A couple months back I bought a ton of pogs on eBay with the intention of making them into business cards.  (I still haven’t done it, but I’m sure it’ll be cool).  When they arrived, I picked out all the ones that were too shitty to use and posted a craigslist ad to get rid of them.  The only person who responded was a guy named Eric R.  Here’s what he sent me, in an email titled “I made a video about pogs”:

http://vimeo.com/3734594

i bought like 200 of them on ebay, so i have no problem trading. when do you need to do this by? i live in bushwick and i work in soho during the week, you should feel free to come to either for a trade off. let me know if you’re still in need of the goods.

So with that, Eric let me know right off the bat that he was crazy, which was nice of him.  But I still really needed pogs, so for a week I tried to arrange a time to trade “the goods” with Eric, but to no avail.  We emailed back and forth a couple times, and then he just disappeared.  Well, almost disappeared.  From time to time, his name pops up in my Gchat list, and his away messages always tell me a little more about this guy whose pogs I almost acquired.  They’re usually promoting one of his videos, but today when I logged on I saw this:

I’m broke and I have to take my puppy to the vet (her pierced ear got infected).

Can you say WT FUCK???  This guy is the best argument I’ve seen as to why we should license people to have pets and/or children, and why pog trades are sketchier than drug deals.  I guess I dodged a bullet by not meeting this guy.  Only in this fucking town.

I think I may have uncovered a prank from one of my favorite comedy troupes, but I can’t be sure.

First I got an email about a gig that pays a ludicrous amount of money for a hysterically cliched ad for  a product called the “Ultimate Chalk Box.”

The combination of that concept and the line “paid for by UCB,” made me think this might be the Upright Citizens Brigade.

But then I checked the Ultimate Chalk Box website, and was even more confused. Are these guys for real?

What do you guys think?

I could really use a better way to convert my PDFs to text. Oh, hey, look! An online program that does exactly what I need!
http://www.pdftoword.com/
http://www.smashingapps.com/2009/02/25/get-your-free-beta-invitation-codes-for-pdf-to-word-converter.html

Hey Blagojevich,
Here’s a hint: if you’re accused of a crime, stop wearing black leather jackets. It doesn’t make you look any more trustworthy.

And if you MUST wear a leather jacket, try not to directly rip-off the look of ventrioloquist Jeff Dunham, ok?

Duh!

I didn’t cry the night Obama won.  I didn’t dance, I didn’t sing, I didn’t run out into the streets and howl at the moon.  Friends called me up the next day saying, ‘You must be happy” but I wasn’t.  The night Obama won, I didn’t even feel relieved.

Like most Americans, I had spent the last five years in perpetual shock at the unceasing disaster in Iraq, but I had a particularly bad case.   I flirted with the idea of militant action – real militant action – as it became apparent that traditional activism was effectively useless.  I started innocently enough by tagging recruiting stations with such revolutionary phrases as “NO WAR” and “TROOPS HOME NOW”.  When that failed to bring about peace in the Middle East, I decided that more drastic action was necessary but was unsure what form it should take. So of course, I looked to Bill Ayers.

I can’t remember the first time I heard about the Weather Underground, but I watched a film about the famed college-students-turned-revolutionaries (or was it the other way around?) on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2006.  I was struck by their passion, their resolve, and also by the courageousness of their “war” on the largest military-industrial complex the world had ever seen.  The 2002 documentary tells their story in a voice laden with remorse, but Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernadine Dohrn, seem proud to have stood up for their beliefs.  And why not?  In America, few people have ever had the pluck to fight – literally – for a cause, but those that do have often earned a place in history:  Martin Luther King, Jr., John Brown, and George Washington are among the brave elite.  When the film ended, the room of present-day college students discussed the Weather Underground with disdain.  I disagreed.  “What good is non-violent action if it lets the perpetrators continue their war?”  I asked.  No one had an answer, but no one agreed with me, either.

In March of 2006 I offered to write a piece on anti-war activism for my college’s student-produced magazine.  That month’s issue commemorated the third anniversary of the Iraq War, and the Weather Underground was still fresh in my brain.  I found Bill Ayers’ email address listed publicly – as it still is – on the University of Illinois website, and sent him a long-winded and exaggerated request for a phone interview.  He sent back a three word reply and his number.  I called him before the week was out.

Ayers was lucid and well-spoken.  He chastised me for not reading his book, Fugitive Days, but was cooperative and accommodating. He pontificated about the merits of non-violent action, his latest and preferred modus operandi, and decried the present-day use of violence, advising would-be imitators to “find another way”.  He spoke with the wisdom of a man who had seen all this before, but with the outrage of someone who thought it was over. He said at the time (though he denies it now) that every successful social movement involves a mass of people in motion and an armed resistance.  That hit me hard.  In my article, I wrote that “Ayers declined to mention that since the Vietnam war ended and the Weather Underground disbanded, the US has had neither.”

Though I admired his bravery in the past, I didn’t look to Ayers for leadership in these dark times.  I looked instead to young people, my fellow college students, in the hopes that they would wake up to the vast ineffectiveness of standard non-violent protest and the dire need for more direct methods.  As more symbolic actions across the nation led to more symbolic resolutions in the Capitol, my frustrations grew.  My belief in the need for militancy matched it.

Governments must be responsive to the people.  Our government clearly wasn’t, I argued, and so it came to us, the people, to make it responsive.  To shirk this responsibility would make us just as liable as those that wielded power.  The real problem wasn’t Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld; it was the 300 million people who were too complicit, too complacent, too cowardly to stand up to them, to make them fear ignoring the will of the people.  The real problem was leadership, as the anti-war movement was dysfunctional, rudderless, and largely reactionary. The real problem was the Democrats, who month after month approved legislation that made the war possible, with nary a ‘No’ vote in defiance. The real problem was the Democrats, who continued to speak in one direction, vote in the other, and collect money from both.  The real perpetrators were the Democrats, who were either too craven to stand up for their beliefs or too corrupt to believe in the things for which they ostensibly stood.  The congressional Democrats and their supporters effectively retarded the anti-war movement, diverting it into a cove of irrelevance that we might today call a “Free Speech Zone,” some place far enough away from the action to be ignored and small enough to be trampled.  I came to a conclusion that ironically would have pleased that great anti-war activist Ronald Reagan: Democrats were not the solution to our problems, Democrats were the problem.

And so it came as no surprise when Pelosi took impeachment off the table and Barack and Hillary voted to renew the Patriot Act.  It wasn’t a surprise when the newly Democrat-controlled congress voted – yet again – to approve funding for the war.  In fact, the only surprise in the days after the Democratic take-over was Bush’s announcement that he was expanding the war in Iraq (with a “surge” of troops!).  Perhaps some recruiting stations in Rochester, NY were surprised the next day, too, to find their windows were tagged…or broken.

The US in 2006 lacked the movement to produce the militancy that existed in 1969, and so my capacity to imitate Bill Ayers was non-existent from the start.  My fascination with his story, however, continued.  In 2008, after being side-tracked by a number of other projects, I began work on a film exploring the use of force in past social movements.  I hoped to broaden the vocabulary of activism, to re-discover a turbulent history that has been cruelly and disgustingly white-washed to make it palatable to middle America.  In that Disney-fied history, revolutionary figures like John Brown, Malcolm X, and King are diminished, ignored, and castrated.  So of course, I looked to Bill Ayers.

I wrote him another long-winded, exaggerated request for an interview, this time on-camera.  He wrote back another characteristically short response, and we set a date a month in advance.  Shortly after we made our plans, I was reminded of Bill Ayers’ other history, that of an education activist and professor, when it was revealed that he was an acquaintance of Barack Obama’s.  Up till then, it had never occurred to me that the politician from Chicago might know the education activist from the Windy City, but it quickly made sense.  Bill Ayers is a patron of the Chicago liberal community, and any politician courting that circle would do well to get in his favor.  I don’t know the extent of the Dorhn/Ayers-Obama connection (how extensive could it be, really?), but I can say that when the rest of America was outraged at the connection, I was kind of impressed…with Obama.

I met Bill Ayers face to face in a New York hotel in the spring of 2008. I didn’t sleep the night before, and spent the four-hour drive from Ithaca with my co-producer, Jon Gerberg, discussing different ways to approach the interview.  By the time Jon and I got to the hotel lobby, I was running on nervous energy alone.

Once again, Ayers was lucid and well-spoken.  By this time I had read Fugitive Days, and brought a copy of the book to prove it.  This time he chastised me for buying a page proof.  He spoke with more arrogance than accommodation, but mostly with passion.  He discussed the ethics of violence, the Vietnam war as a context for his actions, and the limits of a non-violent approach towards social change.  I brought up Obama only twice, but he shrewdly dodged the subject both times, as I expected he would.  The Obama connection wasn’t relevant to the film, anyway, so I dropped it.  We spoke for about two hours.  Near the end, Bill Ayers turned to Jon Gerberg and wryly remarked, “He looks tired.”

I came away from that interview with a diminished respect for Ayers.  Perhaps he was preparing for the inevitable Hannity-led attacks, but there was something defensive and posturing about his words, not unlike those of a politician.  Perhaps he was a sell-out after all.  Or perhaps I was just upset that he wouldn’t admit that the Iraq War was worse than Vietnam, and that – by extension – he should start blowing shit up again.  In any case, Jon and I drove back to Ithaca feeling a little short-changed, but on the whole pretty good.

In the months that followed, I watched as Bill Ayers became a prominent issue in the campaign and marveled at how little context the media provided.  If I hadn’t known better, I would have guessed Ayers to be a sadist on the level of the Unabomber.  The truth is that no one in the 60’s or 70’s feared the Weather Underground, unless you think concrete and plaster are people with the ability to fear.  Barack masterfully distanced himself from Ayers, and the anti-war crowd was pleased, for some reason.  I guess they think it was all those peaceful protests that ended the Vietnam war.

The campaign dragged on, and I watched with dismay as the Democrats whittled their choices down to a senator who voted for the war and one who probably would have if he had been in office.  Even after Obama stopped showing love to the progressive crowd by cruelly voting to expand Bush’s wiretapping powers in the middle of the primaries, the head-in-the-sand community refused to reciprocate, instead coalescing around him even more.  Obama sheepishly became the cause célèbre of the anti-war movement, which really should be renamed the “anti-Iraq-War-after-2013-unless-Barack-thinks-it-has-to-go-on-longer-than-that” movement. The nation that had just two years prior reluctantly elected Democrats to Congress to end the war only to find that the Democrats had no intention of ending it once again elected a Democrat and gave him the same mission, but this time he was to try it with “hope”.  And they call this progress.

If someone had told me in 2004 that in just four years, a Democratic congress would be joined by a Democratic president (and a black man, to boot), I would have been overjoyed.  But if someone had told me in 2004 that the war would continue indefinitely, and of all of the lies and disappointments, of the spineless cowering and cowtowing the Democratic party would engage in along the way, the only thing left to be excited about would be the sound of a glass ceiling shattering. And so it was that on Election Night, the only comforting thought I could muster was, “At least he’s black.”

More than 1 million people are expected to descend on Washington for Obama’s inauguration on January 20.  I’m tempted to say that could be a decent anti-war demonstration on January 21, but the last five years (soon to be six) haven’t lacked demonstrations.  They’ve lacked a Step 2, the creative and necessary actions beyond “peaceful” protest.  Lefty blogs and magazines are awash with writings reminding us that “We have to keep the pressure on,” when they should be writing that “We have to learn the definition of the word ‘pressure’”.  It’s “the use of persuasion, influence, or intimidation to make someone do something.” We used up our persuasion and influence when we voted them into office.   Now what?

Hamlet wondered,

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep;
No more.

There are those in the anti-war movement who think that it is nobler to limit our own influence, to consign ourselves to “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”  There are those who think, as Bill Ayers did, that this war may only end when we “take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them.”  And perhaps in some barely-foreseeable future, when our hard work and tough choices bring about a real end to the war, and our children ask us why such drastic action was necessary, we can look at them and say, as Bill Ayers does today, “That was a different time.”  And if we do it right, we won’t be lying.

—-

You can watch clips from my interview with Bill Ayers here.

Check out everything I’m reading at:
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/04031052718951698519

I’m still working out a better way to do this. Bare with me.

If you haven’t done so yet, please check out Lockbox: An Anarchist Tale.  Let me know what you think about it (by leaving a comment on the film’s Current.com page, please!) then come on back and read the rest of this.

I’ve been getting less-than-favorable feedback about this piece, or no feedback at all (which I consider bad).  When people do choose to talk to me about it, they usually make one or more of the following points:

1) It’s hard to focus on the piece when the material and characters are so polarizing.

2) The filmmaker does a poor job of challenging the anarchists, but also fails to give an adequate reason to support them.  In other words, it’s hard to tell if I, the viewer, am supposed to agree with them or not.

3) The anarchists come off stupid.

I’ll address these criticisms one at a time, which makes sense, since I was the one who quantified them in the first place.  And before I begin, I have to state that I can take criticism.  In fact I wish I had more of it, but so far the only criticism I’m getting centers around elements that I considered while producing this piece, elements that I had hoped the piece addressed.

1) The material and characters are polarizing:  Um, no shit.  The characters and their actions are going to elicit a range of responses from audiences, from outrage to understanding, but hopefully not boredom.  That’s got nothing to do with me, and everything to do with them.  I, for one, have never considered that to be a bad thing.  When Jean Cocteau produced his adaptation of Antigone in Germany on the brink of World War II, critics noticed that the play was received in two profoundly different ways: Jews aligned with Antigone, the passionate, come-what-may adolescent hellbent on defying the state and laying her brother to rest.  Nazis, on the other hand, appreciated the difficult position of the pensive King Creon, who must uphold the sanctity of the state by desecrating the corpse of his own nephew.  I’m no Jean Cocteau (a fact that has been well-documented) but I don’t think I need to be, either.  I’ve got the advantage of working with real characters whose actions I consider to be just as passion-induced (and inducing) as those of Antigone.  Furthermore, it’s not the job of the filmmaker to take the polarizing and make it palatable, especially in a documentary format.  We live in a world of many different colors, some of them extreme.  I hope my camera can capture all of them.

Some would say, “Don’t you want to explain these people to your audience and raise their understanding?  Isn’t that making the polarizing palatable?”  In a sense, they’re right, and perhaps there my film falls short of what I would like it to accomplish.  But the fact is that the anarchists said the things they said, did the things they did, and that these were not uncommon or misrepresented words and deeds.  To say that the film fails because these things aren’t put into a logic that the dominant ideology can understand is to miss the point of the film (and the anarchists).  The anarchists operate according to their own logic, and it would be disingenuous to try to translate it into the logic of the dominant culture.  To say that it fails because their acts are not adequately explained is a bit more valid, but I think there’s a case to be made for bewilderment.  A film can engage with the world in any way it chooses, and the world isn’t always easily explained.  Which brings me to…

2) Am I supposed to agree with them or not? What do you think?  You’ve seen the footage.  You’ve had a chance to watch the anarchists and their actions without the annoying, nasally voice of a pretentious film student telling you what to think.  If you feel that the piece lacks enough context for you to form a judgment then I apologize; I’ve always had a difficult time figuring out where adequate context becomes editorializing.  However, the argument that the piece fails because it doesn’t choose a side is one that I find difficult to accept, and not because I’m a big proponent of the 50/50 school of journalism (I’m not).

You don’t hear a lot about anarchists.  There aren’t a lot of movies that feature realistic anarchist characters (unless you think the Joker is an accurate portrayal of a complex social theory). Sure, I could have made a bulleted list of why you should support the anarchists and read through it on screen.  Or I could have made the opposite list about why they’re totally wrong, in which case people would ask me why I made this film in the first place.  Or I could have done both, and said, “Here’s one side, here’s the other.  Which is right?” which is exactly what the 6 o’clock news does.  But instead I opted to let the anarchists make their case, on their terms, in a logic that made sense to them.  The obvious critique of this is that it’s biased.  I can already hear Chris Fers saying, “You wouldn’t do that for President Bush!”  He’s right.

The President is an authority figure and – for better or for worse – authority figures get the benefit of the doubt. The anarchists, as members of an opposing ideology, don’t get that benefit.  Viewers bring an already well-honed skepticism to a film about anarchists, and it’s a kind of skepticism that they don’t apply (or didn’t used to) when dealing with, say, Preisdent Bush.  Authority figures already get their voices heard.  The pres has a spokesperson on every news broadcast.  Comparatively, when was the last time you heard an anchor say, “Bill Ayers, what’s your take on this issue?” Anarchist voices are rarely heard, and it’s not because we as a culture have successfully discredited their ideas.  We don’t need to listen to Nazis or Confederates; we know their ideas don’t work.  We haven’t seen that same kind of intellectual defeat of the anarchists.  Until we do (if ever we should), the spirit of free speech and democracy should govern this cultural discussion.  Perhaps Nietzsche said it best: “All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.” 

3) The anarchists come off stupid. I hope Nathan and I made the anarchists (and Somorra in particular) look as smart as they are, because they are smart people.  And you can disagree with smart people.  You can also support a social movement without being able to speak specifically to its finer points.  I read an interview from the 1800’s with one of the last surviving Revolutionary war vets.  The interviewer asked him, “How big an influence were the writings of Locke?”  And the vet said, “Who?”  And the interviewer said, “Well certainly you must have been familiar with Locke, or Hobbes, or Adam Smith.”  And the vet said, “Listen, my neighbor grabbed his gun, and so I grabbed my gun, and that’s how the revolution came about.”

So that’s all I have to say for now. But seriously, leave some comments on the Current page, leave some comments here, and lets get this discussion going!

My voter registration form came in the mail today.  I was like a kid on Christmas.  As I hurriedly filled in all the boxes and struggled to remember my address in 2006 (how could I forget?), I came across one section that I had failed to anticipate. It was Box 11.

Box 11 is a rather large but unassuming division of the NYS Voter Registration Form.  It’s in this area of the form that voters signal which party they wish to enroll in.  The parties are listed out in order of how many votes they received in the last election, I think.  At least that would explain why Democratic Party is at the top and Working Families Party sits neatly at the bottom.

That’s not to say that the WFP is a loser party.  On the contrary, they’re kicking ass.  So much ass, in fact, that I’m considering making the switch.  Here’s my reasoning:

I hate the Democrats.  I know that “Democrats are our friends” or some bull shit because every now and then they’ll show up to a rally or something, but let’s be real.  Over the last 8 years, the Democrats have either actively or passively had a hand in every piece of dumb shit that’s gone down, be it the war, the Patriot Act, or the wardrobe malfunction.  It’s a party bought and paid for by corporate interests in which truly progressive candidates are often buried and ostracized, especially on the national stage (cough*GRAVEL*cough).  Four years ago I registered as a Democrat because I wanted to vote against Bush. I was also 18, naive, and honestly believed that if we put the Dems in power they would end this war.  Well, in 2006, after 6 solid years of running their mouths and bitching 24/7 they finally got the House and Senate and…well you know.  Nothing happened.  The party that promised us change and oversight and an end to Bush brought us war and wiretaps and a droning woman who wanted to be Bush so badly that she voted to ban burning the flag.  Even W’s not that nuts.

The benefit to registering as a Democrat would be the opportunity to vote in the primaries and thus steer the party towards an actually democratic candidate.  It’s tempting to think that my one little vote could have the power to shape the future of the mighty Democratic party.  It’s also tempting to think that if I dump enough ice into the river near my apartment I can single-handedly stop global warming.  In truth, the latter is probably more likely.  The Democratic party is awash with special interests and politicians both after the same thing: the promise of a steady paycheck, and they’re willing to work together to get it at the expense of folks like me and you.  How else do you explain the last 8 years?  Has the Democratic party behaved like the progressive anti-war, anti-imperialism party it so fervently claims to be?  And if not, who have they been acting like?

Which leaves me with two choices:  register with the Working Families, or don’t register with a party at all.  At least with Working Families my vote counts for something.  Still, WF often ends up cross-endorsing the Democratic nominee, so I could just as easily not register with anyone and still sleep well at night.  And come to think of it, I’d like to be sleeping right now.