Have a Very Polemic Christmas

Here's an article in the NY Times Sunday Styles section — which I don't read — about the latest trend in eco-friendly holiday gift giving, and the resentment it creates among some people who do read the Sunday Styles section. The holiday drama starts with a socially conscious nucleus gift-giving handmade recycled crafts or charitable donations and the once-valent rest of the family, expecting real presents, turning resentful. Not to mention euphemistic: "We spent so many years so poor, where we didn’t have the money to do much,” said Cynda Reznicek, whose sister gave her a compact flourescent light bulb last Christmas. "We're at the point now where we can be a little more extravagant.... It's just a joy."

This is the point where I fruitlessly remind you how Christmas is supposed to be about the birth of our Savior, and peace on Earth, and mirthful times with your friends and (possibly politically backward) family, and spreading Christianity by co-opting a pagan solstice festival. But that's not what struck me.

I always thought there was this tacit rule in society that when someone gets you a gift, even if it's a light bulb — which, let's be honest here, ranks above underpants and below socks — you're either under twelve years old or otherwise at least feigning gratitude, you selfish jerk!

Kenneth P. Green, a resident scholar on environmental issues at the American Enterprise Institute — I'll point out that's not really any sort of credentials on this issue, but anyway — accidentally clears up the spirit of gift-giving: "The point of the holidays for many people is the joy people get in giving." No... if you're bitching about what you unwrapped, then the point of the holiday is the joy you get in receiving, potlatch be damned. You know, every family has their Christmas issues, and most of those are way more trivial than the health of our entire planet. The difference is the twenty-five year old rivalry between your two uncles because one got a car as a graduation gift back in 1982 and the other didn't doesn't manifest itself when presents get unwrapped. "A power drill! That fixes everything, for the remaining hour we have to be in the same room."

I'm not judging, although avarice does rot your soul, but the gift is supposed to be a gesture of generosity and not a fantasy of watching football on a big TV or impressing your girlfriends with designer shoes. It's one thing to expect something else, but to actually complain about the light bulb is the mark of someone who, next year, seriously deserves to get shit. (I was going to say "coal," but an environmentalist wouldn't give coal as a gift.)

Year of the Robot

Every Christmastime, I take an hour and drool over the bi-annual Sharper Image catalog, and imagine our dystopic future ruled by superfluous gizmos from Korea. Progress marches on this year, with the catalog's opening pages devoted to pet robots of every conceivable species, from vacuum cleaners (now with "anti-tassel" technology!) to insects to re-animated Elvis. Elvis lives!

When the androids become self-aware and the revolution inevitably happens (June 12, 2012: mark your calendar), there really won't be any greater indignity than being killed by a three-hundred dollar animatronic rockin' Elvis.

Okay, no robot apocalypse, but the damn things still creep me out, especially as they're evolving into more "lifelike" creatures of servos and sprockets. Pleo the Brontosaurus here, or whatever he's supposed to be, "develops his own personality, moods and habits," needs training and socialization — he really seems like a lot of trouble. A pet without the dander, and the affection... so he's pretty much Pig.

I find these androids just a tad condescending towards humanity. Not so much the engineering nerds at Honda creaming themselves over Asimo because it's been years since they've had contact with an actual human being, but the rest of us. He can run, he can dance, he can play the trumpet! Big deal — I can do all those things, plus I can walk downstairs without toppling over. (Usually.) Suck on that, Asimo!

And you know what else Asimo can't do? Love, that's what.

That's what frustrates me with this so-called robot vitality, and I see us raising a generation of children believing computers can show true empathy. And the reverse, like when you're stomping on ants and there's a half-crushed one writhing, waiting for the sweet release of death. It doesn't count as a living thing until it's squished on its thorax with those six little legs twitching pathetically in the air, and Wittgenstein notwithstanding, suddenly your sick mind apprehends how that feels for the poor thing. And someday robots will get the same recognition — that's what "lifelike" means, after all — and hippies will protest over the poor working conditions, long hours, and meager pay for all the Screwbots and Weld-O-Matics toiling away in factories for the benefit of the rich first world.

The Sharper Image needs to re-brand. They're not lifelike, they're bipedal toasters, although now I expect to see Toaster-Bot 3000 in next year's catalog. (Headline: "Your new robotic best friend wakes you up, makes breakfast, and dances!")

I Am Swank, Briefly

My high-powered NJYP connections introduced me to Netparty, a site organizing networking functions for young professionals, and apparently people like me as well. Netparty held their premiere NYC event last night, where 1700 young professionals were expected to crowd into a club, trade business cards, and possibly hump each other, but in a totally professional, business-casual way. I went, expecting the social-phobic, fish out of water disaster these things usually collapse into — but I enjoy these stylish clubs, first because I get off on that slick, trance, mood-lit ambiance and second because I feel like someone important walking into this secret, sacred space, like Page Six or Heidi Montag might stop by and I'd get to be on the other side of the tabloid glossy for once. As if that's a worthy goal, but I think we can all agree that it sounds better spending tonight like every other night, commuting home, stuck in traffic.

The party was held at Hiro, an exclusive club that usually has no reason to be open at six on a Tuesday night. I confirmed this with a couple of the bartenders. Hiro is one of those obnoxious places that's kept hidden from the plebeians — 371 West 16th Street doesn't even exist during daylight hours, camouflaged as a service entrance for what I always thought was a homeless shelter but turns out to be an expensive hotel. It's easier to find at night because you can just look for the line of beautiful people heading into the Maritime Hotel's service entrance. I arrived a few minutes before the party sort of kicked off at six and the line was already down to the corner.

I was probably the only person waiting on line not talking into, e-mailing from, or texting on some kind of handheld electronic gizmo.

I'm generally super-awkward at these events and I somehow found myself sitting at the dudes' table. All of you with — not social skills so much as social confidence — haven't experienced this phenomenon, but basically you're hanging in the clu trying to look engaged, failing usually. One of the system admins already at the dudes' table — everyone at the dudes' table is inevitably a system admin — calls you over and you collapse, sucked into this black hole of low self-esteem, and wind up sitting with dudes sadly pointing out who's hot, or even more sadly not pointing out who's hot. Dudes and their repressive asexual work ethic are actually here for networking.

Here's where the night becomes awesome. So I'm at the dudes' table trying to explain this Netparty concept to some system admin who doesn't really speak English and is, seriously, expecting someone to make a presentation tonight, and just generally getting frustrated cause I've been sitting at the dudes' table since I was seven or eight years old. I want to escape and I see the woman who was in front of me on that long, long line outside sitting by herself. Understand: I never do this. I've never done this. But I was totally sick of being this guy's instruction manual — "No, you have to go and introduce yourself" — that I excused myself to go "mingle."

I went up to... the bar.

I checked out upstairs.

I brought my drink into the men's room. I've never seen this before: they have all this metrosexual styling product over the sink and a guy who charges you two bucks to use it. I'm a firm believer that you can judge the classiness of a joint by its bathroom — fake white marble, high-velocity hand dryers, those big bowl sinks. Hiro had the bathroom of your corner deli, plus the guy selling fancy soap or whatever was sort of creepy.

I left the bathroom and, out of places to wander, I introduced myself to the woman from outside. "I remember you from the line..." I'm not sure what the big—

Hold on. I'm forgetting something. It didn't hit me till later, but: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't figure out what I was afraid of, since this went smooth as, well, curling up in a ball and floating underwater. Sure, the circumstances were really favorable — no competition, plus I had an opener, plus I don't know what the hell Hiro put in my drinks but I was spinning for hours — but still, in instant replay, it can't see my looming disaster approaching from anywhere at all. There's a moral somewhere in here; I really hope I can dig it out.

Your Dog Looks Like a Whore

I wish I could have more nice things to say about the folks at eccentricpets.com because it looks like they do some really good, important work. They're in the animal rescue business, finding homes for unwanted pets... and then dressing them up. I believe I have a new arch-enemy. Putting a raincoat on your dog when you're taking him for a slushy walk might not be too bad, but this meretricious greyhound mini-skirt or the dress for a guinea pig or hamster robs every last shred of dignity from a creature who eats its own poo. (Really, click on the link because that hamster dress needs to be seen to be believed.)

In case your poor pet didn't look ridiculous enough in the "Dazzling Doggy" mini-skirt at right, you can contact Ruth Regina at Wiggles Dog Wigs for the full-on canine tranny look. Half these dog wigs are so freaking ridiculous they couldn't even get a dog to model them. Dude, they're dogs — they already have hair and unless they're performing in a Vegas show they don't need more, and they certainly don't need it to be platinum blonde. Words fail to describe how much I wish I could lock this woman in a room for a week with all of her over-coiffed dogs.

Man, I don't even have any vitriol left for "animal communicator" Donna Velardi.

Meeting

I met up with some friends, and some friends of friends, this evening and brought them to P.S. 1, which... if you ever want to impress your crew with both how much obscure, over-the-river New York City you know and how coolly Zen you are, P.S. 1 is the singular place to bring them. It's a branch of my still-loathed Museum of Modern Art and full of dippy, over-commentaried installations, but redeemed by James Turrell's awesome sanctuary Meeting, guaranteed to leave jaws agape.

It's both easy and hard to describe: a white room, wooden bench around the perimeter, and a hole in the ceiling. A skylight, literally. Turrell pulls off some sort of optical illusion where the ceiling's maybe twelve feet over your head, your eyes scan across to the hole and the sky is right there. At my first Meeting, there was a debate among my friends, "Is that just twilight projected onto a screen? It has to be. I bet they're pumping cold air and wind in the room... no, look, there's a plane. How did he do that if it's a screen?"

Once your mind resolves the issue, the Turrell room is a great, chilly little place for meditation. No one will stop you if you need to sit in lotus position for hours or perform corpse pose on the bench, and there really aren't too many places where a bunch of grown adults, strangers to each other, will lie on a dirty carpet together and it won't be awkward. Plus we got lucky with a perfect, deep pink evening where the illusion crept closer and closer as dusk turned to night.



Credit for the photos goes to Harrigan, who's a photo ace. Seriously, she was setting the aperture and exposure manually. I can barely take pictures that aren't motion-blurry...

Same scene. My picture:

Harrigan's picture:

Not that my picture doesn't have its charm, but I was going for something a teensy bit different.

Also on display, this guy. Min Tanaka, a conceptual artist putting on a special live exhibition. So watch the video, and see if you can guess what his conceptual art gimmick is. (Note: I had the camera sideways, filming, figuring it would correct itself. Oops. Doesn't matter, since he's not any less inexplicable rotated ninety degrees.)

If you guessed that he "dances the space around him," because you are unaware that "dance" is an intransitive verb, then you are correct. Also, he doesn't like being videoed, since some security ninny told me to put the camera away, even though there were at least five professional photographers in the room, blocking everyone's view, and taking snapshots. So I didn't get on camera the part of his dance where he randomly bangs his head against the wall, presumably because the space told him to do so.

I'm really glad the New York Shipping Association put up this ad for the ports of New York and Newark, because I used to load and unload my dry shipping all on my own, with the cargo ships dropping anchor in my driveway and holding the steel shipping containers in my front yard, but it looks like contracting that to an outfit that's not twelve miles inland, and with stevedores and giant cranes, will be a lot more efficient. Now if I could only find someone to deliver my mail for me and a place to land my 747.

In my first reading of the ad, though, with the foreign couple and the line "From brides to bulldozers..." I thought the port was advertising their smuggling operation for mail-order brides and eastern European prostitutes into the U.S. Turns out they're just talking about importing wedding dresses and silverware, but I have little doubt that the Port Authority has more skill with shrinkage and political graft than they do with wordcraft.

Singapore Weighs In

Not exactly a nation known for its subtlety, the Singaporean press gave us this well-labeled political cartoon yesterday, with so much blunt symbolism that, at first, I mistook it for a French New Wave film. It strikes me as one of those newspaper cartoons from the days of the Hayes administration, when Americans were a humorless people yet to evolve to drawing satire, and just as inscrutable. Why is Bush holding that "Anti-Terror Ally" square? I know America and Pakistan are allies in the War on Terror, or at least we are on paper, but... And is Musharraf hugging that Dictatorship tiger or trying to control it? What's with the sandal? The footprint of tyranny? That doesn't make sense.

(Oh, I get it: it's a flip-flop. It would just be easier on my brain to move on to a cartoon reinforcing the idea that Fred Thompson is too scripted.)

Missed Connections

Reuters reported the most saccharine news article since Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack met cute, a true Big Apple love story that absolutely never happens in real life: New Yorkers rally to help online romeo. The timeless love story goes like this: Boy sees girl on Number 5 train. Boy falls instantly in love with girl. Boy loses girl. Boy posts crude drawing of girl on website. The whole freaking city of New York searches down girl. Boy and girl go on Good Morning America. Dopey women across America squee.

The story's just like out of a movie. No, seriously.

My personal Cupid must be broken. He doesn't drive hot girls to sit next to me on the train, or inspire a captivating Chemistry.com profile, or stir a whole jaded city to search for my soulmate. Ass. Can I trade him in and get another one? Preferably one who'll get my cute barista whose name I don't know to chat with me and see the sweet, vulnerable, yet surprisingly virile guy beneath this tortured soul, pining over lattes and pastries..... I'll stop now.

I guess I just don't understand what makes this random subway guy any different from the hundreds of other random subway guys and girls posting on Craigslist's "missed connections" bulletin board. "R train from 57th to Lex - m4w -26."

"Irish Actress at Whole Foods - m4w."

"Beautiful man in Yale sweatshirt - w4m - 28."

It's a giant anthill out there — strange enough, though, that it's got to be at least ninety percent the drones who are posting. (Also, ants don't need wings. They're fucking creepy enough already.) What are the odds missed connections could ever possibly work out? Like, example: "Blonde on The E Train - m4w - 30." This blonde on, well, the E train was "reading a book and seemed totally into it." She has to be looking for a missed connection, on Craigslist, recognize herself, try to place the guy that's all wistful over her, and want to meet him. "I looked at you one last time and you and I met eyes for a second. I wanted to say hello but didn't feel like making a semi spectacle on train, so I am trying to find you here." Seem likely?

But this guy gets put on the Jumbotron? Not fair! I'm saying right now that once I'm rich, I'm gonna set up this laser system to draw my face on the moon. That ought to catch the attention of that cute barista whose name I still don't know... although once you're rich, I bet you don't have to be quite as tacky to find love.

Speaking of which, here's another Reuters romance (sort of) article: "No deal! Woman's bid for rich husband deemed poor offer." This gold-digger posted what's got to be the most heartfelt ad ever on Craigslist. "I dated a business man who makes average around 200 - 250. But that's where I seem to hit a roadblock. $250,000 won't get me to Central Park West.... I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don't think I'm overreaching at all." She described herself as "superficial," like, no shit, bitch.

A "mystery Wall Street banker" replied:

Your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity ... in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won't be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Let me explain, you're 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!

It doesn't make good business sense to "buy you" (which is what you're asking) so I'd rather lease.

Sounds to me like some mystery Wall Street banker is in lurrrrvvve. They really do sound perfect for each other. She can fritter away her afternoons in Bergdorf Goodman and Jimmy Choo while he's at work fomenting the inevitable class war, then they can spend their nights together having passionless sex and beating up handicapped orphans.

I'm just kidding — I'm sure these two utter tools would never beat up handicapped orphans. There's no money in it. But organizing handicapped orphan streetfights....

Scab

Dear American Media Conglomerates:

I generally sympathize with the working man, the Americans like myself who perform the tedious, backbreaking labor necessary to keep our great nation supplied with the coal, the industrial machinery, or the non-English speaking domestic help it needs to thrive. I'm disturbed when greedy corporations stepping on these good Christian folk, and thankful for the unions supporting our working-class as they struggle to put food on their dinner tables. But with your screenwriters on strike, and broadcasters threatening to fill the airwaves with absurd new reality show mash-ups like Are You Smarter than a Singing Midget Who Loves New York? I feel like now is a good time to compromise a few principles, step across the Writers' Guild picket line, and offer up my writing talent — just to keep television running smoothly, of course.

And also because I'd fucking kill for the job these thankless little sell-out shits aren't doing. I would write for TV shows or movies gratis... I would write for the vast wasteland detritus — Zoey 101 or The Jimmy Kimmel Show or that super-sterile original programming on the ABC Family Channel — just to see my name in the credits and hear something resembling my words out of the actors' mouths. I would pay Viacom, Disney, Warner Brothers or NBC Universal to write for them. FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, ARE YOU LISTENING, STUDIOS!!!???

Not that I'm looking to screw anybody, but it's like watching professional beer tasters or racecar drivers complain about their jobs, but even more oblivious to the irony. I'd just love to watch some NBC exec march up to Tina Fey and throw her 30 Rock words back in her face, "You got into this business because you're funny, and you're weird, and you're socially retarded. And you also got into it because it pays well," and yes, I'd miss 30 Rock but the idea of Tina Fey working some shitty normal job like the rest of us suckers, like Tina Fey as a claims adjuster or Jon Stewart painting dotted lines down the freeway, is just so comically absurd — somebody ought to write it into a Saturday Night Live sketch, if the writers were actually working.

So I'll be stopping by Rockefeller Center and Viacom's headquarters in Times Square tomorrow, pushing aside the picket lines and that giant inflatable rat (I'll stick a few nails in the damn thing if that makes my proposal any more appealing), and pitching my ideas about a new comedy where a fireman and a pyromaniac share an apartment and date women who are way out of their league. Oh, oh, and I've got this one about obscenely rich, spoiled teenagers in Montana who wear skimpy clothes and have sex with each other. And one about four professional women who run their own shipbuilding yard....

Looking forward to scabbing for you!

Thanks,

Jay Harris

Men Suck!

The subway system is Seoul, South Korea is re-introducing womens-only cars, and that makes me sad for our species, as we took a giant step backwards in our thousand century evolution beyond our bestial instincts. Other cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai, and Mexico City have all decided that grown-ups need to be treated like we're at the sixth-grade dance because the concept of anio means anio, or é proibido means é proibido, or na means na is too mature for us. I think this CBS News report, hosted by a hot blonde chick, about Tokyo's grabbiness problem, more or less sums up the issue in a sexual harassment video right out of the late-eighties. Shiatsu Boss in the video comes off as pretty pervy, like that really unfortunate comely woman wants a shoulder-rub after spending all night in one of those claustrophobic office-tube beds, but I'm damn impressed by the balls on those two office horndogs, ogling that dirty magazine with their co-worker right freaking there! Unproductive, lecherous, and not at all ashamed of it, like it's their biological prerogative.

Turns out that Seoul is a festering petri dish of unabashed sleaze — you know, without trying to be judgmental, except they need to complicate daily life keeping the boys and girls apart so nothing inappropriate happens. I don't even see an attitude problem here, unlike the gender-separated subway cars in Cairo or the antipodal testosterone packed cars on the Paris Metro. When big fat guys are stuffing passengers past the closing doors, there's a bit of plausible deniability — not to mention honest accidents — in the situation that some people who have no qualms about paging through porn while they're supposed to be crunching numbers might take advantage of.

If Seoul ran more frequent, emptier subways, it's not like anyone's going to complain. Other than the gropers.

Annual Halloween Rant

Of course I drive to work this morning and the trees are flowing with toilet paper, because today's the day witches and goblins come out, so naturally kids have to vandalize their neighbors' lawns. I'm not above hiding in the bushes with a garden hose, except "House" was on. Man, if Mischief Night fell on a Wednesday, I would've been so ready to ambush those little bastards. Halloween night, fifteen years ago, was when I officially became jaded, after some fucking delinquents smashed our jack-o-lanterns in the street and egged our house... and man, how I'd still love to hunt those punks down and feed their faces to my Rottweiler.

I'd never really do that, of course, because I don't have a Rottweiler.

I've never gotten together with a bunch of my drunk and/or stupid friends and TP'ed someone's house, and now I feel like I missed out on something, like a Nerf war with more cleanup and the adrenaline rush of knowing you could be caught. The other option is playing by society's rules, and what do you get out of that? Candy corn and ennui, that's what.

We're DOOOOOOMED!!!

The Bush administration is, once again, failing to heed the warnings of the world's top scientists, who've noticed strange happenings in our environment and are rushing to spread the word. We're facing a threat far worse than terrorists or global warming — astrophysicists at the University of Salamanca in Spain have postulated that, in the near future, our familiar three-dimensional universe will lose its time dimension and pick up a fourth space dimension. So maybe this whole string theory craziness doesn't have the visceral sci-fi imagery of the Earth swallowed by a black hole on Long Island, but "the fact that the Universe seems to approach a future sudden singularity at an accelerated rate of expansion might simply be an indication that our braneworld is about to change from Lorentzian to Euclidean signature." Translation: we're literally at the end of time, about to be cast off into the void of never and eternity.

All I'm saying is, you know that Mastercard fantasy hedonism weekend you've always dreamed of but would forever be putting off? You might want to get on that.

Those of you who are given to alarmism and panic should hole up in your tachyon-proof bunkers right about now.

I was having a shit day, so thank God I ran into this absolutely true news story that totally made me laugh:

India official dies after monkey attack

NEW DELHI - Wild monkeys attacked a senior government official who then fell from a balcony at his home and died Sunday, media reported.

I could handle the monsoons and the plague, but throw roving monkey street gangs in and I have every reason I need to never visit India, ever.

An optimist might point out that if the Indians can't even keep their leaders safe from killer monkeys, our failure in Iraq doesn't look quite as bad by comparison.

Coca-Cola Brownies

It's been a while since I baked anything. I miss throwing flour all over the kitchen and vanilla extract aroma and licking the batter — oh, how awesome were the days you could gorge yourself on unbaked cake?! You can't do that anymore cause batter has raw eggs in it, and raw eggs can have salmonella in them, and why is our chicken population so sickly lately? Screw SARS and avian flu, I want to lick the mixer blades! I made hash-free Coca-Cola brownies, which isn't as weird as it sounds at first, and they came out good, if more than a little globby.

Here's the recipe.

1. Put two cups sugar and two cups flour into a bowl. Mix with spoon.

2. Put one cup unsalted butter or margarine (that's one stick), one cup Coca-Cola, and three tablespoons cocoa in a pot. Pot on stove, stove on high, boil the mixture.

3. Clean up mess from exploding cola pot.

4. Pour boiling soda/cocoa/butter mixture over sugar/flour mixture.

5. Put two eggs, one half-cup of buttermilk, one tablespoon vanilla, one teaspoon baking soda, and one and a half cups of those little marshmallow things into the sugar/flour/soda/etc. bowl. Mix with mixing utensil. The end product, which you can't freaking eat, isn't watery or anything, but it's thinner than most batter.

6. Line a 9" x 13" baking pan with aluminum foil (makes cleaning up easier), smear Crisco all over the aluminum foil, and drop a thin layer of flour on the Crisco. This is the step I always forget, and then I have to resort to some ridiculous improvised MacGyver contraption to separate brownies and foil without the former crumbling away.

7. Pour batter into baking pan. Put baking pan in oven. Half an hour, 350°. Don't burn yourself.

8. Make frosting. The timing here is tough because you want the frosting and brownies to both be warm when you marry them. Say five minutes. Take that pot, which hopefully didn't explode back when you were boiling Coke earlier, and put another stick of margarine, three tablespoons of cocoa, and six tablespoons of Coke in. Boil it up again, taking to heart any lessons you might have learned the first time you did this.

9. Dump a box of confectioner's sugar into a bowl. I mean, take the plastic bag out of the box, take the sugar out of the bag, and put that in a bowl — but you knew that, right? Right?

10. Pour boiling margarine/cocoa/Coke mixture over sugar. Stir. Stir! Stir!!!!

11. Brownies are done when you can stick a toothpick in them and the toothpick comes out dry

12. Remove baking pan from oven, aluminum foil from baking pan, big layer of brownie cake from aluminum foil. Smear frosting on. Let cool. Refrigerator helps.

The brownies turn out pretty gooey, and I sort of wound up with a giant brownie blob you have to eat with a spoon in my refrigerator. They're a little less chocolaty and a little more sugar cookie-y than the standard brownie, but not nearly as sweet as I was afraid they'd be, considering how Coca-Cola brownies are basically sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and more sugar. They're a nice change from my usual coffee-flavored brownies, although I'm not thrilled about taking a Coke-plus-Mentos sort of risk every time I make them. There are easier ways to make a mess in my kitchen.

Top Secret

It looks like I sent my resume off to this Princeton company that makes a "semantic collaboration workspace that seamlessly ties together people and analytical applications to help our customers collect, organize and process disparate information in order to quickly and effectively respond to changing conditions," whatever that means. It's basically a electronic doohickey that receives data and filters it. Anyway, they got back to me with an email including this completely comforting information: "Due to the nature of our work and customer base, you will be subject to a government security investigation." I assume that Semandex employees are also issued photo ID badges, encoded with your retina scans and maybe some DNA, which isn't Orwellian at all.

Not that I have any real secrets to keep, aside from a somewhat embarrassing web browser history laden with HTTP requests for softcore porn — which, just so you know, can easily be tracked and linked back to your cable modem or DSL line — but the only reason I'm not cowering in paranoia as our government illegally taps our phone lines and AT&T sells them our domain name server requests, is that there's three hundred million people in the country and I'm pretty sure when it comes to the most boring and irrelevant, I fall somewhere in the top two hundred ninety-nine million. It's a pragmatic thing, fully, since I certainly don't trust the government — especially this government — to keep its prying eyes away from me because unjustified spying rends the freedom and priciples that make America great. The data is collected and dumped into this mechanical Semandex filter, and who knows what a buggy computer or an overzealous bureaucrat will do with it. (That, by the way, is my only real concern with this blog: jerks exploiting it, and idiots interpreting it out of context.) It seems better to not encourage them.

I don't really know if I could obtain government security clearance anyway — I got fired from a webmaster job at the theater for writing in my blog. I might have a rather fuzzy line between what's supposed to be private and public, but I'm quite sure I wouldn't be revealing the identity of an undercover CIA agent. I'm not that stupid, or politically vindictive.

The whole black market thing really confuses me, from both the inside and out. Like, how does one get started in international gun running? What's the job interview like? (Speaking of which, the CIA is hiring. Also available on their website, employee profiles... which kind of seems like it would defeat the purpose.)

And on the other hand, where are the links between the black market and the general population — how do I purchase a Slovenian prostitute, if I wanted to? There's no listing in the yellow pages for "Sex Slave, Retail." (I didn't check, I'm just assuming.) The weird thing is that I have friends who don't have library cards but know where to buy illicit drugs. Really? Friend of a friend of a friend? I mean, I don't even know who to call when my cable TV goes out; the idea of being a link in the chain of a Robert Ludlum novel is unfathomable to me.

I was in my blanket fort the other day and I got this brilliant coffeehouse idea, which you are free to use provided you give me credit and maybe a free mochaccino or two. You know how coffeehouses have chairs and tables, and maybe a friendship sofa in the back, right? Not anymore, because I've got a serious cafe revolution germinating — rugs on the floor and a whole Linens 'n Things' worth of bedding. You've got a sort of Zen, minimalist, comfy vibe going, but here's the best part: the customers get to make their own pillow forts!

Enterprising souls have tried something similar with great publicity and, apparently, mixed results. But that was dinner, my idea is just about pick-me-ups and hanging out. And that was for professional jackasses with disposable income who've probably lost their sense of whimsy around the same time they were cashing in their stock options — "It's dinner and dessert in bed! We can eat, then we can screw!" Only to be disappointed when it's all a little too public and you're stuck in under the sheets being platonic and talking about other dudes. (On a side note, Grounded is playing Marvin Gaye right now, which I think would be a lot more appropriate if you're in a blanket fort! With somebody else.)

You need to tap into that puerile market, folks still dreaming about how Hollywood will someday option their screenplay.

I was on the train into the city this morning — and the one thing that makes the rush hour trains barely tolerable is that, at least it's quiet. The weekends, you have families with screeching five-year-olds climbing over you to look out the window or teenage skater boys partying on their way into the city, but rush hour is just droll, sad grown-ups trying not to think about the work day. Which is why it's particularly irritating when there's two women, and I'm not being sexist because it's always women, clucking away really loud so you can hear their whole tiresome conversation.

So guess what happened on the train this morning! "Did you hear Shirley got herself a new job? She's at Macy's, working in the cosmetics... took Taylor to Little League but if he's not gonna show some enthusiasm... that was like that time we were in France and the waiter spilled coffee..." So the woman sitting next to me turns to the woman sitting next to her and mouths, obviously towards the talkers, "Shut up already!" and they've only been on the train for like fifteen seconds. She stuffed her iPod buds in her ears, ineffectually.

Here's the weird thing: this iPod lady was thinking pretty much the same thing I was thinking, and the lady next to the iPod lady was also sharing that thought. In the train car, turns out there were a lot of people staring at these two jabbering women with their conversation invading everyone's space. I fantasized about screaming, "Shut the fuck up!" at them, but, you know, I didn't. Neither did iPod lady, or anybody else — the ride to work was overcome by this crazy phenomenon where, seriously — we're the majority, we're following the tacit commute ritual, we're respectful of those around us, and we could've all easily ganged up and kicked their asses — but nobody did anything. Like we're all handicapped and our only tool left is the passive-aggressive glare.

We're all such fucking pussies.

What I've always dreamed of doing is giving that kind of behavior right back to them, like they're yammering on and I just walk in and join the conversation: "Shirley's working at Macy's? Wow, good for her, I hear you make great commissions there. Who's Shirley?" I'll never do that — thanks a lot, society, with your "rules" and "customs," but I'd love to know what would happen.

The other thing that somebody, somewhere needs to do is get the attention of one of those jackass blustering into his cell phone. Take out your own cell phone, make a call, and in a loud and clear voice: "HEY! WHAT'S UP?... I'M GOOD, TOTALLY, DUDE... YEAH, THE ONLY THING IS I'M RIGHT NEXT TO AN ASSHOLE TALKING WAY TOO LOUD ON HIS PHONE!" Click.

Finally Improving Fall '07 TV Watch: Aliens In America and (yay!) Pushing Daisies

Sometime around the third season of Sex and the City, someone out in TV Land decided that sitcoms no longer needed to be funny. Humor in comedies died as the once ubiquitous laugh-track faded out, which in itself was one of those great steps in television evolution I was totally in favor of: "The Powers That Be finally realized that we, the viewers, were smart enough to figure out where the jokes were without being told." Turns out, TV viewers aren't all that smart, and left to wander the comedy landscape without a guide, they seem to think anything not involving an actor in an Emmy-winning crying scene is funny. Hence, Desperate Housewives, which is mediocre satire and about as funny as having Dane Cook perform at your parent's funeral.

Not that the unfunny comedy can't be good; I can count Weeds, The Knights of Prosperity, Everybody Hates Chris, and probably others if I thought about it, as shows that aren't absurd enough to really pull off the humor that they're going for, but are certainly watchable just to empathize with the well-crafted, multidimensional characters. Complaining that Weeds isn't funny is a lot like complaining that Mad Men isn't funny: who said it had to be? You still get a way better TV bargain than you would watching Two and a Half Men.

That's pretty much the case with Aliens in America, the CW's token dork show, about an unpopular high schooler whose image-conscious Midwestern family takes in a Pakistani exchange student. The premise sounds like a recipe for stock "comedy," and there's plenty of mismatched housemates dialogue that's obligatory but not that funny, like den mother Franny telling Raja, the exchange student, to go to bed at 6:30 so the rest of the family can discuss how to "return" him. (It's a theme that's sort of harped on in the pilot.) The family's shallowness and ignorance is the joke here, but it comes off as mean-spirited plotting. I had the same issue with the bit about Justin finding himself on the seniors' "Hottest Girls" list or the reveal with Claire's boyfriend at the end of the episode.

But the show is really good when it's spontaneous — the scene out of nowhere with the bullies fighting over which one of them would sleep with their sister was hilarious, and (maybe I'm naive here but) I wasn't expecting Raja's class to unanimously blame him, personally, for 9/11, especially when the whole dialogue opened so innocently. I can see the show moving in that direction — the writers had to manipulate the story for Justin and Franny to eventually have changes of heart, but the rest of the characters can grow organically since they don't have to, a never will, accept Raja. The dynamic softened in just the right way, pitting a now-likable family I can empathize with against an unlikable world I also empathize with. I'm not prepared to laugh, but I'm prepared to care.

Not that I'd lodge any complaints if the networks would create more shows like 30 Rock or Arrested Development. You know, stuff that you actually do laugh at.

So, last night...

I've been waiting sooooo long for Pushing Daisies, since I'm a huge Wonderfalls fan, and the "Pie-lette" did not disappoint, other than in its coy yet surprisingly appropriate title. Bryan Fuller, who created Dead Like Me and the aforementioned Wonderfalls, and wrote the Heroes turning point episode "Company Man," specializes in charming tales of alienated misfits and pulls them off with a lot more honesty than, say, Josh Schwartz (Chuck) or Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas (Reaper). Of the three shows Fuller created, Pushing Daisies is by far the most cloying and even more saccharine than its color palette, but the material — within the first five minutes, a nine-year-old boy kills his mother and his best friend's father — tempers and even somehow justifies the sweetness, like in those pre-Disney fairy tales where the princess marries Prince Charming and the evil witch has her brains picked out by a colony of rabid bats.

Fuller brilliantly exploits his fairy tale narrative model to get what has to be the most complicated exposition ever on television out of the way in a hurry: "Once upon a time... magical powers... here's the rules... we're not gonna bother questioning them cause that's not what the show is about." Little Ned has a crush on the little girl next door, and the amazing ability to raise the dead with a single touch. The caveat is if he touches them again, they die for good, and if he doesn't, someone else dies in their place... although that's a moral dilemma that's pretty easily worked around when Ned's childhood crush is murdered and he brings her back to life.

The look and tone of the show are heavily influenced by the French fantasy director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, where the quirks grow out of characters fascinated by the trivial, like the mechanical hand on a stick Ned uses to pet his once-deceased dog. It's not even close to actually petting your dog, but it's important because it's all he has. The central conceit — Ned and his childhood crush, Chuck, are infatuated with each other, but can never touch — is similar, with the disparity between what's genuine and what's settled for magnified a hundredfold. The kissing monkeys as surrogates for Ned and Chuck, is actually pretty touching and special, as basically the peak of their relationship, and representing what they'll never achieve. Sad stuff, but it made the part of me that owns ten Chicken Soup For The Soul books smile inside.

I also need to say a little about Chuck who, in a show with zero gender politics, somehow manages to be the most daring and dynamic new female character of the season. So, writers of Bionic Woman, let's see how this works, so maybe your show won't suck so much. (Actually, I read that the second episode wasn't nearly as bad as the pilot, but it doesn't matter to me, since I was watching an episode of Mythbusters I've already seen seven-hundred times.) Chuck has two things your bionic heroine desperately needs implanted: something to strive for, and something to lose. Pushing Daisies and its bizarre presentation is satisfying on the same visceral level that Bionic Woman reaches, but Fuller hits a nerve of universal experience that most shows this season don't dig anywhere near dip enough for.

Scavenge

It's garbage week here in Fanwood! I don't know if you have garbage week in whatever normal place you live, but it's a semi-annual event down here. We celebrate by throwing all the old, useless crap in our homes out on the curb, so the whole town looks like it was overrun by smelly, toothless hicks. Now I'm embarrassed to say that, when I was younger, I used to dig through my neighbors' trash piles, hunting for treasure and usually coming away with a torn-up mattress housing a dust mite colony or a decades-old radio missing its antenna, and being so excited because I was actually going to make good use of other peoples' shit. Hah! All that crap just got recycled into the curbside pile for next year's garbage week.

I don't get the appeal of other people's used junk — not the antiquities, the rare stuff with real value — even used bookstores leave an unpleasant ether, the combined musk of a hundred bibliophiles' bookshelves, surrounding me. I can understand the appeal of literature for a dollar, but you bring a used book into your house and all I see is you introducing a new species of mold to the environment. But at least that's still usable; garbage week stuff is (kind of the whole point) garbage. I don't care what sort of nostalgic Victorian taste you've got — what the hell are you planning on doing with a wicker chair the cat clawed all the way through? Someone took our record player — You know how the kids today don't know what a cassette deck is? This thing plays 45's, okay? — and somebody took it. If you're scavenging for old record players, maybe you should sell your LP's and use the revenue to buy an iPod.

What really pissed me off today was some old guy picking through people's trash, then taking this termite-rotted set of dresser drawers and putting them in his Lexus. Cheap motherfucker! God gave us Ikea so that old crappy furniture could die a natural death and be reincarnated into new cheap furniture. It's the circle of life: department store, family room, guest bedroom, attic, curbside, Sweden, department store.

More Fall TV '07 Watch: Reaper and Life (plus more on Chuck, with spoilers)

I am so happy I found Reaper on the CW, the first indisputably good new show of the season, and also the first show since Flight of the Conchords that made me laugh out loud. It's the underachieving slacker complement to overachieving nerd comedy Chuck, although Reaper is smarter, funnier, and better overall. Don't feel bad, Josh; as an assembly-line show producer pandering to teens with disposable income, at least you're no Kevin Williamson. Plus Reaper will be canceled first.

Reaper's success as a coming-of-age comedy is the same as Chuck's failure: the supporting cast. The basic plots are "puerile dude gets in situations over his head and grows up," but Sam, our hero in Reaper, is doing it without a net. The Devil pretty much conscripts Sam into chasing down on Earth souls that escaped from hell, but as the show's grown-up teacher figure, Satan seems to be a lot less helpful than the Casey plus Sarah combination on Chuck. Casey and Sarah do the tough stuff for Chuck, especially the "What do we do with this guy?" decision-making, as if (also because) he's not an adult capable of running his own life, and they essentially run out of denigrating options by the time he saves the day: first, let's lock him in a secret government facility... that won't work, so Sarah tells him to wait in the hotel lobby... but that doesn't work, so they push him aside when they're (not) defusing the bomb... and even when Chuck is actually doing the job neither of them can, Casey still has to give him shit because Chuck is supposed to be worthless as a human being in this situation.

The supporting cast of Reaper is just as clueless and unreliable — maybe more — as Sam is, and Satan is hilariously unhelpful. Sam's first capture is a guy who can turn himself into fire, and the Devil not only gives Sam a Dirt Devil — not a Hoover or an Oreck — to do the job, but he doesn't even bother to fully charge it. Sam's partner is the anti-Casey — a fat, lazy slob named "Sock" — who's so unhelpful, one of the weapons he brings to the final confrontation is a battery-powered touch lamp. Their struggle is greater, so their success is greater.

That's why I want to see more of Chuck and less of Casey (but Sarah's fine), and that's why I wish ABC would make an all-Marshall Alias spin-off.

Now Life is one of those shows that has no idea what it's doing. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes Life totally perplexing. I will never forgive the clunkiest exposition ever — the narration is standard, except the flashbacks are told as a talking heads documentary, complete with subtitles identifying who's on screen and spontaneous, bleeped swearing. The writers were too busy handing the hero, Charlie, television-friendly quirks to be bothered with revealing the backstory through dialogue. I hate literary laziness.

There's a criminal-of-the-week plot, the serialized "who framed Charlie" plot, other stuff involving his ex-wife and her new husband, but the degree to which you tolerate Life is directly proportional to the degree you tolerate Charlie. (I've seen a lot of comparisons to House, and while both shows rise and fall based on their protagonists' "endearing" idiosyncrasies, that's where the similarities end.) My perspective is that a lot of Charlie's weirdness is unmotivated — I like his mantra, "I am not attached to material goods," while speeding his brand new Cadillac down the freeway — but Charlie's fruit obsession seems to come from nowhere and go nowhere. The decision to minimize the impact of Charlie's time in prison also seems wrong to me, since (I assume) that's the primary source of his current personality, and that's the conceit of the show, and that's why I'm supposed to care about him.

One of the final scenes in the Life premiere is Charlie looking at a mind-map of his case, trying to solve who framed him, but I just don't care. If anything, I'm looking forward to the standard Charlie and his partner cop scenes, which are, well, standard. I see that Life is also showing on the USA network, and it feels like, along with (superior) Monk and (inferior) Psych, that's where this show belongs.

Tonight: Moonlight on CBS, which I doubt I'm watching, because I don't have a three-year-old crush on Jason Dohring.