The Heart of Artness

Originally published November 12, 2008

Last week I was invited by a friend to an art show reception featuring some of his art. I of course accepted, despite the fact that I’ve never felt entirely comfortable around art. As soon as I arrived at the studio I was filled with a tangle of emotions. The most prominent feeling I had was one of awkwardness. Before I go any further I want to make it clear that I like art. In fact, I am rather envious of artists. The ability to take a mental image and make it into something tangible is a talent I have never had and never will have. I can vividly remember attempting to draw when I was younger, but since I can barely write my own name legibly I never got very far. What makes me feel uncomfortable around art is the fact that I’ve never really understood it. To understand a piece’s meaning you have to look at it in dimensions that my mind is simply unable to comprehend.
I remember visiting the Tate Liverpool last year. Many of the pieces there were very interesting, but some were beyond my understanding. An example of this was the paintings in the genre of monochrome. For those of you who don’t know, monochrome is when a canvas is painted a single color and that’s it. Yellow or blue pieces of canvas just don’t seem that artistic to me. The piece that sticks in my mind the most was a photo of a woman pulling a long piece of paper out of her vagina. The paper contained a speech where the woman recounts a conversation she had with a film director. As far as I can tell, the only point of this piece was to haunt my dreams for months.
The art show on campus had much less confusing art. Despite this, I still felt uncomfortable. The reason for this was because the artists who made all the pieces in the show were present, but it was impossible to tell whose art was whose. I knew most of the artists there, but I didn’t know how to compliment their work. The most articulate things I could come up with to say were “This is cool,” or “I like this.” These statements were true, but made me sound like an idiot.
I have to apologize to Parry Grimm because I may have offended her with my extreme lack of artistic knowledge. I was looking at a photo with a friend and said something along the lines of, “I’m not sure I understand this. Why is the picture so small?”
“Oh that’s one of Parry’s.” My friend said pointing her out to me. Much to my horror, Parry was well within earshot of my previous idiotic statement.
“Uh, I like your picture, Parry.” I said in an effort to cover up my stupidity.
“Thank you.” She replied. I walked over to the refreshments in order to regroup after my embarrassing display. I later tried to compliment Rachel Warren on her sculpture of a wall. The most interesting question I could ask was, “Is this a real piece of a wall?” She said it wasn’t and that she constructed it herself. After an awkward pause she walked away leaving me to reflect on how stupid a question I had asked.
So, let me now set the record straight. I did like the art there. I liked Parry’s photography. I liked Tawi’s paintings of people. I like Judith’s collages. I liked Rachel’s wall sculpture. I liked Navajeet’s ink blot city maps. I liked Kristan’s body tracings and her sequin dress. (Her dress was not part of the art show, but it was cool.) There was not a piece of art there I didn’t like. So if my compliments about anyone’s art seemed insincere because they were so simplistic, I apologize. Artists of Dickinson, I like your art even though I’m too stupid to describe why.

Technological Knockout

Originally published October, 2008

As some of my loyal readers (if any) may have noticed that I had not published articles in the last two issues of the Dickinsonian. The reason for this is not laziness. Well it kind of is. Some time during the weekend before last I attempted to turn on my laptop and nothing happened. My computer sat there lifeless as I repeatedly pressed the power button. Feelings of panic began to enter my mind as I started to hyperventilate. I picked up my cell phone and dialed tech support as fast as I could. After listening to crappy “hold” techno music I spoke to a woman with a thick Indian accent. She revealed that I would need to send my computer to be repaired, but my computer was out of warranty. Fortunately, it wouldn’t too expensive. As my Indian telephone operator began to transfer me to the repair department from half way around the world, something horrible happened. My cell phone completely crashed. I say the word “crashed” because “died” has the connotation of the phone simply running out of power. My phone was completely unable to function. It turned off and refused to turn on or charge. After punching several holes in my wall I curled up in the fetal position on my bed while muttering to myself “This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.”

After some quick e-mailing I was able to get my mom to make the necessary phone calls to get my computer fixed. By the end of the day, a box was on its way for shipping my computer to the repair shop. With that taken care of I was able to steady myself enough to contact Dan Officer to drive me to the Verizon store. I mention Dan by name because he saved me. I cannot live for more than 72 hours without a cell phone or computer in my possession.

Now that my survival was assured I had to deal with the reality of not having a computer. The internet is something I need to keep my sanity. As long as I can remember my mind has always come up with questions that need to be answered. The internet allows me look up the answers to what things are and such. I like to say that I do this because I’m a smart person, it’s mostly that I’m very curious. If I hear something I don’t know about I look it up on the internet, no matter how useless the information could be. I recently heard the word “necrosis” and I had to look it up on Wikipedia. Apparently necrosis is a kind of cell death where cells are not recycled by the body. I doubt I’ll ever need to know this, but I feel satisfied that I know it. Without a computer I was forced to work in the library, some people prefer this to working in their room. Personally, I cannot stand it. There are too many unexpected distractions. I will get completely distracted if I think someone is typing too loudly. I like my room where the distractions are more along the lines of procrastination. If something is going to keep me from my work, it’ll at least be enjoyable. I like having my music and my normal internet sites to distract me. Lastly, I enjoy working on the computer in my underwear; this is not possible in the library. It is actually the only way I can write my column. You may think that’s weird, I prefer to think it’s eccentric.

After 9 horrible days of having to walk outside to go check my e-mails, my repaired computer arrived in the mail. I felt so happy to get things on an even keel again. I could write in my underwear to my heart’s content. This experience made me realize how important my computer is to me. It is my tool for expressing myself and my link to the answers for my mind’s incessant questions. It kind of sucks that a grey box is so important to me, but it could be worse. I could not have a computer at all and never have ended up writing. The only possible path for me aside from writing is heroin addiction.

A Bizarre Weekend

Originally published October, 2008

I hate to say it, but I’m running out of ideas. Under normal circumstances I would take a broad subject and be a smartass about it. But now, I am almost out of social commentary. So instead I am going have to regale my readers with an epic story, the story of my weekend. Now stay with me here, I swear to you it’ll be funny. As the title implies, it was a bizarre weekend.

On Thursday night I had plans to go have some drinks with friends, when I met them they decided to add an unexpected twist to the night.

“Hey there’s a bikini contest tonight at the red devil tonight. We’re going.” One of my friends declared. I was of course intrigued by the idea of a bikini contest. What was strange to me was that a bikini contest was happening in the land locked area of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, during the month of October. This is not the usual setting for such events.

By the time we got there the place was packed. We paid our five dollar cover fee and found a place among the crowd. I was surprised to see that a good percentage of the audience was female. I had always thought that the audience for such an event would be only male, but seeing that women were present made me feel less like a pervert. The event ended up starting forty five minutes later than scheduled. Despite this, the audience refused to leave until they had seen the show. It’s amazing the feats people will go to to see a scantily clad woman. Finally the show began. A man got on the microphone and called the winner of last year’s contest to say a few words. She basically said something about handing over her title, and than she called out the contestants. They consisted of three girls and one man. They paraded around to the hooting cheering of the audience. After all the contestants had come out, the highly sophisticated judging technique of applause was employed. A winner was crowned, and everyone cheered.

It occurred to me that I could have seen women in bikinis for free at a beach, it would be less crowded and I wouldn’t have had to be surrounded by horny guys. The next thing that happened was rather unexpected. The announcer got on the microphone and said, “Alright, we now have some professionals here, if you give them five dollars they’ll give you a lapdance.” Three women came out in bikinis, it was clear that they were strippers by trade because of their familiarity with giving a lap dance, and the appearance of their breasts. The women looked as if someone had taken two halves of a basketball and spot welded them their chests. My friends urged me to get a lap dance, but I declined. I didn’t feel it would be worth paying five dollars for the illusion of sex.

The other lees strange thing that happened to me this week was my performance at the tree house open-mic. I have recently been doing standup comedy and many friends who had missed my performance at the good life café back in September wanted to see my routine. The tree house open-mic seemed like a good place to show everyone my routine. When I arrived at the tree house I was a little bit surprised. Open-mic is not an accurate term for what was happening there. This is because there is no stage or microphone. It was mostly people lying around waiting for someone to get up and do something in front of them. In between performances there were long stretches of nothing happening because no one wanted to perform. This led to several impromptu poetry readings.

The nature of the performances made me feel out of place. It was a few musical acts and poetry readings. This did not seem like the right environment for standup comedy. I remembered at the good life café, the act before me was a folk music group. Most of the audience there had come to see that, when I went on I definitely got most of the audience there laughing, but a few people were clearly horrified by some of my material. Would the residents of the tree house take me too seriously? They clearly took their sustainability very seriously. They even had a sign that said, “If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down.” Would I be able to make fun of this or would it offend their system of values. When, I finally got up to do my act was when I felt the least comfortable. Not because of the audience, but because I was basically standing in the middle of a living room to do my performance. Fortunately, I ended up doing very well. No one was too stuck up to laugh at jokes about old people or dildos. This was a great relief.

So, now my strange weekend has ended, and now I have to return from the glory of stand up comedy, and the overrated experience of a bikini contest. It’s back to dull work and sobriety. However, I hope to have more strange weekends. They are always good to bring up for conversation and give me something to write about when I am out of ideas.

The Green Routine

Originally published September 24, 2008

A little while back I was in a clothing store looking at T-shirts. I was surprised to find one that was advertised as being sustainable because it was made from 100% organic cotton. I didn’t really care about that, but the price was only three dollars so I bought it. It Later, it occurred to me that the shirt was so cheap because it was probably made with slave labor. This makes the sustainability of the shirt a moot point. Trying to help the environment by exploiting slave labor is not the right thing to do.

Situations like this are happening all over. People are being too self righteous about sustainability. Now, don’t get me wrong, I know that it’s important to be eco-friendly. But I just don’t like everyone shoving sustainability down our throats. All the time I’m seeing commercials about companies changing something to make them more sustainable. This is fine, but the reason they’re doing this is just to make themselves look better. They feel the more green they are the less evil they will seem. It’s a legitimate marketing tactic, but I’m certain they spent more money advertising their sustainability than they did on actually becoming sustainable. If a big corporation wants to get me on their side they’ll have to do more than that. Personally, I like getting stock rather than hearing about sustainability. In fact giving me stock would be sustainable. All intangible forms of assets are very sustainable.

Dickinson College is very much fond of announcing their level of sustainability. In front of the center for sustainable living, better known as the tree house, there is a parking spot that is “reserved for fuel efficient vehicles only”. When I saw that sign I never wanted a Hummer so bad, just to park it there. Hell, if I had a Sherman tank I would have parked it there. I’m fine with people wanting to live more sustainably, but if I’m not allowed to park somewhere because of the car I drive someone’s going to get brutally beaten. If you want to devote your life to being eco friendly, fine. But I’ll be damned before that gives you the right to tell me where I can park.

The last thing I want to address is the pessimism associated with going green. The level of fear that is driving everyone to be sustainable is not healthy. Everyone needs to take a deep breath and tell themselves that the apocalypse is not as imminent as many would lead you to believe. Convincing people to be more sustainable through fear is not a good way to motivate people. If you’re taking the whole green thing as far as possible, good for you, but if you are telling everyone that they are killing the planet and you’re bragging about how green you are, then please, for the good of us all, shut the hell up.

A Year Abroad

Originally published September 17, 2008

Well, it was a beautiful fifteen months. I spent two semesters studying in England and traveling all over Europe. I saw Krakow, Amsterdam, Budapest, Prague, Vienna, and Berlin. I even got to spend a month living in London. I’ve seen things that I may never get to see again. Now that I’m back in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, I’ve realized something. This place is far less fun than school in England. There the kids have no restrictions on drinking and only go to class six hours a week. Everyday was like a party. Me and my friends often lament about how fun it was. But we must push on, no matter how much greener the grass on the other side is.

So now I look back on the time I spent overseas and reflect on what I learned. Much of it was academic, but the lessons I will really use I learned outside of the classroom in various seedy places. Here are some of my pearls of wisdom.

First, in England people will not greet you bys saying “what’s up” or “how’s it going”. They always say “are you alright?” This is confusing at first. Every time I heard someone say that to me I assumed something was wrong with me. This is not the case. It will take some time to get used to certain English phrases. If you are in Norwich don’t go to the Waterfront nightclub unless you really like Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson. I went there once wearing a yellow polo shirt and a pair of jeans. The rest of the club patrons were wearing black leather, black makeup, and had their hair spiked up in ways that could put someone’s eye out. I would have felt uncomfortable and out of place, but I was too smashed. Instead I ended up dancing the night away with the black leather clad crowd.

The best advice I could give someone on Amsterdam is don’t go to the sex museum. It’s horrifying. The whole place is filled with giant sculptures of penises and animatronic people doing filthy things to each other. It’s also not really a museum. It’s about as educational as watching Married with Children. Aside from that Amsterdam is a great place. Walking through the red light district is an experience that must be had. There are prostitutes in windows and men trying to sell you cocaine and ecstasy. Very interesting stuff.

I would have to say the city with the meanest people is Prague. I actually discovered that numerous travelers felt the same way. Everyone just seems pissed off over there. I have no idea why, they have some of the hottest women and some of the best beer in the world. I guess some people just can’t be happy. Berlin definitely has the friendliest people. This may be intentional as they are trying to gloss over a shaky history. The advice I got from locals on what Berliners eat is that they eat something called currywurst. This sounds exotic but is really not worth it. It is basically a hotdog without a bun covered in ketchup and curry powder. You can make one of these at home easily.

So now I’m back here reflecting fondly on my past experiences and wondering where the winds of fate will blow me next. Hopefully it will be back to Amsterdam.

Eastern Medicine on a Western Man

Originally published September, 2008

Aside from writing, the only other thing I might be good at is being stressed out. I can be stressed about anything. If it’s remotely unsettling, I can be stressed out about it. It could be something big like the CIA falsely accusing me, or something small like the way a girl on the street looked at me. You name it and I can be stressed out about it. However, my versatility with my stress is the only thing I can take pride in with it. The stress itself is quite horrific.

The person who is concerned by this the most is my mother. Aside from being a loving parent the reason she cares so much about my stress is because my level of stress is surpassed only by hers, so she probably feels responsible for passing her stress level down to me. We both deal with our stress in different ways. She generally uses alternative eastern medicine practices while I use whiskey and not leaving my house. For some reason she thinks this is detrimental to my over all well being. Go figure. So she decided to set up a session with me and her acupuncturist.

I of course was a bit apprehensive about it, but it did get Eric Clapton off of heroin. If it’s good enough for him it’s good enough for me. I walked into the acupuncturist’s office and my nostrils were instantly assaulted by a mixture of sweet smells. The combination made me a tad nauseous. A Chinese woman greeted me and led me to the back.

“So how exactly does this work?” I asked

“Well we all have different elements inside us, earth, water, wind and fire. When those get out of balance we have problems.” She replied with a thick accent. This wasn’t exactly the answer I was looking for. I was hoping for something a little more scientific. Instead I was more confused than before I had entered.

In the back room I met a Chinese man who spoke no English. The woman instructed me to sit down and stick out my tongue. I reluctantly did so and they conferred with each other in Chinese. The tone they used made me think that they had discovered something wrong with my tongue but I never found out if that was true. The woman then asked me a series of unsettling questions.

“Do you have bowel movements?”

“Um, yeah.” I replied.

“Do you finish.”

“Uh, yeah I do.” This was kind of strange because I had never thought anyone could start shitting and than stop halfway through. I really feel sorry for anyone who has this problem. It must be very messy.

After the questions the actual acupuncture began. I laid on the table and the woman stuck needles into me. She put a few in my arms and legs which didn’t really hurt, but then she put one between my eyes and one on top of my head which was a little uncomfortable. If I could give advice to anyone about acupuncture it is keep your eyes closed while you have these needles sticking out of you. The experience is relaxing but it is a little disturbing to see needles sticking out of you. It makes you feel like a pin cushion.

So I must admit that the acupuncture does make you feel very calm. You actually get a buzz that is on par with a couple of beers. There is a sense of well being and I kind of felt like I was floating in warm water. It was very cool. The needles were removed from me and we proceeded onto something called “cupping”. Basically what happens is you lay on your stomach and glass cups are placed on your back. The cups are than heated so that the air is sucked out creating a vacuum. The idea is that negative energy is sucked out of you. I would have been less apprehensive about that if I hadn’t seen it used in the film “The Madness King of George”. There I was lying on my stomach being administered a treatment that hadn’t been used since the Hanoverians had been in control of England. But again I must admit it relaxed me. The worst part of this treatment is that it leaves perfectly circular bruises on you. I looked like I had been given multiple hickies by a giant suckerfish. It’s really not that fun going to the beach looking like a goddamn domino.

Before I left I was given a small paper bag containing herbs. I was never told what kind of herbs they were but that they would help me. I got home and opened the bag. It contained several little packets of a light brown powder. At first I thought it was heroin, the ultimate anti-stress medicine. It was actually a sweet substance that was meant to be mixed in water and than drank. I did and it wasn’t half bad. I’m not sure the herbs helped much, but the treatment itself was effective. I do have to say I was surprised that it worked at all. I guess the lesson I took from this was to always keep an open mind. I am even considering going back, but I’ll skip the cupping. So until next time my loyal readers. Stay happy and always know that I love you.

My First Protest

Originally published May 3, 2007

Last weekend I did something I always thought I’d never do. I went to New York and attended a protest. Like many people I have always felt that protestors were kind of stupid. When you picture protestors in your mind you get images of those guys who live outside of the white house to protest nuclear weapons. Some of those guys have been out there for months. I certainly admire their conviction, but after a while you’d think they’d realize their protest is not having much effect. But it turns out better executed forms of protest do have an effect.

I went to New York with my amnesty international group to the amnesty international “Get on the Bus” protest rally. We drove into Manhattan, met with the organizers, and than headed to our first protest destination which was JP Morgan headquarters, we arrived there a little early. While we were standing around in our t-shirts that had various pro peace slogans written on them in magic marker, I seemed to be getting a lot of dirty looks from people who seemed to be employees of JP Morgan and the police who were assigned to keep an eye on us protesters. This made me uncomfortable since I had often given the same dirty looks to protesters I had passed by before this. When everyone else had arrived we were herded into our designated protest area which was a large rectangle formed by police barricades. We began chanting and handing out flyers. A man came up to me and said “Why are you protesting JP Morgan?” It was then that I realized I wasn’t entirely sure why we were protesting JP Morgan. Fortunately someone better informed than I jumped in and told him why we were protesting. JP Morgan is responsible for cleaning up a chemical contamination in Bhopal India for some reason, and they weren’t doing it.

We kept chanting and we did get people’s attention. Mostly dirty looks and a crazy person who cursed at us, but some people did take interest. After a while the chanting was giving me a sore throat, so I diverted my attention to looking at one of the hot female police officers, until one of the organizers handed me a megaphone. This was a mistake on her part. The chants were getting monotonous, so I tried starting my own chant with the megaphone. “Whoooo! Yeah! JP Morgan Sucks!” I yelled out. The woman immediately snatched the megaphone back and my chant never even got a chance. I actually was having fun doing this. Protesting actually combined two things I enjoy, yelling things at people, and trying to create obscene chants. Though I felt some of my fellow protestors were a bit upset with me. Apparently when you’re protesting egregious violations of human rights you’re not allowed to have fun.

After we were done with JP Morgan, we walked over to the Guatemalan consulate to protest the fact Rios Montt, the former dictator of Guatemala lives free there. Rios Montt killed 70,000 indigenous people and an international warrant had been issued for his arrest. But so far nothing had been done. After about five minutes of chanting someone came out of the consulate and said they would not rest until Rios Montt was brought to justice. We all cheered but the problem was we were supposed to stay there longer. We ended up chanting even though we had accomplished our goal. I attempted to start a “Rios Montt is a dick” chant, but again it failed to catch on. Our last stop was the Chinese consulate where we went to protest the Chinese selling weapons to Sudan which supported the genocide in Darfur. By now I really had to go to the bathroom. The problem with protesting is that it seems gauche to ask to use the bathroom of the place you’re protesting. After some more chanting the organizers told us to link arms to show our unity in the issue. The chain I was part of ended up forming a circle. One of the organizers got in the middle with a megaphone and asked everyone “Why are we here?”

“Because genocide blows!” I yelled out. The organizer handed the megaphone to a girl so she could answer the question “Why are we here?”. She replied “What that guy said,” she replied pointing to me. “Because genocide blows.” For once I had most of the crowd behind me, and I decide to take advantage of it. “Genocide blows!” I chanted. For roughly four and a half seconds people were chanting my chant. It kicked ass.

We all began to disband and head back to our cars when I heard something fantastic. One of the organizers told us that JP Morgan agreed to clean up Bhopal and TIAA CREF also agreed to clean up Bhopal. On top of that the people at the Guatemalan consulate agreed to bring Rios Montt to justice. 2/3 of our protests worked. We had actually made a difference. Our presence combined with my obscene chanting ended up saving lives. So don’t think protesting is useless. It is more effective than many people think and is an excellent way to yell at people and make them feel guilty. So until next time my loyal readers. Stay happy, and always know that I love you.