Am I a bigot? Am I going to h-e-double hockey sticks? These answers and more within!

I hate Christmas advertising so much. I know that’s a negative opener, but I haven’t had a TV in my house (good for watching anything but movies and channel nine) for about four years. Now, thanks to a three play special from cablevision which makes it cost only marginally more to have phone service, internet access AND cable than just two of the three, I can watch CSI at anytime of the day and despierta con el mundo latino en la manana! With a little help from my lovely Jamaican cable installer, Wayne, I can be bombarded with messages like these:
“Get me beauty, get me sexy, get me beauty and nothing, nothing I need, get me victoria’s secret.”
“Now is the season, now is what brings us together, now is why cable vision developed optimum vision, now is what you’ll always remember.”
Ok forget Christmas messaging, everyone knows it sucks anyway. I just changed the station and HAVE YOU SEEN PAUL WALL? What a freakshow! How can he make that face and be taken seriously? Plus if you’re so hooked up with jewelry, why are you always wearing the same pimp juice cup of pink diamonds necklace? Get some new shit! We’ve all seen that thing!
I can also watch what’s called New York One. Its channel one, and it seems to be a way for new Yorkers to raise their paranoia about all city events a few notches. You can get weather forecasts every ten minutes, (its cold now, it was cold ten minutes ago and its going to be colder ten minutes from now, capece? Wanna know if it’s raining? Look out the window!) traffic reports (just buy a metro pass and forget about the BQE,) and unending coverage of whatever local big deal happens to be going on. Right now, the Transit Workers Union is negotiating their contract with the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) and they aren’t getting what they want. So they’re doing what every union does when it isn’t satisfied with an offer, threatens a strike. Which is all well and good except it will KILL New York City to be without public transportation. Seriously, I can’t even imagine it. I wont be able to go to work, at all. No one can drive below 96th street with less than four people in the car, there will be NO busses, no trains, and if you think you’ll be able to get a cab you can think again. They’re talking about all these ways they’re going to make getting a cab affordable, like having them pick up a bunch of people at a time and having flat fare instead of distance rates. Great except that few of the cabbies know a damn thing about it and when they interviewed some of them their responses were hilarious! Everyone had a different idea about how they were going to get multiple parties to split fares. Its going to be so hysterical and disorganized, just mass confusion, with tons of late, stressed out and pissed off people. I kind of cant wait. So it was supposed to start last night at midnight so New York One had this outrageous countdown-to-strike clock going, like 6hours49minutes32seconds but with a stupid dramatic graphic of a clock as if we cant all see when midnight hits. So, so dumb. It’s like the king five satellite center in Seattle, the desk with two laptops where they cut to for the breaking news, I think they just turn the camera forty degrees. Anyway, it didn’t happen, now they’re saying Tuesday at the earliest, so that’ll be another excuse for a countdown. I say give the bastards whatever they want! We cant live without them and so they deserve to be compensated extremely well! Just hold off embezzling your average three billion dollars off transit revenues this year, MTA! You can always raise rates next year, you’ll get by!

So the question on everyone’s mind after last weeks expose on subway race is AM I A BIGOT? Its on my mind anyway. So, am I? Am I a bigot? I don’t think so…then again, do bigots ever think they’re bigots? No they just think they’re right! But I am right! I’m just making observations… that’s really how people are…am I supposed to not notice differences? And is it not a general expectation that people will at least in some way begin living according to American social morays? Do I sound like a grand dragon?

Bigot: NOUN:
One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.
prej·u·dice (pr j -d s) NOUN:
An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts.
A preconceived preference or idea.
The act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions.
Irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group, race, or religion.
Detriment or injury caused to a person by the preconceived, unfavorable conviction of another or others

I’m definitely not strongly partial to my own group, unless you mean my personal collection of friends and family, which may be the case. And my adverse judgements were NOT made beforehand or without examination of the facts, however they may be unreasonable, and somewhat be based on preconceived preferences or ideas, No detriment or injury, yet…though that is number four, perhaps I’m gearing up to it!! That does it. I may not be a bigot, but I think I may be letting my prejudices get the better of me. How would I talk to a bigot, make her see the error of her ways? And how should she go about changing her feelings? Ah the great equalizer! Education. I am feeling a new years resolution surfacing. I resolve to learn more about the modern cultures of southeast and east asia and their respective immigrant communities (with the exception of the Japanese, thanks to the strong Seattle/Japan connection have a lot of exposure to Japanese culture) and hopefully become more understanding and less of an ASSHOLE about their public habits. Even having said that I can still hear my inner voice saying “Why is it your responsibility to get with someone who hocks loogeys loudly,frequently and shamelessly in closed quarters? Because they speak a different language?” Shut up inner voice! Can’t you see? That’s bigotry! BTW I did hear that after the SARs epidemic, the Chinese government had to outlaw public loogey hocking and spitting in the street to try to control the spread of the disease. Apparently its like the national pastime. You would think they ate a lot of dairy. Oh shit, I’m not doing good so far. Seriously, after January first its Gung hay fat choy all the way. And I’m gonna go eat a Shabbat dinner with some orthodox strangers on a Friday night. I saw a bunch of them posted under events on Craigslist and if I can find someone to go with me (Sarah?) I’m going to go and see what’s really going on in these houses. No more hasid-bashin’ for me either! I’m gonna be half Chinese half Hasidic by 2007!
I know I haven’t really been talking too much shop lately…I guess nothing of too much interest is really happening in the salon, hair wise. I’m just on the quest to learn to do the perfect blow out. I’m getting better, but I really do suck. I taught myself to blow dry left handed, like with the dryer in my right hand, brush in the left, and I have little to no left hand dexterity, so I think I have to relearn it all right handed, which now feels SUPER awkward. God, it seems so simple. Speaking of simple, you know how in every religious tradition, there is some parable or other which sort of scares you into being super nice and gentle especially to those people who test your desire and ability to be so lest you be harsh and mean to God, or the messiah or some avatar in disguise as the worlds most annoying person? Well, I’ve got mine, and I think I’
ve failed the kind-to-the-messiah test. There is an Israeli man, of about 40years old who is an assistant at the salon. He is simple, and while I know that I usually change names to protect identity, this one is just too much for me to bear. His name is Simon. A moment of silence for how hard it is for me to pretend that its easy to go through my day not calling him you-know-what.
His English is terrible, so at first I thought it was a language barrier problem, because he seemed normal enough just like such an annoying person that you couldn’t believe he was for real. After a while of working together and knowing his history (he has been here ten years) I realize that he’s probably retarded, and that’s why his English is so bad. He is no taller than me (which, combined with grey hair, beady eyes and small hands puts him unequivocally in the horrible little man category) Basically, whatever affliction it is he has makes him the most socially irritating person you could ever imagine. He has absolutely no manners in English what so ever, so the fact that he takes it upon himself to make sure and know what everyone’s responsibilities are for the day and remind you of them means that he is barking orders at you about things you may already be in the middle of doing. He only speaks in one tense, and it doesn’t really exist its like an infinitive gerund “I’m go store buy milk?” “You’re come to train?” I tried to help him learn the right way to say thing about a hundred times then gave up. “Yes Simon, I’m take train, I’m live Brooklyn.”
He not only doesn’t have tact, but doesn’t even realize that such a thing is necessary, he yells for peoples’ attention across the salon WHILE shampooing someone, flanked by two other assistants also with clients. He asks questions that you would have no more probability of knowing the answer to than he does, like where is so and so when you just walked out of the bathroom. You can tell him anything time and time again, even something simple like don’t drink out of that cup, its Ludmila’s and she brought it in for herself because she gets cold sores. He will look at you like you asked him what moon dirt tastes like and (and his English is DEFINITELY good enough to understand “don’t drink out of that cup”) you will absolutely see him the next day drinking out of the cup. If someone is in the middle of eating and doesn’t have time to finish their sandwich, they wrap it up and put it to the side in the back area. I can’t tell you how many times he has finished peoples’ food and they come back and their lunch has been eaten. He stares right at you while you’re working for minutes at a time and when you look up to be like “what?#@$%!” he just stares more, cocks his tiny head and smiles like “what?” I’m telling you, one hour in the hood and he’d be nursing broken bones. The real kicker for me is that he has NO sense of personal space at all. If you turn around without looking, you’ll trip over him. If you’re standing in the middle of the salon watching something, he’ll come and stand so the edges of your shoes are touching. He will come stand right next to me at the sink when I’m doing dishes with his back to my arm and look out at the salon like he’s just standing leaning against a wall!!! It’s AMAZING!!! He used to try to hug me all the time, or worse, dance with me to whatever music was on in the salon in this real Israelo-European clubby way. I put the immediate kibosh on that. No way. I have my limits. I’m not a real touchy person to begin with and I certainly can be hugging someone when it’s all I can do not to be landing a right hook to their grill. I know I’m going to hell because he probably can’t help it, but it feels like he does the stuff on purpose! How else could he be so annoying?? God. Maybe I should be a grand dragon. But seriously, for this holiday time of goodwill and cheer, I’ve had to start pretending that he’s the messiah in disguise and I never know when he’ll reveal himself so I have to be super nice and tolerant. He drives everyone else nuts too, it’s not just me, but I have more trouble keeping my annoyance in check than the others seem to. So I’ll just keep pretending he’s on his way to taking us all to the promised land and maybe it’ll help. I’m sure a lot of people found Jesus annoying, after all he called everyone sinners and said their religion was outdated and now we count down to his birthday and talk about how much we need him. Well, the Jews still don’t…crap. I guess we just aren’t cut out to like annoying people.
Look, I am not the one to tell you how I tried to learn to speak Vulcan as a teenager, nor can I tell you bilbo baggins family lineage or recount the story of the mists of Avalon. I never saw any of those Star Battle movies that the kids love ( J ), and while I liked Quantum Leap and X Files, they both starred a somewhat hunky male main character and had a lot of funny one liners that kept me interested. What I’m telling you is this; although I have the fantasy imagination of a cockroach, I LOVED HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE!!! Ok? I admit it, IT WAS GREAT. I stayed awake and in the theatre for the entire two and a half hours. That is a four star review as anyone who has tried to go see a film on a lark with me can attest to. It was funny, brilliantly cast and acted, although I think they could have cut a budget corner by not hiring Gary Oldman to be the unrecognizable face of Harry’s uncle that appeared for five minutes in glowing embers, but who am I? And did anyone actually appreciate that Lord Valdimor (who may or may not come back to life in the end) was Ralph Fiennes? I didn’t! Take away a man’s nostrils and you take away his identity! It was totally dramatic, had very few fight scenes (key) and provided a total escape. So, continuing in the vein of my life as an apology: I’m sorry I talked so much smack about grown people unabashedly reading children’s books, raving about the next one coming out, and critiquing plotlines and character flaws of dark lords on public transportation. I can see that the Harry Potter series is actually very entertaining and in the face of modern life going to wizard high school looks really good to me too.
I spent six hours getting to and from Trader Joes today with one stop for the bathroom. Any questions? I love reasonably priced organic raisins as much as the next guy but Jesus H.! Long Island should secede from the union. They’re not a state you say? Well, fine. Give it to Connecticut! All the houses have outer shutters; they’ll fit right in. Yesterday I was walking along 120th between Malcom X and Fredrick Douglas in Harlem, duh. Two lovely overhearances: One guy, walking alone took a deep breath from a evergreen bough he was carrying and as he exhaled it out with a cloud of breath into the cold, cold air he said “Mm! I love that smell!” Me too! And there isn’t enough room for Christmas tree lots here, so they just set them up on the corners and the you can smell it up and down the block. Number two: There was some construction going on on the top of one of the beautiful brownstone townhouses. Men walking around up there, belaying down the side of the building and all those tremendously unsafe things we’re all used to seeing construction workers do in the holy name of development. As I was walking towards an elderly black lady out with her granddaughter, she called up in a surprisingly loud voice (probably a founding member of some AME choir or another) to the construction workers, “You bein’ careful up there baby?” From a hundred feet up “Yes ma’am we are!” “Good! You watch your step now, y’hear?” Again “Yes ma’am!” Very sweet. It made me miss Mrs. Alexander, cause I’m sure she talks to construction workers all the time (I can hear what she’d say to that too! “Shit honey, they men aren’t they!?” )