"Triumph of the Human Spirit" may be Jack's finest hour yet in an exceptional month of June. Here we see his old themes - Man Made An Ass of By Woman, Poor Creative Decision Making By Committee, The Hidden Treasures of New York City. And devilishly, his title takes on several meanings - the name of the statue, an ironic meaning playing on the failure of the "human spirit" to go on a date, a cruel mockery of the "human" woman who failed to present her boobs for Jack. But of course, the text itself is the true "Triumph" - Jack has made comedy of tragedy, and surely isn't that the truest "Triumph of the Human Spirit"? Either that, or those giant heads on Easter Island, which are also a triumph of the human spirit.
Punchy, salty prose is Jack's giant head - it crackles and stings a bit in the mouth like a crisply made BLT. The little details - the flower in the hair, the 427 dead Africans - make it all the more worthy.
But this entry also calls the reader's attention to one of the central dilemas of Clinomania-study. The simple fact is, Jack's misfortunes make for better reading than his highest moments. For example, the time he banged that lady in Hudson River Park didn't make for the finest posting, but his immoderation with booze, and his crazed rants in the wake of rejection burble into magnificent prose. It reminds one of the comment our associate Vali made recently - he noted that Gatorade tastes so good when you're hung-over, it's almost worth the hang-over.
So the purest Clinomania reader, who must inevitably love Jack, is tortured by the fact that he must also root for mal-events to befall him. The resulting struggle draws one towards the text - we have to read constantly to see whether our dark wishes have come true. Reading becomes both a delight and a punishment for our wicked instincts. Consider: you can't watch a Harold Lloyd movie without loving Harold Lloyd, but you also want him to fall and be beset by injury so that comedy will ensue. Similarly: one roots for tremendous blizzards to hit Boston, just so something interesting happens. If there's going to be snow, it may as well be a motherfucker, just to get you out of bed in the morning.
Of course, we've never seen a Harold Lloyd movie, but the same seems to be true of Jackie Chan.
--On another note, some readers have expressed concern about this site- we can't nearly keep pace with Jack's recent spat of delightful musings, all worthy of excavation. But sadly, we're afraid that the robots inside the computers owned by our Australian dictatorial employer will find our thoughts distasteful. So our usual practice is to write our thoughts out in our own blood on napkins at the office, then copy them into the interweb once at home. Apologies for laxity.
