Jew-Jitsu is super-fly!

As some of you know, I’m the Catholic son of Catholic parents. I went to catechism and received all the sacraments that were available. If I got married in the Church, then my wife died and I became a priest, then I luckily received Last Rites on my deathbed, I’d be the proud recipient of all 7 available sacraments! It’s like making Eagle Scout, but you’re dead and you don’t get any patches.

My paternal grandfather was Jewish, so I have a Jewish last name. I like my last name; it’s kinda cool. Rosen. “Keeper of the roses”. It was probably Rosenzweig or Rosenkrantz or some other awful central European appellation prior to my ancestors moving to the US. It may have been sourced from Rozen or Roosen from Polish Silesia. I dunno. But Rosen is alright. I don’t mind having a “Jewish-sounding” last name.

Yet I know almost nothing of Jewish culture and tradition. When I was a little kid, I attended my great-aunt’s Jewish funeral, and I also attended my buddy Mike’s bar mitzvah. That’s the extent of my experience with Judaism. I know it involves yarmulkes, bad singing and a level of boredom that easily rivals Roman Catholicism.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.........

Despite my ignorance of Jewish life, I am vividly aware of the history of the Jewish people: Roman occupation, the diaspora, the awkward integration throughout Europe, the discrimination, the Holocaust, the founding of the new Israeli state, etc etc. But when it comes down to Jewishness itself, I have no fucking clue.

And this is where it gets weird.

You see, lots of people think I’m Jewish. I have a receding hairline, a big nose, gapped teeth and a general look of unathletic nerdiness. You can dump the “zwieg”, but you can’t jettison the DNA. If I was standing in line in Nazi Germany to  get a government job, my rosary beads wouldn’t count for shit and I’d be laughed out of the building.

According to the Nuremberg Laws of 1936-1938, one’s Jewiness was very carefully measured. Even if you were a blond-haired, swastika-waving party member, if you were found to have three or more Jewish grandparents, you were a Jew – even if your parents were observant Lutherans. If you had two Jewish grandparents, you were considered a “Mischling”, which sort of means “half-breed”.  If you had one Jewish grandparent (like me), you were considered a “Mischling of the second degree”. Whether or not this “second degree” of Jewiness affected you came down to the fickleness of the Nazi bureaucrat making the decision. Sometimes, you’d get a full pass – especially if you looked Aryan enough. Otherwise, you’d be deemed a “Geltungsjude”, or “considered to be a Jew”.

If you need a chart to figure out who you hate, it's time to re-think your ethics.

If you were a Mischling or a Geltungsjude, you were typically stripped of citizenship and the right to vote. However, if you avoided marrying a Jew, Mischling, Geltungsjude or quarter-Jew, you were usually not deported to a concentration camp. The Nazis figured your latent Jewiness would be pretty much diluted if you married a fully Aryan person, thus ending the despicable lineage of Jewy Jewiness. This would have been good news for me had I grown up in Nazi Germany, but it may not have lasted because I think Jewish chicks are pretty hot.

Nazi eugenics laws aside, this subtle streak of inherent Jewiness has followed me my entire life. When I lived in New Jersey, it wasn’t a big deal. The place was crawling with Jews. My friends knew I was Catholic, and everyone else just didn’t care if I was Jewish or not. Well, there were some neighbor kids whose parents told them that my family were “dirty Jews”, but these people were Irish; they didn’t have much of a perch from which to judge. Fuck ‘em.

Everything was hunky-jewy until I was about 16. My friends had gotten jobs at the Route 9 Car Wash and I wanted in. This job was a glorious vocation. You could siphon change out of people’s ashtrays, find hidden treasures beneath car mats and get stoned on lunch break. I really wanted this job.

The owner was Mr. Goldstein. He wore gold rings and puffed cigars and didn’t take shit from anybody. But he was Jewish, and rumor was he had a soft spot for Jewish kids. Few ever applied to work for him, though. Jewish kids in New Jersey don’t wash cars. They prep for Princeton.

An artist's rendering of what Mr. Goldstein may have looked like.

So my pals told me to play up the Jew thing. This was no easy feat; I didn’t know the name of my local synagogue and I couldn’t distinguish the Torah from British wallpaper. I went to the car wash and shook Mr. Goldstein’s hand. “Hi, I’m Thaddeus,” I told him.

“What kinda name is that, kid?”

Oh my God! I blew it already! My full name – Thaddeus – is about as goyim as it gets. I was named after the apostle Jude Thaddeus, a follower of Christ, a writer of the most polemic chapter of the New Testament and a bona-fide denier of the Jewish faith. I continued: “My last name’s Rosen!”

Goldstein’s face beamed. “Oh, you don’t say! You’re hired, kid. Here. Take a rag and a punch card and go talk to that fat kid in the back.”

I was in! I had Jewed my way into a peachy minimum wage job! And I didn’t have to quote Exodus or anything! I was free to frolic with my burnout buddies, scam stuff from cars and earn a princely paycheck. The whole global Jewish conspiracy thing was really working out for me.

Unfortunately, scrubbing 500 cars a day throughout the brutal New Jersey winter isn’t a particularly joyful experience. One warm spring day I had had enough. I handed in my rag and punch card to Mr. Goldstein, thanked him for his generosity and walked home, whistling a happy tune.

Years went by, and my depressing life in New Jersey was taking its toll. My family had moved to Bakersfield (my mother’s home town – she met my father there after the war and they moved to NJ to find work). My parents wanted me to join them in California, and New Jersey had me hating life, so I moved West.

After a few years of cushy work, I was laid off and took a job at a pro audio shop in a dusty, barren tumbleweed town out in the county, Pumpkin Center. There were two other techs there, very smart and capable guys. They warned me about the boss, who was a classic right-wing Republican shit-kicker. I didn’t like him either, but he had hired me and gave me run of the entire back half of the Quonset hut where I could conduct my electronic experiments and feats of troubleshooting genius. It was a good gig, I thought.

An alarming facsimile of the shitkicker boss.

After a few months, things were going well. I was working faster and making them some money. Then, without warning, I was fired. No reason was given. I was bummed, but I still qualified for unemployment insurance. I took my pink slip without complaint and left.

The next day, one of my fellow techs called me up. He had overhead the shitkicker boss talking with his wife in the office the day I was fired. She informed the shitkicker that I was almost surely Jewish, and this made the shitkicker boss enraged. I guess if I was Rosenzweig or Solomonkraussteinowitz, he’d have sniffed me out more easily and never hired me. Instead, his raging anti-Semitism had to be applied post-facto. That’s why I was fired.

My buddy asked me to consider suing the bastard for what amounted to workplace discrimination. But I just couldn’t be bothered. I didn’t want to win my job back – the guy was a fucking asshole. Why would I want to go back? And yes, maybe I could have won some money and made him look like the racist jackass he was. But that would entail a lengthy civil trial, a lawyer I couldn’t afford and months of scrutiny and headlines. Fuck that.

The only thing that bugged me about it was that I WASN’T JEWISH.

So, it seems my inferred Jewishness had scored me a plum job and cost me a plum job. Karma was satisfied; the universe was once again at rest.Nowadays, some acquaintances still think I’m Jewish. When I eventually correct their mistake, they take it with carefully hidden surprise. Their blank expression says “Oh, so he’s not Jewish. NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT.”

I actually find this more disturbing than blatant bigots who slap me on the back and say “Hot damn! I thought you was a Jew Boy! Well, Catholic ain’t much better, but we can’t all be perfect! Hyuk hyuk!”

I never bother to tell either of them I’m actually an atheist.

.

Damn, you're suave! Isn't he suave?

Did you ever meet a guy who is just so damn good-looking, so suave and elegant, and (even worse) so frustratingly intelligent and (here’s the worst part) so friendly and genuinely kind that you just want to turn yourself inside-out and BE this guy? That was my friend John Powers.

I met him about 4 years ago at Trivia Night. He, David Pillinger and I formed a top-flight team called The Triumvirats. We laid Roman siege to trivia questions. We won some, lost more and had a great time. I got to know this John Powers guy pretty well.

While most people struggle through life doing what they must to get by, John decided to chuck that attitude and dive headlong into something meaningful. Like most people sick of the rat race, John thought about what mattered most to him in life. What comprised his most cherished moments? What really fucking mattered?

The answer for him was “good times spent with those you love”. Some of his most satisfying moments in life were: sharing wine with a beautiful woman, listening to really great music and meeting cool, interesting people. Oh, and playing golf. Most everything else was just a burden.

Now all he needed was a business plan. He took up winemaking and set up shop at the bitter end of Chuckanut Drive, one of the most scenic spots in the United States, if not the world. As clouds rolled over the glittering waves of the Puget Sound, John set to work improving his skills at converting Washington State grapes into something worth sharing with a beautiful woman. It wasn’t easy to go from novice to expert in this very daring field, but brains and persistence are two things John had in spades.

After a few years and some success, he moved his tasting room into downtown Bellingham. Now that his wines were not just serviceable and saleable but pretty goddamn good, it was time to leave the empty islands in the shadow of the Chuckanuts and bring his smile and his wares directly to the people.

Yes, John, that thing is on.

He’d drive to eastern Washington to buy grapes, deliver them back to his humble winery in Ferndale, perfect them, then vend them at his humble little joint downtown. But wine is hardly the same without song, so John scratched out a corner of the tasting room to accommodate live music. Being a jazz fanatic, he tilted the names in that direction, but wasn’t afraid to host some of the more eclectic acts as he saw fit. If it worked with clinking glasses and happy faces, it was OK at Chuckanut Ridge Winery.

When you’re tall, handsome, smart, friendly and affable, it isn’t too hard to make friends and attract women. Friends he had in abundance, and his artist gal Jennifer is about as beautiful and kind and talented as any man could hope for. John wasn’t rich, or even successful in American business terms, but he finally had it all. His plan had come to fruition: freedom from the rat race, a respectful living that offered people the cherished moments he so enjoyed, and a beautiful woman on his arm.

That’s all any man needs, really. What’s really crazy is that I wasn’t envious of him. The man simply didn’t engender such a dark spirit from anybody. He earned only admiration. One would think this requires skill, with the tendency to be haughty too tempting for any man. But for John, it was effortless. He operated well beyond the simple tools of smiling and being accommodating. His charm and congeniality were sincere aspects of his personality. The man was preternaturally engaging and lovable.

Last week, at a charity golf tournament, John slipped and cracked his head on some pavement. It was just a freak misstep, but he landed hard. Obviously injured, he was rushed to the hospital where he remained in a coma for about a week. Today, John Powers died.

I can’t burn clichéd words of sorrow. It just isn’t in me, and John is worth more than that. Instead, I’d like to let everyone know that John Powers was one of those rare birds. Not only did he defy convention and carve out something that was meaningful for him and delightful in this blighted old town, he was also patron of the arts, as well as everything in life that makes it worth living.

See ya, Johnny. You will be missed.

We're the fucking Beatles, godammit!

Some say they’re the greatest musical group of all time. Some say their body of work comprises the best songwriting of the 20th century. Some say they defined an entire generation. Who are they?

The fucking Beatles, of course. I mean, didn’t you read the post title? Jesus. Keep up, willya?

I have a deep-love, deep-hate relationship with the fucking Beatles.  The deep-love is derived from my youth; by the time I was able to discern real music from television sing-songs, the fucking Beatles became my #1. It wasn’t because they were famous or popular. It was their dolphin-like harmonies that grabbed my soft-skulled mind. Couple that with the head-bopping lilt of their infectious rhythms (punctuated with well-choreographed guitar strums to add some drama) and you have gold vinyl.

To this day, there are some fucking Beatles songs that I consider profound and timeless.

Adoring us isn't optional!

Yes, everyone has their favorite fucking Beatles songs. But you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who likes all – or even most – of their output. Let’s face it: even the fucking Beatles themselves had some serious qualms with some of their stuff.

That said, it’s awfully easy to sit here on a 21st century perch and dismiss the music of the fucking Beatles. Nonetheless, I intend to do just that.

Being a man of Science, I plan to critique the Beatles reductively. Without further ado…

1962 Please Please Me

The early fucking Beatles were raw, raucous and sensational live.  The recording industry’s job was to take all that energy and dilute it for public consumption. In that, they were triumphant. Despite this record’s blockbuster appeal, its actual content of dance-hall rock n’ roll standards and “composed to fit” original hit songs is an embarrassment. Nostalgic vinyl hipsters may swoon over the tube-compressed sound of “A Taste of Honey”, but the rest of us find it dated and boring. Grade: F.

1963 With the Fucking Beatles

Shooting to fame and wealth gave the fucking Beatles a bit more leverage and 1963′s “With the Fucking Beatles” gave the boys a bit more input on the album. Though sonically similar to the first record, this record bristles with some of the energy Lennon wanted to express. Sadly, the album itself is mediocre. The fucking Beatles were leading a trend that they were, in fact, behind. This record couldn’t hold a candle to some of the innovative sounds being wrought elsewhere in the early 1960′s, not to mention the output of some of their rock n’ roll influences who had held over from the 1950′s.  Grade: F.

1964 A Hard Day's Night

Now firmly ensconced as the Biggest Thing Ever, the fucking Beatles took control in 1964. To their credit, this album shows that the fucking Beatles could innovate. A perusal of the cuts on this record shows a slow evolution from dance-hall standards to the expression of something wholly original. This is the album of toe-tapping ankle boots and mop tops that declared a new day dawning. Most of the cuts are pure crap, but the slow-dance “If I Fell” shows the band was capable of tight, sparse composition with an emotional tug. Sadly, any value wrung from this record was tainted by the asinine film that accompanied it. Grade: D.

1964 Fucking Beatles for Sale

This album title is ironic, for the previous records were cynical marketing tools while this one made a valiant effort to do something musically interesting. Songs like “No Reply”, “I’m a Loser” and the very Who-like “Every Little Thing” showed a band describing its environment. England emerging from post-war austerity was a place of low morale. Its youth yearned for something newer and bigger and brighter, and their comparatively trivial travails (broken hearts, loneliness, etc) and desire for more (sex, fun, frivolity) were honored in this record. Nonetheless, there’s a nagging reliance on the ole’ dance hall standards. The umbilical cord is still clearly attached. Grade: D.

1965 Help!

This is the record that “Fucking Beatles for Sale” should have been. I’m gonna be fair and dismiss the awful film associated with this record, but even rating this album on its merits can only be done in light of the contemporary music of the time. And this album still reeks of the 1950′s dance hall umbilical cord. Well-composed nuggets like “I Need You” and “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and the inexplicably mature “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” are shat on by drivel like “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” and “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl”. Perhaps most horrifically, the one song that from this album that rings through the ages is “Yesterday”, a sappy dollop of syrup that makes me puke bile . Christ, I hate that fucking song. I know I’m losing you guys now, but I don’t care. Grade D.

1965 Rubber Soul

Thank God, the fucking Beatles finally discover psychedelic drugs! Leaving the crutches of crappy rock n’ roll behind, the Fab Fucking Four can finally stand on their own eight feet. This album is dotted with songs that actually sound like they were composed by some guys who thought hard about life, love, stress and longing. “Norwegian Wood” is, for its time, one of the best descriptions of the loosening sexual mores of the times (and their consequences) ever written. Sure, the album is still plagued with trifles like “Drive My Car”, but one can detect a hypnotic drone adding some sonic breadth to the “fucking Beatles sound”. Witness “Think for Yourself”. Ringo’s disposable “What Goes On” should have been binned or sold to The Who.  Grade: C.

1966 Revolver

The fucking Beatles come to fruition in 1966. This is the first album where George Martin pretty much took over control, and what he considered a “light touch” sometimes resulted in some oafish arrangements, but overall it was a record that reflected the changing zeitgeist with verve and precision. Typically fucking Beatlesy fluff like “And Your Bird Can Sing” were lathered in layers of swirling guitar. We can smirk about the shameless Eastern psychedelic expositions “She Said She Said” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”, but this stuff was defining a new sound brilliantly. So suck it. Sadly, Paul just couldn’t help buttering up the sandwich with crap like “Good Day Sunshine” and the execrable “Got to Get You Into My Life” (a George Martin abortion if ever there was one). He makes up for it by penning what was probably his best fucking Beatles effort “For No One”. Grade: B.

1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Mountains have been written about this record. It’s been called “watershed” and “breakthrough” and all kinds of crap. In reality, this album is George Martin jizzing all over the place. I can applaud the band’s desire to shed its screaming-teen reputation and do something truly epic, but this record is far too hit-and-miss for consideration as a watershed event. Here’s where I really piss off the readership: this record had promise but was littered with effluvia. Specifically, the stilted title track, its awful reprise, “Lovely Rita”, and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” are giant balls of suck that weigh this record down. Fortunately, Lennon once again saves the day with a truly brilliant, off-kilter masterpiece called “A Day in the Life”. That song is clear evidence that George Martin can be harnessed for good as well as evil. And once again, McCartney drops a turd in the punchbowl with “When I’m Sixty-Four”. Grade: C.

1967 Magical Mystery Tour

Oh, man. I could really unload a can of whoop-ass on this record, but my own nostalgia stays my hand. Once again, I’m going to give them a pass on the awful film tie-in to this record and judge the album on its musical merits. And there are a  few: the absurd instrumental “Flying” is a charming bit of silliness. “Blue Jay Way” is an wonderfully creepy sludge of filters and flangers, slugging forward on the low notes of a lugubrious cello. Lennon’s equally dark “I Am the Walrus” featured some startling use of studio trickery to create an abstract whole from a set of mismatched melodies. I won’t acknowledge the idiotic theories regarding this song. So STFU. The rest of the record is an awful face-slapping of mediocre McCartney middens. If Paul wasn’t dead at this point, somebody should have actually killed him. “Hello, Goodbye” and “Penny Lane” are the stuff of nightmares. Grade: D.

1968 "The White Album"

By 1968, Lennon had found Yoko and decided to jettison the cutesy crap in favor of artistic endeavors. McCartney was dragged kicking and screaming into Lennon’s vision, leaving the other two fucking Beatles feeling quite uneasy. This double-record set is clearly a mish-mash of solo tunes by each of the bandmates, held together by George Martin’s increasingly frustrated hand. As a result, while thoroughly modern and maybe even bold, the death of the toe-tapping ankle boots that hung their earlier works together was costly. Fortunately for us listeners, this means we can pick and choose some truly great songs from the minefield of dog crap. Lennon’s angry steel rage shines through (“Glass Onion”, “I’m So Tired”, “Yer Blues”), Harrison asserts himself with some timeless bits of songcraft (“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, “Savoy Truffle”) while McCartney continues fucking that chicken (“Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da”, “Rocky Raccoon”, “Honey Pie”) and Ringo just doesn’t give a shit anymore (“Don’t Pass Me By”, “Goodnight”). 1968 was a year of tremendous forward movement in modern music, and despite its abstract sheen, The White Album is nowhere near as innovative and inspiring as output from Hendrix, Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones and dare I say: The Doors! Grade: B.

1969 The Yellow Submarine

When I was a little kid, I loved this album and I adored the film. But like many things, when you become an adult you put away childish things. Particularly crap like this shitty album. Harrison comes to the rescue with “Only a Northern Song”, and “Hey Bulldog” is a powerful song that probably belonged on The White Album. But nothing can save this record. Nothing. Grade: F.

1969 Abbey Road

George Martin needed to rally the troops after the Yellow Submarine was flushed down the toilet of disposable pop culture. He wanted the cohesion that was absent on The White Album. He wanted the fucking Beatles back. What he got was a fully disinterested John Lennon and a Paul McCartney who enjoys penning garbage. As Lennon watched on with cynical amusement, Martin cobbled together another incoherent mess of solo songs, running together Side Two of the record as a “concept”. Once gain, Harrison stepped up to the plate with the smooth, timeless “Something”. Then, on cue, McCartney dropped his pants and wiped “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and “Oh, Darling” onto the tapestry of popular music. Not to be out-done, Ringo chimed in with what may be the worst song ever recorded, “Octopus’s Garden”. What was a sad laugh for Lennon, a failed gambit for George Martin and an exercise in wankery for the rest of the band has become a time-honored classic in the fucking Beatles discography. Grade: F.

1970 Let It Be

At this point, the fucking Beatles were done. But for some reason ($$$) Apple Records decided to cobble together this godawful menagerie of terrible songs. Search high and low; every track sucks donkey balls. The only thing that could make this album worse would be the inclusion of “Hey Jude”, a single release that is so heinous, so terrible, so irredeemably shitty, that most people would rather throw themelves out of a window than endure one more fucking “na na na na-na-na-naaaa” from that irritating exaltation of Satan’s dominion on Earth. The fucking Beatles went out not with a bang, but a simper. Grade: F.

As you can see, while the fucking Beatles remain in the forefront of popular music history, their actual output was pretty damn dismal. This is sad, because they had a lot to offer: humor, style, talent and what became a unique presentation.  The fucking Beatles had a tremendously attractive ambiance. From their trend-setting hair styles to their jangly guitar strums, they could have been something truly moving, though perhaps ephemeral.

Lennon loved loud, sweaty dance hall rock n’ roll. Who can blame him? But when the dance halls closed, he decided to become an artist. George turned to weird religion and hypnotic Eastern sounds. Paul (to paraphrase Yoko) spent the balance of his life rhyming June with Moon. And Ringo? I have no fucking idea what Ringo is about.

Feel free to vent your spleen in the comments section.

]]> http://citizented.com/?feed=rss2&p=1313 2 http://citizented.com/?p=1278 http://citizented.com/?p=1278#comments Mon, 05 Jul 2010 20:09:10 +0000 Citizen Ted http://citizented.com/?p=1278

Can you fucking hear me now?

Put the goddamn phone away. Seriously.

Day and night, you’re cramped over the thing, neurotically hammering out  yet another worthless text message or just futzing with the goddamn thing. You’ve just GOT to have your fingers wrapped around it, like a four-year-old boy who grips his penis incessantly.

God forbid you find yourself with more than 25 straight seconds of inactivity. You’ll have to reach for that phone. Is there a new text? Maybe it chimed and you didn’t hear it. No message? Hmm. Maybe you can go in and change one of the 8,000 possible parameters, like the one that lets you set your wallpaper to sequentially display the last 10 photos you took. Oh, look! You can even add some cool wipe transitions. Alright!

This is what you look like.

No message, no incoming calls, no cell phone activity at all? No problem! Just fire up any number of tiny-screen games or “apps” that help make your 3-inch life so much better. Why don’t you fire up Happy Dangy Diggy and blow someone a virtual kiss. How cool would that be?

Better yet: let’s get on the 3G network (the one’s that setting you back $110 a month) and try to look at some website that requires endless zooming and scrolling and paging and futzing. Anything to keep your face buried in that goddamn phone.

"Hey! Guess what I'm doing? What? Can you hear me now?"

Most of all, it’s critically important that you are talking to somebody about whatever, whenever. Solitude is for losers who don’t have a crystal-clear network, right? Nowadays, the concept of rudely ignoring those in your presence is known as “get over it”.

Making a purchase? The cashier can go fuck herself because you are within your rights to yap on the phone to your bestest friend about how much it cost to get your car fixed last week.

On a date at a nice restaurant? Whatever. That will.i.am ringtone means it’s Kayden and she just got botox! OMG! Touch touch TOUCH THE PHONE! That guy will get over it. Fuck him anyway. As long as he pays the bill and and settles for a blow job later on, he’ll be fine.

Speeding down the highway? That’s the best time to pick up a call from Jared. It’s really important: Jared just got home and he was wondering what you were up to. Like, not right now now, but, like, what you’re up to later. Yeah, so you weaved a little. Nobody got hurt, right?

Concentrating on what's important.

I’ve fucking had it. You people are crazy. Yeah, I have a cell phone. But its most powerful feature is the “ignore call” button that shuttles people to voice mail when I’m doing things like – you know – interacting with my fellow human beings, driving a car or just enjoying a bit of quiet time.

Texting? Fuck that. Not in a million years. I can understand why children like it; they can send each other messages like “Ur a FAG LOL!” and nobody’s the wiser. But if you’re an adult and you have something to tell me, you can call me if its urgent or email me if it’s not. Texting me is like saying “I can’t be bothered to talk to you, and your precious few hours away from a computer screen don’t deserve freedom from interruptions, so here’s a goddamn text message.”

At this point, I’m probably losing friends, but I don’t care. I refuse to become one of the dual-thumb craned-neck masses. Instead, I like to use my mobile phone as if it were (get this!) a telephone. I like to talk to my friends and family on it. I like to confirm times and dates and just chat about our lives. I love all of you. I really do. When we’re apart, it’s important to me that we can talk.

0110 1000 0010 0001!...............1101 0011 0010 1110!

What I won’t do, however, is join you in this mobile phone madness. When I’m out and about, I want to see, hear, smell and experience that hi-resolution interactive experience known as “outside”. No iPod, no ear buds, no tiny screens, no ads. We can talk, though. Just don’t be surprised and hurt if you go to voice mail. It’s not that I hate you; I’m just busy with real life at the moment and I’ll get back to you later, I swear.

Remember before cell phones? When we had a telephone in the house and if you weren’t home, people left messages? Was that life really so bad? Did thousands of horrible deaths occur because you couldn’t get a hold of Lori to tell her that “Pretty in Pink” sucked and Kathy Jenkins puked up buttered popcorn in the lobby?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a Luddite. Having a portable personal telephone was a futuristic dream that has come true. It’s easier to coordinate with people and share information. But do we really have to be buried in the things all day and night?

Hot or twat?

I was biking home a few weeks ago. Some assmunch with one of those kiddie trailers got in the bike lane in front of me. He reached into his pocket and started fiddling with his phone, swerving into the road a bit. He corrected himself and slipped the phone back into his pocket. Then, not 30 seconds later, he pulled the phone back out and started futzing with it again. He swerved once more, this time causing traffic to avoid him. Rather than put the phone away for good, he simply darted his gaze between the phone and the road more frequently. For safety.

It has gotten to the point where attending to our cell phones is more important than the health and safety of our children. Furthermore, we’re willing to pay hundreds of dollars a month for the sheer joy of being an oblivious asshole.

You’ll never hear me say this on any other subject, but in this case I believe innovation should be halted. Mobile phones should be re-purposed to be…telephones.

You may now commence with the hateful denunciations. I can hear you now.

]]> http://citizented.com/?feed=rss2&p=1278 6 http://citizented.com/?p=1254 http://citizented.com/?p=1254#comments Sun, 27 Jun 2010 02:09:54 +0000 Citizen Ted http://citizented.com/?p=1254

The agony of de-feet.

With the World Cup in full swing, I feel compelled to include some commentary. I’m not a big sports fan, so I can remain objective discussing such an emotional subject.

On this day, America was defeated by Ghana. This is the second time in as many World Cups that Ghana sent America packing, which speaks volumes about the value of this truly international competition. Unlike the Olympics, where huge sums of money can make a national team superstars, in association football any group of wiry little bastards can destroy the richest and most powerful nation on Earth.

The next generation of Goliath slayers.

Association football isn’t very popular in America. We love it for our children, but if you’re post-pubescent and still playing soccer, you’re gay or weird or both. Parents giveth the soccer ball, then they taketh away. This seems mighty strange when one considers that the vast bulk of Earth adores the sport and holds it in the highest regard imaginable.

The reason for America’s tepid interest is simple: the nature of the gameplay precludes extensive commercial breaks during broadcast. There isn’t enough TV money in soccer to satiate the voracious appetites of the American media machine. Without broadcasts, there is no national interest. Without national interest, there is no television audience. It’s a positive feedback loop that keeps soccer in schoolyards and civic fields and out of stadiums and networks.

45 minutes without ad time? Forget it. What's next on the agenda?

For the rest of the world, it’s a passion. Their broadcasters will show all the games simply because it draws viewers. They have that old-fashioned belief that currying viewership builds long-term interest in the rest of the offerings. This quaint approach to business is anathema to American business practice, which dictates that anything that threatens the next quarter’s numbers is a stupid folly that must be avoided.

What a passionate market segment may look like.

Meanwhile, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa and Pacifica are exploding with football madness. Supporters go to horrifying extremes to demonstrate their loyalty to the local side. In Britain, this passion makes worldwide news as the hooligans perform public outrage after public outrage.  This is the kind of passion that marketing executives dream about, but America has yet to comprehend the possibilities. It’s her loss.

As for me? Even if America became soccer-mad I wouldn’t be very interested in the game itself. Maybe if soccer matches became ultra-bloody spectacles of crowd violence I’d watch on TV and even attend matches now and then. It’s the psycho-social aspects of the game that interest me, not the game itself. Why? Let me tell you  a story…

Eng-LUNDDDD!

It was 2004. I was touring the south of England during the UEFA Euro Cup games and ended up alone in Bournemouth during the quarterfinal against Portugal. I debated leaving my hotel to join the locals; my previous match night in a tiny Wiltshire village pub was a bit stressful. Being the “bloody Yank” in a sea of painted English faces isn’t exactly comforting.

But I wanted to see the spectacle. I wanted to observe this cultural phenomena firsthand. English football hooligans make American football tough-guys look like a bunch of fat girlies. I wanted to understand this fury; I wanted to smell the beer and the sweat and hear the screams of joy and anger. I was not disappointed.

I went to the biggest, busiest pub full of the most painted, caped and be-draped England fans I could find. The place was a riot of beer and noise. The crowd overflowed to the outdoors, where numerous TV sets were hurriedly installed maximize the punter volume. It was to this garden I went and, to my surprise, was befriended immediately.

'E's a fookin' Yank, 'e is!

I met a lovely young college-age couple and their buddy, a hardcore supporter. We talked about England and America and how idiotic Bush is and all that stuff. The game against Portugal started well enough: Michael Owen scores in minute 3 and the place explodes with joy. I felt much more at ease, cheering on the English side without actually speaking too much and giving away my ethnicity. I wanted to blend in and observe, not come across as a johnny-come-lately interloper.

The game progressed through waves of beer and liquor. I was quite intoxicated when regulation time expired. In extra time, Portugal scored and the whole place erupted in hatred and frustration. What now, England? To universal relief, Frank Lampard scored the equalizing goal at minute 115. A miracle! But as extra time expired, the place became hushed.

I didn’t take any of these photos, but it this one demonstrates the mood of that moment perfectly:

Why so sad?

I didn’t understand it. The game is a draw and will go to a shoot-out. England still has a fighting chance! Why is everyone so despondent? I stupidly inquired with my hooligan host what the problem was.

“Cunt!” exclaimed the hooligan, “England ALWAYS loses these FOOKING shoot-out’s! FOOK! Oi ‘ate this shite! Oi fookin’ ‘ate it! FOOK! ENG-LUNDDD!”

And he toddled off, beer in hand, a man destroyed. The whole pub felt similarly. they knew that the English side, despite its numerous merits, are world-renown for screwing it up in the clutch. England, mighty England, is a goat team. And everyone knew it.

You could hear a pin drop in the pub. First up for England: Beckham. The man. The legend. He sets the ball, steps back, hand in the air, and proceeds to puff the ball miles wide of the goal. It was the kind of shot on goal I would make, and I suck donkey ass.

That was it. The place was in an uproar. As the shoot-out continued point-for-point, there was absolutely no hope. Portugal was one point up and that was all the room anyone needed to beat the goat-losers of England. Fate inexorably closed in on the hopes and dreams of the Sceptr’d Isle. Portugal wins, 6-5.

The pins-and-needles were swept away by torrents of dark, beaming anger. Screams of anguish filled the hall. Glasses smashed on the floor. Men were tearing at their hair and faces. As they say in hooligan lore, it was about to “go off”.

Not a place for drunk Americans.

The crowd spilled out into the street. Men were stripping off their shirts and flexing their muscles. Women walked quickly along, arms tight their men-folk. I must admit, I was feeling like them. I wanted to put my head down, grab someone’s arm and hope to Christ they could guide me out of that mess. The incipient violence was palpable.

Social scientists have studied crowd violence for decades. Freud supposed that crowd anonymity begets unwarranted exuberance and truncated personal reasoning skills. “Convergence Theory” holds that crowds self-organize: while it’s possible for a few individuals to whip up a crowd, the crowd must want to be whipped up.

What I witnessed that night paid homage to both theories. The core of extreme hooligans clearly infected others, but as the crowd swarmed into the street and started marching uphill, it was apparent that the horde had decided for itself to vent anger and do damage.

There was them. And there was me. And then, there was the police.

It's goin' off!

At the top of the hill was a wide police cordon. The coppers had lined up their vehicles at the crest of the hill and formed a cordon in front. As we marched up the hill toward them, they stood ready, tapping their batons in their palms, ready to crack some drunk-ass skulls without a moment’s hesitation.

At this point, I was ripe for escape. I looked to the left. I looked to the right. No alleys, no arcades. Only two directions existed: forward with the crowd or back against it. I was infected; I couldn’t turn back. It was like surfing into shore. The wave carries you and you don’t head back out to sea even if you want to.

The hooligans were screaming at the police, tearing at their bald heads and itching for a fight. The bigger, the bloodier, the better.

As the first wave of rioters met the police cordon, something amazing happened: the crowd backed down. It wasn’t just one person and it wasn’t discussed among the hooligans. It was just felt. Despite its vehemence, the crowd had decided for itself that this was not the occasion. Skinhead England supporters meekly ducked past the police, wringing their football shirts in their grubby, drunken hands. “Relief” could hardly describe my feelings.

We all winnowed our way through the police cordon. There was a bit of yelling and shoving, but in the grand scheme of things peace had been restored. I bustled past the cops with my head down, silent. God forbid they picked out a fucking American in this crowd. It would be like finding a Tibetan monk at a Texas hootenanny. Like, what the fuck are you doing here?

I walked back to my hotel, exhausted yet unharmed.

My back-handed appreciation for the Beautiful Game coalesced that night. I had never seen anything like it. Sure, angry crowds in Detroit and Los Angeles sometimes riot after a big win, but their chaotic vandalism can’t hold a candle to the focused, shimmering fire of the heightened association football fan.

]]> http://citizented.com/?feed=rss2&p=1254 0 http://citizented.com/?p=1231 http://citizented.com/?p=1231#comments Sun, 20 Jun 2010 17:20:26 +0000 Citizen Ted http://citizented.com/?p=1231

I'm rich, bitches!

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet recently teamed up to create something called the Giving Pledge. It challenges American billionaires to pledge half (or more) of their personal fortunes to private charities. If all American billionaires sign on, up to $600 billion could be distributed to deserving causes.

They have already signed on a handful of fellow billionaires to the cause. Each of them agrees to give 50% or more of their wealth, now or at their hour of their death, to any charitable organizations they deem worthy.

Please Mr. Gates, can we have some more?

Everyone knows that Bill Gates is the biggest philanthropist ever. In marked contrast to his vengeful practices when he ran Microsoft, Bill is not a  monster and truly wants to help people – even pledging his fortune in that effort. I applaud him.

He knows better than most that if you make a man a fire, he’ll be warm for one night but if you set a man on fire he’ll be warm for the rest of his life. When he created the foundation, he wanted to make sure the billions that flowed from it were spent meaningfully.

Thus, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been carefully crafted to solve global problems within its reach. It begins by solving health problems (because people can’t make the world a better place of they’re dead), then goes on to support small entrepreneurship, education and agricultural advances.

On its face, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation looks like a worthy effort. But I think the new Giving Pledge is aimed incorrectly. I have a better idea.

Can these guys be rehabilitated?

Dear Bill and Warren;

Rather than ask your fellow billionaires to donate their fortunes to charity, why don’t you use this historic philanthropic gold mine to make a meaningful, permanent change? Let’s begin by accepting reality: $600 billion isn’t going to change the world. It can, however, change America – and that’s a good start.

This is how: ask your billion-dollar buddies to pledge their fortunes to a single endowment. Then challenge the United States government. Offer to use the entire balance of the endowment to offset the US national debt if – and only if - certain policies are enacted and maintained:

• Permanently reduce the DoD budget by at least 50%;
• Apply 25% of DoD savings to a true national health service;
• Use 25% or more of DoD savings to create incentives for renewable energy and energy independence;
• Use the $600B debt reduction pledge to encourage investment in internal infrastructure;
• Create a 50-year plan to end suburban sprawl and re-design the American landscape into something sustainable.

This shit is why America struggles.

Once the Giving Pledge is on the table, it will be up to the president and Congress to act. If they do – hooray! We’ll pull ourselves back from the brink of military stupidity and start creating a brave new America. We’ll start working towards a better future – and with a huge mitigation of our national debt!

And if the president and Congress refuse the pledge money, they will be faced with an electorate so angry and so vengeful that our petty see-saw of Dem v GOP will seem like a bygone amusement. A new breed of body politic will emerge to fill the void and put the Giving Pledge money to work.

In sum, it just can’t lose.

So, whaddaya say, Bill? Instead of donating money, why don’t you leverage it? You did a helluva job with Microsoft using that game plan. Face it, Bill: it’s in your blood. Now rally your buddies, get the endowment rolling and start working DC.

We need ya, Bill. We really do.

]]> http://citizented.com/?feed=rss2&p=1231 6 http://citizented.com/?p=1194 http://citizented.com/?p=1194#comments Sun, 23 May 2010 22:51:17 +0000 Citizen Ted http://citizented.com/?p=1194

Who can forget America's sweetheart?

Back in 2004, a young heartbreaker named Lynndie England became world famous for photos of her humiliating and torturing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

The Abu Ghraib photos shone a light on American policy regarding “enhanced interrogation techniques”. We have always portrayed ourselves as the Good Guys, the shining light of Liberty in a dark world of oppressive governments and gulag nightmares. These photos made it quite clear that we had joined the ranks of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and wartime Japan as employers of cruelty and barbarity.

The whole world hated Lynndie England. But I didn’t.

I didn’t see a heartless monster. I saw a stupid girl doing exactly what her superiors demanded. And that Chain of Cruel Command went all the way up to Dick Cheney and George Bush.

A-ten...HUT!

Let’s look at some facts:

- Barbaric abuse of prisoners was going on at Abu Ghraib long before Lynndie England got there;
- She was neither a trained guard nor an MI expert – she was a volunteer reservist.
- She was a low-level administrator at Abu Ghraib, not a jailer. It was Graner who convinced her to “join in the fun”;
- The staff all admitted that the inhumane treatment was conducted on orders from above – the CIA and the Army.

The “just following orders” defense is a murky subject. To some degree, it’s  valid defense. Should we blame rank-and-file guards at the gulags for Stalin’s homicidal purges? On the other hand is the assertion that if Stalin’s gulag guards had disobeyed orders and made a big public stink, that maybe the pogroms would have ceased earlier.

If a gulag is a gulag, is a despot a despot?

It may be true that refusing to obey barbaric orders is an admirable stance, but the “we’re all stewards of ethical behavior” maxim is easy to espouse when it isn’t your career, your body and your family that are at risk.

So, is Lynndie England a calculating, diabolical witch or a just a stupid little twat?

My vote is the latter.

If she, Graner and the others are morally culpable, then Cheney etal. should serve life in prison. But he won’t. There’s a saying in the military: “Shit rolls downhill”. Rank-and-file soldiers have been eating the shit from generals and kings since the Sumerian wars 4500 years ago. Leaders were responsible for victories while “poor morale” was responsible for defeats.

That leaves us with little Lynndie England, unwitting wingman for an administration that tossed her onto the scrapheap without one iota of regret.

Another stooge in the vaudeville of war.

Many years ago, I visited a parody site from a guy named M. Spaff Sumsion. See it here. I thought ole’ Spaff was pretty funny. One of his songs was “Everyone Knows It’s Lynndie”, sung to the tune of The Association’s Everyone Knows It’s Windy. I thought it was freaking hilarious and I asked Spaff for permission to score it, which he granted.

His link to my music is down (fixed soon, I hope) so I decided to embed it here along with a link to his lyrics page.

And so, without further ado…

Lyrics found here.

If my audio link fails to work, please try another browser; Firefox is behaving badly.

God bless the USA!

It has recently come to my attention that I am not a typical American.

People have pointed out that my penchant for critical thought, my tendency toward caution, my atheism and my eclectic tastes in art, literature, film and music make me more of a stinking European elitist than a hardscrabble American pioneer.

Normally, I’d just accept the fact that I am probably a European trapped in an American’s body. I’d look for a surgeon who could outfit me with a mock turtleneck, a sharp brown blazer and some Italian shoes. I’d adopt a snide attitude and insist on taxing my own income at 38%.

But godammit, I want to be an American!

Lady Liberty shines her tired, aching torch.

People all over the world would give their eye teeth to come to America. Some would even stab me for my passport if they could. With all this zeal for everything American, who am I to deny my own heritage? Who am I to spit in the eye of the nation that whelped me?

I owe America a lot.  It educated me and gave me the opportunity to become truly great. Of course, I blew that opportunity, but that’s my fault – not America’s.

So, rather than make flippant hipster put-downs of this great nation, I have decided to join it.

Meet Citizen Ted: All-American!

Love it or leave it, you fucking commie!

Pride.

To begin, I am hereby an unrepentant nationalist. Here in America, we call ourselves “patriots” because it sounds more American and less scary-fascist-nutball. As a patriot, I promise to forget everything I’ve learned about geography and world history. And American history.

Once I’m free of the shackles of knowledge that weigh down the shoulders of commie intellectuals I will be able to see the  American tree, and not the forest of details that seeks to confuse me with its proofs and subtleties. EVIL DEMON FOREST I REBUKE YOU!

For me, not only is the USA #1, but I don’t even give a shit about who thinks they’re #2 and #3. Those guys are fucking losers. If they were any good they’d be knocking on my door. What do I hear? Nothing! That’s right, you pussies. Enjoy loserdom.

It's all about family.

Family.

Now that America is #1 again, it’s time to pay some attention to the next song on the All-American hit parade: family.

I’m single and don’t have any kids. In  America, this is the moral equivalent of squatting over the Constitution and letting loose a splatter of diarrhea. If you aren’t married with kids (and occasionally cheating on your wife), you may as well be teaching a cultural relativism class at Trotsky Community College.

Unfortunately, this dive into Americana is something I can’t do alone. If any of my ex-girlfriends or any desperate female strangers are reading this, please drop me a note. We need to get married and start popping out some over-indulged brats ASAP. We’ll have a nice Baptist wedding and a fabulous reception at the local Radisson hotel’s meeting room, then zip away for a honeymoon at Disneyworld. There, in  the still night of the Disneyland hotel, we’ll conceive young Dakota Dylyn. We’ll make sure he has every distraction available. We’ll also make sure he isn’t poisoned by the public school system and MSNBC.

A chip off the old block!

Of course, during the pregnancy we’ll become so entranced by our magical mysterious bay-bee (an occurrence which has never been matched in the history of mankind) that we’ll become die-hard pro-lifer’s. Your big belly will make a nifty resting spot for the “BABY KILLERS BURN IN HELL” protest sign.

Which brings us to…

Jesus rocks!

Religion.

78% of all Americans identify as Christians. The rest are all lying, hell-bound infidels or conniving, hate-filled secularists. If you think for one moment that any Real American™ could be a non-Christian, you are either tripping hard on nutmeg or you’re Satan. One of the two.

No, to be American is to be a Christian. Period. Thus, I plan to join the craziest, noisiest fundamentalist church I can find. I’ll “AMEN!” enthusiastically at the preacher as he exhorts me to deny evolution, vote Republican and devalue everyone outside the walls of the church.

We’ll all wave our arms around while a bunch of Christian rockers perform a set of agonizingly derivative rock ditties peppered artlessly with  “Lord”, “my Savior”, and “Jesus”. I may have to choke back vomit at these gigs, but it’s worth it if I hope become a full-fledged American again.

4 hours of this crap is the minimum daily dosage.

Television.

Since I don’t watch TV, I will have to get a full cable TV package with 300 channels of the crappiest programming imaginable. This may prove to be the hardest trial of them all in my bid to become a Real American™. I really hate TV. But if I’m going to re-join the national dialog, it will have to be via Fox News, Law & Order and Dancing With the Stars.

Not only will I become more conversant about the critical issues of the day at the water cooler, but I’ll be able to fritter away innumerable hours that were previously lost to reading, writing, playing guitar and enjoying the outdoors. This is an American win/win.

Just trying to get from Point A to point B.

Transportation.

Good-bye Subaru, hello GM! Sure, my Subaru is great on gas, nimble in the snow and totally reliable. But it’s Japanese, for God’s sake. It just won’t do. Real Americans™ buy Real American™ cars (built in Mexico). And that means General Motors. Ford is almost American. They have invested too much in quality and reliability and they will continue to suffer for it.

No, it’ll be GM for me. Since the Hummer is gone, I’m thinking the GMC Yukon XL.

Stupid, crappy and wasteful - behold the Yukon XL!

Oh, what fun we’ll have driving 0.4 miles to and from the grocery store to pick up toilet paper or a quart of milk! We can intimidate those faggy bicyclists and blunder into the shopping mall like a Bulgarian freighter. I’ll put Old Glory on the rear window and a Chinese “Support the Troops” ribbon magnet on the rear. This will let everyone know that I have avoided any attempt at educating myself and rely fully on AM talk radio for my political insights - just like everybody else!

At home or on the road - Americans do it with style!

Fashion.

OK, I admit this won’t be a big stretch for me. I’m not a clothes hound. However, to be fully and truly American, I have to bring it down a few more notches. This means investing in white socks and white sneakers, two things I do not possess. I’m also partial to polypro and fleece, which will have to be sacrificed to make way for cotton T-shirts and idiotic short pants.

The way I see it, this hurdle won’t be too hard. Everything I need is under one roof at WalMart, and driving there in my new Yukon XL will let everyone know that I may be shopping WalMart but I’m not slumming. Which brings us to the final makeover in the Citizen Ted conversion plan:

Money is EVERYTHING.

Money.

Not just possession of it, but downright worship of it. Right now I’m just not motivated by money. I live humbly, I have no debt and I save money sensibly and cautiously. This is 100% wrong and will have to be reversed. Real Americans™ are obsessed with projecting an image of wealth. Not sophistication – just wealth. Enormous fiberboard McMansions, laughably awful leather furniture, heaps of overpriced gadgets, over-stuffed refrigerators and (of course) the 2010 GMC Yukon XL.

Since few Americans possess any real wealth, managing debt is the name of the game. One must purchase on credit only those items that make you appear better off. It’s OK to stretch this credit to ludicrous extremes, but you should never go bankrupt (that’s what LOSERS do). Your house should absorb about 70-80% of your income. Everything else is financed on revolving credit so the remaining 20-30% is swallowed up by credit card payments.

This is called “The American Way of Life” and it is a sacred honor and duty to abide these rules.

The way I see it, with these goals in mind I should become a Real American™ by Q2 2011. Check in with me then and we’ll see how well my transformation is coming along.

Before........................................After

]]> http://citizented.com/?feed=rss2&p=1037 2 http://citizented.com/?p=1066 http://citizented.com/?p=1066#comments Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:51:39 +0000 Citizen Ted http://citizented.com/?p=1066

Not every man shines in a suit and tie.

There’s something compelling about a guy who looks great in a suit and tie. It’s not how they look, necessarily. It’s not the custom tailoring or the square jaw. It’s their comportment that makes them look good. It’s they way they move, their mannerisms, their confidence and their comfort.

I just can’t pull it off. I don’t have “it”. I own a few suits and a bunch of ties, but I always look like “a guy in a suit and tie”. I don’t emit an air of ease and confidence like I was born to wear this stuff. That is the domain of the truly great suit-and-tie guys.

The following list leans heavily towards the classic French and Italian looks of the 1960′s and away from the idiotic wide lapels and dinner napkin ties of the 1970′s. This is because the former is brilliant and captivating and the latter is laughable, ugly and stupid.

Here we go…

10. Gordon Gekko

Greed is good - and so is the tailoring of this jacket!

Michael Douglas isn’t a great suit-and-tie guy, but when he portrayed Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, he apparently took a crash course in being smooth and commanding. Despite the handicap of having to wear some truly awful designs and cuts, he exuded the granite charm of a wealthy egotist brilliantly. You could almost smell the cologne when he enters a room.

9. Christian Bale

Come closer; I have something for you...

Sometimes a man is so goddamn magnetic that he defines his clothes. Christian Bale is like that. He’s not a natural suit-and-tie guy, but give him a nicely tailored suit and a pneumatic bolt gun and watch out!  Bale defines the “too sexy for my shirt” kind of presence that almost precludes him from this list. No one wants to concede that a handsome face is necessary for a great suit-and-tie guy, but Bale is proof that winsomeness is part of the deal when it comes to owning a look.

8. David Bowie

You will never be this cool, so give up.

While best known for dressing like an androgynous freak, Bowie has pulled off the suit-and-tie for four fucking decades and done it with casual ease. This chameleon has walked across stages and hotel lobbies in skinny ties and wide ties, skinny pants and parachute pants and has never shuffled even one step. The man glides effortlessly like PG Wodehouses’s Jeeves. I would even say that his command of the suit-and-tie is even more outrageous than his skin-tight spaceman suits. Bowie is totally cool. You aren’t, so pay the man some respect.

7. Peter Sellers

Some men are born to it.

The greatest comedic actor of all time, period. But unlike most jokers, Sellers wore a suit like it was his own skin. From the British checks in the image above to the silly getups of Jaques Clouseau to the prim fastidiousness of Chance in the film Being There, the man of a thousand characters could portray them all smartly in a suit that looked like he’d been wearing it all his life. There will never be another like him.

6. Bryan Ferry

Only one man can pull off this suit.

You may argue that Bryan Ferry wears suits and ties as a gimmicky adjunct to his persona as front man for Roxy Music, but you’d be ignoring the fact that he does it brilliantly, both on stage and off. Furthermore, his ability to explode value out of a shimmery tuxedo jacket without looking like a total jackass says more about the man than any rock reviewer can hope to understand. Suaveness can be created from whole cloth and Bryan Ferry is living proof.

5. Sean Connery

There is no other Bond, so STFU.

This list would be useless without James Bond and no one portrayed Bond with such impeccable style and ease. Whether wearing a trim tuxedo or a period Savile Row suit and skinny tie, Sean Connery wore it like a real man. His every move was calm and pedestrian; he could have been wearing jeans and a pullover. That he didn’t have to change his gait or comportment in order to utterly shine in a tuxedo indicates how some men are truly born to it while others have to work at it (Roger Moore, this means YOU!).

4. George Clooney

Looking good is only half the battle.

How can George Clooney out-rank Sean Connery? Because Clooney is modern and forced to abide the comparatively abysmal state of modern men’s fashion. Both men are handsome devils, but Clooney is working with a handicap that Connery never dealt with. Clooney is refined and confident and willing to let small imperfections show in order to produce a look that is simultaneously crisp and human. Hats off, George.

3. Donald Draper

Fuck YEAH this guy's cool!

In third place is not the actor Jon Hamm but his character Don Draper in TV’s Mad Men. The product of a research team, a bunch of brilliant costume designers and Hamm’s steely eyes and tough chin, Don Draper defines the very reason the suit and tie was invented in the first place. Trading in shining armor for perfectly pressed lapels, this warrior conquers Madison Avenue with sharp wit and a leather briefcase. If you don’t find Don Draper to be a completely captivating character then you must be dead inside.

2. Marcello Mastroianni

This is how it's done, bitches!

Maybe he has unfair advantage being slim, Italian and debonair, but Marcello Mastroianni OWNS the suit and tie. He stole away the garb’s reputation for stuffiness and showed the whole world how cool is DONE. His look is so timeless that Quentin Tarantino couldn’t help himself when creating Reservoir Dogs. Long after mankind has disappeared, aliens will visit our planet, look through our archives, find Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and say “Holy SHIT that guy is fucking COOL!” . It is a sad indictment of our culture that this look ever faded from prominence. It simply cannot be topped.

1. Sidney Poitier

Believe it or not, our #1 spot goes to a black guy! Wearing a suit well is more than being sharp or being handsome. A brilliantly worn suit and tie is greater than the sum of its parts, and in the film To Sir, With Love, Sidney Poitier showed how a commanding presence is part and parcel of your look, your words and your comportment.

This (rather dated) film is well worth a second look in order to see how a confident, smart, elegant man uses the suit and tie to express greatness. Poitier took a tool and made a masterpiece. His Mark Thackery is tough, yet sensitive. Commanding, yet reassuring. Dominant, yet accessible. This is the heart and soul of the suit and tie.

Who's a sex machine to all the chicks?

Even when forced to act stilted during the school dance scene, Sidney Poitier was poised and smooth and lovable. I would trade all the square jaws in Hollywood for 1/10th of the elegance Sidney Poitier exudes when he’s in a suit. It’s the perfect meld of man and machine. It’s what we intend when we wear these clothes. And nobody does it like Poitier. Nobody.

Honorable Mention: Reservoir Dogs

The costume of cool.

I wanted to include a short salute to this film. Tarantino used the outfits as a visual shtick knowing full well the power of the black suit, white shirt and skinny black tie. After all, if one Macello Mastroianni is stunning, how about SIX of them? It was a smart move and made the film (and Tarantino’s career) explode. It reminded audiences that the classic look shames our modern fashions and that sometimes it’s best to leave things alone. I, for one, would welcome the permanent return of this look.

After all, what’s cooler than this?

]]> http://citizented.com/?feed=rss2&p=1066 2 http://citizented.com/?p=1049 http://citizented.com/?p=1049#comments Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:45:34 +0000 Citizen Ted http://citizented.com/?p=1049

Have you seen this man?

I’ve been making snide, snarky comments on public Internet forums for about 17 years. I even garnered some notoriety (nay, infamy) in the 1990′s for my posts to the Usenet group alt.tasteless. Oh, those were heady days full of sardonic barbs, razor-sharp quips and anecdotes about drinking dry the contents of a dead whore’s anal boil.

I also posted to sci.skeptic and a few other sundry newsgroups. This was back when your conversational skills meant everything and your cool avatar meant nothing. We didn’t even have avatars or icons. If you couldn’t express yourself in simple ASCII, you were road kill.

It was in this cauldron of writers, biters, raconteurs and saboteurs that I discovered the trolls.

A troll in the wild.

Even though I wrote some outlandish things, I always meant them to be genuinely sarcastic or humorous – I wanted everyone to laugh with me. I never broke into forums specifically to upset the locals and goad them into responding to a bunch of hyperbolic nastiness.

That’s what trolls do. They’ll go into a web forum for cancer survivors and extol the virtues of smoking cigarettes and eating lead paint chips and tell everyone to “stop whining”. Their goal is to see how many outraged cancer survivors they can get to rise to the bait.

Trolling is as old as the Internet – maybe older. And I hate it.

I worked pretty hard to get a reputation for being outrageous and funny. I don’t like it when some illiterate punk comes waltzing in with a kit bag of insults and no eloquence to back it up. They simply stir up the natives, have a laugh and move on. Lame.

They even had their own newsgroup where they could discuss the finer points of trolling a discussion board. Then out they would spread like a disease, infecting reasonable conversations worldwide – even reasonable discussions about drinking dead whore pus!

This is what you get from a GIS for "dead whore pus".

Well, the trolls may think they’re clever, but they’re not. On fark.com, they can sniff a  troll a mile away and even offer ratings for troll quality. A lousy troll (“Why don’t you go marry your Fartbama savior, libtard?”) will earn a 0/10 points while a good troll (“Just because I think Obama may not be a citizen doesn’t mean I’m wrong about global warming”) may earn a 8/10 points if it’s really, really subtle.

Sometimes, on very rare occasions, someone with true grit and a lexicon of steel can commit an act of trolling that resounds through the ages. This is so difficult that only true masters of this arcane art can pull it off.

Today, I would like to honor one of those über-trolls. If you have some time, I encourage you to read the saga of the Mall Ninja.

His name is gecko45, and to this day he maintains his cover as a bumbling, brash and hysterically funny fabulist. He infected a forum dedicated to guns and proceeded to introduce himself as a heavily armed martial artist who needed some assistance selecting assault rifles for his life-and-death vocation in  mall security.

His shtick was so good, so outrageous and so cloyingly sincere that the forum admins let him go for far too long, ending it only when the Mall Ninja (and his sock puppet supporters) started to interfere with the orderly conduct of the forum.

I really hate trolls. But sometimes from the mists comes a man so compelling, so wonderfully bizarre, that I must remove my hat and bow to his greatness. The Mall Ninja is that man.

Job well done, sir. You may return to your leaky bridge in the knowledge that you succeeded where thousands have failed.

I salute you.

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