2005-12-31 - 8:20 a.m.
Did you read that amusing news story about the 16 year old kid who, as a journalism class project, just up and flew to Baghdad, hoping to cover the war there? They have made such a kerfluffle about this I almost can’t believe it. I have been watching the endless coverage of the story on the TV – and you’d think that the kid ran amok with a chainsaw and butchered half a dozen teenage girls at the prom. I have almost never heard so much disapproval and clucking from the smug and pompous news media.
“What a dumb kid!” sneered one reporter. Intoned another, “He may have scored really high on the SATS, but you can see that means you can get good grades but not be that smart.”
I actually find the sneering and ridiculing of the kid to be decidedly offensive. What did the kid do wrong? He is an American citizen and for crying out loud he can fly to Iraq if he wants to. What’s the big deal? Yes, he could have gotten kidnapped, I suppose, if he walked down the wrong street. But that didn’t happen. He actually seemed to arrange the trip with an almost astonishing amount of ingenuity and cleverness. When he was turned back at one border, he actually flew to a third country, and took a flight into Baghdad that way. And then he somehow found just the right hotel which was used by international news medial.
It seems to me that the kid should have his own column and be hailed as being a brilliantly aggressive young reporter. Instead, I just have to vomit when I hear the overly coiffed, bimbo-like news anchors laughing and patronizingly smirking about the kid, as though he was someone who fell into a well and needed to be rescued. One of the few good things about being an American is that we get to go wherever we want, provided the country we’re going to will let us in. Don’t tell me that other 16 year olds aren’t flying into Iraq all the time. In fact, the kid WAS of Iraqi descent.
What’s the real issue here? I’ll tell you. The government doesn’t want us going where we want to go. And the news media, which likes to think it has an hegemony on information, doesn’t want freelancers telling the real story of what’s happening in the country. It’s disgusting. I have never heard so much smug, odious wickedness in all my born days. They’re just saying, “You just sit there in your living room and behave. Do not try to be an aggressive reporter. You just digest the pre-chewed press releases that we regurgitate from the government authorities. Behave! Obey! That is your order.”
Here’s the thing. I had this friend a few years back who wanted to make it big in the news media. So do you know what he did? He just flew out to Bosnia-Hercegovenia and presented himself at the local bureau offices of the New York Times. He just offered to be their local reporter. And do you know what the Times did? They just hired him on the spot.
Three weeks later, he was writing cover page articles for the Times. Mind you, they were slushy pieces about what the people who hang out at Bosnian coffeehouses thought about the war – and I have to tell you that the kid could not string three words together in a literate manner -- but the articles still made the front page. He did the same thing a few years later, flying into Iran. And then a few years later going to Sri Lanka. What’s the difference between what my pal did and what the “dumb kid” did? Very little. So when I hear all the lame moralizing and moaning, I just want to pull my hair.
Meanwhile, I must also admit that I wish to pull my hair because I am Hung Over. Really, it’s decidedly disgusting. And more dreadful, yet -- It’s almost ten at night! How can I have been hung over for twenty hours? That’s longer than the time I was drunk at Mickeys for sure. But it stands to reason: It seems to me that I have been pretty much on a two day bender – or on what passes for one as far as my usually milquetoast habits are concerned.
You see, in this odious week between Christmas and New Years, I have had very little to do, so I have squandered away my time pursuing the pleasures of the flesh. And, do you know – can I just say, pursuing pleasure is just the most fabulous thing to do! I can honestly say that there’s nothing better to do in one’s life. The pursuit of pleasure is just about the only perk life in this horrid world has. It is a good thing to luxuriate in sensation, whether it’s a yummy turkey meatloaf, a gigantic apple pie, or a huge, cum-spurting penis.
I mean, what can be wrong with dancing around and around, gin and tonic in one hand, a hot go go boy in the other? I’ll answer that question: Nothing. Nothing is wrong with it, except for the fact that you ultimately wake up the next morning to discover that your head is splitting and your stomach is aching, and somehow you accidentally spent sixty bucks on things that you have only a hazy memory of . Even so, I can’t precisely say that I am sorry: Money is for spending, and if I have it, it should be spent instantly.
It is disturbing, though, that the bartenders at Mickeys have started to recognize me when I come in. And, given that those gentlemen, all muscular and shirtless all the night long, see literally THOUSANDS of men in a given night – well, I am afraid that I must be making a sort of horrifying impression. I do not have any illusion that the genial bartender Keith, with the wraparound beard and pervy eyes, remembers me because I am so HOT. I must instead be perceived as a “character” and a “personality.” Oh how odious!
Back when I lived in Chicago, I used to hang out at what was the sleaziest, most loathsome gay bar in the entire city. Oh my lord – that place was rank. Disgusting and filthy, loaded with hot and cold cum-shooting trolls lurking in every corner. You would want to wear a plastic wrap as soon as you walked through the door, I tell you. Why did I hang out there? Well, I don’t really know. I had low self esteem back then, and a boy could always find someone to buy him a drink. And, more to the point, they used to play porn vids on a monitor over the bar. Back in the day, it was hard for a college kid to find porn. I remember that there was this regular, a hideous old troll, who would come waddling into the bar, his white curly locks a-flapping, and his lispy voice a warbling, and he’d be greeted by all and sundry as “the Duchess.”
“Ahhhh, The Duchess is here! How are you Duchess?” everyone would call out, laughing and howling. I was always creeped out by the whole notion, not only because the guy was OLD – he must have been 50! But also because of the idea of calling a grown man “duchess” just revolted me. What Hell would it be to be known as The Duchess? Kill me now, I’d say.
But my point is this: I have a feeling that the hot Mickeys bartender Keith looked at me and saw a “personality” like the way you’d refer to someone as The Duchess. How potentially horrifying! On Tuesday, for instance, Keith giggled as he served me my fourth drink, “Damn, I don’t think I have ever served you FOUR drinks before! Usually you only have three!”
I returned, “Hey – I’m going to get so drunk you’re going to have to have the security guards throw me out of here!”
Keith merely snorted with laughter, his ripped pecs rippling above his shimmering six pack-y belly. “You should be so lucky!”
If I were not me, I would be most appalled at my debaucherous behavior. But, really, it’s all good around now, you see. Why not play and have fun if one can? I admit that I feel a residual sort of guilt, given that I should be using the time for a more worthwhile pursuit, such as writing my own novel or searching for a fabulous and high paying gig. However, what is to be done in this week between Christmas and New Years? I might just as well as play.
Something has been bothering me slightly ever since I talked with Uncle Harvey Darlingstein a few days ago. I think I told you about the conversation, during which I tried to ask my astonishingly dull and squeaky voiced Uncle about my long lost half brothers, and he instead tried to tell me about how they served strawberries while on his last cruise to the Amazon. Well, at one point I mentioned that “Times are tough and I don’t know where the money is going to come from this next year.” To this, my esteemed Uncle Squeak replied, “Ohhhhhhh, thaaaat’s all right! You have LAWTS of MONEY don’t YOO? You’re RIIIICH! Yoooo know – yooo have that TRUUUUST FUND!”
I gaped at his squeaking, which resembled a cross between that idiotic chatter you hear on South Park and a barking hyena. “What on EARTH are you talking about?” I had to ask.
“Ohhh, don’t play COY,” Uncle Harvey squealed. “I’m taaawkin’ about all that Canadian Oooooil Money!”
I was outraged! And for a moment, my eyes almost crossed with sheer fury. A trust fund! I don’t think I have ever been so wrathful. Could it possibly be that my Uncle, my own disgusting flesh and blood, brother to my father, for all these years – and let’s say it must be at least 20 or 30 to be conservative – thought that I was living off the hump of some mythical trust fund from the oil company started by my… what is it, my maternal great grandmother’s second husband. Dear blog-a-licious blog, you must know that I have never seen a penny of any money from that side of the family. Barely a tuppance! That money was all stolen by the oldest daughter of my great grandmother, who cooked the books so that she inherited it all and passed it down to HER wing of the family. And, at the time, no one I suppose could blame her, for her brother, my grandfather, was an alcoholic who would have drunk away every penny he inherited.
But the upshot of it all is that my mother inherited but a pittance and me – well, on my 21st birthday my inheritance came to me in a letter from the family’s Canadian attorney. It was a check for a thousand bucks. Canadian. I think I spent it all on a slab of ribs in the summer of 86. There is no money! And yet, my stupidass Uncle labors under the misapprehension that I have a secret hoard of wealth that I selfishly have refused to share with my siblings. And this is clearly what he – and for all I know, they – have thought for years and years and years. It is odious! Lord knows, I tried to convince my ridiculous Uncle of the truth – but I do not think that he was talked into it. And that is how the conversation ended.
