mennonno sapiens - one giant leap for mankind

Tortured Analogies

Mike Mennonno — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:48:47 GMT

One of the more, uh, interesting analogies to come out of the neverending shit-show that is the Republican Primary is the one that Rick Santorum is running with at the moment -- that Obama, in "crushing faith" in this country is leading the nation to the guillotine.

Regardless of how patently baseless the accusation and how nonsensical the analogy is it's yet another TMI moment for a party so far down the well of paranoid delusion they've definitely got the Mole People vote all sealed up.

The fact that Santorum's analogy has legs is still a little dismaying. I mean, is Santorum siding with Absolute Monarchy? Is he against The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen which has some striking (and not, um, entirely coincidental) similarities to our own Bill of Rights?

Well, yeah, absolutely.

But that's not really where Santorum is going with this. There are two things that the analogy is useful for in Santorum's tortured imagination.

Down with the guillotine! Up with the Breaking Wheel!

One, the image of the guillotine (which was made France's official method of execution under Louis XVI, replacing the "breaking wheel", and remained so through 1981 when the death penalty itself was abolished, but is associated in this analogy with angry mobs and Robespierre's Reign of Terror), which while utterly ridiculous in the current context, appeals precisely to the paranoid imagination of the mob Santorum's whipping up, the same mob that embraced the Death Panel fantasies of Sarah Palin.

And, two: framing the French Revolution as an attack on religious faith (note that Santorum is not as interested in Freedom of Religion, which was an enlightenment value among those expressly enumerated in The Declaration of the Rights of Man), rather than understanding the history and culture of the Estates of the Realm, and the exemptions and abuses of power that the clergy were guilty of perpetuating for centuries at the expense of commoners.

Of course, there's just enough of an analogy here to draw a tenuous connection. France was, after all, facing an economic crisis exacerbated by foreign wars and a regressive tax code that favored the top 2%. But that's about where the analogy ends. While some rabble showed up for Occupy Wall Street, the movement didn't manage to produce a Robespierre, alas.

Not that understanding the appeal of an outrageous analogy is all that enlightening these days. We already knew that Santorum is medieval in his politics. Now it's official: the GOP would prefer the Spanish Inquisition to Mitt Romney.

But really. Someone should tell these bitches to be careful what they wish for. In the final analysis, the battle in Santorum's mind seems to be between the guillotine and the breaking wheel. A Santorum presidency would definitely be torture.

Shame

Mike Mennonno — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:38:01 GMT

With the Fenway in total lockdown -- we're talking no parking and cops and barricades with closed-off access to side streets all along Boylston -- it was an eerily quiet night last night. No cries in the night, no rending of garments, no cars overturned and set ablaze.

I spoke to a BU cop this morning at Billy's on Berkeley, and he said there were incidents in Amherst, though. And sure enough, according to the AP, there were several arrests on the UMass campus after the game.

“It was a loud crowd and there were fights breaking out in pockets,” [UMass spokesman Ed] Blaguszewski said.

Marissa Faldasz, a junior whose dorm room looks out over where students gathered, said they were chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A.,” and throwing beer cans and toilet paper rolls.

“As soon as the game ended, a bunch of students came running from all across the campus,” she said.

Video she took from her fourth-floor room showed smoke and flashes and students yelling, then much of the crowd running away as police on horseback approached. Police officers wrestled at least one student to the ground. She said there was a similar incident after Osama bin Laden was killed last year.

Sorry to have missed it.

Boyfriend and I caught the first quarter of the game at Citizen's Pub on Boylston, which was refreshingly deserted on account of the lockdown. I actually haven't seen it that deserted since, well, Sunday.

Citizens does what we have dubbed the Disney Brunch on Sundays, where they play only hits from Disney's Aladdin and Momma Mia!, an interesting twist for a Brown Bar with beardy bartenders that specializes in whole suckling pig roasts. For some reason tossing back bourbon and dining on braised pulled pork, slow poached eggs, pork fat hollandaise and brioche to a bartender sing-along version of "Dancing Queen" just hasn't caught on. Go figure.

As for the game -- Citizens only has two TVs, which is another plus. Even so I could tell from the get-go it did not look good. First of all, the Pats need to get rid of the shiny leggings. The Giants, who were not in shiny pants, just looked hotter in theirs. And when you're dealing with a hostile crowd, why would you egg them on by wearing shiny pants? Does anyone like a man in shiny pants? I mean, what is this, Dancing With the Stars? Why not feather boas and faux fur capes, too? Seriously, why not just go the full Elton John on their asses?

We left the bar with the Giants at 9 and the Pats at 3, and I could already smell defeat. The streets were deserted. The Fenway was like what I'd imagine one of Newt's moon colonies to be like. It was all very Space: 1999.

We'd been thinking of a movie to pass the time, and decided if we were going to be dealing with shame we might as well get some full-frontal nudity along with it. As luck would have it Steve McQueen's Shame with Michael Fassbender was still playing at the Somerville Theater in Davis, so we headed over there.

Shame is a real movie. It's like a movie movie, with acting and everything. Not only do you get to see the sultry Michael Fassbender walk around with his ample junk flopping everywhere but you get to see the sultry Michael Fassbender walk around with his ample junk flopping everywhere . Did I mention you get to see the sultry Michael Fassbender walk around with his ample junk flopping everywhere?

There's not a whole lot of plot here, actually, but what there is forms an elegant loop that perfectly captures the plight of its amply drawn characters. Director Steve McQueen has managed to craft a picture that is much greater than the sum of its parts, and its parts are, again, ample. Especially Fassbender's. His penis should win an Oscar.

We didn't know the outcome of the game when we left the theater, but the eerie quiet on the streets and the few downcast characters we saw shuffling about told us all we needed to know. Boston is not subtle when it comes to its sports.

As we maneuvered our way back home through the police roadblocks that sealed off all of Kenmore-Fenway to the rest of civilization I felt good about our choice of entertainment for the night. Not to downplay the shame of a Super Bowl loss, but shame is always more satisfying when there's a little sex thrown in for good measure.

Evermore!

Mike Mennonno — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:35:21 GMT

Plans for Poe Square proceed apace! Now the Poe Foundation is inviting the public to comment on the three finalists for a sculpture (or in one case, structure) dedicated to Poe on the corner of Boylston and Charles Street South, near where Poe was born (Poe's birth home was razed in 1959).

Last September the Poe Foundation announced three finalists in the Poe Boston Public Art Project, and now they've set up the Poe Square Public Artwork Public Forum blog to collect folks' thoughts on which design they'd like to see on the spot.

The three designs are very distinct from one another, each a different take on not only the man, but how we might go about monumentalizing him in a city he more or less despised that by most accounts didn't exactly hold him in highest regard either. But then Boston is not a city one loves, especially if one expects a city to love one back.

None of the designs is without its flaws, of course. One bears a shocking and likely unconscious allusion to Abu Ghraib which should probably disqualify it. Another resembles a giant cube of jellyfish (when the visual rendering of the design is as abstract as the statement of intent you know you're in trouble). Which leaves the probably too cluttered and rather whimsical third option as the likely crowd favorite. But we mustn't make the perfect the enemy of the good here.

We'll start by making the bad the enemy of the good: the Bonner/Stayner structure, "a small, freestanding triangular glass pavilion... comprised of an almost spectral structure of steel fins above a distorted glass façade." Described by the artists as a "Wonderkammer" ("curiosity shop" sounded too, er, English, I guess) and "cenotaph meets 'gift shop'" ("gift shop" in quotes, for unknown reasons -- I mean, the structure would admittedly be a gift shop), the project presents some opportunities but mostly challenges, and represents a trend in design that will, I predict, soon become dated, if not hated. (MIT's Strata Center, not yet a decade old, is an embarrassment disguised as a curiosity wrapped in a leaky veneer, coated in a lawsuit. I mean, at this moment distorted facades are all the rage. But one day, in the not too distant future, Frank Gehry is going to die, bitches. Just sayin.)

Therefore, to Bonner/Stayner I give a big, fat NEVERMORE!

The other two finalists have very different vibes, one solemn and static, the other whimsical, frenetic.

I really liked the idea of the Hirsch/Olson design (aside from the plinth)...

Too soon?

... until someone pointed out the unfortunate resemblance of the sculpture's "shrouded figure" to the infamous "hooded figure" of Abu Ghraib.

And then there's the plinth.

If Boston is looking for a mini-landmark that will be beloved by tourists in passing duck boats (maybe they can even add a raven boat to their fleet), Stephanie Rocknak's bronze is just the thing:

Make Way for Poelings!

The speed-walking sculpture is probably too kinetic for the po-faced Poe, who was not exactly a bustling, bubbly figure. The intensity in his eyes here is more industrious purpose and steely determination (flinty hope, even, according to the artist) than the weary madness for which he is so well-known (and loved). And the bird, which (I'm sorry to have to point this out) is way too big for his briefcase, looks more eagley than raveny, truth told. Oh, and that clutter trail is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

You could call the sculpture "The Revenge of the Frogpondians". Even though he is speed-walking away from the Frog Pond here, this imagining of Poe definitely sprang out of it.

But, again, of the three finalists, this is the "Make Way for Poelings" of the lot. And even echoes the famous and much-loved "Ducklings" a block away in its linearity. And it's kid-friendly, too:

Although the Raven is designed to look rather foreboding, all of its sharp looking elements are people-friendly. The claws are turned inward and the feathers are left blunt and are curved back. Meanwhile, the beak is also blunt and is turned down.

Like Poe, sort of. I mean, face-down. In a gutter. Ah, happy endings!

People-friendly Poe.

Evermore, baby. Evermore.

Winterlude in Vermont

Mike Mennonno — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:43:00 GMT

Camping Out at Downton Abbey

Mike Mennonno — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 01:46:55 GMT

I've been watching Downton Abbey with the bf (I've been cheating on him with The Way We Live Now, though, an adaptation of Anthony Trollope from a few years back which I like better). From the beginning I found the PBS sensation to be a little, well, camp. It's basically Knots Landing in fancy knickers, and about as true to life.

Which must be why it's popular with the gays*, right? It can't be for the positive, complex and incisive depiction of gays in Downton Abbey that the gays are drawn to, since, well, there isn't any positive, complex and incisive depiction of gays in Downton Abbey.

Oh, there is a gay character in the series -- one we would recognize as gay who seems also to self-identify as gay -- Thomas the footman. Whom the website describes as "scheming", "vicious", "cunning" and "nasty". He is a liar, a thief, and a coward. His only remotely sympathetic emotion is self-pity.

The only "gay scene" so far pairs Thomas up with a Duke he's carried on with whom he's now trying to blackmail. The Duke proves more than his equal in villainy. That's all we'll say about that.

The show's creator, Julian Fellowe has said of Thomas,

It’s hard to be gay in 1912. It’s illegal. If anyone finds out, you go to prison. So for me, him being gay means you slightly stay your hand. He’s not just horrible. To get any kind of emotional life going, he’s got to take his life in his hands every time. That seems to me to be a sympathetic thing.

It's really rather, um, not. Actually. But if I'm reading Fellowes right, The evil gay footman is a product of his society, and can therefore be forgiven. Carry on.

It may be that the gay community is all grown up in a big wide post-gay world and doesn't mind blatant negative stereotyping of the sort Thomas represents. The character of Thomas takes it so far, in fact, is so utterly lacking in redeeming qualities and so jam-packed with despicable qualities historically attributed to homosexuals by the 'phobes, that as serious as the show seems to take itself we may detect some archness in the audacity of presenting such a sadly retrograde character in this day and age, and on PBS to boot.

Of course, gender and sexuality have always been coded in theater and cinema, and remain so even today in our ostensibly “liberal-permissive” culture (as Zizek would call it), which is much more expulsive than repressive. Theater and cinema thrive on layers of meaning, and it's not unusual for characters -- I'm thinking of the girls in Sex In the City -- to be read as essentially gay men in drag.

There's obviously a long history of cross-dressing in theater which took on fascinating new dimensions with the advent of cinema, where male writers can "have their way" with women, and gay male writers don't have to don drag themselves to "play" women.

When you look at it like this, the gayest character, by far, in Downton Abbey is not Thomas the footman, it's the saucy Dowager Countess of Grantham, whose Wildean quips -- "what is a weekend?" "Don't be defeatist, dear, it's very middle class." "I do hope I'm interrupting something." -- provide the "oh snap!" moment (such as it is) of many a scene.

But it would be a tad too postmodern to suggest that there is really the subtlety of subtext in this series, which is, in so many of its details and the gravity with which it so obviously grapples, something rather short of a masterpiece, I'm afraid, that would qualify its characterizations as duly ironic.

But it may still qualify as camp.

Camp has many faces, of course, and has been notoriously hard to nail down as a concept, but when I think of what constitutes camp at its most wickedly glorious, it is its identification with cultural kitsch. "Pure Camp," as Susan Sontag famously put it, "is always naïve". What makes something poorly constructed that aspires to high seriousness camp is our reaction to it, our reading of it.

Again, to echo Sontag:

The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to "the serious." One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.

Which is why the Dowager Countess is the gayest character of the lot. Her elitism and attitude of umbrage are in every way more representative of High Gay sensibility than the cliche of the conniving, evil, blackmailing gay (a cliche that conniving, evil, blackmailing pols like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich would certainly approve of) that Thomas the footman represents.

Can we still enjoy the grotesque and outdated depiction of gays Thomas the Footman represents? Of course we can. But I don't think we should try to understand the character as a serious statement about the evil effects of criminalizing homosexuality, or any such nonsense, as his creator half-heartedly suggests. No. That's taking it all entirely too seriously.

The only way to understand it properly is as camp. Pure camp.

___________________________________
*No, I don't mean my high school New Wave band The Gays. I mean the "gay community" in general.

Say Nopa to SOPA

Mike Mennonno — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:30:16 GMT

Of Miracles

Mike Mennonno — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 01:43:40 GMT

The big headline at Huffington Post this morning:

The Boston Globe, while a little less triumphalist (the front page headline: "Patriots showing they may be best in NFL") riffed on Bronco QB Tim Tebow's religious pretensions below the fold, calling last night's drubbing a "beating of -- shall we say -- Biblical proportions."

Meanwhile, over at timtebow.com, the smited Broncos QB had yet to offer exegesis on his pre-game Bible verse: Romans 8:37-39.

³⁷Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
³⁸For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

³⁹Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is clearly meant to be consolation to his loyal fans for losing against the Pats. Tebow obviously knew he was going down. Or should have. Like my friend Ellen said today, "Jesus is a Jew. He doesn't work on Saturdays." (In fact Jewish Law explicitly forbids scoring on Shabbat.)

So while it may seem everyone's picking on Tebow, and it may seem as though the Broncos lost last night, it's all part of God's plan.

The one thing Christianists love better than gloating on their own super-star humility when victorious is persevering in their faith in the face of defeat.

Because everybody knows when True Believers win it's undeniable proof of the truth of what they believe. And when they lose it's still undeniable proof of the truth of what they believe. It's just that God is testing them. He's daring them not to believe the undeniable proof of the truth of what they believe because he knows that they never will.

Because never does doubt, the smart man's faith, come into play.

Doubt is the ultimate heresy for the True Believer.

So you can be certain Tebow believes he's being tested. And if there is something truly enviable about people of faith, as they are sometimes called (and sports fanatics, as they are other times known), it is that their ultimately petty successes and failures gain epic proportion in the arena of play.

There's a lesson here for all of us. Why is it only True Believers can turn an epic ass-whooping into an ultimate victory for faith? I mean, the Huffington Post is wrong. There is a miracle here.

It's the miracle of faith.

Animal Magnetism

Mike Mennonno — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 13:35:27 GMT

Clumsy, playful, clever, hungry (or all of the above)?

It may be that in a thousand years when they look back on youtube what they will be most impressed with is not the preponderance of evidence of the overwhelming stupidity of humans but proof of our interest in the cognitive, emotional and moral lives of other animals.

We know that other animals play, problem-solve and engage in selfless -- that is, heroic -- behavior, partly because we see them do it all the time on youtube. But the fact that we love watching them do it as much as we do is interesting.

Of course, animals have long been used by humans as examplars of moral activity, notably in fairy tales and fables, and usually based on anthropomorphized attributes, but never before have so many animals themselves been so widely observed going about the business of their own inner lives.

Although no videos featuring cute and cuddly animals have cracked the top ten most-viewed ever (unless you count Justin Bieber, who's got two in the top ten), animal videos do go viral on a fairly regular basis (remember "surprised kitty"? "Playing with an otter"? "Baby elephant sneezes and scares himself"?), with domesticated animals most likely to become viral video stars (Maru the Cat has his own wikipedia entry -- see "Maru (cat)").

The truth is Top Ten be damned (I mean almost a billion views for Bieber? Really?), intelligent humans tune in to youtube for two reasons: to see videos of children, usually at their parents' prodding, saying and doing the darnedest things (which is infinitely more interesting than when, say, adult politicians do), and to see cute or clever animals doing likewise.

Research suggests we're hard-wired to respond to animals. In fact, researchers from Caltech and UCLA report that "neurons throughout the amygdala—a center in the brain known for processing emotional reactions—respond preferentially to images of animals."

"This preference extends to cute as well as ugly or dangerous animals and appears to be independent of the emotional contents of the pictures. Remarkably, we find this response behavior only in the right and not in the left amygdala."
...[T]his striking hemispheric asymmetry helps strengthen previous findings supporting the idea that, early on in vertebrate evolution, the right hemisphere became specialized in dealing with unexpected and biologically relevant stimuli, or with changes in the environment. "In terms of brain evolution, the amygdala is a very old structure, and throughout our biological history, animals—which could represent either predators or prey—were a highly relevant class of stimuli."

Had Charles Darwin or Konrad Lorenz, that giant of Comparative Ethology (animal behaviorism, essentially) been around at the dawn of the youtube age, I can imagine their satisfaction.

Both Darwin and Lorenz were fascinated not just by animal behavior but by how it relates to human behavior. Darwin, in Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, observed how like other animals we are when it comes to expressing many of our emotions.

We snarl and raise our upper lip in fierce anger--to expose our nonexistent fighting canine tooth. Our gesture of disgust repeats the facial actions associated with the highly adaptive act of vomiting in necessary circumstances.

Evolutionary Biologist Stephen Jay Gould has a fascinating short essay -- "A Biological Homage to Mickey Mouse" -- that brilliantly explores the theme behind so many of today's internet memes. Riffing on Lorenz's observations in Ganzheit und Teil in der tierischen und menschlichen Gemeinschaft, that features of juvenility trigger "innate releasing mechanisms" for affection and nurturing in adult humans, Gould shows how Mickey's morphological evolution over time, a "reverse ontogenetic pathway" from "the ratty character of Steamboat Willie" to "the cute and inoffensive host to a magic kingdom", reflects precisely the unconscious human predispositions toward animals Lorenz posited.

For Lorenz, our affection for animals that share, "for reasons having nothing to do with the inspiration of affection in humans, ... some features also shared by human babies but not by human adults," may be a "biologically inappropriate response to other animals". But it seems it's one we can hardly help having.

Of course we humans have a habit of taking things too far, even evolution. And as often as not rather than shining a light on the moral life of animals, from which we might learn a great deal, our treatment of them instead sheds a light on the animal in us.

8 'Adorable' Viral Videos That Qualify as Animal Cruelty -- powered by Cracked.com

I would hope that most humans would choose the biologically inappropriate to the morally inappropriate response. And hopefully in a thousand years we'll have more than just youtube videos to prove that occasionally we did.

Divorced from Reality

Mike Mennonno — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 02:11:30 GMT

Occasionally at work I have to deal with the divorced parents of a student. It's easily the worst part of my job. I find I usually want to slap them across the face and shout "snap out of it!" (Yes, just like Cher in Moonstruck, except without having to sleep with them first.)

My job requires equal parts empathy and obduracy. And while I love a good story as much as the next guy, my job is to keep everyone's focus on the bottom line.

But on some level, as an observer of human behavior and a sometimes unwilling participant in it, these interactions and the role I am emboldened by my function and entitled by my office to play in them interest me deeply.

I could, first of all, not do my job at all were it not for the knowledge, hard-won, that most of what we must do in this life is utter nonsense, and yet still it must be done. Adolescents have real insight into this, and rightly they rebel against it. That's what parents are for. To pick up the slack. At least up until the age of majority.

You can, of course, keep going with the whole rebel without a cause schtick. But if you take it too far (and I'll freely admit I probably did) what you come to realize after years of knocking and being knocked around is, you should probably choose a cause. You can't rebel against the whole damn thing. People who do tend to end up with a lot of tattoos and facial piercings, and facial tattoos, too, and not a lot else to show for it.

Pick a little piece, and maybe in the end, after hammering away for a lifetime, you'll make a little dent in that little piece. And if everybody does that, what you'll have at the end of the day is a lot of dented little pieces.

The world is a lot bigger than you are. That's all I'm saying.

One cause probably not to choose is single-handedly destroying capitalism by not paying your bills.

I've been broke most my life. For quite a lot of it I was broke and having lots of sex. Here, there, everywhere. From trains to jumbo jets, five-star hotels to underwater caves. You name it I was there sexing it up. But let me tell you something about being broke and horny: it's not a good combination. I mean, when your young it's fine, but later. You don't want to end up like that scene in Ironweed. (Forget The Iron Lady, Streep deserved an Oscar for that.)

As bad as broke and horny is -- married, broke and horny: way worse.

So it's no wonder folks divorce.

And then most get on with their lives. But there are some who never stop holding a grudge. They feel they were tricked, and they apparently want the whole world to know how stupid they were to mate with the person they did. That type becomes not just exes but mortal enemies. And the kids are just collateral damage.

Now that I'm the age of a typical second-time-around divorcee with college-age kids I've lost all patience with their shenanigans, especially when they're at their kids' expense.

And so it was that today I had it out over the phone with the fiery Italian father of one of our students with a past due balance from last semester. The student owed almost two grand, no small sum for one of ours. The kid had been on a monthly payment plan (we're a small college -- we do them in-house) and his mother had paid her half throughout the fall semester. But dad hadn't kicked in.

Now, I'm not fooled for one minute. Mother was not blameless. We do not have special divorcee monthly pay packages. The kid's liable for the whole amount he's contracted to pay monthly. But we received a check for exactly half from her more or less every month. Of course she knew that the other half of the monthly bill was going unpaid. And she was fine with that, even though ultimately it was the kid who was impacted.

It's not my job to make separate appeals to the various partied paying the bill. It's their job to get their shit together and pay it, come hell or high water, for the good of their kid. I mean, it's like paying half of your electric bill every month because you've got a roommate you don't bother to even show the bills to. And then you act all sanctimonious and self-righteous when the lights go out. Try explaining to the electric company how it's not your fault.

Of course it's your fault. It's both your miserable faults.

I'd already told mom the jig was up. And I wasn't interested in hearing all about the deadbeat dad. You married him, I didn't. If I was going to take sides it'd be the side of the kid I'd be on.

But taking sides seems to be the sole obsession of some divorcees: to make everyone, even total strangers, choose. To get people you don't know who don't know you to corroborate your opinion of your ex-mate as the biggest douchebag who ever walked the earth.

So now it was dad's turn. I never know when I pick up my office phone what kind of treat I'm in for these days.

He was an actual Italian, so the following is no exaggeration.

After the introductions and niceties he's like: "you knowah how I found out aboutah this billah? Myah LAWYER! My exah wife-ah, she no tellah me nothin!"

He's laughing now, trying to get me to join him.

So how would you like to settle up? I say flatly.

"Nowah, wait a justah minute!" he says, non-plussed. "Whyah you talkah to me like-ah thatah? It'sah my exah wifeah--"

I'm like, listen, that's none of my business, and it has no bearing --

"Wellah, you cannah expectah meah to payah when I never goddah billah!"

I matter-of-factly tell him the past due amount and start to go over payment methods, and before you know it he's shouting: "WAIT A MINUTE! WAIT A MINUTE! SHUDDUP A MINUTE! SHUDDUP ANNAH LISTEN! SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LISTEN!"

It was like that.

I mean, he got so worked up like that that even when I shut the fuck up and listened he kept screaming "SHUDDUP ANNAH LISTEN! SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LISTEN! JUST LISTEN! LISTEN!"

And then he's asking me was he going to have to come down to the school and settle it thatta way.

I was like, I know you didn't just threaten me.

That made him change his tune (well, kinda).

"Don't be an asshole!" he exhorted. "I knowah you noddah asshole! Whyah you actah like-ah one? Let'sah be friends, okay?"

Seriously.

And apparently this worked on her. For a time, at least.

I told him to mail the check and we'd be the best of friends, and would never have to speak again. That might work for the ex as well, but somehow I doubt it. Seems like they're both enjoying it way too much.

Good Advice is like a bad Twitter Feed...

Mike Mennonno — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 02:11:05 GMT

Have you noticed: there's a whole slew of agony aunts out there doling out all kinds of crazy advice to anyone who'll write in. No longer the sacred province of Miss Manners and Ann Landers', everyone seems to be giving advice to the lovelorn these days. So much so, it's hard to know who to trust sometimes!

__________________________________

...No one wants to follow it.
__________________________________

I'm always on the look-out for good advice, so when aimlessly perusing the Globe's "G" (pronounced "guh") section today at lunch, I discovered "Ask Margo," by Margo Howard, Ann Landers' very own daughter, I dropped my turkey cobb sandwich, suddenly hungrier for wisdom.

Does good advice run in the family? I figured I'd give Margo a read and find out.

Today Margo responded to two letters. I read the short one first, even though it came last, so as not to waste too much time should the whole affair feel a little too much like eavesdropping on a conversation on the subway or the supermarket checkout. (I prefer eavesdropping -- in this order -- in public restrooms, cinemas just before the movie starts, and for some reason, fast food joints, but only if it's via cellphone.)

Anyway. The first (or last, actually) letter went like this:

Dear Margo: My younger sister died after a long illness. Her husband was a total menacing control freak before, during and after the illness. There is a bit of a family dispute going on about what to do about him. Is there anything wrong with cutting him out of the family completely at this point? — Hesitantly

Nice. It's a good sign when those seeking advice from you get straight to the douchebaggery, no beating around the bush.

Would Margo slyly suggest a little soul-searching empathy on the part of the Letter Writer, who, for all we know, is a control freak herself -- takes one to know one, right? The Emily Post approach ("Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others," &c.)? Maybe something high-minded and moral, referring to herself in the third person, Miss Manners-style? Would she throw in a little dtmfa like Savage? Maybe toss out a tidbit from beyond the grave like Ask Grace? What, I wondered, would be her schtick?

Dear Hes: No. If the guy was an irritant while your sister was alive, I assume you all put up with him for her sake. Now there is no reason to do that. I would just ease on down the road and reject any overtures — which may, in fact, not be forthcoming. — Margo, sensibly

Sensibly, indeed. And succinctly. Breezily oblivious to the complexities of human emotions and relations. Always useful when giving advice about grieving in-laws on the fly. As unquestioningly dismissive of inconvenient truths like there's two sides to every story as a toadying subordinate in search of a promotion.

She could be The One.

Read on, gentle reader. Read on.

Dear Margo: How can you tell whether someone is bipolar or just plain angry?

Ooh, this oughta be good.

I’ve been with my husband for nine years, married for five. I currently work full time, go to school part time and am away from home 13 to 15 hours a day Monday through Thursday. On weekends, I spend time with our kids, do homework and light housework. The issue is my husband.

During the week, he is the housecleaner, which he claims not to mind because I am the main moneymaker. Because I only have a year left in school, I shouldn’t have this schedule much longer. He, too, is in school and works part time.

One of our issues: When friends invite us out during the week to celebrate a birthday or a new job and I’m able to get a sitter, he gets upset and lectures me about not doing housework, not working harder at our relationship and just wanting to party with friends. Another issue is that he thinks I don’t find him attractive anymore because we don’t have sex like we did when we met. (I was 19, without a care in the world, and we’d get physical about five times a day.) Over the years, it’s dwindled to once or twice a week.

Without going to a counselor — which he doesn’t believe in — I am wondering whether this is a mental issue or an abusive one that can be dealt with on a rational level. Am I naive for staying and thinking that once our money and schedule stresses go away he will be better about not saying hurtful things? — Dealing with Who Knows What?

OK, so lets recap:

By her own admission, her husband, who works and attends school, as does she, does not mind keeping house, and there doesn't seem to be any conflict on that count.

She's home less than he is and when she wants to go out during what little time she has for family, he "gets upset" and "lectures" her "about not doing housework, not working harder at our relationship and just wanting to party with friends" -- all of which seem like standard gripes in a situation like this. None of which she denies.

He also voices concern about their sex-life, which after nine years together is surely long overdue. But he doesn't call her fat and complain that she has become unattractive to him. On the contrary, by her admission he worries that he has become unattractive to her, which obviously he has. It's what the whole frakin letter's about.

Because he really hasn't done anything out of the ordinary or unjustified given the circumstances (I mean aside from saying super mean shit like "I'm worried you don't find me attractive anymore") and she knows she's not justified in telling him go screw, she obviously wants Margo's blessing to have him committed.

She's not asking for advice. She's asking for an accomplice.

And Margo does not disappoint.

Dear Deal: I am no diagnostician, but this does not sound like bipolarity to me. It sounds like anger mixed with insecurity, resentment and immaturity. In addition, your being the major breadwinner is probably interfering with his machismo. Show me one woman with kids, a full-time job and part-time school attendance who is getting it on five times a day, and I’ll give you a nickel.

Your reluctant househusband needs to shape up and grow up. I suspect you are assigning magical properties to having more money and easier schedules. Those things don’t make people nicer; they just provide more money and easier schedules. I would have it out with him and tell him that his treatment of you is causing second thoughts about the future. If there’s an improvement, fine. If not, decide whether this is how you want to live. — Margo, decisively

Now, that's advice you can use.

Which is how you know it's bad advice.

As I was about to mull it all over, something on the page just below the advice column caught my eye. The "Reflection of the Day", which today was a quote from Charles Darwin:

A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.

Now that's advice.

I threw down the paper straight away and took up my sandwich again.

Infinite Vicious Regress

Mike Mennonno — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:04:55 GMT

I confess that while nothing about the GOP freak show really interests me (galls and frightens me, yes), the prosaic process by which we magically confer relevance, importance even, on crazy people does somehow.

____________________________________________

And so it is that every
election cycle we end up back here.
____________________________________________

This painfully drawn-out primary season is more evidence that Andrew Sullivan is right about one thing: the GOP "is an entertainment company based around a religious identity politics and masquerading as a political party." The Republican primary is just an extended interview for a stint bloviating on Fox during the general.

People still find the comparison to American Idol and America's Got Talent novel, but that's really what we've been witnessing -- without a hint of irony -- A version of The Biggest Loser, where instead of pounds, the contestants shed their sense of shame, decency and conviction. (How could Romney not win this? It's totally rigged.)

So after having to actually contemplate a world in which a Herman Cain or Michele Bachmann presidential bid is a reality -- a fact no one really knows what to do with -- we're now down to Rick Santorum, whose hackneyed "God, Gays and Guns" approach to campaigning is -- surprise! -- resonating with the right. You don't get points for originality, people.

We shouldn't have to care what Santorum thinks. Just like we never should've had to care what a two-bit huckster like Herman Cain or a bat-shit crazy gay-married Michelle Bachmann thinks about anything -- anything! But for weeks we did. Participating, sometimes passionately, in our own degradation.

So now the man who likened gay marriage to "man-on-dog" sex is the GOP's frothy fecal flavor of the week. Great. Another round of warmed-over Kulturkampf. A culture chasing its tail, occasionally catching up to lick its own ass. Talk about man-on-dog.

It's probably an improvement on repeat-philanderer Newt Gingrich's thoughts on marriage equality, though the serial dehumanization of gay people that is de rigueur for Republicans should give all people pause. As far as we seem to have come, the same people who are exporting the idea of the death penalty for gays and their allies in Uganda are registered Republicans here.

We have to remember, always remember, that there is no such thing as progress for the right. There is only infinite vicious regress. And so it is that every election cycle we end up back here.

Of course I couldn't care less what Santorum thinks of gay sex. The truth is: the existence of gay sex in the world obviously has not stopped Santorum-on-Santorum sex.

He should bear in mind, however, that scientists have found a correlation between fraternal birth order and male sexual orientation. According to several studies, each older brother increases a man's odds of having a homosexual orientation by 28–48%. Which means that the odds are pretty good Santorum has a gay kid or two himself.

Now that would be progress.

T to the B

Mike Mennonno — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 01:01:34 GMT

Some old Friends of the Blog may remember I began this whole blog business six or seven years ago with a wildly popular blog called T-Rage! where I related shocking true stories of my daily commute in posts like "Child Seen Licking Seatback and Sibling While Father Looks on Unfazed" and "Man’s Hopes Dashed on Commute Home (Again)", still classics of the subway vérité genre.

Especially for a writer (and for readers as well), public transit is much better than driving. Even for non-writers and audiobook types I think it's an awesome idea that is seldom executed in America with the level of commitment and competence you see in some other places.

Before coming to Boston I had, of course, spent nearly a decade abroad, Europeanizing myself. And I have to say, for the most part, at least in the places I lived and visited, they had the will and the wherewithal to make public transit work.

Either that, or everyone over there at that time was a writer.

(And it's true that continental writers -- Bulgakov, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Zola -- have traditionally loved public transit, particularly trains. Bulgakov could not have started The Master and Margarita without a streetcar, and Tolstoy could not have ended Anna Karenina if his heroine been driving a Volvo station wagon.)

Whatever the case, Europeans knew it was worth it. I mean, public transit is just great people-watching, and occasionally you get a shag out of it.

I remember living in Budapest, one dashing lad on a late-night train from Deák tér, where I used to work to Moszkva tér, where I lived, who, after several stops playing eye-tag stood shoulder to shoulder with me on the endless escalator ride up to the exit, pressing himself to me as I pressed my shoulder to his, both of us looking straight ahead, neither saying a word.

We got to the top of the escalator and out into the night, and I think all I had to say was, "Gyere." Come. And, boy, did he.

It's true, my life in Budapest was basically one big porno.

Boston, not so much. But I don't blame the T for that. I could, but I don't.

But I have more than a prurient interest in public transit. Totally aside from the sex, public transit just makes good sense, especially in a city like Boston. And that good is a common good, and it deserves to be publicly funded.

And that's coming from someone who, after fighting the good fight back in '06, grew totally disgusted with the T, threw up my hands and became a bicycle commuter.

Yeah. One of those.

And that's what all you motherfuckers who don't want to fund public transit because you don't use it have to think about: do you really want more bicycle commuters out there on the road? DO YOU? Because that's EXACTLY what you're gonna get if the T keeps hiking up fares and cutting services. And with climate change progressing apace we'll be crowding the thoroughfares ten months out of the year. Pretty soon Copley Square's gonna look like downtown Shanghai at rush hour:

And you know what else? The more bicycle riders you get out there, the more naked bike rides there're gonna be. It's inevitable.

You think no-pants day on public transit is bad? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

All the Single Laddies

Mike Mennonno — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:06:05 GMT

Discovered last night that Weekend, Andrew Haigh's tale of a weekend tryst, which the New York Times' A.O. Scott hails as "one of the most satisfying love stories you are likely to see on screen this year" is already streamable on Netflix! Say what you will, this is why I still subscribe.

Weekend is so true to its premise -- an extended hook-up of the sort that seems to happen outside ordinary time -- that you can't shake the sense afterward that you've actually spent the weekend with Russell and Glen, too.

Tom Cullen's Russell is eminently crushable, the sweet, earnest relationship-type we all pretend to want, who somehow manages to remain sullenly single. Chris New's Glen represents the other end of the spectrum: the cynical bed-hopping art-fag, who whips out a tape-recorder the morning after for some po-mo art project on one-night stands he's doing.

While that last conceit feels a little forced, it provides a loose motif for the movie, which is, after all, a movie. It also gives a sense of an ending when it comes to it, suggesting that the cynic has given up the critical distance that keeps the truth at arm's length, that artlessness has prevailed over art, sincerity won out over irony -- and isn't that what love -- true love -- is?

The sex is frank without being pornographic -- or even, really, particularly erotic (bobbing heads and very earnest slurping sounds is as close as things get to getting steamy). But in truth the movie is not about sex (despite its sexual frankness).

Sex, when you take the taboo (and fear of contamination) out of it, is simply one of any number of ways we get into one another (yes, pun and all). When affection is involved (and obviously it isn't always), sex is empathy in its most literal, immediate and rewarding form. The intensity of that sense of identification with an other can change us in profound ways.

What's wonderful about Weekend is how it sees and shows sex as one of a vast repertoire of ways we question, cajole, and communicate with one another, a legitimate and frankly wonderful way we make meaning of certain mysteries of identity and existence we can't confront alone.

And it poignantly explores the ways in which a profound physical connection can sometimes give us a sense of intimate knowledge -- of knowing the other -- that we might presume supersedes the pesky details of their personal history. We are not necessary mistaken in this presumption, but the application of this knowledge often proves, um, problematic.

It's this seemingly backward approach to intimacy that accounts for many of the film's best, most authentic and awkward moments. It is, ultimately, a story about understanding, but misunderstanding what it is you're understanding.

That's something we've all been through -- gay, straight, whatever -- which is why A.O. Scott was right to call it "one of the most satisfying love stories you are likely to see on screen this year" and not "one of the most satisfying gay love stories you are likely to see on screen this year".

And satisfying is a good word for it. Weekend is satisfying in its unassuming humanity. In its ability to tell this simple story of a very complicated human emotion.

5 a.m. New Year's Day

Mike Mennonno — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 16:44:26 GMT

I have to admit, I am deeply curious about my upstairs neighbor. And I mean that in a Polanskiesque way.

He or she -- B. and I have been trying to decode the gender by listening to his or her comings and goings (yes, I could check the postbox in the lobby, but I'm not a stalker) -- takes an inordinately long shower every morning just before 5 a.m. The hissing of the pipes is the first thing I hear most mornings.

___________________________________

Someone is serious
about a clean start in 2012.
___________________________________

Lately I have detected a barely audible high-speed thwacking that immediately precedes the long shower. I can't imagine what this could be. I mean this is some serious high-speed thwacking -- thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack-thwack and it's over.

(Maybe the ladies can help me -- as a man I can only think of one thing that thwacks like that -- though not usually at that speed -- but there might be some implement of beauty or hygiene that is in common use among the lasses that we lads know nothing about.)

I don't know how long #11 has lived there but there's definitely some karma here. Above my bed are several tiny craters in the ceiling that may very well have been made with the handle-end of a broomstick.

This morning my neighbor was up at 5 again, running up and down the back stairs on the other side of my bedroom wall to the laundry room in the building's basement.

Someone is serious about a clean start in 2012.

Why should any of this interest me? I don't know. Frankly some of the things that interest me baffle me. But maybe it's the fact that my upstairs neighbor seems to live alone, and yet I'm somehow privy, while not to his or her gender, to some intimate details of his or her life. Or that eavesdropping -- even forced eavesdropping -- is just inherently interesting. And then there's this: while all kinds of people like masturbation, it's a certain kind of person that likes long showers afterward.

I'm not judging.

I know you won't believe this, but I don't judge. I distinguish between and among things, of course. I categorize and even hierarchize -- but that taxonomical mania is our species' genetic predisposition. Judging is different. Right and wrong is, after all, a simple matter. Even Christ boiled it all down to one commandment -- do unto others, bitches. Right and wrong is never as interesting as its outcome, which is bound to be either comic or tragic. That's the part that interests me.

So, in other words, if #11 spent his or her New Year's Eve dreaming of all the laundry he or she would get done at five in the morning on New Year's Day, what's it to me?

I spent New Year's Eve with the delightful David Mitchell and Robert Webb (B. was away at a college reunion of sorts) and passed out on the sofa by eleven. I woke up briefly just after midnight to a tweet from B. and again around two, wishing I had a slingshot, as drunken revelers made their way down the echo chamber of Queensberry Street.

Friends of the Blog know I'm not a big fan of crowds. These days you never know whether you're walking into an Occupy-something or when an otherwise innocuous mass of people is going to break out into some awful choreographed flashdance routine.

But to be clear: I'm not really an agoraphobe. I don't mind crowds -- on a bustling city street, an airport, a mall, where everyone is hustling off in different directions for their own little purposes, this one rushing off to his daughter's birthday party, that one coming back from the best shag of his life. Even if some of them have criminal intentions, what's it to me?

No, it's when the purpose of the crowd is singular that I start to get a little scared. And I don't care if it's a cheesy flash mob or an angry lynch mob, I don't want to get swept up in it. I mean, bitches whipped into a frenzy'll mace you for a two-dollar waffle iron. No thank you. I'll be occupying my toasty little flat tonight. Alone. With the deadbolt securely locked.

And that goes double (and yes I have a double deadbolt) for New Year's Eve. We suspend certain conventions for a few hours in what is really as much a collective nod to death -- what else is the passing of time ultimately good for? -- as Christmas is an orgy of futile acquisition in the face of imminent annihilation -- er, I mean a celebration of birth and life.

That's why we're encouraged to drink ourselves into a stupor on New Year's Eve. Because WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE.

Just consider Auld Lang Syne, that old New Year's standard:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?

CHORUS:

For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp !
and surely I’ll be mine !
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae run about the braes,
and pu’d the gowans fine ;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We twa hae paidl’d i' the burn,
frae morning sun till dine ;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
sin auld lang syne.

CHORUS

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere !
and gie's a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

That's some sad shit. Some old man, down the pub, blubbering in your ale, sad, sad shit right there. And that's life.

So anyway, around five I awoke again, to my neighbor's manic New Year's Morning laundering spree, and decided, fuck it, to get my 2012 up and running. Time waits for no man.

And yet those first hushed hours of the first day of the year give us pause. There's something about that hangover hush, something about a whole world sleeping off an epic bender, that gives those of us up at the crack of dawn a moment alone with Time, that old friend and nemesis. And for that brief moment we can -- or so it seems -- meet as equals.

And then it's off to do the laundry.

Interesting Times

Mike Mennonno — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 15:06:40 GMT

I'd like to say 2011 was an interesting year, but that would not be in even the top 10 adjectives I'd use to describe it.

In a personal way it started out promisingly enough, although those of you with a little more organizational experience than I had going into it could probably have guessed that "interesting", while on the list in the ironic "Chinese curse" sense of the word, would not make it without the air quotes.

___________________________________

"Interesting" is a singularly
boring adjective.
___________________________________

Likewise, many of the "interesting" characters I met along the way. I am a curious sort, and love a good story, and everyone has one. Unfortunately only a very select few seem to be able to tell it in an interesting way. We all have complicated stories -- It would be crude, condescending, and needlessly cruel to argue otherwise -- but most tend to tell them (if indeed they can tell them at all) as if telling a cabbie directions home from the airport. And directions, while useful, are not interesting.

Meanwhile, my day job, inarguably in the service of a great cause -- educating an underserved population, and blah blah blah -- is not in itself interesting, either. If I had my druthers higher education would be free to all those who qualify, and learning a trade would be mandatory for everyone, even -- especially -- academics. (I know, I know. It's like having to do phys. ed. in grade school, but trust me, learning to do something useful, as my dad used to say, can be useful.)

As it is, my job is to shake 'em down for all they've got, and I can do that because I understand that the world is a prison and we're all somebody's bitch, and that getting fucked is still better than getting shivved in the neck and bleeding out on the shower floor to the heedless jeers of your heartless attackers. That's what I tell my kids anyway. And while I occasionally hear stories from them that would draw blood from a heart of stone, you'd burn through a good ten or twenty-five other adjectives there before getting to interesting.

My pet projects of 2011, likewise. You know, people like to think that if it's challenging it's interesting, but I'd say it all depends on the times. And I think we live in times when, in fact, a lot of things are challenging that aren't all that interesting.

I mean, a lot of things are challenging that we maybe used to take for granted. Like getting by. Getting by is not interesting. Maslow's Hierarchy doesn't start to get interesting until Level 5, really, and the longer you're scratching around down at the base of the pyramid the more of a bore you're going to end up being.

And then you become one of those people the rest of us have to step on on our way up. And you're going to bitch and moan at us for doing it, and we're going to have to stop and, you know, make nice. Strap you on our backs and try to hoist you up to level 4, kicking and screaming most likely.

I'm not saying I didn't get a hand up every now and again myself. But lemme tell you from experience: egos weigh a ton, and you'll never make it to the top with yours in tow. I don't want to sound like some cut-rate douchebag guru here, but trust me on this.*

In July I met the guy I've been dating ever since. It'll sound like a big cliche, but he's hands-down the best thing to happen all year, period. I'm sorry he couldn't have happened to everyone, but you know how it is.

But this thing we've got going, which is a gift as all good things are, is -- mercifully -- not interesting, either. In fact, he was telling me just this morning that he thought "interesting" was a singularly boring adjective.

But I dwell on that word -- interesting -- because it has so long been the one I have associated with my aspirations for a life. I mean, I used to want to live an interesting life, Chinese curse and all. And I guess I kinda did for a while.

But, man, did it get boring.

For the record, here are my top ten adjectives for 2011:

10. aleatory
9. untethered
8. brackish
7. mealy
6. thick
5. raw
4. uncut
3. rowdy
2. heroic
1. futile
___________________________________________
*There were at least seven people in my 2011 who could use that little piece of advice. You know who you are. Not. I mean, of course not.

The Not So Talented Mr. Wheeler Strikes Again

Mike Mennonno — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 22:50:12 GMT

Adam Wheeler is back in the news.

You'll recall Wheeler is the character actor whose greatest role was as a kinda hunky Harvard student who gained entree to the Ivy League by falsely claiming he'd attended a bunch of other elite schools, and kept up the act by aping Ivy League cliches. Just a semester short of graduating, he was caught back in '09 submitting this brilliant parody of an Ivy League resume, convicted of fraud and larceny, and given a suspended sentence.

Well, now he's going to prison for violating his probation -- by putting Harvard on his resume again.

The judge in this case was so certain that Wheeler's actions were the result of mental illness -- why on earth else would an otherwise seemingly intelligent person (I mean, he did attend Harvard) repeat the very behavior that had resulted in his conviction barely a year into his probation? -- she sent him to Bridgewater for a forty-day psych evaluation. When he came back with a clean bill of mental health, the court really had no recourse but to enforce his sentence.

Although I'm inclined to side with the judge, compulsive or pathological lying is not identified itself as a mental disorder in the DSM-IV although it is a component of a variety of personality disorders -- Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder, to name a couple that probably apply here.

It may be that Wheeler's problem is more a "character flaw", as the judge was forced to call it, than a personality disorder, but there is something in Wheeler's complete physical transformation over the course of his travails that seems to argue for an evolutionary explanation as well.

A Tale of Two Wheelers.

I was just reading a review of Evolutionary Biologist Robert Trivers' new book, Folly of Fools, which outlines his theory of deceit, where he puts it in a much broader context. From the New York Times review:

Trivers calls deceit a ‘deep feature’ of life, even a necessity, given genes’ brutal struggle to prevail. Anglerfish lure prey by dangling ‘bait’ in front of their jaws, edible butterflies deter predators by adopting the coloring of poisonous species. Possums play possum, cowbirds and cuckoos avoid the hassle of raising offspring by laying their eggs in other birds’ nests. Even viruses and bacteria employ subterfuge to sneak past a host’s immune systems. The complexity of organisms, Trivers suggests, stems at least in part from a primordial arms race between deceit and deceit-detection.

And isn't that what we saw happening here? The humor in this whole cautionary tale (which is what it should be for institutions like Harvard) comes from the fact that Wheeler's lies were ridiculous to begin with and only got more monumentally ridiculous with time, and Harvard (and later Stanford) still bought them wholesale -- hook, line and sinker. The kid was this close to getting away with it!

The fact that Wheeler exposes both the sociopathic tendencies of social climbers and the pretensions of the class to which he still obviously aspires is what makes him such a compelling (if ultimately unsympathetic) character. The Trickster, who (in this case seemingly unwittingly) shows us how our social order is in some sectors as flimsy as a house of cards.

Wheeler, with a tweak here and there, is the sort of character we root for in movies like Catch Me if You Can and I Love You Phillip Morris (and with less tweaking the sort we don't, like the much creepier Talented Mr. Ripley). The characters these movies were based on were not merely deceivers, or even master deceivers, but shape-shifters, like species we find in nature, whose survival is based on their ability to effectively deceive.

Of course most folks notice by a certain age that deceit is as common an ingredient in all social transactions as, say, high fructose corn syrup is in canned goods, but most of us don't just chug the corn syrup straight up.

Trivers' insight is that self-deception is a tool we have evolved the better to deceive others. So the question is -- well, there are a couple: to what degree do the Adam Wheelers of the world come to believe their own elaborate deceptions, and are they different in kind or just in magnitude from those we all construct to get through life? That's one. The other: why are we so willing to believe them?

Oh wait, I can answer that last one. We do love a good lie. And if it reinforces our outlook -- confirmation bias anyone? -- so much the better.

What is poignant about Adam Wheeler is that -- take another look at the deflated and defeated creature on the right above-- he'll never be happy being Adam Wheeler, because there seems to be no Adam Wheeler qua Adam Wheeler.

Trivers uses the example of a moth against the bark of a tree. In nature "the deceiver is using morphology, not behavior."

What was striking to me as I followed Wheeler's story was the degree to which he physically changed in subtle but very significant ways -- and not merely his mien and mood but his morphology. That the person on the left is the same as the one on the right is not a question, and yet.

Wheeler's nature is to deceive – it’s his survival that’s at stake. Perhaps he's not so different from the rest of us in this, just a little less talented.

Santagnosticism

Mike Mennonno — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 01:19:00 GMT

I can't remember ever really believing in Santa Claus. It may be that my parents just didn't sell it, but honestly it never added up to me.

Don't get me wrong, I have always loved the twinkly Christmas lights and the jazz-era standards -- the Nat King Cole records my father would break out and play for the few weeks leading up to Christmas Day (although I found Ed Ames, another of dad's Christmas faves, creepy from an early age).

I loved the midnight mass with its candlelight and poinsettias. The excitement of being allowed to be up well past my bedtime. The magic of all of that was sufficient without throwing Santa in the mix.

I was a Santagnostic, I guess you'd say. (I would even go with Santatheist, but I feel it's needlessly inflammatory when the truth is I didn't feel strongly one way or another about the old man.)

My formative memory of sitting on Santa's lap -- and I'm sure it is a composite -- involved an obvious fraud at J.C. Penney. He was tired and irritable, with a fake beard and bad breath. Santa, the real Santa if indeed he existed at all (and, again, it was not all that important to me either way) would smell like Christmas candles and have breath like peppermint candy canes, not stale farts and filterless fags.

When I had my druthers, and my mother let me run off on my own (as parents inconceivably did in those days) I always visited the Talking Tree that stood like a sentinel outside Santa's little shanty.

I fucking loved that Talking Tree.

It was a little like the one in The Wizard of Oz. Basically a tree-shaped booth with some poor bored sod stationed inside, who blinked and winked and wiggled the tree's limbs, and -- if you had the good fortune of not being accompanied by an adult -- imparted all manner of snark through a microphone in a goofy voice whoever was inside imagined to be tree-like.

I am sure The J.C. Penney Talking Tree was the first to tell me flat-out that Santa didn't exist. (Adults were always pretty, um, frank with me when I was a kid. I probably asked too many questions. Like any good interrogator, eventually I wore them out and, again, checking for an adult and not finding one in ear-shot, they more often then not confessed the ugly truth to me.)

We view childhood -- even, or especially our own -- through a haze of sentimentality. But I think most kids are much shrewder and more coolly rational than we give them credit for. I never felt the need to express my skepticism about Santa, or reveal what The Talking Tree had told me.

Like most kids, I had gathered you believe what you have to believe and tell whomever you have to tell whatever you have to tell them to get what you want for Christmas.

A Long(er) Goodbye for The Otherside

Mike Mennonno — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 20:40:43 GMT

The writing is on the bathroom wall.

The Boo and I dropped into the storied Otherside Cafe yesterday for what we assumed would be our last brunch at Boston's premier hipster dive serving unparalleled hangover cuisine delivered in an untimely manner by the skinniest, most tattooed wait staff anywhere this side of the Charles. But it turns out they got a brief reprieve and won't be closing until this time next month (January 28th, to be precise).

There's a big furniture store called Room & Board slated for the spot, although my feeling is it's a terrible place for it. Truth is, it's a pretty terrible place for anything, which is why it's the perfect place for a hipster dive like Otherside.

But I can see how a developer could spin it as an ideal location for something else. Even the Globe made it sound like a big box dream-spot -- "prime retail space" in Back Bay "where Newbury meets Massachusetts Avenue" -- if you didn't know any better.

It is highly visible. It's just that, as the Otherside's name suggests, it's a tad inconvenient to get to, because right there "where Newbury meets Massachusetts Avenue" is also -- by happenstance -- the entrance to the Mass. Turnpike. It's like a Masshole black hole, where Newbury turns suddenly into Nobury Street, tapering off into oblivion.

Which is sort of what the Otherside based its success on.

They'll be looking for a new Boston locale, but it's hard to imagine a spot quite so conveniently inconvenient, a forgotten destination only seen from a distance if you knew where to look.

Cutting Off Your Nose To Spite Your Facebook

Mike Mennonno — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:09:56 GMT

The Boyfriend has been grappling with Facebook. A couple of weeks ago he tried to quit it cold turkey and almost made it a week -- a work-week -- before he was back. He decided, instead, to shrink his social network (so far I've made the cut -- whew!).

I know several people half my age who are suddenly exhibiting Luddite tendencies in the face of the social networking revolution. One of my board members, a kid who's set to be in charge of communications next year, told me over lunch the other day, "I don't do facebook -- I mean, this--" he indicated me, us, our table -- "is my facebook."

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Young people exhibiting anti-social-
networking tendencies --
what's new?
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Um, no, it's really not. This is just, uh, reality.

Reality is not a tool. It does not require batteries. It just is. It's just... reality. Which is really nothing at all like facebook, it's very true.

But there's the crux of the problem. These kids have grown up in a world that clearly values the virtual more highly than the actual. They assume, as is youth's wont, that we all have. But a big ol' chunk of my life was lived in the complete absence of a virtual reality (except for the one called, um, insanity). I've lived half my life without cellphones and "social networks" (which used to be called "circles of friends").

I mean, you can't blame the kids for feeling alienated by the very technology that connects them. "Networking" is itself a tech term -- it's all links and nodes and patterns of connectivity. Just calling something "networking" essentially dehumanizes it. People my age still find it novel, of course, and get a kick out of saying it. It makes us feel cutting edge and cool.

Because we still inhabit (in that gauzy dream-lens of memory through which we view the present) a life before cells and social networks.

Life was harder then. That's what these kids don't get. I remember driving back to Southern Indiana from Arkansas in college in my sputtering VW Fastback, and having a breakdown around midnight about fifteen miles outside of Bloomington. Back in those pre-cell phone days, you had no choice but to get out and hitch your way to the nearest service station or to a truck-stop with a grimy, germ-ridden pay-phone (and this was also pre-Purell, which was introduced on the market in 1996).

(On the flipside, this was also the easiest way to get laid in Southern Indiana in the pre-Grindr era. It was a lot of work, but occasionally worth it.)

Ah, Youth!

Kids these days don't know how easy they've got it! Or maybe they do, and want it to be harder. But they don't know. I wish we had a time machine we could send some of them back to 1987 -- not the Hollywood version of 1987. The real 1987.

Of course, youth is always steeped in unwarranted assumptions and misplaced great expectations. That's what youth is, and why we look back on it with such embarrassment and wistful longing. The kids currently set on rejecting facebook (not the cranks constantly caterwauling about privacy protections) are looking for something real to devote ten hours a day to, and they are right to suspect that facebook ain't it. (Back in 1987 it was cheap wine, marijuana and blowjobs in the front seat of a Malibu Classic in the Broad Ripple Park parking lot with The Smiths' "Strangeways Here We Come" in the tape deck.)

For us old coots facebook is kind of cool, because we don't expect it to be a bottle of cheap wine and a blowjob in the park.

I mean, you've got to look at it in context and understand how long it has taken -- long, in internet terms, obviously -- to come to a point where there's the tantalizing prospect of one-stop shopping for all the disparate elements -- entertainment, information, interactivity -- that define the web for the layman.

Facebook did not invent friendship and doesn't care how you define it. To appreciate its success (which it will squander in very short order, I assure you) you have to think back to when you had to visit youtube to see a youtube video and go to blogspot to read a blog.

Remember -- not so long ago -- the off-putting prevalence of those chain-spams you used to get from your aunt every morning because she was afraid God would smite her if she didn't forward them to everyone in her aol address book? Well, now she's got facebook, and you can just unfollow her. And she's none the wiser!

Seriously: if you're finding facebook oppressive, you're doing it wrong. I mean, I don't look at facebook as a real social network and so do not expect anything that I would expect from a real social network from the virtual social network of facebook.

Real social networks take a great deal of grooming, and we use them to build alliances, trade influence, get jobs, and make things happen in the world. They are based on consistency of character, establishing reputation, and the concept of reciprocal altruism. Their currency is mutual favors. In terms the facebook generation can understand: real social networks are basically Mafia Wars.

I mean, facebook is just not all that. In fact -- ask you facebook "friends" something useful -- ask 'em for help finding a job or moving house -- and see what happens. Go ahead. I'll wait.

You back?

So whudja get?

Yeah, uh: a whole lotta nothin'. Peppered with annoying OMGs and ROFLMAOs. And a cat video or two.

Truth is, facebook is kind of a reverse social network. An anti-social-network, if you will. With prospective employers trolling for dirt on applicants, your so-called facebook friends are likely to do you more harm than good in the real world.

So the trick is not to assume or expect anything. I mean, facebook is great for folks you hardly know who might share your opinions on youtube cat videos. And it's actually a great way for a nonprofit to build a rapport with a volunteer or donor base. It's a great way for an organization to hook its members up with each other and build a sense of community, virtual though it may be, that can motivate them to go out and explore the real one, too.

I recently got a call from one of our members who wanted to donate ten grand. He said he was amazed at how much we'd been able to accomplish in such a short time, and it inspired him to give.

I was enormously grateful, of course (and humbled, as they say), but couldn't help asking myself: did we really accomplish all that much, or was it our constant contact with our base -- largely through various media and social networking sites -- that made them feel that the organization finally had some momentum? Whatever it was, it's translated into real giving.

That's social networking.

What these young Luddites are yearning for is obviously authenticity -- a robust authenticity -- in social relations. That's actually less a Luddite thing than a youth thing, I think.

I went through a very long period, twenty years of intense searching for just this sort of authenticity, and felt I occasionally found it in the sport of spontaneous sexual experience -- in an alley outside a fin de siècle bathhouse in Budapest at 2 a.m. with my pants around my ankles grappling and grunting with a randy Hungarian in a similar predicament. For example.

But the truth is, everything surrounding the Thing Itself -- the moment of orgasm -- is theater. Well, at least for men -- remember: men can't fake orgasm.

Although -- if I can digress a moment -- I recall one irritating rutting session with The Ex where he actually said, "I think I came."

"You think you came?" I said incredulously.

"Yeah, I think so" -- *Blink, blink* -- came the clueless reply.

"How -- what -- who has ever -- ?" I stammered. "How can you not know? You've been coming five times a day--" (chronic masturbator) -- "for thirty years! Did you come or didn't you?"

I never got a straight answer, but, guys, the proof is, uh, in the pudding.

And maybe that's the problem with facebook: no pudding. Swapping cute cat videos is good as far as it goes, but out in the real world it's not who you know, it's who you blow.

All I'd say to the anti-social networking crowd is, lookit, you can choose your friends (and unchoose them, too) -- but it's a lot easier on facebook than in real life. OK, occasionally the unfriended will hunt you down and torch your house, but, trust me, in real life you hardly ever get off that easy.

So relax. Enjoy. Maybe have a bottle of wine and share a cat video or two. "Like" something. LOL -- Heck, ROFLMFAO -- while your at it. Maybe someone'll give you a color-changing flasher pig on Farmville. That's what facebook friends are for.

Why Occupy Must Defy

Mike Mennonno — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:45:45 GMT

Yesterday's Suffolk Superior Court ruling denying Occupy Boston an injunction against eviction from Dewey Square brings Boston a step closer to doing what cities across the nation have been doing the last several weeks: trying to shut down the Occupy movement.

Mayor Menino has taken to offering Occupiers advice as a prelude to evicting them: "If they had one issue, they could be a very powerful operation. They don’t have one issue; they have several issues.”

The Mayor also noted: "You know, mayors can’t do much about what they are talking about. It’s Congress and the US Senate that can make these decisions, but nobody is talking to them at all.”

Occupy Wall Street, he's saying, should go occupy Washington.

But the innovation and the power of Occupy Wall Street is in actually occupying Wall Street. The Occupy meme is likewise powerful precisely because it is not a one-off march on Washington. These days even a hundred thousand people on the mall elicits a big ol' been-there-done-that yawn. As we saw in the Bush years some of the largest war protests in the nation's history were very easily ignored by the media and lawmakers alike.

And the Occupy Movement, lacking a media sponsor, was ignored at first, too. Fox, sponsor of the Tea Party Movement, refused to cover it (even to mock it), and the other Cable networks, which generally follow Fox's lead in their bid for ratings, once again followed suit.

If it had been a one-off protest in Washington -- even a day of satellite protests nationwide, we would not even remember it, much less be talking about it today. The fact that, as Menino rightly points out, there isn't one single issue but a whole contellation of entrenched inequalities and encroaching injustices Occupiers want to talk about, would only make a march the more ineffectual.

A sustained presence is what was -- is -- called for. Because, as goofy as the human mic and dancing fingers are (and they are), what the idealists of Occupy are doing is speaking complicated truths to an increasingly monolithic power, a power that has become calcified and impervious to the will of the people.

The degree to which power has been consolidated over the past 25 years (and exponentially in the last ten) has shut down the possibility of serious discussion on -- surprise! -- precisely the issue of consolidation of power, which is manifest not only in the astromical wealth gap but in the degree to which our public discourse is now dictated by those on the other side of the Great Divide, who write the laws for a kept Congress and own and operate the media (even public broadcasting has a host of the vilest corporate sponsors imaginable -- from Exxon Mobil and Monsanto to Bank of America and McDonald's -- to whom they are in some manner accountable).

In an environment of near-complete consolidation and control of politics and media, the ability of individuals to gather in public spaces to express discontent is more important than ever, regardless of inconvenience or cost (two of the most common reasons cities are giving to shut down Occupy encampments). Virtual crowds can be ignored. Real crowds, not so much. Or only to a point.

And it has to do with being physically present. When the disembodied discourse has become totally untethered from the reality of the daily life of ordinary people -- our bodies become our last bastion. When people go -- physically -- into the breach, it's a potent reminder of what is really at stake.

That's why the presence of individuals at Occupy sites speaks volumes. Like the conscience of the nation they speak to the sense, sometimes explicit but mostly elusive to articulate, that there is something so wrong none of us any longer even pretends to believe the lies we use to cover it up. Occupiers' willingness to literally embody that sense of outrage is what makes them a danger to the Powers That Be.

Make no mistake, the Powers That Be have been pushing the middle class to the brink to see just where the breaking point is. And their contempt for the rest of us has grown palpable. The fact that Occupy is pushing back, while an act of collective courage, is also an indication of the degree of desperation among a populace that finally grasps its political impotence.

A favorite refrain of self-identified liberals during the Bush years was: "where's the outrage???" Occupy, though it came too late for Bush, answered this question, quite literally. (One reason it came during Obama's term is that Obama didn't in the end acknowledge this question or answer it himself. And when all his soaring rhetoric produced neither hope nor change, the impatience of those who had believed he would address the outrages finally boiled over.)

The point is: despite advice from well-meaning allies that suggest it may be time to move on, Occupation is the source of the Occupy Movement's power. The physical presence of Occupiers is the source of any successes the movement has had and the only hope of success for the movement in the future.

The media would love to find two or three "Occupy" personalities to co-opt (and, believe me, there are many Occupiers out there who would relish the celebrity), and incorporate their "views" into the mainstream monologue. As the Occupiers disperse these personalities would represent cultural stereotypes, and political speech would be transformed by the magic of modern media into the anodyne entertainment we've come to expect and love.

But it's the presence of bodies, as in warfare, that lends real heft to ideas and convictions. And, because of the undeniability of bodies, elicits physical force in response. The methods we've seen so far of physically removing Occupiers is the most powerful indictment of the power structure they seek to "out" that seeks to suppress them.

Witnessing physical assaults of the sort we saw in Oakland, Berkeley, and UC Davis was a wake-up call. Not only can we not NOT have a response, the nature of our response then requires real reflection.

We fear nothing -- not even tyranny -- so much as physical violence to our persons. Which is why organized violence is at the heart of the durability of all tyrannical regimes. Violence -- and the constant threat of violence -- is the operating mode of tyranny. When we see our government utilizing violence against nonviolent protesters, it exposes a truth about our freedoms in a way that is immediately comprehnsible and compelling.

When we see violence (I won't use the redundant term "excessive force" which bespeaks the depth of doublethink in our current culture) as a response to political speech it exposes in a way nothing else can the organizing principle and priorities of power in society. When people who look like you and me are beaten with batons or casually assaulted with pepper spray by anonymous stormtroopers, the symbolic reality that undergirds the order of society is suddenly made very real -- it's given flesh. Flesh that bruises, burns and breaks.

It will sound, uh, spectatorial (if that's a word) to say that the 99% needs to feel your pain, Occupiers, but they do.

Mayor Menino's next move will be to evict you from Dewey Square. That's clear. The Mayor has never been a fan of Occupy Boston. Recall his "I will not tolerate civil disobedience in the city of Boston" bluster after evicting early Occupiers from a parcel on the Greenway? Well, now he's got a judge who agrees with him. One who doesn't see the Occupation as an exercise in free speech.

But Judge McIntyre is wrong. Your presence speaks volumes. The proof is in the pudding. Try as they might, the Powers That Be obviously can't ignore you.