on the MBTA Green Line B this very AM

When I first moved to Boston, the Green Line had old cars. They had some rust, and they weren't particularly sleek, and they had green paint that was flaking some, and the encrustation of many winters and the application and removal of advertisments, and they weren't particularly easy to get in to, or get out of. But they had character. Especially, the conductor would, (and a lot more often than in the sleek new actual subway cars on the Red Line or the Blue Line or the Orange LIne) lean into the mike, about halfway between the stops, and grunt "Blandford" or "BU east" or "Copley." You had to pay attention. You'd miss it, and he wouldn't repeat it. Other than that, the conductor was silent, except he would occasionally hector passages to "move to the back" or inform folks that "this train will be running express" but the central interaction was the calling of stops in a curt, barely-bothered, fashion.

Then, the winter came, and new trains. They were sleek, had slab sided expanses of sheet metal, little "designed by Pininfarina"logos, since they were, after all, designer trains, and they came equipped with little LCD screens in the cabin that would tell you where the train was going (inbound or outbound) and, most disastrously of all, a calm, computerized voice that was didactic and intrusive.

"The destination of this train is..Government Center," the voice would opine. "The next stop is..Arlington. Doors open on the right. Entering..Arlington."

And, because it was the green line, and there wasn't very much space between stations, the voice would be back, within seconds.

"The destination of this train is..Government Center," the voice would say, taking no notice that it just said it, "The next stop is..Bolyston. Doors open on the right."

What was the most irritating was the obvious vocal stitching. These cars had come replete with a program to announce stops: you could pick if the doors opened on the left, right, or both sides, you could designate when the train would tell you if it was entering or leaving a station, you could designate destinations. Then, you'd program it to say "Government Center" or "Park Street" or "Griggs St. Long Ave." and it would, with this barely perceptible delay:

"The destination of this train is..Government Center." Just a slight catch, but so noticable, and so obnoxious.

Killed me slowly, it did.

Today, though, was different.

The voice, my personal Big Brother, was gone. And the conductor was yelling it out, again, with a slight tinge to his voice, the wry humor of repeating what everyone knows: this is Harvard Ave. You should move to the back of the train. Don't smack people with your bag. Yep, the next stop is Packard's Corner. Today, this morning, there was human touch.

And then, around Copley, our conductor started giving the directions in a perfect, lilting, Irish brogue. "The next stop," he said, giving full reign to the poetry of the statement, "is Arlington." It was hillarious, subtle and hillarious, and we all looked around, at eachother, us long-suffering commuters, and we smiled.

"This guy is funny," I said, looking across the way at a man in a maroon dress shirt and a broad grin. "Good accent, too."

So I ask, nobody in particular, but a question nonetheless: why not let conductors announce the stops? Let them use funny accents, if they want. Everyone knows where they are going, and this morning, although it was a packed car, the commute wasn't so bad, wasn't compounded with mechanical sterility and pointless repetition. Give the conductors a voice again!

You'll make me happy, at least.

lies and promises

Readers:

I must apologize for my lack of blogging at present. I've got a lot of posts in the pipeline, and I've even promised a ditty on "Adaptive Reuse" for the fine folks over at EphBlog. In any case, these must largely wait for vacation, which is upon me tomorrow, not quite like a ton of bricks, but not really like the wolf in the night, either.

I can promise a few things, though:

1) I'd like to see this blog do more sponsored reviews. I'm working on that, and I'd hope to be able to bring that to you guys.

2) I'd also like to provide some more arts coverage. I'm working on getting tickets to both the David show at the Clark Art Institute as well as seeing Cezanne and Pisarro at the MoMA (plus some notes on the architecture).

3) I'd like to see a greater balance in coverage. I feel that I've been doing a lot of arts and entertainment coverage to the neglect of my other interests. There's some interesting articles in the Journal that are out or coming out, so I am thinking about preparing some review on stem cells (always a popular field) and other scientific issues.

When I resurrected this blog, partially at the behest of Zachary R. Blume, one of the most ferocious critics I've ever met, I was somewhat apprehensive. Looking back in the archives, you'll see that I alternated between the sublimely nasty, intensely local and concerns with important issues that impact everyone. I got into this whole business after the cessation of the ADD, something that everyone still misses, to varying degrees, and I'll be honest: I didn't always have a firm vision for what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go.

And I still don't.

But, I'm feeling a lot more comfortable doing some of the things I get to do here: arts criticism, science writing, political opining, and the descriptive vignettes of the day to day. I'm feeling much more comprehensive, now, and I have you, readers, to thank.

If you have any comments or suggestions, please leave them below or email them to me. I'd hardly shun any advice!

a couple thoughts on apartment hunting

I'm sure most Bostonians and most everyone, flung out in post-collegiate diaspora, have dealt with apartment hunting. Sure enough, this process centers around the suspiciously indespensible website Craigslist, which offers, in plain text: jobs, apartments, gigs, dating, rants and raves, and almost every city worth living (and many that are not) in America and the world.

Now, in my opinion, Craigslist apartment hunting is a bit like dating. You go to CL, fire up the search engine, put in your key terms ("tall," "brunette," "loves to laugh") and hit go. You then are presented with a list of places with descriptions.

"Gorgeous model-quality 25 year old with expensive habits, collects men who collect post-impressionist art."

Yep, like you'll be able to rent that place. That's first, last, security and fee!

So, you email the people via the anonymous contact email:

"Hi, I'm a 27 year old financial consultant with a coke habit. I'd love to live in your place because I owe $274,357 in back taxes to the IRS and $26,457 a month in child support to three or four women, I forget how many, and I drive a bimmer, so my car payment is killing me. So, moving in with you schlubs will help me cut costs, and goddamn, you know I need to do that. My ex is killing me slowly, and I'd love to have a shorter commute. I don't smoke and I hate pets."

You hear back:

"Hi, this is John, I've been living here for 2 years, and all my roomates are moving out, so I'm scoping out some new people for 3 ratty water stained bedrooms that look like they were used to film scenes from a zombie movie. You can come by between 745-845 on Tuesday, and wipe your feet, because we have snakes. You aren't allergic, right? Oh, my cell phone number is 555-423-7887, call me if you have problems."

So you traipse over there. Sure enough, "about 10 minutes" from the T means "Carl Lewis could sprint there in 10 minutes, maybe, with a tailwind." You wander around a little. Boy, this neighborhood seems run down. No wonder it is 475 a month. And then you ring the doorbell and meet the folks. Your host is usually wearing socks:

"Hi, John?"

"Hi, Carl?"

"Hey, nice to meet you, c'mon in."

"Is this the bedroom?" you innocently inquire, looking at what seems to be a laundry hamper mating with a closet. "Yes, this would be the 475, it has a window," your John replies.

"And here's the kitchen. We don't really cook much, but it has a range." "Gas?" "Electric."

"Here's the door to the roof deck, but we don't go up there much."

"The TV is staying, but Alan, he's moving out, well, he's taking the x-box. Hey, say hi to Brian."

And because Boston apartments are tiny, generally, it doesn't take much tramping to see a couple bedrooms, the inveterate mess of slobby men, and the fact that 600 a month isn't going to get you corian countertops, let alone faux marble. But that's fine, we can't all afford to live in Swellesley right out of college, anyway.

Here's the kicker though: everyone in Boston is doing the exact same thing you are, at the same time, with the same places, the same listings, the same people. Except, most places would rather have a girl, not a scruffy guy, or even a clean-shaven "professional" with a steady job. And that's the battle you're fighting, over and over again: there are 5 people looking at every listing, and you're always in competition.

"Who else is looking, (if I may ask)" you'll inquire.

"Oh, we've got a couple more tomorrow, and then we'll pow-wow with the roomates. I didn't really like one of the guys, so there's only really 3 or 4."

"Oh yeah? And then what's the timeframe?"

"Well, we'd need first and last, and then you could start moving in whenever."

"So when will you let me know?"

Tomorrow, or Thursday, or maybe early next week, see, we're looking at a couple more people, and one of our deadbeat buddies might finally move out of the Parental Manse up near Andover and join the fun in the big city, and really, we're hoping for a cute girl so we can oggle her in the morning when she's making pancakes, but seriously, we are kinda needing someone, and you look reliable...so we'll call you, don't call us.

But we're all doing it, because what's the alternative? Calling a relator and getting led around by a Rico Suave type who has simultaneously cornered the market on (hair) product, Davidoff's Cool Water pour Homme, and is sporting some gold chain ala boyhood hero Curt Schilling (or was that Gary Sheffield?) and who will be taking 10% for a finder's fee even though he just fucking looked the place up on Craigslist like you did?

Yeah.

Enjoy the rat race, that's what I say. At least you get to meet new people. I looked at a palace last night, hardwood floors, good looking roomates, nice room, solidly middle-class clapboard in Davis, near Tufts, replete with an American flag and potted roses on the porch. And I knew that there was no way I was going to live there, with the gold-plated toilet bowl and the leather couches and the faintly monied roomates who were upper-crustier with a hardly detectable hauteur ameliorated by the potpourri of their noblesse oblige and I was standing outside, afterwards, talking to another petitioner, and we shook hands, and he got in his Blazer, forest green, and he's half in his seat, leg dangling in the road, and we exchange stories, job boilerplate: "I work in cancer research" and he shoots back with "I'm a social worker for disabled kids" and the consensus is clear though I say it anyway, "keep up the good work" and he concurs, and at that moment, us do-gooders, standing in the street in front of that palace, we realized that we weren't going to live there, that we weren't female enough, or endowed with wildly renumerative positions, and that we were going to keep searching and find something, but not this nice. He drove off, and I walked to my car, and what more to say?


Good luck, and keep hunting!

On the parties of the damned

Sometimes, in an effort to remember what the master Jean-Paul Sartre presciently said about Hell (for those who haven't read No Exit simply that "Hell is other people"), I treat myself to an encounter with the damned. I suppose there a couple camps on Hell. There are the Sartreans, who see it as rather existential and undoubtedly personality based. There are the Boscheans, who see it as a garden of the most profound and perverted delights. And, I suppose, the Jews, who doesn't believe in it, even though they are all going there for having killed Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."




(details, Garden of Earthly Delights, H. Bosch, Prado, Madrid)

I've always loved Bosch in a very weird way. His visions of hell were intense, pictorial, and endlessly inventive. Look at the bottom detail: we've got a demon molesting a defenseless girl, two men throwing up, in the middle ground a man with a recorder jammed into his cornhole, all overseen by a bird-headed figure that could pass for Horus in any bad Cairo hookah dive bar. But, even though most of this imagery is pretty fantastic, even frightening, there's the odd humorous moment, like the demon on skates, or water skiis, above Horus' hat.

When I was a kid, reading, for some reason, the profoundly overrated C. S. Lewis' Perelandra series of turgid, allegorical science fiction novels, I always remarked on their trippy, very '70s jacket art.

Yeah. There you go, you've got some white hand, holding an apple, under some stylized awning, and strange celestial bodies in purposeful conjunction. Cover art that is a '70s LSD-ridden take on our dear Bosch. But, I digress.

@@@

I walk into this party in the aptly named Grendel's Den, a basement bar named by some Harvard Square Beowulf fan. Grendel's is a good place, little out of the way, decent drink selection, and apparently it is never visited by its namesake, which is definitely just as well (I hear he's presently employed as a bouncer by the Liquor Store, one of Boston's too many "meta-named" bars.)

The damned have a table, against the wall, with the little placards that Grendel leaves about to designate how large your party must be to play: "5 or more." The table was filled to this level. Out of respect for the dead, I'll not identify the damned. Suffice it to say, there were two ladies, one nursing a tall Paulaner Heffewizen and the other stubbornly attacking a Sammy summer. The ladies occupied the wall seat. They were faced by three gentlemen, one wearing, inexplicably, gym shorts and the others attired more respectably, at least wearing t-shirts and shorts.

It was a sorry scene. My companion, the infamous and occasionally humorous Eric Engler, lept into action, offering to buy a round and even summoning the old waitress, blue-shirt, horn-rims, and white hair to go with her skeptical eyes, to effectuate his claim. The nearest girl, who seemed to be, in some small way, the target of his affections boldly ordered another Sammy summer, and I requested the Paulaner, perhaps out of a desire to feel emasculated by such an imposing glass. Earrings bobbing, she had slim silver shafts that suspended, pendulum-style, a little shiny ball, she engaged the ever-charming Engler in conversation, but soon, Engler's attention was engaged by the man sitting to my left. Because this is not a logic game, I'll explain. Grendel's has a wall-bench, wall-seat, whatever you want to call it along its perimeter. I had taken the first wall seat at the corner of the table, covered with what seemed to be thinly beaten copper but was probably less expensive. Engler was to my right, next to the girls, who were in the wall seat in the alcove proper. To my left were two chairs, filled with the reasonably attired gentlemen, and directly across from me, in a chair, was gym shorts.

Doing my part to facilitate interaction, I started asking what people do. We had a sorry bunch: the man to my left had some sort of non-profit gig and played online poker. The man to his left was unemployed. There was, as seems to be de riguer these days, a disaffected grad student (gym shorts) and the two girls had meaningless volunteer or slightly paid labor positions in the non-profit sector as well. Yet, "poker," the word spoke by the man to my left, was the elixir of the Gods to Engler's fairly avaricious ears. "Poker," he started, and then commenced a verbal torrent that included the key phrases: "world series of poker, made a couple thousand dollars, made a couple thousand dollars in a few hands, Las Vegas, poker tournament, placed 3rd in a field of 470, world series of poker, got kinda nervous but still cleaned up." In short, our dear Engler hasn't changed at all.

While this conversation was furiously being waged in front of me, both men leaning towards eachother with a type of ferocious intensity (the man to my left being surprised that someone of Engler's obvious skill wasn't playing more, Engler explaining he found online poker to be desultory and dull, fit only for beasts) I began to study the other speaker.

He was particularly ill-favoured, so much so that I imagine in less enlightened times than our own he would have been consigned to circus work. His face was dominated by a chef's knife sized nose, thin and sharp and as dominant a rock-face as I've ever seen. His eyes were set below the browline, and his forehead was short and sloped at an acute angle towards a suspiciously flat skull. He was exacerbating his good looks by shaving his head, and the overall effect, with the wide-set, beedy, eyes and the prominently sharp nose and the flat head, was like that of a hammerhead shark. He was extraordinarily ugly, yet almost sympathetic, grinding his teeth a bit as he talked (weak jaw to go along with this) as he was some sort of antediluvian reptile masquerading as man. His companion had a frattish shock of brown hair and didn't seem to do much beyond smile blankly.

I began to realize where I was. I was sitting between Engler, ostentatiously advertising the apparatus of wealth and privilege, and a shark-man, some sad circus freak with flippers, a veritable Oswald Kobblepot for our time. The girls were smiling, talking idly of past hookups--who, exactly, had hooked up with whom while at a certain undergraduate college--oh, how naughty, you're such a skanky ho, oh my no, you, you were a skanky ho in college, titter. I was at a party of the damned, a short look at the most plausible Hell of all: other people.

I began drinking with furious intensity, hoping to escape. I dashed back my beer and , having moved away from Sharkface and Pokerchamp, began talking to Gym Shorts, who seemed marvelously insensible and afflicted with a maudlin concern for nostalgia. Oh my, I realized, time to go.

How dreadful.

On Thucydides

There comes a time in a man's life, when he's riding the train next to some untouchables--some vile, smelly, unshaven, ritually unclean maths geeks from MIT, reeking of desperation and talking loudly of their inane pursuits--when he realizes that there really is a certain level of necessary civilization. At least, that's what the girls across from me said when our intrepid Math-nauts, chortling to themselves about "sluicing," departed the train, leaving only their foul miasma behind them: "God, those guys make me want to really achieve something!"

"I was trying so hard to tune them out," her friend responded. They were sitting two seats apart, bracketing a blonde in a white top who had been spared it all by virtue of her earbuds. "They really did seem to be happy," the original interlocutor stated, after further reflection.

And that was that. The end of The History of the Pelopenesian War, with some smelly math geek invading my personal space just as surely as Spartan hoplites did the fields around Athens...

***

As I admitted earlier, I had never been able to stomach Thucydides. I read Seutonius at an early age (he's so delightfully risque) and was able to handle Livy and even Tacitus (hardly the most straightforward of Latin prose stylists, but a magnificent historian). I read my Herodotus, and was unimpressed with the "Father of History's" rampant credulity, which, literally, knew no bounds. Homer, of course, and Virgil, and some Caesar and some servicable, redoubtedly British general histories of the Punic Wars, Alexander's conquests, Marathon, Augustus' disastrous German campaigns (you know, banging the head against the door and yelling "Varus, give me back my legions!" because what else can you say after the greatest Roman military disaster since Cannae?) which led into schoolboy admirations for the dark Phoenician and his doomed enterprise but a bracing young imperial respect for the great Scipio Africanus, the winning general who is merely a footnote...

Thucydides isn't much of a romantic. He's hard-nosed, rigorous, honest. He's unspairing, seeing clearly, even as a contemporary, the incalcuable stupidities, arrogances, overreaches of the power-hungry Athenian mob or the enthusiastically block-headed Spartans. He finds no easy solace in oracles or the accumulated obediences of Greek religion. They are, for Thucydides, arbitrary and irrelevant.

Well, I realize, in retrospect, that I simply wasn't ready for such an adult work. I might have been a happier kid, or at least someone that only understood despair, disapointment, and loss in an intellectual sense. That's not going to do it, when confronted with the self-immolation of a glorious situation, the wasteful abandon of the flower of Greek youth, all for more talents, a couple more ships, greater prestige.

Thucydides: a masterpiece of history, calm, dispassionate, boldly analytical, and magisterially comprehensive. Highly recommended.

Happy Independence Day!

Just wanted to wish a happy Independence Day to all my readers out there in America and the world. It may come as no surprise that the 4th, along with Thanksgiving, are my two favorite holidays. They both, in their own way, center on drinking, food, and public recognition of our central cultural values: fireworks and football. They are also, I increasingly realize, unique. My friends from Britain or the Netherlands have Christian holidays--Christmas, Easter, Mardi Gras. They do not have national holidays.

We're fortunate to live in a country that offers us so much: Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. These are not, I'll aver, overdetermined. They're aspirational.


Here's to dreaming big, cool fireworks, and beer! Here's to the good old USA!

on spending 7:53-8:01 PM at Kendall Square

The Marriott hotel in "Cambridge Center," roughly located above the Kendall/MIT T stop, looks remarkably crystaline, as if some quartzite, docahedral, suddenly splintered into brick and glass. The Marriott towers corrugate, stepping forward and back, and are, in their own way, midly imposing, slightly sterile.

I was sitting in Kendall Square, the courtyard outside the Marriott, waiting for friends. The T regurgitates you from the earth onto a brick-paved courtyard, neatly decorated with some street trees hemmed into planters, a sprinkling of metal benches, enough to make sitting possible. At almost 8, on a Saturday, the square was empty, a small knot of a group, chatting animatedly, and some stragglers, obviously waiting for people.

I sat down, resigned to waiting. The Longfellow was to my left, the curve of Broadway sweeping onto the bridge. To my right, cooly animated in the greying light, was F. O. Gehry's generically post-modern Stata Center, a post-Bilbao crazy-quilt for the prestige of MIT.

The square was largely deserted. A woman walked up to the inbound Kendall T stop, across the street, and then down the stairs. I kept looking around, secure under my tree. Sun was setting, more or less, not with any great alacrity, but in the steady ebbing of a summer's day. Because of the silence, the breeze was making most of the noise. Main Street, Cambridge, which divides the inbound and outbound pavillions of Kendall/MIT, features a row of festive flags, advertising "Cambridge Central," in variegated, multi-colored resplendency. Each flag, suspended from a boom, was also anchored with chain. The flags, catching the wind, were producing a variety of harmonics: the taut flapping of the cloth, the dull thunk of the wooden booms smacking against the flagpoles themselves, the chink of the chain being grated against metal.

Remarkably symphonic, really, but comforting, the varying tones, flap, chunk, bang, flap, whistle, pivot, bang! There's a pleasing sibilance to hearing flags or sails twist in the wind, to make their own quiet, accidental music. This is, incidentally, mirrored by the "Pythagorean" organ, downstairs, in the Kendall/MIT station. Hollow pipes, tuned to varying tones, can be "played" by getting an appropriate frequency, waveform, however you want to put it, to register in suspended mallets. You rock a handle, back and forth, building up amplitude, until the "organ" sounds, melodic chimes in a subway station.

Right before my friends arrived, I was approached by two tourists, a lovely asian woman and her (middle aged) daughter. They produced a map, jabbed an emphatic finger at where they wanted to be, and asked me, in effect, how to get there. I told them, using my best tour-guide demeanor, that they should walk down Vassar, and moreover, one of the side benefits of such a route is that they'd walk by MIT's new Stata Center, see Frank Gehry's latest. "Who's Frank Gehry," the grandmother asked. "The architect, famous architect, did the Guggenheim in Bilbao," I replied, "you should really see it, plus, it is a great walk, get to see a lot of MIT." This seemed convincing, and they walked off, parting with a sincere "thank you," in the direction I had indicated.

It was, I'll say, a lovely quiet bit of evening, even without the flagpole seranade.

***

In my attempt to see more films from the '70s that couldn't or wouldn't be made today, I had procurred the early Al Pacino vehicle Dog Day Afternoon (1975) from Netflix (Ebert, Camby). Sidney Lumet directed, with a tight budget; lot of great shots inside, framing a very sucessful evocation of claustrophobia and media mania. For those of us, weaned on OJ that believed that media-saturated crimes began after the MTV age had killed the radio star, this film's effective portrayal of a brouhaha was telling. Police helicopters hover next to news choppers, high channel camera men scaled out on the landing skids for a better shot, all the while the police, using green army surplus schoolbuses, pump in a full media contingent, cameras, photographers, notepads and all.

This film is, thoroughly and unabashedly, Al Pacino's. Playing a ruthlessly charismatic "Sonny," and robbing a bank to (it turns out) pay for his gay lover "Leon's" (played with aggrieved camp by Chris Sarandon) sex change operation. This sordid, domestic, plot doesn't overshadow Pacino's white hot rage. He paces, twirling the bank's keys on a metal chain with scarely contained fury, shouting at the assembled officers with the name of the recent police massacre: "ATTICA!" As he strides back in forth, in front of the bank, white hankerchief in one hand, key chain in the other, dishelvelled, straining, you are filled with unremitting awe. This, this is acting! This is electric! You can't take your eyes from Pacino, since he's sparkling, magnetic, the beating heart of this movie. Late in the film, in two phone conversations, filmed one after the other, Pacino pours out his heart to Leon, who effectively betrays him by having the cops listen in, and then hangs up, in disgust, at the ineffective keening of his insensible wife, mother of his children. This is great, intrusive, film-making. Sidney Lumet bores to the heart of the issue, letting us explore someone who is unabashedly complex, a real man, a killer, a lover, someone confused about gender issues, full of bravado, but ultimately aiming just to help.

It goes without saying that they wouldn't make this film today. The relevant issues are a little raw--in our heavily over-focus-grouped Hollywood what actor would dare to play a gay man?--and the performances are too complex, shaded, for the modern jump cut. I can't imagine this movie today, with jump cuts, rock soundtracks, and various heroics; it would be too far from the urgent, cheap, desperate cinema verite of the '70s where stars were still permitted to sweat and suffer.

The film's conclusion, at the airport, was borrowed, slightly, by the masterful Michael Mann film Heat (1995), a cops and robbers film that ultimately recognized craft as the token of respect between professionals for whom the career meant everything. Pacino's cop, in Heat, pursues DeNiro to LAX, and in the shifting, liminal space between city and air, nationality and freedom, light and dark, kills him.

Violence at airports--we instinctively understand they're appropriate places to end protean narratives--and Lumet delivers, even recruiting Lance Henriksen, chiseled and largely immovable features, for a contributing cameo. Lance achieves fame, a relative term, for an experienced character actor, in James Cameron's Aliens as an android. That's an effective use of that face.


Dog Day Afternoon: highly recommended.