A New York State of Mine

A couple of weeks ago, I took a trip to the Big Apple, New York City, to celebrate my girlfriend’s birthday. I recognize that that might sound a little frivolous given the current economy. But as it turns out, the travel industry is so desperate to capture the little disposable income that is actually floating around that it actually cost about the same for us to go to NYC as it would to go to Vegas. And I suppose we decided to class it up a bit, and head to points northeast.

Prior to my latest visit, I had only been to NYC twice. Once, when I was still in submarine training when I went to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Times Square (read as: I was still 25 years old, with the social aptitude and accompanying fashion sense of your average agoraphobic shut-in), and then once again, as an attorney, there on business. My overall impression from those two visits? First, it was cold. The kind of cold that makes it your first impression of a place, no matter what sort of wondrous things you see there. Second, the people weren’t particularly nice. Not that anyone was mean, but the indifference was palpable – as if you could burst into flames and people would simply step out of the way and use you to warm their hands. And third, everyone (save the tourists) seemed to have really nice coats. Which does a surprising amount for the gentrification of the place.

But after years of poo-pooing the world’s most famous city, I was interested to see how my perspective might have changed since the last time I had visited. What’s more, my primary impression of NYC was informed by two competing sources: one, Law & Order, which I’m addicted to like a Trump ex-wife to plastic surgery, and two, my hatred of San Francisco, which makes no bones about trying to be the NYC of west coast. Turns out both sources were wrong: the NYPD is not nearly as cool as I thought they were (although still a very solid group of guys), and amongst the many things that SF has all effed up, it can now count its impression of what it means to be a big, important city.

To put it simply, New York City was the absolute shit.

Now, my New York experience was much more consummate than it was authentic. In that, we stayed at the W Hotel in Times Square, saw some shows (both on Broadway and off), went to Central Park, ate from the three major street food groups (hot dog, pizza & bagel), had a real steak and stayed out way too late dancing and drinking. I was ready for the entire adventure to be quaint and fun, but to be ultimately overwhelmed by the horribleness of the city, the paranoia of being victimized by street crime, and the ever present awfulness of the weather. But as it turns out, I had the best four days that I can recall, and now the best birthday I’ve been a part of wasn’t even mine.

Times Square

There are a hundred reasons to hate Times Square: it’s garish, loud, and full of ill-mannered tourists whose ideas about personal space seem drastically different from those of your average Californian. But there are a thousand more reasons to love it. I’m not prone to buying into anyone’s tagline, especially those generated by state tourism boards (for example, the only thing I’d like you to “Show Me” in Missouri is how to get the hell out of it), but Times Square really is the crossroads of the world, and if you’ve got any manner of ADD (even the acute version like mine), this is a place where you brain can actually find some peace.

There are literally a million things to look at. There are news tickers, stock tickers and, well, ticket tickers. Every brand that you can possibly imagine has some square footage there. The buildings are unbelievably tall, and the traffic actually seems to flow through without incident (although never without rest). I actually heard six different languages spoken while walking the same city block, and was never more than a block and a half from a hot dog, pretzel or knish. If there is a place that defines our video game, brand-name, pop-culture generation, it is this.

The Shows

First off, I can’t tell the difference between Broadway and Off-Broadway, and I expect that if I tried to, I’d come off as an even bigger douche than if I just kept quiet about it. It suffices to say that I actually preferred my off-Broadway experience slightly – but they were both pretty awesome. Secondly, I’m not into theater. I find theater snobs about as palatable, personally, as televangelists and informercial emcees. And, I’m more likely to be heard singing a Jonas Brothers song than I am to be humming along to a showtune. So, I consider it to be some measure of miracle that I enjoyed either of these experiences, let alone both of them.

Fuerza Bruta is an Argentian dance and music “experience”, which was like anti-theater. The entire crowd is shuffled onto a theater stage with no seats, and told to move around as directed by the show’s crew. What followed after was an assault on nearly all of the senses, in a celebration of music and movement that was passionate, fun and just the right kind of insane. The show happened all around and above us. The cast ended up amongst us, dancing and inciting the crowd. The DJ had a giant water gun with which he sprayed the throng, and which no one seemed to mind. But the most glorious moment was after the show had ended, when the performers had bowed and then invited us to stick around and dance with them… as they DJ played on and they turned on the “rain” in the center of the room. So, there I was, dancing in the rain in the middle of New York City theater, surrounded by strangers, smiling at my girlfriend (who was, of course, dancing with me) and having completely forgotten anything to not be happy about.

On Broadway there was Rock of Ages, which was a musical based on hair metal of the 80’s, and despite the fact that the star of the show was that insufferable rocker douche from American Idol a few seasons back – er, Constance something-or-other, the leader of the house band was from freakin’ Night Ranger. Enough said.

The Rest Of It

There were so many other things: Cental Park, dancing, shopping at Century 21, the pizza, the cabs, the subway, the W, the steak and even the rain. But above all, there was a sense of bigness about the city that was neither intimidating nor off-putting. There was a contentment in knowing that you’d be able to find whatever you needed to entertain, satisfy or comfort yourself just a few minutes away. Everything seemed so damned possible, even the impossible things – like putting a smile on the face of one California cynic.

In the end, my trip to New York City taught me a few valuable lessons:

1. The pizza in California sucks
2. The weather in California does not; and
3. There’s still nothing better than dancing with a pretty girl in the rain.

Fast and Spurious

It's a little late to be noting the rise in popularity of franchise films (for both the studios and movie patrons) as a sign of the Apocalypse. We're a decade into this mind-numbing trend, and we've only got ourselves to blame. So "Bring It On" has three sequels (all straight to DVD), and American Pie has had four (the last three straight to DVD). I think it's fair to say that there has never been a franchise whose fourth installment had any sort of merit, artistic value or cultural significance (NOTE - Star Wars: Episode IV does not count as a fourth installment). But this past weekend, as I found out that the fourth installment of a film franchise shattered box office records, I reconsidered whether it was finally time to invest in a cabin next a lake and finally give up on society.

Fast & Furious embodies a creativity in sequel naming that we haven't seen since Christopher Reeves was playing Superman (The Fast and the Furious [2001], 2 Fast 2 Furious [2003], The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift [2006], Fast & Furious [2009]). The fact that this franchise can retain relevance by recycling scripts and only changing articles and conjunctions ought to be our first indication that there may be some significant mind decay going on - but the numbers tell a different story. Target consumers are lapping up this brain candy like day old doughnuts at the 7-Eleven.

From CNN.com (and Entertainment Weekly):

In the first truly shocking box office result of the year, "Fast & Furious" sped away from expectations to gross a humongous $72.5 million, according to early estimates from Media by Numbers.

That result is effectively double what most industry observers had predicted for the debut of the fourth feature in Vin Diesel's car franchise, and it left in the dust a number of notable records:

- Best April opening ever, beating "Anger Management's" $42.2 million.

- Best Universal Pictures opening ever (three-day), beating "The Lost World: Jurassic Park's" $72.1 million.

- Best F&F franchise opening ever, beating "2 Fast 2 Furious'" $50.5 million.

- Best opening yet in 2009, easily beating the bows of the more-buzzed-about "Monsters vs. Aliens" ($59.3 million) and "Watchmen" ($55.2 million).

And yet, "truly shocking" just doesn't seem to really capture how this news made me feel. Along with skinny jeans, The Hills and Uggs, the street racing of "sport import" cars is additional proof that I've begun to make the transition from young and hip to fiscally responsible and social irrelevance.

But let me back up. Despite what I imagine to be the global reach of this forum, I expect that most of you have no idea what these movies are about. So let me provide a brief synopsis: the height of badassery is achieved by taking a $12,000 car (Acura, Honda, etc.) putting six figures worth of performance gear, neon lights, obscene paint jobs, shininess and noise production equipment on it and then racing it in the city streets with no regard for human life. As it turns out, performing in this way will: (a) get you the hot girl, (b) allow you to always narrowly escape capture by the hapless police, and (c) make all manner of thugs and miscreants not only elect not to kick your ass, but also give you what the kids like to call "mad props".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not ready to start camping out on my front porch with shotgun full of "salt rock" to chase the neighborhood kids of my property (although, the thought of being "Crazy Old Man Truitt" does bring a little smile to my face). I understand that street racing, and fast cars has always been purveyance of American youth. For God's sake, the title of this ill-conceived franchise was taken from a 1939 movie about a race between a 1935 Chev and a 1939 Hot Rod Lincoln. I remember the hot rods that dotted the landscape of my high school parking lot, and the intense envy I felt. But I also remember a few important characteristics of these cars and times that distinguish them from the current trend:

1. The cars were older models that were "fixed up" and "hot rodded" by the "gearheads" that owned them, usually on their own dime, that they had earned from their part-time job.

2. If they were loud, it was because they had an obscene engine in them that made them obscenely fast.

3. If they were racing them, they were doing at the local 1/4 mile track (Bandimere Speedway for you Colorado types), or on some very desolate country road, where only things they could disturb/damage were themselves, some barbed wire fences and a smattering of assorted livestock.

The cars in these movies would cost in excess of $100,000 each to reproduce, and that's without the special effects gear that allows them to pop half-mile wheelies, attach film rigs, and be in massive crashes without mangling the driver/passengers. There is nothing "American Graffiti" about simply having enough privilege and money to pay a custom shop to "pimp" your ride. These aren't simply well-tuned old engines with sport shifting, a blower and a racing carburator on them - these are machines built by the same guys that build the cars for professional racing. Owning one of these doesn't say anything about you except that you have extraordinary spending power.

What really worries me about this development is not that this dangerous and silly subculture exists, it's that it's becoming mainstream. It's that I'm going to have to endure more and more teenage wastoids trying to imitate these behaviors in their endless quest for coolness. The reality of these cars is that almost none of the kids that pay to see these movies are going to be able to reproduce these cars. So what will they do? They'll make their cars loud instead of making them fast. And they'll drive around the city and neighborhood streets like idiots in the middle of the day/evening, attempting stunts they're not trained or able to do.

The beauty of America is the freedom to be any sort of stupid that you'd like to be... with one very important caveat: you can't do it if it keeps anyone else from being the kind of stupid that they'd like to be.

Noise pollution is excusable under certain circumstances (e.g. your band actually rocks, your car is actually fast, or you're someplace that is already loud). But if all you did was spend fifty bucks and thirty minutes bolting a noise-making device onto the exhaust of your KIA Sorrento, trust me, you're not fooling anyone - and the only attention you're getting is the kind that starts with "I wonder what douchebag is driving that thing..."

On the off chance that you actually do have a fast import car, rest assured that most of us do not care. Which means that I don't need you to cover the eighth of a mile between stoplights in three seconds just to highlight your feelings of inadequacy. I don't need you to swerve in and out of traffic just so I can appreciate the alleged glory of painting your car a color that's been known to cause seizures. And I certainly don't need you coming around a corner, squealing your 14-inch tires while you're trying to focus on the text message you just got. If you want to race, why don't you try it against someone else who actually wants to race you (and not the folks just trying to get somewhere), and doing it somewhere where the only people you'll hurt (in case your driving skill turns out to be a little less than you had predicted) are yourselves?

Besides, before you decide this is your one-way ticket to transcendent awesomeness, keep in mind that the buyers for the surviving F&F cars (after the filming) did not include Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, or Jordanna Brewster. But they did include the five feet of manliness that is Frankie Muniz. So after buying one, you'll only be one hit sitcom away from being that cool.