another example of reality far outstripping any parody you could think of--you could not come up with a better fake-tabloid lede if you were given a thousand years and a warehouse filled with monkeys chained to typewriters. I can just imagine the ones they must have rejected:

BURGER WITH A SIDE OF DEATH
TODAY'S SPECIAL WILL BE MURDER
EAT DRINK AND BE DEADLY
A COMBUTSIBLE FEAST
MAN MUST NOT LIVE BY DEAD ALONE

Just imagine: In every major tabloid, there is a man whose duties are confined completely to coming up with headlines for the paper each day. This man is ensconced in a bejeweled, velvet-lined duplex overlooking Central Park, attended to by eunuchs and fed peeled grapes by Nubian hand maidens. Every day, the mavens of the journal approach his manse to pay obeisance and humbly ask for his guidance in this, their hour of need. The man licks some icing from his pudgy fingers and intones some mysticism of which they are ignorant. He casts his attendants away so that he may clear his head. He paces the room, padding from the fully stocked mahogany bookcase to the 50 gallon tropical fish tank. After interminable minutes of waiting, he pronounces his brilliance for tomorrow's journal. And it is...JACKO WACKO?

The Mosul headline, however execrable it may be, fits well in the tabloid mold, which holds about as many surprises as the average sitcom. A cover story that is happy, funny, heroic, or weird must employ puns and/or alliteration. So last week, when an off duty fireman saved a bunch of people from a burning building, the Daily News proclaimed him a HUMBLE HERO (the accompanying article did not question the humility of a man who poses for the cover of a newspaper). Sports stories employ these methods as well, although after 100 years of serious athletic journalism, the profession is running out of new ways to say one team soundly beat their opponent. Some new phrases coined for defeat in the past few years:

lambasted
hornswaggled
curdled
decoupaged
crocheted
tae-boed
panini-ed
Kilimanjaroed
freecelled

The tragic headline is constructed in Mad Lib fashion: (DEADLY NOUN)+(PREPOSITION)+(LOCATION). It is simple, can be confused for respectable, and sounds like the title of a made-for-TV movie, which is roughly the intellectual/emotional maturity level that the average tabloid reader is able to stomach. It also, in itself, reveals so little about the story that arouses a reader's prurient interest, thus making them curious about the nature of carnage, where the lunch was held, etc. Tabloids are a lot like construction sites: the surest way to make someone want to see something is to obscure it.

Last week I narrowly escaped my own CARNAGE AT LUNCH. I was on my break, walking down 42nd Street just past a construction site on the corner of Fifth Avenue, when I heard a worker yell OH SHIT! His tone at first sounded like someone joking around with his friends (as in, "Oh shit, son, he wrecked you!"), but the crashing noise that followed told me otherwise. The scaffold structure I was walking under began to collapse, and I ran away Indiana Jones style, disaster trailing behind me. For the rest of the day, I checked all of the local news web sites to see if the accident warranted any ink, but a story never materialized. At first I was disappointed that something that could easily have caused my death didn't even make the papers. But considering tabloid headlines, I was not only spared an untimely end, but also having my passing marked by the elegy LATTICE PREY.

12.13

11:01am: I'm not a capable enough wordsmith to convey the depths of my hatred for "The Little Drummer Boy." In order to do so, I would have to invent a new language in which each syllable sounded unmistakably like a hoisted middle finger. There are plenty of other Christmas songs I dislike strongly--"Jingle Bell Rock" I find particularly retardo--but only "The Little Drummer Boy" (or, as I often refer to it, The Goatish, Evil Laugh of Satan Himself) invokes within me such a profound loathing. For a long time, I thought this hatred was due to my cynical, calloused soul, that perhaps if I had some more Childlike Wonderment (c) within me, I could appreciate the tune. But I distinctly remember despising this song as a kid, too. So finally, I discovered the true reason why "The Little Drummer Boy" is so awful.

Most holiday songs are either completely secular or completely religious. The completely secular ones are much more popular, because they're decidedly less controversial. No one has ever gotten into a fistfight over opinions on bells and their ways of jingling. And, the secular ones usually have some sort of obtuse sexual connotations--imploring a loved one to stay at home and snuggle by the fire, waiting for someone to slide down a chimney, candy canes....So you get to act festive and jolly while secretly dreaming of hot Christmas humping.

Religious carols have mostly fallen out of favor, at least outside of church choirs. That's because they are usually strictly representational recountings of the Biblical stories of Jesus' birth, or they are calls to the faithful to rejoice, and these make a lot of people nervous. "The Little Drummer Boy" tries to be all things to all people, by taking a religious setting and putting in a precious character that no one could possibly get mad at. But a drummer boy is nowhere in any of the Gospels, so it's nothing more than cutesy bullshit. What was a little drummer boy doing out late at night in Bethlehem? "Come they told me..." Who told you? Did the Magi roll into town and say, 'Hey, we got gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and we need a session man on skins'? "I am a poor boy too..." So where'd you get the drum from? Either you'd have to buy it (too expensive) or make it yourself from an animal's hide and some advanced carpentry (too hard). "And then he smiled at me..." Have you ever seen a newborn baby? They can't even open their eyes. They don't know what the hell they are yet. If a kid playing a drum showed up near a newborn baby and his mother, banging away on his stupid instrument, I guarantee you the baby would scream in infant terror, and Buddy Rich wanna-be would be given a swift, savage beating by the father.

So I've deduced that "The Little Drummer Boy" annoys me because it's something pseudo-religious that has no theology whatsoever. It's a lot like the "angel craze" that beset us a few years back. It's something kind of spiritual sounding/looking that has no burden of history, and makes no demands on a person to think, reason, or believe in anything. It contains within it no mysteries of faith, nor does it force a person to question any aspect of themselves or the world around them. I'm not a religious person, but I think I understand the function of religion in the lives of those who are. And if your spirituality serves no higher function than to make you feel warm and fuzzy, why not just believe in Care Bears?

12.07

01:05pm: I'd like to take this opportunity to invite you to listen to OfficeOps Radio tonight from 7-8, where Holy Goddamn! will once again hold forth after a two-week holiday induced hiatus. It also wouldn't hurt to tune in at 6, and catch Chris Gusta, aka the Legendary Curmudgeon, holding forth on the 1s and 2s. Be there and be square.

In the interests of truth in media, I should call attention to the fact that I committed a number of glaring errors in my reminiscence of the Pixies' appearance on MTV in 1991. I know this now because I dug up the old tape last night and viewed all of the in-studio band segments, and so now these mistakes of memory blind me like fluorescent light shining off of enormous scabby pustules, ready to burst with lies. (Please excuse me--I'm in training for the Extended Metaphor Olympics.) The bigger un-facts are as follows, in no particular order:

* All of the Pixies do not wear enormous sunglasses; only Frank Black follows Corey Hart's directive. He and Joey Santiago, however, do sport obnoxious hats--Mr. Black a floppy, wide brimmed canvas sun hat with chin strap, and Mr. Santiago a huge furry black winter hat of the Russian variety.
* Joey Santiago is much more talkative than I made him out to be. In fact, he speaks far more often--and far more enthusiastically--than Kim Deal. He and David Lovering do not try to escape questioning by cowering. At one uncomfortable point, Kim Deal looks perturbed that she is being asked a question, and makes a sort of waving motion in a feeble attempt to avoid speaking, but that is as close as we get to what I purported to describe yesterday.
* On a whole, the band is not nearly as uncomfortable with each other as I wrote below. Perhaps that was a projection of what I know now of how much they disliked each other at that point (according to all gossip, anyway, and we all know that gossip is always true). I was correct, however, when I said that they obviously dislike their host. But seeing this now with adult eyes, I can't say that I blame them. Dave Kendall was quite a grating man, with his broad English accent and Marvin the Martian t-shirt poking out from beneath his leather jacket. A friend of mine from high school, who often went into NY for the purposes of weekend hedonism, said that she was once hit on by him at a club, in decidedly unsmooth fashion. She was both flattered and creeped the hell out.
* The Pixies did not open up for U2 on the Achtung Baby tour, but the Zooropa tour. Big difference, because Achtung Baby was U2s triumphant return after years of inactivity, and it's actually a good album. Zooropa was basically all the shit they decided to cut off of Achtung Baby, the kind of thing that smells of contractual obligation, or artistic wankitude.
* The band only plays two songs. No "Alec Eiffel," but they do play some rocking outro over the closing credits that vaguely sounds like the 'rock out' bridge you hear in "All Over the World."

The show is a pretty interesting artifact, a glimpse of what MTV was putting forward as "alternative" just as that phrase/genre was about to be co-opted and ruined forever (the show dates only a few weeks after the release of "Nevermind"). As I noted in yesterday's post, there were an enormous amount of British bands back then before Seattle had been discovered (though the show does have a Mudhoney video). Some of them are mediocre, some downright rotten. And there are some bands that I used to like that I had totally forgotten about, like Lush and Curve and Ride. (Frank Black refers to them as the "one name bands from England." He also says he likes "that one song that Ride does, but I can't remember the name of it."). These bands were characterized by enormous sheets of guitar drone, over which were sung haunting melodies. Curve and Lush were in the sub-genre of Hot Chicks Singing Sweetly Above Raucous Noise, while Lush and Ride intersect in the Raucous Noise Plus Beach Boys Harmonies zone.

I ragged on Mr. Kendall yesterday and today, but seriously, 120 Minutes in its pre-Kennedy days really had some cool stuff on it. The bands I mentioned above had mainstream popularity in England, but here you could only catch it on MTV after 11pm. Pre-internet, before you could easily download songs or order albums with the click of a mouse, if you lived nowhere near a cool, independent record store, 120 Minutes was the most likely place you would have heard anything at that time that wasn't pre-fab bullshit. I heard lots of really great stuff on there for the first time--Joy Division, Morrissey, the Pixies, Ministry...the list goes on! If you couldn't stand pop radio, but you also tended to get the shit beaten out of you by meatheads in Metallica denim jackets, 120 Minutes was your only hope. I'm a bit wary of giving any props to MTV at all, but I must give credit where credit is due. Without 120 Minutes, who knows? I may very well have become a Rick Astley fan.

I take it all back. Thank you, Dave Kendall, for making us laugh about love--again.

12.06

12:07pm: Prior to this year, my only opportunity to catch the Pixies live was when I first discovered them, circa Trompe Le Monde.* Unfortunately, they were opening up for U2 on their prohibitively expensive, sold-out-before-it-was-announced Achtung Baby tour, and broke up shortly thereafter. The closest I got to seeing them was when they "guest-hosted" an episode of MTV's 120 Minutes in 1991, during the Dave Kendall years. This was a strange moment in indie rock history, if any of y'all remember--there was Fugazi and NOU and a bunch of other cool DC bands, and the Pixies, of course, and the first rumblings from the Pacific Northwest. But if you were into what was still unironically referred to as "alternative" music, chances are your latest hotness was British, either a trippy Madchester group, or one of the droning, sheet of noise, "Shoegazer" bands (Ride, Lush, My Bloody Valentine). Dave Kendall epitomized this in between era--he was an effete British man just punk enough to wear a leather jacket, but not tough enough to pin a Misfits patch on the back of it. All of his sentences had little hooks on the ends of them.

I still have this show on tape somewheres in my vast archives. It is quite obvious from the footage that all the members of the band hate each other (except maybe Joey Santiago and Dave Lovering, who seem to be allied in silence). All of them but Kim Deal wear opaque, obnoxious sunglasses, in an indoor studio. But they are all united in one common goal: confuse and annoy the living shit out of Dave Kendall. Frank Black does most of the talking, and though he responds to Dave's questions, you can't quite call them "answers," because he simply uses the queries as a starting point for meaningless ramblings. He doesn't quite talk in the insane tangential manner of Tom Waits, but more in the way of a politician, trying to deflect any chance of actually talking about something of substance. Dave is so ill prepared for this treatment--with nothing to respond to in Frank Black's "answers," he has to move on to his next talking point, haltingly and awkwardly. Joey Santiago and Dave Lovering, when prompted with a question, actually try to hide, waving arms in front of their face. Kim Deal is maybe the most direct and lucid, but she obviously has no more interest in being there, or talking to Dave, than anyone else. She sits slumped and harassed, dragging on a cigarette and exhaling her responses just as slowly. I don't know how purposeful or studied this all was, but I suspect it was planned at least in part--Frank Black, in particular, seems to delight in making Dave Kendall's next 120 minutes a living hell.

The band compensates by banging out some smoking versions of songs of their just released album. (Added to the band was Eric Drew Feldman, former keyboardist for Pere Ubu and Captain Beefheart.) If I remember correctly, they played "U Mass" and "Planet of Sound," and "Alec Eiffel". "U Mass" ends so abruptly that Dave appears to have been caught in the middle of a bathroom break. There's an uncomfortable silence of about two seconds, then he suddenly runs on stage to take us out to a commercial. The show also features a number of Pixies videos, the best being "Here Comes Your Man." It's filmed in a weird walleye/keyhole angle, and the band does not lip sync--they simply open their mouths when they're supposed to be singing. Genius.

After waiting a mere thirteen years, I finally saw the Pixies live last night, at the Tweeter Center in Camden.** One thing that struck me--other than the fact that they rocked my god damn face off--is how much more friendly they appear now, with each other and the audience. I think it might be because the band is finally getting the recognition and the praise they always deserved. They were one of those bands that, if you loved them, you could not possibly understand why anyone else wouldn't love them, why every track on Doolittle shouldn't hit number one on the charts. Maybe they all thought the same thing, and now that they've reformed and are playing to sold out arenas across the world, they get to know they weren't all crazy back then. It must be a beautiful feeling.

* Of course, I was alive when Come On Pilgrim came out, but I was also nine years old, and it was unlikely I would have dug the Pixies back then, or been able to gain entry to any of the clubs where they played.

** I spent the day in Philly beforehand. More on that loveliness later.

12.03

04:41pm: There's an interesting article in Slate today about hologram technology, and why we have yet to see "Help me Obi Wan!"-type 3D videos. Apparently, scientists are not yet able to develop holographic video past the comparable state of modems circa War Games. ("Shall..we..play..a..game?)

Shortly after reading this, I ran across a link on Bookslut's blog, which cited a company called Customized Classics. For $30, you can get a revised version of Romeo and Juliet which replaces the titular characters with the names of you and your sweetie. They'll even put your picture on the front cover! And if the tragic demise of the young lovers upsets you, no worries--they'll tack on a new happy ending for you! Calloo callay!

Reading these back to back is an excellent demonstration of what America has become. We've run scampering from scientific innovation, and save up our ingenuity for fantasy and escapism (see: the Entertainment Industry). As a result, the 21st century is still a long way away of catching up to the future dreams of the 20th. Where are you, flying cars? Back to the Future II promised me hoverboards--where's my hoverboard? And jet packs--CAN SOMEONE AT NASA GET ON THE STICK AND INVENT THIS COUNTRY A MOTHERFUCKIN JET PACK ALREADY?! These have to be boon years for the defense industry, the likes of which I'm sure have not been seen since the scarier days of the Cold War. Can we siphon off some of that dough going to make super smart bombs that only kill brown people, and get cracking on some Jetsons technology already?

The lack of such invention and ingenuity in our age is due, in large part, to our complete lack of optimism. Nine peeps out of ten, I betcha, do not think things are gonna get better any time soon (whatever "things" means to you, they's bad these days). People are much too pessimistic to dream up a flying car. Instead, most research cash goes to more cynical things like anti-depressants and boner pills.

The American self image has always been one of The Good Guys. Up until the 1960s, though, America was much more optimistic--one might say na…ve--about its place in the world and what it could do with it. One of the great--and last--examples of this was the 1964 World's Fair. The expositions and the architecture were all conceived around the idea that Innovation and Industry (read: Big Business) could make a better world. The theme was Peace Through Understanding, and it was largely the brainchild of Machiavellian uberplanner Robert Moses ("The man who brought you the South Bronx!"). The fair itself was a microcosm of the America of the day: a cheerful, hopeful fa?ade constructed over an underbelly whose seediness was never even remotely acknowledged. Moses--whose personal distinction between the city's funds and his own pocketbook was shaky at best--"borrowed" tens of millions from NY to put on the fair, and never paid it back. Mobbed up unions basically held foreign delegations for ransom, charging exorbitant fees for garbage pickup and other services. It left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths, and although the fair attracted millions of visitors, it also created a whole slew of foreigners who had a new notion of the Ugly American.

I often think of the 1960s as the beginnings of America's adolescence, a time when we first realized The Guys in Charge are not gods, that they make mistakes, and that they don't always have our best interests at heart. The historical revisionism we've seen since then is a form of regressive therapy, whereby we dredge up the unresolved issues of our nation's childhood. ("You never should have invaded Mexico, Daddy!") Which isn't to say that I don't think revisionism a good thing--a country has to grow up and not think of itself in heroic terms, and I think most of the gung-ho posturing of the "Vulcan" neo-cons is a desperate attempt to resurrect this dying notion.

But an unfortunate byproduct of this is making a people so unable to face their own history that they fell like they have only two choices. They can pretend like stomping on other countries and ignoring the rest of the world is really what America is all about (thanks, Toby Keith). Or they have to completely escape nationhood altogether, and live in a stateless fantasy world of reality TV and action movies. A world where altering Romeo and Juliet to include yourself and give it a pleasant ending is a wonderful thing. Don't hold your breath on getting a hoverboard any time soon.

11.24

11:21am: I'm glad someone finally got the whole Ron Artest mess right. Today in Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley says what no one has yet said publicly: that was a hysterical fight to watch. No one was seriously hurt, you got to see huge NBA players bitch-slap drunken fans, and once again Detroit got revel in its reputation of being a bad ass city. My favorite line, observing how everyone in the Detroit audience seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the chaos: "The very few people in the crowd who weren't interested in the fracas seemed like the kind of people who refuse to be entertained under any circumstance."

Exactly--you'd have to be a soulless robot to not enjoy that spectacle on some level. Just remember how exciting it was when you were in school, and all of a sudden two guys would throw down their Trapper Keepers and start wailing on each other. Or, better yet, two girls. And when one someone landed a punch, you'd scream OH SHIT!--and laugh, too, I'm sure. Two people so wrought up about something that they come to blows is funny. I'm not sure why, except that there's something humiliating about a public display of such raw, naked emotion--and as any stand-up will tell you, where there's humiliation, there is comedy.

I firmly believe that the entire hand-wringing act put up by the NBA and sports columnists across the nation is one huge purgative, a way for us all to pretend that there is no part of the human soul that enjoys a good fist fight (or just a funny one). Nowadays, we live in a society so obsessed with children's welfare--or what we perceive to be good for children's welfare--that everything we do, say, see, make is filtered through that warped sensibility. Children aren't the only people in this country, and they're not as innocent or fragile as we'd like to think they are. There was not one kid out there who saw that fight and didn't think it was awesome. And I will swear to you on the holy book of your choice that, as a result of seeing it, no more of them will become sociopaths than would have otherwise.

No one with half a brain, or any sense of history, can truly believe that sports are more violent today than they've ever been. You wanna hear insane? In the 1910s, Ty Cobb ran into the stands to attack a heckler who had no hands. His response? "If he's gonna ride me like that, I don't care if he's got no legs." There was barely a notice about it in the press, because everyone knew Ty Cobb was a scumbag of the highest order. Of course back then, it was a generally held opinion that all baseball players were scumbags. No one looked to them to be role models, or even decent human beings, so long as they could play the game.

What it comes down to is that we're afraid of the thing within us that lusts for fights, the animalistic part of us that we like to think we can control but secretly fear that we can not. So we must make a big public show of deploring this hideous violence, and sentencing all the miscreants to a lifetime of imprisonment in Chateau d'If. Artest, Wallace and the rest of the pugilistic crew must be sacrificed on the altar of our own shame about the darkest recesses of our soul. Like all ritual sacrifices, there must be a higher rationale put forth than simply doing away with what makes us nervous. In this case, that justification is "looking out for the children"--even though we're really just looking out for ourselves.

The first person to get on TV and say, "That fight was awesome to watch" gets my vote for whatever he/she is running for, because I will know there stands an honest human being.

11.22

06:45pm: About ten minutes after I posted the pathetic, hand-wringing screed below, I received an email invite for a lit mag's reading for some award they're giving out this year. The email had so many special MS Word characters that could not be translated into HTML that it looked like Klingon. This computerly ineptitude, in its own stupid way, made me feel better about myself.

06:01pm: A word to you young'uns: when you're a writer, trying to get your work published is just one cocktease after another.* Much like the game of L-U-V, literary endeavors are fraught with emotional peril. We all want to think we're attractive--if only to a small subset of the population. So if a fine looking young thing bats his/her eyes your way, nine times outta ten you take this gesture as one of genuine desire. You are further emboldened if you get to buy them a drink or three. And if they leave the club/bar/restaurant supply store with you, surely you start to think I am red hot tonight! But if, after all that, he/she finds someone else to spend their evening with, it's devastating--not really because you lost this particular person, but because you briefly possessed the hope of catching someone, anyone.

Writers tend to be fragile people who, because of the nature of their chosen art form, need outside validation--like actors, except they're afraid to be on a stage. They do their work alone, in secret, and the only way to achieve recognition is to get published. A musician can stand on a street corner and plunk out his songs, but a writer can't stand in the same spot and force passers-by to read his novel. When someone expresses even the tiniest bit of possible interest in a writer's work, it's like the heavens have parted, and God himself is reaching down to sweep you up in the palm of his hand. And when, after this initial flashing of the ankle, you hear thanks but no thanks, it is as if that same celestial fist has crushed you to pieces. Did you really give a shit about the Dakron Laundromat Association Literary Review? Of course not. But Did you want them to like you? Oh, yes, desperately.

When I get rejection letters in the mail, it's difficult not to feel deeply and personally insulted. I am fully aware that most lit mags have staffs of 2.3 people, either overworked college student interns or dedicated maniacs who do it more for personal satisfaction than any monetary rewards. And I also know that even the tiniest literary magazine gets reams upon reams of submissions every day--98% of which are so startlingly bad and/or inappropriate for the publication that it could drive a good man to the bottle. So I know that being told I do not suit someone's present needs should be taken with a large bucket of salt. But sometimes I'd prefer not to get any sort of hope at all.

Occasionally, the rejection notes will have something short and encouraging written in pen, like try us again. Now, to the untrained, non-writerly eye, this may seem no more personal than a message imprinted on the bottom of a supermarket receipt (HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM C-TOWN). To a writer, however, this tiny directive can be pored over with the scrutiny and mysticism of a shaman. Two or three times, I've even gotten a full blow paragraph from a real human being, which to a writer is about as good as getting a coupon for one week of free ice creams and blow jobs.

On the flipside, I've gotten more than one snotty rejection letter which turned down my work because it was simultaneous submission. I don't know what kind of lunatics run these magazines, but they're out of their tiny little minds if they expect me or any other writer to submit to them and them only and wait for four months until they dare to respond. Fuck them in the face, hard. Almost as ballsy was the rejection letter I received earlier this week, which included a subscription form within it, so I could receive month after month of magazines that refuse to publish me. I actually like these rejections much better--if you're gonna blow me off, do it mean and give me someone to hate. That can drive me for months. Receiving a polite, anonymous rejection is like getting rained on--how the hell can you fight back?

For the last six months or so, I've desperately been trying to find an agent, because getting a novel published without one is next to impossible. I've been told that it's very difficult to get an agent to even look at your book, so each time I've queried an agent and received a manuscript request, I've treated it like the battle was already won. Just like those people who plan out what they're gonna spend their money on when--not if--they win the lottery. There's just something about an agent that to me, unrepresented novice that I am, seems to scream PROBLEM SOLVED. The agent will get your book sold, get the publishing company to promote it, and generally clean up the mess in the diaper of your career. Of the agents that wanted to see my book, more than a few had some Big Name Clients (c), and ones I liked, too. Surely, sez I, the dam has broken--this Philistine world has finally realized the talent it has in me.

But I was rejected by each one, about 50/50 down the line for literary and economic reasons. Those who had problems with the writing in the book could not agree on what those problems were, so any hope I had for seeing my way to the end of the tunnel were lost. Economically, however, they all agreed: we can't sell this piece of shit (they said it nicer than that, though; they said "poopie"; one used the precious Britishism "shite"). Most said, "we'd love to read your stuff in the future." In other words, one day far, far off when you might finally develop some chops.

And I hate these people suddenly, as much I once wanted them to be my savior. I hate them because I wanted someone--not them, but someone, anyone--to sit at the stool next to me and let me buy them a drink.

*I can't think of an equivalent phrase for those of you without cocks. Please email any suggestions you might have.

11.10

04:41pm: I'm in the midst of yet another Lazy Beard (c). When the length of my beard exceeds the length of hair on my shaved head, I can no longer deny that I am headed deep into the heart of Beard Country--and as of today, I am there. A Lazy Beard usually starts with a long weekend, or a sudden lack of shaving supplies, coupled with the fierce desire to avoid Duane Reade. It can also be aided and abetted by not giving two shits about what you look like, because it takes a certain amount of apathy--or short supply of dignity--to walk around with a half-formed beard. I go through bipolar cycles in regards to my personal appearance, caring way too much for a while and then completely giving up. Right now, I would go to work in footy pajamas if I could.

As a little kid, I always thought it would be really cool to have facial hair. But like most things that look cool and adult to a child, this one turned out to be a huge pain in the ass. By the time I was old enough to sprout hairs on my chinny-chin-chin, my facial hair of choice--the goatee--had already been coopted. My dream of singlehandedly reviving beatnik style had been destroyed. So, at the age of 16, I decided to do something I'd never seen anyone do: grow out my neck hair. I shaved everything but the hair protruding from my throat and under my jaw. I didn't even let the sideburns grow in, just a furry mess hanging onto the soft underbelly of my head.

The first thing I discovered is that my facial hair was red. My arm hair was light blondish, and my chest hair was dark black, so I guess this fit in with the schizophrenic activity of my pores. It looked like I had killed a Muppet and glued its scalp to my throat as a trophy.

The second thing I discovered is that beards itch like a bastard when they're growing in. It was impossible to pay attention in school anymore; I was too busy trying to alleviate the continuous discomfort of ten thousand strawberry blond needles brushing into the collar of my shirt. You know like in Spider-Man, when Peter Parker discovers the little hairs in his fingers that help him grip walls? Kinda like that, except I couldn't do anything with my hairs but experience constant pain.

I was not the only person I knew who adopted such a rigidly antisocial sartorial style. One friend of mine wore a lab coat to school every day for almost two years. It had a strange stain on the right breast pocket that resembled peanut butter and jelly, and no one dared imagine what else it might be. Another friend alternated between a Minor Threat and Dead Kennedys t-shirt all year, while wearing the same soiled button down shirt on top. He topped it off with wild hair that he towel-dried and lathered with eighteen cubic feet of hairspray. I recall that both of these people drew a lot of negative attention from other students--not just bullies fucking with them, but other kids who seemed deeply and personally offended by what they chose to wear to school. High school is the first and last time you can do things like this, since you're old enough to make your own fashion decisions, and by the time you get to college, no one would give a shit if you walked around campus with your head on fire.

I, however, received no such abuse. Only my friends noticed the beard at all. Perhaps this was because it was not the sort of thing that could be spotted across a crowded room. Because of where I was growing the beard, you had to be fairly close to see it; otherwise, you just might think my jaw cast a preternaturally long, furry red shadow. So when spring rolled around, the beard vanished with the snow. I tried the chinstrap a few times in college, but was soon chased back to normalcy by the hope of ever getting laid.

And I have yet to see anyone else attempt my own facial hair experiment. Perhaps I took a bullet for all of us.

Scratchbomb RSS Feed

Holy Goddamn! Podcast RSS Feed

2005

January-February

2004

November-December
September-October
July-August
May-June
April-May

Back to the Main Drag