Originally posted October 18th, 2006
By Michael Konik
Despite our vigorous protests to the contrary, what Americans value more than “family” is quantity. We are a nation of super-sized dreck.
As our population eclipses 300 million — bigger and better every day — we are less inclined to appreciate (or even acknowledge) anything that is accomplished on a small scale. “Go big or go home” is the mantra. Should one score a minor triumph, the emphasis is on the minor aspect. We are a country of major.
When we discuss the YouTube phenomenon, it is in terms of millions of viewers and billions of dollars and trillions of lawsuits. Someone somewhere may have created a short film that is beautiful, illuminating, and possibly important. But unless it registers countless views and a cover story in Newsweek, it’s akin to a tree falling in a celluloid forest.
When we discuss the lasting gifts a kind . . . → Read More: Size Queens
Originally posted September 1st, 2006
By Michael Konik
Thank you to the Dads and Moms, toiling at home or in an office, on a truck or in a field.
Thanks also to the Thais and Turks and Filipinos and Sri Lankans, the Malaysians and the Indonesians, the Bangladeshis and the Vietnamese, and of course the Chinese, who make our clothes and shoes and socks.
They allow us to pay semi-literate folks a few dollars an hour so that other semi-literate folks may be paid millions of dollars to lend their familiar visage to the billboards and television ads that assure us how necessary and, yes, somehow vital, the shoes they endorse will feel upon our feet.
Thanks to them all.
And thanks to the Mexican and Salvadoran and Guatemalan and Honduran fellows who keep our grass green and our flowers blooming, bursting forth in fireworks colors that successfully distract us from the . . . → Read More: In Anticipation of Labor Day
Originally posted July 26th, 2006
By Michael Konik
I saw a beggar (and his dog) on Sunset Boulevard the other day. They — well, the human — were soliciting cash donations for “food” from pedestrians. A well-meaning but foolish fellow threw a few bucks at the doleful couple, thereby cleansing himself of whatever sins he had committed in the name of acquiring his gleaming car and discretionary cash. The donator didn’t care that the money he gave would help ensure that the recipient (and his dog) would be encouraged to stay on the sidewalk, where positive reinforcement from liberal Hollywood residents was easier to come by than honest work. All the rich fellow knew was that he somehow felt a little bit better about having more than the other guy.
Not long ago Bill and Melinda Gates announced that they would be dedicating the bulk of their time to giving . . . → Read More: The Charity Enigma
The first section — the “A” section — of the Los Angeles Times, focuses on international news and domestic stories of national interest. It is here that one learns how ugly and cruel life is for most of our brothers and sisters living in places other than America and Europe.
The next section is the California section. Here one finds news and trifles originating in the home state.
Then the Business section, in which the pursuit of money is celebrated with the same gusto that the next section, Sports, celebrates the pursuit of hockey goals and basketball points.
The Calendar section is where one finds news and analysis of our entertainment culture. This being Los Angeles (and America), movies and television garner more attention than, say, books or symphonic music.
In addition to the classified ads, the paper publishes a special section once a . . . → Read More: Sections of the Newspaper
Originally posted April 18th, 2006
By Michael Konik
In a gesture of international goodwill — and because there’s a big trade meeting coming up — the Chinese government recently shut down an enormous bazaar in Shanghai that exclusively offered counterfeit goods.
Merchants and shoppers admitted to reporters that the closure would be momentarily inconvenient but that the bazaar would soon move to another location nearby. Market forces, more powerful even than the pernicious Party, would dictate the bazaar’s future, and those forces, vendors predicted, would ensure continued financial success, no matter how much the authorities wagged a scolding finger or confiscated bootlegged copies of “King Kong.”
The enormous demand for fake Gucci handbags, fake Swatch watches, fake Yao Ming-endorsed basketball shoes, and hastily copied CDs of the latest Kelly Clarkson album tells us something about both the enduring appeal and the essential emptiness of brand names. In the case of a pirated DVD, both . . . → Read More: Learning from Piracy
Originally posted March 14th, 2006
By Michael Konik
According to a series of recently published newspaper stories, Thomas Kinkade, the enormously successful painter, isn’t as nice of a man as his collectors and business associates believed him to be. This normally wouldn’t be much of a revelation except that in Kinkade’s case the artist trades heavily on his “Christian values” and “core beliefs,” powerful code phrases that signify to his buyers that the expensive paintings they’re acquiring are much more than pretty wallpaper. They mean something. His tableaux, executed in a mushy realist style, depict a distant time that never was, when all was calm, all was bright.
Kinkade, according to court documents, has become fabulously wealthy from franchising his prints and lithographs to “Signature Galleries” located mainly in shopping malls. (The collapse of many of these outlets, which at one time seemed at plentiful as Burger Kings, is the . . . → Read More: Painter of Light
Originally posted February 16th, 2006
By Michael Konik
Most of us toil at jobs were not crazy about, dedicating a large portion of our life on Earth to laboring at tasks that may or may not satisfy our spiritual hunger. We recognize that we have a finite amount of time to be alive — and that time may be shorter than we imagine — and that the hours we spend at the office or factory or wherever we perform our quotidian exercises might possibly be spent doing other more satisfying things.
But we remind ourselves that it’s necessary and perhaps even virtuous to earn the money that our work produces. We have families to feed, bodies to clothe, electronic gadgets to purchase. Our determination freshly resolved, we rededicate ourselves to the pursuit of money and all the wonderful things it can get us.
Originally posted September 5th, 2005
By Michael Konik
To most of us, today’s holiday means a long weekend, an extra day off from the office — which, for those who dislike their job, is reason enough to celebrate. The occasion is solemn enough that banks, financial markets, and government offices remain closed. Amid the backyard barbecues and furniture discount sales the essential purpose of Labor Day is lost. Who or what do we honor with this national observance?
“All who are employed,” we think, is a misleading answer. We honor all who labor.
Only people who have never really worked — people who have never washed dishes, dug trenches, hauled trash — can misunderstand the distinction between working and laboring. Laborers do the jobs that nobody would freely choose if offered an alternative, and they do it for far less money than seems fair. Consider this: You would probably be willing to be a movie critic . . . → Read More: Hooray for Labor
Living in Los Angeles, in a neighborhood that’s near Bel-Air and Beverly Hills, enclaves of wealth and luxury that neatly summarize all that is grand (achievement, possibility, beauty) and horrible (excess, vulgarity, greed) about America, one has ample opportunity to reflect on the pros and cons of consumer-driven capitalism.
The question that comes to mind almost daily is, What are we all chasing?
A better life? Apparently that noble concept takes the form of more money, more power, more things, all of which, one eventually realizes, aren’t really better at all., just more. We pay lip service to the good souls who actually do something for the greater good, the teachers and organizers, scientists and volunteers. But we continue to lionize the rich and famous, granting them our highest cultural honor: attention.
One day, when our species is gone (or reduced to foraging through the fields, like our ancestors), the . . . → Read More: The Chase
Originally posted April 13th, 2005
By Michael Konik
Strip away the effective marketing campaigns that inspire Acquisition Lust, and what’s left? Remove the cultural conditioning that programs us like so many robots to want need desire require more, and what do you have?
An illusion.
Many of us find meaning in life through a maniacal pursuit of money and the things it can buy us. Those who have already secured more money than they could ever spend on the necessities of life, people with a net worth far beyond the average American’s wealth — not to mention the average Citizen of Earth — don’t seem content unless they’re socking away an ever-expanding “nest egg,” no matter how empty the larder of their fellow striver. The impulse, it seems, is to have more, do more, be more.
But more of what? More food? More space? More sex? More power? More solitude? Less solitude?
Practically speaking, if you have a . . . → Read More: Never Enough
“I welcome that debate.” — President Barack Obama, reacting to the disclosure of a secret domestic surveillance program operating under his watch.
“I welcome that debate,” I said to my wife. She had just discovered that I’d been having — actually, that I am currently having and intend to continue having — an affair with one of the hot flexible chicks in my yoga class.
Some bitter friend of my wife’s knows the girl I’ve…
We’re like every other patriotic American: when our beloved country is under attack, as it is at this very moment and every other moment of every day, we’re delighted to sacrifice our constitutional rights.
Whatever gets the job done, that’s our view. And if beating Islamic terrorists means being spied…
The time we’re living in is being called the Technology Revolution. It’s given us personal computers and cell phones and devices that, we all agree, make our lives altogether better. Everything is more efficient, more connected. Things can be ordered to appear at your door, getting lost in your car is…
Luckily for Barack Obama, news of improper shenanigans at the IRS stole attention from the week’s biggest story: that the President’s Justice Department had secretly seized call information from at least 20 phone lines belonging to Associated Press reporters, including personal cell phones and the main switchboard of the AP’s…
News comes from Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, that a disastrous fire swept through a garment factory there, killing eight people. A factory fire in November killed more than 100.
The garment industry in Bangladesh is euphemistically called “loosely regulated,” so, regrettably, these things (fires and so forth) tend…
Aside from the usual side-effects of hypnotic music — tapping toes, pumping heads, swaying shoulders — one of the interesting results of listening to the Cambodian Space Project is the onset of what feels vaguely like a psychoactive hallucination. They’ve got a delightful weirdness factor (at least to unseasoned Western ears). You feel transported. But [...]
Sections of the Newspaper
By Michael Konik
The first section — the “A” section — of the Los Angeles Times, focuses on international news and domestic stories of national interest. It is here that one learns how ugly and cruel life is for most of our brothers and sisters living in places other than America and Europe.
The next section is the California section. Here one finds news and trifles originating in the home state.
Then the Business section, in which the pursuit of money is celebrated with the same gusto that the next section, Sports, celebrates the pursuit of hockey goals and basketball points.
The Calendar section is where one finds news and analysis of our entertainment culture. This being Los Angeles (and America), movies and television garner more attention than, say, books or symphonic music.
In addition to the classified ads, the paper publishes a special section once a . . . → Read More: Sections of the Newspaper