New York Zoning Appropriations (part II)

(Concerning the New York trip of 4/10-4/16)

DAY FOUR

It’s Friday, it’s the weekend, let’s see what the city has to offer. I woke up! Then I went back to sleep. Slept in, a bit ashamed at the night before. Later wandered down and while eating lunch/breakfast I overheard a Jewish guy having political discourse with some European girls.




Ah, my topic of choice. My ears twitched. Zionism, the Jewish question, and the supposed anti-Semitism of Old Europe. These girls were basically saying that its hard to feel sorry for Israel because of how they treat the Palestinians and the Jewish guy was saying that the real reason people criticize Israel is because everyone is secretly racist. I had to chime in. I butted into the conversation and got my kicks criticizing my home country; about the immense foreign aid Israel gets, about the historical rationale for Zionism, poor Israel with their small amount of land, the treatment of Palestinians, about what is really good for Israel, blah blah. And I didn’t play the Sabra card once, nobody’s business, for all they knew I’m just another liberal anti war young college student with no personal stake.

Really, politics is such ridiculous subject matter when one takes it too seriously. The world is screwed up and there’s always going to be suffering as long as humanity exists as territorial primates with hierarchal alpha male political structures. That’s just the way it is and its probably going to be that way forever. All utopian ideologies are terribly naïve. Either humanity completely evolves into something else or it’s never going to end.

But while I choose to toy with a Zionist-type debate, here’s the bottom line point: it just didn’t work. The purported goal of Zionism was to end anti-Semitism by giving the Jews a homeland. Did that succeed? Nope, that went horribly wrong. I cannot say that Jews are safer and racism has ended because they have Israel, I cannot say that at all. And it’s a shame because regardless of history the country is there today now and people should get along. I wish it could be a bi-national state and nobody had to fight over the semantics. But people are stupid and want to kill over pride, over who gets this stupid parch of land. The Arabs are fucking stupid for making such a big deal of it too. I don’t get what hooplah is over, it’s not that great a country. It’s just another dessert where they built some cities and for some reason religious nuts think its special. Get over it.

(And also, some say the goal of Zionism in actuality to about the ‘Jewish Communist Conspiracy’ taking over American and then the world. Even if this was the case, that goal didn’t work out either. Another simplification by the conspiracy theorists. Israel has power but it obviously does not ‘run the world.’ As much influence as the Israeli lobby has over America the Saudi lobby has power too. OPEC and oil play a role on every side of the conflict, for example Greg Palast has written about infighting between the Neo-cons and Big Oil. The System is not as in control of everything as the paranoids think…

Then again, what if the goal of Zionism all along was neverending unresolved conflict? What if the goal was just for the arms industry to sell their crap forever by dragging out the conflict perpetually? Nobody ever really wins, but the F-16s and bombs and Uzis charged to American taxpayers, the terrorist threat looming in the backdrop a constant motivation. That’s probably how it works, sides are taken, but nobody wants to ultimately finish the job, they just want money.)

Anyways, this conversation dragged on for a while. It was rather fun, I love a healthy debate. But everybody had to get going. Funnily enough, I ran into the Swedish girls again, and they were leaving the States soon so they gave me an extra ticket they had to a show at the Natural History museum. How nice. I went to the museum, which I think was mostly free, and this ticket being specifically for a planetarium show. I remember planetariums being pretty lame when I was a kid but this one was very interesting. About interstellar collisions, hosted by Robert Redford. Afterwards I still had plenty of time and I looked into what else was available. Dinosaur exhibits!





Nothing cooler than dinosaurs. Upstairs to the Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops skeletons, charts of Sauropod evolution, eggs, and all that. O to be a kid again and be in love with dinosaurs. There was plenty of other stuff at the museum; I wandered for a few hours, and then it closed. I need to go to museums more, I’m such a philistine. I never did end up going to the Guggenheim. Well, I did end up going to a novelty sex museum, but that was later.

Inbetween I looked for a movie theater to kill some time at. I wanted to watch the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, I think the movie poster is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. I miss cable, I want my Aqua Teen fix. I never did see that film yet but I did see this Japanese movie called ‘The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai.’ It was an… interesting movie. There were funny bits, and plenty weird, about a call girl who is shot in the head and becomes a genius. The villain was a terrorist who cloned George Bush’s finger to press a button for doomsday weapon. Mostly the movie was about , uh, intellectual dirty talk fetish. Like, there were all these sex scenes were the characters discussed existentialist philosophy and rationalism and Noam Chomsky. But it was a pretty shitty produced movie, outside of the novelty of the bizarre it wasn’t very good.



As said, it was Friday night; and I was headed to this rock show I had gotten an email about, ‘Rock and Hard Place’ show at the Crash Mansion on Bowery. I rsvp’d and everything. Friday night this place was really packed. Some good bands played. One band, the Press, made a particular impact as they all played in their underwears. And their music was great too, I’ll have to look up their web page or something.

New York has the most beautiful girls in the world. Much better than L.A. And obviously preferable to the overweight Midwest. The ‘hipster scene’ there or whatever, is filled with so many amazing girls. And they seem real, they seem less pretentious than over here. Deep L.A. has plenty of ugly people (if I can be so judgmental) but even at some nicer O.C. beach in the summer the skinny hot girls don’t seem very interesting. Empty bodies, no brains. New York girls seem so cute and intelligent all at once. Of all the places I’ve traveled to in my times I say that New York has the best people in the world. Not just beautiful ladies but sincere nice people who will tell you to fuck off with honesty as well as sincere moments of kindness (NOT like fake L.A.), intelligent humans with something to add to the world. But maybe I just idealize because I’m not there.

So I tried to talk to a few girls at the show, but not to much avail. After the last band performed the DJ played some shitty music, and nobody was dancing anyhow. So I left.

DAY FIVE

Saturday, what a day. My time was up at the hostel and when I went down to rebook they were filled up. Dammit, frustrating. I called the Chelsea hostel and they seemed helpful. But when I went down there they said I had to wait until 2 to get a room. I did some laundry there, very necessary, and that quite lessened the weight in my bookbag. What to do to kill time?

Marguerite told me about an anarchist convention thing at a church in Washington Park. So I went over there. Interesting stuff, all these little publishers selling books and talking about upping the system. As stated, I’m a bit over upping the system. But its nice to see these people mustering up energy I don’t have (assuming it makes any bit of difference at all, assuming their point of view has any objective reality, assuming I’m not an apathetic waste, assumptions awry). Although, there were quite a bit of Marxists there, rather disturbing. How can communists who believe in strong central government be anarchists anyways, that never made sense to me? I’ve still got that Libertarian memetic indoctrination in me.

My big prediction is that global anarcho-capitalism is the future. But it’s not something I necessarily believe in, not something I want. Its going to suck and a lot of people are going to suffer. But it’s the lesser evil against all tyrannical government systems, that being no government at all, and we seem to be at a crossroads of one or the other. Global anarcho-capitalism will at least force us to evolve. Hopefully we don’t destroy the environment in the meantime and the planet survives, which all I can do about that is have blind faith that it will. This isn’t really something to fight for, something to revolution over. Just a prediction and a hint of cynical optimism. Fighting for revolution is stupid. I hate to say but that’s what history has taught me. All revolutions throughout history have failed and either compromised to a slightly better but still plenty fucked (mainly America) or having the post-feudal system becoming far worse than the one before (first French then Russian and all subsequent communist overthrows…)



Nevertheless, fun to see all these wacky anarchists. I talked to one publisher, networking la la, and gave him my comic. Need to email that guy with some of my prose and see what happens. (I brought a few copies of my comic but didn’t find as many people to give them to as I’d like. All that work for what? Well, once I get a cover and find the motivation to do some more. I’ll start a minicomic series of my own. Skylight books over in Los Feliz even said they’d consign, and that’s a great start. But a topic for another day…) One booth apparent was for the Freegans. Freegans, I hear, are vegan squatters who are against food waste so they dumpster dive for food. They claim its healthy and were giving out free samples but I declined. Some of these really hardcore activists didn’t smell so good by the way. Nice up the system technique, but I’m too judgmental and stuck in my patterns to be so hard up as to eat trashed food. I’m sure one day it will come to that but not right now. And there were some Brazilian performance artists in bloody pornographic outfits, among some panels, but I didn’t stay long. The whole ordeal reminded me of a small comic convention. It would be nice to fit in with some of these hardcore outcasts, but I guess I’m outcast enough I don’t like mainstream society but see so much of the counter-culture as full of it too. Either they’re poser phonies or naïve true believers, either way it’s not for me. They just seem to try too hard for no change, posturing about how much integrity they have but nothing matters. You can’t win in my cynical system huh? I’m upset with society for accepting so much stupidity, and I’m against the phoniness of working towards change. I’m against compromise and I’m against apathy, I’m suspicious of passion and weary of acceptance. All I can do at this point is observe for observation’s sake and believe in nothing. That can be fun. In fact, that should be the true artist’s way.





I went back gay scene Chelsea at the hostel and put my clothes in the dryer, and it seemed I was rather lucky to get a room. The girl working there was from Long Beach and she was saw my license and was like “now I have to give you a room.” Lucky me. 34 dollars plus ten deposit, I had a bed. Only one more night to book and I would finally be done worrying about finding a place to sleep. If all else failed I knew I could go back to the Brooklyn hostel which would never fill up. But that would be a bad idea on the day of my flight because if my stuff got locked out again I could miss my plane. But the next day I did fine, so no worries.



I went back to the anarchist show for a bit but it was played out and I looked for other activities. Noticing an interesting flyer I looked into this Kink sex museum. Only ten dollars with student ID, I checked it out. It was interesting but kind of stupid. More or less it was a pornography museum. They had a gallery on fetishism and a gallery on the history of porn. A lot of people just went there for the joke novelty, I could tell. Porn-wise, some nice education on the history and genres, most of it gross, but some of it rather hot. There were plenty of girls there, one particular girl I remember sitting down watching an explicit educational film on erotic massage, and I never did talk to her or anyone else there. At that kind of place, a bit creepy.

But still, filled with the emerging lifeforce of a perverted depraved energy, I scoured the city for something else to do. Flipping through the back pages of the Village Voice





[censored]





Feeling weird but still journeying ahead I walked about. Went to the Manhattan Mall for a bit, then Time’s Square again, Rockefeller center area (where Fox News is), ate, thought about seeing a comedy show but never did, looked into seeing that Aqua Teen movie around Time’s Square but the theaters there were too crowded and it sold out too early. It was all too crowded over there on the weekend, and I was so sick of that place by then. I checked out the Village again looking at some clubs but they all had twenty dollar cover charges and seemed to high-class for me. Getting late, I took the train to Brooklyn and wanted to go back to that bar from my first day and see if there was any fun to be had. Well, I tried but Brooklyn trains are trickier. It’s not as congested so when I tried to transfer to the next train I couldn’t find the other station and went the opposite direction. I gave up and just went back to my room, called it a night.





DAY SIX

This day sucked! I woke up and it was raining so damn harsh outside. I tried to persevere and went out. This was probably the worst weather I’ve been in my entire life. Karma punishing me? It was ice cold and my shoes weren’t too good. I thought maybe the rain would let up like on Thursday but it didn’t. The endless downpour of cold water everywhere. My shoes weren’t too good (I need to buy new shoes so desperately) and my socks were soaked. I went to Washington Park again because I thought the anarchist thing was continuing but apparently I was wrong and nothing was going on there. It was so utterly ridiculous outside (I ain’t used to this! I was made for tropical regions, I though I moved away from the cold dammit), I was in such horrible pain from the cold all I could do was laugh. I was even scared that my cell phone and electronic stuff in my pocket, iPod & camera etc., would break from the water but luckily they didn’t. Which is a miracle, I totally felt like the equivalent of just jumping into a pool and stepping out. Eventually had to go back and stay indoors. I took a hot shower and hung my clothes to dry. I just washed them and now they were so messed up.



There was nothing to do but read and play Game Boy. I talked to these mook British guys I was staying in a room with, they were okay guys but not terribly interesting. Later I went to the halls at the hostel, paid to get online for a little while. Just drinking some coffee in the kitchen and hanging out, and there was a British girl named Nicci there I got to talking to. British accents are so cute! Not that I have such intentions, or do I. There wasn’t much to do so we just talked for a time. She was visiting from a small town in England with a friend (I always assume all British people are crazy Londoners cause that’s my experience, but it really isn’t the case). One funny thing is they were going to rent a car and drive all the way to Los Angeles for their trip. Nicci, and her friend Claire, seemed very cool. Perhaps we’ll stay in touch and I’ll show her around this half of American in the months to come. We exchanged phone numbers and email and all that. I even gave them a copy of my comic. They seemed a bit impressed that I’m a writer, or at least profess to be (I still feel a bit embarrassed to label myself ‘a writer’). Maybe I should play the ‘I wrote a novel’ card more often to impress girls eh. Yeah right.



Later on when the rain was just a little bit better I walked to a nearby theater and saw Year of the Dog, the one with Molly Shannon in it, directed by the writer of the Good Girl. It was okay but sometimes indie movies are not very well made. A lot of it could have been shot way better, like way too many symmetrical conversations far too dull. Hell, over-the-shoulder shots anyone? For me it’s difficult to get lost in the story because I think too much about beat shifts and composition and lighting consistency editing pace and all that. Seriously, taking film classes and then even seeing real sets totally destroys the illusion of enjoying film. You can’t just turn off your brain to watch and enjoy, you’re too aware of the hundred people standing behind the camera. Oh well. I still enjoyed it for all its flaws. At least the movie, while cynically self-mocking, overall had a nice pro-vegetarian message.



I texted that girl (her phone was Americanized for her stay or something) but we never did meet up for drinks and I had to get to sleep early anyways. My last night in New York and tomorrow morning I had to get to the airport on time.

DAY SEVEN



Not much to tell. Only woke up checked out commuted to LaGuardia. Goodbye New York. My flight was delayed a little bit cause of the weather but I survived. Read more of Neuromancer, glad Wintermute and the Neuromancer A.I. got a happy ending but I wish Molly didn’t disappear and I hope Case will be alright though I didn’t understand the whole 3Jane thing very well. The Zelda game I got stuck on and didn’t continue it until I could get to the internet to cheat with a walkthrough guide. So I read and listened to my music and ate overpriced airport food. Southwest sucks by the way for not giving you any food, not even snacks. My ear-popping wasn’t so bad this go around, perhaps I’m getting more used to it. Transferred in Chicago, I guess O’Hare change their name to Midway or something, and back to LA. California, my adopted home country. And it was kind of cold but nowhere near New England. (I have never been to New York in a warmer time of year, perhaps next time.) At night the green line to blue line took so freakin long and I didn’t get home until pretty late. I’m getting sick of public transportation here, especially after comparing it to New York’s, I need to get a car. But I can’t now, I already spent all my money.

CONCLUSION

So now I’m back home. What to do. Had to go to school immediately the day after and start editing my movie that I’m turning in late, had to half-ass study for some tests, had to go back to the grime of work. Same old same old.

So what was ultimately the point? Just to go somewhere for the sake of going somewhere and experiencing some things just for the sake of experience? I guess that’s a worthy endeavor.

I do love New York. This was the longest I’ve ever been there; a whole week, and I witnessed a lot of the city. (I do regret I didn’t see any comedy or theatre or whatnot, but then again if I really want to there’s plenty of that in LA) Perhaps one day when I make more money and times are a bit more stable (or then again perhaps another day when I still make no money and life still makes no sense) I will ultimately move there. Yet what’s the big deal, geography doesn’t matter so much anymore. New York isn’t what it once was. You know, people write that the art scene might be moving out of New York and it’ll never be the clubbin 90s or the Warholian 70s ever again. The thing is, geography isn’t so important any more, not just in New York (or LA) but everywhere and nowhere. Mass media tech is making it rather irrelevant. You don’t have to live in New York to be on the cusp of cultural evolution or even live in LA to make movies; the internet is putting all of us on a more leveled playing field. It’s getting more and more virtual, you can do anything anywhere, and community sure isn’t so important. For now New York definitely still has the best creative energy, but who knows how relevant that will be in the future.

New York is as good a place as anywhere else, I would prefer it, but why do I want to keep moving? I don’t even know why I spent all this money on this trip, really and honestly what the specific point was. What am I searching for? I’m lost people, I’m very lost. Searching for some kind of meaning in existence that I’m not finding here, and I tried my hand somewhere else. It’ll probably never manifest, meaning is just a phantom. It’s not like I had any romantic adventure, just wandering about observing what I could find, but even if I did make some kind of real human connection what would it ultimately mean? Whatever, no sense overthinking the process. All is done, continue forth. And once again, the time comes for reinvention and a focus of will. I’ve got a lot to do, I’ve got to catch up, the future waits for no one but me, maybe you, slugging along, a gravity to escape, a shooting on the news, reality so real, perception so important, goodnight and carry on.