International Bitches’ Day

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Noun: International Women’s Day. Opinion: Love.

Image Credit: Time Magazine

Happy International Bitches’ Day!

Last year, I celebrated our bitchy ancestors who directed the tides of history with little to no credit.  This year, I want to celebrate the bitches of the present, running the world. Bitches who are so rarely lauded, so often neglected.

There are a variety of subspecies of Bitch, of course.  There is the dumb bitch (often recognizable by her inability to account for discretion, accommodation, and other social mores in public settings), the catty bitch (who are social animals, tending to travel and hunt in packs), and the fucking bitch (your boss…maybe your wife).   There are always the male version of all these bitches, who tend to exhibit their respective attributes more strongly or saliently than the female of their kind (like lions…or peacocks) and respond in a very nasty way when you identify them as the bitches that they are. Today is not about these bitches.  Today is about whom I call, for lack of any creativity, the Real Bitches (I KNOW, I should be a writer).

Everyone is a bitch in their own way, of course.  I don’t want anyone to feel bad for being left out. In fact, if you’re reading this, you probably are a bitch.  Yes, you!  You’re a bitch!  And you’re a bitch!  And you’re a bitch! We’re all bitches! And some of you are the best bitches of all, Real Bitches. And if you are the female variety of the Real Bitch, it is to you that I dedicate today.

A leopard has spots, and with the exception of occasionally being mistaken for a cheetah (which they do not take kindly to, by the way), one can with some level of confidence identify one in a crowd. A Real Bitch has her spots, too.  Not worn on the outside, but just as unmistakable. A Real Bitch is strong; unambiguously strong. It’s palpable before she says anything. It’s different from confidence; many Real Bitches have that, too, but that’s just the outward manifestation of strength.  Some Real Bitches come across as quiet and meek, but that’s just the clothing they feel comfortable dressing their strength in. The point is, it doesn’t have anything to do with how they’re presenting themselves to the world; it’s just about who they are. And they are strong. They lack the undercurrent of panic endemic to the common bitch; that disquiet distress that a person carries with them, its tremor rippling the air between you.

That rippling airstream is their effort to manipulate what you think of them, by the way. It’s trying to push your opinion of them in a certain direction. It’s a campaign. The Real Bitch may seem shy or friendly or quiet or outgoing, but a Real Bitch never campaigns. The Real Bitch owns who she is and sits in it. You come to the Real Bitch, she does not come to you.

It’s not that the Real Bitch doesn’t have her insecurities, of course she does.  She is human and she is self-aware—you may as well demand that a combination of hydrogen and oxygen not make water. But what she doesn’t do is ask us to bear the burden of her anxieties; she carries that cross herself. Her dignity won’t allow her to ask for attention and her rationality keeps her fears checked for the most part. And I’m not referring here to real suffering, the only cure for which is human connection and care, but the needles of self-consciousness that constantly prick at our sense of peace. Sometimes I’ll sit across from one of you Real Bitches and I’ll suddenly become aware of your uncertainty—you never ask me to, but it happens because you’re honest and that makes you transparent at times. And I’ll say something reassuring the way I do to regular bitches when they start humping my leg for notice and you’ll respond graciously, as I’m sure it rarely happens that someone shows you the compassion you must crave.

We’d do it more often but we usually don’t notice when you need it. I’m sorry about that. Sometimes we notice but we’re not sure what to say. What do you say to someone who has already reasoned with herself using maturity beyond our means, fearlessness beyond our grasp? I’m sorry about that, too. You’re a giver, not a taker; yet if anyone deserves kindness, it’s you. We forget, and it’s unforgivable.

It’s unforgivable because of all those times we are taxed by regular bitches to administer to their petty angst. Yes, you’re pretty. No, you’re not fat. Yes, you’re attractive to others you are attracted to. Yes, he was wrong to dump you. No, whatever bad thing you’re telling yourself isn’t true. Yes, all your self-delusions of grandeur are, in fact, accurate. Here we are, indulging in the kinds of human folly we actually don’t have time for but do because it’s how we get through life.  Don’t even get me started on the contortions we go through to try and salvage the male ego. Kicking Christ! Could you bitches have any more analogues for your penis that I’m not allowed to affront? Yes, you’re rich enough, you’re tall enough, your tie is…just the right length.

Then there’s you, Real Bitch, majestic in your poise, noble in your solitude. Maybe you’re a mother who needs to be strong for her children. Maybe you’re single and trying to succeed honestly. Maybe you’re older than your company and everyone looks to you to be nurturer and forgets to nurture you. Maybe you’re a poor person living in a poor country in a world that has determined you and your country inconsequential. But since you’re Real Bitches, strong and regal and bitch enough to handle it, you suck it up.

That, in a nutshell, is what separates children from adults, girls from women, bitches from Real Bitches.  Sucking it up. What would become of the world if people didn’t suck things up? Mothers would throw tantrums right by their children, single women would dissolve into puddles of helplessness, older women would lose patience and undermine the younger, poor women would give up and take entire societies down with them. More than government, more than invention, more than any other force in the universe, sucking it up is what makes the world turn. Because life is filled with toxic matter of our own creation, and Real Bitches suck it all up, even other people’s bullshit, process it, render it inert, and release it as love back into humanity. The emotional ecosystem of the human race—the ecosystem we all live in, despite our geographic location—determines the course of civilization, of art, of progress , of nearly everything beautiful and worthwhile. And Real Bitches make sure that the ecosystem is clean and healthy.

If you know a Real Bitch, please call her, tell her you love her, and thank her. If you are a Real Bitch, I e-hug the shit out of you this International Women’s Day.  And once we’re done with the women, let’s find the male Real Bitches—they’re valuable specimens, too, and they come from women, so what the hell.  For one day out of the year, let’s acknowledge how indebted we are to this race of magnificent people. You are some of my favorite bitches.

The Judgmentor in America: Doing The Right Thing Edition

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Noun: American Righteousness. Opinion: Love.

Image Credit: The National Archives

Americans always do the right thing…eventually: I want to revisit gay marriage. Come with me. Let’s pick up some pastries on the way so we don’t show up empty-handed.

I have expressed exasperation before at the energy we’ve invested into an issue as self-evident as gay marriage. This still stands. I’ve yearned for the conversation to take on a different tone, one more productive and thoughtful, one less blind, deaf, dumb and generally maudlin. This also still stands. But I want to put this issue in a larger context, one I think ingrained in the character of this nation.

I have always been and I am all for gay marriage. In whatever way one can be “for” marriage, that is. I do not buy into a one-size-fits-all ethos when it comes to marriage, gay or not, and to me it does not seem to be SUCH a desirable thing, so my for-ness in gay marriage may have come across as tepid. However. I would put the strength of my against-ness in the ring with anyone with balls big enough when it comes to the bigotry of those who feel called upon to prevent gay marriage legalization. If I am a bit indolent in my support for what I think is a common sensical application of basic rights, you can only imagine how I feel about those who would actually use the energy to take up arms against it. To actually get up off the couch to battle for a right I do not exercise myself would be something very noble, and I’m not noble. I’m not proud of this. But to inconvenience oneself to the extent of abandoning a perfectly good couch–for what? To exert one’s efforts to mind someone else’s business? To prevent their expression of loyalty and commitment? That’s just ghastly. That’s worse than I am.

Nevertheless, I look with doubt upon all this whooping and joyful tearing when a law passes allowing for gay marriage. It is a difference in attitude, perhaps.  I am one to climb a mountain and despair when I look at the expansive range of those we must yet climb. Others will celebrate the conquering of the most recent mountain. I strongly recommend this latter take on life, it seems to me wiser.  But I cannot help but wonder that there be so much celebrating over a law. A law that says that the state will acknowledge the vows between two adults with comparable genitals.  At least that is what I think it says, in essence.  It does not say the state will allow and acknowledge the vows between two children, or two goats, or two adults and a goat, or a female adult, a male child, and a neutered goat. In essence, it is the same law as has ever been, except for the genitals part. Two adults, same brand of genitals. Really, it’s such a small thing.

So much angst and anger over such a small thing. It doesn’t even say that the people in the state have to be nice about acknowledging the marriage. Your uptight, right-wing neighbor will continue to snub you, or be afraid of you, or talk viciously about you behind your back, or patronize you. An uptight, right-wing woman asking a gay man whether her heels go with her apron, all the while telling her daughter not to dress like a boy, strikes me as revolting. An uptight, right-wing man titillated by his lesbian neighbors, all the while studiously avoiding the effeminate man in the locker room, is repulsive beyond words. Pass a law against hate and vanity–and you will see me crying tears of joy. It will be about as effective against hate and vanity as a law passed to allow marriage between similar genitals, but it seems to me it will get more to the heart of the matter.

But that is not really the point of gay marriage laws, is it? Gay marriage laws are not about fighting hate and vanity, it is about allowing gay people to marry. And laws often anticipate cultural submission. And so far as that goes, they are very good laws, indeed. Two people in love get to marry and benefit from state-acknowledged marriage. But that is a small thing. The marriage doesn’t change your love, and it doesn’t change how others see your love; love is big, just as hate and vanity are big, and the act of marrying (unlike staying married) is small. I understand why you may disagree. But you needn’t worry, as I am comfortably ensconced on my couch, and will not budge to make such a trivial point. You have my couch-enabled support for marrying as much as you like.

The hate and vanity, however, sticks in and up my craw, wherever that is. For every state that allows gay marriage, there is still another mountain in the range represented by hate and vanity. And for every celebration, I and my craw fear that the battle is being mistaken for the war. The war is against hate and vanity.  The war is for love and inclusion. And while gay marriage laws are not about fighting hate and vanity, they are TOTALLY about fighting hate and vanity. They are intrinsically part of the war against hate and vanity. While this war is so much larger than gayness or marriedness–just as you and I are more than our sexual orientation and married status—the Battle for Gay Marriage is a part of the larger purpose. The purpose encompasses the Battle over Women’s Bodies, the Battle for Open Immigration, the Battle of Economic Justice.

Different battles, same war. The same war this country has been fighting a long, long time. Even before we were actually a country, in fact—the Virginia Declaration of Rights set the artillery up before we declared independence from England. We fought it literally as in the Civil War, we fought it figuratively as in the women’s movement, and we fought it somewhere in between as in the civil rights struggle.

The enemies are sometimes people, but mostly wrong ideas. While I may be astounded by the poor decision-making of the voting populace, I believe that most Americans care about doing the right thing. Their hearts want to do the right thing but their heads are caught up in wrong ideas. There are lots of reasons for that—the right ideas are complicated, and we weren’t taught stuff in school, and the game’s on, and the guacamole’s turning brown. But we don’t need to be fancy lawyer smart to do the right thing, thankfully. We just need to be streetwise, in a people-savvy manner, and we are that. We’re a lot that! I mean, we’re about the streetwisest there is. Even our rednecks are streetwise in a slow, fearless sort of way. OK, say you’re walking at night down a dark alley in a big city.  I give you the choice of taking along one companion out of three, and you know nothing about them except that one’s American, one’s Brazilian, and one’s Armenian. Who do you take? The American, obviously. OK, again: one American, one Dane, and one Korean. THE AMERICAN.   OK, OK, last one: one American, one Moroccan, and one Canadian. DUH! It’s ALWAYS the American.

(Many years ago, an American classmate during my year abroad in college took the Paris metro late one night. She was alone on the train with only a group of young urban thugs who proceeded to harass her in French. She didn’t understand French, but knew perfectly well what they were saying. So she stood up, turned to face them, and told them off in English: “If you were thugs from Chicago, I’d be afraid of you.  But you’re not.  You’re French. Who the fuck do you think you’re kidding?” Then she sat down, and they left her alone. See? Always pick the American. Preferably one from Chicago, given the option.)

We have what it takes to get it right, is my point. And we have! Often!

Sure. We get it wrong all the time. Perfection is beyond a democracy; too many competing wrong ideas. So we optimize, plucking off the wrong ideas one by one. Over long periods of time. Trying to outpace the regeneration of new wrong ideas. Budge a little here, budge a little there. We each try to influence the Ouija board to spell out what we’d like our country’s destiny to be.

A-G-A-I-N-S-T H-A-T-E A-N-D V-A-N-I-T-Y.

That’s the enemy. That’s what we’ve always been fighting. Unrepresented taxing, slave owning, lynching, raping, child laboring, oppressing, Watergating, warring, poverty-ing, suiciding, terrorizing. America’s been fighting this fight a long time. Not all countries do, you know. Go where the political elite determine all government discourse; there may be surface peace, but there is also stagnation. Go to another, where routine goes unattended; progress seems born of ennui and discontent instead of ideals and values. Go to yet another, they don’t even pretend to care about this shit.

Not us, we’re a country of constant ideal-driven conflict. That’s why people get off couches where they belong to fight against gay marriage—they forgot to look for the hate and vanity and got wrong ideas stuck in their heads. But that’s also why we’ve gotten it right for so long—fighting against hate and vanity is as old as our Constitution (almost every article and amendment in there is about containing hate and vanity). As long as we identify the hate and vanity, using our wily street wisdom, we tend to do fine. If you hear prejudice dribbling out of the mouth of a politician, if you smell ego on the breath of an elected official, if you yourself are feeling flattered by false attention or driven by selfish motives—you know what to do.

It takes too long, I know. There’s too much damage to the collateral, this is so sadly true. But we get there. Moral America always gets there. Looking back on our history, we tend to arrive, though we arrive late. I mean, could we have dragged our feet any more on abolition of slavery? Come on. So it’s a matter of urgency we have to work on, but, thankfully, not a matter of values.

This is how we’ve done it, how we fought hate and vanity. The gay guy who never impregnated a woman in his life did the right thing when he saw the oppression of women’s reproductive rights. The white woman who’d never been pulled over by a cop did the right thing when she saw someone’s civil liberties breached. The African American did the right thing when she witnessed uncool goings-down towards Arab Americans. The rich Asian American standing next to a poor Mexican American did the right thing when he got the long end of a double-standards racist/classist/horseshit stick. The straight dude did the right thing after hearing some crazy homophobic rant. It doesn’t matter if the fight serves our immediate interests, we all benefit from living in a world that isn’t ruled by hate and vanity.

I’m not worried about gay marriage, gay marriage is a foregone conclusion—it’s the right thing to do, and America will do it. Women’s authority over their own bodies is a foregone conclusion—it’s also the right thing to do, and we will get there. Inclusive immigration laws are a foregone conclusion—we know it’s the right thing to do, we’re just afraid to do it. But we will. Because the most un-American thing to do would be to lose this war, the War on Hate and Vanity. It would invalidate our entire history. Let’s just win it soon, let’s win it now, starting on our couches, in whatever small way we can, by doing the right thing.

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.