the man in the mirror

If you are reading this, that means I eventually got to leave the ATL airport, where I spent the better part of Sunday. Outside, an apocalyptic storm beats down upon a fleet of grounded planes as I type. Inside is a grim spectrum of obsolete computer systems, forgotten food chains, and roaming packs of the Great Unwashed in various stages of crisis.

My particular stage of crisis is somewhat less dire than the line of people pulling blankets out of a refrigerator-sized cardboard box and the legless woman who just wheeled by with feet protruding directly from her hipbones. (Wouldn't "Legless with Feet" make for an excellent TLC special?) Still, my situation is decidedly unpleasant, a sort of purgatory where I’m forever running between terminals to make connections that don’t actually exist.

It is with this spirit of tediousness, spectacle, and hysteria that I’d like to share with you my thoughts on Michael Jackson, whose mug seems to be on every TV in this airport some two weeks after his death. Is there anything worse than a “news” story that goes on for so long that the media feels obligated to launch into the meta why-are-we-talking-about-this-so-much-anyway song and dance? It’s sort of incredible they can spend so much time on that question with so little analysis, insight, or substantive commentary.

The talking heads tell me that Michael Jackson was the last of the great race of True Pop Icons and that no one will ever again be mourned by the public to this degree. I’m pretty sure that isn’t true, but embedded within that last-of-the-Mohicans observation is an interesting conversation about the very nature of celebrity, and how it has changed/is changing. New media have made it more difficult for a single figure to achieve the sustained ubiquity of someone like Michael Jackson. And moreover, any celebrity who catches the public eye has to deal with a level of scrutiny that tarnishes their image almost instantaneously (cf. American politicians).

And yet, amidst these changes, one thing is pretty stable: our culture’s obsession with celebrity. (I think the real turning point was just after Princess Diana’s death—we could have tarred and feathered the paparazzi, but instead we turned her funeral into a circus.) Now we’re so obsessed with celebrity that we are willing to extend it to just about anyone who is willing to appear on a reality television show. And so the qualifications—the standards—for celebrity have been lowered. Someone peed in the talent pool and now Paris Hilton has a TV show.

We are a celebrity-obsessed culture with increasingly worthless celebrities. Will we mourn these useless people when they die? I would argue that we already have, given that Diana was basically a classy Paris Hilton. Which brings me to the question I’ve been thinking about: what has caused this violent sadness, this collective grieving for the King of Pop? Because I’m not convinced that it was his Importance as an Artist, though of course there is that. My best guess—and this explains the Diana phenomenon, too—is that it has something to do with guilt.

Let me give you an example. Remember Britney’s snuff film performance on the Video Music Awards? I felt really bad for her after that, which seemed odd given (a) my personal distaste for her and (b) my general lack of compassion for celebrities. So I decided that everyone, deep down, is rooting for Britney because we, collectively, feel a little bit responsible for what she has become. The human psyche just wasn’t built to withstand the cruel gaze of US Weekly.

So too with Michael Jackson. As a child he was shaped by the fists of Joe Jackson and an adoring fan base, which must have been pretty confusing. Then he made a music video that was so compelling that we of the pre-YouTube generation can recall the exact circumstances under which we had access to “Thriller” in the same way that our elders talk about where they were when they heard about the Kennedy assassination. We all, at some point in our lives—whether it was in a dance class, at a slumber party, at camp, or in prison—have tried to recreate that choreography. Somewhere in that “Thriller” dance is the very essence of what makes us human.

We loved Michael Jackson. We loved him so much that we paid him millions of dollars to sell us Pepsi. And the more we obsessed over him, the weirder he got. He bleached himself whiter and whiter, reflecting our society’s worst inclinations. He was the portrait of Dorian Gray, decaying before our eyes until his nose literally fell off his face. (I guess the human body wasn’t built to withstand the cruel gaze of US Weekly, either.) All the while we tried to pretend that he was thoroughly Other, that we had nothing to do with his eccentricity, like we were the Catholic Church and he was an errant priest. I say it’s time to accept responsibility, to explore this causal relationship.

I mean, I’m no Al Sharpton here. Jackson children: clearly something was wrong with your daddy. He suffered from what was probably the most severe case of arrested development ever. He spent his fortune in the spirit of a terminally ill boy’s make-a-wish, surrounding himself with child stars, chimps, and an amusement park. He eventually became so far-flung from reality, at such a remove from anything resembling a life, that he BOUGHT ACTUAL CHILDREN and gave one the name of a place and another the name of an object, as though Blanket was just another object in a store.

But you know, I’m glad he bought those children, because at least he had three people in his life that loved him and recognized his personhood. Because beneath all that dysfunction, beneath the rumors of Nazi paraphernalia and child molestation and oxygen chambers, was a man—a man whose talent burned so bright that it couldn’t even be diminished by decades of grotesque adoration. And if we did this to Michael, who was not just an icon but also an Artist of Importance, just imagine what we’ll do to the new wave of talentless celebrities (cf. Kate Plus Eight Minus One).

this post might change your life

Oh boy. I’m about halfway through my time in New York. There’s much to report and zero time to blog, but I have a very important public service announcement that can’t possibly wait another second: I have found the most rocking jam EVER FUCKING EVER.

The path to the most rocking jam, which was pretty rocking in itself, began when S and D offered to drive my sister back to Princeton following her visit here last weekend. The car’s stereo was broken, which was a bummer for everyone, but an especial bummer for S, who is a totally rocking attorney/drummer that works for a fancy law firm by day and opens for whippersnappers like Titus Andronicus by night. So I suggested the obvious: why not buy a boombox for the backseat?

At first we thought that the Hoboken Target didn’t sell boomboxes---actually, we wondered if boomboxes even existed anymore---but eventually we found one for around $22. More importantly, we found two amazing CD compilations: 80s metal hits and 80s metal ballads. The former included the most rocking jam ever, which is, without further ado:

In the final analysis, I believe the theme of this video is “apocalyptic masturbation.”

“Cum On Feel the Noize” as performed by Quiet Riot.

As you might imagine, New Jersey is the perfect place to listen to metal compilations on your backseat boombox. And when we stopped at Trader Joe’s, it only seemed natural to put the boombox (which is, just to set the scene, about the size of an alarm clock) on the roof of the car and, you know, rock out, which we did before we went in the store and also while we loaded the trunk.

I guess the best part was when a child started dancing to the music and his mother dragged him away while shooting us, the riffraff, a mean look, closely followed by the soundtrack to the Ore-Ida commercial I saw last night, which is...yeah.

Next step: boombox on the subway.

you're welcome

Like me, my sister H is a connoisseur of really bad television. She's not quite as adventurous as, say, my mom, who watches The Bachelor and Dancing With the Stars, which I'm pretty sure are irredeemable, but she has a particularly keen eye for shows about stupid people being unintentionally hilarious, à la Celebrity Apprentice. She has turned me onto many delightful programs over the years.

But when she told me she has been watching MTV's The Duel 2, which is one of those Real World vs. Road Rules train wrecks, I thought that she had gone too far. Even her hilarious description of last night's program, wherein there was a spelling competition with the word "cucumber," could not convince me otherwise.

Then she told me to watch the opening credits.

At first, I refused, but she wouldn't get off the phone until I looked for the clip. When I googled it and the first hit was a post on one of my favorite websites, Videogum, I started to realize how foolish I'd been. I can't remember the last time I laughed this hard.



So, like, at first this clip seems like a standard, if weirdly somber, introduction to a reality show as we cycle through shots of each d-bag cast member looking like they're thinking too hard. But then, about halfway through, it erupts into pure wizard magic, as the Chief D-bag launches into an impressively offensive/TOTALLY AMAZING string of "tribal" gibberish--think Sigur Rós, if Sigur Rós were retarded racists.

After watching it a dozen or so times, I have decided that my favorite is the fat guy at the end. Dance, Eric, dance!

sweet fancy moses

How did I not know until now that Stephin Merritt was working on an adaptation of Coraline? And how is it possible that I have the good fortune to be in New York during its run?

Now playing at the Lucille Lortel Theatre

This might be even more exciting than when Shockheaded Peter came across the pond. Apparently, in addition to the super-creepy strains of the toy piano, Mr. Merritt has used a prepared piano outfitted with regular household items like playing cards and, you know, gold-plated dildos.

Like me, Stephin Merritt likes children's literature more than, you know, actual children.

Fucking A.

moments of truth

I think one of the hardest things for artists is that they’re not subject to the usual checks and balances that naturally occur in most professional spheres. This is especially true for writers, since both writing and reading take place under conditions of silence and solitude.

Writing/reading is not a social art like, say, dance or music. It’s not even a publicly displayed art, like painting. Writers very rarely enjoy an audience in the flesh-and-blood assembly-of-people sense of the word. For us, feedback trickles in little by little, if at all, because editors are usually too busy to tell you what they think unless they plan to publish your work.

I was thinking about this problem tonight as I watched So You Think You Can Dance. The show is in its tryout episodes, where dancers audition for a spot on the real show. Even if you’ve never watched SYTYCD, you’ve probably seen a similar ghastly process take place on shows like American Idol. There are two types of contestants in this phase: super-talented showoffs who are awesome and dumpy deviants in ill-fitting clothes who are totally out of touch with reality. The deviants walk out on stage and dance their fucking hearts out, and then the judges crack wise and make them feel small. Some people think it’s mean, and some people think it’s entertaining; I guess I think it’s both but that it’s also generally for the best because clearly these people need to let the dream die.

The thing that always gets me when I’m watching the delusional contestants cry bitter tears after they are rejected is that they believed in their own talent so hard that they were willing to stand in a two-day-long line to show the world their stuff. I guess the lesson is that you can’t really know if you’re good at something until some stranger with no empathy or compassion judges your work. Maybe that’s why they say you should pursue your art out of love—then, when some meanie says, “So, you think you can dance? I’m afraid that is not in fact the case.” you can reply, “Oh well, at least I had fun.”

I think that anyone who works in the arts has moments when they worry they’ve misjudged their own level of competence. I was plagued by my own doubts just the other day when I was flipping through one of my Moleskine notebooks, which I carry around everywhere. I use them to record all sorts of thoughts (ideas, observations, shopping lists, etc.), and while doing so usually makes me feel a little bit douchey, the Moleskines have been a wonderful aid because I have an unreliable memory.

So anyway I was paging through one of these notebooks and generally admiring all my deep thoughts and perceptive observations until I came to the page where I had written “Why are pets so sleepy?” like it was the philosophic question of our age. It was like I was outside of my body, watching myself flail around a stage in leggings—nay, hot pants—thinking god, is that person (i.e., me) actually retarded or is she just a really terrible dancer? Because you and I (heartless bastards that we are) both know that sleepy pets aren’t exactly fodder for my opus, or even for my blog.

Now, all of that being said, I’m awfully fond of sleepy animals, as evidenced by my recent trip to the Philadelphia Zoo:




I love watching dangerous animals nap because they really do look like sweet pets that ate a little too much for dinner. The animals at this zoo were particularly awesome, from the Muppet-like orangutans that live like hobos in a room strewn with old blankets and cardboard boxes, to the winsome slow loris, a tiny beastie that loves nothing more than a good tickling. I also liked this shy elephant that hid behind a column to avoid the unwanted spray of the zookeeper’s hose:



and this weird and wonderful sloth bear, who might be my new favorite animal:



Unfortunately, this zoo also harbored one of my most feared foes, the peacock. At first, I thought they were housed with the prairie dogs, who just stand around being adorable in the midst of terror:





But a few minutes later, I came to realize the peacocks were roaming around that zoo willy-nilly. We’d be walking along the path when one would jump out in front of us like a flamboyant highwayman and let loose with a blood-curdling shriek. Sometimes we’d hear one in the distance and my sister would look at me with concern and say, “We’d better keep moving” like we were in Jurassic Park or a Cormac McCarthy novel or something.

As my regular readers surely know, the only thing I fear more than peacocks is wild turkeys, which I also saw while I was visiting my sister. This sighting was very exciting from the confines of my sister’s car, but it was also disturbing since I had just studied a turkey’s red drippy burn victim head up-close from outside its pen at the zoo. There were three of them—huge ones—eating something (corn? wheat? people?) in a field one rainy Tuesday afternoon. I made my sister drive by like ten times so I could take pictures but since I’m a numb-numb all I got was around a dozen pictures of blurry grass and a couple of streaky lumbering turkeys:




I sort of like these pictures, though, because blurry turkeys have a certain nightmarish symbolic quality that, to me, really captures their menace.

princeton: graduation weekend

Friday

1:35 p.m.
Family arrives for sister’s graduation from seminary school.

1:42 p.m.
Sister H pulls me aside for an emergency powwow. Topic: mom’s “dressed in the dark” ensemble, featuring a seersucker jacket over a black formal sparkle sweater.

2:15 p.m.
Recognize the familiar pangs of suicidal ideation as I become aware of the yin-yang symbols on Uncle C’s tie.

3:00 p.m.
H’s baccalaureate service begins. Begin to feel uneasy upon realizing, like, half the students are from Korea or Africa. Contemplate the fraught relationship between gruel and Jesus.

3:15 p.m.
African student delivers some Bible verse in click-click dialect. Sneak a look at my (racist) dad to see if he’s blown a gasket.

3:25 p.m.
Irony alert! The choir sings a charming song about how all gods are fake...except theirs. Then again, I can see how the gruel-bearing God might seem more real than, say, poop-sculpture gods.

3:45 p.m.
Sneak another look at dad when it becomes clear that what we’re hearing is a gospel-style call-and-response sermon. Has he stroked out or is he taking a nap? Only time will tell.

3:48 p.m.
Begin laughing inappropriately when someone in the audience launches into an Herbal Essences-style orgasmic series of oh-yes-yeses. Regret sitting in the front row.

3:49 p.m.
Laugh harder when mom pinches my shoulder with her talon nails. Reread the cult song lyrics to regain composure.

4:10 p.m.
Service concludes with Lion King-style worship song. Paul Simon look-alike behind me starts clapping and singing like it’s his job.

7:30 p.m.
Scandal alert! Over dinner, dad tells me, apropos of nothing, that Uncle S was a convicted rapist.

Saturday

10:30 a.m.
H requests special morning time Bitter Strumpets as phase one of her new “drink away the family” initiative. Served with a coffee sidecar.

2:00 p.m.
Pre-graduation family photo time! There are a few really nice ones where H says I look like Powder.

Dear Conan, This photo completes my application to join the Pale Force. Signed, Morticia of the Visigoths


My dad makes a big production of getting the right angles for pictures, but then all of them are like this one, where no one is looking at the camera. I particularly like H’s taking-a-dump squint.

3:50 p.m.
Dad pulls me aside for an emergency powwow before the ceremony begins. Topic: how much he hates Uncle C.

4:00 p.m.
Uncle C sings choir-only hymn in full voice in an otherwise silent audience.

4:20 p.m.
The graduates receive their hard-earned degrees!

4:45 p.m.
Dad leans over mom to make a culturally insensitive comment when a “foreigner’s” one-word name is announced.

4:35 p.m.
President reads a lengthy excerpt from the school’s mission statement. Is it more or less riveting than the hour-long list of names we just heard? Hard to say.

6:00 p.m.
After the ceremony, we learn that we were sitting right in front of the foreigner’s 130-year-old adopted grandma, who told Uncle C all about his indigenous tribe. Uh-oh!

6:50 p.m.
Back at the hotel, Uncle C makes a suspicious phone call to ask maintenance for a plunger. He explains he has stopped up the toilet with his “big b.m.” from earlier that afternoon. Excuse myself to take notes for blog entry.

8:00 p.m.
Aunt C launches into an hour’s worth of champagne toasts.

8:20 p.m.
Dad inadvertently pours glass of champagne in his salad; eats it anyway.

small talk

A few days ago, a junkie plopped down beside me on the El. “Pretty sunny down here, huh?” he said.

I thought he was just talking crazy until I realized we were both wearing sunglasses even though we were on an underground train.

Hee, I thought, the junkie made a little joke. Usually they’re awfully serious.

Funny, too, he used that as a conversation starter, given the main reason I wear sunglasses on the train is so the deviants won’t talk to me. Reminded of this, I looked out the window, aloof.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “I’m from Nashville, where people actually talk to each other.”

“I’m from Tennessee, too,” I replied, turning to him. The South is one of my favorite topics of conversation.

“No way!” said the junkie. “Whereabouts?”

I told him.

“Is that northeast Tennessee? I know a guy there but I’m not going to say his name because if you know him, that would be way too weird.”

I agreed.

“Well, look at you, acting like you’ve always lived in Chicago,” he said. “And here we are, just a couple of Tennessee motherfuckers.”

“Oh no, I was like this in Tennessee, too,” I explained.

“What are you, a recluse? That’s good! You won’t ever get heartbroken or mugged or shot.”

“All the usual,” I said noncommittally. Recluse or not, I’ve been most of those things.

As we sat there chatting like Tennessee motherfuckers, I learned a lot about my new friend. He told me all about his band, which is comprised mostly of famous people, including some guy from Kings of Leon. He told me about how all the other guys in Kings of Leon are pot-smoking assholes. He also told me about his “band friends,” which include Of Montreal, Yo La Tengo, and Kevin Shields (which is, coincidentally, not unlike like the fantasy life I’d dream up for myself if I, too, smoked crack).

And then, in the middle of a story about leaving his jacket on the train (which, incidentally, had $300 cash in the left pocket), he mentioned the heart attack he had last week more casually than you might describe, say, what you had for lunch.

“You should never carry that much cash,” I advised—a little tip on how to make it here in the big city, one country bumpkin to another.