"...how we do things downtown."

I'm late getting to this, but ROC-NY has won big in its years-long struggle against managerial tip-stealing and racism at Fireman restauraunts. This is a big deal because ROC-NY is one of the organizations at the forefront of the workers' center movement that was and remains so central to the immigrant worker labor movement that took the mainstream media and the streets of cities across the country by storm two years ago.

I haven't been blogging too much about what this blog purports to be about, mostly because it's summer break, I'm still in post-exam vacation mode, and watching massive amounts of Deadwood, which has, by my count, employed all seven of the words the late George Carlin told us could not be said on television, and then some. I have also watched a lot of movies, some on my ipod, some in the theatre. Be Kind Rewind and There Will Be Blood were the best of these, the former had me laughing uproariously at my computer screen at six in the morning, while the latter makes me want to go out and read the Upton Sinclair novel on which it's based. I'm interested in what Be Kind Rewind has to say about a politics of history - the history Mike and Jerry remake, the history of the films they 'swede' ("anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of robocop") but also the history of Passaic, New Jersey, of its great textile strike ("Passaic means class struggle") and of the projects into which Danny Glover's Mr. Fletcher is relocated at the film's close. Mia Farrow's character suggests a radical populism inherent to this postmodern selective/fictive reinterpretation of text and event, but the political possibilities of this kind of play, the film seems to suggest, are fleeting.

Iron Man was one of the better Marvel Comics movies, up there with the second Spider-Man film and maybe X2: X-Men United as the best of a bunch which includes the unwatchable Tom Jane Punisher remake (Dolph Lungren now keeping himself busy as a VH1 nostalgia show talking head), the execrable Daredevil, and its seque Elektra, whose existence escapes reason, as well as the crass Fantastic Four franchise. (Joel Schumacher Batman installments and Catwoman aside, DC's been much better at this sort of thing lately - Superman Returns was great, and while i didn't get much out of Batman Begins, it was certainly better than, say the Brett Ratner X-Men 3 crapfest.) When Iron Man came out back in May there was a great deal of hubbub about the critique of war profiteering and then backlash "it's not really a very strong critique" in response. The critique is somewhat limited, but even if Stain's double-dealing offers an easy way out of the conundrum, the film does highlight some interesting questions raised by corporate R&D and its relationship to the war state in an old-school, Eisenhower "Military Industrial Complex" manner (rather than a new school, Jeremy Scahill, labor subcontracting, Blackwater etc. one.) I do think that the ghostface killah cameo would have made more sense in this film than it does in Walk Hard, which I enjoyed mostly because of the 3 seconds of Martin Starr's Yiddish accent. Semi-Pro was pretty bad. Cloverfield was a boring landscape of gentrified, yuppie Manhattan in crisis. Charlie Wilson's War combined Aaron Sorkin's usual preachy liberalism with a worldview even more neocolonial than usual. Kung Fu Panda was OK. I like how they never explain why his father's a goose. No Country for Old Men was interesting. Breach was boring despite Chris Cooper, and Ryan Phillipe can't act. I don't remember what else I watched.

I've started walking again, and organizing again, and in general I'm enjoying being done with my exams and will soon move on to my incompletes and my dissertation proposal. Sigh.

random, but awesome.

Turning from Flatbush Avenue on to State Street this afternoon to go feed Spooky I passed a short, stocky, goatteed guy in his late 20s walking in the other direction. He looked at me, said "panda power," and continued walking. Did this man somehow know that I love pandas? Was he mocking my GSOC button, or the fact that, dressed in all black save for the white rubber tips of my converses, I had kind of a panda color scheme going on? Or was he totally fucking batshit? Who cares? It was awesome.

What wasn't awesome was getting locked out of Spooky's apartment because the landlord called the locksmith at the request of spooky's owner, who wanted a different kind of lock on the outside gate leading into the little vestibule where the front door to the 1st floor is, and the locksmith came much earlier than anyone was expecting. It's all resolved now - I have to go pick up a key tomorrow afternoon - but I am already in Spooky withdrawal. I love that cat a lot. SHe is ridiculously affectionate and jumped in my lap while i was watching a tivoed episode of The Tick yesterday. She's adorable.

Bombing Somalia. They're not even particularly good imperialists anymore, are they?

Yesterday Manhattan smelled and people got paranoid.

I have been in Manhattan a total of four times in the last month. That's kind of awesome.

Oh. Mos Def came out with a half-assed new album, which, while not nearly as sexist, homophobic, and anti-semitic as The New Danger Crapfest ft Marky Mark and the Motherfucking Funky Bunch, was boring and haphazard and the best moment was the beat from "Liquid Swords." Geffen released it on Friday, December 29 (which is fucking bizarre since most new cds come out on Tuesdays and December 29 is December 29. Now it's been recalled. Supposedly the rerelease will actually include cover artwork. Maybe Mos could use the extra time and make a halfway decent album which does not cast hip hop as anally raped victim of David Geffen "Homosexuals" and "Israelis." Not that bashing Israelis is necessarily anti-Semitic, but I sincerely doubt that the problem has with Lyor COhen "controlling this rap game" has anything to do with his admittedly vocal (and admirable) support for Palestinian Liberation.

Happy Birthday to Tai Shan

Tai Shan, the baby panda, is 23 years, 364 days younger than me. That means today is his first birthday. The National Zoo threw him a party, complete with a birthday giant fruitsicle. Awesome.

Pandas on Strike

While in DC for a friend's wedding (which was really beautiful and amazing, but I am going to refrain here from blogging about it) I attempted a pilgrimage to see Tai Shan, the baby panda at the National Zoo about whom i have blogged incessantly here. Needless to say, I was very excited. Unfortunately, Tai Shan and his mother, Mei Xiang, were both nowhere to be found in their yard, and the inside exibit was actually closed, leading me to conclude that what was taking place was in fact a wildcat (or, in this case, domesticated bear) strike. I have no way to substantiate this claim, but I stand by it nonetheless and pledge my full support to my furry companero who is currently climbing all over his mother. I did get to see a baby elephant dribble a ball around with its snout, just in time for the world cup, a hippopotamus swim really fast underwater and then take an unusually violent bowel movement, and some really freaking cute golden lion tamarins. And no, i'm not starting the monkey obsession again.

This blog is not a union blog. The opinions herein do not represent those of any union, not the least GSOC, of which i am a member. GSOC cares about things like the future of the academy and winning just contracts, whereas i write about things like baby pandas and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So please don't interpret any of these rants as anything other than what they are. Thanks.

The tupperware was to keep him from moving while they weighed him!

Amazing video of baby panda facing medicalized biopower.

Sorry about the (pseudo)Foucault. I have a one track mind.

Weber's a racist, a firm believer in the unique force and grandeur of Occidental capitalist modernity, something of an anti-semite, and does not, i believe, mention women much if at all throughout his magisterial work of historical sociology, The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism, in which he attempts to trace the relationships between puritanical asceticism and capitalist discipline. It's still interesting to read, but it's also pretty infuriating, and i hope the discussion on monday is a good one. Now on to Kathy M'Closkey's book on Navajo Weaving, which is interesting so far (i'm only 13 pages in) and has already cited Maria Mies' Patriarchy and Accumulation on A World Scale. Which is cool.

There are lots more pictures of the baby panda up at the National Zoo website, which will proovide me with blog fodder for weeks. For now, I just want to let you all know that if i were a baby panda, I too would hang out in large tupperware containers.


The Mets won today, and the Yankees lost not only their game against the Blue Jays, but also sole posession of first place. Oh, the Schadenfreude. Pandas probably don't do Schadenfreude. They are probably to busy hanging out in tupperware containers.

Thursday is the new Friday is the new Saturday reportback

First the bad news - i have read a total of three more pages of Weber all day than i had when i woke up, which is not going to get me very far. Then the good news - I had a really good day -- lunch with a friend from high school who's now an undergraduate at the university by way of a few years in Tibet and Nepal, and then dinner with BC, which renewed and increased my excitement about this fight and all the stuff that needs to get done between now and whenever we win. A year and a half ago, a certain former graduate student union lead whose intials both start with the letter W told me that I had to go to grad school somewhere were there was an organizing drive going on ("or i'd have to start one," I pointed out.) As it turns out, I wound up going to a school which already had a recognized bargaining unit, but now nevertheless finds itself in an incredibly important fight over the future of transient teacher unionization at private universities. This is a fight we need to win, not only because the Sextons and Levins of the world don't want us to, but because we need to radically reimagine and reinvent the university - not only its governance, its actions, and its heirarchies of labor and power, but also its relationship to the communities in which it is situated and the kinds of knowledge it produces and for whom it produces them.

hydrarchy (11:53:55 PM): see, i'm a total panda
Frans626 (11:54:41 PM): oh i get it blacka nd white clothes-- you ARE a little nuts
hydrarchy (11:54:57 PM): I'm NOT NUTS
hydrarchy (11:55:05 PM): I'M a f***ing panda
hydrarchy (11:55:17 PM): don't stand in the way fo my self-actualization as a panda!
Frans626 (11:55:21 PM): oh dear --get the nexium hurry!!
Frans626 (11:55:40 PM): i'm a good jewish mother who wants you to be whatever you want -- so panda -away
hydrarchy (11:56:05 PM): woohoo
hydrarchy (11:56:09 PM): i will be a jewish panda
Frans626 (11:56:37 PM): great mazel tov!
hydrarchy (11:56:52 PM): l'Panda tovah
hydrarchy (11:57:05 PM): or l'shana panda, i mean.

i got nine hundred problems

but leisure ain't one. This is post 900, if that was too subtle. yay for me.
Here's some Panda crotch.

Today's wednesday, and it's after five, which means i'm done with classes for the week, which means i now have to start reading for next week's classes. Before then, though, I wanted to blog for a little about nothing in particular. I could talk about how i feel really intimidated and stupid in all my classes and have no idea what teh fuck i am doing. But i'm not going to do that. (Praeteritio!) I could blog about Hurricane Rita and I hope folks get safe and make sure that people who can't leave have immediate assistance and support, but no, instead i think i'm going to blog, first, about fall tv premieres. Specifically i'm interested in three series featuring former cast members of Buffy and Freaks and Geeks. "Kitchen Confidential" stars a bunch of people i have never seen before and don't like very much, and John Cho of Harold and Kumar fame, who is a pretty good comedic actor. But it also co-stars Nicholas Brendon, who played Xander in every single episode of Buffy except the one he isn't in, and John Francis Daly, who brilliantly played one of the protagonists in Freaks and Geeks back when he was a lot more prepubescent. Both of them don't really factor too much in the first episode, which is unfortunate, because the series itself isn't particularly good. Dumb racist and sexist jokes, ("Tyrone, you're a walking can opened; this man is a chef") hackneyed extremities in food humor, etc. Also it was directed by Fred Savage, and badly.

"How I Met Your Mother" has another actor who was in Harold and Kumar, Neil Patrick Doogie Harris. It also features voice overs from Bob Saget. But again, not really giving a crap. It co-stars Alyson Hannigan and Jason Segel though, so i decided to watch the premiere. Cliche romantic comedy, brazenly orientalist fetishization of lebanese women, but Hannigan is wonderful. Segel is amazing at playing hapless masculinists, half-enearing, half-sketchy male characters whose attitudes towards the objects of their affections are possessive and at times frightening. Here, he's playing a much shallower and multidimensional character, a shlocky law student who gets engaged to alyson hannigan in the first episode.

Niether show is particularly good, but the new season of Veronica Mars starts next week, and that has another ex-Buffy cast member, and Steve Guttenberg too, so it should be pretty interesting.

And at ten weks old, the baby panda becomes a swimsuit model

shamelessly stolen from the national zoo website. I wish i had a talking baby panda sidekick. I could take him for walks and we would discuss Foucault and coloniality. Then he would be my panda wingman like in that stupid NYT article about the women who you pay to get you dates at parties. Only he would be a talking baby panda, possibly with a slight Yiddish accent. (There were mad jews in Beijing.) Also every time i look at the panda, i want to be all [baby talk:]"look at that punim!" Why my imaginary baby panda friend speaks with the accent of great grandparents i never knew, i really couldn't tell you.

The backstreet boys have apparently remade themsleves with massive amounts of post-sum 41/American Hi-Fi emo retro metal chic. I guess that's the zeitgeist. They're eerily reminiscent of Blink 182 parodying, um, The Backstreet Boys. My head is going to explode.

happier news

The MEG seems like it is starting to buckle on its refusal to negotiate a 2006 contract expiration date.

Also, happy eight week birthday to the baby panda.

Unite-HERE has set up its own relief fund to help members in the Gulf region. So have SEIU and other unions. I'm reticient to plug the red cross stuff because i think they have a very fucked up relationship to imperial violence, but I also think it's possible to donate and still be very critical, so if that's what makes the most sense, do what you can, and organize to rebuild and create networkks of solidarity to counter what seems to be quickly descending into militarism and cronyism.

Baby Panda is clearly watching John Sexton and feels that NYU ought to immediately negotiate a contract with GSOC in good faith.

"I love being a turtle!"

Ok, i promise that's the last reference to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on this blog for a while. But I'm assuming that if I didn't already lose you all with panda obsessions and anti-Diplo invectives, a couple stray references to a childhood fad aren't going to lower my readership any more than my typically mediocre posting quality will.

Today i saw not one, not two, but four turtles in prospect park, all sunning themselves on rocks. Litle kids walking by were pretty excited. It was really cute.

Also I learned that Anonymous Baby Panda (ABP) has even more company - a baby California sea lion born July 6th at the Bronx Zoo. I'm not as obsessive about this largely because I saw a crapload of baby sea lions attempting to sun themselves on the docks at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco last September when i was out there for boycott-related program activities and the Bronx Zoo sea lion exhibit pales in comparison. ABP is mad cute though.

phone conversation

"Wait, so now you want to be a panda, you don't want to be a monkey anymore? So if you were a Panda, what kind of Panda would you be. Ha ha ha." - Frances Susan Schwartz.

pandas, plus three counts of attempted vehicular zachicide

baby panda is so fucking cute. Right now, i'm watching him on the pandacam (which is admittedly very panoptical and fucked up, but... pandas... cute... and i'm reduced to inarticulability.) He's repeatedly trying to curl himself into a ball, he's waving his tiny feet around in circles, and putting his little forepaws on top of his head. He's so adorable. Now he's trying to scratch himself. And every now and then he makes little noises, I think.

In the last two days three motorists have apparently attempted to hit me with their vehicles while i was lawfully crossing an intersection with the light and the pedestrian right of way. Yesterday it was these two guys in an SUV. I remarked to them that I had the right of way, which was dumb of me, and they shouted obscenities and threats and sped away making obscene gestures. so i called my mom. Today at the same intersection (5th Ave and 9th street in park slope) as I was aga-- excuse me, baby panda is now grasping a bamboo stalk in both paws and seems to be chewing on it -- ahem, again walking to Manhattan, a grey sedan nearly plowed into me. This time i didn't say or do anything.

Then, once i made it to Manhattan and was walkign up Broadway from the city Hall area into SoHo (eww) towards the east village, a large RV driven by a hasidic man in his late twenties or thirties with like "Lubavitch Mobile" or something like that written on the front and detailed with lots of stars of David and the phrase "The Moshiach is Coming Now!" (which confuses me because i thought they thought that the Moshiach was that Rabbi who passed away a few years ago) --Mommy Panda was eating, while Baby panda was doing his ball impression, now they are showing her defecating, which seems very invasive. Now she's eating some more. -- anyway, Moshiachmobile turned a corner as I and some goyishe tourists were crossing the street and nearly ran us over. Am i being too aggressive in my street-crossing? Am i zoning out because i've been walking way too much in 94 degree weather? Or do they just hate me for my freedoms?

Back to baby panda writihing around on ground and munching on bamboo. Awwww.

more panda cuteness

national zoo panda cam: best thing ever.

the new panda

totally off-topic, but oh my god is this cute

weird songs about pandas by very weird bands

Deerhoof: "Panda Panda Panda"
Xiu Xiu: "Little Panda McElroy"
Dungen: "Panda"

and then there's that Panda Bear dude from Animal Collective...

It's enough to make one paranoid of all these Manchurian Candidate indie rockers and their paymasters in Beijing!