“You've probably used up more brainpower analyzing this song than it actually took to write it.”
-my friend Chuck
Perhaps some of you are familiar with a band called Hot Chelle Rae, which consists largely of some guys who are related to more famous people. They have a song that’s pretty popular right now called “Tonight, Tonight.” It’s the one whose opening chords fill me with dread and nausea, and I usually only stay on the radio station long enough to say something rude to frontman Ryan Follesé (“If you’re wondering why your girlfriend cheated on you, I’m starting to get a real clear picture over here!”), and then I immediately change the station to one playing a song with more depth and subtlety, such as “You Shook Me All Night Long.” It’s an annoying song -- not annoying a good way, like a Maroon 5 song, but annoying in a demoralizing way, like a Ke$ha song. But like the self-absorbed, err, introspective person that I am, I began to analyze why I hate this song so much.
It’s not just the la-la-la, la-la-la sequences and the completely predictable chord progressions; it’s also the lyrics. At first Follesé sings that his week has been “torture” and “bitter,” because, you know, getting cheated on is kind of upsetting. But the rest of the song is basically a more dramatic boy version of Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night,” about partying hard and blacking out and whatnot. He admits to “faking it,” which is of course a healthy and acceptable way to deal with our emotions. Sure sure. (Future counselors do not joke about coping mechanisms.) In summary, this song is an all-around waste of noise.
Now here comes the rub. My brother is 15, and he loves this song. Loves it. I’m only 7 years older than he is, and here I am thinking, “The music these darn kids listen to is terrible! Just terrible!” In my defense, I was never cool or fun or anything, so it’s not like hating pop music with an intensity that most people reserve for genocide is new for me. But the whole thing got me thinking: I know that since graduating college in May, I’ve begun my slow descent into cultural irrelevance and obscurity, and someday I will undoubtedly do a bang-up job of embarrassing my future children in the carpool line. But have I slid so far already?
Let’s check the scoreboard.
Old/responsible person things I’ve done this week:
1. Watched a gratuitous amount of Law and Order
2. Spent an evening cleaning my room and ironing my clothes, and actually enjoyed it
3. Sent out Christmas cards
4. Sang along with Frank Sinatra albums
5. Took a nap so that I could stay awake for a TV show coming on at 10 pm
Young person things I’ve done this week:
1. Stayed up with friends until 5:30 am, just because we could
2. Heartily enjoyed the music video for “Sexy and I Know It”
3. Caused some completely avoidable damage to my car
Yikes, this isn’t looking too good. Maybe this dumb song doesn’t represent my Rubicon after all, but it’s coming. C’est la vie.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
The Raptor Kiss
Last week I watched an episode of the new TLC reality show The Virgin Diaries. Generally I have no shortage of opinions, and even fewer scruples about sharing them with the world. But after that show, I just… I had no reactions. I had no words.
Luckily I bounced back.
The premise of the show is that TLC interviews people who are virgins “later in life,” which you might think means at least middle age, but no. The youngest person on this episode was 29 or 30 (seven more years, and I’ll be eligible!) and the oldest was under 40. Most of the contributors had chosen to wait until marriage, but the one guy said he was “not a virgin entirely by choice.” So at least TLC is making the show diverse?...
Other participants included a couple (30 and 31) who had decided not to kiss until their wedding day. The man had, in fact, never kissed a woman on the lips. Homegirl had some experience, but to see their ravenous vampire-style kiss after the I-do’s, you wouldn’t think so. If your first kiss (hell, ANY kiss) is going to be on television, seriously, either keep it simple or go ahead and practice some. At least rent some Nicholas Sparks movies and research how it’s done. Not to be graphic, but “The Honey Badger” would be a great nickname for this woman.
There was also an apartment of three women around age 30, two of whom were bona fide virgins, while the third had had sex in the past, but had since decided to wait until marriage. Their segments were pretty boring. The only interesting part was when they were on dates and brought up their sexual statuses. On a first date! Why not mention your opinion on circumcising babies while you’re at it, since appropriateness is apparently off the table? Obviously the TLC execs couldn’t have them just talking about SportsCenter or something; they had to go right for the jugular. Needless to say, it was awkward. Miraculously, the three women ended up going on a big old group blind date with three guys who were ALSO virgins! So one presumes they’re making progress, or whatever.
And the dude who started out the episode as a virgin ended it as a virgin, despite a woman who threw herself into a virtual debauch with him in a bar, in which he was a half-hearted participant. They were sitting in this bar, with his friends around, and she licked his bald head. She LICKED his HEAD.
I like reality shows because they make me feel extremely normal.
Having had time to reflect, I’ve decided that there was really one aspect of the episode (aside from the disturbing PDA) that truly bothered me: it was the contrast between shows where people riff veritable catalogues of their sexual partners, and this show, with people who are (mostly) choosing not to have any sexual partners. The reason it bothers me that presumably the contributors on The Virgin Diaries are waiting because physical intimacy is something they consider so sacred and private that they want to share with one person only. So why are they talking about it on TV? The newly married couple reported on their wedding night! I bet their best friends would rather lick the shower drain than hear these details. (Also, the bride said it hurt a lot. ARE YOU LISTENING, RYAN MURPHY?)
I know I’m the one who watched the show for a full hour. But the bottom line is that I shouldn’t know how a stranger’s wedding night was. I shouldn’t know that the involuntary virgin masturbates a lot. I shouldn’t know how many partners the “reclaimed virgin” had before she decided to make this change. Sex is between the person, his partner and his beliefs. Call me quixotic, I don’t care. I still think some things should be kept between partners, and that is all. Thanks for doing your part to take the shine off the apple, TLC.
Luckily I bounced back.
The premise of the show is that TLC interviews people who are virgins “later in life,” which you might think means at least middle age, but no. The youngest person on this episode was 29 or 30 (seven more years, and I’ll be eligible!) and the oldest was under 40. Most of the contributors had chosen to wait until marriage, but the one guy said he was “not a virgin entirely by choice.” So at least TLC is making the show diverse?...
Other participants included a couple (30 and 31) who had decided not to kiss until their wedding day. The man had, in fact, never kissed a woman on the lips. Homegirl had some experience, but to see their ravenous vampire-style kiss after the I-do’s, you wouldn’t think so. If your first kiss (hell, ANY kiss) is going to be on television, seriously, either keep it simple or go ahead and practice some. At least rent some Nicholas Sparks movies and research how it’s done. Not to be graphic, but “The Honey Badger” would be a great nickname for this woman.
There was also an apartment of three women around age 30, two of whom were bona fide virgins, while the third had had sex in the past, but had since decided to wait until marriage. Their segments were pretty boring. The only interesting part was when they were on dates and brought up their sexual statuses. On a first date! Why not mention your opinion on circumcising babies while you’re at it, since appropriateness is apparently off the table? Obviously the TLC execs couldn’t have them just talking about SportsCenter or something; they had to go right for the jugular. Needless to say, it was awkward. Miraculously, the three women ended up going on a big old group blind date with three guys who were ALSO virgins! So one presumes they’re making progress, or whatever.
And the dude who started out the episode as a virgin ended it as a virgin, despite a woman who threw herself into a virtual debauch with him in a bar, in which he was a half-hearted participant. They were sitting in this bar, with his friends around, and she licked his bald head. She LICKED his HEAD.
I like reality shows because they make me feel extremely normal.
Having had time to reflect, I’ve decided that there was really one aspect of the episode (aside from the disturbing PDA) that truly bothered me: it was the contrast between shows where people riff veritable catalogues of their sexual partners, and this show, with people who are (mostly) choosing not to have any sexual partners. The reason it bothers me that presumably the contributors on The Virgin Diaries are waiting because physical intimacy is something they consider so sacred and private that they want to share with one person only. So why are they talking about it on TV? The newly married couple reported on their wedding night! I bet their best friends would rather lick the shower drain than hear these details. (Also, the bride said it hurt a lot. ARE YOU LISTENING, RYAN MURPHY?)
I know I’m the one who watched the show for a full hour. But the bottom line is that I shouldn’t know how a stranger’s wedding night was. I shouldn’t know that the involuntary virgin masturbates a lot. I shouldn’t know how many partners the “reclaimed virgin” had before she decided to make this change. Sex is between the person, his partner and his beliefs. Call me quixotic, I don’t care. I still think some things should be kept between partners, and that is all. Thanks for doing your part to take the shine off the apple, TLC.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Meditations on Undergrad III: A Taxonomy of Douches
Because I’m both nostalgic and bored. And in the words of Dave Barry, “I realize I am making some very broad generalizations here. Deal with it.”
The frat-daddy douche.
Do I even have to describe this one? I will, because I truly miss him-- Sperries on the bottom and Croakies on top, with a pastel Vineyard Vines ensemble in between, cheap Coozie-clad lite beer in hand, and if he’s wearing a bow tie and a GOP lapel sticker, that’s just gravy.
The finance major douche.
That guy who pisses on every other major, sneers at anyone else’s workload, and convinces himself that an undergrad career spent entirely in the ZSR is fine, and that working 80-hour weeks at J. P. Morgan someday is an acceptable dream. He either refuses to engage in plebeian conversation with you or devolves into a rabid story-topper every time you open your mouth.
The a cappella groupie douche.
The girl who plans her schedule around the performances of the premiere men’s a cappella group on campus, who posts about them on Facebook, who desperately befriends as many of the fellas as possible, and whose obsession slowly engenders the hatred of all the other boys she knows. She never dreams that the guys might not be as squeaky-clean as she envisions, and bless her heart, nobody tells her otherwise.
The comm major douche.
Now, comm majors tend to be a gentle breed who don’t take themselves too seriously, and generally I like them a lot. Here I am referring to the one guy who gets stressed over a three-page reflection paper on how “Charlie Brown’s Christmas” made him feel.
The sorority douche.
Any girl who uses the abbreviations “TSM” or “GDI,” or refers to an action as “a geed move.” You can spot her at football games in a sundress and, if she really knows what she’s doing, a floppy hat. Also, if you wake up early on 1 November, you can enjoy some truly wonderful walks of shame across the Quad.
The music major douche.
That girl who walks around campus like God’s gift to Wake Forest just because she can play three instruments and made the highest grade in music theory. This especially includes people who play their instruments in public, even when they’re not stomping around the football field in a ridiculous hat. They are attention whores, and I don’t want to hear anything more about diminished sevenths until they try to cut it at a real music school.
The radio kid douche.
He hates Vera Bradley, he hates rich people, he hates Greek organizations, he hates mainstream music, etc. He just want to sit on the floor in his pea coat and kvetch. He’s a rebel without a cause who wishes he’d just stayed in Asheville.
The English major douche.
She maintains a pointless blog just to amuse herself by saying rude things about her friends from college.
The frat-daddy douche.
Do I even have to describe this one? I will, because I truly miss him-- Sperries on the bottom and Croakies on top, with a pastel Vineyard Vines ensemble in between, cheap Coozie-clad lite beer in hand, and if he’s wearing a bow tie and a GOP lapel sticker, that’s just gravy.
The finance major douche.
That guy who pisses on every other major, sneers at anyone else’s workload, and convinces himself that an undergrad career spent entirely in the ZSR is fine, and that working 80-hour weeks at J. P. Morgan someday is an acceptable dream. He either refuses to engage in plebeian conversation with you or devolves into a rabid story-topper every time you open your mouth.
The a cappella groupie douche.
The girl who plans her schedule around the performances of the premiere men’s a cappella group on campus, who posts about them on Facebook, who desperately befriends as many of the fellas as possible, and whose obsession slowly engenders the hatred of all the other boys she knows. She never dreams that the guys might not be as squeaky-clean as she envisions, and bless her heart, nobody tells her otherwise.
The comm major douche.
Now, comm majors tend to be a gentle breed who don’t take themselves too seriously, and generally I like them a lot. Here I am referring to the one guy who gets stressed over a three-page reflection paper on how “Charlie Brown’s Christmas” made him feel.
The sorority douche.
Any girl who uses the abbreviations “TSM” or “GDI,” or refers to an action as “a geed move.” You can spot her at football games in a sundress and, if she really knows what she’s doing, a floppy hat. Also, if you wake up early on 1 November, you can enjoy some truly wonderful walks of shame across the Quad.
The music major douche.
That girl who walks around campus like God’s gift to Wake Forest just because she can play three instruments and made the highest grade in music theory. This especially includes people who play their instruments in public, even when they’re not stomping around the football field in a ridiculous hat. They are attention whores, and I don’t want to hear anything more about diminished sevenths until they try to cut it at a real music school.
The radio kid douche.
He hates Vera Bradley, he hates rich people, he hates Greek organizations, he hates mainstream music, etc. He just want to sit on the floor in his pea coat and kvetch. He’s a rebel without a cause who wishes he’d just stayed in Asheville.
The English major douche.
She maintains a pointless blog just to amuse herself by saying rude things about her friends from college.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
15 Reasons Being Single Is Better than You Think It Is
“O hymen! O hymenee! why do you tantalize me thus?
O why sting me for a swift moment only?
Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease?
Is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you would soon certainly kill me?”
Partly because I am suffering English major withdrawal and partly because it fits really well, I have chosen this poem from Walt Whitman as an epigraph to introduce today’s topic, which is why it’s awesome to be single. Obviously there are pros to dating, but those are covered at length, umm, everywhere else, ever. So Schell and I decided to make a list of the positives to being single. It’s not the end of the world, people. For example--
1. There’s less drama. You’re not constantly balancing friends and significant other and worrying about upsetting someone, which you inevitably will when you’re in a relationship.
2. Being single also means you don’t run any risk of alienating your friends with your disgusting obsession with what’s-his-name, which kind of makes people hate you.
3. On the flip side, when you’re single, you can judge other people who are in relationships. There’s little more fun than that.
4. Your chances of getting into a big fight with someone decrease exponentially when you’re single. (Of course, they go right back up when you join a sorority.) I’m not gonna lie; I don’t mind third-wheeling. I choose to focus on what I’m happy to be missing rather than what makes me jealous. I’m envious because they’re going home to a marathon macking session, whereas I am not. (Well, maybe. See #13.) However, after said macking session, they’re going to get into a fight about what his mom said to her last month when she was wearing those high heels and blah blah blah on into relationship eternity. Whereas I am whiling away the happy hours, angry at no one and content with the world.
5. Do you know how stressful it can be to plan Valentine’s Day festivities? Pass.
6. Being single equals more time with God. Paul stayed single his whole life because he could dedicate his everything to the Lord that way. Obviously, you don’t have to do that, but you can enjoy it and value it while it’s happening. If you’re not a person of faith, you can still devote your time to something that’s important to you, whether it’s learning, social activism, or writing the great American novel. You can use your time as you see fit.
7. You also get more time on your own. You don’t have to worry about looking cute at the end of a long day; you can walk into your room, take your pants off (yes, girls do that too) and watch whatever you want. Perhaps you would enjoy an SVU marathon spent ogling Detective Stabler. Or perhaps you would like to watch the Madonna episode of Glee for the 47th time. I don’t think I hear any objections! And best of all, I don’t hear anyone judging you.
8. You get to look forward to the excitement of meeting that special someone. Beginnings are always the best parts, before the relationship becomes a lot of work. Other people won’t have that and you still get to!
9. Being single means not giving someone the opportunity to lacerate your heart and pour lemon juice on it, and then piss all over your self-worth. Seriously, it saves a lot of time.
10. You can use this opportunity to learn new skills. Sure, you can get your girlfriend to cook for you or your boyfriend to change your oil. Or you could learn to do these things on your own and learn how to be a functioning adult.
11. This one is important. You get to be independent. When you’re in a relationship with someone, you have to (if you’re a somewhat decent person) think about the other person’s feelings and wants, unless you’re either a. looking for a reason to break up with him or b. do not want to spend your future with him. In both cases, why the hell are you still in the relationship? (Wait, I know this one. Insecurity). Want to go out with your friends tonight? Go for it. You don’t have to check with anyone first. Want to apply to grad school in Russia? What’s stopping you? Well, probably money (and the fact that it’s Russia), but at least you don’t have to worry about supporting yourself AND someone else, or about asking him to uproot his life. Even if you’re dating someone who loves you so much that he will follow you to the ends of the Earth and doesn’t care at all what you do, you will (again, if you have any decency) think about how your decisions affect him. And that’s a lot to have on your mind.
12. Ladies, we want to be really clear with this one. You can skip shaving your legs and no one has to know. And guys can observe Octobeard all year ‘round: you’ll look like a hobo but it’s ok!
13. You can flirt with impunity. And/or GYS.
14. When you’re single, you have much clearer, more objective vision than someone in a relationship who just knows homeboy is the one, even though he flunked out of college three times and dresses like a 12-year-old skater punk from the mid-’90s. Science shows that people who are in love are hooked on their own brain chemistry, the way some people are addicted to drugs. Seriously, look it up. Now, I’m not trying to denigrate love. I think love is wonderful and precious. Nor am I suggesting that single people don’t do stupid things. I’m just saying that people whose brains are marinating in crazy act like they have carte blanche to do infinitely more dumb things.
15. Finally, let’s think about what kind of person you are when you’re obsessed with getting a boyfriend or girlfriend. You’re lonely, you’re desperate, your self-esteem is in the toilet, and people can see that. Everyone except idealistic girls who believe in “fixing” others know damn well to avoid you like the plague. You’re in a self-defeating cycle: you can’t attract someone decent with the vibe you have going on, and being alone feeds your crappy self-image. Get out of your own way, and use being single as a chance to celebrate how great you are. Seriously, the worst thing two people can do is search for their worth and fulfillment in each other. You have to find contentment in your own identity first, or your relationship is dead in the water. So get on it.
On a somewhat unrelated note, now I’m contemplating the implications of Walt Whitman’s openness about his sexual preferences ("yes" and "everyone") and his self-proclaimed role as the Voice of America. He’s basically what would happen if David Bowie and Maya Angelou had a baby. Discuss.
If you have any questions, I’ll be in my room, taking up the whole bed, pantsless, watching Glee and thinking about how awesome I am.
UPDATE: Anne Marie points out that when you're single, there's no need to worry about where you bought your unmentionables, let alone whether they match. Make that sixteen reasons.
O why sting me for a swift moment only?
Why can you not continue? O why do you now cease?
Is it because if you continued beyond the swift moment you would soon certainly kill me?”
Partly because I am suffering English major withdrawal and partly because it fits really well, I have chosen this poem from Walt Whitman as an epigraph to introduce today’s topic, which is why it’s awesome to be single. Obviously there are pros to dating, but those are covered at length, umm, everywhere else, ever. So Schell and I decided to make a list of the positives to being single. It’s not the end of the world, people. For example--
1. There’s less drama. You’re not constantly balancing friends and significant other and worrying about upsetting someone, which you inevitably will when you’re in a relationship.
2. Being single also means you don’t run any risk of alienating your friends with your disgusting obsession with what’s-his-name, which kind of makes people hate you.
3. On the flip side, when you’re single, you can judge other people who are in relationships. There’s little more fun than that.
4. Your chances of getting into a big fight with someone decrease exponentially when you’re single. (Of course, they go right back up when you join a sorority.) I’m not gonna lie; I don’t mind third-wheeling. I choose to focus on what I’m happy to be missing rather than what makes me jealous. I’m envious because they’re going home to a marathon macking session, whereas I am not. (Well, maybe. See #13.) However, after said macking session, they’re going to get into a fight about what his mom said to her last month when she was wearing those high heels and blah blah blah on into relationship eternity. Whereas I am whiling away the happy hours, angry at no one and content with the world.
5. Do you know how stressful it can be to plan Valentine’s Day festivities? Pass.
6. Being single equals more time with God. Paul stayed single his whole life because he could dedicate his everything to the Lord that way. Obviously, you don’t have to do that, but you can enjoy it and value it while it’s happening. If you’re not a person of faith, you can still devote your time to something that’s important to you, whether it’s learning, social activism, or writing the great American novel. You can use your time as you see fit.
7. You also get more time on your own. You don’t have to worry about looking cute at the end of a long day; you can walk into your room, take your pants off (yes, girls do that too) and watch whatever you want. Perhaps you would enjoy an SVU marathon spent ogling Detective Stabler. Or perhaps you would like to watch the Madonna episode of Glee for the 47th time. I don’t think I hear any objections! And best of all, I don’t hear anyone judging you.
8. You get to look forward to the excitement of meeting that special someone. Beginnings are always the best parts, before the relationship becomes a lot of work. Other people won’t have that and you still get to!
9. Being single means not giving someone the opportunity to lacerate your heart and pour lemon juice on it, and then piss all over your self-worth. Seriously, it saves a lot of time.
10. You can use this opportunity to learn new skills. Sure, you can get your girlfriend to cook for you or your boyfriend to change your oil. Or you could learn to do these things on your own and learn how to be a functioning adult.
11. This one is important. You get to be independent. When you’re in a relationship with someone, you have to (if you’re a somewhat decent person) think about the other person’s feelings and wants, unless you’re either a. looking for a reason to break up with him or b. do not want to spend your future with him. In both cases, why the hell are you still in the relationship? (Wait, I know this one. Insecurity). Want to go out with your friends tonight? Go for it. You don’t have to check with anyone first. Want to apply to grad school in Russia? What’s stopping you? Well, probably money (and the fact that it’s Russia), but at least you don’t have to worry about supporting yourself AND someone else, or about asking him to uproot his life. Even if you’re dating someone who loves you so much that he will follow you to the ends of the Earth and doesn’t care at all what you do, you will (again, if you have any decency) think about how your decisions affect him. And that’s a lot to have on your mind.
12. Ladies, we want to be really clear with this one. You can skip shaving your legs and no one has to know. And guys can observe Octobeard all year ‘round: you’ll look like a hobo but it’s ok!
13. You can flirt with impunity. And/or GYS.
14. When you’re single, you have much clearer, more objective vision than someone in a relationship who just knows homeboy is the one, even though he flunked out of college three times and dresses like a 12-year-old skater punk from the mid-’90s. Science shows that people who are in love are hooked on their own brain chemistry, the way some people are addicted to drugs. Seriously, look it up. Now, I’m not trying to denigrate love. I think love is wonderful and precious. Nor am I suggesting that single people don’t do stupid things. I’m just saying that people whose brains are marinating in crazy act like they have carte blanche to do infinitely more dumb things.
15. Finally, let’s think about what kind of person you are when you’re obsessed with getting a boyfriend or girlfriend. You’re lonely, you’re desperate, your self-esteem is in the toilet, and people can see that. Everyone except idealistic girls who believe in “fixing” others know damn well to avoid you like the plague. You’re in a self-defeating cycle: you can’t attract someone decent with the vibe you have going on, and being alone feeds your crappy self-image. Get out of your own way, and use being single as a chance to celebrate how great you are. Seriously, the worst thing two people can do is search for their worth and fulfillment in each other. You have to find contentment in your own identity first, or your relationship is dead in the water. So get on it.
On a somewhat unrelated note, now I’m contemplating the implications of Walt Whitman’s openness about his sexual preferences ("yes" and "everyone") and his self-proclaimed role as the Voice of America. He’s basically what would happen if David Bowie and Maya Angelou had a baby. Discuss.
If you have any questions, I’ll be in my room, taking up the whole bed, pantsless, watching Glee and thinking about how awesome I am.
UPDATE: Anne Marie points out that when you're single, there's no need to worry about where you bought your unmentionables, let alone whether they match. Make that sixteen reasons.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
What I Learned from Watching Glee’s “The First Time”
Acceptable reasons for giving it up include:
1. Because the student director of the school musical says so (read: peer pressure).
2. Because you get one out of five yeas from the other girls (read: peer pressure, if you squint your eyes).
3. Because your boyfriend is sad that he’s not getting a football scholarship.
4. Because you feel the need to protect your relationship from the lecherous New Guy.
5. Because masturbating just doesn’t cut it anymore. Yeah, they went there.
—So in conclusion, mainly because peer pressure says your virginity is disgraceful contraband that has got to go.
Characteristics of that first time:
1. Nothing says foreplay like a promised Sara Lee poundcake. Thanks, Finn!
2. It’s smooth, never awkward.
3. Pain? What pain?
4. It’s totally personal and meaningful, in spite of your partner calling you the wrong name. Brittany was so lucky to share an experience with what’s-his-face.
5. It’s reflective of a relationship that will definitely last, even when your group of friends is more incestuous than the members of the Hapsburg dynasty.
Tips for the writers of Glee:
1. Do not make Artie, of all people, the authority on matters in the boudoir. Especially do not have him discuss such matters with school faculty members; it’s too disturbing. Maybe as the season goes on, you can pencil in some therapy sessions for Coach Bieste.
2. On a related note, try to have some consistency. At the beginning of the episode, Artie says that he felt like a man for the first time when he lost his virginity to Brittany; later on, he says he felt like a man for the first time when he directed West Side Story. At least have the decency to pretend you’re not drunk when you write these scripts.
3. A couple seasons ago, Quinn gave it up to Puck for an even stupider reason than peer pressure from Artie (“you got me drunk on wine coolers and I felt fat that day”). Back in the present, Quinn is currently winning the annual Glee crazy-off by trying to frame her baby’s adoptive mother as a child sacrificer (really) so that she can get the kid back. I dunno, I think Quinn’s contributions to the show tend to be at least a little interesting. You writers gave her one line in response to Rachel’s to-bone-or-not-to-bone dilemma: “I’m not just talking about getting pregnant. I’m talking about losing something you can never get back. It changes you. It makes everything more complicated.” Debbie Downer! Oh, we’re moving on to Tina? I guess Quinn’s hymen is old news.
4. Definitely keep the completely appropriate and realistic solutions coming. Not passionate enough play a sexual character? Make sure you deep-six that v-card by opening night! Maybe in another episode the New Directions can solve the conflicts in the Middle East by sending over some puppies and lollipops.
Oh, these artsy kids. Who knows what shenanigans they’ll get into next week?
1. Because the student director of the school musical says so (read: peer pressure).
2. Because you get one out of five yeas from the other girls (read: peer pressure, if you squint your eyes).
3. Because your boyfriend is sad that he’s not getting a football scholarship.
4. Because you feel the need to protect your relationship from the lecherous New Guy.
5. Because masturbating just doesn’t cut it anymore. Yeah, they went there.
—So in conclusion, mainly because peer pressure says your virginity is disgraceful contraband that has got to go.
Characteristics of that first time:
1. Nothing says foreplay like a promised Sara Lee poundcake. Thanks, Finn!
2. It’s smooth, never awkward.
3. Pain? What pain?
4. It’s totally personal and meaningful, in spite of your partner calling you the wrong name. Brittany was so lucky to share an experience with what’s-his-face.
5. It’s reflective of a relationship that will definitely last, even when your group of friends is more incestuous than the members of the Hapsburg dynasty.
Tips for the writers of Glee:
1. Do not make Artie, of all people, the authority on matters in the boudoir. Especially do not have him discuss such matters with school faculty members; it’s too disturbing. Maybe as the season goes on, you can pencil in some therapy sessions for Coach Bieste.
2. On a related note, try to have some consistency. At the beginning of the episode, Artie says that he felt like a man for the first time when he lost his virginity to Brittany; later on, he says he felt like a man for the first time when he directed West Side Story. At least have the decency to pretend you’re not drunk when you write these scripts.
3. A couple seasons ago, Quinn gave it up to Puck for an even stupider reason than peer pressure from Artie (“you got me drunk on wine coolers and I felt fat that day”). Back in the present, Quinn is currently winning the annual Glee crazy-off by trying to frame her baby’s adoptive mother as a child sacrificer (really) so that she can get the kid back. I dunno, I think Quinn’s contributions to the show tend to be at least a little interesting. You writers gave her one line in response to Rachel’s to-bone-or-not-to-bone dilemma: “I’m not just talking about getting pregnant. I’m talking about losing something you can never get back. It changes you. It makes everything more complicated.” Debbie Downer! Oh, we’re moving on to Tina? I guess Quinn’s hymen is old news.
4. Definitely keep the completely appropriate and realistic solutions coming. Not passionate enough play a sexual character? Make sure you deep-six that v-card by opening night! Maybe in another episode the New Directions can solve the conflicts in the Middle East by sending over some puppies and lollipops.
Oh, these artsy kids. Who knows what shenanigans they’ll get into next week?
Monday, November 7, 2011
Death of Auto-Tune (If Only)
Recently I was listening to the song “American Pie,” which those of you who follow world events will recognize as Don McLean’s 1971 response to the 1959 deaths of Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly and "the Big Bopper." (How great would it be if someone used “the Big Bopper” as his stage name now? I’m thinking of William Hung.) These guys were among the first to bring rock ‘n roll into the public eye; they were a huge deal for American music. To that end, the best comparison we have is probably Michael Jackson. He died more than two years ago, embroiled in ignominious accusations of child molestation and unbridled crazy, and America is still actively mourning. On the other hand, unlike Jackson, the three men who died in 1959 had only been on the music scene for a few short years. So maybe a more apt example would be the deaths of Ronnie Van Zant and co. in 1977, when Skynyrd had only been big since 1973. In any case, there are two variables that made the Day the Music Died a thing in American culture: Buddy Holly et al. changed the rules in a big way in a short time, and they were beloved by the American public.
As I’ve suggested before, American music took enough hits to make a full recovery doubtful when Brad Delp died and when Sammy Hagar replaced David Lee Roth in Van Halen, and it’s all been downhill from there. That being said, “American Pie” got me thinking. If a pop star kicked it today and spawned the kind of legacy these three men did, who would it be?
Let’s look at our terrible, horrible, no good, very bad options. (Adam Levine is not on this list for obvious reasons.) First, I’ll go ahead and cross off the possibilities I’m not brave enough to entertain, starting with Justin Bieber. Any 17-year-old whose next album could legitimately contain a cover of “Billie Jean” needs to go directly back to Canada. Don’t even get me started on his holiday album.
I realize that my hatred of Bruno Mars for being an overemotional sap is probably a bit unfair. It’s not his fault that my measure of masculinity is Charlton Heston in his chariot, masterfully bringing his horses around the Circus Maximus with unbridled strength and control. But my ridiculous standards don’t change the fact that if you listened to his lyrics without ever seeing him, you’d naturally assume that Mars was a little girl with pigtails riding a pink tricycle. In a war zone.
Britney Spears made pop music a safe and profitable place for people who can’t actually sing, but her numerous public breakdowns ensured that America views her more as a sad spectacle than a beloved public figure. She’s out.
Jay-Z does indeed refer to himself as “J-Hova,” or the god of rap, but he wouldn’t be as amused if he knew that the symbol he’s adopted for himself means “vagina” in sign language. Out.
As my friend Brad said, “According to Kanye West, the answer to this question is Kanye West.” No. Out.
I adore Beyoncé, she is one of America’s sweethearts, and she has given us some of the best damn breakup songs in the history of American music, but she hasn’t really created anything new. So unfortunately, she’s out. Similarly, Usher’s dulcet tones and rippling abdominals have kept him famous since his R&B days up to his current dance music, all of which, not gonna lie, I love. But has he done anything terribly original? Not really.
[Before we move on to the rest of the list, I have to confess something I didn’t want to face. Buddy Holly popularized the guitar, bringing a new instrument onto the popular music scene. What comparable innovation do we have now?
Auto-Tune (spoken in the same tone I would use for “the atomic bomb”). People who can’t carry a tune in a bucket sound great with Auto-Tune, because it corrects pitch. This software is the Photoshop of music. A tone-deaf person using it would be like me going to Paris and demanding a modeling career, even though I am 5’2 and shaped like a teacup. Though Auto-Tune is the biggest thing that’s happened in music recently, it’s not even comparable to the guitar, which has been instrumental (see what I did there?) in countless rich careers in nearly every genre, fingers bloodied by steel strings and unforgettable music. Contrast this to the vacuous artificiality Top 40 stations crank out every week, leaving their mouth-breathing fans with essentially empty hands. Not that I am biased.]
Enough of the soapbox. Let’s end this.
As Dan O’Brien so aptly points out, Lady Gaga’s career and stage persona are a combination of Madonna and Marilyn Manson. So although I think she’s quite talented, and she sure is doing something special with music videos and, um, clothing, her music isn’t earth-shattering. Similarly, Rihanna’s music has become much darker and progressively weirder, which has made her rather a polarizing figure. I love her, saw her in concert this past summer, and think she’s a beautiful and talented woman. But she’s neither universally beloved nor a musical innovator.
Let’s go slightly less mainstream. Josh Groban got his start singing opera on the Rosie O’Donnell show, and his records are a mix of amazing classical voice pieces and smarmy modern love songs that I usually skip. (Josh Groban, if you’re reading this, I never skip even your dumbest songs and would happily marry you tomorrow.) Two strikes bar him from winning the title “The Music”—one, his music doesn’t show up on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show, and two, if he writes one more STUPID song about dead historical figures falling in love, I will have to cut him.
Regina Spektor’s music is the weirdest on my list. She sings in Latin sometimes, she writes lyrics about literary and mythological figures, she purposely mispronounces words, etc. Now she could change the rules, if she were more popular with average kids. Sadly, beyond “Fidelity” and that time she sang during the credits of a Narnia movie, I’d say that most people have no idea who she is. (Everyone who watched that movie was still trying to figure out Caspian’s accent anyway.)
The conclusion: we don’t have a Buddy Holly right now, America. Music may be too diverse for the rules to change in such a big way ever again. I, for one, am relieved, and will get back to my Led Zeppelin and GNR albums, as God intended.
And anyone who tries to defend Bruno Mars is going down.
As I’ve suggested before, American music took enough hits to make a full recovery doubtful when Brad Delp died and when Sammy Hagar replaced David Lee Roth in Van Halen, and it’s all been downhill from there. That being said, “American Pie” got me thinking. If a pop star kicked it today and spawned the kind of legacy these three men did, who would it be?
Let’s look at our terrible, horrible, no good, very bad options. (Adam Levine is not on this list for obvious reasons.) First, I’ll go ahead and cross off the possibilities I’m not brave enough to entertain, starting with Justin Bieber. Any 17-year-old whose next album could legitimately contain a cover of “Billie Jean” needs to go directly back to Canada. Don’t even get me started on his holiday album.
I realize that my hatred of Bruno Mars for being an overemotional sap is probably a bit unfair. It’s not his fault that my measure of masculinity is Charlton Heston in his chariot, masterfully bringing his horses around the Circus Maximus with unbridled strength and control. But my ridiculous standards don’t change the fact that if you listened to his lyrics without ever seeing him, you’d naturally assume that Mars was a little girl with pigtails riding a pink tricycle. In a war zone.
Britney Spears made pop music a safe and profitable place for people who can’t actually sing, but her numerous public breakdowns ensured that America views her more as a sad spectacle than a beloved public figure. She’s out.
Jay-Z does indeed refer to himself as “J-Hova,” or the god of rap, but he wouldn’t be as amused if he knew that the symbol he’s adopted for himself means “vagina” in sign language. Out.
As my friend Brad said, “According to Kanye West, the answer to this question is Kanye West.” No. Out.
I adore Beyoncé, she is one of America’s sweethearts, and she has given us some of the best damn breakup songs in the history of American music, but she hasn’t really created anything new. So unfortunately, she’s out. Similarly, Usher’s dulcet tones and rippling abdominals have kept him famous since his R&B days up to his current dance music, all of which, not gonna lie, I love. But has he done anything terribly original? Not really.
[Before we move on to the rest of the list, I have to confess something I didn’t want to face. Buddy Holly popularized the guitar, bringing a new instrument onto the popular music scene. What comparable innovation do we have now?
Auto-Tune (spoken in the same tone I would use for “the atomic bomb”). People who can’t carry a tune in a bucket sound great with Auto-Tune, because it corrects pitch. This software is the Photoshop of music. A tone-deaf person using it would be like me going to Paris and demanding a modeling career, even though I am 5’2 and shaped like a teacup. Though Auto-Tune is the biggest thing that’s happened in music recently, it’s not even comparable to the guitar, which has been instrumental (see what I did there?) in countless rich careers in nearly every genre, fingers bloodied by steel strings and unforgettable music. Contrast this to the vacuous artificiality Top 40 stations crank out every week, leaving their mouth-breathing fans with essentially empty hands. Not that I am biased.]
Enough of the soapbox. Let’s end this.
As Dan O’Brien so aptly points out, Lady Gaga’s career and stage persona are a combination of Madonna and Marilyn Manson. So although I think she’s quite talented, and she sure is doing something special with music videos and, um, clothing, her music isn’t earth-shattering. Similarly, Rihanna’s music has become much darker and progressively weirder, which has made her rather a polarizing figure. I love her, saw her in concert this past summer, and think she’s a beautiful and talented woman. But she’s neither universally beloved nor a musical innovator.
Let’s go slightly less mainstream. Josh Groban got his start singing opera on the Rosie O’Donnell show, and his records are a mix of amazing classical voice pieces and smarmy modern love songs that I usually skip. (Josh Groban, if you’re reading this, I never skip even your dumbest songs and would happily marry you tomorrow.) Two strikes bar him from winning the title “The Music”—one, his music doesn’t show up on Ryan Seacrest’s radio show, and two, if he writes one more STUPID song about dead historical figures falling in love, I will have to cut him.
Regina Spektor’s music is the weirdest on my list. She sings in Latin sometimes, she writes lyrics about literary and mythological figures, she purposely mispronounces words, etc. Now she could change the rules, if she were more popular with average kids. Sadly, beyond “Fidelity” and that time she sang during the credits of a Narnia movie, I’d say that most people have no idea who she is. (Everyone who watched that movie was still trying to figure out Caspian’s accent anyway.)
The conclusion: we don’t have a Buddy Holly right now, America. Music may be too diverse for the rules to change in such a big way ever again. I, for one, am relieved, and will get back to my Led Zeppelin and GNR albums, as God intended.
And anyone who tries to defend Bruno Mars is going down.
Friday, September 23, 2011
An Open Letter to Adam Levine
Dear Adam,
First off, however ashamed I am of this (frequent) lapse in judgment, I like your band’s music. I think it’s because I love classic rock so much; your prepubescent, glass-shattering voice fits perfectly with the musical stylings of Brad Delp and Steve Perry. It’s unfortunate that you were born in 1979, too late to shine there. In any case, Maroon 5 is my guilty-pleasure band. Even when your lyrics have the emotional depth of sawdust, the melodies themselves are just too catchy to ignore. And for a really good breakup song, one needs to look no further than your albums. Really, I wonder if you divide your time evenly between gratuitous amounts of boning, weeping over your lost loves and engaging in drunken recording sessions. (To be fair, you probably also pencil in some time at the tattoo parlor now and then.) I mean, from the sound of things, you could open a store with the negligees these women have abandoned in their haste to flee your cold, dead eyes and the consummate potency of your lovemaking (see what I did there?).
Enough about your personal life. Adam, you’re a decently attractive man, right? SIDEBAR: like I even have to ask what you think; the world sees you shirtless more often than not, as though your life is a never-ending calendar shoot. My favorite line in "Moves Like Jagger" is "I put on a show/ Now I'm naked," or as some people hear it, "Now I make it." My money's on the first version, because come on, we all constantly picture you as naked, Adam. (That came out wrong.) I mean, has anything more patently obvious appeared in a lyric? It's like saying Oprah is loud, or Brittany Spears is trashy. The sky is blue and Adam Levine is naked. No big deal.
Digression over. In any case, I feel obligated to ask you not to get carried away. Ever seen a photo of David Lee Roth, circa 1985? All the girly antics and assless chaps in the world could not dilute that man’s sex appeal. He belongs on the cover of one of those redemption-themed romance novels women love so much. You are not David Lee Roth, Adam. You are a pale, skinny white guy with enough tattoos for about seventeen convicted felons. Rippling abdominals aside, you’re not as hot as you think you are. And your head is way too small.
However, your bandmates look like the leftovers at an audition for either Led Zeppelin or the Beatles, depending on the album; whereas you look like James Dean, or perhaps a slightly less-fruity version of John Travolta in Grease. I guess this combination of styles is ok, seeing as how nobody watches Maroon 5 play to see the sexy bassist, or something. It’s all about you and your “little kicks.” As cracked.com has pointed out, you wisely surround yourself with these less-attractive men, and as a result, you look like hot stuff. Beauty is relative. Well played, Adam.
But let’s talk about this new song of yours. “Moves like Jagger”? What the hell is that about? I’m having flashbacks to the 2006 Superbowl where Mick Jagger’s leather-clad pelvis was moving in a lot of ways that arthritis should really prevent at this point, and short of electro-shock therapy, I will not be able to get those images out of my head. My childhood ended that day. (Note that I have the class not to mention Jagger and David Bowie's music video for "Dancing in the Streets.") Why would you compare yourself to that? Because moving like Robert Palmer, which has been your M. O. to date, was no longer cutting it? I watched your music video, Adam, with footage of Jagger as a young man. Guess what. He was an uggo, then as now. Let’s not even picture what present-day, 68-year-old Mick Jagger looks like. In person, Dave Barry says, Mick Jagger looks like Yoda wearing a Mick Jagger wig. In any case, you, Adam, are hotter than Mick Jagger. Don’t get too excited, because so is Al Gore, but really. The music video for “Makes Me Wonder” makes me chuckle, but the music video for “Moves Like Jagger” gives me nightmares.
Adam, I’m not writing you off as I did Bruno Mars (“MARS, YOU’RE DEAD TO ME”). The fact that I discovered “Stereo” is not, technically, a Maroon 5 song is what saved you. But you seriously need to check these lyrical and dancing shenanigans. When all you offer us are a bunch of crummy lyrics AND weird dancing, you’re on equal footing with that sticky, glittery Ke$ha. Don’t be that guy, Adam. Don’t be the male Ke$ha. Because I’m pretty sure Nick Carter has already called dibs.
Your favorite secret fan-
Carie Mac
First off, however ashamed I am of this (frequent) lapse in judgment, I like your band’s music. I think it’s because I love classic rock so much; your prepubescent, glass-shattering voice fits perfectly with the musical stylings of Brad Delp and Steve Perry. It’s unfortunate that you were born in 1979, too late to shine there. In any case, Maroon 5 is my guilty-pleasure band. Even when your lyrics have the emotional depth of sawdust, the melodies themselves are just too catchy to ignore. And for a really good breakup song, one needs to look no further than your albums. Really, I wonder if you divide your time evenly between gratuitous amounts of boning, weeping over your lost loves and engaging in drunken recording sessions. (To be fair, you probably also pencil in some time at the tattoo parlor now and then.) I mean, from the sound of things, you could open a store with the negligees these women have abandoned in their haste to flee your cold, dead eyes and the consummate potency of your lovemaking (see what I did there?).
Enough about your personal life. Adam, you’re a decently attractive man, right? SIDEBAR: like I even have to ask what you think; the world sees you shirtless more often than not, as though your life is a never-ending calendar shoot. My favorite line in "Moves Like Jagger" is "I put on a show/ Now I'm naked," or as some people hear it, "Now I make it." My money's on the first version, because come on, we all constantly picture you as naked, Adam. (That came out wrong.) I mean, has anything more patently obvious appeared in a lyric? It's like saying Oprah is loud, or Brittany Spears is trashy. The sky is blue and Adam Levine is naked. No big deal.
Digression over. In any case, I feel obligated to ask you not to get carried away. Ever seen a photo of David Lee Roth, circa 1985? All the girly antics and assless chaps in the world could not dilute that man’s sex appeal. He belongs on the cover of one of those redemption-themed romance novels women love so much. You are not David Lee Roth, Adam. You are a pale, skinny white guy with enough tattoos for about seventeen convicted felons. Rippling abdominals aside, you’re not as hot as you think you are. And your head is way too small.
However, your bandmates look like the leftovers at an audition for either Led Zeppelin or the Beatles, depending on the album; whereas you look like James Dean, or perhaps a slightly less-fruity version of John Travolta in Grease. I guess this combination of styles is ok, seeing as how nobody watches Maroon 5 play to see the sexy bassist, or something. It’s all about you and your “little kicks.” As cracked.com has pointed out, you wisely surround yourself with these less-attractive men, and as a result, you look like hot stuff. Beauty is relative. Well played, Adam.
But let’s talk about this new song of yours. “Moves like Jagger”? What the hell is that about? I’m having flashbacks to the 2006 Superbowl where Mick Jagger’s leather-clad pelvis was moving in a lot of ways that arthritis should really prevent at this point, and short of electro-shock therapy, I will not be able to get those images out of my head. My childhood ended that day. (Note that I have the class not to mention Jagger and David Bowie's music video for "Dancing in the Streets.") Why would you compare yourself to that? Because moving like Robert Palmer, which has been your M. O. to date, was no longer cutting it? I watched your music video, Adam, with footage of Jagger as a young man. Guess what. He was an uggo, then as now. Let’s not even picture what present-day, 68-year-old Mick Jagger looks like. In person, Dave Barry says, Mick Jagger looks like Yoda wearing a Mick Jagger wig. In any case, you, Adam, are hotter than Mick Jagger. Don’t get too excited, because so is Al Gore, but really. The music video for “Makes Me Wonder” makes me chuckle, but the music video for “Moves Like Jagger” gives me nightmares.
Adam, I’m not writing you off as I did Bruno Mars (“MARS, YOU’RE DEAD TO ME”). The fact that I discovered “Stereo” is not, technically, a Maroon 5 song is what saved you. But you seriously need to check these lyrical and dancing shenanigans. When all you offer us are a bunch of crummy lyrics AND weird dancing, you’re on equal footing with that sticky, glittery Ke$ha. Don’t be that guy, Adam. Don’t be the male Ke$ha. Because I’m pretty sure Nick Carter has already called dibs.
Your favorite secret fan-
Carie Mac
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Church Search
Last night I went to a church that has a specific ministry for young single adults. It turns out that they were planning on a brief prayer walk around the church wherein we would each write down some concerns and swap papers and pray for each other. Harmless, right? My group consisted of two guys, one who obviously loved to hear himself talk, and another who had no idea what we were in for. These gentlemen are herein referred to as Dr. Phil and the Hapless Victim.
The Hapless Victim and I both shared our names and how long we’d been going to this church. Dr. Phil felt that the situation warranted more self-disclosure, and told us his name, occupation, how long he's been at this church, how he got connected, his hometown, his hobbies, what he did the past few weekends, his dietary needs, his social security number, etc. I'm thinking, Does anyone else remember asking for this guy's life story?
I got Dr. Phil's card of prayer requests (lucky, right?). He had the Hapless Victim’s card, and I kid you not, went over everything his Victim had written with a fine-toothed comb.
Dr. Phil: "So, I see here that you're thankful for your mother."
Hapless Victim: "Ah, yep."
Dr. Phil: "I assume you have a good relationship with her."
[Already at this point I'm turning away to smile because this can only get better.]
Hapless Victim: "Yeah, I do."
Dr. Phil: "Well, you know, my mother passed away eight years ago, and..."
[Or not.]
Dr. Phil: "... so I understand the bonds of that relationship, etc., etc."
Hapless Victim: "I just can't imagine losing my mom; I have so much respect for people who experience a loss like that and keep going."
Dr. Phil [displaying no emotion whatsoever]: "Well, my mother raised my sister and me to be independent. By the ago of sixteen or so, I had already moved to another city to start working..."
And so on. To my misfortune, the Hapless Victim had written on his card that he was looking to meet someone. Dr. Phil was all OVER that. " Hapless Victim, can I just say... that the search for a mate is one of the most demanding aspects in a man's life."
Ohhhkay. First thought: "mate"? Are you a biologist now? Try not to sound so creepy. Second thought: Dr. Phil has effectively cut me out of this conversation. It's a boys' club now. Apparently the "search for a mate" is just a cakewalk for women, and we couldn't possibly understand what men go through.
But Dr. Phil is in no way finished.
Hapless Victim: "How do you mean?"
Dr. Phil: "It's a search that necessitates so many of his rezzources." [NB: Yes, he did just pronounce "RE-sour-ces" as "re-ZOUR-ces."]
Hapless Victim: "...his resources?"
Dr. Phil: "Yes, emotional, financial, mental... It's quite exhausting. I myself have been engaged twice, but am now in a positive long-term relationship..."
We'll skip ahead to the coup de grace. Poor, poor Victim, whose only crime was following directions. He'd written that he needed prayer for his brother, who was going through a divorce. Dr. Phil proceeded to ask district-attorney-style questions about the situation. Basically it sounded to me like the Victim's brother and sister-in-law had met at their workplace, and now that the husband has been fired, he and his wife have lost the main thing they had in common and the relationship is deteriorating from there. Dr. Phil had a slightly different take on it:
Dr. Phil: "Well Victim, that's just how women are. If a wife loses her job, her husband hastens to take on extra hours and support her. If the husband loses his job, though, she immediately thinks, 'I don't want to spend my time supporting this man. I'm going to go out and find another man to support me.' It's a bit of a double standard."
Well, at least now we know why he can't manage to hold down an engagement. My new question is, who would think for a second of marrying this guy? Just as I've decided to write Dr. Phil off, he turns to me and says brightly, "So, do you have my card?" I mumble something in the affirmative and glance at the card, noticing that he's asked for prayer for someone named, let’s say Katie, who’s starting her own business.
Me: "Is Katie one of your friends?"
Dr. Phil: "My girlfriend, actually."
Me: "…What kind of business is she starting?"
Dr. Phil: "A dog-sitting business."
Me: "Will it be full-time?"
Dr. Phil: "Oh no, she's in school."
Me: "What degree is she getting?" [See, I was trying to be nice.]
Dr. Phil: "Mumble mumble bachelor of arts mumble."
Ohhhh. That's how he got a girlfriend. Creeper.
I feel like I need to say that this church was very lovely and Dr. Phil was the only person I met who I didn't like. But wow.
The Hapless Victim and I both shared our names and how long we’d been going to this church. Dr. Phil felt that the situation warranted more self-disclosure, and told us his name, occupation, how long he's been at this church, how he got connected, his hometown, his hobbies, what he did the past few weekends, his dietary needs, his social security number, etc. I'm thinking, Does anyone else remember asking for this guy's life story?
I got Dr. Phil's card of prayer requests (lucky, right?). He had the Hapless Victim’s card, and I kid you not, went over everything his Victim had written with a fine-toothed comb.
Dr. Phil: "So, I see here that you're thankful for your mother."
Hapless Victim: "Ah, yep."
Dr. Phil: "I assume you have a good relationship with her."
[Already at this point I'm turning away to smile because this can only get better.]
Hapless Victim: "Yeah, I do."
Dr. Phil: "Well, you know, my mother passed away eight years ago, and..."
[Or not.]
Dr. Phil: "... so I understand the bonds of that relationship, etc., etc."
Hapless Victim: "I just can't imagine losing my mom; I have so much respect for people who experience a loss like that and keep going."
Dr. Phil [displaying no emotion whatsoever]: "Well, my mother raised my sister and me to be independent. By the ago of sixteen or so, I had already moved to another city to start working..."
And so on. To my misfortune, the Hapless Victim had written on his card that he was looking to meet someone. Dr. Phil was all OVER that. " Hapless Victim, can I just say... that the search for a mate is one of the most demanding aspects in a man's life."
Ohhhkay. First thought: "mate"? Are you a biologist now? Try not to sound so creepy. Second thought: Dr. Phil has effectively cut me out of this conversation. It's a boys' club now. Apparently the "search for a mate" is just a cakewalk for women, and we couldn't possibly understand what men go through.
But Dr. Phil is in no way finished.
Hapless Victim: "How do you mean?"
Dr. Phil: "It's a search that necessitates so many of his rezzources." [NB: Yes, he did just pronounce "RE-sour-ces" as "re-ZOUR-ces."]
Hapless Victim: "...his resources?"
Dr. Phil: "Yes, emotional, financial, mental... It's quite exhausting. I myself have been engaged twice, but am now in a positive long-term relationship..."
We'll skip ahead to the coup de grace. Poor, poor Victim, whose only crime was following directions. He'd written that he needed prayer for his brother, who was going through a divorce. Dr. Phil proceeded to ask district-attorney-style questions about the situation. Basically it sounded to me like the Victim's brother and sister-in-law had met at their workplace, and now that the husband has been fired, he and his wife have lost the main thing they had in common and the relationship is deteriorating from there. Dr. Phil had a slightly different take on it:
Dr. Phil: "Well Victim, that's just how women are. If a wife loses her job, her husband hastens to take on extra hours and support her. If the husband loses his job, though, she immediately thinks, 'I don't want to spend my time supporting this man. I'm going to go out and find another man to support me.' It's a bit of a double standard."
Well, at least now we know why he can't manage to hold down an engagement. My new question is, who would think for a second of marrying this guy? Just as I've decided to write Dr. Phil off, he turns to me and says brightly, "So, do you have my card?" I mumble something in the affirmative and glance at the card, noticing that he's asked for prayer for someone named, let’s say Katie, who’s starting her own business.
Me: "Is Katie one of your friends?"
Dr. Phil: "My girlfriend, actually."
Me: "…What kind of business is she starting?"
Dr. Phil: "A dog-sitting business."
Me: "Will it be full-time?"
Dr. Phil: "Oh no, she's in school."
Me: "What degree is she getting?" [See, I was trying to be nice.]
Dr. Phil: "Mumble mumble bachelor of arts mumble."
Ohhhh. That's how he got a girlfriend. Creeper.
I feel like I need to say that this church was very lovely and Dr. Phil was the only person I met who I didn't like. But wow.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Things We Hate: Office Edition
For about six weeks this summer I worked in a Human Resources department as a receptionist-type person, and for the most part I really enjoyed it. My coworkers were thoughtful, accommodating people, and the pay was uh-mazing for temporary work. But all that nice stuff is boring, so here I’m going to focus on the downside of working in HR: the company employees and applicants. Because for every intelligent, polite and well-adjusted person who comes in, we get five ill-mannered, paranoid, or crazy idiots. Several of my friends who work in academic and financial offices also contributed to this list of things we hate.
1. Willfully illiterate people, or, more probably, people who refuse to follow directions. Examples:
- My office has a couple of signs up in the waiting room requesting that people put their phones on vibrate and take/make calls outside the room. You’d think we were shooting a Verizon commercial in here, the way their phones are going off, usually with obnoxious rap tunes that make my ears bleed. There are also people who apparently think this is 1902 or so, and they must shout into their phones to be heard, usually about things I do not wish to know. My favorite was a young guy yelling into his cell that he would take care of his son but he refused to support his “babymomma.”
- There are also signs that say “Please do not leave your children unattended.” My second day of work, a woman who came in to fill out a job application let her kids run around the office like cracked-out, shrieking chihuahuas, which culminated in the little girl peeing all over one of our chairs. My supervisor is a Ph.D. candidate, and that day she got to deal with the Pee Chair. Stay in school, kids!
- People put mind-boggling things on the sign-in sheet. The most common offense is people using the space that says “Appts/mtgs: provide representative’s name” to write “New hire forms” or “insurance questions” or “Regis Philbin.” Freaking read the instructions, y'all.
2. People who come in to apply for jobs, but lack basic abilities and then expect me to spell or type for them. Call me old-fashioned, but I think they should have picked these skills up in school when they were being taught. I also do not care for people who know how to do stuff, but they want me to do it for them because they suffer from an overblown sense of entitlement. The best example of this was a woman who looked like a scary dinosaur and wanted me to fill out her nursing application. I considered telling her that no one would hire a nurse who was too lazy to type on a computer. Also her face would give children nightmares.
3. People who turn in shoddy paperwork. I mean paperwork that looks like you put it through the dryer to wrinkle it up, then wore it on your chest during a World War, then dropped it in your toilet the day after you had asparagus for dinner. Maybe on your way to our office you ran it under the wheels of your car a few times, I don’t know. The salient thing is that now I’m holding it and it smells like a brothel that’s situated in a New York underpass. I also hate it when people mail in paperwork in a tiny envelope that forces them to fold it 64 times and bend up the corners, invoking my wrathful judgment. Didn’t anyone else’s third-grade teacher explain proper mail etiquette?
4. People who think the rules don’t apply to them. Sometimes they come in and demand to see a representative who is busy that day, and get upset when I ask them to make an appointment. Don’t you just wish people would always drop whatever they’re doing to help you?
“Excuse me, doctor, I need some attention right now. I’m not sure which box to check on this insurance form.”
“Sure! I was in the middle of a heart transplant, but what can I do you for?” [Heartless patient flatlines]
See? Imagine how great that would be!
5. People who screw up and then act like I’m the dumb one. For example, I’m trying to track your department’s effectiveness, and since you gave me “greater understanding of world knowledge” as the sole criterion, I’m going to have to give your department a score of negative seventeen. No, we are not holding your students to too high a standard; you just don’t bother to teach them any basic grammar and as a result your department is full of uneducated, entitled tools.
6. That guy who comes to the office at 7:55 am and yanks and bangs on the door, as if the automatic lock will relent before 8 just because he’s a jerk. On a related note, there are other people (or maybe the same people) who look at the sign on the door that says “pull without turning handle” and apparently think to themselves, “Ok! I better yank the handle down and push!” Then they angrily gesture for me when it doesn’t open. How do you manage to put your pants on in the morning?
7. People who go around like bulls in a china shop. Seriously, didn’t we all learn basic etiquette in kindergarten? It’s not the most considerate to slam doors, talk unnecessarily loudly, shout across the hallway or stomp down the corridor. Some of us are actually trying to work and may be on the phone with important people, like say, the dean of the college. Or even if it’s just a secretary, try to have some manners. Don’t make the office louder than it has to be.
8. People who forget things that they should know, and then ask me to find them. Examples include their email addresses, their badge codes, their passwords, and my favorite, the answer to their security questions. “What was my first school?” “Perhaps the Semi-Drunken Academy for Inarticulate Mouth-Breathers?” And then they get mad at me when they have to create a whole new account because they forgot all that information. Frankly I’m surprised no one asked me to dig up his Social Security number.
9. People who think that when I say “Let me find that out for you” and pick up the phone, I actually mean “Keep rambling on in an unhelpful fashion; maybe I’ll suddenly understand your question.”
10. People who violate cubicle etiquette by eating tuna, playing music, talking on speakerphone, crunching through fortune cookies, etc. Don’t sing at your cubicle, especially if you’re tone-deaf. Don’t be so hungry that your stomach growls audibly. And I guess this is more of a personal injunction: don’t sweat all over your keyboard right before your boss comes to show you something (guess who gave me this particular tip?). And while we’re on cubicle etiquette, let’s talk about the bathroom too. If for some reason you aren’t smart enough to aim all your business into the toilet, clean up after yourself. Everyone hates you-- as Dave Barry says, “not as much as I hate, say, Hitler, but more often.”
1. Willfully illiterate people, or, more probably, people who refuse to follow directions. Examples:
- My office has a couple of signs up in the waiting room requesting that people put their phones on vibrate and take/make calls outside the room. You’d think we were shooting a Verizon commercial in here, the way their phones are going off, usually with obnoxious rap tunes that make my ears bleed. There are also people who apparently think this is 1902 or so, and they must shout into their phones to be heard, usually about things I do not wish to know. My favorite was a young guy yelling into his cell that he would take care of his son but he refused to support his “babymomma.”
- There are also signs that say “Please do not leave your children unattended.” My second day of work, a woman who came in to fill out a job application let her kids run around the office like cracked-out, shrieking chihuahuas, which culminated in the little girl peeing all over one of our chairs. My supervisor is a Ph.D. candidate, and that day she got to deal with the Pee Chair. Stay in school, kids!
- People put mind-boggling things on the sign-in sheet. The most common offense is people using the space that says “Appts/mtgs: provide representative’s name” to write “New hire forms” or “insurance questions” or “Regis Philbin.” Freaking read the instructions, y'all.
2. People who come in to apply for jobs, but lack basic abilities and then expect me to spell or type for them. Call me old-fashioned, but I think they should have picked these skills up in school when they were being taught. I also do not care for people who know how to do stuff, but they want me to do it for them because they suffer from an overblown sense of entitlement. The best example of this was a woman who looked like a scary dinosaur and wanted me to fill out her nursing application. I considered telling her that no one would hire a nurse who was too lazy to type on a computer. Also her face would give children nightmares.
3. People who turn in shoddy paperwork. I mean paperwork that looks like you put it through the dryer to wrinkle it up, then wore it on your chest during a World War, then dropped it in your toilet the day after you had asparagus for dinner. Maybe on your way to our office you ran it under the wheels of your car a few times, I don’t know. The salient thing is that now I’m holding it and it smells like a brothel that’s situated in a New York underpass. I also hate it when people mail in paperwork in a tiny envelope that forces them to fold it 64 times and bend up the corners, invoking my wrathful judgment. Didn’t anyone else’s third-grade teacher explain proper mail etiquette?
4. People who think the rules don’t apply to them. Sometimes they come in and demand to see a representative who is busy that day, and get upset when I ask them to make an appointment. Don’t you just wish people would always drop whatever they’re doing to help you?
“Excuse me, doctor, I need some attention right now. I’m not sure which box to check on this insurance form.”
“Sure! I was in the middle of a heart transplant, but what can I do you for?” [Heartless patient flatlines]
See? Imagine how great that would be!
5. People who screw up and then act like I’m the dumb one. For example, I’m trying to track your department’s effectiveness, and since you gave me “greater understanding of world knowledge” as the sole criterion, I’m going to have to give your department a score of negative seventeen. No, we are not holding your students to too high a standard; you just don’t bother to teach them any basic grammar and as a result your department is full of uneducated, entitled tools.
6. That guy who comes to the office at 7:55 am and yanks and bangs on the door, as if the automatic lock will relent before 8 just because he’s a jerk. On a related note, there are other people (or maybe the same people) who look at the sign on the door that says “pull without turning handle” and apparently think to themselves, “Ok! I better yank the handle down and push!” Then they angrily gesture for me when it doesn’t open. How do you manage to put your pants on in the morning?
7. People who go around like bulls in a china shop. Seriously, didn’t we all learn basic etiquette in kindergarten? It’s not the most considerate to slam doors, talk unnecessarily loudly, shout across the hallway or stomp down the corridor. Some of us are actually trying to work and may be on the phone with important people, like say, the dean of the college. Or even if it’s just a secretary, try to have some manners. Don’t make the office louder than it has to be.
8. People who forget things that they should know, and then ask me to find them. Examples include their email addresses, their badge codes, their passwords, and my favorite, the answer to their security questions. “What was my first school?” “Perhaps the Semi-Drunken Academy for Inarticulate Mouth-Breathers?” And then they get mad at me when they have to create a whole new account because they forgot all that information. Frankly I’m surprised no one asked me to dig up his Social Security number.
9. People who think that when I say “Let me find that out for you” and pick up the phone, I actually mean “Keep rambling on in an unhelpful fashion; maybe I’ll suddenly understand your question.”
10. People who violate cubicle etiquette by eating tuna, playing music, talking on speakerphone, crunching through fortune cookies, etc. Don’t sing at your cubicle, especially if you’re tone-deaf. Don’t be so hungry that your stomach growls audibly. And I guess this is more of a personal injunction: don’t sweat all over your keyboard right before your boss comes to show you something (guess who gave me this particular tip?). And while we’re on cubicle etiquette, let’s talk about the bathroom too. If for some reason you aren’t smart enough to aim all your business into the toilet, clean up after yourself. Everyone hates you-- as Dave Barry says, “not as much as I hate, say, Hitler, but more often.”
Friday, July 22, 2011
"What the People Need is a Way to Make 'Em Smile"
If the line “It ain’t so hard to do if you know how” sprang immediately to mind upon reading the title, you’re going to enjoy this post. (If it didn’t, you probably also don’t know why it’s funny in a juvenile way to name your band “The Doobie Brothers.”) Unless you’re just dumber than a bag of hammers, you have to admit that though the content hasn’t changed much, popular music has taken somewhat of a hit in quality over the past generation. Turning on the radio in 1976 was likely to yield “Carry On Wayward Son” five times an hour, whereas now you find yourself with Ke$ha drunkenly intoning “We R Who We R” into Auto-Tune (damn you, Andy Hildebrand). In fact, I have it on good authority that Dire Straits penned “Money for Nothing” (1985) as a prophecy about Ke$ha’s ability to turn raw suckage into incredible amounts of cash. Anyway, though popular music has some similar themes, then as now, the songs themselves have gone from the type of stuff I’d have played at my funeral if I were President of the World (“We Are the Champions,” maybe) to the crap I’d play via loudspeaker in the seventh circle of Hell to torment Carrot Top if I were Dante. Once again looking for new ways to amuse ourselves at work, Schell and I decided to make a list comparing different songs on the same subject to see which one comes out on top. We’re stretching this definition of classic rock to include the ‘80s as well, mainly so we can use Van Halen songs. So without further ado,
10 Reasons We’d Rather Listen to Elevator Music Than Contemporary Pop
10. Heart’s “Crazy on You” (1976) + John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Hurt So Good” (1982) + a little insanity and some questionable weaponry = Rihanna’s “S & M” (2010).
Heart’s classic offers metaphors comparing love and nature, which is just the kind of hippie-dippie stuff we’d expect from a band who still performs at Lilith Fair. But the cries of “Let me go CRAAAAZY on you! CRAAAAZY on you!” are just a little alarming, in no small part because we have no idea what that means, at all, not even a little. John Cougar Mellencamp is only slightly more specific in “Hurt So Good.” He asks his young but experienced lady friend to “sink your teeth right through my bones,” and later says “I ain’t talking no high heels.” That clears my question up, I guess, because I tend to picture John Mellencamp spending his private time in stilettos. Of course Rihanna takes all this to a whole new level with “S & M”: “Sticks and stones may break my bones/ but chains and whips excite me.” In addition to confusing the hell out of Chris Brown, Rihanna is dispensing information about her sexual proclivities that no one needs to know. At the same time, it makes you wonder what the Wilson sisters really meant by “crazy on you.”
9. “Come Sail Away” (1977) by Styx and Katy Perry’s “E.T.” (2010).
The common denominator in these mega-hits is... aliens. I’m pretty sure we can chalk Dennis de Young’s brief “Oops, those aren’t angels, they’re aliens” moment to a mellow Saturday afternoon acid trip. However, I don’t know what Katy Perry was thinking. She’s clearly fascinated by the aliens, so I’m going to credit her lyrics to some kind of obsessive reverse xenophobia. But there’s no reason for Kanye to jump in and rap about “alien sex,” promising to “disrobe you” and “probe you.” “Probe” her? Are you taking Katy Perry to the doctor’s office? And why do you have to make space travel so dirty and explicit, Kanye? Why can’t you just casually mention starships headed for the sky? WHY??
8. Van Halen's “Everybody Wants Some!!” (1980) and a lot of sexually explicit rap songs whose titles we’re too modest to post. I mean things that would make Enimem blush.
Though Van Halen doesn’t get as disturbing as some of our finest working rap artists (Google “nastiest rap songs lyrics” if you don’t believe me; just keep a sharp stick handy for poking your eyes out), David Lee Roth does provide us with some specific images. He tries to get busy on the subway, in the conductor’s eyeline, no less; and then maybe on an airplane(?); and then he starts to narrate a sex scene, just like in “Panama,” but stops before things get too suggestive. So clearly David Lee Roth is at least somewhat classier than your modern rappers. Wait, he’s still talking... At the end he says, “Look, I’ll pay you for it.” OK, maybe this is a bad example.
7. Queen’s “Fat-Bottomed Girls” (1978) and Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “I Like Big Butts” (1992).
Much like Freddie Mercury’s luxuriant mustache, this one speaks for itself.
6. Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” (1986) ‒ the raw masculine anger + a heavy dose of Foreigner’s Lou Gramm huddled in a corner crying about a girl who’s as “Cold As Ice” (1977) = Bruno Mars’ “Grenade” (2010).
All three songs are about a bad breakup caused by a man-eater with no morals, and we’ve arranged them in order of decreasing manliness. Here’s the girliest bit from the boys of Foreigner: “You’re digging for gold/ You’re throwing away/ A fortune in feelings/ And someday you’ll pay.” Clearly these guys need David Lee Roth and co. to smack some sense into them about how to interact with women. And I’ve already covered my disdain for “Grenade” at length in another post, so let’s just say that staying in a relationship where the girl is willing to watch with supreme disinterest as you get flattened like a baby ladybug under a runaway train is the epitome of wretchedness. Congratulations, Bruno Mars, everyone thinks you’re a pathetic tool.
5. John Mellencamp’s “I Need a Lover” (1979) and “Grow a Pear” [sic] (2011) by Ke$ha.
They both sing (ok, for Ke$ha, “sing” is generous) about wanting relationships that are only physical. People should keep their pesky emotions inside where they belong, is what these guys think. Sample lyric from “Grow a Pear”: “I only wanted one thing from you and you got confused.” And the whole point of Mellencamp’s song is that he wants “some girl who’ll thrill me/ And then go away,” and “who knows the meaning of a ‘Hey, hit the highway.’ “ I’m pretty sure if John Mellencamp were the type of pansy to watch chick flicks, he’d agree with what Harry says to Sally in their cinematic classic: “...You have sex and the minute you're finished you know what goes through your mind? How long do I have to lie here and hold her before I can get up and go home? Is thirty seconds enough?”
4. Journey’s “Faithfully” (1983) and “Here Without You” (2003) by Three Doors Down.
Both songs describe the difficulty of maintaining a marriage when one is off touring with the fellas, but whereas Steve Perry made an awesome anthem out of his pain, proudly reaffirming his commitment to his wife (you younger readers may remember this song from Glee’s first-season finale), Brad Arnold pens this whiny ditty about how he apparently sits around his trailer crying over his wife. Psst, Brad! If you have to take man-up lessons from Steve Perry, you might want to rethink your life. Or just quit the band and go back to your wife. That way everybody wins.
3. Van Halen’s “Panama” (1984) and “Shut Up and Drive” (2007) by Rihanna.
Singers have been comparing cars with women and sex since at least the Beach Boys, and both of these songs illustrate just how well that metaphor works. David Lee Roth combines both elements neatly by revealing, in another creepy voice-over, that he’s actually singing about car sex: “I reach down, between my legs... And ease the seat back.” (You thought he was going somewhere totally different with that first part, didn’t you?) And Rihanna’s songwriters probably get paid by the double entendre, if this song is any indication: “I’ll get you where you want to go if you know what I mean/ Got a ride that’s smoother than a limousine/ Can you handle the curves, can you run all the lights?/ If you can, baby boy, then we can go all night,” etc. Not really sure what she means by “run all the lights.” Break all the rules, maybe? Perhaps “Shut Up and Drive” is the precursor to “Rude Boy,” which eventually led America to contemplate, with horrified fascination, “S & M.” Or those lyrics just fit with the rhyme scheme, and the writers said, “Oh hell, everyone at a Rihanna concert is going to be too distracted by the grinding drag queens in the next row to listen to the words; let’s just call it good. Pass the cocaine.” (True story: that is what a Rihanna concert is like.) Or maybe the writers knew she had a pressing date with her whips and chains. In either case, the line doesn’t detract from the song, or from the hot, hot insanity we’ve all come to expect from RiRi.
2. “Hello, I Love You” (1968) by the Doors with “Give Me Everything” (2011) by Pitbull.
Here we have another example of pop music espousing this undoubtedly alcohol-induced view of “the club”-- I’m sorry, “The Club”-- as some kind of magical paradise wherein everyone finds true love, usually in the form of crotch-grinding a stranger in a place that smells like a cross between a frat party and a stadium rest room. That’ll be a cute story for your wedding toast. Pitbull is kind of undiscriminating as well as presumptuous and demanding: “Grab somebody sexy, tell ‘em ‘Hey/ Give me everything tonight.’ ” Of course the obligatory rap portion of this song is just as stellar as you’d expect, culminating in “I got ‘a locked up like Lindsay Lohan.” Nothing could go wrong there! Take this man home to meet your parents! At least the Doors could count on Van Halen to come up with “Jamie’s Cryin’ ” (1978) to illustrate the negative consequences of one-nighters, so there at least we have a balanced picture. Hell, all Pitbull’s got to back him up is Katy Perry singing “Teenage Dream” (2010): “Let’s go all the way tonight/ No regrets, just love.” Call me a wet blanket, but losing one’s virginity in a fort made of sheets in a motel room is a surefire way to pick up some regrets in the form of a venereal disease.
1. Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” (1972) and Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable” (2006).
These are both serious BURN breakup songs. None of this pansy “just let me hold you one last time” crap we get from Paolo Nutini. No, these ladies are out for blood. Carly Simon takes the more subtle approach, creating an incredibly famous song that just might be about you, but every time the thought crosses your mind, you’re simultaneously insulted. Not to mention you’ve become the butt of one of the most famous jokes in American pop culture. Dick Ebersol, the president of NBC, paid $50,000 for the privilege of knowing the song’s subject. I hate to judge the way other people spend their money (haa, just kidding), but $50,000 so you can rest easy at night knowing you won that bet with yourself because it was Warren Beatty after all?! Or whoever. I’m not psychic. Anyway, Miss Knowles uses a more blatant tack and straight-up tells her ex, “I could have another you in a minute,” presumably after she drop-kicks his plasma screen TV down the stairs in the direction of his waiting cab, because she took the keys to his car away. To quote Scrubs, this is the type of woman who uses your dignity as a a dish towel to wipe up any shreds of manhood that might be stuck inside the sink. Kind of the way Dante immortalized his enemies by sticking them in lakes of poo in the Inferno, Carly Simon and Beyoncé make sure that the guys who hurt them are infamous for it, even if we don’t know their names.
In conclusion, musicians have been singing about the same damn things for years; for the most part, they were just better at it a long time ago. Of course, to be fair, “A Horse With No Name” (1972) indicates otherwise.
10 Reasons We’d Rather Listen to Elevator Music Than Contemporary Pop
10. Heart’s “Crazy on You” (1976) + John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Hurt So Good” (1982) + a little insanity and some questionable weaponry = Rihanna’s “S & M” (2010).
Heart’s classic offers metaphors comparing love and nature, which is just the kind of hippie-dippie stuff we’d expect from a band who still performs at Lilith Fair. But the cries of “Let me go CRAAAAZY on you! CRAAAAZY on you!” are just a little alarming, in no small part because we have no idea what that means, at all, not even a little. John Cougar Mellencamp is only slightly more specific in “Hurt So Good.” He asks his young but experienced lady friend to “sink your teeth right through my bones,” and later says “I ain’t talking no high heels.” That clears my question up, I guess, because I tend to picture John Mellencamp spending his private time in stilettos. Of course Rihanna takes all this to a whole new level with “S & M”: “Sticks and stones may break my bones/ but chains and whips excite me.” In addition to confusing the hell out of Chris Brown, Rihanna is dispensing information about her sexual proclivities that no one needs to know. At the same time, it makes you wonder what the Wilson sisters really meant by “crazy on you.”
9. “Come Sail Away” (1977) by Styx and Katy Perry’s “E.T.” (2010).
The common denominator in these mega-hits is... aliens. I’m pretty sure we can chalk Dennis de Young’s brief “Oops, those aren’t angels, they’re aliens” moment to a mellow Saturday afternoon acid trip. However, I don’t know what Katy Perry was thinking. She’s clearly fascinated by the aliens, so I’m going to credit her lyrics to some kind of obsessive reverse xenophobia. But there’s no reason for Kanye to jump in and rap about “alien sex,” promising to “disrobe you” and “probe you.” “Probe” her? Are you taking Katy Perry to the doctor’s office? And why do you have to make space travel so dirty and explicit, Kanye? Why can’t you just casually mention starships headed for the sky? WHY??
8. Van Halen's “Everybody Wants Some!!” (1980) and a lot of sexually explicit rap songs whose titles we’re too modest to post. I mean things that would make Enimem blush.
Though Van Halen doesn’t get as disturbing as some of our finest working rap artists (Google “nastiest rap songs lyrics” if you don’t believe me; just keep a sharp stick handy for poking your eyes out), David Lee Roth does provide us with some specific images. He tries to get busy on the subway, in the conductor’s eyeline, no less; and then maybe on an airplane(?); and then he starts to narrate a sex scene, just like in “Panama,” but stops before things get too suggestive. So clearly David Lee Roth is at least somewhat classier than your modern rappers. Wait, he’s still talking... At the end he says, “Look, I’ll pay you for it.” OK, maybe this is a bad example.
7. Queen’s “Fat-Bottomed Girls” (1978) and Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “I Like Big Butts” (1992).
Much like Freddie Mercury’s luxuriant mustache, this one speaks for itself.
6. Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” (1986) ‒ the raw masculine anger + a heavy dose of Foreigner’s Lou Gramm huddled in a corner crying about a girl who’s as “Cold As Ice” (1977) = Bruno Mars’ “Grenade” (2010).
All three songs are about a bad breakup caused by a man-eater with no morals, and we’ve arranged them in order of decreasing manliness. Here’s the girliest bit from the boys of Foreigner: “You’re digging for gold/ You’re throwing away/ A fortune in feelings/ And someday you’ll pay.” Clearly these guys need David Lee Roth and co. to smack some sense into them about how to interact with women. And I’ve already covered my disdain for “Grenade” at length in another post, so let’s just say that staying in a relationship where the girl is willing to watch with supreme disinterest as you get flattened like a baby ladybug under a runaway train is the epitome of wretchedness. Congratulations, Bruno Mars, everyone thinks you’re a pathetic tool.
5. John Mellencamp’s “I Need a Lover” (1979) and “Grow a Pear” [sic] (2011) by Ke$ha.
They both sing (ok, for Ke$ha, “sing” is generous) about wanting relationships that are only physical. People should keep their pesky emotions inside where they belong, is what these guys think. Sample lyric from “Grow a Pear”: “I only wanted one thing from you and you got confused.” And the whole point of Mellencamp’s song is that he wants “some girl who’ll thrill me/ And then go away,” and “who knows the meaning of a ‘Hey, hit the highway.’ “ I’m pretty sure if John Mellencamp were the type of pansy to watch chick flicks, he’d agree with what Harry says to Sally in their cinematic classic: “...You have sex and the minute you're finished you know what goes through your mind? How long do I have to lie here and hold her before I can get up and go home? Is thirty seconds enough?”
4. Journey’s “Faithfully” (1983) and “Here Without You” (2003) by Three Doors Down.
Both songs describe the difficulty of maintaining a marriage when one is off touring with the fellas, but whereas Steve Perry made an awesome anthem out of his pain, proudly reaffirming his commitment to his wife (you younger readers may remember this song from Glee’s first-season finale), Brad Arnold pens this whiny ditty about how he apparently sits around his trailer crying over his wife. Psst, Brad! If you have to take man-up lessons from Steve Perry, you might want to rethink your life. Or just quit the band and go back to your wife. That way everybody wins.
3. Van Halen’s “Panama” (1984) and “Shut Up and Drive” (2007) by Rihanna.
Singers have been comparing cars with women and sex since at least the Beach Boys, and both of these songs illustrate just how well that metaphor works. David Lee Roth combines both elements neatly by revealing, in another creepy voice-over, that he’s actually singing about car sex: “I reach down, between my legs... And ease the seat back.” (You thought he was going somewhere totally different with that first part, didn’t you?) And Rihanna’s songwriters probably get paid by the double entendre, if this song is any indication: “I’ll get you where you want to go if you know what I mean/ Got a ride that’s smoother than a limousine/ Can you handle the curves, can you run all the lights?/ If you can, baby boy, then we can go all night,” etc. Not really sure what she means by “run all the lights.” Break all the rules, maybe? Perhaps “Shut Up and Drive” is the precursor to “Rude Boy,” which eventually led America to contemplate, with horrified fascination, “S & M.” Or those lyrics just fit with the rhyme scheme, and the writers said, “Oh hell, everyone at a Rihanna concert is going to be too distracted by the grinding drag queens in the next row to listen to the words; let’s just call it good. Pass the cocaine.” (True story: that is what a Rihanna concert is like.) Or maybe the writers knew she had a pressing date with her whips and chains. In either case, the line doesn’t detract from the song, or from the hot, hot insanity we’ve all come to expect from RiRi.
2. “Hello, I Love You” (1968) by the Doors with “Give Me Everything” (2011) by Pitbull.
Here we have another example of pop music espousing this undoubtedly alcohol-induced view of “the club”-- I’m sorry, “The Club”-- as some kind of magical paradise wherein everyone finds true love, usually in the form of crotch-grinding a stranger in a place that smells like a cross between a frat party and a stadium rest room. That’ll be a cute story for your wedding toast. Pitbull is kind of undiscriminating as well as presumptuous and demanding: “Grab somebody sexy, tell ‘em ‘Hey/ Give me everything tonight.’ ” Of course the obligatory rap portion of this song is just as stellar as you’d expect, culminating in “I got ‘a locked up like Lindsay Lohan.” Nothing could go wrong there! Take this man home to meet your parents! At least the Doors could count on Van Halen to come up with “Jamie’s Cryin’ ” (1978) to illustrate the negative consequences of one-nighters, so there at least we have a balanced picture. Hell, all Pitbull’s got to back him up is Katy Perry singing “Teenage Dream” (2010): “Let’s go all the way tonight/ No regrets, just love.” Call me a wet blanket, but losing one’s virginity in a fort made of sheets in a motel room is a surefire way to pick up some regrets in the form of a venereal disease.
1. Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” (1972) and Beyoncé’s “Irreplaceable” (2006).
These are both serious BURN breakup songs. None of this pansy “just let me hold you one last time” crap we get from Paolo Nutini. No, these ladies are out for blood. Carly Simon takes the more subtle approach, creating an incredibly famous song that just might be about you, but every time the thought crosses your mind, you’re simultaneously insulted. Not to mention you’ve become the butt of one of the most famous jokes in American pop culture. Dick Ebersol, the president of NBC, paid $50,000 for the privilege of knowing the song’s subject. I hate to judge the way other people spend their money (haa, just kidding), but $50,000 so you can rest easy at night knowing you won that bet with yourself because it was Warren Beatty after all?! Or whoever. I’m not psychic. Anyway, Miss Knowles uses a more blatant tack and straight-up tells her ex, “I could have another you in a minute,” presumably after she drop-kicks his plasma screen TV down the stairs in the direction of his waiting cab, because she took the keys to his car away. To quote Scrubs, this is the type of woman who uses your dignity as a a dish towel to wipe up any shreds of manhood that might be stuck inside the sink. Kind of the way Dante immortalized his enemies by sticking them in lakes of poo in the Inferno, Carly Simon and Beyoncé make sure that the guys who hurt them are infamous for it, even if we don’t know their names.
In conclusion, musicians have been singing about the same damn things for years; for the most part, they were just better at it a long time ago. Of course, to be fair, “A Horse With No Name” (1972) indicates otherwise.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
An Addendum to “Porn for Women”
I’m still on the question of why women insist on believing the fiction that we can change men we date, and I think I've been looking at this the wrong way around. I need to take the question a step back: why are women attracted to damaged, dysfunctional guys with daddy issues in the first place?
At least one reason I had right is that we need to feel superior to him in some way. Women aren't idiots. We know that by and large we come with a little extra crazy and at some point in the relationship we won't be able to repress it any longer and it'll come spewing out and KILL HIM. (If only.) That is, we're aware that most guys' ability to refrain from mentally dissecting every detail of the relationship gives them a distinct advantage over us. Women can fight the crazy, but we can't eradicate it altogether, and this sucks.
So what do we do about it? We gravitate to messed-up guys who will make us feel less vulnerable when we act like nut jobs because they’re acting like nut jobs too. The problem is that guys with a lot of issues are-- spoiler alert!-- terrible boyfriend material. If he can't handle his own crap, he can't handle hers; and ultimately when she begins to lean on him, he won’t be there, no matter how much her illogical brain wants him to be after all these damn Sandra Bullock movies. And then of course she tries to change him, and we all know how well that usually works.
Basically we women discover our masochistic streak when we choose to date losers in an attempt to avoid vulnerability, but in that scenario nobody wins. We want him because he’s a jerk, and then we find ourselves inexplicably stuck with a jerk. Because—once again for emphasis, people—we can’t change others.
Freaking Elizabeth Bennet.
At least one reason I had right is that we need to feel superior to him in some way. Women aren't idiots. We know that by and large we come with a little extra crazy and at some point in the relationship we won't be able to repress it any longer and it'll come spewing out and KILL HIM. (If only.) That is, we're aware that most guys' ability to refrain from mentally dissecting every detail of the relationship gives them a distinct advantage over us. Women can fight the crazy, but we can't eradicate it altogether, and this sucks.
So what do we do about it? We gravitate to messed-up guys who will make us feel less vulnerable when we act like nut jobs because they’re acting like nut jobs too. The problem is that guys with a lot of issues are-- spoiler alert!-- terrible boyfriend material. If he can't handle his own crap, he can't handle hers; and ultimately when she begins to lean on him, he won’t be there, no matter how much her illogical brain wants him to be after all these damn Sandra Bullock movies. And then of course she tries to change him, and we all know how well that usually works.
Basically we women discover our masochistic streak when we choose to date losers in an attempt to avoid vulnerability, but in that scenario nobody wins. We want him because he’s a jerk, and then we find ourselves inexplicably stuck with a jerk. Because—once again for emphasis, people—we can’t change others.
Freaking Elizabeth Bennet.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Carie and Schell's Theory of Everything
My best good friend Schell and I decided to take some time out of our respective busy schedules of perusing scholarly articles on cracked.com (a website whose entire output is dedicated to keeping the employees of corporate America awake in their cubicles) to do our own little riff on a top-ten list. Because we’ve been known to dabble in judging others, we decided to write about all the things we don't like to hear mere acquaintances go on and on about. I should point out there are definitely some people in your life who want to listen to the minutia of your ingrown toenails, and those people are probably fine to hear about all the stuff on this list. However, the vast majority of the people in your life are... not.
Top 10 Things Other People Don’t Want to Hear You Ramble On About
10. How you really are.
The question “How are you?” is basically the second part of “Hello” in this country. There are precious few people in your life who actually want to know how you are (and chances are I’m not one of them). Here’s a good hint: when you pass a friend on the Quad and he perfectly times his eye contact and subsequently required “Hello-how-are-you” to coincide with the moment you pass each other, all he wants to hear is “Fine.” For the love of God, don’t stop walking and start a conversation. You keep spewing molten crazy all over people, and it’s only a matter of time before they start avoiding you like the plague.
9. Your sports team.
The moment after a big win, sure, go for it. Four days later? LET IT GO. Also, the smack talk is just completely unnecessary. Yes, I’m sure your team will win every game for the rest of the season. And you telling everyone is exactly the way to make that happen. On the same note, I hate to burst the superstitious bubble that is a direct consequence of men’s crippling obsession with athletics that Dave Barry has so aptly named “sports anguish,” but as a spectator, unless you sneak an AK-47 into the stadium and off the quarterback right before kickoff, nothing you do will have any discernible impact on the game. So pour yourself a big tall glass of calm-down juice, because the Wake Forest football team is perfectly capable of sucking without your help. Bless their hearts.
8. Your weird and/or boring hobbies, religion, or political views.
If the person you’re talking to does not have these aspects in common with you, he is going to a. judge you and b. tune you the hell out. Here’s a quick example: I enjoy attending craft brew festivals. I don’t go on and on about it like I’m visiting the Louvre twice daily with Johnny Depp, partly because walking around in the Southern heat sampling beer with some of your best friends pretty much speaks for itself, and partly because I know other people don’t care about what I do in my free time. And that’s ok. On a more serious note, do not make ridiculous claims like “Obama is a Muslim Communist who shot JFK” just to stir up controversy, which is the only reason you would post something like that. Either you love the attention or you’re just an idiot. Or maybe you enjoy the mental image of a two-year-old toting a rifle around-- though in Texas, it’s probably not that rare a sight.
7. Your personal health problems.
If I wanted to know what color your phlegm was, I would ask. Actually, snot reviews are the least of my worries when I have friends who want to share the details of childbirth. Think of it this way: people who’d want to know what that bloodbath was like were probably in the room with you, witnessing all the bloodcurdling screams and bodily substances flying hither and yon. So do not volunteer this information.
6. Your children.
Here’s the hard truth: after the first kid is born, everything becomes banal to most of us. I read an article that was linked on stfuparents (incidentally another gold mine of hilarity) in which the writer suggests asking yourself whether this person cares about your child enough to know his middle name. If so, sure, share about the green poopy blowout he had at the Cracker Barrel, or the exact phrasing that his overly cheery kindergarten teacher used in the comments section of his widdle report card. Spare the rest of us. Also, don’t make your child (or fetus) a Facebook page. It’s weird. Just don’t do it.
5. Your damn pets.
Every time I see one of those commercials with the guy waxing lyrical about what his dog eats and the magical substances that fill each bag of Iams with what is apparently crack cocaine for animals, I ask myself, where is that guy’s girlfriend? (She’s running the hell away.) It’s all well and good for him to love his pet, but he crosses a certain line when he spends inordinate amounts of free time fondling his dog’s ears and wrasslin’ with him on the kitchen floor. I almost wish a telemarketer would call him so at least he’d have some kind of interaction with a human-based life form. One has to wonder whether the guy engages in any of these other unacceptable pet-owner behaviors: talking to his dog on the phone, referring to the dog as his child, buying him clothing because God-given fur apparently just doesn’t cut it, telling others about his pet’s health and bodily functions, or making him a Facebook page. If you have to ask why, and the answer “Because he’s not human” doesn’t suffice, you’re already too far gone.
4. Your significant other.
I really don’t care how beautiful/romantic/breathtaking you think s/he is. It makes me violently gag in my mouth to read about it. Somewhere between the thirty-seven photos of the engagement ring from different artsy angles and the honeymoon photos that noticeably commence the day before you left your exotic locale, because you figured you should document the area outside your hotel room just to prove you really did go to Aruba, your friends all started to hate you a little. That stuff is PERSONAL. We’re only a few small steps away from getting play-by-plays of the wedding night. As their captain, I can speak for all those busybodies who want to know what’s going on with everyone all the time-- we don’t want to know this. Nobody does. Not to mention this is no way lift the spirits of someone who recently experienced a nasty breakup, is unhappy about being single, or just had a bad day and needs a pick-me-up. Have a little consideration for the “less fortunate.” (Although they might count themselves ahead after enough hours of exposure to your nauseating love-honor-and-cherish fixation. In the words of stfucouples, “Dying alone is looking better every day!”)
3. Things you hate about your life.
Life is hard for everyone. If you experience a tragedy, or if you get fired (perhaps because you’re reading my blog at work), or even if you get a traffic ticket, it’s ok to complain about those things. But not to everyone, and not on Facebook. If you must whine, at least make it funny; or if you’re not funny, you can follow these specific guidelines. Don’t post some sad lyrics by an obscure indie band who you’re just sure understands you in their sober moments, or some vaguely worded poem where I can’t tell what happened or figure out if I should care, or worst of all, just a sad emoticon. And in a more general sense, don’t be a victim of your own bad choices. You don’t want to kiss a social life goodbye? Don’t go to business school. Hoping to avoid drama? Don’t join a sorority. You get the idea. Stop letting your situation define you and define your situation instead.
2. Your passive-aggressive nonsense.
If you’re mad at someone, grow some stones and tell him. Don’t try to tell everyone else how great your life is without him in the hopes that someone will let him know. Especially don’t tweet or post on Facebook things like, “Life is so much better when you’re with your real friends!” That’s the way we did it in the seventh grade, but you know what, that’s also when we thought Orlando Bloom had some vague degree of masculinity, so I’d say it’s time to let that particular habit go.
1. Your advice.
This one I feel especially well-equipped to explain, because I am that girl who’s always telling her friends what to do. At the end of the day, I’m basically a less-Dominican version of Carla from Scrubs. And as such, I’m extremely aware that people don’t want advice. Well, sometimes they do, and then they ask for it. (And then they ignore it. It’s an ironclad rule of friendship.) But unsolicited advice is about as welcome as a flu epidemic on Pledge Night. The worst advice is either completely obvious (“Have you tried restarting your laptop?”) or not conceivably helpful (“Maybe you should change your major.” “Yes! I graduate in three months! Totally feasible”). People hate advice the way Georgians hate the memory of Sherman. Good thing neither Schell nor I are going into professions where we’re supposed to, you know, understand people and help them.
No, wait....
Top 10 Things Other People Don’t Want to Hear You Ramble On About
10. How you really are.
The question “How are you?” is basically the second part of “Hello” in this country. There are precious few people in your life who actually want to know how you are (and chances are I’m not one of them). Here’s a good hint: when you pass a friend on the Quad and he perfectly times his eye contact and subsequently required “Hello-how-are-you” to coincide with the moment you pass each other, all he wants to hear is “Fine.” For the love of God, don’t stop walking and start a conversation. You keep spewing molten crazy all over people, and it’s only a matter of time before they start avoiding you like the plague.
9. Your sports team.
The moment after a big win, sure, go for it. Four days later? LET IT GO. Also, the smack talk is just completely unnecessary. Yes, I’m sure your team will win every game for the rest of the season. And you telling everyone is exactly the way to make that happen. On the same note, I hate to burst the superstitious bubble that is a direct consequence of men’s crippling obsession with athletics that Dave Barry has so aptly named “sports anguish,” but as a spectator, unless you sneak an AK-47 into the stadium and off the quarterback right before kickoff, nothing you do will have any discernible impact on the game. So pour yourself a big tall glass of calm-down juice, because the Wake Forest football team is perfectly capable of sucking without your help. Bless their hearts.
8. Your weird and/or boring hobbies, religion, or political views.
If the person you’re talking to does not have these aspects in common with you, he is going to a. judge you and b. tune you the hell out. Here’s a quick example: I enjoy attending craft brew festivals. I don’t go on and on about it like I’m visiting the Louvre twice daily with Johnny Depp, partly because walking around in the Southern heat sampling beer with some of your best friends pretty much speaks for itself, and partly because I know other people don’t care about what I do in my free time. And that’s ok. On a more serious note, do not make ridiculous claims like “Obama is a Muslim Communist who shot JFK” just to stir up controversy, which is the only reason you would post something like that. Either you love the attention or you’re just an idiot. Or maybe you enjoy the mental image of a two-year-old toting a rifle around-- though in Texas, it’s probably not that rare a sight.
7. Your personal health problems.
If I wanted to know what color your phlegm was, I would ask. Actually, snot reviews are the least of my worries when I have friends who want to share the details of childbirth. Think of it this way: people who’d want to know what that bloodbath was like were probably in the room with you, witnessing all the bloodcurdling screams and bodily substances flying hither and yon. So do not volunteer this information.
6. Your children.
Here’s the hard truth: after the first kid is born, everything becomes banal to most of us. I read an article that was linked on stfuparents (incidentally another gold mine of hilarity) in which the writer suggests asking yourself whether this person cares about your child enough to know his middle name. If so, sure, share about the green poopy blowout he had at the Cracker Barrel, or the exact phrasing that his overly cheery kindergarten teacher used in the comments section of his widdle report card. Spare the rest of us. Also, don’t make your child (or fetus) a Facebook page. It’s weird. Just don’t do it.
5. Your damn pets.
Every time I see one of those commercials with the guy waxing lyrical about what his dog eats and the magical substances that fill each bag of Iams with what is apparently crack cocaine for animals, I ask myself, where is that guy’s girlfriend? (She’s running the hell away.) It’s all well and good for him to love his pet, but he crosses a certain line when he spends inordinate amounts of free time fondling his dog’s ears and wrasslin’ with him on the kitchen floor. I almost wish a telemarketer would call him so at least he’d have some kind of interaction with a human-based life form. One has to wonder whether the guy engages in any of these other unacceptable pet-owner behaviors: talking to his dog on the phone, referring to the dog as his child, buying him clothing because God-given fur apparently just doesn’t cut it, telling others about his pet’s health and bodily functions, or making him a Facebook page. If you have to ask why, and the answer “Because he’s not human” doesn’t suffice, you’re already too far gone.
4. Your significant other.
I really don’t care how beautiful/romantic/breathtaking you think s/he is. It makes me violently gag in my mouth to read about it. Somewhere between the thirty-seven photos of the engagement ring from different artsy angles and the honeymoon photos that noticeably commence the day before you left your exotic locale, because you figured you should document the area outside your hotel room just to prove you really did go to Aruba, your friends all started to hate you a little. That stuff is PERSONAL. We’re only a few small steps away from getting play-by-plays of the wedding night. As their captain, I can speak for all those busybodies who want to know what’s going on with everyone all the time-- we don’t want to know this. Nobody does. Not to mention this is no way lift the spirits of someone who recently experienced a nasty breakup, is unhappy about being single, or just had a bad day and needs a pick-me-up. Have a little consideration for the “less fortunate.” (Although they might count themselves ahead after enough hours of exposure to your nauseating love-honor-and-cherish fixation. In the words of stfucouples, “Dying alone is looking better every day!”)
3. Things you hate about your life.
Life is hard for everyone. If you experience a tragedy, or if you get fired (perhaps because you’re reading my blog at work), or even if you get a traffic ticket, it’s ok to complain about those things. But not to everyone, and not on Facebook. If you must whine, at least make it funny; or if you’re not funny, you can follow these specific guidelines. Don’t post some sad lyrics by an obscure indie band who you’re just sure understands you in their sober moments, or some vaguely worded poem where I can’t tell what happened or figure out if I should care, or worst of all, just a sad emoticon. And in a more general sense, don’t be a victim of your own bad choices. You don’t want to kiss a social life goodbye? Don’t go to business school. Hoping to avoid drama? Don’t join a sorority. You get the idea. Stop letting your situation define you and define your situation instead.
2. Your passive-aggressive nonsense.
If you’re mad at someone, grow some stones and tell him. Don’t try to tell everyone else how great your life is without him in the hopes that someone will let him know. Especially don’t tweet or post on Facebook things like, “Life is so much better when you’re with your real friends!” That’s the way we did it in the seventh grade, but you know what, that’s also when we thought Orlando Bloom had some vague degree of masculinity, so I’d say it’s time to let that particular habit go.
1. Your advice.
This one I feel especially well-equipped to explain, because I am that girl who’s always telling her friends what to do. At the end of the day, I’m basically a less-Dominican version of Carla from Scrubs. And as such, I’m extremely aware that people don’t want advice. Well, sometimes they do, and then they ask for it. (And then they ignore it. It’s an ironclad rule of friendship.) But unsolicited advice is about as welcome as a flu epidemic on Pledge Night. The worst advice is either completely obvious (“Have you tried restarting your laptop?”) or not conceivably helpful (“Maybe you should change your major.” “Yes! I graduate in three months! Totally feasible”). People hate advice the way Georgians hate the memory of Sherman. Good thing neither Schell nor I are going into professions where we’re supposed to, you know, understand people and help them.
No, wait....
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Don’t Confuse Bruno Mars with Dr. Laura
Imagine getting all your knowledge about love and relationships exclusively from Bruno Mars songs. It would be like basing your understanding of the state education budget on lottery tickets from the Circle K, or getting turned loose in an actual vampire war with Twilight as your only guide. (I’d be extra screwed since I’ve never even read those books.) Anyway, with Bruno’s every gem saturating the airwaves for at least 27 hours a day, I’ve had some time to muse about his lyrics. Most of his songs present a woefully inaccurate picture of love, but in an endearing-enough way that people take him seriously, somehow. My 3 favorites (har!) are “Grenade,” “Marry You,” and “Just the Way You Are.”
There are so many things wrong with “Grenade,” so I’ll start there. Most valid objections to this song can be found in Glozell’s analysis on Youtube or in the annals of dearblank. Criticism that earned gold stars from me includes “Honey, why are you in love in a war zone??” and “Someone’s throwing grenades at her? This girl is clearly part of some illicit activities! RUN AWAY FROM HER,” etc. Seriously, where are these two lovebirds? I’d guess John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, since the air is thick with bullets and blades and grenades and the occasional runaway train. How can he breathe with no air, speaking of terrible songs?
Let me glance upwards here to see what my original topic was. Ok. So maybe Bruno is indulging in some hyperbole, because aside from all this airborne weaponry, the song’s main problem is that Bruno and his lady are looking for different levels of commitment in the relationship. He’s ready to die for her, and she’s got her eyes open, looking for the next rich pop star she can snag. Y’all have seen this before. Bruno is that needy guy who wants his girlfriend to call him whenever she gets home, whenever she goes to sleep at night, whenever she takes a study break to down a Jägermeister or three, etc. She, meanwhile, is hoping that he’ll make some friends of his own maturity level (approximately age four).
Speaking of immaturity, “Marry You” ticks me off because it treats marriage as some kind of harmless pastime for bored people. “It’s a beautiful night; we’re looking for something dumb to do/ Hey baby, I think I want to marry you.” It goes without saying that (though Bruno Mars says it anyway) the mature and responsible adults in question are wasted as all hell. And later-- “If we wake up and you wanna break up, that’s cool/ No, I won’t blame you; it was fun, girl.” I really can’t dissect this song without getting all preachy, so I’ll just say that getting married is supposed to be kind of a big deal, the prospect of which scares the crap out of any thinking person. What sucks is that the song is so daggone catchy that it’s all I can do not to enjoy it, in spite of the fact that it endorses the dumbest sentiment since Paris Hilton decided she was ready to have kids.
Although the first two songs present different extremely screwed-up versions of love, “Just the Way You Are” actually gets it right, as far as the initial infatuation goes. Bruno Mars is so crazy about this chick that he’s completely idealized everything about her. And aren’t rose-colored glasses necessary to start a relationship? If those crazy attraction hormones weren’t gilding our vision, we’d be thinking it’s kind of pathetic that he’s 22 and can’t grow a beard, or that his head is shaped like a dinosaur (I’m looking at you, Usher), or that he’s utterly obsessed with his fantasy football league. (NB: Being obsessed with a real football league, especially the ACC, is totally acceptable.) But you know when you’re looking at that guy you like, all you’re thinking about is his adorable smile, or whatever it is that floats your boat. Even when he has spinach stuck between his teeth. (“Hey look! He has healthy eating habits!”) The only thing that worries me is, what if Bruno Mars hangs on this idealized image of his girl too long? At a certain point, he needs to see her for who she is and love her in spite of her flaws. As things stand, he’s got two possibilities: she inevitably lets him down, he reacts like a petulant child and goes home to mother’s; or he turns into the emasculated and probably cuckolded hero of “Grenade.” Y’all see the connection?
In conclusion, I have a message for you, Bruno. Stop begging this woman to do her dorky laugh before she lets you catch a grenade for her, in the space where your brain should be. (Note that I have the class not to mention anything resembling stones, not that he would know what I was talking about anyway.)
Oh, hell. Maybe I should give Twilight a try. See what I’m missing.
There are so many things wrong with “Grenade,” so I’ll start there. Most valid objections to this song can be found in Glozell’s analysis on Youtube or in the annals of dearblank. Criticism that earned gold stars from me includes “Honey, why are you in love in a war zone??” and “Someone’s throwing grenades at her? This girl is clearly part of some illicit activities! RUN AWAY FROM HER,” etc. Seriously, where are these two lovebirds? I’d guess John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, since the air is thick with bullets and blades and grenades and the occasional runaway train. How can he breathe with no air, speaking of terrible songs?
Let me glance upwards here to see what my original topic was. Ok. So maybe Bruno is indulging in some hyperbole, because aside from all this airborne weaponry, the song’s main problem is that Bruno and his lady are looking for different levels of commitment in the relationship. He’s ready to die for her, and she’s got her eyes open, looking for the next rich pop star she can snag. Y’all have seen this before. Bruno is that needy guy who wants his girlfriend to call him whenever she gets home, whenever she goes to sleep at night, whenever she takes a study break to down a Jägermeister or three, etc. She, meanwhile, is hoping that he’ll make some friends of his own maturity level (approximately age four).
Speaking of immaturity, “Marry You” ticks me off because it treats marriage as some kind of harmless pastime for bored people. “It’s a beautiful night; we’re looking for something dumb to do/ Hey baby, I think I want to marry you.” It goes without saying that (though Bruno Mars says it anyway) the mature and responsible adults in question are wasted as all hell. And later-- “If we wake up and you wanna break up, that’s cool/ No, I won’t blame you; it was fun, girl.” I really can’t dissect this song without getting all preachy, so I’ll just say that getting married is supposed to be kind of a big deal, the prospect of which scares the crap out of any thinking person. What sucks is that the song is so daggone catchy that it’s all I can do not to enjoy it, in spite of the fact that it endorses the dumbest sentiment since Paris Hilton decided she was ready to have kids.
Although the first two songs present different extremely screwed-up versions of love, “Just the Way You Are” actually gets it right, as far as the initial infatuation goes. Bruno Mars is so crazy about this chick that he’s completely idealized everything about her. And aren’t rose-colored glasses necessary to start a relationship? If those crazy attraction hormones weren’t gilding our vision, we’d be thinking it’s kind of pathetic that he’s 22 and can’t grow a beard, or that his head is shaped like a dinosaur (I’m looking at you, Usher), or that he’s utterly obsessed with his fantasy football league. (NB: Being obsessed with a real football league, especially the ACC, is totally acceptable.) But you know when you’re looking at that guy you like, all you’re thinking about is his adorable smile, or whatever it is that floats your boat. Even when he has spinach stuck between his teeth. (“Hey look! He has healthy eating habits!”) The only thing that worries me is, what if Bruno Mars hangs on this idealized image of his girl too long? At a certain point, he needs to see her for who she is and love her in spite of her flaws. As things stand, he’s got two possibilities: she inevitably lets him down, he reacts like a petulant child and goes home to mother’s; or he turns into the emasculated and probably cuckolded hero of “Grenade.” Y’all see the connection?
In conclusion, I have a message for you, Bruno. Stop begging this woman to do her dorky laugh before she lets you catch a grenade for her, in the space where your brain should be. (Note that I have the class not to mention anything resembling stones, not that he would know what I was talking about anyway.)
Oh, hell. Maybe I should give Twilight a try. See what I’m missing.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
The World’s Most Anal-Retentive Family Finds Fame and Fortune
Should I ever write my memoirs, I'm going to title them "The World's Most-Anal Retentive Family Goes On Vacation." I chose “anal-retentive” because it's more specific than just calling my family weird; and besides, let's face it, no one in my family would consider giving even an inch when we're up against a different way of doing things. The dictionary definition of "anal-retentive" starts with “characterized by personality traits (as parsimony, meticulousness, and ill humor)…” I prefer to think of us as methodical at best and tyrannical at worst, but always in a funny way. Put it this way, we do things however we damn well please. Chapters of my runaway best-seller will include:
"I've Been Abroad for Five Months, But Now I'm Back and Ready to Detail Everything I Ate"
"In Order to Learn How Many Seats We Should Save in This Unfamiliar Church, Let's Measure Across the Pew With Our Butts"
"It's Labor Day Already! Do You Know What I Should Bring To the Christmas Potluck Yet?"
“Calm Down, I’ve Only Been in the Bathroom Three Hours”
“I Told You People, When You’re Setting the Table, I Only Like Small Spoons!”
“If You Misuse the Word ‘Literally’ One More Time, I Will Literally Shove It Up Yours”
Or this actual unretouched quote from my grandmother: "At My Wedding I Promised To 'Love, Honor, and Be Subject To,' But I Didn't Mean It."
I'm also casting about for a pithy way to describe a particular habit of my grandfather. Whilst riding as passenger in someone else's car, he has been known to ask drowsily, eyes closed, what speed they're going. The driver responds, "55. That's the speed limit," to which the half-asleep patriarch responds in a non-accusatory way and without a trace of irony, "Feels like 57." He also inadvertently steals other people's napkins at dinner. All the time. The Chief speaks like the first edition of the Oxford English Grammar, which I actually love about him. Sample sentence: "To what restaurant would you like to proceed tonight? Carol, I am famished!" It's a moot point anyway; they're going to the K&W. Obviously.
My mother will shine from the acknowledgements page only, because she's a McDaniel and was therefore raised to do nothing more interesting than sit quietly while "The Andy Griffith Show" was on during dinner. Her mother, on the other hand, will have her own chapter entitled simply "The Lips Face," or as my mom and aunt call it, the "suck-candy face." Grandma purses her lips and shakes her head, absolutely infuriated over something terribly, terribly wrong in the world. I have to confess that this phenomenon is so amusing that my brothers and I sometimes play poke-the-bear by saying things like, "Grandma! Yesterday I saw a girl in the grocery store wearing a bikini top instead of a shirt!" or "I heard that some Wake Forest fraternity brothers had a noisy party off-campus recently!" (neglecting to mention that I was there). Or simply, "Barack Obama is on the front page today, Grandma!" Then we just sit back and watch the fireworks begin, throwing in the occasional hearty "Mm-hmmm!"
As I'm composing my magnum opus, feel free to send suggestions and/or donations my way. Also some extra napkins.
"I've Been Abroad for Five Months, But Now I'm Back and Ready to Detail Everything I Ate"
"In Order to Learn How Many Seats We Should Save in This Unfamiliar Church, Let's Measure Across the Pew With Our Butts"
"It's Labor Day Already! Do You Know What I Should Bring To the Christmas Potluck Yet?"
“Calm Down, I’ve Only Been in the Bathroom Three Hours”
“I Told You People, When You’re Setting the Table, I Only Like Small Spoons!”
“If You Misuse the Word ‘Literally’ One More Time, I Will Literally Shove It Up Yours”
Or this actual unretouched quote from my grandmother: "At My Wedding I Promised To 'Love, Honor, and Be Subject To,' But I Didn't Mean It."
I'm also casting about for a pithy way to describe a particular habit of my grandfather. Whilst riding as passenger in someone else's car, he has been known to ask drowsily, eyes closed, what speed they're going. The driver responds, "55. That's the speed limit," to which the half-asleep patriarch responds in a non-accusatory way and without a trace of irony, "Feels like 57." He also inadvertently steals other people's napkins at dinner. All the time. The Chief speaks like the first edition of the Oxford English Grammar, which I actually love about him. Sample sentence: "To what restaurant would you like to proceed tonight? Carol, I am famished!" It's a moot point anyway; they're going to the K&W. Obviously.
My mother will shine from the acknowledgements page only, because she's a McDaniel and was therefore raised to do nothing more interesting than sit quietly while "The Andy Griffith Show" was on during dinner. Her mother, on the other hand, will have her own chapter entitled simply "The Lips Face," or as my mom and aunt call it, the "suck-candy face." Grandma purses her lips and shakes her head, absolutely infuriated over something terribly, terribly wrong in the world. I have to confess that this phenomenon is so amusing that my brothers and I sometimes play poke-the-bear by saying things like, "Grandma! Yesterday I saw a girl in the grocery store wearing a bikini top instead of a shirt!" or "I heard that some Wake Forest fraternity brothers had a noisy party off-campus recently!" (neglecting to mention that I was there). Or simply, "Barack Obama is on the front page today, Grandma!" Then we just sit back and watch the fireworks begin, throwing in the occasional hearty "Mm-hmmm!"
As I'm composing my magnum opus, feel free to send suggestions and/or donations my way. Also some extra napkins.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Porn for Women
When my roommates and I went to Florida last month, we’d just spent a week taking finals and writing papers and turning in portfolios. I decided that we needed some mindless reading materials for the trip, so Carleen and I went to pick up some trashy romance novels. I know that admitting this, especially on the heels of an especially pretentious post in which I dropped the exalted names of the Milton and Vergil, is not a particularly smooth move. However, I also mentioned Plautus and Shakespeare; and I read the supposedly awful romance novels with an eye for those famous authors’ classic comedic structure: boy meets girl, they want to get married, encounter a lot of obstacles, but they overcome the hurdles and the story ends with their wedding. Modern romance novels follow this basic thrust, with some important addenda. Ever the English major, I pondered what, exactly, makes this genre work. What constitutes a good romance novel?
[It’s crucial to note up front that no one should ever take romance novels seriously. They are built entirely on fantasy. They’re R-rated chick flicks in prose, and often unconsciously hilarious.]
The first necessity is an incredibly contrived set of circumstances. For women, traditionally there’s a lot of guilt that accompanies canoodling, so the authors of romance novels must creatively invent bizarre situations that allow the woman to throw both her caution and her unmentionables to the winds. Arranged marriages are always popular options. Even better—I read one novel in which the woman is on her way to the husband her parents have chosen for her, and she gets hijacked and accidentally marries someone else. Whoops. (It is also important to note that she is usually a virgin, and her virile lover never is; one of them needs to have some experience or certain scenes would flatten like toothpaste.) In my personal favorite scenario, the heroine is forced to rely on a blackguard for protection against kidnapping and murder. Nothing sets her heart and libido off on a race like the threat of death. In any case, the crucial characteristic of these plots is duress. The heroine can’t feel guilty about something that is not her fault. Problem solved.
So the heroine sets off to fornicate with impunity. With any luck, her rogue of a protector has some kind of emotional baggage. If he’s been hurt, or feels purposeless, or doesn’t believe that he deserves to be happy, then the heroine knows that she has hit the relationship jackpot. In the midst of all this totally justified copulation, the couple share their hearts until the air is so rife with emotion that it could legally qualify as a Zach Braff movie. Of course, life in romance novels operates on a plane that doesn’t quite align with reality, and so ultimately the woman reaps the rewards of her entirely unreasoned faith in this afflicted cad, and they ride off happily into the sunset together.
Implicit in their escape to A Whole New World is the linchpin of what makes a good romance novel really stellar: the heroine changes her man. (As one writer puts it, “To women, all men look like DIY projects.”) I don’t know of any really ironclad precedence for this new development—unless you put Pride and Prejudice into that category. Mr. Darcy says this to Elizabeth when she accepts his second marriage proposal:
“I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.”
Jane Austen is onto something here. This is emotional pornography for women. The fact that Mr. Darcy is capable of looking at his character and making improvements, let's face it, is hot. But more to the point, women love the idea of changing their men. Why? Whatever it is, it has something to do with why women go after bad boys. It could be because a Mr. Darcy situation is just plain interesting, and Lord knows that nothing warms the female heart like a complicated mess. Is it because the woman wants to feel superior to someone? Does her constant carping represent nothing more than a power trip? And even if her actions spring benevolently from a desire to save what’s-his-name from himself, why does she want to put herself through such futile misery? Does she actually think it’s going to work?
So maybe we should just bring it full circle and blame these same novels (and Meg Ryan movies, for that matter) for telling women they can modify men, or anyone else, in the first place. The truth is that we can’t change other people. We can only contend with ourselves, and in my case, that’s plenty to tackle.
The moral of the story is to not to take those romance novels too seriously. Their plots are about as likely at that of Twelfth Night—amusing but ridiculously improbable.
Much like Mr. Darcy.
"In any case, hope springs eternal in the human vagina."
-Florence King
[It’s crucial to note up front that no one should ever take romance novels seriously. They are built entirely on fantasy. They’re R-rated chick flicks in prose, and often unconsciously hilarious.]
The first necessity is an incredibly contrived set of circumstances. For women, traditionally there’s a lot of guilt that accompanies canoodling, so the authors of romance novels must creatively invent bizarre situations that allow the woman to throw both her caution and her unmentionables to the winds. Arranged marriages are always popular options. Even better—I read one novel in which the woman is on her way to the husband her parents have chosen for her, and she gets hijacked and accidentally marries someone else. Whoops. (It is also important to note that she is usually a virgin, and her virile lover never is; one of them needs to have some experience or certain scenes would flatten like toothpaste.) In my personal favorite scenario, the heroine is forced to rely on a blackguard for protection against kidnapping and murder. Nothing sets her heart and libido off on a race like the threat of death. In any case, the crucial characteristic of these plots is duress. The heroine can’t feel guilty about something that is not her fault. Problem solved.
So the heroine sets off to fornicate with impunity. With any luck, her rogue of a protector has some kind of emotional baggage. If he’s been hurt, or feels purposeless, or doesn’t believe that he deserves to be happy, then the heroine knows that she has hit the relationship jackpot. In the midst of all this totally justified copulation, the couple share their hearts until the air is so rife with emotion that it could legally qualify as a Zach Braff movie. Of course, life in romance novels operates on a plane that doesn’t quite align with reality, and so ultimately the woman reaps the rewards of her entirely unreasoned faith in this afflicted cad, and they ride off happily into the sunset together.
Implicit in their escape to A Whole New World is the linchpin of what makes a good romance novel really stellar: the heroine changes her man. (As one writer puts it, “To women, all men look like DIY projects.”) I don’t know of any really ironclad precedence for this new development—unless you put Pride and Prejudice into that category. Mr. Darcy says this to Elizabeth when she accepts his second marriage proposal:
“I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoilt by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father, particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing; to care for none beyond my own family circle; to think meanly of all the rest of the world; to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.”
Jane Austen is onto something here. This is emotional pornography for women. The fact that Mr. Darcy is capable of looking at his character and making improvements, let's face it, is hot. But more to the point, women love the idea of changing their men. Why? Whatever it is, it has something to do with why women go after bad boys. It could be because a Mr. Darcy situation is just plain interesting, and Lord knows that nothing warms the female heart like a complicated mess. Is it because the woman wants to feel superior to someone? Does her constant carping represent nothing more than a power trip? And even if her actions spring benevolently from a desire to save what’s-his-name from himself, why does she want to put herself through such futile misery? Does she actually think it’s going to work?
So maybe we should just bring it full circle and blame these same novels (and Meg Ryan movies, for that matter) for telling women they can modify men, or anyone else, in the first place. The truth is that we can’t change other people. We can only contend with ourselves, and in my case, that’s plenty to tackle.
The moral of the story is to not to take those romance novels too seriously. Their plots are about as likely at that of Twelfth Night—amusing but ridiculously improbable.
Much like Mr. Darcy.
"In any case, hope springs eternal in the human vagina."
-Florence King
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Meditations on Undergrad II: And Yet the Books
“For every door opening, there’s another one slowly closing.”
--Elizabeth and the Catapult
Last week I got my diploma in the mail. I didn't realize they'd actually list my majors, and even "Magna Cum Laude" doesn't completely detract from the "what the heck?" factor I incurred with a B.A. in English and Latin. I have to wonder, should I ever hang this diploma up in my office when I’m a therapist, are my clients going to think, “English and Latin? How did that happen?”
(Yes. Yes, they are.)
That’s awhile off yet. But my majors have been on my mind lately, as I’m trying to figure out the best way to get rid of my schoolbooks from undergrad. I’m keeping the psychology texts, but the vast majority of books in this brown box are literature. Sure, plenty of them can go: the bucolic poetry we (thankfully) never even looked at in English Renaissance Literature; the American lit books I skipped over in the major seminar because I was ticked off about the “C” I got on my Henry James paper; comedies of Plautus and Terence in Latin, marked with my frequent notes; the collections of scholarly articles on Jane Austen, Ovid and Shakespeare.
But for every book I’m planning to sell or donate, there are two more I’m keeping. Why? What is their place now? For what possible reason could one woman need two different translations of the Aeneid? Am I expecting to pick up The Canterbury Tales sometime soon and take another shot at the Middle English? Better yet, In Catilinam in Latin? Am I ever going to really understand what the hell James Joyce is doing in Ulysses? Will I ever get through the thousand pages of Middlemarch again? And I’m well aware that owning the complete works of Jane Austen is socially acceptable, but those of Ovid, not so much.
I’m keeping these books because, in spite of the practical Masters degree I’m headed toward, in my heart I am a nerd and I love these books. A year ago, I was seriously contemplating an honors thesis comparing the heroes of Homer’s and Vergil’s epics to see what light they shed on their respective cultures of shame and guilt. I have been known to tear up when Odysseus and Penelope reunite (the simile about the shipwrecked sailor is a killer). Sometimes I absent-mindedly break words into their original parts and wonder how they reached us in their current form. I can still remember the sections of The Canterbury Tales and of Hamlet I’ve memorized in school. I actually like Faulkner. The best papers I wrote last year were about the play-within-the-novel in Mansfield Park, and the connections between violence against women and enforced silence in Ovid and Shakespeare. And I love writing papers.
Heres’s the punch line: I’m entering a field where literary absorption is not the order of the day. Don’t get me wrong; I know this is where I’m supposed to be. I am so excited to go into counseling. But in spite of this shift, I’ve got the beginnings of an English professor’s library. It exists to no purpose beyond assuring me that I haven’t lost the stars that anchor my firmament in tradition, history, order, connection and beauty.
“…Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.”
--Czeslaw Milosz
--Elizabeth and the Catapult
Last week I got my diploma in the mail. I didn't realize they'd actually list my majors, and even "Magna Cum Laude" doesn't completely detract from the "what the heck?" factor I incurred with a B.A. in English and Latin. I have to wonder, should I ever hang this diploma up in my office when I’m a therapist, are my clients going to think, “English and Latin? How did that happen?”
(Yes. Yes, they are.)
That’s awhile off yet. But my majors have been on my mind lately, as I’m trying to figure out the best way to get rid of my schoolbooks from undergrad. I’m keeping the psychology texts, but the vast majority of books in this brown box are literature. Sure, plenty of them can go: the bucolic poetry we (thankfully) never even looked at in English Renaissance Literature; the American lit books I skipped over in the major seminar because I was ticked off about the “C” I got on my Henry James paper; comedies of Plautus and Terence in Latin, marked with my frequent notes; the collections of scholarly articles on Jane Austen, Ovid and Shakespeare.
But for every book I’m planning to sell or donate, there are two more I’m keeping. Why? What is their place now? For what possible reason could one woman need two different translations of the Aeneid? Am I expecting to pick up The Canterbury Tales sometime soon and take another shot at the Middle English? Better yet, In Catilinam in Latin? Am I ever going to really understand what the hell James Joyce is doing in Ulysses? Will I ever get through the thousand pages of Middlemarch again? And I’m well aware that owning the complete works of Jane Austen is socially acceptable, but those of Ovid, not so much.
I’m keeping these books because, in spite of the practical Masters degree I’m headed toward, in my heart I am a nerd and I love these books. A year ago, I was seriously contemplating an honors thesis comparing the heroes of Homer’s and Vergil’s epics to see what light they shed on their respective cultures of shame and guilt. I have been known to tear up when Odysseus and Penelope reunite (the simile about the shipwrecked sailor is a killer). Sometimes I absent-mindedly break words into their original parts and wonder how they reached us in their current form. I can still remember the sections of The Canterbury Tales and of Hamlet I’ve memorized in school. I actually like Faulkner. The best papers I wrote last year were about the play-within-the-novel in Mansfield Park, and the connections between violence against women and enforced silence in Ovid and Shakespeare. And I love writing papers.
Heres’s the punch line: I’m entering a field where literary absorption is not the order of the day. Don’t get me wrong; I know this is where I’m supposed to be. I am so excited to go into counseling. But in spite of this shift, I’ve got the beginnings of an English professor’s library. It exists to no purpose beyond assuring me that I haven’t lost the stars that anchor my firmament in tradition, history, order, connection and beauty.
“…Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.”
--Czeslaw Milosz
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Occupational Hazards of Counseling
When I was looking at graduate schools, I went to Vanderbilt for a prospective students’ event. At one point we got to ask questions of the students currently in our intended programs, and something one of the grad students said has stayed with me.
“If you want to be a counselor, chances are you’re already the person who everyone goes to for advice. You’re genuinely interested in what’s going on with people, you have a lot of empathy, and you probably have any number of friends who take more than they give. And here’s something that will surprise you: when you’re studying to be a counselor, not only will you learn how to help your clients with their relationships, but you’ll learn all over again how to be a friend yourself. Because you can’t keep doing what you’ve been doing. You can’t go to work and get dumped on all day, every day, and then come home and get dumped on by your friends and family. You owe it to yourself to be careful and intentional in your personal relationships, investing in friends who will care for you equally as well as you support them. Otherwise counseling will prove a very miserable profession for you.”
As I get closer to starting my program, I’m becoming more and more nervous about the sheer volume of emotion that will surround me and become my problem every day. I’m praying that I’ll focus on the progress and not get slammed by the sadness and dysfunction. Or better yet, focus on the funny.
“If you want to be a counselor, chances are you’re already the person who everyone goes to for advice. You’re genuinely interested in what’s going on with people, you have a lot of empathy, and you probably have any number of friends who take more than they give. And here’s something that will surprise you: when you’re studying to be a counselor, not only will you learn how to help your clients with their relationships, but you’ll learn all over again how to be a friend yourself. Because you can’t keep doing what you’ve been doing. You can’t go to work and get dumped on all day, every day, and then come home and get dumped on by your friends and family. You owe it to yourself to be careful and intentional in your personal relationships, investing in friends who will care for you equally as well as you support them. Otherwise counseling will prove a very miserable profession for you.”
As I get closer to starting my program, I’m becoming more and more nervous about the sheer volume of emotion that will surround me and become my problem every day. I’m praying that I’ll focus on the progress and not get slammed by the sadness and dysfunction. Or better yet, focus on the funny.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Meditations on Undergrad: The Evolution of Dating
“No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.”
-Dave Barry
One thing that defines the Wake Forest student population is that these kids very often have their panties in a wad over something. Or to put it more diplomatically, Wake students take life pretty seriously. They tend not to half-ass anything; if they’re going to spend time on something, they take the time to do their very best. This is both a virtue and a flaw. The virtue is obvious; the flaw takes shape when the drive to do our best overshadows our better judgment and skews our ability to keep things in perspective. One casualty on the field of these overly-pensive undergrads armed with Thinkpads is their relationships.
When our parents and grandparents were in school, it was perfectly acceptable for them to go out with multiple dating partners. Sure, if they were “going steady” with one particular person, then it wasn’t kosher to keep playing the field. But otherwise, all bets were off. More importantly, the pressure to decide whether this was “the one” was off.
Things are different now. As far as dating goes, Wake students fall into one of three categories: those who never do anything with anyone ever, those who hook up but don’t really date, and those who have serious relationships that are at least potentially headed toward marriage. Each of these groups takes an extreme position; and I’m not sure I know anyone who just goes out on dates to have fun and enjoy himself with someone he likes. Instead, I know a lot of people who jump right into serious relationships, signing on for unnecessary drama and responsibilities. (I get tired just thinking about it. Relationships are an inordinate amount of labor and time, people. Why rush into one before the time is right?)
The point is that because Wake kids regrettably race toward relationships, the act of asking someone out becomes a huge deal. Our generation has managed to successfully elide asking someone out for a date with Defining the Relationship, and this DTR has taken on so much weighty importance that it’s basically on level with the last copter out of Saigon.
This is what should generally go through a girl’s head when she contemplates a guy asking her out: “Why the hell not?” Sure, if the guy who asks her out on a date is a pathological liar, or is addicted to eating glass, or thinks Sarah Palin would make a good leader of the free world, or something equally problematic, she may want to weigh these facts before she answers. That is, she needs to be a little discriminating. If her religious faith or political views or career aspirations are incredibly important to her, and the guy doesn’t share or even care about them, then she probably shouldn’t date that guy, because there are pretty big differences from the start. And leading that guy on, when she knows they won’t work out, is a serious party foul. But what about the vast majority of the world? The guys she foresees no serious problems with? Why not give it a shot?
But what actually goes through the girl’s (or guy’s, as the case may be) head in this situation is often shot through with raw panic, because she knows that “Do you want to go on a date with me?” could actually mean, “Can you see yourself spending the rest of your life with me?” This is the phenomenon responsible for the pervasive solemnity that defines a lot of relationships from the start; it’s the reason several of my girl friends responded to their boyfriends’ first “I love you” with nervous and counterfeit acquiescence, abject fear, and a whole bottle of André. They belatedly realized they were in over their heads.
[Irrelevant sidebar: May I just say that even for those of us ill-starred enough to be single, our friends’ dalliances get on our nerves? Because dating is such an earnest, sweaty-palmed affair, people think too hard about whether to accept someone’s invitation out to dinner, and all this dithering often ends nowhere exciting. For someone like me who likes to know what’s going on with everyone else, all the time (in the words of Florence King, “What could be more interesting that other people’s business?”), this cautious culture is incredibly obnoxious. Every time something might get started between two people, one of them invariably pours toxic discretion all over it. Will they? Won’t they? It looks like they’re going to, but something fell apart; the last second’s always a nail-biter!... Come on. This gets very boring.
However, there is a silver lining: playing poke-the-bear with someone in such a somber, future-oriented relationship offers no end of amusement. “How much school do you have left? So, how long an engagement would y’all need?” The trick is to move from the potential subjunctive to the future indicative. “How soon will you be proposing, then? Have you gotten her ring size yet?” And soon he’s the one with the bottle of André.]
Listen very carefully, Wake Forest. Put your ear right up to the computer screen.
Taking one date so seriously puts tremendous pressure on both people to a. not screw it up and b. decide quickly whether this is something they want to pursue. I’d love it if people could just date casually, and I don’t understand why we’ve moved away from that. Dial it down, Wake Forest. Where’s the fire? Where is this pressure to get serious coming from?
I just hope the “real world” has retained the possibility of dating someone who I don’t want to pick out curtains with just yet.
-Dave Barry
One thing that defines the Wake Forest student population is that these kids very often have their panties in a wad over something. Or to put it more diplomatically, Wake students take life pretty seriously. They tend not to half-ass anything; if they’re going to spend time on something, they take the time to do their very best. This is both a virtue and a flaw. The virtue is obvious; the flaw takes shape when the drive to do our best overshadows our better judgment and skews our ability to keep things in perspective. One casualty on the field of these overly-pensive undergrads armed with Thinkpads is their relationships.
When our parents and grandparents were in school, it was perfectly acceptable for them to go out with multiple dating partners. Sure, if they were “going steady” with one particular person, then it wasn’t kosher to keep playing the field. But otherwise, all bets were off. More importantly, the pressure to decide whether this was “the one” was off.
Things are different now. As far as dating goes, Wake students fall into one of three categories: those who never do anything with anyone ever, those who hook up but don’t really date, and those who have serious relationships that are at least potentially headed toward marriage. Each of these groups takes an extreme position; and I’m not sure I know anyone who just goes out on dates to have fun and enjoy himself with someone he likes. Instead, I know a lot of people who jump right into serious relationships, signing on for unnecessary drama and responsibilities. (I get tired just thinking about it. Relationships are an inordinate amount of labor and time, people. Why rush into one before the time is right?)
The point is that because Wake kids regrettably race toward relationships, the act of asking someone out becomes a huge deal. Our generation has managed to successfully elide asking someone out for a date with Defining the Relationship, and this DTR has taken on so much weighty importance that it’s basically on level with the last copter out of Saigon.
This is what should generally go through a girl’s head when she contemplates a guy asking her out: “Why the hell not?” Sure, if the guy who asks her out on a date is a pathological liar, or is addicted to eating glass, or thinks Sarah Palin would make a good leader of the free world, or something equally problematic, she may want to weigh these facts before she answers. That is, she needs to be a little discriminating. If her religious faith or political views or career aspirations are incredibly important to her, and the guy doesn’t share or even care about them, then she probably shouldn’t date that guy, because there are pretty big differences from the start. And leading that guy on, when she knows they won’t work out, is a serious party foul. But what about the vast majority of the world? The guys she foresees no serious problems with? Why not give it a shot?
But what actually goes through the girl’s (or guy’s, as the case may be) head in this situation is often shot through with raw panic, because she knows that “Do you want to go on a date with me?” could actually mean, “Can you see yourself spending the rest of your life with me?” This is the phenomenon responsible for the pervasive solemnity that defines a lot of relationships from the start; it’s the reason several of my girl friends responded to their boyfriends’ first “I love you” with nervous and counterfeit acquiescence, abject fear, and a whole bottle of André. They belatedly realized they were in over their heads.
[Irrelevant sidebar: May I just say that even for those of us ill-starred enough to be single, our friends’ dalliances get on our nerves? Because dating is such an earnest, sweaty-palmed affair, people think too hard about whether to accept someone’s invitation out to dinner, and all this dithering often ends nowhere exciting. For someone like me who likes to know what’s going on with everyone else, all the time (in the words of Florence King, “What could be more interesting that other people’s business?”), this cautious culture is incredibly obnoxious. Every time something might get started between two people, one of them invariably pours toxic discretion all over it. Will they? Won’t they? It looks like they’re going to, but something fell apart; the last second’s always a nail-biter!... Come on. This gets very boring.
However, there is a silver lining: playing poke-the-bear with someone in such a somber, future-oriented relationship offers no end of amusement. “How much school do you have left? So, how long an engagement would y’all need?” The trick is to move from the potential subjunctive to the future indicative. “How soon will you be proposing, then? Have you gotten her ring size yet?” And soon he’s the one with the bottle of André.]
Listen very carefully, Wake Forest. Put your ear right up to the computer screen.
Taking one date so seriously puts tremendous pressure on both people to a. not screw it up and b. decide quickly whether this is something they want to pursue. I’d love it if people could just date casually, and I don’t understand why we’ve moved away from that. Dial it down, Wake Forest. Where’s the fire? Where is this pressure to get serious coming from?
I just hope the “real world” has retained the possibility of dating someone who I don’t want to pick out curtains with just yet.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Fading
“With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked... it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past.”
I know I'm the only non-English professor in the world who likes Virginia Woolf, but I've been thinking a lot lately about To The Lighthouse and its focus on nostalgia and ways to remember the past that are constructive rather than depressing. Seven weeks from today we graduate, and I won't be in college anymore. Every day I see people whom I will probably never see again after May. I won't belong to this beautiful campus anymore; I'll miss walking into a Wake Forest building whose floors are strewn with flower petals the wind has blown in. I'll never walk through Tribble and Benson again and know everyone I meet. I'll probably never live somewhere that church bells play Disney music at five o'clock every day.
I hate to admit this, because Troy is a terrible, terrible movie (that I love in spite of myself), but Brad Pitt has a point when he says that the transience of human life is more valuable than the stasis of immortality. Wake Forest will always have my heart, but it won't be my home anymore, which means I'll treasure my time here all the more. The best thing to do with the next seven weeks is make memories and maintain friendships that will last longer than anything I've learned in class, longer than I'll have any kind of lingering presence on campus, longer than anyone here will remember me. It's not that I don't want to go; it's time to move on. I can already see the images around me fading as we all plan to disperse. I'm committed to hanging onto the memories forever.
I know I'm the only non-English professor in the world who likes Virginia Woolf, but I've been thinking a lot lately about To The Lighthouse and its focus on nostalgia and ways to remember the past that are constructive rather than depressing. Seven weeks from today we graduate, and I won't be in college anymore. Every day I see people whom I will probably never see again after May. I won't belong to this beautiful campus anymore; I'll miss walking into a Wake Forest building whose floors are strewn with flower petals the wind has blown in. I'll never walk through Tribble and Benson again and know everyone I meet. I'll probably never live somewhere that church bells play Disney music at five o'clock every day.
I hate to admit this, because Troy is a terrible, terrible movie (that I love in spite of myself), but Brad Pitt has a point when he says that the transience of human life is more valuable than the stasis of immortality. Wake Forest will always have my heart, but it won't be my home anymore, which means I'll treasure my time here all the more. The best thing to do with the next seven weeks is make memories and maintain friendships that will last longer than anything I've learned in class, longer than I'll have any kind of lingering presence on campus, longer than anyone here will remember me. It's not that I don't want to go; it's time to move on. I can already see the images around me fading as we all plan to disperse. I'm committed to hanging onto the memories forever.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Top Ten Reasons to Love Valentine’s Day
10. Sandra Bullock movies are in order.
9. Or you can rebel against chick flicks by watching Braveheart… duh. Always a winner.
8. If you’re single, you can bask in the glory of eschewing relationship drama every day of the year. It might be the greatest feeling in the world.
7. Along the same lines, you can make fun of all the mushy statuses and wall-to-walls on Facebook, or at least use them as an excuse to drink.
6. But if you really, really, hate being reminded you’re single, you have the next 364 days to maintain your sense of denial.
5. This holiday is another reason to cuddle, if you needed one.
4. You can wake your roommate up by playing J-Biebs and she can’t kill you… because it’s Valentine’s Day!
3. This is a holiday based entirely around chocolate. You can let the beach bod go for a day, right?
2. Or two. Tomorrow all the leftover candy goes on sale.
1. You can put off that English paper because you’re composing this obviously very important list.
Happy Valentine's Day, Wake Forest!
9. Or you can rebel against chick flicks by watching Braveheart… duh. Always a winner.
8. If you’re single, you can bask in the glory of eschewing relationship drama every day of the year. It might be the greatest feeling in the world.
7. Along the same lines, you can make fun of all the mushy statuses and wall-to-walls on Facebook, or at least use them as an excuse to drink.
6. But if you really, really, hate being reminded you’re single, you have the next 364 days to maintain your sense of denial.
5. This holiday is another reason to cuddle, if you needed one.
4. You can wake your roommate up by playing J-Biebs and she can’t kill you… because it’s Valentine’s Day!
3. This is a holiday based entirely around chocolate. You can let the beach bod go for a day, right?
2. Or two. Tomorrow all the leftover candy goes on sale.
1. You can put off that English paper because you’re composing this obviously very important list.
Happy Valentine's Day, Wake Forest!
Friday, February 11, 2011
[A psalm of David]
"Praise the LORD, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the LORD, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits—
who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s...
Praise the Lord, my soul."
Psalm 103:1-5, 22
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
Praise the LORD, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits—
who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s...
Praise the Lord, my soul."
Psalm 103:1-5, 22
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Things I Hate
In the spirit of Kinsgley, the sassy Youtuber, I have decided to compile my own list of Things I Hate. As Dave Barry says, don't keep your anger bottled up inside, where it only hurts you. Let it out, where it can hurt other people.
I hate it when you try to surprise someone and he doesn’t even bother act surprised.
I hate it when people call me to ask me a question whose answer is sitting in their inbox; they’re just too lazy to check it.
I hate it when people don’t use their turn signals. Why do you think God put it in your car? For decoration?
I hate it when people prefer Dunkin’ Donuts to Krispy Kreme. I’ll grant that Dunkin’ Donuts coffee is pretty good, but only because they need something to wash down that hog slop they call doughnuts.
I hate it when people say they like all kinds of music, because the lack of strong opinions that just means they don’t really care about music.
I hate it when people wear sweats outside the house when they’re not working out or doing yoga. I got dressed today, so should you.
I hate it when outdoorsy people wear compression shorts and Chocos in real life. You like nature! We get it!
I hate it when you go see a movie at the theater and the audience claps while the credits roll. The actors can’t hear you! Let’s all just go home!
I hate it when you try to surprise someone and he doesn’t even bother act surprised.
I hate it when people call me to ask me a question whose answer is sitting in their inbox; they’re just too lazy to check it.
I hate it when people don’t use their turn signals. Why do you think God put it in your car? For decoration?
I hate it when people prefer Dunkin’ Donuts to Krispy Kreme. I’ll grant that Dunkin’ Donuts coffee is pretty good, but only because they need something to wash down that hog slop they call doughnuts.
I hate it when people say they like all kinds of music, because the lack of strong opinions that just means they don’t really care about music.
I hate it when people wear sweats outside the house when they’re not working out or doing yoga. I got dressed today, so should you.
I hate it when outdoorsy people wear compression shorts and Chocos in real life. You like nature! We get it!
I hate it when you go see a movie at the theater and the audience claps while the credits roll. The actors can’t hear you! Let’s all just go home!
Superbowl Sunday 2011
In addition to being the greatest American sport, football is also an extremely apt metaphor for dating, wherein the quarterback is the boyfriend, the ball is his game, the first downs are relationships milestones, and the touchdown is marriage. Each girl is a new drive toward a new end zone; the QB only gets to pursue that first down for so long.
THE TEAMS
The hero’s team: His wingmen. The specific lineup varies with the girl in question.
Linemen: Those who play defense against other guys.
Running backs: Those who do some of the legwork for the QB, Barney Stinson-style: “Haaaaaave you met Ted?”
Wide receivers and tight ends: Those who do everything else the QB needs.
The offending team: Obstacles, e.g., time, space, other guys, her friends who dislike the guy, etc.
SCORING
Special teams: Getting into position to play some offense.
Offense: Exactly what it sounds like, or in other words, GYS.
Defense: Protecting the girl from other guys.
Rushing: The slow and steady gain of positive yardage.
Passing: The more momentous gestures, the flowers, the jewelry, the dinners at Panera, the chick flicks, spending time with her family.
First downs: The important “firsts,” e.g., the first date, the first kiss, the first meeting with her parents, the first time farting around each other, etc.
Second and third downs: “We should talk” moments.
Fourth downs: “We NEED TO talk,” i.e., his turn is over unless he can work a miracle.
Punting: Making the best of his failure to gain positive yardage, so the kicker is also the QB. I never said the metaphor was perfect.
Field goal: The frustration of the ultimate aim of TD, but the field goal is still a three-point gain, such as becoming best friends or FWBs with the girl.
DOWNFALLS
Turnovers: Being dumb, e.g.
The interception: A mistake that allows another guy to start playing offense on our guy’s lady.
The fumble: Carelessness that allows someone else, usually one of the girl’s friends, to knock the guy out of the running and cause him to drop the metaphorical ball.
A safety: Extenuating circumstances such as, but not limited to, getting kidnapped by the Dread Pirate Roberts.
Out-of-bounds or incomplete: Events and obstacles that temporarily derail the guy, e.g., a bad date, an old boyfriend, jealousy, etc.
The kneel-down: Self-defense when the guy thinks the girl might hurt him.
Penalties: Cheating. The guy might get away with it, but he loses his integrity as a player. And if he gets caught, he catches some serious negative yardage, or even gets kicked off the field for awhile.
Offsides: being presumptuous, e.g., going in for the kiss on the first date. Wrong, wrong, wrong. In the words of Lindsay Miller, nothing is sexier than tension.
THE AFTERMATH
The end zone: The girl.
The uprights: The ceremony.
The baseball diamond: Resides in the end zone, if you catch my drift.
The extra point: Staying married past the eight-year mark.
FAQ’s
Q. What is the kickoff?
A. Puberty.
Q. Who are the referees?
A. The girl’s best friends(s).
Q. What are example of some plays the guy can run?
A. I’m glad you asked.
PLAYS
The conversation-joiner: The guy smoothly joining a conversation with one of his good friends and the girl.
The group date: A low-pressure social situation, similar in aim to the conversation-joiner.
The Hail Mary: A risky play, e.g.,
Being the life of the party. It can backfire, because while the girl might be intrigued by this guy’s popularity, she might also be turned off by his ego.
Special teams play: Introducing himself as “Brian’s friend.” This can succeed because it’s an easy in—everyone knows a Brian—but it can backfire, e.g., if she asks, “Brian who?”
Pacing one’s offense: Playing well but slowly, i.e., observing the three-days rule (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x94ews_3-days-rule_fun).
Wingman play, or the end-around: Talking up a friend who likes the girl and then handing the ball off to him. Risk of negative yardage.
Running up the middle: The one play that almost always works, i.e., doing stuff she likes to do, like yoga. Sometimes unpleasant but generally effective.
Here at Wake Forest, we waste our time creatively.
THE TEAMS
The hero’s team: His wingmen. The specific lineup varies with the girl in question.
Linemen: Those who play defense against other guys.
Running backs: Those who do some of the legwork for the QB, Barney Stinson-style: “Haaaaaave you met Ted?”
Wide receivers and tight ends: Those who do everything else the QB needs.
The offending team: Obstacles, e.g., time, space, other guys, her friends who dislike the guy, etc.
SCORING
Special teams: Getting into position to play some offense.
Offense: Exactly what it sounds like, or in other words, GYS.
Defense: Protecting the girl from other guys.
Rushing: The slow and steady gain of positive yardage.
Passing: The more momentous gestures, the flowers, the jewelry, the dinners at Panera, the chick flicks, spending time with her family.
First downs: The important “firsts,” e.g., the first date, the first kiss, the first meeting with her parents, the first time farting around each other, etc.
Second and third downs: “We should talk” moments.
Fourth downs: “We NEED TO talk,” i.e., his turn is over unless he can work a miracle.
Punting: Making the best of his failure to gain positive yardage, so the kicker is also the QB. I never said the metaphor was perfect.
Field goal: The frustration of the ultimate aim of TD, but the field goal is still a three-point gain, such as becoming best friends or FWBs with the girl.
DOWNFALLS
Turnovers: Being dumb, e.g.
The interception: A mistake that allows another guy to start playing offense on our guy’s lady.
The fumble: Carelessness that allows someone else, usually one of the girl’s friends, to knock the guy out of the running and cause him to drop the metaphorical ball.
A safety: Extenuating circumstances such as, but not limited to, getting kidnapped by the Dread Pirate Roberts.
Out-of-bounds or incomplete: Events and obstacles that temporarily derail the guy, e.g., a bad date, an old boyfriend, jealousy, etc.
The kneel-down: Self-defense when the guy thinks the girl might hurt him.
Penalties: Cheating. The guy might get away with it, but he loses his integrity as a player. And if he gets caught, he catches some serious negative yardage, or even gets kicked off the field for awhile.
Offsides: being presumptuous, e.g., going in for the kiss on the first date. Wrong, wrong, wrong. In the words of Lindsay Miller, nothing is sexier than tension.
THE AFTERMATH
The end zone: The girl.
The uprights: The ceremony.
The baseball diamond: Resides in the end zone, if you catch my drift.
The extra point: Staying married past the eight-year mark.
FAQ’s
Q. What is the kickoff?
A. Puberty.
Q. Who are the referees?
A. The girl’s best friends(s).
Q. What are example of some plays the guy can run?
A. I’m glad you asked.
PLAYS
The conversation-joiner: The guy smoothly joining a conversation with one of his good friends and the girl.
The group date: A low-pressure social situation, similar in aim to the conversation-joiner.
The Hail Mary: A risky play, e.g.,
Being the life of the party. It can backfire, because while the girl might be intrigued by this guy’s popularity, she might also be turned off by his ego.
Special teams play: Introducing himself as “Brian’s friend.” This can succeed because it’s an easy in—everyone knows a Brian—but it can backfire, e.g., if she asks, “Brian who?”
Pacing one’s offense: Playing well but slowly, i.e., observing the three-days rule (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x94ews_3-days-rule_fun).
Wingman play, or the end-around: Talking up a friend who likes the girl and then handing the ball off to him. Risk of negative yardage.
Running up the middle: The one play that almost always works, i.e., doing stuff she likes to do, like yoga. Sometimes unpleasant but generally effective.
Here at Wake Forest, we waste our time creatively.
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