So, I was thinking about the statement I made in my last post, “I was ‘with it’ for approximately two years in the early ’00s,” and, you know, it’s really true.
Growing up, I was raised on classy shit. Musically (and cinematically and televisionically) I had limited exposure to what was modern and popular. I listened to the Beatles and the Monkees as a child, as well as Springsteen, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, the Police — all of which were technically popular and, some, modern — but none of them were what most kids were listening to in the late ’80s.
In the ’90s, my musical intake was limited to the radio (which I listened to obsessively) and some “Christian rock.” My parents kept a tight lid on what entertainment I was allowed to ingest, for better or worse. Then they bought me Collective Soul’s self-titled album(!) on cassette(!) for one of my late-’90s birthdays. The musical world slowly began to open up.
In 1999 and 2000, a couple of new friends from church blew my mind wide open by introducing me to Weezer’s first two albums and the Pixies. They were revelations. I started writing lyrics (badly). I became involved in the Weezer fan community. And that, right there, sometime between 2001 and 2004, is when I was “with it.”
I started listening to the likes of Stephen Malkmus, Cat Power, Ash, Of Montreal (very briefly), Nada Surf, Arcade Fire, and a multitude of other indie-type artists that I can no longer remember because OLD. This particular Weezer community was pretentious, off-color, elitist — i.e., right up my alley. I’d found my first Internet home in a post-America Online world.
Thanks to that community, I was with it, downloading music illegally on Soulseek and putting it on my Dell DJ mp3 player. I was cool, man.
Then, the forum’s cool kids decided I was creepy and annoying (fair enough, really). I was harassed. I left. I came back on a new account. I got banned.
I stopped being with it.
Since then, Weezer and Nada Surf went to shit, Ash fell apart, I stopped being able to tolerate Arcade Fire, and no matter how hard I try to like the current crop of indie sensations (your Mumfords and your Bon Ivers and your Vampire Weekends) I just can’t do it. It is an alien language that my brain is not meant to decipher.
But, for a couple of years back there, I knew what was up. Mmm. Yeah.
1) I hate that I feel compelled to talk about this.
2) Kanye is a genius. Seriously. We are all just pawns on Kanye’s chess board. Do you know why? We are talking about him. A lot. Sure, most of it is in the form of memes, or calling him a douchebag, but in his line of work, once people stop paying attention to you, you’re as good as dead. Effectively, we’re all helping to keep his career afloat. (Which is fine, IMO. Each of his albums inevitably end up with two or three quality tracks.)
3) The worst part about all this is that it’s undoubtedly going to inspire Taylor Swift to write another unspeakably bland, soulless pop song that teenage girls will inevitably plaster the lyrics to across their Tumblrs, Twitters, and MySpaces. If we smite Kanye for anything, let it be this. What hath thou wrought, Yeezy?
4) How long is it going to be before celebrities realize that, when you see Kanye West walking towards you while you’re on-stage, you take the fucking mic and you run in the other direction. Best-case scenario, you get away and finish your speech. Worst-case scenario, fifteen minutes of YouTube fame.
5) Can we please make it a rule that all television programs — be they sitcoms, the evening news, documentaries, whatever — must randomly cut away to a live shot of Lady Gaga? Watch this video for at least forty seconds and try to tell me that this wouldn’t immeasurably improve the entertainment value of everything.
I’m done.
I was a lonely, introspective child. I developed a habit of talking to myself, or thinking out loud. I grew up into an even-more-lonely teenager who kept the habit going strong. And now I’ve become an ever-so-slightly less lonely adult, if you can really call me that. Often, this “talking to myself” takes the form of me spouting off lyrics to songs I’ll never write and sentences from books that will never exist. On this beautiful morning, the following came out:
I stumbled through the room, picking up discarded tissues in a lonely, post-orgasmic stupor.
It’s not exactly Pulitzer material, but I like it. I don’t know where it’s going or where it’s been, but I like it. It’s got something to it, an atmosphere — at least, it does in my mind. But I have such a difficult time with writing. After all, what’s purpose does it serve? At best, it will sit, unfinished, in a folder on my computer. It won’t make me a dime, and I’ll never have the patience nor the talent to craft it into something that I’m truly satisfied with.
Creativity seems so almost-pointless to me, an amateur do-nothing. Perhaps if I was a bit more together and resourceful I’d be able to come up with a plan or a goal. Like Burt Bacharach, Dusty Springfield, Jack White and countless others, I just don’t know what to do with myself. I feel like I’ve always had a ton of worthwhile, decent creativity inside of me, but I’ve never known what to do with it. I don’t do well without a purpose. I just stumble around blindly, never accomplishing anything. This is true for all areas of my life. Perhaps this is why romance is so important to me, since it gives me a purpose, something to care about.
Anyway, I’m not really sure what the point of all this is. I wish it was easier to be a writer. I mean, I suppose it is easy — you just write. But it’s ridiculously difficult to get anywhere with it, especially when I don’t even know where I’d want to go with it in the first place. Fiction? Nonfiction? Short? Long? I don’t know. But dear God, I hope I get to do something with it all. An imagination is a terrible thing to waste.
Click that link. There’s a lot of text there on the other end. But you fucking read it. Seriously. Read the hell out of it. I imagine that some of you were wondering why I was so excited to have merlin following me on Tumblr. The linked post is a sterling example of why. No B-level Internet celebrity makes my puzzler’s wheels start turning more often than Mr. Mann.
From me, that’s a fucking marriage proposal.
I’ve always been a fan of people telling their stories. And I do mean their stories. The personal ones, the experiences that never seem like they’d be worth telling while they’re happening. High school mischief, a relationship that was simultaneously exciting and disasterous, their dad’s questionable Sunday-afternoon habits… If told well, told candidly, and told authentically, they’re a delight, an absolute delight.
When a person has a way with words, such as both Merlin and the Tumblr user he quotes appear to, I can’t get enough of their ramblings. And most of us, I think, are capable of having a way with words. It’s not that complicated. So, write more. I don’t write enough. I’d like to think that I’m a capable writer, but I don’t do it nearly enough to accomplish much at it. But I know that Merlin’s right: Write more. Go. Do it. Keep doing it.
But try to care about it. I don’t want to go all Elitist East-Coaster on your collective ass (Collective Ass: Great band name or greatest band name?) but while I want to see my wonderful friends and followers write more often and about anything and everything… make an effort. Can I say that? Is that douchey? If you’re boring, you’re boring, but at least you tried. Right? Don’t just slap an extended Facebook status into a blog post and call it “writing.”
If being boring disqualified one from conversing via the Internet, none of us would be here. So, please share your stories. Tell me things. I promise to listen as much as the ADD will allow.
It feels like they ran The Office through a mid-’90s Xerox machine. The characters are pale, dull imitations of Office characters (I saw a Michael, a Jim, a Dwight, and a Pam, at least), they grossly overplay the whole “documentary” angle, and the humor wasn’t sharp at all. I was literally surprised when the credits started rolling — “That’s it?” I only laughed once (“Marmalard”). Not good. I’m kind of at a loss, as to why it failed so hard.
If they can move away from the Office format a bit, develop the characters, and maybe let the cast run wild more often (particularly Ansari and Poehler), then the show might have a chance. The only character I actually kind of liked was the Jim-like, “nice guy” character (see above image), and he wasn’t even supposed to be all that funny. And this is a comedy.
Amy Poehler, you can do better.
