Last night a friend asked me if I was familiar with "Steampunk." I was, but not terribly. My understanding of steampunk was that it was kind of like Goth for video game enthusiasts. And, not unlike some of the more Edwardian (i.e. queer) aspects of Goth, I regarded steampunk with semi-detached curiosity. I've picked up a few details here and there--just enough to come to the conclusion, "Oh, neat. I want nothing to do with that!" It's sort of like when I walk past a furniture store that, from the street, appears to possess all the sleek and modern design touches I like. Then I step inside the door and realize, nestled among all the angular couches and geometric-patterned throw rugs, oh look--there's one of those chairs shaped like a lady's shoe. "I get where this is going," and I immediately turn around and exit the store pretty much knowing, where there's smoke there's fire, and by "smoke" I mean that shoe chair, and by "fire" I mean one of these. (And probably one of these, too.)

Then, just this morning I see this article in the New York Times about the rise of Steampunk. (And it must be on the rise because, according to their picture slideshow, they found no fewer than seven people in New York City who are into Steampunk, and a couple of heavyset girls who are into wearing old-fashioned welding goggles with their Ren Faire costumes.) Because the New York Times provides a smart guy context that helps legitimize wasting time reading about micro-trends, I got to learn a whole bunch more about steampunk today. I'll give this to you, steampunk guys--the asthetic is pretty neat. Bravo on all the sepia tones and tailored pants and stuff. But this strikes me as an annoyingly high-maintenance commitment, with more punishment than reward built into it. Forget the amount of time you'll invest cloaking your 40" plasma screen television set inside a frame of dusty burlap or rich, polished marble--once you're done, what are you even going to watch on TV? How many times do you have to cycle through your very limited collection of steampunk-approved DVDs--basically, Van Helsing, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Young Sherlock Holmes, and Howl's Moving Castle--before you realize you might have jumped on the wrong band-dirigible? And think of all the important life events you're likely to miss because you were too busy polishing your wooden ray gun, or adhering brass and nickel fixtures to your ipod nano?

It's such an inconvenient subculture, and very cost-prohibitive with in our current economy. With oil at over $100 a barrel, who has the kind of disposable income required to operate their gas-powered wristwatch and old fashioned peanut brittle oven? And if you ever get tired of the steampunk lifestyle--AND HOW COULD YOU???--good luck trying to sell your clockwork top hat on consignment. At least Goth kids who get tired of the scene can always dust off their old clothes for a Dracula Party, Edward Gorey retrospective or cocktails at Tim Burton's house. Ex-steampunkers are stuck with their old junk, except in one of the following very rare situations:

• The Museum of Zeppelins and Old-Fashioned Motorcyle Sidecars is looking for a tour guide
• An ambitious young director decides to expand Tom Petty's music video for "You Got Lucky" into a feature-length film, and desperately needs extras with their own wardrobe
• Kanye West reads that NY Times article and decides to piggyback on the trend six years from now, then pretend he invented it
• Jack the ripper finally perfects his time machine!

I guess steampunks should live it up for now, while they still can. At least there's the new Hellboy movie to look forward to, right? Too bad you can't buy tickets on Moviefone using your refurbished Strowger wooden wall phone.

" 'Allo...two admissions for 'League of Extraodinary Gentlemen Part 2: Extraorindarier Gentlemen', if you please. And please do tell, does your moving picture house provide a sheltered space where I one might park one's bathysphere?"

Recently, I taped one of those VH-1 talking head shows, where comedians and professional wrestlers and editors of Women’s Health Magazine narrate an essential list of cultural moments, such as the 20 Most Pregnant Ladies of the 1980s, or What Were Those Faggots Thinking?!? Part IV. I was a little conflicted about doing it for all sorts of reasons, both real and made up, but was gently talked into it by a friend at the network. She made the very excellent and difficult to ignore point that this would be silly fun, and probably no more harmful to my career than the Hitler uniform I choose to wear onstage at comedy shows, for shock value. (and comfort--the cotton moves remarkably well.)

I went in and, yes, it was actually kind of fun. The only difficult part was my reluctance to use certain kinds of colloquial words that might have pleased the producers. This was because 1) My great respect for the English language causes me to get terrible migraine headaches just from seeing slang like “hottie” or “blogroll” or “23 skidoo” written on a page, and 2) I feel super insincere trying to make that kind of youthful stuff come out of my mouth. (Please understand I realize this also makes me a tremendous prick. My reluctance to fist-bump only makes my interactions more awkward, and my insistence on avoiding emoticons and spelling out every little bit of Internet shorthand is probably only slightly less annoying to people than my insistence on repeatedly telling everyone about these delightful grammatical rules I follow.)

Now that I think about it, there was one other difficult part for me--I had no real memory of about 1/3 of the celebrities I’d been asked to discuss at length. I mean, I recognized their names (mostly), but couldn’t place most of their faces, couldn’t remember their pop songs, never watched their sitcoms, didn’t follow their modeling careers, etc. To their credit, the producers were very nice and did their best to re-awaken my interest in Gabrielle Reece and Toni Braxton, but I guess I was thinking about other things when the rest of the world was obsessing over those two. Actually, it did make me wonder what I was thinking about back then, if not Toni Braxton. Probably something awesome.

Oh wait. I just remembered one last part that was a little difficult for me. (My life is way harder than yours, Burma.) It was not easy to discuss certain things without betraying some measure of cruelty or contempt in my voice. Really, it’s harder than you’d think. For instance, if someone were to say the words “Jordan Knight” to you right now, how many truly positive things would you have to say about him? Keep in mind this isn’t you in the year 1989; this is you with almost 20 years perspective on the version of you that used to wear a gigantic NKOTB button pinned to the single strap holding up your acid-washed denim overalls. I understand and respect that VH-1 prefers upbeat or tongue-in-cheek jokes but, man, when you’re charged with generously offering an extra cultural minute to someone like Jordan Knight or Joey Lawrence, there really is such a fine line between tongue-in-cheek and knife-in-back. (or gun-in-own-mouth.)

Apart from navigating those concerns, I honestly did have a good time and my first thought after wrapping was, “I’d do this again, if the topic were something I’m more familiar/comfortable with.” (i.e. not '40 Reasons We Used to be Really Horny for Nick Lachey.') Sure, the experience was a little embarrassing and I definitely wrestled with my own highly self-conscious ideas about integrity, but what it really came down to was this: I got to goof around for an hour. I wasn't asked to wear a crazy hat, and no one suggested I sing a Gerardo song for grins. I just sat (slumped) in a chair and joked. Pretty painless, kinda fun. Until I saw the show.

Here's the thing…I sucked. Honestly, after watching the broadcast I was watching some of the other pundits speak very knowledgeably and sentimentally about the show's subjects and I started thinking, "Ohhhhh, that's what makes shows work. People who are really good at setting up video clips!" Also, people who are not shy about being very enthusiastic. And people with decent posture. Suddenly, any traces of embarrassment or compromised credibility were supplanted by a very strong sense that I looked chubby, had bad hair, poor posture, and weak eye contact. Also, maybe only about half or fewer of the topics on the program were ones I discussed during my taping. As a result, I didn't have a lot of screen time. After spending all that time deliberating about doing the show in the first place because it seemed a little shallow, I ended up disappointed that I was barely present in the broadcast and, when I was present, it was a really unappealing, nasal version of me. It proved an O'Henry-esque lesson in dramatic irony. And, with literary references like that one, if VH-1 ever produces a special called '40 Most Gifted Short Fiction Writers of All Time,' hopefully I will be asked back. But first, I'll be sure to take night courses in diction, nutrition, and The Alexander Technique.

When I first moved to NYC in the mid-nineties I spent most of my social time with a friend/co-worker named Tyler. While my personality tends to be a bit cautious, Tyler has always been a genuinely warm and open person. A guy. This easygoing nature caused him to attract all sorts of strange and interesting (and sometimes intolerable) characters back then, many of whom I adopted by proxy. One of the more fascinating people who orbited my life back then was a guy Tyler and I very casually referred to as 'Crazy Phil.' I honestly don't remember ever calling him anything else, because his eccentricity was so completely naked it naturally dominated and defined him. When you were out with Crazy Phil, no matter where you went the night was his right from go, and you just became one of his guests. He had a really overwhelming wiry, ADHD kind of energy-- super impulsive, always moving, nonstop chatter. I think he'd be very difficult to sketch.

Around the time we met, Crazy Phil had recently been laid off from a job as a mechanical engineer and, instead of pursuing for another engineering gig, he decided he would try to make a living playing in underground and mostly illegal backgammon games. I had no idea such things existed, but Crazy Phil insisted they did. (I must confess there were a lot of things Crazy Phil said that I didn't believe at first--including the fact that he held an engineering degree--but, miraculously, ever single implausible detail eventually proved completely true.) He spend all night at these clubs, which were filled mostly with older European and Asian men, all playing at pretty serious stakes, in relative backgammon terms. At least once, Crazy Phil flew to Istanbul because he'd been told there would be a very lucrative game there, hosted by some wealthy "pigeon." (That's what he'd call guys who loved to play the game and had lots of money, but were also pretty easy to clean out. Also, it should be noted that he referred to backgammon as "Gammon.")

Eventually, many of those games dried up and Phil turned to poker. His life seemed crazy to me, because he would be up $20,000 one month and down $15,000 the next. He didn't seem to care, though, and made a point of treating poker like a fulltime job. I remember him even telling me that he made sure to play 40 hours a week, just like a real job.

He was a lot of fun to bring to parties, and did this thing where he'd instantly treat any home as if it were his own. I never got the impression that he was consciously rude or had an offensive sense of entitlement; he just had no social safety valves between his thoughts and his actions. I've witnessed him take over someone's bar at their own party and, at another apartment party, after noticing there was an active fireplace, Phil just started loading it up with logs and recruited all kinds of strangers at the party to help him kindle and maintain the fire. All this without even thinking to ask the host if this was cool. People usually let him run roughshod over their parties or restaurants or bars, though, because I think most of us lack the energy to resist or restrain personalities like Crazy Phil's.

For a little while, Crazy Phil lived in a very small apartment in Chelsea with this Danish guy who spoke almost no English. He built an elaborate loft bed there, and painted all the walls either wine-red or black, like Dracula's bedroom or something. When we told him his landlord probably wouldn't be cool with having all the walls painted black, Crazy Phil just said, "Don't worry. I already know we're going to be here for a long time. The landlord just doesn't know that yet."

Crazy Phil once had a NYE party that he kept insisting was being professionally catered, and wouldn't let us leave until the catering arrived. Finally, Tyler and I decided we had to split because the party was a little too weird---most of the guests were non-English-speaking Europeans and old men Phil had met through the 'gammon scene, and Tyler and I were more interested in girls than hearing a 60 year-old guy strum an acoustic guitar in Crazy Phil's tiny kitchen. Just as we were leaving, Crazy Phil's buzzer rang. "That's the catering!" he shouted, and insisted we stay just a few minutes more. He ran downstairs and returned a minute later holding four or five pizza boxes. To this day I have no idea if Crazy Phil actually considered these pizzas equivalent to a professionally catered affair, or if he was just screwing with us the whole time. With him, it could have very easily gone either way.

When Tyler and I lost touch a few years back I also lost touch with Crazy Phil, and didn't hear about him again until this past weekend, over a Sunday afternoon drink with my optometrist. (I think my optometrist has always been pretty fascinated with Crazy Phil, which is not surprising to me at all. If you made a venn diagram of their respective personalities, the two circles would overlap so much they would almost appear as one.) Apparently, Phil moved to L.A. where he continued to play poker and, as the game became more of a national phenomenon, Crazy Phil emerged as one of poker's more colorful celebrities. He's accrued over $1.2 million in cash tournaments and has earned the nickname, "The Unabomber," because he usually wears a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses at the poker table and, when a hand gets really stressful, has been known to pull the drawstring of his hood so tight that his face more or less disappears inside it. (You can read all about this on his Wikipedia page.)

My optometrist also told me Crazy Phil has been dating Jennifer Tilly for a while, and these days has his own televison show on some HD cable network, where he and a friend go around betting on everything they see. Honestly, none of this surprises me at all--just as I wasn't surprised when Crazy Phil dyed his hair an awful blonde on a whim, or when he had his New Year's Eve party catered by Domino's. It's nice to know he's found his way into the entertainment industry, where insanity is both tolerated and richly rewarded. (Ring a bell, Meryl Streep?)

I am trying to avoid turning this into some kind of tedious wedding blog (no offense, 'themostmagicaldayofmylife.blogspot.com'), but I really need your help this time. Just a little honest feedback is all I'm asking. Keep in mind that this is still a 'rough' draft--the typeface or colors might get tweaked a little before we go to print--but let me know what you think of our wedding invitation design:

It's not too fussy, is it?

The Roots - "Rising Down" (available for purchase at caldor.com)

Recommended for anyone who's ever wondered what it would be like to have a black man yell at them for 52 minutes straight. The perfect tonic for liberal guilt-addled whiteys with a sinking sensation they've had this coming to them for a long, long time. I give it "4 and a half trash cans thrown through the plate glass window of an Italian-American owned pizzeria."*

*"Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate!"