A Collection of Assholes
Tempers flared last night at Loreley Restaurant & Biergarten in the Lower East Side. Shouts were shouted in a shouty fashion. Fists were applied forcefully (and forcibly) to tabletops. Fingers were grabbed and pulled, and nary a fart was heard in the aftermath.
I was out with four of my muchachos: Twickface, Hipster Scientist, Laser Feldshul, and Roast Beef Sandwich (names have been changed to protect the sensitive). Laser’s ebullient girlfriend works at Loreley, and was whetting our appetites with mug after mug of frosty bier. Gotten bless her. It was a reunion of sorts, as Roast Beef had spent the last month in the Virginia hinterlands recovering from a nasty case of measles mumps rubella. Or maybe it was appendicitis. I forget.
Regardless, rosy-cheeked camaraderie reigned and many witty one-liners and one-uppers and out-siders were dropped, none of which any of you would find very funny. (Or for that matter, phunny.)
But the tone soon changed, as all tones do. A cloud of anger slowly descended over our five-top table, as if we’d all just shelled out $12 to see a movie only to discover it starred Jimmy Fallon. The topic was airport security, or security in general, and how it manifests in our (and I cringe to say it) post-9/11 world.
It began when Laser told us about the latest security snafu at his place of employment, a Yiddish historical society. Apparently, he and all the 90-year-old Jewish archivists (such as the esteemed Zelda Ackerman) were required to go through a security gauntlet to get to their desks, wanded and searched like potential criminals. I responded that at my graduate school (where I just started classes this week), there was a security guard on practically every floor. Twickface made the point that knee-jerk security like this only fuels our collective national paranoia and only makes it easier for the White House and other authorities to impose more and more restrictions, all under the name of protecting the Homeland.
The conversation drifted to airport security, and how it was a pointless endeavor that made people more afraid to fly while providing very little in the ways of actual preventative measures. Roast Beef and Twickface, the two loudest and most opinionated of my friends (the former a recovering philosophy grad student, the latter an Israeli), started to get into it, yelling and pounding their beer mugs on the table. Roast Beef maintained that airport security wasn’t tight enough, and that metal of any sort should be prohibited from carry-on luggage. Twickface responded that airport security should be cursory and non-invasive so as not to contribute to the climate of fear in which we live.
At one point a finger was pointed (I won’t say by who) and then grabbed in a let’s-fight-now manner. Fortunately, tempers cooled, backs were rubbed, and Hipster Scientist asked in his pleading, sincere, circa-mid-90s kinda way, “But what about all the poor people in the world?” Well said, my friend. What about all the poor people?
My friends are phunny.
I was out with four of my muchachos: Twickface, Hipster Scientist, Laser Feldshul, and Roast Beef Sandwich (names have been changed to protect the sensitive). Laser’s ebullient girlfriend works at Loreley, and was whetting our appetites with mug after mug of frosty bier. Gotten bless her. It was a reunion of sorts, as Roast Beef had spent the last month in the Virginia hinterlands recovering from a nasty case of measles mumps rubella. Or maybe it was appendicitis. I forget.
Regardless, rosy-cheeked camaraderie reigned and many witty one-liners and one-uppers and out-siders were dropped, none of which any of you would find very funny. (Or for that matter, phunny.)
But the tone soon changed, as all tones do. A cloud of anger slowly descended over our five-top table, as if we’d all just shelled out $12 to see a movie only to discover it starred Jimmy Fallon. The topic was airport security, or security in general, and how it manifests in our (and I cringe to say it) post-9/11 world.
It began when Laser told us about the latest security snafu at his place of employment, a Yiddish historical society. Apparently, he and all the 90-year-old Jewish archivists (such as the esteemed Zelda Ackerman) were required to go through a security gauntlet to get to their desks, wanded and searched like potential criminals. I responded that at my graduate school (where I just started classes this week), there was a security guard on practically every floor. Twickface made the point that knee-jerk security like this only fuels our collective national paranoia and only makes it easier for the White House and other authorities to impose more and more restrictions, all under the name of protecting the Homeland.
The conversation drifted to airport security, and how it was a pointless endeavor that made people more afraid to fly while providing very little in the ways of actual preventative measures. Roast Beef and Twickface, the two loudest and most opinionated of my friends (the former a recovering philosophy grad student, the latter an Israeli), started to get into it, yelling and pounding their beer mugs on the table. Roast Beef maintained that airport security wasn’t tight enough, and that metal of any sort should be prohibited from carry-on luggage. Twickface responded that airport security should be cursory and non-invasive so as not to contribute to the climate of fear in which we live.
At one point a finger was pointed (I won’t say by who) and then grabbed in a let’s-fight-now manner. Fortunately, tempers cooled, backs were rubbed, and Hipster Scientist asked in his pleading, sincere, circa-mid-90s kinda way, “But what about all the poor people in the world?” Well said, my friend. What about all the poor people?
My friends are phunny.
posted by Ricardo at 5:18 PM
2 Comments:
I have a few objections to this post, although much can be forgiven of its author, who is merely a student of writing, making mistakes as he goes and learning valuable lessons along the road of life.
Particularly, I don’t like that my position was represented simply as pro airline security, which sounds simple and lame and mildly right wingish. Instead, Mr. Montalbon will one day learn that his friend Matt (Roast Beef) often has complex lefty justifications for views that sound lame. I maintained specifically that (i) a consistent high level of security will actually do more to undercut a right-wing-climate of fear, as it will bring more comfort to passengers (fuck your hair gel and your portable metal devices), and (ii) looser standards (like the ones Yon advocates) will force guards to rely heavily on unfair (and poorly functioning) racial profiling techniques. (e.g. The demand for lower security is often advocated by those who explicitly support such profiling (see Scarborough, etc.))
The other objection I have is to Montalbon’s suggestion that this difference of opinion caused the “finger grabbing” (really it was more like hand holding). The “grabbing” was caused, as anyone who was there will tell you (except for andy and Yon) by Yon’s accusation that ‘I am a republican,’ ascribed to me on the basis of words I didn’t say. (Even if I did say them, I certainly made it clear that my intention was not to imply that only Middle Easterners threaten our security, as is suggested by my earlier point that profiling is not sufficient to eliminate bomb risks… My point now is just that a massive diss (you are a republican) should not be hinged on a miscommunication… a higher degree of charity normally operates among friends.)
So it was, in my view, either a vicious Strawman with a serious diss, or an uncharitable interpretation of a friends point followed by a serious diss that brought about the soft hand petting, which some have interpreted as physical violence.
Anthony ( hipster scientist) maintains that a victory in a debate among our friends amounts to forcing one’s opponent to become angry. (But then again, Anthony also asked gumby’s pizza if they could deliver him a pokey sticks order with FRESH tomatoes—so what the fuck does he know?) By this superficial measure, the night was Yon’s.
I’m just not so sure that he “won” when higher standards are brought to bear.
dear sir,
my weblogia post-it was never intended to elucidate or "correctly
portray" your point about airline security, or security in general. i
could give a fuck abut that. it was merely intended as a one-way conduit
of enter-info-edutainment-ism (or journalism as its also known), a
fly-on-the-wall/live-in style piece that was meant to offer my many
readers (3) a glimpse into how my phriends pheel about things, security, fingers; things of that ilk. Also, be mindful that Ricardo Montalban is mainly a forum
for like-minded individuals with great hair to sound-off about how
they're feeling at the pump.
perhaps, mattisfun, you should start your own blogger so you can give
"accurate" portrayals of accounts and things. perhaps you could call
your blogo "Matt is Fun" and you could update it once every thousand
years.
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