Feeding the Animals Feeding the Animals ...

Feeding the Animals

I'm glad Mark Ames wrote this feature ("The Flip-Flop King," 8/27). He's right in saying that Klosterman is "everything vile in my generation." Idiotic, pretentious frauds such as Klosterman need to be challenged. But I think the best way to handle idiots like Klosterman is to completely ignore them. Guys like this (and New York City is full of them these days) thrive on attention and controversy, so in a way your article only plays into his hands. Anyone with any sense would see this book's ridiculous title and toss it aside, dismissing it as yet another piece of shit passing itself off as serious discourse.

I can feel Ames' pain, especially after reading the article, but even a wonderfully written hatchet job such as this only feeds Klosterman's insatiable desire to be a "celebrity."

John Gallo, Manhattan

Ad Buster

Those Thirteen ads on the New York Press website have got to stop. I don't mind looking at pics of hot young teens, but they cover up the text, and don't disappear when you click "close."

Ben Westhoff, St. Louis

Repair Despair

Celia Farber's romanticized lament for appliance-repair generalists ("New York City," 8/27) might have been worth publishing if she'd taken the trouble to do a little research. Yes, the trade has declined through planned obsolescence but also because there's no money in fixing $15 hair dryers. Many repairmen now specialize in more profitable items (vacuums, "big ticket" appliances, etc.); others join the service departments of appliance retailers. Still, most generalists have been driven out by the Big Two: their customers and our laws.

Most repairmen have customers who authorize repair but never return to pick up and pay. Liability laws drive up prices and discourage repairs. Manufacturers dislike selling repair parts because of the cost of facing greedy lawyers in court (even nuisance suits cost a bundle) and the risks of staggering awards from gullible juries. Burn a finger on your just-fixed toaster oven and you'll want to sue the repairman?but your lawyer will say:

"No, stupid, 'he' hasn't got a dime: We'll sue the manufacturer for his defective heating element or say he should have known the repairman was incompetent. When he says the guy has a license, we'll note that it's a business license, not a degree in electro-thermodynamics. When he mentions the guy's tech-school diploma, we'll say the school advertises on matchbook covers. We'll tell the jury that this heating element operates on 110 volts of potentially lethal electricity at 60 death-dealing cycles per second. But odds are, he'll settle out of court when we mention that the half-million similar elements he's sold raise the prospect of the biggest class-action suit since silicone breast implants."

Moans like "Plastic. It used to be metal" are a half-century old now. Once they had some legitimacy; today almost none. Almost invariably, the substitutes (plastic, fiberglass, etc.) outperform metal, which often was used only for lack of an alternative.

All in all, John Galsworthy covered this ground nearly a century ago, and he could write.

Bill Marsano, Manhattan

No Irony Here, Mate

Bad news, guys: Mark Ames' prose ("The Flip-Flop King," 8/27) is as annoying, immature and stupid as Klosterman's. I couldn't even make it through his boring bluster; I tried continuing, then skimming before giving up.

"[Klosterman] is a one-man prose polluter, a living WMD employing the dummy ass-head as a delivery system. And I will forever hate this ass-creature for the pain and suffering he has caused me." Ames is one of the clunkiest, most unqualified writers I've seen in eons and I'm guessing deadlines kept you from sending this dump to rewrite.

If you're going to pick on other writers, don't do it by being talentless yourselves. Or is Ames' writing "ironic?"

Mark Vitale, Brooklyn

Yes, Bravo to Us

My first reaction to the Klosterman review? Did my old gang of university newspaper punk mates get cranked on moonshine and take over New York Press? What the hell was that?!

Every single aspect of Mark Ames' piece was, though apparently heartfelt, savage. I'm left seriously questioning his ability for sound cultural references and, frankly, his sanity.

Furthermore, apparently the editors of New York Press were giddy on the puerile fumes of Ames' copy when they set about designing a cover. The line "Please Kill Me"?well, that's just insanity. Open a window, go for a walk, just don't get jacked on hysterical vitriol and lose your grip on editorial responsibility. Unless, of course, the new editorial direction of New York Press, comprises vicious personal attacks. In which case, bravo! Point taken.

Don Hoyt Gorman, Assistant Editor, SEED Magazine, Manhattan

It's the Economy, MUGGER

Russ Smith certainly looks at the White House bum George W. Bush through rose-colored glasses (MUGGER, 9/3). Smith may think that the economy is in great shape and won't be an issue in 2004, but he is wrong. The fact is that in November 2004, no matter how high the stock market is, the deficit will still be hundreds of billions of dollars.

Bush inherited a surplus. It was his bone-headed approach to the economy that created this deficit, which is not going away. Also with the loss of three million jobs, Bush will be the first president since Hoover to experience job loss. Bush's mishandling of the economy will be a campaign issue?you can depend on it.

Reba Shimansky, Brooklyn

Undecided Voter

I've got a few complaints about your paper, but I haven't yet decided if I hate the new editors or not.

What's up with your infatuation with Mr. Wiggles? That strip must have been a pants pisser?when you were eight years old! It's barely even stupid and never comes close to being funny. We're embarrassed for you. FHM wouldn't even run this pap because it's too immature. By contrast, the New York Post's Sean Delonas is often very stupid, but still funny.

And what's with your continual harping on the smoking ban? Isn't that the Post's job? I thought New York Press fancied itself a stable of "rebels" who don't follow the crowd. I'm no fan of government intruding in our private lives, but the debate has been put to rest, because smoking tobacco isn't like eating fatty foods. You pig out on chocolate and there's no way in hell I'm going to get a cavity or a spare tire from your bad habits, so please stop with the bullshit.

If you're going to print the same old opinions that we read in all the other papers, then why should anyone care? Your readers poll is a perfect example; it offers no thought-provoking questions. Same as it ever was.

Janice Amato, Manhattan

Oh, Woe! Woe Is Us!

Whilst reading the review of Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, I found myself asking the following questions: "Is this a joke?"

"Is there a longstanding Klosterman-Ames feud?" And lastly, possibly most importantly, "Would it be possible to take down the melodrama just a notch?"

Allison Escoto, Queens

Gone Daddy Gone

MUGGER: I don't read your ex-paper every week, but this is my impression: You built a successful business and were raising cosmopolitan kids in the most important city in the world. You then left it all to return to some awful backwater because you were afraid of another 9/11 and didn't like the mayor, his taxes and his cigarette policy. I assume for your sake that I'm wrong and hope you'll enlighten me so I can regain my previously favorable opinion of you.

J. Harris, Manhattan

Lindbergh, Baby

C.J. Sullivan: Just wanted you to know that I enjoyed your little article about the Lindbergh case ("Bronx Stroll," 3/5). I conduct annual spring bus tours of the sites in the Bronx connected with the story. Each tour is limited to 24 participants and includes lunch at one of the sites. We don't go inside any of the sites, but participants are invited to enter the bakery that Hauptmann said provided his alibi on the night of the crime.

Richard Sloan, Massapequa, NY

Who Rules?

Signorile: I often read your column, and I applaud the way you can succinctly sum up what most of us are feeling about the way things have transpired since Dubya stole office.

We are all aggrieved at the spiraling out of control of our nation and what used to be called the political process. It's great to have someone point out that the emperor (lower case "e") truly has no clothes, scruples, conscience or brain; especially since so few in the media are doing it. This administration is the worst. Ever. Period. I look forward to your next column.

Sergio Baradat, Manhattan

Smith vs. Edwards?

MUGGER: I just came across your column today for the first time. I loved it! My main question is: Have you taken on our local homeboy; Breck-girl John Edwards? I went to school with this guy when he was at NC State University. He ain't going to the White House. He's likely not going back to the Senate. About all he's doing is making North Carolinians look foolish for sending him to Washington the first time.

I have a thought on the 60s generation that sort of works with your recent column. (Disclosure: I was born in 1953, I did inhale and I'm a white middle-class male.) My lefty contemporaries are panicked about George Bush getting reelected because if GWB controls the executive and appoints the judiciary for another four years the 1960s will be effectively dead. The judicial turnover will be almost 35 to 40 percent and the critical mass of old holdover lefties will be thoroughly diluted and forever weakening.

The next generation came of age under Reagan, and the one following that has never lost a war?and thinks Vietnam is about as relevant as the Boer War. I know this because I have one for a son. I recommend you go out and talk to current young adults. You will be amazed at the scorn they have for baby boomers as a group.

Sorry about the rant?just getting ready for the long weekend. You're a damn good writer. I'll make it a point to keep up with you in the future.

Richard Pierce, Huntersville, NC

Wesley, to the Maxx

Signorile: First, I would like to thank you for "The Gist." I find it incredibly informative and entertaining. If only more people had the courage to give us the facts the way you do, maybe things would be a little different. That said, I would like to relate to you an experience I had just a few short moments ago.

I am a 34-year-old white gay man. I am six-foot-two and weigh 300 pounds. My hair is buzzed short, and I sport numerous tattoos and piercings. After being asked if I was a skinhead too many times to count, I had the word "QUEER" tattooed across the back of my head. I had this tattoo done to show people that you can't judge someone by their appearance and, more importantly, to show that I was proud of who I am.

I am currently living in Pensacola, Fl. Earlier this evening I went outside to smoke a cigarette in my backyard and heard the sounds of soft whistles and muted laughter. I approached the gate leading to my front yard and opened it. As I looked down my street to see who was making the noises, my blood ran cold. Coming down my street very slowly was a pickup truck. There were a few men inside and a few sitting in the back. These men were shining flashlights into the yards and saying "We see you". As they came closer, I crept back into my yard and closed the gate. The men drove to the end of my dead-end street, turned around and left. Only to go down the next street doing and saying the same things.

I grew up in Connecticut with a cornfield across the street from my house. Abuse of every kind was placed upon me for the entire time I was in public school. I suffered abuse at the hands of family members. I have lived in cities like Hartford, Detroit and Sacramento. I have come in contact with and been befriended by the likes of gang-bangers, pimps, prostitutes, junkies and felons. I have also been a friend of very well-to-do, educated and rich individuals.

I have experienced a lot in my short time on this earth. I am a romantic with an optimistic outlook, yet I am fully aware of the injustices that occur continually in this world to the gay community. Keeping these things in mind, I still believe that eventually things will change and every GLBT person will be treated fairly and with the dignity that we deserve.

The incident I experienced tonight has codified for me the fact that as long as the religious-right conservatives and their hate-mongering political pawns are in power, we will all someday find ourselves cowering behind our gates waiting for a bunch of drunk red-neck yahoos to drive by so we can feel safe again.

I'll chalk this up to one of those moments in my life that will strengthen my resolve and hopefully teach me something.

J. Wesley Maxx, Pensacola, FL

Armond's Applecart

In his review of The Battle of Shaker Heights, Armond White finally manages to be misinterpretive, hypocritical and simply incorrect all at once, instead of his usual one or two of these ("Film," 8/27). He accuses both the Village Voice and his Press compatriot Matt Zoller Seitz of "soft-headed non-thinking" for stating that Shaker "cannot be viewed fairly because its production process was exposed on...Project Greenlight."

Yet White misreads those criticisms; these other reviews (which, he neglects to take into account, were of the HBO show, not the movie) suggested not that Shaker couldn't be judged independently, only that people who had already seen Greenlight might have a hard time putting it out of their minds while watching the feature?hardly an unfair speculation. (Upsetting White's apple cart further, the Voice did wind up reviewing the film independently ?and liked it!)

Then White goes and engages in the exact same kind of "non-thinking" by spending more of his own Shaker review discussing Greenlight than addressing the film itself. Along the way, he indulges in one of his favorite sports: off-handedly slagging an otherwise well-received movie, in this case 28 Days Later, which he asserts that "most of the public...stay[ed] away from." Reality check, Armond: Days' $44 million in the U.S. and counting may not be blockbuster business, but it's a damn good haul for a film that opened on less than 1500 screens against an onslaught of summer megamovies and their saturation advertising.

But then, reality has never had much to do with White's reviews. Even as he constantly spouts off about his quest for cinematic "truth," he consistently (and, it sometimes seems, willfully) misrepresents the facts of the films he covers, misjudges other critics' responses to them, and just plain gets things wrong. This has been happening from his early days with the Press (remember Cop Land's "Being white [sic] is not a bulletproof vest"?), and has only become more arrogant as he puts himself up on a pedestal, high above the rest of the critical establishment. One moment he's attacking them for supporting Hollywood's blockbuster mentality (as if he were the only reviewer to find fault with The Matrix Reloaded), the next he's trashing them for letting down a film he believes in (like A.I., which, as anyone paying attention that summer would have noticed, actually got positive notices from any number of major critics).

His commentary is at its most egregious, however, when it comes to issues of race. Earlier this year, he offensively played the race card when he suggested that critics ignored David Gordon Green's George Washington and embraced Green's All the Real Girls because the former centered on black characters and the latter on whites. The truth, of course, was that Washington was heavily lauded upon its release, even winding up on a number of ten-best lists. Then there was his appearance on the tv documentary BaadAsssss Cinema, in which he stated that few people responded to the social commentary in Sweet Sweetback's BaadAsssss Song upon its initial release. Oh, so it was just the sex and violence that black audiences were getting off on back then, right? Good thing there have been people like White (who would no doubt consider himself one of those few) to enlighten them in the years since.

It's clear at this point that no amount of objection will sway White from continuing his $20-word-laden reviewing style (he gives every indication of intentionally courting controversy), but it would be nice if he'd at least get his facts straight.

Michael Gingold, Manhattan

It Was Foul

Armond White ("Film," 8/27) wrote: "When a test screening of Shaker Heights received a less than 55 percent favorable response, the blame is put on the directors, not on Moore and Miramax's decision that Beeney's sensitive script be turned into a teen laff-riot."

I believe fearful producers repeatedly advised these directors to play down the comedy because comedy is so clearly their strong suit (Battle attempts to balance both comedic and dramatic tones). They did. After the low test scores, they were forced to create a comedy with material that had been skewed more toward drama.

I agree that the story was meant to have sensitive dramatic elements. However, playing up the drama would have been problematic in my opinion, and I think it's a script problem.

One of the biggest obstacles was that the story is riddled with cliches, under-defined characters and tonal inconsistencies; like the over-the-top revenge plot against the school bully or the conveniently stupid teacher, a cheap device to make the protagonist smarter.

Formula thinking is obvious in how Beeney describes female characters. In Beeney's script, all females must be attractive. Sarah is described as: "plain-looking now but she'll be beautiful later when she figures out who she is." The mother is described as the type of mom other kids think is hot. There's absolutely no reason for her to be anything more than average.

Other problems include: Creating a tidy ending, with reconciliation unlikely given his parent's reality. For example, Dad's a lifelong alcoholic and mom's apparently living in a stupor of her own?effectively a co-dependent. However, neither character was fleshed out sufficiently (in the script) and so, reconciliation or no, Kelly's responses were confusing. It would have been difficult to make a sensitive drama resonate from such sketchy surrounding circumstances. I believe the script wasn't fully hatched.

Armond White said: "The hatred Moore expresses for his director-team was a shocking revelation that Project Greenlight is only about the arrogance of Hollywood players attempting to aggrandize themselves."

I agree that the king of teen sexual flicks seems an unlikely source to produce high quality "indies." This is not based on what I know about how indies are made. They're usually done with preexisting collaborators, not with writers and directors thrown together. Since comparatively high-demand Hollywood stars are absent, scheduling is less of a hassle and they can shoot and reshoot more easily on less than a million. And of course there's a lot more time to edit. The only advantage was a much bigger budget, though by film standards, comparatively low. This project was neither fish nor fowl.

Ellen Albee, Brooklyn

Arnie's No Ronnie

Thanks very much for your attention to and consideration of my letter and may God bless. MUGGER's qualified prediction of a Schwarzenegger victory in California may be dubious (MUGGER, 8/13), but he deserves credit for avoiding a blunder that some other, lazier writers did not: comparing Schwarzenegger to another famous "actor-turned-politician," Ronald Reagan.

The only comparisons that exist between Schwarzenegger and Reagan are ones that make Schwarzenegger look lousy and make the current sadness that is the Republican party all the more pathetic. Reagan was an insurgent in the finest tradition of American rebelliousness, and headed a true anti-establishment movement that came to be called the Reagan Revolution. Schwarzenegger is nothing but another mainstream wishy-washy quasi-liberal Republican who sucks around for "support" among the wealthy elite types he claimed he would be independent from.

Reagan withdrew America from foreign entanglements in places like Lebanon, kept America out of any large-scale overseas military conflict throughout his tenure, managed to help win the Cold War regardless of his "isolationism" and presided over a relatively prosperous time at home. During that same time, Schwarzenegger was helping to fill a generation's mind with super-macho, utterly unrealistic images of violence and cultivating the corny Hollywood "machismo" he displays in his campaign today. We see that same cheap machismo on display in Washington as a Bush America, to its future detriment, violently invades countries that just happen to be oil-rich.

Reagan was an unabashed Christian and worshipper of God who would never have stood silent while some hack federal judge removed the Ten Commandments from a state capitol. Reagan was anti-abortion without reservation. Schwarzenegger's religious views are as unclear as what he thinks he and Warren Buffet are going to do about California's economy. He is in favor of babies being killed in their mother's wombs. And the current White House says of the Ten Commandments case something like "uh?well, we like the Ten Commandments, but...uhh?"

Reagan, a child of real poverty, never signed federal bills that threw poor people off of welfare and was known for his unheralded and humbly secret personal aid to the poor. It took a liberal Democrat named Clinton and the Bush generation of petty yuppie tyrants in the Republican Party to spawn the anti-poor welfare bill of 1996. And Schwarzenegger, a self-created freak of nature who got lucky, drools a sun-addled "will to power" philosophy of success while shaking hands with black kids in Harlem to show how cool he is.

Such was the Republican Party of the 80s. And such is the Republican Party of today. How far a political party can fall in so little time. And small wonder that some of us voters have always refused to belong to one.

Jack Seney, Queens