It’s not entirely clear what “criteria” the “World Values Survey” “used” when “polling” the “happiest” and “unhappiest” “nations” in the “world,” so you might want to take all of this with a generous dose of salt, but like almost everything else these days, it did get me thinking about my own situation, because I’m nothing if not solipsistic, although I’d say that I’m probably 28% more solipsistic than Moldova, but a full 57% less solipsistic than South Africa.

In any event, some things to note briefly about what seems a frankly rather unscientific poll. Evidently the rankings are “based on responses to questions about happiness and life satisfaction.” Aside from the fact that nobody polled me to establish my personal happiness quotient as a percentage of the national happiness index, I do wonder what that must have been like.

Survey: How happy are you?

Respondent: Oh, pretty happy.

Survey: On a scale of 1 to 10?

Respondent: I’d say at least a 7.

Survey: And you represent…?

Respondent: The Netherlands. Definitely the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, happiness is always 7 out of a possible 10, where 1 is the least happy and ten is the most happy.

Now I’m by no means among the happiest people in the world, or even among the happiest people I know, but neither am I the unhappiest. It all kind of depends when you ask me, really. I mean, don’t ask me these kinds of questions on a Monday, otherwise my happiness quotient will be way down in the satisfaction basement with Zimbabwe and Indonesia, but if on the other hand you ask me on a Thursday night when I’m up in the bar and the weekend’s almost here, I’d be almost as happy as Mexico or Denmark. So I guess I’m saying, that if they asked Ukraine how happy it was on a Sunday night when it was just about to go back to work, it’s no wonder they got such a surly response. And if they asked Puerto Rico on a Friday night or a Saturday morning how it was doing, it’s no surprise either that Puerto Rico was all sunshine and lollipops about its prospects for the foreseeable future, because Puerto Rico was probably either dining with friends and loved ones or about to go to the farmers’ market with the girl of its dreams. And if somebody maybe called Belarus when it was in the middle of dinner, then I’d imagine that Belarus might have been a little testy to have to answer questions about its happiness while its dinner went cold on the table. I guess I’m saying that it’s possible that the survey might have been flawed in some way, maybe.

But it did start me wondering about starting this survey at a more grassroots level, say in my town, and then compiling the results by area and even by street. At a very rough estimate based on no polling data whatsoever, I’m going to suggest that I live on the fifth happiest street in my town, although I’m probably only in the 90th happiest house on that street (it’s a long story, the last few months have been rough, I’m not getting enough exercise, spiritual growth is sluggish, I’m kind of disgusted with myself at the moment). So my personal nation is kind of sucking in the happiness stakes, even though my immediate area appears to be thriving. But if you check back in with me next year with some smarter fucking questions, I’ll try to be a bit sunnier, OK?

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Frank at iFlipFlop posted the following photo, which he found at truthout.org.

Posterboard: $1

Black sharpie: $1.35

Flashing a shit-eating grin as you lay bare the lunacy of the religious right?

Priceless.

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So I’m not going to get into the whole Michael Jackson thing very much. It is what it is. And it will be what it will be. But when I read, and almost missed, the reference to Mr. Jackson’s “friend and personal magician,” I had to stop and ponder its ramifications for a few minutes. Can you even begin to imagine what it would be like to have your own personal magician? Do you think other celebrities and notables have them? Like, for example, does Ashton Kutcher also have a personal magician? Probably. Or how about, say, Oprah or Melissa Etheridge? Maybe. Dick Cheney? Probably not, although I can well believe that he might have his own personal jester, but that’s a whole other thread right there. I think it would be most awesome to have my own personal magician. I want one so bad. I would say, “Hey, Majestic, give me some magic, right now.” And Majestic Magnificent would have to stop what he was doing (whether he might be polishing his wand or ironing his cape or some other magic maintenance-related activity) and come up with some magic right there on the spot, ready or not. And if he forgot to say the magic word, I would drum my fingers and say, “Aren’t we forgetting something, Mister Magnificent, if that is indeed your real name?” And he would say, “Begging your pardon, Sire. SHAZAM!!!” And then I would say, “Now that’s more like it. You may be excused. But remember, MM, I may be requiring your magical services AT ANY MOMENT, SO BE PREPARED. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?” And then I would dismiss him with a wave of my hand.

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I can’t believe that in my post on the best films of the 90s, I forgot to include Heat as one of the decade’s best (unintentional) comedies.

In fact, when I rented it (and I did so upon being reminded of it in James Wolcott’s blog; I haven’t heard his commentary yet), I forgot that I had seen it before. It turns out that I had just blocked the viewing experience from my consciousness.

Heat offers viewers the chance to observe the versatile Al Pacino in a variety of finely tuned modes:

• see the wind ripple through Coiffed Al’s hair as he strides ahead of his subordinates;
• admire Important Al’s decisiveness as he hangs up on multiple co-workers in mid conversation;
• gaze in awe as Deep Al broods, carrying the weight of the world upon his shoulders;
• feel the empathy of Sensitive Al as he wraps grieving mothers in his warm embrace;
• fear Big Al when he screams “GIMMIE WHATCHA GOT! GIMMIE WHATCHA GOT!” at an informer;
• recoil from Nasty Al when, during an interrogation, he answers the question “Why’d I get mixed up with that bitch?” with the immortal line, “Cause she’s got a GREAT ASS! And you got your head ALL THE WAY UP IN IT!”
• recoil farther from Nasty Al as he confides, “Ferocious, aren’t I? When I think of asses, a woman’s ass, something comes out of me.”

Indeed, Pacino is so restrained in the role, so stoic, that you might even forget that you are watching a master Actor practice his craft.

For the deprived viewer who has not yet seen the film, and as a public service to young thespians everywhere who might wish to emulate Pacino’s technique, I offer these screen captures of this cinematic giant at work:

I Feel Your Pain

Holy Pittsnogle!

Holy Double Pittsnogle!!

Holy Triple Pittsnogle!!!

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I like the supermarket. I go there a lot. Where I live, we have the Giant, which is my favorite. I’m not too proud to go to the other ones on occasion, although I have to confess that the Kroger and the Food Lion do tend to be a little depressing and, well, Eastern European, no offence or anything. They tend to remind me of the time I went to East Berlin, when there still was an East Berlin, and they made you change up a certain amount of East German currency which you absolutely had to spend, but then there was nothing to buy, so you ended up buying a packet of sugar-free cookies and a pamphlet by Lenin. The shoe stores didn’t have any shoes in them. Insert old Soviet joke here. But really, it was kind of a downer. This is what I think about sometimes when I go to the Food Lion and the Kroger.

When I was in graduate school, I’d go to the Giant at two in the morning, just because I could. Now that I have a more-or-less regular job I can’t really be caught doing much of anything at that hour, so my visits to the store are more regular. I have many friends who do not share my affinity for the retail grocery environment. My friend Paul gets all disoriented in such spaces, experiencing something akin to a postmodern or otherwise existential angst. He literally gets lost in the supermarket and starts to worry about just about everything. The supermarket distresses him on a very fundamental level. My most recent, and lamentably now former, girlfriend, used to hate the supermarket. I’m sure she still does. She’d do anything to avoid going. She’d give me a list; she’d sit in the car while I’d go in and shop on her behalf. Somehow, this reminds me of my grandfather, who would go out in traffic to drive to the supermarket even when he was almost eighty and had cataracts, armed with a list from my grandmother. He’d crash the car pretty often and just pay the people with his checkbook because he didn’t want to bother the insurance company. And he really loved my grandmother, even though she didn’t reciprocate a whole lot, so this was probably one of the many ways in which he was honoring her. Maybe this is why I broke up with my girlfriend, because I didn’t like the prospect of replicating my grandfather’s luck at the supermarket, and because I maybe didn’t want to be with a girl who didn’t like the supermarket as much as I did, and I didn’t want to go to the supermarket by myself for the rest of my life knowing that my girlfriend/wife didn’t love me as much as I loved her. I don’t know, I’m clutching at straws a little bit with that comparison, but I certainly do miss her. But I really didn’t mind going to the grocery store on her behalf. In fact, I considered it to be kind of a privilege and an honor. If I were a writing instructor, I would rip this paragraph apart. I mean, what’s the topic sentence, for crying out loud?

There’s been quite the turnover in supermarkets since I’ve lived in this town. For a time there a few years ago, we had a grocery store called Farmer Jack, which is part of the A&P family of supermarkets. Nowadays their motto is something like “We’re Thinking Fresh,” but back then it was more like “We’re Stompin’ Out High Prices,” and there was a mechanical Farmer Jack suspended from the roof as you entered the store. One of the mechanical Farmer Jack’s legs would go up and down in a stompin’-out-high-prices kind of motion and you could hear the motor grind and groan. It was one of the most exhilarating things I’ve ever seen. I was also constantly rather surprised that the mechanical Farmer Jack always seemed to survive the wear and tear of all that stompin’. It was the kind of crappy device that you might expect always to be broken, but the mechanical Farmer Jack was kind of a trooper. honestly.

Back in the day before the Giant was taken over by a large Dutch corporation (I think they’re Dutch. They may be Belgian. I get my multinational grocery concerns a little mxed up sometimes.) and remodelled to suit the new corporate ethos, the butcher’s section at the Giant near my house had a big neon sign above the counter that said “MEAT.” It was the kind of sign you might see on Broadway, except that it said “MEAT” and not “CHICAGO” or “ANNIE.” This was also entirely exhilarating. I’d go there with my friends and we’d never fail to say, as we rounded aisle seven, “Look, ‘MEAT.’” And everyone would feel edified. Some of the more frivolous members of our company would laugh, but I never found it funny somehow. I found it impressive. And romantic.

Now we have a second Giant, that’s how lucky and bourgeois we are. We have two Giants. The second one is so fancy, I don’t even know if I can do it justice in a mere word painting. But you’ll get a little idea of how fancy it is when I tell you that when you get out of your car in the parking lot and turn around to head into the store, you can see the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Blue Ridge Mountains. How lucky do you have to be to live in a town where the new supermarket has a stunning view of the Blue Ridge Fucking Mountains? And that’s even before you go inside.

A few years ago, also while I was still in graduate school, we got word that Harris Teeter was coming to town. I don’t know much about the provenance of Harris Teeter, but I understood at the time that it was kind of southern and a little bit fancy. Because I was in graduate school, I didn’t have to miss the grand opening. I got up on the morning they were opening and went down there. They had lots of free stuff, you know like little pieces of sausage cooked by older ladies wearing toques, and baguette with fancy oils and vinegars for dipping. It was pretty posh, I guess, but it didn’t blow me away or anything. I’m still a little suspicious of the Harris Teeter for some reason. I always get the feeling that they’re trying to put one over on me. But we do still have fun with the punniness of the name. People variously call it The Teet, The Hairy Peter, and a few other things. But I think Harris Teeter is pretty much funny enough all by itself.

I’m sad that we don’t have a Piggly Wiggly, though. I’m really jealous of people who live in a town that has a Piggly Wiggly, because they get to say, at least once a week, ”Hey, I’m going to the Piggly Wiggly, does anybody need anything?” Or, say I bought something really cool, or got a good deal on chickens or something like that, people might say, “Hey, nice chickens, where’d you get those?” and I could reply, all proud of myself, “At the Piggly Wiggly.”

I went to Florida a couple of times. They have these grocery stores called Publix. I don’t understand that name. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as exciting to say, “I’m going to the Publix, does anybody need anything?” But I’ll bet that some people who live in Florida and frequent the Publix have a lot of fun saying, “I’m going to the Pubix, does anybody need anything.” I guess that would be kind of funny. But we have Harris Teeter, so I get that kind of fun from them instead. So I really don’t need a Publix for that.

I go to the supermarket even when I don’t need anything. My mother will call me on the weekends sometimes and say, “What are you doing today?” And sometimes I’ll have something going on, and I’ll tell her about it if it isn’t illegal or embarrassing. But I’ll always say, “I’m going to the supermarket.” And she’ll usually say, “What are you going to get there?” And I’ll usually reply, “Oh, I don’t know, it kind of depends on what they have.” I just like walking around in there, reading the special weekly sales bulletin that they have at the front, earmarking some particular bargains like orange juice or something, which can otherwise be kind of expensive. I wonder sometimes at the logic of what they put on sale. I’m sure it’s some kind of capitalist scam that I would have learned about in Economics class if I’d ever taken Economics, but I do get excited when I see that they have some Healthy Choice products at Buy One, Get One Free or something like that. It’s also weird when things are on sale. Like, soup is never on sale in the summer. It’s only on sale in the winter. If I owned a grocery store, I’d put it on sale in the summer, because that’s right when people don’t need soup. So people would buy it out of season. I’m guessing that people will buy soup in the winter whether it’s on sale or not, because it’s cold and they need soup. I think I might be quite good at running a grocery store, to be honest with you.

There are some recent developments at the supermarket where my personal jury is still out (I don’t mean by this to say that I have twelve of my peers in my head or anything, deciding on whether or not I should like certain developments at the supermarket of late, but it’s a just a figure of speech that means I’m not sure how I feel about some of these things yet.). For example, you can get sushi at a lot of supermarkets now. This feels wrong, somehow. I love sushi, but I don’t feel entirely confident in a sushi purchase from the store. For similar reasons, I probably wouldn’t buy, say, an engagement ring at the grocery store either. I guess it’s a compartmentalization thing. Maybe it’s a neurosis and I need to get over myself, and call me old-fashioned, etc., but I just don’t feel right buying my sushi from there. Also, I got sick a couple of times when I bought sushi from the grocery store. I won’t tell you which one it was, but it wasn’t the Giant. They wouldn’t play me that way.

Another thing I’m not sure about at some of the supermarkets these days is the “Self Checkout Line.” There are several things about this that make me a little uneasy, apart from the fact that I fear change and adapt slowly to new circumstances and scenarios. First of all, I don’t want to check myself out (that sounds like some preliminary reference to masturbation, which I’m definitely not going to make, so don’t worry about it, I just meant that I don’t like to scan my own groceries. Oh, see, now it’s just getting worse. Neither of those two preceding remarks was about masturbation, OK, just calm down). I like the supermarket to take care of me. Now, I understand that some people like the “convenience” of checking themselves out, and I wish them all the best. But I’d rather talk to a human and have a little interaction with my grocery shopping. Also, there’s a political point to be made. I don’t want someone not to have a job at the grocery store if they need one, just so I can experience the “convenience” of self-checkout. Also, wouldn’t you expect your groceries to be cheaper if you were in the self-checkout line? They aren’t, of course. So all of that makes me suspicious. And I don’t like feeling suspicious at the grocery store. It’s a place I go to get away from those kinds of feelings.

The other thing I don’t like about the self-checkout line is when you’ve scanned something and you haven’t put it on the belt yet and this automated voice says, “Move your….NUTS….to the belt.” It’s really kind of embarrassing, to be honest with you, because the automated voice is pretty loud and I don’t necessarily want everyone to hear what I’m buying, not that I’m buying anything embarrassing, although somebody hearing a robot say, “Move your…NUTS…to the belt” might easily get the wrong end of the stick. It doesn’t always say “Move your…NUTS…to the belt,” it only says that if you’ve bought and scanned nuts, so “Move your…PRUNES…to the belt” is, I suppose, marginally less embarrassing, but then everyone knows that you’re buying prunes. I don’t buy prunes, I’m just saying, if I did, I’m not sure I’d want the world to know about it, you know?

Sorry to go on and on for my very first Tattered Coat post. Believe it or not, I probably have a lot more to say about the supermarket. But I’ll spare you for the time being.

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Pool photo by Nick Ut, NYT

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Just when things are heating up for the GOP, you can always expect that old reliable “liberal” newspaper, The New York Times, to come to its rescue. And who is today’s superhero? Why, none other than our favorite Bushie lapdog, Elisabeth Bumiller! (remember the three B’s: always Beware Bumiller Bylines.)

In today’s Times, Bumiller publishes yet another shameless bootlick of Dubya: President Bush’s New Public Face: Confident and ‘Impishly Fun’. There is so much wrong with this article that it’s hard to know where to start.

But let’s begin with the fourth paragraph:

Awwww, isn’t he cute, makin’ eyes at the ladies? What a charmer.

Frisky, hmm? I think I see where this is going. Feeling a little damp, Ms. Bumiller?

It’s easy to be buoyed by elections in Iraq when you ignore the fact that they haven’t actually accomplished anything there yet.

Not just “fewer than many previous presidents,” but far fewer — the fewest, by a long shot, of any modern presidency.

Hard decisions like, “should I put ketchup on my eggs or just eat them plain?” and “Should I screw soldiers and poor people separately, or can I screw them both at the same time?!”

And since Elisabeth Bumiller has started covering Bush for the Times, Bush has been receiving regular massages in the “liberal” press.

Oh, what a MAN!!! (I wonder if he ever dons his cheerleading outfit for old times’ sake). Now that would be hot!

Georgie has been smiling lately because the grownups have given him a new PSP to play with during all those boring meetings. At a recent gathering on social security, Bush interrupted a Rovian diatribe by shouting “YEAH!” when he turned a Jango jump jet trick on Tony Hawk’s Underground 2.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Rove trembles as Randall Terry and Scott Heldreth become the new face of the Republican party.

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What a weekend of basketball, huh? Three out of four games went into overtime. As King Kaufman says, “Improbable. Amazing. Dazzling.” And as yoco says, “Best. Elite Eight. Ever.”

I’ll add my own superlatives tomorrow.

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than this?

Why yes, yes it does. . .

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I picked up James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces by chance at the library — the cover looked interesting, and the opening page caught my attention:

The story of how the twenty-three year-old Frey ended up in the back of that plane, and how he was able to beat the drug and alcohol addictions that brought him there, form the central narrative of the book. It’s a gripping read — Frey’s life has been nothing if not colorful. Drinking heavily at age ten, smoking pot and popping pills by age eleven, using coke, acid, and crystal meth at fifteen, and smoking crack by twenty-one, Frey was on a collision course with death until that fateful plane ride brought him back to his parents, who drove him to a treatment facility in Minnesota for a last chance to get clean.

If you or someone you know has battled addiction (and I imagine that that covers just about everyone, including me), Frey’s memoir will speak to you. But be warned: this is, at times, a difficult read. The most trying event he describes is a trip to the dentist that the clinic arranges for him. Because Frey is a patient at a drug treatment center, he is not allowed to receive local or general anesthetic as he undergoes two root canals and the construction of a dental bridge between his remaining teeth. His friend Hank, who works at the center, gives him two tennis balls to squeeze before he goes under the drill:

And that’s before the root canals.

As is probably apparent from the passages I’ve excerpted, Frey writes in a stream-of-consciousness style that bears some similarities to the work of Beat Generation writers such as William S. Burroughs. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of that style, but some reviewers consider it to be the major strength of the book:

“Nearly” is perhaps the operative word. While I agree that Frey’s style does make for a pretty compulsive read, I do think that the book could have benefited from a stronger editing hand to steady passages like this:

Much of the book is written in that style, which reminds me, at least, of the kind of stuff I was writing at age fourteen. But one thing that this book cannot be accused of is being dishonest. And that, in the end, constitutes its lasting value — this utterly naked memoir of pain and hard-won recovery is a brutally honest exploration of one man’s search for hope through the haze of addiction. Frey sums up the stakes of that battle when he describes his reaction to a lecture given at the clinic by a rock star who used to be a patient at the facility. After the star brags about the copious amounts of drugs he used to do, Frey wants to “give him his beating.” Instead, he lets his readers in on the central truth of addiction:

It’s an unpleasant truth, but it’s one that is worth exploring — provided that the reader has a stomach strong enough to bear the gory details.

Update (1/06): Recent investigative work by The Smoking Gun has shown that Frey shamelessly and repeatedly lied about many incidents described in the book. When I reviewed the book, I found Frey’s writing to be pretty weak, but I recommended the book based on the power of Frey’s personal experiences. Now that TSG has revealed that those experiences never happened, I must retract my recommendation of this book.

Memoirs achieve their power (and their sales) through a central emotional contract with the reader; the basis of that contract is the central notion that what is described in the book really occurred — something akin to Ishmael’s “I only am escaped to tell thee.” When you subtract the strength of that contract from Frey’s book, there really is little to recommend it.

Frey is a fraud, and his attempt to take advantage of those who have really had the experiences he described sickens me.

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