I love True Blood, God help me, I do. But the latest episode did something that I’ve gotten really sick of: Sookie getting mad at Bill because he’s being dishonest or he’s up to something and won’t tell her what it is.

For real, y’all? AGAIN? I’m sure someone out there has already done the breakdown on how many times this has happened, and it’s gotta be a huge number.

I get it - they’re so different, it creates so many problems for them, they’re from different worlds and there are inevitable clashes. But a smart show will find new and exciting ways for their differences to create problems! Not the TEN THOUSANDTH TIME that Bill’s lying to protect Sookie, and she gets mad. What about - I dunno - him getting mad at her? Hello? Or what about their tensions/differences being PRODUCTIVE, INTERESTING, leading them on exciting adventures where for once they’re on the same page?

The American version of The Office did a great job of managing the relationship tension between Jim and Pam. The gestures were so little - a lingering look that only the camera caught, a friendly conversation turned uncomfortable because of everything that’s not being said. The on-again/off-again, will they/won’t they dynamic was really underplayed, and it worked.

And now that they’ve gotten together, and the audience is clearly on board with them, the show knows better than to constantly jeopardize the situation by making one get mad at the other. The one real time it’s happened since they finally got together… I was in agony throughout the entire episode! Because I care about these people! And the show respects them and me enough to not keep jerking me around (aside: it was really brilliantly done - Jim talked to Pam’s dad to try to get him back with Pam’s mom, and instead Pam’s dad filed for divorce, and Pam was really angry and wondered “what did he say to him? And how long until he says it to me?” (GREAT WRITING) and in the end Pam finds out that WHAT HAD HAPPENED WAS when Jim told Pam’s dad how much he loved Pam, Pam’s dad realized he had never felt that way about Pam’s mom, and that their relationship - unlike Jim and Pam’s - was based on a lot of things besides love… like fear, like loneliness, like the kids).

At this point I don’t even care about whether Sookie and Bill’s relationship works, because I’ve totally checked out on it. Which is a shame. Because it should be the bedrock of the show. Instead it annoys me - mostly - and most of the time when one of them comes on screen I think… GOD… when will we be getting back to LAFAYETTE? OR RUSSELL? OR ERIC? OR JESSICA? OR ARLENE? OR PAM?

Like any good fanboy, I went right out and bought Metroid: Other M when it was released yesterday. I guess a really good fanboy would have found a line to wait on until midnight, but there were none around.

After a mere hour of playing, I think it’s safe to say: I’m in love. I’m such a sucker for 2-D gaming, and they really found an innovative and exciting way to make a 2-D game for the 3-D gamer generation. Depending on the time of day and the wind direction when you ask me, Super Metroid might be my favorite video game, and Metroid: Other M is clearly trying to re-create and expand upon the experience of that game… right down to beginning the game with a cinematic re-play of the climactic battle between Samus Aran and the Super Mother Brain… and the very poignant death of the Baby Metroid Samus rescued at the end of Metroid 2.

An overview of initial critical reception is here, although I’m not going to read much of it. I think it’s fair to say that contemporary gamers who are used to stuff like Halo and God of War and Call of Duty and so on will find this to be unsatisfying; it’s not the same kind of blow-you-away-with-its-graphics-and-difficulty product, and in attempting to honor its roots in Super Metroid it’s obviously something of a throwback… there’s a lack of sophistication in the cinema cut scenes - flat delivery and uncompelling dialogue - that doesn’t feel so much like ineptitude as a different aesthetic, one that calls to mind the storytelling style of Metroid: Fusion and other older games… I can see some people not digging it, but I am really enjoying it.

I’ll post more as I get further!

On the latest episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, Danielle meant to say “my ethnicity.” I think. Because what she actually said - with a straight face and no flinching - was “my ethninticity.”

Submitted without comment. Not even “why do I watch this crap?”

I’ve been reading a lot about the housing crisis in China. (also here and here, and a billion other places).

And since I majored in Russian, I have vivid memories from my Soviet history courses of memoirs and other primary sources that described the acute housing crisis that plagued the Soviet government for pretty much the entirety of its existence (not that the preceding or following system did a much better job of it). Collective flats, with five families to an apartment, seemed to be the best they could do - and it wasn’t very much fun for anyone, and it still required a massive and agonizing government bureaucracy to keep people in place.

So I’m wondering: does anyone know of any examples of a socialist system that was able to deal with this problem?

I’m not saying this to be critical of communist or socialist economic systems. I ask this as someone who feels strongly that alternatives to and/or radical restructuring of capitalism is necessary. I just find it interesting that this fundamental problem that most radicals in the West (including myself) attribute to the free market, did not go away in the absence of the free market.

And while I know the principles are similar, I am NOT talking about land reform. I know there’s lots of examples of a socialist government taking land away from rich/foreign/noble landlords and redistributing it to the agrarian working class. That seems to work out a lot better.

I’m talking about housing in an urban setting. The same thing we talk about here in New York when we talk about homelessness and the high cost of housing and the staggering, bewildering, depressing power of the real estate lobby in controlling the political process.  The same thing we think would be fine, just as soon as we can take it out of the clutches of the free market…

And for my Marxist/economics friends out there, are there any great analyses of WHY some of the most iconic socialist governments failed to tackle this fundamental indicator of inequality and injustice?

I don’t like Starbucks coffee, and I generally avoid them for the same reasons I avoid any other big corporation: I’d rather give my money to struggling local merchants who need it a lot more. But I know that in New York City, they do right by the homeless. Free bathroom access, and folks can sit for as long as they want.

And now, I’ve learned a brand new trick that’s even better than all of that.

Go into any Starbucks, anywhere, and ask for a cup of hot water. They’ll give it to you for free. They’ll even ring it up and give you a receipt for it - $0.00!! [I've had mixed luck getting this to work in other places. McDonalds will sometimes give it to you for free, sometimes will charge you $1.62... I guess it depends on how successfully you flirt]

So now, I carry a Ziploc full of tea bags with me, and every time I walk by a Starbucks I say “Can I have a cup of hot water?”

And my life is transformed.

(thanks, Joan!)

Interactive mapping is about more than just fun and games and Grindr-style hookups and helping me find the best subway line to take to get to a morning meeting on time.

Crowd-sourced mapping has the potential to impact people’s lives in truly transformative ways. Ushahidi was developed as a way to help people document and keep themselves safe from ethnic violence in Kenya, in the wake of a disputed election. In the Bay Area, when a police officer was convicted of manslaughter even though he shot and killed an unarmed, handcuffed Black man named Oscar Grant who was lying on the ground on his stomach, and the police prepared a riot squad response in anticipation of an uprising, protesters developed an open map at OscarGrantProtests.com, so that peaceful demonstrators could avoid the violence of overzealous cops.

Picture the Homeless is betting that the power of crowd-sourced mapping can go deeper than that. We think it can get progressive legislation passed, and forever change New York City housing policy. We recently deployed an Ushahidi-based open map called VACANT NYC that will help us get an accurate count of vacant property citywide.

For years, homeless people have been demanding action from city government around the massive numbers of vacant buildings and lots in New York City. While the city spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on providing shelter to the homeless, perfectly good property languishes in the hands of private landlords and city agencies. That’s why homeless folks drafted Intro 48, a city council bill that would empower the city to conduct an annual count of vacant buildings and lots.

But government officials say vacant property is not a problem… and even if it was, there’s no money to count these properties. To prove that vacant property is still a huge problem in this city, and that a census of these buildings and lots can be accomplished without breaking the bank, we’re turning this project over to the public. VACANT NYC lets New Yorkers send a text message or an email or fill out an online form, every time they see a vacant building or lot anywhere in the five boroughs.

Our little map is already getting big buzz. It was featured prominently in a recent article documenting the fight for Intro 48. This was subsequently picked-up as a featured story in the Housing and Land Use News Digest of NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.

Other allies in the housing struggle have covered the map, including the Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights: http://restorehousingrights.org/?p=1093

If VACANT NYC can prove that this is still a major problem, and that an accurate census of under-utilized property can be cost-effectively accomplished through participatory mapping, it’ll be a major revolution in the way that open-source technology impacts public policy.

So please - help us out! If you see something, say something. Tell us about vacant property in New York City. Publicize VACANT NYC on your own blog/website/Facebook/Twitter/Whatever. We are re-making the world as we map it; let’s make sure we map the kind of world we want to live in.

Do you have a tattoo in Chinese or Japanese, even though you don’t speak a word of either language?

Because you thought, that shit looks COOL, and spiritual, and whatnot?

But deep down you wonder - why do people always laugh when they see my tattoo? Does it say what I think it says?

Have no fear!

Hanzi Smatter is an amazing blog whose host does the very excellent favor of providing translations of all the Chinese and Japanese calligraphy tattoos that silly Westerners got while drunk or after doing minimal research or trusting someone whose knowledge of Asian languages was either exaggerated or being used for evil… so they think their tattoo means some awesome sh*t like “Choice of a New Generation” but it really says “Pepsi Will Make Your Ancestors Return From the Dead.”

One guy thought his tattoo said “Fear No Man,” only to be told:

棺材佬 means “coffin man”.

Another person admitted that they had “absolutely no idea what it means”… turns out their tattoo says:

“to commit any imaginable evil”

And my personal favorite:

this gibberish means nothing in Japanese or at least nothing like “live for today” and I don’t think it means anything in Chinese either. The only meaning I can guess is that if it were written 生きて現れる, this would mean “to show up alive” or “turn up alive” as if someone thought dead had appeared alive. Anyway, it sounds pretty spooky, like seeing a zombie!

I think the person who made this up just looked in a dictionary for the word for “to live” 生 and a word that means something like “now” 現 and thought you could stick them together to make “live for today.”

It doesn’t work like that.

There’s a great one where that idiot Audrina from the Hills got a tattoo that was supposed to say “pork fried rice”….

However the tattooed phrase is not grammatically correct. What has been tattooed is direct translation from English word-per-word to Chinese of “pork; oil fried; rice grain”

On the plus side, this blogger seems to be pretty non-judgmental. They often say things like “better luck next time.” So there’s that.

Two recent literary-journal controversies, both tragic in wildly different ways, have left me with a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach.

This summer, the lit-mag-blog-osphere was on fire with the news that the Paris Review had rescinded some poetry acceptances - stuff accepted under one editor was rejected by a new editor because it didn’t jibe with their new vision for the journal. Can you imagine? Getting an acceptance from the Paris Review - with all the life-changing that would come along with that - and then being told “sorry, no.” I’d be devastated. Good info on and coverage of the issue was included here, here, and here.

Last month, the managing editor at the Virginia Quarterly Review committed suicide. From the look of things, his relationship with the journal’s allegedly bullying editor was a big factor there - and at least one person is arguing that that’s partly because Ted Genoways was trying to “elevat[e] what had previously been a respected but quiet literary journal into one of America’s best magazines” (other good coverage: here, here, and here). As someone who has struggled with clinical depression my whole adult life, and watched people I love do the same, suicide is something I find profoundly disturbing and upsetting. Because when you can see that gulf up close, you know how real and truly dreadful it is, the head-space of being where such a horrific act actually makes sense. So I don’t even want to think about the sadness and suffering of his friends and family, let alone the pain he must have been going through.

I adore both these literary journals. I have a tiny moral problem financially supporting journals that are obviously doing so much better than many smaller struggling presses, BUT I subscribe to them because I know I will find amazing writing. Period. Fiction, poetry, essays - the caliber of writing in both places is top-notch. Not uniquely top-notch, there’s tons of other excellent places I also subscribe to - but I’d definitely say their “market share supremacy,” or whatever the stupid economics term is, is deserved.

But here’s what troubles me about my own response to these incidents (which on one level I have a hard time grouping together, because in the face of suicide it’s hard to waste tears on a rejected poem - no matter who it was rejected by, or how f*cked-up it is to be accepted and then rejected). I have a strong sympathy for this whole notion of editors trying to radically re-invent their journals. Because really radical change is needed. Because in spite of the numerical proliferation of journals, in spite of all the amazing writing that gets published every year, in spite of the vibrant community of amazing people who write and love good writing and love talking and writing about good writing, for whom these journals are a crucial source of daily joy, as they are for me, I fear that the literary journal is too much an island unto itself. I say this not because of any doom-and-gloom analyses in blogs or the editorial pages of these same journals (although there’s an endless stream of both of those things), but as a writer who, when I tell my friends about some amazing new publication credit (LIKE MY STORY “BLACK BABE” IN THE UPCOMING ISSUE OF SLICE!!), gets blank stares. Because no one’s ever heard of these places. Because people who are not writers do not know that these places exist. It sounds like an oversimplification, and maybe I’m just hanging out with the wrong non-writers, but it’s real.

On the one hand, that’s cool. I love my community of writers and readers and editors and bloggers. I love my relationships with the people who publish me, and the people whose great work runs alongside mine. Our communities should be complete unto themselves - I believe that my beloved queer community will continue to thrive and survive without the slightest bit of attention or respect or money from folks outside our community.

On the other hand, it’s not just about the money. It’s about how we all belong to MANY communities. To continue the analogy with the queer community: nobody’s just queer - they might be queer and of color, for example, so they are part of communities of color both straight and queer. Queer and Southern. Queer and from upstate New York. Queer and Asian American. Queer and Southern and Asian American. I’m queer and Jewish, and my relationships with queer AND straight Jews are really important to me. I’m a writer AND a community organizer, and it makes me sad that literary journals are so completely outside the world of many of my comrades in the social justice movement. Lots of other awesome community organizers happen to be great creative writers, but our artistic life is partitioned off in a dark room somewhere.

As writers, how do we function in a world where no one knows what we’re doing? Of course our loved ones follow our writing, read our stories, buy our stuff when it comes out, support us through the ups and downs, but I can’t be the only one who feels absolutely certain that the vast majority of people I really care about and are not writers do not subscribe to a single literary journal.

So it’s not a frivolous issue, this question of how relevant and widely-read and financially-secure and “mainstream” a literary journal is. It’s not about whether editors are after money and fame and glory - or not JUST about that. It’s at the very heart of who we are as artists and how we function in the world (…nor is it a new question, for that matter, brought on by the fact that supposedly no one reads anymore because of the internet (or television before that, or cinema before that)).

I don’t know the people at VQR or the Paris Review. Any of them. I want to step back from the deep (if relative) trauma in both of these cases, which have provoked hundreds of impassioned blog comments and emails. I’m not talking about any people or personalities. I’m talking about a dynamic that I spend a lot of time stressing out about. Who reads us? And how can we get our work in front of new people who will care about it? And how might that involve changing the way we do things? And how traumatic will that be? And how can we do it in a way that respects but challenges writers and editors and unpublished fledglings and Guggenheim fellows in equal measure? And what are the risks? And what might be the benefits?

Thirteenth Century Illuminated Manuscript, from the Cloisters in NYC. Photo by me.

Come sleep with me.

31st Street and Eighth Avenue, southwest corner. I’ll be out here all night - Tuesday, August 24th, 2010.

It’s a slumber party protest! Visit picturethehomeless.org for the grisly details. The why and the how.

“Let’s face it, eating people is a tough sell these days.”

If you haven’t seen last week’s episode of True Blood, don’t read this.

But if you have, I hope you’ll join me on Team Russell. Russell Edgington’s stint as a replacement news anchor was truly marvelous. He’s got a lot of panache and I’ve been enjoying his antics all season, but this was just too much fun. And too terrifying. The way he waved that guy’s spine around for most of his strike-terror-in-the-hearts-of-humans speech encapsulates what I love about this show: its campy, gleeful, gory, mixture of hilarious and horrifying.

I’m done with Bill. He’s handsome and all, but I want to watch a show about a queer flamboyant revolutionary vampire looking to overthrow an unaccountable government/Authority, who sees human society as fundamentally self-destructive.

“The American Vampire League wishes to perpetuate the idea that we are just like you. I suppose in a few small ways we are. We’re narcissists. We care only about getting what we want no matter what the cost just like you. Global warming, perpetual war, toxic waste, child labor, torture, genocide, That’s a small price to pay for your SUVs and your flat screen TVs, your blood diamonds, your designer jeans…. But make no mistake. Mine is the true face of vampire! Why would we seek equal rights? You are not our equals. We will eat you… after we eat your children. Now time for the weather. Tiffany?”

Never stops, rarely slows. Never lets you feel like you know all of what’s going on. Is she? Isn’t she? Double-cross? Triple? Weird but good.

That is all.

Okay. A few words of exegesis.

I am a fierce Pinkberry partisan. I love the stuff. More than Sixteen Handles. More than all the other Pinkberry wannabes out there. And no, I don’t care if technically something else came first, and it’s Pinkberry that’s the wannabe.

But last night we were rolling down 14th Street and we thought, hmm, there’s a Red Mango. And a Pinkberry right across the street! Let’s be adventurous.

We asked for samples of two flavors, and they were yucky. But we figured, well, the PLAIN must be good. Right? At Pinkberry, that’s all I ever get. Fuck the flavors. “Small original please. No toppings.” Or, once in a great while, if I’m feeling frisky, i add mochi.

But NO. The plain was not good. In fact, it was BAD. It tasted like it was trying too hard to imitate the flavor of conventional dairy-based soft ice cream. Except made with milk from sinful, perverted cows.

This frog would taste better. Photo by me.

I am indebted, as I often am, to Kenyon Farrow - this time for his recent breakdown of the should-she-or-shouldn’t-she discourse regarding Queen Latifah and coming out. His angle is that it’s not just about personal privacy - it’s about capitalist enterprise and the way that Queen Latifah and others make money off of an idea of heteronormativity and conventional femininity:

“Latifah has partly made a career off of promoted heteronormativity in some pretty conservative films–not just as an actress but as an executive producer. The extremely racist and sexist Bringin Down The House was a film where her character , a black “ghetto” ex-con at first causes havoc to the life and family of Steve Martin, but in the end assists him in correcting his white middle-class, heteronormative family.  Latifah was executive producer.”

Watching this season of So You Think You Can Dance I was saddened, as I am every season, to see so much queerness kept under wraps. These beautiful talented gay-as-f*ck boys butching it up (and more than a few dykes femming it up), joking about having crushes on their opposite-sex partners, doing hot and steamy tangos and waltzes and Bollywood-Russian-folk-jazz routines with people they have zero sexual interest in… because most of the people who vote in competition shows like this are young women, presumably with the same fictional “middle American” mentality that causes politicians to head straight for the middle (or the right) of the road, and they don’t want to alienate potential voters, who might happen to be homophobic assholes, by being queer.

Which climaxed in THIS AMAZING DANCE, choreographed by past “Dance” competitor (and button-cute, definitely-gay) Travis Wall, in which two of these boys danced what was clearly an elegy for a gay break-up, with a lot of embracing and wrestling and stabbing in the back and fighting and emoting (the YouTube video will almost certainly get taken down by Fox’s roving band of copyright desperadoes, so if you follow the link and there’s nothing there, do a Google search for “how it ends travis neal kent” or something like that).

No queer person could watch it without reading it as a story of gay love and heartbreak and betrayal, which is a very different narrative (in some ways) from the heterosexual equivalent. And yet the judges and the dancers kept talking it up as something about “best friends” reaching “the end of their friendship,” or some other bullsh*t. Judge Mia Michaels, also certainly a dyke although there’s no authoritative record I could find online of her officially coming out - was so moved she had absolutely nothing to say:

“I think it’s the first time that I can’t find words. Can’t find the words. Sorry, it’s so real. And so uncomfortably awful and that is what true true genius and an artist is. ”

A queer judge; a queer choreographer; a show full of queer dancers - but nobody’s out, nobody’s able to be who they really are, everybody’s trying real hard to be good little Fox employees who won’t offend or rock the boat, everybody’s trying to please this alleged universe of slavering homophobes who can handle even the gayest sh*t as long as it doesn’t SAY it’s gay. (well, a couple of the other judges are out, but it’s almost always glossed over or ignored).

When public figures claim a “right to privacy” around their sexuality, we have to understand that it’s not actually about privacy. It’s about protecting their economic interests. Their brand. Their hustle. And of course they can’t admit it to us. They know that queer people know how to read between the lines, and most straight people don’t want to know that there ARE lines.

On Tuesday, October 5, I’ll be reading with two of the awesomest gay men writing.

Lee Houck is the author of YIELD, forthcoming from Kensington Books (or did it already forthcame?), and one hell of a model human.

Alexander Chee is the author of Edinburgh, which is one of those marvelous novels that manages to be literary as fuck, with brilliant dense writing and abundant heart-stopping feats of imagery and punctuation - but also tell a really good story and have really interesting characters.

I’ve been in anthologies with both of these fine upstanding gentlemen (Best Gay Erotica 06 and 08). I’ve read with Lee on two separate occasions. I interviewed Alex for a bad article I’m almost (but not quite) too ashamed to link to, and we’ve corresponded a bunch - but I’ve never actually met him, let alone shared a bill with him, and I’m a little nervous/excited.

Please come. You won’t find three hotter better writers doing their thing on stage at the same time for a while.

Tuesday, October 5th, at 6PM

Dixon Place: 161A Chrystie Street, between Rivington and Delancey.

Use a Google map for DRIVING & WALKING directions.
Use HopStop.com for SUBWAY, BUS & WALKING directions.

Hyacinths and Whiskey. Photo by me.

Has anyone else noticed the complete and utter ridiculousness of the ad campaign for “Eat Pray Love”?

Basically, it’s just Julia Roberts, sitting on a bench, eating some ice cream. With a look on her face that could mean anything from “I am on a magical life-altering soul-searching journey of transformative redemption” to “I farted” (see below for the pic).

I’m not sure what movie this ad is selling. What kind of film will it put into people’s heads, when they see it? A movie about the simple pleasures of ice cream? A movie about being a grown woman unashamed of enjoying something normally associated with childhood? A movie with Julia Roberts, and therefore there’s no need to convey any additional information?

I have no doubt that it works, in that cynical advertising kind of way where even the dumbest concepts get into people’s brains and replicate and then before you know it people are plopping down money. It’s just baffling to me. And that’s why I’m not making any money.

There’s a brilliant article in Bitch Magazine about the book, situating it within the bigger context of “books, blogs, and articles saturated with fantastical wellness schemes for women,” the credit for much of which gets laid at Oprah’s feet. The article coins the term “priv-lit,” which I love, and am gonna start using obsessively, because it so perfectly describes the glut of books that “could easily have been called Wealthy, Whiny, White.”

To whit: “Eat, Pray, Love is not the first book of its kind, but it is a perfect example of the genre of priv-lit: literature or media whose expressed goal is one of spiritual, existential, or philosophical enlightenment contingent upon women’s hard work, commitment, and patience, but whose actual barriers to entry are primarily financial. Should its consumers fail, the genre holds them accountable for not being ready to get serious, not “wanting it” enough, or not putting themselves first, while offering no real solutions for the astronomically high tariffs—both financial and social—that exclude all but the most fortunate among us from participating.”

I find this sh*t infuriating. But it’s where the money is. Tell people it’s easy to have a perfect life, all their dreams can come true, God loves you, your inner goodness will be rewarded. People want to hear that. Most of all, they want to hear that the system is set up for them to succeed.  That we don’t live in a world that’s actively f*cking them over. That the oppression they face (because they’re female, or of color, or queer, or differently abled, or poor) is somehow INTERNAL TO THEM, because if it’s INTERNAL TO THEM it means all they need to do is change themselves… (which Oprah and her ilk say is so easy… just buy yourself something nice once in a while)…

When in fact what needs to change is the patriarchal and poverty-based underpinnings of our society. That’s the real source of our oppression. And all the ice cream in the world won’t make it go away.