Rushfield Babylon

There are many stereotypes about what it is like to be a debonair gentlemen.  Almost all of them are true.   It is a fact that when you are a debonair gentleman, the world is pretty much handed to you on a platter. Everyone wants to be your friend.  Most people want to have sex with you.  Many try to find ways to give you money.   

But despite that being a debonair gentleman is a living hell.  I compare it to being the CEO of a Fortune 500 company: yes, the perks are terrific, but in the end, you still have to get out of bed every morning.  Worse still, although I can, and presently will, make you understand a bit of what it is like to be me, I know that I can never understand what it is like to be you.  And that is the true prison of debonair.  Thank your gods that you will never know it.

It was at age seven when I discovered I was debonair.  It didn’t happen all at once, the discovery was rolled out over 2 -3 weeks.  Little by little I noticed that whatever sort of clunky footwear I wore, I always seemed to walk on air.  With my peers I had a way of making them feel like they were the center of the Universe even as they couldn’t take their eyes off of me.  When my teachers suffered romantic troubles for instance  I was always right there with the perfect bon mot that wiped away all their cares. Somehow, I spoke French, German, Latin and could recite the Rubyiat in Arabic, before I even knew my multiplication tables.  At recess, my fellows remarked, in unison, that when I was near the world seemed like the 4th of July and Whitney Biennial rolled into one.

I was only in second grade, but there was no denying the fact that I was a debonair gentleman, and a debonair gentleman I would stay.

Immediately everything in life changed for me. I could be best friends with kids two, even three grades above me. I had an open invitation to any slumber party I chose.  I took my meals in the teachers lounge.  Kids whose names I didn’t even know bragged about sitting next to me on the bus. For the remainder of my academic career, I was excused from all school work.  The toughest kids in school were my enforcers.  The prettiest girls were never more than four feet from my side.

And so it was. And so it has been for the decades since, only more so.  Tenfold so.  Eighteenfold.

But there was a dark side to this.  A side darker than the deepest starless night on the moons of Jupiter.

It was the old tale: we despise the gift that comes too easily.  But when that gift is the entire world, where are we to turn for our happiness.  I became a creature of the shadows.  By day, under the klieg lights, my debonairness never faltered.  Everywhere I went, my manners were impeccable.  My handkerchiefs were crisply folded and ready in a flash for any sneezing lady.  My luggage bore tags from the great destinations of the world.  My smile grew only more dazzling.    But the real me, no one ever saw.  The real me prowled by night when he would surf the internet in stained boxer shorts, chortling at videos of Darth Vader going to the shopping mall.  The real me went for meals at Chili’s stuffed myself with zircle platters.  As the debonair gentleman helped out a Klutz falling down the stairs, deep inside the real me chortled in delight.

But the world will never suspect that is me.  Yes, the world gives me its jobs, its awards and medals, its love.  The world loves a Debonair Gentleman, and if you want to know what that is like, well, it is very very good.  But there is an ancient Sanskrit saying that he to whom the most is given carries the biggest burden.  And that burden is mine.

In an interview with Variety (behind a paywall but quoted here at Hitfix)  Motion Pic Academy President Tom Sherak promised to:

“take this organization into the next decade,” by recruiting a younger and more culturally diverse membership, launching a new website and incorporating new media into their regular processes.

When nothing else works, promise to go on Facebook, but seriously, talk like this makes me want to take Oscar behind the barn and shoot him in the head while he still has a tiny shred of dignity left.

The problem Oscar has is not that its too old, it’s that the movies it celebrates are no longer in the mainstream of American culture…the mainstream of American culture having essentially been given over to Transformers.   The studios have by and large stopped making the type of big budget adult dramas that Oscar - the dead center capital E establishment of Hollywood - was invented to hype.  So it’s become a celebration of indie dramas that relatively few people have seen and thus, relatively few people watch.

But damnit, that is alright.  Oscar may have been invented as a PR event, but hype plus 84 years = distinguished.   A century later, Oscar remains the last tenuous bridge to a time of grown ups and glamour.   We don’t need yet another ceremony to show exclusive trailers from Twilight.  We need one less VMA awards not one more.  Nothing is sadder than seeing grandpa go shopping for skinny jeans at Forever 21 and brag about how many Twitter followers he has.  Don’t make us go through this with you.

CALL TO ACTION:

Sarah Deming, a Detroit based hero is suing Film District for tricking her into seeing Drive.  The suit states: "Drive bore very little similarity to a chase or race action film…having very little driving in the motion picture.“

OCCUPY DRIVE!

(and no, it didn’t have great characters or profound depth either)

via MCN

replied to your post: On When Hipsters Attack

That said, Young Manhattanite is free to manage my 401k anytime.

replied to your post: On When Hipsters Attack

I dont have to be careful.  I  do whatever newspapers tell me. 

And I question how oppressed anyone can be while still having time to grow ironic facial hair.  

I know making fun of hipsters and hippies protesting is too easy a target…And I know that the cranky old man on Tumblr schtick, but in for a dime in for a dollar.  Watching these young folks with their ironic shirts and their obscenity laden signs and their provocative facial hair parade around in their protests, well, it gives a man thoughts.  I’m a firm believer that the best thing you can do with thoughts is to smother them in their cradles, but the one thing I share with the Occupy Wall St hipster protesters is an inability to put a cork in it, a tragedy for us both.  So here goes.

So all of you out there with your signs and lumberjack beards, you folks think I should listen to what you have to say about how to organize the economic systems of the world? I gotta tell you, I wouldn’t listen to what you had to say about organizing a ping pong tournament. If people cant manage their personal grooming properly why would I feel they are ready to move on to global economics? If they cant put on a t-shirt or grow a moustache without being totally irritating why should I want to move on to bigger issues with you? If your entire persona is based on being snide and superior and condescending why should those you’ve spent your life insulting be interested in a word you say?  I dont know the answers to these issues They are complex and all. But I know I could make a fortune at a casino betting against whatever answers you people reach. Trust you to say what we should do with our money? I’d sooner hand over my money to Bernie Madoff. At least he’d buy himself something nice with it. You people would just leave it somewhere. And then call me up whining that you need cab fare. 

You may have lots of good things to say.  For all I know everything you’ve got to say about economics may be 100 percent on the nose true.  Broken clocks, twice a day..But if you know what you’re talking about you sure don’t give off that impression.  If people had a protest demanding that everyone look both ways before you cross the street and I’d start thinking that maybe jaywalking deserved a second look.

I’m sure plenty of you are really nice people.  Some of my best friends are indignant hipsters.  And I’m sure when I look back 20 years from now I’ll see you really did know better than me which were the bands that were doing something unique.    But in the mean time, the best way to turn me against an issue is for you people to come out angrily in favor of it.

I recently was honored to celebrate a birthday.  About halfway through the day, a well wisher asked me how old I was and I had to stop and think about it.  I was one of either two neighboring numbers and couldn’t remember which I had been through the previous year.  Numbers have never been my forte, but still you’d think I’d remember this one.  I can remember my phone number after all.  And my zip code, which is a bigger number than my age.

I thought harder and still came up blank.  I realized I could do the math - I still know what year I was born - but what would be the advantage of that?  The result is going to be horrifying whichever side it lands on. Even if it gives me another year, it still doesn’t put me in my 20’s.

When my grandfather was in the old country his birthday and birthday were on the jewish calendar and he never did the math to figure out what the birthday would be on the Julian calendar or what year he was born. As a lad, I always thought that was the worst sentence life could impose on you, not to know your birthday and not to get credit for every year you’ve made it through.  Now, I see the wisdom in his lack of interest.

And so I have reached the point in life where when asked my age, I can honestly say, “I stopped counting.”  I hope to make it through this year without ever doing the math and ever knowing for sure how old I am.  This is the gift of aging.