As some of you may be aware, there are people around the globe waging a war against the richest "1%" of the population, protesting against the extremities of Capitalism and the unfair wages the "99%" of the rest of the population are suffering through. And when I say "waging a war" what I mean by that is there are individuals who have taken to the streets with their tents and their baggies of food and their heavy clothes and they are expressing their disgust by sitting down and holding up signs and spreading bacteria to each other. It's as brutal a campaign as has ever been waged against the Powers That Be, more brutal than the Battle of Stalingrad or the Battle of the Bulge or the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir. In those battles, there were things used called "guns" and "knives" and "bombs," which led to direct casualties and disfiguring deformations and bloodshed and sorrow. In this battle, the Battle to Be Seen, Tolerated and Quietly Dismissed as a Farce, they're making hot cocoa and yelling and saying things other people told them to say because they read them on a blog and act really, really, really indignant and use that disappointed face your Mom used on you when you wet the bed.
The 1% is clearly cowering in fear.
The occupiers, chosen by Time Magazine as the Most Ineffective Protestors in the History of Protesting, are certainly getting their share of press and attention and pepper spray to the face. Their Goal is simple: they're mad. And ... they're still mad. Okay, let's face it, they have no goal. Except to be looked at and kind of noticed, like those obnoxious nerdy girls in the cafeteria who can be heard over everyone else but everyone does their damnedest to ignore and roll their eyes in disgust. Most people are waiting for them to give up and return to their cozy apartments with their parents, where they will once again go on Monster and CareerBuilder to get those part-time jobs they've been avoiding so defiantly.
The Occupiers have a brave and strong leader ... okay, wait, they don't have a leader. They have The Internet. And as we all know, The Internet is a great place to find people arguing with each other over the dumbest crap, people posting animated pictures of cats in boxes, people claiming celebrities have died (when those celebrities are alive and well), people posting videos of themselves talking about chicken wings and people obsessively stalking people they'll never know, meet or interact with in person via useless, sycophantic, soul-crushing social networking sites.
Meanwhile, on the other end, the 1% are sitting and trembling while wearing their poorly-tailored Dolce and Gabbana suits and clicking their computers and feeling remorse over making godlike sums of money. They are so glad they are not being tasered or beaten with clubs. They're partying in clubs with each other ... but doing it with the weight of the world on their shoulders. When they sail on their company yachts and fly in their company jets or do karaoke at their company parties, I'm sure they are deeply disturbed and concerned with the well-being of those who have never flown first class and have racked up thousands in credit card debt. I'm sure those sleepless nights they experience are due to worries about proto-hippies calling for a Change. I'm sure the 1% are swallowing Xanax by the fistful, praying for a sweet release from the agony of their existence. On the limo ride to their offices every morning, I'm sure they wish they could take all their money and make it rain: not on strippers, but on the poor, the weak, the infirm. Those collecting unemployment. Those making minimum wage. Those who drive beaten-up Chevys and are forced to smoke L&M's because those Nat Shermans are simply too expensive.
Right now, it's an emotional bloodbath. I have no clue how it will turn out. Maybe once the Occupiers win and the 1% give in, we'll have some New Wave Utopia come into being ... or some kind of New American Pact in place that everyone will happily sign. Maybe Wall Street will close its doors and turn its focus onto things like preserving the environment or making sure the hungry get fed or making sure health care is provided for all citizens. Maybe the birds will chirp a little louder. Maybe the sky will suddenly undergo a physics-defying transformation, and turn to a brighter, more fluorescent, Yves Klein-inspired blue. People will smile more at each other and crime will be nonexistent, because human nature will change permanently and no disagreements or law-breaking misbehavior will be necessary. Maybe the ozone layer will be replenished. Researchers, with their new lease on life and respect for human dignity, will release those cures for AIDS and cancer they've kept locked up. Children will respect their elders. Adults will respect their children. The world will give itself a massive hug and pat on the back and shake its own hand.
I wait with bated breath.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Friday, September 30, 2011
The Lehigh Maneuver
Way back when I was an undergraduate in college, I used to frequent these things called parties ... semi-often. (Those that know me: stop rolling your eyes.) I couldn't help it I went to a supremely dodgy, astoundingly cruel institution for my learnings; it was just the culture to drink, drink, drink (the infamous chant of "Drink that drink" still keeps me up at night). So on Thursday, or Friday, or Saturday or whatever other day something was going on, I'd be there, Solo cup in hand, standing or sitting around, watching the inanities unfold. There was drinking, there were retarded beer games, there was blaring, awful music, there were my classmates fighting against time and the call of adulthood.
One friend of mine, "Derek" - name changed because he's now a professor of philosophy at a prestigious university in the South - was one person who used to (sometimes) accompany me to these 'festive gatherings.' You see, these 'gatherings' used to, in the best (or worst) of cases, get supremely out-of-hand. Like, violent and ridiculously out-of-hand. Not always, mind you: sometimes they would fade out and die peacefully and everyone would stumble on their merry way. But in the case of the Bad Ones, alternative measures needed to be in place.
Derek and I got trapped a few times in some bad situations, enough so that simply talking our way out of whatever shitstorm brewed was becoming stressful and there were certain 'locations' and individuals we learned to steer away from. We've seen girls "pushed" off balconies, guys thrown off balconies, people vomiting blood, people tossed in pits of chocolate (and, as it turns out, feces), sparkling wine dumped in Jacuzzis (not a good idea), bricks thrown through car windows, bottles thrown at locals and other things it's best to keep repressed. Now, I never got hit by any objects (... intentionally) or tossed anywhere or gotten slammed with a bar stool (I know someone who did) and the worst things I ever got involved in were shouting matches with strangers (some of whom went on to become half-decent acquaintances ... and investment brokers) and a precious few tasteless shenanigans. The reason why neither Derek nor I got into any major trouble is that we learned how to figure out when That Precise Moment was going to take place in which things were going to take a turn for the worse and it was time to Run ... Like Hell.
You see, That Precise Moment is the Exact Time in the evening when The Mood changes from fun and pleasant to something more dark, ominous and potentially hazardous (or, conversely, crushingly mundane). Don't get me wrong, danger in small doses is quite thrilling. But there are those (cough, cough, my father) where the level of danger is simply never high enough: the threat of physical harm, police intervention or a messy brawl with neighborhood thugs, for them, is where True Bliss is at. For those of you that delight in anarchy, God Bless. But for Derek and myself (not to mention a few other people we knew), that became tiring and, frankly, stupid.
Derek was an obnoxious Philosophy major and I was an obnoxious Psychology major, and together we thought we had it figured out. See, parties generally don't just start off batty (and for those that do, do a 180 and find someplace else to go). It's the environmental factors that play into it: what kind of people are at the party? Who will eventually show up at the party (invited or uninvited, it doesn't matter)? Did two (or more) people enter the party already arguing? Is there some sociopath at the party who has a history of stirring the pot and causing problems? Exactly how much alcohol is there? What kind of drugs are there? What time of year is it? Is it cold outside? Is it warm outside? Is it exam week? Is there a serious rivalry underway between two fraternities or sororities? Is the school cracking down? Are the police out and about? Are the locals/neighbors pacing around outside with nothing to do?
Factoring all these elements in, Derek postulated The Lehigh Maneuver. It's based on intuition and experience, and can technically be applied to any number of situations. The Lehigh Maneuver basically states: when the official Mood of the Vicinity changes, it's best to find the nearest exit and excuse yourself from the place because once The Mood Changes, the Maximum Potential for Pure Fun diminishes when compared to the Maximum Potential of Ugliness (or, in select situations, Deadening Malaise). You think things will get "way more fucking cool" when they most likely will not. A night ended talking to the police or dragging a friend to the hospital or seeing a half-naked young lady run from a room and claim she was raped puts a damper on things.
Now, I learned ... and this was reinforced in other ways a little later in my life ... about always being aware of the exits in any location you are ever in. You walk into, say, a house, and there's a garage, a back door, a front door. There are windows. There may be a raised balcony/patio with steps. In an apartment, there's a main door but there's also (usually) a fire escape. In a fraternity, there's the pig chute (if you don't know, don't ask). Some bathrooms have windows you can squeeze out of depending on your size. Once you're aware of the exits, you will know which ones to get to should you need to.
I can tell what you're thinking. "Matt, you putz, why worry about ways to get out? It's a party! Sometimes things get out of hand, and that's all right! If you leave early, you might miss out on good stuff! Leaving is rude!" To this I say: I'm sorry you went to a liberal arts school. I hope you enjoyed your strawberry daiquiris and potluck and Carole King albums. And you apparently haven't been where either Derek or I have been. If you're afraid of missing something, you will find out about it later. People chatter. If you screwed up when you were there and feel compelled to just Get Out, time will pass and tempers will subside and the alcohol poisoning in the people you offended/irritated will have gone away and they will be in a much more civil mood. Derek, being the philosopher, always applied Bentham's rule: it's about maximizing enjoyment and minimizing drama and conflict and unhappiness.
Someone shows up high and carrying a crate full of pellet guns? Unless you feel like getting shot at (and you very well might), get out. Someone opens the front door and chucks in a (cheap) bottle of whiskey that smashes on the nearest wall and the ladies present yelp? Get out. You're bored as all get out and you can't stand talking to the same people about the same dumb crap over and over again? Pure Fun is over: excuse yourself to the bathroom and then make a hasty retreat. Someone outside crashes into a neighboring car and everyone inside runs out and starts yelling? Get out (or view the proceedings from a safe distance). Some pathetic drunk girl is leaning on you and burping uncontrollably and worried about the small-time issues in her life? Lean her against something else because she's a Fun Exterminator. The campus police arrive? Who cares if you're over 21, get out.
This maneuvering has led me to being something of an oracle nowadays to my (somewhat younger) friends, who are always amazed whenever I, out of the blue, say, "I'm leaving." Or just leave without saying anything. I can't tell you how many times, after I bid a hasty exit, they say to me the day after, "Oh man, you won't believe what happened after you left! It was ... awful. So-and-so got into a fist-fight with so-and-so over [Something Moronic]." Many, many, many times.
So if I'm at a dinner party I'm sickened with (for lack of Pure Fun and mandated Pleasant, Fake Interaction), I know when to leave. If I'm at a wilder gathering with caustic substances and a stressed and irked idiots, I know when to leave. Make yourself seen, then make yourself un-seen; maximize Enjoyment and leave when that Enjoyment is under threat by outside sources. Maneuver your ass out any available door. "But how do you know when to go?" I've been pressed. I just do. If you pay close enough attention to The Mood, you will too.
One friend of mine, "Derek" - name changed because he's now a professor of philosophy at a prestigious university in the South - was one person who used to (sometimes) accompany me to these 'festive gatherings.' You see, these 'gatherings' used to, in the best (or worst) of cases, get supremely out-of-hand. Like, violent and ridiculously out-of-hand. Not always, mind you: sometimes they would fade out and die peacefully and everyone would stumble on their merry way. But in the case of the Bad Ones, alternative measures needed to be in place.
Derek and I got trapped a few times in some bad situations, enough so that simply talking our way out of whatever shitstorm brewed was becoming stressful and there were certain 'locations' and individuals we learned to steer away from. We've seen girls "pushed" off balconies, guys thrown off balconies, people vomiting blood, people tossed in pits of chocolate (and, as it turns out, feces), sparkling wine dumped in Jacuzzis (not a good idea), bricks thrown through car windows, bottles thrown at locals and other things it's best to keep repressed. Now, I never got hit by any objects (... intentionally) or tossed anywhere or gotten slammed with a bar stool (I know someone who did) and the worst things I ever got involved in were shouting matches with strangers (some of whom went on to become half-decent acquaintances ... and investment brokers) and a precious few tasteless shenanigans. The reason why neither Derek nor I got into any major trouble is that we learned how to figure out when That Precise Moment was going to take place in which things were going to take a turn for the worse and it was time to Run ... Like Hell.
You see, That Precise Moment is the Exact Time in the evening when The Mood changes from fun and pleasant to something more dark, ominous and potentially hazardous (or, conversely, crushingly mundane). Don't get me wrong, danger in small doses is quite thrilling. But there are those (cough, cough, my father) where the level of danger is simply never high enough: the threat of physical harm, police intervention or a messy brawl with neighborhood thugs, for them, is where True Bliss is at. For those of you that delight in anarchy, God Bless. But for Derek and myself (not to mention a few other people we knew), that became tiring and, frankly, stupid.
Derek was an obnoxious Philosophy major and I was an obnoxious Psychology major, and together we thought we had it figured out. See, parties generally don't just start off batty (and for those that do, do a 180 and find someplace else to go). It's the environmental factors that play into it: what kind of people are at the party? Who will eventually show up at the party (invited or uninvited, it doesn't matter)? Did two (or more) people enter the party already arguing? Is there some sociopath at the party who has a history of stirring the pot and causing problems? Exactly how much alcohol is there? What kind of drugs are there? What time of year is it? Is it cold outside? Is it warm outside? Is it exam week? Is there a serious rivalry underway between two fraternities or sororities? Is the school cracking down? Are the police out and about? Are the locals/neighbors pacing around outside with nothing to do?
Factoring all these elements in, Derek postulated The Lehigh Maneuver. It's based on intuition and experience, and can technically be applied to any number of situations. The Lehigh Maneuver basically states: when the official Mood of the Vicinity changes, it's best to find the nearest exit and excuse yourself from the place because once The Mood Changes, the Maximum Potential for Pure Fun diminishes when compared to the Maximum Potential of Ugliness (or, in select situations, Deadening Malaise). You think things will get "way more fucking cool" when they most likely will not. A night ended talking to the police or dragging a friend to the hospital or seeing a half-naked young lady run from a room and claim she was raped puts a damper on things.
Now, I learned ... and this was reinforced in other ways a little later in my life ... about always being aware of the exits in any location you are ever in. You walk into, say, a house, and there's a garage, a back door, a front door. There are windows. There may be a raised balcony/patio with steps. In an apartment, there's a main door but there's also (usually) a fire escape. In a fraternity, there's the pig chute (if you don't know, don't ask). Some bathrooms have windows you can squeeze out of depending on your size. Once you're aware of the exits, you will know which ones to get to should you need to.
I can tell what you're thinking. "Matt, you putz, why worry about ways to get out? It's a party! Sometimes things get out of hand, and that's all right! If you leave early, you might miss out on good stuff! Leaving is rude!" To this I say: I'm sorry you went to a liberal arts school. I hope you enjoyed your strawberry daiquiris and potluck and Carole King albums. And you apparently haven't been where either Derek or I have been. If you're afraid of missing something, you will find out about it later. People chatter. If you screwed up when you were there and feel compelled to just Get Out, time will pass and tempers will subside and the alcohol poisoning in the people you offended/irritated will have gone away and they will be in a much more civil mood. Derek, being the philosopher, always applied Bentham's rule: it's about maximizing enjoyment and minimizing drama and conflict and unhappiness.
Someone shows up high and carrying a crate full of pellet guns? Unless you feel like getting shot at (and you very well might), get out. Someone opens the front door and chucks in a (cheap) bottle of whiskey that smashes on the nearest wall and the ladies present yelp? Get out. You're bored as all get out and you can't stand talking to the same people about the same dumb crap over and over again? Pure Fun is over: excuse yourself to the bathroom and then make a hasty retreat. Someone outside crashes into a neighboring car and everyone inside runs out and starts yelling? Get out (or view the proceedings from a safe distance). Some pathetic drunk girl is leaning on you and burping uncontrollably and worried about the small-time issues in her life? Lean her against something else because she's a Fun Exterminator. The campus police arrive? Who cares if you're over 21, get out.
This maneuvering has led me to being something of an oracle nowadays to my (somewhat younger) friends, who are always amazed whenever I, out of the blue, say, "I'm leaving." Or just leave without saying anything. I can't tell you how many times, after I bid a hasty exit, they say to me the day after, "Oh man, you won't believe what happened after you left! It was ... awful. So-and-so got into a fist-fight with so-and-so over [Something Moronic]." Many, many, many times.
So if I'm at a dinner party I'm sickened with (for lack of Pure Fun and mandated Pleasant, Fake Interaction), I know when to leave. If I'm at a wilder gathering with caustic substances and a stressed and irked idiots, I know when to leave. Make yourself seen, then make yourself un-seen; maximize Enjoyment and leave when that Enjoyment is under threat by outside sources. Maneuver your ass out any available door. "But how do you know when to go?" I've been pressed. I just do. If you pay close enough attention to The Mood, you will too.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Nobody Gives a Shit About Your Band
So please stop talking about it. And making posters for it. And making t-shirts for it. And creating various websites promoting it. And asking people to pay for hard copies of your albums. And turning every conversation we have into the music you're making. What is it with almost every new and upcoming "band" or "solo artist" that took one course in marketing and another course in composition and turning into a virtual one-trick, one-dimensional droning pony? I don't know what it was like in the music scene of the '60s and '70s - because I was still in the process of being re-incarnated from my former life as an SS Officer - but the United States couldn't have humanly been flooded with this many poseurs.
Let's get a few things straight: you can't sing, you have great trouble playing an instrument and you own an iMac loaded up with pirated music software. You live in a town so small that a tree falling not only makes a sound, it kills 3/4 of the local population. Your Mom has kicked you out of the basement and the attic and your bedroom and moved you and your asshat friends to the shed, where you keep tripping over the lawnmower to get to your pedals. Your bassist can't remember any of the chords, can't remember to shower and thinks weed is a profession. The drummer you found on Craigslist is middle-aged and not allowed around children or the elderly.
So what are you going to do? Well, if your genre is some kind of rock, you're going to scream like there's a bamboo shoot being rammed into your pee hole. You're going to turn the amps up and make everyone forget you have no idea what you're going on about. You're going to make up a lot of the words because you left the Post-It note you scribbled the lyrics out on in your used Volvo. For the ten of your incredibly supportive friends that you robbed of $8 to watch you "perform" (when they were just hanging out with you hours before), you're going to shake and sweat. Somewhere in your twenty-minute set, you're going to play a shitty cover of some decent song from a reputable band but put your own "spin" on it by making it "ironic," i.e., making it completely unrecognizable. Someone in your band will be wearing plastic-rimmed sunglasses. Another will probably be in drag. It doesn't matter: it's gonna be loud. And loud is good, right?
Or, instead of the obnoxious, you can take the mellow road. You can brood. Oh, Christ, you can brood. Tired, disheveled, wearing soiled corduroys and a bracelet you stole from your dead Grandfather's casket, you can sing about hurt. The beard you sport makes the hurt look worse. And you can play your odes on an acoustic guitar you stole from a thrift shop while your former drummer shakes a tambourine and your former bassist holds your Pabst and nods along. Everyone in the slim audience will be waiting for your next deep proclamation, waiting for you to say the words that everyone thinks they experienced but really haven't because they still have their parents drive them to softball practice. You can talk about love. And remorse. But keep it Hallmark card simple. A C chord and a line like "you have the simplest head of hair / like a macaw ascending toward hope" will cause everyone to disintegrate emotionally. The ladies will swoon. The guys will swoon. The doorman will swoon. The girl at the service counter will be playing on her cell phone.
If the mellow road isn't for you, and you consider yourself more danceable and techno-friendly, you (and your pals) can do what Richard James and Daft Punk and the Fuck Buttons dudes did: gather as much equipment as possible and hook all that gizmo-y gadget shit together. There's a plug? Find a hole. See a hole? Find a plug. Just shove everything together. Hide behind it if need be. And then, after you've taken three and a half hours to set-up, start playing pre-recorded loops. Keep pressing buttons because that really gets people jumping. It doesn't matter if the loops and sound-effects are in sequence. It doesn't. But make sure it's loud. Add in an electronic drum-beat. Girls love a drum beat. And it doesn't matter if any of the sound clips go together musically: the few people in the crowd will be so loaded up on pills and grinding their teeth so hard it won't make a difference. Also, don't forget strobing. God yes, strobing. Strobing is God's way of keeping epileptics away from concerts. Remember that the strobes and the beats and the sound effects don't have to be timed together or anything like that. If people collapse from exhaustion, that means you're good.
Once you've decided what kind of musical hack you're going to be, you're going to have to remember to always play the part of the hack. And in being an expert hack, you have to advertise yourself with the aforementioned swag and handouts and flyers and websites. You need to pump up your band to such an extreme degree your friends will want to set your shed on fire and delete your number from their phones. The talentless are generally full of braggadocio; the meek are the ones you wouldn't know ever conceived of a song. For example, arguably the most thoughtful actual musician I know personally is currently huddled in his room wearing a cardboard box mask and a lab coat. He has Styrofoam shoved against the walls to keep out the "hum from the refrigerator." He doesn't perform in public, because that would involve leaving his bedroom. He doesn't record anything, because the very act of recording "murders the shape of the notes." When I inquired as to what he was working on just last week, he shook a piece of ripped crepe paper in front of my face and asked me if I thought it properly simulated the sound of a man with polio shuffling through a wheat field. He won't tell you he's in a band. He won't give himself an alias. He'll tell you about the celestial rhythm of millions of human breaths exhaling in divine harmony. Then he'll take his medication and sleep for fourteen hours.
In other words, all of you "musicians" need to start fazing yourselves out and you definitely need to delete SoundForge and Cakewalk and ProTools off your hard drives. Asthmatic Kitty and Warp and Matador aren't going to sign you. You need to recognize you don't have a voice (literally and figuratively), you can't just mash on buttons or chords and make something lasting and nobody wants a black size XL tee with your face silk-screened on it. You know what I really want to hear about? I want to hear about people doing the old-fashion-y kind of art that requires time and dedication. Tell me about your pottery wheel. Talk to me about ceramics. Making mosaics and tribal masks? Kitsch, but I'll take a peek. Video art? I'll view it (just please don't ask me to review it). Don't hand me a CD-R or a glow stick or a cup of hot tea to absorb my sorrows, hand me a hand-made ashtray decorated with a decal of a rotting lung. Or you can paint a picture. Get some goddamn watercolors and remind me what a fucking sunset looks like.
For the record, just make sure you keep your art in the shed.
Let's get a few things straight: you can't sing, you have great trouble playing an instrument and you own an iMac loaded up with pirated music software. You live in a town so small that a tree falling not only makes a sound, it kills 3/4 of the local population. Your Mom has kicked you out of the basement and the attic and your bedroom and moved you and your asshat friends to the shed, where you keep tripping over the lawnmower to get to your pedals. Your bassist can't remember any of the chords, can't remember to shower and thinks weed is a profession. The drummer you found on Craigslist is middle-aged and not allowed around children or the elderly.
So what are you going to do? Well, if your genre is some kind of rock, you're going to scream like there's a bamboo shoot being rammed into your pee hole. You're going to turn the amps up and make everyone forget you have no idea what you're going on about. You're going to make up a lot of the words because you left the Post-It note you scribbled the lyrics out on in your used Volvo. For the ten of your incredibly supportive friends that you robbed of $8 to watch you "perform" (when they were just hanging out with you hours before), you're going to shake and sweat. Somewhere in your twenty-minute set, you're going to play a shitty cover of some decent song from a reputable band but put your own "spin" on it by making it "ironic," i.e., making it completely unrecognizable. Someone in your band will be wearing plastic-rimmed sunglasses. Another will probably be in drag. It doesn't matter: it's gonna be loud. And loud is good, right?
Or, instead of the obnoxious, you can take the mellow road. You can brood. Oh, Christ, you can brood. Tired, disheveled, wearing soiled corduroys and a bracelet you stole from your dead Grandfather's casket, you can sing about hurt. The beard you sport makes the hurt look worse. And you can play your odes on an acoustic guitar you stole from a thrift shop while your former drummer shakes a tambourine and your former bassist holds your Pabst and nods along. Everyone in the slim audience will be waiting for your next deep proclamation, waiting for you to say the words that everyone thinks they experienced but really haven't because they still have their parents drive them to softball practice. You can talk about love. And remorse. But keep it Hallmark card simple. A C chord and a line like "you have the simplest head of hair / like a macaw ascending toward hope" will cause everyone to disintegrate emotionally. The ladies will swoon. The guys will swoon. The doorman will swoon. The girl at the service counter will be playing on her cell phone.
If the mellow road isn't for you, and you consider yourself more danceable and techno-friendly, you (and your pals) can do what Richard James and Daft Punk and the Fuck Buttons dudes did: gather as much equipment as possible and hook all that gizmo-y gadget shit together. There's a plug? Find a hole. See a hole? Find a plug. Just shove everything together. Hide behind it if need be. And then, after you've taken three and a half hours to set-up, start playing pre-recorded loops. Keep pressing buttons because that really gets people jumping. It doesn't matter if the loops and sound-effects are in sequence. It doesn't. But make sure it's loud. Add in an electronic drum-beat. Girls love a drum beat. And it doesn't matter if any of the sound clips go together musically: the few people in the crowd will be so loaded up on pills and grinding their teeth so hard it won't make a difference. Also, don't forget strobing. God yes, strobing. Strobing is God's way of keeping epileptics away from concerts. Remember that the strobes and the beats and the sound effects don't have to be timed together or anything like that. If people collapse from exhaustion, that means you're good.
Once you've decided what kind of musical hack you're going to be, you're going to have to remember to always play the part of the hack. And in being an expert hack, you have to advertise yourself with the aforementioned swag and handouts and flyers and websites. You need to pump up your band to such an extreme degree your friends will want to set your shed on fire and delete your number from their phones. The talentless are generally full of braggadocio; the meek are the ones you wouldn't know ever conceived of a song. For example, arguably the most thoughtful actual musician I know personally is currently huddled in his room wearing a cardboard box mask and a lab coat. He has Styrofoam shoved against the walls to keep out the "hum from the refrigerator." He doesn't perform in public, because that would involve leaving his bedroom. He doesn't record anything, because the very act of recording "murders the shape of the notes." When I inquired as to what he was working on just last week, he shook a piece of ripped crepe paper in front of my face and asked me if I thought it properly simulated the sound of a man with polio shuffling through a wheat field. He won't tell you he's in a band. He won't give himself an alias. He'll tell you about the celestial rhythm of millions of human breaths exhaling in divine harmony. Then he'll take his medication and sleep for fourteen hours.
In other words, all of you "musicians" need to start fazing yourselves out and you definitely need to delete SoundForge and Cakewalk and ProTools off your hard drives. Asthmatic Kitty and Warp and Matador aren't going to sign you. You need to recognize you don't have a voice (literally and figuratively), you can't just mash on buttons or chords and make something lasting and nobody wants a black size XL tee with your face silk-screened on it. You know what I really want to hear about? I want to hear about people doing the old-fashion-y kind of art that requires time and dedication. Tell me about your pottery wheel. Talk to me about ceramics. Making mosaics and tribal masks? Kitsch, but I'll take a peek. Video art? I'll view it (just please don't ask me to review it). Don't hand me a CD-R or a glow stick or a cup of hot tea to absorb my sorrows, hand me a hand-made ashtray decorated with a decal of a rotting lung. Or you can paint a picture. Get some goddamn watercolors and remind me what a fucking sunset looks like.
For the record, just make sure you keep your art in the shed.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Pinsky & Me, An Adventure Waiting to Happen
I have this strange, surreal connection to arguably the most important American poet currently working and writing, Robert Pinsky. People unfamiliar with his work most likely know him best as That Guy who was on The Simpsons in the one episode where obnoxious goody-goody Lisa Simpson pretends she's a college student and attends one of his readings. Animated Pinsky, all yellow and austere, spouts off some of his work and the audience swoons. His public persona doesn't even stop with his guest appearance on The Simpsons (itself a high honor): he's been on the Stephen Colbert show, he's worked for Salon.com, he's done tons of radio interviews and seminars on poetry and he's a professor of creative writing at some bullshit school in the most lame Metropolitan Area in America, Boston (don't worry Miami, you're still #2). He's even the former Poet Laureate of the United States, which may or may not be impressive since this country hates anything complex or intricate or full of big words. Our current Poet Laureate apparently doesn't wash himself and is legally married to his sister ... but he's never been on an animated program so he's not relevant to anyone.
Mr. Pinsky and I have had two noted near run-ins within this past year alone, and should there be a third, he can fully expect to be physically tackled by me and forced to go on a weekend-long bender (and no, I'm not above tackling seventy-year-olds). Sure, the man can channel the soul of Bashō and name drop über-obscure Fulke Greville, but what about a massive borderline illegal descent into madness and excess?
My fascination with Pinsky's body of work started, of all times, when my father - not exactly big on anything poetic written after Tennyson ("a real man's man," quoth Dad) - gave me a scribbled copy of "Samurai Song" on notebook paper (that he copied when he was in Barnes and Noble) back in 2001 and instructed me to "retype it and print it out so I could paste it into my locker at work." Before I even turned on my computer, I made a special point to really and truly examine the piece he was handing me. Normally my father only makes me type up complaint letters to Green Giant grousing about the "shit-awful broccoli" in their frozen veggie packs, but this poem - surely one of the great poems of the 21st century (mark it, historians!) - is so beautiful and simple it made me get choked up inside. It says so very much about self-sufficiency and independence, about dealing with loss and making the most out of a situation. It is, in its own way, infuriatingly perfect and beautiful. In awe, I decided to track down all of Pinsky's collected works and tore through them. Few of his works match the directness of "Samurai Song" and most are more heady-intellectualism than deep-feeling poetry (i.e., they're the product of years spent sheltered in academic circles instead of years of yearning and suffering and starving hysterically naked), but the man's still produced an impressive collection over his years on Earth.
Cut to this past year, when I was ready and prepared to take filmmaking classes at the aforementioned bullshit school in the most lame Metropolitan Area in America. My main goal, within the first couple of days there, was to find Pinsky and shake his hand and thank him profusely for his poems ... but specifically, "Samurai Song." Alas, he was unavailable. I trolled through the building they house him in, and asked around as to his whereabouts. He wasn't in an office, he wasn't in class, he probably wasn't even in town. To be Pinsky means to be in high demand. I requested the dummy undergraduates doing work study (read: sitting on their hands) to help me find him. They made phone calls, shrugged a lot and told me to return the next day. And when I returned the next day, they still couldn't locate him and told me to try back the following week. Due to issues with the horrifically inept financial aid office I booked out of the school as quickly as possible, belongings in hand, and never did stop back to claw at his (closed, locked) office door.
As luck would have it, I enrolled in a creative writing program at yet another school a few months after this debacle and was told (who'd have thunk it!) that none other than Prof. Pinsky would be there to do a presentation of his poems. Egad, I thought: here he is again! I had both my video camera and my still camera ready and on my person: who knew I'd have yet another opportunity to at least 'see' (if not necessarily meet) this slippery poet. But the following day - a Saturday - I was told by one of the heads of the creative writing 'program' - a man who looks like Oddjob from Goldfinger and who has more of a passion for popcorn chicken than prose - that Pinsky wouldn't be making it; he canceled because of either (a.) weather concerns (it was snowing like a mother wherever the poet was at) or (b.) he found out I was there and didn't want my foul, critical spirit infecting his innocuous cloud of postmodern splendor. Hopes dashed and dreams shattered, I started feeling resentful. Pinsky 2, Matt 0. He was dodging me. I don't like being dodged.
I sent Mr. Pinsky an e-mail explaining our near-encounters and how I just wanted to thank him for writing such a goddamn beautiful poem and how I, like wide-eyed Lisa Simpson, desperately needed to hear him lecture on something ... anything. He could talk about getting a grease-and-oil change for his car or how he dislikes wool sweaters. How he once bought a microwave from Wal-Mart. Anything. But a week later, I received no written e-mail response. Mr. Pinsky could not even acknowledge my adoration with a quick text response. Not a "ROFL" or "TTYL." I would have even accepted a copy-and-pasted canned response along the lines of "Sorry I can't write you a personal note, but I'm a genius and you're a dipshit."
So that's it, I told myself, I'm going to create a super-deluxe plan for our (eventual) third encounter. There will be no three strikes against me by the same artist ... I simply will not have it. I started planning the Dream Weekend I will spend with R.P. ... a weekend to knock the preening pretentiousness from his psyche, to shake the academia out of him. So here's what I came up with so far: I'll sneak up to the Pinsky on his way to work one Friday morning and I will kidnap his lanky ass and drive him way the hell back to my neighborhood. On the long drive home, I will have an experienced hypnotist put Pinsky into a trance to allow Pinsky to follow my orders without question (brainwashing never hurt anybody, really).
After a nice, casual dinner of sushi (and more brainwashing), the festivities will begin: we'll drive to a dive bar in the seedier part of the doldrums I live in and we'll both spend several hours there, shaking off the local prostitutes and pimps to drink 18 straight whiskeys ... the same number that did in Dylan Thomas. While drinking the whiskeys, we can empty pack after pack of Nat Sherman MCDs, which I will charge to Pinsky's expense account. The bartender, who knows me by name, will ask me who the glazed-over stiff I'm hanging out with is, and I'll tell the bartender he's my new friend, and he's a carpet salesman (because that's a lot more honorable and realistic). I'll nudge the Pinsk-ster to go along.
Following the whiskeys, we will then go shooting. Nothing sobers one up like heavy artillery. Pinsky was never in the military, and neither was I, but Heinrich von Kleist was. We'll show Kleist a thing or two about aggression by firing off several semi-automatic shotgun rounds in the woods, hoping we knock out a couple of deer and/or the windows of houses. The whiskeys, still running through our blood streams, will empower us as Americans ... and being an American means having a love affair with guns. Unlike Kleist and Madame Vogel, however, Pinsky and I will not shoot each other: the bullets are strictly reserved for objects that need exploding. When the police show up (as they inevitably do), we will bolt for the car and then drive to a safe-haven for a few hours. Hopefully the cops won't have identified my car or license plate (no doubt both on file already).
After hiding away for a while until the coast is clear, Pinsky and I will get a heavy breakfast somewhere to help sober up. We'll share several pots of coffee and, on the back of the place mat, scribble out revolutionary poems together - the kind of incendiary, heavily-political tomes that Brecht would smile upon ... the kind if, when published, would cause people to riot in the streets. We'll leave the restaurant once fully sobered up and then head to our next location: the boxing gym.
Nothing brings real men together like a little fisticuffs. Surely this would please Papa Hemingway and Ezra Pound: Pinsky and I will put on the gloves and start wailing on each other. I'll take a few swings at his temples solely to knock out the preening austerity found so often in The Want Bone, and maybe get a gut shot in there for his denouncing Shakespeare's sonnets as "over-rated." "The Bard will still be read in one thousand years, you ass," I'll shout, "but Gulf Music will have long since been turned to ash." And then I'll make sure to get a few swings in at his writing arm, so the black and blues ache when he raises his Cross pen to write anything. Pinsky needs to be consistently reminded about physical agony.
A little fun needs to follow our strenuous boxing match. We'll swallow several dozen pain pills (in honor of Lord Byron) and then go to Chuck E. Cheese or Bounce U (the good professor can choose) and intentionally crash a children's birthday party. Pinsky, a little weary but still cogent, can sneak us into the place with a soothing ode to Hart Crane and/or a parable about finding one's way through life with the aid of meditation. There, we will be on a mission not only to see who can make the most number of children cry in terror by both screaming lines from Artaud at them and mashing birthday cake in their faces: first one of us to get into an actual fist-fight with an irate parent wins the game! As we run out of the building, I imagine a thrilled and fevered Pinsky kissing one of the staff workers on the cheek, telling the worker that fortune will be his means.
We will cap off that night with more drinks and more cigarettes, and I will probably try to slip some sort of opium derivative in Pinsky's beverage, which is what Coleridge would have done to himself. We will flip a coin and let the fates decide what next to do: heads, rob a liquor store (in honor of Bukowski) or tails, steal a car (to remind Pinsky of Rimbaud's lament that every poet is a thief). Should we rob a liquor store (and successfully escape), I will make sure to drink my winnings; if we steal a car, I will aim to nab a Mercedes Benz.
Regardless of what the coin decides, I promise to get Mr. Pinsky back to his home in good time and relatively good health, even though he may be frothing at the mouth and/or nearly-ruined by fear and madness. When the poet sobers up at his house (after I throw him into his front yard) and the hypnosis and all those chemicals he ingested eventually wear off and he can finally, finally return to his actual office he's rarely ever inside of in the first place, I know - just know - that his own writings and his own teaching style will be greatly affected - for the better! - by our Weekend Adventure. The almost constant brushes with the police, the physical beatings and the cruel Soviet-style brainwashing will only heighten his already impressive talents. Audacity will become his roof. And I hope - no, I pray, to the heavens, to the celestial night - that he will be cautious to never, ever - in the future - dodge adoring fans either consciously or unconsciously again.
Mr. Pinsky and I have had two noted near run-ins within this past year alone, and should there be a third, he can fully expect to be physically tackled by me and forced to go on a weekend-long bender (and no, I'm not above tackling seventy-year-olds). Sure, the man can channel the soul of Bashō and name drop über-obscure Fulke Greville, but what about a massive borderline illegal descent into madness and excess?
My fascination with Pinsky's body of work started, of all times, when my father - not exactly big on anything poetic written after Tennyson ("a real man's man," quoth Dad) - gave me a scribbled copy of "Samurai Song" on notebook paper (that he copied when he was in Barnes and Noble) back in 2001 and instructed me to "retype it and print it out so I could paste it into my locker at work." Before I even turned on my computer, I made a special point to really and truly examine the piece he was handing me. Normally my father only makes me type up complaint letters to Green Giant grousing about the "shit-awful broccoli" in their frozen veggie packs, but this poem - surely one of the great poems of the 21st century (mark it, historians!) - is so beautiful and simple it made me get choked up inside. It says so very much about self-sufficiency and independence, about dealing with loss and making the most out of a situation. It is, in its own way, infuriatingly perfect and beautiful. In awe, I decided to track down all of Pinsky's collected works and tore through them. Few of his works match the directness of "Samurai Song" and most are more heady-intellectualism than deep-feeling poetry (i.e., they're the product of years spent sheltered in academic circles instead of years of yearning and suffering and starving hysterically naked), but the man's still produced an impressive collection over his years on Earth.
Cut to this past year, when I was ready and prepared to take filmmaking classes at the aforementioned bullshit school in the most lame Metropolitan Area in America. My main goal, within the first couple of days there, was to find Pinsky and shake his hand and thank him profusely for his poems ... but specifically, "Samurai Song." Alas, he was unavailable. I trolled through the building they house him in, and asked around as to his whereabouts. He wasn't in an office, he wasn't in class, he probably wasn't even in town. To be Pinsky means to be in high demand. I requested the dummy undergraduates doing work study (read: sitting on their hands) to help me find him. They made phone calls, shrugged a lot and told me to return the next day. And when I returned the next day, they still couldn't locate him and told me to try back the following week. Due to issues with the horrifically inept financial aid office I booked out of the school as quickly as possible, belongings in hand, and never did stop back to claw at his (closed, locked) office door.
As luck would have it, I enrolled in a creative writing program at yet another school a few months after this debacle and was told (who'd have thunk it!) that none other than Prof. Pinsky would be there to do a presentation of his poems. Egad, I thought: here he is again! I had both my video camera and my still camera ready and on my person: who knew I'd have yet another opportunity to at least 'see' (if not necessarily meet) this slippery poet. But the following day - a Saturday - I was told by one of the heads of the creative writing 'program' - a man who looks like Oddjob from Goldfinger and who has more of a passion for popcorn chicken than prose - that Pinsky wouldn't be making it; he canceled because of either (a.) weather concerns (it was snowing like a mother wherever the poet was at) or (b.) he found out I was there and didn't want my foul, critical spirit infecting his innocuous cloud of postmodern splendor. Hopes dashed and dreams shattered, I started feeling resentful. Pinsky 2, Matt 0. He was dodging me. I don't like being dodged.
I sent Mr. Pinsky an e-mail explaining our near-encounters and how I just wanted to thank him for writing such a goddamn beautiful poem and how I, like wide-eyed Lisa Simpson, desperately needed to hear him lecture on something ... anything. He could talk about getting a grease-and-oil change for his car or how he dislikes wool sweaters. How he once bought a microwave from Wal-Mart. Anything. But a week later, I received no written e-mail response. Mr. Pinsky could not even acknowledge my adoration with a quick text response. Not a "ROFL" or "TTYL." I would have even accepted a copy-and-pasted canned response along the lines of "Sorry I can't write you a personal note, but I'm a genius and you're a dipshit."
So that's it, I told myself, I'm going to create a super-deluxe plan for our (eventual) third encounter. There will be no three strikes against me by the same artist ... I simply will not have it. I started planning the Dream Weekend I will spend with R.P. ... a weekend to knock the preening pretentiousness from his psyche, to shake the academia out of him. So here's what I came up with so far: I'll sneak up to the Pinsky on his way to work one Friday morning and I will kidnap his lanky ass and drive him way the hell back to my neighborhood. On the long drive home, I will have an experienced hypnotist put Pinsky into a trance to allow Pinsky to follow my orders without question (brainwashing never hurt anybody, really).
After a nice, casual dinner of sushi (and more brainwashing), the festivities will begin: we'll drive to a dive bar in the seedier part of the doldrums I live in and we'll both spend several hours there, shaking off the local prostitutes and pimps to drink 18 straight whiskeys ... the same number that did in Dylan Thomas. While drinking the whiskeys, we can empty pack after pack of Nat Sherman MCDs, which I will charge to Pinsky's expense account. The bartender, who knows me by name, will ask me who the glazed-over stiff I'm hanging out with is, and I'll tell the bartender he's my new friend, and he's a carpet salesman (because that's a lot more honorable and realistic). I'll nudge the Pinsk-ster to go along.
Following the whiskeys, we will then go shooting. Nothing sobers one up like heavy artillery. Pinsky was never in the military, and neither was I, but Heinrich von Kleist was. We'll show Kleist a thing or two about aggression by firing off several semi-automatic shotgun rounds in the woods, hoping we knock out a couple of deer and/or the windows of houses. The whiskeys, still running through our blood streams, will empower us as Americans ... and being an American means having a love affair with guns. Unlike Kleist and Madame Vogel, however, Pinsky and I will not shoot each other: the bullets are strictly reserved for objects that need exploding. When the police show up (as they inevitably do), we will bolt for the car and then drive to a safe-haven for a few hours. Hopefully the cops won't have identified my car or license plate (no doubt both on file already).
After hiding away for a while until the coast is clear, Pinsky and I will get a heavy breakfast somewhere to help sober up. We'll share several pots of coffee and, on the back of the place mat, scribble out revolutionary poems together - the kind of incendiary, heavily-political tomes that Brecht would smile upon ... the kind if, when published, would cause people to riot in the streets. We'll leave the restaurant once fully sobered up and then head to our next location: the boxing gym.
Nothing brings real men together like a little fisticuffs. Surely this would please Papa Hemingway and Ezra Pound: Pinsky and I will put on the gloves and start wailing on each other. I'll take a few swings at his temples solely to knock out the preening austerity found so often in The Want Bone, and maybe get a gut shot in there for his denouncing Shakespeare's sonnets as "over-rated." "The Bard will still be read in one thousand years, you ass," I'll shout, "but Gulf Music will have long since been turned to ash." And then I'll make sure to get a few swings in at his writing arm, so the black and blues ache when he raises his Cross pen to write anything. Pinsky needs to be consistently reminded about physical agony.
A little fun needs to follow our strenuous boxing match. We'll swallow several dozen pain pills (in honor of Lord Byron) and then go to Chuck E. Cheese or Bounce U (the good professor can choose) and intentionally crash a children's birthday party. Pinsky, a little weary but still cogent, can sneak us into the place with a soothing ode to Hart Crane and/or a parable about finding one's way through life with the aid of meditation. There, we will be on a mission not only to see who can make the most number of children cry in terror by both screaming lines from Artaud at them and mashing birthday cake in their faces: first one of us to get into an actual fist-fight with an irate parent wins the game! As we run out of the building, I imagine a thrilled and fevered Pinsky kissing one of the staff workers on the cheek, telling the worker that fortune will be his means.
We will cap off that night with more drinks and more cigarettes, and I will probably try to slip some sort of opium derivative in Pinsky's beverage, which is what Coleridge would have done to himself. We will flip a coin and let the fates decide what next to do: heads, rob a liquor store (in honor of Bukowski) or tails, steal a car (to remind Pinsky of Rimbaud's lament that every poet is a thief). Should we rob a liquor store (and successfully escape), I will make sure to drink my winnings; if we steal a car, I will aim to nab a Mercedes Benz.
Regardless of what the coin decides, I promise to get Mr. Pinsky back to his home in good time and relatively good health, even though he may be frothing at the mouth and/or nearly-ruined by fear and madness. When the poet sobers up at his house (after I throw him into his front yard) and the hypnosis and all those chemicals he ingested eventually wear off and he can finally, finally return to his actual office he's rarely ever inside of in the first place, I know - just know - that his own writings and his own teaching style will be greatly affected - for the better! - by our Weekend Adventure. The almost constant brushes with the police, the physical beatings and the cruel Soviet-style brainwashing will only heighten his already impressive talents. Audacity will become his roof. And I hope - no, I pray, to the heavens, to the celestial night - that he will be cautious to never, ever - in the future - dodge adoring fans either consciously or unconsciously again.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
You Are Not a Psychiatrist
... so please stop diagnosing yourself.
I've met entirely too many people with middling to pissy GPAs and/or degrees in nonsense (Medieval History?!) who are fond of placing labels on themselves based on a five minute search on the Internet (or a hasty flip through a psychology manual) and then telling me about their great personal discovery in laborious detail. This isn't a phenomenon exclusive to cocktail parties, soirees, Bar Mitzvahs or community college graduations. It seems to happen to me, personally, more often than I'd care to admit: when I'm at a bar pretending I'm Hemingway, when I'm resting at a Stop sign after an emotionally liberating sprint through the neighborhood, when I'm trying to eat my low-fat, low-sodium, high-sugar lunch in the faculty room and some other teacher decides to have a breakdown in front of my very eyes. I can be inserting money into a soda machine at a bus station and someone will inevitably come up to me, ask me for change and tell me he/she gets turned on by fire drills and once had to have a dime surgically removed from his/her rectum. "I like Mountain Dew too," I might respond, and then I would smile and run the hell away.
The truth is that a little bit of information can go a long way, and that honest face you think I have is judging your weak-minded ass up and down the block. I remember I had to take a rather shady prescription years ago for acne called Accutane. I had heard all about the side effects: the "suicidal ideation," the swelling of the brain, the hair loss, the melting skin. Frankly, the facts of what the drug can do should scare anyone with even a moderate concern for self-preservation. But when I raised my concerns with my dermatologist, he told me quite firmly, "Don't read anything else about this pill, ever. If something bad is happening to you, I'll be the one to tell you." This was actually sagely advice, and not only was I not suicidal, but I was elated by how Accutane cleared up my skin. My doctor was an expert, he told me he was an expert, he told me to shut the fuck up and quit whining like a waifish cunt ... and by damned I did.
Other people are not so, how do you say? Reasonable. They don't seek experts, they skim forums of WebMD or other people's web journals for comparison. A little depression? "I have that every other Tuesday and sometimes on Saturdays!" A smidge of anxiety? "Sure, after a Red Bull and some uppers!" Impulsive behavior? "Three years ago I stole a lighter from Walmart and one time I kicked over a mailbox!" Aggression? "I fantasize about my family being stomped to death by cattle!" Paranoia? "I just know someone's e-stalking me and I know all those Status Updates from my 1,500 friends on Facebook are about me ... that's a sign of schizophrenia! But wait, I also have this weird thing where I use lint remover on my corduroy pants after each and every time I wear them! Whoa, I have schizophrenia and OCD! And once I was at a party and took the candy from the bearded man no one invited over or knew the name of and I woke up in a tent in New Jersey with a dead badger, an empty bottle of Old English in my hand and my panties wrapped around my neck! I'm a nymphomaniac, Mom! This is all your fault!"
No, actually, it's no one's fault except your own (and your wacky, twisted logic). I pity your poor mother for having to squeeze you out of her delicates. Your armchair diagnosis isn't fooling anyone except maybe you. "I can't help that I robbed the elderly couple with a fork! It's my disorder." No, you're an idiot. "I can't help that I didn't score high enough on the aptitude test. I studied, but they didn't write the test for someone with my unique mental abilities. If they wrote the test specifically for me and whatever learning problems I invented for myself a week ago, they'd realize I'm a genius." You are not a genius. You had difficulty with English in Junior High and your score on the SAT was a frowny face. "I cause trouble by starting fights among people ... then I wonder why they all come back and hate me! I only do this to avoid truly examining my own vacant life and confronting personal demons that are obvious to everyone but me!" Frankly, my dear, you're a mess. Crawl out of the cave you shiver inside of, walk in front of a mirror and really take a long, hard look at what you think you are.
"But Matt," you say, sipping your Chardonnay out of a plastic cup, "you need to show a little understanding and patience! Sure, some people are delusional and outright crazy and should seek out serious therapy and stop pretending they're fine, but a lot of people over-exaggerate for the sake of drama! There's nothing wrong with a little drama! And so what if some people self-diagnose! They just like thinking they're special and unique and full of deep inner turmoil, when they're actually as shallow as a puddle. Leave them to their delusions." Maybe it's the cheap wine talking, because some of these are really good points, but you seem to forget I have neither patience nor understanding. There's a fine line between having a pitiable problem and another about flaunting the problem like it's a Cub Scout badge. In other words, there's a fine line between the Private and the Public, and some people are unclear about that distinction. If you cut your finger badly, you don't pour gasoline on it. If you are truly depressed, or truly manic, seek a professional's guidance, not your co-worker at Arby's. Your personal issues aren't something to be ashamed of, but they also aren't trophies you place on your mantle. And if an expert tells you you're a deeply troubled person, your duty and obligation to those that care about you and know you isn't to hurt them ... it's to heal yourself.
Now pour me some of that wine before you pass out and let me show you where that tent is again.
I've met entirely too many people with middling to pissy GPAs and/or degrees in nonsense (Medieval History?!) who are fond of placing labels on themselves based on a five minute search on the Internet (or a hasty flip through a psychology manual) and then telling me about their great personal discovery in laborious detail. This isn't a phenomenon exclusive to cocktail parties, soirees, Bar Mitzvahs or community college graduations. It seems to happen to me, personally, more often than I'd care to admit: when I'm at a bar pretending I'm Hemingway, when I'm resting at a Stop sign after an emotionally liberating sprint through the neighborhood, when I'm trying to eat my low-fat, low-sodium, high-sugar lunch in the faculty room and some other teacher decides to have a breakdown in front of my very eyes. I can be inserting money into a soda machine at a bus station and someone will inevitably come up to me, ask me for change and tell me he/she gets turned on by fire drills and once had to have a dime surgically removed from his/her rectum. "I like Mountain Dew too," I might respond, and then I would smile and run the hell away.
The truth is that a little bit of information can go a long way, and that honest face you think I have is judging your weak-minded ass up and down the block. I remember I had to take a rather shady prescription years ago for acne called Accutane. I had heard all about the side effects: the "suicidal ideation," the swelling of the brain, the hair loss, the melting skin. Frankly, the facts of what the drug can do should scare anyone with even a moderate concern for self-preservation. But when I raised my concerns with my dermatologist, he told me quite firmly, "Don't read anything else about this pill, ever. If something bad is happening to you, I'll be the one to tell you." This was actually sagely advice, and not only was I not suicidal, but I was elated by how Accutane cleared up my skin. My doctor was an expert, he told me he was an expert, he told me to shut the fuck up and quit whining like a waifish cunt ... and by damned I did.
Other people are not so, how do you say? Reasonable. They don't seek experts, they skim forums of WebMD or other people's web journals for comparison. A little depression? "I have that every other Tuesday and sometimes on Saturdays!" A smidge of anxiety? "Sure, after a Red Bull and some uppers!" Impulsive behavior? "Three years ago I stole a lighter from Walmart and one time I kicked over a mailbox!" Aggression? "I fantasize about my family being stomped to death by cattle!" Paranoia? "I just know someone's e-stalking me and I know all those Status Updates from my 1,500 friends on Facebook are about me ... that's a sign of schizophrenia! But wait, I also have this weird thing where I use lint remover on my corduroy pants after each and every time I wear them! Whoa, I have schizophrenia and OCD! And once I was at a party and took the candy from the bearded man no one invited over or knew the name of and I woke up in a tent in New Jersey with a dead badger, an empty bottle of Old English in my hand and my panties wrapped around my neck! I'm a nymphomaniac, Mom! This is all your fault!"
No, actually, it's no one's fault except your own (and your wacky, twisted logic). I pity your poor mother for having to squeeze you out of her delicates. Your armchair diagnosis isn't fooling anyone except maybe you. "I can't help that I robbed the elderly couple with a fork! It's my disorder." No, you're an idiot. "I can't help that I didn't score high enough on the aptitude test. I studied, but they didn't write the test for someone with my unique mental abilities. If they wrote the test specifically for me and whatever learning problems I invented for myself a week ago, they'd realize I'm a genius." You are not a genius. You had difficulty with English in Junior High and your score on the SAT was a frowny face. "I cause trouble by starting fights among people ... then I wonder why they all come back and hate me! I only do this to avoid truly examining my own vacant life and confronting personal demons that are obvious to everyone but me!" Frankly, my dear, you're a mess. Crawl out of the cave you shiver inside of, walk in front of a mirror and really take a long, hard look at what you think you are.
"But Matt," you say, sipping your Chardonnay out of a plastic cup, "you need to show a little understanding and patience! Sure, some people are delusional and outright crazy and should seek out serious therapy and stop pretending they're fine, but a lot of people over-exaggerate for the sake of drama! There's nothing wrong with a little drama! And so what if some people self-diagnose! They just like thinking they're special and unique and full of deep inner turmoil, when they're actually as shallow as a puddle. Leave them to their delusions." Maybe it's the cheap wine talking, because some of these are really good points, but you seem to forget I have neither patience nor understanding. There's a fine line between having a pitiable problem and another about flaunting the problem like it's a Cub Scout badge. In other words, there's a fine line between the Private and the Public, and some people are unclear about that distinction. If you cut your finger badly, you don't pour gasoline on it. If you are truly depressed, or truly manic, seek a professional's guidance, not your co-worker at Arby's. Your personal issues aren't something to be ashamed of, but they also aren't trophies you place on your mantle. And if an expert tells you you're a deeply troubled person, your duty and obligation to those that care about you and know you isn't to hurt them ... it's to heal yourself.
Now pour me some of that wine before you pass out and let me show you where that tent is again.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
My Sole Good Deed of the Year
Every year, I try to do at least one good thing for one single person. The idea came to me based on an agonizing "conversation" I had with a blonde retard years ago about Buddhism or some such business. She was yammering on about karma and helping the world and being the change you wish to see and all I was thinking about was tying her to a tree and hurling rocks at her limbs. But this little verbal encounter resonated days later when I was punishing my liver with a cruddy microbrew or three: maybe the tart was onto something. Why not perform some positive acts to counteract all the bad ones I inevitably end up doing? That way when I'm at the pearly gates I can barter with whoever the hell is judging me: okay, it's true that I threw that bucket of cholera down the well and poisoned the town's drinking water for a hundred years, but remember how I gave those urchins begging for money some Canadian coins after I spit on them? Remember how I jump started that car for that old broad when I could have very easily driven off and given her the finger? Remember the lost child that begged for my help in finding his lost parents and how I couldn't find his parents after a five minute search so I gave him to some nice tattooed carnie folk? Heaven will understand.
The way I see it, the One Good Deed Per Year Plan is a sure-fire way for me to get those 72 virgins in the sky without blowing myself up at a farmer's market. And my chance to perform a good deed came a little while ago when a Japanese undergrad who goes by the nickname 'Cherry' - because her real name is like Chang Chong Bing Bong - was clearly Up Against It. She was basically squatting in a third-floor apartment I was (at the time) living in, eating the food I bought and drinking my (delicious, expensive) alcohol without asking. She's friends with one of my (then) roommates, and apparently she guilted my (then) roommate into letting her just hang around the place, only taking the time to leave when she had classes to attend and other people to harass.
A few Fridays ago, I was in-between my nightly ritual of washing down stomach medication with Rolling Rock and swatting at bed bugs with a cardboard tube, when I heard several not-very-kawaii yelps coming from the back patio. Annoyed by this noise, I trudged onto the patio with the cardboard tube in hand in order to swat and kill the creator of the offending sound ... it turns out it was Cherry, covered in a blanket and laying on the deck, crying. All around her were fragments of broken glass that originated from our (then) upstairs neighbor, an undergrad alcoholic whose idea of fun is tossing empty beer bottles out his window (throwing bottles : college students :: Apples 2 Apples : children). I noticed bits of glass were stuck in the bare soles of Cherry's feet and there were other bits dangerously close to her face. Annoyed (and a little dizzy), I decided to console her by screaming at her face.
Below is a rough idea of how our conversation went:
ME: What are you doing out here?
CHERRY: [mumbles something through the crying]
ME: GET THE HELL OFF THE FLOOR.
CHERRY: [mumbles something through the crying]
ME: GET THE HELL OFF THE FLOOR.
CHERRY: [mumbles something through the crying]
Realizing this was a waste of time, I told her I don't understand gibberish and went inside to sit down and watch SportsCenter. Needing an ear, she followed me in with her slightly cut up feet and sat down across from me. She quelled the crying long enough to tell me The Saga of Cherry and the Reasons for Her Sadness, which I didn't ask to hear. Her biological father died when she was nine or so. Her mother's an alcoholic. Her brother's in jail for stealing horses. She missed being home. She liked this one guy in her engineering class and took to chasing him around for a year but he wanted nothing to do with her. She didn't get along with her dorm-mate because, she claimed, she was "weird" and "always watching what I'm doing." She was running out of money for frivolous crap and couldn't ask her mother to send more. It was enough to make a golem crumble from worry.
ME: It's only going to get worse from now on.
CHERRY: [back to crying]
ME: You should probably kill yourself.
CHERRY: [still crying]
I figured out that my attempts to empathize and sympathize were meeting resistance. So I got a lot firmer and a lot louder. I explained how much of a useless bag she was. I told her her father probably killed himself out of disgust with her and her mother. I told her her mother was drinking out of shame and that alcoholism is inherited. I told her her brother was probably stealing the horses in order to rape them. I told her her engineering love interest was chain fucking the entire Korean Club. I told her she was a financial drain on her family and an emotional drain on her friends. I told her she was wasting my precious Xanax / Vicodin / whiskey / SportsCenter time.
CHERRY: You don't understand.
ME: I understand completely.
CHERRY: I don't know what to do.
ME: You should jump off the balcony.
She stopped talking and stopped crying. She got up and went to use the bathroom and hopefully wash the glass out of her size 2 feet. When she came back she told me she was going out. I told her that was a good choice and that she should never return. I figured she was going to buy strychnine or razor blades.
Hours passed, and at this point more people funneled into the apartment, including two Harvard Professors and their Bags of Special Blend Magic. I sat out back with them, smoked and bitched about Harvard ("the comparative literature department is weak compared to The University of Chicago"), the intricacies of the Persian language ("there's no 'she' because women don't exist to us, har har"), America's lack of culture ("oh, Godard, you grouch") and somehow that conversation segued into Brecht, Polish cinema and Cortázar's story about a man who vomits rabbits. Around 3 AM there was a tap on the patio window, startling us. It was Cherry, unfortunately alive and for some reason able to get back into the apartment even though, to my knowledge, no one ever gave her a key. She came over to me and asked me to step inside. I said no. She asked again, guaranteeing it would only be for a minute. I relented.
Once inside, Cherry placed her hand on my arm (uninvited) and thanked me profusely for helping her through a hard time. She was impossibly, incredibly intoxicated. I told her she had no right to ever touch me and that she needed to leave immediately. She said people just don't want to listen nowadays, and that it's refreshing to get some positive advice from someone's who's Been There. I told her she was very welcome and all but pushed her out of the apartment. She thanked me again and told me she owed me, so I closed the door on her. But immediately after I shut the door, hopefully to never see her again or maybe only have to glance at her obituary, I became suddenly alarmed by the power of my own wisdom and guidance. I was reminded that I have the power and ability to help someone when he/she is at his/her worst. It's about caring, and being there, and aiding one's fellow human in a Time of Need. I then locked the door and went back on the patio to re-light.
In other words, 2010's good deed is finished. And, no, I have no idea who set that dumpster on fire. Or who stole that unopened package from Amazon.com sitting in the hallway (seriously, who the hell buys workout videos?). Or who sent the male stripper to the Assistant Dean's office.
(Heaven, you paying attention?)
The way I see it, the One Good Deed Per Year Plan is a sure-fire way for me to get those 72 virgins in the sky without blowing myself up at a farmer's market. And my chance to perform a good deed came a little while ago when a Japanese undergrad who goes by the nickname 'Cherry' - because her real name is like Chang Chong Bing Bong - was clearly Up Against It. She was basically squatting in a third-floor apartment I was (at the time) living in, eating the food I bought and drinking my (delicious, expensive) alcohol without asking. She's friends with one of my (then) roommates, and apparently she guilted my (then) roommate into letting her just hang around the place, only taking the time to leave when she had classes to attend and other people to harass.
A few Fridays ago, I was in-between my nightly ritual of washing down stomach medication with Rolling Rock and swatting at bed bugs with a cardboard tube, when I heard several not-very-kawaii yelps coming from the back patio. Annoyed by this noise, I trudged onto the patio with the cardboard tube in hand in order to swat and kill the creator of the offending sound ... it turns out it was Cherry, covered in a blanket and laying on the deck, crying. All around her were fragments of broken glass that originated from our (then) upstairs neighbor, an undergrad alcoholic whose idea of fun is tossing empty beer bottles out his window (throwing bottles : college students :: Apples 2 Apples : children). I noticed bits of glass were stuck in the bare soles of Cherry's feet and there were other bits dangerously close to her face. Annoyed (and a little dizzy), I decided to console her by screaming at her face.
Below is a rough idea of how our conversation went:
ME: What are you doing out here?
CHERRY: [mumbles something through the crying]
ME: GET THE HELL OFF THE FLOOR.
CHERRY: [mumbles something through the crying]
ME: GET THE HELL OFF THE FLOOR.
CHERRY: [mumbles something through the crying]
Realizing this was a waste of time, I told her I don't understand gibberish and went inside to sit down and watch SportsCenter. Needing an ear, she followed me in with her slightly cut up feet and sat down across from me. She quelled the crying long enough to tell me The Saga of Cherry and the Reasons for Her Sadness, which I didn't ask to hear. Her biological father died when she was nine or so. Her mother's an alcoholic. Her brother's in jail for stealing horses. She missed being home. She liked this one guy in her engineering class and took to chasing him around for a year but he wanted nothing to do with her. She didn't get along with her dorm-mate because, she claimed, she was "weird" and "always watching what I'm doing." She was running out of money for frivolous crap and couldn't ask her mother to send more. It was enough to make a golem crumble from worry.
ME: It's only going to get worse from now on.
CHERRY: [back to crying]
ME: You should probably kill yourself.
CHERRY: [still crying]
I figured out that my attempts to empathize and sympathize were meeting resistance. So I got a lot firmer and a lot louder. I explained how much of a useless bag she was. I told her her father probably killed himself out of disgust with her and her mother. I told her her mother was drinking out of shame and that alcoholism is inherited. I told her her brother was probably stealing the horses in order to rape them. I told her her engineering love interest was chain fucking the entire Korean Club. I told her she was a financial drain on her family and an emotional drain on her friends. I told her she was wasting my precious Xanax / Vicodin / whiskey / SportsCenter time.
CHERRY: You don't understand.
ME: I understand completely.
CHERRY: I don't know what to do.
ME: You should jump off the balcony.
She stopped talking and stopped crying. She got up and went to use the bathroom and hopefully wash the glass out of her size 2 feet. When she came back she told me she was going out. I told her that was a good choice and that she should never return. I figured she was going to buy strychnine or razor blades.
Hours passed, and at this point more people funneled into the apartment, including two Harvard Professors and their Bags of Special Blend Magic. I sat out back with them, smoked and bitched about Harvard ("the comparative literature department is weak compared to The University of Chicago"), the intricacies of the Persian language ("there's no 'she' because women don't exist to us, har har"), America's lack of culture ("oh, Godard, you grouch") and somehow that conversation segued into Brecht, Polish cinema and Cortázar's story about a man who vomits rabbits. Around 3 AM there was a tap on the patio window, startling us. It was Cherry, unfortunately alive and for some reason able to get back into the apartment even though, to my knowledge, no one ever gave her a key. She came over to me and asked me to step inside. I said no. She asked again, guaranteeing it would only be for a minute. I relented.
Once inside, Cherry placed her hand on my arm (uninvited) and thanked me profusely for helping her through a hard time. She was impossibly, incredibly intoxicated. I told her she had no right to ever touch me and that she needed to leave immediately. She said people just don't want to listen nowadays, and that it's refreshing to get some positive advice from someone's who's Been There. I told her she was very welcome and all but pushed her out of the apartment. She thanked me again and told me she owed me, so I closed the door on her. But immediately after I shut the door, hopefully to never see her again or maybe only have to glance at her obituary, I became suddenly alarmed by the power of my own wisdom and guidance. I was reminded that I have the power and ability to help someone when he/she is at his/her worst. It's about caring, and being there, and aiding one's fellow human in a Time of Need. I then locked the door and went back on the patio to re-light.
In other words, 2010's good deed is finished. And, no, I have no idea who set that dumpster on fire. Or who stole that unopened package from Amazon.com sitting in the hallway (seriously, who the hell buys workout videos?). Or who sent the male stripper to the Assistant Dean's office.
(Heaven, you paying attention?)
Friday, May 7, 2010
Tobacco Is Some Goddamn Delicious
(A Follow-up to Raw Oysters Are Some Goddamn Scrumptious)
They always take the best things from us: the right to play grab ass and tell filthy jokes in the work place, the right to refuse women the right to vote, the right to beat our own children in public, the right to murder innocent people because there's nothing else fun to do in town. Recently, the right to sit in a packed restaurant and light up a delicious cigarette and blow the smoke into the faces of our fellow diners was unfortunately stolen from us as well, and now the Powers That Be are taxing the motherfucking shit out of our beloved sin sticks, ostracizing we 'unholy' smokers by encouraging us to quit and using the tax from those $8 packs of wrapped, "filtered" goodness to ... fund universal health care (also known as the first step to kissing Karl Marx right on his Santa Claus beard).
In other words, they're using the smoker's desire for the Sweet Release of Death to try to heal those among us that are actually trying to ... live.
It's appalling.
We speak, as a Nation, so lovingly of the Great Farmer, with mud and cow dung beneath his or her fingernails, the baggy overalls covering his or her unkempt frame, the John Deere hat adorning his or her graying head. When driving through the Great Farm Country, we as Americans roll down the windows of our gas-guzzling monster machines to take deep breaths of relief, nodding to ourselves that the beauteous methane consistently emitted from the anuses of those American cows is, indeed, the True Air of America. It's not the fragrance of hot apple pie, raw denim, a freshly mowed lawn or even tacos smuggled in by robbers and cowards. It is there, in the fields, with Ma and Pa Kettle.
By taxing cigarettes and reallocating the funds to help people with horrible afflictions like acne or scabies, this country is encouraging - nay, coercing - people to actually ... stop smoking. And they're not just raising the prices and hurting the farmers who specialize in tobacco, they're putting warning labels on packs, they're putting scare commercials on television from those obnoxious goody-goodies from TheTruth.com and they're protesting - yes, protesting! - the use of charming cartoon figures and other clever marketing ploys to sell our Great National Product to dumb teenagers. Don't they realize that dumb teenagers have anxiety issues, and not only are cigarettes perfect for curing anxiety issues but - and here's a bonus! - the 11 minutes removed from their lives from each and every cigarette they inhale will actually prevent them from becoming boring, useless senior citizens?
If people in America stopped smoking, what would happen to the farmers in Virginia? Who would plow the fields and bring us that sweet, burnable, God-given glory that so many of us cherish? Why, lungs would be free of contaminates! Cancer would start making frowny faces and pouting (and my word does Cancer like to pout)! We've turned smokers into lepers, keeping them locked far away from the rest of mankind! Of course, we've encouraged people to stop eating so much and no one really listened - the American Waistline has been expanding like the cosmos - and yet the smoking thing has actually been a little effective.
It's troubling and terrifying.
Why, some years ago I traveled to Europe and while I was there I reveled in the amount of smoking done by our Brethren Across the Pond. Sure, their government people and medical folk tried all the anti-smoking tricks, but many over there brazenly resist advice that will improve their physical well-being. In the Frankfurt Airport, there are kiosks where smokers are permitted to just sit around and exhale and relight and inhale and relight and exhale! I'm pretty sure it's illegal to not smoke in France if you're under the age of 75. Cuban kids indulge in perfectly rolled cigars when they're not starving. In Amsterdam, if you aren't smoking something, people wonder what is wrong with you and immediately fill your personal space with their exhaust - it's enough to give you a headache, but what a glorious headache it truly is! I was told by an Italian guy that in the Middle East some parents give their kids hookahs as presents. I was told by an Irish dude that his father gave him a pipe for his 18th birthday and the two of them would have long, silent conversations whilst struggling to keep their bowls lit. Smoking is about family and togetherness. And yellowing teeth and bad breath ... but we have cures for those things, thank you Crest.
We, as a World, lose so very much in trying to keep people from enjoying the products of the earth. You don't see people trying to quit peaches do you? Or mint tea? What's next, taking salt out of our over-salted foods or removing factory-made corn syrup from food stuff that has no real need for factory-made corn syrup? The next thing you're going to tell me is that it's possible to disarm the world and effectively promote peace and harmony, free from prejudice and fear! Poppycock, you knave! So just deal with it: go to your local drug store, pick up your overpriced asthma medications, and then wheeze your way over to the front counter and nab some Parliaments for the road.
Your culture is counting on you.
They always take the best things from us: the right to play grab ass and tell filthy jokes in the work place, the right to refuse women the right to vote, the right to beat our own children in public, the right to murder innocent people because there's nothing else fun to do in town. Recently, the right to sit in a packed restaurant and light up a delicious cigarette and blow the smoke into the faces of our fellow diners was unfortunately stolen from us as well, and now the Powers That Be are taxing the motherfucking shit out of our beloved sin sticks, ostracizing we 'unholy' smokers by encouraging us to quit and using the tax from those $8 packs of wrapped, "filtered" goodness to ... fund universal health care (also known as the first step to kissing Karl Marx right on his Santa Claus beard).
In other words, they're using the smoker's desire for the Sweet Release of Death to try to heal those among us that are actually trying to ... live.
It's appalling.
We speak, as a Nation, so lovingly of the Great Farmer, with mud and cow dung beneath his or her fingernails, the baggy overalls covering his or her unkempt frame, the John Deere hat adorning his or her graying head. When driving through the Great Farm Country, we as Americans roll down the windows of our gas-guzzling monster machines to take deep breaths of relief, nodding to ourselves that the beauteous methane consistently emitted from the anuses of those American cows is, indeed, the True Air of America. It's not the fragrance of hot apple pie, raw denim, a freshly mowed lawn or even tacos smuggled in by robbers and cowards. It is there, in the fields, with Ma and Pa Kettle.
By taxing cigarettes and reallocating the funds to help people with horrible afflictions like acne or scabies, this country is encouraging - nay, coercing - people to actually ... stop smoking. And they're not just raising the prices and hurting the farmers who specialize in tobacco, they're putting warning labels on packs, they're putting scare commercials on television from those obnoxious goody-goodies from TheTruth.com and they're protesting - yes, protesting! - the use of charming cartoon figures and other clever marketing ploys to sell our Great National Product to dumb teenagers. Don't they realize that dumb teenagers have anxiety issues, and not only are cigarettes perfect for curing anxiety issues but - and here's a bonus! - the 11 minutes removed from their lives from each and every cigarette they inhale will actually prevent them from becoming boring, useless senior citizens?
If people in America stopped smoking, what would happen to the farmers in Virginia? Who would plow the fields and bring us that sweet, burnable, God-given glory that so many of us cherish? Why, lungs would be free of contaminates! Cancer would start making frowny faces and pouting (and my word does Cancer like to pout)! We've turned smokers into lepers, keeping them locked far away from the rest of mankind! Of course, we've encouraged people to stop eating so much and no one really listened - the American Waistline has been expanding like the cosmos - and yet the smoking thing has actually been a little effective.
It's troubling and terrifying.
Why, some years ago I traveled to Europe and while I was there I reveled in the amount of smoking done by our Brethren Across the Pond. Sure, their government people and medical folk tried all the anti-smoking tricks, but many over there brazenly resist advice that will improve their physical well-being. In the Frankfurt Airport, there are kiosks where smokers are permitted to just sit around and exhale and relight and inhale and relight and exhale! I'm pretty sure it's illegal to not smoke in France if you're under the age of 75. Cuban kids indulge in perfectly rolled cigars when they're not starving. In Amsterdam, if you aren't smoking something, people wonder what is wrong with you and immediately fill your personal space with their exhaust - it's enough to give you a headache, but what a glorious headache it truly is! I was told by an Italian guy that in the Middle East some parents give their kids hookahs as presents. I was told by an Irish dude that his father gave him a pipe for his 18th birthday and the two of them would have long, silent conversations whilst struggling to keep their bowls lit. Smoking is about family and togetherness. And yellowing teeth and bad breath ... but we have cures for those things, thank you Crest.
We, as a World, lose so very much in trying to keep people from enjoying the products of the earth. You don't see people trying to quit peaches do you? Or mint tea? What's next, taking salt out of our over-salted foods or removing factory-made corn syrup from food stuff that has no real need for factory-made corn syrup? The next thing you're going to tell me is that it's possible to disarm the world and effectively promote peace and harmony, free from prejudice and fear! Poppycock, you knave! So just deal with it: go to your local drug store, pick up your overpriced asthma medications, and then wheeze your way over to the front counter and nab some Parliaments for the road.
Your culture is counting on you.
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