On the God of the Christians by Remi Brague

   Remi Brague  makes no graven image in his treatise about God; on the contrary, he’s pretty clear that little can be known about a creator whom you cannot see. The first question is whether the Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same deity. He goes into this with the origins of what we call “monotheism,” which he also questions, since the term wasn’t used until the time of the Renaissance. The Muslims have a mantra that there is only one God and that God is one, so we can see a closeness to Christianity’s single deity. He also discusses the Xenophanes of the Greek world (around 600 BC) who opposed Hellenic paganism.

    Next comes the chapter To Know God, the author discusses whether God is a person or thing. If we were to see God as a thing, then we would not be able to attribute much in the way of accomplishment. Then there’s the issue of knowledge, which is something of a touchy subject in the Bible. On one hand, perhaps knowledge can deepen our understanding of the sacred, but at the same time there was suspicion about scientific knowledge. The Catholic clergy were wary of Galileo’s telescope, along with other scientific discoveries, and many wondered if it would lead the people astray. Keep in mind that in the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve run their carefree existence by eating from the Tree of Knowledge, but then again, is it better to be ignorant in luxury than knowledgeable in a world of work?

   “Is God the father?” wonders the author. On one hand, unlike Zeus, he doesn’t have a wife, yet he does have human attributes (as in the Book of Jeremiah, the sky is my seat and the earth is my footrest.) We say “the hand of God” or “wrong in the eyes of God,” so we can assume that God can have a body.

Love Goes to Buildings on Fire

    New York City in the 70’s is always great to write about, but for years nobody cared to remember the era. Back in 1993 (20 years before this book came out) nobody really cared about the city’s rough decade, but that’s all changed since 2000. The 1970’s NYC has been the subject of books, documentaries, movies, fashion trends, and just about everything you can license for profit. So why do we have such a fascination with that decade? Perhaps it was because all the peace & love stuff of the 1960’s were over, and the nation’s confidence was scarred by Vietnam? Or was it the riots here at home? America in the 1970’s seemed to be in a kind of limbo, now that the Flower Power was finished. Jimi and Janice were dead, the Beatles had broken up, and whatever feeling we all got from Woodstock was ruined at Altamont. The feeling of the 70’s was rough, and who could illustrate it better than Bruce Springsteen, the great working-class balladeer! The author Will Hermes describes Springsteen’s first gig at Max’s Kansas City as a fish out of water; the torn jeans and stubble of the singer, versus a club full of Warhol superstars.  But then we get the surprise; the audience – transvestites included – loved Bruce Springsteen! They weren’t any flower children in that audience, but lots of flagrantly gay scenesters who were turned on by Springsteen’s proletarian roughness. The kind of bands that the Warhol crowd went to see weren’t the Crosby-Stills-Nash-Young types, with fringe jackets and love beads. They wanted edgy, transgressive artists like the cross-dressing New York Dolls, weird-sounding Lou Reed, and in this case, a messy-looking guy from New Jersey. It was a sleazefest they wanted, not protest songs. Springsteen’s rough look and rough subjects were perfect for the occasion.

   Love Goes to Buildings on Fire (long title, very punk rock of the author) doesn’t gloss anything, and why would it? Given that in the 1970’s, gloss couldn’t even stick, and if it did, then it would’ve been spray painted over and ended up looking like a subway car. One of the best parts is the chapter Invent Yourself, where Abe Beam (the mayor) says “I want to be the matchmaker that brings us together.” The author says “well mazel tov, sort of, the city was bankrupt and everybody knew it.” In strides Patti Smith, with her thrift store duds and unfeminine stick figure, who fit in perfectly. She certainly wasn’t a babe, and come to think of it, she looked like a vampire. Her boyfriend (if they were intimate, which I doubt) was an equally skinny artist named Robert Maplethorpe, who everyone must’ve known was gay. This was no hippy chick in a floor-length embroidered gypsy dress with a flower in her hair; nope, that was San Francisco shit, and this was 1973 New York City. Mayor Beam wanted to be a peacemaker, and it obviously didn’t work, because there was no way to bring peace. Everyone saw him as he was; a silly little accountant in a silly little suit, out of his depth, over his head, and with the rough look of the time, way more “out of his element” than Bruce Springsteen was in a club full of cross-dressers!

    There is one issue that the author doesn’t discuss, and one that I think had an effect on the development of the NYC art scene, and that issue is labor. The NYC mayors of the time – Lindsay, Beam, and Kotch – had a terrible relationship with the transit workers, police, firemen, sanitation workers, and just about all the other city employees. It really made the city’s progress slower, and that made the city less enticing for developers. If it hadn’t been for all the strikes going on, the city’s progress would’ve been stunted, and developers would’ve gone after all those run-down neighborhoods. I also suspect that the city’s bohemian life had to do with the civil service as well; with all the hiring freezes, there were fewer full-time jobs, so that left plenty of time for everyone to be silly. The jobs that the artists and musicians took – restaurants, bookstores, record stores – didn’t mind the employees having long hair and drug addiction. If the Ramones all found full-time well-paid jobs in a unionized outfit, they probably would’ve given up their music.

   I’d better remind everyone here, 90% of the characters in this story weren’t even from New York City. Patti Smith was from New Jersey, Iggy Pop was from Detroit, Lou Reed was from Nassau County, the Ramones were from Queens, Warhol was from Pittsburg, etc. Manhattan always attracts outsiders from all over the USA (E.B. White said the same thing in his essay Here Is New York.) Perhaps that’s why the “noo-yawk” accent has vanished, except in Staten Island. But after their careers were established, a lot of these people left the city. Patti Smith moved to Michigan, several Warhol superstars went to other cities (Billy Name went upstate, Viva got kicked out of the Chelsea Hotel and moved to LA), and countless artists and musicians moved elsewhere. Manhattan, bankrupt and derelict, was perfect for men and women who didn’t mind it rough, but it wasn’t a place to raise kids. The schools were crap, the food was lousy, and when you want to have a family, safety becomes paramount.

   

    Those of you who watched the documentary NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell know that NYC in the 70’s wasn’t a place to raise kids or find happiness, but you could move here to drop out and enjoy free love. It was for people who liked it rough and messy, and if it weren’t crime-ridden, it would’ve taken New Orleans’ place as “the city that care forgot.” Punk rock, hip-hop, Latin pop, it could only happen in the most non-judgmental city in America, where high fashion meant dirty clothes, and torn jeans couldn’t keep you down. If transvestites could be accepted, then who wouldn’t be?

No Matter How Loud I Shout: A Year in the Life of Juvenile Court

California’s juvenile justice system was a mess in 1996, and I don’t know exactly how much has changed in the last 22 years. I know that teenagers, at least for the type of crimes committed in this book, are tried as adults nowadays. Regardless of whether they end up in the Juvenile Courts or regular courts, there’s no guarantee of a competent lawyer, and there’s always the question of whether to keep them confined or release them to their families pending trial. Then there are the kids whom you just can’t reach.

One of the cases involves two boys robbing a man at gunpoint, they goof up, they drop the wallet they tried to steal, nobody gets hurt. Now let us look at the back story; the kid is Korean-American, with upper middle-class parents, and he wants for nothing so far so good. The problem is that two local high schools merged, and he ended up in a school with stupid kids, and he’s a bit of a follower. You’re probably thinking what I’m thinking, the parents should’ve been more alert to what was going on, but we can see that they weren’t. The parents worked long hours, so they were probably too tired to ask their kids what was going on at school, and then there was the language barrier, and then there was the culture gap. In some countries, there aren’t any minorities or a criminal underclass, so the parents are completely alien to the issue of “bad influences.”

There are some kids profiled in this book who really are criminals and really do deserve jail time. Take for instance, the boy who repeatedly punches women in the street and snatches their purses. Every time he offends, the juvenile courts let him right back out again. Is he learning that he can get away with these crimes? Is the constant leniency setting the wrong precedent? The biggest problem is that once he gets to the age where he’ll be tried as an adult, he’ll have ten strikes on his record. If he beats someone up at age 18, the judge will say “you’ve been doing this for years, so I’m throwing the book.” The juvenile courts are doing kids no favors be letting them out again and again.

I appreciate the author’s impartiality toward race. There are stories about Black, White, Asian, and Hispanic kids, one of them is an adolescent surfer who refuses to listen to his father. I could relate to the part where the surfer kid calmly says to his father “for the last time, shut up.” I’ve seen that a million times, the parents are mad at the kid, and the kid stands there looking annoyed. Parental neglect (or parental spinelessness) is a running theme in this book, and I wish the author had included what the judges have to say about it. The book centers around California’s juvenile court system, but the same in this book were happening in New York back in 1996. I read Judge Judy’s 1995 book Don’t Pee On My Leg and Tell Me It’s Raining, where she details her years on the family court. It was the same thing in New York City; the kid commits a crime and gets a break, then he reoffends and gets the maximum.

Remember the scene from the documentary Scared Straight, where the convict compares the juvenile offenders to a dog pissing on the carpet? He says, “every time you go before that judge, you’re pissing on his carpet, and after a while he doesn’t know what to do with you anymore.” That’s exactly what happens to these young offenders when they’re old enough for prison. Even if the judge lets it slide, the offense is still on the record, and it’s going to add up when they offend as adult. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to give a kid a break.

Our Expanding Universe by Alex Robinson

    I won’t mince words, I find this book to be a major disappointment. It’s about a bunch of 40-year-old men who can’t seem to grow up and act their age, and there’s nothing funny about it. They gather in a playground to play boxball, which in my view is the equivalent of grown men playing Candyland. Keep in mind, one of them has children, and another is expecting one. It’s one thing for men to have hobbies that aren’t traditionally male (some men like to do needlepoint), but for these guys to play a kid’s game in a kid’s playground, that’s just plain stupid and immature. There’s a scene where a parent insists that they leave, which makes sense because playground signs clearly say “no adults except those accompanying children.” Some arguing is involved, but I couldn’t help thinking “good for her, and while you’re at it, make them sit in the corner!” It’s not fun to see grown men who play a game meant for five year old children.

    The next problem for these defeated Generation-X boys is the job thing. One of the guys is the manager of a dog grooming (or doggy day care) franchise, which he doesn’t like much, and isn’t even sure if he wants the child his wife is about to have. Then there’s the guy with the well-paid teaching job, having an affair with a sexy blonde teacher at his school. He has a wife who’s overweight, overbearing, and suspicious, but you can tell she’s not going to leave him. She’s just given birth to kid #2, and you get the vibe that this is the best she can get.

    Maybe the real problem with this book is the author Alex Robinson? I’m a big fan of his, and I loved his previous works Box Office Poison, Tricked, and Too Cool to Be Forgotten. Based on his previous efforts, Our Expanding Universe lacks any of the depth of those books. BOP was all about Generation X trying to find their way in life, and in the process, reconcile the lessons of their parents. Then came TCTBF, in which Generation X is getting older and coming to terms with adult responsibility. Now take the protagonist of TCTBF; he’s 37, losing his hair, working in IT, has a pre-teen stepdaughter, and wants to quit smoking so he won’t die on his family like his father did. Furthermore, you wonder if maybe this guy has ALWAYs been a bald 37-year-old, because you never imagine that he was once a kid. When he travels back in time to when he was 17, he finds the era to be a silly waste of time. But in OEU, the men want to keep on being kids. It’s like having dinner with an adult male who only eats fish sticks and tater tots. I wonder if this book, in contrast to Robinson’s earlier pieces, could be a study in the lack of adult responsibility in today’s men? Even the artwork is no good, compared to the others. A lot of it is filler, with none of the hilarious montages of his previous works.

    After finishing this book (which took a long time because it was so boring) I came to one conclusion; these people deserve their misery! And if Robinson’s work doesn’t improve soon, he’ll be in the same position as the characters.

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea

I’m a little conflicted about this book. On one hand, it’s boring, but on the other hand, it’s about the most boring country on earth. North Korea has sterile buildings, no casual socialization, no casual music or arts, and no food. So why does the author bother to draw it? There isn’t really anything to draw.

    Delise is a Quebec-born artist and animator, now living in the south of France, and travels to Pyongyang to visit the state animation studios. There are other foreigners in Pyongyang – French, Italian, and Arab – mostly doing engineering projects. There are things to entertain them – discos, cafes, and a bowling alley – all of which lack essential parts. Worse, they’re only open to foreigners, so there won’t be a lot of people there to talk to. That’s fine with Kim, because the foreigners can’t speak or understand Korean and therefore they can’t corrupt the locals with their fascinating stories of Western capitalism. On more than one occasion, the author says he’d rather be nuked.

    High rise hotels have only three occupied floors. The 1,000 foot tall pyramid-shaped hotel is a concrete shell (covered with glass by the time of this writing) and admired by only three tourists. There’s a club for tourists, situated inside an ugly Soviet-style lobby that used to be the Romanian embassy. I have to wonder why Romania needed an embassy in North Korea, when the two countries had almost no relationship. Neither country had anything to contribute to the other.

     I wasn’t surprised by the guitar-playing kids who do a performance for the tourists. I saw it on youtube, where the kids in Soviet-style outfits play an old Russian melody. The kids look like they’re less than eight years old, and they play huge guitars. I wonder how their tiny fingers can handle the massive frets. Maybe those “kids” are actually dwarves? What surprises me is that the leaders of North Korea can’t see that nobody’s fooled. They have to be aware of how foreigners are laughing at them. I also wonder how a country that hasn’t had a war in years can need to conscript men for over ten years at a time. With so many people forced into the army, it’s a wonder there’s anyone to grow the food.

   Maybe their “Dear Leader” is fully aware how the foreigners see him, but doesn’t care. The Kim family spent decades being obeyed, so maybe they’re happy as long as their own people are kept in line. One thing however, is certain; the North Koreans are brainwashed, and if the doors of North Korea ever open up, they’re going to need to bring in psychiatrists.

The Nordic Theory of Everything

From the start, the author judges the Americans as over-anxious, and blames the anxiety on parents who micromanage their children’s lives. The anxious-parent micromanagement stresses the parents, and teaches the kids nothing about taking care of themselves. They’ll spend fortunes on tutors (and even do their kids’ homework) to get them into top colleges, stress themselves to pay for it, and four years later they have less money and some kids who can’t support themselves. But in Scandinavia, things are a wee bit different; college is free, kids are expected to move out at age 18, and the parents don’t stress.

    The author quotes a US-educated Swedish academic named Lars Tradaigh on several issues. The first one is financial aid for college – which in the USA requires you to state your parents’ income – and that is alien to Scandinavia. In Sweden, your parents are no longer obligated to support you after age 18, so the idea of your parents’ income being an issue is ridiculous. The second issue is elder care, which looks bleak, since the average American can’t afford it. Look at it in terms of economics; parents today are supporting their grown children (the sandwich generation) so they can’t possibly support an aged relative as well. In Sweden, the state pays for the health care and nursing, and that’s it. The children are expected to take their elders for walks, talk to them, do stuff with them. Social workers can’t do that.

    It’s the same thing with childcare in Finland. The government provides free maternity leave and daycare, so the parents are not stressed about taking care of the children. But this would be impossible here in the USA, for a million reasons. First, the USA has a teenage pregnancy problem, which Scandinavia does not. Not only that, but all over the country you find women with lots of kids by different men, and they’re on welfare their whole lives. Scandinavia has a low birthrate and no teen pregnancy, so they’re not swamped with the bills. Then there’s another great American problem to deal with; crack babies, and the kids with FAS. Few kids in Scandinavia are born addicted to drugs, so all those Nordic teachers aren’t struggling to retarded students. Lastly, the USA has a titanic defense budget, and that cuts into what we can spend on daycare. As for the government providing free housing so 18 year old kids can live on their own, forget it. You’d have nonstop partying and trips to the ER.

   There is one Nordic practice that can work, and that’s a school curriculum involving hikes. In Sweden, the children are taken into the woods, given a compass, and told to find their way back. They’ll do this in all weathers, rain or shine, and their motto is “there is no bad weather, only inadequate clothing.” The kids learn to be self-reliant, solve problems on their own, and get along without their parents. Maybe the US problem is that we’re desperate for the kids to achieve what does not exist? Look at the schools, with their uniforms (the kids look sloppy anyway) and the dress codes (that lead to conflicts.) Do truckers have dress codes? What about cab drivers? Do electricians wear neckties? Do most NYC teachers wear neckties? The answer is usually no. So why make kids dress up for school? It’s part of the spectrum, of Americans forcing useless things on their kids, and it’s all because of paranoia.

   Unfortunately, the majority of Scandinavia’s ways can’t work in the USA because…..well I guess everything here is different. Finland has  a high number of percentage of women legislators, and we have few. Norway has a tiny defense budget, ours is astronomical. Denmark has no teenage pregnancy, but we certainly do, and it’s a drain on our nation. Scandinavia has an anything-goes attitude towards sexuality, no censorship, and they’re racially homogenous. True, they have free college, but it’s only for kids that qualify, and they do have vocational training (which most US schools have gotten rid of.) The reason they can afford to have free college is that you don’t attend if your grades are no good. Here in the USA, any idiot can go to community college, even if they can barely read.

    I’d love to see the forest hikes in US schools. Maybe if we’re less paranoid about lawsuits, we might see it in this lifetime.

My Friend Dahmer

    Back in 2000, actor Noah Taylor caused a a stir by playing the young Adolf Hitler. Nobody complained about the performance; everyone agreed that he nailed it perfectly. What bothered the audience was the subject matter, and that it made the monster look, for lack of a better term, less monstrous. I remember watching the film and saying “you know, I almost feel sorry for the poor bastard,” which is essentially what the character is – a lonely man with no family and no friends – wandering a world he doesn’t recognize. Maybe the problem is that we’re used to stories about monsters, but they’re easy to recognize. Human monsters, the kind that inhabit the prisons, aren’t like the trolls and dragons in fairy tales. They aren’t born with fangs, claws, and a terrible appetite. We know that at some point they were just kids, and we wonder what those kids were like.

    Backderf’s memoir of his friend (more like acquaintance) Jeffrey Dahmer is not a horror show, but a dark comedy. I wonder if Todd Solondz – creator of dark comedies set in America’s suburbs – would’ve been better suited to direct the film version? The author draws and writes of Dahmer as a freakish outcast in a 1970’s suburban school, not fitting in with any of the cliques. He’s fascinated by dead animals, but he’s not part of the group that loves science. He’s built like a football player, but has no attraction to sports. He’s weird, but doesn’t hang out with the weird kids. Dahmer spends his time alone, drinking too much, in his shed with dead specimens. Then the awkward teen starts making bizarre noises and gestures in the hallway, amusing and puzzling everyone at the same time. Backderf doesn’t draw much of the dead animal collection because he didn’t see much of it. The problem is that Dahmer kept so much hidden from everyone; the dead animals, the drinking, the problems with his family. When Dahmer’s father Lionel wrote his own memoir to try and make sense of it all, he claimed 100% ignorance. The author of this graphic memoir agrees, there was extreme ignorance on part of the adults.

    In terms of Backderf’s drawing style, I can only say that it’s perfect. His realistic drawing is necessary in the story, because the facial features, clothes, and period décor are an essential influence on the characters. Art Spiegelman’s mouthless mice wouldn’t have worked, neither would Marjane Satrapi’s block figures. The author gives us a full-on frontal assault of the 1970’s – the sterility of the school, the kitschy home décor, the foliage of the woods – and how it all influences the events. A recurring character in the story is Lloyd Figg (the school’s emotionally disturbed kid) and he’s drawn as fat and curly-haired, which helps establish the boy’s awkwardness. In fact the awkwardness is a recurring theme in My Friend Dahmer, not just social, but physical as well. Dahmer’s posture is drawn as stiff, his walk is stiff, and he doesn’t seem sure of what to do with his arms. As for his face, he’s portrayed as a wall-faced kid hiding behind long hair and glasses.

   There is no lesson to be learned from My Friend Dahmer. Like the Vegas Shooter, Dahmer showed few obvious signs that he was going to go on a killing spree. In the epilogue, the author hears that a former classmate was arrested for mass murder, and he’s certain it was Lloyd Figg. He figures is has to be, Lloyd Figg is well known to the local police. Then he hears it was Dahmer, and stares in disbelief. How could it be Jeffrey Dahmer, he wonders, if that boy showed no signs? When it comes to spotting a future serial killer, the fact is that very often you can’t.