Support David Wojnarowicz, Stop the Smithsonian

Dear reader(s),

When I was in high school, I knew I was gay and never breathed a word of it.  Back then the motto of AIDS activists was "Silence = Death."  It could have wound up being my epitaph.  Because, during my moratorium of gay expression, I found myself growing ever more isolated and depressed.  I entertained thoughts of suicide.  One day while looking through an art exhibition article I discovered the image and text reproduced above: a work by David Wojnarowicz.

It changed my world.

The dark vacuum of my experience burst into a litter of stars.  All these points of sunlight that linked me to persons and ideas that came before, a constellation of freedoms denied and desired.  I knew I was not going to extinguish myself, because that was not the correct answer to any of the questionable punishments the world might try to inflict on me.  It's all made clear in Mr. Wojnarowicz's text, and I knew it was true in the heart inside my head.

After that I found Mr. Wojnarowicz's memoir, Close to the Knives.  Perhaps the most significant book I've ever read.  You will search and search for something as shimmeringly beautiful, heartbreakingly honest, and vigorously pitiless--and likely come up empty.  Everyone should read it.  In my opinion, everyone on planet Earth should read it.

When I found out that the Smithsonian was pulling the David Wojnarowicz work "A Fire in My Belly" from the National Portrait Gallery's landmark Hide/Seek exhibition, my heart sank.  Because it was possible that someone who needed very badly to learn from Mr. Wojnarowicz would not have that opportunity.  They would be stymied by uninformed Republican leaders and bigoted religious leaders, now, when a message of hope is ardently necessary for gay (and straight) youth.

If you can do something, please do it.  If you can help someone, help them now.  Don't follow the shameful example of the Smithsonian directors and detractors.  Censorship has never helped a single person in history.  But people die from what can't be found in sight every day.

Don't Call It a Closet

One thing that happened during the depression of the 1930's was that entertainments (films, plays, etc...) became more and more lavish.  The thinking being that people wanted to visit worlds that lifted them out of their burdensome existence and placed them someplace grand and rarefied--financial security being so very rare.  It was a sound principal, and many of these flicks made a profit because of it.

However, the unrich patrons were not being duped by anyone.  If you read some news-clippings from that period, the ticket-buyers were well aware of the placebo effect of a few hours spent admiring mansions bedecked with women in festive ball-gowns, all wondering how to get Cary Grant to kiss them before the big fade out.

Our own Great Recession has been a whole lot less egalitarian.  There are no cleverly crafted distractions, no attempts to massage the knotted minds of those who are struggling.  Of course, without a prevailing studio system that really can't happen now.  Instead, what has cropped up is a newfound favoring of the Arts & Leisure & Design & High Fashion crowd as entertainment.

There's just one problem: It's disgusting.

Because these endless articles and shows and websites seem to exist solely to delineate the impenetrable line between the having much and the having little.  And those persons connected to the super-wealthy (who may or may not be such themselves) don't want to be thought of as aspirational, merely exclusive.

Take a recent Home and Garden article in the NYTimes.  A woman who is known for her exclusive and expensive home-cleaning service is supposedly having her apartment profiled by the paper of record.  But instead of descriptions of her wainscoting, we get a description of the intensely comprehensive method her cleaners use for her famous clients.  She mentions how her people will actually take apart cabinets and dressers, simply to clean the runners.  This is nuts.  But she defends her insanity, saying some people have specially designed closets by, for example, Linda London, and these can cost as much as $20,000.

So far, so wasteful: but here's where it gets better.  Someone from the Times must have contacted Ms. London about her services being mentioned.  And she insisted on correcting these erroneous statements.  She does not design closets, but "dressing rooms."  Moreover, the cost for these rooms is typically far above $20,000.

Apparently the suggestion that she would create a storage space for only twenty grand would give the impression that she works for paupers.  I think the oxygen must be pretty thin way up on Ms. London's high horse, if she thinks such comments are appropriate in this economic climate.  Or, truly, anytime ever.

But her attitude is indicative of a whole culture gone flooey.  You're either a someone who's worried about the possible posting of an eviction notice, or someone whose fiefdom might as well be littered with signs that read, "No peasants allowed."  Certainly not in the dressing room.

Things Nobody is Telling You

 

Dear subscriber:  Please no questions.

I have decided to start a new informative feature on this here interblog.  These missives will attempt to explain (or simply demonstrate) how something that should be dandy is actually a minefield of problems.  That is, all the things you should know but wouldn't because nobody is making them explicit.

The first party up for review is the DVD/Online Media subscription service--Netflix.

Here are some things you should know: They still throttle.  A lot of people are under the impression that because of the class action suit, which they paid a lot of money to settle, the activity of throttling had ceased.  (By the by, throttling is when Netflix denies film titles that are in demand to customers that the company feels is using the service too frequently.  That is, getting a large number of DVDs per month.)  But all they did was re-word the service agreement to allow for throttling without impediment by law.  You see, what they mean when they say subscribers can have unlimited rentals is: Please limit yourself, or we will.

No. 2: You will not have access to new Warner Bros. and other studio titles until one month after they are released.  Netflix made a deal with WB to delay renting their latest films in exchange for making more of their back catalog (i.e. the films you've already seen or made the choice to avoid like plague) available for instant viewing.  WB feels this delayed gratification will cause subscribers to rush out and purchase their DVDs.  And while you're out you may as well get it on Blu ray, and come back in a couple months for the Special Edition, and a year after that for the Anniversary Edition...

The above is correlative to No. 3:  Instant viewing is mostly crappy.  By that I don't mean the titles, but rather the execution.  Whether watching on your home computer or HDTV, unless you have a connection that is Microsoft HQ-speedy and wholly free of glitches, the picture and sound are fuzzed and twitchy at best.  The fault of connection speeds cannot be laid at Netflix's door.  But I would rather they stick to their primary mandate--mailing your film choices quickly and seamlessly--than depreciate that service just to amplify the number of movies that you can watch stutter and pixelate on your new big screen TV.

(Feb. 2011 Update: Netflix's instant viewing is a lot better now, even with only a moderately speedy connection.  There are also many more HD titles that look pretty good.  If you're going to go with only an Instant subscription, I can't argue against it.)

No. 4:  Many Fox titles you receive will be stripped of their special features.  Fox, and its affiliate studios, have taken to removing the extras you typically find on DVD releases in exchange for bare-bones presentations.  In many cases, though, the Netflix pages for these films will still indicate that these special features are on the discs.  I know many people don't care about extra features, but these films also won't contain Director's Cuts or Extended versions of the films themselves--that is something customers might well choose over theatrical versions.  The reason behind this: Fox wants to sell (not rent) its wares.

No. 5:  Netflix's customer service is sorely (and surprisingly) lacking.  Sorely, because the reps you speak to either have no clue about which disc side is up, or are pretending to know nothing.  Either way, you're screwed.  Surprisingly, because there is no way to communicate with customer service via the Netflix website or by email.  This seems more than passing strange for an internet-based megalith.  But it does mean there's no electronic paper trail when a rep tells you over the phone that they have no knowledge of why Warner Bros. flicks aren't available, or what might be happening to the Fox films.  Both statements that have been interpolated to me.

So, caveat emptor.  But if you're looking for a sort of, kinda solution...  What I've done is drop my Netflix membership from three titles at a time to one.  And I've picked up the cheapest Blockbuster rental option.  This way I can get any WB films immediately, and Fox titles with their special features (though I get these on Blu ray--no extra charge on Blockbuster, four dollar surcharge on Netflix).  I now pay an extra two bucks per month, but I get the perks and avoid most of the headaches involved with these services.  Or you could just subsist on rabbit ears and YouTube.  That might be the most Zen choice of all

Team Conan Rules All

Oh, NBC.  Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Now is the time for all good men (and women) to come to the aid of this great host and our once-great talk-show institution.

P.S.  The fact that he declared that he would not want to screw over Jimmy Fallon and the Late Night franchise in order to keep a bowdlerized Tonight Show marks him as one helluva stand-up guy.  Just name the time and network, Mr. O'Brien.

This Man is Not an Island

Not interested

I really like travel magazines.  I subscribe to Condé Nast Traveler and Budget Travel.  I also regularly pick up other pubs at the news stand.  During the winter months these magazines all go bug-eyed for tropical locales.  Specifically islands.  And I don't get it.

I mean, I get why someone spending months in the tundra of, say, Minnesota would want to hie him or herself to a sunny beach.  (Though that's not a place I would ever go near.  I grew up in Florida, so I abhor the beach.)  But, why the fixation on islands?

Reading through a random article, here are some of the wonderfully fun things to do on your vacation: Spend a night in a thatched hut on the beach.  Cavort with gigantic robber crabs and other sea life.  Find a tree with coconuts, then knock one down, crack it open and enjoy the raw milk.

Why would I ever want to do these things?  I'd sooner make a list of ideas that represent a waste of vacation time--and put those three near the top.

Trust me, that thatched hut is not going to keep out wind, rain, or bugs.  Those crabs don't want you around, and they will claw your toes to prove that point.  I have tasted fresh coconut milk--it is not worth even half the effort that will go into trying to split that damn shell.

In the same article--I kid you not--the author describes tossing pebbles and watching them skim along the water in the shallow reefs.  So apparently the activity you did as a child when you were completely bored is, on an island, a greatly fun entertainment.

I guess those rocks are made all the more zippy when you realize this is something you get to "enjoy" not far from your $1,000-a-night island suite.

How suite that is?  I don't wanna know.