Category: Thoughts

Wandering The Old City

I am thinking about a movie about killers hanging out in a medieval city, and it reminded me of the last time I went to a medieval city.

Nürnberg. I was there for work back in the spring of 2005. I had meetings Tuesday-Friday, but arrived early on Monday, and had the day off to get used to the jetlag and wander the city. I went and saw Albrecht Dürer’s house. It was closed, of course, because it was Monday. Museums are often MONTAGS GESCHLOSSEN. Beautiful from the outside, though, like the rest of the old city.

It was spring there, while it was still grey in Boston, and I was happy just wandering around the city’s medieval center, grabbing a sandwich midday, flipping through the guidebook to say “eine lager, bitte?”

All the bathrooms had vending machines with cute ten-packs of Lucky Strike Light cigarettes, which I remembered from Chile, and which you just can’t find in the US. The tourist info maps had ads for restaurants, family amusement attractions, museums, and porno palaces. The famous court where the war criminals were tried is still a working courthouse, and wasn’t open during the days I was there. All the other museums were Montags Geschlossen, too. I went to the porno palaces.

Tuesday we had meetings. The other two people from my US department had arrived Monday night and Tuesday morning, and were jetlagged and irritable. I was fresh, but I was junior staff. I was there to learn about how to conduct international meetings, and to impress upon the German counterparts that this series of meetings was important enough to bring three people to Europe for a week. Sometimes the point of a meeting is not only in the topics discussed, but the priority of those topics. My presence indicated that this was a topic of three-people-in-Europe importance. But not three executives. Just three people. I don’t recall if anything really came out of the meetings.

Mostly I sat around and nodded and took notes and read a book about how to be a product manager. After work we went to the biergarten and I wandered around the city some more, browsing stores where I couldn’t read the labels on things and guessing at what signs meant, walking until my feet hurt.

I didn’t kill anybody, though. So I didn’t have a lot to run from. I was just there.

TV Criticism: Respect Your Audience

I think I’m bordering on disrespect for my audience in this post, but I feel strongly that spending any significant amount of time and energy and money to “save” a TV show is a serious sign of misplaced priorities. Sure, if you like the show, write a note saying it’s great. People love them some feedback. But buying box after box of nuts or Tabasco or lightbulbs or Rice-A-Roni? Please.

Things look bleak for the Dillon Panthers, and the small, dedicated fanbase is rallying to keep "Friday Night Lights" lit in yet another one of those incredibly irritating "save my show" endeavors.

Look, I get that you like the show. I get that it’s well-made and that it’s been mistreated by the network, who gave it a shaky lead-in and a terrible time-slot and then punished it for not getting an audience. But do we need to build an enormous groundswell of support and a fan-driven protest to save what is, at best, just another high-school drama?

Yes, I know it’s more than just a football show. Hot kids, small town, relationships, love, learning, complex on-and-off-the-field social dynamics. I get that high-school football is a big deal for a small town in Texas and television about high-school football is a big deal for fans. But get over yourself, BWE: It’s not an "act of cruelty" to cancel your favorite show. You want to see an act of cruelty? Watch the video below, which shows airport police killing a man with a taser. (Warning: Contains actual footage of actual airport police actually killing a man with a taser.) After that, are you still outraged about "Friday Night Lights" getting only two seasons?

You Ever Feel Like It Means Something?

The Mountain Goats song “Palmcorder Yajna” has this line: “Carpenter ants in the dresser, flies in the screen. It will be too late by the time we learn what these cryptic symbols mean.” And I keep thinking I know that feeling: The delusion that arbitrary events mean something. It happened to me all the time when I was in high school. I’d see dead flies trapped in the window and think OMG this is a metaphor for my life, a sign that I’m trapped! Or I’d burn the toast and stare at it in horror, wondering what the universe was trying to warn me about.

I suppose the narrator of that song is actually suffering from drug-induced psychosis, and I’ve heard you end up with similar (although more pleasantly grandiose) delusions when you develop terminal syphilis. Mine were probably induced by being a hormone-addled teenager with a subscription to “American Poetry Review,” but I guess you pick your poison.

Yajna, by the way, is an ancient Vedic kind of sacrifice involving fire, illustrated here in a television version of the Ramayana:

I haven’t figured out what it has to do with palmcorders, but maybe the universe will reveal that to me once I totally lose my mind.

Personal Essay: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Television

Yes, this is the real cartoon textRight around election-time, pundits always begin to lament the frivolity of the average voter. “Why can’t we pay attention to what really matters?” they wail. Why must we focus on Britney Spears and her pubic hairstyles? Why must we devote more column space to whether Posh has breast implants, and whether David Beckham’s crotch is enlarged with props and Photoshop in that Armani underwear ad?

I admit that it’s certainly possible that the average voter is a fucking idiot, but isn’t it also possible that politics and “serious” matters don’t focus enough on what matters to the average voter, and that what matters to the average voter is a little diversion before the comfort of the grave?

It’s been nearly four hundred years since Thomas Hobbes coined the phrase “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” and while life has improved on all five points, society hasn’t exactly perfected itself, either:

  • Life is still solitary: I’ve got lots of Facebook friends and plenty of face-to-face friends as well. It doesn’t make me any less alone, though. Pundits like Lee Siegel decry the effect of the Internet on society and say that online relationships are a poor substitute for face-to-face relationships. But direct human interaction is greatly overrated and frequently soulless. Is any real connection to another person possible?
  • Life is still poor: On the one hand, we wallow in material possessions. On the other hand, David Beckham is far wealthier and is better endowed. And even he doesn’t seem satisfied, or why else would he be appearing in those Armani ads?
  • Life is, if anything, nastier: Perez Hilton. Enough said.
  • Life is still brutish: An organ-trafficking ring was recently uncovered in India. Marijuana farms in the UK are employing slave labor. The American government admits to using methods of torture perfected by the Inquisition. We’ve refined our brutality, but that’s like putting a pig in a suit: It’s still going to roll in its own shit.
  • Life is still short: As another notable economist noted, “in the long run, we are all dead.”

 

Care to discuss tax policy now? The politically high-minded (myself included) love to talk about rational decision-making. The flaw in that approach is that rational decision making requires assuming that there’s some kind of goal or point to what you’re doing, and if you think too hard, you’ll remember that there isn’t one. Given that life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, is it really worth the effort to think about substantive proposals for farm subsidy reform?

No wonder people just vote for whoever makes them feel good, and then go back to distracting themselves with Britney Spears (her problems make my problems look totally surmountable, even though both of us are, in the long run, dead). Frivolity makes us feel a little better, and between mewling infancy and helpless senility, feeling a little better is all we’ve got.

And that’s why I love television: Because it’s the opiate of the masses (I’m a mass on the couch right now, trust me. Probably a cancerous mass, but I guess you’d have to ask Dr. House.) and anything which eases suffering is a blessing indeed.

Where Should I Really Be Living?

It’s cold and wet here. And expensive. Yet people tell me frequently that Boston (and environs, such as my home of Somerville) are awesome. And to a certain extent, I agree. But on cold, wet, evenings, I often think… couldn’t I be somewhere… better? Boston may be great, but is it The Greatest City In America?

Apparently not: Search for “The Greatest City In America” and you’ll come up with… Baltimore!

Since we know that Google never lies (see also the search for “dangerous cult“), I’m obviously going to have to move to the Charm City.