tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66122232024-03-07T19:42:40.154-05:00Jay Blathers And Bloviatesremodeling... and making an effort at this, for once.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.comBlogger842125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-36093642534719373122008-11-24T10:12:00.005-05:002008-11-25T11:00:43.055-05:00Lake of FireTony Kaye's <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0841119/" target="_blank">horror documentary</a> left me kind of twisted in fear and righteous anger over the characters at the ends — at one end, in particular — of the American "abortion debate." That's a misnomer; the issue's been thrown way outside the boundaries of debate or discussion or even childish name-calling, though there's plenty of that, too. <span style="font-style: italic;">Lake of Fire</span> is about detachment, how the abortion issue is now tangential to the abortion debate. The real focus is the characters, and it would only be oversimplifying a little to classify them as (mostly male) intellectual liberal ninnies and (mostly male) motherfucking psychopaths with high-powered rifles, both stroking their egos within their little sub-cultures.<br /><br />Hidden in the mess is a woman with a <span style="font-style: italic;">thing</span>, a tumor alien chimera growing inside of her. One of the early scenes is a late-term abortion where after the procedure — I didn't realize this — the doctor needs to assemble the pieces of fetus to be sure that it's removed entirely. It's a grotesque image, thankfully shot in black-and-white, that re-affirms both sides of the argument: simultaneously human and a sick joke parody of a human, hands and feet like a doll — detached from the body — a kind of pygmy Chernobyl prairie-dog looking creature with a bulging eyeball running down its squished head. I flipped, "Eeeew! Eeeew! Get it out of me!" before even realizing that it's evil metaphorically manifest.<br /><br />But that's not important.<br /><br />The drama, dogma and demagoguery outside the clinics hogs all of the attention, which I suppose is the point. On a sane day, it's merely anti-abortion protest leader Randall Terry facing a disorganized crowd of profligate college kids in their own anti-abortion protest protest, both sides bitching about how it's impossible to have a frank discussion with the other side. The vociferous Christian right wrangles more face time from Kaye, and also more batshit crazy face time. One Florida pro-life preacher, John Burt, bought up all the property around a Planned Parenthood clinic, set up billboards condemning the women in the clinic when both he and God couldn't be bothered, and spewed his brimstone vitriol — the Lake of Fire gets a major shout-out — at anyone within earshot, or on the opposite end of a camera lens.<br /><br />The pro-choice side, pro-abortion or pro-woman, depending on your stance, is on the defensive. I can't see why having an abortion is more shameful than devoting your life to spying on the women who come in and go out of the clinic, but self-righteousness is a powerful shield against due shame. It's voyeuristic and pervy, a <a href="http://www.naral.org/" target="_blank">NARAL</a> activist points out, over footage of an eighty-year old man peeping out from an impromptu "counseling" house across the street from a clinic. There's something about taking a position, or doing so on film, that screws with your countenance: all the pro-lifers have a vague child-molester look to them, the pro-choice women go out of their way to be dykey, the pro-choice men are all eccentrics with uncontrollable hair. It's difficult to believe they're all examples of the same species.<br /><br />It escalates, especially in the wake of America's conservative turn post-9/11. The far-left accuses — and before you ask, they're reading way too much into it, Sarah Palin's retarded baby notwithstanding — the Pentecostals of subverting the Constitution to re-create America as an eternal Christian theocracy. It would have been glossed over before the Taliban came into our consciousness, but their far-right counterparts, those with the aforementioned high-powered rifles, make Falwell's knee-jerk contention that gays, feminists, liberals, abortionists, and the ACLU caused 9/11 sound petty. Blood libel and SRA — again, bullshit — are common themes.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Lake of Fire</span> follows the contrasting, rational, genuine but largely irrelevant ethical discussion, too. It's all the more jarring to see Noam Chomsky or particularly the godless Village Voice columnist and pro-lifer Nat Hentoff talking heads in, ostensibly, their lecture halls, in front of a chalkboard or bookshelf, making a case without grainy video of an aborted fetus or a picture of a woman dead with a coat hanger in her uterus. Society still has these wordy things called words that can be used to some effect; the argument that while protecting the unborn may be nice, there are millions of already-born children starving, or without clean water, or medicine, or schools outweighs all the graphic bodily descriptions, in part because I could think about it without having to look away. (A mostly nude performance artist and her not-as-nude partner make the same point, but it's somehow less effective when she's stripteasing, for a purpose, with a wire hanger in her underwear.)<br /><br />I wish I'd thought of that when I <a href="http://jayharris.blogspot.com/2007/08/eighth-circle-of-hell.html" target="_blank">confronted</a> that anti-abortion woman outside of church.<br /><br />Is that just because I have a brain? Several of the non-insane liberals make a point of not arguing with the dogma screamers. Hentoff's contention that the fertilized egg must have civil rights in order for the idea of civil rights to be meaningful can be, and summarily is, torn apart. Bio-ethicist and Princeton professor <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/%7Epsinger/" target="_blank">Peter Singer</a> finds the real root of the issue and has the chutzpah (gall) to assume that abortion is murder and then ask why, exactly, is murder bad? But what do you with the real scary people in the<span style="font-style: italic;"> Lake of Fire</span>, besides gagging them or alternately letting them spew their loony till everyone else stops listening? The latter might take a while, and the former suddenly elicits a response about freedom of speech, usually from someone who'd piss on the Bill of Rights if they could.<br /><br />I haven't even mentioned the real monster freaks in the film, without question people who need to be thrown into the Christian version of Guantanámo and left in that netherworld. There's a senescent priest — no idea what cult would have the guy at their face — who runs a halfway house for, if I remember correctly, 180 young girls and goes on a possessed, speaking in tongues rant on all the nasty ways President Clinton wants to fuck "Sparklee," the sixth-grader sitting not two feet away from him. John Burt, who claims to go no farther than inflammatory rhetoric, is certainly not apologetic about (inadvertently?) talking Mike Griffin into shooting a doctor who performs abortions. And he's disturbingly ambiguous about his relationship with Paul Hill and Andrew Cabot, who defend Griffin with fury and psycho quasi-logic ("All murderers need to be murdered!") and in their down time discuss who else needs to be murdered (homosexuals, adulterers, blasphemers, anyone who says "Goddamn it!" at a baseball game) in a half-scary serious tone and a half-scarier sarcastic tone. They are the pygmy Chernobyl priarie dog with personality, guys who I'd negotiate with for my own safety: "I'll renounce my right to an abortion (pretty easy for me to do) if you renounce your Second Amendment rights," and they'd flip out on a whole separate rant about the end days and one-world government and the DEA coming to eat their children.<br /><br />There's little room left inside them for Singer's question and even less for its answer.<br /><br />And, oh yeah, there's also a woman with a devestating choice to make somewhere in the mix. Here's Kaye's only point of real connection with somebody and the issue, also the film's only character who's too busy being pregnant and unable to care for the child to give a damn about taking a militant position either way. The whole of the past two and a half hours is suddenly irrelevant; all that's in the room is the woman, and the staff and Kaye's camera providing her the sympathy, and also clinical appreciation of her situation, that she can't provide herself. Nice to see there's folks out there still capable of caring about somebody <span style="font-style: italic;">else</span> for a moment.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-52957967272814142492008-11-10T22:21:00.002-05:002008-11-10T23:18:15.536-05:00My cousins dropped by the East coast for some random relative's wedding and they stopped in today for their annual couple-hour visit on their way to the airport. It was the grandparents, parents, and their two proto-humans. The baby couldn't care less, because she's a freaking baby, but the toddler was adorably shy, or at least as adorable as those things get. She was scared to walk in the front door, scared to meet Grandma, spending most of the afternoon engrossed in the GPS navigator and also a shiny silver necklace. Maybe fifteen minutes in, I guess Grandma felt like the toddler was neglecting her, and she called her over, "C'mere, Zoe..."<br /><br />Zoe didn't even look up: "No."<br /><br />We are simpatico.<br /><br />God, I envy her, and I hope she never changes, because that is fucking beautiful. I wish I could do that, be just my own free fucking soveriegn self without any of that passive-aggressive bullshit. Nothing personal, just slow down, Cowgirl. I'll come when I'm good and ready.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-47899213111910180762008-10-28T15:45:00.004-04:002008-10-28T16:16:34.939-04:00Big, Fancy Red Carpet PartyI got an e-mail today from the "Hudson Union Society," which sounds like a bank, but is in fact a social club. Here's the subject line: "Birthday Party with Steve Guttenberg - Please Come! Free To All." That's right — I was invited to Steve Guttenberg's birthday party. The poor man's Q-rating must be lower than dirt, because I don't even get invited to my <i>friends'</i> birthdays, and none of them co-starred in <i>Amazon Women on the Moon</i>. <br /><br />I assume. At least, none of them have come out and told me.<br /><br />I'm a sucker for curious desperation, Hudson Union practically begging me to show up — Please Come! Free to All. Drinks Will Be Served! Like they already know I have better stuff to do than meet Steve Guttenberg. Call me when Judd Hirsch or Emilio Estevez or that robot from <i>Short Circuit</i> stops by. The way he can't comprehend human emotions is hilarious!Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-49231826438701887032008-10-24T10:36:00.003-04:002008-10-24T11:04:42.764-04:00Pre-Emptive Movie ReviewI want to mention how much I'm looking forward to not seeing <i><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/saw_v/" target="_blank">Saw V</a></i> this weekend. I'll be missing out on the cinematic genius of the production designer on the made-for-Animal Planet movie <i><a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/287843/Cybermutt/overview" target="_blank">Cybermutt</a></i> ("Part Dog. Part Machine. All Best Friend.") and the second unit director of <i>Saw IV</i>, plus what I'm sure is a brilliant, pithy, philosophically insightful screenplay by the guys who probably got paid more to write <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104836/" target="_blank">Feast 3: The Happy Ending</a></i> than I make in a year, but I have toenails that need clipping, carpet fibers that need counting, and three Takashi Miike DVD's in my Netflix queue.<br /><br />Aside: has anybody, anywhere ever seen <i>Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds</i> — Oh! I get it! It's dirty! — or <i>Feast 1: Original Flavor</i>?<br /><br />Second aside: If anyone does see this, feel free to spoil the ending for me. I will totally pay eleven bucks to watch <i>Saw V</i> if it turns out that Luke from <i>Gilmore Girls</i> is the killer.... Well, probably not, but I might check out ironically on DVD.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-16552214651883047082008-10-22T21:56:00.005-04:002008-10-22T22:16:49.003-04:00RequestPlease don't post on your okcupid profile a picture of you at the freaking <i>Holocaust</i> Memorial. Sure, you're smiling, not blinking, not a hair out of place, but is that really your best photo from Berlin? There's not one of you at the Pergamonmuseum or the Brandenberg Gate or with the polar bear?Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-79955639445247474732008-10-16T22:42:00.001-04:002008-10-16T22:44:42.902-04:00Mating CallsI work near a bunch of construction sites in the city, so for the first time in my life, I got to watch some dirty guy in an orange vest and a hard hat whistling at a woman passing by. I didn't think anyone actually did that outside the movies and stereotypes. Catcalls are the perfect combination of ill-timed lust and laziness for failing to attract women, or anyone, really. Beagles and taxicabs, maybe, but a human being, with consciousness, already moving towards a destination? Please tell me no one has fallen for that since our neanderthal days.<br /><br />But this dude whistled and the woman ignored him and his construction buddies were congratulating him and — okay, it's not about the woman; he's flaunting his masculinity to his co-workers. Fair enough.<br /><br />The other day, same thing happened, but now I'm utterly baffled. This time it was a cab driver, maybe in his mid-fifties, no passengers, waiting for the light to change. Woman in her twenties walking the other direction, and the cab driver opened his window, stuck his head out, and called to her. "Hey girl, wanna ride?" or whatever generic substitute for charm and affection the pop stars are saying these days. The light turned green and he drove off.<br /><br />I have no idea what the point of that was. "Dear Penthouse Forum: I never thought this would happen to me, but..." it didn't happen to him. Did he expect her to forget about wherever she was headed, turn around, and <i>chase down his cab</i>? I can only imagine his disappointment — another one got away. Damn that traffic light!Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-62547415210037071612008-10-15T22:24:00.003-04:002008-10-15T22:51:52.223-04:00This ad's been popping up all over the train I take into the city every day, and I'm kind of perplexed:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.drugfreenj.org/_static/images/web_banners/grandma_long.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 500px;" src="http://www.drugfreenj.org/_static/images/web_banners/grandma_long.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a>Because it's ostensibly about prescription drug abuse — the best kind of drug abuse — but really it seems more anti-Grandma than anything else. Grandma kind of needs those drugs to, you know, stay alive, so I'm not really clear on how the Partnership for a Drug-Free New Jersey wants me to handle the situation. Honestly, I never even thought of stealing Grandma's prescription drugs until the anti-drug people mentioned it.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-53052505087939302132008-10-13T22:14:00.006-04:002008-10-14T10:37:13.396-04:00AloneI was thinking about my side in the iPod revolution ever since yesterday, and waking up every day a square peg in the grown-up world. I wrote that the Star-Ledger article was "out to offend me, personally, into falling in line," which I suppose is what reactionaries do. They split the world in two, those like us and those who aren't, so what's incongruous to me isn't so much the name-calling from one of "them," but that I'm taking it <span style="font-style: italic;">personally</span>. I can't be — I'm not, the article makes it clear — the only one who sees no conflict between headphones and professionalism, or who feels the corporate wardrobe is superficial and frivolous, or who'd rather send out a conversational résumé. So how is it that Convention alienates me (or us?), that I (or we?) accept its value judgments, as if my (or our?) own normality was real rebellion threatening to tear a stable society apart?<br /><br />I had a job interview a few years back where the hiring bosses specifically handed me a "business formal" dress code, and I wore a tie and jacket and it turned out the company was run by a bunch of jerks — sartorial demands aside — who were barely worth combing my hair for, let alone looking nice over. I wish I had the guts to walk into that interview in my standard jeans and dark T-shirt: "The business is computer programming. I can program computers perfectly well dressed like this. If I wanted to dress unprofessionally, I would've worn mittens."<br /><br />Attitude like that will get you nowhere — not that presenting myself well got me very far either — and the more I think about it, the more that seems like a tactic of the old morality, flipping every ordinary, arbitrary, moral value on its subjective head: It's not that you're a horrible fit for the culture, it's that you're a <span style="font-style:italic;">unique</span> horrible fit. Maybe it's time for a change, acknowledging the conformist cultures of non-conformity. You don't hit people, or steal, or litter, or talk on your cell phone during the movie... so you're okay, and you're not alone.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-65556027653678491972008-10-12T21:01:00.002-04:002008-10-12T22:53:17.857-04:00The Jobhunter section in today's Star-Ledger tackles the dicey issue of listening to music at work. This can't be good. An innocuous work habit holding employees' sanity intact in this insufferable sick existential joke called a job scares the status quo, like someone will come into work one day carrying a boombox on their shoulder and start breakdancing on the boardroom table right in the middle of a big presentation. I spend most of my work day with little white earbuds peeking out of my head — even when I'm not listening to anything — so this article, like the past ones headlined "Dress For Success" or "Interview To The Top," is out here to offend me, personally, into falling in line.<br /><br />The Star-Ledger interviewed some power-drunk "managing partner" dude Mario Almonte, of the public relations firm Buzzkill & Partners, where "listening to music on the part of employees there is frowned upon." I'd actually find it really funny except that <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087277/" target="_blank">Reverend Moore</a> probably makes more money than I do and enforces his will on people. The biggest stumbling blocks in Almonte's quest to destroy all things fun are the interns, "young people whose experience with the company is limited," and presumably whose souls haven't irreparably crushed and recycled in, say, a gaudy fountain or chandelier decorating the world's largest whatever in Dubai. "If you are really concentrating on your work, music will distract you," not that an intern's job couldn't be done by a retarded monkey.<br /><br />"It doesn't occur to them that anything's wrong with it," Almonte says. Almonte, mind-reading, claims the other employees are distracted by the iPod buds — and jealous, too — but it's all just a cover for him, not begging the question but dodging it. <i>There's not anything wrong with it</i>, unless you're a micromanaging tool and there's some kid chair-dancing around the filing room, not even rebelling, but just plain oblivious. The article ends by pointing out that the children of the LP are a dying breed and Gen Y is coming into its own in the workplace; what once was lousy kids upsetting the social order will soon become the social order, and I believe one of our generation's projects should be moving every Elks lodge and canasta house into the bathroom of an underground rave.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-83684680296005950042008-09-22T09:16:00.001-04:002008-09-23T10:36:53.582-04:00We were at <a href="http://jayharris.blogspot.com/2004/10/happy-fanny-wood-day.html">Fanny Wood Day</a> yesterday and amid the usual small-town street fair vendors and tent — for window treatments, aluminum siding, popcorn, and the local Board of Education — two caught my eye. The first was a table offering, quote, Islam. Which surprised me, because even though Fanwood isn't some backwoods retarded gun-toting cousin-marrying big-ass fourteen-karat silver belt-buckle flyover hicktown, it still has more of an intolerant 1950's-style conformist vibe than anywhere in the information age should have. At least that's my take, judging from the letters to the editor in our local waste of a tree newspapers, but maybe I'm wrong...<br /><br />...or maybe not. Fanny Wood Day also had an Old People For McCain tent; see my above analysis of the town. Not that I expect Old People, or small-town Republicans for that matter, to have the slightest grasp of de-regulation, the eleven-trillion dollar national debt, or the mortgage crisis — haven't they at least figured out that for the past eight years, they've been making less money and paying more for the big-box crap they buy? Short answer: no, because they've been building credit card debt instead of paying for stuff. Very Republican indeed.<br /><br />I wanted to confront them, and I wanted to change their minds, which are two mutually incompatible things, especially when I'm overflowing with contempt for these Old People who got us into this financial mess, this Iraq mess, this oil mess, and who also drive slow as they walk. But I believe I've found the key: There's this sardonic grassroots organization <a href="http://www.billionairesforbush.net/" target="_blank">Billionaires for Bush</a> that's a "grassroots network of corporate lobbyists, decadent heiresses, Halliburton CEOs, and other winners under George W. Bush's economic policies," ironically supporting the Republicans who would return the favor, if they were actually rich and not upper-middle class college students. The problem is that they're too self-aware, that you don't even have to hear the joke because you already either agree or disagree with it. People are stupid, and appeals to self-interest don't go anywhere when they're only supported by facts and logic.<br /><br />What I wish I thought of back then, and had the balls to go through with, is <span style="font-style:italic;">agreeing</span> with the Old People's economic instincts. It's way obnoxious, and the more smarmy MTV-generation lingo you throw in, the better:<blockquote>"Hey! Hey, there, great job! Thank you for voting Republican, cause the hedge fund I work at, we made so much cash off this economy. You should've seen my Christmas bonus, it was obscene. Probably worth more than your house. Speaking of which, if you need money, you wanna reverse mortgage that place, you call me. Here's my card, there's my cell, my e-mail, cause I'm looking for real estate to turn a profit on. I wanna buy a motorcycle..."</blockquote>Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-69441565899400590202008-09-19T17:13:00.004-04:002008-09-19T17:40:59.285-04:00One of the perks of twenty-first century living is being pummeled by abstruse, confusing viral advertising that demands you ask it what it's hocking, and also weird promotions for stuff you <a href="http://jayharris.blogspot.com/2007/11/im-really-happy-new-york-shipping.html">can't actually buy</a>. BASF: "We don't make the things you buy..." So, why are you selling it to me then? But advertising has never perplexed me so much as this sidebar gem that someone <span style="font-style: italic;">spent money</span> to put on Facebook<blockquote><h2>Knot physics</h2><div class="social_ad_advert_text">Knot physics is a unified field theory with a simple Lagrangian. Particles are knots in the spacetime manifold. Learn more here.</div></blockquote><p>I, for one, wasn't even aware that knot physics is for sale. How much do you think a unified field theory with a simple Lagrangian costs?Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-72862027737255634632008-09-10T16:36:00.000-04:002008-09-14T22:56:54.666-04:00Who else was getting some apocalyptic nerd-love last night when the team at CERN powered up their new <a href="http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/" target="_blank">Large Hadron Collider</a> toy? "You know, the world could end any moment now, just as soon as those two proton beams annihilate each other in a dark matter fusion reaction ripping apart all the atoms in the planet's gravitational field. It would be a shame to spend maybe our last few hours in the universe watching this repeat of <span style="font-style: italic;">Lost</span>. Maybe we should, I dunno, fool around a little....?"<br /><br />If the idea of empirically verifying the existence of the Higgs boson in the quantum chromodynamic vacuum doesn't get your loins tingling just a little, I don't even know you.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-39735804588305480812008-09-09T09:48:00.003-04:002008-09-14T10:45:10.979-04:00"Losing All Hope Was Freedom"I'm not a huge romantic, still I feel like Tyler Durden isn't the ideal philosophical voice to follow when you're looking for love, just leaving a mess of contradictions between me, girls, and the tenuous CupidMail connecting us. I'm currently zero for seven, disheartened and <span style="font-style: italic;">a priori</span> pessimistic, and embracing <span style="font-style: italic;">Fight Club</span>'s absurd reductivist nihilism under the illusion that it's not just comforting but even <span style="font-style: italic;">empowering</span>. <a href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19991015/REVIEWS/910150302/1023" target="_blank">Roger Ebert</a> simply calls bullshit on Tyler's myopic, emasculated world-view — and I do see the false premise — but short of suffocating myself in Axe™ Deodorant Body Spray, it sure <span style="font-style: italic;">seems</span> like it doesn't matter what the hell I write to simplysara@okcupid.com or art_fiend84@okcupid.com because they won't respond anyway. So, "Hey, cool profile. [Generic question referencing a detail in said profile.] Hope to hear from you soon!" Close my eyes and click send, and at least it's not like I'll be disappointed or anything.<br /><br />You can see the problem here. I can't tell if I'm suffering from a self-fulfilling prophecy because I do, at least consciously, make my best, honest effort to be appealing and attractive, engaging and interested — and to be sure, that's certainly not my greatest strength — but at the same time, I don't imagine people who are really successful at dating treating it like the love lottery.<br /><br />Then again, my computer generally behaves the way I want it to, and you'll hardly catch me complaining about how modern technology is inscrutable.<br /><br />I predicted it would take ten to fifteen CupidMails before I'd figure out the right thing to say, so in that vein, I'm almost fifty to seventy percent of the way there. But it would be nice to know what other guys are Cyrano-ing, maybe cutting out a bunch of the false starts and (utterly adorable) self-doubts plaguing me. Some people might be missing out in the meantime.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-81187133935425579422008-09-07T11:47:00.002-04:002008-09-07T12:05:53.886-04:00Demographic ElectionAnybody else notice how the Republican talking-head faux demographic generator has been growing more and more redneck every election? It started with the soccer moms, till that was too European and gay. Then NASCAR dads, a solid vroom-vroom Dukes of Hazzard replacement except gas went up to four dollars while loud-ass advertising machines were driving in circles five-hundred times a day. So, hockey moms! (Which is apparently only redneck <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2199361/" target="_blank">on the surface</a>, as it's right up there with Lou Dobbs's working-man <a href="http://gawker.com/5003378/hillary-dobbs-immigrant-pony-destroying-american-careers" target="_blank">equestrian team</a> when it comes to parents' disposable income being thrown into undoing their childhood failings vicariously through their overscheduled kids.) I wonder what ESPN reject the Republicans will cram an ill-defined group around next. Rodeo? <a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/timbersports/index" target="_blank">Chainsawing?</a><br /><br />In 2012: Backyard-wrestling creepy uncles.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-18273503129977422132008-09-04T20:59:00.002-04:002008-09-07T11:41:48.783-04:00The temperature went up to ninety today, so I thought it wouldn't be utterly retarded to wear a heavy black T-shirt and walk two miles from a random place in the city to the train home. I really do love my urban hikes, the way hiker hikers let nature into their private mind-world, it's the same for me, except with paved roads and less poison ivy. They're great for thinking journeys, where I'm just a bit too active to be bored senseless and still on autopilot so I won't be distracted... except that it's ninety-degrees, garbage day on the Lower East Side, and Fish Day in Chinatown — but everyday's Fish Day in Chinatown and that's part of its charm cause, you know, fresh fish should <a href="http://www.bhg.com/recipes/fish/basics/how-to-tell-if-fish-is-fresh/" target="_blank">smell sweet</a> and not at all fishy. It is a bad day when the bubble tea shops, jewelry dealers, and hairdressers all reek of rotting eel, too.<br /><br />My only problem with hiking, or exercising in general, or often just sitting in my car, is my integumentary system and how it could easily keep a couple acres of rice paddies irrigated. If my glands also produced soap, I'd never need to shower again, and one of these days I might just inject myself with lye and emollients to save myself that trouble every morning. Instead, I keep plodding along, pretending I'm that guy who the Discovery Channel drops in the middle of nowhere and he has to walk back to civilization with only a half-empty water bottle and fifty pounds of camera gear. It's exactly like that.<br /><br />I shouldn't bitch — well, I <span style="font-style: italic;">wouldn't</span> bitch — passing by the courthouse complex, where everyone wears a dark suit, dark pants, and a tie. I tried <a href="http://jayharris.blogspot.com/2004/07/job-interview-today-first-in-two-years.html">that shit</a> once, and I left the wardrobe moist and overwhelmed with the sense that if God wanted mankind to wear three thick acrylic layers He would have kept the ice ages going and the woolly mammoths alive. "At least they'll be drippy and shiny as I am," I figured that if they're going to be young, attractive, rich, and <span style="font-style: italic;">lawyers</span>, at the very least they could be oozing saltwater and cresols. But they're not, probably because — cheap lawyer joke coming — they're <span style="font-style: italic;">cold-blooded</span>.<br /><br />Hah! Maybe I should've been more straight-forward and gone with "lizards?"<br /><br />My urban hikes are good times for thinking.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-26449931183128769362008-09-03T22:28:00.002-04:002008-09-04T00:09:35.466-04:00Google Chrome: Is It Your Best Browser Choice for Porn Surfing?Google released a beta of <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome" target="_blank">Chrome</a>, their inexplicable new browser, yesterday to modest indifference even from the digital geek community. We already have two well-designed, relatively standards-compliant alternatives to Internet Explorer — Firefox and Opera — and just how many more variations on an innovation do we need when it comes to pulling bytes off a server? Chrome isn't that much of a misfit, but I'm used to my Firefox workflow, shortcut keys, and add-ons (except for <a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5244" target="_blank">Ctrl-Tab</a>, which will never feel natural) and I don't see a lot of benefit from switching. Also, Google hasn't released a Mac-friendly version of Chrome, so there's another reason to stick with Firefox.<br /><br />I was fiddling with Chrome this morning, since it would be nice to have a lightweight browser not crammed with extensions and widgets, and it confirmed all my predictions of blandness. The one feature that caught my eye is Chrome's incognito windows, which wipe themselves and their cookies, cache, and browser history from your computer automatically. But there are caveats. You can't expect security at work because it won't encrypt your requests and responses on the local network. Incognito windows won't keep the government and its telecom surrogates from illegally snooping on your browsing sessions either. (Google's documentation explicitly makes that point.) And they won't do much good in public either because — as I should've pointed out to the dilweeds next to me looking at fat, hairy naked guys and getting all moist — you're in freaking public! Have some shame!<br /><br />Really, the only use I can think of for incognito windows is porn browsing on the family computer, which is what I tested it for, in the name of research, of course. The family and I don't share a computer, but I've still been using now-defunct Netscape 9 to compartmentalize... you know what, too much information. Let's just say that Netscape puts a ton of energy into swapping in and out of virtual memory, and no, that's not dirty. Chrome is supposedly lightweight, for a faster, more efficient naughty but banal experience, but I can't say I saw any real difference. Between looking up URL's and trying a bunch of username-password combinations, the switch wasn't worth it. And of all the things a Google browser should do well, YouTube videos played choppy — choppier than usual — and, wow I'm jumping through a lot of technical, un-erotic hoops for pictures of scantily-clad ladies.<br /><br />So there's some work for Google to do in terms of helping me jack off. Maybe tomorrow, or in five minutes, I'll try Chrome's sandboxed asynchronously-threaded tabs and advanced JavaScript engine. Man, that's making me so horny.<br /><br />Such a nerd.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-13179933253100120032008-09-01T23:20:00.006-04:002008-09-02T10:15:05.213-04:00My Pitch to BravoI hope Bravo's latest fully-scripted reality debacle, <span style="font-style: italic;">Tabatha's Salon Takeover</span>, will finally have the network execs dousing somewhere other than the bone-dry well of stereotypical cultural havens for rich, frivolous gay dudes and the metrosexuals who envy their highlights and boot cut jeans. This will be Bravo's fourth drama-queen hair salon-related programming venture, sponsored by Paul Mitchell styling product and an apparently limitless supply of self-important anal-retentive hirsute douchebags trailed by an ozone hole like an aerosol shadow, but dear God I hope that network is way overestimating our culture's interest in professional hair setting. Pure complacency on Bravo's part: giving the salon makeover show to an arbitrary <span style="font-style: italic;">loser</span> of perennial Television Without Pity favorite <span style="font-style: italic;">Shear Genius</span>. It's like pointing to one of the "Real" Housewives of Orange County and letting her host a show about botched plastic surgeries (<span style="font-style:italic;">Face Off</span>, in the tradition of wordplay titles) while her gray-haired husband is out dicking around L.A. in a European convertible.<br /><br />Here's the next new prime-time reality hit: <span style="font-style: italic;">Hipster Death Match</span>. We throw a bunch of attention-starved bohemians together in an impossibly large fixer-upper apartment; they spend the first forty minutes downing Merlot and Chimay on Bravo's dime, having casual sex and pillow-talk, and stealing each other's copies of <span style="font-style: italic;">Me and You and Everyone We Know</span> — the director's cut — before each week's finale of two manorexic performance artists slugging it out. There's something for everyone: for Bravo's core demographic, <span style="font-style: italic;">HDM</span> features hipsters, and for the rest of the population, it's got hipster death matches.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-78581955023628562152008-08-17T10:52:00.004-04:002008-09-02T10:07:19.551-04:00There's a part of me who wants to see gas prices up at six dollars a gallon, especially when I'm at a corner in my Saturn trying to turn right and there's some sport-utility jerk next to me, sticking out into the intersection, unaware that his monster truck isn't transparent. Now, that particular problem could also be solved by lowering overpasses to, say, five-foot eight, but I also enjoy living in a world where owning a Prius or a Civic Hybrid makes you a smart consumer instead of a terrorist-loving fag sissy.<br /><br />In the middle of the pricey red-blue cultural shift, I love the juxtaposition of progressive Barack Obama giving his supporters <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akjXqfvLu28" target="_blank">gas-saving advice</a> and reactionary McCain pushing his phallic <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8v7vz9KzQw" target="_blank">offshore drilling dream</a> to a crowd of Harley-riders pissed about four dollar gas but not so pissed that they don't waste it throttling their idle engines. I'm a bit sick of Obama, in fact – not his useful energy conservation tips but his tiresome campaign of happiness and love that refuses to call McCain's ignoramus-pandering out.<br /><br />Where I stand, the issue revolves around critical thinking, because I am naive and don't see what the hell the problem is. Offshore drilling won't produce a drop of oil for at least seven years, and keeping your tires inflated increases your car's fuel efficiency, so... duh. I bet even Republicans — not necessarily the neocon think tank ninnies but the white trash that gets a boner from their motorcycle sound — are keeping their cars tuned up. I believe Friedman wrote an opinion piece in the Times, weeks ago, by the time I got around to posting this, accusing the Republicans of nurturing ignorance — "the party of stupid:" Saddam's so-called involvement in 9/11, rumors that Obama is a Muslim, the idea that offshore drilling will remedy the gas crisis (or that there even is a gas crisis in the first place).<br /><br />And that's where I end. It's a broken psyche thing — my TV's not getting a signal, and I lost my credit card, and the price of lunch just went up fifty cents, and no one's answering my okcupid love notes, and <i>nothing I do makes a difference</i>! I get it, I can deconstruct it, I just can't fix it, so instead I sit on the couch, blog, and mock people at a motorcycle convention because, honestly, if Blockbuster doesn't have the movie I want right now, then they fucking deserve it.<br /><br />What scares me about the McCain philosophy is the way he coddles that attitude on a big old macroscopic scale. I'd love to see Obama preach from the podium the empirical differences between his and his opponent's energy plans: "My plan works. His plan doesn't. Your choice," but I also feel like that's a losing strategy, leaving the masses with that decision. Your choice, dumbasses. I'm afraid it won't happen in time, but maybe Obama's just the sort of Kennedy to do it — a massive post post-9/11 shift in the way Americans view their own agency.<br /><br />Yes we can. That's a brilliant... slogan. It encapsulates the campaign's view of Americans' role towards their community, but it's not enough. Coming off the Bush-Cheney still-presidency that's left a huge debt with China and the Middle East so they could be like the cool step-parent who never asked us to sacrifice anything (tangible), I don't see us taking Step Two. You actually need to get off your ass, under your car, and inflate the tires — and you won't do that unless you believe one trivial five-minute action will actually matter — and you won't do that unless you believe you, alone or in concert with your neighbors, actually have the ability to change the culture.<br /><br />That's the dichotomy of this election: Barack's platform of community self-reliance versus McCain's insistence that only the government and corporations can matter and we better placate Exxon-Mobil and Wal-Mart and Halliburton lest they leave stranded without fuel or cheap Chinese consumer goods or whatever it is Halliburton makes. It's brilliant: you get to lie in a useless zombified lump while somebody else (immigrants, maybe?) builds these offshore drilling platforms. The candidate tells you that you're impotent and you vote that way, then the government you put in office kills off your equity, your culture, your rights, leaving you even worse off and reinforcing the original idea. The problem isn't complacency; it's diffidence.<br /><br />I'm a realist, and doubt that Obama, if he's elected, will actually make the individual matter again. But even if I don't believe a word of it, it's really nice to hear someone tell us that we're significant.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-69991376378231318572008-08-14T15:20:00.002-04:002008-08-14T15:31:06.835-04:00Irksome thing I overheard from some lady on the train this morning: "We're still behind in the medal count."<br /><br />No. We are not behind in the medal count. We're not even in the running. The U.S. Olympic Team has a medal tally, but we don't. The difference is that people actually on the team are competing in the Olympics, while we are sitting on our fat asses, drinking Coke (an official sponsor of the U.S. Olympic Team) and buying crap online with our Visa cards (also an official sponsor of the U.S. Olympic Team).Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-23124562118857691622008-07-27T17:36:00.002-04:002008-08-05T15:36:37.787-04:00A Review of Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, SupermasochistBob Flanagan was sick, in every sense of the word. He suffered from cystic fibrosis, but what's memorable and visceral in Kirby Dick's documentary <i>Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist</i> is Flanagan's other, transcendent, sickness. His disease is far, far secondary to his performance art, a sideshow of cringe-inducing flagellation born out of a "contract" Flanagan "signed" with his lover, collaborator, and dominatrix, Sheree Rose. Flanagan surrendered ("gave of [his] own free will") his existence to her in a performance piece of ritualized sadomasochism, every perverse thing under the sun, that would be utterly demeaning to anybody not condemned to spend his life drowning in mucous.<br /><br />Even with that in mind, you watch <i>Sick</i> for the shock value of a man nailing his dick to a two-by-four — and un-nailing it. (Spoiler alert: it's bloody.) I'm not grossed out, just — even the man's visceral struggle against his illness becomes trite in comparison. Flanagan is almost a character study of himself, a mess of pop psychology and accidental heroism to some kids in the Make-a-Wish Foundation, throwing off his default definition — "guy dying with CF" — for one equally reductive — weirdo. His art, what he presentation, isn't pressing the limits of nociception for the sake of art and truth — he's getting off, especially since he's doing it in public. Imagine David Blaine standing on top of that tower for thirty-four hours with a boner.<br /><br />And the Inevitable has such a discordant resonance, especially after Flanagan's condition deteriorates. He can only face his mortality; Sheree, who isn't oblivious but also not rotted out the same way he is, is pissed — fearful — that he refuses to be spanked. The dominatrix thing is an act of love between them, but the sex — he basically agreed to be her robot — is about the uncontrollable physical sensations, utterly removed from the collaborator relationship they (theoretically) have outside the bedroom. Even if he coped with the concept of dying by being an ass to himself and, by extension, his cystic fibrosis, reality catches up with him in the end. Flanagan's plan for a final sendoff was a video camera in his coffin, so a collector could watch him disintegrate.<br /><br />But Kirby Dick's camera is in Flanagan's hospital room, recording him wasting away, both he and Sheree sobering to the idea, and that project never materialized.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-40566673348369058032008-07-25T17:37:00.002-04:002008-07-25T17:45:14.919-04:00I posted this on my okcupid.com journal yesterday:<blockquote>I've been wallflower-ing on okcupid.com for about a month now with limited success meeting folks, and I think I figured out what I'm doing wrong: I've been wallflower-ing on okcupid.com. Rejection stings — pretty sure that's not a particularly controversial opinion — but my OKStalking business is picking up the distinct odor of sixth-grade Spring Fling, and I like to think I'm fifteen years older and at least ten wiser than that.<br /><br />Still, it's so easy for me, or Nike, to say "Just do it!" — Lord knows I've given that pep talk to my friends plenty of times — and so scary to take that leap into the deep end, especially if you're not sure whether you'll sink. That isn't a metaphor; my swimming ability ends at curling up in a ball underwater and floating wherever the tide carries me.<br /><br />I just wanted to put that out into the ether, even though others have said it before, and better, and probably while sober. Not the world's best introduction, but it is honest... and, in a weird way, freeing.<br /><br />So, here goes. No more looky-looing, no more woo button. No expectations, either. Well, maybe one — I'll try my best but how you all do or don't respond is beyond my control. Just something I have to surrender and see what happens.<br /><br />By the way, I'm Jay. [Smiles. Shakes hands.] Nice to meet you, [fill in your name here].</blockquote><p>It's right now thirty hours since I posted that and I'm sad to report that I haven't followed through. My plan is to not move from this seat until I introduce myself to somebody, even if — probably — it's not someone I'm especially smitten over. The only problem is this giant mutant insect flying around here — it's like a hornet mated with a wolverine — which might motivate me to lower my goals a bit before moving.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-59070476985753444232008-07-15T11:03:00.004-04:002008-07-16T15:54:49.640-04:00A Review of My Kid Could Paint ThatWhen I took my art history class back in school, I had little affection for my teacher, and she had little for me. I'm not sure who started it, but she imposed a cantankerous, snooty depression on me and, in return, I read her as vacuous and sycophantic. Everybody in class had a cultural hard-on for Jackson Pollack, so we had to ask this discussion about one of his <a id="ws88" href="http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/abex/hd_abex.htm" target="_blank">modernist</a> wanna-bes, <a id="ws880" href="http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/search/citi/artist%3AKooning" target="_blank">Willem de Kooning</a>, maybe: <blockquote id="ws881"><b id="tr5.2">Me:</b> But I could do that!<br /><br /><b id="tr5.3">Teacher: </b>But you didn't do that.<br /><br /><b id="tr5.4">Me:</b> If I'd known it could be a museum, I would have done that.</blockquote> <p>Which misses the point, of course, that it sure seems like the value in modern art has little to do with its content and everything to do with the creature behind the paintbrush. ABC News's professional nuance-killer John Stossel took a stab at clearing the art community's eyes with a <a id="ws889" href="http://abcnews.go.com/2020/GiveMeABreak/Story?id=563146&page=1" target="_blank"><i id="tr5.6">20/20</i> report</a> challenging art critics to pick his child's finger paintings out of an abstract expressionist line-up; after being punk'd, the critics called Stossel a philistine and he, in his way, called them whatever the 2005-English translation of "ivory tower elitists" was, resolving everything. Amir Bar-Lev's doc <i id="tr5.10">My Kid Could Paint That</i> covers much, maybe more, of the Stossel territory, but with an eye to the truths and stories underlying the scribbles, and without being a total dick about it, Bar-Lev's film quietly morphs into a brilliant and devastating look at how we claim ownership of those truths and the practical consequences reaching way beyond some rabble-rouser's mock indignance.<br /><br />In 2004, the contemporary art world first met Marla Olmstead, whose gimmick, beyond her acrylic-on-canvas, was that she was born in the year 2000. My guess is that every suburban parent has their kid's watercolor art hanging all over the home and fawns over it to anyone who'll listen; the only obvious difference with Marla is that her hobbyist painter sets her down in front of a primed canvas instead of paper. Marla's work moved from her refrigerator to a friend's coffee shop, just as a gaffe, then to a new nearby gallery, the local paper, and soon, an article by the chief art critic for <i id="tr5.17">The New York Times</i>, Michael Kimmelman, who's a talking head in the film. Amir Bar-Lev wants to examine what gives art its value, and Marla's works — which sell for thousands of dollars — are the flashpoint in the debate. Marla paints vibrant, random squiggles, the sort of art you see hanging in the waiting room of someone who charges $400 an hour, and she gives cynics ammunition to point at modern art and peek behind the curtain, my kid really could paint that. Her collectors look at the same doodles and see a painting free of the cynicism and alienation endemic in modern art. Bar-Lev and his camera play the moderator and chronicle the Story of Marla — or, <i id="kxud">a</i> Story of Marla — through her first solo show, her New York opening, her appearance on the Jane Pauley show.<br /><br />What lurks in the background, then hulks, are the cameras pointed at Marla as someone off-screen decided she'd be the global sensation of the art world. Bar-Lev, probably the most perpetual camera, insinuates himself with theOlmsteads , who smile when they're being watched but can't hide the tension between mom and dad, Laura and Mark. They clearly love Marla, but Laura is timorous and low-key, and when charismatic but slimy gallery owner (and outmoded painter) AnthonyBrunelli takes a liking to Marla's work, he and stage dad Mark railroad her into pursuing Marla's path to fame and fortune. Bar-Lev, and about a thousand other cameramen, catch these bizarre gallery juxtapositions: rich collectors browsing and drinking champagne, Mark hobnobbing, Laura in over her head, and Marla, who could not care less that Mr. and Mrs.Bigshot are looking at her work. There may be some sly commentary on the nature of fame and the way outside expectations influence us — especially with Mark, who genuinely wants his daughter to be happy and is also genuinely certain that being the littlest bigmuckety -muck on the scene is what makes her happy. There's a telling scene that's the working class family's first ride in a limousine; the adults are elated and the kids are thoroughly unimpressed, and as Marla's value grows so does the fawning....<br /><br />...and then Charlie Rose devotes <i id="qzzq">60 Minutes</i> to an exposé — nobody ever says it, but the allegation is that Mark "touched up" Marla's paintings. The crash is fascinating, and seems to answer Bar-Lev's original question, but by now he, theOlmsteads, and the film are so far beyond that as the media vultures pick at the Story of Marla's second chapter and everybody's roles shift to fit the new angle. Bar-Lev is as discrete as he can be from the subject, but he realizes that he too doesn't have the video of Marla completing a painting start to finish that he needs for his film, and it dawns on him that as another guy recording theOlmsteads, he's been assigned a role in their drama. By the third act, Bar-Lev is himself on camera, in just as deep as the Olmsteads , trying to reconcile his nagging skepticism with the family's need for redemption, his objectivity with his clear fondness for these people, and his art with the moral and ethical implications of the subtle quantum mechanical changes he's forcing on this child by watching her and bringing her an audience. All he can do is make choices — what to film, what (if anything) to present — that are all at odds with the truth, whatever it is.<br /><br />It's a testament to Bar-Lev's journalistic (bad word) skills that, in my opinion, he arrives at the sort of nuanced truth that makes absolutely nobody happy, and he's straightforward when he says that the media monster Marla's artist fortunes turn on won't even try to accept something outside its false dichotomy. There is a scene where Marla's painting on camera and she tells her dad, "Draw a face," and I winced while Mark made half-assed excuses for not getting down on his hands and needs and <i id="e.gh">playing with his child</i>. I hope Mark really did get his hands dirty in those disputed paintings, because they are stories, not of Marla's genius (I don't believe she's a prodigy) but of her play. Here's the thing: Bar-Lev has an editing bay and pares down hundreds of hours of footage down to ninety minutes, those hundreds of hours of footage are only what happened when and where the camera was rolling... There is a truth, but it's too complicated to capture fully, so I guess there always is the possibility that Marla's paintings really are free of cynicism and alienation.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-58560479613234574432008-07-11T15:02:00.002-04:002008-07-12T15:08:40.191-04:00Jay: Incompetent Action Hero!I spent my after-work wind down yesterday at the <a title="West Side Rifle and Pistol Range" target="_blank" href="http://www.westsidepistolrange.com/" id="u-xc">West Side Rifle and Pistol Range</a>, shootin' stuff. In New York City, you need a license to own a dog or serve food on the street, but it's every citizen's God-given right to fire off a .22 caliber rifle with nothing more than a couple of signatures. It's every little boy's fantasy to potentially kill something — or let's face it: cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, James Bond, <a title="this video" target="_blank" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7vD2ejf4OA" id="pacw">this video</a> — potentially kill some<i id="vp9g">one</i> (nefarious) ever since he first saw it glamorized in a PG-rated movie. (I think it was Kevin Smith who made an interesting point in the documentary <i id="xo60"><a title="This Film is Not Yet Rated" target="_blank" href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/this_film_is_not_yet_rated/?critic=creamcrop#mo" id="r9d:">This Film is Not Yet Rated</a></i>, that the MPAA gives harsher ratings to movies that show the bloody aftermath of characters being shot; films that realistically portray the consequences of gun violence are rated R while movies that sanitize and trivialize them tend to get PG-13 ratings.) "Shoot a gun" was on my bucket list, somewhere above "ride a Segway" and below "three-way," so when <a title="Meet Market Adventures" target="_blank" href="http://www.meetmarketadventures.com/" id="ht:s">Meet Market Adventures</a> offered a singles-only night at the firing range, I took the opportunity. Yee-haw!<br id="v:hq"><br id="v:hq0">It doesn't matter that we're in a blue city in a blue state, the pistol range is just the sort of stereotypical backwoods basement you'd imagine, with the faux wood plastered in NRA stickers and Second Amendment posters and everybody's wearing T-shirt slogans daring the government take away their arsenal and a handgun on their hip the way most New Yorkers carry a BlackBerry. My impression was a weird co-dependent neediness with "<i id="v:hq1">my</i> darlin' gun," since I figured there's no reason to walk around the firing range with your gun at all times — like, you can't really go more than a couple of feet in any direction without having about twenty guns at arm's length. They corral you into a small classroom in the back and there's a waiver on every desk. Normally you just sign and date the piece of paper without even reading it — let's just say that this time, I made a point of knowing exactly what I was signing. On one side, a statement re-affirming my awareness that I'm about to participate in a HIGH RISK/DANGEROUS activity and indemnifying the range against little things like dismemberment and death; on the reverse, a certification that I'm not among the groups the State of New York doesn't want operating a firearm: the inebriated, the mentally disturbed, convicted felons — but only if the felony carries more than a year of jail time.<br id="v:hq2"><br id="v:hq3">While we're all signing waivers, as if to hammer the point home, the gun range guy comes into the classroom with four big-ass deer-hunter guns — or, as he'll tell us, four Ruger ten-shot .22 caliber semi-automatic rifles — puts them down on the table, goes out and comes back with four more, and again four more... It's not something I see every day; where I come from, we don't even use bug zappers.<br id="v:hq4"><br id="v:hq5">There's a safety lecture (good!) that, you know, takes a little bit of the fun fantasy element out of everything. Oh, so we won't be skulking around barrel-first whirling around corners and shooting bad guys, or firing blindly with that sideways grip popular with gangsters in the early nineties (movies). I was honestly expecting, like so many safety lectures, something incredibly inane — and there was a little of "If it's not firing and you can't figure out why, don't peek down the barrel Elmer Fudd-style," the kind of stuff where if someones needs to hear it, they shouldn't be allowed near guns in the first place. Or crossbows, or throwing stars, or <a title="ACME Dehydrated Boulders" target="_blank" href="http://home.nc.rr.com/tuco/looney/acme/dehydrated.html" id="hvoc">ACME Dehydrated Boulders</a>, or safety shears. Maybe there'd be a poorly-acted <a title="video" target="_blank" href="http://nssf.org/safety/FSEV/FSDOY.cfm" id="zdbb">video</a> with poor production values. In fact, gun safety 101 reminded me a lot of drivers' ed, with some ex-military guy explaining all disaster scenarios possible but the real reason you're listening to him is cause he's scary as shit. He expects the United States government to batter in his door at five in the morning and take away all his guns, and he's preparing for that. But just like drivers' ed, he approaches the morbid subject with levity and detached irony, and you almost forget that there's got to be some wires crossed in his brain that would make him take this particular job, whether it's some kid's first eighty-mile drive on the freeway or in the front of a room with fifteen people waving (hopefully unloaded) guns around and randomly pulling the triggers.<br id="v:hq6"><br id="v:hq7">For the record, I did not take any practice trigger pulls in the classroom. (Apparently this is a safety feature: "The gun won't fire unless you pull the trigger," Gun Dude told us. Which is good, since it turned out the actual safety would not necessarily stay in the on position once it's engaged.) In the interest of holding off death at least till I was actually on the firing line, I also stayed away from cocking the rifle and kept it always pointed at the ceiling. I would've thought that always pointing the gun at the floor would be safer — if it did fire, there'd be less chance of knocking something down and onto your head — but, then again, I'm pro-gun control, so what do I know?<br id="v:hq8"><br id="v:hq9">Unlike drivers' ed, the pistol range will let you out in the wild with about fifteen minutes of class: how to load the gun, how to unload it, how to aim, and... that's about it. Here's five magazines and a box of bullets (cartridges, technically), so everybody go crazy and shoot stuff! Well, shoot paper, but still...<br id="v:hq10"><br id="v:hq11">The firing range is the sort of cruddy concrete room you could fire a couple thousand rounds into and it wouldn't become any more derelict. There's twelve or so stalls, or shooting stations, or whatever, and twelve or so rifles chained to the wall. I claimed lucky number five, putting all my spare magazines and extra bullets on the shelf and kind of composing myself. Now... the thing is, I really do enjoy trying new things, but I'm also kind of, let's say, mechanically uninspired, like I'll be the one who accidentally hits a ping-pong ball the wrong way and flattens it, or tears up an entire cereal box trying to reclose that little tab that keeps your processed food fresh. One morning when I was living in a campus dorm, the fire alarm went off. I raced down seventeen flights of stairs, hoping to escape before being engulfed in flames, to find one of those fire doors with the bar — "Alarm will sound if pressed" — at the bottom. And the right thing to do here was obvious, but it took a ton of decision making before I actually did it — and set off a second fire alarm. It was the same kind of feeling face-to-face, or face-to-butt, with this rifle.<br id="v:hq12"><br id="v:hq13">I was meticulous. <br id="v:hq14"><br id="v:hq15">Step one: turn the gun over, make sure there's no stray bullet in the chamber. <br id="v:hq16"><br id="v:hq17">Step two: make sure the safety is on.<br id="v:hq18"><br id="v:hq19">Step three: load the magazine, push it in until it clicks.<br id="v:hq20"><br id="v:hq21">Step four: turn the gun right-side up, be completely freaked by the fact that the safety somehow managed to disengage itself.<br id="v:hq22"><br id="v:hq23">I could've dragged this out all night with the double-checks and triple-checks, then gone home thinking, "How cool was that, getting to wear those airport runway headphones!" But the rangemaster saw me stalling (or struggling) and this was gonna happen: He pushed my left leg forward, straightened my elbows, told me like fifteen times that I was pointing at the ceiling, fixed my grip, leaned my shoulder into the gun, helped me line up the sights. I closed my left eye, aimed — just a little below the target — and fired, with a tiny pop, recoil, and a healthy, totally unearned, dose of pride and machismo. The target is maybe twenty feet away, the bullet hole is less than about a quarter-inch in diameter and my vision isn't great, but it felt like everything went super and the casing bouncing off the wall and twinging my face confirmed it.<br id="v:hq24"><br id="v:hq25">As it turned out, I missed the target completely, and probably put another bullet hole in the ceiling. The testosterone-driven fantasy drooped into its anti-climax; the whole point is that you're supposed to be <i id="v:hq26">good</i> at this, from the get-go really. After firing the whole magazine and pulleying that paper target in, ten bullets but only seven holes, I was — I can't believe it — disappointed in myself, cause I naively expected to not suck at this. The rifle is heavier than you'd (I'd) expect, and your (my) arms really aren't designed to stick out like that; I'd be on target and perfect with a handgun, or a laser tag blaster, or a water pistol... still hanging on to that macho imaginary me who, I assume, shouldn't exist. Maybe shooting off a rifle looks so easy — just point and pull the trigger, no fine motor skills involved — cause most other things to try, you know you'll have to grow into. No one expects to sit down at a piano for the first time and play a Beethoven sonata or play top-level chess without years of practice, but fall off a horse your first time riding and there's a sense the laws of physics are cheating on you.<br id="v:hq27"><br id="v:hq28">By the fifth magazine, I was improving, able to get ten shots relatively close together, although still nowhere near the bullseye. My lifelong dreams of winning the biathalon were crumbling — seriously, all I had left to do was learn to shoot and learn to ski! I took home a bullet as a souvenier since my paper targets were embarrassing (and also since I don't want my mom knowing that I went to a firing range — she flipped out over the potential high risk when I merely told her I <i id="siw7">wanted to try</i> riding a motorcycle). I don't see myself ever shooting a gun again — it's outside my nature — but it's nice to say, "I tried it and it wasn't the horrible experience I signed a waiver over." Live your dreams, kids! Just don't be surprised when the reality pales against what your imagination's <a title="been sold" target="_blank" href="http://www.incredible-adventures.com/" id="wtfk">been sold</a>.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-4595416116421201492008-07-05T16:10:00.001-04:002008-07-08T16:46:31.097-04:00I have a little issue with some girls' okcupid.com profiles, especially on the last question: "You should contact me if..." People are writing something like, "You are not over 30, you are not creepy. Don't message me with 'I want 2 have sex w/ u' cause I won't respond, etc., etc.," basically rattling off who they <span style="font-style:italic;">don't</span> want contacting them. I guess, be as picky as you want, but it's a brief, dumb email. It's not like medieval times where some guy points at you and suddenly you're his bride.<br /><br />If I can summarize, the sentiment is, "Don't be a lech," which — maybe I'm naive — I thought goes without saying. I immediately take off a personality point for that, since I can definitely see me adding, "Vapid bitches need not apply," to my profile would be a certain deal-breaker... even though (a) it's true and (b) nobody thinks that they're a vapid bitch and that restriction would even apply to them. Dear God, getting hit on: that must be awful! Some guy, admittedly with broad tastes, thinks you're physically attractive. Such a burden! You, Girl, are a hero just for getting out of bed in the morning, and putting on make-up... and doing your hair... and coordinating an outfit...Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6612223.post-13944176926715232462008-07-03T22:37:00.002-04:002008-07-08T16:10:42.422-04:00I set up a profile on <a href="http://www.okcupid.com/profile?u=kempshall" target="_blank">okcupid.com</a>, which is basically just a copy of my chemistry.com profile, which I more or less lifted from my Facebook profile, which I tweaked from the MySpace profile back when it looked like that would take off, so now I don't see how there can't be anyone in the world who doesn't know all about the way I like the Tempur-Pedic mattress (I call it "that Swedish space-foam bed at Brookstone") and my dislike for movies with the main character's name in the title. Within a few minutes, two people — women — checked me, or at least my pith, out. That was one of the complaints I had with chemistry.com, that I had no real indication of how successful my blurb was, or wasn't.<br /><br />okcupid is a bit more facetious than chemistry.com or eHarmony, without any long, researched psych surveys to fill out or complicated connecting procedures. There are Cosmo-style romance tests, mostly written by the okcupid community and ranging from the inane to the very inane to the prurient and inane. And there are multiple-choice matching questions that live on their own, photos, short essays, all the good stuff you expect. okcupid is free — free to use, free to connect, free to communicate — and I think it's like practice poker or the fantasy stock market, where some folks are earnest and others take it ironically until they get bored.<br /><br />I'm pretty proud of what I wrote, even though it's utterly useless in its content at times. (Q: I spend a lot of time thinking about... A: What does this button do? Should I press it? Will I press it? Oh man, I'm about to press it... )<br /><br />Just like chemistry.com, I don't have very high hopes for this — mostly because I'll be too chicken to contact anyone. Technology hasn't gotten around that one yet.Jayhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14592209415475630785noreply@blogger.com0