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EGR - Tommy can you hear me?
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Christopher Locke
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Jul 30, 2001 06:12 PDT
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Gonzo Marketing: Winning through Worst Practices
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0738204080/entropygradientr
be the first kid on your block!
http://www.gonzomarkets.com
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Valued Readers:
What can you say about a man who's trying to work out his salvation in
a goddam webzine? I'm fresh out of answers to that one. But I'm not
really trolling for theories, please -- even though I know I'll get an
earful for speculating out loud. It's my fate. I accept it. Think of
me as your straight man. Which works on several levels, actually, so
maybe I can claim some sort of literary finesse as a booby prize. And
maybe, further, that's the answer to the first question. You never
know. As Uncle Bob once said: "this is what salvation must be *like*
after a *while*..." I can still hear that Hibbing twang. I'm dating
myself anyway (he said, ambiguously), so why not? Here's to Woody and
Leadbelly and Joe Hill's long-haired preachers. Bake that into your
pie in the sky when you die.
It's a bourgeois town. I'm feeling a little Wobbly.
And there's the predictably non-sequiturial hook you've all been
waiting for, finally, because what I really want to know is who the
fuck is Tommy Bahama? Lately, I'm seeing this guy everywhere I go. I
hesitate to tell you that, because it says a lot about where I've been
going. Mostly malls. I live in Boulder, Colorado. What else is there?
Boulder is one big strip mall masquerading as a retirement community
for the terminally rich. Counter-culture types are imported to
populate the in-f'-ably multicultural downtown mall, where today I saw
yet another poster for, yeah you guessed it, Tommy Bahama.
In this poster, we see Tommy himself casually sprawled against a
lovely mahogany-and-cane loveseat with this gap-toothed brunette
Botticelli babe. Their eyes sparkle with an easy air of deep-seated
self-satisfaction. He's wearing one of his own 100% silk shirts. All
is well with the world, you feel, on seeing them simply *there* like
that. In the background is a large oil painting -- a Seurat it looks
to be almost, but probably isn't -- depicting a triple-masted sailing
ship at anchor in the harbor. Happy darky slaves are rowing out to
meet it. In the foreground, European aristocrats and their ladies
model the finest fashions of the day. The whole composition seems to
breathe: "We're modern. We're cool with colonialism. What's *your*
problem?"
Of course there's a website. Did you even need to ask?
http://tommybahama.com
"Tommy Bahama welcomes you to Paradise Nation, his Island home,
where life is one long weekend..."
That's funny. My life has been one long weekend all weekend. It
started out Friday night, as weekends will, when Laurie and I went out
to dinner. She came back to my place afterwards, and, in the interests
of propriety, I forget what happened. The next evening we drove way to
hell and gone past South Denver to a party at Roger Loeb's new place.
Roger, who 99.999% of you have no idea who I'm even talking about, was
looking good. I think he was wearing a Tommy Bahama shirt, in fact,
but this is not in any way to cast aspersions. Roger has a little of
the good life coming. He's earned it. Anyway, it was a great party.
The catering was top notch. The booze the best. I could tell, even
though I was drinking Canada Dry. And Rog was in rare form. He
introduced me as RageBoy, which seemed to confuse everyone, and Laurie
as the focus of a romantic obsession intimately known to "millions" --
somewhat overstating EGR's subscriber base. I was suffused with modest
pride. Laurie with a vague sense of embarrassment and unwarranted
exposure. I spent the rest of the evening looking for her.
As she seemed to have disappeared, I ended up having dinner with a
convivial group of folks I'd never met. They mentioned some very large
information system they were working on and I said to one of them,
"Let me guess. You're with IBM." Exactly right, as it turned out. "Let
me guess further," I said, feeling I was on a roll: "Dinosaur company.
Legacy systems. Big iron. Spaghetti code. Am I getting warm?"
This had the effect of everyone beginning to talk at once. A real ice-
breaker. Because, again, I'd nailed it. Everyone said no, of course
not. Everyone said how could you even think that? Except for one woman
who cupped her hand to her mouth and stage whispered: "Bingo!" Some of
you might suspect I'm not that good in social situations, but I do OK.
Later I watched the moon rise over Pike's Peak. I basked in the
zephyrs washing the ridge. I smoked Salem Lights and wondered about
the meaning of life and where Laurie had gotten off to. Oh, here she
was now, smiling, looking lovely. We had dessert, said goodbye to
Roger and drove back. This morning it was Sunday already. We had
coffee outside. She worked on the calligraffiti for the gonzomarkets
site: a deeper code. I read the inane ruminations of "four veterans of
the valley" in the NY Times.
Technology Pros Discuss What Comes After the Fall
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/29/technology/29ROUN.html
Here's a sample of the latest industry wisdom...
We are certainly seeing an overreaction to the damning of all
advertising and the value of all advertising on the Internet. We're
going through a particularly nasty little business of pop-up ads --
but are pop-up ads, being annoyed by them, any different from
"ring around the collar" in Wisk commercials? Annoying advertising
has its place in the pantheon of advertising. And, by the way, it
seems to work.
And on the subject of Napster:
Q. What do you tell 40 million kids who know how to turn a product
into data that they can trade freely?
A. You teach them some values.
Translation: We're cool with colonialism. What's *your* problem?
Laurie and I talked about art and voice. How can you talk about
something that comes out of a place that's unnamable? We talked about
science and logic, rationality and proof. She said it was a masculine
way of thinking. The feminine deals with things as they are, who
fucking cares if you can prove they're true? Within the code a deeper
code. Poetry, she said, suggestion, stories. That's why parables are
so important. Like Aesop's Fables, I suggested. But then someone comes
along and adds a lamer "moral" to each one. And that's what gets
codified. The nuances, the connotations -- everything you need stories
to convey -- get thrown out and replaced by the short form. "It's like
sex without foreplay," somebody said. I wish it had been me.
Possible t-shirt: Grampa Talked to a Burning Bush and All I Got Were
These Lousy Ten Commandments.
Laurie cut up peaches and bananas, mixed them with blueberries. I made
scrambled eggs, bacon, hash-browns, cheese grits. We ate. We washed
the dishes. Where is my voice, I wondered. I put on an episode of The
Sopranos. I watched the whole first season over a couple days last
week. Get a load of this Tony Soprano, I said. She doesn't watch a lot
of TV. I was looking for the episode where he delivers the best line
in the history of the medium: "Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us
to this." But I couldn't remember which tape it was on. The ducks flew
off. Tony was trying to get to the bottom of it all. Somewhere in
there, I fell asleep.
Later, taking her home, we talked about art again. I said it's not
just personal, I think. Not something I can do for myself. I said, I
know you haven't read that last EGR yet. She's been busy. Juggling too
many things. I said I wrote there: "Voice connects. It is a paradox: a
recognition and a cry for recognition." She said she was going to
steal that. Good. I felt better. In Gonzo Marketing, I said, I wrote:
"Human culture has always been the work of thieves, beginning with
Prometheus."
I dropped her off. We said goodbye. It was still just 2pm. Fire and
alphabets. One long weekend. What was I going to do with myself now?
When I got back to my place, I re-keyed Laurie's latest workshop
description and put it up on her site:
Absence and Presence
http://www.lauriedoctor.com/essence.html
The creation myths all begin with absence: no light. "And there was
darkness upon the face of the deep." In the fall, summer is gone
and light is passing. There is often a sense of something lost,
gone or distant. We feel the imminence of winter. Absence evokes
longing. It is the winter beckoning the blooming of spring. Longing
and darkness are the essential ground where seeds are sown, where
the beginnings of creation are stirring underground, unseen.
In spring green shoots and color emerge from total darkness. It is
a miracle of passion, manifestation of what has only been felt.
Absence and presence come from the same Latin root, esse, to be,
essence. The essence of the creative pattern is reflected in this
cyclical movement between absence, sending back, and presence,
sending forward.
In principle, this sounds exactly right. Light and dark in balance.
Day night, sun moon, man woman. Everything in its season. In practice,
however, absence sucks. "Loneliness is a drag," said Jimi, in somewhat
less poetic terms. Granted, he probably waited more than five minutes
before saying it. Patience is not my long suit. I couldn't wait for
spring so I went to Borders, where I spent the next three hours and a
hundred and thirty bucks.
I'll tell you first about the last thing I found. It wasn't connected
to what I was hunting for, but it looked too good to leave behind.
The Anatomy of Disgust
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674031555/entropygradientr
I went back for it, actually, thinking it might be about how a kind of
nausea forms the bottom-edge boundary of conceptual categories we'd
just as soon not think about. Something like that. There's only so
much you can tell by reading the cover. And I'm interested, in a
general sort of way, in category formation. Taxonomy as cognitive
taxidermy. Never mind. Forget I mentioned it.
But the first thing I saw that cheered me up was
Life: The Movie
How Entertainment Conquered Reality
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375706534/entropygradientr
Initially, I figured I could get some tips on that subtitle serving
suggestion. Then I realized it was probably just more dystopian hand-
wringing about how everything is going to hell in a handbasket and how
low culture is winning over high culture. Which is OK by me -- up to a
point. That point being anything made by Disney. But maybe I could use
it to at least *sound* as if I cared. Oh dear! The New York Times
says: "A thoughtful, in places chilling, account of the way
entertainment values have hollowed out American life." Chill me thrill
me fulfill me... creatures of the night! You know: Susan Sarandon,
Sissela Bok. Whatever. Things got a little obscure for me at this
point.
Next, changing sections, I popped this one into my consumables stash:
The Sociology of Religion
by Max Weber
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0807042056/entropygradientr
I can't resist anything by Mad Max. Wasn't there an iron cage in
Beyond Thunderdome? And anyway, what's love got to do with it? That
ought to keep you gratuitous-allusion junkies happy for a couple
minutes. I can feel another contest coming on.
Actually, I've been thinking about the importance of naivete. Did I
already say that last time? Wait a second, lemme check. No, I guess
not. Though I did write in the intro to the Bombast Transcripts (which
I understand will be out in January):
Have we not passed beyond the naive tropes of high modernism with
its art for art's sake. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the
world, as any psychoanalyst will tell you for a modest fee. And who
gives a rat's ass whether it was Tim Robbins or Tom Robbins or Tony
Robbins who had the big insight?
As NO ONE will get that one, the answer is (may I have the envelope?):
Cradle Will Rock (VHS, 1999)
Directed by Tim Robbins
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/6305810079/entropygradientr
...which is not a bad little movie, especially if you've just decided
to take a break from days of mind-numbing "research" on modernist
formalism (christ only knows why) and let a little entertainment
conquer whatever passes for your reality -- only to discover that, in
some other reality you have no control over, escape is impossible and
it's posthorns all the way down. Also, I understand that Tim Robbins
is married to Susan Sarandon, so there's even more evidence... of
something. Personal power. Unlimited power. Fierce invalids home from
hot climates. The new science of personal achievement. Sure, it's all
connected. Oh Brad, I'm frightened!
So yes, naivete is crucial. Without it we might feel too intimidated
to explore these matters in sufficient depth, wrongly believing that
such a study would require deep foreknowledge of the difference
between an iron cage and a Weber Kettle.
[suitable for framing]
http://www.weber.com/Public_Weber/homepage.asp
Next, for good measure, I decided I couldn't live without...
Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195110528/entropygradientr
...for the latest word in liminality. After all, Victor and Tina
couldn't both be wrong. Could they? But now I'm not so sure, after
reading the first page of...
A Magic Still Dwells:
Comparative Religion in the Postmodern Age
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520221052/entropygradientr
...as it appears that Eliade was all wet with that univeralis vitalis,
or whatever it was he was on about. A little dab'll do ya. Then again,
it seems to me that this whole postmodern shtick is way out of
control, having undermined itself with its own demand for historical,
gender, and whateverthefucking context to the point that no one can
agree on dick, never mind comparative religion. Talk about your moral
relativism. Just ask Aesop. And that's what got me going this morning
reading that dreck from those dunderheads at Intel and Novell. It's
all between the lines, you know. You can't let these media types get
away with telling you what to think.
Which I guess is why I opted to throw this one into the cart for good
measure:
Culture & Truth:
The Remaking of Social Analysis
by Tommy Bahama
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/080704623X/entropygradientr
The chapter on Imperialist Nostalgia looked fun. Plus the back cover
said something about "the unavoidability of subjectivity," which
piqued my curiosity. Is that a flamadiddle or an inverted paradiddle?
Maybe neither, what do I know? But I opened the book at random and
found this bit quoting somebody named Becker:
"In wayang [Javanese shadow theater], we might say that Gatsby,
Godzilla, Agamemnon, John Wayne and Charlie Chaplin -- or their
counterparts -- do appear in the same plot, and that is what causes
the excitement..."
Well, I should say so! What this immediately tells me is that I was
born into the wrong culture by mistake. However, as it's getting
pretty late over here, I suppose I should push on. I next picked up...
Shadows in the Sun:
Travels to Landscapes of Spirit and Desire
by Wade Davis
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0767904028/entropygradientr
...as I figured it was high time I got my head around some actual
STORIES about something REAL, like drug-crazed shamen and talking
jaguars, instead of all this theoretical bullshit. A little, you know,
unavoidable subjectivity for a change. And Wade Davis is cool -- the
guy who figured out the whole tetrodotoxin/zombification thing. Papa
Legba, come and open the gate. But that was David Byrne, wasn't it? I
just realized it's not the internet that's killing me. It's the
intertext. If you're still reading, give yourself an extra hundred
points.
Finally, I had to grab this and get the fuck out of there:
Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality
by Morris Berman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0791444422/entropygradientr
I really didn't want to buy this damn book, but it turned out I had
to. Whoever this Morris Berman guy is, he's pissing me off! First it
was this:
The Reenchantment of the World
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0801492254/entropygradientr
...which I originally bought when I was a practicing hippie about 300
years ago, figuring like, yeah man, what we need is some reenchantment
around here! I must not have dropped for a whole 12 hours. Then much
later -- last week I think it was -- come to find out that this whole
disenchantment/reenchantment gambit has some backdoor tie-in to the
Enlightenment, about which I know next to nothing. But remember: I'm
working on my naivete. Getting more comfortable with it. And I tell
myself I gotta check this dude out. Then, complicating matters, I come
across this little tome...
The Twilight of American Culture
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/039332169X/entropygradientr
...and find out Berman's an asshole. Did I tell you about this yet? I
don't think so. Let me check again. Huh. Doesn't look like it. But I
did take some notes...
Today is Wednesday. Yesterday, I bought a book by Morris Berman
called The Twilight of American Culture. Tuesday with Morrie, what
a blast. The cover totally sucks -- eight candles (why eight?) that
aren't even fired up. I guess this is supposed to play off the
twilight theme. At first, I thought it was Happy Birthday, Wanda
June. On page two, Berman mentions "some of the better national
magazines" -- and already there's a warning bell going off in my
head. Right away I figure he's not talking about the sorts of
periodicals I read, like Swank and Hustler and Modern Bride.
It seems this fellow thinks that, since everything's going to hell
in a hurry, those few of us who still value CULTURE (or something,
flamadiddle-rimshot, I didn't quite catch it), should move to the
boonies and form these monastic communes. Like the Irish who Saved
Civilization. You get the basic idea. Then he outlines the
qualities of the ideal inhabitant.
"He regards Starbucks as a sad plastic replica of the gritty (or
bohemian) cafe of bygone days." (p. 10)
Now hold the phone there, pal! Ripped as I am at the moment on
several fine quad espressos from that very establishment, I regard
the Starbucks product as a veritable gift of God -- a much needed
replacement for the gritty (or toxic) swill that used to pass for
"coffee" in these here twilit United States.
"The new monk is a sacred/secular humanist, dedicated not to
slogans or the fashionable patois of postmodernism, but to
Enlightenment values that lie at the heart of our civilization:
the disinterested pursuit of the truth, the cultivation of art,
the commitment to critical thinking, inter alia."
Note the use of "patois" and "inter alia." Here's a guy who
obviously never boned up on his Strunk and White. Sacre bleu! (I
got zat from reading zee Blackhawk comics. Pretty cool, eh, mon
ami?) We shall pass over in silence the many slogans this sentence
waves around, such as: "slogans," "humanist," "fashionable,"
"postmodernism," "values," "civilization," "disinterested,"
"truth," "art," and "critical thinking." What interested me was the
reference to the Enlightenment. Or, as Kant called it, das
Aufklärung. Stick that in your Weltanschauung, Wolfgang!
"If she is a high school teacher, she has her class reading the
Odyssey, despite the fact that half the teachers in the school
have assigned Danielle Steel." (p. 10)
A couple-three points on this. 1) Get a grip. Homer was the Stan
Lee of his day. Pre-Attic parents would be like "Patroclus, honey,
are you wasting your life on that 'wine-dark sea' crap again? Stop
following that blind faggot around! It's such a nice day, why don't
you go out and do something manly with the sheep?" 2) Half? Fact? I
rather doubt it. Sure, like the gym, shop and algebra teachers are
going to make their students read The Kiss. 3) It's so hip to hack
on Danielle Steel. Everybody does it. If someone said he was going
to jump off the Empire State building, I suppose Morris Berman
would jump off too. That's original.
Never having read any of her books, I decided to check out Ms.
Steel for myself -- and was surprised at what I discovered. Here
are some random samplings from her recent writings.
"She had had triplets through in vitro, after years of trying,
and decided that she wanted to stay home with them, to enjoy
it." (The House on Hope Street, p. 57)
Aside from the idiosyncratic punctuation, and a certain dangling je
ne sais quoi, this is shit-hot writing. I don't know what
everyone's complaining about. While I was a little confused at
first about what it was this character wanted to enjoy -- her home?
having triplets? artificial insemination? -- a second reading made
it perfectly plain what she meant. Why do these snotty
intellectuals have to make everything out to be so complicated?
"'I'm OK, Mom. I'm fine.' It was a dumb thing to say, but what
else could she say?" (The House on Hope Street, p. 66)
Note particularly the minimalist "say... say" reiteration.
Personally, I kind of like it when an author subtly shares the
thought process that went into creating a scene. But then, I would.
Excited by these first forays, I moved on to The Wedding.
"He loved kids. For him, it was what he had always wanted, a
wife, a family and a baby. 'That's quite something. And it's not
April Fool, I hope!' Allegra asked pointedly and Carmen
laughed." (p. 275)
For some such as myself, the placement of that exclamation point
might require three or four readings to get the point this passage
so pointedly points to. However, it's clear that most readers
aren't slowed down a whole lot by such grammatical trivialities.
And, as the paperback jackets make sure you grasp: "EVERYBODY READS
DANIELLE STEEL." To date, her 52 novels have sold something on the
order of 450 million copies. That's more than all the editions of
The Cluetrain Manifesto, Gonzo Marketing, and The Bombast
Transcripts combined!
Look, if the sun is about to set on American culture and it's all
on account of Starbucks and Danielle Steel, I think we could all
afford to relax. Don't you? I mean, come on. Can't we get worked up
about something a bit more serious? Like maybe the inherent
unfairness of death? I dunno. It'd take something heavier than
mediocre prose to get me to a nunnery. OK, a monastery then.
Well, I'm afraid that's all we have time for tonight. But do tune in
again next week for the further adventures of Tommy Bahama and the
Lectroids from Planet Ten by way of the 8th dimension.
One long weekend is right. Christ, I gotta quit doing this shit!
The Management
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