Category: ultrapersonal

The Filthiest of Heroes

I was raised on filth. More specifically, I have been an ardent fan of the John Waters aesthetic ever since I was an impressionable young high-school sophomore. I was hooked even before I finally got to see my first films of his, a double feature of Pink Flamingos and Polyester my senior year of high school. By that time I had read plenty of stuff by and about John, and I was truly devoted to him and his canonization of trash culture. Finally seeing all the movies only intensified things by a few levels.

My appreciation for John and his Dreamland players has never wavered, but finally going to see Divine Trash, steve Yeager’s documentary on John and his early career brought all that giddy enthusiasm right back. In particular, this was the first time I had ever gotten to see Waters regulars like Edith Massey, David Lochary, and Mary Vivian Pierce speak out of character. If you love John — and I know you do — try to find and watch this film. You’ll be grateful just for the chance to watch the woman from the Maryland Film Censor Board go apoplectic as she recalls Divine‘s infamous “rosary job” scene from Mondo Trasho.

The photo above was taken by Stephanie Hernstadt for The Finger. M. J. Loheed, Matt Patterson, Eddie schmidt © 1998.

OK, New Topic.

Spring is in the air. At least that’s one possible explanation for the rampant cruising I’ve been noticing on the streets of New York lately. Another possible explanation (and the more likely, I suspect) is that it was a really good idea for me to finally ditch the glasses look. Who can say? Maybe the boys checked me out before and I just never noticed because I had no peripheral vision, and was constantly wiping greasy dirt of my glasses. Maybe they just made me look dorkier than was optimal. Either way, I have had a real streak of self-esteem-building incidents lately, ones involving really cute guys giving me long, intentional, very frisky looks on the subways and the streets.

Not that this means I have the necessary social skills to take advantage of this new development. I’m getting better, though. Maybe I’ll work my way up to the next hurdle soon: meeting a guy who not only wants to get busy, but also wants to stick around for movies and adventures afterward. And is engaging enough to that I would encourage him to do so.

I’m not holding my breath. It’s easy enough to meet sexy guys and have sex with them, and easy enough to meet cool guys who are a lot of fun to hang out with, but the two factors come together a lot more rarely than I would think possible.

One More Topic

Right now I’m sitting in Cinema Classics, one of my favorite hangouts, waiting for a date, believe it or not. Unfortunately, the mix of the crowd right now has achieved a certain level of comically cliche urban hipness. There’s scruffy writer guy next to me, who’s madly scrawling away in his spiral notebook and reading rumpled activist flyers. There’s the group of crusty-punk bike messengers in the back ranting about human rights, the World Trade Organization, and (you knew it had to be coming) the many, many uses of hemp. There are three groups of Germans. Worst of all is the intellectually pretentious older guy on the couch, trying to impress his blind date with all sorts of masturbatory bragging about how he only goes to see movies at revival houses. When he’s not engaging thin, winsome strangers at coffee shops in discussions on the problems of the modern educational system. Of course, I’m not much better than any of them: I’m the guy tap-tap-tapping away on his laptop, working on one of his many fruitless personal projects. (Namely, my two web sites.)

Fresh Start

The big news, if I haven’t blabbed it to you yet, is that I finally quit my job. Woo hoo! No more two-hour commute (on a good day)! Back to doing freelance work in the comfort of my own home! Of course, whenever I quit a job, I always feel huge pangs of guilt. I didn’t hate the place or the work, just the grueling trip back and forth. Too bad it couldn’t have worked out another way. Oh well, at least I’m free to help out the glamorous world of public television for a few months again.

First Things First

A few months ago, when I was knee-deep in my “should I or shouldn’t I” grad school crisis, Adbusters and a few other magazines simultaneously published a reprint of First Things First, a manifesto first written by Ken Garland in 1964. First Things First was a call to designers to take responsibility for the role they played in society, and not just idly contribute to the propagation of reckless consumption. It asked designers to make a distinction between design as communication and design as persuasion, and side in favor of using their skills to improve our culture rather than drown it in a deeper sea of crap.

This made a big impact on me, since it was a clear, passionate articulation of problems I’d wrestled with for years as a designer. This was the reason I’d quit or turned down more than one job rather than produce second-rate crap just because it might sell. This was the reason that one of my professors at Pratt consistently made me furious in class for wasting our energy on a project geared toward producing modular, “sell-as-much-as-possible” crap. This was the reason that I’ve never considered working in advertising. This was also the reason I loved working for public television and teaching. I really believe in design’s ability to facilitate learning and understanding, in ways that are explicit as well as implicit. I love typography and design and photography and stuff, and I want to use them for good, not evil.

Naturally, this high-falutin’ approach regularly comes into conflict with my desire to earn a living. I once had to design a kids’ book that was little more than a perverse attempt to move product by cashing in on public-domain ideas. I still cringe when I think about the time I gave telephone software support to what is apparently a cult. It’s an ongoing battle, and one where I’m not always happy with the outcome, but I think it’s worth the effort to try and stick by the ethical approach.

Wired published a great article that hit me in the same way, even though it wasn’t about my field of expertise. Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us was an examination of where the future of robotics, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering might be taking us, and whether or not they posed more of a threat than an ultimate benefit. This wasn’t a reactionary warning from a Luddite; it was written by Bill Joy from Sun, and looked at both sides of the coin. But it made the same call to scientists and engineers that First Things First made to designers: Take responsibility for the things to which you contribute. He points out that Robert Oppenheimer and the scientists of the Manhattan Project learned this lesson later than they wished they had, and that some of today’s technologies pose even greater threats than the Bomb posed.

It wouldn’t be such a bad idea for everyone to ponder the ethics of their careers, now would it? Maybe that tickle in the back of your brain, that aspect of your job that you try not to think about, is something you should think about. Maybe it’s not such a grey area after all. Maybe it’s touch of conscience.

Whine and Boos

Lots of ups and downs this weekend, with the requisite amount of wacky stuff thrown in for good measure. since this is still a family show, I can’t share all the details, natch’. I will say, however, that the new contact-lens-empowered Sparky has reason to think that ditching the glasses wasn’t such a bad idea. If only that would help me land a foxy partner-in-crime instead of quick flings with Williamsburg hipsters or impossibly good-looking actor types. (seriously, it’s been a fun couple of weekends, in that regard.)

Aside from fleeting moments of self-esteem and carnal adventure, this last mopey week made for a pretty mopey weekend. I really want to find a different way to support myself, FAST. I want to be a designer again. selling out was good in concept, but taking the techie route was not the best way to do it. Ironically enough, my years of doing high-end tech work and becoming a print-design whiz are now making it hard for me to find lucrative work. I never wanted to do HTML code-monkey jobs for a living because they were too tedious, and there was always something more interesting to tackle. But now it seems like I have no relevant Web design experience. I guess hand-coding my own web site for four years, just for the fun of it, doesn’t count.

This weekend also had a few more of my musings about how much of a problem I might really have with depression. Am I just lazy, or is it normal to feel overwhelmed by things like returning phone calls or folding laundry or buying groceries? Who can say? The potential is certainly there — my family seems to be chock full of depressive types. Or maybe that’s just the Irish thing: it’s not really a tendency toward substance abuse and moodiness, just good-natured drinkin’ and being taciturn. I have my doubts. (In case you’ve never heard my explanation, that’s the condensed version — minus a lot of the racy details — of why I’m too afraid to start drinkin’ or smokin’.)

And I want to be free of debt so I can do something fun with the money I’m making in the meanwhile. And I want my tonsils removed. And I want to get my driver’s license. And I want a sweetie petunia to call my own. And I want to stop having hypoglycemic blackouts (see, I said it was a wacky weekend) every few years. Whine, whine, whine.

Thank goodness that despite the moping and the job panic, we finally finished Fragile. My classmates came over Saturday, and we finally assembled the other two copies of our 132-page, handbound, photocollage opus about the rituals of moving. It was nice to have a little reunion now that the semester is so far behind us. Fragile really turned out well, which makes me happy. since we tried to rethink the mechanics of how to go through a book, it could have been a freakin’ disaster. But instead, it rocks. Our professor had some professional photography done of the first copy, so pictures will be forthcoming.

The Mego Years

Made-Over Megos

None of these guys are in my collection anymore. This is a historical photo from the Rhatigan family archives.

It’s all about Mego, baby. As I’ve been putting more stuff up for my big auction on eBay, I realized that I should do a little research about some of the more obscure Mego items I had floating around.

Please tell me you know about the Mego superhero dolls. They were the cornerstone of my childhood, my favorite toys throughout elementary school. Being cursed with an overactive imagination, I refused to play with any of my toys as they characers they were sold as, so I made up all new characters for every onbe of them. What was great about the Mego dolls, aside from their excellent flexibility, was the fact that you could swap around all their costumes and accessories to form exciting new combinations.

Well, when I went hunting around for some background on the Mego dolls, I stumbled onto the motherlode of all Mego sites. I spent hours and hours poking around there, not just looking at the almost complete picture archive of all the dolls, but also checking out the incredible galleries of customized Mego dolls made to look like almost every other comic and sci-fi character around.

Another exciting, one much closer to my own Mego experience was SmallNet, a group of people who’ve transformed their Mego figures onto whole universes of their own characters. “You are big, but we are small!” The photo-documentary of the Rocket to the Roof mission was particularly fun. It produced many smiles here in the Rumpus Room.

Ol’ Blue Eyes

Peripheral vision kicks ass. I finally got contacts this week, and it’s a very startling change. Not only can I see clearly for the first time in months, but I have peripheral vision for the first time in about ten years. That first ride home on the subway was a bit of a sensory overload. Half the shock came from catching my reflection in the window of the train and seeing my face clearly. Yes, my eyes do have a color, a fact not many people notice when my eyes are obscured by glasses. so far, though, focusing on things in the foreground is a real bitch. I hope I get used to that soon.

Life has been pretty slow lately. A shocker, I know. I haven’t been in the best of moods or the best of health (my winter cold finally caught up with me), so I’ve been laying low. I’ve watched a bunch of movies, but I’m sure no one needs to hear more reviews of anything.

Excuses, Excuses

I know I’ve been delinquent with the updates lately, but my latest incarnation as a professional technical writer has been making it very hard for me to come home and type some more. Or at least type anything I have to think about first. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it to anyone, but for the last two months or so at work I’ve been editing, writing, and typesetting a manual for a pretty elaborate piece of software for publishing directories and yellow pages. It’s difficult, to say the least, when only part of the package has a GUI, and the GUI it has needs help. The rest of the system tends to skip the “G” and often dismiss the the comfort level of the “U”. so, at 230 pages and counting, I’m trying to minimize the chaos and actually explain what’s going on. Of course, I’m trying to learn the damn stuff at the same time, which keeps causing minor delays. Sigh…

So that’s starting to sap my energy, but at least it keeps me from griping too much about the latest round of unsuccessful attempts to capture the interest of interesting guys.

Valentine’s Dread

I have a ton of work to do and it’s late and I’m too mopey to do it. But, as with many things, there’s no choice.

2000 HUGS

Happy Fuckin’ Valentine’s Day. sentimental type or not, I hate this day. The pressure is too great, and the reminders to depressing. Screw Cupid, the diaper-wearing freak.

Teeny Tiny Town

It’s a big city, but also a tiny town. I haven’t felt coincidence closing in on me like this since I lived in Boston. It’s been quite a weekend for kookiness in that regard. At least one of those wacky coincidences was fortunate, but I’m gonna keep my mouth shut and my fingers crossed about that one. I believe in the “jinx effect.”

I figured I might find myself a little embarrassed after posting the “Cute Web Boys” list, but strangely enough it hit me from left field, rather than from the li’l cutie I expected to bring it on. I guess this is all part and parcel of being a big dork.

Not much going on, otherwise. Saw Scream 3, which was mostly OK. I had forgotten, though, how much I love Parker Posey. she is soooooooooo brilliant in her own kooky, scene-stealing way.

The new movie theaters in this town are starting to spiral out of control. They’re becoming so large and surreal and disorienting. We saw the movie at the new Loews “E Walk” megaplex in the “New” Times square. Talk about the fucking mall-ification of New York! This was like an indoor version of the Universal studios Theme Park or something. The scale is just big, like you’re an ant in someone’s house, not big and grand and breathtaking, like Grand Central Station. It’s really icky.