Back to Cool

In the space of 90 minutes I slipped back into myself. Hilary Masters is teaching me Survey of Forms: Fiction.

Again, Hilary Masters, son of Edgar Lee Masters who wrote Spoon River Anthology, is teaching ME the art of fiction. By the passage of knowledge I will reap the genius of several highly regarded authors, as channeled through a highly regarded author whose dad was my required reading in high school.

I think badass may run in the family. He regaled us with tales of phone calls from Eleanor Roosevelt, checking in on Hyde Park's local news. He loves Weeds, especially Nancy Botwin. He was stranded in Oklahoma on Route 66 alongside his 1940 convertible.

I'm reunited with my first love, a creation borne from stealing, lying, and antagonizing. From wrong, right. I'd giggle if I weren't in a computer cluster.

I'm seeing Ratatat on Friday at Diesel, a real-life Pittsburgh nightspot. In the words of Buster Bluth, I feel alive!



And I want this^. I wonder if it's vegan (since it's Stella McCartney)...

Remember Proenza Schouler? Those two guys who are kinda dating, maybe brothers? Well this is what they've tossed onto the table, and if I were a rich man I'd be in it. And that wordplay would have increased proximity too.
<-- Well of course Miuccia Prada "thought using a little bit here and there is tacky, so we've had all Switzerland working on couture lace. They're in shock."

Yes, hospitalised for shock after a year of 16-hour workdays spent frilling up lace to pay for some horrendous[ly expensive] efficiency. Oddly, les élites du monde d'haute couture seem poised to continue praising this lacy bullshit until someone comes forward with some criticism that diverges from the homoerectile Oedipal compulsion party line. Of course this person will be a freelance fashion reporter, or some Rachel-Zoe-with-glasses publicity whore whom no one will take seriously. Hence, more praise, more money, and all I get is a pair of glasses. (They're great glasses!)

Leg-er! Hemlines hike up in Leger's scooping catsuit-style minidresses. Slinky materials wrap the hips and midsection, and cleavage takes a backseat to buns and thighs. My favorite piece is the open-chested dress that forms a heart! Adorable.

Diane Von Furstenberg's Fall 2008 collection is sensual, creamy, and reminiscent of the 1940s manned-down silhouette of sex appeal. This last outfit is the most vibrant and gorgeously composed ensemble I've seen for fall and maybe even forever. Diane's still got it.

Notes to self:

-FenderBender

-pregnancy and young couples (Making parentheses around her stomach with his hands, he pronounced in shrill, precise tones, "This. Will not become. That.")

-Ginger's coffee that tastes like burnt azz.

Back to school, back to cool. Stay trill, yinz.

Let's Get Racist (In Here)

<--This is the sequel to Trainspotting. Fun, fierce, fabulous!

So last night I asked my friend to rate himself on the racist scale, from 1 to 10. 10 being an awoved/involved racist and 1 being "I call bullshit".

The problem was, I delineated the eschelons of racistness after he rated himself a 6, which he then thought was too high (and it is), so we settled on a 5. To ease the sting of my unseemingly devised confession extraction game, I gave myself a hearty 4.

The point of this whole exercise was to own up to ignorance, bigotry, generalization, scapegoating, and fear, the 5 deadly sins of which we are ALL GUILTY, to varying degrees. I'd be lying out my arse if I said I haven't made hasty associations between a person's exterior and his character, or that I haven't acquired and nested expectations of color, size, background in what I read, watch, kiss. My worldview results from my ubringing by immigrant parents in a progressive environment amongst people with strange accents from a place I'd never even seen until I was a teenager, and finding myself at odds with my auto-Americanism and my parents fought for, misunderstood, conditioned, and adjusted Americanism.

Therefore, I don't give a fuck who's "in the room"--if I wouldn't say it if a [insert race] person were present, then I simply would not say it. I would die before I'd write off a race of people with a single derisive comment or term, because I've been wrong too many times and have had my preconceptions twisted and turned too many times to believe that people exist foremost in a handful of pigment-determined absolutes.

It can't be that easy.

I've met a black guy who was not, in fact, "ripped". He's my fucking dad!
I met an Asian kid who was dumb as dirt. And his parents weren't that upset about it!
There was the intolerable Russian, the prodigal Jew, the Estonian schoolboys who called me a nigger (multiple times, as we shared a row on a plane headed west), the white dude with 2 kids and no legal income, the Hispanic girl with wealthy parents and a perfect GPA, and the most proximate example, the black girl who loves music by old white guys, and will never again reduce herself to using, endorsing, or shrugging off a racial slur. That's tasteless, tacky, embarrassing, rude, abrasive, inconsiderate, and highly unbecoming.

Especially not when I open my eyes and set foot on a college campus where white people are not the majority. Simply having senses intact will emphasize the fact that the only thing separating me from an Arab, a Cambodian, a Korean, a Swede, or a Nigerian is....

nothing. In some cases, a lake or forest or desert but we're all biologically identical and race does not exist (if you disagree, then define it). There is no tangible qualifier to determine difference among humans, so "white" "black" "Oriental" "colored" "mulatto" "pardo", conveniently, provides a means to subjugate, terrorize, colonize, and comfort.

On my scale, then, a 4 would indicate that stereotype fascinates, entertains, and amuses me, and that I can take a clever racist joke in stride, assuming that it's delivered with impeccable comedic timing and calculated sensitivity. Otherwise you're no better than an incest-ridden idiot redneck and you can get off my property before I shoot yinz.



How's that for a stereotype?

Recession Special!

Apparently Campus Food offered a special of the same name. I'm still reluctant to jump on the Recession bandwagon, although while searching for an account to store my modest assets, interest rates slapped me across the face and washed my mouth out with soap.

Additional wordly tidbits: Daniel J Flynn HATES Howard Zinn's leftist, Marxist perversion of American history, his omission of facts that do not mesh with his "class struggle" narrative, and his anti-American mudslinging in the name of greedy, capitalist monsters looking to profit from "the people".

I've only made it to chapter 4, and I see where Zinn's going. I'm okay with this, especially now that I've read the review. However, this sounds like a former bullied accountant who found his balls in the Grand Ole Party, perhaps himself a "Son of Liberty":

"America’s founding can be reduced to the pursuit of exploitation and profit. Well maybe for academics with lifetime subsidies and rock stars with drug-fried brains."

I challenge ye then, Ye Olde Republican Partye, to write a book that flips my leftist distrust for socioeconomic self-interest on its ear, because that worn-out, shriveling mess John McCain is not doing it for me.

Pittsburgh By Night: No Shirt, No Shoes, No Toga

And that was how I met Tyler. Along with Mike, Andrew, Jim, &Meredith. Only the strong survived!

Around 3 the crime mob--some in toga, others convinced they could not cross the threshold--walked to Ritters, where we continued to embarrass ourselves. Sat in the back room I didn't know existed beyond the greasy fryhole known as Ritters Diner. This big table next to us blurted out, "I love Times New Roman!"

We walked back to Chris's and at 4 am techno was blasting from an unknown source. Then we all had coffee and went to bed.

The best nights end at 5 pm the next day, like this one.

Notes to self:

-Times New Romanian

-Ritters-Carlton

-Mike's lifelong dream: "to see Enya live."

-You're not above sharing a twin mattress on a floor surrounded by wonderful people.

Pittsburgh By Day

This Saturday I went from Shadyside-->Downtown-->North Side-->North Shore-->Strip District-->Bloomfield-->Shadyside and took several pictures, the rest of which are here.

Found a beautiful park on the North Side with many hobos. Still don't (need to) know the name. I went to the Thai truck in Strip where this overbearing homeschooling dad used me as an "example" for his daughters. I wanted to roll my eyes at him and tell him to loosen up, but I guess that would have been immature and counterproductive. Then a weirdo nudged his way into our conversation simply because I said "Russia".

I digress, with popular responses to half my course of study:

-I only know one word...priviet.

-I only know one word in Russian, da! (I'm rolling my eyes hard)

-What do you plan on doing with that?

-Why? (for those without time to waste)

I feel similarly about Segways.

Adam and his friend Emily came into Crazy Mocha while I was drawing and after a bit they took me home. I was super tired then Chris told me he was having a party so I went...

PBR You Kidding Me?

Today Netta e-mailed me the upcoming feature in Adbusters. After reading it, I reflected and sent her the following e-mail:

Yeah, this article is so defeatist. After I took a minute to criticize the writer (step 1), I realized he must have been pressed on a Tuesday to meet a Thursday deadline, so he hopped to that club on Wednesday, ended up blowing lines off that girl's Polaroid with her and Bruce Willis's nephew, and hit the send from his DELL. DESKTOP. some time around 7 am on Thursday. This could explain the fixed-gear bike fallacy (they can, and often do, have brakes) that could have been easily warded off with that last, crucial Wikipedia scan.

Some counterpoints:

That last paragraph is self-obsessed just by being! The Lost Generation died off before WW2. And now that acid and cocaine are illegal, the only things we can rebel against are the war on drugs and gas prices and the Right's deathgrip on consumer efficacy, by getting high and going on a bike ride to the thrift store.

Here's something that "feels real": cash. So having a college degree, especially in the progressive sciences, not only allows you to criticize every aspect of the feeding machine your paycheck powers, but to do so with the backing of, you guessed it, a government-funded institution.

"We are the last generation." He's really given up. He considered throwing those rocks (at a vacant housing development? talk about subversion!) and decided to reveal the huge conflict of interest apparent in this article: the royal "we" and the titular "hipster" are inseparable yet unwilling to admit their point of intersection, the reporter.

Wearing non prescription glasses (I have some) and skinny jeans (I have multiple) and listening to Deerhoof (you've probably never even heard of them) on your iPod (I don't have one, or a Facebook) while making sure everyone on the bus can SEE that you're reading Bukowski (shhh--I haven't read Bukowski, but Pete Doherty interviewed him in VICE) probably has little to do with a disillusioned backlash (not to be ironic) to the West's ignorant overconsumption and excessive reproduction of style and standard. Maybe everyone feels so snubbed by Hollywood that it's less hurtful to create mini, Internet Hollywoods or even pitch them up under a 300-year old bridge (et voila, DUMBO--"Down Underneath the Manhattan-Brooklyn bridge" DUH!).

But before this sounds too optimistic, I'll acquiesce to the conservative evildoers who Barry O's obviously grinding a self-challenging, earth-conscious cog against: the American Apparel has been pulled so far towards the belly button that we've been looking for nipple on Last Night's Party instead of even glancing at the dynamic shift occuring in our history that accompanies any change in power. Call it our New Millenium American Dream: We won't take the President, but we'll take a tip from his pastoral origins. Cowboy-fit jeans, white v-neck, and the interning class's perverted darling, piss ass beer.