We got to spend some time with my cousin's husband this weekend, and in the course of chatting about this and that, Goober asked the financial services employee what he thought of the Occupy Wall Street protests. He hadn't heard about them. Come on, really? we asked. You didn't hear about the people hanging out in Zuccotti Park down in Lower Manhattan? His face was blank.
"What are they protesting?" he asked.
"I don't know," I admitted, "Corporate greed and, uh, stuff like that."
"No," he clarified, "What are they protesting?"
I repeated something I thought I heard some newscast report.
"No," he said again, "I mean what are they protesting on Wall Street? There's nothing on Wall Street. All the financial firms are elsewhere."
Sure, Zuccotti Park itself isn't on Wall Street, but the protesters need some place to set up, so that's understandable. But looking at the 2009 TARP bailout recipients, he's right — it looks like few of them are actually on Wall Street. Wells Fargo ($25 billion) has its corporate headquarters in San Francisco; its New York offices are at Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building, at 52nd Street and Park. Citigroup's ($45 billion) headquarters are just down the street at 399 Park Avenue in Midtown. JPMorgan Chase ($25 billion) is headquartered at 270 Park Avenue (at 48th Street). Bank of America ($45 billion) has a large tower in Charlotte, NC. The closest seems to be Goldman Sachs ($10 billion), but even they are up at 200 West Street, and a half a mile away from Zuccotti Park.
So what's actually on Wall Street? Of course the New York Stock Exchange is there — just off Wall Street at the corner of Broad Street — but isn't that like going to a newsstand to protest something Graydon Carter printed in Vanity Fair? There's an Equinox gym at the corner of Wall and Nassau. The Museum of American Finance is at 48 Wall Street. There's a Cipriani at 55 Wall Street. I guess Deutsche Bank has offices at 60 Wall Street, but I don't think they received bailout funds.
We've been hearing that Wall Street/Main Street dichotomy on TV for years now. Obviously "Main Street" is a metaphor for whatever it's supposed to be a metaphor, but I don't think I really appreciated just how much "Wall Street" is also a convenient stand in until this weekend.
Someone should do something "fun" (well, "fun" in the way crap on the six o'clock news is fun) and protest on one of the five Main Streets in New York City. Maybe some of those Billionaires for Bush people can dust off those smart-looking 1930s costumes and occupy the 7 train station out in Flushing . . .
Maybe I'm the wrong age but I always found Daria to be really boring. I haven't thought about the show for some time but I just flipped by a rerun on the Logo Network while waiting for ALDS coverage to begin.
I don't know why it's so boring — it just sort of seems like a show about disaffected teenagers written by people who are long past their teenage years. I got the same feeling after seeing Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist — that was a movie that felt really dated; it was written by people who were nowhere near teenage. You sort of knew that for two reasons. One, no one has made a mixtape in like 20 years. And two, "fingerblasting" is, like, so 1992:
Seriously, that's one of the most disgusting "love scenes" in the history of film. I have half a mind to start a Blogspot blog, call it "TopFiveWorstArthouseFilmSexScenes.blogspot.com" and listing this one at number 3 or 4. There would be only one entry on this blog. And I would write "Thoughts?" at the bottom of the post and forget to enable the comments.
But back to Daria.
Yeah, so sorry — I just don't think the show is that funny. I don't think it's particularly interesting. I don't think it's useful satire. Whatever . . . all this is boring as well. I'm bored that I just tried to internalize why I didn't like Daria.
Here's what I would watch though: Daria 2012, where Daria is 31. I would like to see what the show's creators could do with this. Is she still in Lawndale? Is she pursuing some fascinating career in some interesting urban environment? Is she underemployed and still living in a college town? Is she married with children? Did she join the military after 9/11? Did she join the military after 9/11 and die serving her country? Is she a ghost? Can we find her on Facebook? Did she become religious? Does she work in the front office of the Tampa Rays? Did she vote for Bush in 2004? Did she get in trouble with the law after a second DUI? Does she regret a tattoo? Did she ever get Lasik done? Did her father ever leave home? It goes on and on.
Maybe Daria didn't do anything unexpected. Maybe that could be part of the charm of Daria 2012 — it could be as boring as the original version. Like Mary Tyler Moore meets Waiting for Godot. Now there's something I'd watch.
