Tea and crumpets

At work the other day we ended up a conversation about curse words. Namely, 

Party A: What's your favorite curse word?

Party B: Why, that would have to "fuck."

Party C: I agree wholeheartedly with my colleague.

Party D (me): It's "cunt." I won't say it in mixed company, but it's "cunt."

Party E (female): What's all the hubbub over there?

Party A: Do you have a favorite curse word?

Party E:  [thinks] "Shitbag?" I think I use that one the most.

Party D: It's still "cunt." Sorry, but it's the last one left. Unless you're Irish or a Brit, they've already used their allotment like its government whiskey rations.

This might not be the exact breakdown of the conversation, but it was close. I am not that witty sober. 

And I will have you know I was wrong. Completely, utterly wrong.

I should have remembered this article from slate awhile back (http://www.slate.com/id/2213558/ for the browserly retarded) that expounded on the virtues of matriarchal incest as a slur in nearly every language. And the other day a friend of mine texted me about losing his glasses after talking to a female bartender about Booker's being 'crazy juice' (a new one to me as that's a term I reserve for other much more personal things, namely about other people). I responded "Did you check her snatch?" I had to hide this response from my female company — too vulgar, too ultimately base for the moment.

Which brings up the question: why do all the good ones revolve around the female genitalia? I mean, you call a guy a dickhead, a putz, limpdick or micropecker and he'll probably not give a shit. Won't even think he's being yelled at, unless you're yelling at the time. But throw out "You dirty fucking cunt" to anyone and they'll just about rip your eyes out. Unless they're a Brit or Irish, and then they'll laugh and buy you a pint. Unless you're yelling at them. Seems like a sexist bias in there somewhere.

I will have you know, I also like the word "skullfuck," but thanks to the onion that's even gotten a little old.

The Music Blog

For shits and giggles (one of my favorite cliches btw, if anybody is regularly following this they will probably have already seen that pattern), I put my iPod on shuffle. No classical. Three out of three songs so far I forgot or didn't realize I had. This astounds me.

Now, I'm not going to talk up my musical knowledge — to be quite honest (and as intimated in the previous post), I'm usually quite far behind on any musical trend and have lost my taste and connections for it — but I have always enjoyed knowing I know what's in my freaking collection. It's up to 2222 songs now, a good third of that probably classical, but dammit if it this state isn't a result of pure negligence. 

Case in point: I made a friend a classical guitar mixer the other day. Got two cds out of it. And I'd forgotten how much I actually enjoyed a lot of that music. So now I'm trying to take stock of why that's happened. The usual lineup of co-mingling events are there: not enough time, a lot of music compiled in 33 years, and I've been so wide-reaching with my tastes that it's hard to get consistent thread between all of them. However, when I was younger, on my own, in SF, I'd sit around my apartment as something fantastic to do, chill and read and listen to music, usually sans the reading part (I'm guilty of trying to make myself sound to noble). And I've lost it somewhere, and sort of want to get it back, sooner rather than later.

So, the first part of this process is arranging my apartment for however long into a place I can again relax and sit and really listen to my tunes. The second — and now I'm challenging all my loyal readers out there — is to get back to making mixes. I'm guessing most of you are on the facebooks, where this blog is mirrored — send me a note, tell me what you want. I'll see what I can do. 

And if I've already made you one, then don't get too spoiled.

Anyway, this blog has now

.

rediscovering the shit on my shoes

I had a revelation tonight that, were I living back east or at least were I living in Baltimore, where I lived would be a tony neighborhood. I mean, the fucking former CAA building might as well be The Belvedere. Not to be confused with the Mister. 

Fuck, location is central, basics are almost perfect, you even get a walk past city hall and its gilded dome to go to work -- but this qualifies as inner city west-coast style. The respectable neighborhoods are all up the hill or less developed "neighborhoods," that, while they qualify as such, are much too large to substantiate basic civil existence on an old-world scale (meaning -- before cars existed). And I've met too many people here who will get their car to go half a block. True story. But that's an aside, and let's talk about the hill thing.

Now, make no mistake I don't think this is a bad idea: in general the riff-raff is less inclined to climb, esp. when it means they get farther away from freeway traffic, but something in this idea strikes me as horribly wrong. The buildings here are some of the oldest, not this pretty victorian shit but something that survived the quakes by being made well, or were made after it and are made even better.

Moreover, the monuments, arts, structure of the area says it should be so much better. And what is it? An effing ghetto. If I have one thing that always pissed me off about suburban life back east and west-of-the-appalachian culture in general is that if it means you have to be around people regularly, you must live in a ghetto. Not in a place that requires more substantive existence and people always being on their wits. No, you need to acclimate to the stupidity of the ghetto to get around beauty.

I've always said that if I ever went back to Europe, I'd never come back. I'm still tempted, but next stop (cross my fingers) will be New York. I'm done here. For several years now.

late night ruminations because i'm not sleeping

there will be no theme to this post, as quite frankly i'm only writing it in a fit of insomnia and disappointment because of it. so the list of random thoughts:

• Finished watching season three of Battlestar Galactica. Wow. I'd heard about this show for awhile, but frankly I'm amazed they've managed to pull off a show that's so bizarre, brilliant and absolutely unpredictable in a sci-fi setting. not that I have anything against sci-fi, but the genre usually relies on so many tropes it's not all that watchable. BSG...no. Easily one of the weirdest and most inventive shows I've seen since Twin Peaks, but without the Twin Peaks lulls.
  
• I miss days where I could just steal off to nowhere in particular, hang out, do nothing. Not to say I don't enjoy living in the city, but I miss the idea of going somewhere on a whim with no planning or agenda. That's the most nostalgia you'll hear from me for awhile.
  
• Music hasn't had the same power it once did for me. I still love it, but it used to be something that would just floor me and I would plan nights around. Maybe it's the prospects of not sharing.
• Grendel. Read it recently, made me realize that American authors do not write novels like that anymore. Slim, metaphysical, but also a full on monster story. Who knew? Too many American novels remind me too much of the author, like that was its purpose. 
• I'm taking a stab at making red sauce in my crockpot. We'll see what happens.
• I removed the last comment. It's too embarrassing.
• I need to get back to writing. My apartment is too much of a disaster to do so, though. Mainly to work on my portfolio.

for shits and giggles

I'm reopening an old blog. not restarting it, just reopening it to outside. Nocturnal SF. Enjoy the old shit. Also linked from my profile.

Shriveling, like a spider under a hot lamp

It just dawned on my that Virgin is closing. Granted, I'd already been there at least once since the discount signs went up, but it just registered with me today -- cons slicking the pavement right in front -- that it will be gone. It's one of those weird demarcation points I'm experiencing in SF in my tenth year here, and it was brought on by wondering what the hell is going to fill its space.

And the realization: nothing. Not for awhile.

CompUSA died. Circuit City died. Red Box is either closed or on life support. Tower and now Virgin. Some of these are places I gave a shit about, others just happened to exist but I wouldn't take the time to spit on the pavement in front of them out of their relative insignificance.

But Virgin -- I spent a shitload of time there. Not that it was anything respectable. It was overpriced, full of itself and generally a tourist trap. But it was also a great place to get DVDs and had a respectable jazz and classical selection, and I wasted quite a few lunch breaks there throughout the years. And now, seeing the sign that all the marketing bullshit is now on sale, it sort of gets driven home.

Pity the corpse of Virgin. Pity the phoenician San Francisco. Nobody likes to watch a bird while it's burning.

The Teachings of Donnie B.

Here's an amazing argument in the most recent copy of the New Yorker, taken from an article about Donald Barthelme's place in the postmodernist canon:

What killed that distinction [between high and commercial art] wasn't defining pop art up [to the level of high art]. It was defining high art down. It was the recognition that serious art, too, is produced and consumed in a marketplace. The point of [Andy] Warhol's Campbell's soup-can paintings was not that a soup can is like a work of art. It was that a work of art is like a soup can: they are both commodities.

This was courtesy of Louis Menand, and it blew my fucking mind. Not for the observation of it, which is a trivial distinction. What mindfucked me was the way it put so succinctly an essential complaint I have had with a mood permeating the circles I've been around.

What does this really mean? Essentially, Warhol's soup cans brought the world to its logical summation. It's kitsch. Cultural criticism mistaken as artistic relevance. It's not constructive but nihilistic. And that's not the world want to live in. It's a dead outlook.

If art is not striving to find at least the odd, the weird dissonances associated with everyday life and find some type of tether between them, then all it really is is a pretty little trifle. We don't feel it, we don't need it. It isn't essential in the way that food, fucking and -- for some -- religion is. Maybe for all -- I've always held that Modernists biggest failure was the path they took to make art the new religion, and therefore as essential as Sunday Mass was to the 1300s.

With its push to emphasis on titillation and the superficial, the contemporary era essentially pulled high art and art in general to the levels of porn, minus the stache or what have you. It's all superficial -- and not even satisfactorially animalistic -- fucking. It's not attempting to be anything else.

So here's my ultimate manifesto:

If you're looking at a piece of street art, ask the fundamental question "So what?" With any gallery opening or new track of music: "So what?" Any film: "So what?" What else did the work bring to the table? What was this looking to do to me or change or mold or push or punch or spit on me?

Not everything is going to be effective here, but shit if you're not going to find -- if the artist is taking his audience seriously and not just completely absorbed in his- or herself -- that incrementally you have changed. Your life, whatever. Your outlook, your world view has been altered in such a way that you eventually look at yourself and say "I can't go back now." Even if it's not apparent what the "what" is, there's still a "what" that has already happened. And it's unsettling, in a good way.

Faithful readers, I promise not to talk your head off in the next one. I'll find some toilet humor for next time.