The Judgmentor in America: Winners Edition

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Noun: American Winners. Opinion: Love.

Image credit: Sports Illustrated

It is election year. Politicians are telling us why America’s so great. Clint Eastwood is on a Super Bowl ad telling us why America’s so great.  My friends, studying for their naturalization tests, are telling me why America’s so great.

The Judgmentor agrees. America’s so great. But I’m pretty sure we don’t all agree on why, and in a series of posts I’ll be investigating why I’m right and everyone else is wrong. Here are my credentials: I was born here, I didn’t always live here, I don’t always belong here, but I belong less everywhere else. I grew up in America, mostly, and was considered foreign. When I lived where I looked like everyone else, they considered me American. I don’t identify with any particular land or place, but I’m of a species that could only have evolved in the United States.  I’m both insider and outsider at once, and I will identify Americans as “they” and “us” depending on my mood.

I love this stupid country.  Here is the first of many reasons why, in a new series we call “The Judgmentor in America” (insert dramatic bass drum effects):

Americans are good winners: I came to know competition in a different world, an Asian world.  There’s more at stake there in the outcome—the glory of victory is taken as a matter of fact, as a social achievement.  The shame of loss is seen as a personal failure. It’s a method of promoting conformity and the rule of law while avoiding the blight of Western democracy: the race to the bottom, the curse of the average, the disgrace of the lowest common denominator. And it works, too, so you should work on your chopsticks skills because this prehistoric implement you call a “fork” is hard to pronounce for most of us, and we will likely rid of it when our superior math skills (even the girls) allow us to vanquish this society of creatures who are lazy, entitled, and as far as we yellow-types can discern with our slanty eyes, a bit undercooked and in need of a couple more minutes to brown in the wok.

For many years it never occurred to me that competition could be fun for anyone; it was supposed to be work and toil, punitive and fearsome. Americans’ delight in competing and fetishistic belief in competitive markets can come across as primeval; like Romans savoring the blood-seasoned air of the Colosseum, Americans revel in competition even when the game is rigged. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate—as opposed to the Roman indifference to the viable parity between a Christian and a lion, Americans care very much that the playing field be level. But this jock itch for sport and faith in capitalistic dogma can render Americans blind to systemic handicapping, which effectively takes the armor off the Christian and the muzzle off the lion. It somehow fails to register. Game on! Americans cry in their bloodlust. Game on! they cry, followed by attempts to mimic the howling of wolves.

To many in the world, this American excitability is a bit of a turn-off. I used to think so, too. But then I realized that Americans come to competition from a different angle than most—an angle unique to their unpretentious, uncomplicated natures. Americans love a clean game and a hard-won victory. Americans don’t love to lose, but they don’t hate failure as much as most; they’re sincerely glad to have played, those dopey sons of bitches. Americans, callow as they are, don’t see cheating as an evil necessity; they don’t even account for it when strategizing against the other team. And Americans don’t masturbate triumphantly when they’re on the winning side of a blowout; they’ll actually take it easy, take a knee, give the benchwarmers a chance to play, and be content never knowing how high the score could have gone. I’m not sure how to explain how amazing this is. I don’t know if I can convey how unique this is. This—is not the way it is in much of the world. This—is not what competition means in other places.  This—is entirely disarming and adorable.

But the quality that completely redeems Americans of their caveman-like belief that to-take-one-must-club-over-the-head is how well they behave when they win. They’re usually good losers, but when I think of American competition nothing comes to mind as clearly as the Olympics and in the Olympics, Americans win a whole hell of a lot. And there are a lot of opportunities there to be obnoxious about it, but growing up I didn’t see many who took them. Most of the narratives were along the lines of the Miracle on Ice, a little before my time but utterly indicative of my ultimate point, when the Americans beat the undefeated Soviets in a medal-round hockey game.  It was the winter of 1980. 52 Americans are held hostage in Iran. We’re a solid generation and a half into the Cold War. We’re still twitching from whatever Agent Orange-drenched shrapnel embedded itself into our collective skull in Vietnam. Those Soviet bitches just invaded Afghanistan, which was decidedly not cool. The late 1970s saw the birth of this strange phenomenon of mass school shootings, an inauspicious sign of American self-inflicted violence to come. Inflation was high, unemployment was high. It was a time of uncertainty and confusion in America.  It was a time when America had real enemies out there, ones our own size, ones we were afraid of.  It was a time when America had real conflict at home, ones we created, ones we were afraid of. It was a time when Americans weren’t really feeling like winners.

The Soviet team was expected to win. The American team was expected to lose. There would be lots of good reasons to lose, and people would comfort each other with those reasons when we lost, and though it would feel real fucking groovy to beat those pinkos, shit man, you dig? Well, never mind. Let’s hope we play a good game.

I can never follow the puck in hockey, making it a really boring sport of men randomly skating in a rink with the occasional eruption of nonsensical brawls and loss of teeth, but from what I can gather the game basically went like this: the Soviets come out humping hard, the Americans face the assault nobly until the end of the first period when they get a lucky shot, tying up the game. The Soviets, like all heroes in Greek tragedies facing an inevitable end, presumably grunt at each other and shrug it off, not realizing the import of this turn of events. They’re winners, remember, and have the muscle memory of winning, so come out grinding even harder in the second half. American goalie Jim Craig bites his lip and takes it like a power bottom. A little more back and forth, a defensive error, Americans are up with twelve minutes to kill, the Soviets flail and go limp, with five seconds to go broadcaster Al Michaels asks if you believe in miracles, answers his own question (“Yes!”), the entire USA hockey team comes spilling out onto the ice and fall on top of one another like a litter of golden retrievers deliriously happy to be a puppy in a world made of puppies.

There’s a lot more homoerotic hugging and skating, then the two teams line up to shake paws, and the camera closes in on the hero of the hour, Craig. And this is the moment that feels somehow different, special, and very American. Craig wasn’t exactly known for being easy-going or modest, but this moment speaks volumes about him and the American winner. He’s standing there like a groom at a receiving line. He’s shaking his opponents’ hands and nodding at them, like he’s acknowledging what they look like without their helmets on.  It’s not rushed, it’s not reluctant, there’s no undertone of smugness or conceit. He’s friendly but not smiling too much, he’s looking into their eyes, he’s pleased to see them there, thanks for coming. Good game, good game, let’s grab a beer sometime, good game, that was a good shot you got by me, good game. And he’s doing all this while experiencing the BIGGEST BONER OF HIS LIFE. And you know he’s got a stiffy because after he’s shaken the last hand he ejaculates an enormous smile with his arms up while doing a little leap of joy.

That right there is an American winner.

There’s a lot of decency and humility that goes into being able to do that. There’s a lot of respect for your opponent and generosity towards others. That there is the kind of moment your papaw was trying to prepare you for when he talked about the importance of character.

And the Russians were stunned, of course.  They were disappointed, of course.  But good winners have a way of bringing out good losers, and they smiled back when the Americans smiled at them. Good winners know that the win mattered because the opponent was worthy, and when good winners celebrate they invite the losers to the spoils. Even if they’re Soviets. It’s only right.

I’ve seen more good winners born in America than anywhere else. It makes me feel OK about their weird competitive streak, their strange need to compete for competition’s sake, their penchant for making more work for themselves. It’s mostly benign. I still don’t love the game, whatever the game is, and I don’t much care who wins, but I do and will always love a good winner.  Good winners are the best this country has to offer when it is at its best—good winners are what we get when we do it right and well at the same time.

Good winners are also becoming increasingly rare. Is it just me? I don’t recall winners of my youth gloating. I don’t recall dancing in the end zone, as if struck with a neuromuscular disease. I don’t recall people going out of their way to rub their opponents’ noses in the shit they just took in their mailbox. Good winners don’t do that.  Good winners enjoy their victories but not at the cost of someone else’s pride and hard work.  If your team won the Super Bowl and you heckle the wife of the opposing quarterback, even if she is a bag of bitch and crazy, you’re not a good winner. If you’re rich and have contempt for the poor, you’re not a good winner.  If you are lucky and privileged and think you’re a better person because of it, you’re not a good winner. If you’re part of the majority and exploit the minority, you’re not a good winner. That’s not what good winners do.

And as far as I’m concerned, that’s not what good Americans do.

America is the last natural habitat of good winners, species benus victorius bigbonorum americanus, and they are highly endangered.  Please help protect this species. They are hugely important to our environment.

The Judgmentor Jumble: Things I Love That Other People Hate Edition

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Noun: Various. Opinion: Love.

Image credit: AMC

One of the interesting things about writing a blog like this is how often one comes up with opinions one would ordinarily never have bothered having about stuff no one else cares what you think about. Another interesting thing is finding out that it is more difficult to explain why you love things than hate things. There’s something about hating that people trust; the hostility acts as a dais on which you get to stand and allows you to be taller than everybody else and no matter what you say you see (bald spots! dandruff!) people will take your word for it as you’ve undermined anything positive they had to stand on. Say you love something, however, and people tend to scoff. Love seems to make you vulnerable and ridiculous. There’s something perverse, important and terribly interesting going on here, which I will not investigate. I will instead wallow and relish in this messedupness, the way a wolf rolls in deer shit and carrion, by celebrating the things I love that I know make other people spoon-gag.

Opera—I freaking love the opera (say in sing-song voice with extended vibrato on the last syllable–go ahead, go back and read it again just like that). The impractical costumes, the monotonous recitative, the lung-bursting arias! The fake weapons, the mediocre dancing, the part where two zaftig singers embrace but can’t quite encircle their arms around one another because of their oversized midsections! I love it all! I hate the overpriced tickets, but that’s about the only thing I hate about it. My love for opera does not, however, make me blind to the fact that other people really hate opera. I’ve had to turn off the radio, leave performances early and utilize headphones because of the rampant opera hate. This is entirely unfair, as most of the hate comes from people who’ve never properly listened to opera. This is also entirely understandable, as opera has lame public relations—like cats. Look at dogs, dogs have great PR: man’s best friend and all that. Dogs are always showing up on rooftops during floods and next to the graves of their owners who were killed in a natural disaster. They’re positioned as loyal and noble and loving and having low, easy-to-achieve expectations of you. Meanwhile, cats show up on You Tube beating up on dogs. Cats are loved by cat people despite their poorly managed reputation—cat people laugh when a cat rubs up against their leg then hisses at them when they bend down to pet it. Cat people find this adorable. When cats stare at cat people and cat people respond by saying “hi!” and the cat runs away, cat people think that’s endearing.

Opera people are like cat people. Opera and cats have something in common: they come across as detached and elitist, but they’re both really, really beautiful. And just because one cat is kind of an aloof asshole, it doesn’t mean all operas are boring. You follow? Look, if you’re one of these people who find opera boring or obnoxious—whatever, I don’t feel like fighting now. But if you’re someone who thinks you don’t like opera when you’re actually just intimidated by it? Come. I stroke your hair. Relax–it’s just opera. Even if you spoke the language it’s being sung in, you still wouldn’t understand what they’re saying—the melisma warps the vowels to the point that French, Italian and German all pretty much sound like the same gibberish. Hey, I’ve fallen asleep during the opera. So what? Sometimes they’re too damn long—usually by the time I wake up the same soprano’s still going at it; you won’t miss much, don’t worry about it. It’s just opera. Read the Wikipedia entry before you go, that will help you follow the story. Opera’s all about the journey, the music, that’s why you can see the same opera over and over and never tire of it. Most of the time the stories don’t even make sense, anyway. Again, it’s just opera. Bug Bunny did it, so can you.

Now, once you get over the whole intimidation thing, you might be surprised to find that there is a world of beauty you never knew existed. There are notes you’ve never heard sung before. There is emotion you didn’t think could be expressed with such accuracy or in such an interesting way. Once your brain encompasses the complexity of a Mozart aria, you may just wonder how you ever withstood the herp-derp repetitiveness of a contemporary pop song. Opera may be hard to love at first, but it’s easy to stay in love. If all you know about opera is what you saw in Pretty Woman, forget that twaddle immediately! If I recall correctly, he says something about how if you love opera the first time, you love it forever, but if not it will never be a part of your soul. She, of course, cries ecstatic tears her first time. That is because they are watching Verdi’s La Traviata, where a john falls in love with a hooker and then the bitch DIES. She cries because she herself is a HOOKER. Get it? Do NOT take life lessons of any sort from a goddamn Julia Roberts movie. Those of us who love opera know it took time; first familiarity, then friendship, then affection, then the kind of love that makes marriages work for life.

Gwyneth Paltrow—Everyone hates Gwyneth Paltrow, but I…actually, I hate her, too. A lot. Next.

Home Economics—I am not one of these women who takes pride in not cooking or sewing or cleaning. I do not knit ironically (I knit poorly, which resides in a different quadrant of attitude, catty-corner from the one that says “tragic, self-mocking hipster”). My oven is in regular use. I hate doing laundry and I hate ironing; I nevertheless fancy myself competent at both (as long as you ignore collars and sleeves. And the section around buttons). I take pride in generally being a good steward of my things and space. I do not feel any less the feminist for being domestic; in fact, I’d like to think I’m making a stronger statement. I am advancing the cause by using my powers for good, to improve the quality of my life and not in subservience to someone else’s pleasure. Don’t get me wrong, if I could afford it I’d hire the cadre of servants from Downton Abbey—but I believe that truly happy people are the ones who know to find joy in the chores they must do. Thus drudgery becomes delight! And a sinkful of dirty dishes gets cleaned in the span of one and a half Al Green songs with made-up lyrics (“I’m…so in love with you; Whatever I want you do; It’s alright by me…You–make me feel; Like a shoe…I–want to spend all my cash on food…”).

Betty Draper—AMC’s Mad Men is scheduled to return to the air in a couple of months, and this seems as good a time as any to assert my affection for this crazy bitch. If you don’t watch the show, you probably won’t be too insulted by my love for Betty Draper. In the beginning of the series, she is the model housewife of the main male lead. So textbook is her performance of the housewife role that it is hard to tell if her flawlessness comes from effort or vapidity. Then Betty’s character suffers through the indignities of an unfaithful husband, a repressive society, suburban scrutiny and imperfect children. We see her veneer crack little by little—when we see what’s underneath, instead of vulnerable flesh we discover a fossilized spirit cast in amber, once liquid resin but long ago polymerized by heat and pressure. She turns monstrous in her selfishness and contempt for the world, including her own children. This seems the most honest depiction of the influence of mid-century values on a bystanding woman. Trapped in a supporting role to my own life, confined within fences both physical and metaphorical, hindered from fulfilling every corporeal and emotional need, disallowed from pursuing my intellectual interests, required to set my hair every morning, demanded to maintain a certain waist size, dismissed for every quality I possess in mind or character, performing all these duties perfectly to the thankless indifference of the world, I, too, may eventually disassociate from decency and compassion when so little has been rendered to me. I, too, may subvert my oppressors in self-destructive ways. I, too, may lock my daughter in a closet out of frustration. I find her an entirely sympathetic figure, a beautiful body harboring a longing soul that was scourged by negligence. A waste of mind and spirit. A compelling picture of a heart blackened and gloriously corrupt. I hope she wins.

Keanu Reeves—It’s not like I’ll watch anything Keanu’s in, like I would for, say, Meryl Streep or Peter O’Toole. But Keanu manages to show up in a lot of movies I genuinely enjoy, like a traveling film bomb, including Much Ado About Nothing, the first Matrix, Dangerous Liaisons, A Scanner Darkly, etc. He shows up in a lot of other shit, too, so there’s that. However, while his range as an actor is limited, the diversity of his projects is prodigious, which is admirable. I never found Keanu’s screen presence disagreeable—what other people see as wooden strikes me as refreshingly lacking in exploitation. He does not chew scenery, he does not bully the viewer with emotion, his beauty is clean and unaggressive and quite delightful to take in. He’s a glass of unsweetened iced tea, a little on the underbrewed side. The waiter forgot to add the lemon wedge. But I drink it anyway. I hereby officially lobby for more pretty boys in the movies, or at least as many as there are less interesting, insipidly attractive women who have been tolerated on-screen (some even win Oscars for it). Maybe that will cheer up Keanu. It will me.

I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did, though why would you? I just spent six paragraphs expounding on things you hate. I apologize. But really, I gave you the opportunity to stand on your dais and laugh at the midget who likes fancy music, baking, frigid blonds and Ted Logan from his and Bill’s excellent adventure. Stand there on your platform, make fun of my hairline and enjoy it! Or…should you be among the few who love what I love…come join me and look for boogers up their nostrils! Haha, that’s a hairy one.

.

Occupy Wall Street

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Noun: Occupy Wall Street. Opinion: Yup. OK.

Photo credit: The Washington Post

I live right by Zuccotti Park where the protesters have set up camp, and I’ve lived in the area since it was called Liberty Plaza—which may at first seem like a more fitting appellation but seeing as John Zuccotti made $1.2M for napping during an annual board meeting in 2008, maybe its current name isn’t irrelevant.  To be fair, I don’t actually know if he napped, I just assume that because he was 72 years old.  To be even more fair, I don’t actually know if he bothered attending the meeting, he may have voted in absentia.  Given what I know about septuagenarians, however, I will stand by my assumption that whether or not he was in attendance, John Zuccotti was somewhere napping.

I’m sure he’s a very nice man.

We just got started and I’m already off course.  That supercilious English bitch on my GPS exasperatedly tells me she’s recalculating, like she’s so much smarter than I am, which I guess she is so I’m changing the voice options. Slut. But as long as I’m way out here, I want to say something about the dirty hippies that people are saying comprise the majority of protesters.  Others say they are being misrepresented by the media, and that most of the protesters are your average, disfranchised, college-educated American. To this small, endearing voice of impassioned wisdom, I say: actually, they are mostly dirty hippies. The average Americans you’re seeing are the reporters covering the story.

Which is not to say that dirty hippies don’t have something valuable to contribute. And maybe some of them started out more hippie than dirty, but a month of living in a tent pushed them over.  Maybe they were already dirty, but the act of carrying a cardboard sign transformed their image from pointlessly filthy to a hippie with a mission.

The Aw-strine accented voice on my GPS tells me we’re on the fair dinkum pass, she’ll be right, reckons we’ll be out of the woopwoop in seven donkey’s years.  I’m as certain about what that means as I am about what the protesters want. They carry so many signs, and 99% of them make them sound like whiny potheads on an angry trip—like your brother-in-law, the one who’s been sleeping on your couch the past eleven weeks and who never offers to pay for the groceries he blithely consumes and shares with his cat. If you were to make some gentle suggestions about his life choices, you’re sure to get some unfocused but extensive belligerence roughly directed at you.

But when it comes to the 1 remaining %, I’m on your side. Probably. Maybe not. Honestly, it’s hard to tell.

I get that it’s hard for the protesters to fight an enemy they can’t identify. I mean, this is an industry that calls itself Wall Street, when basically the only investment bank that still resides there is German (and we can all rest assured Deutsche Bank is paying taxes—big, juicy, European ones). This is an industry that specializes in investing money but charges large fees to pay themselves salaries because they can’t make enough money through investing money. It would be like selling eggs, but you can’t produce enough eggs, so you ask to be paid in chickens in return for an egg when any honest farmer would be eating eggs from his own damn chickens. This is an industry, to paraphrase Buffett, where men travel in limos to take advice from brokers who ride the subway. So much of Wall Street is really fucked up and arbitrary.

And then there’s all that math, which can be confusing. Wall Street has a huge advantage in a country that still debates the factual basis of evolution. We’re not that bright. Numbers are amazingly tractable to obfuscation and Wall Street exploits them to its full advantage. Sometimes, they even just make them up! Based on no fundamental truth at all! But we don’t notice, because it’s hard to tell when they do that.

There’s also no check or balance to them. The obvious assumption is that the government is watching them. But the government turns out to be peopled by those who worked on Wall Street, because apparently all that math and fuckery takes an insider to understand. So Obama, who as Commander-in-Chief needs to have expertise in politics and human rights law and oil pricing and environmental carcinogens and how not to piss off the Chinese and the Torah decides to delegate, of all things, this. So he’s like, “anyone who understands this shit, raise your hands.” And the only people who raised their hands worked on Wall Street. And then it occurred to him to talk to other people, like Congressmen, to whom he said “find out if this shit is legal” and since they didn’t really know, they went and asked “does anyone know if this shit is legal?” And the only people who raised their hands worked on Wall Street and they said, why, yes, yup, it sure was legal, yessir. And even if it were all legit and above-board, the way everyone went about it was just weird and wrong and did nothing to make the process more transparent, and in a bucket already filled with dumb they added their own interminable supply of stupid.

No one comes out well here, by the way. One group of people probably did illegal and/or immoral things. These illegal and/or immoral things led to another group of people, who were by parts unlucky, unaware, victims of an underfunded public education system that made them bad at math—even maybe irresponsible! Or maybe completely innocent and undeserving!—but all in a legal way, to lose jobs and savings and security and opportunities. And a third group of people, who pledged to work in the second group of people’s interest, got gun-shy about doing anything because the first group is, in fact, essential to ensuring that the third group keep their jobs—not only/necessarily because they are being paid off, but because all three groups are more interdependent and fungible than people think. The first group is the aorta, and the second group is the heart and needs the aorta operated on, and the third group doesn’t have a medical degree.

The third group may very well be right that if they attempt surgery they’ll fuck it up and kill the patient. So, it recommends diet and exercise, hoping the issue will go away. It probably won’t, by the way. We really do need it operated on. We need the aorta to work. It shouldn’t be removed, it shouldn’t be ignored, it should be made to work. To anyone on either side who thinks that the heart can survive without it or vice-versa, I suggest you reconsider.

The GPS just rattled something off in Spanish; I’m assuming it said we’re close to our destination. So, okay, it’s all very confusing and a real, honest, legitimate clusterfuck. Maybe that’s why none of these protesters can explain what they want in an effective manner. “We’re the 99%”? Really? Is that a threat? Besides, to call themselves the 99% is a little disingenuous, as the working poor raise an eyebrow at being included in a statistic they were pointedly left out of before.  As far as they are concerned, there is still a large gap separating them and the middle class.

But they need the middle class.  If you’re not in the 1%, you need the middle class.  The existence of a healthy middle class suggests that there is fluidity between the strata. It means there is a pathway from the bottom to the top.  It is the sign of a thriving capitalistic democracy—not everyone is rich, but everyone contributes and has a say. A large, succulent middle class is where small businesses come from, where competition thrives, where innovation is born.  Even a vast majority of those we’d consider rich would benefit from this socioeconomic lubrication; it opens up the top to them, it validates their ambitions. The problem is, where there is a hill to climb up there is a slope to slide down.  And if you have a lot to lose, you’d rather seize the system and press pause on all this bustling interchange.

This country doesn’t appreciate its middle class.  The average American sees his place in the middle class as a temporary layover to the day he wins the lottery.  He’s so concerned about protecting those imaginary winnings he’ll even vote against his present self-interest.  We take the middle class for granted.  There are other countries that work hard to ensure the life of the middle class is pleasant and livable—they offer health benefits and work week limits and free colleges and day care and good bakeries.  Not us; if you can’t provide these things for yourself, you don’t deserve them.  We hate the middle class.  Liberals think they’re fundamentalist bourgeois, conservatives think they’re unionized wangs, everyone thinks they’re underachieving yokels. We abhor the middle class.

And now the middle class is coming out of this self-loathing. It’s occurring to us that we’ll never be rich, not like this.  All that stuff that happened in the last few years, even more—the frontal lobe may have forgotten WorldCom, Enron and Tyco, the dot-com bubble, the S&L scandal, but they’re imprinted in the sulky depths of our reptile brain—slashed into the rickety trust that was built between the haves and have-nots. How is it that these shitheads get to pull our collective dick every time they make a mistake?  And how is it that we have to pay their bail?  They never shared the wealth when they had it, why is it my asshole that gets raw and sore when they lose it? Every! Single! Fucking! Time!

Maybe we sense we’re being frozen out of being even middle class so we’re finally driven to protect it.  Maybe we could lead good lives in the middle class, if only there were certain systemic reinforcements put in place that would ensure its sustainability. Maybe if we were given the vast majority of the nation’s wealth, we would “create jobs,” too—us and a flock of masturbating ducks, because wealth begets economic activity like economic activity begets a big fucking DUH. Maybe the rich aren’t so special and we didn’t deserve their contempt after all. Maybe we’re starting to think that if there is a class of Americans who should be provided greater protection and preferential treatment, it’s the middle class.  Maybe this is what Occupy Wall Street is calling for, maybe this is why their message is so diffuse—it’s a motion for a concept of society, a model of civilization, which is more complex and difficult than can be expressed on a poster board held by a dirty hippie.

When I was a kid sometimes my older brother and his friends would make me feel left out. My response was often to launch from a running start, land on one of their backs like a monkey, and windmill my arms to batter my fists against their heads in a violent bid for attention. My brother would then calmly pluck me off, avoid making eye contact, toss me out of the room and close the door in my face. This is exactly how it is recommended you should handle a deranged monkey. For my part, in retrospect, my behavior seems an unlikely way to win anyone over. I didn’t get what I wanted, which was to be included. But, as I stood on the other side of the door, stomping my feet and screaming until birds flew into power lines on purpose, everyone knew, for what it was worth, that the monkey was mad.

The voice on the GPS is in that neutral, God-Bless-American accent of the Mid-Atlantic and syndicated sitcoms. It’s telling me that we’re very, very far from our destination. But at least we’re pointed in the right direction and, with some guidance, we might even make it there.

Bacon

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Noun: Bacon.  Opinion: Love.

The first workday after a long weekend tends to find me pretty ornery, and seeing as how I’m getting it as good as I’m giving today I’m concluding that I’m not alone.  On this blog I’ve been veering wildly between the pedantic, the sentimental and the ridiculous (all the while rooted firmly in the dumb and bitchy) and my preaching ass is tie.  Yurd.  Given that ridiculous is the least exhausting of the three, we’ll order another plate of that.  So I want to lead the lemmings to a safe haven.  A happy place.  And take a short think nap.

Heaven, according to the sound stage used for every Hollywood depiction of it, is a destination made of large wisps of dry ice.  People, even men, wear long white dresses and everyone but God whisper-speaks like they’re in a library.  Citizens smile placidly, stoned on the rapture of goodness, and float around delicately, as if afraid of breaking something.  Heaven’s fancy and sounds like harp music.  Heaven is the lobby of the St. Regis.

Everyone knows that’s bullshit.  If heaven is worth getting into, which is to say if it’s worth the time I didn’t spit in that jackhole’s Pinkberry after he cut in line, then it has to be more interesting than a mid-market accounting firm’s conference room.  Blue sky as vast as eternity.  Bright sunshine gleaming off frizz-free hair.  Rolling hills carpeted with fresh, bugless grass.  A rainbow stretching overhead, with a Pegasus galloping on the violet bridge.  Puppies wagging their tails and reaching their wet noses towards your extended hand.  You reach down to pick one up and it’s as soft as a microfiber dishtowel, warm as if it were resting on a stove.  You tell it how cute it is, and it thanks you in English.  Then it tells you how smart and good-looking you are.  The Pegasus offers you a ride.  You hop on and exchange pleasantries in mid-air with a very funny duck who makes you laugh so hard you snort.  Then after you land you skip off to find that all of heaven is a trampoline, and you bounce around gymnastically, waving to Virgil and doing a double somersault over Gandhi.

Envision, if you will, this heaven.  It’s nice, yes?  The people are very nice there, yes.  The soundtrack is just to your liking, yes.  No more school, no more work, no more leaky faucets, no more bills, no.  Ice cream for breakfast, yes.  Crowded subways, no.

It looks beautiful.  It sounds wonderful.  It smells…like bacon.

Every time the soft breeze carries the aroma to you, it slithers around your body like a boa constrictor and tickles your nostrils with its tail.  Salivating, you follow the source to a tall, handsome tree.   You approach its trunk.  You recognize the smoky, delectable scent it’s emitting.  You lick the bark and shudder in delight.  Bacon.  You look up into the canopy and see little fruits dangling from the branches.  You pluck one and unfurl it—a hot, sizzling strip of bacon.  But it’s too crispy for you, so you pluck another one at a different point of maturation—it’s perfectly cooked, just enough fat and chew.  You look around you.  More bacon trees.  You’re in a grove of bacon trees.  Bacon grows on trees in heaven!  Even vegans can eat bacon in heaven!  Bacon’s super kosher in heaven!

You get into a conversation with one of these trees (everyone and everything in heaven speaks English, but increasingly more Spanish), and it tells you on Earth they used to be pigs.  But what with the wallowing in mud, dining on slop, being looked upon with disdain and slaughtered for their meat, they decided on a change once they came over to the other side.  Who needs it, right?  Right, you say, plucking another rasher of bacon.  Eat all you want! invites the pig-tree.  The pig-trees are so nice in heaven.

As are the tomato, lettuce and toast plants.  Very nice. Very generous.  And delicious.

So with the salty, savory taste of bacon meat mocking your mind’s tongue, I will now count backwards from ten.  When I reach one, you will wake from this heavenly reverie.  Ten.  Nine.  Eight…

You know what, stay there.  Have some more bacon.  Take advantage of it now, just in case you do end up spitting in someone’s Pinkberry.  I’ll wake you tomorrow, what’s one more day to a long weekend.

80s Cartoons

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Noun: 80s Cartoons.  Opinion: Love.

You know that joke, when you’re allowed passage into two characters’ minds, and the thought balloon of the smarter is filled with schematics, big words, complex ideas and light bulbs all afire?  And then they zoom in on the dimmer of the two, his eyes focused on a far-away dreamscape, his tongue hanging gently from the corner of his mouth, and all you get is a blank screen accompanied by the jingle of an ice cream truck?  Well, we all have our moments of both, I think.  And I also think we’ve earned a break after the last few blog entries.

When the Judgmentor casts a dreamy, closed-for-business look, it usually means the right hemisphere is serenading the left with this:

Overture

Curtain, lights

This is it

We’ll hit the heights

And oh what heights we’ll hit

On with the show, this is it!

And Bugs and Daffy sashay off Stage Left, pumping their hats and spinning their canes, the first vaudeville show I ever caught and it makes my heart glow to this day.  Then the pig pokes his head through a bulls-eye and tells me to go home.  At which point I replay the entire thing.

I hope that in old age, if my mind decides to call it quits and retire early, this is what it will put on constant replay for me before it locks the door behind it.  Maybe leave a little kibble and water.  But may it forever be Saturday morning in my head.

Looney Tunes, however, is a little cerebral for every day wear.  The bulk of the transmission rotation I’d guess would come from the 80s.  It was in its own way a golden age of commercial animation, at least to those of us high on Fruity Pebbles and whole milk.  While this list is in no way exhaustive, here are a few honorable contenders:

The Smurfs: The absolute and definitive anchor show to the entire Western animation canon.  This cartoon is probably the source of political awakening for all liberals of a certain age—naively utopian, shamelessly socialist, undeniably anti-commercialization, and questionably homosexual.  Generation X need look no further for the source of their embitterment than the expectations set up by these miniature blue trolls.  Incidentally, if you can’t place why every time you frolic in a field of wildflowers the suite to Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt plays in your head, look no further.

The Snorks: Underwater Smurfs with pieces of calamari attached to their heads, the Snorks have failed to achieve the kind of renown enjoyed by their mushroom-dwelling cousins though it ran for a good number of years.  Perhaps it was due to the fact that it was, in my recollection, aired at ungodly hours too early for even our Saturday morning-specific circadian rhythms to catch.  Or perhaps it could only survive in a pre-Little Mermaid world, before Disney came along and crushed any underwater scene not involving a singing Jamaican crab.

Gummi Bears: Speaking of Disney, whoever were writing their theme songs at the time were fucking KILLING IT.  Jesus H. Christ, they were catchy.  I mean, it’s a niche market, right, but if you’re the best of the best in your niche, you’re like the dung beetle, eating what no one else wants to but doing a damn fine job serving the greater good.  There has not been a single day in the past 20 plus years that I could not recite every word of that song.  As for the cartoon, it had a patriarchal head of the family, a cooking grandma, some annoying kids who were either into food, fashion or violence, and they were all loyal to a legacy steeped in spirituality and populated with myriads of ancestors and kin.  Basically, they were Italians.

DuckTales: If you didn’t immediately launch a “woo-ooh” after reading that, then you are probably an android.

The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: These last couple are on the periphery of the 80s and my legitimate cartoon-viewing years, but were well-crafted enough to hold the attention of a maturing mind.  This rendition of the Hundred Acre Woods was something close to paranormal—a self-contained world that honored, without exception, the laws extant therein.  Finely detailed and beautifully rendered, it recalls something Walter Scott said about Jane Austen: That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Clearly the voices were intended to function as dog whistle to the sensitive ears of the youths.  They captivated their audience with their sound net for many decades prior to the 80s, but this is when they hit TV and they hit it hard.  They introduced the Chipettes, for one, who were genetically improved versions of the Chipmunks, if only for managing to wear something other than turtleneck dresses. While that stage-dad David Seville always seemed one antic away from beating on his kids, you couldn’t help but look affectionately upon one of TV’s first inter-species families.

The Transformers: There were a lot of classic 80s cartoons that were really out of my realm of interest but I watched them because there were boys around who bogarted the remote control.  This was one of them.  Like a white man trying to flag down his waiter at a Chinese restaurant, I never could get any of the characters straight because they all looked alike to me.

He-Man and She-Ra: He-Man was a mimbo of the most mind-numbing proportions, and while She-Ra was an obvious improvement in character development, neither of them could hold a candle to that cranky bitch Skeletor.  His motives were unclear but his cheekbones could cut glass.  In terms of iconographic shelf-life, Skeletor will live on far past those other two bowls of vanilla pudding.

Robotech: Does anyone else remember this trippy-ass shit?  This was another forced viewing by dint of having an older brother, but this one really caught me by the metaphorical balls.  I remember nothing about it.  I don’t remember characters, I don’t remember plotlines, I don’t remember any of the music—but I remember how goddamn addictive it was and how my soul would die a little if I had to miss an episode due to soccer practice or church.  It was my first exposure to soap opera—complete with sexual tension, betrayal, violence and honor.  It is probably responsible for making a young girl grow up too fast.  But as a Japanese anime import, it’s unlikely I would understand any of it even today.

Now I don’t know about you, but that made me feel much better.  I’m looking forward to doing the 90s.  But for now: cue orchestra glissando.  Prompt bulls-eye rings.  Enter Porky.  And that’s all folks.

Gay Marriage (and an Appeal for Civil Discourse)

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Noun: Gay marriage.  Opinion: Done.

Noun credit: Dennis.

So I was watching the local news the other day when a reporter was polling passersby on their views on legalizing gay marriage in New York.  And one woman said she was against it, because it was “unnatural” and that her take was really “a religious thing.”  And she said all this with a smile, as if what she was saying wasn’t one of the worst things you could ever utter with your mouth.

To me, gay equality is a question with an obvious answer.  It’s a non-issue.  It’s so self-evident it drives me fucking bonkers to have to discuss it.  There are real problems in the world, people—real, complicated issues that demand our attention.  And you’re making me sit here and argue with you over whether the Earth is round.  It’s excruciating.

FINE, GAWD, I get it, it’s not about me.  So, ok, here’s my contribution.  Gay marriage should be legal.  It should never have been illegal.  Can we go back to working on world peace now?

No, I didn’t think so.  Look, I know you’ve heard this before, but why do you care?  Why bother caring?  I don’t care.  I don’t care that you and your wife are having missionary sex (you with your secretary, she with the pool boy).  I think you make the world a little bit worse, and make the gender divide a little harder to traverse, but I’m not proposing a Federal Fidelity Amendment to the Constitution or a Defense of Loyalty Act.  I figure that 1) this is between you two, so in return for not legislating whom you sleep with I trust you will not legislate whom I sleep with (i.e., my microwavable hot water bottle stuffed into a teddy bear) and 2) you’re not costing me anything, so when I do sleep, I sleep well.  If you were born that way—which I have reason to believe is true—I don’t care.  If it was a choice—nope, still don’t care.

It’s not like by legalizing gay marriage I’m going to force you into one.  If you’re a dude and the idea of making out with another dude grosses you out, don’t do it.  And if it makes your sweaty parts tingle, go at it.  But—and this goes for all of you—close the fucking door, don’t do it on my couch, and take a shower after.

Really, this is no biggie.

Ah, but the other side has decided to challenge this confidence; they’ll play their hand with a little more finesse.  Sure, I’ll humor you, bring it.  Now I see your entire cavalry take one step back, leaving a lone representative standing before me.  At first I’m a little afraid you put Bill O’Reilly out there, in which case my short tenure as activist is done.  I’m sorry, but I have my limits.  I will not engage battle with a logic-averse yammer engine.

But no, it’s no one from Fox News.  It is a well-dressed man.  And he has kind eyes and an agreeable, soft-spoken manner.  He seems decent, reasonable.   Let’s call him Jon.  Jon disagrees with me.

Jon isn’t hateful.  Jon doesn’t vilify gays.  He is religious, but he defers to God on judging fellow men.  He has gay friends and he knows that the stereotypes are unfair.  His gay friends are devoted to each other and yearn for legitimacy and protection under the law.  And he thinks they deserve every right but marriage.  He is not opposed to equal treatment of gay partnerships–that, he concurs, is a human right.  But not gay marriage.  And I, finding such half-assery hollow if not slightly sinister, don’t accept.  The concept of marriage, he tells me, is in itself institutional.  Marriage has existed since ancient times, but today’s idea of marriage, American marriage, marriage as an institution–one that is monogamous, one that determines kinship, one that is officiated, one that is a sacrament, one that is romantic as opposed to transactional–was originated by the divine laws governing our founding fathers and mothers. When those laws introduced marriage, the introduction necessarily came with a definition.  And the definition integrated this clause: that it was between man and woman, before God.

Basically, though Jon is too nice to say so, they—straight God people—came up with the institution.  It’s theirs.  Why would anyone else even want it?  It’s just weird, like if Jews wanted to appropriate Christmas.  They are not keeping gays out, Jon says, as much as they are trying to contain the institution.  An institution that they created, they defined and that they honor. They invite others to partake, but it has to be by their rules.

Meanwhile, I tell Jon that by withholding marriage, you withhold legitimacy even when you grant its rights.  Both marriage and Christmas have already been appropriated by a secular society.  You can’t commandeer the concept of marriage and dictate the rules when it is already so deeply ensconced in the public domain.  Jon shakes his head and says what I’m calling marriage and Christmas aren’t really.  Without rancor, I tell him he will have to reassess his definitions in the light of progress.  Without rancor, he tells me that that undermines the point of tradition and religion.  I tell him his logic has been used as an excuse to oppress the weak; he says mine has been used as an excuse to discard time-tested wisdom.  I look at him and see the violence of Nazism; he looks at me and sees the violence of the French Revolution.  I call him Tyranny; he calls me Chaos.

And then there’s the Church.  Jon says: you may say you support separation of Church and State, but what will happen is that the State will—has already!—become involved in the Church’s management of this affair.  For once this becomes legal in the courts, the Church will be called to defend itself in the future against discrimination on this issue.  It will open the doors to challenging us on adoption, polygamy, religious liberty.  Church and State reside in the same ecosystem and you will pollute our waters and we will have to deal with it.  You cannot expect us to stand idly by when we fundamentally disagree with the direction this will lead us.  And I nod and say: You’re right.  That’s going to suck.  But let’s face it, things have been going downhill for you guys since the Reformation.

Jon looks disappointed in me, then turns to leave but I’m not sure why; maybe because I was flippant, maybe because he’s a Protestant.  So I run after him and insist on buying him a cup of coffee, a fancy one, with foam and caramel swirls, because though I am thoroughly unsympathetic to his argument I probably proved his point by dismissing his concerns.  Which are, I have to admit, not entirely bullshit.  Not if you associate virtue with customs, tradition, faithful allegiance and community.  Can we agree that those things aren’t entirely bullshit?  But neither is my stance that the economic, psychological and social impact of differential treatment to minority groups is destabilizing to a democracy.  And you can’t keep marriage to yourself without practicing differential treatment.  Church and State do reside in the same ecosystem, and prejudice pollutes all of our waters—whether secular or religious.  Inclusion is a precondition to democracy, and, for that matter, devotion.  Jon doesn’t disagree.

So we sit, drinking coffee, agreeing on the merits but disagreeing on the greater evil.  We believe that by both defending our sides nobly, we will find a resolution and do honor to the process.  Neither of us will change our minds, but we both feel that a compromise with the other party could be tolerated; we’ve developed trust in each other’s intentions.  We toast to civil discourse despite the fact that we’re currently at an impasse.

This country has found itself at many impasses, but this is the kind that doesn’t kill your mothereffing soul.  This impasse is where things get foggy for some people who usually associate with the left or right–it’s where a liberal like Obama finds himself when he says his view on this issue is still “evolving” (if you accept that at face value).  It’s where a conservative like New York State Senator Roy McDonald is compelled to say: “You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn’t black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing.”  It’s an upside-down, topsy-turvy, confusing place, this impasse.  But it’s also where this nation will find its salvation as an open society–it’s where the best answers will come for our hardest questions.  It’s where answers will come without designating winners and losers, without festering resentment.  It’s where answers will come with more acceptance, less rage, more faith, EVEN WHEN one thinks the answer is so.  BLOODY.  OBVIOUS.

Luckily for me, this impasse is a very skinny little space, delineated by fuzzy lines, and no one can find it much less make room.  Luckily for me, our simplistic, retarded, dim-witted national confabulation hasn’t presented a Jon, it’s presented Fox News, a loss to whom would be unacceptable.  Luckily for me, the arguments against gay marriage have been along the lines of “it’s unnatural” and “it’s a religious thing”—so foolish and hateful that there really is only one side to choose.  Luckily for me, the discourse has been anything but civil and I don’t have to bother with understanding and nuance.  So when gay marriage happens—and it will, whether now or later, in New York and across the entire nation—I will buy myself a cup of coffee, mourn Jon, and celebrate alone with an unrestricted conscience.

Foodies

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Noun: Foodies.  Opinion: Qualified hate.

This topic seems relevant, today.  Today, around 2000 miles away from where I sit, many foodies are congregating in the Rockies at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen.  They are searing and tasting and quaffing.  Because foodies don’t just cook, eat and drink, that’s beneath them.  Somewhere out there, little mountain foodies are feeling very important, disconnected from the rest of us.

I take food seriously.  I take the preparation of food even more seriously.  Once I was bonding with someone over being disgusting, gluttonous food sluts (that’s a bullet point on my resume) when I discovered that his idea of cooking was to buy fresh ravioli and assemble it together with some prepared sauce.  Like waiting out bad sex, I smiled mechanically, maybe even made some perfunctory “mmm!” noises, but silently felt betrayed—I had formed what turned out to be an entirely fraudulent connection with him.  I would consider that meal the affected, tweed-jacketed older brother of Kraft Easy Mac.  I’ll eat it, and probably have seconds, but that is because 1) it would be free, 2) I am deeply appreciative of any meal that someone else makes where I don’t end up doing the dishes, and 3) please refer to the third bullet point on my resume.

This betrayal has happened to me often.  I ate indifferent cafeteria food in school (betrayed by Education!), I ate untold numbers of burritos at work (betrayed by Corporate America!), I ate frankenfood protein bars when I was busy (betrayed by Time!), and when I couldn’t take it anymore, I learned to cook.  The betrayals stopped and the enlightenment began.  Through cooking, I learned about the world—its networks and chains, its synergies and yields.  I learned about animals and plants and weather.  I learned about health and history.  I learned about people, which is largely why I find food so wonderful—because it can create connections, because these connections form families, because these families structure society.

To understand a culture, I begin by eating what they eat.  To comprehend traditions, I study its cuisine.  To get on people’s good side, I eat what they put in front of me and rub my tummy approvingly like my life depended on it.  My wandering ass has been to many strange lands with strange customs, and when in doubt, I eat.  I came to know people in France by eating snails floating in a wild mushroom bisque (it was divine).  I came to know people in Korea by grilling sweet-marinated eel plucked hours earlier from a muddy delta (it was transcendent).  I came to know people in Peru by consuming unreasonable amounts of pristine ceviche radiant with the tang of local citrus fruits (it was glorious).  I came to know people in New England, who like to follow up a five mile morning jog with oatmeal (it…was).  Food, along with music and math, is one of our world’s universal languages.  It is, you could say, a passion of mine.

I am not, however, a foodie.

My skin crawls at the word.  I abhor what it has come to symbolize.  (Well, “abhor”…it’s a strong word, no?  But for effect, let’s say “abhor.”  I’m really more exasperated, but I’m here to judge, so we’ll pound the gavel with “abhor.”)

These people are not my people.  They, too, take food seriously, but in a different way.  These people think that food allows them to yell at cooks on television, to charge $500 for a meal, to preach and preach and preach their locavore gospel until you suddenly remember how good french fries dipped in Frosties are and make a midnight trip to the nearest Wendy’s. These people have a warped sense of the importance of food, as if our mismanagement of the food chain is somehow accountable for holy wars and dengue fever and irresponsible journalism.

We have gotten this far, after all, having for most of our evolution eaten berries and nuts.  We were grateful when they were there and didn’t give us diarrhea. And surely we ate the wildebeest raw before it occurred to us to cook it.  During the Middle Ages in the West, boiled swan on a trencher was considered sophisticated fare.  Yet here we are, alive, texting on our smartphones, putting bitches on the moon; you, me and Britney Spears, who subsists on a diet of Cheetos and still earns more than any of us who invest in organic rhubarb.  The point is, even on the most dubious of diets, man has accomplished many things.  Let’s not make food out to be something it’s not.  Foodies take food seriously, yes—but mostly because they want to be taken seriously.  They attach themselves to food in a serious way, then impose a seriousness on food that seems misplaced and artificial, so that by the transitive property they, too, are serious.

Listen to me, foodies–I get it, I’ve been there, that’s how I know.  School lunches, agribusiness, factory farming—these are important issues.  But you have to stop taking yourselves so seriously.  You have to stop being so fucking earnest.  You have to stop following Gwyneth Paltrow’s lead and thinking you know two shits about anything because you read Michael Pollan and the Dining section. Because you are talking about food; your food, your subsidized, imported, first-world food.  It’s a beautiful thing, I know.  But you can’t come at it from a place of entitlement—meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, some kid is sucking peanut butter out of an airdropped plastic packet, and she doesn’t give a shit if your dinner is free-range and grass-finished.  And, by the way, that piece of veal was prepared by some guy who just got out of jail, not by the chef you saw on Food Network, and was served to you by an out-of-work actor who contracted hepatitis from a penis piercing, and the cookbook you bought to take home with you was actually ghost-written.  Just so you know.  Enjoy your meal.

So stop being picky eaters and status whores!  If the point is here, you’re somewhere way over there.  You so missed it, it’s like it left last week and you only heard about it tomorrow. For foodies, food has become a contrivance of religious wholesomeness—I’ll eat this, I won’t eat that, I’m purer than you, better than you.  Look how superior I am, I eat wild ramps gathered by aboriginal farmers.  Seasoned with saba vinegar made by a third cousin of Mario Batali.  And finished with fleur de sel, collected by dipping berets into the Brittany coast because regular kosher salt isn’t as balanced and I would never use regular iodized salt because that’s what Top Chef told me.  I can’t with you.  You use food to justify your sanctity the way priests use sex, and I bet you’re eating pork rinds on the side the way priests…never mind.

Look, I eat ramps.  I like saba vinegar.  And, God help me, I’ve paid $25 for salt from the Guerande.  But here’s why I’m not a foodie—because I don’t like it like that.  I fucking love it!  Food makes me giggle.  Food brings family and friends.  Food parts the clouds and coddles me in sunshine.  While your clenched, joyless, over-regulated pleasure in food makes you look like Wallace farting (while Gromit contemplates suicide).  You’ve gone and depleted food of its greatest contribution to our lives: delight.

I wouldn’t go so far as to agree with the much argued-over Atlantic article that suggested there was some moral distortion innate in eating excessively and excessively well,  but there is certainly a pomposity to it.  The irony is that food doesn’t need pomposity.  Food is important, food can be artistic, food does have impact.  But food is also delightful—so let it be delightful.  Foodies, stop using food to separate yourself from others.  Start using it to connect.