--Living Beyond Our Means --

Bird's eye view of Chicago

2006-06-23T08:42:00.000-04:00

Chicago, on a recent trip. I was surprised how lively it was, as soon as the sun came out. Many suit-and-tie clad people roam the streets. And one dead bird.

Notes from Tel-Aviv

2006-05-01T09:40:00.000-04:00

Israel is a land of contradictions, and the tension is highest in Tel-Aviv, a city that acts like a fifty-year old woman whose children left home and who is not afraid to voice a big sigh of relief. The city flirts with anyone that cares to look at her summer dress, she rocks, she rolls, but all in all she cannot hide her age. There is no amount of architectural Botox that can stretch the marks of five decades in the Mediterranean humidity or erase the stains from the city’s aging walls that are covered in now-black ‘shpritz’, that German contribution to urban aesthetics that should have been illegalized back in the 40’s. Tel-Aviv can’t hide its age, but it gets dous-pua for still trying. On some days it almost works.
Recently a rejuvenation project cleaned many of the central avenues, which now sport fancy central lawns and street cafés and, perhaps more importantly, stubborn foot-high pillars of concrete that prevent SUVs from parking on the much coveted green space. Consequently, a street culture is developing, echoing the glory days of European cities in days gone by. On a lazy Friday morning, everywhere you look you can see young people meandering up and down the avenues with their baby strollers or dogs on a leash, enjoying the mild sea breeze, or stopping for a coffee and a late glimpse of the morning paper, usually skipping directly to the sports section, knowing that the headlines will report nothing less than death and despair. These are the same people that awarded eight parliament seats to the “Retired People’s Party” in the elections two weeks before. Thirtysomethings voting for eightysomethings as an act of rebellion, signaling to all the corrupted politicians of the age-range in between that they have had enough: enough corruption, enough occupation, enough of the swords by which anybody that grew up here lives by. Perhaps this voting pattern is a harbinger for what will become a global phenomenon, who knows. The thirtysometings want simple things, but primarily a promise that the politicians do not mortgage their future. They want a promise that when they age they can maintain their dignity. They want less swords and more plowshares to work these little lawns, or perhaps a mental vine and fig tree to sit under on a Friday instead of taking that second job just to pay rent. Fig trees are not yet to be seen, but the avenues are shaded by giant Fichus trees, which shed their blackberry-like fruit on the pavements below, like bird droppings that soil the ground with dark purple stains. Large posters are hung high above the people’s heads, stretching across the streets from one tree to another. The posters read in colorful letters poems by Hebrew poets that celebrate the outdoors and complement the relaxed atmosphere. Despite the global wave of capitalism, some socialist aspirations of educating the masses must have a stronghold in city hall. The street looks natural, educated, relaxed and one can almost forget that there is a war going on 30 miles from here, in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, where two million Palestinians are living in inhumane conditions under the regime of a rogue terrorist government. One can almost forget that the entire region is under nuclear threat from Iran that announced that when it will have the capability it would annihilate Israel. One can almost forget that at the current rates of growth of the Arab population, the two human tankers called Israel and Palestine are destined to collide and sink without trace in the ocean of history. It doesn’t take much to forget all this other than, like the people on the street that are ordering the second latte with overspent credit-cards, to believe in living the moment. Just look at them and see how much more alive they look here than they do in their high-tech offices, or government barracks, or retail jobs. And who can tell them they shouldn't? What choices do they have? They simply live in the moment without thinking about it too much.
A spy satellite was launched earlier this week using a Russian launcher, and was the cause of much national pride. The papers called it a marvel of science and technology, announcing that the future is here. The military’s high brass declared that the man-made-bird became operational two hours after launch sending its optical tendrils deep inside the Iranian weapons program. But the people here don’t really care about optics, and don’t stop and ask how the global military-industrial complex is morphing. Less than two decades ago Israel didn’t even have diplomatic relationship with Russia, and now they became such allies. What gives? Perhaps the people don’t care since on another front Russia is still their fiercest enemy. Israel’s Macabi Tel-Aviv is playing in the Euro-league final against CSK Moskva, hoping to defend its two-years-in-a-row European championship crown. The fact that Israel is not geographically part of Europe doesn’t trouble the fans, nor does the fact that most of the players (on both teams) are not European at all but actually seven feet tall African-American NBA dropouts. Who cares? When you’re the champion, you don’t question the rules.
To return the car at the airport I need to drive to another terminal, making a 15 minute detour. The designers of the multi-million dollar Terminal 3, Israel’s international umbilical cord, were so excited with designing a train station, a very uncommon means of transportation here, that they forgot to build offices for the car rental companies. Or perhaps they were too focused on designing the free Wi-fi access inside the terminal. Israel was always forward thinking. The only problem is that in the pursuit of the future, it usually forgets the past, and often neglects the present.

Survival of the fittest

2006-04-16T14:01:00.000-04:00

Have you seen those HSBC ads that show a multitude of faces from all ethnicities, claiming HSBC is the “world’s local bank”? Well, our gym is the sports-world parallel of that. In it you can find tattooed Puerto-Rican bikers pumping iron right next to Italian housewives losing weight on the treadmill, and blond investment bankers in a spinning class. But of all the people, the ones that catch my attention of late and can teach us a lesson or two about diversity are the Hasidic Jews from South Williamsburg that discovered this gymnastic rabbit hole. For them, an excursion to the gym is much more than a training session, it’s more like a foray to a forbidden land where the body and the mind can be stimulated like in no other place in their holly world. They show up on the first day with their black and white attire, like penguins that got swayed with a runaway iceberg out of the arctic and found themselves in mid-ocean. The look in their shaky eyes is confused, like those of a child in a candy store, not knowing what to do with their shy hands, but soon they do what everybody else would do in their stead: they follow the people around them. On the first day, they start on the treadmill. Twenty minutes into the session they realize that six minute miles are a bit too fast a pace and that a black wool suit is probably not the best outfit for sweat exercises, so they lower the speed to a steady walk and remain with their white undergarments that can hardly conceal their flowing body and thick necks as they stretch to look around frantically. In the first few weeks they would never select a cardio-machine that has a TV screen next to it lest the faux gods of unholy broadcasts would temp their pure minds with American-idolatry or other temptations, so out and a afar goes the neck again, as if passive complacency diminishes from the guilt of active sin. A few weeks later, resistance starts to fade and some get a t-shirt and start looking more relaxed. Some might even bring sneakers. By the third or fourth week, many of them are in shorts. By five weeks they try yoga or get a private trainer. It’s endearing to see bodies, which for, say, thirty years, have had little or no exercise as they try to curl in baby cobras and downward facing dogs. By the end of six weeks, the locker room is like a magical cocoon. In comes a penguin, out comes a hipster, ready to pump iron, iPod in hand, looking at the girls nonchalantly, as if he were one of ‘us’. In Williamsburg, he is.

Notes from the googleplex

2006-04-10T11:29:00.000-04:00

You certainly don’t expect to be greeted by people in swimming caps and bathing suits when you pull into the parking lot of a high-tech company, especially not when it’s raining outside. With Google, however, we should know by now to expect nothing but the unexpected. Intrigued by exactly such a welcome, I take a few more steps from the parking lot towards the visitor’s lobby, and as I begin to trace the origin of the scantly-clad engineers things begin to make sense to me. In the middle of the campus there is a Jacuzzi, and around it sit engineers with their laptops, not disturbed by the drizzle that is so atypical to April mornings in Silicon Valley. In the Jacuzzi several talking heads are having a conversation. I get it. The Jacuzzi must be a way for people to relax from the ball game that they can play in the large, sandy beach-volleyball court that dominates the otherwise Photoshop-green lawn at the center of the universe, sorry, center of the Googleplex.
I walk into the fancy glass-walled lobby, eying the employee cafeteria that serves –not sells-- all sorts of nuts and other health foodstuffs. Within the lobby, four Lava-lamps adorn the reception counter in lieu of old-world flowers, comfy red couches occupy this modernist space, and the guests are welcome to enjoy a slew of expensive health juices. Updated magazines are spread on the coffee tables, and a massage chair is there to entertain you if your host is delayed. Where one would expect to find the receptionist there is a computer with a large screen greeting me with googlesque and instructing me to self-print my visitor’s badge. “I Agree”, then sign the waiver form with an electronic pen and the machine prints my sticker-badge while I’m noticing a basketball size ball made of the remnants of the sticky badges of previous visitors gone-by. Automation –the next generation, I think. Where are the humans here, I wonder?
A semi-transparent back-projection screen is hung high from the ceiling, with terms scrolling bottom to top in rapid succession. A combination of familiar celebrity names, long technical terms, words in undecipherable east-Asian languages, and long strings of letters and numbers that run on the screen hypnotize me.
“What is this all about”, I ask a woman that finally walks in and takes the receptionist seat,
“These are search queries in real time,” she answers briskly.
I feel like one of Jules Verne’s characters having reached the center of the earth. This is the real thing, I think. This is as close one can ever get to seeing Gaia, the spirit of the organism we call earth.
My next thought is that this must be a very nice place to work in. The oldest person I see coming in or out of the building is not more that 40 years old. Then I look at the clock on the wall and change my mind. The clock is an hour late.
“Your clock is an hour late” I tell the receptionist in a friendly tone “You know they moved to daylight saving time today, the spring is starting”. It’s actually hard to believe that it is spring already. This year was the rainiest in the bay area since 1904, the year they started to keep meteorological records.
“I know it is late” she replies
“So aren’t you going to change the time then?” I insist.
“No, I don’t do that, Information Systems have to do that, the clock is centrally controlled”
I look at the wall again and find it hard to believe. The timepiece looks like any other black-and-white clock I know, just like the one present in every classroom in America, maybe a little cleaner and more-expensive looking. But what really catches my eye is not the centrally controlled watch but the minute other details of central control. Beneath the clock there is a picture of the two founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, one of them with his arm on the other’s shoulder, and the CEO Eric Schmidt standing in the background. Google is turning into a big company, I realize. The Jacuzzi and beach-volleyball court are its failed attempts to stay young. Like any 35 year-old woman would tell you, it’s not going to work.
As my host comes to pick my up from the lobby, I realize I could never work for a big company, no matter how young it looks.

Homeland Insecurity

2006-03-20T06:28:00.000-05:00

Flying back to Israel, my motherland, is always an anthropological experience, which starts already at the airport in New York. It's been a while, however, since I flew El-Al, the national airline, whose JFK flights are notoriously known for their high concentration of orthodox Jews from Brooklyn. True, all man are created equal, and yet my own informal statistics show that these guys are --by far-- both overweight and over fertile, much more than the general population. They beget like rabbits and eat like pigs, and they pray every 6 hours or so, so they are constantly in motion, and the extremists among them, get this, would not seat next to a foreign woman, because women are unholy enough for them. So you can imagine that having 300+ of these penguins in their black shtreimels and fur hats in a condensed 747 is no picnic by any means. Just getting the seating arrangement is in itself a human sudoko puzzle for the mathematically inclined, and the gazzilion babies, which are crying in the background, don't make it any simpler.

But this is just the beginning. In what other country will the uniform-clad, audible bubble-gum-chewing, 50 year old passport control officer full with her purple-red hair, call on you. “Darling, your passport is about to expire, baby”? I guess I just got too used to American formalism with its overstated MRs. and SIRs to feel comfortable when officers call me 'baby'. Although, truth be said, I'm was little flattered, I must admit :-)

I go on a tour to the north part of the country with my parents and my in-laws. We decide to stop at the famous Kineret cemetery, which kisses the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s only sweet water source. Several of the country’s forefathers are buried here. More than water emanates from here to the rest of the desert. First among these is the famous poet Rahel. Like many other great biblical figures, she too, in the public memory and on her simple white tombstone, has no last name. As we approach, I see that nestled under the palm trees that graze both the sky and the ground a poem book is attached by a short metal chain to the tombstone. A young man is holding it with his hand. He wears simple cloths, his sun-glasses are shifted off his eyes on onto his black curls, and his cell-phone is dangling from his neck. “Would you like me to read you a poem?” he asks as we approach. “Sure, why not, what poem will you read?” I play along, after conquering he initial surprise. “I’m not sure yet, why don’t you guys stand here for a few minutes, and I’ll get your vibe and decide”. We stand there for a couple of minutes while he absorbs our vibe. “OK, I’ve got just the thing for you” he finally concludes, and starts reading a sad poem on page 76

Do you hear me, you who are
So far away from me, my dear?
Do you hear me crying aloud,
Wishing you were well, wishing you were near?
The world is vast, its ways diverse,
Brief meetings, partings long,
Men, with unsure feet, post on never to return, too weak
To find the treasure they have lost.

“Do you come here often?” I ask. “I try to, it’s the force of habit, my parents used to come here a lot”. We go on our way, but I keep thinking of that man for the rest of the day.

Every time there I’m afflicted with the same disease: a version of the Stockholm syndrome overtakes me after a few days. Less than a week into a homeland visit my captive's eye becomes blind to the aesthetics of evil, to the soiled buildings, to the smell of cat urine that is so typical of Tel-Aviv, and to the aggression of the drivers on the street and the headlines in the newspapers, and instead identifies with the Levantine architecture, and the mild weather and the middle-eastern hospitality and family rumble. Tel-Aviv is everything that Brooklyn is not, and vice versa, and yet there is something heartwarming about this place at the end of the world (local think it's the middle of the world), a sort of sense of home and security that is hard to explain to anyone that was never there. Something in me craves it. The tension can tear me from the inside.

Let freedom ring

2006-03-20T06:18:00.000-05:00

Pain -- a diary

2006-02-05T22:03:00.000-05:00

Day 0: Shock
The doctor is late, he was summoned to treat an emergency on the fifth floor, a nameless patient has gone into diabetic comma. I thus have unexpectedly ample time to inspect the torture devices lying neatly in front of me. I made every effort to avoid this opportunity, coming in to floor two, oral surgery, three minutes late to my 6pm appointment. As I enter the door, I feel like I’m in a religious space. Five hundred years have passed, but the power of the steal blade has not waned at all. It’s the same inquisition, the same instruments, only the religion has changed. Preventive medicine takes the place of devoted Christianity. The zeal is similar, only the cause is different. In its original version bodily harms was a fight for one’s soul. Now it’s a fight for the body itself. The prophets wearing white lab-coats will take every measure to keep that body ‘healthy’. In both cases there is only one way to worship, the institutional way, and it involves complete surrender of individuality and agency. You’re either with us or against us. You will cooperate. Oh, you will cooperate. As my doctor is delayed, trying to balance the sugar circulation of that misfortunate patient out my sight, my own sugar level drops and I feel nauseous as the idle assistant aligns one sharp tool after another in front of me. I wet my lips with my tongue just as the assistant rests a sparkling clean scalpel the size of a banana on the tool cart, and seeing my nervousness he tells a joke:
“The silverware is ready. So what would it be sir? Fillet Minion or Rib-Eye, tonight?”
“I’m veggie, I should be lucky to have soup”, I reply, trying to be friendly, but really I have no sense of humor right now. I’m glad I skipped lunch. I would have vomited otherwise.
Finally the doctor is back. The diabetic is stable. It’s time to cut me up. We examine the panoramic x-rays together, as we did three times before. You don’t need to have clinical experience to see that my wisdom teeth are completely crooked, and this is why I’m here. The upper tooth, number 18, is just miles off from where it should be, like a ship that lost its anchor and was swayed away with the tide. The bottom tooth, number 17, is growing in a 90 degrees angle to the rest of the force. These are time bombs, waiting to explode, renegade political cells in a banana republic that might spark a revolution whose cost is unfathomable. I’ve known of these rebels’ existence since I was 18. They were discovered in a mandatory screening in the army (they wouldn’t tell you, but they take those panoramic photos of your mouth not for preventive care but, rather, for identification if your body is severed in battle beyond recognition, and only your jaw remains to attest of who you once were). I have offered these lesser teeth a safe harbor for fifteen years now; it’s time that they concede to the party line.
We go over the plan, the doctor detailing the procedure like a military operation. I’m already under the influence of very strong local anesthesia, but I remember talk about incisions and lifting and knots. I sign the waiver, confirming that I understand that 10% of the people loose some nerves in this type of procedure, and come out of it with constant numbness in their cheeks. I lean back and try to relax. There is too much information for me to chew on right now and soon enough two teeth less to chew with.
My mouth is completely numb, but my mind is alert. The doctor makes a test cut, to see if the sedation is working. It does. I can feel the saltiness of blood pouring down my throat, but I can’t feel any pain. Yet.
The doctor cuts my upper gum, first vertically, then horizontally in two places. He can now see the lost tooth, he reports. It’s way up there, almost in my sinus. He tries to pull it with some pliers, but can’t get a grip. He will try to drill it out. I can feel my jaw vibrating to the rhythm of the drill. I can feel my whole skull vibrating. He still can’t get it out. He needs to call the professor, who comes readily.
“The problem is” the professor explains happily “that you didn’t cut high enough”.
“Got it” the doctor says, and in comes the scalpel again. I feel more salty blood in my throat, and the drill swinging me, again, from side to side, then lots of pressure, and finally the tooth is out.
“We finished the easy part” the surgeon reports, “God this is killing my back, I don’t have to go to the gym tonight” he tries to be funny.
My alertness starts to numb. That was the easy part? I’m near the point of fainting. But now, the tough part, the bottom tooth, No 17, is still ahead. Again the scalpel. Again the salt in my throat. I can feel every movement inside my mouth, but it doesn’t really hurt. Learning from the experience on the upper tooth, the surgeon orders another set of tools, larger than the usual ones. He uses my chest, which is covered with a sterile paper towel, as an impromptu tool tray. I feel the weight of the steal tools on my body, one of them accidentally slips towards my groins, leaving snail marks of blood on my t-shirt, I would later learn. I feel pliers and knives, and something that looks like a little hammer, or at least that what I imagine. The bottom tooth is buried deep inside the bone. The surgeon introduces a new tool, some sort of fancy disk drill. Now I can not only feel the hunt, but smell it as well. The stench of burned flesh and bone reminds me that organic matter has no chance against harpoons of iron and steal. The room is shaky, but my surgeon’s arm is stable like Ahab’s voice over the Pequod. “The tooth is in sight” he announces, he will shortly get the great white whale if it will not get him first. But it’s not so simple, the tooth won’t come out. It’s too deep. The professor is called for a second consultation. They’re considering putting me into full anesthesia, but it’s too late. They’ll break the tooth inside the bone, and take it out in parts.
“Just be careful not to break his jaw” I hear the professor caution, and he stays to watch, just in case there are complications. The numbness starts to fade away. I hear crackling noises, and more instruments are ushered from the reservoir. Sure that little hammer had its moment. I feel bits of stones in my mouth, then the bite of a crescent needle stitching my gums, trying to restore the carnage in countless seams. This was all a rehearsal. Now starts the pain.

Day 1: Loss
The first 24 hours are not too bad. The body is simply in shock. But after the shock comes pain and with it comes loss. Who ever took for granted the ability to speak or eat? When you can’t open your mouth, food can’t come in and words can’t come out. Brushing your teeth? Now that’s a joke. Smoking? What a pipe dream. Then comes the loss of weight. The body is in trauma. It seals itself off. It’s in emergency mode, a mindset of self-sufficiency. Any resources consumed will have to come from reserves kept neatly before the gates were closed. The body sucks fat from all around. I can feel my legs and hands beginning to narrow. I lose 6 pounds in 48 hours. All that excess is concentrated in my left gums. My skull is no longer round. It’s oval, or rather oblique, slanted to the left side, which is completely swollen from under the chimney of my eye down to the tendons of my neck. I look like Louis Armstrong on the 32 cent stamp, my cheeks inflated beyond belief.
Day 2: awe
Now I’m beginning to understand what bodily pain is. I’ve heard women after labor talk about it, but never experienced it myself. The pain-killers lose their effectiveness quite rapidly, the body all too soon adopting to narcotics, and the pain finding ways around it. There must be a gland somewhere in the brain that is in charge of releasing that chemical that makes us want to live. This gland must be overwhelmed now. I get up in the middle of the night, almost suffocating, my mouth full with salty saliva mixed with blood. I’ve lost my desire to live. Only pain feels my body.
I’m disappointed with myself. This is, after all such am minor cut on each gum. What if I ever really get hurt? Perhaps then the body gets into real survival mode. Perhaps masks drop from the ceiling, offering an extra dosage of élan vital to the frightened passengers, and yes, I guess you’re expected to help yourself before you help others.
Day 3: Delusion
The level of drugs in the body has reached a critical mass. I no longer keep a sleeping schedule aligned with the rhythm of the sun. Waking up at night, and sleeping in the day, or otherwise, dreams and nightmares intermix. Characters from my life and from books I read come to visit me in my sleep. The viruses, the doctors, the warriors of the Spanish civil war, a lost dog of our neighbors, the three year old kid of our city friends-- they are all so vivid, so powerful, and some of them are frightening. They spin out of control. I flip in and out of great clarity and a mode of delusion. The drugs sharpen my senses. The colors seem strong and the music loud. A person sitting on the sofa next to me creates an earthquake in the mattress. But the mind is dull, numb, not working in full swing. Numbers don’t make sense. I don’t remember which day of the week it is. Time stretches slowly, and all the burning tasks on my to-do list lose context. Updating the website. Huh. Who ever wrote this meaningless task on my notepad anyway? I’m constantly thirsty and I sit for hours holding a glass of salt-water mixed with a little honey without remembering to drink it. I can’t stay in one place, but I don’t want to move. We go out for dinner with the neighbors. I feel alright, for a while, but then lose it, and come back home shaking. I feel that my feet are narrow. I wake up at night with strong pinching pains in my shins. There must be some neural pathway connecting the legs with the brain, I figure. The body morphs in endless shapes and forms. The mind spreads through the body, and then is concentrated back where I can feel the threads permeating my mouth, cutting through the flesh, and dwindling beyond it, like excess red ribbons on a Christmas gift. I can feel everything; I can feel nothing; all depending on the cycle of drugs. I hate being weak. I hate being sick. I hate losing control. It frightens me.
Day 4: Purgatory
The pain has a cleansing effect. I reduce the dosage of drugs, and the mind starts shifting gears. I can even eat some, and start to restore my strength. A strawberry shake. No. A STRAWBERRY shake. Mixed with apples. I can feel the taste of every atom. I can make out the distinct taste of the apples. I can taste the soil they grew in. I can discern the taste of the apple’s skin, and it’s distinct. My senses are sharp, and the body is relearning. It has been cleansed from the toxins that have been piling up in it for years. It feels young and healthy, so long as I don’t move my head to rapidly.
Day 5: Discovery
12:00 midnight.
I decide to conduct an experiment (it’s non-scientific, the sample size it too small, but it’s an exercise in control, call me control freak): I’ll try to sleep without drugs.
1:30 am.
The Experiment fails.
I wake up in tears. I rolled from my back to my left side. I’ve been resting on the wrong cheek. Oh boy. The damn blood again. I’m glad I left that towel on my pillow, it now looks like a Rorschach test, in it the mind can see beautiful roses or the signs of my healing. I can close my jaws again. I even ate some earlier. I feel the garlic burning in my throat. It has a healing effect, I’ve been told. Or at least, it keeps the evil spirits away.

Super Glue

2006-01-27T00:39:00.000-05:00

The other day the orange rim of my cheap swatch broke loose. The six-years-old plastic fell to the floor with resignation, and broke into two pieces, the metal fitting, which sat under it and which, while it was still functioning employed tiny scales to allow the frame to rotate only in one direction, soon followed. The sadness that filled me when I witnessed this, surprised me. It was only a plastic watch, after all, and it had served me beyond the call of its duty during its six years tour since I bought it in a Swatch shop, next to the Dome Cathedral in Milan as a gift to myself after a successful business trip. Because of this history, the sudden loss saddened me beyond belief. Just like the hammer that inspired the drawing on the Soviet Union’s flag and is displayed in a museum in St. Petersburg, my watch too was as good as new. Sure, the hammer’s head was replaced twice, and the handle thrice, but it was an original, alive in spirit, just like on the day the revolutionary artist had drawn it. So what if I replaced the battery several times, and changed the strap repeatedly? The watch has become part of me by now. It was the same watch that was my accomplice in so many adventures, across air, sea and land, under the cuffs of suits just as reliably as over the whitish salt of sweaty hands on desert hikes. How could it break just like this, now in my bedroom, when there was no immanent threat? There must be something I could do about it, I was called into action, and radical problems call for radical solution, I reminded myself, soon remembering the small tube of super-glue stashed in my office’s desk drawer. Crisis also calls for sacrifice, I repeated to myself as I set the watch on the desk-turned-operating-table. The movement will have to cease. The glue agreed to my every deliberation with its strong odor, cementing the reconstructed orange plastic to the timepiece’s body. I wander if the super-glue could have the same effect on my memory. Would my world be a better place?

Learning from Las Vegas

2006-01-16T23:16:00.000-05:00

Nothing summarizes a week in Las Vegas better then two slogans I observe as a Taxi is approaching the glittery lobby of the anachronistic hotel I was staying in, the middle-ages themed Excalibur. The white-glowing neon sign on top of the cab reads in bold black letters a slogan that after the public outcry of concerned citizens was taken off the billboards of more respectful cities like Chicago. It reads: “Let freedom ring. And let it be rung by a stripper.” A black fist adorns the ad on the left giving it an anarchistic flavor, and the name of radio-bad-boy Howard Stern, signs it off on the right.
As I try to make sense of this ad and figure out what it’s trying to put up for sale, a pinkish-looking thirty five year old man exits the cab. He is wearing blue jeans and a black t-shirt and is carrying his heavy black jacket in his hand. His half-bold head is sweating, revealing that like many other east-coasters he came overdressed for the Vegas heat. His t-shirt reads “I Smell Glue” and the Consumer Electronics Show exhibitor ID card that is strung around his neck with a radiant-yellow thread explains this self-proclamation. The invisible ink reads: “I’m a geek, I’m here for the electronics show, just like 2400 other exhibitors and 145,000 visitors, my home is 127.0.0.1 and no, I’m not here for the adult entertainment expo, that’s in the next building. I like internet porn better, anyway, now leave me alone.”
Finally I get it. The notorious Howard Stern is smarter than you might think. Far from promoting moral degradation as the Chicago priest that sued him for that ad suggested, Stern is himself a high-ranking clergyman in two very popular churches: sex and technology. When the two meet --and in Las Vegas this week they met big-time-- few are the incredulous. Stern is redefining radio as we know it. Reportedly, he just signed a $500 million, five-year deal with Sirius radio, and both parties are very happy. Part of the trick is that what is not permissible on public radio --as Stern lively tells Larry King on CNN, he has an uncontrolled penchant for on-air discussions concerning body parts and body functions, preferably his own-- is perfectly acceptable on pay-per-listen, digitally rights managed satellite radio. And the glue-smelling geeks are buying into it. Sirius’s belt is overflowing with bleeding new subscribers’ ears. What’s $12 per month for premium content, commercial free? Let freedom ring.

The land in between (and then some)

2006-01-16T23:15:00.000-05:00

Have you ever been in a show, maybe a high-school play, maybe a Broadway production, where for some reason you stayed longer, lingered behind, perhaps talking to a pretty girl, perhaps waiting for someone you knew, perhaps looking for something you lost under your seat, and you loitered long enough for the stage workers to start taking the set apart, exposing the inner workings of theatrical magic, deconstructing the illusion with the sweep of one falling cardboard façade that only a few minutes earlier was a castle of distressed princesses, a street market stall, a high-masted ship cutting through a life-threatening tempest? Perhaps you haven’t, but sure you have you at some point accidentally wandered into the wrong room while looking for the bathroom in a fancy restaurant, say into the place where they keep the dirty dishes before they wash them. That’s how I felt exploring the lands outside Hong Kong. There is not enough sunshine in that part of the world to reflect off the shiny buildings in HK and sparkle unto the dark land in between, the ‘new’ territories that lie to the island’s west. New? Territories? These desolate and miniscule parts of land are new only in historical scale. These are the overflow parking-lot of Hong Kong’s main arena, home to half of HK’s population (the lesser half, to be sure). In between the miraculous oasis-island and the Chinese mainland, almost four million people live in government owned and operated housing, in neighborhoods that make the projects in the south Bronx look like luxury high-rises on Central Park West. The density is unbelievable, and it reaches all the way to the sky. Ten-person families in one-room studios of 400 SF. That’s what you get for $75 a month. That’s what you can pay when you make $200. That’s what you get when you’re born in the wrong class. And that’s the last economic law I learn in Hong Kong, not that I didn’t know it before: somebody has to foot the bill. Happy new year of the dog.

Regulation, Hong Kong style

2005-12-23T08:39:00.000-05:00

In Hong Kong, everything is regulated. Simply everything. And the level of details of this regulation will blow even Foucault's mind.

In the aftermath of SARS, for example, disease outbreak and contamination is a serious concern, and the public is educated about washing hands in public bathrooms and in randomly distributed "public hygene stataions". Now here in the US, we're used to the cover-your-butt "employees must wash hands" signs but in HK, they take it seriously. Washing hands, you should know, requires six steps, and there are pictures showing you how to do it.

But it goes beyond such sanitary practices. Viruses, bacteria, and other microbes are nasty, and should be controlled. Chinese signs educate you not to sneeze in public lest Pacman-like ghosts will raise hell (if we're playing Pacman, where are the tasty cherries, is what I want to know.)

And it's not only about health. Do you have a large dog? (that is, a dog that weighs more than 20KG), than you should leash it on a leash which is shorter than 3 meters. Do you have a slope on your property? (if you say 'no' and you live in hilly HK, you're probably lying). Well, you should register it with the slope registration department. Did you know that the elevator you just used to climb up to floors consumes 2 Kilowatt of power? Did you know that you can help reduce this load? All you have to do is take a look at the elevator's ovulation chart, and you too will be convinced to take the stair next time.

You would imagine that this level of regulation would elicit resistance from the inhabitants, but it hardly does. People that I've met just don't seem to mind it, to say the least, or in some cases would go out of their way to explain to me why such detailed policing is necessary and useful. Talk about local patriotism.

Improvisation HK Style

2005-12-23T08:36:00.000-05:00

What do you do when your business is located on Hong Kong peak, where tourists abound but visibility is so low, that on some days you can't see the view? You set up a laptop-based photoshop editing station. Minor problem: there is no electricity. Well, who cares about that.

Notes from Hong Kong

2005-12-23T07:53:00.000-05:00

The scenery is beautiful -- a full moon rising high above a Japanese pagoda -- but the two kids that are fighting in front of me couldn’t care less. The shorter one, a nimble warrior-kid with a green martial-arts suit and a ponytail raises his elbow high above his head, his sword parallel to the ground, twinkling in the moonlight. In precise movements he chops his opponent to pieces. The carnage is spectacular. It is a clear-cut victory. The scene rapidly changes, now the warrior-kid is standing atop a volcano as the video-game progresses to the next level, allowing the five year old that is orchestrating this digital bloodbath to stretch his fingers that were hitherto fast-stroking the keyboard. I can see his eyes shining, reflected on the screen as I am standing behind his shoulder. We’re in a local cafeteria, a cyber-café as it is called, in an old building at Hong Kong University. There are only two computers here, and kids occupy both; I resisted my urge to push the kids away, and instead I’m standing here for the last half hour, watching them with an open mouth. One kid, of grade-school age, is apparently writing some essay in Chinese for a geography class, browsing sites with information on Buhtan. I can’t read a word, other than the country’s name which is engraved in English on it’s digital map image, but from the structure I guess the boy is learning about the population, political system, currency, main industries-- absent a printer all the data is meticulously copied into his notebook in clean Chinese characters that quickly fill the page.

I realize immediately that at this pace of manual labor I’ll miss the beginning of the panel on innovation policy for which I came here. I turn my attention to the other kid. He is playing games on Yahoo. Clearly fluent in both English and Chinese at the age of four or five, earlier he quickly roamed the different pages on the Chinese version of the American website, playing a round or two of flashy animated games, but soon enough finding it boring, he proceeded to download ‘Little Warrior II’ and install it on the public computer, select an avatar and slash his opponents. He seems to care little of the fact that I’m waiting in line, and that this was a public machine before he appropriated it. His mother that is leisurely eating her breakfast nearby doesn’t care either. Every few minutes she comes to check up on how her land-discoverer and little warrior are doing, smiling as she sees the kids are making headway in the information society.

I stand there and look, and ask myself, don’t these people know that I have important tasks to complete, like checking my email? What is this, a digital public playground? I’m thinking this as I identify the spark in their eyes. I am taken twenty-five years back to a time where I was excited about computers as these kids are now and paid little attention to my environment. The early eighties in the Silicon Valley: mullets and mustaches, oversized shades and widening pants are in fashion, an actor is sitting in the Whitehouse, and Michael Jackson is picking on kids his own age, but I’m oblivious to all that, I’m in Palo-Alto’s public library, and personal computers are not yet personal at all. I feel privileged to get an hour’s slot on the TI-99, the state of the art in personal computers. The harbinger of later IBM PCs this machine has no permanent memory, so within the weekly golden hour one has to write the program, debug it, and run it. All too often, time runs out before the program does. I’m awakened by the sounds of swords swooshing and ponder when in this twenty-five year history did computers lose their charm? When did they turn into efficiency machines for me? I’m glad I didn’t push the kids aside so that I got a chance to get excited with them. Finally, the geography lesson ends, Buhtan, after all, is a small country. I log into my five email accounts. It’s 90% spam. I’m sorry I’m wasting the kids’ time, they were having so much fun. Before I leave the room to go and study Chinese innovation, they’re back to their merriment.

This is my first day in Hong Kong, a land of contradictions and possibilities. A jungle of concrete, steel and glass where buildings rise to dizzying heights but are being built using bamboo scaffolding; where the Anglo-Saxon-West meets the Chinese-speaking-East; where the developed-North meets the developing-South; where old tradition meets the new economy; where high-technology meets low-cost labor; and where the Pacific ocean meets the mainland in one of the worlds busiest ports (“if only we could sell one of these to each Chinese, we’d be rich”). A barren rock in South-East Asia, breathed with life into a goose that lays golden eggs, not by godly feat or secret word rubbed into the palm of its hand but, rather, by the greed of the Royal British merchant fleet and by the human capital of Hong Kong’s only natural resource, its seven million hard working people who have made money their new religion.

Looking from my 20th floor hotel room window I can see the entire downtown area, Central, spread beneath me. The crowns of much higher buildings are obstructing my view in the distance. In Hong Kong, uptown and downtown are topographical designations not only conceptual divisions. My hotel is in the ‘Mid-levels’, a residential area where most of the American expatriates dwell. As the name suggests, it’s located half way up the hill that dominates this island-city. The hill is very steep, almost too steep to walk comfortably on. A lengthy escalator mobilizes people up and down the slope, changing its direction with the human flow of rush-hour ebbs and tides. The Mid-levels are also where the lush tropical vegetation that occupies every piece of non-built land begins. Right beneath the hotel is the HK zoological and botanical garden. It must be a few hundred feet below me, but every morning I wake to the sounds of birds and monkeys on the trees -- if the hotel PA system playing Christmas carols doesn’t wake me first.

I look out and I see four extra-tall buildings among the many mammoth edifices that graze the sky, three of them have huge neon signs on their top floors. Hong Kong is the epicenter of globalization, an economic wonder whose gross domestic product is not a product at all but rather a wide range of commercial services. All four buildings are the regional headquarters of famous international banks. Citigroup and Bank of America can’t leave the territory to HSBC, Hong Kong’s most well-known brand, the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation, that recently markets itself as ‘the world’s local bank’. The executives of these juggernauts all keep their eyes on the Asian tigers from their corner offices high in the sky. The forth building does not need a sign, it is a symbol in and of itself. Everybody around here knows who owns it: the Bank of China. A Needle-like skyscraper, rising almost a hundred stories up, it is said by the locals to be the dagger that the Chinese rapidly stabbed at the heart of Hong Kong, as soon as the negotiations with the British ended Her Majesty’s two-century long illicit affair with this region. In this region’s hard-nosed political economy, one form of colonialism replaces another. At China Bank’s feet I see some old British buildings, grey military barracks made of stone that look like they are two-dimensional compared to the enormity of the glass and still monsters that tower them. The Chinese bank was constructed on the site of the old Murray house, a famous building that used to house the British authorities back in the day. Out of respect to tradition and authority –two things the Chinese don’t mess with—the Murray house was dismantled, piece by piece, dozens of thousands of rocks numbered one by one, and rebuilt in a new site, at Stanley, on the other side of the island where it now houses the HK maritime museum, commemorating among other things the stubborn resistance to the Japanese occupation.

Ninety eight percent of the locals are ethnically Chinese, but other than the prevalence of Chinese food, and the fact that all street and shop signs are bi-lingual it’s hard to notice any strong ethnic influence. Walking in downtown amidst multiple venues of Starbucks, McDonald’s and Citibanks it’s hard to know that one is not in New York, London, or Toronto. Often times you hear two locals speaking English among themselves, be it because that’s how they were brought up, or because one speaks Cantonese and the other Mandarin, and they can’t communicate in oral form otherwise. There are two significant driving forces apparent on the street: a form of secular Christianity that embraces the Christmas traditions with the utmost seriousness, and a worship of the real religion here -- material wealth.
Christmas is surely the best time of the year to visit Hong Kong. The entire city is dressed for the holiday, all buildings are fully decorated with glittering lights, a huge Christmas tree is put up in a central square turned Santa-town, rivaling the festivity of Rockefeller Center, the shopkeepers almost universally wear red Santa caps, and Jingle Bells and other Christmas carols are chiming in most public places.

The bizarre part is that this entire imagery with snow-flakes, reindeer, sleds and all the other arctic Christmas paraphernalia, is incongruent with the temperature outside which rest squarely at 50 degrees or more and that, as far as the elderly can remember, it has never snowed here. It’s an example of a larger phenomenon of an uncritical adaptation of Western traditions –garments, music, movies, fast-food-- swallowed like bitter medicine at first but later regurgitated and vomited back at you only bigger, faster, higher, smarter.

The area in which the latter is seen most clearly is economics. An unrestrained form of Capitalism is the unofficial religion in Hong Kong. The World Trade Organization is meeting here this week, a prize for China that joined the organization in 2001. The organizers could not have selected a more fitting location. Whereas in Seattle and Cancun the delegates were met with rioting mobs, here the world traders are welcomed with huge billboard signs at every corner that call for the talks’ success. The few hundred ‘trouble-makers’, especially the ‘notorious’ Korean farmers of which one stabbed himself to death in Cancun at the last WTO round, were denied their pre-reserved hotel rooms because of “unexpected renovation” reads the China Morning Post. The only impediments for more welcome signs are the football-field size ads of Channel and Dior that decorate the streets, calling the citizens to indulge in shopping, because Christmas deserves nothing less. For over a century Hong Kong has built its fame and fortune on the principles of Free Trade that same principles that the rich countries are now trying to shove down the throat of the poor countries. Hong Kong is a textbook example of a full-fledged frictionless efficient market economy. Everything has a price here, and there is someone willing to sell anything that someone else is willing to buy. Money here, it is evident, transcends any other divisions. Class, race, ethnicity, all those don’t matter if you have money.
The tallest building in Central Hong Kong is the International Financial Center, IFC, a hard (to miss) phallic symbol of economic power, which sits right on the water on a reclaimed dried-out piece of prime property. On a clear day, from the top floors of the IFC young entrepreneurs in expensive Armani and Hugo Boss suits, from both the private and public sector, can see the mainland that lies beyond the mountains like a sleeping beauty waiting to be had. But the revolution starts from the bottom. The foundation floors of the IFC house one of the world’s most luxurious shopping malls. A titanic poster greets the shoppers with the pearls of economic wisdom from an unusual suspect, Bo Derek. It reads: “Whoever said that money can’t buy happiness obviously didn’t know where to shop. Welcome to IFC”. Judging by the holiday-shopping frenzy in the superstores it seems as if the post-irony of this statement goes over the head of locals and tourists alike.

At 5’10” I’m not used to being the tallest man in the room, and with the city architecture so dependant on the hilly landscape, it’s hard to see many people standing leveled, but riding the sparkling-clean subway where all the cars are connected with wide doors I suddenly notice that I can see far away, almost to the other end of the train, above the heads of the hundreds of people that are crowding in the rush hour. They all look very similar to me although of course they are not. I guess we look similar to them too. When I landed in Hong Kong’s world-famous airport, another symbol of size and efficiency, the luggage beltway assigned to our Chicago flight had the correct flight number flashing above it, but at the same time claimed that the flight was from Philadelphia. Perhaps they are right, all these North-American cities look the same anyway, don’t’ they? It’s important to be away sometimes and get some perspective. Besides, what are a few hundred miles and a few million white people, among friends?

Airport Pride and Prejudice

2005-11-23T11:17:00.000-05:00

AA 2078 DEP-5:32 YYZ ARR-7:05 LGA. As if all the acronyms and codes will quicken the flight. How do they code a two-hour delay? Time doesn’t run smoothly, some minutes run slower than others. The airplane has landed a quarter of an hour earlier, and we’re still in it, and every minute goes by much slower than the minutes while we were in the air. Finally the doors open, and I can feel the change in pressure and the odor of jet-fuel slowly permeating the round body of the airplane, overtaking the smell of sweat of a hundred-odd passengers that were crammed in this medium size airliner with full winter gear on, not prepared for over-heating. I finally get up, putting the book I was reading back into my bag. A sad book about stereotypes of race and identity, and the ways they are constructed and reified in the ostensibly raceless, genderless, classless online world. I look for my coat, and can’t find it. Items have shifted during the flight. I don’t so much care about the coat, but my cell phone was in its pocket. What if I lose my cell phone? How many contacts will I lose? Will there be people I will stop communicating with if I lose their number? With my laptop battery nearing the end of its life working at most for an hour, I have recently resorted to a new time-killing game: while sitting in the airport terminals I often find myself in, I manage the contact list. Finding someone that you’re sure you’ll never call again and deleting them, gives you extra points. It was easy when I started with 400 numbers. It’s getting harder with every delayed flight.
I spot my coat in an overhead compartment two rows back, and ask a woman standing underneath it to pass it to me. Although there are many passengers still blocking the isle in front of me, the people behind me are getting nervous, because my coat-hunting took a few seconds too long. It’s not only the smell of jet-fuel that infuses the plane when you land in LaGuardia, its New York City style tension itself. New Yorkers call it energy. Visitors usually call it stress after a few days. I thank the woman with a nod, as I feel the cell phone in my pocket, and make my way out.
“Excuse me” the woman that handed me my coat shouts behind me on the concourse. “Excuse me, sir, yes I’m talking to you” I don’t usually interpolate myself when random people shout, but with her next “excuse me” I finally understand she’s talking to me.
“Yes ma’am, how can I help you?”
“You should have thanked me, you American prick”
Now it’s my turn to say “Excuse me”
“Mam, I did thank you, but I apologize if you didn’t hear it. So thank you again”
“You should have thanked me before, you prick” she repeats the badmouthing. I look at her, startled by the attack that came out of nowhere. She looks like a young Whoopi Goldberg, but much less attractive. Holding a plastic bag in her hand, her eyes narrowing like those of an animal under attack.
“Mam, let me apologize again, and officially thank you for handing me my coat” I say out load, and whisper to myself in a voice she can’t hear “you have endowed our country with great service, and we thank you for that.” She waves her hand at me, wrist first,
“Get away from me, all you Americans are the same”
Now I’m following her as she steps into one of the concourse’s duty free shops. She goes deeper into the shop, to check a perfume. “Get away from me, American prick”
“I’m not even American” I say to myself, and remember the book about stereotypes stashed in my bag. I guess we can’t live without those.

The mathematics of life 101

2005-11-16T17:40:00.000-05:00

Why does it seem that so many things around us are mediocre? There is a simple mathematical explanation backed up by a whole strand of statistics. More importantly, there is a psychological twist.
To begin, we may note that many resources in life are distributed along lines that we can call the winner-take-all curve. The Italian mathematician Vilfredo Pareto made a name for himself when he formalized in 1906 the Pareto rule, a.k.a. the 80/20 rule of wealth distribution noticing that eighty percent of the wealth is owned by twenty percent of the people. Over the years it became clear that the same applies not only to money but to other forms of capital as well, social capital prime among those other forms. Some people are social hubs, whether others are the type that stand in the corner. And in those situations it’s pretty straightforward to understand how there is a positive feedback loop that keeps the 80/20 stability intact. But what about things like beauty or other resources that we think might be distributed more equitably? Here another principle kicks in. There is a reason that we call the ‘normal distribution’ (the common way that things distribute themselves in nature) ‘normal’. It’s exactly because this distribution is so normal. The familiar bell curve, where most things are at the center, repeats itself over and over again.
If we had to grade things, regardless of what they are, on a scale of 1 to 10, normal distribution implies that many of them would be 5s and 6s. But here is the problem: when we consider something to be excellent, or very good, we’re aspiring for the 9s and the 10s. Simply speaking, we’re looking for the abnormal.
And then there’s a third principle at work. For complex phenomena our incessant penchant for measurement is carried out over more than one dimension. For us to consider something as falling within the pigeon-holes of ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’, it has to score well on multiple dimensions (we all want our kids to be smart, healthy and social, and our wives to be beautiful, funny, and caring. A 5 out of 10 on each of these dimensions frightens us, doesn’t it?). The more dimensions we have the less statistically probable it is that we’ll get what we want, and yet we still want it. Even if we ignore the implications of normal distribution and assume that all positive traits are evenly distributed (which, to be sure, they’re not), we’re still gonna get stuck because if all those traits are independent of one another, and say that we want a rating of 9 or 10, on three dimensions, chances are 124/125 we’re not gonna get it. That is, we’re aiming for less than 1%, and not the top 20% as we may think.
What’s the twist? OK, here is a preview of Math of Life 201. It’s the little voice in our head, the evil genie, Descartes might call it, that is really to blame here. Plato once said that we never see two sticks lying on the ground. We see a stick and another stick which is either longer, shorter or equal in length to the first one. In other words, the genie endlessly whispers in our inner ear qualitative assessments concerning any phenomena we encounter. Our interactions are always mediated by the genie’s interpretation. The only way to beat the odds of the mathematics of life is to abandon the formulas altogether. The only way to beat normal distribution is to chose to see uniqueness and quality around us. If we keep our trust in numbers we lose.

Notes from Budapest

2005-11-12T17:22:00.000-05:00

As I was making my last steps towards the top of Castle Hill, she followed my every move and was looking at me right in the eyes without lowering her own. I looked back and she just stood there nonchalantly, her eyes still on me, checking me out, smiling the most irresistible and tempting smile she could garner. I’m not sure, of course, what happened more recently: me forgetting it or she reading it, but by her looks, I’ll bet the latter is probably the more recent event. And if in fact she never read Nabokov, she should have.

Now you could have never guessed from her tall posture that she was less then half my age-- only when she stood next to her classmates in the late afternoon sun, just like them only half-listening with clear disinterest to the giddy teacher’s lecture on Hungarian architecture, did it become obvious that none of them had crossed fourteen. The boys’ faces have evidently never seen a razor, and the girls, most of them higher than the boys, were all dressed in tank-tops and t-shirts that were at one and the same time both fashionable and childish. Only she stood out from the crowd, with a colorful striped tee that left her tanned belly uncovered, white caprice pants, and an orange knitted bag that ran across her shoulder, over her long straight hair, down to her thigh. I looked back at her, letting my eyes rest on her body and catch her bright eyesight for a few seconds beyond what social convention permits men of my age. Now both mine and her faces were sanguine. Mine from the climb, hers from my undivided attention. Meanwhile, her teacher hurried the group down the site, urging them to look at one or another architectural element of the nearby cathedral. The pack started flowing down but she lingered behind, regally, still looking at me in what now became a smile of a victory foretold. I was still looking at her.
She won, like she knew she would. Like we both knew she would. A sense of worth was added to her charming smile, but as guilty as I felt I slowed down my pace and couldn’t take my eyes off her until she was out of sight. I finally neared the wall and looked beyond it from the observation deck. Both banks of the Danube opened up a few hundred feet beneath me. Welcome to Budapest, the city that blurs the lines.
In the distance, I could easily see the building of the Central European University which hosted the conference I came to attend. A conference on social economics, or was it economic sociology? Neither econ or soc are my home fields, so by corollary their intersection is far from home, both socially and economically. The CEU website describes Budapest as a varied city that can please the quiet scholar as well as the pleasure seeker. I guess that what they mean is that it works for those who want to indulge in an academic pursuit within an Austro-Hungrian style Art-Nuevo surrounding, as well as for the hedonists who are drawn to the nightlife of a generation that came of age after communism died and were prepared to make up for what their parents lost, or rather never had. In spite of my lineage that can be traced back to a family of doctors in the Keiser’s court, personally I never had much sympathy for or the Hapsburgs. Three hours after I got to town, I already finished my packed-room presentation (I always believed in tight time-schedules and popular jokes at America’s expense in the presence of Europeans). What is more, confusing the zero-abundant local currency by a factor of ten, I accidentally drew $800 in Florins out of the airport ATM. I could still feel the bundle of notes in my pocket. In a city in which the local beer costs one dollar a pint, nightlife never looked more promising.
Walking down the hill I tried to explain to myself why, beyond this Lolita, the city seemed so enticing, so electrifying in its bitter-sweet dangerousness. Partly, I reckoned, it was a feeling induced by the tensions exhibited everywhere, partly because it was a city whose chastity belt was already broken. The trains ran too close to the cars and the people, the main road to the airport amounted to what would be a cheap country road in the States. Even when brought together, the two single beds in my modest conference center room were not as wide as the bed in which I was used to sleep at home. Public transportation worked on an honor system. For most young (but honor-less) Hungarians I met this meant it was practically free. For the two American girls with whom I traveled the next day it meant a big fine from a tall high cheeked blond girl wearing a red inspector armband and conducting surprise checks on the tram.
But beyond all these were two characteristics that caught my eye and arrested my imagination. Save for a few churches and the parliament house, almost all the architectural landmark buildings downtown carried huge neon signs announcing brands of Western or South-Asian products; save for the extra busty women, many of the girls found it unnecessary to wear bras. Capitalism has spoken in central Europe of the Nineties: the Wall came down, the signs went up, the bras came off. I wasn’t sure what seemed more unreal: an enormous Toyota sign in Moskva Plaza, or the scent of unrestrained, natural sexuality in the summery streets.
Back in a conference reception dinner, I had a chance to experience Hungarian cuisine. The key ingredient in starters, entrées and deserts alike was, not less, whipped cream in various forms. It actually perfectly matched my meatless carbless diet, but left most low-fat carnivores astounded and hungry. As a result, a large group of us decided to go for an early after party a few blocks away. Few situations in life offer a better demonstration of the problematic concept known as ‘collective action’ more than selecting a restaurant with twenty of your not-closest friends. The sociologists soon took a step back to observe the economists who rapidly suggested to split the group so that we can lower the transaction costs. Naturally, none of them could suggest an appropriate division criteria, and the group just stood there in the touristy Vaci Utca, where all the venues seemed equally plausible to rip us off. Finally a Frenchman made a move, and took a table at a random location. It could have been a diplomatic affair lest the combined brain, brawn and Chutspa of three of the younger scholars (including yours truly) who didn’t wait for the waiter to ask if they could move the rest of the tables outside to form one long banquet. Finally, when the entire group which now grew to become twenty five member strong sat down, we discovered that the kitchen was closed so we preceded without any further pause to drinking cheap Hungarian Champaign on an empty stomach. I must confess, the too-sweet bubbly wine works quite nicely with the whipped cream inside ones abdomen; the combined effect is a light-headedness of the most pleasant kind without the need for repeat visits to the men’s room that would be the common outcome should one try to achieve the same by drinking beer.
By the end of several bottles of this bubbly stuff, Vaclev joined the table, a friend of a friend of Landen, one of the other grad students who used to live in Buda back in the day. It has also started raining by then, so he wasn’t hard to convince to take pity on four of us and his old buddy, and he invited us to join him to a real local hotspot on the other side of town. The six of us crammed into his small Fiat, and Vaclev maneuvered our motley crew to a place called Simplaza. When we got there, it was still raining, so the usual summer crowd was all jam-packed into the indoor space of a club that takes pride in its patio. Inside, I observed the unlikely combination of twenty-somethings chain-smoking and playing fussball for money right next to more high-cheeked slavik girls in mini-skirts that were drinking tea--for god’s sake--from white Russian cups. A few shots of local peach-schnapps later, it all looked much less weird. By that time, Patrick joined us, another one of Landen’s friends from back in the day. A good looking Corsican by origin, through his thick Southern-French accent I couldn’t figure out whether he was still living in this city or not, but it was obvious that he knew the night scene well. It was two am and time to move on. Patrick came with two local friends, both of which didn’t speak any English or German but were friendly enough to suggest in a series of translations that we all go to a party at some outdoor club in another part of town. Since their car was full, we had to take a taxi, and Patrick briefed the driver where to go. Half an hour later, still in the cab, Landen, Malcolm and I found ourselves disbelieving the unforgiving early July rain which was still pouring outside. A few minutes later we finally found ourselves at the entrance of a huge mega club called Bed Beach. When the rain suddenly ceased, and the fog cleared, I saw we were on bank of the Danube, apparently quite far from the city since it was very dark outside. We went in past three huge Igors, and saw that the complex had three dance floors, two of which were some version of floating docks, and the third, a huge tent in which were several bars, a big DJ booth, and several hundred ravers. The music was good. A vibrant combination of top 40 hits, remixed with local rock. The bar prices would make you think you were in the hip meat packing district in NYC. Madonna: meet George Sorus.
Light was coming up and the rain which earlier went away started again. I was feeling those peach-schnapps shots just right now. After several hours of dancing, my adrenaline level was so high, that I ignored Malcolm’s signs of fatigue and didn’t want to stop. Just like him though, I was getting hot. A few vodka-tonics later I found myself dancing in the rain, on a side dance floor, with Katlin, a dark movie producer, who smelled marvelously of the ocean and could teach me a move or two. As my new found friends with whom I came dragged me off the dance floor, eager to go home, Katlin kissed me good night and gave me her business card which had an engraving of a schooner on it, and swore me to call her the next night over, proclaiming she goes out every night to a different club. Little did both of us know that in the next day in Budapest my imagination would be captured by someone else.
… to be continued…

Resistance is Futile

2005-11-05T18:00:00.000-05:00

He knew it immediately when I opened my mouth. I knew it for a long time. I knew that he knew it. He knew that I knew he knew it. The evidence was spread in undeniable X-RAY blue in front of both of us. There was little point denying it. Resistance is futile in these panoptic situations, if you struggle, you’re only gonna get more entangled.
“You caught me!” I said in a balanced voice, hoping that honesty would get me off the hook.
“That’s right!” he didn’t agree.
“Why don’t you?”
“I don’t know, I don’t get to it” I knocked on the ‘i’m stupid’ door
“You know it’s really important, right?”
through his breathing mask, he sounded like Darth Vader
“I Know it is.”
Resistance is futile. I know that.
“Then why don’t you?” now he seemed fatherly disappointed.
“I don’t have a good excuse” I tried the honesty route once more.
“But you’re gonna start doing it after today, right?”
ever since his brother got hurt in Faluja, almost lost a leg, he preferred action over talk
“Yes” I said, knowing full well it would not last more than a week.

Do prison cells have air-conditioning?

2005-11-01T12:46:00.000-05:00

Every time i drive on the Triboro bridge by Randall's island (or is it Ward's island?), where that big prison--sorry, correctional facility--lies, I notice something peculiar: some of the rooms have air-conditioners in them. Now don't get me wrong, i'm all for making the lives of the inmates more comfortable. After all, the NY State department of correctional services is, as the name suggests, a service oriented organization; there is no reason, therefore, that the inmates of this minimum security prison should not enjoy some hi-tech climate control, and yet, it just strikes me as odd. Incarceration is, in the last instance, a method of limiting one's freedom in retaliation of a criminal activity. Where do we draw the line, though, when making sure that this limitation of freedom is done under 'comfortable' conditions? but here is the real conundrum: not all the rooms have air-conditioners. So my question is this: which criminals get their air conditioned, and which crimes merit an escape from NYC's stale summer atmosphere (a bad enough punishment even before the toxic fumes of Triboro traffic exhaust).
Maybe I should just drink less coffee in the morning.

Real Beauty, and getting old

2005-10-29T11:30:00.000-04:00

Find the differences. I First spotted this tic-tac-toe ad on a street billboard in Copenhagen, and then in major media publications in the U.S. (before hitting the major markets, the agency behind it probably wanted to test the water with the Nordics first, recognizing their penchant for bear skin and resistance to pain.) What is it selling? Diesel jeans, of course, or rather, Diesel genes. A culmination of desire embedded in fabric. A bored adolescent (of unknown gender, but probably a male) is getting flogged by two half naked women, all in the name of a fun game of tic-tac-toe. One of the women has already taken her turn in being whipped, and lost a round of this wonderful game. The players seem happy to inflict pain upon themselves, and the colors in the background give the entire scene a hellish look. The message: buy diesel jeans and you too can blur the lines between pain and gain; when you've got it all, all you need is a little pain to spice things up.
The second ad, in contrast, started flooding the media a few weeks ago as part of Dove's campaign for real beauty. Real women have real curves, they tell us, with the hope to sell more soap. For the longest time ads have shown us the 'unreal', building up the economy of desire. It's time for a change, and Dove has commissioned real women, to show real beauty. These two ads are not new. The same moves have been pursued before. Benetton is famous for incorporating the uncanny into its marketing campaign (including images of children with Down syndrome, and dying HIV/AIDS patients. The campaign for milk has gone a transition in the opposite direction (from being a 'milk does the body good' necessity to being an object of 'got milk' desire, bordering profanity when drawing mustaches on the likes of glitterati like Brooke Shields and by alluding to milk's physical similarity to other bodily fluids). But what I find striking about these two campaigns is the extreme they go to in the segregation of their audiences, on one hand, but the reliance on the same psychological move of identification on the other hand. The Diesel ad caters to the young and frivolous. The Dove ad caters to 'real' people. It seems as if there is nothing in common between these two crowds, and yet, the entire campaign (like most marketing campaigns) is built on the viewer identifying with the object in the ad.
So this is the question. When in the cocoon of life do the young and frivolous become real? When does the beautiful butterfly become a real larva once again?

Post Irony

2005-10-24T16:27:00.000-04:00

Post irony, Williamsburg Style.
What is the difference between irony and post-irony, you ask. Good question, Watson. Well, the differeneces are minute, but easy to identify. Irony depends on caring about something. Post-irony doesn't give a damn. Irony depends on the recipient understanding a shared cultural assumption with the ironist. Post-ironists live comfortably with Beeves-and-Butthead style self appreciation. Irony is sophisticated, it's like a sour candy, that is tasty only because of a certain sweetness at the end; post-irony is like one of those tasteless ginger altoids.
OK. So maybe this DYI graffiti is more ironic than post-ironic after-all. But you get the point.

Starter

2005-04-12T17:59:00.000-04:00

That Tuesday afternoon, just like most other days that summer, we were sitting on Mike’s front porch at the poor end of town. The salty air was as stale as usual full with a mix of smoke and dust from the furniture factory down the street, but it didn’t bother Mike. He was trying like always to get a decent tune out of his old guitar, without much success and just played quietly, sitting in his cargo pants on the rubbed down sofa, like he always did. The red watermelon I brought was too sweet as usual, and just like always we ran out of ice and the pale ale was a few degrees too hot and tasted like water. Only Starter looked different. Something in his green, narrow eyes suggested he was eager to tell us something major.
“Let’s here it Starter, what’s on you mind?” I crunched a black watermelon seed between my teeth, feeling with the tip of my tongue the sharp taste of summer.
“I have an insider” Starter raised his eyes to make sure we were all watching him, and slid his fingers back on his bold round head, as if to affix some long-lost renegade curl of hair. Judy stopped halfway through the door as she was entering the house to get another round of drinks. With one of her long hands she held the door open, and with the other an empty plastic tray. She shook her head in discomfort, looking at Starter over her thin shoulder.
“Starter, please! What are you up to now?”

He smiled at her but she didn’t smile back. She looked at him with clear disappointment, tilting hear head slightly backwards,
“Please, not another business idea. Are you going to get us all in trouble again?”
Starter stopped smiling and wore his most confident look.
“Trust me Judith” he always called her by her full name when he had something important to say to her
“I told you a million times, I know what I’m doing.” She had little reason to believe that he did. He kept promising her that ‘he knew what he was doing’ ever since they got married seven years earlier. She was still waiting for him to deliver on that promise. The millions from the car washing business, the easy money from the shopping-center real estate deal, the fortunes of the magazine distribution route. Like all of Starter’s other business ideas, all of these left deep scars on their depleted checking account. The only things that Judy was sure Starter knew anything about were the inner-workings of John Deer tractors and other agricultural beasts. He had a good hand with those green juggernauts since high school. He could heal even those machines that others thought were lost causes. She also knew that unlike all his pipe dreams and unrealized schemes that were supposed to bring them from rugs to riches but never did, his job at the small garage at the end of town, fixing tractors from the neighboring villages and farms, paid just enough to put food on the table. Together with her tips from working six shifts a week at Ziffy’s diner, they could even dream of a short vacation up north at the end of the summer. She hated admitting it to herself but at this point in her life she could hardly hope for anything more exotic.
I looked at her as she entered Mike’s house, letting the door-screen slam behind her. She was skinny, almost too skinny, but still very beautiful with high cheeks and exaggerated gestures when she moved about. Although she lived just around the corner for most of her life, she walked as if she didn’t belong to this desolate neighborhood. Starter definitely knew what he was doing when he married her, he was lucky to get her, almost too lucky. Judy kept him out of trouble so many times… it wasn’t even funny.
“Starter, what are you talking about?” I looked at him, amused, knowing that some fantasy is sure to follow if I only pull him by the tongue hard enough. When Starter took this look it was a sign that in his mind he was building castles in the air. I knew him well. He was my best friend after all. We’ve been together for almost thirty years. I could remember him for as long as I could remember myself. We were born three weeks apart in the county hospital. Our families lived in the Whitney Estates trailer park since we were born, sharing a childhood that was poor but not unhappy. If it wasn’t for Judy, he would probably still be living there now, just like me. Before he lost his hair, some people said we even looked alike, although I never quite saw it. Because he was five inches taller than I was, when we grew up people often thought he was my older brother. Sometimes we’d play along with this confusion; sometimes I even believed it myself. In some senses we really were brothers, or at least that’s how I felt, but I couldn’t really know since my only real brother died of pneumonia when I was four.
“Ehh, I’m just thinking big, that’s all” Starter said “you’re the one that always told us to think big, smarty” he looked at me with his big eyes, and pointed his finger at me. ‘Smarty’ that’s how he always called me. At least ever since I went to state college to study English when he and all our other buddies were helplessly looking for blue-collar jobs.
“Tell us something we don’t know” I looked back at him, signaling with my hand that he should continue.
“Starter, what the hell are you talking about?” the quiet one was late into the conversation and didn’t even raise his head from his guitar.
“I’m talking about once and for all getting all of us out of this shit-hole, and I figured out a bullet-proof way to do it” Starter lowered his voice, as if to make sure Judy wasn’t listening. As he was finishing his sentence, she came out the door with the tray still empty.
“damn you Maykee, your fridge is completely wiped out, why didn’t you tell us to pick up some beers on our way over?”
Mike looked back at her, said nothing, and kept playing his guitar, abusing some melody from the seventies, a piece by the Doors, maybe, I couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
“So what is it, Starter, tell us” I leaned back and smiled. This was going to be amusing, I could tell. If we all had a dime for every invention Starter thought of, we’d be rich by now, I thought to myself. Judy, thinking the same but sharing much less enthusiasm couldn’t decide if she should be curious or angry, and came to stand next to me.
“It’s very simple. We go in, with a key, take whatever money is in there, and go out. Clean and simple. Like a walk in the park. Before they notice anything, we’ll be in Vegas.”
“Lika-wolk-in-da-park” Mike repeated,
“Clin-an-simpel lika-wolk-in-da-park, lika-wolk-in-da-park” he started playing some new chords.
“Starter, those are awesome lyrics, did you ever think of making a career as a rock-star?” Mike started laughing.
“Shuddup maykee, I’m serious, I have an insider, I told you” Starter looked at me for consolation.
“Let the man speak maykee” I did my best to appease Starter, sensing an unfamiliar tone in his voice.
“Whatever” Mike uttered, and put on the concentrated look again.
“Starter, what do you mean you ‘have’ an insider?” I leaned forward. Sensing that something unusual was going on, Judy sat down and our eyes crossed. God, she really is beautiful, I thought. Starter was such a lucky bastard to have her.
“Do you remember Boris, the guy that used to work at the garage with me?”
“You mean the little Russian boy that came with us to Maxie’s a couple of times?”
“Yeah, exactly, you know who I’m talking about”
“What about him? Haven’t seen him in a while. Is he still around?”
“He got fired. Andy, our shift manager, caught him reading an adult magazine in the spare tire room during work hours. Showed him the door. Just like that, the poor boy.”
“Get to the point Starter” Judy was losing her patience. She had to live with his fantasies day in and day out, and it was getting late. The last sun rays of day were sinking, and most of the other houses on the street already had their lights on. Mike’s house, however, was deteriorating, and he couldn’t get the electricity to flow all the way to the porch, so we often ended our evenings in the dark.
“I ran into Boris yesterday,” Starter made himself as if he didn’t hear Judy “guess where he’s working night shifts now that he don’t have a day job?” We couldn’t guess.
“Oh yes. You guessed it, at Western Credit Union” Starter pointed with his right hand in the general direction of the town center where the only bank in town stood solemn whole with two huge pillars decorating its neoclassical façade and a high pole carried what once was a proud flag and now remained a reddish cloth full of holes.
“Good for him, but how does that help us exactly?” I couldn’t resist asking.
“Let me tell you how” Starter relaxed into his wall-mart EZ-chair, smiled and then fake-whispered “I took little Boris out for a drink or two, for old times sake you know” he nodded “I kinda felt sorry for the guy, you know, we all read magazines during work-time. Boris was the only one unlucky enough to be caught by this retard, Andy”
“So?”
“how shall I put it….he aint exactly happy with five fifty an hour. Apparently he’s not so young. He has a wife at home, and a baby to feed.”
“Starter, get the point” now Judy was really losing her calm.
“They’re renovating the bank now, and had a little accident. They were digging foundations for a new room, and one of the water pipes was burst and the whole basement, including the safe was flooded. They’re trying to dry it, but it will take a few more days. In the meantime, they’re storing all the money in a special temporary shelf in the mezzanine. And Boris has the keys because the alarm’s control panel is in the same room. And he’s a smart boy. He recognizes an opportunity when he sees one”
“Good for him.” I said “But why does he need us, if he’s so freakin’ smart? Why can’t he just take the money and run?” I insisted
“No, you don’t get it, he’s smarter then you think, I tell ya, he knows the cops will be all over him in ten minutes. He needs someone else to go in” now Starter’s grin turned into a full ear to ear smile, just like the smiles he used to put on himself in high-school when, like always, he finished Mr. Musgrave’s mechanics class drills before everybody else. His green eyes glittered in the dark.
“There we go again” Judy stood up, obviously upset.
“Starter, what are you suggesting? So now you’re a criminal? Are you out of your mind or what? Aren’t you ever going to learn?” she was even more beautiful when she was angry, her eye-lines flexing backwards.
“Enough of this cops and robbers bullshit, I’m going home” she grabbed her overused plastic purse, took the old Buick keys out of it while stepping down the stairs, and entered the car, slamming the door behind her. She started the engine and let the car slide down the driveway without turning the headlights on, then she rolled down the window and shouted “Smarty, give him a ride home when you boys are done with your fantasies, will ya? He has to get up early in the morning and go to work.” She drove off without waiting for an answer.
“What’s up with her, Starter?” I stared at him, and back at the car just when the Red tail-lights came to life. It was already dark.
“Oh, let her go” Starter murmured, and flapped his left hand in the direction of the car.
“I can’t really blame her, she’s tired and edgy, working overtime like hell at the diner, saving up for some stupid vacation, I hardly see her at home lately” he sighed.
“I don’t trust this Boris boy” Mike brought us back to the subject. “Do you, Smarty?”
“I don’t really know him,” I said “he seems like a good guy.”
I tried to imagine what the basement of the bank looked like with water in it. I didn’t even know what it looked like when it was dry since I never went down there. The only people that ever did were those with the big accounts, the ‘private banking’ customers as the branch manger called them. Them rich boys, and, of course, the tellers that needed to access the safe. I tried to imagine what it’s like having money. To be able to buy one of those clean white shirts, and go eat real steaks in restaurants instead of grabbing a burger at places like Ziffy’s. What does it feel like to be really rich? To buy a convertible and take vacations on the beach, to open the bills and know that you can pay them, to make a road trip to the NASCAR championship.
“you’re missing the point guys” Starter raised his voice
“it has nothing to do with trusting Boris or not. it’s gonna happen. His gonna do it. It’s either with us, or with somebody else. It’s that simple.”
“I don’t trust him” Mike put the guitar aside.
“What if he changes his mind? What if he talks?”
“He won’t. I know him. He needs us. We need each other. He duplicates the keys for us, we go in, we go out, he tells the cops he was hit on the head and doesn’t remember a thing, we split the money in four and fly to Vegas. Like a walk in the park, I told you, this is bullet-proof, absolutely nothin’ can go wrong!” Starter was shooting the words out.
“I don’t know…what if the police catches us, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail” Mike picked up the guitar again, and went back to his annoying chords.
“Suit yourself maykee, we can always split the money three ways instead of four, you can drink warm beer until the end of times, for all I care” Starter looked at me and winked. For the first time after many years I felt like he was my older brother again.
“Let’s do it” I heard myself say, and imagined myself at the casino in Vegas, wearing a black suit, and a bow-tie, sitting at the Black-Jack table.
“When is the best time to go in?”
“Thursday night, I guess, just before they transfer all the money to central on Friday morning. That’s when the safe will be fullest, Boris told me.” I could see his eyes running back and forth, and guessed his thoughts were faster then he could speak. He was making plans, and kept smiling eerily all the while. Now I was smiling too.
I always wanted to go to Vegas. I once almost did, a few years back. I met this girl, Sarah, in an English composition class in college. We went to the drive-in a couple of times. She liked dramas. I liked her, and didn’t so much care what we saw. Cinema all looked the same to me. After two movies and one night of bowling, she let me kiss her on the lips. For the homecoming prom I asked her to be my date. She said yes, we danced all night, and later went back to my dorm room, sneaking past the guard who, just like us, was drunk by the time we got there. I made sure ahead of time that Barney, my roommate, was out of the way. She was my first real woman and had a lot to teach me. In the days that followed, I would still smell her perfume when I laid in bed and daydream. I was planning the details of our escape to Las Vegas, to get married. About a week later, when she didn’t return any of my calls, I finally caught up with her in the cafeteria. She was standing right next to her two best friends, and said she didn’t want to see me anymore. She said that I was nice and all, but that she needed someone ‘more mature.’ I didn’t know what to say, so I left. For days later I could hear her friends giggling behind my back as I walked away. I never saw her again after that winter and, of course, I never went to Vegas.
“Starter, what about Judy?” a last vestige of rationality crept into my mind.
“Oh, don’t worry about her, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, she’s a smart girl, you know, she’ll calm down and come back to her senses. She’s not going to let me miss this. She’s not going to let US miss this. Deep down, she knows I know what I’m doing and that I will treat her right, just like she deserves”
One last obstacle remained.
“Maykee, what do ya say? You’re not gonna let us down, r’ya?” I tried to sound as fatherly as I could.
“I don’t trust this Boris guy, Smarty, and I don’t want to get in trouble” Mike turned to me, and stopped playing “but if you and Starter both say we should do it, I guess I’ll have to trust you” he looked me in the eye, and then at Starter, who looked him back without lowering his eyes
“besides, I really do need a new guitar”
“What you need, is to learn how to play your first guitar” Starter said and the three of us burst into laughter.
* * *
Back in my trailer, I couldn’t believe how easy it was. Starter was right. Just like a walk in the park. Indeed, his plan turned out to be bullet-proof. Boris picked up the make-do-safe keys right after they opened the branch at 7:30, without anyone noticing. Starter got the keys from Boris in a brown envelope on his way to work. I came by the garage during Starter’s lunch break, picked up the envelope and drove South for an hour on Route-46, down to Bishop’s Hardware by the lake. We didn’t want to duplicate the keys in town, just in case anyone would ask questions.
“What can I do for you,” the old man behind the counter asked politely. I was trying to figure out whether he was so polite because he saw how nervous I was.
“Eh, just this key, duplicated in one copy please” I took the key out of the envelope, and handed it over to him. He inspected it for a long moment and then went into the back room. Does he suspect anything? Is he calling the police? I heard my heart bit and the blood rush in my veins. What’s taking him so long?
“No problem, I think I still got one of those blank ones left” he finally came back, holding a similar key in his hand. I let out a big sigh. Just like Starter anticipated, once he made sure he could get the job done, the old clerk didn’t give the big key so much as a second look. Working his counter for so many years, he was losing his memory faster then he was losing his sight. I paid in cash, pocketed the new and old keys, and drove back North. I got into town just in time to give the original key back to Starter, and for him to drive the old Buick through Boris’s street as the night-guard was getting ready to leave for his long shift.
Boris came in early, and placed the keys where he picked them up. The branch manager, impressed with Boris’s devotion showing up half an hour before he was due, couldn’t avoid patting himself mentally on the back for hiring an immigrant against the will of his deputy that wanted to hire his own all-American cousin instead. ‘I should ask Boris, maybe he has a cousin’ he snorted to himself.
In the evening, we met at Mike’s place, as usual. Judy called from the diner to wish us good luck, and sent the three of us kisses over the phone. She told Starter that she knows that sometimes they don’t understand each other, but that she, just like him, likes to think big, and that in the long run, he would appreciate her choices. We agreed that Mike would drive us in his trashy pick-up, and that Starter and I will go in with the duplicated key and my old tennis bag to pick up the money. We even took some rope with us, which I cleverly picked up at Bishop’s before I left, to tie Boris up and make the whole scene look more credible. Starter briefed Boris to recall his aggressors as a man and woman, who were driving a Bluish Ford Mustang. Everything was set. It was bullet-proof. Starter was a genius. He thought about all the details, big and small.
“To Maykee’s new guitar” Starter raised his cheap beer bottle at ten past midnight.
“To Vegas” I raised mine.
“To Starter’s genius plan” Mike joined us, and we all laughed apprehensively.
Now back in my trailer Vegas seemed more real then ever. Luck was on our side. It so happened that last week’s transfer to central was cancelled and double the usual money was accumulated in the improvised-safe. After splitting the money at Mike’s garage, I still had my share of almost a quarter million dollars left in the tennis bag. I almost didn’t dare look at it. It was obviously more money than I had ever seen before.
‘Vegas, here I come,’ I thought to myself, and leafed through the United Airlines ticket that I bought the day before at Sky-Travel, a block from the bank. I still remembered the look on the young travel agent’s face. In her early twenties, five months pregnant with her second child, and chewing a bubble gum noisily, she wasn’t sure if she should fancy me, for living the good life she will never have, or pity me for my addiction to gambling, going to Vegas on a whim like this.
“I feel like it’s my lucky week” I tried to joke with her, but, of course, she couldn’t get my subtle irony.
“We shouldn’t travel together” Starter insisted, so he bought a ticket to Reno, and was going to drive from there. Judy actually had to borrow two hundred dollars from her sister so that they would have enough money to pay the six hundred dollars upfront. Mike would fly to LA, visit his cousin, and come a day or two later. Judy was going to stay for a week, then resign and join us at the Sahara, at the end of the strip. Of course, we could afford something fancier, but we wouldn’t want to attract too much attention. Starter really was a master-mind, coming up with a detailed plan like this. He figured out everything in advance. Nothing was left for chance. Of course, we had no clue what we would do after we got to Vegas. The only thing we agreed on was to go to the Yamaha store, and buy Mike the most expensive electric guitar that money could buy. After that, we’d let our new life carry us downstream, I figured.
I held the ticket in one hand, and the bag in the other, and dropped back on my bed, without taking my shoes off. As I was falling asleep, I imagined myself playing the roulette and the slot-machines amidst all the glittering lights. I closed my eyes. In my dream, I won the jackpot. The siren went on. Blue and red lights flooded the casino, confetti was falling from the ceiling, and everybody was clapping, first with their hands, then with their feet, then pounding on the tables in rhythm, stronger and stronger. Some ladies were howling in excitement, calling my name over and over again
“Smarty, Smarty, Smarty” and banging on the tables harder and harder. I woke up, but wasn’t sure I did. Red and blue lights still flooded the room. As I regained my consciousness I suddenly realized the lights were coming from outside the trailer’s window.
“Smarty, Smarty, open up, it’s the police, we know you’re in there.” I closed my eyes again, waiting for them to go away. Instead, I heard a wild crack, and the crappy door burst open. A gun barrel invaded the room, followed by the heavy boot of Jamie, the town’s deputy Sheriff who used to go to high school with Starter and me. Right behind him was another cop that I didn’t recognize, which must have been over six feet tall. Jamie held his gun out with both hands, and his buddy held his with one, holding an enormous beam-light in the other. They were aiming the guns and the light directly at me from across the room. Terrified, I didn’t move. Looking up at Jamie from where my head was resting on the bed, I could hardly see his face within the bright aura, which the strong light behind him was casting. When I caught his eye for a split second, I saw disgust mixed with fear and joy. He was looking at me as if I was a dear caught in his headlights, about to be run over.
“Smarty, you’re under arrest for armed robbery,” he barked and nodded with his head feverishly. He had obviously heard this sentence repeated in movies more times than he said it himself. I just looked at him blindly, and then closed my eyes.
“You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attor…” I didn’t hear the end of his speech. I must have fainted.
* * *
I haven’t seen Starter, Mike and Judy in eight years. The last I saw them was on the day of our verdict, standing before the court. The judge found us guilty on all accounts, and gave us the maximum penalty. Judy didn’t move as much as a muscle in her tall cheeks when the security guard took Starter and me out through the back door. Starter looked back at her with dejection. She never did believe that he knew what he was doing. She hoped for more.
Starter and I got more time in than Mike did. He only drove us. Now Mike is driving again. He came to pick me up from the prison’s exit, in a trashy pick-up that didn’t look at all different from the one he drove a decade ago. Working for a small deli while on parole, he can’t afford much more. After two hours of almost silent driving, we’re entering town, and I see that nothing much has changed. Its summer again, and as we pass through the town center, everything looks the same as I remembered it. The travel agency is still there with its half broken neon sign. The bank whose image is engraved in my retina forever is still there, its paint peeling in just about the same places that I saw in my dream every night. The police station is still there, with the beat-up patrol cars that look as if they were taken out of a B-rate black-and-white movie.
As we pass the car that reads
“Sheriff” in big white serif letters, Mike and I look at each other. That’s Jamie’s car. With us becoming his undisputable “catch of the decade” as the local Gazette put it, he made it to the top position without much effort when his boss retired a couple of months after we went in. A week later, he bought the small house next to the school. The branch manager was honored to sign his mortgage papers personally. Jamie felt so proud that he could give Judy what she deserved-- it was his wedding gift to her. We were the wedding gift that she gave him.
“Where do you want to go?” Mike turns his head back to the road.
“Let’s start with Starter,” I reply. Let’s start with Starter. The words just come out of my mouth.

* * * This story was inspired by Yossi Elephant’s lyrics “Time drives”

Taken on my birthday

2005-01-08T16:45:00.000-05:00

Fill in the blank

2005-01-01T13:00:00.000-05:00

Living / Dying / Having fun / Being trustful / Cheating on our partners / Reading the old masters / Vomiting / Missing our friends / Writing our dissertation / Traveling to faraway countries / Paying rent / Collecting rent / Building a reputation / Laughing / Crying / Drawing / Losing control / Talking on the phone / Navigating the world /

_______ Beyond Our Means

all, while constructing the grand unified theory of nearly everything.