Happy Hannukah (Though It's Really No Big Deal)!

The American Scene:

From the Jewish side, "competing” with Christmas has artificially elevated the status of Hanukkah from arguably the least important of the minor festivals to one of the most preeminent, and has also transformed the holiday (the tradition of giving Hanukkah presents is an adaptation of a Christmas-season custom, to say nothing of such outrages as the Hanukkah bush, Hanukkah Harry descending the chimney, or green-and-red-striped bagels).

The Israeli Intellectual Situation

Sometimes I buy into the cliche of the suffering artist. I think that I want to be a writer because I'm a misanthrope, because so many things seem corny to me, because I get that aching feeling in my stomach from forced pleasantness, when I lie about anything, or whenever anyone feeds me a self-help mantra when I ask them a serious question about their life and goals.

But I find myself, now more than ever in Israel, thinking of the fight to create my own language as a fight between light and darkness, even life and death. It's not the result of some deep-seated sadness, or the result of a need for attention. The reason is actually almost always a moral one. As Jen Graves wrote in the last column in the Stranger:

There's something inherently, wonderfully amoral about art—it does nothing, really—but its stubborn independence is the same thing that makes it our only potential way out of this whole mess, the only moral thing we've got going.

In this country where religion has clouded the minds of many (though certainly not all), I've found a lot of hostility to independent (and artistic) thought and a lot of people resting on easy opinions. This could be because I am so far removed from any intellectual epicenters, because I'm not meeting writers, or whatever...but it scares me. I am hesitant to make any broad assumptions (even the one I just made makes my stomach ache a bit) on this blog because I am aware that the people I've met are not the people who are creating and critiquing culture, but rather Jews who have come here looking for their own spiritual and emotional piece of mind. Still- I find myself leaving interactions wanting so much more.

In Seattle, to be an intellectual is not a four letter word, it is actually a complement. Yes we suffer from some urban alienation, we're perpetually logged into our computers, and we buy into a lot of petty crapola, but we still venerate those who expose ourselves to ourselves in devestatingly accurate ways. We still are hungry for meaning, and aware that meaning comes in so many different forms. Some people may call this being "Politically-Correct," but I've come to see it as being open to the fact that we don't actually know anything about the world. And I happen to think it's a very moral way to live. So, thank you, uptight Seattleite- you've got more good going on than I give you credit for. Now if only we could do away with all the self-loathing.

The Jewish Intellectual Situation

This is a fabulous essay written by the editors of n+1 on the current proliferation of Jewish literary magazines, and their value and influence over what Jews are talking about and how we are trying to be seen right now. To paraphrase, Heeb is the juvenile and rebellious Jew trying to start a fight with anyone religious, Guilt and Pleasure has been unable to talk about anything of significance about the Jewish people or the current conflict and seems to be resting on the laurel that "while Jews may appear slouchy and neurotic, we're actually undeniably fabulous," Nextbook (while employing a great number of talented Jewish writers) is shackled by its mission to only write essays about Jewish thought (as if Jewish thought appeared in a vacuum where goys did not exist) and everything else is too provincial to warrant critique ("provincial" being the favored word of anyone trying to sound smart in a literary magazine).

The essay ends on an excellent note, and one I've felt since forever: that if, as a people oppressed, the Jews are not able to stand up for the oppressed everywhere, we have completely forgotten what it means to be a Jew. These endlessly self-referential magazines, with their self-revering tone, are too hypocritical and riddled with internal contradictions to survive very long.

No good can come of it, but maybe this: That our nationalism—racism, even—finally allowed unfettered expression on these American shores, will burn itself out as its contradictions become clearer. No one can look at Heeb, or the "Superjew" and "Yo Semite" T-shirts, without feeling ashamed—even if that magazine and those T-shirts are themselves products of that feeling of shame and are meant as a rebuke to it. The greatness of this people was also that it once believed its experience of oppression to be a universal one, and its fortunes tied to all those who are oppressed. There are many ways back to that belief, including through ethnic particularism, if one wants to find that way. Otherwise secular Jews deserve to become like people of Scottish descent: to wear yarmulkes twice a year like kilts, and toot shofars like bagpipes, calling no one back to righteousness.

Pet Peeve

People: can't you just say "I"?

Whatever douchebrain opinion you're about to share sounds even more douchebrained after the expression, "I, personally."

The Death of the Queer Resource Center

Back in September, I wrote a post about UW's depressing queer resource center.

I wrote:

It's not that I don't think there should be places where gays can go and talk about their problems, I just think the gay resource room could be, I dunno, a bit hipper? It felt so clinical there. There were all these posters about AIDS and HOMOPHOBIA and TRANS PHOBIA, where there could have been art or something else that didn't make me feel like I was in a social worker's office. If you want to create a relaxed vibe, don't make gay students feel like they should all be collectively outraged constantly by the invisible web of white male heterosexist patriarchy. The Queer Resource Room should look like "The Cock" in New York, or the late great "Pony" on Pine, staffed with indie arts fags. This is Seattle, not Albuquerque, can't we have a bit of playful fun with a gay resource room in the center of one of the gayer cities in the country? If you want activism, queer theory, Tony Kushner and all that to be hip again, start with your wall art.

Today, the Stranger predicted the death of the queer resource room in 2009. I can't say I disagree with them. Queer resource rooms have seen their day. With an internet connection, anyone can read about famous queer authors, find out about queer events in their city, and learn about how to protect themselves from STDs.

But I still think these places are important because face-to-face interaction is important to everyone, no matter how advanced they think their webcam is, no matter how good they are at using google.

And if I hadn't met teachers, school nurses and administrators face-to-face who told me they were passionate about fighting for gay rights, who had pink triangles and rainbow stickers on their doors, I doubt I would have felt comfortable enough to come out my senior year of high school and I would have been just another closeted college kid my freshman year.

I think we should try to make them hip. I think we need these places. I think they still serve a purpose.

If the gay community is totally over going to a gay center and reading gay literature, maybe it's because this isn't a really social thing. It's forced interaction, it's awkward, it's sitting down with someone who doesn't know a thing about you except the fact that you're gay (and thus OPPRESSED) and who, no matter what, is going to maybe sound a little bit patronizing towards you.

If these places are too clinical for today's gays, what about creating a space where gays can yell at each other, and laugh and talk about the future? What about a gay salon, like the shitstorm salon Brendan Kiley's obsessed with?

We could talk about how annoying it is that every single gay character on TV is a fucking hairstylist, why every mainstream gay movie seems to end with the lead gay guy dying, why queer activism is so passe on college campuses, how shitty and pointless the Human Rights Campaign is, the state of queer theatre, the state of drag theatre, arguments for and against posting a naked picture of yourself on Manhunt, which gay rights organizations deserve our money, how to help high schoolers coming out of the closet at shitty conservative schools and, of course, what should replace the (now dead) queer centers.

That's just a starter list. And there would be lots of booze, and paper so you could write down your thoughts (and pictures?) while other people are talking, and we'd stick the whole night somewhere painfully hip like, oh, Cafe Presse or the Hideout.

What do you think?

The Western Wall

"Grab a yalmukah" someone scowls at me at the western wall and points towards a glass recepticle filled with cardboard. I must put the cardboard on my head so I can walk closer to the pile of dirty bricks Jewish people bow to day in and day out. The cardboard symbolizes my connection with the dude upstairs who never talks to me. I put it on my head and it flies off and hits the man next to me, who's mid-prayer. He doesn't say anything. I try to fetch it and as I walk, my shorts come slide slightly down my legs. The Western Wall can see my underwear.

I go up to the bricks with my cone dunce hat and stare at them. They're filled with dirty notes meant for God and not my eyes. Behind me, a filthy table is peeling, and there are worn bibles sitting atop it. The dude next to me is entranced by the book he's reading, and he's swaying his body back and forth and muttering to himself. So are the people next to him. Anywhere else, I'd call 911 but the Western Wall simply sits and accepts.

I wander behind the Ethiopian boys who are standing in a line with string hanging out from their sweatshirts. They're the black Jews here. You can find them mopping the floors in every restaurant in the country.

I find the only open chair and sit and watch the teeming, writhing masses with a man with dreadlocks and his male friend.

"Shit's crazy," I say.

They don't respond.

A bearded man is putting away his Talis (which is also supposed to remind people that there's a dude upstairs) and he sees me out of the corner of his eye.

"Hey, are you on Birthright?" He asks me, pointing to the lanyard around my neck which proudly indicates that I am a dumb American tourist. He asks me where I'm from and I say "Seattle." "Ah," his eyes glitter. "Do you know the Levitans?" Jewish Geography; an international past time. "Why yes of course, I respond." It's true.

The man asks me more questions about my Jewishness with varying displays of interest and mental fatigue (he's been bowing a lot). I feel like the blonde rich sorority girl during rush. I am being courted. I am fresh meat, ready to convert.

Turns out the man has spent time in Seattle (in a rock band! that broke up!) and he came here and decided he couldn't leave. His bearded friend emerges from talking on his cell phone. He looks like a hairy bird.

"Before you leave, we have one thing we want to do," the hairy birdman says to me, grabbing my hand and linking hands with his friend and five other random strangers who instantly emerge from behind me, forming a circle.

"Mashiach! Mashiach! Mashiach! AYAYAYAYAYAYAYA! MASHIACH! MASHIACH! MASHIACH! AYAYAYAYAYAYA!" The men spin me around in a circle, and my pointy dunce cap goes flying into the wind like a rouge saucer. My flip flops get flung into the center of the circle. I'm being pulled into the air, part of the writhing masses.

"You've got to come back on Friday," a man says to me. Apparently, there's even more grabbing and flying and rogue dunce caps on Friday.

When we stop, I collect my belongings and leave the men who have just grabbed me, like they're strangers, like we've never met at all.

I keep the hat.

Manhunt

Can we just agree that everyone ever born is on this website and that it is okay. Soon, this is how straight people will meet eachother. Just one more example of the gays being ahead of their time.

Today in Undeniable Catchiness

More on why this song is so successful and how you, too, can create an unreliable narrator for your song by pop music god sasha frere-jones

I Love You, I've Missed You

God this is so great. I am so happy to be sitting in front of a computer and typing. This feels amazing. I travel across the world, do all of these touristy things that cost a bajillion dollars, and literally all I want to do is sit, here, in a room, alone, unbothered, and try to talk to you, dear anonymous person. Please continue to read.

Facebook Pictures of Israel

A girl I met on the trip in Israel just tagged me in 14 pictures. I just looked at them. I'm now supposed to either approve or disapprove of them. I'm not sure. I know we usually disapprove of pictures when we look ugly in them, but I think I want to disapprove of these pictures on moral grounds. They are not pictures of me. The Steven in these pictures looks really fucking pissed off. I look vacant and checked-out. They were taken during the week of the birthright trip, when we were going everywhere all the time, and I was constantly posing for different photographs with different people and it looks like I've forgotten where I am and even who I am in them. I'm just sort of there, hovering, like a cardboard cut-out, with a smile-sneer on my face. A sort of "ohfuckingdamnit okay I'll be in this picture" kind of face. It's a roll full of cardboard stevens. Do ignore.

By the Way...

The last post was about Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem (which I haven't experienced on my own yet) so I'm talking about a city that's supposedly the new york of Israel. Soon I'll be in the fucking holiest city of all- Jerusalem. I was there with birthright (the free sexfest israel trip any American jew can go on so long as they are able to prove they have jew parents) but I was being inundated with pro-Israeli propaganda constantly (more on that later) and couldn't blog, much less think.

Will I feel anything going to Jerusalem on my own? Will I start to "get" religion? Will the men bowing in front of a giant wall and mumbling to themselves look any less insane to me? Stay tuned.

The First Obligatory Israel Post

HAY! Wanna hear about Israel? No? I don't blame you. It's kind of an exhausted topic huh? Quite frankly, my brain tends to shut off when I even hear the word because I know I'm about to get an earfull of someones insufferably well-informed "opinion" on the "conflict." I've literally been to dinner parties and walked away from conversations about Israel. It's just so...college. Or something. But I'm here, actually in Israel, so I guess I'll try to think of something to say. God this is hard. I sort of feel like I'm firebombing the old city and simultaneously pissing on my ancestor's grave. I certainly can't think of anything nice to say.

All fellow Jews listen to this: Israel is the absolute worst possible place to feel like you're "getting away from it all." I know what your friends said and they're wrong. You're not getting away from anything here. If anything you're immersing yourself in all the weird cultural corners of "what it means to be a jew." You will be asked what you want to do when you grow up a thousand times. You will be pestered. You will be lectured to. You will see elements of your mother in women you meet. You will see elements of your father in men you meet. Do not expect to relax. Expect to argue. If you're from Seattle, consider yourself very ill-prepared. If you're a crier, don't expect a shoulder. Everyone was in the army and they cover their sadness with anger.

Israelis are loud. They're rude. They're provincial. They sort of sprawl out messily. They're unapologetically obsessed with money and status and they don't put a smile on their face when they're pissed off at the world. I like them and I hate them. I am them. I'm not them. One thing I've been grappling with is the idea that the Israelis live the way American jews would live if we weren't so bound by the unspoken social, sexual and moral codes of these aryan United States. But I no longer think this is true. They're a completely different people.

Okay okay, so it's not all bad. I do enjoy the national past time of commiseration. At any given moment, I can communicate my disgust with my current situation to any Israeli around me with a sad, wry smile and get a sad, wry smile in return. But is that zionism or whatever? I think not.

One other thing: I'm really sick of being gay here. Are you listening, GOD? Can you make it easier for me to have Gaydar please? It's fucking impossible to tell anything. Everyone's well-dressed, men have stereotypical lisps, everyone's got one "arm across the shoulder"of their "best friend" and yet they're all "straight" and offended by my "accusation."

I complain about it to everyone I meet, but I should really stop expecting commiseration. Everyone likes to believe it's not a big deal here (unless you're trying to make out with a Hasid) and if you have a grievance with life's more unsavory elements in general, step in line. There are a million people in front of you. As a gay man, you're standing behind the Palestinians. Do you really want to stand there? At least everyone knows someone they want to set you up with. You'll have to explain numerous times that gays don't uniformly fall in love with their own people. There are worse things. You know it's true.

Is it pretty here? Yeah. It is. It really is. I mean, for one it's sunny (don't hate me!) and there's this thing called "Jerusalem stone" everywhere which is this gorgeous brushed brick everyone uses to build things and when it's sunny outside buildings literally glow. But there's not as much innovative architecture in Tel Aviv as I expected (thanks for the lies, Wallpaper). Sure they've stolen a little Bauhaus architecture from London, and there's a bit of a UNESCO Paris feel to the apartments in Tel Aviv but talking about it seems more like exoticizing hideous old architecture than lauding anything innovative. And it's hard finding things to buy. Perhaps I've been visiting overly-touristy areas but if I have to see one more olive branch or shining city on the hill glazed on to a plate I'm going to punch a baby. They're not just in Jerusalem...played out Judaica is everywhere. What did I expect? I don't know. That will be the new theme of this blog: Steven's expectations routinely getting fucked up the ass. Steven blogging about how traveling is so hard. What a painful, terrible life I lead. Enjoy the schadenfreude.

HI

You know what's really annoying to me? Trying to think while on vacation. So you know what I will not be doing? Writing on this thing. For a few days.

On Trying to Teach

This is from an email I sent to a teacher I worked with this past quarter:

Being able to communicate with you after class gave me a glimpse into the life of a university teacher and all the insecurities, stress and magic of it. To you, the class was a bunch of light bulbs in need of electricity, and you were constantly worried about whether or not you were providing enough voltage. To me, they were the students I wanted to escape from, the reason why my mother invested in an SAT tutor and a college counselor and the reason why I spent so much time applying to so many schools- so I wouldn't be stuck here, where everything felt just the same as it did in high school, where you could get away with writing all the short stories in your English class about growing up gay and the teacher would give you an A for effort (and because he was afraid of offending you and being labeled un-PC), where success was measured in how often you showed up to class and whether or not you paid attention, not in your ideas or analysis or criticism or intellectualism.

But, I suppose, I'm starting to further understand how to make the system work for me- must be in leadership roles (check) must communicate with professors (check) must not be snooty (B- for effort?).

There were a few moments that changed me. First came when I had to lead a short discussion section. I got up in front of the class and I had to say something about the film festival book, and how the festival circuit actually exploited good films, did nothing to further the art form, and was essentially a name-game networking event that scared indie filmmakers and delighted journalists ("so many brushes with stardom and rivalries and politics!"). I got up and, looking into the eyes of my fellow students, couldn't fathom a word that wouldn't make me sound like an intellectual snob. My entire prep, all of my thoughts, somehow revolved around what made this book a good piece of journalism, why it was news, what worked about his use of language.

I had to think of something to say that related to the curriculum (and fast! all the staring!) that didn't further alienate me from them. I believe I said something about how this book, unlike the last critique we had read (which sounded more like an angry blogger rant), was more of an accessible critique, perhaps because the journalist knew that his purpose was to educate the populace about an exceedingly complicated arena of art and commerce through whimsy and non-judgmental observation, and not to indoctrinate the reader with slatherings of opinions (something academic writers tend to do all the time).

None of which is relevant to your course! This anecdote I had revolved around writing, and there are so many writers who think about writing all the time but I guess what I realized was, like, who cared? I was a teacher at this moment, not the kid sitting in the back of English class. I had responsibilities. It was scary and I realized what a juggling act teaching must be, finding this way for your brain, with it's myriad of thoughts (some productive, some self-defeating) to work in harmony with the brains of everyone around you. To pace yourself so the thoughts will sink in everywhere. To look at the class but not in their eyes (never the eyes!) and try to gracefully tie just about everything to your syllabus (how do you do this?)

There were other moments. Lots of other moments. There was the moment I filmed the commercial, where I really felt like I was actually lending some sort of creative clearance to the endeavor, like I could leverage my loopy sense of creative entitlement toward the greater good ( and then it got deleted...) There was the moment I started atanarjuat and had to fast forward through parts of it and not come off like I was unsympathetic toward silence and absence in nonwhite narratives. There was the time I said the words "this hurt our aesthetics" or whatever. There was the weird look people gave me for being associated with the Stranger, that made me feel like they were practically expecting my whole routine to be very off the cuff, whereas yours was polished and refined. I got to revel in their juvenilia (is that a word? it should be a word), and be occasionally juvenile around them, but you got their professional ready-to-work smiles and "sure thing" glances. I'm not sure who should be jealous of whom.

All of which to say is...teaching is hard. I have no idea how you do it. You are some kind of wonder woman balancing all of these conflicting things (does fun make people learn? how do you create fun? what if they're having too much fun?) I mean, I honestly feel like I learned more than two credits worth of information, even though I probably only deserve two credits since I didn't really do a whole lot. For a whole quarter, I got to occupy the brain of a college professor, and was privy to all of her off-the-cuff thoughts and emotional reactions. For a journalist, that's called a gold mine. For a student, it's practically unheard-of. So, a genuine thanks. It was a fascinating, frustrating, endlessly insightful ride, and not something I will soon forget.

Cafe Presse's Smelly Cheese

I'm a total wuss with stinky cheese. The smell horrifies me, it makes me want to gag, I don't understand how people put the cheese close to their face, much less down their mouth.

I'm at cafe presse right now doing homework, and every time someone brings out a cheese platter (which is literally every other second here) it's like someone is sticking their belly button lint up my nostrils with force and saying "this is what you get for waiting until the night before your final to start studying!"

It's like eating out of a dumpster. I don't see the difference. It's like going and sitting in a dumpster and eating whatever curdled cottage cheese is sitting in there and then paying the dumpster for the time it spent letting the cottage cheese go bad.

Or it's like giving a blow job to your food.

Both make you gag. Seriously, people. How do you eat this? How is it not like eating your own throw up?

Oh, and don't bother googling "smelly cheese". All you'll get is this article about a boy who's ears ended up smelling like smelly cheese forever because he never washed back there.

"Lesson learned the hard way, cheddar."

Update! apparently the correct term is "stinky" cheese. Not smelly. And its fans are bountiful and loud. I stand by my proclamation. People: you disgust me.

TINA FEY STOLE SOMETHING FROM MY BLOG!

Apparently she was also accused of clogging her toilet by her manager. Either that or she found my blog entry on the same subject and said "ha ha ha ha ha ha I will steal that!" Either that or I'm a hack journalist and this is a common accusation.

Goodbye Seattle

on the eve of my departure for israel, i have a few notes on the media in seattle.

in journalism, it doesn't seem like the truth is enough to carry any piece. it's got to have drama. it's got to be sarcastic. it's got to be incredibly cynical. if it's a music article, it's got to have a bajillion analogies and go on forever. if it's a news piece, it has to rebble rouse a blue state demographic.

.....we could and should ask more from our media. they're not as engaged as they should be. they're kind of freaked out by the power we've given them, so they crack jokes about how incompetent they are, but they're actually incredibly smart. they're just operating under insane and weird pressures from a seemingly infinite sea of angry internet people hungry for things to get even angrier about. its a weird set of pressures, and im not sure if the resulting writing is as good as it could be. im not sure a collection of blogs is what the future of the media should look like. i do find it fragmented and alienating, and im sure i'm not the only one. it's not like i long for the days when the nightly newscast was the only thing people saw...but this...this obsessive need to increase one's social capitol, to invent a taste, a brand, a point of view wholly unique from the teeming masses, to be funny and provocative on a daily basis.... it's a bit of an unreasonable expectation to have for a journalist.

traditionally, journalists go out and report the news. now we're being asked for our opinions in order to stay in the game of simply reporting the news. we have to carve out an online identity when we don't actually know anything about the world. we have to fake it. we have to pretend we're the expert, and get tomatoes thrown at us from anonymous internet folk the entire time.

in front of the computer, all you gain is intellectual knowledge. it feels like learning, but it's just getting fed spin and trying to figure out where the truth lies under all the spin. it's exhausting. and what makes a good blog story is rarely the truth. it's more a heightened emotional reaction to something. you know you're attracted to the rants on blogs for a reason- it's because you're consuming someone else's reaction to an event. it's infinitely more interesting because you're literally looking at a news story through the eyes of someone you know and (perhaps) trust to cut through the bullshit. any impartial news story pales in comparison because it's just a news story. a blog entry has layers and layers of intellectual fodder.

first there's the event, then there's the impartial story about the event, then there's the commentary on the impartial story about the event, then there's the commentary on the commentary on the impartial story about the event. then there are the commentors who argue with the writer. then there are the commentors who argue with the commentors. then there's the dude who twitters the commentor comments, and then there's the person who responds to the twitter. there's an enormous amount of information to consume, most of it asinine, occasionally fascinating or illuminating.

a bit of a bright point- there is a sort of candidness with the reader that gawker has, and when you strip away all of their creative resentment, all the bickering about who is more deserved of our attention and all the bitchy things they say about people who aspire to do anything with their lives, i think it's actually a really great candidness. i think there's something to be said for remaining a complete outsider. maybe the ideal media would sound like n+1, or the believer or BUTT. something fearlessly intellectual or completely raw and confessional. not necessarily angry or critical, just honest. better for something to express a relentless introspection than to hide behind a smart ass writing style or a voice that condescends. it seems riskier because it is riskier. and risk is good.

i know i'll be called out as a hypocrite. yes, i work for the stranger. no, my stories aren't perfect. im not even trying to defend myself. i just like tearing things apart and trying to expose their mechanics. it feels cliche, but i want to figure out how best to proceed, morally. shouldn't that always be the imperative?

and with that, i leave for israel... gorgeous, politically stable israel where everyone is moral and acts with compassion towards everyone around them.

Vanity Fair: Tina Fey Used to be Fat

So we knew this right? And Maureen Dowd is obsessed with this.

Then she retreated backstage at S.N.L., wore a ski hat, and gained weight writing sharp, funny jokes and eating junk food. Then she lost 30 pounds, fixed her hair, put on a pair of hot-teacher glasses, and made her name throwing lightning-bolt zingers on “Weekend Update.”

It's all about Tina Fey's previous girth. It's literally the most annoying article I've ever read on someone I love.

"How did she go from ugly duckling to swan?" "Given her frumpy start in comedy", "Her makeover is the stuff of legend", “She doesn’t have the looks,” Mengers told him." "She was very mousy. I thought, Well, they gotta be having an affair." "I really wasn’t heavy in high school,” "I’m five four and a half, and I think I was maxing out at just short of 150 pounds, which isn’t so big." "I looked like a behemoth, a little bit. It was probably a bad sweater or something." "You’ve got to pop one more button on that blouse and you’ve got to get that hair done and you’ve got to go!" "they bonded over hot veal sandwiches and their appreciation of 'sarcastic humor'" "She wanted to be “PBS pretty”" "O.K., I’m starting Weight Watchers.” "Please, please make sure you’re eating.”’ "McKay recalls Fey telling a story about her heavier days" "you’ve got to get that hair done and you’ve got to go!"

Tina: us gays don't care about your looks. When I read an interview with you, I want zingers.

R Place

Last night I went to R Place with a few of my friends. The following is a list of things I remember:

Dancing with the butt of a girl feels like lightly humping a moving pillow.

I feel like a bobblehead when I try to dance. Sometimes I also feel like this one ADD kid who couldn't sit still in my Kindergarten. It's less like dancing and more like looking like you have to go the bathroom.

I became transfixed by the gyrating underwear of one of the dancers and even when I looked away, I could still see his gyrating crotch. It danced in my brain the entire night, like a rolled up pair of socks.

I witnessed one girl trying to socialize with a group of people who did not want to talk to her. The whole time, the girl kept downing more and more of her drink, trying to feel more comfortable with what she was going through. She kept on trying to grab on to her friend's butt, but he kept shooing her away. Her eyes were completely transfixed on his butt. It was like, with every drink, the only thought was "Must Grab Butt" instead of "Must Make New Friends." It confused me.

There's something about being in a club that makes me suddenly realize I have a butt.

I only bent down once, semi-ironically, for Lilly. She barely humped me. She felt like a wall, like I was dancing alone with a wall. Down there, I looked for quarters. I just thought "I'm bored and might as well look for fallen change."

There's very little fallen change on the floor of R Place.

While reaching down to touch her toes, one girl lightly scratched me on the arm. It was like experiencing light foreplay with a stranger.

Liveblogging Dinner with Lindsey at Pies and Pints (UNSUCCESSFULLY)

PIES AND PINTS DOESN'T HAVE ACTUAL PIES. like with fruit and butter. just this meat crapola. it's like visiting a frozen yogurt shop and, oh, i don't know, being served yogurt with meat in it. Or regular yogurt. It's more than false advertising, it's lying.

I'm now sitting with Lindsey, my friend, who arrived hella late. She is studying the menu, knowing she will not be able to eat an actual dessert because Pies and Pints lies to their customers. She's wearing her dissapointed face. Her face makes me sad. Now she's casually scratching her nose. Now she's staring at the happy hour menu. Now she's staring at the actual menu. Now she's flipping her hair and looking away from me, annoyed. Now she just said "This is fun." Now she's really irritated with me. Now she asked me "are you typing what i'm saying now?" Now she's trying to close my laptop. Now she has closed my laptop. Now i'm experiencing an unfortunate feeling because i want to continue typing but I know she's really annoyed with me. Now I'm annoyed with me. Now I'm stopping. Now I just read what I just wrote to see if it was funny / revealing / representative of modern life. Now she's strumming her fingers against the table. Now this has reached a point of excess. Now I reaaallly should probably stop. OKAY. I'M STOPPING.

Now I'm back. Lindsey is talking to Daniel. Lindsey doesn't realize I'm trying to pay close attention to their conversation so I can type it down. Lindsey is not looking at me. Someone just walked by and said, loudly, "this is exciting!" I agree. I feel so covert. I am distancing myself from Lindsey by typing. Lindsey is going to hate me for this. Neither of them are saying anything interesting or noteworthy. The entire event is completely un-noteworthy. Now Lindsey is looking in my direction and making a very disappointed face. Now I am stopping.

The Sorrento = the New Kube Haunted House

I have to write up hotel listings now, which means I've been visiting a lot of hotel websites. Are you asleep now? I am.

Anyway, the Sorrento's website caught my eye- it seems like they're having some sort of problem with the site's flash which makes entire rooms light up, terrifyingly, like something out of the twighlight zone. Check it out.

OMG!

A Slog post I wrote has officially received...1231 comments! I'm famous!

What? Stop it.

I Love

Rosie To World: At Least I'm Better Than Hanging Out With Your Terrible Family

\

So Rosie has a new show. But can anyone replace the image of her harried, tear-streaked face blogging every emotion in haiku on her blog and then yelling at her children on a cruise ship with this new image of her in a white fur robe surrounded by topless gay dudes? I'm having trouble.

Also- some people are natural one-eye blinkers, and some people are not. Rosie is not.

Kristin Wiig Excites Me! Sexually!? Maybe!

David Letterman reminds of the guy you meet at a party who can't remember your name or anything about you but pretends he does, and thinks it's really funny. Also, I love Kristin Wiig, but why isn't she funny here? Is it because actors and actresses don't actually have personalities and are malleable clay or whatever or was she just nervous?

In honor of Kristin Wiig, here's a video she's in called "The Engagement" where she plays a middle aged lady who can't contain her excitement or anxiety over her son's future wedding proposal:



(Don't you kind of want her to fall into the fish tank? Can they use fake glass for fish tanks? Of course they can! She should have fallen into the fish tank. Also- I used to think she was trying to channel the late gr8 Lorraine from MadTV but I was wrong. Kristen is something else entirely.)

And here she is as the "Just Kidding" lady:



She's really perfect at playing the self-conscious person who wants to sound more interesting than she actually is. See: penelope.



Haha, as if younger children are more manageable somehow. For some reason I failed to laugh once during that last video. Maybe Kristin Wiig's weird power over me is already beginning to wane. I hate when this happens. Damn it all to hell!

I'm in San Francisco Right Now

And every streetcorner smells like babypoop if you smell it for too long. does anyone else know what i'm talking about?

New Chow Bio

I interview a belly dancer.

Of Montreal

So yesterday I went to the Of Montreal concert at the Showbox in Sodo. By the way, this is not going to be a concert review. Just wanted to put that out there. I have zero interest in telling you what the concert was like and using words that will simultaneously alienate you and prove to you how much I know about music. Because I don't. Know anything. About music. Alls I know is that Of Montreal was weird. That's a word my generation uses when we don't know what to say about something but we want to appear mildly culturally competent. WEIRD. But Of Montreal WAS weird. It felt like a cultural moment of sorts. A cultural moment I couldn't, for the life of me, understand. There were all of these bears, and glitter, and suggested 69ing between bears wearing glitter. I don't know.

I was told, by a friend of mine, to go out and have FUN. FUN was capitalized in the text message, and I took this to mean: you do not usually have fun at things, so please, dear god, just try to have fun.

This felt very much like a moment. Kind of like the Backstreet Boys or something, but for hipsters. A moment where a band could do anything the fuck they wanted, and get a huge response out of people. Like, people were just willing to go there. Or at least, the kids at Northwest School were willing to go there. And yeah yeah, those kids are kind of adorable but they banged their heads into my side and that's not fun for me.

Sometimes I feel like I'd experience concerts in general differently if I lived in New York City. Here, the crowd was just trying too hard to enjoy themselves. It didn't feel honest. It felt forced. It felt like everyone had read a newspaper article about the concert and was trying to feel the way the journalist had felt about the concert.

The security were huge dicks to everyone, too. This I don't understand at all. Okay, you're security, you're very large people...shouldn't that be enough for you? Like, that's a lot to get off on here. You get to shine your flashlights in people's faces. You get to check stamps on people's wrists. You get to order people around. You don't have to frown. If you're sad, okay, go on and frown. But you're obviously not sad because I saw you laughing with that girl right before you frowned and stuck your flashlight into my retinas and barked at me.

All that being said, I do enjoy about four to five seconds of every Of Montreal song on the new CD. Sometimes I enjoy even more! But usually, just four to five seconds.

I Wish More American Newspapers Sounded Like the Independent

So yesterday I was googling the words "berlin" and "gay" (I'm planning a trip) and I stumbled upon this profile of Rufus Wainwright in the Independent.

Midday in the kind of upmarket London restaurant where the waiters look like models and the chefs are busy coveting Michelin stars, and Rufus Wainwright is doing what he perhaps does best: talking about himself in highly reverential tones. To accompany his vocal patter, his knife and fork conduct an imaginary orchestra in the air while his plate of artfully designed couscous and chicory leaves lies untouched before him.

What a fucking beautiful lede. Acerbic, witty, devastatingly perceptive...check check check.

"The thing of it is," he drawls, speaking American the way Quentin Crisp spoke English, with every consonant exaggerated and every vowel extended way beyond its natural boundaries, "is that I like to tell the truth - in ev-er-y-thing. And the truth of the matter is, I really am extremely good at what I do." He laughs in his bone dry manner. "What? I should be falsely modest and pretend that, actually, I'm not that great? No, no. For me, that would never work. I am great, and that's all there is to it."

Man, Rufus is such a dick. But don't worry, the Independent interviewer puts him in his place.

Before his all-consuming arrogance and self-love threatens to suffocate this interview, let us try to put his peacock preening into some kind of mitigating context. Wainwright has just released a new album, his fifth, called Release the Stars. After maintaining cult status for the past decade, his records rarely selling more than a few hundred thousand copies (a comparatively paltry figure for someone with his profile), he wants this one to be his mainstream breakthrough, and to sell millions. In order to do this, he has to blow his own trumpet, and hard.

Here, the writer manages to critique his subject and sympathize with him. Quite a feat, indeed.

Compare this to what the Seattle Times wrote about him when he was here in July, 2007:

"You're an amazing audience ... and I'm an amazing performer!"

A packed Moore Theatre couldn't have agreed more, giving Rufus Wainwright his sixth standing ovation of the night while he and his septet linked arms, blew kisses and bowed.

The writer here just assumes we are all in love with Rufus Wainwright, and his ego deserves no extra scrutiny.

After the house lights came on, strangers beamed at each other like they'd just seen a shooting star.

Okay, yada yada, people love concerts, I get it. It's not exactly a newsflash. Seattle audiences love a big 'ol self-obsessed 'mo. I still like Britain's version better.

And Rufus? Listening to you still makes me feel like I'm living in a dramatic reinterpretation of my boringass life. So, thanks. No sarcasm intended.

Wanna Buy A "Chair"?

Thanks craigslist! Really helpful!!!

Restaurant Death List

So I have this new post where I'm writing about all the restaurants in seattle. Well, all the good ones. And I have this list of words I'm trying to avoid. Some (most) of them are really really hard not to use.

Think:

Friendly. Authentic. Well-heeled. Inventive. Creative. Traditional. Movers and Shakers. Not Your Mamma's... Fusion. Old school.

And that's just for starters..

Then there are the words you sorta have to use, like:

Local. Organic. Sustainable. Friendly. Unfriendly.

If you don't use these words, you look like you're just whipping out a thesaurus for fun and you look like a total moron.

Sasha on Blogs

Newspaper and magazine writers work in a logical key: Start here, take a little promenade and then circle back to the beginning, careful to not knock over anything on the way. This smooth revolution feels good. I need it more than I'd like to admit. But someone's got to supply the mad love and raw justice, the garbage and the free food. I hope this is what blogs do. Lusty overstatement leads to good things, and full-on commitments are a requirement of the fully engaged life, even if the commitment is to Christina Milian.

I don't just like blogs for the pub fights. I like sentences and I think blogs are a good place to find them. I like blogs with very short sentences. I like blogs with very long sentences. I like the music of the prose on a lot of LiveJournal pages, because many of the writers haven't necessarily figured out what writing means, and won't necessarily be better off when they do.

Frere-Jones in Gawker.

It's an old interview, but it provided me with insta-comfort. That last sentence kills. I know, I know...meta alert. Isn't it wonderful and altogether fascinating and insanely productive when the media talks about the media? You learn so much about the world...no, but really, I love you Sasha.

It's Okay to Cry

Video of the Day

Micro Loup from Richard McGuire on Vimeo.

The people look like alphabet soup, the city a collection of neon signs, a sort of King Kong esque plot line but all the gore is implied with little squiggly lines and chomping noises. A gorgeous French animation. Enjoy.

Yo B, This is Hot

I like how these women explode their hips, and how they sort of float around in the frame like short-wired fembots. Beyonce's terminator hand? Totally fuckin weird. And what a great, honest, self-conscious end-chuckle. The white background doesn't feel too early 90s GAP ad since there are all these spotlights and sweeping camera shots.

Damn. I'm kind of in love with this vid.

I'm Writing About Linda's

This is capitol hill's outdoor rest stop, a winking saloon / ski cabin with plastic trees and a giant paint-by-numbers mountain range.

I'm Writing About Honey Hole

A circus break room staffed by tattooed hipsters, a prop and costume shop for the weirdest play every produced.

I'm Writing About Black Bottle

Think starkly decorated, monochromatic drinking hole.

Words bounce off the walls in a crisp staccato beat. The buzz feels foreign: a sliver of the Lower East Side forcibly carved into a Belltown storefront. Try the prosciutto and bechamel or the laab gai.

I'm Writing About Molly Moon

Molly Moon is an ice cream flavor laboratory, a tiny classroom where the subject is how to create something delicious by combining disparate flavors like balsamic vinegar and strawberry.

The lines are long, the ice cream is thick and chunky, and the buzz wavers between gourmet restaurant and neighborhood soda shop.

I'm Writing About Liberty

Ellen Forney’s sexy ‘hands’ paintings used to hang inside this bar above the sofas, making it seem as if cartoons were reaching through the walls to try to finger the furniture.

Boring poster art replaced ‘hands,’ but nothing else has changed: plush couches are still available to intensify the warm sinking feeling after a particularly strong ginger-cucumber concoction and good bar music makes rather run-of-the-mill epiphanies sound profound.

I'm Writing About Cafe Presse

Bartenders with mullets, writers with Ira-Glasses, and the freshly-scrubbed Sitka and Spruce crowd all look gorgeous under Café Presse's perfectly-sized skylight.

Everything to everyone, Presse's magazine rack stacks Artforum next to Newsweek next to Adbusters next to Cooking Light. At night, the Brazillian Girls pulse through the dimly lit dining room as writers sip wine, down cubes of cheese and liveblog on their laptops. The subtext being, don't we all look ridiculously cool sitting here?

I'm Writing About B+O Espresso

An anthropologie store that just happens to serve fondue, B+O doubles as an antiques parlor and the classiest train stration on capitol hill. Desserts are a delightful clusterfuck.

I'm Writing About Wild Ginger...

A shmancy asian banquet room, like something out of a super sweet sixteen finale, bigger than an airport frequent flyers club, with waitresses who talk like dental assistants: sweet but not the brightest bulbs.

Gimme

People are selling their NYTimes with Barry on the cover. This dude wants 100 dollars. How about 5? Come on dude, they're not historic yet.

ZOMFG

Thank the lord, people. We're never going to have to hear about this lady again.

New Chow Bio

George Lagos, of the Continental Restaurant. Read it here.

This Film Preview Gives Me The Goose Pimples

Sean Penn: such a charming homosexual. The little smiley laugh after he says "but god knows we keep trying"...I'm in love.

Letter to the Editor

This appeared in the comments section of a Slog post:

Ugh have you ever read his blog?

He's the archetype for better-than-everything too cool for everything I hate everything but wait I'm really lonely too, why am I still single and whining? OH RIGHT! I'm better-than-everything too cool for everything I hate everything but wait I'm really lonely too, why am I still....

http://www.ohmygodseattle.blogspot.com/

I'm surprised he didn't get a full time job with y'all.

(You are only feeding the beast. From now on, I will attempt to feel twice as lonely, alienated and "better than everyone around me." This will become my mantra, my rallying call. I'll become like Vice Magazine, only meaner.)

NEXT PLEASE!

It's So Funny...

how everyone in my generation complains about the same things. I am sitting in a cafe and the dudes next to me are talking about new york and how expensive it is, how hard life is there, how they love it but they're scared of poverty, yada yada.

The words could have been coming out of my mouth 2 years ago, maybe even last year. The truth is, none of us really know. You have to move there to find out...

Eating Dim Sum with Di

"That sounds great!" I say to Di when she proposes going to lunch. I do my best impression of someone who isn't me who looks happy and wants to communicate their happiness to everyone around them. "When were you a thinkin'?"

"How about tomorrow?" Di asks. "Yeah! That sounds fun!" I don't mean to look like I'm talking to an autistic person when I talk to Di but I probably do.

I also comment on every mundane thoughts that pop into my head because I think, well, the thought occurred in English. On the bus to Chinatown with Di and my boss, I stare at a couple in front of us who are eating chocolate and say "MMMMM chocolate" to Di. I think: this is just sad Steven. You feel more comfortable talking to Di than half your friends.

Di and I get off the bus and it smells like buckets of years-old urine have been poured over the sidewalk. I make a very dramatic facial expression and start batting at the air in front of me. Di laughs and says something I can't write down without making me look like I'm culturally-insensitive. It was something like "MMM, smells like cooking," or something, which was obviously not what Di meant to say. I feel bad for her, and then I feel bad for feeling bad for her. It's multi-layers of confusing cultural guilt.

We get to the restaurant, and Lindsey, my boss, pulls out this list of antiquated slang words she thought we could use over lunch for fun. Just to give you a sense of how un-useful and culturally inappropriate these slang words are...the first two are Amigo and Airhead. Maybe these words would be helpful to Di if she ever found herself watching a movie with an innaccurate re-enactment of the way teenagers talk to each other and she really really wanted to figure out what was going on, but I can't see her whipping them out while talking to someone on the metro. I also have this nagging annoying thought: why does Di need to learn English in the first place? This seems unfair.

The waitress brings us the food, which is more like actual chinese food than the food I usually eat at Chinese restaurants (I like the crappy General Tso's). Lindsey and I are both talking loudly about things we would never talk about in real life, under the impression that this is all somehow instructional for Di. But I think it's really more about us. Di gives us an excuse to talk like two people unjustifiably fascinated by the world around us. I also give Di "insider informations" about Seattle culture which come across as bitter cultural criticisms. I say things like "In Seattle, no one talks to each other on the bus. We're very anti-social. Is it like that in China?" I have this weird urge to turn Di into a critic of America, and this underlies all of my teaching. I'm not sure if she's picked up on the fact that, in this weird way, I don't want her to assimilate.

Lindsey tries to change the subject and begins to read the words on her slang list. One of the words on the list is poop. "Poop?" asks Di. "Yeah, you know, like when you're in the bathroom, you know, and you sit down and out comes stuff?" I move my hand between my butt and the seat cushion. "Oh yes. Cushion." "No, not cushion," This next sentence that comes out of my mouth is literally the highlight of my day, which is sad for so many reasons: "It's food that comes out of your butt," I say. Di looks back at me like she only heard the word food. I make this grunting noise, shut my eyes and clench my fists. I think; this would be unbearable to watch if I were watching me right now. It's almost unbearable just being me right now. "Oh, yes, poop!" Di says and she grunts and closes her eyes, too. Later we teach her "shit."

I tell Di I'm a writer and she tells me she thinks artists are "crazy." I feel like that would be a serious road block to us becoming close if I didn't also harbor the fear that artists are completely crazy, and that I will one day go insane trying to write a book no one will read.

After our meal, Lindsey and I wave to Di as we walk away. We wave very fast, like we're trying to shoo away insects that are attacking us. When we get back on to the bus, the conversation still feels bright and airy, like we're tourists looking at everything around us from far away. It's a much more comfortable way of looking, but it only lasts a few moments.

Seattle MetBlogs Said Something Nice About My Writing

Read it here.

Video of the Day

What's Worse Than Saying "That's So Gay"?

"That's so g-ohmygod...sorry. I forgot. You're like, actually gay."

"We could hear, when we opened our mouths, the culture industry's language and not always our own"

"Back in 2002 I had a running debate with a friend of mine on the subject of "dignity." She claimed that this was something I was excessively concerned about. She didn't think it was possible for people like us to be really dignified in the old (and possibly imaginary) way of prior generations and characters in classic novels. We were endlessly self-reflexive individuals who had been marked by dabbling in drugs and semiotics; the media world we inhabited made life feel squalid, disposable, and fearful; we could hear, when we opened our mouths, the culture industry's language and not always our own. We were trapped inside ourselves—and in there wasn't even a "self." More like an empty lot crisscrossed by gusts of addictive compulsion, and littered with cultural debris. The situation made you feel ashamed. It bankrupted concepts like "dignity."

Benjamin Kunkel, in N+1

"without the resources of dreams and literature-and psychoanalysis for the lucky few-the consequences are surely dire"

"I was once asked by Adam Phillips if I did a lot of readings and I answered that yes, I did, but that these appearances were difficult and I suffered shame. So he said 'then why do you do them?' And I answered, 'I guess this must be perverse.' He said, 'I think you want to make something out of your shame.' I still find this comment comforting and illuminating. And then, not much later, at a Q and A at Syracuse University, a student asked me a related question: 'aren't you embarrassed to to walk around if you know that there are people looking at you and thinking about what you've written?' I answered him something like this: 'well, you know this is fiction! And I can take the cover that this is fiction! But really, I can take no cover.' I said that literature ought not to be a haven for tea time conversation, for polite speech-that most of us are obliterated by all of our opportunities for polite speech, that without the resources of dreams and literature-and psychoanalysis for the lucky few-the consequences are surely dire. Well I said something like that"

-Diane Williams, in the Believer

New Chow Bio!

I interview a pint of Haagen-Dasz Dulce de Leche Ice Cream.

My Friend Eli Just Crated This Site

It's called "So Long, Cowboy: Letters to an Ex-President." Look for my entry, you might like it.

I have this new job...

And I need to write 100 restaurant reviews by Nov. 24th. So far, I've written 20, and was able to get free meals at 12. Who wants to accompany me on my next dinner?

My Future Life

First- print Journalist. In this vision I am sitting at my desk, and I have 412 unread email messages. I write back witty, one line responses to every single one of them that manage to capture the universality of our human experience, and also manipulate them into writing something honest back to me in response. It’s a good kind of manipulation. I’m cutting through bullshit. I write a blog post about one of the emails. My blog post gets 45 comments from people, half of whom are haters. I show the hater comments to my editor and we laugh together about how stupid people are. I am filled with love and joy for all human beings, especially the ones around me.

In the other vision, I am alone on my computer, trying to pump out a 430 word response to a theatre performance I didn’t like. I know the director personally. I need to write honestly because my readers expect that from me, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be invited back to review another show again if I give my real opinion. I have no one to talk to about this. All of my ideas are cliché. I become paranoid like Emily Gould and am unable to leave my apartment.

Second-memoirist. In this vision, I write about my family from the vantage of someone who’s had a lot of psychotherapy and can now laugh about fucked up shit without scaring people. I am really really completely alone, writing in my room. I am bored out of my brain, wearing sweatpants all day long and getting stoned. I write panicked emails to my mother asking her “is it okay if I say….” And the response is always “NO! SONNY BOY! DON’T WRITE ABOUT ME!!” “But mom! You’re hilarious! This deserves an audience!” I write back “Your answering machines capture the truth of what it means to be the son of a loving, warm, Jewish mother! Your emails are amazing! I want to write about you because I love you!” I get no response, except from my father who leaves a voicemail that says “Mom is very upset now.”

Third-college professor. In this vision, I work at a good college where students raise their hands. I know a lot about this one really really obscure thing that matters more than any other really really obscure thing. My classes are really small, and by the time we’re done discussing how my research relates to the point of existence, we’re all so over-stimulated that it seems like my classroom just might be the most important, exciting, illuminating place in the world; more important than the Oval Office, more exciting than the Nobel Prize Awards Show, more illuminating than the New Yorker Festival. In fact, someone in class brings up the New Yorker Festival and says they went last year and my class is more illuminating.

In the other vision, I work at a big school and get paid roughly the same amount per hour as someone at McDonalds. I cannot write one more thing about that really obscure thing I decided to devote my life to without my head exploding. Half my students come to class, and the others bring their laptops, which I am then forced to ban, inspiring hatred of me. I dumb down the way I talk because most of my students aren’t the brightest bulbs in the barrel and the only smart girl in the class looks at me with disappointment and intellectual longing.

Fourth-NPR. In this vision, I work at the NPR offices in Seattle, and field questions from people all across our fair nation. I exercise a lot, which lowers my voice and makes me sound calm and inhumanly reasonable. My friends are all calm, inhumanely reasonable people and we read essays about our childhood to each other, and write poetic emails that capture what it means to be alive. People tell me I “bring the funny” to NPR and that things will never be the same there again. I’m able to make the radio audience laugh about terrible things like bombings and genocide by extracting witty commentary from survivors. But no one would call me manipulative, I just bring out that side of people. Finally, Americans understand what it means to go through a war, or a bombing, because they feel bonded with the survivors. My life is filled with joy and friendship and witty warm friends who are very dramatic about things and like to turn off the lights when they introduce me to new music.

Eating Alone at Cafe Presse

Today I ate alone at Cafe Presse. Alone. Just me and the steak and fries. And my belly. And ketchup. Food tastes less interesting when you eat it alone. The whole experience is just less fun. You want to talk to someone but there's no one there. So you play a game on your cell phone, thinking it will be relaxing. Except the cell phone game is actually very involving, and emotionally taxing. There are these balls, and they have to hit other balls so that they can explode. It sounds fun, but it's actually tedious and a chore. But you do it the same reason heroin addicts take shots of heroin: because it's something to do and it's a nasty habit.

At the table next to you, a dude wearing a sweatshirt and his friend are talking about the differences between Seattle and Portland. The consensus is that Portland is less big and thus "less classy" or something. I'm not just whipping out that word "classy" and using it to fill in a missing hole in the conversation I didn't quite overhear, it was something to the affect of "Seattle is bigger and thus has more classy places." Although they could have just been saying that because they were sitting in a classy restaurant and you always ascribe a characteristic to a city based on the place where you are when you're having that conversation. I've never complained about Seattle's lack of friendliness when I'm at a party with people I love, but when I'm in a coffee shop alone on Facebook looking at faces of people I don't care about just to pass the time, yeah, sure, I'll tell you Seattle sucks socially if you sit next to me and strike up a conversation. Then I'll tell you that I miss South Africa, and feel self-conscious about how college I am; not loving America and all.

The statement about Seattle sucking socially is met with different responses. I take that back. Different responses sounds like some people are negative in response and some people are positive in response. This is untrue. People are absolutely positively uniformly agreeing when you say Seattle sucks socially. This is actually the best way of starting a conversation with someone in Seattle: tell them you like the trees but you wish you could break down that "barrier" with people. Then show some sort of emotion to prove that you're not like the rest of Seattle. Gasp when they say something shocking or laugh at nothing in particular. This will prove to people that you are capable of breaking out of demographic trends, that you are crazy like the only people who have any fun around here (the Broadway homeless), that you are different and thus, your suffering is unique and based upon the fact that you're just not showing your personality because the people around you aren't worthy of your personality because you're just that fucking amazing.

But the statement about Seattle people having "barriers" isn't uniformly true, I don't think. I don't think people in Seattle really have "barriers." I think I probably just meet the only socially incapable people in Seattle who like to complain about how hard it is to make friends because there's actually something socially wrong with them.

Anyway, so back to the conversation this couple is having. The dude says he went to a high school called "Brookline" or something and the girl says "wow" and I think, well, that's weird because people in Seattle don't usually say "wow" about high schools. So I guess he's from somewhere else, where wows are expected after you state your high school, because if people don't say wow they'll be looked down on as the sort of person who doesn't read the US News and World Report's Annual Listing of High Schools, and thus aren't smart, and thus don't have smart friends, and thus probably won't amount to anything in the world, and thus are a life drainer people want to stay very very far away from (especially if they read books like the Secret).

But I hide my pain and play my cell phone game. I am suddenly, acutely aware of the fact that I am now Seattle because they are so close to me, and looking around and seeing the city through the eyes of people who just arrived here. I'm the dude playing the game on my cell phone, like a social retard, while he waits for his food to arrive. I am Seattle. I am retarded.

The waitress comes back for her mandatory "check in" and asks how the food is, and I lie and say it's delicious even though it's too rare because I don't want the hassle of sending food back. I wonder to myself if the waitress says things like "hun" in her daily life or if "hun" is used for affect here. It's such a warm older woman word and she looks like she's 15. If she's using the word for affect, I deem the restaurant to be inhospitable for people who have personalities. I assume they have some course on waitressing tips where they tell all the waitresses how to use words that are folksy. Even though this restaurant would never do that, the thought crosses my brain.

Eventually, I am given a box for all my food that I will probably put in my fridge and then throw out three days later without eating any of it. It's just a ritual I like to feel a part of. To not ask for a box is admitting you don't like the food and are completely comfortable with the image of some chef shoveling it into a trash can while crying, and then killing himself all because of you. So you ask for the food in a fucking box, because you're a fucking human.

Walking out of the restaurant is uncomfortable because you are suddenly made aware again of the fact that you are completely alone. If you're emotionally healthy you probably have the feeling "man, I am an adult having fun being emotionally healthy and getting to know myself. good. I just love to eat alone and listen to my pretty shiny thoughts" and if you are not emotionally healthy you probably have the feeling "I am fat. I also don't like people. My head hurts. My car is filled with junk I don't take out because I am lazy. I am going to go write in my blog now about being fat and not liking people. Maybe I will also WebMD 'Depression' just for fun."

You walk to your car. It is a foreign car you bought because it is reliable. It's so Seattle. It's fucking forest green. You left that little sticker on the window that says you parked it for such and such hours. You put your key in the ignition and it revs up. You and the car have a weird relationship. You're just not ready to really tell it what to do. You try to coax it instead, so you drive like an eighty year old man. You think; well, I'm Jewish. Somehow this is all okay. Larry David has done worse. Shalom Auslander has said worse. David Rackoff is a mess, and Gary Shteyngart must have had some social problems in his 20s. Each of these men were probably grumpy old farts trapped in teenage bodies. They probably didn't have a good relationship with anyone until they had a good relationship with a kind, warm editor who told them all their ideas were fucking brilliant. So the car thing is okay, it's okay. You can drive like an eighty year old man. You can do that.

There's a Spider on My Thermostat

I'm not quite sure what to do now. I put a cup over the spider thinking, oh, well, he'll probably just crawl into this cup and then I can just shake him into the trash. I mean, honestly, I also had a vision of the spider crawling out of the cup as I'm bringing it to the trash, and me dropping the cup, and it shattering into a bunch of pieces and then me screaming because I often scream when I inadvertently drop things. I wondered how the scream would sound...if it would be a restrained "Ah!" or a longer "eaahhaahhh!"

But the spider refused to crawl into the cup and, instead, clung to the wall.

Then I thought- paper. I'll hold out a piece of paper, the spider can crawl onto the paper and then I'll throw both paper and spider into the trash. Problem is, as soon as the spider was on the paper, it started crawling toward my hand.

It would have made it to my fingers, but I dropped the paper before it could get that far. The spider was flung off the paper, and fell with its legs squirming around on to my pillow. It fell like those stuntmen fall off buildings into bluescreens: its tiny arms over-dramatically cycling backwards.

Ugh.

Then it crawled into the space between my bed and the wall, where it is (happily?) setting up camp.

Great. Now it's right next to the place where I put my head and close my eyes.

I have a few options now. I can either push the whole mattress towards the wall, and hope it squishes the spider in darkness, far from my tender eyes. I could also move the mattress backwards and stare at the spider and squish it with a hankerchief but I don't like the idea of feeling its legs and body collapse and I'm afraid of ooze. Do you think there will be ooze?

I could also just leave it there and hope it doesn't crawl into my mouth or ears while I'm sleeping. It might be really angry at me and want revenge. I did drop it from a high place.

Blinky McBlinkerson

Cut It Out!

Okay seriously guys! I mean seriously! You need to stop talking shit about Palin! She can totally hear you, you guys. It's making her totally depressed. I'm not fucking around. She's literally depressed now, guys, and it's all because of you. She can ban books, but she can't ban TV's, and she can hear you and everything on the TV and it's affecting her ability to give speeches. She used to get all excited before she went on one of her long rants about all those mean folks who were taling shit about her gay best friend, and now she doesn't even want to come out of her room. She's wearing sweatpants now, guys! All day! And she's been eating out of the same cereal bowl for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She refuses to cut her bangs! And that mustard stain on her shirt? She totally rejected my offer to use the Tide To Go stick. It's not funny, guys!

Rush Limbaugh "At Least Sarah Palin Isn't Causing Global Warming.."

This is a transcript between Rush Limbaugh and a woman who says she's undecided because she just can't get over the Palin stumbling block. Why? Because Sarah Palin is the worst vice presidential pick in the history of ever? Because she's refusing to talk to the media? Because she's the faux-folksy hockey mom from hell?

No. "Because she hunts wolves."

Witness Rush Limbaugh's convoluted (to say the very very least) response:

RUSH: Do you realize that the cattle industry kills more steers in a day than Sarah Palin has in her life? And when you went outside the last time was the sun shining?

CALLER: No, actually it was raining outside.

RUSH: But it was light when it was supposed to be light?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: And of course rain is good for plants and animals, they drink it and they grow and they replenish themselves. What's the temperature in Atlanta today?

CALLER: I couldn't tell you.

RUSH: Well, is it hot or is it warm, is it cold --

CALLER: It's warm. It's warm.

RUSH: So the animals that Sarah Palin's killing have not caused temperatures to plunge where you live, you're getting needed rain --

CALLER: What about the polar ice caps, though?

RUSH: Georgia's been in a drought so you're getting needed rain in Atlanta, you admit that you eat beef. Do you eat vegetables, which are just plants?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: But my point is, I'm not concerned -- I mean --

RUSH: You mentioned the polar ice caps. The polar ice caps are growing. We got a report yesterday that two glaciers in Alaska are larger than they've been in years, and the meteorologists say it's the coldest winter. But you're being sold a bill of goods on a political agenda, Ren. Start thinking for yourself and use common sense. The bottom line is you and I could not destroy, nor could Sarah Palin, the ecosystem of the planet if we tried.

It's warm! That's good! Oh, wait, I mean, no; rain is good! Rain's a sign of health! Beef! You eat beef. So does Sarah Palin. You and her, you're basically the same person. She hunts, you should hunt. Do you eat your vegetables? So does she.

Buck up, young environmentalist! You and I and Sarah Palin can cut down as many trees as we want and it still won't really do anything.

Currently Whitepasted to a Wall in Montreal's Gay District

It's Amy Winehouse in yarn, and the caption reads: watch them form, watch them unravel. It's for a gossip magazine.

I Was Just About to Send This Baby Off

...when my mother informed me I'd left the inner envelope at her house.

I still want to send it in (who the fuck cares about the inner envelope?) but my mom thinks my vote won't be counted without the inner envelope.

What do you think, interwebs? This is the biggest election I've ever had the opportunity to influence. The stakes are enormous. I can't fuck this one up.

I'm sure tons of people forgot the inner envelope during the last election. Did their votes still count?

Andrew Sullivan Tackles the Subject of Blogging

The flip side, of course, is that bloggers are also human beings. Reason is not the only fuel in the tank. In a world where no distinction is made between good traffic and bad traffic, and where emotion often rules, some will always raise their voice to dominate the conversation; others will pander shamelessly to their readers’ prejudices; others will start online brawls for the fun of it. Sensationalism, dirt, and the ease of formulaic talking points always beckon. You can disappear into the partisan blogosphere and never stumble onto a site you disagree with.

But linkage mitigates this. A Democratic blog will, for example, be forced to link to Republican ones, if only to attack and mock. And it’s in the interests of both camps to generate shared traffic. This encourages polarized slugfests. But online, at least you see both sides. Reading The Nation or National Review before the Internet existed allowed for more cocooning than the wide-open online sluice gates do now. If there’s more incivility, there’s also more fluidity. Rudeness, in any case, isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a blogger. Being ignored is. Perhaps the nastiest thing one can do to a fellow blogger is to rip him apart and fail to provide a link.

I'm trying to write about lark

This is what I have so far...

The crowd is Aveda-moisturized, dressed in Coldwater Creek and whispering excitedly about their favorite Alice Waters book. They are eating their food slowly because it is a tiny amount of food and they must make it last long enough to finish explaining their favorite Alice Waters book.

I love stereotyping.

Text Message From Capitol Hill

At honey hole. A girl (perhaps SU?) with Juicy Couture booty shorts and a big shiny purse just came in and the conversations. stopped. She is not wanted.

Dept. of City Marketing

This video made me laugh. It's part of an advertising campaign for Upstate South Carolina, and it really undersells the region at the beginning of the clip. "When my parents told me we were moving to the upstate of South Carolina" says the teenage girl interviewed for the clip. "I pretty much assumed my life was over."

The girl goes on to talk about how she thought South Carolina would have "one room schoolhouses" and thinks aloud "what would I have in common with those kids?" The girl also figured "I wouldn't have a social life."

Thankfully, the girl was "blown away" when she actually started school in upstate South Carolina. And this is basically the theme of the entire advert campaign, where residents talk about how much they thought South Carolina would suck, before they make the vague recommendation that the city "blows them away." How, exactly the city blows people away is a good question. According to the video...Because it has a fountain? A restaurant? A couple human beings?

I wonder how the residents of upstate south carolina feel about some ad execs from new york coming into their town and creating an ad campaign that (before the pitch) kinda shits on their town.

And that voice over: actress or realperson? Discuss.

Thankya Ms. Duff...

"Knock it off!"

I think that will stop it.

And haha, she wore a skirt on her boobz.

Video of the Day

Because these kind of videos just don't get posted enough anymore.

UW Undergrad Education is a Joke

I am now sitting in one of the "supposedly good" UW classes. Half the class is asleep, the others look unengaged. The professor is still talking and it doesn't seem like he notices. All my classes are like this.

Uhm

Does anyone else find Norah Ephron's political reporting (and general literary aura) supremely annoying?

Betty Crocker Creates Fat Person's Lip Balm, Theoretical People Rejoice

Quote of the Day

One of the things I love about my character is I can make vast declarations and it doesn't matter if I'm wrong. I love being wrong. So my character can tell you exactly what's going to happen: The Democrats are going to change everything. We're going to have gay parents marrying their own gay babies. Obama's gonna be sworn in on a gay baby. The oath is gonna end ''So help me, gay baby.''

-Stephen Colbert, in Entertainment Weekly

matthew mcconauhaaaayy

That is all.

Goodwill Outlet

Today I went with my friend Daniel to the hugeass / fucking overwhelming Goodwill Outlet in SODO. I had never been there before. I go to places like Value Village all the time, but the Goodwill Outlet took the thriftstore minimalistic environment to an industrial level I wasn't prepared for.

(Why does Goodwill need an outlet? Isn't it already the outlet of all outlet stores?)

The rubbermaid buckets were overflowing with clothing, books, tchotchkies, kitchen appliances, lightbulbs, bras... and digging through it all felt dangerous. Dampness was foremost on my mind. As was brown stains. Or lacy anything.

My friend Daniel has an unhealthy relationship with the citizens of Seattle who are giving away their suits to Goodwill. Please stop giving them away to Daniel. He has enough and, as I remind him, not every day is dress-like-a-an-out-of-touch-businessman-ironically-day. I don't care if you can buy 8 for only 6 dollars because they don't weigh very much. YOO HAVE TOO MUCH CRAP.

Anyone who wants to feel abused and upset can read someone's just-tossed Ann Coulter book, "How to Talk To A Liberal (if you must)" located in the back right bin. After I'd exhausted all the levels of the game on my phone, I began to read the book. Eight pages later and my head was spinning with enough dogma about Liberal Gay Hollywood Socialist Conspiracy Theories To Destroy America that I could have written a very bad very angry letter. Goodwill-I am offended by the placement of that book on the top of the heap. Can someone please come and bury it underneath that coffee-stained 1977 edition of "Women's World" where no one will ever think to look? Thank you.

Daniel was scarily good at mechanically sifting crap from discarded jewels (like Ferragamo shoes). He had the search and seize movements down, his eyes darted everywhere, his brow furrowed, his lips pursed. Watching him was like watching a Project Runway contestant clawing his way through an overpriced fabric store bin. Or a homeless person, desperate for clothing. Either / or.

Not to go all Chuck Klosterman on your ass, but I sometimes feel like Daniel and I simply act out Project Runway when we shop. I feel more comfortable criticizing his choice of dress because we'd just watched Michael Kors ape on that unfortunate overly tanned dude from West Seattle on television. Daniel doesn't get angry at me because the Project Runway Fashion Gods are watching us both interact, nodding their heads in silent approval.

Deborah Soloman Tears Into the Author of "The Bell Curve"

And what a blithering, non-sensical, elitest, hypocritical, asshole he is.

Money quote:

What do you make of the fact that John McCain was ranked 894 in a class of 899 when he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy? I like to think that the reason he ranked so low is that he was out drinking beer, as opposed to just unable to learn stuff.

“The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you are uncool.”

That wonderful line, originally spoken in Almost Famous, is used to anchor a brilliant essay about contrarian teaching in tomorrow's New York Times Magazine. Read it now.

New Chow Bio!

I interviewed Ronnie Santone of "Hay Paison!" Read it here.

Baby Palin Names

According to an email just sent to me by friends...

Max Berde is Comma Liberty Palin

Chris Kinzig is Nam Guadalupe Palin

Max Silver is Bush Gator Palin

Matan Barnea is Ammo Canal Palin

Daniel Frum is Clamp Noodle Palin

and I...am...

Lock Pepper Palin

The trend seems to be animals, patriotic words, places where America has fought wars, a city in New Mexico, a president's surname, something that goes into guns, an artificial water channel, a food made from unleavened dough that is cooked in a boiling liquid, a mechanical fastening device, and a spicy plant. In other words, uhm, there is no trend.

You Know The Movie's Going to Be Bad...

When the only reviews advertised on the movie's website are from some dude named "D.W. Bostaph" (perhaps the neighbor of the filmmaker?) and S.T. Josi (the other neighbor?) .

Overheard at Another Gay Bar in New York

"I think that's stupid. Just because you're gay doesn't mean you're more creative, or witty, or anything. Come on. We live in a post-gay world. Stop clinging to your gay identity. You are who you are because you are who you are, not because you're gay."

Overheard at a Gay Bar

"Why's everyone so crazy about the New Yorker?"

"I think it's just the font."

What Goes Down Must Come Up, But I'd Rather It Stayed Down

The toilet in my apartment is broken, and it's been broken ever since I moved in. You can take a crap in it (it still allows you to do that) but then, around the fifth time you use it, the flush just brings the water back up, to my apartment, where all my clothes and books and rugs and beds and desks are. And it brings your poop and toilet paper with it. It's disgusting, and I've called in my manager about six times to come up and look at it. He brings this big long metal thing called a snake and sticks it into the bowl, through the wads of toilet paper and, uh, other things, and then he cranks the handle on top until he's unclogged it. Let me reiterate: he's done this six times. I don't really know him that well, but now he's seen my poo over and over again, gotten up close to it, smelled it, talked to me about it. Over and over again.

All of this is frustrating, in and of itself, but what's even worse is that my manager somehow thinks I'm making up the whole story. He thinks I've been clogging the toilet, intentionally!, with toilet paper, because, you know, I have nothing else better to do in my life. He's also asked me if I take hard poops, if I eat enough ruffage, yada yada because I am an old man with poop problems, apparently. I usually sit on the couch, while he takes the snake and winds it through my toilet bowl, asking me about how much toilet paper I used, and questioning me like I'm a poop fetishist on Law and Order and I'm trying to reel him into my poop themed life and watch him touch my poop (so hot).

All of this reached a breaking point when I left my apartment and he had a plumber take out my entire toilet, and take a look around to see if there was anything wrong with my plumbing. There was nothing wrong with my plumbing. So he left me a note. Let me read it to you. It says...

"Hi, Steven,

The Plumber was here and pulled your toilet for a complete examination. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the toilet or the toilet bend. He said it worked perfectly and is a good brand of toilet. He turned it upside down, sideways, and in every way inspected it for anything that may have been in it and reported it was 'clean as a whistle.'

None of the past tenants in your unit has ever reported a problem with a blocked toilet.

In the last 20 days I have cleared your toilet 5 times and have observed a large amount of toilet paper. More than what a reasonable person would expect to be flushed in one flush.

If you block up the toilet it is your responsibility to unblock it. The plumber had two recommendations.
1. Use the flush method. If you have a large load, flush, then continue your process and flush again after the water has filled the bowl.
2. Get a better plunger that is pliable. The plumber tested yours and said it was worthless.

I have purchases for you a new plunger and a toilet snake. You have observed me enough times clearing your toilet with the snake that by now you probably already know how to use it, but if not, there are instructions and drawings included with your new snake. Try using the plunger first. It will probably take care of the clog. If not, then use the snake."

Did you see what he just did? He just blamed me for clogging the toilet. I do not use an excess of toilet paper. I do not have hard poos. I'm not trying to sabotage him and distract him from his busy busy life with my inability to use a reasonable amount of toilet paper. The toilet doesn't fucking flush!

Day 2 of being back from New York and the toilet is already clogged. I guess I'm going to have to cover my face with my t-shirt and stick this snake thing inside of it, wind it up until my poo and toilet paper break apart.

Life, man. It just keeps going.