Confessions of a Starving Artist

Between a quarter and a third of Los Angeles’s land area is now monopolized by the automobile and its needs-by freeways, highways, garages, gas stations, car lots, parking lots.  And all of it is blanketed with anonymity and foul air.  ~ Alistair Cooke, American Journalist, 1908

As sent to the Publisher of Up and Coming Weekly, 13 March 2009 —

Before I start, I will say that maybe I am wrong.  Maybe it was just a poor swing at trying to find something fresh to write about in today’s field of frozen-fresh journalism, but Bill Bowman’s Publisher’s Pen article Park Here. Validate Downtown. had to have been one of the most propagandized, sell-out articles that I have ever had the disgust to come across in a publication that I had come to admire for its grass-roots reviews and local championing.  However, after that utter nonsense, I feel as though perhaps Haymont may have had the rug, or in this case, their parking spaces, sold out by someone on the inside.

Haymont is one of the only pure vestiges of cultural sanity in this otherwise sterile and commercial town, pock-marked by sprouting new age sub-divisions, strip malls, chain stores, and the occasional country ghetto all canvassed against a back drop of military transience and classic Southern values.  Altogether though, it’s rather nice in this humble author’s opinion.  Notably though, the revitalization of the greater Haymont area is a substantial boon to an otherwise downtrodden community.  Maximizing its exposure the ever expansive city of Fayetteville (or Cumberland County… the two are almost interchangeable nowadays) has always presented somewhat of a difficulty.  However, Mr. Bowman’s commentary seemly to be towing some kind of party line, which insinuates that paying $4 dollars to park after possibly driving thirty minutes down the scenic vistas of Bragg Blvd or Raeford Road is somehow going to inspire more people to come to see what Haymont has to offer.  And while it wasn’t a bad pitch, it is, well, just dumb logic. 

Personally, I’ve never had an issue with parking in Haymont, and as a single member of the military in his late-twenties, I think that I may be one of the key demographics that the Downtown Alliance would be hoping to garner.  I could be wrong… Nonetheless, when I do escape down to Hay Street during the weekdays, I’m lucky if I can stay for a full three hours due to other obligations, professional and personal, thus negating any parking worries.  The times when I can stay longer, typically evenings and weekends, I don’t suffer the same obligatory time constraints as the work-day parking stop clocks so again, no harm, no foul.  And as side note, while I have heard of McLaurin’s Parking Police as the “Parking Gestapo” in light-hearted conversation, I’ve never considered them an eye sore or anything other than kindly meter maids, rather more part and parcel of the warm (though perhaps annoying) character that marks the historic downtown so homey.  And really, on a street that used to be the haven of prostitution, drugs, and illegal activities in all of Fayetteville, is one more guy in uniform really that unpleasant?

The whole article was really quite comical in its suppositions.  To think that someone will actually say, “Come on down, and stay all day for just four bucks!  How cool is that?” Is one of the higher forms of lunacy that I’ve been privy to since leaving Afghanistan.  To put myself in that scenario, I’ve never just pulled up to street parking in front of Bob and Sherry’s Wine Shop to run in quickly and grab few bottles of wine and said to myself, “hmmm.  I’d love to give this four dollars in my pocket to someone for no good reason at all.  Too bad there isn’t a bum or a government official around to hand it over to.  I guess I’ll just have to spend it in a local business… sigh.”  Also, harrowing terms used in the article like, “…a new day will dawn…” or “…a solution may be on the horizon…” are intended to make us feel like some progressive measures are being achieved.  They are both trivial and misleading, and what’s worse, complete malarkey. 

Taking customer money before the customer has a chance to spend it, that’s part of what’s really at work here.  If Mr. Bowman can honestly look us in the face and say that the grand fascists in Fayetteville City Hall are going to turn around and give this money straight away back into Haymont, pound for pound, dollar for dollar, I’d be pleased to be the one to throw the first stone from the crowd.  The City Council has applauded the efforts of those organizations responsible to breathing life back into Fayetteville’s historic district for years, but has done little more than clap them on the back as they focus on more streamlined ways to make the city more profitable and more prolific, not artistic or centric.  In this case, Mr. Bowman uses a feeble smoke screen, showcasing the wonderful features, merchants, and businesses in Haymont as something that can be enjoyed now at such a nominal fee… without mentioning that it all used to be free.

Let’s be fair and call this what it is: a timely profit windfall.  With the expansive (and expensive) new townhouses, all of which are already sold, nearing completion and thus nearing occupation, creating paid parking in the downtown area just prior to an oncoming parking crisis is going to net the city a pretty penny and the good people of Haymont will be the ones left circling in the rotary. 

Mr. Bowman does give a half-hearted gesture to the real issue, which is the mark of true journalism, I think; the need for a mass parking deck or garage.  But the city hasn’t ever seemed to think that this is important, mainly because a free garage wouldn’t be profitable.  And Bill, who cares if it’s “in the correct location”?  Everyone in Haymont walks everywhere once they arrive on those lush brick streets anyway.  As Lewis Mumford once said, “Restore the human legs as means of travel.  Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities.”  Free parking and four hundred yards or four bucks?… I might be alone in this, but you can feel free to call me Clark Griswald.

The most disappointing thing about this article is that it came on page four of Up and Coming Weekly.  There are papers like this one in most major cities in the United States; simple working class periodicals reminding us of the pure and artistic matters of our urban and fast moving lives.  They are free because the untarnished information is priceless and raw; a pure American press.  Troubling to the core that the Chief Publisher couldn’t even find a patsy to write an article so obviously meant as propaganda boot-licking towards those that financially aid this newspaper.  Instead, he dumbly placed himself and his integrity at the forefront of either his loyalty to the check-writer or his own detachment from the local people.  Either way, it’s sad.   

So if you want my two-cents (or four dollars), Mr. Bowman, there is a Gestapo in Haymont… so proudly sport your armband next time you’re on Hay Street.   

Sincerely,
[The Guttersnake]

Only great minds can afford a simple style.  ~ Stendhal

Once upon a time, I was a fashion aficionado.  I like that term better than “metro-sexual”, though at the time, I was probably closer to the later.  Metros somehow got a bad rap along the way as I think that the first wave of men who started to dress with the times were just trying to break out the humdrum wardrobes of Old Navy and GAP.  Then suddenly The Powers That Be decided that what was in style was also to be less-than-maculating in form and fit.  However, this whole phase of my life came and went before the label of “Metro” became vulgar and associated with semi-queers and quarter-fags everywhere.

Thankfully, metros have regressed into a more youthful demographic.  For a while there, middle aged men in their thirties and forties tried to give the smedium tee-shirts and vintage faded jeans a run to a sharp degree of non-success.  After a year or two, circa 2005, even men in their late-twenties figured out that dressing in drag was a bit of a stretch when trying to work the bars and single clubs.  Nowadays, the only real people who you see dressing in the prescribed androgynous avant guard are men in their early-twenties and late-teens who can’t really be faulted for following something trendy.  We all did it once or twice to some extent or another.  After all, who are we to be trend setters at twenty-three?  It’s not like we are Justin Timberlake… but then again, who is?

Nonetheless, it has become increasingly hard for men to dress their age in a fashionable and still manly manner.  Our role models are seemingly few and far between.  Hollywood continues to provide leading men who are pushing fifty and looking twenty-seven.  The new bloods like Shia LaBeouf or Michael Cera who show up on the silver screen look like the proverbial college-aged smart-asses who needs an ass-kicking or a few more days in shop class rather than someone who could dispense an example of any kind, let alone fashion, toward those of those of us out in the real world of a wartime wintery economy.  TV sitcoms, 24-hour news stations, and even the music and sport world provide hideous examples of what a modern man should look like.  Is it any wonder why men dread turning thirty and women seem to bask in it?  Women ascend at the thought of being thirty and looking twenty.  Men would rather look like an oaf in ill-fitting jeans than look like a boy of twenty these days… and many opt for just that.

I am no different… minus the oaf in jeans part.  I was just remarking to some of my younger colleagues that in fact I had not purchased any significant new clothing in over a year, aside from a new pair of running shoes, due to a straightforward lack of want.  My wardrobe has become one of simplicity, though well-fitting and coordinated simplicity I would add.  Single color sweaters and conservative-cut jeans have been the hallmark of this winter’s line, allowing my sunglasses and petty-coat to do much of the talking for them.  Still, it’s a classic look; clean and up-right.  And while it’s pure, I would have you take note that it’s increasingly hard to shop for clothes that fit into this line of though within today’s malls filled with trendy prints and oversized knit beanies.

The overall point to all this is that despite the fact that I don’t flaunt my fashion sense in a boisterous or flamboyant manner, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have one.  Actually, I would consider my discretion to be the more experienced mark of propriety; that is, the ability to observe the trends and rather than swim with the current, maintain some level of solidarity and self-made manhood.  So I was a bit taken back when yesterday as I was wondering through the local mall running an errand for a friend, I happened to note the change in season through the display and wear of the new spring sets in the various store windows.  In a word, I was horrified. 

In an effort, it seems, to completely ignore the lessons learned in the 1980s, those absurd skinny legged jeans did come back with a vengeance this past fall and winter.  Whatever, I can deal.  But it would appear that rather than going softly into that good night, there is a further genesis to those awful denims as I noted a young teenaged man wearing what would at a glance have been thought to be his little sisiter’s capri shorts.  Yup, that’s right; “the man-pri” style of shorts are going to the part and parcel of the young emo-look this summer.  And just as I finished shaking my head, I was left reeling again as yet another fashion blunder walked by.  This time it was a moppy-headed young hippie fellow with mid-thigh shorts rolled further up, cuffed and in the manner of a male version of the classic whore-shorts, the daisy dukes. 

I truly hope that our fair mall is the exception to the rule, and that you, faithful reader, will be not be troubled by this latest fad as it is a troubling eye-sore that left me confused and concerned.  Perhaps it is a regional thing.  Who can be sure?  I guess I will find out as these days and months continue to warm up.  So, unfortunately, will you. 

Mad I call it; for, to define true madness / What is’t but to be else but Mad?  ~ Lord Polonius, Act II, Scene II Hamlet

I think that I’m about ready to call it quits on the whole amateur sports pundit gig.  It would seem that I am completely incapable of making any sort of prediction that has even the slightest margin of hopeful gain.  The only thing that keeps me in this aggravating leisure pursuit is that arguably neither is anyone else.  Perhaps it is the uncertain economy that keeps this whole topsy-turvy NCAA Men’s Basketball season completely unable to find any sure footing, but whatever the reason, one thing is for certain: I have zero idea who is going to be in the Championship game come the first part of April.  In short, I just don’t know.

I don’t think that it’s going to be about the seeds.  Okay, it’s going to be about the seeds a little.  Not like it was last year, however.  Last year, we basically knew as far back as November who was going to be our Final Four teams, and voila! here comes, for the first time in NCAA history, all four number 1 seeds making  it to the Final Four.  While some of the games were kinda cool, overall it wasn’t terribly thrilling.  It was actually more like some sort of Roman spectacle in The Coliseum.  Look kids, do you think that the dogs will kill the giant mammoth tiger?… guess not.

This year the mammoth tiger is back.  The Memphis Tigers have clawed all the way back into disputation as the last of the surprise contenders after starting the season as number 5 in the nation, then dropping out of the Top 25 at open point, and now re-aloft the stack as the recently crowned Number 3 seed in today’s ESPN Poll.  But if you think that Memphis is some sort of shock-story, you’d have to have just tuned in your local sports network because while they are likely the most turbulent team out there, The Tigers aren’t all that out of the norm.

After Week 7 when a mediocre Boston College dismantled the University of North Carolina, a team that many had herald as “unbeatable”, there was seemingly a new Number 1 every week up until, well, now.  I can’t say that their aren’t favorites, but what I can offer is that every one of them has proven to be beatable by teams that are relative nobodies.  The key word there is relative.  And fairly, nobody in the Top 25 is a nobody this year.  You can go down the list, nearly into teams that aren’t ranked, and find some sort of surprising win somewhere in their season, just as with each likely favorite you can find an equally surprising loss.  What the guys on ESPNews and Sports Center are saying about all this is absolutely true: the NCAA Tournament Committee is going to definitely have a hard time picking the 64 teams who are going to The Dance this year because there are so many good teams… good, but not great.  What I haven’t heard anyone saying is that just as important as who is going to The Dance is going to be who your dancing with; that is to say, the match-ups in the brackets.

Start with this line of questioning; who are going to be the four number 1 seeds?  The correct answer is, I don’t know.  Right now, there are ten teams who have valid reasons to be a number 1 (UConn, UNC, Memphis, OU, Wake, MSU, Pitt, KU, Louisville, and Duke), but moreover there are ten more teams right behind them that all deserve to be number 2 or 3 seeds, each with the ability to hand anyone of those potential 1 seeds their lungs on the court (Clemson, XU, LSU, Washington, Marquette, Nova, Mizzou, Perdue, and UCLA). 

So second question; who do you want your number 1 seed to match up with?  Again, the correct answer is, I don’t know.  Take the triangle case of UNC, UConn, and OU.  In this humble man’s opinion, logic is defied by the match-up.  For example, UNC’s speed and raw offence can play ball with that of UConn giving them the edge in size and speed, and UConn’s guard defense and underscored size in the low post can fold down on the singularity of Blake Griffin and one-dimensional bullying Sooners.  However, I give the edge back to OU if they were to see UNC in the Elite Eight for two reasons; UNC’s Tyler Hansborough is just not only going to have a hard time matching up well with Blake Griffen, but also the Tar Heels play a run-and-gun fast break offense, which OU can stop in a way that UConn will have a hard time containing.  See?  It’s a vicious circle…

Third question, and it might be a rhetorical one; what are the chances of a 1 seed and a 2 seed making to the Elite Eight without upset?  If you mumbled, I don’t know, then you would be correct yet again.  Just like the example above, every favorite has a chink of inconsistency in their armor and every little fish in the sea is a piranha this year.  The likelihood of seeing anything close to last year’s all number 1 seed Final Four is slim.  You’re far more likely to see a Final Four this year with no number 1 seeds.

Is that going to make the brackets fun this year?  I one thing that I do know is that, yes, it will.  But I will expect a certain loss of caliber from the individual players come the Final Four.  If the brackets become flooded in upsets, which they likely will, then we’ll see one of two things: either a sub-par Finals should we find ourselves in an underdog’s championship with no real powerhouses present, or we get one, perhaps two, real heavy weights in the ring and it turns into a thirty-point spread blood-bath come crunch time.

Therefore my advice to you all is to take some sick days and head to the sports bars this weekend my friends.  With the amount of guaranteed grudge-matches coming up (Duke v. UNC, Pitt v. UConn, OU v. Mizzou, Clemson v. Wake, MSU v. Purdue, Marquette v. Syracuse) there is a really good percentile that says that this is your last chance to see Final Four level play this season.   

Go Xavier!  Beat Dayton!