Blog
November 26, 2007
NON-POLITICAL PROTEST ART OF THE DAY:
A reworking of last week's New Yorker cover to address my primary pet peeve as a subscriber. (In case you can't make it out, those are the insufferable little subscription postcards that are forever falling out of the venerable magazine--ironically encouraging the faithful subscriber to terminate his subscription and read online.)
SAD IRONY OF THE DAY:
I rebroke the thumb (or at least set myself back a few weeks in the healing process) trying to open my vial of Lipitor.
LFAQs OF THE DAY:
Is there any experience more vicarious than watching someone else watch their fantasy sports updates?
Neil Diamond and Warren Buffett--separated at birth?
If Dennis Kucinich were tall, handsome and normal-eared, would the media be refererring to him as a visionary idealist and an inspirational leader instead of a fringy, unelectable joke? Even with the UFO sightings?
How tall, good-looking and normal-eared do you have to be as a presidential candidate to get away with admitting to a UFO sighting?
Which is worse. (With thanks to the Cialis commercial) Not being healthy enough for sexual activity or suffering froma 4 hour long errection?
What is the opposite of mucus?
How much time do we waste annually listening to customer service representatives recite their long winded obligatory scripted non consumer-centric, excruciatingly un service-oriented wrap-ups of the "thank you for choosing Verizon where it is always our goal to assist you and exceed your expectations" variety-- addressed not so much to you as to the supervisor who might review the taped call?
If Stephen Colbert joined the writer's strike picket line, should he do so as Stephen Colbert the peron or as Stephen Colbert the character?
If we agree that he should do so as Stephen Colbert the character, should his picket sign say: "Down with the writers/Up with the corporate profits" or "If the Writer's Win then the terrorist's have already won?" Or....?
Would you be kind enough to indulge me in the...
TEDDY VEGAS INTERACTIVE FEATURE OF THE DAY:
Please suggest a slogan for Stephen Colbert to put on his picket sign as he joins the Writer's Strike in character.
ART REVIEW OF THE DAY:
Really enjoyed the Lawrence Weiner show at the Whitney.
His works are, in essence, blueprints for works. Their descriptive DNA. Sculptures and performances distilled into language.
While I loved the conceptual purity of his project, I had a few niggling reservations. First, I didn't like that the fact that the linguistic recipes were not conceptually consistent. That is, while some of the worded works that were writ large upon the museum walls seemed mimetic of the color and shape that the dimensional work they described might actualy assume, others were instructions for performances rather than constructions (and hence had no spacial reference) and yet others were mere ideas that did not suggest or allow for realization in the phenomenal realm of time and space--but could only be translated or enacted as acts of mind. There seemed to be something a bit careless and sloppy in giving yourself that much lattitude (the lattitude between language that referenced physical form and language that did not) in such a rigorously formal exercise. Additionally, I didn't really understand what warranted printing these diversely conceptual outlines or descriptive distillations very large on a museum wall rather than leaving them in the more humbly scaled (and arguably more appropriate) showcase of a notebook. And on a third and related note: While I admired the discursive and reflective space cleaved open by these works (and vastly preferred this exhibit to anything I'd seen at the Whitney since the Matta-Clark exhibit about a year ago) I couldn't quite shake the feeling that there was a certain pretentious laziness operative here-- A desire to describe rather than realize that seems far more appropriate to say, a blog (you KNOW I embrace wholeheartedly the describe rather than do ethic!) than an institution of art with a $20 cover.
But again, I quibble.
In short, the Lawrence Weiner show is definitely worth seeing. If only to think about how you'd have done it better.
VALIDATION OF THE DAY:
The other day marked the 44th anniversary of the JFK assassination and as the world's lone remaining exponent of the Lone Gunman Theory (hence my status as the Lone Gunman Theorist) , I was heartened to see a piece in the NYT op-ed by a guy explaining his theory that the Zapruder film records an assassination attempt already in progress. According to this guy, Zapruder turned on his camera right after the first shot was fired (a shot that he claims--with some forensic evidence-- was deflected by a street sign) --a theory which, if accurate, goes a long way towards resolving many of the famous inconsistencies in the Warren Commission report that fueled countless conspiracy theories and emboldened countless conspiracy theorists who now spend their time far more productively by proving to us how the hijacked planes didn't take down the Twin Towers.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
I'm confused about what about this is short of the most amazing thing ever.
LIST ADDITIONS OF THE DAY:
Things that are hard to do with a broken right thumb,
Opening a bottle of wine.
Washing the dishes.
INJURY-RELATED OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:
I'm using my teeth a lot in place of my thumb. Experiencing the humbling loss of evolutionary advantage.
NEW LIST OF THE DAY:
A Thanksgiving list of things to be grateful for:
That the mendacity, bad faith and incompetence of the Isaiah/Dolan regime and the Bush/Cheney regime both seem to be reaping their karmic rewards.
Kucinich's wife.
My Fantasy Hoops Roster: KG, Camby, Baron, Manu, Leandro, Zdrunas, Josh Howard, RJ etc.
The mute button during most sportcasts.
The blessed mercy of the nap.
Chipotle the restauarant.
Chipotle the stock
Opposable thumbs.
Having had an extraordinarily kind, generous and loving father.
BRIEF MOVIE REVIEW OF THE DAY:
Saw Gone Baby Gone. A few quick impressions. One: If I never see another movie with Morgan Freeman in it, it'll be too soon. Too much freaking, oppressive dignity. The weight of his moral rectitude--in even the most ethically ambiguous roles--is enough to make the eyes glaze over. Two: Casey Affleck is everything his brother is not: A skilled, nuanced compelling leading man. Three: If you loved, Mystic River, you'll like Gone Baby Gone. Four: If you didn't love Mystic River, you won't like Gone Baby Gone. Five: For some reason, despite some very fine performances (and Ben Affleck making a fairly persuasive if fully transparent attempt to say "Hey, I have some talent and gravitas like my boy Matt.") I was strangely unmoved by the movie. Maybe it was the series of unconvincing plot contrivances. Maybe it was Ed Harris's distracting hairpiece. Maybe it's that I really would have rather been back in my lair tracking my fantasy sports results. But that's how I felt. In, summary: B , Baby, B
PSYCHO-ECONOMIC CONJECTURE OF THE DAY:
In the face of a possible recession, will Americans keep spending as vigorously as they have been? l say they will, because it's an addiction and we as a society haven't cultivated any sustainable, countervailing value to compete with that of consumerism.
UNSOLICITED ADVICE OF THE DAY:
Ladies: Think twice before marrying a guy named Peterson.
NAME OF THE DAY:
Pettigrew H McFarthur
CARTOON WITHOUT ILLUSTRATION OF THE DAY:
Jewish Mother introducing a young man to soomenone:
CAPTION: Meet my Doctor, the son.
PHENOMENON OF THE DAY:
Phantom Portfolio Disorder. Experienced when I logged into my Fidelity investment account after last week's NASDAQ freefall . I kept hallucinating the part ofmy net worth that was no longer there.
SUGGESTED NAME FOR A CUPCAKE STORE:
Ass Padding.
NOTE FROM THE HARVARD-YALE GAME:
At the insistence of two 22 year old recent Harvard grad colleagues who have adopted me as their quasi-avuncular mascot/chaperone, I attended my first Harvard-Yale game in many, many years and my first ever at the Yale Bowl. I did it in part as a tribute to my father--who had always wished for me to have a more mainstream, normal college experience than I had. It was kind of a corrective gesture--in his honor--for not having attended my recent unspecified milestone reunion in the month before he died.
Anyhow, I ended up getting separated from my young friends and--due to a network overload (reminiscent of 9/11)--was unable to make any kind of contact with them via cell phone.
While wandering among the vast acreage of Harvard and Yale tailgating gatherings, feeling a bit like a man without a country...like Tiresias caught between two worlds...like an old man among school, children (that is until I stumbled into the Yale Class of '43 tent), I overheard these consecutive (and somehow representative) snippets of conversation:
"He's got one of those Lamborghini Gallardos that he keeps in the house in the Hamptons..."
"..and then the Pommeranian put its entire head in the other dog's mouth!"
"I ain't no insurgent. I ain't no enemy combatant, shit."
"She said she was 18, officer. She said she was 18. I swear."
Best T-Shirt: Read this T-shirt if you hate Yale.
There was a guy with a video camera and a sign inviting people to "Tell me everything you have to say about George W. Bush." (A man shamefully associated with both of the fine institutions competing that day.) I step in front of his camera and say, "I could go on all day about how George W. Bush is a dangerous and mean-spirited ideologue but instead I will say only this. (I stopped to take a big sip from the beer I was walking around with.) George W. Bush gives drunks a bad name."
Some young kids passing by overhear my little summary and they say "I totally agree with what you just said." I asked them when they graduated and they said "Class of 2007." I had the impulse to tell that that I was a classmate...but that I have adult onset Progeria. But then I thought the better of it.
In the stands at the game, I kept seeing people who looked like the parents of my classmates. Then i realized they were my classmates.
As for the game itself: Yale was so bad they made the JETS look good!
NOT ENTIRELY RANDOM FRAGMENTS OF THE DAY:
He couldn't help but feeling he was returning to a place he'd never been.
There will have been no theory of everything.
SENTENCE OF THE DAY:
"The soup, a thin brown sludge with floating lozenges of fat, smelled of wet dog." -From John Banvllle's "The Untouchable."
RANDOM SINGLE SENTENCE PORTRAIT OF THE DAY:
He was such a workaholic that when he was forced to take a vacation in the Caribbean, the hotel maid found written on the walls of his suite, the kind of "countdown to freedom" markings that prisioners etch into the walls of their cells.
NOTE FROM THE JOURNAL OF MOURNING OF THE DAY:
Achingly sad to pass Westport on the train up to New Haven and to know my father is no longer there. So painful, returning from this journey made partially in his honor, to pass the stop where he'd so often pick me up--and to arrive back in the city early on a Saturday evening as I so often did after visiting him. I find myself once again thinking of what turned out to have been my last visit with him. And the fact that I did not stay for dinner because I had to get back to New York City for god knows what.
--
On my one venture out of the apartment on Black Friday (the day America most whole-heartedly--and to me terrifyingly--embraces the mania of consumerism) to get a cup of this organic vegetarian chipotle chili soup to which I've been nothing short of addicted, I see the son of one of my father's oldest and best friends eating in the restaurant. He does not see me and so I pass by -- as i want to avoid the obligatory belated condolences and the inevitable reopening of the wound it will occasion. Comforted by my fantasy NBA distractions and narcotized by my post-Thanksgiving Triptophane haze, I simply do not have the courage to feel that ache and pang of loss right now. By way of avoidance, I wander into a shoe store I have never really gone into in the neighborhood. I allow myself to covet a nice pair of Cole Hahn shoes and then promise myself that I will buy them for myself some time before the new year in honor of my father who loved nice things and whose last birthday present to me had been a pair of shoes from Kenneth Cole. After a few minutes, I leave the store and, with trepidation, make my way back to the soup place where, just as I discover that the family friend has left, I am accosted by a neighbor with a lot of building maintenance issues to get off his chest.
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Posted on 11/26/2007
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November 10, 2007
NOTE TO MY READERS OF THE DAY:
Sure I could attribute my failure to post anything in the last ten days or so to laziness or lack of inspiration. But I prefer to think of it as a principled gesture of premature solidarity with the striking writers whose cause I now arbitrarily choose to abandon.
SOCIO-POLITICAL ANALOGY OF THE DAY:
In reading Michael Pollan's excellent book "Omnivore's Dilemma," I learned that in industrial chicken farming, chickens are cooped up in tiny cells in which they are fed and from which their waste (or at least most of it) is removed. The feature that differentiates regular mass production from the production of meat that can proudly sport the label "Free Range" is that, in the latter case, the livestock are given a designated period of the day (I believe usually 15 minutes) during which the gate to their cell is opened up. At the far end of the giant meat farming building there can be found a small passage way with an opaque rubber curtain on it. If one of the animals happens to wander out of its stall and find its way to this door and traverses the little rubber curtain, it would find itself in a small enclosed outdoor pen--exposed briefly to the grace of weather and sky. Needless to say, most of the chickens neither make use of this little portal to enclosed outdoorness nor even discover that it is there. And yet, it is the feature that allows the industrial facility to legally market its product as "Free Range."
Anyhow, it struck me as being a little bit like the way we market our "democracy" to ourselves. And the way we experience and exercise our "freedoms." Don't want to push the analogy too far, but I feel that there is some kind of relevance there.
CONCEPT OF THE DAY:
Stealth newness. The novel being introduced under the cover of the familiar. Rather than the far more prevalent opposite phenomenon.
EPIPHANY ABOUT MY OWN ABSURDITY OF THE DAY:
I was recently told that, due to a technical error, the first two weeks of our fantasy basketball league might not count and official scoring might only begin in the third week of the season. I of course protested with vehement righteousness--as I have been obsessing quite a bit over my team's roster and have been alternating between first and second place in the standings. I actually found myself thinking:
If the fantasy hoop points I've accumulated over the last two weeks don't count, then all that wasted time was for nothing!
I was evenly divided between the part of me that saw humor in the thought and the part of me that didn't find anything funny about it at all. Ok: I was like 95% in the latter camp.
Ok, let me retroactively redeem my failure to see the humor of this thought by (shamelessly stretching the material and) annointing it:
TRAGI-COMIC THOUGHT OF THE DAY:
If the fantasy hoop points I've accumulated over the last two weeks don't count, then all that wasted time was for nothing!
LFAQs of THE DAY:
Did that gesture of turning wasted time into a quip keep it from being wasted time?
Would you rather travel unobstructed in the wrong direction or bumper to bumper in the right direction?
Gay Republicans. Isn't that like Jewish Nazis? Or Black Klansman?
Has the George Washington Bridge suffered a subtle reductioni n prestige due to having the same initials as George W. Bush?
Why aren't the people who outed a CIA operative (Valerie Plame) being charged with treason? Why are they not in Guantanamo bay? Why are questions like this so readily dismissed?
Which is higher praise: He's a good person or he's a good mammal?
Were the Pakastani police living out every American's fantasy by beating up the lawyers?
How many people have manifested the kind of magical thinking that allows you to take milk out of the fridge, notice it's a day or two past its expiration date and then, instead of trying it or throwing it out, simply put it back in the fridge as if it's going to somehow get less addled with the addition of time?
Or is it just me?
STAT OF THE DAY/JOKE OF THE DAY:
I saw a story on Yahoo the other day claiming that 53% of married men admit to ogling other women. It was also reported that 47% of married men lie.
ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE DAY:
Winning my first week rotisserie fantasy NBA match-up with just one thumb!
MUSIC COMMENTARY OF THE DAY:
Got a last minute ticket to see Sufjan Stevens at BAM. A really special talent. I'd say of the explicitly Christian musical artists I am aware of, Sufjan, The Innocence Mission and J.S. Bach are my three faves. Hell, if they were the only three faces of Christianity, I just might oblige Anne Coulter and "perfect" myself.
CURIOUS PHENOMONEON OF THE DAY:
When I arrived for said concert, I was given ear plugs by the usher. Classic. Actually, that (Classic) was the name of the earplug manufacturer. I wonder if they give blindfolds at the movie screening too.
OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:
The unlikeliness of two people being together isn't necessarily a bad thing. But unlikeliness shouldn't be the best thing that a relationship has going for it.
MEDIA OBSERVATIONS OF THE DAY:
a)
Larry King to Seinfeld: "Now your show wasn't cancelled was it?"
Larry King to Steve Erwin's wife: "Now a croc is the same thing as an alligator?"
Larry King: the apotheosis of casual avuncular cluelessness. If there were no Larry King, he would have to be invented. Most likely on SNL.
b)
The mainstream media is still abdicating its role as an arbitrator of fact and a critical filter for information. It still presents lies and truths (i.e. deceptive spin and established certainties) in a preposterously fair and balanced way. As if truth and falsehood were merely competing claims. (And, yeah, I know "media" is plural, but it just doesn't sound right that way.)
c)
Sarkozy on 60 Minutes. A delightful slap in the face to the inherent immaturity, irresponsibility and prurience of even the semi-serious American media. That the first question to the new leader of one of our greatest and longest standing allies (and a nation that finds itself on the verge of great socio-political and economic change) would be about his personal life is symptomatic of just how far our public discourse has fallen.
REFLECTION ON POLITICAL RHETORIC AND LINGUISTIC ELASTICITY OF THE DAY:
This administration believes you can keep something from being called torture by redefining torture as "enhanced interrogation techniques:" I can imagine Cheney stealing an old lady's purse. The old lady screams. "That man just stole my purse!!!" whereupon Cheney responds defiantly: "That's not stealing. That's merely using enhanced acquisition techniques."
Which suggests our second repurposing of the day and our first and only:
CARTOON WITHOUT ILLUSTRATION OF THE DAY:
VIS: Cheney, Bush and Addington breaking into a car with a crowbar.
CAPTION: It's not stealing. It's merely using enhanced acquisition techniques.
REFLECTION ON TORTURE OF THE DAY:
Water boarding. A terrible thing. Obviously inexcusable. And obviously--despite inspired linguistic evasions-- torture. But frankly, I found snow boarding every bit as painful and degrading. I never recovered from the first lesson of being repeatedly body slammed to the ground. Come to think of it, the boys at Guantanamo Bay might want to look into snow boarding lessons as an enhanced interrogation technique. After the first few bruise inducing encounters with the icy slope, those guys would become veritable chatterboxes.
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
"I guess that when the good guys aren’t even good anymore, it’s time to give up politics.” -my mother on her disappointment in Chuck Schumer.
Schumer's rationale (as expressed in a NYT op-ed piece) for supporting the Mukasey confirmation seemed to be a variant on the concept that the perfect is the enemy of the good. His take was, in essence, that the good is the enemy of the minimally acceptable. Or maybe even that the minimally acceptable is the enemy of the barely tolerable.
MOVIE OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:
Saw Michael Clayton. Was--for obvious reasons-- really moved by the scenes of the divorced protagonist picking up his son in suburbia for weekend visits. And overall, I was surprised by how much I liked the movie. While I'm not a fan of the whole romantic trope of psychosis as liberated truth (Tom Wilkison's role is reminiscent of Peter Finch's in "Network"), I really appreciated Clooney's carefully modulated performance--conveying his character's pained confusion and emerging moral awakening with muted gravitas. It struck me that Clooney is becoming the Robert Redford of our era; Their career arcs are really similar with both evolving from dazzlingly sexy young movie stars to the good looking but sober-spirited moral consciences of their generations. I suppose the same could be said of all kinds of liberally inclined leading men (Warren Beatty from Redford's generation, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Brad Pitt etc from Clooney's)--but there is a certain combination of beauty, charisma and complexity that links these two. No? Or is it just the Lipitor talking?
ADDENDUM OF THE DAY:
Other tough things to do with broken thumb:
Open bottle of wine.
Play pool.
Use chopsticks.
Origami.
Play guitar.
SORT OF A PROPOS, ENHANCED METAPHOR OF THE DAY:
Like trying to find a needle in a haystack. In the dark. With two broken thumbs.
CORRESPONDENT CONTRIBUTION OF THE DAY/WEEK/MONTH/YEAR:
Loren Parkins our fearless Correspondent at Large phones in from the Aperture fundraising auction to report that he doesn't know which people are eyeing with most interest: the art, the appetizers or the breasts.
For this we pay him good money. (but of course not during the Writer's strike.)
GEOPOLITICAL SUMMARY OF THE DAY:
This silly young country in this sad old world.
BAD TASTE POLITICAL QUIP OF THE DAY:
I read somewhere that among pedophiles who vote, there has been huge support for George W. Bush over the last 7 years. I was mystified by that, until I realized it was based on a simple misunderstanding. The NAMBLA folks thought his policy was called "Leave No Child's Behind."
P.S. OF THE DAY:
Sorry.
SELF-DISCLOSURE OF THE DAY:
I’m not a misery loves company kinda guy. I don’t want company when I’m miserable. Hell, I can barely stand my own company when I’m miserable.
NOTE FROM THE JOURNAL OF MOURNING OF THE DAY:
Dream of going to the place where I last ate with my father. I explain my presence to the waiter/maitre d. I sit in the seat and sob.
The waves of acutely felt loss just keep coming. I'm just startled by--will forever be startled by--the permanence and unnegociability of the absence. The fact that he is no longer there to call.
With the death of a loved one, one's life is irrevocably divided between the time when you had that person in your life and the time you no longer do. And you are endlessly shuttling between those two irreconcilable versions of your self--struggling to become the impossible integral of those two identities.
---
Until the end there is no end. And then it seems there is nothing but the end.
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Posted on 11/10/2007
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