PipesDreams

My friend Phil, sailor, Master Diver, Lothario of Many Ports, arrived in town yesterday on a stopover from Whitehorse to New York. I couldn’t offer him a warm bed due to my own living situation, so I asked if he would settle for a hot meal and lukewarm conversation instead.

I suggested ‘Le Commensal’, an upscale vegetarian restaurant on Elm Street, because last time he visited he was not of the meat-eating persuasion, but when I asked “You’re still vegetarian, right?” his response was “Well, I can be”. Hmm.

This shot is from my dinner and a movie outing with the ladies on Tuesday night. We had dinner at Crispy Roll on Queen where everyone but me ordered the vegetarian sushi platter, and I bucked the trend and ended up with some mysterious arachnid-based-dish that involved rice and seaweed wrapped around cucumber, avocado, and transparent distended claw husks filled with oil. Better or worse than the Melly and Petar doughy-beetle-ball incident of a few weeks ago? You decide.

The movie was ‘Children of Men’, but I found it very disorienting, so I’ll pass on writing a review, and just say that Clive Owen is still extremely pretty, and Michael Caine can still act.

I know, I know – I can’t believe I have this much to say about my weekend, either. Bear with me, one more and I’m done. Since the Redhead Gallery trip was a bust, the three of us trudged off in search of oversized burritos, then pushed on through the sudden attack of chilly rain to Pages on Queen, where I spent money on books that I will have to read and then give away (I don’t have any bookshelves).

Since mentioned she had read my review and tried to buy Frank Miller’s ‘300’, only to find it was sold out everywhere, Alastair took the opportunity to object to my unflaggingly positive evaluation of the work, stating that it celebrated fascism. I couldn’t even come up with a response to that. All I could think was, “Duh, it’s about SPARTANS. Of COURSE it’s about glorifying militarism through severe social regimentation and placing the nation above all other sources of loyalty! That’s how Spartans roll, baby.”

I know the term was invented by Mussolini, but seriously, it could be called Spartism, if that wasn’t such a totally lame sounding word. Although I deeply respect my friend’s opinion, and his knowledge of things philosophical and political far outstrips my own, his attempt to slander a work of fiction by labeling it with a political epithet seems, well… naïve. Many, perhaps most, of the world’s greatest cultural works are dependent on an unabashed, aggressive nationalism and a narrative voice that derives power from exclusion. Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’. Byron’s ‘Don Juan’. Melville’s ‘Moby Dick’. Wagner’s ‘Ring Cycle’. Milton’s entire canon.

As Sylvia Plath would say, ‘Every woman adores a Fascist, / The boot in the face, the brute / Brute heart of a brute like you.’ Maybe not the best argument for my position, but see? Literature is chock-full of worthwhile reading that is steeped in dubious political juices. Besides, what does fascist mean anymore? It’s become a hopelessly vague pejorative. Orwell wrote over fifty years ago that the word ‘Fascism’ was almost entirely meaningless, and I doubt it’s made much progress towards clarity since then. But I digress.

went her own way while Alastair and I sat down for tea and a chat about, of all things, Peter Singer’s ‘Practical Ethics’ (aahhh! it won’t go away!), and then I had to break the news that we had talked ourselves out of time to rock climb, since I was due to meet in about 15 minutes.

A lot less physical than climbing perhaps, but no less mentally exhausting, Edward and I bunked down in and ’s living room and he introduced me to the scary world of ‘Viva Piñata’ for the Xbox360, a game I’ve been having wet dreams about for months now which was a complete and total disappointment in reality.

I mean, what a tease. One hears about a game whose entire premise is based on piñatas, and one makes assumptions. Such as that you will be allowed to smack the piñatas with a stick repeatedly, until showers of candy rain about your head in a sugary thunderstorm of pure insulin-crashing bliss. But no. No no no no no. Sad to say, ‘Viva Piñata’ is just ‘The Sims’ with paper-tissue-coated animals.

That’s right, people: the first 30 minutes of the “game” is all about hitting the shitty ground in your shitty garden with your shitty rusty shovel, then planting grass seed and waiting for it to grow so that piñata worms show up (no, you can’t hit them, stop asking) and then, if you’re very lucky, you might attract some piñata birds with your piñata worms, and get a whole piñata ecosystem started. And how do ecosystems continue? With sexual reproduction of course! You have to build a little house for the worms, where they can get some privacy and maybe have a glass of wine and give one another back rubs while presumably listening to some Barry White so that they can get in the mood for making whoopee.

At this point, I’m pretty sure I turned to Edward and said, “Wait, hold on, time out – am I really playing a video game that is about WORMS FUCKING?” The silent, shaking laughter and evil smile from the other end of the futon was enough to tell me that he’d been waiting for that moment of horrified revelation for days. Possibly weeks. Bastard.