Barrage of the Asian Blog-Spam

I don't know whether Confucius has become a fan of my blog, but I keep getting these weird Asian-language responses to my entries. I have no idea what they say, but thanks to my new friends in the Far East.

Hollywood for Ugly People

This is one of the greatest descriptions of DC I've ever heard, but it strikes at something that gives me hope in my waning years. Washington is one of the few places left for wise old men.

Yes, you can look, like half the Senate, like Deputy Dawg, but your opinion is actually respected more as you grow older (hint to the hedonist left coast - it's called experience. Land of the Lotus Eaters, sycophants - a lot of big words and phrases to throw at what is some degree of the Good Life out there, and we know it.

But someone has to be the grown-ups here, and like the Roman Senate, it's left to a lot of rich old men, still, mostly. (hint to the West Coast; Rome was an empire and Republic sometime before 1979, before which the earth consisted only of Sea World and was ruled by Shamu the Whale)

Still, DC's attempts at hipness often verge on the pathetic. The fact that new restaurants in the old downtown (I know it sounds strange)were starting to use a lot of glass and chrome was seized upon by the NYT as evidence that the city now was starting to have places just like those in real sophisticated big cities.

But at least, unlike LA, we don't measure time as the space between face-lifts, provides some solace to the old and in the way in a society obsessed with youth and superficial beauty. Now if only we could get some Supermarket rags dedicated to the fabulous, hot stars of the Ways & Means Committee.

Fear the Shark in LA

A clicked-on mail entry in Yahoo got me to the most bizarre site I'd recently seen; one about "Sharking." Sharking is apparenty going up to strange women and either ripping or taking down (or up) their clothes in public, or it is the practice of approaching strange women, with you covered in a hoodie, and jacking off on them at a Starbucks or wherever.

Needless to say, this sounds pretty illegal (assault, public lewdness, indecency etc. (assault with a deadly weapon?)) even in LA, where there'll probably soon be an industry built around it and girls from Indiana lined up to volunteer for the part.

Between making sex videos and public sex, I don't know how anyone can get any work done out there. Rambler, between your hanging out with Ryan Seacrest, or however you spell that cheesebag's name, please explain the roots of this phenomenon. The only way I can explain it is that the girls wear so little in the first place that "Sharking" becomes um, a release.

Years ago a former girlfriend had a man sit next to her on the Washington Metro and start wacking off. She just got up and left the pervert to his own attentions. Now that guy can become a celebrity in LA (Ladies and Gentlemen, tonight we have a real treat: the country's greatest "Great White" Mr. xxx yyy. Let's have a big round of applause")

The bigger question is still whether LA remains a lifesyle cultural innovator or just a holding pen for extremo-narcissists of every stripe. "Alternative lifestyles" are LAs biggest contributor to modern American culture. Would you like a shot of "cream" in that Latte?

try again

Check it Out in DC (if you can find it)

A new hipster district has emerged in DC in the most unlikely of places: H Street NORTHEAST, between about ninth and 12th. There is no public transportation here, but somehow the entrepreneurs (some of whom are responsible of the transformation of 14th/U streets) have come up with a geniune nightlife stretch in the middle of freakin' nowhere.
Don't try to walk here from Union Station, you'll only get mugged, warn the signs inside the clubs. Take a cab.
The only obvious reason that this district is working is one: space. H Street was one of the so-called "riot corridors," a stretch of black businesses that burned in the 1968 riots. That means large department-store type layouts that converts well into nightclubs and whatnot.
The only thing familiar about it is the DC hipster strategy: outflank the preppies and the squares by moving East of them, further into the formerly threatening ghettos.
How this area does remains to be seen, as they say in lame broadcast journalism.

Basketball battle of the lefty schools

Today Cornell plays Wisconsin in the NCAA tournament. Cornell, though an Ivy League school, is quite good. But the similarities in the match-up are actually more socio-political than sporting.

Cornell was founded late (meaning 1860s') for an Ivy. Its founder, the Simpsons-sounding Ezra Cornell, was of course anti-slavery, and pro-womens rights (it was to be the first Ivy to admit women).

My aunt and uncle live up there, near Lake Cayuga, and I've been for a visit. Very much like Madison or Ann Arbor. A little San Francisco in the hills. Crystal shops, new age stores, and all manner of whole earth/natural food co-ops.

But few blacks live there, and that contributed to one of the most notorious incidents of the 1960s.'

Black students decided to take over the student union. A largely while fraternity tried to rush the building and kick them out. Needless to say, they had their butts kicked.

Fearing a further attack, the black students armed themselves, then demanded concessions from the university (ie a black studies department, their own on-campus "house.") The administration caved, and there is that famous photo of black students leaving the building with rifles and bandoleers across their chests.

At Madison, black students had already called for a strike that Winter, in which mostly white students were supposed to block people from going into buildings at all. The National Guard was called, complete with helmets, rifles, and bayonets. The strike eventually ended.

But this is ancient history for the NCAA. Go Badgers, eh?

The Three Coreys

It was sitting outside the Fox in DC when Rambler had a great idea: we would all be Coreys: Corey Rambler, Corey Tourguide, and Corey Dlamini.
If any females actually wandered over to our section, that's what we'd tell them. Corey's all the way.
Haim and Feldman eventually went their separate ways, but the name will live on. I'm planning to name the next dog I have Corey.
Now, with one of the two dead, the world is ripe for more Coreys. In Rambler's LA every day they would have forgetten, since life is lived only in the present and Jimmy Carter is considered a historical feature and thus not worth learning about.
But think of the glory of being a Corey ("no, I'm not the one who's dead"). What are the chances of two teen movie stars named the same name?
So try the Corey thing at the next party in the Hills, Rambler, you just might get lucky (or forgotten.)