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Thursday, 14 April 2011
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Under My Skin
By Avril Lavigne
see relatedIt is What it Isn't
I’m not the first one and I won’t be the last to state the obvious fact that MTV hardly plays music videos. As of January 2011, the only time of the day that MTV plays music videos is for three hours very early in the morning when mostly everyone on the west coast is still sleeping. The rest of the day MTV airs reality and game shows aimed at pregnant teenagers, New Jersey people, and homosexual college students. This hardly constitutes “music television.” The last music video I can recall seeing in its entirety on MTV was Bye Bye Bye by ‘N Sync, and that was way back when Carson Daly still gave a damn about children’s after-school programming. In this age and time where it’s cool to be ironic, MTV programming is equivalent to why hipsters think Pabst Blue Ribbon is good beer: it is what it is not.
The same can be said about MTV’s sister channel VH-1. What started out as an adult-contemporary music video channel, it is now a bastion of pop-culture that plays on the nostalgia that old people (read: born before 1980) have for things not current. Over the holidays I was surfing DirecTV and ended up watching an old Saturday Night Live episode on VH-1. I was watching a Weekend Update segment from, I would guess, around 2001 with Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon. As they were wont to do, these faux news-anchors were acting like sarcastic baboons. My wife, who was watching with me, laughed a lot and said, “Wow, this is actually funny.”
I should point out that my wife hates Saturday Night Live. She doesn’t think it’s remotely funny; in fact she thinks that it’s insulting to anything with a functioning brain. She’s not the only person who shares this sentiment. Many people say that the golden age of SNL was in the 1970s with iconic comedians like John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Dan Aykroyd. Current episodes of SNL are widely panned for being unfunny and overly contrived, and I suspect the only reason people tune in is because of its musical guests (being a musical guest on SNL is still a big deal).
I agree with most people on this issue. I started watching SNL in the early 1990s with Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, and David Spade. Those guys made me laugh. Nowadays I feel that SNL isn’t really all that funny, and I’ve felt this way ever since the late 1990s. However, when I was watching that old episode of Weekend Update last month, I was genuinely laughing, even though I suspected that I wasn’t laughing when I saw that segment when it first aired roughly nine years ago. I clearly remember hating Jimmy Fallon. What has changed? Was Tina Fey and Jimmy Fallon’s comedy ahead of its time? Am I losing my mind?
A while back I read an article in which Lorne Michaels (the creator and executive producer of SNL) responded to criticism about SNL. He said that SNL is not as bad as people say it is, nor was it as good as people remember it was. This struck me as being surprisingly prophetic about everything.
As a whole, we seem to be surprisingly cynical about the present. We stress out about our jobs, we worry about feeding our kids, and we fear nuclear war. Every decision we make is approached with skepticism. Is this show funny? Who should I vote for? Will this affect who I am? When will I die? Instant information via smartphones and the internet has made the present a hyper-reality. As such, we’ve become over-nostalgic for the past. This is why 30-year-olds like watching VH-1 and why extreme Republicans like dressing up as 18th century New Englanders. Like Saturday Night Live, we’re under the illusion that the past was always better, even though it was probably the same as it is today.
Something about this makes me feel sad for the present, but then I remember that it is what it is not.
Wednesday, 09 March 2011
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Goodbye Lullaby
By Avril Lavigne
see relatedI Give Up
Early spring has historically been a boring time of the year for me. For someone whose disposition is largely dictated by sports seasons, late February and early March is typically bland. Football season is over and baseball season is only in preseason. This leaves only hockey and basketball. While I love hockey, I really don't get into it until the Stanley Cup Playoffs begin, and while basketball is exciting to watch, it's also boringly simple. Everything about the NBA can be summed up in three sentences. A complete basketball neophyte (like my wife) can sound like ABC's basketball genius Jon Barry by just reciting the following:- The Lakers are too long for any team to match up with.
- The Thunder are explosive, but probably can't survive a seven-game series.
- It might take the Heat another year to gel together.
Ironically, the people who need to read this probably gave up the internet for Lent. In forty days, the world will go back to normal and there will be basketball and hockey playoffs to watch.
Thursday, 24 February 2011
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Licensed to Ill
By Beastie Boys
see relatedAdvancements in Being "Liked"
Last spring I was on the popular website IMDB.com, the Internet Movie Data Base where uninformed movie fans go to become informed about movies that they are fans of. I was gathering information (or “data”, I guess) about Iron Man 2. Specifically, I was looking for the plot synopsis of the film. After reading it, I concluded that the plot seemed entertaining and engaging enough for me to want to watch the film in theaters. I also realized that Scarlett Johansson was in the movie, which made the film even more intriguing not because I enjoy her acting (which I do, sometimes), but because the tight black jumpsuit she wears as the Black Widow accentuates her large breasts.
Anyway, while I was reading the Iron Man 2 page on IMDB, I noticed that there was a Facebook “Like” button at the top of the page. I also noticed that it said, “Jason Bautista likes this.” “What in the name of Robert Downey, Jr. is going on here?” I asked to no one in particular. Why is Facebook on IMDB, and why is it telling me that my friend Jason Bautista likes Iron Man 2? Was this some kind of computer glitch? Does Jason like all movies on IMDB, or only super hero ones? Does Jason know about this?
I realized that I was asking the wrong questions. After that visit to IMDB, I started seeing the “Like” button all over the internet. For the past year now, it’s been popping up on news sites, sports sites, blogs, and just about any other website that has the potential to be Likeable. If you’re logged into Facebook while visiting these sites, that “Like” button will tell you if any of your friends “Like” that site, and if you “Like” a site, that action will show up in your Facebook friends’ News Feed. Or, in summary, Facebook has gone nuts and has taken over the internet.
Now, there is probably nothing wrong with what Facebook is doing. I’ve read their privacy policy and I’ve consciously agreed to it, so, if they’re giving away my information, I can’t complain about not knowing about it (although there may be ethical issues regarding Facebook changing their privacy policy every several months). Nevertheless, it certainly feels like all sorts of creepy. Ever since the mid 1990s when the internet became relevant to the average person, the internet has traditionally been thought of as a mysterious place. You could go look for information about anything discreetly and anonymously. Your identity online could be something completely different from who you were in real life. While this is still true, the arrival of social networking websites in the early 2000s opened up the internet. It made people more comfortable with expressing themselves and sharing their information online. And what we’ve realized is that people love talking about themselves. People love sharing pictures and status updates on Facebook, and Twitter helped carry this self-indulgent bullshit to our mobile devices. We’re witnessing the destruction of the anonymous cyberworld and entering a new era of self-glorification. With Facebook expanding its services to beyond the Facebook domain, it isn’t shifting the paradigm. It’s responding to it.
A lot of people don't like this. I am not one of them. As you may have noticed, I’ve implemented the “Like” button on my blog posts for the past year or so. This is undoubtedly self-indulgent of me to assume that anyone will Like anything that I’ve ever written. Furthermore, I have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and a formspring page to add to the degeneration of my own humility. The limits of my ego are defined only by the limits of technology. I have no redeeming qualities.
As history has shown, the advancement of technology is a product of our own egos. You’ll have to embrace it or surrender to it. You just don’t necessarily have to “Like” it.
Wednesday, 23 February 2011
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Detours
By Sheryl Crow
see relatedCaffiend
Every work day at lunchtime I go to Starbucks, and every time I go to Starbucks there is almost always the same lady working there. She always greets me in the same dreary way, robotically asking me how I am doing and what I want to drink. There is never any expression on her face or inflection in her voice. Qualitative reasoning does not lead me to believe that she has Bell's palsy or vocal chord paralysis, so I suspect that her problem is that she either (1) does not like her job or (2) does not like herself. Interacting with someone who is not happy with themselves is always uncomfortable. It's kind of like the experience you get from listening to a Nirvana song: any terrible feeling you have about yourself is instantly amplified. I always feel like my day becomes a little more ruined whenever I see her, but perhaps I just feel miserable because I'm sleepy and tired, which happens to be entirely why I go to Starbucks in the first place. Sometimes I think that depression and fatigue are the same thing: In both cases you're just trying to live through the grunge of your own existence.
I feel like I just described the entire essence of the city of Seattle.
Saturday, 19 February 2011
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Everything Comes and Goes
By Michelle Branch
see relatedChristians Never, Yesterday Forever
Barack Hussein Obama is probably not a socialistic Muslim terrorist. He’s probably not even a Muslim. But, if he is, indeed, a Muslim, then he’s a very lousy one at best because from what I have seen, it has been well documented that he’s a devout Christian and he goes to Church every Sunday, regardless of the fact that he likes to hang out with those evil Democrats.
Furthermore, Barack Obama is probably not a socialist, but, from a Christian standpoint, I don’t see why it would be such a bad thing if he is. I don’t know what Jesus Christ’s political outlook was, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he was a social fascist. If the fundamental principle of socialism is that everything must work for the common good (and since the driving force behind capitalism is self-improvement through ambition and greed), then I would suppose that Jesus would be a proponent of that philosophy. However, the current trend for Jesus fans right now is to vote for whichever policy is perceived as the least socialistic. Christians tend to be Republican because they feel that that party best represents their values. But, the truth is no one really knows what Jesus Christ’s values were. I don’t even know what my own values were ten years ago, so I would feel kind of arrogant to claim to know the morality of a homeless Jewish guy who was born around the year 0. We only believe we know what he stood for, and what we believe is usually whatever makes our lifestyle more convenient. The past is always rationalized by the present, and yesterday should never be interpreted in a wholly single perspective.
I don’t know how many Christian denominations there are, but the fact that so many exist suggests that no one in the history of the world has had any idea on what the hell Jesus Christ was talking about (that includes me and you). Christianity is like the song Yesterday by the Beatles. It was a song that was revolutionary in its melodies and chord progressions and it made you feel great every time you listened to it. And if Christianity is Yesterday, then the Catholic Church is The Beatles. Like the Catholic Church, The Beatles created it and made it all up. Yesterday (Christianity) belongs to The Beatles (Catholic Church) and it is only them who can capture its original essence.
But, Yesterday has become one of the most remade songs in pop music history. Each cover artist offered their rendition of the ballad, and each remake catered different sects of the musical fanbase. Bob Dylan’s version is like Protestantism because he’s revolutionary and rebellious. Ray Charles’ version is for the Charismatics and Pentacostals because they would rather believe than see. En Vogue’s version is like Gospel music. Heavy metal band Rage did a cover of the song, and they’re like Evangelicals because they’re fucking nuts. Leann Rimes was just a kid when she came out, so her version is like Youth Ministry. Frank Sinatra was married multiple times, so his version represents Mormon values. Just like Michael Bolton is a white guy who tries to sing like a black guy, his version is for the Jews for Jesus (it doesn’t make sense).
If you’ve ever heard a remake of Yesterday, then you probably thought that it kind of sucked, or, at the very best, was not quite as good as the original. Every Christian denomination tries to represent Jesus, and every sect believes they’re doing a good job, but it’s really just a cover. This is not to say that the Catholic Church best represents the “true Christianity” because they were the original Church. Even The Beatles can’t capture the original spirit of Yesterday, and that’s largely because half of them are old and the other half are dead. The essence of everything is always lost in time. Time hates humanity, no matter how much we try to convince ourselves that 30 is the new 20.
That settles it. Jesus probably doesn't give a fuck that the Beatles are now available on iTunes.
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