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.

Pilgrim at Rodney Street

Waking up Saturday morning, it's begun to get warm; the heat through the open window is warming the left side of my face as I type. Last night I had some books returned to me: For the Time Being, by Annie Dillard, and The Worst Journey in the World, by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. He (Apsley) is one of my heroes; the book, which I'd loaned to a co-worker nearly a year ago, is just a monument. Apsley—or "Cherry," as he was known to friends—was a member of Robert Falcon Scott's last Antarctic expedition, during which Scott and a small group of men reached the South Pole for the second time in history (they were beaten to the prize by about a month by the Norwegians under Roald Amundsen) and, on the return journey, died.

Today, on the top of Ross Island's Observation Hill, there is a cross commemorating the five men—Scott, Wilson, Oates, Bowers and Evans—who made the Polar Journey and died on the way back, inscribed with a quote from Tennyson's Ulysses: "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." You're goddamn right.

Also on my desk is another book by Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I first read Dillard back in college, when I reviewed her then-new release For the Time Being for my college newspaper. In For the Time Being, Dillard attempts to answer the following questions, in the roundabout, impressionistic, enchanting linked-essay style that has become her hallmark: "Does God cause natural calamity?"; "What might be the relationship of the Absolute to a lost schoolgirl in a plaid skirt?"; and, "Given things as they are, how shall one individual live?" It is a stunning book, one that I've returned to over and again in the close to ten years since I first read it.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, however, I've only had for three years, and have never fully read (until now). On the back of my copy is a price tag that says Scorpio Books and $29.95. This is because I purchased it in New Zealand, on the one free day I had back in that country after I got fired from my dishwashing job at Antarctica's McMurdo Station, in late-January of 2005—about 93 years to the day after Captain Scott achieved his greatest victory, I achieved my greatest defeat.

But I bought Pilgrim and I flew back across the Pacific to L.A. and I had no fucking idea what to do; it was so weird to get off the plane into LAX and have nowhere to go, no one to meet, nowhere to be. I wandered to a hostel in Venice Beach and I went out to the boardwalk and I sat at a cafe with my newly purchased copy of Tinker Creek—I'd gone from great dreams of Worst Journeys, my lodestar before my Antarctic folly began, to meek, supplicant Pilgrims, seeking stupidly on a beach in the warm (everything is relative) L.A. winter.

I started the book then but I never finished it. But I wrote two things in the book three years ago, on blank pages in the front and back. Now they live in the book, and, as of late, they have been going with me where I go. They are unfinished, like Captain Scott's final entries, which Cherry includes in The Worst Journey in the World. Scott wrote:

"Thursday, March 29. Since the 21st we have had a continuous gale from W.S.W. and S.W. We had fuel to make two cups of tea apiece and bare food for two days on the 20th. Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more."

And his last entry: "For God's sake, look after our people."

My entries are equally (if unjustifiably) dramatic. But everything is relative, and in my world the journey I'd just experienced was My Personal Worst. So, gentle reader, be kind. I wrote:

I'm thinking of a fish I never saw, sitting here at the Sidewalk Cafe in Venice Beach, the very end of America. The smell of patchouli is on the air and across the way is this painting of a fish that's mottled orange and white, with whiskers and feathery fins and a purple lotus blossom floating on the water behind him. The sun is going down behind clouds to the west, and in a few hours' time will sizzle out orangely into the Pacific. It's January and everywhere are people, but no one I know. The fish I'm thinking of which I never saw (but you did, in the ocean) is what Art studied, the Antarctic toothfish, an ugly, though ethereal, creature. They had"

Like Scott's, it, too, ends abruptly.

And then there is this:

"Antarctica was, in the end, like a dream. Which is not to say dreamy, or magical, but rather dreamlike, along with all that a dream can be: unreal, beautiful, disturbing, exultant, comforting, dull. I fell into this dream for six months and awoke suddenly, stupidly blinking at the bright Christchurch light, a Kiwi summer of babies and skirts and birds and bars and foodsmells. Ducks in the water, diving their heads in for food, seemed to me like pictures of ducks come to life, surprisingly duck-like."

So, now: I've picked up Pilgrim at Tinker Creek again. It's time. The book, which was published in 1975, Dillard's second (the first was a collection of poetry), won the Pulitzer Prize, and for good reason: It is literally changing the way I'm looking at the world. She writes about how blind people who have operations to restore their sight, in the first days or weeks after their surgery experience the seeing world as patches of bright and dark color, without depth. I've been trying, as she was trying when she wrote the book, to see in this way: The other day I got a bagel at work and smeared some strawberry jam on it; the color kind of stopped me in my tracks, and I put my eyes close to the rich red splotch. Walking home three nights ago in Brooklyn, to my apartment on Rodney Street, I passed a small tree on the street, flowering with pink flowers. I put my nose right in the flowers, and saw the little gold and black stems coming out of the middle of the flowers, and the pink petals. I both inhaled and saw deeply.

Try it sometime: Put your eyes really close to things. Just look at them, I mean really look. You'll be surprised at how it can affect you. After all, as Dillard writes in Pilgrim,

"It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won't stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get."

And again I say: You're goddamn right.

Urge to kill rising

Just a minute ago, I sent this email to a friend of mine. I thought it's worth reposting here.

This article about something being somehow spoiled and not-right and anti-women about Obama supporters is WAY too long, but it raises some interesting points: Namely, the point that I want to hurl my computer through a plate-glass window after reading it.

It contains such gems as the following:

“Maggie Merrill, a 31-year-old graduate student in urban studies ... is a Clinton supporter who told me that she will happily vote for Obama in the general election. But, she said, "There is this Obama-mania, where these young men get glassy eyes and start spitting out vague things about how Barack Obama is going to save humanity. Really, have you seen their eyes? It's this faraway look. It's scary."”

So now we’re cult members, huh? Sort of like wild-eyed feminists who see a woman-hater on every corner? Is that right?

And this:

“Obama loyalty, like white masculinity itself, has become normative -– if you're not for him, you'd best be prepared to explain your deviation.”

Yes, that’s right: Obama loyalty—loyalty to a BLACK man—is somehow “like white masculinity itself.” What a beautiful fucking backflip of doublespeak.

And this:

“That does not mean that all privileged white male Democrats are sexist, anymore than it would be true to suggest that all working-class white Democrats (the segment of the party that is breaking for Clinton) are racist. But a lightly disguised uneasiness with female power, as well as the "we love women, just not that woman" rhetoric will be familiar to anyone who has paid attention to the reception of the feminist movement.”

Oh, thanks, that's sweet of you. Thanks for saying we are not all sexist. All Arabs aren't terrorists, either, by the way. You see what that does? Saying "All X aren't Y" implies, without having to actually commit and say "Most X are Y," that in fact, really, "Most X are Y. I mean, come on. You know it to be true."

Also, and: Except maybe it’s not rhetoric? Maybe we think that Hilary has—sadly, because lots of us once liked her—chosen to take the lowest possible road as she has descended into a primal panic over not winning, and THAT’S why we don’t like her?

And this beautiful para:

“Valenti continued, "I pinpoint sexism for a living. You'd think I'd be able to find an example. And I hate to rely on this hokey notion that there's some woman's way of knowing, and that I just fucking know. But I do. I just know." When it comes to feminism, she continued, so much proof is required to convince someone that sexism exists, "even when it's explicit and outrageous. So when it's subdued or subtle, you don't want to talk about it."”

Oh that’s great. “You just know.” Wonderful. I’m a UFO expert, and I just know that there are aliens. So now it’s true. Also, relying on the stereotype of “some woman's way of knowing" (aka "women’s intuition”) to “prove” a point about the existence of sexism in a particular instance is so fucking beautiful and symmetrical it kind of makes me happy.

But so: Doesn’t this all smack a bit of McCarthyism, and the Red Fear of the 1950s? I think so. And of course I will vote for Hillary come November if somehow she subverts the will of the electorate via superdelegate shenanigans and ends up the nominee—I just won't be as happy about it as I could have been if she had run a more hopeful, inspiring, high-road campaign, LIKE OBAMA HAS DONE (which is why I like him).

The world is over

From the Washington Post review of the new Gaylord National hotel in D.C.:

There is a lot of "above" to be had in the Gaylord National, the newly opened, $800 million resort and convention center built so ridonkulously large that it makes you think of those Bruce McCall cartoons in the New Yorker.

That's it, I quit.

Black Ice

In today's New York Times, there's a story about a black Harlemite who is going to be teaching from Antarctica this fall. A guy called Dr. Stephen Pekar, a geologist at Queens College, recruited Shakira Brown, a 29-year-old science teacher, for the following reason:

“I’m tired of having a bunch of white people running around doing science,” said Dr. Pekar, who is white. “When it comes to Antarctica, it isn’t just the landscape that’s white.”

That's very true. When I was at McMurdo Station, station population was around 1,200—and yet there were only a small handful of black people, maybe less than 20 (or perhaps that's just how I remember it). Which leads to a funny story:

I was talking with a guy one day while working in Antarctica and he was trying to tell me a story about someone else, but I didn't know the guy he was talking about. He was telling me, oh, he's in the carp(enter) shop, he hangs out with so-and-so, he's about this tall, etc.

I'm trying to think who he was talking about and then I realize it. "Wait," I say. "You mean the black guy?" "Uh, yeah," my friend says. "Yeah, he's, um, he's African-American."

That seemed to me the height of absurdity. If we had been living on an island of four-foot-tall pygmies, would my friend have hesitated in describing the island's only pro basketball player as, "You know, that tall motherfucker"? I doubt it.

Some people have brown skin. So what? That's not usually the most easily identifiable characteristic about them—but it is when people with brown skin make up 1% of the population of wherever one's at.

But maybe my attitude on this results from growing up in the south, where it's no problem to say, Oh, yeah, the black/white guy. Also, African-American is often a misnomer: Not all black people come from Africa.

At any rate, I like this development and the story—diversity is always a good thing, and that'll be a treat this coming fall for Ms. Brown's students to see her working and teaching on the Ice.

Shotgun Stories

My friend Jeff Nichols' movie Shotgun Stories, which I saw last year at the Tribeca Film Festival, and which is being shown at the IFC Center in Manhattan starting on the 26th, just got a fantastic review in New York magazine. Read it here. I highly recommend the movie to anyone looking for a strong shot of Southern heat, violence, ennui and brotherly trouble. Congratulations, Jeff!

All Quiet on the Blogstern Front

I saw Joanna Newsom play with the Brooklyn Philharmonic at BAM. Lines like "In the trough of the waves, which are pawing like dogs, pitch we, pale-faced and grave, as I write in my log" jumped out at me; I had heard the words before but I had never heard the words before. I thought of the jump in complexity from Milk-Eyed Mender to Ys and how it echoed, in its unprecedentedness, the leap that Dylan made from The Freewheelin' to Blonde on Blonde and, in his only "V" song, "The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face, where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place." But then Joanna came back out, a vision in a short hot pink dress, and I heard evidence of her genius presaged: "There are some mornings when the sky looks like a road." Early on Dylan meditated on roads, too, singing in tribute to his idol, "I'm a-leaving' tomorrow, but I could leave today, somewhere down the road someday."

Joanna's come home but Dylan's on the road again. In Todd Haynes' fractured biopic I'm Not There, which I saw last Sunday, Dylan morphed as a small black boy jumping trains, living out of time, to a work shirt-clad Freedom Rider to a symbol-addled French dreamer to an arch embodiment of that high thin wild mercury sound to a broken family man to a man of god to a bespectacled, wily outlaw witnessing the sunset of that weird old America only to end up again, as he remains, on a train, winking and forever receding from view yet not ever disappearing. He's in whiteface at the ballpark this summer. He drives SUVs in black mirror shades. He sells ladies underwear just like he said he would. He wears bolo ties and can't keep from crying over Alicia Keys, who was born in Hell's Kitchen when he was living down the line. Woody, Dylan, Johanna, and Joanna, they "will be fine; but what was yours and mine appears to me a sandcastle that the gibbering wave takes."

File under fragments, Ice-related

Though not quite sastrugi*, the Jersey swamp's
wind-whipped, frozen hillocks on the way in
to work put me in mind of Antarctica,
and the cold-storage smoking-room's window,
through which I looked out onto the alien
Ross Ice Shelf, busted-up and jackknifed
like a California freeway after an earthquake,
and wondered, "Where in the holy fuck am I?"

* sastrugi = wavelike ridges of hard snow formed by the wind

Three weeks in the life

Forgive my long absence, Faithful Reader; In the past few weeks I have been really busy.

Two Tuesdays ago I saw Vampire Weekend play at the Bowery Ballroom, hands-down the best place to see a show in the city. They were great: It was the day of their self-titled album release, and during the show I had a smile plastered across my face the entire time. The drummer was like Stretch Armstrong mixed with Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem's drummer, with college-kid thrown in; the keyboardist spent large chunks of a couple songs goonily scratching at his face; the bass player shook and strutted as if he thought he were in a much cooler band than he actually is; and the lead singer was confident and guileless. The music (sort of Afro-pop or, in a much better term, "Upper West Side Soweto"—kudos to whoever coined that) was simple, weird, incredibly catchy and just a lot of fun. The woman I was with, whom I brought to the show without her knowing the band at all and who had been having kind of a bad day, couldn't deal with the very crowded crowd and went to the back of the room during the show—but she texted me during to say, "They are really good!"—They are that irresistible. They won't ever "save music," but they are a great band whose album, since I purchased it at the show that night for $10, I've been rationing so that I don't wear it out too quickly—an honor I reserve for only the albums I love best.

Next up: Joanna Newsom at BAM!