AN AMPLE OFFLOAD

A NOTE ON THE TITLE OF THE BLOG:

Digital napkins. The attentive among you may have noticed that I've changed the name of this blog to "Digital Napkins". Why Digital Napkins? Because I tend to scribble all my ideas down on napkins or other scraps of paper that then accumulate in my pockets and on all the available surfaces of my apartment waiting—often in vain—to be transcribed. In fact, I've long often considered publishing a little book (or having a gallery show) entitled 'The Collected Napkins of Teddy Vegas." Anyhow, this new name celebrates the fact that my napkins now exist in a new clutter-free, crumble-free, electronically transmissible form.

UNREASSURING ITEM OF THE DAY:

Just read that the Bush administration has given a company from the United Arab Emirates control over significant operations at six major American ports.

www.cnn.com/2006/politics/02/16/congress.ports.ap/index.html

The U.A.E., it should be noted, was a key transfer point for shipments of nuclear components sent to Iran, North Korea and Libya and was one of only three nations that had officially recognized the Taliban as Afghanastan’s legitimate government. In other words, it’s a country with immeasurably greater al qaeda sympathies than the last country we decided to attack in respsonse to 9/11. Anyhow, yet another of those Bush administration moves that sound so inconceivable and preposterous that they couldn’t possibly be true. And yet, are. And again, you just can’t tell how much of it is a function of blind corporate cronyism and how much of it is sheer, dazzling incompetence. So, great. while every nail clipper and tooth pick is being confiscated from old ladies at airports, huge crates of nuclear materials will be smuggled in by terrorist sympathizers in control of our ports. Geiger counter toting International emergency workers in lead suits will discover that, at the moment our great cities were destroyed by a nuclear bomb, thousands of men, women and children were standing in their socks at airport security lines dutifully waiting to have their Rockports examined for explosives.

STRANGE PHENOMENON OF THE DAY:

Don’t want to jinx it (or maybe I do), but I realized recently that I must have a miracle halogen bulb. It’s in a little halogen desk lamp and I have never once had to change it in 9 years of daily use. I don’t know whether to be deeply grateful for having the Hanukah halogen or a little bit creeped out as if I’d unknowingly slipped into eternity without anyone having warned me. Ah, the fine line between gift and curse. When I first realized I had been given the gift of perpetual illumination (in a desktop sense), I greeted it with analloyed appreciation. But it’s now reached the point where it’s starting to have unsettling metaphysical overtones and I’ll probably be very grateful once the damned thing conforms to the laws of physics and finally flickers out.

OLYMPICS OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:

Have to confess to feeling a little bit of anti-corporate schadenfreude as I see each of the Olympic sponsors’ carefully selected spokespersons fail in their quest for winter gold. Bode Miller, Michelle Kwan, Lindsey Jacobellis etc. It’s as if the Olympics has taken a page from the reality TV show it keeps losing to in the ratings war and has fashioned itself as American Idol: The Search For The Next Bankable Hero. Needless to say, you watch as much in hopes of seeing a spectacular failure as in hopes of finding a true new star.

Speaking of Bode Miller, here’s what I wrote about his Nike ad a few days ago and forgot to post here:

AD CRITIQUE OF THE DAY:

I sort of enjoyed Nike's consummate anti-ad with Bode Miller. "Hi I'm Bode Miller. At the end of this ad there will be a website I expect you to either visit or not visit to either hear or not hear what I have to say." It's amusing to see the logic by which anti-corporate iconoclasm gets reappropriated by corporate interests as a way to sell product.

In any event: I notice that this ad for Bode Miller is no longer running much in the rotation.

NYT META-COMMENTARY OF THE DAY:

Speaking of Olympic failures: Did anyone see the photos in Friday’s New York Times identifying the crop of American Olympic disappointments? There was a pretty straightforward photo of Michelle Kwan and a caption indicating that she had to withdraw because of injuries; there was a nice action photo of Lindsey Jacobellis with a caption explaining that she lost a sure gold medal because of an ill-advised (and ill-fated) showboat maneuver at the end of her run; and there was a photo of hard partying Bode Miller apparently kissing a blonde woman with a caption that read: Bode Miller hasn’t had any success on the slopes. You could almost hear the rimshot. Very un NYT. But sort of nice. Since the NYT seldom quips or editorializes so blatantly, it’s hard to read the intended tone: Is it the reproach of a fussy little scold (“Tsk tsk he should have been chasing gold..but instead he was chasing blonde.”) or the admiring observation of a Maxim writer (“Yeah you go Bode baby. You know what really matters!).

OLYMPIC OBSERVATION OF THE DAY: PART II

I heard this Sam Waterston narration of the epic battle between Norway and Italy at the Lillehammer Olympics in 1994--a story of unknowns triumphing over legends, a story with a tragic death and an inspiring rebirth. I started by seeing the whole thing as a goofy exercise from the Monty Python School of Silly Walks and ended up with tears in my eyes.

A more detached voice in my head kept thinking "Wow, I guess they finally realized that the typical jingoistic America-centric approach wasn’t going to cut it…especially with all of the Americans losing. Our networks go to this kind of a story with all of the enthusiasm of the Bush Administration embracing the UN." Plus, I couldn't help thinking how the fact that this noble 1994 European agon took place against the background of the Kerrigan-Harding soap opera really highlighted the superficiality and silliness of our culture.

FASCINATING DEVELOPMENT OF THE DAY:

What’s with the guy Cheney shot in the face saying he was just so terribly sorry for all the trouble he’s caused. How? By putting his face in the way of Cheney’s bullets? Hey, let’s not fool yourself buddy. The Imperial Dick may claim to have been traumatized by the shooting but he also fulfilled a life-long desire to shoot a man—a desire that had been thwarted by his cowardly evasion of the military and sublimated into his obsession with hunting. But that aside: The veep shoots you in the face--mistaking you for a quail--and YOU apologize?? Damn. You really have to admire the way these moneyed right wingers stick together. I guess they’re just both so deeply, deeply grateful that nothing worse happened: Like, say, being forced to socialize with a poor person.

INDIGNITY OF THE DAY:

Last night I was awakened at 4. a.m. by a complete stranger making what could only have been a wrong number booty call. Bizarre.

CONCEPTUAL CATEGORY OF THE DAY:

The wrong number booty call.

THEME OF THE DAY:

Recycling.

VALENTINE'S HORRORS CONTINUED: SECOND THOUGHT OF THE DAY:

Realize I can’t continue with that Valentine’s nightmare story because it’s just too ugly. All I’ll say is the wife refused the crushed and severed rose and rejected the present her husband had brought for her. In response, he crossed her name off on the card and replaced it with the name of his older daughter. The 5 year old girl was thrilled to have the beautiful white gold past-present-future necklace…until the wife vengefully snatched it away and she ran up to her room crying and cursing her mother. Then, the man told his wife that even though she didn’t want her present, he still wanted his. She then handed him a shopping bag with an unwrapped Michael Buble cd and a chocolate bar, When he reached for the chocolate bar, the younger daughter screamed “No, mommy…you said that was for me!” Etc. etc. And trust me…it just gets too ugly to recount. Let’s just say that if it's true that comedy is misfortune that happens to other people, then this is really really funny.

QUOTE OF THE DAY DOING DOUBLE DUTY AS CARTOON WITHOUT ILLUSTRATION OF THE DAY:

VIS: One gay man speaking to another without irony while watching hyper effeminate American Olympic hopeful Jonathan Weir compete in the Men’s figure skating competition.

CAPTION: “Where has the masculinity gone in figure skating?”

ADDENDUM OF THE DAY:

Indeed: Where have the real men like Dick Buttons gone?

SKATING COMMENT OF THE DAY:

The woman figure skating commentator saying that “So often skaters wear such garish outfits and show such terrible taste…but it’s nice for once to see a skater wearing something elegant and simple.” Which is not noteworthy or interesting except for the fact that she was talking about a man.

Yeah, that’s where the masculinity in skating has gone. Shopping.

OSCARS UPDATE OF THE DAY:

BTW: back to a topic I wrote about a few weeks ago: Word on the street is that Race (“Crash”) and Gay Rights (“Brokeback”) have, as predicted, separated themselves from the more complex, less easily personified issues --Free Speech (“Good Night and Good Luck””) and Terrorism (”Munich”) --and have become the clear front runners in this great referendum on the relative merits of social issues. And the rumors are that Race just might win it down the stretch in an upset. If it weren't a matter of such profound societal consequence, I'd be tempted to say "It's all too exciting!!!!"

ENLIGHTENING NEWS ITEMS OF THE DAY:

Watching Calories Takes Commitment
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060218/ap_on_he_me/fit_diet_monkeys

Eureka..

Jusitce Ginsburgth sole woman on Supreme Court
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060218/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_ginsburg_solo

Now when exactly did this become news?

FILM REVIEW OF THE DAY:

I saw a French movie at the MOMA called the “The Secret Child” that made Ingmar Bergman seem like the Marx Brothers. Exruciatingly slow and directionless immersion in the emotional life and non life of its subjects. Conceptually interesting, Experientially tedious.

NOTE ON SPELLING:

I experience at this juncture a certain ambivalence with regard to spelling. I was always a very good speller and an excellent student and a lot of my sense of self-worth was tied up with being both of those things. But now I often take it as a positive sign when I look up after a few sentences of frenetic keyboard tapping and find that I’ve screwed up some homophone (i.e. where/wear) like a 5th grade language arts laggard might do. “Wow,” I think. “There’s some part of me that’s in touch with something deeper than correctness! Woo-hoo!”

MUSIC-RELATED COMMENT OF THE DAY:

On Friday night I went to perhaps the least hip event in New York: A James Taylor tribute concert sung –with extensive between-song commentary—by a gifted James Taylor sound alike. I had been offered the tickets for free and, since I confess to having a soft spot in my heart for the earliest James Taylor albums, I figured “What the hey? Let’s embrace the uncool. With vigor. “ Anyhow, when I arrived I instantly recognized the performer as the guy who sang Jimmy Buffet songs at a Club Med I went to with a friend about 9 years ago. I really hate Jimmy Buffet (and didn’t exactly love the Club Med) so he had that going against him. Anyhow, he began to sing James Taylor’s songs, with striking sonic similitude. He went basically in chronological order, meaning that the songs that had the greatest personal meaning to me (“Sweet Baby James”, “Fire and Rain”, “You Can Close Your Eyes”, “Something in the Way She Moves”) were sung first. So long as he was singing songs that felt like some fragile and miraculously still untarnished remnant from my childhood, I really resented his commentary on the origins and meanings of the lyrics. I didn’t want to learn, for instance, that ‘Sweet Baby James” was about the color scheme of the baby nursery (“Deep Greens and Blues are the colors I choose”) where his older brother’s first child, (Baby James) spent his earliest days. “Sweet Baby James” was the first album I ever bought and its songs (along with those of Joni Mitchell’s “Blue”) had become the emotionally charged soundtrack to my parents’ divorce. I didn’t want my deeply personal relationship to these songs recontextualized by this guy’s folksily shared anecdotal input. Indeed, as long as he was singing songs from that period, I kept thinking ungenerous thoughts like: “Wow his voice is virtually identical to James Taylor’s, but there’s some ineffable something that’s missing. Something that I’d be inclined to call the soul.”. I also kept thinking: “You know, I didn’t think this was possible, but he’s singing these songs with a degree of slack mellowness that makes James Taylor seem like Trent Reznor.” And I kept trying to preserve my primal associations with the songs by not really listening to his commentary, but by thinking about other things instead. Things like “If they had to give a title for this show it should be called: An evening of James Taylor songs: Can’t you just feel the Absence of Funk?” In this manner I achieved the cognitive equivalent of putting wax in my ears. Anyhow, long story short, so long as what he was doing threatened to tamper with songs I really cared about, I was unreceptive and ungenerous at best. But as soon as it got into the post “Mud Slide Slim” period (like 1975), and I no longer had strong connections with any of the songs, I suddenly started to really like the guy and appreciate not just his unusual talent for mimicry but the anecdotal and biographical information he was providing as well. Point being: It’s easier to be generous and receptive and big-spirited when you don’t really give a shit. Yeah, once he got to the middle and later stuff, not only was I more receptive, but I actually learned some things. Indeed, the information he shared about the song “Mexico” provides a good example of the way too much information can irrevocably change the way you relate to a song. Evidently, he’d always been mystified by the fact that the lyrics say “Whoa, Mexico, it sounds so simple, I just got to go. The sun's so hot I forgot to go home, guess I'll have to go now.” And then “Oh Mexico, never really been so I don’t really know. Ohh Mexico…I guess I’ll have to go now.” Anyhow, confused by this apparently contradictory muddle, he asked James Taylor’s brother about the story behind the song. The brother (Livingston) evidently explained that his brother didn’t know you’re not supposed to drink the water in Mexico and essentially spent his entire time down there on a toilet. (“Never really been so I don’t really know.). Which gives a whole new meaning to “Guess I’ve got to go now.” Anyhow, I’m glad he didn’t contaminate my associations with any of my early faves with an anecdote like that. So what’s my point in this whole rambling reflection? I guess my point is that we vigilantly and tenaciously guard the things that are precious to us and don’t want to have them indelibly associated with things like diarrhea if we can possibly avoid it.

PROPOSED BOOK TITLE OF THE DAY:

“Autobiography of Someone Else.”

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Posted on 2/20/2006 ( Permanent Link )
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