Tuesday, August 24, 2010

As I sit

and it seems like everything is a rushing around, a wind tunnel that flings shit, flings pianos at me like they were made of balsa wood, the little sentences that people hand to me feel like the pelt of a piece of sand in a roaring desert storm. I cannot hear what you are saying; why are contributing to this?

I have to pull my head over the surface of the rushing water to understand what you're saying. No, I fucking heard what you said, I just don't know what it means. What's that? Oh. My day was fine. Thank you for asking. It is so hard to sound sincere when only most of me actually is.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Advertising

I think if I was an advertiser, I would probably do a series of commercials that took place at funerals. It would be like, people at the funeral of a loved one, tears streaming down their face, breaking apart inside, at their most exposed, most vulnerable, most miserable. Then Bill pulls out  his smartphone, which transports him instantly from this awful reality to a land of endless internet possibilities. At first everybody else at the funeral is horrified, because Bill over there is on his smartphone at a funeral, but seeing how happy he is, they go check out what he’s looking at, and are instantly blown away by the number of apps on the marketplace or whatever, and then they’re gone, and suddenly the funeral has become a dance party, and then we get to see that the dead guy is floating above them all in spirit, and he’s happily filming it all with his smartphone.

Because, if something is enjoyable at the funeral of a loved one, it really has to be great, right?

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Ruining Your Childhood

Inspector Gadget was a shitty movie. It made me angry. 
When Inspector Gadget 2 came out, I was confused.
Star Wars Episode 1 made me like the Star Wars Trilogy less than I used to. What was the world doing to itself? Was this an example of greed winning out over art?

When I heard an interview with George Lucas, he said something like, of course lots of fans of the originals didn't like the new Star Wars movies; they were too old to; they were outside of the target demographic. You know who the most popular character was? Jar Jar effing Binx. 

And here, an entire generation of movie-goers was like, "What did you do to my movies?" 
How funny. 

In a recent post on the Best Week Ever blog, I saw a post titled "Of course the Yogi Bear trailer looks stupid. You know what else was stupid? Yogi Bear."
And indeed, it probably was. How would I have enjoyed it as a 4 year old, if it had not been stupid on some level? The more I think about Yogi Bear, the more I wonder how it entertained me in the first place. 

I was all about Yogi Bear, Inspector Gadget, and Bugs Bunny. They were completely awesome to me. I think back on them like pinnacles of entertainment, like models of excellence. When my friends talk about the unsurpassed greatness of Care Bears, the Smurfs, or, essentially, any children's show that our parents didn't let us watch, I think, 'what an idiot. They have no idea what they're talking about'. I am, in my adulthood, still critical and judgmental of these obviously, to me, inferior shows. 

As adults, we all stand by these things which we grew up with, which instilled in us this insane sense of loyalty and attachment. I saw an episode of the Pink Panther cartoon the other day, something I used to completely love. As a child, I would hang in anticipation, nervous, clutching, clenching and fixated on what was happening. Now, snoozefest. It takes something else, something entirely else, to fire off these neurons now as an adult. Now what I tell people about is not how awesome a show The Pink Panther was, but rather how awesome it was to watch as a kid.

I must tell you, in was a long time since a movie or TV Show had breached this cold exterior and affected the emotional receptors in my brain when I watched Inception the other week and left feeling mostly just tired. My friend and I walked out of the theater afterwards- unimpressed, dissecting the film, walking with people who mostly seemed to love it. I watched the movie Kick Ass a few days later and loved it. The same way that I loved the movie  The One for an entire Summer, keeping it running on repeat for seriously an entire Summer. I know The One was one of the worst movies ever made. It was ridiculous and insane. It was hilarious, and stands out in my mind as a pinnacle of entertainment. I'm a little afraid to ever watch it again, because that might just ruin it.