Category Archives: Thing

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.

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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.

The Judgmentor Jumble

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Noun: Various.  Opinions: Varied.

Come play a game with me!  Sit in the middle of the room with wipeable tiles and scooch your butt cheeks across from mine.   Sometimes there are too many things to judge and simply not enough time.  During these periods of high judgmentable activity, you’re going to spit out nouns at me and I’m going to knee-jerk a reaction all free-association style.  I get three passes.  You get ten seconds to think of another noun.  Whoever quits first loses.  Winner gets Tootsie Pop.

Gay teen suicides: Can we first of all agree that these are tragic regardless of the preceding adjective?  As I’m certain there are fat teen suicides and sad teen suicides and straight-but-perceived-weird-in-other-ways teen suicides every day.  The adjective is not what binds these events together—social rejection is.  Isolation is.  Cruelty is.  The fact that being gay triggers these things is a problem.  That these things are rampant is a societal crisis—bullying is not the way to react to people we dislike or disagree with.  Even if you don’t co-sign someone’s lifestyle, you cannot, must not turn a blind eye to the moral bankruptcy latent in the souls of kids who tease to torture.  It is at least a cavity that can be treated, as they are still young; but this means you are obligated to do just that.  Hate.

Streaker at Obama rally:  Was he doing it for money?  Was it for his sick sister?  Was he protesting clothes?  Talking heads psychoanalyze streaker on news shows.  My mother has a more succinct diagnosis.  “It seems,” she says, “he is naughty.”  My mother is always right.  Naughty people are often naked, or vice versa, either way they are more easily identified when they are publicly nude.  Indifferent.

Syncing (noun credit: Andres): It’s easy to do, takes only a couple of clicks, and is good for you.  I never do it, it’s still a pain in the ass.  I’ve been listening to effing Keane for three years.  Hate.

Ginni Thomas: I give women two and a half more generations of a free pass to release themselves from social and financial dependence on their husbands and start being accountable for the choices they make in marriage.  Deny while you can, ladies.  The day’s coming when succeeding Judgmentors will brutally enforce your honesty and make you stop clawing at each other in defense of a man who should be able to live up to his own damn honor.   Indifferent.

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Related, but dissimilar.  I love women who look like they’ll care of it when shit gets real.  I’ll make a run for the panic room and when I re-emerge I’m pretty certain the zombie apocalypse will have been managed to a desirable outcome.  She’ll have played dirty, for sure, but it will be for the right cause and that doesn’t bother me.  Love.

Chipotle (noun credit: Lokesh): I know I’m in the minority on this but this shit just doesn’t curl my toes.  Their chips are unforgivable.  Smart business model, though, so, you know, props for that, I guess.  Hmm.  *scratch neck, stare off into space*  Indifferent.

Rick Sanchez: Have you heard about this shit?  Pete Dominick got away with murder in the press, but only because Rick Sanchez eclipsed him with the immense dimensions of his stupidity.  Making generalized remarks about anyone, like they both did, in a public forum is something less than wise.   Calling Jon Stewart names just sets you up—dude, he’s got an entire staff of comedy writers and you only have your overextended ego staying up at night trembling in a scotch-induced rage.  And look what you came up with.  He’s a “bigot.”  That’s the best you could do.  Sad.  Look, this wasn’t just a Cuban-American journalist making provoking remarks about Jews in the media—there were a lot of layers here and it was a doomed debate.   They stumbled into something too big and serious and complex for them and made a mess of things like the sloppy-thinking bitches they are.  It was like monkeys eating oatmeal with forks.  Facepalm.

Starbucks (noun credit: Katherine): I parked my ass in one of these crack dens recently and had a pleasant enough time.  Until the United States adopts the sidewalk café model of European cities this serves as a completely inadequate substitute in terms of both ambiance and coffee quality but it’s the only thing we got.  Being snobby/counterculture/anticorporate about Starbucks was so 2003, get over it.  My productivity level was pretty low but the sugar high from their surprisingly tasty wee pink sparkly donuts made me feel like I was tearing my spreadsheet up.  Like.

Mustard (noun credit: Sarah): Dijon.  Smooth.  End of fucking story!  No grainy shit!  No yellow squeeze bottle!  Dijon, goddamn it!  Nothing else passes must…er.  Love.

OK, I’m done, you win.  Keep returning for another edition of the Judgmentor Jumble!  Check your local listings.

International Burn a Koran Day (formerly known as 9/11)

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Noun: International Burn a Koran Day. Opinion: Facepalm.

9/11 makes me all opinion-y.

Yeah, it’s personal.  But it’s also become insanely political over the years.  And it makes me all crazy with these thought balloons hovering around my head and I have to pop one so that the words splatter on the screen like this just so I can clear my mental windshield which right now is covered with the carcasses of sensationalist media news headlines and that was a lot of metaphor to get to the point which is this: I am not a big fan of this idea.

I don’t support burning books altogether.  It’s stupid.  But burning holy books…well, that just feels uber-wrong.  Like, it makes me really nervous wrong.  Like someone should do something about this before it happens wrong.  Like this is me tugging at Papa Obama’s suit sleeve anxiously wrong.

Not that I think he can really do anything about it beside wag a finger.  If there’s a stronger supporter for a secular government than me, I would like to meet him or her and challenge them to a humanist face-off (we’d stare each other down then compliment one another’s well-calibrated perspectives contained to demonstrable experience).  But that doesn’t mean I think it wise to disregard the spiritual leanings of our fellow citizens—that would be whack.  We might as well turn a blind eye to their physical safety or educational needs.  One would have to be a full-on, furry-chested, power-top sociopath not to have an intuitive understanding of that which is sacrosanct  and untouchable—whatever that may be to you, be it a book, an idol, a grilled cheese sandwich in the shape of a crying Jesus.  It’s about respect.  And part of me wishes that I could get the government to holla a supportive “fuck yeah” by way of intervention.

I voted for Mike Bloomberg when he was calling himself a Republican and it didn’t even hurt.  I have my differences with the man, but we both come from the school of Get-Shit-Done and I relate.  He has publicly defended Jones’s right to burn holy books under the First Amendment.  While I get that, it still doesn’t sit right; this act plucks the same brain string that’s activated every time I hear of a hate crime.  My perspective on this is more along what General Petraeus was getting to when he said this act would “endanger U.S. troops and the overall effort.”  In the short-term, the former is of utmost concern, but in the long-term, the latter is a serious buzzkill.  If by “overall effort” he means civilization’s efforts to create an entire world of universal citizens who hold mutual respect as the highest value.  Can you imagine?  That would sort of solve everything, don’t you think?

Can that possibly be legislated?  Because we’ve tried relying on people to self-determine their way there, and it hasn’t happened.  It feels like it’s anti-happening.  And when kids don’t behave you ground them.  Can we legally unplug the Dove World Outreach Center’s cable connection?  Or, I dunno, lock them in their rooms and fasten chastity belts on all of them to ensure no reproduction?

I’m not going to make the same mistake you are, Terry Jones, by attributing your asinine and inflammatory behavior to your religion.  I won’t paint broad, black strokes over all the delicate nuances of Christianity.  My disdain for you has nothing to do with you being a Christian.  It has to do with you being an asshole.  It has to do with your lust for attention.  It has to do with your disregard for civility.  It has to do with your hypocrisy.  Most of all, it has to do with that fucking preposterous face mullet you sport.  You’re a dickwad, and you’re ugly.

And for the rest of the world, please hear me—pay no mind to this canker sore.  He’s an outlier, a drama queen, an abortion of a true American.  You have yours, he’s one of ours.  We can’t take him anywhere nice, and as much as he offends you, our aversion to him is magnified by how exceedingly mortified we are by him.  So, sorry about that.  Hopefully the things we do right and the good we offer the world will mitigate this a bit—like, here, take this Coca-Cola.  I hear you like it.

Unions

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Noun: Unions.  Opinion: Conflicted.

Noun credit: Jen.


Among the nicer, more conscientious of you, there may be those who were wondering where the Judgmentor hath been these many weeks.  Among the rest of you are those who never really noticed the absence but are curious now that the topic has been brought up.  And the remaining of you may go back to playing Farmville for all I care.

Where have I been?  I’ve been busy.  Growing more deeply disenchanted with the world is a time-consuming business, I’ll have you know.  I have been off having what little remained of my idealism touched in private parts.  I have been occupied with the violation of an entire life philosophy.  In short, I have been busy becoming more cynical.

The easy joke here is to laugh a not very slightly supercilious laugh, the way Americans laugh at European people, and ask if that is even possible.  Just so you know, there is no faster way to have me get my sanctimony on.  Idealism is not vacuous, or silly, or embodied by your Tickle-Me-Elmo approach to life.  It is not always graced with beauty but it always has an element of splendor.  As if there were virtue in serenity, in canopied buoyancy, in blinding smiles and drawing your mental curtains to screen out the ugly.  Who’s more cynical, I ask—me, who had pursued an exquisite chimera, or you, chipper as you were, who never questioned whether the world could be better?  Me, who made choices with the faith that the result would direct itself towards a normative path, or you, who made negative decisions by accepting the positive reality?  What’s a more cynical statement: “This goddamn fucking sucks” or “That’s ok, it’s just the way things are”?  No, this is not me getting defensive, this is me not getting you.  Some idealists focus on the positive, some focus on the negative, but none of us find willful ignorance funny.  Skepticism is not cynicism, though admittedly it’s a slippery slope.

Chew on that while I climb off my soapbox.  Anyway, the point is that the slope turns into an outright freefall down the rabbit hole.  I (barely) stand witness to it.

The Judgmentor, in fact, never left.  The problem was that my last entry was up for all of two minutes before I took it down—it was too dark, too much, too Tori Amos on downers and pomposity.  It’s the space my brain is in right now.  For the first time in my career, I am working with unions.  For the first time, I am working with those without graduate degrees or suburban upbringings or ambitions that don’t involve winning the lottery.  For the first time, I am working with the noble proletariat, the great unwashed masses who struggle mightily against the new feudal system of capitalism, those whose income come from honest labor and not from exploitative ownership of the means of the production they make possible.  As vulnerable as they are to abuse and mistreatment, as susceptible as they can be to corporate manipulation, do they not have a right to protection?

Well, yes.

Do they deserve it?

Fuck, no.

But not because they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps or some such Tory nonsense.  I don’t buy into a merit system based on accumulated wealth, it smacks too much of over-simplification chased with malice (hear me, Fox News cocksuckers?).  Unions don’t deserve to exist because people fundamentally SUCK and because they don’t stop at protecting the innocent from the exploitation of management.  They will grab, snatch and claw at more.  Samuel Gompers, leader of American unions and founder of the AF of L, summed up human nature when he said “we do want more, and when it becomes more, we shall still want more.”   And voila the suckiness of mankind—this isn’t the innocent organizing against corporate evil, this is a simple case of assholery versus assholery.

And what kind of result can possibly manifest from a war of assholes?  Never a good one.  Where’s Troy today, after all (or Greece, for that matter)?  The distortions to the free market system I’ve witnessed that were direct consequences of the union and their irrational demands have been astounding in scope.  Hey, I’m no unadulterated fan of competitive capitalism—but however rickety its operations when left alone, it is fucked upside-down when you introduce a market abortion like a collective bargaining agreement.  What you can do, say, suggest, how you can execute, scratch your pits and carry out reasonable business practices is completely hamstrung.  There is jockeying and posturing on both sides, each trying to position themselves with perceived advantages.  The most charming part about the battle is how very human it can be— arbitrary, irrational, and mean-spirited.  Unions will negotiate themselves right out jobs just out of spite.  Businesses will resort to any covert maneuver to save a buck.   And after all that, management still treats workers like shit.  If asked by any of the manual laborers I come into contact with, you better believe I tell them to go union.

And thus my idealism lies gasping for breath on the asphalt, bleeding from the head.  Beaten to a pulp by the misled notion that responsible self-interest can exist and butt-raped with a broomstick by the idea of dignity inherent in simpler lives.  Absurd, of course.  But worth saving…on the off-off-off-chance that despite all evidence to the contrary, there is someone out there who’ll deserve and benefit from the elusive justice idealism lives to enable.  Because his or her demise is a far greater injustice than all the ill-begotten victories of the assholes put together.  So I’ll resuscitate that pathetic invalid, bandage its wounds, and have it live another day, keeping it alive on bare faith and defiance alone.  It’s gnarled and broken and looks a little like an old Chinese Crested with conjunctivitis, but it’s goddamn splendid.

Nobel Peace Prize

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Noun: Nobel Peace Prize.  Opinion: Uh, ok.

nobelpeaceprize

Continuing to confound the universe (we MBAs would call this “diluting the brand”), the Nobel committee opted to award President Barack Obama with the highly esteemed, if highly eyebrow-raising, Peace Prize.  Leader of the largest armed forces, commander of two ongoing conflicts, president for all of fifteen seconds, even Obama seemed to be embarrassed about the whole thing, giving a speech at the White House today that can be abridged to: “Thanks…I guess.”

Obama’s moderated confidence is so appealing and so out of character for an American politician, because like any good capitalist he hires that shit out.  His henchman Rahm Emanuel is his megalomaniac-for-appointment, and even he seemed bewildered by this unexpected honor.  This is a guy who made it seem like convincing an America who voted for Bush twice to accept a half-Black man into the White House would be like eating cupcakes and Skittles.  When Obama was elected and finally inaugurated, the entire nation took pause and tasted ourselves the rainbow.  But today even Emanuel’s eyeballs jumped out of their sockets in a Tex Avery moment.

No one expected it.  Now that he has it, what does it mean?  Martin Luther King, Jr. was given one, as was Mother Theresa.  That seems like good company.  Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin, and Shimon Peres shared one, which kind of seems to miss the point.  Henry Kissinger has one, too.  No, I’m not talking about J.D. Power & Associates, I’m talking Nobel.  Peace Prize.  I’ll give you a moment to vomit that memory back up, since I’m sure most of you repressed it.

Yeah, I don’t think the award reflects much but the whims and worries of those who make up the committee at the moment, and this year it seems to be well-intentioned realpolitik retards who thought they were helping the cause by boosting Obama’s credibility.  The problem is, like most social outcasts over-eager to be your sidekick, they did just the opposite.  Even people who like him are giving him the side-eye and making the flatulence face.  I’m sure Afghans and Iraqis everywhere shook fists and raised their middle fingers to the irony gods, while half of France shat themselves because they only liked Obama while he was an underdog.  If he keeps winning, he might as well be Bush.

I have no problem with Obama winning, especially a prize that I have nothing invested in.  Half the time I don’t even know who the winners are or what conflict they’re trying to resolve, the suckiness of the world is just too grand for me to keep up on everything.  I do feel sorry for Bill Clinton, who’s been gunning for the Peace Prize since his presidency (that’ll teach him to light his cigars using unconventional methods); this has to hit where it hurts.  But honestly, this idea of awarding someone for promoting peace?  I love peace, I vote for peace, but I don’t fetishize peace.  This award seems to matter more to those who think war is inevitable and that peace has to be just as big and glittery and belligerent to have impact.  While I think peace can be found and sustained in the smallest acts of childhood or grace.

The award is only useful insofar as it spotlights injustice and its resulting violence, as well as the counteractive forces of optimism and humanity.  That’s it—it’s not like I started giving half my money away to MSF after Doctors Without Borders won in 1999.  And while that in and of itself is valuable, it’s not everything; it’s perception, but it’s not action.  And that is what Obama will have to deal with—this new perception that something more will be expected of him.  Or this perception that he is too well loved by the international illuminati whom his American opponents hate.  And he will be expected to act on it, which is a billion times harder than accepting a little award.  So…good luck with that, Mr. President.  And congratulations…I guess.

Butter

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Noun: Butter.  Opinion: Love.

Noun credit: Fred.

butter

Any good cook knows his fat.  Not to take away from those of you out there attempting to sear tofu patties on non-stick pans, but y’all are kidding yourselves.  Fat is an essential component to food—it conducts heat, it contributes to mouthfeel, and it functions as a kickass flavor delivery system.  Even if it doesn’t taste like something you’d want to spoon up and eat on its own, it makes everything else more delicious.

If you want to have a basic idea of what makes regional cuisines unique, take a look at the fat they use.  Sesame in East Asia, olive in Greece, Crisco in the United States…these speak in such clamorous volumes about our respective diets that you hardly need to look at any other ingredient to understand the palates of the regions’ people.  Waverley Root segments France into three basic regions based on their lipid foundations.  In the South (-ish…just wave your hand broadly around that area on the map) you have your olive oil, which lends itself to the sunny, unpronounceable gastronomy of ratatouilles and bouillabaisses.  In the West they use animal fats, yielding rich, delectable fare that claims stake on anything having to do with the goose and pig.  And in the Middle and North, they use the most high-maintenance and transcendent of all fats, butter.

Butter.  Sigh.  What to say about butter…give me a moment, here.  I’m…verklempt.  Sorry, I don’t usually cry in public, but…choking on my…emotion…

Now, I’m speaking of good butter, not the stuff that’s trying to pretend to be butter, or butter that’s made half of cow’s milk and the other half of cow’s piss and another half (butter is the new math) of salt to preserve it as it stands on the very precipice of rancid.  The French do a rendition of butter that is nothing short of divine—if God has toast in the morning, this is the stuff He spreads on top.  I’ll spare you the details on the kind of governmental control it takes for the country to produce this awesomosity, but if you ever see French butter in your market stock up on that shit like it’s gold bullion.  For serious, they’re cheesy, creamy ingots of scrumptiousness.

I’d go into the various uses of butter, but it is a topic far broader and deeper than would be manageable in a day.  It’s too much.  I don’t have the time to wipe the tears and drool of joy as I attempt to key in words beyond my reach to explain the elation that butter brings to life.  I know there are those of you who cringe at the very word, who associate it with obesity and sin.  I can’t with you—I wouldn’t even know where to begin.  The very premises of my weltanschauung (oh, hell yeah, I busted out the German, bitches) is so diametrically opposed to yours I don’t have the balls to try.

OK, ok, I’ll give it a go.  Follow me here.  Butter = yum. Yum =  happy.  Butter = happy.  Happy = Aristotelian moral purpose.  Aristotle = butter.  Oh, shit, wait.  That’s not right.  Forget it, I told you it was impossible.  Suffice it to say that fat is not the enemy.  I’m just saying, a little bit of butter can go a long way in bliss.  Butter is not only the root to all things delicious, but all life philosophy.

Roses

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Noun: Roses.  Opinion: Love.

Noun credit: Sarah.

roses

I’m going to put my cranky hat over here (don’t let me lose it) and put on my happy bonnet for a second.  Ow.  It’s a little tight…just…wait…there we go.  Howzzat look?

My happy bonnet is adorned with lace and gardenias, but we’re talking about roses today.  A lot of what we’ll say can be applied to almost any flower, but to say that roses carry more symbolic weight would be underselling the point.  They’re the most romantic of all blossoms, signaling varying states of affection through their color; they are the most elegant, signifying beauty, wealth and class; and they are the most figurative, combining exquisite gorgeousness with cruel thorns, a caveat that hadn’t been lost on the most primitive generations.

I have girlfriends who also think they are cliché and affected and will judge men rather harshly for attempting to confer a bouquet of the offensive stuff.  Uh, yeah, I guess I could see that.  I mean, nothing screams “I’M TRYING I REALLY AM” like a dozen roses.  I rather think it’s because roses have now been associated with men who have fucked up royally in some way and for whom these flowers are the easy and expensive way out, so it’s more a matter of conditioned response for women who aren’t so easily bought.  Fine, but don’t blame the roses!  The roses are innocent!  The roses weren’t the one who slept with your best friend!

Ladies, put the preconceptions away in the drawer with all those exercise DVDs you never use.  Pick up a rose from the corner bodega and take a look at it.  Lovely, no?  Touch the petals—as soft and smooth as tender flesh.  The scent of its perfume is as seductive as any found in nature.  It intoxicates nearly every sense, it’s sex on a stem.  The rose is a perfect flower.  And if your man screws up, kick him to the curb but keep the roses.

Fresh-cut flowers are an indulgence my wallet can never entirely justify.  Which, come to think of it, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  If I’m not investing my disposable income in beauty, what am I using it for?  No, flowers don’t have much use other than being pretty.  Don’t scoff—you men out there have slept with less.  Loveliness has value in an ugly world and we should surround ourselves with as much of it as possible.  Rest assured, the Judgmentor will never turn down a bouquet of flowers.  Really!  Not even if you do sleep with her best friend.