Not I
Written byPosted on February 26, 2007
Filed Under Uncategorized
It was somewhere in the middle of the broadcast: a muted melange of cultural snippets that I apparently didn’t pay attention to, but that partisan puppets and closet conformists salivated over. I didn’t know. I was probably pouring scotch.
Now it’s spread across the YouTube. And I won’t mention it. Because I have a twitchy baseline phone that takes shitty pictures and does more or less what it sets out to do. Even when it cuts out. Even when it fails. What kind of spoilsports are we to declare more when only fifteen years ago we had a curly cord that attached into a wall or, if lucky and prosperous, a cordless? If you think I’m dropping half a gee for a whiz kid’s toy, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. If you think I’m going to buy into this because some kid in an editing room mashed up clips from popular films of people saying hello while the suits were burning bills left and right laughing their asses off because they had told you the same thing before, telling you to think different, you’ve really got ME laughing, pal. Boy, my boister’s dripping down the halls because the hell of it is that if I were about seven years younger, I’d probably fall for this shit.
I’m disappointed in geeks sometimes. Are there no cynics among the bunch? Do they casually accept everything without contemplating that baubles are often confused for advancement? Besides, this is a corporation we’re talking about here, not a gaggle of philanthropists. Ol’ Steve-O’s doing quite well because you swipe your credit cards without understanding what you’re doing. Hell, how many of these contraptions have been pre-ordered because these guys played into your uncanny love of the first person singular?
It’s not that I’m anti-fruit. (By now, you know who I’m talking about. So there’s no need for sobriquets.) The costermongers, on occasion, put out good wares. But I’m against this smelly buy now think less fervor, which has not only polluted the airwaves but taken up precious real estate on this alternative media thing we’ve got going here. Think different? A con man’s first point of order is to get you to believe the opposite.
Look, all I’m asking here is a healthy dose of skepticism. They’ve got some geeks drooling at the bell. Woof woof. It’s a shame, because many of these geeks are a lot smarter.
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
Hear, hear.
Why aren’t these “conformity” attacks leveled at people who buy Windows? Why is Microsoft exempt? No cynics among the bunch? Most of the comments—the user comments, that is—I’ve read on Gizmodo, Engadget, etc. take a similar stance: buying into Apple = being a conformist. I’m sick of it.
This was an inoffensive, low-key ad. People saying hello, and then a picture of the phone. Reading any more into it is moronic.
It’s digital Starbucks.
I’ve calmed down now.
Anyway, I stand by what I said above, and I think the iPhone’s cool, but I’m not going to buy one either. (1) because my $50 phone is already more than I need, and (2) the $500 asking price is more than I have to my name, presently, so no.