Annoying Blog Part III

A bit of wisdom/humor about Generation X.
One was a quote somewhere in which some slacker-type guy said "retreating in disgust is not the same as apathy."
The other was in Gen-X's enduring big accomplishment, The Onion. With all the ridiculous "where will the next Seattle be?" questions in the media, the Onion had a great story called "Harrisburg is Starting to Happen." It complemented an earlier story on "The TH scene." TH was Terre Haute, Indiana.

Generation Hex

From what I remember, there were only two movies made about Generation X, during about the only time the media actually feigned an interest in us. That would be roughly circa 1991-1994.
If "Reality Bites" is any indication of that interest, be glad that we were quickly trampled by the children of the boomers (Gen Y?) and went back to being roundly ignored, which was the way we liked it.
The main question I had about "Bites" is why would anyone set a film about any kind of trend (besides "Urban Cowboy")in Houston? Did some guy pitching movies say "Houston is the next Seattle" and some kind of producers, uh, bit?
Seattle was indeed featured in "Singles," a movie I have little memory of, except for "Touch Me I'm Dick," which Matt Dillon's band did, and is a great takeoff of Mudhoney's "Touch Me I'm Sick."
But the cliche winner went to the first season of "Melrose Place," in which they actually tried to make it a sincere twentysomething show.
One character approached the other, a temp receptionist or something, and she told him "Hey, do you think this McJob's my Nirvana?"
Douglas Copeland wept.

Living Large with The Dog Whisperer

God help me. With everyone gone from the Thanksgiving party yesterday I'm alone, with a car, with at least some pathetic amount of cash, and I am rocking out.
I'm watching "The Dog Whisperer Marathon."
The question now is if I had a gun, would I blow away the TV or me?

The World Leader Pretend

It's gotten to the point where so many pundits are so sick of Bush that they are calling for a change in the date for the presidential inauguration.
At this point, many figure, Obama has appointed so many Washington insiders (a smart move away from radicals at the community level), that what's the point of waiting another two months for the coronation ceremony?
The lag between election and actual power is one which those groovy founders must of held upon, because at that time there were constant changes in European governments. The lag enabled everyone to cool off.
In the end, it's a smart move, ensuring that nutballs don't immediately take power in a fluke election.
As for Bush and his legacy ... he's ressurected the policy of preemtive military strikes, which is not bad so long as he (and we) know exactly what is being struck.
But let's allow Bush the last hurrah, as well as members of the totally confused and panicky Republican party.

Before the Box-Office Knows You're Dead

It was difficult to watch "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead." Mainly because I have either known or met the two principal actors. Phllip Seymour Hoffman was part of an off-Broadway show called "Shopping and Fucking," in which he performed with Justin Theroux, son of my late mother's best friend.
Ethan Hawke, later in "The Devil Knows You're Dead," would come around the ice cream store I helped tend in downtown Princeton. My co-worker was a fake-blond haired English tart. Quite attractive if you're into the slutty look (I was).
Ethan, in his Hun School blazer and pulled-down tie, would talk about how he wanted to come in sometime and see me boning the tart right over the ice cream counters (he was 15 at the time, I was 20). No such luck.
Nobody at the time could be considered a star. I shook Hoffman's hand quick and emotionless at Marion's across the street. I had no idea who he was.
I was watching the play with Justin's sister, who was beautiful but married. I sweated whenever she was around and alone and by her married-self because, like George Costanza, I didn't want to be an accessory to adultery. It probably was just my overactive mind.
It all worked all in the end, it seems. Justin became a big star, as did Hawke, and Seymour Hoffman; and Ms. Theroux moved to Carmel, CA.
Just keeping score.

Simon Says Its Time to Move

Don't look for the news on page A1, look for it on page A17. Don't send non-violent drug offenders to prison. In the best-case scenario, it will take 20-30 years of nonstop attention to the ghettos to bring them into the mainstream economy.

These were the words of David Simon, creator and producer of the critically acclaimed, often brutal series "The Wire;" on Baltimore street life on cable, who spoke last week at Princeton.

Simon is not uttering these prophesies from the Hollywood Hills. He started as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, wrote a book called "Homicide: a year in the streets of the Killing Fields," which NBC picked up briefly, then the last five years have been spent drawing together the streets, the mayor's office, and law enforcement working together on the drug war (brought to you by the people who fought the war on drugs; as the Onion has written, "Drugs win Drug War.")

"What we were striving for was a tragedy, like a Greek tragedy in which even the good get victimized." As someone noted before, in terms of the killing fields, "deserve ain't got nothin' to do with it."

It is a portrait, he said, of the end of an empire, meaning the US.
Simon said if you want the real news, don't follow the pack journalism of the front page. Again, look on page A17.

When I looked at a page 20 story in last Sunday's (or Monday's) NYT, it was about a 15-year-old girl who had been shot at her school by another girl. The school was not in the ghetto, and had no guards or weapons-checks at the door. The girl was black. I don't know about her assailant.

In other words, America, coming soon to a suburb like yours.

I'll return to this subject later. At this point, it is remarkable and probably necessary that Obama not throw the problems of the inner-city at mainstream America. Would have sent them running for their hunting rifles. We still don't know who the secretary of HUD and HHS are going to be, but I'd bet on a black or a woman, or perhaps both.

In summation, Simon said, "The question is are we one society or are we not? If we're not, let's hire more private security guards and build more gated communities. And let's come to terms with the fact that America only works for some of us."

Califantasyization.

Does anyone else think that "Californication" is bizarre, a kind of wish fulfillment for writers? The Hank Moody character is seen as glamourous and cool, and every female, from teenagers to fortysomethings, practically drops to her knees when meeting him (often literally).
The worst example was when a beautiful blonde in a convertible pulls up to Hank's battered Porshe at a red light and asks him what he does. He responds by telling her he's a writer.
The girl then writes down her phone number, says "read this," and kites the piece of paper over to Hank.
You would think that Hank is Justin Timberlake, or at least John Grisham, or somebody famous. He is not, except by a small group of fans (hey, wait a minute, that must sound familiar to some of you reader(s)). Instead, he's the Fonzie of writers, and I've heard that like the Fonz would have it, there is an episode featuring twins or sisters or something.
Wait, there's a group of co-eds at my door. They're constantly harassing me, asking me to sign various parts of their pert bodies. The writing life is tough.

Heather Has Two Mommies Golden Anniversary

The book was supposed to teach children about tolerance, accepting difference, and how all kinds of lifestyles are equal.
In the late 1980s The New York School Board was slated to buy "Heather Has Two Mommies" and distribute it to every public elementary school. Naturally, the idea of a mandatory book about lesbian parents set off a shitstorm among parents and pundits.
Pair that book with another then under serious consideration: "Daddy's Roommate," about a boy with two absolutely fantastic male role-models in Daddy's room. Let's just say The Post had itself a field day.
The way to sell these books would have been to combine them into pornography. "Daddy's Roommate has Two Heathers." "Two MILFs have Daddy's Roommate, "Heather's Daddy has Two Mommies and an Orgy."
The possibilities are endless, if it weren't for a few blue-noses. I have a dream that someday gay-themed childrens books will escape San Francisco and fly off the shelves from coast to coast. Then the space will be free for bestiality

Got a Free T-Shirt

The Democratic National Committee is wasting no time in their constant haranguing of people to support the organization. Here it is not even a week from the party's triumph, they have just put out an e-mail that offers anyone contributing $30 or more a 2008 commemorative election T-Shirt.

Hey, the Chinese and other countries that still actually produce real things need the labor.

Don't underestimate the lure such a seemingly humble garment. I was walking through Times Square a few years ago, and there was a line of muttonheads stretching around the block for a free premiere of some wretched and long-forgotten movie.

The crowd was getting restless, so whatever firm that was handling the circus decided to give away, that's right, the ultimate gift - free T-Shirts

The crowd went wild, with people in line shouting out and flailing their arms. "Oooh, free T-shirt, over here, over here!" You would have thought that they were giving away bricks of gold bullion.

As for the DNC, go back to pumping Hollywood and Upper East Side socialites for money. Their nannies might look good in those shirts.

By Order of Mayor McCheese

I realize that I made a mistake in my last post: Philadelphia Mayor Nutter is not named McNutter. I blame the goof squarely on McDonalds and their Mayor McCheese character.

McCheese has been fading from public view for a long time now. Once high and mighty, he's been reduced to hanging out with Ogre, the "Cookie" Monster and other sexual deviants.

For their part, McCheese's lawyers are denying any involvement. The copious amount of cheese around rape scenes could easily be attributable to Quarter Pounders (what exactly is it pounding?), Big Mac's and other raw meat fried for human consumption. This is despite the fact that Mac showed the world just how "big" he really is in a Playgirl full-color pictorial.

Don't get me going on Ronald. For God's sake, stop cruising the highway rest stops where McDonald's has a restaurant. All that white greasepaint must "come" in handy (or simply come in handy, usually his right hand).

McCheese wasted no time after the elections. He called for an end of the oppression
of Peoples of Burger. He spoke candidly of his tormented childhood, when other students would constantly try to take a bite out of him during recess.

Then there are the balance issues. McCheese and other people of burger have found themselves constantly tripping and falling because 70 percent of their body mass is in their heads.

They called for federal legislation, the Americans with Burger Head Act of 2008. In it elevators would have to install another steel bar where such people could lay their weary heads to rest on the journey.

The McCheese forces are meeting strong resistance from the Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips company. Treacher's product advertisment claims that it is the meal one cannot make at home, so, said a spokesman, eat your damn meal there.

Fast-food competitors Domino's Pizza has been surprisingly lobbying against the Burger Head Act.

A spokesman explained yesterday: once people realize that McDonald's is not actually food, they will quickly realize that Domino's product bears no resemblance whatsoever to actual pizza.

Role Model-in-Chief

This is the largely unspoken question in the campaign: would the election of a black president actually change the behavoir of ghetto black boys and young men?

When I posed the question to Mayor Micheal McNutter of Philadelphia, he said essentially and honestly that he simply didn't know. Not everyone can go to Columbia and Harvard Law, and for many dealers the four-block or so area around their houses is all that they know.

Ghetto boys on election day kept asking us, the almost lily-white volunteers from New Jersey, if we had any extra buttons. The older boys and young men stayed on their stoops, too cool for that, but certainly did not harass us in any way.

For decades, the media and profesoriat have been lamenting the rise of illegitimate babies in the inner city and the gangs of fatherless boys that would later result. The cure, most thought, would be male role models in areas other than sports or entertainment.

Now you have just such a model in the highest office in the land. It's definitely wrong to think that he can substitute for all the absent fathers in the inner-city, or the quick money of the drug market, but at least it gives boys a path they had never dreamed of.

My cousin worked another area of Philadelphia. There, he said, Obama was at least making some dent in the terrrible self-crippling notion that academic achievement is "acting white."

After the inauguration, you will simply be acting like Obama.

A Democratic Springtime

The House. The Senate. And the Presidency.
Watching the results come in last night on the Princeton campus, there was no way to stop my jaw from hitting the ground. First Pennsylvania, where I had hit city streets and suburban lawns for the campaign. Then, incredibly, Ohio.
You know the rest of the story.
Democrats may be inheriting the worst foreign and domestic situation since the Great Depression this Autumn, but for now, at least - at last - it is Springtime.

Running for Obama

Wearing three Obama buttons, I raced through the streets of Philadelphia, trying to get to the Broad Street subway. I couln't help thinking that it would have been twistedly funny and Philly-typical if I got mugged with all that flair on.
Instead, I got kids sincerely asking for them. Maybe there's hope for the future after all, or at least until they get to junior high.
I had spent hours knocking on doors, putting voting information on people's doors, and exhorting them to vote. But truthfully, my assigned north of North Philly neighborhood was a cakewalk. Working class black. By the afternoon, many who worked early shifts had come home, and said they had voted just after dawn that day when the polls opened.
The voting was so lopsided that I began to fear that I was operating in a bubble, that in the suburbs all around the city everyone was voting McCain. I'd probably get a big surprise when I turned on the TV.
Instead I made it to my cousin's field office to support him; he had been up since four am along with a lot of young mostly white volunteers. I missed the bus to Princeton we volunteers came on, so I ran 14 blocks to the subway, caught a train downtown to Trenton, a train to Princeton Junction, and finally a cab to the polls where I finally voted at 7:20 pm.
The polls closed at eight. I had just helped make history - by 40 minutes.