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Busytime
Last few weeks have been dizzyingly busy. So far I’ve enjoyed the winter wonderlands of Prospect Park, explored the wilds of Canarsie and Manhattan’s lower west sides, and picked up another bargain guitar.
Things I didn’t take pictures of: last week’s dining expeditions with Heather for Moroccan and Indonesian food, the Tim Burton MOMA exhibit, checking out “Venus in Fur” (starring Arkansan Wes Bentley) with Gabrielle.
Coming soon: SXSW next week, and I’m looking to move into my own apartment, so I’ll be starting The Search as soon as I get my tax refund in the next few weeks. EXCITEMENT!
The Sermon
The aforementioned sermon is now online. Dude drops knowledge from John Carpenter’s They Live and George Orwell’s 1984. Brief synopsis: we’re all equal but we all steer clear of the ghetto. He doesn’t seem to have any understanding of cultural history or socio-economics. He says even though pride goeth before a fall, that was a different definition of pride. Definitions change over time. He goes off on a long tangent on the natural racial awareness of babies. Which, even if it were true, nevertheless leaves out that infants are also naturally selfish, shortsighted, and impatient.
The hardest part is listening to the child crying in the background. I couldn’t help but post a rebuttal on his 2/8 entry. We’ll see if he allows it to post[1].
Oh, and he says there will be a part two next week…
1.) UPDATE: He didn’t.
Poking Dead Things with Sticks
Sometimes you can’t look away. Sometimes you’re fascinated by the heart of darkness. And sometimes you’re curious about the difference between the Truly Evil and the Merely Misinformed.
Not far from my hometown, one of the last vestiges of the Ku Klux Klan survives. I’ve mentioned a particular blog before, but I won’t link to it this time, just in case they check their backlinks.
I promised myself I wouldn’t comment on that blog. But sometimes I have to poke dead things with sticks. My anonymous comment is first here. Naturally I came at it with a sarcastic and self-righteous attitude, and I succeeded at creating no dialogue.
But what if I changed my personality and voice? What if I put myself into a similar mindset? I tried again with that in mind and succeeded! While the message didn’t make it past the blog owner/moderator, he liked it enough not only to excerpt it in a future blog post, but also to use it as the basis for a two-part sermon! The part in italics is what I wrote. I hope that there will be some way to see or hear this sermon online. I feel oddly proud of this accomplishment.
To get a better idea of the voice I wrote in, read the last comment on this page, which did make it past moderation. And since no comments have been left after it, I can feel some bit of satisfaction at having politely schooled one of the other posters.
Now I have to step back and ask…am I totally deranged for doing this?
“If You’d Have Told Me Ten Years Ago…”
Kottke.org has the most comprehensive list of the 2000s in review, but maybe the best way to take stock of the last ten years is to think of the list of unlikely things that have happened. To get started, I Googled the phrase “if you’d have told me ten years ago” and came up with some seriously hilarious results. Try it for yourself (be sure to use variations like “10” or “you would“).
As a side note, this great segment of Robin Williams’s recent HBO special also makes for a nice collection of unlikely recent history.
Here are just a few off the top of my head.
If you’d have told me ten years ago that…
…suicide hijackers would destroy the World Trade Center…
…we’d elect a black guy for President…
…we’d start two land wars in Asia, and still be in them as of 2010…
…we’d be debating the intricacies of what “torture” means in sneakier ways than we did the word “is” back in the Clinton era.
…Americans would be obsessed with vampire romance novels…
…Americans would be obsessed with “voting” for “musical talent” on a TV show…
…I’d be able to watch on the web just about any music video ever made…
…I’d be able to see any part of the world from the sky…
…I’d be able to get directions to anywhere in the US at the push of a button…
…I’d be watching TV on a hard drive cable box…
…I’d be renting DVDs by mail…
…I’d be able to fit my entire CD collection in the palm of my hand…
…I’d be able to stay in touch with old friends every day, no matter how far away they lived…
…I’d purchase a brand new record player, with a USB port…
…Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name Of” would top the UK charts during Christmastime…
…the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, and the tallest basketball player is Chinese…
…Jon Stewart would be the cable news man I trust most…
…I’d have said you were crazy.
And last but not least, for myself, the realization that started this whole post:
If you’d have told me ten years ago that I’d be living in New York City, working on the 43rd floor of the American Express building in Lower Manhattan, I’d have said you were crazy.
Holiday Recap
I haven’t done a recap in a long time because I haven’t had an intensely active series of days to chronicle. But the last few weeks have kept me busy. Here are the details with photo links:
Did I mention my roommate got a cat? Her name is Lola and she’s an affectionate former streetwalker who is finally gaining some weight.
Before Christmas I went to Macy’s. That was a mistake. I also braved our first blizzard to see the tree at Rockefeller Center. The snow continued to pile up while I was at Aly’s birthday party. Walking home was easier on the street than on the sidewalk. Getting into my apartment was tricky.
The snow also delayed Tara’s visit by a day, but she arrived just in time to catch the latter half of my friend Matt’s cookie competition at Bell House. We did Central Park in the snow, including skating at Wollman Rink. We took tons of pictures of the window displays on 5th Avenue but there are so many that I’m going to upload them later as a batch. We saw a 20’s/30’s swing band featuring a brilliant 85-year old clarinetist. The guy at the table next to us told us to check out a speakeasy on St. Mark’s. You go into a phone booth at a hot dog joint and pick up the receiver. The wall opens and the hostess asks if you have a reservation. Best bourbon and tater tots ever.
We returned to Arkansas on Wednesday the 23rd. Katherine and I had the same idea to have breakfast at Waffle House, where she pointed out to me the presence of reclusive author Charles Portis. Mom wanted me to come up to Harrison a little early to lend a hand, so I had a nice rainy drive through the Ozarks.
Christmas was delightful. I convinced my parents and brother to go in with me on a Hello Kitty electric guitar for my niece. My brother got his daughter Band Hero, much to the consternation of my stepmom’s dog. My sister got me the Atlantic Rhythm & Blues 1947-1974 collection
I knew I’d need more time to catch up with Little Rock friends, so I moved my flight back two days. I feverishly scheduled meetups with more than 13 people, and saw a few more down at The Big Cats show at Whitewater Tavern. And, sadly, for as many people as I saw, I didn’t think to take pictures of any of them except Heather. I did, however, take a picture of my friend Richard’s insane guitar collection. Just to show you that there’s always someone crazier than me.
My flight into NYC from Cincinnati was delayed a few hours, but I managed to make it to Aly’s New Year’s Eve party. Amy and I spent New Year’s Day in our pajamas watching the special Dharma Orientation edition of LOST season 5
That’s about it. This weekend I’m off to Austin to see a special screening of The Monster Squad. A rash, hasty decision, to be sure, and given this weekend’s forecast, one I’m sure I’ll regret.
The True Nature of Evil
“To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good . . . Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race, and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations.”
— Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago.
Norman T. Vorse
For folks looking for more information on Des Moines architect Norman T. Vorse, we’ve preserved Kent Carlson’s website on this server. The Vorse and McCorkindale family were united via the marriage of Molly Vorse Todd and Rob McCorkindale.
Let’s Make a Video
I bought a copy of Adobe Premiere Elements (just $80 with rebate) because I had an idea for a video to Spiraling’s “The Future” (Please buy the album now). The song is about all the things we were promised about the future that still have yet to be delivered. Initially I thought I was going to have to cut amongst several old sci-fi serials on file at the Prelinger Archives[1], but I found one video that had everything I need. Fittingly, it was from New York’s 1964 World’s Fair, perhaps the single saddest and least accurate depiction of the future man has yet devised. Here’s my video.
On a related note, as we approach 2010, we will once again pass through a threshold of science fiction movie disappointment (we haven’t even made it to Jupiter!) much the way we did when we passed 2001. The next scheduled Disappointment Threshold for me will be when we reach 2015, the year of Back to the Future II, and we won’t even have hoverboards to show for it.
1.) I have previously plumbed the depths of the Prelinger to make a video for Jeff Buckley’s “Be Your Husband.”