Standard

What do you mean you haven’t told him happy birthday yet? No email? No e-card? No prezzie? You obviously know nothing about the Bronx temperament….

Why are you still sitting there? Get with the birthday cheer–and step on it! I gotta live with the guy! Yeesh…

Standard

Maybe I’m jaded. Maybe I set my expectations too high. Maybe I’m overcaffienated. But one thing’s for sure:

Autofocus sucks.

Yeah, the title sequence is good, and I was happy to see that the movie wasn’t art-directed to within an inch of its life (unlike another flick about porn in the 70s I could name), but in the end, Autofocus amounts to little more than a director sitting on his ass for two hours, making facile moral judgements instead of giving you the opportunity to care about the characters. I mean, Entertainment Tonight could have made a less cliched piece of tripe.

For those of you considering filmic forms of amusement this weekend, you’ve been warned.

Standard

eight zen questions for modern life

Of the 27 people on-duty at Kinko’s, why is there only one cashier?

When does “no cheese” actually mean “no cheese” to a Taco Bell employee?

Why does my keyboard have a greater affinity for Diet Pepsi than I?

Why do people insist on sending html email?

Why does my Windows folder view keep changing long after I’ve set the default options?

Why can’t money buy Bill Gates a good gay hairdresser?

Don’t you know who I am?

How did you get this number?

Standard

Oh yeah: I wrote for someone else again. It’s pure mendacity, but it comes with a paycheck.

You can tell it’s slow around here ’cause I’m tidying up. Don’t get used to it.

Standard

It‘s kinda weird: just the other day, I was saying how no one really speaks of snipers any more. As a phenomenon, snipers fall into the same general category as flashers, streakers, and those who create macrame.

They want a profile? Try looking for (a) a 40 – 50 year old male with a history of stalking Jaquelyn Smith lookalikes, or (b) someone 20 – 30 with retro tastes that could best be described as terminally hip (and I do mean terminally).

Standard

Homosexuals ruin everything.

Well, clueless homosexuals do. Look at Southern Decadence, or Memorial Day, or Halloween: at one point, these were all fun, festive holidays, fabulous excuses to dress up and boogie down. Not to get all essentialist on your ass or anything, but there’s something very special and particular about the way New Orleanians pass their good times, and folks who first threw parties associated with these holidays knew how to do them up right. They knew how to enjoy the moment in that kinda unique way, when the only tools at their disposal were a keg of cheap beer, an amateur funk band, and a old muddy lot in the ghetto.

Now, yes, I understand: change is inevitable. These were good parties, and it would have been impossible to keep them from growing in size and scale. But even with everyone telling two friends, and so on, and so on, the character of the events had been kept intact. They still had that certain je ne sais quoi.

Until last night.

Last night was Decadence Ball (technically, no relation to the aforementioned Southern Decadence, though I’m beginning to wonder if it hasn’t been co-opted by the latter just to annoy me). For years, the Ball has been a full-on freakfest, a celebration of the Ninth Ward personality: funky, dirty, nasty. It’s been held in artist’s studios and abandoned warehouses and on condemned properties, drawing a devout crowd of locals from Elysian Fields to Poland Avenue. But last night, as I walked onto the scene with my two housemates, I was dismayed to see so many Decadence costumes–I mean Southern Decadence now–scuttling around. Gold lame thongs. Oakleys worn without a hint of irony. Tans straight from the bottle. Couples with pupils the size of quarters darting off behind the stacks of unused lumber at the back of the lot, then coming back with pupils the size of silver dollars.

Where were the freaks, the beautiful, delectable freaks? Sure, there were a few familiar faces in the crowd, but not as many as I’d have liked–and of the several I recognized, there were quite a few I wanted to avoid. I tried drinking copious amounts of cheap beer to put myself in the mood. No dice. I left after an hour.

Of course, it’s not just the homers that have ruined it. It’s people like the woman I passed, sporting a mundane ensemble of jeans and a leopard-print t-shirt screaming into her cell phone with a thick yat accent, “Oh my god, dawlin’, you gotta come down here and see dis. Dis shit is wild!” To put it in New York terms, the party’s gone all bridge-and-tunnel, you know. In other words, it’s over.

Maybe I sound bitter. Or jaded. Or self-aggrandizing. Or like an old person waxing nostalgic. But more than anything, I think I sound like Ralph.