Recent news comes from Bangladesh: our dearest and best of friends Arafat Kazi, one time internet celebrity, is taking the jetliner from Dacca, BD to Boston, MA. He arrives mid-July. Plans are in the works for some form of reunion. Much happiness.
This reminds me: last year I was working with a non-profit during a tumultuous period of board transition. One of the board members did a little Internet Sleuthing on yours truly in the hopes of digging up mondo dirt with which to discredit not only me, but the board member with whom I was allied. A last ditch effort of the desperate. For an individual with a history of Telecommunication use predating the world wide web, there’s surprisingly little dirt to be had. Some curious entries from the days as a text file writer (mea culpa) & some truly unfortunate logs of me being a jerk on messages boards (mea culpa, ages 13 to 19). But otherwise there’s no evidence of illegalities, perversions, drug use, or any other thing that one could use to discredit a lad, unless one was a staunch opponent of the First Amendment.
In truth, there’s more good than bad– the major results are academic work, film work, and historical preservation. But this didn’t stop our anonymous board member. Not only were the aforementioned text files & message board logs turned over in a giant email dossier, but also uncovered was the bestfriendship with the aforementioned Arafat Kazi, a man with an astonishingly checkered Internet past. As our board member was both wild & desperate, and there’d never been a face-to-face, in their exultant frenzy, they made the incredibly odd mistake of thinking that me and Arafat are, in fact, one in the same. I’ll repeat that: this person mistook me for a 300lb+ five-foot-three Bangladeshi man. This board member believed that we were one entity working under two strange names.
This malicious slander was of course laughed at but did present me with the experience of having to explain the existence of Arafat to disinterested third parties. While at work. You try telling your boss how a creature that weird can really exist.
The highlight of this whole affair was the following picture, taken from Arafat’s livejournal, which was included as an attachment to the email expose. Arafat had captioned the photo something like “Here I am with my two wives!” This was sent in, I kid you not, as evidence of my craven use of the internet to further a gay agenda. Yes, I must have forgotten to mention: at least 30% of the expose was about me being a faggot, and said faggotry was framed as evidence of my unsuitability for the task at hand. Meanwhile, this was happening in New York City and New York State, with a New York State incorporated entity, and the anonymous board member in question was a lawyer. New York State, you know, being a place where such an email and a subsequent dismissal for presumed faggotry is illegal to an astonishing degree.
A lawyer.
Anyway, here’s the great brown beast and his two wives:
During Fall/Winter ‘96 I was living in Union Square, next to the building where Andy Warhol got shot. This wasn’t one of the happier periods of my life. My free time was split evenly between watching endless Classics of Cinema at the media center in NYU’s Bobst Library and attending book readings at the Union Square Barnes & Noble. In a sad comment on my own crap memory, despite having gone to tens of these things, the only two I remember are an appearance by Kenzaburo Oe (with his famous son and wife) and one by Michael Moore, in support of Downsize This!
That was over a decade ago, but whenever the dread spectre of Moore reemerges to haunt America, I never fail to think of the reading. The crowd was fascinating– comprised of protesters (who wanted Moore to fund independent cinema or something), a couple of people who liked his work, and an incredible amount of upscale media elites, it was a like a lion being thrown to the Christians. There were about 3 friendly questions and 30 angry ones. For me, the most revealing moment was an at-length discussion of Friends (a show I’ve still never seen, but my Mom liked) and how Moore forced himself to watch it every week, as a way of keeping in touch with the trends and currents of Popular Culture.
This was a really strange time for Moore. I think by & large he had been written off as someone who’d made one interesting film and would now fade into obscurity. For god’s sake, he was reduced to doing book tours. I remember being turned on to Moore in 93 or 94 by my friend Dave Asselin, the world’s preeminent Smashing Pumpkins bootlegger (really, I think he hangs out with Billy Corgan), and in those halcyon days it wasn’t even conceivable that Moore would become what he has. Clinton was in office, and George W. Bush, the bete noir, had yet to emerge. It is strange to think that the ascendancy of Bush brought Moore screaming so hard into politics (of course his hands were already dirty with the Nader fiasco.) It’s also a misdirection of ability, because Moore is far more effective when he’s engaged with media & corporations, and their influence on the political process, rather than simple critiques about why George Bush is a dick.
Yesterday I saw SiCKO. Let’s get it out of the way: this is unquestionably Moore’s masterpiece. It’s also the best piece of American agitprop I’ve ever seen, effective enough to worry me that people in the theatre on the verge of a riot. I’ve been to hundreds of movie screenings, and I’ve never been to anything like this. The sheer outrage! A whole audience yelling and crying. It freaked me out. This was like May 68. Maybe it was the neighborhood.
Which isn’t to say some things in Moore’s bag of tricks haven’t grown stale. The condescension and mock innocence of the voice-overs are unnecessary and reveal an insecurity on the director’s part to let the work stand on its own. It’s a crutch. Plus, come on, can you honestly believe in the naiveté of a man wearing these frames?
I’ll make a deal with you, Michael Moore. After a career of 20 years documenting the stuff, you can pretend to be surprised still by corporate malfeasance, or you can loose the metrosexual glasses. You can’t have both. Sorry!
The’s film great asset is Moore’s willingness to put the working poor and middle class on the screen. This has always been where Moore shines, and it has never failed to cause the New York/DC echo chamber to bristle with discomfort. Even in the days of 24/7 reality tv, there’s something shocking to see people that look a lot like the folks from wee old Warwick, RI taken seriously as intellects & allowed to be articulate for their own selves. I was trying to think of the last time I had seen anything like this– and I couldn’t.
So bully capital there, Mr. Moore.
Speaking of Arafat Kazi, former internet celebrity, I’ve just received email from him, containing only this attachment:
As my blog is now getting several hits a day regarding former internet celebrity Arafat Kazi, and I presume this is related to his health, I’m going to post a little update as to what I presently know.
I just got off the phone with Arafat. He is currently in the ICU of a Boston area hospital, where he has been for at least a night, and I guess will remain. He’s been running a kind of malaria fever on-and-off for over a year and seems to have been particularly plagued over the weekend, leading to an E.R. walk-in with a 104 degree fever, a return visit, having shot to 105, and, finally, hospital admittance.
Actually getting an overnight admittance to a hospital under the current American health care system is one of the twelve modern tasks of Heracles, so it’s safe to assume that Arafat’s present condition is exceedingly serious. Frankly, he sounded awful. He was too weak to talk longer than a few minutes.
From what I gather, and I do remind people that this is filtered through Arafat’s understanding of science, which is somewhere between piss-poor and shit-awful, our man seems to have a malaria-like infection that is residing outside of his liver. The doctors have told him that it’s treatable but that they’ve never seen anything like it and can’t figure it out.
That’s what I know.
Arafat Kazi, former internet celebrity & my Bangla-buddy, came to America for a visit and nearly died of the Typhoid that he had contracted back in his homeland. Thank the Sweet Lord, for I am able to report that the manifold marvels of Western medical science have saved our modern day Mary Mallon. The man is cured!
Arafat, meanwhile, has seen fit to share images of his hospital stay, which I now pass on as a warning. Enjoy!
