Category Archives: Place

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.

The World Trade Center Mosque

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Noun: The World Trade Center Mosque. Opinion: Build the fucker.

Noun credit: Jen (kind of. Not the noun as much as the act to write something, anything.).

Let me make this clear–I am not at all conflicted about this one. Not even a little bit. I’m not even allowing for my usual sliver of noncommittal airspace for ambiguity lest someone comes forth with new evidence. The Judgmentor has deemed this debate to be DEFCON 1 FUCKED UP–deeply, urgently dangerous to anyone who cares even a little bit about living in an open society and about our responsibilities to each other therein.

I’m not sure how international this news has been, but to bring the Japanese guy who visits here every once in a while up to speed, there is some controversy about building an Islamic community center and mosque a couple of blocks from where the World Trade Center stood. Now, I wish my first reaction to hearing this news had been—“Come again? I don’t get it.” Because the connection between a building devoted to worship and kids cutting out shapes of bunny rabbits in construction paper and religious apartheid and government conspiracy and terrorist attacks and the 10048 zip code IS pretty arbitrary. Jon Stewart does a good job of illustrating why, but I don’t remember what he said exactly (something ironic about the necessary proximity involved in plotting in Hamburg to attack in New York) and I don’t have streaming capabilities on my work computer, so I’ll just wait here while you go look for it.

Never mind, I’m no good at waiting. I will have to admit that my first reaction was actually: “Balls. Here we go.” It was like when you have this friend, and you like him, and he’s cool, but he’s got some sort of short-circuited synapse that doesn’t really let him know when what he’s asking for is—while completely reasonable and within his rights—kind of a pain in the ass. Like, he’s always been cool about lending a hand when you move and shit, and now he’s asking you for a ride, but you have this thing. And you don’t want to do it, it’s out of your way and you’d rather go to your thing. Because you like him and all, but it’s not like you have that much in common, and your other friends rag on you when you hang with him because he doesn’t fit in, but he seems really excited that you’re picking him up in your car, and he’s telling everyone about it, and now it’s become, like, a BFD. And you have to deal with this shit.

You just kind of wish he never asked. You wish he had had the social sensitivity NOT to have asked. But he’s your friend, and he’s an awkward motherfucker, and he asked and it’s out there. And there’s nothing you can do about it, because there’s really only one right thing to do.

YOU HAVE TO DO THE RIGHT THING, even if it makes you squirm. Hear that, shitheads? Because he has every right to ask you of this thing, and it is not the end of the world as you know it, you’re just being an asshole. And I cannot believe (and am still sort of indulging in the denial of) the prejudice and hate that this issue has evoked. It has been utterly demoralizing. And the credibility we’ve given these fuckers by way of airtime has made me question what country I live in. Surely I am safe for at least a few generations before the progeny of Paris Hilton and The Situation take over the world? Man, did I time that wrong.

Alright, I’m throwing down my 9/11 card. That’s right, dipshits, I was there, I saw the whole boom-fire-scream-run thing. And I’m going to make this rule right now that the validity of one’s opinion about the matter is proportional to their distance from the epicenter of the two strike points the planes hit–that means if you were an inch farther away than I was, my say supersedes yours, and that includes you, THE ENTIRE FUCKING BIBLE BELT, ohyesitdoes. This is New York business, go back to speaking in tongues in bed with your cousins. And if you were closer than me, then I’ll match my investment in the neighborhood where I own real estate and have worked for over half my career against yours, and if your investment is greater than mine, then I’ll rub your face in this here copy of the American Constitution until you can read it right.

But if you’re some variation of a thoughtful Christian who lost a loved one in a way made even more senseless by its magnitude, then, first of all, I’m sorry. Any loss is devastating and doesn’t feel any better for manifesting in a smaller scale–but yours in particular demanded that you process much, much more than your personal pain. It was heavily accompanied by politics, war, and national confusion. I can only understand in the abstract but even that weak estimation of bereavement aches hard. The distress you’ve been through and relive every time the rest of us take your tragedy and administer it for our own means—in movies/in the press/in our blogs—must cause no little anguish. It is understandable that you flinch at the thought of a mosque as a symbol of the murderers’ motive standing on your hallowed ground. But let me take your hand and implore you, a thoughtful Christian, to think of the thoughtful Muslims who have experienced the same loss that you have. What you have in common has absolutely nothing to do with this mosque. Your pain is not commensurate to your religion. Your Gods are not contained by this geography. Both of your religions have been perverted to endorse terrible deeds. Preventing this edifice only brings you closer to the bigotry exhibited by the terrorists; it does not bring you closer to finding meaning in 9/11, for which I can only conclude there was none.

If we look at Muslims and think: “You did this”—if we look at a mosque and think: “They’re in there”—if we grip greedily to our rights to worship and refuse to extend them to another—we are embracing a mentality of religious intolerance that breeds and feeds fanatics. Irrational, hateful, fearful fanatics who feel righteous about their sanction to oppress other religions. Fanatics who will slide down the slippery slope from abhorrence to assassination. Fanatics who think nothing of flying planes into buildings filled with civilians. And it wouldn’t matter if we’re Baptists or Catholics or Jews or shamans, this kind of exclusivity is poison. If we even entertain the idea of taking away religious freedom—which has been a foundation of our nation and culture since Charles Carroll signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and one of the most identifiable features of what it means to be American—let’s not mince words about it: then the terrorists really do win.

High School

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Noun: High School.  Opinion: Pssht.

tjhsst

The Washingtonian recently featured a cover story on the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, rated by U.S. News and World Report as the best high school in the nation for the past two years running, and probably several times sporadically before (I can’t be bothered to look that shit up, just take my word for it).  The article was titled “Why You Should Hate This School,” and proceeds to talk about how the over-achievers who populate its student body are basically better than you in every way, and since you are a bitter, stupid and ugly LOSER, the Washingtonian saw it fit to remind you to direct your bile thusly.  Full disclosure: TJHSST (big fail on crafting an efficient acronym, there) is the alma mater of one Judgmentor.

Most locals call it TJ (that’s better), and it is a public magnet school you need to test to get into.  The test lasted about as long as the SATs from what I recall, thereby introducing most of us to the distinctive agony that is standardized testing.  There was an essay portion where I was inspired to write about aliens (I was, what, 13 or 14 at the time?) and a bunch of algebra I’m sure I used my fingers and toes to get through.   I don’t know how I got in.  We were known as the nerd school in the area, which would have hurt our feelings if we weren’t all diagnosable with the low-grade Asperger’s usually correlated with being interested in computers.

From what I remember of high school, it was a blur of social anxiety and bodily transformation.  Yet from reading this article one would think we were all well-adjusted, multi-talented brainiacs who translated Medieval French troubadour verse for fun and pooped out National Merit Scholarships when we weren’t busy running triathlons and curing AIDS at the same time.  I guess some of us were.  I certainly was not—see that kid at her locker observing the world with a stink-eye while noshing on a Hostess Fruit Pie?  Yeah, that was me.  I took AP Judgment in high school, and left it at that.

I have a lot of good things to say about my high school, but most of you don’t give a shit.  You want to hear what this genius factory sucks at.  Well, for one, there’s me.  That should make you feel better about yourself immediately.  And secondly, most of us were not as outstandingly awesome as the article suggests—there was a large dose of journalistic license liberally applied.  Granted, I did not have the benefit of going to high school more than once and increasing my sample size (HALLELUJAH) so I only have the perspective of my own experience.  We were probably more motivated than most, and more eager to be inspired, and that’s saying a lot.  But we were still teenagers, and thereby assholes by definition: lazy, hungry, stupid, insecure and just figuring life out.

TJ was definitely a safe place for a lot of us, especially during a time when the base schools were installing metal detectors to screen for weapons.  And during formative years, one can’t say enough about the benefits of something like that.  But we were also incredibly sheltered—those of us who developed any street smarts at all either grew up where that was already necessary or came by them far later in life.  There are huge advantages to being surrounded by smart kids of more or less the same socioeconomic status—but the disadvantage is a certain character-killing homogeneity.  I feel that a lot of us grew up sort of retarded in the ways of sex, drugs, racial and class relations—that is to say, the real world outside of White Liberal Guiltanistan—but damn if we couldn’t ride the shit out of a quadratic equation.

The article talks about whiz kids who are destined for the Ivy Leagues.  And then what?  How much does being able to clone an African violet in a petri dish really count for in life?  Seriously, now, do any of you living in the reality of adulthood actually believe that these kids won’t eventually have their dreams killed?  Most of them will, obviously.  Such is life.

And they will nevertheless lead perfectly responsible and happy lives, if they’re lucky.  The geeks will console themselves from the quotidian stressors of existence with their PlayStations, the jocks will masturbate to memories of their All-State victories, the drama kids will take their exhibitionist tendencies out on their co-workers, the straight-A students will continue trying to validate themselves by earning the approval of others.  It’s life.  Which is something that is attainable even if you never went to the best high school in America.  So you have absolutely no reason to hate this school, in particular.  You can hate it because you hate high school universally, though, and be grateful that we are no longer there.

Delis

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Noun: Delis.  Opinion: Love.

katz

I can be viciously critical of food—it’s my thing—and there isn’t a set of taste buds in the universe that I trust above my own.  I don’t care how famous or successful you are as a chef, I’ll probably find something wrong with your food (“Hmmm…tastes like arrogance.”).  As a Catholic kid in church, I used to grimace at the prospect of having to ingest the papery wafers of the Eucharist.  Get the picture?  THE BODY OF CHRIST tasted like ass to me.

There are always exceptions.  Not even Jesus beats my mother’s food.  More generally, I am tremendously easy to please when it comes to home-cooking; its comfortable imperfections and the relaxed company among whom it’s served are exactly what make a meal so easy to digest.  But God help you if I’m paying for your food.  Which is something I do often in New York, and I cherish every rare moment of joy I derive from an unexpected culinary experience.  Which have almost never manifested when that was exactly what I was paying for.

All the years I’ve lived here, I had never been to Katz’s Deli until recently.  This deli, for those of you who live somewhere offset from the center of the universe, is the one that was featured in the orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally… (if you’re too young for that shit, stop reading my blog immediately).  The place is operated under a system that only makes sense to its workers and proprietors and is filled with old people who look unafraid to send back soup.  It is famous for its hot dogs and very thick corned beef and pastrami sandwiches.  It will henceforth also be famous for mightily pleasing the Judgmentor.

I went with a few friends.  When our order arrived, the entire table went silent; negotiating these enormous sandwiches takes concentration, but that wasn’t the reason behind the hush.  These fuckers were tasty.  There was the occasional approving moan from the party, and no one looked at each other.  Finally, someone took the initiative to comment on how good the food was, which gave way to nods of consent as we finally broke off our semi-coital interaction with our pastrami.

What was great about this exchange was its honesty.  There was no ceremonious bullshit that fine dining establishments induce: “How is everyone’s food?”  Short beat as people calculate anticipated bill and adjust opinions accordingly: “Delicious!”  We sat at a rickety table, I had five soiled napkins in my hand, the waitress suffered from bouts of amnesia during which we would despair of ever being served again, and none of it mattered.  The food was good, and the other jizz couldn’t take away from that.

Compare that to another experience I had at one of the city’s preeminent restaurants, owned by a Michelin starred chef.  The meal was perfect.  There wasn’t a thing wrong with it, I looked.  It exceeded expectations but it just didn’t curl my toes, know what I mean?  I didn’t walk away feeling satisfied in any other way than having had my hunger sated.  The restaurant was again operating under a system that made no sense and was filled with old people unafraid to put a stop order on a stock.  The tables and chairs were much nicer.  Everything was stacked in its favor, everything should have served to enhance the dining experience, but it nevertheless failed to deliver.

I have my own ideas of what they’re doing wrong, but I’m not giving that shit away for free.  Suffice it to say that for my money, I’d go to Katz’s any day.  Here is one piece of advice I’ll donate to the Pope, though…PASTRAMI AS SACRAMENT.  Waddya say?  It’s genius, I tell you, and if that had been observed when I was kid I may still be a practicing Catholic today.

Sky

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Noun: Sky.  Opinion: Love.

sky

I parked myself on a bench near the North Cove Yacht Harbor, looking out towards the Jersey City skyline backlit by a dipping, crimson sun. It’s one of my favorite spots in the city, if only I could eliminate the posturing, steroidal joggers and the screaming kids attended to by unresponsive nannies.  But that’s what facing the other direction and iPods were made for.  Down by the lower tip of the city the sky breaks open over the water and you can take in a briny breath without having to worry about inhaling undue amounts of carcinogens.  This area is the only place in New York that one of my oldest friends, a woman obstinately devoted to small towns and mountains despite my best efforts to recruit her here, will concede doesn’t entirely suck.

I only get around to seeing sunsets a few of times a year.  Which is a shame, since they’re awfully pretty.  It’s a study in painting and movement  as the color shifts into a Kodachrome of reds and yellows.  And anecdotally I hear it happens at least once a day; you’d think the odds of my running into one would be higher.  It makes one wonder how many other frequent occurrences of beauty and splendor we miss: full moons, falling stars and sunlight streaking through clouds of eiderdown.  I see sunrises even less often than sunsets, as some fool had scheduled them at exceedingly inconvenient times of the day.

The sky has a particular way of providing perspective.  The Ancient Greeks knew this, as seen in their obsession with constellations and the sacred meaning they attached to the stars.  They sky was granted greater power and significance than the Earth—Zeus, the chief executive on Olympus, was the god of the sky.  His man-whorish ways are in almost every myth that survives the ages.  Gaea, goddess of the Earth, only manages to cameo in a few.  Zeus’s brothers, Poseidon and Hades, don’t have nearly as much fun being respectively stuck in the ocean and the underworld.  Poseidon got punked by Athena in the bid for Athens’s love and devotion and Hades had to kidnap Persephone just to get laid.  Zeus, on the other hand, got whatever he wanted; what Zeus did mattered.  In the hierarchy of elements, the sky definitely reigns supreme.

Yet we remain largely indifferent to it, unless it’s to briefly shake our fists at it if it’s pissing some form of precipitation on us.  Is it the sense of our insignificance that it conveys?  It’s true, the sky can sometimes put on a bitchface and so-what your every concern.  But often it will seem munificent, kindly looking back on you—and so-what your every concern.  Like I said, it’s the element of perspective.  Maybe it’s New York—the buildings and lights block out the view.  But I’m starting to think this failure to look up is the primary cause of our crazy.

France

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Noun: France.  Opinion: Love.

Noun credit: Greg.

baguettes

Let me present a couple of scenarios to you.  Pick the one you find most appealing.  In the first, you work long hours, inhale fast food during a limited lunch break, get a measly two week vacation, publicly observe arbitrary Puritanical values, dress like a slob, and are grotesquely obese.  In the second, you work less, eat more butter while remaining slender, take long lunches that involve drinking, run off to the beach for the entirety of August, have more sex with better-groomed people, and are well-versed in tax evasion.

If you chose the former, you are the kind of person who takes it personally if the economy you contribute to is only the ninth largest in the world.  If you chose the latter, you are of my people or already have access to an EU passport (call me).

I’m not going to attempt to encapsulate millennia of history into one character portrait (just a little bit).  Let me focus on what I think the French do better than anyone else: screwing you with administrative bullshit.  Oh, yes, the French take red-tape to a new level.   Trying to navigate the clusterfuck that is their bureaucracy is a Sisyphean effort.  The French require an inconvenient obedience to custom and law even while there’s a strange lack of appreciation for the direct path among them.  They will demand you to take a coiled route, asking you to leap, crawl, and pirouette along the way.  Then they will tell you your stupid American ass did it wrong and to try again, only at the next counter once the lady comes back, but she left for the day.  Blink.  Shrug.

But, really, they’re right.  The direct path in life leads to death, so why be in such a hurry?  Besides, things function well enough in France…eventually.  The beauty is that you don’t really care when they don’t.  It’s not personal, it’s just the way things are, and hey, look, dinner’s ready.  Ooh!  Poulet à l’estragon, my favorite!  And heavens, don’t you look fetching this evening.  I like that shirt on you…what were we talking about again?

Look, for all their exasperating inefficiencies, the French have crafted a way of life that illustrates a certain discriminating delicacy.  They may be philosophically resigned about many things, but you never saw people so zealous about a proper loaf of bread.  They’ve chosen their battles carefully (forget Napoleon for a second and follow me here)—they’ve as a people selected to perfect food, art, beauty and daily life.  And they did.  Maybe they did it at the cost of optimized business, technology and government (what number republic are we at, exactly?  Seventeen?  That sounds right.), but whatever.  In terms of the ephemera involved in your time on Earth, I’d argue they chose that which has most impact on your everyday happiness.

OK, so none of this is entirely true any longer as the French have foolishly adopted many American habits and attitudes.  I still don’t take any of it back.  I was once trying to provoke the French boyfriend of my roommate, telling him that in the chronicles of late-20th century history the archives would be dedicated to the rise of the American empire and France would be nothing but a footnote.  “Yes,” he said, “but it will be a beautiful footnote.”  He pinched his forefinger and thumb together and puckered up his face in an expression of delight while saying “beautiful”.  Frenchmen harbor this particular fondness for exquisite things.  And there was an honest patriotism in that statement that basically annihilated my whole argument.

I didn’t tell him that, though, which was my own patriotic act.  God bless ‘merca, dammit all.  We do fat, ugly and overworked better than anybody.

Ikea

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Noun: Ikea.  Opinion: Like.

Noun credit: Kathrin.

ikea

The most democratized of furniture retailers, Ikea has become the go-to location for the proletariat’s houseware needs.  Trips to the store take on the gravitas of pilgrimages.  The brand evokes a sunny, youthful image, and there are few of us that can resist its appeal.

The goods of Ikea are so ubiquitous that it often brings about exchanges such as the following:

Friend visits respectably outfitted abode and wanders into kitchen for a drink.

“Help yourself,” I say, casual and convivial host that I am.

Friend reaches into cupboard.  “Oh, my God!” she exclaims.  “I have these glasses!”

Beat.  “Oh, really?” I say, casually and convivially.

“Yeah.  They’re from Ikea, right?”

“Yeah.”

Awkward pause.

“What’s for dinner?”

“Meatloaf.”

What just happened there?  As beloved as Ikea is, it is not a terribly aspirational brand.  And in acknowledging that we were both proprietors of Ikea goods we admitted to a common membership in the subsegment of the working class that seeks the clean, modern lines of Scandinavian chic but can’t quite afford the trademarks that come without any assembly required.  Any effort you make of trying to hoodwink your friends into thinking you were successful and elegant are revealed, as theirs are to you.  From this point forward, you side-eye their clothes (Loehmann’s), their coifs (Supercuts), and their watches (Chinatown).  You’ll look around your own quarters which once seemed so stylishly equipped and start perceiving it as rather commercial and banal.

Such thoughts are easily extinguished with a visit to the store, however.  There is a thrilling quality to seeing new, gibberishly-named Ikea furniture before normal wear and tear make them disintegrate within a matter of months.  The bright lighting make their ridiculous chairs seem contemporary and fresh, and the euphoria of buying window treatments at such discounts induce a temporary amnesia about how impossible they are to install.  There is magic in Ikea stores.  A wondrous, dreamlike enchantment that make even the insipid meatballs taste savory and delicious.

So, why fight it.  Take your hard-earned dollars and spend it on your very own Framstå bookcase.  Sweden has much to be proud of as the world’s most popular exporter of furniture, cold, and lingonberry jam.

Ocean

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Noun: Ocean.  Opinion: Conflicted.

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The ocean waves have it in for me.  They were nice enough to me in childhood and in return I developed a deep affection for the seaside, but then they turned, as arbitrary and vicious as high school mean girls who feed on meting out public humiliation to subordinate castes.  I nearly drowned once, and had my bathing suit compromisingly rearranged a couple of times, and have too often been tortured with salt-water sprays going up my nasal passages.  Yet my romantic heart so fondly remembers our once warm friendship that I always diffidently return for more, and subject myself to their bitchery again and again.

My shyness towards the ocean turns into outright phobia out in open waters.  I develop a kind of vertigo on a ship, knowing that what supports us underneath can be as deadly as a 1,250 foot freefall from the Empire State Building.  It always calls to mind the passage from Moby Dick where Pip, the sensitive and intelligent black boy, jumps overboard during a whale hunt and is left abandoned to bob in the water.  It is a clear day and the child not only experiences the infinity of the sky above him but the infinity of the waters below.  Alas, the “awful lonesomeness is intolerable.”  By the time they fish him out, the kid has lost his marbles.  Rather, Melville says he is only perceived as mad, but really  his plight had allowed him to see God in the celestial deep and so “man’s insanity is heaven’s sense”—and it turns out heaven’s sense is really to not give a shit about anything.  Which follows how I always suspected the ocean feels about me.

Yet it is beautiful.  There is no more breathtaking view on Earth than the sunlight glimmering off soft, liquid folds, each sparkle merrily winking at you as if at a private joke, each twinkle a sign of life’s insouciant bliss.  A recent trip to Monterey displayed an ocean that seemed outright benevolent, and an unforgettable visit to the island of Hydra had the sun color the water in shimmering gold.  Here in New York, I settle for the Hudson River (or as some turtle-faced Woody Allen wannabe will inevitably point out, the Hudson Estuary, as it is not technically a river who the hell cares go away), and it works in a pinch when the spirit is sore.  Melville came from New York, after all—so, he knew.  He definitely knew.

New York

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Noun: New York.  Opinion: Heart.

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Let’s face it.  This city is a shithole.  In the summer one has the sensation of walking through someone’s uterus, the air as thick and liquid as amniotic fluid, suspending molecules of olfactory insults ranging from trash to sewage.  The winters are a barrage of meteorological punches, pounding you with wind, sleet, snow and cold.  Spring lasts for a week in a good year, and autumn provides just respite enough to make you forget the summer you went through and the winter you’re about to endure, like a passive-aggressive acquaintance setting your chump self up for disappointment.

And that’s just the seasonal rundown.  We could wax forever on the crowds, the vermin, the filth, the tourists, the pollution, the homeless, the jackasses, the noise, the expense, the traffic, the garden-variety lunatics that populate every freaking corner of this godforsaken city.

And if that is enough to deter you from moving here, good.  We have enough people here without you.  While I admit I suffer a little bit from battered-wife syndrome, protesting too much in defense of my abuser, I defy anyone to rehabilitate my pathetic and possibly misplaced loyalty.  New York has not quite requited the affection I’ve bestowed upon it, but sometimes it calls me baby and tells me it will try harder and I believe it.

For some New York is an acquired taste.  For me it was love at first sight.  My young, vapid, suburban-conditioned mind marveled at seeing an East Village lamp post near the late Tower Records adorned with tiles—imagine!  Mosaic on a lamp post!  How droll!—and the discovery was a revelation.  This is a city of intense beauty.  It is not, however, a beautiful city.  It is an impressive one, for sure, but it is generally speaking a landfill with big buildings poking through the rubbish.  Yet nestled in the debris are indisputable treasures manifest in myriad forms: natural, architectural, personal, musical, corporeal, lingual, theatrical, gastronomical, what have you.  Set in relief against the compost, none of these things is taken for granted; they make this dung heap sparkle.

I spent a total of six years in undergrad and post-graduate institutions settled in towns that boasted a lot of trees and a nauseating amount of quaintness.  I get it…one has a sense of safety and serenity and all that.  It was adorable.  It was endearing.  It was ok.

But every moment, every exchange lacked the authenticity that New York possesses in spades.  The city is a magnified reflection of the diverse ugliness that claims most of the world, as well as the redeeming grace that keeps human life from being entirely pointless.  And New Yorkers know better than anyone else on the planet how to endure the degenerate and embrace the sublime.  No one survives here that doesn’t have this particular mark of spirituality.  It is Eden and Gomorrah in one: there is no more transcendent place on Earth.