04.29
10:23am: On the stroll to work this morning, I hit upon this vein of comedy gold:
We see a young family, mom, dad, and kid about 7 or 8 years old, all well dressed, sitting in what appears to be a pew. The shot is tight, so we can't really see anything beyond them. The kid sits between the two parents, and is bored to tears. The parents try to nudge him awake, have him show the proper respect for the "service", but this inspires little reverence. We hear the muffled sermon of the preacher, who sounds much angrier than priests normally do. Eventually, it becomes apparent that this is a Satanic rite, and despite the heavy-metal-eqsue aspects of it, the kid finds it as boring as he would any other religious service. "You can at least stay awake for the goat sacrifice, young man! Show some respect!"
I publicly declare, in case it was not painfully obvious, that I am operating on a thimbleful of sleep today.
12:12am: I know from both experience and example that it's an extremely bad idea to blog about one's job, particularly when one expresses negative comments about their place of employment. The quote-unquote anonymity of the web is worth about as much as the paper that promise is printed on.
So, not to be a cocktease, but I must be a cocktease and simply say, oh the stories I could tell. All I can promise you, gentle reader, is that one day the true story will be told, full of ghost pirates and hobgoblins, witchcraft and skullduggery, and a prominent role for Mischa Barton.
One thing I can say: my celebrity knowledge has increased ten-fold since I began this job. Hell, last month I woulda guessed Mischa Barton was a imported Dutch beer. Now the cadences of certain celebrity names dance in my head like Latinate tattoos. It's similar to the sensation you get when you learn the definition of a word for the first time, and then suddenly you see the word everywhere. Now, everywhere I look I see the cast of One Tree Hill. Last month, if the entire creative team behind Desperate Housewives killed my whole family, I still wouldn't have been able to tell you anyone involved with that show. Now, the mellifluous name Eva Longoria will not exit my brain without the aid of a large mallet.
My last job was extremely--well, I won't say manly, but it did possess the pungent, sweaty stench of a 'boys club' atmosphere. Wandering over to someone's cube and saying 'See the game last night?' was not considered a time-wasting diversion, but part of the job. My cube was not far from the sales guys, and they could be heard all day, every day discussing hypothetical trades and judging who was overrated as enthusiastically and in as shrill volumes as Mike and the Mad Dog.
The new gig has decidedly less testosterone, but one good thing is an abundance of TVs that have DirecTV. Right now, thanks to bullshit legal reasons, I can't watch any of the Mets games on cable--thanks, Time Warner! Here's to more ivory back scratchers! DirecTV is not affected by these bullshit legal reasons, and so when I work late, I often turn the nearest TV to MSG or FSN, occasionally switching over to YES for the Yankees, or ESPN for one of the late games.* A small coterie of production/prepress guys gather in fitful groups, watching small patches of half-innings, before descending quietly back into the high octane world of celebrity gossip and intrigue. They're like a small political resistance, meeting in secret, hanging on to small shreds of masculinity amid the designer bags and lip gloss.
04.26
4:27pm: The next big fashion accessory: hobo bindles.
You heard it here first, ladies.
1:10pm:On my way to work this morning, I listened to a Jean Shepherd show from 1966* regarding tattooing. It reminded me of a really ridiculous conversation I had--can't remember with who--about absurd tattoos that we'd like to get, which quickly degenerated into a nerd-out. It struck us as hilarious to get a classic military-type tattoo like an anchor or a battalion's insignia , and to emblazon it with the name and date of an ancient battle we couldn't possibly have fought in. ANTIETAM 1863. HASTINGS 1066. TROY 307 BC. I believe how many laughs you can derive out of this riff is directly proportional to how much tape you have on your glasses.
While on tour with my band many moons ago, we found ourselves strolling a beach in South Carolina. Just short of the surf was an empty wheelchair, whose occupant was presumably taking in the waves. At a meal soon afterwards, my friend Joe remarked that a great tattoo would be an empty wheelchair, with footprints leading away from it. This poetic image was immediately usurped by my friend Kevin, who suggested an even better tattoo would be a wheelchair-bound kid from our high school who shall remain nameless, but who was a weiner of the highest order. The kid was like Timmy from South Park, but more articulate, and annoying, a smart-ass know-it-all type. His other human failings made it acceptable to mock his more visible ones, in the logic childhood cruelty. The thought of his face tattooed on someone's forearm made me laugh so hard I almost choked on the burger I was trying to eat. My laughs must have been inescapable, because the entire restaurant--which sat on a pier, and was one of those places where beer is served by the bucket--screeched to a halt. Even the Jimmy Buffett cover band lost a beat. I looked to my left and right, wondering how my loud laughing could be considered unacceptable behavior in a date rape magnet like this place. Then, I thought of the kid's image rendered in ink once again and I lost it. I could barely talk for the rest of the day, because I made my mouth sore with shameful, shameful laughter.
* It also amuses me that a good chunk of my iPod's gigs are occupied by forty-year-old (or older) radio shows. It's kinda like getting a plasma TV and using it to watch nothing but Fatty Arbuckle shorts.
04.25
4:25pm: Hurrah! Episode 001 of Holy Goddamn has been a-posted to the Interweb. It is entitled "Baseball Been Berry Berry Good to Me," and I discuss my deep genetic affliction--being a Mets fan. I also spin some hot tunes, and I perform an ad-filled game broadcast, as well as a sports jock radio show wherein callers propose trades between members of the Yankees and famous literary figures. ("Whaddya think, Jorge Posada for Dave Eggers?") If you got a podcast client, point it here to start the fun. If you don't have a podcast client yet, I recommend iPodder. And if you can't podcast on your computer for whatever reason, click here to download the file straight-up (file's 'bout 50MB, so beware).
Speaking of the Great American Pastime, I played an organizized game of softball this weekend, for the first time since my junior year at college, when, for reasons I can't recall, my scholar's group was enlisted to play a charity game at a Little League field on McDonald Avenue. Several weeks ago, I found out that my local watering hole was starting up a softball team to play in McCarren Park. I volunteered my services, not knowing that my new job would consume all available free time on the weekdays. I hadn't been able to make any of the practices, but I showed up on Saturday with a new glove, hoping to contribute .
In the game, I alternated riding the pine and roaming around in right field. I did alright at bat, got one single and was robbed of another due to the excellent fielding of the third baseman. Early in the game, I was instructed to play deeper than I thought necessary. I agreed: "It's easier to run in than run out." But I did not follow my own advice too well, and when a fly ball was hit just out of my reach, it cost us two runs. We eventually lost 9-5, although there was much grousing that we'd been generous with the opposing team, who took an extra 45 minutes to front a full squad, a delay that ultimately cost us our final at-bats in the ninth. But it was fun just to play, and a trip to the Turkey's Nest, and its 32 oz. beers served in shaky Styrofoam, massaged away most of our wounds.
I was not able to go to the gym all last week thanks to work. On Saturday morning, I finally returned, and this, coupled with the softball game, caused me great muscular distress come Sunday morning (beer didn't help either, I'm sure). I falsely believed that, even with a week off, I could engage in such strenuous activity with no ill effects now that I was "in shape". I thought wrong, and now all my joints creak like rusty hinges. Every few seconds now at my desk, I will move and feel a muscle in some far off spot moan with pain, and I will wonder, "How the hell is that sore? I didn't even use that. I never use that. I'm barely using it now, and it's screaming at me like a banshee." Next week, I'm having all of my muscles stripped of their nerves, removed, and replaced with a pliant, space-age polymer. I won't need food anymore, just an occasional polish.
04.22
2:40pm: "It's been a year since Pat Tillman died for his country in a firefight in Afghanistan, but his courage and convictions continue to resonate today." --ESPN.com.
Only in a country as young as America, and only now, could the remove of one single year seem like a vast chasm of time. I continue to be amazed, though I suppose I shouldn't be, at the complete lack of historical perspective people have. Twelve months is nothing, and far from enough time to assess the influence that any event, tragic or otherwise, will have on the course of human affairs. But the modern attention span is a fleeting thing, which means that the greatest triumph is the last one, the worst tragedy the most recent.
There was hardly any hoopla over the recent tenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombings. This was not an event that Pundit Nation wanted to grasp--least of all Fox News, lest any acute listeners in the audience hear the parallels between Timothy McVeigh's apocalyptic ramblings and the violent rhetoric of Anne Coulter and Bill O'Reilly.
But most importantly, ten years is too long ago for most people. C'mon, I was still listening to Candlebox back then!. From a far enough distance, anything in the past looks funny. When people want to hear about ten and twenty years ago, they want to hear Michael Ian Black make snotty, fey comments about slap bracelets and New Kids on the Block. They want all political and social controversies summed up in a cackling one-liner by Hal Sparks, or a coked out nonsequitir from Juliette Lewis. "I remember Iran-Contra, that was craaaaaazy!" And if it's even older than 20 years ago, forget it. That's as dead as Abe Lincoln and Bing Crosby riding a coal-powered dinosaur.
Frank Zappa once predicted that the world would end by nostalgia, noting that "the time between the event and the nostalgia for the event keeps drawing closer and closer". Eventually, he posited, we could no longer take a step forward without looking back at the step we'd just taken, bringing all progress to a standstill. If we ain't there yet, we's mighty close.
04.18
5:40pm: Folks, it appears that last week I spoke too soon. I have been much too busy maintaining my empire to complete the first for-real Holy Goddamn. But rest assured that I will complete it by next weekend at the latest, and I assure you that the extra wait shall be worth it.
The biggest reason that I have been remiss in my me-work is because of my new work-work, which has an often taxing schedule. I've often been called on to stay at the office very late, due to the vagaries of press times. But on these days, I also have the option of arriving at work as late as noon, which is quite excellent for a night owl such as myself. Normally, I can not wake up one second earlier than I absolutely have to in order to get to work on time. If a gun-toting maniac burst into my bedroom, put a Magnum to my head, and ordered me to wake up ten minutes earlier than usual, I would groggily plead with him for another five minutes.
This morning, I tried to get up early-ish and go to the gym (ha), but only succeeded in waking up early enough to go for a quick run before showering and leaving for the office. I ran down Franklin/Kent, which I have not done since joining the gym, and have seldom ever done in the daytime. I forgot how insanely industrial my neighborhood is. The streets are filled with trucks and backhoes and cranes, and utility crews jackhammering everything made of concrete. The little corner of Brooklyn I like to think of as quiet is really friggin loud in the daytime.
At the corner of Franklin and Noble, I passed by a film crew. I've gotten as jaded about this kind of thing as any other New Yorker. One thing I did notice, however, was the fact that the actors, all waiting to cross the street in some kind of action shot, were dressed in winter wear--jackets, scarves, ski hats, etc. One of them even clutched a small Christmas tree to his chest. Ironically, had they filmed the scene last week, such vestments would have been necessary. But today was the first 70 degree day we've yet had. So while I was sweating like crazy running in a t-shirt and shorts, I couldn't imagine the perspiration generated by two dozen Fake New Yorkers wrapped up in wool, pretending to be cold on a gorgeous April morning.
04.13
11:35am: If all goes well, the first real episode of Holy Goddamn (001) will be posted this Sunday. By then, I will have also devised a way for any of you without podcasting abilities to download the show.
My progress will be slowed somewhat by the fact that I'm attending Mets games on Friday and Saturday. I went to the home opener this Monday, which was great game-wise since they pulled off a come-from-behind win (one that would not have been necessary had the bullpen held on to a lead, but a W's a W). However, as far as a stadium-going experience, the event was sub par. I began to suspect that conditions at the Mets' home field were less than ideal earlier this year, when I experienced the joy of waiting in its hallways for nine hours for Opening Day tickets. But at that time I figured the season was a ways off, and they had plenty of time to spruce the place up. Now having attended a game in the 2005 season, I have finally come around to the point of view that many Mets fans share: if Shea Stadium was a horse, they'd shoot it.
My newly minted hatred has little to do with the aesthetics of the place, at least from the outside. I actually like its (now) retro Worlds Fair look. But I have to concede that Yankee Stadium, a much older facility, treats its patrons much better than their counterparts in Queens. For one thing, Yankee Stadium is in the middle of a neighborhood, with bars and souvenir shops all around it. It's a fun place to be during a game, even if you don't have a ticket. Shea was plopped inside of Flushing Meadow Park, across the street from the US Tennis Center, and there's nothing to do in its immediate environs during a game, unless you're looking for a hubcab for a 78 Buick. As with many shitty things about New York, you can thank Robert Moses for this.
I grant that it's hard for any ballpark to compete with Yankee Stadium in terms of atmosphere. But the problems with Shea go beyond those of atmosphere, and land somewhere in the deep infield between neglect and apathy. It was very obvious to me on Opening Day that Shea simply did not have its shit together. Everything smacked of hurried, last-minute preparation. The front office must have had one of those dreams where you wake up for school and realize you have this big report to hand in that you haven't even started yet, on a topic you know nothing about. Except that in this case, the report was a major league baseball game. AND THIS WAS NO DREAM! (dun dun dun!)
Case in point: I wandered out to a concession stands in the middle of the third to get hot dogs. I was told at two different booths that the hot dogs weren't ready yet. I could see them spinning around on those little grease covered conveyer belts, but they had the translucent, squared-off sheen of still-frozen franks. I shrugged my shoulders and returned to my seat. At the end of the fifth, I went back to the concessions--and not one stand had yet produced an edible dog. How long does it take to cook a dog? At your house, ten minutes on a grill. At Shea, almost two hours on greasy rollers is apparently insufficient. Assuming, of course, that they started the preparation before the first inning, which is a big if. The workers were still hastily stuffing bottled water and beer into the fridges when the game was more than half over.
So I thought I'd wait for a vendor, but--surprise!--I didn't see any in my section. I only managed to flag one down when I returned from a bathroom trip. I completed my visit to the loo in roughly 2.3 seconds, since the Mets do not have video or audio of the game playing in the hallways like they do at, oh, EVERY OTHER FUCKING BALLPARK IN THE COUNTRY. Or maybe, like my neighborhood, Shea is located in the blackout zone for FSN and MSG, who show more than 80 percent of all games.
Things got downright insulting at the start of the sixth inning, when the batter's eye broke. In case you don't know, the batter's eye is a black area behind the center field fence, painted black, so the batter's view of an approaching pitch won't be obscured by anything shiny. Most stadiums just paint a section of the bleachers black, or use a scoreboard that stays dark during innings. The Mets have just installed a revolving ad-board with rotating slats, displaying (in turn) ads for Samsung and Waste Management. When the 6th started, the Samsung ad (featuring Pedro Martinez) was stuck in place and would not budge back into the black. The batter refused to hit, but Tom Glavine kept warming up, putting more wear and tear on his 40-year-old arm. Eventually, the Mets walked off the field, but no announcement was made as to the cause of the delay. It slowly spread through the crowd as a rumor. Several angered fans in front of me growled "Fuck this," and left. The crowd tried to cheer itself up with chants of PEDRO! PEDRO! Martinez responded by dancing on the top step of the dugout. It made the situation only slightly less pathetic.
The grounds crew tried to cover the ad with black tarp anchored to its roof, but to the surprise of no one, the tarp ripped and crashed to the ground immediately once unfurled. So the ad was slowly turned back to black manually, except for one stubborn slat that refused to move. One of the grounds crew took to the unruly slat with a hammer, and once the distracting piece had been right, play began again. This, of course, spelt doom for both starting pitchers, who had too wait far too long to throw again and were all but done for the day after that point.
With Mayor Bloomberg high on dreams of football in Manhattan (please, may I have some of what you're smoking?), I don't hold out much hope for a stadium for NY's Other Baseball Team any time soon. Maybe Shea could be spruced up a bit. Or maybe the front office could just make sure that all the escalators work before opening the gates, or that the concession stands don't serve hot dog-sicles, or that a man taking a piss between innings doesn't have to worry about missing any pitches he paid good money to see. But from what I saw on Monday, for all the money Minaya and co. spent on Pedro and Beltran, the front office has zero interest investing in fan comfort.
04.04
11:40pm: Huzzah! Another slight redesign, this one aimed to accomodate the triumphant return of Holy Goddamn to the imaginary airwaves. As you'll see over there to your right, I now have separate RSS feeds for both Scratchbomb.com and the Holy Goddamn! Podcast Experience. If you're new to the whole podcasting thing, click on the radio to learn The How.
The Why? Well, I decided that I liked doing radio. Since my outlet has been removed from the real airwaves, podcasting is the next best thing. If'n you don't know, it's basically on-demand radio that functions much in the way that RSS feeds do (in fact, podcasts are disseminated via xml files that are basically RSS feeds, but I won't get too nerdy on ya right now). What a podcast client like iPodder does is check the podcasts you subscribe to and start downloading files in the bckground while you spend valuable internet time building your fantasy team or posting to your favorite slashf fiction site. Once it's downloaded, you can listen to it at your leisure (or not, but why would you subscribe if you didn't wann hear it, dumbass?).
This is still somewhat experimental, which is why the first show is numbered 000. These shows will be much more prepared than my OfficeOps outings (a good thing, trust me), and I will actually have some prolonged comedy bits. The zero'th episode contains a "live broadcast" from a danceathon circa 1940 that I'm certain will entertain at least one person other than myself. Future shows will feature much more of this kinda stuff, but for this dry run I only ventured one real comedical thrust.
Again, this is kind of a beta test, so I encourage you to inform me of any problems, or let me know how I can improve on my humble efforts.
03.24
04:09pm: For someone who likes to call himself a fiction writer, I have enormous gaps in my own reading of it. This includes The Canon--those books you're supposed to read if you want to call yourself a civilized, cultured adult--as well as contemporary authors. Frankly, I think a lot of "classics" are written in styles that are all but impenetrable, concerning rich bastards I just can't sympathize with, whose quote-unquote struggles mean less than nothing for the life I'm living right now. Lady Oddbottom spurns the attentions of Lord Snot in a manner considered scandalous for Victorian England--and? (The list of things not considered scandalous in Victorian England is a miniscule one.) I'm not reflexively anti-Classic, but I've honestly found too many of them uninteresting and irrelevant. Ultimately, reading for me is entertainment as much as it is edification, and if I don't enjoy something it's just too easy for me to turn on the Playstation, no matter what the New York Review of Books says.
I also find an enormous amount of fiction written today to be self-absorbed and boring. I'm not talking about airport fiction or the big bestsellers, but the books that are supposed to be more "literary," the kinds that I should like. I know that as a "young writer" ("young writer" = "any writer under the age of 60"), I should keep abreast of up-and-comers to see what's up-and-coming, to know what's getting published and see what angles I can work to get my own stuff in print. (Not to change my work, mind you, but to pitch my work based on what's out there already.) But I'm probably doomed anyway since I like to write about weird, uncomfortable people, and I think this makes readers feel weird and uncomfortable by proxy. Plus, 98 percent of the fiction I come across concerns (1) the wake of messy divorces, (2) tending to parents sick with cancer, or (3) city people seeking solace and a rekindling of the marital fires in a pastoral setting, peopled by condescendingly simple rustic folk who dispense homespun wisdom. That, or genre fiction with a crazy twist: "see, he's a private investigator, but here's the thing--he's completely made of cheese!" Motherless Brooklyn, a book I love by an author I love, is probably the culprit responsible for this trend, but please do not blame Mr. Lethem for his imitators.
For the last few years, other than school work, my reading has been confined almost entirely to non-fiction. No particular focus, mind you, but a polyglot collection of a wide range of subjects. The Irish mob, Lyndon Johnson, the 86 Mets, Joseph Campbell--anything I didn't know too much about before. F'rinstance, I hated science in high school, so I tried to fill that gap in my reading with Stephen Hawking and Brian Greene. It made me feel smart for the three days in which I was able to retain complicated theories about black holes and string theory. It almost got to the point where I questioned the validity of fiction as a medium--if it doesn't interest me anymore, why the hell am I writing it? If I don't wanna read it, why would anyone else?
But fiction has been creeping into my reading list again. Recently, I closed a gaping hole in my personal mental library by reading Paul Auster for the first time. I just finished his last novel, The Book of Illusions, and it was a somewhat surreal experience. For one thing, the subject matter has a vague parallel to that of the novel I finished earlier this year (I won't get more specific than that). I had something similar happen last year, when the plot of a short story I was shopping around bore a striking resemblance to that of a just-published novel by Thomas Keneally. But in the case of Auster, it wasn't just his subject, but his style that I found reminiscent of my own. The way that he constructed his sentences at times, and the kinds of words he used, read eerily similar to the way I write. So while I enjoyed the book immensely, I wondered if the impediment to my finding an agent thus far--other than not having many stories published and the currently shitty state of the First Fiction market--was prospective agents reading my stuff and thinking I'm just biting Auster's steez. ('Steez' is an acceptable literary term at Brooklyn College.)
So the question is, Was it better to have not read Paul Auster, remain ignorant of my literary resemblance to him, and be able to honestly say that I'd taken nothing from him? Or, to read him and finally be exposed to a great writer, at expense of realizing I might not be as original as I think I am? I tend to think that knowledge always trumps its alternative. In this case I'm not so sure. Now that I know, of course, I can not un-know.
Another author I'm reading who's stuff hits me eerily close to home is Sam Lipsyte, whose novel Home Land is every bit as great as everyone has been saying. One good sign is that this novel is a paperback original. Once upon a time, paperback original = death knell for your writing career, but the critical and slow but sure material success of Home Land may propel this format to the importance it deserves. Since it's remarkably cheaper to produce than hardcovers, it's an ideal format for First Fiction and Difficult Writers. The profit margins would be much fatter, allowing publishing companies to do moderately sized print runs without worrying as much about investment returns. I was gonna link to a great article on Mr. Lipsyte's struggle to get his book published, despite considerable critical acclaim, due to his tepid box office receipts, but the outlet in question charges for their archives, so fuck em.
But the main reason the book resonates with me is not economic. Most reviews call it "laugh out loud funny", but I find it much too close to home to chuckle too loud. The narrator's barely disguised desperation, discomfort, and wild flailing at high school demons is so true to me it's chilling. Even though it's more about the wake of high school than the experience itself, it's the most honest book about the wretched of the high school earth that I've read since Vernon God Little. Plus, it's clearly written by someone with a more than casual acquaintance with hardcore--in one scene, the narrator gets ugly stares from a National Guardsman at the airport because he's wearing a t-shirt from a band called Anal Jihad. The man either did lotsa research, or he's gotten kicked in the head a few times at a punk rock night at the K of C. In either case, I salute him.
03.17
11:19am: The link at the top of this column will lead you to the Official Scratchbomb.com RSS feed, so that in the future you may be notified immediately whenever I pen another hard hitting screed about fake baseball.
So today is St. Patrick's Day, or as alcoholics call it, Amateur Night. It's an event that once held a genuinely uplifting meaning for an oppressed people with little else to celebrate, and now, like most holidays (in America, anyway) is simply an excuse for normally antisocial behavior. Plus, it perpetuates certain myths that the Irish like to believe about themselves. As a corrective, I heartily recommend R.F. Foster's "The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making it Up in Ireland," which pokes holes in a lot of these myths and the functions they serve, written by an actual Irishman who knows a thing or two about Ireland today (and Ireland of the past; he wrote most of the textbooks I had to read for an Irish history class I took in college).
My main problem with the day as it is celebrated now, as I've expressed many times in many media, is that most of those who celebrate--especially those who purport to be Irish--really don't know anything about Ireland. Not that you should have to take a multiple choice test on Hibernian trivia in order to chug a pint of green beer. But most people's notions of Ireland are trapped in the 19th century, visions of Aran sweaters and ruddy-faced publicans, a pastoral and tranquil existence. The Ireland of today is a very different place. It's had a booming economy for over twenty-five years, and it is very quickly becoming much like the rest of Europe in its culture and social mores. Land outside of the major cities, which lay all but dormant for centuries, is being gobbled up in suburban sprawl. Even much of the urban squalor Roddy Doyle writes about in The Barrytown Trilogy is being swept away by prosperity. When I visited Dublin seven years ago, the whole city seemed like it had just been let out on spring break, or it was throwing a party while its parents were away. That's what happens when you finally emerge from 900 years of colonization and economic privation--you don't move to the countryside and become a farmer, you buy a Mercedes and start hitting the clubs.
I must also point out that there's a reason why so many Irish fled Ireland, and it wasn't just the potato famine. There was the complete economic desperation resulting from being an agricultural client state for England, and the inability of Free State to rebound once the English had left (most of) Ireland. My grandfather left Dublin after World War II because there were no jobs to be had anywhere. He lived in New York alone, without his wife and kids, for two years to save up enough dough to send for them, because that privation was still better than the life he would ever be able to make for them in Ireland. I saw the house that my grandfather grew up in, in the countryside of County Louth. It was in someone else's backyard, deserted and overgrown with weeds. Can you comprehend how bad things have to be to just abandon a house?
Then there was the complete stranglehold of the Catholic church over every aspect of life. Catholicism was heavily tied to Irish nationalism, since the Penal Laws foisted on the land by England prevented Catholics from owning property and holding certain jobs. So for years, the resistance to English rule was expressed largely as a Catholic struggle. Unfortunately, once Ireland won its independence, it continued to see itself as The Most Oppressed Land Ever, and considered anything that questioned the Catholic church to question Ireland itself. If you go to any "Irish" pub, I'm sure you'll see a poster of famous Irish writers on the wall. How many of those writers were actually able to publish in Ireland, let alone thrive there? Authors like James Joyce and Brendan Behan had to leave the Emerald Isle to get anything published, because their work dared to suggest that Irish people sometimes swear, drink, and fuck-- making them bad Catholics and therefore bad Irishmen. It was only after these authors achieved fame elsewhere that Ireland was able to accept them--and then preferably after they had died, so they couldn't raise unpleasant questions about how Ireland treats its greatest artists.
Honestly, I think ethnic pride is as stupid as ethnic shame, simply because you are not responsible for the details of your birth. It's not an accomplishment--it's a coincidence. Some people still need to express pride in their heritage because they are oppressed or stereotyped, and while the Irish are certainly stereotyped, they can no longer said to be oppressed either here or at home--unless you count the amount of abuse we've had to take about Riverdance
03.14
12:01pm: On Saturday, while driving home from the Rockaways, the lady and I pledged some heard earned deaux to WFMU, the only radio station worth listening to in the tri-state (prove me wrong, I dare ya). This is the fourth year in a row I've parted with my shekels to the make the airwaves a better place. I even pledged a C-note when I was deeply mired in poverty. It seemed a karmically wise thing to do.
The last few years, I earmarked my money for the lovely Terre T and her punkariffic program, "Cherry Blossom Clinic". This year, I broke with precedent and dedicated the funds to Rex, whose "Fool's Paradise" show immediately follows hers. No dis against Terre, by any means, for her show is just as awesome as it's ever been. But for whatever reason, in the last few months the lady and I have found ourselves driving somewhere at the time Rex's show is on, and we can not get enough of his playlists. We want every single song the man plays. Lotsa old sleazy R n B, the kind filled with slutty tenor sax solos and leering vocals. Lotsa obscure, semi-competent garage rock. Lotsa failed "Do the ____" dance crazes. Nothing less than amazing. Ever.
We demanded that Rex DJ our impending nuptials. On the air, he fretted about doing such a thing--he'd been apparently burned before by folks with similar demands, which he complied with to the horror of parents and relatives. "It's their little girl's big day, and I'm up there playing stuff like 'Rock n Roll Done Ate My Soul'," he said. I assure you, Mr. Rex, anyone who would impugn your musical taste would have to answer to swift and brutal retribution dispensed by yours truly.
If you have the means, slip WFMU some cheddar. You know the money's going straight to operating costs, not in some suit's pocket. It doesn't even go to the DJ's--no one gets paid over there. They're all just insane music lovers, broadcasting insane music to other insane music lovers. It's a beautiful thing.
Speaking of radio, after exploring other avenues of continuing Holy Goddamn!, I've decided to get high-technical and do a podcast. It'll be at least a month before I can get it up and a-running, but just wanted to letcha know to keep hope alive! If anyone's got any expertise in this arena and can give me some pointers, drop me a line. I'm a quick study.
03.11
12:38pm: Since returning from Vegas, I've been making a concerted effort to Be Healthy. When I got my Masters last year, after having spent two years with little free time in which to cram work-work, me-work, and exercising, I felt the liberating need to slack off on all fronts. So except for completing a novel, taking an improv class, and house fixer-uppery, these last ten months have been a giant edifice to the virtues of slack--unless you count building a Fake Baseball Empire to be work. At the same time that I relented in my two-miles-a-day running regimen, I also increased my consumption of foodstuffs. My na...ve reasoning, for much of my life, has been this: I'm not a junk food eater. I eat good food. Therefore I can consume to my heart's content, knowing that I'm not going to become one of those blobulent couch moisteners who inhale fistfuls of Fried Corn-Based Horrors. The result of this faulty reasoning: unsightly bulges where there were not unsightly bulges before. In my life I have been Fat and Not Fat many times, with the reasons being inscrutable metabolic ones rather than the result of any effort (or lack thereof) on my part. Except for the post-collegiate year I lost twenty pounds through poverty, depression, and alcohol. An effective system, but not one I recommend. As a rapidly aging adult, I realize that I can no longer rely on the vicissitudes of growth spurts or impoverishment to alleviate weight problems. Pound shedding will actually require work on my part (groan).
So I'm almost embarrassed to admit this, but I'm doing Weight Watchers right now. Not going to meetings, mind you, but following their point plans. Some people need public motivation and a large support group in order to achieve their goals. Me, I'm a solitary worker. Give me a system in which to work and I will do the job alone in a dark corner. I woulda made a great sniper. I'm approaching dieting in the same way a recovering alcoholic tackles sobriety--if you thought about all the things you couldn't eat ever again, you'd go batshit insane and inhale a funnel cake. You have to take it one meal at a time (thanks, Bill W.).
Tied to this Glorious New Health Regime is my recent joining of a gym. I'm counting on the expense of joining combined with my regimented diet to be motivating factors in jump-starting my abandoned exercise routines. I've been talking about joining a gym for many moons, but it took a lot of willpower for me to actually sign up. If you're like me--and I know I am--you don't associate the word gym with the word healthy. You think of words like crippling emotional distress, unfortunately timed boners, and the death of all that is holy. Every gym class I ever had was like forty-five highly concentrated minutes of Lord of the Flies--primitive childish societies where might makes right, where the weak are left to be consumed by the ravenous taunts of the strong, where pig heads are staved on long wooden pikes beneath the basketball hoops as warnings to intruders. I'm sure I could write you a four-thousand-word essay on my junior high school gym classes and their brutal separation of the wheat from the chaff, but in order to delve into those memories I would have to descend so far beyond the brink of madness that I might not return.*
My first visit to the gym was intimidating. See, there are Gym People and Non-Gym People. As a Non-Gym Person, Gym People unnerve me. They already know exactly how to use all of the equipment. They can run the treadmill without stumbling on their iPod headphones. They can even read Paul Krugman's latest anti-Bush screed while slogging through a cross-training machine's imaginary terrain. I hadn't felt so obviously out of place since I flew first class.
What I quickly realized, however, is that Gym People--adult gym people--do not give a shit about what you or anyone else does in the gym that does not directly affect their own exercise regimen. Even if I did something colossally stupid, only the largest of jerks would dare laugh at me. Slowly, I separated the School Gym Experience from the Adult Gym Experience and was able to begin a new healthy life with no thoughts of repeating The Shameful Shower Incident.
I also swam for the first time in a long time. As a kid, I went to a neighborhood pool all the time in the summer, and would spend endless pruney hours patrolling the blue concrete floor. I've heard that swimming is extremely good for you, cardiovascular-wise, so I thought I'd give it a shot. What I forgot is that, while I really liked swimming, that didn't mean I was any good at it. I did ten laps of a serviceable crawl, followed by five of a pathetic breaststroke. Then it was five of a very slow backstroke, which was more of a way to look like I was still swimming when I was really resting up. Then, ten more panting laps of the crawl before I climbed back to dry land and lurched to the showers, a sore but wiser man.
*I have a distinct recollection of "being sick" one gym class in high school and repairing to the bleachers. I alternately watched the girls play soccer and read Camus' The Fall. Never before, and seldom since, had I brought exactly the right literature for exactly the right situation.
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