Attention Whoring, Indignant, Media, Socialism

Getting Arrested is My Only Inspiration

There’s a thought that keeps screaming back into your head – it’s as if you’ve left this thought to run away on its own, but it’s attached by a bungee cord and at some point you’re smacked in the face by this thought again: “I shouldn’t be here. I haven’t done anything wrong. No one thinks I’ve done anything wrong.”

We’ve named our set of jail cells “correctional facilities” despite the fact that they are not intended to correct and are barely facilities. It’s like some morbid stand up comedy routine. There are 8 of us in 4 cells. 3 men to my left, 1 man to my right, two men in the cell with me, and two women in a cell within yelling distance. We’ve all been arrested for various degrees of being a tourist. One man can’t stop ranting about how all he did was pat a cop on the back and say “good job” sarcastically. From their our crimes become more and more confusing. One was trying to put away a sign he was legally allowed to carry, but didn’t do it quick enough. Another didn’t want to put away a sign. Another put away his sign and started to walk away in order to follow police instructions. Me and another were standing near the guy who tried to walk away. One accidentally backed up into a police blow-horn. Another was accidentally backed up into by a police officer.

None of us wanted to get arrested that day, but the feeling doesn’t change when you intend to get arrested. You still feel like getting arrested is not a proper response to a mild disagreement about where to stand.

Honors British American Literature was the first class I had with Lucas Michelson. I knew him vaguely as the rich kid. I’m sure he knew me vaguely as the tiny vegetarian. We quickly came to not particularly care for each other. It wasn’t hatred. It wasn’t even true dislike, but it was a disagreement about how to handle life that we weren’t quite mature enough to handle in discussion. One day Lucas went to get a drink of water and go to the bathroom. He had been sitting in the comfy chair. I had been sitting in it at the beginning of class, but I had gotten up to get a drink and go to the bathroom. Now the chair was free and I was free to take it back. He had set the rules that a free chair was a free chair, and though I disagreed with his ruling, the rules were now turned in my favor. I retook the chair and our classmates applauded my decision. It wasn’t that Lucas was disliked. He was. But so was I. It was that we had all witnessed his original seat stealing antics and had decided against trying to reason with the spoiled kid with the well known temper problem. When he re-entered the classroom, Mrs. Lyons’ large wooden hall pass dangling from his wrist, his eyes lite up with fury. The primordial screams of “GET OUT OF MY CHAIR!” seemed to echo in my ears as he grabbed me by the throat and picked me up – feet dangling above where my books and homework assignments had fallen. Mrs. Lyons was a measly 3 feet away and yelled with the same force “LUCAS!” Her scream was surrounded by a cloud of confusion and disappointment. Though I never scream at the cops, I feel that same cloud of confusion and disappointment surrounding the words I do say to them.

When I was slammed down on the ground, I asked if I was under arrest. “Am I under arrest?” It wasn’t a snarky response to a police officer to claim a higher understanding of my rights. It was a question asked out of genuine confusion as it seemed as though I had just been collateral damage as the cop tackled a crowd of people trying to leave a crowded area. It was a question I was realizing the answer to as I asked it and it filled me with disappointment. Disappointment in this police officer, disappointment in the country, disappointed that we lived in a society that would immediately interrogate me and my motives first.

We all spent 11 hours in those tiny cells without getting a drop of food before we were shipped off to another jail cell. I tried to sleep, but I kept getting woken up by this thought. This thought that I shouldn’t be here, I didn’t do anything wrong, nobody thinks I did anything wrong.

The cops don’t even want to look you in the eye because they know they’ve screwed up. Your “arresting officer” is never the one who tossed you to the pavement, but they know you have no reason to be there. They feel guilt and shame but it doesn’t change their actions because they’ve been told a job is more important that morality. They’ve been told that you do what the rules say not what you believe – and this becomes an increasingly difficult tightrope to walk as the rules keep getting changed.

The system is broken because it pits the guilty against the confused in an effort to distract from the evil. The system is broken and needs to be corrected, but in its last act of self-preservation the system got rid of the correctional facilities. Let’s create our own correctional facilities. Let’s start correcting the facilities that be without fear of laws because laws do not translate to morality – that connection is becoming thinner and thinner every day. If we have morality on our side then we will eventually tear down the laws that bind us to immorality. At least, we have to believe that. At least, I have to believe that. For me. And Mrs. Lyons.

Media, My favorites, Selfish

My Therapeutic Review of Childish Gambino

My dad attacked me with his hypothesis. This is a sentence that could begin many of my stories, but in this one his hypothesis had clearly evolved from our previous conversation. Yet this conversation is new and, potentially, so mind expanding that you may feel pain from the thought of it. That’s the way conversations with my dad feel: like he’s constantly teaching you a new secret form of mind exercising that he, only now, at this exact moment, feels you are ready for – that you have finally proven to be competent enough for this burden. So, conversation from last night was fodder for mind altering conversation. He approached with his idea of “Genius vs. Talent.”

Talent was what conveyed ideas and Genius was where the ideas were from.

THUS: Childish Gambino. Aka: Donald Glover.

My dislike was born out of like. His taste was so great, and he was a vehicle of such , but it felt like nothing was behind it. There was no human element. If the truth will set you free, than he was still enslaved by the shackles of his desired self-conception. He wanted to be Tyler the Creator meets Drake meets David Cross. Those are all people I wanted to be so I respected his desires, but with success comes a new formation of desire – a self reflection and understanding that one’s wants must change with one’s current situation. Donald Gambino was obviously talented, but his genius was in question.

Genius comes from a complete and honest awareness and explanation of who you are in your art.

That’s what I thought before. That’s what I assumed was the reason that Gambino’s music resonated hollowly – that I seemed to echo back hatred. But Childish Glover kept performing his therapeutic self-controlled-self-awareness. And, in a sense, it kept getting better. It got more pointed and controlled. He understood who he was by analyzing who he was. But it was simply therapy. For him, and people who want to be him.

I was sitting shotgun in the car parked in our driveway and my dad turned off the car which turned off the CD of Beatles-Soundtrack-Remix-Cirque-de-Soliel album. I was back in Maine with my financial, artistic, and social tail between my legs. I wanted to make comedy, but didn’t know what that meant. I attacked him with a hypothesis. Art needs an audience, without an audience it was simply therapy. Not that there was anything wrong with therapy, but the lack of public display makes writing, painting, yelling, artistically expressing purely a therapeutic act. He responded with the appropriate defensiveness of a person who has a novel he’s never shared with his only son and has been editing and re-editing for 40 years.

Gambino, Childish is a self-therapist not an artist. I understand that he has an audience. A much larger audience than I have or will ever have. ~~And that jealousy is an important part of my motivation for writing this.~~ Art needs that audience because both audience and artist should be going on a journey of self discovery. CG/DG hogs that journey. He selfishly refuses the audience to join him in self-analysis by covering all basis of self-analysis himself. ~~I say this in order to selfishly self-analyze my own feelings of jealousy toward a pop-icon that was born from New York sketch comedy.~~ He refuses vulnerability/critique by self-congratulatory defenses of his past and future actions. He asks for constant pity in his constant response to the haters ~~when he shouldn’t be fucking bitching because he’s accomplished all of his dreams.~~ His raps are simply cover letters to apply to be your idol, and he seems to be getting the job.

I hated Aaron Kane, but respected him. In middle school I was a crybaby who would trip and fall emotionally every day. The response from my friends was to push me back down emotionally. Aaron always threw himself down before anyone could push him back down and by doing so everyone was satisfied because young boys are only interested in making all of their friends as miserable as possible, and yet he was in control. My response was simply to flail to point out that I had been pushed down because I thought everyone needed to be acutely aware of the actions they were making and supporting. It wasn’t fair that everybody laughed with Aaron and only laughed at me.

Death, Gender, Lonely, Math, Media, My favorites, race, Socialism

In Which I Qualitate/Quantitate

Don’t read this until you are ready to READ this. By that I mean, click on all links. You don’t have to read them, but they are an important part of the narrative. But do read the last link. It is the most important and is a news story and provides context.

c) I’m pretty sure that everything I think has been thought before.

That is simultaneously comforting and terrifying.

Often times our world is misled by what we think we think though. We then suffer under the great injustice that is our own misconceptions of ourselves. Specifically, the fact that 4 million more people watch Modern Family than The Middle. Both shows analyze the changing definition of the American dream, but one does it through shallow analysis of obvious xenophobia and one does it through thoughtful revelations about the inhumanity inherent in a capitalist society that refuses to empathize with struggle. Modern Family is a person who has not listened’s analysis, The Middle is someone who paid attention’s analysis.

1. I have had arguments with three people who have stated their frustration with the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Each of them went like this:
Them: “I agree with what they’re saying, I just don’t know what they’re saying.”
Me: “Have you been down to Zuccotti Park?”
Them: “No” and a bunch of more words that don’t matter.

2. I have a belief that Taylor Swift is doing the more harm to American society than Lady Gaga – specifically that Taylor Swift is doing the most harm and Lady Gaga is doing the most negative harm (negative used in the mathematical sense). This belief is challenged often. Typically those conversations go like this:
Me: “Don’t ask, don’t tell would have been repealed 3 years earlier if it weren’t for Taylor Swift.”
Them: “That’s ridiculous” They’re right “Lady Gaga isn’t even saying anything. She’s just the same mindless pop that we’ve had forever.”
Me: “Have you heard her new album?”
Them: “Um..” and a bunch of defensive lies about how they have an appropriate sample size that don’t matter.

2. Frankie Heck – Patricia Heaton’s character on The Middle is a true hero of the Michael Moore union version of socialism. She is a lighthouse that shines light through all the cracks in the American Dream. Hard work equals hard work, but having money equals having money. Surrounding her is pain and suffering that is solely the gift of a desire for things she is told she deserves. And yet this could all be solved with a simple sharing of some wealth. It doesn’t need to be opportunity because we don’t all need to the freedom to try. We need the freedom to succeed. And success is not defined by being in the 1%. Then only 1% of us, necessarily succeed. I aim for 100%.

I like to play a game called turn concepts into rants for socialism in as few sentences as possible.

comedy, Gender, Indignant, Math, Media, My favorites

Women, Fun, Math – A New Thesis.

“When I’m Ira Glass I’m gonna have chapters instead of acts.”

-Me, Right Now

I’ve shared three videos on facebook recently. I think they are the three videos that perfectly describe what my life is. This realization comes on the heels of a change in the domain name of my blog – a long needed change as the contents no longer fit what it was called.

Chapter 1.

We change the way we view things based on the context under which we view them, obviously. Information is so free though nowadays that anything that is imbibed comes with a whole set of preconceptions. Therefore we can never know if Bridesmaids was truly a good movie or bad movie. We demanded to know if a woman could make a Judd Apatow movie because we were confused about our role as an audience member and then Kristen Wiig did it – she made a Judd Apatow movie.

Guy has chance to have something super hot and rich yet unhealthy with one girl, finally finds joy in something more interestingly attractive and healthier. Screws things up with it, but gets it back in the end. = Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Switch “guy” and “girl.” = Bridesmaids

Two best dude friends have a constant passive aggressive battle because despite the fact that they like each other, the one that isn’t as much of a conventional “failure” feels like the other is holding him back. The “non-failure” also wants to hang out with an annoying person who is more successful at the next step in their lives. The two dudes make up in the end after a big blowout fight where they decide not to be friends anymore. = Superbad

Switch “dude” to “chick” and “him” to “her.” = Bridesmaids

“Screwup” man has a failure business that he put everything into despite the fact that he didn’t put that much into it. He learns to try by the end of the movie because a woman that he likes does try. = Knocked Up

Switch “man” and “woman.” Bridesmaids

A bunch of male friends rag on a dude who has still not done something that the rest of them have done. That dude feels likes an outcast, but then feels less like an outcast when he becomes comfortable with his own pace of doing that thing that he hasn’t done. = 40 Year Old Virgin

Switch genders. = Bridesmaids

But is it more important because it’s women? We as a society, unfortunately, but obviously treat genders differently – as should be realized by the fact that I equated a male’s loss of virginity to a female’s wedding night, but because we treat genders differently do we have to reward genders differently?

I am a straight male who looks and acts like a straight male and that gives me a key to a safe space that I don’t feel safe in. A safe space that does not need to be designated as a safe space because it is the controlling space. Straight males are the people most frightened of admitting women are funny because they’ve been given the monopoly on funny and losing things isn’t fun. The most common defense of their monopoly when they see funny women being gross in order to be funny is that that type of thing wouldn’t work for a man because the bar is higher for men. Pooping is hilarious when anyone does it, it’s just also important when women do it. If you’re jealous because a woman can get a laugh by making poop noises while she has sex with a blowup doll and you can’t, then try growing up in a culture that tells you that sex and poop are shameful and still make shitfucking sounds. The humor comes from the vulnerability that is inherent in admitting your inability yo conform to society’s demands of you.

Apatow has made his fortune on creating male characters that don’t quite conform to the expectation of men in our society. Therefore, when we asked K-Wiig to do the same for women, we didn’t give her a chance to succeed. Freaks and Geeks came out with no expectations and was cancelled after a season. Same with Undeclared. 40 Year Old Virgin came out when Apatow was still known as a guy who had something to do with Anchorman. It was going to be an mainstream comedy with offbeat antics, and it turned out to have heart. Knocked Up looked sappy and romantic from the trailers and when it turned out to have bong rips and birth video footage, people fell in love with Judd. By the time Forgetting Sarah Marshall came out Apatow had created a new genre of comedy that was only missing one thing: Developed female characters. He tried letting Aubrey Plaza create it in Funny People, but the movie was still about two men’s relationship and Plaza’s plot got thrown do the side. Wiig took the reins. The problem being that we all saw her take the reins. This movie had to be funny in the same way Apatow is, but about female dynamics, but it couldn’t be just about chick stuff because then it wouldn’t prove that women could do universal humor, but it had to have heterosexual attractive women because it couldn’t buy into the stereotypical lesbian imagery of the 1970s. We expected all of this from Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo. What we expected, at best, from Apatow was dirty comedy with heart. His task was easier.

Then there is the even bigger problem of succeeding. Which Wiig did. She did it. She made the movie we wanted, but in doing that, we all knew what was coming. She simply achieved our outlandish expectations instead of surpassing them.

There are two people in this world that I don’t think it’s okay to be mean to: Kristen Wiig and Christina Aguilera. It’s not because I think they are the best people. It’s because they are doing what has been asked of them by the brightest in society – and doing it with talent. Being mean to them doesn’t make sense because you asked them to do what they are doing. Get mad at yourself instead.

Jacob said it best.

Chapter 2.

Artists should not be asked to conform to a role imposed upon them by an audience. Their role should be self-determined. I want Tyler the Creator and Hodgy Beats to be the new Keenan and Kel.

I’m not sure if that’s racist, but I’m pretty sure that it’s hypocritical.

Hypocrisy used to be my main exploration as an artist. At another time it was the relationship between logic and emotion, and at another time it was the correlation between confusion and comfort (it was a negative correlation), and at another time it was “why doesn’t anyone like me?!”

I think the word artist should be spelled F-A-R-T-I-S-T. Because of the word “fart.”

If we’re going to pick a correlation that sums up my fartistry right now, it would be the correlation between fun and importance. This time is different though. This time I feel like the correlation I’m creating fart about isn’t about pointing out an existing statistical anomaly, but rather is about forcing a correlation to exist that I desire to exist. Fun and importance should be highly positively correlated. The only way to get people to do things is to make those things fun to do – nobody does for others, so as long as we make important things fun and fun things important than we will have a successful world.

This philosophy is not one I feel comfortable taking credit for. This is a philosophy that I have appropriated from Keenan and Kel. The message of their fart was a message of fun. Never was a motivation anything beyond attempting to have more fun accomplishing the tasks they needed to accomplish. OFWGKTA is also a group dedicated to the motivation of fun. Guns, eating bugs, vomiting and frightening rape innuendos may not seem fun to you or me, but they are teenagers with an excessive number of resources and an even more excessive imagination. They are starting a sketch show, but just as The Keenan and Kel Show was a far superior spin off of All That, I feel as though (Futurely Named) The Hodgy Tyler: More Than You Show will be a more focused version of exploring fun than the Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All’s ragtag group of teenagers.

I just think people should have fun, and judging others’ versions of fun is rude.

Chapter 3.

Math education has been regarded as too unfun for too long. Math education could save our society. Math class from age 8-15 is the most important hours in the development of a child into a correctly functioning human. This has nothing to do with learning the quadratic formula or how to find the area of the space left over in a circle when a trapezoid is taken out, it has to do with a method of think.

Math teaches us how to discover. A good math education teaches us to find ways to learn from everything around us. It’s about understanding how to find a problem and then find the steps necessary to reach the solution of that problem.

1st Grade: Kids should be taught the coordinate plane. We need to understand what numbers are. How they interact. 1/2, one half, and 0.5 are not different things, they are all one thing split into two parts. Too often when I’m tutoring statistics to grad-students do they write 32.0650. That isn’t appropriate, and if people understood that putting a zero at the end of a number that has reached below zero specifics is useless than they wouldn’t do that.

Here’s a quick test:

1. Read this number out loud: 45.123

Did you say:

a) “Forty five point one hundred and twenty three”

b) “Forty five point one two three”

c) “Forty five and one hundred and twenty three thousandths”

If you said (a) you were taught numbers incorrectly as a child, if you said (b) you taught yourself numbers and are probably pretty good at math, and if you said (c) you are a goody two shoes.

2nd Grade: Kids should be taught long division. In the process of learning long division they are forced to learn addition, subtraction, and multiplication.

2. When you look something up on google maps do you:

a) Look at the directions on the left for indications of where to go

b) Look at the map for indications of where to go

If you said (a) you learned long division incorrectly and if you said (b) you learned long division correctly.

Long division is a unique step-by-step process unlike most processes that we see in our day to day life. Each step of long division takes the answer you found in your last answer and directly applies it to the next step to find the next step, and then repeats. Practicing long division is to logic what sit-ups are to your abs. Reading a map involves finding the connections between two steps and considering that connection to be a step of its own. Long division also demands patience and a respect for the journey toward the solution. Long division teaches you to care less for the final answer and more for the process getting you to the final answer.

Also, operations are not different. Multiplication is just addition done a bunch of times. Subtraction is just addition backwards. Division is just addition done a bunch of times backwards.

3. How would you say the following: sin(30), sin, 3*sin*10?

a) “Sine thirty,” “Sine,” “Three sine ten”

b) “Sine of thirty (I’m going to assume degrees),” “the word ‘sin,'” “that doesn’t mean anything, Nisse you are annoying, what is the meaning of this? I hate you”

Answering (a) means you never understood how operators (multiplication, division, addition, subtraction) work. Answering (b) means you understand how operators work. I hear so many students say “sine 30” and when I clarify that it is “sine of 30” they go “yeah, yeah yeah, whatever.” It’s not “whatever.” This is a very important distinction to make. Trigonometric functions are operators like addition, they are not variables to be placed wherever. They function only if they are of a degree or radian.

None of that needed to make sense to you. What needs to make sense to you is that finding new things is fun. A new operator should be an exciting adventure into a new way to deal with numbers.

3rd Grade: Give the students an abacus, a protractor, a compass, and a slide rule. Don’t teach them anything for an entire year. Put different numbers on the board each day. Let them play.

Math is fun and given the tools to realize that, kids will find that on their own. If we tell them that it’s boring, then they will think that instead.

comedy, Gender, Indignant, Media, My favorites

Why Are There No Funny Men?

I’ve tried for such a long time to keep an open mind to all comedy – to respect that all people, regardless of gender, can be funny. I can’t do it any more. Men just aren’t as funny as women.

Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about. If we are going to have an open and honest discussion about the true gender divide in comedy, we have to all start at the same obvious conclusion.

I understand that this seems like a broad generalization, and it is. I don’t mean to imply that no men are funny, there are funny men, but for the most part they utilize gross exaggerations of the male ego for comedic effect or rely on jokes that point out feminine qualities (jokes that wouldn’t get laughs if a woman were to do say them). All male comedians that are decent fall into one of these two categories – they are overly masculine or feigning femininity in order to co-opt comedy. When Dane Cook or Daniel Tosh yell loudly about they’re penis or their erection, they are simply attempting to copy the women who have achieved comedy success through jokes about their menstrual blood and vaginas. Alternately, comedians like Michael Cera or Andy Dick enjoy humor-fame only because they fully commit themselves to femininity – awkwardly avoiding confrontation, refusing to take sexual agency: what’s more feminine than that?

Also Jews. Jewish males are allowed to be funny, but they are only funny because Jewish humor is inherently feminine.

Of course I’m no fan of the fact that when I go to comedy shows it seems as though there is some unwritten rule that you always have to have a male stand up performing about how his ex-wife is a cunt or how much pussy he can get or how big/small his penis is, but why I bring up this inherent comedic division by sex is because I see it permeating our day to day life. The average man just isn’t funny.

Obviously, there are far more terrible male comedians than terrible female comedians, but also I’ve begun to notice that the average male is drastically less funny than the average female. I can’t help but think that this has something to do with some sort of trickle down effect of comedy. Without funny comedian idols to look up to, how would any man become funny?

As a man interested in comedy, this troubles me. Is it impossible for me to be funny because the templates for humor contain curves and sensitive nipples? Does my hairy chest and flat ass prevent me from being able to provide laughter? No. I believe there is hope.

I believe that I can be both a man and be funny. I believe I can provide comedy without castrating myself. I just refuse to believe that comedy can only flow through fallopian tubes. I refuse to concede that testosterone is the biological antonym to humor.

So, please, give me hope. I ask each of you to look for a male comedian who will inspire me – who will not conform to the comedy of yesteryear- comedians equal, in any way, to their comedienne counterparts.

When will we have male comedians that stand up to the powerhouses of comedy like Phyllis Diller, Sarah Silverman, Joan Rivers, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Lucille Ball, Wanda Sykes, Kristen Schall, or Gilda Ratner? I pray for that day.

comedy, Media

Mom/Dad

I friend a lot of my friends’ moms and dads on facebook. I am of the first generation of facebook – my college was within the second wave of people to get facebook and though I held off for my entire freshman year, I have been a part of f-book history. My generation is also the sons and daughters of people around 60 years old. 60 year olds are typically not very good at using social media, which comes from a burning desire to be good at it and a terrible lack of understanding of what it is.

I tricked my dad into getting facebook, and he’s the worst at it.

Rachel is my friend/comedy partner. My dad later called me and asked if Rachel was serious about going to lunch because he wasn’t sure he wanted to, it seemed like a lot of work.

Let’s update you on my other friends’ parents and their activity:

1. A mother writing a defensive post about how rejoicing at the death of OBL is valid

2. A mother posting earnest repost about special education week

3. A mother with a series of posts attempting to alleviate the “nasty situation” of accidentally asking all her friends to buy an I-pad.

4. A mother posting a series of right wing vs. left wing talking points being argued over comments on statuses between a mother and her brother.

5. A mother who only has two interests listed: Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries, and What animal is your spirit guide?

I guess I’m friends with less dads on facebook. I am friends with my friend/comedy partner’s dad, but I don’t harass him nearly enough.

I think it’s hard to troll people who don’t understand how you’re trolling them.

Here’s what I see as the major problems for 60 year olds on facebook:

1. Earnestness.

2. Technology.

I was originally very confused when people started writing things on facebook that they meant – that they treated this vaguely anonymous online community as a place to spout their actual opinions and actual values. This didn’t make sense to me. Wasn’t this a place where we were supposed to say things that were silly and pretend we were in love with Harry Potter prequels or Macedonia? But now, they’re taking over.

They are the people of elderly affliction who believe in the necessity of honesty even in internet interactions.

They are right. If we are to make okTwitFace the main form of communication of our culture, then it should be one that isn’t laden with fake insults and sarcastic comments. One of my favorite facts is that sarcasm is the last thing that gets learned in a new language. Well, technology is a new language to these people and sarcasm is not learned yet. Because they mostly interact with each other, they aren’t learning it yet.

I don’t have a solution, nor do I think there is one. Maybe there isn’t a problem in the first place.

comedy, Media

Daniel Tosh is the New Rebecca Black

Pi day came and went, but this time it left us a song. Despite coming out on a Monday, this song is about Friday. We know this because Rebecca Black says “Friday” 6 times in the chorus.

The song is allowed to exist. It’s a terrible song – truly terrible in every way, but that’s not worth talking about. What is worth talking about is the 33 million other times this video has been viewed. What is worth talking about is that the company that tricked Rebecca Black into making this video has 15 other videos up of similarly manipulated sadly untalented teens with parents with extra money to use to exploit their daughters. What is worth talking about is the amount of effort put into making sure that “Friday” became a hit.

Who do we blame when things like this happen?

The overprivileged child who listens to the world we tell her to listen to, who aspires to be what we tell her to aspire to be? The mother blinded by possibility of success through means she may not have to work at and deafened by her daughter’s screams and whines? No, obviously not. They are simply products of society.

Should we blame ARK, the music company that demanded that Rebecca Black pay them $2,000 dollars to produce a song that they wrote for her and produced for her and autotuned for her? They are also simply products of society.

None of these individuals are worth blaming because they are people who exist within a society in which we’ve fetishized the child celebrity – a concept so abhorrent that I wanted to do it as a child.

I wanted to be Harriet the Spy. She was a child in her own little world where she only had to precociously interact with herself as she destroys each of her friendships until she’s happily alone. I didn’t want to be Harriet the Spy, I wanted to be Harriet the Spy in the movie version. I knew I wouldn’t be allowed because people kept telling me that boys and girls were different and I didn’t have any evidence to refute that point.

When Michelle Trachtenberg became the spy I wanted to be in a pathetic attempt at retelling the story of the child with a depressing life and vivid imagination that barely pulled her away from the life that depressed her so much, my desire to be the character became a desire to love the character. They had associate the character with a physical form that I had been told was supposed to be an object of my affection and I fell for it. I no longer wanted to be the spy, I wanted to marry the spy.

Rebecca Black wants to sing a song with Justin Beiber and she is trying to ride the sympathy train there. Beiber shouldn’t do it. Not because his music is significantly better than hers but because Black shouldn’t be rewarded for having excess money in her family that was spent at a psuedo-scam company trying to fit into society.

I stopped wanting to fuck Harriet the Spy when I learned what fucking was. But as a child I was simply at the whim of whatever I was told to want. Because I wore sweatpants and sweatshirts that matched didn’t mean I should look fictional characters who dressed the same as me in order to find a template to live by. Those fictional characters were created by depressed writers attempting to rectify their past mistakes by making the mistakes lovable.

Mistakes are not lovable.

Let’s write a short story:

Rebecca Black sees Willow Smith. Rebecca Black sees Justin Beiber. Rebecca Black finds shallow similarities between her and these people. Rebecca Black decides she is like them. Rebecca Black finds shallow differences between her and these people. Rebecca Black decides she is going to be the next them. Rebecca Black gets her mother to pay $2,000 to a group of people to pretend to agree with her. These group of people pretend to be her friends. “Friday” gets made.

If you could have whined to your mom and get the friends you wanted when you were 13, would you have? Probably. If you could pay a little bit of money to get your kid to stop whining and love you for once, would you? Probably. If you could get $2,000 to pretend to be a kid’s friend, would you? Definitely.

Nobody’s motivations were that irrational or evil except Daniel Tosh.

Tosh.0 is the worst thing that has ever existed and Daniel Tosh is one of the worst people that has ever existed.

The exploitation of these children to maintain a family’s happiness and a scam artist’s financial success is gross, but a necessary side affect of capitalism. Capitalism is really to blame for this song, but I don’t think I’m breaking new ground by saying that – I’m just making sure we’re all on the same page before I talk more about what a horrendous human being Daniel Tosh is.

Tosh makes his living by finding videos that other people have already found and then saying obvious facts about said video and then spending an inordinate amount of time staring at the camera when you are supposed to laugh. The popularity of the Rebecca Black video is mostly attributed to Tosh making fun of it on his half an hour of wasted space that he calls a TV show. Can we simply attribute his exploitation of an exploitation to capitalism gone awry? Partially because I hold comedians to a higher standard than normal people, but also because he refuses to admit that he is part of the system.

Tosh saw Justin Beiber and Willow Smith and thought, “man, they have things I want.” Someone with an excess of money who cared about Tosh gave a scam artist company (Comedy Central) a bunch of money to pretend to be his friend and that company decided to use the profits. Daniel Tosh is Rebecca Black.

His method of making fun of her is absurd because he refuses to admit this simple fact: that he is just as much of an untalented waste of space as Rebecca Black. She tries to cover for her lack of talent by autotuning her voice and Tosh overcompensates for his lack of talent by overwhelming an audience with a laugh track. They are the same person except that Tosh isn’t 13 so he doesn’t have that excuse.

Harriet the Spy is still my idol sometimes because I’m still part of society and I forget to combat that sometimes. I think Rebecca Black is Daniel Tosh’s idol and we should feel bad for Tosh that he will never get to be her.

comedy, Gender, Media, My favorites, race

I Could Have Accomplished More if I Was Black

When I saw Win a Date With Tad Hamilton I was pissed. I wasn’t just mad because the movie was clichéd representation of gender norms in 95 minute form, but also because I wasn’t in it.

Topher Grace had stolen my life. I was supposed to be the too scrawny to be attractive awkward guy that ended up with the girl in the end but only after losing her multiple times to hunkier men who weren’t all bad, but weren’t as good either. When I said life in that first sentence of this paragraph I meant movie-life. I meant the person I was so good at pretending to be when I was 18 that I figured people would want to watch me on TV screens being that person. I wasn’t that person.

Though at 18 I was much dumber than I am now, I still knew that with that power came great responsibility and once I became famous for being nerdy but not too nerdy, awkward but somewhat charming, and vaguely depressed but only because I didn’t have you in my life I would have to find some way to subvert those expectations. Maybe I would also be gross because we aren’t comfortable enough with grossness as a society. Maybe I would be surprisingly cocky because it’s stupid that we find lack of confidence attractive only if it’s teamed with bumbling sentences and small muscles. Maybe it would be simply be extreme leftist politics because these vanilla figures of teen-idolatry never took a real stance.

I’ve grown. Both in my understanding of teen movie worship and in facial hair. Both make my desire to manifest as a tween heartthrob only to subvert any desires tweens had for me less appealing. Most importantly Drake came along.

He was on Degrassi. He didn’t quite always get the girl. Then he joined the most badass group of rappers in the US. Sings with the most badass chicks in rap. Had a video that prominently displayed boobs as its main feature. But most importantly he was still cute.

The whole time!

He was soo cute. He still is. Nobody looks cuter when he moves his gaze slowly from her thighs to her boobs.

He’s doing what I wanted to do, but so much better.

The key to the socially awkward, doesn’t get laid guy who gets the girl in the end is that he induces “awws.” Is that when you look at him you can’t help but crinkle your eyebrows and hold back a smile that says “man, I wish you were doing better.” Is that you root for him no matter what he does. Topher Grace, Shia Lebeouf, That dude from Can’t Hardly Wait, Jason Biggs. They all did it well, but then did nothing after. Drake does it while being a part of Young Money – rapping with Lil’ Wayne, Kanye, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, and every other person associated with the badass part of rap. A part of rap associated with drugs, tits, fucking, and gang violence. Yet he’s playing Topher Grace in Win a Date with Tad Hamilton.

Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino) is trying to do the same thing, but why he won’t succeed is because he has two names. Drake is Drake – he is no longer Aubrey Graham who was in a wheelchair in Degrassi. Donald Glover will always stay an actor because he refuses to let go of his acting persona (Not that I think that’s bad, I think he’s a great actor). He’s just a shitty person with amazing taste.

I don’t want to go on a rant about how confused I am about my feeling about the Derrick Comedy star.

Drake is incredible.

Watch this video and try to not understand what I’m saying:

Indignant, Lazy, Media

My Excuse

Again I am faced with the disgusting reality that when my eyes opened at 9am this morning I had to watch three hours of television. I had to check my twitter feed, which is like wasting time by wasting time. And then I saw this on facebook:

Obviously the movie is stupid. Obviously it is a bad thing for society. What caught my eye though was that this ad is stating that in order to answer the question “Can sex friends be best friends?” you have to see this movie. Movies don’t answer questions like that. They are providing a look into one person’s vision as to the answer. Good filmmakers just provide you with the tools to ask yourself questions. But it’s not fair to compare whoever started writing a project that was originally titled “Untitled Ashton Kutcher/Natalie Portman project” to good filmmakers. It is fair, however, to demand that just because you had one thought about one subject that it is not correct. That people should not listen to it and think wow, you’re right that is how I think about that now. Especially when it comes to love and shit. Love and shit is complicated. Love and shit is not answerable in a script.

Lots of people are stupid.

This is my ultimate point is that lots of people are stupid. Also lots of people talk. Therefore the overlap on the venn diagram is going to be significant. We shouldn’t be listening to people just because they are talking.

I watched a lot of CBS’s answer to The View: The Talk. It’s worse. Somehow they managed to get a larger group of more incoherent, more disagreeable people letting the loudest and dumbest voices speak loudly and then end with, “each of our opinions is valid.”

Nope.

We don’t all have valid opinions. Some opinions are dumb. They need to be challenged and when a person refuses to challenge their own conceptions and instead look wackily at the camera as though they just made an obvious point and are simultaneously auditioning for The Office, then that person needs to be told to shut up. I’m not saying we can’t listen to people, but when people refuse to listen to other points of veiw, they lose their right to have their point of view listened to.

I think I’ve summed up enough hypocrisy to get to the point: I’m not wasting any more time because of hulufriday and twitter – they are just new excuses.

Gender, Media, My favorites, race

Rube Goldberg of Feminism and Rap

Nicki Minaj likes to have sex with women and I don’t do music reviews. Pink Friday is absurdly good though, and this is why.

Note: Please don’t read this without listening to the album. Each song is linked in the number before it. Click on them. Listen to them as you read or before, but listen. It’s really fucking important.

1. I’m The Best. Nicki just starts out her CD with something that we all know but maybe have forgotten: I’m The Best. How do we know that? She explains that she wasn’t given this out of nowhere, she worked from nothing to this superstar status. She isn’t the first to make it big, but other people became big for themselves, whereas Nicki did it for us. She became a megastar because we needed her to become a megastar. She explains that she is the best because it’s selfless for her to be the best – to be the one everyone loves, and she hopes someday the rest of us will be as smart and amazing as her because it’s lonely being so much better than the rest of us. I hope I can make her less lonely.

2. Then she starts her album for real with the words: “I am not Jasmine, I am Aladdin.” Just as in fairy tales we’ve been told since we were tiny, the rap game has been a patriarchal world. Nicki’s having none of that. Thus she declares that she is not the useless pretty girl who is simply the impetus for male actions – she is male action. Then she calls herself a cunt because she has a vagina and she is fucking proud of it. She is male action with a pussy. She uses a lot of fairy tale imagery to remind us that we are constantly bombarded with gender roles – specifically ones that make the man the chivalrous savior with a large sword and the woman the helpless piece of skinny being held prisoner by a dungeon dragon.

Who does she get to be featured on this track (essentially the first track of the album)? The voice of patriarchy – the biggest, whitest name in the rap game. Eminem plays his part well, explaining that he doesn’t take shit from women and if they stand up to him he’ll rape them and film it. He then offers a game plan as to how to defeat his patriarchal rain of terror. If life sucks: “kick it back in the face.” She does kick him back in the face but she illustrates how hard it is to combat this when the male norm in power, represented by Eminem, when that power says things like: “All you little faggots can suck it, no homo” and that gets regarded as reasonable.

3. Then she busts out the best song of the 21st century that starts with “Shitted on ’em, I just shitted on ’em.” In case you forgot, she’s better than everybody else and she’s into fucking girls. Like a man. She’s better than a man. She fucks more girls than whatever male idol you have, because (a) “A lot of bad bitches beggin me to F1” (she rhymed F1 three times in a row) girls want to fuck her (b) “She ain’t a Nicki fan, bitch is deaf dumb” so that explains the few girls that won’t fuck her – they’re stupid and can’t hear how amazing she is (c) “If I had a dick, I would pull it out and piss on ’em” because she doesn’t have a dick and she needs to remind you of that.

4. She’s better than a man, right? She’s established that. Then comes her most clichéd girly song. She’s post-modern. Nicki is a woman and sometimes she likes to fuck men. She’s not just showing her feminine side though, she’s showing that when she shows her feminine side it necessitates her being defeated by a man. By subscribing to a feminine archetype, a man sees “right thru her.”

5. “Me against them.” This is a rap album and rapping is about bragging – about battling and winning. Here Nicki explains that she is not just the best but she’s the best despite the fact that everyone is constantly trying to bring her down. How are they bringing her down? By defining her as a female rapper, or a pop star, or as any word because “[She] is not a word.” “I am not a girl who can be defined.” She is Nicki Minaj. She refuses to be defined by anyone else because only she can define herself and she is simply defining herself as the best – as the winner – as “the voice of an entire generation.” She is the ultimate rapper because she refuses to define herself as a rapper.

6. Just when you think it’s simply an album about bragging about how amazing she is, she displays her vulnerability and hypocrisy. “Yes, I’m a beast and I feast when I conquer/but I’m alone on my throne.” She wants to make it on her own, but she’s scared of what making it on her own will make her, and she needs you to save her. Who is “you?” That will be answered later.

7. The first assumption we would have about who she is calling out for help – who can save her from her hypocrisy – would be her friends. So she sings a love song to her friends at Young Money. But they can’t save her. They are simply a moment to her. They created a wonderful moment, but it is a moment. A moment that she is thankful for because moments create the whole, but it is not the whole. You have to enjoy all the moments. “Everybody dies, but not everybody lives.”

8. This is how I know I’m right/brilliant. The version I downloaded had “Check it Out” as the next track and I thought it was weird. It didn’t fit the narrative of her thought process. So I checked out her official tracklist. The next song is “Here I Am.” This is the answer to who can save her. Confused? Don’t be.

Nicki, in a very dark song, keeps exclaiming “here I am.” She’s desperate for attention from this same, still unnamed person who can supposedly save her from becoming the monster that she thinks fame will turn her into. “Everything in life is old.”

9. The mood shifts drastically to cheesiest sounding, girliest love song to this person who can supposedly save her. She desperately pleads that this person come back to her – this person that she supposedly wronged and wants back in her life. Who is this person? Well the song is called “Dear Old Nicki.” Just when you thought she was showing all this vulnerability as a woman and she was gonna need a man to complete her, she says “fuck you, yeah I’m vulnerable, but the person I need to save me is not some man, but rather a woman, and not just any woman, ME. Me will save me. But me before the fame.”

Every single line is fantastic in this song, but essentially it is just saying: “I’m glad I did what I did because as a famous person I can do good, but before I was famous I didn’t have to worry about the shallow things that maintain fame and I miss those moments – those moments when I was a different person.”

10. Then she plays the first single that made her popular. Just to remind us bitches that she can sample Annie Lennox and still be a bad ass bitch that will blow your mind. And she needs “your” love. Who is you? Her. Old her.

I really like Rube Goldbergs, and I’ve never been able to explain it validly – there is no real use to them. This is why. This album is the Rube Goldberg of narrative. Each track triggers the next track. This is why I like Rube Goldbergs because they defy narrative in that they mean nothing while simultaneously being a slave to narrative in that there is no way to move on to the next piece without finishing the first part.

Nisse Greenberg

Category Archives: Media