Unrelated but Pertinent

Any person who comes into the gallery whistling is someone I do not want to talk to.

Ponderings: or, possibly I am now a criminal

I... have not blogged.... for a week. And so now, it's time to blog. And yet here I am on Monday morning with a frustrating lack of things happening in my brain. I tried to Gchat a moment ago and nothing happened. Just no words.
Sooooo....
I just wrote this article for Whack! which was horrendously underdeveloped and kind of badly put together in the first place, but which I didn't have enough time to fix. And which I feel really weird about having written. Because in the article I make a case for people being less hysterically panicky about child molesters, aka sex offenders.
Because, here's the thing, I'm not in any way condoning really messed up things that people might do to children. We're not living in a day and age where forcing a prepubsecent child into a sexual situation is ok. I don't know that there would ever be a day or age where that would be ok. It skews the child's understanding of sex and what it means, turns it into a dark and painful thing rather than a joy, as it should be. Warps the growing-up process. Hurts everyone involved. It's wrong.
But I also think that because as a culture we're so terrified of the prospect, we've also gone a bit overboard with our definition of it and our desire to catch the bad guys responsible. I mean, I understand that the age of consent is high in most industrialized countries in hopes of preventing young people from being taken advantage of by older people. But there was a kid recently locked up for TEN YEARS on a statutory rape charge, because when he was seventeen he had oral sex with a fifteen year old.
That's not ok with me. He didn't really do anything wrong. Sure, she was fifteen and probably didn't really know what she was doing in the grand scheme of things, but, A) he was seventeen and he probably didn't really know either, and B) nobody EVER really knows, and C) he was only two years older! That is not the same as 35 year old man preying on a five year old child. It's not the same at all. And yet this guy will be forever labeled a sex offender. His life is ruined. For no good reason.
Consider the fact that there are cops posted to the ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) Taskforce who are undergoing serious emotional trauma because of the things they're forced to see at work. Consider that there are cops across the country posing online as young kids or the guardians thereof, offering sex with minors to perverts online. Consider that guys responding to these offers are often arrested without having committed a crime.
Consider that we are so terrified of child molestation that we get suspicious of any adult male near our kids. If a kid falls on the playground and a man is there to help them up and dust them off, we think "pervert" instead of "helpful." It's weird, isn't it?
And, in another vein but still under the general premise of this conversation, consider the fact that a fifteen year old "girl" in this day and age has probably been getting her period for three or more years, developed a fully functional adult body, and is horny as all hell. She is probably not really mature enough to understand or interpret her horniness adequately, but those are the facts.
Also consider that there is a thriving industry based on "barely legal" female porn performers who 'just turned eighteen.' Many of these girls might not be eighteen yet, and many others are barely over the line. It's ok to jerk off to them, though, because they're 'legal.'
Furthermore, consider that as animals, we are biologically programmed to find young adults attractive. Younger females tend to be healthier and more able to have healthy babies. Younger men tend to have more energy, be faster and stronger and more able to bring home the bacon. While TOO young is obviously not ok from a moral, social, OR biological standpoint, the fact that lots of guys get off to 'barely legal' porn isn't so much gross as biologically expected.
Of course there's a line between what's ok and what's not, but it seems to me that we are so terrified of people crossing it that we've made the line a thin, solid black one separating the adults from the children in a world where it's a much more grey, fuzzy line that covers a whole lot of territory.
And I think we need to figure out a way to be less panicky and more comprehensive about it. I don't have any anwers to the problem, but it's been on my mind and it bugs me.

Ok. So that's the premise. Does this make me a bad person?

Third Column is UP!

Check me out, I'm such a writer! My third column is up on McSweeney's! This one is a lot more of a story than my usual rambling, and I happen to think it's pretty funny. Let me know if you agree!

New York Gears Up for Halloween: or, almost a bum-fight

Yesterday when I left work to go to my night class, I heard some inarticulate shouting from down the block, but couldn't see its source. Intrigued, I approached the sound, and as I got closer I discerned a hobo, complete with shopping cart full of plastic bags-o-crap, arms raised to the heavens, shouting out incoherent witness to the Gods of Bums.

Just then, another hobo, sitting discreetly against an abandoned building with a coffee cup full of change some fifteen yards away and watching the first hobo, started yelling back!

It was a showdown:

Hobo #2: Shut UP! Shut the fuck UP!

Hobo #1: (continuing his earlier conversation with himself) So I said, what you wanna take my coat off? You want me to pull my pants down?

Hobo #2: SHUT UP you crazy motherfucker!

Alas, I was already late for class so I couldn't stop to see what kind of insane hobo antics were about to occur, but I can only assume that pants were dropped and blows exchanged.

Ahhhh, New York. You're ready for All Hallow's Eve.

An Update on NYC: or, weird things I've seen lately.

1) Yesterday, in Central Park, two dwarves walking together. Maybe brothers? I guess it doesn't sound so impressive in writing, but honestly, how often do you see that?

2) Also yesterday, a man came into the gallery with the most amazing set of mutton chops I have EVER SEEN in the flesh. I've only seen better photos because I've looked up pictures from international beard competitions. His facial hair--and his eyebrows, too--was bright white, surprisingly wispy, and at least three inches long.

3) Last week, outside FAO Schwarz, I got stuck on the sidewalk behind a very old couple (think upwards of 80) who were walking excruciatingly slowly. I got annoyed and moved to go out around them before realizing that the woman had BRIGHT BLUE HAIR. Like cerulean blue hair. It was AWESOME. I wanted to stop and tell her how much I liked it, but of course I chickened out instead.

4) Dan Akroyd.

5) Some other pseudo-famous lady whosename I dont know, but whose face is extremely memorable. Think big, inflamed looking chipmunk cheeks and short brown hair. Old.

Stolen Stories: or, I'm lazy

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you New York City:

A woman standing on a Manhattan subway platform with her pants down bit a New York City police officer in the back, police said Thursday.

Cops: Woman with pants down on subway bites officer
September 24, 2009 By DANIEL EDWARD ROSEN. Special to Newsday

The woman, whose name was not released, was standing on the mezzanine of the 34th Street-Herald Square station, according to a police spokesman. When two police officers approached the woman, she ran down to the southbound Q train platform, where she was apprehended.

During the arrest, one officer sustained a bite mark to his back and a bruised left shoulder, and the other suffered "facial injuries," the spokesman said.

Both officers were taken to St. Vincent's Hospital, where they are being treated.

The woman was taken to Bellevue Medical Center for examination and is not expected to face charges, the spokesman said.

I Can't Write Poetry Anymore: or, why journalism sucks

I realize it every time I read something poetic that someone else has written, but it hits home even more when I listen to music or--good gracious--try to write a poem myself. It's the reason I've always told people I hate journalistic writing. It sucks out the soul. And sure, nobody wants to read about my piddling emotional turmoil, but it sure used to feel good when I wrote it. It was my release all through high school, some college, on the reservation. To take my pent-up everything and spew it out on paper in such a disgustingly drippy fashion that I can't even stand to look back through my own journals. I guess I'll have to burn them when I feel death coming on; couldn't bear to have anyone look into my pencil-scrawled soul and realize that, yes, I really was--am--that shallow.
I've been writing informative (I should put that in quotations: 'informative') articles and op-ed pieces and columns and even straightforward fiction for two years now, for different outlets, and it's made me take the focus away from my poetry, my painting with letters. And that's probably a good thing. I need to know how to say what I want to say in language other people can understand, or at least read without wanting to vomit up adjectives. But. Still.
Now, if I want to come up with a beautiful phrase, I have to conjure it from thin air. Cause that's the thing about writing facts for meager pocket change: you forget to feel. For god's sake, this blog is about my made-up paranoia about robots and slime molds, and even that has devolved into a vessel of promotion for my other writing projects! I can't force myself to write something deep and profound even when I try. I decided to make this blog about something besides me--the real me, the tormented dark soul that used to scrawl itself out in pencil all over everything at its disposal--so nobody would get bored reading my weird and personal bullshit.
But. Now I look at it. Do I even HAVE any weird personal bullshit anymore? Am I so busy being a 'writer' who writes things for other people because that's the only way to be a success these days that I've lost the part of myself that wanted to write in the first place?
When I go to parties for research now I don't write later about the crazy euphoria of drunkenly watching other people or of the breathless walk back through the watching night of the Bronx. I don't remember those feelings. I get home and I sit down and I write the facts, like minutes from a meeting, like a fucking PTA Secretary. When I sit down to the computer I start searching for news stories. When I write I use verbs and nouns. I'm sardonic. I'm sarcastic. I'm straight-forward-all-the-facts-all-the-time.
Probably because I could never explain to my parents, those knowers of all things, why I wanted to write. They loved my stories, sure. But they wanted me to be a Something with a Big Paycheck, a Solid Part of the Community. A scientist or an athlete or a something useful. So I never showed them the poems. I never commented on the feelings. I just bottled them up and became "dark" and wrote about my "darkness" in journals I then locked in a suitcase in the attic, which still bothers my mother because she can't get into it. And when I did get poems published, or feel good about them, they'd be the imagery ones. The story ones. Not the emotional ones, the real ones, the raw ones, the passionate ones... not Writerly enough. Not Good Writing. Can't be sent to a magazine because they were just me.
And now look where it's gotten me. I'm reporting back to you on my lack of poetry using concrete terms. Who, what, where, when, why, and how. What does the audience want to read? Will this sell? Will I get comments?

...all bullshit.
This is not ok.
I need more than all this.
That need is why I became a writer. To feel, to report back, to make it all beautiful. Not to inform or add to the wealth of human knowledge. Knowledge is overrated and nobody can ever have all of it. But all of us have all the emotion and the wonder in the universe. That's all we have in common. I should be writing about that.

Another Story and Another Column: or, shameless self-promotion

In case ANYONE reading this hasn't gotten an e-mail, tweet, FB post, or MySpace bulletin yet... I have two publications to show for one week, NOT on Whack! Magazine! Check it!

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: The Conflicted Existence of a Female Porn Writer: Column Two: Desensitization

And:

The Whiskey Dregs: Short Stories: The Old Goat Man

Now that that's over with, I've been considering the merit or not of the upcoming Where the Wild Things Are Movie. I don't know how to feel about it. On the one hand, it looks like a great film so far, and I have the utmost respect for Spike Jonze, as a director, as well as for the fact that Maurice Sendak's wishes are being realized by him directing this movie. He apparently once said that the only way he'd agree to his baby being turned into a movie would be if it were to be directed by Jonze.

So that's all well and good.

But still. It irks me on a number of levels. I'm always hesitant to see a book turned into a movie, particularly if it's one I grew up with. But this one bothers me more than others. For one thing, the book is so beloved by so many, not for the merits of its movie-length plot, but for its sparseness. It's a book with so little background and so little development of the plot that one must bring one's own imagination and experience to it in order to make the story whole. And one's own story must be a good one to match the incredible possibilities and the astounding artwork. And that brings the best of the imagination of everyone who reads it.

Of course I appreciate Spike Jonze's vision, and I think his version of the story will probably be one that will be eminently artistic and enjoyable. But. It's still HIS. From the time this movie comes out, every kid who's seen the movie (there will be MANY) will bring with him Spike Jonze's idea of the story, the characters, the background, the sounds, the sights we don't get to see in the pages. And that bothers me with this particular book because it has always been the opposite of a fleshed-out, pre-imagined story. And now it will be just like Harry Potter or Twilight or The Lord of the Rings. Well, ok, not JUST like them, but one person's vision of it will come to dominate the entire story, book, movie, idea. And I don't like that.

Furthermore, I feel like this movie was cooked up by some producers who looked at my very specific part of my very specific generation. They looked at the books we love, the music we love, the directors we love, and the type of movies we love, and then they said, "You know what would be perfect? Turning 'Where the Wild Things Are' into a live-action style movie and getting Spike Jonze to direct, the singer from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to come up with the soundtrack, and the Arcade Fire to let us use their anthem about growing up in the trailer. The twenty-somethings will line up around the block to see it, and they'll bring their kids! We can't lose! It's a money-making machine!"

I might be totally wrong about that. It's just as likely (and I've obviously done no research about it) that someone really really loved the book and really really loved Spike Jonze and The Arcade Fire and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and thought that together they would make a beautiful piece of art. And you know, they probably will. But I get this feeling that I'm being led by the nose because being who I am, at this point in my life, at this moment in time (post-college fugue, frustrated creative visions, yearning for childhood feelings, wanting to be swept away to a better world without a recession or even money), I HAVE to love it. I don't like being led by the nose, even if the people at the other end of the leash are creative geniuses.

I dunno. I guess it just seems contrived to me, and too much awesome in one place.

I'll probably end up seeing it and loving it, but hating myself for it the whole time. Grumble.

What do you guys think? Support it? Love it? Hate it? Meh?

In other news: my coworker Maribeth saw John Turturro on the street today. I am way jealous. This lady has never even SEEN The Big Lebowski! Not fair.

But I DID see this after leaving work: a mid-twenties white guy sitting in traffic in a very nice Chrysler convertible, with the top down in 50 degree weather, smoking a cigar, and listening to "With Or Without You" at full volume. Way to go, guy, for blasting the music you REALLY love.

19th Century Color Film: or, awesomeness.

This movie was made around 1899. Each frame was hand-colored. It is amazing.

Coming Out to My Parents: or, risking getting banned from Thanksgiving Dinner

Well, I came out to my parents last night. No, I'm not gay. Well, not in the strictest sense of the world. Girls sure are pretty though. But, no, what I mean by that is: I told my parents about my McSweeney's column, and in so doing told them I've been writing for porn magazines for two years and am working on a book about swingers that I hope to get an agent for any day now.
And... miracle of miracles... they didn't disown me! Or even tell me not to come home for Thanksgiving (thank GOD, cause my mom's food is so good)! They pretty much said that it's my life and whatever, just as long as I don't start talking about porn at Thanksgiving. Which is a bit unfair, considering they always sit around discussing surgeries and weird medical issues, but whatever. I'll deal.
The point is that now that my parents know about all my crazy writing jobs, I no longer have to hide it. I mean, sure, someday I might want to try selling my children's book idea and then I might want to keep the porn thing under lock and key, but that's why I use a pen name.
I feel so unburdened, suddenly. I mean, sure, I've still got like a billion deadlines staring me in the face and a huge amount of work on my plate, but now if my parents call me while I'm in the middle of it, I can just tell them I'm writing a DVD review instead of making up some ridiculous story about pirates and ninjas storming the Bronx and running off to a friend's house with my sleeping bag to escape the melee.
I mean. That's a pretty cool story. But not really believable in any way. And telling the truth is just easier.
So.
Hello, world.
I write for and about pornography.
I feel so free!