And but so: Last thoughts on DFW (for now)

For the past week and a half, since I learned of David Foster Wallace's suicide, I've been reading the papers, the magazines, online, saving the clippings, putting my favorites in the folder I have on top of my bookshelf where I keep all of my favorite magazine pieces. I've cursed at some of the obituaries and teared up at others. I've read the growing tribute McSweeney's thoughtfully has made a place for (and among which my stab at memorializing the man, previously posted here, is included). People I haven't heard from in a long time got in touch, whether via email, phone, text, or blog comments to express their condolences. People knew what he meant to me. People seemed to like what I'd written about him, after. And but so I sat on Sunday morning, after a good visit from my dad and my brother for most of last week (with a special guest appearance by my sister on Saturday), and flipped through my books of his, including my three copies of Infinite Jest (it's the only book of which I own multiples). I saw the highlighting, the underlining, the notes, the bits of in-class comminques preserved within, the weather, the wear, the tear. All of which I've got, too. And so sitting there in the half-light of my room, Sunday morning, brother just departed—and feeling that sense of disconnection, that sense of one's plug being pulled out from the wall socket that I've begun to see is a pattern for me—I sat there and it got to be more OK. The notes from people throughout the week, the appraisals I'd been reading in the papers, his books on my shelf, my and others' deep feeling for the man and his work—

I got to thinking about Bob Dylan's "Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie," a poem from Bob for his idol, which ends thusly:

And where do you look for this hope that you're seekin'
Where do you look for this lamp that's a-burnin'
Where do you look for this oil well gushin'
Where do you look for this candle that's glowin'
Where do you look for this hope that you know is there
And out there somewhere
And your feet can only walk down two kinds of roads
Your eyes can only look through two kinds of windows
Your nose can only smell two kinds of hallways
You can touch and twist
And turn two kinds of doorknobs
You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you go to Brooklyn State Hospital

You find God in the church of your choice
You find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital
And though it's only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You'll find them both
In Grand Canyon
Sundown

I like that. I also started to think just now about how people used to graffiti "Frodo Lives!" on things back in the '60s and '70s, after the hero of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (which was the first Big Important Book for me). So I hereby propose another graffiti: DFW Lives! And he does.

And but so for now that's where I'll leave my memories of the man. Now, onward and upward. Dave would want it that way. Soon we'll return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

* Last (foot)note: Thank you—sincerely, deep down—to everyone who wrote, called, texted, or posted on this blog or Facebook to say hey, and that they were sorry to hear, and hope I'm OK. I really truly appreciate it.

A Eulogy for David Foster Wallace; Or, Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is!

Toward the end of 1996 I was in my parents' living room reading a Time magazine. It was one of those year-end wrap-up issues, with various lists and capsule reviews of the best books, films, art, and so on of the year soon to bow out. This was my senior year of high school. I had a girlfriend, or was moving toward having a girlfriend—My first "real" girlfriend. I was reading the magazine and in the books section, one book caught my eye: A book called Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace. I don't remember why, but something in the capsule review sparked my interest. I had always been a reader, but this book—1,079 pages, about an "entertainment" called Infinite Jest that is so pleasurable that those who saw it lost all desire to do anything but watch it, and thus died—seemed a whole other order of magnitude beyond what I'd been reading.

I bought the book. I think this was in December. I bought the book and started reading it. For the whole second half of my last year of high school, January through May or thereabouts, I read Infinite Jest. I read it in class, and got in trouble for it. I gave it to my girlfriend, Shannon, for Valentine's Day, and she was touched because a boy had never given her a book before.

Infinite Jest was indeed about this entertainment, but it was about so much more. It was about addiction and a real American sort of sadness; it was about the future, and maybe where we were headed. It was also about two characters, Don Gately and Hal Incandenza—characters that are as alive to me as any other real living and breathing person. They live with me still today.

Infinite Jest turned me on to serious reading, and to the style of writing that I've come most to prefer: the sprawling, encyclopedic novel. David Foster Wallace turned me on to Pynchon, to Joyce, to Gaddis, to DeLillo. DFW—as he would come to be known to me—made me want to be a writer. But why?

For this reason: Infinite Jest made me feel less alone. And DFW meant to do that. In an interview published in 1993 in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, he said the following:

I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction's job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I guess a big part of serious fiction's purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like a sort of generalization of suffering. Does this make sense? We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy's impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with characters' pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might be just that simple.

I was disturbed and Infinite Jest comforted me. I was comfortable and Infinite Jest disturbed me. Infinite Jest made me feel less alone. And but so, ever since that late winter, spring, and early summer of 1997, I've been trying to write—and trying somehow, in my own small way, to follow in David Foster Wallace's footsteps: To make others, through writing, feel less alone. If I have ever written anything that anyone liked, that even for a moment made them feel unalone, then I have succeeded. And success is entirely relative; though I will in all probability never achieve near as much as DFW did, it doesn't matter—A drop of water is the ocean in miniature.

***

David Foster Wallace is dead. He hanged himself on Friday at his home in Claremont, Calif. He was 46.

***

I could go on. I could tell you about reading all his other books, from Broom of the System (his first novel) to his most recent, a collection of essays called Consider the Lobster; I could tell you about how I gave Infinite Jest to a friend once, and how she later brought it back to me, signed; I could tell you how another girlfriend got another of his books, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, signed by him for me, the summer she was in New York, and how she gave him a copy of our school's literary magazine, in which I had a couple of poems; I hoped that maybe he flipped through it on the plane ride back to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he was teaching at the time, and read my poems and maybe liked them; I could tell you about how I very nearly went on a pilgrimage to see him in Illinois, but didn't, and how I wish now that I had.

I could tell you about how he was a laugh-out-loud funny writer—He had to have been to have worked into a 10,000-word review of a dictionary an analogy to a stoned person watching the PGA Tour with Oreo crumbs all over his shirt's front and being caught in a loop of thinking about what the color "green" really means. I could tell you about all the times I've told friends,s significant others, and virtual strangers, "You have to read this book." Or I could tell you about how, in the special edition of Rolling Stone published soon after 9/11, David Foster Wallace's take on that day's tragedy, called "The View from Mrs. Thompson's House" (since reprinted in Consider the Lobster), was the most dead-on and honest assessment I've ever read about 9/11, in its throwing-up-the-hands-and-saying-I-just-don't-fucking-know-ness. I could tell you about how once I got to see him in New York, with Jonathen Franzen, as part of The New Yorker Literary Festival, and how he blasted Franzen—no dope himself—entirely out of the water.

Or how now, reading Infinite Jest for the third time around in 11 years, having gotten sober myself, in the last 100-page home stretch, this evening on the couch before a dinner party, and then the dinner party and outside, after, smoking a cigarette with some people, and a guy getting a text message and saying that David Foster Wallace had killed himself felt first like a friend had died, and then like a repudiation of something, a core-shaking of my own personal foundation—

But I'll not tell you about all that. I'll leave some things for memory and choose not to go down certain roads; I think DFW would want it that way. But, I will tell you this: David Foster Wallace's writing made me and millions of others feel less alone. I know that. And for this he should be praised, and mourned. I hope he has found the peace that eluded him in this life.

Rest in peace, DFW. I'll still be here, pushing your books on friends.

I Turn My Camera On; Or, Letter from Bryant Park, Fashion Week

I'm sitting here in Bryant Park watching people go apeshit over fashion models and designers. Just saw a bunch of photographers run to get shots of Anna Sui, who I sort of recognized but didn't know who it was until I heard someone say "Anna!" The photogs, schlumpfy guys all, are standing around in little clusters of two and three looking down at the little screens of serious-looking black cameras they've got slung around their necks. Then there are also a lot of younger women, Japanese and American, milling more hesitantly, with smaller ordnance cameras.

One guy, earlier, almost fell into me at the little green desk-table I was sitting at, as he got pushed out of a scrum of photogs surrounding two tall black models, with aquiline features and wearing Egyptian goddess, Isis-type garb. The big cameras, when they go off, sound like thwack thwack thwack. Directly in front of me, a middle-aged black photog, with a French bulldog's squished-up expression and the suggestion of an afro, is taking pictures, but not getting up to do so from where he's sitting, of random women who look good but obviously aren't models as they walk by. One other civilian-looking woman saw this just now, as she was standing here. She smiled, and walked on.

The scene has now calmed down somewhat. Directly across from where I sit is the Bryant Park Hotel, all black brick and gold trim. To my right is the green and gold, old-style carousel, ridden by kids on ornate up-and-downing horses. A blue baseball-capped black man just pushed a flat of cases of Peroni beer past me. Impossibly thin models, vaguely Russian-looking, keep swishing by. Photogs move up and away, as the models pose while walking or stop and pose, either giving a smoldering look or smiling wanly. It's like a kind of chemical or magnetic reaction, electrons drawn and then repelled from a nucleus. The models' breasts move around in their shirts or dresses like a sped-up grandfather clock's pendulum. Another flat of 25 cases of Peroni beer, pushed and guarded by five black guys, just rolled by.

It occurs to me that, women-wise, a man could probably clean up in this vicinity of town with civilian women during these Fashion Weeks.

I am wearing a tie and pink tennis shoes. I look good but not great. Thumping, irregular bass is and has been this whole time issuing from the big white tent complex (where the actual fashion shows are held) directly behind me. I am sitting at the back end of the tent complex, away from the entrance, which is festooned with voting- and election-themed Fashion Week slogans, on 6th Avenue at 41st Street.

The photogs have this way of running up ahead of the models, humping gear, about 15 feet, then turning and shooting. I wonder if the civilian women walking by, in their own finery, harbor a secret desire to be mistaken for a model, and shot.

Several people walking by, Anna Sui one and maybe Ralph Lauren another, have been wearing black T-shirts bearing the legend, in a stone color, "Save the Garment District." A leaf just fell from the air in front of me—the first falling leaf I think I've seen this fall. Soon more, soon all, will fall. All of my friends at the Rough Guides office in New York, where I got my first real job, as an editorial assistant, were laid off this week. With respect to Fashion Week: I cannot decide whether I do not care about the models, the hubbub, or whether I do care, deeply, but refuse out of pride to admit this to myself, and move up to the front. I feel sort of the same conflicted way that I do about Anne Hathaway and The Devil Wears Prada, when I see it come on TV.

I have freckles and am 28, for a little while longer.

A white bum named Tim, carrying a metal-frame rucksack and wearing two hospital bracelets—one blue, one white—just approached me. He had a twang in his voice so I asked him where he was from.

"I'm from Savannah, Georgia," he said. "Where you from?"

I told him.

"I just get outta the hospital," he said. "My lung collapsed."

I gave him a dollar and he shook my hand, a strong handshake that lapsed into looseness.

"I been panhandlin'. I just get outta the hospital but I'm gon' panhandle the shit outta these people."

He shook my hand again and asked my name. I told him.

"Hell," he said, "I got a son that's got a son named Hunter."

To my left, a couple dressed in black that both seem very drunk, she tottering on heels and he holding the smoldering ass-end of a cigarette, keep putting their tongues into each other's mouths, slowly and very deliberately. Tim had reeked of alcohol. I don't know whether these fashion shows are ending or beginning. I have an hour to go until my therapy appointment. A motherly-looking handler woman who's holding an iPhone keeps hustling up late girls, coltish, into the back of the tent. She just called one "sweetie." Two women walking with a pair of NYPD just walked by, one woman shaking one of the cops' hands.

The trees are the kind that look camouflaged, from shedding bark, and their green leaves, way up high where the sun breaks in over the skyscrapers surrounding, have begun to have a yellowish tint about them. The flagstones are big gray squares and rectangles. No one has taken a picture of me directly, but I bet I'm in some anyway. Watch the newsstands, the magazines. You might see me there, writing this, mustached, pen in one hand and cigarette in the other.

* Late-breaking correction: A woman did just take a picture of me, a long woman with long brown hair and a handsome face in a white dress and a slim, flow-y, almost ankle-length orange sweater-type thing. She said, with an accent I couldn't place, that "I looked so cool. I like your style, weird and funny." This picture she took was for "her fashion blog." This was right after I ran into my friend, former roommate, and fellow Arkansan Jessica, a red-haired beauty who walked by where I was sitting and whom I wolf-whistled at, to get her attention.

The McCain Campaign, not the Hadron Collider, Will Be the Death of Us All

By now you've all probably read about the "lipstick on a pig" controversy. If not, let me sum up. Yesterday, Sept. 9th, Obama was talking about McCain and his policies and said the following:

“John McCain says he’s about change, too—except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics. That’s just calling the same thing something different. You can put lipstick on a pig; it’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change; it’s still going to stink after eight years.”

Not long after, the McCain campaign comes out blasting against Obama for a "schoolyard insult" against Sarah Palin. Wait, what? Just because she mentioned lipstick in her acceptance speech, suddenly an old idiom is off-limits? Also, McCain's memory may be going: He used the exact same idiom to describe Hillary Clinton's health care plan on Oct. 11, 2007.

Reading about this trumped-up, ridiculous, so-called controversy this morning made my blood boil. And then Obama's remarks about the controversy calmed me down. He's just so reasonable. Really, if you have four and a half free minutes, watch this—He's amazing.

Letter from Raleigh

It's hot in Raleigh, N.C. Hurricane Hanna's passed, which last night had the weather cloudy and spitting rain, while overnight she hit, blowing over tents downtown and dropping a few inches of rain. This morning was gray, rainy, and windy, too. We ate breakfast at Big Ed's, in the City Market portion of downtown, little shops and old brick buildings. Ed's is famous for its owner, the barrel-chested, red-checkered snap shirt and overalls-clad owner, who sits down to tell stories at table after table—Plus of course for its grilled biscuits and pound cake-batter pancakes.

I'm sitting outside of Big Ed's right now, on a bench flanked by rusty brown farm implements, right across from the 1914, redbrick City Market building, with stucco tile-roofed overhangs around its sides, like the French Market in New Orleans. But the place is empty, disused, with a green and white "available" sign in its window, bearing the logo of Hunter & Associates. There are more than a few H&A signs in windows around here. Journey is playing from the speakers of a bar/restaurant called Woody's @ City Market across the way. A gray H2 Hummer just rumbled by. I'm sitting on the redbrick sidewalk on Blake Street, between Parham and Wolfe. There are a couple of choppers out in front of Woody's. A country-fried voice just called out, "Ain't that a purty motorsickle?" There are more black people in this part of town. Last night at the brand-new Marriott City Center, a debutante ball was going on, all white faces in tuxes and dresses, the girls with their skirts hiked up as they waited for shuttle mini-buses, because of the rain pooling on the ground.

Let's Contrast & Compare, Shall We?

From Senator Joe Biden's V.P. acceptance speech:

John McCain is my friend. We've known each other for three decades. We've traveled the world together. It's a friendship that goes beyond politics. And the personal courage and heroism John demonstrated still amaze me.

But I profoundly disagree with the direction that John wants to take the country.

From Senator Barack Obama's acceptance speech:

Now, I don't believe that Sen. McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn't know.

It's not because John McCain doesn't care. It's because John McCain doesn't get it.

But what I will not do is suggest that [Senator McCain] takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism.

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain.

From Governor Sarah Palin's V.P. acceptance speech:

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.

My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of "personal discovery." This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer.

Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems — as if we all didn't know that already.

We've all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers.

Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights?

Now who's bitter?

From Senator Barack Obama's acceptance speech:

I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk. They claim that our insistence on something larger, something firmer and more honest in our public life is just a Trojan horse for higher taxes and the abandonment of traditional values. And that's to be expected. Because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.

You make a big election about small things.

And you know what — it's worked before. Because it feeds into the cynicism we all have about government. When Washington doesn't work, all its promises seem empty. If your hopes have been dashed again and again, then it's best to stop hoping, and settle for what you already know.

Bingo: That's the Republican strategy right there, as exemplified by Palin's smug, sarcastic, and mean-spirited speech last night. The Republicans have one worn-out playbook, and they won't put it down. Let's hope that enough of the country has gotten wise to their game over the past four years that we don't allow this cynical strategy to work yet again.

Here are another few lines from Obama, to close out this post:

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.

Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.

There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope?

That's from the Democratic National Convention—in 2004. He's been saying this all along, and he's calling us to something better, something higher. He is saying (and has said), "America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this."

Are we? Do you want to find out? If so, maybe go here to donate $10 or $25 (or more if you've got it) to this inspiring, historic campaign.

I'll close with a story. Back in early 2003, in the run-up to the Iraq War, a big protest was held in Manhattan. I debated whether or not to go. At this point, most people believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, as our government told us they did—and, if they did, well, I wasn't sure what needed to be done. I had bought some of the lies. But I was thinking about it and I was also wondering, What does it matter if I attend the protest? It won't change anything.

In the end, I went. I talked to my dad and decided that, whether or not we went to war, whether or not Iraq had WMDs, and whether or not the protest changed anything, that I wanted to be on the right side of history. Five years later, I feel I was on the right side of history, and I'm glad I decided to go into the city that day, to stand and march with hundreds of thousands of others—because "they" really, finally, completely win only when no one shows up to say "no."

So, in this election, which side of history do you want to be on?

Hot New Sentences

Reading the NY Times' coverage of Hurricane Gustav this Monday, I came across this beautiful sentence:

As the wind blew through the deserted streets, a group of bored police officers sat on rolling office chairs outside on Tchoupitoulas Street, watching a few of their colleagues “wind-surfing” down the long thoroughfare, one of them explained. Two officers would hold up opposite ends of a sheet and wait for the gusts to blow them down the traffic-less street on their rolling chairs.

Really the first sentence is the best, especially up until "thoroughfare." Just say it out loud to yourself; it's really musical, rolls off the tongue. Almost poetry.

Then there's this, from an Onion article about Cheney waiting until the last minute (again) to buy 9/11 gifts:

Although Cheney himself has never received any Sept. 11 gifts, with the exception of a pair of silk pajamas from his wife and a second term in office, he insisted that he gets more joy from giving than receiving.

That made me laugh out loud at work today.

And finally, in more serious news, Thomas Friedman published this op-ed yesterday in the NY Times, about the choice between two "green" candidates having been, after McCain's pick of Sarah Palin, drilling advocate, as his running mate, narrowed to just one (meaning: The One).

Friedman writes:

By constantly pounding into voters that his energy focus is to “drill, drill, drill,” McCain is diverting attention from what should be one of the central issues in this election: who has the better plan to promote massive innovation around clean power technologies and energy efficiency.

Why? Because renewable energy technologies — what I call “E.T.” — are going to constitute the next great global industry. They will rival and probably surpass “I.T.” — information technology. The country that spawns the most E.T. companies will enjoy more economic power, strategic advantage and rising standards of living. We need to make sure that is America. Big oil and OPEC want to make sure it is not.

That right there is a bull's-eye. What is going on with respect to oil and energy right now is a challenge, yes—But it's also a big opportunity. The U.S. has the ability to define the debate, to lead the charge, to do what we've always done: Put our best minds to work on a massively difficult problem. We need a new Apollo Program for energy indepedence. And that, Gentle Reader, is what Obama promises. See here, from his nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention last Thursday night:

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

We will do this. Washington -- Washington has been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years. And, by the way, John McCain has been there for 26 of them.

And in that time, he has said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil than we had on the day that Senator McCain took office.

Now is the time to end this addiction and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution, not even close.

As president, as president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America.

I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars.

And I'll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy -- wind power, and solar power, and the next generation of biofuels -- an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced.

America, now is not the time for small plans.

Damn straight. Now let's elect him, shall we?

Hard-core Wake-up

Rise and Shine
Sophomore year of college, my roommate Joe and I developed a radical system of rousing oneself in the morning. The system was as follows: When the alarm goes off for the very first time, immediately get out of bed. No hesitation, no hitting the snooze. We called this system “Hard-core Wake-up.” And it worked. Mostly.

This being college, Joe and I lived in a dorm room. Joe and I being men, we had our beds bunked. I was on top, Joe was on bottom. The couch was situated alongside Joe’s bed, forming a little crib that he would climb into, evenings. When I got out of bed, I would hop from my bed down to the couch and thence the floor. (Can you see where I am going with this?)

Hard-core Wake-up, as I said, worked. The trick, for anyone who’d like to play along at home, is that you must brook no discussion with yourself about whether or not to wake up. You just hit the deck when you hear the alarm, Pavlovianly and immediately.

But sometimes the system of Hard-core Wake-up, my position in the top bunk bed, and the invariable alcohol consumed the night before intersected in bad ways. Occasionally, in leaping groggily from bed, I’d hit the couch wrong or hit the arm of the couch and, still disoriented from sleep, go sprawling. One time it was worse.

This time was at the end of sophomore year. Joe had already left. Classes were over. I’d stayed behind to finish up a paper and for a couple of parties. I wouldn’t be back next year; I was going to Austin for the summer and then Oxford for the next year. One of the last parties was at my friend Collins’ house, out in a little back courtyard parking lot off the street. His was an ugly, squat, four-apartment, white-painted cinder-block building, but I loved that place. We’d sit outside at his little table and umbrella and drink beer from the keg and smoke cigarettes and bullshit and all of that felt like it would never end. Then it did end.

As I said it was the end of the year. I had gone back to my dorm room after Collins’ party to sleep. I was all packed up, my room entirely stripped of furniture and possessions; everything was in my car, as I was driving back to Little Rock that day. I had trained myself in the art of Hard-core Wake-up.

So when the phone rings (with that newsroom-style clanging bell ring that, sadly, seems to be disappearing) at oh, say, 8am, I instantly leap from the top bunk, feet seeking the couch—But no couch. I felt like I fell about six feet, landed like Spider-Man, squatting, arms out, fingers splayed, thoroughly hung-over and thoroughly shaken awake, now. It was kind of like the feeling you get when you pick up a glass expecting it to be one weight, because you think it’s glass, and in fact it’s another weight, because it’s actually plastic, and you end up picking it up way too fast as a result. That was how I came out of bed and to the floor that morning, with a brief flash of terror-filled cognitive dissonance. And dry-mouth.

I snatched the phone’s receiver off the wall and immediately laid down, flat on my back, boxers-clad only, on the bare floor. “Hello,” I croaked. It was my mom.

That was pretty much the end of Hard-core Wake-up … or was it?

Don’t Call It a Comeback
Recently, my buddy Sean was expressing his desire to wake up early, like me (I rise at 6am for work).

“No you don’t,” I said.
“Yes I really do,” Sean said.
“Well then there is only one way forward, Young Grasshopper,” I said, cracking my knuckles and flexing in the fashion of a long-retired martial arts expert who has just made up his mind to return to battle for the sole purpose of avenging the killing of his teacher. “That way is Hard-core Wake-up.”

An amusing musical training montage followed. Sweatbands and jump-rope were involved. Also Sean snapping out of bed and me there with a clipboard, marking down his time and screaming at him that it wasn’t good enough damnit and then throwing the alarm clock out the window in rage and disappointment.

Eventually he got it. Or he’s getting it. See, the good thing about Hard-core Wake-up is that it’s self-reinforcing. The first day you do it is Not Fun. But every day you do achieve Hard-core Wake-up, it gets a little easier, a little more natural. Waking up begins to feel more like an on-off switch, rather than a swim up out of something deep. I've been coming back to it, too. It was good on this weekday for the following reason:

Alarm buzzed, I woke. Got up (almost) instantly. Went into kitchen, poured a cup of coffee from the pot I’d set to brew at 6am the night before. (This, Dear Reader, is one of the great joys of life: Coffee ready the moment you wake up.) Went back into my bedroom and sat on the edge of my bed, feet on the windowsill, looking east. It was 6am and the sun was rising. I wrote the following:

Sunrise, from the window of 322 Rodney Street: The clouds looked like burning canoes, painted wispily by a traditional Japanese artist, frozen in their orange sorbet waves down a river of robin’s-egg blue. And the shoosh of cars from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, behind me. Within minutes the canoe clouds disappeared, the ice-cream fires were extinguished, the painter packed up. And I dressed for work.

Thoughts on the Democratic National Convention

I'm watching the Democratic National Convention right now; I just saw Caroline Kennedy introduce a tribute video to Ted Kennedy, and then the senator himself came on to give a rousing, fiery speech—he remains the Liberal Lion.

The tribute video choked me up a bit, to be honest: One of his brothers died in World War II, and then they killed his other two brothers. That happening would probably turn a lesser person to bitterness and rancor, but Ted's kept on fighting, all these years. It's inspiring.

And all the people waving Kennedy signs ... of course I wasn't old enough to remember Camelot, John, and Bobby, but I feel the fervor, fifty years later, for Obama. I really think this election represents a restoration of the fighting, proud side of the Democratic party, and I for one am honored to feel a part of it.

It's simply this: The Democrats are the party of the people, the party of the common man, the party of human rights—and I feel fucking great to be a Democrat, life-long 'til the day I die. Go Obama and Biden!

Now for a lesson: Are you in a battleground state? (I'm looking at you, Arkansans.) Are you registered to vote? Are your friends and family? If not, do this: Google "[your state] voter registration" or [your state] board of elections." Look around and find the voter registration form; most states these days allow you to print out a PDF of the voter registration form, fill it out, and mail it in—usually you don't even need a stamp. (Here's Arkansas' voter registration page ... scroll down to download the PDF.)

But don't just print out one PDF for yourself; print out a few. Keep 'em with you. In the next week or two, talk to your friends and co-workers about the candidate you support—and I'm not even saying it has to be Democratic. I don't agree with the Republicans on most issues, but they are a valid voice as well—and it's an axiom that the more people who are engaged and registered and keeping the politicians accountable, the better our government will run for all of us: Our families, our new babies, our brothers and sisters, our husbands and wives.

So talk to your friends, family, and co-workers. Ask them if they're registered. If not, pull out a form and encourage them to sign up. I put together a small voter registration drive earlier this summer and got, with the help of two friends, 51 new voters registered—and it felt fucking good.

What difference does one vote make? Not much. But one voter talking to a couple of voters, who talk to another couple, who maybe gives $10 or $25 to Barack's campaign (click here to do so via credit card), and encourages others to do so as well ... that makes a difference; both in politics as a whole and in your own personal life. Trust me. It'll feel good.

And vote Democratic, the party of the Kennedys, the Clintons, and now the Obamas; the party of the people.

*Addendum: Just watched Michelle Obama's speech, and then her with her daughters afterward, with Barack live from Kansas City. Michelle gave a great speech (and is really sexy, by the way), and Barack seemed like a normal guy, a cool dad. And their little girls—Man, just too cute. THAT is the family we need in the White House.

Sunrise

Woke up this morning 6am the sky looked like an ice-cream fire, sorbets burning out over Brooklyn. Later West Fourth, walked western SoHo, shopwindows all shot up with light. A bar fight, a ruin, a skinned shoo-in. A friend seen below his store's sign, but the sign seen first and a thought: I wonder if Carlos is here. Carlos was there. Dressed in black, a business, man; discussed old apartments. "354 haunts me," he said. I laughed and agreed. "354 haunts me, too."

Sometimes I really I.D. with my niece

So Tired of Crying, Must Keep Crying....

File under fragments, fall-related

Two buildings across the way, with the gleaming Hudson beyond, behind the brick air-vent towers of the Lincoln Tunnel, toward which we are descending amid fall-like morning light, are getting new, mirrored silver skins. Put me down for one too.

Being in Europe, seeing the rowers in boats under a gray Swedish sky ignites in me the desire to be someone else: To not lead my life, to lead another’s, one who speaks Swedish, or lives in Murray Hill, or has a house in Austin. I think of Jibz and her girlfriend, doing what in Stockholm?, and under the same sky I am under, the same spray from the Baltic. But my self always catches up to me.

I Montauk Monster New York

I rarely post things such as this, but this T-shirt is such an awesome non sequitur that I couldn't resist. (If you don't know what the Montauk Monster is, click here to learn about it.)

Adjö så länge

Tonight's my last night in Scandinavia. Right now I'm sitting on my bed in my room at the Hotel Grand Stockholm, with the windows open (it's 50 degrees out—a little taste of fall) and Robin Holcomb playing on my computer.

It's been a great trip. Gorgeous cities. I was in both Copenhagen and Stockholm. I love being in European cities, especially when it feels fall-ish like it does now; it feels so out of time, so disconnected from America, and maybe it reminds me of my first trip to Paris, nine years ago now, in October or November, I forget which. And then, in Paris, with my friend Amber and her friends, I drank too much wine (and smoked too much joint) one night, and was down for the count: Threw up, got undressed, laid down in hotel bed, had the spins; But I rallied.

I roused; washed; re-dressed, and came back into Amber's hotel room, where the party was still going on. "I am Lazarus, come from the dead!" I said. "I have come to tell you, come to tell you all."

We went out that night to a basement club, hot and sweaty. We walked along the Seine in the rain. We took a black cab back to the hotel. Later in the trip, we visited the Pere Lachaise cemetary, fall leaf-littered and blustery. We saw Jim Morrison's grave, and Maria Callas' ("whoever she is"), and Oscar Wilde's, which on the observe reads thusly:

And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn
For his mourners will be outcast men
And outcasts always mourn

Now in Sweden I think about that; or I think about that often. Now I'm listening to Robin Holcomb; a cool breeze is blowing in from the Baltic:

Consider, friends, when this you see
How my life was lived by me
How I shall pass I cannot know
But I don't mind to be starting over

And back to New York tomorrow.

R.I.P., McCarren Pool Parties/Movies/Concerts

It was fun while it lasted. Mostly.

From The New York Times:

It’s Been Quite a Pool Party, but the Days Grow Short

That all said, I can't really complain about it becoming a pool.

Remiss Redux

Again I've been remiss. I started a post last week titled "White Bread: Not Just for Serial Rapists and Holocaust Deniers Anymore," but I got sidetracked and couldn't find time to write it. The basic gist of it was, Have you noticed how people (at least in NYC) have developed this knee-jerk revulsion to white bread? The other morning I was making a sandwich for work, and I pulled out some white bread, peanut butter, and jelly. (I'm from the South, give me a break.) My girlfriend (who, to be fair, is a chef) said, "White bread? You really eat white bread?" in the tone of voice that you might use to question the seriousness of someone who just said, "You know, when you think about it, that Hermann Goering had some OK ideas" or "Let's see what's on Lifetime."

Another time I was buying the ingredients to make a baked, brown-sugar-and-dijon-mustard-rubbed bologna. I bought a whole bologna: The lowest of the cold cuts but, and I stand by this, damn good when it's baked after being coated in a brown sugar and dijon mustard paste. And then I was buying bread. I went for white bread of course (bologna should be served on nothing other), and my friend Alexis says, "You know, you should get some wheat bread, too—people [I was baking the bologna for a picnic] aren't going to eat white bread."

"Why the hell not?" I say. "People can eat some goddamned white bread for once, it won't kill them." And, I'm pleased to say, they did (eat it, I mean, not get killed) and they enjoyed it, by gum—but probably only because I refused to kow-tow to the nefarious and all-consuming wheat bread lobby which has so ensnared the hearts and minds of Joes Lunchpail and College alike.

So I guess that wasn't really the gist; That was more or less the whole post I had plotted out, though perhaps with a little less anti-wheat bread invective. I mean, it's hot out. It's hard to be vitriolic when it's so hot.

Finally: Here's a treat for those of you who've slogged all the way through this post: A Men's Health video story about my friend Michael's pig roast that I helped out with back on May 31. The text of the article is pretty bare-bones and how-to (though still good, if you want to learn how to run a pig roast), but the video really captures it. I'm in it a couple of times, too: I'm wearing a white T-shirt, white apron, and a brown bandanna tied around my forehead. Oh, and I have a mustache, for any readers of this blog who might not know me in physical person (hope springs eternal).

The Running, Part 2 (Slaton Family Edition)

Like my brother, my friend from high school Willie, and I did in 2000, my other brother Sam and my sister Carrie just ran the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Sam and Carrie are both studying in Cannes right now and—after urging from my dad—took the train down to Pamplona a couple of days ago to run.

This morning I got a call from my brother Jacob, with whom I ran in 2000.

"Dude," he said. "I think I found a picture of Sam on this San Fermin [the official name of the Running of the Bulls festival] website."

I went to the website, checked it out and, sure enough, there's Sam, a terrified-looking face in the crowd. We weren't entirely sure it was Sam, but later on my dad found another picture that proved it. If you want to see the pictures (unfortunately the pics are in some sort of flash loop, and I can't pull them out for posting here), do the following:

Go here and click on the far-right image of the second row of pictures from the top. That's Sam at the top center of the picture, just to the right of the guy with his back to the camera, wearing a white shirt that looks like it has bloody gore-marks on it. Sam is wearing a red bandanna and sash, and has a rolled newspaper in his right hand (yeah, I know, like everyone else in the picture, but still).

Also go here and click on the far-right picture of the top row for the incontrovertible evidence: That's Sam's face, looking hilariously terrified, in the bottom-right of the picture. I remember that face. I made it back in 2000. One thing that people don't tell you about the Running of the Bulls: It's not fun. I mean, it is before, and it is after, but while you're in the middle of it you're just like Oh shit what in god's name have I gotten myself into, and trying not to get killed.

No pictures of Carrie running are as yet extant. Apparently the locals frown on women running, but hopefully she did it anyway. And for those of you perhaps worried for my brother and sister, worry not: This morning my dad got a quick email from them. The email read:

From: Samuel Slaton
Date: Sat, Jul 12, 2008 at 9:58 AM
Subject: pops
To: Dave Slaton

we made it! at an expensive internet cafe right now, so i will let you know more when we get back to cannes. french keyboards are terrible. we love you!

scram and carrie

Well done Sam and Carrie.

Friday was the Fourth of July

Today's the Fourth of July
Another June has gone by
And when they light up our town
I just think, "What a waste of gunpowder and sky"
—Aimee Mann

I don't really feel that way, save for the another June has gone by part. It always saddens me, how much I look forward to summer—the redemption I ascribe to it—and then how fast it goes, never seeming to be used to its fullest. But that, I suppose, is the nature of things.

It's hot and real muggy today, same as yesterday. My Fourth turned out great. I had folks over to my house for burgers, which at first made me anxious but in the end turned out really well. I think everyone was pleased with the burgers and had a good, relaxed time.

We walked over to the water at 8:40pm, and the air felt charged—not just with the thunderstorm that was threatening all day and never really made good on its threat, but charged, too, with the sights, sounds, and smells of a Brooklyn Fourth: hipster girls in their skimpy finery and stroller-pushing, multi-child Mexican families streaming west to the water along the Williamsburg streets; charcoal briquettes on the grill; and the intermittent sizzle, scream, and pop of illegal—and procured where?—small-bore fireworks, always only ever half-seen, if at all.

Fox News Outdoes Itself

Yesterday, on the Fox News morning show Fox & Friends, while discussing a so-called "hit piece" of June 28, 2008, in The New York Times ("Fox News Finds Its Rivals Closing In," about Fox News' competitors catching up to it in ratings), the co-anchors, Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade, showed digitally altered pictures (without giving anyone the heads-up that they were altered) of the Times article's reporter, Jacques Steinberg, and his editor, Steven Reddicliffe.

Here are the pictures they showed on air, next to the original photo from which each was drawn:


For those playing along at home, that's three (in recent weeks): the "terrorist fist bump," Obama's "babymama," and now this.

Past Week's Ledger

Days covered: 6/25/08–6/30/08
Miles traveled (airplane): 3,240
Miles traveled (bus + taxi): 536
Weddings attended: 2
Rehearsal dinners attended: 1
Strings of lights strung: 10
Cars driven: 2
Wedding brunches attended: 1.5
Tuxedos worn: 1
Suits worn: 1
Dates: 1
Diet Cokes drunk: About 196
Club sodas drunk: See above
Cigarettes smoked: Indeterminate
Dances danced: 10 (approx.)
Fun had: Lots
Times read Infinite Jest, spring 1997 to present: 2.269 (and counting)
Favorite passage from third re-reading (thus far):

Though Schacht buys quarterly urine like the rest of them [Quick backstory: Schacht, like “the rest of them,” is a student at an elite tennis academy, and is subject to quarterly drug-screenings; hence—since Schacht and the rest of them use “substances” (some, as we’ll see, more than others)—the need to buy “clean” urine to use in said tests—ed.], it seems to Pemulis that Schacht ingests the occasional chemical that way grownups who sometimes forget to finish their cocktails drink liquor: to make a tense but fundamentally OK interior life interestingly different but no more, no element of relief; a kind of tourism; and Schacht doesn’t even have to worry about obsessive training like Inc or Stice or get sick so often from the physical stress of constant ‘drines like Troeltsch or suffer from thinly disguised psychological fallout like Inc or Struck or Pemulis himself. The way Pemulis and Troeltsch and Struck and Axford ingest substances and recover from substances and have a whole jargony argot based around various substances gives Schacht the creeps, a bit, but since the knee injury broke and remade him at sixteen he’s learned to go his own interior way and let others go theirs. Like most very large men, he’s getting comfortable early with the fact that his place in the world is very small and his real impact on other persons even smaller — which is a big reason he can sometimes forget to finish his portion of a given substance, so interested does he become in the way he’s already started to feel. He’s one of these people who don’t need much, much less much more.

In the future

In the future, every goddamn thing on the face of this planet will be classifiable under one of four categories: luxury, artisan, organic, or gourmet. Case in point: This fucking ice cream truck, which as of today is plying the streets of SoHo with its overpriced, precious wares.

George Carlin Has Left the Building

Rest in peace, George Carlin. You were a funny guy, and one of the rare comedians that really could kind of twist a listener's thinking, expose the absurdity and hypocrisy of those in power.

To wit, from Carlin's famous "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television" bit:

I love words. I thank you for hearing my words. I want to tell you something about words that I uh, I think is important. I love..as I say, they're my work, they're my play, they're my passion. Words are all we have really.

We have thoughts, but thoughts are fluid. You know, [humming in a spacey way]. And, then we assign a word to a thought, [clicks tongue like snapping into place]. And we're stuck with that word for that thought. So be careful with words. I like to think, yeah, the same words that hurt can heal. It's a matter of how you pick them.

There are some people that aren't into all the words. There are some people who would have you not use certain words. Yeah, there are 400,000 words in the English language, and there are seven of them that you can't say on television. What a ratio that is. 399,993 to seven. They must really be bad. They'd have to be outrageous, to be separated from a group that large. All of you over here, you seven. Bad words. That's what they told us they were, remember? 'That's a bad word.' 'Awwww.' There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad Intentions.

And words, you know the seven don't you? Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits, huh? Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that will infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war.

Listen to the whole thing here:

Everybody Here Comes from Somewhere

Last night I saw R.E.M. play at Madison Square Garden. It was the first time I’d seen them in concert since the summer of 1999. They played these songs:

Living Well Is The Best Revenge
These Days
What's The Frequency, Kenneth?
Bad Day
Drive
Hollow Man
Ignoreland
Man-Sized Wreath
Leaving New York
Disturbance At The Heron House
Houston
Electrolite
(Don't Go Back To) Rockville
Driver 8
Harborcoat
The One I Love
Until The Day Is Done
Let Me In
Horse To Water
Pretty Persuasion
Orange Crush
I'm Gonna DJ

Supernatural Superserious
Losing My Religion
Begin The Begin
Fall On Me
Man On The Moon

It was a great show. Lots of old chestnuts, including three songs from Reckoning, my dark-horse favorite early-period album of theirs, and “Let Me In,” off of 1995’s much-maligned Monster, done up in multiple acoustic guitar and organ (the original is just a ton of melodic feedback). Michael Stipe is a consummate showman. The crowd was pretty good, but you could tell some people were annoyed that they weren’t playing “their hits” (i.e., “Losing My Religion,” which they did play during the encore, thus allowing the two mooks in front of me to leave).

Which kind of leads me to this: To have such a huge fanbase, even if it’s leftover from the mid-90s when they had hit albums Automatic for the People and Out of Time, is bizarre for a band as weird as R.E.M. I mean they are a really fucking weird band: They are dorks. Weird dorks. Mike Mills is a dork, the kind of guy that the mook in front of me probably used to beat up in high school. Michael Stipe is gay — not usually a cheered-for-by-jocks demographic — and sings about summer camp and aluminum tasting like fear. I suppose Peter Buck is relatively normal. But how did this band ever get this big?

Jean Teasdale on Airlines

This op-ed, by Suzanne Barlyn, is just about the stupidest thing I've ever read about the airline industry. It really reminds me of The Onion's fake columnist Jean Teasdale ("I don't have to tell you Jeanketeers that Christmas is just around the corner, which means it's time for—you got it—TV Christmas specials."). Barlyn writes:

Just when it seemed that air travel couldn't be any more demoralizing, three major carriers announced plans to charge most coach customers $15 to check a first bag.

That's right. American Airlines, United Airlines and US Airways have made a decision to bring the industry's already pitiful customer satisfaction ratings down yet another notch. Passengers who dare to travel with -- gasp -- necessities, such as clothing and diapers, will now have to pay for the privilege, beginning this week.

What's next? A surcharge for the air that I breathe in the cabin?

Zing! Also: Diapers? How many diapers are you bringing? Why do you need so many diapers? Don't they sell diapers wherever it is you are going? (Note: These $15 checked bag fees are only applicable to domestic, not international, travel.) Anyway, Barlyn goes on:

Airlines are, understandably, struggling to remain profitable amid record fuel prices. I can deal with cutting routes to save money. I can even accept raising fares -- probably because airfares already seem so complicated that I would, admittedly, have a hard time understanding when I'm paying an extra $15 for a ticket.

But nickel-and-diming my family for baggage is absurd. If only I could enjoy the privileges of a corner office in exchange for making such stupid decisions.

First of all, the airlines are not "struggling to remain profitable"; they are struggling not to totally and completely flat run out of money. The only airline that is profitable is Southwest, and that is largely because the fuel it is using, because of hedge purchases against future fuel prices, costs about $50 a barrel, as opposed to the $140 a barrel other airlines are paying right now.

Secondly, about your family? Shut the fuck up. You shouldn't've had so many kids, and expect to fly to Florida for $200 for all five of you. It's unrealistic, and it's not the airlines' fault. Moving on:

Checking one bag each for my five-person family can now add $150 round-trip to our already pricy travel expenses. Imagine, paying extra for the hassle of checking your luggage, and then hunting it down when you arrive. I expect service when I fork over extra cash -- such as an expedited baggage claim process. But finding your luggage when you arrive at your destination is often an adventure of its own, and now we're paying more for the same old madness.

I intend to get around luggage fees, and the hassle of claiming our bags, by carrying on every last pair of socks.

What did I just say about your family!? Seriously, enough. And I love this, too: "Imagine, paying extra for the hassle of checking your luggage." Imagine! Imagine having to pay FIFTEEN DOLLARS so that you can put a bag on a flight that goes across the country in three hours! I can't! The horror, the horror.

And that's great: You intend to get around luggage fees by carrying on every last pair of socks. Wonderful. Thanks for fucking it up for the rest of us. Now, not only will we have to contend with your squalling five-ring circus of a family, we will also have to deal with your mountains of diapers and socks spilling out of overhead compartments.

Oy. I could go on but I won't. Read it for yourself. Just such a distasteful, annoying sense of entitlement.

Best Typo Ever

Check this out:

A former Delta Air Lines employee and two TSA security officers have both pleaded guilty to charges that they were involved in drug smuggling. According to the charges levied against the three former airline industry employees, they were involved in a heroine and cocaine smuggling operation based on Atlanta’s Harstfield-Jackson Airport.

That's right: They were smuggling Joan of Arc, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Batgirl.

Fair & balanced & racist

Once and for all, this is why FOX News is a racist piece of shit network:

Michael Calderone, for Politico.com, writes:

Since Salon's Alex Koppelman caught Fox News characterizing Michelle Obama as "Obama's Baby Mama," there's been an uproar over use of such an offensive term.

“A producer on the program exercised poor judgment in using this chyron during the segment,” Fox's Senior Vice President of Programming Bill Shine said in a statement to Politico.

In addition to being insulting, the phrase "baby mama" is also inaccurate. The Urban Dictionary defines "baby mama" as"the mother of your child(ren), whom you did not marry and with whom you are not currently involved."

Although Shine doesn't name anyone responsible, the show's producer is Jessica Herzberg. A Fox staffer said that others internally were bothered by describing the potential first lady and very accomplished women — as the senator's "baby mama."

Unfortunately for the network, this comes just days after Fox's E.D. Hill addressed her use of the phrase "terrorist fist jab" on-air in reference to the famous Michelle-Barack fist bump (or pound) made just before his celebratory speech in St. Paul.

That is all.

More disallowed words (now with suffixes!)

Esquire magazine recently published a piece on epithets, specifically those of the swear word variety. The package included an admonition to quit using the word "douchebag"—the argument being that we are stripping it of its meaning by using it so much, and that if we keep doing so it won't have the necessary sting when we really need it. I agree that we should quit using the word, but for different reasons: Namely, that a grown person should not be using any childish, gleeful, of-the-minute swear word. Here, Paul writes to the Corinthians:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Damn straight. If the level of a man's hatred for another person does not rise above "douchebag," then he should hold his tongue. Douchebags are, by definition, not even worth acknowledging—and like the crazy preacher on your college campus, with whom students would futilely try to engage and debate, the best offense is no offense at all. If a man really needs to tell another man off, there are plenty of fine, still-harsh words on offer. It's all about tone.

Addendum: All of the cousins of douchebag are also disallowed: douchetard, asshat, etc. (Basically just read Gawker: Whatever they call someone there, or in the comments section, don't say it. Ever.)

Other disallowed words/suffixes:

• Any reformulation that uses "-erati"; i.e., "glitterati," "literati," etc. Just fucking quit it.
• Any reformulation that uses "-ista"; i.e., "fashionista," "Clintonista." Everybody's gotta be famous.

Let me just say this:

Any Hillary supporter that votes for McCain (or no one) in November is a party traitor and should be excommunicated, and maybe deported. (Where's Putin when you need him?)

Watching the election returns last night, US News & World Report columnist and CNN panelist Gloria Borger said that she'd received an email from a Hillary supporter—in justification of Hillary's combative non-concession speech—saying that it was "her night." (Just to demonstrate that this wasn't a random lunatic supporter saying this, Terry McAuliffe, Clinton's campaign chairman, echoed this sentiment today on CNN's American Morning. John Roberts asked McAuliffe why Clinton didn't concede, and he responded, "In fairness, it was her night.")

"Her night"? Are you batshit insane? That's enough! Enough about yourself! Last night on CNN, when New Yorker writer and fellow panelist Jeffery Toobin heard Borger say that, he just about choked, remarking on the Clintons' "deranged narcissism." And you know what? As much as I love and have loved the Clintons, I'm well on my way to agreeing with Toobin.

What I've Been Reading

1. Last week’s New York Magazine cover story, by Adam Sternbergh, about the Brooklyn real estate blog Brownstoner and the commenting imp who goes by the Seussian name (as the piece’s illustrations brilliantly convey) “The What.” The piece, linked here, is a perfect example of excellent magazine writing: Ostensibly it’s about the tiniest of subjects—the comments section of a niche blog—but really it’s about so much more: class anxiety and hatred, fear, racism, gentrification, money, renters vs. owners, and more. The excellent soft lede—and this is a great idea, really—is nothing more than an aggregate of comments from the site, all mashed together.

Note: The What’s blog-commenting “signature” is Robert Duvall’s famous line from Apocalypse Now: “Someday this war’s gonna end.” It’s unfortunate that Sternbergh doesn’t point out the way that Duvall says this line in the movie, which is in a wistful fashion that betrays his fondness for the war, from which he draws so much of his self-image and meaning. Would have added another good wrinkle to the article—The What loves the war, and maybe many involved on the Brownstoner blog do, too.

2. Emily Gould’s New York Times Magazine cover story from two Sundays ago, “Post-Blog Confidential.” In it, Emily, a former Gawker blogger, writes about starting a personal blog of her own, and then the ecstatic highs and disillusioning lows of her time as a snark blogger for hire with Nick Denton’s evil empire. It’s a bit self-involved (as I suppose any 10-page article about blogging must be), but it’s well-written and provides some insight into the acrimonious world of blogging. Emily writes this about her former employer:

Sometimes Gawker felt like a source of essential, exclusive information, tailored to the needs of people just like me. Other times, reading Gawker left me feeling hollow and moody, as if I’d just absentmindedly polished off an entire bag of sickly sweet candy.

In the parlance, I feel her. That’s the precise reason why I cold-turkey quit reading Gawker a few years ago, save for the occasional post forwarded to me by a co-worker or a friend. I switched to Gothamist, a much more optimistic and (I feel) healthy diversion, about all aspects of New York City. I highly recommend it.

3. The Ends of the Earth: The Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic, edited by Elizabeth Kolbert and Francis Spufford. Lately I’ve been easing back into what I’ll call Ice-lit, and I’ve been remembering what I like so much about it. It’s not the subject matter per se, it’s more the way in which the poles are like those weirdly magnetized places on the planet where cylinders roll uphill and compasses go crazy: They are places where the normal laws of the planet break down, and therefore I believe they are great “becoming” places. See this passage from Robert Peary, for example, from his (disupted) account of being the first to reach the North Pole:

It was hard to realize that, in the first miles of this brief march, we had been traveling due north, while, on the last few miles of the same march, we had been traveling south, although we had all the time been traveling precisely in the same direction. It would be difficult to imagine a better illustration of the fact that most things are relative.

And:

… at some moment during these marches and countermarches, I had passed over or very near the point where north and south and east and west blend into one.

Brilliant. I felt the same way when I was on Antarctica, even though I did not reach that continent’s equivalent point. But I remember sitting on top of Observation Hill once, with someone, crouched in the lee of a rock and quietly looking out onto the frozen Ross Sea, which stretched in a solid white sheet to the horizon. All was still and silent and white, and a growing sense of unmooredness—from life, from the flow of time, from place, from purpose—spread throughout my body. It was like a hole opened up in the fabric of reality, and for a moment I could see through and beyond this hole into the heart of the universe's monolithic silence.

Poor Hill

From an article in today's Times:

“There’s nobody taking Hillary’s side but Hillary people,” said Donald Fowler of South Carolina, a former national party chairman and one of Mrs. Clinton’s most prominent supporters, referring to her campaign’s suggestions that she might seek to challenge the way the party resolved the fight this weekend over seating the Michigan and Florida delegations. “It’s too bad. She deserves better than this.”

Aw, how sad: No one is taking poor, pitiful MILLIONAIRE SENATOR Hillary Clinton's SIDE. (What is this, grade school?)

I like her and her supporters less and less each day. The rules of the contest were established before the contest began; you can't just go changing them mid-game when it suits you—that's a basic tenet of sportsmanship. Nor can you claim to have won the popular vote when you do not count voters in the states that held caucuses. (How, Senator Clinton, does that square with your "count every vote" mantra? Also: Shame on you for invoking the specter of Florida in 2000 for your own personal gain.)

Regarding the Dems' decision to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations, but with only a half-vote each—I think they made a good decision. This is not disenfranchisement, either—this is a political party's internal nomination process. I would have preferred for Michigan's delegation to not be seated at all, because how can this be fair—Obama's name wasn't even on the ballot—but I'm willing to accept compromise in the spirit of party unity. Hillary and her supporters should demonstrate that they are willing to do the same—and soon.

How Not to Get Around Abu Dhabi

(The ceiling above the bar in the Emirates Palace Hotel.)

I’m back at the Emirates Palace bar, waiting ‘til 11:45pm when my car leaves for the airport. I scammed a shower in the hotel spa earlier, and then changed clothes and freshened up in the public bathrooms, so I’m feeling pretty good—better, at least, than after my super-aimless trek around Abu Dhabi this afternoon and evening.

(Me looking fat in my hotel room, with fruit.)

After the trade show I went back to the hotel, changed, and then got a cab to Hamdan Centre, which I believed to be more of a center than it turned out to be. I ate some weird chicken curry with no rice at a ramshackle café with a rattling air conditioner and then caught a cab to the Iranian Souk, or market. Only problem was, the driver spoke zero English and had no idea where the market was, even though I pointed it out to him on a map of the city—so we circled and drove for a half-hour, the driver calling people for directions all the while until we happened upon the not-at-all appetizing-looking, very minor market.

By that point I was sick of the whole enterprise, and knew I wouldn’t be able to get a cab from the very out-of-the-way and deserted-looking market back into the city, so I just told the guy to take me back to the Corniche, which is a waterfront esplanade/park that runs the length of Abu Dhabi.

He either didn’t know how to get back there or didn’t understand me, so eventually he stopped and passed me off to another cab, who took me back into the city with a relative minimum of confusion. He dropped me at the InterContinental—aka, a luxury Western hotel, which I’ve come to realize are the only foreigner-friendly waystations in this city—and from there I wandered, mostly along the Corniche, which is pretty and well-manicured and looks like it was built yesterday.

(Not the Corniche, but the Arabian Sea behind.)

The wind was high, and I sat down by the whipped blue water and watched the hazy, yellow Arabian sun set. I took a picture for an odd threesome—a Vietnamese woman who walked arm-in-arm with what appeared to be an English grandmother, and a German (I think) who I guess was the Vietnamese woman’s husband.

My feet hurt. I redid my shoes’ laces and set out again, trying to decide what to do until I had to be back at the Emirates to leave for the airport. Little did I know that it would take me about two hours to find a cab, as night fell and the streets became more crowded and, at sundown, the call to prayer echoed nasally from several mosques in a row, which men trickled into. I felt when this was happening that I was in a very different place indeed.

(A prayer mat, with compass to point towards Mecca, in my hotel room)

At one point during my walk I passed by a very modern building and then curved around its back, trying to find a taxi stand and, in the process, walking through what I took to be a VIP car park for the building. As I rounded the building’s backside and headed for the (security gate-fronted) exit, two Emiratis in white approached me. One spoke up and asked what I was doing, was I taking picture, what did I have in my pockets. I showed him the contents of my jacket pockets, a five-dirham note fluttering out in the process (his friend, who seemed more amused than my interrogator, was moving to help me grab the note as I picked it up), and he said No—all this in broken English, mind—what’s in your bag. I showed him—books, papers—and, seeming satisfied that I wasn’t a threat, dismissed me with, “OK. But next time you can’t come in.”

(Sheikh Zayed and his father, one of the primary founders of the U.A.E.)

I was pretty demoralized by this point—I thought maybe I should have been like, “Fuck you, man, this is a free country, I was just walking”; but then I thought, well, probably better not to say such a thing unless you’re certain just how free of a country it is that you’re in.

I kept walking, at this point actively trying to find a cab, which I had discerned only stopped at these little pull-off points, once a long block or so, and had no luck. There were four or five people waiting at each pull-off I stopped at, in no recognizable queue, all having as much luck as me, trying to flag down passing taxis, many of which were empty, with a half-assed, waist-level, arm-extended handwave. This did not work. I walked and walked, eventually passing the café where I ate earlier.

(A sign on the beach outside of my hotel.)

I got frustrated enough to stop, at a relatively empty turn-off occupied by just one other group, a white-veiled mom and her son, who looked to be ten or so. At one point, the mom looked at the son and brushed, with her fingers’ tips and a smile, the hair back from his forehead, and I thought OK maybe we are all the same.

Eventually the pair got a cab and I moved up to pole position near the head of the turn-off. Soon, however, a younger Indian or Pakistani guy stepped out in front of me and started the half-assed flagging (which, to be fair, I, too, had adopted). I was like what the fuck. In New York this move will get you knifed.

Finally another cab stopped at our flagging and the guy went to get in. I moved to the door as he did and said Excuse me, I was here first. Excuse me. He stared me down for a second and then backed off as I went to get, and got, in. I didn’t look back as I got in—though I had a brief flash of panic that the guy would brain me from behind—and said “Emirates Palace” to the driver, who sped off as I thought, “That guy must be thinking, ‘That fucking American….’” But, fuck it: Abu Dhabi or no, certain laws of the jungle—the cabstand line is inviolate—must still apply, or else all is lost.

The End.

(Sheikh Zayed's personal entrance gate to the Emirates Palace Hotel. No, really.)

Why I Want to Go to the South Pole

Behold the Telectroscope!

This is pretty fantastic—an old, recently completed tunnel, and attendant viewing portal, connecting Brooklyn and London.

(Here's the real story.)

News Roundup

On Monday, the Chicago Tribune reported on the wreck of a truck on Interstate 80 that was hauling 20,000 pounds of Oreos. Here is a link to the story—and here's an excerpt:

Several lanes of Interstate Highway 80 were shut down for hours overnight after a truck hauling Oreos crashed into a median, spilling tons of the chocolate cookies across the highway, police said.

The crash occurred at about 3:40 a.m. Monday on I-80 just east of Morris, said Master Sgt. Brian Mahoney of the Illinois State Police.

The bolding is mine, and here's why: Imagine if you were high—I mean baked out of your mind—at 3:40 in the morning, driving down I-80, and you are consumed by an all-consuming munchies whose hunger seems to gnaw at the very fabric of the cosmos—

—and then, like a gift from the universe, or like somehow winning both (both!) Showcases on The Price Is Right (by coming within $250 of your opponent's Actual Retail Price, naturally), a truck jackknifes in front of you, spilling black-and-white gold like manna from Heaven.

Imagine!

***

More seriously, I take back what I said about West Virginia being the most racist state in the nation. Kentucky is.

Charles M. Blow had a great op-ed in the Times on Saturday about Appalachia, and how it relates to the presidential campaign. Dig it here. It contains this fantastic sentence:

So, when [H. Clinton] stops casting the nomination as a standoff between the Dukes of Hazzard and the Huxtables and accepts the outcome as a fait accompli, the party can unite, and there will be a better sense as to which states are in play.

Finally: Obama's daughters are cute as hell. That's what we need in the White House.

No Sleep 'Til Park Slope

This morning I was turned on to a story in The New York Times by my managing editor, about the Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope and why, in the vernacular, people be hating on it.

For non-New Yorkers: Park Slope is a formerly radical, now upscale Brooklyn 'hood that abuts Prospect Park and has, in recent years, come to be known for its yuppie militancy, as embodied by anti-bar, -nightlife, and -noise activists, huge off-road strollers that take up half the sidewalk, and its overall entitled insufferability.

For New Yorkers: Need I say more? And you can probably guess on which side of the debate I come down. (Apologies to friends of mine that live in or love the Slope; I don't really hate it hate it, I just kind of get annoyed by it, and also see what about it annoys.)

At any rate, the Times article discusses how Park Slope, in the latter part of the Sixties, became "the leading edge of urban revitalization” (this is according to John Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the City University Graduate Center).

The article goes on:

[These people who began to revitalize Park Slope in the late 1960s] were part of a “postwar middle-class search for urban authenticity as a refuge from mass consumer culture,” said Suleiman Osman, a Slope native and assistant professor of American Studies at George Washington University, who is writing a book about the history of gentrification in Brooklyn. That authenticity, he said, generally lasts only for the first phase of gentrification. It’s a theme in modern urban history: the sense that authenticity is always slipping away. In short, this place was authentic until you people showed up. Repeat.

I bolded the above sentence because I think it’s really the key to unlocking all of this, and maybe much more. The phrase would be even more true, or truer on a larger scale, if the word “urban” were deleted, and maybe if “authenticity” were replaced by any number of words. As Tony Soprano tells his new therapist, Dr. Melfi, during the pilot episode of the classic David Chase television series, “Lately I feel like I came in at the end of something. The best is over.” Dr. Melfi responds, “I think many Americans feel that way.”

I can identify with the feeling that “it’s” always just running through my fingers: Time, the seasons, relationships, good moments, records that defined the last year. (Whence the love I felt for Arcade Fire's Neon Bible last spring, or Feist's "Feel It All"? Where do these emotions, the city's collective listening to a few albums for a short time, go? Maybe they're mothballed somewhere in a DUMBO storage facility.) In summary and return: I would like to stop the clock, to live for years in that one good summer when we had the garden parties.

At any rate, the bolded phrase in the block quote holds true in other NY neighborhoods: I know I feel that way about Williamsburg, that is was better five years ago, and that the kids who are moving in are ruining it—But certainly someone who was in Williamsburg in the late 1990s feels that way about me, too. So what is this? Why this tendency to hate what comes after and to romanticize what comes before?

Until this weekend, I had never before seriously considered kidnapping.

One For the Fam
Originally uploaded by Jake Freedom

Here's why that's no longer the case:

The Onion Weekender

This picture is the laughter equivalent of a snowball rolling down a hill. I looked at it, said, "Ha," then looked again ("Ha ha"), then, "Ha ha ha"—and then I had to close the window on my computer because I was going to lose it if I continued looking at it. Dig, Lazarus, dig:

Two Things

Both from the Times:

From this article on seven new sandwiches in NYC and environs:

One day last year at the Watchung Deli, at the request of a student from a nearby school, Ben Gualano piled mac-and-cheese onto a chicken cutlet sub with barbecue sauce and bacon, squeezed it shut somehow, and the Benny Mac was born.

They left out a phrase before "student"; namely, "high-as-shit."

And, more seriously, this, from an editorial on the Obama/Wright fight:

Senator John McCain has continued to embrace a prominent white supporter, Pastor John Hagee, whose bigotry matches that of Mr. Wright. Mr. McCain has not tried hard enough to stop a race-baiting commercial — complete with video of Mr. Wright — that is being run against Mr. Obama in North Carolina.

That is damn straight. It's about time far-right Christian pastors began to be held accountable for their lunacy. But will he be? No he will not.

Hell's Kitchen

At the backside of Columbus Center,
which previously was only a Circle,
I kill time—
having walked twenty-six blocks up Ninth—
in a café, not a bar.
The movements are the same.

The center’s twin towers rise
in perfect parallel
like a key from the future. The two frame,
between them, an equally shaped bolt
of severe blue; together the three
look like the optical illusion
in which a fork’s tines appear variously
to be four or three.

I am unfamiliar
with this part of the city,
save for the day, nearly
a year ago now, when I went
to inspect an outpatient rehab
with a soon-to-be sponsee,
and coming here

assaults me and my balance,
a head-rush when one stands
up too quickly, or how in Abu Dhabi
the city spread out before me
like a dusty Oriental rug:
I can only ever know a corner
of anything.
And what if everything
is similar?

Only a corner of Carolyn,
ever a sliver of Serena.
Perhaps within my own self under
thick opaque ice
warm seas I’ll never see
slosh and wash, submerged,
unknown underwater peaks
of my blinkered consciousness.

Please to meet

My new monkey niece, Emma Kaye Slaton. I love her!
More pictures of Emma are here.

Standing outside of my laundromat yesterday afternoon

I saw the following:

1. A drug deal.
2. A portion of the hardware store sign that read, "Keys Made Her." They certainly did.