Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Incoming!

Salon seems determined to provoke lately. The number of subscribers drawn to the endless dweeby blather of Cary Tennis must have peaked, since they have lately been publishing some positively weird shit.

Today's exhibit: Ryan Knighton's "Dancing in the Dark," an account by a nearly-blind guy of picking up a girl at a club and getting her back to his house, where the lights are now bright enough for him to tell she actually isn't his type.

And that's the whole piece. There's no epiphany, no lesson learned, no point -- it's like a joke without a punchline. The piece more properly would have itself been a letter to columnist Tennis, who could at least have offered some of his typical on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand, on-this-third-hand- I-seem-to-have-grown advice.

Like this:
Dear Ryan, You stupid twerp, how could you possibly have been graceless enough to drag this girl home and then not fuck her? Couldn't you have dealt with your sudden ambivalence after you'd had sex, so she wouldn't have felt like a complete idiot?

On the other hand, we've all felt like you do, at times. We've all brought people home whom we look at in the light of day and think "Who the hell is this? What was I thinking? I don't even like breasts!" But that's in the light of day -- the freakin' light of day, man. You weren't meant to have second thoughts in the middle of the might when you're both half-drunk and ripping each other's clothes off (I notice you didn't offer to help her remove her boots. It's a wonder you ever get laid at all.) You're supposed to have these second thoughts the next morning, when it's way too late. This is why candles were invented, you idiot!

On the other hand, look at it from my perspective. I get letters from clueless dicks like you every day, and frankly, I'm starting to wish I were a Muni driver. I even wrote a song about it:
If I were a Muni driver...
Beep beep, beep beep, oh yeah!
All day long I'd beepy-beepy honk!
If I were a Muni man!

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