for 7 June 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Filler Not to fall in line, but I couldn't help noticing the giant stream of hatemail you seem to receive. Just out of curiosity, why the fuck are these people reading Suck? I'm doubtful as to whether they are forced into it. Surely they must have a hand in their own I-wish-I-had- something-to- bitch-about bullshit. Do they just search for things to tear down? Were they tricked into reading your columns? Surely they don't mistake it for news or a refreshing self-esteem zine. It seems odd to me why someone would willfully subject themselves to something that they regard as tasteless and tactless. I think this runs into your 'healthy-relationship' vein of conversation, so I'll end it here. But I just wanted to know, what drives these idiots? I don't know how someone could be so angry and eager without being permanently embedded in the Bible Belt. Maybe you should check the demographics on your hatemail. I'd be willing to bet that the Southwest had a hand in it. Keep up with the cynicism. Concerned About the Gene Pool Oh sure, blame the Bible Belt. Why do people assume that the stupidest people in America are religious or live in the South or both? And what's this Southwest thing — I didn't know there were scores of Bible-thumpers in New Mexico. I thought New Mexico was filled with hot lesbian artists in lizard-skin cowboy boots, crafting turquoise jewelry for the upcoming "Sounds and Smells of Santa Fe" Festival. Ok, maybe that's just my little fantasy. But you have to admit, there's something so appealing about packing up and moving out of the big city, with all its heterosexual big-city ways, and driving out to the scrubby desert and pulling out a canvas to paint like, well, Georgia O'Keefe, I guess. Vaginal flowers and stuff — fitting, no? And think of all that silver jewelry, how good that might look with a high-desert tan. Ah, but all such fantasies are merely skin deep — it's like wanting to step into a Smith and Hawken catalogue, wanting to be that waspy chick skillfully planting perennials in a floral skirt without looking muddy and frustrated, without actually being quite bored by the whole stupid pointless gardening thing, and then killing all those impatiens a few weeks later when you skip town and drive to Vegas and forget to have someone water the plants while you're gone. As much as I'd like to throw off the chains of dull heterosexual cowboy-bootless city life, the truth is I'd be sweaty and irritable from the long drive through Arizona, and I'd pull out that canvas and realize that I can only paint stick figures. Then I'd realize that I don't like vaginas in my face, either on a canvas or otherwise. Oh, these trivial details that hold us back from our dreams! Wait, what was your letter about? Oh well, no matter... Causing more concern for the gene pool than all the Bible-thumpers in Arizona, Polly  Dear Polly, Today is the day you can take a head count of all of your older, increasingly female, less affluent, and less highly educated readers. I wonder what it must be like to be ceaselessly bombarded by the media messages concerning the strange, new, dotcom world and yet have absolutely no clue what all the hubbub is about. And yet, even by using little old ladies to make your point, you have recognized their existence to an extent uncommon in our culture. I am terrified of growing old in America. Fortunately, besides the Internet there are plenty of other sources of trivial misinformation to keep one's thoughts occupied. Thanks for your (understated) commentary on the sorry and twisted ideas permeating today's popular media. But when we are confronted daily by horrifically absurd and disturbing news and media events, what must marginal magazine marketers do to attract readers, anyway? Thank you for reminding me that Freud is a shibolleth for discerning cultural observers. The meaning of which I am still sorting out. I'll cite Filler 5.31.00 when I publish my paper. A Loyal Ephraimite, Richard Banks <richard.banks@cpa.state.tx.us> p.s. Thank you for publishing my previous letter, Polly. What a thrill!. I completely understand and appreciate your response. And I have debited my Fame account accordingly. (I only received one letter as a result of my new notoriety in the Fish. One of your loyal readers whose remarks you had cited in the piece begged me not to judge his character too harshly on the basis of his published remarks, which, he writes, were taken out of context. And, at his request, I am begging you to be merciful and pardon him his past transgressions.) No! I say smite his very name! Strike that loathsome swine down into disgrace and despair, like the groveling beast that he is! No forgiveness for the damned! Let them feel thine horrible wrath! Let them feel the twisted grip of guilt and hopelessness at their throats. Laugh as they squeal out their pathetic last words, "I was taken out of context!" Laugh heartlessly and then calmly remind them that there's no proper context for the naysayer, the blasphemer! Not currently juicing adequate numbers of carrots, Pitiless Polly Subject: Older, poorer, and dumber? You bet your ass. I had the misfortune to work Tech Support for a major Internet Service Provider who shall remain nameless (although its initials were AOL) for quite awhile. And, improbable as it seemed, the old, poor, and dumb were simply chompin' at the proverbial bit to get online. Why?? I had to ask myself continually. If you couldn't afford the damned computer in the first place (not even the cheapest piece of crap in the Packard Bell line), and can't even figure out how to turn it on now; why do you do this to yourself (and me!)? "Well, I wanna git at some o' that there free porn that's supposed to be all over the place." (And literally expected me to point him there, step by step, right from the removal of the computer from the box.) "I wanna share recipes with my friends, and trace my family tree." (Your friends all live in the same county with you. Ditto for your ancestors. Your family tree is a stump.) "I chat online with all kinds of people." ('WELL IT RAINED NEAR ALL DAY HERE AND WE HAD THE POWER GO OUT ON US TWICE'... oo, stimulating.) "There's news and information out there that the TV won't tell you." (Oh, yeah; like the Jews really do run the planet, that Elvis is alive and doing two shows a night on Mars, and that - oh my God - Bill Clinton fools around.) "I dunno; I just wanna see what all the fuss is about with this Innernet thing." (Hint, chief: it's a newer, faster, and more efficient way of draining your bank account and causing you crippling anxiety.) So - strange as it sounds, the Internet is steadily dumbing down just like the entire rest of the fucking planet. I don't know why it should surprise anyone. Maybe it's time for a nice, fool-proof virus; spread through some irresistable outlet like www.free-money.com... can you believe someone hasn't registered THAT one yet? Best Wishes Alan in ABQ Very interesting — I thought only artistic lesbians lived in New Mexico. But while we're dealing with sweeping prejudice, let me say once and for all that I have a big problem with targeting the supposedly idiotic, worthless American masses. I'm not sure what's wrong about being old and poor, and, aside from the first comment you included, I'm not sure that the excerpts you've provided here are evidence of anything but a provincial conversational style that you somehow find appallingly unsophisticated or uninteresting. If you're a black man, or a gay man, then I can definitely understand your resentment toward unenlightened straight white people. However, if your main reason for disliking these inconveniently chatty minions is that they don't share your sophisticated sense of humor and taste in obtuse art films and rarefied music put out by small independent labels, I can't really get behind your cause. I just don't quite grasp the teaming masses of self-conscious, snide hip fucks who get their panties in a bunch over every mundane conversation they overhear about sports or the weather while buying aspirin at Wal-mart. These poor old people may not recognize the raw genius of Pavement, but 80% of them have more compassion and understanding of what's important in life than you have in your little pinky, and the vast majority of them are not, in fact, nearly as ignorant or as prejudiced as you are. The planet has always been full of stupid people, and no special little rarefied community (the Internet, in this case) is going to stay special and rarefied for very long, as long as the barriers to entry (high cost, difficulty) are low enough to accommodate your average bear. If you want precious little circles with which to share your love of young, intelligent, cash-heavy types, consider joining your local country club. Do you think, when these people were so graciously telling you about the weather, thinking (correctly) that you were probably a rather lonely fellow in some awful corporate office in the city, that for a minute they would have traded places with you? Which, I guess, is why they got under your skin in the first place. No offense, Alan — I get letters like yours about how fucking stupid most people are almost every day. I just wanted to set the record straight and say nothing makes me more discouraged by how stupid most people are than a letter about how stupid most people are. Stupider than most, Polly Crem Brulée Dear Slotcar, Artists should stop signing their "shit." Maybe signing as anonymous or not at all would help lift their art from the analysis of substance to the analysis of process. I do like the idea of calling the video a sculpture and putting it in a museum. After seeing Mission Impossible 2 recently, I'm struck by the irony of how ubiquitous movie theatres map well against the inability of Hollywood to actually produce a good film. So now, film escapes into museums where the payoff ratio is about as good as a monolithic, over-merged music company's odds of cashing in IN A WORLD WHERE (I love that movie trailer phrase!) mp3 files are everywhere. It's that infamous antipattern where a stock market analysis tool becomes widespread, and then collapses in on its self in the feedback loop of the analysis. Futility! Futility! How can you create social change without having to wrap it in sexuality, then sell it on the marketplace to a society that can't understand anything unless they can buy their own individual copy? Why is it that anyone whose communicating but not cashing in on her ideas is seen as crazy in this culture? Oops! Er.... F*** ME SILLY SIDEWAYS!© Anonymous (a.k.a. SqueakToy2000) <squeaktoy2000@hotmail.com> What's wrong with a society that can't understand anything unless they can buy their own individual copy? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Signing our own shit, Sucksters Subject: Satirically challenged I can't tell you how disappointed I am that Suck of all places fell for my little satire. Please, how could you take it seriously? "Onan the Magnificent"? "Onanism" as a term of praise? The men's movement as serious philosophy? And then you read the letters, under the headline "An Immodest Proposal" and you still didn't get it. My God. Even Slate got it, for Christ's sake. Roger D. Hodge <roger@harpers.org> We remain great admirers of your work, Mr. Hodge. The discussion of whether or not your review was a prank was duly noted in our story. Beyond that, the burden of establishing who got it and who didn't rests with you, not with us. As Suck has found out the hard way, if you pull a hoax and it's not terribly funny, you have nobody to blame but yourself when people don't play along — and frankly there aren't enough hours in the day for the Sucksters to play this essentially narcissistic game of making sure everybody knows we're in on this or that prank. For the record, 90 percent of all jokes go over our heads; and a hoaxer who complains about the reaction he gets is in the same pickle as the carpenter who blames his tools. Sucksters Matthew Barney was a J.Crew model not a Gap model. Nitpicking aside, I am not sure I understand your criticism of Barney's selling of "promotional material". Having worked in the museum world briefly, the museum profits from the "schlock" that Walter Benjamin would have grave concern over. But, the postcards, the mugs and the T-shirts of their exhibitions help the museum cover operating costs and allow for lower or even no entrance fees. So I guess my question to you is.....is Matthew Barney selling this crap or are the museums? Thanks, Margaret Klein <maklein@vt.edu> Matthew Barney is selling crap? Is he signing it? It was bad enough when he showed his penis, but this is just too much! Sucksters Who's the Gaylord? Listen punk, Bad News Bears was a semi-amusing junior jock movie. The kids who identified most with Bad News Bears were the same gutless punks who formed savage packs to beat up the lone Star Wars fans who spent their days dreaming of a better life, one where you didn't have to deal with dumb ass adults and if someone pissed you off you'd just hack off their arm and no one would care. And another thing, what's up with that "Gaylord" crack? Are you being homophobic (in which case I hope you get run over by a bus), or are you just insulting people who's last name is Gaylord? I think their lives are hard enough without having some hack jump on the name calling bandwagon two decades after he should have gotten off. Ciao Ben <bschwabe@po11.mit.edu> Homophobia would be completely superfluous in this case, given that, aside from the relationship between R2D2 and C3PO — a gay-positive stance for which Lucas deserves praise — the only reference to sexuality of any kind in the Star Wars pictures is the enormous vagina dentata that devours a few characters in the Ewok movie. No, my use of the term "gaylords" is intended in its purest pre-adolescent form, divorced from anything having to do with sexual preference. It's an unfortunate truth that most of the great locutions invented by fourth graders are never improved upon by adults. "Punk," your insult of choice, is hopelessly lame — the kind of thing some stiff authority figure would call The Fonz. "Twits," "ninnies," "boobs," "morons," "nerds," "dweebs," "dorks" ... none of these terms has quite the nuance that we need to describe the Star Wars diehards. So until the English language comes up with something better — possibly something borrowed from the French — "gaylords" it will have to be. Furthermore, it is you, sir, who should have gotten off the bus decades ago. There never was any such thing as a "lone Star Wars fan." That movie's monstrous and inescapable popularity is what ensured that Luke's Leif Garrett haircut and Han Solo's Dr. Pepper vest would remain with us as perpetual blights on our culture, rather than fading gracefully into fond seventies memory where they belonged. The fact that this picture allowed you to fantasize about hacking off some misfit's arm with impunity demonstrates the kind of Tyranny of the Chosen that has always given Star Wars its particular and hideous power. It was that sort of tyranny, and a too-delicate attitude toward salty language, that The Bad News Bears strove in vain to overthrow. Which is part of the reason I say this Little League comedy is an underappreciated classic, and may merit further comment at some future date. BarTel Is this not America? Subject: merchandise to whom it may concern: what the ....? what do you mean i can't PAY for merchandise???? what happened to money being able to buy anything?? is this not america? i work very hard for my money(once in a while) and i like to spend it. isn't that the american way? i'm also too lazy to "earn" it in the ways suggested. i would prefer to pay you to wear your t-shirts and cover my car in suck stickers...isn't that enough advertising?? anyways, if i can't buy it, then i'll just download the images i want and make my own t-shirts and stickers. later, m l <eelmeem@hotmail.com> If we let you pay for merchandise, then we would be supporting a society that can't understand anything unless they can buy their own individual copy. Plus, you wrote "anyways" and "later." Fans like you are not, in fact, good advertising for us. Needlessly hostile, Sucksters I Know You Are, Reverend, But What Am I? In your introduction to the page of 2000/04/24, you call THIS (apparently) Easter "the first Easter of the Third Millennium." Unfortunately you're wrong, because year 2001 is the First Year of the Third Millennium if you are following the dating of yers set up by Dionysius Exuguus and adopted by Pope Gregory. There is no year zero because he was counting the years of the supposed reign of Jesus Christ as King. According to the myth, Jesus was King at birth and therefore entered the world as reigning monarch, and Year One was the first year of his reign.This is supposedly the 2000ndth year of his reign and the end of the second one thousand years. The third millennium does not start until January 1, 2001. Reverend Ken Bonnell, ULC <Khbonnell@aol.com> Fascinating. We have never, ever heard before that the new millennium doesn't start until 2001. There's something about people who point this out ceaselessly that makes you glad that you aren't related to them or living with them or working closely with them. They're the kinds of people who are all the time grabbing Dictionaries to prove their stupid points, or latching onto alternative pronunciations with the stubborn fervor of a zealot. Of course, when you're in a pesky mood and feel like irritating the living hell out of someone with sloppy grammar or blatantly false assertions, there's no better pal in the world. Onward. We also don't take too kindly to men of the cloth who write things like "Unfortunately, you're wrong." It sort of makes us feel like saying, "Unfortunately, YOU'RE wrong." "No, YOU'RE wrong." "Unfortunately, no, I'm sorry, but YOU'RE wrong." And so on. Wow, we wish you were here right now so we could do that, actually. Sucksters |
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