Column for MRR 277 May

You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
by Mykel Board

You always have to watch out when people start talking about purity, ethnic or
otherwise. It usually means someone is going to get hurt. –Elena Glassberg

The MRR editrix suggested we write about DIY, the invasion of big corporations
into punk, the difficulty of remaining true to the vision, and of keeping punk pure.
Interesting topic, though not unusual in these pages of punknic cleansing.
There are a few issues here.
1. Does punk mean DIY, small label, independent?
2. Is DIY, small label, independent inherently better than big corporation? If so,
better for whom? For the individual/band/writer/zine? For the world? For rebellious
teenagers living off their parents’ allowance?
3. Is punk a style or a way of life?
The answers depend on your point of view. If A, then B. If you don’t believe A.
Then B is not true.
So let’s look at the questions above. The first is easy. GG Allin was the punkest
human being in history. Or at least in the 20th century. Would he be any less punk if Eat
My Fuck were released on Warner Brothers? Of course not. If GG Allin continued doing
what he was doing. Shitting where he was shitting. Getting arrested the way he got
arrested. Living a life of just not caring, of having no fear, of being able to piss on the
president of his record label, GG would be just as punk. No matter who put out his
records.
If GG were inhibited in some way, if he didn’t do something because he feared
being dropped by the label, or lack of promotion, then he’d be less punk. It’s not the label
that makes the punk. It’s the balls.
Question two is more difficult. I usually prefer independents over corporate
giants. I never go to Starbucks or McDonalds. I don’t buy Nike. A Sony-induced worm
does not infect my hard drive. But I make compromises.
Sometimes I feel forced into the corporate world. I use a Windows computer
because I grew up with it. All my bootlegged software is in Windows—or MS-DOS. Is
Apple better? The system sure is. But is the company? I don’t know. I only know it’s
smaller.
Sometimes, on a personal level, big corporate stuff is just better. I rent from Hertz
because when I call they don’t put me on hold. I can change my reservations at the last
minute. The guys at the rental garage know me, and will hold my favorite car even if I’m
late picking it up. They give me a free rental for every 6 paid ones. I can get a satellite
system that somewhat makes up for my lack of directional sense. And they never
complain when I bring the car back with a flat tire, or the back seat carpet missing.
Sometimes, a product is good, but the corporation is total shit. Pfizer and Coca
-Cola are horrible companies. Pfizer’s pricing and tight patent control kills people. Coca
-Cola has overthrown leaders to get its product into countries and cheap raw material out.
But Pfizer makes Viagra, for G-d’s sake. And Coca-Cola makes, well, Coca-Cola.
 So waddaya do? You can’t be pure. Even vegans wear polyester (made from
animals—dinosaurs) and cotton (containing the helpless bodies of millions of ground-up
bol weevils). We’ve all got to draw lines—or die.
The question is not how to remain pure, but how to draw our lines.
Question three has as many answers as there are people who call themselves
punks.
[Aside: Like in the mid-eighties, when everyone was suddenly New Wave, these
days, there’s a taboo in calling yourself punk. A good taboo if you ask me. Punk is balls.
You’ve got to have balls to break taboos.]
For me, punk is an attitude. It can be music, literature, a drunk on the street
sleeping in his own vomit, a whore on the corner whispering Hey Mister, you wanna go
out?
It is not style. A $300 designer “torn look” dress is not punk. A $3 thrift shop plaid
business suit is. But other than the obvious, there’s no purity. No arbiter. No this is, or
isn’t punk. There’s no manual that lists the criteria for true punk or not.
It’s as dangerous as hell to keep punk— or anything else, except maybe air and
water— pure. Who’s gonna be your punk cops, policing against contamination from
lesser cultures? It used to be MRR—but Tim’s dead now.
What the Supreme Court said about pornography, I say about punk. I may not be
able to define it. But I sure as fuck know it when I see it. That’s enough.

Part Two (continued from last month)

In the US, 40% of those surveyed say they were shy. In Japan it was 57%. The
lowest percentage was in Israel with 31%. We speculate the reason was that in Japan, an
individual’s performance success is credited externally to parents, grandparents,
teachers, coaches, and others, while failure is entirely blamed on the person.
In Israel, the situation is entirely reversed. Failure is externally attributed to
parents, teachers, coaches, friends, anti-Semitism, while all performance success is
credited to the individual enterprise. Israelis are free to take risks, since there is nothing
to lose by trying and everything to gain.
--Thomas H. Benton

Summary of last month’s adventure:

I’m in Fort Lauderdale on a two-pronged mission: (1)promote my books (2)go to

my pal Ms. S’s wedding. The first two nights I stay with Tom Clearman, a Catholic
Mensa Wobblie. He tells tales of things I’ve never heard of. He also introduces me to
strange people, who though brilliant, have few of what the rest of society would call
social skills.
For the wedding, I wear a tie for the first time in 10 years. With my overcoat, tie
and fedora, I think I look like a Mafia hit man. Entering the wedding site, Uncle Charlie
asks if I’m the rabbi. Instant ego deflation.
Before the ceremony, Ms. S introduces me to Fletch and Greasy. Neither of them
are wearing ties. Both, in fact, are wearing hooded sweatshirts. Ms. S tells me they’re
skaters, friends of her famous skater husband to be. They speak in a language I don’t
understand. Transcribed, this is what Fletch says:
Hey, remember that time we were on the halfpipe in back of PK’s? You were
killing it, doing narly hand plants, landing all the way on the bottom of the tranny. So this
guy wants to show he’s a hotshot. He comes to the top of the pipe and wants to do an Ali
to grind revert. He goes flying completely off the end. Just slams onto the flat bottom.
Pow! Right on his head. Cudda killed himself. We pissed ourselves laughing so hard. He
didn’t die though. Still, it was funny.
Though I don’t understand it, I figure the word Ali has something to do with Islam
—or maybe boxing.
Greasy sticks out his hand. “Yo, Mykel Board,” he says, “I didn’t expect to see
any other famous people here. It’s great meeting you. I used to read your column when I
was a kid. You still writing for Maximum? Does it still exist?
“Yes. Yes.” I answer.
“How do you know Alan?” he asks. “Are you a skater?”
“Nope,” I tell him. “I can’t even stand on one of those things without falling off.
I’m not gonna ride one…. And Alan? I met him once in New York. Cool guy. But
actually I know the bride.”
“Know! Know!” he says winking at me. “I get ya’ Know!”
“No,” I say. “I don’t know her. But we’re friends. We went to Europe together.
I’ve known her for a long time.”
“You went to Europe together and you don’t know her? I don’t get it.”
“It’s a long story,” I tell him. “You can read it in a column.”
“I can read everything in a column,” he says.
“Mykel,” comes the voice of Ms. S, “you’ve got to come upstairs and sign the
ketubah.”
For the goyim amongst you, a ketubah is a Jewish wedding contract. It’s a
document that needs two witnesses who are in neither the bride’s nor the groom’s family.
It’s a fancy piece of paper with lots of Hebrew on it.
I forgot to bring a yarmulke—I’m not supposed to sign the thing bareheaded.
They let me wear my detective hat.
After the signing, there’s a hubbub. The actual wedding is about to begin.
The ceremony takes place outside, in a space that used to be a gazebo before the
last hurricane blew it away. The real rabbi speaks with a strong Eastern European accent.
A Jewer guy, I never saw. He goes through the mystical mumbo jumbo. Then, before he
does his husband and wife pronouncing, he talks about each of the couple-to-be.
Ms. S’s story I know—better than he does. Her hubby-to-be, I don’t know that
well, but the rabbi’s heard all about him. He’s famous. A skate-boarder. He invented a
word that’ll be in the dictionary. Some kind of skateboard jump where the board stays
attached to your feet. It’s called the Ali—a weird name for a jump invented by a Jew. At
least I know what it is now.
“… husband and wife. You can break the glass,” says the rabbi as I zone back into
the ceremony.
Someone once said that you can sum up all Jewish celebrations with:
They hurt us.
We killed them.
 Let’s eat.
Weddings skip the first two parts: fish, chicken, huge mounds of cheese, tons of
booze. Yowsah!! I’m sitting at the table with the skaters. I still can’t understand more
than three-quarters of what they’re saying.
“So how come he called it Ali?” I ask. “Is it like Mohammad Ali?”
“No,” says Fletch. “It’s O-L-L-I-E, not A-L-I. It was Alan’s nickname, from
where he liked to eat. That’s why it’s called the Ollie. Dude, you can’t be that dumb.”
“Of course not,” I lie with a perfectly straight face. “It’s just this way I have of
putting you on. It’s a Jew thing.”
After eating enough to shit for a month, and drinking enough to puke as long, it’s
time to go home. The problem is, I don’t know where home is.
I call Tom Clearman.
“Sorry Mykel,” he says. “My gal from Boston is here, and well, you know how it
is. Sorry. But you left your toilet kit in my bathroom. I’ll mail it to you.”
“Shit!” I say loudly after hanging up. “I’m screwed now. A Miami motel will cost
a fortune. Besides, I’m gonna be sick.”
A voice comes from behind me. “You can stay with us.”
It’s Alan, the groom. He’s offering me a place to stay.
“Yo,” I say. “It’s your goddamn wedding night. I’m gonna stay with you on your
goddamn wedding night?”
“What the fuck?” he says. “You’re mishpocha (family). You’re one of us.”
I stay on their couch.
Flash ahead several weeks: I’m in Portland Oregon, reading at a cool bookstore
called Reading Frenzy. It’s Northwest Book Promotion time. I’ll be in Portland, Seattle,
Bellingham, and Vancouver, BC.
[Aside: I can’t figure out why Vancouver is considered the Northwest. Look at a
map of Canada! You can’t get more Southwest than that. It’s the Arizona of the North—
but even the Canuks call it the Northwest.]
I’m surprised by the number of blonds up here. In New York, a blond is as rare as
a protestant. But here, you see ‘em all the time. Maybe half the people. Fat ones, thin
ones, cute ones, ugly ones. They just walk around on the street, like they’re ordinary
folks.
After my reading, this guy comes up to me and introduces himself. He’s got short
dark curly hair, thinning in front.
“Hi,” he says, “my name’s Seth. We met about 15 years ago. I used to write for
this fanzine called Factsheet 5.”
I don’t really remember the guy, though I do remember the zine. One of the all-
time greats.
“I’m not sure I remember you,” I say.
“Oh sure you do,” he says, “I’m the Jew.”
Flash ahead 2 days: In Vancouver, after the reading, a slightly shlubby guy with
curly black hair comes up to me.
“Hey Mykel,” he says, rolling up his sleeve. “Check this out.”
He’s got a blue Star of David tattooed on his upper arm.
“Cool,” I say, “you’re one of us.”
 “Yeah,” he says, “I thought you’d be offended. I mean Jews aren’t supposed to
have tattoos.”
“Well,” I tell him, “the rabbis recently ruled that it’s okay to have a design tattoo.
Something like a Star of David, or one of those Celtic bands. The rule is you can’t have a
graven image, like a person or an animal.”
His face drops like a Matzo-packed turd.
“What about pets?” he asks. “I mean like cats. I mean like cartoons of cats. You
can’t have one of those?”
I can see by his one unrolled sleeve that he’s got something to hide.
“No pets,” I tell him. “No animals. No people. Or you can’t be buried in a Jewish
cemetery.”
“And… there’s… nothing… ???” he stutters.
“Oh, sure,” I tell him, “you can have the offending tattooed limb cut off and
buried separately. It’s no big deal. It’s not like you’ll need it in the afterlife.”
I can see his features soften as he begins to believe I’m putting him on.
“Funny, Mykel,” he says. And there starts a conversation about Skrewdriver,
Muslims and how Noam Chomsky is a self-hating Jew. And about all the people who are
anti-Israel.
“I’m anti-Israel,” I say.
“I thought you were Jewish,” he says.
“I’m a Jew,” I tell him. “No –ish about it. But that’s a cultural Jew. I’m not a
religious Jew. I’m not a Zionist Jew. I’m just a plane ole’ ordinary Jew Jew.”
“Oh,” he answers.
And that brings me to the second theme of this bi-themed column.
What is it about Jewtude that makes me say I’m a Jew, rather than I’m a Punk or
most anything else when asked about my identity?
It’s certainly not the religion. You know Jews have a prayer where men beat
themselves on the chest and say thank G-d I wasn’t born a woman? You know that
according to Jewish law, if you see someone working on Saturday, you should stone him
to death? You know that, as a Jew, if G-d tells you to kill your kid (Abraham) or murder a
complete village of innocents (Canaan), you’ve got to do it? It’s an awful religion.
It’s certainly not Israel, which is—next to the U.S. and maybe Russia— the most
murderous country in the post WWII world. It’s killed thousands and tortured thousands
of others in a paranoid attempt to protect its theocracy. Even the State Department of the
US—the most pro-Israel country in the world—says that religious and racial
discrimination is rampant in Israel. Israelis are Jews, so they have some of the great Jew
qualities, like not being shy. But Israel is not a nice country.
So what is it that makes me proud of being a Jew?
It’s the Jews, that’s what. Not all of ‘em of course, but the culture, and personality
traits that make up Jews are what I love about it. The pushiness. The self-confidence. The
boldness. The balls. It’s the Chomskys, the Lenny Bruces, the Norman Mailers, the Karl
Marxes, the Joey Ramones.
It’s Deborah Libstadt a Jewish professor at Emory University who commented on
the recent jailing of a Holocaust denier in Austria. She said, “We Jews, who have suffered
from censorship should not be supporting it. Censorship renders the censored item into
forbidden fruit, making it more appealing, not less so… The best way to counter
Holocaust deniers is to teach the truth to as many people as possible.”
It’s my Arab friend Bassam, who I call right after the World Trade Center attacks.
“Bassam!” I ask. “Are you okay? I thought that Arabs might be targets after this
thing and I just wanted to check up on you.”
“Mykel,” he answers, “thanks for calling. Everything is all right here. But you
should know, it’s only my Jewish friends who called me. They’re the only ones who
care.”
It’s how Jews walk into a restaurant and look at food on a stranger’s table and just
ask how—and what— it is. It’s the way we are not shy. It’s how we talk with our hands
and how we refuse to be like everybody else. It’s how we hug and kiss when we see our
friends. Not a toot toot oui Monsieur two cheek kiss like the French. Not a Negro style
chest-only hug and slap on the back. Nope. An honest-to-G-d wow! I-can-touch-another-
human-being-and-hold-‘em-close-for-a-few-seconds hug. It’s the way I can talk about
books and art and punkrock, and the Jew I’m talking to knows at least something about
books and art and punkrock. It’s the way Jews bring new words into the language—like
mishpocha, bagel or Ollie. That’s why I love being a Jew. Religion or nationalism has
nothing to do with it. That’s Jewish. For me, there’s no –ish about it.

ENDNOTES:

 The editorial staff of The New York Press walked out en masse after the publishers
refused to print the Danish cartoons that sparked international riots. Have the cartoons
been printed at all in the US? I guess they’re on the web, but are they in print? I haven’t
seen ‘em. [Last minute note: I hear a few papers printed them—none here in New York,
that’s for sure.]
A weird thing about this, is the universal non-Muslim reviling of the riots.
Strange, how Americans will allow internal spying, Wal-Mart music censorship, TV V-
chips, but when someone else complains—oh no! The other guys are anti-free speech.
Plus the news has been so distorted. Headlines like, 9 KILLED IN ANTI-
CARTOON RIOTING make it sound like the rioters killed people. It was the police and
NATO troops who killed the rioters. Not the other way around.
And, where were they rioting? In front of a US sponsored torture chamber, that’s
where. The cartoon was only the tip of the Goldberg.
Ah no, but Americans can be self-righteous and revel in our freedom of speech,
while the CIA reads our email.

 Ah the government dept: Under the headline FDA THREATENS TO RAID CHERRY
ORCHARDS, Life Extension Magazine (March 2006) reports that the Food and Drug of
Administration sent warning letters to 29 companies that market cherry products. In
these letters, the FDA ordered the companies to stop publicizing scientific data about the
benefits of cherries. According to the FDA, When cherry companies disseminate this
information, the cherries become unapproved drugs subject to seizure.
Oh yeah, the FDA doesn’t say the information is false. It only says that
making the claim makes the item a drug and subject to penalties.
 Are they gonna raid the breweries? dept: The Bottom Line Daily Health Report says
that an increasing body of serious research backs up beer's health benefits. One of them is
bone protection. According to a medical team at Tufts University in Boston, beer may
help prevent bone-thinning osteoporosis.
Other findings show that beer lowers the risk of heart disease and increases the
survival rate after a heart attack. Plus, it improves levels of “good” cholesterol and
preserves mental agility into old age.
Other studies at Harvard show healthier kidneys and stronger antioxidants in beer
drinkers than in non-drinkers. Let’s drink to that!

 Twelve dollars and thirty-five cents for your thoughts dept: The Economist magazine
says that Oslo, Norway has just passed Tokyo as the world’s most expensive city. Third
is Reykjavik. New York where no-bedroom studios go for $3000 a month, is the highest
placed American city. But it ranks only 27th in the world. If you live in the 26 higher
ranked cities, you owe me a beer.

 Don’t pray for me Argentina dept: I’m not an atheist, but I hate the religionists more
than I hate the atheists. That’s why it was such a joy that The NY Times reported on a
$2.4 million study on the power of prayer to heal sick people.
The results: Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of
people who were undergoing heart surgery. And patients who knew they were being
prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications.
Yeah! It’s not the time to be a Christian Scientist—that’s for sure.