this is the stuff of susie(’s)

If you know me, you probably know I now have consistent access to cable television programming for the first time in about six years and that this means I’ve been introduced to the Food Network in all of its bloody glory. As Amy Sedaris says, “when you’re alone and high in the night,” you can switch back and forth between the Food Network and the medical shows with the box on mute and everything looks just about the same. (But I’m also kind of convinced that watching has improved my seriously sub-par vegetable chopping time significantly.)

This also, of course, means I’ve been introduced to RayRay, that ever-grinning reminder of our continued march as a culture toward the lowest common denominator. (Not to mention those recipes take at least an hour.)

Now, I find Anthony Bourdain as repugnant as any of y’all, but I just had to block quote this for posterity…

Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So…what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could–if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?” Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better–teach us–and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. “You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to chop an onion–you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing…Just sit there. Have another Triscuit…Sleep….sleep….”

That is all.

image courtesy of the one and only Dave Warwak.

As a journalist, I’m not ashamed to admit that crazy vegans make for really fun news stories. But as a vegan, I sometimes have trouble reading past the headlines.

For the last few weeks I’ve watched the drama around school teacher and loudly proclaimed vegan Dave Warwak play out in Google News. In a soy nutshell (if you, too, winced at those headlines): Warwak, 44, went on a personal mission to convert the students in his art classes at Wisconsin’s Fox River Grove Middle School to veganism. As soon as the news hit the papes, Warwak was fired.

I don’t doubt that Warwak meant well. He just went vegan(gelical) in January, he’s used to molding impressionable young minds, and he probably thought he was doing the right thing. Tactless proselytizing looks much better from the inside–just like for religious teachers who’ve similarly been fired for leading prayers in class.

It’s not totally the media’s fault for characterizing people such as Warwak and the countless irresponsible “vegan” parents as vegan first and crazy second: that’s how they portray themselves. And when the vegan community stays quiet in implicit support it only makes it easier for the next crazy vegan to run with their unfounded moral righteousness. Even worse when they’re loud, misinformed and on the offensive defensive.

Vegans across the country have taken up Warwak’s “cause”–the same Warwak who just crashed the middle school homecoming parade, and handed out cards that said Santa Claus “is a lie,” and, “‘Naming a rock, a banana, does not make it food.’” Clearly he teaches art, not English.

Yet Warwak champions are popping up everywhere, from PETA (“Sound the alarm!”), to Meetup.org groups in Chicago, to Manhattan activist-bloggers.

Take Elaine Vigneault, for example.

“It’s yet another example of how vegans are painted as ‘crazy’ and our ideas are not taken seriously,” she writes. Unfortunately for Elaine, a lot of us are crazy: bat-shit, balls-to-the-wall, all-out freaking crazy. And the less that reasonable vegans differentiate themselves from the crazies, the more the entire world will go on believing that we are humorless ascetics.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, however, the humorless ascetics appear to be winning. Elaine says vegans “should be rude and obnoxious,” because we are the enlightened, and should spread our wisdom among the evil-doing masses. Well, that’s basically what she says. “Needlessly killing millions of animals is far beyond rude and obnoxious… And people who do it, people who promote it, and people who buy it deserve a little dose of the uncomfortable, rude reality.”

I guess that’s why not a lot of religious extremists hold teaching positions in public American schools, right? Because the uncomfortable, rude reality is just too tempting? Elaine claims Mr. Warwak didn’t have “some vegan cult he was recruiting for,” but when this kind of obnoxious attitude prevails, and the preaching continues, and converting the damned and absolving them of their sins is priority #1, that’s not truly the case. It just gives people more reason to block out, marginalize, alienate and fire the crazy.

You have to give people a reason to take your ideas seriously, especially if you’re challenging their entire paradigm. I don’t know one vegan who chose “the lifestyle” because they saw a disgusting PETA video or were yelled at for wearing leather. Making friends and influencing people is not about breaking them down. This isn’t a debate about animal rights or veganism: it’s about being a responsible, non-crazy adult.

And it’s also about not taking yourself so seriously. Because really, I for one think Warwak, PETA, Vigneault and the rest of the gang are hilarious.

Today marks the one year anniversary of my veganism (and on World Vegetarian Day, no less). So far it’s been a mostly positive experience. I’ve honed my cupcake craft, plus I haven’t gained any canola-oil-and-sugar weight, which I think counts as a win. And I even had a sweet run of it there as the managing editor of a rather vanguard vegan blog. Vegan, it turns out (somewhat to my surprise, I admit), is not a bad thing to be.

But one year and one day ago, an overpriced party at an overrated vegetarian restaurant in Fort Greene nearly convinced me otherwise.

The “Vegan Buddies” party seemed like a good enough deal. Olivia promised to set me up with a hot (vegan) guy, my friends were going, and there would be food: a Sunday afternoon trifecta.

I didn’t put much thought into the “Vegan” part of “Vegan Buddies”–how the sermons would go for a girl in vegetarian purgatory.

The VB project, the now-abandoned lovechild of UK animal rights organization Viva!, was meant to match up vegans with non-vegans to make the “transition” to veganism easier on the latter. Unfortunately for them, the organizers had drank a little too much of the Kool-Aid just prior. I guess that’s why they preferred guests to pay in advance.

It was preaching to the choir and a handful of heretics, with a 9-to-1 vegan to non-vegan ratio. Add to that a blood red nametag (peace-loving avocado green for the vegans, obvs) and unrelenting dogma: “wannabes” and “mentors,” “epiphanies” and “truth.” I thought I was being harsh when I told the kid sitting next to me with the green name tag that it reminded me of an AA meeting.

“I think it’s like Scientology,” he said, right after a reference to “taking it to the next level!” It was unclear if he meant that to be a positive commentary, so I didn’t ask.

But I’d already decided to “take it to the next level” weeks earlier. I’d filtered the milk out of my diet, started a label-reading habit and had a last ceremonious (and still enticing) grilled gouda sandwich. Lucky for Viva!, too, or else I might’ve run screaming down DeKalb (or been burned at the stake).

A few months later, buddy-less and at peak this-diet-is-blatantly-inconvenient-and-I-desperately-need-winter-boots crisis time, I came across the Vegan Buddies MySpace page, and their recent blog post. “We now have more than 500 friends here on Myspace, if every person directs one friend to the Vegan Buddies Project, we could ‘convert’ hundreds of peope [sic].”

It reminded me how I’m vegan despite vegan preachers like the VBs and hard-liners like the Vegan Freaks crew and Gary Francione. I’m not interested in converting the lost lambs, rating an individual’s veganism on a scale of murderer to absolved of all life-long sins, or rescuing every feral cat on the streets of Brooklyn. And I have enough writerly ego to think that maybe this makes my veganism even better than yours! If not, it at least has kept my parents from being totally creeped out so far.

So welcome to The Reluctant Vegan. I don’t like PeTA, I never saw “Meet Your Meat,” I don’t have any of the T-shirts and I think the best way to “convert” anyone is to make them cupcakes.

But I do really like Sheese.

Last summer I lived in the Lost Boys (and Girls) camp of 206 Classon Avenue, across the street from the well-appointed complex for retired Catholic nuns, and down the block from the Hasidic housing “bldg” and the Pratt art school. I wrote on the history of 206 for the Syncopated 3 anthology, from dairy pasteurization compound to illegal loft (to luxury condos?). While I still think that piece did the place justice, I don’t think it captured some of the subtleties of the 206 petri dish. Subtleties like Rick.

Rick was an ex-ad photographer and current dolly grip for film and television, and a former resident of a small Midwestern town, Venice Beach, Canada, various rehabilitation facilities and the L train. He had an impressive collection of stories that involved a colorful cast of characters including, but not limited to, Ron Jeremy, David Bowie, Katey Sagal of Married with Children; and though nearly 50, he showed no sign of slowing down. I haven’t spoken with Rick in nearly eight months, but here I recount Rick’s Greatest Hits: some of my favorite things he ever said to me and various other roommates. Rated M for Mature.

On Jocelyn’s family complaints: Why don’t you just kill everybody in your family and live like me?

On John acting douchey: I’ll jump on you like a fuckin’ lizard. I’ll never get off your face. [Pause] It’ll be like you stepped on a landmine.

On Stephanie joking that 206 uses resources like a community center: We are a fucking community center.

On me, to Chris: Don’t you wanna just bash her in the head?

On himself, wearing my sunglasses: I remind myself of Jackie O. Don’t I look like Jackie O?

On himself, forever young: The Picture of Rick Morrison. How about me? 48 and I have a zit! Do you have a zit?!

On himself, waiting to get old: I can’t wait to get Alzheimer’s. I can say crazy shit and people will just feel sorry for me.

Some background: Trina Robbins is the self-appointed expert women cartoonist “herstorian” (and herself a rather crappy woman cartoonist) and founder of the now predominantly male-run women cartoonists organization Friends of Lulu. When I did my journalism master’s thesis on women cartoonists, TR didn’t return any of my e-mails; this was also the case for lessers in the same mold, e.g. Heidi MacDonald, who generally suck up to cartoonists, men and men cartoonists, but who seem to be threatened and/or out of their element when it comes to women infringing in their womanly territory (trad male hegemony tactics, girls: divide and conquer). I wonder how TR and HM get along.

Now: I’m not so much a fan of Aline Kominsky-Crumb either, mostly because I don’t care for her work (though she’s worlds better than TR) plus the odd impression she makes in Crumb. However, my opinion of her has increased at least 47.3% after reading this interview she gave to Daniel Robert Epstein for the Suicide Girls (big gender WTF there as well).

This snippet works on so many delightful levels. Not only does it confirm my opinion of TR, but there’s cat-fighting, misogyny, narcissistic wounds plus the goddamn Suicide Girls? Amazing.

I like Anthropologie; like, I likelike Anthropologie. But I’m kind of cheapcareful with money, so I mostly just go there to ogle all the over-priced, well-designed stuff, and/or to play the “How much does it cost?” game, which really never gets old. Really! — just guess how much this shirt costs.

Anyway, I realize this is kind of absurd, especially considering my lowwell-managed income, but it’s a fun distraction from time to time. And at least I am not like Jade from Jersey, who blogs at Craving Anthropologie. From her site:

An obsession, have to have it, definitely want to live there! A gal who spends way too many lunch hours at Anthropologie — browsing, making my wish list, inspired, charmed, teased, of course I have to leave with something.. anything!

I love it when other people’s idosyncracies overshadow mine — it makes me feel so normal.

So apparently about 6% of adults shop compulsively, though probably not all at Anthropologie, or else they could make that shit a little more affordable — they must be Craving Urban Outfitters, or Old Navy.