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Brian Sorgatz
(rhymes with “cats”)
Arcata, Humboldt County, California, United States
What sort of man blogs about Playboy? I flatter myself to think that Kendra Wilkinson might call this blog intellectual pimping.
To see what I look like, click here.
ISFP “Composer Artisan.” Culturally and economically libertarian for reasons having nothing to do with Ayn Rand. The rabbit in the avatar is not mine. I stole the image from the House Rabbit Society home page. Favorite activities: reading, writing, crosswords, Jeopardy!, moviegoing, television (and proud of it), piano, didgeridoo, foreign languages (currently Spanish), light hiking, spiritual practice, friendship, sex.
Hollywood, California, is my spiritual hometown. I actually grew up in three other communities in California, but it hardly seems to matter which three. How could my heart take root anywhere under the tyranny of American public schooling?
I don’t have to work for a living. After my father died in December 1997, my family and I won a legal settlement.
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Rev. Scott Imler and I debate marijuana policy
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United Methodist minister Scott Imler has been gracious enough to debate me in a comment thread elsewhere on this blog, despite my harsh words for him after he expressed regret for cowriting California’s medical marijuana ballot initiative of 1996. I encourage everyone concerned about drug policy and health care to click to this page and read it from top to bottom.
February 24, 2010
Shame on Playboy for romanticizing the misery of Cuba
If I hadn’t been semi-retired from this blog by the time the January-February issue came out, I would have had to write something like what Michael C. Moynihan has written about its stupid, offensive travel article “Cuba Libre” at Reason magazine’s blog, Hit & Run: “Libertarian” Playboy Mag Hates Choice, Loves Authentic Communism. There’s nothing sexy about the Castro regime.
February 23, 2010
John Mayer is a retarded midget for taking back the word “nigger.” That’s gay.
Please excuse my language, but it pisses me off that people get so chickenshit about words these days. It makes me worry about the future of free speech. In America’s endless cycles of outrage over supposedly racist comments made by obvious non-racists, whoever has the weakest sense of irony makes the rules. The inevitable result is, shall we say, mentally challenged public discourse.
In context, singer John Mayer’s use of the word nigger in the March Interview expresses no hostility or condescension towards black people, does it?Someone asked me the other day, “What does it feel like now to have a hood pass?” And by the way, it’s sort of a contradiction in terms, because if you really had a hood pass, you could call it a nigger pass. Why are you pulling a punch and calling it a hood pass if you really have a hood pass? But I said, “I can’t really have a hood pass. I’ve never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, ‘We’re full.’”
I’m disappointed by Mayer’s gutlessness in apologizing for his statement on Twitter:Re: using the ‘N word’ in an interview: I am sorry that I used the word. And it’s such a shame that I did because the point I was trying to make was in the exact opposite spirit of the word itself. It was arrogant of me to think I could intellectualize [sic] using it, because I realize that there’s no intellectualizing a word that is so emotionally charged.
At a recent concert, Mayer broke down and cried during a lengthy apology for his remarks, to which the audience cheered. Oh Lord, please don’t let him help make uptight political correctness look hip and sexy.
January 30, 2010
The Catcher in the Rye left me cold; “Teddy” gave me chills
I don’t get Holden Caulfield, the first-person narrator of The Catcher in the Rye. His hatred of the “phoniness” of the movies alienates me. I find him sanctimonious, almost morbidly so, for damning Hollywood’s game of iconographic make-believe. A philistine like Caulfield can never admire the cultivated phoniness of Oscar Wilde, for example. If I say so myself, my own essay on the magnificent phoniness of Playboy photography has aged well over the past 45 months. Although I’ve read Catcher only once, roughly twenty years ago, I remember my impression of Caulfield as an overrated antihero.
However, the death of 91-year-old J. D. Salinger moved me to sample more of his work online yesterday. Even if you don’t like Catcher, try his short story “Teddy,” originally from the January 31, 1953, issue of The New Yorker. Salinger’s lifelong quest for transcendence finds a much better spokesman in ten-year-old genius Teddy McArdle than in Holden Caulfield.“I was six when I saw that everything was God, and my hair stood up, and all that,” Teddy said. “It was on a Sunday, I remember. My sister was only a very tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God, if you know what I mean.”
Far out, man! I’m shocked and fascinated by Teddy, his words, and his fate. See if you aren’t also.
January 21, 2010
Why shouldn’t corporations have free speech?
“If corporations are capable of making the public do their bidding, then why isn’t everyone driving their Edsels to Circuit City to purchase Betamax video recorders?” So asks Bert Gall, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice. I challenge anyone who thinks of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission as bad news, not good, to answer Gall’s question. (I thank Reason’s blog, Hit & Run, for making me aware of the quotation.)
January 14, 2010
The Haiti earthquake isn’t funny, but Pat Robertson is
According to televangelist and former presidential candidate Pat Robertson, the disastrous earthquake in Haiti was a consequence of the pact with the devil the Haitians made some two centuries ago to drive out their French oppressors. While I wouldn’t make light of the suffering in the Caribbean, I believe ridicule is the best response to callous, moronic statements like Robertson’s. Let’s have some fun.
Let’s watch these two videos, one right after the other. The first shows Robertson telling the “true story” on The 700 Club:
What’s so funny about that, you ask? As you watch this clip from a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone, “The Howling Man,” in which Lucifer escapes from the monastery that has held him prisoner, try to imagine him thinking, “The first thing I’ll do is liberate the Haitians,” as he strokes his beard and begins his transformation. If you’re like me, this will help you savor the delicious absurdity of Robertson and the science fiction version of Christianity (as opposed to serious Christianity) he stands for.
December 7, 2009
Probably the most interesting discussion ever on Tiger Woods’ infidelity
These beautiful pundits, brought to us by Bloggingheads.tv, do a better job of extrapolating meanings from the Tiger Woods scandal than I could, so I’ll give them center stage. Keep your ears open for the dirty joke seventeen and a half minutes in.
(Update on my other blog: By necessity, my output at Play It Backwards sdrawkcaB tI yalP will proceed slowly until the “Admin” at BlogExplosion approves it for blog traffic exchange.)
November 17, 2009
My other blog is sillier but safer for work than this one
Now that I’ve pretty much retired from this blog, I can write a blog about another passion of mine: reversed audio and video. Play It Backwards sdrawkcaB tI yalP will let you experience the subliminal, satanic fun of songs and video clips played backwards. Anything that scares fundamentalist preachers ought to entertain you.
October 17, 2009
Just in case I ever reincarnate as a woman...
...I feel a need to make some amends to improve this blog’s feminist karma before I retire from it. Four years ago today, I started it by posting “Please don’t assume I’m a pig.” In retrospect, I sometimes question that thesis.
For example, I have inappropriately sexualized the women of Reason magazine, especially Kerry Howley. I remember seeing an online video at Reason.tv of one of their editors’ meetings in which Howley looked rather uncomfortable in her own skin. It may be egocentric of me to suspect it was my fault, but I can’t help wondering. Oops.
I really did have a crush on YouTube star Brooke “Brookers” Brodack for a while. But even though I described some of her videos as sexy, I never sexualized her in my imagination the same way I’ve done with Playboy models. ’Nuff said. Actually, for all I know, my feminist karma may have gotten worse with that confession. Oh, the ambiguity!
On at least two points of predictable controversy, however, I’m ready to defend my feminist karma. As a group, women have disappointed me with their general unwillingness to defend equity in male and female reproductive choice. A Roe v. Wade for men is a moral necessity, no matter how many feminists hypocritically invoke nature’s will to force men to open their wallets to support unilaterally chosen children. Philosophically, I still believe in a woman’s choice to give birth or not, but I can’t be more than lukewarm in support of that cause until feminism learns to listen to men more sympathetically.
The other predictable controversy is that I’ve called my mother a cunt. I stand by what I said about that particular woman. MDMA has been teaching me the value of forgiveness, but not fast enough to forgive her (or my father) in time for this day of confession. I’m sorry, but I’m not sorry. She stood by idly while bullies and bureaucrats humiliated me at school and my know-it-all father fucked with my head at home. Just in case she ever reincarnates as a mother again, I hope she learns her lessons on how to avoid raising an ungrateful son.