Criticism. Essay. Fiction. Science. Weather.
week:
1"Mark it 8, Dude." Get it?
Plus, fake facts are for sissies. 2The reality of the unreal
and the art of chewing. 3Getting interrogative with the Dark Continent
and ants are the Internet's idol. 4The author displays his clothes in piles on his bedroom floor. And 1,000,000 Rhode Islanders can't be wrong. 5One size counterfeits all, plus there's a run on limes and the movies don't talk good no more. 6The sweet and no-so-sweet of time travel
and the rigors of uncancellation. 7Personal Parties and Friend Finders considered 8Gamers of the world unite too much
and the new Star Wars scores. 9This week: one guaranteed way
to make yourself more famous. 10Awkward and tacky journalism in celebration of journalism. Plus, individuality now more expensive. 11There are balls in your head
and buds in your heart. 12The upsides of federal incorporation.
The downsides of shoddy adevertising. 13The first 90ways Quaterly Review begins!
1, 2, 3 pieces of Criticism! 14Not being able to look away from
bad grammar and junk material but still LMFAO. 15Spam can be fun if you don't
mind the corporate pimping. 16Some movies go Direct-To-Video.
We feel their pain. 17What the American media doesn't
want you to know about the Tour. 18Dumbing down The Honeymooners for
the preschool set; plus, pain as upper. 19It's 2005. Do you know what your
building's ecological ethic is? 20That building is whispering
ethical nothings in your ear. 21These movies will never know the
warm embrace of a projector lamp. Direct-to-video reviews return! 22The English language is growing & 90ways is on the case.
Neologisms Spoken Here. 23The American frontier is back and ugly as ever:
Here comes Sheriff Privatization. 24When making a British book into a British movie, it's all about the British, no matter what galaxy you're in. 25Condi bites the big one, Apple bites Condi, or Apple just bites. Plus, all the news that's packaged poorly. 26The Second Quarterly Review cometh... 27The rap album based on [adult swim]
has already been leaked. 28The road to Blockbuster is paved with good intentions: Direct-to-Video reviews are back! 29The preschool set belongs inside the lines
and the rain belongs in It. 30They're what everyone's talking with:
Neologisms Spoken Here. 31What time is it?
It's Standard Candy Time. 32Transportation is overrated.
And underrated. 3390ways' investigators go into the field.
And are vaguely saddened. 34See it again, whether you want to or not.
Picture this, in spite of yourself. 35Old comedians don't die,
they just get taken seriously. 36Pro: It's a 90ways debate.
Con: Both sides are just so salient. 37As long as Brokeback Mountain is sold out, we'll keep giving you Direct-to-DVD Reviews... 38At least we can all agree those people who say "Happy Christmas" are insane. 39The Third Quarterly Review
is ringing out the old year! 40New words for the new year. 41False starts and happy endings.
There's value in dead-ends. 4290ways has a confession to make.
We made up our history, too. 43Bringing you the latest from the world of dissembling: 90ways inaugurates the Hoax Report. 44It ain't about the facts, ma'am.
It's about the truth. 45Oscar nominations have been handed out. Direct-to-DVD movies snubbed again. 46What are the 90 points of it all? 47Spring: new growth, redemption,
Spring Traning. 48Technological advances notwithstanding, there's a whole new kind of static over the 6 o'clock news. 49O'Reilly's on the warpath.
The Chinese are not. 50The Hoax Report returns. And Canada beats Team USA. (That last part's actually true.) 51There's a lot packed into that intro and we feel no need to approach it in an organized manner. 52It's a surprise;
that's why you should have seen it coming. 53It's our party and we'll cry if we want to. 54Now that big, gothic banner looks positively antique. Plus, who cares about which cares about baseball. 55Being proud of Junior and bored in June. 56Every time I hear that song, I see a Cornell alum hitting a home run. 57What do heroin and Christian prayer have in common? They both star in the Direct-to-DVD finale! 58The cutting room floor in the desert.
The recording studio at first base. 59Tinted contact lenses and poorly delivered jokes. Foolproof. 60If you can't make a real quick 70 mill, how else do you justify a $125 million budget? 61Landmark case of 2006:
Orchestra v. Organ. 6290ways is interested in the words here, too. 63Everything in Criticism today is not quite right. 64Sports Utility Vehicles. Sort Of.
Sports. Golf, anyway.
65It's our Second Annual First Quarterly Review! 66Behold: The return of new word reviews. 67Bringing global warming in from the cold,
one dollar at a time. 68Don't believe the zinc industry's hype. 69It's crazy on the street.
It's best-selling on the teevee.
70Still crabbing about lost CD revenue?
Time to learn to shake your new moneymaker. 71Thrown into a plane.
With snakes. 72Space and Worlds and
snakes on planes. 73One giant vehicle is for war,
the other is for one day sales. 74It's all laid out for you.
From the numbing consumerism to the noble freedom. 75Sure the natural majesty was great,
but how about that Motel 8? 76One of life's great mysteries:
An Arby's in Mountain Time. 77Fall teevee is upon us.
Maybe some of it won't suck. 7852 + 26 = 78.
One and a half years of Ways. 79The smell of pigskin is in the autumn air. 80Someone needs to speak up in the name of common sense. 81New words are all around us.
Neologisms Spoken Here. 82What Dallas is now to someone who never knew it before: The Nostalgia Watch. 83Oh. The Horror.
A special Halloween installment of The Hoax Report. 84It was awful.
WomenAndChildren awful. 85It's like Carrie, but even better.
And somehow that became a great movie. 86He's in the corner.
And he wants to help you sleep. 87Up in the air. It's a bird. It's a hot-air balloon.
It's the 90ways Hoax Report! 88Tearing through the sentimentality and the water-colored memories: It's the Nostalgia Watch. 89Of all the Anabaptists in all the world... 90It's the week we've all been waiting for. 91We're reviewing the quarter to ring in the new year. 92Ringing it in is a burden we all carry. 93Am I my brother's keeper? 94This is all true. 95Notes to Notes.
Sometimes ears taste better than pens. 96Neologisms Spoken Here.
New words created through misappropriation. 97The lies of the diamond dealers. 98Crime, punishment, and the bits in between. 99Same name.
Different albums. 100All the forensics in the world can't
turn up any evidence of character. 101What makes America great
and not so great. 102Fanboy hand-wringing. Shocking. 103Panic in the streets,
Monsignor style. 104It's our second anniversary.
Break out the cotton. 105He kills for all the right reasons. 106The World's Cheese Imagination is within our grasp... if only. 107It's never an easy choice. 108Just give me one thing I can play for.
New New Orleans
Judson Merrill
America has a wild west again. Tombstone has long gone legal, the OK corral a cute tourist attraction. The gold rush has emigrated to Africa. The frontier towns of McCabe and Mrs. Miller and Deadwood are just that: alive only in film and teevee. But New Orleans is dissolving into something old-fashioned and lawless, giving us a dangerous frontier for the first time in over a century.
The city is a crossroads that has long maintained a distinct drive-through-daiquiri-stand flavor, that has welcomed wave after wave of sorority girls and their attendant Girls Gone Wild cinematographers without totally succumbing to the Times Square, Orlando, Las Vegas temptation to package vacation into an utterly sanitized, entirely sleazy, and oddly-recognizable mash. Now it's an outlaw town and it doesn't seem likely that that's going to end soon.
The federal government is strapped to the financial breaking point. If New York bitched about getting its relief monies after 9/11 how is New Orleans going to fare 4 years later? The National Guard is, bafflingly, rebuilding a different, far-away nation. Homeland Security will have to forgive those of us who look askance at their claims that, any day now, more troops than necessary will arrive in New Orleans, cavalry style, to save the day. It all sounds too familiar. "The violence will stop soon." "We're moving as fast as we can." "Our ability to respond is not affected by our other military commitments." Really? The evacuation of the Superdome was announced and then... not a whole lot for several days.
Since 9/11 our consumption of oil is up and now the Gulf, gateway for one third of the country's fuel, is on its knees. If the President recently gave the impression that anything other than getting oil production back up and running and prices out of three dollar territory was his chief priority, he didn't mean it.
Late last week the New Orleans' mayor ordered the police to stop with the search and rescue and crack down on looters. How this move was designed for anyone but those at home dry and watching Good Morning America is not immediately evident. After all, there are people trapped on roofs, bodies floating in the water, just waiting to start spreading disease. Amidst the $25 billion in damage, the mayor is concerned the starving and dehydrating of New Orleans are helping themselves to what little remains? Guns are being looted along with food and those who still have property to defend are getting out their own arms. That is unsettling. That cuts closer to the sexy-but-terrifying, kill-or-be-killed primacy of frontier lore. Nonetheless, finishing that evacuation and feeding people ought to be strong candidates for courses of action one and two. Anything else is just the talk of a mayor who suddenly finds himself on national teevee every day.
The American history of murder and survival was not buried so very deep after all. A few feet of flood waters and it is rinsed off and held up for us all to see. But what exactly does this strange mix of faux-world charm, fatalism, fuck-you, poverty, flooding, and shotguns so far below sea level bring into relief?
First off, and right on cue, the reemergence of the brutal spirit of the frontier has quickly revealed the aw-shucks, help-a-neighbor-out, flip-side of the American coin. As the city of New Orleans looks increasingly nasty and out of control, Houston is displaying its gregarious, oversized charm and hospitality for the whole country to see.
The contrasts will not all be so heartwarming. For a few weeks we are going to get a real taste of the cowboy spirit that the President so loves to affect. The administration's love of putting on big cowboy hats to practice ranching and John Wayne grimaces is going to be sorely tested. Behind all the cowboy swagger the President has signed the Patriot Act, appointed interior officials eager to hack away at the National Parks, and solicited the help and direction of the religious extremism that is of a different breed than the pray-and-leave-well-enough-alone stoicism of the frontier. New Orleans has submitted to its hellish baptism and been born-again as a lawless, abandoned archipelago in the middle of an increasingly fascist country. The fierce and frightening independence of the cowboy is on display again in New Orleans and it's going to make the play-acting in Washington look insensitive, immature, and idealistic.
The President may exude a love of hard-working independence and self-reliance but as he moves forward to meet this unwieldy situation, armed only with a budget that will make Congressional resolutions and actual aid money two very different things and a National Guard already stretched thin, he will have to reveal himself as something other than a cowboy. To meet the real life desperadoes and rebuild New Orleans into something more than an outlaw town suitable only for filming terrible Kevin Costner movies, the President will have to take off his ten-gallon and put on his corporate fright wig.
Social security outlook poor? National Parks annoyingly undeveloped? Iraqi resistance not in its last throes? Public broadcasting too damned independent? Public schools failing? Public prisons bloated with drug offenders? No need to panic. This administration has a great big box of Privatization band-aids. Enough for everyone.
While the government goes about the important work of reconnecting the American Addict to its oil IV, it may well farm out the business of rebuilding New Orleans. After all, it will be cheaper and more effective to retouch New Orleans' unique and mosaic history with the big, brown paintbrush of generic logos and facades. Katrina and the resultant flooding will finally do what years of Spring Break and a reputation as a place with non-threatening history lessons could not. The National Guard has irrigation ditches to dig in Iraq so Kellogg, Brown and Root may well be called upon to enhance the levees of the Big Easy.
When the floodwaters are pumped away and so much of the French Quarter's grit and architecture has been cleansed, who better to come beautifully to our rescue and help us recreate it than the world's great dream factory. The movie studios and cable conglomerates could make such a nice theme park of the whole thing, complete with a memorial roller coaster dedicated to those who gave their lives so we could go on vacation without feeling like we were somewhere different.
Mr. Show, the inspired and therefore, by necessity, short-lived, sketch show on HBO once devoted a healthy part of its half-hour to a San Francisco bought up by GloboChem and turned into a family-friend theme park, complete with non-threatening chinks, queers, and hobos. All the excitement of a dynamic, progressive culture without all that dynamism or progressivism. The sketch looks less like satire ever time I watch it.
America has a wild west again and it's not because we elected a Cowboy to our highest office. What happens to our new, gritty reminder of this country's real frontier spirit will have everything to do with his very un-cowboylike love of corporatism.