Tales from the Modern Art Museum

            I remember once talking to a friend who was in film school. He told me a story that never fails to cheer me up when I remember it. The story was that he had procrastinated on a short film project until the day before it was due. As he was riding the El home he remembered the project and became filled with dread and panic at his impending failure. Thinking quickly and desperately, he pulled his hand-held camera out of his backpack and started recording out the window. Upon getting back to his apartment, he downloaded the footage onto his laptop. It was about an hour before he threw his hands up in a proverbial ‘fuckit’, and put the raw footage through a filter that made the window and everything outside of it in black and white, while the interior of the train remained in color. Bitterly, he submitted the film the next day for his class to review.

The class sat, enraptured.

One student thought that it tragically portrayed the solipsism of modern life. Another found it to be a subtle critique on the technological revolution’s crippling effect on the working class. A third opined that it showcased the ways in which Americans turn the suffering of the underclass into an abstraction.

            He ended up getting an A on the project.

            Last year, during a family gathering in New York City for my aunt’s 50^th birthday, we decided to take a trip to the Museum of Modern Art. I ran that story through my mind over and over for the two hours I was there. It helped me keep my sanity. Whilst there, I bore witness to hanging bags of sand (which I was later relieved resembled scrotums by intention, and not just in my scrotum-obsessed mind) placed as serious art. I saw hordes of horn rimmed hipsters contemplating the existential meaning of a blank off-white canvas that was hung with the reverence of a Modigliani. By the time that I stumbled upon a pile of dirt that had artfully been thrown into a corner, I had to fight every impulse in my body not to kick it across the room and see if anyone would notice. As I left that dark and godless place, I prayed that some wonderfully diligent janitor might one day find employment there.

            A person more cynical than myself might claim that such works are not art. But such an argument is foolish. It bogs one down in a semantics battle over the definition of art. It also raises the valid question of who gets to determine what constitutes art. The masses? Well, the masses utterly ignored Van Gogh’s work during his lifetime. The academics and critics? You mean the same academics and critics who once decried D.H. Lawrence’s masterpieces as pornographic trash? And so it cannot be said with any fairness that a blank canvas or a pile of dirt is not art.

            What can be said is that such it is vapid, shallow, empty art. Shit, in other words.

            But surely I’m just not deep enough to understand. With a smug sense of satisfaction at the befuddled rubes’ negative reactions, modern art types will take joy in the criticism they recieve. As James Franco said in response to the critics of his art exhibition (pieces of which included close-ups of penises urinating and anuses defacating),

“They don't try to think outside of their pop-culture commentaries. It's so easy to criticize contemporary art from the outside: 'Douglas Gordon slowed down Psycho so it's 24-hours long? That's easy! I can do that.' That's how the morons in the blogosphere try to critique my work. But the great thing about it is, is that their critiques are part of my work. I like that they are confused.

            It’s not that all the hipsters who champion such art are merely pretending to like it—although some are, obviously. If I had broken out of my solipsistic irritation at the Museum of Modern Art and had asked one of the people beside me what they thought the blank canvas piece meant, I’m sure they would have had an intelligent, and maybe even insightful, interpretation—just as my friend’s classmates had made insightful and interesting interpretations of his meaningless, slapped together film.

But what they fail to realize is that that insight and meaning has nothing at all to do with the art itself. It could be found in anything. Right now I am looking at a reddish stain on my white drywall. But don’t you see? It is the red, vibrant, organic passion of that which is truly human and vital inside of us fighting off the surrounding seas of modern culture’s repressive homogony.

            Hey, lookit me! I just found meaning in that goddamn stain.

            That does not make the stain art. William Blake once wrote about man’s ability to see the world in a grain of sand. What he meant was not that the world existed within the grain of sand, but that it existed within man. This ability to find meaning—or if you will, beauty—in that which is mundane and inconsequential and meaningless is something that is innate within all of us. Of course, so is the ability to pretentiously blow smoke out your ass. Regardless of which ability we are truly employing in such excercises, what the modern artists who peddle such cryptic tripe are doing is pretentiously and talentlessly cashing in on the abilities of the observer. All art—from Fellini’s 8 1/2 to Shakespeare’s Macbeth to Cezanne’s The Card Players—depend on our critical and emotional abilities, but they bring something to the table themselves. They guide our existing intellects and emotions to new and uncharted waters. An artist who hangs a blank canvas or piles dirt in a corner does no such thing. He is a fraud on the level of a personal trainer who tells you to do some pushups while he reads a magazine. And, of course, the reaction is the same.

“I could’ve stayed home and done this myself for free”.

Semper Fidelis

A few weeks ago my cousin Dave enlisted for the Marines. It hadn’t been frivolous. In not a fiber of Dave’s decision had the opportunist lurked. He had not done it for the benefits, nor to pay for his college education. If he had simply wanted that, Dave would have pounded the pavement to find a full time job. He would have worked 60 hour weeks while cramming for exams, and not a peep of complaint would have passed through his lips.

No, Dave aspires higher than that. Before he left, I stopped by Dave’s apartment to help him clean out. There hadn’t been much there. Just the essentials—a bed, a table, a fridge. No, fancy television set. No Xbox. No Surrond Sound system. His room was that of a young man who lived sensibly and within his means. It hadn’t been frivolous.

            It took us only 20 minutes to clear out his apartment. Dave hadn’t even asked for my help, insisting twice on the phone that it was his responsibility and that I should just relax and meet him for a beer when he was done. Finally, he had politely accepted. He made sure to thank me on the phone preemptively for helping, although in reality, I doubt that I helped much. Going down the stairs my scrawny arms trembled. Going up the stairs my smoker’s lungs wheezed. In the end I was assisting him in the same way that I assisted my parents on my science projects back in grade school.

            Look, ma, I got the scissors for you all by myself!

            Great job, Gus.

            Once we were done, and once I was sweating profusely, he pulled two beers out of the icebox that we had left in the room and handed me one.

            “Thanks, man” he said, clinking his bottle against mine.

            “Hey, I gotta ask” I said after a moment’s silence, “What made ya do it?

            Dave smiled “What do you mean?”

            “Well, what was it that made you decide to enlist? Pretty heavy decision”

            The knowing smile remained on Dave’s face as he took a sip of his beer. I scratched my eye and looked around awkwardly, fearing that I had said the wrong thing.

            “I mean,” I continued “I never saw you as a very political guy”

            “Nah, you know I don’t get caught up in that stuff. Drive a guy crazy, when it doesn’t take much at all to see that, at heart, pretty much everyone wants what’s best for this country”

            “Well, then, why’d you enlist?”

            Dave took another sip of his beer and thought about it for a moment, choosing his words with care “At a certain point a person needs to start taking responsibility for himself. And part of that means doing something hard because you know it’ll make you a better person. Part of that mean’s going off to fight when your country calls on you”

            “Startin to hear the rumblings about Iran…”

            “Yeah I’ve been hearing them too”

            “Well, what’s your opinion on that? I mean if you might end up being the one holding the gun, ya gotta have an opinion”

            “See but that’s where you and I differ. It’s not for me to be making that decision. It’s my duty to uphold the responsibilities of being an American citizen. To be honest with you I don’t know the politics of the war we’re in now, nor do I know the politics of the war we might be in in the future. I just want to be able to serve my country.”

            It was at that moment that I looked up at Dave’s face and was hit by the mix of admiration and embarrassment that only comes when a person suddenly realizes the nobility of a male family member. And as we stood there, quietly drinking our beer and feeling the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows and illuminating the unsettled dust, I thought back to a time when we were kids. We were in fourth grade and were playing basketball after school—best to eleven, with me starting at five—when Tommy Maculson, came running up to us. Tommy breathlessly told us about how he had seen our mutual friend Alec being teased and picked on by Jeff Carter.

Upon hearing this, my head began spinning. Could Tommy he trusted—he had been known to occasionally exaggerate and manipulate people. What exactly had even happened—all Tommy had said was that Alec had been “picked on and teased”. Was there another side of the story—things are always more complicated than they appear. Would our intervening in Alec’s affairs have negative consequences—maybe we would be grounded, maybe if we fought his battle for him Jeff would just end up getting teased more.

            Finally I began forming a tentative plan in my mind. We would go ask Alec, just to be sure that Tommy wasn’t misleading us. We would go talk to Jeff, just to be sure that there wasn’t more to the story. We would ask around our class, just to get an outsider’s perspective. Then, if everything seemed clear and if we decided that the positive consequences outweighed the negative, we would confront Tommy and would make sure that he would think twice before ever messing with Alec again.

            But by the time I had my plan put together, Dave was already twenty yards ahead of me in a dead sprint. I immediately began running with all the speed I could muster in his direction. It was only a block before I lost sight of him completely, but by that point I could tell that Dave was headed toward the park that Tommy and his friends usually played football after school. Finally I turned the corner onto Maple Street and saw them through the chainlink fence. Dave had Tommy pinned down by his throat as all of Tommy’s friends stood watching in a mix of shock, fear and embarrassment for Tommy.

            “I didn’t do anything!” Jeff squealed from under Dave’s grip

            Dave grabbed Jeff’s nose in between his thumb and forefinger “We know you did, so stop lying”

            Jeff just continued whimpering.

            “Now, if you mess with him again, you’re gonna regret it. Understand?”

            “Yes! Yes, I understand! I-I wont say a word to him, I promise!”

            “Okay good”

            And just like that Dave stood up and walked away. As Tommy’s friends rushed over to him, each one taken down a peg by the experience, I caught the look on Dave’s face through the fence. There was no anger or hatred. He had merely done what he had to.

            We never did find out if Tommy actually had been picking on Alec, or how Alec felt about the incident since he never brought it up to us, but that didn’t matter. What mattered is that Dave had done what he had to. He had not let any mental acrobatics over ambiguities get in his way. He had not let concern over possible consequences paralyze him. He was a man of action. A man of loyalty and patriotism.

Never Alone

            I work as a lifeguard. Putting aside the cycles of suicidal despair that come when given six hours to do nothing but allow your mind to devour itself, it’s a pretty sweet gig. If you have a few hundred bucks to spend on a red-cross crash course on vague safety regulations, you’re pretty much guaranteed employment somewhere. For there will always be middle class exercise junkies and arthritic seniors clamboring for the miserable wonders of a tepid, indoor pool.

            But just remember, that no matter how wonderful the embrace of early morning’s solitude feels as you step onto that pool deck and feel the breaking sunlight stream through the windows onto your naked torso, you are not alone. The lifeguard is there.

            Obvious, I know, but allow me to tell you a story.

            One day, a year or so back, I was working a shift in the middle of a weekday. The pre-work, morning crowd had left and the post-work, afternoon crowd had yet to arrive. I was pacing in the corner of the pool deck attempting to compile a comprehensive mental list of the thirty greatest Simpsons Halloween segments—the kind of mental acrobatics one is apt to do during six hours of total encagement—when I noticed that the echoing pool deck had been filled with distant sounds of splashing and voices for some time now. I looked up and saw a couple at the shallow end of the pool. Quietly, I walked down the blue tiled deck and stationed myself in a chair maybe ten yards down from them. I continued my mental debate over the comparative virtues of The Shinning vs. Attack of the 50 Foot Eyesores, when I noticed that the woman was crying.

            Discreetly I lifted my head and focused my hearing.

            “I-I-I just can’t believe you’d do this to me!” she whimpered

            “Baby” he said, trying to swim toward her as backed away, “It was just a mistake. C’mon you know it’s not like that”

            She allowed him to finally reach her at the far end wall. He pulled her in, and after a moment’s hesitations, she buried her head into his impressively hairy chest. His back was to me, but I saw him soothingly stroking the hair on the back of her head and whispering to her. I couldn’t quite tell the nature of the comfort he was providing. It could have been that of genuine remorse and love, but then again it could have been the malevolent manipulation of a sociopath. If only I could see his face. I was tempted to dart around the pool deck so to get a front row seat, but ultimately decided that doing so would ruin my cover.

            It didn’t matter though. Not long after, they got out of the pool, toweled themselves off, and exited into the lockerroom. Once they had left I jumped up out of my seat and began furiously pacing around, in disbelief at what I had just seen. I was outraged, really.

            Now, don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t like a “oh, how could you force me to bare witness to such a display” sort of thing. I had thoroughly enjoyed the drama of their scene. As it built, I even began imagining backstories. He held a job at the local law firm, where he had met a woman named Jen. The woman in the pool, Dana, who was his long-time girlfriend, and who had for so long waited on him to finally commit and propose to her, had been initially uneasy about the friendship, but pushing 35, she had seen enough relationships end over jealousy and had decided to not say anything, in spite of the increasing amount of time that he was spending with this new friend of his. This had gone on for weeks until one day when he was in the shower, her anxiety overtook her and she looked through his cell phone. As she was doing it she felt physical repulsion at her own selfish anxieties, but she couldn’t help herself. Finally, four days back was a single text from Jen that he had forgotten to erase. Her heart sank into her chest as she saw the flirtatious, sexual innuendos, and she burst into tears. Her sense of betrayal was so great that she was unable to even feel anger when he came back from the bathroom. She just felt lost.

            This had happened only the day before, and as I watched them leave, I imagined them driving home in utter silence before entering an empty, creaking house. With a look of anger still on her face she would walk up to him and press her warm, lithe body up against his, and shove him hard up against the wall. With the passion of pure anger he would only bother to unzip his pants and would lift her onto the counter. After a few moments of jerking thrusts he would attempt to kiss her mouth, but she would turn her face away in bitterness. And the hardwood floor would shake with the passion of emotion’s death rattle.

            The only thing I couldn’t put together was why they had come to the pool in the first place. Maybe they didn’t have air conditioning and got hot in the middle of their fight. It doesn’t really matter though. The reason I was so outraged, at least on a superficial level, was not that I had been forced to watch, but that they deemed me unworthy of social restraint. Or more accurately, they had neglected my mere existence. As the staff, I had blended into the furniture. A piece among pieces. In an elevator, in a somewhat crowded bus terminal, in the office, they would have died before subjecting their social lives to such public scrutiny. But on the pool deck, all such trepidations had been cast away. In their eyes, they were alone.

            But the staff is always there. The lifeguards and waiters and cashiers and gas attendents. Behind the busboy’s look of neutrality, he is judging you. Behind the clerk’s nonchalant boredom, he is taking in every detail of your story. Behind the sunglasses of the summer lifeguard, he is making a mental image of your tits to jerk off to later (well, probably not yours, since statistically speaking, you are probably either a man or an unattractive woman). It is the only joy of the minimum wage job. Vicariously living through you, absorbing everything with the attentive love of a Facebook stalker.

            Do not take this as some working class screed. It doesn’t matter if the nonentity in question is a forty-three year old janitor, or an upper class fifteen year old at McDonalds. Just remember to look over your shoulder that next time you feel it ‘s safe to tell your friend a story about the guy you fucked last night, or remind a room of supporters of the laziness of America’s worse half.

A Sad Call to End Employment Discrimination

            My fellow brothers and sisters, you know me. You know that I have never, and will never, wave the white flag in our battle against the moral undermining of America. You know that I will defend this Christian Nation from the attacks of the Homosexual until the day I die, and that I have fought valiantly since the day the Homosexual reared his ugly, godless head into the American mainstream. In 1969, a gang of crazed homosexuals viciously attacked innocent police officers in the Stonewall Riots. I was there that day. I saw them, in all of their shameful decadence. I bore witness to two lean and svelte men embracing in a kiss of pulsating neck tendons and delicately tickling facial hair. It made me sick. And although I was only a small boy at the time, I knew from the moment my first rock struck one of those little queers that I had found my calling in life.

            The fags and Jews and liberals behind the homosexual agenda have been devious lo these past four decades. They have gotten their kind elected into public office; they have gotten their kind into the military; in some states they have even gotten their kind legally married. It truly is disgusting. They argue that the Homosexual does not hurt anyone. They argue that the act of one man’s glistening, clenched buttocks and thighs being caressed by the large all-encompassing hands of another man is a harmless one. Could a more egregious lie possibly be told? For one, their disgusting conduct, even when kept to the shameful privacy of their bedrooms, does hurt someone; it hurts God. God simply cannot bare to see such perverse acts. Like a woman, He is squeamish and lacks the constitution to be subjected to such vulgarities; and, like the woman, it is our duty to protect Him. But beyond the harm that the homosexual agenda does to God, it inflicts equally disasterous effects on society at large. Since the “Gay Liberation Movement” began, American society has nearly torn itself apart. After all, in the last 40 years, the rates of abortion and children born out of wedlock have skyrocketed to astronomical levels. How anyone could fail to see the Homosexual’s responsibility in such statistics is beyond me.

            And so I will never back down in the fight against the Queer. However—and I cannot overemphasize the sadness with which I say this—it may be time to reevaluate our tactics. Allow me to explain. Today the divide on granting the Homosexual special and unwarranted rights is about even. However, once the statistics are dissected, the picture becomes considerably bleaker. To put it bluntly, our support base, and thus God’s support base, is dying. Statistics show that whereas 66% of American Citizens over the age of 65 support the preservation of marriage as a beautiful and sacred joining of one man and one woman, only 33% of the godless generation between the ages of 18 and 29 supports the protection of marriage.

            All is not lost, mind you. I will die before I give up the fight against the homosexual agenda. What these fags don’t realize is the moral strength of the opposition they face. Yes, in the coming decades we may become the minority, but we will consolidate. We will veto. We will use the power of the minority and our constitutional freedom of speech to sway the sails of America’s mast back toward the kingdom of God. What they don’t realize is that we are not in this fight for the shortsighted pleasure of two warm, sinewy, perfectly defined male bodies pressed together in the heat of decadent sin. No, we have our eyes set on the future generations and on the future of the Human Soul. Our fight is not the trendy cause of the month, but rather one that will shine on throughout the decades and centuries and even millennia, if need be, until our righteous side has crushed these agents of Satan into the dust.

            However, if our cause is to survive—and it must—we have to adjust our tactics to fit our future minority status. And so it is time that we reevaluate our stance on the right of employers to fire workers based on their sexual orientation. Yes, I know, an employer’s right to fire worker’s based on their perversion is a liberty we all hold dear—and we have fought hard to see it maintained in 29 states.

And, no, I do not wish to be forced to work alongside an army of queers. It will be madness. So-called “glory holes” will be drilled in the bathroom stalls of every office in America. Men will eschew suits and ties for cut off jean shorts and mesh-tops in droves. It will be horrific. But we must look at the alternative. We must understand the viciousness of our enemy so to anticipate the moves he will use against us.

            As I mentioned earlier, the next generation will see the fag-lovers in the majority. Such an obstacle can be overcome, but not if we find ourselves without employment and without financial backing. For you see, the current employment discrimination laws are based on the precedent that any minority can be fired for leading a life or holding views that clash with the hegemonic majority. In a homogenous Christian Nation, this precedent is quite logical. It has allowed us to keep queers, jews, and muslims out of power for centuries. However, we are facing a tipping point. In twenty years, the hegemonic majority will be that of godlessness and perversion. Would it be so paranoid to suppose that in the future, we may become the minority? That we may become the objects of prejudice? If we allow this precedent to continue, the armies of godlessness will be able to wield it with great power and crush our crusade into ashes. Once in power, they will use it to allow employers to fire us good Christians simply because of our way of life.

            So, it is now our sad duty to destroy this precedent. Otherwise, one day twenty or thrity years from now, we will find ourselves being persecuted by the pinkos and fag-lovers. They will be ruthless. They will pry into our private lives. They will judge us for our beliefs and practices. They will trounce on our basic human rights of dignity and liberty and privacy. And then as a final cruel injustice, they will wield the power of their majority to take away our employment, crippling us financially.

            If we are to successfully fight the Homosexual, we cannot allow such a travesty to take place. We must put a heartbreaking end to employment discrimination.


For more, go to:
http://www.aclu.org/lgbt-rights/tell-congress-pass-enda