The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished - it is no longer secure in its instincts.
Notes from Bushwick
*
All the zombie crawl bullshit is ongoing this month just as it does every October. The most popular of these go on in Manhattan, where dozens of creative class sorts - particularly those associated with the b-movie scenes, undead-related or otherwise - all assemble at such venues as the Beauty Bar in Union Square and then march around the area being zombies and getting drunk. A couple of friends of mine are deeply involved in this nonsense, and I've learned that, goofy or not, it's a hell of a pick-up scene; if you're looking to meet people who really enjoy getting drunk and having sex while dressed up as zombies, this event could very well be for you! That's for sure! IT SEEMS LIKE EVERYWHERE YOU GO THESE DAYS, PEOPLE ARE DRESSING UP AS ZOMBIES AND RUNNING AROUND PRETENDING TO BE ZOMBIES! LOVE 'EM OR LOATHE 'EM, THE ZOMBIES ARE HERE TO STAY!
Seriously, though, the chicks involved in this thing are extraordinarily attractive; simply remember that an unusually large percentage of them are also porn stars associated with Burning Angel and other such high-concept local outfits.
*
Surreal Estate, the collective housing/event venue over on Thames, is throwing what will probably end up being a pretty sweet Halloween party. Heaven on Hell starts around nine on the evening of the 31st and goes on till four in the morning; the ten dollar cover gets you six bands, a gaggle of DJs, and access to Surreal Estate's roof deck, which itself is among the most fun little spots in the area. Surreal Estate is probably the only outfit of which I'm aware that does event promotion while also setting their MySpace page to private. Presumably this has to do with its membership's various radical anarcho-feminist activities and whatnot. Or maybe they don't know that their MySpace set to private. Hey, guys, your MySpace page is set to private.
* The only e-mail I received in response to my request for people to let me help them promote their projects was the one from the folks at Surreal Estate. Either nobody reads this column or nobody in Bushwick is interested in promoting themselves except for me. Or both.
Tell me about your undertakings. I'll write about them here - and various production people and editors and other people with money and gigs available do read this blog, as I've learned - and if you're sufficiently awesome I'll even profile you for The Onion's NYC print edition. People will learn of your various things and I'll make a bunch of money. E-mail me here.
Notes from the Outside World
Has any political movement of consistency and relatively liberty-friendly orientation ever produced any good political humor? The answer is almost certainly no. We see nothing truly funny in service to fascism or communism, for instance. But we may find that communists and fascists have otherwise promoted their totalitarianism by way of great and glorious contributions to film, music, and the performing arts - which is to say that anti-individualistic political persuasions may produce fine works of aesthetics, but apparently not humor.
This may lead us to suspect that humor is not subject to whatever strings together the totalitarian-accessible arts. More importantly, we may determine that it is, at the very least, a troubling sign when a political movement seems incapable of producing any humor in service to its ideals or in opposition to its enemies.
Two years ago, movement conservatives were given a chance to try their hand at political satire of the Colbert/Stewart variety when Fox News picked up
The 1/2 Hour News Hour. They failed miserably, even to such an extent that other conservatives would not watch it. Meanwhile, P.J. O'Rourke, the conservative-oriented quasi-libertarian was once among the greatest political humorists in American history, is now in such decline that the only amusing thing about his recent output is
the extent to which he has lost all sense of self-awareness. O'Rourke has since been replaced as the right's best satirist by
National Review mainstay Mark Steyn, largely by default.
Earlier this month,
Donkey Cons co-author and
American Spectator contributor Robert Stacy McCain posted
a single-panel comic strip composed by a fellow conservative blogger named Steve Elmore; the cartoon takes an attempted jab at Little Green Footballs founder Charles Johnson for the fellow's allegedly psychotic efforts to expose McCain as a white supremacist. Johnson is depicted as crying and wearing a soiled diaper. Meanwhile, his allies-turned-detractors among the conservative punditry are shown as being disgusted by Johnson's terrible behavior; one notes that Johnson "just needs his diaper changed," while another asks, "Doesn't that big baby ever shut up?" This was deemed to be endlessly hilarious by several of the conservative blogosphere's more prominent commentators, a couple of whom posted it on their own blogs.
Last week I downloaded a copy of the cartoon, re-wrote the text with references to evidence of McCain's obvious racist activies, and sent copies to Johnson, McCain, and Elmore. McCain responded with a long, silly "open letter" to me in which he draws on some five or six over-the-top metaphors to illustrate how I've been persecuting him, Johnson chuckled a bit, and Elmore sent me a series of whiny e-mails to the effect that I'd "vandalized" his "art." Meanwhile, his co-blogger announced that I would soon face a massive "backlash" that would end my career as a "journalist" (she seems to think I'm a journalist); what this turned out to mean was that Elmore had just published our e-mail exchange on his blog. So I wrote
a big long article making fun of both of them and a few other people that I hadn't made fun of in a while for good measure, while also linking to the published e-mail exchange and posting another, even more hilarious correspondence I'd just had with the co-blogger. I also published my parody of Elmore's original cartoon, prompting the artist to demand that I take it down. I told him to talk to my lawyer if he thought he had a case - which, of course, he doesn't. Instead, he sent a whiny e-mail to my editor demanding that
he take it down; of course, the cartoon remains up. In conclusion, the conservative movement is fucked beyond belief and
Robert Stacy McCain is a white supremacist with extensive ties to a variety of neo-Nazi and pro-Confederacy organizations and leaders.
And speaking of parody, I'd been aware from second that
Björk was extraordinarily bizarre and whimsical and whatnot, but had always just assumed that the various satirical depictions of the Icelandic fairy queen were simply exaggerated in the manner that all satirical depictions are exaggerated for comedic effect. It turns out that she really is the wackiest person who has ever lived.