On Sunday I visited my favorite record store, you know, where I go every week to buy soul records from the most adorable old gay shopkeeper in the city. He said that between Trump, the Oakland fire, and the rain, business has been awful for him because nobody can bring themselves to leave their homes, let alone make it all the way to his shop. I thought about you, and how in a way you’ve been making it difficult for me to leave the proverbial (and literal) home over the past 12 months, because every time I try to feel positive you seem to trip me and then kick me when I’m down. What can we say about you, 2016?
First you killed David Bowie. He was in his late 60s, younger than my dad, and as a rule nobody younger than my dad is allowed to die—you know this, 2016. Bowie was one of those artists who could bend my emotions at will—he could bring me to ecstasy or agony, or both, over the course of just a few songs. His variety and creativity excited me, his views on politics and sexuality intrigued me, and his aura of mystique enthralled me. I never saw him in concert, and now I never will.
About a month after his death I went to a tribute concert, and you pulled me on stage and made me sing “Life on Mars” to the crowd, embarrassing me when I forgot the lyrics during the second verse. You did an amazing version of “Lady Stardust” and when I got home I went into a “Lady Stardust” YouTube hole until I came upon this video of Chris Cornell doing his rendition, which elicited a few tears.
You killed George Martin, which led me to listen to Eleanor Rigby on repeat for a full day or two—I still consider that violin at 1:07 to be one of the most beautiful fills in musical history.
You killed Phife Dawg, although I’ll admit that I love the new Tribe album that you gave us. You killed Merle Haggard, and I pretended to be a huge Merle Haggard fan even though I’m actually only familiar with a few of this songs and I don’t care that much for him. You killed Prince.
You fucking killed Prince.
When you killed prince, I wrote on Facebook, “Fuck 2016. Just fuck this whole year.” And that was only in April. At this point, I still was not over mourning for David Bowie, and then you took away one of the most inspirational artists in my life. And you took him way too young, and you took him for a fucking stupid reason. Here is my favorite Prince clip:
In early June, you committed the largest mass shooting in U.S. history, slaying 49 dancers celebrating gay pride in an Orlando nightclub. The politicized media really had a field day coming up with creative ways to spin the incident. The left blamed the proliferation of semiautomatic weaponry and decried the act as a homophobic hate crime. After a few days of what must have been deep inner torment, the right briefly embraced the gay community and used the tragedy to push Islamophobia, framing the discussion to be one in which the only way to keep our beloved LGBT community safe would be to remove Muslims from the country. These are the conversations you’ve inspired, 2016. But you can’t fool me; I am well aware that no matter how you slice it, regardless of whether you choose to focus on G-d, guns, or gays, you brutally murdered 49 people for no reason other than the fact that they lived in a world where boys like to dance with boys.
The summer wasn’t so bad. For my birthday you took me to London and we sipped negronis on the balcony of that fancy restaurant on river by the Tate. That night we went to a Japanese restaurant where our waitress was from Toyama, where I had taught English for 2 years. I was able to purchase pounds on the cheap because just a week before you had caused the UK to leave the European Union. In retrospect, that was sort of a dick thing to do, 2016, but you’re not going to live to see the fallout.
Remember Normandy, 2016? Visiting the farm a few kilometers inland from Utah beach, where my grandfather had established a field hospital? Drinking calvados at the orchard that had once been occupied by Nazis? You took a respite from murdering my heroes for just long enough to bring back a false sense of hope.
Then you took away my grandmother. I acknowledge that she was old, and senile, and probably ready to die, but man, her death fucked me up. My grandmother was a famous, powerful, and influential poet, fairly well-known in the states and highly revered in Israel, where she lived for 35 years until we brought her back 6 years ago. We had a small memorial for her, family only, during which we reminisced and read a few of her poems. My cousin read this one:
Horseshoe Crabs
She is astonished by the moon
as she crawls out of the sea
on a small island, dragging
the male crab on her tail.
He hangs there by the hooks
he’s just grown out of his legs,
clutching at what she
offers him, and half her size.
She wears him as she wears
her great shell like a mask
stretched over her body
and the steaming eggs.
Air enters her gills
like moonlight
and she breathes it out on this
one night out of the water
with her sisters, and their
ferocious lovers
hanging on. Already
the tide slips back,
and on the beach the crabs
are giddy, meaning to go.
They always mean to.
Four hundred million years
of habit, still they are caught
like shards left over
when the roof falls in.
They lie at sunrise
in the bright sand, holding
the dark inside them,
dreaming of floors of oceans
where they move alone.
One of the last things my grandmother said to me when she was still compos mentis was, “Your greatest accomplishment is being related to me.” She was dead serious, too. It made me feel like shit then, and it felt even shittier now, at the age of 35, burying her and worrying that she may be correct.
Do you wanna talk about the election, 2016? Honestly, I already wrote a piece about the president-elect and his supporters, so I’m not sure we need to have that conversation again, so I’ll make this short. We were watching at a food truck party where there was a fire pit with ingredients to make s’mores—I know, I know, so fucking San Francisco. You’ve never seen a more deflated group of yuppie liberals than we had that night. I got drunk, and you gave me a ride home in your Lyft. When I got home, I posted the following message on Facebook:
“I just got home, and then literally broke down in tears (and you know that I don’t fuck around when I use the word ‘literally’). There are a million reasons to be sad tonight, but for me, one stands out above all others: tonight, a generation of children were taught that bullies win.”
Two days after the election, you killed Leonard Cohen. This was a great set-up for another crying session two days after that, when I came home late at night from a concert and watched this:
And now, 2016, I need to give you a trigger warning, because the next bit of this letter is going to be painful.
Two weeks ago we went to the Leonard Cohen tribute show at the Chapel, in which a number of Bay Area-based musicians performed hauntingly beautiful renditions of Cohen’s greatest songs. We were moved emotionally, and afterwards we talked about how between that show and the Undercover Presents Bjork tribute the week before, we were witnessing the strength, perseverance, and resilience of the Bay Area art scene.
Five days later, you killed 36 young members of the Bay Area artistic community in the deadliest fire in Oakland’s history. It might be more than that, actually—there are still people missing and the death toll is expected to rise. When I first heard about the fire, I was in shock, but separated from the incident. A quick check revealed that I didn’t personally know any of the victims, and I was sad, but my thoughts were elsewhere. In the few days that followed, I read many articles about how gentrification was a cause of the fire, as marginalized artists are forced to live in precarious conditions in this impossible housing market. The fire in Oakland was at a live/work/create warehouse known as “Oakland Ghost Ship” where the members regularly threw parties to raise money for their artwork. The stairs were stacks of pallets, exposed wires stuck out of the walls, there was no sprinkler system, and the building sure as hell wasn’t up to any sort of building codes, but rectifying any of the foregoing would have cost a great deal of money–something that artists do not have.
The articles made it seem like the recent tech boom has relegated the creative class to warehouses on the outskirts of town, but the truth is that artists have been living in warehouses and semi-abandoned buildings in the Bay Area since the 70s—they just moved from San Francisco to Oakland. Heck, there was a time when punk rock bands crashed in the empty beer vats of an abandoned brewery—check it out. This doesn’t make the situation any better—artists form fundamental threads in the tapestry of San Francisco, California, the country and the world, but I’m not sure I believe that more artists had been living in safer conditions prior to the past few years (of course, if you have any good articles that provide solid (or semi-solid) evidence about this, please do share). Nonetheless, the fact that artists who create and inspire and make the world beautiful have to live in squalid conditions while people who work in “biz dev” for “apps” that create “dynamic targeted advertising experiences” get to live in luxury high-rises pisses the fuck out of me.
Starting five days after the fire, different news sources started posting lists and bios of the victims of the fire, and that’s when the incident became a tragedy for me. Seeing these young, hopeful faces and knowing the devastation caused to their families, friends, and communities, my chest ached and I became short of breath.
I didn’t personally know anybody who died that night, but I have a few friends who did. One of these friends posted the following memorial video about a week after the fire:
Watching this video, it occurs to me that real, actual human beings—who laughed and made others laugh, who danced and made others dance, who dreamed and made others dream—had their lives suddenly, painfully and unfairly cut short. I think about the victim and 35 other grown-up kids like her, so full of spirit and expression, panicking, screaming in a sudden inferno, unable to breath from the smoke, feeling their flesh burn. I began to cry.
Do you remember when we sat on the stairs in front of the Imperial War Museum back in July, and we discussed living in New York during 9/11? We had gone to the roof of my dorm building, the tallest building at Columbia, and we could see the smoke rising from the towers five miles away. We were in shock, and we were a bit scared, and in the following days we were sad, but we were 20 years old back then and we had no idea how to process the largest act of terror ever to take place on American soil. Sure, we had some idea of the political ramifications, but we couldn’t grasp what it meant for 3000 people to perish from the blind faith and hatred of others. And you and I contemplated what it would be like if 9/11 happened today, how our now adultish 35-year old minds would be unable to overcome it or to handle it, whereas at the time it just felt like we were on some bizarre drug, and we didn’t cry.
And I know that 36 is a lot less than 3000, but 2016 you made me cry in a way that 2001 never could. I can’t listen to “On Melancholy Hill” or “Hallelujah” or “Lady Stardust” without tearing up right now—yeah, that’s right, the worst part is that it’s December and I’m still not over David Bowie’s death. And now I’m watching the news about Aleppo and it ain’t helping.
I don’t want you to finish this letter thinking that I absolutely hate you, 2016. We had some good times, too.
Remember when we went to the Cure concert and you kissed me when they played “Just Like Heaven”? We were so worried that they wouldn’t do “Boys Don’t Cry,” but then the band came back on for that third encore.
Remember when we got drunk in the back of that fancy wine bar and took off our shirts to show each other our tattoos?
Remember when you made me that sign for the Black Lives Matter rally and we were interviewed by Al Jazeera?
Remember when we hiked to the top of Bald Hill to watch the meteor shower, and you jumped every time you heard something in the bushes?
Remember when you sent a text saying you missed me so I caught the next flight to LA and we got coffee together in Echo Park?
Remember when you came over and we baked muffins together? And after I put the muffins into the oven I set the timer on my phone I said, “well, it looks like we have 23 minutes to kill, what should we do?” and then I kissed you.
I won’t forget you, 2016.
The good thing about a bad year is that you’re only around for 365 days (or in your case, 366…goddammit, you just HAD to have one extra day to be a dick). I’m sure you’re not done with the gut punches yet, 2016. In fact, I predict that just a few minutes before the ball drops in the closing moments of December 31st, you’ll smite Bob Dylan with a massive heart attack or stroke (yes folks, you heard it here first). And then comes 2017. Even with “El Pendejo Naranjo” becoming presidente, I have hope that 2017 will be better to all of us than you were.
I should be wrapping this up. Back at the record store, I bought an old Percy Sledge record to give my friend a much-needed sale. But you know what? It’s a fucking great record and I’m quite pleased with my purchase.
Now have fun these last three weeks, 2016, and then go fucking die.
On Wednesday, November 9th, 2016, the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, I awoke at 4 AM with a pounding hangover and puffy eyes. After sifting through the sea of misery that was my Facebook feed for a few hours, I left my apartment to go to work, skipping showering and brushing my teeth. There was a larger-than-normal cluster of homeless men in front of the donut shop—I took their orders and bought them all breakfast, while also purchasing a chocolate and a glazed donut for myself. I’m trying to cut down on my sugar intake, but as far as I was concerned, Wednesday was a cheat day.
There was a beautiful young woman sitting next to the window on MUNI. When the train left Civic Center station, she spontaneously burst into tears.
Five minutes after settling into my chair in front of my desk, one of my colleagues entered my office, stared out my window for an awkward thirty seconds, and then muttered, to nobody in particular, “No words. No words.”
After work, I had dinner with an old friend. He insisted that, for the entire duration of the meal, I tell him about my recent vacation in Colombia. Every time I tried to change the subject, he would ask more questions. “What was the food like? Is it easy to get around without knowing Spanish? Let me see your pictures!” I was more than happy to oblige—it was clear that neither of us had any desire to address the elephant in the room.
Upon arrival home, I immediately logged back into Facebook to catch up on the day’s deluge of angst, anger, and fear. My friends who are not white, or who are LGBT, or Muslim, or women, or some combination thereof, posted articles explaining why they were afraid. White males displayed their recognition of privilege and pledges of solidarity. And many of my friends posted messages attacking Trump’s supporters and Republicans in general. As one friend succinctly put it: “If you voted for Trump, then you are a racist. Period.”
I want to believe that most Republicans are not racist.
* * *
I followed the 2016 presidential contest more closely than I had any election before. The amount of energy I devoted to reading articles about the candidates far eclipsed any interest piqued in the 2008 election, which between Obama and Palin, was the last time I had allowed myself to indulge in extended political obsession. Although the dramatis personae of the 2016 campaign included a very strong supporting cast, featuring the Falstaff Chris Christie, the Iago Ted Cruz, and the Lady Macbeth Hillary Clinton, it was American Caligula Donald Trump who received, by far, the bulk of my attention.
I recall a barbecue in Brooklyn in July, in which we were discussing some of the more comical election-related moments of the recent few weeks. I pointed out how I was flabbergasted by Trump’s supporters. “They’re obsessed with Trump,” I noted. “Dude,” replied my friend. “I’m obsessed with Trump.” And I was too—hell, we all were. We updated HuffPo and WaPo and NYT every three minutes, waiting to read about the next hate-filled, ignorant, or downright stupid sound byte to come out of his pie hole. And mind you, this barbecue occurred before the dawn of the “Grab ‘em by the pussy” era.
And so, for fifteen agonizing months, the Donald was the butt of every liberal joke, the target of every left-wing insult, and instigator of endless decent-person rage. Not just in America—my friends in the U.K. and Europe (I’m getting used to treating those as separate places), Australia, Israel, and Japan contributed their fair share of anti-Don zingers. People in Colombia even wanted to talk to me about Trump, even though my recollections of 7th grade Spanish usually left me nodding incessantly and just repeating “si…si…” with a confused look on my face. I did learn a new word though: pendejo.
Then Donald Trump won the election—there, let’s say it, let’s admit it, let’s acknowledge it, the 45th president of the United States is a former failed steak salesmen who has never held political office and who has an affinity for younger women whom he fathered. We’re all drowning in waves of shock and depression—hell, it took me three days before I could even shower and I’ve eaten nothing but breakfast burritos, chocolate croissants, and Chinese food since he won (okay, admittedly, that’s not too different from my normal diet). And you’d better believe I have a serious Grizzly Adams look going on right now.
Trump’s victory was a huge upset, and now we find ourselves asking, how the hell did it happen? We play the blame game—it was that bitch Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the DNC sabotaging Bernie, who obviously would have smashed Trump. It was the liberal, Jew-controlled media, who gave Trump infinitely more attention than he deserved. It was Nate Silver, for convincing us all that Hillary’s victory was a shoe-in and causing us to become too complacent. It was the lack of education in the Midwest and south that led to a generation of stupid bigots. It was Huffington Post. Honestly, fuck that website.
I blame myself. I sincerely believe that the reason we lost this election is because I and other like-minded people hid in our liberal, coastal elitist bubbles and ignored what was happening in the rest of the country. We refused to acknowledge that Republicans were people worthy of respect, and they eventually got their revenge. I take responsibility because I have lived on this planet for 35 years and, of my 706 Facebook friends, I can name around 5 who identify as Republican and one (1) whom I know voted for Trump.
I’ve been ignoring and avoiding Republicans my whole life, because I’ve been taught (brainwashed?) to believe that Republicans are sleazy, cheating, bigoted, and otherwise immoral. During the election cycle, a number of Republicans had the audacity to point out that, in 1865, 150 years ago, it was the Democrats, and not the Republicans, who opposed the abolition of slavery. Of course, anybody with a rudimentary understanding of U.S. history knows damn well that, since the Civil Rights era in the 1960s, the Republicans have been the party most supportive of racist ideals. But despite that—
I want to believe that most Republicans are not racist.
* * *
My earliest of memory of any sort of cognizance about politics was in 1987, when the hearings against Oliver North were televised and America became wise to the full extent of the Iran-Contra scandal. I was six years old at the time, and I remember my father watching the television, shaking his head, and saying, “Oliver North—what a dummy. North, Reagan, all of the Republicans—what a bunch of dummies.” One strange quirk about my father is that when I was younger, he had a horrible swearing problem (which is why I have such a fucking filthy mouth today, I suppose), but the most scathing insult he could ever bestow upon somebody was calling him or her a “dummy.” He used the term very sparingly. Although he would toss out “fuck” or “shit” or “asshole” or “sonuvabitch” without batting an eye, but it was only when he was overflowing with livid rage to the point of tasting bile in his mouth that he would call somebody the dreaded D-word. When my father called somebody a “dummy,” it was his way of saying that they were a daughter-raping, criminal, immoral, depraved, moronic, son-raping, disgusting, deplorable, imbecilic, cowardly, ugly, father-raping, psychotic, uncouth, immature, intolerable, mother-fucking, titty-sucking two-ball bitch with a ping-pong pussy and a rubber dick.
And this was the earliest term I heard used to describe the fifty percent of the U.S. population who identify as Republicans.
When I was in middle school, there was a program to try to instill some kind of work ethic in students in which they’d encourage us to sell magazine subscriptions, and reward us with “weepuls,” which were essentially collectable colored cotton balls with plastic googly eyes. They came in dozens of types, with different little hats or other accessories.
The “Weepul Man” would stand on stage in the auditorium and thrill us with the bounty of rewards that awaited us if we would excel at bothering our parents and parents’ friends to convince them to buy discounted subscriptions to Readers’ Digest. Weepuls were just the beginning—I think if you sold 20 subscriptions, you got a Sony Walkman. The top saleschild got picked up in a limo and taken to McDonalds.
Each different weepul had a unique name, which was usually a pun based on its accessories. There was one weepul named “Jumbo” who had an elephant’s trunk and ears and a red, white and blue hat. He was one of my favorites, but when I proudly showed my weepul collection to my older sister and her friend, they pointed out that Jumbo was a Republican, and encouraged me to throw him away. I did.
It’s a metaphor, people.
* * *
I rooted for Michael Dukakis because my parents voted for him. I rooted for Bill Clinton because my parents voted for him, although admittedly I kind of liked Ross Perot, because even at 11 years old I could see that the two-party system was problematic. My parents explained that they believed in paying more in taxes in order to fund schools, and that made sense to me. I learned the difference between pro-choice and pro-life and decided that I was the former. In high school, I met a few out-of-the-closet students and teachers, and they seemed fine to me—I didn’t understand why any person would have a dogmatic opposition to homosexuals. I read Atlas Shrugged and disagreed with Ayn Rand more and more with every turn of the page (and I turned A LOT of pages). I decided that I was a Democrat.
I went to an Ivy League university where most of the student body was in the same camp. There’s a memory that sticks out—it’s the day before Election Day in 2000, and at the end of my Literature Humanities class, one student stands up and says, “everybody, don’t forget to vote tomorrow!” The dude sitting next to him turns to him and says, “I will, but I’m not sure you’ll like it…you see, I’m a Republican.” The first guy said, “that’s okay, I’m a Republican too.” They smiled and shared an awkward moment. At the time, I made a joke about how they kind of wanted to kiss, but didn’t know what to do because they were homophobic. But I also realized something then: Republicans were a minority at my school, and they were taught to keep their mouths shut about it.
I don’t remember ever getting into any political debates with Republicans when I was in college. I also don’t recall being very political. I think I went to one meeting of the anti-death penalty student organization but I found the members to be insufferable. I saw John Kerry speak when he came onto campus and wasn’t terribly impressed. I knew I hated George W. Bush, and even more, I knew I detested Dick Cheney. Watching the news of all of the blood that was being shed just so Cheney’s cronies could make more money made me sick. I began associating Republicans with greed and an utter lack of concern for human life. That old joke resonates with me—you know the one. Cheney, Bush, and Rummy are sitting in the war room, planning the invasion of Iraq. Rummy says, “we’re gonna go in and kill a million Iraqis, and one blonde with big tits.” Bush says, “why the blonde with big tits?” Rummy turns to Cheney and says, “see, I told you nobody would care about us killing a million Iraqis.” Ha ha ha?
After college I spent three years teaching English in Japan, in a small area called Toyama. We had a high concentration of English teachers from Indiana and North Carolina, due to the fact that the two largest cities in Toyama were sister cities with Fort Wayne and Durham. Some of the teachers from those states were staunch liberals who were fleeing their conservative homelands. Others were heartland Republicans who, contrary to popular liberal misconception, actually owned passports and were interested in seeing other parts of the world and helping people. When W was re-elected, most of us mourned, and the Republican JETs generally stayed silent. Again, I don’t recall much political debate.
Then I was off to law school at UCLA, which was packed with Democrats hoping to change the world. Some of them did end up doing something like that, which is great—many of us just ended up working for the other side in huge corporate law firms. There were also a few Republicans, who were mainly interested in the money-making aspect of lawyerdom. For the most part they stayed quiet during Constitutional Law class (and they rarely if ever took Criminal Procedure), so we rarely got into any sort of debate on social issues.
Near the end of my first semester 1L year, a classmate informed me that our slated second semester property teacher was a racist who singled out, attacked, and humiliated minority students and made them feel horribly uncomfortable. I was asked to sign a petition requesting a different teacher. The thought of a blatantly racist professor troubled me, so I signed the petition. I would later learn that the impetus for drafting the petition was that this professor had published an article in which he denounced affirmative action, citing empirical evidence that the practice actually hurts black students.
I regret signing the petition. I understand that this particular professor was and continues to be an extremely controversial figure in legal academia, but stating that somebody is not allowed to do their job because they have different political beliefs than you is dangerous, cowardly, and, in my opinion, part of why Trump got elected. His property class was, like all 1L property classes, dry and boring. When I took the bar exam, there was one multiple choice item about the Rule Against Perpetuities, and I just blindly filled in “C” without actually reading the question. I still passed.
[a little inside lawyer joke for ya]
The Sander incident did have one positive effect on my life. Since then, I will never blindly sign a petition until I have thoroughly researched the issue. And to any of my law school friends who are reading this now, grinding your teeth about how this professor is a horrible racist and you felt horribly mistreated every time you walked into his class, I’m happy to be educated.
By the time I graduated from law school, Obama was president and I had 4 or 5 openly (and vocally) Republican friends on Facebook. I have since de-friended three of those people (two whom I know from high school, one from law school) from both Facebook and life, because they made disgustingly racist comments about the country’s first African-American commander-in-chief. In other words, 60-75% of my outspoken Republican “friends” demonstrated to me that they were bigots.
I want to believe that most Republicans are not racist.
* * *
There are two problems:
The first problem is that both political parties have shifted to the right. Bernie Sanders aside, neoliberalism and capitalism in general have essentially become the de facto positions of the Democratic Party, and many of the prominent Democratic politicians have aligned themselves with corporate interests. Republicans, meanwhile, have doubled down on conservative social issues, which include opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage, immigration, and black people. As a result, about half of my friends who voted for W in 2004 voted for Obama and Hillary (who both would arguably be considered to be moderate Republicans if our loadstar was 1976), and the other half are now identifying as Libertarian.
The second problem is that, in my heart of hearts, I genuinely believe that the Republican stances on most social issues are genuinely immoral. I believe that the pro-life position is injurious to women. I believe banning LGBT people from marrying those they love, or not allowing them to use the restrooms in which they are comfortable, is tantamount to stating that they do not deserve to be treated as human beings. I believe that stating that “all lives matter” makes you ignorant at best, but most likely a fucking racist. I believe that calls for massive deportations of brown-skinned immigrants is an act of cruelty comparable to the Trail of Tears, which would also have devastating effects on our economy without actually providing any “real Americans” (whatever the hell that means) with gainful employment. I believe—no, I know with absolute certainty—that being a Muslim does not make you a terrorist. Republican social positions, combined with Republican economic “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” philosophies, makes me feel like Republicans are the party of being mean.
This one-two punch means that I rarely interact with actual Republicans, and when I do, I quickly run into fundamental disagreements that are impossible to resolve in an amicable manner. Four occasions come to mind in which I (or my friends) have tried (and failed) to understand the other side:
C
In law school, I briefly dated C. She was beautiful—born in South America and adopted by a family in the U.S. east coast when she was a baby, with caramel skin and deep brown eyes. A classic Los Angeles story, she had initially come to the city to do promotional modeling but was now doing marketing for a video game company. She lived in Marina del Ray and had a puppy chihuahua. When I got my wisdom teeth removed, she came over with the puppy and we watched all three Naked Gun movies, followed by L.A. Story. Little lady, let your mind go and your body will follow.
This was in 2008, and after taking a trip to Nevada to knock on doors for Obama, I became very active in UCLA’s phone campaign for the no on Prop 8 campaign, attempting to preserve the right for same-sex couples to get married. One night, after finishing up my shift at the phones, I met up with C for burgers in West Hollywood, the epicenter of the Los Angeles gay community. The people whom I had called that evening had been extremely supportive of the cause, and I was rather excited telling C about it
“Um,” she said, “I actually think I’m going to vote yes on 8”
“What?!” I was completely flabbergasted.
“Well, you know I’m adopted, right?”
“Yeah…”
“And because of that, I have a lot of friends who are adopted.”
“Okay…”
“And I know some people who were adopted by gay couples, and it didn’t work out so well.”
I paused for a moment, then questioned her logic: “Okay, do you know of any people who were adopted by gay couples where it did work out well?”
“Yes.”
“And do you know any people who were adopted by straight couples, where it didn’t work out well?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then doesn’t it seem that the success of an adoption is dependent on many factors beyond the sexuality of the parents?”
C shook her head. “You just don’t understand because you weren’t adopted.”
She was right, I didn’t understand. We broke up shortly thereafter.
If anybody reading this was adopted and can help me to better understand C’s argument, I’m all ears.
P
While on an extended lawyering assignment in Tokyo 5 years ago, I flew home for the holidays. P, a brutish-looking, tattooed, white American who looked like a younger, meaner Brock Lesnar, was sitting in the aisle seat, staring across the plane and seething. He turned to me immediately after I sat down next to him. “If I see that Iraqi over there—” he tilted his head to point to a brown-skinned man who could have been descended from any Middle Eastern or South Asian country—“If I see him start to move towards the cockpit, I will not hesitate to immobilize him by any means necessary.”
I attempted to distract P so that he’d stop focusing on the darker-skinned man. Within 30 minutes, he had explained to me that he feels nauseas whenever he sees any “illegals” in his hometown of Vacaville, and how it’s unfair that the “gay communities” don’t have to pay taxes. I inquired as to the genesis of his beliefs on the last point, and he looked at me as if I were insane and said, “because of the loopholes the Democrats put into the tax system.” I then noticed that he had an MMA magazine, and switched the conversation to that.
We ended up talking about MMA for practically the entire 10-hour flight. P was a wrestler and boxer who had spent a month in Tokyo training with some famous sensei, with the hopes of someday making it in the UFC. At the time, MMA was my favorite sport to watch and I followed it somewhat religiously (I have completely stopped watching since then, for unknown reasons—it really is an incredible sport).
The point is that I was able to connect, and even formulate somewhat of a friendship, with P—as long as we avoided any discussion related to politics.
H
Several of my British friends from my JET Programme days have started a number of fun Facebook groups, like “Sport Chat,” “Film Chat,” “Music Chat,” “Book Chat,” etc. We make recommendations, share funny links, and have light-hearted conversation about these different elements of pop culture. There’s also “Politics Chat,” which for the past year has focused on Brexit and Trump. Of the 20-ish active members of Politics Chat, there is only one who is conservative—let’s call him H.
H is British, and happily gloated about Brexit and the Tory victories. The other members of the group made concerted attacks against him, which only made him more defensive and, as a result, more offensive. He was fighting alone against 19 others—what the hell did we expect? There was a private discussion around banning him from the group. I voiced by dissent, stressing the importance of having at least one opposing viewpoint in our political forum.
After Trump won, H again expressed his pleasure. My fellow members again asked about banning him, and I replied that although I wanted to punch H in the face, I would not want to ban him from expressing his opinion. I quit the politics chat group—not because of H, but because I can’t fucking deal with any of that shit anymore. My friends informed me that after I quit, H was banned. We need conservatives in the group, they noted, but only “good” conservatives, which I suppose means conservatives who are smart and reasonable and willing to capitulate or shut up when pounded by morally and intellectually superior liberal rhetoric.
D
D is a rather close friend of mine (who is not on Facebook) whom I’ve known for nearly 30 years. I can say without hesitation that I love him dearly. Since I’ve known him, he has always been an unapologetic Republican. Over the course of our friendship, we have engaged in countless political debates. Not once has either of us persuaded the other to change his views—if anything, we have only reinforced each others’ pre-conceived biases against the other side. But through all of these arguments, we have maintained a deep mutual admiration and respect. In recent times, some of D’s arguments have revealed elements of bigotry that are not too subtle, and I have no idea how to respond to them. Since Trump’s victory, I have not reached out to him, and frankly I don’t know when I will be able to do so again.
Soon, I hope.
I want to believe that most Republicans are not racist.
* * *
If you’re on Facebook, there are two links you have undoubtedly seen by now.
The first is this video of an angry British man explaining why we lost. In case the link is not working, you can see it by searching for “This is who to blame for Trump.” Chances are, you’ve already seen it and re-posted it.
The punchline, if you watch to the end, is that the reason Trump won is because we failed to listen to Republicans, to understand their troubles and why they are so angry. I think of my failed attempts to discuss issues with the few conservatives I encountered. I think of how we banished H because he disagreed with us. I notice the sudden uprising of “Secret Groups” on Facebook, which allow liberals to have a safe space in which they can discuss Hillary Clinton without being attacked by conservative trolls. Let that soak in—my liberal brethren who, unlike me, are not blessed with having very few conservative family members, are so exhausted from having to deal with their racist/sexist uncles that they’ve created an artificial way to circumvent such fruitless dialogue. How the hell are the two sides supposed to speak to each other? I can only speak for my side, and I can tell you that it’s damn near impossible to have constructive dialogue with somebody who I think is racist.
The other link I’m sure you’ve seen is a list of tweets by LGBT folks, Muslims, Jews, immigrants, women, and people of color who have been the targets of horrific homophobia, Islamaphobia, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, sexism, and racism in the day or two immediately following Trump’s victory. I refuse to include this link on my blog. Please tell me that these are just anomalies, not representative of the millions upon millions who voted for Trump, because…
I want to believe that most Republicans aren’t racist.
* * *
Where can I find these “good” conservatives? These populists who voted for Trump because they were angry, but would have gladly voted for Bernie. These Republicans who, despite their party affiliation, can be persuaded to vote for the candidate who wears a “Black Lives Matter” T-shirt and a hijab while getting an abortion—she got accidentally inseminated by a man she slept with, despite being married to a woman—because despite all that, she believes in small government and self-reliance. Where is that conservative?
We have them in San Francisco—we call them “moderate” Democrats. Despite my rabid “#fuckedlee” diatribes, I have close friends who voted for Scott Wiener, or for Prop Q, or for the death penalty. I have close friends who are less troubled by wealthy members of the tech class displacing long-time San Francisco residents. Don’t get me wrong—we debate, and those debates get heated. And we don’t persuade each other. But we don’t see each other as morally corrupted human beings. And all of those people voted against Trump.
The snooty liberals (like myself) look at the Republican platform of hatred and believe that the right wing is incapable of empathy—that George W’s “compassionate conservative” was as much a lie as the blowhard, inexperienced demagogue claiming that he will “make America great again.” But, from what I understand, those in Trump country find us to be just as lacking in empathy. How can you have empathy when for Trump supporters when you hide in a bubble and never encounter them in the real world, and the only context in which you hear about them is when you see them spray painting swaksticas on synagogues and dressing up in KKK robes. And then we demand the non-racist Republicans to speak out against these people, after getting aggravated at the ridiculousness of demanding that the Muslim community condemn every terrorist attack?
Where are these “good” Republicans? Let’s assume that if one simply ignores (and therefore passively accepts) Trump’s racist and sexist rhetoric and votes based on economic concerns, then he (or she—WTF?) is still “good.” Even under that assumption, do these people exist? I don’t know them, and I don’t know anybody who knows them. I put out the bat call on Facebook asking if any of my friends had gotten any sort of sympathetic responses from their Trump-supporting family members, and the answer was a resounding “no.” But I watched those clips with Van Jones in Gettysburg—he seemed to have found some folks who aren’t racist at all, they’re just looking for a change. Maybe these folks are just not vocal because they’re scared of us PC thugs? Maybe they’re communicating their anti-racist beliefs in Secret Groups?
They must exist. There must be millions of them. The bulk of Bill Clinton’s supporters did not condone his adulterous ways, but still voted for him. I really want to believe that the same is true for Trump’s fans (but replace “adulterous” with the litany of your choice…which should also include “adulterous”). But seeing the way his offensive comments are cheered at his rallies…it’s hard for me.
Without exposure to the “good” Republicans, I’m the rich white, spoiled white kid in Westchester County who only knows of black and brown people as “the help.” I’m the Midwestern farmer who learned everything he knows about Muslims from 9/11. I’m the young schoolboy in Austria in 1932 who has never actually spoken to a Jew, but knows that they remain very secretive in their fenced-off ghettos and sincerely believes that they wear those funny little hats to hide their horns.
And thus, everything I know about Republicans I’ve learned from reading the news about the most prominent figures in the party: Trump of course, Pence, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly (please, please, please tell me she didn’t vote for Trump), Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain (who, you may recall, was the “cool” Republican before he ran for president), Scott Baio, Reince Priebus, Stephen Bannon, Alex fucking Jones, David motherfucking Duke, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush (who was the voice of reason during the Republican primaries—that’s fucking scary), Jim Inhofe, Ben Carson, the Koch brothers…
I want to stop typing this list, because I want to believe that most Republicans aren’t racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or xenophobic, or climate change deniers, or other people whom I never want to fucking see again, and this is not making it easy.
* * *
What if it’s not the “good” Republicans we should be seeking out? What if it’s the desperate ones? As noted above, most of the Republicans I know well are rich Republicans that stand to gain from tax cuts—I have little sympathy for their causes. However, according to TV and a few other credible sources, there are a shit ton of Republicans in middle America who are so poor that they are struggling to get by and don’t have time to worry about the plight of the other—it’s hard to give a fuck about which bathroom a transgendered person is allowed to use when you’re struggling to put food on the table. The chant of “black lives matter” makes little sense when it’s become quite apparent that your life doesn’t matter to people living big cities. When it seems like resources are extremely scarce (because for you, they truly are), it’s hard to stomach those resources being allocated to benefit people who came into the country illegally. And then Hillary Clinton supporters tell you that you don’t have a right to talk about these issues and you should just “check your privilege.” Is it racist if you’re a white guy who is too concerned with survival to care what other people say about minorities?
Having lived a life in affluent urban or suburban areas, going to top-level educational institutions, and working in the technology sector, I’m probably at least three degrees of separation away from any of these people. But they do exist. In large numbers. And I want to believe that they’re not racists—and maybe they wouldn’t be if their lives had more stability.
I hope y’all read this far, because this little bit right here, this is why Trump won.
* * *
I don’t expect or request the non-racist Trump-supporters to apologize for the actions of others or to engage with terrified minorities. I don’t expect or request any meaningful dialogue between Republicans and Democrats—that would be expecting more from others than I seem to be capable of myself. I do request, but don’t expect, the government to help any poor or middle class communities (whether white or otherwise). But here is what, in my humble opinion, we all need to require in order to heal America going forward:
Every single person who has any sort of interaction with children needs to be held accountable for preventing bullying. When I was in sixth grade, I said some extremely mean things to a classmate and really hurt his feelings and humiliated him. I received swift punishment from my teacher, principal, and parents. I was shamed and felt like shit—and I learned my lesson. Children need to learn from a young age that insulting others is not appropriate—this is fundamental to ensuring that they do not become bigots, regardless of their political affiliation. Melania Trump claims this is going to be her primary initiative as first lady, and if that hold true, I will respect and support her.
Democrats need to wake the fuck up on the subject of income inequality. How the Republican party, which invented trickle-down economics and the myth of the “Welfare Queen,” managed to convince so many people who are experiencing financial hardship that voting for Trump was the best choice blows me away, but is not surprising at all given our candidate.
On a similar note as the above two points, liberals need to stop making fun of white people who live in America. No more calling them “white trash,” or “honkeys,” or “cracker-ass motherfuckers.” No more making fun of them for not going to college or for not knowing the different between “your” and “you’re.” No more bashing them for watching Duck Dynasty (which, I’ve learned is not a combination of Duck Tales and Dynasty—although that would be rad).
Hate crimes need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Trump wants law and order? Let’s start here.
No more Huffington Post.
You need to watch this video. Right now. And I thank you for reading this whole post—it was a fucking doozy.
p.s. As you can tell from this post, I’ve clearly failed when it comes to maintaining a friend base that spans a diverse range of viewpoints. I’m assuming that many people reading are more open-minded than I and know non-racist Republicans (or even identify as such themselves). If that’s the case, can you please just reassure me, and perhaps introduce me? I’d love to talk to these people. In fact, we all should make an effort to open up the lines of communication—it’s the only way we have a chance of avoiding Trump’s re-election.
It’s election season, and the denizens of San Francisco won’t shut up about the big race. The two candidates could not be more polarizing. One is a sharp-dressed woman who tries to relate to the common people but has a history of cozying up with corporations and saying anything that is politically convenient, even if it means flip-flopping on her established positions. The other is a tall blowhard who hates poor people and has been creeping out the targets of his sexual advances for decades.
I’m writing, of course, about Jane Kim vs. Scott Wiener in the race for California state senate. To me, the contest is ultimately a farce. Both candidates are democrats, and although in the ultra-left microcosm of San Francisco Scott Wiener seems like a less-handsome Barry Goldwater, I’m not too worried about him screwing over the great state of California more than it’s already screwed over. I attended the sole Kim/Wiener debate, during which both candidates emphatically explained how, if elected, they would bring affordable housing and state-of-the-art transportation to the city of San Francisco. In other words, the candidates, who are both currently on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, were presenting great cases for why they should stay in San Francisco and not go to Sacramento. Nonetheless, I will still vote for Jane Kim because I like her and want to support her political career, but to me it’s a win-win situation: if Jane Kim loses, then San Francisco gets rid of Scott Wiener.
Now, if Mark Farrell were running instead of Scott Wiener, I would potentially vote for him in the hopes that he would win and leave my city behind forever. Farrell is also on the SF Board of Supervisors, representing the Marina district, which accounted for roughly half of the 9000 San Francisco votes for Donald Trump in the June primaries (most of the others were in Twin Peaks and the surrounding neighborhoods—the wealthiest part of the city). A former VC, Farrell has been firmly entrenched in the pro-Ed Lee “moderate” camp (as opposed to the anti-Lee “progressives”) since he was first elected to the board in 2010. Like many other San Francisco politicians, Farrell has strong opinions on the best approaches to dealing with the “homeless problem.”
I first encountered Farrell last year at the Town Hall to End Homelessness, which was an ambitious event put on by Project Homeless Connect (one of my favorite SF-based charities) in conjunction with Greg Gopman. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Greg Gopman was the uncouth tech-bro CEO who, posted an epic Facebook rant condemning the homeless population of San Francisco in 2013, which included choice bits of assholery such as, “in downtown SF the degenerates gather like hyenas, spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy, they act like they own the center of the city.” The post was not well received and the backlash led to Gopman’s resignation from his company and self-imposed hermitude.
For two years, nobody saw or heard Gopman, until he emerged, reborn, a phoenix rising from the ashes who had seen the light and now wanted to devote his life to helping the homeless instead of lambasting them. Some of his ideas were eccentric and unrealistic (such as provisioning homeless people with private geodesic domes), and it often seemed like Gopman was expending a disproportionate amount of energy on pontificating on his own personal redemption, rather than addressing the problems affecting homeless people themselves. Just last week, Gopman’s name appeared in the news again, when Twitter hired him to join their AR/VR team and TechCrunch responded by publishing a hit piece that got Gopman fired rather quickly. Apparently Twitter had neglected to do any sort of background Google search on Gopman, but once TechCrunch published a story gently reminding them of a tirade he posted online 3 years ago and writing off all of his efforts of redemption as insincere, that cajoled the social media giant into immediately regretting its hiring decision.
I, for one, call bullshit. I’ve seen Greg Gopman speak and I’ve read his blog posts (there are others besides the ones linked above). It’s clear why people think he’s disingenuous. Imagine if a middle school bully gets in trouble for calling somebody “gay” in a derogatory manner in the classroom and is required by the teacher to go read the Wikipedia article on gay rights. He comes to class a week later with a forced sense of sympathy, and awkwardly lectures everybody about the Stonewall riots and hate crimes inflicted on the LGBT community. Do we believe that this bully has actually reformed his ways? To many, this is analogous to the approach Gopman is taking towards homelessness.
I see it differently. In my not-so-humble opinion, Gopman is a narcissistic, entitled douchebag who made some huge mistakes in the past and is now desperately trying to be a better person, albeit in an arguably self-righteous manner. Needless to say, I can relate, and I believe that he deserves a second chance.
Gopman had envisioned the Town Hall to End Homelessness as his opportunity to advertise his newfound charitable heart, but the powers that be, aware that Gopman’s unique style of delivery often overshadowed the substance of his message, did their best to limit Gopman’s stage presence. They were largely successful in their efforts until Gopman took the podium at the very end of the event and gave a 7-minute soliloquy on his transformation. Putting that aside, the event was certainly worth my time. The first half showcased a number of inspirational speakers, including representatives of the Navigation Centers (temporary deluxe shelters that, from what I’ve read, are actually quite effective for helping get people off the streets), Project HandUp (crowdsourcing to help individual members of the homeless community), and Lava Mae (mobile showers and toilets for homeless folks). These speeches were followed by a panel discussion hosted by Gary Kamiya featuring Supervisors Jane Kim and Mark Farrell as well as Joe Wilson, the program manager for Hospitality House, an incredible SF community-building organization.
The panel decidedly was not the highlight of the evening. Farrell started by jerking himself off a bit, talking about his work on authoring and passing Laura’s law, which centers around treatment for people with mental health issues. Jane Kim arrived late, and then she and Farrell jerked each other off for their brilliant ideas about providing free or below-market housing for the homeless. Joe Wilson tried to keep the politicians honest, pointing out how in a small, dense, city like San Francisco with a saturated housing market, providing all of the homeless with free living spaces (a la Salt Lake City) was an overly-expensive (and thus unrealistic) approach. The supervisors artfully dodged his attacks, but I chalked up their responses to classic politician-style diplomacy. All in all, I left the meeting thinking that although Farrell was one of the “right-wing bad hombres” on the Board of Supes, he seemed to have some genuine empathy for the plight of the homeless community.
Oh how naïve I was back in 2015. Fast forward to a few months ago, when I first learned about Prop Q, which was written by Farrell. I immediately distrusted it when I read that it was co-sponsored by Scott Wiener, who is not known for his compassion towards the homeless community. The backdrop is that, in the past year or so, more and more homeless people have acquired camping tents, and small “tent cities” (which are better described as “shanty towns”) have been popping up all over the city, particularly South of Market (although they’re becoming more ubiquitous, and I often see them in Hayes Valley where I live). Many San Franciscans are concerned about these tent cities, because they are more visible than homeless people sleeping on the concrete (perhaps due to the brightly-colored nylon of the tents) and force the better-off to face the unfortunate fact every day that the city is full of extremely poor human beings.
In January of this year, the city was worried that tourists coming in for Super Bowl 50 would be taken aback by witnessing poverty in the Tech Capital of the Universe, so Ed Lee and his minions did what any “reasonable” municipal government would do: they forcibly removed the tents from the area surrounding “Super Bowl City” (a corporate-sponsored football theme park that could be used to induce vomiting during an ipecac shortage). If the residents of the tents did not evacuate the area in a timely manner, their tents were thrown away and their belongings confiscated. Unsurprisingly, the more empathetic progressives did not approve of these abhorrent actions, and a protest led by popular blogger/firebrand Broke-Ass Stuart was staged to bring attention to the cruel treatment of the people who relied on tents for shelter during the winter (which, incidentally, was unusually rainy due to El Niño).
Unphased by the protest, Farrell has come back and is now attempting codify removal of tent encampments with Proposition Q. This approach appears anathema to the Mark Farrell whom I saw speak at the Town Hall to End Homelessness, the district supervisor who, despite representing some of the wealthiest people in the city, was determined to help those most in need. In order to reconcile these two conflicting notions: compassion for the homeless and hatred for those who have no homes, Farrell came up with a MAGA-esque slogan (and I’m not joking here): “Housing Not Tents.” The concept is simple: homeless people should live in permanent housing, not tents. Therefore, we should get rid of their tents. And Farrell and Wiener are trying to pass this off as humane.
I read the text of Prop Q. It was the only proposition I actually read this year. Between 17 propositions for California and 25 for San Francisco, the ballot books weigh in at an overpowering 537 pages combined, and make me question the purpose of having a representative democracy at all.
I usually like to read all of the interesting propositions word-for-word, as well as all of the arguments for and against, but life is too fucking short to deal with the gargantuan tomes delivered to my mailbox during this election cycle. Despite that, I had to read Prop Q in its entirety so that I could be fully justified in hating it. To spare you the agony of having to analyze this convoluted piles of word feces on your own, I will present you with a simplified discussion on the theory of Prop Q (as described by proponents of the law) vs. the reality.
Theory: Police officers see one or more tents on the sidewalk. They inform the inhabitants that they have 24 hours to evacuate the area or their tents will be confiscated. However, the tent inhabitants are given temporary shelter (either in a city shelter or a Navigation Center), and this temporary shelter will turn into permanent housing so the former tent inhabitants never need to sleep in “Hotel REI” ever again.
Reality: Police officers see one or more tents on the sidewalk. They inform the inhabitants that they have 24 hours to evacuate the area or their tents will be confiscated. This leads to one of three outcomes:
The tent inhabitants pick up their tents and move them one block away. I’m guessing that this is what will happen 90% of the time.
The tent inhabitants pack up and go to a shelter offered by the city, where they are supposedly allowed to stay for one night. The city currently has roughly 7000 homeless people and 1200 shelter beds. There is an 800-person waiting list for the shelters, so in order to make Prop Q work, people already staying in the shelters will need to be pushed out. I’m guessing that there’s not actually going to be any communication between the shelters and the cops tasked with evicting the tent dwellers—making sure there are shelter beds for those who are displaced is actually quite difficult logistically and the text of Prop Q does not seem to contemplate how this would work in the real world. I’m guessing that the cops will simply point the tent inhabitants in the direction of the nearest shelter and tell them to try their luck there.
In any event, the notion that you have 24 hours to go to a shelter is absurd in and of itself: according to the video I’ve posted below, to get into a shelter, you need tuberculosis clearance, which takes 72 hours. (Important note: this does not actually appear to be the case according to the SF Dept. of Public Health website—if anybody can provide any insight into this, please let me know!) Further, many homeless people do not like staying in shelters, which have strict curfews, limitations on the amount of possessions you can bring, and a prohibition on pets.
Prop Q also suggests that tent dwellers may be moved into Navigation Centers. The Navigation Centers, which allow you to bring in all of your stuff and your pets, are more attractive, but entry into Navigation Centers is by careful selection only and there is slim to no chance that anybody displaced by Prop Q will make it into one.
In any event, after one night, you’re back on the street…and most likely back in your tent, especially if it’s raining.
The tent inhabitants refuse to move. Their tents and all possessions inside are confiscated. Supposedly they are impounded for 90 days before they are destroyed, but I imagine that it will be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for a homeless person to retrieve his or her possessions after they are placed under control of the police department.
This video provides some more information:
The Yes on Q camp also has videos. Let’s take a look:
The small business owner. The police officer. The taxpayer. What do these people have in common? One thing: none of them are homeless. This brings us back to the “homeless problem” that I referenced above. When I say “homeless problem,” I mean the problem for homeless people—that they don’t have homes and are forced to sleep on the streets. When Farrell speaks of the “homeless problem,” he means the problem for people who are not homeless—those poor unfortunate souls who must endure the unpleasant sight of les miserables, who create a blight in an otherwise pristine urban environment. I’m sure he gets a lot of complaints from his constituents, those who live in the Marina but have to leave their lily-white bubble and travel downtown to work. Sure, they have Chariot so they need not take public busses with the riff-raff and other commoners, but once they get to the end of the line, they will undoubtedly need to walk a block or two, in which they will see those repulsive tents. And of course, they’re exposed to much larger tent encampments when they go to SoMa on Saturday night for the all-night EDM basement parties.
These Marina types are currently working Farrell’s phone banks for Prop Q. Here’s a picture the Yes on Prop Q team posted on their Facebook page:
Look at all of the fun they’re having! Reminds me of this:
There’s one other Yes on Prop Q video that makes me particularly uncomfortable:
According to this video, which does not attempt to provide any sort of reference, an average of two women report being raped in tent encampments each month. This is horrible, but this has nothing to do with tents. Homeless people are raped and assaulted every night. Particularly homeless people who are young. Particularly homeless people who are young and who are LGBT and/or racial minorities. Farrell’s ads seem to suggest that drug use, prostitution, rape, assault and other crime among the homeless happen more now because of tents, but I have not seen any objective news sources corroborate this. These horrific perils of being homeless were happening under the cover of night long before the cover of tent was introduced.
I will admit that empathy with homeless people is not easy for me. I was blessed from birth with an uncommonly strong, stable, and supportive family, so I have never been at risk of becoming homeless. I have been told by homeless people to whom I give muffins that I don’t know shit about homelessness, and this is a true statement (for the record, I’ve also received many, many, many kind words and I encourage everybody to give muffins to homeless people and to not be deterred). I don’t think you can ever understand what it means to be homeless unless you are homeless. But I understand that homeless people are human beings who are dealing with shitty situations, and being demonized by the city and harassed by the police is not going to help them or anybody around them.
Believe it or not, I am also doing my best to empathize with people who support Prop Q. There is no shortage of such people—in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Prop Q ends up winning (despite the combination of my virtually unstoppable persuasive powers and the expansive readership of this blog). I’ve spoken to many of these people. I’ll admit that I’m not doing too well with the whole “empathy” thing on this front. In fact, I can think of two occasions where I was a complete fucking asshole to people who disagreed with me on this issue. I was only drunk during one of them.
But here’s what I understand:
Nearly everybody living in San Francisco has had at least one frightening or otherwise negative encounter with a homeless person. Most of us have been grabbed or otherwise assaulted, chased, and yelled at. Many woman have been barraged with disgustingly insulting catcalls or worse forms of sexual harassment. We’ve nearly tripped on people passed out or shooting up in the middle of the sidewalk. As the homeless population increases in San Francisco and the situation becomes more desperate, these incidents become more and more frequent.
People are fed up with the fact that San Francisco spends more per capita on services geared towards helping the homeless than any other city in America, and yet there has been no decrease in the homeless population.
There is something unnerving about tents. You can’t see inside of them–who knows what their inhabitants are doing?
Most importantly, as I mentioned above, tents are very difficult to avoid seeing. Before I started handing out muffins, I only noticed homeless people when I’d walk within several feet of them—other than that, I’d tune them out, as many people do today. In fact, many homeless people with whom I’ve spoken note that the worst part about being homeless is that people treat them like they’re invisible. However, when a tent pops up on the sidewalk, you notice it.
IT SEEMS LIKE NOTHING IS HELPING THE “HOMELESS PROBLEM” AND IT’S JUST GETTING WORSE.
These are all valid points—and they’re frustrating for all parties involved. It seems like nobody has a clue as to how to solve the “homeless problem” once and for all. But Proposition Q will not actually get rid of tents, nor will it do anything to help homeless people or improve your health or safety. It will give cops yet another legal channel for making life worse for those who are suffering the most, and it will do so to your detriment (because we have a shortage of cops and we need them to spend their time addressing actual crimes) without causing even a temporary benefit for a single person. Except Mark Farrell, who can chalk this up as a political victory when he runs for mayor. This is why we must all vote “No” on Prop Q!
If you want to help the homeless, I recommend baking muffins and handing them out to those in need, as well as donating money, time, or in-kind services to any of the organizations included in the links throughout this post, which I will now consolidate here for your convenience:
And here are a few of my other favorite SF charities that deal with helping the homeless:
Larkin Street Youth Services: focused on helping homeless youth between the ages of 12 and 24 in the Tenderloin and Haight neighborhoods. http://larkinstreetyouth.org/ Episcopal Community Services: they offer many services, including shelter, food, and job training. http://www.ecs-sf.org/ Downtown Streets Team: provides job training with the goal of permanent employment and housing. I recently learned about them at an event last week—apparently Greg Gopman was there as well but I didn’t see him. http://streetsteam.org/
Alright friends, thanks for reading. I gotta run—it’s Monday morning and I have two dozen banana-chocolate chip muffins that ain’t gonna eat themselves…
I should begin by saying that National Muffin Day is meant to be fun. This is the easy answer. Baking muffins is fun. Muffins in and of themselves are quite a bit of fun: you can use any zany ingredients you want and you’ll almost always come up with something delicious and genuinely interesting if you use your imagination. Even the word “muffin” is kind of fun to say. And giving out muffins to those in need is fun and rewarding.
I, for one, love fun and everything it stands for. I also love feeling accomplished and making other people smile. This does not make me special; this makes me human. The happiest people in life are those who are able to devote their lives to making others happy, while still affording to pay the rent or mortgage and cover their other expenses. I am extremely jealous of these people.
I’ve been told that well-off folks like me who perform charitable acts are “selfish” and “only giving [muffins, money, etc.] because it makes you feel good about yourself.” There is some merit to this argument; I (and I assume, most others like me) do give in part because it makes me feel good. Other than work, that’s the reason I do most things, right?
So yes, giving muffins is fun and can make us feel good about ourselves. But on National Muffin Day, we are doing ourselves a huge disservice if we forget for one second that homelessness, poverty, and hunger are not remotely fun. In fact, they are incredibly abhorrent conditions that bring about a level of suffering that is extremely difficult to comprehend, let along relate to, for the average city dweller. Homelessness is the cumulative manifestation of all of our society’s deepest insecurities, darkest secrets, and paralyzing fears: inequality, mental illness, depression, filth, hunger, and violence.
In a city like San Francisco, where those who are not homeless are, by and large, disproportionately affluent (compared to people in most other cities throughout the country and world at large), the negativity encapsulated in homelessness is difficult to take. Thus, most people develop a two-pronged defense system in order to avoid acknowledging that the most dreaded aspects of humanity are occurring en masse everyday just a few blocks (or steps) away.
The first defense mechanism is denial, or selective sensory intake: seeing and hearing only what we want to see and hear. This is a skill that we have all been honing since we were children. You’ve witnessed this before: kids run around completely carefree, totally oblivious to the fact that there’s a whole world around them, filled with people and other dangerous obstacles. Awareness only comes when a little runt accidentally runs head first into an adult’s leg.
Nonetheless, selective sensory intake is something so innate that most of the time we are unaware of its existence. I first became conscious of the concept in my high school drama club (yes, I was a “drama geek”), when our teacher presented us with an exercise on “everyday walls.” “When you walk through the halls of this school,” she explained, “you don’t realize it, but you’re putting up walls all around you. You see your destination and your friends if they are in the area, but you don’t notice everybody else around you—all of their conversations and troubles. You wouldn’t want to notice them—if you tried to take in everything that happens around you all the time, you’d go crazy. But tomorrow, at some point during the day, try to let down your walls—try to take it all in.”
And so I did, just for one morning, walk through the crowded corridors of Redwood High School without any walls, trying to hear every tidbit of the teenage angst-laced din. The goth kids making snarky comments, the pimply-faced nerdy kid letting out a loud guffaw at something he saw in a comic book, the cute “popular” girls giggling at a sexual joke, the freshman dropping his books at his locker and looking around, embarrassed, praying that nobody had seen him. I distinctly remember seeing a girl crying, too—a chubby-but-otherwise nondescript girl that I had never seen before. It was an extremely intense journey through the halls—halls that before had felt so familiar, but that at that moment were barely recognizable. I never tore down my school walls again—at least not consciously—but from that day on I was constantly aware of their existence.
The walls don’t go away when you become an adult. In fact, they become stronger and thicker as you develop responsibilities with real consequences. If you live in an urban environment, there is far too much stimulation on every block for you to possibly aborb it all. You have to filter out 90% of the people around you out—and the first ones to go are often the homeless. The homeless are easy to not see because most people do not want to see them. Eyes naturally seek out the beautiful; if there is nothing beautiful around, you focus on your destination…or on your iPhone.
I used to put up walls to avoid seeing the homeless in San Francisco. The first time I tried to give out muffins walking down Market Street from Page to Front, I could barely find a dozen hungry people. As I did subsequent muffin runs, I would find more and more hungry recipients. Now I usually see at least 50 on that route, because I’ve reprogrammed myself to perceive them. Every now and then I’ll do a muffin run with a friend, and I always have to point out hungry people to her, because her eyes aren’t trained to see them—she’s put up her walls.
Of course, when you have as large of a concentration of homeless people as we do in San Francisco, walls aren’t necessarily enough. Even if you don’t see 90% of the homeless people around you, you’ll still see the woman in the wheelchair crossing your path, or the man on drugs who jumps two feet in front of you, or the mother and child sitting in front of the trashcan directly in front of your office building every single day. That is where the second defense mechanism activates itself to protect you
The second defense mechanism is judgment. Once a person’s walls are torn down and he is forced to confront the fact that thousands of people all around him are trapped in a living hell of cold, hunger, discomfort, boredom, and often literal madness, empathy may kick in and he may be tempted to empty his wallet on every walk home, passing out cash to the dozens of people on the street begging for money and the hundreds who are too ashamed, too angry, or not physically capable of asking for assistance. Such a task would be draining on one’s wallet, let alone one’s sanity.
You can’t donate to every single needy person you see, at least not in San Francisco. So when you see somebody sitting on the gritty sidewalk, cutting into you with painful eyes that convey the bleakest depths of despair, and you just can’t give him anything, you have two options: (1) get really bummed out, or (2) fabricate an internal justification for not giving. Some common justifications include:
He’s just gonna spend the money on drugs or booze.
He’s on drugs.
He’s dirty and he defecates in the street.
He should get a job.
He’s mentally ill—my money’s not going to help him.
The city already provides enough services for him.
He’s choosing to be homeless.
To address these arguments:
As if you’ve never spent money on drugs or booze. You can always give him food if this is a concern.
People on drugs need to eat too.
Sadly, showers and toilets are not readily available to those without a home.
I agree that he should get a job eventually, but it’s virtually impossible to apply for a job when you don’t have a food, clothing and shelter first.
Mentally ill people need to east too, and if you hadn’t noticed, the mental health services he needs simply aren’t available.
In San Francisco, you can get one free meal every day. One meal is two meals fewer than most people eat in a twenty-four hour period.
No he’s not. Nobody “chooses” to be homeless. Being homeless totally sucks—talk to him and you’ll see. If he’s young, there’s a chance that he’s homeless because he ran away from home. Ask him about how his home life was, and you’ll see that the “choice” to be homeless was made for him. These are not “trust fund” homeless kids. Believe me—I went to high school with the trust fund kids. They are not living in tents in Golden Gate Park; they are living in the Marina and wearing a lot of J. Crew.
But truthfully, some of those rationalizations are not without merit. I’ve encountered plenty of homeless folks who are, frankly, repugnant. I’ve yelled at a dude taking a dump ten feet away from a children’s playground, been mocked by the homeless hippies in the Haight, had my arm grabbed by an angry short woman demanding I give her money in the TL, and been violently shoved off of MUNI by a guy most likely on crack. Everybody in San Francisco has, at one point, or more likely at many points, had an unpleasant experience with a homeless person. So why have any sympathy at all?
Because there before the grace of G-d go I. If you have any sort of support system in your life, it is very difficult to become homeless. Every person in this human’s life has turned on him, or more likely, hurt him. Every institution has failed him. Besides, I’ve also encountered many non-homeless people whom I find to be repugnant—I’m not going to write off the entire human race because of a few bad apples.
But if you don’t pass judgment (or try to limit the judgment passed), this will often force you to take the other option: getting really bummed out. And getting really bummed out sucks, and makes you wish there was a solution to the homeless problem.
What is the solution? After Salt Lake City came up with the simple-yet-brilliant idea of getting rid of homelessness by giving homeless people homes, a group of progressive-minded folks were inspired to hold a “Town Hall to End Homelessness” in San Francisco to discuss implementing a program similar to Salt Lake City’s in San Francisco. While the event was well-attended and some interesting ideas where exchanged, there was a collective reality check when everybody realized that (1) SF has far more homeless people than SLC and (2) housing in SF is (far)7 more expensive than in SLC.
So there goes that idea.
Right now I’m less interested in coming up with a solution to the “homeless problem” and focusing on how I, or you, or all of us collectively can help just one person break the cycle of chronic homelessness. Here’s the challenge: this person has no material possessions, likely no education, is possibly mentally ill and/or addicted to drugs, doesn’t have a social security card or driver’s license or any of those other symbols required to navigate the American bureaucracy, doesn’t have any friends or family, and has already tried to take advantage of all of the available social safety nets (to no avail).
I recently tried to help somebody. And I failed. And it sucked. And it still sucks. I don’t like failing.
For now, I bake muffins and hand them out to hungry people on Market Street. It’s my way of letting them know that I see them, that I believe that they are human beings, no more or less flawed than I, and that I care about them. And, if I may say so, my muffins are damn tasty. I am well aware that it is not a “solution” to the homeless problem, but I can’t imagine establishing any system for helping homeless people until we can collectively treat them with dignity as human beings, and make them understand that we truly acknowledge their existences and troubles and want to help them. Home baked goods is a good first step for that.
I encourage you to join me for National Muffin Day, or for longer, in handing out muffins to those people whom have been dealt the crummiest hand life has to offer. And I encourage you to make your muffins good. If you’re not sure how to do the latter, that’s definitely something with which I can help. National Muffin Day may only come once a year, but if you’re open, it can have an impact on you that persists through the seasons.
“First they came for the subway jumpers, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a subway jumper.
Then they came for the smut shops in Times Square, and I did not speak out –
Because I didn’t go to the smut shops in Times Square (that often).
Then they came for the people pissing in the streets, and I did not speak out –
Because I did not piss in the streets.
Then they came for CBGBs, Kim’s Video, M&G Diner, Bleeker Bob’s Records, Max Fish, Big Nick’s…you know, pretty much every place I ever liked to go in Manhattan, and then the whole island was just one giant grid of Chase locations and overpriced “gastropubs,” and then they did the same to Brooklyn and the next thing I knew, the only place I could afford to live was in some crappy shoebox in Queens with 4 roommates. And it’s not even in Astoria, it’s in one of those weird parts of Queens you’ve never heard of. Fuck this shit.”
–Pastor Shmuel Horowitz III
Hi sports fans. I know, I know, it’s been waaayyyy too long since I’ve exercised my creative writing muscle, but between National Muffin Day, Muffin Man Tours, and other muffin-related happenings that I need not get into right now, I haven’t been inspired to sit in front of my typewriter-with-a-TV screen and write for quite some time now. However, since I now plan on researching and writing a San Francisco-related book in the next two years (setting a deadline for completion by my 36th birthday—and now that it’s online, I’m bound to it), I need to keep generating as much of my particular brand of mumbo jumbo as possible. All skills go stale if you stop performing them, and creative brilliance with the written word is no exception. Or in my case, mild creative wit.
Every year I celebrate my birthday with a karaoke party. This year, it looked a little something like this:
I am now 34 years old. Mid-thirties. An “adult,” by most traditional metrics, although I still act like a child occasionally and think like one most of the time. For example, I’m watching the baseball game in the background right now and I definitely chortled audibly when the announcer asked, “do you know what the ‘B.J.’ in ‘B.J. Upton’ stands for?” But despite my lack of maturity (which I assure you manifests itself in various ways beyond my enduring fascination with sexual innuendo and double entendres), my body is certainly 34 years old, and has become the case annually, my post-birthday hangover was worse than the one from the previous year. It’s agonizing and also irritating; I’ve reached a point where my seasoned tolerance allows me to guzzle down a large amount of beer without getting drunk, but I still wake up feeling like I was simultaneously trampled and shat on by an excited parade of mid-sized pachyderms.
Getting off the couch was clearly not an option that day, so I did what any other red-blooded American would do: I binge watched a TV program. My coworkers had recommended Wayward Pines, so I gave it a shot, and burned through 9 episodes over the weekend—needless to say, I enjoyed it. For those of you not yet in the know, it’s about a guy who wakes up in a strange place where everybody is paranoid and nobody is allowed to leave. It’s certainly derivative of The Prisoner, although it has a big reveal in the fifth episode that changes the course of the show (the brilliance of The Prisoner was that there was no big reveal, but that could be the subject of an entirely different post). I don’t want to give you any spoilers, but at one point the main antagonist says something to the effect of, “you can be free, or you can be safe…but not both!” Coincidentally, I had been dwelling on the freedom-safety dichotomy that day…and nearly every day for the past 11 years since I first set foot in the robotic wet nightmare* that is Japan. Now it’s high time I wrote something about it.
Freedom is something that everybody wants (or so says Party of Five). In America, freedom has become a bizarrely perverted (or pervertedly bizarre) political obsession, with liberals and conservatives frequently claiming a monopoly on freedom and stating unequivocally that the other side abhors it: liberals strive to abolish freedom by forcing the populace to submit to a metaphorical prison of cameras, regulations, and other instruments of the nanny state, while conservatives yearn to eviscerate freedom in America by placing as many people (of color) as possible into literal prisons. Nonetheless, while governmental policies and societal mores may reflect otherwise, it’s a fact of life that humans want to be free to do what they want, any old time.
When people speak about the battle between freedom and safety, they traditionally discuss this split on a personal level: I can be safe, or I can be free. If I follow the rules then I am less likely to get hurt, but if I take risks I am more likely to feel liberated. There’s an enticing mystique surrounding freedom—everybody knows what safety entails, but due to our worldly constraints, few people, if anybody, can comprehend what it would mean to be truly “free.” This concept is succinctly summarized by Louis Sachar in the “Freedom” chapter of “Wayside School is Falling Down” (one of the greatest children’s books of my generation). Myron, former class president who was demoted when he was late to class, is sick of being caged up in his desk and, after recess, goes into the basement instead of retuning to the classroom on the 30th floor. There he encounters three strange older men, who present him with this classic pseudo-Faustian bargain:
“Well, do you want to be free, or do you want to be safe?” asked the bald man.
“Huh?” asked Myron.
“You can’t have it both ways,” said the bald man.
“Do you want to be safe?” asked one of the men with a mustache. “Do you want to sit in the same chair every day, and go up and down the stairs every time the bell rings?”
“You’ll have to go to school five days a week,” said the other man with a mustache. “And you’ll have to go to bed at the same time every day.”
“But first you’ll have to brush your teeth,” said the other man with a mustache.
“And you won’t be allowed to watch TV until you finish your homework,” said the other man with a mustache.
“You’ll have to go inside when it rains,” said the other man with a mustache.
“But first you’ll have to wipe your feet,” said the other man with a mustache.
“Or you can be free,” said the bald man.
Myron chooses freedom. Because the Wayside School books focus on a different character in each chapter, we don’t hear much more about Myron’s freedom, except that Myron decides not to go to Mrs. Valoosh’s tango class and regrets his decision when he learns from his classmates that it was simply the most fun event at school ever. This was to be expected—freedom includes the freedom to make stupid decisions; indeed, that is often its predominant characteristic.
When we talk about freedom and safety on a personal level, we often think of the dual “conservative” vs. “liberal” comportments. I hesitate to use those terms because at this point they carry heavy political connotations, but imagine that a “conservative” person is one who cares deeply about her future economic well-being and thus takes a “safe” educational and career path that will provide her (and her future family) with long-term financial security. Provided that she works hard and diligently, she will have a steady and strong income. She’s a lawyer, or a doctor, or maybe she works in finance. She’s probably happy with her life choices—her type-A self wanted to be married with child and a nice house by the age of 33, and she’s achieved that goal.
The “liberal” follows his dreams and takes more risks. He went to film school and does freelance advertising work to pay the bills while working on his experimental pieces at night. Or maybe he makes a lot of apps and hopes that one day he’ll strike gold. He’s probably happy with his life choices—he doesn’t make too much money, but is doing what he loves, and has a large group of friends with whom he can guzzle cheap wine and bitch about the decline of culture in San Francisco. Perhaps he’s polyamorous too. That could be a lot of fun.
The “conservative” lives a “safer” life. She occasionally dreams of a life less ordinary but is not about to go pursue that. The “liberal” lives a “freer” life. He often wishes he had more money, but wouldn’t trade his freedom for a buttoned-down existence (and couldn’t if he wanted to).
Of course, you get the not-so-rare character on either side who wishes for more of the other. The starving artist who has the talent to get a high-paying job as a designer in a tech company but who fears being ridiculed or even ostracized by his friends if he follows that path—the label of a “sell-out” is potentially a scarlet A in his community. Or the corporate lawyer who fantasizes about quitting his 9-5 (which is more of a 9-10) and working full-time on his writing, but can’t pull the trigger because he needs income to stay in San Francisco, which is such a fucking expensive city, even if you have decent rent control.
But I wouldn’t know anything about that. Besides, that’s not the main point I wanted to raise in this post.
And I also don’t want to talk about the Wayward Pines/Brazil/1984/Brave New World archetypical universe where the government controls everybody and allows them to be “safe” from harm as long as they live a life with minimal freedom, constantly paranoid that they will be “disappeared” if they don’t conform. According to a not insignificant number of American “conservatives” (in the political sense of the word—not to be confused with the use of the word in the preceding paragraphs…actually, let’s just call them “libertarians”), this is the future of the United States of America if we do things like provide health care to the poor (because if the government provides healthcare, this is tantamount to them controlling what we do with our bodies), place restrictions on people with histories of mental illness purchasing firearms (because this is one step away from the government stealing all of our guns, which are necessary to maintain things like our freedoms of speech, religion, and states’ rights), and increase taxes on the rich (because the freedom to accumulate obscene amounts of wealth is a fundamental principal upon which this great nation was founded). The word “Orwellian” is often tossed about to describe any “liberal” positions. I once even heard a conservative claim that allowing same-sex marriage is “Orwellian,” because it takes away his freedom to use the word “marriage” as it has been used for thousands of years, and instead places the word into the dictionary of “newspeak”—the nomenclature of oppression devised in 1984. In the minds of these folk, liberals think they must save us from ourselves, and with every regulation that supposedly increases our “safety,” such as requiring bicyclists to wear helmets or forcing factories to undergo environmental reviews, the government is taking away our precious freedom.
To these people, I’d like to point out two things: number 1, George Orwell was a socialist. He would have gladly supported any measure that empowered the working class and the downtrodden, even if it meant taking away from the aristocracy. Hell, especially if that’s what it meant—Orwell was quite supportive of Lenin and Trotsky. Like any sane human being, Orwell recognized that Stalin’s Soviet Union was far from being “socialist,” and that the line between socialism and fascism was quite thick. 1984, the novel from which the term “Orwellian” was spawned, was meant to depict the latter.
Number 2, George Orwell’s “socialism” in 1984 sure as hell was not safe. It entailed a whole bunch of people getting kidnapped, tortured, blown to smithereens, and otherwise injured, maimed, and assassinated. It was a world with neither freedom nor safety, which is not really the goal of anyone.
On the contrary, the goal is to live in a society that is both free and safe, where you can do whatever you want without the fear of getting hurt…and on that note, we get to the meat of this post. In San Francisco circa 2015, this goal is becoming a reality for many people. This is because San Francisco is becoming an island of affluence, and affluence brings you both freedom and safety. Freedom to, as an adult, dress up in costume and get belligerently drunk in the middle of the day with no societal repercussions. Freedom to eat and drink the best that the culinary world has to offer, any time you want to do so (and not just on special occasions). Freedom to have any external need met with the click of a button or swipe of a screen. All with the knowledge that you will not be harmed, attacked, mugged, raped, hurt, or killed, because San Francisco is a very safe city (as long as you stay out of certain neighborhoods).
Of course there’s a flip side to this utopia. In an environment where money buys freedom and safety, the lack of money leaves one without. More freedom and safety for some means less freedom and safety for others. Without an affordable place to live, artists are not free to create as they wish, and those of us who patronize the arts are having more and more of a difficult time experiencing the liberation that brilliant creation can bring. Very few people who are not rich can afford to pay more than $8 for lunch every day—a store clerk working in Hayes Valley is not really free to eat at any of the establishments in the area. As more and more of the wealthy choose to take Uber or Chariot, the waning investment in Muni has led to its disrepair, so people who are not wealthy are not free to move about the city in an efficient and clean manner.
Without money, San Francisco is not a safe place to live. There are fewer and fewer options for housing in safe neighborhoods if you are not rich, and those without a ton of cash are often pushed into less desirable locations. Yes, San Francisco does have unsafe neighborhoods. There was an uproar about a year ago because some company had developed an app that helped people identify and avoid “sketchy” neighborhoods (with “sketchy” calculated based on crime rates). People attacked this app as being everything from “racist” to “douchey” (I certainly agree with the latter accusation). But I’ll tell you this much—I know two people who were mugged at night on the eastern edge of Alamo Square, and I try to not walk past there too much after dark.
Of course, just as New York managed to Disnefy seedy Times Square, San Francisco is doing its darndest to aristocrify its poor neighborhoods. Setting aside what happened to Hayes Valley (a snarky comment from this HV resident who recognizes the irony), one thing that makes me uncomfortable is the recent rash of super-swanky bars in the Tenderloin, traditionally one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city (for those of you who are not San Francisco residents, it’s called the “Tenderloin” because cops working the beat there got paid extra, and thus could afford better cuts of meat). It started with Bourbon and Branch, which admittedly has been in the neighborhood for a long time. B&B calls itself a “speakeasy,” which is somewhat irritating (they have a liquor license, for chrissake). You need to make reservations to go there and drinks are VERY expensive. Still, I guess you could say it is an “experience.”
That is more than can be said about Rye, Swig, Redwood Room, Tradition, and Chambers (in the Phoenix Hotel), trendy drink spots in or near the Tenderloin where a hand-crafted gourmet cocktail will set you back $14 or more. I’m generally not into this type of establishment, but it really burns me up when there is a bar nestled amongst SROs, a huge fuck-you to the people who actually live in the area. Nobody who lives in the TL (or I suppose nobody who lived there three years ago) can afford to go to these places—you get a bunch of you-know-whos who live in SoMa or the Marina who want to go to the TL and “slum it” at these over-priced waterholes. The next day, they will tell stories about how they had to dodge crackheads and human feces in order to get to the bar. Such bravery! However, once these adventurous drinkers can get through the gauntlet, they are treated to an overly-sanitized imbibing experience. It’s very safe—at the cost of the freedom of the locals to go to bars on their own damn block. And if you want to tell me that Tenderloin residents are “free” to go into these fancy bars, then you haven’t met the bouncers.
When I moved to New York in 2000, it seemed like everybody was thanking Giuliani for “cleaning up the city,” but that was because I was talking to young people who moved to the big city seeking adventure but wanted the kind of adventure that came with cocaine, champagne and pretentious modern art, not the kind that came with crack, homeless people and poetry. A city that’s both liberated and safe—what more could you want? Then I started talking to older folks who missed the days of Lou Reed and Patti Smith and Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsburg and Gil Scott-Heron, and who lamented the sanitized version of a once very real city. It dawned on me that, while safety, growth and opulence brings a sense of “freedom” to many people, it leaves some behind. And I liked those people—the ones who were left behind. They had much richer sense of humor.
10 years later, Manhattan was out of control and everybody hated it. The house that Giuliani built had become a three million dollar penthouse that nobody could afford except for Demi Moore, and honestly, what has she done worth watching since Nothing But Trouble? My G-d I love that movie.
People talk about the “Manhattanization” of San Francisco—hell, they’ve been talking about it since the 80s. Is Ed Lee our Rudy Giuliani? Or was that Willie Brown? Neighborhoods that were formerly “sketchy” are being rebranded – the Fillmore is now “Lower Pac Heights,” Western Addition is now “NoPa,” the area south of the Civic Center is now “Mid-Market,” the Mission is now “Hipster Marina,” Hayes Valley is now “Hayes Valley, but with Brass Tacks.” The reaction among old people is mixed—those with businesses appreciate the influx of young people with plenty of discretionary income who enjoy spending it, those without miss all of their artistic friends. In 10 years, or maybe 3, there won’t be many people left in San Francisco who care about the loss of the misfits.
Except for me. Cuz I ain’t no goddamn son of a bitch.
I’m a bit hesitant to post this piece. It kind of fell apart at the end, and I anticipate, if anybody actually reads it, that there will be a barrage (i.e., one or two) comments to the effect of, “what do you know, you straight white male yuppie lawyer Marin County Hayes Valley Jew-boy hypocrite?” To anybody who wishes to make such a comment, I give you my reply in advance:
*A “wet nightmare” is a wet dream that is also a nightmare. You wake up with a gasp of terror, your heart beating with panic and your body covered in sweat, and then you notice that your sheets are also sticky.
I was originally going to title this post “On Fellatio and Cunnilingus.” It was going to begin as follows:
* * *
Last night we had a big Thanksgiving dinner at my parents’ house in Marin, with 17 family members ranging from 5 to 70 (or maybe 71) years of age. The turkey was succulent, the cranberries (prepared in 3 ways) were sweet and tangy, and the pies (apple, pumpkin and pecan) were the stuff of which dreams are made. To answer your next question, yes, there were also latkes for Hanukkah, with cranberry applesauce. During dessert, I mentioned that recently I had been buying more records, and my dad took it upon himself to dig through some floor cabinets and retrieve his old, dusty vinyl LP collection. After leafing through some Dylan, Limeliters and my dad’s personal favorite, “Double Time! The Sounds of Basic Training” (an army training simulation record from 1959), he got to the musicals, which were always favorites in my family (yes, we were that kind of family). After briefly singing refrains from Mame and The Music Man, we came across Hair, which was immediately selected to be the soundtrack for the rest of the evening.
My mom told a story about how in 1966, during a wine-soaked Shabbat dinner, her mother (a poet) had enlisted our cousin (a musician) to help her write a musical about the San Francisco hippy experience of the 1960s. The group present at the dinner had ultimately decided that this was a silly idea, but then Hair came out the very next year, and 46 years later, there we were, belting along to “Age of Aquarius” in the living room.
There was about 2 seconds of anxiety preceding “Hashish” and “Sodomy,” as we acknowledged that three children under 10 were present and the lyrics were about to get decidedly R-rated. But hey, they need to get exposed to drugs and sex somehow, right? It may as well be through a musical! When they’re a little older, we can use Rent to teach them about AIDS. The lyrics to “Sodomy,” in case you aren’t familiar, are as follows:
Sodomy, fellatio, cunnilingus, pederasty
Father, why do these words sound so nasty?
Masturbation, can be fun
Join the holy orgy kama sutra—everyone!
Oh wait—you can just watch the video:
When I first heard that song when I was 8 or 9 or 10 years old, I think I was only familiar with maybe 1 or 2 of the seven or so sexual terms rattled off in that list. 20+ years later, I know a tiny bit more, and I feel that I have enough knowledge to focus a post on two of the terms: “Fellatio” (referring to the oral sex act, not the Shakespearean character), and it’s counterpart, “Cunnilingus” (Latin for…well, you can figure it out).
* * *
After that, I was going to accuse you all of being perverts, then point out that the beginning of this post was just a ruse to get you to check out this post in the first place. I decided against this after speaking with somebody who pointed out that a number of people would not read a post entitled “On Fellatio and Cunnilingus” written by me, because believe it or not, people have no desire to read my pontifications on that particular subject. Whoda thunk?
Those of you who have been paying attention recognize that it’s Black Friday (or really the day after Black Friday—sorry, I got really busy yesterday hiking with my family and making more latkes), which can only mean that it’s time for (drum roll please)…
J’S THIRD ANNUAL CHARITY CONTEST! HECK YES!!!
Admittedly, I was thinking about not doing the charity contest this year. Last year I received some backlash from friends and family members who said that my charity contest was gauche and disingenuous. “There’s a difference between being righteous and being self-righteous,” I was told. Real mensches donate anonymously—that is the highest form of mitzvah. And so on.
And so I thought, if people don’t like me asking friends and family for advice on causes to which to donate, then maybe I shouldn’t take that route. I can still donate, of course, I just don’t need to make a show of it. I was just about to crawl off into my cave when a couple of my dear friends emailed me last week and asked if I was doing the charity contest this year, saying that they had some great ideas for worthy causes. It was kismet—I realized that I had to continue the tradition. After all, I believe that I said I’d continue doing it as long as I worked for the big evil law firm, and 3 years later I’m still there. Besides, I make a show of everything.
For those of you unfamiliar with the contest (“n00bs,” as I believe is the common parlance), here’s the quick and dirty: The concept of Black Friday and consumers pushing, shoving, and literally killing each other over flat-screen TVs sickens me. I feel like people should do less consuming and more giving, period. I love the idea of donating to charity during the holiday season, but I am too busy to really do proper due diligence to ascertain which charities are the most worthy of my limited donation dollars. Every year I ask my friends and family (note: if you’re reading my blog, we’re “friends,” even if we’ve never met) to advise me on their favorite organizations. I do some research and choose the top 5, then donate accordingly. Each donation is made in honor of the person who suggested it.
Please send your ideas for charities to sfloveaffair@gmail.com or any other email address you may have for me, or shoot me a private message on Facebook. You can send more than one idea. If you’ve sent me a charity idea in past years that I didn’t select, feel free to send again—it may have been a great idea that was narrowly edged out.
For avoidance of doubt, you don’t need to donate money—just give me names of charities. However, if you were able to not spend all of your money on Black Friday, then I highly encourage you to consider donating to some worthy cause this year. If you are a lawyer working in a big law firm, please consider giving to charity—I know you can afford it, and your donation will most likely be tax-deductible, which is awesome. If you don’t know where to donate, please consider the California State Bar Justice Gap Fund (if you’re in California) or your state’s equivalent.Yes, the bold font was necessary there. We all know that lawyers only read the conspicuous text.
Tips for winning the charity contest:
–If you work for an org or have a close connection to one, that helps.
–I prefer local charities that focus in on a particular problem in one city or area, rather than those that collect money for nationwide disbursement or a more general, nebulous cause. I’m partial to charities based in the Bay Area but open to other areas as well.
–These days, I’m most interested in charities that help underserved humans, but I have a soft spot in my heart for environmental organizations as well.
–You can increase your chances of winning by providing me with some background information of the charities you send, in particular, why they’re special to you.
–International charities are totally okay too!
To give you an idea of the kinds of charities that I dig, here are last year’s winners:
I will accept submissions until the Winter Solstice (December 21), and winners will be announced within seven (7) days after that date. Send in your entries today, and soon you can be guzzling down the creamy, salty, white, sticky juice of charitable victory!
Hello ladies and germs! Today we’re going to talk about games. When I say “games,” I don’t mean video games. It bothers me how the video game industry has completely corrupted the word “game,” how a “gamer” is somebody who plays video games, and how when I told my friends I was inventing a game, they all immediately assumed it was a video game (note: my game development has not been going very well. Stupid apathy). We’re also not going to talk about gambling games or drinking games, although admittedly those can be fun sometimes.
Usually when I think of games, I think of those games I love the most, which include Dominos, Boggle, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Risk, Chess (although I am not very good. A lot of people assume that I’m good at chess because I’m descendent of Russian Jews and I was a math major. But nope—not that great, although I still don’t like losing), Mafia (best. party game. ever.), Celebrity, Taboo, Scattergories, Scruples (highly underrated, but utterly, utterly brilliant), Shlaflaff (a summer camp favorite), Monopoly, Backgammon/Shesh-Besh/Tavla, Sorry!, Clue (or “Cluedo” in the U.K.), Rock-Paper-Scissors/Janken, Euchre, Hearts, Spades, Bridge, Uno (especially Speed Uno), Spoons, Othello, Kamps (or “Crepes” or whatever it’s called—that French card game that I’m really, really good at), Crazy 8s, Spit, Frustration (a.k.a. “Double Spit”), Mille Bornes, The Game of Life, Payday, The aMAZEing Labyrinth, and Jenga. I don’t like Apples to Apples, and I’ve never played Cards Against Humanity. I’ve never played Bananagrams either. I say this because I know that you’re probably freaking out because I didn’t mention them.
This post is not about these games. I just felt like writing out that list—it brought back many warm, fuzzy memories, of playing board games in front of the fireplace with my sister, or in the common room at Jew camp. No, the point of this blog is to talk about those awkward games that society forces us to play with each other every G-d-forsaken day of our dismal lives. I acknowledge that Eric Berne already wrote a book all about these games back in 1964, and although this post is meant to be a 2013 take on the subject, there’s a high probability that Berne already said what I am about to say, and in a much more scientifically-accurate manner. I’d check for myself, but I’m currently using my copy to prop up my TV and if I pull it out the whole kit and caboodle will topple.
Anyway, without further ado, here are the games!
1. The “How Are You” Game
It’s been over 6 months (more like 7 or 8), and people are still finding my blog thanks to Jason Evanish. In fact, statistically speaking, there’s a 90% chance you found this blog because of him, and if so, I’m thrilled that you decided to read another one of my posts. Earlier this week I received an email from a pretty young woman who graduated from an Ivy-league college recently and just moved to SF. I know that she is pretty and a recent Ivy-league graduate because I Google stalked her. Yes, I do that. She asked me about the absence of a “blogroll,” and admittedly I was not familiar with the term, so I looked that one up on Google as well. Apparently, a “blogroll” is a list of other blogs that I like that I’m supposed to link to my blog. I guess the general concept is “if you like my blog, check out these other blogs!” There’s a well-founded theory that if you link to somebody’s blog, then maybe they’ll link to yours as well, and both of your hit counts will be increased.
Truth be told (and I assure you, dear reader, that I am always truthful with you), the reason I don’t have a blogroll is because, for the most part, I don’t read other blogs. For the most part, I find blogs to be irritating. I’m sure that there are many brilliant blogs out there that would put mine to shame and that I would truly love, but I simply don’t have time to find them, let alone read them. There’s only one blog to which I will gladly devote my precious free time, and that is The Annotated Zoetrope. The author is a beautiful, dear friend of mine, and her blog is probably the most stunningly intelligent and emotionally powerful display of pure, unadulterated truth that the Internet has to offer these days. In her last post, she waxed poetic (in elegant prose) about, among myriad other things, the importance of lying when asked the simple question, “how are you?”
I’ve actually thought of this a great deal over the years. In my freshman anthro class in undergrad, the professor taught us how in every culture humans have developed some form of “talking to avoid talking.” When we see an acquaintance, we are not allowed to simply ignore him. On the other hand, we usually have no desire to actually have any sort of meaningful interaction with him (and yes, I realize that I’m using the “royal we” here, but you know exactly what I’m talking about). For a moment, we appear to be navigating our dinghy of human-to-human communication between the Scylla of agonizing awkwardness and the Charybdis of unabashed dickery.* Fortunately, the laws of interpersonal relations have given us a way out: we simply say “how are you?”, our acquaintance replies, “fine thank you, yourself?”, we drop a “fine too, thanks,” and both parties go their separate ways, neither feeling irritated or like a jerk.
“How are you?” is not a question, it’s a prelude to a pattern. In Japan, students learn through rote memorization that the correct answer to “how are you?” is “I’m fine thank you, and you?” They do not know the actual meanings of the phrases; they just know that when an American says “how are you?” to you, you’re supposed to respond in a certain way. This has some rather comical results. Perhaps you heard the story of the Japanese middle school exchange student who went hiking with his host family and fell off a small cliff, breaking his leg. They rushed him to the hospital, where the nurse asked, “how are you?” Through tears, the boy spurted out, “I’m f-fine…th-thank you…and y-you?”
Why don’t we actually answer the question? Because we definitely don’t want to hear anybody’s answer. In Israel, there’s a common insult called “nudnik.” Google defines nudnik as “a pestering, nagging, or irritating person; a bore.” The Israeli definition is much better: a nudnik is somebody who, when asked “how are you?”, will actually answer the question. None of us wants to be a nudnik when we can avoid it, so we have to play the game. It’s a fairly simple game and there are no real winners of losers, unlike the next game on this list…
2. I Totally Know What I’m Doing
This is a game often played by young professionals in their late 20s/early 30s who are just about finished with their educations (because we all got graduate degrees, right?) and are now dipping their cute widdle toesies into the frothy class-5 rapids of the real world. The object of the game is to convince people that you are worth the ridiculous amount of money you are getting paid, even though you are hilariously incompetent. At all times, you must fight the overwhelming urge to throw your hands in the air and say, “for the love of G-d, I’m a freakin’ moron, why the hell do you trust me to produce any sort of passable work?” Unfortunately, you can’t let your bosses, coworkers, clients, customers, investors, or shareholders know the extent of your unfathomable suckitude. That’s the game, plain and simple. Some people think that the point of the game is to “fake it ‘til you make it,” but that’s for beginners. The advanced mode is “fake it ‘til people believe you, despite the fact that you are not remotely close to making it, you pathetic excuse for a lawyer.” Or doctor, or architect, or whatever.
I heard a scary story the other day about a friend of a friend who graduated from law school around the same time as me at the top of her class and joined the ranks of a biglaw firm in a small satellite office. She was doing M&A and kicking ass…or at least faking at kicking ass. The partners grew to trust her, and within two years she was leading deals with little or no supervision.
Then she fucked up. Don’t get me wrong—this is completely normal. I fuck up all the time, but that’s why people above me review my work. In her case, however, those above her were under the impression that she was infallible, and thus nobody bothered to check what she was doing. Something happened. I was not told the exact details, but yada yada yada bad things happened for which she was at least in part responsible, and she quit her job somewhat involuntarily. You may say that she “lost” the game, but after she left the firm she traveled in Africa for 6 months. I wouldn’t call that a loss.
As a biglaw lawyer, when you fuck up and nobody catches you, somebody might lose some money. Big fucking whoop. Not long ago I had surgery, and right before I went under the anesthesiologist gave me an explanatory chat/pep talk. He was young. Like, really young. Like, younger than me, fresh out of med school, wet behind the ears, just beginning his residency, doesn’t know a catheter from a ham sandwich young. I was probably among the first 100 people he was putting under. He spoke confidently, like he knew what he was doing, and all I could think the whole time is, “I speak confidently like that to my clients all the time. Hell, I’ve been doing it since I was a first-year. I’d speak confidently, gain their trust, and then completely fuck up. Is he going to completely fuck up? Because if he does…” and then I went to sleep.
3. The World Is My Pissing Contest
I’d imagine that in most parts of the world, men prove their worth by engaging in contests of strength—sports and the whatnot. There’s a lot of grunting involved, rolling around on the ground with a slew of beefy combatants while your chest hair gleams with sweat—your own and that of others. Or maybe kicking a ball down a field, or getting from one end of a swimming pool to the other as fast as possible using only your arms and legs, or using a weird paddle with strings to hit an object over a net so that it eludes your opponent. The general theory is that, as in the moose community, the male who is the most physically able gets to mate with the most fertile females. Makes sense.
San Franciscan men on the other hand, G-d bless us, are complete pussies. The only “sports” you will ever see San Franciscan men play are air hockey, skeeball, and a friendly activity we like to call “cornhole.” This is what cornhole looks like:
Don’t worry, I was also a bit disappointed when I witnessed cornhole for the first time. It’s basically like horseshoes for frat boys and hipsters. I think it comes from the Midwest.
Despite our non-athletic nature, we San Franciscan men still desire to one-up each other, but instead of doing it with our arms and legs, we do it with our minds…or at least that part of our minds that collects knowledge of obscure cultural references that nobody understands. When two San Franciscan males meet, they will often engage in this battle of the wits, which is similar to the “pissing contest,” an age-old tradition in which two men, fighting for a woman’s attention, would whip out their cocks and each try to shoot a stream of urine that is more powerful than that of his foe. Here is a breakdown of a typical San Franciscan pissing contest:
The Scene: A bar on 16th street, just after midnight on a Saturday. An ATTRACTIVE FEMALE stands at the bar, attempting to order a vodka soda. SAN FRANCISCO MALE #1 is standing next to her, having spent the past 7 minutes trying to get the attention of the SNOOTY BARTENDER, who is wearing a Misfits/San Francisco Giants T-shirt and has no fewer than 6 piercings on his face. SNOOTY BARTENDER finally addresses SAN FRANCISCO MALE #1, who is about to order a PBR when he notices ATTTRACTIVE FEMALE standing next to him. With a nervous and cracking voice, trembling from head to toe at the sight of ATTRACTIVE FEMALE, SAN FRANCSICO MALE #1 decides to make his order a little more interesting, in the hopes of impressing her.
SFM1 (loudly, so AM can hear): Excuse me, what do you have that’s malty, but not too hoppy? Something kind of Belgian-style, preferably imported (of course)—do you have anything that’s like a combination of Delirium and Hobgoblin?
Meanwhile, SAN FRANCISCO MALE #2 has been sitting on the barstool on the opposite side of ATTRACTIVE FEMALE, tweeting about he’s stuck in a bar that’s totally lame and full of doucehbags, with a crappy jukebox that doesn’t have any punk rock other than the Ramones and Sex Pistols, which are total sell-out “punk” bands that only corporate suits listen to these days (on an unrelated note, SAN FRANCISCO MALE #2 is currently trying to found a startup with his bros that improves customer experience in online shopping platforms). Upon hearing SAN FRANCISCO MALE #1, SAN FRANCISCO MALE #2 looks up from his phone and notices ATTRACTIVE FEMALE standing next to him. Perfect—a chance to display his San Francisco-style manliness!
SFM2: You should try the Drake’s 1500. It’s an American extra pale ale. Their brewery is actually just in San Leandro—I sometimes ride my bike there on the weekends.
SAN FRANCISCO MALE #1, realizing that another male is competing for the attention of the female, ratchets his game up a notch.
SFM1: I’ve had Drake’s before. I’ve never been to the brewery, thanks for the tip. I’ll go there next weekend before hitting up the Trappist. But actually, I don’t think I want beer now. (To SNOOTY BARTENDER) What kind of scotch do you have?
SFM2: You’re going to get scotch? I only drink scotch when I’m in Scotland. You can’t really get any of the quality stuff in the U.S. You can get good bourbon though—Portrero is nice and pretty smooth. It’s made by the Anchor Brewing Company.
SFM1: Well, I can’t really afford the good stuff. I’m fine with my Johnny Walker Red and Jim Beam.
Here SAN FRANCISCO MALE #1, realizing that SAN FRANCISCO MALE #2 has him beat on knowledge of alcohol, tries out a new strategy: “poorer than thou.” Females are always impressed when a guy doesn’t have a lot of money but still manages to be cool (on an unrelated note, SAN FRANCISCO MALE #1’s father is a real estate mogul who has given, and will always give, SAN FRANCISCO MALE #1 money whenever he asks for it).
SFM2: I love Jim Beam! It reminds me of the good ol’ days. I drank a whole bottle of Jim before I snuck into Slim’s to see the Mr. T. Experience when I was 16!
SFM1: It reminds me of the first time I saw the Residents at the Great American—I did shots of Jim with their manager. She was gonna let me meet them but I got too drunk and ended up passing out in the men’s room.
SFM2: That’s like the time I saw the Mutants in a reunion tour in Mexico City. I told them I was from SF and partied with them after the show! They said that they were clean and sober, but you know they weren’t…
The two SAN FRANCISCO MALES are now combining three forms of one-upmanship, “I am down with more obscure bands than you,” “I have more crazy drug and alcohol stories than you,” and “I have had partied with more famous people than you.” Meanwhile, ATTRACTIVE FEMALE has ordered, received, and paid for her beverage, and now returns to her FRIEND.
AF (to FRIEND): Ugh, just once I’d like to go out in this city without getting caught in between two douchebags having a pissing contest.
4. Let’s Avoid Looking at Each Other
If there’s one thing that human beings hate, it’s being forced to interact with other human beings, except in special designated “human interaction” times (such as hoe-downs and box socials). In order to avoid interacting with other human beings at all costs, we’ve developed all kinds of distractions that enable us to get lost in our personalized tiny universes. I suppose it all started with books. When you’re reading a book, you are clearly focused on the pages in front of you and not the world around you. However, books do have covers, and a particularly astute (and/or creepy) observer, upon seeing somebody reading a book that he or she either enjoyed immensely or is interested in knowing more about, may interrupt the reader to ask a question or otherwise initiate a conversation. I remember two such instances when it happened to me.
The first was when I was in 16. I was in Israel, on a summer teen tour, and on my free weekend I was riding a bus in Jerusalem to my savta’s apartment in Rehavia while reading Jitterbug Perfume. As I was nearing my stop, an American woman, maybe seven or eight years older than me and dressed from head to toe in hardcore orthodox garb, said, “is that your first time reading Jitterbug?” When I replied yes, she said, “I am extremely jealous of you—to get to read Jitterbug Perfume for the first time, not knowing what you’re in for.”
The second was about ten years later, when I was flying across the country reading A Prayer for Owen Meany. I finished the book just before landing, and as I was disembarking from the plane, an elderly woman tugged at my elbow. “You just did one of my favorite things in the world,” she said. When I asked what, she replied, “You just finished A Prayer for Owen Meany. I was sitting in the row behind you across the aisle, watching you as you read. I could tell that you were loving it—I saw the hairs on the back of your neck prick up. I’ve been a writer all of my life, and whenever I read that book, all I can think of is, ‘plot! How do I make a plot work like that?’” I suppose that had I been an elderly man, and approached a young woman to tell her that I had been watching her read from afar, that would be a little off-putting. But this woman was pretty adorable.
Of course, many anti-human-interactionists got irritated with people commenting on their reading habits (“Oh my G-d, I love Steig Larson!”), so some depraved introverts in Japan invented the walkman. After the advent of such a device, no matter how many of those grating chatter machines known as “people” surrounded you, blissful isolation could be achieved simply by putting on your headphones. This opened the floodgates for personal electronic devices capable of generating social force fields, and soon the streets, elevators, busses, subways, airplanes, and even family cars of the world were packed with zombies, locked into their diskmen, Gameboys, iPods, iPads, iPhones, and Kindles, like prisoners in a chain gang who are forced to wear blinders, but who, for whatever reason, are under the impression that they’re enjoying themselves.
For the most part, our devices allow us to avoid talking to, or even looking at, other humans at all times. When I lived in New York a decade ago, people would talk to each other on the subway. Now they are plugged into their phones. Not only is this antisocial, it’s actually problematic, as people fail to notice when an elderly person step onto the train (or at least they pretend to fail to notice), and unless that elderly person is particularly vocal, he or she may be forced to stand. I actually witnessed this on BART a couple of weeks ago and had to intervene to ask the Berkeley students sitting by the doors to make room for a septuagenarian gentleman who was teetering on his cane. I was quite disappointed; I expect this kind of obliviousness from Stanford brats, but not from good-hearted Berkeley liberals. I suppose that I’m naïve to believe that kids these days aren’t all freakin’ morons.
This game is not confined to public transportation. A café used to be a place where you could make new friends or chat up cute girls. Now when you step into café it feels like you are diving into a sea of laptops. Or consider the workplace—in my office, it is considered rude to have your headphones on in the elevator. But don’t worry—they’ve installed a TV inside so you can watch on the 30-second ride up to avoid ever having to exchange awkward small talk with your coworkers.
I recently suffered a brutal loss at the game of LALAEO. It was last week, on Monday. I normally ride my bike or walk to work, but I was wearing a suit so the former was tough (wearing a suit is a rarity for me, but I had an important client meeting) and I was running late so the latter wasn’t an option. Instead I took the Muni. On the platform I saw a woman with whom I had gone to high school. This happens when you grow up in Marin and move to San Francisco. Back in high school I was friends with her, but people grow apart and now we’re at “good acquaintance” level. One night last year I bumped into her in the Mission and we realized we both lived in the same neighborhood so we exchanged numbers and talked about how we should meet up, but that meeting never materialized. You know the deal.
She was plugged into her iPhone, so I tapped her on the shoulder and said hello just as the train was approaching. We boarded the train together and she removed her earbuds. It was packed and I said my usual “packed train” line: “come on people, there’s plenty of room. In Tokyo subways they have a rule: if you can still breathe, there’s room for one more.” Some people laughed, but she did not. We then realized that we would probably have to talk with each other for the 10-minute train ride downtown. Re-inserting her earbuds was not an option; that would have been rude. Instead, she asked “how are you?” The correct answer would have been, “I’m fine thank you, yourself?”, to which she would have replied “I’m doing well.” Unfortunately, that would have left us with 9 remaining minutes of uncomfortable silence. The “how are you?” game really only works when you can make an easy escape.
What could I do? I answered her honestly, nudnik-style. It was a Monday and I had an important client meeting, but had also awoken to a dozen emails from Tokyo telling me all sorts of ways that my day/week was going to be ruined. This was just a tip of the iceberg—I was also slowly getting deeper and deeper into my existential crisis that comes with being a dirty hippie communist luddite working as a technology lawyer in a large corporate law firm. And I just got a ticket because I forgot to move my car for the street cleaner, and, oh, is this your stop? It was so nice to bump into you—have a great day!
Needless to say, she was happy to arrive at her destination. You win some, you lose some, I suppose.
5. Spread the Love
This one isn’t necessarily a game people play, but it’s one that I hope more people in San Francisco, and the U.S., and the world, engage in as much as possible and eventually master. The way it works is that if somebody does something nice for you, you go and do something nice back for them. A more advanced version is where you just randomly do something nice for somebody, even if they didn’t do anything for you first.
I’m going to play a round of STL right now. If you’ve read this whole post, I consider that to be something very nice that you’ve done for me. This shit was more than eight pages—that’s ridiculous! Who the hell has time for that? You, apparently (I mean, you didn’t skim it, right? Because that would be cheating). Anyway, to reward your kindness and patience (and masochism), I will gift you something special. THE FIRST FIVE PEOPLE TO SEND ME AN EMAIL WITH THE SUBJECT “GAMES PEOPLE PLAY” WILL WIN A FREE MIX CD! And if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s making mix CDs. I say so on my online dating profile, so it’s gotta be true (along with my height of 6’4”). My email address is sfloveaffair@gmail.com. It doesn’t matter if we’ve never met, or if you live in Ouagadougou. And if you don’t have a CD player (because apparently people under the age of 29 don’t have CD players), you can steal an external disk drive from work and use it to burn the CD into MP3s and onto your iPhone (at least that’s what a friend of mine for whom I made a CD did recently).
If you do send me an email, please include:
1. The first concert you ever attended.
2. The most recent concert you attended.
3. The best concert you ever attended.
4. Your mailing address
Also, in the subject line, please include your spirit animal. If you want to be clever, you can do some kind of variation on the proposed theme. For example, you can say “Games Walruses Play” if your spirit animal is a walrus.
THERE IS ONE ADDITONAL RULE TO THIS GAME. If I have ever sent you a mix tape, CD, or playlist, then you are disqualified. Sorry! The game is call “Spread the Love,” not “Deposit More Love Where You’ve Already Put Some.” However, if I’ve ever made you a mix, that means you’re probably a dear friend of mine, and if you give me a call I’d love to catch up with you. I’m sure I miss you a ton.
I’d be lying if I said that I’ve been following this whole “sequestration” hullaballoo enough to write an intelligent, informed piece about it. Admittedly, my only two sources of political news these days (really, since I started working) are the New York Times op-ed page and Jon Stewart, and I’ve been too busy at work the past couple of weeks to catch up even on those. However, one doesn’t need to read the Wall Street Journal to know that the American economy is all kinds of screwed up. Needless to say, desperate times call for desperate measures, and with Obummer in control for the Dems and Bonerhead representing the GOP, it’s not remotely surprising that our government has failed to produce even a hint at a rational solution to any portion of our economic woes.
Fear not government, J is here. Following the immortal advice of one John F. Kennedy, romancer of countless women and one-time president of the United States of America, I am not asking what my country can do for me (mainly because I already know the answer to that: “sweet bupkiss”), but I am asking what I can do for my country. Actually, I’m not even asking what I can do to help, I’m just flat-out helping by letting the Internet/U.S./world know exactly what we need to do in America to get out of this mess in which we are currently wallowing (which mess, incidentally, I blame on Reagan). One thing we all need to understand before I begin: you can’t please all the people all the time. Period. Being from San Francisco, my solution probably has a somewhat liberal slant. Nonetheless, I assure you that I have tried to the best of my ability to come up with a solution that defies party lines and that would, if brought to Congress (as it damn well should be), gain substantial bipartisan support.
Okay, enough with the introduction. Without further ado, I present to you J’S MODEST PROPOSAL FOR FIXING THE U.S. ECONOMY AND THE U.S. IN GENERAL:
I. Health Care
The one piece of legislation that has and will continue to define the Obama Administration is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare.” Depending on your political leanings, one may view Obamacare as a G-dsend, a blessing, a blessing-in-disguise, a curse-disguised-as-a-blessing (a.k.a. a “curse in a blessing’s clothing”), or the devil. The particular effects of Obamacare will not fully be understood until several years after all of its provisions have been enacted, but the debate around the law has made two things very clear: (1) healthcare in this country is really freaking expensive, but doesn’t necessarily need to be that way, and (2) Medicare is quickly becoming a huge burden on the federal budget that we simply can’t afford (see this chart below, from the non-partisan Center for American Progress).
I’m no health policy expert and I’m certainly not a doctor, but my mom is a medical anthropologist and my sister has an MPH, and I’ve spoken with both of them quite a bit on the subject of the American healthcare crisis. Based on those ongoing conversations and a fair amount of independent research, I’ve arrived at two feasible and easily-implemented solutions that will at least begin to enable progress on the healthcare front. Bear in mind that these are just the initial baby steps to making healthcare affordable for all Americans, but we all must acknowledge that Rome (and the hospitals therein) was not built in a day.
A. Tort Reform
Ask any doctor what his or her worst professional fear is, and he or she will immediately answer “getting sued for malpractice.” This is far scarier than having a patient die on the operating table—in fact, the only reason that a patient’s death is remotely frightening to a doctor is that it could lead to a nasty lawsuit. To help alleviate these fears, doctors, and the hospitals that employ them, double down on medical malpractice insurance. Of course, this insurance is not cheap, and who ends up footing the bill? Why, John Q. Patient, of course, in the form of inflated medical costs.
Doctors should not be living in constant fear of getting sued. We should be down on our knees thanking anybody who went through the hell of medical school and is willing to accept a good-but-not-great paycheck (doctors make less than lawyers) in order to save our freakin’ lives. The last people on earth we should be rewarding or even encouraging are medical malpractice lawyers. Take it from me, a member of the bar: plaintiffs’ attorneys are the scum of the earth, and medical mal lawyers are the scum of plaintiffs’ attorneys, so that makes them the scum of the scum. Remember John Edwards, one-time potential presidential candidate and infamous adulterer? He was a medical malpractice lawyer.
My solution? Get rid of medical malpractice suits, with no exceptions. Believe me, I know lawyers, and if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile, and then sue you for false advertising about the size of what you gave them. Simply pass a federal statute that states that any claim of medical malpractice brought against a licensed doctor will be immediately dismissed, with harsh sanctions imposed upon the attorney who filed the case. What about actual instances of doctors screwing up and harming patients? Yes, patients will have one less avenue for compensation if this happens, but this is a small price to pay for lower medical bills across the board. Also, once this legislation goes into effect, doctors will be under much less stress once the fear of being sued for malpractice is lifted from their shoulders, and will likely perform much better, resulting in fewer accidents in the first place. In other words, everybody wins, except medical malpractice lawyers and insurance companies, but honestly, fuck them. Can I get an amen?
B. Fixing a Broken Medicare System
I have a conservative friend (he’s a bit older) who blames Lyndon B. Johnson for everything that’s wrong in this country, from starting the Vietnam War to signing the Civil Rights Act (this friend is a proponent of the Clarence Thomas “helping black people actually hurts black people” school of thought). However, my friend doesn’t seem to mind Medicare all that much (he’s a doctor, I should add). At least, he didn’t used to mind it. It seems that, for a long time, Medicare was a fine program that people all across the country seemed to love, but now all of a sudden it’s coming under a lot of fire, as we realize that it costs a heckuva lot.
The Republicans want to raise the minimum age for receiving Medicare to 67. I find this disgusting. We already work far too much in America, and bumping up the age at which one is eligible to receive Medicare is tantamount to saying, “sorry bub, we’re gonna need you to work an extra 2 years.” Having recently joined the work force in full swing, I’ll say right now that the day I turn 65, you’d better believe your dippy bippy that I’m retiring, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to take another two trips around the seasons without affordable insurance.
Pushing the age of eligibility up another 2 years is genuinely inhumane, and absolutely not necessary, when in reality there is a much simpler solution that will save American taxpayers a ton of money while keeping health costs down. This fix is to put a cap on the age at which somebody can receive Medicare. I think we can start with 90. From 65 until 90, you can receive Medicare. After that, if you want medical treatment, it’s on your own dime. We can start the cap at 90, then over a few years, or maybe a decade, lower it to 85 and then to 80. Still, that’s 15 years with solid government-subsidized medical insurance.
Why the cap? Because let’s face it, after a certain age, people really don’t need to be alive. Seriously—have you talked to an octogenarian lately? They’re bitter, ornery, and constantly complaining about everything from their prostates to the mailman to the damn bakery that makes its French bread too crusty. They sure as hell aren’t contributing anything positive to society; their days of doing that are long gone. If an old man gets cancer, he’s going to die—and that’s fine. Everybody dies. I don’t think we taxpayers need to pay $200,000+ for some random grandpa in Minnesota to get chemo to extend his life an extra few months. Let these people die with dignity, for Pete’s sake.
Saving money, being humane, and making America a better place. Yes we can!
II. Les Miserables
The “Occupy” movement of 2011 and 2012 brought the concept of percentiles into the American (and global) consciousness, as more and more Americans started expressing discontent and even anger over the fact that the top 1% of Americans hold 35% of the wealth, while the bottom 80% hold barely over 10%. According to recent figures (taken from the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry on “poverty”; I was too lazy to read the rest), roughly 15% of the country lives in poverty. Unemployment is still hovering just above 8%, but that figure (which is really already quite dismal) doesn’t tell the whole story, as in some states and counties unemployment is solidly in the double digits. Those who are “gainfully” employed don’t necessarily have easier lives, as stagnant wages combined with skyrocketing costs of living have greatly broadened the “working poor” class.
In these dark economic times, it seems preposterous to cut federal spending aimed at helping the lower classes, but with record spending on welfare, foodstamps, and unemployment during the Obama administration with little to show for it, the social safety net is beginning to look quite porous. I have a very simple suggestion that will create a beneficial ripple effect, bringing back prosperity into multiple spheres of American life.
A. Helping the Poor
Many conservatives, particularly those of the older, white, male variety, say that it’s not the government’s job to help the poor, and that the poor need to “pick themselves up by their bootstraps,” get jobs, and learn to become contributing members of society. Conventional conservative wisdom dictates that the reason poor people don’t work is because welfare incentivizes laziness—why should I get a job and bust my ass when I can just not get a job and get paid almost as much? The strain on the rest of the country (us hard-working types, that is) is then doubled—not only are we paying for these moochers, but they’re not putting in any taxes to bring down the deficit.
There was a time when I believed that Horatio Alger was a bunch of malarkey, and that people can’t be expected to help themselves. That was before I went to India. In India, the “social safety net” is more like a giant innertube, with a gaping hole through which anybody except for the fattest 30% of the population will slide. Most Indians receive no aid from the government, so do they lay down and die? Some do, but most just learn survival. Do you know how much food a human being actually needs to survive? It ends up that it’s much less than you’d expect, especially if you’re from America where even the poor are morbidly obese. Do you know how often somebody in India buys new shoes? The answer is never—he fixes the pair he has if they get too old. How large of a living space do you need for a family of seven? I guarantee that whatever you’re thinking is quite the overshot; the answer is roughly 160 square feet.
It’s high time for Americans to learn these valuable life lessons. Thus, I think we should reduce spending on foodstamps from $110 billion per year to $0. Unemployment compensation should be cut from $77 billion annually to $0. We spend $57 billion every year on public housing. You know what number would work better? $0. That’s right: a big, fat nuthin’ at every corner. Will some folks die? Well sure, maybe. You can’t make an omelet if you don’t break any eggs, but as many Americans will learn, you can make a one-egg omelet that will feed a family of four. Mitt Romney was full of shit when he said the 47% of Americans who don’t pay taxes won’t help themselves. They most certainly will, they just need a little kick in the ass.
Don’t believe me? Ask any economist to list the centers of economic growth in the next 50 years, and he or she will undoubtedly mention the “BRIC” nations—Brazil, Russia, India and China, four countries where people aren’t relying on mother government and are instead learning to fend for themselves, with explosive results (that is, explosive economies, not literal explosions, for the most part). The U.S. could easily join the BRIC nations as a breeding ground for unprecedented economic expansion (okay, so maybe it would have more precedent in the U.S., but you get the idea). BRICU—that has a nice ring to it. Or maybe UBRIC.
B. Helping the Homeless
There is one special class of the ultra-poor who are often forgotten: those who are so poor that they must sleep on the streets, beg for food, and shit on the sidewalk. I’m talking about the homeless, pervasive in even the wealthiest cities (like our dear San Francisco). Most people don’t want to think about the homeless. Obama doesn’t. Those jokers up on Capitol Hill certainly don’t. It’s not that they hate the homeless, they’d just prefer to believe that nobody in America is that lacking in…well…everything.
I, on the other hand, think of the homeless every day, as I see them huddled in bunches outside of the liquor stores on my morning walk down Market Street. Old ones, young ones, men and women of all races, sometimes without shoes, sometimes without pants, and always without hope. These people are suffering, and nobody wants to do anything to remotely alleviate their pain. I want to do something for them: I want to put them out of their misery. Yes, by killing them. It’s the only humane thing to do. These people are living miserable lives, waiting for sweet, sweet death to overtake them. I think the least we can do for a homeless man, as good Americans and good Christians (or Jews, as the case may be), is to put a bullet between his eyes.
I use the word “we” here in the most literal sense. We do not have enough resources to pay the military or other government-sponsored officers/executioners to kill our homeless. Our deficit is too large to be using our hard-earned tax dollars to fund large-scale urban euthanasia. Besides, if we left it to the government, they’d probably screw it up, just like they screw up everything. If a senator tried to kill a hobo, he’d probably end up adding ten years to the guy’s agonizing life.
This is why I propose forming a nationwide network of “Angels” to assist the homeless to heaven. Angels would work on a strictly volunteer basis, and provide their own weapons. Obviously they would have to go through rigorous background checks, and no person would be accepted as an Angel if he or she had been in prison within the past 12 months or in a mental institution within the past 6. Also, Angels would be strictly forbidden from using assault rifles or guns with high capacity magazines to kill the homeless. I warned you at the beginning of this piece that I’d take a liberal slant, and I am absolutely pro gun-control, especially when it comes to killing the homeless. A real hunter doesn’t need an assault rifle to kill a deer, and he certainly doesn’t need anything close to a semi-automatic weapon to kill a wounded or sickly deer. Homeless people are even slower than wounded or sickly deer. If some Angel, drunk with power (and perhaps vodka) goes crazy and starts shooting at the homeless and homeful alike, I hope he’s carrying a pistol that holds no more than 10 bullets, for the sake of our children.
Angels would be highly respected in their communities, and would get to wear identifying patches, which would look something like this:
Angels (sometimes referred to as “Angels in America”) would take on many roles in daily American life. They could work as safety guards, helping our kids cross the street. They could work as the National Guard on a volunteer basis, cutting down on unnecessary defense spending. They could officiate weddings and bar/bat mitzvahs. I’m just throwing out some ideas here, people.
III. Other Issues Facing Our Nation
There is a veritable hodge-podge of other issues related to America’s economy that are in dire need of some resolution, and I can’t begin to address them all here. I’m just going to present the two that immediately came to mind on my walk to work this morning, when I passed by a young man on the street holding a cardboard sign that said “From Bulgaria, no money. Thank you for you’re kindness.”
A. Immigration Reform
Most people acknowledge that the large population of illegal aliens/undocumented immigrants in this country is some kind of problem. Either they should get on the path to citizenship so that they can contribute to society (and maybe, G-d forbid, pay taxes), or they should kindly go back to whence they came. Most proponents of “immigration control” focus on the latter, and if Republicans are in charge, the results will undoubtedly be racist. Seriously, can Republicans do anything without it being racist?
Republican “immigration reform” works as follows: See a man who looks Mexican. Ask him for proof that he’s American. If he fails to produce proof, deport him.
So. Freaking. Racist.
Being a liberal Democrat, I detest racism in all forms. But just because I hate racism does not mean that I love illegal immigrants coming to our country, speaking all sorts of languages I don’t understand, stealing jobs from Americans, committing crimes, and filling up our emergency rooms while not paying for health insurance. Pu-leeze. I’m an American first, Democrat second. Here’s a simple, non-racist plan for dealing with our immigration problem. If an Angel sees somebody who looks foreign (and over 18), regardless of race or gender, that Angel can stop him or her and demand to see some kind of identification—for example, a driver’s license, a state ID card, or some DREAM Act card that demonstrates that the person is on a state-sponsored road to citizenship. Bear in mind that there are foreigners of all races; perhaps it’s a white man who looks Russian, or a black woman who looks Nigerian, or a dark-skinned man who looks like he’s from India or one of the ‘Stans, or maybe southeast Asia. Angels will not discriminate.
If the foreign-looking person cannot produce proper identification, the Angel will shoot him or her in the head. Our court systems are clogged up the wazoo and lengthy deportation proceedings are a waste of everyone’s time and money. Trust me on this; I’m a lawyer.
This may sounds a bit harsh, but I envision a one-year ramp-up period leading to this, which will give everybody in America who is over 18 (or who looks over 18) enough time to either (a) get proper ID or (b) leave the country. One year—that’s a long time. Anybody with half a brain should be able to get ID within a year. And speaking of having half a brain…
B. Education
From what I understand, there was a time when the American education system was the envy of the world. Our system had the best funding, we had the highest literacy rate, and we were the best at math. Now, countries all over the world (especially those in Scandinavia and Asia) are kicking our asses in these departments.
Many people will blame our educational system for this. They say that for our children need better schooling, and that means smaller class sizes, better teachers, and more access to high-quality learning institutions. But achieving all of these crucial elements takes money, and if you have been paying attention at all to this blog post or the world in general, you’ll understand that money does not grow on American trees these days.
I’d propose a different approach: instead of trying to make our country smarter, we should focus on making it less stupid. Of course, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do this. Many years ago, the concept of eugenics gained a bit of popularity among many circles in the U.S. The theory was that stupid begets stupid, so if you prevent a stupid person from begetting, there will be several fewer younglings in the world bringing down the average intelligence of the nation. There is a famous Supreme Court case from 1927 in which the court held that a law requiring the forced sterilization of the feeble-minded was constitutional. In the case, a doctor had sterilized a dumb woman with a dumb mom and a dumb grandma (note that in 1927, promiscuity was equated with a lack of intelligence), and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes lauded the act, declaring that “three generations of imbeciles is enough.”
I know that my readership is smart, so I need not explain how fucked up that is. More importantly, a mass sterilization effort would be very draining on our country’s human resources. To sterilize a man, you need at least three people (two to hold him down and one to cut off his balls), and to sterilize a woman, you really need somebody who has been medically trained. We can’t have all of our able-bodied folks and doctors wasting time sterilizing the stupid. The easier, cheaper and more effective solution is, of course, execution. This may seem like a pretty harsh or even drastic solution at first, and 10 or 20 years ago I would not have suggested it, but let’s face it, in today’s economy, there’s simply no room for the stupid. After however many hundreds or thousands of years of coexisting with the lovable town oaf(s), times are tough and we’ve reached a point where stupid people are no longer capable of contributing to society. Think about it—in the year 2013, you’ll never see a job description that says “stupid people preferred” or even “stupid people welcome.” Those days are over. Thus, to avoid stupid people further mooching off of our resources, we need to kill them. I’m sure that if you explained this to a stupid person he’d understand…or at least he’d understand if he wasn’t so stupid.
Now comes the tricky part—how can we tell who is stupid? Some people may suggest testing, but anybody who knows anything about education can tell you that standardized tests are unfair and don’t actually tell you how smart or dumb different people are. Intelligence is more subjective than that, and usually only the smartest of the smart can accurately and efficiently deduce whether or not somebody has the mental agility to eventually contribute to society. I propose forming a very selective army of our most intelligent Americans, who are willing to donate an hour of time here and there in between curing cancer and composing symphonies to hunt and kill the stupid. This will be an extremely elite squadron, and each member should wear the only insignia worthy of his or her superlative position:
IV. And One More Thing…
I admit, my solution for saving America leads to a lot of dead bodies: dead old folks, dead poor, dead homeless, dead foreigners, dead idiots, dead investment bankers (I didn’t include that part in this blog, but it doesn’t really require much explanation). What should we do with all of these corpses? Cemetery space is prime real estate that we can’t afford to just give away, and burning bodies creates fumes that are bad for the environment. Here’s my suggestion: human bodies are rich in nutrients, right? Why not donate the bodies to local farms (such as the Hayes Valley Farm) to use in fertilizer, in order to produce organic, locally-grown fruits and vegetables! As you can see, my plan for saving America is the gift that keeps on giving.
V. Conclusion
The way I see it, there are only two ways of solving America’s problems: the Republicans’ way, which involves massive (and massively unfair) spending cuts while genuflecting to the rich, and my way, in which everybody gets what they deserve. I think we all know what needs to be done. Contact your congressperson today today and tell him or her that you support J’s plan.
Wow, can you believe it’s been a year already? Time flies, whether you’re having fun or not. I’m a very reflective person, and of course I always get a little extra-reflective this time every year. How did 2012 stack up in terms of other years? Well, it certainly wasn’t 2010, that’s for damn sure. Not even 2011. For me personally, 2012 was a pretty shitty year, with the two dominant themes being heartbreak and working too much. Both of these themes were directly related to this blog—the first inspired it (i.e., something to do to get my mind off of the pain), the second killed it. I’m hoping that neither of these plays too much of a prominent role in my 2013. For the first, time is slowly but surely healing that wound. As for the second, my number one new year’s resolution for 2013 is to WORK LESS. In 2013, I surpassed my minimum required billables by nearly 500 hours…I sure as hell don’t need to do that again. Ever. There probably won’t be a repeat performance by virtue of my not being in Japan, but even so, I’m going to make a concerted effort to make sure that I end 2013 with somewhere between 1950 and 1957 hours, period. Don’t worry—for normal people, that still ends up being way too much work.
I have a few other New Year’s Resolutions:
Attend at least one concert every month. I had some decent concert action in 2012: Morrissey in Tokyo, Jonathan Richman, Devo/Blondie, Barrington Levy, and a couple of nights ago, the Jamaicans. Other than a few other very small local gigs, I think that was about it. Every one of these shows was pretty darn good, and they reminded me why I love live music (as I noted in my last post). I realize that all of the concerts I attended in 2012 featured artists who have been around for at least 25 years. I guess that’s how I roll; I truly believe that they don’t make music like they used to. I have to point out one small note about the Morrissey show: At the time, the great Mozza’s band consisted of a large drag queen on guitar and 4 very young, very fit men who, at the show I attended, were wearing nothing but black briefs (which were very brief). Coupled with Morrissey’s general sexual androgyny, the entire show reeked of homoeroticism, all of which was completely lost on the Japanese audience. It was somewhat incredible.
I’m not sure that I need much more of that in 2013, but I certainly want more concert experiences. Okay, and maybe a bit more of that.
Not complain as much. I have a friend from law school whom, for whatever reason, gets cited in this blog more than anybody else. A couple of weeks ago, I was having drinks with him, and I started bitching about, hell, I forget…something, and he slammed down his drink and in a genuinely pissed-off tone said that I complain too much, and that most people would do anything for a life as good as mine. I mean, other than heartbreak and working too much, my 2012 probably kicked ass. I got to live in the city I adore with a lot of people I love, working in a job that pays well and keeps me intellectually stimulated, and just yesterday I bought an awesome new pair of jeans. They cost a lot, but they’re really comfortable and stylish. I’m trying to finally grow up a little fashion-wise.
Run a half-marathon. Yesterday I went to Sports Basement and bought running gear and new shoes. The shoe part was incredible. The guy had me walk and run back and forth a couple of times, then he told me that my arches roll and my feet point inwards at approximately 1.3 degrees, and so I can injure my first two metatarsals if I don’t have the proper footwear. He guessed my shoe size on the spot, pulled out two different pairs of shoes, had me put a different shoe on each foot and run around the store, then asked which one felt better and sold me the corresponding pair, with a 30-day guarantee, and they gave me the AAA bonus even though I forgot my AAA card. Sorry for the long run-on sentence, but the whole shebang took approximately 3 minutes and left my head spinning. Anyhow, after all that, I feel like I owe it to Sports Basement to make this run. For those of you who don’t know Sports Basement, it’s another reason that I love San Francisco, and I’m not even that sporty.
Write down something every day. I bought this little “one line a day” 5-year diary, which I intend on filling. I’m pretty excited about showing it to my grandkids.
Create a board game. I have this great idea for a game that sort of combines Scruples, Trivial Pursuit, Celebrity, Mafia and Mousetrap (the last one on a slightly more metaphorical level). By the end of the year, I need to have developed a prototype. I plan on taking this pretty seriously and devoting a lot of time to it, so if I don’t write many blog entries next year, you can assume it’s because I’m working hard on my game. Or stuck in the office because I’m failing at my #1 resolution. Or maybe on an online dating website. Sigh.
Not be so afraid of technology. I’m a technology lawyer, for chrissake—I can start to actually use my smartphone and stop being such an old fart. First stop: Spotify.
Now that I’ve thrown out these resolutions into the internet, that means I’m bound to them, right? If not, everybody in the world has the right to chastise me as a failure. Crap, that’s way more pressure than I anticipated. Can I take them back? Unfortunately, no. As Confucius says, once something is written, it may not be erased for all of eternity. Of course, bear in mind that Confucius lived in an era before the advent of the eraser and “delete” button, but still, the man knows his shit.
I’m getting way ahead of myself here, already talking about 2013. 2012 isn’t over yet (at least that’s what I’m hoping—I really want to finish this post before the new year, but I just discovered Boardwalk Empire…you know how it is). [Update: I did not finish this post in 2012 because on December 31, I unexpectedly had to work all day. My #1 resolution did not apply yesterday so it’s all good.] Outside of my personal life, 2012 was pretty damned interesting, and I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the world events of 2012 that made me laugh, made me cry, or blew me away in general. And as I am wont to do, I’ll present such events in the form of a top 10 list.
THE TOP 10 THINGS FROM 2012 THAT ELICITED FROM ME SOME SORT OF EMOTIONAL RESPONSE:
10. The Death of Adam Yauch. Okay, I admit, in order to remember ten items for this list, I had to go back and look at all of my Facebook posts from the past year. On May 4th, I posted “If this is gonna be that kind of a party, I’m gonna stick my dick in the mashed potatoes. RIP MCA.” When I heard the sad news, I dusted off my old Paul’s Boutique mp3s, and thought back to my younger, formative years. If you’re my age, your older sibling (or friend’s older sibling) probably introduced you to the Beasties when you were just a wee lad or lass, and you thought that Brass Monkey was the most amazing song in the world (and you envisioned an actual metallic primate when you heard it). Yes, the Beastie Boys were clearly older than you, but not that much older, right? MCA was way too young to die. I’m pretty sure we all miss him. The Beastie Boys were one of those few bands that everybody really enjoyed. Have you ever heard somebody say, “you know what, I don’t really like the Beastie Boys.” Of course you haven’t. And if you ever do, you give them a back-handed bitch slap. Right in the kisser.
9. Season 3 of The Walking Dead. I’m really into this show. I’ll admit that I did not like Season 1 so much–for many years, I’ve been a die-hard zombie fan, and I felt like the inaugural season didn’t contribute much that Romero hadn’t already played out years before. But then came Season 2, which got me excited, and Season 3 just kicked ass (or is in the process of kicking ass, as the case may be). Merle with a bayonet hand! Michonne! Prison zombies! I don’t think I’ve been this excited about a show since Battlestar Galactica.
8. Hurricane Sandy. I went to Columbia for undergrad, but during the big blackout of 2003 I was studying abroad in Australia, so I missed out on all of that fun. I remember hearing stories about people walking home from work, and having fun spontaneous parties and candle-lit acoustic concerts with strangers in their buildings. Although I was having the time of my life in Oz, I was kind of bummed that I missed it. When I first started reading about Sandy (mainly through reports from friends on Facebook), I had that same feeling–it sounded kind of fun, and I almost wished I was there. Then it started to sound awful. Weeks with no power or hot water. Apartments ruined, possessions destroyed. I have one friend who was friends with one of the people who died. Like the Japan earthquake of 2011, it was a painful reminder that Mother Nature simply doesn’t give a fuck about humans. It also served as a frightening warning that with climate change, these events are going to increase in frequency. I know that we’re strapped for cash in the U.S., but we need to start taking adaptive measures pronto.
7. National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. A.k.a., “the Obamacare Supreme Court decision.” Unless it has to do with patent or copyright law, I don’t really ever read cases, but my mom wanted me to explain the decision to her so I took a full 3 or 4 hours to read it. I genuinely think Roberts is a smart guy (I would never say that about Thomas or Alito), and I’m very happy that he chose to not toe the party line on this one. Obamacare is hardly perfect, but I love the idea of as many Americans as possible having health insurance. Some may call this notion communism or socialism; I call it common sense for a civilized nation. I have no idea if this was a one-off for Roberts, or if he’s going to start taking the liberal approach on other issues as well. Could he be on the good side during the gay marriage cases next year? Oh man, once Obama replaces Kennedy and the SC is liberal for the next 15 years, the good times are gonna roll.
6. Call Me Maybe. At some point last year—it may have been June, or May, or even when I was back in Japan, I noticed that a lot of friends were posting videos related to this song on Facebook. There was the actual song, and remixes, and parodies (from SNL to Sesame Street), and all sorts of memes or whatever-the-hell you call them. You know, like that picture of David Bowie from Labyrinth that said, “I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my labyrinth, I stole your baby,” and so forth. I avoided listening to the song for as long as I could, because I knew I’d hate it. Then in July I went to NY for my birthday and 2 weddings. After my birthday party at Cherry Tavern, I took a cab back to Brooklyn with my friend, and this horrible abomination of noise (I hesitate to even call it a “song”) came on. Fortunately, I was so wasted that I didn’t really hear it. However, it came on again at the first wedding. And then the second. And then every single night out after that for the rest of the summer. People: this shit is G-d awful. It might be a new low for pop music, and that is really, really saying something. I lost a lot of faith in humanity knowing that this song was the #1 summer jam in the U.S. Thank G-d Gangam Style came out and rescued our nation (and the world) from the auditory abyss that was Call Me Maybe. Let’s put it this way: I was not at all surprised to learn that the singer is Canadian. This is their revenge for all of the jokes over the past however many years. They’re all up across the border eating poutines and laughing hysterically.
5. Trayvon Martin. This unpleasant incident led me to disrespect hardcore conservatives even more than I already did. I do not understand why guns are ever equated with “manliness”. To me they represent the opposite. Real men can fight (or resolve their conflicts through non-violent means, but that’s not the point here). Any coward or weakling can kill somebody with a gun. The fate of George Zimmerman has yet to be decided, but I wouldn’t be remotely surprised if he walks, due to Florida’s “stand your ground” rule. The phrase “stand your ground” is somewhat deceptive, because it implies that the person invoking it has big cajones. Real men stand their ground! The truth is that, it appears that the “stand your ground” rule means that if you pick a fight with somebody whom you outweigh by 90 pounds, and you legitimately get your ass kicked, you’re allowed to take out your gun (which you had hidden the whole time) and shoot and kill him. Bonus points if he’s black (because then you can more easily claim that he was a “thug”)! They really should call it the “complete and utter pussy” rule. I truly believe that hardcore conservatives in support of these laws get some sort of sexual arousal from firearms. As I told one conservative friend of mine (who sent me an email with a bunch of pictures of big guns), I prefer to jerk off looking at naked ladies.
4. The latest Israel-Palestine Kerfuffle. I do not mean to disrespect the victims of what actually happened by calling it a “kerfuffle,” I just really like that word. The affair already inspired me to write one entire blog post, so I need not say much more on it, except that the whole world needs love, and the Middle East needs it especially.
3. Romney Loses the Election. Some may argue that Obama winning the election was the real story of 2012, but not to me. I don’t love Obama. I like him. I think he’s doing an okay job after being dealt a crappy hand. But I really did not like Mr. Romney. Since around the time I was born (i.e., the Reagan years), the sole purpose of the Republican Party has been to help the rich get richer. Sure, they toss poor white trash a few bones by promising to do their best to eliminate rights for gays, blacks, Hispanics, and of course women, and occasionally throw in some rhetoric about protecting guns, but the bottom line is that the vast majority of actual Republican legislative and executive policies are centered around helping big finance, big pharma, big oil, and other big swinging dicks maintain their control of Washington, the U.S., and the world at large. Most Republicans, at the very least, try to pretend that they will somehow confer benefit on the non-rich. Romney didn’t even bother with that. He actually produced bumper stickers that said, “Romney: If you’re not rich, go fuck yourself,” and he had no qualms using this as his campaign song:
Even though Romney was clearly and explicitly only trying to help the top 1-5% of earners in America (his infamous “if you make less than $200K per year, you can suck my hairy Mormon balls” speech made that clear), he still received roughly 49% of the vote, removing any doubt that a huge swath of the American public are misguided, bumbling morons. But Romney lost, and then, when Obama tried to at least pretend to be nice, Romney, still not understanding the general concept of being a public figure, responded that Obama only won because he “gave gifts” to blacks, Hispanics, and young people. Note: although I may of exaggerated some of the other things Romney said and did during his campaign, that last sentence was true. I don’t often use the term “douchenozzle,” but I really can’t think of any other word to describe Mitt Romney.
2. The Sandy Hook Shooting. Every year has devastating tragedies, and 2012 was no different. The Colorado theater shooting, Delhi bus gang rape, Eid mosque bombing, and an unpleasantly high number of other such incidents all struck chords with me this year, but for whatever reason, I’ve taken great interest in the discussion Sandy Hook has inspired so far (and will hopefully continue to inspire). In the past, the gun debate has been ridiculously black-and-white: we either need to remove all guns, or give every American (legal American, that is) the right to carry any sort of weapon anywhere at all times. After Sandy Hook, the debate has widened: what kinds of weapons? What kinds of ammo? What about the causes of the shooting? What about mental health? Should we have armed guards in schools? What deters/prevents violence? I’ve been reading as much as I can on all sides of the conversation, and I am a bit surprised to find that Michael Moore has written, by far, the best piece on the subject to date. I’m most curious to see if this whole incident inspires politicians to grow some balls and stand up to the NRA. Imagine that—politicians caring more about their constituents than about special interests! In the end, I hope that something, anything, is done—more resources for the mentally ill, less access to the most advanced killing machines, more protection for schools. No matter if you’re a liberal or conservative, I think we can all agree that we cannot allow these children to have died in vain.
1. Giants win the World Series. I’ve already expressed my love for my boys in Orange and Black here, but I think it’s worth noting that in a year that was otherwise pretty difficult for me, the one memory that stands out more than any of the others is walking down Mission Street in my Buster Posey jersey, high fiving every single person I saw, screaming at the top of my lungs, and being filled with a euphoria that I hadn’t felt for the longest time (bear in mind that I was not in country when the Giants won in 2010, so I missed out on that fun the first time around). I’m not the manliest guy out there (as you can tell for my lack of love for guns), but I pity anybody who refuses to have any sort of emotional connection to his or her local sports teams. As a sports fan, you subject yourself to a lot of heartbreak, but in times of victory, the payoff is absolutely worth it.
So there you have it kiddies. I was texting with a buddy of mine yesterday trying to think of a good quote to kick off 2013, and I initially suggested “may 2013 suck slightly less than 2012,” but he had a much more optimistic outlook on the new year that I will leave you with:
Hello ladies and gentleman, but not boys and girls (because this post is for the +18 crowd only), today we’re going to discuss a favorite topic of mine: sex. You know: doin’ it, makin’ whoopee, doin’ the horizontal hokey-pokey, makin’ love, the whole 9 yards. This post is totally going to be HAWT, as the kids say. In fact, if there’s a single Muppet clip that can sum up this post, it’s this one:
Okay, I lied. This post has nothing to do with sex. Come on now—this is a PG-rated blog, remember? The real purpose of this post is to introduce (drum roll please)…
J’S SECOND ANNUAL CHARITY CONTEST!!! WOOHOO! YEAH!
Yes, I intentionally used the lure of sex to try to get more hits for this entry, because I know that all of my friends are perverts (that’s likely why we’re friends in the first place). Also, I hoped to get views from some random folks who searched for “sex” on WordPress, because I’m fairly certain that that particular term is searched for a wee bit more than “charity.”
What is this charity contest, and what are its origins? I’m glad you asked. One year ago I was living in Japan, and I noticed that, pretty much during the entire month of November, the Internet was abuzz with all sorts of articles, ads, blog posts and other wastes of time related to Black Friday. Having never been one for consumption of earthly goods, this obsession/hysteria over retail boggles my mind. I mean, people literally kill each other for new 50” plasma TVs. Has this whole world gone crazy? (Answer: yes.)
Although I understand that the Black Friday concept is good for our economy, and, from what I understand, many Black Friday purchases turn into holiday gifts (and I’m a huge fan of gift-giving), I think that, as we engage in rampant consumerism, it’s important, nay, imperative, to recognize that a large sector of people could never dream of the luxuries we’re lining up hours in advance to buy and would be more than content with a roof over there heads and a hot meal. I’m not just talking about in third-world countries, or even the poorest parts of America—there are plenty of people in expensive San Francisco that are in the streets begging for change every day. And in my Jewish/self-righteous little worldview, I genuinely believe that those of us who are blessed to be able to afford all of these fun-yet-unnecessary toys have some sort of obligation to help the less fortunate.
I work in a big-ass law firm. It’s hard work, and I get paid more money than I know what to do with. Considering the hours, stress, and mental strain/agony I endure, I think my paycheck is appropriate. However, if we factor in the amount of benefit I confer upon society, then I am grossly overpaid. For whatever reason (Jewish guilt?), I feel the need to give something back. I make various donations throughout the year, but sometimes it’s hard to know where to donate. There are SO MANY freakin’ important causes out there, and so many different organizations established to get the money from us to them, so what’s a good Jewish mensch supposed to do?
That’s where you come in, fair reader. I’m looking for the best of the best in charities—the worthiest causes that give the most bang for my buck. So here’s the deal (in step-by-step form):
1. All y’all submit your favorite charities to me. Please submit via my email if you know it, or facebook private message, or, if you’re a complete stranger (and I LOVE involvement from complete strangers), you can send an email to sfloveaffair@gmail.com and I think I’ll get it. You may submit up to 3 charities. Submissions will be accepted through the end of Hanukkah (December 16).
2. I will research all charities submitted.
3. Sometime between my father’s birthday (December 21) and National Pickle Day (December 27), I will announce the winners. If you are a winner, I will make a donation to the charity you suggested in your honor.
4. No purchase necessary! You just name the charities, I’ll throw down the cash.
Tips for winning:
–I like helping out people who are close to the action. If you yourself work for a charitable organization, or if you have close friends or family members who do, please submit!
–In general, I prefer local charities to those world-wide—the fewer middlemen between me and the recipient of the money, the better.
–Although I will do some research on my own, I’m a little lazy, so if you include a descriptive blurb about your charity that explains what it does and why it’s good, I’m more likely to donate.
–Pick charities that are awesome! To give you an idea of what that means, here are last year’s winners:
5th place ($50): 850 Yoga (yoga classes for residents of California state prisons)
4th place ($100): Room to Read (literacy programs for girls in developing countries)
3rd place ($250): Friends of Sausal Creek (preservation of a large watershed area near Oakland)
2nd place ($500): A Better Chance (helping kids from poor areas in America to receive good educations)
Grand prize ($1000): Grow Dat Youth Farms (teaching kids in New Orleans sustainable farming)
One final note. I’m going to get preachy here (preaching to the perverted, uh huh huh), but I don’t give a hoot. To my friends who are lawyers, doctors, big swinging dicks on Wall Street, or otherwise fall into the “haves” category, I encourage, nay, beseech you to donate to some sort of charity this holiday season. There is no doubt that we worked our fucking asses off to get where we were and continue to do so, but at the same time, we are absolutely blessed to be where we are today and this is something we must recognize. For my friends in Biglaw, if you’re looking for a place to start, please consider making a donation to the Justice Gap Fund, which supports free civil legal services for the poor in California (or, if you’re not Californian, your state bar likely has a similar fund). Remember, not everybody can afford to pay $400 per hour to have you look at cat videos on the internet, then draft a piece of crap document that needs to be re-written by a partner for an additional $800.
Thank you all in advance for your submissions. Peace and love!