for 1 November 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Manhattan Project Holly, It's indicative of just how screwed up things are in Gotham when the controversy there over an art exhibit echoes something that happened in Cincinnati a decade ago (the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit brouhaha). Mark Twain must be spinning in his grave. Sucking in Southern Ohio, Tony Nowikowski <tony@nowikowski.com> Actually, Gotham also managed to rip off Ohio's punk rock props back in the day, since the Pere Ubu/Tin Huey/Rubber City Rebels nexus antedated the much-ballyhooed CBGB's din kicked up by Blondie, Talking Heads, et al. (though the Ramones remain, as ever, unsullied by the plodding linear march of history and the company they were forced to keep). But this birthright has been squandered by the unsightly Cleveland siting of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, proving that no region is finally immune from the scourge of virtual history — or the giddy placelessness of sports fandom. Holly Martins  It's been two years since I lived there, but that hurt! I'm assuming you've never lived there ... or you might think otherwise. Dennis Dennis Smith <DSMITH@kmd-arch.com> It's been more than two years I have lived here, and many more that I've wrestled with its Macy's parade–scale inflated sense of self-worth. There are, to be sure, many virtues to the place, but they tend to wilt in the face of desperate sports fandom and the special pleading foisted on a hapless nation by everyone from Woody Allen to Regis Philbin. Chicago is, for my money, a far more agreeable town, and manages to forgo such strenuous theatrics; people actually enjoy living there without constantly advertising the fact of doing so as a great life accomplishment. And, not coincidentally, on the rare occasions when the city's baseball franchises find themselves in postseason play, they do the gentlemanly thing and promptly collapse. Go, uh, Cubs, Holly Martins Holly, I left New York for San Francisco precisely because of the Nazi in Gracie Mansion and his black-shirted police force, which combined rather poorly with the general anschluss of Gotham's grit and attitude, leaving me with a sense of impending riot and mayhem. It saddens me to hear that 12 billion souls could be put and kept in their places by the husband of a DJ. One would have thought that most of NYC's "issues" were the result of so many bullies in the school, not just the want of a better school marm. Mind you, SF's mayor is no better. Here's to the joy of a decent economic depression that will bring both cities back to their '70s glory and pride. Faithfully yours, Bill Bailey <arkouda@doxos.com> Oddly, it comforts me to reflect that, their many trials notwithstanding, New Yorkers would seem to have, let's see, roughly 1,777 souls apiece. When all else fails, after all, we New Yorkers can always fall back on our intense spirituality. I must say, however, that unsightly as our own mayor is, the Nazi analogies strike me as a tad, shall we say, overblown. It's true he's never seen a vicious cop he didn't like, and nary a street vendor or cabbie he did, but the knee-jerk, virulent demonization of the guy seems to be a weird form of Upper West Side catharthis for catharthis' sake. It would be much more convincing, in any event, if our sage liberal Democrat braintrust could manage something like a serious political challenge to him and all he stands for. Somehow the notion that Mark Green would seize the reins of municipal power thanks to a Giuliani putsch in the Senate is akin to, well, celebrating the Yankees' elevation into World Series glory after a long series of bad umpiring calls in their favor. As for the specter of depression and riots, it's the nature of the new Gotham beast that the depression would likely be triggered by a long-overdue correction in sports-merchandising futures. And the riots would be supplied, of course, by cops and NASDAQ day traders. Holly Martins "Omnientertainment state a paying proposition in the longest peacetime boom in American history." Pardon me? Peacetime boom? Maybe therein lies the problem — the last time I looked, the US of Eh (still) spends more on its military than all of its enemies combined. Weren't Americans just directly involved in Iraq and Kosovo (and oddly, not in Timor or "Kurdistan")? Canadians are apparently pacific, but maybe New York will start a trend. Learn to love being Canadian ... learn to love Big Brother. Martin Koldijk (Rhymes withchilly les) <01140759@3web.net> Well, I grant that war is simply an economic stimulus by other means, but I still cling to the old-fashioned notion that wars are, you know, things that involve massive movements of troops over long stretches of time. And are sometimes even declared. But I'm sure all these disputations will be rendered merely semantic once we start raining our retribution on the shifty enemy on the other side of the Maple Leaf curtain — unless, of course, plans proceed apace to relocate Yankee Stadium in Toronto. Holly Martins WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU? THE MEDIA CALLED IT THE WAR IN KOSOVO; EVERYONE CALLED IT A WAR BUT THE GOVERNMENTS BECAUSE THEY WENT AROUND THE PROCESS OF FORMALLY DECLARING A WAR AND CALLED IT A NATO EXERCISE BUT IT WAS A WAR ALL THE SAME. THESE ARE THE SAME SEMANTICS THAT GOT THE United States IN VIETNAM FOR (APPROX.) 10 YEARS. AS FAR AS I KNOW, EVERYONE CALLED IT THE VIETNAM WAR BUT THE POLITICIANS NEVER CALLED IT SUCH. HA HA, YOU'LL FIND THAT THE United States ALREADY OWNS ALMOST EVERY SQUARE METER OF CANADA ANYWAY — INVADING US WOULD BE POINTLESS. WHY INVADE WHEN YOU OWN EVERYTHING IN THE COUNTRY YOU ARE INVADING? BESIDES, AMERICANS ARE JUST DECADENT SUBURBANS WHO COULDN'T FIGHT A SERIOUS CONFLICT IF THEIR LIVES COUNTED ON IT. FINALLY, SINCE WHEN DID SOME PUSSY LIBERALS LIKE YOURSELF BECOME SO MILITARISTIC? HAVE YOU EVER HAD ANY MILITARY TRAINING? I HAVE. BEING A SOLDIER IS SERIOUS BUSINESS. IF YOU WANT TO GRAB A RIFLE AND HUNT ME DOWN, GO FOR IT. I WOULD EXPECT NOTHING LESS FROM A VIOLENT AMERICAN BULLY (COLUMBINE, ETC.). YOU PEOPLE ARE VIOLENT AND DISGUSTING. ONCE YOU'VE FINISHED KILLING EACH OTHER OFF THEN MAYBE YOU'LL INVADE CANADA. TRUE NORTH STRONG AND FREE. MARTIN KOLDIJK <0114059@3web.net> Oh my. I was merely attempting to observe long-established Suck protocol by tweaking Canadians with stereotypical, boorish US élan. Little did I guess how dangerous a pastime this could prove to be — even for someone like myself, who is simultaneously a pussy liberal, a decadent suburbanite, and a disgusting, violent Littleton commando. I have every reason to credit and honor your own military training, and withdraw my prior misguided sport-making on the grounds that this would seem to be the very sort of exchange that fuels passions in these things known as "wars." Holly Martins Subject: NYC doesn't suck that much ... ... given the alternatives. Drew Robertson <atlantic@ abslive.com> The alternatives being what? Newark and Wilmington? Holly Martins Shamesploitation That was beautiful ... a deconstruction that inverts an intended irony to be a caricature of itself. Of course, if you tried to make a film that was/wasn't in a position to stradle its own antithesis in the moment of its statement, then you might end up with no statement at all — a film about nothing because anything you say would be ridiculously pointless. A blank white film screen that lasts for one-and-a-half hours that everyone hails as brilliant because of its sheer audacity. The marketing people would love it because of its price point. The critics would recognize it as "the Pet Rock of films!" Piper Carr <PiperC@corbis.com> Thanks for writing, Piper. Many films are able to maintain a sublime tension between what they think they're doing and what they're really doing or between what they're trying to do and the way they're surpassing it. For me, American Beauty is not one of them. And I bet you've noticed how many films about nothing are actually made that please critics anyway, without resorting to the kind of dead-end, statement less minimalism you propose. And how much longer those movies are than 90 minutes. And what big stars they have. Slotcar Hatebath You half-assed cheeseball. It's almost amusing to read something that expends so much cynicism to denigrate so much cynicism. Your writing is probably a better example of shamesploitation than American Beauty is. When I was finished reading your righteous indignation I still wasn't sure what you were indignant over. Oh yeah, I think it was, how dare movies that show us stuff show us stuff. Damn those filmmakers for revealing various aspects of the grotesquerie that really is modern society. I guess the mixture of cynicism and sincerity that pervades these movies is offensive because, instead of harping on one note, they exploit the dualities that are ripping us apart at this point in history. We are so jaded and we so desperately want to be hip that we want to destroy those that are when we realize we can't be. Your tone runs along the lines of a moralist who hates finding that the brilliance of the surprise of his cynical turn is usurped by the banality of such a move when it's already ingrained in the culture. I think these movies are in some sense about stripping away the mundane and finding not Lynchian weirdness, but a sincere sense of self and hope. That this exhibits itself in some terrible irony is the unfortunate side effect of our postmodern, self-reflexive, self- conscious society. That perhaps it is fruitless due to the wretched state of mankind is still no reason not to go with it. Perhaps Kevin Spacey's character is "living in a state of irony" like Lara Flynn Boyle's character in Happiness. At least it's more of an attempt at a real existence than the slump-shouldered loser we see at the beginning. At least he makes contact outside himself by the end of the movie. The strangest thing to me about this movie is that the clichés are combatted with more clichés. Again, this seems to be the state of our "whatever," "yada, yada, yada" way of referencing things that makes everything a cliché, especially the use of "Lynchian." The restructuring of these clichés to try and make contact or make them implode on themselves is evident in so many movies coming out now (Hurly Burly, Buffalo 66), and hey, Jeff Koons made a big-ass art career out of doing just that. Is it wrong? What do we use as cultural themes to get at the heart of things now? I think when you point out that it is novel to see characters doing anything besides dodging bullets (or being involved in intense court cases), you are really getting at something that is problematic. But what do they do without guns and gavels? I guess tear each other apart in some other way. I wouldn't lump Happiness and American Beauty together because the schmaltz of the latter offers the possibility of transcendence, while Ben Gazzara's saltshaker finale and the ending line in Happiness don't really offer us a way out. Some of the movies that work these themes seem to just posit the fact that we do continue on, as testament to the human will. What we get out of such shenanigans is up to us. But I hope that it is more than you have to offer with our "tut, tut" to these films, while I bet you offer shameless cynicism in your critique of the bulk of Hollywood fare. Thus you get to be self-righteous, cynical (equated with hip), and anticynical in the guise of some sort of intellectual sincerity. Complaining pays the bills for you guys and I guess you have to take it where you find it to fulfill the editorial mandate du jour. Satanhausen <satanhausen@uswest.net> Well, I guess we disagree. I do, however, agree with you about the saltshaker ending of Happiness. The cut-in to the insert of Gazzara's hand is no different to me than the one with the janitor in Election. Both work the same way as American Beauty's spoon-fed transcendence. Thanks for writing. Slotcar Hatebath Raves Dear Sucksters, I have read many online e-zines (including the dreaded Salon), but you guys have have left 'em all in your dust. I love opening my email every morning, if not for a chuckle, then for a new perspective on current public (and private) affairs. The writing is witty, the subject matter relevant, and gosh darn it, I like you! Sharon Spilman <puamana@puamana.net> Well, you'll see in time that at Suck.com we have a strong commitment to putting out a quality product, day in and day out. We take all our feedback from our customers to heart, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to let us know. the Sucksters A disgraceful name, and a worse product. Warren L. Dean <wdeansr@juno.com> So don't read it, you big fink. the Sucksters |
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