There'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.

In the middle of the pricey red-blue cultural shift, I love the juxtaposition of progressive Barack Obama giving his supporters gas-saving advice and reactionary McCain pushing his phallic offshore drilling dream 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.

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).

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 nothing I do makes a difference! 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Irksome thing I overheard from some lady on the train this morning: "We're still behind in the medal count."

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).

A Review of Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist

Bob 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 Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist 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.

Even with that in mind, you watch Sick 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.

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.

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.

I posted this on my okcupid.com journal yesterday:

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.

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.

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.

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.

By the way, I'm Jay. [Smiles. Shakes hands.] Nice to meet you, [fill in your name here].

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.

A Review of My Kid Could Paint That

When 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 modernist wanna-bes, Willem de Kooning, maybe:

Me: But I could do that!

Teacher: But you didn't do that.

Me: If I'd known it could be a museum, I would have done that.

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 20/20 report 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 My Kid Could Paint That 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.

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 The New York Times, 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, a Story of Marla — through her first solo show, her New York opening, her appearance on the Jane Pauley show.

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....

...and then Charlie Rose devotes 60 Minutes 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.

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 playing with his child. 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.

Jay: Incompetent Action Hero!

I spent my after-work wind down yesterday at the West Side Rifle and Pistol Range, 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, this video — potentially kill someone (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 This Film is Not Yet Rated, 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 Meet Market Adventures offered a singles-only night at the firing range, I took the opportunity. Yee-haw!

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 "my 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.

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.

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 ACME Dehydrated Boulders, or safety shears. Maybe there'd be a poorly-acted video 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.

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?

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...

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.

I was meticulous.

Step one: turn the gun over, make sure there's no stray bullet in the chamber.

Step two: make sure the safety is on.

Step three: load the magazine, push it in until it clicks.

Step four: turn the gun right-side up, be completely freaked by the fact that the safety somehow managed to disengage itself.

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.

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 good 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.

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 wanted to try 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 been sold.

I 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 don't 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.

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...

I set up a profile on okcupid.com, 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.

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.

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... )

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.

The Italian family wanted to hear live Gospel music while they were in New York, so we took them to a church in Harlem, which I felt was inappropriate in many, many ways. Race issues, religion issues, cultural issues, but mostly people are there trying to find salvation and for us it's a rip-roaring good time concert hall. The Refuge Temple Church is used to "visitors" dropping in more for the music than the community or the Word of God, but my own religious upbringing had me coming to the church — a white person in an all-black church, no less — with a huge burden of gravity. I mean, I wore pants! In the middle of a hazy, hot and humid New York summer!

But the Sunday experience, at least at the Refuge Temple Church, is a radical departure from the solemn deference that (I was taught) is the Lord's due. They were essentially partying with God, singing, dancing, screaming out loud when the Spirit moved them, throwing up their arms like you see crazy glosso people doing at the Down South megachurches, but — I don't know — it felt genuine, not some ideomotor effect. Nobody was trying, God simply became "found." To me, trying to put forth a stolid veneer, the Gospel celebration was profoundly — I want to say "annoying," but it wasn't; it was — infectious. How has Roman Catholicism missed out on this?

What bothered me was the tithing, having people in a (relatively) poor neighborhood sacrifice a tenth of their money, plus the weekly donations, plus a monthly membership fee seemed cruel, although I don't know if I'm in a position to judge. That money does go back into the community, just not the parts of the community that'll keep Brooks Brothers from opening an Anglo power suit store on 125th Street. What bothered and impressed me was a line from the (first) preacher's sermon. Not a sermon, really, just a list of things we're all thankful for, growing more enthusiastic and manic by the second. He had that stereotypical African-American preacher sonorous voice and punctuated cadence, and I sort of wanted to know if he speaks that way off the pulpit, too. Anyway, list of things we're thankful for, went on for about five fueled minutes, but the very first one (of course) was that we're thankful the Lord chose to wake us up this morning.

I have never been thankful for waking up in the morning. I never thought about it, but even if I had... and it dawned on me — there's one guy somehow sleeping through this whole service, but in general — the congregation here actually is thankful that they woke up this morning and I became choked up in reverse schadenfreude. The service, not the words — of which there aren't many and even fewer that are understandable — but the sum total of the atmosphere, is an affirmation and I'm truly jealous. On the other hand, we stayed ninety minutes for the "first half" of the service, so I'm not really missing that part.

With my Italian family here, it reminds me of how much I'd like to be a polyglot. Not necessarily fluent or anything, just enough to get by, and not just in Italian either. My grandma, the family's Italian immigrant, is fluent, and Mom is pretty good, too. On the other side, my aunt (or cousin or something) works in an Italian bank trading American securities and currencies, so her English is quite decent. The son (also a cousin or something) is shy with his classroom English, but it's way better than my Italian. What's interesting to watch are the father, who speaks four words of English (one of which is "golf") and my father, who speaks one word of Italian ("Italia")... and mispronounces it.

There's a weird psychological thing going on here, and I know lots of people think it's an Ugly American trait, but I have a feeling it's more of an isolationist thing: My dad, who's fully aware he might as well be speaking English to a brick, almost subconsciously decides he'll be understood if he talks realllllllyyyyyyy sloooooooow and LLLLLOOOUUUDDDDD. It's super amusing, if only because no one even talks to their dog like this. ("Blah blah Ginger blah blah blah Ginger blah...")

Their father just speaks normally, fast and with his hands, while I smile and pretend to comprehend.

Like I said, I don't think it's an American thing, because when I was on the Contiki tour, everybody spoke condescending, pointless English in that way to the natives — Americans, Australians, Brits, Canadians, New Zealanders. It's just a function of who's around you: if you're from a loose confederation of nations where your neighbors speak one of twenty-three languages and who knows how many dialects, I can imagine you freeze up a bit less when some incomprehensible sounds come your way.

The trick, of course, isn't to speak more slowly (although that can help) or loudly (which won't help) but to speak less, more simply, and with longer words that are likely to be cognates. Pointing helps too. Personally, I think it's a lot of fun, sort of like the world's most restrictive game of Taboo.

My family from Italy, or at least a chunk of it, is in New Jersey for the first leg of their Ameri-Canadian vacation. They wanted to go to New York, but my mom and dad — the Nuclears — usurped the planning and micro-managed them into staying at la casa della nonna, an hour out of the city, and tour-guiding them around town. Someone's been taking lessons from Contiki.

Maybe it's because they're European, but the Italian family is such a departure from the Nuclears: they're fun, and fascinated, and it's not like everything they see and do is utterly perfunctory. Us, okay... my fondest memory from our semi-regular trips to Disney World back in my kiddie days: We were on the now-defunct "Journey Into Imagination" ride, a vivid, whimsical trip through some Imagineer's storybook fantasy, set in the Dreamport and guided by the jolly Dreamfinder in his colorful DreamMobile blimp. (There's a theme here...) There's a catchy-ass song and a flying purple dragon guy and animatronic robots and, maybe three-quarters of the way through, a hidden camera takes a pic of you and the friends and family in the OmniMover, who, let me remind you, are on vacation in the Happiest Place on Earth. The photo of my family: we could not have been more disaffected and apathetic if we were at an estate tax planning seminar.

So yes, it's weird, slightly annoying and slightly discomfiting being around folks who aren't thoroughly jaded. And no, enthusiasm isn't infectious.

A lot tourist stuff I just don't get. Waiting in line two hours for their 86-story elevator ride at the Empire State Building — that makes sense. Wanting to see St. Patrick's Cathedral when you're from Europe, where they have bigger, older, real Gothic cathedrals on every other block? Not so much. F.A.O. Schwarz — yes. Fifth Avenue Apple Store — ...maybe. The official NBA store — who shops there? Maybe if you have a favorite team or something, although I don't think the NBA store sells anything you can't also buy at K-Mart for a lot less, but if you're not from America and have no connection to American basketball... don't you have your own cultural detritus to put on your T-shirts and stuff? Stop stealing ours!

It seems like it's working out for them, though, since they seem to have the opposite tourist philosophy that I do. They're sightseers, so as much as my dad tries to push them into experiencing New York (and America) rather than just taking snapshots of it, it looks like they're enjoying their cursory introduction way more than I ever loved the city. I'm a little jealous, actually.

I Have Not Fallen Off a Moving Train... Yet.

I loathe NJ Transit, our statewide embarrassment and financial sinkhole of a mass-transit system — for their trains' unfailing ability to arrive five minutes late, their abysmal service and obnoxious staff, and recently, their conviction that I'm going to fall out of a moving train unless I'm five-point restrained in their industrial-springy seats with some dude's newspaper tickling the back of my head. For at least the past twenty years, you used to be able to stand in the vestibule between trains during the ride — not that you'd want to, or anything, but it beats the dreaded middle seats, and the vestibule smells like train, instead of pee. NJ Transit would leave the doors open and everything, and this was even back when I was a kid, and even though the eighties had childproof bottles and childproof doors, there was nothing but common sense keeping us children from jumping off the train, adventure-style.

Cut to today, when now you can't ride in the vestibule at all — again, not that you'd necessarily want to — but, and I'm sure this was a coincidence, but there was an article in the Times about NJ Transit train doors opening before the vehicle has come to a full and complete stop. This can be dangerous:

“I typically stand between the cars, and it could be very dangerous because people could be leaning against the door,” said Neil McGrath, who commutes between Princeton and New York. “It’s kind of dodgy. You could easily get thrown out of the door.”

To highlight the danger posed by devil-possessed train doors, the Times article includes this tenebrous photo of a lady who was standing nearby a train door as it opened. I'm amazed she survived.

The real problem with NJ Transit, aside from their lack of maintenance capacity, is that they're total dickweeds about it, almost like it's our fault. The morning conductor, who is otherwise okay, basically took a "because I said so" approach to dealing with passengers who missed their vestibule rides (and if you have to stand, the vestibule gives you a lot more room than the train car aisle does), and a fair number of them complained. "If you don't like it, take it up with NJ Transit headquarters," he P.A'ed, like that's just what people need in the morning; we have an entire day to look forward to middle management passing the buck.

But today's evening conductor was a risible asshole about clearing the vestibule; he literally said, "I will not move this train until everybody is inside the cars!" Dude, you're not our second-grade teacher, okay? Shut up and get us home, Public Servant! If it's that big a deal, how about sticking a few more cars on the train... problem solved.

Considering the difficulty I'm having Googling incidents of lucid adults falling out of a moving train (the first news article dates back to 1896), I sense that the danger here is greatly exaggerated. Certainly it's not greater than the thousand people a year killed by flying coach. Don't see anybody quite so eager to take up that cause.

Eyesores

AM New York has an article "10 to lose: Ugly buildings NYC would be better without," and I'm so happy to hear that other people — real urban aesthetics professionals — also despise AT&T's foreboding Communist-era concrete behemoth on Thomas Street. I always assumed the building just housed switches, routers, and other telco equipment and it's built from an entirely functional point of view, but it looks like it's straight out of a Kafkaesque nightmare and needs, like, a plant or something.

I can see making those blank walls into a graffiti artist's canvas brightening up the neighborhood.

Another building that needs tearing down, stat, is the Astor Place Tower sitting, or oozing, on the corner of Lafayette and Broadway and sticking out like twenty-two inch rims on a 1974 Datsun. These trippy post-modern buildings are popping up all over lower Manhattan, especially on the Lower East Side, which is still home to a bunch of dirty tenements... or spruced-up tenements now available for lofty rents. Much as I like the neighborhood, I'm not a huge fan of its look and I have no issue with these heavily angular (or heavily un-angular — I'm not an architecture critic, in case you couldn't tell) fiberglass and glass-glass mixed-residentials springing up. It's the ones that keep springing up and up, growing above the neighborhood like a condominium freak crying out for attention that bother me.

I'm sure they have great views for the privileged few at the top, but they're fucking up the views from the street for the rest of us.

Vocab Off!

I must be in a feeling sad for people mood cause I never go to these teeny-weeny bad acoustic concerts, some guy, a guitar and a mike playing in front of ten people — technically nine and a volunteer sound guy. He's okay; my ears aren't burning but it's not like I'm not seeing him go triple platinum, or even triple aluminum, but then he strums a final chord and there's what I believe they call a "smattering" of applause. Again, ten people; the praise is just so anemic it makes me want to cry. Me, I'm cupping my hands so it looks like I'm clapping, but I don't want to draw attention to myself. I'm for a new rule in society, if there's fewer than, say, fifty people then no clapping. We all snap like beatnik poets, which is supposed to sound weak and laconic. You still probably wouldn't hear me though.

Such a nerd, though — I came for the... god, such a motherfucking nerd... vocabulary bee.

Round one: Come up to the microphone, Scripps style, and use the following three words in a sentence. Jingoist, laudatory, nebulous. Penurious, perfunctory, sacrosanct. It's all the fast-paced action of vocabulary combined with the incoherent ramblings of the crazy guy on the sidewalk who blurts out random words. Augury, avarice, burgeon. Some guy named Sid, who I'm sure I've seen at other geography bees, bar trivia contests, Scrabble nights, etc., where he probably also annoyed the living shit out of me: "The ornithologist's augury was he saw as a burgeoning field because there's avarice and money in ornithology." No style points.

Ornithology — twice! Then the guy has to yell at the judges because their definition of "augury" wasn't specific enough. An augury is a prophecy read from birds' entrails, except according to the American Heritage Dictionary (it's on my computer), it's not. On one side, they're lexicographers, but Sid's opposing argument is, well... loud.

Did I say "nerd?" I meant "hipster." I'm live-blogging this, for Christ's sake!

And points off to Meg for trying to subvert the game with her sentence. "Quixotic means idealistic, comma, hubris is like pride, comma, and castigate means a dressing down, comma. I mean period."

Sid: "Semicolon!"

Round two: Know your prefixes. Nychtophobic. Aurivorous. Which nobody knew, cause again, it's a contest for twenty-something hipsters and not socially maladjusted seventh-graders with stacks of root word flash cards. So they dumb it down for us with clues... not like funny ones or anything, just plain old Wink Martindale type shit. That's disappointing, really — I expected the hipster grown-up vocabulary bee, of all things, to be a mock ironic celebration of how much better we are than those knuckle-dragging blue-collars, and caked with extra irony since each of us, as an individual, was above the insecurities assuaged by calling someone who's not in the room a dummy. But it's just this chick in an inappropriate tiny white dress playing Alex Cameron, Doctor of Pronunciation, and some folks defining words. I'm not really having fun — this Meg girl is standing right behind me, either watching me type or not at all aware of my existence (and I'm not sure which is more awkward) — but I don't think anyone else is either.

What little crowd there was is getting sick of clapping every time someone guesses a synonym for the word.

Round three: Multiple choice. The words are getting pretty obscure, the kind that if you saw them in print, you'd be able to make out the meaning from the context and your past experience with English, but just hearing them is a garble of mismatched syllables. But it's multiple freaking choice. We've gone from hoping someone will use three words in a clever, amusing sentence down to a pop quiz.

Bonus round, this one's for the grand prize, the "25-Foot Long Crossword Puzzle:" Great, more words! You get the definition and you have to come up with the word, which ends in "sion." Whoever gets the most words in a minute wins. This isn't bad cause I can play along and feel stupid when I can't figure out the answer or even stupider when I figure out an answer that ends in "tion."

So It's Come to This: A Review of ABC Family's The Middleman

I was desperate for entertainment last night, and ABC Family had this first-run show among television's reality detritus re-packaged as summer reality detritus. The Middleman started out with a few bonus points, just for having no association with ABC Family's darling professional moralizing showrunner Brenda Hampton. As far as magical cyber-realism superhero shows go, it's not all that insufferable. The pilot, or the arbitrarily-named Pilot Episode Sanction, sets up the premise and the kind of pot-induced homages and humor we're in for. Struggling artist and X-Box fanatic Wendy Watson gets recruited by some nebulous organization to fight, literally, comic-book evil, and I always feel embarrassed for the actor who has to deliver that exposition: "The National Security Council's supercomputer was downloaded into your brain!" or "It appears the plasmatron laser fused your DNA with that of a squid!" Not just that could never happen, but, really, come on now, that could never happen.

At least The Middleman runs on a stylistic level that's aware of its absurdity, the comic book tropes its imitation flatters, and (to a lesser extent) the trite superhero conventions it adopts for narrative simplicity. The pilot's first half is the same setup — random encounter with evil forces, protagonist brought to the secret lair, she's resistant to the whole ridiculous idea, etc. — and neither all that promising nor indicative of the way The Middleman embraces its crazy fantasy in the show's second half. I'm not saying it was totally successful, but you'd expect one of those ABC Family shows to delude itself into thinking that a mad scientist breeding an army of super-intelligent remote-controlled gorillas in order to take over the world (there seems to be a step missing in there...) is the most Emmy-worthy thing ever, rather than a dumbass idea with possible comic potential.

My biggest disappointment with the show — aside from Wendy's least-flattering superhero costume and/or security guard's uniform circa 1986 ever — is the show's failure to live up to its tone. The Middleman kept reminding me of Bryan Fuller's aesthetic, with a cheap, retro vibe, bizarre over-exposition, loquaciousness, and alternately brisk and cautious speech patterns almost lifted from Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies... but whoever's behind The Middleman is no Bryan Fuller. It feels like the style in The Middleman competes with the characterization, and some of the tics bring the script to a halt. Wendy's boss and title character is perpetually and irrationally cheerful and super-consciously refuses to cuss — he sounds like a lobotomized Ned Flanders — and the worst part is it's just a setup for a particularly ill-executed joke. I can see a Fuller character like Charlotte Charles thinking of and soliloquizing someone's refusal to cuss as a surrender to and acceptance of destiny's random influence and one's insignificant but not inconsequential role therein, plus the Fuller speech would be amusing.

I guess the style substitutes for the humor ABC Family censors wouldn't work with — be shocked, it's sanitized and, save for one good joke at the end, the sort of stuff where you know why it's supposed to be funny but it's just not — or the inherent superhero violence that the censors cut, or the weird sexuality in concept only. It covers up the dishonesty, poorly — because there's no way any of that stuff would happen in the real world.

Ben Stein Gives Fashion Advice

Ben Stein — the guy from the Clear Eyes commercials — went on an angry rant on his semi-regular CBS Sunday Morning editorial, complaining the usual conservative complaints about how much better things were in the olden days. What's destroying society this time? Neckties — they're headed the way of the ruff and cravat, and the percentage of American men wearing ties regularly is at an all-time low. I'm still waiting for the day when I can walk into work in my little footie pajamas, but it's a step forward, no longer having an arbitrary piece of fabric choking you all day long.

When I was a lad and a younger man, men wore these to show they did not work with picks and shovels and pitchforks.

Ties were a symbol of white collar status, although even some workmen wore them under their leather aprons.

If you had on a necktie, it showed you had some sense of organization, some sense of dignity about yourself.

Even schoolboys wore them. At fabulous boarding schools like Cardigan Mountain in New Hampshire, where my handsome son went, boys still wear them. It showed, to use a word that you rarely hear, class.

And what, Mr. Stein, is wrong with working with picks and shovels and picthforks? Someone's sounding awfully elitist, with his Hollywood connections, Ivy League education, son at a "fabulous" (read: gay?) boarding school, and silk strip dangling off his collar for no reason other than to show off his "class." The cultural shift — lagging behind the cultural shift — must be a little humbling for Ben. Back in his Nixon-speechwriting days, Ben and his tie lived with presidents and CEO's in the moneyed elite, the people who could do their jobs while sitting in a thick leather chair. They left our cranky old fogeys behind with the junior associates, assistant managers — the subordinates who don't get a say in the matter.

"Power is being able to dress the way you want," argues a Joseph Abboud executive. Save for casual Fridays, I am more powerful than any lawyer, banker, or trader in New York. Ah, it seems the tables have turned.

What Ben needs is a Xanax and an invitation to the twenty-first century and away from his Eisenhower-age nostalgia. He's looking to his comfort zone, where "men were there to work, not to play," as the very thought of Ben Stein playing boggles the mind. I bet he wears his tie and loafers to the beach and has no clue why that "Bueller, Bueller" was funny coming out of his mouth. Back in the day, Stein's nameless economics teacher character would've been able to punch any insolent student who laughed at his monotone, in the eighties we could mock him and now we just exploit him to sell eye drops and Creationism. Pushing the status quo must be a relief for the poor man.

It's as if the tie makes the man for Stein, and our supposed progression towards a slacker culture could be reversed not by reinvesting in our infrastructure or education — that would be expensive — but just wrapping our necks. But why is Stein moaning in the first place: he and his whole tie rack will do just fine no matter where the culture strays — rich people just enjoy that privilege. It's from that privilege that blinds Stein to the real forces shaping the zeitgiest. There was opportunity back in the fifties, hence some reasons to not slag off. By the Ferris Bueller days, with the birth of elitism and the expansion of our class stratification, the payoffs of hard work only went to the power-suit elite, or to the lucky, undeserving asshole who skips class and somehow winds up leading a parade down Michigan Avenue.

These days, hard work on its own gets you nowhere and the tie is a key to a door that might or might not exist. Ben tries to reach the young'uns' demo almost name-dropping Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as guys who wear ties on TV, "It will probably come as a shock to all of the network newscasters and the late night talk show hosts. They're the coolest guys on the planet, and they wear neckties." (That "coolest guys on the planet" thing: I'm pretty sure he ain't talking about Craig Ferguson there.) They're a great example of how out of touch Stein is, with the youth, with logic, and with reality. Ben chastises us, "Start dressing like grownups and acting like grownups. The necktie is a start," as if dressing like grownups isn't merely the most superficial means of acting — pretending — like grownups. Thanks, Dad! I know I'm grounded but I'm gonna sneak out my bedroom window at midnight, too. Me and the gang are gonna smoke some cigarettes, then shoplift.

Stewart and Colbert don't sit us down for talks about being grownups. They treat us like adults, and that's why they don't have to ask for our maturity and energy, and that's why they're the coolest guys on the planet. They really are like the neighborhood cool parents who you can rebel with, against the tie-fanatic monotonous Ben Steins of the world.

My favorite Congressional vegan punch-line possible fairy sprite representative, Dennis Kucinich, I'm happy to say has brought articles of impeachment up against Bush. And I'm also happy to say that they'll go nowhere, which is the best possible outcome given two words: President Cheney.

Wanna Play a Game?

I found a box labeled Barista on that stack of random board games Barnes & Noble's got piled up near the Starbucks. The tagline: "Brew the perfect cup!" and "The strategic game of fresh brewed fun!"

I was curious, so here's some more info from the back of the box:

Grande nonfat mocha with a single shot? Or tall soy cappuccino with a double-shot? Match the beverage shown on a roll of dice to make the perfect cup and win! But wait…other players can force you to spill your drink order, or they can change the drink order and mess up your hand! Or maybe a player is closer to finishing the drink order than you are and calls a Barista challenge. Barista is the best game of strategy and match-up fun you’ll ever play with an espresso cup.

Holy cow, that box is excited about coffee.

The Post-Intelligencer — Seattle, where else? — calls Barista "a latte fun," which makes me die a little inside. The spokeswoman for Barista's publisher, Discovery Bay Games, gave it a resounding endorsement, saying Barista "really is a pretty good game." The box is more enthusiastic. Spilling coffee! Changing drink orders! It's everything you love about your local coffeeshop, except the coffee. And in board form.

I do, however, want to know what this Barista Challenge thing is, and if they could maybe import it into Grounded.

Maybe She Just Likes Campaigning...

It's pretty much the same thing we've been saying since the days of her revolving hairstyles: we haven't heard the last of Hillary. She'll help lead John McCain to the presidency next year and run again in 2012. In 2016, Chelsea will probably be on the ticket. By 2024, it'll be Roger handing whatever's pieces of the country aren't in China's or Dubai's hands over to the neo-cons.

Over the speculation about what the hell she's still doing, there's the question of why she's still doing it, whether it's political posturing or waiting for tragedy to befall Barack or what. My theory is she's just an arrogant bitch — whether it's American Idol or the party nomination process, you don't get eighteen million votes, and you certainly don't get to the top, without ego overflowing your cranium. Politicians, unlike the wacko fundamentalists who support them way, way after the game's over and everyone's left the stadium, are supposed to have the grace to at least appear humble. Bush, who, lest we forget, believes he's God's messenger bringing democracy and oil revenues to the Middle East, looks like a doofus — at least until someone challenges him.

Frankly, Hills, it's no longer fun and your militant feminist supporters remind me of those protesters on College Walk I tried to avoid cause they'd spend fifteen minutes of your life telling you how you're a bigot for not supporting their crazy rage-filled anarchic politics. This comes from someone who still would vote for a white guy, John Edwards, if he were still in the race. (Although to be honest, I really wanted to vote for Elizabeth Edwards, whose politics I agreed with and who, in my estimation, would be even less disingenuous than her husband.)

But then again, maybe she just enjoys campaigning, and pandering to the working class.

More Money, More Problems

It's good to know that the economic downturn is affecting the filthy rich — i.e. the same Wall Street dipweeds who lobbied for the de-regulation that caused the downturn in the first place. The Times reports that the priceless art, multi-karat diamond, and private jet rental markets are all suffering as the Greenwich pigs tighten their belts, metaphorically, and loosen them literally — trainers and personal nutritionists are also getting cut back.

Justin Sullivan, managing director of Regent Jet, which leases private airplanes, said most clients in real estate and on Wall Street are switching to chartered jets over private jets, and cutting their flight budgets by about 25 percent. One New York real estate developer cut his budget to less than $250,000 a year from $1.5 million a year.

“A year ago, he would have only flown Gulfstreams,” Mr. Sullivan said. “Now it’s moving to the point where he’s flying Beech jets and Learjets.”

A year ago, I would've only eaten Frosted Flakes, but it's gotten to the point where I'm eating generic brand "Sugar Flakes." Let's all pray for the economy before I have to start buying that bottom-shelf cereal that comes in plastic bags.

The economic fallout is also affecting the personal lives of the super-rich, with one guy confessing to his divorce lawyer "that his net worth had decreased to $8 million from more than $20 million, and he thinks that his wife will leave him. He has hidden their fall in fortune by taking on debt to pay for her extravagant clothes and vacations." I can't help myself: Ha, ha! You're trapped in a loveless marriage with a gold-digging bitch!