Beware Codependent Vampires

The other night a friend and I discussed whether the Twilight Series (books and movies) are harmful subject matter or innocuous entertainment. Without recapping the conversation, I'll just tell you that by the end I concluded Twilight does some harm to young readers/viewers.

(Full disclosure: I've read only sections of the first book (enough to taste what Stephanie Meyer is cooking) but I have not seen any of the movies and I don't plan to.)

By harmful subject matter I do not mean vampires. I'm cool with sexy undead blood suckers (and sexy undead bloodsuckers who have renounced sucking, such as young -- 107? -- Edward). What I am talking about is a story that, as Lucy Mangen from The Gaurdian puts it, is  "depressingy retrograde, deeply anti-feminist, borderline misogynistic...[and] drains its heroine of life and vitality as surely if a vampire had sunk its teeth into her and leaves her a bloodless cipher while the story happens around her."

What makes Twilight anti-feminist/mysogynistic? Falling in love is not anti-feminist, not even the kind of love that is all-consuming, I'll just die if I can't have him/her, blah, blah, blah. Neither is writing flat characters such as Bella Swan or Edward "The Teeth" Cullen, anti-feminist. However, what pushes flat characters and obsessive love over the line is when a female character is completely defined by her subservience to just about every other male character in the story. What life Bella does have is dedicated to thinking every minute about Edward, longing for Edward when he leaves her, tip-toeing around Edward lest he go-all-vampire on her ("I worried that it would provoke the strange anger that flared up whenever I slipped and revealed too clearly how obsessed I was"), leaving her family and friends for Edward. 

My friend asked, "What do you learn from Twilight? Men are horrible to you, treat you like you're stupid and abandon you and what? This means they really love you?"

On the other hand, Twilight offers plenty of virtues people like to think about when love is the topic: loyalty, monogamy, eternity, waiting to have sex after marriage, and devotion. Virtues that seem twisted and perverse in the context of Bella and Edwards utter codependence, but audiences and readers don't seem to care.

The question is my mind is whether young people obsessed with the Twilight story today will come away with unhealthy views of what relationships should be, and what they should do to get them and keep them. Some questions to consider: Is it okay to sacrifice your soul (as in what and who you are) for the other person? Is subservience at the cost of your own personality okay as long as its in the name of true love? Is the notion of true love healthy? 

Even if the answer to all of these questions are negative, I'll add that learning the difference between the love of stories and the love of real life is a necessary a part of each person's own life, journey, path etc, etc. What might be bothering me in the end is how ruthlessly this brand of relationship is being marketed. When the dollar signs starting flashing no one stops to think that maybe we ought to put a warning on the label: Product may induce unhealthy views of relationships and love. They certainly do it on violent video games. 

Am I missing the point? Is Twilight just a story or has it become something more?

The Worst Song of the Decade

With all this talk lately of best songs of all time, and best of the decade, I figured it was time to throw in a 'lil bit of hate. After looking at Billboard's Top One Hit Wonders of the Decade, I got to thinking. What's the worst song of the past ten years? A whole bunch of classics jump to mind, including "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt, "I Don't Wanna Be" by Gavin DeGraw, or even "Wanksta" by 50 Cent. But after giving it a little more thought, it became very clear what the worst, most abominable song of the 2000's was.



"One Step Closer," by nu metal band Linkin Park is more than just a terrible song. It's a catastrophe.

If Limp Bizkit's success in the late nineties showed America that metal/rap fusion was on top, Linkin Park's 2000 smash hit "One Step Closer" said it was here to stay. With Limp Bizkit and Korn on top of the rock charts, every label suddenly realized they would need a nu metal act of their own (much like with the boy band craze), and Warner Brothers Records was no different. So they, in their infinite wisdom, crapped out Linkin Park, and the joke of a music video and single I've posted above. Interestingly enough, the video has pretty much everything a boy band video would-hot young twenty somethings, choreography (watch them bob their heads together!), and of course, little people.

But the crowning moment of the song doesn't come until the end, when any attempt at making music ceases, and LP front man Chester Bennington (who plays in a side project band called "Bucket of Weenies!") takes a big steaming dump on anyone who's ever taking a singing class by forsaking any kind of melody and screaming "shut up, shut up, shut up when I'm talking to you" repeatedly into the microphone. Call me crazy, but I get insulted enough in my everyday life, I don't need my music to do it too.

I remember the first time I ever heard this song. I watched the whole video, and laughed to myself, thinking, "who on earth would be dumb enough to every listen to this junk." I've never felt more out of touch.

30 Tiny Truths - 2

2. CAG347

Ari Levin's Lexus is the only license plate number I've ever memorized aside from my own.

I didn't have a car throughout high school - I actually didn't get my license until I was out in New Mexico, 18 and technically a freshman in college. But before then, I was the consistent passenger amongst my friends and Ari's car was my favorite ride. There were other good and memorable cars running the road in those days - Ami first had The Van, a giant steel tank that may or may not have been sold to be a cab in an african country after it was no longer in use here. Then The Rocket, a Volvo station wagon that began the long running tradition of Ami and I getting into a car saying 'let's bounce, homes.' And Jacob still has the Grand Marquis, Spoont. sticker attached and filled to the brim with stuff, a living remnant of those days.

But no other car was like CAG347.

The gold Lexus named Alexis with her leather seats, she was a home away from home for years.
Ari and I would take that car every weekend for the Friday Night Drive, a weekly tradition where we would visit our friends who couldn't leave the house for Shabbat - starting off with dinner at one, then the next, until we ended up at Cunningham's for a late night movie, me passing out in the passenger seat on the way home. We must have done this nearly every week for a year or more.

Or the 2am trips to Bistro Francais in Georgetown, when we once literally kidnapped Andrew Stiles from his doorstep and took him there for perfect French cuisine, him screaming the whole way there. Being followed by a police car on Christmas Eve one year, across three counties, through residential neighborhoods and a col de sac, just looking for a place to eat. Getting lost in Poolesville just to see where River Road went.

That car was my escape during endless fights with my parents - blasting The Offspring or the Chili Peppers with Miles and Ari as we sped from diner to diner - Silver, Broadway, Star - or nowhere in particular.

Ari was the driver of our group, going out of his way to pick up or take every one of us somewhere, another extension of his very selfless spirit. He never asked for gas money, never felt put upon, just drove around and did his friends a good turn. When his first senior jersey idea ('I have a room') was turned down, his actual jersey proudly displayed 'The Chauffer.'

I always said once I got a car I would pay it back and give as many rides as I could.
And so I do.
I love driving, and it's rare to find me in the passenger seat. But for Ari, for old times, I'll make an exception.

Ari lives in LA now, and the Lexus just recently died. He has a new car, one I won't have nearly the same relationship with, seeing it only once or twice a year.
But High School is best remembered in that car - late at night, windows open, singing with abandon.

30 Tiny Truths - 1

Tonight, along with fellow gents John and Adam, I got to see the Neo-Futurists perform their show Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind. The Neo-Futurists are a Chicago based Theater Collective of Writer/Actor/Directors with a goal of dynamic, irreproducable, interactive, and collaborative performances. Too Much Light is their most succesful and longest running show. Now in it's 20th year, it is an attempt to perform 30 original plays in one hour. A menu is given to the audience, with a title next to the numbers 1-30. A clothesline runs across the stage with those same numbers. Throughout the hour, audience members call out the numbers as the Neos act out each one of the plays, in a different order every night - their only connection being that all of them are in some way inspired by the lives of the performers, and that everything onstage is true. The results are alternately funny, moving, or audacious and completely original. Every night of this run, taking place at Woolly Mammoth, 1 to 6 plays will be replaced with new original work making no two shows the same.

This is a kind of theater I wish hadn't been created yet, so I could get in on the ground floor.

Inspired by the Neos and their focus on art from their own lives, and the truth, I'm going to be posting 30 Tiny Truths - one for each of the next 30 days. A small moment or anecdote of truth taken from somewhere in my life, translated and shared in blog form instead of theater.

I haven't told any of my fellow Gentlemen about this yet - if one or more of them want to tag in and tell a truth one day, they are more than welcome. And if not, I'll be writing all 30. Either way, you'll have 30 tiny truths in 30 days.

1. Places I Remember

My first kiss took place right here in the basement I live in now.
I was in tenth grade, she was a senior. Her name is Rachel, and she's now pregnant and engaged. We haven't spoken in several years - not out of any bad blood, just time. Her brother later became a close friend, a band mate, then an acquaintance - and now little more than a stranger.

We had been hanging out with people that night, friends who I found out later had been trying to leave us alone for hours, which I obliviously thwarted over and over again. We watched 'But I'm a Cheerleader,' which was and is a weird ass move, and the beginning of some crazy anime. Eventually the others went upstairs, ready to take her home. I asked her to wait, and kissed her in front of the brown armoir that's still out there now. She started laughing in the middle, reminded of a scene in the movie where a clueless jock tongues out the inside of his actually a lesbian girlfriend's mouth in exaggerated fashion.

It wasn't a perfect kiss.

But otherwise it was sweet. She was happy, I was happy, and we liked each other.

We used to drive around as a group at night, listening to Oldies 100, calling requesting songs, singing and screaming in Ari Levin's lexus. The DJ started to recognize us and called us 'The Frat.'
That night I dedicated a song to her - The Beatles' 'In My Life' - her graduation song - that she listened to in bed. I may still have the moment on a casette somewhere in my room, taped live off the radio just under a decade ago.

She left for Israel days later, and whatever brief feelings had started weren't able to survive the distance. We lost touch while she was gone and never really got back into it, though we used to run into each other more than we do now.

It's a pleasant memory, aside for the hysterical laughter - mainly the song - but one without any real feeling attached.

My first kiss is pregnant and engaged. Soon she'll have a husband and a child, a family. And outside of being happy for her in this distant sense, I feel like the acknowledment of that moment - a real end of childhood realization - should affect me in some, even tiny, way; and I'm surprised by how little it does.

These Gentlemen Contest: The Greatest Song Ever Written

I'd like to take a moment to direct everyone's attention back to this post.

Shortly after this was written, I came to These Gentlemen with an idea - a proposition, if you will. Just as The Heat outlined in "The Best Songs of All Time" Going off of the criteria he outlined, I put the question to my fellow Gentlemen; what would YOU qualify as the greatest songs ever written?

The answers were as varied as you might expect. Enjoying music is a purely subjective experience, but there are certain songs everyone can agree on as being exceptionally well, if not perfectly, executed by their creators. Elements of music quality, emotional content, and lyrics blend together in a unique way to form a truly unforgettable, timeless piece of art. While none of these may be particularly our favorite song, we have singled them out amongst our individual libraries as fulfilling these conditions, being as objective as we possibly could be in such a scenario.

So how does this concern you, the reader? I'll tell you how.

This will be the beginning of the first ever These Gentlemen Greatest Song Ever Written Contest. From our initial list of nearly 100 songs, we will hold a round of voting to narrow it down to a more manageable 32. Those 32 songs will then be entered into a 5-round, single-elimination tournament which you, the reader, will determine the winner of based on your write-in votes.

Before we get started, I'm going to post the list of what we'll be choosing from up here for everyone to see. Then, some time will be given for the Gentlemen to familiarize themselves with the songs they might not know. When that's done, we'll narrow down our list, and the tournament brackets will be announced. So start commenting now, you may just sway some opinions ahead of the vote.

Without further ado, the These Gentlemen list of candidates for Greatest Song Ever Written:

1) "#1" by Goldfrapp
2) "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Marvin Gaye
3) "Ain't No Sunshine" by Bill Withers
4) "A Milli" by Lil Wayne
5) "Another Travelin' Song" by Bright Eyes
6) "Apparitions" by The Matthew Good Band
7) "Baudelaire" by . . . and You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
8) "Beast of Burden" by The Rolling Stones
9) "Be Thankful For What You Got" by Massive Attack
10) "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson
11) "Bizarre Love Triangle" by New Order
12) "Blind" by Hercules and Love Affair
13) "Blueberry Hill" by Fats Domino
14) "Born in the U.S.A." by Bruce Springsteen
15) "Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G" by Johann Sebastian Bach
16) "Build Me Up, Buttercup" by The Foundations
17) "Canon in D Major" by Pachelbel
18) "Cannonball" by Damien Rice
19) "Carry On My Wayward Son" by Kansas
20) "Cassandra Gemini" by The Mars Volta
21) "Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy
22) "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd
23) "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" by The White Stripes
24) "District Sleeps Alone Tonight" by The Postal Service
25) "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by The Blue Oyster Cult
26) "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey
27) "El Scorcho" by Weezer
28) "Feel Good Revolution" by Bright Eyes
29) "Fireworks" by The Animal Collective
30) "Float On" by Modest Mouse
31) "Funky but Chic" by David Johansen
32) "Georgia On My Mind" by Ray Charles
33) "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys
34) "Gonna Fly Now" by Bill Conti
35) "Good Vibrations" by The Beach Boys
36) "Got to Get You Into My Life" by The Beatles
37) "Hallelujah" by Jeff Buckley
38) "Heart of Glass" by Blondie
39) "Heroine" by The Velvet Underground
40) "Holiday" by Weezer
41) "Home" by Marc Broussard
42) "Hurricane" by Bob Dylan
43) "Imagine" by John Lennon
44) "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz
45) "In My Life" by The Beatles
46) "I Only Have Eyes For You" by The Flamingos
47) "I Think We're Alone Now" by Tommy James and the Shondells
48) "I Want You Back" by The Jackson 5
49) "Juicy" by The Notorious B.I.G.
50) "Just a Girl" by No Doubt
51) "Killing Me Softly" by Roberta Flack
52) "Leaving on a Jet Plane" by John Denver
53) "Love Song" by The Cure
54) "Maiden Voyage" by Herbie Hancock
55) "Margaritaville" by Jimmy Buffett
56) "Marrakesh Express" by Crosby, Stills, and Nash
57) "Mas, Que Nada" by Jorge Ben
58) "Midnight Train to Georgia" by Gladys Knight
59) "Moondance" by Van Morrison
60) "Moon River" by Henry Mancini
61) "More Adventurous" by Rilo Kiley
62) "Music Sounds Better With You" by Stardust
63) "Nemo's Egg" by Thomas Newman
64) "Night and Day" by Cole Porter
65) "Over the Hills and Far Away" by Led Zeppelin
66) "Poison" by Bell Biv Devoe
67) "Renegade" by Styx
68) "Revolution" by The Beatles
69) "Roadrunner" by Jonathan Richman
70) "Samson" by Regina Spektor
71) "Shelter" by Ray Lamontagne
72) "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding
73) "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole
74) "Superstition" by Stevie Wonder
75) "Tangled Up In Blue" by Bob Dylan
76) "The City" by D Plan
77) "The Way I Feel Inside" by The Zombies
78) "Thirteen" by Big Star
79) "Ticket to Ride" by The Beatles
80) "Time is Tight" by Booker T and the MGs
81) "Trapeze Swinger" by Iron & Wine
82) "Under Pressure" by David Bowie & Queen
83) "Wake Up" by The Arcade Fire
84) "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham!
85) "Walk the Line" by Johnny Cash
86) "Waterloo Sunset" by The Kinks
87) "Wave" by Antonio Carlos Jobim
88) "What's Love Got to do With it" by Tina Turner
89) "Where it's At" by Beck
90) "Wherever I May Roam" by Metallica
91) "Whistling in the Dark" by They Might Be Giants
92) "Wonderwall" by Oasis
93) "Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who
94) "Worked Up So Sexual" by The Faint
95) "Wouldn't it be Nice" by The Beach Boys
96) "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon
97) "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC

97 songs have entered! Only 32 songs will leave! Keep reading to find out which of these will make into our first ever Greatest Song Ever Written Contest, and make your thoughts known now!

These Gentlemen's Guide to Shopping

Or 'Let me give you a tip- the retail edition'

Like several other Gentlemen, I have what I refer to as a 'fake job'. This is the job that provides me with an income, since my theoretical 'career' is in a creative field which isn't exactly lucrative. Essentially, I work in a clothing store so that I can do things like pay rent. It's certainly not a terrible job: the hours are flexible, I like the people I work with, and the discount is fantastic. Occasionally, however, the frustrations (i.e. customers) make it quite unpleasant. And so, like Ali did for restaurant patrons, I'd like to offer shoppers a simple guide to store etiquette.

On the sales floor: If you knock something onto the floor, pick it up. This is not a difficult concept. This is a concept a five-year-old can grasp. Literally. I was straightening clothes on the sales floor today and a little girl, after seeing me hang up a shirt, crawled under a rack of clothes to pick up a dress off the floor, and stood on her tip-toes to place it back on the rack. I don't think I have ever been so fond of a small child.

In the fitting room: Generally, in stores, clothes are placed on objects called 'hangers.' These are often made of wood, though they can also be plastic or (shudder) wire. In order to try on a garment, it is necessary to remove the item from its hanger. It is not necessary, however, to then discard the item to a pile in the corner of the fitting room. Instead, take a moment to return it to the hanger. Please. Bonus points if closures are zipped/buttoned/tied. While this is not a particularly time consuming act, when multiplied by every item tried on by every customer in the fitting room, it can quickly become a huge task. And a mess left in a fitting room means a longer line as that room must then be cleaned out before another customer can use it.

At the cash register: Hang up your cell phone. Personally, I really enjoy working at the cash register because it's fun to chat with customers. I like hearing about the sister who puts her dog up to the computer to videochat, or the husband from whom all of the purchases will need to be hidden. It's incredibly frustrating when the person across the counter ignores the fact that I am a human being deserving a certain amount of interaction. I'm not asking for undivided attention, but 'yes' is not an appropriate response to 'Would you like the receipt with you or in the bag?'

In general, I love the customers in my store. I am more than happy to go running upstairs, downstairs and back to the stockroom in order to find that sweater someone saw in the window two months ago. I will gladly help a customer decide which of the twelve dresses she's trying on looks the best on her, and I will carefully wrap a dozen full place settings for a customer who is traveling with them halfway across the country. I think my 'guidelines' are really just about showing common courtesy. If customers were to follow them it would create a much more pleasant shopping experience, largely because it would enable sales associates to help them directly instead of simply cleaning up in the wake of their shopping frenzy.

Let Us Discuss The Country Sad Ballad Man

One could argue all day about the effects of a band losing a member and whether what comes afterwards is really the same band (for example: the band currently calling themselves Alice in Chains, is not Alice in Chains), but I still gave Blur a shot when Graham Coxon left before their final album Think Tank. But what a tough album it was for me to warm to. I've come around to it, but it's one of the few albums in my life where I was stunned into silence after the first listen. Here was a band that were overflowing with ideas in their previous two albums, and now we had these rather more rudimentary and sometimes cloying songs.

But it wasn't until Graham left that I realized the brilliance of the third song on their self-titled album, "Country Sad Ballad Man." Yes it has a silly name and it's basically four British guys approximating country music, sort of, but it's one of best displays of guitar strangulation I've ever heard. After the tidal wave of sound in the song right before it on the album, "Song 2", "Ballad Man" opens with plinking guitar and bass, but after edging toward chaos in the last minute Coxon opened up a gaping sonic hole out of a charming little ditty. At one point he rips through a brief solo that's basically sans melody.

Here was a guy playing those lovely guitar leads for two of the more prim and proper of British rock albums, Parklife and the Great Escape, finally cutting lose properly. Coxon remains one of the most underrated guitarists of the last 20 years, and the proof is in this forgotten little tune that had the inauspicious position of being the next cut after the biggest hit the band ever had. (And for good measure, right after "Ballad Man" is the classic "M.O.R." another display of Coxon's guitar attack).