All posts by Matthew Callan

Fashion, NYC

The New Hotness, God Help Us

One great thing about living in NYC (among many) is that you get to see fashion in progress. I don’t mean Bryant Park during Fashion Week, or guys pushing garment racks down 7th Avenue. I mean, you see the future fashions of the world exhibited by the eternal fount of all style: urban teenagers.

F’rinstance, the current steez amongst teens in this city is a sort of mutant hip-hop/punk rock/rockabilly hybrid. Ed Hardy-mania is its most obvious manifestation. Nowadays, kids in Brooklyn dress like a weird mix of Jay-Z and Mike Ness.

This hasn’t taken hold everywhere, near as I can tell, but I’m guessing it won’t be too long before it does. And I, for one, am totally on board with it. This is probably the first time since I’ve been alive that I’ve thought, “I actually like the way teenagers dress right now!”

But that train of thought came to a screeching halt this morning. Because I saw a kid this morning on Atlantic Avenue, dressed in all black (hoodie, jeans), holding a matching murse.

Not a messenger bag, or a laptop bag. It couldn’t possibly be slung over his shoulder. In fact, I would even hesitate to call this thing a murse.  It was no bigger than small grapefruit, and he held it with as few fingers as possible. It was a man-clutch.

Mind you, this kid was not even the slightest bit precious. He totally had the look of someone who would beat you up for thinking about thinking about messing with him.

I don’t hate this idea because it’s girly. I hate it because it’s so dumb and impractical. Like when punk/emo kids were doing that ear stretching thing a few years back. Do they still do that? Please tell me they don’t still do that.

Google tells me that at least some kids still do this. C’mon, kids, cut it out.

My plea to the kids of NYC: You were doing so good on the fashion front. Please do not adopt the man-clutch. Thank you.

Cinematics, Media Morons

For Your Halfhearted Consideration

/stirring orchestral music/


benjaminbutton.jpgOscar season is here, the buzz is brewing, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is…well, it’s one of those movies we should be talking about right now, right?

“I was really looking forward to Benjamin Button and…I don’t know, I was looking for something, and I don’t even know what it is. I don’t even know why I’m disappointed, I just know I am. You know what I mean?”
— Roger Ebert

The critics have spoken, and one thing you can say is that they have expressed themselves through the use of words.

“Look, it’s not like I hated it, I just..I don’t think there’s a word…just…meh.”
— J. Hoberman

“Brad Pitt turns in his best performance to date.” Did anyone say that? No? Then what did they say?

“Brad Pitt is, you know, he’s okay. There’s the makeup and the cgi and…I guess I can’t say anything bad about his performance. It’s just…man, it’s on the tip of my tongue…”
— Janet Maslin

Critics agree: they will probably bring themselves to vote for Benjamin Button for one Oscar or another.

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, what, I’m gonna vote for Dark Knight? A superhero movie wins an acting Oscar, or, god forbid, Best Picture? Yeah, sure, that’s happening.”
— Jeffrey Lyons

Life In These United States, Literary Endeavors

You Hate Me! You Really Hate Me!

I got a fresh piece of hate mail yesterday, something I haven’t received in quite a while. When you write for the web as much as I do, it’s like yelling in a vaccuum. It’s hard to gauge if your words have any impact at all. So it’s nice to know that someone read your work and was touched by it, even if the work touched them in such a way that they want you dead. 

The hate mail had nothing to do with Scratchbomb, but a piece I wrote at the now sadly defunct Freezerbox.com, a site I contributed to for several years. The emailer didn’t specify the source of his/her ire, but they were very clear about what they wanted me to do myself, or have done to me.

I’m not going to reproduce the hate mail here–not because it’s filthy, but because I’d rather not give the writer’s words any more fame than they deserve. The gist of the message was:

1) I am on drugs because I disagree with this person politically, and also because, unlike them, I peppered my work with proper spelling and fancy punctuation.
2) They hope America gets taken over by Muslim terorrists so I’ll get what I deserve. It’s funny–I never hear liberal commie types like myself wish that the US would succumb to foreign aggressors, but AMERICA: FUCK YEAH! types say this all the time. That would totally be worth it–the beacon of Western democracy should fall to teach me a valuable lesson.
3) I should go back where I came from. I don’t know where they thought I came from; Jihadist Russian Homo-ville, I guess.

I was mildly upset at first. I thought, Wait, I’m such a wonderful person! Who could possibly hate me? But hey, I’m not exactly innocent when it comes to writing really angry stuff online. Plus, in thinking these things, I’ve put more thought into the hate mail than the sender had.

In the old days, if you decided you hated someone, you’d have to type or write a letter, go down the post office, and spend money on a stamp before you could possibly express that hatred to them. Most people didn’t bother, because they knew some secretary would read this letter and throw it out. And because taking all this time out of their busy day interfered with their elaborate masturbation rituals.

So in volume, I’m sure there was far, far less hate mail in those days than there are angry emails/comments today. But the instataneous nature of the Intertubes is a good thing on this front. Because if someone reads a post that pisses them off, they can fire off a snotty email or comment, and that’s pretty much the end of it.

Read the comment sections of any site–political or not–and you will see some of the angriest, hate filled language ever written this side of the Aryan Nation. And yet, as far as I know, no blogger has ever been murdered a la Eric Bogosian in Talk Radio. 

Way back when, people were less inclined to publicly declare their hatred. But then all that animus built up over time until they started picking off people from clock towers. So I like to think of the Internet as a safety valve for the Crazy Steam that builds up in some people’s brains. They let it off, and then they’re close to normal for another few days.

Hey, I’ve been there. I know that if I don’t post here often enough, I start getting pains in my head! But then I vent my frustrations and the neighbor’s dog stops talking to me for a while!