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On this particular Saturday afternoon I found myself in that awkward combination of boredom and stir-crazy, where I simply must get out of the apartment but have no real idea to what ends. After a brief subway detour around my old haunts in Brooklyn Heights (where I was honored to spend $9 on a “gourmet” fast-food hamburger) I found my way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Now, I hadn’t been to the Met in some years. If I feel in the mood for a museum, I usually go to the Museum of Modern Art, which never fails to inspire me while simultaneously making me question what the hell some artists are smoking. But the Met’s cavernous size meant that it might be good to get lost in, so I paid my $20 and got the little metal “M” lapel pin.
I honestly can’t remember the last time I ever felt so bored by art. I came to an important realization, as I walked through the halls adorned by centuries old paintings and sculptures: I don’t really give a shit about most artistic time periods.
The REALLY old stuff from truly ancient civilizations is fascinating to a point… But let’s face it. You’ve seen one clumsily-scribbled upon clay pot from 5000 B.C. and you’ve pretty much seen ‘em all. Whether they’re from China, from Greece or from Egypt they all pretty much look the same. The statues are interesting from a “look at how talented they were back then” point of view, but one quickly tires of those as they begin to blend together in the mind as well. There is nothing here to relate to, to identify with, or to learn beyond what we were taught in grade school. Nothing until the last few hundred years, and often the most interesting things have been said in the last 50.
Now, you might be saying, “but Justin! It’s all about the culture! The thousands of years of humanity! Isn’t it interesting to imagine how people lived back then?” Well, frankly… no. We already know what people did back in the middle ages, and it was mostly trudge around in muddy, shit-strewn streets, eat bad food, get sick and die. In between, they prayed a lot, self-flagellated because the church told them to, and that was pretty much that. There’s no great romanticism about it — they were miserable, dirty people. I have trouble watching any remotely accurate film about those days because people are so filthy and live in such a state of self-delusion that I quickly tune out. These people have nothing to teach me, other than what it’s like to shit out a kidney.
So as I walked the halls of the Met, being stared at by fat naked women that more closely resemble giant throw-pillows than anything human, pointing at some magical event from the bible recreated, I began to wonder… what, if anything, does any of this art actually say about us? About humanity? If those halls are to be believed, vast stretches of art history serve no other purpose other than to either illustrate the bible (or, in the East, some other religion), or get a paycheck for painting soulless work-for-hire portraits of the rich and the royal, with ne’er a hint of irony or cheer or anything other than cold dead seriousness. Moments of joy, humor, and humanity in general — the whole purpose behind all the art that I love — don’t even seem to come along until the late 1700s.
Gee, does this mean we’ve actually advanced as a race?
Sorry for the lack of updates the past few weeks, but between moving to a new apartment, a rigorous social schedule (whee!) and a normal work schedule, I haven’t had time to do anything. In fact, the only reason I’m typing this right now is because I pulled a nerve in my neck by sleeping funny last night, and I can’t move my head to the point where I can watch TV in bed as I wait for the Benadryl to kick in.
BTW, Twitter blows. I can’t imagine a more pointless communication tool. Why NPR has such a hard-on for this thing I have no idea.
I spent the last week in Detroit.
This isn’t the suck-fest it usually is. In fact, it was downright pleasant. My parents, bless their souls, spent their time and (increasingly precious) money spoiling me rotten, and seeing my sister and her fiancée is always fun. Despite being ground zero for the current financial armageddon plaguing the country, the place radiated the same slow-drip echoes of life I’d come to expect of the place.
My post-adolescent anger at the land has long since dried up, and now whenever I visit I’m constantly in awe at the pace of life there; how every emotional impact seems absorbed and slowed as if suspended in a giant vat of Karo syrup. It’s something that I can only appreciate in low doses, but that I can appreciate it at all is progress. And after the punishing few months I’ve spent trapped in a vicious circle of self-doubt and defeat, it was exactly the healing I needed to step back and redefine my path.
That said, the path wasn’t exactly a clear one. The day after Thanksgiving was my 10 year high school reunion. Now, having been someone who never fit in among those his own age, to say I was apprehensive about this reunion was an understatement. I wanted to attend, if for no other reason than to sate my curiosity. I’d made a clean break with a large cast of characters that had followed me for years, and I was admittedly overcome with curiosity as to what became of them, for better or worse. At the same time, I was absolutely terrified of being judged by the same group of milquetoast preppy kids that had failed to accept me years earlier.
After a lengthy review of my personal appearance, I nervously drove my mother’s SUV to downtown Birmingham, a small suburb that fancies itself the Beverly Hills of Detroit. (Not having driven at night in 8 years I was white-knuckle the entire trip.) I walked in and to my surprise was greeted by a small group of guys I remembered well with appreciation and fond memories. These were nice people, and while I didn’t have much to say to them, it gave me some much needed self-confidence.
Conversations generally had a three-minute life to them: I would reintroduce myself, they would reintroduce themselves, we’d feign excitement at seeing each other again and perhaps regurgitate a random memory of the other person, recap what we’d been up to lately, and then find ourselves without further topics of mutual interest. Stammering after a few seconds of awkward silence, we’d politely excuse ourselves and move onto the next person. The lack of name tags meant we were constantly guessing as to who each other were if we didn’t recognize them (we’ve all put on a lot of weight), so some conversations were a polite game of chicken, each of us trying to hide the fact that we MIGHT be able to place the other person’s face, but the name utterly escaped us.
After regurgitating the last decade of my life in sound bite form several times, I became mindful of just how lame it sounded. I wasn’t going for my doctorate, I didn’t have any major credits to my name. In fact, I really had very little to brag about. I began to sweat, and as the loud bar with laser lights and loud music and hockey on the TV started to fill up, I had a sense of panic as my eyes swung across the room, looking for someone who might be open to conversation. As my prospects increasingly dimmed (especially among the women — I never had much interest in those fake and judgmental cunts, and they returned the favor) I decided I had to get the hell out of there.
I don’t regret going. It allowed me to finally close the chapter on that period of my life. Those people don’t matter in any way, and never really did. Also, I had rejected them as much (perhaps more) than they rejected me. But my panicked state was made worse by two things: that I had accomplished so little, and that I had left the car’s headlights on and the car wouldn’t start. (I called my dad to come out and give me a jump, and then laid back in the driver’s seat and reflected.) The day before, my grandparents had asked me if I had been on television lately. Apparently some family friends had called them excitedly after confusing me with the Saturday Night Live announcer’s introduction of Jason Sudeikis.
As the week wore on and I had time to think, I realized that I’ve been chickening out and short-changing myself. I had deprived myself of the possibilities of becoming somebody interesting by burrowing deeper and deeper into my nerd nest, no longer having the experiences nor the ability to communicate with others in a way my dreams required of me. And I vowed to change that.
Found an old notebook of mine, and was struck dumb by a moment of clarity sketched on it. I remember writing this to a friend, 6 years ago.
I suddenly realize that I fear dying. The realization dawned on me, during an idle moment, while my mind was preoccupied with my usual psychotic obsessions. Dying — death, not necessarily of the body, but of the mind. Nothing is scarier to me than the inevitable death of my thought, my memories. Whether these things fade away, or drift into the communal ether is something that even religion can’t (or won’t) answer.
So, why the sudden fear of such a thing? Perhaps because I am starting to realize the fragility of that thing we call “mind.” Whether I can blame chemicals or something more fundamental, the result is the same. I can’t escape it — my mind is failing. I feel it failing — like a weak heart. I can feel my own sanity slipping away from me. It’s absolutely terrifying — every psychotic episode seems like it brings me closer to death.
Assuming, then, that my time as a functional human being is quickly coming to a close, my dreams and aspirations suddenly develop a new sense of urgency. The threat of becoming unable to fulfill my dreams weighs down on me like a cloud of dread. I absolutely cannot afford to stay idle.
Whether I’ve ten useful years left in me, or even five, the clock is ticking, and I must achieve. If I don’t, all of my struggles to keep a hold of my wits will be a complete waste.
I was a senior in college when I wrote this, and suffering from near-crippling bipolar disorder. It was easily one of the worst years of my life, and yet one of my most important and formative. I’m no longer anywhere near that unstable and haven’t been in quite a long time. I sought treatment by a professional, and came out okay.
And yet there are certain aspects of being in that place, that very dark place, that I miss. First and foremost is the sense of direction, the drive, the panic-induced aspiration. It’s been so long since I’ve been on the brink and worried about losing my mind. Stability has robbed me of this, and complacency has set in. Maybe “complacency” is too strong a word, but I’ve most certainly lost the fire in my gut, replaced by a vague sense of unease and discontent.
I’ll be spending the next few months trying to get that back.
Life seemed to turn on a dime last night as the election results came in. I was at my usual haunt, a bar in Greenpoint called Black Rabbit. The night went from tense and nervous at around 7pm to nervous and cautious optimism at 9pm to awed and excited anticipation at 10pm, which exploded into utter jubilation at 11, when every news organization simultaneously called it for Obama. Surrounded by friends, the cheers of like-minded people, and a sense that we may yet crawl out of this horrible cesspool we’ve dug for ourselves, I started to overload. (As McCain gave his concession speech, a huge fire down the street further added to our jitters.)
Today, speaking to my hardcore neo-conservative father and reading the reactions of the now disenfranchised right, I found the resentment I had towards them not fade, but morph into relief that they no longer seemed to matter. I no longer need to fear their ignorance and their selfishness, for the moment at least. Nonetheless, an unholy generational gap has emerged, between those of us who have had friends in other countries before we were allowed to drive, who have grown up in a world of sushi and MySpace and AIM, and those who live in isolation and fear. That such isolation and fear and their violent, reactionary consequences have taken root in a generation that once touted themselves as one of universal love and acceptance will become the joke of history. That America has finally found its footing again is proof that we can reinvent ourselves. I’d be lying if I wasn’t worried about someday turning into something so foolish and outdated myself. But for today, I’ll let the tears flow as I hear stories of inner city, minority youth dreaming of becoming a lawyer, and never fully comprehending the extent of suffering, the small-mindedness, the racism that was overcome. To not revel in this joy today is to deny these things. To not appreciate the difference this seemingly minor change in psychology will make in the lives of people worldwide and others’ perception of us as a people is to turn one’s back on dreams of a better world.
I’m currently obsessed with a new band called Passion Pit, which I first heard on KEXP’s Song of the Day podcast. It’s really experimental electronica, with a gritted-teeth sort of intensity and the innocence of 80s pop. Visually, it’s the sort of music that conveys a sunny fall day on a pleasant street somewhere, as you watch the world go by. I haven’t been this excited about a new band since MGMT.
As I lay back listening to this warm swimming pool of comfort and contemplating a world that suddenly seems like it holds promise of decency and forward thinking, I’m overcome by an utterly alien sense of relief and joy. I don’t know what to do with it. It’s scaring me.
While perusing the grocery store, I had noticed a small stack of deli-wrapped trays in the refrigerator isle labeled “meat ends”. Apparently the deli department would gradually grind down a large hunk of, say, ham and would eventually end up with a little warn down nub of meat that couldn’t be safely sliced anymore. So rather than throw it away, they threw a few of them into a tray and marked it for cheap.
To me, this was an amazing revelation. No longer was I restricted to only large hunks or paper-thin slices of my dead animal product. No, these pieces were the size of large crackers, and with a squirt of mustard could be made into instant meat-snacks. And they were cheap as well — three or four pieces for only $1! Excited, I bought a stack of them.
I had a grin on my face as I tore open the first package, selected a small piece of what appeared to be turkey, but with the dark, grid-shaped pattern on the back of the slab. I realized that the outside of the meat was something I’d never tasted before, and although it wasn’t exactly what I would call “good,” it wasn’t bad per se. The excitement wore off after the second bite, whereupon I realized that these meat hunks had clearly been left poorly wrapped in a refrigerator together for too long, and their flavors had blended together to create something of a “generic luncheon waste product” flavor, common among all the meats no matter the animal of origin.
Additionally, certain fattier meats, clearly not intended to be consumed in hunks, had oozed a clear, gelatinous substance that clung to the shrink wrap and the tray. Running the meat under the faucet wouldn’t get it off, so I ended up having to wipe it off with a paper towel. I ate the piece of ham anyway, and then, glancing at the paper towel (that now was covered in this fatty mucus-like substance) I realized just what I was doing.
Saving money is great. Not being wasteful is great. Having snack sized bits of meat around? Fantastic in concept. Meat ends? A mistake. A horrible, horrible mistake.
everybody else who was at Wing’s concert at Birdland tonight.
For those who don’t know, Wing is a little old Chinese lady that lives in New Zealand, who loves to sing, and has put out 16 CDs (so far) of herself singing to MIDI and absolutely butchering everything from ABBA to AC/DC. She starred in an episode of South Park that was named after her. The woman is a novelty act. She sounds like cats being strangled. But damn is she funny.
In her second American concert ever at the famed Birdland jazz club tonight, she did a long set of songs to an enthusiastic crowd. Now, I went to see Wesley Willis in concert, and that was an interesting experience. Despite his obvious lack of real talent, he had a bond with his audience. Bohemia simply “got” him, he was punk rock. He used his music to vent, to have a good time, and if we pissed him off, he was 350 lbs and could easily kill us all.
Wing, on the other hand, seemed to attract nothing but musical theater people, which meant the audience was 75% snobby “cultured” gay men with self esteem issues. The night was organized by Wing’s self-proclaimed “biggest fan” a guy that looked like he got beat up in high school a lot before joining Harvard’s theater club. Wing came on to thunderous applause, and proceeded to do a string of favorites. She was dressed in a red Chinese silk dress with a dragon embroidery, and had a THICK accent. She immediately reminded me of my grandmother, but without the anger and malice.
Two problems. First, nobody knew for sure whether she was “in on the joke.” Any laughter had to be politely suppressed. Which meant that this theater full of condescending theater jerkoffs spent her entire set snickering at her under their breath. Then, as Wing got set to do the theme song from Rent, the entire cast — yes, the ENTIRE BROADWAY CAST — joined her on stage to sing “backup”. Needless to say, they collectively blew the poor old woman off the stage.
Something clicked in me at that moment. This had turned a very bad corner into something clearly exploitative. My mind raced. What does SHE think of all this? Does she really think she’s as good as they are? No way in hell! But if she KNOWS she’s bad and she’s intentionally trotting herself out as a sideshow, that’s even worse! Then I started asking myself if I was there to merely laugh AT her, or to cheer her on? And what of all these theater jerks clearly laughing with a haughty sense of superiority?
I had to force myself to keep applauding, to keep smiling. As the sole Chinaman in the audience, I felt her looking at me, and I wanted to applaud her efforts, no matter why anyone else was there.
I slipped out as soon as the show was over. As I exited, the two flamey dweebs who organized the event, including the earlier mentioned Harvard bully fodder, were snapping pictures of her with some big Broadway actor that I didn’t recognize. The two of them murmured to each other, “You’ve got to send me your pictures.” The other replied, “Yeah, and you’ve gotta send me yours too!”
I immediately felt incredibly guilty, and spent the next hour walking and calling friends, as if reaching for a confessional.
+ Justin got 10 hours of sleep last night!
- Justin slept too long, so his lower back is a little wonky and it’s cold outside of bed.
+ Justin is full of energy
- Justin squanders said energy on mundane, stupid tasks and gets nothing of worth accomplished
+ Justin finds a buyer for his old Mac, gets a good price for it
- Justin almost blows it several times by not giving the buyer the right information
+ Justin is healthy by not eating most of the day
- Justin blows it big time and orders a large 3-topping, dripping cholesterol-fest from Papa Johns
+ Justin doesn’t eat the whole thing, for once.
- Never mind, it was an extra large. Those two extra slices he didn’t eat were probably the difference.
+ Justin goes to deposit money from the Mac, thinking how smart he is
- Justin hates self, has several vurps on trip to deposit money order
+ Justin goes to gym
- Justin is lulled into worry and self doubt by listening to too much financial collapse news from NPR podcast
+ Justin finds decent music on iPod instead, and does his elliptical machine like a good boy
- The music is “Maniac” from Flashdance. Justin is ashamed.
+ Justin buys fruit on his way home
- Once home, Justin pours a glass of water from Brita pitcher. He notices halfway through the glass that the water is much darker than it should be, and it’s not just a reflection from his stained countertop.
+ Justin unwraps vintage anime trinket from sister
- Anime trinket is mysteriously coated in greasy substance, direct from the package. Justin reads the back: “Made in China”. Justin washes his new trinket and his hands vigorously, and prays that whatever industrial lubricant that was doesn’t give him cancer
+ Justin goes to bed
- Justin gets out of bed because he’s not all that tired, plus he’s bored and a little hungry
+ Justin snacks on fresh produce
——- JUSTIN SEES A GIGANTIC FUCKING COCKROACH THE SIZE OF A SCREWDRIVER HANDLE! IT’S SO BIG IT MAKES A NOISE! He kills it with his giant tin of Quaker Oats, injuring his pinky finger in the process. Utterly freaked out, he ladles the corpse into the trash with a paper towel and moans about how much he hates this fucking city.
+ Justin says “fuck it” and eats the two leftover slices of pizza.
- Oh, you certainly don’t think Justin can sleep NOW, do you???
Yesterday I had the opportunity to be an extra in the sketch comedy show The Whitest Kids U Know. Having been a friend of a the troupe for so long, it was a little strange to have not done this by now; most of their other friends had done this years ago. But having been a workaholic with a day job during the previous two seasons, I never really had the time.
Yesterday, I responded (a few minutes late) for the 8am call time, which was WAY too early when you are still catching up from a convention. I hadn’t had more than 4 hours of sleep a night for about a week, and so I was pretty wrecked. The location was an overpriced restaurant in Williamsburg that was not serving.
It’d been a long time since I’d been on a set (and I’d never been so unimportant on one before), so I was absolutely not prepared for the boredom. It was nice on some level; I was too tired to read the book I’d brought and instead wiled away the hours talking to some of the college kids that were there to earn credit, or to Ivan (a cool guy I never really got to talk to much). The day also featured seeing some of my best friends in full-out drag, which is a weird-out no matter how many times you’ve seen it on TV. Once Darren came outside for a cigarette in full woman garb sans wig, and I marveled at how he resembled Hilary Clinton.
I doubt I’ll be doing this again. My life has too much value to spend a day doing nothing around a set for no pay, and had I been well-rested I would have been mutinous with boredom. But it’ll be a fun memory at least.
BTW, best Chinese restaurant ever: Peter Ng’s Place on Bowery. Fricking amazing. Don’t miss it, especially if you have a large group of people.
I was going to save this for a rainy day, and it was actually pretty nice, but I screwed up my neck in my sleep. As I’m unable to turn my head to the left, it qualifies as a metaphorical rainy day in my book.
The most horrifying shit ever
It will never cease to amaze me, the depths to which grown men and women will sink in the name of entertaining children.
My parents bought this for me on a whim for my 5th birthday. I really didn’t know what to make of it at the time, but I was a media whore and was starved for recorded material, so it ended up in my collection. It didn’t get played very often. On its initial play my mom thought it was so corny she accused my dad of being behind it. He swore innocence, and I believe him. Corny as my dad is sometimes, this is waaay below him.
But god, what a cloying, annoying horrid piece of work. Can you imagine the poor guy who had to record all the different versions for all the various names? (You can hear where the different names are spliced in, barely.)
And what’s with those eyes on the star? He be doin’ some fucked up drugs.
