★★★★ One building stood awash in coral light in the slow-arriving morning. Low sun raked the edge of the schoolyard, scintillating in the little chains by which decorations dangled from the backpack of a child who was dangling from the middle third of the tall chain-link fence, unsure how to go up or down. The sidewalk junction of the sun-blinded cross street and the dark avenue was impossible to smoothly navigate. The holly bathed in full reflected light; light came in straight and bounced straight back from the mirrored apartment to the west and glanced down from the side of the Apple Store, sending shadows radiating in multiple directions. The sidewalks were wide and clear and it was tempting, on the way to get something to eat, to keep walking. People were wearing autumn gray. A bulky parking sign with a neon arrow creaked and visibly swung overhead. The clouds were now shredded, now smooth, dense gray and white or warming to ivory and gold and finally, framed in the gap between the last and the current apartment towers, glowing like backlit parchment.

The Lautman Variations

What Should I Be For Halloween?

Be an adult.

“I still haven’t figured out what to wear for Halloween. Any suggestions?” — Trick or Treat Tim

I love wearing costumes. I prefer to be the only one in costume. I used to fly on Christmas dressed as Santa and I have both an Easter Bunny costume and a Turkey one for Thanksgiving. But, I, too, am stumped about what to dress as this Halloween. This year we definitely need Halloween! I think we’ve earned it. Free candy makes everything better!

Adult costumes can be problematic. Sexy costumes are not very sexy. I would rather get busy with someone dressed as a normal bear than a sexy bear. And a regular librarian than a sexy librarian. Regular librarians are sexy enough for me. I don’t need much sexy.

Scary costumes are just annoying. Are you getting dressed up to scare kids on their holiday? The current creepy clown craze that’s sweeping the nation is super annoying. I’d be fine if they banned clowns from the earth. Clowns are all creepy. If you get caught trying to scare kids in a clown costume, they should make you serve your prison sentence dressed as a clown. Big shoes, red nose and bozo hair. That would be the end of that wacky craze.

I’m also not a big fan of Halloween costumes you have to guess at. Clever costumes, OK. But like “I’m dressed as the concept of irony?” Sure you are, Brooklynite.

Political costumes are out this year. I wore a Bush mask in Chelsea on Halloween during his presidency and some kid punched me right in the face. I guess me and President Bush deserved it. Trump, Obama or Clinton costumes are just not gonna get it done this year. What kind of candy would we give Hillary or Trump? We’re voting for you. Get your own damned candy.

My favorite thing about Halloween has become not dressing up. But walking down West Side Avenue here on the West Side of Jersey City and appreciating how all the kids are dressed up. Lots of Elsas, Spidermen and characters from video games I’d never heard of. And I get very excited when we actually get Trick or Treaters in my neighborhood! And also eating whatever candy is left over. We only got like 5 trick or treaters last year. There’s only a few houses in my neighborhood giving out candy every year. But the way kids light up when you’re giving out candy, that’s pretty awesome. Way better than getting drunk at some lame Halloween party.

So this year I’m thinking of being an adult on Halloween. Dressing like a dad. Wearing a polo and some dad jeans. It’s the costume people would least expect from me. What should you dress as? Someone who gives candy to kids.

“Who should I be cheering for in the World Series?” — Baseball Bob

Both teams are great and deserve to win the World Series. Both fan bases are terrific and have suffered for centuries. The Cleveland Indians came close against the then-Florida Marlins, only to lose in heartbreaking fashion in a classic Game 7. The Cubs haven’t been to the World Series since 1945. When most of the best baseball players were still serving in World War II.

These two teams have the longest current World Series droughts. It’s hard to cheer against either one. Their fans are great fans. These cities are great cities. I spent a week in Cleveland curled up into a ball for the Republican National Convention. I spent one night visiting a beautiful woman in Chicago like ten years ago. But what a night.

There are reasons to cheer against both teams. The Indians have a mascot that is alarming. Their nickname isn’t great either. But “Chief Wahoo” is a mascot that needs to find his way to the dustbin of history. And the Cleveland Cavaliers just won the NBA Championship. Winning a World Series would be like giving a Nobel Prize to me. We’d never hear the end of it. Cleveland would be the center of the sports universe. The Browns are perennially awful, but they are on track to get the #1 pick in the NFL Draft. Can Cleveland go from Believeland to Titletown in six short months?

Cubs fans, on the other hand, might be better off secretly wishing for the Cubs to lose. I remember after the Red Sox won their first World Series victory after 84 years. It was glorious. The Red Sox have won twice more since. But there is something a little less special about them now. Whether they win or lose is no longer life and death. I no longer hang on every pitch of every game. Without all the losing, the Red Sox are now just another pretty good team. The aura of mythology that swirled constantly around them was gone.

Would Cubs’ fans like the Cubs more if they actually won? Maybe. Their neighbors the White Sox broke a decades-long World Series drought of their own in 2005. Chicago is one of the best Sports towns in America. And a century of losing would have spelled the end of a franchise in almost any other American city. Ever heard of the St. Louis Browns? They’re the Baltimore Orioles now. Is it better to be a loveable loser? A team wins every year. Only the Cubs have never won this long.

You can’t lose cheering for either team. If the Cubs win, it will be amazing. When the Cubs lose it’s usually in spectacular, existential fashion. But Chief Wahoo must be admonished. The Cleveland Indians should not win until this offensive character is put out to pasture. And if the Cubs do win it may mean that the end of the world is nigh. Imagine that. Go Cubs!

Jim Behrle lives in Jersey City, NJ and works at a bookstore.

You Don’t Need To Come Up With A Solution To Say That There’s A Problem

Maybe we’re cynical because things are so terrible.

So that “Black Mirror” is pretty polarizing, huh? I haven’t seen the show myself and don’t have any plans to — I work on the fucking Internet, there’s no way to make it any scarier for me than it already is — but it has been amusing to watch people react, since it’s rare to find something about which there is so little indifference. People either adore it or, like New York’s Kathryn VanArendonk, have an aggressive dislike for it. VanArendonk has a problem with its pessimism and lack of nuance.

In part, that’s just the nature of cynicism, which notoriously punches holes in things without offering much in the way of solutions…. [T]he nature of Black Mirror’s vision of the future is that it can also feel like a cop-out. Its very simplicity — cell phones = bad! — is so misaligned with the much more complicated, multifaceted role technology plays in our world that we are almost let off the hook. We’re excused from the consequences of deep thoughtfulness about what role we give technology because Black Mirror already leapt to a conclusion. Social media is bad! I got it! It is bad! But it’s also here, in our politics and our commerce and our daily lives, doing horrible things and decent things and neutral things all at once.

Again, I haven’t seen the show, so I cannot address the specific criticisms, but I do want to take issue with the first part of the argument here, particularly because it is a line of thought I see expressed far too often these days whenever anyone makes the point that maybe the things that we are being told are all amazing benefits to humanity — and which we are supposed to be grateful to receive from the billionaires’ bounty— might not actually be all that worthwhile and could, just possibly, be detrimental to our well-being as individuals and to society at large.

If you can punch a hole in something then that thing is poorly constructed. That in itself offers a sort of solution, since it is saying, “You need to build this better.” But even if it were saying nothing of the sort, it would still be providing a valuable service, which is to show you that the narrative of constant progress (which is being pushed on you in hopes that you are so overwhelmed by its oppressive ubiquity and seeming inevitability that you stop questioning whether or not there is some sort of benefit in it beyond the financial one that goes to the powers invested in your acquiescence) is frequently a self-serving fraud. There is nothing wrong with pointing out the emptiness and falsity at the heart of almost everything we are told and sold. You are not obligated to offer a solution to every — or any — problem; that is the job of the people who are trying to force their product on you in the first place.

We live in an age where asking questions is discouraged. We are not supposed to be “haters,” because pessimism is uncool. Why would we go looking for “the real story” when “the real story” is so obviously brilliant, disruptive innovation? Why would we want to waste our energy on being anything other than positive?

Why is it so important that we all stay positive? So that everyone who is lying to us can plant their truths so deeply in the ground that by the time we realize we are being used it is too late to do anything about it, or even too late to notice. Once the narrative has been framed a certain way it is almost impossible to debate from any other standpoint: If you call out shoddy construction of a foundation you can stop the building from going up, but if you are arguing about an extension to the penthouse you are already accepting that the penthouse belongs there.

When we call something cynical we are attempting to discredit the validity of its criticism. Cynicism, with its assumption of self-interest as the main motivator of most human behavior, gets a bad rap, even though the history of the last 5000 years is almost without exception an extended essay on how if anything cynics are not skeptical enough about what makes people do what they do. Calling something cynical is a cheap way to shut down discussion: “Oh, you’re not going to come up with a solution? There must not be a problem then.”

There are a million people out there each day telling you how terrific everything is because of the way their product is changing the world. For every million there are, at most, a hundred saying, “Wait, this isn’t true,” but it’s hard to hear them over all the other voices shouting about how wonderful things are. Look around you: Do things really look wonderful? Do you feel like they’re getting better for us as individuals and as a society? Maybe we should stop and listen to the cynics. They might not be offering any answers but we are so far in the hole right now that it is nice to even be aware that there are questions.

Besides the fact that they’re not very good at it

The main reason is simple, I think, a very “American” reason. But first, a little history and then some other lesser reasons why you’re average American sports fan isn’t a fan of NHL hockey.

The Americans won the Gold Medal against the Soviets in the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics and then mostly dropped off the media’s radar until the “Miracle On Ice” at Lake Placid in 1980. The next year, Massachusetts high school player Bobby Carpenter became the first American ever drafted in the first round, picked third by the Washington Capitals. He then became the first American player to score 50 goals in a season in 1984–85. Because of his and the 1980 Olympics team’s successes, pro scouts turned some of their attention to northern midwest and northeastern U.S. high schools.

United States Hockey had become an actual Thing. But American sports fans did not flock to the pro rinks nor did they gather in large numbers around their TV sets to watch their local team. And they had their reasons.

“There’s too much fighting”

In the 1970s, in the pre-Wayne Gretzky era, this was a truth that even many diehard fans couldn’t disagree with. Led by the Philadelphia “Broad Street Bullies” Flyers, ugly, bench-clearing brawls were common. This goonery led to the anti-fighting movie “Slap Shot” and infamy for the Hanson Brothers.

But since then, several rule changes — extra penalty minutes for fight “instigators,” game misconduct penalties for the “3rd man in” and first man to come off the bench during fights — have greatly curbed brawling. The days of “I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out” are long gone, and the number of fights continues to decline markedly year after year. Your reason is no longer valid, I’m afraid.

Fighting is banned in European leagues and the Olympics. You throw a punch and you’re thrown out of the game. But it should probably not be banned from the NHL.

Odd Man Rush: You Got Five For Fighting?

“I can’t see/follow the puck”

This is a drawback of watching hockey. It’s a fast-moving game with few stoppages. The puck is only 1” x 3”. You cannot “passively” watch a hockey game, either live or on TV. HD technology has greatly improved the TV experience, but apparently not enough to bring in new fans.

In the ’90s, there was silly-talk of changing the color of the puck — desperate times. But then Fox Sports, one of the NHL’s U.S, broadcasters in the mid-1990s, did just that with FoxTrax. Uproarious laughter echoed through North America’s rinks, big and small.

Players did not like the new puck; they complained that it bounced more. Amazingly, this stupid tech trick lasted through two seasons despite a steady ratings decline.

“There’s not enough scoring”

I guess this is a valid complaint, considering the source. (This is also one of the main reasons Americans don’t like soccer.) But back in the late 1980s, during the dynasty of Wayne Gretzky’s Oilers, hockey was much more of a freewheeling game and there was a lot more scoring than there is now. Yet American sports fans still collectively said “meh.”

These days, in media discussions about improving scoring, there is talk of making the nets bigger (idiotic idea), goalie equipment smaller (OK idea), and the ice surface 10 feet wider to match international and Olympic dimensions (great idea).

Meanwhile Gary Bettman, a labor relations lawyer from fucking Queens and the worst commissioner in NHL history (sources: me and the internet) does nothing. I truly think that he — like most Americans — hates the sport.

“Their uniforms are too bulky, I can’t see their bodies”

A few women have complained about this to me over years. (Hey, it’s not my reason, don’t call me sexist.) “I can’t see their butts, their legs, their arms, anything!”

Yes, well, getting hit with a vulcanized rubber disc at 90–100 mph (or higher) opens big wounds and breaks bones even with all that padding. But, just to give you an idea of what some of the most athletic bodies in the world look like, here.

How’s the NHL doing now, ratings-wise? Look at the Stanley Cup finals numbers from the last ten years and look at the amazingly terrible consistency of those low numbers. (You take a look too, Bettman.) Reruns of Old Yeller would have scored better this year.

The numbers during September’s World Cup were even worse (cc: Bettman). Even the big USA–Canada matchup attracted fewer than one million Americans (766,000). And I think about half of that number was silent, glowing TV sets in Best Buys.

So really: why do Americans hate hockey, what is the main reason? I believe it’s simply because they’re not the best at it like they are at baseball and basketball (and “football”). The Canadians are of course far superior but, the USA isn’t even second best. Russia is still better and arguably Sweden is better. Little fucking-less-than-10-million-people Sweden! Fuck those ice-pussies!

What else besides wider rinks would help? A new commissioner who actually likes the game more than he likes the fucking owners would be a great step forward.

LAST WORD

I urge all sports fans who have never been to a pro hockey game to get tickets between the blue lines (preferably right on a blue line, so you can watch how hard a team works to get shots on goal) in the first five rows (if you can afford them) so they can witness how fast the game is, witness the skill these players have at passing, skating, checking, avoiding checks and shooting, all with no time to actually think of doing any of these things. It’s all instinct, reaction, muscle memory from doing that exact same move, thousands and thousands of times before.

Places I Puked When I Had Food Poisoning And Episodes of “Westworld,” Rated

A double listicle with a lot of commentary

Have you been watching “Westworld?” The new Michael Crichton HBO drama about cowboys and robots and corporate social responsibility? Lots of people have! I know this because Twitter and my friends who are generally up on things have told me so. Before getting food poisoning this past weekend, I’d tried to watch the pilot once at home and bailed about five minutes in. I could tell from the tone of the opening scenes that I was not this program’s target audience, and I am currently not in the business of forcing myself to pay attention to things that don’t make me feel engaged or happy or horny. “The pilot is pretty slow,” everyone said. “But then episode two? Hoo! I’m hooked!”

This is a popular defense of buzzy TV, and the rationale always eludes me — if a piece of entertainment programming is good, shouldn’t you not have to close your eyes and plug your nose and cram it down your gullet like a fish oil supplement? Shouldn’t it just…be appealing? Call me crazy, but TV is, traditionally speaking, an extremely digestible art form meant to be easy-to-follow because it needs to be broken up by the ads that pay for the show to run in the first place. HBO doesn’t run ads, so they’re in a more creatively lax position, but if you cannot convey to me in a sixty-minute pilot why your characters and premise are worth my time, I do not feel confident you’ll be able to do it over the course of a season.

It’s kind of like in school when someone thought their paper was gonna be bomb because it had the word “diaspora” in the thesis, but then you peer edited it and realized, “Oh, this person is a dunce.” That is what “Westworld” feels like to me. A sixteen-year-old who just learned the word “diaspora” and is resting on his laurels because of it.

Anyway, home sick with food poisoning and unable to leave my bed, I watched all four hour-long episodes of the show, and now the two conditions are inexorably bound in my psyche. “Westworld” = vomit. Vomit = “remember that show that asked, ‘What if Ex Machina, but cowboys?’” So without any further ado (I can hear the people clamoring for me to hurry up), here are the places I puked when I had food poisoning this weekend AND the currently-viewable episodes of HBO’s “Westworld,” rated:

Hotel sink
Ah, you never forget your first. My friend was in the bathroom taking a shower, and not wanting to interrupt, I opted to run to this decidedly-closer scum vessel. Had my morning Claritin been too much on an empty stomach? Who could say for sure. All I knew was this place had a garbage disposal and ample Dawn to clean up the crime scene after I’d finished. 5/5

Hotel toilet
I thought I was done after that sink business, but lo! There was still more puke left to puke. Luckily my buddy was out of the shower and I could cozy up on the floor next to old faithful for a no-fuss, flush-posi experience. 4.5/5

Highway McDonald’s parking lot
Maybe two hours into being on the road, I felt bold. Potentially healed, even. I took three small, shy sips from a water bottle, and it turned out to be three small, shy sips too many. Luckily the McDonald’s parking lot offered plenty of pavement for me to spew the water onto. And, when I was feeling more mobile, it boasted a lovely grass median for me to stand in with my hands on my hips while I waited to see if my body was done rejecting basic nutrients. 2/5

A plastic bag in the backseat of a Mini Cooper
This was a first for me, and I’d really love it to be a last if at all possible. At this point there was no more puke left to puke, so it was really just me drooling into a bag for a couple of minutes while everyone asked, “You okay back there?” It may be a long shot, but I’d love to never again have to say, “I am okay enough to answer your question, but not okay enough to not be puking.” 1/5

The pilot
“Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?” a scientist asks Dolores in an interview. Yes. Every day. She is a woman in the 1800s. Even if she isn’t cognitively aware that she is a robot, her life still blows. Suffrage is like a hundred years away for her; show some respect. 1/5

Episode Two, where we follow some guests into the park
The boss and the nerd programmer who loves facial expressions are having an affair! Fun! It is also cool that Dolores is some kind of purity litmus sheet against which we have to test every male character. If they are bad to Dolores, they are bad period. So far, Teddy: good. Tourist in white cowboy hat: good. Tourist in black cowboy hat: bad. Got it. 2/5

Episode Three, where resident hotboy Teddy gets a new backstory
Dolores now appears to be becoming woke and her programmer worries that she is becoming too woke, in fact, perhaps problematically woke. Damn. Must be stressful for him. It is cool that the gang of rogue randos in the desert can’t be killed by bullets because Who are they? Also what is Arnold’s deal? This ep felt a lot like “Lost.” 2.5/5

Episode Four, Maeve is getting woke
Honestly, Maeve the town prostitute is onto something with all of these flashbacks and visions. I’m rooting for her to solve “Westworld” before the rest of them do. Preferably in the next episode. 2/5

Does he remind you of anyone?

In a mall in southern China, in a tank near the arcade
A polar bear named Pizza staggers round and seems dismayed
He shakes his head, he paces and he sadly sniffs the air
No wonder people say he’s the world’s saddest polar bear
He stands there looking lonely under artificial lights
He’s trapped in that enclosure and it haunts his days and nights
His will to live is fading as he sits and spins his wheels
I saw it on the Internet: I know just how he feels

If you aren’t sad and blue you haven’t realized it’s only Tuesday yet.

Here’s another one from Many Voices Speak, who did that amazing version of “Blue Moon” from a couple weeks back. If you are feeling bleak today maybe give this one a miss, unless you want to feed the bleak, which I sometimes find is the only thing that helps. Enjoy.

★★★★★ Even with the blinds closed, the brightness could be sensed somewhere overhead on the long slow ascent from sleep. Ropes swayed, branches tossed. It was chilly enough to bundle up against, but not so chilly that the bundling didn’t work. Clouds crossed above the avenue like perpendicular traffic. The five-year-old resisted wearing his hoodie, but made sure to bring a sun visor. The turn onto the cross street brought a roaring blast of wind over the ears. Rays of sun came veering in from unexpected buildings. A tire scraped the curb with a phlegmy gargling sound. The precision or the imprecision of brickwork was obvious. Children spun around the playground in various orbits on on individual high-speed vectors. The five-year-old took the slide sidesaddle. Gradually, harmlessly, fingers grew colder. The light floated above everything like a layer of oil calming the waters.

A brief look at milk in popular culture

What is it about an adult taking a big swig of white cow liquid? Milk drinkers are weird and creepy because milk is a children’s beverage and its pure white color brings to mind words like “virgin,” “non-alcoholic,” “plain,” “wholesome,” “mother,” and “comfort.” (That last one is sort of confusing because pH-wise, milk is actually slightly acidic, but it doesn’t stop people from talking conflating milk with “milk of magnesia” as a stomach-settler.) There’s even an old Slavic word for milk-drinkers, Molokan, which refers to Christian sects whose traditions do not conform to Russian Orthodoxy — among other outsider behaviors, they ate dairy during fasts.

The most popular definition of a “milk drinker” in Urban Dictionary is:

An insult / derogative term deriving from the video game Skyrim, often used by City Guards to suggest a person is weak and / or young / inexperienced.

Possible explanations:
Young babies drink milk from their mother’s breasts.
and / or
Those who can’t handle mead or ale instead drink milk.
and / or
Milk in Skyrim will restore a Warrior’s resource for hard-hitting sword swings. Those who require Milk for this purpose would likely be lower-level, and inexperienced.

Don’t be such a milk drinker.

All that said, milk can be nice with cookies! I’m not anti-milk. Milk is a crucial ingredient in tons of baked goods and ice creams I enjoy making. Many adults enjoy a splash of it in their tea or a gallon of it, steamed, in their coffee. There’s just clearly some association with adult milk-and-milk-alone drinkers in popular media that signifies loudly, “THIS CHARACTER IS AN ODDBALL!!!” Videlicet:

Kalinda from “The Good Wife”

Liam McPoyle from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”:

Who could forget Anton Chigurh’s beverage of choice in No Country for Old Men?

Creepy Alex in creepy A Clockwork Orange at a creepy milk bar (notice “moloko” on the walls!!)

Hitchcock’s Suspicion and Spellbound both featured poisoned-milk situations (including the famous “glowing glass of milk” scene).

Sorry for reminding you about this scene from The Aviator—“come in with the milk”:

Michael from “The Office” drinks…just milk and sugar:

The reason we’re all here today: the Milk Drinkers in HBO’s “Westworld”…

Does it remind anyone else of the whitish substance the 3D printed “robots” are dipped in during the title sequence????

Or the Lady McDuff milk references in Sleep No More? The milk bath? The lone glass of milk? Milk of human kindness?

It’s such A Thing, they made an ad campaign about it in the UK

NEED I REMIND YOU THE NAME OF THAT MILK IS…. CRAVENDALE??!!!

This is just a very select selection of milks from popular consumer media. I’m sure there are many more I have forgotten, but you get the point: milk is weird and it means scary things are coming. Sorry about the whole “Got Milk” campaign—those guys had no idea what they were up against. But at least they tried. Cheers to you, you mustachioed creep.