June 30, 2000
The X-Men
I love long weekends, and the Fridays which come before them... Today, out of idle good spirits, we are playing Who's Your Favorite Superhero? at work. Mind you, this is among a bunch of social services professionals -- welfare case managers, job trainers, day care network managers -- mostly older than me, from late-20s on. Normally I would expect to be having this conversation with my just-out-of-college-and-unemployed-or-in-the-newmedia-biz friends, not these folks. But Angelo insisted.
So we found out Kent, who is probably my dad's age and from Nebraska, likes Batman because it is dark. Diana, who feels very much like my favorite aunts to me -- she runs the day care network and has a daughter my age -- likes Thor. One of the job trainers, who I feel inclined to call Ms. Brown because her clients call her that and she just holds herself with such dignity that I can't bring myself to do otherwise, went into ecstasies about how much she likes Storm from the X-Men. "Because she has power over all the elements," she enthused. "Like the mother! You know?" Either that or the Beast, "because he has the power of the mind!"
Me, I like Gambit when I'm playing Marvel vs. Capcom (I play him game good! Mash him the keypad! Beat win!), Dazzler or Jubilee just out of sheer identification with energetic tomboys, but mostly I like Buckaroo Banzai. You can't beat being a neurosurgeon, ninja master, rocket jockey, and a rock star. That's like the royal flush of superheroism.
I haven't ever been a heavy comic book reader, though. For reasons I haven't ferreted out of my parents yet, comic books weren't a part of my childhood to speak of. I consumed whole Bloom County books without chewing ("Bill did what to Henry Kissinger? Haaaaa ha ha ah ha ha... um, who's Henry Kissinger?"), and I had whole Edward Gorey abecedaria memorized by age ten, but I didn't really have any exposure to comic books at all. I got into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and X-Men in junior high, but just the animated stuff, and only enough to get me into karate classes for a year or so. My distance from comic books, and their pariah status in the world of literature, made me leery of them.
The idea of the X-Men has always been so appealing, though, especially when I was younger and straightening out where I stood in relation to my prep-school classmates. How can you resist the message?: The weirdness in you is a powerful force for good. It's enough to almost make me want to see the damn movie to see how they play that theme out, even though the staff of Marvel apparently thinks the film is gonna suck. I hate like crazy that the film industry has their greedy tenterhooks deep in my feelings of loyalty and self-identification like this, but what are you gonna do. Shell out the ten bucks (I hate New York, what I wouldn't give to be back at the fourplex in Amherst) and take it like a man.
Perhaps because I have been spending time in the world of The Beetle, also because of this morning's office game, I feel like ruminating on the meanings and place of superheroes in our culture... maybe I should read Bettelheim?... maybe I should write a book...
* * * * *
Strange websites I have come across in the past 24 hours: one on a chicken dish and one on beef plugs. I would recommend poking around the last site some. I think it's healthy for everyone to know the minute details of production of the things they eat. After all, it's someone's job to handle the beef plugs all day...
ok. back to work now.
Posted by me at 1:43 PM | Comments (0)
June 28, 2000
Detritus
Something substantial fell into place for me yesterday at the main
branch of the New York Library. I was supposed to be there digging up
curricula on day-care related issues and having little luck when I came
across a book about Tibor Kalman on one of the reshelving hand-trucks. I
don't know much about Kalman, but they did a fervent dedication to him in
Adbusters a while ago... I gather he was some advertising and art
muckittymuck. I'm surprised the book even caught my attention; somehow I
recognized that the portrait on the cover was ol' Tibor, even though I've
seen the guy's face maybe once before. How's that for the power of images.
Anyway, one of the first things I turn to when I open the book is the
cover of a Talking Heads album. It felt like fate. I shouldn't have been
in the library, shouldn't have been browsing through art books, and here
was some John Cage spear of fated resonance pushing through the daily
noise to underscore what I always suspect: there is a conspiracy out there
of truths and people doing good work.
David Byrne was an important figure in my childhood. True Stories and
Strange Ritual and The Forest are the question mark in my inquiries about
culture. The only reason I might have doubted there was a link between him
and the culture jammers is that what I know of his work isn't openly
political.
So I'm listening to Stop Making Sense now. I have the dictaphone from
my mother's days at USC plugged into my computer speakers. The sound only
channels through one, but it is clear.
* * * * *
A stupid haiku:
You think: nothing can
redeem New York City from
its dirt people heat,
then out come the fireflies.
* * * * *
Interesting incident at work: Today in the lunch room there was a
larger group of clients than usual, having a more spirited conversation
than usual. (The usual: something on the order of "I can't take it no
more," pronounced in a heartbreaking monotone, followed by an agreeing
silence.) As I went through to nuke my lunch, one of them was proclaiming,
"And everybody think they got to pluck and shave and all this like the
white people."
The outrage with which this statement was delivered caught my
attention, and made me smile inadvertently. I spend many days watching the
parade of black women coming through with amazing hairdos, spirals and
fans, edifices to rival anything in Rome... I start to wonder how much it
cost these women who need food stamps (I don't begrudge them
self-expression, but for me food comes before social signifiers), and also
what a lifetime of hair chemicals will do to you.
And I remember what I read in-- I think it was-- the Autobiography of
Malcolm X, where he talked about how the black men would "conk" their
hair, straighten it out to make it look like white folks', and how he
thought that was a shame. I do too, coming from a family where I was
encouraged not to worry about the ways my body was deviating from the
norm. It made me happy to hear one of these often dispirited women saying
that. I looked around the bunch to see who was saying this, and identified
the source: a brightly-dressed Jamaican woman in the center of them all.
I left; and came back; and the same woman was saying something, even
louder, on the order of "The white folks came to this country and stole
everything"... again bringing out my perverse smile. I hung around for a
second to see how the group reacted, feeling they must think me strange
for taking this slander with a big dopey grin on my face. (well, here's
their introduction to Liberal White Guilt--)
Later, I ran into them in the hall. The Jamaican woman started to
apologize. "Honey, we didn't mean all white people," she began,
putting her arm around me. I tried to explain to her why I'd been smiling,
but a large blunt woman to my left cut me off.
"What's it like to be white?" she asked.
Before I could tackle the question seriously, the women exploded into
discussion.
"Don't ask her that! That's not something you can answer in a few minutes."
"Where you from?" (Meaning where were my ancestors from.)
"Can you do an Irish accent for me? I love that accent!"
"Well," I said, pulling myself from the wreck of my explanation,
"what's it like to be black?"
All this in open earnest-- no challenge that I could see, just a lot of
interest. I've never been through anything like it. In less than five
minutes we talked about cosmetics and piercings (which the blunt woman had
in abundance, apparently the fuse for the Jamaican woman's tirade),
accents, and the very root of it: what it meant to be black and to be
white. A few minutes wasn't enough. I suggested I'd join them for lunch
tomorrow.
Further bulletins as events warrant :)
Posted by me at 4:03 PM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2000
Grey Flannel
(Written June 22nd, posted late due to continuing browser issues.)
Another cloudy, windy, slightly warm day in New York City... The
oppressive heat, the Summer-Of-Sam heat that cracks open every fire
hydrant and makes the whole city nuts, hasn't hit yet, thang god.
When I was in high school I convinced myself that the weather
sympathized with me and was playing to my mood, trying to charm me. It
usually did what I wanted -- torrential rain on my birthday in a hot
season, whatever. I was convinced this was a sign I was Lucky. (This was
in high school, mind you, not even elementary school.)
There were many things which backed up this assumption. Where you find
me commenting on my luck in old writing journals, I pointed to success in
my romantic endeavors and access I had just then to a horse, which was a
lifelong dream... certainly my mood was buoyed by the attention of an
English teacher who was very encouraging about my poetry. Now I look back
on this with my Hampshire goggles on, and I think I was Privileged, or
maybe just Spoiled.
Today was maybe the first day I have walked from the subway stop to
work and not been acutely aware I was in a depressed neighborhood. Usually
something sticks out -- mostly people who are out of place for nine thirty
in the morning. Grown men who are just sitting, not going anywhere. Kids
who ought to be in school who are lugging shopping bags for their mothers.
Or sometimes I'm caught by the pong of organic goo festering on the
sidewalk near the school, where a pile of cafeteria trash has recently
been. Today, though, I might have been on Fifth Avenue; people all around
me were flowing naturally down the street, and the decay of the buildings
seemed to be fading into the background.
The hardest part of working at a welfare organization is seeing the
constant stream of people coming in and out. I only get bits of their
lives, unlike the counsellors across the hall, who hear all the medical
problems and the family trouble. They sometimes talk about the things our
clients say. "This is like prison," one woman spat at a co-worker of mine.
The counsellor works hard to line up opportunities, so she was was deeply
offended. The client, I guess, was frustrated with the nature of the work
she was being pressed into, maybe also the rules of workfare.
I thought about that for a while. The middle and upper classes have our
Organization Man, our Man in the Grey Flannel Suit to read,
and a whole literature on Taylorism and de-skilling if we get around to
it, too. We make movies like Fight Club and Office Work.
There is a certain kind of middle or upper class parent who tells his
college-bound child Follow your heart, Go ahead and take a liberal arts
major, Major in writing if it's what you love. We know that we do not want
to take Soul-Crushing Desk Jobs.
Are we the same people who elect representatives who created workfare
as it stands, this system which jerry-rigs a solution to under-educating
poor kids in public schools? Did we vote for the conscription of former
welfare mothers into jobs we think starve the soul?
I do not wear a grey flannel suit, but my bosses would like me to.
The workplace culture of my office dictates that as employees in a
welfare-to-work organization, we are setting an example of what it looks
like to be a successful employee for the tired-looking women who come
through.
Most mornings, I can't do this. I was the one who decided in high
school that I was going to wear four different plaids on a given day if I
felt like it. I took enough shit in junior high for not wearing socks that
matched my outfit. The dictates of fashion simply aren't important to me.
Worrying about them leads to low self esteem and wastes of resources which
could be better spent elsewhere. There's a double standard, too; men don't
have to work as hard to look like they fit in. I'd rather be creative with
what I wear. To this day I still wear pairs of socks which don't match.
It may sound ridiculous, but this is the hardest part for me about
working where I work. I see the women coming down the hall, and there is
something subtly mismatched in their colors or lines. I identify with
them. They are there to learn how to write a resume, how to make a good
impression when they interview, how to properly format a letter in Word. I
know how to format HTML properly, but I have yet to feel confident that I
know how to impress at a job interview. Lately I wonder if anyone will
ever consider me a good employee. Of course, if I fall my luck, or
whatever it is, is waiting to catch me...
Posted by me at 5:29 PM | Comments (0)
June 22, 2000
First Post
(This was originally posted 6/20/00 on my site, a day before before I discovered Blogger.)
What are you up to?
Falling in love for no good reason, hating my job for no good reason,
enjoying New York and all the dancing opptys therein. Yourself?
We used to get angry, at Hampshire, when events we enjoyed were under-attended. It was something many of my friends did; maybe that was why we hung out together. At one point or another, usually early in our Hampshire careers, we showed up for some event which saw a turnout of less than a dozen, not even enough to fill the seatless indoor amphitheater of the East Lecture Hall. At that point we individually came to the conclusion that there simply wasn't enough "community" at Hampshire. People weren't coming together for the things which mattered to us; therefore there was no community. This beefing about "community" went on until the year I graduated, in the face of a number of events which clearly demonstrated that Hampshire people cared more for their neighbors than most do. (Like the vigilante mob which apprehended an attempted rapist one night at 3 a.m., for example, or the 500 people mustered in a flash when a student was bodily hauled off campus under dubious circumstances.)
Looking back I'm grateful I went through all this grousing, as I am about much of the "experiential education" I had at Hampshire, painful as it sometimes was. I'm better prepared for nights like tonight. I was at work until nine -- my VISTA job is finally living up to its threat of being a 24-7 experience -- sweating out a community forum I'd helped arrange. The idea was to get members of the low-income community where I work talking about their problems with the transportation system. (Apparently the local government has actually set aside money to investigate how they can get poor people to jobs more easily. Who knew.)
The turnout made the puniest Hampshire literary magazine meeting look good. There were maybe five members of the community there, and they just wanted to talk about getting jobs to begin with. It's not like we didn't advertise; I believe we sent mail out to 800 people, and we postered and all that. People just didn't show.
I'm not as mad as I could be, but still, this is the kind of thing that sends me rocketing off into the stratosphere of possibility... I imagine what we could have done with a Madison Avenue ad firm at our backs for this forum, rather than a bunch of urban planning contractors monkeying with a copy of PageMaker. Whole subways plastered with graphically stunning information about available jobs with child care and benefits in Long Island, eh? I imagine shutting down all the mainstream media for a day, a week maybe, and donating all their time to social service organizations. Make a holiday of it. Anti-Media Day! With TV ads about food pantries, with talking lizards in them!
I mean, Rupert Murdoch gets to own the attention of how many people in the course of a week, and he gives us what? Cops? Secrets of the Mummies? Yarrr, mateys, let's board and pillage the fsck out of his stations, and his newspapers too. There is so much liberating information out there, and all anyone wants to stuff their heads with is entertainment. The media could be used to educate, or could have, maybe, once. I feel like everyone's asleep. And I spend all day dodging the Hatch Act and waiting for the government to pay off my student loans...
* * * * *
Meanwhile, in Queens it is the season where Korean grandmothers appear in the streets in traditional costume. Dresses with waists that begin at the shoulders. Pink chiffon bells with worn faces above them. And young men in tuxedos which match their black black hair. Boys too. I see them almost daily in front of Dae Dong. I guess it is wedding season, but as usual I am too shy to ask.
* * * * *
The Popo Village website is gone for now. Not that you care. I am trying to spend the summer learning how to hack together something which will generate web pages without my having to hand-code oodles of html. This is a problem: I don't know how to program at all, and Glyph is trying to teach me something called an "object-oriented" programming language. Python specifically. I am told the learning curve is steep. It is so steep in fact that I think I've already run smack into the vertical part of it. But I desperately want to write (and I don't want to deal with pitching and edititing and the aforementioned Hatch Act, which wants me to be desperately poor and desperately unfulfilled. If I write for publication it's unlikely I'll get to write what I want, or what I think). So I'm not waiting around to get the heavy tech stuff up. This web journal starts now.
A friend of mine has inspired me with his
qualified to
comment on politics and popular film ;) well, more power to him. The fewer
professional pundits and celebrities we have, the better off we probably are. Amuse
your own damn self. Turn your own heads, move your own arms.
I'll put things here periodically. Eventually this will be worked into the Popo Village site, which shouldn't be so damn complicated to begin with.
Posted by me at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)