I guess Richard Ho is what people mean when they hurl “Asperger” at someone. To be ideally followed, of course, by 2010 America’s favorite mind cure: a mental flatlining, oh, let’s just call it what it is, a mental lobotomizing by drugs.
          The New York Times, Sunday Styles Section, 6/13/10, 14, paints a grim picture of the young man’s condition: “…electrical engineering job in Silicon Valley [already we know what's coming!]….Ho hunched over a bowl of cereal, mesmerized by a scrolling crawl of computer code…..universally described…as a typical computer nerd….’To call Ricky shy is an understatement…He barely spoke.’….He would fix a software glitch, but forget to tell the team. Or fail to fix the bug, but not tell them why he hadn’t….poorly fitting jeans….introverted….a dating neophyte…awkward….Mr. Ho’s father, a retired software engineer….”
          Ah, but there’s a difference here. A saving grace. He’s American— but he’s also Asian. And, though I’ve seen no studies on the subject, I would guess Asian parents don’t allow their sons to be mentally castrated with drugs the way other Americans do, just because some “expert” hurls that big bad boogey-word “Asperger’s” at their child. They understand– that our minds aren’t fixed in cement, that as we live we grow and evolve, and that a ferocious intelligence and focus in a young man as he starts out on life’s journey isn’t necessarily a “sickness”– nor should it be a mental death sentence.
     The article is in fact about Richard Ho’s May 30th marriage to the beautiful Helen Zhu, “a high tech product manager”. “She had no shortage of boyfriends, but none had shared her commitment to the Chinese virtue of filial piety….integrity and loyalty….’I love you,’ she told Mr. Ho.”
          Blessed by her love, “Mr. Ho has become a trendy dresser and almost chatty.”
          May the couple enjoy lasting happiness, as I imagine they will, since in the end they weren’t defined by America’s cultural definition of what is normal and what is ill. And that’s all this little recent series of blogs is, a plea for tolerance for those who are uncomfortably different but not really bad or sick people, and a more profound understanding of the amazing, unfixed plasticity of human behavior, which needs to be allowed to run free, unless it is (so much more rarely) truly dysfunctional.

          The stereotype of the “absent-minded professor” was created because the average mind doesn’t understand how the elite mind works, or it sort of does and it feels jealous or inferior, so it puts it down. To this we add one of the worst trends on the planet today: an appalling thrust toward uniformity, a flatlining, wherein everyone dresses the same, likes or pretends to like the same music, worships the same celebrities, sees the same movies, speaks the same language or close to it (English, Spanglish, Chinglish, etc.), has the same economic system (American-style turbocapitalism) and– since the uniformity is that of standard American culture– exalts mediocrity, getting along, being “well-adjusted”, acting “normal”, networking well, partying well, smiling broadly…
          In this current race toward mental flatlining a breath of fresh air is a recent article in the British magazine New Scientist by David Wolman (April 28, 2010) entitled “The advantages of autism”.
          What the average person doesn’t understand about the “absent-minded professor” is that he or she is in fact the “present-minded professor”, present mentally at what matters to him, at what he’s devoted his life to, super-present in fact, with an obsessive focus the average person can’t understand or is scared by, scared because it means the trivia that fills most lives is pushed to the side. I’m sorry, but as I’ve been saying, only this focus can reach the highest levels in science, mathematics, law, finance, medicine, software, classical music, some of the other arts (in some of the arts today, like poetry, you can fake it) and other areas. Sadly, sometimes tragically, the scary and “alien” focus means the bearer falls into social exile, or at least social ineptness.
          The article helps show why nature created “autistic” or “Asperger’s” humans (there is a reason for it, you know): “…The flip side of an inability to see the wood for the trees is being very, very good at seeing trees….attention to detail and resistance to distraction….people with autism have better musical pitch….immensely talented artists….superior visuospatial skills….more firepower from the brain’s visual areas….a hyperactive brain that makes everyday sensory experiences overwhelming….More rational decision-making…less susceptible to subjective or emotional factors….”
          Or do you really want a world that’s all Kirk and no Spock?
          Yet the amazing thing is the plasticity of the human mind, how an “Aspie” is not necessarily fixed in his condition. More in Part 3 (the story of Richard Ho).

          In my posting of November 4, 2009 I blasted how society is now demonizing some of its most brilliant people, especially some of its most brilliant young people, as suffering from some stupid pseudo-scientific concoction called “Asperger’s Syndrome”, and the potential here for denying genius any role to play in our society, even though much of the progress the human race has made over the last several millennia is due to its “Aspies”. I mentioned Beethoven then, a classic “Aspie”. But there are so many others. Isaac Newton was an “Aspie”. And one of the human race’s greatest minds. Archimedes, of ancient Greece, who virtually invented calculus nearly 2,000 years before anyone else, had that kind of “crazy” intensity of focus and “inability” to “read” others that stamp you as an “A”. The story that’s come down to us is that when Rome conquered Syracuse (in Sicily) a Roman soldier killed him because Archimedes refused to accompany the soldier until he finished the mathematical problem he was working on. Bobby Fischer, perhaps the greatest chess player of all time, was an Asperger/Autistic/Idiot Savant. Many people have commented on how socially inept Tiger Woods was/is, as well as his ferocious golf concentration practically from babyhood, and how emotionally cold he is. (Of course, through his golfing success Woods was also transformed into an Alpha Male, meaning women would now throw themselves at him for sex without any need on his part for social skill or emotional response.) E.O. Wilson, the extraordinary entomologist/zoologist/sociobiologist/ecologist/writer/thinker had an extreme focus on observing insects as a boy. A young equivalent today, lying in a swamp face down observing ants when he should be acting “normal” and getting “blasted” at time-wasting parties, might end up having all his exclusive intensity and focus drugged out of him by worried parents. Look, let’s face it, half the elite math faculty in America is A. The same with the physicists. Silicon Valley wouldn’t exist without A’s. Bill Gates was a socially inept dork. Still is. The two most successful intellectual revolutions of our time– the biomedical and the computer– have the following to thank: Dorks. Nerds. Geeks. Socially inept “Aspies”. Idiot geniuses. Grinds. Awkward loser kids, clutching the one thing they do well. Then better than well.
          All this is a prelude to my discussing (in Part 2) an article in the April 28 issue of the distinguished British publication New Scientist, entitled “The advantages of autism”.
          Look, I understand that in extreme autism the human personality becomes dysfunctional. I’m not romanticizing an inability to talk, or feed yourself, or use a toilet. But what we call “autism” or “Asperger’s” and don’t really understand yet constitutes an extraordinarily broad spectrum of brain behavior, and this spectrum is a gift from Nature as well as (at times) a curse, and stamping it as just cursed, as “diseased”, and drugging it out of existence, is like wishing to kill every insect species on the planet with pesticides because a tiny percentage are harmful.
          More soon.

          You may have noticed something: As of today a lot of the subway and bus service in New York City has been destroyed or radically cut back. If you haven’t noticed it today, then tomorrow in your Monday commute. Further cuts seem assured in the future, combined with ever-increasing fares that will eventually put what service survives out of the reach of the poor, the working class and even some of the middle class. This in a world of diminishing oil and increasing global warming, where mass transit is needed more than ever. Mayor Bloomberg and the MTA suggest new van services can take up some of the slack. Van service– that’s what the Third World has, that’s what I’ve seen in Third World cities I’ve visited. Not that the elite will ever ride in any of those vans. That will be for the “small people”. You know, the ones who can’t get out of paying their taxes.
          We’re told this act of vandalism– which carried to its conclusion will, for New York City, be an act of economic suicide– is needed to close an $ 800 million MTA budget gap. $ 800 million– oh boo-hoo. That’s less than the amount that was given in city and state subsidies to Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase to build new offices in lower Manhattan. For that there was money. It’s estimated that a 25-50 % tax on Wall Street bonuses– the 25 % would only kick in when bonuses exceed $ 250,000 and the 50% tax would only kick in when the bonuses hit $ 500,000– you know, those bonuses Wall Street gives its people for wrecking the economy of the world– would bring in $6.9 billion a year, so that even a one-time tax would bring in enough to take care of all MTA deficits through 2018 or 2019. But no one, not Paterson, not Bloomberg, not Obama, not Democrats, not Republicans, dares to question these bonuses, or tap them for the public good. The MTA– the same MTA that sold the Atlantic Yards to power broker/ultimate insider Bruce Ratner to develop, even though another developer offered them three times what Ratner did– and then, when Ratner hit cash-flow problems, sweetened the deal for him– they too never explored fiscal alternatives to what they’re doing. And all this in addition to $ 511 million in tax-free bonds for a Nets arena for Ratner (and new Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov, Russian mega-billionaire, whose source of colossal wealth has never been satisfactorily explained [you  better not try]). And…
          Oh, why go on? Enjoy your destruction, sheep.

          It’s always struck me that the The New York Times’ ThursdayStyles section represented the bottom of the barrel of that mixed-bag/sometimes still great/sometimes gross and appalling and sometimes inbetween American institution called The New York Times. And without ever actually counting the faces it also struck me that the section was weirdly, overwhelmingly White in a city that is quite definitively majority non-White, but of course, this being The New York Times, and this being ThursdayStyles, Whites only of a certain kind– wealthy, smarmy, condescending, snotty, sloppy, snarky, goofy, smutty, smirking, superior, drunken, drugged, ironic, young, wiseass, decadent, hip and pseudohip and phony hip and really hip and overwhelmingly Brooklyn/Lower Manhattan-based and supermaterialistic while pretending otherwise and preferably gay but it’s okay to be straight if you meet the other qualifications. And above all, as in the June 3, 2010 article “Celebration at the Edge of Decay”, celebrating not at the edge of decay but right in it. No admission to this club unless you can urinate on every conventional value it mocks. And can never stop mocking.
          So first I counted faces. Or sometimes just body parts. A little hard to determine every single one, since some in the background were too tiny or blurred to assign a race to, but I made my best effort. I counted those in the ads too, since the section’s about making money, and if someone appeared more than once I counted them more than once.
          June 3 issue. By my count: 52 Whites, 4 Blacks, 1 Asian, 0 Latins. In multi-racial New York City that’s insane. Overwhelmingly young and “hip”, of course.
          So that I wasn’t just skewed up by a single issue, I then checked out:
          June 10th issue. 136 Whites, 2 Blacks, 18 Asians, 1 Latin. Ever see a Latino New Yorker? Of course not. (Maybe a couple of the well-tanned Whites were really Latin.) Overwhelmingly young. “Hip”. Where are the rest of us? Maybe in a concentration camp.
          As for the “snarky…ironic…decadent”, here are quotes out of the June 3 issue, in their order in the lead article “Celebration at the Edge of Decay” (Brooklyn hipsters winning their irony and superiority ribbons by “celebrating” the filthy Gowanus Canal area): “…loveliest toxic waterway…drawing the city’s hipsters…Gowanus a special cultural edge…blurry beauty everywhere…big party…a nice piece of urban decay…creative types…bigger bar…blond, blue-eyed 29-year-old…completely nude…we are creative…”
          Feeling old enough, unhip enough yet? If not, then The New York Times hasn’t completed the job. Perhaps they can get in a knockout punch in the June 10th issue. Quotes in order from a variety of articles: “…weekend debauchery…The Romance of Jack the Ripper…alluringly sinister…artfully calibrated creepiness…post-apocalyptic…scorched earth…hems hitched up to show off shredded hose…It helps, of course, to be young…right amount of menace…leather harness…painfully uncool…hipster heaven…The Age of Excess…nude photos…soft-core…ex-porn…billionaire socialite…the cash river…in full spate…global buying spree…pageant of gentrification…sexual libertine…heroin…androgyne…pansexual…sex guru…online sex site…bisexual open marriage…Manhattan high life…sex, drugs and ego…gay-themed…cocaine…He had a boyfriend, she had a girlfriend…same-sex…the threesome thing…hookup night…tattoos, skull ring…blasted on heroin…I’m like a yuppie junkie, man…I’m the first to tell about my heroin use or my debaucherous past…I would be high on the train…trying to score drugs on the island…drinking so much that you’d…pass out…Williamsburg, Brooklyn…weekends battling hangovers…bosomy torso…Oh, to Be Young and a Star…the right people…cute, connected, rich and famous…generational shift…only 21…A star was born…catch the buzz…”
          Is it any wonder even once open-minded Americans now understand there truly is a culture war, with much of the media throwing the culture war gauntlet down at their feet, with a smirk of course? Yet the media hipsters then get all in a tizzy when some pick that gauntlet up.
          As for me– “painfully uncool”– I guess you can take me to the camp.
          Oh, to Be Young and a Star.

          I may need a car service to go from one point in Queens to another later this week. So I picked names from the Verizon Yellow Pages under “Car Svce.”– actually it’s now called the Superyellowpages– that title’s so typical of today’s hyped-up failing America– it reminds me of the hysterical celebrations you now see when players on one sub-.500 team dunk or hit a home run against another sub-.500 team, they go crazy even though their teams stink and they’re going nowhere.
          Anyway, I ended up calling 16 car services.
          Seemed simple, right? How much does it cost to go from Point A to B in Queens? And do you have cars available in the late afternoon? (Some car services in Long Island City have their cars mostly tied up in Manhattan corporate accounts at that time.)
          Simple.
          Except I forgot something.
          This is America 2010– where a few thousand semi-amateurs in sheets and sneakers may defeat us in Afghanistan– and oil companies who pull in $20 billion a year in profits get to drill in deep water without being able to cap a spill except (maybe) months later– and corporate lords get golden parachutes worth tens of millions for what– destroying Capitalism? Western Civilization? or just being stupid?
          16.
          3 aren’t even car services. Verizon blew it? (The Superyellowpages!) Angry people on the other end.
          One number’s no longer in service.
          4 didn’t pick up. (I called each twice.)
          2 had crazy voice menus with no seeming way to get an operator.
          Called another one. A polite total ignoramus person picked up. Thought I wanted to go out to Long Island. Said hold. Hung up. I called back. Said hold. Hung up. I called back. (Why?) Got a voice mail. Gave up.
          Another picked up, seemed okay, but warned me that if I called again maybe no one would answer and I should leave a message.
          4 others picked up, were polite, answered my questions, seemed doable, but one did warn me they might have no afternoon cars readily available in Queens.
          3 out of 16? Or is it 5?
          Does that count as a good average in today’s America?
          Did I tell you how 3 times I used the Post Office to send overnight express mail– and they failed all 3 times? One was a key legal document going from Long Island City to Jamaica (the one in Queens). About 8 miles as the crow files. (I should have used a crow.)
          What is the problem America now has with “simple”?

          Gurgle-gurgle!
          Hold on!
          “Excuse me, do you have water running near you?”
          “Oh, I was just doing the dishes while waiting for ___ to get to me.”
          I wouldn’t use this as an example if it had happened only once.
          Here’s the thing.
          And I’ll say this as politely as I can.
          It’s at our convenience, not yours.
          We welcome your calls– of course we do, there’s no talk radio otherwise– but you’re now part of the show, and should act that way.
          Radio off.
          TV off.
          Water shut off. Off.
          Stop talking to your friend who’s sitting there in the kitchen with you.
          Show us some respect.
          We’re showing you some.
          Give us your attention.
          Make us your project for a brief time.
          An eager host, not to mention 100’s of 1,000’s, or even millions, of listeners, are about to hear you.
          Yes, I’m aware sometimes there’s a good wait.
          The host knows you’re there. He sees the information on the screen.
          But you’re not the only one who called.
          And we like to do interviews sometimes.
          And it’s the commercials that keep us on the air.
          Now please don’t walk away from your phone. There’s nothing worse than going to…dead air.
          And two other pet peeves, while I’m at it.
          I ask you to turn your radio or TV off, but you just turn it– down. You think I can’t tell the difference? I most certainly can. It just extends the screening process.
          A lesser peeve. You– Joan– say you have a question. Excellent! And when we go to you– “Now let’s talk to Joan from…” “Hi. No. This is Joe. Not Joan.”
          Joan got tired. Or something. She handed the phone to her husband Joe.
          Look, it’s not a major big deal, but it’s annoying. If you care enough to call, you should care enough to hang on. Now and then I go back to callers waiting and ask if they can hang on and, if possible,  give you some idea of how long it’ll be before we get to you. Now you told me “No problem, I’m happy to hold.”
          Didn’t you?
          Otherwise, we love you all.

‘

          Having taken on such big subjects in my blog as President Obama and Tiger Woods,  it’s now time to end my brief blog hiatus and talk about a re-a-a-lly big subject: Phone etiquette when calling a radio talk show.
          We have no pictures in radio, so you want the sound to be good. It had better be. And as a show screener, while the substance of your call is most important, part of my job is to make sure that the sound our listeners hear is of quality too.
          Now look. I know the days of callers sitting at a desk and talking on a wired phone, while they’re not over, have been significantly superseded. And how convenient is it for you to be riding in a car and talking to a radio host at the same time? How much fun is that! A blast!
          First off– I want you to pull over.
          How many times have I said this to a caller: “It’s safer, and it’ll give us better sound.”
          A lot.
          You may be driving in your cocoon of modern convenience, but here’s what I often hear: Traffic noise so loud I feel like I’m standing in the middle of the Holland Tunnel. And that noise your car is making. And maybe people talking away next to you.
          Meanwhile, you can sound so muffled and distant it’s like you’re calling from Mars.
          Do I have to tell you what this will sound like on the air?
          Or, if I”m doing my job, won’t.
          We have standards, you know.
          Between your cell– whose sound quality can change by the minute as you leave one  spot and hit the next– and the other sounds– all of which our sensitive mikes pick up…
          Close your windows.
          That helps the sound.
          And how many times have I asked: “Are you on a speaker? Or wearing an ear piece?”
          Please get off. Take out.
          Give us a break!
          Cell– car– traffic– dog barking– someone talking– windows down– dog barking– speaker– ear piece– music playing– radio on…
          You’ve pulled over.
          You’re safer now.
          Good.
          Good spot.
          Speaker phone off.
          Ear piece out.
          Noises off.
          Ready to talk.
          We’re ready to talk.
          Sorry to be so fussy.
          I’m paid to be fussy.
          Okay– my job’s done.
          Here’s the host.
                         ________________________________________

          Next time: Part 2: When you’re not in a car– and there are still problems.
          With the sound, I mean.

          My intellect has been begging me to also have its say about Avatar for weeks, so I’m finally, grudgingly, going to give it a little space. After all, it’s hung out with me all these years, and I’m sick of its whining:
          “First off the film is manipulative and you fell for it!”
          Hold on! Wait a minute, little intellect. It’s a work of art, it’s selective– that’s not manipulative.
          “It’s beautiful pictures without reality!”
          It’s the realest damn pictures I’ve ever seen, dude!
          “Will you let me talk!? It’s a pure appeal to the emotions, beautiful and simplistic. It’s like stupidly falling in love with a beautiful shallow woman!”
          Oh, intellect! What do you know– what will you ever know– about falling in love?
          ”And if you’d listened to me when you did you’d have avoided a hell of a lot of trouble!”
          Thank you, Spock.
          Okay, look. I loved the film. I don’t apologize for that. But I’m going to now give you one– that’s one– long paragraph– or two short ones– to have your say. Go! Now!
          “I can’t do it in that space! I need…”
          One long! Two short! Go!
          “Pandora is a fantasy world that can never be, and the Na’vi are pure fantasy also, and the way everything is presented is such a fantasy that it’s not worth respecting. The Na’vi aren’t aliens– aliens will probably look like crabs or cockroaches– they’re just exalted human beings, basically idealized Native Americans, who are so supernaturally beautiful and pure both physically and spiritually that I can’t take them seriously as beings. You think this world is realistic? Senses! Senses!? Where are the smells? Where’s the stinks? Where’s the death? Real death, not a few carefully staged plot-advancing movie deaths. They live in a rain forest where it doesn’t rain, they’re surrounded by monsters that never succeed in eating anyone, nobody’s ugly which means they must kill the “inferior” infants the way the Spartans or some Native Americans did, they’re hot-tempered and armed but we never see their wars, they tame flying monsters with ease that in real life would kill half of them…!”
          Time’s half up, friend.
          “Okay. Okay. Now the humans. The whole deck is stacked against them– us! This is what we’re supposed to believe: We’ve mastered fusion and antimatter power which means we have infinite energy already, our biogenetic technology is so advanced we can create actual bodies and then our science is so magical we can transfer minds between bodies which is a more spectacular trick than beaming up on Star Trek. So how about a little awe for the humans!? The Na’vi aren’t the only magic ones here. Yet we’re supposed to also believe that a civilization this advanced still wants or needs to tear up another world to get at some minerals! And that back home Earth isn’t prospering it’s dying! And a single corporation is given this world to loot! And back home a few corporations are doing the same to Earth! That’s nuts! There isn’t a single mention of government in the entire film. Any government. I thought Cameron was shallow before, but this is zero-dimensional– even in Imax! You’d never accept this kind of shallowness in a book or play, so why do…!?”
          Time’s up, intellect. Thank you. Let me call you Intellect.
                    _____________________________________________________________

          So look how impotent the intellect is. It says this can’t  be and that can’t be– but they all are. In a work of art, a creation with its own rules. If you don’t like it build your own! I can see it now. But how come nobody wants to spend three hours with it?
                    _____________________________________________________________

          “Ah, I got to you a little, didn’t I?”

                                        (WARNING: Ending Given Away)

          Living up to what I wrote in my first review, I don’t intend to fill up space just because it’s available, nor try to be bigger than this enormous work. My first viewing was in 2-D, so I could judge the picture’s merits without extra wow’s getting in the way. And now I’ve seen it again, in Imax 3-D.
          As a visual experience, the picture is beyond astounding; it is a near-miracle, the greatest pure visual experience in the history of cinema, and I’m confident in saying that without having seen every film that’s gone before. I flinched once from an object “coming” at me; another time I involuntarily reached out to touch something, I think a leaf, my mind put on hold by the film’s overpowering feel of reality. But more than that, these little instances of rationality’s surrender, was the overwhelming delight and awe at the bioluminescent beauty and lushness of this created world. And though I thought I’d be less interested in the story, having seen it just a few weeks back, I was even more gripped by it, the movie passing in what seemed an instant, and each scene taking on a sense of inevitability and forward momentum. This even included the (relatively) weakest part of the film, the battle at the end, which at times devolves into standard “action” cinema. I was too gripped to even resist this.
          And this second time around, I realized just how good and underrated the acting is, especially Zoe Saldana’s exquisite Neytiri, and the surprising depth in Sam Worthington’s ostensibly laid-back Jake.
          I’d say Cameron succeeded in whatever area he wanted to succeed at in this film. The area he didn’t succeed in is the area that doesn’t interest him– human depth psychology, and, overall, he shows disinterest in the human’s world (in fact, displays flat-out hatred of it). He expended so much energy to bring the Na-vi language to life, for instance– and not an atom of energy to bring the English of 150 years in the future to life: the language, the slang, is completely of the present; indeed, some of it is 1990’s. As are the clothes, the military etiquettes, etc.
          And in the end, what feeling does this amazing film leave us with? Awe at its execution, of course. But, as many have already written on the internet, a strange sense of depression as well. Our species is presented, with a few exceptions, as fundamentally insane, and monstrously evil. Demons, as some of the Na’vi declare. And generally shut off, by our fundamental nature, from a capacity for beauty and oneness. In the end, the Na’vi are saved  not through their own brave efforts, but by their God Eywa’s– against Neytiri’s understanding– taking sides against us. Even God, or a kind of pantheistic near-God, chooses to hate us. There were some cheers in the audience as the humans fell. We the monsters, yet the creators of this vision.