New York Times Reporter Anthropologizes Hometown, with Predictably Vapid Results

Cultural tourist cum NY Times reporter Michael Wilson writes an article about ultimate fighting (or whatever one calls it) in Sioux Falls, the city nearest where I grew up. The title of the article is “Alive and Thriving in the Midwest: Brawling in Cages.” From this article:

On June 4, promoters set up a cage in the gravel lot beside Sidewinder, a bikers' bar in Sioux Falls, and held 17 fights in a "Summer Slam." A cage fight is scheduled for a bar in the city of Yankton on Aug. 13.

"It's like the hardest core," said Jarod Stevens, 25, a beefy, freckled redhead who works at a Hummer dealership, signing up for his first fight on Saturday in Sioux Falls. "It's proving something to yourself, that you're man enough to be a part of it and do well, hopefully."

By the night's end, Mr. Stevens will be holding a bag of ice to a bluish lump on his forehead. And he will be one of the luckier ones, in 11 fights over two hours that include men who train daily and self-described street fighters. Former convicts will fight on the same card as a corrections officer at South Dakota State Penitentiary, who has been approached by his fellow officers looking to learn a few moves, in case things get rough at work. Three men will be knocked out cold, with the night ending awash in the bright, swirling lights of an ambulance . . .

(Later) Mr. Stevens, the Hummer dealer: "I'm not one of those guys who's going to back down from a fight. I've had six ribs broken. I've been knocked out cold at a concert."

The hardest core, huh, Jarod? Wilson makes you sound like an idiot, albeit an idiot with a very distinct code of honor. I thought the hardest core was that time in sophomore year at Washington High when you and your friends picked on those Somalians new to the school and country, terrorizing them for like six months before they fucking rose up on your pale, freckled ass gangland-style and pitched you headfirst into the urinal. Jarod is the Midwestern archetype who hits on a girl, is promptly deflected, and responds by calling her a cunt to realign the power relations. Jarod buys big things to compensate for being such a small person. Jarod may be a good guy, but Wilson, and by extension, the New York Times, succumbs to its culturally voracious appetite for human interest pablum and gives us beefy Jarod and an account of grown men (and women – Wilson neglects to point out that this Sioux Fallsian are egalitarian in their stupidity) beating on each other under cover of “entertainment.” Jarod and the fighters are free to do what they want, as is anyone with the desire to see blood spilled and bones broken. Wilson and his editors however, do not prevaricate so much as they caricature. I call bullshit on this.

The interesting story would be the Somalians: how Lutheran Social Services decided allocating funds for bringing minority immigrants from war torn countries was necessary, how those who are displaced have battled tooth and claw to find a place here, the basic and innate racism that has sprung from their arrival, and the social dynamics of a small town that has grown into a metropolis without likewise expanding its concept of who is included in the idea of “we.” Instead we get bars, blood, and “Brawling in Cages.” Maybe it was Stuart Hall, who knows, that said – I don’t care about your politics, how you vote on your own time, I care about the kinds of stories you tell. This story is an evasion of relevance, a cartoonish piece equivalent to eye candy and masturbating to Internet porn. It tells us nothing about a changing Midwest or the traditions and attitudes, some of which are positive, resistant to such change. Let us move on:

This is not quite the Sioux Falls that Money Magazine declared the best place to live in the country in 1992, not the Sioux Falls that has attracted Citibank and Automatic Data Processing Inc., a quiet, safe city of 141,000, where an average of eight new residents arrive each day and a laser-light show plays every night.

In this Sioux Falls, people are 19 and 20 and 21 years old and looking for something to do, anything besides some youth program at one of the city's 65 parks or another laser-light show. The timeless ritual of cruising, in a square of downtown called "the loop," was banned two years ago, when police officers started writing tickets after three nightly sightings of the same car.

The thing is, people in Sioux Falls ranging from 19 to 25 have always been looking for something to do. This is a non-story. 2 to 1 odds Wilson learned about the laser show from the Chamber of Commerce or Tourist office, because that’s what it is: a history of Sioux Falls, told in a baritone voiceover with embarrassingly dated laser show graphic. The loop is like forty years old; in the last ten years, if you were 23, and wanted to score some meth or commit statutory rape, then you went to the Loop. Otherwise, not so much.

So we learn that Sioux Falls is a small humble city filled with many stupid young people who need to be spoonfed entertainment that is not too complicated and comes with bells and whistles. They have found violence, welcomed it into their lives, and either bathe themselves in blood or live vicariously through those who do. Welcome to America. Let us know get some sense of the momentum all this bloodletting is getting.

First,

"I always say, 'Where's the rule book?' " said Vernon Brown, 37, a former television reporter who joined the Sioux Falls City Council last year and is a critic of cage fighting. "They keep giving me a sheet printed off the Internet that says no eye-gouging, no fishhooks, no fingers in bodily orifices."

He does not foresee banning the sport. His main concern, he said, is for the spectators in the potent mix of violence, alcohol and what he sees as lax security.

The irony here is rich. Vernon Brown specialized in exactly this kind of story: his range stretched from cat-caught-up-in-a-tree to local-girl-gets-national-attention-for-quilting-talent. How he got elected in the first place is beyond me, but the fact that his main concern is for the spectators – what, are they being desensitized to violence or something – is suggestive of the man’s qualities in general. He’s a cheesedick, plain and simple.

Wilson concludes the article by doing some series journalistic legwork i.e. talking to one of the people who find fighters in the first place:

Watching the fights near the cage was Damien Alexander, 30, the man who met the Hawn twins in Iowa and urged them to come and fight. Thinking back on that night, he said he does not remember seeing either of them beating a marine, but something had moved him to approach them.

As he sees it, cage fighting is poised to take off in Sioux Falls. "You know what we got? We got a bunch of bars and a state park," he said. "This is good."

So Wilson’s method is to find the talent scout for the event, who dishes out the immensely stale justification for semi-sketchy behavior: There’s nothing else to do, man. This is good, too. What would it mean if cage fighting “took off” in Sioux Falls? Do you think Damien the recruiter has some interest in seeing this happen?

See, the thing is, the Midwest is really a great big ball of interesting narratives right now. Entire counties in Nebraska are surviving on Social Security. Areas west of the Missouri River in NE, ND, and SD have been in a drought for seven years. Small towns are evaporating, while Sioux Falls, Fargo, and other outposts of small city life are being entirely remade. They are no longer as white, as middle class, or as static as they used to be, yet the boxstores and minimalls that are sprouting up diminish any sense of unique, place-based originality they may once have obtained. What’s depressing about Wilson’s piece of shit article is that it will offend the city fathers for all the wrong reasons. It will offend their sense of decorum, not their sense of justice. It will not catalyze reflection, but reaction. So what? I guess not much. Caricatures will continue, sensationalism will provide the template, and reporters will take 3 day junkets to write shallow, condescending pieces about lonely, loutish men and women who find solace or triumph or something about who they are by taking or giving a punch.

Portrait

Room
Okay, so the room itself is an attic, with a half-spiraled staircase leading down back to the main floor and a general upside down “v” shape.. Call it 14 x 30, but that’s vastly misleading because it’s cut in half by the perpendicular ascent of the stairs and a big column, about which more will be said soon. At the foot of the stairs (the near wall) is a window, looking down into the yard and the quiet one way street on which the house sits. On the other side of the room (the far wall, yes – you’re picking up what I’m putting down), is a wood door painted red that leads to the back entrance and another set of stairs: wood, slightly dangerous, and sometimes (well, twice) pissed on after exuberance-granting liquids are consumed.
The far wall is untreated wood, which evokes halfass rusticity. The bed is perpendicular to red door, and about three feet from it. Well, futon not bed – it sits about 10 inches of ground, is a queen, and squeaks if physical motions between two non-combatants of different genders occur. Also not very comfortable, in addition to noisy, and of course the noise it does make during physical motions tends to cause mental discomfort or distraction as well, or so I hear. A blue comforter and green pillow sit on the bed. The sheets are cotton dark blue/light blue/transparent blue/white checked pattern sheets.
On the near wall side of the bed sits half of a desk, the other half being discarded due to space considerations. The half-desk actually looks and functions like an endtable, with shelving. In the shelving sit two large batteries, a copy of Emerson’s Journals, the King James Bible, Nietzche’s the Gay Science, a notebook, some letters to room’s occupant from various individuals, and Dreamweaver software that occupant has plans to eventually learn use.
The column in the center of the room mentioned earlier is oh, 12 inches from the bed. Its far wall side is probably 36 inches wide and 18 inches deep. The walls of the staircase connect to this column and extend toward the near wall, away from the bed. Two towels hang down from these walls, which at room level are about 36 inches tall. So, but the crucial thing to understand, is that these walls/ledges really make one aware of the upside down “v” shape of this converted attic. On the either side of the column, pick a side doesn’t matter, when walking from near to far or far to near, occupant has to assume various degrees of hunchback. Occupant is 5’9, and leads a charmed life indeed.
On the other, far wall side of the bed, is a tiny wood structure comprised of two shelves, respectively 4 and 12 inches of the floor. On the floor sits on alarm clock and the following books:

Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome, Stanley Cavell
Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
Never Cry Wolf, Farley Mowat
Webster’s Dictionary
John Donne’s Collected poems
Pastoralia, George Sanders
Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson
Tortilla Flat, Steinbeck
Leaves of Grass
The Virginian, Owen Wister
v. III and V of Rising Up and Rising Down, WT Vollmann
Secret Knowledge, David Hockney
Miscellaneous education theory bullshit that is about to be either burned or auctioned – (is Ebay racket hard to break into?)

Also on the floor of far wall side of the bed: three beer caps (two Budweiser, one Rainier) eight cue tips, a pack of Parliaments (empty), an atlas of the good ole USA, Atlantic Monthly fiction issue, and six or seven scattered pens.
On the actual far wall itself, a dreamcatcher (Lakota) hangs on a nail over a napkin on which is scrawled a pro con list of two schools, one private one public. Below the napkin/dream catcher ensemble, a pack of cigarettes, empty, is nailed to the wall, partially covering a picture of an incredibly still lake that is 7 x 10 and a gift from a friend. On the side of the picture in red oil crayon the word “silence” is written, the result of an ill-conceived attempt at profundity after exuberance-containing liquids were consumed. I consumed, but did not write on this picture.
Next to the picture is the door frame, then the screen door (red door is open). Outside the screen door is the world. We aren’t going there any time soon.
On the other side of the door sits a plastic set of drawers, very cheap looking, which contains underwear and socks on the top drawer and books in the bottom. A sleek looking CD player sits on top of the plastic piece of shit. Bored yet?
In front of plastic piece of shit sits a coin depository that must have originally been intended as a bong: it’s glass about 12 inches high, and widens out at the bottom for sturdiness-type purposes. There is more but I am now done with Room.


Occupant
Occupant is sprawled on bed, with everything below knees hanging off bottom of bed. He wears a white t shirt Jockey, tan shorts Lee, white socks Golden Toe, a watch Timex, and has very tan skin such that if he were 6’2, stacked, and better looking the descriptor “bronzed” might be suitable. This ensemble is the outfit of choice 80% of occupant’s normal days. If cold, substitute jeans for tan shorts. On feet occupant wears moccasin-style slippers, an eccentric habit he picked from father.

Occupant’s mental/emotional/psychological inventory: yeah right. Even narcissism has limits.


Distinguishing physical characteristics: two cigarette burns on left forearm, two cigarette burns on right forearm, all self-inflicted on joyous occasions when young and immune to the idea that actions have consequences, very long eyelashes, unibrow, hirsute but not to the point of embarrassment, green eyes circled in light brown, two weeks of beard on face, offputtingly pretty hands but pretty isn’t the word more like well-crafted, which does and doesn’t make sense at the same time. Scattered moles, none of which are really interesting.




The songs have stopped. Only 2nd time occupant has listened to music in room since some time in April. Occupant used to be about the music, and knows not the reason for sudden vacuum.

who knows

It's too late to care. Night is upon us. I have lived through an earthquake. I wish tomorrow's work requirements were really tomorrow. Good night, god bless (heresy)

Ed. note: Earthquake was a 5.6 and did not scare the bejeezus out of me. Am glad to be able to check that off the "experience once in life" list.

Eminent domain vis a vis minds

"Some people have said that patronage is a bad thing," the late Mayor Daley once said. "I think patronage is just doing favors for friends. It would be a lousy world if you couldn't do a favor for a friend." You’re goddamn right it’d be a lousy place. A Chicago Tribune Columnist drops the hammer, and slays Daley the Younger in the process

Judge Posner unequivocally castigates stupid MSM, outlines the underlying reasons of their increasing irrelevance, and intimates that you reader are a consumer with scant interest in finding anything but your expectations in what you read, watch, etc.

You are boring, a cog, and I am too.

Oh a long week continues. I’ll leave it at that.

sneeze guard

1) Rumsfeld’s rhetoric

When asked if he enjoyed the ballet in some Eastern European country he had visited, he responded: “I’m from Chicago.” That made me nostalgic for some of the semi-tough, laconic white Chicago guys I met.

He wrote this in yesterday’s WSJ, which means he is either uninformed that the administration is currently mired in Rovegate or he just doesn’t give a fuck about the obvious cross-parallels:

As America adjusts to this new Information Age, I suggest the following notions as part of the discussion:

• First, government officials will need to communicate clearly and often. When a government official is found to have put out information that is not exactly correct or fully complete -- even in good faith -- it plays into the hands of our enemies, who seize on any fault to try to harm the American system.

• Second, a healthy culture of communication and transparency between government and the public needs to be established. Due to the ubiquitous sources of information and access, most things -- controversial or not -- become known eventually. But they become known unhelpfully when they dribble out piecemeal or in highly selective excerpts -- as opposed to being presented early, in full and with appropriate context.

This openness, however, does not obviate the necessity of protecting the secrecy of confidential information that, if revealed, could harm the security of the U.S. While I have long believed that too much material is classified across the federal government as a general rule, an increasingly cavalier attitude towards sensitive information in various quarters can put the lives of our troops at correspondingly increasing risk.

Maybe Rumsfeld seriously dislikes Karl Rove and sees him as the kind of scheming, duplicitous, slightly effeminate bottom feeder that gives stout, stern Chicago guys like himself a bad name. Anyway.

2) It seems as though those of us who noticed the basic logical conundrum of Over There in the Desert are vindicated. I have a friend at home, someone who does not follow politics, doesn’t really concern himself with what’s going on in world, plays a lot of sports, smokes a lot of pot, makes a lot of bets, is happy with his station in life, and in general is one of the most decent human beings I’ve ever met. A few months after the war had started, we stood on a porch smoking cigs in the cold. He turned to me and said, out of the blue, “I think the only time I would fight a war is if it happened right here” and he pointed to the town we grew up in. This seemed particularly relevant at the time, and whatever credence you give to these reports, it makes sense to think that defense of homeland, energized by religious zealotry and framed within the “Americans are Jews from a different continent” paranoia, would push otherwise inactive young angry men into action. It makes SO MUCH SENSE. “Iraq is a breeding ground for terrorism” because the people who say it from podiums and the people who they represent made a decision to make it a breeding ground. But I’m just another voice, preaching to one choir and condemned as someone not worthy of entering the church by the other. So that's that.

more to come later, including notes on a wedding and the vicissitudes of MPLS urban planning (the city with a saint for a twin is what MPLS is)

Crossroads

Remember that Bone Thugs N Harmony song, "Crossroads" - the syncopation, the extra-discursive lyrics, the overall Cleveland funk vibe pervading that shit?

I do too. And - of course - there are times in a life when the metaphor of a crossroads, or if you prefer Frost, A road not taken, holds true. Is now one of those times?

Autopilot has its function. Sometimes money needs saving, or endurance needs building, or emotions need attending: yet if you decide that you yourself are someone who speaks the unmitigated truth, even if that truth never leads the internal monologue by which you pass the next 24 hours, you make the choice and abide.

I have a handlebar mustache. For the next 24 hours, I will rock this handlebar mustache, even if someone (rightly) suggests that I look like a pedophile. I do not have enough money in my bank account to buy a simulacrum of self-respect, so I will just assume that there is no need to make that purchase. Life affords few opportunities for upper lip hair, and I am taking this one and running with it. Pictures (I hope) are forthcoming.

Declarative Sentences for a Friday

My great aunts in Brighton, with whom I spent drinking champagne & eating Chinese food on my 21^st birthday, do not know what to make of the bombings in London. Anyone who knows what to make of the bombings in London, please let me know and I shall pass the information along. The younger one (83) is a crazy leftist; the older one is a statist (87) who thinks she is semi-royalty because she married a low-level diplomat in Ecuador. They survived the Blitz. For some reason, I associate the way they smelled with Englishness.

I was in Italy on 9/11. I don’t like to write that: “9/11.” I do not know exactly why. Milan, Italy – to be exact – is where I was. I drank like six bottles of wine in a day and a half, staring at the television like an invalid and occasionally rolling up a cig the size of a ballpoint pen. That seems like a decade ago. Entire worlds have since emerged and departed.

I like to read Christopher Hitchens because he tells me how lucky the world is to have Christopher Hitchens. I go to him for my weekly dose of gloating and I-told-you-so. I wonder if he likes being the portly, hyperdiscursive guy he is. I am not one of those people who decry his policy stances of late and yearn for the old Hitch. I just like to observe him, and to hear him recount prior stances he held and previous gifts he bequeathed to the world.

This weekend I am going to that place pictured above and to the right of where your eyes are now.

I am an escape artist of late. Summer camp is almost over, so the need to branch out, go forth, and make memories has grown. This entire exercise should serve as a warning to anyone who is not cognizant of the dangers of self-absorption.

another day another dollar

1) MO MO gets all thoughtful on Kelo. Worth a look if your knee jerk reaction was: “That poor woman who lived in that house all her life.” Kudos especially on the emphasis he gives to the narrow findings of the case – Stevens circumscribes Kelo’s precedent even as he affirms the lower court’s decision. Go over there. He unpacks some elements of the case nicely. I’m more on the fence on this one than I was upon first hearing of it, but I am probably less accepting, or more suspicious, of its rationale (and takings in general) than MO MO.

2) I wonder why I have yet to encounter a thoughtful discussion of the Aerosmith song Dude Looks Like A Lady. I abide by my decision in ninth grade to drop unequivocal hate on Aerosmith, with the exception of Sweet Emotion – an aberration if there ever was one. But from where did Dude Luke Likes A Lady come? Did Steven Tyler, in a coked out haze, come across some dude’s junk unexpectedly and decide to write a song about it? Did she really have a body of a Venus, Steven? I had a dream about this song, or the video, last night, and I’ve been in a bad mood the entire day because of it. Fuck Aerosmith.

3) 99 Luft Balloons is a trenchant criticism of Cold War paranoia. I recently discovered this.

4) A wolf’s howl can contain up to 12 harmonics. I read that yesterday.

Q.
Well, I know this site looks like shit and, actually no – I like pictures and images and whatnot. I just do all my posting at work, and I would have to get permission from the IT guys to download whatever I need to start posting pictures here. And I wont do that, for various reasons.
Q.
Various ones.
Q.
I would put a picture of me flicking off the camera, big bearded and intoxicated, in my too tight SoDa t-shirt in the White Front Bar in Philipsburg, MT, my current home. I would put a picture taken from the summit of this hike I take a couple a time a month. I would put a picture of Teddy, the dead horse, before death and after. As I write this, incidentally, a grizzly bear is eating on Teddy’s corpse. If I had a digital, I'd go get an image of that bear so you could see it, but I don't know . . .Then there would be daily picture type stuff.
Q.
Yeah, I kind of drifted into a position at work where I can do stuff other than work while at work.
Q.I don’t have a title. I work in four different departments, in various advisory roles, and have some interns who do my work for me.
Q.
In August.
Q.
It’s time to go. All jobs run their course, I guess. I could stay, but that would be sort of self-defeating, given the time and money I've spent becoming qualified to embark on a new adventure.
Q.
Well, ok, adventure, no - new spasmodic immersion into a different social milieu, yes.
Q.
No, I started this on Friday, and now it is Monday, the 4th, the day of (In)dependence. (Yes, that bracketing in parentheses is indication that English was my field of study.
Q.
I am well.
Q.
I would like to give shoutouts to sunsets, laidback rainshowers, and humor.