It's a Celebration, Bitches

6 months
52 posts
25,000 words

A sensible person might spend their 25,000 words writing a novel. Instead, I have squandered mine on idle ramblings and obscure endorsements. It is a sad fact that I have now expended more verbiage on this page than I did on my entire undergraduate thesis. Then again, my thesis was insufficiently broad in scope to warrant mention of Fuckly.

Speaking of rap music, Halfz and I saw GZA at the 9:30 Club last night. The opening act was Buckshot, the BDI MC. He looked a great deal like Jaleel White, and was accompanied by fellow DuckDown artist Sean Price, whose album “Monkey Ballz” drops on Tuesday.

The set was hardly thrilling, but did include several amusing exchanges between the two MCs. As it drew to a close, Sean P. remained defiantly on stage as his DJ began playing tracks from his album and his street team emerged with his bottle of Hennessy and flung CDs and posters into the crowd. Sean rhymed along with his own lyrics, sipping his Henny and mugging for his fans, if there were any.

“I’m the best rapper in the whole fucking world,” he declared as he finally left the stage – a claim I might dispute.

The true best MC in the world, the GZA/genius, came out at 10:30. He launched into a medley of one-verse renditions of some better known hits, including “Clan in da Front,” “Fam (members only),” “Crash Your Crew,” and “Liquid Swordz.” The crowd, comprised chiefly of young professionals and would-be thugs from Bethesda, MD, chanted along eagerly.

One highlight of the show was an impromptu tribute to ODB, including the following story: shortly after releasing their first demo together in 1984, GZA and Dirty were on the train together when a guitarist caught their attention. Apparently, Dirty was incensed by GZA’s contribution of 50 cents, and pronounced, “Shit. This fucking guy don’t got talent. We got talent.”

He then proceeded to empty the man’s guitar case of all of its contents.

The second half of the set went into lesser-known material, seeming to leave some in the audience restless. But after “Breaker, Breaker,” GZA explained briefly his disdain for the materialism and emptiness of mainstream hip-hop, citing his preference for the more cerebral “sword style” of lyricism known as Wu-tang and declaring (as he always does) that “Wu is the wind from the sword. Wu, wu, wu, wu. When you hear ‘tang’? That’s your goddamn neck.”

After a few minutes of prepared rhymes performed a cappella whipped the coffee house set into a frenzy, GZA delighted me and Halfz by closing with “Killah Hillz 10304,” requested by a loyal fan. The final lines, “400 barrels of ether/ 200 pounds of reefer/ and 50 immigrants with fake visas,” thrilled us both to no end.

But before calling it a night, GZA launched back into his tirade about the essential futility of content-free rap music. This continued for several minutes.

“Rappers want to talk about bling-bling and ice. Raekwon started that shit, ‘ice.’ You know what? I’ve never heard a rapper call diamonds a precious mineral. That’s what it is, a precious mineral from the earth. Crystalline carbon, motherfucker. That’s where it gets its shine. Learn that shit before you talk about it.”

Revisionist History

It’s been a while since I weighed in on the progress at Ground Zero, where things have been going less than swimmingly over the past few weeks. First, the NYPD requested that the Freedom Tower be redesigned according to their security guidelines, which require that the building be placed at least 100 feet back from any roadway in order to deter and deflect would-be truck bombings.

This raised the ire of George Pataki and the LMDC, who thought that the recommendations came a bit late (the NYPD claims its concerns were initially ignored). As it is, no steel has yet been ordered for the tower, and in light of these new developments it seems likely that when the design is finally ready to go into construction, both the tower we get and the overall planning of the site will have been changed -- for better or worse -- by important security considerations.

To make matters worse, the Donald took this opportunity to throw his support behind an alternate and unsanctioned plan for the WTC site by Kenneth Gardner and Herbert Belton, which calls for building updated replicas of the original twin towers on their original footprints, defying not only the terrorists but also the wishes of most 9/11 victims’ families, who have asked that the (already chosen) memorial design preserve the footprints. This is an alarmingly conservative approach to what most New Yorkers -- and people in general -- have recognized as a unique opportunity for optimistic renewal.

Aside from the obvious problems associated with ignoring the desires of victims’ families, this plan would also replace the office space of the original towers all at once. It is already clear that tenants willing to rent offices in newly high-risk Lower Manhattan are scarce (Goldman Sachs recently announced that they are pulling out of their plans to move in to one of the new buildings). Rebuilding both towers together assumes that they would be occupied immediately, while the Freedom Tower plan, however flawed, at least makes a provision for building the additional towers only as dictated by the demand for space.

Close examination of the “Twin Towers II” scheme also reveals the extent to which the original towers’ design has been changed: where the windows were once narrow and tall, presumably to make workers on the upper floors feel more at ease, the new towers would have more typical square office windows. Gone are the graceful proportions and slender window mullions emphasizing verticality, replaced by the kind of banal facade one might find in Houston, Denver, Atlanta, or any other place.

But my greatest problem with the new design has nothing to do with victims’ families, real estate demand, or the way the facade is detailed. To rebuild the towers more or less as they were is fundamentally an act not of defiance, but of denial: it says that nothing happened here, and our lives go on. Yes, we must show terrorists that they have done nothing to break our spirit or change our values, but we must also acknowledge the importance of what happened. I would much prefer to show my children two 200-foot squares and a gap in the skyline than two monolithic towers that are frustratingly different from their predecessors. How could one explain the latter? “Here stood two great towers, identical in nearly every respect to the ones you see now.” How are they different? How long before no one remembers what changed, or that it changed at all?

I do not believe that cities are static, singular things. They are dynamic and fluid, and are always contingent on the ebb and flow of human commerce and culture. That which is removed does not vanish completely, but resides forever in our memory, leaving incongruities on old maps and faint shadows on the sides of buildings. The reaction to tragedy in this context should be “We can do this better.”

There is nothing defeatist about that.

People-Watching

In my very limited experience in Washington, there are two major factions. These are not, as Halfzie recently quipped, “Ethiopians and everyone else.” Red state/Blue state starts to get a little closer, but this isn’t how I would choose to posit the dichotomy, either. I see only striped shirts and raving lunatics.

An alarming percentage of my interactions here have been with the latter group -- both my employers and my soon-to-be landlords (yes, my strategy worked like a charm) tend toward the loony left. Meanwhile, the striped shirt set is mainly to be encountered at the city’s many sub-par watering holes, sucking down a few Miller Lites and high-fiving each other raw.

As Halfzie intimated, there are certainly other groups in the Washington equation. There are, for example, a surprising number of overzealous hipsters, displaced New Yorkers, and immigrants of every stripe. But when push comes to shove, when Washington finally succumbs to its deep-seated binary impulses, we will be left only with the stripers and the loonies.

In case it isn’t entirely clear what I intend by these divisions, allow me to flesh out each stereotype a bit. Loonies can be identified by their tendency to avoid bathing, their strict diet of organic and vegan food products, and their compulsive habit of hoarding newspapers (generally WaPo) and piling them up in way that creates fire hazards. They have no qualms about demanding to know your politics, which are always to the right of theirs, but cannot hold a decent conversation on political matters without losing focus and needlessly using the phrase “war for oil.”

Stripers, by contrast, can be identified chiefly by the striped shirts for which they are so well known. Attention to detail is key, however; often times a striper will reemerge from his apartment around nine or ten o’clock wearing a slightly different pattern of shirt, signaling to the female of the species that he is out for a night on the town. Stripers who elect to go out in the same clothes they wore to work, however, are sometimes trying to give the impression that they are quite simply too busy to be bothered with changing into eveningwear. To their credit, stripers rarely talk about politics in polite company, and certainly would never demand to know the voting habits of a recent, casual acquaintance.

This is not to say that conversation with a striper is to be recommended. Interaction with members of either group can, in fact, be excruciating, with loonies talking aimlessly and aggressively and stripers talking about nothing in particular.

Living on a Prayer

Some time ago I took the risk of sounding like a petulant wimp and lamented the difficulty of finding a job. As if on cue, I found a job just a few days later. So in the hope that the same tactic will bring me similar luck with my ongoing housing search, I will now take a few moments to complain about that.

First of all, I cannot imagine what it must have been like to look for an apartment before craigslist. Especially when used in conjunction with Google Maps, craigslist makes finding a listing within a given price range and geographic region amazingly simple. If only the same logic and ease could extend to the habits of landlords and sublettors, we might be on to something.

Two weeks ago I thought I had hit pay dirt, when I found a reasonably sized three-bedroom house in Columbia Heights in need of a replacement roommate and just $345 a month in rent. Considering how difficult it is to find anything in the District for under $700, I did my absolute best to sell myself as a reliable and decent housemate. I even offered to go above the asking price, effectively reducing the already preposterously low rent paid by the other two occupants.

I knew that despite my substantial charm, getting the room was far from a slam-dunk. After all, I was up against four others all vying for the same spot, and I was 0-for-2 in previous encounters with shared houses. However, I waited patiently for the call or email I was certain would eventually come, even if it was, "Sorry, the room has been filled. Good luck!" But no word ever came, even after my pathetic, "I'm thinking you've found a roommate, but I just wanted to make sure you didn't misread my email address or phone number" message.

At this point, given my three whiffs and the countless times I emailed to enquire about an apartment or room, only to receive no reply and see the exact same post reappear at the top of my craigslist searches an hour later, I am starting to lose hope. I'm thinking that maybe my attempts to come across as a responsible, easy-going and fastidious person are actually undermining my effort -- maybe I sound annoying, prissy, or, worse, like a liar.

In light of this last possibility, it occurs to me that I might try a reverse psychology approach, presenting myself not as I am, or even as I might try to be, but instead like so:

"Hi, I'm a 75-year-old pedophiliac rapist vampire. I sweat pure bile, eat my own vomit, and for a living I fart into jars. Can I be your roommate?"

If my "honest" self-appraisal seems too good to be true, potentially irritating, or flat-out false, the one above provides a falsehood so alarming as to become humorous, inviting, and charming.

I would certainly give such a person a chance.

By Popular Demand: Meerkats

It may come as a surprise that, according to my bravenet statistics, a large percentage of visitors are brought here by Google image searches for “meerkat”. This is because way back in January, I employed an image of a meerkat for my review of northwestern beers. Unfortunately for these guests, most of whom seem to be stationed in Europe and New Zealand, Google links to my main page, not to the archived page above. So I figured that, at least for a few days, I would appease my Kiwi fans with the eye-candy they so crave.

Even if close to half of my visitors come looking for meerkat pictures, I was still impressed to have exactly 100 hits during the first week of my bravenet counter. This did not include hits from my own IP address, which I have blocked to prevent myself from artificially inflating my stats. This week, there have been roughly 60 visitors thus far, so even if I have fallen off of my 100-per-week pace, I remain close to 10-per-day.

There has been precious little news for me this week, mainly due to 48 hours of illness, which seems, mercifully, to be passing as we speak. However, by staying home from work yesterday, I became aware of the airspace SNAFU as it was happening when an F-16 went screeching across the sky outside the window. Sure enough, FOX was reporting the evacuations within five minutes.

Seldom a dull moment in our nation’s capital.

Graphic Design, the Lazy-Tech Way

Some time ago I proposed that graphic design would be among the subjects of this page. I have tried to keep the graphical content here eclectic and engaging, but I realize that I have made no direct mention of the topic itself. In fact, I have acknowledged the role of graphic design only tacitly, by offering new versions of the Mr. S banner every so often.

But in the creation of these graphics, I have stumbled upon what I believe to be the approach to graphic design that is most appropriate to our times. I call it "Lazy-Tech," and it is nearly impossible to explain.

In fact, it might be easier to explain first what Lazy-Tech is not. Take a moment, if you would, to examine Pepsi's new "Oneify" campaign. The idea is quite simple: through the magic of shared affinity for low-calorie soft drinks, an unlikely gang of stereotyped characters comes together to form an unending chain. There is a spaceman, an alien, a sasquatch, a robot, a punk-rocker, a tree, etc.

Pay special attention to the way these characters are rendered. To the untrained eye, there appears to be a certain paired-down purity to each figure. Details are represented diagrammatically and thus act more as symbols -- discreet visual clues to the identity of each creature -- than they do to add depth or texture to the forms. Beyond this, notice how the junctions between the hands are drawn. In the words of Dropkick Jisoo, the execution is "piss-poor." The Oneify campaign has the look of something someone spent very little time in doing. This, unfortunately, is not the intended meaning of "Lazy-Tech."

Now to travel to the opposite end of the design spectrum, to the ubiquitous style I refer to as "textural eclecticism." It is exemplified by Adbusters, Vice Magazine, and even Martin Venezky's Appetite Engineers (although it might not be immediately apparent from the firm's website). This approach is a great deal easier than it looks, mainly because its basis is in the rich tradition of the print advertisement. Visual interest is created by layering various photographs, clippings, and textures, making a sort of cultural trompe l'oeil. Any commentary, ironic or no, needn't come from the interjection of outside editorial content, but arises instead from the juxtaposition of the elements themselves.

Despite being extremely lazy, this last school isn't Lazy-Tech, either. The one example I have found is karlssonwilker, inc. (For a real treat, click on the "karlssonwilker"/"about us" button, and then on "jobs.") There is evidence of Lazy-Tech in their portfolio work, notably the "Souvenirs for the End of the Century" logo.

If a serviceable definition of "Lazy-Tech" has failed to emerge through these examples, look to the previous incarnation of the Mr. S logo:



This image was made in Adobe Illustrator by tracing over an existing typeface with the pencil tool. This was tremendously inefficient and would not have been undertaken by any sensible designer, when the same basic effect could by achieved by drawing the letters by hand and then scanning them. However, this undoubtedly would have made the letters more free and homogenous, eliminating the somewhat forced and awkward feeling introduced by the inefficient use of computer software. In Lazy-Tech, an implicit acknowledgement of the computer is thus built into the end product, even if it is legible as such only to other designers.

In general, as we have seen, designers are extremely lazy. One might expect computers to help them with this affliction by, say, automating repetitive tasks or providing standardized and easy-to-use templates. But such use doesn't necessarily leave any trace of the computer behind -- or, if it does, it is likely to be heavy-handed to the point of becoming offensive.

Lazy-Tech handles the problem with measured, self-referential wit.

Dirty Mofongo

Given what one can sometimes encounter by following Tyler Cowen's sage advice (especially when he acknowledges he hasn't visited a given place), it was with some trepidation that I elected to visit Manna Restaurant & Carry Out, a Dominican eatery in Takoma Park. But I was anxious to try the mofongo or, failing that, the cuban sandwich. (By all accounts, Manna offers foods from several Latin territories, including Puerto Rico and Cuba.)

What I encountered at the intersection of Flower Avenue and Piney Branch Road was a veritable nexus of ethnic cuisine, with Chinese, El Salvadoran, and various other Latin restaurants clustered around in several small strip malls. The parking lot in front of Manna was overflowing -- a good sign if ever there was one. Outside, several middle-aged Dominican gentlemen were poring over the sports page of a newspaper. As if to prove a point, the eldest man pointed to the standings and began screaming: "Arizona! Arizona, Arizona, Arizona!" (The Diamondbacks have won seven of their last ten, closing within a half game of the Dodgers.)

Similar excitement met me inside, where nearly every table was occupied in the small main dining room by members of a single group of men, most of them younger. After ordering at the window near the front I took a small table in the back corner, resigning myself to the Spanish language soap operas on the television. The upper dining room -- if I have learned anything in Washington, DC, it is that it is never a good idea to go exploring the upstairs rooms of such restaurants -- was, seemingly, closed for repairs. Every few seconds, a chorus of hammers and angry shouting rang out from above.

After a few minutes, a man who looked like a gap-toothed Penny Hardaway asked me pleasantly if I was being helped. I answered that I had already ordered. Then, the older man from outside changed the television to the Braves-Marlins game on FSN Florida. He suddenly became animated again: "Florida! Florida, Florida, Florida!" (The Marlins, going into the game, were just one game ahead of the Braves in the NL East.)

As I was beginning to wonder if my mofongo had been forgotten, another older man, who until now had been holding court at the center of the room and passing out fresh beers to each new visitor, returned from his car with a duffel bag full of bootleg DVDs. He immediately extracted the adult titles -- Hot Latinas vol. 8, if I recall -- and began passing them around the room for closer inspection. Penny examined the reverse side of the case and snickered. After a spell, he again turned to me.

"You like dirty word movies -- I mean, dirty girl movies?" he asked.

I stammered a bit before accepting his offer to look at the item for myself. The entrepreneur returned from his circuit of the room. He began emptying the entire contents of his bag on my table. There was a puzzling array of titles, ranging from Rugrats to In Good Company and Latin music videos.

"To look is for free," he explained, "but when you make a selection, it's five dollars."

I studied the discs carefully, not wanting to appear disinterested. With each title I put down, more were stacked on my table.

"You got kids?" he asked.

When I said that I did not, in fact, he continued, "Nephews? Nieces? No kids, nowhere? You're the only one?"

Satisfied that I would not be purchasing any Barbie movies for the time being, he made his two strongest recommendations: Flight of the Phoenix and In Good Company.

"These are great movies," he told me. "This one, action; this one, comedy. Very good."

I contemplated buying a film -- perhaps Hot Latinas -- for Halfz, but ultimately decided to politely decline to purchase anything.

"Well, I'm here all the time. Now you know what I have." With that, he refilled his duffel and returned it to his car.

Entertainment aside, the mofongo with pork was excellent, although I might have tried it with shrimp instead. The dish consists of a cylindrical turret of mashed plantain and pork, ringed by larger chunks of pork and served on a dressed bed of lettuce, tomato, and avocado. At $13, it was probably more food than I needed for lunch, but delicious nonetheless.

Finally, the link of the day shows that my appraisal of the cell phone driving law is shared by some in Germany. However, the ending is not clear.

Memory Lane

When Halfz and I were tooling around Paris in April of 2002, we were astonished to see posters advertising the album pictured above: "L'Indiscipline," an effort by the adolescent rapper known only as Fuckly. Needless to say, we took several of the posters home with us. I don't think it hurt Fuckly's sales, either -- there were so many of the posters that even the pending release of the "The Eminem Show" scarcely registered at all in my mind at the time.

I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I haven't actually listened to a single Fuckly track, and that I accidentally left the poster in my rented apartment in Florence when I moved out. Given that it was my proudest acquisition during my entire six-month stay in Europe, I tried to explain the situation to my landlord, who operated the sausage factory downstairs. He denied knowing anything about the item, but I suspect he was lying.

After all, who could resist Fuckly's penetrating, devil-may-care gaze? Seldom can a fifteen-year-old conjure up such a convincing scowl -- a look that indicates such utter contempt for discipline in all its forms. It's no surprise that the enfant terrible has developed a solid international following, with polyphonic ringtones to prove it.

I mentioned above that the Fuckly poster was my favorite memento from my travels that year, but to be fair there were at least three others of equal value, all of which have gone missing either before or after my return to the U.S.:

1. Photograph of me, in Florence, standing in front of a graffito reading "Cock Block Jock Rock," surmounted by the anarchy symbol.
Stolen and taken to Chicago, Illinois, by a well known provocateur.

2. A pair of tortoise-shell framed sunglasses, with brown fade lenses and the name "Sport" across the bridge.
Purchased at a flea market in Waterlooplein, Amsterdam. Stolen by mischievous spirits at a zen temple in Tokyo. Since replaced (and subsequently broken) twice, by comparable pairs, the second of which will soon be making its big screen debut.

3. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Import Soundtrack), produced by RZA.
Purchased for $22 in Tokyo in May 2002, badly scratched and then lost in college. Now available on Amazon and eBay for as much as $50.

Pending a trip to the windy city, all of these items can be replaced. Not so for Fuckly, wherever he is. His stony visage is gone from my life forever.