"I'm sorry grandmama for mistakes I have made / When I aired family business, how you put me in my place"

From: [my mom]
Date: Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 11:44 PM
Subject: Buckley
To: Leon


The only thing i did not realize from your article is that he was a Conservative icon...

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5htj3BNDPQZfgo1Sjus7DBavzhHjQD8V32E000

All in the game

En Dasher carries the latest missive from Peter Ekman of Queens.

What joke is this

There are these couple of jokes people like on the internet that are all alike in a weirdly narrow but elusive way. The prototype as I understand it is the string of "Chuck Norris" jokes; these are just sentences about the outrageous and superhuman things Chuck Norris can do. A more recent incarnation of that same thing is the "www.barackobamaismybicycle" thing which is just sentences about the saintly and thoughtful things Barack Obama does for people. And then in the middle there was this video, which I never really understood, which I think is the same thing.


Somehow I think this is the same joke as the "ninjas" website from long ago. "Fun facts about ninjas" or whatever, and the guy just listed all these ways in which ninjas were "totally fucking sweet" etc.

Part of what people find amusing I guess is the enthusiasm of the declarations. And their absurdity/clicheness maybe? Alternately clicheness and absurdity, and part of the joke is in the bumpy transition from one to the other. Also it has something to do with the historical figures -- these are guys about whom it is funny to be excited /"really pumped" about. What does it take to become one of those guys? What kind of reputation is that?

Everybody in my crew stands on their own two

D. Luxemburg here and B. Kawaller here.

"We make a lot of noise / when we come through the club"

En Dash goes viral.

"Actually, they didn't print the letter with en dashes. This has to be taken down; it's unintelligible in this format."

Update: Gawker post amended. "Following a gently critical email from Mr. Ekman, we have attempted to recreate his proper use of em and en dashes."

Cafe culture

Was reading my book about Nim Chimpsky at Tillie's tonight and they did an open mic. First though the cafe people played a bunch of songs on the stereo from 69 Love Songs. Because of Valentine's Day I guess? In which case, a loaded choice. Because, I mean, for these people, really? I don't think I'm just thinking like a sitcom when I say that I could imagine one of the guys in there -- maybe the one who was reading The Fountainhead -- realizing that he just couldn't take it, getting up very reluctantly, and saying to the guy, "Come on -- change it, man."

I am treading lightly because there's a very nasty, as-seen-on-TV tone/attitude that tends to be taken towards Valentine's Day. It is a dull, cynical stance -- banal because it is predictable, calculated, formulaic... a sort of defiant expression of rebellion that is actually not rebellion at all but rather quite transparently defeat... "I don't care about this holiday, anyway!" The people who say this, or anything like it, are still buying into whatever they are declaring themselves to be beyond; the only difference is they're buying into it for the purpose of denouncing it. No more interesting a maneuver at this point than smashing your guitar on the stage at the end of your band's performance. Canned fury; marching to the beat of a drum you want people to think is your own.

All that said, I still think: playing 69 Love Songs at Tillie's on Valentine's Day? Jesus. Maybe burn the place down too.

The sign-up sheet for the open mic was put out on the counter around 7:30; by 8pm only one act had signed up, and that was a pair of 10-year-old girls named (I think) Kina and Tika. They sat down afterwards and stayed in the cafe for like 30 minutes, waiting at one of the tables for enough other people to sign up so that they could go on. At 8:30 an emcee took the stage and introduced them. They sang "I Remember" by Keyshia Cole, which I'd never heard before and thought they'd written, which made me remember how the song lyrics I wrote when I was 10, 11, 12 sounded like The Offspring and Stone Temple Pilots. Snotty, confrontational, oblique. "WHAT THE HELL DOES 'DIY' MEAN? AND HOW ABOUT A ZINE? THIS FUCKING PUNK MENTALITY / ALL THE WORDS I'VE SEEN / I WANT AN EXPLANATION / IT'S ALL A LOAD OF SHIT." That was written in 5th grade, for the band Section 69 (first EP: "Laudanum"). I had just started using mailorder to get ska CDs from Asian Man Records and taping "Everything Off Beat Radio" on Sunday nights. I was forthcoming about my status as a newcomer but... I'd started a band in spite of it and if I do say so myself there is something to admire in that.

After the girls got done a rapper went on and as the beat dropped one of his friends in the audience yelled out "YO IT'S NOT A CAFE ANYMORE!!" (It was still a cafe, and not just because the guy rapped about fucking Obama.) That guy served as hypeman the rest of the time, yelling from the audience words of encouragement ("Handle your business!" "That's it") whenever the guy hit his stride in a way that reminded me of the dudes in On the Road who shouted "blow, man, blow!" when they got to jazz clubs. I could never quite get on board with that, not even when I read that book at 15, and when that guy yelled out I felt pretty much the same way about it. Maybe it's my fault that I can't fathom enthusiasm so uncontrollable/rapturous without suspecting that it is being forced; people tell me I have a fine enough time being "earnest" myself (hey ladies) but it's possible that I can't tolerate it in others.

During the next guy's set, which was quieter and closer to spoken word than rap, this same hypeman kept making that sound people make in fake life when they take a sip of something cold. After that it was his turn to go up on stage, and he was really pumped to do it. Except the CD he gave the cafe guys didn't work so he had no beat. He rapped some things without accompaniment, really dirty things by a cafe open mic standard but pretty typical if you're used to Dipset/Lil Wayne/etc. He kept stopping every 8 bars or so to say, "you guys don't wanna hear that, do you?" Finally he walked off shaking his head, very obviously bummed that his stupid CD didn't burn right and that he didn't get to perform. After him three little fucks in sweaters and suspenders came up and did the Moldy Peaches thing where they don't try to be good as a joke. "Isn't it funny that we thought this was worth performing," basically. It felt like a matter of great injustice that these idiots got their satisfaction and the hypeman, who had obviously looked forward to this a lot, didn't get to do what he came to do. I'm sure someone out there will say that is a "problematic" feeling... why do I assume the rapper's motivations were any more pure/authentic than the little indie kids who followed him, etc; fair point I guess BUT I promise this is just real talk, not an illustration, at least not an intentional one, for why I think there should be a class war.

After the trio a high school kid in a Mets hat played a cover of some country song, or maybe he wrote it himself ("Walking the low road / Drunk on rye"). He was asked to do a second, and he introduced it as a Valentine's Day song. Then he played "Last Caress" by The Misfits. Which was obviously hilarious because that song has lyrics like "I raped your mother today" etc. -- sorta like when Eminem introduces "Drug Ballad" by saying "This is my love song!" except not a real joke. I guess people have always found this kind of thing funny -- it is not that different from Dynamite Hack covering "Boyz N Da Hood" or Mountain Goats covering "Ignition (Remix)" or even Weird Al doing anything -- but while the kid played I couldn't help but feel like I was watching a YouTube video. What's worse is the little jester didn't even do a good job with the song -- where the original sounds alternately sinister and silly, this sounded more like someone gloating.

That was the end of it. I don't know but I think it was a pretty good open mic? Sitting here now I can hear a mouse in the pantry, otherwise all quiet. "For God is not a secret, and this also is a song."

"Yeah, but he's so cute though"

As much as I complain about how reporters write about the campaign, I’ve read enough of the coverage recently to tell the good from the bad. Which is to say there are a lot of really incredible articles being written, and while I take them with a grain of salt a/f/a expecting their predictions to come true, their narratives to actually unfold as described, and their speculation re momentum and electability to be substantiated, I see very clearly that there is something artful in the way some of these things are conceptualized and composed. The best of them have elegance; they are simple chains of ideas based on sophisticated observations. What it takes to write one of those is the ability to come up with creative ways of reading an exit poll, to see something crucial or indicative that others miss, to visualize a coherent, compelling arrangement of facts, to come up with the right turn of phrase.

I guess I am talking about imagination again. Also discipline and craft, as per that John Darnielle quote.

The shoe bomber story

...is an emblem of everything that is bad about how people think and make decisions. What basically happened was some guy came up with an idea but was thwarted when he tried to carry it out. The response was: "no one will ever try this again on our watch!" So they started taking people's shoes. And they made sure that no one would ever try to put explosive materials in there ever again: fool me once, etc.

This was an idiotic, unimaginative response. I guess, fine, you start doing shoe-checks and you probably won't get anyone trying that particular thing again. But how shabby, to come up with this new, absurdly narrow procedure in response to one guy giving it a shot? If a dude packs heat in his bellybutton next time, are they going to start requiring the day after he's locked up that everyone flash their navels as they walk through the x-ray machine?

It's worse even, maybe. Because the shoe-check decree is targeted squarely at those people who lack imagination in the same exact way as the legislators/whatever who came up with it. The only people who stand to be comforted by it are the ones who can't picture a thing happening that they haven't already seen, that hasn't yet been explained to them. These people didn't know to look out for shoe-bombers before, but once Richard Reid did his thing, it's all they could think about. A mind that can only wrap itself around that with which it is already familiar.

This came up because we were talking about T-Pain, and how it's dumb that after he got some singles onto the charts music producers thought they could just make more songs using that vocal effect and expect the same success.

"Yo Slim, you gon' let him get away with that? / He tried to play you, you can't let him skate with that"

The Eminem Show came out in May 2002, more than six months after 9/11. And so it's pretty safely a post-9/11 album if you think about things that way. But! There's a Chandra Levy reference ("Who knew shit could be so easy? / How could one Chandra be so Levy?"). This is important because that was a thing everyone was supposed to forget once the business happened. If I remember right, a lot of smug long-view fetishists made a big deal out of how Gary Condit got away with his dirt thanks to tragedy. Which is true I guess since the media stopped covering the story immediately. But Eminem remembered, is my point.

"Passion is a virtue, but so is proficiency"

John Darnielle, writing on Last Plane to Jakarta:

If I say a band is "dedicated to their craft," that sounds boring and staid, right? Well, fuck you, then, Jack, with your antiquated half-recycled notions of how craft and intensity are somehow at odds. Craft is the path to the damn palace, and the palace's windows are all ablaze with the fire that's constantly raging in all the rooms, and it's not even uncomfortable for the people who live there, because they have become accustomed to the heat.

Weird discrepancy

How come it is "considered" ladylike to laugh at all jokes made by men but distinctly "unladylike," in the same universe, to vocalize your appreciation for a point someone has made?

Both guidelines as far as I can tell are supposed to make a girl seem passive. And yet, they are fundamentally opposite reactions. Why is giggling at a joke -- a way of flattering the person who uttered it: "you're funny!" -- such a girl thing while saying someone's made a good point -- clearly the same thing except: "well said!" -- is only something men are supposed to dare say?

One possible reason is that if a girl giggles at every joke like she's supposed to, it means she's not really getting the punchlines but doing something to please the man who is entertaining her. Which, yes, does signal passivity.

I should mention that I'm not endorsing this universe.

This is quickly becoming the new pop versus soda

I had a good post all written about the argument people have where one side says you should say "I'm good" and the other says "I'm well" but it disappeared because my computer froze. The basic point was that both positions are kind of politically loaded and reprehensible because people who say "I'm well" are smug philistines and people who insist on "I'm good," if they actually volunteer to defend the usage actively, only do it because they want to stand up for the masses in a way that's more acutely expressed in things like ironic PBR-drinking and Che shirts.

(The reason these people usually give for why "I'm good" is right after all is that "I'm well" means "I am good at being" rather than "The things that are happening in my life are good and I am enjoying them OK.")

The reason I was bringing up this fight -- an important one because its many manifestations basically make it impossible to live in good faith or be a not horrible person -- was that I think I have an easy answer: "I'm good" is right because you'd never say "I'm badly." Not even "well" people say "I'm badly." In other words the PBR-drinking Che cabal is right-- you actually need an adjective, not an adverb, after "to be".

BTW when my computer froze it gave me the blue screen of death. Who knew that was still around??

Strong words

While writing another thing I used the word 'invariably,' which made me think: there are a couple of words that mean kind of the same thing, except they describe it in slightly different terms. I can think of three-- 'uncompromisingly,' 'unequivocally,' and 'unambiguously'-- though I'm sure there are more. If 'invariably' refers to the frequency with which a thing happens (100%), then

--'uncompromisingly' refers to the conviction with which the person who causes that thing to happen does so,
--'unequivocally' refers to the passion/resolve with which that person talks about it (a lot),
-- and 'unambiguously' refers to the way it appears to other people (they think it is the real thing).

Pretty much ten toes all the way down, as my friend Saskrotch likes to say: "no half steppin', just ten fuckin' toes, all the way down."

Credit in the straight world

The pizza guy came earlier tonight and some funny things happened. First, when I gave him three 20 dollar bills for a 50 dollar purchase he claimed not to have any change, and instead offered me a copy of his 10-dollar CD. The title of the CD was a rape pun. I agreed to this deal because I felt guilty turning him down. Then, later on when I was sitting down at the kitchen table to eat some pizza, I saw the three twenty dollar bills sitting right there. I had to think for a second about whether I had a responsibility to do something about this, and decided finally that I should be honest.

"And that's how I know / that I ain't shit"

From "We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 3: The Spirit of Competition (We Just Think We're Better)":

Ignore the lies that they tell
Under my cuticles proof the powder that I sell
So I guess life in jail is just a manicure away
Well, I don't feel like getting my nails done today.

"O I've lied to you so much I can no longer trust you"

It occurred to me the other night that the sound of a person trying and failing to fall asleep in the same room as you is a sound I recognize. There is a lot in that sound; "turtles are screwed in the snow." One of those things worth finding words for.

You're at your best when you've got the gun pointed 180 degrees

(12:29:38 AM) Me: it's embarrassing what things we used to find amusing
(12:29:48 AM) Me: or like, intriguing
(12:30:08 AM) Me: like remember when we talked about starbucks aesthetics a lot
(12:31:42 AM) Lux: i mean
(12:31:52 AM) Lux: i regret almost everything ive ever said
(12:32:01 AM) Me: yeah
(12:32:19 AM) Me: i wish i could erase all the publicly accessible symptoms of who i am
(12:32:33 AM) Lux: that sentiment is going to become a thing
(12:32:39 AM) Me: it's a thing

More on the same

"Speaking in the broad thematic strokes that more voters (and reporters) expect from Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton invoked Robert F. Kennedy by name as she said she was running to strengthen the United States for “the next generation” of Americans." # Emphasis mine.