I'm Not Wild About The New Bowie, & I Hope I'm Wrong

Today, people are having opinions. Lots and lots of opinions about David Bowie, a man whose media attention has, in the last few years, been at an historic low. Good or bad, The Next Day​ merits having some opinions—and just that is a triumph, I think. Like everyone else, I listened to the album this afternoon on iTunes, and I don't like it very much.

The new David Bowie is currently available to stream for free on iTunes, and the question on everyone’s mind is, “How sad should this make us?” The Next Day is the onetime superstar’s first album since 2003′s indifferently-received Reality, and it hasn’t been hotly anticipated so much as warily watched out for. If this were Springsteen or the Stones, no one would worry too much. We know they’re doing fine. But Bowie made his bones as an artist, and just because he hasn’t made any good art in decades doesn’t mean that his ambition is gone. This is a man whom we don’t want to fail.

The question is what constitutes failure for Bowie. Should we treat this as a serious attempt, and trash it? Or do we let him coast on his name, and give him another pass? It depends on whether or not you still take Bowie seriously as an artist—or whether you think he takes himself seriously. It's a big question, and one that I am way, way, way under qualified to answer. ​One thought I had though—for every article you see about this album (including my two), take a look at the accompanying photos. If every picture you see is from the '70s, well, that says more about this album's importance than I can.

I'm going to give the album a few more listens this week, and hope it grows on me. Heathen ​and Reality​ both did, although I haven't really listened to them much since high school. You'll feel much less conflicted about The Next Day if you like the album straight off, as Gothamist​ does. I hope everyone feels the same way they do. I hope I am completely wrong.

Today in, "Oh No They Didn't," The USPS Takes On Dolly

All right, so the post office isn't really going to war with the woman who wrote "Jolene," "9 to 5" and "I Will Always Love You."​ They'd have to be goddamned fools. But they are screwing with her charity, and I don't like that one bit, so I wrote a doodad about it:

As if the United States Postal Service didn’t have enough trouble, a little-noticed news item ran this week that suggests they are about to make a powerful new enemy: East Tennessee’s favorite daughter, Miss Dolly Parton. In 1996, Parton founded the Imagination Library, which sent a free book every month to children in Sevier County, the forever-impoverished mountain community where she was born in 1946. (Huh. Never thought of Dolly as a baby boomer.) In 2000, she took the program nationwide, partnering with local libraries and community groups to spread the love of reading across the United States. It’s an uncontroversial charity, because everyone likes reading.

Everyone, that is, besides the Post Office. The local newspaper from Maryville, Tennessee, reported this week that the Post Office has begun throwing out Imagination Library books that were returned due to a bad address. Although the local Kiwanis Club was once allowed to pick these books up free of charge, Uncle Sam has changed his mind. Post Office flunky David Walton said:

They are wanting to go pick those books up without paying that return fee. We can’t afford that. They are wanting to … bypass that fee that most other mailers pay. For some time, they have been getting away with that. It’s costing us money.

For the Post Office, I predict this will prove a fatal mistake.

Read on, if you'd like to know more about why I love love love Dolly Parton.​ Is this a Tennessee thing, or do people nationwide find her incredibly inspiring? I don't know the answer, but I do know that if I have a few too many beers tonight, this is the song I'm putting on the jukebox:

The Porter Wagoner Show

This Post Contains Photo Evidence That Cats Are Rude

Yesterday I tried to explain that my one week break from entertaining you was due to some poppycock about finishing a rewrite of a new play.​ This was a pathetic lie. In fact, the reason I spent seven days not typing for you is pictured above. The problem is A Cat, and it is a doozy.

I mention it not as part of some bald-faced traffic-grab. As far as I'm aware, photos of cats are among the least popular things on the Internet. I share this with you because a bit of historical research has shown me that my problem—a cat on the thing I'm working on—is not something I have to face alone. In fact, it's been happening for hundreds of years. From The Atlantic Wire​:

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Image ripped off from the Atlantic Wire, taken by Emir O. Filipovich.​

Now, via medievalist Emir O. Filipovic, evidence that cats have been up to this same mischief for six centuries: inky pawprints, gracing a page of the 13th volume of "Lettere e commissioni di Levante," which collated copies of letters and instructions that the Dubrovnik/Ragusan government sent to its merchants and envoys throughout southeastern Europe (Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia etc.), according to Filipovic -- sort of a 15th-century Federal Register. The particular document that the cat got its paws on dates to March 11th, 1445.

​Not only is this adorable, it is reassuring. My cat isn't the only nuisance—my work isn't the only work being interrupted. My lie about finishing a play can die here. Obviously, it would have been impossible for me to work on the play anyway. When the cat isn't on the computer, she's here:

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Dog is man's best friend. Cat is writer's worst enemy.​

The State Of The Union: Strong, Stronger, Strongest

A nifty little piece from Monday's Times goes into the modern history of the phrase, "The state of the union is strong"—a speechwriting cliche that is now impossible for a president to avoid, lest he appear a negative Nancy. Like other irritating aspects of the President's annual address, this bit of fluff is the fault of Ronald Reagan, whose brand was optimism, and whose superpower was an ability to wring life from meaningless phrases. It was not always thus, says the Times!

Presidents once used other words to describe the state of our union. President Jimmy Carter liked to call it “sound.” President Harry S. Truman liked to call it “good.” President Lyndon B. Johnson, in a lyrical moment, described the state of the union in 1965 as “free and restless, growing and full of hope.”

And when things were not going well, they said so.

“I must say to you that the state of the union is not good,” President Gerald R. Ford said in 1975, citing high unemployment, slow growth and soaring deficits. He added, “I’ve got bad news, and I don’t expect much, if any, applause.”

To prevent future generations from being bored to death by their elected officials, I hereby provide a list of adjectives, free of charge, to describe our union's state. Because the speech is nothing but political theater—have I mentioned lately how much I hate that phrase?—it doesn't matter if the chosen adjective is accurate, or even sensical. It's Washington—nobody's listening anyway, not even Ted Nugent.

So, the state of the union is:

• Bumping
  
• Crunchtastic
• Even flabbier than expected
• Disgruntled
• Over-caffeinated 
• Dimwitted
• Zesty
• Zestacular
• Zestacious
• Sexually mature
• Stuck in traffic
• Arachnophobic
• Increasingly horny
• Pretty drunk for a Tuesday

Embarrassing Dating & Embarrassing Congressmen

And while I'm posting clips, there are two more that I was too busy—read: lazy—to share with you good people. Ze first comes from Narratively, one in a collection of vignettes about the pains, horror and strife that come with dating. It's an incredibly embarrassing story from an incredibly embarrassing time: the middle of my freshman year of college.

It seemed I was the only person on campus not getting laid hourly during my freshman year at NYU. The trouble was a steadfast commitment to a long distance girlfriend whom I loved too much to cheat on.

Long distance relationships are tricky because long distance sex is unfeasible, for now. So I dreamed up a Valentine’s Day surprise to return to her bed as soon as possible.

She expected me back in Nashville late February 14th, but I decided to cut class and go home a day early. I’d tell her to step outside her house, where I would be waiting for hugs and kisses. It would blow her goddamned mind.

You'll never guess it, but complications ensue. While I'm bothered by the Narratively editors insistance on splitting my work up into tiny little paragraphs, I think the story turned out well. They're fun dudes to work for, and I'm hoping to do more of it in the future. 

The second post is another one at Bullett, this time about the already-forgotten controversy over historical inaccuracy in Lincoln. It's mostly worth it for the alliteration of "Kushner Krushes Kongressman." At the end, I reach some conclusions about the truth, which I hate.

It’s silly to demand accuracy in film. The IMDB comments section for your average historical drama is populated by whinging history buffs who don’t understand that movies are not supposed to be textbooks. Anything that must be sacrificed for the sake of the story should be sacrificed. When I first heard of Courtney’s ire, I was naturally sympathetic. It seems like such an easy thing to get right, and Lincoln’s grotesque run time turned me against the movie long ago. But Kushner has a way with words, and he talked me into it. If he changed those votes on purpose, then he had a good reason. The historical record is meaningless. Storytelling is king.

Enjoy your Tuesday, you wonderful literate person, you.

Aw Man, I'm Gonna Miss Ed Koch

A lot of people are writing about Ed Koch today. Everyone who's doing so is more qualified than me, but nobody is more qualified than the man himself, who recently recorded an interview with the Times intended to be published after his death. Watch it. Enjoy the sight of a cranky, lively old man reminiscing about the '77 riots, the Village in the '60s, and Mario Cuomo's enduring prickishness. Key quote, on Rudy Giuliani:

"He was a good mayor, but he was a bad man. He was mean-spirited. . . . Rudy was not a racist—he was mean to everybody!"

If I'd been living in New York in the '80s, I have a hunch I would have loathed Koch. But as politicians age, controversy recedes, and all that's left is personality. As far as personality goes, Koch couldn't be beat. He was also the finest film reviewer this city has ever seen. His take on Once:

This film wasn’t Irish enough for me, but it is good and will have to do until the next one is made which I will rush to see. I saw it at the Landmark’s Sunshine Cinema on East Houston Street in Manhattan. The majority of the people in the audience, mostly in their 20s and 30s, applauded when it ended. I snapped my fingers.

I interviewed Koch for a fairly dopey Observer article in 2011. I only got to use a paragraph of it, but we spoke for twenty or thirty minutes, and it was one of the coolest things I've ever gotten to do as a reporter. Here's the bit that got printed:

A survey of some of New York’s busiest people suggested that, despite the appeal of such software, the simplicity of the notepad is irresistible. Ed Koch is never without one. “It’s about four inches long and two inches wide,” he said of his pad. As mayor he required his commissioners to submit monthly lists of success and failure—a kind of never-ending performance review—and now he uses lists to keep track of the various issues he pursues as a pundit, columnist and film critic. As of last week, he said, “the top of my list is Medicare.”

A politician with personality. You hate to see that go.

This Just In: Facebook is For Old People

My girlfriend works in the Newark public school system—a gig that makes my freelance toil look even less impressive than it really is. Speaking to a student a few weeks ago, a question popped into her head: "Do you still use Facebook?"

"Oh no," said the student. "Facebook is for old people."

If there had been Bloomberg microphone there, Facebook's stock would have tumbled to zero. Students in my girlfriend's school are turned off by Facebook's monolithic structure, and have turned to sites that offer broken-down versions of Facebook's tools: Instagram for pictures, Twitter for words, Pinterist for whatever Pinterist is for. When teenagers do use Facebook, it's apparently only to slutshame. According to that excellent NPR report, Facebook declines to remove naked pictures of teenage girls. Breastfeeding, of course, remains taboo.

Once it becomes widely understood that Facebook has stopped being cool—a realization that I think must be less than six months away—the company will go into a seizure. I look forward to watching it. After spending years making the site into a one-stop-shop, will they attempt to reverse course, exploding themselves like Ma Bell in an attempt to recapture the glimmer of youth? How long before we get Facebook EDGE, a teens-only safe space where kids can post as much sexually explicit gibberish as they like?

I truly hope that the Zuckerberg Empire makes a sad grab for relevance. Since their original concept caught on, the people at Facebook have done an abysmal job giving its  customers what they want. Their privacy violations come like clockwork, and each new feature seems to alienate users more than the one before. Facebook's continued success has come from its ubiquity. Take that away, and the giant will falter. As soon as insecure users get wind that the kids have fled to Snapchat, the adults will follow suit, and Facebook will be left a ghost town, a dead mall.

Will Facebook do what we all have so much trouble doing, and accept that it will never be young again? Or will it hypercorrect, and become the aging hipster that kids of all ages love to mock?

To Title Pornography, Go Filthy Or Go Home

If there's one thing to be said for bad Broadway shows, it's the speed with which they recede from memory. Remember The Performers? Neither do I. Writing this paragraph, I had to google "Broadway show pornography" to remember its title, a google search that sadly did not turn up screenshots from Liza Does Dallas or a literal production of The Iceman Cometh. I forgot the name of that show even though I eulogized its closing, taking the opportunity to complain about one of my comedy pet peeves: "funny" porn titles based on the names of hit movies.

Comedy writers of the world—can we put this tedious joke behind us? Can we dig a joke-sized hole in the backyard and bury it under cover of darkness? Can we spend the seven or eight seconds it would take to come up with something else that’s funny about sex?

I mean, everything is funny about sex. Pick anything else.

I bring up the old article not just because I'm too lazy to write anything new, although that is often the case. Yesterday, Gawker published the AVN Awards list of nominees for "Clever Title Of The Year," and it's a list that I would like to think would put imaginary titles like Das Booty away forever. Because the thing is, clever porn titles aren't that clever. You may be surprised to hear this, but the people who make pornography have an eight year-old's sense of humor and a ten year-old's vocabulary. The list is amazing not because the titles are clever, but because they are so emphatically blunt. These really sound like porn titles. You just can't make this stuff up.

I was going to append an NSFW tag to the following list, but decided that anyone whose job prevents them from reading lists of bad words should probably quit their job. I will say, the following titles are not safe to scream out in your cubicle. They're legitimately filthy. Seriously. You should start washing your eyeballs now.

Clever Title of the Year

• Asphyxia Heels the World, BurningAngel/Vouyer
• Brooklyn Egg Cream on the Roxxx, Seymore Butts/Pure Play
• Chocolate Covered Crackers, Black Magic Pictures
• Chocolate Yam Yams, Black Storm/Monarchy/Vantage
• Does This Dick Make My Ass Look Big?, Vouyer Media
• Look Mom, My First Black Penis, Mike Hunt/Juicy
• My Wife Caught Me Assfucking Her Mother, Devil's Film
• Nice Shoes, Wanna Fuck?, Electric/Hustler
• Occupy My Ass, Bobbi Starr/Evil Angel
• She Plays a Mean Rusty Trombone!, Lethal Hardcore/Pulse
• Show Me Your Shithole, B. Pumper/Freaky Empire
• Somebody Shave Me, Zero Tolerance Entertainment
• The Spit and the Speculum, Mike Adriano/Evil Angel
• Subtle Fragrance of Her Private Parts, Swank/Pure Play
• We Vow to Bang Black Beotches, Kelly Madison/Juicy

Does This Dick Make My Ass Look Big took home the prize, though I think honorable mentions are due to The Spit and the Speculum and Subtle Fragrance of Her Private Parts, for making my skin crawl without using any dirty words. That's writing!

A Hoax Is Okay When 'Sports Illustrated' Is In On It

Even the sports-indifferent Internet is agog today at Deadspin's scoop. The story of Manti Te'o's imaginary girlfriend is only the first half of an already insane story—a star football player either got tricked into falling in love with an imaginary girlfriend, or made her up himself. The mainstream journalists who covered the story, including some at Sports Illustrated failed to factcheck because who would doubt a star athlete when he says his girlfriend is dying of cancer? What kind of journalist could be so cynical? In Deadspin's telling, the answer is, "a good one."

I smiled when I started reading this story, and got giddy as it went on—not because I'm happy about the darkness at its heart, but because I can't help but love a good hoax. Even the word is tantalizing—redolent of con men, snake oil salesmen, and the bygone days when the media was strong enough that, if a newspaper was fooled, the nation was too. This hoax has everything: sex, sport, death and mormons. It's even better than the hipster grifter.

For whatever reason, it made me think of Sidd Finch. Sidd, the mysterious yogi-cum-fastballer who threw 168 miles per hour, was lauded in an April Fool's Day Sports Illustrated as the greatest baseball prospect in history. Even if it weren't published on April 1, George Plimpton's story includes enough outlandish details that the prank should have been obvious. Finch pitched with one bare foot and one work boot; he carried a French horn everywhere; and he was the son of Indiana Jones:

Finch spent his early childhood in an orphanage in Leicester, England and was adopted by a foster parent, the eminent archaeologist Francis Whyte-Finch, who was killed in an airplane crash while on an expedition in the Dhaulagiri mountain area of Nepal. At the time of the tragedy, Finch was in his last year at the Stowe School in Buckingham, England, from which he had been accepted into Harvard. Apparently, though, the boy decided to spend a year in the general area of the plane crash in the Himalayas (the plane was never actually found) before he returned to the West and entered Harvard in 1975, dropping for unknown reasons the "Whyte" from his name.

But people believed it. In Plimpton's telling, the New York Mets kept their star prospect so under wraps, it was a struggle to even get the story. Every bit of information he finds only deepens the mystery, making the gawky young man a legend by the end of the first page. Well-faked quotes from Mets officials, other players, and people out of Finch's shadowy past give it credibility. (Mets brass was actually in on the joke, making me nostalgic not just for the days when the Mets would land a mythical pitching prospect, but also had a sense humor.) Find this story folded into what was then the home of sports journalism, and it would be easy to believe.

And, of course, that's what we want to do. Sports appeal to our sentimental side, the part of us that wants to believe that superheroes are real. We like it when normal people do things like this, and we get irrational when we find out they did it by cheating.  Tell us a lie, and we'll believe it, just so long as it's amazing. Thankfully, Deadspin is wary of a story that's too good to be true. Google in hand, they would have blown the Sidd Finch story out of the water in a matter of minutes.

People are less bothered by a hoax when the media is in on it. The people responsible go down as scoundrels; the people who fell for it are mocked as rubes. The Sidd Finch hoax was more of a prank—it was April Fool's Day, for god's sake, and it was done in good fun. We need the media to be smarter than we are, and when we prank us, that superiority is reinforced. When the media gets hoodwinked, it's sickening.

Stupid Stuff I've Done, Illustrated!

A site I've been doing some work for, Narratively, solicited their writers this week for stories about all-nighters. I picked over my brain, looking for memories of all the times in college when I partied 'till dawn, and was finally forced to conclude that partying 'till dawn was just not something I did. 'Till 3, maybe, but seldom dawn.

But then I remembered—all night stories don't have to be fun. In fact, it's better if they aren't! So I sharpened my brain-pencil and got to work telling the story of one of the dumbest things I've ever done, which started with an all-nighter and ended in anguish on the Jamaica LIRR platform.

No matter how neatly they rhyme, don’t trust friends who say, “Early flight? Stay up all night!”

Leaving New York after my freshman year at NYU, I booked an eight a.m. flight and was foolish enough to let my best friend turn my ordeal into a party. With the graceless vigor of those young enough to still have a metabolism, we threw ourselves into an all-nighter fueled by Talking Heads, lamb gyros and the world’s worst Manhattans—an abominable mix of Canadian whiskey and dry vermouth that only a freshman could love. But my friends fell well short of greeting the dawn.

“It’s past two,” they whined. “We’re going to bed.”

Half-drunk and fully alone, I put aside my wistfulness and whirlwinded around the apartment, cramming my crap into any bit of luggage that could hold it. Just before dawn, I staggered out of my dorm for the last time, dragging two rolling suitcases, a three-ton duffel and a Duane Reade bag full of sneakers. Unable to carry my Totally Awesome dorm room posters, I left them behind, and my dorm rooms were never Totally Awesome again. I hailed a cab for JFK and slipped into sleep.

It gets a lot dumber from there. There are nine or so other stories on that page, and they're all doosies. Mine is at the bottom presumably because it provides the kind of moral weight that you want to close a piece with.

The neatest thing, really, is that the good folks at Narratively solicited an illustration from a woman who works at Hatch Show Print, a letterpress shop that can only be called a Nashville institution. I fantasize about one day having a play produced in Nashville—Dark Horse theater producers, if you're reading this, call me—and to see my name in Hatch's big, beautiful, blocky letters. Being illustrated by a Hatch employee will tide me over for now.