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anti-press ezine 1999 11 19
ANTI-PRESS EZINE #11
"We're Positive About The Negative"
An November E-dition
(C) Copyright 1999 Anti-Press
Unless indicated otherwise, all articles by Anti-Press. Articles
submitted by others do not necessarily express or reflect the opinions
or beliefs of Anti-Press.
Anti-Press Ezine radiates from our Reality Center. We're presently
entrapped in the alleged city of Plattsburgh, northeastern New York
State, USA. (So when's the parade?)
THIS E-DITION: Plattsburgh Goes Gay? / SEND US THE TAPES!!! /
Trenchcoating in the Trenches / 2 By Viki Reed: Do All Men Aspire to be
Exhibitionists? & Blind Date (TeeVee Show Review).
=============================================================
PLATTSBURGH GOES GAY? (Are the Burghers Really Happy?)
So how conservative was Plattsburgh, NY? Back in the 1970s the citizens
elected a Roman Catholic priest as mayor.
So how conservative is it today? Not that much anymore.
The final votes are in. Plattsburgh is going to be the first city in
the history of New York State to elect an openly-gay politician as
mayor.
If you told someone back in 1970 that a homosexual would become mayor in
the year 2000, the average P-burgher's reply would have been: "My God!
That's a sign of the Apocalypse! The world will end! The Millennium
will be as foretold in the Good Book!"
Do we exaggerate? Read letters in the Local (news)Paper over the last
three decades. The leader of the local chapter of the John Birch
Society used to weigh in with his ultra-conservative views. He detailed
how drugs, rock music and premarital sex were a Commie plot to ruin the
youth of America, leaving this country open to a take-over by the Soviet
Union. He also stated that all the talk about Richard Nixon and
Watergate wasn't important: the President should have been put on trial
for treason when he visited "Red" China with open arms. (Communists were
everywhere; don't forget to check under your bed with a flashlight.)
Or read the transcripts of telephone calls to the Paper's "citizens
forum" where the average joe or jane could get on the horn and speak out
anonymously about the evils of palm reading or the threat of New Age
cultists in our schools. One time a great controversy raged in the
citizens forum about breast-feeding in public. A Canadian woman was
seen at the mall, sitting on a bench in public view, giving her kid some
milk fresh from the tap. _Only animals do that!_ ranted one caller.
The Mayor-Elect will still have to deal with that kind of conservative
citizen. They're still a lot of them out there; he only won by 104
votes. We've heard a couple of comments, indicating fears about the
future. With articles in the _New York Times_ spotlighting the
election, some citizens are afraid that a certain type of individual
will be attracted to move here. We have to agree. The new mayor is a
Republican and we don't need any more of THEM around here!
A gay Republican? Sounds oxymoronic but such bizarro realties are
normal for Plattsburgh. The party that counts Pat Buchanan as a
favorite son is trying to be "more inclusive", backing someone whose
lifestyle is usually a prime target of Bible-thumping conservatives.
We suspect that the New Mayor is one of those "compassionate
conservatives" we've heard so much about lately, in contrast to your
garden-variety "Let them eat cake" GOP fat cats. Maybe as a
compassionate conservative the New Mayor will condone cutting food
stamps in half for everyone instead of completely shutting down the
program and letting the disadvantaged survive on their own, living on
garbage can gleanings and roadkill. (It must be noted, in fairness,
that he used to be a Democrat and changed parties when he had problems
serving on the city council with the Old Mayor.)
Despite what that Brobdingnagian blowhard Rush Limbaugh might claim, you
can be TOO conservative. Some "traditional values" are OK but we
question the one about the woman (wife) being subservient to the man
(husband). One issue lurking in the background during the run for
P-burgh mayor was the rumor that the Incumbent had abused his first
wife. Yes, people make mistakes, but we don't consider this line of
"reasoning" to be a good defense:
"Jeezum Crow, so what if the Mayor used to beat his wife? What's wrong
with dat? A woman needs a good hit now and then."
Obviously this citizen really fears the future. During his tirade he
apparently expressed concern about a particular garden flower (Viola
tricolor hortensis) overrunning the city. Wonder how he would react if
he accidentally found himself in the middle of a Gay Pride parade
downtown next summer and the city's new mascot, the purple Teletubbie,
patted him on the butt? (If he was a true Christian, this concerned
citizen would just turn the other cheek.)
So how did an openly-gay candidate become mayor of Plattsburgh with such
a generally conservative electorate?
Well, besides the theories of Communistic or Satanic mind control, there
seem to be a number of reasons.
As mentioned before, the gay candidate ran as a Republican and the party
completely endorsed him. The governor, a Republican, paid a visit to
Plattsburgh and-- according to the Local TeeVee news-- he was putting
his "full support behind" the candidate. (Ahem.)
Also, the Incumbent Mayor "sucked"-- at least according to some people
who grew tired of him over the last ten years. Besides the ugly
wife-beating rumors, there were questions raised about dealings between
his private company and the city.
We didn't mind the Incumbent Mayor that much. At least he did
something-- got out there and sponsored street concerts, had new lights
installed downtown, stuff that made the city look better and generated
some ACTIVITY around here. (We remember one lame-o mayor who did
nothing but wear gawdawful plaid sports jackets-- the shady used-car
salesman look-- and complain on TeeVee about kids riding their bikes on
the sidewalks. Meanwhile downtown died, the new mall outside the city
limits sucking away all the shoppers.)
But even with notable successes behind him, some people didn't like the
Incumbent Mayor's management style; he rubbed them the wrong way. An
argument could be made that the voters weren't embracing a gay
candidate, they were just voting against the Old Mayor. Remember how
Ronald Reagan got elected? People voted against Jimmy ("Great Malaise")
Carter and Walter (Wrung Dishrag) Mondale.
So are the voters really happy with their choice? Voting against
someone is not how the system is supposed to work. The evil of two
lessers?
We could go on with other theories but what it comes down to is a
generally conservative political party-- the Republicans-- and a
generally conservative city-- Plattsburgh-- have helped an openly-gay
candidate become a micropolitan mayor.
Hmmmm-- maybe it WAS Commie/Devil mind control...
=============================================================
SEND US THE TAPES!!!
Dear Outraged Councilwoman:
What's on the tapes?
All of us would like to know.
It's been reported that you supposedly have the goods on some local
politicians. As a city council member it's courageous of you to make
such a statement. It reminds us of Senator Joe McCarthy and his list of
Commies lurking in the government. You say your secretly-recorded tapes
will make other politicians honest and that you won't go quietly into
the night after being defeated in your re-election bid. Bravo!
Things got ugly in the last days of your campaign when you were accused
of using a slur against one of the mayoral candidates, the openly-gay
one who eventually unseated the incumbent mayor (see related article in
this e-dition). Supposedly you called the openly-gay candidate a
"bundle of twigs or sticks" or something to that effect. Hey, we know
the mayor-elect is thin but he isn't THAT thin.
You state you never made a "bundle" comment and that you're going to be
sue the Local TeeVee station for their news reports in which the
accusation was made. Before your defeat, you did some damage control
and held an emotional press conference, stating that your accuser was a
"total, unfabricated liar". Huh? Unfabricated means not fabricated. To
fabricate something is to lie. Unfabricated means not a lie, i.e.
truthful. A truthful liar? Some cynic would say "Freudian slip" but we
don't care if Sigmund was a cross-dresser. As the target of a
"scurrilous" attack, anyone can get overwrought and might substitute
"unfabricated" for "unmitigated".
Anyway, we're interested in the tapes. Are they audio/video/both? We
heard that some were taped at one local eatery that specializes in
bologna cylinders smothered with beefy sauce in long buns (what are
called locally as "Michigans"). We've heard all sorts of stuff and it's
time for the facts to be unveiled.
That list Tail Gunner Joe waved in front of the cameras never saw the
light of day. We sincerely offer to make your potentially
scandal-proving tapes available via the Internet. After all, that's why
we're on the Net: we're not encumbered by the System, political- or
media-wise. Just send them to us as audio files or use .jpg format to
send select stills from the video (if videotape was used). This way
you'll demonstrate that those tapes aren't just figments of your fevered
imagination (as some cynics might say).
The truth shouldn't be hidden, O.C. Send us the tapes! Don't hide;
stand fully exposed!
Pseudonymously yours,
Anti-Press
=============================================================
TRENCHCOATING IN THE TRENCHES
Back in World War I there was trench warfare. Soldiers on each side
hunkered down in grave-deep ditches, cold and muddy. The routine for a
doughboy was occasionally popping up and taking a potshot at the enemy
while fighting off disease (i.e. trench mouth) and dealing with the fear
of a horrible death from a gas attack. A WW I soldier on the front line
generally had a miserable, gawdawful time of it.
Like us back in grade school and right up through high school.
We never enjoyed a day at school. We were shy, nervous, the outsider to
pick on. We used to fantasize about flying over the high school in a
fighter jet and strafing the joint with napalm.
Ooops. Maybe we shouldn't be telling you this. After the high school
shooting at Columbine, Colorado, everyone is on edge about young kids
driven to violence. Let's get one thing straight: we are NOT advocating
violence-- mainly because it usually solves nothing and just ends ups as
a cheap source of infotainment for the news jackals. (You should've seen
Plattsburgh when The Media learned that one of the shooters at Columbine
attended middle school here.)
This article doesn't promote or condone violence. But it doesn't ignore
the bullshit that can drive a teenager to flip out and destroy others
and himself.
You can call it "teasing", belittling someone for being different, not
fitting in with a prevailing concept of "the norm". Instead of a lame
word like teasing, we prefer the term _torture_, as in water torture, a
victim strapped down, his skull locked in place while waterdrops
persistently splash on the center of his forehead, each drop adding to
the growing agony, just like another insult or assault by the bullies
and other assorted jerks at school.
We didn't "attend" high school; we only "served time" there. We
remember one day a girl who was slightly retarded was being picked on in
the main lobby, the target of verbal insults by some cruel kids-- while
the guidance counselor just stood there and did nothing to stop it until
the incident got out of hand. After all, it was her problem, wasn't it?
She had to learn to "grow up" and "be tough"; she shouldn't be crying
and yelling, reacting to her tormentors. Such public-- and human--
reactions made the school look bad. Apparently in those days guidance
counselors were only supposed to help you find a "good college", not
protect a sensitive student from verbal and mental abuse.
It could be argued that The (School) System allowed the recent shootings
to happen through such indifference. And what are the Answers being
advocated by The System? More security! Guards! Metal Detectors!
Video Spy Cameras!
That's nice. But can a guard tell when a student, a kid usually quiet
and unremarkable, is on the verge of losing it? Instead of metal
detectors, maybe they should try "mental" detectors.
Or maybe they should try to PREVENT something from happening from
reducing the bullshit. Educating the insensitive torturing pricks in
how to behave like human beings, then making said pricks behave humanly.
And also giving personal counseling to a student who doesn't fit in
before his hate and fury explodes.
Maybe such common sense is finally gaining acceptance. Recently we
talked to a kid who attends a middle school in this part of the state.
We'll call him Slack.
Slack likes to dye his hair a weird color, wear Marilyn Manson T-shirts,
and lately has added a trench coat to his wardrobe. Like any teenager
he has anger; life ain't been fair to him. Family problems. At the
start of each school day he stands up but doesn't mumble the Pledge of
Allegiance to the American Flag like the pod-students around him.
America hasn't done much for him lately.
Like us when we were his age, he's in the trenches.
The school principal is concerned about Slack. We can understand his
concern after events like Columbine. But does he have to get
"buddy-buddy" with this student, patting him down for weapons? Hell,
the kid probably weighs 60 pounds wet; how's a wiry guy like him going
to conceal an Uzi on his bod, even with a trench coat?
From what we know of Slack, he isn't a prime candidate for a
spree-kill. He's just clever in the way he yanks the principal's chain.
At least the principal has told Slack that he will try to stop any kids
from harassing him, that such behavior is no longer tolerated in school.
So it appears progress has been made. Looks like The System is aware of
how serious so-called "teasing" can be. But why did it take a cluster
of shootings to make school administrators wake up to reality, to learn
how to handle things the right way?
And will the horrific memories of those shootings fade into the
background, forgotten, so that the usual bullshit will return years
later?
History. Is your school doomed to repeat it?
=============================================================
DO ALL MEN ASPIRE TO BE EXHIBITIONISTS?
A Tale of One Father, Maybe Yours....
By Viki Reed
You will forget you're wearing underwear that displays your crack to the
world with a crescent shaped tear. Then your wife gets the giggles and
yanks at the crescent, reshaping your shorts into a makeshift
jock-strap. You, of course, continue to wear these underwear.
Cut to ten-twenty years later and-BOOM! You're greeting the cable-guy
in a towel, and you know what? There's no shame in the inevitable.
"Yeah, I have a small penis, and I want free hook-up in the bedroom
too." This could never be you, right?
Don't be so sure. Life hurls enough crap your way and there ceases to
be call-for frilly concerns like discretion. For women, the result is:
panties turn into underpants and white bras outnumber the black lacey
ones.
Frankly men too busy griping about their wives' giant underpants to
concern themselves with their own hairy-asses.
For example: "Big Bear" as my father is known (he's a large mechanic
from New Jersey) has revised his body consciousness without fret, if
with some chafing. I can only conclude that my father believes himself
to be invisible.
For most of my childhood, Dad walked around naked or clad in jockey
underwear. These were shorts from years gone by, as close to him as the
many hunting dogs they'd survived. After bouts with whiskey, a sour
appendix, and a steady diet of roast-beef and gawumpkes (stuffed
cabbage), Big Bear wore his jockeys just hairs above the zipper. The
problem with even quality jockeys are that the leg holes do not contract
to correct the open-spaces exposed when the elastic waistband has all
but vanished underneath a manly gut. The wind sheared straight through
his drawers and past our heads, not to mention any passerby could see
everything God gave him.
Big Bear accessorized with a "snot-rag". ("Handkerchief" to those of
you who don't touch them except to fold them neatly into a pocket for
decoration; hanky' to those who occasionally need to use one.
"Snot-rag" to Dad, which he'd reuse, returning it to it's keep-place:
the elastic of his holey, ancient jockeys.) Why? My grandmother was
Polish-Depression Era: a real immigrant. Economy infused every aspect
of her existence. Dad got an ironed hanky every morning. Grandma would
scrub each one clean with her "I Just Escaped Hitler Hands" and then
bleach it. Voila! Fresh hanky in the morning. Later Dad joined the
military, where the anal-retentive life was reenforced. Ultimately he
marries my mother whose housekeeping style is best compared to Fred
Sanford of _Sanford and Son_.
With Mom, Dad was lucky to get any hanky, much less an ironed and
bleached one. Whatever boogers that flaked-off in the wash-cycle became
crispy surprises for the whole family. Knowing that the next clean
snot-rag might be days around the corner, the Polish part of Dad's
heritage possessed him. Rather than buy tissues, he found ways to empty
his sinus into every square inch of a handkerchief. He'd refold them
like some crystalline form of origami, discovering dry patches. You'd
watch him emerge from under the hood of some car: staring, turning,
folding, and blowing. He'd crumple the snot-rag and tuck it away for
later, refusing to acknowledge his desperate act.
Eventually, Dad figured there was no reason to grab trou when company
arrived. He worked at home. If Big Bear was in his Super Crust-Man
outfit and someone needed to pay a bill, they also got a show. I
remember easily distinguishing the new customers because they tended to
listen in distracted awe as Dad babbled on about their cam-shaft or
brake fluid. Ten more years of this M.O. and who's to say the
customers will notice that you're completely nude as long as you stay
seated at the table? We're all friends! Come on in!
Of course, Dad doesn't do this intentionally. It simply happens when
his work is done and every filthy stitch has been laboriously removed.
I've heard legends of customers seeing the flash of a 60-year old ass,
en-route to a closed door, air whistling. He's not running for himself,
he doesn't care.
If lighting is low or the sun's set for the day, and you greet Big Bear
shirtless at the kitchen table, odds are that his unadorned nuts are
resting on the cold chair that someday he'll offer you when he's wearing
more, like a snot rag. Or maybe he is invisible. Either way, he began
like you, my male friends.
=============================================================
Blind Date: The Little Moments...
By Viki Reed
Blind Date, (Universal TV & Gold Coast Entertainment, syndicated-strip)
This twist on the dating show is a hybrid of heavily-scented
reality-based programs like: Fox's "Cops", MTV's "Real World" and VH1's
"Pop-UP Videos". Best description?: Nothing is more fun than watching
video of DUI traffic stops, right? "Blind Date" is what happens before
the Highway Patrolman pulls someone-over.
Show after show features babes de-babing themselves by getting wasted
and otherwise embarrassing themselves. There's magic in the show's
premise: anyone wanting to have a blind-date on television is
conditionally a loser.
Losers are good TV.
Headier than "Candid Camera", but posing the same elements of surprise,
"Blind Date" reveals every pore at the precise moment of humiliation.
Your inner most judgments and mockery materialize on-screen in the form
of animated blurbs and comment-bubbles. I wonder if there is a clause
in the release form that the participants sign that reads, "Will not
take brutal character and personality assassination personally"?
Credit must also be given when a show instills a sense of relief that
you are no longer 22 years old (meaning stupid) and stating philosophies
seemingly shaped by song lyrics and TV shows.
Audience feels superior: good TV.
This leaves one problem: the host. Roger Lodge has filled-in for John
Henson on "Talk Soup", but more circumscribe is his constipated delivery
a la Rod Serling. According to Lodge, "Blind Date's" producers don't
give him enough leeway in contributing to the hilarity. What little he
does say is not much more than, "Well, I guess THAT wasn't a love-match,
no chemistry THERE." Is that the ammo he's using with the higher-ups?
Taut, unfunny hosting is mediocre TV.
Anticipate a fat-dose of girls that get stupid after a beer. Watch
douchey men demonstrate why they're single. Occasionally catch a
couple erupting in coitus inside the camera-wired Blind Date Van'.
(Pity the fool who has to clean that beast.) Hear post-date comments,
fresh-off the hung-over couple, as interrogated separately, yet fed
comments by the other party. Isn't that called baiting?
Baiting is good TV.
Look for stupendously funny commentary, like an animated brick wall
filling the space between dating partners; or a slo-mo, sax-accompanied,
so titled "Walk of Shame" after a date.
Nasty is good TV.
Also a bonus is the racial mix; it's not a white-bread cast. There
haven't been any gay blind-dates yet, but perhaps the producers are
still talking about that show.
**Viki Reed is a writer searching for a lifestyle that reconciles
relaxation with super-worship. Show biz is passe and yet totally
desirable. Viki lives in LA and writes in her sleep.**
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