The End of Time

This morning was the end of time. It was majestically overcast and gray. The sky was huge, and not at all claustrophobic or crowded, as overcast skies tend to be. The air was cool, but not cold. The sun didn’t have the energy to fight the crushing nihilism of the clouds. It wasn’t in the mood to work hard, and none of the rest of us were, either.

Fake Hipster Artist-Wanna-Be Degenerate Fucks

Nobody’s fucking anybody tonight. This place is terrible. It’s full of terrible people smelling terrible. The art is terrible. The beer is terrible. Everything sucks. The gallery is full of young, pretentious hipster assholes. I am the only man in here who can bench press more than his body weight. I guarantee it. I’m also the only guy in here that has likely ever made art that meant anything. There is nothing for me to learn here. These men are not men. They’re all growing beards and ironic facial hair to convince themselves that they are. Then they’ve adorned themselves in strange haircuts and ridiculous glasses to temper all that projected illusory masculinity and create a visual tone of irony. They’re all admiring the crappy, neato, comic-book-sketch-looking, safe-quasi-graffitti cartoon art that isn’t even framed. It has just been drawn on illustration board and tacked to the wall. It must be a rough life having that little self-respect and motivation. How do they have sufficient energy to feed themselves? Too much weed, not enough red meat. I can understand that these kids were raised on cartoons and videogames, and that’s why it’s reflected in their art. Fair enough. However, in the larger creative dialogue, I think it’s absolutely horrifying that that’s all my generation has to say: “I like video games and comic books.” That appears to be about the size of it. I can’t understand how they can feel that passionately about inane, time-wasting childrens’ games and pulp illustration. It’s proof that humanity is in decline and we’ll never cure cancer or AIDS. It’s even more ridiculous when they try to pass it off as “street art.” Whenever I hear that excuse, I want so badly for Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring to come back from the dead and beat these corny, white, straight suburbanites within an inch of their safe, stylish lives and educate them. Furthermore, I’ll bet none of these people read anything worthwhile. Likely they don’t read anything at all, except maybe comic books. Of course! God-fucking-knows it’s important to have images and illustrations handy to remove any of the creative responsibility from reader. On top of all that, the women here are generally sexless and uninviting. Fuck these people and their scene. I can appreciate what they’ve created for themselves here. I’m sure they were all misfits and outsiders growing up. Now they’ve got a place to belong, and that’s great. The only problem with that is the fact that they’ve simply created their own exclusive group with a specific set of codes and criteria that you must meet to be accepted. Being an outsider by nature I can identify, though I have no desire to belong to anything. I tend to be an outsider among outsiders. When too many people agree with me, I get nervous and uncomfortable. I like to judge people by my own criteria, based upon their content. None of these confused fuckers have anything valuable to say or contribute. They have no enduring sense of identity beyond having all gone to the same shitty, over-priced art school that taught them nothing, but reinforced the juvenile notions of art that they carried into it from high school, and created an incestuous clique for them to hide inside. Never send your child to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. A worse education isn’t available in the free world.

Too Cool to Care

It’s 2006 and all of American culture has been consumed by the postmodern cancer. Everybody is too hip to believe in anything. Even many religious people often won’t own up to their beliefs in conversation. I suspect they’re concerned about pissing off God(s), and just don’t want to pick a team officially. Nobody takes anything seriously, for fear of looking ridiculous or being wrong. Sincerity is a vulnerability and a liability, and we live in a culture of cowardice. Everything is rented, and ownership is seen as a form of insanity. We are a culture without permanence or honest conviction. Welcome to Wal-Mart. With no lasting interests, we’re all passively waiting for the next big thing to come by and blow our minds, tire of it, then move on. Recycle, then move on. Recycle, then move on. The strong-willed individual has died and given rise to shiftless disorganization and fashionable disinterest. Irony has consumed everything like rust. Art without conviction is a shameful and insincere thing. Good art should come from the gut and be inflexible. An artist must first be a fascist.

Raining In Toronto

I like Toronto. You can’t smoke indoors anywhere…but prostitution is legal. Canadian logic is amazing. My wife really wanted to watch me fuck a call girl, but we opted to hit a strip club instead, as I just wasn’t in the mood to gamble with diseases that night. Strip clubs are safer. They all appear to be free here. They’re pretty different than any that I’ve been to in the States. Free to get in, and you don’t tip the dancers unless you opt for one of the optional private dances. The alcohol is, of course, horrible and overpriced. I suppose that’s how they make their money. Regardless, it’s fun. My wife doesn’t enjoy it quite like I do, but she tolerates it well enough. She’s a good sport. Unfortunately, most of the strippers don’t know what to make of her. So she’s like stripper repellent. They normally just don’t approach us. So on that night we were content to watch from our table. The stage was wallpapered with mirrors. There was even a bank of them at a 45-degree angle between the back wall (mirrored) and the ceiling (also mirrored). There was quite literally nowhere for the strippers to stand on the stage that they weren’t exposed in one way or another. There was also a strange chin-up bar that I didn’t fully understand. I hadn’t once seen a girl do chin-ups or even swing on it. It must have just been there in good faith, in case they ever hired an ex-gymnast to dance there. We didn’t hang around long. One beer each and we watched a few half-hearted dancers. We left to get some coffee. It was raining, and my $12 umbrella was apparently made of black tissue paper and feeble old coat hangers. Whenever the wind picked up, it turned inside out like a sea cucumber. The only practical thing to do was embrace the cold wetness. Accept the things that you cannot change. Once at the donut place, the name of which I can’t recall, I was drinking my black coffee and eating a stale donut. While I did this, my wife dried off in the ladies' room. I sat right beside the door, because I’m stupid and was not wet or cold enough yet to realize that the rest of the place was empty. Warm, dry seats abounded, everywhere other than where I sat. However, my stupidity paid off, as I got a close up view of a girl pressing her ass through the door. She had a coffee in one hand, and a cell phone in the other, and tons of flat, boring shit pouring out of her mouth. Her ass, however, was round and full and wrapped in wet denim. Watching it change shape as she squeezed and turned her way through the glass doors was the sexiest thing I’d gawked at that night.

Awkward Americans

My wife and I love Toronto. It’s only five hours away, so we go there fairly frequently. It’s a fun little town with lots of cool things to do. One evening in Toronto, we decided to check out the Amsterdam Brewing Company. It’s a brew pub. We had a pretty good idea where it was, and struck off without much preparation. We got off the subway a little too soon and had to walk a little extra distance. The air was nice. Canadians are nice. The sky was beautiful. So we walked and loved it. Ever so slightly lost, we were only about one or two blocks off. We arrived with minimal trouble. They had outdoor seating in a sectioned-off area on the sidewalk. We stood and waited to be seated, assuming a hostess was coming. A beautiful young girl greeted us, and instructed us to sit wherever we liked. I said, “Oh, sorry. We’re not from around here.” She replied, “I could tell.” She smiled, betraying sincere amusement. I said, “You could tell we’re Americans?” She responded, “From down the street, before you even got here.” We laughed. It was a pretty wide open street, with minimal car or pedestrian traffic. No doubt she could see us approaching. I wondered how she could identify us as Americans from that far away, though. We weren’t wearing or waving an American flag. Our attire was pretty nondescript, and didn’t have anything intrinsically American printed on it, like a Slayer logo or American football team colors. We didn’t try to economically exploit anybody on our way down the street, or declare a pre-emptive war on anybody or anything. I was dumbfounded, not hurt or offended, just honestly baffled. I wanted so badly to ask her to explain what we had done that made us look so obvious from so great a distance. Not wanting to embarrass myself further, I decided to just get a beer and enjoy the evening.