Advice from Outkast

This seems like a good way to live your life.

Holy Crap

Living at home where you don't have any friends in town is BORING. School starts next week, which is good because it will give me something to do/stress over. But yeah man, not doing anything for days on end is kinda lame. Good thing I've had some fun/hanging out with cool people recently.

Movies that I've seen this summer

I have seen three movies in the past 3 weeks and I think there may be some common theme amongst them. The three movies were Inception, The Expendables, and The Kids are All Right. You may asking, what is the connection between these movies? And this may be a tenuous connection but it came into my head while I was watching the body count rise and the explosions engulf the screen during my viewing of The Expendables. The connection is about the role of males in society as seen through the lens of summer movies. This is not a post that states that men are good and women are bad, or even that the role of men in society is dwindling. The post is simply trying to square the circle about males in the media.

We (I mean people who have read/skimmed the article The End of Men) know that males in society are having a harder time adjusting to this post 2008 economic downturn world. This is not an article about how men are being oppressed, we're not. But we do have some trouble adjusting and in the media the man is sometimes considered the "omega man" (not that Charlton Heston movie) as defined in the Atlantic Article:

American pop culture keeps producing endless variations on the omega male, who ranks even below the beta in the wolf pack. This often-unemployed, romantically challenged loser can show up as a perpetual adolescent (in Judd Apatow’s Knocked Up or The 40-Year-Old Virgin), or a charmless misanthrope (in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg), or a happy couch potato (in a Bud Light commercial). He can be sweet, bitter, nostalgic, or cynical, but he cannot figure out how to be a man.

So how does this fit in with the three movies mentioned above? In the Kids are All Right the sister is the smart one, the brother is the strong but less bright hapless jock and their sperm donor is a bum who clearly does not "have his shit together." The women in the movie have their own share of problems and the movie is a treat and great slice of life movie but the males are getting the short end of the stick in the film. In Inception the female Ellen Page is the architect of the dreams. She creates the dream worlds that the other characters' use to accomplish their mission. While the main male Leonardo DiCaprio is a complete unstable nutcase who is no longer able to act as an architect. There is a woman in his head that may or may not be his own creation that seeks to ruin his attempts to achieve his goal. This story may be a good allegory by itself for a man's place in society. Woman are more than capable of running society, the man used to be able but was crushed by the weight of it, and he blames the woman for his own downfall. (One or many interpretations of this movie). The Expendables is the ultimate guy movie, it "blows up real good" and the men are in charge and the women need rescuing. It brings back memories of action movies of the 80's and early 90's. Is this movie trying to return us back to those times when men ruled are is this an attempt to placate males. Throwing men a bone while the world keeps turning without them?

Of course I too am struggling to be a man as well because I think this is the coolest website in the world http://www.perpetualkid.com/.

Sigh

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuung

Thumbs beware

Just got some of these.



Though I have El Chupacabras and El Diablo. So if anyone wants to have their thumb's candy ass handed to them let me know.

Boring day

Can I retire?
Fast forward a few decades
Being an old man

Back from the Beach + the Simpsons repeat from today

The summer of no swimming came to and end, or how it ain't summer 'less you pee in the ocean

Just got back from Delaware (we're... in Delaware). I totally went to the beach and swam even though I had said that I wasn't going to swim because I have the body of a 40 year old man. But it all turned out okay because since I'm a fat guy now I can float on top of waves, which is good because they were breaking too close to the shore and I couldn't body surf.

Also if you haven't seen "The Kids are All Right" I recommend it. It's a nice slice of life movie with lesbians. And since Julianne Moore is in it you know there are at least boobs. There is also Ruffalo butt, you know for the ladies, who aren't lesbians. Or maybe also for the lesbians, I think we can all appreciate a naked guy/excellent butt every now and then. (see PCU). The only thing I don't recommend about this movie is seeing it with your parents and grandfather, because that was awkward.

Beach

Going to the beach
But not "going down the shore"
Where is Delaware?

Scott Pilgrim Review (the comic not the movie)

So I read all 6 volumes of Scott Pilgrim. I give it 2 1/2 explosions out of 4 3/4 explosions. The art started out pretty bad with everyone looking the same. Though the pencils did get cleaner as the story progressed all the characters still kind of looked the same. This is problematic when one of the main female's character traits is that she changes her hairstyle constantly. You lose tract of who she is sometimes.

The story was kind of "meh" volumes 3 and 4 were good, they felt like they built up to something in the individual volume and in the story arc as a whole. The last two volumes were okay but the characters become more shallow and unlikeable. The book really isn't one you read because you like the characters. But the overarching theme of getting over your emotional (and at times your physical) baggage was well told and quirky though. The whimsy was at times forced but not as forced as I thought it would be.

You can read all the volumes in an evening so if you are bored and not doing anything. Eh, what the hell give it a read. I realized that there wasn't enough snark in this post. A lot of people (like myself) call this comic hipster bullshit. And it's not accurate because it's not marketed to hipsters. The characters are unlikeable, shallow, and dumb, much like hipsters. We never know why Scott and Ramona like each other other than Romona says Scott is simpleminded and Scott says she is mysterious. So these young people are having "authentic experiences" and Scott's parents pay for his apartment.

Just talked to Kenya

This is what he told me:

"So i just had to call into the "progressive" radio station over here
bc they are in the midst of a telethon fundraiser. And they keep playing clips of the conservative Dr. using the N word, claiming that if you dont support their station, all you will be left with is conservatives who use the N word, thats a quote, not me paraphrasing. Im outraged but I dont have a blog, if u share in my rage. pls feel free to blog about it. thank you"

From what I can gather Kenya is mad because the radio is not full of conservatives who use the N-word. [Someone not Kenya] would like the world to know that if he had his way the only thing on the Radio would be conservatives using the N-word. I don't necessarily agree with this wish, I say we should have less use of the N-word on the radio and it doesn't matter if these people are conservative or liberal. But if you are like [someone who is not] Kenya and want everyone on the radio to be conservative and use the N-word let him know.

Edit: This is the story about Dr. N-bomb

Edit 2: Apparently I misconstrued Kenya's argument. He doesn't actually want people to be conservative and say the N-word on the radio, but I'm sure some conservative person does.

Something near and dear to me

I am a big snob
I don't enjoy forced whimsy
No Scott Pilgrim then

Surprise

Look here comes Daniel
Flip Flip Flip-adelphia!
Now Daniel is gone

New Look

Changed the blog background
More articulate and clean
Will readership grow?

Check out my parents' effing puppies

Slice of life

Puppies wake me up
Jump from the couch to my bed
Fuzzy alarm clock

Classic Windproofhat

February 2009, total classic posts (TCP).

Back from a brief hiatus

I am a lady
Some find my thoughts vaginal
Dot my i's with hearts


(Edit: please the 1 person who reads this don't construe it as misogyny, I'm merely saying that sometimes I think like a lady, not that there's anything wrong with that.)