NERDS BE WARNED

January 4, 2003

I realize things are going really well for nerds lately. Several years ago, various mainstream media channels heralded the “Rise of the Geek”, and graced their covers with various computer nerds-a-leaping, costumed with all the naturalism and subtlety of an extra from Saved by the Bell. Nerds were everywhere you looked, except at cool parties or underneath attractive women because, let’s face it: unless those headlines read “Rise of the Multi-Billionaire Geek,” the only velvet ropes you had any hopes of getting past with those steel-frame glasses, tennis shoes and trench coat were at Club Bizarro Universe. It was false advertising, but no hard feelings.

Well, even if you couldn’t sincerely thank Bill Gates and that Asian guy from Yahoo!, the same cannot be said for Peter Jackson. You see, his outstandingly deft handling of JRR Tolkien’s Nerd-tastic trilogy has legitimized all of your bookish fantasies and vindicated decades of unsubstantiated physical abuse at the hands and feet of Jocks™ worldwide. The tables have turned, and Lord of the Rings upset them.

Everyone loves the fantasy that Jackson – and, by extension, Tolkien (the original he-man woman-hater) – has wrought. Suddenly, your insight into elvin lore is a much-desired commodity. Jocks are bringing their own nerd sherpas to the movies, and hanging on their every thin-lipped utterance. “Give us safe passage through Middle Earth,” their eyes beg, and you comply more than willingly. You’re pointing out mistakes in the subtitles for scenes spoken in Elven, an act which would ordinarily elicit a swift and severe beating, but now caresses “oohs” and “ahhhs” and sweet eyelash fluttering from your tormentors. Maybe they even throw a beefy arm around your shoulder and chuckle along when you make a joke about the generous size of Gandalf’s staff, and take no notice when your skepticism and newfound cavalier spirit cause you to mutter, “Auta miqula orqu*” underneath your breath. Yes, the world seems to be tilting according to your whims but believe me now: BE CAREFUL.

Don’t push it too hard. Remember that Tolkien’s rich, female-free universe of dragons and dwarves and homocidal trees has been your province for many, many years, but is virgin territory to the rest of us. Take it slowly. Learn to hold your tongue. Leave your cape and cardboard scabbard at home a little while longer – at least until the reviews are in for the next chapter in the trilogy. Perhaps you can show people your armband tattoo of the Ring’s unforgettable inscription, but don’t share your Hobbit fan fiction just yet. Choose your battles, or you will upset this wonderful but delicate victory. Don’t start wearing ear points. Don’t refer to your cubicle as “the shire”, except in private emails to your closest and most trusted friends. I know it doesn’t seem fair, but please trust me. I’m just trying to protect you.

You’ve got a year left, maybe even more. Just hold your breath and pray the critics don’t smite The Return of the King next year, or you’ll have to retreat back to Middle Earth (i.e. your mom’s basement apartment) for another three thousand gleems, or whatever you nerds call years.

(*if you were able to recognize this phrase and/or translate it, it’s already too late for you. sacrifice yourself with silence for the sake of the rest of the nerd race, please.)

STOP FUNNING

December 8, 2002

Every so often I feel compelled to signal the end of a long-running comedy trope that I feel has long worn out its welcome in the mix of popular culture. I don’t mean to be a killjoy. The declarations I make are not intended to hurt others who may find themselves experiencing some sense of enjoyment from making jokes that have been thoroughly exhausted for all of their comic potential; they are merely meant to protect us from staleness, from being caught in an infinite loop of recycled cultural detritus that inhibits our ability to create anything new.

Past nominees for extinction have been Elvis (the only people allowed to get a laugh out of elvis now are advertising agencies and the mentally retarded, and any overlap between the two) and Carrot Top (no fair!). I think my policies for selection are actually generous, never cutting something off before its potential for future laughter. For instance, I’d love to say Anna Nicole-Smith is off-limits but, really, who knows what surprises she has in store for us this holiday season?

That aside, here are my two nominees for 2003:

Ironic Dancing
Guess what? Waiting for a rap song to come on at the party is a terrible waste of time when we all know the only reward from that wait will be your smirk-filled Robot Dancing. Yes, you think robots are funny – and, by proxy, Robot Dancing must be even funnier. Certainly, the faint “wink” sound emitted by each exaggerated, stiff movement of your arms and head would lead us all to believe this. And maybe, just for kicks, you’ll even try to implicate others in your joke by starting one of those top-rock wave circles where you all lock fingers and pretend an invisible worm has possessed you for a brief moment, using your body as a medium to move to the next soul. And you’ll laugh and you’ll laugh and you’ll laugh. To some people, that’s actually a real dance. To you, it is a sort of barely concealed expression of your complete self-consciousness about dancing. (and possibly your contempt for hip-hop and, in some rare cases, even your own latent racism. but i am not here to get all oberlin college on you.)

My point is, enough! We’ve seen your robot dance. We’ve all probably been there, too. It’s not a crime. It’s just about time we all stopped and either learned to like moving our bodies without fear of repercussion, or just leave it to the experts. And we know that, somewhere in your silly little soul, as you robot the shit out the place, you’re thinking, “I’m actually really good at this, aren’t I?” You’re not. Sorry. And it’s still not funny.

Michael Jackson
I can imagine a small, but collective gasp rising up at this announcement, especially given his latest bouts of insanity, but that’s precisely my point. You cannot touch MJ because he is always sure to checkmate whatever attack you’ve prepared. He’s on that next-level type of shit, seeing the playing board seventy-three moves in advance. Michael Jackson has done everything in his power to fortify himself against ridicule by stacking the deck too high. While you’re busy making fun of his white glove, he busts out a gas mask. If you think that’s funny, he’ll make sure someone gets a picture of him in a traveling iron lung. Go ahead and make your jokes about his chimp because he’s so far past you that he’s having tea parties with the elephant man’s bones. See how good he is? And even when everyone gives him shit about being weird and white and no-nosed and molesting children, Michael is throwing up the “W” and throwing towels over his kids’ heads. You cannot catch up with him. I’m sorry.

Michael Jackson is, to me, like Las Vegas. He’s so aggressively otherworldly that he sort of defies analysis. Try to get your Irony Face on in Las Vegas and you’ll have so many opportunities that you’ll be paralyzed and speechless within the first ten minutes; at the craps table within the first half-hour; drinking a pina colada out of one of those weird, tall plastic cups that girls like so much within an hour; and shopping for a fanny pack to cart your chips by dinner time. MJ is the same way. And no more of this “remember when Michael used to be black” stuff, please? Because think about it for a moment. I don’t think anyone really does remember when he was black anymore. I grew up on the Jackson Five cartoon and I am still pretty sure MJ’s character was played by Johnny Quest. So leave him alone. Stop joking about him and just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. There’s bound to be a new one every six months.

THE WARNING SIGNS HAVE BEEN REPORTED

November 21, 2002

Lately, new forces are dominating my down-time. Things I haven’t yet been able to control. For the moment, I hope, a thickening social itinerary and television have outpaced quietude and inspiration. I barely have time to look at my cats, or get them drunk and steal their best ideas. I’ve become so restless, so busy that I often have to split a single act of masturbation in two separate sessions. (sometimes three.)

I’ve been catching video burn between reading some really unsatisfying fiction. (damn you, eggers! why am i so quick to drink your kool-aid when the tin drum continues to haunt me from my book shelves, bullied and wedged between robert mckee’s story and chicken soup for incurable racists?) Then I turn to my TV, and it shows me 24 and , Julien, Donkey-Boy and How High. Rare TV has even made its way into my home. The Conan O’Brien/Robert Smigel pilot for “Lookwell” (starring adam west); The Gong Show Movie (yes, movie); the Werner Herzog documentary concerning my favorite late-night evangelist/lunatic, Dr. Gene Scott. I like to be shown things. I’m not complaining.

Today I decided, by any means necessary, this would all change. I watched a segment of “The Other Half”, a morning show starring a panel of men, but still very clearly for pill-popping, stretch-pantsing, unemployed women. I was led to this segment via a link on cockybastard.com, a site I promised God I would never stop reading, for reasons strictly between us. In the segment, people with long hair were getting it DRASTICALLY cut.

Like many things on morning television, the segment really went nowhere but here’s what surprised me. If you were to watch this segment – or any segment on “The Other Half” – without sound, you would lose none of its meaning. Isn’t that odd? I mean, it’s ostensibly a talk show. But I had it muted for nearly the entire video and I followed it just fine.

In fact, when I did put the volume back on, it only became more confusing. Listening to the banter of the hosts – Dick Clark, the Partridge Family drug addict with a classic rock DJ voice, that dude who kept calling the other dude “preppy” on “Saved by the Bell”, and some quiet guy with muscles who is probably supposed to make the audience think about fucking – was sincerely no different than listen to caged lab monkeys shriek. The hosts were prancing around the stage, swinging around the recently cut hair locks of their special guests, and only occasionally forming actual phrases. Sometimes you’d catch snatches of subjects and/or verbs, like “Look at me!” or “That’ something else!” or “He’s a live one!!” or “Just like Dachau!!” But mostly it was just a series of unfinished interjections, gutteral sounds, and intense sonic noise designed to move the show along. The producers probably have a rule hanging in the conference room on a plaque or carved into some polished granite, and placed on the desk: SILENCE MEANS DEATH. One of the interns (a Wellesley graduate?), would love to point out the ironic similarity to the AIDS activism slogan, but she keeps quiet and tries not to flinch when Dick Clark throws open packets of half-and-half at her head. In six months she’ll turn her back on this horror show forever, and be well on her way to infiltrating the entertainment industry’s power structure, producing shows of her own. Shows with SMART women talking about IMPORTANT things. Her only rule, on a future slab of granite she only imagines today: “FUCK THOSE ‘RULES’ BITCHES.” She’ll create something powerful and unique. A SPONTANEOUS, UNREHEARSED talk show? What about it? Guests being real! All! The! Time! Why hasn’t anyone thought of that, she wonders as a packet of Equal hits her on the cheek, and sprays its contents across the bridge of her nose.

But I digress. I’m polishing my own clean granite slab, sending it to the engraver, so I can worship my own rule: LESS LIQUOR, MORE PROTEIN. LESS DIGITAL, MORE ANALOG. LESS ANGRY, MORE SEXY. It’s going to be a big, heavy stone.

STOP THE VIOLENCE IN LIP SYNCH

November 16, 2002

There were two near-outbreaks of violence at the hip-hop karaoke event I attended in Williamsburg last evening. I wish I could say that statement was a fabricated setup to a joke, but it’s true. There was a spate of crackers threatening to rock the mic, and bust a freestyle rhyme. And the few who were granted mic privileges sadly squandered them on rhymes like “yo, yo, yo, let the beat go, i need the flow to go, so let the beat go slow, oh no, here i go from the top of my dome, it’s going on and on and on, my name’s ron, here we go, almost ready to flow, keep it go-ING, i am the king”, etc.

I think 8 Mile has given some white kids brain parasites, making them believe they can perform super-human feats usually reserved for black guys. There was a similar outbreak when Rocky III came out and white men all across America became delusional, believing they were the ready-fist upholders of their race. It’s like a poor-man’s messianic complex. The battle rap fever 8 Mile seems to be provoking is thankfully less aggressive than RIII fever, but infinitely more embarrassing.

When one of the kids finished performing his nowhere rhymes, which were laced by a scratched out drumbeat and the merciless boos of the audience (some people in the back were waving him off in the style of the apollo theater, evoking the spirits of sandman sims and jp lacey), the hip-hop karaoke host laid into him in a good-natured manner – justifiably, considering all the fuss this kid made before farting on the mic. This caused a near uprising, as the kid’s cadre of drunk Italian and Irish friends started pushing weight against the hosts’ chests. Please, I cried to the inside of my skull as I held myself tight – Stop the violence in hip-hop karaoke.

P.S. During an impromptu “rhyme battle” between a self-declared Sicilian in a botched Caesar haircult, and a karaoke regular, the Sicilian kid actually removed his shirt (just like eminem!) to reveal a white tank top underneath it. (just like eminem!) It was highly irregular, but no more irregular than his rehearsed, generic insults against his opponents gear, haircut, and sexuality. He promised to “rip ya, and slit ya” but his spit-ya was shit-ya. From the audience I wrote my own personal response to his rap – and convinced myself it was highly dope – and then quickly realized exactly how easy that was to do…from the audience. Here is a sample, for your own enjoyment, and from the safe confines of my web site:

Look! It’s Little Caesar!
Pizza Pizza
Nice to meet ya
But it’s nicer to beat ya
Uh oh duck for cover – the shirt came off
Now we know you’re a wife beater
And the ladies see you’re an over-eater
I got a six-pack
you got a twelve
Put your microphone back on the shelf
and listen to Tupac Shakur some more
cause your rhymes were too wack, for sure
I like your Caesar
Did your barber have a seizure?
I’m sorry – that verse was the worst
But now I’m feeling murderous
Think I’ll stab you with the mic
While you scream out “Et Tu Brutus???”
Being onstage with you, these people should pity me
You rap so shittily
Now go take your sorry ass 8 miles back to Little Italy

(at this point, the crowd would pick me up in their arms and shout “levin boom-ba-yay!” repeatedly. as their shouts drowned out all other noise, the scene would become fuzzy and then dissolve to me, sitting in the audience, drunk, snappling out of the dream, and accidentally knocking a light beer over on an attractive woman.)

TWEED RING

October 29, 2002

Yesterday, a friend of mine posted a link to “The United States of America, According to My Racist Aunt” on a somewhat well-attended community web site called Metafilter. From my limited experience with this community site, it seems that maybe many people visit it but only a small, loud minority account for the bulk of comments and dialogue.

The link was obviously meant to be funny, but I was pretty surprised at how quickly the user comments turned both inward (“let me tell you about my experiences with racism.”) and, stranger still, deathly serious. (“this is not funny. we must not tolerate the racist behavior of our 94 year-old grandparents for one moment!”) There were almost immediate accusations and counter-accusations of racism posted by the Metafilter community and it made me feel sad because all I ever wanted was for people to see that map and pronounce, “hee hee. now back to work.”

But it’s somewhat foolish to complain, or wish feedback/interpretation could be guided by your own wishes. I was speaking with a friend about this, and sort of arrived at the conclusion that, if you’re interested in having your work (whatever that may be) exposed to a bigger audience you have to accept this basic truth: once you let something go, it’s not entirely yours anymore. You have to share ownership with an unknown number of people, including many whom you’d never give a sip of your Diet Dr. Pepper to.

I heard a great line recently that carries this point to its natural conclusion. I can’t remember the source (was it the seinfeld documentary?), but the quote was something like, “You wanna know how to tell when you’ve really failed? When you start blaming everyone else.”

MR. KNITTY

October 15, 2002

Tonight my friend Phil confessed that he’s been taking knitting lessons for several months. After I punched him in the face and finished my Boilermaker, I demanded an explanation. “First of all,” he assured me, “it’s a totally discreet service. The lessons take place in a basement-level, unmarked apartment.”

I nodded slowly, indicating that he may continue. Then I socked him in the face again, as a pre-emptive strike.

“Wait!” he cried, blood running in thin rivulets from his nostrils. “You have to understand something. When I was a child, my Nana” – SMACK! – “Fuck! Ow! Fuck! Anyway, my grandmother loved to knit, and then after she died I just always wanted to take up knitting. See?”

I considered this for a moment and replied, “Your grandmother’s last words better have been ‘Phil – finish this sweater…’.” Then I smashed him in the teeth with the blunt end of a roofing hammer. My gang has three rules for membership, and all of them are “no knitting.” As a kingpin, it is crucial that I learn to draw a line.

THIS IS THE ELECTROCLASH

October 10, 2002

Everywhere I go, I hear the same conversation between music nerds (of which i consider myself one, though i think i’m a really mild strain). It goes something like this:

SCENE: local record store. Nerd A sees Nerd B flipping through the latest issue of The Fader, and approaches:

Music Nerd A: Hey, good to see —
Music Nerd B: ELECTROCLASH ELECTROCLASH ELECTROCLASH ELEC-
Music Nerd A: Whoa, wait a second here. Hold up. Are you –
Music Nerd B: Chicks on Speed!
Music Nerd A: but…
Music Nerd B: A.R.E. Weapons!!!
Music Nerd A: OK, I know but have you –
Music Nerd B: Peaches! W.I.T.! Detroit Grand Pubas! Fischer-goddamn-Spooner!! The Faint!! Holy fucking shit Tracy + the Plastics!!
Music Nerd A: Right. however –
Music Nerd B: Pac-Man! Berserk! Evil Otto! Bleep Bloop! Logan’s Run!
Music Nerd A: YOU ARE A TOTAL FUCKING BIONIC TOOL!!!! AND JUST LAST YEAR YOU WERE SAYING THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA WAS THE NEXT BIG THING!!! FUCK! I JUST WANT TO KNOW IF THE FUCKING BLACK HEART PROCESSION RECORD IS GOOD!!!!
Music Nerd B: The black who?..

END SCENE!

I think “electroclash” is shorthand for “hi, can I have a record deal, please?” The one aspect of punk and new wave I was never crazy about was the totally shallow obsession with fashion. People like Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood hand-picking clothing to make perfect little punks. I still think it’s OK for the fans of the music to be sort of enamored with punk fashions, but that kind of surface attention from the musicians – especially the ones who were supposedly giving the fig to everything society finds admirable and tasteful – breeds a certain sub-set of musicians who lack talent but can afford style (cough! siouxsie sioux). Electroclash has that air to it, a thousand times over. “Check it out,” so many bands seem to say. “I’m going to pose behind this vintage laptop and you are going to take my picture. Please make absolutely certain the Udo Kier button on my blazer lapel is in full view.”

I confesss that, in certain cases, I really like the electroclash noise, but with this particular style of music comes this ugly instance of spoiled, upper-middle-class behavior. Kids who scour music thrift stores and eBay and anywhere else to buy every last bit of “proper” electronics. One of the most exciting aspects of music to me – really live, burst your testicles or creep under your skin and haunt your gooseflesh music – is its cheapness. Inexpensive Montgomery Ward guitars. Taped together shit. The smelliest t-shirt ever. Electroclash is the polar opposite of that in many ways. It comes from a source of privilege – the kind of privilege that can make you the most nattily dressed artist out there, and the kind that can pose you behind a pile of enviably vintage equipment. I guess, with every breed of music, the genuine innovators are inevitably going to be diluted by the kids with trust funds and good record collections. And I promise I’ll still listen to the music – well, some of it – if you promise to never say “electroclash” again. Just call it by its proper name: NEW WAVE AT IMPROPER VOLUME. Fuck it. I guess electroclash is catchier, if a bit less honest.

p.s. Great electroclash start-up primer here.

p.p.s. Seriously…how is the Black Heart Procession album? Tell me.

COURTNEY LOVE

September 22, 2002

Admit it: you are one strong prescription away from being Anna Nicole Smith.

I decided to watch a little bit of “24 Hours of Love” on MTV2, an overnight block of live programming in which you and a few of your sycophant handlers are broadcast live from the MTV studios in New York. As MTV2 put it, you were given full, unabridged control. We get to see you saying the bullshit you want to say – WITHOUT EDITING – because that’s the kind of shoot-from-the-hip genius you are. Supposedly, you were also given permission to pick all the videos that are played during this period, though you spent a shocking amount of time complaining about MTV2’s inability to locate some of the videos you wanted to see. (what the fuck? i thought mtv was the coolest? what happened?)

Here’s my intractable take on you, Love. You cheated us. More importantly you cheated the chubby girls in lingerie who cried at your Hole concerts, because you instructed them in the okayness of being unpretty and aggressive. Here’s what you forgot to tell them: your plan all along was to use that aggression to secure yourself a place in the world where you could spend the rest of your life fixing that “unpretty” part and using your so-called aggression as a cover for juvenile tantrums, obnoxious opinions, party-crashing, and the kind of intoxicated public stupidity that should have been corrected during the adolescence you spent away from home.

Watching you sit on the street corner, right in the middle of Times Square, chatting with a group of teens whose approval you still so desperately crave even as you approach 40, sort of made me sick. Putting words in their mouths was worse. (“YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE? I HATE THOSE WHITE BANDS WHO STEAL BLACK RAGE!! HEY YOU – BLACK GIRL – WHICH WHITE BANDS DO YOU HATE??” classy.) And you proved your singular and troubled need for constant validation when, after leaving the kids, you completely obsessed over the one teenage girl who didn’t just share your opininon and spit it back at you. You came back to her, over and over again, like you were remiss in your duties to convert part of the flock and maybe – just maybe – she won’t see your powerful new subcultural HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTER starring Kevin Bacon. Rage against the machine, Love! (were they on the soundtrack to that kevin bacon movie?)

See Courtney insist she had Moby’s ideas first. Watch her fall over a gigantic bed and show everyone her panties. Catch her name-drop Eve (“She’s a really, really good friend of mine!”), DMX, and Fred Durst in the space of ten seconds. Listen to her cynically announce to her pack of street-corner kids and the whole viewing audience that she has to cut her fireside chat short because it was time to break to a commercial “for, I don’t know, something to whiten your teeth or some shit” as she smiles through her own mouth of stunningly large and cosmetically whitened teeth.

Man, Courtney, you don’t even get it, do you? I sort of think the ultimate revenge will be your own impending teenager, who could possibly shit on you the way we were all designed to do. It’s not always mean; sometimes it’s just ritualistic. Our parents got over it, and understood (for the most part) it wasn’t about THEM, but how about you?

‘DON DIVA’ MAGAZINE EDITORIAL REVIEW BOARD

September 16, 2002

I would like to submit this review of the season premiere of The Sopranos for consideration in the next issue of Don Diva:

“Yo, I said I wanted to see a lot of shit getting whacked; not a lot of WACK SHIT. Ain’t but one motherfucker got killed in that episode, and he was a fake cop. Ten times that many people got shot in the first skit on the new Lil Wayne album. I give this season premiere two mandatory tossed salads. Show and prove for episode two or I’ll stop modeling my persona after Tony Soprano and go back to modeling it after Nino Brown. RECOGNIZE.”

(i’m so sorry that just happened. i think it was the result of reading someone’s web site today. it quoted some nwa lyrics a bit too street-cred-knowingly and then followed up the quote with “NWA Indeed!” which is sort of like spilling out a few ounces of your magic hat ale for your ‘dead homiez’ and then immediately stooping to mop up the spill.)

JEWISH GUYS

September 8, 2002

You guys have reached a whole new level of religious aggression. Was it really necessary to try and pull my bike over on the jogging loop in Prospect Park? How were you able to identify a Jew on the run like that? I actually would have put on tefillen with you if you’d put in the extra effort to chase my bike until you caught up with me. In the future, you should choose a different beat. Something where citizens are moving at a slower pace. Like lap swim at the JCC.

I want this to be easier for you. I really do. I consider myself an idea man (last night’s idea: dinner plates with magnetic strips around the edge so forks and knives don’t slide off while you’re transporting them from the table to the kitchen. bam!) and I’ve got an idea for you: licorice tefillen. disposable, fun, delicious. Jewish kids get to wear it and spend the rest of the day eating a sweet candy sign upon their hands and flavored symbol before their eyes. And all the while they’re reminded of how great this religion is, because what other religion combines noisemakers (shofars) and candy? It could be like every day is a birthday party in the Jewish religion. And who doesn’t like a birthday party? I’ll tell you who: jerk-asses.

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