Modern air travel is a confrontation with the absurd

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 5 Comments
The author, seated 18 inches from a chemical toilet for the second consecutive flight

The author, seated 18 inches from a chemical toilet for the second consecutive flight

Yesterday, I flew from Missoula to Des Moines on United Airlines. My ticket cost just over $1000. I have flown United for the past five Christmases, and they have stranded me overnight six times. I would fly some other airline, but United’s merger with Continental and Delta’s merger with Northwest/KLM means there are only two carriers serving that route, and United is usually cheaper. Their secret to keeping fares low is to take your money in advance and then do whatever.

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Missing cat

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 3 Comments

Blurry Cat

Something nice about living in a small town is that one person can make a difference. I like to put up flyers that say MISSING CAT over a blurry picture—just the outline of a cat running past a snowman or whatever. I like to get everyone out into the neighborhood, looking for cats. When someone calls the number on my MISSING CAT flyer, I don’t answer. I think about how many people have pets they love now because of me.

“Who was missing a cat, after all?” I say. But never into the phone—I only watch it ring.

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Me and a homeless guy save a bug

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 3 Comments
A homeless katydid

A homeless katydid

Yesterday was a hectic day around the Combat! blog offices, as we moved into an exciting AirBnB on East 6th Street normally occupied by a young woman who loves the Misfits and hates to dust. Did you sleep last night beneath an enormous Die, Die My Darling wall hanging? Because I sure did. Before that, though, I ate Japanese curry with Tommy and Laura. On my way home, I found a bug.

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On a certain feeling in New York yesterday

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 1 Comment
Coney Island 2011, by Sarah Gitin

Coney Island 2011, by Sarah Gitin

Yesterday, I took the train to 103rd Street and the Museum of the City of New York, where I saw an exhibit of photographs by Aaron Rose. I walked down Fifth Avenue to the Met, where I looked at 7th-century southeast Asian sculpture and the rooftop installation and the backs of tourists’ heads. I walked through the park, past the boathouse and the longest line for rowboat rentals I have ever seen, to the roller disco area. I watched roller disco for a long time. It was a pleasant day, during which I probably saw more strangers than I see in an entire year in Missoula.

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Kim’s Video to close, ending taste identity

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 1 Comment

kims_video_medium_image

I take issue with Emilie Friedlander’s claim that Kim’s was the snobbiest record store in New York City; that title belongs to Other Music, whose microfine genre shelving distinguished, for example, “trance” from “dream.” But Kim’s was cool, and its employees liked bands and movies that you did not know about. Paradoxically, that made them cool to those of us who prided ourselves on not liking what other people liked. The defining feature of popular culture was that everybody knew about it, and popularity correlated inversely with quality—in tastes, at least, if not in individual works. Except now, thanks to the internet, everybody knows about everything.

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