[1147] Class Hole

Apparently, I’m stuck in a considerably more thoughtful place than I had planned for the day, so let’s digress.

I want to talk about class and character.

I tried to go to a comedy show in Chicago on Saturday. I had to drive my F-150 4 hours there. Parking was $16. I got there hours early because I’d never been to the venue and wanted to scout the area and know where I was going. I find out when I arrive that the show had been cancelled. No notice came out on social media. No email blast was made.

I reached out to the artist, who somewhat surprisingly, responded and said it was the other guy who he was performing with that was supposed to put out the cancellation. He offered to refund the money and apologized. He showed an understanding and courtesy that I feel has become something of a coin-flip in general. It speaks to a class of character.

He’s not responsible for parking in Chicago, and I think it would be very not-classy to bundle that cost into a request about what I’d get back for the ticket. So I reach out to SpotHero. Turns out, by virtue of my spending habits and use of their app, they’re happy to credit my account! They must insist that this is normally outside of their policies, but, me being me, they’ve got me covered.

Can you spot the difference in each piece of how that scenario was addressed?

There’s a version of that story where I’m simply shit out of luck. The “non-refundable ticket” is sunk. The parking I needed for 30 minutes but paid 9 hours for is gone. The gas, old truck wear-and-tear, and time and effort just part of an unfortunate scenario that most adults are going to understand, but also encourage you to move on from pretty quickly. Especially in the era of discussions on “privilege,” I’ll be invited to appreciate more that I even own a vehicle, could afford the ticket, or have any number of qualities that do a terrible of job of acknowledging and entertaining the actual discussion I’m hoping to have.

I belong to a certain class. It’s not rich, but it is first-world and informed by some upper-asshole sensibilities. I have rich family members (who, to be sure, want nothing to do with me). I’ve dated girls with even richer family members. I own stuff, including land. I’ve got a college degree. I have hobbies that involve big-word books and expensive tools or instruments. Most of my “problems” fall between a set of safety barriers that would have to work pretty hard to approach something resembling real poverty or struggle.

If I weren’t regularly spending the money, how classy would SpotHero be? How supportive of my character would they be inclined to build in to their business model? Is the money I spend and frequency with which I use the app a good or the best measure of said character?

By our capitalist logic, yes it is. I clearly do something worthwhile that affords me either the cash or credit to play along the lines I do. And, to be sure, I do and have worked to make money, subjected myself to many forms of job types and punishments, and actively campaign to maintain every inch of gained privileges or access I achieve. Is it “fair” more than “fair enough?” No. It’s just fair enough for a practical means of approaching an otherwise impersonal mode of operating.

It gets sticky and complicated, particularly with modern also-narratives about who is suffering from what and why. It’s gotten so dramatic that, without irony, people were trying to cancel the police and downplay getting car jacked and mugged from positions of leadership in major cities. Rich or poor, when you steal someone’s shit, it’s not classy and demonstrates poor character. Yet, we’ve seemingly allowed rich people to steal with impunity for generations. Our instinctive moral compass that would snap into action within a tribe gets twisted and broken when abstracted across a nation.

What you’re left with is resentment for those who can get away with it, and yet a perverse desire to be more like them. Don’t you want to be rich enough to get away with murder? Millions and millions of people vote for Trump on precisely that desire. They’re the “privileged poor” who have to deal with customer-service headaches, prices they can’t control, health care they can’t afford, hard to afford and maintain vehicles that technically work but are ill-suited, and every nagging detail that contrasts poorly against your imagination born from an episode of The Wonder Years.

There isn’t a lot of room to be “classy.” We’re in a fundamental death match of an eroded social contract, so it remains, tragically, something of a surprise when someone does the right thing. It reminds me of The Walking Dead, in that you never know what you’re going to get with the next stranger you come across. Even if you wish to claim the ones who almost immediately try to steal or kill your favorite main character are doing it wrong, you still begrudgingly understand where they’re coming from.

We can contrast my experience of getting a refund for this show with getting refunds from Ticketmaster. I shouldn’t have to climb the chain, implore the minimum-wager to not get unnecessarily verbally berated, or write heartfelt letters of my circumstances in order to get money back for a rained-out event. If I paid exorbitantly to see 4 bands, and half of them aren’t going on, and I’ve driven 2 hours and stood in line for 2 more, just give me the money back when I never enter the venue and the circumstances have materially changed beyond my control. It shouldn’t be a fight, but it always is. When you monopolize a space, you’re seemingly less-inclined to find civility or class.

Of the many shows I’ve gone to over the last 3 years, I’ve created giant playlists of clips I’ve taken from most of the shows. I haven’t had a single issue doing so, uploading to YouTube, and just playing them when I clean or sharing with friends and family. Yesterday, I get 2 copyright strikes from George Gargan and his Damnably label for Otoboke Beaver videos I took when the opened for the Chili Peppers in Noblseville. YouTube has a pre-scan thing that tells you if your video is copywritten. It says, “Copyright-protected content found. The owner allows the content to be used on YouTube.” It said that for the Otoboke Beaver videos, or I never would have posted them.

YouTube tells you to either reach out to the person who filed the strike, and ask them to withdraw it, or you can do some kind of legal retaliatory option. I did both. The email exchange was devoid of class. Whether it was George himself or a representative using his Hotmail, all I got was a series of bizarre condescending hoity-toity moral posturing and nonsense trying to justify filing the strike. It didn’t matter that I told him I’m perfectly happy to just take down the videos. It didn’t matter that I explained how I found the band, why I appreciate them, the merch I bought, or that they’re celebrated along with hundreds of others I’ve encountered no issues with for 3 years. Nope, he’s going to fold his arms and use vague truisms about what he thinks all bands in general believe about why he’s justified.

Naturally, I’m going to hold that grudge and avoid supporting his label going forward and cross my fingers the one band I care about on it drop him.

This intersects with notions about the appropriateness of recording anything from a show at all, what rights artists do or don’t have with regard to their work, and the monopolized means we’re offered by which to experience it…but I’m not getting into all of that.

The point is, I think a person who appreciates music and artists like I do to such a degree he’s spent thousands in support of them over the last few years, shares moments from one of their performances, and isn’t in any way making money from or misrepresenting them is the opposite of the one you try to moralize and punish for…trusting YouTube’s pre-check? It’s not classy and shows me your character is misaligned and petty.

I think one of our largest moral failings today is regarding each other as simply one of a pack of dogs wreaking havoc across our otherwise pristine and perfect palaces of leisure and indulgence. Are there healthy doses of entitled disingenuous and immature assholes pissing in the overall soup we’re trying to enjoy? Absolutely. Does that give you license to treat everyone like they’re coming for your last meal and head during the apocalypse? Not even a little.

You’re not classy or have a good character just because you have money, the keys, or the presumed duty to carry out some unjust and ill-conceived rule for its own sake. If you remain persistently unable to think critically, give the benefit of the doubt, or see and listen to circumstances that, often enough, don’t require a dozen tit-for-tat emails or tired digressions about “policy” where common sense would do, you damn us all.

I have 25 more shows on the horizon. I can create another channel. I’m healthy, fed, and technically not in debt, but definitely in debt with several means of alleviating it. I just saw Green Day at Wrigley Field. I’m not looking for sympathy. I do think one of their lyrics should rattle around more heads of those who try to shuffle the wrong targets back to their place.

“Do you know your enemy?

[692] Shout, Shout

What if I don't actually know my own voice?

Consider, what's the first thing people do when they hear themselves recorded for the first time? It's often a cringe or insistence it be shut off or even that it isn't them. How many “humble devil's advocates” are nothing but the asshole at the office? How many failed “trying to be funny” types have cast themselves into a pit of aspersions they'll never climb out of? How many pathological professions of love so routinely reduce the feeling to pain and combat? If you never know you're screaming, your answer to why people are crying and running in pain will always be incomplete.

There's a number of lines clashing at once that made me raise the initial question. Kevin Smith just said at the end of the episode of Comic Book Men that it's always fun watching movies, but way more so to be making them. Recently as well, I read an explanation for why The Walking Dead decided to kill Carl. And I've been thinking considerably about the message I profess on my road to self-sufficiency and the excuses I've offered as to why I don't engage in something like stand-up, movie making, or really anything I don't particularly care to suck at.

Maybe first we should talk about the consequences of not knowing your voice. It speaks to many of my old themes. You're a parrot for the times. You're forgoing the requisite thought to take control of your identity. Your ideas become open for manipulation and exploitation in ways that had you a consistent and deliberate message would make such things considerably harder. We take the concept, the individual nature of our own voice as for granted as any other part of our body, despite it surely being of greater implication than your tongue in its physicality.

When it comes to any kind of artistic expression, I hate it when it's done for its own sake. I'm with the pretentious art critic who doesn't really believe AI algorithms making pictures is the same thing as a person putting in the work. I like the genuinely depressive and desperate comedian who's been in pointless feuds and is in recovery considerably more than the 19 year old who can match the pace and set-ups. I'll give them credit if they're funny, sure, but “they” aren't going to stick with me like the comedians and stories of my favorites have.

Writing is really the only example I have of something creative that I do on any sort of regular basis that I bother with people seeing. First, a few pages that I may come to regret are a considerably easier time, money, and effort investment than what it would take to drag people to an open mic or pull together the resources for a film. Second, I tend to only write when I really want to explore something or think I have something to say. If I don't want to write every day, I don't. If what I'm saying I think is more important than how sad it might make you feel or how far you may question what's left of our relationship, I'm putting me before you and telling you to take responsibility for how you perceive me.

That's basically the thing I wonder about everyone who puts together a movie or thinks the world needs to experience their art. Are they doing it for the right reasons? Is it truly the group of friends writing and shooting Clerks who's voice is so powerful a group of Irish guys want to make a movie about that friendship? Seems a huge sign that Kevin Smith is embedded in the right world for the right reasons. Why do certain directors make hit after hit after hit, and they all register as some degree of timeless or quality, and others are Michael Bay?

In the episode of The Walking Dead, the creators explained that they needed a reason for a transformation in Rick. Rick's “voice” as dogged leader who survives and keeps people together tragedy after tragedy, now pushed to the edge of all-out-war having blood feud has been a long and complicated one. What would prevent Rick from killing Negan? “His” voice would have to shine through as his love and commitment to his son. The spirit of what kept the group together is what's needed to keep even the concept of humanity alive in the storm of constant raining shit. At which point does Rick know what he's supposed to do? Is it the thick of it all as the guns are blaring, or in the memory that flashes before his eyes as he refrains from doing something that would betray it all?

People are loathe to defend the show anymore, and I think it's because of the same “I don't want to persistently think and evolve” mindset that plagues the modern era in general. A show comes out and excites you about the prospect of death, the lingering wish at the back of every fat desperate “millennial” mind and child not knowing if they're making it home from school. Now the show wants to speak of humanity and redemption as we're entertaining the idea of arming teachers and hearing that God wants the EPA destroyed? The Walking Dead is going where people might one day be again, but it's certainly no longer where they are.

I woke up to see the first article on my phone telling me that Kevin Smith had a massive heart attack. I read about how after facing his biggest fear, he realized that he had a good run and found himself oddly at peace if this was really it. He had his friends who he's still creating with. He created a family he's crazy about. He's used his underlying love or all he gets involved with to propel him across platforms and into so many worlds. I don't think that happens merely “because he made a movie.” I think it's because he made his movie. And if you never remember a line from it, you'll remember how it made you feel like he feels about his life and friends.

I think that's what I tried in the party house. I think that's why I'm willing to sever ties when the conversation has died and “life” has substituted for your life. It's why I bother to make appeals at all in writing. I feel confident enough that my voice is all of the blogs. If I adapt them into something else, then at least it came from a place I thought only I could speak to in my way. You don't need to hear my record, you don't need to see my routine, you know my motivation. I want to report on what I don't see enough of or where I see weird things connect. I want to create because I have to, not because I can. I want to know that if I get my heart attack well before I or anyone thinks it's due, I can have that same feeling that I did what I could as I thought I should, and how it looks right now is okay.

Maybe I don't want the “workaholic” narration to be so loud. Maybe I don't need to denigrate exploring what other people have created, even if that only involves a screen. Maybe my voice is better for all the people that no longer need to flavor it. The ideas wouldn't bring me a tinge of happiness if they were out and out wrong, right? I wouldn't bother to write if I didn't think my voice existed in the first place. But I'll never know the totality of what I'm saying. I'll only be able to look for how to respect why I said it. That's the voice I hope is in every blog and touches anything else I might think to create in the future. That's what needs to live so that I can die happy.