Night and the City
Tuesday, March 31, 2009


Richard Widmark as the ghost of capitalism:

1) Watches his prize wrestler die in the arms of another, demonstrably inferior wrestler. In fact, the whole movie hinges on the notion that Widmark doesn't make distinctions of quality, only of advantage.

2) Widmark is the locus of female desire in this flick, in spite of, or better, because of, his anemic face and pleading eyes. The commercial sculptor downstairs with the gingerbread house full of cash doesn't stand a chance. He makes things, he owns them, but the point is to want.

posted by Greg Purcell @ 12:49 PM, ,


It Begins
Saturday, November 08, 2008

It begins, our new found status in Europe -- not the one in which we're boorish and obscene and violent, but the one in which America is unfathomably progressive. With how many European leaders will Obama have to sit and smile diplomatically, patiently, as they step all over themselves explaining away some gaffe or other, or perhaps why there's no Algerian President of France. I feel some satisfaction from this.

posted by Greg Purcell @ 12:32 PM, ,


The Patient Wakes
Wednesday, November 05, 2008


Got out of work at midnight and walked the few miles down Broadway from the E. Village to Times Square. New Yorkers were actively seeking Whitmanic, eye-to-eye contact with me as walked down the street, and whooping when they made it. In Union Square, thousands of people were hopping in unison around a pickle-barrel drummer in a vast human vortex. I saw an African-American man in a humiliating, canary-yellow Pax deli chain uniform openly weeping behind his counter. In Times Square, thousands were out, weirdly capturing the moment on their blinking mobile devices, like hands mimicking the movement of wildflower spores in a heavy wind.

I feel as if the patient has swung her legs over the side of the hospital gurney after an eight-year illness full of sputum, bile and senile midnight chattering, and is tentatively working her feet onto the cold linoleum floor.

posted by Greg Purcell @ 10:47 AM, ,


Three Items
Saturday, October 11, 2008

1) The closest thing we have in America to real satanism is hard-core christianity. Now, being that satanism is simply a type of hard-core christianity, this may be so self-evident as to be not worth mentioning.

But of course, I'm thinking specifically of Sarah Palin. Anyone in her position, who was not an absolute hedon, and who was capable of the remotest self-assessment, would have flat turned down her recent "opportunity." Alistair Crowley and Jimmy Page wrapped together had nothing so obscene to show the world as Sarah Palin's ophidian mind.

2) My own hedonism extends to having recently gathered together all my stray electronics, sold them, and received in turn an brand new XBox 360 with a wireless controller and a 60 gigabyte hard drive. Look, I'm not running for Vice President, here. Plus, it barely cost me anything. Besides (suddenly I feel defensive) I consider the novel and all its attendant self-justifications a far sight more decadent than any video game. It's as if someone spent all the time they could have in gainful employment doodling around with the singular, lonesome pleasures of typeset printing. The novel is dead, people.

That said, I find the games confusing. They're so filled with visual data I can't tell what I'm supposed to be doing. Grand Theft Auto IV is practically just an undulating field of brown, with voice acting. My eyes start bulging with strain just thinking about it. The upshot is that my chief pleasure on this machine is a cheap little throwback called Geometry Wars Evolved the Second, or something, which is basically just shooting at or avoiding blobs and dots of varying degrees of malevolence, very clearly delimited.

3) I know those best suited to understanding the economic collapse are doing their best to move the consequences of it onto me, and that the result could, for me, lead to every discomfort up to and including death. I worry, too, for the relatively modest retirement funds and holdings of my parents. Yet watching it unfold in real time, possessing as I do nothing of value (aside from an Xbox) I feel joy in my heart, real cosmic joy, at the horror and panic of those most effected by what, after the last eight years, cannot remotely be called a tragedy. I like watching these un-American jerkoffs run, though they seem to be running straight for me.

posted by Greg Purcell @ 1:56 PM, ,


Nothing to Inherit
Friday, September 26, 2008


If I'm going to have my ass taxed off, I want it to be for big, inspiring infrastructure projects. Energy projects, school projects, projects that create jobs. Obama wasn't really inspiring on this front, choosing to focus on moderate tax relief for the middle class (that essential cesspool of wankery) instead of talking about doing anything really cool with the taxes he would collect. Well, there's no use pretending that 700 Billion of that is going toward anything remotely cool or useful. It's not that you can go with the crackpot Shelby/McCain opposition on this one (hey, it just warms the cockles of my naturally socialist heart to think that at least someone's worried about socialism), it's just that the course open to us stinks. The next decade is going to be a strictly punitive one, as we replace in a purely negative capacity what has been gutted through privatization while watching streets, bridges, schools, etc. crumble -- and I won't be working any less, or getting any closer to my own personal vision of complacent wankery, during my forced participation in this debacle. Obama will win, I really think he will. I just doubt there's going to be anything to inherit.

posted by Greg Purcell @ 11:37 AM, ,