for 1 November 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Tim Cavanaugh
Special Guest Editor

Terry Colon
Art Director

Heather Havrilesky
Senior Editor

Joey Anuff
Publisher

Polly,

I think you've hit on something important about the nature of conversations with "successful" people. The constant jockeying for upper hand position does get irritating very quickly, and while understanding how to be a complete assfuck is an important skill, you quickly come to realize that making a career/lifestyle out of it doesn't really contribute all that much to your personal happiness.

And I'm sure that's what they're banking on. I suppose such people are able to eat moose turd pie longer than the rest of us, but after a while one begins to understand that you are what you eat.

Before you club me with a bong and turn me into a squirrel tell me: can you really have disconnected ownership, or do you think it infects who you are on an intrinsic level?

Greg Pyatt
<squeaktoy2000@hotmail.com>

Well, to tell you the truth, I don't think doing something crass and commercial infects who you are on an intrinsic level. I think hanging out with the kinds of people who do crass, commercial things and never, ever question it for a second is what infects who you are on an intrinsic level. I mean, you're surrounded by these people who don't question things. Maybe they also speak entirely in upbeat business jargon. But, hey, wouldn't you do something crass and commercial if you weren't a big questioner? I mean, life would be so much easier. But see, for a questioner, hanging out with non-questioners is sheer torture. That's because all questioners were raised by non-questioners, who beat them about the face and neck with huge question marks every time they asked a question, hence the perverse need, as adults, to question everything and be punished for it.

Ok, that's not totally accurate. It's questioners who hang out with non-questioners that are questionable. These are people who want to torture themselves by trying to play a role they can never play, not authentically. They wish they didn't question everything, but they do. So they surround themselves by upbeat non-questioners, hoping they'll pick up the non-questioning thing. Instead they just end up beating someone up or crying at the company picnic.

What really gets my goat is renowned questioners, questioners you know really well, who suddenly start acting like non-questioners. I mean, you lose touch, and then the next thing you know, they're sending you emails about how great their lives are, when in fact the details of their lives sound quite unbearable. Did they stop questioning, and if so, can you get a prescription for whatever they're on? Or did they stop bringing you into their confidences? Should you respond by lying in kind ("Lovin' Fayetteville! Wish you were here!") or should you be brutally honest and hope they'll respond with honesty? And isn't it sad that you think reports of happiness must be dishonest? What the fuck is wrong with you anyway?

Ah, the life of the questioner really is the true path to happiness, isn't it?

It isn't? You're kidding me. Then why am I on it?

I'm not on it?

Where am I?

Hello? Is there anybody out there?

Questionably numb,

Polly

Dear Polly,

Filler today was excellent: good topic (yuppies), with a quiz (drawing in your readers), and political topicality (lockbox) which led back to to the topic. It worked for me on so many levels, man.

I wanted to tell you it was all a's and b's on the quiz, but if I'm honest I have to admit to answering c on the last one. But my poster was Georgia O'Keefe, and it was from the big tour that followed her death, and I've been to D.C. lots of times, and I was there for my sister's wedding, and besides it was one of her abstracts--you know, the one with lots of hard pastels that can go in any room, so you can't really blame me for wanting a remembrance.

Please, God, save me from yuppiedom, or just give me an Internet-ready earpiece and some handlers.

Still trying to make the grade.

Richard Banks
<rbanks@mail.onr.com>

Hey, man, I'd never give you an F for liking vaginas.

Besides, one should never be blamed for what one truly wants.

Catholicly,

Polly

Nice stuff, but the service professional thing seems very Eighties--not Naughts--as lampooned in American Psycho.

Andy Crouch
<acrouch@mail.utexas.edu>

Didn't see the movie or read the book — I avoid material about psychos, fearing it will strike a little too close to home. But I'm very eighties, so your comments are right on the money. In fact, your comments are the color of money, money, money, honey, honey.

p.s. Did you know your name rhymes with "grouch"?

Polly

You know whatcher talking about Lady.

And, say for instance that your Yuppie acquaintances are not just friends of friends but actual blood relatives. Say they are your older sisters, even. Then the steady barrage of unsolicited and publicly delivered career counseling comes under the guise of familial concern. Well it's no less humiliating than unsolicited and publicly delivered psychiatric counseling. So, in response to their well-intentioned assaults, why don't I publicly deliver my amateur diagnosis of their clear personality disorders?

Because that would be cruel. I really can get a better job. They, on the other hand, are mired in high-powered careers and lifestyles to which their social pathologies suit and condemn them. Can't have the one without the other.

Keep keepin it real.

Pete

What makes you think I'm keeping anything real? What would you say if I told you I'm reading this email on my Limited Issue Platinum Palm Pilot XX?

I believe in publicly delivered career counseling and publicly delivered psychiatric counseling, frankly — particularly among Catholics like yourself, who tend to be a little bit repressed. I think if your siblings are speaking to you honestly, no matter how much you second-guess and judge what they say, you should feel grateful that they take the time to try. I mean, they're older sisters. They feel like it's their responsibility to be open and frank with their sweet, shy little brother. I'm thinking maybe you're the one creating distance there, because you're a wee bit self-conscious about your lack of ambition in commercial and monetarily rewarding fields.

Why so embarrassed by your own choices, sweet pea? I think you need to make peace with the decisions you've made in your life, and then your siblings' behavior won't get under your skin so much.

Actually, scratch that. Your siblings' behavior will always get under your skin. I should know, I am a medical doctor. I suggest you fire back with some fashion advice, or perhaps a little guidance on how to raise their children, or how to listen to something other than Motown classics for once.

My advice is pretty schizophrenic, huh? It's as if I can't decide between open-mindedness as a means of dismissing you, or vengeful pettiness as a means of spiting your awful unquestioning siblings. It's all bad! Torn between two (bad) lovers!

Feelin' like a fool,

Polly

That was fantastic. I hope Eminem reads your piece.

Yesenia Gutierrez
<YGutierrez@pjc.com>

I hope he does too. I don't think my career at Suck will be complete until somebody busts a cap at me. Anyway, it's enough for me that you liked it.

yrs,

The Boob

Must say that is the most scathing review i have ever seen, and i agree 200%.

Jeff
<DRSPOCK1@aol.com>

You can't beat having somebody agree with you 200%. Unfortunately, what I wrote was more along the lines of a panegyric than a scathing review. But I'll take the 200% anyway. You can't have too much agreement.

yrs

The Boob

That is the lamest piece of writing I have yet to read, Suck or anywhere else. Eminem is a blight that poisons young minds, and to defend him is to take part in his rape of a generation.

Eric Welch
<ewelch@gia.edu>

Eric,

I didn't defend him. I said he was a great talent, which if you think about is has a lot to do with his popularity. Maybe he is raping a generation, but the victim almost certainly led him on by buying six million of his albums.

yrs

The Boob

I enjoyed this article, there is something to be said for being able to expreience the content of this "talent" in written form, as you present it here, without having to listen to it.

thanks,

myron

There is that. Synesthesia works the other way too — you should hear me spit my essays at the Suck Battle-raps. If I could just find a rhyme for Myxpykl...

yrs

The Boob

But, see, Eminem sucks ass.

Sure, he's good at freestyling. I'll give him that. He's better'n shit at rhyming (where "shit"="really good"). But the fact remains that it's one of those trained-monkey kind of skills. Anyone who actually has enough interest in it to sit up nights memorizing what rhymes with what could easily be, as the kids say, "one fly ass emmcee". What he does is no more art than someone who's veryveryvery good at making hamburgers. It's just a mechanical skill. Sure, it's easy to knock it since I don't walk it, but really it's kind of a compliment to Our Great Nation — proof that any idiot in America who's full of aimless teenage anger and takes the time to learn a useless skill can make it all the way to the cutting edge of blase mainstream culture.

PS: For further evidence of Eminem's annoyingly average Anger At Everything I cite the thousands of pictures of him flipping off photographers (how original! how soulful! his anger SPEAKS to me!), not to mention the fact that he feels his music is somehow incomplete without sodomizing a blowup doll of his wife.

Jackson Pritt
<Jacksonpritt@cs.com>

Do you know a trained monkey that could write, "Something something something, something I get weeded/My daughter scribbled over that rhyme, I couldn't read it"?

Rhyming may indeed be the lowest and most mechanical of the poet's arts, and the one furthest removed from his or her role as prophet. But it's the foundation of poetry, and no small thing. How many hamburger you ate at the age of three still come back to you every day?

yrs

The Boob

Dear BOob,

You give Eminem far too much credit. The only credit he deserves is for being the spokesman for an album with sweet f.a. for content that became popularly successful. Look at Vanilla Ice. He wasn't as media-saavy as Eminem's producers certainly are, for the media were able to find him out and prove him a fraud on his tale of bad-boyness in Miami. Think Eminem's any different?

This is all hype, pure and simple. The reason for his popularity, therefore, falls upon the message: of America's whiteboy culture that secretly wants to be as tight with their friends as gangsta posses are thought to be. Not in Europe, not in Australia, not in Japan do you have the crime rates of aggressive male behaviour — especially sexual assault — as in the United States and Canada. It's a sexually frustrated attitude that lingers in a culture that has been tied down by "religious" family values. There's no respect for women or men in these lyrics b/c Eminem's attempt is to simply whine. Whining means he's doing more feeling than thinking. He's not intelligent; he's ignorant.

As a rapper, KRS-1 is infinitely more popular than Eminem among many intelligent people who like rap b/c he doesn't waste his time rapping about "smacking up bitches." He treats his audience--and his position of influence--with respect, knowing that unhealthy attitudes do nothing to showcase real art. Eminem's rap material, and the way it's been marketed, are to me like the old edge-row houses in the heart of England's industrial north: grey, repetitive, depressing and sub-human. If rape and aggressive sexual contact are the hallmarks of his "successful" rapping career, what does this say about his audience?

Paul Miazga
<paulmiazga@usa.net>

I disagree. Eminem's producer's aren't particularly media-savvy, and in fact no one expected him to get that popular.He seems to have almost complete creative control of his albums, and in fact if he were a pure marketing creation, as you suggest, I doubt there would be tracks on the Marshall Mathers LP like the Insane Clown Posse skit, "Under the Influence," etc. I don't blame hip-hop highbrows for preferring KRS-One or Chuck D to Eminem; hell, even The Boob likes to kick it old-school now and then, and luxuriate in the security of street-sanctified agitprop. But Eminem as millennial Fabian is as misinformed a take as Eminem as Menace II Society. There are lots of white boy rappers. But there's only one real Slim Shady.

yrs

The Boob

The Shit

Krushchev Remembers, by Nikita Krushchev (authorship disputed), translated by Strobe Talbott

Five-Star Day Cafe Athens, Ga.

Salon's "Action Figures" TV ad

Donna's Famous "Long and Short of It," by Donna Anderson and friends

Two-Lane Blacktop, directed by Monte Hellman (The Anchor Bay/Universal letterboxed edition)

George Bush, Dark Prince of Love: A Presidential Romance, by Lydia Millet (Scribner)

King Kong: The Complete 1933 Film Score, by Max Steiner Moscow Symphony Orchestra, William J. Stromberg conductor (Marco Polo)

Eightball #20, by Dan Clowes (Fantagraphics Books)

The ECW's Little Spike Dudley

Stan Kenton, City of Glass, featuring arrangements by legendary weirdo Bob Graettinger (EMD/Blue Note)

Comix 2000, Edited and published by L'Association, 2000

Star Dudes

Do you know of stuff that doesn't actively suck? Things so good they deserve to make the Shitlist? Send your suggestions to us.