Sappy Solstice, Everyone! Hey there folks. As usual, the season is filled with the sounds of the season: the clash of battle axes as you join the barbarian horde fighting your way through Bloomies, the soft crackling sounds of fire as you set ablaze all the crappy fuzzy sweaters given to you by Aunt Mildred and what's Christmas without a little stressed out screaming with the one you love? In that spirit, Japhyjunket is going to take a brief winter's nap. When I return in January, expect some new changes and new features, including my interview with Pansy Division. And now, a request: I'm currently looking for a few good bloggers. Or even a few good non-bloggers. I would like to continue developing this blog or another like it, but can not do it alone. If you are or know of someone who has opinions about culture and and has an interesting way of expressing them, please send them my way. Japhyjunket has grown to the point that it needs to be more than one voice. Have an idea for a column? Let me know. This need not be a weekly gig or even a monthly one. My goal for this site has always been to be an experiment. If you'd like to join me, hollah. Wishing you all the warmest of holidays. - Japhy

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posted by Japhy at 12/19/2003 03:26:00 PM || #

Theatre Review: Conspiracy Mom A trip down memory lane leads to saccharine tears in “Frame 312” When I used to work at ABC, one of my co-workers would try to bond with me over his pet interest in the JFK assassination. One day, he actually explained to me, using real English words, how Elvis was in fact, responsible for the death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. JFK’s death was undeniably the touchstone for a generation and the slight Frame 312, now playing at the Atlantic Theatre Company, wants desperately to capture both the greatness of the event as well as the intimate impact it had on the private lives of Americans, but instead winds up being little more than a very special Lifetime event, that is neither very special, nor ultimately, much of an event either. Lynette (Mary Beth Peil) is celebrating her first birthday since her husband died, or rather, her grown- up children are celebrating it for her, since she shows little interest in marking the day, and who can blame her? Her daughter Stephanie (Ana Reeder) defines herself by her depression medication and her son Tom’s (Greg Stuhr) defining characteristic is that he’s both bombastic and banal, asking Mum for cash and then, when Mommy reveals that she has the original Zapruder film, takes it as proof she never really loved him. I found myself praying to God that these characters were drinking something stronger than iced tea; nothing is as maddeningly dull as a sober suburban family gathering, even if Mommy does have the most valuable piece of conspiracy evidence- ever. The aforementioned Zapruder film is, as conspiracy buffs know, an 8mm film that shows President Kennedy as he is shot. It was purchased by Life Magazine and eventually turned over to the government, where some allege it was altered to conceal evidence that there was a second gunman. The conceit of Frame 312 is that Lynette, who was a secretary at Life at the time (played in flashbacks by the perennially pert Mandy Siegfried) winds up with the original copy through a series of circumstances fueled by subterfuge and paranoia. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the bulk of Frame 312 is set in the present, where we get to watch Tom and his wife (Maggie Kiley) bicker about whether he knows his kids names or not. The main point of this play is not Kennedy or assassination at all; rather, it’s that Lynette’s ungrateful kids need to realize that Mommy once had a very interesting life before they came along. Playwright Keith Reddin could have easily titled this play Parents Are People Too, and nobody would be the wiser. Do Mom and her estranged daughter share a tender bonding moment watching Jack and Jackie-O get shot at? You bet your Oprah Book Club subscription they do! It’s telling that the program notes that the “modern day” of this play is the 1990’s. Throughout the play, listening to Lynette tell us about how That Day affected all Americans, I couldn’t help but be drawn to the parallels to our generations’ own Day of Infamy. What does Lynette’s silence and acquiescence to live a suburban life say to our own times when we our leaders warn us to watch what we say and when Americans mysteriously disappear into the night? Not much. The larger issues here are repeatedly pushed aside so that we can focus on lukewarm fuzzies like Stephanie giving her mother a teddy bear she made out of her grandmothers old coat. Oh wait! Is Stephanie’s addiction to depression medication an indication that not much has changed? If only there was a line from Lynette to Stephanie like, “You’re not that much different from me” to bludgeon the point into my skull. Oh wait! There is! Where’s Lee Harvey Oslwald when you need him? As far as the acting goes, Mary Beth Peil’s Lynette is luminous and believable and lends a gravitas to the proceedings that is lamentably missing in the text. Ana Reeder is worth looking out for in the future, but the same can not be said of her co-stars. Greg Stuhr plays Tom as well as a number of equally one-dimensional characters throughout the play and seems too caught up in the business of playing multiple roles to ever really inhabit any of them. Maggie Kiley has the same multiple roles challenge, but solves the dilemma by playing all characters exactly the same way, however Mandy Siegfried as the younger Lynette and soap opera scion Larry Bryggman, who plays Lynette’s boss at Life have real chemistry as two people caught up in something larger than themselves. Walt Spangler’s set is a fantastic hyper-pretty white meditation on suburbia and Robert Perry’s lighting inventively moves us between the past and the present. The only thing I will remember about Karen Kohlhaas’ direction, however, is that she forces the audience to endure a ten minute scene in which Lynette’s son Tom doubts whether she has the actual film or not while having her hold the film in her hand the entire time. The greatest conspiracy of this play has nothing to do with reels of film, but rather the clever foisting of another kitchen sink drama onto an audience that has grown desperately weary of the genre. Frame 312 is currently playing at The Atlantic Theatre Company (336 W. 20th Street) Tickets are available at the Box Office or through Tele-Charge (www.telecharge.com)

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posted by Japhy at 12/11/2003 11:48:00 AM || #

The Most Pompous Thing I Have Ever Done Yet. Quizilla is like Old Faithful, only for quizzes, instead of geothermically superheated steam. Every week or so a new "Must Do" quiz comes out. Since I've written before about my dislike of academic jargonism (which has nothing to do with real intellectual inquiry), I thought it would be fun to take the What 20th Century Theorist are You? Quiz. The Result:
I am Jacques Derrida! I founded
Deconstructionism in 1966, and have been a
thorn in people's sides ever since. I argue
that texts cannot be reduced to a single
meaning, among other things. I am dense,
impenetrable, and not dead. I was kinda hoping for Noam Chomsky.
brought to you by Quizilla

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posted by Japhy at 11/19/2003 05:39:00 PM || #

Let's Never Marry A Gay against Gay Marriage Dearly Beloved, We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of Love and Law as expressed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. How glorious is the Divine Creator who looks down upon these two anthropomorphizations this magical day and says unto them, "Lo! May mankind legislate every emotion under the sun!" If any of you know of any reason why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace. Um- hi there. Marriage is a sacred institution that is defined as being between a man and a woman. I'm no Jerry Falwell loving, self-hating fag, but really, that's what marriage is. From Biblical times up until today, marriage has always been there for the hets and really, it's on their home turf. The straights invented marriage. Imagine if, all of the sudden, the NBA decided to make Judy Garland their official mascot. Get the drift? I'm all for inclusiveness, but if homosexuals want their culture and lifestyle accepted, then they have to respect the heterosexual culture; a culture for which marriage is their yellow brick road and Oz all rolled into one. Marriage is religious. The less our presidents and our priests snuggle up to one another, the better. The question of who can marry whom is one that individual churches should be left to decide. It is the governments job to afford all of its citizens equal protection under the law. In that respect, civil unions are a must for any two consenting adults. They must be given the same essential privledges in regards to healthcare, property and custody as any traditional married couple, but I see no reason why the government is obliged to marry anyone. Those supporting a constitutional amendment to define what marriage is are frankly, idiots or political grandstanders. It's unlikely that Americans would stand for what would ultimately be a Gay Dredd Scott Decision. The wiser move is to support an amendment that would recognize that the sanctity of marriage is one conferred upon by God, and as such is not under the domain of the State. The amendment should then go on to define a civil union and what it's rights and protections are. I may get accused of being a turncoat here, but before you get you start pelting me with your fish taco bridal bouquets, here me out. I'm all for marriage. It's a beautiful wonderful thing when two people, of any gender, decide to commit before the world their love and devotion to each other, however, the ritual of marriage is more than that. Why should gay men and women take on the baggage of an institution that has never been their own, and more importantly, why does the state need to be involved? I don't need the State to tell me who I love, nor do I need its permission to declare that love publicly. What I require of the State is that it provide me the same privledges it admits to heterosexual couples- no more and no less.

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posted by Japhy at 11/18/2003 05:46:00 PM || #

Will the Real Metrosexual Please Stand Up? A Phone Call One of my childhood buds is a Red Sox fan, but being an adopted New Yorker, I’m a Yankees fan. Two hours after the Yankees inevitably beat the Red Sox in Game 7 of the AL Championship, my friend called me up, obviously a little bit drunk: “Rooting for the Yankees is stupid.” “If by stupid you mean, being on the winning side, sure.” “You suck.” “You know, my heart goes out to you, bro. I mean, rooting for the Sox is like dating a hot girl with syphilis. Sure she’s hot, but it’s always going to wind up in you contracting a horrible wasting disease in the end.” “Like you even know anything about baseball. You’re gay.” “What does that have to do with anything?” “Please, you couldn’t even play tee ball, gay boy.” “I was on a baseball team and I don’t exactly remember you bringing home any trophies yourself.” His roommate shouts from the background, “Just because the Yankees uniforms are prettier doesn’t mean you should root for them.” I answer back, “No, the fact that they’re a better team is, though. Their uniforms really are pretty, though.” My friend laughs and tells me he has to go and hangs up on me. Now, I’m not exactly sure what just happened, but I’m a little hurt and pissed off that my friend would play the gay card like he did, especially in front of his roommates. My friend, on the whole, has been pretty cool about such things and has been really the only person from childhood I talk to that I’ve been able to share details of my personal life with. In the past few years, however, he has become increasingly boorish and dismissive towards me. Where we used to exchange pick-up tips he now tries to “beat me up” and shows little interest in talking to me, except to regale me with stories about his frat . Perhaps this is the inevitable growing apart that all childhood friends must come to terms with as they go their own separate paths, but it seems to me there’s something else at work here. I Blame The Metrosexual. The term “metrosexual” was coined by British author and self confessed “skinhead Oscar Wilde” Mark Simpson and it was coined to describe a new breed of man whose primary object of sexual desire was, well…himself. Whether straight or gay, Simpson’s Metrosexual was the ultimate consumer, who slept with people not out of any gender preference, but out of a desire to find someone whose skin matched the Prada sheets. Too complex a concept for the mainstream, the term metrosexual was soon appropriated by mass market publications (including MSN, Time, People and Business Week), but with a new more market friendly meaning: the new Metrosexual is simply a straight guy with gay tastes. I’ve watched this semiotic change with irritation. If there is a vast heteronormative conspiracy out there, they surely manufactured this change in meaning. It’s quite clever, really. The main point of Simpson’s definition is to transcend the straight/gay binary; meterosexuality has nothing to do with the type of gonads you get off on, but the attitude you have. The watered down version not only gets rid of any notion of sexual transgression but actually further perpetuates the straight/gay dichotomy by clearly defining things like manicures and mud masks as “gay” activities, while at the same time brilliantly encouraging straight men to engage in the kind of luxury spending indulgences gay men have been practicing for years. This isn’t just a semantical issue here; something really has been lost, or perhaps, more charitably, missed. The original definition of metrosexual could have helped out guys (and gals), straight and gay alike. Men Have PMS Too. Men have, in their own quiet way, been engaging in a liberation movement for the past decade and a half. The Male Liberation movement can be seen in guys lobbying for ending circumcision, guys devoting themselves to gyms and diets, the rise of Mark Walberg née Marky Mark and in the phenomenal success of Fight Club, which is my gender’s Stepford Wives. While women have self-consciously battled their gender stereotypes for more than a century, the men have quietly perfected theirs into this truth: In America a man drinks beer while watching football. If he doesn’t he’s probably a sissy. Guys are told that we’re supposed to be a pretty stoic bunch, so, excluding a brief foray into speedos and long hair in the sixties and seventies, we’ve silently endured our cast-iron macho man mold. The problem is that there is no man alive who could possibly fit within the mold, so we’ve all turned on each other. Look, in this country, the only way a straight guy can show affection to another guy is if they are both on their third beer and Bob Costas is on the TV. Guys who are into music are cool as long as the music involves an electric guitar. Being knowledgeable about a subject that doesn’t involve canyons, automobiles or drill saws is a guaranteed way to be labeled a geek. I’d weep for the state of my gender if it weren’t for the fact that it would make me a wimp. It’s not much better for the gay guys, who not only engage in macho Aberfag posturing and competitiveness, but also extend it to the bedroom. For many gay men, it seems bedding as much of the disco dance floor as possible has replaced winning the touch football game. On the surface it seems oh-so-out there, but it’s just as rigid a hierarchy as the straight paradigm. In other words, being able to sleep with a lot of people does not make you sexually liberated- oh, that needs to be repeated, I think: Being Able To Sleep With A Lot of People Does Not Make You Sexually Liberated What this puritanical “Oh My God Look at J.Lo’s Booty!” nation needs is a new kind of sexuality. This isn’t a call for a post-gay America, it’s a call for a post-straight America as well. Why divide sexuality along the lines of what kind of loins you rub up against at night? All the people who want to drink beer and talk sports or be alpha males who backslap or bareback each other can all move over to one corner and make room for a new breed: The Metrosexual. The Metrosexual is not a guy who likes to do gay things, nor is he, apologies to Mark Simpson, just a guy who’s into himself. The Metrosexual is the man or woman who, as the name implies, has abandoned the rural (or seemingly rural) sexual stereotypes that have dominated American culture, politics and lore for two centuries and embraces—no, gropes, a sexuality which is as unique as personality. Unlike the dippy flower children our parents used to be, the Metrosexual does not consider himself a sexual rebel. The heart of the Metrosexual credo is “As long as it’s between two consenting adults, who cares?” Unlike the Act Up Crowd or other grand-dame’s of the queer movement like John Epperson aka Lypsinka who bemoans the “Gay boys with strollers on Eighth Avenue”, the Metrosexual is not about “subverting the straight establishment”. The Metrosexual realizes that all along she has been the establishment. Men don’t do it like Brad Pitt does and real women are more creative than Madonna when it comes to bedroom antics. What’s even hotter is that in the morning, they put on a suit, grab some Starbucks and head off to work. The Metrosexual is Sex Getting Real. Rather than defining what’s ‘hot’ by the pages of Vogue or Details, the Metrosexual instinctively knows you make something hot by owning it. Have a collection of snails? Don’t stash them under your bed when you’re first bringing a girl home. Show those gastropods off passionately enough and seductively enough and you’ll soon have your lady turned on far more than a bottle of Drakar ever could. What makes something sexy? It’s obvious: It’s the passion you imbue it with. The Metrosexual lives in a world where women gather together for sex toy parties instead of Tupperware parties, where the local Fraternity holds a monthly bondage party (Come on- if there was ever a group better suited…) and the High School Sex Ed teacher says to his students, “Each of you are incredibly sexy if you believe you are.” Low self-esteem, that perennial social malady, would evaporate like afterglow sweat. The g-spot is not a place on the body, but a place in the mind. The Metrosexual realizes this instinctively. The Metrosexual is The Self-Actualized Libido. If men and women create their own definitions of sexuality and gender role, rather than being slaves to what they’ve been told, the world will be a much better place. We don’t let anyone tell us what to think, why should we let anyone tell us who or how we can get it on? Hey Geeky Guy with the Pimples!: The next time you’re at the family barbecue and Uncle Ralph starts bugging you about the pennant race, ask him what he thinks about the latest release of Red Hat…and treat yourself to a facial. Hey Confused Kinda Lesbian Girl!: Solve your dilemma by dating both a girl and a guy at the same time. Go on dates as a group. Save money on cabs! It’s not radical, it’s reality. Be your damned self. Every last one of you turns me on.

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posted by Japhy at 11/12/2003 02:55:00 PM || #

Why The Matrix Revolutions is Great To read the reviews for The Matrix Revolutions, you would think the final installment of the wildly ambitious sci-fi trilogy was a remake of Battlefield Earth. Having just seen it, I have to say to all the detractors, "Give us [the moviegoers] a fuckin' break!" I'm not exactly sure what these people expected, but apparantley a movie that is one of the most visually thrilling, fast paced and epic two hours ever developed to celluloid just isn't good enough. [SPOILERS AHEAD] The argument against The Matrix Revolutions is essentially this: All of the secrets and teases of the past two movies are either a.) not revealed enough, b.) betrayed or c.) revealed too much. I'll admit that Revolutions suffers from the X-Files Syndrome, in which tantalizing secrets always trump actual revelations, but looking at the movie as the Wachowski brothers intend it to be viewed; a trilogy of birth, life and death, you can't help but be impressed. Just as the original Matrix presented us with a hero for whom everything was new and every truth an illusion, and Reloaded gave us a hero who relishes his role, knowing his place in the universe and fighting for it, Revolutions gives us a hero who acts not for his own life, but for the life thereafter. The entire trilogy has been called cold by more than a few, but I find it splendidly expressionistic. The Wachowski brothers give us a wonderful rumination on the nature of endings: the end of love (both in the Trinity and Neo relationship, but also in Morpheus and Niobe's long dead love which in this movie transforms itself), the nature of death and war and destruction and also the end of conflict itself. There are also some amazingly kick-ass action scenes. What I'm saying here folks is that through the course of the three Matrices, audiences have been delighted by fantastic visual effects, have been introduced to some philosophical concepts (admittedly, watered down concepts) and enjoyed a fairly entertaining heroic narrative story. There has been nothing like the Matrix trilogy: it makes Star Wars look like a kiddie pool. Any careful viewer of the Matrix trilogy will see that the Wachowski's never set forth to create a solid-air tight narrative. The discussions that people have because of the ambiguities built into the Matrix are, I believe, deliberate. To turn marketing into tautology: Every ending is a beginning. Also- just to quiet the naysayers who say the ending goes against the whole humans must be coppertops premise: In Reloaded we learn that the humans have found an alternative source of power, so, in theory the new matrix (no longer green and all) could be a virtual meeting place for the machines and the humans to work out how to live in the real world. Neat!

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posted by Japhy at 11/06/2003 07:31:00 PM || #

The Aesthetic of the Cheap. New York is the capitol of capital. For a city that has been the home of the likes of Duke Ellington, Jackson Pollack, Elia Kazan, Jack Kerouac, Bob Dylan, Laurie Anderson and countless others, the New York of today is a nearly impossible place for artists to both survive and create. The galleries are filled with artists from Pittsburgh, Providence, Berlin and beyond. The theatres, when not playing revivals, mount productions of regionally developed works as a sort of Gotham canonization ritual that eludes me. Musicians seem to have it easy, or at least the sort of musicians that only require a guitar and a trucker hat as an investment. I mention all this, simply to set the landscape. Finishing strokes might include acknowledging that the biggest art show of the decade was Matthew Barney’s multi-million dollar Cremaster Cycle and a brief glance at the American Airlines Theater on Forty-Second Street. This is the town in which I work, and serves as the practical impetus for what follows. As a young artist living in New York, I find myself trapped in the same dangerous cycle that so many of my friends have found themselves in: To create art, you need money- to get money you must work- to work in New York means to work in a cubicle- to work in a cubicle is to kill the impulse to create. I know writers who are dying as editorial assistants, I know painters who design GAP ads. This in and of itself is not a bad thing. If your goal is to make a lot of money, this is a good way to do it, however, if your goal is to create art, it’s a fairly counterintuitive way to go about doing it. Talent is not a rock, it is a sensitive and precisely tuned Stradivarius that must be bowed and plucked by the most sympathetic of hands. If I were to spend the next five years in a cubicle, I would, best case scenario, lose my mind. The dilemma: Short of a trust fund, how does the artist create? I’ve told you all this to establish that there is a practical reason for the theoretical aesthetic that follows. This in itself is completely fitting within the concept of “cheap”; as you will see. Most art today is inherently capitalistic. In theatre especially, the specter of commercial viability looms over every aspect of production- from choice of material, to casting to marketing. This does not hold true simply on Broadway, where over staged musicals (42nd Street, anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber) and upper-class liberal hand-wringing straight plays (The Goat, Take Me Out, Proof) are the norm. The supposed tautology between high quality and high budget also informs downtown theatres, who show their rejection of this ideal through bare stages and self-consciously avant-garde staging. This is a mirror of the audience that theatre caters to, one which in youth rejects the very bourgeois attitudes it will embrace in maturity. The hippie who grows into a middle-management bureaucrat is no longer simply a cliché, but a modern day rendition of Joseph Campbell’s hero myth; that is, we are expected to lose our ideals and so we chose ideals from the outset that we are comfortable with surrendering later. That our nation’s youth are savvy to this carefully constructed series of morphing poses has left them dispirited, ironic and nihilistic. To them and logically so, the act of having ideals, being political and attempting to enact change is not just futile, but folly. They know, if not always consciously, that in the totalizing system of capitalism, even the act of rebellion exists only to be commodified and marketed. It is not my goal to find a remedy to this totalizing force, but to offer an aesthetic response to the total milieu of late stage capitalism. That response is “Cheap”. Cheap is political. Cheap is the enemy of capitalism. Cheap is already a force embraced by youth. Drinking Pabst beer is Cheap. The ‘irony’ of our generation is not ‘irony’ at all, but rebellion. Wearing a trucker hat, while not terribly original, is a political act that rejects capitalism by deliberately seeking out and embracing what capitalism fears most: the tacky, the functional, but above all, the unmarketable. While retailers have quickly started selling designer trucker hats, the ultimate trucker hat is one that can be bought for seven dollars in Missouri. Cheap has nothing to do with things. Cheap acknowledges that capitalism will upscale any object deemed to be ‘popular’, but Cheap will have rejected the object by that time, for Cheap is the material expression of anti-materialism. It sets capitalism on a hamster wheel, vainly chasing after increasingly unsalable things. For an artist, Cheap represents a way to escape the poverty of the capitalism’s gauntlet of success. Cheap allows the artist to arbitrarily commodify and sanctify whatever is at hand. It invites excess as both parody and earnest undertaking. Like all movements, Cheap is not an unexplored country. John Waters has used Cheap not just to shock (Cheap is always shocking to a capitalist) but to politicize. Waters’ films are profane because they are made Cheap and advocate Cheap, not because they include pubic hair and teabagging. That the recent Broadway version of Hairspray totalizes Waters’ cheapness into the rubric of later day capitalism only highlights theatre’s role in America as the ultimate bourgeois institution. It this role that the theatre plays in America that makes it the perfect forum for advocacy of the cheap. Cheap can be found in other places. In performance, there is The Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players, who create songs and narratives for disused and forgotten memories. Cheap can be found in the impromptu memorial to September 11th near Saint Vincent’s Hospital that was created from individually marked glazed tiles. Its eloquence lies in its cheapness; the memorial is unabashedly sentimental, genuinely heartfelt and simply rendered by individuals who respond with immediacy instead of tortured test-ballooned deliberation. It is virtually indestructible, for even if it is dismantled, it will continue to exist as individual tiles or even individual fragments. Its cheapness allows it to be fractured by design; an assemblage of disjointed parts that becomes an inversion of the tragedy it memorializes. Cheap can be a tin-pot opera, a racecar action adventure told through soapbox derby cars, a king in polyester, the exultation of toilet bowl cleaner as divine and MUCH MUCH MORE!. Cheap reduces complexity into the symbolic. ACT NOW! The semiosis of the generic can be reworked into opulence. TIME IS RUNNING OUT! If we want to insult a woman, we call her cheap. A cheap suit is emasculating at best and oftentimes fatal. When the artist embraces the cheap, she manifests the nightmare visions of the CEO, but reworks them into the sublime fantasia of truth and hope that is the cubicle dweller’s daydream.

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posted by Japhy at 11/05/2003 12:13:00 PM || #

dearest internet, For my Lesbian Love Tragedy version of Othello (I'm calling it 'Othellia'), I need lots of cardboard. Can you get me some or tell me where I can get some? All my love, Japhy P.S.- I also need girlish actors to audition for me. P.P.S- And a pony.

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posted by Japhy at 11/03/2003 01:10:00 PM || #

TRICK OR TREAT! TRICK Japhy Presents the Top Costumes of 2003 The Metrosexual: Put on a mud mask, manicure your nails and wear your favorite Diesel jeans and Burberry jockstrap! Finish it off with some lip glass and a really tight t-shirt and be everybody's favorite media-coopted fashion statement du jour! This costume is not complete without a quintent of nelly stereotypes following you around making catty comments. Deviled Angel: Show that you too understand how binaries are meaningless in our post-millenial world by dressing as both an angel and devil at once. People will stare at your halo and horns with bemused enlightenment as you free them from the chains of moralistic duality. For Couples: Pimp Bush and Ho' Lady Liberty: Um, this one is pretty obvious, right? Elliott Smith: Buy a knife, attach it to your chest. (courtesy of Justin) Falcon Pornstar: Recession hitting you bad? Go naked and give lots of blowjobs to people. Not only will you make LOTS of new friends, you'll save a bundle on your costume! TREAT The scariest movie of all time. Have I got a tale for you. It involves, ghosts, reincarnation, a mysterious necklace, a gentleman's agreement gone horribly awry, death and death again, a push up bra, madness and obsession. It is the obsession that is most terrifying, so terrifying in fact, that it leaves us, and the man caught in its grip, dumbstruck. Can you guess the movie, I'm refering to? If you haven't figured it out, highlight here: It's Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. If you haven't seen it, get thee to a cinema. The following has lots of spoilers in it. More than any monster movie, it is this movie which fills me with terror and dread. Movies with blood and gore are fun, but the whole thrill comes out of knowing that you made it out alive. When this movie fades to black, you aren't so sure. Scotty (James Stewart) is asked by an old friend to investigate the odd behavior of his wife. Scotty follows the woman (Kim Novak) who is, in fact, not who Scotty has been told she is at all. She is an actor, and her audience is Scotty. The rouse is ludicrous and complex, the machinations of a madman, but the result is that Scotty falls in love with the woman, whose fate, literally scripted, is to jump off a belltower, the one place, Scotty, who has a fear of heights, can't go to watch her. And then, after months in an asylum, getting well, Scotty sees a woman on the street who looks like the woman he loved. He doesn't know that this woman is in fact the same woman, but she does, and as she quietly acquiesces to his demands to transform her into the woman she used to be, we find ourselves lost in a dizzying fall into obsession and love, until they become the same thing. What makes this movie so amazingly creepy is that we, the audience are not let off the hook that we are voyeurs to this drama. When Scotty watches this woman, we watch her. His obsession with the image is our obsession. It's primal, it's perverted and there is no release. A nun appears in the last seconds of the film and blesses the woman who has just fallen, a second time, for good, but she does Scotty, and she does not bless us. We are not absolved of the sins we have commited as passive viewers, needing, like fiends, more images, more and more, to satisfy the unsatisfiable: The desire to recreate a moment of truth, that was always, has always been, a lie.

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posted by Japhy at 10/29/2003 02:03:00 PM || #

Blogs Suck. Camille Paglia says, in her new interview in Salon: "Blog reading for me is like going down to the cellar amid shelves and shelves of musty books that you're condemned to turn the pages of. Bad prose, endless reams of bad prose! There's a lack of discipline, a feeling that anything that crosses one's mind is important or interesting to others. People say that the best part about writing a blog is that there's no editing -- it's free speech without institutional control. Well, sure, but writing isn't masturbation -- you've got to self-edit. " Read the whole article here. What a breath of fresh air! I have had countless arguments with other bloggers (mainly on LiveJournal) about whether blogs are open to criticism, and time and time again I get responses like, "Well, it's a transcript of my cortex" or "I only write it for my friends." One even told me that I could criticize her content, but not her style; a style clearly enamored with itself, but for no reason I could discern. So that Camile (and the rest of us) don't have to suffer anymore, I present the following: Japhy's Rules of Blogging I, John Q. Blogger do hereby proclaim: 1.) My blog is not a diary. If I publish something, I realize it is for other people to read and that if I only wanted my friends to read what I write, I could always just email them. A blog is a public thing. 2.) I accept that if I publish something on the web, I must accept criticism of it, even if I don't agree. 3.) I will spell check. 4.) I will not simply copy the text of someone elses work and say something like, "Look, this is cool" . 5.) I promise to try to write better each time I write. 6.) The majority of my blog entries will be longer than five sentences long. 7.) I will punctuate and capitalize and do my best to follow the grammatical conventions of my native language- unless I have a damn good reason not to. 8.) I will google the subject of my blog before posting. I will see if someone has already written the thought I have in my head. I do this not only to take part in the online community I am a part of, but also to see if my thought has been expressed in a way which is better than mine. If I can not expand on what has already been said, I will shut my piehole. 9.) I will not be boring. Any bloggers who wish to agree to these rules and emails me will get a swanky "Japhy Rule Certified" banner for their site.

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posted by Japhy at 10/29/2003 01:30:00 PM || #

Come One! Come All! Oh! Don't I feel like Uncle Walt opeing Disneyland right now? I do! It is with deep pride and insincerity that I introduce to you Japhyotype - Portraits and Views 1824-1928, the latest expansion to the Japhy empire. To get there, just click on the "Images" link above. Go my children! Go!

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posted by Japhy at 10/23/2003 05:01:00 PM || #

Adam Superstar I'd like to tell you all a story about a young man named Adam. I have known Adam for a few years now and on the whole, he's mainly irritated me. Adam has an intensity that kind of makes you want to run screaming. He also happens to have a terrible- I mean, terrible, love life, which he wants to tell everyone about. The combination, of course, is just what we want in a *pop star*, which is what Adam wants to be more than anything and he'll tell you this every chance he can get. What Adam does have is a huge amount of drive. I have seen him do just about every shitty job there is to do in the entertainment biz here in New York and he manages to take each job seriously and put all of his commitment into it. He doesn't come from the greatest of childhood's and perhaps what irritates people most about Adam is that he continually believes in his success when it seems that the cards are so ludicrously stacked against him. This is why I admire Adam Barta. This is why, despite his nonsensical IM's about Buffy, I respect him. It is also, in my opinion, the secret to his success: He's never once considered himself, unsuccesful. His single, I Told Her, is now available. Listen to it here.

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posted by Japhy at 10/22/2003 05:37:00 PM || #

What an amazing game! Cop cars are playing their sirens in the streets! Cheers everywhere!

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posted by Japhy at 10/16/2003 09:26:00 PM || #

Waiting for the Goldbergs Though I am no longer a student at NYU's Department of Dramatic Writing, I'm excited to hear that they've received over a million dollars from Rita and Burton Goldberg, specifically for playwriting. As reported in The Times, they've admonished department chair and beret-wearer, Mark Dickerman, to focus the money specifically to playwriting, which I think is just wonderful. As frequent Japhyjunket readers know, one of my problems with NYU's program is that it pushes its students to write for film and TV and in a particular manner. The Goldbergs seem determined to change all that. I would love to see a New York based playwriting program that truly focused on the needs and perspective's of the contemporary theatre writer. I don't believe that Tisch currently is that program, but perhaps under the watchful eye of the Goldbergs it will transform itself into something more than a factory for Aristotilian three-act commercial screenplays. Perhaps they should engrave Mr. Goldbergs words in the hallway of DDW; ""I think that playwriting is about the highest calling that a person could have; I think this is the best way possible to explore the human condition."

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posted by Japhy at 10/15/2003 12:39:00 PM || #

The Love of Japan Entirely There are We! America loves Britain. We love the tea, we love the accent, but most of all we love their constant disdain for us "Yanks". We like to see each other as allies. While Barbados and India still chafe under the banner of post-colonialism, the original rebelling colony has moved on. We're a country of free-spirits and independent thinkers- we don't hold a grudge against Great Britain, at all. Bollacks, I say. Even cultures have a subconscious. America reveres Great Britain. We have emulated its traditions ever since we managed to spank them off the Continent like an abused child longing for the lash. It continues to this day: The New Yorker reported last week that Britain's famous black cabs may be coming to New York as an upscale alternative to our own, yank-yellow taxis. We revere the British as the last bastion of true culture, and see ourselves as the trashy loudmouth cousins of a more refined, tea- swilling branch of the Familia Anglica. Which brings us to the Akihabara district of Tokyo. Nicknamed "Otaku Town", Akihabara is a maze of neon, internet rooms and shopping malls dedicated to Japan's "geek culture". Fifty-eight years ago, the U.S. dropped two nuclear bombs onto the Land of The Rising Sun, and after a post-war rebuild by the U.S., a new generation of Japanese have become obsessed with all things American. Pepsi in garish neon, game shows with insane propositions, Levi's, Jordache and Catholic schoolgirls have all been Sinofied into brilliant, glossy life. As Americans, we can't but help but looked on in bemused horror. Welcome to the Funhouse of Mirrors known as globalization, where every culture is a reflection of someone else's. Of course, the mirror bounces back. It is unlikely Great Britain will ever find itself in the throes of U.S.-mania, but, almost so improbably that it's inevitable, the 21st Century Empire is finding itself in the thrall of its first great colony. America is going Japan-Crazy!!! In Rockefeller Center, Takashi Murakami's Reversed Double Helix was just one more assault by the superflat artist on the American psyche. His glorious mutated eyeballs have been spotted on everything from gallery walls, Grand Central Station and Louis Vuitton handbags. The "Andy Warhol of Japan" is the hottest artist in America. The two most critically acclaimed films of the Fall season are Lost in Translation, Sophia Coppola's tale about two lost Americans spending a week inside a Tokyo hotel and Kill Bill, Quentin Tarrantino's ode to chop-socky films and the warrior code. In Lost in Translation, this tale of romance, not only introduces America to the cultural mash that is modern Japan, but also introduces them to a storyline that seems to mirror the style of Japan's top novelist (and America lover) Haruki Murakami (no relation to Takashi). The final scene, in particular, seems to echo a motif of Murakami's: A girl running away through a shop market, pursued by her lover. Kill Bill, for all its gore and violence, actually, because of all its gore and violence, it clearly reflects the great tradition of samurai myths. The anti-hero, an American invention, is nowhere in evidence in Tarantino's slick, iconic masterpiece of storytelling. Instead, Uma Thurman's character, known only as The Bride, has more to do with Zen tales of heroism, in which action is all and overthinking is a good way to get your arms lopped off. The latest trend in sportscar driving is "drifting", which involves skidding the car so that it rides side first up or down a hill. The trends origin and home of the first semi-professional league? Japan. There has always been "The Japan kids", Americans obsessed with Japan, but the cultures seem to be spilling into each other- a potent signal that the America of tomorrow has less to do with tea and crumpets and more to do with sake and otaku. From 1786-1793, Thomas and William Daniells traveled extensively through India, then under the direct control of Britain through the East India Company. They brought back to the mother country a huge number of watercolored drawings of the Indian subcontinent, now on view at the Yale Center for British Art. The vast majority of these drawings consisted of two types: beautiful traditional shrines and tombs and images of the newly erected British neoclassical government buildings. How the British must have marveled to see their own graceful architecture amid palm fronds, elephants and rickshaws. How exotic the temples and palaces must have seemed. There is nothing more alluring than seeing ourselves as the exotic; for the master to delude himself into thinking he is the outsider. The result can be fatal, not just to empire's now gone, but also empire's that are just beginning.

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posted by Japhy at 10/14/2003 04:07:00 PM || #

Death of a Blog My deepest sympathies to Ms. Modern Age for being voted by The Village Voice, "Best Scenester of 2003". How cruel of the Village Voice to essentially damn what was a wonderful site with such a destructive title. You'll see now that The Modern Age is in ruins. Since, if any of her cadre, I'd be the one most likely to be Elton John, I'd like to pull out my sunglasses, sit by the piano, and sing a little song to you: *ahem* Goodbye, Modern Age I sang with you up on the roof Loved your photos of Jack White and Travis and sometimes Bowie too And it seems to me like you lived your life Like a perfectly sane rock girl Singing in the next room a party of just you and I would have liked to see The Modern Age on MTV make fun of Carson Daly and show that music's not just industry But it seems to me like you ran your site Simply for the love of it. You think if I called The Voice and told them how you like to sing showtunes, they'd take it back? So I could have you back- Ms. Modern Age. Thank you. Goodnight.

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posted by Japhy at 10/12/2003 09:39:00 PM || #

Craig & Me Update In which Craig Newmark shows his love for the little guy Earlier this week, I wrote craigslist founder, Craig Newmark about a problem I was having regarding Craigslist, which he has described as " a place for people to get a break". I placed an ad for a casting call and offered one dollar as renumeration (in addition to a video tape/transportation and food) to fufill the craigslist requirement that all jobs be paying jobs. My ad was refused. What I wanted to know: What's the minimum amount needed to get me on Craigslist. I never got a satisfactory answer and wrote an entry (see below). Craig saw it and wrote me back. What follows is the whole email conversation, unedited, between me and craigslist founder, Craig Newmark. Craig writes: I'm not entirely happy with this [ie: the entry I wrote] , since it's very unfair, but I don't know how to show you otherwise. are you actually listening to either Geoff or myself? our policies are based on what thousands of people have told us. You seem to think that your priorities are more important than everyone else's. What am I missing? Japhy writes: Well, see, that's rather the whole point. I asked Geoff what the policy was. The policy on the craiglist board is that it must be a "paying" job. I offered a dollar. I was then told that it was "minimum wage", but the vast majority of paying jobs are not minimum wage at all. All I really wanted was a clear answer as to what the policy was. The film/TV/theatre community is an odd duck. People work for reels or doughnuts all the time and do so willingly. Not all payment is cash- it's contacts and networking. Look at a copy of Backstage or any casting paper and you'll see "reel" as payment. Craigslist COULD be a great resource for these kind of jobs, but instead if you peruse the film/tv/ section it's all ads for various softcore porn stuff. This still isn't the point. All I want to know is how much does craigslist consider to be a minimum? Why can't I get a straight answer? I think it's unfair to tell someone, even if it's a free site, that if they aren't getting the help they need, they should "just wait a few days"...it seems antithetical to what craigslist is about. Craig writes: Japhy, get serious, $1 is not paying. You got a straight answer. How about getting reasonable. Japhy writes: So- then I ask again, what is "pay"? I'm a frikken college student trying to cast a student film and you're essentially dictating to me how much I have to pay my actors when I know that they'll work for a reel. I'm not trying to screw anyone over- talk to anyone in the entertainment industry. Regardless, tell me how much Craig Newmark wishes me to pay my actors and I will list that amount so I can get an ad up on his board. Craig writes: I think Geoff already answered that, please review, or ask, nicely. Japhy writes: Dear Mr. Newmark- I am a teensy bit confused as to craigslist definition of "pay". While you mentioned that Geoff has already told me what that policy is, I simply can not seem to find it anywhere. If it is "mimimum wage" then why are there so many other ads up that do not offer it? I know you are a busy man, so all I ask is that you answer this one simple question: "How does craigslist define what 'pay' is?" Sincerely, Japhy Grant Craig writes: Japhy, how about using some common sense? That works for millions, literally. If there are problematic ads of any sort, please flag, or post the URLs in Feedback. Japhy writes: Dear Mr. Newmark- Thank you very much for refusing to answer my question. I would also like to thank you for insulting me. Repeatedly. I am writing to tell you that I have decided to place an ad, which I will pay for, in Backstage magazine for my Lesbian Love Tragedy version of Othello. I will, as many filmmakers, not offer any payment to my actors, but will provide a reel of their work and transportation as is the custom in my clearly non-common sense oriented world. It is a shame that I could not use Craigslist to place this advertisement. I stand by my belief that if you offer a resource to the public, you are responsible for their questions and inquiries regarding it. That I have asked the same question now, fifteen times (I counted) and not recieved an answer is not a sign of my lack of common sense, but yours. -Japhy Grant Craig writes: Japhy, I'd sure appreciate either 1) if you'd commence an honest approach, or 2) approach this as an adult. Craig Japhy stops writing and contemplates starting Japhyslist. To top it all off, Craig recently wrote this on his blog: "We're not sure what people usually do various business situations, so we plunge ahead. Sometimes we do get into trouble, but usually, it works out well for all concerned. That is, we try to do the right thing, and it works for everyone, particularly as part of the "culture of trust" that's very important to us. "

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posted by Japhy at 10/12/2003 09:12:00 PM || #

LAST DAY TO REGISTER!!! Hey New York! Tommorow (Friday) is the last day to register to vote and switch your party affiliation if you want to vote in the Democratic primary on March 2nd! The forms are available here. In NYC, drop off the forms at: New York County Board of Elections 200 Varick St. New York, NY 10014 Phone: 212-886-3800 Serioulsy, y'all, don't go putting down "independent" cuz it's cool. Register Dem and get the criminal out of office.

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posted by Japhy at 10/09/2003 02:24:00 PM || #

Craig & Me Japhy's brief encounter with the Craig Newmark: craigslist founder, geek politico and chill guy. In my Inbox this week: An email from Craig Newmark. Any semi-savvy young metropolitan knows about craigslist, the free community meeting ground where you can meet the love of your life, get a new apartment together, find a free bed to shag on and then find jobs to get away from your new found love. Craigslist has cultural cache up the whup-ass, partly because it's free, partly because it' so "community-oriented" and partly because there's no ads and almost no design (in fact, Japhyjunket's design aesthetic stems from craigslistian utilitarianism) and so it goes without saying that the "craig" in craigslist, Craig Newmark, is a pretty important guy. He's also been sued by Hollywood. This all begs the question: Why is he writing me? I had tried posting a casting notice for my Othello video project in the film/TV/radio classifieds on craigslist, which seemed a pretty good place to put it. The site warned that only paying jobs would be accepted, so I listed the compensation as a reel of the shoot to use on auditions and $1.00. Five minutes later I get an email from Geoff Flemming (geoff@craigslist.org) telling me that I can't put up non-paying jobs, but try again if you think there was a mistake. I try again. No luck. I write Geoff and ask him what the deal is. He writes back, "If you are paying $1.00 then you man [sic] *NOT* post this here." I write back to him and ask what the minimum amount is and why this pay minimum is not listed. Geoff replies: "Minimum wage. It's the *LAW* We shouldn't have to list it. It may be the industry standard not to pay people, but it is NOT acceptable in our[sic] job categories." I then write him back explaining that in the theatre/TV/film industry nobody works on an hourly wage rate. It would be cost prohibitive to do so and that offering a reel is kind of a standard student film thing to do and point out a similar ad on the same board I am trying to post to that offers the exact same thing, except with a $25.00 fee attached. I ask again what the minimum is and if I can talk to someone besides him. Geoff replies: "Japhy, I will respond one last time to your email. We do not accept unpaid jobs in th ejob [sic] categories. We are not talking about any other post but *YOUR* post. You are welcome to post in the artists category. If that's a problem then I suggest seeking out another FREE resource for your ad. Thanks." Now, I'm a little miffed. This bozo still hasn't answered my question and he's being pretty haughty about it. Whatever happened to "the customer is always right"? I'm even more miffed because this is craigslist, a community striving ever towards greater perfection. Partly I just wanted to get my classified up, but I also thought the wording on the site was vague, and like a good democratic craigslist member, I wanted to improve the system, but here I was being harassed. I reported the whole incident to abuse@craigslist.org. Five minutes later I get an email fro, you guessed it- Craig Newmark. "Japhy, I have complete trust in Geoff, and I suspect you might have been overly persistent. Is that a possibility? Craig" Amazed as I am that the Craig Newmark has written me it's not quite what I expected, so I email Craig the whole email exchange between Geoff and me and add that I only bring it up because of how utterly pleased I am with craigslist usually. A minute later, from Craig: "Japhy, thanks, but I'm no big deal. It looks like Geoff was really patient to you, particularly considering we're all very badly slammed. Maybe wait a day, ask him again, patiently. thanks! Craig" Now I'm sitting here at my desk and thinking, "Craig Newmark is a communist". My illusions are so utterly shattered. I had always imagined craigslist as this mutual community and Craig as a deist deity watching over us all. I had to fight off my Gothamite urge to sneer at what seemed to me an utterly flaky San Franciscan thing to say. "Maybe wait a day, ask him again, patiently."? Was there really so deep a cultural divide? New Yorkers are always accused of being rude, but I was simply trying to get an answer and Geoff kept using ALL CAPS and *asterisk* around his words. He made it a totally emotional issue and Craig seemed to agree. Are New Yorkers from Mars and San Franciscan from Venus? The other question raised by this whole encounter is exactly what are Craig Newmark's responsibility to craigslist. Sure, it's free and he created it, but it's become such a staple of the internet, like Google, that the question arises: How much accountability does Craig have to those who use his eponymous list? Is craigslist really Craig's or does it belong to everybody? Robber baron's once invited workers to their mines with the allure of opportunities and created whole villages for the workers to live in, and yet, they had no voice in public affairs or even what kind of bread they could buy ("You will buy Westinghouse bread!"). Craig Newmark has, for far more altruistic purposes created a community that now reaches across the globe. What has made craigslist great is not Craig Newmark, but the people who have posted on the site. Does the town belong to the people or to the mayor, even a feel good San Franciscan like Craig Newmark? For such a New Economy kinda guy, Craig's list sure looks like a company town.

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posted by Japhy at 10/09/2003 12:02:00 PM || #

My Dearest Jill- Miss Quinn, it has been far to long since I have touched your ivory face or gazed upon your sun-wheat hair. As I think of you, somewhere past the gull cry, I find myself asking, "Why oh why did you go and become a pirate?!?!" Pirates are horrible bloodthirsty scavengers of the sea! You were fair and kind and now you probably have a peg leg and a crew of deserters and chinamen. Well, I'm resigned to your fate- that's why I found you this: Dave Egger's Pirate Store. They say it's the best around for "your kind". In San Francisco, obviously, but they'll ship to wherever the Aolians take you, my dear, dear, much missed she-pirate. Eternally Landlocked, Japhy

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posted by Japhy at 9/24/2003 02:41:00 PM || #

Theatre Review: Over-Dose: The Weird and Mainly Unpleasant World of Dose: The Musical "-Do you like me? Yeah? -Would you do something really special for me? What? -Heroin." (from Dose: The Musical) I'd like to begin this review by pointing out that most people, me included, go to the theatre to enjoy themselves. The audience, for the most part, wants to have a good time. The audience that attends new musical theatre in the East Village is an especially tolerant breed. They've seen some pretty bad stuff and so, don't ask for much. I bring this up because for most of the seemingly unending eternity that is the new musical Dose, the audience remains pretty much silent as a heroin addict. Well, a normal heroin addict, not the singing, mincing, monsters on stage in this disaster. See, Dose is about heroin---and fat people...gay stereotypes too. I could go on about how confusing the plot is, but I could better use my time to say, read a book or pick my nose, so here's the briefest synopsis possible: Fat girl Lily (Shanna Sharp- who is buried under the world's most unflattering fat suit. Who knew that there were no genuinely fat girls who could sing left in the world? Thank god for fat suits- without them we'd have to see people who really ARE fat tread the boards!) is obsessed with model-boy Jamie (Kahan James)who is a heroin addict and not much else. He turns all of her friends on to heroin while she remains annoyingly oblivious and actually is the source of funds for Jamie's addiction. There's a minor sub-plot involving the most ridiculous gay character this side of Paul Lynde's grave and another about a performance artist with a Daddy-Catholic-Spank-Me fetish. Wow: An hour and a half of my life wasted on a storyline that thin. It kinda makes me want to do heroin. Alright, let's review this baby: The show starts off promising enough with Lily (aka Fat Girl), entering lonely and dejected, crying over her salad until she pulls out a salami and two prancing faggy chorus boys and starts singing about the joy of food. It's about time we had a musical number making fun of chorus boys and it's well done here. Someone should write a musical about chorus boys and girls- I'd bet it would be a big hit. In any event, this light hearted acidic comedy soon dissolves into the depressing and morose middle section of the musical, which could easily be retitled: D.A.R.E- The Musical. The usual problems that plague bad musicals are all here: One dimensional characters, boring plots, expositional songs, songs which really have nothing to do with the musical, songs that stop the musical dead in its tracks (no pun intended) and then, of course, reprises of all those useless songs throughout the second act. However, Scott Schneider's score is actually quite good. The tunes were catchy, even if the lyrics were generic or nonsensical. I hope to hear him again someday in a better musical. There are moments of enjoyment in the show. One number especially, "Manipulation" comes together in a catchy, proto-Fosse way that manages to tell the audience something without bashing them over the head with it. Also, the last ten minutes of the play are fantastic- and completely out of context with the rest of the show. If book writer/lyricist Tim Aumiller really wanted to make the point he makes at the end of the show, he would not have given us such entirely pasteboard characters. If the show could only be as witty as it is in it's final moments (there's bit about "karma" in the final number that is absolutely hilarious) the creators of Dose might have a show that doesn't leave its audience wishing for the narcoleptic bliss seen onstage for themselves. As it stands now, when the fatty finally gets around to shooting up, I found myself muttering, "Well now, maybe she'll lose some fucking weight." Dose is playing through September 26th at the Kraine Theater (85 East 4th Street between 2nd and 3rd). Tickets are $15 and available through www.smartix.com or at the box office. Showtime is 7:30. www.dosethemusical.com

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posted by Japhy at 9/23/2003 09:11:00 AM || #

Advice for the High School Senior From the College Senior Hey there Senior! Congratulations, you're almost out of high school! You've taken your senior photo and now, if you haven't already, you find yourself spending each weekend at some new campus that tries to woo you with impressive talk about "academic rigor" and "fun dorm living!". You've eaten at more Sodexo cafeteria's than you can imagine and you've collected enough embossed informational folders to start a small stationary store, but little senior, I know how lost you really are. You have absolutely no clue what's going on and if you think you do, you're probably in even worse shape. That's why you have me: The College Senior. Oh sure, I'm probably not the best one to be giving advice. I'm not at Harvard and it's taken me five years to get here, but Lil' Senior, trust me. I've been to three colleges: the rural state school Plymouth State College (now Plymouth State University), the highly urban private wannabe-Ivy New York University (where I attended Tisch School of the Arts) and now I'm at my soon-to be alma mater, the public, ethnic and urban Brooklyn College, here in sunny Flatbush, Brooklyn. My instability is your gain. I've seen almost every kind of college set-up and met almost every kind of college student. I took two years off to work and still came back. Most of all though, like you, I came into college wanting to get something more out of the experience than simply a piece of paper. Here's my advice to you, the High School Senior: Don't go to a University. This is the strongest advice I can give anyone looking at an undergraduate degree. Universities are large and serve the needs of researching professors and graduate students. As an undergraduate, you will find yourself taking classes that are extremely large and taught by T.A.'s, not professors. Save the university for your grad degree, when you'll get the attention you deserve. A university may sound prestigious, but unless you are going for a specific program, skip it and choose a college instead. The only difference it will make when it comes time to graduate is that your recommendation letters will come from someone who actually knows you. Major in what you want. Students are constantly majoring in things they "think" they should be majoring in and wind up miserable. Major in whatever moves you. It's not as if you're going to actually wind up doing what you major in anyways, so you might as well do something you enjoy. What if you want to get into a good graduate program? A friend of mine did his undergrad at the University of Austin and then went to Harvard Law. He's making tons of money at a major law firm now. His undergraduate major? Cello Playing. Be an adult. I don't mean act mature (god forbid!) but the way to succeed among your friends and impress your teachers is to simply act like you have a handle on things. If you act like a lost little kid, that's how you'll be perceived. Everyone is terrified in the first few months of school, but if you fake confidence, you may actually build up some real confidence in the process. Pick a college town. The big city universities are great fun, but that's their downfall. While you should be focusing on wearing baggy t-shirts and plaid, the big city campus makes you think about being a grown-up far faster than you really need to be. It's hard to consider class all that important when you can get a job in your industry now. Some students excel at big city college life, just realize that it's more city life than college life you're getting. Get involved in campus activities, but have a life as well. Sure, if your campus is the only game in town, your life is going to revolve around it, but get some real world experience as well. Meet people who are not in your college. Take up a job. The campus can be a bubble that shelters you, but eventually you need to burst it open. Take a semester off. Better yet, take a year off. Go travel. Write a novel. Have a passionate affair with a Latvian archeologist. Whatever it is, do it now. Once you graduate, you will most likely never have the opportunity to do so again. Find a mentor. If there's a professor you adore or who infuriates you in a positive way or if you have a director, coach or boss who you really seem to click with, hang on to that person. Develop a real relationship with someone older and wiser and in your field and you'll be orders of magnitude ahead of everyone else. This might sound too Mrs. Robinson-esque, but trust me. My first and best mentor, Matt Kizer, of Plymouth State University, challenged me in ways I would have never challenged myself. I still email him now and then, two colleges later and his advice is always on the mark. Do what you want. The great thing about college is that you get to reinvent yourself and unlike high school people are going to be pretty much cool with that. Always dreamed of being a jock, but was labeled a wimp in high school. Go for it! Didn't do drama because you thought it was gay? Get over yourself and do a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta! Be who you want to be. Just, for god sakes, don't be boring. And one bit of advice about your last year in High School: Enjoy it! Those jerks that think they're the kings of high school? Four years from now, they'll still be living in the same town, doing some crappy job and talking about how cool high school was. Get close with your friends and cry like crazy when they leave, because year or two from now, you'll be lucky if you're still talking to three of them! So, don't be afraid of college. It's just like high school- only the classes are easier, you get to do whatever you want and the jerks are the ones everyone makes fun of. Excelsior!

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posted by Japhy at 9/16/2003 12:38:00 PM || #

This is General Wesley K. Clark. From NPR.com: "Clark was Supreme Allied Commander of Europe from 1997 to 2000. A West Point graduate, Rhodes Scholar, and decorated Vietnam War veteran, Clark was the director of strategic plans and policy for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon from 1994 to 1996 and lead military negotiator for the Bosnian Peace Accords at Dayton, Ohio, in 1995." This week, General Clark, a Democrat, will announce his candidacy for President of the United States. Oh yeah, he's also anti-war.

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posted by Japhy at 9/15/2003 12:37:00 PM || #

The War on Terrorism Count...It Keeps Growing and Growing and Growing... Hope you had a Happy Terrorism Day! I'm not going to write about September 11th specifically today. Suffice it to say that turning on my TV this morning, I saw a special news segment on "What Celebrities Were Doing on September 11th" in which I found out that Christian Slater called his agent to find out when his flight to New York...blah, blah, blah. I turned off the TV and felt sick, disgusted and dirty. I think there are a myriad of ways to remember this day. That was not an appropriate one. Here is my way: The War on Terror began on September 11th, 2001. Two years later, let's look in on how we're doing: I guess this means we're winning.

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posted by Japhy at 9/11/2003 05:33:00 PM || #

Our Dull tomorrow: The Latest Issue of Time Hails the Death of The Future Take a look at the September 8th issue of Time, a special report entitled What's Next- Our fearless forecasts in the worlds of Science, Medicine, Tech, Sports, Design, Movies and More.[Click here to see it online] The "Look into tomorrow" theme is certainly not a novel one, but what's so telling about America's favorite magazine's take on tomorrow is how close tomorrow is from now. Managing Editor James Kelly writes, " we decided to avoid fanciful long-term projections of what life might be like in, say, the year 2050...we decided instead to focus on the near future, to look at the trends that will make a difference later this year and in 2004." That's right. The future is next week. While groups like Daniel Hillis' Long Now Foundation urge to think of things on a cosmic scale of thousands of years, we have become a culture obsessed in quarterly, even weekly future. James Gleick chronicles this trend in his book, Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything, but the latest issue of Time seems to transcend mere overcaffinated myopia. In fact, in 104 pages, James Kelly seems to be telling Time readers that future, or at least the vision of the future as ultimate cultural carrot that drives society forward, is gone. The first half of the magazine is filled with full page spreads of the recent bombing in Najaf. Looking like an eerily familiar post-apocalyptic scene, men yell and struggle to pull bodies out of dust soaked cars. Rubble fills the streets and a man cries into his t-shirt. This could be last year, two years ago, the Middle Ages or Armageddon. Time folds in on itself in Time. Afghanistan is back (as if it ever went away), conspiracy theories about Saudi Arabia and American politicians smiling and riding motorcycles (John Kerry, to be precise) all seem to exist without any real historical context. This might be the now, but when sandwiched between a cover about the future, these events already look hazy and dim. With the war on terrorism a war that can never be won, it seems that the future, past and present have all collapsed into rubble, leaving us to sift through the eternal now. Once we get to the actual section on The Future, we don't find flying cars or even new gadgets. Instead, we meet Irma Zandl, a media consultant who's job is to spot the latest trends. Her guesses: iPod DJ parties, Latin Flava, and Burlesque. Burlesque, of course, as my savvy readers know, is so last year it hurts. She describes the people who set trends as 'alpha consumers' and then describes the process by which, creative original ideas are commodified and transformed into bland, soulless, politically harmless trends to sell to shoppers. Happy Future! Then there's a nice article that you've read thirty times already about the security risks this country faces and then a little dazzle article about NASA's new Martian golfcart. Shiny Future! What else does the future bring? Chinese basketball players (again!), talking dolls (again!) and cyberspace and real space will blend according to the perennially unbuilt Asymptote (who's most public project, a virtual Guggenheim was cancelled after the dot com crash wiped out funding). Brad Pitt will star in an epic- actually, The Epic- The Iliad and in the music world, black people will get back to their roots while white people will be more soulful and sensitive. The eighties are back in as a fashion-style. In short, it's last year all over again. Or 1955. Or 2050. Welcome to Tomorrow- Everyday.

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posted by Japhy at 9/09/2003 12:10:00 PM || #

Come Have a Happy Ending! Once a Chinese massage parlor (with release!) Happy Ending is now a hip, swank, soiree (with release!) Come celebrate the birth of one party and the death of another! At 8 p.m.: The Happy Ending Reading Series begins with music, magic and Rick Moody! Free. (details) At 10 p.m: Dean Johnson and Johnny McGovern say goodbye to their own Happy Ending party. I'll sure miss their weekly emails with their clever quotes. Not for the faint of heart or the broke- it'll set you back five bux. The location: Happy Ending Bar 302 Broome Street @ Forsyth; 212-334-9676 6; N, R to Canal Street or F to Delancey

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posted by Japhy at 9/02/2003 07:19:00 PM || #

An Open Letter to Daryl Lang (Which You Can Read Too) "I'm just writing to point out that the destination you describe in your "Gone Hikin'" entry sounds an awful lot like New *Hampshire*, not New York. But have a great trip, wherever the road takes you!" - Daryl Lang, regarding my most recent blog entry *Japhynote: Daryl Lang can be read every day at his stupendous journal @ www.daryllang.com Dear Daryl, How are you? I'm well. You're absolutely right. I was referring to New Hampshire, not New York. Truth of the matter, I was standing in the middle of a library web kiosk at Brooklyn College while writing that blog. Looks like I must have been a bit distracted by all the...books, since I clearly mistook one 'New' for another. You can't really blame me though, since I've lived in every 'New' state save New Jersey (gak!) so it's easy to get confused. I'm not surprised that you were the only one to notice though. New Yorkers probably believed that Mount Washington might as well be in New York for all they care- it's all upstate to them. As I was driving past Concord, I thought of you and your days at the Concord Monitor. While New Hampshire might be home to a thousand human interest stories (exactly one-thousand, in fact), I can't imagine the frustration you encountered in your search for real news in the Granite State. New Hampshire defies the concept of The Now. I had not been there in five years and the only qualitative differences about the state I could discern were that Plymouth State College is now a university and The Old Man in the Mountain (a.k.a. The Great Stone Face- which is more majestic sounding if you ask me) is now a pile of dust at the bottom of Mount Cannon. In any event, I'm rambling. What I wanted to tell you about, Daryl, was my trip up the mountain. Mount Washington, home of the worst recorded weather on Earth.....reachable by road, cog railway and by foot. My Dad had been bugging my brother Mo and I to go on a father-son summer trip for years. Inevitably, whenever the three of us camped together, it rains. My childhood father-son bonding memories are a permanent water-logged alblum of playing checkers on a mushy cardboard surface, pock-marked by rain dripping down the sides of the tent....or nights of falling asleep to the sound of rain hitting the windshield of our Aerovan while Dad slept next to me in the driver's seat, fully reclined, minimally comfortable. The rain never really concerned us all that much, to be honest. Rain on Father-Son Weekend had become like Snow on Christmas....only, more inevitable. Which is why we stayed at a condo. And there wasn't a drop of rain. Someday, what we will do is make reservations for a hotel, pay for it, check in and then make a mad dash for our tents and camp, hopefully fooling the great storm spirit, Ammonoosuc, into thinking we're at Holiday Inn and giving our camp trip the impossible dream of a dry, dry camp. Seriously, we're doing it. This is what I want to write to you about Daryl. I want to tell you about Ammonoosuc, who makes his home on Mount Washington, who is a creation of the Abenaki people, and who I met at about 9:30 a.m. on the 21st of August. So, Dad, Mo and I hit the trail at around seven o'clock. Ungodly, I know, but the air up there defies sleep, too thin to ever lull you into a sense of relaxation. Down at sea level, the air is soup, perhaps a chowder, really. Up in New Hampshire, the air is more like an abstract concept that you might run into time to time while traveling through empty space. So we start walking- Mo in front, my Dad behind me, carrying his walking stick with feathers he had found on trails past tied into the leather lanyard at the top. I'm in the middle and for the first hour or so, true to form, I don't shut up. Every thirty seconds or so, there is an arrangement of rock walls interspersed with peg-like trees and lit by the morning sun in such a way that surpasses any Hudson school painter. My mind races with the idea that once the world was all like this and what it would mean to come upon such grandeur for the first time. Which I was, but I mean, to be discover this. Which I did! But to be the first. Which I am in my own heart. I am the frontiersman and the guy who died before ever hitting the mountain and who have endured snow storm and death and bears only this time, this umpteenth first time, it is beautiful and I am reminded of paintings that everyone call 'impressionistic' because nobody gets out enough anymore. Nowadays we call the fantastic unbelievable and call a painting surrealist if it's colors are to vivid, it's contrasts too contrasty, it's reality too stupendous. (Aside: Great joke I heard this week- "Dadaists are just keeping it surreal") This is what I'm thinking about. I'm also thinking about how to write a nature poem in a way that doesn't reference the man-made. No "rivers like ribbons" or "vast canopy's of green", but rather to find ways of talking about the natural without turning it into a dressmaker's shopping list or an architect's glossary. I'm thinking about this and crossing the Ammonoosuc, which when not being a mountain or a great storm spirit, is also a river. This is a mad river, really more water falling off the side of a giant rock than actual river, with banks and shores and things. It goes barreling down the mountain like dragon's flames, only wet and white. We reach this perfectly amazing waterfall that looks like it took thirty zen monks fifty years to arrange in perfect harmony each tree, boulder and pool into a balance that expresses the One True Nature of All and then we go up. This is a staircase. My knees are up to my chest in each step, bah-dah, shuffle, bah-dah, shuffle. If it was steeper, I'd need climbing equipment. This goes on in short intervals for about twenty- thirty minutes and then something happens. The trail gets harder. I'm dying here and the trail gets harder and all the sudden I'm flying. Crossing the ever shrinking Ammonoosuc back and forth, splashing it's fucking way-too-early-in-the-morning water in my face and I'm laughing at the boulders and the way they have absolutely nothing to do with a trail at all other than that I'm making my way up and over them. I'm falling up the damn mountain! Fuck the cliche, I am the cliche and I'm dangerously close to becoming the guy I'm named after, but I don't care, really because this is the most incredible thing I have ever felt, as if my heart has become this giant metal thing slicing out of my body and reaching out to the valleys below, the ravines and gorges, to the water and moss and lichen beneath my feet and I'm giddy. I stop every few minutes and scream out into the valley below and my voice is just absorbed into the mountains and the forests. My hollars and whoops are just sucked in and Ammonoosuc is saying, "Yeah, baby, let it all out, you aint' gonna' get me riled up. You scream and you hollar and I'm just gonna take it allllllll in, you hear?" Rhapsody of stubby pines shrinking down from vertical towers into nothing, into moss and shrub and nothing. Into nothing and nothing and nothing. Man on rock. Man up rock. No man. No air. No rock. Just the demarcations, the line of where footprint hit stone. When traced: A lightning bolt in empty space. Thanks for listening Daryl. (Everybody else, too) -Japhy

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posted by Japhy at 9/02/2003 11:39:00 AM || #

Gone Hikin' Japhy will be spending the next week or so summering in the glorious White Mountains of New York. His goals are to climb Mount Washington, see Clark's Bears, swim out to the shark rock in our lake, go ride one of the rock flumes and see (or rather not see) the remains of the Old Man in The Mountain. He'll return next week, rested and hopefully capable of writing in the first person again. As a special treat, Japhy has invited his long time friend, Gregor, to write while he's absent. Hopefully, Gregor will be entertaining, but not more so than me. It's also possible, he'll flake out and write nothing at all. Again folks, you get what you pay for. Till then- Cheers!

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posted by Japhy at 8/19/2003 11:56:00 AM || #

Jerry's Kids Love Japhy. So Should You! Welcome back folks! I'm proud to announce that The Get Japhy His Clie Back Fund is more than a third of the way to its 300 dollar goal! Thanks to generous contributors who value the prose and puns of Japhy, his Clie is well on the way to becoming a reality! However, we still have a ways to go and we need your support...your support in greenbacks, that is. For those of you who don't know how to scroll down the page, Japhy lost his Clie in tragic circumstances and needs your help! Don't take my word for it, though. Here's celebrity philanthropist Jerry Lewis, here to tell you more: Freunleven Mister Blogger Reader Man! Japhy's Clie is serious business. He travels and moves about so often that without it, he forgets where to be, what to do and who to call. He's notoriously disorganized and without it, he spends his days being absolutely nutty. And I know nutty! Bwahhahaha! That's why I have cancelled my annual telethon to help out kids with muscular dystrophy, so that those dollars can go to Japhy. The kids, well- I know they look cute, but they're really brats. Drooling all over my lapels! Freunleven! Give the money to Japhy, instead. Guffaw Guffaw! Thank you Jerry. Remember, every person who donates money to the Fund receives a poem, especially written for them, created by Japhy himself! Don't delay! Think about how much Japhyjunket means to you. Great blogs like this take energy and resources to create. Show your appreciation now by clicking the button below and donating to The Get Japhy His Clie Back Fund. Even a dollar will get Japhy closer to his dream. Think of the children. Help Japhy out. You'll be glad you did.

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posted by Japhy at 8/18/2003 01:06:00 PM || #

I Heart Electricty Hey there folks- 9:12pm Causing people to cheer and holler out their windows, power just returned to my current location (25th Street and 8th Avenue) about ten minutes ago. Amid both the general community friendliness that marks New York and the price gouging done by markets and restaraunts as food supplies dwindled (I managed to snag some chicken from Chez Brigitte downtown, but most restaraunts are just serving drinks and chips) everyone seemed to survive the blackout fairly well. Personally, I think Bloomberg should turn off the power to the city one day every week as a cost cutting measure to save the budget. We can call it "Frontier Fridays" and we'll all learn a useful colonial skill. Me- I'll be dipping candles in my quaker boots. As you can tell, I'm a little punchy. I was in Flatbush, Brooklyn when the power went out and managed to snag a bus to Burrough Hall, which for those outside NYC, is downtown Brooklyn. From there, I walked with a classmate of mine across the Brooklyn Bridge, fighting the overwhelming tide of people coming out of Manhattan. They flooded not only the pedestrian walkways, but the roads as well, forcing automobiles to park fifty feet above the East River. Other exciting things to note about the blackout: - For probably the only time ever, you could see the stars (the literal kind, that is) above Manhattan. - Deli owners are the unsung heroes of our time. While most stores closed up and refused to open, the deli owners kept us all alive on potato chips and increasingly warm water and juice. Bringing us a taste of their homelands, New Yorkers wandered through the candle-lit delis and stood in lines that looked more like something you'd see in Communist China than in the 212. - I really wanted to go looting, but nobody would join me. Losers. - For the first twelve hours, having no power is a beautiful transcendentalist experience, where you can really ruminate on the state of Nature, both within yourself and in the world. After that, you start to want to hit people. So- while we still have no subway, no perishable food, and the smell of uncollected garbage piling up is wafting through the streets, I'm happily staring at this most remarkable new novelty of the modern age: the lightbulb. P.S.- If anyone needs anything to do, reads this soon and is in the Chelsea area- give me a call. We're gonna make it a Julianne Moore movie night and screen Safe and Vanya on 42nd Street on the kinetiscope!

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posted by Japhy at 8/15/2003 06:33:00 PM || #

See Me. Feel Me. Touch Me. Buy Me. Like Tommy, I'm a kid in need Hi there folks. Bad news. My Clie, which I love and adore, which stores all my phone numbers, ideas and notes, has been lost. You have no idea how I've looked all around for it. It's my own fault, I'll admit it- I was in such a rush to get to the orphanage to help out those poor little tykes, that I must have left it lying in my gym locker. So now, I'm without it and I'm sad. You don't want Japhy to be sad, do you? The Clie is a mere $300.00. Rather than wasting your money on the homeless and the destitute, donate whatever you can to the Get Japhy His Clie Back Fund. No amount is too small. In exchange, all donors will receive a poem written especially for them, by Japhy. Japhjunket has always been free. Think of all the joy and insight it has brought you over the years. Think about the cultural cache you have earned by being able to name drop me at society parties. Being a writer is a sad, lonely profession. My Clie was a small glimmer of sunshine slicing its way into the murky gloom of my heart. Won't you help me get it back? Together, we can make me happy.

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posted by Japhy at 8/13/2003 02:19:00 PM || #

Tiresias Speaks: Blind Items from a He-She Know-It-All Greetings Gossip Hounds, I've been working on a new blog for a while that will prove that the concepts of "Freedom" and "Liberty" are utterly meaningless and must be struck from the lexicon at once if we are to save democracy. It's a bit involved, and seeing as how we're in the dog days of August, when brains turn to fried eggs and concentration only musters its strength to order a Tanq and T, I thought that rather than try to repeal 250 years of democracy, I'd hold off for a bit. Instead I'll engage in some good ole' fashioned blind-item rumourmongering. With out further ado: What Broadway "Boy Wonder" does double duty down in the Bowery showing off his fuzzy puppet to anyone who knows that the number of the day is five? What Hollywood harthrob dujour has been cultivating a "silent and brooding" attitude with interviewers because his agent does it want it to slip out that this rising star started out as a poolboy for a big time producer? What neurotic Must-Read gossip columnist still has his octagenarian mother do his dishes- hates her for it and only wants help so he won't feel bad when she dies? What out of this world pop star tells the fellows that he likes it the way Andrew Sullivan likes it? What former MePa denizen is having so much trouble getting his sex up, that he's resorted to writing emails to everyone he's ever known to get someone to help him out? What reader of gossip-mongering blogs is doomed to sunburns, floods, poor leaders and the occasional rape at the hands (er..wings) of a swan? (hint: Look in the mirror, honey-child) Don't believe me? I'm Tiresias. Don't fuck with me or you're gonna wind up poking your eyes out. Off the record, on the QT, and very HUSH HUSH - Tiresias

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posted by Japhy at 8/11/2003 01:11:00 PM || #

A Call to Arms Dear Friends, I'd like to take this opportunity today to officially announce my candidacy for Governor of California. While rumours have been rampant over the past few weeks, it brings me great delight to say to you, and to the people of the Sunshine State (no wait, that's Florida...) um, the state with the bear on its flag, that I intend to throw my hat into the gubernatorial ring. Some of my opponents have questioned what qualifications I have to run for such an esteemed office. To them, I say this, " I too, like tacos, can speak in funny accents and can point out California on a map of California- as long as I have advisors nearby to help me out." I will run on a platform of advocating rights for mariachi bands and the establishment of the Walt Disney Corporation as the official replacement of the state legislature. I will also demand gifts to appease my savage will, and if they do not please me, I will eat you. In conclusion, I'd just like to say that I look forward to running against all my opponents and hope that you too, will join us and run for Governor of California. Viva la Revolucion! -Japhy

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posted by Japhy at 8/07/2003 08:06:00 AM || #

A Touch of Class: The O.C. is Good Dumb Summer Fun Ryan Atwood (Benjamin McKenzie) has it rough. He scored in the 98th percentile on the PSAT's, he looks like a dimpled, cuter and younger version of Russel Crowe and he has the biceps that come from hours spent at a high class gym perfecting them. The thing is, Ryan's guns weren't toned at some tony gym, but on the mean streets, where, in the opening moments of Fox's new teen drama The O.C., he finds himself arrested while helping his brother steal a car. The brainchild of Josh Schwartz, who at 26 is the "youngest person to ever create a TV series" according to Fox, The O.C. piles on the storylines fast and furious in its pilot episode which premiered last night. After being sent to juvie, Ryan is befriended by his public defender, played by the usual revolting but somehow endearing Peter Gallagher. After Ryan is released and sent home to his smoke-infused, peroxided, straight out of White Trash Central Casting mother who promptly kicks him out of the house, Ryan winds up being taken home by Peter Gallagher- home to The O.C. (ie: Orange County) that is. Why Peter Gallagher (I'm sure his character has a name, but really, does it matter?) takes Ryan home is something of a mystery. It seems that his motivations are partly altruistic and also partly because he wants to bring a taste of "the real world" into his beautiful upscale life. Once installed in the pool house (with views of the Pacific Ocean filling the all glass walls), Peter Gallagher seems to hope that like a cross between a lawn ornament and Jesus, this rough-hewn kid can bring some sense to this upper class life of his. Indeed, early on at a fashion party, someone asks Ryan what he thinks of Orange County. He replies, "I think I could get in less trouble where I'm from." There's a lesson to be learned there! Alright, The O.C. is over the top. In fact, I'll admit that every time I type "The O.C." out, I kind of want to vomit. However, as ridiculous as this show is (in the first episode we meet the next door girl that is in love with a meathead, but she's also an alcoholic whose friends leave her passed out in her driveway and her Dad is being investigated by the Feds, and Peter Gallagher's wife is concerned because, hey! she almost married this guy, but now he's married to a fashionista half his age and she's married to Peter Gallagher who, when not bringing home criminals or surfing is messing up his neurotic son's life, not that it needs messing up since the boy has already named his catamaran after a girl he is in love with, but has never met- and oh yeah, he's probably gay- or will be by season three) there seems to be a balance to it all. Hell, it's fun, it's goofy and amazingly, avoids being histrionic. The key to this is Benjamin McKenzie's performance as Ryan. He's silent. I mean, completely silent. He broods and occasionally beats people up. However, he manages to anchor the rest of the characters in something vaguely resembling a believable reality. The O.C. is worth watching, especially for anyone who grew up on Beverly Hills 90210. Is it dumb? Very. Is it vacuous? Puh-lease! Is it a good way to waste an hour? Please. Hot chicks, Hot boys, Scandals, Sex and Booze. What more do you want?

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posted by Japhy at 8/06/2003 08:42:00 AM || #