This is not the sort of blog that's all "I post my random thoughts from my xcRAZyx life lol!" When we write we write with an audience in mind. But we often just post hilarious youtube videos.
A Manifesto commenter made me start thinking about something- why is there a Europe? First though, I'd like to link a VERY eye-opening article I just read about weight-loss (that transition almost sounded like a newsbroadcast.) I don't care about weight-loss, so me finding this article interesting says a lot about the article. This article makes an overwhelmingly persuasive case that exercise has no effect on weight loss on the aggregate. It's pretty shocking, but it really seems like they may be right. Read it here.
Okay, so why is there a Europe? Let me preface this first by saying that John and I have traveled somewhat extensively and have plenty of European friends. I mean, we're totally comfortable with it- you can go shopping with them, go to the clubs, whatevah. Your coworkers, your brothers, your mom and dad might be Europeans and just haven't been open about it yet.
Okay that was a tangent and a half for a basically kinda lame joke... Sorry. So why is europe a continent? Let's answer it the simple and obvious way first, which is to say: "they made the maps."
Okay so that's why Europe IS a continent, but why should it be a continent? I urge you to review the map again. Europe is obviously, uncontroversially, just the western part of the Asian continent. The definition of "Continent" is notoriously vague but it's "understood to be large, continuous, discrete masses of land, ideally separated by expanses of water." Which is to say, Europe doesn't count. Have a look at this picture from space and see if you can find a single reason why Europe should be its own continent:
North and South America are technically connected by a thin strip of land (the Darien Gap, a dangerous place me and M. Zee actually braved and loved) and if someone wants to make the case they should be the same, that's fine. Personally I see a pretty simple intuitive difference of land when viewing the landmass so i vote different. But Europe? No way. One rather gets the impression that the Europeans simply wanted to distinguish themselves from those "unwashed hordes" who looked and spoke differently- hence the separation.
I could keep ranting about this for much, much longer but I've decided to cut it short since it was basically just inspired by one commenter. There have been a lot of aaaathatsfiveas regulars (like MC) basically owning off-the-cuff commenters lately on geography-related issues- it's so hot right now.
Linkage: This is one of the best wiki pages I've ever seen, providing a chronology of inventions that's far more riveting and fascinating that you would think.
I'm going to go ahead and take this opportunity to talk a bit about HBO's the Wire, the best thing I've ever seen on any screen anywhere any time (movies, television, anything.) When one is in a situation of liking something fairly obscure so damn much, the ways to proceed become difficult. I'm not sure I could overhype the Wire if I tried, but I know that of everyone who's watched the wire on my account, only one hasn't unabashedly loved it and I probably gave him the mistaken impression that the Wire will instantly hook you. (Also, he's a noted contrarian who only seems to appreciate dramas that are whimsical and/or nostalgic.) Watch it with subtitles on at first and commit yourself to the entire first season, as crazy as that sounds.
What I'm about to say is going to sound extreme and over-the-top to most of you and maybe it is. But bracket your scepticism for a moment and consider this: In 1878 a Railroad tycoon hired photographer Eadweard Muybridgeto settle a bet on whether a galloping horse ever had all four of its feet off the ground and Muybridge's solution (the zoopraxiscope) sparked the creation of the motion picture. 62 years later Orson Welles was filming Citizen Kane, the movie that finally realized the deep potential of the technology. I'm not some Citizen Kane worshiper by any stretch, but I'm sure it must've felt like a revelation that after decades of light, funny, consciously-"populist" fluff^^^ someone was finally demonstrating new artistic and narrative depths w/r/t cinema. The same year Citizen Kane was released, New York licensed the country's first commercial broadcasting station for television the story of which hardly needs telling, but could also be largely summarized as "consciously-populist fluff." However, on June 2, 2002- 62 years after Citizen Kane was filmed- The Wire was broadcast on HBO to little fanfare.
I'm not comparing the two accomplishments themselves, but I would submit to you that The Wire realizes the potential of television as a political, sociological and artistic medium in much the same way the Citizen Kane did for film. These aren't the kind of things you're supposed to say unless you're speaking about things that are 30 years old but I think it's true. You spend 50+ hours watching this group of people in the Wire (a phenomenon unique to TV), and if anything is the difference that makes the Wire so great, it's that the writer's really "get" that. No character is so "heroic" that they don't have deep flaws. And I don't mean "Ross is a bit arrogant/ Phoebe's kinda spacey" flaws- we're talking excessive use of force, cheating, theft, murder, etc. I feel the deepest sympathy when the "villains" die, but it's not because the show tells me how to feel (you won't hear a single strain of tear-jerking strings trying to cajole you) but because they were so real (so real in fact, that describing anyone but Marlo as a villain feels wrong. Screw Marlo though, seriously.) Alright, enough of that let me make fun of Lost a little bit.
I debated about writing this part, because most of the people I dearly love also love Lost. Some of them got into Lost based on my strong recommendation and I feel really guilty for being all "hey check out this cool thing, oh you like it? Okay now it sucks" about it. However, I'm just not the same television viewer that I was back then. I was hooked on Lost for awhile and I remember being impressed with how intelligent it was ("oooh they name characters after philosophers how totally fucking deep!") for a TV show. It's embarrassing to have to even type that out now because Lost is not an intelligent show and it's not even a very original show (Twin Peaks meets Gilligan's island!) It's simply figured out that by promising a resolution that it can never provide it can maintain some viewership faithful for the payoff (which- trust me- will be deeply unsatisfying at best.) Further, by shifting the new focal points of each different season like a debtor transferring credit card balances they can make you forget that, when all's said and done, they owe you a shitload of money and they aren't paying it down. That's not really it though; there's something more.
Lost, along with every other piece of non-HBO drama I've seen since getting hooked on the Wire feels deeply, deeply manipulative. Leah and I were excited to get back to watching Lost after a Wire-driven hiatus (and the overwhelming-sounding fact that 4 complete seasons of the Wire are already out there will soon feel like a god-damn Christmas present, btw) and our reaction was so immediate that it was unmistakable what had happened. The camera had panned-in on Jack's face while he said some calculatedly dramatic thing as booming over-the-top strings repeated an ominous low G to make you feel the exact sense of foreboding and dread before the cut to commercial. It felt so hammy and self-satirical that Leah and I both wanted to laugh and yet we looked around the room at our rapt friends, reflexively watching a jeep commercial (not a coincidence, obvs) with mouths agape, and marveled at how big the gap had become; we were not the same TV-watchers who had raved about lost 3 months before.
At this point I could play it off self-deprecatingly and wax nostalgic about my new inability to appreciate some former entertainment, but the truth is it felt good and refreshing to recognize the naked manipulation of Lost. We've since tried three+ times to watch season 3 and we haven't even come close; it feels like someone explaining why a joke's funny (and if this piece does too, then I'm sorry but I'm only trying to tell my story.)
Bill "The Sports Guy" Simmons has a great article about the Wire (and he mentions it frequently) that's worth quoting at length:
We ended up banging out three episodes the first night and another three the second night. Then our cable system switched to a new provider ... and all the Season 1 episodes disappeared into thin air. Now we were scrambling. None of the video stores around us had Season 1 in stock. I ended up ordering Season 1 online (two-day delivery courtesy of Amazon Prime), but we were so hooked on the show that when someone returned Season 1 to our video store, we rented the last three discs that same night. We banged out the last seven episodes in two nights before the DVD was even delivered.
That so closely resembles my own experience that it's funny- I remember waking up at 5:00 am to watch 2 episodes before I had to go to work on more than one occasion. He goes on "I'd put Season 1 of "The Wire" against anything." (which I'd amend only to include all of the Wire with season 4 being the best... so far) and " Anyway, I can't believe I didn't watch this show sooner. It enrages me." which I complete relate to.
The Wire Season 4 is a true masterpiece, in which they follow the rise of a new drug lord along with 4 urban youths being tempted to drop out and fully commit to that world. Metacritic (basically the same as Rottentomatoes, good for non-movie things like shows books, etc.) has The Wire season 4 listed at 98/100 based on all of the collected reviews- the highest rated TV show there is, period. Reviews like " This is TV as great modern literature, a shattering and heartbreaking urban epic" don't seem at all over the top, nor do the surprisingly frequent comparisons to Dickens. Slate says ""no other program has ever done anything remotely like what this one does, namely to portray the social, political, and economic life of an American city with the scope, observational precision, and moral vision of great literature."
Part of what makes the show so great is that it's written by an ex-cop-turned-teacher and an ex-journalist for the Baltimore Sun. Their Baltimore is a strikingly realistic one as a result, and versatile enough to make any point it needs to make without being overt. The Wire is highly political, but they aren't lazy about it by making one character verbosely political and speaking for the writers (in fact, the most articulate political points that are spoken- Carcetti S3E12- support the very opposite view of the creators.)
Interviews with the creator David Simon (the ex-journalist) have become one of my new favorite things to look for on the web. Like other true geniuses (Noam Chomsky and DFW among them) every interview feels brilliant and free flowing as if you could ask any question and the answer would be just as strikingly insightful. The connections to Chomsky don't stop there- Simon constantly describes the show as being about the powerlessness of the individual in the face of the gigantic institutions. Chomsky describes much of what he does as "Institutional Analysis", deemphasizing the role of individuals in the face of pressures monetary, political, social, and so on. When Season 5 (the final Season of The Wire and "The one about the media") gets started in January, I won't be surprised at all if it plays like Manufacturing Consent. Incidentally, I have it on good Authority that Chomsky is a Law and Order fan (no kidding) from way back and "never misses an episode." Based simply on that I know that The Wire is therefore his favorite show in history and that he now hates that he ever even watched Law and Order once.
I'll close with some more Bill Simmons (remember he's "the sports guy") who breaks character to end a column with a rumination on Season 4. After saying that "I agree with others who argue that it's the most important television show of all-time", he ends his piece with these words which are again worth quoting at length:
"Two weeks ago in this space, I explained how I'm one of those people who doesn't like when other people tell me, "YOU HAVE TO WATCH THIS SHOW!" If anything, that makes me not want to watch it. I like to stumble across these things organically.
Now I'm wondering if I avoided "The Wire" because its central themes -- drugs, corruption, urban decay -- were realities that I simply wanted to ignore. Instead of being haunted by a show like this, it was easier and safer to skip it entirely. Most people feel this way, I'm guessing; it's the only conceivable reason why five times as many people would watch "The Sopranos" over a show that's better in every way****. See, when most Americans dabble in inner-city TV shows or movies for our "taste" of street life, we're hoping for the Hollywood version. We don't want despair and decay, we want hope and triumph. We don't want the zero sum game of drug dealers killing each other, we want the Rock coaching juvie kids and turning their lives around in two hours. We want them to win the big football game, we want the movie to end, and we don't want to think about these people ever again.
That's the real reason why "Gridiron Gang" became the No. 1 movie last weekend, and that's the real reason why "The Wire" was barely renewed for a fifth season."
Why did I wait so long to watch the Wire? My Dad has been into it forever and telling me I needed to watch it, and I'd read the otherworldly praise it's received since the beginning, but it still took me forever. Maybe because it seemed like a project and projects are easy to put off. Maybe (and let's be honest here) because it wasn't marketed to me, advertised to me, or reported about to me (no glossy magazines targeting my demographic were running cover stories, though inevitably some smart hip guy on the staff loved it and threw in blurbs wherever he could, seriously.)
I've had this post ready for a long time, and I've hesitated to post it because I couldn't think of a way to end it. In my head I thought I wanted to talk about the difference between your unique self versus your "Middle class American age 24-36" demographic market self- the self who discovers and treasures a song or an album from unlikely sources versus the self who goes out and purchases the Garden State or The OC soundtracks and moves on. That made the Wire sound like it had obscurantist tendencies, which it doesn't. There's nothing all that difficult about the show (while it extremely, immeasurably intelligent it doesn't even have to be watched on that level to be appreciated) apart from learning the characters at first. That's why I decided to quote the sports guy at length; it's an important show- a show on which drugs have been realistically legalized for a spell, the decline of working man has been rendered literally and metaphorically- but it's also a viscerally exciting; edge of your seat entertainment.
Let me instead end with a horrible marketing tagline, which may be all you need at this point to start watching it: Maggie Gyllenhaal says:
"Make a The Wire transfer and watch your "interest" compound hourly!!!"
^^^ Of course this is an oversimplification; this is just a rhetorical device. Congratulations on having seen La Règle du jeu. ****If you've read Simmons in the past, you'll know that he absolutely loves Sopranos and wrote about it frequently, which makes this line even more heartfelt.
Don't watch this video below under any circumstances unless you've seen the Wire multiple times. There are several reasons for this, not the least of which being that you could be two minutes closer to the video store by the time you were finished. Obviously the video store trip's aim would be acquiring the first 4 discs of the Wire season 1.
I may be the last person to see this as apparently it's been getting some heavy media coverage.. but just in case I wanted to make sure you all get in on the action.
Guys, thanks for being patient. I started a new job as an executive recruiter and have spent a lot of time going in early and staying late trying to learn the business. Those who know me probably know that I can't stand not to have a reasonable depth of knowledge for things and accordingly I always work my ass off for months trying to learn everything there is to know about a job. So, I think I'll need to spend some weekend nights blogging, because I have a whole page or two of blog topics (including "fallacies", "circumcision", "sam harris pt. 3", "Chomsky", "Liberalism vs. Anarchism vs. Patton vs. Achohol", "federer", and "On nakedness, sex, vaginas and other keywords that make a blog post immediately fascinating even though everyone might like to pretend otherwise")
Without further ado, let's pretend you forgot about this blog for the last month and are catching up on everything you've missed:
The creepiest Myspace page of all time, hands down, noone else even comes close. Kajina Ray This is a page dedicated to a miscarried baby discussing heaven and "loving their mommy and daddy." Yes it's true that despite lines that should be sad like "I'm dancing and playing with the angels in heaven" it winds up 100% grade a fucking creepy. And that's because there are fucking pictures of the miscarried fetus dressed up in baby clothes in the "pics" section. You have been warned but holy shit.
From a list of things that high-level executives, salesmen and bosses around the world say that are (the things they say) philosophically unsound, compiled by me:
"Perception is reality." This is extremely common and is just absolute drivel. I first year philosophy student should be able to decimate this canard, so why do supposedly intelligent people use it? I think it's appealingly geared toward business-style nihilism with a marketing bent, or something. You know "if we can make you think it then it's true." But it's just nonsense- put a pencil into the water and have a look:
Is it actually bent simply because you perceive it as bent? Okay, then please shut the fuck up.
From a list of things that high-level executives, salesmen and bosses around the world say that are (the things they say) philosophically sound, compiled by me:
"It is what it is."This is a highly defensible statement, known as a tautology or truism. David Hume called these "Analytic A Priori Truths" which is to say things that could never not be true, and don't need to be verified by experiment, experience, etc. I actually like using this, as a sort of less pretentious "c'est la vie" that says "well what are can you do? (nothing.)"
Words/phrases that don't mean what you think they mean, including one I just used incorrectly above (only so I could educate you.) 1. Decimate: means to kill or remove every tenth thing. Does not mean to "utterly destroy" as is commonly thought and said. 2. Penultimate: means "second to last" not just a fancier word for "ultimate." 3. Irregardless: No, this is not a fucking word. DO NOT use it. If other people do, feel free to laugh derisively. 4. "As best as you can." It chills my bones when people say that, though it's somewhat rare. Obviously the correct form is "as best you can." 5. "I could care less" This is an almost meaningless thing to say: "I care about this thing to some degree." (rough translation. PS I'm guilty of this one at times, gulp.)
A homemade youtube video for Daft Punk's "Harder Better Faster Stronger" that is amazing. Leah who does not like Daft Punk loved this, and based on that I would simply recommend that everyone watch this. The fact that it's almost retardedly uneventful for the first minute makes the top-notch last 3 minutes THAT MUCH awesomer. (sorry for the dumb/offensive slang in this post.)
Zach Galifianakis being Zach Galiafinakis on Kanye's West's new video for "Can't tell me nuthin'" This is an official video (you can find a high quality version on Kanye's site) which makes me impressed with Mr. West:
You'll almost be disappointed with yourself for finding this video so goddamn funny, but for some reason it is. "Yeah har har har yellow ledbetter is hard to understand, har har", and yet it's got a certain je ne sais quoi that makes it both appealing and funny. This song still rules by the way- proving the theory I'll later develop in a blog post that the mark of a great band at the top it's game is a great B-side. Pearl Jam- Yellow Ledbetter.
If wrestling was still like this I would watch it for sure. This is a fued between the big boss- WAIT! Don't stop reading! This passed the Leah test too and it's incredible how over the top it is! One guy "The Big Boss Man" makes fun of the other guy's dad dying (imitating him whining "my daddy, my daddy!") so the other guy stands in the middle of the wrestling ring and says (I shit you not) "How would you feel if a family heirloom; a watch from your grandfather was taken from you and destroyed?" As he smashes a gold watch over an anvil (apparently taken from a road runner cartoon, the only place in which anvils have ever existed.) But here's the thing: that happens about 20 seconds when they're just getting started. You haven't seen the attempted assassinations, the grave theft, the bullhorn-featuring funeral interruption (with poetry) etc. In fact, they don't even show you the wrestling match in this clip, because who the hell cares?
Wikipedia is making me sad. It's so obvious that this would've happened that I'm shocked I never considered it, but the site is basically over-run with corporate spin control. I love this site, but it's hard to see how they can control this while staying true to the truly inspiring wikipedia mission. To explain: when the GAP wants to paint over their nasty sweatshop history, they can hire people to effectively sabotage the wiki page by continue to delete and remove and move and alter the GAP page, defending the decision on the Talk pages and so on. Given how great a benefit that is to GAP, and how they're only up against a few volunteers who don't have time to argue everything one can see how the truth can be twisted, shaped, and manipulated according to those how have an interest and the money to try and affect things. What happened is, someone has used a directory of IP addresses and cross-checked them against edits in the wikipedia pages and found some scary and serious patterns of malfeasance. This project is just getting started but is already way-beyond disturbing. The wikipedia staff is implicated in some of it too... It's up at Wired (though to wikipedia's credit, it's nice that they are transparent enough for a project like this to be possible.) Nevertheless, Matt=Sad.
Thanks for reading, and please never give up on us. I promise that we have much, much more to say.
Seriously impressive mental resilience on behalf of the troops- it's taken them 4 years plus of horrifying conditions and daily mutual terror to develop the same levels of callousness and disregard for human life that guys like O'Reilly and those in the Bush administration has had all along. "A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi... You know, so what?"
My neighbor has heroically bad taste in music; heroically bad. A few weeks back he held a very loud all night coke party for Widespread Panic (i.e. Phish for republicans) and had a friend over who thought it just hilarious to yell down from the balcony to people passing by that they were "faggots" (this was at 8 a.m. on the saturday after the first "Panic" show- they were pulling an all-nighter and a half.) A few days later I'm at the computer and he's listening to a 12 minute live version of "Runaround" (complete with several extended harmonica jams) from a Blues Traveler bootleg. Bad so far, but not "blog post bad." But what's he listening to right now, as I type this? A live version of Will Smith's "Gettin Jiggy wit it." I could not make that up if I tried. The questions are too numerous to really even scratch the surface: Will Smith has played a live show? Somebody bootlegged it? Somebody owns and listens to said bootleg in two thousand and seven?
Seriously, it's like: or something.
This is the most bizarre news story you may ever read, and there's no right tone to take when discussing it (though this guy didn't seem to care.) I will say this though- if someone else is around make sure both your hands are on the keyboard.
I don't link the Onion here because everyone who reads this checks it already (I know our audience has grown substantially as of late, but I'm still pretty confident in that assessment.) Suffice it to say, if you haven't checked it yet- this issue is on of the best I've seen in awhile. Anyway, I'm going to talk about the Onion "AV club" today, which is different. "Why", you ask? Because I used to never check it (and I probably still wouldn't have if I didn't get the issues in print) and it's awesome, and I was reading it today and saw something funny.
The lead singer of Bloc Party, Kele Okereke (whom I like) is commenting on the tracks that randomly come up on his Ipod when it's set to shuffle. For those unfamiliar- this is a monthly feature for the AV club and it's usually less cool than it sounds but I always check it anyway. So a song by Prince comes up and Kele starts talking about how nobody can do what Prince does and he says "certainly not Justin Timberlake" and then laughs. So what comes up on his Ipod next (remember it's on shuffle)? None other than JT himself performing sexyback.
The easy way to spin this is "People are embarrassed to like JT because it's not cool, but we all secretly listen to him non stop." Who knows whether that's true, but if it is it shouldn't be. And I'm not saying this in one of "c'mon bro-dude just like what you like who cares what people think?" bullshit things people do when they want to make a big deal out how independent they are and how little they care about what other people think (catch them listening to the Bravery though and see how they are). Newsflash: people who don't really care also don't care that you know that and so don't make a big deal out of it. No, it's because it's actually cool to like Timberlake; really cool even. Check this link if you don't believe me (the tastemaker website gave him 5/5). So what's going on?
First let's establish a few things. One, Justin Timberlake is not a good-looking dude, naturally. Feel free to scroll up for the corn-rows again, too.
However, Justin Timberlake can be done up to look pretty damn good (just sayin'.)
I just wanted to put those there to make sure people were still reading. But so Justin Timberlake has taken on this strange cultural cachet in which liking him is the ultimate "I don't care what people think" statement. It's so ultimate, in fact, that it's become actually cool to say you like the guy and vice versa. Talk to a hipster (hell talk to the guy above who said "Bro-dude") and just say you don't like JT and it'll go like this:
P4KR (eyes lighting up as he realizes it's his big opportunity to show just how much he doesn't care about other people think of him and his taste in music): Dude-bro, it's just good music you know? Good pop music right? I mean sure I know it's not "cool" to like him, but that's not what...
ugh.
Notice: Cliff's notes of this post. Read this sentence and if you understand it (and good luck), then you've got 81% of this post. I'm saying that JT is Music you don't like but you also know that everyone else thinks that it's actually music you like but that you only say you hate because you think you're supposed to think it's horrible. Which winds up meaning it's music you're supposed to (say you) like.
Now there are guys who genuinely, truly like Timberlake, and I'm totally cool with them. In fact they should be pissed too because their actual appreciation is getting hijacked. If you're one of those people, scroll up and click the hyperlink for "apart from one song" (i.e. denoting the song of his that I really like) because it's the remix of "What goes around" featuring Rick Ross and Pitbull and it's badass. I couldn't find it on a single CD, either!
By the way, I realize I'm probably giving him way too much credit by referring to these songs as "Justin Timberlake's songs" when in reality they're probably "Timbaland's songs that Justin Timberlake contributed one line to so he could squeak out a co-writing credit." I do this by convention only- one reason why Timberlake isn't the next Prince is that Prince was a great songwriter on top of everything else. We can't say that about JT.
So... At this point there're two different meanings of "I like Justin Timberlake", only one of which refers to the actual aesthetic appreciation of Timberlake's 85% shitty music. The other one -as far as i can tell- refers to this new method of publicly declaring how you aren't affected by hip-culture telling you what you should or shouldn't like (the irony is so obvious it's barely worth mentioning.) It's enough to make your goddamn head spin.
Anyway, as someone who realizes that if there was ever a time in our cultural milieu to like Justin Timberlake without shame it's now: Justin Timberlake sucks.
