Show a lot of things in a Little Time...MONTAGE!

This is the "montage-o-rama" of the bike tour I did a few weeks ago. (Even Rocky had a montage)

Nine-Eleven

The world has a nostalgia problem, short-term nostalgia problem. At first I thought maybe it was a problem exclusive to my generation. After all, how else do you explain the reemergence of leggings, Transformers, Strawberry Shortcake, etc? But every generation has this problem, there are countless baby boomers that can’t let go of the psychedelic music of their hey-day, and hell, all those old people will still tell you war stories if you’ll listen. (Of course it’s interesting the differences in the things that the generations nostalgiasize, but that’s a different topic.)

I have realized recently though that it’s not just a matter of generational nostalgia for glory days past. The collective culture is in love with looking back (but not too far back and not to critically). I don’t have the real answer as to why this is, but I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that we’ve run out of new ideas. This has been the case with music and movies for years, the amount of sequels, re-makes, and covers or re-appropriation of other media into new forms (the movie based on the play, based on the book) just keeps growing.

Recently though we seem to have a sick nostalgia for tragedy, and not with any good purpose either because the tragedies that we nostalgiasize are either pop culture-y ones, or are simply regurgitations.

The 40th Anniversary of the Summer of Love
Really? This is a thing that deserves three floors of the Whitney Museum and countless magazine features? A bunch white people took a lot of drugs, had a lot of sex, and gave the figurative finger to the “man.” Forty years ago. Jesus. What about the civil rights struggles and riots, or what about what’s happening now?

The 10th Anniversary of the Death of Princess Diana
I never really got why anyone in England, much less in America cared about Princess Diana when she was alive. But holding huge memorials 10-years after her and her rich boyfriend died? But she was such a good person! Kind-of. Yes, she did good things, but that was part of her job. Mostly she looked pretty and wore fancy dresses, and lived a very, very, very opulent life from the money of the people of her country (including of course the working poor, since the royal family are paid with tax money).
There are thousands of people living and dead that have made vastly more significant contributions to the lives of oppressed people, yet they get no spotlight. Princess Diana was the Angelina Jolie of 1997, a celebrity who wasn’t 100% self absorbed and therefore was a god.

The 6th Anniversary of 9/11
Yes, 9/11 was a tragedy. And yes it certainly changed ‘merica. It was a scary mess, and losing someone in such a senseless way is probably something that you don’t get over ever, no matter how many years pass. So as a nation and as individuals, sure we should “Never Forget.” Just like we remember the Alamo and Pearl Harbor, right?
The problem is I think we aren’t remembering it in the right way. Throwing a pity party year after year and naming things “freedom” while there’s still a huge hole in the ground and more people have died in the mess of a war that we started in the name of 9/11 than died that day, isn’t honoring anyone, least of all the people they are memorializing.
And in all this looking back, still very few bother to ask why it happened to begin with. In 40 years will the historic memory of 9/11 be a bunch of tacky American flag kitsch and shit called “freedom” instead of the real ways that our greed fucked up the world? Probably.

We can’t look forward, we can’t look at the present, and we don’t know what to look at when we look back.

(Photo: probably one of the only good things that MTV has produced in the last decade, from a series of ads about AIDS, hunger and poverty that we banned)

Great Lakes, Not so Great Times

When I noticed a few months ago that BP was acting like its initials stood for “Beyond Petroleum” instead of “British Petroleum” I was pretty sure it was just a green bandwagon jumping publicity stunt.

Yep.

From Environment Michigan:

“BP talks a lot about being 'Beyond Petroleum,' but their plan for increasing dumping ammonia and toxic sludge into Lake Michigan from their oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana shows they're certainly not beyond polluting our Great Lakes. Even after mounting public pressure, including over 55,000 petition signatures urging them to stop their toxic dumping plans from Environment Michigan supporters and our sister organizations around the region, BP still intends to go forward with their refinery project, even if it means more pollution for Lake Michigan. They have not committed to a plan that would ensure that no additional pollution would be dumped in the lake.”

What's Wrong with American Fashion

Crocs are still the biggest thing wrong with fashion in the world. And I would be tempted to say that the second most grossly offensive thing is the 80’s resurgence, but really it just makes me giggle. No, the second most infuriating and offensive thing in the world of fashion is undoubtedly American Apparel.

Exhibit A: Hello Ladies, American Apparel hates you, now please spend $50 on this metallic swimsuit.



1) The clothes for men, babies and children are normal and simple. The clothes offered for women are almost exclusively metallic, spandex, and hideous (as seen here)



2)You are asking for it, and if you aren’t asking for it, you should be. It’s no secret that the powers that be at AA are huge mysogistic perverts. Their ads (as seen here) feature young and underage women in unambiguous soft-core porn poses. And the sexual harassment lawsuits from employees (senior partner Dov Charney reportedly asked a young store employee to have sex with him, exposed himself to several employees and conducted board meetings nearly nude) Oh and he also thinks that you are asking for a beating, “women initiate most domestic violence.” Charney asserts.

Exhibit B: Sure our clothes weren’t made in a sweatshop, but that doesn’t mean that we give a flying fuck about worker’s rights.

According to this article the “progressive” clothing chain that kills two hipsters’ birds with one stone (looking stupid and feeling superiorly good about ones self) hates unions almost as much as they hate women.

When American Apparel heard the news of workers wanting a union (and disputing things like no paid time off, lack of affordable healthcare, production methods, and (most shocking) treatment by supervisors) the management held captive meetings with employees, interrogating them about their union activities and sympathies, solicited employees to ask the union to return their union authorization cards and threatened to shut down the plant if the workers organized. Nice. Real “liberal.”

In a society where carrying a canvas bag proclaiming, “ I’m not a plastic bag!” seems to be the best we can hope for in the way of awareness and action, the antics and support for American Apparel is still as hideous as their clothing.

UPDATE: Ha Ha!

Give me a Freegan Break

This doesn’t annoy me nearly as much as the showy no toilet paper yuppies and certainly not as much as the backwards thinking involved with these products. In fact I must admit that for the most part I agree with these hippies.

Of course not without exception: dumpster diving and trash picking is something poor people have been doing, well, probably since there has been rich people to throw out perfectly good stuff. Buying things at garage sales and taking them off the street is just ingrained as good sense in people without money. Truly, the lower your income, the more resourceful you have to be.

New York City is probably one of the worst places in America to be poor, yet one of the best places to find almost anything for free. And while I don’t begrudge these white people from middle and upper class backgrounds taking things from the trash (it’s public domain after all, it should be equal opportunity), I do take offense that they have co-opted it as their idea.

Only when people who retired early from investment banking start realizing that there’s a lot of waste and a lot of nice stuff in there does it become a news item (they probably came to this realization by remembering how much nice stuff they once chucked themselves). Producing less waste, consuming less, reusing more, all of these are necessary and their ideas and actions are in the right place, it’s the self-important “revolutionary” approach that is annoying.

Poor people might not pick trash to save the environment, but their impact (or lack of impact) on the environment is probably considerably more over their lifetimes since they buy less in the first place, have smaller homes, cars, etc. The New York Times however, isn’t likely to print an article about poor people picking trash, as it wouldn’t be as self-congratulatory to it’s perceived readership.


Side Note: A vegan eating meat so it doesn’t go to waste rubs me the wrong way; it seems like morals that are a bit too flexible. (Couldn’t they just give the meat to a meat-eating homeless person?)

The New Coney Island

Gothamist posted the plans for Coney Island, and there’s no other word to describe it than creepy. Adding hotels doesn't make it more attractive or appease people who wanted to save the character of Coney Island, it just adds to the sterile Disneyfiycation of the place.

Coney Island is Coney Island because it feels a little trapped in time with the sideshows and old rides and boardwalk. The idea of it as a vacation spot is absurd, tourists come to New York for New Yorky things, if they want amusement parks with overpriced hotels, Six Flags, Cedar Point and Disneyworld are going to win out.

As for the condos, they of course ruin Coney Island more than anything. And who’s going to live there for that kind of money? Trust fund hipsters? Maybe, it might be ironic, or post-ironic, or something. And that would be the biggest crime, turning Coney Island into Williamsburg…

Related: The plans claim the Wonder Wheel will stay even though it is technically in Astroland, yet it doesn’t appear to be included in the drawing. Other rides are for sale though, at surprisingly low prices.

Update: Oh and it turns out that on top of it all the developer is a massive racist: "The hotels, Mr. Sitt said, would offer black residents not only jobs, but careers. The Russian immigrants, who enjoy a 'quality of life and activity by the water,' would flock to the hotels and nightclubs. Jewish and Italian-American residents would get the "quality retail, bookstores and entertainment venues" that they want."

New York's Sexiest Vegetarian

Let me just preface this with saying I think this whole thing is a bit silly.

First of all how does the fact that you don't eat meat make you more sexy? But most importantly why are only celebrities allowed to compete? What they don't get enough attention?

That said, I think I should totally win "New York's Sexiest Vegetarian" for the following reasons:
1) I am a lot less annoying than most other vegetarians and celebrities
2) I live in New York
3) I have been a vegetarian for 14 years and have never had a piece of KFC on the sly
4) As evidenced by the photo above I am totally sexy

Also, so much for being the capital of the world, turns out New York is only the number four best city to live in as a vegetarian in 'merica (damn you West Coast hippies!)

UPDATE: So PETA has named the Sexiest Vegetarian for 2007: Carrie Underwood (I don't know I think she won 'merican idol or something), all I can say is: LAME!