My Life in 100 Anecdotes

I write slowly, I know it. But as I look back on the almost five years that I’ve had this blog, I am grateful that, slow as I was, I did write.

Today I close Czardoz Contra World with my 100^th post. With this nice round number, it’s time to conclude this blog and start another (link pending).

I believe that lives are lived in anecdotes, not necessarily in days or years. And though it is tempting to think of “the best day,” a la City Slickers, I don’t remember full days, only moments. And that’s why I made my blog a collection of anecdotes about my life.

Over the years, there were many things I wanted to write about but never got to. Some articles were begun but never made it to the blog, usually because I couldn’t find out what I was trying to say, or because it took me so long to sort through my thoughts that they were no longer timely. Some articles got close but died for lack of some kind of relevance that would make them more than just self-indulgent words. Sometimes, I realized that I just didn’t have anything to say.

For this last post, I’ve included some anecdotes that mattered to me, and though I didn’t know then what to say, and may not know much better now, I found in each of them something about my life that I wanted to remember.

If I die tomorrow, I hope these items and the 99 posts that came before will be sufficient to explain who I was and what I valued.

*          *          *

February 2009: In Defense of Grimlock

I was luridly fascinated by the DVD audio commentary for Transformers: The Movie, perhaps because it matched the shambling mediocrity of the animated film itself. The hilarity began when director Nelson Shin started talking. He seemed to have only the barest command of English, and his comments, ranging from bemused to befuddled, had me doubting the level of control he had over the movie. He seemed only dimly aware of what was going on and why. Here’s Shin explaining a scene near the beginning of the movie where Unicron is shown sucking up a planet:

“Inside of the Unicron, this is organic, he gets the juice out and he’s getting lights [life], so he’s now the uh, he can survive, he can activate.”

Fun fact: Shin is now president of a Korean animation company that supplies animation work for numerous American shows, including The Simpsons. 

*          *          *

August 2012: How many guys does it take to throw away a perfectly good hamburger? (Answer: Five Guys!)

Regular readers of my blog will probably think that I eat fast food way too much. To that, allow me to emulate a charming Southern gentleman and say, “Guilty as charged!” (Yes, I know it’s a stale joke now, but trust me, this was a big deal back in August!)

In August, I went to a local Five Guys that I had been to a few times. Five Guys, to me, was the new kid on the block, an aggressive challenger from the East Coast that had made significant inroads in Southern California over the past few years. I think it had gained a sort of cult following based on complimentary all-you-can-grab peanuts in the store, messy burgers wrapped in foil, and that magazine article of Lebron James endorsing Five Guys that seems to be framed and posted in every store.

They make good burgers, and seem like sort of a more expensive cousin to In ‘N’ Out, bigger and sloppier, but with just as much hipster cred and everyman authenticity.

So on this occasion, I mistakenly grabbed someone else’s order, which I only realized when I had returned to my seat and peeked into the grease-stained bag. I brought the bag back to the counter and explained my folly. The server told me, “Oh, well we can’t take it back.” Fair enough. As a customer, I wouldn’t want to feel like I had to accept a plate of food that had previously been handed to someone else. She and the store manager exchanged some words to the effect of, “Make a new one for that customer, STAT!”

And then the three of us, the manager, the server, and I, we all just walked away, as if the bag contained a time bomb. I sat down and glanced somewhat uncomfortably at the bag of perfectly edible food that had been abandoned for the moment on that counter.

And here the questions began. Did they mean for me to take the bag, as a bonus, since they couldn’t? Were they going to retrieve it and maybe give the food to an employee later? Were they going to follow the most likely possibility and just throw it away? Should they have at least offered it to me? Or should I have said something, even though it seems sort of presumptuous to claim a free burger after my mistake had rendered it unservable to the rightful purchaser? What exactly was the right thing for me to have done?

Even though I told my brother as we sat there, “They’re just going to throw that away,” I somehow wasn’t prepared for the sight of the store manager chucking the entire bag right into a trash can not three feet away from me.

Even though I figured this was just store policy, and probably the policy of almost every restaurant you could name, I was dumbstruck. It was obscene. Children are still dying in Africa, aren’t they? I should hope so. Well, not “hope,” but I should think so.

When I was very young, there were often television commercials in the afternoon and evening for various outreach programs, asking for donations to help poor people in Africa and South America. You know the type, “just 48 cents a day will feed a child like Maria, and provide her with clothing, medicine, and a good education.” One time, according to my mother, I was watching one of these commercials, and I asked my mother, “Can we give them some food?” Apparently, I thought it was possible to just grab some delicacies from our refrigerator and pass them through the television screen to the rapturous enjoyment of these children. Or maybe I didn’t really believe that, but what I wanted was about as much a fantasy as that would have been. I wanted to help those other kids, and I thought that if I wanted it badly enough and spoke up about it, then every child in Africa would get three square meals a day, a pair of Nike sneakers, and a beautiful new schoolhouse.

Everyone had a good laugh over my naïveté and presumably we moved on with our lives. Hopefully those children in the developing world are moving on with theirs as well. The next time this happens, perhaps my choice is simple: I’ll speak up and say, “So can I keep this one, since it seems a shame for you to just throw away all this food?” I’d like to see them throw it in the garbage in front of me then.

And so, a noble burger was sacrificed so that I could learn a lesson, right? Not on your life. As soon as the manager’s head was turned, I reached into that trash can and nabbed that rudely discarded bag. And did I eat the food inside? Of course. And how was it? It tasted great. Like justice. 

*          *          *

August 2012: “a Tony Scott joint”

I wanted to add a few words to the funeral mound of observances of Tony Scott’s death, something different from the consensus in the media, which intoned, somewhat condescendingly, that we had lost an energetic maker of films that were critically unremarkable but commercially viable. I really don’t see why every critic had to chime in if they were all going to say the same thing. I guess keeping all these movie critics on staff saves the country’s unemployment figures from going even higher.

I never saw Tony Scott’s magnum opus, Top Gun, but I was a big fan of Man on Fire (which, along with Hide and Seek, had me convinced that Dakota Fanning was one of the very few child actors who could “bring it”). Undoubtedly, when you watch a lot of Scott’s films, you start to think they were all basically the same film, but the same criticism could be leveled at critical darling, Wes Anderson.

Scott’s movies had panache without the pretension. He managed to navigate a treacherous middle path between the Scylla and Charybdis of earnest self-seriousness and smirking irony. And with mild apologies to Spike Lee, I believe that if any filmmaker should have been using the word “joint” to describe his films, it was Tony Scott.

*          *          *

August 2012: The Bamiyan Buddhas

Around this time, I read a news item about the preservation status of the Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan. Sadly, “preservation” is generous, as there hasn’t been much left to preserve since the giant Buddha statues (the largest two were some 53 meters and 35 meters tall, respectively) were dynamited into the afterlife by the Taliban regime in March 2001.

I first learned about the Bamiyan Buddhas when they made international news in 2001, as talk grew about the Taliban’s intent to destroy the statues, which had been crafted in the 6^th century. I was affected by the notion that a work of art, though admittedly a work of religion in the eyes of those who hated it, could be treated so callously by a government. I thought to myself that any government, any people, who could do something like this would be capable of even more astonishing crimes against the living. 

Indeed, the Bamiyan Buddhas were close to my mind after the crimes of September 11, 2001. I’m not saying that 9/11 would have been averted if the “civilized” nations of the West had just bombed the hell out of Afghanistan and the Taliban, and saved these Buddhas early on. But no one should be surprised that these were the monsters who harbored Osama bin Laden. Destruction of artifacts, art, and cultural objects is perhaps the bellwether of genocide and murder. The Taliban were all too eager to destroy something that a competing culture held dear, if only because it was easier than hunting down every last person who still held those things dear.

I’m not a Buddhist, and I’m not sure I even know anyone who is a serious adherent to Buddhist ideas. But I recognize the value of religion and spirituality as an impetus for human creativity. No matter how strong one’s adherence to secularism, it would be hard to deny the glorious artistic achievements that were influenced, financed, or otherwise directly attributable to the existence and vehemence of religion.

No matter how technically impressive or aesthetically beautiful, I am aware that many monumental human artistic achievements, whether religious or secular or somewhere in between, were created by blood money and slave labor, and devoted to oppression in kind. After all, the Colosseum, so revered today, was but a temple to carnage and the institution of murder as entertainment. And as Thoreau said about that last remaining of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,

As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

– Thoreau, Walden

Nevertheless, the objects exist, and they represent a past and a people who can no longer represent themselves. As a humanist, I am appalled at any wanton destruction of the irreplaceable works of a past culture.

Today, I hear snippets of a similar rampage against art, culture, and human life in Mali. I know next to nothing about the ancient glories of Timbuktu and the present conditions of life in Mali. But I know that anything that can rile up fanatics so desperately that they go out of their way to destroy it is probably something worth saving. At the very least, the destruction of a statue or a manuscript or an entire library is a sign of worse things to come.

*          *          *

September 2012: To “pull a Goran”

When Andy Murray won the 2012 U.S. Open tennis tournament, I wondered if he had divested himself of the title of “best active player who hasn’t won a Slam” only to take on another dreaded title – was this Slam the first of many for him, or would it be the career highlight of a man destined to become a “one-Slam wonder”? Rather like Homer Simpson shedding the “stone of shame” only to be shackled to the even larger “stone of triumph.”

And much like Andy Roddick, whom I had lauded during his last, anticlimactic run at that same U.S. Open. In the journalistic aftermath of Roddick’s career-ender, I stumbled upon this informative slideshow of all the tennis players in the Open era who have won only a single Grand Slam tournament.

Looking at the names, I realize that it’s sort of a compliment when certain pundits cackle that Roddick underachieved or that he needs to have won more Slams to be considered among the greats. After all, do you think such a debate even comes up in reference to a Thomas Muster? Roddick wasn’t a fluke Slam winner, like Richard Krajicek or Anastasia Myskina. After his U.S. Open victory in 2003, he appeared in four more Slam finals over the next six years, and for some of those years, it was not outlandish to think he might win another big one. I doubt anyone looks at a Thomas Johansson and says, “What a disappointment. We expected a few more Slams from him.”

I think Roddick will be remembered very favorably alongside Michael Chang, a fellow American who won his Slam early, gave hope to every Chinese immigrant mother that her American-born son could become a big man in this country (okay, this part is not so similar to the Roddick career arc), then trailed behind the legends in his wake, all the while winning many lesser tournaments, keeping his nose clean, and contending well enough to make fans think a second major was probable, perhaps inevitable.

Roddick also calls to mind another player on the list: 2001 Wimbledon champion Goran Ivanisevic. I mentioned in a previous post that my favorite Slam final was the Federer-Roddick Wimbledon 2009, but Ivanisevic’s 2001 Wimbledon ride was just as memorable.

I remember it primarily because I was traveling in China at the time, riding down the Yangtze River on a cruise ship, watching Wimbledon on the tiny television in my room, because I was waylaid from some local disease brought on by a bug bite. With my head woozy and my hand swollen to roughly the size of an inflatable raft, I lay in bed watching tennis and listening to the lilting accents of a couple of announcers named Alan and Vijay who squandered no opportunities for hyperbole (“Too good!” “He’s playing like a shattered man!”).

Ivanisevic was a three-time Wimbledon finalist with a game tailor-made for grass, but he had never won, and though an eventual victory once seemed inevitable, by 2001 it seemed like his chances had passed him by. Having dropped in rank to 125^th in the world and no longer considered an effective full-time contender, he only got into the tournament because he was granted a wild card. What he did with that wild card was unprecedented, winning the championship and giving his career a storybook capstone.

Wimbledon 2001 had no shortage of drama. It saw Justine Henin reach her first Grand Slam final, losing in three sets to Venus Williams. A 19-year-old Roger Federer upset defending champion Pete Sampras in the fourth round, a loss that more or less sent Sampras into a downward spiral into irrelevance until he finally emerged with a surprise victory in the U.S. Open 2002, after which he wisely retired.

This tournament was probably top British player and favorite son Tim Henman’s best chance at making a Wimbledon final, as he took a two sets to one lead over Ivanisevic in the seminfinal. However, rain delays turned the match into a three-day ordeal and seemed to wash away Henman’s rhythm and resolve; Poseidon had thrown his godly weight behind Ivanisevic.

Ivanisevic beat four Grand Slam winners on his way to the championship (though, like Goran, victims Carlos Moya and Andy Roddick are also one-Slam wonders, and Marat Safin and Patrick Rafter each won but two).

I remember watching Ivanisevic demolish Roddick, who at the time was a young gun known primarily for his cannon of a serve. Here he was, still quite green, and getting schooled by an over-the-hill wild card who simply fired ace after ace at him. It was a performance not just overpowering but distinctive, and I remember uttering “Roddick got Goran-ed!” for some reason.

Sadly, Roddick did not “pull a Goran” in his last tournament. I haven’t followed any tennis since the 2012 U.S. Open. The Australian Open just happened in January, and I couldn’t find it in me to care; I didn’t even look up highlights. First went team sports, and now perhaps even tennis holds no appeal for me any longer. 

*          *          *

November 2012: Fire the Critics

For a long time, I wanted to write a post about Pixar films, because they’re kind of a big deal, and for a long time, I held out because I didn’t think it was particularly useful, and indeed, it felt obnoxiously self-indulgent, to disparage any particular product or company just because I could. But there is something even more obnoxious about movie critics, as an industry, regarding their reviewing of Pixar films. This at least is worth a cursory dissection (vivisection? evisceration?).

A sampling of online reviews and editorials about Pixar and, primarily, their latest release, Brave:

“When it comes to Pixar, the worst is still so much better than most of the other junk being churned out by Hollywood.” (IGN)

“Still, Monsters, Inc. is fun and better than most of its non-Pixar peers (how many times do we have to make that distinction today?).” (IGN again – and to answer your question, you didn’t have to make that distinction at all)

“Arguably the worst of the best, the film [Brave] is simply decent (which ranks better than half the animated films released in a year).” (Screenpicks.com)

“If the Walt Disney Studios logo were the only one on Brave, this film's impeccable visuals and valiant heroine would be enough to call it a success. But Brave is also a Pixar Animation Studios film, and that means it has to answer to a higher standard.” (LA Times)

“Pixar’s own history of excellence has effectively painted the studio into a corner. If Brave were a straight-up Disney release, people would be hailing it, at the very least, as an end to the princess movie as we know it. Because it’s Pixar, they get to whine, ‘What? Princesses again?’” (Slate)

I’m quite tired of this blandly uncritical view that insists on starting with the premise that Pixar films must be judged by some rarified standard that eludes all other animation. If the role of the movie critics is merely to tell us that the gum that gets stuck to the soles of John Lasseter’s shoes is more beautiful than even the finest film that any other studio could produce, then really, what is the point of having the critics?

To praise Pixar’s track record is justified, but to go out of their way to defend the studio against any serious criticism is to undermine their own critical judgment. This seems to me a kind of moral cowardice, and moreover, it ignores the reality that other studios have started to make some very good movies that stand up well to what Pixar is dishing out.

To take one example, to my mind, Brave is not nearly as good as the Disney movie it most resembles – Tangled. For more examples, I’d rank Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs alongside the best of what Pixar has made.

Richard Corliss’s Time magazine review of How to Train Your Dragon offers a historical perspective. While he acknowledges Pixar’s edge in box office, awards, and prestige, he has the audacity to compare the Pixar-DreamWorks rivalry to an animation rivalry of yore: Disney vs. Warner Brothers:

“‘Each year I do one DreamWorks project,’ actor Jack Black told the crowd at the 2009 [Oscars] ceremony, ‘then I take all the money to the Oscars and bet it on Pixar.’

That was also the case 60, 70 years ago, when Disney shorts had a monopoly on the Oscars, while the funnier, livelier cartoons from Warner Bros. – which today are treasured – were ignored. In that sense, Pixar’s features are closer to the old, elevated Disney style, while DreamWorks’s films are flat-out cartoons, proud to carry on the fast, cavorting Warner tradition.”

Not just DreamWorks, but Fox, Sony, and all the other companies that delve into animation have tended to shy away from the “elevated” epics that have become Pixar’s signature. This certainly feeds into the perception that Pixar makes “prestige” movies, while its competitors are making the animated equivalents of Michael Bay’s Transformers.

Moreover, we are meant to believe that animated movies by DreamWorks or Fox are churned out by wage slaves in a Korean factory (perhaps Nelson Shin's), whereas animated films by Pixar are willed into existence by an auteur, whose vision is rendered by a handful of artistic true believers. But whatever happens behind the scenes, the results don’t indicate such a strong ideological divide.

The Kung Fu Panda, Ice Age, and Madagascar franchises can be just as sentimental and (sigh) heartwarming as Pixar films, and Pixar’s movies are just as heavily laden with slapstick and low-brow comedy as their counterparts from the wrong side of the tracks.

My goal is not to heap scorn on Pixar for its well-earned success, but to argue that the divide between it and its competitors is narrow, and getting narrower. And though perceptions of Pixar’s superiority persist, especially in the critical community, these perceptions are not always supported by evidence. Pixar is the Apple of the film industry, and fittingly so, since it inherited its creative ethos from its founder, Steve Jobs. But that doesn’t mean that other companies aren’t making products that are just as intricate and enjoyable. 

*          *          *

January 2011: Grand Theft Auto IV

I basically inaugurated this blog with an anecdote about Grand Theft Auto III.  It seems fitting that I should end it with an anecdote about Grand Theft Auto IV. 

When I jumped back into Liberty City with GTA IV, I thought I’d get a few chuckles from driving over pedestrians, maybe roughing up some unwitting innocents in the street, and in the process find out if the Grand Theft Auto experiment had gotten more playable since my last foray into this urban wilderness.

The good news is that the addition of interior spaces, a speaking role for the player’s character, and “life” scenarios like going on dates with a girlfriend do enrich the feeling of “play.” The bad news is that driving is still an ordeal with no happy medium. Either you’re crawling slowly to grandmother’s house, or you’re zigzagging down straight roads and sideswiping pedestrians and lampposts with every turn. Shooting while aiming still requires a finesse I’ll never master. And committing random crimes will once again have the police hounding your ass very quickly, and you are never a match for their killing prowess.

Despite its flaws, I got a lot of enjoyment just from exploring the game’s possibilities, the many “what if” scenarios. What if I kill the bowling alley attendant? What if I kill the girl working at Burger Shot? What if I join the stripper on stage at the strip club? What if I run over some fools while driving Michelle home from our date? What if I kill someone on the street, wait for the ambulance to come, then kill the paramedic after he gets out of the ambulance – will another ambulance show up?

And on and on until I realized the irony of the GTA games: there is ultimately no liberty in Liberty City. In attempting to create the illusion of freedom and seamless immersion, the game ultimately draws attention to the limitations of its technology and all the restrictions imposed on the player. I can kill a hot dog vendor, but then I can’t take any of the hot dogs he was just selling? That don’t make no sense.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the artificial boundaries imposed on the game map. As in previous games, you are stuck on one island in this fictional world, and only after meeting a set of achievements do you open up access to the next island. Funny thing is, there is a bridge to the neighboring island, and it exists the whole time you’re playing, but access to the bridge is blocked by concrete barriers and a fierce police presence, all under the guise of, I don’t know, construction or an investigation or martial law or some similarly ludicrous excuse. And yes, these coppers would unleash a lethal torrent of bullets if I stepped foot on that bridge.

Days passed. Days filled with the monotony of blowing off steam at the pool hall with my brother Roman. Going on dates to the bowling alley with Michelle and “trying my luck” when I took her home. Muscling low-level hoods and capping rival gangsters. And every day I’d drive by that bridge and those badge-wearing pigs and think to myself, “You don’t own me.”

What was on the other side? What was so important that they went to such extreme lengths to keep me from it? This was Shell Beach in Dark City. This was the painted sky at ocean’s end in The Truman Show.

There is a freedom out there, true freedom that exists without structures, and beyond artifice. The bubble world they created for me was not the world I wanted to live in, so I would make my own world, or die trying. “If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?”

I became convinced that if only I could get on the bridge and drive to the other side without getting shot to pieces, then that island would exist, just like the one where I was standing now. It would be real, with real people, and a real life. I just had to survive.

And so, I decided that, come heaven or hell, I would cross the bridge.

There was no sense in trying to drive through a concrete wall, so I knew my only chance was to run through the gaps in the barricade and steal a squad car that was already on the bridge. Once in, they couldn’t stop me. So I ran, taking heavy fire when the astonished goons realized I was actually going for it. Hot lead pierced any flesh that wasn’t covered in body armor, but I made it to the car, pulled the driver to the ground, and immediately I was flying!

Everywhere around me, I heard voices yelling, “Yes, yes! He made it! He can get through!”

The bridge felt like it went on forever. The first few hundred feet were breezy, with a few lights and sirens giving pathetic chase, but then the fuzz lowered the hammer. One after another, black police vans barreled head-on toward me at top speed on the threadlike bridge, trying to block me or crush me. They would take me dead or alive, so long as they ended my run.

But for the first time, my driving skills attained a sort of blissful elegance. It was as if I were controlling my car with my mind, not my hands and feet. Armored van on my left – I dodged right. Another van trying to squeeze me against the wall – I hit full throttle and drove past him straighter than I ever knew I could. I had attained automotive nirvana and eluded them all!

My supporters renewed the rallying cry, “Yes, yes! You did it! They can’t stop you!”

The bridge’s end drew into focus, with the massive skyscrapers of my destination coming into view. And then I saw the wall. There was never just one barricade. The police had a second one waiting for me this whole time, at this end of the bridge.

Every fiber of my being told me to stop the car and end this madness. But it was too late. This was my Thelma and Louise moment. At full speed, my speedometer about to crack from the strain, I slammed headlong into the concrete, the impact shooting my limp body through the windshield like a rocket, sailing past the front lines of cops and cars and landing like a broken doll tossed by a wailing infant. I had made it this far only to collapse under shattered glass and pitiless mortality.  

And yet my eyes opened!

I stand up, pat myself down, amazed. I had been shot, I had flown, I had crashed, and yet I live! And then I look about me and realize that I have crossed the bridge and am on the new island. It is real. And it is beautiful. I had made it. My dream was not in vain.

All I have to do now is grab the nearest police cruiser, as I had at the beginning of my escape, and drive. Always drive. And then I am free.

At least, that’s what I was thinking when my vision turned murky white, and my knees disappeared beneath me. I felt a warm moistness all over my chest, like I was bathing in salty water. And then the world went dark and I felt . . . nothing at all.

. . .

It was probably ten years ago that I played GTA III, but I still remember the Great Siege of Ammo-Nation. Ten years from now, when the many sordid misadventures of Niko Bellic in GTA IV have faded from memory, all we’ll remember is one glorious moment when I hurtled through a police barricade, jacked a squad car, and hightailed it across a facsimile Manhattan Bridge, crossing the Rubicon, making my own freedom.

*          *          *

Here we are at the Ides of March. As Caesar goes, so goes Czardoz, dying today, only to live forever . . .

What is art? (Baby, don’t hurt me)

Recent coincidence: right around the same week that street artist Shepard Fairey was featured as a guest star on an episode of The Simpsons (“Exit Through the Kwik-E-Mart”), he also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge relating to his inappropriate use (or outright theft, as some might call it) of a photograph that was the basis of his widely-seen “Obama Hope” poster.

This image is likely familiar to most people from its connection to and use during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008. Though I didn’t know his name then, I was previously familiar with Fairey’s obnoxious “Obey”stencil, which was parodied as the Homer “Dope” stencil from that same Simpsons episode.

I first became aware of this legal issue because some in the photography community were understandably up in arms over the whole idea of an “artist” basing an illustration on a photograph, but without properly crediting the photographer (that would be Mannie Garcia, a freelancer for the Associated Press). 

Also of note is the Simpsons episode itself, which I thought was one of the funnier ones in recent memory (though the Internet yet again spills bile from its contrarian spleen). The couch gag mystified me at first, because it was a parody of the opening credits sequence of the show, Game of Thrones, which I had never seen. Of course I knew it was a parody of something (over the course of 500-plus episodes, what hasn’t been parodied by The Simpsons?), and I find it amusing that here’s a show that regularly exercises its fair use rights presumably fairly, while guest star Fairey actively covered up his use of the template for his most influential work. Ironically, on the episode, Fairey plays a character on the right side of the law, busting street artist Bart Simpson, whom the establishment considers a mere “Vandal Van Gogh.” That leads to my favorite exchange from the episode:

Chief Wiggum: I don’t traffic in wordplay, Kent, but I do have a message for Mister Prank Lloyd Wright –

Lou: Uh, that’s architecture, not painting, Chief.

Chief Wiggum: They’re all artists, Lou, why don’t you open your eyes?

Indeed, I’d like to believe that different kinds of art are all equal, though I wonder what this case says about the relative value of art. Should we consider the “Obama Hope” poster a sort of collaboration between photographer Garcia and street artist/stenciler Fairey? Without the former, the latter likely would not have created the iconic work. On the other hand, one wonders if Garcia even considers himself an artist – he is after all a press photographer, at least in this instance. And it’s certainly fair to say that his photo of Obama, and the photos taken by the photographers on his left and right at the same event, their camera shutters firing within mere milliseconds of his own, would never have been seen by anyone as anything other than journalistic documents, hardly worth a glance, whereas Fairey took that and created something that affected people in a larger way. And yet, the photo did deeply affect at least one person – Fairey; otherwise he wouldn’t have been so inspired.

And finally, are we to judge the value of art by how many people are affected by it, and how deeply? Or do we acknowledge instead that the value of art is not determined by whether it inspires us, but by whether it inspires a meme? Parodies within parodies!

The Golden Nunchuk

I guess this is what they call a “first world problem,” but I’m just going to plow ahead with the minimum amount of shamefacedness.

Which reward should I get from Club Nintendo?  

The Hanafuda cards for 800 coins, or the replica handset of Game & Watch: Ball for 1200 coins?

Both are snazzy in their own way, both are legitimate collectibles, both are utterly useless and, frankly, underwhelming, considering what our compeers overseas have been offered over the years. 

Briefly: you buy Nintendo games and register them at Club Nintendo’s website to acquire coins, which you can use to “buy” special items.  As is customary with all things in video gaming, the special items are always cooler in Japan and Europe than they are in home sweet America.

Witness: specially designed retro controllers, limited-edition games, exclusive soundtracks.  Not impressed?  How about a Kirby throwing disc (don’t call it a Frisbee unless you want Word to auto-capitalize it):

Or the deluxe Professor Layton box set:

There’s also the Wii Golden Wheel available in Europe:

And best of all, Skyward Sword owners need scratch their heads no more, because here at last is the Wii Golden Nunchuk:

 

Just not in America.  I mean, why would we bother with rewards that a person might actually use?  I realize this goes against the very meaning of “collectibles,” which I believe comes from a Greek word that means “crap you thought you wanted, but that ends up stuffed into a shoe box under your bed.”

(Ok, so I wouldn’t really use the Golden Wheel, but come on, people!  Imagine the gold Wii-mote nestled in that thing!)

I suppose I could mount either the Game & Watch or the Hanafuda set in a shadowbox.  My god, I could feel the futility oozing out of that statement as I wrote it. 

*          *          *

When I was a child, I dreamed of displaying all my G.I. Joe action figures in a massive glass case, each one posed to best feature his or her combat role and abilities (e.g., Snake Eyes dual-wielding swords, or Lifeline hunched over a prone soldier, medical case at the ready).  I also heard fables of people going to China and buying a gargantuan crate that contained the entire collection of G.I. Joes in one go.  Of course, I never acquired all the Joes, nor did I ever display them in such fine fashion.  And while I look back fondly on what was an innocent dream as a child, it makes little sense as an adult to keep hanging on to things that have no use. 

To be fair, there is an aesthetic justification for having such things.  Toys and trinkets are often little works of art, delightful to behold.  But art can be an isolating experience, visual art especially.  Art museums, more so than going to the movies or a concert, are best enjoyed with company, someone to talk to about what you are seeing.  And unless I’m going to host regular viewings of my swag collection, what use is it for me to gaze alone?  I imagine that the thief of the Mona Lisa finally tried to sell the painting only because he had grown bored of staring at La Gioconda on his dining room table every day. 

*          *          *

I think the very first super-swag I got was a free copy of Dragon Warrior for the NES that came with a subscription to Nintendo Power magazine.  This was a legendary limited time promotion – the gift of a full-fledged game, and a well-known and desirable one at that – and still the king of all promotional giveaways, at least in the nerdlyverse.  This was not a symbolic gesture like most swag; it was something I could pop into my Nintendo and use right away. 

Collectibles tend to walk a fine line between art and mere consumerism (isn’t that the line where pop art lives?), but I would argue that we don’t need to choose between the extremes of pure asceticism and vulgar consumption.  Luxury goods and leisure activities give resonance to serious work, and vice versa.  So I’m not saying we shouldn’t have luxuries.  I just enjoy them more when they are useful luxuries.

Although, looking back, I can’t say that Dragon Warrior was a very useful game, since I never got very far in it.  But hey, I tried.

Bonus: here’s a guy rabidly wetting himself over a moderately pleasant windfall.

The Gateway City

For being such a well-known place and such an old city (by American standards), St. Louis is actually a relatively small city.  St. Louis is home to Anheuser-Busch of Budweiser fame; it hosted, in the same year, a World’s Fair and an Olympic Games (1904 – the first Olympics in the United States); the Cardinals are a storied baseball team.  Most of us are familiar with Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis and the film Meet Me in St. Louis.  St. Louis has most of the things that seem to characterize a cosmopolitan city: museums, trendy restaurants, nightlife, a large urban park, a symphony orchestra, a passable light rail system, an international airport, a well regarded research university, three major sports teams, and at least one iconic feature: the Gateway Arch.  Yet as I drove around town on a recent visit, seeing various neighborhoods, and trying to figure out what made this place special, it was hard to escape the feeling that there wasn’t much going on.  It felt like a smaller version of a city like Chicago, or even San Diego.  It was sort of a Portland of the Midwest, though less hipsterific.  But it’s hard to distinguish yourself by being a smaller version of something else.  As Emerson wrote in the Divinity School Address,

Imitation cannot go above its model.  The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.  The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm.  In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man’s.

*          *          *

Gateway Arch, designed by Eero Saarinen.  The one thing everyone knows about St. Louis, this symbol is ubiquitous in the city, found in souvenir photos and knickknacks, integrated into logos, and even used as a replacement for the “N” in some signs.

   

A placid scene from the Occupy St. Louis presence downtown, in the shadow of the Arch and the Old Courthouse.

Washington Avenue with the lights on.  The locus of nightlife downtown.

The original office building at the Anheuser-Busch brewery.  I’ll never forget the smell that saturated the air around the complex, richly earthy and almost appetizing.  Malted barley, maybe?  Yeast?  I don’t know, but I like it.

Inside the City Museum, something like a funhouse crossed with a wrecking yard, but nothing like a museum.

Rue Lafayette, a café cum antiques and vintage goods store.  Note the A. E. Housman poem, “With Rue My Heart is Laden,” framed.  Is there a pun there?

What we know as Panera Bread actually started in St. Louis under a more local moniker.  (No, I didn’t go inside for a snack, although on my first visit to St. Louis, some seven years ago, I did go to this very one, and thought, "This food is good.  They should really expand nationally."  I guess they went with that.)

I found religion when I tried the gooey butter cake, one of the triumvirate of uniquely St. Louis delicacies (the other two being toasted ravioli and St. Louis-style pizza).  It tasted like a moist brownie, but not chocolate.  Or something like the widely available raspberry bars or toffee almond bars, but . . . gooey-er.  Like manna, my friends.  I'm talkin' Old Testament.

Toasted ravioli.  I felt very much that this is the right way to prepare ravioli.  I don’t dislike your typical boiled ravioli with sauce, but I don’t think I’ve ever thought to myself, “I really have a hankering for some ravioli today!”  And I’ve always thought it kind of silly when upscale restaurants have some version of ravioli on the entrée menu, whether something exotic like rabbit or elk (no matter how outlandish the animal, you never get any discernable flavor from the ground meat paste that goes inside the dough), or a token vegetarian option.  But when I tried the toasted ravioli, I thought, “Yes, this is something I could find myself craving.”  Perhaps, alongside the Arch, the home-grown cuisine can truly be considered the pride of St. Louis.

*          *          *

St. Louis compares favorably with another medium-sized Midwestern city I’ve visited: Cleveland.  That probably doesn’t sound like a recommendation, but both of these cities have beauty to find, and I’ve enjoyed my chances to visit less obviously enchanting places.  When you go to New York, if you’re a certain sort of savvy traveler, you try to look for “off the beaten path” attractions and “neighborhood joints,” and you marvel at your good luck and ingenuity when you capture a taste of what the “locals” do, as opposed to getting mired in tourist traps.  But when you visit a place like St. Louis, it’s pretty much all “off the beaten path,” and it allows you to appreciate discovering a place without the mist of preconception between you and it. 

My only regret upon leaving the Gateway City was that I didn’t try the St. Louis-style pizza, which is distinguished by the thin and crispy crust and the trademarked Provel cheese, a kind of processed cheese that I have heard will “stick to your mouth” and is “kind of gross.”  Apparently, this oddity can only be found in St. Louis and the environs, and the locals seem to either love it or hate it.  Maybe some even love to hate it, which is as strong a recommendation as I can think of for trying it. 

              

Next time, St. Lou.  Next time . . .

The Walk

I don't see time begin and end. In my head, the twin towers are still alive.

- Philippe Petit, tightrope artist

Ode to my father

For Father’s Day, I thought I would do something I’ve never done before: share a few anecdotes about my father, in homage to a man I’ve long underappreciated and have had difficulty connecting with. Here are a few of the moments I’ll never forget about my father.

* * *

Once upon a time, during a visit to Oakland, it was suggested to my father, my brother, and me that we see the local Mormon temple, which was reputed to be quite aesthetically pleasing. Once there, we walked the grounds, and somehow got roped into taking a “tour,” their version of a tour involving very little architecture or landscaping, and quite a bit of religious propaganda, most notably in the form of a short movie about the Mormon “experience.”

After the movie, our guide, a smile-happy young woman, asked us what we thought of what we had just seen. Though I gather the questions were directed at all of us, she specifically looked at my father, and he took the lead in answering.

“I thought it was very nice,” he said, “that you believe in a father who takes care of you.”

Our guide nodded approvingly. Then she made the mistake of asking my father, “What do you believe in?”

My father looked at her with the placid expression that he had maintained throughout the film and conversation, and said, “Nothing.”

Sitting shoulder-to-shoulder beside him in the theater-style seats, I tried desperately not to laugh out loud. I could feel coming upon me a crack of smile the size of the Grand Canyon, and it was only a combination of jaw-clenching, lip-biting, and hand-over-mouth that saved me from an epic guffaw. The man had said he believed in “nothing,” as if it were the blandest comment in the world.

Our young lady looked slightly bewildered, and I’m sure she didn’t want to respond in any fervent way, for fear that something was lost in translation. In a way, I think something was lost, because although I know my father was honestly expressing that he has no religious beliefs, I don’t think he realized the idiomatic impact of his blunt statement.

Embroiled as our societies are in various destructive culture wars and ideological arm-wrestling matches, I’d like to think that one day, I’ll be able to say with a straight face and clear conscience, “I believe in nothing.”

That was the last time we visited a Mormon temple together, but hopefully, not the last.

* * *

On a family daytrip to Davis, California (the reasons for the trip would bore you as much as Davis bores most sane people), I asked to be dropped off for the afternoon to see an old college friend who was now attending UC Davis. I met up with her, just the two of us, and we talked, laughed, and drove around while the rest of my family pursued their own Davis delights.

When my family retrieved me, my mother asked me, “Did you have enough time together?”

My father interrupted in a good-humored way and said, “When it comes to the people you care about, when is it ever ‘enough’ time?”

When it comes to life lessons, I was never particularly receptive to the ones my father tried strongly and directly to instill in me. But once in a while, he would utter an offhand remark that reached right into the most humane and sympathetic part of me.

* * *

My favorite memory of my father comes from my grade school days.

When I was a boy of about six, just starting to walk that one long block to school on my own, my father would walk me out of the house and up to the street curb, and then let me cross the street by myself. At the opposite side of the street, it was my habit to look back at my father, and invariably, he would move his hands up to his head and make a gesture of finger-combing his hair. He was telling me to smooth down my disheveled jungle of hair. I would try my best as I walked the rest of the way to school. Looking back now, I wonder why he didn’t just put a comb in my pocket. I also wonder why the best memories are always the simplest.

Though I don’t tell him nearly enough, and though his attempts to give me advice might strike me as imperious and officious now, I hope he realizes that I appreciate his concern. And no matter how well I've learned to tame my hair, I hope my father will continue to look out for me as he did back then.

* * *

Note [The following will perhaps be of only minimal interest, and only to my long-time readers.]:

I wrote and edited the above post all in one day, and so it is in very real terms a first draft, as opposed to almost all my other posts, which are heavily scrutinized and modified before I publish them. Not to say that there is any treasure hunt of typos or grammatical boners to be found. Rather, it is only remarkable to the degree that anyone cares about the “voice” of my posts, which perhaps is less clear in this one than in my more carefully written posts. If I ever get around to revising this post, I may put the new version alongside the above version as a useful comparison study. For myself, I mean, because I’m sure no one else cares!

It's a-you? It's a-me!

Mario has achieved the top of the flagpole! Hooray! 5,000 points!

(Totem pole at Victor Steinbreuck Park, Seattle)

“My name is Ozymandias . . .”

On April 15, 2006, the Hotel San Diego was demolished to make way for an empty hole. The official story is that the feds wanted the downtown site at 339 W. Broadway for an expansion of some courthouse. Thanks to typical gubment alacrity, the site remains a dirt lot almost five years after the wrecking crew turned one of downtown’s few distinctive buildings into a heap of rubble. (To be fair, I recently noted some stirrings on the site, so construction may be visible soon.)

Though it wasn’t a bad looking piece of architecture, I had no special affection for the Hotel San Diego, and I wasn’t in the audience the morning it collapsed upon its own ghosts. In the ensuing years, whenever I drove past the site, I would casually notice the vacant space where the hotel once stood, and wonder at the wisdom of destroying a city’s heritage only to make way for a bigger jail. San Diego doesn’t have nearly the quantity of grand old buildings of a city like Detroit, nor does it have the same level of urban blight. You would think a city like San Diego would have the luxury of taking more care with its historical buildings.

Fast forward to 2010. A few months ago, I was driving through Liberty Station in Point Loma. In 2006, this was home to the nicely cleaned-up remnants of the Naval Training Center. Acres of old buildings stood empty, and what once housed navy personnel was being prepared for a second life as home to freshly painted offices, art studios, galleries, and retail stores. Today, Liberty Station is starting to fulfill its original promise as a tidy village of pedestrian traffic, bland commercialism, and artistic endeavor.

So imagine my surprise as I drove up a random street within the complex and slowed to examine a hulking mass of metal on the side of the road, sitting on a lawn, shaded by trees. Upside-down and laid low as it was, I recognized the name and shape as soon as I saw the front - it was the original sign from atop the Hotel San Diego:

I had thought the sign would be scrap metal somewhere by now, and yet here it was, intact, a little rusty, but functional, a sign without a building. Why was it kept, and why here, out in the open, vulnerable to any vandal with a mind to befoul it? It’s a little ironic that a remnant of a dead era should be casually dumped in a place intended for revitalization and nostalgic restoration.

Just about a week ago, I was at Liberty Station again, and the sign remains on the same patch of grass. If I had more of the journalist in me, I might dig for a story of what’s to become of it. If I do learn of anything, I’ll revisit this in a future post. Until then, I am thankful for this little curiosity on the side of a road, and a few lines of verse it called to mind:

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sometimes a patriot

This is my 51st blog post, and but for an eleventh-hour substitution, it would have been the 50th. If that had come to pass, here is how it would have gone:

This is my 50th blog post. I thought this day would have come quite a bit sooner, but it comes now, and I want to post something special. Something classy and respectable, and that best represents the magnanimous spirit of Czardoz Contra World.

Behold, a goat peeing:

As Paul Harvey would say, now let’s hear “the rest of the story.” I spotted this enchanting tableau at Comic-Con this year, on a congested intersection in the heart of the convention’s splash zone (by which I mean, where the Con’s largesse splashes over onto the streets of downtown San Diego). The goat was one of an unholy trinity of protestors calling for the abolition of Anaheim, specifically in reference to our northern neighbor’s attempts to pilfer Comic-Con from us, but perhaps in general terms as well.

I hope all this talk of Comic-Con leaving San Diego for Anaheim or LA or wherever is all smoke and mirrors. The Con is the cultural touchstone of San Diego, and the city needs this event much more than the alleged wooers. Anaheim has Disneyland. LA has Hollywood, among other splendors. Vegas has . . . Vegas versions of Paris, New York, Ancient Rome, the South Seas, and more magicians than you could fit into a clown car.

Lest anyone think this is purely a local issue, one municipality against another, I must remind you that this is a matter of national gravity, nay, of patriotism. This point is driven home by no less than the greatest patriot, Captain America:

Though Cap is looking about as plush as the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man these days, his point is well made.

This controversy actually reminds me a lot of the Lebron James debacle in Cleveland. I’ve been to Cleveland. I’ve seen President Garfield’s coffin lying in the crypt of the exquisite Garfield Monument. I’ve admired Tiffany’s denim jacket at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I’ve stood in the footsteps of the concertmaster at Severance Hall and gazed from his perspective at the podium where George Szell once conducted the Cleveland Orchestra.

So yes, I know that Cleveland has its place in the world. But that place is not at the top of a jetsetter’s hitlist. And if I were some young buck (or cavalier, for that matter) with a bright present, I wouldn’t expect a very bright future staying in a town like Cleveland.

Lebron is just a dude, of course. Comic-Con is an institution, and, like the office of President, it’s much bigger than any one man. But even though I can understand the arguments for moving – the bigger convention space, the proximity to Hollywood, the proximity to Disneyland, for Goofy’s sake! – the loss of Comic-Con would leave a cultural void in San Diego far bigger than the bankruptcy of the San Diego Symphony in 1996, bigger than the loss of K-BEST 95 – the only oldies radio station in town and yet to be replaced, bigger even than the death of Dr. Seuss.

Yes, I understand that this is a crum-bum town in which I reside, and when the Namor-reading nerdlinger grows up to be Tobey Maguire or some kind of expensive Hobbit crap, he needs to spread his wings and fly to a bigger toilet. Hell, I did it myself once upon a time.

So no hard feelings on my end. But Comic-Con, if you really do leave, just don’t think for a second that the gasping culture junkies you leave behind in this wasteland will forget that you pulled the plug on their life support.

Long live the Con!

Who says you have to get inside Comic-Con to have a good time? Here’s what I saw on the outside looking out, walking around in front of the Convention Center and strolling the Gaslamp.

The Milieu

For a few blissful days every summer, Comic-Con turns the Gaslamp District into a veritable tent city of Amazons, Voltrons, Superfriends, orcs, wizards (both pinball and Hogwartian), spiky-haired Japanophiles, Sailor Scouts (yes, they still exist), keyblade-slingers, Pokemon trainers, X-Maniacs, Jedi Knights and other sad devotees of ancient religions – all wearing matching lanyards and packing grossly oversized swag bags.

* * *

The San Diego Convention Center, home of Comic-Con, has fitful dreams, talks in its sleep: “Must . . . grow . . . bigger! Accommodate . . . more . . . vendors! Keep . . . the Con . . . local!”

* * *

Comic-Con is the one event that makes downtown San Diego feel like the hub of a city that is more than a zoo and some beaches. And somehow, it does this by transforming skyscrapers into gargantuan video game posters.

* * *

Yes, more posters!

* * *

Trolley signs in Klingon = a brilliancy! True or False: Klingons hail from the planet Klingonigon!

* * *

It turns out that Skyline is a movie about people floating up into the sky, hence the little white bubble-men in this frame.

* * *

Yeah! Bubble-Man!

* * *

The Denizens

Don’t bears already have enough of an advantage without toting machine-guns as well?

* * *

Now hold the phone there, Michael Eisner. Something’s not quite right about these Disney princesses. I mean, come on, where’s Tiana???

* * *

Mob scene: a crowd hoping to catch Dragon Age 2 blow-up spears tossed from a balcony. Seriously.

* * *

Now isn’t that adorable? It’s a Wonder . . . boy . . . bun . . .?

* * *

Girl with platinum hair and rabbit ears. Now that’s what I’m talking about!

* * *

Before all those bad dreams started, Freddy Krueger was just another carefree kid reading Dick Tracy and kicking it with a Milhouse.

* * *

Ah, the classic “girl being ogled by sleazy dudes” photo. A timeless set piece.

* * *

Hahaha, some of you will get this joke. You perverts know who you are.

* * *

Will someone please give her a cookie, a tiara, and a box full of gold stars?

* * *

Walking among this elbow-to-elbow mess of exuberant humanity, and having cosplayed once myself, I was happy to see how many people had donned costumes (both homemade and store-bought), painted themselves, built accessories, stretched their imaginations to come up with something unfamiliar, and posed proudly for photos.

And then I became convinced of something. These wizards’ robes, metal brassieres, horns, lightsabers, princess gowns, all manner of animal furs – these were not the costumes. These represent something real about what these people care about. No, the costume is that fashion-challenged, mother-approved school attire that these chaperoned kids go back to when Comic-Con ends. The costume is that ill-fitting work shirt and suffocating necktie that the guy in the head-to-toe Vader outfit returns to after he takes his bag of newly bought action figures home.

The costume is that attitude we put on that says we’re okay with the life of workaday monotony, where we have to act like we don’t really know all that much about the things we value most, where we pretend that, yes, those are just little hobbies that we have, those comics, those games, those movie trailers that we wait hungrily for, or maybe it’s music or dancing or poetry or even Latin grammar, mirabile dictu! This is the stuff that makes people distinctive, and it’s the stuff they do when they are being who they want to be.