Self-Indulgent Performance Art Reaches Record Low

Videogames Adventure Services. Where do I begin?

Featured in the Times about a week ago (article here), V.A.S is "a company that constructs 'reality adventures' for paying clients." Run by Columbia M.F.A-grad Brock Enright, this mind-boggling service arranges staged kidnappings at $1,500 and full-fledged odysseys of strangeness for no less than $10,000. The customers? Yuppie idiots with cash to burn, idiocy to spare, an inability to create meaning in their own lives, and an overwhelming need to make others do it for them.

At first, it's kind of cool to read about the "adventure" Enright and his team plan for Cristina, one such client. Cristina meets the team in a bar, interacts with people who are actually actors, and gets to act out a series of riddles culminating with a disappearing ventriloquist. Well, it's really awesome, actually -- or it would be, if this had been arranged by her friends or maybe as part of a movie. But when we find out that Cristina paid up to $60,000 for the complete unraveling of this life-overlapping-art fiasco, it gets a little less awesome -- especially when we know, well, it's all staged.

At some point, you could almost commend Enright for being the mastermind of what seems like an ingenious structure. He brainstorms, designs, and organizes incredible scenarios that people only dream about (or see in The Matrix), receives all the money needed to make it happen, and makes a profit to boot. He gets to hire actors, blindfold people, and even stage abductions.

But Enright, shacked up in a Bushwick apartment with his girlfriend and child, is one of those performance art junkies who thinks that urinating and defecating on himself are profound forms of self expression, and that's an immediate turn-off. He is a pretentious provocateur extraordinaire, armed with a Columbia degree that surely won't turn away fans -- or buyers.

Speaking of these buyers, let's review a few:

-Margo, a 38-year-old former Goth who was harassed with fake phone calls nightly and eventually flown to Germany, where she unknowingly played the role of rape victim on stage.

-A married couple looking to reignite their romance, chased by staged assailants in a country wood.

And the best:

-David, who paid under $5,000 (a bargain, no less) for a "superhero fantasy" during which he was "forced through a labyrinth of puzzles and endurance tests" and trusted to rescue a female damsel in distress (planted by V.A.S., of course). 

The outcome? "The comedown hit me immediately," David reports. "Everything had been so heightened. The next day I had to go back to work, and it was tough. I got very depressed."

........

"Very depressed," huh? BOO FUCKING HOO. That's what you get when you pay shit loads of money to be the star in an alternate reality game that is not only not real, but completely indulgent and ridiculous and unnecessary to the umpteenth degree of all degrees. This reminds me of those fools who suffered "depression" when they realized Pandora, the fictional planet showcased in the movie Avatar, was not real, nor were the blue Nav'i (and their know-all Tree of Life).

...Really, people? You deserve to feel a "come down" if you think it's okay to pay several thousands of dollars to have someone else engineer a quest of meaning in your life, and to make you the center of the world. If you had any real consciousness, you wouldn't need this kind of validation.

"Hey Mom, I just paid $10,000 for someone to involve me in a perverse alternate reality game where I might be beaten, kidnapped, or flown out of the country with minimal notice. It's like, totally cool, yah."

Can't Grow A Mustache? At Least Your Fridge Can.

If you can't grow it, buy it.

As you all know, mustaches are a major cornerstone of hipster culture, and the ultimate trendy accessory for skinny white men. With just the right amount of Village People sexiness and old-timey appeal, the mustache has far surpassed the skinny jean (I think) in the attainment of "I'm Cooler Than You" status. And, along with everything else hipsters find cool, it has thus inspired mountains of useless kitsch and novelty items.

Let's peruse a few gag gifts online to see just how far the insanity has gone. While some of these items are undeniably cute, they are far beyond any kind of normal, and seriously need to be condemned -- not on the side of the retailers, who clearly have a pulse on the current market, but on the side of those for whom they have been created.

Exhibit A: "Fingerstache" Tattoos

It's one thing to not have an actual mustache. But to not pretend to have one? That's just bollocks! If there's anything hipsters love, it's a combination of vintage trends and materialistic throwbacks to childhood ("OMG remember those?!). The 'fingerstache' tattoos provide both.

Brilliant.







Exhibit B: Mustache Bandaids

Kind of in the "childhood throwbacks" category, but worse. While 110% of real adults do whatever they can to avoid showing their boo-boos in public, hipsters think it's cool to pretend it's 1993 again (or 1970, for that matter), and flaunt their minor injuries wherever possible. So don't try punching any skinny mustachioed guys in Williamsburg -- it might give them an excuse to wear these.



Exhibit C: Handlebar Wine Bottle Opener

A blogger who picked up on this item says it best, imagining the user on a date. "She'll be so distracted by your Handlebar Mustache Bottle Opener she'll hardly notice the label on your cheapskate $4.95 bottle of fine." If that's the case, they're a perfect pair.

Exhibit D:  "Flavor Savers" Chip Clips 

'Cause even soy crisps won't stay crisp in a Williamsburg pantry full of Salvation Army clothing dust. These come in different colors for mustache diversity, so the hipsters will feel like they're celebrating the "colorful" aspect of their neighborhood.

Exhibit E: Mustache Candy

Um, these look like bats.

Exhibit F: Mustache Jumbo Magnet    

As the product description puts it, "Everything looks better with a mustache, right?"

Wrong. Very, very wrong.

Goldman Settles for Silver

Goldman employees have yet another reason to cry into their company-card dinners this week. The firm's budget for compensation and bonuses has reportedly dropped to $15.4 billion (down 5% in 2010). That means that instead of receiving an average bonus of $498,246, faithful workers must settle for a mere $430,700.

Boo Fucking Hoo.

What's Next, "Dog & Deluca"?

Far more than the revolting sight of dogs dressed in brand name clothing, ads for 'organic' and 'wholesome' dog food have caused me a lot of angst over the years. After all, nearly 50 million Americans struggle to feed themselves, and millions more don't have access to healthy foods like fresh produce, whole grains, etc -- yet lucky pooches are getting gourmet dinners served right under their anus-sniffing snouts.

Lately, I've encountered a series of commercials that have driven me to the brink of fury. They're for a brand called 'Blue Buffalo,' and here's an example. I couldn't load the isolated clip, so you'll have to bear with this one -- it starts at 1:02 (or, watch here).

Like, Oh em gee, Kim. "Ground corn was the first ingredient, not meat," says this frumpy valley girl.

Boo Fucking Hoo, lady. I'm all for not serving animals by-products and poison, but seriously, ground corn? That is the issue? And the romantic montage of mood-lit poultry and colorful produce that follows is not only cheesy as all hell -- it's frankly insulting to anyone who might never have access to such a nice assortment of foods.

"I love Murphy like family, so I wanna feed him like family," she continues.

Someone should tell Mom Jeans over here that Murphy is a fucking dog, and would eat literal garbage if given the chance (ever seen those glammed up chihuahuas sniffing turds on the street?). Something else tells me that this woman probably spends more time caring for her dog than for her family -- if she's got one (Yes, I know she's just an actor, but she's representative of real idiots out there).

I have nothing more to say. WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE TODAY?! 

Tiny Furniture? More Like Big Nuisance.

You might have seen this annoying poster. If not, you are seeing it now.

Sometime last year, I was slightly irked to read about Oberlin grad Lena Dunham's "low budget" film Tiny Furniture, about a young woman who "returns home from college, moves in with her wildly successful artist family in a pristine TriBeCa loft, all the while trying to find a place to stand in the world" (it was in this Times article). "Oh great," I thought, "another story about a rich college grad 'struggling' to make it on her parents' dime. Boo Fucking Hoo."

So imagine how pissed I was when Tiny Furniture blew up at IFC and started getting acclaim in lots of other places, too. Worst of all, Dunham has even scored a deal with HBO. The show is Girls, a Sex and the City-esque look at 20-something privileged white chicks making it big in New York City (gee, how original). Dunham plays an "eternal intern" at a publishing house, the Yale grad Allison Williams (daughter of NBC anchor Brian Williams) has a gig at a fancy PR firm, and another girl is doing some other kind of artsy "job" that in real life one could only get with a great connection (the same applies to the cast of this show, clearly).

And of course we're not seeing this lovely portrayal of the intern world on a youth-targeted network like MTV, which airs stories of low-income minorities, uneducated guidos, pregnant teens, and fat people. No, it could never be on MTV because then all the hipsters would have to go through great lengths to explain how "ironic" they were being by daring to watch such a lowbrow network, and obsessively lament over how sad it is that MTV is no longer about music.

Luckily for the show's future viewers, Girls will be on HBO, just gritty enough to count as "authentic," but also sufficiently upperclass and "artsy," so when they get together with their whiskey-brewing recording studio intern buds, they'll feel okay watching.

Let's just hope that Girls doesn't go 'wild' -- we already saw enough yupster undressing this weekend during the No Pants Subway Ride -- and that's enough for a long, long time.

Rats, Beware: The Hipsters Are Coming!!

 

Why is the "Underground" so damn trendy -- in this case, the literal underground?! If you liked what you learned in DieHipster's post about hipsters filming "movies" in an abandoned Brooklyn subway tunnel, you'll love this.

Decked in flannel and scarves, with expensive camping gear in tow, a bunch of fools led by Steve Duncan and Erling Kagge (a Norwegian mountain climber) blazed an intrepid trail through tunnels, sewers, and other underground spaces beneath Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx. Lucky for us all, they had the fine privilege of documenting their romp in a full-length Times article, with a day-to-day diary and a slide show to boot (**EDIT: and an NPR bit, too!!)

The author of the article, who went along on the guided trip, had me in conniptions by the first paragraph:

It must have been the third or fourth day — time, by that point, had started to dissolve — when I stood in camping gear on Fifth Avenue, waiting as my companions went to purchase waterproof waders at the Orvis store. We had already hiked through sewers in the Bronx, slept in a basement boiler room, passed a dusty evening in a train tunnel; we were soiled and sleep-deprived, and we smelled of rotting socks. Yet no one on  that sidewalk seemed to notice. As I stood among the businessmen and fashionable women, it dawned on me that New Yorkers — an ostensibly perceptive lot — sometimes see only what’s directly in front of their eyes.

Soiled, sleep-deprived, and smelly? Boo Fuckin' Hoo: that's what you get when you leave your cozy Park Slope apartment and take a vacation in a goddamn sewer. And time had started to dissolve? Give me a fucking break. Your companions are buying equipment at a fancy outer goods store on 5th Avenue, and one of your guides climbed Mt. Everest... yet you think you've got some kind of epic street cred?! Like, "Oh, I am so deep. Look at how rugged and dirty and authentic I am compared to all these capitalist Wall Street suits and fashion-conscious women. They're so superficial and I'm so real. Poor souls, they only see what's in front of them..." (Yeah, exactly: they see a grimy rando standing outside a fancy clothing store. Grow up, already: nobody cares!!!)

Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to post pics from the slide show here, so you'll have to take a look yourself. I'm not sure which is worse: the fact that one of the travelers wore white sneakers (Photo 4) while exploring a dirty old train tunnel, or that the group took an artsy fartsy snapshot (Photo 7) of a woman who's been ACTUALLY LIVING in an Amtrak tunnel for several years as some kind of supremely offensive and exploitative relic. Actually, the worst part has got to be the guides' stupid, ironic expressions of rugged hardship and struggle in Photo 10, as if it were not indeed their own privileged choice to explore the most putrid parts of NYC as an enlightened project of "urban spelunking."

New Year, same old shit.