Detective Comics 844 Review.
2008-05-10
Writer: Paul Dini
Artist: Dustin Nguyen
Plot Synopsis, WARNING SPOILERS!
Continuing from last issue; Bruce Wayne has been kidnapped by the new Ventriloquist and Scarface along with mobster Johnny Sabatino and taken to their hideout. Bruce recognizes the Ventriloquist from when they used to occasionally mix in the same social circles, and Bruce asks what ever happened between her and his friend Matthew Atkins, and we're into narrated flashback history. Peyton Riley was the daughter of an Irish mobster, who wanting to forge an alliance between the Irish and Italian mobs offered her up as an arranged marriage to Sabatino. Matthew protested, and was beaten and the marriage went ahead. Johnny was more concerned with appearing a big shot than actual mob business. At one stage Johnny tried to rip off the original Ventriloquist on an arms deal, and was brought along to Scarface along with Peyton, setting up her first meeting with the puppet. Scarface takes a shine to Peyton and decides to let Johnny live as long as he gives thirty percent of his weapons cut to the Ventriloquist. Johnny gets rich, but is abusive to Peyton, due to being trapped in a loveless marriage. Years passed, and the Sabatino mob decided to remove the Riley mob from the family. Peyton's father is hit, and Johnny drags Peyton to a rat-hole apartment and shoots her in the head to make himself a free man. Peyton doesn't die, but is severely injured. Meanwhile unbeknownst to her on another floor the original Ventriloquist has been murdered (as in Batman 818). After Batman leaves Peyton enters the room, and the partially crushed dummy begins ‘talking to her' and asks her to help him, and a new partnership is born. Back in the present, Scarface leaves Bruce tied to a chair and goes to kill Johnny. Zatanna arrives and frees Bruce, and they track down Peyton on a yacht. In the ensuing fight, Peyton leaps over board ‘to her apparent death'. Back at the Batcave Bruce places the Scarface dummy in his trophy room, and the two discuss the possible romantic feelings from the last issue and the events from Identity Crisis, and decide they're not ready to be serious about each other. The end.
It's been hard for me to get overly enthusiastic about Detective lately, especially with all that's been going on in ‘the other title' and Grant Morrison's continuing proclamations about how ‘things will never be the same again.' ‘Tec practically seems to take place in a separate universe, as there's no allusions between the two (this is understandable actually, R.I.P being Morrison's baby). I'll say upfront, I don't like single issue stories; they're like tapas to me, they can be delicious sure, but also unfulfilling. I like some depth to stories I read, and most often single issues don't have it. Witness the completely pointless Mad Hatter story from 842. Secondly, I always base my opinion on the visceral first impression I get; second readings tend to amplify the flaws; be it films, books or comics. On both of those categories Paul Dini has lost my faith a bit lately. I was therefore quite pleasantly surprised with how enjoyable I found this Scarface two-parter.
This story is all about exposition and back-story, as the primary plot really isn't anything to get excited about. Make no mistake folks, this story is an origin tale for the new Ventriloquist. I generally like origin tales, they're usually interesting and the only misstep they really can make is to too egregiously contradict fans beloved continuity; this was the mistake that the new Joker origin ‘Lovers & Madmen' made by removing the Red Hood aspect of it-not only has that been referenced in numerous tales from Batman's first encounter with the Joker, but it makes Jason Todd's use of the alias pointless- L&M has been filed by me as the new Batman movie Joker origin. Dini hasn't made any such mistakes, and instead has quite brilliantly tried to connect the dots between the two Ventriloquists. He confirms that, yes this Scarface considers itself the same no matter who's holding the dummy (though if this is true why does he now pronounce his b's correctly?) The back-story of ‘Sugar' is very interesting filled with being a pawn and a victim of spousal abuse makes her willingness to be able to assert herself and take control of her destiny plausible. I'll probably always still prefer Wesker's Ventriloquist, but this portrayal of Peyton Riley is making the transfer more palatable. Speaking of Wesker, Dini also does a very good job of showing the different ways the ‘Scarface' personality reacts to his puppeteer. With Wesker it's an abusive relationship with Scarface always treating him as an incompetent who he needs out of necessity rather than any closeness. With Peyton we see a definite affection and even love from the first time they encounter each other (I'm not going to talk about any sexual relations, because it's best left to the imagination, and is creepy). Scarface even acts jealously when he suspects she might be ‘sweet on (Bruce) Wayne', and when she plunges overboard he attempts to say he loves her. Of course it's her own delusional state saying it, but it's interesting. Dini also doesn't forget to have Scarface mispronounce his b's as g's in the flashbacks to Wesker- a nice touch to how Alan Grant originally wrote the character, and one neglected by more than one writer before. The ascension of Peyton to the Ventriloquist is also neatly retconned, by the referencing of the events surrounding Wesker's death back in Batman 818, even quoting some of Batman's dialogue from the issue verbatim. One thing in particular that I liked about this was Peyton's wondering whether the dummy really was sentient, or she'd suffered brain damage as a result of being shot in the head. This is a neat way of satisfying the debate over whether the Ventriloquist's suffer from ‘dissociative personality disorder' or the dummy being made from possessed wood (I'm of the former camp by the way, as I've seen the dummy be destroyed too many times for the other to hold water). By doing this Dini lets us decide which one we prefer, without giving us definitive answers. A smart move.
It was nice to see some references to the old Scarface gang in this issue. Scarface always works best as an unconventional mob boss, rather than as a lunatic holding a doll. It was good to see his old muscle Rhino pop up in the flashbacks here too.
The Zatanna/Bruce thing really couldn't go anywhere, not for a while anyway, as Morrison is using Jezebel Jet as the love interest in Batman, and that looks to take preference during R.I.P. I'd actually be open to Bruce caught between three different women (in small doses) with Jezebel being the normal girl (as normal as an African princess can be), Zatanna as the good girl, and Selina Kyle as the inbetweener. As far as I recall its not something we've seen before. Dini's got to get off his Zatanna kick though; I know he's married to a magician in real life, but he's not here to write a love letter to her through Batman.
I'm still on the fence about Dustin Nguyen's art; some parts of it are very nice and clear, while others are a kind of a mess. He's fine with non-action work, but his fight scenes like at the end are a bit of a mess. I don't care for how he draws Scarface overly much either- a little too wooden looking. This may just be my preference, but I prefer him to look like a nuttier version of Charlie McCarthy.
Next time R.I.P part I.
We’re all mad here.
2008-05-07
Just about every day during the second half of last week my (apparently) crazy ex, and co-worker, Katie tried inviting Emma and I to dinner with her and her boyfriend. This seemed strange for a number of reasons, but most importantly because I could still distinctly remember her saying she wasn't seeing anyone. Putting my reservations aside though, it seemed a fairly innocent request, and an effort at trying to get things off on a better foot. At least it did until she kept stopping by my desk and asking about it from Wednesday to Friday, the phone call I revived on Sunday, and a repeat of last week on Monday. Then it got weird. Not in an ‘I'm going to kill you in your sleep' way', but in a she's a bit too enthusiastic kinda way. In the end I just agreed and managed to sell Emm on the thing, though initially she wanted nothing to do with having dinner with her predecessor.
All of the above led to Kate and I leaving work together yesterday to meet up with our respective partners for dinner. Now I'd been spending the good majority of the day staring at a computer screen , so my eyes were worn out and I was feeling dehydrated like I'd just stepped off a twelve hour flight, so all I really wanted to do was crawl into a nice cool bar and down a few beers. But of course I'd made a promise, and so I found myself at a table at Orso (which didn't make my suspicions about the planning involved dissipate or anything). She didn't even let me grab a drink at B.Smith's before hand.
I guess this is when I started to think something was up. I mean I like Orso, and I'd missed going there while I was out of the city-and I actually regretted not taking Emma there yet, but...
This restaurant was one of the places Kate and I went to often, and if that wasn't weird enough it turned out it would be just the two of us initially. O.K, so I knew Emm'd be late because she's always harried at work, but in the cab on the way her ‘boyfriend' called to say he'd be late too.
So there I was stuck at the restaurant for half an hour with my ex-girlfriend on what seemed far too like a date. As a result I was forced into the same kind of ‘double-think' conversation as here. Her guy was the first to arrive, although this apparently had more to do with Emma's still improving navigational skills. The guy, who we'll call ‘Chad' is an advertising exec (peachy! My favorite kind of person), and blandly handsome in the same sorta way as the guy who played Cyclops in those X-Men movies. So there was me and Emma, and Kate and Scott Summers. The dinner was civil enough, but I couldn't shake the undercurrent suspicion that this dinner was a set-up to show me how much better she'd upgraded over me.
Now I've got no way of proving this, and so no real way to quantify and express how this felt; you just had to be there to experience it (I hate using such tired clichés , but this one's perfect). See, this is why I hate seeing a lot of my ex-girlfriends, things are always weird. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I'm a terrible breaker-upper. However in this case it shouldn't apply, not so much anyway, as Katie and I broke up it was pretty amicable. So I don't know what happened. Secondly, this guy ‘Chad' had the personality of a wet piece of cardboard, so I apart from his bland good looks, I don't know what exactly I was meant to be intimidated by. I'm not trying to be too hard on the guy, I mean he seems like a nice guy, just a little stilted and dull. Also I don't mean to take out that the dinner was adversarial, it wasn't. Plus my suspicions about the motives behind this dinner really only served to make me deliberately friendly towards ‘Chad'. In fact the more I look back on it absolutely nothing awkward really happened, beyond trying to remember who had what at the end. So really the only result was me wasting 734 words telling you about it.
BATMAN 675 Review.
2008-04-29
BATMAN # 675.
WRITTER: Grant Morrison
PENCILLER:Ryan Benjamin.
Plot Synopsis, WARNING SPOILERS!
Bruce Wayne is having dinner with his current girlfriend Jezebel Jet, but before long the conversation turns to Jez demanding an explanation for Bruce's continued disappearances and broken dates, and she vocally questions whether this relationship has legs. Before this can come to a head the dinner is interrupted by a group of freedom fighters from Jezebel's country intending to take her hostage, led by a blind nine-eyed man who can apparently see through his fingertips.
We cut to the League Of Assassins HQ in the Himalayas where Talia Al Ghul is overseeing her son Damian's archery training by master archer Merlyn, and discussing the Jet-Wayne relationship, and commenting that Damian belongs with her father Bruce Wayne. Merlyn asks her whether she wishes Jezebel assassinated.
Back at the restaurant Bruce Wayne fakes being knocked unconscious and nine-eyed man prepares to spirit Jezebel away. Meanwhile above Gotham Nightwing and Robin discuss Bruce's increasingly erratic behavior while taking down the ‘Ray Gun Raider'.
Merlyn returns from his presumed assassination mission, and tells Talia that terrorists have kidnapped Bruce and Jezebel, and the three set off to intervene.
In the darkened kitchen Bruce Wayne brutally and uncharacteristically sadistically subdues the Nine-eyed man burning the eyes on his fingers off with hot oil, and pounding him with his fists while asking him about the mysterious ‘Black Glove.' Unfortunately Jezebel walks in and sees this just as the Batsignal flashes in a window. A still enraged Bruce tells her to leave, and that she was right about his shallowness. Jezebel almost speechless, says it all makes sense, and cradles Bruce's head and reveals that she now knows that ‘Bruce Wayne Is Batman.'
This was a slightly schizoid issue, and a bit or a momentum killer after the absolute brilliance of the last three issues. This issue didn't seem to know whether it was a filler issue, or a progression issue. There was a lot of seeming filler in it, but the end was just outta the blue and done like it was a crucial turning point. Half way through I was expecting Merlyn to kill Jezebel though, so that's me. I think the real thing is Morrison got us so amped up with the last three issues, and then there was the delay and it became two months later, so anything apart from a grand slam was going to be a let down. So be it.
I'm now 90 % sure that the same process that activated the three Batmen has also activated some subconscious trigger to push Bruce over the edge; from the heh, heh,heh's we saw in the flashback in 673,to his rage at the end with Jezebel to the brutal (even for Bruce) handling of the nine-eyed man. I'm guessing the folder the third Batman burnt last issue has the only copy of the activation and deactivation triggers to stop this. Though don't quote me on that. I've been wrong on where Morrison's going before.
It was also fun to see Talia acting like such an overprotective mother, she's just so brilliantly unbearable with the whole 'wonder child' thing that you can only conclude this was the intention. I know some readers have real problems with this characterization, but it makes perfect sense to me. Talia's always been a prototypical daddy's girl, a spoiled child treated as a princess by her father Ra's al Ghul. Which is of course why she can never really be together with Bruce, she's too conflicted between her feelings between the two. Now saying all that about her spoilt she is, Ra's loves her as a child, but also would've preferred a son-which is why he wants Bruce to marry her. Now with her father in the booby-hatch at Arkham and with a son she's treating Damian with all the overbearing adulation she never quite got herself. This is actually very good consistent characterization by Morrison.
On to the negatives.
One thing I didn't like was the how the issue started with Bruce having dinner. With all that was going on last issue, I expected Bruce to be obsessively analyzing things in the cave, with Alfred having to remind him of the date. Would've only taken a page, and been a nice old school narrative tip of the hat.
I'm not sure I like that The League of Assassins has to get involved in this-It seemed a kinda reaching to include them to me. Yes I know that Talia wants Damian's acceptance by her father, but this doesn't seem to be the story to do it in.
I know Morrison likes to tie everything together as one mosaic, but not every issue from earlier in his run has to be pivotal. There is such a thing as red herring clues.
I'm also still not a fan of the ten, sorry nine, eyed man. The character's still lame to me. All Grant really did was provide him with a sort of ninja makeover. Sometimes I wish Grant'd just realize that not all characters are worth resurrecting just to prove how much continuity he knows. There's a reason some characters were buried. I like the silver age in some respects-but some stuff was just bad.
Jez finding out about Bruce was a little too easy wasn't it? Where was the logic? Her first thought should have been Bruce has 'roid rage.
Sure Bruce just beat the hell outta a guy, but how does that automatically equate to Batman? He wasn't even in costume. Sure it was odd seeing him destroy Nine eyes, but Bruce is fairly athletic anyway, maybe he just lost it. The next time I beat down a guy I guess people will think I'm Batman.
Jezebel Jet's appalling name is silly bond girlish, (but nothing compared to the queen Silver St.Cloud), and this may be why I don't react to the character as well. Jez still seems a cipher to me, a collection of attributes meant to convey depth, but not amounting to the sum of her parts. Exotic, check. Leader of another country, check. Attractive, check. Not shallow, and doesn't buy into Bruce Wayne's over the top facade, double check. The first two remind a little too much of the Marvel character Silver Sable.
There's certainly not been enough depth and connection between her and Bruce that he'd 'retire' for her, or even marry her (as a lot of fans have been speculating). There's certainly not been enough lead in to have her suddenly put together that Bruce and Batman are one and the same. Also it's not like this is a big revelation, I mean the aforementioned Silver St.Cloud certainly figured it out, then there's Shondra Kinsolving, Sasha Bordeaux...
The art was a mixed bag for me, Benjamin seems to draw females well enough (his Talia was nice and not ridiculously curvaceous) but his male characters' faces are far too angular and old looking; Bruce looked like Marv from Sin City in a suit, and Tim and Dick were just wrong and looked like they were over thirty . rather than 25ish and 16.
Monty Got A Raw Deal.
2008-04-29
First, an update: On Thursday I had dinner with Emma at my parents', at which I ‘begged' for a loan from my parents getting the apartment in the village that we wanted. I don't really want to discuss it any further, suffice to say a deal of unpleasantness was involved. The good news was that we were finally able to officially get the apartment the next day, and move out of my sister's place with the aid of several of my friends, who I bribed with beer.
O.K enough with the recaps. Yesterday was the first day of my girlfriend's internship. Somewhat unsurprisingly she was giddily nervous and hyperactively flightily all that morning, but also (I think) excited as hell.
She looked so cute in her white blouse, little pencil skirt and glasses (which she hoped would make her look smarter-Not that that she's not smart). She'd even styled her hair into a very respectable looking ponytail with bangs to complete ‘the look'.
Now over time at my job I've garnered a reputation for moderate tardiness at the beginning of each workday. I'm so renowned for this that it's now got to the point where people basically expect my arrival at half-nine, and no one says anything when I arrive then.
(I am going somewhere with this by the way, bear with me).
Because of that I was able to still be at the apartment to see her off. So I got to inspect her before she left and ask stupid questions like ‘you sure you've got everything?' (My god I'm turning into my mom!) and good-naturedly rib her about things. It felt like I was sending her off to school for her first day or something, as creepy as that sounds.
Flash forward to later in the day.
I'd told her to meet me and my buddy Jeff (who looks like a balding, not quite as handsome Ashton Kutcher by the way) at a bar near his work after her day finished.
Jeff and I waited and had some drinks while discussing Rovian strategies in the Clinton campaign as it pertained to the Pennsylvania primary and...oh who am I kidding we talked about sports and women. So we waited.
And waited...and waited. Until about an hour and a half latter when she marched in looking much more disheveled than before, and sat down in the booth with a disgruntled thud. I looked at Jeff quizzically for some kind of cue, and he just shrugged. So instead I asked if I could get her a beer, to which she replied whether I could get her a scotch instead, which I did.
Back up a minute: I've known her for a while now obviously, and never have I seen her order a scotch and anything. Something was clearly up.
She was in a foul mood too, being short and blunt even around Jeff, who she's so far liked a lot. Whenever I tried to ask about what had happened that was bugging her so much, but she just asked me to ‘just drop it o.k.' presumably not wanting to disscuss it around Jeff.
Once he left for whatever reason to parts unknown, I asked her again. It turns out that she was run off her feet all day, that it wasn't exactly the kind of work she'd expected, that she was completely overdressed, and that her boss was kind of a dick. There's probably other things I've left out, but that's the gist of it. I just sat there listening while she let it all out.
Now I could have said that I'd told her all this before, but then she would've strangled me to death on the bar room floor. No instead in empathized with her and said such (really meaningless) things platitudes as ‘it'll all get better.' This actually improved her mood, and we left shortly afterwards to eat.
NOTE: From now on I'll be posting ongoing reviews of certain Batman comics the week they come out. So if you'd like to read the slightly cranky rantings of a guy supposedly far too old to still be reading comics, feel free to stop by. Plus I'll occasionally post some Bat-centric discussion pieces as well. In fact the first of these reviews may already be there now. Quick, run and look.
Of course you can still read my cranky message board rantings.
Of course if you're relatively well adjusted and have no interest in comics-go in peace.
Beyond The Valley Of The Nerds.
2008-04-21
This weekend I tortured my girlfriend.
(Boy , with a title like that it can only be downhill, or a quick visit by a group of Feds).
This torture didn't involve ball-gags, waterboarding, oiled whips and nipple clamps ( but enough about that-its sounding too fun). No this was a far more insidious type of torture...I took her to THE NEW YORK COMIC CON!!!
See as nauseating as the notion of hanging out with a bunch of socially inept , perpetually adolescent fanboys who dress up as Dr.Doom and ogle pseudo-attractive (meaning large breasted) women dressed as Elektra and Huntress is to me, I invariably attend one every other year.
After the scathing (and stereotypical) disparaging remarks listed above , you'd be forgiven for wondering why I bother.
The primary reason is that I'm always trying to fill gaps in my collection, which have either disintegrated from wear or been simply ‘lost'; and there's no finer place to do so all in one place as a Comic Con.
I didn't invite Emma, because I didn't think she'd be remotely interested. But it turns out she wanted to go, giving some b-s reason about having ‘heard stories' about what goes on there. I relented and let her join me, figuring what's the worst that could happen. I wasn't able to convince her to go dressed as Power Girl though.
So she spent two days walking around with me with a perpetual look of bemusement on her face about what she was seeing. She was also able to see me talk about an array comics topics with a variety of vendors and people I normally only communicate with on message boards. I'm sure this was an eye-opening experience for her.
I was also able to fulfill approximately 45% of the issues I was looking for, most of them for a reasonable price.
This was actually a good convention to attend apart from that. I always find it amusing to see guests, especially ones involved with ‘big stories' speak, and try to avoid giving too much away, but not say nothing at all. The catch here is that comics readers are generally so savvy , and slightly jaded, that a misplaced quote can give the whole game away.
Frank Miller was there, no really Frank's a delightfully crusty old guy. I tried to give 'All Star Batman' a go Frank, really I did.
Grant Morrison was there too, which I was particularly interested seeing as his current Batman run has got me hooked. I even got to speak with him , albeit briefly, because of a friend I know who writes for Wizard. And no I didn't have my Dictaphone on me, or you could be sure I'd post a transcript.
I asked what's been nagging me about his overarching continuity, and that was what he thought about the ‘90's Batman comics (which I still consider the best era). He said something like he personally thought it was fine but it went a little too dark towards the end with the whole, Cataclysm-No Man's Land stuff.
Stan Lee and John Romita Snr were there too, which was kinda cool-because they're so little alike that it baffles the mind how they worked together so well. Say what you like about Stan; that he's a huge self promoter, a glory hog and that he's spent much of his latter years trying to perpetuate his own myth. This may all be true, but he is really the comics equivalent of St.Peter. You may hate him (though probably not as much as Steve Ditko) but come on, the guy created ‘The Fantastic Four', ‘Spider-Man', ‘The Hulk', ‘The X-Men' and probably others I' forget. The point is he's got reason for being slightly conceited. Plus if you give me a choice between Stan talking possibly apocryphal stories about writing comics in the 60's and a German pope talking about the sinfulness of anal sex, I'm going to choose Stan every time.
Even Emm seemed to have more fun than she thought, in fact she actually seemed to get into it once she overcame her feelings of displacement. In fact she even commented that it was nowhere near as bad as she thought it'd be, whatever the hell that means.
Only the names are changed.
2008-04-17
On Wednesday I started my new job, which is really my old job, at the old office-which hasn't changed much except that there's some people there that weren't there before I left.
It was all very unexciting.
On thing that changed though, was where my desk was located. A whopping five yards from where it was before. You may be asking how I noticed after all these months. Well when you're working in an office and your desk is near a window, you come to know the view out of it in detail-it seers itself into your mind. Anyway this view, while very similar to the untrained eye, was slightly off by a few yards. For instance, I could never see the corner deli at the end of the street from my old view, but from this new one I could see the whole front window clearly.
It's the little things.
One thing that hadn't changed though was that my desk was still just across from my colleague Bernard's. This is a good and bad thing; it's good because I generally like Bernard and he's kinda a good guy to kill time with. It's bad because Bernard's got this annoying habit of always asking hypotheticals. It can get annoying quick. Today it was presidential election hypotheticals. I tried to block him out and concentrate on the little work I had to do (being my ‘first day' and all), but that just caused him to start IM'ing me the hypotheticals.
After my modicum of work was done (11:30ish) I decided ton waste some time. I wrote the paragraph's you've just read (ooh meta) and browsed many comic based message boards and discussed such hypotheticals as who'd win in a fight Captain Marvel or Superman (for the record Captain Marvel, but don't worry I'm not going to go into it-you're welcome).
Around half twelve, I began to notice I was being watched over my shoulder. I turned around to face my ex-girlfriend Kate (yes she works here too-but she's been ‘promoted' in my absence so we're no longer equals, in fact she technically outranks me.
‘You're browsing comic board message boards?' She said with a slightly appalled look on her face.
‘Pretty pathetic I know.'
‘Well you said it.' A beat. ‘Hey, have you had lunch yet?'
‘No. Why?' I replied quickly.
‘Me neither. You want to join me?'
I didn't know how to respond to this offer. I mean I know we're just workmates now, but it still felt pretty weird. Eventually I rationalized that it was probably harmless, so I shrugged my shoulders and said; ‘sure.'
We went to a café a block over, where I had a ham filled panini and she had something I can't remember (who says I'm anal on details).
Of course we got to talking, because sitting at the same table and just ignoring one another would just be weird. Still, as I said before, it was weird. I know we're just meant to be friends and whatever, but it's impossible to ignore the fact that we once used to be a couple. You have to double-think everything you're about to say, as you consider what kind of things you're willing to share and talk about. Evidently she didn't have the same problem;
‘so you still seeing the blonde bimbette?'
‘Well I call her Emma, but yeah. How ‘bout you? You seeing anyone I should know about?'
‘What do you mean "know about"?
‘Well in case I get drunk and start hitting on you,' I joked, ‘it'd be good to know I won't get punched out?'
‘Funny,' she replied sarcastically. ‘and no, I'm not. Not really.'
For some reason this seemed a relief. I guess deep down I wasn't ready to see her with some other guy yet.
‘You know I didn't think you would be still together with her.'
‘You sound like my sister.'
‘What makes you say that?'
‘Well she said the same exact thing. Why is it surprising anyway? we were together for three years?'
She sipped her coffee that she held with both hands and said; ‘Yeah but we broke up almost two and a half times.'
‘And a half,' I snickered. ‘I love how you can classify things like breakups into exact decimalization.'
‘Thanks. We almost broke up, but we didn't-so its a half,' she smiled a smile that could have meant a thousand things.
‘Right.'
‘So you're staying with your sister?'
‘Only until I get my own place.'
‘What's she doing?'
‘An internship. What's with all the questions?'
‘What do you mean "what's with all the questions"?'
‘It's just like you're interviewing me or something,' I shrugged.
‘No, it's just, it's I don't know, I haven't seen you in so long...I've missed you.'
I looked at her quizzically.
She picked up on it and answered; ‘no, no not like that.'
‘That's a relief,' I made t wipe my brow affectedly.
‘I mean there are always going to be feelings there, right?'
‘I guess...'
‘It's only natural, but I wouldn't go out with you again if you were still single.'
I didn't know whether to be relieved or take this as a putdown. I didn't have long to dwell on it because she suddenly checked her watch.
‘Yikes its one-fifteen, I have to get back to the office.'
This of course meant that I had to too, though she didn't say that. So we left and I smoked a cigarette as we walked back to work, and reflected on a very odd lunch date.
Seven Days.
2008-04-14
First things first. There's a reason I haven't posted lately, and it has something to do with the fact that Emma and I have switched coasts in this down time between posts (hey that rhymes!) and are currently in the big (cr)apple. Don't worry , it's not nearly as glamorous in a half-assed ‘Muppets Take Manhattan' way as you'd think. Anyway, rather than give you a hundred-thousand word post on everything that's happened in the seven days since we arrived in the city that never sleeps. I'm going to post a brief day by day description of everything that happened on those days.
Sunday (the sixth) : We melancholically leave Donnie's place in Santa Cruz and head up to San Fran to take a flight back to New York. However this flight is going to be Monday morning , so we check into a reasonably priced hotel for one night before. I'm going to miss hanging Donnie, he being my best friend after all. The last nine months or whatever it is has been strangely reminiscent of hanging out in college again. I know this sounds pathetic, but I don't care. I'm going to miss all the meaningless b-s chat about pointless topics most of all I think.
Monday: Travel day. Typically pleasant U.S domestic flight, which no amount of high tech gizmos in the seat can diminish. Seriously, what with this American Airlines cancellations and the service, is this really the price you pay for protectionist economic policies? I know almost nothing about economics, but I always half assumed it was something anti-regulation people made too much out of, but wow this is ridiculous.
We were met at Kennedy by my sister , whose place we're going to be staying at until we find an apartment of our own. After getting cleaned up, in the evening Emma and I have dinner with my sister and her long term boyfriend Stephen at a neighborhood Italian place. While Emma was using the bathroom, my sister comments offhandedly that she was surprised we're still together.
Tuesday: Did general touristy stuff around the city with Emma, who's never been to New York before, which I for some reason find extraordinary. Walking around I start finding myself complaining about the cold, which I don't think I've ever found myself uttering around this time of year. I felt like such a tourist and started wondering if this is the effect spending most of the year living in a warmer weather place does to you. I used to think it was just something New Yorkers made too much of to justify ever leaving the city. Later that night Emma awakens multiple times to inform me she's having trouble sleeping because of the street noise.
Wednesday: Sister seems to be being actively friendlier than at Christmas. I attribute this to not being around the poisonous environs of my parents. Speaking of my mother. I spent most of the day ignoring the flurry of text messages inviting Emma and I to there for dinner. The rough odds of this occurring voluntarily amount to a snow ball's chance in hell. Began to suspect sister had ratted me out to parents. Apart from that we do touristy stuff again, before I let her go and do her own thing and I visit my old office that I start at again next Wednesday , to see if anything'd much changed. It hasn't.
Thursday: Sister starts dropping pseudo-subtle conversational hints about when in fact I'm getting my own place. Nothing much else happens apart from visit to Jim Hanley's. Emma doesn't attend.
Friday: Meet up with old-time friend Jeff for drinks in late afternoon at ‘my local'. Manage to avoid talking to ‘my antagonist', who was also there, and you may remember from way back here. Emma seemed to really dig my friend Jeff , initially I suspected a bit too much. Caught Chien-Ming Wang's complete game, and felt better about the Yankees' prospects this season. Managed to avoid temptation to talk to ‘my antagonist' about it.
Saturday: Nothing sort of day, apart from sister mentioning the apartment situation again about 3000 more times. In evening grudgingly attend ‘welcome back party'. Said party basically consists of friend Ed from ‘magazine I'm soon to be working at again' throwing a get-together and inviting everyone he seems to think I know (sadly including ex-girlfriend Katie) at one of his friends' places. For some bizarre reason when Emm and I arrive, all the lights are out and suddenly came on as everybody yelled surprise. This just made no sense. Who exactly was it a surprise for? Not me. It wasn't like I got hit in the head back in Santa Cruz and came to out here, not realizing I'd left the left coast. Party is relatively fun regardless.
Sunday: Spent most of day looking at apartments with overly friendly real estate agent bitch. Most apartments sucked-but there was a very reasonably priced rent-controlled one in village. The one caveat being that ‘reasonably' is a euphemism for needing to get a down payment loan from my parents. This put me in an understandably bad mood. Later the two of us joined Ed and Jeff for a few drinks at bar to watch Sunday night's Yanks-Sox game. After which I came to the conclusion the Yanks aren't making the playoffs this year.
The way the team is set up is just weird; on the one hand you've got an average rotation with one above average guy (Wang) two over the hill guys(Pettitte and Mussina) and two green young guys on pitch counts (Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy) . Now this would be o.k. if this was a young team overall, but its not. The lineup's filled with a bunch of sluggers the wrong side of thirty. This means by the time Hughes and Kennedy become reliable big league starters in two or three years (a big if by the way), the lineup'll be filled with even older guys. Now the Yanks haven't exactly had great starting pitching since oh...2003, but for the past four years the hitting was strong enough to overcome it. I just don't see it this year, not with guys like Matsui, Giambi, Posada, Damon (and possibly Abreu) all of who are in the beginning stages of terminal decline. Basically the only truly reliable offensive guy they have is A-Rod, and he's not getting any younger either. The Yanks could be a non-contender for at least five years the way this team is presently constructed. However on the plus side they've got a back-up shortstop called Alberto Gonzales. How fun is that?
All Good Things...
2008-04-02
WARNING! The following is sappily romantic. I make no apologies for this, it's what really happened-I swear. Somewhat ironically (or perhaps worryingly) I'm not able to lie in fiction as well as this; however I am able to write non-fiction using fictional techniques. Go figure. Regardless I love my girlfriend, and I'm not embarrassed to say it, even if I sometimes get annoyed with her. For example my utter inability to convince her Hillary Clinton may in fact be the physical incarnation of the anti-Christ. For some reason she seems still convinced she's a fundamentally honest and good person. Sheesh.
End of Rant.
Emma'd dyed her hair back, and as stated last time, I couldn't be happier. That happened Sunday.
Tuesday was the day that Emm finally emerged from the plaster cocoon that had surrounded her leg for the past five or so weeks. Donnie and I or course ribbed her about the hairy drumstick that was soon to see the light of day all the way to the hospital. That is until she got sick of it and started giving me withering half-serious ‘I will break up with you looks', and I stopped.
I'll spare you the sordid details, but suffice to say it was indeed hairy, and she insisted on being taken somewhere to shave-especially as she'd come wearing shorts.
We decided to celebrate after that, for the dual reasons of her finishing her studies and the healing of her leg. Actually, I think we'd already celebrated that first one, but no matter. Hell I remember when I finished college; I drank solidly for a week and a half. Hold on, that's not strictly true; o.k. substitute ‘finished' with ‘I was', and ‘week and a half' with ‘the whole time'. Much better.
Donnie suggested we go to Max's (who owns the bar I've been working at) place outside of town-which had a pool. Not that that was a factor or anything...oh who am I kidding; Emma'd been itching to go swimming since the second week after she broke her leg. Anyway Maxie'd been supposedly outta town all week, so we decided to borrow his digs on the down-low. This came to mean Donnie hurdling the fence leading to the pool, and unlocking the gate to let us in. we went inside and proceeded to start drinking the poorly made sangria we'd brought because Emma ‘felt Hispanic'.
O.k. Stop. So we'd actually planned it the day before. We'd decided to make this thing happen Monday , which is why we'd made the sangria the night before, not realizing amidst the excitement that none of us in fact knew how to make sangria. Apart from the fact that it contained red wine (and presumably vodka).
Anyway, there we were armed with sangria, that if lit would've been like a Molotov cocktail. The other two swam, while I stayed outside the pool and they gently mocked me. I always feel awkward admitting this (though I don't know why), but I can't really swim. Oh I've been in pools lots of times, and I can stay afloat so I'm not really in danger of drowning, but I'm just not comfortable in deepish water.
We spent most of the afternoon getting gently toasted on the volatile brew and talking b-s. It was like we were all the same age for once, rather than two older guys and a college age girl (or as Jack Nicholson calls it ‘Saturday').
It was nice.
Later in the afternoon Donnie succumbed to ‘acute sangria poisoning', and decided to lay down on a pool recliner with his hat over his face. Emma then tried to coax me into the water with her, but ultimately in vain. Eventually she compromised and wound up sitting with me on the steps to the pool.
I put my arm over her and she felt simultaneously wet and warm to touch. She cocked her head to one side and rested it on my shoulder. I felt closer to her than I had before, which made what I was about to do tough.
(I told you this'd get sappy).
She seemed adrift, with a puzzled or perhaps thoughtful look on her face.
‘Something wrong,' I asked.
‘No, just thinking.'
‘Okay...something on your mind?'
‘I'm just thinking about what I'm going to do now.'
I hadn't told her about the internship thing at this stage. I thought awhile before shrugging and saying;
‘Do a masters degree.'
‘Did you do masters?' She said taking her head up off my shoulder.
‘Of course not, it would've been a complete waste of time.'
‘But I should do one,' she giggled. ‘I think I see a flaw in your advice.'
‘That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.'
‘I don't want to do that anyway. So what are you going to do?'
She used the singular, but it came across as a joint thing. Perfect.
‘Oh I'm heading back east, that ship's sailed,' I said matter of factly. ‘Why?'
She seemed a little taken aback by this; as if I'd said we should break up and that the last half a year had just been for kicks. Of course I was deliberately trying to put her on edge; it was after all April Fools'.
‘Uh...am I supposed to join you?'
‘If you like. It's your decision if you want to stick this thing out. If not it's o.k. I'll get over it, believe me.'
‘Are you trying to dump me?'
‘Maybe?' I said noncommittally.
She started looking more hurt and confused, like maybe she'd even cry. She turned away from me and slid away.
‘Jeeze you're taking this hard; you know you're not making this any easier.'
‘Shut up,' she shot back avoiding my gaze.
‘Hey Emm. Just look at me a minute, I've got something I need to tell ya. Please?'
She turned sheepishly and waited for a response; ‘yeah?'
‘Gotcha. April Fools'.'
She looked at me with the same withering look as earlier, before saying; ‘you dick.'
She began splashing me with the water, soaking me, before dragging me off the steps and into the water, resulting with her falling on top of me.
After some time I managed to completely keep my head under water (she kept dragging me back under) and made my way to the side of the pool and propped myself up against it. She followed me over.
‘That was fun,' she laughed.
‘If you say so.'
‘So that was all crap then?'
‘Pretty much, yeah.'
‘So you're not going back east?'
‘Oh no that's true.'
‘So about us...?'
‘Well I was waiting for the right moment to tell you, but I've arranged for an internship for you in New York, if you‘re interested...I mean its shit work and the money's for bunk but...'
I noticed she hadn't said anything.
‘You're not interested...? What is it?'
She grabbed me and kissed me. She tasted vaguely of pool water, but I didn't care.
‘You're like the best boyfriend ever.'
‘See I'm going to remember that you said that the next time I screw up.'
‘I figured you might,' she said with her head on my chest.
‘You know, I know I don't say this enough or anything, but I love you.'
‘Actually you hardly ever say it.'
‘That's another way of putting it I guess. Anyway I_'
‘Shhhhh,' she said putting a finger to her lips. ‘I love you to.'
(Bleurrrgh!)
Kobayashi Maru’d.
2008-03-31
For those of you who aren't Trekkies or Trekkers or whatever (an increasing number) I'll let Wikipedia provide a better definition than I could.
Kobayashi Maru is the name of a spaceship in a training exercise in the Star Trek fictional universe. In the exercise, the "Kobayashi Maru" is the precipitating element in a simulated no-win scenario. The ship's name is occasionally used among Star Trek fans or those familiar to describe such situations.
The Kobayashi Maru was first depicted in the opening scene of the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, in which command division cadets at Starfleet Academy are presented with a no-win scenario as a test of character. This provided context for how the main character, Admiral James T. Kirk, deals with the possibility of unwinnable situations, and death in particular.
The training exercise in Star Trek II describes the Kobayashi Maru as a Class III neutronic fuel carrier-ship, with a crew of 81 and 300 passengers. The name is Japanese, and loosely translates as the ship named Kobayashi, with Kobayashi (小林) meaning small forest and being a common family name. Maru (丸) is a common suffix for Japanese ship names.
...James T. Kirk takes the test three times while at Starfleet Academy. Prior to his third attempt, Kirk surreptitiously reprograms the simulator so that it is possible to rescue the freighter. This fact finally comes out, later in the movie, as Kirk, Saavik and others appear marooned, near death. Saavik's response is, "Then you never faced that situation. Faced death." Kirk replies, "I don't believe in the no-win scenario."
Just as an aside, Kirk's solution just proves to me that he's an incredible cheat and a backstabber. Spock should' a hated this guy really.
Anyway, back to the point of this post-wherein I explain the title (stay focused, work the lock, and ignore the dogs).
When you're in a relationship you run into many Kobayashi Maru scenarios, and I had one this week...in fact on Sunday. Remember when I recounted the week after my girlfriend broke her leg? (if you don't click here), and the fact she'd dyed her hair brunette.
At the time I said...
"I was wrong; she actually looks pretty good as a brunette. It was a little unnerving at first though, like seeing pictures of Marilyn Monroe as a brunette, but it did suit her. "
Well I'm here today to tell you that was an outright lie. She looked ‘weird' as a brunette, and I honestly didn't care for it. I wrote that at the time because she was actually reading this blog and I could've done without the aggravation. Since she's stopped reading it I can finally say she should've remained a blonde.
The Kobayashi Maru scenario came about when she asked me point blank if she should've done it or not. Now there's no correct response to this question one way or another. None. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a doe eyed optimist.
So what did I do?
Most of you reading this will probably assume I fucked up and said I preferred her as a blonde. Based on some of the stupid things I'll I've shown myself to do, that's a safe bet.
Well, HA! I didn't.
Listen I know I said a mere 74 words ago that there's no right answer. This is true. I did. Re-read that statement though; "there's no correct response to this question one way or another."
That doesn't include playing neutral. That doesn't mean playing neutral by saying a bonehead thing like ‘I don't care' or refusing to answer the question-that just makes them madder if anything.
What I said was; ‘I don't mind either way. It's you I'm in love with.'
Ha! Super-genius. No-win scenario my ass!
Hate is the new black.
2008-03-24
Very partisan people can be pretty insane. I know I'm not exactly breaking any new ground by saying this, but it really is becoming more and truer.
I was rudely reintroduced to this on Friday when Donnie and I threw a party at his house to celebrate Emma's finishing her finals and by default being through with college. Anyway I ended up being confronted repeatedly by some leftwing guy who looked like an angrier version of Moby with more hair and wild eyes. This guy took upon himself to educate me on why I'm wrong on everything and as a result a de facto idiot.
‘Angry Moby' is one of those guys who really believe Bush is worse than Hitler, a war criminal and 9/11 was an inside job by the Federal government. Look I'm not a Bush fan, and I think his two terms have basically been disastrous...but I don't think he ordered the World Trade Center demolished and the immolation of all the people in so he could invade Iraq.
I couldn't escape ‘Angry Moby's' clutches, in fact he seemed to follow me around, just to prove how much an idiot I was, and he wasn't even polite about it, instead thinking it better to treat me as patronizingly as possible.
I used all my favorite leave me alone speeches like...
The mocking: ‘Oh look who it is_______ back for another rhetorical ass kicking.'
The civil: ‘See you seem under the misapprehension that that I wish to listen to what you have to say anymore. I don't. Leave.'
The lucid: ‘This is the polite version, fuck off.'
And the scornful: ‘O.K now I'm getting sick of this. You've told me what you think, and I've replied. I think you're an imbecile, so now you're work's done and you can leave.'
Eventually I had to resort to the downright threatening: ‘I'm getting sick of you referring to me as a simple-minded fool. I've at least had the decency to treat you with more respect than your opinions indicate you deserve. So I'll make it simple, if you don't now leave I'm going to kick your ass.'
That worked. Though I consider it a failure that I had to resort to that, and cheapened in some way.
But the question I found myself asking was this; when did we become so completely intolerant of others opinions anyway?
Whether it be Bill Cunningham being an outright bigot, and not having the balls to own up to it, or leftwing message boards (the O'Reilly Factor is on!) gleefully awaiting Nancy Reagan's death, or implied threats to piss on William F. Buckley's grave, it seems we're finally reaching a ground zero of partisan bile. I take great offence at the Buckley comments because I had the pleasure of hearing him debate in college, and despite all his Wasp smugness and sense of superiority, and views I'd never share, he was actually in possession of the intellectual faculty to debate you.
Christopher Hitchens said on ‘Real Time' the week Buckley died that when he went on his old show that he may have disagreed with him, but it was a pleasure to do so.
That's what civil discussion should be about, respectful disagreement.
Of course Buckley eventually became a dinosaur in this regard when a new generation of loudmouths emerged. These type of pundits, be it a Sean Hannity or Keith Olbermann, seem to only be able to debate out by metaphorically banging their shoes on their desks like Khrushchev at the U.N. and that's if they allow anyone on their programs that could potentially put up a fight.
For every Russert there seems to be ten O'Reilly's frothing at the mouth like ‘Angry Moby'. Call it trickledown McLaughlinism.
I've started to enjoy watching Bill Maher's show, which works because he uses a panel of experts from both sides of the political spectrum who know more than him and it's mostly civil conversation. Unfortunately the program is hampered by its inherent populism and its audience of hooting and hollering liberals who will only applaud if a guest agrees with them.
(Incidentally for those who go overboard on the Fox News hatred, I invite you to watch Brit Humes's program, which is both fair and forthright without the hyperbole of other programs). Of course the mere fact that I say anything remotely positive about Fox News, immediately makes me a neo-fascist Republican liar. Sigh, moving on.
It's a sign of the political rifts in this country that that we can't discuss anything without trading insults and calling each other fascists of one stripe or another. (Jonah Goldberg was right though; there are/were left wing fascists.) Basically the only avenue a lot of people have left to convince people of their opinions validity is to shout at them until they either back down or surrender.
Speaking of Jonah , who at least can debate in a amicable manner, and could be the next Buckley if anyone'd listen (he'd have to ditch those Star Trek references though) . When I saw him on ‘Red Eye' (of all places) he related the phenomenal amount of crap he'd had thrown at him since his new book ‘Liberal Fascism' was published. For example people commenting on his Amazon page that they wished the Goldberg's never escaped Nazi Germany.
I mean jesus.
Of course in accordance with a written statement released from the internet, most of these people wouldn't have the guts to say things like that to peoples' faces without the built in anonymity the net gives them.
(I'll give ‘Angry Moby' credit on that one. He's got the guts to be obnoxious face to face.)
Fine. But isn't a bit disturbing that people have and are willing to articulate such feelings as all Republicans/Democrats should all be murdered and have their graves pissed on?
As an aside, and not to sound like O'Reilly again, but there is a staggering amount more venom and vitriol coming from the left side at the moment. Listen, as I said near the beginning of this post, I'm the first to say the Bush years have been a disaster, but I can articulate why without referring to him as being worse than Hitler, Stalin and Fu Manchu.
Let me spell it out for you , if you've got to the point where you wish everyone who disagrees with you should be dead or brutally murdered, you're not a valid political voice needing to be heard. You're a Batman villain or a character from a Jerry Bruckheimer film.
‘Those who can’t do teach…’
2008-03-18
It was the last day of the winter quarter of classes on Monday here at the UCSC (no I don't know why they divide it up four ways either) so I decided to have a little fun with my friend Donnie. Seeing as he was teaching the final class of his writing course that day I'd decided to have a little fun heckling him in it for a variety of reasons. First, the most unselfish one. Emma's been totally stressing about finals for awhile now, so this lighthearted ribbing of my best friend serves as a kind of stress relief for her.
O.K, seeing as you're probably only half believing that one at best I'll detail the wholly narcissistic one. When Emma broke her leg , I then had to take notes for her, unfortunately this meant I had to sit in and take notes in his class too and listen to him blather on about first person narrators and properly using metaphors for two hours. Then there's the altruistic ‘it's for his own good' rationale. He takes himself far too seriously when he teaches, this'll help him embrace chaos before he starts walking around wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and smoking a pipe. Finally the rational rationale, and the one that makes the most sense, it's the last day of classes. No one ever teaches anything new in the last class, and never has, so who would I be harming? The lecturer normally spends his time answering questions from students, and trying to convince them he's an o.k. guy and not such a hardass as thought.
With all of the above I disguised myself (disguised meaning wearing a Yankees cap and sunglasses) and accompanied my hobbling girlfriend to Donnie's final class and sat in the back row and waited.
I felt more excited than Scott Baio when he found out the producers of ‘Charles In Charge' had added Nicole Eggert to the cast.
I was right. The whole class was conducted like some kind of literary jam session, with Donnie trying his best to convince the kids he was hip to them and not some old fogy. The way he conducted it was so relaxed and mellow that you expected him to break out a bong and start passing it around.
He rebuffed my initial attempts to rattle him by asking literary questions he'd have to think hard about answering (stuff like can you evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different types of narration) in the hope he'd end up embarrassing himself in front of his beloved students. Unfortunately he managed to duck these good naturedly by basically saying he could answer that question, but if he did it'd take up the whole class.
This would not stand, so I tried some more direct tactics. I raised my hand courteously until he responded.
‘Yeah the guy in the back with all the questions, you have another?'
‘I have ‘a friend' who thinks your writing's o.k.,' I began sardonically, ‘but that you basically have been writing the same thing for years. Any comment?'
‘Yeah I think I know who you're talking about, and I haveta tell you that this guy once asked me why Starbucks was named after the character from ‘Battlestar Galactica', so there you go.'
His audience of followers laughed along with his joke.
‘Shouldn't Starbucks have an apostrophe in it?' I replied.
I waited nearly ten minutes before unleashing another question, my personal favorite by the way.
‘This friend I mentioned before also said you'd written an unofficial sequel to ‘The Catcher In The Rye.'
A series of oohs and ahhs overcame the lecture theatre, as this was indeed news to them I'd imagine.
He let his mask slip a bit and gave me a type of murderous look.
Timeout.
The Catcher thing is true by the way, though he doesn't like anyone mentioning it. A number of years back he began writing a novel that picked up where Salinger's book finished with Holden Caulfield heading out west. I tend to describe it as an ungodly combination of ‘On The Road' and ‘An American Tail: Fievel Goes West.' If the whole concept wasn't so funny the thing would actually be impressive, because he really got the narration down to the point where it sounds like Salinger himself-right down to the types of people Holden considers phony. Of course Donnie claims that he has no intention of ever trying to get it published, but I think he's lying and would jump at the chance, if any publisher would touch it with a ten meter cattle-prod.
Time back in.
He over-laughed to try and make light of my mentioning it, and said jokingly that; ‘that was just a writing exercise, I never intended to publish it.' (See, see).
Some guy two rows in front of me piped in in a So-Cal twang that ‘dude that sounds awesome.'
I agreed with him, adding; ‘yeah you should bring it in and read it to the class.'
‘Uhh...you know what pal I think I've lost it. Any other questions?'
‘Yeah,' I continued, ‘Didn't you once propose a concentration camp system to remove ‘the grotesquely' ugly from the gene pool?'
A few smatterings of dissent from the assembled masses. This happened in college when he was immature, but you know never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
‘That's out of context,' he said half-lying to cover his tracks. ‘It wasn't serious, it was meant to be taken ironically like Swift's ‘A Modest Proposal'.' This may be true. If this were a wrestling match, it'd be the moment where Stone Cold Steve Austin's music unexpectedly hit, he stormed the ring, flipped everyone off and proceeded to deliver stunners to everyone.
‘What's up with all this? Are you even in this class?'
‘I am today,' I replied glibly. ‘So what about this proposal I read where you propose building a sixty-foot high electrified fence around the state of Massachusetts?'
‘Hey, that was you,' he said angrily.
‘Oh yeah, I forgot,' I said faux apologetically.
After that I let him get back to ‘teaching' his class for the whole eight minutes remaining. By the by the Emma part of this mission worked a treat, she was laughing and snickering under her breath the whole time.
We stayed around after class was over, and Donnie stormed up to the back of the room , asked what I thought I'd be doing and called me an asshole.
I told you he takes the whole thing far too seriously.
I told him to relax , and asked him if he was done for the day. He said he was and so we headed down to the bar I work at (I should really start putting that in inverted commas) per my suggestion. It was St. Paddy's day so the bar was actually jumping. Actually technically it wasn't. I don't know whether you heard this or not, but the catholic church actually moved it back to last Friday, apparently because of the leap month the traditional March 17th date ran into ‘Holy Week' and the powers that be decided that it wasn't entirely appropriate for drinking n' carousing to happen. I guess that they could have cancelled it for this year, but the Irish (and the hordes who use it as an excuse to get drunk on a workday afternoon ) probably would've considered it an act of war. Personally I think it was an Irish-Catholic conspiracy to stretch the thing out into a four day weekend of green Guinness drinking, leprechaun hat wearing and Pogues and House Of Pain songs, call me crazy.
So we sat there drinking this Celtic pied piper, as Donnie continued to rake me over hot coals about ruining his precious lecture, while my cute girlfriend looked on at us arguing with an amused smile on her face.
Bargaining my way back onto the chain gang.
2008-03-15
I haven't posted in awhile, so if for some unfathomable reason you're remotely disappointed, allow me to explain why. I wish here was where I'd have some vast series of events that led me to this, and took up most of my time, but I don't; I was just really preoccupied with two things (or three depending how you prefer to sort them) , one set of which was slightly more frivolous than the other. 1. I've been playing both Monkey Island 2 and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis without walkthroughs, which is a lot more frustrating than it was originally-go figure. 2. I've been having a series of long drawn out conversations with the guy I used to work with at my old magazine job, in the hopes of returning to work there. Now this is complex seeing as I quit over an utterly overblown dispute with my editor at the time, even though no one actually wanted me to do so. I was basically using it as an excuse, because I needed a break. The guy, whom I'm not going to name, but shared the same basic job as me when I was there, but now has the job of the person I argued and quit with, but has now also left (features editor). Now he wants me to come back, I think-I'm still not really sure. He wants me to come back, but he doesn't me to know that he wants me to, and neither do I want him to know that I need to. So the ‘negotiations' proceeded at a speed and transparency roughly equivalent to the Cuban Missile Crisis being discussed at the U.N. It still hasn't been officially resolved, though there seems to be a tacit agreement between the two of us that I probably am going to return. While all this has been going on, I've also been trying to negotiate Emma into an internship program. I asked my previously mentioned editor-friend first, but he replied with the rote ‘they'd already filled their internship slots for the year, and that'd be unfair to turf one of them out to let Emm in. he did however give me the name and number of a guy at another mag with a still open intern program, and promised to call and lay the groundwork with. Actually thinking back on it, it's probably a good thing that Emm and I don't end up working at the same place for a variety of reasons...I'm just saying. Anyway I called this guy, who turned out to be an incredibly affable Midwesterner whose voice reminded me of the comic Jim Gaffigan (WORD!). I then proceeded to waste an hour of his time with a ‘you don't know me...' conversation in which I attempted to sell Emma as the best candidate imaginable and someone he should, no needs to accept. Amazingly my powers of persuasion paid off, and he provisionally accepted her into the exciting world of semi-paid magazine internship. When I say provisionally I mean just that, because I haven't told her about any of this, and won't until I break the news, as she's stopped reading this blog as a semi-peace accord between us; she'll stop reading and being bothered about being talked about online, and I'll still be able to write about it. |
Holy Comics Reading Sweetheart!
2008-03-09
I have a girlfriend who's reading comic books.
I never thought I'd say that, and I also never thought I'd be as ambivalent about it as I am. For a ‘comics nerd' finding a female who actually likes comics is a miniscule odds percentage (finding one who's physically attractive reduces the odds still further). As Seth Cohen once remarked "it's like finding a unicorn...a really sexy unicorn." Umm...not that I ever watched ‘The O.C....'
The previous three women I've dated have had the following reaction to my ‘nerdiness'.
"Comics? Really...that's interesting...I think I'm dating a nerd."
Emma it turns out, in the fits of boredom related to leg fracture recovery, had it turns out been rummaging through Donnie's long-boxes. (For those of you who don't know any ‘fanboys' those aren't his underwear, but three foot long boxes that are used to store many, many comics. ) She just started picking a box and systematically reading the books in order. Donnie freaked over this as some of one's she read were his newsprint Batman's from the early 80's, which were in delicate condition.
I'd noticed her doing this a few times, but hadn't commented on it (my time was stretched enough as it is between bar shifts and taking notes in classes).
Then on Wednesday in bed she said matter-of-factly to me without looking that; ‘I've been reading some comics'.
‘Yeah I know.'
‘Just thought you'd be interested, she replied slightly sulkily.
‘Yeah I am, but I...well...you haven't really asked me a question there hon.'
She looked at me angrily.
‘Sorry...so what do you think? Which part did you like?'
‘Oh I didn't.'
She then proceeded to go on in some depth to tell me that the stories were simple and lacked depth, and there wasn't a lot to take in.
Now I know for a fact that that day she'd been reading Detective Comics #'s 583-614 written by Alan Grant and John Wagner (but not really by Wagner -if you're really interested click here) and illustrated by my fav Batman artist ever Norm Breyfogle. These are my favorite Batman comics of all time, and highly literate and thought provoking as comics go (especially for a flagship title of that era), and so I kind of take umbrage with her referring to them as ‘facile'. This was kind of when we ended this conversation. But, as I laid there absorbing David Foster Wallace's thoughts on dictionaries, I came to the uncomfortable conclusion that she may have been right, at least on a macro level.
Most comics are simplistic, with non fighting scenes often little more than a setup for a super-powered slugfest. Sure that's a generalization, but for every good mainstream comics writer (read: not Alan Moore) there's ten average ones. Just look at the two main Batman titles right now. On Detective Comics Paul Dini (the original writer on the truly great ‘Batman: The Animated Series') is creating ‘comfort food comics'. Easy story, not overly referential to comics continuity, and good fun for the casual reader...and it's totally boring me. There's just no hook or overarching story. Meanwhile over on Batman Grant Morrison is writing multilayered stories with a huge overarching plot which aren't easy and require you to really know the character to get what's going on. As an aside I firmly believe the reason that the ‘fanboys' are divided on his run, and some quite angry is that he does challenge them and make them feel stupid (I have a friend who hates Catch-22 for the same reason). Morrison actually plays the continuity game more than the fanboys; for example his current story arc revolves on a key plot point that happened in a comic from 1963!
However I then remembered the first time she talked about comics with me, and admitted she'd only ever read some Adrian Tomine, some Daniel Clowes (some meaning ‘Ghost World') and a few ‘Love & Rockets'. Most of which are miles ahead of most super-hero books in terms of emotional depth. Because she's sleeping later than me at the moment I decided to find her some to change her opinion. So I got Donnie's collected editions of ‘Identity Crisis', ‘Watchmen' and ‘The Killing Joke.'
Her verdict so far (in order): ‘pretty good, brilliant! And ‘that's really disturbing...but it's interesting.'
There's hope for her yet.
T.V Shows I'd Actually Pay To Watch
2008-03-04
As I'm posting this, I'm channel surfing the various cable news channels about this ‘Super Tuesday II' (Electric Boogaloo!) , and currently watching various talking heads play ‘what if?' as they try and kill dead air time until the polls close and they finally get some results to report. It's got so bad on Fox News that they actually brought Bill O'Reilly in to sound off about how Rush Limbaugh's going to decide Texas for Hillary. So you'd probably think I was going to go on about politics again.
WRONG!!!
I'm going to discuss old T.V instead.
I'm not sure I understand this idea of buying whle seasons of T.V shows on DVD. It just seems moronic to me, especially when just about every show is repeated in syndication on cable ad infinitum. Still there are some shows that are so good that you have to watch again and again. So with that in mind here's...
...10 TV shows I'd pay money to watch... if I had to.
10. Duckman
This was a really weird cartoon about an anthropomorphic duck, voiced by Jason Alexander, with a horrible disposition and a sex-addict personality. This was the kind of show that could toss in an entire episode referencing Dostoevsky, and not have to explain the references, or not bother to.
9. Season Two and Three of Melrose Place
These are the seasons where Heather Locklear turned up, Michael Mancini turned into a full-time scum bag, Sydney & Marcia Cross's psycho doctor showed up, and basically Aaron Spelling decided to ditch all kinds of realism in favor of a kind of ‘Dynasty' on HGH.
8. Magnum P.I/Married...With Children (tie)
Magnum just always seemed cool to me; come on he drove a Ferrari , lived in Hawaii, had an uptight English guy to order around, got down with lots of fine ‘80's babes, was a detective and had a bushy mustache. As for ‘Married...' it really had it there for a while , up to about ‘95/'96, and never got enough credit. How come ‘The Simpsons' gets all the credit for saving Fox (even though it's ratings were average for years, and now firmly sucks, when Al Bundy and co were the networks first big hit?
Basically the unofficial Ferris Bueller T.V show (there was a Ferris show I think, but this stomped on the nuts of it). This show didn't even pretend to be realistic, but somehow managed to blend surrealism with social commentary and pop culture references all coupled with ham fisted ‘After School Special' type life lessons.
I know it's become the ‘kewl' thing to like this show ever since people have gone into full-on Seth Rogen/Judd Apatow worship, but this show was fucking brilliant (and like all Apatow T,V shows had a limited production life). The characters were all well drawn and fleshed out , the actors looked totally normally realistic, and the whole thing perfectly evoked the high school experience that actually made you uncomfortable in places. Plus Joe Flaherty rules.
5. Get A Life.
A sitcom designed to be bad, which made it good. I'm not going to go into too much detail , but the premise of this show was Chris Elliot playing a thirty year old paperboy who lives with his parents and temporarily dies every other episode.
4. Batman the Animated Series.
I wasn't overly excited when this came out, I didn't really dig Burton's first Batman film, and the second was only saved from ridiculousness by Chris Walken's over the top performance. I was pleasantly surprised; this is still the best representation of Batman on screen (as great as ‘Batman Begins' is , this is better). They got the villains exactly right (especially Mark Hamill's Joker) some villains have never been as good as here.The thing was dark, and Wagnerian and uncompromising, something you never normally expect in a kids cartoon. Plus it didn't just obviously use old comic stories, but created its own. If only Paul Dini's comics writing was as good as this.
3. House M.D
This show is as a bad comic book. You get a patient-patient gets treatment-treatment works-patient has relapse-patient gets new against the clock diagnosis-patient recovers in the end. On paper this should be just another medical drama, but this show is really a series of character studies. Plus, I've got to say, Hugh Laurie is brilliant in the titular role. I've long said we need more misanthropes on T.V, and finally we have one.
2. Quantum Leap
The show with the best built in gimmick to lure viewers back ever. That bit at the end where Sam beckett would ‘leap' get a brief glimpse at where he was and utter ‘oh boy...' was genius. This show managed to always remain fresh despite the formulaic premise simply because it was always different every episode. The only thing it ever got wrong was when Sam leaped into Lee Harvey Oswald and had to kill Jackie Kenndey to fulfill his mission. I miss this show.
1. The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
This was like if Ian Kennedy Toole wrote ‘The Wonder Years'. This amy have lasted only three years, and iy may have been on Nickelodeon, but this was essential viewing for my friends and I during college. The world of was truly a surrealist's absurd wet-dream. Plus any kid show with random guest stars of Steve Buscemi, Iggy Pop, Patty Hearst and a Michael Stipe as an ice-cream man ,and they don't detract fromm the show must be good.
A Week Of Strange Occurances.
2008-02-29
Since things have certainly changed around here the last week, and the root cause isn't hard to pinpoint- it's because my girlfriend has a broken leg. Trust me that I'm not blaming her for any of this; it's not like she chose to shatter her right leg in two places to inconvenience anyone or ‘shake things up' -that's just what ended up happening. I guess I should start with the fact that, for obvious reasons, and not so obvious reasons, Emm has hardly left Donnie's place for the last week.
The obvious reason is that she broke her damn leg-so walking around hasn't exactly been on her list of priorities the week after. The less obvious is that she's been a little gloomy lately, and combined with her being either slightly sedated from her painkillers or in pain, doesn't exactly make you want you to socialize.
The second thing, which kinda neatly dovetails with the first, is that because she hasn't been going out much, I've taken up the job of attending her classes and taking notes for her. It's just like being back at college without all the fun stuff like smoking dope, keggers and drunken one night stands. Luckily for her I've always been able to take famously meticulous notes, always have, always will. She was stunned when she saw what I came back with that first day, and likened it to me handing her a handwritten essay.
O.K we've dealt with the big stuff, let's turn to the miscellanea of oddities we've seen.
(Wow. I've just reread that, and wow! See what happens when I attend lectures? I end up writing like I'm giving one. This happened all the time in college too.)
Continuing on...
The most unsettling thing is the moping behavior. I've never really seen this side of her to tell you the truth. I don't really care for t much either. The thought has crossed my mind that this isn't the same girl I fell for. No I'm not going to break up with her over it, you'd have to be a special kind of callous to dump someone when they have a broken limb; I know people who would (no names) but I'm not one of them.
Sex is pretty much out of the window for at least four weeks. Not to sound too self-hedonistic, but this kinda bites. It's sorta funny how when you're not having sex you can go forever without craving it, but as soon as you start ‘getting' some' frequently , suddenly going without is liking coming off heroin. I've got used to having sex with her, and the rude interruption of this, and the reintroduction to self-pleasure is a bit of a downer...but maybe I've said too much.
On Wednesday she decided she wanted to be a brunette. This is actually what she said; ‘I've decided I want to be a brunette.' This happened when I was finishing up my latest Hillary Clinton hatchet job , and I looked up from my laptop with one of those classic Bud Bundy ‘has everyone lost their mind' looks of bewilderment. I don't exactly get why she felt she needed to tell me this, after all what was I going to do, say no? Besides a woman's hair and what she does with it is her own business. Personally I was slightly skeptical of this idea; because I was doubtful it would suit her. Besides she wouldn't be my ‘summer blonde' anymore (O.K so I'm selfish -sue me). So she rang up Michelle and the girl-whose-name-I-still-can't-remember-but-my-brother-has a crush-on, and they proceeded to try and dye her hair in the upstairs bathtub without getting her cast wet. It was strangely compelling watching to watch the two girls propping her on the edge of the bath while rinsing and dyeing. It was like watching an adult baptism.
I was wrong; she actually looks pretty good as a brunette. It was a little unnerving at first though, like seeing pictures of Marilyn Monroe as a brunette, but it did suit her. Plus this new look actually cheered her up a bit, so that's all good. In fact it raised her spirits so much that by the next day she was surfing the net (does anyone still say that apart from Bill O'Reilly?) and found the blog entry I made last Saturday, about the day she broke her leg, and went ballistic about me ‘sharing personal information' about her online. We got into a mini-screaming match about it. I of course countered that that post was almost entirely about me, and my reaction, and had fuck all about her in it, but any reasonable discussion was hopeless. Just wait until she finds this entry, then she'll really be able to say I'm saying things about her online...on second thoughts, uh-oh.
Pissing In The Hillary Kool-Aid.
2008-02-27
"There is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted."- Henry David Thoreau.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." - Friedrich Nietzsche.
With Hillary Clinton's presidential nomination campaign becoming increasingl schizophrenic , I thought it'd be a good time to stick the dagger in one more time and twist. Seriously though I've never seen a campaign so vacillate between two things; it's like Faye Dunaway getting slapped around in ‘Chinatown'-‘I'm honored to run against you Barack' to ‘shame on you Barack', ‘I'm honored, shame on you, honored, shame, honored, shame...HERE'S A PICTURE, SEE HE'S A TERRORIST!' Space precludes me from getting into the fallacies inherent in her denouncing NAFTA when her husband passed it...but of course she always thought it was a bad idea. Sheesh.
Personally I'm fed up with discussing Hillary Clinton's campaign to potentially become president (on the other hand it's so fun!) so after this column I'm not going to anymore. I've so far written two blog entries (o.k. one on her, and one on the primary processes themselves) , and every time I end up talking with college students, like my girlfriend's friend Michelle , about my dislike for her, I am accused of being a Republican fascist. From these conversations there seem to be two favorable positions on her; there's those who like her and get enraged at the media criticism and bloggosphere hate on her, and who support her unequivocally. These all seem to be women, and take the stance that it's the patriarchal media determined to destroy a strong woman.
Just check out comments like this posted by someone called ‘Lene Wangmo' on Matt Taibbi's blog just because he voiced his, admittedly slightly venomous, opinion on her.
Hillary Clinton's victimization from mindless hatred directed at her should make all Americans interested in justice, honesty, fairness, and equality be startled into recognizing that we do have a steak of psychosis running through the American psyche that finds it perversely tantalizing to scapegoat and vent on a powerful, highly intelligent, skilled progressive female politician, rather than respect her and honor her. It should give every American pause that we live in a culture where one out of three women are seriously abused, raped, assaulted. There seems to be an aspect of the American psyche that is arrested in a disturbed adolescent male stage of development that finds it extremely stressful and threatening to be in the presence of a great and powerful woman, and like a psychotic adolescent, feels compelled to smash her down in some way, hence the Hillary-Hate bandwagon, where the twisted adolescent male ego types and their female co-dependent cohorts hop on and start slinging the venomous tripe about Senator Hillary Clinton.
It goes on like that for quite a while longer...Blah,blah, b blah, Hillary's a saint, blah, blah dman neo-cons...blah, blah anyone anti-Hillary is a sexiest pig....
Quite how this lunatic is able to equate rape with not liking Hillary Clinton is beyond me. I'm also sure that she recoils at being labeled a ‘victim' (although I'm equally sure that may change depending on the circumstances required). Clearly we're not dealing with anything close to a rational objective mind. Yes it's been slightly appalling how the mainstream news media has been fawning over Obama, sickening in some cases, but the equating of ‘honesty and fairness' with the Clinton's has always been a stretch to me. Plus Obama's ‘Yes We Can' slogan is admittedly a lot more inspiring than Hillary's unofficial ‘Because I'm Entitled.'
This woman must be one of the many compelled by guilt we keep hearing about; throwing herself behind Clinton unquestionably is the only option to people like her, otherwise they'd be left with a nasty case of cognitive dissonance.
The other group are more ambivalent and favor Obama, but wouldn't be crushed if she ‘won' the nomination, in essence saying it doesn't matter as long as they're aligned with the party that brays. These people would support her because she's a Democrat and hate all G.O.P candidates with a passion outstripping rational thought. Bush is eviler than Hitler, but anything wrong Clinton ever did as president is as conveniently forgotten as certain things by Reagan in the middle of Iran-Contra.
I've never liked the Clinton's ever since I read the book ‘No One Left To Lie To' by political commentator Christopher Hitchens, which detailed just how corrupt the two of them were ( if you really want to be nastily surprised about the Clinton presidency I'd recommend finding a copy) I'd already had a nasty uneasy feeling before then though, especially when the Whitewater investigation heated up in intensity and that whole billing records being unable to be found, but turning up in her office thing happened.
Then there were the allegations of invading the privacy of their targets by dispatching private detectives to comb their records, lying about their opponents, attempting to ruin reputations of people who disagreed with there ideals or dared allege they slept with Bill. Just in this campaign they're trying to get the ‘Super Delegates' to turn over the election result if it ends unfavorably for them and the awarding of Florida and Michigan. Attempting to make Obama's campaign a racial one, when to his credit he'd steered away from it, trying to portray Obama as an Al Qaeda operative in waiting, to Bill losing his temper this week with an Obamaite at a rally. The warning cry should have been when she started referring to herself as ‘Hillary Clinton' rather than the ‘Hillary Rodham Clinton' that she's made quite a thing of being called before.
The Clinton's brand of politics has always been to obliterate all potential opposition with a smile on your face; of course this was easy with Bill because, as much of a scumbag as he is, he was charming. Hillary's not as much. They're Machiavellian's in the correct, not corrupted sense of the word; it's more important to appear virtuous than actually be so, and the ends justify the means.
It's been interesting to read that one of the Clinton's once closet ‘aides' Dick Morris has been at the forefront of telling some of the unpleasant truths of the two of them, and decrying the way they've gone about their campaign on his website. Now I'm not a particular fan of Mr. Morris and the things he did while employed by the Clinton's is reprehensible. It was after all Morris who came up with the most cynical of policies the infamous ‘triangulation.' It's also entirely possible he's burnt so many bridges with them he doesn't care, and these diatribes are just his way of cleansing himself. But when one of your closest advisors, is now so sick to his stomach of you, it's quite telling. Hitchens to his credit describes how people in the Clinton's inner circle are beyond loyal as if they are in a cult, and once removed from it, awaken and have nothing good to say about the two of them
Of course the first group would prefer you ignored those icky things and focused on three things
1) she's a woman , and damn it it's time for a female president.
2) remember when Bill was president, weren't things soooo much better? (Actually the country was as divided then as now, and that's kinda how Bush seemed a reasonable candidate in 2000, and don't give me that they rebounded the economy either, that was a delayed effect of the Reagan/Bush Snr years).
3) She's the best choice for defeating McCain. (like it or not what the Democratic Primaries are really a referendum to decide who the best choice to win back The White House is).
Unfortunately this last one doesn't favor Hillary at all. Whereas Obama crosses over party lines and sucks moderates from the other side with him, Hillary's support comes from the ‘once a Democrat, always a Democrat' line. For whatever reason, even moderate Republicans aren't going to vote for her. Naturally the G.O.P has not so subtly been baiting the Dem's over this, by having their pundits say they should choose Obama because he's a sure thing. They're trying to sow doubts (hold on Bill O'Reilly likes him?) and hopefully cause them to end up picking Hillary. They know they can't defeat Obama, but they've got a puncher's chance against Hillary.
Let's get back to her political achievements that she claims enable her to ‘start on day one'. I still fail to grasp how your husband being president means you have experience in the job, if it did we all would have voted Nancy Reagan president in '88 or reelected Carter.
I've said before, but it bears repeating that the only substantive policy work she did was the ill-fated universal healthcare initiative, that proved so poisonous that it cost the Dem's both chambers of congress. So that's out. Then I decided to look at the respective records of Hillary and Obama in the senate, not including her infamous vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq. The results surprised me.
Clinton: served on Committee on Budget (2001-2002), Committee on Armed Services (since 2003), Committee on Environment and Public Works (since 2001) Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (since 2001) and Special Committee on Aging. She is also a Commissioner of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (since 2001).
Obama: holds assignments on the Senate Committees for Foreign Relations; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; and Veterans' Affairs. Took an active role in the Senate's drive for improved border security and immigration reform. In 2005, he co-sponsored the "Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act" introduced by Sen. John McCain.
As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Obama made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In August 2005, he traveled to Russia, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan. The trip focused on strategies to control the world's supply of conventional weapons, biological weapons, and weapons of mass destruction as a first defense against potential terrorist attacks. Co-sponsored a climate change bill to reduce greenhouse gases. Introduced the ‘Iraq War De-Escalation Act.'
Holy shit! Not only does Obama have significant Senatorial committee experience on many of the key election issues (Homeland Security, climate change, illegal immigration and foreign relations), but he far outstrips Clinton in the depth and width of his work in the Senate. So who's calling who inexperienced?
Besides which, is she really trying to tell us Bill arrived from that pig farming state of his in '93, and knew exactly how things worked in the White House? Please. That's what the cabinet appointees are for. What you most need in an incoming president is someone who has an understanding of the issues.
"The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means." - Georges Bernanos.
Look I'm not anti a Hillary Clinton presidency because I think she'll be disastrous in the job (no one could be worse than the last eight years), I expect she'd at worst a perfectly serviceable Commander In Chief; no matter what you say about her, she is obviously a highly intelligent woman and (presumably) fully capable of at least understanding the various situations a President faces. And I'm sure as hell not so reactionary that the very thought of a woman leader frightens or appalls me in any way. In fact I'm one of the few people I know who still thinks there's a good chance she wins Ohio and Texas and secures the nomination.
What I am against is what the Clinton's stand for politically speaking, as the above quote beautifully articulates. Willing to do whatever it takes. It's the politics of cynicism. This isn't a case of immorality, as I firmly believe that we each set our own morals unrelated to anyone else's and it's all arbitrary. With that said it's quite unsettling when you compare whatever morals you have with the Clinton's ,and discover that they either have none, or one's that are completely malleable to the occasion at hand , which as fancy way of saying you have none to begin with.
This was brought home to me anew when the Hillary campaign began talking about the Michigan and Florida delegates should be represented at the Democratic National Convention, despite agreeing in December last year to abide by the decision. Completely unsurprisingly the majority in both of whose states conveniently voted for her (55 % in Mich/ 50 % in Flor). Now the delegates in both states lost their votes because the Democratic Party itself declared them ineligible because of a scheduling dispute. And in Michigan both Obama and John Edwards withdrew their names from the ballot, but Clinton didn't. Predictably she won. Now that she's sliding backwards she suddenly wants them to count. Would they have been this adamant about these disenfranchised voters if they'd voted Obama? Probably not. In fact they'd be outraged if the other campaign were in that position. In response the Obama campaign came back with this; "...it seems like Hillary Clinton will do or say anything to win an election."
When I think about how the Clinton's conduct a campaign, I'm always reminded of a quote George Will made when discussing old time baseball manager John McGraw on an ESPN special some years back- that "he had an unlovely desire to win.'
They've conducted this campaign like a spoilt kid playing baseball; they'll play by the rules as long as they're winning, but as soon as they're behind they'll resort to any tactic to available, as they have begun to, such as ‘leaking' pictures of Obama in a turban.
This is why I refuse to endorse their way.
Now you may disagree with me on this, and that's fine, you're perfectly entitled to believe whatever you want. I just don't think we can ever be in agreement. After all you're willing to tolerate these things, as long as she's anti-Bush (though not as much as she claims). The Clinton's may be liars and cheats, but they're our liars and cheats. It's about standards, if you really believe that it doesn't matter, than you're really willing to stand for anything, as long as it supports what you believe. That is valuing partisanship over commonsense, the lust for power over ethics.
Rounded bottom at the crooked top.
2008-02-23
Emma broke her leg yesterday, pretty badly too. I was at work when I found out, pouring ‘Charlie', one of the charming local drunks at the bar his fourth scotch when the phone rang. I found myself talking to some doctor at the hospital, who told me my girlfriend was there. Apparently I'd been listed as her emergency contact, and needed to come down there as quickly as possible.
This was a slight problem for two reasons;
1) I was in sole charge of the place at that moment
2) I didn't have a car.
To solve the first I rang up Marco and told him he had to get his ass down there and quick. Fortunately in regards to the second one I was lucky that my estranged brother, who does have a car, was in the bar at the time playing pool with a stranger. So I went over and told him that I needed him to give me a ride, and he agreed. Now he'd been drinking, so ideally I shouldn't have been driving with him anywhere-however these weren't ideal circumstances. Of course none of this could happen until Marco turned up thirty-five minutes later, despite the fact he lives a whole two blocks away. Jesus fucking Christ .Fucking dickhead. I'm sorry, I'm just a little pissed off at the whole thing.
Anyway, once we were in Ethan's beat up car, we then proceeded to drive around for another half an hour, because, and I can't believe this never occurred to me at the time, neither of us knew where the fucking hospital was. Eventually we double parked and I ran into a store and asked a clerk breathlessly where it was. If I seemed slightly panicked at this stage, it was because the doctor I'd spoken to had been ‘sparing' with the details, and I didn't know what had happened to Emm-only that she was in the hospital. For all I knew she was half dead.
So we eventually arrived at the hospital, and after I told the nurse at the front office who I was, I sat down on an uncomfortable chair next to Ethan and waited. Finally another half hour later, some doctor who kinda reminded me of Greg House in his demeanor, and the fact he was stubbled, came out and told us she was fine. I don't think I've ever felt so relieved. He also asked if I was her older brother, and looked slightly bemused when I told him I was her boyfriend.
This doctor who yawned a lot, and looked like he'd been on call for two days, brought me up to speed on just what had happened. These are my words, not his-combined with what she's told me.
It seems she was walking up at a staircase around college. She got to the top, and suddenly remembered she'd forgotten something back downstairs. She turned around hurriedly and smacked right into some guy coming up behind her. She fell/tumbled down two flights of stairs and broke her tibia in two places; a partial break near her knee, and a clean break lower down in the middle of the bone. Because the leg was fractured in two places, they'd decided to operate on it and insert a rod and some pins or something to keep the bone in alignment.
It takes a lot to make me feel squeamish, but hearing the story and seeing the x-rays actually made me cringe. Of course this didn't stop the guy asking if she had insurance (I'm footing the bill, don't sweat it). I had to wait another two hours to see her, while she recovered from the surgery and anesthetic. When I did she was resting on a bed in the post-op. I was a little put off by the smell of freshly set plaster, a smell I've always reacted badly to ever since I had my own arm set years ago. I hugged her and asked as sweetly as I can if she was alright. She replied in a manner dripping in kind of sardonicism I usually exude; ‘I broke my leg.'
I asked ‘Dr.House' whether she'd have to stay overnight or whatever, and he replied in a mismatch of noncommittal that it wasn't strictly necessary , that he'd recommend it, but it was ultimately up to her (at least that's what I think he was getting at, I'm still not a hundred percent certain).
However she was adamant that she wanted to leave as soon as she was allowed. I replied that I think she should take the doc's advice, but she was resolute about leaving now. So she got dressed, propped herself up on her crutches, took her treatment of painkillers from ‘Dr.House' and walked out of the hospital room.
I decided that we'd take her to Donnie's place, because her dorm had stairs she'd have to traverse, and I'd get some stuff from her dorm for her tomorrow. She didn't like this idea, but what was she going to do, run away? Sorry...I'm sorry.
Anyway once at Donnie's place, she wanted to pretty much go straight to bed. I haven't had a day turn out this bad since...well I don't remember to be honest. The night I broke up with Kate was relatively stress free, and that was a relationship of two and a bit years. However today bothered me a lot, which in a deeply unfortunate way kinda proves that I do love her. Regardless I was shaken up, so shaken up in fact that I ended up sharing the best part of a bottle of scotch with Ethan and watching ‘Real Time with Bill Maher.' I've never really given the show a proper chance, mainly because the audience is an insanely partisan liberal one, and it feels like Repub bashing a lot of the time. Plus he has an annoying habit of oversimplifying issues to the point of ridiculousness. I'm starting to reconsider though, Maher does usually have interesting and intelligent guests, and it usually doesn't devolve into ideologues screaming at each other. Plus, say what you like about Maher, but the episode where he lost it and threatened to kick the shit out of those 9/11 Truthers is one of my favorite moments in TV.
The Traveler has come...
2008-02-18
I'd just got home and flopped myself down on the couch for a little over ten minutes when the doorbell rang. So I wearily dragged my bones off the couch and answered the door, and ended up standing face to face with my brother Ethan. He looked completely different to anyway I'd seen him before. He had longish black hair that reminded me of Adam Sandler's haircut in ‘The Wedding Singer', and was wearing a black leather bomber jacket, black jeans and black Doc Marten's. He took off his sunglasses, and picked up his bag and said; ‘Hey little bro, can I come inside?'
‘Umm...'
‘Thanks he said,' walking past me without waiting for an answer.
He sat down on the armchair next to the couch, and we talked briefly until he intimated that he could "murder a drink." I left him waiting in the living room texting on his cell while I took a quick shower and got a change of clothes. Then we left to go for a drink. My brother's a dive bar aficionado like me, so of course I took him to a bar on the boardwalk, which was really more of a restaurant. This worked out in exactly the way I'd hoped, as he kept asking me variations of ‘why the hell have you brought me here?' until I eventually gave in and we left for the bar I work at-he seemed that place a lot more. This annoyed him, it meant that if he decided to stick around a while (which he has) he was likely to loiter around here (which he also has). It felt odd talking to him, because I haven't seen him around a lot for the past fourteen or so years; so I don't know how exactly to approach things, or have any shared experiences or knowledge to relate. It felt like when you have drinks with a stranger , and the first couplea drinks haven't loosened either of you up to the point where you're willing to crack jokes or share things (obviously I don't have this particular problem normally, but I've observed plenty of people behave this way). Thankfully the awkwardness was broken up when Emma and a friend of hers who I've met a couplea times briefly, and so don't really recall her name as I write this turned up. Emm spotted us quickly and the two of them came over to our table. I kissed her on the cheek and she sat down, and I made the requisite introductions.
‘Emm, this is my brother Ethan, he just rode into town today.'
‘Your brother,' she said giving me that look meaning that I was meant to have told her everything about my family already. I find this a slightly odd rationale, as I know practically nothing about her family. This is because I haven't really asked. As per usual I have no point. Anyway all the awkwardness seemed to dissipate once Emm and her friend with no name arrived, and the conversational quadrupling flowed smoothly. For Emma's part, because she's got this utterly adorable desire to really get to know everyone she meets as best she can and her friend because Ethan proceeded to quasi-flirt with her.
By the time the two girls decided to they needed to get back to campus, it really didn't matter, as Ethan and were well and truly liquored up (working in a bar does have its benefits sometimes, for instance you hardly ever get 86'd there).
‘Cute girls, especially the blonde perky one,' he said leaning back in his chair and stretching, ‘she yours?'
‘Well I don't own her.'
‘Oops,' he said restraining a smirk.
‘I'm leasing with an option to buy.'
He laughed under his breath.
‘So how'd you find me anyway,' I continued, but I suspected I already knew the answer.
‘Sis told me you were out here the last time we talked, and she gave me a number to try and call.' I sometimes forget that my sister is much closer to Ethan than I am, and they stay in contact bi-weekly. It probably has something to do with the fact that they're both a few years older than me.
‘So,' he began by clapping his hands together hard from behind his head. ‘'I guess I need a place to crash; can I stay round your place?'
I looked at him skeptically, ‘well it's not my place...you'd have to ask my friend Donnie.'
‘Donnie Sullivan? He out here too, get outta town.'
I didn't know how or when or even that he did know Donnie, but something told me that I probably should. Unfortunately my mind was a total blank on the subject.
‘Yeah...ah he teaches at the college.'
‘O.K, so I guess I should go ask him,' he said springing to his feet energetically. ‘Come on.'
Hailing from parts unknown...
2008-02-16
I was just crashing on the couch yesterday afternoon (yes I know this is getting to be a thematic cliché) when the phone rang. I moved slowly to answer it with a weary groan of a hello, and discovered someone unexpected talking on the other end. It was my brother calling from a payphone in Modesto of all places.
O.K, stop. I know that I've never mentioned my brother Ethan before, and didn't even refer