BSNYC BSNYC Friday Friday Fun Fun Quiz Quiz! (Now with reverb!)

No doubt you've seen in the media that essayist Christopher Hitchens has died. His New York Times obituary is here. He has also received social networking's greatest postumous honor, which is of course a Tweet and custom memorial #hashtag from seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong himself:

At times like this it's impossible not to contemplate your own mortality, and at the risk of overestimating my own importance to the world of letters I'd like to think that when my day comes and I am run down in a crosswalk by a speeding Lucas Brunelle I will be worthy of the same honor:

In fact, I like those words so much I'm having Sacha White of Vanilla build me a tombstone bearing this very epitaph. Given that his wait list now roughly equals the average life span of the American male, I figure the timing should work out perfectly.

Elsewhere on the social networks, The Bike Show Tweeted a link to one of Hitchens's Vanity Fair articles from 2004, in which he makes light of New York City's often ludicrous approach to cycling enforcement, among other things:

In particular, he flouts the law by riding a bicycle in Central Park and removing his feet from the pedals:

I decided that, partly to protect those who were with me or hosting me, I would not do anything to directly taunt the forces of law and order. I would be the Zelig of the scofflaws. So I took a bike to Central Park and, starting near the boathouse, rode it uphill until blood started to rush to my head and blackness to descend—i.e., for about a quarter of a mile. I then turned and coasted down, allowing the brisk air of a crisp fall day to whoosh disturbingly up my trouser legs as I lifted my feet in the air. I compounded the offense by having no bell on my handlebars. This was midmorning on a weekday, with almost no traffic, but that was just the luck of the draw. Policemen interviewed recently have confirmed that they are under orders to spot riders who take their feet off the pedals, or who have no bell. (Try getting attention in New York by pinging a bike bell, by the way.) It’s all part of the ticket harvest that they are expected to reap. The mayor denies that there is a quota, which would be unlawful, but he looks and sounds even more like a weasel than unkind nature intended when he admits that there are “performance measurements” that his Police Department might be observing.

Ah, yes, those were the days. See, back in 2004 you could remove your feet from the pedals and only get a ticket for removing your feet from the pedals. Now, on top of that you'd get a bunch of other tickets for stuff that isn't even illegal, like not wearing a healment, operating a bicycle with a vowel in the brand name, and speaking to the ticketing officer with an English accent.

And now, having cast a pall over the weekend by raising the subject of death, I'm pleased to present you with a quiz. As always, study the item, think, and click on your answer. If you're right then you'll receive one (1) Kosmic Karma Fun Kredit (good towards making your next incarnation more tolerable), and if you're wrong you'll see a sneak preview from the new season of "Portlandia."

Thanks very much for reading, ride safe, and don't forget your hand signals.

--Wildcat Rock Machine

(Contador receiving his weight in stuffed lions)

1) Tour de France champion Alberto Contador is going to receive his weight in:

--Gold

--Beef

--Honey
--Schlecks

("Return to me, mighty bird of prey!")

2) What is this rider doing?

--Signaling a turn

--Waving that minivan through

--Shielding his eyes from the late afternoon sun

--Practicing the ancient art of falconry

("C'mon man, I was using that!")

3) Ancient cultures believed that by devouring the heart of their slain enemy they would acquire his strength. Now, for the same effect, you can just:

--Clone his DNA

--Eat his scranus and toenail clippings

--Buy his used saddle on eBay

--Practice the ancient art of falconry

(Martha Stewart always wears an apron while completing Great Head.)

4) According to Martha Stewart, how long does it take to complete Great Head?

--An hour and a half
--A half an hour
--Twenty-six minutes

--It varies, but when you're finished you'll know

(Electronics retail in the 20th century, before it was douchefied by Steve Jobs.)

5) Crazy Eddie. His prices were:

--Nuts
--Crazy
--Insane
--Surprisingly reasonable, actually

6) Among the cockpit cognoscenti ("cocknoscenti"), ChannelLocks are the new bar end.

--True

--False

(In the absence of pliers, spring clamps are also acceptable for light-duty cockpit use.)

7) Cockpits that incorporate hand tools are practical because:

--They can be purchased easily and inexpensively in Walmart

--They can aid in emergency bicycle repair

--They allow you to crack open and devour your lobster fender

--All of the above

***Special The Internet Is Destroying Humanity-Themed Bonus Question***

Thanks to the Internet, humankind may be developing just a tiny bit of an oversharing problem.

--True

--True

Bikes: How Do They Work?

Americans: say what you will about us, but we're really good at using appliances. Sure, giving us credit is like giving an arsonist matches, we can't tell the difference between foreign languages and speaking in tongues, and we have an alarming propensity for shooting each-other, but there's not a feature-rich consumer good we can't master in short order. Home theaters? Talking refrigerators? Self-parking cars? We'll have it down pat before the bank even gets there to repossess it.

So then why do we have such a hard time riding bicycles? We now look at our pornography on computers more powerful than the ones that sent Apollo 11 to the moon, yet the typical adult is completely confounded by the humble bike. Give an American a supercomputer and he'll know exactly what to do (look at porn), but give him a bicycle and he'll either strap a couple of cameras to his head and try his best to die like Lucas Brunelle, or else he'll hide it in the garage like it's some kind of cursed monkey's paw.

Fortunately though, there are one or two people in America who know how to use a bicycle, and a reader tells me they've now made a helpful instructional video to share the secret of practical cycling with the rest of us:

This video is called "How To Bike In a Busy City," though presumably due to a limited budget they weren't able to film it in a busy city and instead opted for whatever sleepy town this is. Nevertheless, this doesn't make the advice contained therein any less useful. For example, obviously you should always ride on the sidewalk:

Also, you're going to need some stuff:

This is great advice, because every day thousands of cyclists leave home without remembering to take their hand signals with them. Yes, there's nothing more embarrassing than raising your arm to signal a turn or flip somebody off and then remembering you actually left your hands in your other pants. Also, it's vital that you always carry a map. Sure, you may know where you're going because, like most cyclists, you do most of your commuting in the town where you live, but with newspapers going the way of the rotary phone you never know when you're going to need a big piece of paper to wrap up that unexpected fish market find. And the lock goes without saying, since you don't want your bike getting stolen while you're browsing the local fish market.

Of course, there are also some optional items. Actually, there's only one, and it's the helmet:

Helmets? Optional!?! Egads! If you listen closely, you can hear the collective gasps of the "helment nazis" as they gulp for air like freshly-caught grouper. Interestingly though, the filmmakers left some important items off of both the mandatory and the optional list, such as:

--Patch kit

--Pump

--Lights

--A bicycle

No big deal though. As long as you have that map you'll be fine. The bike's only going to get you into trouble anyway, especially if you're American. Also, keep in mind that if you want to be accepted into the "bike culture," you're going to need a $350 backpack handmade in the Mission District, as well as at least 14 different combination 15mm wrench/bottle openers on your person at any given time. (Bonus points for having a lockring remover just in case you're suddenly inclined to remove the cog that's been on the bike since you bought it on eBay three years ago.)

The video also emphasizes the importance of proper bike maintenance. For example, you should always dust your saddle for fingerprints to make sure a saboteur has not booby-trapped your bicycle in the night:

You should also (as the person who forwarded me this video points out) smell your chain at regular intervals:

Contrary to popular belief, the first sign of chain failure is not skipping or squealing. Rather, it's the moment the chain suddenly and inexplicably begins to emit "the intoxicating smell of semen that the tubers emit--known to foodies as the truffle umami." Should this happen, remove the chain immediately, slather it with artisanal mayonnaise, and eat it lest you inadvertently install it on another bike. (Ideally you should pair the chain with a glass of fine vintage lube to avoid constipation.)

By the way, remember how the video said the helmet is optional? Well, now they want you to wear one all the time:

And make sure it's a good one--you know, the kind where the straps run down the middle of your face.

And with helmets now moving into the "mandatory" category, that leaves room for a new optional accessory:

As you no doubt noticed from the pictures above, the film's protagonist has enthusiastically opted "in."

So now you've got your map and your helmet, you've checked any fingerprints on your bicycle against law enforcement agency databases, you've combed your optional moustache, and you're ready to ride. But did you remember your hand signals? Of course you did. Just make sure that when you use them you come to a complete stop first:

Also, the film says you should make eye contact with drivers at intersections:

On the surface, making eye contact with drivers seems like a good idea. However, some years back, I took a class in order to learn how to ride a motorcycle. (I was actually raised by feral outlaw Jewish motorcyclists and knew how to ride almost from birth, but my upbringing was so traumatic that I blanked it all out had to learn how to ride all over again as part of my self-actualization therapy. You can read all about it in my forthcoming memoir, "Kosher Hogs.") One of the useful things I learned in that class (besides which lever is the clutch thingy and which lever is the brake thingy) is that just because you're looking into a driver's eyes, you should never assume they can see you. I'm sure we've all had the experience of someone turning right into us even as they look right at us--I know I have. For this reason, eye contact as a way of gauging safety is mostly meaningless. Plus, if you lay the eye contact on too thick, people might think you're an "extreme eye-screwer:"

extreme missed connection - m4w - 30 (f train, okcupid, wherever)
Date: 2011-12-13, 2:59PM EST
Reply to:

I been eye-screwing ladies for years, just tryin to get a missed connection out of it. On the train sidewalk, checkout line, bus, bike, crosswalk, you get the idea.

Now I'm lurking the halls of the intanet, I'm hooking up with cool people, but still no missed connections, what gives?

Anyways, I'm just gonna start wearing a dick pic tshirt and handing out business cards.

Hi ladies

A


What all this means is that if you rely too heavily on eye contact while cycling, one of two things is going to happen:

1) You're going to wind up splayed on someone's hood;

or

2) You're going to wind up splayed on some swinger's water bed because you eye-screwed them too hard while wearing that optional moustache.

Still, you can't go wrong keeping an eye out for pedestrians wearing boots that look like they were made out of fur from their own dog's puppies:

Or by reminding yourself constantly of how much money and time you're saving:

Interestingly, these numbers are true for absolutely everybody, even if you work at home and didn't even own a car in the first place. Just ask David Byrne:

("Even though I don't own a car, cycling saves me $1,825 a year in auto-related costs, because otherwise I'd spend it on maintaining the imaginary car I don't have.")

Still, you do only wind up saving -$3,070 if your commuting bike is a Beloved:

Though you will amortize that if you can keep it from getting stolen for a few years, and it may be worth it to you for all the eye-screwing you'll get in the meantime (assuming you go in for that sort of thing).

Speaking of Portland, the article that contained the aforementioned video also contained a bunch of "infographics" like this one:

I haven't done a formal study, but I'd wager that bicycle commuting is the most-infographed subject in the world. Here's an infograph that shows how much people love infographics about bike commuting:

("All You Advocates Tweet My Infographic")

In fact, I'd say there are almost as many infographics about bike commuting as there are local news segments about bike messengers:

Though amazing cockpits like this ChannelLock-and-cane combo, as seen by a reader in Las Vegas, are truly one of a kind:


Hand tools are the new bar end.

The Awesomest Generation: The Gnosis Myth

Back in the 1990s (the decade that Kurt Andersen says is indistinguishable from the 1980s or the 2000s, even though it was the only decade during which it was socially acceptable to wear baggy shorts with combat boots and to have a soul patch), there was a situation comedy called "Seinfeld." This show came to define 1990s television in much the same way baggy shorts, combat boots, and soul patches came to define the 1990s "alternative" look. Anyway, in one episode, Jerry offers to deliver Newman's mail for him, and the following exchange ensues:

JERRY: (Bravely) Well, what if I deliver it?
NEWMAN: You?! (Laughs hysterically) You can't deliver mail!
JERRY: Well, why not?
NEWMAN: (Thinks for a moment) I guess you're right. It's just walking around putting it into boxes...

While on the surface this just appears to be typical Seinfeldian repartee, it actually expresses a fundamental truth about life, which is that despite our best attempts to obfuscate it, it's actually boneheadedly simple. Really, life is just walking around putting stuff into boxes. Eighty percent of success really is just showing up, as Soon-Yi Previn/Farrow's husband/father once quipped. Tend your garden, as French writer Cabaret Voltaire once advised. That's it. There's no big secret. Before enlightenment you carry water and sweep the floor. After enlightenment you carry water and sweep the floor. And so forth.

Cycling is really no different, and as much as we like to think it's some rarefied pursuit that transcends everyday life that's really not the case--even when it comes to competitive cycling, which, for all the power meters and coaches and electronic equipment and "weird style diktats," really just comes down to this:

The problem, though, is that it's really hard to market the notion that cycling (or indeed life) is as simple as walking around and putting stuff into boxes. Like Newman, we all need to believe we possess some arcane knowledge or rarefied skill or "gnosis" attainable only by a tiny portion of the human population. If we're selling something, our job is to tempt people with this ineffable "gnosis" by burying it under phrases like "laterally stiff and vertically compliant" or by implying that this year's $2,000 component group lost those three crucial grams that were keeping last year's $2,000 component group from bringing you all the way to having a complete and total Zen-tastic bike-gasm all over your laterally stiff and vertically compliant crabon frame. Or, if we're buying, we need to believe that we're nearly there, and by spending just a little more money we can finally enjoy sweet, explosive release. It's what makes retail prices like these possible:

(Holy crap.)

Yes, marketing is a subtle art. Give consumers too little and they get blueballs and go elsewhere. Give them too much and they climax too soon and start thinking clearly again. The truly gifted marketer can keep you right there in the middle, sometimes for years at a time, sucking the cash from your wallet like a stripper with a Miele.

This illusory "gnosis" concept doesn't just apply to selling stuff, either. It also applies to marketing the idea of ourselves, or our own lifestyles. We all need to believe we're the Navy SEALs in the Girl Scouts of Life, when in reality most of us are the Old Navy fleece pullover in the Wardrobe of Mediocrity. Cyclists--American cyclists in particular--are especially adept at deluding themselves in this manner. Consider this excerpt from a comment in support of daredevil cycling videographer Lucas Brunelle:

Almost every fatality and bad cycling accident in NYC is caused by an inattentive driver and an inexperienced cyclist. The driver is usually at fault but a rider like Lucas would never get hit by an inattentive driver. In my opinion the videos make it look a lot more dangerous than it really is. This is nearly impossible to understand unless you are able to ride at the same level which very few people are able too (or want to). A skilled urban rider's interference with traffic and pedestrians is extremely limited. If you are crossing the street Lucas will pass by you like a gust of wind. You won't even notice his presence until he's passed you and already a block away.

A gust of wind? Seriously? Sure, it's easy to delude yourself into thinking you're insubstantial and spirit-like when you don't stick around to interact with the people you're pissing off. Plus, when was the last time you saw a gust of wind make a documentary about itself? Then again, the "wind" analogy isn't totally off, since blowing through a busy intersection at full speed is a lot like laying a huge fart and then leaving the room.

More stunning though is the notion that "a rider like Lucas would never get hit by an inattentive driver," and that injury and death is somehow the exclusive domain of the hapless "noob." On the self-delusion hierarchy, thinking you're immortal lies on the very top. It's the greatest human folly. This has been true throughout history, from the Egyptian pharaohs and their lavish tombs, to the search for the Fountain of Youth, to people who think they are vampires. (Vampirism is often the next stop after Star Wars roleplaying.)

Of course, if it were actually true that "skilled urban cyclists" were immune from harm then there would be no need for a Bicycle Messenger Emergency Fund, yet someone saw fit to create one. This is because there's usually a sizable gap between reality and the "gnosis myth," which is articulated perfectly in the above comment:

This is nearly impossible to understand unless you are able to ride at the same level which very few people are able too (or want to).

"Impossible to understand," really? This may be true of particle physics, but it's simply not true of riding a bike in a city. I do agree with the Brunelle apologists about one thing, which is that riding a bike in an urban environment--even at high speeds--is simply not all that remarkable. The subjects of Brunelle's videos don't really have skills beyond those of the typical Dutch commuter--or the typical American commuter for that matter. They're just more vain and are thus willing to take more risks in the service of theatrics.

But it won't do to acknowledge the fact that the new bike commuter on the freshly-purchased Public will possess most of these essential "nearly impossible to understand" skills in a matter of weeks, or that the only "gnosis" involved in cycling is the decision to ride a bike in the first place. (Yes, in America you are still "crossing the Rubicon" when you decide to ride a bike, so in that respect you are somewhat remarkable.) This is because cyclists all need to be better than each other. Further to yesterday's post someone on Twitter alerted me to an article in the New York Times about "hipsters," and it contained the following quote:

Taste is not stable and peaceful, but a means of strategy and competition. Those superior in wealth use it to pretend they are superior in spirit. Groups closer in social class who yet draw their status from different sources use taste and its attainments to disdain one another and get a leg up. These conflicts for social dominance through culture are exactly what drive the dynamics within communities whose members are regarded as hipsters.

Just as social classes claim true knowledge of "taste," cycling subcultures claim true possession of "skills" even though they're mostly just doing the same thing in different clothes. Who has better bike-handling skills, the urban cyclist or the amateur racer? Does it really matter? They're all dorks! It's like arguing about who would win in a fight: Batman, or Darth Vader. (Uh, Darth Vader. Duh...) And no matter what you wear, or how unimaginably awesome your skills are, the distinctions become meaningless when someone whacks you in the face with a brick:

...or a golf ball for that matter.

In any case, it's easy to fall into the myth of your own awesomeness, so I find it helpful to remind myself once and awhile that we all suck at riding bikes, and that the one of us who sucks the least wins* the Tour de France. It's really not much more complicated than that. This doesn't preclude our spending a bunch of money on a crabon "halo bike" or an artisanal custom dreamcycle, just so long as we keep in mind that focusing entirely on the bike is like picking a university based on how comfortable the chairs in the lecture hall are. Some companies have done a remarkable job of marketing the equivalent of taking a correspondence course while sitting in an ergonomic chaise lounge.

*(Pending the results of the bloodwork.)

Ultimately, we're all just walking around putting stuff in boxes, though some of us do suck at this more than others:


Bike crash on Brooklyn bridge by 10:30 - m4w - 20 (Brooklyn bridge)
Date: 2011-12-13, 2:55PM EST
Reply to:

I crash when I was on my bike, you were taking photos and just walked in to the path bike i warned you but because of all the traffic noise you did not hear me; and it was late I push my rear brake but you was closely and when I pushed both brakes the front one trow me off of the bike and I I hit you . I'm so sorry about your camera but I'm glad you are ok, you asked me if I was ok you were really nice to me and the people who helped us. I just got some scratches on my legs and my helmet got broken wish I release when I got home.
Email me if you read this I wanna help you get another camera because yours got broken

That never would have happened if he didn't have any brakes.

The Curmudgeon Effect: Cultural Retrogrouchery

So, like, the world. What do we think? Better? Worse? The same? Every generation ponders this question, and every generation comes to the conclusion that the world was great once but that it sucks now. This is called the "Curmudgeon Effect." Consider the following quote from Socrates, a guy who lived in a time when people still knew how to think cause they weren't all dumb from their iPods:

“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”

This quote certainly supports the theory that the "Curmudgeon Effect" is as old as philosophy itself, and that the aging generation is always critical of the one that supplants it. Moreover, it would also seem to support the theory that the world is not better or worse but is in fact in a state of stasis, since it could just as easily have been written five minutes ago as 2,500 years ago. However, when you take into account that whole ancient Greek pederasty thing, the quote starts to take on a slightly different connotation and it becomes tempting to think that, yeah, maybe things are a little bit better now after all. See, back then academia was a much different place, and it was socially acceptable for a philosophy teacher to have a sexual relationship with an adolescent pupil. Now, however, it's mostly frowned upon, with the exception of the athletic departments of state universities.

In other words, when you compare yesterday with today, the world looks a lot worse. However, when you compare yesterday with a really long time ago, you can see we actually have it pretty good. For example, here's how average schmucks lives today:

("We have no idea who this creepy old guy is.")

And here's how they lived 600 years ago:

(In the 1300s, death metal was called "life.")

Here's what school looks like today:

(School of hard knocks gentle coddling.)

And here's what it looked like at the turn of the (last) century:

(Check out the spoiled kid on the left with the shoes.)

Here's what an economic crisis looks like today:

("i'm totally protesting LOL :) #occupy")

And here's how it looked in the 1930s:

("totally bummed sh*t sux :( #dustbowl")

You get the idea. It's all summed up rather humorously in that famous Louis C.K. routine which you can watch on the Internet--something you couldn't do back in Socrates's day since there was no Internet and you were too busy fending off the socially-sanctioned sexual advances of your philosophy professor:

So it was with Louis C.K.'s sagacious observations in my mind that I read Kurt Andersen's recent piece in "Vanity Fair" magazine, in which he posits that American culture has essentially stalled:

Basically, he's saying that, despite all the new technology, nothing's changed from a cultural perspective since the 1980s:

Since 1992, as the technological miracles and wonders have propagated and the political economy has transformed, the world has become radically and profoundly new. (And then there’s the miraculous drop in violent crime in the United States, by half.) Here is what’s odd: during these same 20 years, the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all, less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century. The past is a foreign country, but the recent past—the 00s, the 90s, even a lot of the 80s—looks almost identical to the present. This is the First Great Paradox of Contemporary Cultural History.

Now, I suffer from the "Curmudgeon Effect," and in fact I've dedicated most of my life to complaining about how much stupider things are today then they were yesterday. For this reason, I read this with great interest, and I thought Andersen made some very good points. At the same time, sometimes I also thought he was crazy. And sometimes I thought both things while reading a single paragraph:

Look at people on the street and in malls—jeans and sneakers remain the standard uniform for all ages, as they were in 2002, 1992, and 1982. Look through a current fashion or architecture magazine or listen to 10 random new pop songs; if you didn’t already know they were all things from the 2010s, I guarantee you couldn’t tell me with certainty they weren’t from the 2000s or 1990s or 1980s or even earlier.

I'm tempted to agree with him as far as the music goes, but it's a bit of a stretch to say you can't tell the 1980s from the 2000s because people are still wearing sneakers to the mall--especially when he also says this:

People flock by the millions to Apple Stores (1 in 2001, 245 today) not just to buy high-quality devices but to bask and breathe and linger, pilgrims to a grand, hermetic, impeccable temple to style—an uncluttered, glassy, super-sleek style that feels “contemporary” in the sense that Apple stores are like back-on-earth sets for 2001: A Space Odyssey, the early 21st century as it was envisioned in the mid-20th. And many of those young and young-at-heart Apple cultists-cum-customers, having popped in for their regular glimpse and whiff of the high-production-value future, return to their make-believe-old-fashioned lives—brick and brownstone town houses, beer gardens, greenmarkets, local agriculture, flea markets, steampunk, lace-up boots, suspenders, beards, mustaches, artisanal everything, all the neo-19th-century signifiers of state-of-the-art Brooklyn-esque and Portlandish American hipsterism.

I'd say that's a pretty shocking change. I have mixed feelings about Apple stores and all the other hallmarks of gentrification he itemizes, but the simple fact is that if you plucked me out of the 1980s and put me in an Apple store today my face would have melted. Here's what an Apple store looked like when I was a kid:



Steve Jobs had nothing on Crazy Eddie. Speaking of cultural changes, you could have fired up a Marlboro in that Crazy Eddie and nobody would have even looked at you sideways. Just try that now in an Apple store--they'll lock you in an iCell and then send you to Cupertino for "refurbishment."

("A computer is like a rocket-powered bicycle for my bank account.")

I do think Andersen's central point is a good one, though, which is that popular culture is the way it is right now because we have our heads up pop culture history's ass thanks largely to the Internet:

On the one hand, in a country where an adorably huge majority have always considered themselves “middle class,” practically everyone who can afford it now shops stylishly—at Gap, Target, Ikea, Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Barnes & Noble, and Starbucks. Americans: all the same, all kind of cool! And yet, on the other hand, for the first time, anyone anywhere with any arcane cultural taste can now indulge it easily and fully online, clicking themselves deep into whatever curious little niche (punk bossa nova, Nigerian noir cinema, pre-war Hummel figurines) they wish. Americans: quirky, independent individualists!

But to say that "fashion, art, design, entertainment" hasn't changed dramatically in the past decade or two is curmudgeonly by any standard, even if that dramatic change does mostly amount to an explosive rehashing of the most insipid fads, fashions, and spurious "movements" of the past 100 years. Pop culture is always stupid; its stupidity just takes a different form every generation.

And who knows? Maybe the fact that we're no longer trying to outdo ourselves with outsized ambitious projects like we did when we built skyscrapers or flew to the moon is a good thing and a sign that we are "maturing." As it happens, not too long ago I also read an article in the New Yorker about venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who also thinks that our society is stagnating:


Says Thiel derisively, "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters." Is this really a bad thing? Maybe we didn't get flying cars because we realized that flying cars are stupid. People can't control cars on the ground as it is. Does anybody think it's a good idea to put them in the sky? Sure, Twitter is pretty stupid, but I'll take that over a Buick falling on my head any day. Plus, it turns out that we already had something as amazing as a flying car, and it's called a "bicycle," which is why more and more people are riding them now even though they've been around since the days of child labor. Sometimes all that rooting around in the ass of history actually yields some useful finds.

As for my own curmudgeonly view, I do find myself amazed at the way in which we all completely and utterly surrender to marketing and branding in a way that must surely be unprecedented. However, when I stop and think I realize it's not really all that surprising, since marketing is now our folklore and how and where we spend our money satisfies our need for personal expression. This is why in the 1960s people moved to communes, but now they're forming utopian societies of douche:

I've mentioned Rabbit Island before, and whereas once the goal was to "turn on, tune in, and drop out," now experimental societies function as focus groups and labs for new cocktail recipes, which are then served in the bars of the "gentriverse," thus perpetuating the artisanal economy (as forwarded to me by a reader):

I only hope those "foraged cocktails" contain truffle umami and smell like semen.

We may not be the greatest generation, and we're definitely not the worst, but we're certainly the most self-interested.

Overzealous: Gotta Have Faith

This past Friday, I mentioned Bicycling magazine's interview with thrill-seeking IT specialist (and self-hating Fred) Lucas Brunelle. Like many cyclists, I find that Brunelle's antics cause me considerable consternation. Therefore, in search of lighter and less provocative reading, over the weekend I picked up a copy of my second-favorite magazine after Bicycling to peruse during my next bathroom visit:

Unfortunately though it would seem that even the world of bourgeois homemaking has fallen prey to the "making stuff dangerous for no reason" phenomenon, for in the magazine was an interview with some guy who participates in dangerous outlaw landscaping contests called "gardengophers" and films them for mass consumption:


From the interview, I was surprised to learn that "garden culture" is surprisingly similar to "bike culture:"

You grew up in an affluent Cape Cod beach town. How did you become the poster boy for gonzo gardening?

I resented my privileged upbringing, so I played hooky with my push reel lawnmower. One of my first riding mowers was a classic John Deere. My friends and I used to mow neighbors' lawns with the choke all the way closed and the grass bag removed. Sometimes we'd break into Walter Cronkite's garden and prune the topiary. I got my lawn care license when I was 16 and transformed our house into a stop on the annual Cape Cod gardening tour. In college I worked as a landscaper and became obsessed with outlaw gardening. You can't replicate the thrill of implementing unsanctioned landscaping projects in a public park, or of rototilling an uncleared Bosnian minefield, even by lowering your "pants yabbies" into a Venus Flytrap.

Your new movie, Brucas Lunelle: Load of Dung, offers up hair-raising gardening footage from Beijing, Boston, Dublin, New York, and Tokyo. What's the craziest stunt you've pulled?

In Miami, we cleared two acres of Bill Baggs State Park with chainsaws and replaced the trees with native groundcover, garden gnomes, and deadly booby traps like the kinds made by the Vietcong. The palms were crashing down all around us. When you're landscaping like that, the endorphins create this heightened sense of awareness. You notice the sound of a middle-aged Jewish woman slathering on sunscreen or a manatee farting.

Do you garden like that even when you're watering your plants?

Yes. Every hoe I have is as sharp as a whip, so you always double down on the good foot.

Last year you spent $80,000 of your own money filming gardengophers. Why?

Almost daily, I get e-mail from people who tell me I've inspired them to garden more. And they're taking senseless risks in their own gardens. One person has cancer; now she's using her savings to buy rare orchids and cigarettes instead of on treatment. Another was in a relationship with someone she didn't love; she murdered him with a Felco 6" folding saw, dismembered him, and buried his remains in her herb garden. For a lot of people, "No, you can't" is a motto. I'm saying, "Hey, you can live life on your own accord, just as long as you're independently wealthy and a giant asshole."

Are you ever scared, gardening like this?

I'm always scared—even if I'm mulching my flower bed I'm scared. You never know—the Lord has your number, and you really have no control over whether or not you step on one of those leftover Bosnian landmines you buried in it the night before and it blows you to smithereens.

Do you own a riding lawnmower?

I still have the John Deere. Fuck the environment. It's the sharp tools, combustibles and insecticides that make gardening fun. Without them, we couldn't cut off our fingers or develop respiratory disorders. For my next project I'm recreating the gardens of Versailles out of poisonous plants on a highway median strip in New Jersey and fertilizing it with my own feces. I love motor vehicle exhaust and irritants. It's an evil river, sure, but I love the scent of my own excrement.

Outrageous! Lunelle should be ashamed of himself--and so should Martha Stewart for that matter. I miss the bygone days of the wholesome Martha Stewart who used to give advice for making Christmas ornaments out of toilet paper rolls, and who used to spend an hour and a half on Great Head:

I also miss more genteel gardening advocates like Bavid Dyrne:

(Bavid Dyrne doesn't own a riding lawnmower.)

Any resemblance between David Byrne and Bavid Dyrne is entirely coincidental--apart from the fact that they're both unbearably smug, and they both think people from the midwest* are idiots.

*("Midwest" in this context is anyplace that lies in between the Hudson and Los Angeles Rivers, as well as the entire Long Island land mass excluding portions of Brooklyn and the Hamptons.)

Speaking of offensive behavior, a number of people have forwarded me this image of a bicycle employing a lobster as a fender filth prophylactic:

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you know that I worship a deity to whom I refer as The Great Lobster on High. Like most religious converts, I am extremely zealous (as opposed to being mildly zealous, which technically isn't possible, though if it were I suppose you'd call it "meh-lous"), and my revelation came to me when I was at a particularly low point in my life. My addiction to non-alcoholic beverages was ruining my relationships and my career, and I was having a business power lunch at a fancy seafood restaurant when I hit rock bottom. We were supposed to be closing a multi-million dollar deal that would make me rich beyond my wildest dreams, but instead I was on my 16th Shirley Temple, singing songs from "Grease II" and dancing around with a bunch of paper umbrellas in my hair and a maraschino cherry up each nostril. Just then, a particularly succulent lobster in the live lobster tank swam up above the water line, leaned jauntily on the edge of the tank, and spoke the three words that changed my life. "Get it together, douchebag," he said while pointing at me with a rubber-banded claw, and then he simply vanished.

I never did close that business deal, but I did stop drinking Shirley Temples and now limit myself entirely to alcohol. And while I may no longer be a member of the wealthiest 1%, I'd much rather be a member of that other 1%--the people who worship the Great Lobster on High, and who are going to The Awesome Place when we die while the rest of you suckers burn in hell.

All of this is to say that I find the aforementioned bicycle disgusting, and as such am putting the Lobsterite equivalent of a fatwa on the owner. If you see this bicycle, accost the rider and demand that he or she "fatone" for his or her evil behavior immediately. Of course, it's also possible that this bicycle is a sign that the Lob-pocalypse is nigh, and that the lobster is actually The Great Lobster on High cryogenically frozen and ready to be thawed for the final Meh-coning, but this sign is also supposed to be preceded by a cat giving birth to a lobster with three claws followed by the appearance of an NJS track bike with dual disc brakes and a suspension fork, so pending those signs the "fatone" is still on.

Speaking of religion and fixed-gear cycling, the two lifestyles actually have a lot in common. In particular, they involve following lots of rules that don't really make much sense, and few people are able to engage in either unless there are other people around to watch. Consider, for example, this Craigslist post which was forwarded to me by a reader:

Phil Wood front hub NEW - $100 (East nashville )
Date: 2011-12-08, 9:52PM CST
Reply to: [deleted]

This is a brand new hub I never laced it. I moved here from NYC and there's a lack of a fixed gear scene here so there no need for me to make a new wheel so I'm selling it. Brand new if you have any questions call, text 917-XXX-XXXX or email me!


So not only is it impossible to coast on a fixed-gear bicycle, but it's also entirely impossible to ride one at all unless there's a "scene" around to watch you do it. Stranger still is the fact that this is a front hub, which means he could use it on any type of bike, fixed or otherwise. For, as it is written, "But when you build a wheel, do not let your front hub know what your rear hub is doing, so that your coasting may be in secret."

A-meh.

By the way, Nashville may just have made the top of my "dream city" list. No fixed-gear scene and less than 300 miles to Dollywood?!? I may have to move.