RIP Number 6

Patrick McGoohan (1928-2009)
A man who became famous for being repeatedly captured by a weather balloon.

I feel really sad about this. The Prisoner was indubitably one of the coolest shows ever to be on television. Surreal, hip, campy and gorgeous to look at, it was the beginning of my love affair with 1960's spy shows, none of which ever lived up to The Prisoner.

McGoohan was really old, and I guess these things just sort of happen. Still, I am saddened by the passing of Number Six, who in all 17 episodes, always furrowed his brow so magnificently, never stopped trying to escape, and finally, never gave Number Two the "information" he so lusted for.

AMC has the whole series online for our streaming pleasure. I would say that I highly recommend it, but that would be a lie. The Prisoner is mandatory viewing.

I am not a number, I am a free man!

Please give me this movie. Place it in my little hands.

imdb-visioneers website-jefferscorp website

When I saw this trailer, I thought I was going to shit myself. Over the past couple of years, I have fallen in love with Zach Galifianakis. It all started with his appearances on Tim and Eric as the head Gravy Robber and the Snuggler. Then, saw his Vodka Movie series, also featuring Tim and Eric, and all love was solidified.

I like Zach Galifianakis because he's fucking funny. You know what I think is really funny? When he gets angry. I think anger is really funny. He can also do/say really bizarre stuff with a completely straight face. I believe Zach Galifianakis in the Vodka Movies. I believe he IS that person.

Visioneers looks bizarre. I think it's a really cool idea. It could be a really good movie. In all probablity, it's a problematic but really interesting and entertaining movie. Even if it's a piece of shit, it will be worth it to see Zach Galifianakis flip out a bunch of times, but I'm sure there will be much more to it than that.

I really want to see this movie. It makes me angry that it's not in every theater in America. America needs to see this.

I need to see this. Please. Please give me this movie.

the pigeon is still remembering fascism

A dog chases its tail. It grows tired. It stops and rests. Then it gets back to chasing its tail. This goes on and on until, eventually, the dog dies.

Another dog chases its tail. It grows tired. It stops and rests. While resting, it realizes that it will never catch its tail, that the exercise is completely futile. It does not return to chasing its tail, rather it sits and thinks about how stupid it is to chase one's tail, and how, really, there is no point to anything. Occasionally bursting into tears, the dog thinks about these things until, eventually, it dies.

In 1986, the city of Harburg unveiled the Harburg Monument against Fascism, War and Violence-- and for Peace and Human Rights, a large metal column that sunk slowly into the ground. It was a counter-monument encouraging the personal responsibility of memory work.

In 2007, Mark Hatlie, of sites-of-memory.de, visited Harburg. After struggling to find anyone who knew where it was, he found the monument. His photograph and caption sum it up better than I can:

"The pigeon is still remembering fascism."

I look up the word "revolution" on the Oxford English Dictionary website:

revolution

• noun 1 a forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favour of a new system. 2 a dramatic and far-reaching change. 3 motion in orbit or in a circular course or round an axis or centre. 4 the single completion of an orbit or rotation.

— DERIVATIVES revolutionist noun.

— ORIGIN Latin, from revolvere ‘roll back’.

A dog chases its tail. It grows tired. It stops and rests. Then it gets back to chasing its tail. This goes on and on until, eventually, the dog dies.

There will always be another dog to continue in its stead.

happy new year.

your poor author has been thoroughly brain raped

I will start posting again once I recover.

Here's a picture of George Takei in a kilt:

The Collegian Court

There's really nothing I like better than to wander into a restaurant with good food and a perfect atmosphere.

This feels so "Stuff White People Like" to say, but yeah, there is something really great about authenticity, or at least the ILLUSION of authenticity. About going somewhere that feels untouched by time-- not like you're stepping back in time, but as if you are stepping OUT of time. And time passes differently. You are so entranced with the music, the lights, the wallpaper, and the speed that your decrepit old waitress moves, that you can't tell if it's been an hour or ten minutes since you ordered.

Well, I went someplace like that yesterday. It's a Polish restaurant in Chicopee, MA called the Collegian Court. My friends who'd been there before said it was necessary to go, so 7 people piled into a Buick, drove to Chicopee and tried to find this restaurant. It was a grey, wet day and the brick buildings and empty streets of Chicopee seemed so sad. There were a few men zooming down the street on scooter wheelchairs, a couple of kids walking alone, and a group of younger men in suits standing awkwardly outside of a church. It took us a really long time of driving in circles to find the restaurant, but when we did, it was so worth it.

We walked inside into a dark bar/lounge area. I think there was an elderly couple sitting there. Past that was the empty dining room, where two old waitresses squabbled over where we could sit. The first thing I heard anyone say was "that table is reserved for the funeral!" The other waitress led us to a circular table and said "she's confused. Isn't this perfect? Seven chairs, seven people. Isn't this a good table?"

My friend Jennifer, always ready to converse with seemingly odd people replied, "yes! I really like how it's a circle." That seemed to satisfy the waitress and she went away.

The funeral party arrived and sat at the far end of the dining room from us.

As if the situation wasn't Lynchian enough, Bobby Vinton was playing over the speakers. "Mr. Lonely" and "Blue Velvet." The old waitress came back to give us coffee. It was painful to watch her move around the table so slowly. "I'm not a waitress," she told us.

Our waitress, it turned out, was an extremely frazzled young woman who kept forgetting what we'd ordered and almost overcharged us to an absurd extent.

The food was excellent, but like I said, I have no idea how long we waited for it. Bobby Vinton was replaced by traditional Polish music. They never refilled our coffee or gave us more water. It didn't really matter. It was a cool place. Even the funeral party seemed to be having a pretty good time. Only thing is that I kept hearing the voice of a child, but couldn't spot one in the restaurant, which didn't make much sense because the only people there were my party and the funeral party.

I got a loaf of pumpkin bread to go. We got back into the car and left. As we drove away from the Collegian Court, I wondered if I'd ever be able to go back. If I'd be able to make it back to Chicopee and find my way to that street corner. I wondered if it would still be there and I left the sad town of Chicopee for Northampton and realized why I hate it here.

Northampton must have looked just like Chicopee once, another New England town full of laid-off factory workers, before those fucks pumped so much money into it and created this monstrous pseudo-utopian post-hippie, socially liberal, Asian fusion loving, organic food buying, hemp wearing bubble of bourgeois denial. How many laid-off factory workers do you think found jobs at the vegan restaurant, the fair-trade cafe, at the Buddha statue peddling Orientalisms 'R Us, at the vintage clothing stores or cheap "ethnic" chachki gift shops?

Northampton is just as sad as Chicopee, but even moreso, because here they pretend there's nothing wrong. And restaurants like the Collegian Court can't exist here, because they're so old and depressing. Because the waitstaff can barely move. Because the service is awful.

And where are the old people here? Not the ones protesting the war, but the REAL old people. The sad old people. The ones who go to early bird specials and stare at eachother. I miss them.

So I guess that's all there is to say. I hope to find more pockets of pure weird beauty in Western Mass. Chicopee gave me hope. Northampton still disgusts me. Maybe it will change my mind.

why yes, in fact, we CAN

The first memory I have of an election is of going to a Bob Dole rally in 1996 with my friend Dita and her family.

I asked my dad one day in the car what the difference was between a democrat and a republican. He explained that democrats cared about poor people, while republicans cared about rich people getting richer. I have since realized that it's a bit more complicated than that, but I was seven years old and I don't blame him for trying to simplify things for me.

Oddly enough, I don't remember the actual 1996 election, just the elephant shaped fireworks at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda and my father's clarification of the two party system.

The only presidential elections, before tonight, that I had ever really experienced were those of 2000, at the beginning of my political consciousness, and 2004, when that consciousness had developed. I watched my young hopes crushed by the same dumbass twice in a row. I guess that's just what I thought presidential elections were and would always be: disappointing and sometimes crooked.

This presidential election, I was determined not to make the same mistake. I voted for my main man Representative Kucinich in the primary and refused to take a side in the Clinton v. Obama debacle. I even managed not to hear Obama speak until he accepted the nomination at the DNC. It took considerable effort, especially considering that my parents have been supporting him since he announced he was running. By the end of the primaries, I knew I was going to vote for him, but I didn't want to get emotionally involved.

Well, I heard that DNC speech and bawled. He had me there. The man can speak, what can I say?

Tonight I do not regret my emotional involvement. I wasn't the only one looking for a reminder of what the American ideal is.

At 11 PM Eastern Standard Time, just as my dad predicted would happen, Barack Hussein Obama was announced the president elect of the United States of America.

It was, as we have heard so many times, a historic moment for African Americans and all marginalized ethnic groups, a historic moment for persons of multi-ethnic backgrounds.

I don't need to say that electing Barack Obama does not mean that we have finally overcome racism. I think that's pretty obvious.

Tonight's victors are the world's idealists. We who see that things are really really fucked, but nonetheless have hope.

Thank you Mr. President-Elect. Thank you for helping us have that hope.

For the first time in my life, lying in my dorm room bed wrapped up in a sheet and listening to Chuck Berry, my love for my country makes perfect sense.

When holidays fuck you in the face

Maybe it's just a part of growing up, but I don't enjoy holidays as much as I used to.

When did birthdays start to suck?

When did Christmas become so unbelievably depressing?

When did Halloween turn into "let's do what we do every weekend except we're in costume and we'll get even MORE fucked up"?

Maybe all of those childhood memories build up impossible expectations. Maybe I think that if I do the holiday just right, I'll be able to go back somehow to that idealized time that never was. That feeling of autumn excitement when it's actually becoming fall and you need to start wearing a jacket, that strange, wonderful feeling of being publicly in costume, the anxiety on the way to school that maybe you messed up somehow and it's not really Halloween, and then the relief when you see the other kids in their monster masks and angel wings. Trick or treating or handing out candy while watching scary movies. Even in high school I had a lot of fun on Halloween. Sure there'd be substance abuse, but there would also be movies. The spirit was still there.

This Halloween was a disaster. My plans for a horrorfest went to shit because I couldn't connect the projector to my computer and no PCs would recognize my external harddrive. There were no movies, only drunk girls in costumes dancing on my beloved, now deceased, glasses.

November 1st and July 8th were always my least favorite days of the year. The day after Halloween and the day after my birthday. Now they've become a day when I can breathe. Phew, a whole year until I have to deal with that ordeal again.

Next up is Thanksgiving. Good thing I never liked that holiday.

Still, I have hope. I have a whole year until the next Halloween. Maybe I'll get it right this time...