Thus Spoke Korbot

Lawyerin'

2011-04-03T15:26:00.001-07:00

If those law schools would have known with whom they were dealing back in 2001 when they bombarded me with advertising materials just because I signed up to take the LSAT, I think they'd be laughing about it together with me right now.

Fantasy

2011-04-02T15:00:00.001-07:00

The most far-fetched thing in the book The Girl who Played with Fire is the claim that someone could spend hours inside an Ikea without the promise of sweet relief from a cyanide capsule.

_K

Hot Tip

2011-03-11T19:19:00.001-08:00

Break wind before exiting your vehicle each night. That way, if someone breaks into your car, they will be treated to a very uncouth greeting. They will steal your shit anyway, of course. But still!

_K

Swear to God!

2011-02-18T19:38:00.001-08:00

If you EVER catch me just casually wearing pajama bottoms, then you probably gave them to me as a gift and I am wearing them to make you happy and you are probably my wife and I love you. Thanks for the comfy pajama bottoms!

Snuggles and kisses,

_K

Old Spec Sketch circa 2005

2011-02-14T16:51:00.001-08:00

SYNERGY

INT. – COFFEE SHOP - DAY

Two Gentlemen, ROD and JIM are seated at a table.

Rod: (points at someone behind Jim) So, I was at this party the other night and these two guys, Mike and Phil made a bet on a boxing match. The loser had to be known as the other’s bitch for a full year.

Jim: So, they just do each other favors and call each other “bitch,” or what?

Rod: No, the loser had to legally change his name. So the loser, Mike, had to go down to the courthouse and change his name to Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike. Isn’t that hilarious?

Jim: No fucking way! I don’t believe you.

Rod: Straight up, my man. That’s the whole reason I brought it up. Phil Johnson’s Bitch Mike is right over there. (over Jim’s shoulder) Hey Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike! What’s up dude?

(PHIL JOHNSON’S BITCH, MIKE approaches. Rod stands to shake his hand.)

Rod: (continuing) Jim Halverson, this is Phil Johnson’s Bitch Mike.

Jim (standing, shaking Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike’s hand): Um, nice to meet you, um Mike.

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Actually, it’s Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike.

(They all sit.)

Jim: Okay…Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike. But doesn’t it bother you to be called that?

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Nah, man. A bet’s a bet. I don’t think my fiancée likes it too much that we have to change our wedding announcement to Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Michael Edward Everett and Caitlin Fleur Nelson, but that’s all right.

Rod: You’re just missing the bigger picture. Actually at the party, we went around the room assigning one-dimensional qualities to people that best explains their personality archetype. You can get to know someone so much better that way.

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Sorta like how Native Americans used to name each other, like Chief Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse.

Rod: Right, but with a modern twist. For example, that girl you used to date in college, Mary, was there. And she was the first to be renamed as Mary Takes-A-Lotta-Dicks.

Jim: She does?

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: And then there was Gunter Coke-In-Nose, because he’s always doing so much coke. And Rebekah The Semi-Retarded Waitress. It’s like, synergy, man.

Rod: Yeah, exactly.

Jim: What?

Rod: What, you’ve never heard of the advertising concept of the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects?

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Yeah, it’s like, an ad thing.

Jim: Yes, yes. I’m familiar with synergy, but I don’t find the fact that this guy legally changed his name to indicate that he’s someone’s bitch particularly synergistic.

Rod: Well, you’ve heard about these guys who’ve had the names of companies tattooed on their foreheads or whatever, right?

Jim: Yeah.

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Well the same thing applies here.

Rod: And it’s catching on. You’ve to get in on the ground floor on this one, Jim. People are changing. The world is changing.

Jim: Like, how?

Rod: Well, take me for example. I’ve rented out my ass and my dick for sponsorship contracts.

Jim: You what now?

Rod: You heard me right. On my ass, I have a temporary tattoo of Frizzle Freeze Fruit Droolers and my dick has been renamed Celltech Wireless Presents Rod’s Cock. So, everytime I get naked, I am contractually obligated to say, Celltech Wireless Presents Rod’s Cock. A lot of porn stars are doing it, too. They get the logos tattooed right onto their junk.

Jim: They have advertisements on their genitalia?

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Same here, man except when ever I take my shirt off I announce, “Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike’s naked upper torso is Brought to you by Squeezie’s Extra Soft Tissue Paper, Vitriol Vitamins and Deuce-Loose Juice Incontinence Products. The Juice gets the Deuce Loose!”

Jim: You guys are fucking with me, right?

Rod: Sheeyit! How do you think I paid for Paradigm Pictures’ in partnership with Sinking Ships Studios Presents Cinderella 2 Presents Rod’s new Audi?

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: The same way I paid for Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike’s new nose was produced by Funderland Amusement Parks, a division of Stooperlaim Entertainment Corp, LLC. Synergy.

Jim: Synergy?

Rod and Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike (together): Synergy.

Jim: So you think I should get down with synergy?

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Everybody should get down with synergy. As a matter of fact, I hear Chewsy Chopper’s Chewing Gum is taking applicants for forehead-tattoo billboards right now, right down the street at the Vietnamese-American deli. It pays pretty well, too.

Jim: You think I should go check it out?

Rod: Maybe…and by" maybe," I mean, “Hell yes!”

Jim: All right, I’m gonna go check it out. Wait here for me? I’ll be right back.

Rod: You know it.

(Jim stands to exit, turns back to them.)

Jim: And, thanks, Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike.

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike (calling after Jim): Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike and the Department of Education advise you to stay in school!

(Jim exits hastily.)

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike (continuing): You think he bought it?

Rod: I told you he would, he’s a sucker for money.

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Nicely done. Who should I make the check out to?

Rod: How about Chewsy Chopper’s Chewing Gum’s new favorite synergist, Rod “Richman” Richmond!

(They share a hearty laugh.)

END

Rejected Spin-offs of Popular Sitcoms

2011-02-10T17:27:00.001-08:00

NOTE: THIS IS SOMETHING I WROTE CIRCA JANUARY 2005 BUT NEVER POSTED FOR WHATEVER REASON. SO PLEASE TO EXCUSE IF IT SOUNDS DATED.

Ah, the spin-off. If ever there was a better way to impress upon American pop-culture the recycled ideas of clearly intoxicated television executives, then I have yet to witness it. Several of our favorite shows have been spin-offs of more popular franchises: A Different World from The Cosby Show, Laverne and Shirley from Happy Days, Frasier from Cheers. But, much like the sequel, the spin-off allows for the distillation of fresh ideas by otherwise creative minds and the remanufacturing of already tiresome notions by the bloated powers that be in the merry town of Televisionville. Believe it or not, some spin-off ideas are actually rejected. Listed below are some of the lesser-known spin-offs that were pulled from the proverbial womb in mere infancy, so to speak.*

The Cosby Show:

The Rudy’s Friend, Bud, Show

Rudy Huxtable’s mini male-chauvinist friend Bud expounds his ne’er-seen brother’s comical worldly sexual political genius on hot 80s topics ranging from the role of the female in the workforce, to Reaganomics, and abortion.

Pilot Episode: “Really Now, What Kind of a Name for a Girl is ‘Rudy?’ ”

Lisa Bonet in An Even Different-er World

In this ill-fated pilot, Denise (Lisa Bonet) leaves a promising acting career to marry Larry Horowitz, a fledging rock-star wannabe played by Terence Trent D’Arby. Scrapped because it seemed too far-fetched.

Pilot Episode: “So, I See You Got Your Dreadlocks On”

Vanessa and Theo’s Middle Child Syndrome Variety Show

The mere fact that Malcolm-Jamal Warner was constantly being upstaged by his Medusa-esque dreadlocks, coupled with Tempest Bledsoe’s lack of a third name is an indication that this truly was a spectacle to be witnessed and subsequently ignored.

Pilot Episode: “The Newly-Reformed Flying Burrito Brothers Perform While Channeling The Spirit Of Gram Parsons. Also, Stand Up By Emo Phillips”

Happy Days:

Melancholy Days

The happy-go-lucky Happy Days gang amidst the backdrop of racial tension, radical sexual experimentation, and the rise of the drug culture of the tumultuous war-torn late sixties.

Pilot Episode: “Fonzie Nearly Becomes a Mansonite With Hilarious, Yet Murderous Results”

Nappy Days

This spin-off was intended to showcase the lives of the black people represented in the cast of Happy Days, but was quickly shelved when the producers realized that there were, in fact, no black people in the cast of Happy Days, possibly because of the incorrect notion that black people didn’t exist in the fifties. And, surprisingly, NOT because of the inherently racist under- and overtones.

Pilot Episode: “When In Doubt, Just Go With The ‘fro.”

Chachi Does Joanie

Self-explanatory scenario that, due to its titillating one-dimensionality, was later re-thought and sadly, re-titled.

Pilot Episode: “Cherry-Poppin’ Chachi”

Cheers:

The Adventures of Woody’s Girlfriend Kelly

Cancelled after the creators realized the only good thing they had going for them was the theme song: “Kelly-Kelly-Kelly-Kelly-Kelly…, etc.” and that the inclusion of the character of Kelly wasn’t really crucial to the show and, in fact, may have actually been detrimental.

Pilot Episode: “Kelly Hangs Out With Woody and Somehow Pisses Off Her Father In The Process, Even Though She’s Like, Thirty, or Something”

Norm and Cliff in Pukin’ Is For Pussies

Originally slated as a one-off made-for-TV movie, but was stalled in development after one of the stars (I’ll leave it up to you to guess who) was offended by just how fat the other was getting. Curiously enough, both were of relatively the same life-span-shortening size and shape at this point. Also, the attempt to include elements of Sci-Fi wasn’t well received.

Pilot Episode: “Cliff and Normie Versus Eerily Familiar Life-Sized Copyright-Infringing Robots”

That Fat Guy With Glasses That Sits at the End of the Bar Who was Nearly a Regular Cast Member But is only Useful Enough to Mutter One Inconsequential Line Every Few Episodes as a Device to Set-up a Sarcastic Chastening Remark from Carla Show

Never got beyond a brainstorming session.

Diane’s A Pompous, Frigid Bitch!!!

Re-imagined as Frasier Is a Pompous, Insufferable Dork, which eventually just became Frasier.

*In case you haven’t figured it out already, all spin-offs listed above never existed and were entirely made up by me.

In Memoriam

2011-02-09T09:12:00.001-08:00

I'm not saying you're *definitely* going to hell for failing to use your blinker, but just know that Satan is eagerly anticipating punching you in the junk by way of greeting.

An Anecdote

2011-02-08T22:13:00.001-08:00

When I was in college, a photography professor once told me that I needed to work on what I was seeing through the lens. Well, who's laughing now, huh? No, seriously, could anyone ever laugh again after hearing that?

Glee Review

2011-02-08T19:03:00.000-08:00

Didn't watch it.

Poli-ticks

2009-01-15T12:39:00.000-08:00

So I'm watching President-Elect Obama's attorney general nominee Eric Holder as he is questioned by congress for the red-tape hearing before he's officially approved. As I continue to peruse MSNBC's coverage, a few things occur to me:

Holder says he intends to, "adhere to the principles and precepts of the U.S. constitution."

Whew, that's reassuring.

Not to start the criticisms before the Obama administration even takes charge, but isn't upholding the U.S. constitution the minimum of what the USAG is supposed to do?

Secondly, despite Holder's claims that "no one is above the law", he indicated that he likely would not pursue prosecuting anyone from the Bush administration, even though he claims that waterboarding is illegal and the Bush administration has admitted to employing waterboarding. Sounds like cognitive dissonance to me. Holder intimated that these matters of "policy" are not something that he is willing to investigate.

Finally - and this is hardly a revelation - but the confirmation process is a bizarre piece of theater run by tiny little prick puppets in blue suits with lame haircuts, just like everything in the United States political arena. They might as well be wearing powdered wigs.

Somehow, this country is run by elected officials who are nothing like me and you. Look at these people. Who cuts their hair like that? It's not that they have to have "cool" haircuts or dress like hipsters, but a little modernity might help. Would any of you want to have a beer with these schmucks? I certainly wouldn't. And yet, we are responsible for electing these dorks.

It's not a fashion thing. It's a CLASS thing. We're living in an aristocracy, people.

Have a good day!

My Interpretation of The Soprano's Finale (Hardly) Confirmed as (Possibly) True!

2009-01-13T14:40:00.001-08:00

FYI, this is exactly how I interpreted the ending of The Sopranos. This is newsworthy?

via imdb:

The Sopranos star Michael Imperioli is convinced he has unearthed the secret behind the show's dramatic ending - Tony Soprano is dead.
The long-running mob drama came to an unspectacular end in 2007 - the screen fading to black as James Gandolfini's Soprano dined with his wife and children.
But Imperioli, whose character Christopher Moltisanti was killed off in the last season, insists there's more to the finale than meets the eye.
He says, "I think he's dead. That's what happens when it goes black, right?"

LIVE BLOGGING MY UNEMPLOYMENT!!!

2009-01-05T12:43:00.000-08:00

A lot of people in television get all 'creative' when they go on hiatus: they polish a screenplay, start a new project, start a screenplay, take a class, take a screenwriting class. Since I'm not on hiatus and was instead 'gently let-go', I have endeavored to document my first day of joblessness:

6:40 AM - awoke, somewhat reluctantly

7:45 AM - 8:04 AM - filled out necessary unemployment paperwork online, bristled at the notion that I could be rejected

8:05 AM - 8:26 AM - brooded

8:27 AM - 8:45 AM - brooded (in bed)

8:46 AM - considered masturbating

??? AM- 10:50AM - napped.

10:58 AM - 11:40 AM - took dog for walk around the park, noted the increasing greenness of each subsequent bowel movement (the dog's, not mine)

11:55 AM - 12:01 PM - dog barked periodically; advised him to "shut it"

12:05 PM- 12:20PM - attempted to complete some Madden Moments; turned game off in disgust because the Dolphins receivers can't catch for shit (and the Dolphins still beat the Broncos this year).

12;25 PM - began preparing lunch (veggie masala burger on naan bread with hummus, jack cheese and mango ginger chutney)

12:46 PM - pondered whether dishes in dishwasher were clean or dirty

12:47 PM - consulted girlfriend (via Gchat) about dishes. Verdict: clean

12:51 PM - GODDAMMIT!!! burned my naan bread and dropped my masala burger patty on the dirty-ass kitchen floor. Shit!

12:56 PM - enjoyed soiled masala burger anyway

1:06 PM - picked surprisingly minimal hairs out of my teeth transferred to mouth via masala burger (mostly of cat origin)

2:27 PM - pondered whether or not it was too early to drink a beer

3:14 PM - drove to Target

3:32 PM - briefly flirted with the notion of asking for a job application at said Target

4:01 PM - returned home to find dog had gotten into the cat litter and ate cat shit...on my bed spread; ignored dog's entreaties for attention as punishment

4:21 PM - realized that I put corn chips in fridge, hummus in pantry; discovered leftover Robek's smoothie from previous day.

4:21 PM - 4:26 PM - enjoyed leftover smoothie

4:59 PM - began self-flagellation for not going to the gym today

5:00 PM - workday, self-flagellation ended.

If You Can't Find Me, I Probably Left

2008-08-13T12:46:00.000-07:00

I hate leaving.

Actually, hate is a pretty strong word, so allow me to rephrase: I fucking loathe leaving. It's not that I'm so sentimental that it's hard for me to say good-bye. Saying good-bye is easy if everybody lets you off the hook and you're able to just say, 'well, I'm off, bye.' But it's never that simple. Everybody wants to hug and shake hands and prolong the leaving moment as long as possible.

It's the awkward preamble to saying good-bye to people that I try to avoid most. I generally put people into two categories in regards to leaving: people I hug and people I don't. Nothing's more awkward than having to give or receive a hug because of the fear of someone feeling left out. I hereby give permission for you to not hug me when I leave if you don't want to. I won't take it personally. Just don't expect a hug from me and we're fine.

I'm the kind of guy who'd rather not go to a party just because I don't want to go through all of the drama of leaving. Sometimes I get the feeling that I have to get permission to leave. And there's always somebody who seems disappointed to by your departure. Why is that?

Even weirder than the weirdness that leaving implies is how weird I am about just trying to disappear myself. I've been known to vanish from places if I don't have the energy to say good-bye. I acknowledge that this is strange behavior. It's one of the few eccentricities I allow myself nowadays. The next day or even right when I get home, I will inevitably have to sort through numerous text messages and voice mails inquiring, "where did you go?".

I was drunk so I took off. Don't take it personally.

Everybody's A Failed Something

2008-08-06T16:43:00.000-07:00

Things at which I am a failure:

Professional football, baseball and basketball
Lawyerin'
Comic book writing
Self-publishing
Careerism
Friendship
Minstrelsy
Poetry
Acting
Directing
Screenwriting
Table tennis (colloquially known as 'ping pong')
Foosball
Advertising copywriting
Plant care
unpacking my apartment in a timely fashion
dish-doing
cold-calling
caring about stuff that I don't care about, but should
dressing well
acting my age/aging my act
job interviews
dating
drawing class
registering to legally operate a motor vehicle in the state of California
forwarding my mail
eating healthy
not drinking so much god damned beer all the time
exercising regularly
completing this list

Top 10 (or so) Most Obvious Signs That You Are an Alcoholic

2008-08-04T16:40:00.000-07:00

1.) You frequently attend AA meetings and are currently engaged in a twelve step program in an effort to accept sobriety as a way of life...hilarious!

2.) You have been charged with a number of moving violations while intoxicated, but none of them stem from driving a car.

3.) You overhear one of your many, many illegitimate children(s) quietly inquire, "Mommy, is daddy an alcoholic?" She softly responds, "Yes...the worst kind," then turns to the window, tears streaming down her face. AAAAND SCENE!

7.) You just blacked out for numbers 4, 5, and 6 of this list.

8.) You pass out in a different place every night - thousands of miles apart - but somehow manage to stumble all the way home each morning.

9.) Your favorite flavor of mouthwash is vomit.

10.) You don't do anything without getting drunk. And you don't do anything in the first place. And you're always drunk while not doing it.

11.) Because you think that if it goes to eleven, it's somehow funny. You have a shameless need to reference obvious jokes from 80's cult movies and you drink copious amounts of alcohol while doing so.

This post is an Instrumental

2008-08-04T16:19:00.000-07:00

Current Event(s) Blogworthy!

2008-07-22T15:25:00.000-07:00

If a current event has been deemed blogworthy by blogistes the world over, it should be anticipated that the event will be widely reported and analyzed, commented and postulated upon, until such a time as the event is effectively rendered dead by repeated and merciless flogging, (hereafter known as 'blogging a dead horse' - ha!)

In the event that the...event is somehow tangentially related to some other such event by mitigating circumstances (wild speculation, imaginative association) said event will be granted a new life by virtue of its specious relation to the second event. More than two interrelated events construes evidence that a greater "series of events" are unfolding and this "series" may breathe new life once again into the original event by giving it an entirely different context and relevance to other such events.

Should these collective events be deemed to have "a life of its own" by the blogging public responsible for giving it life, it will receive wide coverage from national media publications, who will then grant the event constant permeative exposure. The original event and all subsequent and corresponding events will receive much scrutiny by way of comparison/contrast, id-itorializing, and excessive unnecessary personalization by and for so-called pundits. In this manner, the event has now evolved into what is commonly known as a "scandal". It is crucial at this point that as much hyperbolistic-holier-than-thou-righteous-indignation and moral relativism as possible be summoned and practiced in exploring (judging) the root cause of the scandal.

Thusly follows the most important aspect in analysis of the scandal and that is the formulation of a blame paradigm in which the most enfeebled, defenseless and publicly humiliated participant is fingered as the most blameworthy and should then have the weight of responsibility thrown on him or her. It is not uncommon for any number of bizarre fantasy punishments to be offered by the aforementioned pundits or a special class of morally superior citizens known as "irate viewers" as discipline for this person's shameless depravity in participation of the scandal.

The participants of the original events, now chastened and systematically "scandalized" by constant public scrutiny, should be left alone to contemplate suicide in favor of other events that may or may not be developing into a scandal. Or, more likely, the media will self-reflexively blame "the media" (this is when the media refers to "the media", which is clearly not the media heretofore under discussion, but some other media to which no media ever belongs) for sensationalizing such a scandal and will disavow any connection or responsibility in publicizing scandals in the first place by tsk-tsking other "less respectable" media types for reporting on it.

Pelosi Accurately Characterizes the Bush Presidency

2008-07-17T18:03:00.000-07:00

It's hard to push legislation through when partisan politics rules the day and an opposing-party president vetoes every single vote. I hope voters are smart enough to see through the types of games the Bush administration has been playing in trying to secure a permanent Republican congressional majority. Thanks Karl Rove...dick.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080717/ap_on_go_pr_wh/pelosi_bush

It's Going to be a Football Kind of Year

2008-07-17T17:23:00.000-07:00

I am officially geeking out for the 2008 NFL season. I have bought three NFL preview magazines, am participating in four fantasy football leagues and have purchased the NFL Sunday ticket package from Direct TV. All of this despite the fact that my team is not expected to do very well this season. But at least I will be able to see them not do very well every week without fail, in crystal clear digital television! (I'm not fancy enough for HD yet).

...do people still say 'geeking out'?

Bankruptcy Legacy

2008-04-15T12:55:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, the Bush administration made it harder for individuals to declare bankruptcy. Now there is a wave of national business chains declaring bankruptcy and leaving massive debts to service companies in their wake, which will, in turn, hurt those companies' employees and consumers.

After 8 years of foreign policy, diplomatic, public relations, political and electoral disasters, who would have thought that George W. Bush's legacy would be as the president who drove the world's most affluent and functional economy into the ground? Even Bush has to be stunned at the many flaws of his second term. And if it's one thing Americans don't like, it's being poor.

Bush has finally united the country - now EVERYBODY hates him.

Good riddance.

No Age

2008-04-11T11:51:00.000-07:00

This is a song by the group No Age from their forthcoming album Nouns, available May 6 from Sub Pop. I don't know the title, but it's a decent song.

http://www.subpop.com/assets/audio/4260.mp3

Olympic Flame Blame Game

2008-04-10T13:33:00.001-07:00

China, the US and the Olympic Committee are finally catching up with how the rest of the world feels about China's human rights record. You'd think the Olympic Committee would have seen such problems coming, what with China's propensity to neutralize/put to death people they find inconvenient.

If only the Olympic torch protesters were to admit to themselves that China's human rights abuses don't begin and end with censorship, but with many of the products the protesters themselves purchase daily from the local Mal-Wart. Maybe consumers should protest the manufacturers that support Chinese production and by extension, their long standing and growing habit of labor abuses.

Teenage Girls More Violent Than Previously Thought

2008-04-09T13:56:00.000-07:00

Just saw a video of a bunch of girls trapping and beating up a cheerleader for posting mean things about them on myspace, which proves to me that females are the more violent sex. Girls just weren't aware of the mean things they were saying about each other until the internet happened. Or, they just weren't as keen on making a documentary about how much they like to rat-pack each other.

Will There Ever Be Another Band Like Huey Lewis and the News?

2008-03-06T08:14:00.000-08:00

I wake up every morning with a song in my head. Usually it's some inanely irritating song from adult contemporary radio like The Pointer Sisters' "Neutron Dance" or a song like "You've Got to Pick a Pocket or Two" from the musical Oliver!. Ask anyone who knows me and they'll grumble to you that I have an irritatingly impressionable song-mind. I don't know why, but I get at least a half a dozen songs stuck in my head throughout any given day and, depending on my mood, I might hum them, whistle them, or sing them to the great annoyance of my friend/girlfriend/coworker. I don't know how this happens. I don't even have to hear the song to get it stuck in my head. Sometimes my girlfriend and I will be making dinner and she will say something about taking out the trash and twenty minutes later, I'll be singing "Yakety-yak (Don't Talk Back)." Other times, the background noise of the television will put an idea in my head and I'll have the refrains of "Get Outta My Dreams, and Into My Car" bouncing around in my noggin.

Anyway, this morning I awoke with the Huey Lewis and the News tune "Happy to Be Stuck with You" in my head and it made me realize that there may never be another band like Huey Lewis and the News.

Huey Lewis and the News (hereafter HL&N) was the first concert I went to as a child. I don't even know why we went. It was probably because my sisters wanted to go. My dad was a fan, too, but I think that was after the concert. I remember we made a big deal out of getting there because we were camping at this big campground just outside of Rapid City called Heart Ranch and we left just to go to this concert. I don't know if it was pre-planned or what. It seems like everybody I knew was there. (When Huey Lewis came to Rapid City it was big News!) I do remember that I was having trouble seeing, so I went to stand in the aisle above a tunnel entrance and this dude came down and bitched me out for standing in his way. I was five. My dad took me by the hand and led me to the same spot and stood next to me, daring the guy to come back. I love my dad.

But back to HL&N.

The News was one of those late 80s phenomena that, musically, sat somewhere between soft rock and jazz and adult contemporary, yet they still somehow remained popular. I mean, how many 40-something dudes could release an album called Sports and be a success? How many popular bands can you name that have a horn section in the year 2008? Also, they had a song called "I Want a New Drug" and it was popular! Nobody could record a song like that and get airplay in 2008. And that's my point: there was a sort of goofy innocence to Huey Lewis and the News. They were utterly uncool, (didn't one of the dudes have big grandma glasses?) and they knew it. They even had a song called "Hip to Be Square". Yet HL&N wrote good tunes with wide appeal. They didn't have an overwhelmingly obvious gimmick, but they had a certain effortless blue collar sensibility that only artists like John Mellencamp (or is it John Cougar or is it still all three? Who cares?) desperately try to manufacture in the current musical climate.

I have to admit, when I was younger I always thought that they should have called the band Huey, Lewy and the Newy, as a tribute to Donald Duck's nephews Huey, Dewy, and Louie. Why am I telling you this? I don't know...

I retained my shirt from that Huey Lewis and the News concert for years afterwards. I believe it was the Fore! tour and I think I inherited each member of my family's shirt over the course of a few years. In a way I still wish I had one of those shirts. Kind of.

Huey Lewis last recorded an album of original material in 2001 and a live album in 2005. They're still going strong it seems. I wouldn't listen to any of their new material, but they should keep making albums as long as they can, because once they're gone, they will have been one of a kind.

But maybe that's for the best.

Ninja Revolution UPDATE!

2008-02-29T09:15:00.000-08:00

Due to poor/no research I overlooked this evidence supporting my theory of the Coming Ninja Revolution:

There is a new Sho Kosugi movie in the works entitled The Return of the Ninja.

You see!

Everything is going exactly as (if) planned.

More as the story develops...

The Coming Ninja Revolution!

2008-02-29T08:52:00.000-08:00

When I was but a wee lad, I was obsessed with all things ninja. I would never miss a Sho Kosugi movie or one of the infinitely lamer and progressively more ridiculous American Ninja sequels with Michael Dudikoff.

I would even pretend that I was a ninja. I had a ninja costume and a plastic ninja sword. I had plastic throwing stars (there were kids that had real throwing stars, but I stayed away from them because they were troubled kids who eventually became Hare Krishna, which couldn't be more un-ninja, or "less ninja", if you want to split grammatical hairs.) For a long time, I wanted to grow up to be a ninja. This was during the 1980s, which for some reason was a heyday for ninjas (hereafter to be known "The First Ninja Surge"). Alas, I am sad to report that my ninja ambitions have yet to be realized. But dare I say, it's never too late? (It is, so I daren't.)

But mark ye this: in the very near future, there will be a pop-cultural resurgence of all things ninja. There will be ninja movies, ninja TV shows, comic books, video games, Halloween costumes, ninja-themed parties, companies named for ninjas and on and on and on.

Why do I say this? Because all of the nerds -- er, ninja fans -- that were young during the First Ninja Surge are now coming into media prominence. And like all fashionable things from decades past, unnecessary fads tend to resurface when the original fans get to a certain age and nostalgia sets in. Look no further than VH1's Remember the (insert decade here) series for proof.

Just the reporting this future phenomenon hastens its inevitable arrival. So fellow ninjas, get your (plastic) throwing stars ready!

You heard it here first.

Curb Your Cynicism

2008-02-29T08:23:00.001-08:00

I was listening to a podcast of The Advertising Show the other day and the guest was a gentleman named Chuck Underwood, author of The Generational Imperative: Understanding Generational Differences In The Workplace, Marketplace, And Living Room and he was discussing how to advertise for and to specific generations. He put people in my age group into the "Gen-Xers" category and stated that one of the main attributes of 'our' generation in regards to advertising was skepticism and cynicism.

Firstly, I'm glad that my generation is no longer referred to as the "MTV Generation," because I've never really liked or even identified with MTV. Secondly, and personally speaking, I can hardly disagree with Mr. Underwood's claims, regarding both advertising and the world at large.

But in trying to make a career transition into advertising, I've had to suppress my cynical inclinations. Thankfully, It hasn't been hard.

Over the years, I've busied myself reading books like No Logo, which is, to put it mildly, skeptical of advertising and pure capitalism in general.

It wasn't until I read a book called Nation of Rebels that I was able to come to grips with my role in a consumerist society and finally accept the advertising that goes along with living in such a society.

Don't get me wrong, advertising deserves scrutiny, just like anything else. But it is my belief that many people are skeptical of certain kinds of advertising and cynical because they don't understand the necessary role that advertising plays in our society, not to mention its function in providing entertainment - both as a medium and financier.

The simple fact is, much of our entertainment is driven by and underwritten by advertising. I don't think people realize this. Some people consider advertising intrusive and insulting. Few seem to view it without at least a modicum of suspicion and even less see advertising as a legitimate source of entertainment.

Various advertising philosophies are at odds about the necessity and function of advertising as entertainment. Few disagree that the purpose of advertising is to sell products.

However, advertising is also a service. Without advertising, many products would never enter into the consumer's consciousness and, as a result, many consumers would miss out on products that can be beneficial and even improve quality of life.

If the main goal of consumerism is to improve quality of life, then, by extension, the main goal of advertising has to be the same. Improving quality of life can mean many things. The improvement can come in the form of indispensables like garbage bags or it can come in the form of entertainment. The good thing about free market capitalism is that the importance of goods in the context of life-quality is purely at the mercy of the consumer. The consumer decides what and how much of any product is necessary to improve quality of life. And these traits will vary by consumer and by generation. In other types of markets, these decisions can be made by the government, economists or other figures of academia and power.

So we should all be thankful for the benefit of choice. The opposite in current American society would be unthinkable.

Granted, the fallout of unchecked free market capitalism can be devastating. Many developing countries are at the mercy of so-called "free trade". Globalist economies have even hurt America's once vast manufacturing industries. There are some who will tell you that free market capitalism in its purest form allows for such unrepentant economic Darwinism. But free market capitalism is an idea. And ideas don't have the benefit of conscience. But people do.

I would argue that my generation is skeptical because it is a generation of consumers with a conscience.

Those who would seek to justify prioritizing profits before the welfare of the people with an idea such as economic Darwinism aren't helping to curb the cynicism of socially and environmentally conscious consumers. And this must be reconciled.

The current presidential administration is transparently pro-business and anti-poor. But perhaps these people should themselves be considered cynical and lacking in conscience. After all, it would seem that President Bush and his advisers believe that competition is the only way to succeed in a free market and that any benefits should go to furthering competition and widening the gap in favor of those who are already successful, as opposed to leveling the playing field so that all can compete on even terms. This isn't just a cynical way of thinking, but nihilistic as well.

You could say that Gen-X is cynical about such cynicism.

It may actually be incorrect to claim that Gen-X is skeptical of advertising. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we are skeptical of what advertising represents. I have learned not to blame advertising, but rather to see it for what it is and even appreciate it on many levels.

I've finally been able to curb my cynicism.

The 2008 Academy Awards

2008-02-22T09:28:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in another post, I will not be watching The Oscars this year. Why? I have plans and I don't care. Never have. I'm not going to pretend that I've never watched The Oscars because I certainly have, but I don't enjoy watching The Oscars.

The good thing about this year's Academy Awards is that I feel that many of the nominees are films that have been/could be enjoyed by the general public. Even if they weren't box office smashes, they are, in my opinion, generally very approachable films. Perhaps as a consequence, for the first time in a long time I found that I have watched many of the nominees. (The one major exception is Juno. I've been meaning to see it, but just haven't had the proper combination of available funds, interest and motivation.)

Three of my favorite movies this year are nominated in one category or more - No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood and Michael Clayton. Considering my previous claim that these films are all very good examples of brilliant films with a broad appeal, I heard groans at the end of each of them from people sitting around me in the movie theater, which disappointed me. Granted, I went to film school, but I don't think my education informed my sensibilities, just my bullshit detector. In fact, I have gone on record several times against "classic" films that I don't find very interesting. The irony is that the very same people I heard groaning in the theater will probably watch and put a lot of stock into The Oscars ceremony.

I would love to write a commentary after this year's Oscars. But that would necessitate me watching the ceremony for the sole purpose of making fun of it, which is exclusively the reason I've watched it in the past. But even that gets boring. Making fun of The Oscars is like staring at attractive people, laughing at puppies or cooing at babies - a knee-jerk reaction on such a primal level that it's almost instinctive. People in Hollywood are smart. So I find it hard to believe that they are not in on the joke. But sometimes it seems like they aren't.

And that worries me.

Fridee

2008-02-22T09:01:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts:

There's something suspicious about all of the celebrities that have given birth to twins.
Who are these "officials" and "experts" that seem to be the only people news websites cite in their headlines?
The great thing about being an American is exercising your right NOT to watch the Oscars.
The Broncos re-signed Travis Henry with a re-structured deal, which basically rendered all of my previous trade daydreaming moot.
I just started reading the comic book series Y: The Last Man and it kicks ass.
...so does The Simpsons Game on XBox 360.
This nice weather is giving me spring fever. Too bad spring is still a month away.
It seems that since I'm not a marketing rockstar, an IT guru, a real estate superstar or a customer service wizard, I can't get a job.

The Benefits and Joys of Reading

2008-02-20T08:41:00.000-08:00

My dad once told me that if I wanted to be smart, then I should read. At the time, I didn't take his advice to heart, but some years later I decided that it was a goal in my life to try and learn as much about the world as I could for my own benefit.

I truly believe that if each person in this country dedicated themselves to doubling the number of books they read each year, the world would be a better place. I am always saddened when I see news reports about falling literacy rates, for reading is one of the simplest, cheapest and most fulfilling forms of entertainment and education available.

I think many people refrain from reading for a couple of different reasons:

1) They're too proud. I would put my former self into this category. These people are of the "if I wanted to read, I'd go to school" persuasion. They claim that lack of interest is their reason for reading, but I really think that deep down, they're embarrassed at the thought of being caught reading a book.

2) People aren't aware of the wide variety of interesting books that are available. This might seem like a shallow reason, but some people have very particular tastes and either aren't aware that there are probably lots of books that will appeal to them, or are not sure how to find out about them and where to get them. Again, seems faulty to say that, but some people just don't understand how to research. Without the internet, I probably wouldn't know how to find out about a lot of things I now consider to be a normal part of my life.

3) They're disinterested in reading. This, I feel is a combination of the previous two problems. These people say that reading bores them, puts them to sleep, or doesn't have any appeal because of the lack of interaction. Many of these people associate reading with school and as such, see it as a forced activity. This is a valid, but easily remediable problem. In college, I started to believe that I had no attention span and didn't care for reading because everything I read put me to sleep. This is what happens when what you're trying to read is disinteresting. Everybody has a topic about which they'd like to know more. It's just a matter of finding an engaging presentation of information. Reading as a whole isn't disinteresting, but what a person reads can be.

Reading doesn't mean that you have to sit down for long stretches and dive into a lengthy novel about Victorian England. Comic books, magazines, newspapers, and non-fiction books are all things that can be read with positive benefits. There are no rules for being engaged by words and the benefit is that you almost always come away entertained, informed or inspired.

One of the most irritating things I've encountered is people who claim that you are being condescending to them because they don't understand what you've said or written because you've chosen to use "big" words. Granted, you should always consider your audience, but I think this lacking in communications skills is fundamentally a result of people's reluctance to work with words. I think it's imperative that people make a concerted effort to understand each other and learn more about the world at large. People are threatened by language they don't understand and they are irritated when confronted with such language, because they perceive it as an intentional reminder that they don't possess the faculty to understand such language. This is a fallacy of the highest order. If you're a fully functioning adult with a high school diploma, most common language is well within your reach to comprehend. Ignorance is not the same thing as stupidity and one should never use their own ignorance as an excuse to further it.

I have been guilty of all of the above indiscretions at one time or another. I used to believe that only certain kinds of people did certain kinds of things like listened to specific music or read specific books. It wasn't until I was confronted with the kind of diversity that only a large city can provide that I finally changed my perspective.

In this regard, one specific memory stands out. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I worked as a freelance production assistant on a commercial. There was a grip (basically a laborer, but skilled, highly payed and unionized) that I was helping unload a truck. He asked me what I liked to do. I responded that lately I liked to read. He then began quizzing me about which of the classics I'd read. Based on what I told him, he recommended all kinds of interesting books. It was amazing to me: here was this dread-locked, working class laborer schooling me about the classical canon. It opened my eyes and made me realize that one doesn't have to allow oneself to be placed in a box by others. It is our responsibility as individuals to diversify and not perpetuate the kind ignorance that I had practiced before that exchange.

Reading can do that. If you only give it a chance.

Sympathy for Javon Walker/What to do with Travis Henry?

2008-02-18T11:41:00.000-08:00

Javon Walker recently went on record saying that he would be better off playing for a team other than the Denver Broncos.

I can sympathize with Walker, to a degree.

Consider this: Javon Walker has probably not been the same person - football player or otherwise - that he was before the early morning hours of January 1, 2007, when he witnessed his teammate, Darrent Williams, murdered by machine gun fire. The crime has yet to be solved, which probably weighs that much heavier on Walker.

This happened after the emotional roller coaster that was the uncertainty of a comeback after Walker's devastating knee injury in 2005 and a subsequent trade from the Packers to the Broncos in early 2006. Walker played well in 2006 and earned his spot as Denver's top receiver going into the 2007 season.

In the early games of 2007, Walker continued his role as the Broncos featured receiver until he again hurt the same knee that was surgically rebuilt in 2005. This injury forced him to miss several games, so he was forced to sit idly by and watch his team devolve from a serious playoff contender into one of the more mediocre teams in the NFL. Meanwhile, Brandon Marshall emerged as an incredible talent, and in the process took over Walker's spot as the featured receiver for the Broncos.

Upon Walker's return to the line-up, he played sparingly and caught few balls. It was apparent that Marshall was now the go-to receiver in the Broncos scheme and Walker's role was diminished as a result. It seemed Walker may have even lost a step as well.

When you take into account the emotional ups and downs of Walker's life and career in just the last two years, not to mention since his original injury, it comes as no surprise that he would want to end his tenure in Denver in favor of starting over somewhere else.

But wait, let's be practical. If Walker is traded or cut, he would have to go somewhere else and compete for a job, which he wouldn't (presumably) have to do in Denver, at least not to the same degree. He is not guaranteed a spot on any roster, not to mention competition for the first receiver spot, like he would be with Denver. (It is my belief that he would likely win the number one spot, too, because Marshall is still a little rough around the edges.)

Secondly, the nature of professional sports is competition. If Walker is unwilling to compete with Brandon Marshall for the top receiver spot on the Broncos for the rest of the time he's with the team, then perhaps he should leave. I believe competition between these two receivers would provide incentive for both of them to perform as the elite receivers that they are, which automatically makes Denver a viable offensive threat and will result in huge numbers for both Walker and Marshall. Everybody wins: the players, the team, the organization and, most importantly, the fans.

I am of the opinion that the best choice for Javon Walker is to stay in Denver and duke it out with Brandon Marshall. It's the best choice for Walker and it's the best case scenario for Denver to have the maximum possible strength at the receiver position with Stokley, Marshall and Walker all together in the mix. If Walker leaves, Denver will likely have to settle for a lesser talent and Walker will presumably have to settle for a diminished role on another team. Everybody loses.

Granted, there are certain other factors at play here - chiefly financial - to which I'm not privy, that could very well be the reason for Walker's stated desire to leave. But I believe Walker will be rewarded with his loyalty. After all, now he has something to prove again. And what better way to prove yourself than to exceed everybody's expectations, like Walker seems to believe he can?

Now, if Walker wants to leave strictly on an emotional basis, I can understand. I just hope he understands that the road won't be any easier anywhere else, just different. But maybe that's what he needs.

On a related note, what are the Broncos to do with Travis Henry? My personal opinion is to dump him. I don't know everything that was going on with him this season in terms of physical and mental health, but he was a disappointment after a promising start. I think even he would acknowledge that.

But the Broncos options in regards to both Henry and Walker are limited. The Broncos do not have a lot of depth at either RB or WR, so they would probably want to replace Henry and Walker with similar or superior talent, which inspires one to ask: why get rid of them in the first place?

If the Broncos want to trade, they have to look for teams that are willing to take two players who are considered risky at this point. Age is creeping up on Henry and he's had a lot of personal and health problems. Walker's recurring knee problems make him a severe liability. Chances are, Denver will not get full value in dealing either player because they have to find another team in a similar situation that is willing to deal talented, but unhealthy or unhappy players only to take on other unhealthy or unhappy players.

Nobody is in a good position here. But the solution is likely not far off as both have roster bonuses due in late February/early March. If they are to stay, both players will supposedly be asked to take a pay cut, which, understandably would be a hard pill to swallow.

That being said, there are other teams with players who would do well as replacements in theoretical trades for either Walker, Henry or both:

The Vikings have a superior talent in Chester Taylor. I can't imagine that the veteran Taylor is relishing a career sharing time with Adrian Peterson, one of the NFL's emerging talents, in lieu of taking on the role of featured back for another team, like the Broncos. The Vikings have already said they want to keep Taylor, but they have a serious lack of talent at WR and QB. Maybe a straight across deal of Walker for Taylor isn't out of the question. (It probably is, though.)
Julius Jones is under-utilized in Dallas and there are always rumors that they're ready to deal him. His original role was as starter with Marion Barber providing a change of pace. Now Jones is the change of pace, but he doesn't seem to fit the Cowboys scheme very well. Jones has never really had a decent chance in Dallas. Henry might flourish as a back-up or complement to Barber - they have both have a physical running style, as opposed to Jones' slasher running style. Dallas has a lot of depth at receiver, so they probably wouldn't want Walker. FYI - it was rumored that Denver was looking at Jones' brother Thomas last season before he went from the Bears to the Jets and the Broncos decided to sign Travis Henry. I don't know what relevance this bears on anything, but there you have it.
San Diego's Michael Turner is a talented back-up for LT, but it remains to be seen whether or not he could carry a full workload. This wouldn't be much of a problem for Denver, because they have a decent back-up in Selvin Young. Turner isn't the kind of back that Denver is accustomed to, but maybe that's an indication that Denver needs to change. San Diego is also set as far as top receivers go, so their interest in Walker might be minimal.
Ricky Williams is probably not going to make it far in the Bill Parcells era. The Dolphins have a wealth of talent in Ronnie Brown and so-so back-ups with Jesse Chatman, et. al. Williams has questionable character, but one would like to think that he's put a lot of that behind him. He should be healthy for next season and anybody that wouldn't at least take a look at him would be crazy. The Dolphins are thin at receiver and would benefit from having Walker on the team.
Chad Johnson is going crazy in Cincy, but it's unlikely he's going anywhere, despite his unrepentant narcissism and Marv Lewis' rumored silent treatment. I personally wouldn't want to see Johnson in a Broncos uniform, but there's no denying the impact he would have on any team that's willing to stomach his - ahem - idiosyncrasies.
The Broncos seem to have a good relationship with the Lions and the Redskins, both of whom have minimal needs at RB or WR. That being said, teams that don't have needs sometimes see that lack of need as a motivating factor in trying to improve personnel. It wouldn't be a surprise to see the Redskins or the Lions (or any other team for that matter) willing to part with certain key talents for the benefit of chemistry. But that's pure speculation on my part.

Whatever happens, I'm looking forward to it. It will be a relief to find out who will be helping Denver (hopefully) return to Super Bowl form next year.

Thoughts on Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect

2008-02-17T19:46:00.000-08:00

I finished Mass Effect last week and just tonight completed the XBox 360 version of Assassin's Creed and I am sorry to report that while I was not disappointed with either game, I was unimpressed. I bought both of these games in advance and picked them up at the video game store on the day they were released. The fact that it took me over two months to complete them should give some indication as to how I felt about playing them.

2007 was supposed to be the year that XBox 360 really hit its stride and at least in some regards, it did. However, it could be argued that both of these games were to have provided a benchmark for the future of not just the 360, but video games in general. A lot of hype was in the offering about just how much each game would matter to gamers and the industry at large. It's no secret that Bioshock snuck up and stole many of the accolades that were supposed to be reserved for both Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect. It should be acknowledged, though, that Bioshock also got its fair share of pre-release press coverage, but it should also be noted that for all practical purposes, Bioshock delivered.

I don't think the same can be said universally of Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed. True, both received rave reviews from press and public alike. But not all were impressed. I would include myself in this latter group. (Full disclosure: I have only played a downloadable demo of Bioshock and probably won't buy or rent it. I can't help it: I don't like first-person shooters, which is unfortunate, because it is the most proliferate genre available on 360).

I could go into a detailed personal review of both Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect, but suffice it to say that I found both games lacking in several elements. First of all, both were too talk-y. This could be expected of Mass Effect, as it is a role-playing game and excessive story and dialog are part and parcel of the genre. Mass Effect also lacked difficulty and appeal in regards to combat and much of the game is spent on elective missions, which offer scant variety both in design and execution.

Assassin's Creed is an action game and as such, should have scant gameplay interludes to accommodate dialog. Unfortunately, Assassin's Creed exhibited a lack of discretion in regard to story progression and suffered because of it. As a result the player is forced to sit through many long exchanges between characters and without subtitles, which , for me, made the game difficult to follow. Assassin's Creed also suffered from gameplay repetition and clunky controls.

The various problems with these two games, however, give me hope. Why? Quite simply because imperfection gives vast room for improvement. Both games are great examples of pain-staking attention to detail, not to mention an emphasis on creative innovation. These franchises will surely see at the very least one sequel each so the developers will have a great starting point to create a succession of games that improve with each subsequent release.

In a way, it's almost a blessing that Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed were unimpressive, because I can't wait to see what the future holds for each franchise.

Upcoming 360 releases I'm looking forward to:

Ninja Gaiden 2: If Ninja Gaiden 2 is even a replication of Ninja Gaiden, then it is easily going to be one of the best games of 2008. Here's to hoping the notoriously difficult game will find a way to make the sequel somehow even more awesome than the original.
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: There has yet to be a game that delivers on the potential of playing as a Jedi. This could/should be the one.
Too Human: There have been problems in delivering this game but from what I've seen, it looks amazing.
The Bourne Conspiracy: It will be interesting to see if the cinematic elements translate well to a video game. I've seen some fighting videos and it looks impressive, but I don't think Matt Damon's involved, so the authenticity factor takes a hit.

In Totality - My Most Recent Unfinished Novel: I Reveal Nothing

2008-02-13T08:18:00.000-08:00

Commentary coming soon! - KL

I Reveal Nothing

By

Kory Lanphear

How does one find oneself in these situations? Hanging by the feet from a tacky ceiling fan in a dingy San Fernando apartment - the walls of which having been decorated with some of the most appalling examples of post-modern foolishness one could imagine - is all fine and dandy as a recreational past time, but I find it incredibly humiliating (not to mention vexing) when there are more pressing matters at hand, namely finding a remedy to the pesky and persistent problem of the periodic losing of consciousness that I am...ungh...

...

..

...but let me begin again.

Matters of the heart are hardly stock and trade for chaps in my line of work. Success is almost exclusively predicated on the stoning of the ticker, even in the face of situations where prudence dictates otherwise. As the saying goes, never get involved with a client. I would like to amend that wise saying with the corollary: never get involved with a client’s sister, either.

But let me begin again, again.

I awoke early in the afternoon, as is my wont, to find that I had a fresh recording on my new voice phone-answering machine. It is really no small wonder that the shrill cry of the phone didn’t wake me as I will not permit myself to be troubled by such a trifling nuisance whilst I am a-slumber.

As I sat down to break my fast I endeavored to listen to the message.

A potential client. Name of Veronica. Was referred to me by so-and-so, a mutual acquaintance who swears by my services, etc. Would I be so kind as to meet with her this very afternoon - say 2:30 - at a bar adjacent to a Hollywood shopping center so she might solicit my services?

I glanced up at the digital clock on the stove. 1:45. So much for my ritualistic morning repose. Nevertheless, I daren’t show up to this meeting tardy, as work has been scarce lately and I’ve been getting dangerously close to having to sacrifice my lovely craft beer habit in favor of mass-produced Philistine swill. No, this appointment I could not afford to miss.

Though, in retrospect, I almost wish I had. Almost.

The aforementioned lounge was of the dingy, daytime-alcoholic sort, populated by rejects from a Bukowski novel. I’d never been there, but I felt right at home. I ambled up to the bar and beckoned to the barman.

“I say”, I said, “fetch me the craftiest of your craft brews! There’s a good chap.”

“Why do you talk like such a fag?” was the impolite response as the draft was poured and subsequently proffered.

I quaffed a large quantity of Angel City Abbey. “What ever are you on about?”

The barkeep chose to ignore this opportunity for witty banter. Undaunted, I surveyed the surroundings. Sensing nothing worthy of note, I began to wonder toward the darker recesses of the bar.

“Mr. X?” a desperate voice pleaded from within a burgundy booth.

“Tis I.” What else could I say? After all, ‘twas indeed me.

“Sit, please.”

“But of course.” I sat.

“This is a rather, eh, peculiar place for a day time meeting, is it not?” I said. "Lucky for you, I am a peculiar man, so it all works out capital.”

“Yes, I’ve – I’ve heard that about you. You seem to aptly fit the description.”

“Well, if any of part of that description was ‘handsome’, then consider me guilty as charged.”

“I believe ‘corny’, and 'fruity' was the gist of what was related to me.”

Notes

I could see that she had her wardrobe set on ‘stun.’ She disrobed to reveal unto me Victoria’s most private and profane secrets.

“So what are you, a cop?”

"Nosir."

"FBI?"

“Nope.”

“CIA?”

" ‘Fraid not."

"A private contractor?"

“Tsch! Well, I think the term ‘private contractor’ connotes the presence of a contract, a modicum of job security along with the hint of some sort of benefits package, and with a little privacy mixed in. None of which am I currently experiencing, nor am I expecting to experience anytime soon.”

“So, what the hell are you, then?”

“You might say that I am a snooping, compromised-privacy enthusiast with a special affection for the common grift.”

"This is a situation that calls for the palest of ales."

Entering the club, or whatever you are so inclined to call it, I was afraid that I might stick out like a soar thumb. As it turns out, I was shocked to find that I was not, by a long shot, the only aspiring dandy gent in the joint. Imagine my disappointment as all of the alienation I have prepared for (and perhaps even required as confirmation of my eccentricity) was diluted with each further step into this cavernous enclave. The place was literally awash with aspiring dandies!

In Summary - My Most Recent Unfinished Novel: I Reveal Nothing

2008-02-13T07:59:00.001-08:00

I bid you: enjoy!

X, an effete, aspiring private eye who styles himself after the late, great C. Mortdecai and claims to be the last – or one of the last – living, breathing pieces of art left on this earth or at least the western US of A, is beseeched by Veronica, an aspiring actress, to kill the plastic surgeon who botched her recent facelift and breast augmentation surgery, which would have been her "ticket to relevance" (her words). After demurring Veronica's request, X is contacted by Victoria, Veronica's half-sister and herself a working actress on the verge of stardom, who begs X to refuse the requested hit in order to save her high-profile family the great embarrassment of a murder trial, etc. X, having been already quite content to reject becoming an assassin working on commission, decides to feign interest in the job only to get closer to Victoria and so embarks on a pseudo-clandestine investigation into the two sisters’ affairs which will take him from the hipster dive bars of Silverlake to the Hollywood movie studios but "no further than the streets of the extreme eastern borders of West Hollywood" (if he can help it) and "under no circumstances into the gargantuan, Plebian, porn-producing, middle-class maze that is the dreaded San Fernando Valley" X boozes and blunders his way through many a near-adventure and close-call until he discovers that he’d been set up to take the fall from the start.

It's Been Awhile

2008-02-11T20:43:00.001-08:00

I have not updated for quite nearly a year. No matter. Since this blog is just an outlet for my writerly ambitions and as such is presumably read only by me. I can't imagine that I've disappointed my legion fans.

However, it is good to practice writing. I need to do it more. I have written several pieces for a different site that, for personal reasons, I have chosen not to post there. These few pieces may find their way onto this blahg. Some of them are reviews, some musings about things that I've been studying, but all of them are in various states of completion, which is to say that they're all unfinished. I don't know if the reviews are worth posting because they were unsolicited and the time of their relevance has passed. My only reason for posting them would be to show my range, or lack thereof.

Regardless, I've been struggling with inspiration for the better part of six months now. But that's nothing new. I am never short of topics to cover, so I've got plenty of ammunition stored up. I just need to jam one in the chamber and let it loose.

Meantime, stop being such a fucking stranger, you.

Blogcritics.org

2007-03-08T09:32:00.000-08:00

I am now a member of this "sinister cabal of superior writers." Please check this site out for lots of awesome bloggotry to ponder. I will be putting a permanent link on the sidebar as soon as I figure out how to do it.

Ann Coulter and the Spin-cycle

2007-03-05T10:18:00.000-08:00

What's most shocking about Ann Coulter's slur against John Edwards isn't the fact that she said it (it's entirely consistent with her character, or lack thereof), but that it was quickly followed by enthusiastic applause. Meanwhile, will Coulter join the ranks of the besmirched likes of Tim Hardaway and Isiah Washington? What about all of the people in the audience who showered her so with approval after her unconscionable slur? Not likely. Methinks she'll somehow slip the shitstorm of controversy by using her status as an empowered female with strong, "informed" political opinions as a justification for using such colorful terminology -- as if being a supposed smart person somehow precluded you from also being an idiot.

In other news: Watch how the Republicans turn the Walter Reed scandal into a reason to blast the Dems for wanting to trim Bush's war budget, as if one were the cause for the other.

Prescient

2007-02-26T16:45:00.000-08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070226/sc_livescience/americanshatetheirjobsmorethanever

The Substance of "The Wire"

2006-11-09T14:48:00.000-08:00

Television has been going through a renaissance of sorts the last few years. There are some genuinely engrossing shows coming out every year, though some of them don’t make it through more than a few seasons (R.I.P. Arrested Development). I’m not a television critic -- though I do tend to criticize television – but I would wager to say that the last few years have been some of the most creative in at least a decade.

The course of events that led to this renaissance is beyond my scope, but I can submit a few guesses. One guess is that due to the success of so-called reality television, networks have many incentives to push the envelope with their programming. They can sink the money they save with reality programming into more creative projects. Or, perhaps more likely, they can be more selective with their programming because they can cheaply replace failures with new, cheaper reality fare. Or maybe they just choose to fill their timeslots with boring-reality-crap-tv rather than good-ol’-fashioned regular boring-crap tv.

In any case, an unforeseen development in television that contributed to its current renaissance is the critical success of HBO’s original programming. It's common knowledge that HBO is well-regarded for their original shows. “The Sopranos,” their flagship original drama, has won all sorts of awards for it's all-inclusive, artistic, pop cultural kitchen sink approach to television and likewise “Six Feet Under” -- though, I’m not sure why – I haven’t watched much of it myself. Let’s just say it got pretty steady critical acclaim.

HBO had pretty good timing in their foray into original programming -- which isn’t to say that their shows aren’t good, because they are -- but circumstance in the form of the reality TV boom, helped put the radar on HBO because, frankly, there wasn’t much out there in the form of really good television, reality or otherwise. Also, HBO is free from the broadcast dogma that tends to affect, in one way or another, the final product of a network or general cable television show. HBO also tends to completely ignore trends – that is, other than it’s own. In fact, HBO is usually considered a trendsetter. (It’s strange to me how, during the last few years, there is always one or two original shows on a network that are really well done, do really well and are worth watching. But, the following season, at least one other network will have a show eerily similar in many different ways to said show. Originality pays off, you see, and so these lesser, knock-off shows tend to be entirely unremarkable.):

Anyway, I've been watching HBO's “The Wire” on DVD lately and I was struck by a strange notion the other day that made me re-think the difference between network and general cable television and pay-able television on a more critical level. For those of you who don’t know, “The Wire” is a gritty, realist police drama set in the middle of the drug trade in Baltimore. It lacks an HBO “style”; i.e. the supposed pop-culture referential genius of “The Sopranos,” the foul-mouthed Shakespearean prose of “Deadwood,” and the ironic dark humor of “Six Feet Under,” but it’s story-lines are just as compelling as any of the above, if not more so. I guess you could say the style of “The Wire” is it’s gritty realism, or lack of style, which is what struck me. In my feeble mind, “The Wire” is a significant artistic achievement in the notoriously artless medium of television. But – and here’s the rub – there’s nothing overtly artistic about it, comparatively speaking.

Now, the creators of the show, along with some of its admirers, may not agree with me. But hear me out: The Wire’s artistic achievement is its gritty realism.* I think most any of the show’s fans would agree with me on that. Now my question is: why has television become such that a relatively straight-forward “realistic” show is considered artistic? (The “is” is italicized on Microsoft word, which, for some reason, is not an option on the blog editor. I just want to make sure that people know there is emphasis on “is”. – K)

If you flip through the channels, you will see flashier programs with snappier dialogue, hipper music and a defter editorial slight-of-hand than ‘The Wire.’ However, you will not see such a confident commitment to realism -- quality realism. CSI is by no means un-artistic, but I personally don’t believe that show and I certainly don’t believe in that show. It’s too flashy. The storylines are too character-driven. I mean, come on, who wants to kidnap a crime scene investigator and hold them hostage? It’s too “on the nose” to use industry parlance.

“The Wire,” however, is so “on the nose” that it’s not even close to “on the nose”. By that, I mean it’s so artless that it’s now artistic again by comparison. There’s too much filler bullshit in most network television. Much of the plot exposition is tangential and sensationalistic – almost to the point of being off-story. Consider “Lost,” which I think to be one of the greatest television shows of all time (a subject that I intend to write about at some point). But this whole season has felt like a stall tactic, which is something the “Lost” creators have done to varying degrees and with varying success in the past. In “Lost,” the story will often progress to a point where it is revealed that other previous plot progressions or story points are rendered invalid or incorrect by virtue of this new exposition. This is genius in a way, but a complete and utter sham in another. And, yeah, I get it a certain amount of regressive trickery is required for the success of the show. Otherwise the point of “Lost” would be lost -- hehe. But, nonetheless, it’s growing increasingly aggravating and seemingly unnecessary as the show progresses, particularly in the current season. Ultimately, these devices are reduced to what is oft referred to as “style,” which is sometimes a more positive way of saying “gimmickry.”

What I’m driving at is that at some point “popular” television became so artistically rich, so richly artistic, that it neutered itself. Seeing what people refer to as “MTV-style editing” or gimmick-laden, fast-paced, storytelling is no longer jarring or noteworthy. It is expected, maybe even required for your typical television show. Meanwhile, straight story telling and a noticeable lack of style is laudable for the emphasis of substance over style, or lack thereof.

Like “Lost,” “The Wire’s” plots are both character and story-driven, but lack the gimmickry that makes “Lost” so appealing…and so frustrating. And like most, or maybe even all of HBO’s shows, there is a strong serial plot thread present in “The Wire,” coupled with some episodic plots and some running storylines that are usually resolved within the span of a few episodes. If you’re a patient and observant viewer, you will relish seeing seemingly inconsequential moments from previous episodes pay off later. If you’re a fucking spaz with television ADD, then you won’t.

So it seems that art has come full circle in the pop culture milieu: the abundance of style has saturated so many mediums that style has become commonplace, artless. While substance and conformity to reality carries a high artistic currency because of the dearth of style.

This could be argued for just about any artistic medium and the reasons for it can be pure conjecture. People tend to think that independent films are more artistic because there’s less studio involvement. Maybe so. Same with music. Critics tend to appreciate indy bands more for their lack of gimmicks. Indeed it is an argument that has been made and re-made many times over, often appearing as the aforementioned substance versus style or the art versus commerce debate.

But it seems a strange phenomenon – this art paradox in television – because television is supposed to be a notoriously artless medium. However, most television shows are unquestionably more artistic than “The Wire,” at least at first glance. But quality, I would argue, is the greatest artistic achievement, whether this is achieved through substance or style. And “The Wire” is superior substance.

Arm-Chair Quarterbacking Your Team into A Loser

2006-10-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

Last night the New York Giants played the Dallas Cowboys on Monday Night Football on ESPN. (Side note to ESPN: I understand the national exposure presents a good opportunity to showcase the myriad wonderful shows ABC has in its current line-up. But your cross-promotion ploy sucks. I beg of you: please stop cutting away from football to your in-booth interviews. People (me) tune-in to watch football, not hear about all the other great shows ABC has to offer. That's what COMMERCIALS are for. End of message) {Side-side note: ESPN is owned by Disney, which also owns ABC, hence the cross-promotion.}

Anyway, during the first-half of the game, Cowboys quarterback Drew Bledsoe made some "terrible mistakes" by getting sacked three times in the first half and then had the audacity to run for a touchdown. He followed this by making a valid mistake - throwing an interception in the red zone which left the Cowboys unable to capitalize on a Giants turnover. The Giants, in turn, failed to capitalize on the Bledsoe interception. So it evens out.

When the second-half started, Bledsoe was replaced by oft-called for, but seldom seen fourth-year second-stringer Tony Romo, who went on to have his first pass tipped and intercepted on the Cowboys' first offensive series of the half. Romo ignited the crowd and at times seemed in-command while throwing three touchdown passes. But he made some awful, awful choices which also resulted in three interceptions.

Now, to clarify: I am not a Cowboys fan. I am a Broncos fan. However, I couldn't help but notice an eerie similarity between Bledsoe's predicament and that of the Broncos' struggling quarterback, Jake Plummer and his own personal 'Romo', Jay Cutler. Ever since draft day, people have been calling for a change at the quarterback position from Plummer to Cutler. This is not news. Also, Plummer has not played well. At all. Also, not news. But consider this: the Broncos are 5-1. Plummer is as important if not more so than any one player on the team, especially in the end result of each game. Granted, he makes bad decisions at inopportune times, but he has yet to "lose" a game for the team, just as he has yet to "win" a Super Bowl, which is the problem. What is seldom discussed is the fact that Plummer has one of the best records as a quarterback in the last five seasons in the NFL and as a result, so do the Broncos. This puts him in a category he shares with other quarterbacks you may not always associate him with: Peyton Manning and Donovan McNabb to name a couple.

Recently, I checked out Malcolm Gladwell's website, as I am often wont to do, and I read a re-print of a New Yorker article titled: "Game Theory". Check it out at: gladwell.com/2006/2006_05_29_a_game.html In the article, Gladwell references a book called "The Wages of Wins" (Stanford; $29.95), by economists David J. Berri, Martin B. Schmidt, and Stacey L. Brook. In the book, the authors explore the overall value of professional basketball players to their respective teams. I haven't read the book (I intend to, but I wish it was about football) but from what I read in Gladwell's article, I wasn't particularly surprised by the results and I suspect neither will be most readers. The authors argue that value assessment is currently way off in basketball and that scoring a lot of points isn't exactly the category that makes you the most valuable member of a team. (I could go on about what Gladwell said about the book, but I don't want to steal ideas from so many great minds. So for specifics, read the article and the book.)

Back to Plummer. He has led the Broncos to three straight playoff appearances, including a trip to the AFC championship, where the Broncos, unfortunately lost. (Note to Plummer-blaming fans: there are 21 other starters and a an entire coaching staff to share the burden of your derision.) He helps them to win games far more than he does to lose them, despite his mistakes. In other seasons, he has led a usually steady offense to wins despite the fact that the defense barely decided to show up at all. This year, the opposite is true: the defense has picked up the slack while the offense "struggles." While it's unfortunate that the Broncos' offense, Plummer specifically, isn't playing particularly well thus far, I point you to their record - a hard-fought and similarly well-earned 5-1 - and I remind you that two of those wins have come, at one time or another, against teams that are currently leading their division - the Ravens and the Patriots.

Armed with this knowledge, you would think that most Broncos fans would recognize Plummer's value to the organization and would therefore be reluctant to hand a team with a winning record over to a young and inexperienced quarterback like the Cowboys have seemingly done. Well, you would be wrong. It seems that the cause du jour since draft day has been calling for Broncos coach Mike Shanahan to replace Plummer with Cutler, who has yet to see a regular season snap.

For a working example of this scenario, I point you to the Arizona Cardinals, who replaced their starting quarterback, former NFL MVP Kurt Warner, with their top draft pick Matt Leinart. Leinart is a contemporary of Cutler and some say a near-equivalent in all respects. Leinart has played well, no doubt. The Cardinals record? 1-6.

It is said that quarterback in the NFL is one of the hardest positions to play successfly in professional sports. Rookie quarterbacks make a lot of mistakes. It is expected. What is not expected is that they win. This is taken into consideration when coaches put them in the game. But, fans expect their teams to win, no matter who is playing. The chances of doing so are damaged significantly with a rookie quarterbback at the helm. Albeit that it's not impossible. Ben Roethlisberger led Pittsburgh to the playoffs as a rooke and to a Super Bowl win in just his second-year. It is, however, notably rare.

Leinart is used to winning. He won a lot at USC. A lot. But the point is this: Broncos fans seem prepared to see an unpopular and unrelentingly scrutinized quarterback with a record of 5-1 and the top spot in the AFC West benched in favor of an unproven rookie who is bound to make game-changing mistakes.

Personally, I just can't envision a scenario wherein the Broncos chances of being successful would be enhanced by playing Cutler.

Don't get me wrong. Plummer may very well be playing his last season as a Broncos starter, especially if the team stalls in the playoffs. But as of yet, there isn't any reason to bench him in favor of Cutler. None at all. And at this rate the Broncos are poised to go somewhere around 13-3 by seasons's end. Not many teams do that. The teams that do typically make it pretty far in the playoffs, if not the Super Bowl.

So I ask you, Broncos fans: "Do you still call for Jay Cutler?" Surely you jest.

Epilogue:
After the game last night, a Denver newscaster announced Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo's first shot at quarterback as a triumph by off-handedly relating that he threw three touchdown passes. Apropos, I think, for a town who seems collectively hell-bent on engineering the ruin of its own NFL team this season. What the newscaster failed to mention is that Romo also threw three interceptions. And the Cowboys still lost.

Imagidivination

2006-07-26T16:05:00.000-07:00

I have writer's block. I feel like I'm in a Stephen King novel sitting here, staring at an empty page, waiting for a topic to pop in my head that I can run away with. Inspiration is hard to come by these days, imagination even more so. What’s that saying about inspiration and perspiration? Well whatever anti-perspirant I am using must be an equally affective anti-inspirant as well. My imagination? Well that’s just gone.

Let’s explore this a little. Where does imagination go as we grow older? Why is it that the things we imagine are so much more vivid in our youth than they are in adulthood? Why does the mind seem so much more effective at creating gleeful absurdity when it is filtered through a child? In my opinion the answer lies in the –

Oops, there’s the five o’clock whistle. Time to punch out and go home.

I’ll get back to this some other time…

THE ART OF LEISURE

2006-07-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

I went to the bookstore the other day, (why does it seem like all of my posts begin with this sentence? Why do none of them begin with the sentence, “I went a-whorin’ the other night?) seeking out Marcus Aurelius’ classic treatise on stoic self-relflection, Mediations. As I am often wont to do, I found several other interesting reads and sat down to flip through some of these other books. When I sat down, I caught -- out of the corner of my eye -- the cover a book titled, quite simply: “Doing Nothing.” I could over-dramatize my discovery of this book as providential -- a beacon of slacker hope beckoning the ship adrift that is my mind towards, well, further drifting -- but I am way too lazy to do that. So, suffice it to say, that I just stumbled onto it.

Upon closer inspection I discovered that the full title of this book is Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America by Tom Lutz. Now, I am not one so self-aggrandized to claim that a book was written for me. But, by gosh, this book was written for and about people like me. I can’t really say what sort of demographic Mr. Lutz had in mind when he wrote this book, but I will just assume for now it is the very same sort of folk who like to engage in the activity the title suggests. Although, Mr. Lutz does apparently live in my Los Angeles neighborhood, so maybe I will just pop by his dwelling some day and ask.

Regardless, Doing Nothing was quickly added to my list of ‘books I must have’ and, since I have no patience whatsoever, the book was just as quickly re-categorized into ‘books I own.’ I read the first chapter as soon as I got home, which is a sizable number of pages and quite an accomplishment for someone who considers himself a slacker. I was struck by Lutz’s early thesis (or seemingly so, I’m not really sure if that term applies here) that sometimes people who are traditionally considered as enjoying leisure pursue said leisure or activities considered leisurely in an almost workmanlike manner, so that it thusly becomes work. Lutz uses several examples of writers, artists, poets and the like who espouse the slacker lifestyle, but hardly adhere to it as they churn out several pieces of work at a sometimes staggering rate.

Lutz also pays heed to the flip-side of the coin by exploring the fact that some classic examples of hard-workers worked only slightly as hard as they claim. Benjamin Franklin is the earliest, most accessible and most symbolic example. Though Franklin often meditates on the merits of hard work, there is ample evidence to indicate that he often led his life to the contrary.

Now I’m not criticizing Ben Franklin for being a closet slacker, but it’s interesting what this book has to say about the opposing views of what is and is not considered ‘hard work’ and how those who often tout the merits of hard work fail to live up to even their own standards. This is all to say nothing about the differing attitudes about what is and isn’t “activity” in general and the omnipresent qualitative disparity regarding between the generations, which is told through his son’s reluctance to leave the couch in an effort to find a job.

I grew up in a hard-working household. My dad works harder than anybody I’ve ever known and (gasp) he actually enjoys it. We’re talking actual physical labor here. Not sitting in front of a computer pretending to make television (good or otherwise) like his son does. My work experience growing up was mixed. I learned the value of hard work as defined by my dad, which, consequently gave me motivation to never have to do that stuff again, which, although maybe not what my dad wanted me to learn, was nonetheless a valuable lesson. After all, a person takes from each experience what he will, regardless of the original intention. Basically, my credo became work hard at not having to work hard and this translated to going to college, getting a degree in a field I like, graduating, and getting a job doing that thing which I like; all so I never have to do that which I hate, which may or may not include manual labor, or, ‘working hard,’ by my dad’s definition. The weird thing is, even to this day, whenever I should venture to have the discussion of my work history with my dad, he still seems to argue alternately that I have and have never had to work hard in my life, depending on the context. He tends to be contrarian in this regard. For example, if I am arguing that I’ve never worked hard, he will list all of the tough jobs I’ve had. But if I’m saying I know what it is to work hard, he will argue that though I have had tough jobs, they were never “that” tough and if they were, I didn’t work very hard at them and, in fact, spent most of the workday complaining about how hard the work was.

I believe, my dad’s aim was to teach me the value of hard work. The side effect – my realization that hard work sucked -- was unintended. One thing rings true: my dad worked hard to provide. It is after all the most important lesson: learning how to provide, whether it’s for self or for others. As for things I ‘wanted’ I have had to work for most of those things since I was about 14. But the irony is, that my parents have usually ended up footing the bill for much of said ‘wanted things’ in the end. But I think, for them, it’s just the satisfaction of knowing that if it was really and truly necessary, I could, at some point, pay for all of it myself. Or at least I have the capacity to do so.

Doing Nothing also first introduced to me to the (apparently archaic) concept of otium, which, by Lutz’s definition is using leisure as an opportunity to further pursue the arts, philosophy and overall betterment of the self. I say that otium is apparently archaic because a Google search of the term curiously turns up next to nothing. So clearly the term is not one in on the tips of many tongues these days.

Within otium, though, is how I justify what I call my own personal “constant pursuit of leisure.” True, I often say that I like to do as little as possible. But it doesn’t mean that I’m literally lying in bed all day staring at the ceiling (though I do that from time to time). I spend most of my time doing nothing, not in front of the television, but reading or writing or playing music…or playing video games. Okay, so a guy’s got to have some vices. But it is in this context that doing nothing is actually doing something. That is, when the pursuit of leisure is actually the antithesis of doing actual work, but not so of being productive, in a sense.

Productivity is a tricky word. Is productivity actually having a physical end-product that is corporeally tangible? Or can it also be a work-in-progress abstract notion of building towards an admittedly vague, but no less real goal of some sort? In my case, I pursue doing nothing in an effort to broaden my mind, to expand knowledge on subjects where little or no knowledge previously existed or, in other words, to be a jack of all intellectual trades and a master of none. I can’t say that there is an ultimate goal, because if there is an ultimate goal, then there is also reason to eventually stop my pursuit of otium, which I don’t see happening anytime soon.

What I find peculiar is that when people phone me and ask what I’m doing, most of the time I answer “hangin’ out”or “chillin’ or “lampin’,” all of which are interchangeable with “doing nothing.” However, chances are I am probably doing something -- the aforementioned leisurely activities of otium -- even if it borders on nothing. Most of the time I tell people this because I don’t want to send the impression that I am too busy to talk or to make immediate plans, but I also don’t want to give the impression that I don’t know how to enjoy myself, because I do. And how!

The pursuit of otium may not be appealing to all. Some people may not consider the leisure of art or the art of leisure all that rewarding. Many are not happy unless they are actually moving and exerting some sort of physical effort. But, is this movement any less a pursuit of leisure than non-movement?

It is a mistake to confuse leisure with inactivity or inertia. It is also a mistake to become too leisurely, lest we lose all motivation whatsoever. I admittedly fall victim to waxing and waning levels of motivation. But that is what is called laziness, which, again, should not be confused with leisure or ‘doing nothing.’ After all, doing nothing is usually doing something, even though the “something may be of little consequence to others, even ourselves, it is still something, nonetheless.

Spel-chek yerself! Before ewe Spel-rek yoself!

2006-07-06T16:31:00.000-07:00

And to think, I nearly bought a book yesterday entitled, "The Dumbing Down of America." But I didn't think it all that true...until now.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060705/ap_on_re_us/simpl_wurdz;_ylt=AgF2_OQ1B4ASxsCXb2PU8YSs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3ODdxdHBhBHNlYwM5NjQ-

A 2-Fer

2006-07-05T21:57:00.000-07:00

Projects that I have abandoned for obvious reasons

Trust Buddies - A mentoring program that brings together rehabilitated ex-convicts and inner-city under-privileged youth.

The Johnny Clash - A cover band that plays Johnny Cash songs in the style of The Clash and vice Versa

Nun O’ That! - A road-trip screenplay about three nuns on a cross-country pilgrimage for some vague charitable cause whose station wagon break down, so they hitch a ride with a van full of frat boys. Too much sexual tension

The Point Dexters - A nerd-surf rock band. Just fucking ridiculous

An investigative report on jean jackets in the 21st centrury.

Trying to capture the meaning of life in just one song. Somehow it always comes back to bitches and/or money.

A position paper on vertical versus horizontal stripes.

An in-depth essay on how to write in-depth essays.

Writing an epic poem spoof called “The Silly-ad”. Too lazy and can’t find the right meter.

Menace II Society the Musical.

Recording my first Pop/R&B crossover balad entitled, “Girl, Why You Ain’t Neva Gimme No Ass (No Mo’)?

Starting a new religion.

More Unfinished Brilliance

2006-07-05T21:52:00.000-07:00

Questionable Topics/Themes for Children’s Books That I May Or May Not Write

Writing children’s books is easy. All the author has to do is repeatedly use patronizing rhyming hyperbole and emphasize what is humorous with an exclamation point. (Example!) However, topics for children’s books can be hard to come by. I have outlined some topics below that may or may not be suitable for a child’s impressionable mind.

Ricky Rickets and His Struggle to Cure Stress-Related, Possibly Psychosomatic Illnesses

Pros: Children may be a little more inclined to understand their parents and let mommy and daddy have a little fuckin’ peace and quiet already for crissakes!

Cons: Generally, children are not aware of or afflicted by stress-related illnesses…yet

The Dangers of Habitual Hard-Drug Use

Pros: Creates awareness in children that drugs, while sexy, glamorous and romantic, are in fact, danger-ish.

Cons: Maybe that is something the children should find out on their own.

Synergy - A Farce

2006-06-26T22:27:00.000-07:00

INT. – COFFEE SHOP - DAY

Two Gentlemen, ROD and JIM are seated at a table.

Rod: So, I was at this party the other night and these two guys, Mike and Phil made a bet on a boxing match. The loser had to be known as the other’s bitch for a full year.

Jim: So, they just do each other favors and call each other “bitch,” or what?

Rod: No, the loser had to legally change his name. So the loser, Mike, had to go down to the courthouse and change his name to Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike. Isn’t that hilarious?

Jim: No fucking way! I don’t believe you.

Rod: Straight up, my man. That’s the whole reason I brought it up. Phil Johnson's Bitch Mike is right over there. (over Jim’s shoulder) Hey Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike! What’s up dude?

(PHIL JOHNSON’S BITCH, MIKE, notices them and approaches. Rod stands to shake his hand.)

Rod: (continuing) Jim Halverson, this is Phil Johnson’s Bitch Mike.

Jim (standing, shaking Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike’s hand): Um, nice to meet you, um Mike.

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Actually, it’s Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike.

(They all sit.)

Jim: Okay…Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike. But doesn’t it bother you to be called that?

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Nah, man. A bet’s a bet. I don’t think my fiancée likes it too much that we have to change our wedding announcements to read Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike Anthony Johnson and Caitlin Fleur Nelson, but that’s all right.

Rod: You’re just missing the bigger picture. Actually at the party, we went around the room assigning one-dimensional qualities to people that best explains their personality archetype. You can get to know someone so much better that way.

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Sorta like how Native Indians used to name each other, like Chief Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse.

Rod: Right, but with a modern twist. For example, that girl you used to date in college, Mary, was there. And she was the first to be renamed as Mary Takes A Lotta Dicks.

Jim: She does?

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: And then there was Gunter Coke-In-Nose, because he’s always doing so much coke. And Rebekah The Semi-Retarded Waitress. It’s like, synergy, man.

Rod: Yeah, exactly.

Jim: What?

Rod: What, you’ve never heard of the advertising concept of the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects?

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Yeah, it’s like an ad thing.

Jim: Yes, yes. I’m familiar with synergy, but I don’t find the fact that this guy legally changed his name to indicate that he’s someone’s bitch particularly synergistic.

Rod: Well, you’ve heard about these guys who’ve had the names of companies tattooed on their foreheads or whatever, right?

Jim: Yeah.

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Well the same thing applies here.

Rod: And it’s catching on. You’ve to get in on the ground floor on this one, Jim. People are changing. The world is changing.

Jim: Like, how?

Rod: Well, take me for example. I’ve rented out my ass and my dick for sponsorship contracts.

Jim: You what now?

Rod: You heard me right. On my ass, I have a temporary tattoo of Frizzle Freeze Fruit Droolers and my dick has been renamed Celltech Wireless Presents Rod’s Cock. So, everytime I get naked, I am contractually obligated to say aloud, "Celltech Wireless Presents Rod’s Cock." A lot of porn stars are doing it, too. They get the logos tattooed right onto their junk.

Jim: They have advertisements on their genitalia?

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Same here, man except when ever I take my shirt off I announce, “Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike’s naked upper torso is Brought to you by Squeezie’s Extra Soft Tissue Paper, Vitriol Vitamins and Deuce-Loose Juice Incontinence Products. The Juice gets the Deuce Loose!”

Jim: You guys are fucking with me, right?

Rod: Sheeyit! How do you think I paid for Paradigm Pictures’ in partnership with Sinking Ships Studios Presents Cinderella 2 Presents Rod’s new Audi?

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: The same way I paid for Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike’s new nose was produced by Funderland Amusement Parks, a division of Stooperlame Entertainment Corp, LLC. Synergy…

Jim: Synergy?

Rod and Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike (together): Synergy.

Jim: So you think I should get down with synergy?

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Everybody should get down with synergy. As a matter of fact, I hear Chewsy Chopper’s Chewing Gum is taking applicants for forehead-tattoo billboards right now, right down the street at the Vietnamese-American deli. It pays pretty well, too.

Jim: You think I should go check it out?

Rod: Maybe…and by maybe, I mean, “Hell yes!”

Jim: All right, I’m gonna go check it out. Wait here for me? I’ll be right back.

Rod: You know it.

Jim: And, thanks, Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike.

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike (calling after Jim): Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike and the Department of Education advise you to stay in school!

(Jim exits hastily.)

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike (continuing): You think he bought it?

Rod: I told you he would, he’s a sucker for money.

Phil Johnson’s Bitch, Mike: Nicely done. You truly have a gift.

Rod: Another branded walking billboard, courtesy of Chewsy Chopper’s Chewing Gum’s newest advertising synergist, Rod “Richman” Richmond!

(They share a hearty laugh.)

END.

A (Finished?) Tale

2006-06-20T22:31:00.000-07:00

I stumbled onto this short story as I was doing a little first-day-of-summer snooping in my old files. I know why I wrote it. I know what it's about. I understand the satire. The thing is, I can't remember if I considered this a finished piece or not. It's clearly not polished.

Is it finished? You be the judge.

“The Sudden Epidemic Blues: Pestilence Pandemonium!”

I made my way outside in the early morning sun, stretching my weary bones giving way to fits of yawns. As I stooped to grab the paper, I noticed the neighbors packing up their minivan, hustling their kids out of the house and into the back seat.

Jim, the more male of the two parental figures must’ve noticed my quizzical gaze.
“Getting out of town for the weekend. I suggest you do the same,” he shouted over the hedgegrow.
Funny how sometimes people see in the expression of your face that you require additional information, yet they fail to provide it.
“Alright,” I half-yawned, “have fun.”
I could feel his sharp gaze penetrate the back of my head as I made my way up the rickety steps onto my porch. By the time I turned round to acknowledge him, he had refocused his attention on the screaming two year-old struggling in the car seat.

Once inside, I set the paper down in favor of seeing what the television had to offer on a Saturday morning. I usually make it a point to avoid watching the local news – it can be downright scary and unfairly so, I might add. This morning was no different, -er, okay, this morning was a little different because every channel was playing and replaying coverage of the same thing: a pestiferous virus had somehow made its way into Los Angeles and was quickly spreading throughout the community. I pondered the juxtaposition of the words “community” and “Los Angeles” and the hypocrisy inherent therein for a moment. The two did not seem to fit together well. In fact, one of the things I loved/hated about Los Angeles was its complete lack of community, and so I found it puzzling that the newscaster would dare presume that anyone would feel alarmed by this “perceived” threat to the perceived “community.”

Surprisingly enough, many of the various news reports were suggesting either a mass exodus or mass quarantine of the LA area. Quite frankly, I didn’t know the difference because as soon as you tried to evacuate the LA area, an unintentional clusterfuck of a quarantine is exactly what you’d have. And, as they switched over to the traffic copters, I soon found that is exactly what they did have. I (perhaps a little selfishly) wondered how these recently developing events would affect the errands I had to run later in the day.

I picked up the paper and scanned the headlines: more about the pandemic. I was momentarily horrified as I stared at the front page, but upon further investigation my horror subsided when I learned that no, Madonna and Guy Ritchie had not separated, they were just in different locations working on different projects –separation of the geographical nature, not of the matrimonial variety.

To humor myself I read a little about the impending plague, which had already made sick a few hundred Valley residents and a handful of which had already expired. It seems that the emergency rooms were nearly full by midnight this morning as people came in and claimed to be suffering from a variety of mild to mildly serious flu-like symptoms. Either a serious bug was in the air, or there was a nasty strain of food poisoning working its way through a local taco stand. I was hardly three paragraphs into the article when I came across the inevitable terrorist attack speculation, which I then learned had been tenuously proven true but was as yet unconfirmed by the authorities. The paper indicated that no one had yet claimed responsibility. I stopped to ponder on how perplexing it was that terrorists take so much pride in claiming responsibility for calamity. I had always assumed that deniability was the first and best option.

The television was demanding more of my attention than I wanted to give it so, as I picked up the remote to turn it off, I paused to watch a little of the fourth ‘This Just In’ segment in the last ninety-seconds. It seemed that FEMA was now involved and was rescinding the request that Los Angelenos evacuate the city. Instead, the visibly stirred official asked LA residents to stay in their homes and await further instructions. As it turns out, the cops and EMTs were having trouble keeping up with the increasing demands of the gridlocked traffic as several semi-major car accidents, fistfights and small riots had put the entire freeway system at a standstill. In other words, the Saturday morning traffic more resembled a weekday morning. I shook off the sudden shudder of terror that went up my spine at the prospect of having to sit in traffic all day in an attempt at getting my errands done.
“I’ll just take the surface streets,” I proclaimed jovially to myself.
I could hear sirens wailing in the distance. Then an altogether new set of sirens chirped and whined in closer proximity. I frowned knowing all this noise in my normally quiet neighborhood was going to seriously affect my customary afternoon nap.

Despite the mass exodus, the news reporters were still able to find willing interviewees. It’s funny how when people are running away from an impending disaster, there always seems to be a handful of them who are willing to stop for a camera and explain to a reporter how they are running away from an impending disaster. This thought snapped me out of my daze and I snapped off the television. Exclamation point.

I found this to be a genuine golden opportunity to go back to bed and wait the latest pandemonium out the only way I know how: by ignoring it. Now if only my neighbor would shut off his fucking radio with all of the “Large Scale Disaster of Epidemic Proportions” chatter I can barely hear coming from outside my window. I mean, seriously, some people are so selfish, it’s like they don’t care about anybody else but themselves at all.

On the Anti-Intellectualism of the Tao

2006-06-18T20:45:00.000-07:00

In the past few months I have undertaken a serious study in the Taoist canon via firstly, the Tao Te Ching, and then a collection of Thomas Cleary translations broken down into volumes called, appropriately enough, The Taoist Classics. While I am only part of the way through the second of four volumes in this particular series, I can tell you that one common theme comes through in the pursuit of the Tao – a conscious effort to avoid conscious or, contrived, thought.

It is, for those who pursue the study of Taoist thought, readily apparent that Taoism is incredibly hard to understand, often seemingly contradicting its own logic, or complete lack thereof. The further one goes into this study, the more complicated and esoteric the Tao becomes and it is incredibly easy to get lost in the rhetoric, much of which is delivered via metaphorical prose that is in and of itself a task to decipher. However, it seems that getting lost in the rhetoric defeats the purpose of studying the Tao, as it is often stated in the literature that the words are not as important as the end result.

I am no exception to the confusion. I am currently in the middle of exploring Taoist alchemy, which is maddeningly complex and have found that my “western sensibilities” are proving of very little use in coming to understand the meaning behind these texts.

For those who don’t know, I will briefly and simply, relate what I believe to be the main purpose of the Tao: to return to the state at which one is “clear and responsive” – an almost infantile state of empty-minded, yet fully-aware consciousness. Reacting instead of acting. It doesn’t mean zoning out, or closing up, or taking a vow of silence. It simply means observing, considering and reacting appropriately according to the tenets of modern ethics, etc.

One thing I love about Taoism is the stated purpose of conforming the rhetoric to fit the current social conditions instead of ascetic adherence to an archaic pantheon of moral code. Taoism acknowledges the ever-changing state of society and encourages one to consider how his thoughts and behavior are appropriate for the time, while still incorporating the methodology and overall basic thesis of the Tao. This concept is similar to taking ‘the middle path’ – a Buddhist concept that preaches right mindfulness.

It is interesting to me, though, how the study and application of the Tao in my life has carried over to my interactions with others and my thought process in its entirety. I find this both a blessing and a curse. For example, a blessing is I have spent less time intellectualizing and over-analyzing my relationships, actions and general overall function in any given environment, which is something – for better or worse – that I am often prone to do. In fact, one might say that I have historically spent much of my time in critical self-analysis. Obviously, this affects nearly everything that I think, do or say, and so consequently, I have found it difficult to find new things to write about in this new state of mind, which is a curse, albeit a tolerable one.

I cannot say how long this foray into Eastern thought will last. I have become more and more interested in philosophy in the last few years and have pursued my interest in various media. But there is a difference between Eastern and Western thought, most notably, the degree to which a topic is intellectualized. In my brief dalliance with Eastern thought, I have found that critical analysis is forsaken in favor of simplistic face-value assessment. In fact, Eastern thought isn’t generally categorized in the Philosophy section or the religious section of a book store, but into a grey area somewhere in-between, often called, (surprisingly enough) “Eastern Thought.”

My pursuit of Taoism has inspired me to expand (once I finish with the current canon, of course) into Buddhism, which has much in common the certain schools of Taoism.

It’s strange to actively try and not think about things that are so commonly over-analyzed in one’s daily life – to let situations that are usually associated with internal or external strife enter your mind and dissolve, leaving no trace of existence whatever. I wouldn’t claim to have mastered any of the Taoist techniques, but I have experimented with it to some success and I find that much of my experience, when it lacks the taint of my personal judgment, is far more rewarding now than it once was. It’s sort of like the old saying that goes something like “love like you won’t get hurt,” etc. The pure simplicity of interaction itself is worth the effort.

Question

2006-06-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

I have seriously asked this question of several people in the last few days. It's a weird query, I know, but for some reason it's been bugging me.

Why don't we wash our toothbrushes in the dishwasher?

Okay, here's my logic: you eat off of a fork and a spoon and a plate and drink out of a cup, all of which are either handwashed or washed in the dishwash apparatus. Why, then, do we not wash something that we stick in our mouths more than once a day and leave to fester and rot with our daily mouthgerms all over it?

What does this problem say about the philosophy of hygiene in our culture?

I think I know the answer, or at least a rough approximation of one, but any one answer I come to seems unsatisfactory. It could be that soap may get caught in the bristles and we would slowly damage our teeth or, worse yet, poison ourselves to death. But that seems highly unlikely.

Maybe toothpaste is an adequate enough of a cleansing agent not to require outsourced cleansing. I mean, it may be that cleansing a cleanser itself is redundant.

...and I think I just answered my own dumbass question.

The preceeding was an ill-conceived thought experiment.

I'm sorry.

(Just trying to get something going, for mine brain hath grown stagnant).

Soul Really Matters to Me

2006-05-15T22:33:00.000-07:00

...too much.

Also...

2006-05-13T23:49:00.000-07:00

To the dudes who go around posting advertisements in the comments section of my blog,

Don't be a dick, else I'll start forwarding all of my spam to the email address you leave. Leave my blog alone, or maybe I'll report you to the innernet policia, la bitchface!

O! Ire-nee, what d'ye have for me?

2006-05-13T23:29:00.000-07:00

I am on the Internet Movie Database. I don't know how. I don't know why. I didn't give anyone permission to put my name on IMDb, and yet, sure as shit, it's there. I have two credits, which are both not entirely correct. Here's the kicker, though: I wanted to change my profile and add some "trivia" as in 'trivial information', as in, 'bullshit nobody need know/care about'. My reason for doing this was to, y'know, fuck around'n'stuff. But, I CAN'T CHANGE MY OWN IMDb PROFILE!!! *shaking fist in the air*

Why? I don't know. I don't have enough 'experience' as a 'contributor' the submission page says, which, I guess, translates to not having spent enough time updating "other projects" Gary Busey is or has been involved in and naming all of the dogs that James Cann may or may not own. Well, I don't know who 'contributed' my information, but I would like to pay them a 'tribute' and 'contribute' my own 'contribution' of trivial factoids that I would place on my own damn page about me, if I could.

So, go now and look ye upon my name in all of its semi-correct splendor, then pretend you click on a link entitled 'trivia' and are reading such wonderful things about me as listed below (in no particular order).

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1618403/

Here now, my IMDb trivia:

Is handsome.

Has many second cousins and knows the names of almost none of them.

Is related to the infamous (or is that un-famous?) BeeBibbleC.

Does not, to his knowledge, own any reptiles.

Is Tao-ish.

Is still unaware, to this day, how or why his name is even on this website and why 1/2 (half) of his two (2) entries are incorrect-ish.

Gained 10-ish pounds to take on a role in Texas. The role was behind the camera. And it was a reality show. He has yet to lose that weight.
END TRIVIAL-NESS

I am in Denver right now, by the way. So look forward to some Denver-related posts coming sometime in the next few days, weeks or probably never!

Scientology Sincerest

2006-03-13T16:52:00.000-08:00

Late in the game, I know. I don't know why I never posted this.

Anyway...

I've always wanted to write something about Scientology, but to be honest, I don't have anything original or interesting to say about it. Sure, they've supposedly got an air force and are waiting for an alien invasion or something. But I don't know enough about it to comment on it. However, a Google search will reveal a few comprehensive articles about Scientology that reveal the seedier elements, if that's your interest.

Why am I thinking about Scientology? Well, for one, The Scientology Center is right down the street from me on L. Ron Hubbard Drive. Do you think it's a coincidence that L. Ron Hubbard's church ended up on a street named after him.

That was a joke by the way.

The other reason I'm thinking about Scientology is because of John Travolta and insincere actors in general. I know it's a little late, but in watching the Academy Awards, I couldn't help but notice that whenever John Travolta's face graced my television set, he was each time upstaged by his own hair. Dude was wearing a rug. Not a toupe, either. A straight up rug. Like that sketch from the movie Amazon Women on the Moon with Joey Pants where he's selling carpet that you wear on your head. That's how fake his shit looks.

At one point, Travolta (or Revolta as I've heard my sister call him) got up to address the crowd in presenting an award or something. It was then that I quickly analyzed my decade or so long deep seated dislike for him. In all that time, I knew I didn't like him, but I didn't know why. I mean, he's just a guy. All right, he's an actor-guy, but he's still only human. Suddenly though, I had a Travolta-epiphany. John Travolta is that rare breed of actor who is even less sincere as a "real-life" personality than he is as a character in films.

Granted, one can't really look to John Travolta for examples of great thespian achievements. We all know he's made a lot of bad movies, so I don't fault him for that. Well, maybe I do, but not when it comes to his public persona. After all, he was kick-ass in Pulp Fiction and Welcome Back Kotter. He was also in Grease. I'll at least concede that.

But whenever I see interviews or similar clips on television, I find myself constantly on the offensive about his demeanor and his hair in particular. He has my scrutiny in common with his fellow Scientologist Tom Cruise, who until around a year ago actually seemed like a pretty cool guy. Now, he's a nutter.

Anyway - that hair! That hair! How do you expect your fans to believe that hair, Travolta? What are you thinking? Why can't actors just grow old? You look even more foolish with that fake hair than you think you do as an old, balding man. How insulting to the rest of America that you can just pretend you're not going bald, when you so clearly are. I saw Look Who's Talking AND Look Who's Talking, Too. (Not the third one, fool me once...or twice...) I knew you were on your way then. I know what a receding hairline looks like. But now, your hairline looks poised to join your eyebrows in an eyeball to asshole mat that goes down your back, jack.

These are the reasons America doesn't trust celebrity religion or politics. Why would anyone in there right mind take life cues from somebody who is so clearly in self-denial?

That's all I have to say...for now.

Pretentious AND Precocious

2006-02-22T19:38:00.000-08:00

Whilst doing my "time" in Texas, an administrator at the school where I was working explained to me the Peter Principle and the theory of the Glass Ceiling. I would love to relate to you exactly why this discussion was appropriate, but I'm still not clear why or if it was. I didn't ask him to, but he did it. Anyway, I always thought the Peter Principle had something to do with robbing Peter to pay Paul or some such thing. Apparently that's Biblical. The Peter Principle is corproeally conceived - no divination whatsoever. The way that this administator explained the Peter Principle to me and my colleague can be summed up thusly: one only rises to one's minimum level of incompetence. Like I said, I don't know what the hell he was talking about. However, in reading through several of my writings for this blog and other non-existent "projects", I have come to realize that this same principle applies to not only my writing, but almost everything that I pursue in my life.

What I mean by this is that I am almost always trying to achieve something that is just beyond the reach of my abilities. Some people would call this ambition, others may call it arrogance, others still may call it a ham sandwich, but I don't know why anyone would listen to what a schizophrenic has to say anyway. (Note to self: I wonder what would come from letting schizophrenics review movies, books, television and music. I think there may be some problems inherent. It requires further thought.)

Anyway, the various sketches of possible blog entries, personal essays, goofy spoofy scenarios, etc. have in common one thing, other than their current status of incomplete: they are all outside my realm of expertise. Now, I'm not saying I have an expertise, because I don't. But if I were to have one - which I don't - it wouldn't be in writing about shit that I barely understand. True I tend to write about movies, music, pop cultural phenomena, etc. But what person doesn't have an opinion on such pedestrian topics? And does that person really fully understand what it is that their opining about? Hardly. But, it's when I try to find some deeper connection or meaning to these topics that I seem to flounder in the pools of Peter Principlean precociousness.

In the documentary Hearts of Darkness about the making of the film Apocalypse Now, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola says the worst thing you can be called is pretentious. He then goes on to say that there's a very fine line in art between doing something people will find artistically credible or egomaniacally pretentious. The same thing is probably true of anything done for mass consumption. But what certain quality makes one project more or less pretentious than the next?

When I was in film school the word my professors most loathed to hear from the students during our lengthy and sometimes brutal critique sessions was that something was "good" or "bad". Their hatred for such lack of critical commitment is understandable. But the other oft-used and much-loathed critical term was "cheesy". When asked why they hated this term, or any of the three offending terms, the professors would often cite the ambiguity inherent in the words themselves. What does good or bad mean and who dictates their meaning? Bear in mind these are the same people who would quickly call something "insincere" or "sentimental", neither of which have any real out-of-context critical value. If you say to someone that their project is insincere, then they may respond that insincere is exactly what they were going for and so they will be pleased.

What am I interested in is this: what is the defining quality that gives those words the negative or positive connotation with which they've been attached? Is calling something cheesy no less qualifiable than calling something sentimental? And further, is it really such a bad thing to be considered pretentious, or precocious, even if you are the one ascribing this quality to your own "work"? After all, there is no inherent negativity to these words. The negativity is injected by the user in any certain context.

I think it is valid to be inquisitive about things you don't understand, to attach meaning to things that isn't necessarily inherent, to find connections between things - academically or otherwise - whether or not it is "legitimate". Babies make sense of the world by a very similar process of trial and error. One would make sense of an alien culture using the same techniques, but maybe not in such brazenly outspoken way.

Most of all, though, it is meaningful to comment on things that are beyond one's realm of understanding. I think it is essential, even. However, it is in this discussion that we HOPEFULLY become more aware of what it is that we are exploring and somehow gain some semblence of understanding. It's a risk. You may seem precocious, pretentious, sentimental, insincere or cheesy - even to yourself. But at least you took the risk and maybe in doing so, you increased your minimum level of incompetence just slightly. And you are a better person for having done so. And, of course, by "you" I mean "me".

FYI: The so-called Peter Principle, according to http://www.bartleby.com -

"The theory that employees within an organization will advance to their highest level of competence and then be promoted to and remain at a level at which they are incompetent."

Of New Obsessions and Olde Friends

2006-02-20T19:15:00.000-08:00

Alright.

I know.

It's been awhile.

I've been on a hiatus of sorts, but that's all over now. Well, at least until I get busy with work...again...in Texas...help.

Oh my god, I have so much to tell you! There has been much on my mind. The well is overflowing once again. It never really went dry, but laziness got the best of me. It always does. But right now, I'm sitting in my sister's apartment without a place of my own, huddled in the corner trying not to make a spectacle of myself as I bubble over with excitement at this newfound ambition to write some.

I have tried, recently, to contribute to the sorry state of mine own blog. I started a piece in defense of Jake Plummer after the Broncos lost the AFC Championship game to the Steelers. But I lost passion halfway through. Someday soon I may revisit said piece, but then again, I may not. I am hardly qualified to provide commentary on the reasons why Jake Plummer should not be replaced at quarterback. That, and I think I suddenly went on a (failed) tangent about something else.

However, as an update, I am providing a list of things that I have done/seen/read/thought about in these last few months:

1. Comic books. Lots and lots of comic books.
2. Video iPod. It's going to change the world again. Starting...now. Because I said it just now.
3. Lewis and Clark's journals. Utterly fascinating. I couldn't put it down the first time I picked it up, but then I felt like taking a nap, so I did.
4. Texas. Never wanted to go there. Went there. Don't want to go back. Probably will. (There is nothing wrong with Texas, it's just not California.)
5. Lost souls. Accidental, providential, etc. You know who you are and I am sorry that it's like this. Honestly. But I can do nothing to help you.
6. Heavy psychedelic rock. Always.
7. Movies. They suck right now. I am so annoyed.
8. Television. Finally catching up with Lost. I fucking love Lost. It's the most brilliant piece of television ever. Ever.
9. Firefly. Never thought I would love this show so much. I do.
10. Football. Denver didn't show up for the AFC Championship. People asked me who I was rooting for during the Super Bowl. The Broncos.
11. Reading. Holy shit I read a lot. And I like it.
12. Re-establishing contact with old friends. It's never too late. Now matter how long it's been.

SOON.

Whass Wrong Witchu?

2005-09-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

Extra ! Extra! All the Idiotic News that's important to no one!

What perfect timing to report on such specific and relevant matters. Perhaps Hurricane Katrina has revealed more about America than we would like to acknowledge. The following news stories are a great indicator of what is wrong with America/Americans.

from: http://www.imdb.com/news/sb/2005-09-06/

Forget the Eye, Katrina Has Legs

Television news executives say they are anticipating that the Katrina aftermath will remain a major story for at least weeks -- and probably months -- ahead. Marcy McGinnis, senior vice president of CBS News, told the Hollywood Reporter that she expected TV news to focus on the human tragedy left in the hurricane's wake and on questions like: "How do people start to rebuild their lives? How do they find members of their families? How do they find out if their family and friends are even alive or dead? Where are they going to start their new lives?" But Bob Lichter of the Center for Media and Public Affairs said that he expects journalists to focus on such matters as government preparation, polices and response to the hurricane. He told USA Today that the story "doesn't just have legs, it has tentacles. ... Its implications reach into hot-button controversies involving race, poverty, economics and partisan politics. The reach of this story will make the O.J. Simpson case look like a news brief." Meanwhile, the storm has brought the cable and broadcast networks huge ratings increases. USA Today reported that Fox News's audience of 4.8 million viewers in primetime last week represented a 142-percent rise over the news network's average audience in July. CNN's audience rose to 3.9 million viewers, up 466 percent, and MSNBC's surged to 1.6 million, up 470 percent.

and, from: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050906/ap_on_re_us/katrina_refugees__hk4

Use of the Word 'Refugee' Stirs Debate

By JOCELYN NOVECK, Associated Press Writer 43 minutes ago

NEW YORK - What do you call people who have been driven from their homes with only the clothes on their backs, unsure if they will ever be able to return, and forced to build a new life in a strange place? News organizations are struggling for the right word.

Many, including The Associated Press, have used "refugee" to describe those displaced by the wrath of Hurricane Katrina.

But the choice has stirred anger among some readers and other critics, particularly in the black community. They have argued that "refugee" somehow implies that the displaced storm victims, many of whom have been black, are second-class citizens — or not even Americans.

"It is racist to call American citizens refugees," the Rev. Jesse Jackson said, visiting the Houston Astrodome on Monday. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have expressed similar sentiments.

Others have countered that the terms "evacuees" or even "displaced" are too clinical and not sufficiently dramatic to convey the dire situation that confronts many of Katrina's survivors.

President Bush, who has spent days trying to deflect criticism that he responded sluggishly to the disaster, weighed in on Tuesday. "The people we're talking about are not refugees," he said. "They are Americans and they need the help and love and compassion of our fellow citizens."

The 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention describes a refugee as someone who has fled across an international border to escape violence or persecution. But the Webster's New World Dictionary defines it more broadly as "a person who flees from home or country to seek refuge elsewhere, as in a time of war or of political or religious persecution."

The criticism has led several news organizations to ban the word in their Katrina coverage. Among them are The Washington Post and the Boston Globe.

"We haven't used the word since the beginning of the crisis," said Kenneth Cooper, the Globe's national editor. "Some of us had different reasons, but we all came to the same conclusion: not to use it."

The AP and The New York Times are among those continuing to use the word where it is deemed appropriate.

"The AP is using the term `refugee' where appropriate to capture the sweep and scope of the effects of this historic natural disaster on a vast number of our citizens," said Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll. "Several hundred thousand people have been uprooted from their homes and communities and forced to seek refuge in more than 30 different states across America. Until such time as they are able to take up new lives in their new communities or return to their former homes, they will be refugees."

The Times was adhering to a similar policy.

"We have not banned the word `refugee,'" said spokeswoman Catherine Mathis. "We have used it along with `evacuee,' `survivor,' `displaced' and various other terms that fit what our reporters are seeing on the ground. Webster's defines a refugee as a person fleeing `home or country' in search of refuge, and it certainly does justice to the suffering legions driven from their homes by Katrina."

William Safire, who writes the weekly "On Language" column for The New York Times Magazine, said he did not believe the term "refugee" had any racial implications.

"A refugee can be a person of any race at all," he said. "A refugee is a person who seeks refuge."

He first suggested using the term "hurricane refugees." After thinking it over, though, he said he would probably simply use the term "flood victims," to avoid any political connotations.

FYI

2005-08-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

I love tennis! (Suddenly).

Also, football. Yay!

The Ultimate Exercise in Narcissism: Everything you never wanted to know about me.

2005-05-22T21:31:00.000-07:00

I (I write the letter I more than any other letter, probably because I’m always talking about myself) have always fantasized that I would take part in some kind of self-congratulatory roundtable forum wherein I, by this time being a legitimate or at least noteworthy writer, would answer questions regarding just why it is that I write. In this fantasy, I would go on and on about how important writing is and what it means to me and how necessary it is for me to go on living because I bring so much meaning into people’s otherwise meaningless lives. Since I will likely never take part in such Kory revelry, I have decided to explain why I write to the only audience that will ever read this: me.

I write first and foremost because I have things to say and no one to say them to. Plain and simple. I write because I have ideas that I think mean something and I want to remember them. I write to practice my communications skills. I write for therapeutic reasons. I write to amuse myself. I write to distract myself. I write things about things I want to read about that I feel nobody else has written about. It would be a lot easier for me if other people would write them for me, so I could read them without having to put the effort into writing them first and these other people’s writing would surely be more thorough and entertaining than my own version. Sometimes I write about things that have already been written about that I feel haven’t been appropriately addressed or maybe have been and I’m just rehashing old ideas.

I’m proud of a lot of the stuff that I write. I don’t know if any of it will ever get published. I don’t know if I’ll ever show any of it to anyone. After all, most of it is very personal, but not in an embarrassing way. It just deals with my opinion mostly on pop culture phenomena. Most people probably wouldn’t want to read my opinions about shit that they don’t care about, which is fine, because I probably wouldn’t want to read theirs either. After all, just what gives me license to write about such topics? I don’t have any more (or less for that matter) knowledge about these things than anyone else. Maybe my insights are unique, but I highly doubt it. My writing tends to be a little philosophical in the way that philosophy always makes the reader think to himself, “Well, duh. That’s all pretty obvious.” My hope is that whomever reads my material will think the same thing, but also say the second thing people think when they read philosophy, “I just didn’t realize it/never could express it/never heard anyone else express it.”

There’s an importance in striking a chord with an audience. Nowadays it’s important for an audience not to feel alienated by the material. They want to be in on the joke. (*It should be noted here that when I say, “audience” I mean me. Again, keeping it purely solipsistic here.) Who can blame them? True, some people want to be blown away and tricked and confused and surprised. But people also want to feel that they are just as capable of expressing things as the writer is, they just don’t have the time/inclination/knowledge/interest to write it out.

I wish that I were interested in writing fiction. But to be honest, it’s too hard. I ‘m not much of a visual person. I can’t write imagery. I think I lack story imagination. I believe I’m a pretty good storyteller, but only in the oral tradition. My fiction tends to get bogged down with too many boring details. The ultimate reason I’m bad at writing fiction is that I’m generally not interested in it, so I generally don’t write it. Sure, I have as many tales I’d like to tell as any lonely, half-crazy septuagenarian and I have the strong urge to write a good novel as much as any bored, under-stimulated housewife, but in the end it just doesn’t currently interest me. Though I have toyed with it from time to time, I find that it’s best left in more capable hands. And also, I’m really lazy. But, I am working on that (a little).

Though a person wouldn’t know it from reading this crap, I write to be funny. Nothing inspires me like a funny idea. Unfortunately, I tend to run short on those lately, so I write things of inconsequential subject matter, such as the reasons why I write about things.

As I said earlier, I like to write about things that I’m interested in. People are interesting to me. Culture is interesting to me. Unfortunately, I can’t get too serious about writing nonfiction, either. That would require research. Research is like studying – boring. I didn’t study in school, so why start now? Sure, if a potential employer wanted me to research a story, I would probably do it, assuming that it’s an interesting topic. One of the great things about writing solely for self is that you have only one person to please. If you don’t want to write about local events like you would at a crappy local newspaper, then you don’t have to. End of story.

I do imagine that one day, however, I will take a stab making it as some sort of hack writer. I would really prefer to be an essayist. I would love to make a living telling people – I won’t say my “opinions” because I hate opinions – but my ideas about certain subjects. Though it hardly seems possible that anyone would ever want to hear my opinions. Sure, if I were some sort of Lester Bangs-esque, charismatic run-on-sentence “genius” writer like Dave Eggers, people would want to listen, -er read I mean.

The problem with the personal essay is that people read it and think, “Hey, this seems easy. I can do it.” The thing is – they can’t. Oh, wait, yes they can, but don’t tell them. People - and I include myself in that lot - really love to give their opinions. If they’re anything like me, which they most certainly may or may not be, then they have really no business telling people their opinion, unless they want to come off as a hack, or a jerk, or a dork.

Still writing for the self is rewarding. I like to snicker at my own cleverness or “intelligence.” I never really applaud my own literary acrobatics, but sometimes a phrase or two pops up and I surprise myself. I mostly write stream-of-consciousness stuff. When I hit a wall and run out of ideas, I get bored and the piece suffers. (I hate using the word ‘piece’, by the way, it sounds overly snobbish and should be used only in relation to sculpture or should be appended by the words ‘of ass’ or ‘of pie’ or something. But for lack of a better term - piece it is!) The last thing you want is a suffering piece. Who knows what kind of unhappiness a suffering piece will bring. To quote the old timer in the mailroom in my favorite movie, The Hudsucker Proxy, when I hit a wall, “I usually just throw ‘em out.” I don’t literally throw anything away (anymore) but I will definitely sit on a piece for, oh, say – forever. Though, I have recently been going back and touching up old unfinished material, an experience that I find rewarding and frustrating at the same time. It sucks to see an unfinished idea you know has some merit, but still can’t bring into focus.

Now’s a good time to reveal that I have a horrible memory and this, coupled with pathological laziness, creates for an inconsistent creative output. I will often visualize and write out a good piece of material in my head, only to forget everything but the subject when I sit down to write it. This could be any period of time from a few minutes to a few years. Fortunately, I have a sort of memory for forgotten material. It always seems to pop up in one form or another. It’s too bad I can’t immediately recall it when I want to.

Now seems like an equally good time to mention that the quality, frequency and topical nature of my writing seems to be influenced by many factors, over which I have little, or no, or complete control, depending on the circumstances. Suffice it to say that I am an erratic person, inconsistency creeping into just about every aspect of my life, but one thing I can say is that I am pretty consistently lazy and I’m kind of proud of myself for being able to hold onto that one.

Anyway…

Since I’ve always wanted to be interviewed and since I’m also in a weird mood, I’m going to keep this gas going by conducting an interview of myself.* Interviews, if conducted properly, are really awesome. The interviewer can ask interesting questions and, depending on the subject’s importance, either to the interviewer or to the subject himself, he can answer questions as arrogantly as possibly imaginable. I like the prospect of interviewing myself because I can really think my answers through, then go back and amend them to make me appear (even more) interesting and articulate. And no question will take me by surprise, since I am also acting as my own publicist and have full veto power over the content.

*Due credit must be given to Vincent Gallo, who interviewed himself to hilarious effect on his website, www.vincentgallo.com So I admit it, I stole this idea from him.

Question: So tell me a little bit about myself. Where am I from for starters?

Answer: Well, I usually tell people I’m from one of two places, depending on the situation - South Dakota or Montana. If I don’t care what the person thinks of me, I will usually just say South Dakota. If I want to impress some good-ol’ boy charm onto someone or if I’m trying to get laid, or both, I will usually say Montana. For some reason that always goes over better. People tend to be more interested, so it goes down smoother, if ya’ catch my drift. But, it’s pretty complicated, actually. I was born and lived for nine years in South Dakota, then moved to Montana, then back to South Dakota when I was fourteen, then went to college back over in Montana. However, a recent development has given me cause to tell people I’m from South Dakota almost exclusively. HBO has had some success with their show Deadwood, which is based on my hometown. True story: I find that people are now more impressed with my being from Deadwood than they are with my being from Montana. However, I have yet to get laid because of this fact, which is truly a bummer.

That being said and to answer your question succinctly and concisely - I’m from LA.

Q: What, if any, formal education do I have?

A: Regarding writing? Well, none, really. I’ve always felt I was pretty articulate and pretty funny. I don’t know if anybody else did or still does. But, you know…fuck them.

Q: Okay. So, what is it that I like to write about? Break it down for me.

A: Um, I like shit that’s probably pretty boring to other people. Which is fine, ‘cause other people tend to be stupid. Just kidding – kind of. I am fascinated by the phenomenon of religious and ideological cults. I dig on cultural criticism – both popular and ‘un.’ I like satire. I simultaneously loathe and love celebrity culture. I went to film school, so I am programmed to feel that I can comment on just about anything at anytime and people should want to listen to what I have to say.

Q: Wow, was I neglected as I child or something?

A: No, on the contrary. I had/have a kick-ass family. I don’t know what it is about me that makes me want to ramble on as if I know about shit. I certainly got attention when I was growing up. Maybe it just wasn’t enough. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t given a lot. It just means that nothing is ever enough. I’m never satisfied, but I never do anything about it either. I don’t really know how I get by to be perfectly honest. I’m pretty lazy. I currently work in television and somehow people seem to fail upward in that world, so naturally, I’m on the fast track to superstardom. But, I’m currently on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I’m very fragile and unstable and that’s very crucial to the cultivation of the creative personality. At least that what I think I’m supposed to think. Well, that and a nagging drug habit.

Q: Tell me a little bit about what I think shaped my worldview. What makes a person like Kory Lanphear tick?

A: Hmmm. That’s an interesting and cliched question I have posed to myself. I’m not really sure how to answer that. I can currently divide my life into about five basic parts and those are, in chronological order: pre-cognitive, the part where I pretended I was a ninja, the part where I played a lot of sports, the part where I was a dickhead (carries over into the following two portions), the period where I found out a lot about myself and started hating who I used to be, and the pseudo-genius you see before you now.

Q: (returns from looking lovingly in the mirror): But you, I mean I, have a pessimistic streak in me. Nihlism, maybe? Existentialism?

A: Oh, I don’t really subscribe to any philosophical indoctrination. I will concede that my life has been marked by bouts of depression and rage, which continues to this day. I’m trying to change all of that, but it’s definitely had a huge influence on my work. I find that if one has lowered expectations, they are not surprised when they fail. And conversely, they are elated by small victories because they’re not anticipating them. It’s not such a bad way to think, when looked at that way.

By the way, did I just refer to my writing as “my work.” My work?! Oh, man, I truly am one dork of a kind.

Q: I have a point, there. Speaking of influences…

A: (Laughs) Man, this is weird. I’m a fuckin’ weird dude. I mean I’m interviewing myself here! But – my influences - that’s a good question – and one I’ve always wanted to be asked. My influences are many and I can hardly do justice to anybody by mentioning them, but I’ll give it a shot. From a writing standpoint, I can’t think of any one writer who has inspired or influenced my work, though I’m sure there are some. Oh yeah, Chuck Klosterman – love his shit, though I don’t always agree with it. Some random influences I can definitely cite: The Big Lebowski and the Coen brothers in general, heavy psychedelic rock bands like Dead Meadow and Fu Manchu, Disinformation, pop art, sketch comedy like the Kids In The Hall, Monty Python, Mr. Show, movies - lots and lots of movies - too many to name, in fact, but nothing in black and white, besides Mildred Pierce for some reason, Lolita and Dr. Strangelove, I guess though I’m not really a big Kubrick fan. There are some others, but I can’t really think of them right now. I’ll have to add them when I revise.

Q: Okay, lastly. Sum up my goals for me.

A: Oooh, I’ve got a great answer for this. Real witty ‘n’ shit. I work on the basis of a certain maxim, you might call it my “mantra”, or hell, even my personal philosophy and I am proud to say that it worries my parents. That motto, simply stated is: “Minimum effort, maximum results.”

My Brief Dalliance with Intellectual Greatness or Tales of a Fourth Grade Something

2005-04-21T18:51:00.000-07:00

In my school days, I never considered myself the “scholarly type” or the “academic sort” or even really a good student. There was, though, a certain period – in my younger days – when I was allowed to brush my prepubescent lips across the cheek of the great Goddess of Academia and I shall relay that story presently.

I wasn’t much of a learner in my early days. I was a good boy, I suppose. Yes a good boy - a good boy who liked to leave school early, sometimes under the auspices of a sudden and suspiciously short-termed sickness, sometimes not. Mostly the former. I was in the school office to call home sick often in the early days, so often that I recall that one of the kind office ladies who would often be the channel through with much of this elementary school psychosomatic cloak and dagger drama took place had a sticker on her desk that read, “A clean desk is a sign of a sick mind.” I didn’t get it then and I’m not sure I get it now. Anyway, I would usually place my sick plea calls before the noon hour for the following reasons: there was more time to make a miraculous recovery in time for playing with my friends or sisters when they returned home from prison…er school; I could have lunch at home and eat something palatable that didn't include Tater-tots as an ever-present side dish; and finally, because the cartoons on television in the afternoon were more watch-able than those that aired after 3:30. Occasionally, though, I would call my mom at around 2:45 to see if she would come pick me up and take me home. She would try to reason with me that there was only a half hour or so left of school and couldn’t I wait until the day was over. I could not be moved by such logic. I had had my fill of school that day and that was that. I was ready to go home. Besides, I knew that I had to go straight to the dreaded “day care” immediately after school, which wasn’t home, but some other halfway house parents stick you when they are off doing grown up shit.

So, my schoolwork suffered. Well, it didn’t “suffer”, per se. It got done. And it was done pretty much correctly, give or take a few misspellings and factual confusions. But the work that was school suffered. I suffered. I just didn’t have the patience for putting “work” into “school”. Then one day, my fourth grade teacher happened to notice that I was always the first one done with my in-class assignments and they were (more or less) usually pretty satisfactory-ish. She decided, for whatever reason, that I must be some sort of super-genius. (Ha! Finally someone sees my potential.) This decision lead her to consult the school counselor and the two of them colluded to subject me to a battery of tests – mostly regarding readin’ and writin’. (Math was never my strong suit. I nearly failed high school Geometry, which is typically the poor math student’s favorite class. I much preferred study hall myself.) Unfortunately, the nature and extent of this testing, I cannot recall. But what I do recall is the results indicated that as a fourth-grader I was reading at a 7th grade level (or was it 5th or 6th – shit, I can’t remember)! This put me into a league above the other poor, unfortunate, less intellectually endowed and consequently academically inferior fourth grade students.

I was alerted to this fact and likewise notified that I would be undertaking an independent reading course seperate from my contemporaries that would offer me more of a challenge than the current curriculum. It was going to be a scholastic journey, wherein my talents of extra-ordinary reading and comprehension skills would be cultivated so that they would reach their fullest potential, instead of withering away with the rest of the Joe Sixpack 4th grade class. (An appropriate analogy, I might add.)

Suddenly, I was an intellectual elitist. I can recall looking at 6th graders, and thinking to myself, “I probably have more in common with that person than I do with all of these lame 4th graders.” Or, looking at 5th graders, awash in scholastically average playground filth and thinking, “I wonder what he would say if I told him my reading and comprehension skills were superior to his? He probably couldn’t even comprehend what that meant!”

As part of my new advanced academic course load, I was locked into the library during the regularly allotted class reading time, also known as “story time” in those days. Funny that they should call such a quaint and claustrophobic room a “library” when most sane people would equate it with a broom closet, only somehow smellier and full of about 500 books that you never wanted to read. So, while my classmates were busy (barely) reading and (barely) comprehending “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing”. I was deeply affected by such intellectually engrossing classic literature as “Where the Red Fern Grows” and the likes. (I say “the likes” because I honestly can’t remember what else I was to have read.) The point is: I was actually a fourth grade something!

But then, a weird thing happened: from my study room, I could hear the laughter of my classmates, story-timing away in communal joviality as together they enjoyed the splendor of the pinpoint accurate elementary school wit of Judy Blume. I began to feel isolated. It was then that I realized that to be gifted was to be different and to be different was to be alone. I then began to think that my gifts were a curse. I writhed on the floor cursing my maker, (or something similar but no less dramatic) asking why he had left me to suffer with such superhuman reading and comprehension skills.

Epilogue/Happy Ending: So, this whole experiment lasted a very short while, probably only until I finished the first book. My memory is sort of foggy here, but I seem to remember the cultivation of my superior reading and comprehension skills being ruined because the parents of Heather, who had the best grades in the class, caught wind of my isolated study time and demanded that she be allowed the same. That didn’t last long because we couldn’t share the broom closet of a library for more than one session, so we returned to normal class routine, which just goes to prove that if you have the best grades, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are the smartest or the most gifted, just the nerdiest and the person who is the most desperately seeking the approval of his parents-est. Anyway, I was more than happy to have returned to my class, to sit with my fourth grade comrades of significantly inferior reading and comprehension skills and enjoy the magic that was story time.

The moral of the story is: don't be different...ever. You'll miss out on story time.

An Open Letter to My Friend, The Great City of Los Angeles,

2005-04-11T18:54:00.000-07:00

Dear Ms. Los Angeles, Greater Metropolitan Area,

Are you mad at me? Did some unsavory or irresponsible and untoward action of mine cause a reaction of ill will amongst us? Have I wronged you in some way? I was just wondering because you seem to have a way of snubbing me when we chance to meet on the sidewalks. Furthermore, you even fail to grant me ample room to pass when I beg a pardon in tight spaces. What did I do to you? Whatever it is, I am very sure that I am very sorry and I shall not let it happen again. It is my full intention to return to your good graces as soon as humanly possible (though I sometimes get the feeling that I was never really in your good graces in the first place!).

I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out what I could have done to piss you off. Did I see you and not say “hello” at So-and-so’s party. Or -oh dear - did I not say “good-bye” when I left? The reason I ask is that you seem to be pretty pissed off all of the time and I’m wondering what I can do to ease your burden. I try to catch your eye so I can offer a nod of acknowledgment or a smile of good will, but you turn your gaze elsewhere. Are your feet tired from treading the streets all day long? Can I offer you a soothing foot rub? Will that do the trick? Or maybe you’re short on cash this week; in which case don’t be afraid to ask for a twentyspot. I’m unemployed, but I know you’re good for it ; )

Perhaps my very existence is an inconvenience to you. Maybe my personal being just gets on your damned nerves. Do I take up too much of the space that you consider to be solely your own? It would seem so, given your penchant for drinking beer on the street corner and then occasionally relieving yourself in the gutter, right in my path when I come your way.

I feel very bad that things have taken such a sour turn. I acknowledge that our relationship has been tumultuous at times, but we’ve known each other for a while now and I feel like we should be coming around and getting used to each other. We have to rely on one another because, after all, we’re all we’ve got (or some such patronizing nonsense).

Well, I said really all I had to say. The ball is in your court, so to speak. All I ask is that next time you see me on the street, don’t be afraid to exchange a quick glance or even risk a “hello” or – and I know this is crazy – maybe (gulp!) flash a smile. You might be surprised at the result. I think in the end, you and I could end up being pretty good friends. If only you cared about me as much as I care about you. Please consider what I have said.

Thanks for your time.

Your concerned pal,

_K

The Rise of the Poli-Christians

2005-04-08T11:57:00.000-07:00

"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."

-The Serenity Prayer (I learned this through some weird association to Alchoholics Anonymous when I was about 10. It is to this day the only prayer I know by heart, unless I have misquoted it here, which means I don't know any.)

Conservative evangelism has a grip around American politics and the rest of America is beginning to feel the squeeze. When do we, as sensible constituents of our elected officials declare that enough is finally enough? Organizations exist whose stated purpose is to infuse religion into politics in order to gain ground in the political arena. The watchdogs of the conservative right are attempting to dictate policy in order to promote a predominantly religious agenda including teaching creationism in our schools. Separation of church and state has never been so gravely threatened as it is now.

There are many dangers in infusing religion and politics. The first, and most obvious, is the influence that such beliefs could have on policy and not just of a moralistic nature, but also on domestic and foreign affairs, finances and education. Secondly, common religious beliefs could be culled into statutes of law, thereby all but eliminating jurisprudence and impartiality based on societal moral trends.

The church, from a political standpoint, insults its constituents. The notion that any one person needs as a guide a religious figure is insulting beyond all reason. The prevailing ideology amongst the Poli-Christians is that most Americans are not morally sound enough to make their own decisions. One cannot adequately express how alarming it is that the church is quickly gaining power and influence in our governmental institutions. Surely there are citizens out there who are good Christians who recognize and acknowledge this disturbing trend towards a more puritanical society.

And what of us who don’t believe in organized religion or those are not Christians? Aren’t we becoming underrepresented and/or misrepresented? One might point that out to the Poli-Christians, but they would only ignore the facts and say that they’re not speaking for all religions, just Christianity and each religion (though already at a disadvantage) has the opportunity to do the same.

Where does this infusion end? When is enough enough? When does the average Christian admonish the religious leadership in this country and distance himself from the absurdity of their political ambitions?

One thing is abundantly clear: there is an increasing gap in values both demographically and geographically in this country. However, we of common sense must transcend this gap and let common sense prevail. No religious doctrine belongs in our government. Keep the religion where it belongs – in the church.

Many neo-conservative Christian leaders of the so-called right are called religious fundamentalists. The 9/11 terrorists were also called religious fundamentalists. Clearly there are some very stark differences between these two groups. But there is one commonality and that is the shared belief that God – however different their definitions may be - should be omnipresent in every aspect of life. However, the founders of this country were wise enough to foresee the inherent hypocrisy and inevitable corruption such a melding of church and state could bear and chose to allow citizens the freedom to practice whatever religion they chose as long as it was kept separate from and had no direct on influence the policies of the American government.

One needn’t argue that Christianity doesn’t or shouldn’t have any affect whatever on the social and moral fabric of this country. As the primary religious belief for most Americans, there is a strong undercurrent and indirect influence of Christian moral philosophy present in American policy, which is to be expected. Christianity has and will continue to serve a moral purpose in America in that it allows a frame of reference from which to draw when such policies are being debated, especially in the theater of national politics. However, an increasingly theocratic government would lose sight of any fault in the sometimes hypocritical and impossibly dogmatic Christian doctrine and would therefore be weighted on the side of blind acquiescence to an often times archaic and sometimes morally reprehensible code of conduct.

A government that is predicated on religious doctrine is known as a theocracy.

We must stop giving religious leaders political clout and credibility in the media. Politics is supposed to be approached with an objective, analytical and socially conscious frame of mind. Christianity has predetermined bias certainly against those of other religions and also against those who choose to live outside the strict boundaries of Christian doctrine. True political discourse does not exist in the presence of religious convictions.

Morals, and values are good for any citizen. In this country we are generally quite free in deciding how to conduct ourselves. Each individual is unique in her assessment of what kinds of morals she would apply in her life and pass down to her family. There may be some stark contrasts, but morals, no matter how they derive, are basically the same across the board. People know right from wrong and they don’t necessarily need a religious reference to facilitate the process.

Religious institutions exist so that we may freely explore and decide for ourselves which avenue of spiritual faith we would prefer to pursue. It is not in the best interests of our country to allow any one religious institution to dictate any kind of moral conduct whatsoever, for then our laws will have lost the impartiality which our forefathers held so dear. Many fundamentalists are quick to point out that those who first came upon these shores were doing so to seek asylum from an increasingly repressive and discriminate religious regime in Europe. Perhaps this is the best point they make, though not necessarily in their own favor. Let us not forget this fact. Yes, this country was founded by those who not only sought out the right to practice their own form of religion as they saw fit but also to practice it in a country whose government was untainted by the rhetoric of dogmatic religious law to which they did not subscribe.

I believe I am consistent with the writers of our Constitution when I say: God has no jurisdiction in the government of the United States of America!

Trudging Ever Onward Towards Oblivion

2005-04-03T13:25:00.000-07:00

I make a concerted effort to walk these days, testing the LA pavement with each weary step. The streets are dirty and unfamiliar, but it’s the best way to learn how the city breathes and moves, ebbs and flows. I usually drive around town, which doesn’t give you much of a sense of how the street feels at ground level. With driving, it’s almost like you’re flying over some speck of a town in an airplane, the minutia of everyday life dissolved into a solitary dot on the landscape. You don’t concern yourself with your immediate surroundings, but rather what’s going on in front of you, and behind you. But, given the currently obnoxiously high gas prices, I prefer to hoof it nowadays.

Walking can very nearly be surreal at times. It forces you to notice or face things you normally wouldn’t or would just as soon ignore. You are forced to acknowledge the harsh realities of the urban world; the cracks in the sidewalks; the junk piled up against buildings; toothless bums on dirty street corners, howling to some unseen entity for forgiveness. The prayers fall on deaf ears and hence, go unanswered. “I’m no saint,” I want to say these poor, wretched, hollow souls, “I can offer no salvation.”

Walking makes you face your own mortality in a way. As you pass the lurkers and the workers and the single mothers with kids hanging off of every possible extremity, it dawns on you that no matter how different you are from these people, they are no worse, no better. We’re all pretty much the same. They share concerns about the same things, but maybe have less time to dwell on them. “I worry about the environment and high taxes,” their faces seem to be saying. “Just not right now. Just not right now.”

You can see the pain in the contorted confines of concerned faces; struggling towards hope, grasping at some sense of purpose and deluding themselves into denying the immediacy of death. It almost makes you wonder: how many failures, how many glowing successes and disappointments, highs and lows can one soul take before it all dissipates into one general and all-encompassing concern for general humanity?

We are all like ghosts, I suppose. But we can all see and hear and feel each other. And we walk amongst each other as apparitions, spectral shadows, eyes cast downward nobly disregarding each other, politely damning one another to ignorance of self. But we trudge ever onward, through the dirt and the smog and the garbage towards those golden arches…of McDonald’s.

The Final Final Frontier.

2005-03-30T18:22:00.000-08:00

I have, for the past few years, had a recurring ‘bad’ dream. I won’t call it a nightmare, because I don’t know if I’m ever in any imminent, real danger. But it is scary as hell, no doubt. (If I had to give it a genre,* I would say it's somewhere in the realm of supernatural thriller/mystery.) I will spare you the details of this recurring dream (a collective sigh whooshes across cyber space) but this dream got me thinking: dreams are sometimes scary, sometimes pleasant, always surreal and always aesthetically inconsistent, both with reality and other dreams.

It is incredible how accurately the unconscious mind can represent things to the minutest of details or distort them to the tiniest degree, but the conscious mind often fails to accurately relay or portray such things in any detail whatsoever when the dream is over. Even more astounding is the relation of how things are depicted in dreams to how they actually are in waking life and the significance of the symbolism of the difference between the two.

Whenever I get those weird images on my eyelids that fly towards you when the eyes are closed for whatever reason, I like to try and explore the variety of images that appear and just as quickly disappear in my mind’s eye. Sometimes I can place these images to varying degrees. Sometimes I can’t place them at all. I’m not sure what these phenomena are called exactly, but for right now I will just describe them as awesome. Occasionally I’m even impressed at how creative my visual imagination can actually be.

Perhaps a person’s grip on artistic visual talent is aided by a better grasp on these random ‘awesome’ images in the mind’s eye, or perhaps a mastery of this phenomenon provides for a better grasp on aesthetics. Or perhaps when a certain version of this phenomenon happens on the conscious level, it is associated with synesthesia. In fact, now that I think about it, the ‘awesome’ images can often happen when I am in pain. Furthermore, I find that exploring and cultivating these images can temporarily help divert the attention from pain, and help dispel the sensation. But I ain't no scientist, so I digress.

Star Trek posits that space is the final frontier. I submit that the Final Final Frontier is in fact the mind, for we can theoretically explore the ends of space. The mind, however, may go forever uncharted. To know the mind would be to know God. But, I can't get into that right now - I have a therapy appointment. Big surprise, eh?

*Note to self: explore the notion of dream genres. Hilarious!!!

If it’s one thing the world does not need, it’s yet another freakin' flavor of Fruit Roll-up.

2005-03-28T18:29:00.000-08:00

How many varieties of certain things is enough? We humans have been trying to perfect the chicken sandwich since the dawn of time. Why? Why do we need so many different kinds of dish soaps of varying strengths? I’ll just take the strongest stuff you got, thankyouverymuch. Is it really possible for my shampoo to be formulated to treat my specific hairstyle?

Technology has evolved so much over the years. How much of it is realistically indispensable is debatable. Computers, while not a necessity, have certainly made things a lot easier and computer technology continues to evolve at an exponential rate, which is fine. But is there actually such a thing as a perfect or even a better toothbrush than the one we already have? Imagine if we put as much energy into developing our individual and societal moral structure as we do into consumer culture.

It stands to reason that eventually certain things reach a sort of stasis where they can no longer be improved upon. Unfortunately, human emotion and logic have not yet reached this point, but you would hardly know it judging by the way we act. Cognitive dissonance is a frighteningly common part of everyday life nowadays. Hypocrisy finds its way into every corner of our culture. It’s amazing how far tangibles in our culture – the actual products of our existence – have come. It is likewise alarming how little progress our sense of morality has evolved.

If only we were inclined to put so much thought into our actions as we put into developing our cultural byproducts. Recent – ahem – “political” events have further polarized a nation of ideologues. It is clear that opinions vary widely on issues of morality, as evidenced by the oft-cited and just as oft-denied culture war that is currently being waged (or not waged, depending on who you ask), not just in the U.S. but worldwide as well.

I’ve been reading a lot of literature referencing Aristotle's great work Nicomachean Ethics and it occurs to me that the great minds of the past spent much of their lives pondering what is and is not ethical and furthermore, what set of ethics constitutes a virtuous person. Nowadays, many of our leaders rarely question their own morals, as it is a given that the best ethical position is whatever an individual decides it is. This individualistic approach is a sort of stopgap solution to the exploration of a universal set of moral principles and, consequently, it makes the search for such a system even more difficult. Furthermore, our political leaders have a habit of anointing themselves as our appointed moral guides. Thusly, it is arrogantly presumed that our elected officials’ view of morality is somehow superior to that of the common Joe Sixpack.

Morality has become idiomatic; we blame our differences with other cultures on cultural relativism, instead of a lack of focus on moral development, both in our society and theirs and, most importantly, between the two. It is the dogmatic adherence to the notion of cultural relativism that prevents any two cultures from a working system of shared beliefs, especially in the newly emerging climate of the global village. We rarely challenge ourselves to step outside of our own dogma and try to reach a middle ground with these other cultures, instead of further alienating each other as cultural relativism has a tendency to do. Sadly, few of us view ourselves as citizens of the world, or few of us act like we do.

Throughout the world, morality is for the most part influenced by religion. The degree to which people ascribe to the ethical framework of a given religion varies. Here in America, it appears that there is a current trend towards divine command theory, which states that a person’s choices are virtuous as long as they are in accord with whatever their religion dictates. Ironically, the same can be said for Islamic theocracies, such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia which are in many ways the antithesis to Protestant morality. The problem is that these established moral systems, such as divine command theory, are ill-equipped to deal with newly emerging questions of morality, especially in the context of the so-called cultural boiling-pot of the global village. Much of what prevents our culture from fully integrating into a symbiotically moralistic society is a failure to remain flexible in regard to differing opinions. For example, many immigrants move to this country and choose to take on whatever qualities they see fit, instead of fully assimilating into the mass culture of the society, which is their privilege as American citizens. This diversity, while providing for a wide range of ethical stances on an even wider range of topics, is hardly problematic until it is compared to the social value systems already in place via the short history of American cultural practices.

Most of us, however, extrapolate what we consider to be rational and righteous from many different sources, including, but not limited to religion, family and social networks. We then implement these qualities into a varying and ever-changing set of values, as opposed to wholesale adherence to a previously established ethical paradigm. The most important element of a diverse moral system, then, is the ability to adapt and evolve as culture dictates. The evolution of morals is not universal and it is the failure to evolve that is so striking when compared to the other progresses we have made throughout our existence.

Certainly any evolving system of morals necessitates periodic debate. Unfortunately, it seems that the only current forum for debate is when there happens to be a “hot button” issue in the media. Instead of using such issues as a chance to introspectively explore our own personal ethical position, many of us seize the opportunity for the purpose of political soap-boxing in an effort to passive-aggressively impose our beliefs onto others, or promote some sort of ideology irrelevant to the matter at hand. Ethical questions are all too often employed in a negative context in an effort to further some political cause.

How many of us actively seek out moral theory? How many of us consciously try to nurture and further develop our ethical preferences? Perhaps instead of trying to impose our beliefs onto others, it would be wise to sit down and actually decide what it is that we believe is right and whether or not these beliefs are consistent with our other beliefs. One wouldn’t want to contradict oneself when engaging in a battle of morality.

The question we are left to ask, then, is this: How can so many elements of a society become so advanced, while other, more important elements are so shockingly underdeveloped? If we put as much effort into developing our moral fiber as we did into making a more tasty Fruit-Roll up, maybe we would be getting somewhere.

Infamous or Unfamous?

2005-03-25T14:24:00.000-08:00

In this increasingly culturally myopic society, the notion of celebrity has evolved into a fully mechanized, self-propelled marvel. What was once an earned by-product of high-profile success has now become an all at once fleetingly, over-emphasized achievement sometimes achieved through happenstance that ultimately ends in insignificance and confusing ambiguity.

While growing up, it was always a given that one was to trust celebrity culture. Naturally, I have always had a deep seeded distrust of this American invention. It’s one thing to not particularly care about celebrities and their lifestyles, but it’s another thing altogether to distrust what it is that they stand for either personally, or as a representative of the machine of Hollywood.

It’s clear that the impact that celebrity has had on world culture is profound and abundant. Tabloids, as either agents of dissemination or harbingers of eventual celebrity doom, are as equally responsible, if not more, than any of the other professional, “legitimate” media. Therefore, the rampant availability of celebrity claptrap has allowed for an interweaving thread of media-imposed consequence in world affairs and thusly a valid impact on world society. Rarely can one watch a world news report about serious and consequential events and not eventually be confronted with the latest news of celebrities pairing off or splitting up or taking sides in a dispute.

There aren’t currently any official distinctions of celebrity types but there are certainly many potential categories: professional, circumstantial, sex-scandal, political, literary (just kidding), so-called reality, etc.; the list could go on and on. Just exactly what the term celebrity means in this context is ultimately insignificant, but what it connotes is incredibly complex and constantly evolving. Celebrity can be gained or lost through acts of notoriety, good or bad. Celebrity is achieved or attained through any combination of effort, hard work, luck, skill, good looks, shrewdness, timing or none of the above. Celebrity has become the most intangible of tangibles in our society. No one can accurately describe what it is or precisely how it is granted or lost, but people certainly know it when the see it.

Perhaps the most irksome trend of select celebrity personalities is the recent proliferation of political soap-boxing. Most people find this at the very least insulting and sometimes extremely aggravating. But it should come as no surprise that we who worship at the altar of celebrity idolatry would by our very nature encourage celebrity politicking no matter how misinformed or misguided it might be. American pop culture gives celebrities so much credit in so many ways that it should come as no surprise that they would harbor the misconception that they are the voice of reason in this oft-misguided world.

Politicians no doubt have made great use of celebrity support to their own advantage: hanging out with U2 and “The Boss” gives voters the impression of a hip down-to-earth political persona who would be just as comfortable groovin’ to the blues as balancing the national budget. However, public reaction to celebrity pandering can often be mixed. It’s probably best not to have Mickey Rourke campaigning on your behalf, at least not in any crucial swing states.

The line that our culture draws between serious celebrity, political discourse and incredulity of the scope of celebrity political opinion is unclear. The same culture that often sees Sean Penn as an over-opinionated condescending windbag finds it not a touch ironic to vote Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of one of the most populous, culturally complex and economically viable states in the union. Perhaps it is because Penn’s history of political activism makes him divergent from the mainstream of politics while Arnold has an “in” through marriage and a history of conservative Republican politics. What is most confusing about this phenomenon is that because Penn is so historically outspoken about his politics, his stance on issues is and has been clear for quite some time. On the other hand, before the 2003 California recall election, most Americans only knew about “The Governators” politics through his stint as President Bush 40’s Fitness General or whatever his title was.

Schwarzenegger’s successful campaign for governor and heretofore popular, if not relatively silent term at the helm of California government has spawned a new crusade on his behalf. There is a small, though legitimate contingency of Arnold’s peers and constituents who would like to see the United States’ Constitution amended to allow foreigners, specifically Arnold, to run for president. One gets the sense this misguided attempt at revolution is a hubris attempt at change just to see if it can be done. Whatever the motivation, the short-sightedness of this challenge to the Constitution is alarming.

What is particularly distressing about the confusion of celebrity culture is the ease with which certain notorious people achieve fame through infamy. Violent criminals are often handed the lofty status of accidental or circumstantial celebrity, though albeit in a different context than movie stars. Take, for example, Scott Petersen. No one in their right mind would argue that Scott Petersen is deserving of celebrity status, but the media fixation on his trial for murdering his wife quickly reached the proportion of a self-evolving phenomenon wherein even peripheral players are allowed airtime to discuss their thoughts on the case.

A surprising factor in the business of celebrity is the manufacturing thereof. Fox’s concept for American Idol is nothing new for anyone that’s seen Star Search, but the twist is bizarre. The show aims to seek out talent and personality and infuse the two with national exposure through competition into a final product of celebrity where none previously existed. One could argue, presumably quite accurately, that this is how many of the celebrities we now adore are made. But by revealing the process to its audience and actually allowing the audience to participate, simultaneously eliminating any X-factors, American Idol is essentially democratizing the previously intangible process of celebrity engineering, thusly removing any of the mystique of celebrity itself. This exercise in post-modernism marks a disturbing trend in celebrity culture and that is that celebrity does not necessarily come pre-ordained. Any delusions of destiny are clearly removed when the next flash-in-the-pan is elected by an astute television audience. If only electing the President were so truly democratic.

The end of celebrity for some people can certainly be devastating especially for those who were suddenly granted celebrity status then just as suddenly had it revoked. Those unfortunate souls have been rendered “unfamous” and suddenly culturally inert and even worse, insignificant. Few words of consolation can dull the impact when the ruthless fickleness of American pop culture rips the status of celebrity from the ordained.

However, most often, celebrities unintentionally manufacture their own undoing usually in a megomaniacal attempt at furthering their already lofty status. “Celebrity schizophrenia” is a common problem for the elite. It can be simply defined as anytime a celebrity suddenly has an epiphany and changes in the public eye for the worse. Just like the onset of celebrity, any number of factors can bring about destruction: marriage to an unpopular and decidedly greasy back-up dancer, joining a mysterious religion (read: cult) several misguided career and love-interest choices, blatant and repeated public breakdowns, ignoring the demands placed upon the self as celebrity. This phenomenon is not to be confused with “reinvention” which is territory that has and continues to serve Madonna and, previously, Michael Jackson quite well.

Perhaps the great unraveling of celebrity is best exemplified by Wacko Jacko, or rather the delusion of near-divinity his remaining fans still cling to. These people continue to ignore his most obvious faults, holding to the once universally agreed, but now disputable claim that he is an artist of great consequence. Of course, any sane person would have long ago distanced himself from Jackson, whose significant and prolific career achievements are quickly becoming obscured by his relentlessly questionable behavior. It used to be sad to consider that Jackson’s legacy may not in fact be his music, but his ongoing struggles with the law and the media. Now it is just common sense to believe this will in fact be the case. Jackson had long ago passed into unintentional self-parody, becoming a caricature of some sort of creepy Vincent Price-obsessed man-child who has holed himself up in a fantasy land holding court with only children. But now as his child molestation trial progresses past OJ territory into some new and uncharted realm of celebrity humiliation, Jackson is steadfastly and willfully increasingly bizarre. His once-certain future in the halls of pop idolatry now firmly entrenched in the tome of celebrity infamy. Essentially, Jackson has conducted his own undoing by rendering himself unable to distinguish the difference between Michael Jackson the performer and Michael Jackson the person.

One of the most tragic and ironic twists to “The King of Pop’s” legacy is that, unlike the majority of celebrities, he can never return to anonymity. He passed the point of celebrity no-return sometime in the mid-seventies. It’s painfully obvious that a personality like Jackson feeds off of his fame, lives off it, even cannot survive without it. This unique celebrity does not afford him the benefit of eventually becoming “un-famous” but in fact solidifies the likelihood that he will live on in infamy, just not the way that he had intended.

And so, sadly, this is the fate of those who dare venture too far into the realm of celebrity culture. The realization that there is, in fact, no way out must all at once bring on conflicting feelings of divinity, hopelessness, dread, fear, and supreme confidence , culminating in a sort of mania that enables the uber-celeb to act in whatever way he deems appropriate, whether or not the rest of us agree. Then we can all salivate at the prospect of seeing yet another celebrity cornered by his own notoriety, much of which we are all responsible for perpetuating. It can be safely said that the only thing celebrity culture loves more than a shooting star is a falling star.

How the Infamous become Un-famous

2005-03-24T11:13:00.000-08:00

I recently watched a segment on one of CNN's many shows that are indistinguishable from the rest of its daily line up in which the topic was Ashley Smith, the woman who was able to survive being kidnapped by the Atlanta courthouse shooter, Brian Nichols. Now this segment wasn't as mundane as to praise Ms. Smith for her bravery or calm in the face of such trauma. No, CNN was actually progressive enough to suggest that this average woman, whom none would even think to call a celebrity, at least not in the traditional (read: common) sense, was in danger of succumbing to that fateful killer of human interest causes: media overexposure.

CNN went on to examine just what causes a person like Ashley Smith to fall victim to media overexposure. Apparently, CNN failed to see the irony in exploring such a topic. Fortunately, I did not.

So here, I have decided to expand on CNN's hard-hitting newsreporting regarding such a terrible fate as media overexposure by providing a brief guide of some key factors that may indicate a person, such as Terry Schiavo is dangerously over-exposed:

1. Public scrutiny of private life: The das machina du media has a tendency to dig up and expose some tawdry, scandalous or questionable detail(s) of a person's past, thereby tainting or even totally derailing whatever positive view of a person the public might have towards a hero, or further stoking the fire of negative sentiment the public might have towards an already scandalized individual.

2. Private scrutiny of public life: An infamous person may suffer a serious backlash in their personal life that may affect their standing in small social circles, their family, their professional life or in the community as a whole. If they're lucky, they may get to experience all of the above!

3. Making the rounds on the talk show circuit: There are certain shows that are an absolute must - Oprah, Letterman, The Daily Show. There are some that require careful consideration before the potentially over-exposed commit - Leno, Jerry Springer, Larry King. Obviously, one should avoid Dr. Phil at all costs, 'cause he'll dress you down real proper-like.

4. Appearing on a make-over show, getting breast implants, posing for photos at a movie or television premiere/party/awards show: Inter-mingling your pedestrian happenstance celebrity with the godly creatures of Hollywood and their powerful, cherished and well-deserved celebrity is never a good idea. Rubbing shoulders with the likes of John Revolta and the Belush, however, will create great comedic juxtaposition.

5. Getting dissed on People Magazine's worst-dressed list: This is a major blow to credibility. One doesn't want their wardrobe to garner a lot of attention, one way or the other. However, one should be bold enough to make a statement, but subtle enough not to over-do it. I find that a sense of personal elegance or the calculated-casual look works wonders.

6. Dating/getting engaged to Tommy Lee/J. Lo/Winona Ryder AND/OR hanging out with Courtney Love: You're on your own if you dare to make time with media whores. This is not helping your cause out at all.

7. Carefully constructed and staged public-relations stunts for the purpose of regaining some legitimacy in the eyes of the woefully short-sighted and painfully semi-retarded mainstream of America: Includes saving a little girl from a car accident that nobody saw, making a large donation to the dim-witted marionette Texas politician of your choice, appearing in mid-western high schools as a lecturer railing against/rallying for whatever it was you did right or wrong in the first place.

8. The appearance of a sex tape that you "knew nothing about" and from which you stand to gain no residual benefits whatsoever...honestly!: This one is pretty much self-explanatory. It depends on how graphic the sex is on the tape and how sexually desirable you are to the internet-perv public. Extra-points if the tape sees a DVD release. Double-extra points if there is a premiere party celebrating the release of said DVD and you show up.

9. Marching in a protest parade/making a political statement on behalf of an organization/stumping for fringe religions like Scientology: Nothing ruins credibility faster than trying to gain credibility from things that have no credibility in the first place and for which you have no credibility to be attempting to gain credibility from anyway.

10. Appearing on a reality show alongside other fallen and forgotten sadsack celebrities: This pretty much seals the deal, unless you can somehow miraculously make yourself the most ridiculously idiosyncratic, hopelessly dramatic or notoriously difficult person on the show, which is nearly impossible, considering the stiff competition.

If the now potentially "un-famous" finds himself in danger of being overexposed, he should consider relocating and going "off the grid" for an indefinite cooling-off period. Prime locales include Montana and Eastern Europe, preferably one of the former Soviet countries. Some side benefits include: becoming part of the local scenery and eventually part of the local lore as people will look in your direction and whisper, but only periodically approach you because you are now considered freakish and potentially dangerous. Eventually, you will experience yet another fleeting moment of fame when a popular culture magazine runs a "Where Are They Now" segment and they come to cover you living a "normal life in a normal town."

Dubious Fortunes

2005-03-22T22:57:00.000-08:00

Fortune cookies are weird. They operate under the basic assumption that everybody wants to be happy or distracted with good news. Perhaps it might be more helpful if fortune cookies told a more pragmatic tale.

More realistic fortunes may look something like this:

- Your presence is of little consequence to those around you.

- You will find that the anxiety and woe you feel about your life will only get worse.

- Be wary – the people you work with are plotting against you.

- Generally, most people are offended by your hygiene.

- Your younger brother will be prosperous, you will not.

- Tomorrow will be worse.

- The only purpose your hairpiece serves is comedic.

- You’re ugly when you make that face you think is funny.

- The frequency with which you masturbate is alarming.

- Tomorrow you will develop a rash on your face – it’s not going to be pretty.

- Yes, he’s cheating on you – now stop wondering.

- Your funeral will set the new record for low attendance.

- She faked it last night.

- Your life will be short and you will be plagued with ill health and erectile dysfunction.

- People laugh at you behind your back

- Sell the convertible; you’re having a mid-life crisis.

- You look like an idiot in that shirt.

- People feel a general sense of panic when you’re around.

- The prostitute you saw last night was a transsexual – and you knew it. Also, you might want to see a doctor and/or a therapist.

- Your wife knows about your homosexual tendencies.

- Your daughter is even more sexually promiscuous than you feared.

- Yes, you are getting fat. People are growing tired of lying to you when you ask.

One thing I love about fortune cookies is how ambiguous they are. What if they were a little more foreboding, while maintaining ambiguity?

Examples:

- Watch your back – some shit’s gonna go down. Your health may or may not be at risk.

- Be forewarned…*sniff*

- It’s only a matter of time before yours is up.

- There is a person in this room who would love to watch you suffer.

- You will live to regret.

- There is devilry afoot.

- You should probably upgrade your life insurance, just to be safe.

- The meaning of life is…(to be continued)

- Run…

- The meat you just ate was not chicken.

Other fortunes are just plain generic. Here are ideas for some universal, nonspecific alternatives.

Some Obvious “fortunes”:

- Killing people is bad karma.

- It’s impolite to stare at your boss’s wife’s breasts.

- Trix are for kids.

- Tomorrow is another day.

- Things will work themselves out...eventually.

I can now Italicize...

2005-03-22T22:40:00.000-08:00

"Unless we can so enlarge our interests as to include the whole outer world, we remain like a garrison in a beleagured fortress, knowing that the enemy prevents escape and the ultimate surrender is inevitable. In such a life there is no peace, but a constant strife between the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of will. In one way or another, if our life is to be great and free, we must escape this prison and this strife."

-Bertrand Russell
The Problems of Philosophy

(Now if I could just understand the rest of the fucking book).

The Wu Tang Manual Says...

2005-03-21T11:45:00.000-08:00

About a month ago, I dropped into Border's bookstore to seek out a couple of books for my purchasing pleasure. It is not a rarity these days that when I walk into a bookstore with a specific purpose in mind, I become totally sidetracked by an enticing alternative. In this case, I intended to buy the latest copy of Dissent magazine and find some yoga literature or flashcards in lieu of actually paying to join a yoga class. But immediately upon entering, my eye was caught by the unmistakable Wu-Tang Clan logo staring up at me from the cover of a book entitled, "The Wu-Tang Manual" by the Rza. I picked up the book and flipped through it, smirking to myself with irony at how much I used to love the Wu-Tang Clan and would probably have devoured and cherished the book about ten years ago, instead of scoffing at the very idea of it now. I read a few passages in the book and made a mental note to come back and purchase it for the purpose of coffee-table kitsch (assuming I will eventually own a coffee table).

Well, this weekend, I made good on my promise to myself and actually bought "The Wu-Tang Manual" and I have this to say of it: I really like it. Now let me explain a little about the book first. The fact that it is a manual presupposes an air of didactism on the part of its author, which is to say one expects the book to be about how one should act to be in accordance with the Wu-Tang way of life. However, the book provides more of a context in which to put the Wu-Tang philosophy, lifestyle and musical output and is a detailed account of the many cultural infulences - both ancient and pop - on the Wu-Tang ideology.

Let me say that I can't believe that I am actually discussing a Wu-Tang ideology to begin with. Nonetheless, the Rza has compiled on exhaustive ideological framework from which he and his cronies have drawn over the years. While not terribly credible in terms of his belief system as a whole, (at least not to a white person who finds the notion of the Nation of the Gods and Earth aka the Five-Percent Nation terribly insulting and rather frightening - not like the Rza could care less)I find the sincerity with which the material is presented rather refreshing. It's like a pop culture junkie's dream reading this book. Always a fan of Kung Fu and Eastern philosophy and mysticism, I relish the opportunity to actually have explained how what used to be my favorite rap collective infused their work with these influences.

The very idea of the Wu-Tang juggernaut is brilliant. What's even more staggering is the fact that they've managed to carry on this long and still be influential. I haven't bought a Wu album since their second official release came out around 1997. I was and still am, falling out of love with hip-hop and into love with rock and roll. I am becoming the much-decried "mountain climber who plays an electric guitar"-type that the Gza maligns in the seminal Wu anthem "Protect Ya Neck", but that doesn't mean I don't have a soft spot in my heart for something I used to hold dear.

The Rza is no doubt a charimsatic personality, and surprisingly deep at that. He's created a virtual empire that has somehow maintained its presence, influence and credibility in both the mainstream and on the street. The influences on the clan, which, it seems are mostly channeled through him, are no gimmick. He's very earnest about his respect for and desire to learn from a wide variety of ideological and philosophical sources, including, but not limited to: Gangster films, capitalism, rap history, Islam, the Bible, and the aforementioned Eastern triumvirate of mysticism, film and philosophy. Nowadays, it's passe for a rapper to be ensconsed so in such trite cliches. But it's also rare that a person is so impassioned about such things that his depth of knowledge and admiration for the material would allow him to speak so authoratively.

In all honsety, I was hoping to be able to read the Wu-Tang manual and provide some sort of parodying and ironic commentary, but try as I might, I couldn't help but feel touched by how sincere it is, disagreements over the Five Percent nation notwithstanding. I'm glad I made the decision to buy the book, but for completely different reasons that I thought I would be. It reminds me of how influential the Wu-Tang Clan were on my late teenage years and allows me to appreciate that one day, I may be referencing the Wu-Tang manual as one of my own varied and treasured influences.

The Forists versus the Againstists: A One Act Play (on words)

2005-03-16T17:56:00.000-08:00

A meeting of some sort is assembling. A Speaker stands at the front of the room, addressing his acolytes.

Speaker: Mr. Secretary, please call this meeting to order.

Secretary: I hereby declare this inaugural meeting of the Organization of Against-ness into order.

Speaker: What is the first order of business on the agenda?

Secretary: A statement of principles of our against-ness, sir.

Speaker: Right. Prinicple number one: we are for nothing and against everything. Principle number two…

Secretary: So, let me get this straight for the notes: we are for nothing, but against everything?

Speaker: No we are against everything. We are for nothing.

Acolyte #1: But isn’t that just another way of saying we are for being against something, especially if you consider nothing something?

Speaker: No! Shut up! We are for nothing! I mean, we are against everything.

(A Master enters, attended by attendants)

Master: Salutations!

Speaker: Who are you?

Master: We are the organization of for-ness. We seek to promote for-ness in solidarity with any organization with any stated purpose of for-ness or against-ness. We have come here to state our support for your Organization of Against-ness.

Speaker: We reject your endorsement on the very principle of its for-ness!

Master: And we embrace your rejection as it is your right to exercise your against-ness in response to our for-ness. Nonetheless, we are still for your against-ness.

Speaker: I resent your being for our against-ness. I cannot allow our organization to formally be for your for-ness of our against-ness. I repeat myself: We are against your for-ness!

Master: Your stated position of against-ness of our for-ness is completely acceptable to us. We are totally for your against-ness of our for-ness of your aforementioned position of stated against-ness for your previously vocalized stance of against-ness in response to our for-ness of your against-ness.

Acolyte #1: Is anybody else confused?

Speaker: No! Shut up! (addressing the Master) How can you be for something that you are so obviously against?

Master: We are for everything, including against-ness. We are against nothing.

Speaker: Aha! So you are against nothing!? Then you have now contradicted yourself!

Master: No, I simply said that we are for…

Speaker: No, you said you are against nothing. Hypocrite…

Master: So, does this mean that, if I am against nothing than you are for our being against nothing?

Speaker: As I told you before, we are for nothing and against…

Master: Aha! Now you have misspoken. So you are for something! Even if it is just nothing!

Speaker: No, we are against nothing, by which I mean, we are for nothing and against nothing all at the same time.

(A Leader enters, leading his Followers)

Leader: Greetings!

Speaker/Master: Now who are you?

Leader: I am ambivalent! I am neither for, nor against nothing or something. I remain neutral.

Speaker: Then, surely you can talk some sense into this guy, he is for everything!

Master: I am indeed for everything, as you are for nothing. So therefore you are for something because even nothing is something.

Leader: I cannot intervene, for I am neither for nor against for-ness or against-ness and I am also paradoxically for and against neither or both your respective stated positions of alternating for-ness and against-ness.

(A Representative enters flanked by his constituents)

Representative: Ho, there!

Speaker: Oh, who the fuck are you now?

Representative: I am a representative of the Organization Against Against-ness.

Speaker: Ha! We stand against your against-ness of our against-ness!

Master: (to the Representative) Ah, Comrade. We are for your against-ness of against-ness, even if we are also for their against-ness.

Representative: Not so fast! Your support for our against-ness of against-ness is but a thinly veiled endorsement of the position of against-ness, which means you are against the againstists against-ness and therefore, we are against your for-ness of both the againstists position of against-ness and our position of against-ness of against-ness.

(An awkward silence as everyone tries to recount what the Representative has just said.)

Acolyte #1: (to the Speaker) Anyways, so, um, what’s the second principle of our against-ness, then?

Stopgap solutions

2005-03-11T11:26:00.000-08:00

I was reading an interview with David O. Russel in the I Heart Huckabees script last night and he said something that really stuck with me, and that was something to the effect of that American's have a short term memory, politically. He was flabbergasted when Ronald Reagan died and the media was portraying him as such a great man and a significant leader. I felt confused, too, because I remember Reagan's much decried economic ideology and his decline in popularity as a result of the Iran Contra affair. True, Reagan did play a role in the end of the cold war, but he left behind many problems when Bush, then Clinton took over, some of which are still prevalent and are even getting worse.

Now the Reagan thing is kind of tangential, but I thought Russel's simple observation about Americans having such a short memory is incredibly prescient right now, especially considering Bush's campaign promises and what he has done since regaining the Presidency. It seems clear that Bush and his regime are using our intense political complacency against us. Dick Cheney is claiming that he will use a questionable tactic to break a Senatorial filibuster on the appointment of ultra-conservative Supreme Court Judges. Bush ran on the notion that he has done well in protecting America from terrorist attacks and that his opponent would have been inadequate in this regard. Yet, he has made it clear so far in his first few months that he's clearly repaying his corporate cronies by promising tort reform, privatizing social security, rolling back bankruptcy and continuing his overall assault on American's civil liberties.

The rollbacks are spreading fear and elation alike that our country is regressing to a more conservative society. However, one hopes that this movement will create the kinds of dialogues in art, politics, and culture in general that have been so important in subverting such periods in any era, not just contemporary American history. We can all look forward to a further polarization between the elite and those oppressed, but it can't last long. Some of the most exciting and bold changes take place after a long and bitter war for a return to supposed innocence.

In the context of the bigger picture, America has continued to be progressive in a number of ways that can't be negated so easily. Although the state of Civil rights still inspires a desire for more change, we are a society that has universally embraced the ideal of equal rights, even though it fails to appear that way from time to time. There is also a growing moderate contingency of unaffiliated voters and thinkers who tend to vote their conscience and their heart, striking a balance between the two extremes. I hope and believe that many politicians will recognize the absurdity of this tendency towards roll-backs and draw a definitive line as to when enough is enough. Eventually the scales will be tipped back into balance. One doesn't wish to see them tip too severly the other direction, as it seems that is what we are currently experiencing.

It is a confusing time for those of us who liked pre-9/11 America and there is potential for us to return to that state. We just can't make the mistake of becoming too short-sighted. Bush and his administration may succeed in enacting several stopgap policy initiatives, but those of us who can see the bigger picture know that we will live to fight another day. The hearts and minds of Americans are easily won over by fiery rhetoric in times of uncertainty. Unfortunately George Bush has created and perpetuated a time of uncertainty, which makes his current agenda incredibly vulnerable to those of us who are patient enough to seize the moment when the timing is right.

The Cult of Politics

2005-03-01T22:13:00.000-08:00

I have spent the large part of my “adult life” (am I there yet?) realizing, acknowledging, and subscribing to ideas that have been part of a greater consciousness for a period of time that transcend certainly my worldview, and seemingly that of most of my peers. Indeed, John R. Searle asserts that philosophy is known as such only until we have enough empirical evidence to draw a semi-concrete, rather than abstract conclusion or hypothesis. It is at this critical juncture that what was once known as philosophy is renamed as science. But isn’t it that which we can’t see, touch, taste, or smell that moves man to second-guess the nature of his being? What is recognizable in the physical world doesn’t threaten the human psyche as much as what is unknowable, unseen and unheard. If we cannot bear any sort of witness to an event, then how do we know such phenomena truly exists? For example, think of floating alone in the sea. Which do you fear more: the creatures you know be lurking below or the other, possibly more dangerous creatures that you don’t know about?

I have recently chanced upon a book (for the second time) that, in an effort to reaffirm faith in one religion, systematically (and subjectively) disassembles the doctrines of others. In his book, Larson’s New Encyclopedia of Cults, author Bob Larson puts forth the notion that, through the annals and rigors of recruitment and initiation, ritualistic cults promote and instill a sense of “intellectual sterility” in its members. In various ways, Larson goes on to “disprove” the rhetoric of each “cult” with evidence offered in the passages of the King James Version of the bible. It is funny how one is so bold to refute one school of thought which lacks empirical basis with another equally questionable ideology.

What goes unaccounted for in this book and possibly so many other analyses of cultic sociology is the so-called cult of personality. Cults, by very definition often have a sort of ideological thread on which most of the pattern of belief/behavior is based. Having recently become enamored with the American partisan political system, I have come to find that each of the two major political parties in our country are fast becoming cults of personality. For evidence, one need look no further than the agenda respective to each party.

Democrats, easily denigrated as liberals, as are Republicans conservatives, operate on what is known as a platform that is generally homogenous across the board to all members. When one faction is so ideologically complete, a difference of opinion can be construed as a declaration of secession either intentionally or unintentionally by one of its constituents. In essence, someone with a dissenting view that differs from the stated position of the affiliated party to which they belong can often be viewed as an outsider or in extreme cases treasonous. The term heresy can very nearly be applied in these cases.

It is because of this intellectual sterility that the bi-partisan political system operating in the United States is becoming increasingly cultish. Never has the homogenization of ideas become so apparent than in the recent Presidential race, wherein no politician dare take a stand on an issue that could possibly delineate them from their political affiliation.

“This recent election was a very close one with hotly contested issues on the line.” This sentence could be applied to just about every Presidential race ever run in the history of the United States. But the lack of fresh ideas or at least the lack of knowledge of such ideas made for an increasingly polarized pool of voters in November 2004. The race was less about progress than it was about gaining or retaining control of the ideological juggernaut that is the United States government and consequentially, it’s two most influential entities worldwide – the foreign policy thereof and the popular culture that is a direct result of its domestic policies.

Life in Post-9/11 America is more hypothetical than real. People fear an ominous terrorist threat that is not and has not been immediately apparent since the events at ground zero. Focus has been placed on issues that do not even remotely pertain to the issue at hand - protecting Americans and American interests at home and abroad. Granted, plenty of attention was paid to Iraq, which is a black hole financially and in terms of human casualties.

The race was a war of morality. Many people claimed to have cast their vote for the candidate they felt most closely resembled traditional American values. The war in Iraq and the war on terrorism were at a close second. However, it is apparent that Americans are greatly concerned with being a moral majority. It is this way of thinking that is most disconcerting, that Americans don’t trust themselves or others enough to conduct their affairs in a morally justified manner, they feel that they have to vote morality into office. It is clear that Americans don’t think much of each other’s moral compass.

It can be safely said that the majority of moral sentiment in contemporary America is generated in any combination through one of the following three institutions: family, social environment and religion, specifically Christianity. It is then no surprise that a conservative Christian with strong family ties will be voted into office without fail most of the time, even one as morally suspect as George Bush. In a war of cults, a personality has been assigned to lead the collective ultimate cult of personality, the American voting constituency.

It is within this framework that intellectual sterility in terms of social and moral policy has its greatest affect. The policy directives within such an administration are confined to strict codes as dictated by the pre-designated aforementioned influences. Any “thinking outside the box” would be deemed in contradiction to said influences and would be quickly reduced, changed or re-thought to fit neatly in to the preset conventions. Therefore, progress becomes increasingly difficult and the forestalling or complete lack of intellectual ingenuity becomes inevitable. Change comes painstakingly slow and at a great price. Only those who are willing to risk ostracism dare question the ranks. The cycle of intellectual sterility becomes clear at this point as the veil of democratic politics is lifted to reveal the ugly face of the electorate and the cultish behavior that it perpetrates.

YOUR LIFE IS A JOKE. LET’S GET IT ON TAPE!

2005-02-28T21:48:00.000-08:00

As I take a rare moment to flip through the four channels I get on my television, I come across at least five commercials for new reality dating shows. Is there anything more pathetic than watching somebody try desperately to fall in love? Lack of quality entertainment is why I stopped watching television in the first place (well, that and you know – I lost my remote control.) It’s typical that I can’t get a date, but when other people are having trouble finding love, something has got to be wrong. It seems that everybody has the same problem: they don’t know where to meet good people.

It used to be that a person could go to places like a church to meet a potential mate. But, who the fuck wants to date some crazy religious zealot? I don’t know about you, but I value not having to get up early on Sunday. Another typically safe place to meet a potential lover was the grocery store, but people are too busy stocking up on supplies for the coming apocalypse to notice another attractive person. It also used to be that you could go to a bar to find a lover, but with the advent of date-rape drugs, and the variety and wide availability of venereal diseases floating around these days, not to mention that Michelob Ultra crap, the bar is no longer safe courting grounds.

It’s clear that the American dating system of courtship until marriage is breaking down. This could partially be due to the fact that marriage is becoming an increasingly doomed enterprise. Think about it: how many people under of the age of thirty do you know that are divorced? With all of the marital problems I constantly hear about, it’s a shock that we still celebrate the exchange of vows and console those who are getting a divorce. Logic holds that it should be just the opposite.

In the days of yore (1980s), dating was a private and common practice shared between two potential lovers in the hopes that such an encounter would lead to a fruitful relationship. If successful, the first date was usually followed by a second, then a third and after a long courtship, a celebratory adjoining ceremony in which two symbolically become one (AKA marriage). But dating has evolved into an interactive, televised, post-modern spectator event. A lonely single no longer has to cruise the aisles at a grocery store for prospective dates; he can now pick and choose his lovers on a game show – live! in front of a studio audience. Likewise, the recluse no longer has to cruise the mall for ripe, nubile teenage girls, he can just log onto the internet and discreetly meet tons and tons of teenies who are eager to share their secrets with a complete stranger.

Surely we all know of people who have tried their hand at internet dating. Some may work with a casual internet dater, or have one in their family or household, or even, ahem…be… one. But, is this what it has come to? The answer is yes and I’m saddened by this fact, not because it seems creepy and cold to use a medium of technological interface to try and lure a member of the opposite sex to meet at a safe, neutral location – wait, that does sound kind of creepy – but because the world that we live in now requires you to create a login name to score. Have things really gotten so bad that people can’t relate to each other and proceed accordingly old fashioned way – awkwardly, yet casually approaching someone, striking up a conversation, hoping to god that you haven’t said anything idiotic and if you did, she didn’t catch it, then nervously asking for a phone number and walking away feeling either victorious or stupid for even approaching said person in the first place? I believe that they have not.

However, as hinted at above, I have to admit that I have tried web-dating. Initially, my interest was only superficial due to skepticism because of what I thought was lack of actual potential. Predictably, a few ladies caught my fancy and I sent them a clever and non-threatening note and awaited their eventual rejection. But then something unpredictable happened: an interested party actually responded. Then another girl contacted me of her own accord, without prior provocation. Then another. Eventually I felt as though I actually had to turn chicks away for the first time in my life.

I am happy to report that one of these courtships did come to fruition, and am equally sad to further report that it was only for a short while, as the lady in question soon grew tired of my more realistic non-internet persona. And so, I chalk that endeavor up as yet another failure. But it has become especially hard to deal with now because so many fucking people I know are hooking up over the web. Once again the masses are succeeding where I have failed, miserably. In fact, I think I know more people by association through this dating service than by any other accountable and tangible means of traditional encounter. Of course, very few people do I know as a direct result of my personal experiences with web-dating – only through the experiences of others. There is virtually a “virtual” community emerging, composed entirely of e-daters. And I may very well be at the national apex.

Now, in the spirit of individuality, I have resolved to engage in e-dating no longer. I have challenged myself to think “outside the box” (computer) and assert myself in a face-to-face encounter with a woman of my particular fancy. I always imagine that I will meet my soulmate at the library or the record store and we will immediately hit it off because of our mutual love for some seemingly mundane, but personally indispensable pop-culture phenomenon. Then it occurs to me that this may not happen because I don’t even know where a library is and I usually make a habit of not talking to strangers.

Therein lies the main problem with trying to seek and obtain that one true love: people are scared. I don’t know what it is, man, but I’m scared of meeting people. I do know that once I meet a person and become comfortable, I become extremely likable. But, then kicks in what I call the 90 day guarantee: in 90 days or less I guarantee that I will have repeatedly done/said stupid/unnecessary things and will have chased off my muse due to an unconscious, but nonetheless intentional self-sabotage complex. However, I don’t feel like this neurosis is unique to me. I would be willing to bet that it’s an all too typical phenomenon for people to feel responsible for their own failures in the dating world. But the culprit may be the intense social emphasis that is placed on dating.

There are so many rules to dating: things you should do or say. Should I open the door for her? If she’s old-fashioned she may think it necessary, but if she’s a liberated feminist, she may be offended by the notion that she needs a man to open doors for her, literally or metaphorically. Should I bring up past relationships? They are relevant, in a way. History is important. But am I revealing too much too soon? Am I stuck in the past? What if she only believes in living in the now? Should I let sleeping dogs lie? And what the hell does that proverb even mean – ‘Let sleeping dogs lie’?

It’s no wonder that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find a mate. Potential mates are becoming increasingly difficult. The older people get, the more set in their ways they are and the more they know what they want and the more exclusive what they want becomes. It’s stubbornness masquerading as choosiness. If you don’t fit the bill, then you get the boot. Who wants to waste their time waiting to see if something happens? Why bother if there’s no initial spark?

So it occurs to me that maybe I should try to meet my future spouse the way my parents met – in high school. Now, all I have to do is rig up a fake Never Been Kissed-style persona, go back to the eleventh grade and steal some nerdy, but potentially hot sophomore’s heart. Or better still, and even more cutting edge and less pedophiliac, I will bite the bullet and go onto a reality dating show. But alas, I have been in the presence of people several times who were approached by casting agents for these shows, all of whom look at me and say the same thing: “I don’t think you’re quite what we’re looking for – you’re too rugged.” I think to myself, what a typically Hollywood way of politely telling someone that they’re unattractive. I feel ugly, but I at least I’m ugly in a James Dean kind of way.

Reality dating shows are nothing new. The template has been around since Chuck Barris took time off from being a professional assassin to create The Dating Game. Granted, the format has changed: the drama is more real(?), the stakes are higher (??), the players are more attractive and the scenarios are a little bit “less contrived.”

The thing that continually blows my mind about these shows is just how far each contestant is willing to go. It’s clear that the people who appear in these programs are not aware of their own stupidity nor are they at all hesitant because of humility. Of course there’s always some kind of ulterior motive monkey wrench thrown into the scenario. It’s love versus money, or love versus vanity, or money versus vanity.

So if I aim to participate, it seems that all I have to do is become a little bit more charismatic, work out a bunch, attract the attention of a casting director, go onto the show, suffer hours - possibly days - of shameful drama, weather relentless gossip and criticism by fans, friends, foes and family alike, wade my way through attractive, but ultimately shallow and brainless drama queens, pick the one that I dislike the least and convince her to go out with me on a disastrous date at a location to be named later. On second thought that doesn’t seem so easy or even necessary for that matter.

So, I’m back to meeting chicks the old fashioned way: going to bars, getting drunk and clumsily hitting on them, or maybe that’s a little ill advised. Maybe the new technique I employ will be to enact an air of coy indifference. Girls love to ignored, right? Or maybe I will hire a personal matchmaker to find the perfect potential spouse. But, do I have to get married? Can’t I just have sex with the chick first and iron out the details the morning after.

Whatever method a person chooses it’s clear that the science of attraction has consistently proven only one thing: there is no science of attraction.

Star Wars - an enduring work of art and commerce?

2005-02-22T16:23:00.001-08:00

All right, so I've been wanting to discuss this for a while: I read an article in Vanity Fair of all places in which George Lucas so presumptuously claims that in the future, people will be discussing the Star Wars films as an important and nuanced work of art containing great depth and worthy of much discussion, not only in terms of how innovative it was for it's time, but also how long it has endured. Lucas is basically claiming that his Star Wars films will inspire more questions than it can possibly answer.

The thing is: I kind of agree with him.

I'm no Star Wars Fanboy. I do like Star Wars, but I've hated the last two (first two?) movies. However, consider this: Star Wars is deeply entrenched in at least five or six major literary and philosophical traditions: it's a Christ parable in the form of a father-son savior dynamic, it heavily references Arthurian legend in it's relationship between characters (Luke as King Arhtur, Obi-Wan as Merlin, Leia as Guinevere and Han Solo as a sort of Sir Lancelot), it contains many elements of Samurai philosophy and aesthetic within the application of the Force and its parallel in Bushido as well as the duel being the preferred battle-style and the appearance of the characters, especially the Jedi (Darth Vaders/stormtrooper's helmet), it borrows from and builds on the tradition of fantasy myth and it also has an underlying political complexity that while, byzantine and overly idiosyncratic, is a relatively accurate portrayal of the way such a power struggle is conducted.

No doubt, references abound in Star Wars. The fantasy and Sci-fi elements are perhaps its most enduring and endearing qualities. Like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars creates it's own language, logic and politics. The creative genius behind such a juggernaut is without a doubt a "Force" to be reckoned with. Even the story itself is kind of complicated. Just try to explain the plot with some brevity to someone who hasn't seen it (finding one of these people can be a task in and of itself) and see if you can clearly and accurately convey it without including much of the details. Hell, I've seen the original round of movies several times each and I'm not sure that I can tell you what they're about. And I know I can't recount the plot of the latest round, partially because I'm not sure if I understand it myself.

In addition, it's widely held that Star Wars was the first of the blockbuster films that so many film critics have widely decried in the last thirty years. George Lucas widely retained the merchandising rights in anticipation of a huge spin-off campaign. This led to a new business model for marketing films and related spin-off products that is still very much in place to this day.

Then there's the many cinematic innovations Lucas and his team developed while creating the films, which has led to an adjunct business for Lucas and an ever-evolving new genre of digital effects films. In a twist of irony, though, the reliance upon digital effects has largely been responsible for the widespread dissatisfaction with the new Star Wars releases and the re-releases of the originals, that is, other than the C-level directing in the case of the new crop.

Perhaps what's most compelling is just how many different ways the Star Wars films can be analyzed critically. In one of my first film classes, a professor argued, much to the dismay of the students, that Star Wars was inherently racist and even borrowed scenes from a classic Nazi propoganda film. Here is a link to another, more politically-oriented analysis that may be just as shocking, as the author argues in favor of the Empire: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/248ipzbt.asp

All things considered, George Lucas may be right, the Star Wars vehicle might be pondered for generations to come. Unfortunately it may not be the cinematic power of the films that is remembered, but the many levels on which the foundation was constructed.

The So-Real Life

2005-02-20T22:34:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you something about me. I will often go through the effort of stripping my bed, washing and drying my bedsheets, bringing them into my room, setting them on my chair and then sleeping on my bed with just the comforter on it for a week straight. I will pick up the sheets and move them from my chair to my bed when I want to sit in the chair, then move the sheets from my bed back to the chair when I want to sleep.

Why do I do such things? I'm twenty-six years old. I hold down a steady job - a pretty respectable one, too, I think (sometimes). And yet I refuse to act in such a way that is consistent with the kind of person I should be at this age.

I grew up watching television shows like Dream On and Friends and Seinfeld. I thought my heroes in all of these shows were sophisticated, upwardly-mobile, urban-intellectual-types. This is what I so desperately aspired to be as I sat in my rural South Dakota home (or Montana, depending on the time period) and hung on their every word. Now, as I watch these shows today, I realize that I couldn't have been more inaccurate in my summation of these characters. True, the fact that I aspired to be like sitcom characters is worrisome enough, but the fact that I chose to be like whiny, narcissistic, shallow, comically flawed caricatures is downright frightening. The worst part is, I suppose that, to a certain extent, I embody many of the qualities that I would deem comical in those very characters. In a bizarre twist of irony, I have become the characters I wanted to emulate, but only in the worst possible sense. I don't live in a trendy Manhattan loft. I don't have a (very) romantic job. I don't go on countless dates with an endless amount of incredibly attractive women. In fact, I don't really have dates with women at all, attractive or otherwise. Instead, I go through my life allowing quirky little ticks (read: neuroses) dictate how I live and interact with people.

I regularly and willfully engage in self-destructive behavior: drinking. eating horribly unhealthy food, failing to exercise regularly, missing out on social opportunities in favor of staying at home. This is no surprise. But the question at hand is: why? Why do people willfully partipate in behvior that doesn't benefit them and in fact could harm them? I recently read an article in the LA Weekly about a gentleman (yeah, I used the word 'gentleman', so what?) named Jared Diamond who wrote a book called Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Malcolm Gladwell also wrote a story about this dude (available at www.gladwell.com) Now, I haven't read this book, but for my purpose the main point is enough to get my own point across. According to what I've read, in the book Diamond submits that societies often participate in self-destructive behavior, which ultimately leads to the downfall of entire civilizations. I believe that one could apply this principal to the lives most of us are leading: we often routinely engage in activities that may eventually be our own undoing.

Many of us try will amend such behavior as we grow older. I mean, is there really any room in this world for a thirty-five year old male with pierced ears, or for a twenty-six year old with his Denver Broncos hat cocked sideways as he sits at his computer in a post-modern moment condemning that very thing?

Now I'm not saying that immaturity is the defining factor in my life. I've done some very adult things as recently as this afternoon. I sat down and figured out (some) of my taxes. And to reward myself, I bought a Tombston(ed)[ [hee hee] pizza and ate the whole damn thing, thereby cancelling out my adult gesture in one fell teenage-esque swoop.

When I catch myself acting in such immature ways, I often quote to myself the now-infamous line Elaine from Seinfeld uttered after she kidnapped her neighbors dog for barking too much: "I'm not an adult, I'm a child." The great thing is, I can say this with just a little bit of my tongue in my cheek, because I regularly pay my own car insurance bill.

Pretty Woman!?

2005-02-17T23:33:00.000-08:00

Note: I apologize for how lame the following "essay" is. It's actually pretty entertaining to read because you can tell I had no idea where I was going with it and, frankly, I still don't.

I was hoping to have something positive to explore as I sit here and relay my stream of consciousness to the nether regions of the blogosphere, but I've got too much trouble on my mind - not personal troubles, but worldly troubles. Recently, I've read a couple of stories about the Rwandan genocides and the conflicts between the Hutus and the Tutsis. Then there's the similar situation developing in Sudan. Of course there's the War in Iraq and the developing turmoil in Syria...and Iran...and North Korea. All of these things create a number of mixed feelings, in particular an overriding sense of guilt - guilt about my recent preoccupation with material possessions, guilt about my myopic self-pity in light of the plight of the average citizen of this planet, and guilt because one is duty bound to at least try and improve things in what little time he is given in life.

We are all very fortunate that we are able to discuss such things as happiness, no matter how unattainable it might be. I think for people here in America and in most of the civilized Western world, the idea of 'happiness' is something that comes as an adjunct to having all of our basic needs met, as opposed to the countries where people suffer from political and cultural instability, whose very existence is rooted in the ambiguity of whether or not there is a sense of happiness outside of living a life undisturbed with all basic needs met. I'm really tired, but what I'm trying to get it at here is that Americans tend to look at happiness as something akin to a material possession, like a stereo or a computer. That is to say, if enough of our wants are met, then we certainly won't be lacking in happiness. It is usually a given that our basic needs are met. But our needs, by virtue of living in this country, are completely different than that of most of the rest of the world. Granted, I would never say that happiness is easy to come by for anyone. No, not at all. But it is maybe a little bit more practical for those who require what we consider "God-given rights" such as freedom of thought and action, than we who strive for fleeting achievements and life-status affirmation.

My idea of happiness, I'm sure, doesn't vary much from the average person. But if I am considered an average person, then certainly my requirements for happiness become increasingly more complicated than those who would do with just having their mind, body and soul belong strictly themselves..

What's hilarious about all of this, (aside from nothing, that is) is that the impetus to this, my notion of cultural variables in the search for happiness is the movie 'Pretty Woman.' (Stay with me here now.) I seem to remember a suspicious number of female acquaintances with whom I grew up absolutely adoring this movie. And this is the kind of movie that is tantamount to the point I'm been trying to make regarding desires fulfilled posing as the notion of captured happiness instead of the 'needs-met' paradigm being equated with organic happiness.

For those of you who don't know, the plot of Pretty Woman goes something like this: a lonely playboy tycoon who has everything, save for that elusive holy grail called love, is willing to go out and spend a bunch of money on a hooker, whom he soon falls for. The plot doesn't inspire much admiration for either of the characters as much as it does nausea. Why any young girl would be so enamored with such a morally suspect situation is beyond me. But somehow, through dramatic, real-love-is-undeniable-thirteen-year-old-sensibilities-pandering, the film pulls off some sort of emotional connection. To be honest, I don't know which character is more despicable, the rich playboy or the hooker whom he pays to fall in love with him.

Granted this entire scenario is fictional, contrived solely for the purpose of entertainment, but I think it says a lot about the flawed view that a minor portion of our population sees as admirable. I don't blame anyone. It can't be expected that the movie producers would feel any responsibility for inspiring young people to want to achieve happiness through these sort of means. But something about American society and its profoundly skewed sense of priorities makes Pretty Woman less of a simple "love" story and more of a powerful culturally-ideal example of material happiness. And such a thing may very well be the fundamental difference in how and why people who live in such countries as Rwanda and Iraq may have an entirely different and, consequently, more practical take on what is, and is not happiness than we here between the safe shores of America.

The moral here is: don't write long, confusing, bullshit essays when you're tired - you will paint yourself into a corner and will run out of paint thinner trying to rectify the situation.

Hip-Hoptopia

2005-02-12T22:43:00.000-08:00

Another poorly-realized, but noteworthy unseen piece from the archives.

Hip-Hoptopia

During various periods of my life, I have wished and fantasized that certain life-altering events would occur that would forever change my as yet unremarkable existence. Daydreams. When I was a wee lad, it used to be that my ideal fantasies would involve either discovering or being endowed with a large cache of toys and video games. As a teenager, I would fantasize about girls and material possessions like cars and clothes. Then, in college, I sorted out my priorities and started fantasizing about a world in which I was infinitely successful, universally famous and ruthlessly powerful. I would play out these little fantasies in my head and hope against hope that these fantasies would come to pass. Well, I have found a somewhat imaginary amalgamation of all of these fantasies and now aspire to permanently reside in this Utopian Nirvana-Heaven. What is it? Is it a porno? No. Is it Kansas City? No. Is it religion? God, no.

Rap videos.

From now on, when I daydream, I will daydream that I am trapped in a never-ending rap video. Rap videos are places where bad taste, bank repossession and venereal disease do not exist. Clothes come only in two sizes: large and extra large – same with breasts. Currency is distributed indiscriminately and strictly in the sums of 20’s and 100s. Champagne is the life-blood and success is measured not in dollars, but in SUVs.

It used to be that the world depicted in rap video was filled with guns and brutality. One never knew when someone was going to pop a cap. Now, half of the fun is wondering when some chick is going to pop her top. Once upon a time, the depiction of selling crack was usually as a deplorable occupation. But, in the new rap world it’s commonly seen as an honorable way of gaining financial stability. The lifestyles represented in these videos were not ripe with comfort and vanity, but of harsh hyper-reality. Violence reigned supreme. Appallingly, masturbation fodder was virtually nonexistent.

But with the so-called “Bling-Bling –era” masturbation enthusiasts (or masterbateurs) have endless material with which to “work.” Savvy capitalists and clothing companies who deal strictly in primarily colors can rest easy: mass marketing has finally found its way into hip-hop. Harsh cityscapes have given way to golden glitz, suburbia and Chevy Suburbans. Hey, what better place to expound hardcore street poetics than out by the pool, or, ooh, better yet, in the Bahamas? Strippers have also become legitimate company with which to hold court. Rap stars are not really associated with gangs so much anymore as they are with sports franchises, fashion designers and automobile manufacturers.

Back in the day, you would sit down and watch a rap video and be confronted with hundreds of distracting blurs on the clothing of the artists. Instead of listening to the music and enjoying the aesthetics of ghetto America, you would sit there fuming and wondering aloud, “Come on! What’s behind the fucking blurs?! Logos, guns, inappropriate gestures and nipples – that’s what. Sometime in the mid-nineties, though, corporations got wise. Blurs on logos in rap videos slowly gave way to what could be the best form of free advertising ever – simply letting the artist ‘do they thang.’ Rap videos are fast becoming the best commercials no-money can buy.

Nowadays, the minimum criteria a person needs to start a rap career is a nickname stolen directly from a character in a comic book/gangster film, an affiliation with a cheesy, sleazy mob-boss-wannabe record label exec, a guest spot on an equally mediocre peers’ supremely annoying ghetto anthem, about fifty confusing and unrelated aliases and a complete and utter willingness to suckle at the teat of middle America (while vehemently defending any challenge to the street credentials that they have fought so hard to preserve and probably never had in the first place.) The most depressing thing is, as a former avid hip-hop fan, I’ve been waiting for this embarrassing fad to slowly fade out and give way to the hip-hop renaissance that’s been threatening for years. But, why fuck with a winning formula? After all, modern rap is just an updated manifestation of the American dream: to gather endless amounts of meaningless expendable goods by any means necessary, including crime. It fits right in with the American Dream maxim of the fifties: every American kid should have a roof over their head, a dog, and a Lexus with an in-dash Playstation 2. Never mind the shrewd political analyses of groups like The Coup and Public Enemy, the snazzy, jazzy loops of A Tribe Called Quest and The Pharcyde or the hardcore originality of EPMD and BDP. Social awareness essentially died out of mainstream hip-hop in the early 90s.

At this point it would be wise to point out that I am differentiating between rap and hip-hop because there are some very important fundamental differences. If you don’t know, ya betta ask somebody.

Still, many rappers argue that the depiction of crime in music videos is just an accurate portrayal of everyday street life. Some claim they had to turn to crime in order to make ends meet. I’m not buying that bullshit, not across the board at least. Sure, some rappers may have had to turn to crime to make rent or buy diapers, but chances are, those people are either behind bars or dead. The Notorious B.I.G. (I hate typing that name) was and still is, posthumously, widely considered one of the most prolific rappers, ever. Yet, for the most part, he pontificates about acquiring material possessions and inconsequential social status due to such acquisitions. In one of his first singles, “Juicy” Biggie raps about owning a Super-Nintendo and a Sega Genesis - things that he apparently didn’t have growing up; bare necessities. It is widely known, however, that he turned to street crime because he wasn’t satisfied with the presumably adequate lifestyle his mother provided him, nor was he interested in getting a legitimate job. He was simply looking for a fast way to get the latest trends in fashion, entertainment and military weaponry.

Is this the picture we want to be painting for today’s impoverished youth: the importance of staying real? The three R’s have been replaced by “the four M’s”: materialism, misogyny, marketing and multiple convictions. I don’t necessarily blame rap so much as I do certain individuals’ lack of ability to distinguish real from fantasy or smart from ignorant or even empty from fulfilled. The fact that some people consider material wealth not only a God-given inalienable right that they have been so cruelly deprived of, but also as a symbol of unquestionable status worries me.

The notion of materialistic entitlement is only perpetuated by the current trend of fantasy depicted in rap videos. It is this sad state of affairs that often confuses the fan and could potentially lead to a life spent in pursuit of such empty promises. It is up to the fans to take a stand and buck the trend, to bring hip hop back full circle to a socially viable and credible voice to urban youth. Until then, I will continue to dismiss rap as just empty noise.

Bonus:

Track listing from average hip-hop album (2004)

1. Intro
2. Intro outro
3. Anthemic radio-friendly single featuring P. Diddy/Ja Rule
4. Shout out to the ladies featuring up-and-coming R&B singer
5. Patronizing “girl you’re all I need/black women must be respected” song featuring up and coming female R&B singer
6. Nasty, “doin’ it” song featuring R. Kelly
7. Sketch of the ghetto SNL variety
8. Song lamenting how hard it is growing up in the ghetto/overly dramatic song about the pratfalls of the drug game and a tribute to the homies it done took with it (usually serves as a thinly-veiled and presumably unintentional endorsement of selling drugs as a legitimate form of income)
9. Anthemic Shout-out song to the homies featuring the militantly-named splinter group to which the artist claims affiliation
10. Sketch ripping off Pacino film
11. Second radio single infinitely inferior to the first, but somehow more popular and, consequently, more annoying (usually an obligatory Southern-crunk style bling-bling rip-off attempt at introducing the artist into the mainstream)
12. Poorly placed musical interlude/Unnecessary intro reprise
13. Shameless attempt at gaining/re-gaining credibility with a guest appearance by Jay-Z, who undoubtedly is responsible for the bulk of the lyrics
14. Reading of 5 Percent Nation rhetoric by the resident ‘knowledge disciple’ who decries the state of the plight of the urban black male, thereby furthering the conspiratorial paranoia about the plot against the black race and simultaneously alienating the suburban white kids who are the demographic who bought the most albums
15. Bizarre , sometimes intimidating, but usually comical rant-song promising to indiscriminately murder any turncoats/rivals that may be construed as plotting against the artist and the aforementioned clique to which he claims allegiance
16. Ironic peace anthem (considering the previous song) with a positive, if insincere, social message about unity between races
17. Remix of radio-friendly hit featuring a horribly mismatched guest artist
18. Outro intro
19. Outro, in remembrance of the loss of hip hop greats such as Tupac and Biggie and giving a shout-out to whomever random person/cultural phenomenon/material possession the artist deems appropriate
20. Outro outro
21. *Bonus Track
22. *Bonus Track (European - only Version)
23. *Bonus Track (Japanese – only Version)

Music As A Drug

2005-02-12T21:59:00.000-08:00

The following is the first in a series of some old bullshit I wrote at one point or another, but had nowhere to display them...until now (dun-dun-dunnnn!)

Music As A Drug

Disclaimer: This column does not seek to condone, promote nor advocate the use of music to enhance the enjoyment of drugs. While music is never necessary for self-medication, it is, at times, complimentary. The reader is implored to use music judiciously and within the realms of the documented and observed laws set forth in your zone, code, county, state, country, continent, planet and universe. The rhetoric contained herein is metaphorical in nature and should not be taken out of context. Please remember not to operate automobiles or heavy machinery while under the influence of music.

It has long been theorized (by me) that music can have as much influence over the mental state or even the soul of a person as any drug - street, pharmaceutical or otherwise. If you really let it, music can take you to another place. From music we can feel the deepest moments of brooding, the most tranquil feelings of harmony, the most assured sense of happiness. For some, music is a way of recreating feelings actually felt while under the influence of a psychoactive substance. Or, some people may listen to music to plunge themselves into a similar kind of music-induced euphoria in lieu of actually ingesting mind-altering drugs. For me, music is a drug.

It’s the never-ending search for the song that keeps music enthusiasts going. You know the song: the one that makes you feel like you’re the king of the magical, mystical mythical world of Zatron and are revered and respected by all of the Zatronites as you zoom through the purple sky in your cloud-mobile. Or maybe, it isn’t just a song, but the perfect melody, or harmony or riff that keeps music enthusiasts interested.

The merits of music are many. People claim that music makes them feel invincible, inspired, transparent, heroic, etc. Some people even claim that music can heal illnesses. Yes, unlikely, but maybe it’s possible. While browsing through a yippie grocery store here in LA, I noticed a flier advertising what is known as ‘sonic therapy.’ The sessions promised to provide cures for countless ailments and bring balance to an otherwise disharmonious state of mind through the aural implementation of single harmonic tones. Initially, I scoffed at the preposterous notion of jingling bells being able to cure leprosy. But upon further contemplation, the notion suddenly appealed to me. Despite my skeptical leanings, I began to imagine the possibility of healing through sounds and music in particular. If the old proverb “laughter is the best medicine” is even remotely true, then surely music can be attributed to mental as well as physical changes in the human consciousness. We are all a result of the psyche that we embody. It occurs to me that there is actually a similar proverb, adjusted here for my purposes: music not only soothes the savage beast but can also enrage the docile lamb.

It was at this moment that I had an epiphany – music actually is a drug. And the healing power, among other things is just as tangible as any affect a drug can have, you just have to be willing to ‘go with it’ as is often uttered in the language of dopespeak.

I briefly took guitar lessons in college, during which my Zen-Buddhist instructor, or sensei, as I liked to call him, put forth the notion that music was simply filling empty space with time (rhythm) via harmonic tones. My guitar sensei’s version of the theory, while oversimplified, stands to reason that music is manipulating time and filling space where nothing previously existed. The syncopated pulse of a drum in conjunction with the fluttering of melodic tones provides an intangible aural environment that appeals to the most basic sense of human awareness, most often the desire to feel good and sometimes even the notion of psychic transcendence.

Nearly everyone who has endeavored to partake in the use of psychoactive substances can confirm that any kind of music can take on certain otherworldly, transcendent, almost religious qualities. It’s difficult to explain to the uninitiated the ethereal feeling you get from a spacey, Pink Floyd epic or the warm comfort found in a pastoral movement by the Poylphonic Spree while on a psilosybin-induced trip.

In fact, the influence of drugs has aided in devising some of the most interesting music ever captured or performed. It is arguable to state that drug use in and of itself is solely responsible for such music, but it is hard to deny the impact. Recently, I have found psychedelic music to be my drug of choice. The conscious addition of eerie, spacey, sounds and dissonance creates a sort of sonic pillow of ecstasy on which I am only too glad to lay my weary head in the hopes that I will be figuratively carted off to other realms of cosmic consciousness.

However, one cannot underemphasize the importance of space and silence in music today. In watching a documentary on Pink Floyd’s most popular and arguably best realized album, Dark Side of the Moon, I discovered that the Floyd wanted to create noticeable space between the notes and in fact, made a conscious attempt at making the themes of the music apparent, thereby creating “soundscapes” as opposed to just songs. To be sure, the album is admittedly incredibly dense with sonic textures – music, reverb-laden sound effects or otherwise – but there is plenty of space for the notes to breathe, so to speak, and resonate within both the sonic space of the song itself and the ear of the listener, which is what makes many of the songs so effective.

Nowadays, one can’t help but feel inundated with the invasive sounds of radio-friendly popular music. There is a certain indescribable sheen to contemporary music that strips it of any of the character that its so-called Indie counterpart can easily achieve. Granted, this glossiness is the result of the art of finding just what is most pleasant to the ear and packaging it in a form that is ready for mass consumption, much like an aspirin. While it’s hard enough to put a finger on just the reason why, the difference between radio-ready music and all other forms is tangible. Some may find this music pleasing, but some may find it intrusive, trite or even boring, which is a testament to the notion that there is no accounting for taste. So much of today’s radio-friendly music feels like an opiate that the masses ingest knowing full well that it will make them feel good, even if they want to feel bad. (It’s okay to feel bad sometimes.) It’s like the age-old fluoride in the water conspiracy: the government keeps the saccharine MOR stuff playing repeatedly for mass consumption on the most expansive, diverse and cost effective medium possible – the radio. In this sense, figurative drugs are literally being beamed through the airwaves and into our homes.

I don’t consider myself a music snob, but sometimes when I hear music on the radio, the bile rises in the back of my throat in protest of the mediocrity and the way that I feel pandered to. The “punk rock” played on the radio doesn’t make me feel any rebellious angst as much as it makes me feel like going to Pacific Sunwear to buy a pair of vomit-splatter-colored board shorts. If my drug of choice is the one that doesn’t make me feel ill, then consider me a non-radio patron.

But I digress, diatribes about the perceived listening tendencies of music fans the world over are endemic to the cause of only the most serious and easily provoked of music snobs. Though every fan seems to think he or she has the best taste in music and certainly I am no exception. However, in light of this ideology, I have come to the very real conclusion that my taste in music may actually and most likely does suck.

If it is true that music inspires in us certain feelings, then can it also be said that music influences our actions as well. Much has been made of lawsuits that accuse popular artists of encouraging their audience to perform various sinister deeds. The notion that Marilyn Manson’s music inspired the Colombine massacre a few years ago immediately springs to mind. Rarely, if ever are songs a call to action, not to mention a call to arms. However, misinterpretation of intention is rampant. Possibly the most notorious example of misappropriations of ideas or imagined post-hypnotic suggestion in music is Charles Manson’s gross misconception that the Beatles self-titled so-called “White Album (particularly the songs “Helter Skelter” and “Revolution No. 9”) was a call to arms for a coming race war. Manson interpreted the Beatles music as a direct linkage to manifest biblical verses coded with subliminal message prompting a call to grotesque action.

The fact that Manson can draw such abstractions from completely unrelated material is shocking, but not altogether surprising. To attempt to divine a reason for people’s interpretation of lyrics within this essay is tangential. However, it should be noted that lyrical rhythms, phrasing and pacing are equally as responsible, if not more so, for the unconscious toe tapping that many of us do from time to time as the simple instrumentation of a particular piece of music. In essence, not only the music itself, but also the way in which it is delivered can invoke an emotional reaction. If it was not so, we would all be content to listen to simple instrumentals.

Science has yet to find a link between the pleasure derived from music and its importance in the grand scheme of human survival. It can be assumed that music is strictly an aesthetic pleasure and has very little to do with the perseverance of the human species and preservation (or debilitation, for that matter) of cognitive and emotional mindsets, but that’s a topic better left for the philosophers to debate. However, music is also a viable and pleasant form of communication that, as has been mentioned before, triggers a variety of emotions, both negative and positive. On a biological level, the simplest species of organisms use musical forms of communication as a means of attracting, warning or greeting other organisms. Birds sing. Whales and dolphins use sonar tones to “speak” with each other. Granted, humans are the only species that uses the means of music as both a communicative and aesthetic emotive modes. The question is whether or not the reactive emotions in humans are biologically or culturally implanted. It is clear that while one arrangement of instrumentation into melody and harmony is pleasing to one ear, the same configuration may not necessarily be pleasing to another. Such is the beauty of music. Such is the beauty of life.

I thought I had something to say...

2005-02-12T20:54:00.000-08:00

But I don't. Not tonight at least. Nothing of any consequence any way. Damn, the font on this thing is impossibly small. Let me see if I can make it bigger. Hold on....

All right, so - no - I can't figure out how to adjust the font. I just made the view bigger via the view option on the menu-thingie

I guess one's first instinct here would be toward an explanation of what it is that one is going to be posting. Truth is, I don't know, so I'm not going to discuss it. After all, how can one discuss something one knows little about? Well, we'll find out as I am well known for opening my mouth and yapping about things of which I have very little knowledge.

So, I guess I did kind of decide what this blog will be about - things that I will pontificate about at great length that I likely know little or nothing about. That, and I have some opinions damn it and I want people to be informed of them so they can be duly ignored.

That being said, I will go into why I decided to start blogging. I feel it's my duty as a somewhat informed and (self-proclaimed) nerd-ily hip twenty-something to engage in whatever pop culture phenomenon has grasped that demographic. Friendster, instant messaging, myspace and now this - the blogosphere. What a bizarre phenomenon!

The irony in all of this is that after a brief stint as a contriubutor to a so-called web-zine, my sister suggested to me that I partake in the blog frenzy. I declined as I so snobbily proclaimed that my writing talents could best be served elsewhere. However, my recent fascination with web-opining has intrigued me to the extent that I thought maybe I could have something to offer or least of all a way to entertain myself should I get bored...at home...on a Saturday night...in Los Angeles.

It also occurred to me in the participation of my first-ever message board debate yesterday, that many people (including me) have nothing better to do than sit at home (or at work, but not me - I am diligent in my occupational duties) and document their opinions for all the world to see. Or, at least for all of that person's personal world to see.

Speaking of which, how weird are those message boards anyway? For your edification, the thread I decided to participate in and to which I will refer was in regards to an Op-Ed piece by Ann Coulter regarding Ward Churchill's claims that he is a Native American. The nature of the debate - at least the one in which I participated - was rather interesting. It was an indictment of the Neo-conservatives supposed attacks on the notion of Academic and Intellectual freedom. Coulter had asserted that because Churchill's claims that he is of American Indian descent are inconsistent, then he is somehow intellectually inadequate in his duties as a college professor. I'd like to tell you that the debate continued with each member stating an informed and thought-provoking opinion, but it ended up being a verbal slugfest between people who had a serious interest in the topic and the cyber-bully wanna-be's whom, I imagine, haunt any message board to taunt just about anybody willing enough to be suckered in by such base behavior.

Which brings me to my point: What purpose do these message boards serve, other than to allow for a good old case of virtual finger pointing over who's an asshole and who is not? The tendency towards sophomoric argument at every level of debate in this country right now is deplorable. We've all seen the talking heads having a go at it on the television and it really is starting to get annoying. People are entitled to their opinions, but is it our responsibility to suffer through them, no matter how ignorant or impossibly flawed they are? Yes, I guess it is. It's the nature of free-speech. But in this particlar case you choose your battles wisely.

For my part, though, I was glad I decided to comment on what I thought was a rather unconvincing and unnecessary diatribe on Coulter's part. But, as is to be expected, there were those who would categorically disagree and they certainly didn't hesitate on letting me or my brothers-in-arms know about it.