SCIENCE FACT: People Who Say "I'm Not Racist or Anything" Totally Racist!

Yes, it's true: some people who claim not to be racist also tend to not do anything or get upset at all when they witness obvious acts of racism! Finally, a SCIENCE FACT that explains why people read Vice magazine (endorsed by Colt 45: "It's Ironic that You Drink It, Because in Your Mind You Associate It with Black and Poor People, which You're Not!")*

Now, onto the real mystery: what on earth have I been doing to cause this to show up as a contextual Google link in my WORK E-MAIL?

*Yes, I know, this is "Poop on Vice Week," and it's getting tired. What can I say? As a time traveler from the early part of this decade, during which some people actually read Vice, I care about these things.

What Kind of Douches Drink In Midtown?: A Scientific Article

Ladies, gentlemen: pity the office workers of Lower Midtown. They report, every day, to one of the least interesting, most tourist-heavy sections of New York. They have been accidentally included in at least 5,000 digital photos of the Empire State building. They cannot walk for more than ten feet without encountering (a) an out-of-towner in need of directions or (b) a table arrayed with knock-off handbags and/or perfume. They get home by forcing their way, inch by bloody inch, through the wall of human flesh which invariably surrounds the 34th Street - Herald Square subway station, and which, in the dark days of the Macy's Christmas window display ("look at Santa! No, seriously, stand immobile in the middle of the sidewalk with your mouth wide open, blocking all traffic, and just look!") achieves a density and force that causes one invariably to recall both salmon struggling upstream to spawn and the last moments of this guy.

Pity them, gentle readers - but, in particular, pity me. For I am just such a Lower Midtown office worker, and, last Friday night, upon finding myself with several hours to kill (I was going uptown to see someone, but it would probably be a few hours before he would be free to see me, and anyway it was entirely possible that if it took too long for him to get out of work, we wouldn't meet up at all, but given the fact that I would be meeting him in Manhattan if and when I did meet him it seemed really not at all practical to go home to Queens or even to leave Midtown, so) I found myself in need of a work-adjacent bar. Here, a few capsule reviews.

The Zipper Tavern

The Zipper Tavern is a truly superior Midtown bar. If you are have the misfortune to be sober and also stuck in Midtown, the Zipper Tavern is there to help you. This is because they have a fine selection of endrunkening beverages, and also a bartender named Andrew who is from New Zealand and loves PJ Harvey (why are Peej B-sides not continually playing everywhere? This would improve my life) and occupies some hithertofore undiscovered space on the friendly/grizzled spectrum. Oh, and also, there is an upper deck where you can (ssshhhhh) smoke while you drink, and if you appreciate the double-headed self-destruction of smoking con alcohol (my favorite scenes in Mad Men are always those wherein somebody casually lights a cigarette and pours out a Scotch on the rocks and then, like, performs brain surgery) that is just about perfect. Also, if you are me - and why aren't you, already? - Andrew will buy back lots of your drinks. This is because a year ago at this time, the Zipper Tavern was pretty much empty pretty much every night, and I and my friends were the only people who drank there, chiefly because of the whole "no Midtown douches present" factor. Then they underwent some bullshit retooling to make it more "accessible," and it promptly filled up with Normal People - I swear, I once heard one of them ask for a "cran-tini" at the bar as if that were an actual drink - with the end result being that if you do not get there early there are no good seats and the douches have taken over and you end up being a total asshole and complaining loudly to your friends that "before these tools showed up, we pretty much paid rent on this place, and now we can barely get a drink."

In related news, I was unable to go to the Zipper Tavern on Friday because it had been rented out for a private party. BALLS.

Concrete

Quick question: how misogynist is Katy Perry? Very, I am thinking; all of her Super Fun Empowering Girls Versus Boys ballads seem to hinge on hating girls and/or femininity and/or queers, usually queer dudes, because they are (in the cramped, enclosed world of Katy Perry's mind) girly. There is, of course, "I Kissed a Girl," in which other girls are tools she uses to turn on a guy, because she has no sexuality that is not a performance for the male gaze, and that's so totes empowering, obvs. There is the current single, which opens with "you change your mind / like a girl changes clothes / you PMS like a chick," because obviously the worst thing you can do to a man is compare him to a woman, because we are all awful! Then, of course, there was the trailblazing first single, "Ur So Gay," which goes something like, "you listen to indie rock and read, therefore I suspect you are a homosexual." (No one "reads in the rain," Katy. The pages get wet. Had you ever opened a book, or acquainted yourself with the physical properties of one, you would know this.)

At times, it seems that my entire life comes down to Katy Perry. I used to work for folks who shared a publicist with her, meaning that I was requested to write about 9,000 articles regarding her clothes, concerts, singles, and Feminist Impact on Pop Culture (which is, as we've established, ridiculous, AND YET: like Sex & the City or Camilla Paglia or Sarah Palin, she adheres to an anti-feminism that sells itself by yelling "girl power" a lot, and this fools many people, which is why I fear her). Not wanting to screw over my editors, whose relationship with said publicist would, I then feared, be disrupted by my agreeing to write a post on Katy Perry and turning in something that began, "Katy Perry is a festering sore on the labia of humanity," I politely requested that the assignments be turned over to other, less rageful girls. I did write one article on her eventually and it was so divided between hatred and the need to be polite about it that I now believe it to be the worst thing I have ever been paid $10 for. Now, of course, I know that I might as well have written a hit piece, since one of the Katy Perry Brand's qualities is "controversy," and bad reviews only feed the beast. I thought, after that whole thing, that I would be done with her, aside from the inevitable, "ha ha, why don't you write something about Katy Perry, ha ha ha?" ribbing that has characterized my life since she first rose to prominence. Then this popped up in my hometown. Then a friend of mine was asked to write songs for her next album. I can't wait for the breakout single, "I H8 U Because U Don't Uphold Traditional Gender Roles In Which I Am Subordinate 2 U," or, as it is alternately known, "R U a Homo?"

Anyway, guys: I could say a lot of bad things about Concrete, the bar directly next to the Zipper. I could say, for example, that it is so aggressively Normal I suspect it attracts people who think the newly Normalized Zipper is too "weird." I could say that they have a $14 cheese plate, yet the bartender doesn't know how to make a whiskey sour. I could say that I would bet they serve "cran-tinis" there. It would all be true. Yet, of all the terrible things I have to say about Concrete, the worst is this: in the time that it took me to finish one gin and tonic, I heard all three Katy Perry singles. In a row.

The Distinguished Wakamba Lounge

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God.

This is the best bar I have ever been to in my life.

So, it's right next to a peep show, right, and also right next to a Gray's Papaya, which means that, at any point during your visit, you could step out for a hot dog... OR A WEINER. These are the sorts of amazing pun opportunities The Distinguished Wakamba Lounge provides. Then there is the fact that "The Distinguished" is part of its name, as if the bar were in Congress. (You know who else is "in congress?" Probably some dudes at the peep show! KAPOW. Thank you, thank you!) There is also the fact that it is decorated in the kind of kitschy plastic Hawaiian exotica that I had despaired of ever again seeing in my life, and that it is at present further augmented by being draped head-to-toe in seasonal Christmas tinsel and blinking lights, so that, when I entered, I stood dazed for several seconds, wondering, where the hell am I? like the heroine of one of those children's stories in which a lucky girl stumbles into a closet or a rabbit hole or a tornado and ends up in a surreal dreamscape.

They can make you a whiskey sour at The Distinguished Wakamba Lounge. That much is easy. What is not easy, in my experience, is trying not to stare at the bartender, who was, at the time of my visit, wearing cut-off denim hot pants and a rhinestone-encrusted leotard that was precisely the same color as her skin and was cut out around her abdomen like a particularly newfangled late '80s/early '90s swimsuit. If one got the sense that this outfit were required, one would of course be greatly offended and skeeved out, but after looking at the other bartenders, it would seem that this was not the case: like most women working food or drink service (yours truly, at one point in time, included) they were a little tarted up for tips, but not at the naked-rhinestone-swimsuit level; it would simply seem that, upon waking up that day, this particular bartender thought, "whatever shall I wear to work?" and answered her own question with, "why, a glittery leotard and some hot pants, of course." There was not a shred of irony to this outfit, yet it was ridiculous in ways Dov Charney could only ever crudely approximate and/or dream of, and when she approached me I was so viscerally struck by it that my head wobbled a little on my neck and I gained a new sympathy for the old perverts who used to steal glimpses down my shirt back when I waitressed. (Not that much sympathy. They were old perverts.) So I meekly ordered my drink and retreated to a table, where I promptly began texting everyone I knew about this AMAZING BAR.

At which point the person I had been waiting to hear from called me, and I left the bar with such speed that I actually injured myself on the door frame. Yet it is an enduring testament to the beauty and charm of the Wakamba Lounge that, for the first time in my life, I was sorry to be leaving Midtown.

Yes, We Suck: The Return of the "Generation X" Think Piece

It's such a simple word, "we." It echoes around the world - nous, nosotros, wir, wij, all basic and universal evocations of a common purpose and identity. And all, when deployed in the correct context, signify a writer's departure from the realm of the personal or critical essay, and the beginning of Generation-Defining Time.

This installment of Generation-Defining Time comes to you courtesy of talented Salon writer Heather Havrilesky! I believe it is her first entry in the genre. It is entitled "An open apology to boomers everywhere," and it comes straight from Generation X.

Now, I missed Generation X by a few years (I think I am technically a "Millenial," what with my Facebooking and my text messaging and my baggy pants) but I have been familiar with the X Generation since the early '90s, having known them primarily as the generation of people that would not stop fucking defining themselves, ever. Throughout my tender adolescence there came to prominence a barrage of Generation X spokespeople with Generation X thoughts who wanted us to know about how Generation X was perceiving the world in this totally new Generation X way, and it maybe involved having a crappy service job and being mad at your parents. I thought we were done! I thought the answer was "irony." Apparently, not, however, for the Generation X define-a-thon continues.

So, on the "being mad at your parents" tip, here is Heather Havrilesky, apologizing to them for the entirety of her Generation:

Dear boomers: We're sorry for rolling our eyes at you all these years. We apologize for scoffing at your earnestness, your lack of self-deprecation, your tendency to take yourselves a little too seriously... Chanting "What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!" at that rally against the Iraq war made us feel self-conscious in spite of ourselves. We felt like clichés. We wondered why someone couldn't come up with a newer, catchier, pro-peace slogan over the course of 40 years of protests.

Ah, the true failure of the anti-war movement - insufficiently catchy slogans. Here, Havrilesky explains political involvement, X-style:

We really did stand for something, underneath all the eye-rolling. We're feminists, we care about the environment, we want to improve race relations, we volunteer. We're just low-key about it. We never wanted to do it the way you did it: So unselfconscious, so optimistic, guilelessly throwing yourself behind Team Liberal. We didn't get that. We aren't joiners. We don't like carrying signs. We tend to disagree, if only on principle.

So, completely ineffectual, then? I'm not sure I get it; I've only read 900,000 pieces on Generation X in my lifetime. Can you explain this in a way that involves the words "cynical," "ironic," or "slacker?"

We grew cynical. We doubted even the most heartfelt, genuine statements. We didn't want to be blind to our own faults, like you were, so we paraded our faults around, exalted in our shortcomings. The worst thing, to us, was to not see ourselves clearly. The worst thing was to not be in on the joke... everyone is a fake and the high capitalist world is bought and sold and even the purest form of art is a commodity, not to be taken seriously. No one can be trusted, nothing is pure -- these are the truths we held to be self-evident.

My goodness! Imagine the "capitalist world" being "bought and sold!" Clearly, this means that you can never believe in anything ever and that people are terrible. Remember, people: sad thoughts are always more valid and insightful than happy ones. This is the principle of all psychological health.

Anyway, Havrilesky explains, the real fault lies not with Generation X, but with the Baby Boomers, who were horrible, horrible parents:

You told us to tell you anything, to be honest, to come to you with our problems, but when we did, you were uncomfortable and dismissive. You didn't really want to know how we felt. When we were emotional, you flashed back to that time your drunk mother threw the jack-o'-lantern into the street. You loved us, but you were passive-aggressive and avoidant in spite of your best intentions.

Wow. An entire generation raised by my ex-boyfriends? That must have blown. From now on, I won't carry any bitterness about my past relationships. (Which all ended, by the way, exactly like Terminator 2: "I know now vhy you cry, but it is sommesing I can nevah dooo.") I'll simply understand that they were Baby Boomers. Gentlemen - congratulations. You all look very young for your age.

But wait: crappy parents? Cynicism regarding the political views held by the preceding generation? Disengagement, disillusion, dysphoria? Why this sounds precisely like the Generation X anthem from Generation X-defining Generation Xtacular Reality Bites, written and performed by Ethan "X-treme X-ing" Hawke!



Okay, to be fair, I only put that video in this post because it is the most horrible thing that has ever happened. Just like Generation X!

Still, Havrilesky notes, Obama's nomination can change all that. Now that we've elected a President we can believe in, we can drop all of the cynicism and disengagement and reach out to the world, with eyes and hearts wide open. We can be vulnerable, trusting, maybe even a little bit naive. We can be, in other words, this woman:



Oh, Generation X. You say we only hear what we want to. We don't listen hard; we don't pay attention to the distance that you're running to anyone, anywhere. We don't understand if you really care. We're only hearing negative - no, no, no, baaaaaaaad!

And we say: stay.

Eh, It's Been Done.

I know that last post was pretentious as all fuck, and a bit heavy on the hipster-hate, and I know that hipster-hating is played out and pointless, but seriously: 

If the truth must be told, he was a little bit frightened of middle and lower class humanity, and of foreigners not of his own class. He was, in some paralyzing way, conscious of his own defenselessness, though he had all the defense of privilege... Nevertheless he too was a rebel: rebelling against even his own class. Or perhaps rebel is too strong a word; far too strong. He was only caught in the general, popular recoil of the young against convention and against any sort of real authority. Fathers were ridiculous; his own obstinate one supremely so. And governments were ridiculous: our own wait-and-see sort especially so. And armies were ridiculous, and old buffers of generals, altogether, the red-faced Kitchener supremely. Even the war was ridiculous, though it did kill rather a lot of people... Everything was ridiculous, quite true. But when it came too close, and oneself became ridiculous too...? 

- D.H. Lawrence, from Lady Chatterley's Lover, 1928

New Feature: Slightly Insane Media Studies

I am not smoking! Well: I'm not smoking much. This is very exciting, for several reasons, the chief of which is that I've spent the entire day straddling some sort of barbed-wire fence between panic and irritation. (That is what we call a metaphor, and it is one of many things that you cannot do well when you are trying to overcome your weird emotional/physical dependency on something that makes you smelly and unattractive and also might kill you.) Yes, lots of things are hard when you do not smoke: talking, working, and not whining constantly about how much you want a cigarette would be my top three. But also writing, it turns out, is pretty hard! Which is why it is so, so gratifying when someone else manages to sum up - in only one sentence! - that one thing you just keep bitching about re: popular culture but can't quite communicate in a clear or succinct fashion (do you ever communicate in a clear or succinct fashion, Sara? probably not!) and that you just keep trying to communicate, awkwardly, thereby wasting endless time and space and making everyone think you are kind of a sour nag. Are you ready for the sentence? Here it is!

Thank God we have another film about the fantasies, hang-ups, unintentional cruelties, and eventual redemption of a fucked-up straight white guy.
- Dana Stevens, first sentence in her review of Choke.

Ha ha ha, AWESOME. But can she keep it up? Let's check in with the second sentence:

For a moment there, I had almost forgotten to keep such dudes at the forefront of my concerns.
- Dana Stevens, second sentence in her review of Choke.

Oh, snap!

It's not that I don't care about FUSWGs. I do! They are a part of our human community. Some of them are quite talented. It's just that these stories dominate the landscape, in a way that often makes me feel that other perspectives aren't valued, and at a certain point my relationship to the culture at large starts to feel like hanging out with a dude who has to tell me everything about everything and quite blithely and confidently cuts me off when I start to speak. At some point, my willingness to listen wears thin, and I excuse myself so that I can step outside and smoke.

I should note that this sentence, for me, really hangs on the phrase "unintentional cruelties." Always, in these stories, the FUSWG in question hurts someone - typically a girl - either through sheer doltishness and immaturity, or because he actually does believe that he matters more than she does, that he can and should be cruel or disrespectful or dishonest, because it's fun, and because he can get away with it. The "sensitive," navel-gazing aspect of the story, and the eventual redemption, are supposed to legitimize this: I know I'm an asshole, but I just can't help myself. This is a common line, and it wearies me. If you don't want to be an asshole, there are plenty of ways to avoid it - like, say, listening to the women in your life when they tell you how they want to be treated, or challenging your own belief that respecting women's boundaries is "emasculating." Also, you might not want to surround yourself with narratives that legitimize asshole behavior - although, as previously noted, they will be difficult to avoid.  

--- WORKBOOK: FUN WITH THIS SENTENCE ---

This sentence is fun because you can use it in different contexts! Let's start by applying it to, say, Indecision:

Thank God we have another [novel] about the fantasies, hang-ups, unintentional cruelties, and eventual redemption of a fucked-up straight white guy.

Let's apply it to All the Sad Young Literary Men:

Thank God we have another [novel] about the fantasies, hang-ups, unintentional cruelties, and eventual redemption of [three] fucked-up straight white guy[s].

Let's apply it to Knocked Up and High Fidelity and Fight Club and Garden State and Elizabethtown and The Last Kiss and About a Boy:

Thank God we have [all of these stories] about the fantasies, hang-ups, unintentional cruelties, and eventual redemption of [a bunch of] fucked-up straight white guy[s].

BONUS QUESTIONS: Can you think of any narratives to which this sentence might apply? Be creative! Is it okay that many Charlie Kaufman movies fit this pattern if you also think Charlie Kaufman movies are just really good? Consider fucked-up straight white chick media: is it equally insufferable, not least because of the amount of privilege inherent in being a straight white chick, but also because self-pity and self-absorption are just really unlovely traits? How about this blog? Is it annoying you yet? Do you think that it will start to? Also, can I have a cigarette now? Please. I want one. Please. 

Why They Hate Us, or: If Celebrities Were From the Midwest...

... ha, ha, they'd be fat! Oh, and poor. They probably wouldn't have very good record collections, either. You'd be all like, "the new Silver Jews record really isn't very good," and they'd be like, "I don't care, because our cultures are very different, yet in the upcoming election American adults from all walks of life will be voting in (one hopes) the belief that they can elect a politician who will promote the 'best interests of this country,' although widespread use of divisive culture-war rhetoric has made it impossible to even conceive of Americans as having a common interest to which their government can attend. Corn dog?"

Ha ha ha, God, people who aren't us are so lame.