Yep, Al Davis, Still Insane

Oakland Raiders owner, Al Davis, or Sith Lord Darth Sidious as he is also known, managed to further tarnish his legacy this past week with his ludicrous picks at this year’s NFL Draft.  What I will remember most from the 2009 NFL Draft will be the out-of-touch-meddler’s decision to take Maryland receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey, who most did not project as a first rounder, with the No.7 overall pick and in the second round going with safety Michael Mitchell of Ohio who wasn’t even supposed to get drafted, justifying the picks with something like “I like their speed, they’ve got great speed.” 

Yes, Heyward-Bey is by all accounts a great kid, he had the fastest 40-yard-dash of any player at the combine, and its good that he is getting top ten pick money, but Oakland took him way before he would have otherwise come off the board.  Sure there is no guarantee that you are going to get the guy you want if you trade down in picks, however, in this case they clearly could have gotten more bang for their buck with Michael Crabtree still undrafted.  Everyone was pretty much in agreement that Crabtree was going to be the first receiver taken.  But, apparently, Crabtree is a dick and there are also some durability issues that Davis didn’t like. 

Based on the fact that the top two projected wide outs were still on the board, if he wanted to, Davis could have pulled what Eric Mangini did with the Cleveland Browns.  Mangini, it seems, wanted a certain player, in this case California’s Alex Mack, the best center in this class, but nobody was going to draft him until late in the first round.  The Browns, who began the day selecting fifth overall, a pick that would have been expensive and taken up a lot of cap space, weren’t about to do things the Raiders way and draft the guy way before anyone who wasn’t insane would.  Instead they shrewdly traded down, first with the Jets of all people, the organization Mangini was just fired from, where they got both a first (No. 17) and a second round pick (No. 52) as well as three of his former players.  But No. 17 still wasn’t low enough, so they traded down again, dropping two slots, this time with Tampa Bay for their pick and a sixth rounder.  Not yet satisfied, they swapped spots with Philadelphia and acquired another selection in the sixth.  All that wheeling-and-dealing gave the Browns one the most successful drafts of any team in the NFL—they arguably got the guy they wanted and more for a lot less than they would have in selecting him at No. 5, which would have been crazy.  But this craziness, paying a guy top pick money when they could have negotiated and got him cheap with more to show for it, is exactly what Oakland did.  Although, with all the crap being talked about Heyward-Bey and Mitchell as being shitty picks, they will probably play, as the latter explained, like they have something to prove, which they do, because even if they turn out to be great, people will still give them hell because of the decision imposing, ridiculous Al Davis. 

I say Davis here because we all know that who ever happens to coach the Raiders is only the puppet through which Davis makes all the real decisions which has at least been the case since Lane Kiffin traded Randy Moss for a fourth round pick supposedly behind his, Davis’s, back.  The Kiffin saga doesn’t exactly help his case for mentally stability either.   This highly publicized epic feud will probably follow Davis (and maybe even Kiffin) to the grave.  From day one things never went smoothly with Davis calling his new coach by the wrong name when announcing Kiffin, now screwing the pooch as head coach at the University of Tennessee, as the guy who would lead his team back to greatness back in January of 2007.  After going 4-12 that season, everyone thought Kiffin was going back to college football until he publicly stated that he was going anywhere and was committed to the Raiders.  Apparently, Davis had other plans and drafted a letter of resignation on behalf of the 32-year-old coach that Kiffin refused to sign which would have cost him the guaranteed $2 million left on his contract.  The following season was a circus with Kiffin still on as head coach and Davis threatening to fire him at any moment, finally doing so over the telephone in the middle of their schedule.  Davis then held the infamous press conference where he accused Kiffin of lying and sabotaging his organization which was him trying to show cause to avoid paying out the rest of the agreement.  At best, Davis comes out looking like a bitter old man who redefined overreaction when he felt some young prick had disrespected the thing he loves most in the world.  At worst, he is a vindictive, petty psychopath willing to sink the fucking ship of his team’s success to screw a guy out of the last couple months of his contract just to prove a point.  That point being nobody fucks with Al Freaking Davis.

Our course Davis had the last word and in dramatically petty fashion when his organization sent a letter to Kiffin’s new employers.  The letter is literally incredible and totally illegal—just think if one of your ex-bosses who absolutely hated you and was schizoid sent a formal letter to the people signing your checks at your new job disclosing your “personal agenda in [your] on-going efforts to damage” that former company—and points to the fact that Davis sure as hell can hold fucking grudge.  Boy oh boy.

This stuff is too bad coming from someone who was so important in making the NFL the greatest league in professional sports.  For instance, there would have been no NFL/AFL merger without Al Davis.  Though he refused to combine the leagues while commissioner of the AFL, he more-or-less single-handedly brought the AFL into a legit organization that could compete with the NFL.  He was responsible for finding some of the most talented coaches ever and giving them their first shot—John Madden, Mike Shanahan, and Jon Gruden, all Super Bowl winners, got their starts with Davis’s Raiders.  He also helped integrate the league by hiring the first Latino head coach back in ’79 and the second black coach in ’89.  Plus he is the only owner to ever hire anyone without a penis, Amy Trask, as president/CEO of an NFL franchise.  The Raiders have also had some NFL distinction in that they are the only club to play in a Super Bowl in every decade of since the inaugural biggest game in sports, having won three of those games (76, 80, 83) and coming very close as recently as 2002 when they lost the big game to Tampa Bay in what is known as “Jon Gruden Bowl” he having coached Oakland the previous season.  But since then, Davis has done his best to distinguish his team as the league’s biggest laughing stock, described above, which started the year after their last Super Bowl when they went 4-12 and their coach at the time, Bill Callahan, said “we’ve got to be the dumbest team in America.”  Such insubordination could not be tolerated and Callahan was fired and everything really went to shit when he rehired Art Shell, that second Afro-American coach mentioned up there, only to refire him after the Raiders finished in last place which catches us up to the Kiffin era of unprecedented lunacy.

For all his kookiness though Al Davis is fixing to stick around until the Raiders win two more Super Bowls.  Since Davis is known to overrule his coaches on anything and everything (including the play calling) with his insistence his team runs an offensive game plan that pro football has passed by and only worked sporadically for the last 30 years, what that really means is until he dies.  

Lost in the Junkhouse: Our Excursion to Cook's Flea Market

For whom is this flea market fun?  Not for lovers, as my female companion and I discovered.  For us it is a place of fear and confusion... Having only spent about 45-minutes at Cook's Flea Market (CFM), I couldn't imagine a more depression inducing place and I will never go back.

Last Saturday, before entering the 155,000 square foot building that houses some 500 booths, I couldn't help but compare it to a state fair.  There were wagons selling all sorts of carnival-esque foods along the grounds.  The building itself, which has seen better days, seems to be an old warehouse.  It seems that this is a "new" location for CFM since across the street there is an abandoned building that still has "Flea Market" above its front doors (we actually thought that this was CFM and that it had went out of business) so can only assume that CFM is actually expanding, though I can't imagine why.  Parked in the main lot were a bunch of motorcycles and some bizarre looking automobiles painted in bright colors with strange logos on them that made me think their drivers either had a sense of humor I didn't get or else were insane.  One car that stuck out was driven by an early twenty something black kid with gold plated teeth that matched the gold rims of the car itself which was painted purple and had on its hood and on its side a picture of Dino from The Flinstones.  It was surreal.  

Once indoors, it is hard not to notice all the neon lights in the front center of market.  Its dissonance reminds one more of a strip club more than say Vegas because of how out of place they seem there, drawing your attention to outdated electronics in a warehouse filled with more things that are outdated.  It seems sad.

The people inside were a curious bunch indeed.  For starters, CFM has to be the wife-beater wearing capital of the world.  Per-capita I am confident there has never been such a high ratio of A-shirts vs. sleeves as inside those doors.  It was close to 1:1.  While there I was unfortunate enough to get stopped by carney-like-vendors twice, I guess I look like an easy mark.  The first person to approach me was a young girl who kept asking me if I was a musician and what band I was in.  She was apparently a rapper and wanted me to buy her CD for $10 which I honestly didn't have, not that I would have bought it if I had, and was under the impression that this... flattery?... would get me in the right mind to throw away money on a genre of music I explained I don't particularly enjoy.  When this didn't work, she informed me that "us musicians have to look out for each other."  Ah, I see.  So after explaining, once again, that I was not in a band or whatever, she kept insisting I was a musician because I, she could tell, appreciated art.  I guess she had a point, but the only music I was interested in making was that of my shoes squeaking as I hightailed it out of the area.  I ended up avoiding the isle she was in for the rest of the excursion.

I wish I could say that the second time I was stopped went more smoothly and made me feel less like an asshole but it did not.  The incident I am about to relate started when we entered a booth selling old video games that were greatly overpriced on systems that are notoriously unreliable.  Immediately upon entry, the kid behind the counter stared at me to the point of it being uncomfortable.  I had learned my lesson before and was avoiding making eye-contact.  The booth was crowded and I hoped that this and my refusal to look up would spare me.  But no, the staring continued, I was doomed.  When I finally looked up, the kid instantly started in like I knew everything about him and had background on the subject he decided to go into detail about.  Never did he mention video games, mind you, his chosen topic was some sort of dirt track racing, telling me things like he did $1000 worth of damage to his car which he bought for only $500 all because he was so used to racing bikes and took the turns like he was on a dirt-bike.  He went on and on about it like I cared about what he was saying and wasn't practically pushing my female companion out of the shop.  What does one do when someone begins a conversation like this? which starts right in the middle of a contextless story that he not only doesn't understand might make others uncomfortable and make him appear self-absorbed but also wants you to respond and show that you care about this and by extension him.  What does one do?  I opted for a "wow, that really is something," before leaving the booth and then CFM.

That encounter really freaked me out.  Part of it was the unprompted conversation.  Part of it was the kids creepy appearance: he was a country boy with really bad teeth (both yellow and crooked) and a tongue-ring gauged down to the size of a AA battery.  But there was something else that I didn't see until I talked to Sara about it and she made me see it differently in a way that ties into the whole CFM.  What she said was "the kid is probably very lonely... and you know he gets made fun of a lot."  Once again, in her infinite wisdom, the old female companion has made me a better person by forcing me to empathize.  With the help of her words, I realized CFM is a place for all that is unwanted.  I am not just talking about the crap that is being sold either, which includes dogs in sad little cages, no, unfortunately the aura pervades among the people selling their trinkets or whatever in the booths of the colossal structure that reeks of rejection and hopelessness.

Did I Mention I Was Captain of the Dipp Team in College?

I have been what you would call a "sultan of Skoal" since my first year of college.  Since 2001-ish, you would be hard pressed to find me without a pinch of tobackie in my mouth, the only exceptions being work, class, and when making out with a woman (usually).  Chewing tobacco, also known as woman repellent, combines some of my favorites things in life--i.e. the taste/smell of dirt, spitting, nicotine--into one easy-to-use substance.  There are, however, downsides to dipping, supposedly, which are pretty much the same as those just mentioned but only when done in public.  

This is why Camel Snus is my new favorite thing in the world since it eliminates all of those things except for the nicotine of course which it feels like delivers more of than the 3 and a 1/2 cigarettes worth that regular dipp does.  The taste is also delicious.  It tastes like candy.  I know this is hard to believe, especially coming from R. J. Reynolds, but I think Camel is trying to market this stuff to kids.  Why else would they take something that tastes like delicious dirt and make it taste like an after dinner mint?  Answer me that one Reynolds.  But hey, I like the stuff more than anyone ever did dick-faced Joe Camel so go figure.

An Obama Nation

These are notes that I put together in the days leading up to the election and some thoughts from the day of. I am adding to this and trying to get it published. As always, comminents are much appreciated.

AB

T-minus six days until our great and beautiful nation has a peaceful and wonderful regime change, or to be technical begins one, since the change of power doesn’t become official until the twenty something of the next year. We take it for granted, but this doesn’t happen everywhere in the world. Either way, McCain or Obama, I believe it is going to wind up an improvement, but honestly one would prove slightly better while the other will be a huge milestone and a huge improvement.

With that said, this paragraph is something of personal voter history so feel free to skip ahead, but be warned, there are some pertinent voter controversy tidbits that you may want to read. Ever since I have been of voting age, I have witnessed voting controversy, some of these controversies, I have been directly involved in while others I was forced to watch from a distance. Growing up, I was raised to vote as a liberal, and today I am as far left as you can get, the product of a working class, Irish-American background with an old man who said things like “a working class man voting republican is like a chicken voting for the colonel” and a mother who has spent most of her adult life cleaning the homes of wealthy people (including the home of an ex-girlfriend), I have considered myself too poor to vote for the Republican Party. So in 2000, eighteen-years of age, I voted third party (Green) and watched as the party I second (perhaps third considering I am a registered socialist) most identified with celebrate prematurely and have the election stolen away from them. In all my years as an American citizen, 26-years running, I have only been sicker with the democratic system one other time, which came in November 2004, when I had to wait in line for ten and a half hours just to express my constitutionally guaranteed right of voting. The so called “ground zero” of long waits, this “longest line in America” was the most attention paid to my little college until David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech to my graduating class blew up with popularity after the writer’s suicide. On that day, once I was finished up with the frustrating but inspiring experience of casting our votes after thinking that the election was really going to come down to us, suffering through the rain and ridiculous wait, I vowed to never vote again. Immediately after voting, when Fox News was already calling the election a “Bush victory” while other networks were showing some restraint after the 2000 fiasco, I thought I was going to throw up. The next day, in a Shakespeare seminar I was so depressed that I almost skipped, when asked to interpret a portion of a “Macbeth” soliloquy, I responded with basically, “who fucking cares,” and it went over pretty well considering my professor was only a few spots behind me in line and it was no secrete who she was going to vote for, God bless her. But 2006 rolled around, I registered at the last minute, still not really expecting to vote. Plus my congresswoman at the time, up for reelection, a democrat who was bat-shit insane, the now deceased Julia Carson, wasn’t worth the trouble of casting a vote.[*] The night before the election though, a friend of mine who was then in Iraq, fighting for this country that I still naively believe in, told me not to forget to vote. Coming from a combat veteran who was fighting in a war that he doesn’t support, I found my own petty gripes about the democratic system to be insufficient in justifying my staying home and denouncing the system that had previously let me down. So this year, having registered on “Rock the Vote,” I am involved in yet another voter controversy, this time having to do with whether or not I can vote rather than whether or not I choose to. I am afraid that I am one of the many whose voter registration cards has not yet come because my application has gone unprocessed like many other thousands of people who went through that agency. Every four years and some bullshit happens and I am outraged at my American government. Goddamn it, why is it so fucking hard to vote? This is not a good thing and it shouldn’t be stood for, but this too seems to be the rights ploy, making it as difficult as possible for a young, poor voter’s voice to be heard.

* * *

T-minus three. Once I came to terms with the fact that my voter registration card would presumably never come, I got up a little earlier than usual today and took some initiative by going down to the Forsyth County Government Building to register and vote early. With only three hours separating the time I got in line to vote from the time I had to be at work, I was gambling on the efficiency of governmental officials. After the 2004 debacle, I didn’t think this wise, but what was I to do if I wanted to vote? Not too bad this time around, only a two hour wait to cast my ballot. Still infuriating, plus this time I wasn’t surrounded by my nearest and dearest as I was four years ago, though I wasn’t completely alone in the line either, a girl I went to school with was about 15 spaces ahead of me so I did get to talk to her when the winding line snaked just right and we could chat for a couple of minutes until we got too far away from each other and then a few minutes later again converse face-to-face when our spots in line met up. But two hours of wait isn’t nearly as taxing as ten and half. If I would have been in Gambier, I wouldn’t have voted. But I did get to vote and that was that. Now I am done with it and can chill at home watching election coverage on TV while many go out and wait. And wait.

Recently, I heard someone say that “Obama looks presidential while McCain looks like the guy who doesn’t want Barrack Obama to be President.” This turns out to be apt but that seems to be the republican way and it has worked for them in the past. Actually, going back over the past damn near 40-years, it has worked very well with five of the last seven presidents sporting elephants instead of donkeys. Tonight on SNL, McCain made an appearance on “Weekend Update” where he was sort of funny, I guess, in telling of his last minute strategies going into Tuesday, one of which was called the “Old Grandpa” where he basically says “come on people, Barrack Obama has plenty of chances to be President, let me have my turn.” I fail to see how this is all that different from his actual strategy.

* * *

T-minus two. The following is somewhat of a response to a New York Times article from two months ago entitled “The Final Days” written by Peter Baker. According to Baker, the Shrub’s, George W. Bush, legacy depends on McCain winning this election. Though neither likes the other all that much, they found themselves once again connected on the campaign trail. The question that McCain is now asking himself in the Shrub’s 11th hour is whether or not Bush will beat him twice. Win or lose, he is running against a legacy as much as he is a democrat.

McCain knows this. And so does Bush. And so does Obama and most everyone else. Hence the ads that claim McC is a Bush clone and we “can’t afford four more years” and Will Ferrell on SNL doing his W saying “a vote for McCain is a vote for George W. Bush.” For McC’s part, he has been distancing himself as far as humanly possible from the sinking ship that goes way past anything Gore mustered in 2000 with his relationship with Clinton. Unlike Gore though, McC can afford to and he must. Far enough away from the President’s circle of trust and with a well documented history of piss and vinegar candor, McC can criticize W while not seeming like someone who stood back while he screwed up the country or got a blow job from a government intern and then was wishy-washy about it or whatever. Bush, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to be all that pissed off about comments like “we’re worse off than we were four years ago,” which is quite the statement since it refers to the ineptitude of a leader from his own party. He lets McC be an asshole and trounce on his Presidency because that's the guy who can validate it. Obama though no doubt went negative (both candidates went negative, of course), at first setting his sites on the past 8-years, and then on the Bush clone himself. Going after the Republican nominee though may give people just the excuse they need to lose interest and stay at home and do bong rips on Election Day instead of taking the trip to the polling station.

Getting people disinterested is therefore going to benefit the GOP just as it did for Bush in 2000 when he nearly lost to the anti-candidate (McCain). But when the anti-candidate has a realistic shot, the candidate begins to do all those things he or she denounced and did not do before that made him or her popular and standout in the first place. We not only get bored of this stuff, we find it uninteresting and toxic to our ideals.[†] Being popular, in other words, barely matters. What is important is maintaining power. This is what Bush has done, to be sure, after all, many admired the man for “sticking with his gut” and not heeding to things like information and deliberation and history that in the days pre-9/11 get in the way of swift, decisive actions. And thus, we have had the Joker for a President from 2001-2008—“I don’t plan, I just do.”[‡] So, of course he found his presidency a “joyous experience,” he was obeying what he thought was a call from God after all. So sure he is with his rightness in his “principles” and his “values” that he doesn’t even toy with the notion that it could theoretically be mistaken. Maybe it’s not God talking to you there good buddy, its Dick Cheney (who may very well be Satan).

* * *

T-minus one. Got around to reading the Rolling Stone piece on Obama from the October 30 issue and it is amazing, actually the second most amazing thing that I have read about the candidate. He is, no doubt, a historic candidate and this is a historic turning point in American history. He has always been popular. He has become even more popular as of recent days because of this whole economic crisis. Iraq has become second fiddle to this whole “Second Great Depression” and McCain handled it poorly. This shift has put Obama over the top with the “meltdown” on Wall Street as well as McCain’s “equally impressive meltdown” by erratically/recklessly handling of the crisis not to mention his smear campaign that resembles Bush’s tactics he was so pissed about back in 2000. But much of the credit needs to go to Obama himself for “displaying precisely the kind of character and judgement we need in a president: renouncing the politics of fear, speaking frankly on the most pressing issues facing the country and sticking to his principles.” He has had a big couple of weeks, of course, with the wear and tear of a presidential campaign, a wedding anniversary, the death of his grandmother, and win or lose, the coming days are going to prove extremely difficult and even bigger than the days leading up to Election Day.

Part of his appeal has to be his sense of outrage as most Americans have been outraged for quite some time. In Philly two weeks ago, he called the financial crisis “a direct result of the greed and irresponsibility that has dominated Washington and Wall Street for years” and this has been the GOP economic philosophy supported by McCain that insists “the market is king” and believes in the value of Trickle Down Economics that says the super wealthy are the most deserving of massive tax breaks. So when McCain tries to change his tune, America is wise to his tactics.

Things are not good right now, the Bush administration has damaged our country in so many ways. Who would want the job of leading this bruised and battered nation? Obama does. And he is rising to the occasion. Pray for it. Pray for us. God help us.


* * *

Underworld. Woke up and went with my female companion while she went and voted, I having already done so. She gets ready. Dresses like a first lady. I wear track pants, a sleeve on my head, and a hooded sweatshirt.

Once I get back home, I pop in the documentary “Out Foxed” to get me syked for the day’s festivities. There in, Jeff Cohen, former Fox News Contributor, says, “Media is the central nervous system of democracy” and when that it doesn’t run properly, neither does the democracy. So the point is, when right wing propaganda is played around the clock, they distort the news and make it next to impossible to make an informed decision. They misrepresent and then when they are contradicted they speak over the ones contradicting them and claim that they are speaking “the truth” and “facts” when they are being deliberately misleading.

The best part of the video is a segment about Jeremy Glick, a young man that lost his dad in the 9/11 attacks who was on the O’Reily Factor and said that Papa Bear used the 9/11 attacks to project his narrow right wing viewpoint. O’Reily, of course “spins” it after he kicks the kid off his program, calling him “out of control” and claiming the he said that Bush had planned the terrorist attacks. When he tried to sue Bill for defamation, he couldn’t because the guy lies so pathologically that it was almost impossible to prove that he knew he was lying.

I watched the election at a friends house, a partisan house, most of the kids there have parents that voted for McCain. Some are obnoxious, others are cool, all are drunk. When states get called, someone colors them in red or blue on poster-boards of the country. Once the election gets called, we toast to champagne.

I called my parents, we talked for hours, it was a great time and great day the country. I couldn’t enjoy most of it though, the female companion and I were fighting.

One of the first commercials after Obama’s speech I notice is for Vagisil. This is history. History books are being written right now. No time in my life has been more exciting. I am drunk. So is Tom Brokaw. What a country. What a fucking country. I end the night looking at white guys with bad tupes while my beautiful redhead sleeps upstairs while Indiana, the state I was born, goes blue.

[*] A few days before, a friend of my dad’s, an Irish-Catholic guy much like my father, who is very racially conscious, and is married to a black woman, went to a JC political rally and was appalled by the congresswoman who he witnessed attempt to leave a limousine to only fall back in which caused her to lose her hairpiece. In this reported bit of damn near slapstick comedy, JC ended up leaving the wig in the car and some guy ran up to her just as she was about to go on stage for some political rally and threw on her crooked hair which she barely noticed and she had some clueless look on her face throughout the entire speech she read off a piece of paper and the whole thing looked terrible but she still got reelected. She died not long after. That is the system working for us.

[†] For a more eloquent and informed explanation, see David Foster Wallace’s Rolling Stone essay “The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys, and the Shrub” on John McCain’s 2000 run for the Republican Presidential Nomination and political apathy among the young.

[‡] But where does he get the balls big enough? Well, as it turns out, his religious convictions have the same stink of absolutes that drive his foreign policy. There is a deep need to protect the capacity to will such certainty in the face of daunting complexity and opposition that tere is no way he is doing anything other than what he truly believes is right. Like a Norman Rockwell painting, he is going to stand up there as everybody listening looks pissed and do what he damn well wants. But when you think about his supporters in the Evangelical Right he looks more like a Manchurian Candidate who is a puppet for some group of constituents who want things a certain way and are unwilling to budge. Facts don’t need to stand in the way of bold decisions of unshakable faith when there is need for “righteous actions” in the form of a “crusade” where “evil” is attacked and “God’s gift” of democracy is spread to all.

Former Bush speech writer and religious nut job Michael Gerson (the one who coined “The War on Terror”) calls the Shrub’s non-negotiation “unrewarded heroism/courage” in “doing the right thing under pressure.” As Mike Conway says, “he believes he’s got a role and he’s doing what God wants him to do.” To go again God is certainly something I not going to advocate but to put all you’re faith into something that just isn’t going to work is to turn a democracy into what W wants to eliminate in the Middle East—an oppressive, sectarian government where church and state are one.

Top Ten Horror/Halloween Related Movies

Compiling this list, I tried to make it as accurate, yet original, as I could. Upon looking at several other lists, I discovered that most of these can be seen on most critics lists as well as the definitive 100 Scariest Movie Moments which aired on Bravo in 2005 and has been the regarded as the list to end all lists of the movie genre. Much like AFI’s list has its place in the back of minds as the authoritative source for the greatest works of film, the Bravo segment has put our horror in an ordered set that proves conclusive. With that said, this list is not simply a scary movie list, this has to do with the horror genre for the most part yes, but not all of the these flicks are horror outright. Many of them aren’t scary at all in their over the top ridiculousness and some of them are actual comedies—one of them isn’t even a movie. Thus I defend my picks as being anything but another, alternate list to refute the picks made by whatever selection committee Bravo employed to compose their choices. As always, comments are appreciated, so tell me what you think of the little list I have composed here, and let me know if you have anything to add about any of these films or you would like to recommend your own.

The Evil Dead Trilogy- What can I say besides Bruce Campbell is a God among men. The film “Bruce Almighty” in fact was actually a screen adaptation of BC’s life. One of the coolest things I have ever heard was a kid I knew who claims to have hooked up with Bruce’s daughter and afterwards he said “you know what’s really great about this? Your dad is Bruce Campbell!” That did not go over well, as the story goes, but everyone was in agreement that that was the only appropriate thing to say when such a thing happens. I mean who doesn’t love/idolize a guy who writes books titled If Chins Could Kill and Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way? These films are a fist full of “boomstick” and should not only be watched but studied for all those who think Z-Day is coming or who just want to see the manliest of men kick Deadite ass and look extremely cool while doing it.

The Exorcist- The last movie I watched that totally scared the shit out of me. I went to see it my senior year of high school with my lady friend at the time who was extremely averse to watching it. I told her something like “I’ll be here to protect you baby” or something like that. And for the most part I was, but when Linda Blair, in full getup, climbs down the stairs in the way that she does, which I could never accurately put to words, it really must be seen to be appreciated, I was petrified. I could then understand why people fainted, vomited, and ran out of the theater screaming when I saw that incredible scene on the big screen. I couldn’t look at the stairs in my basement where my bad faced them for weeks and slept on the couch upstairs it fucked with me so badly.

Event Horizon- Rented the film thinking it was going to be a rip off of Star Trek and/or Alien and would involve a bunch or space/science fiction stuff that I was used to. Thus I was completely unprepared for how freaky and terrifying this movie really is. I have talked to many people about this movie and all of their reactions are ultimately the same, saying something along the lines of “that was the scariest fucking movie I have ever seen.” And with the exception of The Exorcist, I would say this film staring Sam Neal and Lawrence Fishburn is, surprisingly, one of the scariest films ever made. Traveling into other dimensions that are thought to be pinnacles of human achievement, they actually open up a gateway to hell, I know it sounds cheesy but you have no idea how chilling this movie really is until you watch it and are paralyzed with absolute fear.

Halloween 1 and 2- October wouldn’t be complete without at least one viewing of each of these two John Carpenter films. These archetypal slasher flicks really should be watched together, but never watch 2 without 1. Many of the critiques that caused the second film to be so much less popular hold true—stuff like it not making any sense if you haven’t seen the original (as with any horror sequels I feel), the plot being absurd, full of cheap thrills, etc. But when viewed together, the second one has a charm that one has to like in films where upwards of a dozen young people are brutally murdered. Plus it provides conclusion which you don’t get with the first one. Though don’t even bother watching any of the ones that follow. They just aren’t very good. (Rob Zombie’s remake isn’t too bad either btw, and for someone who grew up on these flicks, there are a bunch of little nobs to original franchise. One of note is that Danielle Harris, who I sort of had a little thing for when I was a child based on her staring roles in Halloween 4 and 5, returns to the series in the role of Annie Brackett, protagonist Laurie Strode’s best bud. Malcolm McDowell takes over Donald Pleasence’s old role as Dr. Loomis, another little perk that may make this little diddy worth seeing.

In the Mouth of Madness- Another Sam Neal staring role, as well as a John Carpenter film, this 1995 film might be the director’s most chilling work. In this horror flick, a best selling author goes missing while he still churns out creepy work. Neal then goes on the hunt to find the author and ends up in one twisted town that turns out to be some kind of Hell where the books play out in real life. While staying in this hell-hole, he finds that whoever reads the book goes completely and violently insane. With people assuming he has gone mad, he is tucked away in a mental institution while a film version is in the works with anyone who watches again being instantly transformed, and considering the mass appeal and easy access to the film, the work of fiction is ready to alter the outcome of civilization.

Re-Animator- As you can probably already tell, I love myself some absurd, over the top zombie flicks and this one is right up there with Army of Darkness as being the best of the best. This is a bizarre, low budget film, that is as gory as it is darkly funny. For example, an asshole doctor who has been decapitated, carries his head around and after he ties up his colleague’s daughter, one of his student’s who is romantically involved with the medical school’s prized student, he takes the severed head and attempts to perform oral sex on the girl in the film’s most infamous scene.
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein- Bud Abbott and Lou Costello team up with horror greats Bella Lugosi (the quintessential Dracula), Lon Chaney Jr. (the timeless wolf-man), and Glenn Strange (after Boris Karloff gave up the monster role afraid he was being typecast, it was Strange who would go on to star in half a dozen or more Frankenstein roles) in this monster movie spoof that was kind of a farewell to all of these great stars from the genre’s golden age. At times hilarious, even by today’s standards, it is another over the top monster movie which without would leave my list incomplete.

Scream- My favorite “teen scream” of the 1990s, this came out just when I was about to enter high school and I loved it. A bunch of hot little things running around being chased by a masked butcher sporting THOs, it was great. It also paid tribute to all the slasher flicks that came before with a horror encyclopedia incarnate. As a trilogy, Scream left something to be desired, although all three were alright in their own little ways, the original was clearly the best and the only one I will more than likely watch this Halloween season.

Silence of the Lambs- It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again.

The Blair Witch Project- The first time I saw this, during the summer of 99 at Tibbs Drive In, where I spent more time and energy making out/getting it on than I did watching the movie, I ended up in the concession stand buying hamburgers and nachos and missed the beginning part where it was explained that the serial killer guy would make one of the kids face the corner while he killed the other one. The girl I was with at the time also missed this bit of information although she stayed back in the car watching the movie. So when I saw the end, with that guy in the corner being the last thing we see before the camera falls to the ground and we hear screaming, I didn’t get it. I remember thinking something like WTF that does not seem like an appropriate time to just whip it out in the corner and start taking a piss, this movie sucks and is not scary, people, why are going to see this stupid, stupid movie. Then a year later, with a new gf, I was forced to watch the film I had put way out of my mind. I didn’t remember anything about it when I rewatched it on Halloween 2000. After viewing it that time though, I got why it was so goddamn scary and what all the hype was about. Good show.

Fifteen Notable Mentions: Nosferatu; Rosemary’s Baby; Psycho; Hell Raiser; The Omen; Vacancy; The Vanishing; The Howling; The Others; Thriller; A Nightmare on Elm Street; The Hitcher; House on Haunted Hill (1959); The Last House on the Left; Jacob’s Ladder

An Amendment to “Black Friday”

On a day that I posted about how in the service industry “there is no such a thing as being human,” I witnessed one of the most tender, least bull shitty acts human understanding I have seen in some time, and I must say, it actually moved me. The act, described below, was performed by a girl around 18-yearsold who is somewhat self-conscious and insecure and seemed to desperately want to make an impression on her new co-workers—which is understandable—but these things have nothing to do with why she did what she did or the act itself. While I don’t know what to make of it, in an act of full disclosure considering what I wrote yesterday in my piece Black Friday, here it is.

Sometime during the dinner rush around 7:30 or so, with every table occupied and on a 25-minute wait and the big screen playing the UNC-Notre Dame contest in a town where everyone either loves UNC or goes to Wake and people are intent and focused on food and football, a kid with severe mental disabilities starts shouting very loudly some general football terms that are audible even from the recesses of the kitchen. And people getting uncomfortable in a really bad way—I have people asking for their checks and holding their temples looking down at their crotch and whispering about the kid and the scene he is making—and this isn’t really good for anyone. Servers begin whining, people are staring, I here someone say “why don’t they just leave.”

But just as people are about to stampede for the door, a hostess who started a week ago to the day, came over to the clearly frightened severely mentally disabled boy and his ancient companion (who I assume was his grandfather[*]) and squeezed her way into a one person booth, taking up very little of the kid’s space but still setting with him and just talking and listening to his pleas of “score!” and “touchdown!” Maybe part of it was the fact that he had a very pretty young girl sitting next to him actually giving him her undivided attention that calmed him down, I know it works for me when I am freaking out and my unbelievable female companion shows me that I am worthy of such lavish and unwarranted attention. But as with the case with my female companion, there was something else that transcended simple circumspection. It is shown in words and tone and body language that all say it is ok and you are a person and you are human and you are worthy without having to actually say it.

So as she sat there talking to the unlikely pair, she provided comfort for everyone around her. Obviously for the kid, but also for the grandpa in listening to their story, which she barely mentioned afterwards to the inquiring minds, and then the paying customers who were annoyed with the outbursts and the servers who were having to damage-control their tables and on down the line of employees and customers all with a single act of kindness. It visually illustrated the fact that we all are connected and that can be a good thing. When it was over and the two were gone, I told her something along the lines of “nice job” but it was insufficient sounding like some work related issue which it was not, not really. It went beyond that and I hope she realizes this and retains this quality.

After I had some time to reflect on this event, this lone instance of actual, really deep caring, I started to think that maybe this actually shows how most of us are broken by such places. In this line of thinking, I figured it would take someone who has only been working at it for only a week to do something like this. Later, a newer server who has worked at other branches of the company who is one of the most negative people I work with and bitches a lot and calls people “redneck” or “ghetto” depending on race and is pissed off about something virtually every night though he is a nice enough guy for the most part and has been doing this far longer than I have and is also “educated” apparently had some sort of talking to with the hostess because it was late and she was forced to set people in his section around the bar (though she tried to sit at least two of these tables in my section but the TVs aren’t over there and who wouldn’t rather sit in a table around the bar anyway) and it didn’t look like these folks really gave a shit about when we close (20 and then 15-minutes from when they moseyed on in) and were only drinking water (often times a sign of how cheap the table is comes from the drink order which tells you a lot about the way they are going to tip you[†]) and never even acted like they wanted to be there and have you prepare their drinks and dinners for them.

Afterwards, she was pretty upset and said that she is now “thinking about leaving.” Here is a young female who did an unbelievably kind thing that greatly benefited the restaurant in a way that pretty much went unacknowledged by anyone but me because everyone in there was so self-absorbed. I mean, this was a place where two weeks ago a severely mentally disabled employee (who is so handicapped he is actually appears happy) was coming out of the back when he not only slipped and fell on the hard tile but after landing awkwardly, he like sort of slid, sort of bounced, and racked himself on a pole of the platform where the guys in the back wash dishes. It was incredible as far as falls go. It was the worst one I had ever personally seen in that it was a double edged sword of wounded pride with the initial fall and then the skid into pole resulting in genital anguish. It was also, I hate to say, slapstick comedy. When it happened I couldn’t believe he had actually went down the way that he did, the odds had to be astronomical, and I was frozen for a second, everyone was. But, being right there only a couple of feet away dropping off dirty plates, I went over and helped the poor guy up. Once on his feet, he simultaneously grabbed his elbow with his uninjured arm and his crotch with the arm being held. That is when some people began laughing. It made me sick to my stomach but I can’t say that I blame them. Maybe in the future she will be one of those that laugh and say things like “he really shouldn’t be here” but today she is not. She is human. It is the staying human that I pray she keeps and pray that we all keep.

[*] Something that a lot of times will happen in cases like this is the severely mentally disabled will go unwanted by their biological parents and instead of institutionalizing this person, a family member will take the person in and care for them. My grandpa did this with a second cousin or something who was maybe ten years older than my dad who remembers my grandpa telling him to stick up for him and not let anyone give the guy any shit. So my grandpa and my dad took on a lot of the responsibility with this guy whose story was a very sad one indeed—he was dropped as an infant not once but twice by nurses and went unloved and uncared for by his own parents who wanted nothing to do with the burden of caring for a child with special needs (though it was a different time then, I suspect things like this still happen as they did back 40-years ago). When this guy died in 2003, my grandpa and my dad were the only attendees of his funeral, marking the sad end to a excruciatingly sad life. The point is, I suspect this was a situation similar with a relative stepping in to raise a child with special needs.
[†] For example, it has happened on occasion that a family will come in and when you prepare to ask about maybe bringing them a Samuel Adams Oktoberfest, which really are delicious btw, they cut you off mid-sentence and act offended like you are one of the many salesmen in their lives trying to dictate your purchasing/spending, which technically you are, or like you are stupid for not like knowing that they would never drink ever or at a restaurant that overcharges or in front of children or late on a Saturday night or while operating a motor vehicle or whatever. These people do not tip well. You are extremely lucky to get 10% out of them. The most telltale sign thoughthat your tip is going to be lousy, in my experience, is when the adults in this situation order “water with lemon” and then order the drink for the kids however diminutive such an action appears to everyone involved and makes a point of stating that their offspring would like whatever beverage of their choosing “in a kids cup” as in “he’ll have a kid’s coke” which is free and they typically know is free and involves extra work for you because they are tiny and have lids that make refilling and knowing when to refill a pain because they want to make sure you don’t charge them the buck fifty for a regular sized glass, which I never do anyway, and is yet another way of telling you you are too stupid to see this person is a child and thus gets a free beverage all before the adult themselves try and order a ½ order of ribs or steak off the kids menu to save a couple of duckets because it is the same quality of food at a slightly cheaper price and the whole thing just makes you want to quit and tell them they need to get with the fucking program here and acknowledge what they already know in that servers get paid like shit for an hourly wage and depend on your gratuity to make rent and we are working hard to get a paid just like you are and so on and so forth.

Black Friday

The economy is something I cannot begin to understand. I read reports, ask knowledgeable friends questions, listen to debates, but most of all, I get my feel for the economy by how much money I have left over (or rather how much more I owe) after the necessary expenses are taken care of. According to this system, the only system I can pretend to comprehend, after the bare essentials and one bi-monthly luxury item, my first since May came this past Wednesday so now that is becoming more of a biannual thing it would appear, I can afford to spend about $90 a month. I am someone who has reached a 5-digit salary only once in my life (and even then I literally just broke it) yet I have amassed a 6-digit almost entirely from my absurdly expensive education. While outstanding, my education has made me, I am estimating, about $15,000 in its totality. That is $12,500 for teaching and $2,500 for various writing jobs. That number, as depressing as it is, is about the same as the jobs I have had that require no education or even frown upon it. For example, the summers or 1999 through 2001, when I worked as a lifeguard, I made about $2,500 each year. The summers I was in college I made even less at J.C. Penney’s and landscaping, which was more accurately described as getting high and smashing things with a shovel, that goes for both of those jobs. In those summers I made around $1,500 and then did not work one of those years instead taking summer school. Out of college, post-academia, I did some internet database updating for some company, worked with my mom for a while, had a few sales jobs which I was terrible at and technically lost money, spent two weeks in advertising, and did a brief stint with FedEx. In sum with those odd jobs, I made something like $3,000. Now working in the service industry, don’t get me started on how badly I hate this job, I have probably made about $3,500 in the last three months.

I am not going to add all this up, it is too depressing, but I bet they are even keel. Plus if you count the year I was technically unemployed, a year I spent working for a bookie and gambling, I guess my main source of income that year would be picking NFL winners, filling out March Madness tournament brackets, and getting unbelievably lucky in basically blind draws with the sport of kings (horse racing), I would be better off, financially speaking, if I didn’t even go to school. Because starting in 1999, my schooling has cost me[1] an intimidating six-digit-number that overwhelms me just thinking about. And I have yet to even dent it. Two years at Park Tudor at $12,000 a year, plus four years at Kenyon totaling among the nation’s highest (#2 when I went there which is boasted as though it were something to be really proud of)[2] [3] with a whopping $38,000 price tag (that I consider well worth every penny [it at least in the time I was a student there] and upon my deathbed will probably consider the four happiest years of my life), though no one, save for Colin and Joe F. who are very well off but compared to some of the families there are practically beggars, and in full disclosure, I paid less and than half of that number, and then Wake Forest, in a program I am not even going to finish, I took out over $20,000 in student loans. I am actually starving here, I have lost over 50 pounds in the last year, where am I gonna get that kind of money?

I probably won’t. There are friends of mine here in a similar predicament as mine but are more responsible and these people actually know something about economics. They are basically saying the crisis will probably help us out because with all of this student debt that is going unpaid yet must be paid, the gov. will likely devise a new plan/strategy to deal with it. Our prosperity literally depends on it. Or so they say. Maybe that is one of the reasons the crisis doesn’t seem to scare me all that much, I am a survivor, I live simply and will continue to do so. Even if someone were to say, “Yo, AB! You the bomb! Here is a MacArthur fellowship for your bitchin ass! Have at it,” I would probably give most of money away and with what is left over start some sort of literary journal. I don’t own any big ticket items. The most expensive things I own, my car (which I inherited from my grandpa when he died, worth around $6,000 dollars though I take shit care of it and currently rock a donut as one of my tires) and my watch (my parents’ gift for graduating college which is an unbelievably beautiful and tasteful Swiss made Tissot worth about $600)[4] are things that were given to me and not things I would have spent money on myself to own. Its all just stuff and I pride myself on having virtually nothing.

So the point of this little musing, I guess, is to say that I see people freaking out all the time about this damn “Depression” and it doesn’t really scare me. The big-wigs macking it hard will still mack it hard and the poor are still gonna be desperately poor. Can’t people see that the system is incredibly fucked and one-sided and always going to end with inequality and oppression?

This “Black Friday” stuff I heard all over the radio today—from NPR to local rock-block to ESPN—has got people obsessing. My female companion talks about how scared she is about what all this is going to do to her credit score. Sometimes she gets pretty freaked out about it, especially when she starts inquiring about my debt and my credit, which I know nothing about other than it just has to be terrible.

Yesterday, before I heard any of this business, I went to the bank in order to cash my pay checks from work and found a line that practically went out the door. Wha? It turned out people were freaking out about this whole crisis and running to the bank to pull out their savings—ah la It's a Wonderful Life—or so I believe though it was late in the afternoon on a Friday so who knows. The line, dominated by old people, which makes me suspect that the line did in fact result from the quote unquote “Black Friday” thing, was so decrepit that at multiple times when the teller would call out “may I help you” the hard of hearing senior citizens would stand there staring strait ahead until someone with a better hearing aid finally tapped them and pointed them in the direction they needed to go.

When my turn finally came, I lucked out and came to the same woman I dealt with the last time I was in this particular branch. The first time I had went in there, this woman, young, somewhat attractive, huge rack, tried to set me up with a checking account with them. I went through the motions but I had recently been turned down with another bank because I joined an account with my mom in my name that she had overdrawn. Lacking $400, neither I nor my mom can pay it off, thus I am to remain bankless, at least for the time being. But I was going through this then because the woman said she would waive the check cashing fees on all my checks and maybe it would like go through or something as she said. Then, in late July or sometime around there, she was flirty and accommodating and said that whenever I got a valid ID, don’t ask, I could come in there and she would waive the fees, anytime.

So yesterday, hoping to make good on that proposition, I went to her and reminded her of this exchange. The look she gave me was not the flirty, playful look I witnessed back in July but one of annoyance seeing me now as something of a burden, or so I interpreted. “I personally said that?” she kept demanding to know, also asking a rhetorical “Why would I say that?” that seemed to imply I was either lying or had greatly misunderstood our conversation. She then informed me that the checks would cost $6 each to cash, although that bank did not charge some businesses to cash their checks there. This is what happened to be the case with my employer and this bank. It certainly did clear things up for me then, what I assumed was this attractive and flirty young woman doing something nice for me person-to-person was in fact just doing her job, caring out a function that was as part of her routine as bringing a to-go side of dressing is to mine.

When money is involved it is hard to stay human and when money is tight it is harder still. On nights when I am in no mood to ask my tables what they want to stuff themselves with, as tonight I am sure will prove to be which I am already dreading, when a table of seven, one less than the number of people required to get an automatic 18% tacked on to the bill, spends $150 on food and drinks which constantly need refilling and leaves a $10 tip if I am lucky or a $1 tip on $80 and then say something like “you are an excellent server” and ask me “is that alright?” my job requires me to say “oh yes, thank you very much” instead of the obvious “no everything is not alright, you just gave me a shitty tip and I am working my ass off here” I certainly don’t feel like myself. On these nights, at that job, at any service job, there is no such a thing as being human. There is only the customer is always right and you have to live by it. To hell with you.

[1] My parents, barely making ends meet themselves, have not contributed a penny to my education unlike most people at the three wonderful and expensive schools I attended. Most of my peers were of families in the top 5% of yearly income, at worst, whereas my parents are more like at or below the national median making a combined $40,000ish annually. I tried to use the U.S. Census Bureau as my source here, then some other reputable agencies, but without any economic knowledge or skill, except buying things that are cheap, I couldn’t make heads or tales out of it. But hey, Wikipedia makes it easy, there I get the information I seek with minimal trouble, get class and money involved and information just disappears especially in an economic crisis. So anyway, here is my God damned source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Household_income_in_the_US. Thus I have borrowed and worked, but mostly borrowed, seeing this education thing as an investment that right now is not paying out in dollars like I was told it would. But to be fair its not like I really motivated by moneys, I have never had and don’t really know what I am missing. Nor do I really care to know.
[2] http://www.forbes.com/2008/01/21/education-university-globalization-biz-cx_bw_lh_0121colleges.html
[3] http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/stories/2008/03/24/story11.html
[4] Mom and Dad saved up for a year and half to buy me something special for I am the first one in my family to finish college—a family that is so large and reeks with so much Irish Catholic descent that to go through the names of aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins and so on and so forth would be incredibly involved. So anyway, this is an item I love and I don’t really love stuff. I am in constant panic that I own such a beautiful thing and I am always thinking I will or have lost and I get complimented on about once a month, the most recent one being from a co-worker whose name is Jordan who I think is the type of chick it is probably good to have on your side and reminds you of every cheerleader you ever met, I am sure you get the idea, who said while I was pouring tea out of a bucket into a dispenser “Oh my God, you have a really, really nice watch…It is seriously beautiful,” which, you know, doesn’t suck to hear, but nonetheless, I love it but I could never justify spending that much on myself.

See Also:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2008/10/if-ever-there-w.html

http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/882789?UserKey=

Dead At 46: David Foster Wallace Hanged Himself and It Will Never Make Sense

DFW, who is my favorite writer of all time and the inspiration for the name of this blog (from his novel Infinite Jest) and the first contemporary writer who has a substantial amount of work out there that I have read in its entirety, who I witnessed give the commencement address to end all commencement addresses—Kenyon College Class of 2005—which I turn to whenever I think about how working in the service industry makes me want to stick my head in a microwave or think about how much I hated grad school or anything really that I just can’t deal with in a rational way, who I talk about everyday to my girl friend’s annoyance, has just taken himself off the map.  It sucks and I am as sad as anyone can be over the death of someone I don’t actually know.

I don’t watch TV.  I don’t care about celebrity culture.  And I don’t shed tears for anyone outside of my most nearest and dearest.  But Don Gately got my eyes flowing at a time when the end of my then current relationship to a girl I had loved since high school never did.  I saw a lot of Gately in myself as a once “near great” football player who is “massive” who found work with a bookie and is an alcoholic with an affinity for Demerol.  Plus I read the book while teaching at a boarding school outside of Boston, a job that I hated, yet found comfort in this work of splendid fiction. 

It is no wander that IJ has been called “the grunge American novel.”  Kurt Cobain and to a lesser extent Layne Staley (though the music of Alice in Chains had a more profound effect on me, I had mourned for Staley long before they found him dead) were the only other quote unquote celebrities that moved me in anyway, one was also a suicide, and I find that my heart ache this time around is even more awful.  Cobain and Staley pointed out how shitty the world is and while listening to their music, I felt momentary release and continue to.  With DFW though, I find ways to connect with other people and to see the world as a less hostile place, which Nirvana/Alice in Chains/Mad Season definitively did not do.  

When I first heard about the death of my literary hero, it was from the person who probably knows me better than anyone else, my girl friend whom I live with and love and who understands that this is the one person in the world outside of my close and very small circle whose death would have a devastating effect on me.  I was in the can at my shitty, shitty job, risking dismissal for having my phone out and in use, hitting send on my missed call from “The PGOAT”, which I typed in on the night we met, and on this night, when she began to talk, I was afraid that Darth Maul, the black cat we are cabbaging from our neighbors, had been run over by a car.  No, thank God, but in the long run it was something much worse.  Sara, the girl friend, has made me promise, before and again on this evening, that I would not do that to her—hang or in anyway de-map myself—and I won’t.  I wouldn’t do that to her or to my parents because of what I have learned from the man who himself could not swallow his own medicine.  I believe love involves empathy and connection and now I have allowed myself to be vulnerable enough to do that—to love and experience empathy—which I interpret all of the thousands of DFW pages to really, at their core, convey.

But what to do when the one person whose words you turn to when you just don’t feel like going on, in your darkest hours when you barely feel human, when you are nothing more than some abstract conception of grief or doubt or negativity, whose words always bring you back from whatever despair you find yourself consumed by, has killed himself.  Was he consumed by this idea that he was a fraud like his character in “Good Old Neon”?  Did he feel “weak and afraid” or maybe “stupid, afraid, always on the verge of being found out”? Did he buy into the line of thinking that he explicitly warned us was so soul sucking and deadly on that lovely May morning in 2005?  Perhaps he had that “constant, gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing,” Some probably question whether he felt washed up and/or like a sell out considering that Brief Interviews is being made into a feature film and rumors circulate that Infinite Jest may be as well and lets not forget the photo of him in GQ last year.  None of these questions really matter though and we are never going to get answers unless a 200 page suicide note begins to circulate (which it very well might), his fiction and essays will continue to make me a much better and happier person and will never be more than a couple of feet away lest I forget “what it is to be a fucking human being.”  His death is an extraordinarily sad thing.

Below are some of the better pieces I have read that talk about his death.  I am still in shock.

Washington City Paper

La Times

Gawker

Kottke.org

New York Times

LA Times: Farewell, David Foster Wallace

A Pit Bull in Lipstick is the Same as a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing; Isn't it?

Gov. Palin, as it turns out, is a pit-bull.  Not only did she herself allude to this, but often times I will employ this term for a person who at first seems passive and reserved to only surprise you with ferociousness when push comes to shove.  My mother for example, standing at all of 5’2, has been called a pit bull before.  Even though I agree with her—Palin that is—politics only about 1% of the time, I have to give her credit for her apparent outrage.

And she sunk her teeth deep into the media and the Democratic campaign last night both of whom supposedly crossed the line in speaking about her home life, despite the fact that it seems the Republicans involved went on the offensive to break the story, and her qualifications as a running mate.  As far as her qualifications go, I don’t think that is an area where Obama really wants to tread considering much of the questioning of his own qualifications is just now starting to die down.  Plus there is the fact that she is a Governor which neither McCain nor Obama can boast as true of themselves and that is usually regarded as one of the stipulations to becoming a viable Presidential Candidate. 

As for the other charge, I contend that going on the offensive with the breaking news on Monday was a clever way of provoking controversy and thereby taking everything that gets said about and saying it is biased and sexist.  This is sort of what conservatives charge liberals with doing, kind of like crying wolf or intimidation in their offended states—i.e. you are just looking for something to make the issue about race or gender or class or what-have-you when it really has little to do with those things in the first place.

That said, the focus of The New York Times today was not on the creepy right wing stuff that Palin said but rather the “melodrama” that always seems to garner so much attention and focus.  As Obama pointed out, I “did not hear a single word about the economy… Not once did they mention the hardships that people are going through.”  The poor, as usual, go uncared for and in their economic plan, which consists of it would seem tax cuts!,  the divide between rich and poor would only be greater. 

Then, of course, there is God’s creation to look at that we are given dominion over.  Too often that call for care is interpreted as making Mother Nature bow to the nature of man, which is complete futile, and ends with destruction.  The energy crisis we are in, Palin says, has a quasi-solution just off Alaska’s shores in untapped natural oil reserves.  What a plan. 

The Doomsday Clock is down to five minutes till midnight and the crowd in Minnesota chanted “Drill Now, Drill Now, Drill Now!”!  She says they are also going to “lay more pipelines, build more nuclear plants, create jobs with clean coal and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal and other alternative sources,” one can only assume in that order, leaving little time for “moving forward” as we still focus on nonrenewable resources (with the except of nuclear energy of course).

But no one hears about any of this stuff except for just in passing.  It doesn’t sell papers to talk about stuff like this.  It isn’t sexy and no one cares.  So all we get is talk about what order McCain hugged Palin’s family in.  

Copernicus Called and You are Not the Center of the Universe: The Gen Y Problem

Until recently I always believed that it was possible to succeed in America with out making a lot of money. This seemed especially true in this day and age when all the people I associate with have at least a B.A. and can compete at about a AAA level when it comes to mental acrobatics. I was taught that money is easily found and there will always be sales jobs or whatever out there where the potential to make that all mighty dollar is almost limitless for those that are able to sell themselves. This may seem attractive; making a lot of money is pretty much the universal goal. Make money to buy shit, consume and you will be happy. Not so fast my friends, the money, the car, the hype, the fringe benefits are all consolation prizes for getting eaten alive. I could care less about moneys and live on something like eight grand a year. I am ok with this. However, my generation, the so-called millennials or gen y-ers, is in danger of becoming the most self-obsessed and despairing adults the world has yet to breed and i don't think most are even aware of it.

Right now I have the potential to start making a somewhat comfortable living; I have a degree and am in grad school at a supposed good school. But who cares. Not long ago, last fall to be exact, I was dejected: jobless, continuously drinking, my relationships were falling apart, addicted to television, living in a vacuum. The personal here was a mess and everything I did to try and fix it proved unhelpful. Significantly, I think, at this time I also came to the realization that salary is the only yardstick of cultural authority that matters to anyone and everyone and I would never make it the full yard. This comes as a crushing blow to my self-esteem. I know I do not have what it takes to be successful in the economic world of business where mercenaries get paid to trade hot stock tips. Film and books, places I could always escape to in times of despair, proved even more depressing. Remember that Will Smith movie that came out Novembers 2006? The Pursuit of Happiness? The “pursuit” in this piece was equated with getting a high paying job and basically shit.

This should be enlightening to us on the social level. This film's thesis would be something like make money, consume, be happy: the capitalist mantra. Is this what we are reduced to? Do we really want to be sending this type of message? Apparently so. Our parents for the most part, the baby boomers, are the ones that started this trend of consumerism as a type of social control with televised commercials for an infernal machine that is freaky and depressing. Even worse, look at the first children to spring from their loins. These children grew up and were responsible for the 80s. This time should be looked on as some of our darkest days—blind spending, sex crazed, 20something year olds that were reckless and cost us more than anyone cares to see or admit—and basically who cares. The 80s were the first time in American history where the young and irresponsible started making bank. Airlines have never had such success (not convinced, look at Pan. Am.) than in that ten year span; Reaganomics where supposed to end poverty, and we saw our first AIDS crisis in that decade (whatever the fuck that means, I am just saying).

Fast-forward past the gen x-ers and you get us, for Christ’s sake, the blind, illiterate, and culturally unengagable. What exactly has happened to the upper-middle-class-American-child? Part of this has to do with our unwillingness to read or listen. This is due to some extent to the fact that we are having a hard time getting past the personal and into the social. We see the world as being here for our amusement: alone. Our beliefs are the only ones that matter and we cannot even comprehend how anything can be interpreted in any way but the right way—which is to say—our way. This all happens while those with answers, the poet, the novelist, the what-have-you, have more and more to say while we have less and less desire to listen. We need our entertainment instantaneously, it has to be immediate now a days. “Technology attacked religion a long time ago and then it affected our fiction,” as the Jonathan Franzen saying goes.

The average American sees him or herself as totally unique. Cannot see what they possibly have in common with someone from another part of the country or someone across the street. But—news flash—we are all pretty much the same. There in lies the problem. We see in our selves something hollow and missing but we still fail to connect. It is way fucking easier to just roll your eyes and not give a shit. Still though, are any of us really happy? I have met few genuinely happy people and on the rare occasion I have it has been hard to take people like that seriously; you can’t help but look at them with a cynical eye or write them off as insane. So anyway, what happens is everyone consumes to the best of their means and look for remedies for their unhappiness in places that are diverse yet promise the same goal—ah la ending this existential nightmare. Zoloft, Ativan, therapy, changing majors, changing locals, changing appearances, getting a high paying job, etc. and you are still the same piece of shit only now with a dollop of whipped cream on top. Observations on human behavior: we all pay high prices, loss our hair, buy old products we think are new but just differently labeled. Looking through ads, you on Times Square, her in teen Vogue, me in everywhere I look, for solutions to problems we think are treatable by spending money.

Last year, I had been communing via e-mail (a media I hate) with a friend from college who was English major. When I asked her what she was reading she said not a thing. This is a girl who I always thought of as a life-long-reader but has now lost her drive, and we no longer have anything to talk about. The world has fallen on dark days when even the lit major has no need for books. The world is slowly and surely in decline due to a great deal to my generation but think of it as tough love because we are the future whether that is a good thing or not and we can’t really do anything about it. Or can we? Who knows? It all gets too depressing to even think about. So don’t if you don’t want to. I am just saying.