Articles filed under Culture
Unhappy Hours
A young woman goes to a bar, sits alone, and meets no one. That’s the gist of this non-story story (my favorite kind) in the New York Observer. It’s a little sad, in a way: Will anyone go talk to the young woman sitting at the bar by herself? But let’s think about this for a minute. Was there ever a time when a lonely bar-goer could reliably count on meeting someone nice and new? It’s always seemed to me that most bar meetings involve groups — a couple cadres of girls and guys out on the prowl, wingmen and wingwomen. Or, more likely, you show up to meet some friends and they’ve brought along a few folks from work. It’s the social networking concept, meeting friends of friends, for the pre-digital era (who even remembers such a time?).
The piece takes this digital-era anxiety into account, finishing by wondering out loud how we’ll survive in a future dominated by Craig’s List and internet dating:
Since the days of the singles bar, meeting people socially has gone virtual in the form of various Internet dating and networking sites. Increasingly, Craigslist has become the dirty little secret introducing young couples. One recent headline even asks point blank: Are you willing to lie about how we met? That’s not really news, but Craigslist is increasingly the destination for young people (and a few olds) to make new friends and meet new lovers. Perhaps Craigslist is more convenient than the days of singles bars, as it allows one to sift through various pictures, desires and hobbies until a match is made. And besides, many have found apartments and jobs through the site, so why not love or friendship?
Another friend recently moved to Seattle and admitted having to place a Craigslist ad to make new friends. Already in a relationship, and employed in a job with much older co-workers, she had no outlet for meeting new people in a new city.
With the still-unwritten laws of Internet dating, it can be tough to navigate making new friends. No longer in a setting like college, teeming with potential new friends, late-20-somethings are awkwardly emerging from long-term college relationships and wondering what the next step is. Where, exactly, do they find new people, and more importantly, where do they find new people with whom they’ll actually have something in common?
This is a legitimate concern, but again, I wonder: Was it ever truly common to move to a new city, know no one, show up at a bar by yourself and suddenly have a whole neighborhood full of new friends? If anything, I suspect web-based friend-making has fostered faster connection-making. The old wisdom, as I recall, said it should take two years to settle into a new city. Now, I think, a socially motivated person can easily expect to find a communal niche in a few months. There are still problems in small towns, and the extremely shy people of the world will no doubt continue to have difficulty. But the web seems to be a great aid in navigating the social connections of large and, increasingly, medium-sized urban areas. In the past, the problem has always been one of self-definition and selective association. Now it’s easy to fly your flag and look for others who show the same colors. The costs in time are lower, and even more importantly, the impersonal nature of the web reduces the fear of rejection. Everything’s up front, out in the open, making decision making simple. As with retail, friend-making has moved away from loud-mouthed lying and haggling and toward a modern, price-posted environment. What a bargain!
all's right with the world
And why is all right with the world? Because (along with my friend and colleague Brett Foster) I had lunch today at Hot Doug’s, the “Sausage Superstore and Encased Meat Emporium.” The best Chicago dogs in the world may be had there, along with a magnificent Polish, and a range of, um, “specials.” Here’s the one I chose today, or rather that Doug chose for me (I like to trust the chef): Whiskey-Fennel Smoked Pork Sausage with Peppery Dijonnaise, Double Cream Champignon Cheese and Sel Gris. Seven bucks. Worthy of Charlie Trotter, and yet somehow still a hot dog. It can’t be explained, you just have to experience it.
We went today because on Fridays and Saturdays you can get your french fries — made from fresh just-sliced potatoes — cooked in duck fat. Yeah, duck fat. “We’re gonna get an order of the duck fat fries,” I told Doug. “Of course you are,” he replied. They were spectacular, as always.
We arrived a little after 11, trying to beat the lunch rush, which we did: there were only 25 or 30 people in line. By the time we were done the line stretched way down the block. When people ask me what they should do in Chicago, I tell then that there are a lot of cool things in Chicago — Wrigley Field, the Art Institute, the Field Museum, Millennium Park — but the one thing they should not miss is Hot Doug’s.
Dignity, Always Dignity
Why is it I’m always a day late and a dollar short to these things? Everyone’s already voiced their opinion on this Steven Pinker piece decrying the concept of dignity as an important one in bioethics. But everyone’s opinion seems to be that Pinker was gratuitously rude and contemptuous. Which, I suppose, he was. But did he have a point?
I think he did. So consider this a “one cheer for Pinker even if he is being a jerk” post.
Read the full articleSports Quote of the Week
“I’ve been doing what Karl Malone did, running up the mountains.” —New York Knicks point guard, Stephon Marbury on preparing himself for Mike D’Antoni
Does this mean Marbury still owns a VHS player? How else could he watch these?
ethics by Pinker
Okay, the relevant documents are, first, Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President’s Council on Bioethics. Then, a response by Stephen Pinker. Then, critiques of Pinker by Yuval Levin and our mutual friend Ross. Got all that?
Though he never quite admits it, Pinker is perhaps today’s most passionate advocate of the idea that the sciences and humanities form two cultures and that, like Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, they are predestined to eternal enmity: one of them must destroy the other. And while, as Levin and Douthat point out, Pinker does get quite bizarrely exercised about religion — anyone unfamiliar with the dramatis personae of this whole affair would come away from Pinker’s essay convinced that Leon Kass is actually the Papal nuncio posted to Washington — it’s also literature, indeed any non-scientific use of language, that tends to confuse and frighten him.
Here’s an example. Pinker is exercised by the fact that Padre Kass and some of the the other monks and nuns of the Council think that human beings possess intrinsic dignity. Au contraire, says Pinker, finger held aloft, “Dignity can be harmful.” And why is that? Because “Every sashed and be-medaled despot reviewing his troops from a lofty platform seeks to command respect through ostentatious displays of dignity.” There you have it: Stephen Pinker actually thinks that the dignity assumed by tyrants is the same thing that Kass et al. are writing about. What a shock Pinker will receive when, someday, he opens a dictionary and discovers that some words have more than one meaning.
Or this: Pinker is deeply disturbed by Kass’s “disconcerting habit of treating fiction as fact.” Evidence: in his essay for the collection, Kass comments that the Greek gods lived “shallow and frivolous lives.” Obviously, the only possible explanation for such a comment is that Kass actually believes in the Greek gods! (This could be a problem when word gets back to the Vatican.) Then Pinker lands this haymaker: “Kass cites Brave New World five times in his Dignity essay.” There you have it: who would cite works of fiction as though they were potentially relevant to ethical reflection? Surely, only someone too dim to understand the difference between fiction and fact.
This is not the first time that literature has proved to be too much for Pinker. Ten years ago, in How the Mind Works, he worried mightily over the question of why human beings read stories. Hamlet for example — what’s up with that? Here’s the answer Pinker sweated out: “Fictional narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them. What are the options if I were to suspect that my uncle killed my father, took his position, and married my mother?”
To this Jerry Fodor gave the best possible response: “Good question. Or what if it turns out that, having just used the ring that I got by kidnapping a dwarf to pay off the giants who built me my new castle, I should discover that it is the very ring that I need in order to continue to be immortal and rule the world? It’s important to think out the options betimes, because a thing like that could happen to anyone and you can never have too much insurance.”
Pinker wants scientists, like himself, to be the social arbiters of morals. How’s he doing so far?
Who Nose?
Via the Vulture, the new N.E.R.D. song is completely ridiculous.
Naturally, I love it.
Not sure it’s got the oomph to be the song of the summer, but as far as awesomely weird beats go, I’m pretty sure it’s got the prize by default.
One Of These Things Is Exactly Like the Other
In my review of Speed Racer, I noted the eerie (but strangely compelling) resemblance of actor Roger Allam, who plays the film’s barking capitalist goon, to everyone’s favorite contrarian journalist, Chris Hitchens. But what I didn’t have was photographic evidence to back up my claim. Well, now Sonny’s got the proof.
Faith in the All-Encompassing Magical Love Bubble
What a friend is Michael to offer me the softest of landings from this week’s little blogging break: an invitation to carry on about Catholicism and Pantheism. What, indeed, could be more ‘katholikos’ than pantheism, and what better name for Neural Buddhism than European Buddhism (which is what Nietzsche called it when he beat David Brooks to the punch by writing the Genealogy of Morals)?
The first thing I should do is make plain that I highly credit and enjoy Michael’s own neural endowments, even though his fantasies about replacing thriving, quintessentially American holy rollers with feeble, quintessentially European monastic gurus really put the lotion in my basket. Personally I am appalled because I have to try to advance an argument against Neuro-European Buddhism that may be too boutique to rally around. But culturally speaking, advancing that argument seems important enough to try anyway.
Read the full articleThat'll Put the Lotion In The Basket
Do you remember The Silence of the Lambs? Perhaps you remember the line about “putting the lotion in the basket,” which inspired this highly unusual pop sensation. Urban Dictionary has a very amusing definition of “puts the lotion in the basket” as slang.
Used to describe events or objects that are extraordinary in some way. Derived from the film The Silence of the Lambs, in which the line, “It puts the lotion in the basket, or it gets the hose again” is uttered to a woman in an extraordinarily bad situation. Connotation is often but not necessarily negative, and always implied.
“What do you mean your wife is cheating on you? That puts the lotion in the basket.”
“Man, did you see how fast that car can go? That sucker really puts the lotion in the basket!”
“I spit in Brenda’s coffee. That’ll put the lotion in her basket.”
Pure genius.
A Good Price to Pay
Will Wilkinson recently returned from Turkey and he didn’t enjoy haggling. Will smartly writes:
I understand the price discrimination argument for haggling, especially in a country with a lot of poverty and tourism. But probably hundreds of my dollars stayed in my pocket because I didn’t have good information about the quality of products and I knew the retailer is better at bargaining over the surplus than I am, so… there was no transaction and no surplus. Sure, there is a lot of successful gouging going on, but add up millions of instances of “I know you’re going to screw me,” and I suspect that the average retailer is doing worse rather than better under the haggling system. And how about the average native consumer? In competitive posted-price markets, the system basically pre-haggles the price down to the point where the consumer gets most of the surplus. This is why Wal-Mart is a humanitarian triumph, and a shining symbol of civilization.
Well, I don’t quite agree with that last bit. I had the chance to go to Egypt last year and I really did enjoy haggling. In the Khan al-Khalili bazaar men would tug on my coat and give me a very practiced desperate look that seemed to say, “Just give me your money. I need it. I could take it if I felt like it.” It was exhausting. But it had its charms if you were willing to master it. Ask to sit down and discuss the price over some tea – that usually helps. As an American you aren’t getting the objects as cheaply as some natives, sure. But you really aren’t getting “screwed” either; this is the third world. Stay interested in the object and noncommittal about the price and it falls, and falls, and falls. Try that at Neiman Marcus.
Also, I think my friend Will is not counting the non-economic aspects of a haggling transaction. First there is the very real benefit of making economic transactions more social. Will may feel he’s getting squeezed, but local customers may be getting service and value. Sure, you agree to pay too much one time, then get a nice discount when everyone knows your money is tight. Sellers will get good and bad reputations locally. There are also the psychic pleasures of screwing over Americans – certainly worth losing a few bucks from the very few tourists like Will who are turning over the macro and micro economic consequences of haggling in their heads instead of getting into the spirit of things.
Will may identify Wal-Mart’s scanners, listless employees, and algorithmic pricing structures with civilization. My guess is that it is just one white man’s prejudice for a depersonalized economy. There are probably many Arabs, Turks, and others from haggling cultures that, if they thought about it, would consider computerized pricing a kind of atavism.
No Age
Phoebe Maltz has a piece on prof-crushes that I think raises some smart points about the social acceptability of relationships with large age gaps. Meanwhile, the Vulture has a snarky (of course) post on the increasing age of Ashton Kutcher’s co-leading ladies (not to mention his real-life flame, Demi Moore). Anyway, leading off of these pieces, here’s what I wonder: Is age difference going to remain as relevant an issue in relationships as it’s traditionally been? Because it seems to me that, as people live longer, as youth, adolescence, and young adulthood expand and blur together, the traditional age barriers between individuals might disappear. After all, we’ve already seen major shifts over the last few decades in the way age factors into relationship expectations. Go back and look at John Updike’s Rabbit books, for example, in which the characters are all married by their early twenties and deeply concerned by the idea that anyone — especially a woman — would remain single into his or her 30s. These cultural attitudes seem deeply ingrained and permanent during the times in which they’re in effect, but can quickly shift or disappear entirely.
HB-NO?
Cancel your HBO subscription? Well, maybe. Looks like Apple has cut a deal to sell HBO shows through iTunes — some at a higher price point ($2.99) than they typically sell episodes of TV series. Not all the network’s shows are available (Entourage is notably absent), and everything they are selling is old material. So now the question is whether or not the network will sell new shows as they air, or whether this will basically just replicate their DVD offerings. I’m not sure I’ll be up for Hung, but I could probably go for The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency.
bias
For the last few months I have been subscribing to the RSS feed of Overcoming Bias, the blog of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute. I find very appealing the idea of a group blog dedicated to isolating and (if possible) rooting out the habits of mind that cause us to misunderstand the world. But after much careful scrutiny I have discovered that the bias that needs to be overcome is always — always — bias exhibited by other people. Especially religious people and conservatives, and sometimes those who like poetry. I’d love to find a site where bloggers dedicated themselves to overcoming their own biases, but in the meantime: Delete.
Redbelt
As reviewed by a character in a David Mamet play.
This guy, this Mamet, he does his thing, and it’s his thing. Over and over again. Tough guys, fragile gals, a traitorous bitch. Maybe one you can love too, though that’s always suspect. That’s his world. It’s a franchise…like a McDonald’s. A Starbucks. His world. His thing. You walk in, you know, right there, where else could you be? Not bloody Burger King, that’s for sure.
This one’s about a fight, about business. Some guy, runs a dojo, a place to train. He’s a fighter. A teacher. That’s it, nothing else, he’s not some legendary… He’s got a past, barely…but that’s not…he just fights. Fuck business. Business is just another word for “Give me what I want.” The fight’s the thing. For this guy, for this movie. There’s honor in it. Guy like Mamet, he knows the word, he mulls it. Same with this guy, this fighter. He lives the fight. Don’t do, be. That’s it, that’s his thing. You know anything about the man, you know this.
Let’s talk about atmosphere, about tone. That’s his thing, his brand, his signature. Partly it’s the rhythms, right? Like…not a typewriter really… like the rhythm of a stare-down. It’s mano-a-mano. He makes movies, yeah, but they don’t feel like… they feel like another thing. High stakes. Poker, maybe. Everyone’s at the table’s wearing shades, probably carrying a knife. High stakes.
Then there’s the talk…that’s the meat of it… guy never lets someone finish a… When people speak…when people speak …what do they say? Men especially. It’s always men for this guy. Wearing suits, ties… wearing uniforms, engaged in business. You could say ugly business, but that’d be redundant. They don’t call it work because it’s easy. So it’s men, at work, talking work talk. It ain’t pretty.
Except it’s always… It’s always something else. Who’s ever straightforward anyway? You talk to people, to men, what do they say? They say what, how are you, nice weather, gee I’m tired. They say, did you get a haircut? Nice tie. You ever met somebody on an elevator and they tell you about their mother? The time they watched a friend die on the battlefield? No, he says, shit, it’s only Tuesday. There’s not much there. But at the same time, there’s a lot… you never really know. That’s his thing, Mamet’s, his signature… his franchise, always, in repetition. I… I could be saying anything to you. Anything at all, right now. This is work, it’s high stakes. You never know. Never. And if you do, well… what then? What then?
get your ridicule here
Random line from an otherwise quite interesting Eric Asimov article about wine: “People are unlikely to be ridiculed for buying $300 jeans that are washed, bleached and beaten over rocks instead of $60 jeans that will last a decade.” They are? I can introduce Mr. Asimov to people who would be quite eager to ridicule someone for buying $60 jeans instead of the fifteen-buck Wranglers readily available at Target or Wal-Mart. If they failed to ridicule someone for buying $300 jeans that would be because they don’t know that there are $300 jeans. I always enjoy these made-in-Manhattan moments when I’m reading the Times.
Why I Love Ariel Levy
Okay, one more post and I need to leave this infernal machine. I had to run a search for Ariel Levy, and I found an essay from yet another unfamiliar magazine, The Out Traveler, in which Levy describes her relationship with her best friend, and a trip they took together in Southeast Asia after Levy broke up with her first girlfriend.
Once, in college, we came back from a weekend away together and then stayed up all night talking and smoking cigarettes in Emma’s kitchen. Her roommate came out at one point and looked at us, baffled: “You still have more to say?” It remains like that with us. That’s the best thing to have on a trip through Laos — or life, I think: someone who sees the same thing when they look at the world, in all its sadness and magic.
It occurs to me that I’ve been very fortunate in this regard. I’m in Washington for the first weekend in a while because three good friends — who don’t know each other, interestingly — all converged. One of them is my best friend from high school and college (I was, I’m honored to say, his best man), another is a somewhat newer yet very close friend (we were introduced via another post-college friend, who I consider a co-conspirator and role model) who is Ariel Levy-like in her combination of smarts and toughness, and the third is someone I think of as a “brain friend.” Each time I’ve seen them over the past couple of days, I’ve found the conversations spiraling, going on much longer than I expected. The second friend introduced me to a foreign crony who happens to be a writer I’ve admired for ages, and we spent many hours talking about South Carolina, people we hate, and bosoms. It was very edifying. So I suppose I’m on a high, though I’m feeling a little tired.
Friendship is the organizing principle of my life, and I’m frankly a little nervous as my cohort ages, and finds other possibly profounder — yet invariably less fun — obligations and preoccupations. I have a few friends who are as important to me as Ariel’s comrade is to her, and, in somber moments, I think about (this is embarrassing) the short book I’d write for them in light of some grisly accident leading to untimely demise, a book I’d of course keep to myself. It’s a strange and somewhat dark way to think, I realize, and I suppose it says something about the way I mediate (overmediate?) my experiences.
Redbelt is My New Favorite Movie
Move over The Station Agent — Redbelt just blew my mind. Watch it as soon as you possibly can. Alice Braga. Rodrigo Santoro. Ricky Jay. Tim Allen. Joe Mantegna. Chiwetel Ejiofor deserves the accolades. Emily Mortimer is pitch-perfect. The fighting sequences are explosive. There is one moment when a man escapes a chokehold that is sublime. What an unforgettable, dynamite movie. Yes, Iron Man was really terrific. Redbelt comes from another, better planet. I happen to really like The Winslow Boy and most of the Mamet movie oeuvre, but this was less fussily mannered and more affecting in a lot of ways. I left the movie feeling energized, and half-serious about learning jiu-jitsu.
Hung Out to Dry
I’ll watch anything directed by Alexander Payne, and I suppose I can see the concept for HBO’s new series as a mid-season replacement sitcom, perhaps, or an August dumping-ground 90-minute comedy. But I have a hard time seeing how it will, ah, support a full-length season of television. Also: Must every new cable series now use as its premise some sort of violent, sexual, or scatological gimmickry? In under a decade, we’ve gone from The Sopranos to this?
