Ars Gratia Artis

The gay community is a collective rainbow huff over the movie “Ender’s Game” because Orson Scott Card, the author of the novel on which the movie is based, holds conservative views on gay marriage and homosexuality.  Lots of gays refuse to see the film and some have organized boycotts.

I have not read the book or seen the movie, but I understand it to be science fiction and that it does not overtly or metaphorically address any gay rights issues. It was written decades ago before issues of gay rights were as ubiquitous in our public discourse as they are today. The author is indeed outspoken against gay marriage and gay rights etc.  

People are welcome to boycott any film or book for any reason, but there’s one important element I think that the boycotters are missing. That is: Enjoying a work of art is not an endorsement of the political views of the artist.

I’m all in favor of gay marriage and treating gays equally under the law in all relevant respects, but it’s not something I’m going to let get in the way of reading a book or seeing a movie.

You are free to decide what you want to see or read based on the political views of the creators. But at some point you are going to paint yourself into a corner. You will at some point find yourself patronizing the work of an artist with whom you disagree vehemently.

            And even if Card penned a violent homophobic screed that called for some kind of lavender holocaust, reading it or watching it doesn’t mean you agree with it. Everyone should be willing to challenge themselves and purposely seek out opposing viewpoints in art, politics, religion and all aspects of life. If we can’t listen to the opposition, we can’t form our own arguments thoughtfully.

            But let us also enjoy art for art’s sake. If “Ender’s Game” is a shitty book and movie, let it fail on its own merits, not because you hate the religious or political view of the author.        

            I was disappointed to learn Pablo Picasso was a communist and Louis-Ferdinand Céline was a fascist. It broke my heart to see ZZ Top play the George W. Bush inauguration and to read about Julianne Moore shilling for illegal immigration amnesty. Should I boycott all the works of these artists? No. I disagree with them but my patronage of their work is not an endorsement of their views.

            The case of Alec Baldwin, a bona fide leftist who recently issued a mea culpa for calling a reporter a “cocksucking fag,” scrambled the minds of the powers that be at MSNBC, which suspended his TV show for the offense. But no matter how disgusted you are with him for whatever reason, you can’t deny his acting skills. Does watching his films mean you endorse his leftism or his gay slurs or his unique (gay) marriage of the two? No. You can watch “Glengarry Glenn Ross” guilt-free no matter what your political persuasion.

An artist’s goal is to make art that is powerful enough that it can overcome and outlast the foibles of the artist. Only time will tell. Did Robert Johnson approve of homosexuality? Did Nathaniel Hawthorne believe in equality between the races? Those questions are completely irrelevant to those men’s contributions to the world.

 At some point art and politics must go their separate ways. Whatever your politics, can we least agree that one of the biggest sins of all is limiting your intake of art? 

Our Rich Mafia Life

News from Long Island has come in that John A. Gotti son of the more famous Mafia boss and a one-time Mafia boss himself, was stabbed on Long Island. He survived the attack.

            Gotti Jr. told the police he was stabbed while breaking up a fight between two strangers. Police find that about as believable as him being stabbed by a unicorn.

            When I first moved back to New York, I worked at JFK airport and found a place in Ozone Park, on 101^st Avenue near Woodhaven Boulevard. A few short blocks away was the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club, which had served as John Gotti’s Queens headquarters before he became head of the Gambino Crime Family.

            The fact that we were close to a place of Mafia lore was a selling point.

            “You’ve heard of John Gotti?” the real estate agent asked.

            “Yes,” I said. Who hadn’t?

            “Well his club is right down the street. People know not to mess around here.”

            Gotti had been in prison for years by then, but there were still plenty of wise-guy types around. There were still old men playing cards in the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club when I would walk by. It is long gone now.

Gotti’s headquarters for the time he was the big boss was in Little Italy, the Ravenite Social Club, is now a shoe store. Only the tiled floor remains. John Gotti died in prison, ravaged by cancer, a shadow of the feared “Teflon Don” he was in the 1980s.

For better or worse, New York loves its Mafia heritage. There are tours in Little Italy featuring famous assassination sites. I love it too, no doubt. I was glad to walk by the Bergin Hunt & Fish club and gladly bragged to friends that I was in John Gotti’s neighborhood.

But really, when you get right down to it, the Mafia is bullshit.

We like to imagine the Mafia through the lens of “The Godfather,” the quintessential mob film that popularized the genre and made mobsters look good. It’s a great film. Anyone who doesn’t love “The Godfather” deserves to sleep with the fishes. But “The Godfather” is an accurate portrayal of Mafia life as much as “Star Wars” is an accurate portrayal of the space shuttle Challenger disaster.

The real Mafia is not a collection of earnest Vito Corleones living the American dream, it’s a gaggle of the worst grease ball Goombahs you can imagine but with guns and money. The real Mafia isn’t keeping your neighborhood safe, it’s stealing your car and shaking you down for protection money.

A few years ago I read the book Underboss by Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, who was John Gotti’s lieutenant who eventually turned on him and testified against him. Gravano’s memoir, like anything else told by a career criminal, can’t be taken at face value, but it describes a life not of dapper dons but of sleazy thieves and thugs, always looking for new ways to make money, usually by stealing from others in some way. A piece of shit thief in a tailored silk suit is still a piece of shit thief. 

Save the Tourists (and Airbnb)

Tourists: No other form of life on the New York sidewalks and subways is more simultaneously loved and despised. We love that they are here spending their money and enjoying the wonderment of our city while we hate how they slow us down with their clueless wanderings and slow gait unfamiliar with the pace of city life.

New York needs tourists. Tourism is a central part of the city’s economy and messing with the flow of tourists to New York is effectively kicking the Big Apple squarely in its big balls.

So the New York State Attorney General’s office threatens to throw cold water on this essential industry with its subpoena of Airbnb’s New York State records.

Airbnb is a web site that connects visitors with private hosts who rent out private rooms or apartments, usually for significantly less than hotels cost. The N.Y. Attorney General’s office claims that the platform is being abused by people operating illegal hotels and avoiding hotel taxes.

I did a quick search for hotel room rates in New York City for the first week of March 2014. Prices are higher around the holidays in November and December and the second week of March might see abnormally high rates for people coming for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. This study was unscientific, and there are web sites like Priceline.com and others that can help you find discounts.

Starting with a non-luxury, well-known hotel chain, the Marriot Marquis in Times Square charges an average of more than $360 per night for one room for two adults with no children. That jumps to more than $430 per night if you want such luxuries as a sofa bed in your room. A Marriott on East 40^th Street got a rate of $206 per room.

Going to the cheaper hotels, Days Inn offered a rate of $131 per night on 94^th Street. The chain charges $95 per night to stay at their hotel at JFK Airport. Nothing at JFK Airport is worth $95 a night unless it comes with a free strippers and cocaine.

A similar search on Airbnb gets you $175 a night for a room near Times Square in Manhattan and as low as $57 per night near JFK. The offerings were scattered and not as numerous to put too much of a dent in the hotel business, judging by the search I did on the web site.

No doubt there are people using Airbnb who are running illegal hotels outside of the legitimate regulation of the law, but there is a way to differentiate between these groups and the people making a few extra bucks renting a room to budget-conscious tourists. And about 90% of the Airbnb hosts are people renting out rooms in the homes they live in.

For whatever its faults, Airbnb is American capitalism and New York ingenuity at its best.  Even with the abuses as they are the city and state gain more than they lose by enabling more tourism. The money tourists don’t spend on hotels they spend on Broadways shows, Yankee games, hot dogs and hookers. Let them. 

Standing Strong on Pier 17

Fried food is the last thing I need to eat, but I needed to eat at a seafood restaurant at the South Street Seaport just to give them my business.

As I approached the Pier 17 mall, I found it surrounded by barricades with the only entrance guarded by a security guard turning people away. He admits that the restaurant is open, but calls it a “café” when it clearly is not.

“I understand there’s one restaurant still open inside,” I said to the guard, who was discouraging someone from entering.

“Well it’s not a restaurant, it’s a café. If you want to check it out it’s on the third floor.”

The restaurant that remains open among dozens of empty storefronts is called ‘Simply Seafood’ and it’s clearly a restaurant like any other food court restaurant in any food court, only this one is the only business left in a large three-level mall at the South Street Seaport.

The restaurant is the lone holdout in a large mall that a developer is trying to tear down. They have a lease and expect it to be honored. The landlord has used illegal and very underhanded tactics to try to remove them, such as locking the doors to the mall and reporting that the restaurant had closed, and is still using dirty tricks today. With shady developers normally getting away with their violations of private property rights in the name of economic development and the city normally either turning a blind eye or helping out in with corrupt deals, the urge to score one for the little guy is immense and well worth the price of fried shrimp.

Howard Hughes Corp. owns the property and wants to build another, fancier mall there. I would hope that if Howard Hughes were alive today he’d throw a jar of his collected urine at the people running this namesake corporation. Howard Hughes didn’t need to harass small business owners; he flew airplanes and banged Katherine Hepburn.

Security guards pace the otherwise empty mall eyeing customers suspiciously. There are bathrooms open on the second floor, but otherwise the mall is a ghost town of abandoned stores, makeshift barricades, ‘No Trespassing’ signs and caution tape.

Despite the best efforts of the rent-a-cops, people continued to come for seafood. The restaurant’s struggle with the landlord generated publicity that has brought some people; it’s why I was there. The allure of touring a mostly-abandoned place brings more, and hopefully the chance to stick it to a real estate Goliath will bring more. New Yorkers can’t help but respect and admire the people who fight for their rights even against overwhelming force.

New York landlords are notorious for their unscrupulous behavior. The price of real estate is so high and both the expenses and potential profits so huge, a hold-out tenant can cost an owner lots of money. In the case of a prime commercial real estate in New York’s tourist-heavy downtown, developers stand to lose millions of dollars if they have to maintain a mostly abandoned building for the next seven years.

A small group of tourists asked the men working why they were the only business still open at the mall.

“We’ve got a lease,” said one of the men. “We’ve have a lease until 2020.”

I had a lunch of friend shrimp and fries. What made it such a delicious meal was helping a determined small business stick to their guns.

As I left the mall, the security guard at the entrance was turning away another group of potential customers, wrongly calling the restaurant a café. But not everyone was turned away, many continued through and moved on to give the restaurant their business, and I hope Simply Seafood is there for a very long time.

Atheist Church: A Most Unholy Dumb Idea

I don’t remember the exact time I converted to atheism, but the September 11 attacks were the nail in the coffin of religious faith for me. The deadliest faith-based initiative in New York’s history, the attacks illustrated religious fundamentalism and proved that human decency and religious faith were two very separate and unequal things.

            For years I had tread that line in the middle of the road as an agnostic, but that’s long over. I don’t believe there is a God or any gods. Of course I could be convinced if presented with evidence of the Devine, but so far none has been forthcoming. It’s not something I like to argue about or point out in conversation; most of my family and friends follow some sort of religion or another. But I left religion behind and never looked back. I gave up church for Lent years ago and my life has been improved.

            So it’s with a church scold’s dismay that I have learned that the “atheist church” that was started in London as a joke has become a real mega church with branches in several cities including New York.

            These gatherings, known as The Sunday Assembly, feature some interesting speakers at times, at least according to their web site, but otherwise seem to promise all the obnoxious kumbaya of hippie-poisoned religion with the self-congratulating zeal of evangelical nonbelievers.

            The atheist church is an illustration of the spineless nature of our times. People want the comforts of religious faith while being able to look down their nose at people with religious faith. They want to revel in the label of atheist while cocooned in a congregation of followers.

            Atheists don’t go to church and that’s one of its greatest benefits. We don’t have to sing hymns or put money into collection plates. Atheism is turning away from the comfort of religious faith because intellectual honesty and cold hard facts make it impossible to accept.

            Be above the constant navel-gazing identity affirmation that gums up so much of the current discourse. Not believing in God is a fine thing, but replacing faith in a mythical creator with an obnoxious need to belong just makes you another weak drone.

            These atheist groups are either a smug mocking of people who are religious or a sad admission that people can’t live without religion. When atheists flock to church, or some sad excuse for a church, they’re trying to have it both ways.

            The whole point of being an atheist is that you can’t be a follower like that. And this whole free-form meeting to read and discuss whatever you want, that’s been done already. The Society of Friends (a Christian denomination) beat you to this racket by almost 400 years, so congratulations: you’re Quakers.

            This is the same garbage attitude that sends people to new age religions. People want the transcendence of spirituality but don’t have the stuffing to make up their minds about the tenets of a religious faith.  

            So please, if you’re an atheist, be an atheist. Atheists don’t go to church. 

Beavers, Vultures and Lemmings in East New York

Beavers, Vultures and Lemmings in East New York

Famous street artist Banksy is currently in New York City leaving works of art here and there, and spectators are flocking to see these pieces.  

Recently he painted a picture of a Beaver on a wall in East New York, a Brooklyn neighborhood bordering Queens that is known for being dangerous. Art gawkers dutifully went there to view the piece, and local East New York residents promptly went about robbing these art tourists, blocking the view of the graffiti art meant to be public and charging people $20 to view it.

It’s to be expected that street criminals will look to make a quick buck off of less-than-streetwise tourists, what makes this latest hustle more bothersome is that it’s won approval from the very class of victims most likely to be taken by the scam. The Gothamist blog called the street thugs “savvy” and many commenters thought that since white people dared to go there to view some art, then they were serving some worthy cause to be ripped off by the locals. I disagree.

Robbery is robbery, and feeling you have a right to rip people off because they’re not from your neighborhood or they don’t look like you is no reason at all. What’s more reprehensible is the multitude of self-hating “enlightened” white people thinking this is a good thing or that local East New York residents have a right to a life of petty crime because of their race or their station in life.

Let the local residents capitalize on the Banksy art legitimately. Set up a food cart there or make picture postcards of the art. There are real ways to make money that don’t involve thuggery and intimidation.

And as for the sorry state of East New York, it wasn’t street artists from England or art enthusiasts from Manhattan who made East New York the way it is today. There are people there who can do better; let them. But treat street hustlers like the low vultures they are.

Cyclist Jerks from Hell

              One fine morning as I was about to cross a street in lower Manhattan and go to work, I had barely stepped off the curb when I heard the thin chimes of a bicycle bell. I looked to see a cyclist moving towards me.

“Get out of the bike lane,” sneered the cyclist as he pedaled past me.

Not only were we not in a bike lane, he was going the wrong way down a one-way street. I stood there flabbergasted as he rolled by. A few seconds later, I heard him ring the tinny bell once again from farther up the street.

That incident pretty much encapsulates much of the New York bicycle situation. A very large segment of the cycling population not only regularly violate all laws of traffic and common sense, they have an entitled attitude about it. They want all the rights of an automobile owner and none of the responsibilities of sharing the road.

Let me iterate that I am not against cycling or cyclists. I have many friends who enjoy riding bicycles and if I didn’t live 16 miles away from work, I’d gladly consider riding a bicycle to and from work. It’s good exercise, better for the environment and all that jazz. When I was a youth I rode a bicycle constantly and terrorized adults and other children with it whenever I could. I’m all in favor of bike lanes, bicycle parking and even the bike sharing programs that are finally starting to take shape in the Big Apple.

A good rule of thumb for cyclists is: If I can’t do it with a car, don’t you try it with a bicycle. That does not apply to keeping the bike in your apartment and walking it on sidewalks etc. If I drove my truck on a sidewalk, ran a red light and then drove the wrong way down a one way street, I’d expect to be arrested for reckless driving. Just because you can do less damage with a bicycle doesn’t excuse you from riding it recklessly, and the Big Apple is sick with reckless cyclists.

Walk the streets of New York and without fail you will see cyclists do one or more of the following routinely: running red lights; riding the wrong way down one-way streets; riding on sidewalks; passing traffic on the right, even passing cars making turns. It’s without fail. If a motorist is making a right turn and I try to pass them on the right, I’d be the biggest jerk in the world, yet a cyclist will yell and pound on a vehicle to protest their imagined “right” to be a reckless idiot. I’ve seen it happen.

They operate on the theory that they are an endlessly persecuted minority and thrive on being the victims of ignorant motorists, homicidal drivers and overzealous police.

In many cases cyclists are treated unfairly. Every cyclist I know has a litany of horror stories that involve being struck by car, hassled by the police or confounded by ignorant pedestrians. People that I know have been the victims of aggressive motorists who think they own the road, and I’ve had to break myself of the habit of prematurely stepping into the street before I have the right of way.

But bicycle culture has given us another urban horror that the city doesn’t need, that of a cyclist every bit as entitled and boorish as the most reckless motorist or thuggish pedestrian.

Witnessed one night on Stanton Street on New York’s Lower East Side: A van was driving the wrong way down this one way street. Next to the van was a man on a bicycle, yelling at the driver of the van for driving the wrong way while also driving the wrong way.

“You’re both going the wrong way,” I said to the man.

“I can do that faggot!” he called to me as he bravely sped away on his bike. Actually he can’t; cyclists have to obey the same rules of the road as cars. And unless he’s just won the Tour de France, a grown man in bicycle shorts has no business calling anyone a faggot. But more to the point, riding the wrong way down a one-way street is especially odious in New York, where pedestrians are accustomed to looking only one way before crossing a street because so many streets are one way. Yet many cyclists do this all the time and think nothing of it. 

Many of the cyclists are good people trying to escape the dual hells of public transit and city driving. I can’t blame them for wanting the freedom to move in a city that is so often confining. But having a smaller carbon footprint doesn’t absolve you from the rules of the road or the precepts of human decency. 

Kosher Pedophilia, NYC Approved

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The U.S. Open is Dumb and Depressing

The U.S. Open is getting underway not far from where I live in Queens, and it means that life for some subway commuters is going to get more difficult for the next few weeks.

There’s not much of a reason to watch tennis except to gawk at women in short skirts, and you can do that anywhere for free. I’m sure for fans of the sport in New York, the Open is a great opportunity to see some great masters of the game up close, but it’s not an interesting enough game for the price you pay. You can watch it on TV for free.

What the U.S. Open does for the many riders of the 7 train is flood our already overburdened subway with gaggles of U.S. Open attendees who do not know how to ride the subway.

I’m sure you’re thinking, ‘Riding a subway is easy. How can someone mess that up?’ Well, they manage. The tennis fans headed to the U.S. Open are easy to spot on the 7 train. Whereas the afternoon and evening 7 train is usually filled with haggard working people tired after a day at work and quietly waiting to get home, the tennis fans move as gaggles of cheery chatterboxes, filling the air with their inane conversations.

Tennis fans have every right to their inanity of course, but they are thoroughly unversed in the concepts of being courteous to others in a public space. Riding the subway is a quaint slumming experience for them, and their mannerisms betray them at every turn. They constantly lean on subway polls or spread out over spaces meant to accommodate several people. They constantly delay trains by hesitatingly getting on and off of a subway as they are unsure if they are on the right train or at the right stop.

On Main Street, Flushing the other day, I made my way to the subway for the second leg of my three-leg commute to work. A pair of older gentlemen made their way down the sidewalk among the throngs of Asian immigrants. They wore overpriced athletic gear though they looked like they had not exercised in years. One of them was bald but had hair around the edges of his head, and that hair had been dyed the color of a tennis ball.

Something about the soul-deadening luxury of the event and the blank eyes of many of the tennis fans that makes me vow that if I ever have enough money to attend the U.S. Open, I still won’t. I’d rather not be among people who can’t figure out how to use public transportation. 

The Cold Harsh Light of City Lights

            I have not visited San Francisco without visiting City Lights Books; I’d feel guilty not visiting if I’m there. It’s a great rite of passage for any lover of the written word.

            So it was with usual enthusiasm that I entered again on my most recent trip to California and the great city of sourdough.

            City Lights is well known for its fiction and poetry. It is of historic note as a center of the Beat writers and it is owned by the still-living beat writer and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (his book of poems A Coney Island of the Mind is one of the best ever by the beat generation).  

           

            Looking at the political books near the register, there was no attempt at balance. There was the latest from an aging academic and Soviet apologist, a diatribe from a racism hustler gloating over the demographic changes in the U.S., and the usual suspects. I bear no grudge against my many leftist friends and there are many left-wing causes I agree with, but a good bookstore will try to provide some balance, and you couldn’t balance this bookshelf if you put Mein Kampf on it. A bookstore has a right to stock whatever it wants on its shelves and I’m sure most of City Light’s customers gladly drink what passes for the “progressive” Kool-Aid today. But would it hurt to stock some opposing viewpoints? Politically speaking, our literary world has become an echo chamber of self-hating marshmallows.

            The upstairs room is dedicated to poetry and to the Beat writers. A chair by one of the bookshelves had a sign on it that read ‘Sit Down and Read a Book.’ The larger rocking chair next to it had ‘Poet’s Chair’ painted on it. I decided to sit there, since I do indeed write poetry. I picked up a book of poetry from a nearby table that looked interesting. It was a large but not thick book that had an interesting cover with what looked like a bloody doll or puppet on it. I don’t remember the poet’s name. I sat down and read some poetry and realized the stuff I write is better. I turned the book over and read the brief blurb about the author: someone with a predictable pedigree of the literary establishment and not the poetry power to match it.   

            But a good literary scene happens when people go off on their own and take inspiration from the real world around them. Flocking to a bookstore because Allen Ginsberg once took a shit there doesn’t promote good writing.

            I was no longer in the magical place of wanderlust young poets. I was in a retail store that helped suck the life out of literature by cashing in on long-dead celebrities and following the same institutional claptrap that would have made Jack Kerouac puke in his backpack.

There is a fine line between inspiration and commoditized hero worship. My latest trip to City Lights made me believe the venerated bookstore had crossed the line. But then again, it’s a business. It knows we’ll keep buying books there. I’m guilty as charged. I bought a large R. Crumb coffee table book and Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil.

            City Lights Books inspired me once again, but differently than in years past. I left with a determination that the current guardians of our culture’s literary estate need to have their throats cut. Let the call go out in America today for a ninja army of a new vanguard who will make poetry and literature real to people again, and not the province of the sad sacks of coffee shops and admissions offices. Great writers don’t eat tofu. Great writers eat sausage, spinach and pussy.

            American once found its writers among its strongmen, housewives, sailors and hardscrabble journalists. It will once again. 

Happy Summertime, New York

New York in the summer is for oppressive heat and simmering anger, for being tempted with the sights of more female flesh while blanketed with heat and the sweaty intrusions of more people.

City life is a trial of patience and suffering in the summer. Concrete and blacktop absorb and reflect the heat, exhaust fumes are trapped by tall buildings, and everything in the city is hotter than everywhere else. Cramped onto subways and busses, we bristle at the sweaty touch of others, suffering further in one another’s vulgar heat.

Summer tests everyone’s patience. The heat and humidity magnify the unending slights and annoyances that are the fuel of city angst. The unavoidable heat and its sweaty unpleasantness works to erode our patience and our souls boil over with anger and white-hot rage almost daily.

The sad realization of summer hit me just yesterday while I stood waiting for the 7 train in Flushing. The 7 train is populated mostly by Asians with sharp elbows who scramble for seats that they’ll only sit in for about 25 minutes at most and are less comfortable than standing. I prefer to stand so I can read the paper and not fight for a seat. But like other subway lines, the 7 train is a strange beast that operates on its own whims and curses its riders with frequent malfunctions. I was jolted to the realization of summer while standing and waiting for the subway at Main Street, which is underground – most of the 7 line is above ground. “Signal problems” caused a delay in subway service, and there was little to do but stand motionless and suffer as the platform became more crowded and sweat soaked through your clothes.

            Summer in the city has its fun moments. It’s sometimes nice to stay in the city while everyone else is away, especially Labor Day weekend to end the summer season. New York is forever populated with young women and the degeneration of our society has dictated that popular fashion becomes more and more revealing with each summer season.

             But at some point, you must leave New York City for at least 48 consecutive hours every summer in order to preserve some shred of sanity. Being baked in a concrete, glass and body odor oven for three and a half months will make even the strongest person go mad.

            I’m going to Connecticut to light off explosives with a few good friends and then to California where I will try to trace the steps of Henry Miller and light bonfires in tribute to John Steinbeck and the ghosts of Portuguese whalers. But I shall return soon to our sweat-soaked city to grab it by the throat once again.  

How to Go Crazy Properly

I sat in a room full of very well-behaved financial professionals and analysts wondering why no one was going insane. It was a day like any other and it was a financial conference in Manhattan didn’t suddenly give in to the orgiastic wills of the dozens of assembled people.

Most of us lose our minds at one point or another but almost always too slowly to register to the outside world. We let our own fears and disappointments torture and kill us, carving our minds and souls to shredded pulps.

Given the state of the world, I’m surprised more and more people aren’t dropping out of civilized society by going crazy. Many times I find myself in a situation where people’s acceptance of what’s given to them or the state of their surroundings is maddening and ought to result in a violent outburst of creative violence, but it never happens. And if it did, it would never be contained enough to be justified and righteous.

So even though I sympathize with crazy to the nth degree and feel the temptation to bring that measured and sane violence to our insane world, I can’t stand the people who force their insanity on the world around them.

The people who scream and rave in public, who throw themselves in front of trains or off of buildings, are childish egotists who think they are special enough to force others to notice them and rearrange their lives for them. You have every right to be crazy and are probably right to be insane, but force yourself on others and you’re not better than the rest of the cruel, cruel world, probably worse. That is one reason we have art, music and literature: it’s how we turn the pain of being alive into something worth living for.

You have to embrace your insane rage in the right way. The only worse than letting your insanity kill you is letting it make you an egocentric asshole first. 

The Fine Art of Not Belonging

One of the perks of working as a financial journalist is that you sometimes get to go to parties in nice places where food and drink are free. It doesn’t make up for working for years without a raise and being in constant fear of being laid off, but it’s nice nonetheless.

Last evening was one such party, a charity event put on by people in finance.

Ostensibly my coworker and I were there to meet people that would help us do our job. Schmoozing with financial people is part of my job, but it’s a part of the job that I am bad at.

I dressed well enough and was pleasant and polite and still had no hopes of blending in. Members of the financial class are their own race, though they are made of different races. They can look through you as if you are not there and walk with a confidence that bristles with a condescending hostility and feels perpetually offensive and false. I wore a nice suit but maybe there was something in the way I said thank you to the caterers, or the fact I thanked them at all, that gave me away as decidedly not one of the financial class.

There’s nothing wrong with finance, but the people who work in the higher echelons of finance today are not cut from the same material as the people who invent things or pioneered and forged new industries. They are custodians of other people’s money and often speak in a gloating jargon that moves lots of money but creates little of value. I’m sure many of them are decent people and good at their job, but they do not possess the fire of the technology entrepreneurs or venture capitalists I met during previous jobs.

After thirteen years of working in financial journalism, I have actually gotten worse at the art of fitting in at these types of gatherings. My motivation for the easy smile and the glad-handed talk has waned. But I am glad not to fit in among this alien class. Somehow I feel that in the important calculus of life I’ll have more to show for it at the unspoken reckoning at the verge of the great beyond.

I ate as many miniature lobster rolls as I could without making a spectacle of myself and made my discreet exit after putting in a respectable amount of time at the event. I briefly enjoyed the sights of the city on the first really warm evening of the spring before making my descent to the subway for home.

Dew the Manufactured Controversy

The latest manufactured racial controversy involves a talking goat that drinks soda. Mountain Dew has pulled a commercial from the Internet that was supposedly “racist” because it featured black men in a criminal lineup along with a talking goat that loves Mountain Dew.

The brief clips that I’ve been able to watch of this “racist” commercial actually look funny. A crazy goat guzzles Mountain Dew and beats up a waitress. The waitress, cut, bruised, on crutches and wearing a neck brace, is viewing a lineup at a police station that features the brown goat and four black men. Even though her assailant is obvious in the lineup, she is too traumatized by the Dew-crazed goat to identify her attacker.

The men in the lineup are all members of the rap group Odd Future, and the video was directed by Odd Future member Tyler the Creator. Tyler the Creator is not that good a rapper—and he’s disrespected Yonkers to boot (watch this parody of his work by the much-better rapper Hopsin)—but he and other members of the group have a comedy show called Loiter Squad that has actually had some funny moments.

What seems to be lost on the legion of intelligentsia who’ve condemned the commercial as racist is that IT FEATURES A TALKING GOAT. Do we really need to explain any further than that? I’m sorry, but once you realize that the commercial centers around a goat that drinks soda and goes crazy, shouldn’t that be a clue?

If the fact that it is a Mountain Dew commercial didn’t tip you off not to take it seriously, the goat should have. Once you introduce livestock into the mix, you’re done trying to say anything serious. (I’m aware of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and the like, but it’s safe to say that Orwell would be above writing soda commercials if he were still with us).

The fact that the black rappers are there in the lineup doesn’t make it racist. The goat is brown in appearance like the rappers, but he is a goat and they are human beings, and the absurdity of the lineup is humorous. Maybe the black director was criticizing our country’s criminal justice system. Perhaps he was presenting a piece of racial realism and calling the corporate world’s bluff on it. But I’m willing to bet he was just trying to make a ridiculous commercial.

And maybe it’s not that funny; maybe it’s pretty dumb like just about every commercial on television. I have yet to sit through a Mountain Dew commercial that I found erudite, awe-inspiring or even tasteful. That’s OK though, Mountain Dew drinkers aren’t known for their good taste.

And someone please tell me that animal rights activists have complained that a goat was made to drink a large sugary beverage.

The entire “controversy” is most likely a work like New Coke: something that wasn’t meant to even be a real commercial but put out there just to generate press. It worked: I just spent 25 minutes trying to watch an admittedly asinine Mountain Dew commercial. 

Hell Just Got Louder; RIP Jeff Hanneman

The man who made thrash thrive and kept rock music’s Satanic side alive has passed. Jeff Hanneman, one of the founding guitar players of SLAYER, passed away May 2. He had been in bad health for the past few years after contracting a rare illness from a spider bite.

It is not only the state of heavy metal music that wouldn’t be what it is today without Jeff Hanneman. Anyone who listens to metal, punk, hardcore or any variation thereof owes a big debt of gratitude to Hanneman, who made thrash metal faster, harder and louder than it ever was before.

Slayer is the thrash metal band that never turned away from its roots, never wrote an embarrassing love song, never apologized for singing about evil, and never gave up. While the more popular heavy metal bands of the 1980s were wearing makeup and buying hair spray futures, Hanneman was writing amazing songs that were fast and furious from beginning to end. His songs’ subject matter included necrophilia, Nazi war criminals, Satanic blood sacrifices, and other things that were evil and a lot more interesting than weeping about girls.

You remember how every heavy metal band used to have at least one slow, sappy ballad on every record? Slayer has none of those. Remember in the 1990s how heavy metal bands cut their hair to try to fit into the alternative or grunge scenes? Not Slayer.  

In the 1980s, the punk rock and heavy metal scenes often did not mix. A punk rocker would never go to a heavy metal show and metalheads were likewise required to hate punk. Slayer changed that, and Jeff Hanneman was leading the charge.

Hanneman was a punk rock fan first and gravitated to metal because he wanted to play more blistering guitar solos than the punk genre allowed at the time.

For Hanneman, the divisions that fenced in the various genres of aggressive music were arbitrary and false, and he shredded through them with gusto. When Slayer put out an album of cover songs, they weren’t classic rock songs or tribute to popular groups of the day; they were mostly hardcore punk covers from bands that were little known at the time.

You’d rarely see a metal musician wearing a punk rock t-shirt until Jeff Hanneman did. And if Hanneman did it, you couldn’t argue it wasn’t heavy metal. He opened up aggressive music in that way and helped popularize the many great crossover bands that tread the line between punk rock and heavy metal.

[Author’s Note: For the past decade, I have regularly brought deviled eggs to parties and family gatherings and they have become quite popular among family and friends. My deviled eggs are called Double Satanic Deviled Eggs, and every time I make them, I must at some point listen to SLAYER.]

Surviving the Stupid

I have recently given up one of my fantasies (not the threesome with Winona Ryder and Kelly MacDonald). I have given up my dream of living without having to deal with incredibly stupid people.

It is a noble dream. It’s one I know is shared by many good people. We all enter that quest to be free from the stupid, shiftless and insane, but such a place does not exist. It is a curse of the human condition that we are subject to the grotesque imperfections of other human beings. That these imperfections seem to become more extreme and grotesque as probably more evidence of our own maturing wisdom than a larger decline in the population’s brains, though that is probably falling fast.

We yearn to reach a level of life where we can avoid having to be nice to people who are jerks to us, but no matter who you are or how successful you become, no one can ever avoid this.

For example, ask most people who the most powerful person in the world is and they’re like to tell you it’s the President of the United States. Even the President of the United States has to spend a large percentage of his time being nice to stupid people or people who are being boorish and rude. People say rude things at campaign stops, political donors expect to be thanked repeatedly; Congressmen and Senators want to get their photo taken with you even after they don’t vote for your budget, and foreign leaders make insulting spectacles of themselves at photo-ops. We’d like to think that if we were President we’d have the guts to tell everyone, “Fuck you, I’m the President, bitch,” but we wouldn’t. We can’t even tell off our boss when they do something stupid and fucked up; we need our jobs.

And all of life is just like that. We’ll never be as free as we want to be. Unless you live off the land as a hermit in the wilderness, you will have to deal with assholes and idiots that you have to be nice to at some point. And I’d imagine that in the wilderness you have to deal with asshole bears and mosquitoes and so forth.

We all dream about being able to spit in the asshole’s drink, put bananas in the tailpipe of their car, or manage some kind of stealth technology that will visit much-deserved misery on our tormentors and leave us unscathed. That also, is a dream. There are some fine pranks that are worthwhile—the Upper Decker, for instance—but these revenge fantasies carry big risks for potentially little reward.

But really, you can shelve those fantasies for the most part. Maintaining a stoic dignity will be a better revenge than anything you can think up. Deny them the small victory they scrape together by being a pest and affecting the lives of others, and you rob them of the perverse negative pleasures that make their pathetic existence more bearable.

Living among the stupid is one of the curses of being an intelligent, decent human being. It is a universal curse we all share, it’s all a matter of how we deal with this and navigate the obstacles it puts in our path.

It will be tempting at time to give in, to go along to get along and embrace stupidity and play to ignorance. Don’t. Be willing to be alone in the world. Having your eyes open means you won’t like much of what you see, but being smart and in the know is its own reward, sometimes it’s only reward.

Fear and Self Affirming Blame in Boston

The cacophony of conflicting information adds self-inflicted insult to the injury of the bombing of the Boston Marathon on Monday. There’s a suspect now, we are told, but no arrest yet.

In the face of horrific random violence, people want to cling to whatever shred of certainty they have. If we can confirm our worldview in the face of such a terrible and unpredictable event, it will give us some miniscule piece of mind perhaps. We may be relatively helpless in the face of terror, but at least we’ll be right about who’s bombing us now.

Therefore we saw many people predicting government conspiracies, right-wing fringe groups, and Islamic terrorists. The Internet was alight with conspiracy theories before the debris settled on Boston’s Boylston Street.

Personally, I doubled down on Muslims being the perpetrator(s). Muslims can be counted on to blow shit up with a mind to take out lots of innocent people. Also, the same day as the bombing, Al Qaeda executed a series of bomb attacks in Iraq that killed 61 people. Also, the mailing of ricin to political leaders could be part of the same coordinated terror effort, with Al Qaeda trying to relive its September 2001 attacks.

Maybe I’ll eat crow. Maybe it will be a lone wolf just wanted to get their jollies killing people.

Either way, we’re going to shake this off and get back to business like champs. Let’s bring the bomber or bombers to swift justice and learn whatever lessons we can from it to prevent another bombing. Let the people of Boston overcome this horror quickly so we can go back to hating them again.

The Great Immigration Scam

The same kind of myopic subservience to special interests that brought us the credit crisis and other gems now brings us a host of proposals to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.

The media have refused to look at the situation critically and have helped push the amnesty plan on everyone. To oppose it is to be branded a racist troglodyte of the lowest order. But the truth will set you free, and the truth is an amnesty plan will be bad for everyone but the wealthiest among us. 

When I moved back to New York after several years away, I had a job as an immigration inspector at JFK airport. It was the job that enabled me to move back, and I worked at JFK for about two years. We were trained at a federal law enforcement training center like law enforcement officers. We were given badges and guns, even bullet-proof vests. But many of us, particularly those of us who were sent to work at airports as opposed to land borders, were more like glorified clerks than real law enforcement officers.

Here's an illustration of our immigration system at work: A passenger from India stood before me with a regular tourist visa. "How long do you plan to visit the United States?" I asked. 

"Well maybe two weeks, but you will give me six months," was her reply. Now, unless you are very, very wealthy, you cannot afford to go on vacation halfway around the world for six months. Most well-off Americans can't afford that, and this woman was a middle-class Indian at best. If she was going to stay for six months, there was little doubt she'd be working here illegally. 

We were under strict orders to give every regular tourist or business visa six months no matter what, because that was the maximum allowed under law. Back when more inspectors were giving people two weeks in the country when the person said they were only staying for two weeks, federal offices would be flooded with people working here illegally asking for their time extended for some bullshit excuse or another. To avoid this bureaucratic flood, the answer simply became to give everyone more time here. They could go home to visit every six months to keep up appearances and not technically overstay their visas, and they could go on living and working here illegally so long as they didn't get caught. 

The government knew exactly what was going on, but instead of doing something to solve the problem, they just set policies in place so that no one had to. It is pretty disheartening to see people day after day skirt and break the laws you are supposed to uphold.

Not every part of my experience working for the immigration service was a frustrating disappointment. I saw many people coming into the U.S. who exemplified the best parts of our immigration tradition. I met hard-working people who were proud to be coming to America. I met people who had endured great human rights abuses. I met people who would rather be fry cooks in the U.S. than engineers in their native countries.

But every American with eyes knows that our current immigration system is failing at its function of bringing in people who will be productive citizens and keeping out those that won't. There is not a well-funded lobbying effort among disaffected Americans seeking any real reforms. The U.S. government is allowing unprecedented amount of people into the country, and long ago gave up on the policies that made past generations of immigrants a success. 

Our tradition of immigration worked because it was well managed. Immigrants who came to this country were able to assimilate because we had a system in place that demanded they do so, and selected who was more likely to succeed in the U.S. We are now bringing in large numbers of people less likely to assimilate, and making no demand that they do so. This is a recipe for failure, and both major political parties have embraced this policy of failure. 

Allowing in millions of uneducated people who don't speak English is not good for the country, and it's not racist to say so. We already have too many immigrants, legal and illegal, to assimilate reasonably well. Enacting any kind of amnesty plan will only make this problem worse in the future. A reasonable immigration policy means many good people wouldn't be able to come to the United States, but being a responsible adult means sometimes saying "no" to good people.

But large numbers of unskilled, uneducated workers help create a glut of labor that keeps wages artificially low, and that pleases the moneyed interests that control our political leaders. That is one of the reasons why the current amnesty push has so much bipartisan support. It also puts on a path to citizenship millions of nonwhites, who will presumably all vote Democratic, creating a permanent demographic majority. This scares Republicans enough to try to jump on the bandwagon so as not to be branded as racists—even Rand Paul has sold out.

In fact—and even Paul Krugman agrees— lower wages for blue collar work will have a disproportionate effect on blacks and Hispanics. Where is your disparate impact theory now, Democrats? 

This is the country's last chance to put a stop to short-sighted policies that have screwed over the working and middle classes for decades, and try to turn things around. If immigration amnesty goes through, generations from now our descendants will ask us why we let it happen.