• Village Voice
• Musto occupies the CLog

Warning: I love the Village Voice's Michael Musto. Always have. So my CLog post today fairly beams with Musto love. And there's much to love about a man who celebrates global catastrophe.

What does a Michael Musto cover story in the Voice have to do with Charlotte? Well, glad you asked: We have occupiers, too, and they've made, to quote a dead '70s glam king, life a gas.

Replace "New York" and "Wall Street" with "Charlotte," and Musto's words here may also resonate for those of us living in the Wall Street of the South in these last days of 2011. Y'all.

New York became fun again in 2011.

Thanks to a global economic meltdown! The lingering desperation in the air brought down our emotional walls, and New Yorkers became friendlier and more open than we've been in ages, most of us no longer propped up by elitism as we reached out to one another like we were having a massive midlife crisis together—in a good way.

Even better, activism replaced bottle service as we saw the rise of Occupy Wall Street, a grassroots movement hating on the corporate greed and corruption that has led to drastic social inequality, unemployment, and crappy pizza. . . .

The generation being propelled into the hopelessness of someone else's making wasn't going to take it in a prostrate position, even if incidents of police brutality and neighborhood antagonism were trying to wet-blanket the excitement. "Get a job!" yelled the idiots, forgetting that this uprising was happening because there weren't any!

Enjoy the rest of Musto's glee here.