Until I work up the energy to rant about the things and people really bugging me in a serious way, there are always plenty of others who should be told to suck it. Here are the current top ten on the inexhaustible pile.
1. People who veer left to make a right-hand turn, even if they drive small vehicles.
2. Anyone who believes anything they see on a reality TV show.
3. Parents who act like procreation is, in and of itself, an impressive achievement.
4. Male strangers who call any- and everyone they meet "dude," "bra/o" or "dog."
5. White people who call Black men "brother" anywhere outside of church.
6. People who park in two parking spots because they're just so special and their car is just so valuable.
7. Cops who speed on the highway purely because they can get away with it.
8. People who use baby-talk and talk down to kids as if children are stupid.
9. Desperative Housewives--the show, the premise, the public that makes it possible.
10. Females who call everyone "honey" or "sweetie" or, worse, "girl."
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Mini Suck: a new 10
As usual, I have more rage than time, so here's another from my new line of snack-sized hate. This week, the people, places and things who should suck it include:
1. Anyone who belts pants below the ass. While I'm sure your underwear is fascinating to you, to me it's just more information than I want. This is just stupid, and I don't care if that makes me sound old or out of touch. I keep seeing this on campus, and I simply don't get it. Sagging one's pants is one thing, but this doesn't look like a choice so much as an error--like someone just got distracted after doing their bathroom business. I should never look at a person walking away and wonder if they got confused or lost after wiping, unless that person has Alzheimer's. Not to mention, if you insist on showing your underwear to me, make sure it's clean and unstained, Skid Mark, okay?
2. People who share their personal names for their genitals, breasts, or other body parts with anybody who isn't already sharing their bed. It's bad enough that people persist in this cutesy nonsense, but I shouldn't have to be subjected to your body-phobic bullshit unless I'm trying to get in your pants.
3. Shiftless, lazy, unwashed hippies who make liberals look like unemployable miscreants. Don't get me wrong, Moonbeam: be free. It's just that your failure to bathe regularly, groom adequately, listen to recognizable music, find reliable transportation, find legal and non-parasitic income or, at least, retire the bong makes those of us who want social justice but live closer to the center of the spectrum easy to ridicule and ignore. You are not helping the causes you claim to care about so much as you're dropping out of society and refusing to grow up.
4. Those who refer to anyone critical of them as "haters." This gets extended into a little faux-street bit which says "Don't hate the player, hate the game." There are so many problems here. First, sometimes criticism is perfectly valid and has nothing to do with hate. Calling someone a hater suggests that their position is unreasoned and the criticism unearned. It's worse than an oversimplification; it's a complete dismissal. Second, you're not a pimp, so stop talking like you think you are. You are not part of The Game just because you saw American Pimp. Finally, even if you are a pimp, why shouldn't I hate the player, as well as the game? The game is usually demeaning, frequently violent, and always exploitation-based. Anybody playing The Game as usual is worthy of pity at best, and deserving of serious jail time at worst. Without the Players, The Game as we know it wouldn't exist. Stop the player, stop the game.
5. People who get tribal markings and other cultural symbols indelibly etched on their body when they don't belong to the culture it represents. This just bugs, though it does present a good opportunity for tattooists and other artists to manipulate the perceptions of the public a great deal in a kind of subversive way. I mean, if you don't speak the language or have a lived-in familiarity with the complex cultural connotations of your chosen symbology, then you're trusting that the website or book where you found it and the tattoo artist you took it to for inking are faithfully representing the image and honestly sharing its meaning. While the potential for a bunch of culture vultures to get royally screwed does amuse me, this is just a sad shame in a larger sense. Why do people feel the need to "borrow" other people's cultural experience? Everybody already has a culture; in fact, each of us probably belongs to quite a large number of "tribes" in a broad sense. So, why co-op someone else's? I don't care how many tattoos of Asian characters or Totem animals you get: you're still you. And if "you" is white, live with it. Yep, our people are responsible for an awfully lot of the problems. Don't make it worse. Own up. We've got some highlights, too. Learn your own history before you steal someone else's.
6. Door-to-door religion salespeople. In this, the Jehovahs and the Mormons are about equal offenders, with everybody else a very distant finisher. Stop trying to force your book report projects on me. I've read the Book of Mormon, and it's ludicrous. I've read enough of The Holy Bible to know that taking it literally is nonsensical. I have my own faith and values. But, even if I didn't, I do not see how your interrupting my day and insinuating yourself into my life is doing me any favors. If your Gods won't let you into their paradise without your having to recruit others, then it's not Heaven--it's an Amway convention.
7. Any person or corporation that patents life-saving cures for highly treatable illnesses. How dare you pretend to work in the interests of scientific progress and the betterment of humanity and then block the possibility of saving lives, improving life expectancy for entire sectors of the world, and fostering international cooperation--all of which can and does come from the successful implementation of health care into the most impoverished areas. Any company that charges more than 10% over cost for any medication is exploitive. But to take it even further and suggest that, while you've found a cure, nobody can make use of it without your being paid is unconscionable.
8. Habitually tardy people who attribute their rudeness to culture. I hear that people are on "Mexican time," "Mormon time," and even "Mommy time" constantly. You are not on a special time frame. You are not so damned interesting and unusual that we should all make special allowances for the fact that you do not keep your promises and instead selfishly waste everyone else's time in waiting around for you to show up. This is not something you share with an entire category of people, nor is it some unpreventable consequence of membership in the group you were born into or have since joined. You're just rude. But now, in addition to being rude, you're showing that you agree with and perpetuate stereotypes, and you think that doing so is cute and funny.
9. Fame whores willing to behave like animals, exploit their children and families, and shamelessly peddle themselves and their loved ones for unwarranted celebrity. While this is particularly relevant to cretins like the Gosselins, it also applies to Kardashians, the Lamas clan, those weird hillbillies with the 14 kids who run a B&B, and all the rest of them. We get it: you want to be famous. But you're boring, vapid, narcissistic, shallow, wasteful, tactless and greedy. These are not qualities in a person, they're serious deficiencies of character.
10. Parents who blame the schools, the government, the education system, the teachers, television, video games, movies, peer groups and anyone else on Earth that they can think of for their child's poor learning and underachievement. I've got news for you: if you know the name of all the characters on your favorite TV shows, but you don't know the names of all your child's teachers, principals, coaches, and guidance counselors, then the person not making the most of that child's educational experience is likely you.
1. Anyone who belts pants below the ass. While I'm sure your underwear is fascinating to you, to me it's just more information than I want. This is just stupid, and I don't care if that makes me sound old or out of touch. I keep seeing this on campus, and I simply don't get it. Sagging one's pants is one thing, but this doesn't look like a choice so much as an error--like someone just got distracted after doing their bathroom business. I should never look at a person walking away and wonder if they got confused or lost after wiping, unless that person has Alzheimer's. Not to mention, if you insist on showing your underwear to me, make sure it's clean and unstained, Skid Mark, okay?
2. People who share their personal names for their genitals, breasts, or other body parts with anybody who isn't already sharing their bed. It's bad enough that people persist in this cutesy nonsense, but I shouldn't have to be subjected to your body-phobic bullshit unless I'm trying to get in your pants.
3. Shiftless, lazy, unwashed hippies who make liberals look like unemployable miscreants. Don't get me wrong, Moonbeam: be free. It's just that your failure to bathe regularly, groom adequately, listen to recognizable music, find reliable transportation, find legal and non-parasitic income or, at least, retire the bong makes those of us who want social justice but live closer to the center of the spectrum easy to ridicule and ignore. You are not helping the causes you claim to care about so much as you're dropping out of society and refusing to grow up.
4. Those who refer to anyone critical of them as "haters." This gets extended into a little faux-street bit which says "Don't hate the player, hate the game." There are so many problems here. First, sometimes criticism is perfectly valid and has nothing to do with hate. Calling someone a hater suggests that their position is unreasoned and the criticism unearned. It's worse than an oversimplification; it's a complete dismissal. Second, you're not a pimp, so stop talking like you think you are. You are not part of The Game just because you saw American Pimp. Finally, even if you are a pimp, why shouldn't I hate the player, as well as the game? The game is usually demeaning, frequently violent, and always exploitation-based. Anybody playing The Game as usual is worthy of pity at best, and deserving of serious jail time at worst. Without the Players, The Game as we know it wouldn't exist. Stop the player, stop the game.
5. People who get tribal markings and other cultural symbols indelibly etched on their body when they don't belong to the culture it represents. This just bugs, though it does present a good opportunity for tattooists and other artists to manipulate the perceptions of the public a great deal in a kind of subversive way. I mean, if you don't speak the language or have a lived-in familiarity with the complex cultural connotations of your chosen symbology, then you're trusting that the website or book where you found it and the tattoo artist you took it to for inking are faithfully representing the image and honestly sharing its meaning. While the potential for a bunch of culture vultures to get royally screwed does amuse me, this is just a sad shame in a larger sense. Why do people feel the need to "borrow" other people's cultural experience? Everybody already has a culture; in fact, each of us probably belongs to quite a large number of "tribes" in a broad sense. So, why co-op someone else's? I don't care how many tattoos of Asian characters or Totem animals you get: you're still you. And if "you" is white, live with it. Yep, our people are responsible for an awfully lot of the problems. Don't make it worse. Own up. We've got some highlights, too. Learn your own history before you steal someone else's.
6. Door-to-door religion salespeople. In this, the Jehovahs and the Mormons are about equal offenders, with everybody else a very distant finisher. Stop trying to force your book report projects on me. I've read the Book of Mormon, and it's ludicrous. I've read enough of The Holy Bible to know that taking it literally is nonsensical. I have my own faith and values. But, even if I didn't, I do not see how your interrupting my day and insinuating yourself into my life is doing me any favors. If your Gods won't let you into their paradise without your having to recruit others, then it's not Heaven--it's an Amway convention.
7. Any person or corporation that patents life-saving cures for highly treatable illnesses. How dare you pretend to work in the interests of scientific progress and the betterment of humanity and then block the possibility of saving lives, improving life expectancy for entire sectors of the world, and fostering international cooperation--all of which can and does come from the successful implementation of health care into the most impoverished areas. Any company that charges more than 10% over cost for any medication is exploitive. But to take it even further and suggest that, while you've found a cure, nobody can make use of it without your being paid is unconscionable.
8. Habitually tardy people who attribute their rudeness to culture. I hear that people are on "Mexican time," "Mormon time," and even "Mommy time" constantly. You are not on a special time frame. You are not so damned interesting and unusual that we should all make special allowances for the fact that you do not keep your promises and instead selfishly waste everyone else's time in waiting around for you to show up. This is not something you share with an entire category of people, nor is it some unpreventable consequence of membership in the group you were born into or have since joined. You're just rude. But now, in addition to being rude, you're showing that you agree with and perpetuate stereotypes, and you think that doing so is cute and funny.
9. Fame whores willing to behave like animals, exploit their children and families, and shamelessly peddle themselves and their loved ones for unwarranted celebrity. While this is particularly relevant to cretins like the Gosselins, it also applies to Kardashians, the Lamas clan, those weird hillbillies with the 14 kids who run a B&B, and all the rest of them. We get it: you want to be famous. But you're boring, vapid, narcissistic, shallow, wasteful, tactless and greedy. These are not qualities in a person, they're serious deficiencies of character.
10. Parents who blame the schools, the government, the education system, the teachers, television, video games, movies, peer groups and anyone else on Earth that they can think of for their child's poor learning and underachievement. I've got news for you: if you know the name of all the characters on your favorite TV shows, but you don't know the names of all your child's teachers, principals, coaches, and guidance counselors, then the person not making the most of that child's educational experience is likely you.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Suck It: Unemployment by Email
One of the hidden downsides to the technological turn is that now cowardly bosses don't have to face the workforce they're forcibly ejecting from their professions. In fact, they don't have to face that this is what they're doing; it's "downsizing" or "budget crisis" or even, frighteningly, "modernizing." This is in no way a new phenomenon, but the explosion of digital media communications has only normalized this already dehumanizing and corporatizing trend. In much the same way that politicians have long been able to hide from public scrutiny via media exposure behind the mask of a press office, now employers at all levels can hide behind a new smoke-screen: the computer screen.
As if pink slips with your paycheck weren't impersonal enough, we now have eliminated the paychecks by turning them into automatic deposits--and then eliminated the pink-slips too by making the whole thing able to take place purely in digital interactions. First comes the mass email about budgetary woes. Then comes the complaints of policy changes and uncertainty, in the form of a deluge of emails, many incomprehensible. Next, a personal-seeming email expressing concern for your particular situation (insert your name here) arrives. Then it comes. Subject line: Budget Cuts.
The next week, you're erased from the payroll system. Your number--the only way you're recognizable to the entity you've worked for and depended on more than you'd like to admit begins grinding its slow and unpredictable way through the outsourced bureaucracy of COBRA--somewhere in Texas, or maybe Mumbai. Another email comes, reminding you to clear your office, or return your keys, or relinquish your parking pass, or some other impersonal-and-therefore-all-the-more-demeaning demand. You're now a detail to be cleared, a process to complete. You're deleted.
Economic strife and unemployment affect everybody. Job elimination is a reality for many employers, the virtuous and the wicked alike. Part of the reason that managers and administrators make the very good livings that they make (particularly relative to their staffs) is because they have the duty to handle these issues, the unpleasant task of keeping things running smoothly and on-budget. That includes handling staffing at all levels. When someone is let go, either for cause or for budget, notification is part of the duty of management. And when a job disappears for reasons that have nothing to do with the former employee, the bare minimum that employee deserves is an exit interview and the opportunity to hear directly from those for whom they worked directly the reasons for their termination.
Email hiring and firing allows those charged with hiring and firing to hide from the human faces of their decisions. It buys into the false and destructive metaphor that people are nothing more than raw materials, "human resources" to be squabbled over, claimed, mined, and then discarded--that there is no relationship there, no consciousness worthy of consideration or concern. It's dehumanizing, ultimately, to parties on both sides. By treating others as not worthy of human recognition, employers diminish their own humanity as well.
In other words: anyone who has ever terminated an employee by email should SUCK IT.
As if pink slips with your paycheck weren't impersonal enough, we now have eliminated the paychecks by turning them into automatic deposits--and then eliminated the pink-slips too by making the whole thing able to take place purely in digital interactions. First comes the mass email about budgetary woes. Then comes the complaints of policy changes and uncertainty, in the form of a deluge of emails, many incomprehensible. Next, a personal-seeming email expressing concern for your particular situation (insert your name here) arrives. Then it comes. Subject line: Budget Cuts.
The next week, you're erased from the payroll system. Your number--the only way you're recognizable to the entity you've worked for and depended on more than you'd like to admit begins grinding its slow and unpredictable way through the outsourced bureaucracy of COBRA--somewhere in Texas, or maybe Mumbai. Another email comes, reminding you to clear your office, or return your keys, or relinquish your parking pass, or some other impersonal-and-therefore-all-the-more-demeaning demand. You're now a detail to be cleared, a process to complete. You're deleted.
Economic strife and unemployment affect everybody. Job elimination is a reality for many employers, the virtuous and the wicked alike. Part of the reason that managers and administrators make the very good livings that they make (particularly relative to their staffs) is because they have the duty to handle these issues, the unpleasant task of keeping things running smoothly and on-budget. That includes handling staffing at all levels. When someone is let go, either for cause or for budget, notification is part of the duty of management. And when a job disappears for reasons that have nothing to do with the former employee, the bare minimum that employee deserves is an exit interview and the opportunity to hear directly from those for whom they worked directly the reasons for their termination.
Email hiring and firing allows those charged with hiring and firing to hide from the human faces of their decisions. It buys into the false and destructive metaphor that people are nothing more than raw materials, "human resources" to be squabbled over, claimed, mined, and then discarded--that there is no relationship there, no consciousness worthy of consideration or concern. It's dehumanizing, ultimately, to parties on both sides. By treating others as not worthy of human recognition, employers diminish their own humanity as well.
In other words: anyone who has ever terminated an employee by email should SUCK IT.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Quick Suck: this week's 10
people, places and things pissing me off this week include:
1. Anyone who begins articulating an opinion by stating "I consider myself a feminist, but..."
2. Giant Jackie O/Vegas Elvis sunglasses
3. English-only fucktards.
4. People who don't know the sound of their own car alarm and so let them go off on a regular basis, blithely irritating and disrupting entire residential neighborhoods.
5. Wearers of faux-hawks.
6. People who walk their dogs while keeping them on unreasonably tight leashes or in choke-chains.
7. Lousy tippers who act like they have an ideological beef with tipping instead of admitting their own cheapness.
8. Charlatans who undermine the credibility and therefore insurability and usability of homeopathic and natural medicine by exploiting the desperate and credulous.
9. Britney haters.
10. Everyone in any way linked to the commercial revivals of tube tops, jumpsuits, harem pants, ass-baring shorts, spray tans, tooth bleaching, boob jobs, dating old guys and marrying for money.
1. Anyone who begins articulating an opinion by stating "I consider myself a feminist, but..."
2. Giant Jackie O/Vegas Elvis sunglasses
3. English-only fucktards.
4. People who don't know the sound of their own car alarm and so let them go off on a regular basis, blithely irritating and disrupting entire residential neighborhoods.
5. Wearers of faux-hawks.
6. People who walk their dogs while keeping them on unreasonably tight leashes or in choke-chains.
7. Lousy tippers who act like they have an ideological beef with tipping instead of admitting their own cheapness.
8. Charlatans who undermine the credibility and therefore insurability and usability of homeopathic and natural medicine by exploiting the desperate and credulous.
9. Britney haters.
10. Everyone in any way linked to the commercial revivals of tube tops, jumpsuits, harem pants, ass-baring shorts, spray tans, tooth bleaching, boob jobs, dating old guys and marrying for money.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Another Quick Suck: 10 more that should Suck It
1. College and university students who wear licensed, merchandised T-shirts bearing the image of Che Guevara.
2. Women over the age of 25 who think that being called a girl is a compliment.
3. People who post medical photos on Facebook, MySpace and other public sites without warning. I shouldn't have to encounter the contents of your colon or uterus without consent, people.
4. Anyone who can afford better beer but drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon because they think it's hilarious and ironic.
5. Textbook publishers who put out a new edition of their books every two years, even when nothing substantial has changed in the content, gouging students and hamstringing teachers.
6. The University of California again, some more.
7. Fickle Obamaniacs who fell in love with him based on nothing and then out of love over nothing.
8. Students who both ignore instructions and aren't skilled enough to accomplish simple tasks without detailed instructions to guide them.
9. Parents who live vicariously through their kids, whether it be by pushing their children to accomplish the things they've failed to do or putting up pictures of the kids on social networking sites to avoid having to show the world what they look like these days.
10. People who pronounce nuclear as nukular. After the entire Cold War, you still can't figure that one out? Then stop talking.
2. Women over the age of 25 who think that being called a girl is a compliment.
3. People who post medical photos on Facebook, MySpace and other public sites without warning. I shouldn't have to encounter the contents of your colon or uterus without consent, people.
4. Anyone who can afford better beer but drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon because they think it's hilarious and ironic.
5. Textbook publishers who put out a new edition of their books every two years, even when nothing substantial has changed in the content, gouging students and hamstringing teachers.
6. The University of California again, some more.
7. Fickle Obamaniacs who fell in love with him based on nothing and then out of love over nothing.
8. Students who both ignore instructions and aren't skilled enough to accomplish simple tasks without detailed instructions to guide them.
9. Parents who live vicariously through their kids, whether it be by pushing their children to accomplish the things they've failed to do or putting up pictures of the kids on social networking sites to avoid having to show the world what they look like these days.
10. People who pronounce nuclear as nukular. After the entire Cold War, you still can't figure that one out? Then stop talking.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Suck It: Brad Pitt
This one has been coming for a while. There are so many reasons this guy should suck it that it's actually quite overwhelming to try to narrow it down into a coherent rant about the incredible annoyance I feel every time I encounter his smug, aging-playboy face. But, having just seen Inglourious Basterds recently, his irritating countenance is fresh in my mind and it brings the need to vent. There's so much here, though, that I think it merits sub-categories of Suck. Onward to the hate!
1) the face: I don't actually see the allure of this guy. I've heard so many times how handsome, attractive and desirable he is to any number of people, but to me the guy looks squinty, leathery, and a little constipated. His eyes are too small and close together, his forehead wrinkles are eating his face, and sunscreen passed him by. I don't get it.
2) the overhyped body: Again, I get that there is a thing. I saw Fight Club. I did not, however, swoon over his gristle-under-Saran-Wrap physique in it, unlike many of the women and even more of the men I know. There's something very G.I. Joe about the guy's body; it just strikes me as possibly molded out of hard plastic and there's something so deeply, deeply gay about it as an object of desire. Maybe, again, that's just because most of those whom I hear expressing admiration and desire for his body are (allegedly) straight men.
3) the lazy acting and/or lack of talent: There are really just the two Brad Pitt expressions: there's the smug guy, who smirks his way through pictures like the Oceans series and Mr. and Mrs. Smith and then the twitchy guy, who inarticulately spazzes through flicks like 12 Monkeys and Snatch. Smug and grating to twitchy and one-note is not much of a range, in my book. Let's just say I hope Oscar keeps freezing him out until he learns a new color.
4) the overpayment: I read a Forbes article from 2008 suggesting he made up to $35 million dollars per picture, between salary and pieces of the back-end of his films. Seriously? And we're falling all over ourselves as a culture to praise the guy for making a $1 million donation? What's the big deal? If he makes only one picture per year, that's still less than 3% in charitable donation. Hell, I give more than that, and I make about $35,000 a year. Besides which, nobody whose primary acting traits are smugness and twitchiness should be making over $30 million dollars per picture. That's just a gross overvaluation of the appeal of said smug twitchiness. Or twitchy smugness, if you prefer.
5) the apparent lack of an individuated personality: For this observation, I'm really indebted to my good friend Miriam, who pointed out that he has no clear persona of his own and just adapts who and what he is to suit whomever he's currently sharing a bed with. When he dated Juliette Lewis, he was kinda funky and rock-oriented. Dating Gwyneth Paltrow, the woman without warmth, he seemed similarly icy and Aryan. With Jennifer Aniston, he was America's Sweetheart, playing the role of the sunny, blessed, and grateful. Now that he's with la Angelina, he's playing the part of reformed bad boy (when was that era, by the by? I don't remember him ever being a bad boy, unless making a couple of movies with George Clooney and buying a motorcycle counts. For the record, it doesn't.) turned humanitarian. In other words, once again, his persona seems to be a comfortably niche-marketed simulacra of hers. This is why he makes such a good icon, really--because there's little hint of a real person oozing out of his enlarged pores.
6) the inappropriately younger girlfriend: This is an ongoing pet peeve, and not just with this guy. He's not yet Michael Douglas bad. Even still, he bears watching on this front. I mean really; he was already married to a successful, beautiful and age-appropriate woman. Then, it would seem, the inevitable "oh-crap, I'm going to die one day. I will not always be this pretty and overly attended to by an adoring public" midlife crisis set in, and he heads off for someone more than a decade his junior. I'm with David on this one--you get one decade in either direction. That gives you a full generation in which to screw around. More than that is just sad and kind of greedy. But, if he sticks to people around his own age, he might have to encounter women who remember him when he was a Fabio-esque wannabe, and that might salt his game. GOOD.
7) the dismissal of the wife: And that brings me to the plight of Jennifer Aniston. I'll admit that I actually hated her character on Friends and have found her movies to date to be...fine. So, I wasn't exactly her hugest fan or anything. And for years, I drooled over the bounteous beauty of La Angelina like the rest of the breathing world. However, watching the ungracious and utterly transparent way in which Pitt dropped his wife for his co-star and made no bones about the fact that he was leaving her in part for not wanting to have babies on his timeline and to suit his ego needs flipped it for me. It's one thing to grow apart after years--and in Hollywood, those years can rarely be measured in decades. But, it's quite another to make a very public display of ending one's marriage specifically to hook up with a much younger brood mare. That's just tacky. Not to mention sad and cliche.
8) the skrillions of bastard children: I've seen approximately 4,000 articles on the guy, in part because my mother-in-law has decided to adopt Brangelina as her substitute son and daughter-in-law, since they're giving her skrillions of grandkids and David and I will not. Each of these articles written since 2006 talks about what a Family Man he is, and you can see the praise rays radiating off the page even without the capital lettering. However, none of these articles seem to mention that he is in fact a guy who left a stable marriage to shack up with a younger woman, multiply impregnate her, adopt orphan children with her, and then not cohere the family in a lasting legal way. Apparently, this isn't supposed to grate on anyone's nerves, because we're all so laid-back and California about it. That would be fine, sincerely, if it weren't so transparently hypocritical and full of shit. You don't get to play the Traditional Family Man card for sympathy (Jennifer wouldn't have BABIES, man. What's a guy to do?? Cue the violins.) and also be shacking up with your hot, twisted, blood-wearing, serial-costar-marrying, brother-Frenching mistress.
9) the dissing of the ex-wife: In one final turn of the screw on the whole Jen-Brad-Angie saga, recently he's started (allegedly) talking smack about Aniston. That's just tactless and stupid on a whole new level. Aniston gets bitching rights about you until you both die, schmuck. That's the price of being a womanizing ass. You do not get to complain about her saying that your mistress bragging about bagging you is "uncool." Those aren't even fighting words. Be glad you married the classy one and just stick it to the other one, Pitt, because if your ex-wife wanted to rip you a new one in public once an hour, on the hour, she'd have a ready-made audience of other middle aged women who were dumped by their unfaithful husbands. Be glad she's only calling your girlfriend's perpetual case of foot-in-mouth uncool and not painting a target on both your backs or bashing in the front of your house, in the style of Betty Broderick. Seriously.
10) the architectural get-over-yourself: Apparently, between cashing gazillion dollar paychecks and banging superstars, he enjoys looking at houses. In fact, he likes looking at houses so much that he made a bid to restore and preserve a Greene & Greene house in Pasadena(!) about ten years ago. This resulted in a book, and even more attention to the man. His efforts boil down to throwing a lot of money at it, taking some pictures, and then putting his name up on a plaque on the wall. He's not an architect, he's a very moneyed dilettante. He's somebody's rich, busybody Aunt Greta.
11) the rape of New Orleans: And that brings me to his other book, and the Ground Zero of my hate. Just a couple of weeks ago, a book called Architecture in Times of Need came out, pumping Pitt's whole Make It Right foundation and extolling the virtues of their "rebuilding" efforts for the Lower Ninth in New Orleans. The only problem with this is that I was in New Orleans in April, three and half years after Katrina, and Pitt's much-vaunted foundation had only managed to build about a half dozen very high-concept houses, only two of which were inhabited. And, based on the cars in front (both very high end and expensive), they were inhabited by yuppies, not by the previous inhabitants of the Lower Ninth, which has long been one of the poorest districts in the area. To give a little perspective: during the same time window, Habitat for Humanity had managed to build almost 1000 homes in the same area, nearly all of them inhabited, and without anyone in HfH needing to write a book about how awesome their plan was and how cool they are for thinking of it. We talked to some locals while we were there, and let's just say that he's not so universally beloved in New Orleans as the publicity machine surrounding him would suggest. What he seems to be is a guy with more money than sense, and more vague notions of how to heal the world than concrete plans of action for how to get it done. Rather than throw millions of dollars and endless copy at what a saint he is for helping to get built a half dozen impractically high end homes--and the gentrification of the Lower Ninth that these buildings help to further entrench--we'd be far better off sending that same money and press to Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Prize winning organization, which actually can and does make things happen, even when nobody from the press corps is looking.
I could probably rant about the guy for days, but I think I'll leave it here for now. I mean, he already gets plenty of attention. Now he's gotten a lifetime's worth from me. So, in that sense, I guess he's won. Like the terrorists.
1) the face: I don't actually see the allure of this guy. I've heard so many times how handsome, attractive and desirable he is to any number of people, but to me the guy looks squinty, leathery, and a little constipated. His eyes are too small and close together, his forehead wrinkles are eating his face, and sunscreen passed him by. I don't get it.
2) the overhyped body: Again, I get that there is a thing. I saw Fight Club. I did not, however, swoon over his gristle-under-Saran-Wrap physique in it, unlike many of the women and even more of the men I know. There's something very G.I. Joe about the guy's body; it just strikes me as possibly molded out of hard plastic and there's something so deeply, deeply gay about it as an object of desire. Maybe, again, that's just because most of those whom I hear expressing admiration and desire for his body are (allegedly) straight men.
3) the lazy acting and/or lack of talent: There are really just the two Brad Pitt expressions: there's the smug guy, who smirks his way through pictures like the Oceans series and Mr. and Mrs. Smith and then the twitchy guy, who inarticulately spazzes through flicks like 12 Monkeys and Snatch. Smug and grating to twitchy and one-note is not much of a range, in my book. Let's just say I hope Oscar keeps freezing him out until he learns a new color.
4) the overpayment: I read a Forbes article from 2008 suggesting he made up to $35 million dollars per picture, between salary and pieces of the back-end of his films. Seriously? And we're falling all over ourselves as a culture to praise the guy for making a $1 million donation? What's the big deal? If he makes only one picture per year, that's still less than 3% in charitable donation. Hell, I give more than that, and I make about $35,000 a year. Besides which, nobody whose primary acting traits are smugness and twitchiness should be making over $30 million dollars per picture. That's just a gross overvaluation of the appeal of said smug twitchiness. Or twitchy smugness, if you prefer.
5) the apparent lack of an individuated personality: For this observation, I'm really indebted to my good friend Miriam, who pointed out that he has no clear persona of his own and just adapts who and what he is to suit whomever he's currently sharing a bed with. When he dated Juliette Lewis, he was kinda funky and rock-oriented. Dating Gwyneth Paltrow, the woman without warmth, he seemed similarly icy and Aryan. With Jennifer Aniston, he was America's Sweetheart, playing the role of the sunny, blessed, and grateful. Now that he's with la Angelina, he's playing the part of reformed bad boy (when was that era, by the by? I don't remember him ever being a bad boy, unless making a couple of movies with George Clooney and buying a motorcycle counts. For the record, it doesn't.) turned humanitarian. In other words, once again, his persona seems to be a comfortably niche-marketed simulacra of hers. This is why he makes such a good icon, really--because there's little hint of a real person oozing out of his enlarged pores.
6) the inappropriately younger girlfriend: This is an ongoing pet peeve, and not just with this guy. He's not yet Michael Douglas bad. Even still, he bears watching on this front. I mean really; he was already married to a successful, beautiful and age-appropriate woman. Then, it would seem, the inevitable "oh-crap, I'm going to die one day. I will not always be this pretty and overly attended to by an adoring public" midlife crisis set in, and he heads off for someone more than a decade his junior. I'm with David on this one--you get one decade in either direction. That gives you a full generation in which to screw around. More than that is just sad and kind of greedy. But, if he sticks to people around his own age, he might have to encounter women who remember him when he was a Fabio-esque wannabe, and that might salt his game. GOOD.
7) the dismissal of the wife: And that brings me to the plight of Jennifer Aniston. I'll admit that I actually hated her character on Friends and have found her movies to date to be...fine. So, I wasn't exactly her hugest fan or anything. And for years, I drooled over the bounteous beauty of La Angelina like the rest of the breathing world. However, watching the ungracious and utterly transparent way in which Pitt dropped his wife for his co-star and made no bones about the fact that he was leaving her in part for not wanting to have babies on his timeline and to suit his ego needs flipped it for me. It's one thing to grow apart after years--and in Hollywood, those years can rarely be measured in decades. But, it's quite another to make a very public display of ending one's marriage specifically to hook up with a much younger brood mare. That's just tacky. Not to mention sad and cliche.
8) the skrillions of bastard children: I've seen approximately 4,000 articles on the guy, in part because my mother-in-law has decided to adopt Brangelina as her substitute son and daughter-in-law, since they're giving her skrillions of grandkids and David and I will not. Each of these articles written since 2006 talks about what a Family Man he is, and you can see the praise rays radiating off the page even without the capital lettering. However, none of these articles seem to mention that he is in fact a guy who left a stable marriage to shack up with a younger woman, multiply impregnate her, adopt orphan children with her, and then not cohere the family in a lasting legal way. Apparently, this isn't supposed to grate on anyone's nerves, because we're all so laid-back and California about it. That would be fine, sincerely, if it weren't so transparently hypocritical and full of shit. You don't get to play the Traditional Family Man card for sympathy (Jennifer wouldn't have BABIES, man. What's a guy to do?? Cue the violins.) and also be shacking up with your hot, twisted, blood-wearing, serial-costar-marrying, brother-Frenching mistress.
9) the dissing of the ex-wife: In one final turn of the screw on the whole Jen-Brad-Angie saga, recently he's started (allegedly) talking smack about Aniston. That's just tactless and stupid on a whole new level. Aniston gets bitching rights about you until you both die, schmuck. That's the price of being a womanizing ass. You do not get to complain about her saying that your mistress bragging about bagging you is "uncool." Those aren't even fighting words. Be glad you married the classy one and just stick it to the other one, Pitt, because if your ex-wife wanted to rip you a new one in public once an hour, on the hour, she'd have a ready-made audience of other middle aged women who were dumped by their unfaithful husbands. Be glad she's only calling your girlfriend's perpetual case of foot-in-mouth uncool and not painting a target on both your backs or bashing in the front of your house, in the style of Betty Broderick. Seriously.
10) the architectural get-over-yourself: Apparently, between cashing gazillion dollar paychecks and banging superstars, he enjoys looking at houses. In fact, he likes looking at houses so much that he made a bid to restore and preserve a Greene & Greene house in Pasadena(!) about ten years ago. This resulted in a book, and even more attention to the man. His efforts boil down to throwing a lot of money at it, taking some pictures, and then putting his name up on a plaque on the wall. He's not an architect, he's a very moneyed dilettante. He's somebody's rich, busybody Aunt Greta.
11) the rape of New Orleans: And that brings me to his other book, and the Ground Zero of my hate. Just a couple of weeks ago, a book called Architecture in Times of Need came out, pumping Pitt's whole Make It Right foundation and extolling the virtues of their "rebuilding" efforts for the Lower Ninth in New Orleans. The only problem with this is that I was in New Orleans in April, three and half years after Katrina, and Pitt's much-vaunted foundation had only managed to build about a half dozen very high-concept houses, only two of which were inhabited. And, based on the cars in front (both very high end and expensive), they were inhabited by yuppies, not by the previous inhabitants of the Lower Ninth, which has long been one of the poorest districts in the area. To give a little perspective: during the same time window, Habitat for Humanity had managed to build almost 1000 homes in the same area, nearly all of them inhabited, and without anyone in HfH needing to write a book about how awesome their plan was and how cool they are for thinking of it. We talked to some locals while we were there, and let's just say that he's not so universally beloved in New Orleans as the publicity machine surrounding him would suggest. What he seems to be is a guy with more money than sense, and more vague notions of how to heal the world than concrete plans of action for how to get it done. Rather than throw millions of dollars and endless copy at what a saint he is for helping to get built a half dozen impractically high end homes--and the gentrification of the Lower Ninth that these buildings help to further entrench--we'd be far better off sending that same money and press to Jimmy Carter's Nobel Peace Prize winning organization, which actually can and does make things happen, even when nobody from the press corps is looking.
I could probably rant about the guy for days, but I think I'll leave it here for now. I mean, he already gets plenty of attention. Now he's gotten a lifetime's worth from me. So, in that sense, I guess he's won. Like the terrorists.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Quick Suck: a Hit List
So, with various illnesses, start of new contract years, ongoing budget fiasco situations, etc., it's been difficult to find both time and motivation to really let loose with the hate. In the meantime, then, the time is ripe to give a quick (and, hopefully, frequently updated) list of people, places and things that should Suck It for various reasons. Some will be more obvious in the reasoning than others. Sometime when I feel like it--a time between now and never, to be sure--I'll come back and elaborate on those which merit explanation.
For now, today's ten that should SUCK IT:
1. Ron Jeremy
2. University of California
3. Yelapa, Mexico
4. Owners of cars displaying more than five bumper stickers
5. Stephen Spielberg
6. Google
7. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods
8. Warren Jeffs--whack-job and FLDS cultist
9. Wikipedia
10. People who use "text" as a verb.
Updates as events merit.
For now, today's ten that should SUCK IT:
1. Ron Jeremy
2. University of California
3. Yelapa, Mexico
4. Owners of cars displaying more than five bumper stickers
5. Stephen Spielberg
6. Google
7. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods
8. Warren Jeffs--whack-job and FLDS cultist
9. Wikipedia
10. People who use "text" as a verb.
Updates as events merit.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Playlist: Furies
(awesomely problem women)
Haunted by Poe
Northern Star by Hole
It's All Over But the Crying by Garbage
Not An Addict by K's Choice
Hold On to Me by Courtney Love
Somebody by Veruca Salt
Just Let the Sun by Skin
Cherry Bomb by The Runaways
Death of a Whore by Juliette Lewis and the Licks
I Like Fucking by Bikini Kill
Well You Wanna Know What? by Bratmobile
Crazy by Alanis Morissette
Dirty Deeds by Joan Jett
Mother Mother by Tracy Bonham
Crazy on You by Heart
Mommy Complex by Peaches
WEAK by Skunk Anansie
Haunted by Poe
Northern Star by Hole
It's All Over But the Crying by Garbage
Not An Addict by K's Choice
Hold On to Me by Courtney Love
Somebody by Veruca Salt
Just Let the Sun by Skin
Cherry Bomb by The Runaways
Death of a Whore by Juliette Lewis and the Licks
I Like Fucking by Bikini Kill
Well You Wanna Know What? by Bratmobile
Crazy by Alanis Morissette
Dirty Deeds by Joan Jett
Mother Mother by Tracy Bonham
Crazy on You by Heart
Mommy Complex by Peaches
WEAK by Skunk Anansie
Playlist: Summer Camp 2009
(seasonal hits)
Back Against the Wall by Cage the Elephant
I Don't Care by Apocalyptica featuring Adam Gontier
Notion by Kings of Leon
Gives You Hell by The All-American Rejects
Re-Education (Through Labor) by Rise Against
100 Little Curses by Street Sweeper Social Club
Feel Good Drag by Anberlin
Ain't No Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant
Blame It by Jamie Foxx featuring T-Pain
LoveGame (Dave Aude Radio Edit) by Lady GaGa
I Gotta Feeling by Black Eyed Peas
Say Hey (I Love You) by Michael Franti & Spearhead
I Know You Want Me by Pitbull
Sugar by Flo Rida
1901 by Phoenix
New Divide by Linkin Park
You're Gonna Go Far, Kid by The Offspring
Know Your Enemy by Green Day
Savior by Rise Against
Black Heart Inertia by Incubus
She Loves Everybody by Chester French
Back Against the Wall by Cage the Elephant
I Don't Care by Apocalyptica featuring Adam Gontier
Notion by Kings of Leon
Gives You Hell by The All-American Rejects
Re-Education (Through Labor) by Rise Against
100 Little Curses by Street Sweeper Social Club
Feel Good Drag by Anberlin
Ain't No Rest for the Wicked by Cage the Elephant
Blame It by Jamie Foxx featuring T-Pain
LoveGame (Dave Aude Radio Edit) by Lady GaGa
I Gotta Feeling by Black Eyed Peas
Say Hey (I Love You) by Michael Franti & Spearhead
I Know You Want Me by Pitbull
Sugar by Flo Rida
1901 by Phoenix
New Divide by Linkin Park
You're Gonna Go Far, Kid by The Offspring
Know Your Enemy by Green Day
Savior by Rise Against
Black Heart Inertia by Incubus
She Loves Everybody by Chester French
Playlist: Spring Training 2009
(seasonal hits)
Love Hurts by Incubus
Dead and Gone by T.I. featuring Justin Timberlake
Second Chance by Shinedown
Wake it Up by E-40
Love Sex Magic by Ciara featuring Justin Timberlake
Just Dance by Lady GaGa
Swerve by Lil Boosie & Webbie
Single Ladies by Beyonce
Right Round by Flo Rida
Kids by MGMT
If U Seek Amy by Britney Spears
Poker Face by Lady GaGa
Lifeline by Papa Roach
Spaceman by The Killers
Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon
Panic Switch by Silversun Pickups
Undead by Hollywood Undead
Whoop that Trick by Al Kapone
Pop Champagne by Jim Jones & Rob Browz
Zero by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Dead Memories by Slipknot
Indestructible by Disturbed
Magnificent by U2
Love Hurts by Incubus
Dead and Gone by T.I. featuring Justin Timberlake
Second Chance by Shinedown
Wake it Up by E-40
Love Sex Magic by Ciara featuring Justin Timberlake
Just Dance by Lady GaGa
Swerve by Lil Boosie & Webbie
Single Ladies by Beyonce
Right Round by Flo Rida
Kids by MGMT
If U Seek Amy by Britney Spears
Poker Face by Lady GaGa
Lifeline by Papa Roach
Spaceman by The Killers
Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon
Panic Switch by Silversun Pickups
Undead by Hollywood Undead
Whoop that Trick by Al Kapone
Pop Champagne by Jim Jones & Rob Browz
Zero by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Dead Memories by Slipknot
Indestructible by Disturbed
Magnificent by U2
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Suck It: Reification Posing as Irony
Tonight I finished reading James Hynes' The Lecturer's Tale, and was reflecting on what a downhill experience reading it has been, how ultimately disappointing. And I should love this book. The critiques of literary criticism, queer theory, postmodernism, the politics and absurdities of academia, all of that ring very true. There are some lovely imbedded references to literature, primarily the hoary old chestnuts of the canon, with a few nods to the New Canon of Tokenistic Inclusion. It's self-aware and ironic and yet also strangely earnest. These are all things which pluck at my little heart strings and make me all gooey and willing to forgive an author a great many faults.
In short, I should be the perfect audience for this book.
And yet. When I started it, I was really enjoying it, reading a portion out loud to David on Friday, outlining characters and their similarities to people in UCSD's Literature department during my time there over lunch with Anthony on Saturday. At first, I was savoring a few chapters at a time, enjoying the many send-ups and call-outs of idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies I've witnessed in my own experience of academic life. Then, it slowed, and I started lagging to read it, almost dreading the next turn of the plot; by the end, finishing it became the subject of more morbid curiosity than genuine suspense. I'll give it a 3 out of 5 primarily because rarely does anyone so accurately send up a Lit department, and I've got my own axes to grind on that score.
It had so much to recommend it, so what went wrong? There are plenty of issues: the plot is a pastiche of a handful of very well known, canonical tales, for one. That's not inherently a problem, especially if you hold to the Campbellian view that there are only the few megamyths. But, if you're writing an insider's book, a send-up of the sense and sensibilities of a literature department, you should probably expect that some of your audience will not only get your references, but will in fact get there somewhat ahead of you. So, knowing that, shouldn't you do more than mug at the readership and have the characters engage in battles of literary quotation?
It becomes a hall of mirrors, a reinstitution of the "great works" as an aesthetic position, as self-serving political conservatism, and worst as just another lazy writing tactic. Case in point: throughout the text, Nelson's ongoing academic research projects comment upon the character's circumstances and parallels to canonical texts. This bugs because it doesn't go anywhere, it just points out some obvious readings of the text. I actually can really enjoy a novel that deconstructs while you read it; I have love for Gertrude Stein's very difficult The Making of Americans and Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. But this one kept irritating me. Either Hynes doesn't trust the audience to "get" his reappropriation of Shakespeare et al and can think of no better way to impart the themes than to come out and state them or he's just so impressed by his own observational skills and knowledge of the western canon that he's got to tell the reader about it, effectively making it a puffing up of his academic chest, the blustering self-congratulation of the deeply insecure. If you're going to be snottily superior about your own erudition and cleverness, then you had better dazzle me, and this just doesn't get it done.
That's not the worst of its sins, though. The big issue for me comes as a reader, rather than a critic: the lead character is a douche due several metric tons of comeuppance. And while the author all but transparently tells the reader that he thinks of old Nelson as a charismatic Gatsby or a Hemingway broken-heart or some other (allegedly) lovable ass and that we should too, the fact that the author has to step forward to tell you that you should love the guy, accept his utter lack of redeeming qualities, and find him "charismatic" in the bargain should have been a hint to the author and editors that, as written, he's an alienating jerk to read about, and I for one don't root for him even once after about fifty pages in.
I can't think of anyone whose poor-little-mes interest me less, or ring more false. Nelson is the guy who's pissed off he's not going to make it into the history books personally for the exact reason that it's already full of guys exactly like him. He thinks he's really getting screwed because history's full of guys like him--mediocre white guys--who became rich, famous, and powerful, and yet he's grinding out a middle class life. That guy never sees that his life is easier, safer, and more comfortable than almost everyone else's in dozens of large and small ways not despite his unexceptionality but because of it. In this sense, Nelson is the spiritual brother of Tyler Durden, another middle class white man who thinks his own stultifying mediocrity is actually him being oppressed and victimized by outside agents. Like Durden, his solution is to impose his will on those Others. The imperial narrative, the will to power. Rinse, repeat. Yawn. The fact that Hynes (and Nelson) can point out that they know the critique of their positions doesn't, in fact, change their positions. It's like when a guy prefaces a flagrantly sexist story or opinion with "I love women," or "I consider myself a feminist, but" or my personal favorite, "let's be honest..." Your disclaimer and self-awareness do not excuse or redeem you. So, suck it.
I don't want to spoiler plot, so I won't get into specifics, but the whole mishmash falls apart under its own preciousness and self-congratulation by the third act. Like the main character, it can cite chapter and verse of literature and can ape the jargon of theory, but it comprehends not. It starts out an incisive if bitter satire and ends up a paean to the mediocre but entitled middle class white professional man who rages at the world which promised him a kingdom and then told him he had to earn his keep. In the final analysis: if you're a lit grad student, academic grunt, or disenchanted humanities major, give it a read at least through the first 100 pages for the gleeful calling-out of the b.s. run amok in literature departments. After that, it's your call.
In short, I should be the perfect audience for this book.
And yet. When I started it, I was really enjoying it, reading a portion out loud to David on Friday, outlining characters and their similarities to people in UCSD's Literature department during my time there over lunch with Anthony on Saturday. At first, I was savoring a few chapters at a time, enjoying the many send-ups and call-outs of idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies I've witnessed in my own experience of academic life. Then, it slowed, and I started lagging to read it, almost dreading the next turn of the plot; by the end, finishing it became the subject of more morbid curiosity than genuine suspense. I'll give it a 3 out of 5 primarily because rarely does anyone so accurately send up a Lit department, and I've got my own axes to grind on that score.
It had so much to recommend it, so what went wrong? There are plenty of issues: the plot is a pastiche of a handful of very well known, canonical tales, for one. That's not inherently a problem, especially if you hold to the Campbellian view that there are only the few megamyths. But, if you're writing an insider's book, a send-up of the sense and sensibilities of a literature department, you should probably expect that some of your audience will not only get your references, but will in fact get there somewhat ahead of you. So, knowing that, shouldn't you do more than mug at the readership and have the characters engage in battles of literary quotation?
It becomes a hall of mirrors, a reinstitution of the "great works" as an aesthetic position, as self-serving political conservatism, and worst as just another lazy writing tactic. Case in point: throughout the text, Nelson's ongoing academic research projects comment upon the character's circumstances and parallels to canonical texts. This bugs because it doesn't go anywhere, it just points out some obvious readings of the text. I actually can really enjoy a novel that deconstructs while you read it; I have love for Gertrude Stein's very difficult The Making of Americans and Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. But this one kept irritating me. Either Hynes doesn't trust the audience to "get" his reappropriation of Shakespeare et al and can think of no better way to impart the themes than to come out and state them or he's just so impressed by his own observational skills and knowledge of the western canon that he's got to tell the reader about it, effectively making it a puffing up of his academic chest, the blustering self-congratulation of the deeply insecure. If you're going to be snottily superior about your own erudition and cleverness, then you had better dazzle me, and this just doesn't get it done.
That's not the worst of its sins, though. The big issue for me comes as a reader, rather than a critic: the lead character is a douche due several metric tons of comeuppance. And while the author all but transparently tells the reader that he thinks of old Nelson as a charismatic Gatsby or a Hemingway broken-heart or some other (allegedly) lovable ass and that we should too, the fact that the author has to step forward to tell you that you should love the guy, accept his utter lack of redeeming qualities, and find him "charismatic" in the bargain should have been a hint to the author and editors that, as written, he's an alienating jerk to read about, and I for one don't root for him even once after about fifty pages in.
I can't think of anyone whose poor-little-mes interest me less, or ring more false. Nelson is the guy who's pissed off he's not going to make it into the history books personally for the exact reason that it's already full of guys exactly like him. He thinks he's really getting screwed because history's full of guys like him--mediocre white guys--who became rich, famous, and powerful, and yet he's grinding out a middle class life. That guy never sees that his life is easier, safer, and more comfortable than almost everyone else's in dozens of large and small ways not despite his unexceptionality but because of it. In this sense, Nelson is the spiritual brother of Tyler Durden, another middle class white man who thinks his own stultifying mediocrity is actually him being oppressed and victimized by outside agents. Like Durden, his solution is to impose his will on those Others. The imperial narrative, the will to power. Rinse, repeat. Yawn. The fact that Hynes (and Nelson) can point out that they know the critique of their positions doesn't, in fact, change their positions. It's like when a guy prefaces a flagrantly sexist story or opinion with "I love women," or "I consider myself a feminist, but" or my personal favorite, "let's be honest..." Your disclaimer and self-awareness do not excuse or redeem you. So, suck it.
I don't want to spoiler plot, so I won't get into specifics, but the whole mishmash falls apart under its own preciousness and self-congratulation by the third act. Like the main character, it can cite chapter and verse of literature and can ape the jargon of theory, but it comprehends not. It starts out an incisive if bitter satire and ends up a paean to the mediocre but entitled middle class white professional man who rages at the world which promised him a kingdom and then told him he had to earn his keep. In the final analysis: if you're a lit grad student, academic grunt, or disenchanted humanities major, give it a read at least through the first 100 pages for the gleeful calling-out of the b.s. run amok in literature departments. After that, it's your call.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Suck It: allegedly well-intentioned people
I used to think it was primarily a thing of mothers to their daughters, part of the carnivalesque ride that is the mother/daughter relationship. Sometimes, it seemed like a weapon wielded by those thwarted in their desires, like middle school math teachers whose dreams of astronaut status flamed out early and left them bitter. Or perhaps it was something that mother-in-laws learned to excel at, developing their passive-aggressive mojo well into their senior years. But, no. It's everywhere, everyone, and it's driving me crazy.
I refer, naturally, to the back-handed compliment and all other comments like it. Include in this pile the seemingly well-intentioned advice which also implies that you have the intelligence of a fruit fly and need to be hand-led through life. Also of this ilk is the pretended encouragement which is actually dispiriting, disparaging, depressing, or otherwise destructive.
If you're still unclear as to what I mean, then examples are in order. Besides, I have a war chest full of them and a pathological need to vent my spleen. So, here are some sample moments from my personal collection:
1) To one's daughter, who has struggled for years to lose 80 pounds: "You look so good. I'm so proud of you. So, are you hungry? I just made brownies." Why not say: "I thought we were in this fat thing together. That's how I designed it, and it threatens me when you defy my edicts."?
2) To a man training for a marathon: "You really run an eight minute mile? Really? Well, then I want to come on a run with you." Why not just say: "You're either lying, or running an eight minute miles is really easy. Man, I'll bet I can run a six minute mile."?
3) To someone unseen for many years, now much thinner, healthier, and happier than when last met: "Well, you certainly look young in the face." Just go ahead and cop to the fact that you don't really remember what they looked like that well, and you recognized them, so they seem about the same to you.
4) To someone who several years ago ended a ten year smoking habit, after a quiet battle of several months: "I never saw you so much as cheat, or even really jones for one. Quitting smoking must be a lot easier than everyone says. It makes you think, doesn't it? I mean, acting like it's so hard is almost like telling people they shouldn't even try to quit, isn't it?" Go ahead and admit you smoke secretly, okay? You don't have to invent a conspiracy theory or act like my keeping my struggles to myself somehow encourages you to smoke.
5) To a colleague training for a destination half-marathon: "Are you sure you're ready for that course? I mean, I trained for it all last summer, and my finishing time was quite a bit slower than I anticipated." Why not just tell me you think of yourself as faster than me in all senses, and since you barely finished, you assume I won't be able to finish at all. In fact, while you don't need to say this to me, you should probably admit to yourself that you think you're actually being a good person by saying this to me: you think you're saving me from a humiliation, because you so fundamentally believe you're better than me that it never enters your consciousness to think I might actually be better prepared for this event than you were.
6) To a struggling working-class graduate student: "Well, I think it's amazing how well you're doing, especially considering where you're coming from." Why not just say, "But you're so articulate," you entitled, elitist fuck? Believe it or not, the standards are not higher for those to the manor born. If anything, they're lower, and you'd know that if you'd done any of the required reading in your theory sequence, instead of playing beer pong and hitting on your composition students.
7) Or, as my lovely partner said to me when I was ranting about this very subject: "Wow, these are great examples. You should really write them down or you won't remember them." Thanks, honey. Good thing I've got you looking out for me. It's amazing I can dress myself in the morning, much less figure out how to write a blog--which is, after all, the most intellectually challenging and rigorous of tasks, what with the utter lack of publication rigors, editorial standards, and in my case...oh, say, readership.
I am certain you can think of a dozen variations of your own. That's just it; passive aggression rears its head several times a day in all of our lives, I think. Why don't people just tell you what they think? If you want to tell me I'm full of shit, or a big lardass, or you just don't dig my stylings, then just say so. This endless need to unpack the most basic of chitchat for the real, implied meaning wastes time and energy. Why do we bother to interact on a superficially pleasant level with people who clearly do not like or respect us or our efforts?
Sometimes, it's not even passive-aggression in the usual sense. It's not so much that the person has a conscious judgement they're trying to express covertly, or a nasty sense of superiority to flaunt. Sometimes, it seems like it legitimately comes from a desire to do good. That's almost worse, really. No, it is worse, really, because it smacks of such profound condescension. So, there's no out; any way the deck is dealt, these sneakily undermining comments don't serve a positive purpose--unless we count vapid small talk and empty well-wishing as positive ends. And, looking around, maybe we do.
It seems like the social niceties count for a great deal more than does actual communication, standing by your opinions, or sharing one's candid understanding of the world. I get that little white lies make it possible for us to interact with those we may love or loathe, but in any case can't avoid: bosses, colleagues, in-laws, relatives, government workers and service professionals. What I don't get is how often these moments seem to take on a life of their own, dominating our exchanges and dotting our conversations with moments of such utter falsity that it fills me with rage and shame to participate at all.
Or, to be more direct: suck it.
I refer, naturally, to the back-handed compliment and all other comments like it. Include in this pile the seemingly well-intentioned advice which also implies that you have the intelligence of a fruit fly and need to be hand-led through life. Also of this ilk is the pretended encouragement which is actually dispiriting, disparaging, depressing, or otherwise destructive.
If you're still unclear as to what I mean, then examples are in order. Besides, I have a war chest full of them and a pathological need to vent my spleen. So, here are some sample moments from my personal collection:
1) To one's daughter, who has struggled for years to lose 80 pounds: "You look so good. I'm so proud of you. So, are you hungry? I just made brownies." Why not say: "I thought we were in this fat thing together. That's how I designed it, and it threatens me when you defy my edicts."?
2) To a man training for a marathon: "You really run an eight minute mile? Really? Well, then I want to come on a run with you." Why not just say: "You're either lying, or running an eight minute miles is really easy. Man, I'll bet I can run a six minute mile."?
3) To someone unseen for many years, now much thinner, healthier, and happier than when last met: "Well, you certainly look young in the face." Just go ahead and cop to the fact that you don't really remember what they looked like that well, and you recognized them, so they seem about the same to you.
4) To someone who several years ago ended a ten year smoking habit, after a quiet battle of several months: "I never saw you so much as cheat, or even really jones for one. Quitting smoking must be a lot easier than everyone says. It makes you think, doesn't it? I mean, acting like it's so hard is almost like telling people they shouldn't even try to quit, isn't it?" Go ahead and admit you smoke secretly, okay? You don't have to invent a conspiracy theory or act like my keeping my struggles to myself somehow encourages you to smoke.
5) To a colleague training for a destination half-marathon: "Are you sure you're ready for that course? I mean, I trained for it all last summer, and my finishing time was quite a bit slower than I anticipated." Why not just tell me you think of yourself as faster than me in all senses, and since you barely finished, you assume I won't be able to finish at all. In fact, while you don't need to say this to me, you should probably admit to yourself that you think you're actually being a good person by saying this to me: you think you're saving me from a humiliation, because you so fundamentally believe you're better than me that it never enters your consciousness to think I might actually be better prepared for this event than you were.
6) To a struggling working-class graduate student: "Well, I think it's amazing how well you're doing, especially considering where you're coming from." Why not just say, "But you're so articulate," you entitled, elitist fuck? Believe it or not, the standards are not higher for those to the manor born. If anything, they're lower, and you'd know that if you'd done any of the required reading in your theory sequence, instead of playing beer pong and hitting on your composition students.
7) Or, as my lovely partner said to me when I was ranting about this very subject: "Wow, these are great examples. You should really write them down or you won't remember them." Thanks, honey. Good thing I've got you looking out for me. It's amazing I can dress myself in the morning, much less figure out how to write a blog--which is, after all, the most intellectually challenging and rigorous of tasks, what with the utter lack of publication rigors, editorial standards, and in my case...oh, say, readership.
I am certain you can think of a dozen variations of your own. That's just it; passive aggression rears its head several times a day in all of our lives, I think. Why don't people just tell you what they think? If you want to tell me I'm full of shit, or a big lardass, or you just don't dig my stylings, then just say so. This endless need to unpack the most basic of chitchat for the real, implied meaning wastes time and energy. Why do we bother to interact on a superficially pleasant level with people who clearly do not like or respect us or our efforts?
Sometimes, it's not even passive-aggression in the usual sense. It's not so much that the person has a conscious judgement they're trying to express covertly, or a nasty sense of superiority to flaunt. Sometimes, it seems like it legitimately comes from a desire to do good. That's almost worse, really. No, it is worse, really, because it smacks of such profound condescension. So, there's no out; any way the deck is dealt, these sneakily undermining comments don't serve a positive purpose--unless we count vapid small talk and empty well-wishing as positive ends. And, looking around, maybe we do.
It seems like the social niceties count for a great deal more than does actual communication, standing by your opinions, or sharing one's candid understanding of the world. I get that little white lies make it possible for us to interact with those we may love or loathe, but in any case can't avoid: bosses, colleagues, in-laws, relatives, government workers and service professionals. What I don't get is how often these moments seem to take on a life of their own, dominating our exchanges and dotting our conversations with moments of such utter falsity that it fills me with rage and shame to participate at all.
Or, to be more direct: suck it.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Playlist: Manson vs. Manson
#1 Crush by Garbage
Putting Holes in Happiness by Marilyn Manson
Vow by Garbage
mOBSCENE by Marilyn Manson
Androgyny by Garbage
This Is the New Shit by Marilyn Manson
Silence is Golden by Garbage
Heart-Shaped Glasses by Marilyn Manson
Why Do You Love Me? by Garbage
I Put a Spell on You covered by Marilyn Manson
Push It [Boom Boom Satellites Mix] by Garbage
Cake and Sodomy by Marilyn Manson
Queer by Garbage
Tourniquet by Marilyn Manson
Bad Boyfriend by Garbage
Playlist: Child of Bret Easton
(mostly 80s. songs that belong in a movie with James Spader.)
(Also: I like Billy Idol. Deal with it.)
Dancing With Myself by Billy Idol
Beat My Guest by Adam Ant
Stray Cat Strut by Stray Cats
Cradle of Love by Billy Idol
Hazy Shade of Winter covered by The Bangles
Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon
We Got the Beat by The Go-Gos
White Wedding by Billy Idol
Girls Just Want to Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper
Venus by Bananarama
You Keep Me Hangin' On by Kim Wilde
Dead Man's Party by Oingo Boingo
Rebel Yell by Billy Idol
Pretty in Pink by The Psychedelic Furs
(Also: I like Billy Idol. Deal with it.)
Dancing With Myself by Billy Idol
Beat My Guest by Adam Ant
Stray Cat Strut by Stray Cats
Cradle of Love by Billy Idol
Hazy Shade of Winter covered by The Bangles
Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon
We Got the Beat by The Go-Gos
White Wedding by Billy Idol
Girls Just Want to Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper
Venus by Bananarama
You Keep Me Hangin' On by Kim Wilde
Dead Man's Party by Oingo Boingo
Rebel Yell by Billy Idol
Pretty in Pink by The Psychedelic Furs
Playlist: Aging Hipster 2007
Fireworks by The Whitest Boy Alive
Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand
Dance, Dance by Fall Out Boy
Punk Rock Princess by Something Corporate
When You Were Young by The Killers
Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes
Paralyzer by Finger Eleven
Don't Ask Me by OK Go
Song 2 by Blur
Salute Your Solution by The Raconteurs
You Only Live Once by The Strokes
C'Mon C'Mon by The Von Bondies
Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet
Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand
Dance, Dance by Fall Out Boy
Punk Rock Princess by Something Corporate
When You Were Young by The Killers
Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes
Paralyzer by Finger Eleven
Don't Ask Me by OK Go
Song 2 by Blur
Salute Your Solution by The Raconteurs
You Only Live Once by The Strokes
C'Mon C'Mon by The Von Bondies
Are You Gonna Be My Girl by Jet
Playlist: Aging Hipster 2005
Paralyzed by Mondo Diao
Tear You Apart by She Wants Revenge
The Authority Song by Jimmy Eat World
The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage by Panic! At the Disco
Of All the Gun Joints in All the World by Fall Out Boy
Paralyzed by The Used
Dirty Little Secret by The All-American Rejects
Evil by Interpol
Hell Yeah! by American Hi-Fi
The Middle by Jimmy Eat World
Liar Liar [Burn in Hell] by The Used
Can't Take It by The All-American Rejects
This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race [Kanye West Remix] by Fall Out Boy
Dice by Finley Quaye & William Orbit
Clocks by Coldplay
Teardrop by Massive Attack
Tear You Apart by She Wants Revenge
The Authority Song by Jimmy Eat World
The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage by Panic! At the Disco
Of All the Gun Joints in All the World by Fall Out Boy
Paralyzed by The Used
Dirty Little Secret by The All-American Rejects
Evil by Interpol
Hell Yeah! by American Hi-Fi
The Middle by Jimmy Eat World
Liar Liar [Burn in Hell] by The Used
Can't Take It by The All-American Rejects
This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race [Kanye West Remix] by Fall Out Boy
Dice by Finley Quaye & William Orbit
Clocks by Coldplay
Teardrop by Massive Attack
Playlist: Man Up
(Hardcore sends its regrets)
Fire Water Burn by The Bloodhound Gang
Land of Confusion covered by Disturbed
Fire Woman by The Cult
Violent Pornography by System of a Down
Unstable by Adema
Only by Nine Inch Nails
In My Head by Queens of the Stone Age
Institutionalized by Suicidal Tendencies
Down with the Sickness by Disturbed
Freaking Out by Adema
Collide by Anarchy Club
Machinehead by Bush
Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine
Click Click Boom by Saliva
Bodies by Drowning Pool
Getting Away with Murder by Papa Roach
What I've Done by Linkin Park
Fire Water Burn by The Bloodhound Gang
Land of Confusion covered by Disturbed
Fire Woman by The Cult
Violent Pornography by System of a Down
Unstable by Adema
Only by Nine Inch Nails
In My Head by Queens of the Stone Age
Institutionalized by Suicidal Tendencies
Down with the Sickness by Disturbed
Freaking Out by Adema
Collide by Anarchy Club
Machinehead by Bush
Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine
Click Click Boom by Saliva
Bodies by Drowning Pool
Getting Away with Murder by Papa Roach
What I've Done by Linkin Park
Playlist: Cobain & Co
(early 90s, mostly Seattle grunge)
Lithium by Nirvana
Doll Parts by Hole
Cover Me by Candlebox
Black by Pearl Jam
Somebody to Shove by Soul Asylum
Drawing Flies by Soundgarden
Plush by Stone Temple Pilots
Hunger Strike by Temple of the Dog
Nearly Lost You by Screaming Trees
Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden
I Stay Away by Alice in Chains
Alive by Pearl Jam
All Apologies by Nirvana
Far Behind by Candlebox
Interstate Love Song by Stone Temple Pilots
Pushin' Forward Back by Temple of the Dog
Heart Shaped Box by Nirvana
No Rain by Blind Melon
Daughter by Pearl Jam
Vasoline by Stone Temple Pilots
Suck You Dry by Mudhoney
Would? by Alice in Chains
Pretty on the Inside by Hole
Stargazer by Mother Love Bone
Garden by Pearl Jam
Lake of Fire by Nirvana
Lithium by Nirvana
Doll Parts by Hole
Cover Me by Candlebox
Black by Pearl Jam
Somebody to Shove by Soul Asylum
Drawing Flies by Soundgarden
Plush by Stone Temple Pilots
Hunger Strike by Temple of the Dog
Nearly Lost You by Screaming Trees
Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden
I Stay Away by Alice in Chains
Alive by Pearl Jam
All Apologies by Nirvana
Far Behind by Candlebox
Interstate Love Song by Stone Temple Pilots
Pushin' Forward Back by Temple of the Dog
Heart Shaped Box by Nirvana
No Rain by Blind Melon
Daughter by Pearl Jam
Vasoline by Stone Temple Pilots
Suck You Dry by Mudhoney
Would? by Alice in Chains
Pretty on the Inside by Hole
Stargazer by Mother Love Bone
Garden by Pearl Jam
Lake of Fire by Nirvana
Suck It: Big Dumb Action
This is actually from last summer, so the actual films it discusses have now turned over and made way for this summer's popcorn fare. The point, however, remains. Actually, if anything, the point is more true yet. The movies change (kinda), but the same bullshit prevails.
I've finally realized that action movies are pretty much always about reifying the current political machine and public zeitgeist. In the 80s, we had the glorious Bruckheimer indulgence of movies like Top Gun to remind us that the military can do whatever it wants, and we'd better like it. In fact, "Mavericks" who ignore rules and fuck around with billion dollar equipment are the American Way, dammit. We need them, because they will defeat those damn Commies. (Remember Commies? Remember what a big damn deal all that was? Boy, the Cold War seems like ancient history already, doesn't it? Funny how fast the Big Bad turns over. The rhetoric recycles, though.) And, the mavericks bed the hot chicks, especially if those "chicks" have authority over the men. That way, they can bring the womenfolk down to size, remind them of their place. In bed.
At the turn of the decade, we had movies like Die Hard to tell us that, while career women might not willingly suffer the yoke of traditional marriage anymore, ultimately machismo will still save the day, even saving that feminist who didn't want him anymore. We'll just see what she says when taken hostage by terrorists, eh? The macho man will get his, because he's secretly not a failing cop with little in his life besides a desire to cling to a wife who doesn't want him. In fact, all that undercutting by the "ballbreaking" wife and the devalued job is just creating a powder keg of masculinity ready to blow up and destroy...skyscrapers? Oh, and terrorists. Except the terrorists come back, because the battle is never won, or there'd be no further need for all that blustering machismo. Yippee-ki-ay, motherfucker.
By the late 90s, we had The Matrix, a kinder, gentler action movie that still had more bullets than brains, to tell us that technology will enslave us all...and then free us again. Well, actually, it will later free a select elite of previously oppressed tech geeks. In fact, technology will take Regular Joe cybergeeks and let them be superheroes, living in a fantasy constructed in their mind and remaking reality with a combination of will and technological proficiency to suit those fantasies--taking technology back from ... itself? Of course, this will take a kinder-gentler action hero, too...one who can be our "Neo"--the new man, the new savior, the new Great White Hope--the SuperGeek. Of the models, this one annoys me least. While it's largely the same old claptrap, at least it does acknowledge that we need changes in roles, in social structure, and in how we all relate to each other--need them, and frankly cannot avoid them in any case. It has plenty of problems, but the premise that brings all of humanity together against a common enemy at least means all of humanity brought together.
It was not to last, though, as the post-9/11 Era of Dubya has brought regressive politics, and equally regressive filmmaking. This year, we have Iron Man to tell us that annoying, aging playboy arms dealers are secretly superheroes and defenders of the American Way. They sleep with hot chicks, and then have their nice Gal Fridays escort them out the door while insulting them. Also, we have Wanted, which has such palpable contempt for its audience that it acutally informs us that it hates us. That's true for women the entire time (there are only 3 women--the pathetic shrew, the unfaithful bitch, and the bitch-goddess, none of whom fares well), and becomes true for men before the end of the film. One is lame action in the high deserts, overtly in favor of the fool's errand in Iraq. The other is pure escapist fantasy, fan-boy action, rife with misogyny (sidebar: amusingly, one apparent villain is impaled through the heart of an image of the madonna) and again, contempt for the public.
Not so amusingly, both movies are shockingly well reviewed. As of this writing, on Rotten Tomatoes, 76% of reviewers--both professional and informal--liked Wanted, and a scary 93% liked Iron Man. By contrast, quality psychological dramas like Tape and Hard Candy about split the audience, earning at most 65% positive reviews.
Are movies getting dumber? Am I just more discerning, or cynical, or intolerant of Big Dumb Action, than I once was? Or are people and politics getting dumber?
This is part of the same trend in which every damn thing they throw at us suddenly has to be a trilogy. Or beget a new trilogy, like the 60-something Indiana Jones. I mean, really. I like Johnny Depp as much as the next gal, but how you can make three long movies out of a Disneyland ride that runs less than three minutes I do not know. Whatever paper dragon the macho man or men fight always returns with with a new face, or there'd be no sequel. And there always has to be a sequel. Masculinity must always be redeemed, the feminist reduced to caricatured damsel or receiving comeuppance in the form of rape, torture and/or death; so, there will always be a sequel. The movie makers hate us. They hate us, and they think we're stupid. Appallingly, they're apparently right, as all these shit movies keep making money by the barrel.
Sometimes, I really, really hate the movies.
Angelina's still pretty, though. Really, Wanted should just be called "this woman is so hot, most of you won't care that we intend to insult you for two hours." But, I guess that wouldn't fit on the poster.
I've finally realized that action movies are pretty much always about reifying the current political machine and public zeitgeist. In the 80s, we had the glorious Bruckheimer indulgence of movies like Top Gun to remind us that the military can do whatever it wants, and we'd better like it. In fact, "Mavericks" who ignore rules and fuck around with billion dollar equipment are the American Way, dammit. We need them, because they will defeat those damn Commies. (Remember Commies? Remember what a big damn deal all that was? Boy, the Cold War seems like ancient history already, doesn't it? Funny how fast the Big Bad turns over. The rhetoric recycles, though.) And, the mavericks bed the hot chicks, especially if those "chicks" have authority over the men. That way, they can bring the womenfolk down to size, remind them of their place. In bed.
At the turn of the decade, we had movies like Die Hard to tell us that, while career women might not willingly suffer the yoke of traditional marriage anymore, ultimately machismo will still save the day, even saving that feminist who didn't want him anymore. We'll just see what she says when taken hostage by terrorists, eh? The macho man will get his, because he's secretly not a failing cop with little in his life besides a desire to cling to a wife who doesn't want him. In fact, all that undercutting by the "ballbreaking" wife and the devalued job is just creating a powder keg of masculinity ready to blow up and destroy...skyscrapers? Oh, and terrorists. Except the terrorists come back, because the battle is never won, or there'd be no further need for all that blustering machismo. Yippee-ki-ay, motherfucker.
By the late 90s, we had The Matrix, a kinder, gentler action movie that still had more bullets than brains, to tell us that technology will enslave us all...and then free us again. Well, actually, it will later free a select elite of previously oppressed tech geeks. In fact, technology will take Regular Joe cybergeeks and let them be superheroes, living in a fantasy constructed in their mind and remaking reality with a combination of will and technological proficiency to suit those fantasies--taking technology back from ... itself? Of course, this will take a kinder-gentler action hero, too...one who can be our "Neo"--the new man, the new savior, the new Great White Hope--the SuperGeek. Of the models, this one annoys me least. While it's largely the same old claptrap, at least it does acknowledge that we need changes in roles, in social structure, and in how we all relate to each other--need them, and frankly cannot avoid them in any case. It has plenty of problems, but the premise that brings all of humanity together against a common enemy at least means all of humanity brought together.
It was not to last, though, as the post-9/11 Era of Dubya has brought regressive politics, and equally regressive filmmaking. This year, we have Iron Man to tell us that annoying, aging playboy arms dealers are secretly superheroes and defenders of the American Way. They sleep with hot chicks, and then have their nice Gal Fridays escort them out the door while insulting them. Also, we have Wanted, which has such palpable contempt for its audience that it acutally informs us that it hates us. That's true for women the entire time (there are only 3 women--the pathetic shrew, the unfaithful bitch, and the bitch-goddess, none of whom fares well), and becomes true for men before the end of the film. One is lame action in the high deserts, overtly in favor of the fool's errand in Iraq. The other is pure escapist fantasy, fan-boy action, rife with misogyny (sidebar: amusingly, one apparent villain is impaled through the heart of an image of the madonna) and again, contempt for the public.
Not so amusingly, both movies are shockingly well reviewed. As of this writing, on Rotten Tomatoes, 76% of reviewers--both professional and informal--liked Wanted, and a scary 93% liked Iron Man. By contrast, quality psychological dramas like Tape and Hard Candy about split the audience, earning at most 65% positive reviews.
Are movies getting dumber? Am I just more discerning, or cynical, or intolerant of Big Dumb Action, than I once was? Or are people and politics getting dumber?
This is part of the same trend in which every damn thing they throw at us suddenly has to be a trilogy. Or beget a new trilogy, like the 60-something Indiana Jones. I mean, really. I like Johnny Depp as much as the next gal, but how you can make three long movies out of a Disneyland ride that runs less than three minutes I do not know. Whatever paper dragon the macho man or men fight always returns with with a new face, or there'd be no sequel. And there always has to be a sequel. Masculinity must always be redeemed, the feminist reduced to caricatured damsel or receiving comeuppance in the form of rape, torture and/or death; so, there will always be a sequel. The movie makers hate us. They hate us, and they think we're stupid. Appallingly, they're apparently right, as all these shit movies keep making money by the barrel.
Sometimes, I really, really hate the movies.
Angelina's still pretty, though. Really, Wanted should just be called "this woman is so hot, most of you won't care that we intend to insult you for two hours." But, I guess that wouldn't fit on the poster.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Suck It: Launderamas & Frat Boys
Adventures in Laundromatland--the long version
The Man and I have an on-again off-again agreement about the laundry--he does it, and I don't bitch at him about the fact that he does precious little else around the house. This isn't exactly a great deal for me, but I accept it because I fucking hate laundromats, and one of the less charming features of living in our cute little bungalow in this cute little beach community is that we have to truck our dirty gear to laundry facilities. I've been doing the laundromat thing more often than not since early childhood, and I'm just OVER it.
Also, his housekeeping skills leave something to be desired--such as the creation of actual cleanliness.
But, this little bargain means that the laundry gets done when 1) he has time off and 2) its piled so high and deep that the dirty clothes actual pose an active hazard when trying to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night. This usually corresponds with subsidiary conditions 3 (one or both of us runs out of underwear) and 4 (our bedroom begins to smell like blue cheese, only without the charm.) It requires a little patience and a fair amount of actively choosing not to grow annoyed in order to allow the laundry to reach the top of his priority list on its own. I usually succeed in keeping my mouth shut--more or less--until he gets there. Occasionally, I begin to nag, and this typically results in a stand-off in which we both try to out-wait the other, and the loser ends up listening to "Lite Jazz" for three hours of mind-numbingly tedious fluff & fold.
This time, I lost.
Now, to be fair, tomorrow's his birthday, and I did actively encourage him to slack when he offered to do it last Sunday. So, I don't really resent doing it this one time. Besides, I'm out of underwear, and I can no longer stomach the stench. I was starting to dream about our dirty towels achieving sentience and launching a full scale offensive. (Given their relative proximity to our sleeping area, they have us at a distinct disadvantage.)
I should mention at this point that it's been more than a month since laundry was last done around here. A month during which it has been t-shirt soakingly hot and Turkish bath house humid--sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both at once. And we had a party. And a houseguest. The result? Thirteen--count em, THIRTEEN--brimmingly full loads of washing. That breaks down to two enormous and overloaded hamper/baskety things and four lawn-clippings sized Hefty bags, or four trips back and forth from the casa just to get it all into the car. I was filled with anticipatory joy from the outset, as I'm sure you can imagine.
Because I had to wait around all morning for a phone call, I didn't manage to cram myself into the laundry pile I used to call my car until around 1pm. So, for extra fun, mountains of laundry during the peak heat of the day. "No problem," I thought. "It's a nice sunny day, and the middle of the week and all. The place will be empty, and I'll be in and out in 2 hours." I am, it should be noted, a fantastically efficient folder of clothes--far more so than the boy, which is a never-voiced point of pride on my end and pique on his. (A few months in a hotel laundry really ups your folding speed.) Thus did my pride in this most banal of competencies precede my ungainly tumble. In other words, pride goeth before the fall.
Incidentally, does anybody know why it's "goeth" anyway? It's such a silly and anachronistic word to preserve. But, I digress.
After hauling my mountains o' things into the local Launderama, I remembered that I was out of the hypoallergenic detergent I prefer, so I went next door to the 7-11 to pick up some supplies. I've done this dozens of times in the past, because I have a lousy memory for such things. Typically they carry my brand, and I quite happily pay their inflated prices in order to insure that I'm never obligated to make detergent a purchasing priority in my life. Today, of course, they were out of my brand. The only brand left, as it happens, was Tide. I am mildly allergic to Tide. Just allergic enough, as it turns out, that when forced to choose between an intermittently occuring mild rash until next laundry day and piling everything back in the car to go in search of better detergent (only to have to unload it all again), I chose the rash.
Sub-par supplies in hand, I headed back for the laundromat. The population was blessedly minimal, so I had my choice of washing machines. With a month's worth of laundry, the multi-loaders were looking very good to me. Plus, we mostly wear dark colors and perma-press fabrics, so much of our stuff can comfortable bathe together, and the multi-loaders are cheaper in the long run. Three single loads of delicates, whites, and other oddities commenced their cycles. Two triple loaders of everyday clothes and jeans also got underway without incident. And then came the showdown with the MegaLoader.
This machine is, on your average day, a joy. I can cram all my towels, dark sheets, and miscellaneous cheap clothes of the indeterminately dark family of colors in there together. It's five loads in one! It's, well, it's practically a Better Homes ad from the fifties...it's a model of efficiency, a time and money saver! See your clothes through the viewing window; marvel as you actually witness the cleaning action! It's the machine age, making modern living better, turning dreary housework into a techonological adventure! Plus, they take less soap. I use them often, and I've never had problems.
Today, of course, it broke. Of course, it didn't break early, when I could just take everything out and put it in another machine. And, it didn't break late, when I could have just said "to hell with the final spin" and gone straight for the dryer. No, like that bitch Goldilocks, it was right in the damn middle--post-wash and mid-rinse, to be exact. Insert twenty minutes of negotiation with the Head Laundress In Charge, a diverting if frustrating attempt to figure out if my Spanish skills were better or worse than her English skills (I think we were pretty even), and a refund. Now, the functional washers are finished with my clothes and making those urgent little cheeps that such things do when their timers expire. So, move all that stuff into a bunch of dryers, then return to my soap-filled sodden five loads in the MegaLoader.
After wresting the dripping mess from the gaping jaws of the original machine, I got it redistributed into two smaller machines and restarted. This meant that those five loads would be running 35 minutes behind everything else, but I rationalized that I can't fold thirteen loads at once anyway, so it would just stagger my dryer use a bit and not cost me too much time. (Despite the minor setback to my timetable, there was no way I was throwing a Tide-infested sodden heap into the dryers. I stand by my decision.)
Twenty minutes later, I'm at the primo folding table right in front of the dryers; it's hot and humid there, but it's the biggest and cleanest table, and it's a great spot from which to cull the finished clothes from one's multiple dryers--a must for minimizing the lagtime between dry and folded and repackaged. The semi-delicates are mostly done and folding has commenced. "The washers should be about done," I naively mused as I finished folding a load and headed for the twice-washed duds.
One of the washers was stopped.
And it was stopped mid-cycle.
So, beginning to get a headache from the humidity and noise, I started another round of Mad-Libs with the woman in charge. I got the finished wash into dryers, got the other clothes going again (this time, she got the machine to resume, and may the gods praise her for it.) and resumed folding. Due to the time lost, however, I fell behind in the folding and actually had a couple of dryers run out of time on me, which never happens.
Somewhere in here, the clouds rolled in from the coast. Humidity shot up exponentially. A vanload full of strange frat boy clones came in with mountains of --here's the weird part -- already washed clothes. In direct opposition to the rest of the partial-facilities world, they apparently had a washer but not a dryer and were in dire need of about a dozen of them. And right now, thank you very much. But, lo and behold, I and another woman suffering the wrath of the washing-machine gods were in sole possession of some 20 dryers. Whining ensued, followed by bitching, and then subterfuge as they teamed up to divert those of us who selfishly put only one load of clothes in each dryer while another went around and opened a half dozen dryers, unceremoniously dumping all the contents into a couple of baskets. By the time we realized this, of course, they already had four dryers spinning away, full to bursting with their shit. Meanwhile, six loads of stuff were tossed together in two big piles--belonging to me and two other people, I might add.
Now comes the fifteen tedious minutes of trying to sort out what belonged to whom. The few things of mine that were still too wet to pass off as finished, I distributed among my other dryers. (Though they were in the wrong and deserved a good tongue-lashing, among other and harsher punishments, I'd already lost too much time to their games and no longer cared to fight. I mildly regret this decision, as they really were the worst kind of assholes.) My head was, by this point, pounding in time to the sound of tumbling cylinders. No longer optimistic but still hoping to minimize my laundry-induced suffering and give D a little Happy Birthday nod of the uninspired but still touching variety, I resumed my cull-and-fold efforts.
As the last of the clothes hit the dryer, it began to sprinkle. Nearly simultaneously, the laundromat filled with people. Baskets lined the aisles and snarlish faces hunched over every surface. Time seemed to speed up and slow down simultaneously, stretching almost infinite before me as I steadily culled and condensed dryers and folded the Amazing Unshrinking Pile. Buzzers buzzed intermittently, setting off new chain reactions of thumping in my brain. Now completely defeated, I added coins whenever the machines demanded them, my spirit broken.
In a last-ditch effort to cut down on my time in this purgatorial void called Grand Street Fluff & Fold, I hauled each container out to my car as it was filled with folded laundry. At last I pulled the last items from the last dryers. Deciding on the spur of the moment that I simply couldn't take any further abuse at the hands of the laundry demons, I dumped the last load, unfolded, into a bag. Feeling equally inclined to whoop with the joy of hard-won accomplishment and cry with frustrated pain and an overwhelming sense of futility, I headed home a mere four hours after arriving.
I knew it couldn't get worse, but was actively refraining from thinking such a jinxing thing just as I was starting to see the light at the bottom of the hamper. But, it turns out that life did begin to improve almost immediately.
Having promised myself a late lunch filled with fatty goodness as reward for my efforts, I hurriedly hauled everything inside before my french fries could cool and therein destroy the delicate balance of crunchy-but-still-greasy that makes them worth risking a heart attack for. Five minutes after I got home, while I was munching french fries, having a smoke and trying to stop sweating, it started to rain more aggressively. The temperature dropped, the breeze (previously nonexistent) picked up, the skies darkened to that storm-front near twilight which (for some unknown reason) facilitates my being able to see most clearly.
If I were a betting woman, I'd bet that at that same moment, the laundromat emptied of patrons and all the machines spontaneously healed themselves.
I think it may be time to stock up on underwear.
The Man and I have an on-again off-again agreement about the laundry--he does it, and I don't bitch at him about the fact that he does precious little else around the house. This isn't exactly a great deal for me, but I accept it because I fucking hate laundromats, and one of the less charming features of living in our cute little bungalow in this cute little beach community is that we have to truck our dirty gear to laundry facilities. I've been doing the laundromat thing more often than not since early childhood, and I'm just OVER it.
Also, his housekeeping skills leave something to be desired--such as the creation of actual cleanliness.
But, this little bargain means that the laundry gets done when 1) he has time off and 2) its piled so high and deep that the dirty clothes actual pose an active hazard when trying to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night. This usually corresponds with subsidiary conditions 3 (one or both of us runs out of underwear) and 4 (our bedroom begins to smell like blue cheese, only without the charm.) It requires a little patience and a fair amount of actively choosing not to grow annoyed in order to allow the laundry to reach the top of his priority list on its own. I usually succeed in keeping my mouth shut--more or less--until he gets there. Occasionally, I begin to nag, and this typically results in a stand-off in which we both try to out-wait the other, and the loser ends up listening to "Lite Jazz" for three hours of mind-numbingly tedious fluff & fold.
This time, I lost.
Now, to be fair, tomorrow's his birthday, and I did actively encourage him to slack when he offered to do it last Sunday. So, I don't really resent doing it this one time. Besides, I'm out of underwear, and I can no longer stomach the stench. I was starting to dream about our dirty towels achieving sentience and launching a full scale offensive. (Given their relative proximity to our sleeping area, they have us at a distinct disadvantage.)
I should mention at this point that it's been more than a month since laundry was last done around here. A month during which it has been t-shirt soakingly hot and Turkish bath house humid--sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both at once. And we had a party. And a houseguest. The result? Thirteen--count em, THIRTEEN--brimmingly full loads of washing. That breaks down to two enormous and overloaded hamper/baskety things and four lawn-clippings sized Hefty bags, or four trips back and forth from the casa just to get it all into the car. I was filled with anticipatory joy from the outset, as I'm sure you can imagine.
Because I had to wait around all morning for a phone call, I didn't manage to cram myself into the laundry pile I used to call my car until around 1pm. So, for extra fun, mountains of laundry during the peak heat of the day. "No problem," I thought. "It's a nice sunny day, and the middle of the week and all. The place will be empty, and I'll be in and out in 2 hours." I am, it should be noted, a fantastically efficient folder of clothes--far more so than the boy, which is a never-voiced point of pride on my end and pique on his. (A few months in a hotel laundry really ups your folding speed.) Thus did my pride in this most banal of competencies precede my ungainly tumble. In other words, pride goeth before the fall.
Incidentally, does anybody know why it's "goeth" anyway? It's such a silly and anachronistic word to preserve. But, I digress.
After hauling my mountains o' things into the local Launderama, I remembered that I was out of the hypoallergenic detergent I prefer, so I went next door to the 7-11 to pick up some supplies. I've done this dozens of times in the past, because I have a lousy memory for such things. Typically they carry my brand, and I quite happily pay their inflated prices in order to insure that I'm never obligated to make detergent a purchasing priority in my life. Today, of course, they were out of my brand. The only brand left, as it happens, was Tide. I am mildly allergic to Tide. Just allergic enough, as it turns out, that when forced to choose between an intermittently occuring mild rash until next laundry day and piling everything back in the car to go in search of better detergent (only to have to unload it all again), I chose the rash.
Sub-par supplies in hand, I headed back for the laundromat. The population was blessedly minimal, so I had my choice of washing machines. With a month's worth of laundry, the multi-loaders were looking very good to me. Plus, we mostly wear dark colors and perma-press fabrics, so much of our stuff can comfortable bathe together, and the multi-loaders are cheaper in the long run. Three single loads of delicates, whites, and other oddities commenced their cycles. Two triple loaders of everyday clothes and jeans also got underway without incident. And then came the showdown with the MegaLoader.
This machine is, on your average day, a joy. I can cram all my towels, dark sheets, and miscellaneous cheap clothes of the indeterminately dark family of colors in there together. It's five loads in one! It's, well, it's practically a Better Homes ad from the fifties...it's a model of efficiency, a time and money saver! See your clothes through the viewing window; marvel as you actually witness the cleaning action! It's the machine age, making modern living better, turning dreary housework into a techonological adventure! Plus, they take less soap. I use them often, and I've never had problems.
Today, of course, it broke. Of course, it didn't break early, when I could just take everything out and put it in another machine. And, it didn't break late, when I could have just said "to hell with the final spin" and gone straight for the dryer. No, like that bitch Goldilocks, it was right in the damn middle--post-wash and mid-rinse, to be exact. Insert twenty minutes of negotiation with the Head Laundress In Charge, a diverting if frustrating attempt to figure out if my Spanish skills were better or worse than her English skills (I think we were pretty even), and a refund. Now, the functional washers are finished with my clothes and making those urgent little cheeps that such things do when their timers expire. So, move all that stuff into a bunch of dryers, then return to my soap-filled sodden five loads in the MegaLoader.
After wresting the dripping mess from the gaping jaws of the original machine, I got it redistributed into two smaller machines and restarted. This meant that those five loads would be running 35 minutes behind everything else, but I rationalized that I can't fold thirteen loads at once anyway, so it would just stagger my dryer use a bit and not cost me too much time. (Despite the minor setback to my timetable, there was no way I was throwing a Tide-infested sodden heap into the dryers. I stand by my decision.)
Twenty minutes later, I'm at the primo folding table right in front of the dryers; it's hot and humid there, but it's the biggest and cleanest table, and it's a great spot from which to cull the finished clothes from one's multiple dryers--a must for minimizing the lagtime between dry and folded and repackaged. The semi-delicates are mostly done and folding has commenced. "The washers should be about done," I naively mused as I finished folding a load and headed for the twice-washed duds.
One of the washers was stopped.
And it was stopped mid-cycle.
So, beginning to get a headache from the humidity and noise, I started another round of Mad-Libs with the woman in charge. I got the finished wash into dryers, got the other clothes going again (this time, she got the machine to resume, and may the gods praise her for it.) and resumed folding. Due to the time lost, however, I fell behind in the folding and actually had a couple of dryers run out of time on me, which never happens.
Somewhere in here, the clouds rolled in from the coast. Humidity shot up exponentially. A vanload full of strange frat boy clones came in with mountains of --here's the weird part -- already washed clothes. In direct opposition to the rest of the partial-facilities world, they apparently had a washer but not a dryer and were in dire need of about a dozen of them. And right now, thank you very much. But, lo and behold, I and another woman suffering the wrath of the washing-machine gods were in sole possession of some 20 dryers. Whining ensued, followed by bitching, and then subterfuge as they teamed up to divert those of us who selfishly put only one load of clothes in each dryer while another went around and opened a half dozen dryers, unceremoniously dumping all the contents into a couple of baskets. By the time we realized this, of course, they already had four dryers spinning away, full to bursting with their shit. Meanwhile, six loads of stuff were tossed together in two big piles--belonging to me and two other people, I might add.
Now comes the fifteen tedious minutes of trying to sort out what belonged to whom. The few things of mine that were still too wet to pass off as finished, I distributed among my other dryers. (Though they were in the wrong and deserved a good tongue-lashing, among other and harsher punishments, I'd already lost too much time to their games and no longer cared to fight. I mildly regret this decision, as they really were the worst kind of assholes.) My head was, by this point, pounding in time to the sound of tumbling cylinders. No longer optimistic but still hoping to minimize my laundry-induced suffering and give D a little Happy Birthday nod of the uninspired but still touching variety, I resumed my cull-and-fold efforts.
As the last of the clothes hit the dryer, it began to sprinkle. Nearly simultaneously, the laundromat filled with people. Baskets lined the aisles and snarlish faces hunched over every surface. Time seemed to speed up and slow down simultaneously, stretching almost infinite before me as I steadily culled and condensed dryers and folded the Amazing Unshrinking Pile. Buzzers buzzed intermittently, setting off new chain reactions of thumping in my brain. Now completely defeated, I added coins whenever the machines demanded them, my spirit broken.
In a last-ditch effort to cut down on my time in this purgatorial void called Grand Street Fluff & Fold, I hauled each container out to my car as it was filled with folded laundry. At last I pulled the last items from the last dryers. Deciding on the spur of the moment that I simply couldn't take any further abuse at the hands of the laundry demons, I dumped the last load, unfolded, into a bag. Feeling equally inclined to whoop with the joy of hard-won accomplishment and cry with frustrated pain and an overwhelming sense of futility, I headed home a mere four hours after arriving.
I knew it couldn't get worse, but was actively refraining from thinking such a jinxing thing just as I was starting to see the light at the bottom of the hamper. But, it turns out that life did begin to improve almost immediately.
Having promised myself a late lunch filled with fatty goodness as reward for my efforts, I hurriedly hauled everything inside before my french fries could cool and therein destroy the delicate balance of crunchy-but-still-greasy that makes them worth risking a heart attack for. Five minutes after I got home, while I was munching french fries, having a smoke and trying to stop sweating, it started to rain more aggressively. The temperature dropped, the breeze (previously nonexistent) picked up, the skies darkened to that storm-front near twilight which (for some unknown reason) facilitates my being able to see most clearly.
If I were a betting woman, I'd bet that at that same moment, the laundromat emptied of patrons and all the machines spontaneously healed themselves.
I think it may be time to stock up on underwear.
Suck It: Hipster Novels
I picked up David Bledin's Bank purely because it was already on the bookshelf and it looked like a light, easily discardable read to take on the plane. It was pleasant enough, as far as it went. But, it didn't really go anywhere. Nothing happens. It chronicles more Starbucks trips than anything else, and the characters ultimately learn...that investment bankers are douchebags. Why, what a revelation! How can this possibly take 300 pages to realize? Also, what made anyone think that the rest of the world is interested in a behind-the-scenes look at the monkeys manning the spreadsheets for mega-capital megaliths?
After pondering these mysteries through the entire second half of the novel (I have this inability to walk away from even the most soul-deadeningly mediocre of entertainment once I've started it), I reached the end, and an Afterword that made me angry, confused, and sad. Apparently, this novel began as a whiny email circulated amongst financial district drones carping about their long hours and demeaning jobs. I gather they've never cleaned toilets, mucked horse stalls, or done any other actual labor, but that's beside the point. The real point is that this email landed the young Mr. Bledin first an agent and then a novel publication.
And it's hardly the first time. I've read a handful of novels and memoirs which began their life online. That's lovely. I don't even blame the semi-enterprising individuals who turned their boring ass lives into boring ass blogs and then boring ass books. No. I blame us, the reading public, who are so lazy that we want to read a blog in book form--because it will lay down with us on the beach without costing us a grand in repairs. I blame us, too, for thinking that a twenty-three year old with BY HIS OWN ADMISSION no experience 0utside adolescence and then ninety hour weeks in a cubicle would have anything new or interesting to impart.
This is part of a trend of giving annoying hipster twenty-somethings contracts to spend two years in a dead-end job, and then parlay their brief excursion in paid labor into a multi-media empire of pseudo-celebrity. It must stop, before Barnes & Noble starts shoving down our throats the adventures of a twenty-year old barista who, like, really really thinks making cappucinos is hard and stuff.
After pondering these mysteries through the entire second half of the novel (I have this inability to walk away from even the most soul-deadeningly mediocre of entertainment once I've started it), I reached the end, and an Afterword that made me angry, confused, and sad. Apparently, this novel began as a whiny email circulated amongst financial district drones carping about their long hours and demeaning jobs. I gather they've never cleaned toilets, mucked horse stalls, or done any other actual labor, but that's beside the point. The real point is that this email landed the young Mr. Bledin first an agent and then a novel publication.
And it's hardly the first time. I've read a handful of novels and memoirs which began their life online. That's lovely. I don't even blame the semi-enterprising individuals who turned their boring ass lives into boring ass blogs and then boring ass books. No. I blame us, the reading public, who are so lazy that we want to read a blog in book form--because it will lay down with us on the beach without costing us a grand in repairs. I blame us, too, for thinking that a twenty-three year old with BY HIS OWN ADMISSION no experience 0utside adolescence and then ninety hour weeks in a cubicle would have anything new or interesting to impart.
This is part of a trend of giving annoying hipster twenty-somethings contracts to spend two years in a dead-end job, and then parlay their brief excursion in paid labor into a multi-media empire of pseudo-celebrity. It must stop, before Barnes & Noble starts shoving down our throats the adventures of a twenty-year old barista who, like, really really thinks making cappucinos is hard and stuff.
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