APOKALIPSIS

“Sugar Kane” is a Sonic Youth song named for Marylin Monroe’s character in Some Like it Hot, which is a terrific film. It’s one of those rare songs that I remember hearing for the first time on the radio, long after it was out of regular rotation, and being transported somewhere new and different. It’s not a perfect song — the lyrics are nonsense — but it’s a knockout.
Someone on YouTube made a video for “Sugar Kane” set to clips from Some Like it Hot, which is here:

The driving force of the video are clips of Monroe, slowed down to match the hypnotic drone of the music. In almost every shot, she’s in the center of the frame. Whether she’s running from the camera or mugging for it, she always seems to know its there. The song is dark and desperate, but also glittery and bright. I wonder if that’s what it felt like to be Marylin Monroe.

LITTLE NEMO by Winsor McCay, from exactly a century ago. And still the world keeps getting smaller.

It’s 2009 and I am back in the United States after spending most of ‘08 abroad. At this time last year I was preparing for a grand adventure, and now I find myself trying to find a job. Before I came back to America, I would joke that it was the worst time since I had been born to try and find a job. Now I’m realizing that it may actually be the worst time since before my PARENTS were born. I’m still hopeful, but when the “available jobs” page on every temp agency website I visit is COMPLETELY BLANK, there is certainly cause for concern.
Nevertheless, I am determined to make 2009 the best year ever. My buddy Grant used to post his New Year’s resolutions on his blog and then review them at the end of the year, and this year I think I’ll give it a shot, too.

Here are my resolutions for 2009!
*Publish a book
*Run marathon (or a half-marathon if I am a slacker)
*Read through the whole Bible again
*Continue my relationship with a most excellent chick
*Do not destroy a city
*Write more than ever before!

Lofty goals? I hope not. And onward marches the New Millennium!!

BRING IT ON (in it to win it)!!

This is my last night in Australia.
I’ve packed up my bags in almost exactly the same way that I packed them a year ago, and in the morning I’ll hoist them on my back and hit the road again. Almost everything I’ve acquired over the past year, mostly souvenirs, mementos and comic books, fits into a cardboard box I’m having shipped home. I’m not bringing back too many things that I didn’t take with me…
except for thousands of photographs and a year full of unforgettable memories…

Here are some photos from my last few months in Australia:

on the road…

Springbrook lookout

Yay for friends!!

Lizard at King’s Canyon

Champagne at Uluru

Remarkable Rocks at Kangaroo Island

Riding camels near Alice Springs

Sydney at night, from the Harbor Bridge

King’s Canyon

Snake Creek, Kangaroo Island

Croatian wedding!

24 hours on the train to Alice Springs

Sea World on the Gold Coast!

Fruit drink for the road back from Coober Pedy

Massive salt lake, somewhere in South Australia

Camels + Me

Enroute to Uluru

awwww

That’s strawberry sauce, not blood. Thanks for the cake, Kim!

Those pictures don’t even begin to touch on all the adventures I’ve had here. Those of you I’m going to see back in the states should prepare yourselves to be bombarded with stories and photographs. I’ll be in Hawaii tomorrow.
xoxoxo

So KP “tagged” me a while back, and I thought I’d better get around to responding. There’s a picture that lays out the rules of this little meme, but it looked all girly like it had come from Target or Crate and Barrel or something. I can’t have that kind of nonsense frilling up my blog, so I made my own picture.

RAAAAAAAAAAAR

Now, random facts and whatever:

1. The only video game system we had when I was growing up was Interactive Vision, which was this weird console made by ViewMaster. The system plugged into your VCR and played special VHS tapes with 8-bit graphics superimposed over the video. There were only about half a dozen Interactive Vision “games,” but they featured the Muppets, Sesame Street and classic Disney cartoons. When I was in first grade, I was obsessed with getting one of these machines. I did finally get one for Christmas, but the joystick broke after a few months and by that time ViewMaster had stopped making Interactive Vision and couldn’t replace the parts.

2. I don’t drink a lot of alcohol, but if I’m at a bar I usually get a whiskey dry. For a long time I didn’t know there was any way standardized way to order it, and I would ask for “whiskey and ginger ale,” even though asking for ginger ale made me feel like an eight-year old leaning forward in a high bar stool, idly swinging my scrawny legs.
(I just looked this up, and it turns out there are a lot of names for this sort of drink, and I could just as easily ask for an “old fashioned” a “seven and seven” or even just a “high ball.” I am pretty clueless.)

3. I’ve been blogging for The Beat at Publisher’s Weekly for over a month now as an intern. I really enjoy it, but I haven’t told hardly anyone until now.

4. I’ve visited seven different countries this year: the USA, Canada, Malaysia, Australia, Japan and South Korea. That number still seems too low — I want to see more!! I have also spent about 1.5% of the entire year on a train, one way or another.

5. When I was in Korea, I spent three days at a Buddhist temple eating only vegetarian food and meditating about 10 hours a day. I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, but I’m really glad I did it. The head monk spoke perfect English and respected that I was a Christian. When I took a mountain walk with him, he gave me this sura to meditate on:
HEAD MONK: When you are on the right path, the Garden of Eden is all around you.
ME: But how do you when you are on the right path?
HEAD MONK: Change your pants!
If I ever figure out what that means, I’m not allowed to tell anyone.

6. In 2002 I made a movie about zombies. In 2004 zombies became The Next Big Thing. I would take credit for this trend if anyone outside of my family actually saw my film. The final showdown happened in a bowling alley.

7. I have struck up conversations with strangers just because they had a Zwan or Sleater-Kinney shirt on, because those were my two favorite bands of my early 20s, and no one else I knew had more than a passing interest in them. Both bands broke up before I could see them live, and I don’t listen to them any more the way that I used to.

Who hasn’t been tagged yet? I’ll pick Elizabeth, Kyle, Mom, Summer, Megan, Kim and Bethany. Wow, that’s a heap of women-folk. Don’t dudes blog any more?

I am smack dab in the middle of Australia at the moment. Kim and I took the Old Ghan railroad up to Alice Springs from Adelaide, a 24-hour trip, and like a lot of tourists we sort of expected Uluru (AKA Ayers Rock), the iconic symbol of central Autralia, to be close to the town. It is in fact 5,000 km from the town. That’s five hours drive at top speed. It is not close at all! We are in the middle of a two day expedition there, and so far things are good. My time at the internet is almost up, so I will have to write more later!
xo

My friends, when we look back on this past year, I think we can agree upon one thing: it has been dominated by FURY. The signs have been unmistakable: rampant gnashing of teeth, howls of discontent at all hours, pencil jars rattled from fists pounding desks, incessant stomping, unceasing glowering. Rage is, in fact, all the rage.

You might be hearing that things will not be so bad, and that we all need to settle down, but if you stop to think it, there are just as many things to be ENRAGED about now as there ever were! FURY reached the boiling point long ago.

In fact, fury is now boiling over and there is NO ONE to turn off the burners! As evidence, look no further than the normally sensible folks at Free Printable Fun, who have in fact, no lie, made Furious White Boy note cards.

“I had a vision. The anger of Aaron Humphrey could be controlled. Like a laser beam it could be focused and condensed. It could be used for good. I could harness his tremendous ire to do the bidding of the people. I could create Furious White Boy Notecards.” - FreePrintableFun.org, who I swear I have no affiliation with.

Regular readers can never forget that awesome, terrible day I unleashed the Furious White Boy mask upon the world. Now, not only can you cover your face with the my vicious visage, it can also serve as the cover of your most important memos. Truly, the revolution is at hand.

Your rage does not have to be a boiling pot that will make a mess of the kitchen! With these note cards, it can be a laser beam! FPF.org explains:

“Just think of it… how powerful would a letter be if it was written on the back of a Furious White Boy’s face? You could lobby congress for national health care, demand equal pay for equal work, force social change upon the country. You could tell people where to get off at and mean it! It would be glorious!!!”

These note cards appeared about a week before the US Presidential election. Now, I’m not saying that my spontaneous art project had any bearing on the outcome of that contest, but let’s be honest: the timing sure lines up.

I should have posted this earlier, but I found out about it in the midst of packing for a trip to Queensland. I have to thank Free Printable Fun for not just giving a shout out to the mask I made, but for getting the joke and having fun with it on their own. Cheers, you mavens of cut and paste!

Bonus #1: My good friend Joy recently South Park-icized her posse, and created startling accurate portraits of some of my best mates. I was honored to be included. Here is her interpretation of the Furious White Boy:

This looks more like me than I care to admit. I think it’s the clenched teeth that seal the deal.

Bonus #2: In case you were wondering what a Furious White Boy sounds like, Roger Daltry of The Who captures it perfectly in this clip from the classic song “Don’t Get Fooled Again”: REEEEEEEEEYYAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

This is the second time I’ve been overseas for the presidential election. I was studying abroad in Spain during the Bush-Kerry race, and the outcome of that contest completely flummoxed the Spaniards, who seemed either unable or unwilling to pronounce the word “Bush” without making it sound like a vulgar parody: BOOOSSH.
This year I’m in Australia, and I watched the final hours of the race unfold from the comfort of a budget airline enroute from Queensland to Adelaide. I was afraid that I would miss the tallies, countdowns and final speeches due to our travel plans bisecting TV coverage, but Virgin Blue surprisingly provides live television in every seat (for a small fee). As I traveled 30,000 above Australian desert and farms, I was glued to the little six-inch monitor, completely engrossed. This election was different, finally.
There were times when I wanted to stand up and cheer, but I was surrounded by strangers quietly reading, napping, or watching movies. Back in the States, people were staying up late shouting and hugging each other; on TV it was nighttime and the energy seemed electric. Here, it was mid-day, and I sat slightly reclined in a center seat. I felt like a spy, headphones buried in my ears, intercepting a foreign broadcast. I wonder if this is how the rest of the world processes news about America, as if it were a strange, continuous TV show.
I remember that the first time I saw Obama was on television at an airport. For the life of me, I can’t remember what airport it was, or even what country I would have been in. I guess it must have been during the 2004 Democrat National Convention when he gave that great, impassioned speech that sort of launched him into the spotlight. I didn’t agree with everything he said (mostly about stem cell research), but he made an striking impression. I do not remember what country I was in, who I was traveling with or where I was going, but I clearly recall sitting alone, with my bags at my feet, watching the news in some strange airport and thinking “It’s too bad this guy can’t run for president.”

I am looking forward to watching the final Presidential Debate today, which conveniently airs at noon in Australia. However, I doubt that it could be as incendiary or entertaining as the current Mayoral Debate raging in Gotham City:

There is a lot to enjoy in this video, but I particularly loved how uncannily it seems to line up with the general perceptions of this year’s election (even if you disregard the hero and villain implicaitons!) and how the Penguin starts out his speech by saying “no mudslinging!” before proceeding to sling all sorts of mud all over poor Batman. All he’s missing is a cry for “no more partisan politics!”

Also LOL-worthy is the prisoner cheering in his jail cell, and Robin’s tender embrace of Batman at the end. POW!

Despite all my rage, I am still just a white boy in a toaster oven

Long ago, I unleashed a potent vision of white boy RAGE upon the world. The world shuddered and imploded, crushed beneath the weight of my fury. It the wake of our Earth’s destruction, another world was created that almost exactly the same, but with some tiny crucial differences. Namely, Furious White Boy masks began appearing in mysterious locations across the world, a testament to the white boy’s INESCAPABLE EXISTENTIAL ANGST.

Tracking these developments is the leading website in mask- craft-related phenomena: FreePrintableFun.org. From their latest posting:

“Who is Aaron Humphrey? Why is he so angry? Will our nation ever learn what true racial and gender equality is? These and many more questions can be pondered while wearing this Furious White Boy Mask.”

That’s right. Some random stranger stumbled upon my spontaneous art project and decided to share it with the world. THIS IS TREMENDOUS!

My friend Kristen P. sent in some Furious White Boy sightings long ago that I initially neglected to post for reasons I have forgotten, and then I felt too guilty about procrastinating to post them at all. But in light of Free Printable Fun uncovering my greatest accomplishment (and most secret shame), I present some of her photos, direct from the Pine Street Brothel!

Formerly a pumpkin cow, transformed by FURY he stalks the streets, causing ruckus all around and punchin’ dudes in the shins. BAM!

Nothing makes white boys more FURIOUS than mis-using the term “emo!” When Jimmy Eat World became really popular they weren’t even making emo music any more! EVERYONE HAS MISAPPROPRIATED THE TERM! LOOK IT UP ON WIKIPEDIA! JIMMY EAT WORLD IS FURIOUS ABOUT THIS!

MAGNETIC DARTS DO NOTHING TO QUELL MY FURY!!!!!!!!

Which pillow do you choose to sleep on? The one that his head is popping out of, or the one from which his fist is thrusting? It is difficult to determine because EACH PILLOW IS BURSTING WITH RAGE

My friends. This is a serious matter. Halloween is almost here. In Australia they do not celebrate Halloween. The only way I can be consoled about this fact is if everyone sends me more Furious White Boy Mask pictures. The power is in your hands!!

When I am older, I will probably be just as grumpy about consumerism as Calvin’s dad is, and my children will spite me for it.

The final exchange in this strip is eerily prescient considering how well it summarizes what Bush was telling Americans circa 2002. I’m sure it was funnier in 1992 before that bit of hyperbole became a central part of the national dialogue.

Of course, with the economy tanking these days, mocking consumerism seems like a bit of a low blow. This comic is arguably the product of the bullish Clinton era, but as our economy staggers to recover its footing it’s worth considering whether the “manufactured desires” of this strip are what we’re rebuilding toward.

Isn’t there a better way? Well, shouldn’t there be?