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So should I just stay in this position for a while?

Pilot, Girls

Everyone and their mom is talking about Lena Dunham's new show, and I am so glad! She is funny in a low-key way that is super underrepresented in like--a room with just Chris Rock and Robin Williams in it. I worried (after seeing on IMDB or something that Tiny Furniture was classified as "Tragicomedy") that people would just be like, "She's not shouting... so I guess she's not telling jokes?" But now Judd Apatow is all mentoring her and HBO is all slathering her in publicity and thank goodness.

Where the show turned me off, potentially forever, was when everyone started talking about working at McDonald's in a weird out-of-touch way like they were all collectively the Shah of Iran. I am so not on board with liberal arts grads who are too "educated" or too "proud" to work at McDonald's. McDonald's might not have a massage chair in the break room or meat in their burgers conventionally speaking. But sometimes you need money. To eat. And then you do not just like, submit extra vigorously to McSweeney's (by putting all your submissions in... bold?)--you go work at fucking McDonald's! A world, even a sorta satirical world, where that is not the end of the story makes me grumpy. Too grumpy to watch the show, maybe. I just want Lena Dunham's character to get off her lazy, unconventionally beautiful ass that the entire internet is talking about looking at and WORK A JOB A JOB.

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Dungeons and Dragons and Model and UN

"The Treaty," Parks and Recreation // "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons," Community

So as embarrassing as this is (or is not), I have not been watching Parks & Recreation at all this season. Or 30 Rock, or Community. I just went through the Hulu archives and got back in the game a little bit (although 30 Rock is not on Hulu anymore, so I am pretty benched in that game. Or that game is paused due to a technical foul. Or I have experienced checkmate in that game. OR the endzone of that game is full of... dirt. I CAN GO FOREVER I KNOW THE SHIT OUT OF MY GAMES). 

Anyway, while I was watching Parks & Rec ("The Treaty"), I had a revelation. The episode is about Model UN, which I don't totally understand, but it nevertheless reminded me of a Community episode from last season ("Advanced Dungeons and Dragons"), which was also about a game I did not understand. Let's lay out the total of what I know/believe about each thing:

Model UN: Everyone is very nerdy and (at the afterparty) drunk. There is a lot of overlap between MUN and the debate team. You can go to war. You have to "motion." Djibouti. Type A personalities. Gavels are a cool party favor to these guys.

Dungeons and Dragons: Everyone is very nerdy. People are on average not drunk because people are on average 10. Years old. Leather jerkins. Specialty dice. Amulets!!!! Dungeonmasters are like pimps, and all the other players are their hos or something.

So, not comprehensive, and possibly false. HOWEVER. What I realized while watching "The Treaty" (I watched the D&D episode like a year ago) is that THEY ARE THE SAME. MUN AND DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS ARE THE SAME GAME. They are both just people sitting in a room collaboratively imagining shit. The dungeons are full of dragons! Djibouti broke out in civil war! (Djibouti is the only country I can name, besides the US. And Italy. I really like pizza!)

So if there is any kind of feud going on between MUN and D&D, cut it out guys. You're on the same team! The people you're REALLY in a feud with are people who live in the real world. And dragons. You can take the dungeon out of the dragon, but you can't take the dragon out of the dungeon! Because that dragon will totally murder you.

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My Favorite Song

"Screaming Infidelities," Dashboard Confessional

I don't know why the only video for this song involves something called "Mallrats." Probably because this song plays exclusively in malls. At Hollister. It makes people want to try on skintight polos in total darkness!

Also, this is not actually my favorite song. I think it kind of sucks. BUT it is great for me personally because I have this like uncontrollable mane (not in a goddess-y sense, in a nature channel lion sense) of curly hair that is just hysterically everywhere at all times. I have owned many, many defrizz hair products and straightening irons and they have no effect except that the straightening irons sometimes burn my hands. I continue to look like the "Before" in a Garnier Fructis commercial, even when I use Garnier Fructis products that are supposed to make me look like an "After" (Garnier Fructis is French for "Lying Fruit Whores").

So for me, this song is great. Because people actually really often tell me that my hair is everywhere, and thanks to Chris "Secret Hot Topic Shareholder" Carrabba I can respond "Screaming infidelities!" in this weird upbeat way. And then laugh to myself for like, an hour, while everyone looks on in horror because now that it's 2011, you're supposed to pretend Dashboard Confessional never existed. It's like Dippin Dots. We've just all tacitly agreed to forget BUT NOT ME I AM GOING ROGUE BITCHES.

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MIA

I'm going to be MIA for most of this week working on an advice column for my friend's magazine (and sleeping). Am I qualified to give advice? Absolutely not! That is why it will take a while.

I do actually have one good piece of advice though: If you are tutoring a high school student, and you are trying to be a good role model, don't open your purse during the session. Your purse will undermine everything you are trying to do. It is full of candy.

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Do I Have Rabies

Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion

In a book that is not Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion said "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." This is one of those nice quotes, like "Be the change you wish to see in the world" and "I love lamp," that is good at first and then EVERYONE SAYS IT ALL DAY EVERY DAY AND YOU PUNCH JOAN DIDION IN THE FACE. Fuckin Joan. I feel like every hour I have a conversation that's like:

ME: I was snuggling with my cat today and she was purring and it was cute. But then she got this manic look in her eyes, sort of like all Will Ferrell's characters do on SNL!, and then she bit me. And I think I have rabies.

PERSON: For me, this evokes Joan Didion's famous quote, "We tell ourselves stories about cats in order to live."

I HATE THIS CONVERSATION. I don't care what Joan Didion said. I care if I have rabies.

Also, I didn't toootally care what Joan Didion said when I read Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I mean, it was really good. She's smart. She clearly does "research," which I know I haven't mastered because, midway through writing this post, I realized I haven't read Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I stopped 2/3 of the way though. Oops!

But in the first 2/3, Joan was really invested in something I am not into, which is characterizing states. She was sort of writing about people, but she was MAINLY writing about place and how California is "golden country" or "full of stoners" or "a land of dreams." So of course housewives in California kill their husbands. Because of the dreams! The California murder dreams! 

I don't buy it. I buy it when people characterize people, and neighborhoods, and even like, eras. They all have unique characteristics that you can talk about without falling asleep. But when you talk about massive areas, you have to be vague. You just do. So you can say, about California, that it's like "sunny" or "not on the East Coast" or "a place where some people have inflatable plastic breasts" but nothing about that is hard-hitting or interesting. To me.

Then again, there are tons of people who like, jerk off to sweeping novels about the American dream, the vaguest thing of all. So what do I know. About masturbating. 

(Then again, I really liked "On Keeping a Notebook." I think the third I didn't read might have actually been the best third.)

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Be Quiet Jordan Catalano

My So-Called Life

The first time I watched My So-Called Life, I was in high school. My dad taped it and was like, "This show will teach you what it's like to be a teenaged girl."

And I was like, "Dad, I already am a teenaged girl."

And then he was like, "Compared to the teenage girls in this show, you are a middle-aged man."

So I watched it, and I learned SO MUCH ABOUT LIFE I thought. Except now, seven years later, I mostly remember learning that Jordan Catalano was sexy, debilitatingly stupid, and had a leather choker (the top three things I look for in guys to this day!). I also remember thinking that everything Angela said--especially in her voiceovers--was very wise. Like, "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" wise.

I'm rewatching My So-Called Life on Netflix,  though, and it's hitting me differently now. Angela seems less wise than Harry's death-vision of Dumbledore. Also: 

1. It's suddenly funny to me when Rayanne tells Angela she'll always take care of her, because right before she says it she lands them both in a police car. She says it while they are still in the police car. They are not under arrest, but they are not NOT under arrest.

2. Jordan Catalano says EVERYTHING WRONG. Everything! I'm thankful that most of the time he's quiet and just stolidly thinking about his eyedrops, because the minute he opens his mouth it's all "I have no interest in you" and "You talk a lot" and "I barely know you but I'm also telling you what type of girl you are because that's something that's fun for both of us!" If his beautiful face fell off he would never get laid. (Fourth thing I look for in guys: Faces. No shirt, no shoes, no skin on your face, no service!!!)

3. There's a scene where Angela tells Rayanne and Ricky how unfair it is that all she has on her mind is Jordan Catalano, while he has "a lot of things on his mind" besides her. (Or at least, that's Rayanne's completely inaccurate description of him. That boy has NEGATIVE things on his mind. There are things UNDER his mind.) Angela basically thinks that there's nothing going on in her life.

I think the first time I saw the show, I agreed that her life was a little pathetic. But now, I don't know what she's talking about. She has a TON going on in her life. Her parents are fighting and emotionally cheating on each other! Someone shot the shit out of a can of soda at her school! Her old best friend keeps making snorting noises about her in bio, and her new best friend is drunk! Her neighbor with bad hair likes to read in a tree in her yard! More than she seems pathetic, she seems like she's not paying attention. Which is weird, because all she does is pay rabid attention to everything.

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Weezy F Baby and the F is for I'M AMPED

"My Last," Big Sean // "Hands Up," Lil Wayne

THESE SONGS ARE EACH OTHER'S COUSINS:

It's old news, but I just found the Lil Wayne one and I'm AMPED. I feel like Lil Wayne and Big Sean just revealed that they were long lost cousins, or like Lil Wayne just revealed that he was my long lost backup dad, or like Big Sean just revealed that there is a good reason Chris Brown is dressing more and more like Rihanna every day. CHRIS. IT'S OVER. She doesn't want to date you OR you dressed as her fraternal twin.

Or actually, maybe I feel like I am reading a choose your own adventure book (a feeling I usually avoid because no matter what book it is, my adventure involves me dying immediately and unglamorously. Even in books about alien abductions I somehow get "You got hit by a bus in the suburbs. Go to the website below to learn more about traffic safety!"). Except how can you choose between possibly the world's greatest Sean John wordplay AND Lil Wayne talking about his favorite TV show, Sex and the City? You can't. You can't choose. You just have to have every adventure. I feel like I just accidentally wrote ad copy for REI.

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Psycho

"The Writer and the Psychopath," Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

I just read this essay on Bookslut about, among other things, trendy disorders. Psychopathy is trendy right now, Marzano-Lesnevich argues, and Aspergers used to be trendy until people realized that there were sexier problems than unrelenting social awkwardness.

This argument is weird to me, though. It's basically an argument that empathy is getting uncool:

[S]ince the [psychopath] diagnosis correlates with power, charm, and manipulation of others, it offers bragging rights in certain circles. The website Experience Project features an “I am a Psychpath” forum and message board, with topic posts like, “When did you figure out you were a psychopath?” and “What do you like best about being a psycho?” Elsewhere on the Internet, posters offer up their self-calculated scores on Hare’s checklist, seeming pleased by the way the score confirms for them that yes, they are charming, and yes, they are uniquely skilled at taking advantage of others without remorse. (Could there be a more appealing and reassuring diagnosis to the teenage boy alone in his room?)

Who is excited or reassured by not being able to feel empathy? Empathy is the shit! Empathy is the only reason you have any friends! (Unless you have a nice car, then there are two reasons.)  There is no way to hate on it. David Brooks tried in an article about empathy's limitations, and it ended up (I thought) dumb. Every good thing has SOME limitations, and listing them doesn't really constitute a hard-hitting critique. That's like writing an anti-scarf op-ed about how scarves keep your neck warm, but they don't keep your feet warm.  

The Bookslut article also doesn't reflect the way disorder trends have shown up in my life so far. I don't see a lot of self-diagnosis, and I haven't heard psychopathy dropped in small talk that often--the only person I've heard casually diagnosed as a psycopath was diagnosed by me, and the person was Voldemort. (Dude is fuckin textbook. Torturing animals for fun! Killing people for fun! Making people call him "Lord" for fun [even though I would totally do that too, if I commanded slightly more respect]!)

What I hear more is people casually diagnosing other people as narcissists. Specifically, girls diagnosing their exes. It's an easy way to explain breakups so the guy is completely at fault (he was sick and I was healthy), without going so far that you say your ex might murder someone.  Psychopaths are scary; narcissists are just inconsiderate and soooort of think they're famous.

The thing is, that characterizes everyone under 30 that I know. Myself included. I am accidentally inconsiderate a lot. I am also, you may have heard, star of the upcoming reality show Not Getting Anything Done Because Of My Netflix Streaming Subscription.

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More Like I Made It Happen Amirite

"It Happened To Me"s, xoJane

I used to be a big fan of women's magazines and actually know things like which mascara won Allure's Eyelashiest Mascara Award. (It's always Maybelline Great Lash, you guys, you don't have to keep checking back every year.)

But then I got older and smarter and SO BORED. Because women's magazines are basically just one sex tip over and over: Blow your boyfriend with your mouth full of ice (he'll like the surprise cooling sensation!) and then pause in the middle to say "Nergggg, my teeth are so numb" (he'll like how the anticipation builds while you say "Nergggg"!).

It's just not enough to hold my interest for more than five years, so I quit all that Cosmo bizasness and started reading xoJane instead. Most of the time it's just as frivolous, but it's WAY better, and it really makes me laugh sometimes. Like in this post about dealing with dry spells featuring sage advice like:

Occasionally touch the skin on your eyelids. Feel that? That's what balls used to feel like.

But there is one weird thing about xoJane, and that is their "It Happened To Me" series. They post like, twelve of these babies a day, and they're usually pretty interesting, but the title doesn't always make sense. For example, today's It Happened To Me was  "I Became a Cougar." That is not something that just HAPPENS. You do not trip and fall into a vat of cougars who raise you as their own. Or another one is "My Boyfriend Is A Coke Dealer." First of all, it sort of happened to your boyfriend instead of you, and second of all, you CHOSE to date a coke dealer. And then he peed all over your house like a dog. Not as in "men are dogs" but as in "Lassie." It's okay! Relationships are complicated! Everyone pees all over everyone else's houses sometimes!

I just think the "It Happened To Me" title makes it seem like the authors don't have agency, which is the opposite of what xoJane, my one and only source of feminist makeup reviews, is all about.

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Call Yrself Girlfriend

"Call Your Girlfriend," Robyn

This song is such a fucking jam...

...and it outlines the nicest way possible to leave your girlfriend for a pop star. Guys having affairs with Lady Gaga--take note and make sure she has not eaten any of your vital organs!

The thing is, if you have to tell a guy to call his girlfriend and have The Talk, that means he is too spineless to do it by himself like a mensch. Which might mean he is not worth all the industrious warehouse-dancing? It also seems bad that he needs intensive line-by-line prep before he can hold a conversation. I don't know. I think Robyn and her cool teeth can do better. I also think he's never going to call his girlfriend.

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Pants

Party Down // The Office

I just watched one season of Party Down in one day, which requires a certain je ne sais quoi (French for "staying in bed watching TV even though you are so hungry"), and I LOVE it. What I love the most is the Henry/Casey storyline. I like love stories in general, and I get annoyed with shows--even ones that really make me laugh, like Community--that are too self-aware to have a good love story. No one has to get married, but it can at least be interesting and last more than an episode, Dan Harmon, ahem.

But I also really like the Henry/Casey storyline because it's such a kind portrayal of a relationship where the girl wears the pants. Usually when girls wear the pants they're like, demanding presents, or pretending to be pregnant, or getting jealous of their boyfriend's dog ("he always tells his LABRADOODLE she's beautiful"), or in some other way demonstrating that they can't wear the pants competently/without stealing a litttttle bit of money. Casey wears the pants pretty sanely, though. She's direct about what she wants. It seems functional so far.

And it's such a nice counterpoint to Pam and Jim on The Office, two very nice and attractive people who jerked viewers around for years because NEITHER ONE OF THEM WORE THE PANTS. There were no pants. There were just madras shorts of passivity, and then every once in a while Pam set her feet on fire. It was so obvious that Pam and Jim liked each other more than "Karen" and "Roy" that even when I squinch up my forehead and think really hard I canNOT understand how it took them three seasons to get together. "It's not that I don't love you Jim, it's just that my fiancee with anger management problems who makes fun of my art is really... tall." Bitches, please. Stop playing pranks on Dwight like that is a viable sex substitute.

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I'm Captivated By You Baby Like A Fireworks Show That I Barfed At

"Sparks Fly," Taylor Swift

Some people find Taylor Swift nauseating because she is all blonde and princessy and says things like "I don't do drugs" and "Joe Jonas." This is a totally legitimate opinion, but I do not hold it. I listen to Taylor Swift ALL the time.

I don't even totally want to--her songs are just catchy. They are SO catchy that I went through a phase my junior year of college where I would uncontrollably doodle Taylor Swift lyrics on official documents, like statistics exams and tax forms, which made me appear needy to anyone who even glanced at my paperwork. And to the U.S. government.

Even though I have broken that habit now, I still listen to a lot of Taylor Swift. And I listen to her the way Olympic sprinters listen to exercise. I listen to one song on repeat for days and days until I hate all sounds. That's what I did with this song:

I don't even want to make fun of this video. Making fun of Charlie Sheen for being a drug addict and making fun of Taylor Swift for being a wedding and fireworks addict feels like the same thing. Enough. Let them sort out their personal problems, like saying "hit me with those green eyes baby" instead of "look at me," privately.

All I'm going to say is that when I listened to this song on repeat for a week, instead of just getting bored, I also started to feel sick. I gag a little bit when I hear the intro now. Even though she has more than 1000 plays on my iPod, it has started to seem objectively true that Taylor Swift is nauseating. What's unclear is if it is her fault or mine...

[fannonfic]

Blinded

Lindy West Reviews Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

I watched this video during a lull at work and laughed so hard that I cried my contact out of my eye and blinded myself and had to go home. This video is the reason I have started wearing my glasses that make me look "just like Buddy Holly," according to my mom who was trying to give me a compliment.

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I Almost Cried Watching 90210

The Wire, Season 5

I still have a lot of unresolved feelings about The Wire. I know because I was in a taco restaurant watching 90210 (against my will, at full volume), and Michael from The Wire showed up! In 90210! He was all non-gangster and being someone's boyfriend. And instead of being like, "Oh hey, I saw this actor on another TV show and now he is on this TV show!" I was like, "Oh hey, my eyes are full of unexplained tears!" 

Witnessing two murders a night for a month was not great for my mental health.

One of the most oddly traumatic aspects of The Wire, though, wasn't even the violence--it was the relatively thinky and deathless fifth season. PRETTY MEANINGLESS SPOILER: The fifth season is about McNulty going rogue (or like, continuing to be rogue) and making up a serial killer. He gets all these police funds to investigate, and he redirects them to the case he really wants to work on. This involves a lot of lying.

And I viscerally hate watching people lie. Lies in general stress me out. Ask me to do something I don't want to do and I will either tell you I'm dead (the only excuse I can ever think of) or tell you a plausible excuse and immediately undermine it, as in "I can't tonight, I have to go to the store. [Pause] It sucks that I can't go to the store for three days, I'm running out of food!"

So when I see fictional people telling fictional lies, I project my shitty lying skills onto them and I get upset because they're being unethical, sure, but mainly because I'm worried they will get caught. ESPECIALLY that McNulty will get caught. Lying requires very systematic thinking and since McNulty regularly peed in front of his coworkers, I was not convinced he could pull it off.

That lie-related suspense hit me way harder than actual, someone-could-get-shot-in-the-face suspense (not that they are mutually exclusive). The thing was that McNulty lied to his friends who trusted him, instead of to Stringer or Poot or someone in the Barksdale crew (because Stringer trusts literally no one and Poot only trusts inanimate corporate chains such as Foot Locker). McNulty's lies made the suspense not just about if/when McNulty would get caught and punished--it also became about if/when everyone else would be punished, because his friends will feel stupid for believing him, and that's a kind of punishment too.

At least when Omar comes to town and could get shot in the face, it's a zero sum game. Someone ends up with the drugs, and someone else ends up broker and/or faceless. I can handle that.

But I could not handle the fifth season. I spent the whole time I was watching it jumping at creaking noises in my house and feeling a sense of forboding about everything from walking down the street alone (could catch a stray!) to eating dinner (could eat someone else's dinner by accident!).

[fannonfic]

<32<3

"Heart To Heart," Milkman

My favorite part of my Sunday pre-nap soundtrack--it's like a cross between a Tupac song and a puppy. Awwwwww. Who's such a good boy? Who's got a spot for us all where we can play fetch with a ball at thugz mansion? Oh yesh you do. Oh yesh you DO. [Long stream of gibberish, followed by napping.]

[fannonfic]

I Don't Know What's Happening But It Makes Me Sad

"Just Kids," Evan Hughes

I just read this article that seems like it would be a book review, but is actually amazingly detailed gossip from the '80s and '90s. IT IS SO JUICY. Gossip Girl wishes it had egotistical smart people turning over tables and getting tattoos and writing about each other in thinly disguised fiction. Instead, it spends 40 minutes of every hour explaining why the prince is there.

"Just Kids" also made me really sad, though, which is weird because I do not read any of these authors. I know they are famous, and I saw the movie version of The Virgin Suicides at a time (NOW) when I called (CALL) Josh Hartnett "Josh Hot-nett." Even so, I was borderline traumatized by this bit about David Foster Wallace (who killed himself in 2008), Mary Karr (his ex-GF he turned over the table... for) and Infinite Jest (a long-ass DFW book that I have never read because it makes people have nervous breakdowns).

In April, the website The Awl published an article by Maria Bustillos about Wallace’s marginalia in self-help books held with his papers at the University of Texas’s Harry Ransom Center. Karr gave Wallace some of those books, and I told her that one of Wallace’s notes pertains to her—it uses her initials—and offered to read it to her. Karr has very good posture. At this moment it became even better.

Wallace remarks in the note that he seems better able to summon enthusiasm for something when it is secondary to something else in his life. He writes, “The key to ’92 is that MMK was most important; IJ was just a means to her end (as it were).”

“Who is IJ?” Karr said.

“Infinite Jest.”

“Oh!”

She did not seem flattered. I read the sentence again. “How is it a means—to capture me, is that it?” Karr said. “That’s crazy. That’s really insane.” 

When I read this a second time, I realized I didn't know what it was about. What does "capture me" mean?  What does "a means to her end (as it were)" mean? Who knows. It's unclear what "as it were" ever means. It's just a British-sounding phrase people say if they have to talk about penises at work. "I hear his... member, as it were, was injured in the printer malfunction."  If I had a nickel for every time someone said "member, as it were" after a printer malfunction, I would buy myself a nice soda.

But the first time I read it, it reminded me of a girl I used to work with. She was an awesome photographer, who won a ton of prizes and eventually went to art school. One day, we were talking about how she got into photography and she said, "I was trying to get a boy in my photography class to talk to me." 

I thought then, and think now, that this is an unrighteous reason to do something creative. I'm "into" writing, I guess, but I've never written something to impress a boy. Writing is the only thing I consistently do for no reason--that's how I know I like it. And I get that you can wander into something you love for initially bad reasons, or you can end up really liking someone you went home with because your A/C wasn't working. But my gut instinct is that a creative thing that you do to impress a crush/lover is somehow fake.

My other gut instinct is that if a relationship has a hole in it that can only be filled by a 1000 page book about tennis, it was probably fucked from the start.

[fannonfic]

Killing It

"Just Like That, But Funny," Todd Levin

I just found this article by Todd Levin, a guy who wrote for Late Night with Conan O'Brien. It's about how comedy sketches can get unfunny, and man, there are a lot of ways.

According to Levin, sketches can go wrong because they feature: bad actors, bad Korean actors (for some reason separated into their own category), jokes about burning infants, jokes about horse masturbation, audio of horses "whinnying in ecstasy," artificial lakes.

It's a pretty comprehensive list, but I still have stuff to add to it, because I have been getting feedback on a bunch of my bad jokes at work lately. Which is great! Usually, when I tell bad jokes, people are just like "Haha..." and then they trail off and look sadly at their hands. But now people are actually telling me, kindly but firmly, what is wrong. What is wrong is that:

I made tortoiseshell glasses sound like a beverage.

I wrote six jokes and then, looking over them after, realized they were all about billboards. 

I made a list of two similar things and one different thing, as in: "My favorite colors are red, green, and bear." Which is, as a supportive friend pointed out to me, "totally fine! It's just not a joke."

Sometimes I do okay, though. I wrote something about candy today that I liked! Maybe I will improve. Or maybe I will just make a lateral move and get obsessed with horse masturbation. I'll keep y'all posted.