The New New New New Masses

Regifted Light

2011-03-23T22:04:00.031-04:00

Most people I know hate Baby Dee. As someone who cares deeply for the artistry in Baby Dee's recordings and performances, I try to pretend that this is something that shocks and upsets me. Yet there remains a part of me that cannot but acknowledge that listening to Baby Dee is not comfortable. The abrupt transitions in her vocal performances from an upper to lower register with little notice; the cackling giggle that makes her already, ahem, unconventional voice sound completely unhinged; the faux naivete puncturing her half-spoken lyrics when she encounters a phrase that it seems surprises even her; the occasional lapses into bromidic transcendence or odious scatology... there is, in short, plenty to dislike about Baby Dee. Much as I try to deny it, it seems likely that it is my abiding love that is anomalous.

Still, my love for Baby Dee grows with each new release, the latest of which, titled Regifted Light, was released on March 22nd. I am reminded once again of the mocking I am sure to receive as I effuse about this stunning collection of new songs. How is it possible that something I so love can be so loathed by others? And how should we go about inhabiting the same world, aware as we are of each other's uncanny presence?

Against my best impulses, I will try to articulate my appreciation for Baby Dee here, knowing that this is unlikely to persuade anyone, even less convinced that it should. After all, without that terrifying specter of the Other, there might be no Baby Dee.

I hate to invoke that old crank Clement Greenberg, but one of the things that distinguishes art from kitsch is that art can be messy. Maybe it even should be. There's something fascinating and endlessly compelling about work by artists who eschew the impulse to impose an orderly vision on the world and instead offer (as though the art market were an altar) creative detritus that parallels the surprising multitude of life's overwhelming confusion. This fascination is, I think, something that has the potential to bond humans together in a shared struggle, rather than distracting from the ugliness of our failed grappling after profundity that continually eludes us. Sometimes this disturbs (John Waters); sometimes this hurts ( Franko B; Ron Athey); sometimes this bores (Herman Melville). Messy art reminds us that we struggle to find order in a mixed-up world, and in the process messy art offers the comforting (yet nauseating) reassurance that there is nothing more human than our attendant failure at this very pursuit. Messy art -- art that confounds when it should illuminate; art that unravels when it should tie together; art that creates ugliness in precisely those places where we want for beauty -- is often the most lovely. And the most lonely.

But it's ugly too. The grain of Baby Dee's voice does not comfort. She does not tell you that life is okay. She doesn't even tell you that her song is going to be okay. Yet neither does she provoke. Unlike the raw emotionality of Bob Dylan, or the righteous judgment of Joe Strummer, or the vulnerable pleading of Joni Mitchell, Baby Dee just irritates. She is unappealing without, seemingly, having a higher purpose for her subjecting us to her cacophonous caterwauls. She is a mess, and she reminds us that there is beauty there too, for those who find beauty discomfiting.

I suppose there's something modernist in this perspective on art. It was the modern abstract expressionists, after all, who told artists that their canvasses had to drip. (Not that the drips of Rauschenberg, Pollock, or Cy Twombly -- who rather clumped than dripped -- can be thought of as identical.) Still, the modernist obsession with individuality and purity pushed artists to suggest a singular vision as a path to redemption. Jackson Pollock is often upheld as a great artist precisely because no one splatters paint like Pollock! The charge that "my kid could do that" is thus met with the persuasive rebuttal, "no they couldn't!"

Baby Dee asks us to consider what it might feel like if your kid can do that. The closed hermeneutic of modernism gives way to something more expansive, even utopian. As a utopia, this is an uneasy place. Baby Dee offers a failed utopia; a place where hope exists. But hope is not a place of understanding; it might be alienating, insecure, ugly, lonely, and abandoned. Hope is not the utopia in the future; it is the cybernetic atomism of the present.

There's a parallel here, to my mind, with Patti Smith's performance of "You Light Up My Life" on "Kids Are People Too" in the 1980s. After ranting in her typical style against corporate rock, the countercultural legend launches into one of the most heartfelt renditions of this song ever recorded. Her rough, androgynous voice blasts every line, minimally accompanied by the song's composer, Joe Brooks. One of the most successful singles of 1970s AM radio, famously recorded in an eerily ghost-like performance by middlebrow progeny Debbie Boone, "You Light Up My Life" is not reappropriated here. It is resuscitated, given breath, burst forth into a newly expansive space to stretch its tired limbs. Patti Smith screeches and booms her way through every note. This is not the glowing ambient light in a mawkish Thomas Kinkade reproduction; it's the revealing, invasive light shining through a window in an Edward Hopper painting onto a woman who believes she is completely, terribly alone. The song is a failure; Patti Smith's performance is a devastating success. The song is transformed into the full realization of its impossibility -- it can never embody the light it wishes to spread to the world. Patti Smith is lost in every maudlin note...and the audience of pre-teens goes wild.

Baby Dee is an artist who resusciatates. Her voice is not for the faint of heart, nor will her songs give voice to the broken hearted. Her albums neither drip nor shine; they linger and hang like a cold mist or a cobweb. But they also give life and breath. Baby Dee cannot speak for everyone, and that is why she can offer a vision of what it means to hope to someday be fully human. Her voice will never whisper comfortably in the ears to comfort or convince. Her regifted light is perhaps only a treasure for those who appreciate messy art, available only to those who will accept an artist slightly used and already abandoned.

Awesome Book Covers, Part 1

2009-08-12T10:49:00.009-04:00

There is a classic saying: "you can't judge a book by its cover." Of course this is the stupidest line ever. You totally can. I do it all the time. This series is dedicated to exploring examples of book covers that are awesome. Maybe if I get very ambitious I'll put up some crap covers too, just by way of contrast.

Anyway, today's example is Ilene Philipson's Ethel Rosenberg: Beyond the Myths. The book was published in 1988 by Rutgers University Press, a publishing house that has consistently produced some of the most hideously ugly books in the world. This particular cover, designed by John Romer, is an exception: it is a brilliant, perfect evocation of the exact kind of book about Ethel Rosenberg someone like me has been itching for their whole life.

Let's start with the color scheme: black, white, and lavender. This bold choice might seem counterintuitive; a less creative designer might have gone with red since that's what Ms. Rosenberg was. But Romer opted instead for a gaudy purple lilac. Note also the detail that Julius's body is itself hued in this lavender shade, while Ethel boldly pops out in classic black-and-white. The photo of Julius and Ethel is a classic image in beach attire; the victims of the most famous espionage trial of the 20th century rendered as quotidian as tourists on a weekend romp to Coney Island. Ethel looks adorable, sassy, and sexual; a far cry from the dowdy prison images that are usually used on bookcovers. Julius looks kind of sleazy, but in a fun way. Leftists might have been beholden to the party line, but that doesn't mean they didn't get it on; these two look distinctly as though they might have just ducked behind the jetty for a quickie. The photograph, charmingly attributed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, extends boldly beyond its own perimeter. Julius's head pops up over the top onto the laminate countertop of white noise; Ethel's casually draped hand dangles into the title field, gently nudging the viewer's eye onto the second "E" in her name. She looks like a diva securing her own legacy as not Ethel Rosenberg, but as ETHEL!!: one word with exclamation points. The whole affair is layered, off-kilter, and a little frivolous.

The overwhelming tenor of this cover is arch, campy, and fun. It looks like the cover of a cheap, dishy biography written by a slightly obsessive fan about a cherished celebrity (it evokes for me Wayne Koestenbaum's borderline ode to Jackie O). And that's precisely what I want this book to be: a testament to a daring woman who defied the dominant strictures of midcentury American culture and carved a space for herself in American history. The cover indulges the gossipy side of radical history: the fetishistic devotion of leftists to determining who was and who wasn't; the drunken parties attended by members of the Party; the sly seductions that teased potential comrades and lovers both. Why shouldn't Ethel Rosenberg be treated as fabulously as Joan Crawford, Liz Taylor, or Wacko Jacko?

Anyone who studies the Rosenbergs knows that they are as famous for their love letters as for their sham of a trial and brutal execution at the hands of a government gone wild with rabid McCarthyism. This book cover appeals to the side of me that wants to love the Left with the slavish devotion of an opera queen salivating over a new coffeetable bio of Maria Callas. It sits proudly on my bookshelf between Das Kapital and Tab Hunter Confidential.

Shepard Fairey

2009-07-31T10:53:00.002-04:00

Let's see here. Take one part "manifesto", one part obscurantism, one part Warhol, one part Rodchenko, what have you got? Why it's the love affair with business propaganda at the Boston ICA, given the way-more-appropriate-than-it-has-any-right-to-be title, Supply and Demand. Thanks Shepard Fairey! Here's the world's biggest orgasm of clever non-committal "political" art since Damien Hirst sliced up that cow. Or is it since Jeff Koons cast Michael Jackson and Bubbles? WHO FUCKING CARES? Shepard Fairey is to Art what Johnny Cupcakes is to... um... art: clever, profitable, and a master of schtick. Appealing to look at in an obvious way. Capable of drawing in endless lines of hipsters who fancy that drinking cheap beer represents a fuck-you gesture at capitalism. Vacuous. Useless calories. Oh wait... that's an actual cupcake.

Anyway, the only thing more annoying than an entire art exhibit of completely meaningless tripe that is indistinguishable from the shit being sold in the gift shop (Takashi Murakami's Vuitton store is a pretty close analogue, though Fairey probably wouldn't want to hear that... his stickers and t-shirts are sold OUTSIDE the exhibit, you see) is a "street artist" who fetishizes political figures from the past and turns them into white-boy kitsch: witness those WICKED pictures of Angela Davis with her ginormous black nationalist AFRO! Look at LL Cool J rockin' a GIGANTIC GOLD CHAIN! Look at Malcolm X -- and he's DEAD! Basically Fairey's politics stop when his heroes are frozen: Angela Davis is still on the lam hiding out from the feds (not a respected scholar, writer, and capital-c Communist), hip hop is keepin' it real, Vietnamese NLF guerillas are still sneaking around looking for SV fighters to kill, and WWF wrestlers are larger-than-life trash-talkers who look more like Bon Jovi than like Kid Rock.

It almost makes one wonder what would happen if Fairey were forced to actually say something about the contemporary political landscape without the ironic cypher of his graphic style and "don't blame me for critiquing the media since it's become indistinguishable from politics" training wheels. Oh wait, there IS one of those in this exhibit: a TRENCHANT poster of George Bush bearing bloody fangs and the wicked slogan, "One Hell of a Leader". Take THAT neo-cons! Not since Warhol's green Nixon (Vote McGovern!) has an artist delighted so thoroughly in painting a leader as, um, "bad".

Back in the 1980s there was an artist who took on the establishment, capitalism, and the media in ways that were striking, political, and brilliant. David Wojnarowicz offers a significant counterpoint to Shepard Fairey's cynical ambivalence. Wojnarowicz's work assaulted its viewers, demanding they stop standing there and DO SOMETHING. And there was plenty to be done: opposing the pharmaceutical industry, joining ACT-UP, dying-in on the street in front of Wall Street. Capitalism was taken on with no holds barred, and the affective power of Wojnarowicz's work drew upon the new media to elicit rage. Fairey's work elicits a desire for a bong, a PBR, and a poster in your dorm room.

It's not that things couldn't be worse. There is still the winner of a MacArthur Genius Grant, the insipid Rachel Perry Welty whose "hilarious" video work "Karaoke Wrong Number," a post-ironic piece that doesn't even try to be anything other than goofily empty (Perry famously described herself as "as likely to make chocolate chip cookies as work on a tinfoil sculpture"), is part of the ICA's incongruously "permanent" collection. But even if there is worse art to be found, there's little in Fairey's exhibit to give one hope.

Oh yeah. Hope. There is that one piece that's also hanging in the National Portrait Gallery... It features a fairly recognizable figure looking off onto the horizon, a fierce expression of determination and forward thinking on his stern face. Funny that this piece is one of the few that is not emblazoned with the trademark Fairey message: OBEY. I guess that would just be too confusing.

Gigantic Erection Masks as Writing Instrument

2008-03-13T13:18:00.000-04:00

Not since the appearance of the Fleshlight, the male masturbatory aid that ostensibly looks like a flashlight but which you are supposed to fuck, have I seen a product as outstandingly forthcoming about its perversity as the Plumpster Rollerball Pen, selling for $94 at Levenger, the world's most comprehensive source for bullshit that makes businesspeople feel like they are important but that disguises itself as a store catering to "serious readers." Anyway, look at this shit, 100% unedited by me:

A pleasingly plump rollerball pen
Our generously sized Plumpster rollerball pen makes no apology for its expansive girth (imagine). But the real skinny is how comfortable this zaftig shape is in your hand, like being on cruise control across the page.

Yep. Expansive girth, comfortable shape that fits "in your hand," generously sized, pleasingly plump... got it. This pen is a cock. Sure, they might want you to believe that the description is an amusing play on BBW's, but they also expect you to believe that a store that sells a $100 "leather accordion wallet" is actually specially designed for the literati. You know the old saying, if it is tubular and fat and advertises its girth by describing how well it fits in a hand, it must be a penis? Yeah, well that seems applicable here.

Step right up businessmen! Don't be caught with a slim, feminizing Cross pen again! Come on down and grab onto this phallic little beauty and your manhood will NEVER BE CHALLENGED AGAIN!!

Special limited time bonus: the Plumpster doubles as the perfect tool for writing a letter, putting it in a self-addressed stamped envelope, dropping it in a mailbox, waiting a couple days, opening it up, and going and fucking yourself.

That's right, go fuck yourself!

WHO'S WITH ME!!!

Gee, Ted, why don't you bring that to the table on Monday?

2008-03-12T14:09:00.000-04:00

Say, chief, what’s that you got there? Yeah, that thing in the middle of your boardroom, with 150,000 layers of varnish and those ridiculously sturdy legs. Yes, that! Yeah, with the 7-inch thick board on top! Do you use that for slaughtering calves? No? Really? You totally should. It looks like it’d be awesome for that. So what then? Sacrificing your firstborn? No? Seriously?!?! I’m so goddamn confused. Do you practice line dancing on it? Do you do squats on it? Do you birth babies on it? Do you drop lead weights on it to see if they are rugged? No? What the hell?!?!? What the fuck is that thing for then??!!

OH CHRIST, NOW I GET IT. You need that 4 1/2 ton, 30ft long table so that you have something to put legal pads on top of during those long, important business meetings. Oops! I am sooooo stupid I thought it was a support for holding a GODDAMN ELEPHANT. My mistake! I can be such a wicked dumbass.

Yeah, okay, so I get it now. Businesspeople love to know there’s a big long fat piece of wood in the room when it’s decision time. Well CONGRATU-fucking-LATIONS! That’s quite a hunk! It looks like it will make a terrifically stable support for you to lie down on and GO FUCK YOURSELF!

Conference room tables = More masculine bullshit

That’s right… GO FUCK YOURSELF! We don’t need these goddamn tables. LET’S WRITE ON OUR LAPS!

WHO’S WITH ME!!!!!!

Let ME file that!

2008-03-06T15:43:00.000-05:00

Everyone knows that disorganization cuts into productivity like a hot scalpel into the gamey flesh of your business, creating hideous scars on your profits and carving out the malignant growth potential of your bottom line. Nobody wants that! It's ugly! And it's gross -- and not as in the GNP..... "gross" as in DISGUSTING!

People! Help is on the way!

Yep, it's that old friend Mr. Files, the "final solution" to the perpetual trouble you encounter finding a workable way to access all those important documents you need to keep business from going on the bump. And what could be more impressive to your ISO 9000 inspector than a hot double-order of Alphabetical?

Hey, I've got an idea: how about we get a bunch of manila folders and go fucking CRAZY organizing files! What could be more pleasant than the pleasure that you take in knowing that everything is in it's place?

Pleasure, alphabeticalization, manila folders... I THINK I'M GONNA CUM.

But hold that thought... who's going to do all this work? How about a foxy temp?!!?! Yep, nothing spells organization like a non-benefitted worker who is willing to spend hours filing your big important shit. And the best part is, if you ask the right way, you'll get a pretty lady. Harrassment schmarrasshment! These files won't put themselves into those big drawers.

Hey picklebreath! I got an idea! How about you file your goddamn shit yourself and let the temps go get that physical they've been putting off for the past 15 years? Or better yet, why don't you put these files in alphabetical order... let's see... what've we got here.... oh yes, okay:

G-O F-U-C-K Y-O-U-R-S-E-L-F!

That's right, go fuck yourself! And take your filing with you!

WHO'S WITH ME!!!!

OMG, I LOVE MY TEAM

2008-03-05T13:33:00.000-05:00

Oh, hey team! I want to thank you for being such a good team. You know, you’re all really strong team players, and I have to commend you on your breathtaking team spirit. I am going to treat the whole team to a meal at the Melting Pot, because you know what? I’m just part of the team! I think a team is only as strong as its asshole. So this one’s going on the company card.

Sports Analogies = Dickheadedness

Hey, you! Yeah you! The big teaming pile of shit who keeps going on & on & on & on about teamwork! I just heard a rumor. It told me you’re a big bleach-y cumsplosh on the face of the team, and that means it’s time for you to go towel off your managerial excellence and get down to the dirty business of taking on the corporate hierarchy. Hope you didn’t get a splash of team protein in your eye!

Also, I have been meaning to ask you. Do you know who invented teams? Labor unions, that’s who! So next time you feel like celebrating teamwork, how about you throw down and take one for the team by signing on for an organizing drive? Don’t worry, the Change to Win Coalition has a whole team of laywers at their disposal to protect you from retaliation. Thank Christ for the whistleblower’s protection act…. and thank heaven for teamsters like you!

Let’s take a fucking team shower! Hot! Who’s with me!!!!!!!

My Newspaper Is Pink

2008-03-03T12:39:00.000-05:00

Ooooo, look at my newspaper, it's fucking PINK. That’s because I’m reading the goddamn Financial Times! Don’t hate just because I have IMPORTANT FINANCIAL DECISIONS that must be made as a matter of urgency. As it happens, the decisions I make are so financial, I mean important, that I cannot risk accidentally picking up the goddamn New York Times and accidentally reading about, say, human rights abuses as though they didn’t affect my bottom line… I must have Pink at my disposal ASAP – and my NASDAQ PDQ!!! I demand that my newspaper be indistinguishable from the pleasantly fleshy white fingers of the Man. Mmmm… that’s de-lish!!!

Oh, hey there fuckface. Is that your newspaper or did the Victoria’s Secret catalogue throw up last night’s cosmo’s all over your Metro?

Who fucking cares! You’re an asshole! Go fuck yourself!

Who’s with me!!!!!

I'm going to need you all to rally behind this new account.

2008-02-27T18:12:00.000-05:00

You know what y'all can rally behind? DOMINOES, MUTHAFUCKA.

That’s right. So if you don’t have a kickass set circa 1984, SHUT THE FUCK UP.

WHO’S WITH ME???

Here, Take My Card

2008-02-25T15:11:00.000-05:00

When we turned 16, my best friend and I discovered – like so many gay adolescents before us – that we could make a killing providing entertainment for birthday parties. We had just the right balance of panache, theatricality, and hatred of children to keep audiences interested and parents from ever inviting us back. It was the perfect business. While our friends were unhappily nursing the painful papercuts they got bagging groceries or delivering newspapers, all we had to do was show up at some rich fuck’s house, put on a shitty little show, collect a ridiculously inflated check, make fun of the stupid parents and their dumb kids on the drive home, take a shower to wash off the memory of those screaming brats and their suburban ennui, and put it all behind us by retiring to my basement and masturbating each other to completion. We may have lacked talent, ambition, or even the most passing interest in the entertainment industry, but we did have one very important thing: business cards.

I am reminded of this charming story each time I see some asshole dropping his business card in some stupid fishbowl by the cash register of a shitty restaurant or hardware store to “win” a free lunch. Is there anything more soul-crushing than the look of proud excitement on their faces when businesspeople reach for their “cards,” as though the fact that they have a little piece of cardboard with their name printed on it somehow provides incontrovertible evidence that somebody somewhere in the world actually gives a shit about their petty existence? I see a business card and I assume someone needs extra cash to buy a 3-pack of gay porn at their local Richdale’s, only to throw the whole collection away a few minutes later after shame-facedly jerking off all over the cheaply upholstered driver’s seat of their parents’ Toyota minivan. Then I feel so bad for them because they probably had to work really hard for that sad little orgasm.

Business Cards = Unsatisfying Onanism. WHO’S WITH ME!!!!

David Brooks

2008-02-21T13:03:00.000-05:00

Hey, I’ve got one: how about we rename assholes“bobos”!!! Like: bourgeois bohemians! Isn’t that HILARIOUS? OMG! I’m so crazy! I just thought of that! It’s so, like, totally what’s happening right now too. Everything/everyone is so fucking “bobo.” Don’t worry, I’ve got a lot of other hysterical neologisms – or “sniglets,” as I call them sometimes – up my Brooks Brothers sleeve. They’re just like “bobos!” Hahahahahahahahaha!

Hey David Brooks, I’ve got one too: how about “dickhead”? Cause that’s what you are. If you are going to be a conservative prick, you can at least pretend that you hate poor people directly. But no no, that would be too obvious for Mr. Subtlety himself, who feels just a little tinge of regret when he has to think about sweatshop labor or homelessness. This assface just helps rich people convince themselves they don’t hate poor people, even though they totally do or they wouldn’t be so fucking rich.

Hey, bobos, what could be more earnest than snuggling up with the WSJ/NYT and reading another thoughtful analysis by a rich white asshole who has discovered how ironic it is that being rich and white makes people feel bad about themselves – and then made it a hip thing to be? Self-consciousness is sooooooooo progressive! Let’s give this guy a hand! What a winner!

Hey, but it’s so awesome that David Brooks supports same-sex marriage. Maybe he can marry himself now and get a big tax write-off for going and fucking himself.

Yeah, that’s right, David Brooks! Go fuck yourself! Who’s with me!

Tall glass buildings

2008-02-20T11:35:00.003-05:00

Forget the drab office-stucco of yesteryear; it’s the muthafucking future EVERY DAY when you work in a TALL GLASS BUILDING. It’s like freaking Metropolis, and that makes you SUPERMAN. Hells yeah!

Hey dude, where do you work again?
You know the tall glass building? I WORK IN THERE.

That’s right bitches, don’t even think about defying the awesomeness of working in one of these things. And when you drive by and the glare reflecting off that tall glass façade blinds you, just a li’l bit, you know what to say. Say “THANK YOU!” for reminding me that business people are in there at all hours making important decisions, producing really flashy portfolios, and looking out their tall glass windows at the silly, silly world outside.

OMG>>> can you IMAGINE having to wash all those WINDOWS>??? HAHAHA!

I LOVE GLASS BUILDINGS!
I AM THE FUTURE!
BLOW ME!

OMG I’m TOTALLY having a heart attack!!!!! OMG!

2008-02-19T10:39:00.000-05:00

Oooh, look at me, I’m having a fucking heart attack. Ow. Ow. Secretary, call me an ambulance… I’M NOT READY TO DIE.

Damn! I must be one hell of a manager/executive if I’m so important that I have heart attacks! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I “hope” I don’t need a “bypass.”

Okay, businesspeople, we get it. You work hard, golf hard, and fuck hard, and that spells one thing: m-e-d-i-c-a-l e-m-e-r-g-e-n-c-y, specifically: a coronary. Christ, I remember when it was Sanford who was scared of “the big one;” now every time we hear about a heart attack we have to picture Dick “Buckshot” Cheney’s boated pumper shitting the bed, or some Wall Street bigwig who day-traded himself into the emergency room with a goddamn numb arm. Maybe if these people’s arteries weren’t clogged with big fatty deposits of their own bullshit they wouldn’t have to bore everyone with their stupid near-death experiences and subsequent life re-prioritizing. I’ve got an idea: how about these swollen, self-involved pricks give the Big One BACK TO THE MUTHAFUCKIN’ PEOPLE!!!

Who’s with me?

The Water Cooler

2008-02-18T13:56:00.000-05:00

Look at this thing. I have an idea. Let’s find the ugliest piece of goddamn furniture in the whole office, stand around it, and talk. Yeah, that’s right: fucking awesome. We can talk about all kinds of interesting shit:

-- SPORTS!
-- Who the fuck just got pregnant
-- Our spouses
-- How much of our money our spouses spend
-- How much our spouses’ parents suck
-- Sports :(
-- Wall Street – Check out that monoline insurance! Sha-zamm!
-- Hedge funds – OMG HILARITY ENSUES
-- Our goddam kids and their goddam friends/boners/uteruses etc.
-- That dickhead in the office that everyone hates
-- The fax machine – HAHAHA!
-- Kids today and their “My-Space”
-- College parties and how fucking awesome they were
-- CARS!
-- Margaritas

“Ooooh, you know, it’s just something I heard ‘AROUND THE WATER COOLER.’”
“Hey Tom, heading to ‘the WATER COOLER’ again?!?!?!
“Hey guys… this is a BUSINESS MEETING. How about you save the chit-chat for ‘THE WATER COOLER’?”

These conversations would be scintillating enough taking place anywhere, but throw in the madness of a fucking WATER COOLER and suddenly you are talking serious interesting words.

Hey, guess what? We get it. You like to talk about stuff. Neat! But for christ’s fucking sake, subversive, can you please stop talking about the fucking water cooler? WE GET IT WE GET IT WE GET IT. Now shut up.

Who’s with me!!!!!!!!!

Brooks Brothers Non-Iron Traditional Button-Down Shirt

2008-02-15T08:50:00.000-05:00

The first thing you notice when you walk into a Brooks Brothers clothing store is that all their clothes fucking suck. Unless, that is, you are a successful businessperson: in that case, the first thing you notice when you walk into a Brooks Brothers clothing store is that you have finally found a place where you can shop off the rack and look exactly like everyone else at “the firm” -- without ever having to pay the slightest bit of attention to what you are buying. It doesn’t really matter since everything in the fucking store goes together. Hey, you’re not paying $30 for a pair of socks… you’re paying for the peace of mind that comes from knowing that when you cross your legs during an important business meeting, your colleagues/employees/board members/shareholders won’t be suppressing laugher as they gaze at your hopelessly last-season, poly-cotton-hilarious, navy blue socks. They’ll be too busy listening to that line of bullshit that keeps shooting out of your mouth all the fucking time, or watching that awesome PowerPoint presentation that your teenager helped you trick out with rad bells-and-whistles to “WOW!” them straight out of B-school. Same goes for those nifty khaki pants, and hell double yeah: that awesome blue button-down shirt. Fucking versatile.

The good news is, bonus! you can untuck this bad boy, trade the business khakis for a stiff pair of blue jeans – don’t worry about the shoes, those can stay – and you’ll be right on track for a downright kickass night on the town. And the fit will be so formless and unattractive that no one will ever think you’re gay. Boo-yah!

Skymall Item #720058

2008-02-14T11:25:00.000-05:00

Look at this shit. Yeah that's right. It's a "thinking outside the box" sculpture, designed and manufactured by Successories, the biggest assholes in the world of businessperson faux enthusiasm. Emphasis on "suc," because they sure do. This particular gem is a clever object lesson in irony, since only the most pathetic dick on the planet would be lazy enough to purchase this nightmare in an ill-fated and transparently desperate attempt to foster nonconformity: nothing fucks with the system like a sculpture from Skymall. The ad copy reads: "This cleverly designed, hands-on sculpture encourage creativity on every desk." Which is true, since it force everyone who see it to imagines creative ways to tortures the owner of the "interactive sculpture."

Jesus Christ already. Who's going to buy me this?