Snippet Overheard on Philly Streets of the Day

Gap-toothed white beard to his young and burdened protege:

"Because time keeps on movin, like a bird, flyin from one place, to another."

Hangover

Here is a movie that lives up to its name. I had a pretty good time, I think, and now I feel kind of sick.

The movie is a vomitous splurge of humor in its many variations, most notably funny and not funny, though the possibility does exist to break the jokes down further into categories like stupid, unsubtle, or artfully constructed. Vomitous and uncontrolled. The opening image left me with hope: a Kill Bill-esque desert landscape with a busted car and some effed up dudes who LOST THE GROOM during a bachelor party. It seemed edgy and sinister enough at the moment, but hindsight says maybe it was just the music. Anyway, after some dicks and asses and making fun of the fat guy who is also stupid, the movie finally gets around to the absurdity in which it thrives: the predictably ruined hotel room, complete with chicken, tiger, and lots of other stuff. The amnesiac detective narrative frame serves the movie well and keeps gags moving, stackin 'em up on top of each other as things start to get a little bit funny and Mike Tyson lays out the stupid fat guy with a wicked right hook. All of the men find the empowerment they really needed by the end of the film, so don't worry, just like we shouldn't worry that every other character in the 'adventure' narrative is a token: "hey guys if we make the black guy a drug dealer, the asian an evil sniveling queer, and the woman a whore who is also a really sweet girl, we're totally spinning this thing! also let's say retard an uncomfortable number of times."

I'm kind of shocked the Philly Inquirer reviewer was waxing lyrical about this film. The "Citizen Kane" of bender movies!??!?! Because it's well shot, in the desert, and has a pretty sweet arc beginning with alienation and ending with exhaustion? Yes, funny. Yes, rolicking. Yes, possessed of the bachelor party milieu. No, nothing distinguishing, besides it may leave you feeling a little bit filthier. Good show, Hangover, for truth in advertising.

CYBORGS ON NETWORK TV!

I like "Chuck." I like it a lot. To catch allo'y'all up as quickly as possible: chuck is a geek loser working very hard at the "buymore," an electronics superstore, to not live up to his genius-level potential until one day an experimental supercomputer called "The Intersect" is implanted in his brain granting him access to the ultimate intelligence database by way of "flashes" -- unwrapping of said intelligence into his conscious mind through a visual trigger -- which results in the government deploying two crack agents and a lot of fancy hardware to protect "The Asset" from an ambiguous axis-of-evil type secret group known as Fulcrum, priority 1, as well as to take advantage of his capabilities in saving the world, priority 2. One of the agents is a "perfect dime piece" as my brother might say, and she and Chuck fall in love but are separated by the official nature of their relationship and the endlessly unfolding hijinx as can be imagined per the show's premise. A delightfully entertaining mix of comic book high-geek secret agent shit with great bufoonery from the employees of the buymore with a heart-warming alternative family drama (Chuck and sister were abandoned by father at a young age and I'm pretty sure the mom died at some point. Chuck, sis, and sis's fiance all live together).

Now, the meat. Chuck is a modern cyborg. His brainspace has been invaded completely. He works through the machine; the machine works through him. This doesn't make him into a superman, it makes him into a commodity. He is referred to as "The Asset," he has "handlers," and, most importantly, Chuck's central struggle is not in saving the world--that comes secondarily--it is in asserting his person-ness in the face of the both fulcrum and the government's attempts to pack him up and pull the computer out of his head.

The show is borderline subversive in the way it handles this drama: Chuck's humanity is repeatedly threatened, and he wins every time without even trying, without exaggerated gestures of heroism and, mostly importantly, without violence. It's as if, at the moment the machine inhabited him to the extent that he was no longer Chuck, some protector's spirit rose up and out, ceding the flesh to unlock life in the machine and destroying the machine's rational, binary perfection. A real cyborg! This protector's spirit follows Chuck through all of his unlikely trials and smites all the clowns that would mistake a fellow man for an object to be treated as less than human.

Telling also that the setting for Nick Bottom and Peter Quince's descendents is an electronics superstore. The employees make a circus of corporate america, turning a warehouse of a shop on steroids into a village. The goods and geekeries transformed into symbols of status, as opposed to the more common reality of symbols stripped and sold, which is something we witness daily.

Watch chuck! It's awesome!

Susan, Susan, Susan

From cigarette lighter to iPod charger to iPod to radio input to speakers, a podcast sounds in the cavity of an automobile barreling down the highway at eighty miles per hour.

(paraphrase)
IRA GLASS: How did you react when you saw the clip of Susan Boyle in Britain's Got Talent?

SOME RADIO GUY: Oh, I totally got choked up, which, you know, just made me wonder about my own ethical outlook... that I should be surprised to such a reaction, when the only difference is how the woman looks.

Ok, so some effete, liberal intellectual on NPR has his values challenged in a kind of wake-up call about the actualities of cultural perception. "I know that all human beings are equally capable regardless of race and appearance, so I am wrong for reacting emotively to her performance. The television people are manipulating my sentiment for the sake of entertainment and thereby cheapening one of my dearly held democratic principles."

Hey! This isn't about you, NPR guy.

I've heard the sentiment elsewhere: why should people be so surprised that she can sing just because she isn't a pop star? What's the big deal?

Well, for starters, this isn't about the triumph of an ugly person getting on TV and SHOCKING everyone by being able to sing. The drama is a different one entirely: Susan Boyle broke all the rules of the game, and there's nothing we all love more than a very small dose of liberation.

What she did was tear down the dramatized definitions of success and achievement upon which shows like "Got Talent" and "Idol" prey. They are venues for humiliation of the have-nots and the glamorification of the haves, operating under the shoddy narrative pretext that reaching for the stars and attaining your dreams means winning over completely the hearts and minds of your audience--nay! the world!

Then along comes this woman who is solitary and well-adjusted at 47. Scooby says "ruhwhaaaa?" She has been singing since she was 12. She did not display an ounce of regret regarding anything, and, as her performance speaks for itself, she obviously has been active in her practice of voice. She didn't need "Got Talent," though it certainly must have been a large and exciting venue for her. She was not participating in some manufactured achievement narrative for the unrealized.

And herein lies the juice, the game-breaking elements. All of the tension and effort and pound-your-head-against-a-wall striving that the shows stoke for drama and ratings are stripped away and performance becomes more than a nice voice and a pretty song. In an environment of dull, sniping, and insecure drudgery, a simple, sincere thing sings liberation, and our hearts are warmed.

Am I so naive as to think some producers didn't have an inkling as to what they were doing when they let Ms. Boyle pass by wardrobe and makeup? No, not so naive. But what that does make this, as far as I'm concerned, is one fantastic piece of television in the last place you'd expect to find it.

Kinesthetic Learning

For some people yoga is an experience, for others an Experience. Some call it a workout, others "stretching," others a yuppy pile of horseshit. Regardless of your perspective, there are some nuts and bolts of repeated practice which, if you are savvy, you can connect to other aspects of your existence in the world, as anyone willing to learn does with any sustained practice.

I'm in headstand in class the other day, and I receive an adjustment from the teacher. With her index finger, she pushes my shins maybe two inches back in space, aligning the posture to its intended form in which the legs rise in a perpendicular line from the floor. Two inches help, and all of the hellishly difficult and unnecessary work my musculature and mind were exerting to maintain a shape not quite in accord with skeletal structure and gravity fell away. Being inverted is a tremendous joy. You hit the right spot on the top of your skull--engaging your locks, hugging your leg muscles to the bone, aligning mindfully--and there is an exhilarating sensation of lightness and effortlessness. As easy as standing, except upside down, and for those moments you are granted the liberated perspective of limitless potential, having shattered the incorrect perception that when we are standing, we are right-side up.

For some people, myself included, this is how they learn. The moral of the story is not the joy of headstand, it is the action of getting there: a situation in which tremendous, concerted effort and a touch of fear at tumbling over maintains a shape that is not quite right, when a bit more ease and attention is all that lacking to be where you want to be. This is a worthwhile lesson, taught through a physical practice, and it bleeds into everything else I do. Skittering about in a panic trying to organize all my junk for work then rehearsal then two hour break then class then rehearsal then... I remember floating into headstand, and it helps me get out of my own way.

Bodies are intelligent.

Excitement, Minutiae, and Deadwood

I. shwoo!

II. I sat the other day and noticed that for the duration of the inhale, my heart rate increases slightly. I notice also that after recognizing the increase in rate, it is possible to bring awareness to the lack of balance and smooth the inconsistencies of the heart over both inhale and exhale.

Possible understanding for this most interesting phenomenon: the act of being creates a sensation of anxiety, excitement, anticipation, trepidation... while the act of expiration brings calm. A recommended course of action may be to find a little bit of death in life, a smattering of life in death, in order to encounter each new moment from solid ground with expansive perspective, emptied of fear.

III. Al Swearengen is a king, EB a coward, Bullock a principled hothead, and Saul an even Jew. Alma is beshrewed and Tricksy, an unyielding whore. Natural that the theater comes to town, we needed a jester to fill out the Shakesperean cast, especially given that the dullard got his skull kicked in. The monologues and asides, speaking to ghosts and heads, playing politics that spiral out of control into moral whirlwinds of catastrophic proportion... all grand theater. All curiously sustained in this televised medium, where violence and shock rush in to fill the empathetic gap left in the absence of kinesthetics and physical immediacy. Oh, inverted clauses! We are stimulated despite ourselves. The trickling of language, crystal-clear and refined, sprayed over the dirtiest of man-making, world-building settings.

Man and Machine

THESIS: A mindful, high-mileage relationship with one's bicycle brings a person into more exact synchronicity with space and time, engendering a still, vibrant, and deeply fulfilling experience of reality.

ARGUMENTS:

1. Let us define mindful pedalling as a stroke in which the force between foot and pedal remains equally balanced between left and right through repeated revolutions. The mental and physical focus required to maintain mindful pedalling is extensive, and explodes the mind with the infinite complexities of a simple, one-principle task. For example, you may discover a remarkable lightness of being as the mind trips over the flip point between push (downstroke, extension of the knee joint) and pull (upstroke, flexion of the knee joint), again and again and again.
   
2. The muscles of the legs are toned, making everything better.
   
3. With proper posture, the spine is lengthened and shoulders opened, allowing greater ease of breath and increased lung capacity.
   
4. The bicycle is by and large a silent vehicle, making it suitable for investigative stalking trips, assassination trips, or other general ninja use.
5. All of the muscles of the body are warmed, increasing flow of blood, energy, and fresh air through the channels of the body, inducing a cheery disposition and happier perception of the world.

COUNTER ARGUMENTS:

1. Reckless bicycle riding may lead to death, especially in an urban environment
2. Fucking flat tires.

CONCLUSIONS: Reiterate thesis.

yes! headstands!

blunt trauma to the haunch

Begin! [click]

chptr 1

last night upon exiting the meditation workshop perhaps a little more enlightened i discovered the back tire of my bicycle was flat. i had important things to do so I thought not and mounted, after which I rode approximately twenty feet down Parrish St. before my rear wheel kicked out to the left over a patch of ice. i suspended briefly, the movement of the bike frame being very sudden, and the body rotated counterclockwise through both the sagittal and transverse planes, after which the right haunch impacted unceremoniously with road ice coated with perhaps an eigth of an inch of well-mixed road slush. the bottle of bourbon ($23.29) did not break. ask me why i imagined my dainty road bike had transformed into a skidoo while i sat and breathed with my friends and teachers, and i will tell you i don't know. my compatriots were headed to their cars, perhaps a little more enlightened, and they expressed their concern for my person. placing my bike in the snowbank snug against a parking meter and encompassing bike frame, rear wheel, and meter pole with my U-lock, i accepted a ride home with lindsey. we discussed consciousness, vibration, showing up to parties just because you have to, the qualities of a few of our classmates (obliquely), and the buddha.

at lizzie's house we consumed one half of a ginger cake, one orange, 4 generous whiskeys, and two episodes of deadwood in which not overly much happened.

End! [click]

Arrested Development

is a program deeply loved by those with whom I roll.

My introduction to the Bluths was scattershot. The first episode I saw was the one where the giant guy flies the handicapped uncle-type guy around. The in-joking and the absurdity were smug and off-putting, and though I now recognize them as elements of brilliance, first impressions are enduring.

The entire. ever. lovin. series. is just one long joke, which is a premise claiming predecessors as notable as One Hundred Years of Solitude, Catch 22, and The Infinite Jest. The doilies and wondrously interconnected celebrations of shock and awe from nothingness dig right in to the heart of Humor, and damn this show is funny. And what an experiment to perform on televised media! This is as "forward-thinking" or "experimental" as network television will ever get.

RETURNS

Posts I owe THE BLOGOSPHERE:

Arrested Development
Deadwood
Grey's Anatomy

These, though worthy of great discussion, do not comprise my mission today. Nay, my purpose runs deeper, like a torrential underground chasm, or a cosmic tsunami wrecking house in the fifth dimension. A mystery, whispering odd vibrations and anxieties to the body in idle moments.

I went back to Azeroth.

For you noobs who don't know what that means, it means that after a year-long struggle with addiction and two and a half years clean, I took a taste of the virtual crack some deign to call the WORLD OF WARCRAFT, to see what it would do me.

The game is still the game. Quest-lines and story-boarding have been streamlined; there's less pointless running around and time wasted in travel; you can mount up at level 30; the new content is varied, fun, and challenging. New world areas are incredibly tightly designed. Most importantly, the continued refinement and balance of different character classes has created even better tools which grant users extensive control in interacting with the virtual world, which means more freedom and creativity. Blizzard has really learned as they've gone, not to mention the whole venture takes on a new sort of meaning when ELEVEN AND A HALF MILLION people are paying monthly to play the game.

Basically, you get to pretend you're living Lord of the Rings. You work for power and stature in this impossibly huge virtual world with its own living economy. You efficiently manage a set of abilities to slay evil and to achieve goals set before you by the game's writers, whether epic (get twenty-four of your friends into a group and slay the lich king!) or trivial (go pick some flowers for me!). You combat other players for loot and glory. You can spend hours not moving and fishing. Watching a bobber on the ocean, and clicking on it to pull in the fish. Literally.

I'm endlessly captivated. It's funny, the addictive element hasn't really surfaced, probably because I have honest-to-god responsibilities and sustaining commitments in my life, as opposed to times past, and the pull to "win" the game, to get all of the best gear and kill the hardest bosses, has lessened in the face of perspective.

The bottom line for me is this: we have language and tools to create simulacra of the world. It's like TV, except you're IN it. It's part creationary--your avatar is not you, you get to define the terms of the character as well as its actions--but it also incorporates that strange and life-like element of risk, in which you don't know exactly what repercussions your actions will have and you can see, in patterns rising from the foundational elements of the "game," the potential to build something.