by:
Dennis A. Mahoney

01.11.2002:::  

Modern cinema needs a movie powerful enough to shake the very foundations of society, a deeply moral tale written from experience, a story that can't be faked, one that lifts a great veil from the eyes of the masses. I will do this. I will write that story. But it has to be new.

So I'm going to dress like a black person and "see what it's like." Oh, shit. Soul Man. Of course.

There's always the potential of sending a silver-spoon investor to the gutter, replacing him with a vagrant for a "nature vs. nurture" experiment and, after the vagrant has had spectucular success investing in, say, pork bellies, we'll throw the whole experiment out the window to prove that if the upper and lower classes simply teamed up, the world would be a much better place. Or I could infiltrate a college campus, pose as a Jew (posing as a gentile), and after I am "discovered" and ostracized, graduate at the top of my class while the prejudiced students are expelled. Or meet a homeless man who seems crazy but, through a string of wild coincidences, find that our lives are fundamentally intertwined and there are valuable lessons to be learned from this so-called bane of modern society. Or play a juvenile game with a bunch of war buddies to see who can find and exploit the ugliest girl, only to find that even ugly girls are special.

No. Trading Places. School Ties, starring Brendan Fraser. With Honors, starring Brendan Fraser. And Dogfight, with a brief cameo by Brendan Fraser. All of the great masterpieces precede me.

Wait. What about a metaphysical exploration of a boy who suddenly finds himself magically transposed into the body of a full-grown adult? He'll get a job, rise among the ranks, woo an attractive woman, and show that excessive "pragmatism" and "maturity" may be spiritual diseases, while finding our "inner child" leads to healing and redemption. That could be big.


01.10.2002:::  

Weather Underground, already featuring fewer ads than Weather.com (and no hovering Flash ads, which were cool for 0.032 days), offers a $5-a-year membership which would remove all advertisements from the site as viewed from a paying member's computer. An interesting plan for a company needing to generate revenue without going premium.

The tactic of premium membership is nevertheless an engaging, practical approach. Heavy.com now offers a free, limited selection of diversionary multi-megabyte Macromedia material of some kind, but paying members receive access to even more diversionary multi-megabyte Macromedia material of some kind. Metallica could offer a free version of their site with short hair, catchy pop-metal lyrics, and current legal updates, along with a premium "pay" version of the site featuring styled hair, black eye liner, and full-album MP3 downloads for an additional $17.95 per album. CNN.com could conceivably release a "slim" version of their popular news site featuring free, non-biased reporting. Inside, paying members would discover a vast repository of CNN's award-winning biased reporting. Also, Larry King nude (non-members will see a cropped image).

Indeed, even 0(zero)format may decide to go premium. Users could choose to pay for Toby's writing, or Dennis' writing, or both (Gold Card Membership). Non-paying visitors would continue to see our official logo and splashy color scheme - for free. Here's our plan: the premium proposal.


01.09.2002:::  

A new feature about my wallet, and the crisis of wearing it in the opposite pocket: I.D.


01.08.2002:::  

Christmas came like a landslide. My current stack of books-to-read amounts to nearly 10,000 pages. I am a slow reader.

Friends of mine can slice through a book in a couple of days. Not me. Yet I hope to finish the bulk of the stack by Winter's end. Hibernation calls. I intend to read my books, write for 0(zero)format, consider exercise, and shun as much society as possible until Spring. Now and then, I grow so deeply embarrassed about my life that standing in the light of company becomes a horror. I used to grow destructively depressed whenever I stopped writing; I write more often now. The same occurred whenever reading lulled. Living day to day without a book, my life became a broth - no barley or noodle, no meatball, no nutrient or weight.

I like to have a book wherever I go, in case I'm stranded in a dull place, or find myself alone, or feel depression coming on. All three applied to the great comedy of errors that was late 2001. It was a real Grady Tripp kind of December.

Books are lovely, like bees and honeycomb and faery dust! With stingers, stuck throats, and blindness.

A re-read of The Lord of the Rings equaled 1,008 pages. The rest of the stack, in no particular order, is as follows:

The Silmarillion, by: J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hobbit, by: J.R.R. Tolkien

Infinite Jest, by: David Foster Wallace

Strong Motion, by: Jonathan Franzen (He wrote other books. Who knew?)

Up in the Old Hotel, by: Joseph Mitchell

Men, Women, and Chain Saws, by: Carol J. Glover

Churchill: A Life, by: Martin Gilbert

A World at Arms, by: Gerhard L. Weinberg (Written prior to 911!)

The Vietnam Reader, by: Stewart O'Nan

Twentieth Century, by: J.M. Roberts (partly read)

The Sagas of Icelanders, by: The Icelanders (partly read)

The Quest for the Green Man, by: John Matthews

American Pastoral, by: Phillip Roth

Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker, edited by: David Remnick

Theodore Rex, by: Edmund Morris

The Watchmen, by: Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

Woody Guthrie: A Life, by: Joe Klein

With luck, there will be a new feature tomorrow about wallets. Bear with me.

(Cue sound effect of short-circuiting Ham Radio.)


01.06.2002:::  

A new feature: The Rumor Mill #3.

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"Well, that's the nicest chat I've had in a month of Mondays." - Barliman Butterbur

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On Business Day 4, there was a response to The Steve Experiment: "Is that your father?"

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Salon writer Joey Sweeney has written a magnificent Year in Music article, featuring a sparkling description of the new, soon to be released Wilco album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which gets better by the hour:

"An absolute fucking monster of a record. Sad and psychedelic, jazzy and poetic, breezy and weary, the record is loaded with all the clammy portent of the human experience. It begins with the lines, "I'm an American aquarium drinker/I assassin down the avenue," and just gets even braver from there."

Creed is awarded The Chicago Award for the Most Unbearable and Ubiquitous Artist:

"Everything they do hurts my feelings."

And Nikka Costa receives the coveted Best Sideways Cleavage Award:

"Ms. Costa is not here this evening to accept this award, so I will gladly accept it for her, taking special care to honor her requests that I thank God Almighty, her fans and the makers of Scotch tape."

As a special bonus, 0(zero)format has learned that the author, Joey Sweeney, has a band, The Trouble With Sweeney, whose site offers an MP3 sampling of ingratiating indie rock. Especially winsome are the tracks "He Has No Idea," "I Won't Mind Going Back to Jerry's," and "$500 a Day Hall of Mirrors." The songs are reminiscent of that nostalgia surrounding visits home after you've moved away, when bars are full of yearbook personalities, and streets are full of specters, especially after midnight. You drive around, playing music on the stereo, thinking how you've seen the world and maybe now, back home, you're just a short step away from figuring everything out, but it doesn't quite click because you're stuck remembering your first love, and even though you're not in love anymore you want to see that person and say, "How are you? I've almost got it all figured out." But of all the people you meet, that person isn't one of them, and you don't figure anything out. It's pretty sweet, though.

And what an album cover.


01.04.2002:::  

Obscure Chinese Aphorisms

Wise is the man who lets his heart sing, unless his heart is an idiot.

A door without handles is just a wall. Or a hole. Or a weird window.

A slave with no master is free, but a master with no slave is probably lazy and bitter, with a soft, oily body and bad hair, sitting around all day complaining to the dog, who couldn't care less.

At dawn, we are all children of the new day. Except for bastards.

Go forth and boldly seek your fortune! You are not wanted here anymore.

Pleasure and pain are twin serpents in the garden of your desire, which is full of weeds, animal carcasses, and poison-berries.

Eat your fill, no more, no less. Drink heavily.

Dismiss your injuries, like the senile.

One cannot escape one's history, for it comes with broadswords and bizarre torture devices.

Let your mind be an open bowl, and your body a skeleton, wrapped in skin and fatty organs like a stuffed chicken.

All paths lead to home, all journeys to peace, all massive critical injuries to heaven.

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MTV News announcement: George Lucas officially pronounced dead.


01.03.2002:::  

Bits:

The Yes Men offer a program called Reamweaver 2.0 that anyone can use to forge a replica of major web sites - with customizable word replacements. This page (look close), for example, takes the most current CNN.com home page, makes a copy of it, and swaps words like "Bush" for "Leader," "Osama bin Laden" for "Satan," and "Terror" for "Evil." Its purpose is to show that CNN and other news organizations may exhibit secret biases, that if they said "Leader" and "Satan" outright there would scarely be a difference in the ultimate meaning of their news reports.

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Business Day 3 of The Steve Experiment: resounding silence.

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Someone recently reminded me that Gene Kelly performed the title song/routine from Singin' in the Rain with a 103-deree fever. What did he expect? Jackass was singin' in the rain.


01.02.2002:::  

Meet The Homies.

The local A&P Supermarket began filling one of their 50-cent gumball machines with Homies a couple of months ago. We were hooked the minute we dropped two quarters and out popped Wino, clutching his bottle in a brown paper bag. He is one of a series of collectible gangsta figures, straight out 'the Barrio. This, ladies and gentleman, was a revolution in cheap plastic toymaking.

The Man did not take kindly to The Homies. Creator David Gonzales had met with startling success when he introduced the series to California vending machines, but when the LAPD caught wind of the tiny, Mexican American hoodlums loitering at supermarket exits, they put their big shiny boots down. "They glamorize gang life," said the LAPD. A group of Mexican American activists agreed. Payday, for instance, cell phone in hand and bling-bling a-blinging, doesn't represent the best of the Mexican American heritage. Bouncy, a spectacularly endowed female Homie, is not what young Mexican American girls need to see, let alone foxy Gata, most frequently seen acquiescing Hollywood, the Homies' #1 pimp daddy. Where, cry the objectors, are the Mexican American lawyers, teachers, and CEOs?

There is, however, El Padrecito, who is based on Gonzales' real life brother, a Franciscan Catholic Priest in Southern California. El Padrecito baptizes The Homies, offers guidance, and earns their respect through charitable Christian deeds. He is a "second father" to The Homies. He has his own website. Its motto is "Menudo for the Soul." You can email El Padrecito, or view his online archive of Q&A's. In one, he advises a Homie named Flaco, who is in love with another Homie named Sad Girl. Flaco is concerned because his friends say that Sad Girl has "slept with a lot of guys." El Padrecito replies:

"Friendships, whether with males or females, are sacred gifts and something which we ought to treasure. So be careful with rumors from your so-called friends, especially if these rumors may destroy a potentially new friendship with Sad Girl."

Good advice for Homies and non-Homies alike. Besides, we know that Sad Girl will definitely put out.

The Homies were banned in California, but quickly made their way to Seattle. From there, they stormed America. You can take a Homie out of the Barrio but...

Those we get from the A&P gumball machine are forming a mini gang within the potted plants on the counter between our kitchen and living room. We call it the urban jungle. They're representin' Westchester County. So far, we have six: Big Spooky, Gordo the Chef, Conejo, Wino, Gato, and the infamous Willie G (with Low Rider Wheelchair!).

We desperately seek: Hollywood, Loco, Bouncy, Ice Block, Jokawild, Rastaman, Japon, Payday, Chato, Shorty and, of course, El Padrecito. We have much love for The Homies.


01.01.2002:::  

Happy 2002!

December was a pig's heart, nailed to the door. But that's all over now.

A new feature: The Book Under the Chair, by Tobias.

Also, The Steve Experiment:

My boss gave me a frame for Christmas. I ran a search for "Steve" on Google Image and came across this fellow: Steve.

I printed a copy and put Steve into the frame. The frame is on my desk, at the office, not promintent but plainly visible. How many business days will it take for someone to ask about Steve? What will they say? Answers forthcoming.




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Dennis A. Mahoney

copyright 2002
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