Voting? That's so Twentieth Century

As I write this, the United States is preparing for the next MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN HISTORY. This time, it's bigger and more importanter than that last one with what's-his-name... You know who I'm talking about. A week from today, the country will vote, and the stakes are high. If the Republicans remain in control of Congress, we will likely continue to spiral down into violence, environmental devastation and economic hardship. However, if compassionate, intelligent folks can "get out the vote" and put the Democrats in power... They'll probably thank them for the access to all those bribes and then proceed to do their part to bring human civilization to its ugly and brutal conclusion.

A common misconception about Karl Marx is that he hated capitalism and thought communism was the be all and end all to human society. The ratio of people who talk about Marx as if they've read him to those who have actually read him still stands at about 20 to 1. Marx praised capitalism as a necessary step forward in humanity's social progress. Who can seriously argue that capitalism is worse than pure iron fist despotism or feudalism? Marx was simply pointing out the inherent flaws and encouraging us to learn from our mistakes and evolve. Nowadays, he's just conservative talk radio's favorite effigy (excluding Bill Clinton, of course) when they're in the mood for burning something.

I didn't really set out to talk about Karl Marx, here. Bear with me. Here in Pennsylvania, we have a Senator named Rick Santorum. Rick Santorum is a crazy person. Aside from being the worst kind of religious nut (the kind in government), he is also a ranking republican senator and thus wields considerable influence. How could the democrats possibly take down a powerful member of the establishment like Rick Santorum?

There is only one feature a candidate can use to overcome such odds. Intelligent, progressive ideas? Nope. A critical approach to American government and society? Get serious. Good looks and a winning smile? Getting warmer.

Name Recognition.

Rick Santorum's opponent is a man named Bob Casey (Jr). Fellow Pennsylvanians will recall his father, Bob Casey, former governor of our humble commonwealth, and that's exactly what they're counting on. You see, Casey (Jr) is in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade. He supports the war in Iraq (albeit he is in favor of changing strategy, whatever that means). He is against legalizing same-sex marriage and even allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. Basically, in a week's time, we'll have to decide between one guy we know is a jerk and another guy who says he is, but hasn't proven it yet.

Democrats in Pennsylvania, particularly social progressives, have been sold out big time. The whole point of ousting Santorum would be to get rid of his ilk. Contrary to what these men may believe, there are some of us who feel that the government does not have the right to interfere with our personal lives.

Since I never trusted them to begin with, I don't feel like I've been kidnapped, raped and beaten and left in an alley with my kidney missing (politically), but that's how people should feel. I'm talking specifically about all the people two years ago waving "Kerry Edwards" signs with a rainbow pattern on them. The folks who thought that the democrats were the party that really wants social equality. Come on, man. As long as you're outnumbered by old people and hicks, they're not going to lift a finger to help.

Don't get me wrong. I'd rather the democrats win. As long as there is opposition in Washington (base, petty, partisan opposition being better than none at all) then we can avoid going too far down either road. Government works best when it's not working at all.

Marx was always hesitant to lay out a plan for the future. He disdained utopian thinking. He saw human civilization as always changing, evolving, learning from the mistakes of past systems and trying to do a better job next time. This kind of social dynamism is precisely what we could use right now. Like Marx, I don't know exactly what the future will look like, but I do know we could certainly use a clean slate right about now. When the two philosophical arms of the government are running the exact same candidate, something is very wrong.

There's nothing I'd like more than to see Rick Santorum filling out lobbying job applications after this election, but I'm afraid Casey's just not good enough for me. I proudly "threw my vote away" to Ralph Nader in 2004. I did this because he was the candidate I actually wanted to see in the white house. I won't vote for the lesser of two evils, especially in a case like this where the lesser is only slightly less evil.

I don't have a solution for this problem. Well, I do, but I don't want the government to make me disappear and water board me for the next ten years without charging me with anything (which they can do now!), so we'll leave those thoughts in my head where they belong.

The Art of the D10

Good crapper reading is important. One's time on the mighty porcelain throne is an opportunity to shut out the demands and frustrations of the world for a short time, a time to engage in some light pleasure reading and reflection. Some prefer magazines, others go with books that can be read in short bursts. But, while I'm dropping off the kids at the pool, there's no finer reading material than role-playing books. Sure, you laugh now, but the right gaming book is a well-written and impressively thought-out piece of literature.

Back in high school, my friends and I played a variety of tabletop role-playing games published by White-Wolf (most famous for their vampire game, which we didn't actually play). While similar, in form, to Dungeons and Dragons, I speak from experience when I say that they are quite different in practice.

I'm not speaking of White-Wolf exclusively. We also played a game called Blue Planet, a science fiction adventure set on a remote, ocean-covered planet called Poseidon (Biohazard Games). I've heard the Call of Cthulhu game is very interesting. The point is, there are others.

The difference between D&D and these other games, I think, is that they strike an excellent creative balance. The world of D&D is pretty formless. The players are provided with an endless array of tomes detailing unique character classes, monsters, and weapons. That's all well and good, since the Dungeon master is free to create a unique world, but they seem to end up even more formulaic than the more concrete worlds of the more structured games. All D&D games take place in an endless fantasy landscape dotted with towns surrounded by caves and ancient castles to explore. It's Tolkien as far as the eye can see in every direction.

White-Wolf's games take place in the World of Darkness, a world just like ours, but with their large cast of magical beings lurking in the shadows, in the forests, and manipulating world events from behind the scenes. Their most popular games, Werewolf, Vampire and Mage rely heavily on mythology and folklore from different cultures to empower the characters.

It's been years since I've played. I recently tried to get a game going among my friends in Pittsburgh. My efforts were met with either apathy or hostility. "[Crippled Vulture]," one of these prospective gamers told me, "we're too old for role-playing games." This brings me to my point.

"No, 'we' are not too old for them."

The image most folks have of the tabletop gamer is not an attractive one. Pimple-covered, thick-rimmed glasses wearing, physically and socially stunted youngsters sitting in a basement pretending to be Grog the Devastator. They cheer in triumph as Grog cleaves open the head of the Orc chieftain who, if not actually named after the captain of the football team, is at least a psychological stand-in.

It wouldn't be a stereotype if it didn't happen. To be fair, our early attempts at these games suffered from their own maturity problems as well. Fortunately, the White-Wolf games resist this sort of self-indulgent impediment to real creative entertainment. By setting up a world with just enough structure, providing the players with factions, rivalries, and overall themes which the players are encouraged to accept or discard, the games tend to stay focused enough to avoid the more childish possibilities. The "Dungeon Master" in White-Wolf games is referred to as the Storyteller. It's an important distinction. To be fair, the other group of kids in our high school who played once boasted to me that their vampires killed Martha Stewart by shoving a rocket launcher down her throat. We never played with them.

This level of attention paid to the setting is also what makes the books good reading in general. I haven't played in years, but I can still name all the werewolf tribes.

Wizards of the Coast, the publisher of D&D, has a new ad in magazines that shows a house with two or three dark rooms with players staring like zombies at computer screens, presumably playing an MMO. The living room, however, is well-lit and contains three guys laughing with tabletop RPG stuff on the table. I want to shake that marketing dude's hand.

Remove yourself from all the social stigmata associated with RPGs. How would you rather spend an evening with friends? Staring at the TV? I think not. It's a smarter, far more creative and engaging form of entertainment. Working together to tell a tale in a well- crafted fantasy world. What's so wrong with that?

Sadly, you can't force someone to play these games. A half-assed attempt is worse than abstaining entirely. I never give up hope that I'll play again. All my reading and planning on the john will pay off, because I've got hours and hours of gaming in my head and ready to go.

Until then, I wait and read and plan. And dream.

(grunt)

The Rite of Peace, also known as the handshake part

I stand up and walk to the podium, adjust the microphone, God's microphone. I clear my throat. Jesus is behind me, dying for our sins, and he's looking down at me. I want to turn around and say, "Hey Jesus, lay off, man!"

That's how it looks in my head. I haven't gone to church, save Christmas and Easter, in six years. This November, I will read from either the Old Testament or the New one (minus the gospels) at my grandparents' 50th anniversary mass. It will be the biggest sacrilege I've committed since I ate the wafer at Easter last year.

Losing one's faith is a Catholic rite of passage. It's not easy to suffer through sixteen years of obligation, obtuse rituals, and school on Sunday (!) and come out of it still believing in God. Looking back, I can pinpoint the exact moments that shook my faith. Like the time all the Sunday school students were issued envelopes and told that they had to donate to the church every Sunday. This would not have been so bad if I hadn't recently figured out that all the money donated to the church didn't actually go directly to the poor (an impression I must have picked up somewhere, but probably not in the real world). Or the fact that the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-forgiving God of mercy and love doesn't want to hear my fucking sob story for forgiveness unless I tell it to a priest in a weird little room.

I digress. There's still a pang of guilt when I commit these little blasphemies. Granted, this pang of guilt is far less uncomfortable than the awkward conversation with my grandparents when they find out their eldest grandson ain't a church-goer anymore. Sometimes you just got to eat that wafer.

There's a part of the Catholic mass (and maybe the other ones, too) where the parishioners turn and greet each other with a handshake and a "peace be with you." Sometimes if you catch someones eye but they're too far away for physical contact, a cool guy "what's up?" head tilt will suffice. This is called The Rite of Peace, and it's my earliest memory of church.

When you're a kid, the service as a whole is as esoteric as it is dull. "Blah blah blah sit. Blah blah blah stand. Blah blah blah kneel." All of a sudden, everyone turns around and addresses you. I still get a little tingling sensation before the rite of peace.

While having an argument with someone when I was young and my faith was faltering, I was told that the function of church, by which I mean the reason the church and most of one's peers find that a mere personal relationship with god does not suffice is that the church is there to serve as a community. It's a gathering point.

Which makes it even more of a political institution than it seems.

It's not like I have much right to complain, hypocrite that I am. I can bitch and whine about how problematic these things are, but when I eat that wafer next month, (and oh yes, I will eat it) I'll be just as big a fraud as any of them. That's the bitch about religion. You're messing around with world views. They're more than world views, it's a way of life and a comforting presence and a world view all rolled into one. The line between critical thought and flat-out insult is practically non-existent.

Peace be with you.

Fucking Hippies.

Some words were made to be married to each other. Like “fucking” and “hippie.” What is it about those two words that makes it so palatable to the ear to hear them linked together? Is it the phonetics of the words themselves? Or is it the meanings of the words especially modified as they sit adjacent to one another? Could either of those be extricated from the other, once the words are said? I’m not sure. Either way, fucking hippie just about seems to sum it up.

Fucking. Hippies.

What is fucking? Well, that could be answered in a number of ways and there are an innumerable amount of chain e-mails perpetually shooting their way around the internet about the very nature of the word. But I think it’s pretty clear that right here, in the hippie situation, we can equate the use of the word fucking to that of the word “goddamn.” Why not just say goddamn then? Well goddamn doesn’t really carry its own weight in the context of the hippie – to put it bluntly, goddamn doesn’t have enough goddamn in it to explain the goddamned goddamnness of those goddamn hippies. I mean, those fucking hippies.

Maybe kids growing up today won’t hold the word Fuck to higher standards the way recent generations have, coming from the prudish 50’s when saying “goddamn” was enough to get you suspended from school. But on the list of condemnations, fuck is clearly ranked higher then taking the lord’s name in vain or saying damn. So you’ve got to say Fucking hippies, rather than goddamn hippies.

Something about starting off with that fricative F rather than the gutteral G just brings the ferocity and wholeheartedness of the statement to a head. Fucking hippies!

Unfortunately the phrase also summons some images to mind that are of a most unsavory nature. After all, who really wants to conjure up the thought of two grizzly, greasy, grimy hippies going at it like a pair of crazed baboons while bluegrass blares from a tinny radio at the front of their filthy van, the scent of patchouli mixing with marijuana fumes in the air in a desperate attempt to suppress the far more powerful forces of two weeks worth of unshowered body odor?

Which reminds me to remind you that the term “dirty hippie” is absolutely acceptable as a replacement for “fucking hippie” but only if the context is such that emphasizing how dirty the hippies in questions are really is necessary. Otherwise, please use the blanket term “fucking hippies” and just assume that everyone already knows how dirty hippies are as a basic rule. And even though I extolled the frictative F at the beginning of Fucking as a modifier for hippies, please do not replace “dirty” hippies with “filthy” hippies unless they are truly stained in their own filth, which can sometimes be the case when dealing with this most fascinating race of American gypsy.

What is it about the hippie that commands such quick dismissal, such a quick rise in the anger spectrum from not modifying the word hippie at all to straight up Fucking it? Fucking hippies! Maybe if they weren’t so dirty. Maybe if they didn’t make a mess everywhere they went – and yeah, I agree that a lot about how society is run and the corporations, MAN, but you know, it doesn’t mean you have to live like swine. Have you ever been in a venue after a jamband show and seen the carnage left behind by a crowd of fucking hippies? It’s unbelievable the amount of refuse that goes hand in hand with peace and love. Maybe if hippies didn’t try to push their trip on everyone else, and if they realized they’re sometimes guilty of being just as closed-minded as the “systems” they “revolt” against by, ya know, rolling around in the mud outside the Spectrum in Philadelphia after a Widespread Panic show tripping balls on 8 grams of mushrooms and two hits of acid having a conversation with the mystical goddess Kali, naked and flailing, then maybe, MAYBE they wouldn’t be such Fucking Hippies.

Forumlaic Primetime Fantasy-Drama Syndrome

On September 20, CBS aired the first episode of Jericho, the tale of a small town in Kansas cut off from civilization following a nuclear attack on the United States. I won't lie to you, I'll watch just about anything post-apocalyptic. What struck me the most about the show is its very strict adherence to a formula that other new fiction TV shows follow.

It started with Lost. Although HBO and other cable channels had been successfully fielding fiction television, the networks were mired in an endless parade of recycled reality programming. I watched very little TV during this era, but I'm pretty sure I once caught five minutes of a show where people cleaned each other's houses. That does not count as entertainment in my book. Lost was, to say the least, wildly successful. It held a viewer's attention by slowly unraveling the mystery of the island while making each episode relevant and somewhat self-contained through the flashback format.

The people rejoiced. I did, at least. Fiction television had returned. As a bona fide Trekkie, and Babylon 5-ie, I was willing to overlook some of the show's shortcomings and just bask in the knowledge that my television was going to show me something besides that reality TV world of confessionals, alliances, backstabbing, and weeping… oh the weeping. Lost hit the airwaves in 2004. The following year, ABC aired Invasion and NBC came up with Surface. These shows not only sucked, but didn't have the decency to try to be original. The guiding strategy of the reality era hadn't left with their shows' popularity, "Hey that worked, let's make twenty more shows just like that!" The shows were not renewed for second seasons.

Like Invasion and Surface, Jericho appears to have a severe case of what I'm going to call Formulaic Primetime Fantasy-Drama Syndrome, or FPFDS. Yes, they're addictive. And, yes, they're a refreshing change from reality television, but we can't encourage them. I'm a fan of this trend of sci-fi and fantasy TV shows, but if it's stagnating already, that's not a good sign.

The problem isn't Jericho, it isn't even Surface. The problem is that TV is, at its heart, all about money. An inventive show is less likely to be picked up than a show that has a strong proven demographic already attached to it. This is not new information, particularly for anyone who has ever been a fan of a TV show of the FOX network.

If the past few years is any indicator, the audiences of these types of shows are a little harder to fool than others. LOST has its problems, but still manages to be interesting. Whereas the first round of copycat shows was scrapped after a season. My concern is for that idea that never got to have a pilot. There may have been a really creative show in the works that didn't make it because Jericho tested better.

These things usually work themselves out. It's not all bad news, either. While LOST may be getting stale, the new season of Battlestar Galactica has begun, and NBC's Heroes is showing a lot of promise. In the end, Jericho is going to show us something new or get canned. It's a shame. I actually like the premise. I like it less when I can predict almost every line of dialogue.

Fun With Recylced TV

Now you, too can get in on that sweet advertizing cash. Just follow these simple steps to create your own Primetime Fantasy-Drama.

1. Start with a series of interconnected characters.
A group of people connected in ways they may not even understand are brought together in a random fashion. Rich people, poor people, even people of different skin colors. Not too many ugly people, though. One or two at most, you know, for comic relief or something.

2. Put the characters in danger, isolated, paranoid, co-dependent.
This is what your show is all about. Something beyond their control or even their understanding has turned their world upside-down. They might not get along, but they have to work together. This is where your show-spanning rivalries will start. Hot-shot, no rules hero guy and dependable, "let's stick together, gang" hero guy will go at it immediately. If they seem to survive just by luck, that's fine. We'll come back to that later.

3. Let loose the amorphous antagonists.
Nothing's creepier than a crazy enemy you can't see or don't understand. These bad guys don't wear a uniform, they walk among the good characters of your fantasy-drama, gathering information and offering tantalizingly small bits of evidence to their true identity every few episodes. Your characters get even more paranoid. Don't forget the obligatory witch-hunt episode.

4. Slowly unravel the mystery.
Usually the obsession of one or a handful of characters, the mystery of their situation will be explored and enlightenment will be achieved, though usually at a high cost (Kill off your least likeable character, or the actor who's asking for a raise). Reveal things only in short bursts, and only during sweeps. Go ahead and try to explain away some of the weird stuff you did in earlier episodes. When in doubt, there's probably an internet group already deciphering the mystery and predicting the show's outcome. Steal their stuff.

5. Throw in some sex.
Not quite ready to reveal the next chunk of the mystery? Have two of your main characters totally do it. Fans of the show will watch anyway, but the writing is easier. Plus, it's even more interesting because you might actually be dealing with a "last man on earth" situation.

6. Don't forget the end of season paradigm shift.
Everything. You. Know. Is. Wrong. You have to end the season with enough information to blow their minds, but enough wiggle room for a new set of mysteries next season. Everything must change, but stay essentially the same, after all, new sets are expensive. And if it needs to be said, someone must die, and several other characters must almost die. Tune in next season to find out who bit it.

He made millions in the markets

and then settled down to be a cab driver. That should be in my obit. But no, not the markets. God, anything but the markets. (Shoo, spectre of my father, shoo!) I've got to get some dough rolling, so that once I've got a comfortable amount nested in some savings accounts accruing interest, I can do what I really want to do - shell out twenty five grand for a cabbie medallion and drive one o' them yellow late night puke-pods around the city. The New York City cabbie, what a historical figure he is, leaning out his window and weaving cursewords together into verbal rants as colorful as a Navajo tapestry, swerving through congested avenues and alleyways like Dale Earnhardt, Jr. on a hefty dose of acid, cat-calling Friday night lookers on a swing through the East Village. For much of America, New York City is no more than a collection of images stamped in their minds, and in the forefront among these are the darting yellow cabs that stream the length of Broadway. Oh, to be one of them.

And the best part of the cab experience? The radio. You see, it's October, and October means one thing - postseason baseball. October is one of the best months all in all, and baseball makes this true even moreso, giving us championship-caliber competition throughout the month as the earth tilts us away from the sun and the days get shorter and the nights grow brisker. All summer these finely tuned physical specimens are running batting catching and throwing under a hot sun and in the end it's for a shot at this, to give it their all in the last dying rays of summer as it passes on and autumn rises in its wake. Last night I was more than ready for the Yankees and the Detroit Tigers to take the stage for Game 2 of their division series, but lightning struck and rain fell and it was pushed back and now here I am surrounded by my 3-walled cubicle with no AM radio, two hours away from the first pitch. It aches to be away from baseball in October.

Now if I were a cabbie, I'd do nothing but live breathe and talk baseball, and rightfully so - this is New York, and New York is a baseball town. You can say what you want about the Knicks the Giants and the Jets but the Mets and Yankees own controlling stakes in this operation. Ever talk baseball with a cabbie? They've got time to really soak it all in, they listen to the games on their AM tuner and they spend their days soaking up talk radio. To the outside observer, talk radio is a harsh kind of music; male bravado pumps out of the speakers, voices overlap as they yell a mixture of superlatives and expletives, and all in all nothing really gets said. Sports spectatorship is a mix of statistical analysis and oratory, and the most interesting voices (deadspin.com, anyone?) are the ones who can put it all into a historical context that backs up whatever opinion they might have.

The cabbie, with this windowed office on wheels, is often the most refreshing of all sports commentators. Get in a cab, bring up the Yankees or the Mets, and your Italian-accented driver will talk your ear off from midtown to downtown. He'll tell you about his younger days, when his dad walked up to Yankee stadium and everyone at security knew him and they'd walk right in and sit in a box near the Yankee dugout. He'd tell you about watching Mantle hit, Maris get booed, Billy Martin get fired, and Mattingly make a legend out of himself. He'd tell you about how it was and how it is, and he'd tell you how it's gonna be. He'd make traffic worthwhile.

You don't get these sorts often these days. The face of the New York cabbie has changed. Getting into a cab is these days an unpredictable process, but one constant is that your driver will usually be on a hands-free cell-phone conversing with friends and family members halfway around the globe. He will have on the radio, some trance music or 1010 WINS or BBC radio. But when you do find one that's ready to talk about the ballgame, it's worth it.

This tradition has to live on. That's why sometimes I see myself having made a ton of money and settled down to a life of shuttling businessfolk back and forth. Baseball needs to be talked about. Baseball is our greatest real fiction. It's a story told by its statistics, but it needs a voice to bring it to life. If only to be today out on the cold hard concrete, tearing rubber across town to get Mr. Big to his meeting or Mrs. Priss to her salon appointment, listening to Mike and the Mad Dog or who the hell ever talk about Matsui's stance or Jeter's ability to come through in the clutch. To be sitting in traffic with coffee in hand listening patiently to John Sterling describe the movement of a cut fastball as it nips the outside corner of the plate and A-Rod goes down on a called strike.

But you know, it isn't just the baseball that makes me want to be one of those grizzly automotive stewards, it's the moments they inevitably play a part in. Some cabbies are with you for such a short amount of time, and they know it, and they really leave their mark on you. There's a thousand stories to tell but one in particular stands out. It was around 9 P.M. on a weekday evening and Lucy and I, walking home, suddenly got caught in a windstorm. The way the breeze picked up into a full-forced wind was astonishing and sudden, and you could feel some sort of static electricity dancing around on the different currents of air that were whipping through Manhattan canyons playing pinball with stray bits of refuse. We hopped into a cab driven by a grey-haired gent wearing a red and black flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He looked like the type that'd be wearing shades during the daytime, with a cigarette lazily hanging out of his mouth as he waited in rush hour traffic.

But the streets were nearly empty at that time, and as he put his foot down on the gas once the red light we'd stopped him at turned green, he peeked over his shoulder and spoke to us like a peddler pushing a new kind of drug, a high more hardcore than heroin.

"You know, on nights like these, I just love to roll down all the windows and feel the wind coursing through the car. You can feel the electricity in the air."

More than just making conversation, it was an invitation, an invitation to join him on his trip, wherever it was he went on nights like this, and we silently agreed and I don't know how it happened but the windows went down and the classical music on the radio got louder and it all converged into one otherworldly cruise down an otherwise ordinary 9th Street. It was the kind of ride that made you wonder whether you'd rather get to where you're going, or just keep the meter running until you couldn't afford to go any further.