The Prisoner

"The commercials were good. The PalmPre girl. The Geico gecko. I don’t know what that other stuff was all about. Something about a man running round aimlessly."

- Anonymous fan review of AMC's "The Prisoner".


I've been looking forward to AMC's remake of "The Prisoner" for a long time, and my assessment is "there's 47 minutes of my life I'm never going to get back." I should just be happy with man's infinite capacity for distraction.

In order to explain AMC's "The Prisoner" you almost have to explain the earlier - and much better - version which aired on British Television in the late 1960s. The basic story: a man (who is never named) played by Patrick McGoohan - who might have been a spy of some sort - resigns from his agency, is kidnapped and taken to a weird ass place called "The Village" which looks like a small town but is actually a prison. The Village is some sort of high-technology confinement disguised as a small town with a jarring pseudo-reality of its own. What makes it all the more weird is that no one has a name in the Village - merely a number. The man wakes up to find himself designated as "Number Six".

Six tries to escape, but finds it impossible - the prison, however, is quite comfortable and believe it or not, has a small-town government headed by Number Two. Number Two wants to know why Number Six resigned. Number Six doesn't care to tell him, and furthermore, doesn't care to be addressed as Number Six either (but we have to call him something). For whatever reason, they just can't waterboard Number Six, so Number Two tries some scheme based in either superscience or elementary psychology to discombobulate Six and get him to give up the goodies.

Number Two fails. The next week, Number Two is replaced by a new warden (also called Number Two) with a new approach to cracking Number Six. And so on, through a whole sequence of Number Twos. Will Number Six finally figure a way out, or will (the new) Number Two crack him?

One of the strengths of the old British series is that all the "I'm a spy, I resigned, and now I'm in the Village as a prisoner" was wrapped up very neatly in the minute-long opening titles. Instead, the new AMC series drop their new Number Six (played by Jim Caviezel) right in the middle of the action and just seem to follow him around with a camera.

The biggest problem is that the Patrick McGoohan Number Six was an "individual", in the best sense of the word. He was prickly, and annoying, and didn't have much trust for authority, but also had a heart of gold like a hooker's. The minute the McGoohan Number Six was dropped in The Village, it was like a cat being dropped in a bucket of water. If Number Two wanted to be oblique, the McGoohan Number Six would throw it right back in his face. "Try any bullshit you like. I'm not telling you anything," was the McGoohan Number Six's approach to life.

The Caviezel Number Six, on the other hand, is sort of a non-communciative log. All of the Caviezel Number Six is internal, all of the McGoohan Number Six was external. There's simply no way to identify with Caviezel's mopy non-character, who is about as dynamic as a Swiss Colony Beef Log. His job seems to be:

a) be perplexed,
b) ask stupid questions.

Which means that all the heavy lifting in the series is preformed by Number Two - in this case, Ian McKellen. AMC dropped the idea of having a rotating Number Two, which means that McKellen becomes the de facto star of the series, because he's more interesting - both as an actor and as a character - than Jim Caviezel. And, as the review I read implied, the series should have been called "The Warden". Which means that AMC got something horribly, horribly wrong.

Perhaps its not so much a commentary on the worths of each series as a commentary on society. Caviezel's Number Six wants answers - but McGoohan's Number Six demands answers. If McGoohan had been dropped into the remake, he would have simply stolen from the Village larders and built a tent out there somewhere in The Badlands, where he could have been left alone. Caviezel, like the Character That Made Him Famous, is sort of a passive observer to his own drama, moving forward only when the plot demands that something happen. Maybe the other five episodes handled things better; the reviews that I've read suggested that they didn't.

By extension, the message appears to be that the men and women of McGoohan's era were active heroes. The men and women of our era are passive ones. We just let shit happen to us; our capacity for distraction is almost infinite. At the end of the original "The Prisoner", the series succombs to self-seriousness and incoherence (*); at the end of AMC's "The Prisoner" we get a fifth-rate version of "The Matrix". (Oops! I gave it away! Now AMC will be after me!)

You want to watch "The Prisoner". Go to Barnes and Noble or wherever and pick up the series on DVD. Avoid the AMC remake. Don't be a number, be a free (person)!


___

(*) Sort of like this blog.

The Art of Goofing Off

One of the great things about having the internet at work is that it provides a great substitute for actually working. Right now, my job has decided to count up internet use at work - I assume that they are trying to manage productivity, or more likely, have been sold a bill of goods by someone wishing to sell the company "internet productivity software".

Here's the argument:

* your employees have the internet
* instead of designing widgets, answering calls, or performing whatever it is you want them to perform, they're writing Twilight fan fiction
* they lose x number of minutes a day, which could be spent instead adding x minutes amount of value to your company
* if they didn't have the internet as a distraction, the company adds all of those minutes back to its bottom line

The problem with the argument is that it assumes that employees, deprived of the internet, will spend their time making widgets - you know, the same way your boss is diligently working 40 hours a week, not taking time off for so much as a coffee break.

Before some IT manager is tempted to purchase this software, here's what will happen - people will simply waste their time in they ways they did before the internet was invented:

* long coffee breaks
* reading newspapers or doing puzzles at their desk
* conversations with other cubemates
* long bathroom breaks

The other problem that managers of the "time is money" school fail to see is that this surfing-the-web time might actually help the company's bottom line more than hurt it.

Let's take Bob. Bob was spending 30 hours a week working and 10 hours a week surfing the web. His productivity level was 2 units per hour, since the 25 percent of time he spent goofing off made it possible for him to tolerate his job.

Productivity software was installed. Now, Bob can't surf the web and his bosses are watching him closely. Even though he now works 40 hours a week just like his bosses want him to, his productively level is now just one unit per hour.

Bob's former productivity: 30 hours x 2 = 60 work units per week.
Bob's current productivity: 40 hours x 1 = 40 work units per week.

What happened? Bob's bosses lost money by making Bob work harder.

I suspect that these time-managment type solutions are going to become one more management fad. Look, if you want a employee who will spend all 40 hours a week attending to company business and company business only while never doing anything wrong, you don't need to be in management, you need to be in robotics.

The Truncated Thanksgiving Week

The national holiday known as Thanksgiving takes place this week in the United States on Thursday. How do most businesses handle the holiday? Employees go to work on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The holiday takes place on Thursday, and most companies are smart enough to give employees Friday off, since they'd probably leave early, goof off, or use a vacation day to get a four-day weekend. Since many people travel for the "Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner" which is supposed to be a family affair, they wouldn't be there on Friday anyway.

This leaves three days for work - ostensibly. However, I really have to ask how much work gets done. For example, my boss will be out on Wednesday. Another boss from the same department will also be out on Wednesday. That leaves the two remaining employees - us - basically unsupervised on Wednesday. Not that we don't have work to do, but you have to wonder how much the supervisors care about it if they don't even care to show up.

The first three days of the week, in effect, are spent waiting for the other four. It might make more sense to simply declare a Thanksgiving Week. That would mean the addition of three extra holidays to the work schedule and a slight dip in American productivity year-wide, but is it likely that those employees are going to be doing meaningful work anyway? Every suit-wearing douche is pushing a pencil and already plans to be out the door at lunchtime on Wednesday - if not earlier. Furthermore, with the appaling lack of benefits most American employees receive, why not just give them that time off as a Federal holiday?

"But CINCGREEN," you might ask, "why wouldn't people want the extended holiday for Christmas?" I can give a few reasons:

1. Not everyone is a Christian. For people of other religions, there's no special meaning to having this time off other than just enjoying the time off.
2. Thanksgiving always occurs on the final Thursday of November. If Christmas falls on a weekend, do you put the extra time before Christmas or after it?

In addition, you can have Native American Day become a federal holiday. Currently, Native American day rests on the fourth Friday in September, where it is roundly ignored. You could make Native American day the fourth Wednesday in November. That way, not only is there a chance to recognize the Native Americans nationally and associate their holiday with some time off, but it gives the country some time to reflect on the ambiguities of Thanksgiving itself. (You can imagine how the Native Americans might be lacking some of the requisite spirit, despite the presence of pumpkin pie.)

Facebookery and the Art of Being NonGoogleAble

It seems that my wife and I are now targets for Facebook requests. This happened after a good friend of ours friended a prominent person in Daria fandom, who asked for befriendment - or was she passed on as a possible friend? I don't recall. The end result was that I think I now have three "Daria friends" and my wife - who has been out of Daria fandom for at least a half-decade - is now asking me, "who are these people?" Trust me, if you weren't writing fan fiction in 2002 or haven't visited our home since then I guarantee she has no idea who you are.

You might not get friended. As for me, sure, I'll friend you. But then again, I don't post anything on Facebook anymore so if you want to know what's going on with me, you're better off following this poor blog or whatever "Roentgen" posts about on the PPMB.

I'm not much of a fan of Facebook anymore, at least not since my mother found out that I have an account. As a result, I had to friend all of her friends (lest someone be offended) and now my Facebook account is filled with hundreds of gifts, requests, amusing things to read and other widgets that completely clutter the page when I check it out. If there's anything that annoys me on Facebook, it's to be given a widget or asked to fill out a quiz or whatever. I think the gifts are just stacking up on my page, waiting to be opened.

I ended up "friending a friend of a friend" so to speak and I get this e-mail: "Are you in this video lol check it out". The URL is some sort of bizarre conglomeration of consonants and since this person would never use "lol" in a sentence, I recognized it as a deadly spam flower with .exe thorns. Which meant that my Facebook and e-mail got about twenty responses saying "dude, you need to change your password". He probably opened one of those quizzes and the quiz .exe grabbed his personal information and turned his account into a spammer.

If Facebook is bad, MySpace is even worse. I'm not even putting a foot in it. The only social networking site I frequent is Twitter, and even then I only Twitter occasionally. My favorite social networking sites have always been, and will always be blogs. (Well, that and messageboard rants.)

This reminds me of a recent news item that I read. Apparently, someone got fired from their real life job because they had a little fun on Facebook and posted the pictures. I think it was highly unfair of those persons to be fired, because they never expected that they were supposed to be representing the good name of ConGlomoCorp while not flipping burgers or whatever it is that they did. I see it as just another example of the working world, the Great Beast trying to reach its tentacles into your private life. I'm more of the mind of that Dickens character from Great Expectations who almost literally turned his home into his castle, complete with drawbridge and told Pip (I believe) that if you asked him a question at work, he'd give a different answer than at home - the concept being that when he got home he disassociated himself completely from his work self.

A long time ago, I thought that it would be much better for Daria fans et. al. to start using their real names. I felt that anonymity had become too pervasive. Who the hell is that Brother Grimace guy, anyway? Or that MDetector5 fellow? If I met them in real life I certainly wouldn't call them that. For a while, there were quite a few fans that used their real names.

Then The Angst Guy had a need to disassociate himself from his real-life name and he because the figure of dread and penguin lust that we all know and love. An old time Daria fan with a very singularly spelled last name changed his name to Mike Xeno, and stripped me of the point of pride I had in being able to spell that name. (I can't spell it now, it's been too long.) Recently, a now-published author in Daria fandom has asked that all of his fanfiction be retitled without reference to the former real name he was using when wrote his stories. His explanation was that he felt no shame in anything he wrote for Daria fans, but a prospective employer had been Googling his name and wanted to ask a bunch of innocuous questions. He felt that he had no need to repeat the experience.

Face it, if anyone knows your real name they will Google it. And occasionally, you might be tempted to Google yourself, an act illegal in 37 states if your hands aren't above your waist. Thank the heavens that my real name is "semi-non-Googleable". You might get the conservative commentator or the famous singer before you ever find me.

I recently read an article on Wired about someone taking a challenge to remain hidden for one month without hiding out in the desert or the forest. Wired readers got a $5000 bounty if they could find the guy within a month. The man created the alternative identity of James Donald Gatz. "Donald" was the man's real middle name. (A mistake to give himself a middle name linked to his real one, BTW.) However, James Gatz was a name out of the book The Great Gatsby which was Gatsby's real name. The person going into hiding felt secure that anyone trying to look up the name "James Gatz" would simply get a big list of articles from F. Scott Fitzgerald scholarship. The name James Gatz was "non-Googleable".

There have been articles about how giving your child a "unique name" like Orangejello or Winner or whatever is an act which is considered by many child rearing experts to be a mistake. All it does it call unwanted attention to your poor kid, who just ends up getting picked on more than the average kid because of his weird-ass name. In the internet age, it might actually be a good idea to give your kid the most common name possible. We might end up with a bevy of kids in the future named John Smith, simply so that these kids might have the power to hide in the internet among the 10,000 other John Smiths, their online activities virtually hidden from any oversight - and hidden from a future employer.

P. S. A good read is The True Story of How Stacy Rowe Destroyed the Fashion Club, by ticknart.

Wicked

While in San Francisco I had the chance to see "Wicked" playing at the Orpheum. I came in with an advantage in that I hadn't read the book by Gregory Maguire called "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West". I could enjoy the play on its own strengths rather than concluding "The play is much better/much worse than the book".

The play is a revision of L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". The play starts sometime after the Wicked Witch's death by a deadly pail of water wielded by Dorothy Gale (formerly of Kansas). The Good Witch Glinda arrives in the middle of the celebration and Glinda confirms that yes, the Wicked Witch is dead and the Lollipop Guild can now come out of hiding. (/joke) As Glinda is a figure of renown, everyone wants the chance to ask her questions and someone asks what she knows about the Wicked Witch. Glinda gives a non-committal answer to this question, trying to pretend that she never knew her but at the same time, trying to spark sympathy at such level for the green-skinned outcast.

The rest of the play for the most part is Glinda's reminiscences. As it turned out, Glinda - then known as Galinda (emphasis on the "uh") - was a spoiled princess of a girl going to Shiz University and hoping to major in magic - the only practitioner of the art is Madame Morrible and so Galinda is in full Quinn Morgendorffer mode, trying to prove that she's perfect and popular. Like Quinn, everyone falls in love with Galinda when they lay eyes on her.

However, there is another female in the running for Most Important Girl at Shiz. This girl is Nessarose, the daugther of the governor of Munchkinland. Nessarose is confined to a wheelchair and Nessarose's caretaker is her green-skinned older sister Elphaba, playing the Daria role in our drama. We learn that Elphaba's mother was wined and dined by a mysterious stranger with a bottle of green liquor and the woman's first child turned out a green outcast. When it was time for Nessarose to be born, her paranoid father told the doctors to hurry the birth and Nessarose ended up crippled. Elphaba's (de jure) father wants nothing to do with Elphaba, and Elphaba's role at Shiz is to strictly be caretaker to her younger sister.

Madame Morrible, probably wanting to get in good with the Munchkin governor, decides that she will take care of Nessarose's toiletry needs. This leaves Elphaba without a place, and by accident, Galinda inadvertantly offers Elphaba a place in her private suite of rooms at Shiz. The two - spoiled preppy and bitter cynic - are now stuck together as roommates.

This is the time of The Wizard, who is the High Personage of Oz. Everyone wants to see the Wizard, even Elphaba. From here on out, the story of each of the characters is filled out through song. The story of the rivalry, and eventual friendship, between Galinda and Elphaba. The man each fell in love with and whom only one could have. The reason why Elphaba turned against the Wizard. How Nessarose became the Wicked Witch of the East, and why Elphaba wanted those damned ruby (formerly silver) slippers.

The songs were interesting, although I think the only song that's going to be sung in about 20 years from now is "Popular". The clip below has Kristin Chenowith as Galinda and Idina Menzel as Elphaba, the actors that popularized the roles on Broadway.



(Since this is for the Today show, I don't think Menzel is quite into character.)

My two conclusions about the play:

1) "Wicked" really turns on the waterworks. Almost every song is one of these heart-wrenching cries - Galinda is left to carry all of the upbeat moments and comedy, but the play is really about Elphaba.

2) The play reminds me strongly of "Santa Claus is Comin' To Town", which tries to fill up the back story of Santa Claus. This forces a comparison between both stories, and sadly enough, "Santa Claus is Comin' To Town" does a better job of it than "Wicked".

Compare the legend of Santa Claus with "The Wizard of Oz". Santa Claus's story is a little vague, and you can fill it up however you want to, with magic explaining all of the difficult parts. If you watch the Rankin-Bass animation, it does a pretty good job even though the music doesn't match up to a Broadway production. "The Wizard of Oz" on the other hand, is oddly specific for a two-hour movie, probably because its source was a book by L. Frank Baum, who expanded the initial story into an entire series of books. Adapting it to a Broadway play is going to force decisions - you're adding in all of this extra information about Elphaba, but what gets cut?

Apparently, nothing. The problem with "Wicked" is that "Wicked" tries to explain everything, and provide a connection for everything. Here's why Elphaba wears that pointy hat! Here's where that horrible tornado came from that dragged Dorothy into the Oz dimension! Here's the origin of the Winged Monkeys! After a while, it seems like all of this information is shoe-horned in to the narrative.

But it gets worse. The play wants to make an accounting of everyone who was in the movie/book. (Except for Dorothy and Toto, who simply "dropped in".) Here's who would become the Scarecrow! Here's how the Cowardly Lion got so cowardly! While you're watching the spectacle and listening to poor Elphaba pour her little green heart out in song, every time something in the play is nailed - without subtlety - to the books/movies, you just groan. For goodness sake, why do you have to "explain" the Tin Woodsman or the Cowardly Lion? There's enough freakish shit going on in Oz already - just read some of those other L. Frank Baum books. For goodness sake, why does everything have to be explained?

Another problem with the play is the character of Fiyero. It probably had to do with the actor playing him than the character itself. He simply isn't very compelling, and I don't see why either Galinda or Elphaba is attracted to him.

Then again, there's the other part of the play which might explain the above. Galinda and Elphaba become close friends, and they're all pouring their feelings out so much that there is a massive amount of hoYAY in this play, probably enough to power a dwarf star. Probably because Fiyero is such a failure as a character, you realize that if there's going to be any honest expression of emotion it's going to be between Galinda and Elphaba. Galinda and Elphaba - even on stage - are sharing little intimate moments all the time. (Look up the word "Gelphie" on the internet. There's an entire subculture devoted to Galinda/Elphaba slashing.)

As a side comment, it also shows why the creation of Tom Sloane wasn't enough to quench all the Daria/Jane slash. Tom just isn't compelling enough of a character for someone to say, "Oh, I know why Daria (or Jane) would be so attracted to him.)

Anyway, if you get the chance to watch the play, take it - just don't play a lot of money for it. As for the book, I've encountered it a few times at the bookstore. It seems to be a tough slog of a read, nothing there in a thirty-second flip-through to grab your attention.

Daria, Batman, Darth Vader and the Braves

I recently read a post on MightyGodKing titled “Mad Men and Rocket Men” which examined the cancellation of two very different TV shows: “Hank” and “Dollhouse”. The author’s point is that there was no kerfluffle over the demise of Hank; there is moaning and gnashing of teeth over the end of Dollhouse. This, of course, is explained by the fact that those who watched “Hank” were passive observers and those who watched Dollhouse were fans with a personal investment in the show.

The author briefly touches upon – but does not explore – the nature of fandom. I found one comment telling, and by coincidence, the unexplained nature of the comment ties so much into what fandom is.

The term “found object” is used in passing. In art, a “found object” is just that – some technological remnant that is repurposed; a teapot becomes a part of sculpture. The author, however, used the term with respect to certain kinds of literature, and I don’t think the term is meant to be used that way. I believe the author wanted to use the term “found object” with regards to certain types of literature/media as “having some sort of real-life property”.

For example, The Wire would not be a “found object” TV show. The goal of The Wire is to plunge you into something that is very much like the real world. In a way, one “stumbles” across The Wire the same way one would stumble across our teapot in the paragraph above. The show is meant to throw up a mirror to nature; the more realistic the presentation the better the reflection.

The author makes the point that certain genres cannot be “found objects” in literature or film or whatever because one is reminded at all times during one’s interaction with these objects that the objects had a human maker. These are the science fiction genres, the superhero/heroic fantasy genres…and of course, the cartoon genres.

Each of the items from these genres tries to present itself as a found object, and each items has a relative degree of success or failure. In the movie Star Wars, for example, a lot is left unexplained – the idea is to immerse a viewer into something that approaches real life but cannot be real life. Likewise for Batman or Daria. If it has to be explained why Kevin wears his uniform all the time or how Robin is able to beat up adults the attempt of immersion fails.

People who are fans – who have a personal investment – decide that the level of detail with which they’ve been presented is not enough. They have to fill in the gaps. A lot of fandoms on the superhero/science-fiction/cartoon scale are devoted to filling in these gaps. What I have found – at least in Daria fandom – is that Daria fans tend to have their thumbs in either the superhero or science-fiction or anime fandoms. If you’re a Daria fan it’s almost an even-money bet that you’re a fan of a genre that is not a “found object”.

(It’s also surprising how genres that wouldn’t be “found objects” have fans that explore the more artificial parts of the genre. There is a community of House fans that supposedly write their own fan fiction. What those fans find artificial are the relationships between the characters, and they work furiously at filling in those perceived gaps.)

Looking at the “found object” theory, a lot of my fandoms makes sense. I’m the kind of person who likes to fill in gaps, that likes to assist in creating the illusion. Which explains why I’m a fan of Daria and superheroes and certain kinds of science fiction.

However, there was one fandom of mine I couldn’t explain using this theorem – sports fandom. Sports is not a literary genre of any kind, and the only meaning it has is the meaning that you care to give it.

As it turned out, another comment on the post above provided clarity. It states that fans invest a lot in their fandom, to the point that fandom becomes a substitute religion. If you think about it, Daria fandom is like a religion in a lot of ways – there is canon, there are saints (among characters and fans), sinners, demons, objects of devotion, holy art, gatherings, etc.

One might argue that as a religion, Daria fandom is a very poor substitute for a real religion. There is no physical community of believers; that community exists only online. There is no overall message from Daria, and if you want to use Daria’s speech in “Is It College Yet?” as Holy Writ, then the meaning is not particularly deep. Which begs the questions, why do so many fans – even few in number – treat Daria with the kind of reverence that the local clergymen in the areas where each fan lives would be begging for?

The answer: because fan religions – “fandoms” – have removed the most unpleasant aspect of real religions – that of self-sacrifice and self-denial. You don’t have to give up too much to become a Daria fan – you just to have to have a sort of genial open-mindedness, and in some places in Daria fandom you don’t need to have that. It would be like a Christian minister saying that the only thing you have to do is love Jesus – you don’t have to treat your neighbors any differently or make any effort whatsoever to change as a person.

Sports can be considered a religion in some places – take Alabama, for instance. (Please.) All that sports fandom asks of you is to love the team above all others and to hate its enemies. And yes, sports does not have fan fiction (*) but it does leave a lot of unanswered questions, and fans love to speculate with various degrees of intensity. You would never dream of rewriting Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” but the Patriots-Colts drama can be rewritten ad infinitum.

Think about it: a religion where not only no changes are demanded of me, but a religion in which I get to write the missing chapters of the Holy Scripture? Sign me up for that.

____

(*) – Don’t ask me about “real person fiction”. Please, don’t.

Country Mouse, City Mouse

I have spent the past three days in San Francisco. This does not make me an expert on San Francisco. This only makes me the observer of the part of San Francisco near Union and Polk. However, this has never stopped me before from offering my unwanted observations.

* San Francisco seems to be like New York, but more clean.
* I have noticed a strange absence of black people. Maybe I’m just in the wrong part of town. However, I don’t see them in the crowds near Union Square, or in the part of San Francisco near Union and Polk, or really, anywhere else. Not as many as you would see in Atlanta.
* What I see is a lot of Asian people, particular on the buses. The average age of an Asian resident of San Francisco must be 65. All seem superannuated but Chinatown takes up several city blocks and in no way seems like a community in decline.
* San Francisco has its share of panhandlers, but we haven’t bumped into anyone really aggressive yet. San Francisco has about as many panhandlers as Atlanta has crazy homeless people in the middle of a psychotic breakdown, which is a lot.
* San Francisco is hilly. Very hilly. You had better be willing and able to walk up hills in San Francisco if you’re going to do any walking. This isn’t New York walking, where everything is semi-flat. San Francisco is a hilly city.
* My wife used to live in San Francisco – Oakland, anyway – but abandoned it. Two reasons. The first was that many of her friends died of AIDS. The second was the 1989 Earthquake, which gave her pause.
* I haven’t seen a lot of outré gay people, but as my wife says, we’re in the wrong part of town for that. We seem to be (temporarily) located in a little whitebread Yuppie part of town. Everyone looks very trendly. -1 Social penalty for being overweight.

What I saw, however, pleased me. Maybe it’s because I’m a fascist at heart (joke) but I like cities to be clean and providing foods that please me. (“How do you find a good restaurant in San Francisco? Open the door.”) I imagined myself relocating here, and all I’d need would be to make a quarter of a million dollars a year to afford it.

This got me thinking about the differences between living in a city – a big city, like say New York, and living in a suburbia. In each of them, you get a tradeoff.

First, big cities stand for excellence. While walking about today I stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall magazine store. Little did I realize that there’d be a cornucopia of magazines and world newspapers. You get off-the-beaten path bookstores. Every meal is delicious. If you wish to live a life that’s at a little bit of a higher level, the city – any big city that’s more that a Columbus, more that just an aggregation of population – is the place to be.

However, there is no convenience to city life. None at all. It’s expensive as hell. There’s no parking; a big city is usually no place for a car. If you want to go somewhere in your car, you’ll spend 20 minutes trying to find a place to park it. Which consigns you on most days to public transportation – which is well run, but you have to wait for it. Most of city life is spent on waiting for transportation. If you have no car, you have to replenish your groceries day by day. Waiting 10 minutes for this bus, 15 minutes for the crosstown, standing up in the bus all the way down because the aisles of the bus are already two abreast.

There are all sorts of aggravations that wear on your brain. The panhandling. The noise and the filth. The expense. It takes a strong physical – and emotional – constitution to live in a city; New York wore me out in about two years. (CINCGREEN was always at his craziest in New York.)

And second, let’s look at life in suburbia or in a well-equipped small town. Convenience is the hallmark. If I want to go and eat Chinese food in Atlanta, I climb in my car, drive around, and eat Chinese food. If I want an ice cream cone afterwards, I just pull through McDonald’s and get one. If I want new pants, I don’t have to walk six blocks – I just go to Wal-Mart which has several pairs of cheap and sturdy new pants. All of the staples of life are easy to obtain.

Unfortunately, there’s a dreary sameness to it all. If you want anything out of the ordinary, you won’t find it in the suburbs, or in the exurbs. It will always be the same movies, the same underpopulated bookstore, the same opinions and the same dull people. The land of fast food and “fast media”. It’s convenient, but it’s bland.

I skip mentioning the small towns, the places that my wife calls “a spot in the middle of the road”. The places that everyone with any ambition at all escapes, the places where it’s a good place to die.

I don’t know if I have any more years of big city life left in me. The big city is a great place to visit, but I don’t know if I would want to live there, even in Toronto. That old Jim Croce song comes to mind.

“I learned a lot of lessons awful quick
And now I’m telling you
That they were not the nice kind.”