WONDERING. WANDERING. WHATEVERING.
“Though I tend to think it’s usually a waste of space to devote a column to President Trump’s personality — what more is there to say about the character of this petty, hollow, squalid, overstuffed man? — sometimes the point bears stressing: We are led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House.”
— opinion columnist Bret Stephens
On hot days like this, of relentless and arrogant sunshine, when breezes are miserly and shade revels in its scarcity, I like to hole up and construct voodoo dolls of ole Mother Nature, pins at the ready. Even more, I like to do the same of climate deniers, using power drills instead of pins. Their heads are much thicker.
It’s a grim business, but so is the ever-changing weather, the cataclysmic climes of now. We’re all just one flood or wildfire from unthinkable calamity. To those who actually believe it’s an elaborate liberal hoax — for fucksake — I hope disaster strikes them first, because it will ineluctably strike, and soon. (Retribution?)
The heat is feral today, following a streak of enveloping fall-like weather occasioned by a mean Hurricane Erin pinwheeling up the Atlantic Coast, another portent of global warming. From the Times: “As the planet warms, scientists say that rapidly intensifying hurricanes are becoming ever more likely.” And: “Hurricane season could ramp up with storms supercharged by warmer ocean waters fueled by human-caused climate change.”
Awesome.
This isn’t a sermon or a call to action. By now we should know of the horrors ahead. Yet many don’t, willfully and aggressively, and their ignorance, flat-out stupidity, permeates the highest offices in the land. Planet-saving regulations are being excised with the slash of a pen, and a diabolical grin.
The brevity of this post is purposeful. Preaching to the choir is redundant. And name-calling is for presidents. It’s a squib of personal reportage, this, describing my fabulous arts and crafts.
Notice how I’m making a fat, scowling, orange voodoo doll. Pins not required. I’ll just light it on fire and flush the ashes down the toilet. There’s your wildfire and hurricane in one fell swoop.
One of the cats died recently. He was kind of the rotten cat, the one that shreds up the carpet, craps where he feels like it and was extra aloof, like an Aviator-wearing rock star who hates giving autographs. Anyway, we’re saddened and miss the ornery fellow. I’m not sure what to do with his ashes: urn them nicely or chuck them over the fence at the squirrels.
I don’t trust social media as far as I can spit. If I had a girlfriend, I’d ask her, quite nicely of course, to get off that shit.
Voyeurism is the opiate of the masses, not religion. Think about that for about four seconds.
Just guess who I think embodies all of these descriptives: racist, greedy, venal, petty, megalomaniacal, misogynistic, heartless, rankly sophomoric, vulgarian scum. Bingo.
I’ve planned a trip to Mexico City for November, but I’m so traveled-out right now, the whole thing sounds terrible. Five months is far off, so I should be refreshed by then. Thing is, the weather runs in the mid-70s to 80 in November and I’m barely any good over 70. I hate the heat; I’m a San Francisco wuss. I read that t-shirts and shorts are frowned upon in Mexico City, and I’m not a fan of them either. It sounds like when I was in sweltering India and everyone was swaddled in jeans and long sleeves. I wore jeans with t-shirts and I sweated like swine. Drenched. Two showers a day. I don’t want any of that crap. Maybe I’ll push the trip to December. Or January. Or never.
What I’m reading: “Demon Copperhead,” Barbara Kingsolver’s gritty, funny, unsparing ode to Dickens’ “David Copperfield.” The novel won a Pulitzer last year and rollicks with knockabout wit and wisdom and with more than a dash of social commentary about the sorry state of many of our states (opioids, poverty, detox). The damn thing’s a cinder block so it’s taking me forever to plow through, but it’s worth it. The title character, a teenage boy, both tart and talented, is one for the ages. He’s like a super smart Pig-Pen from “Peanuts”: brilliant but with a cloud of flies and dust buzzing around him. It’s his lot. But he’s one wily fighter, a scrappy, red-headed hero (hence “Copperhead”) in a bedraggled, Dickensian wasteland.
The cat died; the dog thrives. Cubby the wonder mutt needs a bath and a haircut and those crunchy, coagulated eye boogers extracted, but otherwise the aging fella is in fine fettle. OK, he’s been doing the occasional “revenge pee” in the dining room, meaning when he feels abandoned he’ll whizz on the rug when no one’s around. Stealth urine is as bad as any urine, but it’s worse, because you know the scruffy rascal’s doing it with a puckish glint in his eye.
“In recent decades, young men have regressed educationally, emotionally and culturally. Among women matriculating at four-year public colleges, about half will graduate four years later; for men the rate is under 40 percent. This disparity surely translates to a drop-off in the number of novels young men read, as they descend deeper into video games and pornography. Young men who still exhibit curiosity about the world too often seek intellectual stimulation through figures of the ‘manosphere’ such as Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan.” — David J. Morris
The last time I was in Hong Kong it was the early aughts, swamp-butt sweltering in May and as crowded and jostling as Times Square on a swarming summer night.
Laptop open, I write this on my return to the sprawling urban archipelago, propped on my hotel bed, gazing out at floor-to-ceiling views of striking Victoria Harbor and about ten thousand skyscrapers, a glass and steel thicket that plays exuberantly off the verdant, low-slung mountains that make Hong Kong’s terrain so famously picturesque — columns of concrete hugged by lavish foliage.
On one side of the narrow harbor is the at once lush and deliriously vertical Hong Kong Island; on the other side is Kowloon, all crackling neon bustle, where I’m staying. It’s January and a merciful 65 degrees and the colorful crowds are maddening and unbudging and beautiful. It’s a blast, really.
Politically, Hong Kong is of course a complicated place, a “special administration region” of mainland China, operating with the constitutional principle of “one country, two systems.” If you follow the news you know how that’s working out, bumpy at best. I vow not to write anything here that will rankle the tetchy government and get me deported or worse. I’m not a big fan of prison meals.
I’m on day four of six, and so far I’ve taken a six-hour walking tour of city highlights; watched the popular Wednesday night horse races at the fabled Happy Valley track; did a day trip to the island of Macau, a Portuguese territory until 1999 and, thanks to its glitzy-kitschy casinos, known as the Las Vegas of Asia; visited two exceptional art galleries and the impressively sleek Hong Kong Museum of Art; relished a private three-hour food tour with the sweet, dynamic and aptly named guide Angel who offered everything from dim sum to donuts as well as cultural and historical appetizers; and strolled the renown Temple Street Night Market, where heaps of cheap souvenirs, name-brand knock-offs, geriatric karaoke, fortune tellers, and grilled octopus and other exotic street vittles conspire for an electric buzz.
Hong Kong is curious. Its population of 7.5 million — unfailingly polite and helpful are these folks — skews palpably young; every other person looks to be between 15 and 35, though officially the median age is 46, which is young, but still. As a former British colony, English is pervasive. I haven’t spoken a word of Chinese, not even a “hello” or “thank you,” which is about the extent of my local vocabulary when abroad.
In many ways, from the sheer human density to the boisterous food culture, HK reminds me of Tokyo. Excitement reigns. Weaving among bodies on the skinny sidewalks — many of those bodies staring at their phones — you pass shops hawking chunky beef offal, luxury bags and watches, shark fins and sea cucumbers, medicinal herbs and incense. And scads of busy 7-Eleven stores, like two per block. It’s a carnival of smells, sights, lights and humanity — especially as it’s the Lunar New Year, year of the snake — a heady, bracing brew that fuels my love of travel, my intemperate wanderlust that makes my heart pound and my feet ache with throbbing delight.
Some Hong Kong visuals so far:
In these mid-summer doldrums, a few rambling thoughts that amount to nothing in particular …
Best sentence all summer: “Her lipstick is a philosophically incomprehensible shade of chalky orange.” (From “Eve’s Hollywood” by Eve Babitz.)
I have yet to read a memoir that didn’t bore me silly or raise an eyebrow or two. Nabokov’s “Speak, Memory” is a possible exception, and “Eve’s Hollywood” definitely is. I’m skeptical of minutiae only the writer cares about, like how their father flew planes in World War II and their sister married an alcoholic son of a bitch. I can hardly believe a word of what the authors say, especially when they do things like insert direct quotes they muttered as toddlers, forty years after the fact. (See: Mary Karr’s aptly titled “The Liars’ Club.”) It’s all magnificent hooey.
I’m sleeping like crap. Nothing new, but I’m locked in a stretch of relentless insomnia. I called my doctor and he gave me a low dose of Lunesta. It’s done nothing, even when I take more than the prescribed amount (whoopsie). I pop Benadryl and a dorky over the counter sleep aid as well. I’m all drugged up and I still don’t nod off till 4 or 5 or 6. Then I sleep till 9 and awake vaguely refreshed with murder on the mind. I feel like a Stephen King character.
Kamala’s got me revved. For now. The initial blast of flowers and fireworks — her spontaneous honeymoon — is about over, and now she must face the music … er, the monster. Trump, a hopeless buffoon, bigot and playground bully, will meet his match in the debates. Kamala will be the buzzsaw that Trump’s ignorant, lying face encounters and it will be beautiful. That ear boo-boo Trump’s so proud of will be shown for the nothing it is, except symbolic and specious martyrdom. He keeps blathering about the American “bloodbath.” Yes, indeed.
As always, I’ve been watching lots of classic movies from early and midcentury Hollywood — the Golden Age of pictures when men were either gruff or suave (and glistening with pomade) and women were silky and soft-focus, radiating unreachable glamor. Black and white was king and the best pics were positively charged with swoony cinematography and dazzling chiaroscuro. Those were the days. (And I’m someone who name-checks “Alien” and “Jaws” among his favorite films, alongside “All About Eve” and “The Big Sleep.”) Recent viewings: “The Big Heat,” a crackerjack 1953 crime thriller by Fritz Lang, starring Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame, who gets a pot of scalding coffee tossed in her face by Lee Marvin and has to wear a giant bandage for half the movie; the unbearably charming Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in the 1937 screwball marriage/divorce romp “The Awful Truth,” which features the brilliant dog Skippy, who also plays Asta in the great “Thin Man” films; and 1955’s “The Big Knife,” where a fist-tight Jack Palance is a movie star sucked into the manipulative corruptions of fame. A rabid Rod Steiger noshes the scenery like it’s beef jerky. And that’s just three oldies I’ve recently watched (I’ve seen them all before). They beat the living crud out of big, dopey summer blockbusters any day.
I bought a hair dryer. I swear to god. It cost $15. It screams like Janis Joplin.
“President Biden vowed to drop out of the race only if ‘the Lord Almighty’ told him to.” — The New York Times
President’s aide: Mr. President, you have a call.
President Biden: Yes?
President’s aide: Sir, it’s the Lord Almighty on Line One.
President Biden: Crap.
“When you read the list of Trump’s purported lies, they are absolutely incredible. His claims aren’t just false; they’re transparently, incandescently stupid. This was not a sophisticated effort to overturn the election. It was a shotgun blast of obvious falsehoods.” — David French, The New York Times
Bullseye.
And there they were, the hirsute hillbillies and toothless terrorists who mobbed and defiled the U.S. Capitol yesterday, a cankerous confederacy of dunces, rampaging racists and whooping ignoramuses. That much cheap camouflage is never a good look.
The lowest of the low, these punks and goons are in lockstep with their pestilent potentate, whose grotesque name and rightfully imperiled title shall go unspoken.
I’m at a loss to add anything brilliant to the roiling conversation about the fatal White House-whipped insurrection. But what was it Robert De Niro famously said about the one-term racist/criminal/liar/sexual assailant?
This.
GNASHING. 