Regarding that bad taste in the mouth, the campaign of John McCain, and the elusive search for a hangover cure.
Last night was the night of the second debate. I watched half in my apartment playing an unrelated drinking game familiar to many Dartmouth students. For the other half, I was drowning my sorrows in a $7 pitcher of beer, chased with fresh hot dogs at Rudy's. Watching on a projection screen backed up against the Hell's Kitchen tenements in my neighborhood, there was a palpable disconnect between the candidates and the audience. Nobody cared to watch. Rightly so--it was boring. With Sarah Palin inciting racial hatred and launching mob-style public defamation and witch-hunting, how can anyone concentrate on anything other than the fact that John McCain just looks really, really, really old?
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Obama's words melted into the miasma of chatter about whether or not John McCain is insane. How can he cut through the Republican spew-fire of garbage that is both thrilling and terrifying to watch? Being governed by "these ones" feels a little like constantly being in a high-action suspense thriller. Every moment is living on the edge, every moment we spend looking behind us to see what is creeping up behind our backs. Now they have people chanting to murder the candidate. This is not democracy, it is a horrorshow. Is this what fascism feels like?
To get the crowd focused on something other than impending doom and danger, I believe in a solution that worked for centuries in the great sports halls of this world, from the Colusseum to Fenway Park. I suggest that Obama perform warm-ups in a nearby gym with fans as his spectators. We'll get to watch him ball one-on-one with Reggie Love before he rips off his sweats, staightens his tie, slips on a suit jacket and joins McCain without a hair out of place. We would be lying at this point to suggest that this election is true democratic process and not spectacle or political theater. The progression of politics in the past eight years to propogandist "branding" and "marketing" machines is alarming. But if it is what it is, let's roll with it and put Obama on a box of cereal swooshing a three-pointer.
But all of these suggestions likely come to you in such frank form because of my form while I was out yesterday evening. I ended the night double-fisting with a glass of Southern Comfort and a glass of water at fellow Panarchist Eric Lindley's concert on the Lower East Side. It was a lovely night, but the morning and afternoon today have not been as kind. With a terrible feeling no pill can cure, I sat at work clinging to my desk while trying to read through contracts and online newspapers. I needed help. Desperate times like these call for desperate solutions.
We usually claim superiority over the Rockefeller Center concourse, knowing that we deserve better. We do not need a mall-- we have Manhattan. We do not go for the same reason that we know we are worth more than we earn, that we are capable of more than our jobs! We have the right to a lunch that does not come from a strip mall in the basement of our building, and it is important in times like these to not forget this. But not today. Today I am like everyone else. Today I have momentarily collapsed into despair and tumbled off my pillar of self respect. I was starving, but weak. I couldn't bring myself to step outside, so I crawled into the concourse with Draguar and trudged past the Manchu Wok.
"Wait, do you want to get Chinese Food?"
"Chinese food-- ugh. I thought we were going to get pizza."
"Yeah, you're right. Pizza is good. But the Manchu Wok smells delicious!"
"I mean, I don't know about delicious, but it smells alright."
"Oh shit, those pretzels smell delicious. Wait, do you want to get pretzels?"
"Yeah I mean we could get some pretzels, the pretzels do smell delicious."
And so we held our noses, resisted temptation, didn't cave to the flashy neon and savory smells. We walked, heads held high to the pizza kiosk. And the line snaked around the tiny joint, as suit after suit queued up to receive offerings of exotically topped, thematically named slices. We determined that no amount of self loathing can justify waiting for such sustenance. Such a display in order to receive nourishment is an insult. We determined that since all options were indeed similarly uninspiring, we may as well accept the food that is ready to be served us. We went back to the Wok.
At the Wok, there were two chances to choose our fate. We could choose breaded, unbreaded, Tso'ed, Orange ("made with real Oranges!"), Sweet, Sour, or Both. "All of the Above" was an option that was definitely implied by The Man with the Ladle. The second choice was fried rice or fried noodle, and judging by the caloric description, the increased surface area of rice in the pan had devastating effects on the nutritional value. So there I sat, in a crowded atrium, slurping bland oily noodles and crunching on the occasional gifted carrot strip. The strip did not begin to cut through the film on my tongue from the flavored chicken pieces. This was not a day meant for singing. Not a day meant for joy. This was a day to be savored like one might savor plunging a toilet. And in that way, Manchu Wok was perfect. I just hope that John McCain isn't the greasy solution to America's hangover.
Here's to Hope. I could stand to have a little arugula.
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