As you can see, the spammers believe that once your sex organ is really “cut,” the ill-defined enlargement process is complete and oozing from the exposed tissue stops, “She will love you more than any other guy.”
Thursday, May 03, 2007
EXPOSING YOURSELF
Someone seems to think the way to sell penis enlargement techniques via junk e-mail is by letting men imagine the process involves flaying them alive. I assume the idea behind showing a penis of exposed muscle and vein is to appear scientific and serious, but the result is horrifying and repellent — like something out of “Hostel III” or “The Hills Have Eyes XIII” or “Jason Goes to Med School” or whatever.
As you can see, the spammers believe that once your sex organ is really “cut,” the ill-defined enlargement process is complete and oozing from the exposed tissue stops, “She will love you more than any other guy.”
As you can see, the spammers believe that once your sex organ is really “cut,” the ill-defined enlargement process is complete and oozing from the exposed tissue stops, “She will love you more than any other guy.”
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
AESTHETICS OF NONCOMMITTAL? YES. WHATEVER.
Some of my most expressive eye-rolling has been in response to the language artists use to define what their work means. I think the first experience with this was in the liner notes to Genesis’ “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway,” in which the story behind the two-disc prog-rock opera gave every sign of being lamely retrofitted to its songs — the product, I would reasonably guess, of a drug-fueled all-nighter. The album is great, if dated, but the story rationalized for it pumps its pretentiousness beyond fun and into unbearable. Best to ignore the story and listen to the music.
And so it has been throughout a life of incidental art appreciation, and so it was during my recent trip to Toronto and its Queen Street art galleries.
At the Engine Gallery were works by a guy named Franco DeFrancesca that were very cool, colorful and shimmering and ebullient and delightful. Check one out here and browse all you like, although it’s best to keep in mind the work is far better in its bigger-than-life, solid, heavy, laminated reality.
If you’ve appreciated the work itself, now look at what DeFrancesca says the work is about. And commence eye-rolling as you contemplate the sheer amount of verbiage against the actual images the verbiage claims to define:
And so it has been throughout a life of incidental art appreciation, and so it was during my recent trip to Toronto and its Queen Street art galleries.
At the Engine Gallery were works by a guy named Franco DeFrancesca that were very cool, colorful and shimmering and ebullient and delightful. Check one out here and browse all you like, although it’s best to keep in mind the work is far better in its bigger-than-life, solid, heavy, laminated reality.
If you’ve appreciated the work itself, now look at what DeFrancesca says the work is about. And commence eye-rolling as you contemplate the sheer amount of verbiage against the actual images the verbiage claims to define:
The Aesthetics of Non-Committal
Fetishizing the “sophisticated ideal” of “contemporary-urban style,” this series of digital/mixed media “picture objects” contemplate and interrogate a personal fascination with modernist art/design and its legacy in present-day culture. Particularly interested in mid-to-late century abstraction and minimalism (Morris Louis, Ellsworth Kelly, Carl Andre, etc.) and its urban-loft inspired renaissance, this series of works observe how historical meanings and aesthetic values are
transformed and assimilated into contemporary contexts.
In working to achieve a high degree of beauty, these pieces, which depict ephemeral light sources, suspended movements and translucent color, simultaneously embody and “gloss over” heroic, utopian and transcendental ideals of the past within contemporary notions of “deconstruction and irony.” Recontextualizing a historical period and cultural production of the past, these contemporary reinterpretations, which converge formal/psychic and conceptual/theoretical considerations, inform a dialectical inquiry of counterpoint and contradiction cultivating an open ended and equivocal — aesthetics of noncommittal.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
HITCHENS’ BEST DEFENSE: OFFENSIVE
Possibly because Vanity Fair and Slate must wonder why they feature Christopher Hitchens so prominently, considering how wrong he’s been on Iraq over so much time and with so many words, Hitchens has used this week’s Slate column to defend himself.
It almost seems he’s going to say something worthwhile; the column bears the headline “So, Mr. Hitchens, weren’t you wrong about Iraq?” and the subhead “Hard questions, four years later.” But the article is tough in the same way as those “town meetings” led by President Bush, where no one is allowed in unless they share Bush’s point of view and all questions are handed in on paper ahead of time. So Hitchens asks himself eight questions and answers them all.
Well, not really. For instance, he asks whether Colin Powell’s performance before the United Nations was a disgrace, but his answer, as brief as it is, is primarily about side issues. (“A few points of interest did emerge,” he writes, with one of the two being that “Iraqi authorities were caught on air trying to mislead U.N. inspectors (nothing new there).” It is left to the reader to decide whether saying there’s “nothing new” contradicts Hitchens calling it a point of interest. I decide it does. This is weak stuff.) He also defends the Iraqi terrorism defense of the war by saying, somewhat oddly, that the Bush administration “never claimed that Iraq had any hand in the events of Sept. 11, 2001.” It’s old news Bush and the Republicans linked Iraq and 9/11 by implication and rhetorical trick every chance they got, so this refutation is so gratuitous as to be counterproductive. The very act of bringing it up is damaging and silly — kind of the “I never promised you a rose garden” defense.
Save for introductory questions on Bush’s U.N. resolution and the prewar massing of forces in the Gulf, the other questions are answered in a similarly oblique and disingenuous fashion.
Two are downright offensive.
Hitchens asks if we should have known Iraq lacked weapons of mass destruction, and in answering employs the same trick the Bush administration used so many times: He cites information supplied by Hussein Kamel, the brother-in-law of Saddam Hussein and leader of the country’s weapons program for a decade, without noting that Kamel, as far back as 1995, said Iraq destroyed its WMD after the Gulf War and that the presence of U.N. inspectors prevented its revival. Powell did the same before the U.N. Vice President Cheney misrepresented Kamel’s testimony in a Veterans of Foreign Wars speech in 2002. But no Bush administration official or apologist ever acknowledged this publicly to claim Iraq reconstituted its arms when U.N. inspectors were gone after 1998. They just ignored it. That Iraq’s lack of weaponry was confirmed repeatedly by the inspectors, Iraqi scientists, their families and Saddam Hussein himself made no difference.
I’ve been citing Kamel’s testimony, courtesy of Newsweek, as far back as September 2003. The idea that Hitchens isn’t aware of what Kamel said, four years after me and 12 years after British and U.S. intelligence, is absurd. It’s information he chooses to ignore.
In Slate, Hitchens also belittles the work done by U.N. inspectors, saying their work wasn’t reliable so long as Iraq’s Baath Party was in power. Yet Powell himself, on ABC-TV’s “This Week” in 2003, acknowledged that the government had relied on information from the inspectors between the Gulf War and 1998.
“From 1998 until we went in earlier this year, there was a period where we didn’t have benefit of U.N. inspectors actually on the ground, and our intelligence community had to do the best they could,” he said.
So the government relied on inspectors’ information until 1998 but couldn’t when inspectors returned in 2002? Before slipping in a total non sequitur about Libyan weapons — more answering of questions no one asked, even himself — Hitchens makes the indefensible charge that “To call for serious and unimpeachable inspections was to call, in effect, for a change of regime in Iraq.” This is Hitchens again ignoring that, shortly before the beginning of the war, Saddam Hussein not only gave U.N. inspectors access, but invited “direct U.S. involvement on the ground in disarming Iraq,” as reported in The New York Times and British Daily Telegraph in November 2003, an entreaty our government rejected in its all-out drive for war.
Hitchens defends himself weakly, and is able to do so only by ignoring widely available information. While not a very long piece, “So, Mr. Hitchens, weren’t you wrong about Iraq?” could have been much, much shorter.
Yes, he was.
It almost seems he’s going to say something worthwhile; the column bears the headline “So, Mr. Hitchens, weren’t you wrong about Iraq?” and the subhead “Hard questions, four years later.” But the article is tough in the same way as those “town meetings” led by President Bush, where no one is allowed in unless they share Bush’s point of view and all questions are handed in on paper ahead of time. So Hitchens asks himself eight questions and answers them all.
Well, not really. For instance, he asks whether Colin Powell’s performance before the United Nations was a disgrace, but his answer, as brief as it is, is primarily about side issues. (“A few points of interest did emerge,” he writes, with one of the two being that “Iraqi authorities were caught on air trying to mislead U.N. inspectors (nothing new there).” It is left to the reader to decide whether saying there’s “nothing new” contradicts Hitchens calling it a point of interest. I decide it does. This is weak stuff.) He also defends the Iraqi terrorism defense of the war by saying, somewhat oddly, that the Bush administration “never claimed that Iraq had any hand in the events of Sept. 11, 2001.” It’s old news Bush and the Republicans linked Iraq and 9/11 by implication and rhetorical trick every chance they got, so this refutation is so gratuitous as to be counterproductive. The very act of bringing it up is damaging and silly — kind of the “I never promised you a rose garden” defense.
Save for introductory questions on Bush’s U.N. resolution and the prewar massing of forces in the Gulf, the other questions are answered in a similarly oblique and disingenuous fashion.
Two are downright offensive.
Hitchens asks if we should have known Iraq lacked weapons of mass destruction, and in answering employs the same trick the Bush administration used so many times: He cites information supplied by Hussein Kamel, the brother-in-law of Saddam Hussein and leader of the country’s weapons program for a decade, without noting that Kamel, as far back as 1995, said Iraq destroyed its WMD after the Gulf War and that the presence of U.N. inspectors prevented its revival. Powell did the same before the U.N. Vice President Cheney misrepresented Kamel’s testimony in a Veterans of Foreign Wars speech in 2002. But no Bush administration official or apologist ever acknowledged this publicly to claim Iraq reconstituted its arms when U.N. inspectors were gone after 1998. They just ignored it. That Iraq’s lack of weaponry was confirmed repeatedly by the inspectors, Iraqi scientists, their families and Saddam Hussein himself made no difference.
I’ve been citing Kamel’s testimony, courtesy of Newsweek, as far back as September 2003. The idea that Hitchens isn’t aware of what Kamel said, four years after me and 12 years after British and U.S. intelligence, is absurd. It’s information he chooses to ignore.
In Slate, Hitchens also belittles the work done by U.N. inspectors, saying their work wasn’t reliable so long as Iraq’s Baath Party was in power. Yet Powell himself, on ABC-TV’s “This Week” in 2003, acknowledged that the government had relied on information from the inspectors between the Gulf War and 1998.
“From 1998 until we went in earlier this year, there was a period where we didn’t have benefit of U.N. inspectors actually on the ground, and our intelligence community had to do the best they could,” he said.
So the government relied on inspectors’ information until 1998 but couldn’t when inspectors returned in 2002? Before slipping in a total non sequitur about Libyan weapons — more answering of questions no one asked, even himself — Hitchens makes the indefensible charge that “To call for serious and unimpeachable inspections was to call, in effect, for a change of regime in Iraq.” This is Hitchens again ignoring that, shortly before the beginning of the war, Saddam Hussein not only gave U.N. inspectors access, but invited “direct U.S. involvement on the ground in disarming Iraq,” as reported in The New York Times and British Daily Telegraph in November 2003, an entreaty our government rejected in its all-out drive for war.
Hitchens defends himself weakly, and is able to do so only by ignoring widely available information. While not a very long piece, “So, Mr. Hitchens, weren’t you wrong about Iraq?” could have been much, much shorter.
Yes, he was.
Monday, March 19, 2007
SUPER IS RELATIVE
I’ve been shopping at Market Basket over the past weeks and have been shocked at the price difference between it and Shaw’s supermarkets — something to which I’d been blind because there’s a Shaw’s literally across the street from me (although the entrance is around the block).
The cheapest toothbrush at Shaw’s costs $2.19. There are many at the Somerville Market Basket for 99 cents.
A pound of carrots at Shaw’s is 99 cents. At Market Basket, that money buys you two pounds.
And so on. It’s also nice to get cheaper prices on almost everything without having to hand over a “rewards” card, in which the reward is saving almost as much money as you would by shopping somewhere else. Chains use these cards to collect data on what sells best and to whom, but good managers could provide the same information without the intrusion, and my local Shaw’s has always been incompetent at stocking, cards or no cards.
My complaints about Shaw’s are legion — the nonsensical and erratic inventory, failure to label, near fraud in the packaged salads and other incidents as mysterious and inexplicable as the heads on Easter Island. Any complaints I have about Market Basket are small potatoes in comparison.
Small potatoes, by the way, are also much cheaper at Market Basket.
The cheapest toothbrush at Shaw’s costs $2.19. There are many at the Somerville Market Basket for 99 cents.
A pound of carrots at Shaw’s is 99 cents. At Market Basket, that money buys you two pounds.
And so on. It’s also nice to get cheaper prices on almost everything without having to hand over a “rewards” card, in which the reward is saving almost as much money as you would by shopping somewhere else. Chains use these cards to collect data on what sells best and to whom, but good managers could provide the same information without the intrusion, and my local Shaw’s has always been incompetent at stocking, cards or no cards.
My complaints about Shaw’s are legion — the nonsensical and erratic inventory, failure to label, near fraud in the packaged salads and other incidents as mysterious and inexplicable as the heads on Easter Island. Any complaints I have about Market Basket are small potatoes in comparison.
Small potatoes, by the way, are also much cheaper at Market Basket.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
CAN CAN'T
The Diet Coke ads in the Porter Square T stop — featuring cans decorated or arranged to suggest when they should be enjoyed — have been bothering me for weeks.Yoga class is one suggestion, illustrated with an upside-down can. Morning is another, with a Starbucks-style sleeve added, implying the drink is like a hot cup of coffee and your hand needs protection while holding it.
Drinking Diet Coke in the morning still has a taint of ill health to it, unlike coffee, and it’s hard to reconcile the pure image of yoga with that of the dark, bubbly, excessively sweet and possibly cancerous cola. (I say all this as a fan; Diet Coke is my drink of choice, in all its varieties.) The ads are also odd because the Coca-Cola Co. is only weeks away from releasing Diet Coke Plus, which adds vitamins and minerals but still contains no calories, to an increasingly health-conscious world. Pushing an image of Diet Coke as healthful and wholesome could obscure the message of Diet Coke Plus.
But that’s the most that can be said about the campaign, which seems to be either minuscule or unfairly ignored. Some poking around the Internet found no buzz (or, I suppose, outrage) about it, or even media recognition. My understanding is that the international Weiden + Kennedy agency is handling Diet Coke advertising, but all the talk is about its television ads, not cheap posters thrown up for the public transportation crowd.
I’m left with my own take: The ads can’t possibly be effective. Yoga culture is a pure one, and its drink of choice is water. And coffee drinkers are not going to swap a hot and hearty breakfast drink for one intended to be ice cold and effervescent. The cultures are hermetic, impermeable — making the ads misguided and mystifying, like suggesting comic books to opera lovers or a cheese plate to people used to having a heaping hot fudge sundae for dessert. Different worlds.
This isn’t the only failed print campaign out there. I agree with Sabine’s blog, Sidetracked …, that Special K has a loser up as well.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
IRISH IT WERE OTHERWISE
In a little while I’m headed off to Central Square’s The Field to be in the presence of people celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. I do this because a friend is visiting, but being at a funeral would otherwise be preferable, if only because funerals tend to be legitimate expressions of emotion relating to a real event, while St. Patrick’s Day in the Boston area is about getting drunk. Few of the drunkards know they’re honoring the death of a guy who converted a lot of Celts to Christianity.
Boston has no shortage of Irish bars or people who go to them year-round to get drunk, so seeing bar lines stretch along the block March 17 is irritating and hard to justify. Imagine if we had a Driving Day, when people who drove did so for greater distances at greater speeds for no reason and people who didn’t joined in the fun by renting cars or jubilantly carpooling to nowhere.
The boast that on this day everyone is Irish, meaning they have license to drink excessively, should be abhorrent to the true Irish, especially because some still consider this a religious holiday (a what?) and their government sees the day as a chance to “Project, internationally, an accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional and sophisticated country.” Only if green vomit is as creative, professional and sophisticated as celebrators here seem to believe.
To me, the day will always be colored, so to speak, by two things:
Simone, who came to visit briefly from Ohio long ago one March weekend. I wanted to show off Chinatown, but either she or her other Cambridge friend balked at eating Chinese food on St. Patrick’s Day. In retrospect, Simone may have flown in for St. Patrick’s Day, not for me, but either way it explains a fair amount about why the relationship failed.
Five years of coming into work at the Boston Herald on the Sunday of the St. Patrick’s Day parade and finding, each time, scads of skankily clad Southie girl attendees, underage and overexcited, kept warm in the lingering winter by the knowledge they’d be sucking down countless illicit beers over the course of the day. This came to betoken the true start of spring, like the arrival of a certain breed of drunken bird or the spotting of a budding drunken flower, and the cheesy and somewhat grating auguring of winter’s end.
The outfit of the holiday is green, which is a pretty challenging color to wear seriously but on St. Patrick’s Day slides wholly into the absurd. Since the non-Irish who become Irish for the day think their adopted nation is populated by leprechauns rather than Samuel Beckett, their green clothing tend toward stockings and silly hats, often ones that look irrelevantly like the oversized buckled top hat of Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter. This is the dramatic last gasp of the silliness of winter wear — the toques, earmuffs and such — that makes the season so objectionably dorky.
As the last stage of our transition into warm weather, this is just that green vomit again. The true symbolism of the day is that, after several months of cold, we dress even more stupidly than we were and drink even more than we have been, throw up our green beer and bagels, stagger home and wake up saying: Enough of that. Too much of that.
Bring on the summer.
Boston has no shortage of Irish bars or people who go to them year-round to get drunk, so seeing bar lines stretch along the block March 17 is irritating and hard to justify. Imagine if we had a Driving Day, when people who drove did so for greater distances at greater speeds for no reason and people who didn’t joined in the fun by renting cars or jubilantly carpooling to nowhere.
The boast that on this day everyone is Irish, meaning they have license to drink excessively, should be abhorrent to the true Irish, especially because some still consider this a religious holiday (a what?) and their government sees the day as a chance to “Project, internationally, an accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional and sophisticated country.” Only if green vomit is as creative, professional and sophisticated as celebrators here seem to believe.
To me, the day will always be colored, so to speak, by two things:
Simone, who came to visit briefly from Ohio long ago one March weekend. I wanted to show off Chinatown, but either she or her other Cambridge friend balked at eating Chinese food on St. Patrick’s Day. In retrospect, Simone may have flown in for St. Patrick’s Day, not for me, but either way it explains a fair amount about why the relationship failed.
Five years of coming into work at the Boston Herald on the Sunday of the St. Patrick’s Day parade and finding, each time, scads of skankily clad Southie girl attendees, underage and overexcited, kept warm in the lingering winter by the knowledge they’d be sucking down countless illicit beers over the course of the day. This came to betoken the true start of spring, like the arrival of a certain breed of drunken bird or the spotting of a budding drunken flower, and the cheesy and somewhat grating auguring of winter’s end.
The outfit of the holiday is green, which is a pretty challenging color to wear seriously but on St. Patrick’s Day slides wholly into the absurd. Since the non-Irish who become Irish for the day think their adopted nation is populated by leprechauns rather than Samuel Beckett, their green clothing tend toward stockings and silly hats, often ones that look irrelevantly like the oversized buckled top hat of Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter. This is the dramatic last gasp of the silliness of winter wear — the toques, earmuffs and such — that makes the season so objectionably dorky.
As the last stage of our transition into warm weather, this is just that green vomit again. The true symbolism of the day is that, after several months of cold, we dress even more stupidly than we were and drink even more than we have been, throw up our green beer and bagels, stagger home and wake up saying: Enough of that. Too much of that.
Bring on the summer.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
DID SHE MEAN ‘BIG BOTHER’?
Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times included a take on the movement toward energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs, the sale of which California would mandate by 2012.
The story talked to one average consumer — Marie Riser, 57, a discount-store shopper.
“They are telling me which light bulb to use?” Riser said. “Talk about Big Brother. It’s almost here.”
There are terrific advantages to the bulbs, including their longevity and ability to help the environment. The companies that make standard incandescent bulbs sound feeble when they vow to double the energy efficiency of their products within three years; twice the efficiency still gets them nowhere near the benefits of fluorescent bulbs.
Riser’s outrage sounds odd in California, among the first to toss cigarette smokers outdoors and where gas is more expensive because the additive MTBE is banned. But it sounds downright bizarre when contrasted with everything else going on in the country right now.
For instance, in addition to Guantanamo and illegal wiretaps and such, a defense budget signed into law Oct. 17 included a surprise provision, requested by the White House, that allows the president to declare martial law in the case of “natural disaster, epidemic or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident.” These are all powers added to the president’s ability “to suppress, in a state, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy.”
The added powers basically allow martial law for any reason.
But, yes, the whole energy-saving light bulb thing, stilll a proposal and not slated to take place for five years, is an outrage. Shocking abuse of power. Horrifying. We mustn't let them get away with it. Et cetera.
The story talked to one average consumer — Marie Riser, 57, a discount-store shopper.
“They are telling me which light bulb to use?” Riser said. “Talk about Big Brother. It’s almost here.”
There are terrific advantages to the bulbs, including their longevity and ability to help the environment. The companies that make standard incandescent bulbs sound feeble when they vow to double the energy efficiency of their products within three years; twice the efficiency still gets them nowhere near the benefits of fluorescent bulbs.
Riser’s outrage sounds odd in California, among the first to toss cigarette smokers outdoors and where gas is more expensive because the additive MTBE is banned. But it sounds downright bizarre when contrasted with everything else going on in the country right now.
For instance, in addition to Guantanamo and illegal wiretaps and such, a defense budget signed into law Oct. 17 included a surprise provision, requested by the White House, that allows the president to declare martial law in the case of “natural disaster, epidemic or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident.” These are all powers added to the president’s ability “to suppress, in a state, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy.”
The added powers basically allow martial law for any reason.
But, yes, the whole energy-saving light bulb thing, stilll a proposal and not slated to take place for five years, is an outrage. Shocking abuse of power. Horrifying. We mustn't let them get away with it. Et cetera.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM
To keep gawkers from the one-time home of serial killer Son of Sam, the city of Yonkers, N.Y., changed a building’s address. But if stressing normalcy was the goal, changing the number to 42 Pine St. from 35 Pine St. might not have been the way to go.
It sure doesn’t fool tourists, who have no reason to be on Pine Street except to see Shrine to Son of Sam. And innocent visitors must wonder aloud to the people they’re visiting why there’s an even-numbered building on the odd-numbered side of the street, to which the inevitable answer is, “Because that’s where David Berkowitz used to live when he was talking to dogs and killing people.”
But that still puts Yonkers ahead of Greater Boston, where civil engineering disasters linger and multiply like recessive genes in a claustrophobically incestuous multigenerational family.
Recently, headed to work from Allston instead of Porter Square, I aimed to catch Interstate 93 south from Route 28 north but — because this brought me into Somerville, and I can get lost in Somerville just by stepping across the city line — failed. Despite the painfully redundant checking of maps before the trip, I missed the turn I needed onto 28 and found myself ready to merge onto 93 once I crossed the Charles River Bridge past the Museum of Science.
But I wanted to learn, and the cross street I was stopped at, like almost every major street in the area, lacks street signs. So I gestured to the guys in the car to my left, who looked like townies, to roll down their window. When the passenger did so, I asked if he knew what the street ahead of us was.
He knew that ahead to the left was the Prison Point Bridge.
Okay. But did they know what the gigantic street ahead of us was called?
“Hey, buddy,” they chortled, “we’re not the one who’s lost.”
There were many things I could have said to this, including that I wasn’t lost — I was headed straight ahead onto Interstate 93 — or that knowing the name of a one-block bridge was not the same as knowing the name of the multilane, multiblock boulevard that fed into it. (We were stopped at Edward Land Boulevard, which changes into Charlestown Avenue at Route 28. The bridge is also known as the John F. Gilmore Bridge.) Or that I hadn’t meant to criticize their lack of knowledge with my innocent restatement of the question. But it was too late for that.
I just said thanks and ignored them as they kept chuckling over my foolishness. True, they were idiots who would rather make fun of me than admit ignorance, but their lack of knowledge wasn’t their fault. While Yonkers made an irrational change for rational reasons, Greater Boston resists improvement for no reason at all. Yonkers may try to obfuscate a murderer’s address, but Greater Boston won’t clarify an address used by thousands of people each day.
It sure doesn’t fool tourists, who have no reason to be on Pine Street except to see Shrine to Son of Sam. And innocent visitors must wonder aloud to the people they’re visiting why there’s an even-numbered building on the odd-numbered side of the street, to which the inevitable answer is, “Because that’s where David Berkowitz used to live when he was talking to dogs and killing people.”
But that still puts Yonkers ahead of Greater Boston, where civil engineering disasters linger and multiply like recessive genes in a claustrophobically incestuous multigenerational family.
Recently, headed to work from Allston instead of Porter Square, I aimed to catch Interstate 93 south from Route 28 north but — because this brought me into Somerville, and I can get lost in Somerville just by stepping across the city line — failed. Despite the painfully redundant checking of maps before the trip, I missed the turn I needed onto 28 and found myself ready to merge onto 93 once I crossed the Charles River Bridge past the Museum of Science.
But I wanted to learn, and the cross street I was stopped at, like almost every major street in the area, lacks street signs. So I gestured to the guys in the car to my left, who looked like townies, to roll down their window. When the passenger did so, I asked if he knew what the street ahead of us was.
He knew that ahead to the left was the Prison Point Bridge.
Okay. But did they know what the gigantic street ahead of us was called?
“Hey, buddy,” they chortled, “we’re not the one who’s lost.”
There were many things I could have said to this, including that I wasn’t lost — I was headed straight ahead onto Interstate 93 — or that knowing the name of a one-block bridge was not the same as knowing the name of the multilane, multiblock boulevard that fed into it. (We were stopped at Edward Land Boulevard, which changes into Charlestown Avenue at Route 28. The bridge is also known as the John F. Gilmore Bridge.) Or that I hadn’t meant to criticize their lack of knowledge with my innocent restatement of the question. But it was too late for that.
I just said thanks and ignored them as they kept chuckling over my foolishness. True, they were idiots who would rather make fun of me than admit ignorance, but their lack of knowledge wasn’t their fault. While Yonkers made an irrational change for rational reasons, Greater Boston resists improvement for no reason at all. Yonkers may try to obfuscate a murderer’s address, but Greater Boston won’t clarify an address used by thousands of people each day.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS LATER
Has anyone noted the utter absurdity of our officials envying British antiterrorist tactics? For anyone who hasn’t read or heard the nonsense, let me quote at length from Eric Lichtblau’s article in Tuesday’s New York Times:
Gonzales and Chertoff struggle mightily to overlook their own well-documented, years-long and chargeless imprisonment, rendition and torture of — although many hardly deserve this description — terrorism suspects, foreign and domestic, as well as the illegal tapping of phones and investigation of finances enabled by presidential “signing statements” or merely national ignorance. We’ve held Jose Padilla and dozens, if not hundreds, of others in our prisons at length without charges, and it’s unlikely to the point of impossibility that some terrorist somewhere has overlooked this; so which would dissuade this theoretical terrorist more — being held without charges for 28 days by the Brits, or disappearing for several years into some nameless black hole of waterboarding and beatings run by the Americans?
Talking about what “American law generally requires” in this context is like noting that the Ten Commandments says “Thou shalt not kill.” This being the case, it’s not a little offensive watching Gonzales’ and Chertoff’s attempts at innocence via earnest yearning to adopt British techniques that might stem terrorism. It probably confuses the British, too.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzalez on Monday ordered a side-by-side review of American and British counterterrorism laws as a first step toward determining whether further changes in American law are warranted.
The plot to blow up airliners bound from Britain to the United States has highlighted differences in legal policies between the two allies, with American officials suggesting that their British counterparts have greater flexibility to prevent attacks.
Newly revised British counterterrorism laws, for instance, allow the authorities to hold a suspect for 28 days without charges, where American law generally requires that a suspect held in the civilian court system be charged or released within 48 hours.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in appearances on the Sunday morning news programs that he thought bringing American laws more closely into line with Britain’s, particularly regarding the detention of terror suspects without charges, could help deter threats at home.
“I think certainly making sure that we have the ability to be as nimble as possible with our surveillance, it’s very important,” Mr. Chertoff said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“And frankly,” Mr. Chertoff added, “their ability to hold people for a period of time gives them a tremendous advantage.”
Mr. Gonzales echoed those remarks Monday in an appearance before a veterans group in Chicago. Asked about Britain’s 28-day policy, he said, “That may be something we want to look at,” according to an account by The Associated Press. But he also said: “Is it consistent with our Constitution? We have to look at that.”
Gonzales and Chertoff struggle mightily to overlook their own well-documented, years-long and chargeless imprisonment, rendition and torture of — although many hardly deserve this description — terrorism suspects, foreign and domestic, as well as the illegal tapping of phones and investigation of finances enabled by presidential “signing statements” or merely national ignorance. We’ve held Jose Padilla and dozens, if not hundreds, of others in our prisons at length without charges, and it’s unlikely to the point of impossibility that some terrorist somewhere has overlooked this; so which would dissuade this theoretical terrorist more — being held without charges for 28 days by the Brits, or disappearing for several years into some nameless black hole of waterboarding and beatings run by the Americans?
Talking about what “American law generally requires” in this context is like noting that the Ten Commandments says “Thou shalt not kill.” This being the case, it’s not a little offensive watching Gonzales’ and Chertoff’s attempts at innocence via earnest yearning to adopt British techniques that might stem terrorism. It probably confuses the British, too.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
THE SHAMING OF THE CREW
Given the level of directorial interpolation and deletion going on in the Commonwealth Shakespeare Co.’s “Taming of the Shrew,” this year’s free Shakespeare on the Boston Common, it is more than a little odd and offensive that the ending ran as written in the late 16th century — with the explosive Katharina becoming an obedient servant to Petruchio, her new husband, and telling other wives at length that “thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, thy head, thy sovereign.” Petruchio makes 100 crowns off this display, winning it from other husbands.
Director Steven Maler set the play in Boston’s North End in the 1950s, which is about the last time Katharina’s sentiments might have been so enthusiastically embraced. It’s an entertaining conceit, but putting “Shrew” into a time capsule, even one back only 50 or so years, doesn’t really forgive the faithfulness to the script. Earlier in the show, when Lucentio urges other characters to “give him head,” meaning listen, another character turns away, muttering he doesn’t want to see any such thing.
Funny, but contemporary, and it’s cha cha-ing along a pretty fine line to make the play relevant in such a way to modern audiences without acknowledging that the resolution of the play, as written, is agonizingly sexist. To say the reaction to “give him head” and Katharina’s speech are both items for a time capsule, and thus acceptable as such to a modern audience, is glib; Lucentio and the others on stage share an idiom, so there’s no getting around that misunderstanding “give him head” is a comment to people in 2006, not the 1950s. There are Shakespeare purists who wouldn’t want to change the message of the play’s ending, but once you start screwing around with the text to make three hours of “Shrew” fly by, setting it in “Bostonia,” making Petruchio’s horse into a Vespa and such, you start to lose moral authority on leaving the sexism intact.
It would have been so easy to get around the excruciating nature of Katharina’s speech, too. As the people with whom I saw the play pointed out, Petruchio and Katharina could have been shown to be in collusion — as equals — to win the 100 crowns by falsely portraying her to be a meek and subservient woman.
This inadequate amount of effort, interestingly, reflected itself in a very different and very physical way on the production, which ended Sunday. The set for the play was beautiful, clever and accomplished, but it was also set low enough that much of the onstage action was impossible to see from only several meters back. It’s a mystery why set designer John Coyne couldn’t raise the action high enough over the lawn that audience members could see the action no matter how far back they sat.
The director and set designer made impressive efforts in their respective arenas, and each seemed to make decisions to hold back that caused discomfort to the audience — or, at least, to audience members with enough distance to appreciate what was lacking.
Director Steven Maler set the play in Boston’s North End in the 1950s, which is about the last time Katharina’s sentiments might have been so enthusiastically embraced. It’s an entertaining conceit, but putting “Shrew” into a time capsule, even one back only 50 or so years, doesn’t really forgive the faithfulness to the script. Earlier in the show, when Lucentio urges other characters to “give him head,” meaning listen, another character turns away, muttering he doesn’t want to see any such thing.
Funny, but contemporary, and it’s cha cha-ing along a pretty fine line to make the play relevant in such a way to modern audiences without acknowledging that the resolution of the play, as written, is agonizingly sexist. To say the reaction to “give him head” and Katharina’s speech are both items for a time capsule, and thus acceptable as such to a modern audience, is glib; Lucentio and the others on stage share an idiom, so there’s no getting around that misunderstanding “give him head” is a comment to people in 2006, not the 1950s. There are Shakespeare purists who wouldn’t want to change the message of the play’s ending, but once you start screwing around with the text to make three hours of “Shrew” fly by, setting it in “Bostonia,” making Petruchio’s horse into a Vespa and such, you start to lose moral authority on leaving the sexism intact.
It would have been so easy to get around the excruciating nature of Katharina’s speech, too. As the people with whom I saw the play pointed out, Petruchio and Katharina could have been shown to be in collusion — as equals — to win the 100 crowns by falsely portraying her to be a meek and subservient woman.
This inadequate amount of effort, interestingly, reflected itself in a very different and very physical way on the production, which ended Sunday. The set for the play was beautiful, clever and accomplished, but it was also set low enough that much of the onstage action was impossible to see from only several meters back. It’s a mystery why set designer John Coyne couldn’t raise the action high enough over the lawn that audience members could see the action no matter how far back they sat.
The director and set designer made impressive efforts in their respective arenas, and each seemed to make decisions to hold back that caused discomfort to the audience — or, at least, to audience members with enough distance to appreciate what was lacking.
Friday, August 11, 2006
ERRORISM
A new terrorist plot is coloring an ongoing political season, and that means there are some important things to remember in the upcoming weeks and months. All are important primarily because Republicans, and the increasingly indistinguishable Democratic U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, have politicized and will certainly continue to politicize the threat of terrorism, painting Democrats as weak and their election as an invitation to attack. This reached its nadir in the 2004 elections, when Vice President Cheney said:
Now, as then, we must remember that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, happened while a Republican — George W. Bush — was in office. We must also remember that every attempt since to strike the United States or its allies with terrorism has taken place with the same Republicans in office.
It is also worth noting that intelligence agencies and every sane, conscious and knowledgeable person on Earth acknowledges that Iraq, which the United States and its allies attacked for no reason having to do with 9/11, has become a breeding ground and rallying point for terrorists. The primary reason for this is that our presence in Iraq angers a lot of people. We have no good argument for having invaded or occupied the country — and the world knows it. (If we wanted to make a point about U.S. might and mercy, the delights of democracy and the perils of pursuing terrorism, it should rightfully have been done in Afghanistan, where we had moral authority. Instead, that nation is slipping back into the hands of the Taliban, just as we are losing in Iraq, and Osama bin Laden is still free.)
Hard-liners say terrorists would be emboldened by our leaving Iraq and strike us all the harder. As Lieberman said of the man who beat him in the Connecticut Democratic primary:
A proper response is that, in fact, the terrorists would have less reason to be angry if we left Iraq, and we would have more resources to use in keeping ourselves safe from them.
In short, Republicans and their policies are a provocation to terrorists and — considering Iraq and the astonishingly flawed Department of Homeland Security — wasteful of resources that could be used to combat terrorism. Voting them back into office would be a dangerous error.
It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice [in electing a president], because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.
Now, as then, we must remember that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, happened while a Republican — George W. Bush — was in office. We must also remember that every attempt since to strike the United States or its allies with terrorism has taken place with the same Republicans in office.
It is also worth noting that intelligence agencies and every sane, conscious and knowledgeable person on Earth acknowledges that Iraq, which the United States and its allies attacked for no reason having to do with 9/11, has become a breeding ground and rallying point for terrorists. The primary reason for this is that our presence in Iraq angers a lot of people. We have no good argument for having invaded or occupied the country — and the world knows it. (If we wanted to make a point about U.S. might and mercy, the delights of democracy and the perils of pursuing terrorism, it should rightfully have been done in Afghanistan, where we had moral authority. Instead, that nation is slipping back into the hands of the Taliban, just as we are losing in Iraq, and Osama bin Laden is still free.)
Hard-liners say terrorists would be emboldened by our leaving Iraq and strike us all the harder. As Lieberman said of the man who beat him in the Connecticut Democratic primary:
If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a certain date, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England. It will strengthen them, and they will strike again.
A proper response is that, in fact, the terrorists would have less reason to be angry if we left Iraq, and we would have more resources to use in keeping ourselves safe from them.
In short, Republicans and their policies are a provocation to terrorists and — considering Iraq and the astonishingly flawed Department of Homeland Security — wasteful of resources that could be used to combat terrorism. Voting them back into office would be a dangerous error.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
THE TEAMING MASSES
Since being an outsider breeds resentment, you can imagine the pique simmering in me from a dozen-plus years living in, ahem, Red Sox Nation and its overlapping districts of Patriotstown, Celticsville and Bruinsburg. Oh, and Revolutionboro. (A mighty small place, Revolutionboro.)
I was nervous the first time crossing the border into the nation; nearly everyone else on the T had prepared by dressing in native garb — a dizzying array of jerseys, jackets, T-shirts, caps and so on labeled “B” for “Red Sox.” I knew that when we got to the station we’d have to queue up and pass inspection, and I wasn’t wearing a single article of clothing advertising my allegiance to a local sports team. My jitters were soothed, though, by an official announcement that, upon arrival, “Those who are not wearing Red Sox-branded clothing shall be issued Red Sox-branded clothing.”
Well, no. This is just in the imagination of someone utterly disinterested in the fortunes of Ye Olde Towne Teame, or whatever cutesy, nonsense nickname sportswriters use when they tire of writing “Red Sox.” Neither the hordes of drunken fans that clog the T nor the horrendous traffic that clogs the streets at game time cause me anywhere near as much irritation as the simple ubiquity of Red Sox clothing. It warrants the same bitter, resigned stare from me as the Abercrombie & Fitch folk get, a look I can put into words as: “Could you try just a little harder?” Sox apparel is the equivalent of the pro-family, anticrime politician, or the people who controversially assert themselves as being in favor of fun and liking stuff. But good stuff. Not bad stuff. This is branding of the most obligatory nature, a national ID card, and the sense of oppression suggested by that is no accident.
I wish I got it. It would make my life much easier, I suspect, if I could be one of the Sox crowd. Throw on the jersey, put on the cap, take out a bank loan, head to Fenway. And talk endlessly and knowledgeably about the game, the players, the trades, our chances, that Theo, those darn Yankees. Argh, those Yankees. They suck! They’re kind of like Hitler, aren’t they? Yes, especially when they buy up all our players with their damned Yankee money — they have too much of it, it’s disgusting — and confuse us by making sure the people we loved as one of us last season we vilify this season as turncoats.
I don’t get any of this, unfortunately.
The team’s success, or individual players’ genius on the field, reflects little upon Boston and not at all upon the individual fans who get so worked up contemplating one, the other or their opposite.
There are metaphorical aspects of the team to consider, I acknowledge, romantically casting us and the city as scrappy, lovable losers: the players are underdogs struggling against a curse, a storyline that had to be rewritten when the Sox actually won the World Series, and had to be revised again, in a Pynchonesque petering out of plot and structure, when it again lost; the team is also an embodiment of a city struggling to maintain its pride against a behemoth quietly buying up and shutting down its soul. As much as this should resonate, it’s hard to stay serious about it when the players earn millions a year and inevitably turn free agent, only for the narrative to be repeated the next year with different players.
Now, if we invest emotion in the players as our surrogates on the field and against New York, we also have to admit that pretty soon all these guys will be off to a bigger paycheck elsewhere. And that just leads us to admit that Boston is a city of transients, an endless line of passers-through in a queue that just happens to lead past a souvenir shop full of Red Sox paraphernalia. While we’re waiting to leave, we’ve nothing better to do than shop. Beats talking to the guy in front of us, but it’s not a very romantic image.
When Red Sox players really were Bostonians — born here, living here, with family here — our tribalism made some sense, as we could argue or imagine that the players were us and, if we were good and fate smiled upon us, vice versa. The skills of the players were worth celebrating because they suggested native talent, or at least the pluckiness that kept us competing through several decades of accursedness. There was an emotional connection.
With the revolving door of players, fandom has become a very different game: one of calculation, of dollars and cents, of whether management bought and sold the right players. In terms of dramatic narrative, it should be about as fun as hunting through the stocks tables in the Journal to see how much money other people made that day. Somehow, the Red Sox and other sports teams at its level have figured out how to make people respond emotionally to this, and even pay for the privilege.
Inevitably, I’m led to a final metaphor: of mass slavish, unthinking devotion to a government that does absolutely nothing for its citizens but offer endless war, glimpses of other people’s wealth and bright, ubiquitous flags to wave. But that sounds depressingly like the United States, and we don’t live in the United States. We live in Red Sox Nation.
I was nervous the first time crossing the border into the nation; nearly everyone else on the T had prepared by dressing in native garb — a dizzying array of jerseys, jackets, T-shirts, caps and so on labeled “B” for “Red Sox.” I knew that when we got to the station we’d have to queue up and pass inspection, and I wasn’t wearing a single article of clothing advertising my allegiance to a local sports team. My jitters were soothed, though, by an official announcement that, upon arrival, “Those who are not wearing Red Sox-branded clothing shall be issued Red Sox-branded clothing.”
Well, no. This is just in the imagination of someone utterly disinterested in the fortunes of Ye Olde Towne Teame, or whatever cutesy, nonsense nickname sportswriters use when they tire of writing “Red Sox.” Neither the hordes of drunken fans that clog the T nor the horrendous traffic that clogs the streets at game time cause me anywhere near as much irritation as the simple ubiquity of Red Sox clothing. It warrants the same bitter, resigned stare from me as the Abercrombie & Fitch folk get, a look I can put into words as: “Could you try just a little harder?” Sox apparel is the equivalent of the pro-family, anticrime politician, or the people who controversially assert themselves as being in favor of fun and liking stuff. But good stuff. Not bad stuff. This is branding of the most obligatory nature, a national ID card, and the sense of oppression suggested by that is no accident.
I wish I got it. It would make my life much easier, I suspect, if I could be one of the Sox crowd. Throw on the jersey, put on the cap, take out a bank loan, head to Fenway. And talk endlessly and knowledgeably about the game, the players, the trades, our chances, that Theo, those darn Yankees. Argh, those Yankees. They suck! They’re kind of like Hitler, aren’t they? Yes, especially when they buy up all our players with their damned Yankee money — they have too much of it, it’s disgusting — and confuse us by making sure the people we loved as one of us last season we vilify this season as turncoats.
I don’t get any of this, unfortunately.
The team’s success, or individual players’ genius on the field, reflects little upon Boston and not at all upon the individual fans who get so worked up contemplating one, the other or their opposite.
There are metaphorical aspects of the team to consider, I acknowledge, romantically casting us and the city as scrappy, lovable losers: the players are underdogs struggling against a curse, a storyline that had to be rewritten when the Sox actually won the World Series, and had to be revised again, in a Pynchonesque petering out of plot and structure, when it again lost; the team is also an embodiment of a city struggling to maintain its pride against a behemoth quietly buying up and shutting down its soul. As much as this should resonate, it’s hard to stay serious about it when the players earn millions a year and inevitably turn free agent, only for the narrative to be repeated the next year with different players.
Now, if we invest emotion in the players as our surrogates on the field and against New York, we also have to admit that pretty soon all these guys will be off to a bigger paycheck elsewhere. And that just leads us to admit that Boston is a city of transients, an endless line of passers-through in a queue that just happens to lead past a souvenir shop full of Red Sox paraphernalia. While we’re waiting to leave, we’ve nothing better to do than shop. Beats talking to the guy in front of us, but it’s not a very romantic image.
When Red Sox players really were Bostonians — born here, living here, with family here — our tribalism made some sense, as we could argue or imagine that the players were us and, if we were good and fate smiled upon us, vice versa. The skills of the players were worth celebrating because they suggested native talent, or at least the pluckiness that kept us competing through several decades of accursedness. There was an emotional connection.
With the revolving door of players, fandom has become a very different game: one of calculation, of dollars and cents, of whether management bought and sold the right players. In terms of dramatic narrative, it should be about as fun as hunting through the stocks tables in the Journal to see how much money other people made that day. Somehow, the Red Sox and other sports teams at its level have figured out how to make people respond emotionally to this, and even pay for the privilege.
Inevitably, I’m led to a final metaphor: of mass slavish, unthinking devotion to a government that does absolutely nothing for its citizens but offer endless war, glimpses of other people’s wealth and bright, ubiquitous flags to wave. But that sounds depressingly like the United States, and we don’t live in the United States. We live in Red Sox Nation.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
BENEATH THE COLUMN
I’ve referred to New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman roughly a half-dozen times in this blog, each time bashing him as uselessly obtuse and confused. I’ve called him “deranged,” an idiot, theorized he’s “absolutely fucking nuts,” “wrong-headed,” a weirdo, “off the rails,” a babbler, a “bright-eyed rube,” someone struggling to “stay on his meds.”
But now I feel like the idiot, because he’s none of the above.
What he is, it turns out, is an extraordinarily wealthy man — living in a $9.3 million home, married into a family with an estimated worth of $2.7 billion — essentially working undercover as a shill, a beard, a stalking horse for his class, nine times out of 10 espousing cynically self-serving ideas in the guise of globalized idealist.
Struggling to see clearly into the reasoned, liberal penumbra of the Times, I imagined him to be smart but misguided, intellectually isolated by the shock of 9/11 but worth listening to for signs of recovery. In fact, his dangerous opinions (Iraq is a grand experiment we should support! It’s a flat flat flat flat world, and we should embrace a globalized economy because it’s so exciting to compete!) are nothing but the standard arguments of an elite who doesn’t have to care what happens to the rest of us — and doesn’t.
His biography on the Times’ Web site somehow fails to give full disclosure of his immense wealth or suggest how it may affect his views or writing; David Sirota, writing late last month on Huffingtonpost.com, fills in the missing details.
I’ve rolled my eyes uncountable times after reading Friedman’s columns, but never caught on to why they’re so overwhelmingly misguided. Despite my acknowledgment that I was a willing participant in my own deception, that doesn’t mean I feel any less deceived. Or angry.
With the very rare exception, notably his columns on GM feeding American’s oil addiction, Friedman does not write as one of us. He is, in fact, one of them — a member of one of the 100 richest families in the country, according to Washingtonian Magazine, one of those who are not hurt by war or globalism and thus cannot honestly discuss it from the level of one who is.
Spread the word: Friedman doesn’t write nonsense; he writes propaganda.
But now I feel like the idiot, because he’s none of the above.
What he is, it turns out, is an extraordinarily wealthy man — living in a $9.3 million home, married into a family with an estimated worth of $2.7 billion — essentially working undercover as a shill, a beard, a stalking horse for his class, nine times out of 10 espousing cynically self-serving ideas in the guise of globalized idealist.
Struggling to see clearly into the reasoned, liberal penumbra of the Times, I imagined him to be smart but misguided, intellectually isolated by the shock of 9/11 but worth listening to for signs of recovery. In fact, his dangerous opinions (Iraq is a grand experiment we should support! It’s a flat flat flat flat world, and we should embrace a globalized economy because it’s so exciting to compete!) are nothing but the standard arguments of an elite who doesn’t have to care what happens to the rest of us — and doesn’t.
His biography on the Times’ Web site somehow fails to give full disclosure of his immense wealth or suggest how it may affect his views or writing; David Sirota, writing late last month on Huffingtonpost.com, fills in the missing details.
I’ve rolled my eyes uncountable times after reading Friedman’s columns, but never caught on to why they’re so overwhelmingly misguided. Despite my acknowledgment that I was a willing participant in my own deception, that doesn’t mean I feel any less deceived. Or angry.
With the very rare exception, notably his columns on GM feeding American’s oil addiction, Friedman does not write as one of us. He is, in fact, one of them — a member of one of the 100 richest families in the country, according to Washingtonian Magazine, one of those who are not hurt by war or globalism and thus cannot honestly discuss it from the level of one who is.
Spread the word: Friedman doesn’t write nonsense; he writes propaganda.
Monday, August 07, 2006
EQUALS DESPAIR
Stagnant wages, rising costs. For the longest time this formula that cannot be solved meant little to me, because I was earning good money and spending little of it. Now I’m earning much less money for roughly tripled living expenses, and a great deal of my pay goes to just getting back and forth to work: I bought a car and now must pay maintenance, insurance and gas for it. That gas is flirting with costing $3 a gallon at even the cheapest station — and by flirting I mean shucking its clothes with the zeal of a porn star doused in Spanish fly — is just part my financial depression.
The other part will seem ridiculous, but here goes: The bean and rice quesadilla I get almost daily for lunch at Anna’s Taqueria has risen in price to $3.35 from $2.95, which means at the checkout I’m paying $3.52 instead of $3.20. This happened last week. (The previous rise at the checkout had been a relatively harmless 10-cent step in June of last year.)
Some menu items have risen less in price — the chips and mini quesadillas have gone up 10 cents. And some menu items haven’t risen in price at all — guacamole is still 55 cents.
Unfortunately, I never buy mini quesadillas or guacamole. My lunch has jumped in price by 10 percent, and I drive some 90 miles a day in a car bound inevitably to break down part by part powered by a terrorist-friendly, environmentally unfriendly substance the price of which is rising inexorably, even as my wages stay the same.
How will I vote in 2008? For someone who truly understands diplomacy and who will not casually toss it aside to exacerbate unrest among petrostates in pursuit of “democracy” or armageddon. For someone who has an energy policy that moves us away from hydrocarbon fuels and global warming. For someone who seems to understand that I, not the richest 1 percent, need to see some improvement in my paycheck and bank account.
Stagnant wages, rising costs. To keep up, I could skip the bean and rice part of the quesadilla and just get cheese. That costs $2.90, up from $2.60, which should put me right back to paying $3.20 per day for lunch.
The other part will seem ridiculous, but here goes: The bean and rice quesadilla I get almost daily for lunch at Anna’s Taqueria has risen in price to $3.35 from $2.95, which means at the checkout I’m paying $3.52 instead of $3.20. This happened last week. (The previous rise at the checkout had been a relatively harmless 10-cent step in June of last year.)
Some menu items have risen less in price — the chips and mini quesadillas have gone up 10 cents. And some menu items haven’t risen in price at all — guacamole is still 55 cents.
Unfortunately, I never buy mini quesadillas or guacamole. My lunch has jumped in price by 10 percent, and I drive some 90 miles a day in a car bound inevitably to break down part by part powered by a terrorist-friendly, environmentally unfriendly substance the price of which is rising inexorably, even as my wages stay the same.
How will I vote in 2008? For someone who truly understands diplomacy and who will not casually toss it aside to exacerbate unrest among petrostates in pursuit of “democracy” or armageddon. For someone who has an energy policy that moves us away from hydrocarbon fuels and global warming. For someone who seems to understand that I, not the richest 1 percent, need to see some improvement in my paycheck and bank account.
Stagnant wages, rising costs. To keep up, I could skip the bean and rice part of the quesadilla and just get cheese. That costs $2.90, up from $2.60, which should put me right back to paying $3.20 per day for lunch.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
JUST LET THE PLAN B
Slowly, oh so haltingly, there’s progress on making the Plan B “morning-after” contraceptive available over the counter, but only to women 18 years or older.
Conservatives, the small-government people, are still opposed. In its Tuesday coverage of the issue, The New York Times quoted the Concerned Women of America’s Wendy Wright — the perfect name for someone in her position, from the WASPish “Wendy” to the metonymy of “Wright” for those she represents — as saying it was wrong to sell the drug over the counter because any man could buy it.
“You could have a statutory rapist buy the drug in order to cover up his abuse,” Wright said.
It’s worth noting Wright’s technique in this flagrantly flawed argument: She has tried to find the worst possible use of the drug to demonstrate the horror of allowing it to be used at all, a strange gambit for people broadly associated with supporting the free flow of automatic weapons and cop-killer bullets as a celebration of American rights. If it’s unfair to lump birth control opponents with gun nuts, then consider that Band-Aids might be stripped from pharmacy shelves because, obviously, domestic abusers could use them to heal the wounds they’ve inflicted.
It’s also worth considering that bans on abortion keep failing because they make no provision for girls or women who have been the victims of incest or — right — rape. A girl who has been raped, statutorily or otherwise, could imaginably want to take the Plan B contraceptive to ensure she doesn’t bear the baby of her abuser.
It would be the rare, obstinate but ignorant girl who would insist on waiting nine months to give birth to a man’s baby just to prove him a criminal. A medical examination and DNA swabbing could do the same with less impact on her lifestyle.
The galling thing about the Plan B debate is that it hinges now on a woman being 18 or older to get the drug when the age of consent comes up to four years earlier in all but 14 states in this country. For example, a girl in Hawaii is legally entitled to have sex at the age of 14, but she wouldn’t be entitled to buy this form of contraception. It has nothing to do with physiology; a 23-4 vote by a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee approved the drug for all ages, only to be overruled by an agency official on moral rather than scientific grounds. The drug is 18-and-over because manufacturer Barr Pharmaceuticals rewrote the application to make agency approval more likely among conservatives, who are also the state’s-rights people.
This would put Plan B in a short but pervasive list of U.S. age inequities, including the classic protest that 18-year-olds can join the Army, kill and be killed, but not drink alcohol for another three years. My favorite is the little-noticed puzzle that kids are charged an adult price for movies once they’re 12 or so, but can’t see R-rated movies alone until they’re 17. There’s a roughly five-year gap in which they pay as an adult but can’t go to such movies without an “adult guardian.”
None of this makes any sense, of course. Especially in the context of the ages of consent already established state by state, the 18-or-older restriction seems on the one hand pointlessly arbitrary, on the other hypocritically moralistic — like keeping a hangover treatment for those 23 or older because you don’t want to encourage binge drinking among those most likely to engage in that behavior.
Once you’re legal, you’re legal, and there shouldn’t be different levels of permission based on an FDA official’s opinion of the rightness of your actions.
Conservatives, the small-government people, are still opposed. In its Tuesday coverage of the issue, The New York Times quoted the Concerned Women of America’s Wendy Wright — the perfect name for someone in her position, from the WASPish “Wendy” to the metonymy of “Wright” for those she represents — as saying it was wrong to sell the drug over the counter because any man could buy it.
“You could have a statutory rapist buy the drug in order to cover up his abuse,” Wright said.
It’s worth noting Wright’s technique in this flagrantly flawed argument: She has tried to find the worst possible use of the drug to demonstrate the horror of allowing it to be used at all, a strange gambit for people broadly associated with supporting the free flow of automatic weapons and cop-killer bullets as a celebration of American rights. If it’s unfair to lump birth control opponents with gun nuts, then consider that Band-Aids might be stripped from pharmacy shelves because, obviously, domestic abusers could use them to heal the wounds they’ve inflicted.
It’s also worth considering that bans on abortion keep failing because they make no provision for girls or women who have been the victims of incest or — right — rape. A girl who has been raped, statutorily or otherwise, could imaginably want to take the Plan B contraceptive to ensure she doesn’t bear the baby of her abuser.
It would be the rare, obstinate but ignorant girl who would insist on waiting nine months to give birth to a man’s baby just to prove him a criminal. A medical examination and DNA swabbing could do the same with less impact on her lifestyle.
The galling thing about the Plan B debate is that it hinges now on a woman being 18 or older to get the drug when the age of consent comes up to four years earlier in all but 14 states in this country. For example, a girl in Hawaii is legally entitled to have sex at the age of 14, but she wouldn’t be entitled to buy this form of contraception. It has nothing to do with physiology; a 23-4 vote by a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee approved the drug for all ages, only to be overruled by an agency official on moral rather than scientific grounds. The drug is 18-and-over because manufacturer Barr Pharmaceuticals rewrote the application to make agency approval more likely among conservatives, who are also the state’s-rights people.
This would put Plan B in a short but pervasive list of U.S. age inequities, including the classic protest that 18-year-olds can join the Army, kill and be killed, but not drink alcohol for another three years. My favorite is the little-noticed puzzle that kids are charged an adult price for movies once they’re 12 or so, but can’t see R-rated movies alone until they’re 17. There’s a roughly five-year gap in which they pay as an adult but can’t go to such movies without an “adult guardian.”
None of this makes any sense, of course. Especially in the context of the ages of consent already established state by state, the 18-or-older restriction seems on the one hand pointlessly arbitrary, on the other hypocritically moralistic — like keeping a hangover treatment for those 23 or older because you don’t want to encourage binge drinking among those most likely to engage in that behavior.
Once you’re legal, you’re legal, and there shouldn’t be different levels of permission based on an FDA official’s opinion of the rightness of your actions.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
THANKS, MBTA. NO, REALLY.
The MBTA comes in for a lot of criticism, and rightfully so. Understanding the agency’s fiscal bind and having some vague hope Daniel A. Grabauskas can fix the system as he did the motor vehicle registries doesn’t mean giving a pass on performance; if anything, the MBTA needs all the criticism it can get to help set goals and priorities.
But when it does something right, that should be mentioned, too.
And yesterday, when I noticed my monthly T pass hadn’t arrived and called to inquire, the MBTA really did something right.
A live person picked up the phone immediately. She found my information rapidly and, while noting that the card had been sent and should already be here, didn’t automatically reject my problem. In fact, she made a long-term fix — changing my address from the one I’d been at nearly a year ago — and sent out another card.
This was so far from the conflict and argument I expected that I was essentially stunned into joyous silence. This is to correct that silence, more or less.
UPDATE: A Federal Express package arrived this morning. Inside was an envelope holding my new T pass. I would never have guessed the MBTA would Fedex the pass to me. Incredible! Wonderful! Surprising!
But when it does something right, that should be mentioned, too.
And yesterday, when I noticed my monthly T pass hadn’t arrived and called to inquire, the MBTA really did something right.
A live person picked up the phone immediately. She found my information rapidly and, while noting that the card had been sent and should already be here, didn’t automatically reject my problem. In fact, she made a long-term fix — changing my address from the one I’d been at nearly a year ago — and sent out another card.
This was so far from the conflict and argument I expected that I was essentially stunned into joyous silence. This is to correct that silence, more or less.
UPDATE: A Federal Express package arrived this morning. Inside was an envelope holding my new T pass. I would never have guessed the MBTA would Fedex the pass to me. Incredible! Wonderful! Surprising!
Saturday, July 22, 2006
THE FRUSTRATING SIDE OF SEARS
Here’s another reason to shop local, or at least to stay away from buying online — and another one of those customer-service nightmares that seem to happen only to me (although I know that cannot be true). It’s also, finally, a warning for anyone buying from Sears.com.
I made that mistake and, following instructions on the back of my receipt, went to the Sears at CambridgeSide Galleria yesterday to return my online purchase, a swimsuit, and get my credit card reimbursed. The instructions were simple: Bring that credit card, the receipt, the swimsuit and packaging. No problem. The swimsuit never even came out of the packaging.
At Sears, though, I was told there was a problem. I was required to bring a printed e-mail holding a confirmation number — something not mentioned, obviously, on the return instructions on the receipt. I pointed this out more than a dozen times over the course of the next hour or so as I climbed the hierarchy of sales clerk, manager and, via telephone, Sears and Sears.com representatives and their respective managers and managers’ managers.
The conversations all began with a Sears worker explaining that this e-mail — back home on my computer — was necessary to the reimbursement process. I would read them their own return instructions from the receipt sent me with the swimsuit. They would reply, “Yes, but we need the confirmation number on the e-mail.” I would repeat that the return instructions said nothing about this. They would reply, “Yes, but we need the confirmation number on the e-mail.” The warning about the return process is also visible on the Web site at some point, I was told, but this proves or resolves nothing. If Sears really wants an e-mail confirmation number, it can say so on its receipt instructions as well as online or in an e-mail.
After all, consider the process: I go to Sears.com, find item, buy item, wait for item to arrive in the mail. When the item arrives on time, I have no reason to go looking back online or in my e-mail. When the item arrives with return instructions printed on the back of the receipt, I get a brand-new reason not to go looking back online or in my e-mail. If I had, isn’t it just as reasonable to conclude that the paper instructions are correct and the electronic wrong as it is to assume the electronic instructions are correct and the paper wrong?
“Yes, but,” they said, “we need the confirmation number on the e-mail.”
Finally, a Sears representative offered a way out: The store could give me a gift card for that amount.
This is retailers’ favorite way of dealing with complaints: “We’re sorry eating our product poisoned you, causing you a week of severe gastric distress. Here is a coupon for more of our product.” But I wasn’t eager to go shopping at Sears again. I insisted that a gift card was an inadequate and unacceptable response to my problem. Another impasse.
Finally, I asked if the store could cash out my gift card. The Sears representative on the telephone said yes, if the store agreed to — never mind that the store manager had called this representative looking for a solution to the impasse. But the store manager agreed to cash out the gift card. Problem solved, in much the same way Jack Nicholson almost got his wheat toast in “Five Easy Pieces,” by ordering a chicken salad sandwich with no chicken salad.
We went upstairs. The Sears manager processed the gift card and an immediate gift card reimbursement. She put the reimbursement, it turns out, on my credit card.
I made that mistake and, following instructions on the back of my receipt, went to the Sears at CambridgeSide Galleria yesterday to return my online purchase, a swimsuit, and get my credit card reimbursed. The instructions were simple: Bring that credit card, the receipt, the swimsuit and packaging. No problem. The swimsuit never even came out of the packaging.
At Sears, though, I was told there was a problem. I was required to bring a printed e-mail holding a confirmation number — something not mentioned, obviously, on the return instructions on the receipt. I pointed this out more than a dozen times over the course of the next hour or so as I climbed the hierarchy of sales clerk, manager and, via telephone, Sears and Sears.com representatives and their respective managers and managers’ managers.
The conversations all began with a Sears worker explaining that this e-mail — back home on my computer — was necessary to the reimbursement process. I would read them their own return instructions from the receipt sent me with the swimsuit. They would reply, “Yes, but we need the confirmation number on the e-mail.” I would repeat that the return instructions said nothing about this. They would reply, “Yes, but we need the confirmation number on the e-mail.” The warning about the return process is also visible on the Web site at some point, I was told, but this proves or resolves nothing. If Sears really wants an e-mail confirmation number, it can say so on its receipt instructions as well as online or in an e-mail.
After all, consider the process: I go to Sears.com, find item, buy item, wait for item to arrive in the mail. When the item arrives on time, I have no reason to go looking back online or in my e-mail. When the item arrives with return instructions printed on the back of the receipt, I get a brand-new reason not to go looking back online or in my e-mail. If I had, isn’t it just as reasonable to conclude that the paper instructions are correct and the electronic wrong as it is to assume the electronic instructions are correct and the paper wrong?
“Yes, but,” they said, “we need the confirmation number on the e-mail.”
Finally, a Sears representative offered a way out: The store could give me a gift card for that amount.
This is retailers’ favorite way of dealing with complaints: “We’re sorry eating our product poisoned you, causing you a week of severe gastric distress. Here is a coupon for more of our product.” But I wasn’t eager to go shopping at Sears again. I insisted that a gift card was an inadequate and unacceptable response to my problem. Another impasse.
Finally, I asked if the store could cash out my gift card. The Sears representative on the telephone said yes, if the store agreed to — never mind that the store manager had called this representative looking for a solution to the impasse. But the store manager agreed to cash out the gift card. Problem solved, in much the same way Jack Nicholson almost got his wheat toast in “Five Easy Pieces,” by ordering a chicken salad sandwich with no chicken salad.
We went upstairs. The Sears manager processed the gift card and an immediate gift card reimbursement. She put the reimbursement, it turns out, on my credit card.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
ZEITGEIST LEBENSRAUM
In the words of the Zeitgeist Gallery’s Alan Nidle, “We live to fight another day.”
Last week’s hearing over whether the gallery can legally hold performances resulted in what sounds like, as Nidle described it, a very odd and dissatisfying compromise for everyone involved: The city says the Zeitgeist can go on doing what it wants for a year, but it will be monitored. At the end of the year, the city will decide what to do.
What’s interesting about this compromise is that Nidle doesn’t intend to do anything differently at the gallery, and the city knows it.
The gallery goes on irritating the city. The city goes on threatening the gallery. It’s something like the cartoon relationship between the sheepdog and the wolf who call off their life-and-death battle at the end of the workday.
Perhaps the decision makes sense considering only one gallery neighbor came to the hearing to complain that its performances were a bother — but not much of one. Usually, the neighbor returned home only after performances were over. Nidle thought the neighbor seemed like a pretty nice guy.
(This is something of a trend. Gus Rancatore, who is about to be pushed out of his Someday Cafe location in Davis Square, has pretty nice things to say about Peter Creyf, whose Mr. Crepe would be the replacement. It seems like only in the greater Cambridge area would business owners seem so phlegmatically resigned to acknowledge the finer points of the people ruining their lives — although in each case, these are just stalking horses. Nidle is really threatened by a voraciously officious, officiously voracious city government; Rancatore is falling victim to disingenuously rapacious, rapaciously disingenuous landlord Richard Fraiman.)
It’s unlikely to matter. By the time the city again takes up the matter of the Zeitgeist, the gallery will probably already be on the move to Central Square. Nidle has his eye on the old Skippy White’s space at 538 Massachusetts Ave., where he will add to an already vibrant square but hardly do himself a favor in the “I’m not a club” perception.
Last week’s hearing over whether the gallery can legally hold performances resulted in what sounds like, as Nidle described it, a very odd and dissatisfying compromise for everyone involved: The city says the Zeitgeist can go on doing what it wants for a year, but it will be monitored. At the end of the year, the city will decide what to do.
What’s interesting about this compromise is that Nidle doesn’t intend to do anything differently at the gallery, and the city knows it.
The gallery goes on irritating the city. The city goes on threatening the gallery. It’s something like the cartoon relationship between the sheepdog and the wolf who call off their life-and-death battle at the end of the workday.
Perhaps the decision makes sense considering only one gallery neighbor came to the hearing to complain that its performances were a bother — but not much of one. Usually, the neighbor returned home only after performances were over. Nidle thought the neighbor seemed like a pretty nice guy.
(This is something of a trend. Gus Rancatore, who is about to be pushed out of his Someday Cafe location in Davis Square, has pretty nice things to say about Peter Creyf, whose Mr. Crepe would be the replacement. It seems like only in the greater Cambridge area would business owners seem so phlegmatically resigned to acknowledge the finer points of the people ruining their lives — although in each case, these are just stalking horses. Nidle is really threatened by a voraciously officious, officiously voracious city government; Rancatore is falling victim to disingenuously rapacious, rapaciously disingenuous landlord Richard Fraiman.)
It’s unlikely to matter. By the time the city again takes up the matter of the Zeitgeist, the gallery will probably already be on the move to Central Square. Nidle has his eye on the old Skippy White’s space at 538 Massachusetts Ave., where he will add to an already vibrant square but hardly do himself a favor in the “I’m not a club” perception.
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
ZEITGEIST WELTSCHMERTZ
There’s a hearing scheduled for 8:45 p.m. Thursday that could end, or save, performances at the Zeitgeist Gallery, a vital part of Cambridge’s art and music scene for a dozen years. A Cambridge zoning official, identified by a Zeitgeist supporter as Sean O’Grady, insists the gallery should have a $500 entertainment license and is known to be bringing forward at least one neighbor who opposes performance at the space. (“Today, O’Grady said there were other opponents,” said Rob Chalfen, maintainer of the gallery e-mail list.)
The contradiction is obvious: If an entertainment license resolves the problem for the city, what relevance do complaining neighbors have? Certainly people crabby over avant-garde sound pollution aren’t going to suddenly be satisfied knowing the din that’s suffered is backed by a $500 fee.
The city, it seems, is using the neighbors to make a point, which is that it demands money — the city’s vaunted fiscal responsibility run amok. It’s not dunning the spectacularly endowed Harvard University here, but a small art gallery that happens to think art isn’t just hung on walls.
And the gallery’s Alan Nidle doesn’t want to pay $500 for an entertainment license when he’s only asking donations from people attending, just as you can’t be running a bar if you only give away the booze (and pass the occasional hat). That argument may not hold back the city this time, although it has in the past, and the Zeitgeist may suffer for it.
At a reception to be held after the hearing, Chalfen said, “people can learn about the Zeitgeist’s alternate plan — to move to a nearby space that is both currently empty and zoned for what the city calls theater.”
The Zeitgeist has moved already this year, from space at 1353 Cambridge St. that is now the all-music Lily Pad, to 186 Hampshire St., which was the New Words Collective before that moved to 7 Temple St. A move may be the best thing for it, if it gets the city off its collective — or collectivist — back.
But for a city as boastful of its funk as it is of its fiscal power, this is an awfully grim approach to an enduring source of art and enlightenment, and it seems like part of an ominous trend.
The Brattle Theatre is only halfway to the $500,000 it needs to stay in Harvard Square after the end of the year; Toscanini’s is very likely losing its Davis Square Someday Cafe, and its Harvard Square location will be shut down while the landlord works on the host building — effectively cutting two-thirds of Toscanini’s revenue stream. This follows hard on the heels of the construction in front of Toscanini’s Central Square location that crippled business for weeks.
These are the businesses we need to support. I’ll be at work during the Zeitgeist hearing, damnit, but I hope to stop by the reception afterward to find out what’s going on.
The hearing is at the Senior Center, 806 Massachusetts Ave., across from City Hall in Central Square. The reception will be at the Zeitgeist, Chalfen said, “regardless of the outcome.”
The contradiction is obvious: If an entertainment license resolves the problem for the city, what relevance do complaining neighbors have? Certainly people crabby over avant-garde sound pollution aren’t going to suddenly be satisfied knowing the din that’s suffered is backed by a $500 fee.
The city, it seems, is using the neighbors to make a point, which is that it demands money — the city’s vaunted fiscal responsibility run amok. It’s not dunning the spectacularly endowed Harvard University here, but a small art gallery that happens to think art isn’t just hung on walls.
And the gallery’s Alan Nidle doesn’t want to pay $500 for an entertainment license when he’s only asking donations from people attending, just as you can’t be running a bar if you only give away the booze (and pass the occasional hat). That argument may not hold back the city this time, although it has in the past, and the Zeitgeist may suffer for it.
At a reception to be held after the hearing, Chalfen said, “people can learn about the Zeitgeist’s alternate plan — to move to a nearby space that is both currently empty and zoned for what the city calls theater.”
The Zeitgeist has moved already this year, from space at 1353 Cambridge St. that is now the all-music Lily Pad, to 186 Hampshire St., which was the New Words Collective before that moved to 7 Temple St. A move may be the best thing for it, if it gets the city off its collective — or collectivist — back.
But for a city as boastful of its funk as it is of its fiscal power, this is an awfully grim approach to an enduring source of art and enlightenment, and it seems like part of an ominous trend.
The Brattle Theatre is only halfway to the $500,000 it needs to stay in Harvard Square after the end of the year; Toscanini’s is very likely losing its Davis Square Someday Cafe, and its Harvard Square location will be shut down while the landlord works on the host building — effectively cutting two-thirds of Toscanini’s revenue stream. This follows hard on the heels of the construction in front of Toscanini’s Central Square location that crippled business for weeks.
These are the businesses we need to support. I’ll be at work during the Zeitgeist hearing, damnit, but I hope to stop by the reception afterward to find out what’s going on.
The hearing is at the Senior Center, 806 Massachusetts Ave., across from City Hall in Central Square. The reception will be at the Zeitgeist, Chalfen said, “regardless of the outcome.”
Sunday, July 09, 2006
SWIM UNSUITABLE
“Fashion” and “fascism” are not as unrelated as I thought — and this has nothing to do with the recent release of the film of “The Devil Wears Prada,” which recapitulates the lessons of high school (people can be mean, but less so if you dress like them) through the adventures of a comely naif working at a style magazine.
Nothing so photogenic here. I merely went looking for a swimsuit and discovered that, this year, the hem is down to the knees. This is apparently the result of a surfer influence, although it might as well come from gangstas or America’s increasing tendency toward obesity. Or all three. For some reason, every fashion trend we have is making men’s clothes baggier, possibly coalescing into an ideal of obese people surfing with Saturday Night Specials jammed down their shorts.
Shorts? Are they still called that, or are men actually wearing culottes now? It feels that silly.
Who are the fashion decision makers able to so completely lower an iron curtain — perhaps an Indian-sarong-style iron curtain, for an ethnic relaxed look — on the border between two years? While I continued wearing my ancient and anachronistic nylon Adidas shorts, wearing out their lining, the style went from ridiculously minimal in summer 2005 to absurdly maximal now. This is suspiciously Manichaean, as though the decision makers are testing the extent of their powers by jackknifing an entire nation of consumers through fashion changes so extreme that it suggests the ultimate fashion accessory is a look of bewilderment. (For consumers, that is. For models, it remains a look of surly vapidity).
It works, too, as I’ve been unable to find swimsuits that go down to midthigh, even online, just as I’ve found it impossible to buy a three-piece suit. I remember asking a fashion-forward friend about this years ago, only to have him laugh in my face — the concept so absurd, that I would look for something so out of style. What’s replaced three-piece suits are jackets that button all the way up to the sternum, and shoppers are supposed to believe that somehow this won’t look as stupid in a few years as the Nehru jacket does now; the three-piece suit, meanwhile, a staple of coolest-man-ever Cary Grant, is relegated to yuks associated with used-car salesmen and baby-blue crushed-velvet prom attire.
Style is timeless. It’s fashion that’s of the moment, susceptible to the whims of the mad and their manufacture of the frequently unwearable, the kind of stuff that is essentially radioactive: You can’t use it, you’re slightly ashamed of the one time you did use it, but it has an incredibly long shelf life. In short, it’s impractical and fails the test of common sense.
Gangsta wear, for instance, is based on the idea that the baggier the clothing, the more firepower can be hidden within. Divorced from the actual smuggling of weaponry and converted into fashion, you just get a lot of people wearing ill-fitting clothing that makes it difficult to move if, in fact, there’s some sort of situation in which they wished they’d brought a weapon. For many of us, we can’t wear it and embarrass ourselves if we do. Onto the shelf with it.
And gigantic swim trunks? They fail the common-sense test in a different way.
If Americans are so obsessed with being tanned, and find farmer tans so risible, it seems incomprehensible they are now embracing swim trunks that will leave them with gangsta tans. Knees will be a rich, prewrinkled brown, thighs will be like purest milk. Unless it is dictated, perhaps, that we must all adopt the swim trench coat and, as an accessory, the swim fedora by fashion police headquarters (where the fashion police gather to make bitter comments about fashion internal affairs and wonder if things would be better as a fashion state trooper or perhaps if they were promoted to fashion police administration).
Because fashion is art, designers and decision makers will always be able to apply the logic of art — there is none — to what they do, and this makes failing the test of common sense pointless, like complaining that a Dali or Picasso is illogical. But fashion is also big business, and that means there’s something else at work.
It’s the same thing behind the evolution of technology that has us revamping our music collections from vinyl to tape to CD to mp3 and our movie collections from reels to VHS to DVD to whatever’s next. And as soon as what we want to listen to, watch or wear becomes unusable, we’re trapped into committing to an entirely new lifestyle, forced into changing.
I just wanted a replacement swimsuit. Not to look like an idiot. Not to waste my time, nor to despair.
I wanted a swimsuit, not a Brownshirt.
Nothing so photogenic here. I merely went looking for a swimsuit and discovered that, this year, the hem is down to the knees. This is apparently the result of a surfer influence, although it might as well come from gangstas or America’s increasing tendency toward obesity. Or all three. For some reason, every fashion trend we have is making men’s clothes baggier, possibly coalescing into an ideal of obese people surfing with Saturday Night Specials jammed down their shorts.
Shorts? Are they still called that, or are men actually wearing culottes now? It feels that silly.
Who are the fashion decision makers able to so completely lower an iron curtain — perhaps an Indian-sarong-style iron curtain, for an ethnic relaxed look — on the border between two years? While I continued wearing my ancient and anachronistic nylon Adidas shorts, wearing out their lining, the style went from ridiculously minimal in summer 2005 to absurdly maximal now. This is suspiciously Manichaean, as though the decision makers are testing the extent of their powers by jackknifing an entire nation of consumers through fashion changes so extreme that it suggests the ultimate fashion accessory is a look of bewilderment. (For consumers, that is. For models, it remains a look of surly vapidity).
It works, too, as I’ve been unable to find swimsuits that go down to midthigh, even online, just as I’ve found it impossible to buy a three-piece suit. I remember asking a fashion-forward friend about this years ago, only to have him laugh in my face — the concept so absurd, that I would look for something so out of style. What’s replaced three-piece suits are jackets that button all the way up to the sternum, and shoppers are supposed to believe that somehow this won’t look as stupid in a few years as the Nehru jacket does now; the three-piece suit, meanwhile, a staple of coolest-man-ever Cary Grant, is relegated to yuks associated with used-car salesmen and baby-blue crushed-velvet prom attire.
Style is timeless. It’s fashion that’s of the moment, susceptible to the whims of the mad and their manufacture of the frequently unwearable, the kind of stuff that is essentially radioactive: You can’t use it, you’re slightly ashamed of the one time you did use it, but it has an incredibly long shelf life. In short, it’s impractical and fails the test of common sense.
Gangsta wear, for instance, is based on the idea that the baggier the clothing, the more firepower can be hidden within. Divorced from the actual smuggling of weaponry and converted into fashion, you just get a lot of people wearing ill-fitting clothing that makes it difficult to move if, in fact, there’s some sort of situation in which they wished they’d brought a weapon. For many of us, we can’t wear it and embarrass ourselves if we do. Onto the shelf with it.
And gigantic swim trunks? They fail the common-sense test in a different way.
If Americans are so obsessed with being tanned, and find farmer tans so risible, it seems incomprehensible they are now embracing swim trunks that will leave them with gangsta tans. Knees will be a rich, prewrinkled brown, thighs will be like purest milk. Unless it is dictated, perhaps, that we must all adopt the swim trench coat and, as an accessory, the swim fedora by fashion police headquarters (where the fashion police gather to make bitter comments about fashion internal affairs and wonder if things would be better as a fashion state trooper or perhaps if they were promoted to fashion police administration).
Because fashion is art, designers and decision makers will always be able to apply the logic of art — there is none — to what they do, and this makes failing the test of common sense pointless, like complaining that a Dali or Picasso is illogical. But fashion is also big business, and that means there’s something else at work.
It’s the same thing behind the evolution of technology that has us revamping our music collections from vinyl to tape to CD to mp3 and our movie collections from reels to VHS to DVD to whatever’s next. And as soon as what we want to listen to, watch or wear becomes unusable, we’re trapped into committing to an entirely new lifestyle, forced into changing.
I just wanted a replacement swimsuit. Not to look like an idiot. Not to waste my time, nor to despair.
I wanted a swimsuit, not a Brownshirt.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)