I know there will be idle talk in the morning about the continuing brutality of Death's Grip this, the summer of 2009. I believe E. has made mention of it in these pages as well. But seriously, if we make it to the September Equinox with Rue McLanahan and Betty White walking among us in God's Dominion, then Death, I will know, has a soul, and we should all breathe a sigh of relief that He has claimed only Michael Jackson et al.
Liberalism is a third-rail word in our electoral politics, As we know, despite occasional virtues, there is no real Liberal spirit among our elected officials. Watching our pragmatist, impotent President and the scatterbrained Democratic Congress he lets run wild, fail even to begin a dialogue on meaningful, universal health care coverage, without succumbing to the shrill masses, without stripping from their proposals health-care reform's central tenet, a public option, in some sort of pre-emptive compromise with the sullen and lame minority party -- watching this, we should know that the Liberal philosophy of equality, welfare, and social justice has no place in our Government. Ted Kennedy -- ever the parliamentarian, make no mistake -- did at least this: He wore Liberalism like a crest on his blazer. For that -- and not just that, of course -- he should be honored. And so I honor him.
But I am also a bastard. So, let me tell you my one Ted Kennedy story:
My childhood friend Paul, the eldest brother of three much younger boys, grew up in a stately manse near Embassy Row. One Halloween many years ago, he took his kid brothers out trick or treating. They got to Ted Kennedy's place, and rang the doorbell. The liberal lion answered the door, absolutely smashed, and with some fine Irish sloshing about in a tumbler in his hand. Bleary eyed, he sized up Paul's brothers, their arms outstretched for caloric bounty. In one graceless move Teddy reached for the bowl of Nestle Crunches, but in so doing knocked a lit candle into the dustbin. The contents of the dustbin immediately caught fire. Irish in hand, Irish in blood, Teddy let out a torrent of expletives and ran off for the fire extinguisher (or another drink, who really knows). Paul and the kids slowly retreated from his doorstep, sans Nestle Crunches. I'm not sure if they went back to casa Kennedy the next year.
I've never really understood what it is to hate your boss until I started work at ________ LLP.
When I worked at Tower Records, I had a supervisor, Talulah, who used to give me shit for sitting on the back counter during slow periods in cash register duty, but she was okay in the end. She smoked weed competitively and took solemnly her designated charge, the R&B section; whereas I was going to college in the fall and her authority was a fucking joke to me.
Years later, when I was a school teacher, I had a principal who generally left me alone, but one day--maybe the second or third to last day of school in my last year, when the kids were doing nothing but cleaning out their desks--she had the temerity to say something to me about young Joshua Reyes. He had been pissing me off and I had kicked him out into the hallway. Well sort of kicked him out into the hallway, since we weren't actually allowed to do that; so instead I made him stand in the hallway while keeping his right hand inside the classroom. That way I knew he was there and hadn't wandered off. Unfortunately, Joshua, who I wanted to kill constantly and who I also loved like my own flesh, bone, and blood, a duality only teachers know, couldn't keep still and started doing some ADD jig out in the hallway. This caught my wandering principal's eye -- though to this day I still don't know how she managed to lift herself to the fourth floor, part of her dominion she never patrolled. She barged into my classroom and dressed me down for kicking a student out in the hallway, even though, if she weren't such a narcissistic and moronic midget, she should have known I had not technically done. I mean, his hand was still pasted against that inside wall. Come on.
By the way, I had a double class that day. I had been minding another teacher's entire homeroom. I was doing my principal a favor, so I was doubly pissed at this affront. I stared daggers at her, and when she walked away, having deployed her bile, I yanked Joshua back into the class room, sat him down at a desk in the corner, and slammed the door -- hard. The kids all hissed "Ooooooh" in unison: I had just slammed the door on my principal. They knew it. And she knew it. She turned around, came back in and summoned me into the hallway. I can't remember our conversation, but, even though I was in the wrong, even though I had slammed the door on her back, if not her face, and had disrespected her in so unquestionable a way, I held my ground. I made it clear to her, in less profane terms than I am making it here, that I thought she was an unreasonable bitch and shouldn't have dared talked that way to me in front of my kids, that the classroom is my kingdom and I would not tolerate her meddling in my jurisdiction....blah blah blah. Youthful exuberance. I told her, more or less, she deserved my outburst. To her credit, she walked away, before things got really out of hand. Before Shit Got Real. But we were on icy terms for the next week or two. We came to a detante during the summer school term. But I never apologized to her, and she never apologized to me. That fall, I went off to law school, but in the years since I have visited my old school and she has always warmly received me. Water under the bridge, I suppose.
But around the time of the incident I do remember thinking, What the fuck is she going to do? Fire me? I bust my ass for this school, and I am good at what I do. She needs me here more than I need to be here. Let her fucking try.
I think of that incident now. I think of the collected moments in my life where, muddled by stupidity's slightly better-dressed cousin self-confidence, I didn't take my superiors' shit. I think of all those moments where I believed--and I acted in accord with the belief--that my employers needed me more than I needed them, that I had no fear of getting fired.
I think of that incident because I am no longer that person.
Now I have a boss -- let us call him Sean -- who sees himself as something of a teacher, but who has no patience at all, who fulfills television's worst stereotypes of lawyers (brimming with rage, mirthless, committed to destroying his adversary no matter how inconsequential the stakes), and who constantly belittles me, questions my intelligence and work ethic, and who I am beginning to think I will never win over. Now it should be pointed out the vast majority of the things that drive Sean to the brink of Hulk-like hysteria -- a comically melodramatic shuttering of eyelids, followed by a one-handed massage of his own temples, accompanied by very loud nose-breathing -- the vast majority of these things he is fully justified in criticizing. I fuck things up. This job has been a challenge to me -- I know nothing about the industries the firm's clients hale from and I did not have remotely the same level of responsibility in my previous job as I do now. Couple these realities of my job with my generally plodding way, and you can see how disaster might strike -- how it might strike all the time. I have no problem with Sean criticizing me, or my work, but what is bizarre is that he thinks bullying me, breaking me down, is the way to make me a better lawyer.
Now I know a lot of people have had bosses from hell, and maybe I've been lucky so far in my career in that this Sean experience is a new thing for me, but that doesn't change the fact that his tendency to fly off the handle causes me anxiety, makes me nervous, and consequently leads me to make other foolish mistakes that in turn draw further ire from his being. And none of this changes the fact that it's astonishing to me -- and I would think to you -- that Sean thinks he is helping me when he talks himself down from violent outbursts in my presence.
The other day Sean told me I don't have a "killer instinct" because he didn't like a fax I had written to some opposing counsel.
The day before he expressed his displeasure with the fact that I had taken a vacation "really early in my time at _______ LLP." I was dumbfounded. I racked my brain for a response to this statement; I thought I should defend myself. What would my younger self had said to Talulah if she said this to me? To my old principal? But no response sprung to mind. I had taken a week off after four months of work, and monitored my work email while away, and made sure the one or two matters I couldn't reschedule were covered by others. I had done it by the book, and now was being told I had done something shameful. Sean's statement hung in the air, and I just stared at him. I didn't mean that moment to mean anything; I thought this was just another example of him unloading on me and me just taking it. But then something strange happened. My silence, my dumb-stricken face looking at his, were counterpoint enough. Sean must have realized how preposterous his statement was, as it hung in the air, a stale fart from his mouth. He must have realized this was a bridge too far. He stammered, "I mean vacations are good. We all need them, but, you know, work piles up..."
I kept staring for a beat or two more. Then I gathered my papers, and said matter of factly, "Thank you, Sean," and took my leave of him.
I guess there's still some fight left in these old bones, but the fights going forward are going to be the tootless, bloodless kind.
a little more girth, a little less hair, a lot more gray...but they're back! nostalgia ensues...
picture it, you're 14 and kicking back a crystal pepsi in vancouver. some chubby southern guy running for president decides to don sunglasses and play the saxophone on arsenio hall. yes indeed, black people who are not the president are featured regularly on television during this crazy time. your school plays "smells like teen spirit" during the winter dance (the "snow ball") and all the plaid-clad white kids start screaming and smashing into one another while most of the asian kids decide to sit this one out. you don't know what to do, so you start bumping into other kids, too, despite lacking the requisite outfit and, erm, pigmentation.
first off, let's get the really important stuff out of the way. AA and AA--congratulations on the little cutie pie! and also let us know: did ayelet make the cut? if so, can i take credit?
anyway, so i took my first transatlantic trip in four years. old europe is still there, fyi. but you know what i actually want to talk about? movies i watched on the plane, of course.
#1 - anvil! the story of anvil. several critics fell all over themselves praising this film (anthony lane, in particular). why? i don't get it. essentially, this is a documentary about a canadian metal band that enjoyed a brief moment of fame some time in the 80's and the rough journey they have had since. the movie begins with a series of interviews with famous heavy metal musicians, e.g., slash, lars ulrich, some dude from megadeth, etc., all lauding anvil for its sound and lamenting its demise. i had no idea that slash could be so sincere, especially when you realize that you can't see his eyes.
anyway, so the two main members of anvil are in their early 50s, living somewhere in ontario working terrible dead-end jobs. the lead singer lips is an assembly line worker of sorts for a catering company and i don't even remember what the other guy did. they still play together as a band, as they have since they were 15. they have wives and kids and seem to come from supportive families, who either have given up trying to talk the two dudes out of continuing their childhood fantasies or actually believe that this 30-plus-year endeavor will pay off. the movie takes us on tour with them in europe, where they play in front of audiences of varying size (some as little as 4). long story short, you're left wondering whether you should admire or scorn them for their persistence and impossible optimism. i dunno, i thought documentaries were supposed to make you care about the subject no matter how ridiculous (case in point: spellbound). i guess this movie failed in that respect as far as i was concerned.
#2 - he's just not that into you. i know what you're thinking: why would any sane person watch this movie? what do you want from me, i was on a 6-hour flight. i remember that one of my usually mild-mannered coworkers went to watch this movie with a bunch of her girlfriends and returned actually physically angry. needless to say, my expectations were lower than low and perhaps for that reason i found the movie to be fairly entertaining. it tries to present itself as the definitive source on relationship advice, but i mostly spent my time wondering how anyone could find the mac guy attractive. also, is it me or does scarlett johansson always play the same person, i.e., the sensuous seductress who is shocked (shocked!) to discover that men are only after her body? and have jennifer aniston and ben affleck starred in a movie before? i can't believe this is actually a novel couple.
and finally, #3 - i love you man. can paul rudd be any more likable? foreal.
Look, I didn't go to fancy pants lawyering school. I went to blog school, after dabbling in a few culinary classes and clown college, but still, I know this: If you're going to craft a press release proclaiming your client's innocence, maybe you should neuter of it language that says, well, he especially did not rape so-and-so, thereby suggesting that in non-special situations, you know, shit happens, who's to say. Douche bags will be douche bags!
I think Aziz Ansari is a golden God. I am on record. But I am still on the fence about Aziz's post-racial comedy routines, at least in one respect: none of his characters have recognizably Indian or Arabic names, which Muslims from any region do and would have -- shit, none of his characters even have Christian names popular in the Subcontinent. But so much stand-up comedy has been weighted down by the worst, by the most facile of ethnic self-stereotype that when I watch Aziz -- a young South Asian Muslim man -- make jokes about getting his drink on and getting his fuck on and getting his cd-burning on, well, I can't help but swell with continental and coreligionist pride.
The death of Michael Jackson had a profound impact on this blog, muting us for nearly a month. In the old days that kind of an extended reticence would not be tolerated, but E and I are now older and wiser (and wizened). We know quality trumps quantity, and, shit, even Perez Hilton has a ghost blogger. So, you will forgive us -- and we will forgive ourselves.
Now with the big news: I may have been silenced by the sad death of a childhood idol and the carnival of ugly it begat, but I am spurred to action, at least to couch-borne typing, because dear reader Anonymous Alex and dear friend, his lovely bride Anonymous Tsipora., whose wedding shower this blog once covered in a rare bit of cutting reportage (but to which I won't link because I am not sure what kind of anonymity we are continuing to provide them with), last Monday brought into this world a beautiful little girl, one "delicious" (to quote 'Pockets) anonymous Middle-Name-I-Have-Not-Yet-Been-Told. 'Pockets and I can't wait to meet her in September. Good job all around.
Meanwhile Adam -- whom you will remember is my broham to the max from ------ Consulting Group days -- has been keeping me informed of all the happenings at the old job. Here's a run down: Smokey got fired; Lindsay Poohands got fired; The nice lady who answered the phones and worked herself into a sexual seizure telling me how good Brad Pitt looked in The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttomgot fired. There is no joke to be made here. These are all good people and while I may have enjoyed a laugh or two at their expense in these pages -- especially L. Poo -- it was in good fun. The point is this: this recession fucking sucks.
So, -------- Consulting Group continues to hemorrhage staff, butAdam has managed to hold on to the temp job -- and the Wesley Snipes Shrine continues to hold a place on the wall in his work station (including, notably, my still of Wesley from the preamble to the "Bad" video where he steps to Michael and gets an earful of You aint bad. You ain't nuthin'! ). Like the Dread Pirate Roberts in the Princess Bride who promised the (non-Snipes) Westley death at the close of each day only to ignore his promise the next morning, Augusta, the project leader, has fired Adam five or six times since I left, only to rehire him shortly thereafter. Oh, and apparently, my old alien-robot nemesis Abigail has evolved into a friendly being resembling a carbon-based life form. The whole time I worked there she wasn't the problem; I was. I suppose no one is surprised.
Still, even though I resigned my post from -------- Consulting Group, the braintrust there manages to mess with me: 1) in the days after I resigned, they sent me a notice of termination in the mail; and 2) as reported by Adam, the other day Augusta called him into the conference room and announced, "We have been talking about something behind your back, but now I want to bring you in the loop." Of course, he assumed the worst -- another pesky firing -- but was told instead that ------ Consulting Group was going to treat him and all the other employees to a sailing trip, and some serious debate had happened behind closed doors, some serious number crunching, and although some in the group wanted to invite me on the sailing trip, ultimately, they concluded there was not room enough on the boat. They wanted Adam to know this. I had not made the cut. They had done all that they could do, and this information should be kept to himself, and away from me -- to protect my fragile heart from the weight of the near possibility of maritime bliss, or maybe to prevent me from going all postal and renting my own schooner and ramming it into the side of the S.S. ------- Consulting Group. I don't know. But of course, this information was reported to me within the minute, and of course, I have turned it into blog fodder. And, of course, Adam and I enjoyed a good laugh, just like the good old days. Suffice it to say, I will never again work at such a wonderfully strange organization.
So maybe here's the lesson: Just like with Michael, eventually we forget all the ugly and just remember the good times.
Or maybe Celine Dion got a hold of some Soul-Glo (see video above) and no amount of wishing and hoping can ever make you forget the ugly (see video above).
I want to write a sweeping post about the death--okay, the evolution of--comedy, a result, obviously, of the Internet's fracturing of our popular culture and its promotion of quirk. But that would mean some bullshit bandying about of academese that no one -- I especially -- wants to endure (well, maybe Thumbu excepted). So, let me check my "discursives" and my "normatives" at the door, and say this only by way of opening query: Remember when only things that made you laugh out loud were truly funny? I have vivid memories of the scene in Naked Gun(or one of its sequels) where Frank Drebin uses the bathroom without detaching his microphone and everyone is made to listen to his bodily functions; that Barry and Levon $240 worth of pudding skit from MTV's The State; that Moleculo the molecular man skit that Conan O'Brien did when he was on Saturday Night Live. And I remember laughing hard at each of them and knowing that, that right there, that's funny. The first of these skits/scenes was universally funny, if the universe was peopled by awkward 10-year-old boys. The second of these ventured into some welcome absurdism, which my high school self had some appreciation for. The last of these I caught at a friend's house one Saturday night before a night out with a large group of people, none of whom got or cared for the joke. I remember standing in this friend's living room, doubled over, as ten people looked at each other, totally perplexed.
I have since watched all three scenes/skits and find them notably less funny than when I first watched them, but I don't think this diminishes their value at all. The thing to note is that all three at one time in my life made me laugh out loud, really hard. Why is it then that these days so much of what passes for humour in our popular culture evokes maybe a half-crooked smile? Robert Downey, Jr.'s minstrel show in Tropic Thunder? Virtually every moment of The Office ever? These -- the performance and the show -- have been haled as virtuosic examples of comedy by many people I respect, but neither have encouraged the slightest snicker from my person. It occurs to me that quirk, that certain boldness of performance, perhaps what Derrida would call differance (French pronunciation; also, just fucking with you...), these are the measures of good comedy, but where is all the stuff that makes you keel over because you're convulsing with laughter? Look, I like Zach Galifianakis plenty, but is clever and discomfiting the same as funny? Seriously, is it? I like Keyboard Cat (see above) too, but does he even qualify as amusing, or is he just the latest example of the mainstreaming of quirk brought on by the internet?
Don't get me wrong. I am happy that laugh tracks are going the way of GM and the newspaper industry. I like that we, collectively as a society, have put up some resistance to cookie-cutter comedy (e.g., America's Funniest Home Videos) -- and yes, I know there is plenty of evidence suggesting we haven't -- but is it too much to ask that things that purport to be funny make us laugh out loud?
That's my piece, and let me end it this way. There are two people on the Internet who make me laugh almost without fail. Aziz Ansari and Gabe Delahaye. They are also both my secret boyfriends, and I not so secretly hope that one day they make a baby together. Recently they both posted throwaway items in their blogs that made me laugh, and as anyone who has ever read the vile trash that is The New Yorker's Shouts and Murmurs section knows, it's not easy to elicit that kind of reaction through the written word alone.
Here's Gabe on the upcoming season of Entourage, and here's Aziz on IM'ing with his brother.
the news media has long exhausted the usual supply of recession stories about job loss, healthcare crises, detroit, retirement, etc. running parallel to this theme of quiet desperation are stories about (what i like to call) problems i'd like to have. the chief source of PILTH (ha!) is, of course, the new york times, which consistently runs stories about people on the brink alongside tips on how to weatherize your second home.
example #1: you saw this story about williamsburgers who can no longer rely on their parents to support their lifestyles. you rolled your eyes, too, at ridiculous anecdotes like -
Luis Illades, an owner of the Urban Rustic Market and Cafe on North 12th Street, said he had seen a steady number of applicants, in their late 20s, who had never held paid jobs: They were interns at a modeling agency, for example, or worked at a college radio station. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements.
“They say, ‘You want me to work eight hours?’ ” Mr. Illades said. “There is a bubble bursting.”
and the biggest PILTH of all:
Mr. Weinstein has been advising two brothers in their late 20s who wanted to buy a $700,000 apartment with $250,000 from their parents. But their parents’ investment portfolio has lost so much value that they now can give only $50,000. Since the brothers make about $45,000 a year each, they are now shopping for a $500,000 apartment.
bailout, please. and then it made me think, is this article meant to be tongue-in-cheek?
Recently, their oldest daughter asked Mr. Araya if the family would have to move. He told her he didn't know. She countered: "How much money do we need?"
"The way she looked at me," Mr. Araya says, "I could tell she was counting the money in her piggy bank." He went into the bathroom and cried. After a few minutes, he dried his eyes and walked back into the living room.
This is a picture embedded in a crazy ass forward that made its way to my inbox this morning. I have a relative in Pakistan who has a tendency to forward alarmist information about computer virus threats, warnings about temporary tattoos, and yes, the occasional insane call to protest because some western institution or the other has managed to affront Islam. Now to embark on this discussion is a bit difficult for me, of course. I write for a meagre audience, but an audience of westerners, and I'm not totally comfortable airing the overly sensitive small-mindedness of my people here for others' derision. But this latest conspiracy really deserves to be shared.
The gist of the email is this: In a blatantly provocative move, a bar serving alcoholic drinks has opened in a structure on 5th Avenue in New York City, a structure modeled on the Ka'aba, a sacred edifice central to Islam and located in Mecca. This bar, according to the wastrels who crafted the forward, is but the West's latest insult to Islam. Of course, as most readers of this blog know, the picture above is not of a bar; it is the fabulous and newish Apple store near the old FAO Schwartz on 5th Avenure. In American parlance perhaps it is referred to as a Mecca of Iphones. Inside, there is a genius bar where bearded and tubby gentlemen serve you bottomless chagrin and condescension, instead of PBR's. In the picture above the store appears under scaffolding, and thus resembles the Ka'aba.
So what to make of all this? I don't know. Today Obama made an apparently riveting speech in Cairo (I have not heard it yet)-- though by all accounts he failed to apologize for Steve Jobs' heresy. Today our President took a proactive move to bridge a yawning chasm, even as he puts other stresses on the structural integrity of that bridge. But do email forwards like this temper whatever hopes we may have for a shared future with the developing world's Muslim population? They may, but here for me is the rub: While in this world there are quite a few crazy-ass Muslims who confuse nihilism for piety, who have made Afghanistan their homebase, who are funded by petro-dollars, and who our governments are right to destroy, the majority of outraged Muslims (not the majority of Muslims, mind you) are like my relative -- intellectually vapid, unpersuaded by reason and fact, and constitutionally incapable of turning their critical lens inward (at the affronts committed in Islam's name throughout the Swat Valley for instance?). That is to say, the majority of outraged Muslims are like the majority of outraged non-Muslims.
And here's the point I want to make. Let me put down my latte, and turn down NPR to make it. These Muslims are no different than our own home-grown crazies, the ones demanding Obama's birth certificate be presented for their personal inspection, who want all taxes eliminated, who blame their own failures on illegal immigrants. An absence of reason, tribalism, pigheadedness -- these are the hallmarks of crazies of all stripe, American and Pakistani. We spend a lot of time thinking--and given the President's actions today, he spends a lot of time thinking -- about the twain and how it shall meet. But perhaps the twain has met.
It doesn't matter the creeds. We are asssailed on both sides by an absence of reason.
This picture speaks for itself, I know. But because I believe in two part harmonies, let me speak for it also. This is the greatest photo portrait in the history of human existence. It is also a picture of me in my dorm room in the fall of 1996. Your task is to identify how many 90's elements there are in this record and comment accordingly. This photograph will soon be on display in the National Archives; the curator thanks you in advance.
