Life is good when:

- You have a girlfriend who is so voraciously intent on reading the latest Seaguy that she insists on having it before you do.

- You have a girlfriend that, like, really wants to see Star Trek.

- Said girlfriend does not, as might be expected from the above information, look like this.

(Listen I am just saying.)

BRRWWWRrrWWnnwwwnn… zzz.

I can fall asleep with the likes of Mastodon and Boris blasting directly into my weathered ear canals, and I do it a lot, actually. 

And despite the fact that these are the sludge metal equivalents of Johann Sebastian Bach, I think, probably, that says something about me.

No?

(I will say, though, that the music video for Sea Beast will, without fail, prevent slumber for upwards of 7 hours.)

“Boredoms” is Great, Y’all

I’ve been listening to a lot of Super Ae recently, which is an album by Boredoms, and it’s probably about as good as Japanese avant-garde noise punk hullabaloo can be. (Which is very, actually!)

But more importantly than their music is the subject of their debut album:

Which bears the following tracklisting:

1. Anal Eat
2. God From Anal
3. Born To Anal

And is thus, at the very least, a beacon of interminable promise.

I guess I’m not really sure if Boredoms is the sort of “music” people are supposed to like, or if noise rock in general is ever intended to be enjoyable, but I think it’s pretty excellent and you should at least check out the aforementioned Super Ae because pretenious indie music publication Pitchfork called it the 44th best album of the 1990s and boy if that doesn’t sell you I can hardly fathom what will!

Seriously though: Born To Anal.

Music Bingin’

There is not much for me to do back in Chicago this weekend other than read comic books, worry about the next two weeks (oh Sociology, bane of my existence), and listen to music, so I’ve been doing a lot of that. For homework, please obtain and enjoy the following, peasants:

I mean, yes, of course, it’s so obvious but, probably, one or two of you have yet to be enlightened, furreal. Also, totally wish I was 20 in, say, 1990.

Cutely, I had a conversation with my mom tonight about some music, because she thinks she totally tears it up with her Ting Tings, and she was very excited to inform me that she has “Here Comes Your Man” by the Pixies and “Reckoner” by Radiohead “from their upcoming album.” I really like my mom.

“Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?” And Us

I’ve just finished Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert’s Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? It is a Thursday in April. I am on a plane from New York to Chicago. I have checked a 59-pound bag stuffed with Jack Kirby, Grant Morrison, an ugly brown coat. I’ve listened to songs by the Pixies over 44 times in the past 4 hours. Any of this might be important, I suppose. The most important of anything. More likely, not.

In a couple hours, assuming this airplane stays its course, I’ll be typing this up on my computer and sending it into cyberspace, where an average of 14 faceless people might read it everyday. Maybe that matters, I guess, and maybe it doesn’t.

Here’s what I want to say: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?, a two-part story spread across an issue of Batman and an issue of Detective Comics (not traditionally the most venerated or celebrated of literary tomes), is one of the most sobering, incredible things I’ve ever read, and I’m wondering if I might look back on this statement 10, 20 years from now and wonder what it was about a giant bat and a pearl necklace that meant so much to me, but this, I suppose, is not quite the point. Batman, super heroes, these myths, are eternal. Could I “grow out of it”? Perhaps. But Batman will always face the hellish night in Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum and come out the other side, prevail against the sadistic Azrael, fall to the lord of all evil while saving Earth, be Adam West and Christian Bale, leap from a bridge to save Commissioner Gordon’s baby, and, well, Batman will always be Batman.

It is this very idea that’s most obviously explored in the keenly self-aware Whatever Happened, which details a Batman brought to the brink of death and/or sanity (presumably as a result of R.I.P. and Final Crisis, but it doesn’t really matter in this story, all things considered), who must accept his ultimate fate however it may come. This is a story about icons. And it’s not the first of such – Morrison seems devoted to this concept in almost all of his super hero stories but very obviously works it in throughout the aforementioned R.I.P. and Final Crisis, especially the Superman Beyond 3D tie-in – but this could be the best.

Because ultimately, it doesn’t have to be about comic books or mythology or Bruce Wayne. My girlfriend and I recently had one of those stereotypical college kid discussions about “time,” and I’m not quite sure I really understand what she was getting at (her GPA is better than mine), but the idea is that she doesn’t buy into time as a linear concept. “But tomorrow is tomorrow and today is today,” I would argue; there are such things as “past,” “present,” and “future.” But not for comic book heroes, as writer Neil Gaiman so beautifully conveys here. And I realize, maybe not quite for us, either.

I mean, yes, I am on a plane now and an asteriod might lodge itself in my face a week from now. But that’s missing the point. What does time mean when I remember countless winter nights on a telephone or a smile in a Gold Creek Court hallway? A night on my best friend’s patio or next to my father when his remaining breaths could be counted on one hand? Or the feeling I get remembering “Airbag” first blaring into my life, or Black Francis’ banshee screams? These aren’t things you quantify. Maybe for you, in your mind or memory, they aren’t there forever (brain tumors happen), but to recall anything, to hold a memory close to your heart is projecting it into eternity. These things aren’t just the past, because in some way, they will always be happening, their reach ever pushing into your heart or tickling your brain. And that’s why something like “Batman,” a drawing of some man wailing on a criminally insane clown, can be just as real as this plane ride; blasted into the ether and played upon our hearts, what’s the difference between the two, really?

So I guess, basically, you should read some Batman comics.

(And I should get a life?)

On Elizabeth Wurtzel

We interviewed Elizabeth Wurtzel in my reporting class. Here’s what I have to say about it:

She’s got a best-selling book in her repertoire, 1994’s “Prozac Nation,” also the impetus to a film adaptation starring acclaimed actress Christina Ricci, a spot in one of New York’s top law firms, but author-turned-attorney Elizabeth Wurtzel is still depressed.

 

“I have always and probably will always, in some way, struggle with depression,” said Wurtzel in a recent interview.

 

She wears her infamy about as comfortably as the massive fur coat draped about her shoulders, which she is quick to justify as PETA-friendly; “I promise it’s vintage,” said Wurtzel, an unprompted response to a room of New York University journalism students.

 

And it’s hard to blame her. Do a Google search for “Elizabeth Wurtzel” and a number of juicy tidbits avail themselves. First, that she’s authored three books and appeared in publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal to Rolling Stone. Next, that media gossip site Gawker has a thing to say about her controversial love life; the third result on the search page is a post titled “On Knowing Elizabeth Wurtzel Screwed David Foster Wallace.” And finally, that an unfiltered image search will produce a topless shot on the second page.

 

To say Wurtzel’s been in the limelight, not always on her own terms, may be something of an understatement. But what has fame brought her?

 

“It doesn’t solve anything,” said Wurtzel. “When you’re depressed, you’re depressed.” And despite the widespread attention both she and her seminal tome “Prozac Nation” have earned, she suggests that she doesn’t quite separate herself from jes plain folks.

 

“You have literary success or whatever, but you’re still taking the garbage out,” she said of life after “Prozac Nation.” But most don’t come in from the dumpster to gaze upon degrees from Harvard College and Yale Law School, a coffee table full of magazines they’ve been published in.

 

Still, chatting with CNN producer Phil Rosenbaum’s reporting class, even breaking for pizza with students and offering her email address to interested parties after the interview, Wurtzel was admittedly at ease, her rapport spanning topics from celebrity gossip to television dramas.

 

“I watch Law & Order re-runs…  I actually just watched the E! True Hollywood Story on the Kardashians… they seem like a nice family, in a weird way,” said Wurtzel.

 

She struggles with the bar examination, a requisite for those who want to practice law, criticizes the popularization of Brooklyn as a hip spot for married couples (“It’s Kabul, Afghanistan before it’s Cobble Hill; I can’t hear one more time that Brooklyn is the new Manhattan”), enthusiastically talks about her dog, and ponders the effect the internet has on blind dating.

 

You wouldn’t think so leafing through her books, trolling internet blogs, or maybe even at first glance, but Elizabeth Wurtzel is almost painstakingly normal; melancholic, occasionally depressive, prone to romantic foibles, self-involved and concerned about little more than the nebulous “world around her.”

 

She’s a best-selling author, yes, a big-time attorney, and indeed, still depressed.

 

Who wouldn’t be?

Today I wrote about cookies

(It’s an April Fool’s column, what can I say?)

Siphoned from the exuberant Washington Square News:

Cafeteria cookies are just too damn delicious

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene isn’t the only institution taking issue with NYU’s dining halls: The masses have spoken, and those cookies at Hayden Dining Hall may just be TOO delicious.

The whole cookie ordeal is just so smug and presumptuous anyway. Some kind-looking lunch lady extracts a massive tray laden with the gooey delights from an oven (an oven that may as well be the forge of Hephaestus himself, given the sumptuous treasures it produces), piles them onto a plate and just walks away like she doesn’t even realize the hysteria unleashed by their presence.

“And what?” she spurts, as kids nearly kill themselves in a mad dash for the heavenly baked goods.

It’s not responsible. I’m told, by a source close to the situation, that the recipe for these chocolate chip cookies (if we are to believe that these are truly so simple a creation) was originally funded by the United States government in an effort to create real-life Powerpuff Girls for use in “Operation Enduring Freedom.” After a few failed trial runs, the formula faced minor tweaks and is now used to fatten NYU students.

Still (and this is the honest-to-goodness truth), the ingredients are G-14 classified (a designation made famous by Chris Tucker in NYU alumnus Brett Ratner’s seminal film “Rush Hour”), and lesser reporters than myself have found themselves slaughtered and turned into “Mondo Meatloaf” for merely asking the wrong questions.

The fiasco, unbelievably, has gone unabated; the administration turns a blind eye to this dangerous dessert, and students refuse to probe Hayden Dining Hall, too placated by the warm, viscous chocolate avalanching down their throats. Here are the hard facts: People get their feet stepped on as often as once every few weeks attempting to access the cookie plate; many have testified that they feel “unable to stop with just one;” and each one has, at the very least, a bajillion calories.

What is wrong with those vegan peanut butter cookies that taste and feel a little bit like a piece of sidewalk chalk rolled around in some dirt? They are healthier, don’t incite conflicts among peers, don’t dribble goop all over your fingers and have the added benefit of steering NYU society away from fattening dessert foods. I mean, they are so gross that they could very well turn someone away from any dessert for life, based entirely on principle.

But no. We are taunted by these devilish treats. Today, in a fit of sheer ecstasy, I saw a portly lad strip to his nether regions, sandwich three of the cookies between two hunks of Funfetti and roll about on the floor moaning while ravenously consuming the new creation. He had to be removed by an NYU Public Safety officer, frosting and chocolate chip molasses running down his curves, crusting into his folds for all eternity — a wailing scar of dessert taken too far.

This is what we, as students, must rise up against: the definitive perversion of our dining hall goods. We found ourselves unmoved by the ultimately tepid sermons of Take Back NYU, allow ourselves to be bulldozed by tuition increases year after year, but here is where we make a stand.

For shame, Hayden Dining Hall. The delicious has gone too far.

Damon Beres is opinion editor (Lord knows why). E-mail him at dberes@nyunews.com.

Chuck Klosterman Gets Me Off

My beautiful, intelligent, ceaselessly wonderful girlfriend just made me buy “Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas,” and it’s likely the best collection of essays on pop culture I’m bound to ever bother with (I’m told that “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs” is, in fact, BETTER, which strikes me as ludicrous), and you should do so, also.

Since you probably can’t just run out all willy nilly to buy the sumptuous tome now, you should probably read this piece he wrote about Britney Spears (an expanded version is included in the book); at the very least, it is accompanied by pants-bursting photos of the bubbly pop star at her peak.

Really, though, why didn’t I read any of this stuff before? I feel like such a pleb.

Quick Boner: Grant Morrison and Final Crisis

I can’t get enough of my favorite bald drug abuser!

DC Comics released the cover art to the Final Crisis hardcover, due out in June, and it is gorgeous: 

The fact that it’ll look handsome on my bookshelf, along with recent news that the collected edition will include the crucial Superman Beyond 3D mini-series, secures that I, ever the salivating fanboy, will be buying Final Crisis all over again. Lolz consumerism!

Also, a number of interviews with Grant Morrison have been going on recently, the best, in my opinion, being published in Wired. Lots of exciting stuff coming up in the future, with Batman & Robin, Seaguy: The Slaves of Mickey Eye, and the possibility of an original graphic novel? Oh baby! Perhaps the most interesting and informative bit from the interview:

Wired.com: Like All-Star Superman with the Man of Steel, Final Crisis pushed apocalypse and deicide to the outer limits of narrative possibility. What are your thoughts on that series? Taken together with The Filth, is it the heaviest series you’ve ever written?

Morrison: Final Crisis was much heavier, much harder to write than The Filth, which at least came with massive doses of surreal black humor to sweeten the bitter pill of the subject matter. On Final Crisis, I spent months immersing myself in the thought processes of an evil, dying God who longed for nothing less than the degradation, destruction and enslavement of all of DC’s superheroes, along with every other living thing in the universe and beyond!

To get into his head, I had to consider people like him in the real world and there were no shortage of candidates. The emissaries of Darkseid seemed to be everywhere, intent on crushing hope, or shattering human self-esteem. I began to hear his voice in every magazine headline accusing some poor young girl of being too fat or too thin. Darkseid was there in the newscasters screaming financial disaster and planet-doom. It was that sick old bastard’s voice terrifying children with his hopeless message of a canceled future, demanding old ladies turn off their electric blankets to help “save the planet,” while turning a blind eye to corporate ecocide.

Up against that, all we had to offer were the wise words of Pico Della Mirandola and Superman singing a song to break your heart. I had to grind America’s superheroes down so hard there was nothing left but diamond in the dark. Everything was falling into a black hole, even the story structure … and fans on message boards were going to war over the thing, screaming “genius” and “gibberish” at one another. It was quite unpleasant to be at the heart of all that but also strangely exhilarating.

I like Final Crisis a lot now that it’s all over. I think it’s the closest I’ve come to creating the type of DC superhero comic I most want to read.

Didn’t think it got much heavier than The Filth, myself, and it’s hard for me to place Final Crisis in that category simply because, at the end of the day, it’s a super hero book where the good guys save the day (kind of?).

But then, maybe seeing our favorite icons of good blasted into oblivion rather than a balding, cat-obsessed chronic masturbator makes it all the more disturbing, if you think about it.

 

NYU’s “Dream School” Drop; Whazzit Mean?

I’m not really sure if I know!

Originally published today in the Washington Square News:

The dream-school dream: exploiting ignorance

by Damon Beres

And lo, the skies parted, swine took to the air, and this columnist found himself in complete agreement with NYU spokesman John Beckman.

What value are we to place in the ludicrous Dream Colleges ranking released annually by The Princeton Review? Beckman said it best, quoted in yesterday’s WSN article called “NYU slips to fifth in list of U.S. ‘dream schools,’ ” with the elegantly snappy claim that rankings do little more than “sell magazines that prey on Americans’ obsession with lists.”

It’s true; The Princeton Review has a list for just about everything, beating the ever-softening brains of American youngsters to a pulp and sloshing the congealed soup around in the cold steel colander of their millions. Can’t decide what to do with your useless, apathetic self? Hop on over to their Top 10 College Majors list, which bears the ironic disclaimer, “Whatever major you choose, don’t pick what’s easiest — or what your best friend is studying — because you’ll only be cheating yourself out of some great opportunities!” Sure, don’t pick what’s easiest, but do feel free to go with whatever some website makes sound good.

The concerning trend with rankings madness is the underlying assumption that students and parents don’t know how to think for themselves. It’s worrisome, because although NYU has dropped five places in the Dream Colleges ranking in just as many years, it’s still up there, which means some from the vapid Princeton Review readership might soon be matriculating at this school for reasons as simple as “lolz, totally going to Saks, love ya, bitch, muah.”

 What’s so dreamy about NYU, anyway? The exquisite sight of a hawk dive-bombing an unsuspecting, rat in Washington Square Park? The warm feeling you get as a guard sandwiches you into a Silver elevator and your neighbor drips his Kimmel stir-fry down your shirt? Our proximity to countless nightclubs and bars?

Ah, that last one sounds pretty good, and given the “if cost were not an issue” clause of the dream college list, probably not far from truth. I’ve gotten the impression, looking around a lecture hall or two and letting comments from peers really set in, that a lot of people are not here for a top-rate education; they’re here to become fledgling Manhattan socialites. Do we really want NYU to be desired because of a glamorous Manhattanite image proliferated by the likes of “Gossip Girl”?

We don’t, because while the dream rankings are without doubt the most specious exploitation of the admissions game on the market, NYU’s failure to maintain its top standing might represent something else entirely; the realization that primo academics outweigh getting plastered in a Brooklyn warehouse on Friday night. With the ailing economy, students nationwide might be waking up to the reality that sacrificing the social scene for a Stanford degree could be worth it. (Sure, tuition may not be a consideration in the Dream Colleges rankings, but New York City isn’t cheap, either.) Or maybe, despite a widespread socialite attitude (remember, vapid Princeton Review readership), brains are the new black.

But that’s the saddest part, I suppose. NYU is a great school in a great city, filled with great, bright people, but it simply can’t escape the glitterati zeitgeist. I don’t know what The Princeton Review’s Dream Colleges rankings are supposed to convey. They suggest quite simply, “like, a lot of people want to go to NYU.” But the connotations they drum up — the celebrity-laden campus, the unique social scene, Scarlett Johansson’s “Hayden” dorm room in that Dennis Quaid movie “In Good Company” — are troubling, to say the least. I’d hope no one paid much mind to these rankings, but considering that major news outlets like USA Today and FOX ran stories on them yesterday, that would seem not the case.

Take a closer look, NYU hopefuls; there’s more to our school beneath the skylights and shimmer.