Monday, June 30, 2008

Quotes of the Day

"Love: a devastating disease, instantly cured by marriage."

- Lenny Briscoe

"A new study shows that a man will propose marriage after an average of 2 years, 11 months, and 8 days. This proves that it takes 2 years, 11 months, and 8 days to break the human spirit."

- Conan O'Brien

I added to an eariler post because apparently the next post is my 2000th, and I figured I should write somethign more special for that.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Some People Are Created More Equal Than Others

I may be a full-time hater, but I think there was always this ethical part of the back of my mind that basically gave people the benefit of the doubt. Hence, I've often found myself being friends with people that I don't necessarily think that highly of. They may have their faults, I'd reason, but who doesn't? So on this principle of equal-ibrium-ality, I'd come to the assumption that everyone has roughly the same to offer as everyone else, and I'd differentiate my enemies from friends on the strength of a simple criteria: "have conflict with" vs. a "don't have conflict with."

But just because someone doesn't have conflict with me, it doesn't mean they're as worthwhile as others. Some people really just have more to offer. I mean, there's no rule that says that if your friend is more smart, that she has to be less fun, or less interesting, or less nice. By that logic, your dumber friend, who could just as easily be meaner and more boring, would have to be a worse time than the other.

Two things last night made me realize this:

1. Sex and the City: The Movie. I didn't have high expectations for this, so in that context the jokes were funny enough; but ultimately they weren't as funny as the show, which unmasks the fact that those hags are horrible people! All of them! I know their aim is to celebrate Girlfriends and make you wish you had friends as great as Carrie/Samantha/Miranda/Charlotte, but after watching that movie I felt relief: thank God I don't have those superficial, self-absorbed, self-entitled, boring bitches in my life!

2. Even after this sense of relief, it still became apparent to me that I am shit out of patience with my friend Butterfly. She's super annoying, everyone would observe, but I would try to defend her anyways because I thought she basically had a good heart. That may still be true, but good heart can only go so far if every conversation we start has to end with her talking about Her Boy - whom she's convinced she'll marry, and it's been 5 months. And did I mention that she's been saying that since week 2? And that this is the THIRD The One? I'm not even bullshitting, none of us have even met the guy yet, and she has the gall to interrupt a conversation - about our other friend's dating drama, I think, or maybe it was about animal style vs. no onions - by saying: "What do you think My Boy is doing right this minute?" Silence. "I don't know, Butterfly, that's something you would know best." I try not to be supercilious and sarcastic in normal conversation, but in that case I can't imagine any other way I could have said it. It was so uncalled for!

That's when I realized that I do indeed have boring bitches in my life. There are no two ways around it: even with all of Butterfly's good points, she is less cool. She has less to offer than some of my other friends, and sometimes, she is straight up a bad time.

The worst part of happened as I was dropping her off at the end of the night. It was still the same bull-fuckery as the Her Boy stuff earlier that evening, but it was even worse because my gas bill was at stake. "Good night, and let's hang out soon," I'd say...and it would turn into this long continuation about her life and her relationship, and how we haven't met Her Boy yet! "Okay, you'll have to bring him out when you're done with your EXAMS...good luck studying," I'd say, as a way of hinting. No dice, the oblivious one would not get out of my car. I should have turned off my engine then, but I reconsidered because I didn't want her to read that as an invitation to stay in my car and jabber indefinitely. Then I just went with the awkward silence and nodding. Eventually that worked...but not all that fast, and not until I gave up and turned off my engine, because I could not keep her going on my dime, with gas prices the way they are. For Christ's sake, learn to get a clue! No one loiters in a running vehicle for 5 minutes at a time. 1 minute is the TOPS.

I'm so brassed off about that. The funny thing is, I might have just let it slide and excused her annoying ways yet again - but there's no demanding mistress like cold hard cash.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

I Have a New Crush

KATHLEEN HANNA. So she's old school, and I've always been a late bloomer. I totally wanna be her best friend.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Quotes of the Day: Saved by the Bell

1.
[Zack announces that he will run against Jessie for president.]
Jessie: Be warned: I'm going to kick your butt!
Mr. Dewey: Zack, care to re-but?

2.
Mr. Dewey: You make light of algebra now, but when you're all grown up and your friends are making logarithm jokes at cocktail parties, you won't have a clue as to what everybody's laughing at.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Joy Behar on Larry King

If Obama supporters want my vote they need to SHUT THE HELL UP. I'm pretty much set on voting for Obama in November, but I just might swing over to McCain, just to spite all those self-righteous, self-important Obama fanatics. Take Joy Behar, for example. My goodness, she could not stop sucking Barack and Michelle dick to help herself. When she wasn't fawning about "why wouldn't people vote for Obama?" or declaring that Clinton's women are indisputably in the Obama bag, so they should worry about white male voters instead, or interrupting Larry King, or making bonehead statements like The View could soften up Hitler's image - when she wasn't doing all that, she'd attack McCain under that typical bourgeois assumption that every reasonable person would share the same politics as herself. McCain is against a quick withdrawl from Iraq, so obviously we don't want to vote for him. Guess what? Just because some people were against the war doesn't mean they're going to be against rebuilding too! Furthermore, the war isn't necessarily even a partisan issue anymore, I hear. I've been hearing that some conservatives are swinging this election (and have been swinging for a while now) because they don't support the war.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

A Fin

It finally happened: yesterday in the water I saw a FIN about 30 feet away from me. I even saw a little bit of the body underneath the fin. My world turned to ice that moment, and I shouted, "OH MY GOD! Did you see that?" to the (off-duty?) life guard who was catching waves next to me. He assured me it was a dolphin. "Are you sure?" "Positive. They hang out here all the time." All the time?? That is a frightening thought. Not only am I going to start panicking every time I see a dolphin, lest it be a shark, but it also can't bode well regarding predators in the area. It used to be that way too with the sea otters in Santa Cruz: it's sort of nice to see them frolicking around you, cracking shellfish on their bellies...but you can't really shake the foreboding that they're a sign of populated waters.

If it weren't for the sharks, it would have been rather nice to see a dolphin in the wild, swimming with me. As it was, I exited the water posthaste.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Where the Boys Are

Speaking of weird psychotic melodramas, check out Where the Boys Are. It's a proto-Beach Party movie made in 1960 (so, 3 years before the Frankie and Annettes), and damn, they should have called it, Before Beach Party Movies Were Entertaining. It's a total waste of space! And my hopes were so high... Instead of a fun story about highjinx at Fort Lauderdale, we get this tedious, depressing little morality tale about abstinence. And of all the things they DIDN'T leave out from the beach party movies, they decided to keep the tackiness (without the enjoyability) and the horrible, pointless dialogue, and they even threw in a few sub-rate musical numbers. Damn.

Bill Maher, the guest programmer on TCM, picked this movie as one of his favorites. Crazy fuck. He actually liked the Code-era touches, which makes him psychotic too. In one of the subplots, a naive girl meets two Yalies; we had learned earlier that it was her dream to meet an Ivy Leaguer and marry him. One of the Yalies, Dill, wins the coin toss, so she starts going out with him. It's unclear if she puts out. But Dill has to leave town for a few days, and in the meantime the naive girl gets seduced by the other Yalie, Franklin. She gets drunk one night and definitely puts out. Then she starts talking to Franklin about marriage. Franklin stops returning her calls. She gets sad and desperate, and calls him up, begging for a date, when he's partying with his guy friends. He tells her to wait for him in this motel...

and when the door is finally knocking, Dill is standing there. The girl starts crying and screaming no, but Dill basically rapes her anyways. Post-coitus, the girl tries to off herself. She's wandering around the highway, gets hit by a car, and is rescued just on time by her friends. In her hospital bed, she cries that they should have let her die. End of subplot.

The Hayes Codes stipulated that any illicit sex act has to go punished in movies. I suppose the girl had it coming to her; she got gang raped, so she deserved to be hit by a car. Just in case it wasn't punishment enough that she'd be a pariah for the rest of her life.

Reckless

What a weird fucking melodrama. I love me some Jean Harlow, but it's still a pretty psychotic movie, and I'm sorry to say that the Harlow isn't much for the (lip) singing and dancing. In the end she can do no wrong, of course, but I do wish she were more of the bad girl. The theme song had raised my hopes:

Jean:
What'll you ever be?
What'll you ever do?
How will you ever know
if you don't take a chance?

Chorus:
You have got to gamble with fate

Jean:
I wanna live, love, learn a lot
I'll light my candle
And I'll burn a lot

Chorus:
You'll have some bad shots, hard knocks

Jean:
I'm on my own if I bruise

Chorus:
And there'll be smiles here, shouts here

Jean:
And I can take it on the chin if I lose
Because I'm reckless

Chorus:
She's simply reckless

Jean:
Reckless!

Chorus:
She's simply reckless

Jean:
I'm gonna go places and look life in the face

Jean (Singing):
When I'm in love
I'm reckless
Each time in love
I'm more reckless
I won't go weeping
For lost romances
I pay my losses
And I take new chances

I'm reckless
And I don't want advice
I'll keep on seeking my own paradise
I waste no weeping
I just keep hoping
For one who's hoping for me

-Chorus girl dance sequence-

Jean:
I've made my mind up
That I'll wind up
I'll take what's coming to me

I've been around
It's been, why advertise
I have lived
And I've loved
What is life
Without love?

Keep your feet on the ground
All my friends have advised
If you'll fight, you will fall
So I fight, and I fell
Every time my heart beats calmly

Etc.

PS - I forgot to mention the best part of this movie: Margaret Dumont, famed of the Marx Brothers, has an breathtaking cameo as a theatergoer who gets up and shouts, "GET OFF THE STAGE!" So perfect! That woman is a gem.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Surf Day, Encounters, Lines

Monday was a perfect surfing day. The waves were fun and peaky and not closed out, the weather was beautiful, the beach was populated though the lineup was empty, and best of all, the lifeguards are back on duty, ie shark lookout. I also did not too shabbily on the surfboard, which was a nice surprise since I haven't been out in about 3 months. I'm looking forward to getting back out there, as soon as I give my burn a bit of a break. The heat around here inland is intolerable, so I have to escape to the coast.

Interesting encounter at the beach: a perfect stranger initiated a conversation...so that he could insult me!

"Was it you out there surfing?"
"It was me trying.:
"Did you get up?"
"A few times."
"No way, I didn't think you'd be able to! I told my kids, she's never gonna get up."
"Uh...bye."

Why the fuck are you talking to me?? Keep that insight to yourself, for fuck's sake. I don't understand what makes people think that kind of behavior is okay.

The weird thing about it is his wife proceeded to continue this conversation, after I blew them off, as if we were friends. She started asking me stuff like if I learned to surf myself and if I'm a local. I can't make heads or tales out of this. Did they not realize that they had just insulted me?

There was another memorable encounter that day, of quite a different ilk. It confirmed to me how right I am when I'm a risktaker, because rejection will almost never be as bad as regret. But that day at the beach, I was shy for whatever reason, and I was not a risktaker. A HOT guy was biking by me as I was washing off my wetsuit, and we clearly made eye contact. Then he kept biking, and then he looked back at me again, and then he kept biking before he and his friend pulled over to rest by the bathroom (but didn't go in). I was heading to the bathroom myself (also not to go in; I needed to use the sink for my contacts), and I should have said something as I walked by. I should have said "hi." But I didn't, and now I'm kicking myself, because the dude was smoking.

Anyways. Next time. Tis better to have balls. Even if nothing comes out of it, as is inevitably the case.

Speaking of chance flirting, I thought I'd start logging some of the better pick up lines - or rather, conversation entries, because I think of "lines" as more like jokes - I've heard. Initiation is the toughest part, because that's the time when they don't know you from Adam, and you can't win them over with your wit yet.

At the airport:
This one was interesting, because it came from the security checkpoint dude. It was totally unexpected: he looked and talked like a lovechild between Ben Stein and someone from the Addams Family, and yet his line was probably the best of the bunch.

"What modeling convention are you on your way to?"

Comical, topical, complimentary, and not creepy (which is saying a lot, because the person himself was easily creepy).

At a club:
"Hi, how are you? I've been wanting to say that for a while, but I was too intimated to talk to you. But then I saw that guy coming over, so I had to take a risk before he did."

A little squirrely, but also very, very complimentary. The line even evokes this idea of a rival - fictional or otherwise - to reinforce that you're extra special. Plus, you can't blow off a guy into oblivion who makes himself that vulnerable. Even if you escape eventually, you at least have to give him a couple minutes.

At a gas station - by ME! - after he said something I didn't get the first time:
"I'm sorry, I sort of missed that. Hot guys make me nervous."

Okay, so here's the sad news: none of these lines were successful, in the long-term sense. But I maintain that they're still good, and I'm rather proud of my own little bit on ingenuity.

Friday, June 06, 2008

Khirbet Khizeh

Wow! What an incredible, forceful story. It's so good. I picked it up after hearing a bit about it on NPR, and was intrigued by the comment that the author was a devoted Zionist, even though this novella dwells on the problematic things that Israeli occupation forces upon the Palestinians. I've always been on the fence about the whole Israel issue; it struck me as a fundamentally wrong idea, but I didn't want to indulge in an anti-Semitic position, and plus I can kind of sympathize with the basic desire for a nation. Even so, I still think, ultimately, that home is where the heart is, and any piece of land should do just as well as any other. But then I'm not particularly religious, so I should plead ignorance here...

So the next question is, religion aside, is Zionism something I can get behind? Khirbet Khizeh doesn't address in detail the pros, as I was hoping it would; and so as of now, I have to say no. I think there's further justification in the fact that to a lot of young Jews, and even some Israelis, I hear, now regard Zionism as a defunct movement. The eyewitness account of the expulsion of the town Khirbet Khizeh convinces me more that they are right. No cause could be justified if it inflicts that much suffering...

...or can it? The wonderful thing about this novella is that it really makes you question what you would do if you were faced with the same choices. We'd all like to think that we'd stand up and speak out if we see an injustice, but maybe that's not true. Every cause attracts adherents because they make themselves sound beautiful - WORTH THE SACRIFICE, and sacrifice is essentially what defines a cause as a worthy one. There's a moment when the narrator thinks about walking away and refusing to take part in the task he considers morally objectionable; but then he rebukes himself:

"Because if it has to be done let others do it. If someone had to get filthy, let others soil their hands. I couldn't. Absolutely not. But immediately another voices started up inside me singing: bleeding heart, bleeding heart, bleeding heart. With increasing petulance and a psalm to the beautiful soul that left the dirty work to others, sanctimoniously shutting its eyes, averting them so as to save itself from anything that might upset it, with eyes too pure to behold evil, who has looked upon unbearable iniquity. And I hated the entirety of my being."

Then I thought of my own great nation, which I love. How much suffering did it have to cause in order to be the strong and just (?) civilization that it is today? I can't say that the suffering was worth it, because I did nothing but reap the benefits, but maybe there wouldn't have been anything if there wasn't so much violence at one time - rectified, of course, by a "cause," that dream that is America.

The amazing thing about Khirbet Khizeh is that it shows the soldiers acting pretty much like you'd imagine Nazi soldiers acting. At first you feel outraged. Particularly, when the soldiers deride the villagers for fleeing and submitting without even trying to defend what's theirs, you think angrily, "Happy now, fuckers? They're fighting back now!" But gradually you come to discern the pressures that make them harden themselves against normal human compassion, and justify their actions by demonizing their victims ("they're like animals" or "they should have thought of this before they started the war"). One minute of softness or pity could bring about chaos, the threat of violence, and a failure of the mission. So by necessity, you have to dive wholesale into this culture of cruelty.

There was a psychology professor at Stanford who once did a controversial experiment in which subjects played out the roles of prisoners and their guards. In a ridiculously short span of time, like a day, the prison guards were acting cruel and abusive, really exercising dominance and superiority over the prisoners. The conclusion of that experiment was that it's in human nature to embrace the roles one finds oneself in, and often, to abuse authority. It's a frightening thought. If I were an Israeli soldier in Khirbet Khizeh, I don't know if I would have been proud of my choices.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Current Audio

Mac Lethal
Calm Down Baby

My first taste of heartbreak was at the park lake
one summer night, I had a big crush on a girl named Sarah
I was gonna ask her out
til I saw Tim Philips kissing her, grabbing her butt (asshole)
I was madder than fuck [???]
and Tim Philips smells like Cool Water cologne
Well fuck him and his Mustang and all his other friends
I vowed I would never love again and since then I dated
but fuck that, I can't get nothing
I'd rather sit alone than have my damn ship sunken
Being single's par for the course
I don't wanna cause a marriage, cause I don't wanna cause a divorce
It's probably important and it's better for health
Besides I get the whole damn bed to myself
But what the hell everyone else
wants me to drop down my guard, no!
This heart is for me, it's blacked out and scarred
Go home, I don't need me a wife
I'm happily single for life. All right?

This is the ode to singlehood I would dedicate to myself. I feel bad about it a lot (like, maybe I'm not single by choice, but by necessity! and, how does every other schmuck on the planet have a mate?), and perhaps they're right when they say that humans are meant for companionship; I was reminded of that the other day when I caught myself feeling affection for a stuffed animal. Maybe we're like dogs, only with more baggage: it's in our nature to love, and we can't help being programmed like that...

But the incontrovertible fact is that life starts sucking as soon as I start dating, so it's high time I just get used to that fact. Anyways, I'm starting to wonder if I've already met all the important milestone people in my life: I already had my great, life-altering crush (unrequited), my great all-consuming, sweeping, and wholly fulfilling romance (for 1 month), my great crippling heartbreak, the lifelong companion of my heart, and besides all that, I'm starting to suspect that I was meant for Joey Ramone anyway, but just missed him by an accident of fate. I mean, what are the chances that the person you'd be most happy with is going to be alive at the exact same time as you? It's cosmically improbable! And how do I know that I was meant for Joey Ramone? Because he is the perfect icon of being free and unburdened and forever young! I still remain devoted to that idea of him in middle age doing nothing but watching the CNN stock reports all day, and developing a fan's crush for Maria Bartriromo. It's beautiful! It's exactly me, except that when I'm 45 it'll be considered pathetic instead of awesome.

Current Audio

H2O
What Happened

"When it began, for those who don't know
It didn't matter how you looked or what you wore to a show
Dress codes, FUCK NO! we didn't care
About the brand of your jeans and all that shit in your hair

"But now the biggest part is all about the image and not the art
Fashion before passion!"

I've often had the same objection when I go to punk shows: what's with all the bullshit? Why am I expected to fug myself up - which I refuse to do under any circumstance, except for laziness - in order to be legit? Besides, there's something about the image that's just unimaginative.

At the same time, I'm thinking now that the H2O take on this matter is simply factually untrue. There was NEVER a time when punk wasn't about the image. A nice little footnote to history: the only reason the Sex Pistols existed was because specialty boutique owner Malcolm McLaren wanted an extreme promotional gig for his FASHION vision. Isn't that a pretty irony? No one takes fashion seriously! It's the most frivolous activity - perhaps the very definition of superficial - that we think of as chaining us up to society's soul-killing conformity. And yet fashion is forever bound in this symbiotic, inextricable marriage to youth rebellion. I guess that just goes to prove that youth is, above all, stupid.

I love it! Fashion is so dear to my heart. I know it's completely vain, in both sense of the word, but it's nice to find some vindication for it.

Isn't vain an interesting word? I'm guessing that the "conceited" definition came first, but because our society discourages self-interested pursuits, perhaps it also came to means "useless." This is pulled out of my ass, of course. It's easily verifiable on the OED, I would guess, but those fucks at UM have officially cut me off, so I don't have the access to the library's OED subscription anymore. It's so pathetic going back to the American Heritage dictionary after the OED.