Backwards City

An Exercise in Disambiguation

2008-07-17T14:15:00.007-04:00

Dear Internet,

Did you know that if you, innocent as a lamb in snow, are looking for sliding doors for your home, and you Google "sliding doors," you are confronted with a page dealing not with doors that slide, but rather Sliding Doors, a 1998 filmic abortion in which Gwyneth Paltrow plays two different characters in a feat of acting echoed only by Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap, Jean-Claude Van Damme in Double Impact and Lindsay Lohan in I Know Who Killed Me?

The plot of Sliding Doors, in case you have yet to be blinded by the almost magical amount of failure that this film exudes on a TBS Saturday afternoon, is this: Gwyneth Paltrow is for some reason in London. Why? Because it's classy, like the Queen, Earl Grey tea and Pete Doherty. Here the plot splits and in one version of the story, Paltrow catches her train (called the "tube" because Londoners have speech impediments) and catches her boyfriend cheating on her with Jeanne Tripplehorne because Tripplehorne is a talented actress who has never had anything to do with Coldplay. In the other version, the tube doors close and Paltrow misses her train and misses catching her boyfriend in coitus with Jeanne Tripplehorne-- hence the stabbingly obvious title, Sliding Doors. Anyway, the plots are separated because in one Paltrow is a brunette and in the other she's blonde, which is the most subtle distinction since evil Spock had a goatee. This film has all the romance and mystery of a frat keg laced with roofies.

Thus, I propose this to you, the internet, my angel of justice-- we make actual sliding doors outrank the movie Sliding Doors. If you blog at all, please sign this petition and add a post to your blog linking http://www.spaceslide.co.uk/ to the key words "Sliding Doors." Why have I chosen Spaceslide? Because like the film, it's based in London, but unlike the film, it never dated Ben Affleck or wore the most offensive fucking fat suit this side of Martin Lawrence for Shallow Hal.

Plus, unlike the film, http://www.spaceslide.co.uk/ does not make me want to blind myself and Oedipus-like, wander the countryside rather than experience the circumstances the world has thrust upon me, hoping for a violent death for which only the fates may be held accountable. Please make this happen for the sake of accuracy and aesthetics everywhere. Films like this are the reason I drink.

Finally, you can sign my petition here.

Sincerely,
Christian

And With That...

2008-03-20T18:40:00.004-04:00

And with that, I have some sad news. Backwards City Review is suspending operation as of its 7th issue, which is now back from the printer and being mailed out shortly. There'll be more details forthcoming, but for now let me say, on behalf of all the editors, past, past, and future, it's been a lot of fun, and thanks.

Green Man in Suburbia Released!

2008-03-20T18:36:00.003-04:00

We know it's been slow around here. But we've got good news: the second Backwards City Chapbook has finally been released! The book is Marcia L. Hurlow's Green Man in Suburbia, which you can order directly from Amazon.

Marcia L. Hurlow is a native of Mt. Vernon, Ohio, and a professor of English and journalism at Asbury College in Wilmore, Kentucky. Green Man in Suburbia is her fifth collection of poems, and if I say so myself, it's clearly the best.

It's a fantastic collection, and we're all very excited about it.

Sorry About the Break...

2007-12-05T11:33:00.000-05:00

Our reading period was particularly intense, but I promise to post more regularly now.

For now, please enjoy From Lowest to Highest: the levels of greatness a fiction writer can achieve in America, from The Stranger.

A sample:

PONY ON A PONY FARM OF A CHILD OF A BILLIONAIRE: Joy Williams/Mary Robison/Frederick Barthelme/Ann Beattie

Considered "important" and "serious" by most critics, writers, and journalists, but are held back from further greatness by an inability to make grand pronouncements using sociological, political, or psychological terms in an earnest tone that conveys "I am very smart and this is my serious literature." Held back also because they sometimes publish in smaller magazines, some of which don't even contain advertisements from Knopf or American Airlines; because some of their e-mail addresses can be found on the internet; and because they would never consider writing from the perspective of someone in a terrible event that they did not experience. Occasionally mentioned by Used Honda Civics in "Great" Condition (see below) to prove a generalization wrong. Do not make enough money from their books to not have teaching jobs. Too godless and without rhetoric to win a major award or be satisfactorily written about by the important literary critics of our time.

Backwards City 666

2007-10-09T01:41:00.000-04:00

Excerpts from the latest and greatest issue of Backwards City are now up at backwardscity.net. We're extremely, extremely proud of it, even if it does contain the most prominent printing error we've ever managed; we feel it's sort of fitting. (Really, it's not all that prominent, just in one of the contributors' notes—but it eats us up inside. We're perfectionists. It's the OCD that keeps us going.)

Subscribers' issues are going in the mail tomorrow and should be in your hot hands in a few days. While you're waiting, enjoy comics from T. Motley and xkcd, fiction from Fiction Award winner B.J. Hollars and Michael Shannon, and poetry from Mary Grimm, Tim Lockridge, David Shumate, and Charlie Clark.

And when it's time to get maudlin, begin to mourn with the original editors' farewell.

No Love for L'Amour

2007-10-07T04:34:00.000-04:00

From today's New York Times Magazine interview with Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa:

NYTM: Did you ever meet President Reagan?
MVL: Once. I said to him, Mr. President, I admire many things that you do, but I cannot accept that for you the most important American writer is Louis L’Amour. How is this possible?

Uh... maybe because Reagan owned more horses than books.

But Where Do I Get My JT Leroy Money?

2007-10-01T14:12:00.001-04:00

Today's the last day to file a class-action claim against James Frey. If you bought A Million Little Pieces on or before January 26, 2006, you're entitled to some money. Go here to file before midnight and get some.

If you feel guilty, don't-- you can always use your cut to buy Frey's new novel, Bright Shiny Morning, for which he was reportedly paid one milllion dollars.

The score thus far:
James Frey: 1,000,000
Truth: 0

Update: The Smoking Gun (which originally broke the whole escapade) has the fiscal information here.

P.S. Avoid Frey's new novel and instead buy one of the J.T. Leroy-inspired raccoon penis bone necklaces. (Carefully cast out of silver to avoid any cruelty to raccoons. Now if only we could get some made as pewter charms.

You Write Like a Terrorist

2007-09-29T11:03:00.004-04:00

The National Science Foundation extols its new Dark Web project, "which aims to systematically collect and analyze all terrorist-generated content on the Web."

This is where the Dark Web project comes in. Using advanced techniques such as Web spidering, link analysis, content analysis, authorship analysis, sentiment analysis and multimedia analysis, [Hsinchun] Chen and his team [Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Arizona} can find, catalogue and analyze extremist activities online. According to Chen, scenarios involving massive amounts of information and data points are ideal challenges for computational scientists, who use the power of advanced computers and applications to find patterns and connections where humans can not.

How, exactly do they plan on analyzing the data?

One of the tools developed by Dark Web is a technique called Writeprint, which automatically extracts thousands of multilingual, structural, and semantic features to determine who is creating 'anonymous' content online. Writeprint can look at a posting on an online bulletin board, for example, and compare it with writings found elsewhere on the Internet. By analyzing these certain features, it can determine with more than 95 percent accuracy if the author has produced other content in the past. The system can then alert analysts when the same author produces new content, as well as where on the Internet the content is being copied, linked to or discussed.

Robot literary critics fighting terrorists? Computer-assisted identification of anonymous authors has been used before, though on a much smaller scale. Don Foster, Shakespeare scholar and "literary forensics" pioneer, developed the field in the 1980s, when he confirmed that the previously unattributed 1612 "A Funeral Elegy for Master William Peter" signed only "W.S." was indeed William Shakespeare. In 1996, Foster identified journalist Joe Klein as the anonymous author of Primary Colors, a political satire of the Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. (If you insist, you can read all about it in Foster's Author Unknown.)

The problem is that Foster uses computers only for the "search" feature of electronic texts. There's no algorithm that simply finds a match. Foster caught Klein by (among other things) his use of "tarmac-hopping," a compound that appeared nowhere else but in the journalism and fiction of Joe Klein. Just pick any distinctive phrase (even if it is innocuous), like "Italian restaurant, London" and run it through a search engine. You won't find many matches but the ones that do pop up will be notable.

The NSF may be over-hyping the Dark Web system. The University of Arizona's website only promises that Dark Web "will include tools supporting search, browse, and analysis capabilities."

It is certainly possible to identify writers by their use of certain words-- David Foster Wallace's use of "ontological" or Hunter Thompson's use of "atavistic" pop into my mind almost immediately. (Any others? Leave them in the comments.) But could a computer do the necessary parsing to positively identify a writer's style?

Alienating Labor Pains

2007-09-27T13:06:00.001-04:00

The world is flat-- and grossly exploitative.

We’ve all taken notice of America’s great quest of more for less, and using whatever means necessary to achieve it. And the word "outsourcing" just makes it seem so fancy and great, right? As you gently pry a red train with lead-based paint out of your child’s hands, maybe you could deign to ponder, “Where, exactly, is the line? And do we care about crossing it as long as we get what we want at a lower cost?”

Perhaps misunderstanding Marx's alienation of labor, we now have the outsourcing of surrogate mothers in India. Now, customer service and tech support-- those are familiar to anyone who's owned a Dell or even thought about Thomas Friedman's mustache (pictured at right), but human wombs? The cost of surrogacy averages about $70,000 in the US but is a fraction of that in India-- just $12,000, which includes medical expenses and the surrogate's fee.

On one hand this seems pretty exploitive, but the $5,000-7,000 surrogate's fee is nearly ten years earned income in rural India. Confined by a patriarchy and a lack of employment options, surrogacy offers uneducated Indian women a chance to have their own money and a future for themselves and their families that probably wouldn’t happen otherwise. When asked if she felt exploited, surrogate mother Sofia Vohra responded, “Crushing glass for 15 hours a day making $25 a month is exploitation. The baby’s parents have given me a chance to make good marriages for my daughters. That’s a big weight off my mind.”

These surrogates are virtual recluses during the pregnancy, as surrogacy is considered risque in rural India-- many villagers don't understand that the process doesn't involve sex and so consider the practice akin to prostitution-- and there is a risk of the entire family being shunned. Further, a large percentage of Indian women are required to sign documents that grant them no paternal rights, unlike in the US, where a surrogate has a small window of time to stake a claim. This puts the biological parents' minds at ease, but also gives backing to the stance that these women, most of whom are illiterate, are being somewhat duped.

Estimated to be a $445-million-a-year business, surrogacy in India is expanding as fast as these women’s waistlines, and parties on both sides of the ocean seem to be reaping the benefits. Even so, is this blatant economic exploitation? In utero imperialism? Or simply a mutually profitable business arrangement?

Comics Are Gay, But They Hate Themselves For It

2007-09-24T15:43:00.000-04:00

Remember when bullies would beat you up and call you a fag for reading superhero comics? It turns out they should have read those comics-- they would have enjoyed all the sadistic gay bashing.

Perry Moore, author of the young-adult novel Hero (a superhero story about a gay teenager, which you can buy here), has compiled a list,Who Cares About the Death of a Gay Superhero Anyway?: A history of gays in comic books, of the fates of about 75 gay comic-book heroes and villains. The list is meticulous, occasionally hilarious (such as "The Hulk's Near Rape" at the hands of predatory gay men in a YMCA shower) and often harrowing-- in short, fascinating and definitely worth checking out. Here's a short excerpt:

BLOKE
First openly gay member of Marvel’s X-Force/X-Statix. Killed on his first mission.

ELECTRO
This longtime Spiderman nemesis recently discovered his predilection for homosexuality as a result of a lengthy stint in prison. Sought out a shape-changing prostitute to satisfy his new desires.

EL EXTRANO
Gay magician member of superteam New Guardians. His name means “The Strange One.” Embodied numerous, offensive gay stereotypes. Attacked by an “AIDS vampire.” Forgotten after series was cancelled.

NORTHSTAR
1st gay male hero to come out in the Marvel Comics Universe, thus making him their most prominent gay hero. Between February 16 and March 9, 2005, Northstar is killed in three different realities, during the most prominent of which, the X-Men’s most popular hero, Wolverine (star of the X-Men movies), impales him through the chest with his metal claws. Marvel’s most prominent gay hero is later resurrected as a murderous zombie assassin.

FREEDOM RING
Hailed by Marvel Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada as the new example of Marvel’s open policy toward gays in their books as “the star of Marvel Team-Up.” Quesada went on to say, “We’ve had more gay and lesbian characters appearing in Marvel comics than ever before.” Marvel Team-Up #24, three weeks after Quesada’s comments, features Freedom Ring, his finger sliced off and then graphically killed with 28 spikes impaling him, including one through the groin and protruding from his anus. Series cancelled with issue #25.

The Submissions, They Have Reopened

2007-09-07T07:54:00.000-04:00

Fiction and poetry submissions are back open at backwardscity.net. Check back here soon for a redesign to befit Backwards City #7, excerpts, as well as all-new! all-different! blogging (just as soon as we get that pesky revolution under control).

On Language, vol. 2

2007-08-06T11:23:00.001-04:00

Matt Damon visits the "Hard-Rocking" Cafe

Safire's back from vacation and as usual, every sentence is just a bevel of shit you never cared about. Like the difference between "chief strategist" and "senior political adviser." Hint: It's entirely semantic but somehow still important, kind of like the difference between "certified bachelor on the prowl" and a plain old "registered sexual predator."

But that just left me with mild boredom rather than full-blown embarrassment. Luckily, I quickly found Still Searching, But With Darker Eyes, Manohla Dargis' review of The Bourne Ultimatum. "Jaw clenched, brow knotted, body tight as a secret, Matt Damon hurtles through 'The Bourne Ultimatum' like a missile," reads the first line, and the review proceeds accordingly, its 5th grade sycophancy finally bursting with "[The director] knows how to do his job, and there's no one in Hollywood right now who does action better, who keeps the pace going so relentlessly, without mercy or letup, scene after hard-rocking scene." (Italics mine.)

Like catching your Uncle Steve masturbating, you want to just back away slowly, but unfortunately, the Gray Lady just decided to go ahead and seriously print "hard-rocking" as both (1) serious criticism and (2) a hyphenate. Why?

"Hard-rocking" first graced the pages of the New York Times on September 12, 1980, describing a John Lennon recording session. It was first used in a movie review three years later, on September 23, 1983 in Janet Maslin's review of the New Jersey rock epic, Eddie and the Cruisers, which still employed the phrase in a musical context.

The phrase wasn't made completely devoid of meaning until March 4, 2001, when writer Dan Neil asserted that "It isn't hard to spot a cultural trend in the hard-rocking commercials for the Nissan Frontier," which makes Neil the first in the cultural trend of using "hard-rocking" to mean "establishmentarian" and "literally commercial."

"Hard-rocking" at the Times doesn't have to involve music and can be anything abrasive or just attempting a mysterious "cool." (e.g. "Your Uncle Steve's hard-rocking Matt Damon jag-off session.") So just go ahead and use "hard-rocking" to mean any fucking thing you want. Really, everything rock-related is going to die anyway with the coming birth of this Rosemary's baby/chupacabra creature from Nicole Richie and Emo posterboy Joel Madden. Just keep rock-harding until then. Or whatevs.

With Great Prizes Come Great Responsibility (or not so much)

2007-08-02T10:36:00.000-04:00

Congrats to all the BCR Contest Winners. But Backwards City isn't the only place handing out prizes these days. Why, just look at the United States and their new poet laureate in this NY Times Blog "On Paper." The article muses on the political stance of the new PL, Charles Simic, and speculates that his past public statements might make him a more vocal critic of the Bush administration. Though I have great respect for Simic's work and his political views, I think this overestimates the esteem and influence of the position of poet laureate.
There has been a serious decline in literary reading in the United States in recent years. In 2004 the National Endowment for the Arts released a survey entitled Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America. The gloomy title suggests that the findings are not good. What is somewhat shocking is how bad the results actually are. Between 1982 and 2002 the United States saw a ten percent decline in readers of literature, or nearly 20 million readers. This decline occurred despite a growing population. In the current cultural climate fewer than half of Americans actually read literature.
Of this half, most are readers of short stories or novels, which were read by 45.1 percent or 93 million adults in the previous year. Poetry was read by 12.1 percent or 25 million people. With so few readers, Can Poetry Matter? To get a little Reading Rainbow about it, what do you think (5 Bonus Points to the first post "acknowledging" a Shelley quotation)?

Victory Is Theirs!

2007-08-01T16:12:00.000-04:00

Backwards City Review is pleased to announce the winners of its 2007 fiction and poetry contests!

POETRY

Winner
Jocelyn Casey-Whiteman, “Kimberly Cutout”

Finalists
Jill Beauchesne, “Armistice Day”
Woody Loverude, “Covenant”
Lynne Potts, “Whole Worlds Had Already Happened”

FICTION

Winner
B.J. Hollars, “Conservation Status of Least Concern”

Finalists
Joe Oestreich, “Trouble Doll”
Kelcey Parker, “Lent”
Mike Young, “Burk’s Nub”

The winners and selected finalists will appear in Backwards City #6, arriving in your mailbox this fall

Keep watching backwardscity.net for information on the winner of our second chapbook contest, as well as deadlines and addresses for next year’s writing contests!

Regular submissions reopen on Sep. 1. Thank you, as always, for your support of Backwards City.

On Language: Don't Dis Like

2007-07-15T14:54:00.000-04:00

Safire's, like, on vacation or something this week, but Patricia T. O'Connor fills in with a column on "like." Specifically, how like can introduce a quotation ("'She's like, 'What unusual shoes you're wearing?''") or paraphrase one ("''She's like, my shoes are weird!'") Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain, an associate professor at the University of Alberta says of like, "'It's innovative, it serves a particular function and it does specific things that you can't do with other quotatives.'"

O'Connor summarizes:

So is the new like proper English? Well, the latest editions of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language and Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary now include it as a usage heard in informal speech. That's not a ringing endorsement, but it's not a condemnation, either.

Which isn't bad, as she explains: "Yet part of the resistance to like may be its youthful rep." After all, "rep" to mean "reputation" (freely used by O'Connor and printed by the New York Times) isn't even listed in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Merriam's Webster's lists it as "slang."

But how long will it be before like finds its way into the news section of the New York Times? My guess? Give it a year or so. After all, "dissing" first appeared as a quote-marked novelty ["Dissing (verb: to insult, from disrespect)"] in a 6/2/90 article headlined "How to Stop Dis From Escalating Into Bif and Bam." Yet on 9/9/91, the Times was dropping the D-bomb like they was from the old school: "Connors cared so much about winning, about himself, that he willed himself into the semifinals, even to the point of dissing a chair umpire one nasty evening." The subject of the article? Tennis, actually. Recently, a 3/2/07 article read: "A year later Zarin Mehta, the orchestra's president and executive director, is blithely dissing that lone CD release." The latest hip-hop feud? Hells, no. The article was about the New York Philharmonic's three-year recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon.

Word up-- keep it real.

Amber is the Color of Security

2007-07-12T13:19:00.000-04:00

It’s summer and you want to relax, but work’s a grind and your old lady is always nagging you about the litter box or the living room curtains. All this tension and heat are driving you to drink. A vacation seems like the perfect solution, and the 21st century American airport is arguably the best part of the trip. All this anti-terror campaigning now leaves American travelers safely wrapped in an amber security blanket as soon as they book the flight.

So its not 1947 and you’re not Howard Hughes-- no worries, Traveler, aviation’s heyday is just now burgeoning. Why, this border-control legislation has created the highest demand for US passports in the history of travel! Now, more Americans than ever are desperate to get out of the country-- and all will find they can do so with dignity and safety. After waiting six months to receive one’s $200 expedited passport and removing all nail files, safety pins, and contact lens solution from their carry-ons, it’s off to the airport. After several anxious sidelong glances at your line-mates and that suspicious fanny-pack left on the self-check-in kiosk, your tickets are collected, your passports stamped, and your boarding passes neatly tucked into an envelope bearing your gate’s number-- you’re now off to Security! Upon arrival to the security-ensuring area, you are safely felt up, patted down, interrogated further, and are shuffled half-dressed and shoeless through an x-ray machine. If you happen to be entering the US as a foreign traveler, you are invited to take some cozy photos and shake hands with a few security-ensuring machines that scan your iris and fingerprint you. No matter where you are from, you are encouraged to eat well and be merry in flight. There’s no better way to be awoken in transit than by an announcement urging you to scarf down your delicious home-made mozzarella and tomato lunch sandwiches at 7:45 in the morning so as not to incur a $500 fine when you’ve returned to the good ol’ US of A. We would'nt want any terrorists bringing their secret family recipes oversees, corrupting our refined American palates with their noxious flavors and tedious preparations. Surrounded by all these threats, yet shielded from them at every turn in American air travel will leave you feeling at first anxious, then superior, and ultimately, safe.

Your luggage is similarly cared for by American airport personnel, allowing you to travel worry and hassle-free about the globe. The bags, checked or carried, are treated with the same respect and care you gave them while packing them up at home. For example, airport staff at all points of transportation carefully inspect your luggage by X-ray and by hand for dangerous items such as battery-operated vibrators that have shifted and turned themselves on during ground transport or birth control pills and anti-depressants, to ensure that these items are legal and yours. Once you have explained your lifestyle and psychological defects to the baggage handlers and strangers around you, your luggage is oh-so-carefully placed on a personal cart and gently conveyed to its own secure corner of the plane’s holding area. If delayed or altogether misplaced, your luggage will be lovingly shrink-wrapped, plastic locked, and heavily tagged/taped minutes before you recieve them once again, proving that international airport staff and travelers have not been tampering with your belongings for 11 days, 16 hours and twenty-seven minutes. The bonus? You will also not be able to open the luggage you have been without for your entire trip because airport staff know that the temptation to put on something clean or charge your phone on the spot would be too great and that ultimately, you would rather do this in the privacy of your own home, two hours later. Forget that three-toed Brazilian sloth dead from an overdose of heroin in your American Tourister roller bag; just let it remind you of how badly you have always wanted to visit Sao Paulo.

While your carry-ons are inspected at seemingly random times in random airports for your protection, these searches are in place to remind you of what might be harmful to you and your fellow passengers. Without the weary, hungover, 18-year-old bag inspector pushing around the contents of you duffel bag while looking at your tits, you might expose your fellow travelers to dangerous fumes emanating from your mentholated lip balm or the annoyance of your over-exuberant Vitamin-watered self. It’s best to leave these liquids and gels packaged securely in ziplock baggies which are then placed on a card table, in a large heap of similarly packaged items out in the middle of your gate’s ramp, guarded by no one.

I can’t speak for everyone, but when I travel by air in the USA, I feel like I’m observing the world through amber-colored glasses. But should you ever feel your security is the least bit threatened, your airport will be happy to furnish you with a shiny steak knife just before you get on the plane, conveniently concealed- I mean, wrapped- in a clean white napkin bearing the TGIFridays’ logo.

Airport Entymology

2007-07-11T14:53:00.000-04:00

Recently, I had the good fortune to spend some time away from Backwards City. I chose to spend most of this time in international airports. After carefully studying the lifeforms that congregate in these hubs, I have prepared my observations of various species, categorized by their dominant emotion:

Indignant Rage:
When airport stewardess (see Lonely Malaise) asks child-sized shape to stop rubbing his pelvis on the seat beside him, child-sized shape will respond with indignant rage. Features include *bulging eyes *arrogant disbelief *ruddy cheeks *profanity

Lonely Malaise:
The most common airport species, this hearty breed is often seen smoking outside the terminal (in designated areas). When disheveled businessman (see Impotent Disdain) asks to switch his aisle seat, uniform-clad shape will respond with a blank stare and explain that the flight is very full, because it is booked to capacity, which makes it very full. Features include *bright make-up *eerie, unwavering smile *divorce(s)

Impotent Disdain:
Just sort of sits there and rolls its corpulent eyes. Features include *Americans *bad ties *bourbon *sweat stains (one hopes)

Look for upcoming travel writing involving more airport culture in imminent posts.

You Know, Fiddy Got a Point

2007-07-04T13:53:00.001-04:00

From an interview with 50 Cent in Spin, July 2007:

Are you worried about the state of the music industry and that hip-hop record sales are down 30 percent from the time of your last record? You know what's interesting to me? If we're selling 30 percent less records, then really, what's the problem that people have with us? Why isn't the violence down? If we're that fucking' influential, you know what I'm saying?

Violence should be down 30 percent?
Yeah, why isn't the violence down 30 percent? Ask that question in your article. I'd like to know the answer to that!

Eschatology and Archeoastronomy!

2007-07-02T15:23:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's New York Times Magazine featured an On Language column that had absolutely nothing to do with language, a Neal Pollack article (about feeding his son hot dogs) that was so boring it made Adam Gopnik look like Hunter Thompson and an interview with Wesley Clark that featured the questions "Why do Americans eat hot dogs on July 4?" and "Do you think the Founding Fathers ate hot dogs?"

In short, the only thing that kept me from killing myself was this assurance that I was going to die anyway, probably in 2012. Yes, the Times decided to do a six-page glossy spread on Mayan eschatology. It even features soundbites from Anthony Aveni, an Colgate professor and archeoastronomer (if you don't know what that is, go here). Maybe next week there'll be an article about phrenology featuring two cryptozoologists.

Besides sounding like Da Vinci Code fan fiction (with sentences like "Jenkins was the first to reveal a major flaw in the synchronization between Arguelles's Dreamspell and the Mayan day count, and he has been involved in an extensive, long-distance feud with Calleman since 2001 over their differing approaches to interpreting the Maya and over Calleman's belief that the end time will be in 2011, not 2012.") there was something else that bugged me about the article. It was a quote from the archeoastronomer: "Jenkins and Calleman and Arguelles are the Gnostics of our time. They're seeking higher knowledge. They look for knowledge framed in mystery. And there aren't many mysteries left, because science has decoded most of them."

It's kind of silly to think that science has solved most of the mysteries of the universe. Just look at the What We Don't Know from the February 2007 issue of Wired. The article was edited by John Hodgman (who also edits the Times Magazine's Funny Pages) and presents 40 different dilemmas that science has so far been unable to answer, ranging from "Why do we sleep?" to "Is the universe actually made of information?" Basically, this post is a long-winded way to say that you should check out the Wired article and everything else John Hodgman does.

The New Transformer's Movie Reviewed!!!

2007-06-29T18:53:00.000-04:00

Actually, let's not talk about that.

No More Heroes (Faux Rage)

2007-06-27T10:43:00.000-04:00

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s Backwards City's vulnerable youth population was entranced by one gerund, shouted at the top of one's pixie stick dusted vocal chords: WRESTLING!

(Side Note: Throwing pixie sticks on a bonfire is a vaguely dangerous stunt also associated with this epoch.)

Though many of us have since lost the urge to see a freakishly large man (King Kong Bundy) battle his weight in midgets (plus Hillbilly Jim!), the titans of old claim a lonely corner within our mental hall of heroes. Now that it is firmly within our grasp to perm a mullet, grow a mustache, and don a pair of neon green tights the mystery of yesterday's heroes has waned.

This has especially been the case as of late, with the recent murder/suicide of Canadian! (almost every article I've read has stressed this a great deal) wrestler Chris Benoit and his wife and child. Mr. Benoit is only the most recent example of how life tends to disintegrate rapidly when one treads the lonely path of steroids, painkillers, hair gel, and faux rage. This is perhaps the only instance where the BCR blog will employ a quotation from Fox Sports, hosted on MSN. In any case, look for your former favorite idol and hang your head for the days when an atomic elbow to your brother's throat was still in the realm of good fun and was never followed by any legal action.

*Ravishing Rick Rude — Died at 40 of an apparent heart attack in 1999, a bottle of prescription pills for his bad back at his side. The autopsy report said he died of "mixed medications." Rude was an admitted user of anabolic steroids.

*Louis Mucciolo, a.k.a, Louie Spicolli — Died in 1998 at age 27 when he suffocated on his own vomit after ingesting massive amounts of Soma and alcohol. Investigators also found an empty vial of testosterone, pain pills and an anti-anxiety drug at the scene.

*Brian Pillman — An admitted user of steroids, he died of a heart attack at age 35 in 1997 on the morning of WWF's In Your House: Badd Blood pay-per-view event.

* Rick "the Renegade" Williams — Died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at age 33 after being released from his World Championship Wrestling contract in 1999.

* "Mr. Perfect" Curt Hennig — Found dead of a cocaine overdose at age 44 in his motel room on April 10, 2003, the morning of a match. Hennig's father maintained that steroids and painkillers contributed to his death.

* Rodney "Yokozuna" Anoa'i — Died of a heart attack in 2002 at 34.

* Davey Boy Smith, "The British Bulldog" — Died of a heart attack at age 39 on May 17, 2002. An autopsy report indicated that past steroid use had likely played a part in his death.

* Michael "Road Warrior Hawk" Hegstrand — An admitted steroid user, he died of a heart attack at age 46 in 2003.

* Michael Lockwood, "Crash Holly" — In 2003, at the age of 32, he choked to death on his own vomit after ingesting 90 painkiller pills.

* Jerry Tuite, "The Wall" a.k.a. "Malice" — Died at age 36 in 2003 of an apparent heart attack in his hotel room.

* Raymond "Hercules" Hernandez — Dead of heart failure in 2004 at age 47.

* Ray "The Big Boss Man" Traylor — Found dead of a heart attack in 2004 at age 42.

* Eddie Guerrero — After a long battle with painkillers, he was found dead of a heart attack by his nephew in his hotel room at age 38. The first person his nephew reportedly called was Guerrero's best friend, Chris Benoit.

* Chris Candido — Died in 2005 at age 33 from a blood clot after breaking his tibia and fibula and dislocating his ankle in a pay-per-view event.

* Owen Hart — Fell to his death at age 34 in 1999 when the rigging that was lowering him into the ring malfunctioned.

Update: Bam Bam Bigelow died on January 19, 2007 from a mixture of cocaine and benzodiazepenes. I'd like to imagine he's currently fighting a no-holds-barred cage match with Yokozuna in Wrestler-Heaven, like some sort of scripted version of a modern Ragnarok.

JT Leroy and Other Literary Frauds

2007-06-21T17:05:00.000-04:00

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
--Jeremiah 17:9

The New York Times has an article today about the ongoing civil trial of Laura Albert, otherwise known as JT Leroy. (If you don't know the backstory of JT Leroy, check out Stephen Beachy's Who is the Real JT Leroy?, published in the 10/17/05 issue of New York, which pretty much sums up the whole ugly affair.)

The Times mentions that Albert used a fake Southern accent to impersonate Leroy over the phone (sometimes to other authors, including Dennis Cooper, Mary Gaitskill and Mary Karr), including in an 11/26/01 interview on NPR's Fresh Air. (The interview is supposed to be archived here, but curiously reads: "Due to an agreement with the guest, the audio for this interview is unavailable.")

I immediately thought of Anthony Godby Johnson, another literary hoax whose plot parallels JT Leroy. Anthony, the sexually abused and AIDS-afflicted child, was the creation of a middle-aged woman (she went by Vicki Johnson-- her real name was either Vicki Fraginals or Joanne Victoria Fraginals-Zackheim) who wrote his "autobiography," A Rock and a Hard Place: One boy's triumphant story. Vicki also liked to talk on the phone-- her chats with (and subsequent discovery of fraud by) author Armistead Maupin led to his (very cool) 2000 novel, The Night Listener.

The James Frey case fits in here too, as does Stephen Glass, The New Republic fabulist who later saw his story hit the big screen in 2003's Shattered Glass. (As did Clifford Irving, who produced a fabricated biography of Howard Hughes, in the recently released Richard Gere movie The Hoax, though Irving insists, in this New Yorker article, that his hoax was "for the adventure" and so entirely different.)

Binjamin Wilkomirski, in his 1996 "autobiography" Fragments (which is actually a well-written book and a pleasure to read), describes his childhood as a holocaust survivor. The only problem is that Wilkomirski is actually Bruno Grosjean, a gentile Swiss orphan who was adopted by a wealthy couple in Zurich. To bolster his story, Grosjean relied on the testimony of Laura Grabowski, a holocaust survivor who claimed to have known him from internment camps. The only problem was that Grabowski too was a fraud. Grabowski (nee Lauren Rose Willson, also a gentile) hadn't gone so far as to author a book about her experience as a childhood survivor of the Holocaust, but had written (under the name Lauren Stratford) Satan's Underground, a 1988 memoir detailing her experience as a survivor of Satantic ritual abuse. Oi vey.

It's not that literary hoaxes don't have their basis in the canon. Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liasons Dangereuses (1782) is ostensibly a collection of real letters (rather than an epistolary novel) published by an invented editor as a moral tale for the public. Benjamin Constant's Adolphe (1816) purports to be a diary that Constant has found and edited. The same is true of Mikhail Lermentov's A Hero of Our Time (1839). In the introduction to 1862's The House of the Dead (also titled Memoirs From the House of the Dead or simply House of the Dead), Dostoyevsky claims that the book is actually found document, not authored but only edited by himself. (If you can think of any other books whose writers deny authorship, let me know in the comments.)

The difference seems to be one of ego. While de Laclos, Constant, Lermentov and Dostoyevsky deny authorship of the work, the hoaxers claim so much authorship that they try to become their characters. But this is an entirely sympathetic view. Rather than pathology, it's probably simply mercenary-- non-fiction consistently outsells fiction. A Million Little Pieces would never have been picked for Oprah's Book Club had it been published as fiction. Pushing aside literary games of identity and authorship, these modern hoaxers are playing only for the money.

Border Control in American Music and Feist’s Entry Through Art

2007-06-19T15:39:00.000-04:00

Canadian singer/songwriter Leslie Feist recently explained in an NPR interview at the 9:30 Club in Washington that entering America as a musician is made possible only by passing through "two enormous iron doors: ... [one in] New York and [one in] California."

She also links her songwriting process to influences that range from the writings of Toni Morrison and Paul Auster to Joni Mitchell and indigo blue. The color.

In terms of temporality, I can see Morrison’s influence in song lyrics such as The Park and in the musical construction of Mitchell’s "Blue," but fail to see the connection between these New York artists and the iron door that Feist claims New York represents to international artists. Any thoughts?

At Least I’m Not a Killer-- Scientific equivocations I offer my loved ones, Vol. 1

2007-06-14T18:06:00.000-04:00

Neuroscience researchers at the University of Iowa have traced emotional and moral reactions to an area of the brain known as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Two groups (one with damaged VPCs and one comprised of those with intact forebrains) were asked to respond to hypothetical moral dilemmas.

In situations involving no personal knowledge, subjects in both groups responded similarly. For example, nearly all the respondents would choose to sacrifice one stranger to save three. However, when asked if they would smother their own child to save a group of people, those with intact forebrains said no. Those with damaged VPCs produced the almost pathologically utilitarian response of yes.

“The findings show that our natural aversion to harming others emerges from two previously documented systems in our brain-- one emotional and one rational,” says the June/July 2007 issue of Scientific American Mind. “Scientists do not yet understand how the two systems interact or how one supersedes the other when they dictate contradictory courses of action.

‘This study doesn’t mean that people who lack social emotions are dangerous,’ says Michael Koenigs, then at the University of Iowa, a member of the research team. ‘They tend to show little empathy and guilt, but they are not killers.’”

P.S. Don’t forget to enter our contest. Thanks.

It's a Contest

2007-06-12T18:59:00.000-04:00

That’s right—we’re having a cutesy little contest. Why? Because we want to get our readers more involved and judging from the confused reaction to the new editors’ blog posts, we figured a small bribe couldn’t hurt.

What’s the contest? We want new slogans for the Backwards City Review. The problem is that we don’t know how to make them. If we did, we could all take metropolitan advertising jobs as the “creative” types at our respective firms (i.e. wacky tie patterns and fake pot plants in our cubicles). So we want you to provide them.

We’re looking for something short, pithy and kind of ambiguously clever. It could be a tidy bit of chiasmus like “Ask not what you can do for your country…” or bluntly utilitarian like “We will bury your grandchildren.” So send us your tired, your poor, your huddled missives and you can win some cool swag.

Like what? First prize is a one-year subscription to the Backwards City Review. Second prize is a signed copy of Michael Parker’s acclaimed novel Hello Down There. Both are extremely cool. Even if you don’t like them, everyone likes getting mail. You can write your slogans in the comments of this post. We’ll all pick our favorites, argue about them over drinks, pick the winners and then collapse in a fitful and editorial bale of having done no real creative work ourselves. After we announce the slogans we like best, the winners can send us their mailing addresses so we can get their books to them.

So send us your entries and participate in our first online contest. We know it hurts the first time but you’re special and we love you and we think you’re worth it. Thank you.