cowperthwait | lies, evasion, spin, circumspection and cleverly veiled hype

There is a racist Mongolian in South-of-Market who will talk to you in unclear codes about what goes on in Oakland, and who charges under $20 for reasonable work, but there’s a stink of the arbitrary around him and the whole thing feels like navy sex. There is a time for navy sex, certainly (such as when one is at sea), but a haircut should be about the pleasures of the harbor.

—Sexpigeon

caption 1: any excuse to re-run this photo, right?
caption 2: YOU ARE WHY WE CANNOT HAVE NICE THINGS


Peter Jamison of SF Weekly just may have become my new favorite writer of the week for his assessment of the hiptards' anemic offline response to the proposed closing of Dolores Park:

You can count us among those who sometimes wish a meteor would crash directly into Dolores Park on a Saturday afternoon, annihilating at a stroke every fixed-gear bicycle, semi-ironic pug, and hipster guy or gal eating Bi-Rite ice cream purchased on their parents' credit card despoiling that otherwise pleasant piece of land.

As a study in prolonged adolescence and urban self-absorption, Dolores Park may be unsurpassed among gathering places nationwide. We've never walked by it without renewed belief in Jack Kerouac's assertion that hipsters are undermining American culture and dignity.

…

Given the [online] to-do, we wondered: Has the office of Supervisor Bevan Dufty, in whose district the park lies, been deluged with rat-tailed baristas and gals in gingham dresses demonstrating for the right to eat pot brownies in public?

Interestingly enough, the answer is no, according to Dufty aide Nicolas King, who says the office has received only "a handful of calls and e-mails" about the park closure.

…

[W]e can't help wondering if the demographic that holds the park so dear is just too busy nursing a hangover at the St. Francis or tying one on at the Phone Booth, or otherwise engaged in some useless pursuit that doesn't require civic engagement.

There's no 'PBR' in democracy, kids. Except the 'R.'

—Dolores Park Renovation Sparks Paltry Offline Response: There's No 'PBR' in Democracy, SF Weekly's blog


Sing it, brother.

A few times a year, my alma mater writes in an attempt to collect fines from library books that I failed to return on time in … mmn. Based on the books, this looks like first-year Soc., 2nd quarter, so, 2001. That's dedication.

The wording of this e-mail could be improved. It all but says, "There are no consequences to nonpayment." Also, they have the wrong address for me, a very old address. Still, I give them credit: at least they get my name right.

It weighs on my conscience (really, it does) but I'm leaving this charge outstanding. I'm doing so both because I'm cheap and because I want to continue receiving this e-mail. It's like a pulse. A heartbeat. A pattern of continuity across jobs and cities. A regular reminder that someone in Hyde Park misses me, or at least misses my $57.00.


From: library-notices@grenache.lib.uchicago.edu
Date: Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 12:35
To: xxxxxxx@uchicago.edu
Subject: University of Chicago Library Email Notice
mailed-by: grenache.lib.uchicago.edu

University of Chicago Library                                        02/04/2010 1100 E. 57th Street Circulation Department Chicago, Illinois 60637        COWPERTHWAIT, JONATHAN EDWARD        xxxx x xxxxxxx xxx xx        CHICAGO, IL          60615 This is a summary statement listing all charges owed to the University of Chicago Library.     The Essential Frankfurt School reader /         Fine                   1.00       Regenstein, Reserve       HM101.E7450               c.1       20842071     Black skin, white masks /                       Fine                  56.00       Regenstein, Reserve       GN645.F3130 1991          c.2       38924802                                       Total Charges Outstanding:          57.00 Please note: Borrowers who owe the Library $100 or more will not be allowed to borrow from the library's collections until these charges are paid. Current and former students who owe the Library $100 or more at the end of the sixth week of the quarter will be restricted with the University Registra which will prevent future enrollment and access to other University services (including transcript requests) until these charges are paid. For more information about overdue materials and late charges, please see http:/www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/using/due/. If you still have questions, please call 773-702-8701 or just reply to this email.

It's fine to show Mickey getting hammered and then trying to drive the little train through the Magic Kingdom, but what if he plows right into a tiny clown car that gets stuck on the tracks? We hear the clowns screaming, confetti shoots into the night sky, and then we cut to a horrified paramedic, asking, "Good Lord, how many of them were in there?"

—from this week's New Yorker

Some people drink too much at parties and get themselves arrested for public indecency. Others conceive children. Apparently, I commit to running half-marathons.

I'm going through with it — June, San Diego, benefiting cancer or something — because I was raised Catholic and I believe in disproportionately harsh consequences for one's indiscretions. Don't let me do this again, though.

Kirsten started sending me blog posts by one of her former colleagues at The Onion, and I found them very funny, so I became his Tumblr follower and Facebook buddy and Twitter fan and everything.

Sometimes I feel a little creepy for diligently following on the Internet someone whom I've never actually met. However, he's attractive and very funny, so I have to assume he'd probably be easygoing about having me as a stalker. No problem, he'd say. Let's adopt a Chinese baby.

Of late, he's been doing an extensive amount of travel. Today, Dubai:

I met a Pakistani man who did his impression of Americans for me. This was it, verbatim: “Oh cool, cool! Bullshit! Oh my god, where’s Carrie?”. And then he fired finger guns into the air and shouted, “Texas, Texas!”.

If you like his writing, too, maybe you'll also stalk him, so that I'll no longer be the only creep.

Oh jeez. Happy 2010, everybody.

Furthering Andrew Henry's agenda to rebrand me "Jeck"...

I don't know whether, or how, he had a hand in this, but look what Zipcar is now available in the lot across the street from my office:


jeckass.

Achtung, baby!

Consumerist bags a major scoop: AT&T won't sell new Apple iPhones through their website to customers searching in NYC-area ZIP codes. A CSR seems to confirm that this is carrier policy:

Daphne: Welcome to AT&T online Sales support. How may I assist you with placing your order today?

Laura: Hi, I was looking at the iPhone 3Gs and the system tells me that I cannot order one in my ZIP code. My zip code is 11231. (Brooklyn, NY) Is this true? Are iPhones no longer available in New York City?

Daphne: I am happy to be helping you today . Yes, this is correct the phone is not offered to you because New York is not ready for the iPhone.

Daphne: You don't have enough towers to handle the phone.

Laura: Thank you for your help. So the phone is not available to people anywhere in the city?

Daphne: Yes this is correct Laura.

—AT&T Customer Service: "New York City Is Not Ready For The iPhone", Consumerist


If this is true, it's a b.f.d. The phone is the #1 handset in the country, but its exclusive carrier can't/won't support it in the country's largest market? Real Steve Jobs would crap his pants.

What's going on here, asshats?

hella Concord

You've been given a very brief reprieve from the nightmarish prospect of being trapped 135 feet below the surface of the Bay while surrounded by East Bay bridge-and-tunnel bleating intelligent things like "Hella this!" or "Hella that!" into their phones uninterrupted. Enjoy it while you can.

—SFist

hi-larious


This morning on my walk to the gym, I passed a shop window that proclaimed

HUGE SUIT SALE

and it occurred to me that this would be substantially more awesome if it had the word panda affixed to it:

HUGE PANDA SUIT SALE.

I would patronize this establishment. Everyone would patronize this establishment.

Just moments thereafter I realized that panda is a universal improver.

• Panda Family Grocers
• Mission Street Panda Food
• Panda Money Loaned
• Angie's Panda Jewelry
• A.C. Panda Trading Co.
• EV's Panda Repair Service
• Fantastic International Panda Services
• Discount Panda Meat & Groceries
• Free Panda AIDS Testing

At 6:00 in the morning, I thought this was pretty funny.

The fire started when a candle, being used for religious reasons, ignited a nearby couch, [Fire Department Spokesman Larry Langford] said. When the residents returned to the room and found the fire, they tried to put it out by fanning the flames, he said. The fire grew out of control and one resident ran out the front door and the other ran out of the back door, Langford said. Both doors were left open and the wind fueled the fire, he said.

—Fire hits Lakeview apartment building, Chicago Tribune

A mark of successful satire is that some people won't recognize it as such. In the case of this piece, they may even include its author.

Of course, if the Salahis had slipped past the bouncers at, say, P. Diddy’s birthday bash and then posted the evidence online, the feat would never have been noticed. But a magnetometer is not simply a velvet rope that beeps, and just because Washington has long been called Hollywood for ugly people doesn’t mean that what works in Hollywood — or New York, or anywhere else, for that matter — will work in Washington.

…

“At most parties in New York or Los Angeles, a bouncer will make a snap decision about whether to let you in depending on your looks or some shtick that that sets you apart,” says Juleanna Glover, a Washington hostess and a founder of the Ashcroft Group, a legal and consulting firm. “In Washington, there are no snap decisions. It’s a lifetime of wise decisions that make it so that you receive a state dinner invitation.”

…

Consider the power wall, that collection of office photos of the subject in a chummy embrace with a president, a prime minister or some other V.I.P. A lot of power walls emphasize quantity, but the true influence maestros in the city understand that the smaller your power wall, the more power it conveys.… When the Salahis put their collection of digital snaps of the state dinner on Facebook, they flouted all the unwritten rules of power-wall etiquette. (Including a new one that nobody had thought to mention: Don’t put your power wall on Facebook.)… [B]y putting their photos online, the Salahis weren’t taking aim at anyone, unless you consider the entire planet their target audience.

…

“Washington has its own version of a celebrity-driven culture, but these people are unattractive and lack charisma so what makes them celebrities is their substance,” says Eli Attie, a former White House speech writer in the Clinton administration and now a writer and producer for “House,” the Fox television show. “If you drain that from the interaction, it doesn’t have a point any more. You just have a photo of you and the vice president, and anyone willing to give $500 to the Democratic party and wait three hours on a tarmac in Kansas City can have that.”

—Dinner crashers walked all over social code, New York Times