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As technology becomes part of the everyday (almost a body part) and people become more melancholy city numbers than social beings, art takes an ego-oriented turn. Whether it be for financial, pragmatic or creative reasons, more artists are choosing the crew-free approach to make their projects. Filmmakers who take on all technical and creative responsibilities of their films, musicians without a band, photographers with the company of their tripods. Sure, everyone needs a little input, but ultimately these creators bravely take on the entirety of their projects unaided. While shooting a 16mm film requires a sound team, camera assistants and a clapper, all you need is two hands and a set of eyes to shoot something with your webcam. Ironically, it was more than 40 years ago when filmmaker Glauber Rocha proclaimed that to make good cinema, all you need is “an idea in the head and a camera in the hand.”

Travestied in the glossy aesthetics of mass consumption spectacle, rap, hip-hop, R&B and pop music seem to all have become the same blob of status quo-inducing saccharine.

The phenomenon doesn’t limit itself to music. Cinema, for instance, can claim the same popularization (in the worse sense of the word). Indie films these days can be as sleek as big Hollywood pictures and as financially “dependent” on big studios as well.

I am at the airport. Late. Strolling a suitcase, a backpack and film equipment, all heavier than me.

I arrive at the Air Canada counter and show them my passport. I say it’s an e-ticket. And that I prefer window.

Paris — When in Paris, I am not very interested in the trendy cafés of the Marais or the Oprah-hating boutiques of Champs Elysées. I would rather be switching trains in Saint Denis, a mostly Arab and North African suburb where I meet Tunisian brothers Mohamed and Miehid.

These brothers of colonial misery will change my perception of what books and well-fed afternoons do to the spirit of a man, how the effect of misery is never uniform because our existences are too amorphous to accept certainties.

I walked into my office one day and saw the glimmering face of my coworker dying to tell me something. I lay my newspaper on the couch and said, “Good morning,” to which she responded “Guess what? I’m engaged!”

It is hard to know how to behave in front of extreme misery and extreme happiness. The everyday is so drenched in immobile in-between-ness, a sudden moment of unusual bliss can throw you off.

The 2005 Milwaukee International Film Festival (MIFF), which came to a close Sunday, gives the city the chance to expose itself to great world and local cinema it wouldn’t otherwise be able to explore.

While film has the power to open up minds and change perspectives, a newspaper also holds similar influence. But while cinema as an art form doesn’t necessarily have to hold social responsibilities (art for art’s sake, why not?), a newspaper has the duty to be fair, the obligation to attempt honesty.

The accidental deaths of two teenagers last week in Clichy-sous-Bois, one of Paris’ many cartiers chauds (aka the ghetto), has prompted youths to riot, torch vehicles and confront the police.

The unrest spread like a virus around Paris’ banlieues and other French cities.

The one thing about a gay man’s life that gives him both an undeletable scar and the privilege of having observed the world from different vantage points is the fact that we all have, at some point, “been” straight. Or, at least, tried to.

We all had to go through the years of identity travestying, in which, like actors doing very serious, method-acting type of laboratory work, we pretended to be “other.” Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Except during masturbation — that was our homo break.

Paris — I am back in Paris for Thanksgiving break. After the riots and the burning of hundreds of cars, all that seems to have changed are the newspaper headlines.

“Suburbs: How to rebuild them?” asks a political magazine, “The youth of the suburbs: what they told us,” says Le Nouveau Observateur.

Every time I re-enter the country, I stare at the paper sign pointing at the line for non-residents (“ALL Visitors, This Way”).

Then I look at the electronic board saying “Residents Here” and, finally, the one that says “U.S. Citizens,” and I secretly hope that next time I will at least get promoted to the “Residents” line.

When thinking about interracial relationships it is important to wonder what “race” really means, both to the couple’s psyche and to the social environment they inhabit.

Psychologically, it may be utopian — or, at least, naive — to think of people who date outside their race as simply color-blind, non-judging social nymphs. The emotional motives for interracial dating might be hidden in more profound places (i.e. the good old unconscious).

I was a Facebook virgin until a couple weeks ago, when a co-worker introduced it to me.

I had always overheard about the Web site here and there — “Are you on Facebook?” “So I was on Facebook last night and, like …” or “Oh, you should Facebook him!” Apparently, Facebook had even become a verb. So I gave in and joined it myself.

You would think that sudden realizations of the state of contemporary defense mechanisms wouldn’t come to you in a group sex setting. But that is how my epiphany, or at least the visual proof of it, came about.

I walk in to this dimly lit Shorewood apartment making sure none of my expensive belongings are on me. I check for keys, untied shoes and coffee stains. I run my tongue around my teeth. Try to floss them with the tip of a fingernail — to no avail. Note to self: remember not to smile widely.

One of America’s most enviable conquests — this thick, superficial layer of efficient colorblindness and its pragmatic presumption for any human’s humanity — has been put into jeopardy by the “selling our ports to Dubai” issue that surfaced last week.

The navigation company based in London that has managed the ports of New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia was bought by Dubai Ports World, which is owned by the Dubai monarchy in the United Arab Emirates, an Arab Gulf state.

As I drive through the barren, Arctic streets of downtown Milwaukee in one of those trajectories where all traffic lights seem to be evidently against you, I read on a nightclub’s marquee: “Thursday, Ladies Night.”

Thursday is today and there is something apocalyptically melancholy about coming across a night club during daytime, with its neon lights turned off, the doors so hermetically shut.

It is quite easy to look inside an airplane and see it as a microcosm for the global tableau of cultural differences and historical baggage.

On an Air France jet, for instance, the Americans are listening to their iPods for eight hours straight, watching “Jarhead” or playing video games while everyone else is reading.

Orthographic coincidence or not, it seems rather appropriate that the most evident emblems of our times begin with the letter “I.”

From MP3 players to the virtual world, all it takes is that letter (which inevitably, and conveniently, reverberates the self) for it to gain contemporary, immediate and compulsory status.