American Fez

Carnival of Snivels

This will be a rollercoaster week for me. Alas, not so much the joyful, arms-in-the-air and whooping with delight type of rollercoaster ride, but more a cowering in my safety harness and being sick on my brand new shoes type of rollercoaster ride. Naturally, the sweaty, tattooed and toothless Carney will also breathe sickly-sweet peach schnapps fumes into my face after overcharging me for the ride and leering revoltingly at my obnoxiously flirtatious date.
Consolation arrives in the form of a candy apple, but unfortunately the little stick breaks after only two licks so my treat topples to the ground and then rolls away amid a sea of mud and sawdust. And as it rolls around on the ground the glazed surface of the apple seems to sprout a wicked smile, which swiftly turns into a demonic grin that begins a relentless, unforgiving chant of "Loser! Loser. Loser!"
On the whole, then, not an especially great week when all is said and done.

Sounds of Old Cathay

The Chinese chatter at such extraordinary volumes. Sitting on the subway this morning within earshot of two venerably ancient Han matrons, I felt as though they were shouting at each other across some enormous chasm, disputing an inscrutably vital point of Confucian wisdom or arguing over the most productive method of cultivating silk worms. In actuality they were probably just discussing their recent holiday to Barbados and whether their granddaughters will attend Harvard or Caltech.
Frankly I still maintain a certain fascination with that old Western vision of the mysterious and fabulous China that never really existed: "The Orient" as we used to call it, with its stoic Mandarins, shady deals in Shang Hai nightclubs, priceless goldfish, slinkily satiny girls in rooms of Jade and bamboo. Fu Manchu, of course.
I suppose that's a kind of racism, isn't it, preferring the fictional to the real. I know it is because when my Chinese friends take me out for what they winkingly call "'Chinese' Chinese food," I always shrink in fear from the strange sights piled high and patronizingly upon my plate.
You see, it works both ways. Vive le difference (in Cantonese characters)!

Bela Lugosi In Love

Last night I attended an exhibition of organized shouting and histrionics the like of which I can only compare with the pandemonium encountered at a cattle market. It was called The American Repertory Theater Present William Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet.’
Set in a version of Verona that could easily pass as a Lithuanian coalfield, the modern day costumed characters all resembled skinhead extras from some Iggy Pop rock video circa 1984.
Juliet, portrayed as a screeching Harpy, wore battered motorcycle boots throughout, even when she was dead. The general tone of the production was “angry” - perhaps the actors were angry about strutting and fretting their three relentless hours through such a staged migraine.
There was no chemistry between the lovers whatsoever, unless you count the prescription for strychnine. Worst of all were the grotesque, sub-Janet Jackson dance routines that were embarrassing to watch. Personally, I was so relieved when the star-crossed duo killed themselves that I wanted to cheer for an encore of death scenes, since there was no 'love' or comedy or even tragedy evident amid this tense, overwrought and suffocating spectacle at all.
The lighting was pretty good, if you like bleak Goth nightclubs.

The Armpits of Griselda

Today has been a very un-unguential day: a fly-papered minefield wherein lurks a medieval boobytrap waiting to waylay the unwary wayfarer with its blades, hooks, and chains. I have been forcibly cleaved to Egregious Griselda's reptilian bosom and there is no escape from her mind-bendingly busty embrace. Adieu, my friends, adieu.... grfgmmuflfdle.

By Rote

As we all know, the first purpose of higher education is the ravenous acquisition of vast tracts of real estate by colleges and universities such as Harvard and the other ones. The second purpose of higher education is to over inflate the already massive egos of professors and academics, often creating huge, imposing and unwieldy edifices that are actually more enormous and more monstrous than the colossal college buildings in which these mutant egos stalk their prey, er, I mean teach their students. The actual creation and distribution of learning is an afterthought, a passing fancy, a mere bagatelle. As far as I can tell, the only reason to attend a university these days is to meet fellow keg enthusiasts and occasionally partake in the dreary game of accruing so-called “credits.” Frankly, as an employer considering the current disastrous state of higher education and the often bizarre classes taught within its lofty and ivoried enclosures, I would rather hire the President of the Knitting Club than the head of the class, since I can reasonably assume that the Knitting Club President will be methodical, industrious and somewhat socialized. If a business is hiring someone because of the framed degree that hangs proudly on his or her bedroom wall, then the business is obviously out of its mind. Now, write all that out a hundred times in joined-up handwriting or else!

The Naiades' Ice Bucket

Riding public transport through the city late at night, gazing through the rectangular window opposite, every time the train stops at its scheduled stations I examine the still life captured by the smudgy glass as one might study paintings and tableaux in some slow moving slide show. Either chance is a very fine framer of images, or the lines of the city are vastly more interesting than I usually give them credit for.
Yesterday there was some sun finally, and the frosted surface of the river stirred and thawed. Stubborn and brittle banks of etiloated or opaque ice still flanked the shoreline, but even there splinters and cracks were beginning to broaden into rippling channels of freely flowing water. One wonders what the fish in the murky depths below think of all this dramatic action. Fishes' eyes, of course, are naturally angled upwards; they see the ceiling rather than the floor of their watery home. I imagine Spring for them must be an aquatic experience somewhat similar to watching the heavens open.
I took this picture while walking the riverway path between the Massachussetts Avenue and Boston University Bridges, where drifting flakes of sheet ice seemed like the melting contents of a forgotten Barcardi and Coke left sitting on the bar too long. Cheers, Neptune, bottoms up.

Meanwhile, the interesting thing about spam is that when you edit this jargon using artsy cut-up methods, it reads so much, much better than a W.S Burroughs novel.

Erasmus and the Melted Snowman

My ambition has always been to write one of those sorts of books: the yellowing, unread pages pasted between brown-stained pale green boards. No dust cover, unwanted atop a precarious pile of equally antique tomes in the dustiest corner of an antiquarian bookseller's least visited shelves, my work would be an exhaustively tedious account of vanishing ways of life in some dreary English country village. Called either A Year in Lower Coddleswallop or Spankington Revealed: Season by Season, it would be illustrated with grim etchings of ducks with their Latin names; someone fishing amongst tall reeds with his bamboo pole; a stone church; someone else riding a horse past the high street tavern and tea shoppe; sheep on a hill. I rather think I would be quite proud of it.
However, I've recently decided to make the effort - and God knows it's an Herculean task - to become more aware of my own absurdities. Not that I really plan to do anything about them, of course. Our absurdities and pretentions are what make us each unique. Where would this blog be, for example, without the ability to plunder my absurdities and pretentions.
Which brings me to the subject of American Wanker: In-House Journal of the Stephenesque Organization, otherwise known as this, my personal weblog.
The name "American Wanker" is not a direct reference to me, and should be read as you would read the titles American Woodworker and Scientific American when browsing through a selection of magazines at a newstand. American Wankerdom is a hobby, a pursuit, something you might do to fill in the time.
"Wanker," of course, is an English term, and reflects the Anglo-American bias of the person writing these words. In fact, I almost decided to call the whole thing American Anglo-American or The Anglo-American American even. I still might. Anyway, "wank" seems a worthy adjective to describe the nonsensical observations I post here and elsewhere, these oddball and often ill-considered words that, like those ephemeral figures of snow given brief life by hyperactive children, will simply melt away into the consciousnesses of the kind souls who stumble across them.

Do You Remember

Do you remember when certain sections of our Christian community picketed Monty Python's Life of Brian by parading outside cinemas and singing hymns in the rain? They were pretty daft, but they were harmless - - unlike Peshawari cleric maulana Yousef Qureshi who is offering a million dollars to whoever is willing to murder the infamous Danish cartoonist.
Crunching the numbers, then, we can conclude:
One satirical movie = a verse or two of "Abide With Me" sung out-of-tune by snaggle-toothed Christians.
Several satirical cartoon = assassination by greedy Muslim.
Oddly, since Muslims also consider Jesus to be an important prophet, is seems strange that they have not called for the head of Michael Palin - - God knows they had enough opportunities when he was going around the world in eighty days for the BBC.

On The Dirt Track To Mandalay

"Government" in Burma often makes the reign of Ivan the Terrible look like a model of beneficence and restraint. In fact, Burma's ruling junta recently cancelled a South East Asian delegation to assess Burma's interminable transition to democracy because they are too busy transplanting their capital city from Rangoon to a remote jungle compound called Pyinman, six-hundred kilometers to the north.
Crab Pyinman anyone? Not today, thank you.
Apparently this Herculean relocation enterprise to the middle-of-nowhere is the result of heavy consultation with an unholy combination of fortification strategists and fortune tellers.
Just a little more paranoia, secrecy and madness in the world. Exactly what we need. It's all rather like Jonestown in a way, except with mango leaf tea instead of Kool-Aid.

Sign, Or The Devil Take Ye

Sent post haste from connoisseur and correspondent Tatyana, this urgent petition declares its worthy and important aims with alarums, inviting all right-thinking romantics and nostalgists to add their signatures with a flourish to help save New York's 1938 Art Moderne style Automat at 104 W 57th Street & 6th Avenue from the philistine's egregious demolition crews.

I cannot speak for the food, but the facade certainly demands preservation.

Bitter Sweet Poesy

No perspiring pixie canst condemn
Nor flatulating fairy queen foretell
What gaseous herald doth summon them
To yon malodorous throne at Dingly Dell

Tis here the Olympian gives demonstrations
Where mighty Zeus his thunderbolts doth llght
Ignoring poor Hera's fervent protestations
About keeping her awake at night.

From The Winds of Classicism

Questions, Questions

When does a derelict building become a romantic ruin? And when will it finally be classed as a monument worth preserving for posterity? Can we let certain structures slowly disintegrate instead of demolishing the walls to make way for modern edifices, or is that cheating? Should we nurture ruins or simply let them collapse? What sector of what city will be a worthy Roman Forum of the future? Will the Lincoln Memorial be the new Stonehenge one day? Will scholars consider the magnificent tomb of Disneyland with Walt’s frozen remains and a priesthood of Mouseketeers as historically important as dynastic Pyramids in the Valley of Kings, or will those excavating expeditions simply believe that they have finally discovered a cross between Atlantis and Sodom and Gomorrah?

Alain Robbe Silly

Last Beer At Marienbad

.... Once again ... I booze alone, once again, drink these pale ales, all these brown ales, these stouts - - in this bar, another brewery, enormous cellars, Irish pubs, baroque taverns, lugubrious draymen - where brown ales succeed endless brown ales, frothy, full-bodied beers and empty glasses, bottles, lager, pint mugs. Lager. Pint mugs. Sick on the floor - empty kegs. Always on tap, always belching, always burping - - and on the other side, still more bottles. Then, last orders - - time gentlemen, please; a slurred voice, your slurred voice or the bartender, singing, echoing, along this bar, within this urinal, singing, echoing, your voice:
Ta-rah-rah-Robbe-Grillet
You are fired Monseiur Alain Resnais
Ta-rah-rah-Robbe-Grillet
Leave the set without delay.
Fin.

Notes: 1961's cinematic spectacle L' année dernière à Marienbad
... and with many thanks to Bleak Mouse for the "ta-rah-rah-Robbe-Grillet" inspiration

The Very Rough Guide To:

Rome! Roma! The Infernal City. Setting for Mamma Mia, the famous opera by Abba that celebrates the Roman Foursome's own mother, the she-wolf.
It was here, beside the Typer, that the Possum Peter built the first Pope Mobile in the shadow of Saint Fiat's beautiful Cupola de Latteran Palace. But even if you're not a Caligula's Witness, there is much to see and do in this modern city.
History buffs can tour the ruins of the Cauliflower, famous for its bloodthirsty gladioli growing competitions, and also where chrysthanemums were eaten by lions.
Or you can relax in one of the city's sun-drenched pizzas and enjoy a hot Capuchin or a steaming plate of the house paste.
For gays and lesbians there is the Campo de Fiori.
Whatever your poison, Lucretia and Cesare at Hotel Borgia will welcome you with open arms and traditional Roman hospitals.
Bonjour, no?

Explanatory Notes For the Literal-Minded & Insufficiently Educated:
Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were supposedly suckled by a she-wolf. "Roman Foursome" is obviously a play on "Roman Forum." Meanwhile, a capuchin is a Monk. The Borgias were a notorious Renaissance family.

Cities of Celluloid

Rome: There have been many, many cinematic depictions of Rome; mostly collaborations between Hollywood and the Roman Tourist Board; almost all featuring the Trevi Fountain or car chases down the Spanish Steps. My personal favorite is Fellini's Roma, the master's impressionistic documentary about the Eternal city that often seems like a sequel to Amacord despite being made a year earlier. Brilliant music courtesy of Nino Rota.

Paris: Robert Bresson's Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne looks like it was filmed through an artful combination of ice and black lacquer. Based on Diderot's novel "Jacques le Fataliste," it's glacial and stylish and far better entertainment than most other Parisian films which are usually all garlicky and cheesed out.

London: Most British film directors eschew the capital in favor of gritty northern cities, not wanting anything as gauche as a shot of Tower Bridge or a double-decker bus in their po-faced epic of working class life. Not so Finisterre, produced by Brit pop group Saint Etienne, where the camera lingers on whatever London landmark, graffito, or high rise estate it chooses while superb oddball voice-over narration and pleasantly blippy electronic soundtrack dictate the mood. Only an hour long but an hour well spent. There's also something about the BBC shipping forecast going on in here somewhere - hence the movie's title - but I couldn't figure out what it was.

Berlin: Rossellini's Germany Year Zero could almost be an adaptation of the poem Ozymandias. Haunting and very sad, a companion piece to the same director's Rome: Open City.

New York: Again, there are many, many films using the Big Apple as a convenient backdrop for on screen shennigans, but I reckon John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy is the best one so far. Even if you remove the hustling element, the film is very evocative of a certain sordid, bohemian style of city subsistance and the expectations that are implicit in it. Maybe, one day, some producer with guts will make an adaption of a Dawn Powell novel. We can but hope.

Venice: Until the studios make a film worthy of the Venetian sections of Casanova's absorbing Story of my Life, I suppose we'll have to go with Nic Roeg's weird and unsettling Don't Look Now, even if does star Julie Christie at her most sexually unappealing.

Vienna: You thought I was going to choose Roeg's Bad Timing because The Third Man is too obvious? Wrong! I do like Bad Timing an awful lot, but The Third Man is pretty unbeatable movie-making. Kudos to Carol Reed, who also scores with ...

Belfast: ... Reed's Odd Man Out is a wonderfully noir-ish tale of art, science and forgiveness. James Mason at his most Masonesque and Robert Newton at his most Newtonesque, it's inspiring and weepy at the same time.

Geneva: Red was the only part of the Trois Couleurs trilogy that I liked. Blue was boring and White was wimpy. There, I've said it.

Barcelona: Oh any of Almodovar's I suppose. I'm getting a bit tired of films now.

Munich: ... give me a break!

The Snows of Old Bostonado

Whenever the skies opened and God's famous Renaissance finger flicked a heavy dispensation of snowflakes down to the Italian ground, the ruling Medici family would command Michaelangelo to sculpt snowmen in the grounds of their Florentine palazzo. I have no illustrious patron, nor do I boast any ice modelling skills, but I do have a nephew who is equally as demanding as Cosimo and Lorenzo.
Besides building carrot-nosed figures, I spent the storm watching my favorite films.
More later, but all Hell just broke loose (if only it would freeze over temporarily on Monday mornings).

Friday at the Ocean

It is true, as John Donne claimed, that no man is an island. But today I have made a very passable attempt at being a submerged rock, seaweed-strewn and encrusted with moody mussels whose creaking blue-black shells brush languid limpets aside to gain more space on the craggy surface.
No oceanographer will locate me on any map until next Monday.

The Ruins of Athens

The burden of his genius weighs heavily upon the philosopher's slackening shoulders. This wise old greybeard has grown weary of solving ancient riddles and cracking conundrums. Indeed, the stooping sage has used the left side of his brain so much that his skull is starting to sag over to that side.
Stoic? Not anymore. Those unsightly worry wrinkles on the guru's once formidable brow are beginning to become deep grooves of misgiving and distress.
It's too true. These days this worn-out ruminator is more likely to wander down to the Agora and absent-mindedly buy half-a-pound of salty fishcakes rather than debate ethical principals with Zeno in the Stoa. And when he finally trudges home, Mrs Thinker will berate his balding head for failing to pick-up all the latest Grecian gossip.

Tick Or Tock?

All over the world pranksters like me are currently planning to dress up as Mohammed for Halloween. Come late October the autumnal suburban streets will be filled with falling leaves and prophet impersonators of all shapes and sizes. Only a few minor alterations to that old Ali Baba costume are required, with, of course, the addition of a fizzingly faux explosive. And perhaps a plastic scimitar or two?
Meanwhile, I hope that sniggering students in Islamic colleges everywhere are doodling grotesque Mohammeds in their notebooks as the boring, bearded cleric at the blackboard drones on and on about what can be eaten on what day and what should be shunned. The fact that many Muslim kids must be just like Western kids, cheeky and impudent and rambunctious, is a comforting thought.

Actually, the Mohammedans should count themselves profoundly lucky, at least they don't have to wake up to the dreadful Pluggers cartoon in their morning paper.

She's Your Lover Now

Yeah. Tanya's alright, I suppose. There's a lot of baggage, though, in her head. She's done therapy, but I guess it didn't do her; the memory lingers, if you know what I mean, and it's been boxed up and stacked away with the others. In fact, Tanya's got so much baggage that her mind's like an airport carousel: as soon as one piece of baggage gets taken off somebody chucks a whole 'nother bunch on. Round and round it goes in her head. There's one a bit of baggage even I'm afraid of. I picture it as being a big red box with holes in it. I think there might be a rabid dog inside.
Yeah. As far as baggage goes Tanya's a bit of pack rat. God knows what you'd find if you had a good rummage around in the back of her head: all these cobwebbed insecurites, a few slices of moldy self-esteem and a very rusty sword of Damocles stuck in them, no doubt.
Yeah. But hey! Not my problem, eh? No. She's your lover now, you deal with it.

Funny Haj Haj

Isn't satire wonderful? Satire is probably my favorite thing in the whole world: you can read Chaucer's description of his Knight as a genuine portrayal of chivalry and courtliness if you like, but I assure you it's far more enjoyable to consider the ironic revelation of a greedy medieval mercenary instead. From Petronius through Swift and onwards to the present day, satire has always been an important and indispensible feature of our culture. But the ability to laugh at oneself when satirized or caricatured is even more vital, especially when one's deeply held and long cherished beliefs are being mocked; the ability to simply roll one's eyes and perhaps laugh along is a sign of admirable inner strength. Laughter can be the toughest trial by ordeal, the hardest test to pass. Anything that refuses to be laughed at is insecure and afraid and consequently untrustworthy since it defends itself by becoming a red-faced, enraged and brutal bully. This is why the dreary and repressive Islamic laws forbid images of Mohammed to be made: those turbaned Dracoes were afraid jokers might make fun of their poor little poppet, er, I mean prophet.
How pathetic can you get?

Folkcartoonopus

That auld eccentric English folkie Roy Harper wrote the following verses several years ago. Roy doesn't usually get this angry. This is strong stuff, but when rabid maniacs are demanding that a cartoonist be beheaded, I'll join in the sing-a-long.

The Black Cloud of Islam

I'm sick to the teeth of the news on the screen
of hisbullah scum and jihad the obscene
whose men plant the bombs and then live feeling free
to watch women and children be killed on T.V.
which satan delivers a child a death curse
in the name of a worn out collection of verse
I've not read the book so I cannot recite
but I'd bet Salman Rushdie is just about right
underneath the black cloud of islam
What kind of publicity needs so much blood
that's not for some sad diabolical god
selling himself as a two-bit Macbeth
as the expect in sentencing cousins to death
and what kind of god can this be anyway
that you have to prostrate to him five times a day
with hate in your heart and a gun in your hand
is force the only thing to understand
underneath the black cloud of islam?
and the butchers who've got all this blood on their hands
are the ones who need god to be stood where he stands
blessing this kidnapping, murder and war
with books written hundreds of ages before
and woman in veils walking paces behind
doesn't sit easy in my mind
it speaks of oppression and no other choice
that rigid compliance with the loudest voice
underneath the black cloud of Islam

Another Autogedden

Man driving his automobile: "like a pig pulling a cart load of sausages" according to the Arch Drude; and how very true that similie is.
This morning a news flash on NPR divulges recent research indicating that drivers who ride with weapons are more susceptible to road rage than drivers that don't. Such an absolutely unstunning observation is obviously the result of heavily funded scholastic study in some grim and sterile university science lab undoubtedly endowed by motor corporation millions.
But what really worries me, actually, are the commuters I work with. They arrive at the office at 8am, still drowsy and pillow-minded, having sped through pedestrian-packed city streets in belching canisters of hot metal called cars, and then exclaim that they really, really need a cup of coffee to wake themselves up.
Surely commonsense dictates that drivers' brains should be fully active before climbing into their fiery automobiles. No wonder there is so much death on the road if most people behind the wheel are still half asleep.

The Little Mermaid's Not For Burnin'

Once again my television screen flickers with images of Muslim fanatics incinerating some western country's national flag. Last night there were ashes from the Danish flag floating through the cold Islamic evening instead of the usual inflammable combination of Stars and Stripes and Union Jack.
This time the Mohammedans had taken exception to a newspaper cartoon. Poor Denmark; I don't think the Danes are used being hated - well, not since the Viking years anyway.
I often wonder where these heavily bearded protesters get all their flags from, because they seem to burn through an awful lot of them. I suppose the Imam's or whomever probably stockpile an international assortment for future use and then hand them out as the need arises.
You can imagine the scene:
"In the name of Allah does anyone have a infidel Danish flag?"
"No idea. What does it look like? We've got the whole infidel U.N. rolled up back there for just these sorts of occasions."
"I think there might be one at the back somewhere, behind infidel Sweden and the other infidel countries that usually don't bother us too much with their blasphemies."
I guess if you want to make a quick buck, then opening a flag shop in Pakistan or the Gaza Strip is a pretty good way to earn it fast.
What would dear old Hans Christian Andersen make of all this kerfuffle? Re-write the Ugly Duckling: ".... and then one fine day the enraged and rabid zealot duckling suddenly turned into a beautifully tolerant and reasonable swan."
But that would be a fairy tale, of course.

End of the Line

At exactly the wrong time, when you least expect it, that dreadful moment arrives: slithering up your spine like an extremely slimy snake; grinning like an idiot, flea-bitten baboon wearing a snake skin mask tricked-out with gleaming fangs and Pierrot make-up applied by a chimpanzee; dressed in greasy lederhosen two sizes too small and brown socks adorned with purple polka dots worn inside-out sweating inside crunchy sandals. Yes, it's that kind of ugly, tactless moment hissing between buck teeth that you're not as good as you thought you were.
A failure? No, worse than that: such an insignificant non-entity that nobody bothered to judge. When the desperate have scraped the bottom of the barrel, you're what's left. And these dregs of your worthlessness are the thin gruel that fuels the spastic doppelganger who devours your scrambled egg ego as the rancid grease from your microwaved pysche dribbles slowly down his acne-riddled chin.
Other than that, I predict an average sort of Thursday for you.

State of the États-Unis

How to break our country's addiction to oil?
Does anyone remember the hugely successful anti-drug "Just Say No" campaign of a few years back? Nope? Neither do I.
Memo to the President: maybe you should fly a hybrid Air Force One, eh?