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Scalzi vs The Bigots: Round One

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I’m going to do something now which totally surprises even me: I’m going to recommend an author whose work I’ve never read. Gasp! He’s on my List. I fully intend to read his stuff. Stay tuned. I’ll keep you posted. Fret not. Meanwhile, go read John Scalzi’s blog, Whatever. I kept seeing his name pop up in other writers’ blogs. And his book Redshirts was a giant meganerdy bestseller. So I checked him out and he is awesome. Mostly because he’s brutally honest about pretty much anything. His work, his friends, raising a teenage daughter, politics, religion, the business of writing, ukuleles, and probably most importantly, churros.

Unfortunately, in the world we live in, being honest about things that matter, out loud, on the interwebs, with a huge steady following, means that you’re going to have haters. Fact of life in the Digital Age, and something we’re going to have to deal with until the end of time. (Should I be capitalizing those words? Digital Age? I don’t know. Imma do it anyway.) And thus we arrive at the Scalzi-centric kerfluffle, which I find simply compelling. The opponents: in this corner, wearing the red shirt of brutally honest nerdy writerdom – John Scalzi. In the opposing corner, wearing the icky grey robes of hateful trolliness – the Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit (hereafter referred to as the RSHD).

A while ago, the RSHD and his gaggle of mindless followers started making trolly comments on Scalzi’s blog and on the RSHD’s own website. Busy as he is, Scalzi still moderates all his own blog comments. Admirable. (On a related note, why don’t y’all comment more on my blog? I know you’ve got shit to say. Quit keeping it all bottled up inside. It’s bad for your liver.) So he started using “the kitten setting” on those comments, a practice which I adore adore adore. Formerly known as the Mallet of Loving Correction, the kitten setting is when a troll’s comment is edited to reflect a more fuzzy unicorns and puppies and sparkly rainbows sort of outlook. All the hatey things directed at Scalzi are turned into heartfelt expressions of the RSHD’s schoolboy mancrush on him. Feels like a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper. Lots of fluffy bunnies. Takes the teeth right out of those comments, takes away their power. It’s fucking awesome. But, understandably, it further agitates the trolls.

Finally reaching his breaking point, Scalzi decided to put his money where the RSHD’s mouth is. Every time the RSHD does his asshat thing in 2013, he (Scalzi) is going to put five bucks in a jar, up to $1,000, giving the RSHD two hundred opportunities this year to say something hateful. And at the end of the year he’s going to donate it all to RAINN, Emily’s List, the Human Rights Campaign, and the NAACP, in loving support of everything the RSHD hates.

Brilliant!

But wait, there’s more. Scalzi’s fans started asking if they could get in on the action. Not wanting to take anyone’s money up front (in case the RSHD cools down and shuts up – unlikely), he set up a pledge system: the Counteract a Bigot Drive. At the end of the year, all the RSHD activity will be tallied and quantified into money dollar terms, and everyone sends their donations all at once. Here’s the breathtaking bit: the pledges rose to $60,000 in two days. That is a lot of anti-hater money. I don’t think I can say “fucking awesome” too often about this whole thing. It’s just…accurate.

Good on you, Scalzi and fans. Good. On. You. Many heartfelt hugs and thanks.

Besides being inarguably badass, here’s what interests me about this story. I’m wondering why it seems that nerds are, by and large, really, really nice. From my perspective, the occurrence of assholery appears to be generally lower among the geekier slices of the American cultural pie chart. For the purposes of this discussion, I will stipulate to the fact that I may have built myself a bubble of liberal, accepting, open-minded, lovely people. If I hadn’t I probably would’ve punched many a bigoted motherfucker in the mouth by now. Thanks, friends, for being decent humans. Also, I’m from an infected pocket of the world where people who appear otherwise normal throw around racist/sexist/homophobic terminology as readily as they do Nascar references. My nerdly homies who rescued me from high school suicidal tendencies were never like that, nor were the people that I later gravitated toward. All these people somehow or another reinforced in me the non-judgmental mindset that my parents engendered very early. Because they’re awesome friends and awesome parents. It’s really hard for me to be objective here, is all I’m saying.

Anyway, the easy answer is that nerds are nice because we got made fun of as kids or are lonely people or have the deck of mainstream media stacked against us. I take it for granted that that’s the case. However, I think the more interesting variable here might be the influence of science fiction and fantasy. For example, look at Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry populated the Original Series cast with people of every color and creed to make the point that in the future we’re all one. We’re all Terrans, and nothing else matters. In the mid-1960′s, that was a bold anti-racist statement, even if it was couched in such ridiculousness as Captain Kirk getting the hots for the green Orion slave girl. Hamfisted, perhaps, but important. Similarly, I recently heard Kevin Smith say that the X-Men comics are one big metaphor for homosexuality. I’d never made the connection myself, but it does make some degree of sense. You have this secret that could get you socially ostracized and you keep it quiet until you can’t anymore and then you come out of the mutant closet? Yep. That tracks. And while sexism is a hotly debated topic, still, among scifi/fantasy fans, I think there are more positive female role models in those pop culture areas than in others. I’ll take Princess Leia or Jean Grey or Trinity over Paris Hilton or Snooki any day of the fucking week (my burning hatred for reality tv obviously provides serious bias on this particular point).

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for prejudice in scifi or fantasy, though. It’s often in a futuristic setting where the social mores are so different from our own as to be unrecognizable (ie, The Handmaid’s Tale). Or, contrarily, there some sort of uber evil that must be defeated by disparate groups coming together against a common enemy (Hobbits and Elves and Dwarves vs the Orcs of Sauron). Consider, too, that our opinions of scifi and fantasy change drastically as we move along our own cultural timeline. I’m fine with Kirk boffing space tramps in every color of the rainbow, but I still get weirded out when Quark makes out with that Cardassian chick in DS9. Why is that weird? I don’t know. This whole thing might be a chicken-or-egg situation, though. Does scifi/fantasy make us nicer because it illustrates and exposes us to a prejudice-less worldview? Or are we nice because of environment and circumstance, and when we get a chance to make stuff we want to show the milieu that we would ideally create for ourselves?

I’d like to find a way to examine these questions with hard science, instead of just spewing my watered-down opinions at you. But it seems like there would be too many variables. Someone should at least try to do a study. Maybe I should take my anthropologist buddy to Comic-Con and set her loose.

No, that won’t work. Comic-Con tickets sold out last week. Also, bonus, she’d kill me dead. One can still dream.

Meanwhile, in the real world, we can all show the Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit how we roll, nerds and non-nerds alike, by pledging to the Counteract a Bigot Drive here. And if you’re a fan of scifi or social commentary, you should definitely check out Scalzi’s blog at whatever.scalzi.com.

No, actually, I DON’T want to talk about it…

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…but I’m gonna.

I will say this once, Americans: I don’t care who you vote for. But this coming Tuesday you MUST. GO. VOTE. If you don’t vote, you forfeit your right to bitch about politics. It’s a shitty, fucked up system, but it’s all we have so use it to your advantage, yeah?

Here’s the thing: I feel like this election has come down to a few issues that, at the end of the day, have very little to do with the way that the President does his job. While they are very important issues for us citizens, frankly the President has all of those things and bigger, more dire things to worry about. You know, like three wars and a tanking economy. Furthermore, those hot-button issues and our passionate feelings about them are being used against us, the voters, as a smokescreen, right? “Look over here at the shiny thing, monkey, so you don’t see what my other hand is doing. Because believe me, it’s something evil and you don’t want to see it. Good monkey.” Talking about “legitimate rape” or de-funding PBS (while I totally agree that those things are important) doesn’t change the fact that somebody in some little brown country just got the shit bombed out of them, does it? But what are we hearing more about? What is the media machine spoonfeeding us? What are they telling us to care about? And why are they talking down to us? The whole thing is a freak show built specifically to distract. It’s juvenile, shit-slinging nonsense and it’s beneath us.

And I don’t think I’m being radical when I say that. Because really, Joe Blow White Christian Middle-Class American Guy probably doesn’t want to sit through a whole debate about foreign policy. Or any debate that’s conducted in Legalese, which is how these bureaucratic fucks speak and think at the office. If we had them actually speaking on TV in the language of their peers, in the language that they use to govern, most people would tune right out. That’s the real gap between “normal” Americans and those who are in elected offices. Which may be me selling my fellow Americans short, but I don’t think I’m necessarily wrong. It seems like all most people hear (or what we’re led to believe that most people hear, anyway, given the way these things are scripted) is: blah blah blah, abortion, blah blah blah, gay marriage, blah blah blah, welfare, blah blah blah, Jesus, blah blah blah, taxes. And that’s fucked up. I think if elections weren’t run like a goddamn reality show, we could maybe hear some real ideas about some real issues. But, alas, they continue to pander to the lowest common denominator. Because the lowest common denominator watches a lot of TV and gets to vote.

The whole thing makes me super agro. I’m glad it’s almost over. It’s so stressful trying to explain to people why I feel the way I feel about things. Dispassionate political discourse seems to be a dying art. Just because I disagree with your politics does not mean that when we talk about it I’m attacking you personally. I may think you’re wrong, but I’m smart enough and kind enough to sit down with you and have a conversation about why you think what you do. Maybe you’ll change my mind. Maybe I’ll change yours. Maybe not. That’s the point, isn’t it? To hear new ideas? To incorporate them into your existing philosophy? Isn’t that why we’re all here? To learn from each other and grow? To understand each other better? When and why did we forget that, as a culture?

Just because you’re right doesn’t mean that I’m wrong.

Just because we disagree doesn’t mean that we can’t love each other.

Just because we’re having a discussion, that doesn’t mean we’re fighting.

Sometimes I wish people would just grow up and learn how to have a debate. Furthermore, I wish people weren’t so nearsighted about politics. That whole smokescreen thing fucking works, man, and it’s pitiful. It should be pretty simple, shouldn’t it? Don’t take away my right to do what makes me happy as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. Something about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Right? Let me marry the person I love and be able to hold their hand as they lay dying. Let me make the important decisions about my health and my (hypothetical, maybe future someday) children’s health. Let me have decent food and water that won’t give me some hideous disease or disorder. I will agree to try to not shoot humans if you agree to let me keep my guns, safely and responsibly, so I can shoot bears and deer and robbers and rapists and the occasional bluejay (because those bastards fuck up my orchard every year – it’s legitimate bluejay hate). Let me get a decent, useful education. Let me speak my mind, even if you disagree with me, and I will extend you the same courtesy. Let me believe in my God or gods or lack of gods or science or spaceships or whatever, and don’t base legislation on yours and yours alone. Give me relevant information so I can exercise my right to vote for what I think is important. Make sure that I’m safe and that the country I love is safe. Treat us all equally. Maybe don’t nuke anybody. Is that too much to ask from one’s government? Isn’t that what government is for?

Anyway. I’m done. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Just do me a favor: Stand up straight, stand on your principles, be a proud American, and go fucking vote.

A hundred-pound sturgeon on twenty-pound test…

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Let me explain to you the complete literary weirdness that happened to me this week. I’ll begin at the absolute beginning: in 1999 my cousin, the stagehand, snuck me in the back door of a Primus show. (And yes, I know that “snuck” is not a word.) I was a junior in high school and had been going to a ton of shows that year, spending unreal amounts of money on shitty metal bands. And I knew Primus, but I wasn’t a die-hard superfan or anything. I had Sailing the Seas of Cheese. But everyone has Sailing the Seas of Cheese (and if you don’t, you should), so that doesn’t really count. It was free (sort of) and I was on vacation so I figured what the hell. However, this particular show was in-fucking-credible. Buckethead opened for Incubus (before they started to suck) who opened for Primus and my mind was thoroughly blown. So, typical Vanessa long-story-short-but-not-short-enough, I went off the OCD deep end and bought every Primus album (on CD, whippersnappers). Huge Primus fan.

Fast forward to 2006, when I heard through the Giant Evil Bookstore grapevine that Les Claypool, the lead singer, bassist, and general heart and soul of Primus, had released a novel. I was stoked and confused and weirded out by the whole thing. Could not for the life of me, even with all my insider information, find a copy of this book. I asked every used bookstore in town to keep an eye out and call me if they saw a copy. I checked the Giant Evil Bookstore database day after day and there weren’t any available. And eventually I gave up, wrote it on my ridiculous books-to-buy-eventually spreadsheet, and forgot about it.

Then I was in the used bookstore in Arcata last week, just poking around. I usually avoid the fiction section. Too many books I want to read and I’ll spend all my money. So I stick to the scifi and fantasy sections because I have very specific things I’m looking for there. More cost-effective. See? I’m a responsible grownup. I irresponsibly wandered over to the fiction section and was reaching for a book on the very top shelf (to clarify: I am short and top shelves are usually difficult for me), when I tripped and knocked over a small stack of books that were precariously balanced on top of some other books. I was putting them back (even though they shouldn’t have been there in the first fucking place) and what do I see? South of the Pumphouse by Les Claypool. In the wrong section, of course. It was in the L’s and not the C’s. Damn it.

This is the third time that I’ve found something I was looking for in this particular bookstore by almost seriously injuring myself. I’m not sure if I should be more cautious or less cautious while in this establishment. Either might serve me well. Hypothetically. Fuck it, I’m just clumsy, and the universe seems to be rewarding me for that. By giving me books. Or something.

Anyway. It’s a pretty small book. I read it in about a day and a half. Weird. Very weird. If you’re a Primus fan, you’ll recognize a few lines from the song “Fish On.” It’s basically a story about two brothers who haven’t seen each other for years and are trying to work on being a bigger part of each others lives after the death of their father, even though now that they’re adults they have absolutely nothing in common anymore. There’s a lot of stuff about trying to go home and see things the way that you did when you were a kid. There’s a lot of fishing, which I kind of took as an extended metaphor for how one can’t force camaraderie through sharing an experience. But then, about three quarters of the way through, it takes a real hard left turn. I won’t give out any spoilers, but I have to say that was not the way I expected it to go. All in all, a good book. Not a great book, but worth the day and a half, for sure.

But I wasn’t quite sure what to think so I read a couple of reviews of it after I was done, just to see what other people had to say about it. And almost all of them (as well as the blurb on the back of my copy of the book) compare Claypool to Hunter S. Thompson. I don’t know that I agree with that comparison. There are drugs and madness involved, and some wacky shit goes down, but Thompson was a revolutionary and a complete crazy person and I wouldn’t in good conscience compare him to anyone. He’s the Pink Floyd of journalism. This novel reads a little more like Steinbeck, trying to squeeze profundity out of the mundane.

Point is, it wasn’t at all what I expected and I’m very disappointed in myself. Because I shouldn’t have hyped up the book based on my previous opinion of the author, right? Just because his music is this wonderfully weird thing doesn’t mean that his written work will be (which is not to say that writing lyrics is not, in itself, worthy of being called “writing,” but you know what I mean – long form prose versus lyrics which are essentially poetry? Apples and oranges, yes? We can all agree on that?). Why pigeonhole people because they’re really good at one thing that they’re famous for doing? Doesn’t mean that’s the only thing they’re good at. Or the only thing that they love. Frankly, I’m dismayed to learn that I even had that particular kind of bias in me. Made me sad. Mostly because when it’s the other way around (and, most often, when it’s someone else’s opinion) I rail against it. Like saying that just because Matthew Gray Gubler is an actor, that he can’t paint. Or that Henry Rollins can’t do spoken word poetry because he’s a punk singer. Or that Eddie Murphy can’t sing because he’s a comedian.

Wait, no, that one’s true.

And I’m not condemning Les Claypool’s work, or saying that he should just stick to shredding on the bass guitar (a fretless, six-string bass guitar). If he writes another book I’ll probably read it. And of course I would never discourage anyone from expanding their artistic horizons. You have a story in you? Fucking tell it or it will die. Period. But beware the preconceived notion monster. Because apparently it will eat your face without you even knowing about it. Lesson learned.

The cult of Cult

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How did I go my whole life without seeing Buckaroo Banzai? I am baffled.

Wait, before you send me angry letters: I am not at this point saying that it’s a good movie. I’m just saying that I find it remarkable that I’d never encountered it. It seems like it would be one of those things that someone foists upon you in a so-bad-it’s-good kind of way. “This stinks; smell it. This tastes hideous; you’ve got to try it.” But maybe that’s just my friends.

Hmm. That would explain a lot, actually.

If you haven’t seen Buckaroo Banzai , get thee to a Netflix ASAP, folks (for searching purposes, you should know that the entire title is The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, but that’s an unnecessary mouthful, isn’t it?). It is cheesy, ridiculous, early 80′s, semi-scifi weirdness. Like a comic book gone wrong. Horrible effects, bad acting, outrageous story line, musical numbers, preposterous love story. It’s everything bad movies are made of. And yet, somehow, through all that utter crap, I just couldn’t stop watching. It was quirky and fun and I enjoyed it thoroughly. If you willfully suspend your disbelief and your modern CGI sensibilities, it comes off as merely campy. Plus, it’s got John Lithgow and Peter Weller and Jeff Goldblum and Christopher Lloyd (Dick Solomon, RoboCop, The Fly, and Doc Brown – a strange but satisfying scifi quartet). And a ton of other character actors who I refer to as Hey-it’s-that-guy-guys, which is always good for the old Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon (I can’t help it, I can’t stop, just let it go).

So, briefly: Buckaroo Banzai, the physicist-slash-brain surgeon-slash-rock star, figures out how to pass solid matter through solid matter, and somehow in the process discovers a horrible interdimensional alien plot/war/situation thing that’s been going on since the 1930′s (with an excellent nod to Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds for you invasion conspiracy geeks). Meanwhile, the evil enemy character (John Lithgow, with amazing crazy-guy hair) has been taken over by the leader of the bad guys and is doing everything in his mad scientist powers to thwart our hero and his band of ragamuffin genius musicians. There’s also a really great corporate conspiracy element, since the bad aliens have been on Earth for decades and have established a stronghold in a company that’s doing research in space travel (which, if you’re an alien trapped on a planet without interstellar travel, is fucking brilliant).

Damn it. Once again, the thing I want to talk about does not sum up well. Why do I do this to myself? Why do I do this to you? It’s probably my stupid Literature degree, creeping in, taking over. As soon as I touch a keyboard my brain’s all “Must summarize! Must critique!” (Not sure why my brain sounds like a Dalek, but I’ll take it.)

Point is, this movie is the perfect example of a cult classic film, a phenomenon that fascinates me. That liminal moment when you get to share an obscure movie with someone who hasn’t seen it? That’s good stuff. Just tremendous. Especially if, as is occasionally the case, they really like it. But what makes a thing go beyond obscure and into the mystical land of cult? Is it the amount of love? Because that’s a bit subjective and not really quantifiable. Is it our twenty-first century ability to measure box-office release numbers to DVD and online purchase/streaming numbers? Because there were cult classics before the interwebs and home movies. It seems like a term that’s pretty difficult to drive a nail through, even though we all know what we mean when we say it.

The more I think about it, though, I really believe that the key element in any cult classic is not the movie itself, but the fans. Take Clerks, for example. Or Rocky Horror Picture Show. This Is Spinal Tap. Eraserhead. Pink Flamingos. (And that’s not even getting into really genre-specific groups of movies, because I have lists, let me tell you, and I could talk about cheesy 70′s horror movies or C-grade zombie films all fucking day). None of these are great movies if you look at them closely just for what they are. But what makes them great is how much we love them, despite their awfulness. We know every word, every joke, every facial expression. We quote them to each other endlessly. And I’m not saying that all cult classics are intrinsically bad. Fight Club is pretty cult-tastic, and it’s one of the greatest films of our generation. Donnie Darko. Harold and Maude. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Anything Quentin Tarantino’s ever touched. These are fantastic movies, but they’re not blockbusting hits that you know everyone and their mom has seen.

Cult classics are bigger than their popularity (or lack thereof), and more important. They tend to be a big part of what defines the boundaries of groups of people, along with books, music, etc, etc. Those boundaries create a community, an instant barrier between those who get it and those who don’t, and we just want to show these things to the uninitiated so they’ll be on our side of the fence, right? Drag them down with us? That’s how social groups work, identifying common interests. (Duh, hello Psych 101.) For instance, I guarantee you that anyone who will scream “We are the Knights Who Say Ni!” at another human being has played at least one game of Dungeons & Dragons in their life.

Go ahead. Try to defy that logic.

Now stop. Because your argument is invalid.

Anyway, if you’re into bad geeky adventure movies that are silly and have awesome aliens, you should watch Buckaroo Banzai. Let me know what you think if you watch it or any of the others that I’ve listed, and if there are more that I absolutely must see, leave me a comment. Wikipedia (oh, how I loathe you) actually has a pretty decent list. Hooray for crowdsourcing information that doesn’t need to be verified!

Aurora.

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Fair warning: as you can probably tell from the title, this isn’t going to be as funny a post as I’d usually go for. We live in a world where serious shit happens and I can’t get by with just talking about books and movies and my stupid feelings about them all the time. Just so you know.

We all heard about the shooting in Aurora, Colorado this past week. It’s hideous. I don’t want to talk about it because it makes me feel sick. But I think I should talk about it precisely because it makes me feel sick.

Here’s the thing: Batman is a big deal. The newest of the Nolan movies is a huge deal. But only because it’s American media hype. This gun-toting bullshit has nothing to do with Batman. And I won’t give wackadoo shooter guy the satisfaction of discussing his connection with an iconic superhero. I just won’t. Fans are fans, whatever they’re fans of, and really all that means is groups of innocent people in one place at one time. Happens every day.

As a side note, the other thing I’m not going to discuss is my view on gun laws, so if you leave something in the comments and it doesn’t make it through please don’t be offended. This is hardly the time or the place for politics. Feel free to send me an email and I’ll get back to you, but I don’t want to talk about it here.

But I do want to talk about crazy.

I’m a child of the Columbine generation. In April of 1999 I was a junior in high school. It’s really strange to talk about this in such a timeline kind of way, but those couple of years between the school shootings of the late 1990′s and the complete global madness of 9/11 were, frankly, a tremendously fucked up period of history to have to live through. It was fear before there was fear on such a blown-out scale. And it was limited to a very specific group. High school kids went to school every day terrified while everyone else got to walk around mostly unaffected (at least that was how it seemed to me and all my friends and classmates). Before we all talked about “terrorism” like it was a normal state of being. Before that word lost its meaning. Like the plan was to grow a whole group of adults who were already afraid for their lives. That’s a bit of a conspiracy theory thing to say. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t work, right?

Unless you were in that situation, though, you don’t really know what that was like, spending every single day petrified that someone would freak out in a classroom and blow you up. Or worse. Out of nowhere. Someone you’d known your whole life, someone you’d never expect. Which was especially scary for me because I’m from a small country town where coming to school straight from going hunting at sunrise wasn’t uncommon. Until Columbine, it was totally legal to come to school with a gun in your car if you had a hunting license. I’m sure it’s still like that in a lot of remote places. I don’t have a fundamental problem with guns. They’re a useful tool in the hands of people who know what they’re doing. But there’s a time and a place. And I was taught the hard way (although, admittedly, not the hardest way) that school is not the place. Sorry, I don’t mean to go on and on about a completely unrelated tragedy.

So now I’m having horrible flashbacks. Perhaps because those two words “Colorado” and “shooting” are in the same sentence again. A conditioned response, maybe, I don’t know. But that’s out of my control.

What pisses me off is that this crazy jackass dragged everyone else in that theater into his delusion. I understand crazy. Believe me, I’ve been at the bottom of several different crazy barrels, other peoples’ and my own. I get it. Reality sways, occasionally. I understand fully how people can…what? Get lost, maybe. Or forget. I’m not saying I sympathize, just for the record. I understand that some folks need serious help to keep their shit together, but that impulse to hurt people is totally beyond me. It just doesn’t seem fair when people pull others down with them when they’re drowning like that.

But it doesn’t surprise me that Americans tend to go on shooting rampages, honestly. Think about the way that we’re desensitized in our culture. We’ve accepted violence. We see death all the time and it seems painless. We shoot people in video games and they just disappear. Tv shows are full of rape and murder and death and home invasions and people beating the shit out of each other – all of which is way more graphic than the news. But censors are more concerned with seeing a nipple onscreen than someone’s guts all spilled out. And I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t mind a bit of blood and guts and gore in my movies/games/books/tv/etc. But I have the mental acuity (now, at 30, probably not so much during my more formative years) to deal with it as a fiction, as a tool to move the story forward. It probably helps that my mother is a trauma nurse (full disclosure: a badass trauma nurse) and brought home real-world horror stories all the time. You get used to it. But that’s just it: we shouldn’t get used to it. Unless you’re a cop or a fireman or a nurse or a doctor or a coroner or whatever, there’s no reason to be so cut off from how horrible these things are. Isn’t it a fucked up symptom of our media-fed culture that we can rationalize actual violence as just something that happens to someone else somewhere else, as long as we see it on a screen? The media treats war like infotainment and death like statistics. They’ve got no problem showing us starving babies in another country and then immediately following those horrendous images with a multi-million-dollar commercial for some overpriced restaurant whose food could probably kill us all. We shouldn’t be so ok with that juxtaposition, that hypocrisy.

I guess my point here, if I really have one besides just using this as a ranty outlet, is that we shouldn’t give this guy in Colorado a spot in our minds, in our history, in our hearts. Let’s remember the victims, the injured and the dead, the people who were just trying to have a night out like we all need occasionally because our lives are shit because we live in America and consuming something makes us feel happy for a minute. They were just people. It was just a movie. And they died. It’s tragic. It’s tremendously sad. The ripples that go out into the world from that event are incalculable.

But we can’t let fear take over. Take just a second, just one, and maybe think about those things that you do in your everyday little life that you don’t ever fathom could ever, ever hurt you. You go to the bank. You get a cup of coffee. You go to the grocery store. You go to the movies. At any given moment any of us could get shot or blown up or whatever. We’re vulnerable all the time to someone else’s crazy. And that’s not our fault. And that’s not society’s fault. And that’s not even necessarily a crazy guy’s fault. Shit, I could get eaten by a bear walking through my backyard, you know? Sad, ridiculous, fucked up things happen all the time. Don’t let those things that might maybe someday happen and that can’t possibly be predicted make you cower. Don’t let the possible make you hide away from the definite. Because trite as it may sound, life is fucking short. Do what you love. Live to the fullest. Tell the people you love that you love them. Smile. Laugh. Spread joy and love and light. Be good to each other. That’s all we can do. To do any less than that is a waste of time, a wasted opportunity, something lost forever that we can’t get back and might regret. And what a shame it is to regret, my friends. What a complete shame. Don’t let the bad guys win.

Logic! Science! Atheism! Pianos?

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Hooray for a post that’s not a downer! Fucking finally, right?

If any of you are my friends on Facebook, you’ve probably noticed the obscene number of Tim Minchin videos that I’ve posted in the last six months or so. (Did you watch them? Weren’t they great?) I may have mentioned him on the blog before. I think it was in my comedy post. Maybe just in the Pointless List box. Anyway, we all know I love comedy. And I love music. But somewhere in the middle there’s a weird cross-section of people who can do both. At the same time. These people are mutants. Hilarious mutants (and really, if you’re going to have mutants, those are the best kind to have, aren’t they?).

The reason I love Tim Minchin is that he’s fucking smart. Perhaps not in a typically booksmart way (no offense, there’s just no other way to say that), but in an important-subject-matter, Bill Hicksian sensibility kind of way. Intelligent, logical humor. Which is hard to do. Harder still to do whilst banging away on a grand piano, singing really complicated lyrics in a sort of baroque jacket with tails, the entire time maintaining an irresistible redheaded Australian adorableness. Logic plus adorable plus funny equals smart-girl bait. Oh, also barefoot. Barefoot smart-girl bait.

He’s one of those comedians that you either love or hate, as is usually the case when someone tries to base an entire career on making people laugh at controversial issues instead of being all profound and serious about them. Religion comes up a lot in his work, as well as other spiritual or ethereal (read: not provable) belief systems. He’s a staunch atheist, and consistently comes back to the point that logic and science should trump blind faith based on nothing. For the record, I’m not an atheist (you can stop having a panic attack, Mom). But I am pretty devoutly pro-logic and pro-free-thought. I have no issues with other people’s beliefs or faith, so long as they can find their peace or happiness or whatever in a quiet, unobtrusive, keep-it-to-yourself kind of way. Just because you think you’re right doesn’t automatically mean that I’m wrong, does it? I’d like to think it doesn’t. Live and let live. You keep your Jesus magic, and I’ll keep my space aliens and theory of evolution and we’ll just agree to disagree and continue to go about our business and love each other unconditionally and unabashedly in spite of our differences. Ok? Ok.

Hello, weird digression. Where did you come from? I should stay on topic.

The problem with combining any kind of social commentary with comedy (or music, for that matter), is that so often people can’t overlook the medium for the sake of the message. Like people who don’t listen to heavy metal or hip hop saying that it’s a bad influence on their kids. Or that all risqué photography is porn. Or that graffiti isn’t art. (“Stay on topic, Vanessa.” Ok.) Probably the best relevant example of this is Minchin’s The Pope Song, which is about the Pope (the last one, not the Nazi Emperor Palpatine-looking one we have now) covering up for priests who sexually abused children. In two minutes he manages to say the word “fuck” 92 times (by my count, could be wrong). Outstanding. Brilliant. Tremendous. The word itself doesn’t offend me in the least. Fuck fuckity fuckfuck. I can listen past it, right? Past the fact that “fuck” is just another word, to get to the point of the other lyrics, which are quite clever, considering that not much actually rhymes with “fuck.” It’s like a test. A battle of wits. And at the end you’re either offended on a shallow level by mere language, or you’ve understood the satirical juxtaposition of a word that shouldn’t be offensive (but so often is) with words that are seemingly more benign but illustrate something far more disturbing.

That last sentence got a little out of control. Just listen to the damn song and you’ll see what I mean.

Politics aside, Minchin is an excellent pianist and a great singer (you’d think that would go without saying, but in the world of musical comedy a lot of people are funny or technically talented but not both). Apparently he doesn’t read music or write his stuff down. Which I find both impressive and annoying. I’m trying to learn his song Not Perfect on the ukulele. But when I went to look for the chords there were about 800 different versions because everybody who ever put one on the internet had to figure it out for themselves. Also, piano to guitar to ukulele is a bizarre little game of Telephone to play with chords. But it turned out ok, I think I’ve figured it out. (Now I just have to learn to sing. Duck and cover folks, this is not going to be pretty.) He’s super versatile, too. An incomplete list:

Satire (for lack of a better word) – Fuck the Poor, Woody Allen Jesus, Prejudice
Straightforward social commentary – Fat Children, Canvas Bags, Peace Anthem for Palestine
Love songs – If I Didn’t Have You, White Wine in the Sun, Drowned, You Grew On Me
Ridiculousness – Cheese, So Fucking Rock, Doctor Who theme song (performed on a keytar while wearing a Prince Charles mask – yes, I’m serious)
Beat poetry (for real) – Storm, Mitsubishi Colt
Musicals – Won an Olivier Award for his lyrics and music for the stage adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda

That should keep you busy on the old YouTube for a bit. Mwahahahaaa. I’ve imposed my timesuck upon you. You’re welcome (unless you’re easily offended, in which case: don’t blame me, you clicked on that shit of your own free will). Tim Minchin’s blog and tour/merch/news/etc info are at timminchin.com. I’ll leave you with this one, because it’s my absolute favorite (insert obligatory “I’m not a pirate, all rights belong to the artist” blah blah – I couldn’t get it to embed, you’ll have to click on it, sorry): Tim Minchin – Rock and Roll Nerd

Hipster Bacon

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Ok, ok, I’m not going to talk about hipsters. I refuse. Last time I got my little feelings hurt by agro commenters. Yeah, that’s right. I’ve got feelings. Buried under all this sarcasm. Somewhere.

I just thought that “Hipster Bacon” sounded funny. It really does, doesn’t it? Like a bad folk rock band. Wearing plaid.

I love bacon. I have always loved bacon. I’m southern, we love ourselves all manner of pig parts. But this whole wave of trendy bacon love seems new and weird to me. I first noticed it maybe two years ago when my buddy got a wallet for his birthday that was made out of fabric printed to look like bacon. I chuckled and let it go, because he really does eat more bacon than is healthy for a normal human and it suited him. Funny in a conventional sense, not funny because it was bacon. But even at the time I thought, “Where the hell did the company that made this wallet find fabric printed to look like bacon?”

And ever since then it’s spiraled a bit out of control. There are t-shirts with I [heart] Bacon on them. There are bacon memes all over Facebook and Twitter. Which is all fine and good and I can blow it off but I wonder about the long-term repercussions of this particular trend. An entire nation of people will look back at the pictures from their youth and wonder “Why am I wearing a shirt that looks like bacon?” All of that aside, what’s particularly interesting to me about this whole situation is how little these images actually call to mind the real life foodstuff. It’s cartoonish, somehow, disconnected from the gluttonous pleasure center in my brain that craves the salty, chewy bacony goodness of actual bacon. More often, my happyfunnysmileyface brain button is pushed (pardon me, I think my brain may have evolutionarily adapted to look a lot like my Facebook page, all political and covered in buttons, which is funnier still because ten years ago that’s what my jacket looked like and my brain didn’t even notice).

Then there are the actual bacon food trends. Bacon toothpaste, bacontinis, bacon ice cream, bacon doughnuts, bacon chocolate bars. Putting aside the obvious conversation about the sad state of our factory food system, GMOs, Monsanto, etc, etc, in small, shallow ways we seem to have turned our attention towards eating better, getting more exercise. Fast food companies are making portions smaller and employers are giving bonuses to people who bike or walk to work. Except for bacon. We ignore the negative side of bacon (no pun intended), embrace it, even. It’s an acceptable evil. But why? Because it’s novel? It’s not novel! It’s bacon! It’s been bad for you for thousands of years! Delicious, wonderful, crispy, greasy bad for you. Nothing about bacon has changed, but there are more vectors than ever by which to ingest it.

I guess this isn’t really about bacon at all. This is probably more about trends and trendiness. I’m not good with people. I never have been. This is how I got to be where/what I am today. So when something is suddenly cool, I usually don’t understand it. Or, rather, I don’t understand the channels by which this seemingly already cool thing found its way into the mainstream consciousness, but there it is, bloody everywhere. There’s a word (phrase? term?) for that: perceptual vigilance. Like when I bought an orange car thinking, “No one else has an orange car, I’ll always be able to find my car,” and then I saw orange cars left and right. No, they did not start suddenly producing many more orange cars. My brain just had a reason to notice them, whereas before it did not. Fascinating little quirk of psychology, isn’t it? It’s the root of in-jokes, which are the roots of community. We seek out people who understand that thing we like, so we can like it together, or talk about why we like it differently. Freakin’ pack animals, humans, just monkeys in shoes. Don’t try to deny your animal nature, folks. Laugh at bacon. Then eat its face. Mmm, bacon face. (But seriously, in moderation, that shit is bad for you.)