26 Fucking Years

I saw "The Gates" today. I'm a worse person for having done so.

I really wanted to like the Gates. Really, I did. I spend most of my time being negative and making fun of stupid shit like the Gates but I wanted to try to open my mind, expand my horizons and all that shit that liberals like.

In case you've been fortunate enough to avoid the whole Gates hoopla, I'll summarise it presently:

Two "artists" with suspiciously French-sounding names, Christo (Male) and Jeanne-Claude (Undetermined, probably female) decided to do an "art" project wherein 7,500 "gates," literally 20-foot-tall orange frames with saffron tablecloths hanging down, are spread throughout Central Park.

Incredible, right? According to some, remarkably.

You ask: but there has to be some kind of variety to these things?

No. 7,500 identical orange (saffron, not orange, excuse me) monstrosities sprawling throughout New York's Central Park.

Oh, you say, but something as simple as that probably didn't take much time to conceptualize and execute, right?

They started planning and preparing this in 1979. When Jimmy "Miserable Failure" Carter was ignoring the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. 26 years.

7,500 identical orange edifices. 26 fucking years.

For my entire life, all the highs, lows, joys, miseries, little-league games, spelling tests, middle-school romances...from my birth and residence in the Village (when my dad still had all his hair) to Long Island to London to Columbia University, these "artists" were planning this. And for what? To cause a nuisance? 26 years, millions of dollars...for a nuisance? I'm a master of nuisances and it doesn't take time or money to pull it off. These people are horribly inefficient, however exquisitely obnoxious they may be.

So anyway, when I get to the park I immediately realize that actually walking through the park would be a fantastic waste of time, because by seeing one gate you've seen them all, so instead I decide to one-up Christo and Jeanne-Claude by causing an impromptu nuisance in the presence of meticulously planned one. Now THAT is art.

I begin screaming to no one in particular. I think Camille was embarassed at first but she's a weirdo artsy type so I think after a while she realized the delectable genius behind my behavior.

I continued to shout for a while until I realized that there were several park attendants wearing vests that said "The Gates" and holding staves with tennis balls on the end of them. Obviously, this interests me.

I go up to one kindly old woman with a vest and staff and ask her what the gates mean to her. Camille loses it and tells me to stop, thinking I was being disingenuous in my inquisitiveness. Well, I was, but anyway she promised to tell me what they meant to her if I would do the same. Being a reasonable fan of the arts, I obliged.

She said that the gates represented the uniformity of New York streets. Then she said the paths through Central Park were, quote: "serpentine."

Unsatisfied with the answer, I began to walk away and she called me back, reminding me that I hadn't told her what they meant to me. I said "the Gates mean that even though we're all different, we're really all the same."

What I should have said was that the Gates mean that we live in a society where people can waste millions of dollars and 26 years on this planet in order to place saffron tablecloths in Central Park and be called "artists."

I hate you Christo. Get a fucking last name.

Put Your Arms Down

Almost every time I go to the West End I become further convinced that humanity is at its nadir and that it's all our fault. It's not that I have to wait a half hour to get a drink (unless I elbow past people who have been waiting and scream my order at the bartender before that guy Imax knows what the hell is going on) or that the mixed drinks are watered down. That stuff is amateur. All bars are like that but it takes real talent to do what the West End does, which is attract hordes of ugly, ugly coeds who "dance" all over the place.

If you've ever been to 'Stend you know what I'm talking about: fat bitches doing the two-step, shaking their ass and waving their arms in the air. Oh shit, her arms are in the air - that's how you know she's sexy.

Give me a fucking break. You are not "in da club." You are not fabulous. You are not "poppin' Cristal," you are not a celebrity, you are not even attractive. Just put your fucking arms down you stupid slut. Go order another "Cosmo" and mouth all the words to whatever G-Unit song is playing. Are you having a good time? I certainly hope you are. After all, you're doing exactly what they do in the music videos, right? So it's almost like you're a rapper's ho, except you're white, you're fat, you're ugly and nobody wants to be your friend.

The best part about it is not how they dance but where: mainly everywhere, but especially by the men's bathroom door. Is this coincidental? What the hell are you doing, ladies? I need to take a piss and part of me is considering just pissing on the bar just so I don't need to get unnecessarily close to these gyrating giants. Of course I relent and while making my way toward the bathroom some chick will always bump into me while shaking her ass from five feet away. Then, of course, she gives me this look like "excuse me, can't you see I'm channeling the emotion of the music through the medium of my body?" I'm sorry, lady, I didn't notice that your arms were up but now that I see they are I realize that even though you are a fat, pasty English major you must be out of my league. I mean, your arms are in the air! You fucking whore.

Even worse than the girls (all japs), though, are the guys who "dance" with them. At least the girls can claim they were dancing or "shaking their ass" or whatever other disgustingly almost-sexual euphemism they want to use and still manage to have a kernel of truth to their stories; the guys just stand behind them with their hands on the girls. Every now and then, especially at the poignant, moving crescendos of any given Jay-Z "song," the guy (almost always white/jewish) will then raise one arm and do some kind of strange pointing motion, usually downward, to the beat while shouting the lyrics.

Oh shit. He did the point. He knows the words. Is this the white Jay-Z I see before me? Is this the legendary Jew-Z? Get this boy a fucking record deal now!

You are not a rapper. You are not even a white rapper. In fact, I would be willing to bet that rappers probably wouldn't like you if they met you because you are the epitome of everything they hate: their listenership.

So please, next time you think you're in the VIP, look around you and get a grip and remember: put your fucking arms down.

Edit: And Playboy named this shithole the college bar of the month?