{"id":154,"date":"2006-08-21T12:28:47","date_gmt":"2006-08-21T16:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/2006\/08\/21\/lileks-is-like-squares-ville\/"},"modified":"2006-08-21T12:28:47","modified_gmt":"2006-08-21T16:28:47","slug":"lileks-is-like-squares-ville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/2006\/08\/21\/lileks-is-like-squares-ville\/","title":{"rendered":"Lileks is Like Squares-ville"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reading the Bleat for years now and he has gone further and further into the business of being a grumpy guy and less and less being an amusing commentator on culture. He had the sense to move a lot of it to a separate blog. But today he just lost it.<\/a> It sounds to me like the rantings of an “old guy” who can’t take the notion that he is a complete square. He spends a lot of words trying to discount any sort of counter culture sensibility as being stupid and has a bad habit of justifying things by pointing out that much much worse things are happening elsewhere in the world. Sort of like “Why are the namby pamby Democrats so up in arms about the goverment spying on them without warrants when North Korea has 100,000 people being tortured to death in secret prisons?” “Why get so up in arms about blacks being kept out of good schools in the 50s when Russia was killing thousands of people every month in Gulags?” Sad. That’s not an argument. Mis-direction.<\/p>\n

I read most of the Bleat today and over and over it was just saying, this guy is really a stiff neck jerk. “How dare you rebel against a country that feeds you, Marlon Brando and James Dean!” Lileks, you are\u00c2\u00a0a sad old guy. Mr. Unhip. And that seems to make you crazy. You need to start allowing people to reply to your rants on your site. Dialog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reading the Bleat for years now and he has gone further and further into the business of being a grumpy guy and less and less being an amusing Read More …<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[555],"tags":[492,221],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kapu-forbidden","tag-bleat","tag-lileks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p731sH-2u","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1263,"url":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/2017\/04\/19\/hukilau-mai-kai-history-presentation\/","url_meta":{"origin":154,"position":0},"title":"Hukilau Mai-Kai History Presentation","author":"Swanky","date":"April 19, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"June 9th, in support of my recently released book on the history of the greatest Tiki bar on earth, the Mai-Kai, I will once again be giving a presentation at the largest Tiki event outside of California, The Hukilau. This year I am holding a sort of Mai-Kai reunion and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Events"","block_context":{"text":"Events","link":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/category\/events\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/huki-logo.jpg?fit=851%2C315&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/huki-logo.jpg?fit=851%2C315&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/huki-logo.jpg?fit=851%2C315&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/huki-logo.jpg?fit=851%2C315&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":119,"url":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/2006\/07\/06\/polynesian-pop-culture-trumps-the-real-thing\/","url_meta":{"origin":154,"position":1},"title":"Polynesian Pop culture trumps the real thing","author":"Swanky","date":"July 6, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Target has a line of outdoor and garden stuff this year called \"Mai Tiki.\" I'm sure Wayne Coombs is furious! Thay sell a couple of styles of 3 foot plastic tikis for your yard.\u00c2\u00a0 Big Lots has a new line of tiki stuff including these plastic statues which draw their\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cocktail Capers"","block_context":{"text":"Cocktail Capers","link":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/category\/cocktail-capers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":275,"url":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/2007\/07\/11\/you-just-never-know\/","url_meta":{"origin":154,"position":2},"title":"You Just Never Know…","author":"Swanky","date":"July 11, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Part of why I like hanging out in old bars is the characters there, not the character of the place. I've been amazed by the stories of the old timers I have heard. There is one old guy, Ed, who hung out at Opal's a lot. He cleaned the place\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Existential Fodder"","block_context":{"text":"Existential Fodder","link":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/category\/existential-fodder\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":237,"url":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/2007\/04\/15\/moving-the-bar\/","url_meta":{"origin":154,"position":3},"title":"Moving the Bar","author":"Swanky","date":"April 15, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I am starting to get acclimated to the new house and having time for the things I neglected while renovating, and then getting to the things that are just sort of normal life again... This picture is a leftover. When we were moving, I snapped this picture after I had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cocktail Capers"","block_context":{"text":"Cocktail Capers","link":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/category\/cocktail-capers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":210,"url":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/2007\/01\/09\/soundtracks-with-a-twist\/","url_meta":{"origin":154,"position":4},"title":"Soundtracks With a Twist","author":"Swanky","date":"January 9, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I am guessing a lot of you are into the same sort of weird music I am. Lounge, but not really the normal sort of lounge. Stuff that strays just enough to give you a sly little smile. So I wanted to share with you perhaps my all time favorite\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blather"","block_context":{"text":"Blather","link":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/category\/blather\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":178,"url":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/2006\/10\/10\/rubin-on-clay-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":154,"position":5},"title":"Rubin on Clay","author":"Swanky","date":"October 10, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"When\u00c2\u00a0commenting on the questioning of Clay Aiken's sexuality, Rubin Studdard said: \"Clay is a very strong guy. He always comes out on top.\" So now we know, Clay's a top.","rel":"","context":"In "Existential Fodder"","block_context":{"text":"Existential Fodder","link":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/category\/existential-fodder\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swankpad.org\/blather\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}