Month / December 2003

by DrMabuse

Viva Gonzalez?

She was across the street, curly blonde locks tucked beneath a snow white cap, flowing down her shoulders, bright teeth matching the hue of the hat on a cold rainy night. It was just close to poll’s close. She raised her arm and accosted me.

“Excuse me, do you know where the polling place is?”

“Who are you voting for?” I asked.

“Gonzalez.”

“I’ll personally escort you there myself.”

But, hey, I would have done it even if she was voting for Newsom. She was a cutie. No. Get that boat back into rational rivulets. She was a voter.

There aren’t election results up yet, but it’s looking pretty good for Gonzalez. I’ve learned that Gavin Newsom sent somewhere in the area of 150,000 abentee applications to potential voters. This despite a Clinton and a Gore endorsement. I’ve never heard of a candidate ever resorting to anything like this.

But just to be safe, I’ve conducted an informal poll among people who are, what I would call, traditional Democrats.

The publisher of a major magazine: “Gonzalez. Begrudgingly.”

A Gore voter with a pragmatic reactionary tilt: “Well, I had to vote for Matt after eight years of Brown.”

Even a person who’s normally apolitical confessed that he’s voting for Gonzalez.

Gonzalez has a momentum here that Ammiano didn’t have back in ’99. It was a hell of a coup to get people to write Tom Ammiano’s name onto the ballot and get him in the runoff. But the minute the runoff went down, momentum shifted. People became painfully aware of Ammiano’s limitations and were willing to let the pragmatic Democrats west of Twin Peaks have the final say.

But not this time. The Financial District signs are split evenly between Gonzalez and Newsom. Pragmatism has shifted. People are hungry for something new. Different. Honest. I suspect the fact that Newsom has never appeared in a photograph with his hair tousled in any way has something to do with it. What were the Newsom people thinking?

I’m amazed to say that it may actually happen tonight. 82% of San Francisco voted against the recall. We do things differently here. And we could be the first city in the United States with a Green Party mayor. If it does go down, I’ll be very proud to be a San Franciscan. Very proud to be part of a movement that tells the nation, “Politics doesn’t have to be an unctuous business. Sometimes, under special circumstances, you can have results.”

UPDATE: We lost. But it was fun ride. Tim Redmond calculates that Newsom spent $34 a vote to Gonzalez’s $4. It’s still a respectable showing.

by DrMabuse

Matt Gonzalez for Mayor

matt_oval.gifSo I voted for the hippie. And here’s why you should too:

Gavin Newsom isn’t the right-wing nut he’s been painted as. But he’s the obvious choice. A pomaded, well-oiled machine slightly better than Willie Brown, but no less accountable. A man who views San Francisco the way a ladies’ man propositions an easy Friday night lay: a quickie on the way to the top or the next one, wherever that might be. This may be putting it crudely, but would you trust this man to babysit your kids? I rest my case.

But Gonzalez, while not as specific about solutions as his supporters would contend, is perhaps the only shot in a generation at a genuinely passionate and respectable politician in San Francisco. Someone who will try something open and different, someone who actually gives a damn about the problems that plague ths City and won’t turn a blind eye the way that Willie Brown did. Even if Gonzalez falls flat on his face, or should he win tonight, at least we can’t say that we didn’t try.

The results that may come from Gonzalez’s grand experiment, good or bad, are what I’m interested in, and why any San Franciscan should give him the risky vote. Homelessness is abysmal. Apartment rental rates are out of control. You have to clear $200K a year and have the credit of J. Paul Getty to buy a home here. And the local economy’s become as neglected as the pet chihuahua left home to die while the family’s driven four hundred miles to mourn the death of a close family relative. (Remix those metaphors, baby!) Who says that thinking outside of the box won’t help matters? And, for the record, Gonzalez is pro-business. He doesn’t plan on tampering dramatically with current business taxes. He just wants people to have a living wage, and to be able to afford to live here. He’s daring us to rethink our priorities. And the great thing is that if the experiment works, it could make a difference to how things are done nationwide. All Gonzalez asks is that we reconsider our values.

I hereby introduce an eleventh-hour campaign slogan that seems to have eluded Gonzalez’s supporters:

Put Your Balls on the Chopping Block and Vote Matt Gonzalez

by DrMabuse

Because Every Review Needs an Attention-Grabbing Sentence to Quote in Later Reviews

Looks like Sterling Clover’s going for a Tibor Fischer (for anyone with the time to read, or skip through, 3,200 pages): “But Rising Up is maddeningly real, at its worst the world’s most erudite dorm-room bullshit session given the Cicero treatment and weighed down by numbing cynicism toward belief and hope of all sorts, naive tossing-about of the ‘social contract,’ irritating misuse of the concept of reification, and an epistemological nightmare of means and ends.” (via Low Culture)

by DrMabuse

Surrendering to Environment

Gore Vidal once pointed out that novelist Frederic Prokosch was roundly criticized for delving too much into environment, and not nearly enough into human character. Hardpan’s lyrical presence within The Seven Who Fled is nothing less than scintillating, but for anyone concerned with the niceties of behavior (including me), it was a bit frustrating to see Prokosch juxtapose highly stereotypical characters against conditions of starvation, hungry lust, and the kind of banal palaver that Stephen King has since injected too frequently within his Dark Tower series.

But what better way to understand condition than through environment? Environment, lest we forget, was one of Balzac’s predominant concerns. In it, Balzac suggested, we could see the complete depiction of personality. Today, with Western environment tainted by post-reality teevee tripe, and as the very worst of post-pomo has forced us to suffer through trite pop culture references, crude drawings and laundry lists placed smack dab in the center of a major story arc, Prokosch, years later, an almost forgotten writer quite out of print, comes across as a more daring prioritizer. Is it environment that determines character, or vice versa?

What’s interesting about Prokosch’s memoir, Voices, is that it’s just as subtextual as his novels. Prokosch reveals almost nothing about himself. He’s the son of a linguist professor, he’s declared a master philologist at a young age (but questions this sui generis status), he likes tennis and squash, he shuttles across the world, sometimes stopping for months or years at a place he grows fond of, and he collects butterflies. But, above all, Prokosch cannot stop expressing wonder at the tropical environments. Interestingly, Prokosch defers most of the book to the literary voices he listens to. And in this world, Prokosch is a quiet questioner rather than a participant. The voices around him speak in pure academese, almost never faltering in their conversational cadences or thinking (save Somerset Maugham stuttering simple words and a particularly bitter Sinclair Lewis, seen with friend Hal Smith encouraging him in the worst of ways). Peggy Guggenheim shows up twice and we begin to ponder how the art world has made her the eccentric and strangely fascinating person she is. Prokosch reminds us not once, but three times, within his memoir that what he’s setting down is accurate and to the letter. But is this truth in process getting closer to a lie that only Prokosch is aware of? Has he been corrupted by the literary community?

Literary circles are depicted in dialogues that also repeat themes. There are the usual dichotomies: one uttered early on by a chopsticks-deficient Thomas Wolfe about the big man trapped within the little man, and vice versa; the other seen by a plastered, quite naked Dylan Thomas about the man trapped within the woman, and the woman trapped within the man. There are endless hierarchies and book ranking, competitive dismissals of other writers, desperate pining for awards. It’s an environment that Prokosch later renounces. He seems to prefer the natural state of a recluse, watching the dappled clouds or the sun rising above a hillock. (Indeed, the last section of the book is titled “The World of Nature.”) I came away from the book wondering if Prokosch’s near-total abdication to environment was a blessing or a curse. In his work, Prokosch possessed effrontery in finding an almost austere style. But in his memoir, we’re still left with the troubling question of whether surrendering completely to a romantic vista inures us in some way towards the human condition.

by DrMabuse

In Defense of Scrooge

The Toronto Star: “In other words, don’t question clichés. But this is precisely what Scrooge does at the beginning of the story, when the ‘portly gentlemen’ come soliciting. Here’s their pitch: ‘At this festive season of the year, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time.’ Oh? And they don’t suffer in January or February? They don’t feel hungry in July and August? Why should it not be just as ‘desirable’ to help out these wretches in those months? Why not go further, in fact? Why not make some ‘slight provision’ for the poor and destitute every single day of the year?”

Michael Levin: “If you think it is heartless of Scrooge to demand payment [from Bob Crachit], think of Sickly Sid, who needs an operation even more urgently than Tim does, and whose father is waiting to finance that operation by borrowing the money Cratchit is expected to pay up. ”

David E. Bumbaugh: “The problem with Dickens vision, of course, is that the Tiny Tims of the world must wait patiently to be discovered by the Ebenezer Scrooges of the world. What is more, they must hope that when the Scrooges stumble across them, it will be after their miserly hearts have been opened by the visitation of the Spirit of Christmas. Scrooge has the resources to save Tiny Tim, but Tim has no claim on Scrooge except whatever obligation his own redemption has laid upon the wealthy man. In the story, Scrooge learned to keep Christmas and to keep it well, and Tiny Tim was saved, but there is no suggestion that the unjust economic system was in any way altered, or that a thousand other Tiny Tims were not languishing and dying needlessly in that gray old city.”

Robert B. Reich, “Scrooge is Alive and Well in America”: “On the other hand, if you happen to work for one of those 24/7 call centers, you may have to work on Christmas Day. Security guards will be at their stations. Many convenience store operators, too. Also hospital staffs, caterers, hotel personnel, emergency repairers of all kinds, fire fighters, police officers, even the staff at Marketplace.”

by DrMabuse

If Rick Moody Described Paris Hilton

parishilton.jpegThe testicles are housed in a ruddy shaking sac barely filtered through hazy colors, Rick Saloman’s, his driving impetus, his force, his motive power, behind a cylindrical-shaped piston engine for all the purveyors and preeners and panderers and patronizers of cheap thrills to see, to download it across networks, to hear her bored moans, the dynamic phallus that drives the basest, perhaps the easiest, of human emotions, vaguely limp, sore after repeated use but still well on the way to repeated ejaculation, if only we had the whole tape, just below an unsightly gorbelly (if it is so; it’s hard to see) that may frighten cocker spaniels, premonitory and intransigent efforts, again and again into the orifice of a tawny wild-child from the rear, just this side of adulthood, a tattoo somewhere above the repeated point of entry, richness here against the smooth pure color of white sheets, coverlets and counterpanes placed down by the maid, what might she be thinking the next morning, sent through a powerful machine known to clean linen, silk, rayon, 100% all-purpose cotton, of hues of lapis lazuli, of chartreuse, of Day-Glo colors forgotten, the colors and shades and dark spasms of hotel and motel rooms from one side of the nation to another — but in this case, white, pure as snow, angelic, the color of America’s angel, again flattened hard, against the bed, her hands possibly clutching the comforter to humor Rick (and me, for my own priapism occurs as I write this sentence); moments later, a machine that this recherche City of Love (in name only) may inherit someday, if she breaks this curse that she should be ashamed of, if only people didn’t want to see a rich kid transform overnight into a soft-porn starlet, if only there was more to write about — but, no, I won the Guggenheim. What would Billy Faulkner have to say? He might have needed something else to download, if you catch my drift.

by DrMabuse

Miscellany

Recent Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee says that television has replaced books as the imaginative impetus for kids. Apparently, he hasn’t heard of Harry Potter.

Is Rick Moody aware of periods?

The New Yorker has a profile on Lucia Joyce, James’ daughter, focusing on Lucia’s efforts to live in the shadow of a paternal genius and her father’s neglect. Lucia Joyce would later spend most of her years in an asylum. Carol Schloss’s book on the matter seems to suggest that Lucia was the price paid for Finnegan’s Wake and that she was instrumental in contributing to its imagery.

Jim Crace on research: “My wife and my editor think I do lots of research. And I encourage them in their delusion as it makes me seem hardworking. But actually I don’t research. I oppose research. What I do is a bit of background reading in order to work out how to tell my lies. I don’t look for information, I look for vocabulary and for the odd little emotional idea that will give some oxygen to my imagination. Vocabulary is the Trojan horse that smuggles the lie. Facts don’t help. If you’re not a persuasive talker at a party, no one’s going to believe you, even if everything you say is true. But if you’re a persuasive liar then everyone is fooled.”

The future of board games? The Boston Globe says Germany.

Hitler’s unpublished second book: “Hitler introduces significant new arguments, notably in relation to the United States, Europe, and, above all, the most crucial area of his foreign policy, relations with Britain, arguments which he had been developing in speeches and articles during 1926?8. ”

More end of the year lists:

The New York Times [The Bottom Line] (user: dr_mabuse, pw: mabuse)
The Washington Post [Fiction] [Nonfiction]
The Chicago Tribune [Best of 2002] (user: dr_mabuse, pw: mabuse)
The Seattle Times [Visual Arts (including The Pop-Up Kama Sutra!)] [Performing Arts] [Classical Arts] [Rock & Roll]
Amazon
The Christian Science Monitor [Top 5 Fiction] [Top 5 Nonfiction] [Noteworthy Fiction] [Noteworthy Nonfiction]

by DrMabuse

The Tough Love Colonel of Iraq

sassaman.jpgIn today’s New York Times, Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman had some helpful hints on how to garner respect from Iraqis: “With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them.”

Forget homebaked brownies or even a mellow guitarist singing “Kumbaya” just outside a shelled building. Apparently, the way to secure peace, love and understanding is to scare the shit out of the people you’re trying to befriend. So far, this has been accomplished with signs reading, “Do not approach or try to cross, or you will be shot” and by arresting family members of suspected “terrorists.”

I may have been too busy laughing my ass off when I read How to Win Friends and Influence People years ago, but I don’t think these unique approaches were mentioned by Mr. Carnegie.

Sassaman is 40, a pizza lover, and a former all-star quarterback for the Army, reportedly described as “cocky” by his peers. Some of his thoughts on handling situations can be found in this interview (user: dr_mabuse, pw: mabuse): “One of the seven rules I live by is, ‘Never let a fat guy pass you.'”

The colonel, to his credit, is trying. Back in October, he spent weeks educating his soldiers on Ramadan. A pamphlet entitled “Ramadan: A Guide for Soldiers” was disseminated among troops. ABC News reported one of the helpful hints: “After sundown when the fast is broken, do not be alarmed if you see large groups gathering to share a meal.”

In early November, Sassaman led a frenetic search through 70 homes for guns and suspects. The results? No weapons and resentment from the Iraqi people. In the same article, Sassaman was also reported as doing something highly undemocratic. As the Balad City Council was determining whether or not to get rid of a police chief, Sassaman grabbed the mike and boomed, “I hereby confirm the police chief to a six-month term.”

Sassaman has a firm maxim: “Our policy from the start has been: If you don’t shoot at us, you will be rewarded.” But how have the non-shooting people of Abu Hishma been rewarded? Israeli-style fences, checkpoint cards written only in English, and buildings destroyed with a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later mentality.

There’s no possible way that any of us here on the homeland can be completely aware of the dangers in Iraq, or how the high-stress environment has taken its toll upon the soldiers. (To date, there have been nine suicides, most of them after combat operations were halted.) But last I heard, the whole idea of being in Iraq was to ensure democracy. While the deaths of soldiers has dwindled because of this new hard-line approach, I can’t help but ponder the long-term implications Sassaman’s actions will have: both for our troops and the people of Iraq.

by DrMabuse

Excerpts from Amazon’s “Abs of Steel” Reviews

“I found the tape a little dated relative to the appearance of the instructor but the excercises were just great.”

“What I like most is Tamilee. I liked Abs of Steel so much, I was inspired to get another one…by Denise Austin. Big mistake…I couldn’t stand her! It made me realize that if the trainer leading the workout is annoying, forget it! I still find Tamilee charming and interesting after having watched the tape many times.”

“I would have liked to have a warm up at the beginning on each section; it is such a pain to have to rewind the tape to warm up (if you are so inclined). Tammy lee’s cuing is great and she doesn’t have an annoying condescing tone in her voice that usually accompinies most instructors.”

“The instructor is extremely fake and over enthusiastic, but it’s worth it because the results are excellent!!!!”

“Much better than the Denise Austin Hit the Spot Abs video.”

But here’s the big question: does it come in Dolby Digital 5.1?

[3/22/04 UPDATE: I see that this was an attempt to pull a Harper’s Readings sort of thing. But it also arises because I’ve spent the past four months trying to figure out exactly how to flatten my tummy. The obvious answer is to start doing sit-ups. And the thought was that getting a video, perhaps something along the lines of Abs of Steel, would be the way to do this. But the thought of Abs of Steel being right next to my Criterion edition of Wild Strawberries was ridiculous. The 34ish waistline holds, though this may change in a few months. Or at least that is my hope.]

[8/9/04 UPDATE: The 34 waistline…uh…holds. It always holds for a man over thirty.]

by DrMabuse

The Most Hilarious Political Mailer

newsom.jpg“REPUBLICANS: PROTECT THIS CITY!” next to a smug, airbrushed photo of Gavin Newsom. Man, with a neck-to-neck mayoral race, it’s good to see printed hysteria (for once) from the other side.

[3/22/04 UPDATE: Newsom was elected mayor and has united liberals with his civil disobedience tactics on the same-sex marriage front. During this time, I demonized him without apology. Not a particularly original way of existing, but an altogether common one. This simplistic cave-in to emotional impulse is what happens when one gets caught up in political fervor. November, and election time in general, is the ultimate way for the mind to degenerate. We throw in the towel with the guy who can get elected and, months later, we demonize the victor, completely forgetting that we elected him. Now that I’m nearing 30, I’m beginning to understand why you shouldn’t trust anybody over that threshold. U.S. politics has become more Machiavellian and deceitful than anyone could have possibly predicted two centuries ago.]

[8/8/2005 UPDATE: And now that I’m over 30, I’m realizing how preposterous this last update reads. Strangely enough, politics has become something intermittent. Often I will avoid it for months, only to be dragged back into it against my will upon reading some horrifying development. Of course, I’m also a lot happier now too.]

by DrMabuse

Four-Square

There’s a moment in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, when the narrator refers to radio as “the four-square beat of heartbreak.” The metaphor’s apt to the character describing it, seeing as how, early in life, she’s experienced a monstrous marriage at a young age. Innocence and pathos, in situ, lost to a scoundrel. The implication is that the emotional shrapnel is buried far beneath the flesh, the damage so insurmountable that even the simple joys are easily recognizable for their artifices. Happiness can no longer be gained or guaranteed. The world’s workings lie exposed, spewing out like oil leaking from a car. It gets our hands grimy. Best to avoid it.

There’s more being codified here than how love reduces us to giggly, internal histrionics, and how radio ballads (the genuine ones from Patsy Cline or John Prine or Janis Joplin, not the treacly messages buried beneath horribly sequenced, aural pillaging from Elton John, Phil Collins or Sting) can, in this delicate state, reduce us to tears, or touch some heartbreak permeating beyond our careful fortifications, the protective walls we build over the years. The music , perhaps, reverts us to a childlike flurry. In some way, it involves an inexplicable surrender that helps us cope. Even if the methodology is less than enviable.

For some people, the “four-square beat” may be all they have. Or it might serve as a way to progress forward. Not nearly as nefarious as television, which only serves to stave off loneliness. But is radio harmful? Or cathartic? I think of how the human spirit, even within the most indomitable individuals, is capable of reducing itself to a woeful, spongy morass. A good thing, because it allows us to feel, helping us grope against the slime, climb out of the cesspool, knocking upon our own portcullis, gaining entry, carefully cataloging our emotions once again, placing the fallen visceral leaves back onto the delicate branches of our all-too-human hearts. A bad thing, because as we’re recollecting, we’re so open to being used, exploited, or damaged by deliberately harmful persons. Or, optimistically speaking, sometimes running unexpectedly into a kind soul, a presence not necessarily there as a crutch, but as a helping hand. I’ve been in this place many times in my life, although I generally keep such reconstructions to myself, for fear of falling prey to the demon with an outstretched hand. It could be paranoid self-preservation, having been burned so many times, and remarkably forgiving towards parties that have wronged me. But I wonder if it’s all as much of a deadly game as Atwood seems to imply. All the same, the process involves trying to understand just why all the veins are twisting, congealing, and then pumping in an entirely new configuration, hopefully representing some improvement over the last one.

Do we play music to help us rebuild? Why do we willingly surrender ourselves to the “soft rock” whims of a DJ spinning his medication from a playlist created and approved by an inchoate corporate entity? Why is there such a positive association between driving solo on a highway and listening to some random tune, whether compiled by DJ or mix tape? The sensation, the notes, the drumbeat, the bass line, the jangly guitars — it all burrows its way into our ears, trancing our inner determination or feeding a flight. But is this a constructive game? Or something intended for a six year old’s recess period?

I realize the voice that posited this metaphor is bitter. But, despite my chronic skepticism, I could never ever become this bitter. If coping’s a game to be avoided, if a lowbrow avenue that momentarily assists us is declasse, if one cannot stoop beneath from time to time (if it helps) and must remain in permanent isolation from the joys of life, then what’s the point of existence?

by DrMabuse

Too Illegit to Quit?

marty.jpgPopMatters reviews Martin Amis’s Yellow Dog and berates Tibor Fischer for jumping the embargo. Meanwhile, Edward Guthmann interviews Amis in the San Francisco Chronicle, scoring a silly Keith Richards photographic homage and utterly strange description: “His voice is deep and rich, seasoned by a lifetime of smoking — imagine Ronald Colman or Jeremy Irons, only rougher. His mouth, often compared to Mick Jagger’s, is full and voluptuous and, even in repose, suggests an incipient snarl.”

The New York Times offers their Notable Books of 2003 list. (user: dr_mabuse, pw: mabuse)

Record label Murder, Inc. shall henceforth be known as “the Inc.” I haven’t seen anything this silly and squeaky-clean hit the hip-hop world since M.C. Hammer shortened his name to “Hammer” — an eleventh-hour career move to appear edgier.

Dark Shadows AOL IM Icons: Granted, this 1960s soap opera, now available on DVD, is an inexplicable form of crack cocaine, despite pillaging every known story in the classical horor canon. But who knew that people would get this obsessive?

And it appears that those sharp minds at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have decided to ask the dead for help in their September 11 investigations. What next? Enlisting an Ouija board for first-hand testimony? (via MeFi)

[3/16/14 UPDATE: As I fix the linkrot, there are a few surprises. The Dark Shadows buddy icons page isn’t a dead link! When this blog post appeared, people communicated through instant messaging. Twitter, Facebook, and smartphones didn’t yet exist. Back in San Francisco, I was acquainted with quite a number of tech innovators who have since become millionaires (and have forgotten me). But I remember encouraging many of them by IM. Today, any avatar you upload will be automatically resized. But in 2004, you had to resize it yourself using Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. Deirdre Day-MacLeod’s Yellow Dog review has been removed from PopMatters. But I’ve found it and added a link to Fischer’s review. I’m also pleased to report that Ms. Day-MacLeod lives online here. The LiveJournal entry that I linked to is password protected through Web Archive, and I cannot find the original Metafilter thread. The Martin Amis photo is by Katy Raddatz.]

by DrMabuse

Of Demagogues and Political Photo Ops

A remembrance of youth, triggered by a series of recent presidential photo ops

My memory is often hopeless beyond compare, but there are things I remember. Important things. Things that come back in the most unexpected of ways. Back in June 1994, I had the misfortune of listening regularly to Rush Limbaugh on the radio. I was working in a Sacramento copy shop, one of several jobs I was working to save up cash for my move to San Francisco that fall. The jobs had me working anywhere from 60-80 hours a week. I was a scrawny underfed kid, nineteen, just on the cusp of twenty, inexperienced. Despite my ability to type 100 wpm, I couldn’t seem to land so much as a lucrative data entry job. But I somehow talked my way into this morning copy shop job through a temp agency. (Some of my other jobs included doing filing for an insurance company, telemarketing funds for the Sacramento Symphony, working as a movie usher, working as a short-order cook — the job I probably liked the best and took the most pride in — and toiling at a Target snack bar. The latter was the worst job I have ever had. At Target, after you had spent the entire day immersed in grease, often without breaks, after cleaning the fryers and unleashing the remainder of your strength scrubbing the grill, they would literally lock you in the store and force you to restock before you could leave, which meant unpaid overtime and sometimes ten hours recorded as eight. And people wonder why I don’t shop at Target or Wal-Mart. But I digress.)

normandy.jpegThe shop was owned by a quiet, portly and agreeable man with thinning sandy hair, egg-shaped spectacles working wonders accentuating his two thin horizontal slats into an owl-like visage, and a bristling moustache. He was a friendly guy, fond of chatting with the post-teen, pre-college transfer hired help. He outsourced desperate young plebeians like me for low wages to perform mind-numbing tasks that he wouldn’t dare perform himself: in my case, collating thousands of high school newspapers and bland user documentation put out by fledgling startups.

Like many small business owners, he had a radio to get him through the day. On this radio, I was inducted into the world of Rush Limbaugh first-hand.

Limbaugh boomed and blustered like the strange charm of William Shatner gone horribly wrong. There was an element of McCarthyism in his voice. And there was no way to escape his DSM-IV cadences, even with the radio turned down. Perhaps because politicians had softened their voices for the tricky subtleties of television, Limbaugh compensated for radio by regurgitating the flamboyance of Winston Churchill and W.C. Fields. He talked as if he needed complete command of the entire AM radio bandwidth. So in performing my mundane job, concentration was of paramount consideration.

I tried to zone out by delving into the paperwork like a savant, thinking of things I was reading. Raskolnikov’s guilt or the exploits of the Pickwick Society, eagerly awaiting return to those pastures, magical places I had little time to wander through. But this was difficult, because I’d hear the word “liberal” every other minute, inscribed with the same hatred given to words like “cunt” or “nigger” or “motherfucker.” As far as I could tell, I was one of those “people,” even though my politics were rudimentary at best. (In my high school politics class, I was one of only two students to defend the right to burn the flag. The other person ended up as my brother-in-law. Go figure.)

One day, I had come in to the copy shop extremely tired. I had worked about sixteen hours the previous day, managing only about three hours of sleep. (My girlfriend at the time, whom I almost never saw, was exceptionally forgiving of my crabbiness.) Limbaugh came on. And I could no longer keep up the sanguine face, or control my sighs and dismay. The copy shop owner saw this, but was surprisingly forgiving. I confessed I wasn’t exactly a Dittohead, but I did ask him why he liked Limbaugh. He replied that he thought that Limbaugh was funny. Funny? Perhaps. Funny, if introducing terms like “Feminazi” was funny (although admittedly warranted in the cases of extremists like Valerie Solanas, whose legitimate points were undermined by the same hatred extant within the Moral Majority). Funny, if declaring anything even remotely left as Bolshevist was funny (on paper or in relaxed environs, yes; but with blathering audio while performing a mindless task, decidedly not).

Funny, yes. But with humor occluded by the dreariest of labor, possibly a bona-fide authority after years of a small business owner working long and hard for nothing.

clintoncairn.jpgBut one day, Limbaugh eventually revealed his colors. On June 6, 1994, Clinton was in Europe to recognize the 50th anniversary of Normandy. And like any President, he staged the predictable photo ops. Clinton gave a speech. He walked lone along the beach of Normandy, preparing a cairn. Hardly surprising. All politicians are forced to embrace artificiality at some point. It’s only the most gifted politician who can make every moment feel natural.

And it’s hardly the kind of thing that someone would use as backup material for the shameful liberal cabal. But that didn’t stop Limbaugh. He tore into Clinton as if the photo-op was the very embodiment of evil. He declared it an insult to the men who lost their lives. Clinton should be ashamed of himself. And why hadn’t “the mainstream media” picked up on this? To this very day, it is one of Limbaugh’s textbook examples of Clinton’s “phoniness,” ironically enough, standing comparatively against Bush’s honest and sterling nature.

It was then that I knew that Limbaugh was unquestionably an irrational chowderhead let loose on the airwaves.

bushthanks.jpgWhich makes the recent Washington Post news that Bush ‘s Baghdad turkey was decorative all the more hilarious.

Ask yourself what is more artificial: (1) Standing in an admittedly staged position placing a stone upon a cairn, but with the process itself actually standing for some genuine expression of loss or (2) bringing a turkey to Baghdad, posing with reporters with it, but without anyone going to the trouble to eat the turkey! Shouldn’t Limbaugh be drawing upon the same duplicity here?

Personally, I’d rather see a President stumble a bit through a photo op than fall flat on his ass playing 52 Pickup with the flimsiest deck of cards in Washington.

[3/16/14 UPDATE: In addition to some corrected spelling errors, I was forced to update the links. An original version of this post directed to Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto, as hosted at an MIT page run by Olin Shivers (dead original link). I haven’t looked at this little essay in ten years, but, today, I work much harder for a lot less, although I enjoy all the work. If anything, the terrible labor conditions that I experienced at Target have become much worse in American life. In the late 1990s, it was still possible to accrue any number of part-time jobs. But a visit to any drugstore or a grocery store now reveals an overextended staff working around many closed registers. Who knew that retail conditions would deteriorate further? I wonder whatever happened to the guy who ran the copy shop. I was far too hard on him. He was very kind to give a job to a cocky young loudmouth. One thing I didn’t mention in this piece was my stint at Rally’s, a burger joint in Sacramento that stood on the southeastern corner of Madison and Manzanita — now long gone — where I worked my way up to cashier. At the time, and this was when I was in high school, a few customers compared my theatrical delivery through the speaker system to Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh was really peaking at the time. I had never listened to Limbaugh for an extended period of time until those weeks in the copy shop. Perhaps there was a part of me that feared turning into him.]

by DrMabuse

The Towers Are the Players

In which I link to a Gollum raps video and (ten years later) uncover a fascinating archival conundrum.

Original Post As It Appeared (December 4, 2003):

Gollum raps. (via Quiddity)

Addendum (May 21, 2013):

The Flash video I linked to was created by Ned Evett, who has since removed the video from his site. I found the link through the blog Quiddity, which I still follow ten years later. But there’s no trace of her original entries. (She has moved to Typepad.) And I have managed to find the old “Towers Are the Players” rap video on YouTube, but I can’t embed it on this page because the user who uploaded prevented this. Furthermore, even though Evett’s video set the precedence for Gollum rapping videos (and is still quite funny), the then groundbreaking visuals are primitive-looking by 2013 standards. And the popularity of Evett’s video has been superseded by a Gollum vs. Smeagol Rap Battle video uploaded on December 30, 2012 and that became quite popular on YouTube (to the tune of 1.6 million views). Nobody has thought to go back to the original Ned Evett video, which is somewhat irksome. I’ve emailed Ned Evett and asked him if I could interview him about these fascinating issues.

Second Addendum (June 19, 2013):

Ned Evett kindly answered my email.

“I’m currently overhauling my YouTube channel to include almost ten years’s worth of video content I’ve let go unmanaged online,” writes Evett. He hopes that the Gollum rap video will be included in this overhaul.

He hasn’t thought to update the video: partly due to time and not having the right idea.

“I tried to strike again but just couldn’t get a funny enough video going.”

Evett has since shifted his filmmaking energies to a series of Roadbot Videos, which ended when Evett directed this video for Joe Satriani in 2008.

He hasn’t had time to work on additional videos because he ended up touring the world with Satch with his band Triple Double. Evett also recorded an album called Treehouse in 2011, produced by Adrian Belew.

He says that he’s working on another Joe Satriani video and an original animated series.

Third Addendum (September 6, 2013):

Ned Evett’s latest animation has just been released. It’s a music video for Joe Satriani’s “Lies and Truths”:

by DrMabuse

Salinger’s Secrets

Secret details about Salinger, including his favorite movie and his pseudonyms.

The New York Post reports* that Jamie Clarke’s upcoming book, O What Fun We’ll Have! O the Times! reveals the following tidbits about J.D. Salinger:

1. His favorite movie is The Lost Weekend.
2. Jeffrey Katzenberg attempted to buy the film rights for Catcher in the Rye (with the promise that Spielberg would direct). So did Harvey Weinstein. Both of their offers weren’t even passed onto Salinger.
3. Salinger’s hearing has gone and he “prefers to receive written letters as communication, to be sure that he understands what he is being told.”
4. Salinger destroyed a telephone enhancer in a rage.
5. His house caught on fire several years ago, but has been rebuilt.
6. He travels under several pseudonyms, but always uses the first name Jerry to help his wife out.
7. There is no wealth of manuscripts that he’s sitting on for posthumous publication.

Now if only Conan O’Brien can get Salinger to appear for “Salinger’s…Secrets,” we’d be truly set. I wonder if similar memoirists will blow the reclusive covers of Pynchon and DeLillo in a decade or so.

(via Publisher’s Lunch)

Addendum (May 21, 2013):

* — Sadly, The New York Post has been remiss about preserving its online content. This came from a Page Six item circa December 3, 2003. But Web Archive only preserved this rapidly updated gossip column in monthly spurts. Salinger is now dead. But there is a forthcoming Salinger biography coming in September 2013 from David Shields and Shane Salerno.

As for Pynchon and DeLillo, there hasn’t been nearly as much prying into their private selves as I anticipated.

by DrMabuse

Does Maragaret Atwood Hate Food?

In which we cite copious examples of Margaret Atwood’s nihilistic descriptions of food.

atwood.jpegIn the Margaret Atwood universe, not even an innocent cookie is safe.

From The Blind Assassin:

“Myra had left me one of her special brownies, whipped up for the Alumni Tea — a slab of putty, covered, in chocolate sludes — and a plastic screw-top jug of her very own battery-acid coffee.” (37)

“She says [hamburgers] are pre-frozen patties made of meat dust. Meat dust, she says, is what’s scraped off the floor after they’ve cut up frozen cows with an electric saw.” (44)

“On the menu, displayed in the window — I’ve never gone inside — are foods I find exotic: patty melts, potato skins, nachos. The fat-drenched staples of the less respectable young, or so I’m told by Myra.” (51)

“jars of jam with cotton-print fabric tops, heart-shaped pillows stuffed with desiccated herbs that smell like hay” (52)

“I sat on the park bench, gnawing away at my cookie. It was huge, the size of a cow pat, the way they make them now — tasteless, crumbly, greasy — and I couldn’t seem to make my way through it….I was feeling a little dizzy too, which could have been the coffee.” (54)

“There was nothing much I wanted to eat: the draggled remains of a bunch of celery, a blue-tinged heel of bread, a lemon going soft. And end of cheese, wraped in greasy paper and hard and translucent as toenails.” (56)

“Consomme, rissoles, timbales, the fish, the roast, the cheese, the fruit, hothouse grapes dressed over the etched-glass epergne. Railway-hotel food, I think of it now; ocean-liner food.” (60)

“Breakfast in a haze of forgiveness: coffee with forgiveness, porridge with forgiveness, forgiveness on the buttered toast.” (77)

“I purchased a small iced tea and an Old-fashioned Glazed, which squeaked beneath my teeth like Styrofoam. After I’d consumed half of it, which was all I could get down, I picked my way across the slippery floor to the women’s washroom.” (83)

“I’d eaten too many cookies, too many slivers of ham; I’d eaten a whole slice of fruitcase.” (96)

“We’d have buttered white bread spread with grape jelly translucent as cellophane, and raw carrots, and cut-up apples. We’d have corned beef turned out of the tin, the shape of it like an Aztec temple. We’d have hard-boiled eggs.” (138)

I’d keep going, but I think the point is clear. Either the narrator’s very being is hindered by eating, or Atwood is a closet anti-culinary type. To which I reply, if music be the food of love, play on.

Addendum (May 21, 2013):

Margaret Atwood’s remarkably nihilistic food description has continued unabated in the past decade, helped in large part by the fact that she’s spent much of her fiction writing time building an apocalyptic universe in the Oryx and Crake trilogy. Here are more recent samples:

From Oryx and Crake:

He said it was only pure dumb chance he wasn’t dead — that this fucking country hadn’t killed him with its lousy food.

Worms and grubs were what he recommended for a snack food. You could toast them if you wanted.

…the food in the cafeteria was mostly beige and looked like rakunk shit.

No point thinking about it, not in this heat, with his brain turning to melted cheese. Not melted cheese: better to avoid food images.

From The Penelopiad:

Have I mentioned that there’s nothing to eat except asphodel?

He was sorry he’d asked them for something to eat.

From Moral Disorder:

I was not an orphan, I told myself; I was not nearly enough of an orphan. I needed to be more of one, so I could eat food that was bad for me… — “The Other Place”

As a child she’d separated her food into piles: meat here, mashed potatoes there, peas fenced into a special area reserved for peas, according to a strict plan of her own. One pile could not be eaten before the one already started had been consumed: that was the rule. — “Monopoly”

From The Year of the Flood:

“Why would we hunt?” said Zeb. “To eat,” said Amanda. “There’s no other good reason.”

by DrMabuse

When Bad Writers Reveal Loneliness

Some brief thoughts on Aniruddha Bahal’s bad sex writing.

This year’s Bad Sex Prize goes to Aniruddha Bahal for his novel Bunker 13. The winning line: “Her breasts are placards for the endomorphically endowed.”

Discounting celebrities that go out of their way to sign bosoms (a phenomenon I’ve never understood), I’ve never thought of breasts as placards. Placards, by their very definition, are flat. “Endormophically endowed,” which would imply a surfeit of silicone or softness, contradicts that.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg: “You see a designer pussy. Hair razored and ordered in the shape of a swastika. The Aryan denominator… “

by DrMabuse

The Charge of the Fight Club Brigade

In which Tennyson and Palahniuk are fused together.

Half a tale, half a tale
Half a book onward,
All in the hackrooms of Death
Wrote Chuck six hundred
“Forward, the Fight Club Brigade!
“Charge for the books,” Chuck said:
Into the hackrooms of Death
Wrote Chuck six hundred

“Forward, the Fight Club Brigade!”
Was there a reader dismay’d?
Not tho’ the fanboy knew
Some Laura had blunder’d:
Hers not to fly a kite
Hers not to think or write,
Hers not to like one mite:
Into the hackrooms of death
Wrote Chuck six hundred.

Lullaby to right of them,
Survivor to left of them,
Choke in front of them,
Purchas’d and plunder’d,
Gorged through with rage and unschool’d,
Boldly they read and watched,
Into the jaws of Fincher,
Into the mouth of Chuck’s checking account
Wrote Chuck six hundred

by DrMabuse

Tomes Out of Touch?

Why do so many of the 2004 Democratic presidential candidates have books out?

The Washington Post reports* that eight out of the nine Democratic presidential candidates have books out. Here are a few excerpts culled from the article and other places:

Winning Back America by Howard Dean: “I don’t indulge myself when it comes to clothes. . . . I have a suit that cost $125 at J.C. Penney in 1987.” Well, every son of a multimillionaire stockbroker needs a hobby.

A Call to Service: My Vision for a Better America by John Kerry: “I am so addicted to ice hockey that I still fantasize about starting a professional over-fifty senior league.” Too bad that nobody’s told Kerry that he’s also addicted to a primary race he can’t win.

Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire by Wesley K. Clark: Clark’s enamored of awkward clauses and repetition. “America’s primacy in the world — our great power, our vast range of opportunities, the virtual empire we have helped create — have given us a responsibility for leadership and to lead by example. Our actions matter. And we cannot lead by example unless we are sustained by good leadership. Nothing is more important.”

A Prayer for America by Dennis Kucinich: This one’s a collection of essays and speeches. The titular speech offers a blustering homage to the Declaration of Independence.

Al on America by Al Sharpton (with Karen Hunter): Sharpton’s fond of stating the obvious. “Racism may make the workplace and housing market unequal. But racism doesn’t make you put gold teeth in your mouth, spending thousands of dollars when you don’t have enough food to feed your family. Racism doesn’t make you buy a new, expensive car when you don’t own the home you live in. Racism doesn’t make you make babies that you aren’t going to raise and support both financially and spiritually. Racism doesn’t do that.”

In An Even Better Place: America on the 21st Century, Richard Gephardt (with Michael Wessel) offers parenting hints: Read to your children, help kids with your homework, try to make every school function, and spend time with them. It’s nice to know Gephardt’s so in touch with working class realities. Little is said of time and money.

The Joseph Conrad Award goes to Four Trials by John Edwards (with John Auchard): “At first it seemed strange that so few people who came into my office were angry. In some ways they were probably beyond anger, for their lives had been altered completely – completely and forever – and they just sought something that could bring it back and make it good again. Anger might come later, or it might have been there before, but I almost never saw it in my office – for now they only hoped that things would change.” With a campaign contribution to Edwards, you can get a complimentary copy. Not unlike getting a worthless trinket after pledging a sizable sum to PBS.

And then there’s Lieberman, who offers An Amazing Adventure: Joe and Hadassah’s Personal Notes on the 2000 Campaign, co-written with his wife. The books sounds about as fun as being forced to watch a slide show narrated by some hoary, rambling relative. “A funny thing happened in 2000. I became known for being funny. It began on opening day. At the announcement rally in Nashville on August 8, I told the crowd I was surprised that the Republicans’ first reaction to my selection had been to say that ‘George Bush and I think alike.’ Well, I said, ‘With all due respect, I think that’s like saying the veterinarian and the taxidermist are in the same business — because either way you get your dog back.'” I wonder if that came from Bob Hope’s joke file?

Carol Mosley Braun, who has about as much of a chance as Kucinich, has thankfully spared us a book. Not that a book will offer her any additional leverage.

Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, just came out with a historical novel, The Hornet’s Nest, set during the Revolutionary War. The Washington Post‘s Noel Perrin writes*, “I had hoped to love the novel, because I so admire the man. Alas, I don’t love it. Mind you, it’s a true novel, with many effective scenes and a few stunning ones….[b]ut some of the best scenes are only tenuously connected with the American Revolution.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s Martin Northway notes, “a chilling encounter with a venomous cottonmouth is no time to pause for a treatise on Agkistrodon piscivorus.” The reviews in general have praised Carter’s historical erudition, while quibbling over his lack of character depth. But the great irony is that Carter has seventeen books behind him.

Addendum (May 20, 2013):

The original Washington Post article, published on December 3, 2003, is now behind a paywall. I have switched the link to a rewritten version of the article. Regrettably, the Noel Perrin review is not available anywhere online. Martin Northway’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch review is online, but behind a paywall. Noel Perrin passed away on November 21, 2004 and I have no way of contacting his widow, Sara Coburn. I also can’t find contact details for Martin Northway. But if these two individuals wish to contact me and share the articles, I will happily feature them here. But it looks like these two links are permanently lost to time. (5/20/2013)

by DrMabuse

Reading Long and Reading Hard

In which our blogger marvels at the McSweeney’s commitment towards William T. Vollmann’s Rising Up and Rising Down

vollmann.jpegSan Francisco Chronicle: “It’s impossible to do justice in this space to the 3,299 pages of philosophic declaration, autobiography, journalism and intellectual exhibitionism in machete-sharp prose and photography.”

The new Vollmann set, Rising Up and Rising Down is $120, seven volumes, 3,299 pages, and 20 pounds. It took a year for the McSweeney’s people to fact check. Frankly, it’s astonishing that any newspaper bothered to review it.

But despite Vollmann’s prolificity, Zoetrope can’t get a new story out of him. “I love literary magazines, but they don’t pay what the big ones do.”

Vollmann on fact checking: “I told them I wanted a fact checker since some of the things that I say may be controversial and I’m not a scholar. Or not an academic, and I’m talking about so many different things. At the very least I want to make sure that I’m not making errors in my sources. And so they’ve given me four or five of them. They’re great people to work with. They’ve been looking up every single book that I cite. I don’t know how many I cite, but the bibliography is probably like 100 pages long.”

[3/22/04 UPDATE: Months later, the Vollman set received a cover story on the NYTBR. Of course, who’d expect anyone to read all those pages so quickly? I should also note that publishing such an ambitious work was one of the coolest things that the Eggers clan did.]

by DrMabuse

Born of a Bitter Bland Seed

In which our blogger attempts to come to terms with book critic Laura Miller.

How This Post Originally Appeared (December 3, 2003):

So who is Laura Miller anyway?

Here’s an audio interview* of Miller extolling the wonders of the Internet back in 1999. But, beyond her nasal droll, I must warn you that, if you click on the stream, you’ll probably be frightened by Miller’s pronunciation of the word “niche” or the moment when she kvetches about carrying all those complimentary books around. A harsh life, to be sure. Despite all this, she’s still bitter.

This profile reveals that Miller was born in 1960 and, before getting into writing, started off as a publicist for a co-op that ran “a San Francisco sex toy store and mail order company.” (Apparently, it was Good Vibrations.) One of her first big breaks came with an essay called “Women and Children First”* which appeared in a collection called Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information, whereby she proffered the following Third Wave generalizations: “In the meantime, the media prefer to cast women as the victims, probably because many women actively participate in the call for greater regulation of online interactions, just as Abbie Irving urges Wade Hatton to bring the rule of law to Dodge City. These requests have a long cultural tradition, based on the idea that women, like children, constitute a peculiarly vulnerable class of people who require special protection from the elements of society men are expected to confront alone.”

Her last column for The New York Times Book Review section was more about the documentary The Weather Underground than books, but didn’t have nearly as many generalizations as previous inside back page columns. But I’m mystified. Just why is Miller still writing for the Times? And can we hope that Charles McGrath’s replacement will see the light?

To look at this from a pugilistic standpoint, if you threw Michiko Kakutani and Laura Miller into a gladiator pit, I’d favor Michiko by twelve points. At least she has a sense of humor. Plus, the Pulitzer helps.

[3/22/04 UPDATE: Months later, I’ve largely ignored Laura Miller. And looking back at this entry, I see that I’ve demonized her a bit. That isn’t really fair. I should clarify that, since I’ve already spilled my thoughts (some would say foolishly), the transformation of Laura Miller is one of the saddest things that ever happened to books coverage. But I have every hope that the Miller I read five years ago will return.]

Addendum (May 20, 2013):

* — I have made efforts to track down the 1999 Laura Miller audio interview from Platform #3 referenced in this 2003 post, but it appears to have disappeared: no doubt deleted in a frenzy of redesigns and server reorganization over the last fourteen years. But you can read this text version of the same article, which appeared on Radio Australia. Additionally, I believe my original link led to Miller’s early essay, “Women and Children First,” but I can’t find it through Web Archive. I have pointed to someone else writing about it.

It wasn’t fair of me to chastise Miller for her “nasal droll.” But in 2013, Miller suffers from the same problems. When she is edited (such as her essays in The New Yorker), she can be an astute critic. But much of her ongoing work at Salon is not edited. I’m a little embarrassed by my cocky 2004 update. I haven’t been able to ignore Miller, in large part because some people still read her criticism. But her influence has faded in recent years, replaced by the likes of Roxane Gay and Michelle Dean, who have both proven to be more astute critics. But Miller has gone out of her way to ignore me. I only met her once at the National Book Awards, where we were introduced by a well-meaning third party and she gave me the look of someone who had just her dog die in a hot car during summer.

This was the first of many posts that laid into Miller. I had this tendency in my early blogging days to seek out obscure bits of biographical data about people — often material that nobody else had found — in an attempt to try and understand them. From what I’ve learned about Miller from others since, I can see why she would hate this. I didn’t know in 2003 how touchy literary people could be. I have fixed all the non-working links.

Because the Luke Ford reprint of the Examiner article cannot be adequately verified from New York, I’ve confirmed Miller’s stint at Good Vibrations through two separate sources: a biographical note that appeared in the anthology Travelers’ Tales San Francisco: True Stories. Additionally, Sallie Tisdale’s Talk Dirty to Me reports that Miller worked at Good Vibrations, where

“she hosted video nights for women who have never seen pornography. She shows clips from some of the new, more romantic, female-produced films, and then clips from older hard-core films with more traditional themes. “The difficult part for women is that they haven’t had the opportunity to even see what’s available,” she says. The surprise is how many of the women prefer the old hard-core films. “It’s so politically incorrect. I’m glad when they’re willing to admit that it really turns them on, but they also say, ‘It really disturbs me, but this works, and the other one didn’t.'”

Now this Laura Miller sounds really cool.

by DrMabuse

I Did Other Stuff

In which the blogger describes what he did in his life in the earlier months of 2003.

How This Post Originally Appeared (December 2, 2003):

The months passed along. I moved into a nice new place. The bad juju disappeared. Then I collided into reality. The Po Bronson question so popular months ago (now unseated by Ethan Watters generalizations) that only the inner self can answer. But I like to refer to it as: “The unlived life is not worth examining.”

I appeared in a play. The Man Who Came to Dinner to be precise. It was the first time I had appeared on stage in about seven years, not counting a one-time role in The Curse of the Starving Class. Community theatre. The first time I wasn’t nervous.

I wrote like a maniac. I sent out packages. I received rejections. I still write. And I will continue to write, even if I’m six or so years behind Kurt Andersen.* Gene Shalit doesn’t return my calls. But who’s counting?

I started a book club, of which more later. We’re on the third book right now. And if you’re a San Franciscan into discussing lit, drop me an email and I’ll be more than happy to add you to the list.

I met people. I auditioned for more plays. I got out of the house. I holed up with books. I went crazy in Vegas. And if things continue the way they’re going, I’ll have something very big to manage starting in January. We’ll see.

But I was still a bit antsy. The nightly journal and the hard early morning writing ritual weren’t enough. I needed another canvas. These things come in threes, do they not?

So much like Leonard Nimoy coming to realize late in life that he will always be known as Spock, I’m here to say that I Do Rant, even if ranting proper is not what I plan to do.

And for those just tuning in, welcome to the ballpark. We serve toasty frankfurters, but don’t crack our peanut shells on restaurant floors the way they do in Southern California. Crazy bastards.

[3/22/04 UPDATE: Now a little more than four months later, I find myself doing a lot of the same things. The difference now is that my desires have broadened. However, I have begun to understand the personal facets that prevent me from achieving everything. Life is not an easy path, but it is a path that one must walk every day, even if the gravel bruises the bottom of your feet. To live without vision, and regular progression, is to exist in a terrible vacuum that sucks away your soul a little each day.]

Addendum (May 20, 2013):

Nearly ten years after I posted this entry, I’m wincing at the language (which I haven’t altered), along with the way I awkwardly compared myself with Kurt Andersen. (I have also updated the link to a Web Archive version, as the folks at Folio appear to be embarrassed by the Andersen timeline or have otherwise allowed the article to fall into disarray.) As David Denby pointed out in Snark, I think many of the early bloggers were inspired by Andersen — largely, because many of us may have intuitively gathered that we were working in the tradition of Spy during the 1980s. I have not succeeded in my career (such as it is) anywhere close to Andersen, but I did end up moving to New York. In fact, I asked Andersen to be part of my somewhat successful documentary about Gary Shteyngart and his blurbing, and he was one of the few authors (out of perhaps forty I asked) who did not reply. He proved to be a remarkable bore during a November 2012 roast. It’s safe to say that, at the age of 38, I have no desire to be like Andersen at all. I don’t like his writing. I have no real desire to befriend him. I think he’s lost his touch. But like Andersen, I did end up pumping out 500 hours of radio interviews in the subsequent decade. I doubt very highly that Andersen will find this little footnote, but I include it nonetheless, with unapologetic candor, because I am an obsessive compleatist. I have also changed the “featured image” for this post (which did not exist in 2003) to Kurt Andersen, since it seems apposite.

by DrMabuse

The Return

The first post of “Return of the Reluctant” — featuring the first graphic I ever uploaded to this site in 2003, along with a 2013 makeover.

How This Post Originally Appeared (December 2, 2003):

blogging.jpg

* * *

Addendum (May 20, 2013):

godfather3

Ten years ago, before Tumblr and social media, much of blogging was defined by uploading an image to your server and attaching a header: sometimes comic, sometimes inane. Hence, this — the first ever post appearing under the “Reluctant” moniker (when this website was known as a blog called “Return of the Reluctant,” later revived as half blog, half magazine as “Filthy Habits,” before transforming into the full-fledged magazine “Reluctant Habits”). I had decided to return to blogging after I had deleted a previous blog — one that had little to do with literature — called “Plight of the Reluctant.” It was with this new incarnation of the blog (“Return of the Reluctant”) that attracted the attention of certain media outlets and people in New York (both positive and negative: I was told that nobody had written like this before and there are still needless grudges held against me to this very day), which led to my questionable choice to become a freelance writer.

It started with this post: a hastily Photoshopped and hastily uploaded image riffing off The Godfather, Part III. My Photoshop skills have improved in the last decade: slightly, like a fish that can leap from the ocean a few extra seconds. And because I am now making efforts to preserve history and combat linkrot by finding archived links for websites which no longer exist (as well as offering annotations such as this one, clarifying how my views and opinions and relationships to certain people have changed, but without modifying the text that appeared before outside of spelling errors: never mind that much of it is wince-inducing), I have decided to update the graphic to reflect a more contemporary aesthetic: that is, one that involves slightly more effort. The hell of it is that I never used the “Chit-Chat” category in any form again. I will try to rectify this.