For last week’s investigation, I decided to take part in the ultimate patriotic Mainstream activity–the Inauguration of President Barack Obama!

If you’re rolling your eyes because you think this is another gloaty blog entry about someone’s awesome, pimped-out day with Barack, Michelle, and Bono. Don’t worry! Real Mainstreamers didn’t have access to up-close seats and fancy balls! That would require money, or fame, or enough leisure time to spend weeks (months?) volunteering for the campaign. Also, Mainstreamers are kind of lazy, so volunteering is a less likely spare time activity than, say, seeing Marley and Me.

No, my diary of the great day consists of gems such as an overpriced Amtrak ticket, bad beer, and getting kicked in the face. Key findings: The Mall is sort of ugly. So are Americans trying to get back to New York. Also, when you are half a mile from the Jumbotron screen, Aretha Franklin looks a lot like my white Republican aunt.

Monday, Jan 19th

5:00 pm. Board Amtrak train at Penn station. Smells like pee in here. Was my ticket really $349? Yes. Yes it was. Buy an $8 beer and settle next to window.

5:15 pm. Nap.

5:30 pm. The party starts! Group in front of me turns on boom box, jolting me out of nap. It’s Mainstream 1989! Hammer time! Someone passes out special Obama magazines and cans of Budweiser.

Hurray, new regime! Obama = free beer!

6:15 pm. Elderly lady boards in New Jersey, sees I am whitest person on train, grabs seat next to me. She eyes my beer with disdain. Immediate suspicions arise that she is of the enemy camp.

6:30 pm. Suspicions confirmed!

“Look how happy they are,” she whispers. “One of them in office. I voted for McCain, but look! It’s SO cute!” She gets off in Delaware. Good riddance! Train party continues. Some girl has tickets to the Western Ball. We open up a world of hate on her.

(I just learned to say that on the train ride.)
9:00 pm. Arrive at Union Station, slightly drunk. TV camera! Media! Cool “Hope” banners! Oh, those are Pepsi ads. Oooo, should I have a Pepsi? Pepsi is so good! Gross.

10:00 pm. Find Wooch, the owner of the couch I will be inhabiting this evening. Shit, it’s cold out here. We wade through crowds to get a very bad burger. Am offered the “Obama” drink special: Bailey’s and Tangerine Vodka!

11:00 pm. Obama drinks vomitous. Couch face plant.
Tuesday January 20th

6:30 am. Wake up. It’s like Christmas! Look out windows, see that huge crowd is already streaming toward Mall. Must beat them! Put on long johns, two sweaters, two hats, huge coat containing sundries and granola bars. Wooch says I look like Unabomber and will not be making friends or meeting anyone hot for a patriotic Obama fling.

7:00 am. Wooch is right. In Starbucks, people see me and look nervously away. Stupid coat. Line too long. 50 people waiting for bathroom. Rumors of 50,000 per toilet at the Mall! We will pee in our hats!

8:00 am. Arrive at Mall. Stake out spot! It’s not even that crowded. Is this a hoax? I mean, people are here, but I have plenty of room. Also there are about 7,000 empty toilets. Try to talk to people around me, but no one is interested except the unemployed guy who is bitching, bitching, bitching. I hope Obama cures him.

8:30 am. Wow. This guy is still complaining. I’m sorry about your marketing job in Baltimore. I know, the mortgage. It sucks! God! When does this thing start? Cold. Consume granola bar for warmth.

9:00 am. So bored! Why is patriotism so dull? Nothing on Jumbotron but some boys’ choir. Wait is that live or did that happen Sunday? Where’s the announcer? Can we watch a quick 30 Rock instead?

9:30 am. More people are coming now. I hear someone say that someone else heard on the radio that there are two million people here. The most ever! But wait. They are all moving into my f_cking spot! Listen, I got here at 8:00 am, Turd Face! Get that toddler off your shoulders. You and your big hat.

10:00 am. Famous people are starting to arrive! Beyonce! Yay! Bill and Hillary! Yay! Ted Kennedy! Still alive? Yay! No one up there is wearing a hat. Do they have special heaters? Why do they all look so good when we all look like bread march refugees?

10:10 am. Biden’s wife is wearing do-me boots!

10: 12 am. I can’t feel my feet. Can you step on my feet for me?

10:15 am. OMG! There they are!!!! The Obaaaaamaaaas! Michele, Barack, Malia, Sasha! So awesome! Yeeeeeessssss!!!

10:30 am. Aretha Franklin. Hat. Ha ha.

10:35 am. Dude, I told you. Toddler down or I pull him down for you.

10: 37 am. Sorry. Please stop crying, little guy. I was—sorry.

10:45 am OMG, it’s starting! Biden is sworn in! Hot old wife looks on. Rivers of Mainstreamer tears.

10:50 am. Classical Music break. Boooooring. The crowd breaks the sacred silence to talk amongst themselves..

–”Yo Yo Ma? Yo MaMA.”

–”Put your fingers in your armpits. It works.”

–”Do you think Burger King will be too crazy?”

–”Hey, let me see your ipod.”

11:00 am. OMG! YES! NEW PRESID—

Wait, did he just fuck up? Or is that the Jumbotron? Why is the sound not working? Fuck!

11:30 am. Oh, this speech is good. It IS the age of Responsibility! We WILL face these challenges! We ARE America…

11: 40 am. sooooo cold…space out…granola bar…

11:50 am. Yes! Thunderous applause! WE ARE SAVED!

12:10 pm. Poet lady speaking. Trying to hear her, but crowd pushing us to side.

Ow! Fall down! Foot on face! Lady, you just stepped on my face! Wooch, did she just—I thought so! Ow.

12:30 pm. Yes, Burger King is mobbed.

12:45 pm. A limo! Is that Beyonce? Where is she eating lunch? Even crappy Pret-a-Manger is mobbed. This town sucks.

1:15-3:30 pm. Hoard plastic booth at Coucous Castle. Couscous pretty good, actually. Put toes in Styrofoam cups of hot water. Ow. Watch taped showing of the speech again. Looks better from here.

3:45 pm. Bye, Wooch. Metro to Union station “crazy”, but if you’ve been in rush hour in New York, whatever.

3:50 pm. Union Station temporarily closed because of a bomb sweep for some ball. Maybe the Western Ball? Riot. Man hits policeman on head, who shoves him and begins whining to me because I have a friendly face.

“Why did you all come here anyway?”

I tell him I’m not sure. We are now friends, so he sneaks me into station through a secret Port-o-Let opening.

4:00 pm. In station. Made it! suckers. Buy Audacity of Hope. Brainwashed! Of course. Mainstream K.

4:15 pm. Buy another $8 beer. Board train to Penn Station.

4:30 pm. Train leaves. Good luck Obama! And you owe me, buddy. I did it all for you.

• • • • • Yours from the new Age of Responsibility,

• • • • • Mainstream K

For my first foray into reporting from the Mainstream, I decided to investigate Marley and Me. Obvious choice. The movie was number one at the box office throughout the entire holiday season, and has made about $120 million so far. Plus it stars ultimate Mainstreamer Jennifer Aniston. Also, it’s about a dog, and I’m really into dogs. Not weirdly!!! Just in a Mainstream kind of way.

my dog

Anyway, I was ready to love this movie. I wanted to watch a funny dog story. I also wanted to prove my friends wrong—the cat-loving, pretentious ones who said I was an idiot for going. I knew it would be bad, but I’m open to banal badness. For instance, The Holiday and The Wedding Date were OK with me. A bottle of wine, some wacky Cameron Diaz antics. Sure. I’m Mainstream.

And yet here I am with the sad, obvious, bottom line: Go nowhere near this movie if you value the precious minutes of your life. Marley and Me was just horrifying. It had no story. The acting sucked. The writing made me want to vomit. (“I just want to be there for you.” “Dogs don’t care if you’re rich or poor.”) Everyone in the movie—including the dog—was blindingly, offensively white. These people lived in Miami, and there weren’t even any hot Latin brunettes around. Oh wait. There was one Jew. The funny guy! But again, they gave him no good lines. And then, the worst crime: the dog-actors so obviously kept switching throughout the movie. Marley grew and shrank in a manner completely incongruous to his age. Plus his face wasn’t even close to similar from scene to scene. True, only a dog person would notice that, but it’s like they didn’t even try.

Two other people not trying: Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston. Owen was completely baked the entire time. I can’t blame him; he’s an oddball genius caught in a Mainstream nightmare, so I forgive his need to numb out while earning rehab money. Jennifer Aniston, though. There’s something creepy about how she has reigned as the queen of Mainstream or so long. When she was Rachel on Friends, I gave her the benefit of the doubt for being slightly annoying. We all wanted to be friends with Rachel. Then she married Brad and we were so psyched for her. And he dumped her, of course. So Mainstream! But her weird I-don’t-age voodoo magic makes me uncomfortable. In this movie, she drones her lines and has total robot face. And you know what? I could totally tell she hates dogs. When she picked little-tiny-puppy-Marley up, it was like she was holding a used self-tanning towel. I felt dirty watching her.

But let’s take a step back and address the truly disturbing question at hand. How is this turd of a movie so popular? Literally, it’s for no one. It wasn’t for girls, because the romantic development and chemistry was non-existent. There wasn’t any hot sex or violence, so it’s not a dude movie. Kids? No way. The “plot” was an excruciating string of after-school-special, mind-numbingly boring adult issues: miscarriage, 40^th birthdays, professional quandaries so lame if my friends complained about them I’d cut them off. Plus, the dog dies a slow, painful death. (I was wailing.) What imbecile would take their six-year-old to watch that?

And yet, the math. 120 million dollars in two weeks. OK. If a ticket cost $10, that means, according to my computer calculator, that at least 12,000,000 people went to see this piece of crap. I know I’m probably wildly off, but still. How did they get all those people to pay money to see that?

It took some serious Mainstream mind acrobatics, but I think I’ve figured it out. To really understand, I need you to be interactive for a moment. Click on the image of the poster to make it big, and then stare at Marley’s face for ten full seconds.

See how cuddly he is? And innocent? And that cute bow! What could go wrong in that perfect little puppy world? Stare harder. You sort of want to see the movie now, don’t you? Huh? Don’t you want to crawl in there and curl up and sleep next to Marley forever? Come on in. We’ll pet you. It’ll be Ok. It’ll be Oooookaaaaaaayyyy….

Quick, close that window! Oh my God! You see? Stay on your side of the plate glass, young hipsters. The Mainstream is a dangerous place. Because out here we can struggle all we want against Jennifer Aniston eating our souls and bathing in our blood to melt her cellulite, but it’s just no use. The puppy will get us in the end.

Yours from the Megaplex,

Mainstream K.

Hi. I’m Mainstream K.

It has come to my attention that my favorite new magazine, the Rumpus, has a healthy paranoia of the Mainstream. (Because Steve treats it like a country to be invaded, I am capitalizing the term.) As in, Mainstream movies, TV shows, books, and gossip. At first, I respected this editorial choice. Intellectual snobbery should not be corralled only within the steamed over doors of Ritual Coffee Roasters and KGB bar! But after awhile, this deliberate eschewing of all things Britney concerned me.

Rumpus, despite what your mother told you, ignoring Lauren Conrad will not make her go away. In fact, not paying attention to her is like throwing away your parking tickets, because while you are pretending she is dead, her cultural value is ballooning, and suddenly she is publishing books and writing movies and underhandedly ruling your country. OK, maybe that metaphor didn’t play out completely, but what I am saying is, ignoring the Mainstream is short-sighted. Better to pull a Palin and keep an eye on those Reds from your living room.

Luckily, Steve thought this too. Actually, he thought all this before me, because his job is to think about these things. It must be admitted that at the outset that I was not his first choice as Mainstream reporter. By many counts, I am not an obvious Rumpus contributor. I get spacey when people talk politics, I don’t write much about sex, and my book reviews consist of emoticons.

Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen: {; -/

But I have an office next to Steve, and after several morning conversations along the lines of…

K: Can you believe Dan cheated on Serena with Georgina on Gossip Girl last night?

Steve: What?

Steve: Did you see that amazing Rumpus piece on Robert Haas today?

K: Who?

…it became clear that we could offer each other a symbiotic relationship. I will report on the Mainstream for the Rumpus. In return, the Rumpus will attempt to widen my cultural horizons beyond bubble gum. Also, I will get a black tee-shirt with the Rumpus logo printed too small across the chest.

(Sorry, Steve. Mainstream opinion is that the tee-shirt people fucked up.)

So, the upshot: you will no longer have to worry that you are missing out on the cultural significance of Hannah Montana. I will watch her show (heinous), find out if she’s hot (totally) and report back as to whether nor not she is a national threat (yes). I’m doing it for you, Rumpus readers. And what’s more, I’m doing it for America.

Yours from Starbucks,

Mainstream K.