Weird. Creepy. Disturbing. Banal...No, Wait, Scratch That Last One

I just got a voice mail on my cell phone...and my phone never even rang. Disturbing, right? Actually, not so much. I've got Verizon so I figure at least a third of my calls ring straight through to voice mail, without ever having bothered me. I pretend it's a service they offer me because of my undeniable importance and prestige.

But this is where it gets unnerving and weird. The voice mail, when I listened to it, was just a sort of buzzing, humming sound coming in and out. I've seen the Ring, not to mention commercials for several other Japanese horror movie knockoffs, so I know all too well what that sound was: a malevolent spirit from beyond the grave, consumed by rage, haunting my Motorola RAZR. Which is, apparently, the Transylvanian mansion or abandoned mental asylum of cell phones. When I get home tonight I'm going to check the manual and see if there's an "exorcise evil spirits" command somewhere in the menu. I hate evil cell phone spirits. They're the worst.

One Honky's Thoughts on the Movie Crash

So I've had the Crash DVD staring at me from its Netflix envelope for the last few weeks. I didn't want to watch it. I had no interest in it. But after it got all those Academy Award nominations and whatnot, I felt like I had to give it a shot. So, last night Karen and I tried.

We made it through 20 minutes. We just had to turn it off. It was such an irritating movie. I hated it.

I have to say, it's a pretty big thing for me to say I hated a movie/book/album/restaurant, etc. I'm a silver lining kinda guy. I try to see the best in things, and generally speaking, I succeed. I'm easy that way. But with Crash, I just couldn't get into it. All of these people walking around, ranting about race in such overblown, ridiculous ways. The parodies have been done and done well. The thing is, the parodies aren't so far off from the real thing. I'm only glad I didn't go with my original plan to play a drinking game wherein I'd take a drink every time someone utters a racial epithet that seemed completely forced and unrealistic. The liver failure would have been quick and catastrophic.

I guess the whole point of the movie was to drag America's issues with race and racism out into the open, but it was done so tactlessly and artlessly that there seemed to be no depth of thought to the discussion. Seriously, trotting out one character and then having another character list off all of the negative stereotypes associated with that first character's race isn't thoughtful commentary, it's provocation without substance. Crash desperately wants to be the movie that bravely and bluntly shows the way people of different races and classes mix in this country and how racial biases, conscious and subconscious, play a role in everything we do in America. The filmmakers apparently feel like they're really pioneering in this field, as if no one else is addressing this.

The thing is, for all the pomp and circumstance and awards-show posturing around Crash, it comes nowhere close to the subtle, intriguing take on race and class in, of all things, a teen drama series, Veronica Mars. Like Crash, VM is set in a racially and culturally mixed Southern California milieu where people are divided by class and skin color. Unlike Crash, VM has some degree of subtlety and thought, showing how characters actually experience the reality of being black/white/hispanic/rich/poor in day to day life, where racism is much more often experienced as an accumulation of inferences and assumptions than as a shrill white woman shrieking, "Get that beaner out of my house!" Also, since VM isn't so busy trying to "teach" us about race (read: banging us over the head with racial slurs), it's able to do other things, like be entertaining and funny and show us how Veronica knew who stole the money from the school carnival. One other key difference between Veronica Mars and Crash: Veronica Mars is awesome, and Crash completely sucks ass.

I've disagreed with the Oscar choices before, and I generally follow the hipster party line: Pulp Fiction should have beaten Forest Gump, Saving Private Ryan and/or The Thin Red Line should have beaten Shakespeare in Love, and neither Million Dollar Baby nor A Beautiful Mind nor Chicago were actually even great movies, much less the best movies that came out in their respective years. But I liked all of those movies to greater or lesser extent. They were all good movies, if flawed. Crash, though, is just a flaming pile of crap. If it claims any of the prizes from the vastly superior Brokeback Mountain next weekend (Crash seems like the only other real contender for Best Picture, or so the award season buzz would have it), I'll be legitimately pissed off.

On the plus side, it did inspire the following conversation between Karen and I the second we turned the movie off:
Me: Go back to your own country.
K: Why? Are you worried I'm going to steal your wallet because I'm not white?
Me: Oh, so solly! Learn how to drive!

See, we're all about confronting race in America as fearlessly as Crash does.

The Ringer

So a few weeks ago, Karen and I were trying to catch a cab. We flagged one down, and in typical New York City cabbie fashion it darted across two lanes of traffic and cut off a bus to get to us. I know that a lot of people hate how reckless cab drivers can be, but frankly I applaud it. When a guy is willing to risk his life and the lives of all those around him for a $5 cab fare, well, that's a level of customer service almost unheard of on the East Coast.

Anyways, as we're getting in the cab, this guy on the sidewalk starts yelling at us. I hadn't even noticed him before, didn't have anything to do with him, but suddenly he's screaming at us: "What are you doing, flagging a cab in front of a bus? What's wrong with you?"

So I turned to him as I was ducking into the cab and I said back, all cool as hell, "I don't know what's wrong with me, but at least I'm not a fucking nutjob like you, so I've got that going for me." It was awesome.

I mean, okay, it wasn't exactly the greatest comeback ever. I'm not going to pretend it was perfect. But I actually yelled at some guy, and my comeback was instantaneous, and it was at least a bit more clever than just saying "fuck you." Compared to most times in a similar situation where I'd either shrug my shoulders and say nothing or I'd think of the perfect comeback ten minutes later, it was pretty impressive. I felt so New York City, like finally I'd made it and I was really adapting to the environment here. Like, how far has this kid from small town South Dakota come? Far, dude. Real far.

The afterglow from the moment lasted a block or two. As I was coming down, I started thinking more and more about it, and that's when I came to a troubling realization: the man on the sidewalk was retarded. I turned and asked Karen, and she confirmed it.

So now I'm a guy who yells profanities at retarded people in public. I guess that's my new thing. The thing is, the guy had it coming. He started it! So there's that. But still, it's not exactly the sort of thing I should brag about. I probably still will, though.

Born on the Cusp

I felt obligated to mention in a post that today is my birthday. As I sat looking at the blank post screen, the iPod shuffle brought up...The Strokes, "Is This It." Which is pretty funny, actually--if you haven't heard it before, or don't remember it, the whole song is sort of a bleak hipster's lament about how he's going through the motions, with the refrain being, "Is this it?"

Which isn't at all how I actually feel about my birthday, or at least this specific birthday. I'm actually really happy about things. I've had a good week at work and I've got a great weekend planned--Nobu for dinner tonight, a first for me, and then seeing friends tomorrow. Drinks will occur, and I expect a general sense of mirth and merriment as well. And if it gets bad, I can just retreat to my birthday present courtesy of my lovely, charming, and all-around wonderful girlfriend: a new 60gb iPod Video. It's like a tiny god.

But all that said, there is sort of a weird sense of, like, "How am I supposed to feel about this?" Birthdays get sort of off track after the early 20s. When you're a kid it's obviously a big draw, and then in your teens it seems like almost every birthday is significant in some way. 13: I'm a teenager! 14: I can get a learner's permit to drive in South Dakota! 16: I can drive at night, and by myself! (I think there was also something about age of consent at 16 in South Dakota at that time, but...let's just say that wasn't a real big operating issue for me back then.) 18: Cigarettes! Porn! Lottery tickets! 21: Booze! But from there it sort of got less interesting. 25: I can rent a car! That's not exactly the sort of thing you wait up until midnight on the night before your birthday just to experience. And now, 28. I like that it's an even number, but other than that, what's the difference between 28 and 27? Not much. I still can't run for the Senate, and I could have run for the House of Representatives last year.

So I'm adjusting. Instead of birthdays being some big milestone, they're now more of an excuse to get all of your friends together and have them be nice to you. Which is more than enough for me. And besides, there's no reason you can't still take advantage of all of your earlier milestones. That's why I have to stop off at the bodega on the way home, so I can stock up on booze, porn, and lottery tickets. I've got a birthday party to plan.

Iowa Sex Contract

So here's the thing about the Iowa Sex Contract. Most people are going to look at it and they're going to say, "Wow, that is horrible. You never should agree to that."

And it's absolutely true. Frankly, the contract is poorly written, poorly organized, and--I'll say it--a bit one-sided. If I was writing up the Iowa Sex Contract, I would have worked out my negotiating parameters a bit better, maybe brought in a mediation team, and I definitely would have seen to cleaning up and organizing the agreement more thoroughly. Cleaner section headings, numbered lines, the whole deal. The font and the little pictorial letters? Strictly amateur. I don't want to just throw an Iowa Sex Contract out there, I want it to be a professional, first-class Iowa Sex Contract. The spelling errors alone are just embarassing, not to mention the ambiguous clauses. And don't get me started on the grammar.

The New Arctic Monkeys Album is...Pretty Okay

The Arctic Monkeys finally get their domestic release today after what seems like weeks or even months of hype. There's a statistic floating around out there that when the album debuted in England a few weeks ago at number one, it sold more than the rest of the top 20 combined. Which is pretty impressive, to me at least.

They seem to be getting a reasonably big push here, too--or at least as big a push as any indie-ish British rock band can get. I ran by the Times Square Virgin Megastore on lunch break and the Monkeys were the featured New Release o' the Day on the racks. Not to mention that their poster has been wheat pasted on construction sites around town for the past week or two. Most of all, though, it just seems like they're getting a lot of hype from the various magazines and online reviewers and bloggers out there. I've even seen references to them in the New York Times and ESPN.com, where one of the writers was saying that the NFL should have gotten a hip young band like the Arctic Monkeys instead of the Rolling Stones to play halftime at the Super Bowl. It's one thing when you've got Pitchfork raving about the next big thing weeks before the album comes out, but quite another when ESPN.com is doing the talking. That's some mainstream hype right there.

Not only has there been hype, though, but I feel like I've seen a lot of the meta-hype as well. A lot of people talking about the Arctic Monkeys are starting off by saying, "The Brits are always hyping the Next Big Thing and they're always wrong, but these guys...these guys actually live up to the hype!"

So, needless to say, I'm a total sucker for this stuff. I'm easily impressionable and can be persuaded to buy just about any album by a well-placed review. In short, I'm a record company's dream customer, and probably singlehandedly responsible for propping up the industry over the past few years. They aren't doing well now, but without me? The recording industry wouldn't exist anymore, outside of 30-second clips of faux-ironic '80s songs downloaded to cellphones.

But I digress. I would have probably picked up the album if it came with even a fraction of the advance notice. It's right down the sweet spot of stuff I like, and I'm pretty much always willing to give a new band a chance. Since the word was so good on the Arctic Monkeys, I bit the bullet and bought myself an import copy of the album a few weeks ago, and I've been listening to it since then. Trying to mull it over, really get a sense of it, live with it a bit. In fact, since I picked it up, I've probably listened to it more than any other album. So I know whereof I speak when I say...

I don't get it.

I'm not trying to be the arch hipster with the reactionary, "I dislike everything that other people like." I like the album. It's good stuff, and if you are thinking about buying it, I'd say go ahead and get it. There are some catchy songs on there, it has some energy and the guy has an accent when he sings, which is always good. I like it, and I don't feel bad about putting down my $22 to get the import copy. (Okay, knowing what I know, I might have waited the three weeks for the domestic release and saved $10. But you get my point.)

But I don't see what makes it so special. It escapes me how this is so clearly the standout album that everyone is talking about, especially when you consider other albums in essentially the same genre that came out contemporaneously with it: I've got new albums by the Strokes, We Are Scientists, and Love is All that were released just since the beginning of January that are all basically comparable in genre to the Arctic Monkeys, and I like all three more than I like the Arctic Monkeys. And there are others I haven't gotten around to, like the M's, the Subways, and the Editors that are, from what I understand, also in the same "rough, angular, post-punk revival" sound or whatever it is. These are all just in the last month or so. Let's just say that the field is not sparse right now.

So how did the Arctic Monkeys emerge from the scrum as the clearcut best of the bunch? If it was some crappy American Idol / teen pop / Justin Timberlake-type that was selling all these records, I'd just read that to mean, of course, that people really don't care what they listen to. But this is a band I like, in a genre I'm fairly well versed in. I'm baffled. Is it their lyrics? Their backstory? (There's some of that, about them being unsigned and internet demos and...you know, whatever.) I just don't hear what makes them special, and I really really want to. It's bordering on obsession.

And so that's why I'll probably be listening to the Arctic Monkeys for weeks or months to come. Not because I love it the way I love, say, Love Is All's Nine Times That Same Song. (Is it too early to start saying, "my favorite album of the year"? If not, Nine Times is it.) But just because I want figure out this mystery. This is one of the few cultural trends that I should actually be able to sync up with, as opposed to all of the wildly popular things like Dancing with the Stars and American Idol that I just don't get. This is my moment! This is my chance to have something I like actually be relatively popular! So why am I still feeling left out in the cold like usual?

Cheney shot some dude!

Seriously though, I don' t see what the fuss is about. Before I knew he was a shitty vice-president, now I also know he's a shitty hunter. This is news?