I’ve been trying for a couple years now but I haven’t been able to come up with a name dumber than ‘Renesmee’.
Tag: dumb
February 1, 2012
January 21, 2012
Ten Best List
I don’t typically compile a “ten best” list each year as I find the entire ritual a narcissistic and even imperious performance of one’s own taste. This year, however, I decided to get off my high-horse and share the most outstanding films I saw this year. After all, I am highly credentialed in film studies/analysis, so it would be criminal of me not to share that expertise with the lay public. Be advised, however, many of these films will prove difficult to see, especially if you live in some God-forsaken, cultural backwater.
1. Seven Tangerines (Poston)
Reportedly shot for less than $50,000 without permits in an abandoned brownstone in Queens, Jack Poston’s Seven Tangerines succeeds less as a well-crafted work of cinema than as a raw document of extraordinary writing and acting. As a play, Seven Tangerines never even made it to off-off-Broadway, Poston staging only six performances at a rented community center in Astoria before taking it before the camera. For many productions, that would be a mistake. But here there is a sense that Poston and co-star Jakov Lund, May-December junkies slowly freezing to death in a Bronx tenement, might have over-cooked their characters if they had waited any longer to capture them on film. And the ending remains as haunting as it is enigmatic– do the two men, at the brink of unconsciousness, see the face of God, or is it merely the lights of a police helicopter? Thankfully, Poston allows the viewer to make his or her own decision.
2. The Winter of the Mouse Friend (Fu)
On the surface, Su Jing Fu’s study of a girl’s dormitory during the Cultural Revolution may seem like a straightforward celebration of female bonding and empowerment. When a small and very bedraggled mouse wanders into the dormitory during the first winter snowfall, the girls nurse it back to health and make it their communal pet, going to great lengths to hide their furry friend from their harsh housemother. The charm of the premise gradually mutates into something more sinister, however, as Xiaobai (“Whitey”) becomes hostage to the various interpersonal struggles between the roommates. Cantopop singer Denise Ho Wan-See is surprisingly good as the dorm’s primary villain, Bao-yu, manipulating her peers for chocolates and other favors by constantly threatening to reveal the mouse’s hidden den in the wall.
3. Jacques et Jacqueline (Courbet)
Hopes were not high after comedian Ricard Courbet’s first feature, Les Idiots sur un Bateau (2009), a broad physical comedy set at a failing yacht rental yard in Nice. And Courbet probably did himself no favors in the follow-up by playing both “Jacques” and “Jacqueline,” combative fraternal twins brought together by the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. But Courbet surprised everyone by crafting a rather poignant character study amid all the requisite yucks, making Jacqueline in particular a stealthily tragic composite of poor life decisions. And while the ending set-piece with the frozen baguettes and broken teeth was a bit crass, overall it didn’t derail this surprisingly complex portrait of sibling rivalry turned bittersweet affection.
4. Zero-Muybridge-One (Muybridge/Locklear)
Experimental cinema can often be unbearable, and on paper, Zero-Muybridge-One looks like it would be no exception. Digital artist Camden Locklear has digitized every single frame of Edward Muybridge’s foundational “motion studies” and then re-sequenced them according to a cryptograph derived from the texts of Walter Benjamin. The effect is a haunting flow of sepia-toned light and shadow punctuated by furtive images that struggle to cohere on screen. Horse and cat strobe toward one another from opposite sides of the frame. A tumbler appears to somersault in and out of oblivion. A nude man strides into the very maelstrom of modernity itself, chin held high as he enters the new century with what we can now see was a sadly misplaced sense of confidence. Credit too must be given to Philip Glass’ architectural scoring that gently accents the emerging images even as it stolidly anchors the overall flows of amorphous light.
5. Yellowknife (Slidell)
Two painfully shy teenagers, he from Vancouver and she from Montreal, find themselves “exiled” together for a summer in the remote wilderness of Yellowknife. While their fathers work together on a geological survey, Marcus and Claudette negotiate a relationship they know is both inevitable and doomed, brought together by their mutual distaste for life in the wilderness and yet knowing their time together will be over come September. First love is an old story, of course, but director Felicity Slidell does an excellent job here undercutting the genre’s more maudlin elements by refracting them through the precocious sophistication of her leads. There are a few missteps (the scene where the young and still awkward couple happen upon moose copulating in the woods flirts a little too heavily with the American Pie series), but overall a touching meditation on the millennial generation’s turn at “summer love.”
6. El vano heredarán la tierra (Urueta)
Transplanting William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair from Regency England to the slums of contemporary Mexico City is an audacious move, as is placing a 14 year-old male hustler in the role of Becky Sharp. But Urueta’s satire of the links between social mobility and sociopathology shares Thackeray’s at times misanthropic eye for the often brutal violence underlying custom and convention. And by removing the “Amelia” character entirely, some might even say Urueta has improved on Thackeray.
7. Tarantula (Emmerich) 
Given his last three spectacularly interesting failures (10,000 B.C., (2008), 2012 (2009), and Anonymous (2011), many suspected that Roland Emmerich might just have one truly outstanding film in him struggling to get out. Who could have known that Emmerich would finally strike gold in a remake, especially considering that his 1998 attempt to reboot Godzilla was such a giant reptilian turd? And yet, in reimagining Jack Arnold’s 1955 classic of an irradiated spider on the rampage, Emmerich achieves an emotional depth wholly absent in his turn at the Godzilla franchise. Wisely, Emmerich transforms Arnold’s creepy-crawly Other into a more sympathetic fellow citizen of earth, one that never asked to be trapped in a laboratory much less forced to ingest radioactive grain. In a testament to the director’s subtly in making us identify with what is, after all, merely a CGI program, our attachment to the giant spider is really only apparent at the very end. As “Tarantula” looks down with his 8 eyes, seemingly betrayed by his former scientist protector (played with surprising verve by Tara Reid), we hope for just a moment that the seemingly inevitable laser blast and explosion will not come. But of course, as it must, it does. So far Emmerich’s Tarantula has not found a U.S. distributor, but hopefully that will change in 2012.
8. Reflections (Corday)
Very few people have had the opportunity to see the first feature film by avant-garde video artist Christian Corday, but fortunately I was invited to a screening last month for 25 or so people at the artist’s new loft/studio in DUMBO. It is truly stunning, and I highly recommend you try to see it should it come to a theater near you (although that’s probably unlikely—given the film’s formal and thematic complexity, it is likely only to play in New York City and Los Angeles for the foreseeable future). Corday begins with an odd but intriguing premise. “A” and “B”, married artists in Chelsea, decide to cover every surface of their apartment/loft/studio with mirrors. From there, they decide that all of their daily interactions—both in and out of the house—will be conducted through mirrors as well. Gradually the inevitable happens. Their identities become ungrounded and uncertain, eventually transferring between their two bodies. From here the film engages a series of metaphysical dilemmas—what happens when “A’s” subjectivity is in “B’s” body, and vice versa? Original, profound, and utterly unsettling—it’s a must see for anyone with an interest in film, philosophy, or both.
9, The Royal Disease (Dankworth)
Excruciatingly detailed bio-pic of Prince Leopold, the Duke of Albany and fourth son of Queen Victoria. Leopold lived a short and troubled life, his hemophilia keeping him under the watchful eye of his mother the Queen. Dankworth’s film only has time to sample a few of Leopold’s many failures at love, focusing primarily on his combative relationship with his overprotective mother. But the true star here (no offense to Jude Law’s turn as Leopold) is the set and costume design. Shot entirely on location, The Royal Disease’s painstakingly accurate reconstruction of every costume, object, and room of its Victorian milieu unfolds almost as a type of time travel. One forgets they are watching a movie so complete is the immersion in period detail. Elegantly stunning and highly educational.
10. Up My Own Asshole, with Vigor (Farren)
Playfully self-reflexive morality tale of Hollywood manners, focusing on a screenwriter who sets out to write the most damning critique ever of the Hollywood system, only to find himself co-opted at every turn by the very system he detests. While this material can often lead to a type of insufferable navel-gazing, Farren very effectively foregrounds the film’s recognition that it is nothing more than navel-gazing, thus allowing it to gaze even deeper with absolute impunity. Amanda Seyfried has a wonderful turn as the embattled screenwriter’s on-again, off-again girlfriend, a “granola” type constantly hectoring him to do something more “useful” with his life (until, of course, she lands a role herself in a network mini-series). By now, one would think the public would be tired of “insider” tales of Hollywood’s glamour and duplicity, but Up My Own Asshole, with Vigor proves the genre still has yet to exhaust its creative possibilities.
January 21, 2012
I Saw That Movie Where All the Apes Get Mad and Take Over the World
First of all, credit where credit is due. Thank you, Hollywood, for finally making a film this summer that didn’t make me wish I had stayed home to express my cat’s blocked anal gland with a Q-Tip. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is actually really, really good. Surprisingly good. True, it did require the industry to dip back into the stockpile of science-fiction ideas that existed before Star Wars transformed the entire genre into little more than an endless sword ‘n’ sandal flick with more and better weapons, but if that means getting a Zardoz reboot next, I’ll take it.
If anyone reading this is in or near Malibu, by the way, please kidnap Michael Bay and force him to see Rise immediately so that he might learn the basics of scene articulation and narrative structure. If Rise can make me misty-eyed over a big, dumb ape taking out a helicopter, surely Bay can learn how to help us keep track of who is a Transformer, who is a Decepticon, who is Shia LeBeouf, and why we should even care in the first place. Okay, obligatory Bay = State of current cinema joke out of the way, let’s proceed…
Let me say this: I wish Rise of the Planet of the Apes were happening right now. I wish super-intelligent apes were swinging through the trees this very moment ready to lay waste to our sorry civilization. It’s about time another species took over for our terrible stewardship of the planet and of ourselves. Millions starving. Inequality increasing. Axe Body Spray still on the market. At this point, the ghost of Paul the psychic Octopus deciding affairs of state with an aqua-Ouija board could probably run most governments better than we humans. And look, we all know this movie is only showing us our inevitable future. Apes may not learn to talk and organize themselves into medieval fighting formations, but it’s even money we end up taking ourselves out with a virus that we will probably invent for profit. It may be an additive used to extend the shelf-life of Cheezy Bread Stix or a fine mist Steve Jobs sprays into the atmosphere to make Apple users misplace their dongles and cords that much quicker, but it’s going to happen, we’re going to take ourselves out in a way that is cosmically embarrassing. 
That’s why it’s so great that Rise targets San Francisco as the first city to go—It’s an open attack on all the Trekkies out there who imagine that Frisco will be the gateway for projecting our boring, homogenized cultural differences of the future out into the universe so that we can lecture other cultures (alien ones, no less) on what they should and should not be doing. You say the future is a bank lobby in space where we all obey the prime directive whilst discovering every civilization in the universe has its own form of brightly colored liquor? I say it will be genetically mutated monkeys ripping out our tracheae and kneecaps just for the hell of it.
In this respect, I always thought Spielberg missed a real opportunity with the Jurassic Park series. After humans stupidly brought dinosaurs back to life, wouldn’t it have been great if a bunch of pterodactyls got loose, bred in such numbers that we couldn’t really control them, and then occasionally swooped down to snatch away house pets and small unguarded children? Not so often that we had to declare a “War on Pterodactyls,” obviously, but maybe with the same frequency as people being hit by lightning—just enough to remind us of what dumbasses we were for bringing dinosaurs back to life in the first place, or for trying to play an extra hole of golf in the face of an advancing thunderstorm. I salute Rise for having the courage to remind us that it is often our very intelligence that makes us the stupidest ape of all. Imagine how much more free and full of life you’d feel if you could simply entertain yourself by throwing your own feces at various comic foils, as opposed to feeling dead inside after paying $14 to see Kevin James do it for you (wait, crossover alert: the mad-as-hell apes of Rise invade Zookeeper, radicalize the non-human primates, and then all escape the film to leave their bewildered human cast-mates wondering where the next fart joke will come from). 
Like all science-fiction, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is of course an allegory. I’ve heard many say this week, either in jest or quite earnestly, that the film is a great parable about the Tea Party—angry right-wingers as angry apes rising up against their oppressors. That’s a really nasty swipe, of course, seeing as how gratuitously insulting it is to apes. After all, the apes of Rise all learn to cooperate for the common good. They share their cookies and divide the labor “from each according to his need, to each according to his ability.” They also learn very quickly how important it is to get a good education, as in that scene where the guard catches them all going to night school. Say what you want about how smelly, dirty, or damned they might be, but an ape isn’t the type of creature that would prefer to shit in coffee cans and stack them on his neighbor’s property line rather than pay that extra penny in sales tax to refurbish his community’s sewer system. No, an ape is smarter than that.
Actually, as far as parables go, I think the film is much more interesting in its kinship to the zombie genre. A few years ago I delivered a paper in London (at the Cine-Excess conference) on the zombie film as a rather playful indulgence of a collective and accelerating social death-drive. Zombies are scary—particularly those British ones that cheat by running extra-fast—but there’s also something exhilarating in seeing the entirety of our social world absolutely destroyed. After all, what’s so bad about being a zombie? You’re still somewhat sentient, apparently, certainly more so than if you just watched 100 Ways to Leave a Game Show or paid actual attention to the last Katy Perry CD all the way through. Moreover, the only thing that can kill you is a clean brain shot—and once everyone else in the world is also a zombie, that isn’t very likely to happen. Zombies don’t have to work or pay mortgages or worry about their personal appearance anymore—what’s not to like? 
If anything, Rise is even more candid and enthusiastic than most zombie films in indulging our desire to watch humankind snuff it—you’re on your feet by the end cheering the primate army as they hoist us brainiacs by our own R&D petard. Hurray for the noble apes! Hurray we’ll all be coughing up blood and dying soon! True, it’s a shame the death of humanity will mean no more incredible specimens like James Franco, Freida Pinto, and the hypothetical primates they might spawn, but that’s a small price to pay for exterminating assholes like that guy in the Ape house with the cattle prod or the pilot-neighbor-from-hell living next door. If I had a neighbor like that, I’d be personally injecting local raccoons with anything I could find in the hopes that one would eventually turn sour and spray his patio furniture with some form of mutantly toxic urine.
So kudos once again, Hollywood, for getting it right this time. I eagerly await the next installment when all the CGI Apes are rather surrealistically talking (which I hope will be even weirder than imagining Roddy McDowell’s mouth flapping behind the latex in the original series). I also hope the sequel has the guts to show thousands of Americans waiting around to die from the mutant virus, sad they will soon be no more, but ecstatic that they didn’t have to see their tax dollars wasted on government medical research or to support the implementation of Obama’s goddamn socialized medicine scheme.
January 10, 2012
Dendrophila and Other Social Taboos: Eminem Sex Dreams Decoded by Dani Burlison
In the thick of the 8 Mile era, he appears out of nowhere, rescuing me from a pretentious hipster bar. Lanky twenty-somethings sipping two dollar PBRs in their nicotine-soaked white belt adorned skinny jeans avoid eye contact while slouching over bar stools. The room is a thick dark cloud of off-putting pheromones and swollen egos. I grow increasingly restless. A friend excuses herself, stumbling outside with a shaggy-haired bass player and he approaches, politely asking to sit down.
“My name is…” he mumbles, while the indie rock band whines from the stage.
“I know your name,” I say, welcoming the attention. “Sit down.”
We discuss politics, genetic engineering and needle exchange programs. He invites me to a private screening of a factory farming documentary back at his San Francisco hotel room. Tugging at his baggy trousers, he leads me out of the bar.
Back at the hotel, his passionate rant about dismantling the racist prison industrial complex lures me, without hesitation, into the hotel bed, which is stacked with handmade quilts. “I made those myself,” he says.
Eminem is a closet quilter. I am so putting out.
He’s just aggressive enough to keep me pleased without hurting me in ways that I don’t want to be hurt. His hands are smooth and strong, save for the calluses where the mic is usually firmly grasped. But on this night, my night of an unbridled sexcapade, tangled up in Eminem’s hand-sewn rag quilts, the only thing in his hand is my body. Every single naughty bit of it.
As the sun rises, he serves the best organic orange juice ever and asks if I can stay another night. “I have season four of Sex and the City,” he says, brushing the hair from my eyes. “I love it when Samantha explores her sexuality with that amazing Brazilian artist, Maria. Love should see no boundaries. Let’s hold each other and watch it.”
He rubs my feet with Ayurvedic sesame oil, leading his hands to all sorts of glorious places on my ravaged body. He makes sweet tender love to me—with the expected intermittent Eminem-style stamina and welcomed throw down—over and over and over again. And again.
I leave the following morning to meet a friend for breakfast. As I dash nutmeg atop my steamed chai, I notice that he, Eminem, is standing in the corner of the cafe, smiling. “I miss you already,” he mouths from across the room.
I approach him. He hands over poetry and sketches of boats and hearts he’s scrawled across his napkins. “These are for you. I’ll never forget you.” He looks down, pulls up his drawers and walks away.
I know, Eminem. It feels so empty without me.
He shows up again, repeatedly, over the next ten years. He’s always a gentleman, always an animal—sometimes a kitten, sometimes a tiger—in the sack. We meet at airports, on road trips, at campgrounds, in waiting rooms at the veterinarian office. And once in the parking lot at Whole Foods where he carried so many bottles of so much fresh juice. Ten years of the best sex of my life. With Eminem. While I am asleep. Why not Leonard Cohen or Margaret Cho or Mark Wahlberg’s character in I Heart Huckabees? Eminem is so upset. And isn’t it wrong for a feminist to really, really enjoy sex dreams with some dude who, well, hates everyone, everywhere except his kids and Dr. Dre?
What does it all mean?
After shying away from asking my Certified Dream Analyst for insight, I did some research on my own. Here’s what some of the experts say:
Freud: If the dream had a ton of penis action already, then maybe Eminem has a pipe in his pants and I need that game piece to play Clue. But that’s a different type of pipe. Maybe I should still look in his pants. Also, the rooms where we always have sex symbolize wombs. I should probably ask my mom but maybe Eminem is my brother. If he is, Freud would still want me to have sex with him, I think.
Jung: It’s quite obvious that Slim Shady personifies the shadow archetype. Maybe that’s why I keep having sex with him in dark, shadowy places. Is he my animus? Do I want to have more sex with myself? Maybe Eminem’s shadow side is vegan and shops at Whole Foods. Maybe I just need a glass of fresh juice.
Laura Ingalls Wilder: I have a lot in common with Eminem. And if good friends are hard to find, maybe Eminem and I should enjoy life on a prairie somewhere. All of our kids would love it.
Radical activist view: Internalized sexism. I hate myself and my girly bits. Maybe I don’t care as much about the world as everyone thinks. Maybe deep down I hate women as much as he seems to. Shit. I need to take back the night and challenge oppression. In bed with Eminem. And then cancel my subscription to Ms.
My therapist: What do I think it means?
Power animal: Maybe Eminem is my power animal. I’m not sure what Eminem’s native elders think his power animal is, but since he was born in the Year of the Rat, I say it’s a rat. The rat is the first animal in Chinese astrology. Maybe Eminem is like an angry Adam and I am his sex-crazed Eve and together we can rule the world. Kind of like Wonder Twins. Or maybe it isn’t a rat but a rabbit. Rabbits indicate lots of sex, which leads me back to Freud, and me needing to have sex with Eminem, who might be my brother.
Runes (translated to Norwegian): I thought about my dreams and threw some stones. They read: Marshall elsker du og han ønsker å holde deg varm med hans rage. It’s cold in Norway.
Christian view: He needs to be saved. Maybe my life purpose is to smolder Marshall’s seething anger with a big, fierce, naked hug. Maybe I need to find God and if I do, maybe he’ll lead me to a San Francisco hotel room where I can drink juice. I’m really thirsty.
Annie Lennox: Sweet dreams are indeed, made of these. Maybe Eminem and I want to use and abuse each other. I think we can heal each other. It might be really good for us. Really.
Male friends: You need to stop dating crazy angry guys. You’re gonna end up in a trunk.
Female friends: You date wimps. You need to hit that shit. I bet he’s actually a really nice guy.
Yoda: If the dark side clouds everything then maybe Eminem’s dark public persona just casts a shadow over his sensitive, spiritual side. Maybe I should take him to yoga. And then go out for juice. And watch Star Wars.
Joseph Campbell: If dreamtime leads us to permanent fixtures in our psyches then maybe Eminem is a part of me, like a twin, and contrary to Freud’s wishes, we shouldn’t have sex because that would be incest or something and I’m pretty sure incest is illegal, especially for twins. Also, Campbell says dreams support our conscious lives so maybe Eminem is my sugar daddy and I should just ask him to support me and buy me the house he offered up in my 6th dream about him.
Oprah: If living my best life means that it doesn’t get better than sex dreams about Eminem than maybe I should leave it at that and not have sex with him. Maybe I’d end up on fire. Or in his trunk. With no juice. I wouldn’t like that.
Confucius: “What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.” Maybe Eminem lost something in that first dream and he keeps coming back for sex because he’s trying to find it in my pants. Maybe I need an X-ray so I can find it for him and send it in the mail so the dreams stop.
Wizardry and other assorted magic. Namely, the wisdom of Albus Dumbledore: If it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, then I think that maybe Dumbledore thinks the only way to make sense of the dreams is to live this all out, either through sex with Eminem or with a stand-in or body double or what have you. Dumbledore also says that happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light. Slim Shady needs to come to the light, I think. And I think the light is in my pants and in his pants, too. But what does Dumbledore know? He got smoked by Snape. Maybe he don’t know shit.
Eminem: I think he’s reaching out to me, telepathically, and that maybe he’d see this as an opportunity to seize everything he ever wanted and have sex with me. And that I am his portal to show the world that he’s socially conscious and is a really gifted quilter and he needs me to help him set up some quilting classes through an adult education program. Or maybe I’m just more thirsty than I realize and I do, in fact, need some juice.
December 19, 2011
Its All Greek to Me: A Column on Sororities in the South : Formalities by M.M. Locker
Less than 24 hours after the first celebration of sisterhood, we are informed of our first swap and first formal. It is exciting, but it really doesn’t go over very well. Within two weeks, we’re supposed to find and ask a date to our sorority Fall Formal, and within the next twelve hours we’re supposed to devise clever costumes for a swap.
Swaps are named not for the swapping of oral bacteria that often occurs on the dance floor, but for the social swapping of one sorority and one fraternity on campus. These parties are weekly, sometimes bimonthly, always on school nights, and hosted at bars that, on regular nights, freshmen are barely even allowed to approach. So it makes for an out of the ordinary and fun night already, even before the incorporation of a dress-up theme.
Sitting in the kitchen of my new sorority home, our pledge trainers try to explain the concept of our first swap, to be held tonight. Its theme is a wedding. Since most of us are majoring in hospitality management, this is a very good theme. Guys aren’t considered dates by Ole Miss girls, they are considered Potential Husbands. Our pledge class has many golden girls, but one who is particularly golden is designated the bride, a few others her bridesmaids, another her mother, and the rest of us are stuck in the broad category of GUESTS.
I’m okay with that. After a quick trip to the Goodwill (packed with Greeks each outdoing the others’ costumes) and then to the Salvation Army after Goodwill is entirely picked over, I find a costume, a clever-but-not-too-clever-don’t-worry-someone-else-will-be-dressed-the-same costume. I’m going to be a wedding crasher! Hah! Wow, originality, oh yeah, let me throw on boxers and a button-up and a tie and a garter, why not.
The swap is our first sorority-sponsored event, and I’m nervous about it. Not only do I need to impress my sisters with my behavior and sense of humor, but the corresponding fraternity as well. Tonight’s is among the best on campus, and its freshmen pledge class contains probably the most attractive boys I know. So my crasher attire will be inviting, right? Subtly, one would hope.
I dress for the swap with Abbey, my best friend from home, also a new member of Sorority H who has suffered all the ups and downs of the semester thus far along with me. We don our wedding guest attire and look… cute? We look stupid, actually, really, really stupid. This leaves us with little confidence to roam the dorm to meet up with more friends. It’s almost 10:00 pm when our group realizes we haven’t left yet, and that the two “pregame” parties have been shut down by cops or lack of alcohol, but we manage to find sober drivers, half gallons of cheap vodka with girly chasers, and our ways to The Levee, Oxford’s most despised bar, the location of the evening’s ceremony.
Still sticking together, as freshmen should on the bar scene, Abbey and I are greeted just beyond the bouncer by a junior boy, also from our hometown. He’s having a grand old time, congratulates us on our bids, poses for a quick “reppin’ the hometown” picture, and proceeds to the bar to buy us shots.
They are, appropriately, called Alabama Slammers, and they are really, really good. The next thing I know, Abbey is gone and I am kissing the cheek of a boy in tortoiseshell glasses, apparently only for the reason that I love his tortoiseshell glasses. Something is off. I have had minimal amounts to drink, but something feels really off, I’m alone and not bothered by it, the crowded bar feels like my friend, I’m making it, this is okay—and then I see freshman bachelor #1, a fellow counselor at the summer camp of my past. He is someone I barely know, but with whom I share common interests and even a random night out of our right minds on a lakefront. He’s dancing.
It’s not clear how, but I make my way to him and suddenly he isn’t dancing, he’s listening and then shushing me as I profess to him my undying love. I think this lasts more than ten minutes. No one but him notices, but I slip in the soiled muck on the bar floor known as “Levee juice” and he has to lift me to my feet. He is generous with the whole scenario, owing me nothing, but taking care to be sweet with all he says, keeping our conversation low-key.
Potential husband? Great job, Mary.
The next morning, I want to kick myself. I wake up to a text from him, yes, him, summer camp frat star, which says: I love you girl. Glad we had that little chat. I want to die. I apologize in a not-too-eager text, because good God, I don’t actually have real feelings for him. To explain the night, I decide my single shot must have been Xanaxed or something. Maybe it was, probably it wasn’t. Either way, he never replies.
Swaps are apparently not my forte. Over the course of the day, I gather firsthand accounts of minimally ridiculous things I did at the bar. My pledge trainer walked up to me in the bathroom, excited to see me and even more excited that she remembered my name.
“Oh my gosh, hey, I’m so sorry,” I apologized. “Where do I know you from? You look so familiar.”
Apparently she found this funny, but if I could I’d be kicking myself even harder.
Then, in doing my best to get over my completely inaccurate, yet somehow still inadequate, profession of love on the dance floor, I revisit other text messages I sent last night. One, to a girl in my pledge class who I’d secretly like to be best friends with, who I met for the first time last night, reads: riding on the bus for your birthday! you go girl. At lunch she tells me it wasn’t her birthday, and that she doesn’t know why I would send that. Solid. Awesome. Go Rebs.
But in the grand scheme of things, this was a tame first swap. Our golden girl bride got her very first kiss (from the handsome frat boy groom, of course), and that is the most interesting piece of news. It’s cute, not in any way embarrassing like my outburst could have been. I promise myself—because no one else noticed—that I will take it easier next time.
But then, you know, it’s almost formal and I barely know a masculine soul besides friends of Abbey’s boyfriend, all sophomore fratdaddies. I’m working up the nerve to ask a certain one to go with me, one I find very attractive but do not know well; but then I convince myself to ask one who is just a friend, somebody I’ve kissed once or twice or a few times for no apparent reason. So I’m excited. I’m making plans. Then my very own roommate, now a sister, decides she will ask my crush instead. She asks my permission after it is done. Drama drama drama. I’m mad for maybe eleven hours, then it doesn’t matter, what’s done is done is done. He’s not as cute as I think he is.
So formal night arrives, and I look pretty, I mean wow, seriously? Like, I look good. My roommate and I—all potential rifts appropriately mended—decide to make ourselves a quick few drinks while we put on makeup. Next thing I know, the lights are out save our hipster-moody dorm Christmas lights, and we are blaring “The Only One” by The Black Keys on repeat. This. Is. So. COLLEGE!!! Maturity! Adulthood! Drinking (pretty much) in solitude! Cool!
Call me Queen of the Lightweights, but when our dates arrive (together, almost awkwardly), I’m already bested. My date looks great, but no, I’m not sweet to him, I’m a belligerent tease.
So:
Formal happens—one minute I’m laughing with my date
—the next I see summer camp boy on the dance floor and nearly repeat my wedding swap antics
—the next I’m arm-in-arm with upperclassmen friends, who are casting me glances, sideways and concerned
—the next I’m alone in the chilly night weather, a cute boy smoking telling me he can’t find his date either
—the next I’m back on the bus, opening and reopening my purse, making sure I haven’t lost anything, smiling, feeling faint, not showing it, I hope, braided bun falling, falling, and then falling fast asleep.
- – -
I can’t forgive myself in the morning. Not only do I feel like a victim of a cruel, continuous beating, I’m humiliated. People have called and texted me to make sure I’m all right, which, really, says it all. I skip the Grove and the football game (as if we had a chance of winning anyway). I head to Wal-Mart instead and buy two small cakes and frosting, which I use to spell SORRY on each of them. I leave one at the sorority house, addressed to a friend who looked out for me, and have Abbey and her boyfriend take one to my date at his fraternity house.
I’m unhappy.
Not just that, I’m irresponsible, incapable of holding my own. This is me: a newly pledged member of a sorority I’d like to call home. I thought it was home already? But apparently it isn’t. I haven’t earned that yet. I’m not belligerent, I’m not “that girl,” but last night I well may have been. College! Maturity! Yeah, right, okay.
I’m a nice girl. I buy cakes and decorate them.
Part of me thinks I should be unconcerned. Mary Marge, you know, that girl who doesn’t care about conforming or belonging, that girl entirely her own. Who cares if I was nuts last night?! It affects no one’s life but mine.
Well, the rest of me realizes that this isn’t true. Stupid or overrated as it may sound, I’m part of something now, something I have no business representing poorly. Have I been brainwashed? Nah, I’ve just been kicked in the shins with a reality check. No matter how dumb the recruitment process, it landed me here, among people I like and respect for the most part. I can’t like and respect the whole of my sorority unless I can totally like and respect myself. Clarity understanding purpose motivation.
So without becoming someone new, here’s to becoming a better, milder-mannered me. I’ll drink—well, a little—to that.
December 13, 2011
Dendrophila and Other Social Taboos: Im Dreaming of an Anne Frank Christmas by Dani Burlison
I’ve never really been a fan of Christmas. The religious-themed music, car-clogged parking lots, the screeching children strapped in faux velvet and dangerously tight hair ribbons waiting to see Santa; all of it makes me incredibly uneasy. I suppose that growing up in a working-class home with nearly a dozen people plagued with varying degrees of psychosocial challenges—and receiving mid-December birthday gifts packaged in Santa-slathered wrapping paper—might lead the best of us into developing an aversion to Baby Jesus’ birthday. Through the years my own aversion grew quite strong, eventually settling into something like resentment.
For me, Christmas was never delivered in the shiny, neatly wrapped box with a snow-dusted Rudolf frolicking around outside, or familial holiday cheer like CBS holiday specials and the infamous Peter Comes Home for Christmas Folger’s commercial falsely implied. No relatives visited. Our family never attended holiday church services. And although I have faint memories of stacking my plate with chewy slabs of ham and watching the box wine squeeze out its last drops of sour medicine for my parents, there were no formal dinners. I don’t blame my parents. They were poor with too many kids, and too tired to erupt into holiday cheer when Christmas was likely looked at as a much needed day home from work. I blame the marketing industry.
Still, the holidays were quite simply a disappointment, with the worst factor playing out after the return to school a week or so later. Classmates flocked to an icy playground to take inventory of who wore sweet new puffy moon boots or who spent the two-week break sipping hot chocolate in between runs down snow-packed mountain slopes at various Sierra ski resorts. The schoolyard also played host to a holiday candy trade of sorts featuring hot list items, like Lifesavers Christmas Storybooks or giant Hershey’s Kisses encased in masses of dazzling red foil, neither of which I’d received. I would lie, explaining to my peers that I had already devoured my heaps of fanciful treats. In reality, my stocking brimmed with bitter, hard-shelled mixed nuts and oranges too sour for my prepubescent taste buds.
Christmas, in short, was a letdown of phenomenal proportions. I felt strongly that “The First Noel” could suck it.
Years later, at the onset of adulthood, I found myself delivering my first born on Christmas Eve. Given my unconventional leanings, I had hoped she’d emerge closer to her due date on winter solstice, shortly after the doctors had induced me with an intravenous drip of Pitocin. Several days and undisclosed amounts of Demerol and morphine later, she was forced out of the womb and into the second verse of “O Holy Night” sung by carolers and hospital staff roaming the hallways of the maternity ward. Suddenly, something changed. I’m sure there is a possibility that the post-childbirth hormones rushing through my bloodstream clouded my judgment, but in those first few moments of holding my wrinkly little elf of a daughter, my resentment toward poinsettias and holly jolly Jesus lovers softened a bit. My inner cynic was silenced for at least forty-five minutes.
The arrival of new motherhood brought with it pressure to provide my kids with every unfulfilled holiday fantasy I watched slip by during my own childhood. At first, I pushed forward, determined to recreate my very own Northern California version of the Family Ties’ Christmas specials. I overcompensated by piling gifts of handmade wooden block sets, fair trade crayons and politically correct coloring books under our live solstice-slash-Christmas-slash-birthday tree. Eventually, a dwindling income and anticlimactic post holiday letdown called for simplifying and managing resources with sporadic “life lesson” elements mixed in. I figured, fuck it; if I am growing humans in the science lab of my womb with the expectation that they’ll eventually blossom into walking, talking members of society, I better create something unique and memorable for them. The last thing the world needs are more kids flippantly plowing through heaps of child-labor produced, phthalate-soaked plastic crap that will just crumble in a month’s time anyway.
I set out with an agenda. And this agenda was not strictly limited to winter holiday madness.
In the springtime, May Day was often spent dancing around flowery trees or marching through our neighborhood in support of labor and immigrants’ rights. Throughout the summer, family camping trips were often planned in conjunction with tree sits in groves of old-growth redwood trees. October was usually saturated with lessons of the religious crusades, reminding my girls of the origins of Halloween and how completely insulting it is for the general public to demonize witches when, historically, witches were just trying to make shit right. That was followed closely by Dia de Los Muertos events, our growing altar bursting with photos of loved ones. Thanksgiving was observed as Indigenous People’s Day beginning with a sunrise ceremony commemorating the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz, followed with a homemade wine guzzling potluck with friends where I could sometimes be found reading passages of Lies My Teacher Told Me to any and every young and impressionable child who would listen.
Regardless of our (i.e., my) political holiday agenda, the kids have been indoctrinated into remembering that regardless of how bad things might be for us at times, everyone else has it much much worse, the lingering sound of my voice surely the source of many late night anxiety attacks: Never forget the suffering of others. Never. Forget.
But somewhere in between righteous activism and the rancid taste of defeat, I began backing away from confronting the iron fist of capitalism. I still correct disparaging language and certainly point out differences between the haves and the have-nots when the time calls. But in my darkest, most Christmas-is-oppressive-bah-humbug moments, I sometimes fear that all that is wrong with our society is so cemented into place that there is little chance of humanity’s survival, so I go ahead and look the other way. I’m not apathetic, really. Just like my own parents were during holidays past, I’m just incredibly tired. Plus my Seasonal Affective Disorder isn’t much of a remedy for my inner Grinch.
So, when recently participating in the soft-pedaled political agenda I call “storytime,” my youngest daughter, filled with her larger than average eleven-year-old heart, looked up at me, each eye a dazzling, sparkling blue and each freckle a kiss straight from God’s own personal and devoted angel servants. Having just turned the page of Anne Frank’s diary entry of celebrating Christmas in the secret annex with gifts of bread and pencils, my daughter’s face brightened.
“Mama, I want to have an Anne Frank Christmas this year,” she proclaimed with hope for a better world—a world of magic and wonderment—clinging to each and every syllable.
I was dumbfounded.
After the initial horror of what could be easily seen as an inappropriate statement from a privileged little white girl passed, I realized that my awkward attempts at reclaiming the holidays had an effect—an awkward one, but an effect, nonetheless.
She wasn’t suggesting that we burrow into the walls and attic of our little home to nosh on a diet of dried peas and fear. She knows I just don’t have the energy or resources to embark on a complete remodel of our rental. Nor was she glamorizing human tragedy, in which the victims of war and violence are too often young children. I’ve applied guilt—disguised as humility—in such thick coats that it has become a permanent, many layered shell of reality for my kids; she would never participate in an abominable World War II reenactment.
I think she recognized, in that moment, that simplicity is where it’s at.
Like my own longing, which led me to dig deep through holidays and traditions choked to the gills with consumer-driven emptiness, this sweet kid just wants to find meaning in a world that has allowed the holidays to be turned into a Jerry Springeresque spectacle. Pepper spray and stampede incidents through discount stores all in the name of obtaining some flimsy, sweatshop produced, overly packaged nonsense have replaced generosity and tenderly shared moments that this god damn holiday season is supposed to offer. Even for those of us who would rather avoid Celine Dion Christmas music or have birthdays painfully close to the holidays, deep down we all just want our lives trimmed with magic and sweetness.
In the end, there is nothing that any of us can do to avoid the build-up to Santa time, whether our belief systems call us to celebrate or not. Red and green window paintings flocked with toxic faux snow are shellacked across businesses as early as Columbus Day, the calluses and flip-flops of summer barely behind us. Sale ads jam our mailboxes, reminding us to start buying shit that no one really even wants or needs, because that’s what Christmas now represents for far too many people. The best that any of us can do is to is recreate the holidays and reclaim them for our own, even if that means dressing in moth-nibbled wool and scribbling lists of our hopes and dreams in our diaries by beeswax candlelight.
For my daughters and me, our two-foot tall faux redwood stands perched beside our paper snowflake lined window, white lights—very likely manufactured by tiny hands in an asbestos clouded factory warehouse, but whatever—flicker from its branches. As per tradition we’ll eat cookies and eggs for breakfast and play John Prine’s Christmas in Prison on repeat for at least an hour before feasting and laughing with our most cherished friends. And adding to the tradition this year, we’ll read a little Anne Frank and bake bread with the sourdough starter my wee one put on her modest holiday wish list.
And deep inside, under layers of sweatshirts and bathrobes and maybe a mild hangover from the previous night’s soynog and brandy, I’ll be secretly hoping that all of the weird shit I force onto my innocent children won’t make them grow up to hate me. Instead, I hope they look back and think that maybe Christmas isn’t so bad. And that maybe, Mom and her recovering bleeding heart necrosis finally got what it’s all about.
November 30, 2011
Its All Greek to Me: A Column on Sororities in the South : Night & Day by M.M. Locker
After skit round, I apparently have my pick of the litter. I’m asked back to all three of my top-choice houses, and I’m pumped. Really pumped. I’m going to be a srat1 star! Boys will like me, and I will like me too! All goals, in short, will be achieved.
My selections for the final round of rush are Sororities A, D, and H. A—the diverse, funny group with whom I have an automatic legacy “in.” D—the tie-dye wearers, the many-braceleted future leaders of America. H—the one I want to join. I said it. I felt committed. I think I meant it.
Pref night, short for “preference,” is what we’ve really been preparing for. It’s the serious segment of recruitment, and tears are apparently pretty common. I’m working on it. I don’t really care for wasted weeping or anything but, you know, hey, we can hope. We dress up really nicely tonight, making final impressions and having heart-to-hearts with the girls in each house who know us best.
At Sorority A, I am the very first girl called inside. The things they say are sweet and somber, real odes to sisterhood and what the members of the group mean to one another. I have a good friend here, and she and I sit down together for the individualized portion of our allotted time in the house. We have a funny conversation, but it takes a more serious turn.
“Mary.” She wants me to join this sorority. “I know you would love Sorority D, and Sorority H, but Mary Marge, this is it. You would be a perfect A.” I’d make such good friends and have such sweetly nuanced experiences, and I’d be a really great officer when that kind of time rolls around, and yeah, of course, uh huh, sounds good.
Then she surprises me. “I’ve got something to give you.”
Red alert. Dirty rushing!! No gifts are to be given to potential new members, under even the most desperate circumstances, but I’m thrilled. A new element has been added to the game. From her pocket she draws a sheet of computer paper, folded into quarters, and hands it to me. It’s from my sister, my legacy into Sorority A, and if it were not the most intimate exchange to ever happen between my sister and me, I’d put it right here to be immortalized. I can’t make it four lines before crying.
Fuck.
Girls, teary-eyed at the promise of friendship, suddenly turn to see me bent over in legitimate tears. The note tells me I’m probably nothing like the other girls rushing, that they have probably never achieved the level of personality she sees in me (true only because she is my sister), and that maybe I’m not meant for this. The letter is not about Sorority A in the way that I imagined it might be; it is instead a love letter, a real life love letter of a support beyond the bond of sorority sisterhood, of real sisterhood, of blood. And tears now too, Goddamnit.
I don’t know what to do with myself but hold the note in my pocket, fingering it gingerly when I get confused by what I want2. Leaving Sorority A, I tell my friend how much she means to me, how grateful I am for her kindness during rush. She says she hopes to see me tomorrow for Bid Day.
From there I migrate to Sorority D. They look gorgeous, hell, they always do. Their members sing and play piano, light candles, tell stories of what D means to them. Suddenly D starts to mean something to me too… I thought I knew what I wanted. Apparently I don’t. This sorority doesn’t simply give off a vibe of friendship. This sorority means something to these girls. They are the good, and together, as D, they are the greater good. Should I be one of them, that is the question, and the hand-holding, the anecdotes, the girls I have begun to know who I now feel want even to understand me, convince me that yes, yes, I should. It’s a cohesive feeling and a great one too. This might as well be it for me. I get big hugs on the way out, and a girl I am willing and wanting to get to know whispers, “I hope I see you back tomorrow.”
I go to the H house unsure. I know just who it is that will pref me, and together we sit down to talk, which I expect to be a really big deal, maybe a definitive point in our friendship. But she says, “Hey, do I really need to pref you?” and we spend the minutes laughing, her happiness in Sorority H subtle, but apparent. She is a really popular person, some kind of big shot officer and so after a few minutes she gets up to address the whole group, not just me.
Thirty minutes ago I belonged in Sorority D. Zero percent of a doubt in my mind, I had overcome my own expectations for the evening and had vulnerably experienced their sisterhood without criticizing it for anything. It is the only group that spoke to my insides, said to take a look at all that I could be a part of, that I could take so seriously and love. Whereas here, at the H house, I’m laughing with friends and not even thinking about collectiveness, about sororities. Is it better to be happy and realize you’re in a sorority or to be happy without all the effort? This seals the deal for me. My mind is made up.
My friend walks me out of the H house, saying hey to every person she passes, and gives me a hug with which I’m actually familiar. “See you tomorrow?” she asks.
My dire need for drama, to seem like this decision is torture, bubbles inside of me. I don’t want to let anyone down. I don’t want to have given the wrong impression. I know which sorority feels best as a sorority, and I know which sorority feels like home.
“Yep.”
- – -
I wake up the next morning eager. All of us in my building—stoners, Catholics, westerners, Honors students—begin a countdown to two o’clock and Bid Day.
A lot of parents are coming to see us off to our new homes on Sorority Row, but my mom wasn’t in a sorority or anything. She didn’t go to my older sister’s bid day. It seems natural that she won’t be here.
No bouquet has been sent to the dorm lobby for me, smelling sweetly and urging me to act perfect and stay poised. Apparently that’s a tradition here at Ole Miss, the flower thing. I felt too stupid telling my mom about it, so I just spray Febreeze around my room and it smells so good guests assume I’m hiding my massive bouquet. So modest. That’s me.
But at eleven o’clock, my phone rings, and my mother is 30 minutes from Oxford.
“Huh?”
Her cell service breaks up on the backroad drive to visit, so she texts me from her next pit stop.
coming 2 oxford. thought it would b fun. xoxo
ok!
bringing u cookies 2.
So she arrives outside of Martin Hall, a tray of homemade cookies in hand, wrapped in coordinated curly ribbon. “Oh shoot,” she says. Before I can manage my next murmur of confusion, she turns back to the car. “These are Sorority H’s colors! You haven’t even gotten a bid yet!”
I laugh because she knows their colors, because she is invested enough in this to show up, but mainly because it’s Bid Day and I’m at Ole Miss and I don’t really know who I am right now. But it’s a humorous feeling, a welcome one. I keep laughing.
- – -
I’m always laughing, though it’s nerves now. We stand, all remaining thousand-ish, waiting for the official business of receiving our bid cards. The order of business is more than order here, it is untainted tradition: we are to be handed our envelopes, to open them with arms adrenalized by the prospects of our futures, and then to spring to our new homes on Sorority Row.
My friends are ready. And I’m ready! I have a feeling that my envelope contains exactly what I want it to, and you know, whatever, if it doesn’t then that is that. That’s how it goes. That’s how it always has gone, I guess, and always will. Until sororities are eclipsed by a new means of social exclusion, probably some Facebook group spin-off. Or whatever, right?
But I get my envelope and—for the fraction of an instant that I go without opening—I’m a little bit terrified. I’ve put a surprising, self-serving, self-deprecating amount of effort into this process, and I am ready, but terrified. There could be a fluke. I could have given or received wrong impressions. I could have, I might have, what if I—
—SORORITY H WOULD LIKE TO INVITE Mary Marge Locker TO JOIN—
blah blah blah, something else, a signature, and then a blur, I’m fucking out of there, I’m like a hunting dog chasing falling birds, I’ve got tunnel vision, I could run like this forever. I could keep on keeping on forever; I’m a jet, you should see this shit, seriously see it, me, Marge, running for the first time since middle school PE—really, really running.
I can barely recognize my path across campus. Frat boys and pledges line the sidewalks, dressed in sport coats, cheering, teasing. Hipsters far above the Greek scene also cover campus, laughing at These Dumb Freshmen Bitches who are paying for friends. Fuck the man. Fuck the freshman girl embodying him.
But oh, man, I’m not stopping for anything. I’m nearly there. I’m high-fiving the bros like I was born to do it, and Bam! I make it to the H house alive, one of the first, barely breathing. My friend who preffed me, Brittany, the big shot, loads me down with presents and general enthusiasm. Yeah! Friends once, sisters now! It’s honestly pretty cool, to be able to take a female, heterosexual relationship to a new level. Give us a new title! Sisters. That’s it, right there. Sisters.
It makes me think of my sister and the note, and I wonder what my family will think of all this, when suddenly I see my mom. Low-key, she stands beneath a massive magnolia that apparently wants to hug her, and she waves to me saying, Hey kid, this is your shindig, not mine—see ya when I see ya.
We aren’t a social family. She knows this will come and go.
I see her for a second, then head inside among the 121 girls of my pledge class. Our massive freshman population grants Ole Miss the honor of second-highest sorority quota in the United States. I’m overwhelmed. Hey I’m Sally. Hey this is Brooke. And Jess, Claire. And Ali. And the double names like mine, even harder, Mary Adele, Mary Margaret, Mary Charles, Betsy Kate, Rhea Kay, generations more, and more, and keep counting, there’s more.
I smile and I’m ready, or I think I’m ready. Okay. Sisters. Let’s do this. We made it. We’ll be in each other’s weddings. We’ll live together for the next three years. We’ll share our hopes and thoughts, and—more importantly—our hookup stories and psychology notes. We’ll bond over late night meals in the sorority house kitchen. We’ll do crazy shit when we drink. 121? I got this. Yeah.
“I’m Mary Marge,” I say, and I’m laughing.
- – -
1 Derived from the abbreviation “frat” for fraternity as an adjective, “srat” is short for sorority.
2 To be in a sorority!
November 22, 2011
The Long Walk: A Column About Washington: What We Talk About When We Talk About Washington by Alec Bings
A few months back, when dusk wasn’t yet unspooling overhead at 5 pm, I attended an early-evening picnic. I hardly knew any of the people circled around the spread, and feeling mildly anti-social, I resolved to simply munch on baby carrots and enjoy the fresh air. But as the hummus evolved towards that final stage where people semi-grossly swipe at it with their fingers, an equally mute attendee rotated toward me and introduced herself. She was a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend (or something) and we exchanged polite conversation for 10 or 15 minutes. It was superficial talk, the kind of half-hearted chatter that never drifts from biographical descriptors for fear of becoming a discussion of actual substance and thus real focus and mental energy.
Soon we were all standing, packing trash and Tupperware into various canvas tote bags. Ambling home, I hadn’t taken five steps when I realized—suddenly, like an electric memory—what was so novel about that conversation: We never told each other what we did for a living. Sure, we talked about how we knew our mutual friends, and our weekend pastimes, and other pseudo-personal factoids. But neither of us had asked the other about our work. And I admit this may sound hyperbolic, but I think there’s a genuine chance that’s the first time that’s ever happened in Washington, D.C.
Look, it’s not really our fault. You meet someone new in D.C., you ask them about their job. Even long since having observed this custom and thinking it noxious, I still find myself guilty of it more than I’d like. This city is like constantly running into a work-friend at the gym: “What are you doing here?” It’s just one of the plagues of living in this town, something so grin-and-bear-it commonplace that I’ve seen people give a little shrug of surrender before asking someone they’ve just met how they draw a salary. It may be generational, with us Millenials more career-centric and less decorous than our forebears. But the phenomenon remains a D.C. stalwart. And the underlying reason for this tacky shtick is simple: not too many Washingtonians move here for any reason other than a job. Washington isn’t usually a place where people explore themselves and see where their passions might lay. People tend not to move here on an airy whim. We don’t have the warm quirk of San Francisco, the infinite potency of New York, the good-natured sentiment of Chicago. We have politics, basically, and the employment that comes with it.
The Washington professional zoology has a few specific archetypes. Schmoozy, tassle-shoed lobbyists bringing two martinis back to the table. Nonprofit workers and big-hearted activists bleeding themselves for petition signatures. Certainty-consumed congressional staffers cloaked in sweaty intensity, obsessing over fiery but meaningless battles on whatever political foofaraw has erupted that day. We’ve also got contractors, think tankers and more lawyers than any reasonable society should need. All told, this one-industry town combines to spawn a few special dynamics. For one, there’s an innate competitiveness that comes from floating in the same fishbowl—which helps breed the kinds of status-check questions I somehow avoided during that autumn picnic. But more importantly, our shared politico-obsession can at times drain us of our perspective.
The fear of losing panoramic balance is nothing new. Life magazine in January 1942 groaned about this as wartime mania was bubbling: “Any rural cracker-barrel attracts a greater diversity of viewpoints than Washington does. Here is a strictly artificial city, the only major capital in the world that produces nothing but government. Here is a city without any balance whatever, with everyone boring everyone else to death talking shop, a city that cannot be a community because its interests are not communal but identical.”
In circa-now Washington, alas, plus ça change. It’s true that other great capitals of the world don’t appear to have this problem. Paris, Berlin, London, Sydney, Bangkok—these are all vibrant cultural and commercial centers in which the primped political establishment is simply part of the show. Perhaps if the capital of the United States were located in some other major city, much of the material for the superficial burlesque of Washington would vanish. But it isn’t, and a centrally self-admiring and monotonic culture we remain. I imagine it’s a lot like living in one-note Hollywood, with its enclave of slime-ball agents and dumb-headed producers eyeing the offloading busloads of wide-eyed wannabe-ingénues, elevated into a kind of cocaine-laced nobility. Washington’s aristocracy is similarly buttressed by a singular industry, a city that’s little more than a sprawling marble office park dotted with memorials and museums.
Ultimately, this obsessive toiling in federal government, as Life noted a lifetime ago, creates a veneer of artifice. It’s not just easy to get lost amid it all, but it seems practically destiny. And while many of my fellow D.C.-ites are able to row against the current to focus on What’s Really Important, sometimes the big picture of national politics simply gets lost. The obvious truth about Washington is that this city can forget—surrounded by the disingenuous whirlwind of rabid twaddle and hour-by-hour cable-TV “wins” and “losses”—that there are practical impacts to our actions. The work can feel simply, regrettably, theoretical.
It shouldn’t. The voting for president begins in just six weeks, and there is no worse time for us in Washington to forget why we moved here. This is the thought that hit me while watching the recent GOP debate in Michigan, where Rick Perry had his widely mocked and now narrative-defining brain freeze “oops” moment. (Thank merciful heavens, by the way, that we somehow avoided calling it “oops-gate,” or did we decide to no longer tiredly attach “-gate” to every miserable little scandal and I just missed the celebratory cake and punch?) By momentarily forgetting the third agency he has lined up for eradication, Perry reinforced the depthless confidence that makes him the alpha and the omega of the GOP’s chuckle-brained simpletons.
But so what if Perry is out of his element, that it’s not entirely clear he could pour water out of one of his cowboy boots with instructions written on the heel? The moment matters because the post-debate conversation naturally gravitated toward the man’s assumed intellectual impotence without real discussion of: wait, what would happen if we razed those three federal departments—Commerce, Education and (trivia question in 2020 alert!) Energy? Perry’s elimination-fantasy triptych isn’t even the largest libertarian daydream. Ron Paul—the beatific doctor-congressman from, yes, Texas—believes we should do away with five federal departments, a fact he unhelpfully reminded Perry as the poor fellow was plumbing his mental recesses in front of 3.3 million flabbergasted viewers.
Three departments, five departments, whatever. It’s all politicking glib fatuousness. We’ve already covered how the nut bars running to become my boss argue that my co-workers and I don’t help people, that we’re tone-deaf to what “real America” wants and needs, and so irkingly on. And when I roll my eyes and sigh in dismissive opposition, it’s not turf-protection—we truly believe we are of assistance. We think this because we’re aware there is something more amplitudinously awful than an inherently unwieldy federal bureaucracy. Despite the GOP’s vision of government office buildings burning in flames in some kind of divinely theophanous act, actually imagining the true outcome if they got their way appears to take a power beyond their ken.
I would love to see some kind of Back to the Future Hill Valley/Hell Valley alternate-timeline scenario depicting how our brave colonial-garbed no-tax-aficionados would act when faced with the kind of government immolation they crave. Ignore for the moment all the ethereal machinery regarding fiscal policy and Medicare percentages and foreign relations and other intangibles. Think about your morning today. Your radio wasn’t a jumbled mess thanks to the FCC. And those weather reports only occur due to the National Weather Service (under the umbrella of the Commerce Department—hope Texas doesn’t need any hurricane or tornado warnings). On the way to work from the house you might’ve bought with governmental help in the form of the mortgage interest tax deduction, you may have your life saved thanks to federal regulations mandating seat belts and child safety seats. OSHA has your back against unsafe work conditions. The FDA labels food against manufacturers’ desires so you know what you’re actually eating. The EPA works to improve air and water quality. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
My apologies for the cliché-a-thon; the point is not to flatly throw hosannas at government. But we—the scores of Washingtonians working in those efforts and others—admittedly can get swept up in the over-exerted silliness and forget that the Republican nomination process is little more than a feckless bullhorn loudly portraying our work as a malevolent force that invades folks’ lives and, I don’t know, eats at their soul. Your tax dollars, which pay my salary, don’t create benefits that you get immediately, and usually you can’t even touch them. But, honest, when we’re not distracted by the exclusive fog of lobbytalk and news-cycle worship, we’re focused on the task at hand. In this city, it can be hard to avoid it.
So, when the right talks about an out-of-touch political elite, they’re right, though it’s not really us. It’s something far scarier—a blisteringly uninterested GOP candidate pool that leads legions of beclouded true-believer goofs and who, when sizing up Washington’s work, offer up a sad, stifling indifference.
October 14, 2011
Funny jokes-Day at the Zoo
Fred was definitely more than a bit dumb; when his pal asked him how he had enjoyed his day at the zoo, he replied, “it was a total con! I saw a sign that said To The Monkeys, so I followed it and saw the monkeys. Then I saw another sign that said To The Bears, so I followed that and saw the bears. But when I followed a sign that said To the Exit, I found myself out on the street.”
September 21, 2011
Notes From an Amateur Spectator at Amateur Mixed Martial Arts Fights: Column 13: Chaos at the College 2 by Rory Douglas
I suspect that my brother Chad won’t have another MMA fight. In his previous fight, Chad defeated Drew “The Eternal Fire” Brokenshire to regain the Ax Fighting 145-pound title belt. But Chad went into the fight with a broken hand and, as one would expect, a five-round MMA fight wasn’t kind to his injury. In the last three months, he hasn’t been able to punch things. And you obviously can’t fight if you can’t punch things.
One of the frustrating parts about following an amateur sport is that you’re not guaranteed a climactic seven-game playoff or a trophy ceremony at an all-you-can-eat pizza place. Even now, we don’t get the closure of knowing that Chad is for sure done fighting. He says that in a few months he’s going to go into the gym and punch something. If his hand survives, he might continue fighting. My opinion—and it’s just an opinion—is that for the story of Chad’s amateur-fighting career, his fight with The Eternal Fire was the best ending we’re going to get.
So what we have tonight is an epilogue. The two other fighters I’ve been following—Billy Walker and Jonny Gilbertson—are both fighting for title belts at an event called Chaos at the College 2. Tonight we also get to watch the debut fight from Ben McKinley, a former color commentator for this column who has a circumference of 72 inches. Ben claims that this will be his only MMA fight, a once-in-a-lifetime event that happens to take place on his wife’s birthday. His wife’s attitude about this coincidence is best described as tolerant.
Before the Fights
I don’t even have to show my press pass to get into the fights. I just walk in with a group of people. I sit with my dad, my mom, my brother Brady (23), and my brother Jake (13). Jake has somehow acquired a bag filled with what looks like a pound of Mike & Ike’s and Runts. Jake tries telling me that banana runts are his favorite. My dad is having a conversation about an anal catheter and how my dad thinks an anal catheter is a good idea.
Pre-Fight Interview with Ben
Q: “Ben, what’s your strategy going into tonight’s fight?”
A: “Win.”
Fight One
The announcer, after saying that “the action is going to be intense tonight,” tells us that the first fight is canceled because one of the fighters didn’t show. The fighter who did show gets to stand in the cage and wave to the crowd.
Our announcer is Chad Walker, also known as the musical artist Chad Walker Is Big Mouth. When Chad Walker Is Big Mouth talks, he makes the same hand motions that hip-hop artists do in music videos. The hand motions seem subconscious and involuntary. Chad Walker Is Big Mouth is the most talented amateur MMA announcer I’ve seen.
Fight Two
Jake bets a dollar on Andy Baker, who isn’t even in this fight. Andy Baker was the fighter whose opponent didn’t show up for the first fight. Jake agrees that he owes me a dollar just for being dumb.
In the actual fight, one of the fighters lifts his opponent, turns him upside down, and drops him on his head.
Guy behind me: “That shit is all fucked up.”
Fight Three
The first fighter—whom the announcer calls “Chops”—comes out to a song that begins: “Let the bodies hit the floor. Let the bodies hit the floor.” Doesn’t seem totally appropriate for an MMA fight, where there’s really only one body he’s supposed to let hit the floor.
When the other fighter walks out, my dad says: “It looks a little unfair here. You got the kid with the farmer tan.”
The kid with the farmer’s tan ends up on his back and gets punched in the face nine times. The ref lets the fight continue, and the first round ends. In the second round, the kid with the farmer’s tan comes out swinging and misses twice. On his third try he lands a jab on Chops’s nose. Chops crumples. The kid with the farmer’s tan wins. The crowd goes nuts.
Fight Four
One of the fighters is bleeding. I don’t know which one, and I can’t see where the wound is, but the fighters are now wrestling in a patch of blood that’s about six square feet and growing.
Someone finally gets punched enough for the ref to end the fight. We’re left with a patch of blood that covers about twenty-percent of the ring, not including bloody footprints around the perimeter. Someone tosses the ref a white towel. He gets on his knees and starts scrubbing.
The ref pauses from scrubbing and appears to wipe the sweat off his brow with the same towel he’s been using to scrub the blood. The net effect of the scrubbing is that the bloodstain has expanded to cover about twenty-five-percent of the ring. Brady says that if he ever murders someone this is the guy he’s calling to clean it up. The ref stands, looks down at the blood, and appears to shrug. The next fighters are called to the ring.
Fight Five
Jake is bored—this is a women’s 125-pound kickboxing match—and wants to know if there are any tasks that I would pay him money to do. I offer Jake five dollars if he can convince the pre-adolescent-looking DJ to play “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham!. Jake is not aware of this song but accepts the explanation that it’s the song you’re least likely to hear at an amateur MMA event.
Jake talks to the announcer and convinces him to write down the song’s name. Jake later sends one of his friends to request the same song. This friend returns and tells us that the DJ said: “We don’t take requests, yo.”
Fight Six
A few CageWars staff guys finally bring out a mop and liquid to clean up the blood. Announcer: “Cleanup on aisle three.”
This fight is between an African American and a Caucasian. The person sitting next to me says something so racially insensitive that I refuse to write it down.
In round one the African American fighter gets on the Caucasian fighter’s back and chokes him out. To celebrate his victory, the winning fighter lies in the center of the cage and does three snow angels.
The person sitting next to me: “No, I meant the white guy. The white guy looks like a gorilla.”
Fight Seven: Ben’s Heavyweight Fight
Ben has told us—and promised his wife—that this will be his only fight. Doing an MMA fight is apparently something Ben wants to check off his life to-do list, like how some people want to skydive or see Italy in the Fall.
Ben has at least a seventeen-inch advantage in circumference against his opponent, which means that his opponent has a six-inch advantage in height. Early in the first round Ben’s opponent tries to kick him. Ben catches his leg and then kicks the guy’s other leg, knocking him down with the sort of thud you only hear in heavyweight fights. Ben jumps onto the guy’s back but somehow slips off and ends up on his own back, with the other guy on top—not only on top, but sitting on Ben’s chest and trapping both Ben’s arms, punching him in the face until the ref ends the fight.
I’m later told that Ben now plans on fighting again.
Fight Eight
One of the fighters here, Jaimin, comes out with a posse of guys wearing shirts that say “Hawaii Boyz.” One of them is waving a red, green, and yellow flag that I’m assuming is the Hawaiian flag. The announcer tells us that we have a few guys here who’ve come all the way from Hawaii to fight tonight.
The guy from Team Hawaii Boyz gets beat in about forty-five seconds.
Fight Nine
This fight features the second and final fighter from Team Hawaii Boyz. There’s the same ruckus with all the Hawaii Boyz shirts and the flag.
Right after the fight starts, before the fighters have even touched each other, the Hawaii Boy, while just standing there, grabs his shoulder and falls. He doesn’t get up. His coaches enter the ring and tend to him.
Sources report that the Hawaii Boy swung his shoulder and threw it out. Same sources wonder where his Hawaiian flag is now.
The Hawaii Boy eventually gets up. The announcer says that the Hawaii Boy is unable to continue the fight due to injury. The other fighter gets his arm raised and gets a trophy.
A middle-age man sitting near me says: “He’s just a pussy. That’s all there is to it. Never seen anything like it.”
Fight Eleven
When I first started watching MMA, most fights seemed riveting or at least worth watching, for the novelty if nothing else. But now, watching fights like this one, fights between two below-average fighters I don’t know, I start thinking about all the Saturday evenings I’ve spent watching sweaty young adults trying to grab each other’s legs—or, worse, playing paddle fisties on the mat—and how boring it can be. Even the guy climbing the cage and straddling and then sort of humping the cross-post after he wins—even though “that’s what [the announcer] came to see”—it’s just not that exciting anymore.
Post-Fight Interview with Ben
“Don’t write anything too terrible about me.”
Fight Thirteen
Judging by the sound of the crowd, I’m missing a good fight while waiting in the bathroom line. On the upside, I witness an obese teenager walking out of a bathroom stall with a giant smile.
Interview with a ZipFizz Girl
I told myself that I was finally going to interview a ring girl tonight. But now that I’m here all the questions I want to ask seem like they’d come across as sleazy (“Do you change into your swimsuit once you get here, or do you like drive here in your swimsuit?”), condescending (“Did you always want to be a ring girl?”), or just pointless (“What’s your favorite part about being a ring girl?”).
So instead I opt to interview a ZipFizz girl. A person could at least have a non-sleazy reason to go to the ZipFizz booth and talk to one of the ZipFizz girls, i.e., the purchasing of ZipFizz. The two ZipFizz girls are at the ZipFizz booth near the entrance, trying to peddle their just-add-water energy drink. I approach the table and, in an effort to be nonchalant, read their ZipFizz promotional materials.
Did you know: ZipFizz is the healthy alternative to energy and sports drinks. It is now available in Walmart. 0 SUGAR. 10 CALORIES. LOW CARB. 41,667% VITAMIN B12. LOADED WITH ANTIOXIDANTS. 4-6 HOURS OF ENERGY with no crash. ZipFizz is a propriety blend. ZipFizz advises using 16-20 ounces of water. Drink a sip to make room. Add powder. Shake it up & ENJOY!
The ZipFizz girls ask if they can help me with anything. One of the ZipFizz girls is substantially better-looking than the other. I try to direct my question to the less-good-looking girl, who’s probably sick of everyone always interviewing her cuter coworker.
Q: Yes, actually, I was wondering how one becomes a ZipFizz girl, I mean how did you get this job?
A: “Uh, my sister’s roommate was friends with the marketing director or something and she asked if I wanted to do it.”
I consider presenting my press pass and notepad to lend this interview some legitimacy, but I realize that then I might appear to be the sort of person who makes his own fake press pass and brings a creepy notebook to amateur sporting events just so he can have invasive conversations with girls who can’t possibly be older than twenty.
Q: And do you enjoy being ZipFizz girls?
A: “Yeah, we enjoy doing it. It’s fun.”
This last question was where I really screwed the journalistic pooch. It was a yes-or-no question that couldn’t possibly have received an interesting answer. And, worse, after that question all three of us are thinking about the sad facts of the situation: this is a god-awful and—when you think about it—incredibly depressing attempt to hit on a ZipFizz girl. An attempt by someone who doesn’t even have it in him to hit on the moderately cute ZipFizz girl. There’s only one possible follow-up question:
Q: How much for a canister of ZipFizz?
A: “Two dollars each or three for five dollars.”
Fight Fifteen
Chad Walker Is Big Mouth tells us that the Hawaii Boyz would like to say something. One of them is handed the microphone. He can’t seem to achieve the proper face-to-microphone distance, so I only catch one sentence: “Thank you for not booing us.”
One of the fighters here, Colton, has a cheering section that contains no less than nine screaming adolescent girls. One of Colton’s coaches is wearing a T-shirt that says: HANDS UP, CHIN DOWN, NUTS HANG, FISTS SWING. Colton wins by split decision.
Fight Seventeen: Billy’s Fight
Billy Walker is fighting Jose “The Rasta” Garza. Billy has nine wins and four losses and has no known relation to Chad Walker. The Rasta has nine wins and two losses, one of which was to a guy now fighting in the UFC. The Rasta appears to be Mexican and has nothing visibly Rastafarian about his appearance.
In the first round The Rasta reveals a tactic I haven’t seen before: while they’re on their feet, as soon as Billy steps in for a takedown, The Rasta grabs Billy and falls on his back, pulling Billy on top of him. I’m not sure who gets points for this setup, which makes it impossible for me to know who won the first two rounds.
In the third round, Billy lands a punch that knocks The Rasta to his butt. Billy jumps on him, but the Rasta grabs Billy’s arm and scissors it with his legs. Maybe this is what he’s been trying to do from his back this whole time. The Rasta scissors Billy’s arm for a few tense seconds, and then Billy slips out.
In round four, the announcer says: “This is where the training in the gym pays off.” The Rasta must have trained by grabbing people and then falling on his back, because this is what he continues to do—although I still don’t see what he’s hoping to accomplish. Round five is the same story. Unless you get a bonus for falling to your back with your opponent on top of you, then Billy won. The judges confirm it: Billy wins the CageWars 135-pound MMA title by unanimous decision.
Fight Eighteen: Jonny’s Fight
Jonny, who’s more or less replacing Chad as one of the premier 145-pound fighters in the north-Seattle amateur mixed martial arts circuit, is fighting Drew Brokenshire—the same Drew Brokenshire that Chad defeated in his last fight. It’s a nice changing-of-the-guard moment. The consensus among Jonny fans is that this is a tough fight for Jonny. Jonny’s a better athlete and a much better wrestler than Drew, but Drew has a substantial advantage in experience.
At the start of the first round, Jonny lands a few kicks and then shoots for Drew’s legs. As Jonny’s doing this, Drew punches him in the head. Jonny ends up on top of Drew on the ground, but they soon get back to their feet. At the end of the round, Jonny does this flick-throw thing to get Drew off him that doesn’t accomplish much but looks cool. Not sure who won that round.
The second round starts with a section of the crowd chanting “Jonny” and ends with Jonny on his back trying to kick Drew. In between Drew landed a few kicks and Jonny got a takedown. Drew probably won that round.
At the start of round three, Jonny takes Drew down with a bear hug, but then Jonny ends up on his hands and knees with Drew on his back punching the sides of Jonny’s face. If I’ve learned anything about MMA, it’s that this is an undesirable position. Drew stops punching Jonny and wraps his arm around Jonny’s neck. After about fifteen seconds, Jonny taps out. Drew wins. Jonny is now 4-1 and has plenty of fights ahead of him.
Chad Walker Is Big Mouth must have sensed that it’s a special moment, the end of an MMA story. As people are filing out, he says: “Folks, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
