On the morning of Monday, Oct. 3, amid the usual Astor Place cacophony of whizzes, hums, clanks, beeps and shouts, a truck carrying six men and five very heavy and very Zen boxes pulled up to the converted Carl Fischer building on Cooper Square. The men schlepped the goods upstairs into an astonishing and just-completed traditional Japanese farmhouse, which had been elegantly stuffed into one of the building’s sprawling loft spaces.

Inside the building—at which the penthouse was listed, last year, at $7 million—the movers cursed to high heaven. The boxes contained something resembling every deliveryman’s worst nightmare: big rocks.

These rocks, though, had been handpicked for shape, character and energy from the Uba River in the Sierra Nevada mountains by Shigeru Namba and his employer, Paul Discoe. Mr. Discoe is an architect, as well as a Soto Zen priest. His works include a number of Buddhist landmarks in the Bay Area and now the “dojo at Cooper Square”—as some visitors have labeled it—which he owns with his wife.

Mr. Namba, who is a master rock setter, began giving life to his first rock garden in Manhattan.

“Maybe my last,” joked the ruggedly handsome and compact 54-year-old. He has been artfully placing rocks for going on 30 years. The last 10 of those have been largely dedicated to landscaping Oracle C.E.O. gazillionaire Larry Ellison’s recently completed 60-acre, $200 million Japanese-style compound in Woodside, Calif.

“I think that the stones are living things. I want to give them their life back,” Mr. Namba said.

Basalt rocks, you may be interested to learn, are igneous rocks, about 50 percent silica and high in magnesium and iron. They are also extremely dense—the largest of the five rocks delivered weighed more than 600 pounds. They also frequently possess the calming qualities that Mr. Namba said he looks for in a good stone.

The rocks were undoubtedly less expensive to buy than to ship across the country, as they only fetch $200 a ton. Mr. Discoe and Mr. Namba had purchased 3,500 tons for use at Mr. Ellison’s. “It’s the trained eye for character in a rock that makes all the difference,” said Mr. Discoe.

Rock gardens in general are meant to create a sense of calm and comfort, according to Mr. Namba. They are also generally outside, but he said indoors “is O.K. too.”

“It’s a very soothing place,” offered Jose Diaz, a contractor who helped with the yearlong remodel of the space and led the team of brawny movers. “When the guys walked in they were like, ‘Wow, this place don’t belong here.’”

“The guy obviously had the whole thing mapped out in his mind,” said Mr. Diaz of Mr. Namba. Mr. Diaz noted that when one of the movers altered the position of a stone by “like a quarter of an inch,” Mr. Namba sensed an imperfection and ordered the stone be repaired to its right position. Getting the stones just right had taken the movers several hours.

Mr. Namba had, in fact, mapped things out beforehand. He had created an identical frame to work from in the Bay Area, where he resides.

But in situ, Mr. Namba’s canvas is roughly a 12-by-20-foot sandbox, for lack of a better word, in the middle of the loft. An elevated walkway, called an engawa (which is usually at least partly outdoors, or a bridge from the indoors to outside), surrounds the garden, which is filled with pebbles, not sand. Five stones now nestle in those pebbles.

In one corner sits the largest of the stones, with a smaller one nestled beside it. “They are like mother and baby,” said Mr. Namba. In the opposite corner rest the remaining three, a group of “brothers” differing in shape but not drastically in size. Aside from creating “good harmony” by uniting stones that enjoy each other, the energy created in the space is also important, said Mr. Namba.

“To move one of the stones after it has been set would be like changing the nose on a Picasso,” said Mr. Discoe.

His views are shared by the other family members. “If, down the road, the property is ever left in my care, I vow never to disrupt Shigeru’s vision,” says Tim Hatch, Mr. Discoe’s stepson and founding member of the New York–based cult band Muscular Christians. “I know better than to mess with ninjas.”

Mr. Hatch, 28, gets a kick, incidentally, out of listening to the sweet sounds of fellow musician Norah Jones, who no longer resides in her famously humble Williamsburg digs. Now she jams in her new apartment, directly upstairs.

In stark contrast to your run-of-the-mill coffeehouse Zen groupie, Mr. Namba and Mr. Discoe are not prone to long discourses on the glory of the Buddha and karma and all that. But both radiate a kind of inner peace that had The Transom dreamily gazing eastward, past the river, to a faraway land where men in fine robes are content to sit and drink tea and think of nothingness. But Mr. Namba, it turns out, actually dedicated his early years to studying karate. After breaking all the bones in both of his hands, he said, and realizing he could not be “number one,” he turned to the art of rock gardens.

And with the “dojo,” Mr. Discoe has realized a lifelong dream and recreated the farmhouse in which he once lived in the mountains of Japan. He has allowed for certain compromises, of course. Metal pipes substitute for bamboo. Downtown cityscapes stand in for a view of nature.

“It’s a blend of the traditional and the modern,” said Mr. Discoe. He says that the Eastern architectural philosophy is “more based on feeling,” the primary objectives being flexibility and comfort. As an example, he points to the various shoji screens that divide the rooms—or, of course, don’t. The floor is lined with tatami mats that can double as mattresses.

Mr. Discoe agreed, when asked, that they would also be suitable for wrestling.

The architect had a few tips for the amateur rock gardener who might like to get something started in an East Village railroad or an uptown townhouse. “Shape and placement are more important than size. It doesn’t have to be large, but it does have to be friendly.”

“Find the best angle of the face,” added Mr. Namba.

For those fearful of looking a rock in the eye and judging its character, the doctor is just a phone call and a plane ticket from the Bay Area away. “I would come back to work in New York. I love the energy. The people there have good energy.”

—Spencer Morgan

Oh, You Two

The photographer Anton Corbijn, in jeans and a T-shirt and blazer, leaned against a gallery wall. He was surrounded by his own photographs, nearly all of which displayed Bono’s stubble. He seemed uncomfortable with all of the attention. “It’s too many people watching me instead of my work,” he confided.

Aww. Then perhaps he’d like to fire his publicist? Or, really, to be fair, it’s probably Mr. Bono’s publicist he should want to fire: While the P.R. gang for the opening of Mr. Corbijn’s exhibition was ever-professional, one sensed a bit of pent-up celebrity-wrangling rage behind their eyes as they bargained with the other publicists. (At least now they know how it feels for the rest of us!)

The handful of reporters who were allowed into the gallery—which will not even be named here because, well, fuck this whole scene—were instructed not to talk to any of the celebrity attendees. Then the reporters were told they could talk to maybe a few people, but definitely not the band.

“The band,” of course, was U2, Mr. Corbijn’s frequent—only?—subject.

The event was, oddly, open to the public, and the press were solicited. Outside, that public, composed of masses of Bonomaniacs, had to wait for several hours to enter, their pale little faces pressed against the window. Hush, plebes! The boldface names—Michael Stipe and Gina Gershon and Orlando Bloom and Kate Bosworth and the Edge alike—needed their quiet time together.

At least there was good ol’ conceptual prankster Jeff Koons.

“I’m enjoying Chelsea,” said Mr. Koons. “At first I didn’t enjoy Chelsea so much, but I’ve been enjoying Chelsea. I love every part of the city.”

And how did the supremely money-wise artist learn to stop worrying and love the gallery district? “Well, it’s always in flux—and eventually they will be moving out, because there’s a lot of real-estate speculation.”

—Raegan Johnson

The Chelsea Shuffle

This new art season brings the greatest real-estate shuffling yet in West Chelsea’s short and hyperactive life as gallery-land.

The dealer Susan Inglett “lasted,” she said, “until the bitter end in Soho” before she came to Chelsea. But now she’s taking the real plunge into Chelsea commitment. “We are building a 4,000-square-foot property under the High Line on 24th Street,” said the dealer. “It will include a rare-book store run by David Platzker.” The new location will open in fall of 2006.

Sara Meltzer Gallery, once down on 20th Street in a LOT-EK-designed space, has equally grand plans for a new home at 525-531 West 26th Street. “It’s the fourth and fifth floor, it’s a penthouse space,” Ms. Meltzer said. “It has a skylights and double-height ceilings and even outdoor space. It’s significantly larger—it’s about 4,500 square feet. We expect to open in January 2006.”

(The Transom, incidentally, used to sneak in to eat lunch in that space while it was under construction, and we can testify to its airy, modernist, bachelor-pad grandeur.)

Why the move, Ms. Meltzer? “Our lease ran out and we were not given a renewal option. We were subletters in the space is pretty much all I would like to say about it.” Ms. Meltzer was quick to join the Chelsea mantra—undoubtedly true, in her case. “Business has been great! It’s busier than ever.”

Ms. Meltzer’s longtime neighbor, Andrew Kreps, also recently hopped one street over to 21st Street himself, to a three-story space where he’s partying down with guest curators.

Of course, some moves are shorter than others: Richard Desroche, co-owner of CRG, which is on the third floor of a Dia-owned gallery building on West 22nd Street, told us, “We are planning on moving to the second floor next year.” The second floor? But, hey, mister, that’s Marianne Boesky’s gallery!

“We bought a parking lot on 24th Street, and we’re building a new building,” said Ms. Boesky. That lot is located between the High Line and Barbara Gladstone’s gallery. “Deborah Berke is the architect. It will be two stories, and it’ll be beautiful.” Ms. Boesky vowed to be in the new gallery by next summer. And her new castle is her home, apparently: “The second floor will be a caretaker’s apartment that we’re going to live in.”

And recently, one of the summer’s biggest (and worst-kept) real-estate secrets in Chelsea finally unraveled. John Connelly, of John Connelly Presents, told us over the summer that he “can’t give specifics about moving,” although he noted that he hoped to settle in a new Chelsea location in November. Foxy Production, former Williamsburgers who have a tiny, closet-sized space on 27th Street, also planned on reopening in November or December of this year, also in Chelsea: “I can’t talk too much about it,” said Michael Gillespie, the owner of Foxy, during summer break.

But a while back, new Chelsea arrival Jill Weinberg Adams, a principal of the gallery Lennon, Weinberg, spilled a bit of the beans: “As a latecomer, I’m surprised by the extent that people talk about real estate all of the time. Where are all those young galleries going to move on 27th Street? Derek Eller, John Connelly: Younger galleries are moving from upper floors to ground floor on 27th Street. Talk about rough edges! Twenty-seventh Street is more where the clubs are, not the galleries. There’s tiny little holes in the wall … and then you’ve got Pace gallery.”

But, ahoy, this group scheme has finally come to fruition! More than 10,000 square feet of the building that formerly housed the Tunnel nightclub, on 27th Street between 11th and 12th avenues, will make a home for those seven dealeries: Clementine Gallery, John Connelly Presents, Derek Eller Gallery, Foxy Production, Oliver Kamm 5BE, Sheri L. Pasquarella and Wallspace. Most hope to open over the winter—many are just beginning to anxiously write checks for their build-outs now.

Of course, there is an easier way. The award for simplest move of the season goes to Sikkema Jenkins & Co., which simply acquired the space next-door to its current 22nd Street location; the gallery’s previous neighbor was American Fine Arts. “We knocked a little hole in the wall and we’re using both spaces,” said Sikkema’s Teka Selman.

And the award for the most-rumored and apparently least-true move goes to 24th Street’s Luhring Augustine and Andrea Rosen, who, it was said around town, were going to cash in on their wise and sprawling real-estate investment.

But a while back, Natalia Mager, the director of Luhring Augustine, told The Transom in no uncertain terms: “That’s not true. Our building is not for sale, and we do not have plans to move. Those two things are wrong. Next question.”

—Raegan Johnson, Anna Lindow, Blythe Sheldon and Choire Sicha

What's new to me in this exhibition is some of the early work from the 1940's, executed in the vernacular expressionistic style that was then a common pictorial idiom for painters attempting to align themselves with the politics of social protest. As an African-American, born in North Carolina and raised in Harlem in the Jim Crow era, it was all but inevitable that Bearden would ally himself with that imperative. As early as 1934, in an essay called "The Negro Artist and Modern Art," Bearden affirmed that alliance in declaring that "An intense, eager devotion to present-day life, to study it, to help relieve it, this is the calling of the Negro artist."

Yet even in this early period, Bearden's art never conformed to the simplistic conventions of the 1930's social-realist school. Picasso was a more potent influence on his work than, for instance, the likes of William Gropper, and when Bearden hit his stride in the 1960's, it was in the medium of Cubist collage that he found a style in which he could triumphantly integrate the demands of his modernist aesthetic aspirations with those of his embattled social conscience.

In 1970, in The New York Times , I wrote about this development as follows: "The collage paintings of Romare Bearden, with their fragmented images of Negro life locked into an elegant Cubist design … raise some interesting questions about the relation of black experience to modernist forms of painting and sculpture. Mr. Bearden uses a great many photographic fragments of African masks in a sort of montage synthesis with contemporary black figures. There is an interesting idea at work in the use of these African mask motifs-a suggestion of the morphology of certain forms that derive originally from African art, then passed into modern art by way of Cubism, and are now being employed to evoke a mode of African-American experience."

Returning to the subject in 1977, I coined the term "Patchwork Cubism" to characterize certain aspects of this development that proved to be crucial to the artist's later work. "What is remarkable about his vein," I wrote, "is that it permits Mr. Bearden to do many of the things that modernist art is not supposed to do. He attaches his art to a story-in this case, the story of his own life. He is anecdotal. He is affectionate-in fact, tender-in the attitude he takes toward his subject, and there is never any doubt that he does, indeed, have a subject, and that the subject is not art itself."

And further: "The style that serves this personal iconography might best be described as patchwork Cubism. The folk-art conventions of the patchwork quilt have often been used by Mr. Bearden in the past, and they are again used here. Actual quilts, too, are depicted in appropriate settings. I think there is a key here to the special quality Mr. Bearden achieves in his collages. The patchwork quilt is, after all, a kind of primitive Cubism in itself, and its use allows the artist both a free play on personal memory and the discipline necessary for art."

What I didn't know in 1977 was that Bearden had already created his most ambitious foray into patchwork Cubist collage in an astounding mural that measures 10 by 16 feet. If this isn't the largest collage ever created, I don't know what is. Its title is Berkeley-the City and Its People (1973), and in January 1974 it was installed in the City Council chambers of what was then the City Hall. As a caption in the current exhibition's catalog states, "This was one of Bearden's rare undertakings not rooted in autobiographical experiences in Mecklenburg County, Pittsburgh, or New York, yet he managed quickly to grasp the essence of his temporarily adopted university community" in the Bay Area.

I cannot recall ever reading about this mural before the current show in Washington, and none of my artist friends in the Bay Area has ever mentioned it, which suggests to me that they are unlikely to have seen it. Yet it's without doubt one of the most successful achievements in public art in this country in the 20th century-and I mean aesthetically successful. Almost as amazing as the work itself is the fact that it has been brought to Washington for this retrospective-yet another reminder that we're still discovering the full scope of Bearden's accomplishments.

The Art of Romare Bearden remains on view at the National Gallery through Jan. 4, 2004. It will come to the Whitney Museum in New York next fall (Oct. 14 to Jan. 9, 2005), and will also be seen at the Dallas Museum of Art (June 20 to Sept. 12, 2004) and Atlanta's High Museum of Art (Jan. 29 to April 24, 2005). I am told that the Berkeley mural will be traveling to each of these venues.

P ALIGN="JUSTIFY"

I'm no longer shocked by the kind of museum architecture that lords it over the works of art it's ostensibly meant to serve while offering few, if any, aesthetic rewards of its own. Nowadays, that's what's expected of a new museum building, and the only thing to be said in favor of Mr. Botta's SFMOMA is that it isn't another Frank Gehry romantic ruin. On the contrary, the design of SFMOMA errs in the direction of overreaching banality and boredom, with exterior forms too bulky for the neighborhood and characterless interior spaces occasionally punctuated by silly architectural conceits.

I was in the Bay Area on other business, but I decided to take a look anyway. I had a happy memory of the early Matisses in the museum's permanent collection, and I was keen, too, to see the current exhibition devoted to the work of Ellsworth Kelly. I was less keen to revisit the museum's other current attraction-the Gerhard Richter retrospective I'd already suffered through at MoMA in New York-but I took another look at that, too, alas.

Those early Matisses are quite as wonderful as I remembered them to be, and they remain, in my opinion, SFMOMA's principal aesthetic asset. As for the Ellsworth Kelly exhibition, it bears a more direct relation to late Matisse, to the period of the large-scale color cut-out compositions. In some of Mr. Kelly's work of the 1990's, he appears to have reduced Matisse's color cut-out forms to a single, large-scale, curved monochrome shape that addresses the eye less as a picture than as a wall sculpture-a reminder that the process by which Matisse produced his late color cut-outs has sometimes been described as "sculpturing light."

It's the great virtue of Ellsworth Kelly in San Francisco , as this exhibition is called (it's largely drawn from collections in the Bay Area, where Mr. Kelly enjoys a significant following), that it closely documents the artist's development over a period spanning nearly half a century (1947-96).The first painting we see in the show is a highly accomplished, ultra-realist Self-Portrait with Thorn (1947), painted at the age of 24. It's also the last painting in the show to feature a distinctly American style. The following year, 1948, the young artist took off for Paris to study art on the G.I. Bill.

Mr. Kelly remained in France for six years, and it was there that he embraced the modernist avant-garde-a Parisian avant-garde that differed significantly from its counterpart in New York in the late 1940's and early 1950's. At no point in his development do the aesthetic imperatives of the New York School appear to have tempted his interest. The sometimes complex but increasingly simplified modes of abstraction he espoused remained linked to a current of Parisian aestheticism and hedonism that was firmly rejected in New York.

It's for this reason, among others, that the Minimalist element in Mr. Kelly's work-if indeed it can be called that-is not to be confused with the self-imposed anti-aesthetic of such doctrinaire Minimalists as Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Richard Serra and early Frank Stella. Even the most austere examples of Mr. Kelly's color abstractions are derived, however distantly, from observed experience. The aesthetic process by means of which his abstract vocabulary is distilled from something observed in the material world may be too hermetic for most observers to divine. I think that in all the most recent work, it remains fairly elusive-but it's the final result that counts.

Mr. Kelly has often been quoted as saying that he gave up easel painting because it was "too personal." I've often wondered what this could mean. What could be more personal than the persistent, unvarying project of self-abnegation on a monumental scale that we observe in his own most ambitious abstractions? In some respects, he's the most personal of all the Minimalists, for the current of Parisian hedonism that's recaptured in his painting is anything but anonymous. Call it passive-aggressive, if you like: This is a pictorial style that's ambitious to impose itself on our sensibilities and isn't the least bit diffident about doing so.

Ellsworth Kelly in San Francisco remains on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through Jan. 5, 2003.

But apocalyptics like me can always use a cool, bubbly slap in the face, and the first half of this year has brought a series of solid hip-hop releases, a few of them better than that. Full-lengths from Defari, Prince Paul, the Roots (who would have thought?), Peanut Butter Wolf, Roots Manuva (limeys!) and many others have done much to remove the ocher taste of the bizarrely praised and massively popular works of such acts as Outkast, Lauryn Hill and the 5,000 cousins of Master P.

To single out the glitterati may be unfair–they apply a different set of values than the underground, and you don't scream at Joey McIntyre for not being Iggy Pop. Yet one expects the supporters of teen witch Brandy and turntablist Q-Bert to sup from the same presweetened iced tea.

Quite the opposite. Hip-hop's recent diversification has brought about an indie rock-style subculture that has allowed artists to embrace weirdness, screwed-upness and obscurity for its own sake. (Not that the hash hasn't helped.) Record companies and entrepreneurs may have almost killed the art form by not fighting in the courts for the right to sample. But Kid Koala can still get his Scratchcratchratchatch –a masterpiece of innumerable, unclearable samples anchored around the spiritual transfiguration of Charlie Brown's dolorous "I got a rock" into the elevating "I gotta rock!"–out on endlessly bootlegged cassette, and become a living (and employable) legend. And Kool Keith can get signed to more than one major label, despite the fact that he is, quite possibly, totally insane. Which in art, as opposed to on Wall Street, or at Bad Boy Productions, can be a plus. Though not always.

Like Daniel Johnston and Antonin Artaud before him, Kool Keith–a.k.a. Keith Thornton, a.k.a. Dr. Octagon, a.k.a. Dr. Dooom, a.k.a. Black Elvis–has thrived in a sympathetic artistic company that he often rejects in the name of an unreachable purity. Despite being twice as old as much of his audience, he's become the figurehead for a newish rap underground that looks to hip-hop's uncategorizable hiccups for inspiration–things like Keith's 1980's group, the Ultramagnetic MCs, the Jungle Brothers' 1993 nose-thumbing album J. Beez Wit the Remedy (sonic inspiration for Brooklyn's avant-mumble Wordsound label), Divine Styler's 1991 Spiral Walls Containing Autumns of Light , and all the other glorious financial failures that hip-hop created before it figured out how to produce hits with gliding, banal effortlessness.

This newish rap underground is generally represented MC-wise by New York's retro-looking Rawkus Records (their new Soundbombing, Vol. 2 compilation is a good intro) and northern California producer Peanut Butter Wolf's label Stone's Throw, and musically by Bay Area spliff-dadaists the Invisibl Skratch Piklz and San Francisco's Bomb Hip-Hop Records (which put out both seminal Return of the DJ compilations). These are the "Playa Hatas," oft castigated by those who value solidarity over beauty. It's no wonder Keith identifies in his lyrics with rats and insects.

Keith's interest in matters sexual and otherwise have often kept him busier than his musical pursuits. But when he teamed up with Bay Area producer Dan the Automator on the Dr. Octagon project in 1996, the air lock clicked in tight. Dr. Octagonecologyst , originally released on the tiny Bulk label, quickly became the Naked Lunch for B-boys, with Keith's Benway-esque Dr. Octagon persona preparing listeners for "A Visit to the Gynecologist" and explicating about "Halfsharkalligatorhalfman" over the Automator's claustrophobic yet lush rhythmic backgrounds. Dr. Octagonecologyst is the most important hip-hop release this side of the Wu-Tang Clan in the last half-decade, although Dreamworks (which now distributes the album) has Soundscanned under 55,000 copies.

The album's evidence is everywhere. Disregarding Keith's adoption by the Prodigy, his nasal, rapid-fire, almost robotic free associations about anal sex revelry, alien mutilation, record company woes and his breakfast menu made the uncanny respectable. It also underlined how much of the "reality" in the finest hip-hop, from the Geto Boys' legendarily violent debut album to Chuck D's jailbreak "phantasies," is the result of a creative imagination that often goes unacknowledged in African-American artists. Jean Genet can write about sucking Nazi dick all he wants, but when N.W.A. recorded "Fuck tha Police," all hell was supposed to break loose. (It did, but you can blame the Los Angeles police for that.)

Keith's deal with Dreamworks fell apart when he split with the Automator and allegedly spent his entire advance on pornography. He released the movingly lewd Sex Style on DJ Kutmasta Kurt's Funky Ass records, and seems to guest on every third release out there, hip-hop and otherwise. Now Keith delivers two new albums. Under the guise of Dr. Dooom, there's First Come, First Served , a collaboration with DJ Kutmasta Kurt on Funky Ass. And come July, Sony-Ruffhouse releases the much delayed and still incomplete Black Elvis/Lost in Space , which, minus cameos by Brand Nubian's Sadat X and the late Roger Troutman of Zapp, is pretty much a one-man show.

The micromanager in Keith's brain often gets in the way of a good tune. We pay to hear a schizophrenic and instead get an obsessive-compulsive. On parts of Black Elvis , Keith seems concerned with just getting the thing out. (Repeated refrain from the opening track: "I need a release date.") The clipped precision of Keith's delivery can be piquantly unsettling, even when he's delivering lines like "Supergalactic lover coming from the projects on the hill in my monkey green ragtop Seville." But the rhythms–a lot of similar, if slightly off-kilter, bass patterns–don't change much through the pieces. The Automator would have remedied this. More often than not, it's Keith's voice that provides the hook. In many ways, it's highly competent business as usual–funny but not completely thought out (typical title, "I'm Seein' Robots"). Though "The Girls Don't Like the Job" is pretty catchy.

The more cohesive Dr. Dooom project seems to confront Keith's resentment toward his newfound semi-fame, not an uncommon theme for someone who took 15 years to become an overnight success. He kills off Dr. Octagon in the first track then spends the rest of the CD as a goofy, rat-eating evil mastermind, the sort of Dr. Mabuse-like captain of industry that Tom Wolfe should take the time to write about. As on Black Elvis , Keith has a knack for spinning the primal and commonplace into sci-fi. Check out "Welfare Love," which is built around a riff from the Moments' "Sexy Mama"; Keith melds inner-city romance and nostalgic recall, twisting each physical and behavioral description so that it's the reality of the situation that seems strange. His lyrics run roughshod over the rhythm track, imagining a time when he read Black Tail in the incubator while staring at his nurse's ass crack and watching girls eat onion rings.

There's enough incremental detail on First Come, First Served to convince the listener of a real universe, both inside and out. It's certainly no less believable than a world of bumping jeeps that don't overturn, expensive champagne that doesn't destroy your liver, and cell phones and breast implants that don't give you cancer. Which is to say, a sick society could use a sick doctor.