Last night, as I do on many a Saturday night, I worked the door at Fly. Corner of Divisadero and Fulton here in SF. Easy and lazy little job. JV the manager is an old college friend of ours. Come by and visit me sometime. Great food, mind-altering/improving sangria, sake cocktails, nice bartenders, not too pricey.
For the sake of some of my less sophisticated readers, whomsoever they may be, I'd like to impart a few chunks of advice and/or "wisdom" for when the mood strikes to go out drinking.
From the POV of the doorman:
1. Don't paste someone else's photo on your sister's second driver's licence, 3 years expired, and then hand it to me. I don't like getting glue on my fingers.
2. If you dress incredibly poorly and give me lip, I won't let you in on general principle, even if you're 50. There might even be a convincing public policy argument there.
3. If in the same breath you offer to tip me and then tell me to fuck off after I say "No thank you, that's OK, you don't need to tip me," I won't let you in. Fuck you right back.
4. If you're an incredibly hot chick, dumb-ass ill-clad drooling guys dripping off you and hanging on your every move, slinking your way out of a cab toward the door on your imaginary red carpet, the only thing missing is the flashbulbs etc, DO NOT hand me an ID that says "age 21 in 2006" when it's November 2004. I don't like embarrassing people in front of their throngs of admirers.
5. If you've been smoking crack all day, go away. Now. Don't talk to me. Don't talk period.
6. If I don't let you in, don't come back 20 minutes later with your "other" ID hoping I've forgotten you. It won't work, and I might hit you.
7. If you're 50 and I card you, take it as a short & sweet compliment and not as an opportunity to give me a verbal treatise about the "good old days."
8. If you go out for a smoke, I'll most likely remember you. Don't panic.
9. The louder you get, the righter you ain't. I don't care what bug crawled up into your O-ring. Yelling at me will do more harm than good.
10. A library card, even a brand new one, is not a valid ID. Neither is a MUNI transfer.
11. If you have an expired ID but you're obviously old enough, be the last in your group to be carded. If I've already let all your friends in, I'll let you in.
12. Very important: I reserve the right to refuse entry to anyone for any reason, including looks. Try not to look stupid. At least not stupider than the happy-go-lucky doorman...
The suicide of Iris Chang last week gave me a prolonged moment of pause. I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with her some years back during one very strange weekend, shortly after "The Rape Of Nanking" came out, and her now-famous intensity was not lost on me. I'll write in more detail later about the particulars of just how, where, and when I got to meet her. For now I'll just say I met a bunch of other amazing people that weekend; I shook President Clinton's hand twice, I pissed in the urinal next to Al Franken, nearly tripped over Ruth Westheimer, and traded quips with Bill Nye The Science Guy. My brother tried to get Chelsea Clinton's number (exactly what one would expect from him), and failed...
The world needs about a billion more people like Iris Chang. Maybe folks would think twice about behaving like morons, entire governments would reconsider stupid foreign policy, and tin-hat homocidal "world leaders" would take a big step back for fear of being shoved into the unkind court of global opinion. But even if Japan issues an apology for the Nanking atrocity tomorrow, realizing one of Chang's goals, it would have been worth it if it came a day later if she had just taken a few days off once in a while.
I think this is important. No matter how dedicated and passionate about anything you are, take a break. Put your all into it, but remember to take a break. Lots of them. Iris Chang was so passionate about exposing atrocity and injustice that she forgot all about herself, and ultimately was suffocated by her own drive. She apparently covered the walls of her study with horrendous photos depicting the atrocities in Nanking, and wouldn't let herself get away from it all. In the end it became utterly impossible.
Take a break and breathe. Have a nice scotch or a glass of wine. Smell a friggin' flower! Play with a dog and pet a cat. Cook something great, and THEN get back to work. Repeat.
Rest in much-deserved peace, Iris Chang. Good work. It was nice to have met you.
Remember Janet Jackson's spectacularly choreographed wardrobe malfunction during the Super Bowl? Remember the ensuing fallout (no pun intended...)? Remember the precedent-setting fine the FCC levied on CBS/MTV/Viacom et al as a result of this decency-threatening indecency?
Several ABC stations are refusing to air 'Saving Private Ryan' this Memorial Day, for fear the word 'fuck' uttered/yelled in the context of battle or footage of severed limbs will invite similar fines, as a direct result of the new 'decency standards' imposed by the FCC. In years past, ABC has aired this movie on this day not only unedited, but free of commercials. What changed? Janet's right hooter.
Anyone ever been to Europe? You can scarcely walk past a newsstand without seeing at least 19 exposed breasts. As we say here in America, won't someone PLEEEEEZZZEEE think of the children?!?!?
Now, I am a football fan of sorts. 49ers football has surely provided my friends and me with some good times, and frequently some damn nail-biting and historic times over the years. I am fan enough to loathe the Raiders. And the Broncos. And any team that TO winds up on, so fuck the Eagles this year. The Chargers are actually doing well right now, though I may have just jinxed it all by writing that. Sorry, guys...
But we all the know the Super Bowl has little if anything to do with football, much less with sportsmanship/good taste/talent/production value. Certainly in recent years it has become merely another televised platform for rampant chest-thumping jingoism, briefly interrupted by a running play executed by one of two teams few people wanted to see there anyway. The sheer number of times we were treated to a replay of Janet's boob being flung out to the world just proves exactly how "offensive" it really was. Tabloid TV defined in spades, all across your remote.
'Saving Private Ryan' is not only among the best war movies ever made, it is one of the best movies ever made. It was made specifically to pay tribute to those who participated in D-Day. It's not easy to watch at times. But it is an important movie, and has been widely hailed among D-Day vets as the most accurate cinematic depiction of what it was like to be there (plus, Tom Hanks can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned). To refuse to air it for fear of being fined because of one banal pop star's exposed breast is a mighty Dubya slap in the face to The Greatest Generation.
And it makes no goddamn sense. Isn't it The Red States that scream and yell until blue-faced about decency and morality and values, and then in the same breath stick "Support Our Troops" bumper stickers on their Ford Exploitators? One especially stupid conservative radio talk show host said something today to the effect that he didn't want the same network that brings him Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune also to bring him a movie showing a guy getting his head blown off. Fine, guy. Just remember that even as I write this drivel, some nice guy from America's heartland is getting his head blown off in that sunny cradle-of-humanity Iraq, that dew-drenched paradise Falujah, and I'll bet you'll be gearing up to tell me what a hero he is tomorrow. Tell it all to the surviving D-Day guys. Sorry; didn't mean to interrupt your nightly dose of Wheel.
Those affiliates that refuse to air the movie are apparently showing reruns of The Andy Griffith Show instead, when Ron Howard was about 8 years old. That speaks too much for comment at the moment. Suffice it to say that whistling the theme sure does make you forget about your strife, a fact obviously not lost on Viacom...
I feel truly sick. Sick and embarrassed.
I feel like I have one of those all-over-the-body hangovers, with the added joyful thought that it's not going to go away for a good long time.
Bush won. Well, great big festering pustule-ridden rats. That's too remarkable to think about just now, and what it says about us as a society is horrific. But two things are getting me down in particular about the results of this election, and Bill touched on them over at billrushing.org.
First, this unchecked frapee-ing together of church and state will be one of the major bookmarks of this administration's legacy. "Americans" seem to love this all of a sudden. Isn't that one of the things being American is all about, to be able to believe that someone else's dogmatic fairytale-grasping way of looking at the world and its people, especially our president's, won't be crammed down my throat?
Second, the issue that ultimately drove W to this victory was not his damn war, or the wheezing economy, or health care, but moral and social values. Morals. Values. Those words have new resonance for me at the moment. Just what do those words mean? Do I in fact have any? What are they? I'm not opposed to abortion. If gay people want to marry, fine by me. I don't care who loves whom. The more the better. I don't care about what people choose to do with/to each other with their genitals as long as nobody gets seriously maimed. I would think all of us have more important things to occupy our time and thoughts. So does that mean I have no values? I'm not a moral person? Apparently most of my fellow Americans think so.
So, congratulations to you, goddamn rednecks. Cowboy ignoramuses. Fathead jingoists. Fatally mistaken and misguided Dubya religious nut jobs. Bigmouth blowhard empty-headed cowards. COWARDS! May you choke on your "confidence and faith."
Funny how I always fall back on Douglas Adams in times of stress: "Drink up; the world's about to end..."
Clinton (either one) in '08!!