[978] You Pull Me Down

I went to another concert today. In my totally absent-minded approach that’s increasingly taking over my life, I didn’t even register where its actual location was until I was sitting in a restaurant 40 minutes away. It probably could have been held where I thought it was going to be, Mr. Josh Groban didn’t draw that large of a crowd for a Thursday, but that’s not important. The sequence of events in my body and mind during it was, at least briefly. Bitches be talking.

You might know, I’ve complained about how we seemed to have collectively forgotten that you need to shut the fuck up in a movie theater. I lamented that I could readily predict one in three movies I was going to have to “shush,” say, “Shut the fuck up,” or otherwise adjust my posture relative to some dumb cunt sitting near me. Well, this last time, as two whispery, coughy, and ever-undulating obese people carried on as they found the last Jurassic Park movie more and more boring, I just moved to the other side of the theater.

At the concert, at all concerts, I wear earplugs. If I didn’t, I’d probably lose my hearing within the course of a year. If I can hear you talking, laughing, or otherwise being an oblivious and entitled cunt, on top of the music no less, you’re being too loud. If you’re that way for song after song, and I’m growing more and more agitated, that I managed to respond to it in the way that I did I’m rather impressed with. My adrenaline shot through the roof as I stared them down, which, of course, they didn’t notice. I literally turned around and just watched them for 3 minutes.

Let’s set the scene. They’re about 7 seats away and 2 rows back. 3 middle-aged women, and one who brought her daughter. I could sum it up with, “It’s Karens, you know the type,” we are in Noblesville, after all, but that feels cheap if still correct. I’m getting jittery. I’ve accidentally purchased an entire bottle of wine for $42 which I had zero desire to finish. I’ve also just eaten the world’s soupiest snow-cone.

I got to thinking. I didn’t want to make them about me. I, pretty habitually, can turn things about me well without my desire or intention. I rehearse the lines I might say. “Hey! Shut the fuck up!” Classic. Do I look like a dweeb around all of these ageless greys and just make an exasperated shush and add my finger to my lips to really sell it? I shouldn’t have to be thinking about any of this shit! I’m not even some major fanboy of Josh Groban, but fucking gas is expansive, and I live an hour and a half away, and I’m pissing away even more money on wine and sugar, and I just want to sit here in the moment with a good singer without constantly jerking my head over my shoulder to investigate your dumb fucking ass.

Finally, I snap. I jerk around and yell out, “Hey, are you enjoying the concert!? It’s good right!? You enjoying yourself? Can you hear it okay!?” They get Karen-face and one attempts to turn it into a conversation about how they’ve been talking the entire time…I turn around and reinsert my earplug. They talk even louder for the back half of the song. They don’t speak for the next. They continue, ever-slightly muted for the rest of the concert afterward. I still want to fucking stab the one in particular.

It’s not that “all people” are a certain way. It’s that today, the worst of what it means to be a person has been given such license that we all carry on like that bitch isn’t in the wrong. And not just in the wrong, but wrong in a deep and profound way. She came to a concert to disrespect the artist, the people around her, and when confronted, doubled the fuck down. Can I think of a more on-the-nose analogue to this Faustian nightmare that is Trumpism? My blood pressure is skyrocketing trying not to be the sore thumb about the raging bloody cunts bleeding into our collective experience. I remain extremely confident that no one else is going to say anything, and if they feel the same pulse and stress that I did, they won’t handle it in as contemplative or a proactive way.

I’m very disoriented. It confuses me when I reach out to 3 to 5 people, and get no response all day, particularly if I know their phone behavior. I’ve had next to nothing to do in this “training” period, so I’ve had a lot of idle time at home, cleaning and rearranging things, and ordering more not-precisely crap from Amazon. I spent, and this must be a form of self-deceptive theater, YEARS avoiding reading this manga I find very interesting, and with the books in front of me, I’m dragging it out. The goal isn’t to get it done, like so many bad TV shows. I enjoy it. It’s intriguing where so little else is. I want to sit with it and think about it and escape into its lurid landscape.

But, that’s what I want out of my life. I want books to be a playground, not an alternate reality I’m desperate for. I want to live in a world where people shut the fuck up and respect each other, and none of us need finishing school to figure that shit out. I want to live in a world where the minority zealots don’t capture the majority psychologically. But I don’t. I live in a quiet place, by myself, in a tick-ridden field and occasionally pop my head out at the prospect of capitalizing on the misery or distracting myself with a shiny new stage performance. And they’re coming for that too, like they’re coming for libraries, and fucking water!

When is it over? When will the deluge of opinions about how to conduct life coalesce into either enough death that whomever is left over can try something new, or we just stop letting the mouthy cunts dictate the noise? There’s a goddamn performance and work on display every day that we just cede or ignore. Like so many texts and so many blogs with so many words that speak to who?

[675] The Best Movie Ever Mad

I'm finding myself completely baffled by the ratings of different shows and movies of the guy I argued with about “Twin Peaks.”

First, he has 4000 of them, on individual episodes mostly, and saves his highest praise for “Lost,” “Boardwalk Empire,” and “Twin Peaks” as well as individual episodes of “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” “The Venture Bros.,” “It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” and “King of The Hill.” He hated “Titanic,” “Billy Madison,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Rugrats,” 2 of the best anime in “Death Note” and ”Attack on Titan,” and finds John Oliver smug, unfunny, and ignorant.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND!

I find myself increasingly disillusioned by the concept of an "opinion." They seem to be the sorts of things I felt I used to have very strong ideas about, and then as my experience with the world grew, they weren't so much needed or worthwhile. Of course, you may read me complaining about the litany of things I can't stand and I'll post a status praising artistic works I find compelling. How do we resolve this? Why would I write a ten page essay for fun on how terrible I think “Twin Peaks” is, and why do I find it so beyond confusing that someone couldn't see the merit in “Titanic?”

I think it boils down to "why." Why are you talking about a show? Do you have a terrible conception of "acting" and you just need to express how much you don't like someone's in particular? Does the show not jive with your terrible expectations going in? Have you invested yourself emotionally into coupling your identity with the words you might have for it? Why does it matter a show "makes sense" or "does better" or becomes a "timeless classic?"

The world is up for grabs. Maybe if you praise the wrong things for the wrong reasons, you change in destructive ways. Maybe if you fail to see the merit in the most confusing or difficult works, you'll never broaden like you need broadening. What is it that you're supposed to recognize and take away? Why do I trust Roger Ebert saying he loved a movie this guy also loved, but the second I read that the random guy loved it, I absolutely thought it would be shit? I don't trust they're seeing the same things. I don’t trust the tools for evaluating are properly calibrated.

I think the nature of this fine tuning can be most easily seen in what happens to movies that are “so bad they’re good.” Maybe it’s “Zombie Strippers” or “The Room.” These 2 differ though too, as one was made with a level of “sincerity” and perspective that author was oblivious as to how it would read, and the other was a zombie stripper movie. You can have an experienced filmmaker with a grasp of story-telling and how to intimately depict character relationships, who still gets off on the absurdity of the markedly low-rent. Can the person incapable of making anything but low-budget bullshit truly appreciate what makes The Greats great?

I used to have a very limited scope of what kind of movies I would consider watching. It might include a comedian my parents thought was funny. I could do action movies. Obviously, I wanted to watch what all of my friends were watching or if there was a specific prohibition or taboo associated with it (“American Pie,” “Deliverance”). Back when you walked the video store hallways, if it had a weird box cover, I wasn’t interested. Subtitles were out of the question. Black and white was horrible by default.

I thought I had “standards.” I thought I only watched “good things.” I had no concept of different devices and styles being used to speak to different things. A long pause on a sunset wasn’t a metaphor or balancing out or resolving a different part of the the movie, it was just a boring sunset where “nothing was happening.” Of course, much of this was the consequences of being younger and never being exposed to even the idea that there was “more” than what I could see. As such, today, I try to find the good in everything. Try. It doesn’t mean I can, but it does mean there is no comparing “Zombie Strippers” to “Titanic.” It means that even if something has had an intense impact on my life, like “Waking Life,” there is a considerably harder task ahead to try and claim it as objectively “the best movie of all time.” Saying something like that would be a reflection of/on me, not the movie. It’s a reflection that would change over time.

When someone offers that they like something about a show, I look for considerably more in their explanation than, “the acting was good.” I think it’s also pretty lazy to belabor the identification of tropes. I might offer something lazy like that about a show I’m not terribly invested in, and it probably doesn’t matter how good the acting is or which cliche device was employed, the show isn’t shooting that high. Camerawork and filters can flavor the mood and help with immersion when done well. The music can be so perfect you hardly even recognize it’s there.

But I only want my opinion to go so far. I have an incredibly hard time telling someone they should or shouldn’t watch something, as I actively pursue things that I thought I’d have absolutely no interest in. What business does a late 20’s guy have in marathoning “Gilmore Girls?” How did I turn anything coming from The CW into something remotely tolerable? You and the medium are both evolving, and I suppose if you can’t identify what it is someone else has transformed into, it feels wrong. My most earnest advocacy rests in things I’d watch more than once, which, even for things I’ve called my favorite, doesn’t happen that often.

I’m still missing something about the level of sophistication. It doesn’t feel right to equate “Pulp Fiction” with “The Room” because they might both offer you “a level of satisfaction” in watching them. As well, I frequently see a push for people defending, literally admitted arbitrary bullshit, as “complex” and “deep” or “beyond what you care to understand.” It is possible to waste yours and the audience’s time. It is possible to have taken myriad bad lessons and insights and slopped them together into a mess that offends the concepts related to communication. There isn’t an arts school in the world teaching you to “just be yourself!” and everything will fall into place career wise.

While this guy has nearly 4000 ratings on 95 days worth of material he’s watched, I have 550 ratings on 860 days. I feel I’m attempting to portray a level of discernment and experience that comes from most things striking you as, “it is what it is” or it’s “passable.” That seems more the reality of life, no? Most things are “good enough” or “fit the pattern.” Rarely is something a masterpiece or the worst thing you’ve ever seen. So when you’re eager to sling your ratings and your words, you seem cheap, you seem wrong, and incoherent. Your ability to recognize what’s good about something good is corrupt. And your propensity to defend something shit exposes your underlying insecurity that knows it.

[656] Watch How I Soar

I'm really tired and wanted to sleep, but I found myself writing a paragraph into an excel sheet so I wouldn't forget, and now figure it's better just to get it all out.

We want to believe we have standards. We want to believe we have OUR ideas. We want to have a story of our morality or ability to achieve or the reasons for things beyond our control. It's convenient to ignore the subconscious machinery. There's too much history to try and contextualize and make sense of it all. Find the slogan, find the partner, find the subject in school, stick to the narrative.

I want to speak to one of the longest relationships and narratives in my life again; I watch a ton of TV. Sometimes I forget just how much TV I watch until I'm looking for a show and type in “Netflix shows” only to discover I've seen every episode of 95% of them. As my docket grows and amount of things to watch sped up in tandem, I find myself often skipping over the “why.”

I used to think I had standards for TV. I used to think the shows I picked were the good ones and it was a giant waste of my time to watch anything else. I used to have a “why.” My time was valuable, after all. I wanted to show a level of respect and appreciation for writers and directors and actors that worked the hardest to make me feel. I couldn't imagine my standards and likes were shopped around focus groups for months or years. I couldn't possibly be a demographic that would watch some 24 year old starlet in next to anything as long as she's most often in next to nothing.

I started reading reviews. I started opening the window the let the bluster of other peoples' wind blow into my opinionated house. They hated my favorite character. They thought the plot didn't move quick enough. They never found enough representation for women, black people, or the disabled. They, seemingly unanimously, agreed that things really went bad during the 7^th episode of the 5^th season. As if I had just lost what was becoming a good friend from a prolonged period of acquaintance, I started to get sad.

“My show” wasn't my show anymore. It was at the mercy of the mob. It was being up and down voted for a million reasons that had nothing to do with my investment. The whole was getting swallowed up by a clumsy line or bad shot. The meaningful worthwhile message it was sending or positive feeling and suspense were just cliché tropes. I could pop over to an ad on a movie website that would teach me how to review them like the professionals! “Another Cop Show” premiers to roaring applause with your favorite actors from “The Last Family Drama.”

Then you add the sick dose of modernity that over-exaggerates hype and jumps to commercialize nostalgia. WHAT DOES THE DAD DIE OF!? Who fucking cares? Shut up and watch the fucking show. Learn how to enjoy the ride. Have you read the rules for watching “The Room”? It's like the new Rocky Horror without all of the artistry, sincerity, or joy. You know what I want when I go see a movie? A bookmark with instructions. That's way better than picking up the cues from the room after the 12^th time I've seen it.

More often than not, “why” is a difficult question because it gives you the opportunity to learn that you don't know anything. Why did I go see the shitty movie? In my case, I have too much time, too much money, and no one to help me do anything meaningful, so I do a lot of dumb shit under that umbrella. Also, it was free. When I question why someone hates so much something that I feel has fairly objective means to not call it shit, in a way, my entire world is thrown into question. As with most people in that scenario, it's a lot easier to invent reasons I can remain correct, or resolve to the cliches, than ever persuade myself to feel as angry at Mad Men for not being black enough.

Modernity seems to suggest that if you have a medium, it's your job to speak to everything at once. You're a white man living in a white man's world? You better have colorblind casting in writing the script about your upbringing in 1950s suburbia, or at the very least force in sympathetic ethnicities. Why? Because there's too much of you already. We've heard your story and begrudge you your trope. You're boring, you're basic, we're the marginalized dreamers who've salivated too long at the prospect of dishing as we've received.

But art lives or dies by its ability to form a relationship with the audience. That relationship is influenced by a hundred different things changing in real time. Trends and complimentary needs rise in tandem as superheroes complimented war efforts. The death of the nuclear family has dozens of happy upper and middle class white people renewed indefinitely. The vigor for fantasy and space isn't nerds winning more than it's the rest of the world feeling as sad, lonely, and depressed as the nerds did in trying to escape their worlds.

Part of what I'll always find fascinating about TV is when you don't realize you're in that relationship. There's a hard and fast change that happens when you start watching a show sped up, and an even more jarring one when you choose to slow it back down. It's different when you're mid episode and notice the show's been on for 6 years but you and your friends are still quoting the first season.

Here I want to jump into how any relationship forms the same way. You don't pick your dorm neighbors or roommates, and yet can have some of the most influential memories and foundational claims of your sense of self in relation to them. You don't pick your family and work into your skin whatever insecurities or attachment disorders they gave to you as early as they could. You're tuned into the “Fucked Up Story of My Life” and didn't notice 25 seasons in that your relationship to it has gone through so many changes despite looking basically the same. It doesn't seem very often along the way people bother to ask why.

I find it a point of desperate sadness that I'll always find it easier, and be proven right more often, in my predictions and assessments of different people than I could ever be about the plot line of a TV show. People who claim to know where a show is going or who've seen it all before aren't actually talking about the show anymore than somehow who waves off “women” is talking about your wife or girlfriend. People stick to their habits and lessons as a default. They can't escape them. A writer anticipating getting canceled or a showrunner who catches a mild stroke can devote an entire season to the joys of shark jumping.

If you're willing to ask yourself why, that's when you set yourself on the road to genuine appreciation for different styles, personalities, or even truly and perfectly bizarre creations. If you ever manage to land on a constant in spite of the whys, now you've got a voice and a story that might be worth telling instead of selling. I picked up the habit of watching a ton of television because I felt myself losing literally everything I might have shared with anyone. If they didn't move, they stopped going out, they stopped caring about discussing the things we used to, they stopped texting. But hey! They mentioned this anime or this new show was one of their favorites, so I'll check it out too. Jesus Christ, that sounds pathetic.

As with everything, over time, it changed. I need to keep my mind even marginally engaged or bad things happen. I started to discover more and varied tastes I never would have explored otherwise. I found myself compelled to write reviews or argue with people on the quality of something. This imaginary supplementary world evolved into a rich medium with rules and expectations worth talking about. I've entertained ideas about writing screenplays, or at least laying out basic plot points. Lines from Jordan Peele like, “I wanted to make my favorite movie I haven't seen yet,” start to ring a little louder. The reviews matter! Following the hole in your being that needs to see THAT can be not only profitable, but proud and life-affirming.

I'm always trying to speak to a w/hole. I tell people I'm after what I thought I've already had. No amount of growing resentment erases the fun I had at my parties. No amount of forlorn and crusted over memories have me confused about why I've gotten into the relationships I have or attempted the friendships I thought worth it. The vast majority of stories I watch or read I've no intention of seeing again, but I keep them stored away. I know they could mean different things in different eras. I know they could be a point of connection with someone when everything else has been lost. They occupy some space about some thing in my memory I'll want to hunt down again one day.